'She's terrified. Had this been any other generation, she'd be executed for this.'

It was treason. No part of him could rephrase it to make the crime seem any less damning. This girl, the daughter of a Foundation member, had gone rogue, stolen chakra from several innocent people, and used that chakra to charge up a living bomb. That thing, if it had detonated, would have destroyed all of Konoha.

She had done what no boy or girl in the old program had ever successfully managed to do: blend in. Until her full story came forward and the Sixth Hokage broke his own rule about keeping the identities of ex-Foundation operatives anonymous, even the Seventh Hokage had been duped into thinking Sumire was just some normal girl.

She'd been classmates Naruto's son. Sai's son, too. Inojin had mentioned his Class Rep a few times before and said she always had other people on her mind. This was a girl who cared, or at least acted like she did.

Her hands were clasped closely to her chest, her dark eyes wide. There would be no escape this time, even if she tried to run.

Slowly, Sai stepped forward. Boruto, Shikadai, Inojin, Mitsuki, and Denki all tensed up as well. None of those children knew what to expect, but he could see a combination of dread, fear, and resentment on the faces of those boys.

'Please don't take her away,' those faces said. 'She had no choice. She felt obligated to follow her father's dying wish. It wasn't her fault.'

He wasn't sure if he fully agreed with the children. Sumire was old enough to make her own decisions, and her parents had been dead for years. Still, old wounds took a long time to heal. She probably had nobody there to reach out. And in situations like that, a person could turn into a black hole and fall back on old routines. Perhaps they didn't agree with those routines, but they felt safe for familiarity's sake alone.

That, he could understand. She'd done a terrible thing, but nobody died. Sumire was fortunate for that fact alone.

"What are you all doing here at this hour?" He knew Boruto had ventured off to find Sumire and Mitsuki tended to follow his every move. Shikadai, Denki, and his own son had no excuse. If Ino got word of this, she'd have a heart attack.

Shikadai stammered, trying to come up with some excuse that would get his friends in the least amount of trouble, but Inojin beat him to it with something Sai preferred anyway: the truth. "We came out here to look for Boruto and the others."

'Silly boy,' he thought, sighing in relief that everyone was fine. 'You could have been killed.'

They all faced him, standing up. Only that girl remained kneeling, keeping her back to him. It was time to make an arrest, to pry her away from the others forever. Her body language made it all too clear she didn't expect to survive this.

"I once walked a path similar to yours," he whispered in her ear, trying to calm her down. That pang of sympathy hurt his heart so badly that he felt an old bruise come back.

She faced him: a sad, forlorn spirit who thought she had nothing left to live for. He'd made such faces before. He'd also seen them from far too many people.

"Will you let me help you?"

There was a moment of silence. Sumire stared right back into his eyes, but he could tell some of the terror was quickly being replaced with grief and shame. By now the boys were suspicious and wanted to know what was going on.

And, true to form and as Sai expected, the girl gave them a smile. "I'm just going to go talk to him for a bit." Her voice sounded chipper, artificial. It was a vocal mask.

Lies could soothe, but children saw through them. "This was an incident brought up by past ghosts," Sai insisted to the others. "She won't be harmed." He had Naruto's word that she wouldn't.

'I had to make this speech so many times to so many people,' he remembered. 'To the former Foundation children who attended Sakura and Ino's child therapy program. To the adults who were my age or older. To everyone who never truly thought for themselves…and to the very, very many that I failed…'