“Next time I start agreeing with a Hazou who’s been on list withdrawal for weeks,” Noburi said in between blowing on his hands, “someone should just put me out of my misery.”

“N’t 'at b’d,” came a muffled reply from the direction of Kagome. The team turned to see a much-bundled version of the sealmaster, suddenly dressed in thick white furs. He reached up to move his scarf down from his face. “What? ‘S not that bad. But it’ll get worse if we keep standing around on the shore. Gotta get camped up before it gets dark. Don’t wanna have to keep henging all night and have your brain melt in the morning.”

“Huh,” Noburi commented mildly as he applied a cold-weather henge of his own. “Wouldn’t have thought of that.”

-o-​

Mari was worried. Also somewhat annoyed, but she pushed that to the side and tried to focus on feeling worried.

The group had, while occasionally carrying one another to obscure their numbers and laying numerous clone-based false trails at Hazou’s insistence, searched their way inland for half an hour. They had ended up between two reasonably sized hills a mile in from the coast, at which point Hazou had asked them to stop so he could explain his idea for a temporary base.

“...and then we can put an extra layer of force walls a little further out on the logs to trap a layer of air if they aren’t good enough insulators by themselves, and push smaller logs or bits of wood onto the corners to help stop them up, or maybe furs would work better, and...”

She wasn’t sure he’d actually stopped to breathe for a minute or so now. “Hazou,” she said gently.

“...yes, Mari-sensei?” he asked, stopping his tirade and looking over at her.

Mari forced herself to take a second to formulate her thoughts into Hazou-speak. “Hazou, while I can’t think of any reason your idea won’t work in principle, it is much more complicated than it needs to be, it sounds labor-intensive to set up, and it probably has failure modes that aren’t obvious, like animals outside the base messing up the support tags or something. What objections do you have to just using MEW?”

“It wouldn’t be untraceable,” he replied.

“We’ve had this discussion before, Hazou,” Mari replied wearily. “If someone stumbles across our camp while we’re there, it doesn’t matter if it’s traceless, and in any case having things like support tags outside the base makes us more vulnerable. If they find it after we leave, that only tells them we were there. Now that we can pretty much vanish into thin air, they get even less information than they would have before. Unless you already know someone’s hunting you, it’s almost never worth the extra effort.”

“But people are hunting us, Mari-sensei!” Hazou insisted, a note of desperation creeping into his voice. “Zabuza, Yagura, those Hot Spring nin -- there are thousands of people who would kill us without a second thought! We have to be careful! I-- I don’t wanna lose anybody else.”

Everyone was temporarily stunned by the outburst of emotion. Noburi broke the spell by stepping up and pulling Hazou into a rough hug, ignoring his squwak of protest.

“You haven’t lost Akane,” Noburi said steadily. “With any luck, you haven’t lost your mom either. And you couldn't get rid of the rest of us if you wanted to… though kami knows sometimes it seems like you do!"

Hazou couldn’t manage to say anything, and simply returned the embrace. Kagome mumbled something about Savior Syndrome from behind his scarf.

Mari blew out a long sigh. “Okay. Next step. Simple, easily concealed base - we don’t have trees to hide behind here. I’m thinking a big, low room that’ll get covered with snow quickly.”

“I had a different idea for a more permanent shelter, if I could try to explain it...?” Hazou asked hesitantly. When Mari merely quirked an eyebrow, Hazou turned to Keiko. “Would you mind calling up Pandaa?”

…​

Scrch. Scrch scrch tck.

“Hrrrrm.”

“That doesn’t sound positive,” commented Keiko.

“It isn’t,” Pandaa agreed. “I could manage it if you gave me a couple days, but I don’t think that’s what you guys are going for.”

“Admittedly, that wouldn’t be ideal,” Keiko said, grimacing. “But if you can’t do it…”

…​

“No. Absolutely not. The great Panjandrum is not a manual laborer,” the hulking pangolin said emphatically, crossing his enormous arms and pointing his snout into the air to emphasize the point.

Keiko resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “You can either refuse to help, and have me report to your superiors that you failed a cold-weather survival team exercise, or help, and get some of the cake Kagome is making tomorrow on top of a positive report,” she stated flatly.

“...cake?”

Gotcha. Asking around among Pandaa’s military buddies had eventually revealed what branch of the military Panjandrum was currently stationed with - the cooks. Apparently, food was the only thing to which he felt motivated to devote his substantial talent. Outwardly, she simply nodded. “I understand it’s a recipe he personally modified from the ancient lore of Hidden Leaf’s Akimichi clan.”

“Pfah. Human recipes. I’d bet you anything it needs a Pangolin’s sophisticated touch to be anything special.”

“...do you want to help with the baking?”

“Oh well alright, if you insist,” Panjandrum answered, and before Keiko could respond he had driven one gigantic claw into the side of the hill and scooped out a mound of icy earth as large as her.

-o-​

Near the end of his watch, Hazou heard Mari-sensei getting up to take her turn. He turned away from the entryway to greet her, only to find her already making her way over. She sat down beside him and together they watched for a few quiet minutes as the snow fell gently outside, hiding their tracks.

Without warning, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into her side.

“Mari-sensei?”

She glanced back at the others’ sleeping forms before focusing on him. “You don’t have to prove anything to us.”

“Wh-- huh?”

“It’s okay, Hazou. You don’t have to be intimidated by Noburi graduating his medic apprenticeship, or by Keiko’s success with the Pangolins. You’re a brilliant young man, and you’ll probably end up making more of a difference than any of us. I understand feeling like you need to show the team you can still contribute even when you aren’t able to use your lists, but your planning isn’t why we want you around. You don’t need to drag us to the far-flung corners of the earth to show us how good you are at coming up with ideas. And you certainly don’t need to do it to try to convince me I’ve been a better teacher than I really have. Okay? We already believe in you. I promise.”

“Mari-sensei, you’ve got it all wrong, I wasn--”

“Shh, shh, shh. I’m not mad. I realize some of it is my fault for forcing you to go cold turkey and then leaving you alone with Keiko and Kagome of all people for company. Just know that we all care about you even when you aren’t planning out our activities weeks in advance. Now get some sleep.”

“...yes, sensei,” Hazou acquiesced, his head reeling as he tucked himself into his bedroll and turned his back to the low flames in the center of the chamber. How was he supposed to respond to that?

-o-​

The next afternoon, it was discovered that Panjandrum and Kagome-sensei had irreconcilably different ideas about what constituted an excellent -- or even sane -- cake recipe, and after nearly ten minutes of bickering Mari had decreed that Hazou would just have to get two birthday cakes and decide the winner by trying each one himself.

“Rigged!” Panjandrum insisted from the corner where he had positioned himself with the majority of his ‘Panjandrum Extra Special Pastry’, which he insisted ‘had still come in second’. “The judge was biased! Your weird cultural traditions have clearly corrupted him. And I had terrible ingredients to work with!”

“Don’t you blame my ingredients, you scaly stinker, you were the one who put flame peppers in a cake!” Kagome nearly yelled.

“And they burned deliciously!” Pandaa countered, coming to his clansman’s defense around a mouth full of his slice of spicy confection.

“This discussion seems to be getting back to being rather... heated,” Keiko interrupted quietly, prompting a groans from around the room.

-o-​

“Present time!” Mari-sensei chirped once everyone had finished eating and Panjandrum had excused himself from the remainder of this ‘full-contact anthropology’. She withdrew a small wooden box from a storage seal and tossed it to Hazou. “That one’s from Noburi and I.”

Hazou examined the box. The lid was cut to resemble a woven basket. The kanji for ‘iron’ was carved at the very center, surrounded by the shape of a raindrop. The ascending tip of the droplet met the descending tip of the heart shape it was inscribed inside of. In the lobes of the heart rested a stylized sun and snowflake.

Gingerly, Hazou slid the lid off to find a set of gorgeous brushes with polished bamboo handles, laying in velvet next to a pair of inkstones.

“They’re beautiful, you guys,” he said and then looked up at Mari hopefully.

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, fine, I suppose you can use them to make lists. But only with supervision!”

“Score!”

“Tug on the last section of one of the brushes,” Noburi suggested, pointing to the handles.

Hazou pulled. The wood came off to reveal a razor-thin blade.

“You made it easier to murder anyone who tries to take his lists away again?” Keiko asked in feigned shock, as she stepped forward with a much larger box.

“Don’t pretend he wouldn’t use that box as a bludgeon. Let alone whatever’s in it,” Noburi objected.

Ignoring Noburi, Keiko knelt down next to Hazou. “Pandaa and I worked together on this, so it’s from him too.”

This box was outwardly simple. Hazou opened the clasps and found his eyebrows climbing up his forehead. Inside were a pair of metal gauntlets cut with a pattern like Pangolin scales. Each had a single solid segment with straps to go around his forearm. The segments for covering the backs of his hands bore kanji reading ‘protect’ and ‘resolve’, as well as a series of wickedly curved blades extending out over each knuckle like a Pangolin’s claws.

“Ah-he-he-hmmm,” Pandaa intoned, standing up. “These are replicas of weapons favored by the previous Pangolin Summoner, Ui Isas. His said ‘rip’ and ‘tear’ - we figured these might be somewhat more appropriate for someone as loyal and determined as you.” His formal manner deflated somewhat, and he began tapping his claws together. “Um. And happy birthday, Hazou. You’re a really cool guy.”

“Thank you very much Pandaa. And you too, Keiko. Where did you get them?”

She inclined her head. “You’re very welcome Hazou. Pandaa knows several other Pangolins interested in historic recreation and anthropology. They were quite determined to get them done once I insinuated they might not be up to it, like Mari-sensei recommended.”

By unspoken agreement, the room settled into a comfortable silence to avoid pressuring a clearly uncomfortable Kagome, who looked to be working himself up to say something.

Eventually, he reached over and made as if to hand a scroll he’d pulled from his pack to Hazou, then reflexively pulled it back, looking down.“This. I. Um,” he stuttered. Mari laid one hand gently on his shoulder. He took a steadying breath. “I still don’t know how you guys found me outside that little village,” he began again. “You’re still crazy for having wanted to learn Sealing. But if you hadn’t convinced me to come with you, I woulda probably been caught up in when the whole country got turned upside down by all those village stinkers. It’s… it’s been the greatest year of my life, having teammates I can count on to watch my back and not worry whether they’re gonna stick a kunai in it. Having people who… who remember my birthday, and want to celebrate it. It’s been… a long time, since someone did that. Even longer since it was somebody who did it because they wanted to, and not because they were ordered to be nice to keep a leash on me, or because they were obligated to. And if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have any of this. Thank you, Hazou.”

Kagome handed over the scroll. Hazou pulled off the rings keeping the ends rolled up, and noticed they had slots for seals. He nodded at Kagome in silent acknowledgement before unrolling the scroll.

On it was an ink-wash painting of a man and a boy sitting together on a hill under an open sky, the man gesticulating, the boy taking notes. Below the sun was written ‘belonging’.