"how dare they how dare they how dare they"

"Are you all right, Uchiha-san?"

Oh.

"Yes. ...I apologize for disturbing you."

Some of the names are of people I only half remember. Uchiha Huo? Uchiha Sarafukā? Faint notes of dirges play in my head and of course there is a reason I only half remember them. How dare Senpuki Teki say what he has said.

But other names are more familiar and sadly unsurprising. Uchiha Ryushi. Uchiha Tarō. ...Uchiha Kanade. Oh. That...wasn't optimal.

Traditionally, the Uchiha clan head owned all of the buildings used by the clan, and he would assign them out. But that was when we were nomads who needed outposts in various parts of Fire County, and not villagers who needed homes. Or money, apparently. I hoped that that was the reason, because as much as insurance fraud looks badly on us, it is still a civilian matter and not...something else. Kanade was probably just trying to finance more eyeshadow, not a civil war. I wrote down the names of those in the listings. I was not yet sure how they were to be disciplined, but this really wasn't acceptable.

Unless, perhaps, they were framed.

That had happened once, when my father was still police chief and I was a patrol cop, assigned to the normally very quiet Precinct 9. It was the sort of area that had had a rash of burglaries because of people not locking their doors, and the main problem was noise complaints. And then Moru Chichon's house went up in flames. He had recently lost his whole fortune in the gambling dens of Shukuba-machi, and everyone knew it. His house had been insured for nearly twenty thousand ryō, a good amount now and a princely sum then. The court of public opinion convicted him long before he got a trial, but after a very lengthy investigation, we discovered he hadn't done it. It was his brother, who had been pretending to be dead for ten years and was angry about the wasting of their inheritance, aided by Moru's jaded ex-lover. It was truly one of the most ridiculous cases we ever had, and I think it even wound up in a book, but it had happened.

That could have certainly been the case here as well. Kanade definitely had quite a few jaded ex-lovers. I would be very surprised if Tarō hadn't made enemies of somebody. And hadn't Huo wound up in small claims court for something once? My mind dances with a thousand conspiracies, of shadowy men in darkened rooms, with silver tantōs glimmering faintly, their voices low.

No.

I couldn't think like that.

I had to admit we had problems. Homespun problems not caused by Shimura or the daimyo or anyone but ourselves. We hadn't liked that, before. Clearly the reason so many of our civilians wound up in the psychiatrist's office was because of the prejudice society had for us. Clearly the reason other families wouldn't allow their children to play with ours was because they thought we were responsible for the Kyūbi attack. Clearly the reason so many Uchiha wound up on missions that involved several months of being posted hundreds of kilometres away from the village was because the Hokage wanted us out of town. And so on.

I wouldn't allow myself to think like that again. I needed to find the reason for this, the real reason. And there would have to be legitimate consequences. It used to be that if an Uchiha committed a crime that was anything short of rape or murder we would let them off lightly, maybe let the paperwork or evidence disappear. There were some people who wanted to handwave sexual assault, too, since "boys will be boys," but I knew Mikoto would kill me if she found out I approved of that so I said no. All of them would get stern remarks, of course, but nothing more than that. Why did I let that happen? No. The Uchiha clan would be great again, but it would be great the right way. A model of clan excellence, not like the Hyūga or some other family that got even more disturbing rumors spread about them than us. Yes.

I wondered if I should confront them, burst right into Ryushi's face and ask him what the hell he thinks he's doing, but that seems too brash. I try not to be that kind of man. Perhaps I wind up that way sometimes, but I try not to. Ryushi was definitely up to something, though. Surely they were all working together on this. But who was in charge?

Kanade liked telling people what to do, but she didn't seem like the type to suddenly decide to commit insurance fraud. Why did she own a building in Block 8, anyway? It was a semi-sketchy area, just beginning to be gentrified. Yamanka Inosomebody was telling me their son who thought he was an artist had decided to live there, but Kanade was not the art type.

Hm. It was definitely not Tarō. He was the muscle, who would've been some oyabun's bodyguard had he been born to any family other than this one. Huo, I remembered now, had always been disorganized and a mess, sort of like Obito except he was old enough it was no longer funny. Not him. Sarafukā was the proper kunoichi, buried in her best kimono. She wouldn't have done this.

So that left Ryushi, didn't it? My brain now connected him to Shisui, probably because of that incident yesterday. Shisui would have done this, and then given all the money to some charity in Kiri or something equally stupid. I sort of missed him. He was as much of a disaster waiting to happen as the rest, but at least he was a different flavor of catastrophe. But Ryushi wasn't him, and the second mora in his name was not hiragana, but the kanji for determination. And he had certainly been determined, before, to do...things which even Kagami did not approve of. This wasn't going to end well.

I really didn't want to think about this right now. What could I do instead that was completely unrelated to this? Well, Torture and Interrogation wanted a report, didn't they? I could write that and ponder what I was going to do. Or ask Mikoto about that self-defence idea, surely she'd be glad to see me at home? Except she said she was going to some sort of mommy group, and I had no idea where it was. And T&I had asked me for a report in person sometime next week. I sighed.

The letter!

I had forgotten all about the letter that mailroom person had handed me a few days ago. I was slipping. What if it was urgent? Except if it had been, surely it would have been delivered in person. Hopefully.

What time was it? I pulled my watch out of my pocket. It had been my grandfather's. Somebody told me he had stolen it from the emperor of a distant land. I had been planning to give it to Itachi as a 13th birthday present, because he had always liked it and I knew being punctual was important to him, but...there had been other things on my mind that day.

It was slightly past two. That was good. Time enough to finish filling out all those requisition forms, maybe stop in to the accounting department, and respond to...whatever this letter said. Hm. I let my mind drift to the mundane side of things. It would probably be a good idea to order some more light body armor. We tended to get ours in the same style as ANBU, but of a lesser quality, because we didn't have an ANBU budget.

I had previously thought this evidence of something nefarious, but it really didn't make sense for someone who would be facing a collection of angry drunks or low-level ninjas to have the same kind of armor as one who fought the best of the best. And...when we were planning the coup, Naoko had been complaining how there was never any armor that was small enough for a woman. Hm, how many women did we even have on the force right now? Could you even order breastplates in a size extra small?

Of course you could.

I had seen one.

Bone white.