"Wouldn't peacetime give more people the opportunity to work on seals?"

"It's that secrecy problem I mentioned earlier - we lost our two greatest seal masters right around the time peace was declared, and they didn't have the time to take apprentices between their rise and then death. One of them was the last of a major tradition, too."

"That is unfortunate."

"I'm hoping that can be rebuilt, at least..."

"I'm guessing they didn't, like, leave notes behind or anything."

"Nothing I'd have access to, and it's standard to encrypt notes fairly thoroughly. That can be worked through, but it's slow and risky - skilled seal masters can trap their notes directly."

"Yikes."

"Things are sometimes reconstructed? But yeah."

"One step at a time."

"Mhm."

And Konoha starts to be audible, at least. Shisui leads them around patrols with the familiarity of someone who's done this a possibly treasonous number of times, angling for one of his boltholes just far enough off the edge of the Uchiha compound to avoid surveillance. 

(He directed one of his summons to Itachi earlier. Hopefully the girl will keep her head down. She's sometimes a bit of an idiot, though...)

The two girls follow him closely, if not so quietly.

He gets them there - a house in the woods that probably used to belong to a shrine-maiden, beside a little shrine - 

And Itachi's standing out front.

"Hello," she says, from where she's sitting on the front stoop. She's vaguely twelve, though thin and wiry for her age, hands callused and expression hard. She stands. "Your crow didn't detail the situation much, so I came out."

She's so small. Looks scrappy, though.

"Itachi. Please tell me you're not starting your teenage rebellion phase."

"No. You're just an idiot, so I decided your suggestion was dumb. Who are they, and what happened?"

"My name is Tasara. This is Anneia. We are visitors from another world."

"Another dimension, or another planet?"

"Dimension, we think."

"Huh. Shisui, you said something about the plans with that man?"

"Uh, let's get inside." There's at least some measure of privacy seals on the house.

Inside it is.

Once inside, to Itachi, "That man turned on me, and tried to take my eyes. He's dead now. I'm aware that changes our plans regarding the clan rather drastically. Also changing the plans: these two don't know how to return to their world, I don't know how to return them, and they're willing to at least look into helping maintain the peace while a solution is figured out."

"From the sound of it, you guys could use a little peacekeeping."

"I'd be hesitant about outside interference."