Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest (STORY ONLY)

Paperclipped · Jul 4, 2024

Hazō rested under the wide beech tree, whose twisting, sweeping boughs reminded him of a calm fall day. Dog's seasons weren't as extreme as anywhere on the Human Path – just a slightly colder period and a slightly warmer one – yet he still found his thoughts coming to the autumn leaves. They changed from vibrant green to the colors of flame, then fell in sweeping motions, tracing a zig-zag path to the ground to meet their fate beneath the heel of a passerby. The branches overhead seemed to sweep out and down in the same way that an autumn leaf fell.

Hazō was alone, then suddenly Cannai was there.

"Summoner," the Alpha said in greeting, as Hazō realized this dog was a little less Cannai and a little more the Alpha. "Forgive me for skipping the pleasantries this time, but Dog needs me elsewhere. I am told you intended to deliver a strategic report on the Leopards' capabilities."

"That's right, sir," Hazō said, standing to face the Dog Alpha. It felt right.

"Please begin."

"You know the Dog Clan's strengths," Hazō said. "We have greater numbers, better coordination, and can outrun leopards over distance and track them when they flee. Based on what we heard from the leopard we interrogated, they're moving in groups of five or six combat-capable adults, sometimes more. Even with our advantages, groups of eight dogs can't reliably overpower such large Leopard raiding groups without casualties. I propose we instead send groups of twenty or thirty dogs at a time and harry the leopards – engage in favorable circumstances, and stay just out of reach otherwise. Chase them until they get tired or until they have to go back to where they keep their cubs, so they don't run."

"All true, summoner," Cannai said. "And I would use such tactics if a war between Dog and Leopard indeed came to pass, rather than send underprepared groups to the maws of our enemies. However, Hyōhakken will not see twenty or thirty dogs as a targeted, retaliatory raid. If those dogs are all seasoned, blooded warriors? That is a warparty."

"I see," Hazō said. "And you did not want to escalate yet."

Cannai gave a low woof of affirmation. "Cancurunchu and Canzappu are both excellent warriors – strongest in their respective packs – and the remainder of your group were all mature fighters who had fought leopards previously. This should have sufficed against the groups of two or three leopards I was anticipating, and it would apparently have sufficed even against the five or six you found had you not encountered one of Leopard's stronger warriors – a cut above even Cancurunchu in strength and notoriety.

"You have no fault, summoner. Cansaku insists at every occasion that you form a contract with him so that he can get more of those Force Blade seals, and his every account emphasizes the importance of your support. But, as you say, I do understand Dog's strengths, and I do know what we will need to do if war with Leopard is inevitable."

"And is it?" Hazō asked.

Cannai looked east, and Hazō followed his gaze. He saw only the endless plains and scattered forests of central Dog, but with the Alpha by his side, he somehow felt the cool chill of the mountains where the pangolins and hyenas were killing each other. Where Kei might be fighting.

"No," Cannai said at last. "I would not be standing here talking, if it were. But my hopes for peace grow narrower by the day, as Hyōhakken refuses my offer of peace talks and accelerates his raids on our border and in Hyena. I suspect his intent is to accept any losses to keep Dog's forces spread out, so that Hyena falls quickly and Pangolin is able to reinforce Leopard against us.

"He is wrong. Even without Conjura's support, Hyena will not fall quickly enough to save him if I turn my gaze towards crushing Leopard beneath my paw, not unless the Pangolins have found some warmaking invention comparable to your skytowers. Yet, I cannot force Hyōhakken to see sense.

"I hope, for his sake, that he does."

o-o-o

"...and after Sasha's graduation party, Shinji also shared with us that he'd been promoted to chūnin. We applauded appropriately, of course, but we all knew he basically didn't care about it at all, right? Turns out he had a talk with Naruto, who realized that he was dramatically underpromoted, so he signed a quick order and bam! Chūnin. Not that it matters now that he's been reclassified as a full-time sealsmith, but I guess it's some prestige for the clan, right?"

Hazō nodded, accepting the latest part of Noburi's report. Something was missing. The news from the clan had all been mundane, but Noburi was subtly bouncing back and forth on his heels in excitement.

"Sounds good," Hazō said. "Was there anything else?"

"'Was there anything else?' he asks, so casually, not understanding the power he holds in the palm of his hand," Noburi muttered. "Yes, there's something else, Hazō! Remember that seal you gave me the other day, the one you said the Fourth Hokage made?"

"Yes, the one which visualizes chakra around it in that weird way, right? The fifth, seventh, and eighth seal in the chain do something like that. The Fourth had a note that the seals might be medically relevant." Hazō asked.

"Medically relevant!?" Noburi said. "It's a Sage-damned medical miracle seal, you know! I figured out it basically lets me look into a patient's chakra system and see exactly what's going on inside them. There's a bunch of medical ninjutsu that gets super complicated by interactions between your chakra and the patient's chakra, and someone that knows how to read these seals can basically make all those problematic interactions go away."

"That sounds amazing," Hazō said.

"Amazing? It's fucking fantastic! I can see chakra! It's like having a Hyūga medic in a seal! Or half a Hyūga medic. Or a quarter. Man, those guys are busted!"

"Shut it!" Fukasaku's voice called from the Toad Sage's low, squat swamp house where Hazō and Noburi met on the daily to exchange news and chakra.

"Sorry sir!" Noburi said, but apparently his outburst had attracted the elderly toad's attention, and Pa came out onto the porch, waving his thick, gray stick at the both of them.

"You need to keep your damn voice down if you're gonna be hanging out here outside when we're training you boy. Ma's making tea, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna be jumping every other second because some fool's outside my house yelling at the sky for not being purple.

"And you!" he said, turning on Hazō. "Don't you think you're overstaying your welcome? Ma invited you to dinner, not to come crawling back here every damn day to have your shadow clones crowding around everywhere. And you've left a pack of stinky dogs in our back garden, running around and barking and making a nuisance. We're done teaching you, shouldn't you go out and do some great things before you come back begging for more?"

"Get back in here, you dilapidated old dingus," Shima's voice called from the house. "Your tea's getting cold and you're getting grumpier than you usually are."

Pa shot them both a death glare, then hopped back into the house.

"...anyways," Noburi said, "you're lucky I wrapped up with Tsunade before I actually had a chance to try this out, since if she saw me using it and figured out what it was, she'd demand you be chained up in a seal sweatshop making more of these for the hospital non-stop, clan secrets be damned. Speaking of which, is this a secret?"

Hazō remembered his conversation with Naruto, where the Hokage had explained that he wouldn't necessarily back Asuma's decision to assign Minato's seals as Gōketsu clan secrets.

Hazō wobbled a hand. "Maybe. Why?"

"I just want to know how much I can use them at the hospital before I need to worry about people getting the idea to snatch a spent seal or copy it somehow. I took a day checking out some easy patients that they let me work on solo, so no one but the Hyūga saw it yet. I'm not gonna be back in the hospital for a while, but I'm gonna need you to make me like thirty more of these," Noburi said, handing a spent seal to Hazō.

Hazō looked the seal over. "That's the eighth one in the chain. Why this one?" Hazō asked.

"It was better than the others," Noburi shrugged. "I think it was giving me the most accurate reading of what was going on inside the patient. If you think one of the others is better, then give me a few of those too so I can compare and decide."

"Extra scribing work? With my schedule? I'd sooner drink Shima's spicy tea," Hazō said. "I'll get you a dozen."

"That'll do, I suppose," Noburi said, picking his barrel up off the ground. "Very well, Hazō, back to your sealing mines. The protagonist has to do his training."

o-o-o

Canope saw Hazō pivot and dodged left. The Iron Nerve switched Hazō into a new movement track, extending his arm awkwardly to catch Canope's leap with the edge of his Force Blades. Red lines split the dog's side.

"Hold on, break," Canope said.

Hazō backed away and unhooked his gauntlets with the mock Force Blades – lightweight wood roughly whittled to the right length, then slathered in thick red lipstick (from Mari's makeup cabinet and apparently 'hopelessly out of fashion') so that the slightest touch would leave a mark.

"What's the matter?" Hazō asked.

"I think this whole effort is misguided," Canope said, as she turned around to inspect the ostensibly-lethal marks along her side. "Yes, we managed to manufacture this little situation with your bloodline where you're guaranteed to land a hit. That's not gonna work on anyone else, who has a different size and strength and decision making process and all. And unlike you humans, who all have a pretty similar combat style that lets you predict what other people are gonna do before they do it, random leopard number three hundred and forty two isn't gonna know what you're telegraphing with your movements. They're just gonna back away or jump on you and eat your face before you reach them."

"You're saying that Roki won't work on the leopards?" Hazō asked.

Canope stood up again. "I don't think so. Your human combat sounds like an elegant dance of attacks and counterattacks. I don't think you'll find that on the Seventh Path unless you for some reason fight someone a dozen times – and even then, you're going to have such asymmetric capabilities from your opponent that you might not get the reliable block patterns for you to feint your way past."

"Okay," Hazō said. "Let's test it out in a more organic scenario then. I'll jog in from that way, and you jump on me when I reach about here, and I'll see if I notice any place where I could build a Roki trap."

"Sure thing," Canope said as she settled into the grass. "Why would I say no to a roll around with the summoner? On your mark!"

o-o-o

The thick clouds and new moon had made the night pitch-black, and so Kagome-sensei had cautiously approved a campfire, so long Purifiers caught all the smoke and Darkness Domes caught all the light as it left the Earth Wall fire pit from above. Game from the island – burrowing rabbit-mosquito creatures that Hazō did not want to think about – roasted above the fireplace and filled the vaguely square enclosure with inexplicably delicious scents.

While Kagome-sensei turned and seasoned the unthinkable meats, Hazō scribed Light Relay seals. He'd originally wanted instantaneous long-range communication. Set up underground tunnels in Leaf with a chain of the seals, then a light on one side would near-instantly appear on the other side. Unlike summoner communication, which needed a scroll and even then only worked with prearranged check-ins, anyone could use this. Sadly, he'd never gotten around to testing it, so in the single hour that he'd budgeted for relaxation today, Hazō had decided to set up a small prototype of his communication tunnel.

He was mid-infusion when a puff of smoke signaled Kei's return from the Seventh Path, and his chakra shifted slightly more chthonic than he'd intended.

Kei opened her mouth to say something, but stopped as Hazō dropped the seal and hopped back to the wall. Everyone recognized a sealmaster's horror and backed away, Kagome-sensei going for his explosives.

But nothing happened.

Before Kagome-sensei could blow up their dinner, Hazō quickly adjusted his stance to a relaxed one. "Sorry, false alarm, everyone. I thought Kei's arrival messed up my infusion, but it's fine."

Kagome-sensei's eyes narrowed and Hazō sighed.

Fifty-five questions later, Hazō had convinced Kagome that a secret sealing failure hadn't eaten Hazō's brain, and the underside of the spitroasted… things had been considerably blackened by the campfire's heat.

"Really, it's just a normal Light Relay," Hazō said, walking over and picking up the seal from beside the campfire. He turned the receiver towards the cheery flame and the emitter face of the seal lit up a rich orange. "Just like normal."

"What concerned you to such a great extent?" Kei asked as she settled down on her halved log, eyeing the suspicious meats with the caution they deserved as Kagome hurried to get them off the flames. "My admittedly mediocre understanding was that sealing failures generally made themselves evident to the sealmaster rapidly and violently, rather than granting you seconds to gape at the failing seal in horror."

"Well, I thought I messed up my chakra in the infusion in a particular way, maybe moving the receiver's tuning beyond red," Hazō said. "I did something like that when I was teaching Harumitsu, and there was a sealing failure then too. I thought I'd accidentally tuned the receiver to an impossible color and caused another sealing failure, but it's stable and there's no weird effects."

"I see," Kei said, extending a hand to examine the infused seal. Hazō handed it over. She held it closer to the fire to light up the seal, then pulled it away to darken it. Kagome tried to offer her food, but she shook her head. "I saw too many corpses today for my appetite to be counted amongst the survivors. Mere companionship will suffice to prepare me to return to Pangolin."

"That bad? Do you want to talk about it?" Hazō asked.

"There was another Hyena raid," Kei said. "The most deadly yet. Two pangolin civilians were slain before we noticed their presence, and two more perished before our approach prompted the Hyena retreat. They still refuse to engage with my tessera while I am present, and I do not wish to learn what they intend to do with the town if they overpower the tessera in my absence, so my presence here will be brief… but I do require additional comfort, yes."

"What can we do?" Hazō asked, starting to saw the blackened bits off his dinner.

"I do not know," she said, slightly exasperated. "Were you Tenten, you would know better than I how to ameliorate my emotional turmoil, and perhaps even were you Miyuki would you be able to make a passing attempt. Instead you… well, I suppose you and Kagome provide emotional support in different ways. Tell me, how you would resolve my current predicament, apart from the obvious."

"The obvious?" Hazō asked.

Kei closed her eyes and sighed. When she reopened them, she reached for another of the Light Relay seals. "The town I am defending is of no strategic relevance, hence why the Hyenas will not invest deeply in an attack, and why Pantsā will not allocate additional resources to its defense. The obvious solution to the townspangolins being chipped away by one attack at a time is to petition Pantsā to evacuate the town to a safer location so that its people might survive. However, this would all but cede the associated land to Haikari, so Pantsā will refuse."

"You can't let the stinking Hyenas kill your people, Kei," Kagome said. "They're not gonna face you straight up because their strategy is working. Can you build a larger perimeter that they can't cross? They can't fly, right?"

"I have considered this," Kei said, voice marginally more deadened than usual. "Indeed, some hyenas have already committed suicide against traps of your creation, Kagome. However, they have grown wise to the existence of trap perimeters and have begun to pelt them at range from ninjutsu, triggering seals prematurely and creating holes in the perimeter. This type of raid is obviously less lethal to the community than the ones in which the pangolins are exposed to the hyenas' attacks directly. However, the associated cost – the loss of the deployed seals – is unacceptably high."

"Seals are cheap, Kei," Kagome said. "Paper's cheap! Ink's cheap!"

"Commercially-available goods have not been our primary production bottleneck for years, Kagome," Kei said. "For all the value associated with a bandolier with hundreds of explosive seals, I cannot actually use hundreds of seals daily without incurring an unacceptably high cost to your time.

"I have observed the raiding groups to contain eight Hyenas on average, who fire two to three ninjutsu each before our response forces their departure, where each ninjutsu destroys one seal in expectation, accounting for explosives destroying adjacent seals and frequent ninjutsu misses. These ninjutsu need not be powerful, as they are merely triggering traps rather than attacking an enemy, so this raid may happen twice or thrice a day.

"Explosive seals and storage seals aside, as your former students provide a near-limitless supply of them, I shall conservatively call the number of seals destroyed per day at around fifty. Scribing these seals would require every other day of your time, Kagome, and you are engaged in a seal-research race with Akatsuki for the fate of the Elemental Nations. Whatever my opinions on the townspangolins' right to life, the logistician in me clearly sees that this cost is absolutely unacceptable."

While Kagome-sensei processed Kei's words, Hazō spoke. "If you can't wait the hyenas out as they come, can you instead take the fight to them? Dog has been punishing Leopard for their raids with small-scale counterattacks, hopefully just enough to dissuade them from attacking without forcing Leopard to counterattack."

"I suppose that must be the solution," Kei said, resigned, as she held the two Light Relay seals together. "If Hyena is made aware that the Pangolin Summoner is a lethal force not to be trifled with, yet is spending her time guarding a nameless village far from any theater of importance, I think they would ecstatically leave me alone. I had hoped that I might-"

"Kei?" Hazō asked.

"This Light Relay is slightly different," Kei said evenly. To demonstrate, she held both seals together, pointing toward the fire. Slowly, she brought them closer. The one Hazō thought he'd misinfused activated. Seconds of slow movement later, the other activated.

Kagome jumped to his feet, preparing weapons to destroy the anomalous seal, but Hazō stood as well. "Wait, Kagome-sensei! The seal didn't fail. It's working exactly according to the specification, isn't it? It's just more sensitive than it should be."

A quick test confirmed that the other Light Relays Hazō had infused under normal conditions activated at roughly the same distance as each other, while the anomalous one activated farther from the light. Hazō spent five agonizing minutes scribing another Light Relay and infusing it just chthonic enough for its receiver to be red, only for them to find out that even a red receiver wasn't as sensitive as the misinfused one.

"I think the fire is just emitting a spread of colors – yellow, orange, red, and past-red," Hazō said, after a quick debate. "I guess I can tune a receiver to receive past-red, but the Light Relay's emitter is just like HOWS, so tuning the emitter to past-red might cause a sealing failure again. Still, we should test it. I could scribe another Light Relay and try tuning the receiver more chthonic than red and see if it shows the same behavior. We could do that now, and if it produces the same result, we-"

"No seal experiments at dinner!" Kagome said, waving his hands in Hazō's face to break him out of the fugue. "If you want to test this, you do it tomorrow, with a fresh night's sleep to think it over, after doing all the proper dances, at a proper facility, with a shadow clone, when we're all ready to reverse summon and behind six meters of granite." His teacher shoved another roast spit of something better left unknown in front of Hazō's face. "For now, eat!"

"Sorry Kei," Hazō said, once he'd gotten a couple bites in to mollify Kagome-sensei. "You were saying?"

Kei glanced to the side. "Actually, on reflection, I believe I exaggerated the extent to which the day's carnage diminished my appetite. Kagome, may I partake in the food you've prepared?"

Kagome quickly handed her food. Kei started to pick it apart, and with everyone occupied by their meals, Hazō put thoughts of conversation aside and let his mind start to swirl with ideas.

o-o-o

"...and we expect to see no further Leaf ninja in reallocated territories for any reason, regardless of whether those territories are currently possessed by Rain, or else we shall consider such actions to be AMITY violations.

"Finally, Sasori is pleased with the seals he has received, so that component of our agreement is complete."

"'Agreement'?," Naruto said stiffly. "I never agreed to it."

"The agreement between Akatsuki and Leaf," Itachi replied, "consisting primarily of a substantial weregild paid by Leaf for the AMITY-violating murder of a member of Akatsuki and high-ranking officer of Hidden Rain. That agreement was made between myself, representing Akatsuki, and Tsunade, representing the office of Hokage and thus Hidden Leaf, and later affirmed by members of AMITY. When the title of Hokage is passed on, all agreements and contracts made by former Hokage remain in place unless explicitly broken, so this agreement binds you as a primary party. Unless you wish to renege on this agreement?"

"Whatever," Naruto said.

"Whatever?" Itachi repeated. "Let's be clear. Are we agreed that you consider yourself bound by the aforementioned agreement?"

"Yes, fine."

"Good," Itachi said. "Then, that leaves only one component to discuss: Leaf's research on dimensionalism. Where is Gōketsu Hazō?"

"On a research mission," Naruto said.

Itachi blinked for a moment, and Naruto took a moment to glance at his tormentor. The Kinslayer was sitting there across from the Hokage's chair with his eyes closed, as if he didn't fear any retaliation Naruto could bring to bear. Which was probably true, since Itachi was certainly a shadow clone, and Leaf didn't have a genjutsu specialist that could inflict enough psychic damage before the clone would dispel and Itachi would know Leaf had made a direct attempt on his sanity.

Then Itachi opened his eyes again, and Naruto found his gaze forced away.

"You sent him on a research mission?" Itachi asked.

"He asked for one himself."

"Where is Gōketsu Hazō located?"

"In the southern isles," Naruto said. "He said he fancied a beach trip on one of the little islands off the coast of Tea. His mission papers have his exact location, but of course we won't provide these things to a foreign ninja that may well wish him harm."

"This is relevant to the agreement," Itachi said. "Do you believe Gōketsu Hazō is researching dimensionalism?"

Naruto shook his head. "No. He said he wanted to do weapons research. I dunno if that's true, maybe he wanted an excuse to get out from under the paperwork and lie on the beach for a while. Whatever, he said it was clan secrets so I didn't ask too many questions."

"'Clan secrets' does not suffice," Itachi said. "Is he researching the rift?"

Naruto shook his head, making sure that his gaze never crossed into eye-contact with Itachi. "I gave him strict orders not to work on anything rift-related."

"Hm. You're in contact with him via the Seventh Path?"

"Minimally," Naruto said. "He's busy, and doesn't take many of my messages."

"I see. You will require his immediate return so that I may confirm that he has produced no new work on dimensionalism."

"You're not-!" Naruto said, turning to face Itachi. He met the man's gaze and immediately, instinctively flinched back to the side, heart racing and vision darkening as his torturer met his gaze, unspoken words crossing the gap between them.

My gaze is dangerous. Yours is powerless.

I control every aspect of your mind.

Your resistance only causes you punishment.

"-the one who gives orders to Leaf ninja," Naruto finished half-heartedly.

Itachi continued to look at him, black eyes drilling in while Naruto's mind ran rivers of red. He refused to make eye contact.

"You will send a message to Gōketsu Hazō via the Seventh Path, ordering his immediate return to Leaf, so that I may confirm that he has not produced new work on dimensionalism in violation of Akatsuki's recent agreement with Leaf."

…

"Fine," Naruto said. A 'go fuck yourself' manifested itself in his mind, but Naruto knew he would never be able to verbalize it. If only shoving a Rasengan through Itachi's face would have solved a damn thing…

"Good," Itachi said. "I will confirm that you have done so. I suspect Hidan will also be curious about those mission papers. Now, I wanted to ask you about Orochimaru..."

o-o-o

Noburi had looked shaken, and for good reason. He wasn't just delivering an urgent message from the Hokage. Uchiha freaking Itachi had apparently visited the Gōketsu main house late at night, politely waited to be escorted through the trap array by a bewildered Kazushi before coming to see Noburi. Only then did the Kinslayer clearly and firmly tell Noburi that Hazō needed to return to Leaf 'at his earliest convenience'.

Ordinarily, a family member confronting an Akatsuki member would be at the front of Hazō's mind, but Naruto's message had included a line that had struck him. "The mission's over Hazō, so stop screwing around in the sand and get back to Leaf immediately because Akatsuki wants to talk to you."

Sure enough, in the stack of thin envelopes Naruto had handed to Hazō via the Seventh Path, one of them was marked "Screwing around in the sand".

Scenario:

Akatsuki has figured out that you're working on something to oppose their control of the rift, and suspects Leaf involvement.
We don't have rift technology sufficient to open the rift and pull our people out in less than two weeks.
Akatsuki probably hasn't opened the rift yet, and so is mostly spread out or based in Rain.
No substantial changes on the Orochimaru front.

Action:

If you have defenses that can deter Konan + Deidara's offense indefinitely, or weapons that can kill at least two Akatsuki members reliably, return to Leaf immediately.
Otherwise, open the envelope marked "Kurohige".
If you have research bandwidth, start to develop rift technology in parallel with Orochimaru. I don't trust that he won't take the rift for his own, but it's still better that he selfishly sit on another immortality source than Akatsuki do who-knows-what with it. Still, I'd rather it be in your hands than his.

In the envelope marked "Kurohige", Hazō found a longer missive, again in Naruto's sloppy scrawl.

'Cause Kurohige left Mist for a long time, but eventually came back to help it out, right? I've been learning a bit of Mist culture recently and I think I nailed the reference.

If you're opening this letter, you need to go missing for the good of Leaf. I'll send Akatsuki on a wild goose chase so you have a head start on them, but you need to drop out of contact indefinitely, and not return to Leaf until you have game-changing defenses (can neutralize Konan + Deidara's offense) or offenses (can reliably kill at least one Akatsuki member at a static, well-defended location [rift or Hidden Rain]).

I wish I could have some way to contact you to tell you to return, but if I can do it, Akatsuki can do it. I have to trust your judgment on this. If you come back, Leaf will fight to defend you from Akatsuki. That could spell the end of Leaf if what you bring back isn't good enough. Come back too late, and we might have already observed Akatsuki at the rift site, waited as long as we thought we could afford to, attacked, and lost. It's a trade-off.

Ideally, you bring back runes and tools ready-to-go and we immediately attack Akatsuki at O'uzu, but who can tell what the future will bring?

Everyone's going to be looking for you. Akatsuki's spy network is strongest in the minors, in Sand, and in the near parts of the Eastern Continent, but they could have someone anywhere. Staying out of contact on the Human Path should be easy. I'll keep Leaf off your ass as much as I can manage (which is not much – I need to act like I really want your head). Roughly speaking, I'm going to have Leaf focus on the southern isles for around two months, then Iron and Snow for two months more, then the Eastern Continent. I can't predict what'll be happening six months out.

I leave it to your judgment how to deal with the Seventh Path. I recommend: don't go anywhere except limited sites in Dog and Arachnid, interacting only with dogs and arachnids strictly under oath not to carry any messages to you from the outside, and have the Dog and Arachnid bosses spread far and wide that this is the case (but obviously not the locations of the sites), including sending messages to Crow and Shark so they can't possibly miss it. Akatsuki will try to get to you via the Seventh Path, and you can use Seventh Path honor as a shield, kind of.

For anyone you take with you – if you tell them that 'going missing' is a sham and that I agreed to it, make sure they also know that they must not return to Leaf with this knowledge. If Akatsuki learns that I suggested you go missing to beat them to the rift, things are going to be real bad for us. I recommend trying to convince them without mentioning my approval and only saying it if they join, but I leave it to your judgment.

If you need them: here are three assets from Jiraiya's spy network that Asuma judged as not very useful and never reactivated. I'll go through the books and make sure any mention of them is expunged.

Suzuki Yūka is a carpenter's wife in the village under the big mossy cliff twenty-five miles north of Otafuku Gai. She is a former chūnin from an unknown (non-Leaf) village. She wants to live a normal life, and Jiraiya blackmailed her with the threat of sending a Hyūga sweep through her village, which would discover her as a ninja, or worse, identify her children as chakra-capable and thus future Leaf ninja. Jiraiya mainly used her for top-secret message runs and for generally keeping an ear on the pulse of trade through Rice and Hot Springs (though the small size of the village limited that utility).
Syōma is an information broker and priest of some weird religious order on the Eastern Continent. Apparently he's a straightforward guy – put ryō in, get answers out. Jiraiya said he once tried to force answers out of him, but he resisted Jiraiya's killing intent better than most jōnin. Jiraiya half-shit himself thinking he'd overextended himself pissing off a powerful ninja at arm's length, but the guy apparently didn't even notice that Jiraiya had done anything! His intel on the Elemental Nations is mediocre, but Jiraiya says he sometimes knows stuff that no civilian has any right to. Go to Red Moon Inn in Marsh's capital and ask for an 'iron nail stew'.
Yamada Saki is the wife of the biggest business magnate in Kanmuri, the Land of Earth's biggest city outside of Hidden Rock itself. She's an incurable gossip with an incredible memory – apparently she remembers the names and descriptions of ninja that her friends' friends hired decades ago. Jiraiya seduced her, so I don't know exactly how you're going to reactivate the asset, but maybe some promises around Jiraiya's return might get you a little bit of progress? If your questions are innocuous, she might just answer them anyway out of habit.

I hope that's enough.

Hazō has set a HOWR (light-emitting rune) next to a fresh Five Seal Barrier in an Earthshaped room 10 meters underground so as to not give away his location to the entire Elemental Nations, with a reference 5SB in a similar room 100 meters away. Both 5SBs were infused by Kagome back to back, so hopefully the astrological conditions of their infusions were identical. Hopefully, the HOWR-adjacent 5SB runs out of energy faster.

A later test of past-red receiving Light Relays reveal that they can be stably infused and reliably activate when exposed to flames of various sizes and sorts.

Day 1
Cleaning up camp, moving to Gaikotsu Bay.

Day 2
Prep Icarus Rune.
Prep Space-Stretch Rune.
Prep Storage Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks he could maybe do this rune. Accordingly, Hazō aborts research on this rune.
Prep Capacitor Rune.
Prep Pocket Space Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks he could maybe do this rune. Hazō also thinks the Space Stretch Rune and similar things would build useful veterancy here.

Day 3
Prep Icarus Rune.
Prep Space-Stretch Rune.
Prep Capacitor Rune.
Prep Remote-Explosion Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks this rune is well within his capabilities.
Prep Storm Rune. Hazō thinks a full thunderstorm would be needlessly challenging as it is composed of many different effects (heavy clouds, rain, wind, etc.). Instead, he simply preps a rune that calls down loads and loads of lightning in the rune's area of effect. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks this rune is well within his capabilities.

Day 4
Prep Icarus Rune.
Prep Space-Stretch Rune.
Prep Capacitor Rune.
Prep Kagome-Sensei-Satisfying Explosive Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities
Prep Jiraiya's Awesome Dawnbuster Legacy Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks this rune is well within his capabilities.

Day 5
Infuse Icarus Rune.

Hazō (Primordial Sealing): 20 + 25 (crossover bonus from SSA-boosted Sealing) + 6 (prep) + 0 = 51
Hazō (Earthshaping): 50 - 6 (timeladder down) + 6 (prep) - 9 = 41
[NB: Getting sketchy… Still high ES relative to PrimSeal, so no reroll, but it's getting close.]

Hazō makes progress on the Icarus Rune.

Infuse Space-Stretch Rune.

Hazō (Primordial Sealing): 20 + 25 (crossover bonus from SSA-boosted Sealing) + 6 (prep) + 6 = 57
Hazō (Earthshaping): 50 - 6 (timeladder down) + 6 (prep) + 0 = 50

Hazō handily completes the Space Stretch Rune! Expands space in a moderately-sized area by a minor amount. Exact details TBD.

Infuse Capacitor Rune.

Hazō (Primordial Sealing): 20 + 17 (crossover bonus from Sealing) + 6 (prep) + 0 = 43
Hazō (Earthshaping): 50 - 6 (timeladder down) + 6 (prep) - 3 = 47

Hazō makes progress on the Capacitor Rune.

Prep Explosiver Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks he could maybe do this rune.

Prep Landmine Rune. Hazō thinks that instantaneous rune activation is nearly impossible given the amount of power runes need to channe, so he prepares a rune which is primed over the usual ~30s and then remains dormant until a triggering condition happens, at which point it takes about 3 seconds (read: one combat round) to activate. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks this rune is well within his capabilities.

Hazō expects some trigger conditions will be more difficult than others – "a human with ninja levels of chakra is running past" would probably be relatively difficult but "a thing hit the rune with X force" would probably be relatively easy. He thinks the "seal-activation levels of chakra applied to the surface of the rune" trigger condition that he tried to make here is on the easy side, although it should be noted that this delayed-activation functionality is never going to be trivial to add in.

Day 6
SSA recovery.

Day 7
SSA recovery.

Day 8
Prep Icarus Rune.
Prep Capacitor Rune.
Prep Canary Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.
Prep Portable-Explosive Rune. Difficulty Result: Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.

Day 9
Prep Icarus Rune.
Prep Capacitor Rune.

Day 10
Prep Icarus Rune.
Prep Capacitor Rune.

Day 11
Infuse Icarus Rune.

Hazō (Primordial Sealing): 20 + 25 (crossover bonus from SSA-boosted Sealing) + 6 (prep) - 3 = 48
Hazō (Earthshaping): 50 - 6 (timeladder down) + 6 (prep) - 3 = 47

Hazō is making steady progress on the Icarus Rune. He thinks he is around a third of the way finished with the rune.

Infuse Capacitor Rune.

Hazō (Primordial Sealing): 20 + 25 (crossover bonus from SSA-boosted Sealing) + 6 (prep) + 0 = 51
Hazō (Earthshaping): 50 - 6 (timeladder down) + 6 (prep) - 3 = 47

Hazō thinks he is barely inches away from completing the Capacitor Rune.

Day 12
SSA recovery.

Day 13
SSA recovery.

This update covered 13 days for Hazō and 11 days objectively. It is currently the morning of September 5th in-character.

XP Award: 48 + 10 (brevity) XP
GM-fun Award: 2 XP

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Jul 6, 2024 at 1:00 PM .

eaglejarl · Jul 7, 2024

Chapter 667: Disciple of the Beyond

HazōNoDomes4U (yes, he had been very clear about the childish spelling) was working on a rune to prevent the formation of Air Domes within a wide area. This, of course, would shut down skywalkers in the affected area, thereby causing anyone using them to experience, as Gōketsu Michiki might have stated it, 'a rapid unplanned terrain interaction causing dispreferred levels of cranial widening.' Translated from engineerese: plummeting into the unforgiving bosom of Mother Earth and spreading the contents of one's skull over a twenty-foot radius. Given that at least some members of Akatsuki used skywalkers for aerial mobility, this was a potential assassination option.

HazōEvenBiggerPackRat was working on the Storage Rune, an upscaled version of the normal storage seal that would have a vastly larger weight- and volume limit. Hopefully, although perhaps not with this version, it would be possible to get around the other limitation of storage seals: the inability to store anything with chakra. With luck maybe they could put a living person into a time-locked storage space, thereby eliminating them as a threat. Again, a useful tool against arrogant demigods who were too strong for Hazō to attack head-on.

HazōJuiceUpGuy was working on the Capacitor Rune, something that Hazō figured was going to need very careful presentation to Noburi. It would gather a huge amount of ambient chakra...and do nothing. Hazō could almost hear his brother's reactions, and the most likely was mockery over the uselessness of the rune, followed by sharp-edged demands about whether or not Hazō was trying to make Noburi obsolete as a chakra source. The answer to that was, well, yes. Eventually, he wanted a rune that would pull in ambient chakra, prepare it for human use, and then allow any ninja to pull the chakra out and into their coils. No more of that pesky drinking necessary. Hazō was definitely going to need to talk to Mari about how to present this to Noburi. Regardless, having a way to charge up allied ninja in preparation for ambushing Akatsuki was obviously useful.

Hazō Prime had reserved the best rune for himself. He was working on the Space Stretch Rune, a rune that would do to space what his Time Runes had done for time: extend it for those within the effect. Someone inside the affected area might measure it as being fifteen yards across while someone outside the area might measure it as being ten yards across. He didn't have an explicit anti-Akatsuki use in mind but he was sure he could figure one out. Or Out, as the case might be.

He chuckled under his breath, drawing a quick glance from Kagome-sensei who was scribing seals a short distance away. Hazō shook his head to say that it was nothing; his teacher gave him an annoyed glare that carried with it an entire sermon on the dangers of letting one's thoughts wander while doing chakra work on seals (or, in this case, runes), but he went back to his own task with merely a sniff.

The silent lesson was well taken; Hazō pushed his distractions aside and focused on the rune he was working.

He wasn't actually trying to infuse the thing, merely working chakra manipulations to check the effects of calculations he had made yesterday. He could see how the chakra structure of the rune would work...or, at least, sometimes he could see it. The chakra construct that embodied a rune was a complex thing, the simplest explosive rune existing in no less than seventeen dimensions. Visualizing something like that in a normal human brain wasn't feasible. You could model it mathematically, you could encode multiple dimensions into a condensed and approximated form the same way "250 miles that way" specified the path to Leaf in a more condensed form than the full directions which would take into account things like terrain obstructions. No, a normal brain could not capture the true form of a rune's chakra construct in one go.

Hazō's brain, of course, was not normal.

Years before, he had gazed upon the Pangolin Summoning Scroll and allowed his Iron Nerve bloodline to store a mental copy of the scroll's seal the way it stored a copy of every other seal he came across. Summoning scrolls, however, were no mere seals. They were something more, something no living person understood or could create. The attempt had cracked his mind, very slightly and in a very useful way. That crack had been torn gapingly wide when he gazed upon the mountain-sized Great Seal in Arachnid, the one that held b4ck the Drag0ns.

He reached through that crack, pressing his awareness into the hyperreality that lay beyond the Paint that was the quote real unquote world. It was a place of madness, of sonic ankles and searing velvet that scoured at the rude intrusion of human awareness with bristles of daydream and spoiled milk.

He pressed aside the silent din with the skill of long practice and took hold, spinning out a tendril of madness and weaving it into a preliminary form, a notiona1 basket that would provide the general structure of his rune's construct. The basket twisted as he built it, spinning through twelve dimensions of apple and sour and dirty hair and sweat-soaked sheets. He enc0mpassed all of it, widening his gaze to perceive all of the basket at the same time, and began to feed ch.kra through it.

The nonworld around him continued to leer and chant and susurrate with charcoal strength in an unguided(?) attempt to break him down and pull h1m ap@rt..

Wait.

Long discipllln3 held the rune's construct stabl3 as Hazō considered what he was perceiving around himhimhimmmself.

The distractions weren't entirely unguided.

Across the Paint, he blinked in shock.

There was S̶͈̯̘̹̰̈̂ō̵̘̖̰ṃ̶̻͈͍̻̌e̶̦̤̾͝ẗ̵̹̅̃́͘͜h̴̛̯̠̪̽̅̋̍i̴̧͌̈́̈̓n̴͊͜g̸̰̹̝̯̜ ͂there. Not an ent12ty, not a being like hE was, but an awareness nonetheless. The movement of n0nࠓêäl1ty around him was clearly not that of random chance. No, it wasn't thaaat there saw S̶͈̯̘̹̰̈̂ō̵̘̖̰ṃ̶̻͈͍̻̌e̶̦̤̾͝ẗ̵̹̅̃́͘͜h̴̛̯̠̪̽̅̋̍i̴̧͌̈́̈̓n̴͊͜g̸̰̹̝̯̜ ereht was S̶͈̯̘̹̰̈̂ō̵̘̖̰ṃ̶̻͈͍̻̌e̶̦̤̾͝ẗ̵̹̅̃́͘͜h̴̛̯̠̪̽̅̋̍i̴̧͌̈́̈̓n̴͊͜g̸̰̹̝̯̜ there, there was S̶͈̯̘̹̰̈̂ō̵̘̖̰ṃ̶̻͈͍̻̌e̶̦̤̾͝ẗ̵̹̅̃́͘͜h̴̛̯̠̪̽̅̋̍i̴̧͌̈́̈̓n̴͊͜g̸̰̹̝̯̜. As in, all of 'there' was the S̶͈̯̘̹̰̈̂ō̵̘̖̰ṃ̶̻͈͍̻̌e̶̦̤̾͝ẗ̵̹̅̃́͘͜h̴̛̯̠̪̽̅̋̍i̴̧͌̈́̈̓n̴͊͜g̸̰̹̝̯̜ and the S̶͈̯̘̹̰̈̂ō̵̘̖̰ṃ̶̻͈͍̻̌e̶̦̤̾͝ẗ̵̹̅̃́͘͜h̴̛̯̠̪̽̅̋̍i̴̧͌̈́̈̓n̴͊͜g̸̰̹̝̯̜ was all there was.

Hazō's m1nd shredded as something came from the S̶͈̯̘̹̰̈̂ō̵̘̖̰ṃ̶̻͈͍̻̌e̶̦̤̾͝ẗ̵̹̅̃́͘͜h̴̛̯̠̪̽̅̋̍i̴̧͌̈́̈̓n̴͊͜g̸̰̹̝̯̜. It wasn't sound, or smell, or touch. S̶͈̯̘̹̰̈̂ō̵̘̖̰ṃ̶̻͈͍̻̌e̶̦̤̾͝ẗ̵̹̅̃́͘͜h̴̛̯̠̪̽̅̋̍i̴̧͌̈́̈̓n̴͊͜g̸̰̹̝̯̜ w4s aLl of r3al!ty; i7 couLd nO moer touch Hazō than cOuLd rElaality. He felt h1mmms3l c min a p a r t @7 7|-|3 7|-|3 7|-|3 7|-|3 7|-|3 s{R4 s{R4P s{R4Ping T0V{|-| of—

Unreality blinked around him and softened as nothing and everything changed. The petrichor color of the madness that swaddled him now seemed familiar and logical. Something̸̰̹̝̯̜ stood between him and the hyperreality, shielding his fragile humanity from the grinding tastes of F4# and the plunging heights of starlight that carried him along the river of ideation and reification, his runic construct bobbing lazily beside him.

His perceptions had sharpened, and weakened. His awareness ('sight' was entirely the wrong word) stretched farther and penetrated what had previously been stygian pits of irony and dazzling rafts of blind indifference. Shapes moved around him, most of them vastly larger than himself, so large that they could grind buildings or planets to dust with a casual bump, but some so small they seemed able to slip between the fibers of his combat vest without noticing that the vest existed. They weren't anything that a mind from his side of the Paint could have perceived; they existed in too many directions and their composition defied language. He couldn't tell if they were hyperreality's inanimate icebergs or genius denizens or blind and hungry animals—indeed, there were undoubtedly all of those things and more besides. Only now, with the intercession of the S̶͈̯̘̹̰̈̂ō̵̘̖̰ṃ̶̻͈͍̻̌e̶̦̤̾͝ẗ̵̹̅̃́͘͜h̴̛̯̠̪̽̅̋̍i̴̧͌̈́̈̓n̴͊͜g̸̰̹̝̯̜ did he realize that those things had always been here.

Sage's name, how arrogant could one be? He had thought he understood this 'place', that he could come and go as he pleased, using the madness of it to enhance his abilities with seals, his power to test them against the cracks in the Paint in order to find how they would best fit. He had never thought that there were Things here, eating away at his brain for every instant he worked. Every time he had used this power he had suffered a blinding headache for days, one that got worse every time he even thought about anything related to sealing. He had believed it was simply part of what it meant for a puny mortal to be exposed to the Out, but now he knew better.

They had been eating him.

Every time he had come here to practice the best ways of cracking open his reality and rendering it more easily accessible by these...Things, they had been there. Their passage had buffeted and battered him constantly as they crowded close, swimming through his brain and defecating ideas and understanding while pressing obscene and defiled bodies against the crack in his mind that almost but not quite gave them entrance to his home.

Now, he was hidden from them, and for that he was more grateful than anything.

Thank you, he thought as loudly as he could. Hyperreality made no reply.

He turned his attention away from the Things and focused it back on the runic construct. It made more sense now, the willow snow dimension connecting clearly and cleanly with the fruit whirlwind kick. It made sense, in the same way that a kata made sense after you had practiced it a thousand times. In fact, runes seemed far more logical than seals. He was mapping dozens of dimensions down into something that could fit across the Paint; why make the extra effort to fit it into two dimensions when he could use the third as well? Honestly, it made so much more sense that he could barely remember how he had done the two-dimensional squishing in the first place.

Far away, on the other side of the Paint, his body snorted in amusement. Here, in this nonplace, his mind focused on the rune that would twist space like taffy.

It was well.

Author's Note: Good news! Hazō has exchanged his 'Summoning Scroll Acoylyte' stunt for the 'Disciple of the Beyond' stunt! This is an exchange, so there is no XP cost. The change increases Hazō's Primordial Sealing skill (the one used for runes) at the cost of reducing his Sealing skill (the one used for paper-based seals).

Better news! After much discussion, the QMs have decided that the crossover bonus between disciplines (e.g. Sealing and Primoridal Sealing) is innate, not a buff. As such, it does not require a 100 XP combination stunt in order to work alongside Disciple of the Beyond. You may rejoice now.

XP and Brevity award: 0 The vote was for an interlude, not a plan.

"GM had fun" XP: 5

It is now about 8pm and your check-in with Noburi is in an hour. This update covered 1 day.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Jul 10, 2024 at 7:00 AM .

Velorien · Jul 11, 2024

Chapter 668: Soon We'll Go Missing Again

"It's time," Hazō announced grimly as the four members of Operation Twilight (Snowflake had decided that if Kei got to name the site of operations, then someone needed to name the mission as well) gathered on the central skytower. Furious winds lashed the outside of the old-fashioned seal-based air dome while the torrential rain pouring down it made Hazō feel like he was sitting inside an oversized Hōzuki's Mantle. The occasional flash of lightning reminded him that the team was altogether closer to the heavens than was currently sensible.

"Naruto has sent us a message," he went on. "Come back with your shark or in your shark."

"What?!" Kagome-sensei demanded as he rose sharply to his feet, the lanky man's head brushing perilously against the dome. "So that stinking Fox has finally got to the direct threats, has it? I told you we should never have–"

"Kagome!" Kei snapped. She held his gaze for a moment, and Hazō's sealing instructor sat back down sheepishly. After a second, the cold retreated.

"I will overlook, for the moment, the uncalled-for insult to my dear friend," she said. "Hazō was merely referencing a traditional Hoshigaki saying. It means, 'It is better to perish in the course of completing a mission than to abandon it and return to the clan in dishonour'. I must say it is a deeply ironic one to use in this particular company."

Hazō looked at his companions. Kei's eyebrows were quirked in amusement. Snowflake was giving him an 'oh, really?' look. Kagome-sensei seemed ill-at-ease.

"That occurred to me about half a second after I said it," Hazō admitted. "But I'm being serious. Itachi turned up in Leaf and demanded my return. Obviously, that's not an option. I can't gamble my life and Leaf's future on beating an Akatsuki interrogation. In other words, I have to go missing, and the people who know what I've been doing and why have to go missing with me.

"This is it. Either we complete Operation Twilight and are welcomed back to Leaf as heroes or we die at Akatsuki's hands before we can. For those of us who refuse to accept a future determined by Pain, there is no third option.

"I'm sorry it's come to this. It might not have if I'd been able to complete my research in time. But we all knew before we set out that it was more likely to turn out this way than not. I have to admit I hoped Naruto would be able to buy us more time, but I've long since learned not to count on best-case scenarios."

"He cannot be blamed," Kei interjected. "This part of the plan hinged on forcing him to face his personal nemesis, the man who stripped him of his power and doubtless tortured him in unimaginable ways in the process of preparing him for a uniquely agonising death that would use him as a tool for his loved ones' doom. A man, furthermore, with extensive experience practising psychic domination of other S-rankers with the aid of a Bloodline Limit ideally suited to the task. Your worst encounters with Orochimaru would be a luxurious soak in the hot springs by comparison. That the Eighth was able to stand firm and follow the plan at all is an achievement to be respected rather than a failure to excel."

Hazō sighed. "You're right, of course. Still, we are where we are. It takes less than two weeks to get back from the southern islands where we officially are to Hidden Leaf. Assuming Akatsuki bought the cover story in the first place, that's how long we have before they stop being polite and go after us with everything they've got."

"You are correct," Kei said, looking away, at the raging storm almost close enough to touch. "This was always the expected outcome. I… had believed I was better prepared."

Snowflake squeezed her hand. "At least now I no longer need to feel excluded from the formative missing-nin experience," she said with false cheer.

Hazō couldn't think of anything to say to that. Snowflake had fought hard, in ways none of them had ever had to, to make Leaf her home. She'd had to fight to be accepted as a person, then as a legal entity, then a citizen, all in the name of a place to belong that the rest of them had taken for granted ever since the skywalker trade and Jiraiya's subsequent adoption all those years ago. Now, she was about to lose everything she'd earned, with no guarantee and little agency when it came to ever getting it back.

He could only move on.

"Our first priority needs to be the other Gōketsu," he said. "In particular, I'm worried about Noburi, Mari, and Yuno. Without Noburi, my research slows down massively and Operation Twilight becomes a lot less viable as a race against time. On top of that, it seems like a natural move for Itachi to take them hostage to force us out of hiding. Obviously, that can't be allowed to happen. Our family needs to be out of Leaf before Akatsuki discover they need the leverage.

"Does that sound right to you three? If I'm exaggerating the danger, then obviously they need to stay in Leaf. I would never ask anyone to go through all the trauma and peril of going missing again unless there was no other choice."

"I don't know why you even need to ask," Kagome-sensei said. "We just watched those Akatsuki stinkers kill the Hokage and make Leaf pay for it. They're not going to stop at a little torture and murder when the stakes are high. Heck, those lunatics would probably do it just for fun if they could get away with it."

This time, Kei and Snowflake's combined glare could have frozen the air hard enough to create an air dome without any seals.

"What? What did I say?"

Hazō sighed once more. "Kei, Snowflake, not now, please."

"Stupendously insensitive though Kagome's comments may be," Kei said coolly, "I am inclined to concur with their essence. While there is a non-negligible possibility that Akatsuki will choose not to risk the stability of AMITY with further aggression against Leaf–their saner members must be aware that they have pushed their mandate to the breaking point–the stakes are simply too high as both parties' rift research surely grows closer to completion. Besides, said saner members are clearly not in a position to fully restrain the rest.

"Our loved ones may possess information regarding our activities, locations, and further plans, or may have indirectly noticed hints of which they themselves are as yet unaware. Furthermore, as you say, their abduction may serve to compel our return, and with multiple hostages available, it would be… only rational to torture one to apply proper pressure and make the point clear."

She hesitated. "Hazō, you have considered the possibility that others outside the immediate family are likewise vulnerable? You and I may be aware of the relative feebleness of our bonds with the others we have sworn to lead and protect, but Akatsuki may not be, or may believe that they will possess sufficient weight in aggregate. There is a vast and unbridgeable gap between the clan head who surrenders their seat before departing on a mission from which they do not expect to return, as Kani Mukan did, and one who abandons their people even in the knowledge that they are about to be placed in danger–much less when they are the indirect cause of that danger."

"I know," Hazō said. "It's not like I had a choice, Kei."

"I did not intend to imply otherwise," Kei said quickly. "My point is public perception, both insofar as Akatsuki may expect you to feel this way and act accordingly and insofar as it will be an obstacle to face in the event of a triumphant return. I very much fear that the populace at large, oblivious to the apocalyptic nature of the Akatsuki threat and seeing only that the missing-nin have bribed our way into Leaf a second time, will not be inclined towards acceptance and forgiveness.

"But that is a problem for a future it feels radically optimistic to even hope for. Our discussion pertains to the dispiriting present."

"Right," Hazō agreed uncertainly. "The fact is, though, that a mass extraction isn't realistic. First off, these people are generally going to be more loyal to the Will of Fire than to us. It only takes one to refuse to go missing and go to the authorities. Naruto being forced to act before the family can exfiltrate would be a catastrophe. Secondly, the more people are involved, the harder it will be to maintain stealth. Mari is an expert at getting out when a mission's gone to hell, but even she can only work so many miracles. Reo can't even use skywalkers.

"I know you feel responsible for the ex-KEI ninja, Kei, but this time round, we're going to have to count on our ex-Coordinator Hokage to do what we can to protect them, and hope that it's enough. Maybe he'll put them under ANBU watch, or into safehouses or something."

Kei bowed her head. "It is not as if I can deny anything you say. I have considered the same arguments and more during my hours standing guard against the Hyenas, a dozen terrible futures contesting over my imagination. But… I hate it, Hazō. What has it all been for, if I cannot even protect those in my care–worse, if my actions place them in danger they did not consent to?"

Silence. What more was there to say? Even Kagome-sensei had to imagine the possibility of Honoka being taken. Or if not, Hazō would choose to come back in his shark before pointing it out.

"We can stretch as far as Tenten and Fujisawa, at least," Hazō said. "Shikamaru is as untouchable as anyone in Leaf short of the Hokage–"

"For all that's worth," Kagome-sensei added bitterly.

Kei closed her eyes. After a few seconds, she opened them again.

"I am losing my patience. Kagome, do you recall what we discussed the other night?"

"Which part?"

"Your comment logically implies that, as Akatsuki are both able and willing to murder the Hokage without consequences, they will also be both able and willing to murder Shikamaru should they judge it desirable. This is plausible, and as an observation, it could even be of value in a hypothetical scenario where we needed to evaluate Shikamaru's safety. However, everyone present is already aware that Akatsuki could murder my husband and best friend at any time. The reminder is both unnecessary and hurtful."

"Oh," Kagome-sensei said, crestfallen. "I'm an idiot. A great big stinking idiot. I'm so sorry, Kei."

"Supposing," Kei went on, "that Akatsuki feel any restraint whatsoever, they will balk at abducting or otherwise taking extreme hostile action against the head of Leaf's most important clan. The same cannot be said of Tenten or Miyuki, KEI ninja whose disappearance would have only a limited impact on Leaf's military capability, and less still on its politics. I wish to believe that, as Hazō observes, the Eighth will feel some special responsibility for the vulnerable minority to whom he once swore additional oaths, and perhaps even some nepotistic concern for a close friend's lovers. However, if a choice must ever be made between those particular shinobi and Leaf's continued survival, I am unable to believe that he would not make the rational decision.

"With that in mind, yes, I wish to extract those two as soon as possible, or at least to offer them the option. Tenten has already once refused to compromise her principles in order to be with me, and Miyuki is a true believer in the Will of Fire in a way that we are not and never can be. Still, at worst, neither of them will take steps to prevent the rest of the family's escape."

"Good," Hazō said. "We can do that. Mari can easily get them messages–off the top of my head, don't Yuno and Fujisawa hang out all the time?–and for now, they're going to be under much less scrutiny than the others. With her guidance, they should have no problem slipping away with no one the wiser."

"They are likely to be interrogated sooner or later once it emerges that I have betrayed the village," Kei noted. "However, the Hokage is aware that actually receiving actionable information would be a disaster, so it is likely that he will avoid deploying the Yamanaka, and ideally delay questioning until any potential information is no longer actionable–a gap allowing for successful exfiltration."

"I'll leave composing the messages to you," Hazō said. "Not that Mari can't be convincing, but if we have to persuade them that this is the right course of action to begin with, then it has to be someone they know and trust.

"Now, since we seem to have a consensus, on to practicalities. Any objections to letting Mari take point on exfiltration and contact us via Noburi once they're safely out?"

"None."

"None."

"I mean, how else were we going to do it?"

"Pretty much," Hazō said. "We are stupidly lucky to have Mari, and always have been."

Kei gave him a look loaded with an essay's worth of meaning. Hazō had time to read the introduction, discussing how they'd only ever needed Mari's skills because she kidnapped them from their families and dragged them to the Swamp of Death, before he decided to leave thinking about it for another time.

"We can set up a dead drop for Noburi, so if Akatsuki are opening our mail, they'll think we're on the move like we're supposed to be and don't have time to chat. I'm thinking some innocent, non-runic sealing notes for the main body. That's plausible if we're afraid of dying en route and all that value being lost, and hopefully, if Itachi looks at it, he'll recognise that it doesn't look like rift research."

"Itachi is a veteran shadow clone user," Snowflake pointed out, "and he knows about Noburi. The notion of multi-threaded research would hardly be unimaginable to him. Besides, in what way do you expect this evidence to affect his actions? He will not choose to retract his call for your return so lightly, nor will it allay his suspicions when he learns that you would rather go missing than report for interrogation."

"Fine," Hazō said. "It probably won't accomplish anything. But it also doesn't cost me anything–copying out a bunch of notes is hardly a big strain when I have a ton of shadow clones."

Snowflake's eyes narrowed. "Yes, of course. Why not create and destroy a few unique divergent perspectives for the purpose of trivial manual labour that you expect to accomplish nothing?"

"...On second thought, it would be safer to use the Iron Nerve anyway," Hazō said. "Can't risk copying errors when someone might use those notes for research some day." He had carefully avoided stepping into that trap array so far, and this was no time to change his mind.

"Anyway," he said, "the real purpose of the notes is so I can throw in some seals to help with the exfiltration–darkness domes, extra skywalkers, and so on. It must suck for the Gōketsu to have to spend months with both of their elite sealmasters gone."

"I hope the kids are getting on fine," Kagome-sensei muttered. "Noburi would tell us if there'd been any estate-melting sealing failures, right?"

"Of course he would," Hazō reassured him. Probably. Unless he decided that bad news Hazō couldn't do anything about would just distract him from his research.

Sage's ballsack, Hazō could totally see Mari telling Noburi to filter the news like that. Leaf might be a snake-filled crater right now, or the Hagoromo might have started a gay revolution for Naruto to have to violently put down, or Mari might have decided to experiment with the economy after all, or…

"I assume this will also be our opportunity to instruct Mari to exfiltrate?" Kei asked.

"...Right." Hazō forced his mind back onto more tractable problems. "I'll send her a letter telling her what to do to prepare for my return–gather documents and reports, make sure the right clanspeople are available for me to catch up with, notify all the business partners who I owe meetings, all that–and ask her to check with Ishikawa-sensei about Honoka's progress at the Academy, for Kagome-sensei's peace of mind."

"This is code for 'go missing ASAP, with no further contact until you have left the Fire Country," Kei explained to Kagome-sensei. "We are all aware that you trust Ishikawa's judgement as much as you would trust a Hyūga to keep his Byakugan deactivated while alone in the Gōketsu vault."

"The stinker said she had hereditary ageometria," Kagome-sensei spat. "Maybe if he'd ever explained why the interior angles add up to 180 degrees, or–"

"A monster," Kei agreed. "In the unlikely event that the opportunity ever arises, I will personally see to his doom now that he has served his purpose."

"Finally," Hazō said, "I have a thought about the hostage situation. You're right that we can't guarantee Akatsuki won't pick someone to be a hostage, no matter who we exfiltrate. The only way to protect ourselves from that for sure is to use the ultimate shinobi defence."

"Don't be there," the other three recited.

"If Akatsuki can't contact us, they can't coerce us, even with all the hostages in the world. That means we have to isolate ourselves from Seventh Path communication, which is their only means of reaching us when they don't know our location."

"Viable," Kei agreed. "I am currently far from the Pangolin heartlands where most of my contractors are located, and Pantsā has no interest in undermining my military utility by forcing me to attend to extraneous matters on the Human Path, much less casting me into Akatsuki's jaws. I am confident that the ruthlessly-organised Pangolin military can filter or sever communications at will."

"I don't spend much time with my spiders anyway," Kagome-sensei said. "I tend to creep them out. They say it's not natural how my organs are all on the outside of my exoskeleton, and the little ones always ask me what happened to the rest of my legs. They mean well, I know, but it does get tiring after a while."

"Can you put something more reliable than that in place?" Hazō asked.

"I suggest only permitting contact at a restricted list of locations," Kei said, "known to the clan boss and those individuals who are absolutely necessary for your function as a summoner and can be trusted, in the boss's opinion, to keep an oath of non-communication. I do not mean in terms of intent, since a properly-formed oath is absolute on the Seventh Path, but in terms of competence."

"I foresee a difficulty," Snowflake said. "For the deterrent to be effective, Akatsuki must know that taking hostages will accomplish nothing, as opposed to learning this only after they have abducted various victims and then found that they cannot communicate the fact to us."

"Right," Hazō said. "That's something our summon clans will need to make known. That does open them up to coercion, but I feel like having a furious clan boss between me and Akatsuki, as opposed to just one who's doing me a favour, is more of a win than a loss."

"There is no 'win' here," Kei said quietly. "Even with the most effective countermeasures, if Akatsuki decide to abduct the people in our care and torture them for information, or on general principles, we will be powerless to stop them. This is… damage mitigation. Until we can reverse the course of the world, until our momentum overpowers human nature itself, everything we ever do will only be damage mitigation."

"I know that," Hazō said. "But we're about to slay the world's greatest monsters and become the heroes who saved it from an age of tyranny. Then, as an encore, we'll conquer the afterlife and bring back the dead. Kei, you are about to see Uplift gather a hell of a lot of momentum."

-o-

You have received 4 + 1 (Brevity) + 1 (Fun-to-write) = 6 XP.

-o-

Hazō privately prayed to Lord Jashin. Apparently, the dead leopards were not sufficient for him to receive any tangible sign of the deity(?)'s attention, unless cutting his finger during weapons maintenance counts.

Snowflake performed the Nara ninjutsu tests in private, explaining that if Hazō, in learning more about how they worked, inadvertently discovered a Nara clan secret, or worse, a hard counter to a Nara clan secret (e.g. if Nara ninjutsu were unusable in the vicinity of a darkness dome), Kei would be obliged to report this to Shikamaru, and then things would get complicated for all concerned. In the event, she found that the techniques she knew either did not interact with the seal (because they did not rely on environmental shadows) or had a weak synergy (because the domes blocked the Nara user's line of sight to the target as normal).

-o-

What do you do?

Voting closes on Jul 13, 2024 at 1:00 PM

Velorien · Jul 12, 2024

Bonus Update: Schrödinger's Farewell

Envelope A (READ THIS FIRST)

If you are reading this, I assume you are following Contingency P27 as instructed. If not, stop reading immediately and do not resume until the P27 protocols are in effect. They are to remain in effect until you have finished reading the messages indicated at the end of this letter, as well as during any subsequent discussion.

Dear Tenten and Miyuki,

I wish this were another social letter, sharing trivial anecdotes from my mission while awkwardly circumnavigating the endlessly deep whirlpool of how much I miss you. Unfortunately, this is the other kind of letter.

As you are aware, I am presently on a self-assigned long-term research mission, serving as advisor and bodyguard to Hazō alongside Kagome. For both your safety and ours, I cannot yet provide additional details, save to say that this mission is essential to Leaf's welfare and potentially its survival. If this seems like hyperbole, recall that Hazō is the inventor of skywalkers, which transformed the face of warfare, and skyslicers, which have slain vast alien abominations and Akatsuki members both, as well as other exceptional seals whose time, I fear, will yet come.

Now, Uchiha Itachi has demanded our return for interrogation, at which time he will judge our mission to be a threat to Akatsuki and eliminate us, even at the risk of reprisal from Leaf. Just as transpired immediately after the Seventh's murder, the Hokage was threatened with Leaf's annihilation and submitted to the demand.

Our mission remains our priority, and we cannot continue it if assassinated or in Akatsuki's hands. Thus, we have elected to defy the Hokage's unwilling order. In other words, we have gone missing.

To recapitulate, all of us remain loyal to the Village Hidden in the Leaves. We recognise the Eighth Hokage as our legitimate leader, and our only goal is to protect the village we have come to love and the many people with whom we have forged deep bonds. We believe that completing this mission is the best way to do so, and that the Hokage would agree wholeheartedly were he not being forced to choose between us and Leaf's immediate survival.

Thus we come to the important part. We believe that as soon as Akatsuki recognise that we do not intend to return, they will seize those close to us for both interrogation and leverage. Our immediate family are already preparing to leave Leaf without the Hokage's knowledge and join us on the mission. I ~~wish~~ urge you to do likewise.

I appreciate the magnitude of the request. To any shinobi raised in Leaf, this is a betrayal of the Will of Fire and of all one's comrades. I do not ask this of you lightly. However, we are confident that if you remain in Leaf, you will be abducted and tortured or killed. Akatsuki retain the legal right to enter and leave Leaf at will, and as you can see, the Hokage is unable to reject a demand that can be expected to result in our deaths. It pains me to say this, but if this is true for Gōketsu Hazō and Nara Kei, it will certainly be true for Tenten and Fujisawa Miyuki–or if not officially, then in the dead of night, or when you next leave Leaf on a mission.

I am not inviting you to hide in the woods (though if that is your choice, I will accept it). I am inviting you to participate in a mission we believe worth bringing Akatsuki's full wrath down on ourselves. We are confident that, should it succeed, the Hokage will have both the will and the ability to repatriate us as heroes–and you, should you decide to join us. However, even were it not so, we would persevere. Leaf's future requires us to succeed, even if we cannot be part of it.

If you choose to leave, open Envelope B and destroy Envelopes C1 and C2 unread. If you choose to remain, open Envelopes C1 (Miyuki) and C2 (Tenten) and destroy Envelope B unread.

I do not pray, but please know that, whatever you decide, your safety is foremost in my thoughts.

Kei

-o-

Envelope B (READ ENVELOPE A FIRST)

[several maps of rendezvous points, with associated meeting times]

[a number of exfiltration plans, each over 300 words]

[preparations and equipment checklist for first-time missing-nin]

-o-

ENVELOPE C1 (FOR MIYUKI; READ ENVELOPE A FIRST)

Dear Miyuki,

If you are reading this, then this is likely our farewell. In the future I dream of, I will return to Leaf triumphant, only to perish of embarrassment when I face a Miyuki who has read this letter. As ever, I write on the assumption that my dream will not come true.

I am appalling at opening my heart to others. I do so with excruciating slowness. I fear that my hope, a candle flame I can barely light and must shield with my entire body lest it flicker, will be extinguished by reality. I fear that I will be rejected as the other recognises the self-evident truth that there is nothing in me worth loving, and then I will have no choice but to accept it myself once again. I fear that I will accept the other as part of my own heart, only to be abandoned, to be made forever less, and to take another step down the path to the self-chosen isolation that I once believed to be my fate.

Thus, I hope you understand what it means for me to confess that over the last year, perhaps even longer given my atrocious self-awareness, I have been gradually falling in love with you.

It has been a slow and difficult process, marked by extensive denial and futile bursts of resistance. It has also been as inexorable as the erosion of rocks to sand, as rain falling from the clouds, as the coming of adulthood. Still, I find myself wishing that I live long enough to complete it.

I have attempted and failed to resist your optimism, like the dance of refracted sunlight that never stops long enough to burn. I have attempted and failed to resist your determination, unyielding once you have identified your heart's desire, no matter how much that heart's desire may seek to keep you at arm's length. I have attempted and failed to resist your inner strength, your indomitable smile in the face of a past darker than mine and chains whose weight you feel not when you stop to reflect, but in every social interaction. I have attempted and failed to resist your endless well of idiosyncratic creativity, your thousand prisms through which I see worlds I did not know existed within my own.

Here and now, when it is too late, I admit defeat. If we meet again, I will finally surrender to you.

Kei

I am aware that you do not know how you feel about me, Miyuki, and in truth, I do not know how I feel about you. How do I tell which sparks are mine, or how many, within the blazing fire of Kei's feelings?

Still, I wish to learn. Belatedly for many of the same reasons as Kei, and more hopeless ones besides, I wish to learn. That is all that I can offer you because that is all that I have. There is still precious little for you to learn about me, and I cannot conceive of what I could offer you that Kei cannot. But at least you have my curiosity, and that is mine alone. Of the countless thousands of people in this world, you are one of the special few of whom I am keen to learn more. You are one of the special few with whom I wish to define a relationship, and explore it to whatever depth we are capable of reaching together.

This is my heart. Please accept it.

Snowflake

-o-

Envelope C2 (FOR TENTEN; READ ENVELOPE A FIRST)

I promise.

eaglejarl · Jul 14, 2024

Chapter 669: Extreme Exfiltration

"Hey, got a—whoa!" Noburi spun around, putting a hand over his eyes for good measure.

Mari lifted her head from where it had been reclined on the headrest of her bathtub. Her sybaritic bathtub that had been a birthday present from her son, the Gōketsu Clan Lord and Dragonslayer. It was huge, far more than the tiny woman needed. Huge enough that she could have comfortably shared it with her former not-official husband, the Gōketsu Clan Lord and Fifth Hokage, Master of the Bedroom Arts, Author of blah blah blah.

"Noburi," she scolded. "What do you think you're doing, walking in on me in the bath?"

"I wasn't! What do you think you're doing, leaving the screens down while you bathe?! Seriously, why did you set this thing up in your sitting room?"

"Don't try to make this my fault. What would Yuno say?"

Noburi had survived in the wilderness, faced down enemy ninja of greater number and higher rank, and stood on air two thousand feet in the sky. He was no coward, right? Surely not. Yet, somehow, his knees were a little wobbly right now and his stomach was trying to emigrate.

"Ahhhh..."

Mari laughed. "Don't worry, I won't tell her. To answer your question: it's in the sitting room because it means the servants can get the water out and clean the tub without having to go into my personal room. As to the rest, I'm covered up. What have you got for me?"

Noburi risked a glance over his shoulder and found that Mari had taken the towel off her hair and draped it over the inappropriate bits of herself. The ones that floated above the soapy bubbles that blanketed the rest of the tub. He turned around and extended a packet of papers.

"I just got back from training with the Sages," he said. "Hazō dropped by as we were finishing and he gave me a bunch of stuff to give to you and Gaku. He said yours was something about an intelligence-gathering thing he wants done."

"Oh? Interesting. Let me see." She extended a glistening arm for the packet. Noburi handed it over with a smile and turned to leave.

He was barely halfway down the hall when Mari called him back with a sharp word.

"What?" he demanded, entering the room more carefully this time. Fortunately, Mari was already out of the tub and was vigorously toweling herself off behind a screen.

"Where is Yuno?"

"Downstairs, last I saw. She was making a snack."

"Ooh, that sounds good. Would you mind asking her to dig up one of the sweet'n'sour barbeque seals for me? I ran out in my daily carry collection and keep forgetting to restock. I'll meet you both down there in a minute."

"Uh...sure?" Odd request, but whatever. He headed back the way he had come, half expecting Mari to call him back again just to mess with him.

Yuno was indeed still in the kitchen. Noburi passed on the request and helped her look through the drawer of meal seals until they found one that matched Mari's sudden craving. In part this was Noburi being helpful and in part it was an opportunity to stand close with his wife, shoulders and hips together as they rummaged in the drawer. The heat of her body spread through his jacket and into his arm, focusing his entire awareness onto her. He felt her stiffen slightly, just for a moment, and then relax and go back to rummaging around in the long pull-out drawer of storage seals, each seal holding a bento box filled with a freshly-cooked meal that had been timelocked moments after plating and tossed in a drawer to satisfy whatever random craving a Gōketsu ninja might come up with months or years later. A quick flick of the eyes revealed that yes, she was blushing furiously. He grinned.

Yuno spotted the relevant seal and plucked it out of the pile, only to freeze in place when Noburi took her hand and pulled gently so that she turned to face him. He looped his arms around her waist and leaned his cheek against hers. She was too stunned to react for several seconds, after which she hesitantly put her arms around him and squeezed slightly.

He chuckled, a deep rumbling sound in his broad chest, and pressed a kiss to her temple, then went back to simply holding her.

"You're a really good wife, and I love you," he said quietly, lips almost against her ear.

Yuno had been blushing since the moment he stood next to her but now her face was so red it would have worried the medics. She leaned back slightly so she could see his face, but she did not seek to escape the circle of his thick arms, nor did she take hers from around him.

"Why?" she asked. The soft hesitation, the sheer uncertainty in her voice made Noburi's heart want to break but the hope that also lived there made him feel like a hero of legend.

"Because I do," he said, smiling down at her in amusement. "Because you're caring, and loyal, and smart, and funny in your own very weird way that I'm still learning to understand. And you're beautiful, that's always a bonus. And because you're absolutely terrifying on the battlefield and you use those skills to keep me and those I care about safe. Because you want me, and you see me, in ways that no one else has. Because I feel comfortable telling you things like this and knowing that you won't laugh at me."

"I would never," she promised.

"Oh, I think you'll laugh at me eventually," he said with a chuckle. "I'm sure I'll deserve it for something."

Yuno's red lips parted to reply but the words went unsaid as a faint scuff of a shoe in the hallway presaged Mari's arrival. The warning was just enough time for the two of them to disengage and step back from one another so as not to be seen doing anything so inappropriate as hugging in public.

"Hey, guys," Mari said, sauntering in. She was wearing fuzzy slippers and a loose house robe, something comfortable but far too shabby to be seen in outside the home. It had once been a brilliant green but had faded to tepid teal over the course of many washes. She was plaiting her hair into a loose updo as she walked, but her face lit up when she saw the barbeque seal. She tossed the loose hair over her shoulder and hopped up on one of the stools that ran along the counter.

"Thank you so much for this, guys," she said, activating the seal and conjuring forth the contents. She lifted the lid off the bento; her eyes drifted closed in feline pleasure as she inhaled the spicy scent of the meat. "That's the good stuff."

She lifted the chopsticks out of the box and then paused. "Oh, hey, Yuno—Noburi brought some messages back, and one of them is a letter from Kei for Fujisawa. Would you mind running it over to her before it finishes getting dark? I would do it, but I think it's better from you." She held out a bulging envelope.

"Of course," Yuno said, glancing at the clock on the wall. The gloaming was already upon them; she would be coming back in darkness even if she hustled.

"Thanks."

Yuno took the envelope and disappeared on ninja-rapid feet out of the manor.

"Heard your foot scuff the rug," Noburi said with a sly smile, reaching for a tea seal as he spoke. "You're normally quieter."

"I figured you would appreciate me not walking in on you two canoodling," Mari said, her words staccato and incisive as she pushed the bento aside and stripped off her house robe to reveal a field uniform, complete with dozens of pockets loaded with seals of all stripes. She kicked off the slippers and pulled a pair of battle sandals from one of those seals, sliding them onto her feet and knotting them in place with rapid fingers.

"What are you—"

"Codeword: Riptide," Mari said. "We are going missing again, full explanations later but it's because Hazō said so and he said so because Akatsuki is likely to be after us. Get your stuff, get Yuno's stuff. Everything. Every seal, every book, everything you or Yuno care about. Get into field gear, get hers ready. Anything sensitive, bring it or burn it. We are exfiltrating two minutes after she gets back. You, me, her, no one else. I'm going to go loot Hazō's office for the ninjutsu scrolls and burn anything that seems appropriate. Go!"

"But— Right." It took his brain a second to catch up but he dropped his unopened teapot seal and sprinted for the stairs. It could take Yuno anywhere from four minutes to twenty minutes to reach Fujisawa's house, depending on how fast Yuno was traveling and how. Two to fifteen minutes before she started back, depending on whether she simply dropped the letter off and left or if she stopped to chat over tea. (Fujisawa's writing-only communication tended to be slower than speech.) The return trip would probably take longer than the outbound since it would already be dark and Yuno would know of no reason to rush. He had anywhere from ten minutes to an hour to pack up everything he and his wife cared about.

Mari had better have a really good explanation.

o-o-o-o

The door opened the way ninja open doors: a small crack at first, with the opener standing to the side and bracing it with one foot before opening it the rest of the way once the person knocking was revealed as not a hostile.

Miyuki nodded a welcome to Yuno and tipped her head inquisitively. She stepped back, gesturing an invitation to come inside. Yuno bowed politely but shook her head.

"I apologize," she said, holding out the packet. "I am only here to drop off this package from Kei. I really must get back."

Miyuki packed an entire 'I understand the need but regret the necessity and hope you return again soon' into one brief nod and a slightly crinkling of her eyes. She accepted the packet, bowed her thanks, and closed the door as Yuno turned away. She had the packet slit open and the contents extracted before she had taken three steps back to the fireplace. Three envelopes and a top sheet.

She read the top sheet with a frown.

For my two lights. Please be together when you read these, and know that I regret my absence from you with true pain. I still look forward to eating pea soup and drinking spiced tea and all the other things we discussed as soon as I return.

Kei had been in an unusually affectionate mood when she wrote that, Miyuki thought. There had to have been other phrasings that would have allowed her to hide the code words without being so schmoopy.

She looked out the window, considering. It was fully dark now, and Miyuki wasn't sure if Tenten would be at her apartment or at the Nara estate. Unfortunately, the two places were in opposite directions and the night was chilly already, as well as damp. She had been drawing by the fire when Yuno arrived. Nothing in the coded message stated that the letters were urgent...

She glanced from the sketchpad on the table next to her chair, where there was warmth and light and toasty blankets, to the slivered-moon darkness outside the window. Tenten would be annoyed if she decided that Miyuki had kept the letters from her overly long, but she likely wouldn't be bothered if Miyuki found her first thing in the morning. Which wouldn't be hard, since she would undoubtedly be training at her favorite field.

On the other hand, Miyuki couldn't read her letter until she caught up with Tenten. Did she really want to delay gratification that long?

She looked back and forth from fireplace to window, frowning uncertainly.

o-o-o-o

"I'm back!" Yuno called as she came through the door, scraping the mud off her sandals before toeing them off and replacing them with house slippers. Mari had undoubtedly finished her barbeque by now, but Yuno hadn't eaten yet and was definitely ready for something. Maybe fish? She remembered seeing a nice salmon filet with ground pepper among the meal seals. That sounded g—

Noburi and Mari were there, wearing full combat gear and skywalker sandals. Noburi had his finger to his lips as he approached and handed her a field uniform before twirling one hand in a 'gather up, time to go' gesture. He turned away and started emptying the bowl of explosive notes that lived on the shelf by the door, stuffing handfuls of them into his pockets and leaving none behind.

Yuno was too well-trained to demand answers in what was clearly a time-critical situation. Instead, she started peeling off her clothes and handing them to Mari to be sealed up while Yuno pulled on the combat gear and the skywalker sandals. Mari handed her a bandoleer of quick-load inserts for the sandals and gave her a quick check-over, tugging on straps and inventorying to make sure that everything was in its place and settled, then standing still so that Yuno could check her as well.

Ninety seconds after Yuno had entered the house, the three were climbing into the nearly moonless sky, chakra swirling constantly through their systems to hold off the exhaustion caused by essentially running up a very steep staircase that happened to be half a mile long.

Behind them, Kei's envelopes remained as unexploded tags that would either earn them two new recruits or a swarm of ANBU racing after them.

XP AWARD: 0 The vote was for '[x] Interlude: The Rest of the Gouketsu Go Missing Again'.

Brevity XP: n/a

"GM had fun" XP: 1

Voting remains closed unless @Velorien opens it

Velorien · Jul 19, 2024

Chapter 670: The Manifold Perils of Fujisawa Miyuki

Hazō paced back and forth anxiously between the weird psychedelic mushroom trees of the Toad forest. Noburi had missed his check-in. Noburi was dead. They never made it out of Leaf. Mari missed the message and Akatsuki made their move early. Akatsuki intercepted the message and interrogated her. Naruto decided he wasn't letting Noburi go and seized him as soon as he came back from the Seventh Path. Itachi had been watching the compound and intercepted them. Leaf's hunter-nin had pursuit capabilities they didn't publicise and caught up with the team. Mari had seen the message, weighed her options, and decided to cut ties rather than leave.

"Hazō."

Hazō spun around. "Noburi! You're all right!"

Noburi looked exhausted, shoulders drooping and bags under his eyes. His expression on seeing Hazō was not relieved but grim.

"We set fire to our lives and walked away," Noburi said. "Nobody's all right."

"You're safe," Hazō amended. "Where are you right now?"

"Tea," Noburi said. "There's no sign of pursuit, so we're on a direct path to join you, fast as we can."

Ah.

"Noburi," Hazō said tentatively, "where do you think I am?"

"Somewhere near Crimson State Island, right?"

"...No," Hazō said. "That was a lie for Akatsuki's benefit."

Noburi facepalmed. "And it didn't occur to you to mention that before?"

"You know I couldn't give you my location while you were still in Leaf," Hazō said. "Akatsuki could have questioned you at any time. It's the same reason I went out of my way not to talk about it in our check-ins. I couldn't put it in the note because we don't have a code for 'western Gaikotsu Bay', and in any case I had to think about the worst-case scenario. If you failed to get away and Akatsuki found out our location, it would be game over for everyone."

"Gaikotsu Bay?" Noburi repeated. "You have got to be kidding me. If we have to go around Fire, that's going to take forever."

"Well, if you're near the southern islands where Akatsuki will be looking for me, then I can't be the one to come to you," Hazō pointed out.

"Whatever," Noburi said. "It's not a big deal."

He slid off his barrel and sat down, slumping against the stalk of a vividly purple mushroom tree.

"This sucks," he said with feeling. "Yuno's miserable. Last time she went missing, she didn't have anything–anyone–to lose. This time she had friends, students, even a future she was working towards, and she gave it all up to follow me. I feel like a total bastard, and it wasn't even my order.

"And me? I had a career. I was helping people. I was trusted. I'd just got private tutoring from Tsunade–sort of–which was going to take me to the next level. Now I'm back in the woods and it's like my life never happened.

"Mari's gone quiet. She's not talking any more than she has to, and I'm kind of afraid to push given the state she's in. So it's down to you to explain. What the hell, Hazō?"

Hazō sat down next to him.

"I've been doing runic weapons research to kill Akatsuki, on Naruto's orders. Everything else was just a cover. The message you gave me last time was a contingency trigger to go missing because he couldn't stall them any further."

Noburi silently absorbed this.

"I guess that tracks. The others–Kei, Snowflake, Kagome–did they know when they signed up?"

Hazō shrugged. "I'm pretty sure Kei figured it out because she's Kei, but I couldn't tell anyone. I certainly couldn't tell anyone the Hokage had ordered me to go missing if things went badly.

"I'm sorry for uprooting you all, I really am. But I couldn't come back and have Akatsuki find out I was directly working against them, and once they figured out I'd gone missing, they were bound to go after my family."

"Dammit." Noburi slammed his fist against the stalk beside him, leaving a deep impression. "This was always going to happen, wasn't it?"

"Kind of," Hazō agreed. "I couldn't give up fighting Akatsuki, not with the world at stake, and they weren't going to stop monitoring me. I had to get away, and I had to go missing once they forced Naruto to order me back.

"But maybe I could have avoided it. If I'd just been smarter, better at research, maybe I could have come up with a superweapon by now, and we could be back in Leaf killing Akatsuki instead of… this."

"It's fine," Noburi said after a second. "I mean, it's not fine, this whole thing is a steaming pile of bullshit and I hate everything about it, but if I was going to complain about you being dumb, I'd have been doing it way before now."

"Noburi, you complain about me being dumb all the time. Just the other day, you told me how much of an idiot I was for forgetting to write to Ino, and how lucky I was to have a brother with a gift for plausible excuses."

"I'm pretty sure she didn't buy it, for the record," Noburi said. "You're really going to have to make it up to her when…"

He winced.

"We're not coming back, are we?"

"We are," Hazō insisted. "We're going to kill Akatsuki and be welcomed back as heroes. If you think skywalkers were worth adopting a pack of missing-nin over, wait till you see what Naruto's prepared to do for Akatsuki-killing runes, not to mention all the other craziness I'm working on."

"I guess we'll see," Noburi said. "You'll forgive me if I'm not at my most optimistic right now."

He levered himself to his feet.

"I'd better get back. I can't leave Yuno alone right now. You said western Gaikotsu Bay?"

"Actually, no," Hazō said. "I mean yes, but if you have to make it all the way from Tea, then it would be better to meet up in northern Iron. That's our first rendezvous point with Tenten and Fujisawa, assuming they take Kei's warning seriously and come join us."

Noburi froze. "Fujisawa's coming?"

"We hope so," Hazō said. "She's on the list of people we expect Akatsuki to take hostage sooner or later. Why, is there a problem?"

"No," Noburi said quickly, his eyes wide. "It's fine. No problem at all."

Hazō stood up. "Noburi, I'm your brother and your clan head. Talk to me."

"You're not my clan head anymore," Noburi said, without hostility. "I doubt there's even going to be a Gōketsu Clan by the end of the week, between the treason and Mari taking or torching the good stuff."

"Fine, whatever," Hazō said, shoving that thought in a deep vault and throwing away the key. "I'm still your brother. If there's something wrong, I want to help."

Noburi looked away.

"It's nothing," he said. "I just think… she's cute. Fujisawa, I mean. Easily five stars."

"I guess?" Hazō said. "Assuming you're into girls who can't smile."

"I had a crush on Kei, didn't I?"

Hazō laughed.

"I don't mean I have a crush on Fujisawa or anything," Noburi clarified. "I don't really know her, and I've been going out of my way not to know her, just in case, even though she's my wife's best friend and if she's noticed, she probably thinks I hate her. But if we're going to be missing-nin together for however long…"

Hazō nodded.

"I'm not saying I'd cheat on Yuno!" Noburi exclaimed without provocation. "I'm not that kind of guy. But Yuno has razor-sharp intuition for this stuff. If she picks up on her husband being attracted to her best friend… well, there's no scenario that doesn't end in a bloodbath, is there?"

Hazō and Noburi shared an ominous silence.

"We'll figure something out," Hazō said, without confidence. "We still have at least a week before everyone's together. In the meantime, you guys should head for Nuken'in Temple in northern Iron."

"Never heard of it."

"It's not far from the Liberator's fortress," Hazō said. "I'll have the map copied–I mean, I'll copy the map out for you by next check-in.

"Noburi…" he said as Noburi strapped on his barrel. "Tell everyone I'm sorry."

"...Yeah."

-o-

Kei was moving the instant Snowflake signalled "clear", leaving Hazō and Kagome far behind in her haste to be in that clearing even a second sooner. She needed to know. Needed to see. Nothing else mattered.

Tenten, with her perfect understanding of Kei, was already braced, and did not collapse beneath the sudden impact of her embrace (on skywalkers, there was no need to touch down first before proceeding to her destination). She was… she was here. Alive. Safe. Hers. Holding her, confirming Tenten's existence with her own hands, instantly dispelled a week of nightmares.

However, even for Tenten, Kei's stamina was not infinite. Finally, reluctantly, she disengaged, allowing Snowflake to take her turn.

With her field of view regrettably no longer fully occupied by Tenten, Kei looked around the clearing, a sense of wrongness steadily rising through her body and beginning to curl around her heart.

"Tenten," she asked anxiously, "where is Miyuki?"

The silence, like all Tenten's silences, said everything that needed to be said.

"No…" Kei whispered.

"She trusts you," Tenten said firmly. "But she doesn't trust the Mad Clan Lord.

"Her words," she added apologetically, looking at Hazō.

Hazō nodded absently.

"I should have known," Kei said as the magnitude of her failure began to become apparent. "I should have factored Hazō's reputation into my persuasion. I should have anticipated that she would distrust claims of a grand, Leaf-saving mission from the treasonous megalomaniac–"

"No offence," Snowflake supplemented.

"–and overemphasise the irrationality of my loyalty to same. Of course she would assume that I permitted my love to blind me to the realities of the situation. Perhaps she even believes, not unfairly, that the need to protect you has led me to follow you beyond the point of reason. I should have been clearer. I should have been more convincing. I should have–"

"This was her agency," Tenten said. "Only hers."

The images washed over Kei, the nightmares returned to consume reality. The T&I catalogue available on request from the main office, come to life in Uchiha Itachi's hands. The blazing fire of the Sharingan that even Naruto had been unable to endure. The bloodthirsty madness of Hidan and the cold cruelty of the sealmaster who hollowed out shinobi to use as his puppets.

"It was my responsibility!" Kei exclaimed. "Were it not for me, she would be nothing to Akatsuki! She would be safe!"

Tenten shook her head.

"We chose not to be safe."

Kei's thoughts ground to a halt. "I beg your pardon?"

"Politics. Homophobia. Akatsuki. The un-Uplifted world," Tenten listed. "I knew your enemies. I knew being with you made them my enemies too. So did Miyuki."

She stepped closer to Kei.

"We could have chosen safer lives. No enemies. No lovers. Just us, alone, until we died."

"So it truly is my fault," Kei concluded. "I drew you into an entire world of danger where you did not belong, all out of my own selfishness."

"We chose," Tenten repeated. "Just like you chose to follow Hazō. I am here because of my own choices. Miyuki isn't, because of hers."

Kei stood silent. At least Tenten was safe. Miyuki would be abducted, likely tortured, possibly killed, but at least Tenten was safe. In the back of her mind, a vile, hideous voice whispered relief that at least it had not been the other way around. Kei quashed it as best she could.

"Can anything be done?" she asked Hazō, pleading. If there was ever a moment for his genius to save them…

"I'm sorry," he said. "With Tenten gone missing right after the others, there's no chance of Fujisawa getting away too if she hasn't already. Even Mari couldn't extract her from under that much surveillance."

"We don't know Akatsuki will kidnap and torture your girlfriend," Kagome said with an edge of desperation. "It's not like they know who she is. I barely know who she is. And they're all crazy lunatics with maybe a tenth of a brain between them. I'm sure they'll just overlook her."

"Do not comfort me like a child!" Kei snapped. "This was the entire reason for the envelope system. They were supposed to flee or stay together, because if one left, it guaranteed that the other would immediately come to Akatsuki's attention. Except apparently I failed even at that."

She closed her eyes. She did not wish to see the pity on their faces. Miyuki. Beautiful, indomitable, inventive, innocent Miyuki. Even if Hazō's staggering optimism was validated and they one day returned to Leaf as heroes, it would be too late.

"Please tell me about the mission," Tenten said eventually.

Of course. Kei had failed even to explain what she had asked them to risk everything for.

"Hazō has created a new sealing discipline," Kei began.

"Kei!" Hazō exclaimed.

Kei whirled around. "Hazō, if you believe that after everything that Tenten has sacrificed, I will allow her to be–"

"Excuse me," Snowflake interrupted. "I believe what Kei is attempting to say is that runecrafting is not a clan secret due to Orochimaru's possession of same"–without even knowing what runecrafting was capable of, Tenten gave her a look of utter horror–"nor is Tenten in any position to disclose it to anyone until its existence is in any case revealed by its large-scale deployment against Akatsuki."

"Even if it were a clan secret," Kei noted, "we are missing-nin. It would technically belong to Jin and the others, with ourselves being clanless thieves to be eliminated in order to protect it.

"More to the point, you will note that Tenten has chosen to be here, aligned with Akatsuki's primary target, and not, say, on the eastern continent where she could live in relative safety until our victory or defeat. She is a member of Operation Twilight now, and entitled to full disclosure."

"I concur," Snowflake said. "That said, if you believe that it is both desirable and physically possible to conceal runecrafting from Tenten for however many months while you are conducting regular prototype infusions in her immediate vicinity, and while Kagome, aware of every detail of your research, is also within her immediate vicinity, we can–"

"Fine," Hazō said, holding up his hands, "you win. Tenten, we're out here researching runes, which are three-dimensional seals with vastly more potential power than ordinary paper seals, with the specific goal of killing Akatsuki, on Naruto's orders."

Tenten nodded. "To prevent them from opening the rift?"

Hazō looked at Kei.

"Nothing about the rift race is classified," Kei said impatiently. "The existence of the rift is known to the senior members of all council clans, and doubtless to anyone they gossip with. All of the pieces have been not only available but in plain sight ever since Itachi blurted out Akatsuki's interest in dimensionalism research in front of the entire Clan Council and it emerged that you were the only person conducting same."

Hazō sighed. "That's right. They're planning to open the rift and bring back Pain from the afterlife, which would allow them to conquer the world. Considering Pain's the kind of man who called Hidan a friend and enabled his massacring tendencies, I don't intend to find out what he'd be like as a global dictator. We're going to wipe out Akatsuki, open the rift ourselves, and then rescue Akane, Jiraiya, and as many of Leaf's heroes as we can. Hopefully, all of that will be enough justification for Naruto to accept us as Leaf ninja again."

Tenten nodded again. "How can I help?"

After a pause that made it clear Hazō had no idea, Kei spoke in his place.

"We are missing-nin now. We will be hunted, not only by Akatsuki, but also by lesser threats, such as the hunter-nin of every village in the world aware that the creator of skywalkers is now fair game. We must be ready to hide, flee, or defend ourselves as necessary, above all protecting Hazō while he conducts his research. Kagome, please brief Tenten on bystander sealing safety at the earliest opportunity."

"I can do that," Kagome said enthusiastically. A younger Kei might have taken it for delight at acquiring a new target to inflict his obsessions on, as opposed to relief at finally having some way to engage with the complex and awkward situation he found himself in (and also delight at acquiring a new target to inflict his obsessions on).

"We should get going," Hazō said. "This is probably the last place in the world where anyone would cooperate with hunter-nin, but we can't say for certain that nobody saw us come down. We can figure out further logistics once Mari and the others join us tomorrow."

As Hazō handed Tenten a fresh set of skywalker seals, Kei took one last look back, towards Leaf and the girl she would never finish falling in love with.

-o-

You have received 2.5 x 7 + 0.5 (arbitrary rounding) + 1 (Fun-to-Write) = 19 XP.

-o-

What do you do?

Voting closes on Jul 20, 2024 at 1:00 PM

eaglejarl · Jul 21, 2024

Interlude: Home Defense

"Smith! Get out here!"

Master Ōshirō sighed. He jerked his chin at his apprentice and nodded towards the metal that the master had been working. Takatoshi set down the tools that he had been cleaning and hurried to take over the work of keeping the metal hot so that Master Ōshirō didn't lose all the work he had done.

The master smith emerged from his forge into the front room of his smithy. It wasn't open at the moment, meaning that Clan Lord Hagoromo had barged in past a sign saying "Closed".

"How may I help you, My Lord?" he said, bowing deeply.

"I need a new hold-out knife. That traitorous Gōketsu whelp destroyed mine a while back and I haven't been able to find anything already existing that met the same standard and I'm sick of carrying garbage. You're supposed to be the best smith around. How long will it take?" He paused for only a moment and then remembered to add, "Money doesn't matter." He pulled a heavy sack from his sleeve and dropped it on the table. It hit with a thunk that said it contained enough metal coin that you could use the bag to beat someone to death without half trying. He did not, however, push it across to Ōshirō. It was a demonstration, not a delivery.

So, this ass barged past a 'Closed' sign, acted rude, and now he was insulting Lord Gōketsu? Lord Gōketsu, who had saved Ōshirō when his forge burned down, who had given him zero-interest loans and generous profit rates on consignment selling where the sales were performed by skilled negotiators, far better that Ōshirō had ever managed on his own? The smith's income had more than doubled since he started working with the Gōketsu and he wasn't having to do all the bullshit parts that he hated. He usually didn't even have to take orders—one of the Gōketsu factors would come out periodically to check on his availability, with a list of potential commissions in hand. Ōshirō would choose the ones that looked interesting, the Gōketsu would be responsible for telling the losers that their commission wasn't able to be handled at this time and fob them off on some other smith. When the work was done another Gōketsu would swing by to pick it up and deliver it. Ōshirō only had to work with his beloved steel and leave all the annoying bits to someone else.

Ōshirō started to open his mouth to refuse, then smiled. There was a much better solution.

"It would be my honor to provide you with such a weapon, My Lord," he said, bowing deeply. "Although I fear I am backed up a bit at the moment. I have an order from another clan which is going to take some time." Meaning it would take Sagebedamned forever and this rich prick could dangle. If he was waiting on Ōshirō then he wouldn't go to another smith in the meantime.

"How long?"

Ōshirō shook his head regretfully. "It is difficult to say, My Lord. Perhaps three weeks? It depends. They have an extension clause such that if they like the work then they can expand the order a certain amount." Yes, the entirely hypothetical client could expand their entirely hypothetical order indefinitely.

"Hmph. Who is it? I can get you out of it."

"I apologize most profusely, My Lord." Deep bow, hold. "I ask your understanding that I can't give names of customers or details of their orders. Would you want me telling someone that I had made a holdout for you, or the size and shape of that blade, or where you keep it?"

"...I suppose not. Very well. I'll pick it up in three weeks."

"Respectfully, My Lord, three weeks is not the date that the blade will be ready. It is the earliest that I might be able to start on the piece, and even that is uncertain. It might be somewhat longer before I can begin."

"Hmph. Very well. How much?"

Oh no. You weren't getting out of here that easily. First let's waste a bit more of your time.

"I am certain the money will be of no object to you, Great Lord. Before we deal with that, why don't you tell me more precisely what you need? Blade shape and length, details of the hilt, and where you intend to keep it, if you please."

Suspicion lit the ninja's eyes. "Why do you need to know where I keep it?"

Ōshirō frowned. "Have the smiths you worked with in the past not asked? They failed you. Obviously, I will be providing the sheath and straps to go with the blade, and they must be set differently if you wish to keep it in at your wrist, ankle, shoulder, or elsewhere. Additionally, the blade itself must be perfect for its hiding place. For example, if you will wear it on the top of your wrist then the hilt must be designed not to catch on the bone, here." He tapped the protuberance on the outside of his left wrist. "If you wish a thicker blade then it will not be easily concealable on your wrist and should be worn at your neck, belly, or ankle. If you wish for—"

"Yes, yes, fine, fine. I want one like my father made for me, the one that pig Gōketsu destroyed. Here." He sketched it on the counter with his finger.

The price doubled at the words 'that pig Gōketsu' but outwardly Ōshirō only bowed. "Excellent, My Lord. Allow me to get some parchment and charcoal. We can design something more precise."

And then he would demand a truly eye-watering price, enough to make this asshole's brain explode.

o-o-o-o

"—and then we got back," the visiting ninja was saying to the bedridden one as Ageha entered the room.

"No sign of the traitors, then?" the patient demanded. "Damn, I wish I had been able to go on the patrols. I always knew that anyone who would betray their original village would betray the Leaf. No trace of the Will of Fire in them."

Ageha's ears had pricked up at the word 'traitors'. The little shit had to be talking about the Gōketsu and that nonsense about them 'going missing'. Ha! As if Great Lord Gōketsu would go missing! The man had done more for the village than any other three clans. The idea that he could be lacking the Will of Fire was ludicrous. Either he had fallen in battle or he was on a secret mission or something. He definitely had not gone missing.

Ageha kept those thoughts locked away in the vault deep behind her eyes, the one that every civilian held. The one where they could hide all of their anger and hatred away from the light in a place arrogant ninja couldn't see.

Outwardly, she said only, "Good afternoon, honored ninja. I am Ageha, one of the civilian auxiliaries. I am here to take your lunch order, if you please." She extended the menu with both hands, holding a deep bow to prevent any risk of the ninja looking through her eyes and into the vault.

"What? Oh, yes." He took the menu from her and skimmed through it. "I'll have option four. Extra pickles."

"Yes, honored ninja." He would get his extra pickles, and also an extra helping of spit in his tea and a little snot mixed into his soup. Also, the chalkboard on the wall said that the attending nurse was Koruri; she was a KEI ninja and would likely be interested to hear about this rude man's comments.

It took only two minutes to find Koruri; the woman was starting her rounds and currently halfway down the ward, only three doors from SpitDrinker's room.

"Good evening, honored nurse," Ageha said, bowing until her back was parallel to the floor.

"Little mother, I've told you before, you don't need to do that," Koruri said with amusement. "You are old enough to be my grandmother. What did you want?"

"I wished to verify a food request, ma'am," Ageha said, keeping her eyes down. "The honored ninja in room seven. When I entered to take his dinner order he and his friend were having a conversation." She leaned just slightly on the final word before quickly moving on. "When they paused, I asked for his dinner order. He said he wanted option four, the beef teriyaki and vegetables, but I was to provide extra pickles. I wished to be certain that extra pickles would not interfere with his treatment."

Koruri's brow furrowed very slightly. Ageha had been working at the hospital forever; she knew perfectly well that extra pickles wouldn't interfere with the treatment for anyone who was allowed food. Food verifications like this were for when a patient requested sake, or extra spicy food that might be harmful to the digestion, or something with specific herbs that reacted poorly with some of the medications the hospital used in various cases. Pickles?

"You are most dutiful, little mother. If I may ask, was the conversation they were having in any way relevant to the patient's condition?"

"No, honored nurse. The patient was saying something about one of the clans...the Gōketsu, I believe, although he didn't mention them by name."

Koruri's face donned its professional mask, the one that prevented patients from becoming alarmed when things were going badly. If Ageha was bringing this to her then clearly the little shit had said rather more than how the Gōketsu enjoyed their tea.

Koruri's little sister, a civilian, had gone through the Gōketsu Educational Department's curriculum and thus she knew her numbers and letters. Knew her numbers rather better than most clan kids, if you were being honest. Chisato was mad for numbers, learning everything she could get her hands on. More than that, she had read poetry and maps and histories. She had read enough that she might have trouble finding a husband, but Koruri could not bring herself to disapprove. The light in Chisato's face every time she came home from the GED made lamps unnecessary.

"Oh, interesting," she said, in a tone that indicated she was only being polite and didn't really care. "What was he saying?"

"I do not wish to be seen to carry tales, honored nurse," Ageha said with another deep bow. "I suspect he will be more than happy to speak energetically about the Gōketsu if asked." The slight and completely deniable twist to the word 'energetically' indicated that it would not be a positive energy.

Koruri smiled. "Ah, very wise. I should not be asking for gossip, little mother. Thank you for reminding me. Now that I think about it, I do remember noticing some perturbations in the patient's gut the last time I scanned him." Perturbations that would absolutely be there after she spent a few minutes 'checking him over'. "It's probably nothing but could indicate an imbalance in his bile, in which case spicy foods could be a problem. In fact, why don't you tell the kitchen to note him down as on restricted diet. Marshweed only, boiled for no less than thirty minutes. No salt in his diet, no spices."

Marshweed was easy to digest and very healthy but it tasted like a skunk that had rolled in a midden before dying and rotting in the sun for a few weeks. And if you boiled it for thirty minutes it fell apart into a glutinous green mass that looked and felt like snot.

"Thank you for the instruction, honored nurse," Ageha said, bowing deeply but allowing the angry little smile to remain on her face just long enough for Koruri to see it as she straightened up. "I shall pass it on to the chef immediately."

o-o-o-o

"To seeing the backside of those Gōketsu fuckers!" Motoyoshi shouted, his words clear despite the fresh glow in his cheeks from the shots of sake he had already downed.

His three friends hoorahed and raised their glasses high, clinking them together and then slamming them back.

Pouring a drink a few drunks down the bar, Daiji forced himself not to frown as his professionally-sharp ears caught the words. Motoyoshi was a clan ninja, Daiji was a civilian. Expressing disapproval was not going to go well for the bartender, not even with the protection of the Soggy Tag's owner. Sure, Motoyoshi might get banned from the bar but Daiji would still be in hospital.

"Toldja they weren't real Leaf," one of Motoyoshi's friends said. Daiji didn't recognize him; he wasn't wearing a crest but he carried himself like clan. "Not a flicker of the Will of Fire in any of 'em. Lord First would be ashamed that they ever poisoned our soil with their feet. Kampai!" He slammed back the last of his sake, went to pour another, and found the bottle empty. "More, more, more!" He started drumming rhythmically on the bar with both hands, an annoying pursuit that his friends immediately joined.

"Of course, gentlemen," Daiji said, hurrying over. "It sounds like you're celebrating."

"Damn righ'!" said the third friend, a Hyūga that Daiji didn't recognize. "Those Gōke'su fuckers 're gone! Betrayed us all. Ran off, the whole lot of 'em. Including that smarmy lil git at their head. Fuckin' asshole." He turned to his friends. "Attacked me one time, y'know? Completely unprovoked. We had a big conference, all the sealmasters. He walks in and jumps me. Sucker punched me with no warning."

"That's not what I heard, Makito," Motoyoshi said, wagging a finger and grinning. "You put your hand on him and he locked you up."

"Didn't happen! He sucker punched me!"

"Ahhhh!" the second friend said, noogying Hyūga in the shoulder. "He beat you hand-to-hand? What a chump you are! Can't believe you lost to a traitor, Makito!" He leaned in close. "D'you think it's true that he ran off because Lady Yamanaka caught him cheating on her?"

"Probably with his cat," Hyūga grumbled. "Always looked like a guy who would fuck cats."

"Gentlemen, looks like your bottle needs a refill," Daiji said, coming up from under the bar where he had been prepping. Honestly, it was nice to have polite customers once in a while. Sure, they were ninja and therefore assholes. Sure, they were drunk and therefore even worse assholes. Sure, they were shoveling muck on the back of the man who had given Daiji's family a house when theirs was destroyed in the Collapse, ensuring that they didn't freeze to death. Still, at least they had kept yammering and ignoring him long enough for him to finish spiking their drinks.

"Yes!" Motoyoshi said, waving his empty glass high. A half dozen other patrons were clamoring for drinks farther down the bar. "Another bottle!"

"Here you go," Daiji said, sliding a bottle across the bar to each of them. The men looked surprised, clearly having expected a single bottle to split. "Your stamps, please?" He held the board out in front of them. It was a clever innovation, invented right here at the Soggy Tag: patrons never had to open their purses. Instead, when they came through the door they chose a stamp from the bucket and signed themselves in with their name and the stamp to show which they were using. From then on, each drink came with a tab board covered in wax. The server marked down what you had ordered and you pressed your stamp into the wax next to the mark. At the end of the night, you settled up. It saved a lot of time, and it meant that people weren't thinking about how much they were spending.

These three certainly weren't thinking about the fact that Daiji had just handed them each a large bottle of the most expensive sake in the house. They also probably weren't thinking about the possibility that he might have spiked their drinks with the grain alcohol that the bar used for cleaning the counters. Not enough to leave them blind, but enough to get them good and hammered. Worst case, he could keep pushing drinks on them until they were bled dry of coin. Best case, they got drunk enough to start a fight and get banned from the Tag for a month, or forever if this was a second offense. (The possibility that they might end up dead from the fight wasn't likely. It would be nice, but fights in the Tag were rarely lethal.)

The three ninja glanced back and forth, none of them wanting to be the ones to look cheap by saying that they had only wanted one bottle to share. Daiji held the board with a bland expression until all three of them pressed their stamp to the wax.

"Kampai, gentlemen!" he said, before hurrying off to the next patron.

Author's Note: One of our delightful players recently approached me about writing a commission. (I shall leave it up to them if they wish to raise their hand.) They wanted something sweet and healing showing the difference that Uplift had made in Leaf, and they suggested civilians defending the now-missing Gōketsu. I had intended to do this as a separate item from the chapter but it took me until late afternoon to get the gumption together to sit down and write, which is a good sign that I don't have the juice to write an actual chapter. Plus, I was pretty confident even yesterday that I wasn't going to have it; it's been a bad day for a couple of days and I'm finally starting to get past it but I'm not completely out yet. Put all this together and it dawned on me that I could ~~shirk my responsibilities~~ write an interlude instead of a chapter (hopefully one that people would enjoy) and also satisfy my new commission! Woot, everybody wins!

It's way too late now for me to run this past my UK-living co-QMs, so I will say that my intent is for it to be canon and I doubt that will be an issue but it might get reverted to omake status if there's an issue I didn't think of. Also, note that the timespan of this update is not specified; it might be a few days or a few weeks. It doesn't advance the timeline from the players' perspective so it doesn't matter.

"GM had fun" XP: 5

Fun and wholesome scenes that lifted my spirits when I needed it

Vote time! What to do now?

Paperclipped · Jul 25, 2024

Chapter 671: Team Uplift Traditions

They didn't talk again until they were safely away from the clearing and back at their temporary base. Kagome-sensei went off to check the perimeter and Kei and Snowflake to gather the portion of their supplies they'd set aside for Tenten's use (and to silently reintegrate Fujisawa's), leaving Hazō momentarily alone with Tenten.

Hazō remembered his first time going missing. Even years since, he remembered his first and simultaneously endless footfalls down a one-way path, with murderous hunter-nin snapping at the squad's heels and no hope of return even if he did everything right. He remembered the constant, acute awareness that he was now the village's number one enemy; that through no fault of his own, he was now hated, hunted, and doomed to kill or die if he ever ran into his old comrades. How long had it taken him to accept his new way of life? How long before he was able to look beyond pure survival and find the new purpose that he'd eventually name Uplift? Could he have done it on strength of will alone, without constant support from Mari, who'd taken being a missing-nin in stride exactly as if she'd been planning for it from the start, and normalised what would otherwise have been a constant state of heart-rending abandonment and betrayal?

Hazō was the leader now. It was his responsibility to manage the transition for the people in his care, and none more than Tenten, who would actually have been betrayed by her village and forced to flee for her life, only she'd run in advance, making her the betrayer.

"Tenten," he said, putting all the warmth into his voice that he could, "thank you. Really. I've been where you are, more or less, and I get what it must have cost you to leave Leaf with nothing to go on but Kei's words on a piece of paper."

"I was prepared," Tenten said, with gentle denial.

Hazō blinked. "You… were? Kei can't have warned you about the mission. If she knew why we might have to run, then she knew OPSEC would make the difference between life and death."

Tenten shook her head.

"Kei talks about you all the time," she said. "I listen. One day, you'd make her choose between you and Leaf. I needed to choose too."

"Oh," Hazō said after a moment to absorb this. He found himself intensely curious to know what kind of things Kei said about him, especially if they'd led an uninvolved third party to reach that conclusion, but this wasn't the time–and besides, he doubted Tenten was in any hurry to have an extended verbal conversation (even if she'd apparently made stunning progress under Kei's tutelage).

"Still," he said, "it's enormous that you made that choice, no matter how long you had to think. I never got a choice, and I'm almost glad for it when I think about how difficult it must have been for you."

"I learned from the Nara," Tenten said with a small smile. "Kei on one side. Then Snowflake too. Everything else on the other. It…"

She paused to find the right words.

"It hurt, but… it wasn't hard. You choose the side that weighs more."

Huh.

Yeah, it was kind of like that, wasn't it? Hazō had left Ino back in Leaf, even knowing that he'd probably broken her heart, and he might not be able to reverse that just by eventually proving he'd had a good reason. (He'd managed to win Akane back once just by fixing his mistakes, but Akane was Akane, and miracles like her didn't happen twice.) He'd left behind Gaku, Atomu, Honoka, Sasha, and a dozen other Gōketsu who meant something to him when he remembered they existed. He'd left behind hundreds of civilians who'd placed their lives in his hands. He'd left behind projects, aspirations, and ambitions. He'd left behind a torn but apparently salvageable bond with Shikamaru and a potential friendship with Naruto that kept failing to click. He could keep listing people and things he'd lost all day and never run out.

He also didn't question for a second whether he'd made the right decision.

If Hazō ever turned out to be wrong, it was because there had been a more efficient, more reliable option for accomplishing his goals and he'd been too tunnel-visioned to see it. The notion that he'd chosen the wrong goals to begin with was abstract, meaningless, something for future historians to argue about when they had nothing better to do.

Apparently, Tenten was like that too, only her goal was Kei–and once she decided Kei outweighed everything else, it didn't matter that the everything else was also precious and worth giving up her life for.

"The rest of us will make sure we're worthy of your trust," Hazō said. "I promise you that. We won't let you regret your decision.

"I don't think there's much I can add right now. Welcome to Team Uplift, Tenten. Now, I've got a bunch of new seals to scribe, so I'll let Kei take point on helping you customise your loadout, and then there are…" he trailed off when he realised Tenten wasn't listening.

"Tenten?"

Kei appeared beside her. "Ah," she said sheepishly, "this is embarrassing. Hazō, I suspect that over the course of our relationship, I may have given Tenten the impression that, my bond with her aside, there is nothing more"–she looked away for a moment–"nothing more important to my existence than Team Uplift and my place within it. The notion of being included in this most crucial part of my life, from which she was naturally barred as an outsider and expected to be so forever, is perhaps a touch overwhelming."

"..." Tenten added, her face somehow conveying the most exotic mixture of shock, joy, more shock, unease, disorientation, hope, and some extra shock in case anyone missed it the first and second times round.

"You may need to work on the banter," Hazō said with deadpan seriousness, "but you've already checked off the treason, family loyalty, Uplift compatibility, complicated love life, and 'being prepared for me to cause trouble' requirements. All you need now is a distinctive special interest and–"

Tenten tapped her shuriken holster meaningfully.

"–welcome aboard," Hazō concluded.

Kei hugged Tenten, Tenten recovered enough to hug her back, and with that, a fragment of guilt that Hazō hadn't even known he had suddenly melted away.

-o-

"That's a problem," Hazō said.

"It's a problem, yep," Kagome-sensei agreed. "But hey, the rift is closed!"

At least that was true. Years ago, the bladehorrors, Hazō-imitating monstrosities of razor-sharp steel, had sprung from a rift that looked like a shimmering piece of dark metal in this spot. Now, there was no sign of that metal hovering in the air. That was good.

Unfortunately, Hazō could see the rift's former site. Granite rubble surrounded the old foundations of the box, which varied between a couple inches and a couple feet, all connected by the smooth cuts of a razor edge rather than the jagged fractures of intense force. That was bad.

"So, the bladehorrors got out of the box, and then did… what?" Hazō asked.

Kagome-sensei shrugged. "Doesn't matter. Probably terrorized the nearby everything. It's been years, so the rift closed up, and if the critters are still running around, they're gonna be so spread out that we won't get swarmed. Someone else's problem. Probably."

"It was a good thing we moved camp immediately, then," Hazō said. "I hope everyone remembers where this is."

"That was a good idea you had," Kagome-sensei said. "Checking the team for genjutsu from that cheating-eyeball stinker. Hope they don't get annoyed at needing to run four more hours to meet us."

"It should work out," Hazō said. "I'll run back tomorrow and drop Canvass off to greet them. If she smells followers, she'll dispel and I'll know immediately. Otherwise, she can lead them along my trail."

"Can the stinker genjutsu Canvass?"

"I… I don't think so. Itachi probably wouldn't know how to replicate her sense of smell exactly, and she'd probably notice the slightest mistake, right? She's smelled most of those people before. But…" Hazou hesitated. "I can't say for sure when the Sharingan is involved."

Kagome-sensei scowled and muttered something threatening about the eyeball cheaters. Hazō decided to let his sensei stew. Within a couple hours, he'd probably come up with a half-dozen potential improvements to their contact plan to keep the team safe. Instead, Hazō started the slow process of erecting walls and creating Substitution target chains so he could approach the rift to inspect it.

o-o-o

"I told you, boy, I don't have any interest in swearing any oaths at my age, least of all to you!" Fukasaku said. "And even if I did tie my soul into a knot for a squirming tadpole of a human, I damn well wouldn't be promising absolute secrecy for something you haven't even told me yet!"

"It's important," Hazō said. "Really, truly important. Not just for my safety and for Noburi's, which are both true, but for the fate of the world."

"And I don't give a flying flea! I'd sooner take an oath to tell everyone. I'll keep it quiet if I want, but I won't be swearing a thing."

Hazō swore (as in, profanely) internally. He really needed the Toad Sages to make the oath so that Akatsuki wouldn't somehow be able to cut through the Toads to get at Hazō and his team, but they were too obstinate. Fukasaku was, at least, and Shima was apparently out and about running errands.

"Fine," Hazō said. "But I'll want you to swear that you'll keep it a secret after I tell you."
"Fat chance, boy."

Hazō grit his teeth. "You'll see. So, this is about the rift on O'uzu-"

"I knew it!" Fukasaku said. "Skip all the bullshit, I don't want you explaining it all to me a third time."

"Well, Akatsuki finally came by Leaf asking about me, and I can't let them find me and discover runecrafting. I'm going missing from Leaf so that I can keep developing runes to oppose them, to try to stop them from gaining control over the rift and resurrecting Pain."

"Hmph. Leaf seemed like a nice place. That Hiruzen fellow was quite polite. You could learn a thing or two from him."

"He's dead, sir," Hazō said. "Though not for long, if all goes well."

Fukasaku scowled. "Right. Your damn rift. If these other schmucks are taking it seriously, then maybe there's something to it."

"Exactly. Plus, I'm not betraying Leaf, you know. I'm not breaking any of my oaths. This is really in Leaf's best interests. Here, take a look at this," Hazō said, handing over Naruto's carefully written letter instructing Hazō to go missing.

Fukasaku took the letter and frowned, then brandished it back at Hazō.

"Bah! I hate reading your ugly human script," Fukasaku said. "It's fine when there's an elegant poet or a genius ninjutsu designer penning beautiful scrolls, but the rest of the time it's nastier than pondscum in August. Well, I don't care about your damned letters any more than I care about the damned oaths you think I should take. Any polite visitor would speak their demands to my face, instead of foisting off the responsibility to ink and paper."

"Right, sir, I'm sorry," Hazō said, the Iron Nerve keeping any irritation at the Toad Sage's frankly unreasonable outburst off his face. "The letter…"

The letter revealed a critical secret – that Hazō was going missing at Naruto's request. Hazō going missing could damn his family in Leaf, his clan, to Akatsuki's torture, but this secret was bigger. If Akatsuki knew that Naruto had ordered this, they could burn Leaf to the ground.

And Itachi or Kisame might come visit the Toad Sages to ask about Hazō and Noburi, both of whom had been known to interact with the Toad Sages. And the Toad Sages wouldn't take any oaths on Hazō's behalf. The Toad Sages were strong, and they wouldn't be as easy for Itachi to coerce as Naruto had been (and for all Kei's words, Hazō was still irritated with the boy Hokage who apparently had all the willpower of a particularly recalcitrant peanut), but if they leaked word to Akatsuki that Hazō's plan was anything less than a total betrayal of Leaf, it could spell the village's end.

Besides, Fukasaku didn't seem to particularly mind that he'd betrayed Leaf anyway. The Toad Sage liked Leaf, but he'd only had one truly loyal summoner in Jiraiya. He'd get over it.

"The letter wasn't very important," Hazō said, finally. "I'm sorry for wasting your time, sir."

"Don't just say it. Act like it by leaving me alone," Fukasaku said. "Is there something important happening, or are you finally going to take your dogs and get out of here?"

"Uchiha Itachi," Hazō said. "He's a Sharingan user and extremely skilled with genjutsu, to the point that he can outright puppeteer people. He was the one to visit Leaf, and might have suspected that I'd go missing. If so, he might have hit Noburi with a genjutsu to make him think that he wasn't being monitored, then followed after him to find me. When Noburi reverse summons to Gamadai, can you check him over for genjutsu, and if he's clear, tell him to meet us by the bladehorror rift?"

Fukasaku thought about it for a second. "Sure. 'Bladehorror rift,' huh? It's a little annoying to head down to Gamadai, but we can do it once. And if there's one thing me and Ma know forwards and backwards, it's genjutsu. Can't let the Crow Summoner be fooling our clan's summoner when he's on important business. Now, if that's all, get out of here."

o-o-o

Hazō heard the team coming before he saw Canvass' mottled gray-brown coat break out of the forest's thorny underbrush – mostly through the occasional sound of a branch snapping as the much larger Noburi struggled to follow the dog and the pair of jōnin he'd found himself with.

Canvass hadn't dispelled herself, so she hadn't noticed anything amiss, right? Hazō waved to Mari, Yuno, and Noburi from behind the walls of Kagome's improvised fortress while his Earth Clone went out to ask them for recognition codes. If they were careful, Canvass should have smelled any ground-based pursuer, and what sort of aerial pursuer would have followed Noburi's team for so long? Any Leaf patrol would long since have attacked, and even Akatsuki… well, the Toad Sages apparently hadn't noticed anything wrong with Noburi. So they were safe. There was no one following them.

The earth clone raised its orange flag ("Use orange and blue, so in case the stinker uses a genjutsu on the earth clone, he won't know which one is the good one," Kagome-sensei had said), and Hazō wasted no time leaping over the walls and following the safe path out to meet the team, Kagome, Kei, and the newly-Uplift Tenten close on his heels.

He reached the edge of the trap perimeter and opened his mouth to call out, only to have the breath taken out of him as Mari accelerated in a streak of red to grab him in a hug.

After a moment, he closed his arms around her back and felt that knot of uncertainty in the back of his mind finally relax.

"I'm glad you're safe," she said, breaking the hug and stepping away from him. Hazō looked, but her eyes were dry.

"I should be saying the same thing," Hazō said. "We've just been waiting in seal fortresses in anonymous parts of the wilderness. That's the safest thing ever. You're the one that had to flee the village of Hyuuga and Inuzuka."

And then Mari was behind him, kicking his knee forward to bend him over so she could ruffle his hair.

"Also, dammit Hazō! I was having Yumenori prepare me a hundred different perfumed baths, all sealed up at exactly the perfect temperature, but you called right before she finished and now I don't have any perfumed baths at all!"

"That's what you're worried about?" Hazō said, bending lower to get her hands off his hair and ducking away. "I'm sure we can heat some water with some nice plants in it for you, Mari."

Mari barely quirked her lips and glanced at Noburi and Yuno for an instant. Right. Mari was trying to lighten the mood, but Noburi and Yuno had both had deep social connections in Leaf, futures that they were looking forward to, and that Hazō had now yanked away from them (for very good reasons!). Noburi trusted Hazō, but Yuno… Well, for better or worse, Hazō's strongest connection with her was their shared religion, and he wasn't sure if he should leverage it to win her approval or forgiveness.

"Well," she said, as Noburi and Yuno came into earshot, "Noburi has already given us the run-down, so we can skip the whole 'What the hell, Hazō?' part of this reunion."

"What!?" Noburi exclaimed. "Why would we skip that? It's the best part! What the hell, Hazō?"

"What the hell, Hazō?" Mari agreed.

"What the hell, Hazō?" Hazō heard Kei say from behind him.

"I thought it was pretty reasonable," Kagome-sensei said. "Gotta get away from the Akatsuki stinkers."

"What the hell, Hazō?" Tenten said.

Yuno looked back and forth between everyone, confused.

Noburi took a step to her side and reached around her shoulder with one arm, gesturing at Hazō.

Yuno hesitated. "What the hell, Hazō?" she finally said, slowly.

Mari and Noburi cheered, Tenten smiled, and Hazō sighed.

"A fascinating pack tradition, summoner," Canvass said, looking back and forth between the various parties. "Try to get me something good to track next time, okay? If that's all…" the bloodhound disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"Seriously though, I think it's not as bad as last time," Hazō said. "Materially, we have far more resources."

"True," Mari said. "It'll be pretty much impossible for hunter-nin to find us if we play it smart. Still, we also know the mission you're set on, and I, for one, will be planning for failure. Even if Akatsuki doesn't kill us, it's probably the woods for the rest of our lives.

"But!" she quickly said, realizing how morose her words had turned the mood in an instant, "on the flip side, we're free of all the expectations and bullshit that came from being in the village. I for one am looking forward to never seeing a metal-bearded asshole again except in a context where I can kill him."

"Speaking of which," Hazō said, "I have some ideas of things we can do now that we're freed from the village's rules. But first, let's get some distance away from this place that we haven't exactly kept secret."

o-o-o

"You want to what!?" Noburi exclaimed.

Hazō heard Tenten making some vaguely-choking-like sound behind him. This wasn't exactly the reaction he'd expected.

"I want to teach everyone shadow clone," Hazō said. "We're missing-nin anyway, and it's the single most powerful technique we have, except maybe the Summoning Technique. It's non-elemental, so everyone can and should learn it."

He glanced at Tenten, who looked vaguely horrified. She didn't say anything, but she was apparently still too loyal of a Leaf ninja to grab a free albeit treasonous power-up. Whatever, she'd come around.

"I want to learn it!" Kagome-sensei said. "Teach me!"

"Absolutely," Hazō said. "In fact, I can teach everyone who wants to now. It'll just take a couple-"

"Hold on," Noburi said, pulling his barrel off his back and holding it out towards Kagome. "Kagome, dip your hand in my barrel for a second."

Kagome blinked, then stepped over and dipped his hand in the barrel.

"You don't have enough chakra," Noburi said instantly. "I think you have less than when Hazō learned the technique, and even that was low enough that Lord Seventh barely felt comfortable teaching him. The technique is supposed to kill you if you don't have enough chakra, so you should really train your reserves before you try."

"It will in fact instantly kill you if you don't have the chakra to form the number of clones you try to make," Hazō said, holding back a grimace as he saw Kagome-sensei's face fall. He should have thought of this – Kagome-sensei was a sealmaster and a trapmaker, not a ninjutsu specialist. "Don't worry, Kagome-sensei. Train your reserves for a few weeks or months, then I'll teach you as soon as Noburi says it's okay."

"Fine," Kagome said.

"Will you be learning it, Yuno?" Hazō asked.

The axemistress considered, then nodded. "I think it would be wise. My chakra reserves are larger than yours. There is no downside to knowing the technique, is there?"

In fact, Snowflake had raised a number of philosophical objections to spreading the technique widely (and increasing the risk that it got spread even wider, if ever the group was separated or captured), but she'd ultimately been overruled. Shadow clones were really too valuable to pass up.

"Not really. And you, Noburi?"

"You know I want to," Noburi said immediately. "But I don't know if it's safe yet with my bloodline, I never got a straight answer out of Kabuto, and I never bothered asking Tsunade. Now I guess I never will."

"If you want to learn it, you need to make the choice," Hazō said. "No more relying on anyone. It's up to you."

Noburi thought about it.

"Not yet," he said finally. "Working with Tsunade taught me a lot about how bloodline research works, and I think I could try to figure out for myself if it's safe or not. I probably won't be able to tell for sure, but I'll at least be able to take a pretty good guess. And like you said, the Shadow Clone Technique is worth it. If gaining the technique means I can skip risking my death at some other point in the future, then it's worth a little risk now, right?"

"Computing which side of the tradeoff is favorable requires more detailed information on probabilities and frequencies of risks," Kei said. "In general principle, I would recommend against attempting the technique unless you are absolutely certain you can cast it safely."

"No such thing as absolute certainty, sis," Noburi said. "Not when working with bodies and bloodlines. But I'll see how close I can get."

Hazō turned to Tenten, raising an eyebrow.

She shook her head.

Hazō sighed. "Just you then, Yuno?"

"I do not know when I will get the time to train the technique," Yuno said, "not when there are other more immediately compelling ninjutsu to train, such as the Strength of the Storm technique you acquired from Orochimaru. Still, it is probably better that I learn the basics sooner than later."

"So be it," Hazō said. "Let's find a nice place to sit, and we can go through the basics."

o-o-o

"Hey, is that what I think it is?" Noburi asked.

Yuno pivoted to focus her telescope down at where her husband was pointing. After a couple of seconds, she locked onto what he was pointing at.

"That does look like a zigzag streak of red in the wall," she said. Immediately, she started scanning her telescope back and forth. "And look, I think I see a square shape in that pile of stones there. That must be the building foundation that Hazō mentioned."

Noburi followed her gaze, then took a step to snake his hand around her waist. "Good eye! I love how observant you are."

Somehow, despite the fact that they were spending all day out on skywalkers underneath the blazing summer sun, Yuno managed to turn a shade redder.

Yuno turned to Noburi. "Shall we-" she stopped as he leaned in for a kiss. She leaned back for a second, realized there wasn't a single living thing for miles, then relaxed to accept his kiss.

"Shall we go report to Hazō that we found Orochimaru's chakra-enhancing cave?" she said, once Noburi released her.

"Let's," Noburi said. "And let's get some of the ice out of the storage scrolls to beat the desert heat. At least we'll be able to come here after nightfall now."

"I wonder what we'll find in there," Yuno said as they turned to head back to the skybase.

"I don't know, but I'm looking forward to exploring it with you."

Many thanks to @Velorien for the initial Tenten scene!

Kei has taken charge of reading Tenten into Team Uplift's handtalk, combat codes, strategies, etc. Tenten already has Flame Aura, but doesn't train or use it much, as she believes it is too dangerous to be worth it for a ranged-weapons user.

Noburi will work with a few summons to set up an information-isolated enclave on the Seventh Path, but the Toads are far less cooperative than the Dogs or Arachnids, so Noburi will probably only be able to maintain one such site. Still, he expects Gamabunta will be willing to spread the message to Akatsuki, if only to piss off Jiraiya's killers.

Hazō preps the four rift runes as described by Orochimaru via Naruto. Setting aside Orochimaru's uncharacteristic generosity in sharing this information with Naruto for basically no reason or benefit, Hazō gets the following difficulty results:

Rift-opening rune: Hazō thinks this rune is well within his capabilities.
Rift-unanchoring rune: Hazō thinks he could maybe do this rune.
Rift-kicking rune: Hazō thinks he could maybe do this rune.
Rift-attractor rune: Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.

As a result of studying the bladehorror rift, Hazō is confident that he could develop runes that would work with either the bladehorror or the O'uzu rifts by using the bladehorror rift as a testing site for his research.

This update covered 7 days: 1 day studying the rift, 1 day after reuniting with the team for them to rest off their intense long-distance run, 3 days to run to the mountains in western Wind Country where Orochimaru's magic-chakra-water-cave-place is marked on your map, then 2 days of aerial + telescope searching to find the landmarks and eventually the cave mouth.

XP Award: 28 + 7 (brevity) XP

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Jul 27, 2024 at 1:00 PM .

eaglejarl · Jul 29, 2024

Interlude: Noburi and Tsunade, Sitting in...er, Doing Research Together in a Completely Appropriate Manner

"Ma'am, how did you do that?"

The greatest medic-nin in the world glanced at ~~her protégé~~ ~~her research partner~~ ~~her colleague~~ Noburi with a frown.

"Do what?"

Noburi gestured at the still-warm corpse on the table. Ten minutes ago this had been Tanaka Osamu, a 19-year-old warehouse worker. He had fallen from a loft in the warehouse and shattered his everything. He had been rushed to Leaf General where Tsunade had done everything that she and her staff could to put his shattered spine, punctured lung, fractured skull, and depressed brain back together, but no one ever imagined that it would be possible. The only meaningful thing she was able to do for him was to ensure that his death was not pointless, that he would contribute to someone else not dying in the future by helping with her and Noburi's research.

"You didn't move your fingers when you opened him up."

She lifted her hands from the body and held them out, palms up. Tiny bursts of medical chakra rose from her fingertips and transformed, becoming hooks and wedges and blades. They roamed around her hand, changing size and shape and angle as she willed.

"Scalpels to part the flesh, retractors to open it," she said as though it were nothing. "Fun party trick. And yes"—she turned her right hand over and made a fist; the chakra migrated around to her knuckles, growing to form finger-length blades—"I have used it to turn an enemy's internals to mulch. Punch, spin the blades around inside them, move on to the next target. Now, if we could come back to the research?"

"Yes, ma'am." He turned back to the corpse but couldn't help but ask, "Did you use that on the Dragons?"

"Nah," she said absently, casually spreading her hands to split Osamu's sternum down the center and open his chest like a flower. "They were too big for the blades. I used medical chakra to create a tunnel down to its organs, then channeled the force of my attack down the tunnel. Punched it from the inside where it's squishier."

Noburi nodded, eyes slightly wide as he suddenly understood the length of the path that led from his current ninja status to the heights of possible achievement. For that matter, was Tsunade even at the peak? Was there a peak, or could ninja simply get stronger indefinitely? If so, how strong must the Third have been? When the team first met him he had seemed like such a friendly old grandfather. His aura when they annoyed him had made clear that he was...more, yet still he must have been holding back so much.

He swallowed and forced himself to focus on the body in front of him as Tsunade submerged it in the pre-prepared bath. He dipped his hand in and found that, as expected, there were still very faint traces of chakra lingering in the corpse. So faint that he probably wouldn't have noticed them two years ago before he achieved mastery over his bloodline.

He cursed himself for using the word 'mastery', even in his own thoughts, immediately after seeing how much farther there was to go as a ninja.

"Well?" Tsunade said. "Hurry up and do your thing."

"Yes, ma'am," Noburi said, beginning to push chakra into the corpse's unbeating heart.

o-o-o-o

Noburi entered the lab and frowned at the dire rabbit on the table. Tsunade had captured its bladed ears in one leather-gauntleted hand and had the other resting lightly on its neck. The rabbit's head was twitching and its ears were struggling but its body was utterly slack from Tsunade's hand downwards.

"What are we doing today, ma'am?"

"Alternate sensing medium. Cut its side open, stick your finger in, see if you can sense its chakra through the blood."

"My...my bloodline really only works with water, ma'am."

She sniffed. "That's what they taught you as a toddler and a wet-behind-the-ears genin. Doesn't mean it's true. Clans always keep their best secrets back until you're old enough to keep them secret. Now hurry up."

Noburi swallowed and picked up the scalpel.

o-o-o-o

"The patient in room four is ready for you, ma'am," said Doctor Kurusu, holding out the patient's chart.

Tsunade took the chart and flicked through it, eyes scanning back and forth with trained speed. "Conscious?" she asked, not looking up.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Mild fever, wet cough, aches, tiredness," she muttered. "Damp lung, like we thought. Sounds like we caught it early." She glanced over at Noburi. "You sure about this, kid? I'd think you'd need more of the spirits to be present before you can sense them."

"I'm not sure, ma'am. My thinking with this experiment is that we compare between patients at different stages of illness. I'm sure we'll get someone else in soon who is farther along. It's the season."

"You're not wrong, I suppose. Still, I'm still not completely sold on your ability to kill the spirits with chakra drain but not hurt the patient."

Noburi shrugged. "I can't promise that I can kill the spirits, ma'am, but I can promise that I won't hurt the patient. I've put many patients out without hurting them."

"If there's nothing else, ma'am?" Doctor Kurusu asked, his voice studiously polite. "With your permission, I would like to go back to rounds."

"Yeah, fine." The doctor started to turn away but she caught his arm as she remembered something. "You asked the patient for consent, right?"

"Ma'am?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You asked the patient for consent to be used in medical experiments, right?"

"Ma'am...he's a civilian."

The hand that wasn't holding Doctor Kurusu's arm tightened into a fist, green chakra flickering around it. The hand that was holding his arm must have tightened as well because the doctor went to his knees, crying out in pain as the mountain surged into reality around them, its weight crushing down on everyone within thirty feet. Two nurses staggered and the civilian auxiliary sitting at the intake desk slipped out of her chair.

Tsuande closed her eyes and breathed, forcibly dragging her soul back into its cage the way the owner of a vicious dog pulls it away from its victim.

After a moment she managed to get herself under control again. She lifted Doctor Kurusu back to his feet with punctilious care.

"Doctor Kurusu," she said in a voice that was far too calm. "This is the second time I have had to speak to you about your attitude towards civilian patients. Please take me literally when I say that if there is a third time, I will rip your head off, spit in your neck, and throw your body over the wall of your family's compound. You are free to retire from your position and never practice medicine or use medical chakra again, but if you wish to continue as a medic-nin in Leaf, you will treat all patients, ninja or civilian, with the same degree of respect. If you do not, we are going to have that third time. Am I completely understood?"

The doctor clenched his teeth, visibly restraining himself from saying anything stupid about how powerful and important the Kurusu clan was. Lady Tsunade was the Lady of the Senju clan, grandaughter of the village's founder, Slug Princess, Sannin, the medic who had trained essentially Leaf's entire medical corps, who had saved the lives of multiple Clan Heads and their children, and a former Hokage. She reigned supreme in the medical sphere. In anything related to medicine, this hospital, or its staff, she could do whatever she wanted and not even the current Hokage would so much as wag a finger at her.

"You are understood, ma'am," he said.

"Good. Go get those stress fractures patched up, then get back to your rounds."

o-o-o-o

"Ma'am?" Noburi had to clear his throat before he could continue. Nervousness had rendered it dry as expired travel jerky.

"Yeah?" Tsunade didn't look up from where she was going through the records of their latest experiment.

"I wanted to ask...um...I wanted to ask if there is anything combat-oriented that you would be willing to teach me? Either based on my bloodline or in general."

She finally looked up. "I thought you wanted to learn how to heal?"

"Medics still get deployed in wartime, ma'am, and I have trouble believing that we'll never see another war, even with this new AMITY thing."

She chewed on that for a moment. "You insisted we set a stop date and I don't want to waste research time teaching you non-medical stuff, but we can look into some weaponization possibilities."

"Thank you, ma'am. Lord Orochimaru said that it was possible he could teach me to manifest chakra scalpels through my Water Whip jutsu?"

She laughed. "'Lord' Orochimaru? Jiraiya would have laughed his ass off if he heard you call Oro that."

Noburi smiled weakly. "With respect ma'am, Jiraiya's not here and Lord Orochimaru is scary. A little bit of politeness seems like a good idea."

"Eh." She shrugged one shoulder. "I suppose. Dunno about the scalpels in particular, but the idea of manifesting medical chakra through your jutsu is interesting." She rubbed her jaw thoughtfully. "That whip thing...two, three yards long, right?"

"Variable ma'am. I've made it up to four yards in combat; I haven't tried to go longer but I might be able to."

"Suppose we had a bunch of operating tables lined up. You think you could lay the whip across multiple patients and use your bloodline on all of them at once? Keep them all sedated or whatever?"

"Absolutely. Splitting my drain is no problem. The Whip would need to be made from actual water though. Can't drain through a construct."

"I wonder...you can push chakra into a person by touch. You think you could use it to disrupt their own internal chakra? Could be a good way to keep them from using jutsu, or maybe even boosting. And maybe you could affect their muscles, make them go limp or cause spasms that have them fall down. Very hard for an opponent to fight when he's in the middle of a seizure."

Noburi's face split into a smile. "That sounds very interesting, ma'am."

"You'd have to be able to do it fast, just on a brief touch instead of needing to grab on. If you manage to restrain someone with your Whip then you don't need fancy medical tricks to kill them."

"Yes, ma'am."

She nodded and pushed the papers aside. "Let's go see what we can do."

XP AWARD: n/a This is a retrospective on events that have already happened, so XP has already been awarded for this time.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Jul 31, 2024 at 7:00 AM .

Velorien · Aug 2, 2024

Future Interlude (AU?): Instances of Three Individuals, Part 2

None of the events of that fateful day could explain how it had come to this.

There were not one but two women waiting for Hazō at the Asuma Fountain.

Hazō had argued. Hazō had reasoned. Hazō had begged. Hazō had nearly lied, but for the fact that either of them could have his exact schedule for the week with minimal effort. Neither would budge on this day and this hour.

Hazō was not good at first dates. He'd been on exactly two in his life, and one had been a special case (his bond with Akane had been too big for a date to be more than symbolic, and had come long after the confession that actually mattered) and the other, with his girlfriend's best friend within an already-negotiated relationship against a headache-inducing political backdrop, was hardly representative either.

Neither experience had prepared him for a first date with his sister by the transitive property, still-undefined direct family member, serial fiancée–honestly, it might be shorter just to say "Ami" if he wanted to convey the the weirdness of it–or with his sister's identical-but-different other self currently in a fulfilling pentad with said sister, who possessed firm and unyielding killing intent for those who would date Ami and who shared the memories but not the actuality of whatever Snowflake's feelings were, but who had actually also had a crush of her own…

Hazō would have to keep a clear record of his private life for posterity because any post-Uplift historian would be laughed out of the profession if they reconstructed this out of secondary evidence.

Of course, that would all require first surviving the date.

"Hazō," Ami said, waving at him past the crowd. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting."

"Of course you did not," Snowflake said. "You arrived exactly on time, as usual. I, on the other hand, arrived an hour early, thereby mitigating any risk of delay."

"You still have much to learn," Ami agreed.

The two could not have been more sharply contrasted. Ami was wearing the exact vest and trousers prescribed for first dates in Chapter 20 of My Vision, down to the bandolier of antidote vials, the all-purpose kunai, the backup kunai, and the emergency kunai. Even the yellow rhombus badge indicating to the watching secret police that one was on a first date, and thus their partner had not yet been cleared of treasonous intent, was in place below her left shoulder. Between their current location, her well-known general outlook on life, her knowledge of exactly how treasonous he was, and the treasonous plotting they'd already participated in together, it was ironic on at least four different levels, and Hazō was sure he was missing more.

Oh, five. She was wearing blue with orange accents–the personal colours of the Mizukage who, according to her own reports, had removed My Vision from the mandatory Academy curriculum and was in the process of dismantling the rest of Yagura's legacy with the fierce support of the AMI.

The orange, as it happened, nicely matched Snowflake's season-appropriate kimono, a thing of abstract red, orange and yellow patterns evocative of autumn leaves (all very un-Kei colours, Hazō noted in passing). Unusually, Snowflake wore two yellow ribbons, worn symmetrically like hair ties, and Hazō made a note to ask Yuno about this afterwards. (He definitely didn't want to ask Snowflake herself in case the answer was either something embarrassing to her, like "true love", or something embarrassing to him, like "when will this walrus of a man finally notice my feelings?")

Hazō was ever so grateful to Mari for the fashion advice that saved him the headache of trying to match their obvious effort.

"You two both look great," he said. "No, exceptional."

Challenge the first: he had to figure out unique compliments for each of their outfits that did not, Sage forbid, make one sound an iota better than the other. He wasn't that stupid.

Or would Snowflake be displeased if he made them equal? The Kei base model balked at any attempt to draw equivalence between her unworthy self and the divinity that was Ami. But then again, last he heard, Snowflake was furious with Ami, so did that change things? Gah.

This was not a thing anyone had ever had to deal with on a first date before.

"Ami, I love the countless layers making up those clothes, and also how the lines of the visible kunai make my eyes follow your figure and skip over the weapons hidden in your vest. Yagura would hate you with a fiery passion and grudging respect."

Ami preened.

"Snowflake, I love the varied, vibrant colours of your kimono. I think they express how much aliveness and energy you have beneath that collected exterior, and at the same time that translucent shawl gives the whole thing a transient feeling that's appropriate on a more subtle level."

Snowflake blushed and looked away.

Ami looked Hazō up and down.

"You've managed to impress me right back, and I've got to tell you, that takes some doing considering my, shall we say, variety of experience. You've got guts, making that kind of statement to two sisters who aren't exactly on threesome terms right now."

"O-On what?!" Snowflake stuttered, mirroring Hazō's internal reaction.

Dammit, Mari.

"That blue hakama and white jacket combo symbolises foam on the waves," Ami explained to Snowflake, "in other words, vigorous, wet activity, in other words, expecting to bag your date before the night is over. Mist seduction specs sometimes wear it to get the sex kami to back them up when they only have one night to complete a hard seduction mission.

"In Mist, wearing it on the first date is very bold. Wearing it on the first date with two women, who happen to be sisters, one of whom can't even handle talking about sex–no offence, Snowflake–well, that's hardcore. A man shows he's got balls that big, he's either about to find himself getting closely acquainted with the nearest body of water or he's halfway to a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Snowflake was now a deep crimson to match the darkest parts of her kimono. She opened and closed her mouth, but no words came out.

Hazō decided it would be suicidal to try to bluff his way through this.

"Mari picked it for me," he confessed. "I spent ages agonising over what the best outfit would be for this before I gave up and asked her for advice, and by the second hour, she'd more or less taken over the process."

"...huh."

Ami looked Hazō up and down again.

"Well, that's interesting. I mean, on the surface, that's clearly just a message to me: take him if you can, that sort of thing. Permission, maybe even encouragement. But then you have to think about it in a social spec context. Is she saying, take him in your capacity as a seduction expert, which means no getting actually attached? Or is that an overly primitive reading? After all, there's the master-apprentice level, where the medium is part of the message and you can't communicate without a test, and also you could take it as an allusion to the personal relationship between Mari and me, and how it's evolved over time. Then when you add in Snowflake, and Mari's relationship with Snowflake, and what Mari knows I know about her relationship with Snowflake…"

Hazō tuned Ami out in favour of focusing on Mari's other victim.

"I really am sorry about that," he said. "We were overdue for an embarrassing Mari prank."

"N-Not at all," Snowflake said. "But just to be clear, are you expressing a preference for a… a…"

Hazō had honestly not considered it until this moment. This date alone was already well past what he'd expected his romantic future to look like a week ago. He'd had to keep telling himself that this was a unique opportunity: having accidentally talked Ami down from marriage to dating, all he had to do was provide direct proof that they weren't romantically compatible, and then this entire issue could finally be put to be–settled once and for all. (And if it turned out they were romantically compatible, at least he'd be walking into his doom with his eyes open.)

As for Snowflake, he was at a complete loss. Hazō had spent years unsure whether Ami felt any actual attraction for him, and those years were still going even right now, but he'd been confident that Snowflake only saw him as a good friend. Why had she kissed him? It didn't seem like a friendly greeting kiss, and so far this didn't seem like a friends-hanging-out type of date. It was so confusing. Worse, when he thought about it, he couldn't deny that while his relationship with Kei had settled into a comfortably platonic, fraternal form, the Kei base model was attractive in its own right, a lunar counterpart to Akane's sun, and Snowflake in particular–

"Only," Snowflake said, growing tense in the face of his distracted silence, "at this time, I would prefer–I mean not that I am establishing a conclusive dispreference for–which is to say the issue of context–but I by no means wish to imply that I am somehow… Hazō, do you understand what I am trying to say?"

Not remotely.

"I think we should return to this topic at a later date," Hazō said cautiously, "if circumstances are appropriate."

"So you wish for there to be a later date?" Snowflake clarified.

Gah.

Hazō looked to Ami in hopes of rescuing the conversation, which in retrospect was a crazy way of thinking.

"...but she'd be expecting me to play on a level above that…" Ami muttered to herself, counting something off on her fingers.

"I do wish to apologise about… before," Snowflake said, mercifully changing the subject. "I had previously been following a strategy co-designed with Kei, which revolved around extensive gathering of data in order to create an ideal opportunity for confession that maximised the odds of success while minimising the danger of rejection. But… in the moment, it occurred to me that Kei is not actually very good at romance, and I decided to do the exact opposite of what she would do. I… I realise now that the result was excessively forceful and one-sided, and surely so unromantic that you are here only out of pity."

"I… wouldn't say that," Hazō said. "Surprising, certainly. And I could probably have reacted better, or at all, but it's not like I was traumatised. It didn't make me think worse of you is what I'm trying to say."

Snowflake's shoulders sagged slightly in relief.

"I still cannot believe I did that. Kei literally beat her head against the wall, though not for long, since it was late and we did not wish to wake up Shikamaru.

"So…" she continued after a long pause during which Ami could be heard positing a clan-wide conspiracy, "how was it?"

Hazō cast his mind back to the urgent, untameable feel of her tongue in his mouth.

"...Good," he said, feeling himself blush. "It was good."

"I'm glad," she said with just as much awkwardness. "All those hours practising with Tenten finally paid off."

This finally snapped Ami out of her fugue.

"Seriously, Snowflake? You're on your first date, and you're going to talk about how you practised for your first kiss with him with another girl?"

"Oh," Snowflake said. "Oh. That was a… terrible faux pas, wasn't it? I am so sorry."

"Nah, not necessarily," Ami said. "It's a high-risk move, but if you can get the guy thinking about how hot it is for you to be kissing another girl, that's a critical hit. A lot of guys are into that for some reason, and once he's turned on by thoughts of you and kissing–well, you've basically won, haven't you?

"Still, it's not a beginner technique. Especially when things get poly, talking about your other partners can bring in whole layers of complexity. You don't want to pretend they're not there–especially not when we're already one big dodecahedron of incestuousness where everyone is connected to everyone else–but on a first date, try to keep things simple. Trust me."

She grinned alarmingly at Hazō. "Luckily for you, we can settle this one here and now. Hazō, are you turned on or off by the idea of Snowflake kissing another girl?"

But this wasn't Hazō's first rodeo. With Ami, it paid to be ready for questions to which there existed no safe answer.

"I'm flattered Snowflake considered me worth the practice," he said. "Also, don't you mean 'dodecagon'? A dodecahedron is a 3D shape. Believe me, the extra dimension can be decisive."

"Nope," Ami said. "I've learned a lot on my travels. My personal shipping chart currently covers three Paths and two levels of reality. Maybe two and a half. Unfortunately, Singularity made me swear never to show it to anyone for fear of the consequences.

"But enough about cosmic forces that could undo my return and maybe even the entire year that led up to it if I tick them off too badly. Where are you taking us for our date, Gōketsu Hazō?"

-o-

"There is one immortal tradition for brave couples–or, well, triples–on their first date in Leaf," Hazō began. "One place where the pure of stomach are rewarded while the unprepared receive their just desserts."

Both girls tensed.

"And we will not be going there."

Ami relaxed.

Snowflake muttered something to herself that sounded a lot like "weeks of preparation down the drain".

"The Yabai Café will have to manage without us today," Hazō said, "because we'll be doing something much more fun."

"I knew I could count on you," Ami said. "What have you got in mind?"

"The three of us," Hazō said dramatically, "will be entering a civilian cooking competition!"

Ami beamed. Snowflake, however, gave him a piercingly sanity-checker look.

"What's wrong?" Ami asked." Don't tell me you think Hazō could respect a kunoichi who can't protect the stupendously-expensive kimono that she expects to be wearing for rest of the date–maybe less if things go really well–while not only cooking but being surrounded by a bunch of clumsy civilian cooks wielding all sorts of colourful sauces?"

Oh. Oops.

"If anything," Ami said, "I think I'm the one being unfairly handicapped here. Do you not remember eating my cooking?"

Snowflake smiled sweetly. "I'm glad you recognise that you don't belong in this competition, dear sister. It would be best for you to bow out now and waste no more time. I have already proved my willingness to risk losing face for the sake of the final goal."

"Uh," Hazō said. "Actually, I did think of that issue. There is a special award for the Most Unique Dish."

"Hazō," Ami declared, "I officially love you and want you to have my babies."

"Uh…"

"Biosealing," Ami said to the unvoiced objection. "I know it's next on your list."

"If he was going to conduct that kind of research," Snowflake said, "obviously his focus would be technique hacking."

"It would?" Ami asked innocently.

"Of course," Snowflake said, "for the purposes of extending shadow clone duration to–"

She froze. "Um, I mean… what kind of category is 'Most Unique Dish' anyway? Uniqueness is binary. Either a thing is unique or it is not. I should file a complaint with the Merchant Council over deceptive advertising practices."

"Uniqueness is relative," Ami disagreed. "You are unique as an individual, but you are less unique than, say, Noburi because there's half a dozen other Snowflakes running around at any given time."

"I am not less unique than Noburi," Snowflake said heatedly, "and you are wilfully misusing terminology with malicious intent."

"Excuse me? This is perfectly ordinary pedantic intent, thank you very much."

Hazō just sighed and kept leading them to the competition site.

-o-

What do you do?

Voting closes on Aug 3, 2024 at 1:00 PM

eaglejarl · Aug 4, 2024

Chapter 672: Dull Days are Best Days

"Welcome back, Canvass," Hazō said. "How did it go?"

The summoned bloodhound shook her head around the long axis of her body, making her droopy ears flap furiously and flinging bits of blood and dog spittle around.

"Gross!" Noburi shouted as a fleck of spittle struck him where he was prepping his gear for the upcoming assault on the cave system Orochimaru's notes had led them to. "Canvass!"

"Apologies," the dog called. She turned back to Hazō. "Ran into some giant bugs. They were delicious. I have never tracked in a place like this. You called it a 'desert'?"

"Yes," Hazō said. "Although not the deep desert." Turning, he surveyed the arid land around them. The tan-brown soil was working hard to achieve its lifelong goal of absolute desiccation. The land rolling like a sleepy sea, flat fat hills of widened girth and shortened stature, all covered in silver-green scrub and lichens and an occasional sapling stubbornly refusing to accept reality and move someplace decent. (Well, mostly. The team had passed one trio of migrating trees on the way here, and given them a wide berth.)

"The deep desert is pure sand," Hazō continued. "Massive waves of it, dozens of feet high. Life exists only in little spots called oases, wherever there is water."

"Hm. That sounds difficult to track in," Canvass said. "The sand would shift under your paws and it wouldn't hold scent well."

"By all reports it's also extremely difficult and unpleasant to live in."

"Yes, well, remind me not to answer if you try to summon me there."

"Did you guys find anything? Also, how was it working with Mari?"

Canvass glanced over to where the redhead was pouring water on her face and fluffing out her hair to let the heat off her neck.

"Nothing particularly interesting," the hound said. "No especially dangerous plants or animals, although the nighttime stuff might be a different story. As to Mari, she is a good runner and interesting to talk to. She had some fascinating stories about you, actually."

"They were lies. All of them."

"You don't even know what she told me, how can you know they were lies?"

"Because I know Mari and she absolutely would not miss a chance to prank me."

"Hm. A pity. I was quite impressed with the idea that you set up an education program for the younglings of your pack, then opened it to other packs."

"Wait, really? That one is actually true, it's called—"

"Now, now, Summoner. Don't try to take unearned credit. You already said it was all lies, you can't walk it back just because one of the lies was pretty."

"No, really, it's true!"

"Of course it is. Now, as I was saying, the scouting was informative. A surprising number of creatures in the area given the conditions. Mostly bugs and lizards of various kinds, many of them quite delicious. I recommend avoiding the snakes with the red and green markings; they can spit their acid quite a distance."

"Noted. Thank you. Anything else?"

o-o-o-o

"I can't believe I'm asking this but...are you sure this is all necessary?" Noburi asked. "We're here to study the pool that Orochimaru recommended, right?"

"Yup. And it is at the bottom of that cave complex. The last two times we went into caves, one of us almost died. Thus, yes, we are going to be careful."

"Sure but..." He gestured towards the entrance to the cave.

The team had spent two days mapping out every place that the cave system connected with the surface that they could find. This entrance, the one that Orochimaru had recommended, was the only one large enough for a human to walk through, with the majority being simple slits in the ground a few inches across, sufficient for scorpions or snakes to go in and out.

Heroes of legend, such as the Sannin, would have stormed into the cave with chakra ready, knowing that their battle-honed reflexes were more than sufficient to keep themselves safe. Kagome-sensei was not a hero of legend and felt that what they made up for in power they lacked in brains; Hazō, his student, fervently agreed. Accordingly, the exploration of the cave had been done in a proper Team-Uplift-approved fashion; to wit, the safest and most efficient way possible.

"It feels unfair somehow," Noburi said as he stepped to the cave entrance and raised a misterator seal. "Here, little chakra dumplings! Uncle Noburi is going to drain you right to death." He fired off the cone of heavy mist and spread his bloodline through the resulting haze of water.

Three months of researching alongside Tsunade had enhanced his medical and bloodline skills immensely. He had progressed so much that two days before going missing, he had come to the office to find Tsunade, Hospital Director Kon Ai, and the Hokage waiting in solemn tribunal.

"Gōketsu Noburi," Naruto said gravely. "Lead Doctor Senju has come to me with a most serious statement about your behavior as a medical professional."

Noburi forced himself to keep calm, not summon his Water Whip and brace for attack, and not run for his life before he could be thrown into a killbox. Damn it, Hazō was supposed to be the treason dragon in the family!

Naruto waited for Noburi to say something and looked disappointed when he didn't.

"Specifically," he said at last, "she said that you have demonstrated competence at a level well above those of your peers and she has formally requested your promotion to special jōnin."

"...Really?" Noburi cursed himself for asking, and for the way his voice squeaked. "Are you sure?"

"What, you don't want the promotion?!" Tsunade demanded, crossing her arms.

"Tsunade!" Naruto said before Noburi could reply. "There is a certain decorum to this, you know?"

The Sannin rolled her eyes. "Fine. I just wanted you to give him the paper so we could get on with this."

"Sensei," Kon Ai scolded gently. "Promotion to special jōnin is a huge milestone in anyone's life, and the fact that Noburi has achieved it at such a young age is impressive. He deserves to have a meaningful ceremony."

"Fair enough." Tsunade visibly took a grip on herself. "Gōketsu Noburi. In my rank as Lead Doctor of Leaf General, I have worked closely with you for the past several months on a project of novel research. This project required you to demonstrate a wide array of medical skills, which you did with grace and aplomb. Your skills are significantly above those of your cohort, you have embraced the medical ethos and requirements of Leaf medic-nin and brought honor to the profession. In recognition of these facts, I hereby grant you the title of Senior Doctor within the Leaf medical establishment, along with all the rights and responsibilities of that rank. You have full access to hospital resources and you answer only to myself and Administrator Kon Ai." She paused, then shook her head and, in a move so bizarre that it made Noburi want to check her ears for lupchanzen, she smiled. It was a very, very small smile and it existed mostly on half her face rather than dare to attempt proliferation, yet still it was a smile.

"You've done a hell of a job, kid."

"Thank you, ma'am," Noburi said, dumbfounded. "Thank you, Lead Doctor."

The smile disappeared. "That's enough of that formal twaddle. Come on, kid, we've got experiments to check on." She started to rise, only to stop when Naruto caught her arm.

"Ahem," said the Nine-Tails jinchūriki, Hokage, and youngest of Leaf's three S-rank ninja. "I believe there is a small matter of military promotion as well?" He turned to Noburi and produced a vellum scroll with elegant cherry endcaps. He unrolled it and began to read aloud.

"Whereas, Gōketsu Noburi has demonstrated loyalty to the Leaf and her command.

"Whereas, Gōketsu Noburi has an unstained disciplinary record.

"Whereas, Gōketsu Noburi has used his skills in service of the Leaf.

"Whereas, Gōketsu Noburi has received attestations of skill well above those of his peers and well beyond his current years."

"Therefore, I set my hand to the following document of promotion for the aforementioned Gōketsu Noburi to the rank of special jōnin, seconded to the Medical Corps. Congratulations, Special Jōnin Gōketsu."

He allowed the scroll to roll up and set it on the table before offering a shallow bow of the head, a gesture of respect from the Hokage to a loyal supporter.

"Thank you so much, Lord Hokage. I did not expect this."

"No one expects promotion to special jōnin, or to jōnin," Naruto said. "It's always a surprise. We don't want people getting demanding based on time in grade or whatever."

Noburi nodded. "That makes sense, sir. I can—"

"Noburi? You ready?" Hazō asked.

Noburi shook himself out of the pleasant memory and nodded. "Yup. Commencing Operation 'Mist Drain All the Monsters to Death Instead of Going in There Like Real Ninja' now, sir!"

Hazō looked narrow-eyed at him, clearly taking note of the barb. Still, he said nothing. There were too many other things to do, like set up barricades across any side passages and set up skyslicers by the door and then flood the cavern with smoke to drive animals out and through the 'slicers. All in all, it should make the cave exploration at dull as possible. Dull was good; especially as a sealmaster, Hazō thought dull days were the best days. Once the caves were secured the team could have fun and excitement researching the magical pool that had brought them here. Until then, dull was good.

XP AWARD: 6 This update covered 2 days.

Brevity XP: 2

"GM had fun" XP: 0

It is now about 6pm.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Aug 7, 2024 at 7:00 AM .

Paperclipped · Aug 5, 2024

Chapter 672.1: Not So Dull After All

A couple minutes after tossing the misterators into the crack of the cave, Noburi declared the all clear.

Hazō seemed to shake off whatever contemplation he'd been stuck in and asked, "Did you get enough chakra to compensate for summons?"

Noburi laughed. "Nowhere close. A few little beasts in a tiny room like this wouldn't pay for an academy student's substitution, much less a decent combat summon."

Hazō sighed. "I'd hoped for more. How come the beasts in these 'chakra-dense' areas don't have more chakra to them?"

"They do, I think," Noburi said. "But it's still not that much per beast."

"I think it makes sense," Mari said. "We spend years and years training our reserves to make them as big as possible, but chakra beasts don't do that. If you compared their natural reserves to what a civilian has, they'd probably be enormous, right?"

"That sounds right," Noburi said.

"Well, I guess we'll be a bit lower on chakra today," Hazō said. "Shall we?"

"Summoning Technique: Panashe!"

"Summoning Technique: Candoru!"

"Shadow Clone Technique!"

"Shadow Clone Technique!"

Puffs of smoke surrounded the team as the bulk of the cave-expedition's fighting force appeared from the aether. Most notable were the clones of Yuno, who were looking around in momentary confusion (Mari's clones were clearly much more used to immediately grabbing seals and moving into a formation).

Ah, Yuno had shadow clones now. Not only did that mean that his wife was safer, it meant that he had more pleasant faces to gaze at.

Oh no. What would Yuno think about looking at another woman that she knew he was attracted to, even if that other woman was a clone of herself? Could he afford to show affection to her clones if he wanted to stay in one piece? Could he afford to show affection to Yuno, when the Yuno clones were clearly each carrying their own little Satsuko-clones?

What if her clones came to him for physical affection (which they expected, being cognitively identical to Yuno herself!) and he shunned them? She'd receive the memories of being ignored by him and who knew if that would set her off.

Noburi quickly looked away from the small crowd of Yunos. Some questions didn't need to be answered.

Panashe was here for general utility and scouting, Candoru was here so that Hazō could feel like he was contributing, and the shadow clones of the team's two jōnin were here to provide infinitely more combat power than the cave could handle, on the off chance anything survived Noburi's mist drain and attacked.

Noburi quickly did his rounds, rebalancing chakra within the team so that everyone was at around half their reserves and he felt like he was pretty close to full.

The mist from the misterator had long since settled out of the air, so he popped another one and checked his sense of chakra through the mist again to confirm that there was nothing living with chakra within twenty meters of the cave's mouth. His senses reached farther than he could drain, so he could sense chakra deeper within the cave that he couldn't quite grasp and pull on, but he could tell it was there. Once they got in there, he'd need to call out each and every one of the beasts that he could sense but couldn't drain to make sure that the jōnin knew about the potential threats long before they made themselves into actual threats. Of course, those things would ideally be dead long before they even knew that they needed to fight back.

"Alright, we're good now," Noburi said. "Going in. I'll meet you all, my fellow meat-people, at the pool."

With that, he wrapped his hand around his barrel so it wouldn't knock against the narrow walls of the cave's opening, and ducked his way inside.

Two minutes later, after a frankly inordinate amount of chastising about letting the shadow clones and summons go first, he actually went in for real.

"I don't know why Noburi even has to be in here physically," he heard Yuno saying. To whom she was talking, he didn't know. Maybe Mari, or one of the summons. Maybe another one of the Yunos?

Noburi pulled out his Daybright Lantern seal (attached to the base of a small metal cup so that it only shined light in one direction) and pointed it at where he remembered sensing chakra sources in the room. The light refracted through the thin mist, but not enough to keep the team from seeing the six torso-sized lizards piled up dead at a point where the tunnel turned.

He redirected the light to point at a pair of dead snakes in a crack in the wall – four feet long and striped in bright red and orange – then to a nest of forearm-sized scorpions whose corpses were somehow still stuck to the ceiling.

"That's why," he heard a Mari say. "Guess you haven't seen Noburi in action before? Trust me, we're going to have a very easy time of things here."

"I don't believe you," Candoru said. "Hazō only summons me to die in dramatic ways, and I'm pretty sure that there's something in here that's going to fuck me up in ways that even this guy can't prevent."

"Perhaps the problem is your insufficient combat skill," Yuno said. "You should request Hazō summon you more often so that you get more experience fighting chakra beasts."

"What she said," Panashe said. "Though, I guess this explains why we're rolling through the Dogs we find so easily, if you're all too lazy to even consider training against unconventional enemies."

"Listen here you scaley bitch," Candorui said, "I'm going to take your tongue and-"

"Hey!" Noburi said. "You're on a mission right now! Focus! We're on a timer since Yuno's clones don't last that long yet. Can I get more mist moving forward?"

"And more light," Mari said. "These things are well camouflaged, and we didn't spot those beasts without movement. That's unacceptable."

Moments later, the cave was far better lit and a pair of Yunos were advancing with misterators spitting their thin haze ahead of them.

Their advance was slow compared to a ninja run, and insanely fast by the standards of any chakra beast hunter. At one point, one of the lead Yunos dropped her misterators to raise her axe to intercept a pouncing spider/cat thing, only for it to lose consciousness mid-pounce and get itself chopped in half in a spray of blood.

The flipside of the beasts having barely any chakra in them meant that Noburi could drain them dry in an eyeblink. He could sense dozens of beasts within the cave as it opened up, far more than he would have expected to find (maybe there was something to be said for Hazō's 'chakra-dense locations'), but they didn't pose any threat to the team. As soon as they got within a couple dozen meters, Noburi pulled the chakra out of them and out they went. He didn't hold back either. Each pull had a little twist at the end as he pulled out the last dregs of life-sustaining chakra from within them, leaving them dead where they lay.

He wondered if he was impressing Yuno. From the front of the formation, she could see the occasional beast decide to attack the intruders, only to collapse dead the instant they entered Noburi's range.

Working with Tsunade really had taught him so much about sensing and draining with his bloodline. Even through the thin mist, he could feel a group of eleven beasts with a bit more chakra than they'd encountered so far, as well as some sort of Fire Element ability. He pointed, Mari threw a misterator, and he sensed the creatures get up and run away deeper into the cave. Whatever. If they didn't stick around so he could kill them later, they'd run into the skyslicers on their way out and kill themselves.

A Yuno popped. Her seals, embedded in Kagome's signature wooden disks, clattered to the stone. One of the Yunos opened her mouth to say something, but if she (or any of her fellows) got anything out, it was muffled by the repeated staccato popping of the rest of the Yunos.

"Huh," Noburi said, stopping his advance. "Yuno said she could sustain clones for about ten minutes, right? I didn't think it had been that long."

"It hasn't, I'm pretty sure," Mari said. "Maybe she messed up casting the technique. She's definitely had way less practice with it than I have."

Mari's head snapped to the side at another staccato thumping noise.

"Sorry," Noburi said. "Bat swarm was flying this way to investigate. Dead now. You were saying?"

"Well, we knew Yuno's clones weren't going to last that long anyway. Let's continue."

Mari redistributed her clones, moving a couple to the front of the formation while a couple stayed by Noburi's side as insurance against some incredibly improbable events.

They took three steps forward before a Mari popped.

"Huh," the other Mari in the front of the formation said. "I don't know-"

And she, along with the rest of the Maris, disappeared in their own clouds of smoke.

Noburi leaned back into a combat stance and saw the two summons ahead of him doing the same. Something was wrong.

He looked left and right, but saw nothing. The cave was filled with mist, so he should have been able to sense if there was anything nearby, but he felt nothing.

"What was that!?" Candoru said. "She wasn't supposed to disappear, right?"

"No, she wasn't," Noburi said. "We've hit unexpected problems. Time to retreat and regroup; see what Mari and Yuno felt when their clones popped. Let's back it up."

"Sounds good," Candoru said, and Panashe quickly signaled orders received.

They started backtracking through the cave and made it maybe thirty meters to a more open region of the cave when Candoru spoke.

"Hey, I think I feel-"

The Dog puffed into nonexistence. Simultaneously, Noburi heard a thunk of stone hitting stone in a cavern nook to the side.

"Water Element: Water Whip!" Noburi said.

"Well, he spoke the Pantokrator's will into existence, didn't he?" Panashe asked. "He did end up dying in some new way."

"Quiet," Noburi said. "We don't know what's causing that, and we need to be cautious. I heard a sound over that way, Panashe, go and take a look." As he spoke, he gestured with the whip to the side nook where the noise had come from.

"I'll note that you tall monkeys are still the ones with the good vision," Panashe said as she softly stepped in that direction.

Noburi swore. He needed intel, and that nook was closed off. There shouldn't be anything living in there. He followed after Panashe.

"Watch out," he heard Panashe say as he wallwalked up the side of the cave to look into the nook. "There's something in here that survived your jutsu."

Noburi raised his Daybright Lantern light to shine it into the nook.

Within, a pair of creatures floated in the air. They looked like river otters, if river otters were twice as big and covered in short gray fur and hovered two feet above the ground. Their eyes snapped towards Noburi as he shined the light on them. The pair had been gathered around… a gray stone statue of another otter, lying on the floor of this nook?

Noburi backed away, sticking to the walls as he looked at the creatures, but they didn't attack. They didn't look aggressive at all, in fact. They had no claws or fangs or anything of the sort that would mark a chakra beast as threatening.

What had caused that thunk of stone against stone? And why couldn't his bloodline sense these weird otter-like creatures?

Noburi took the risk and closed his eyes, focusing entirely on his sense of chakra in the thin mist that still filled the cavern. His senses were coarse, but that didn't mean that, with focus, he couldn't pick out details.

Noburi (Vampiric Dew): 50 + 6 = 56

At first he still felt nothing, so he narrowed his attention down to the otters themselves, barely a couple meters away from him.

…he felt it. Strange, negative spaces in the soft static that normally filled his chakra sense when there was nothing there. He struggled to perceive it, adapting his sense to see a creature that could only be noticed by noticing where he felt nothing at all.

Those otters were parts of a larger something. He could feel them, several of them, looming over him. They were tentacular, like some sort of octopus, and he could feel those tentacles moving. The otters were somewhere near the heart of the creature, but he didn't know if they were the heart of the creature.

Those tentacles were reaching towards him. He backed away.

No, the tentacles were already attached to him. Or rather, his barrel. He could feel three, no, four of the negative spaces stretching from his barrel to the shadow cast by the otters.

Those spaces weren't fully negative. There was chakra there. His chakra, being pulled out of the barrel and along the tentacles of these creatures.

They were draining him. They'd drained the shadow clones into nonexistence, and soon they'd do to him exactly what he'd done to the beasts in the cave. He had more chakra than them, but in the end that wouldn't matter. He'd go unconscious, then his life would be extinguished like a candle going out.

"Panashe, run!" Noburi said as he turned to sprint his way out of the cave.

Noburi has given you the action report of the above, corroborated by Panashe.

Mari and Yuno both collapsed a few minutes after the cave exploration team went in, Yuno first, then Mari. Hazō and Kei initially suspected psychic attacks, but Noburi was able to confirm that they had somehow been put under extreme chakra drain and woke them up with a small chakra transfusion. They both report noticing their reserves being precipitously low moments before passing out, so the drain on them must have been fairly fast. Noburi reports that the drain on his barrel felt fairly slow.

Noburi notes that while their coils might have been temporarily damaged, it was thankfully probably impossible for the Primes to die as Prime going unconscious pops the clones that were the conduit by which the weird tentacle-otter-chakra-draining things were draining Prime.

Candoru refuses Hazō's attempt at resummoning. When Hazō travels to the Seventh Path, Candoru says that he felt "the worst thing ever, like having your soul yanked out of your body by cold, wet, slimy paws." He doesn't want to go back into this particular cave.

Voting remains open.

Velorien · Aug 8, 2024

Chapter 673: Choosing Death

"...and if you think having your skeleton rip itself out of your body and choke you to death is as bad as it gets, that's nothing compared to the risk of rupturing the dimensional insulation layer and having the Leviathans That Punish Cognition come and–"

"Thank you, Kagome," Kei interrupted wearily. She'd started out standing by the fire, reaching over periodically to warm her hands against the chilly desert night. By this point in the tirade, she'd sunk to the ground, trying to maintain proper, upright cross-legged posture even as the life visibly drained out of her.

The entire team, sans Mari and Yuno (still laid up in their bedrolls, at this point needing rest more than treatment), was gathered around the fire. Hazō sat opposite Kei and Snowflake as they identically tried not to sag. Tenten, next to him, had never been exposed to a proper Kagome-sensei rant before, and was drinking in every word with obvious fascination. Noburi, on Hazō's other side, seemed to have zoned out. Hazō himself was alternatingly nodding to show understanding, cringing in humiliation, and taking notes about very real dangers every sealmaster should know to watch out for. As Kagome-sensei had pointed out repeatedly, Hazō's rapid growth in skill was unmatched by a parallel growth in experience, which meant he was still dangerously ignorant in countless domains. He'd never even heard of the Leviathans That Punish Cognition, much less learned whatever lucky dances might stay their wrath.

"No problem, Kei," Kagome-sensei said briskly. "Now, where was I? Right, the sheer pants-on-head craziness of trying to–"

Kei's hand twitched in her lap. "What my expression of gratitude was intended to convey is that I believe you have covered all the essential points, and since the rest of us are already quite au fait with the perils of sealcrafting and how they apply to this situation–"

Tenten raised her hand.

"I am quite certain that Kagome will be delighted to explain the myriad perils of sealing and the absolute need for egregious safety measures, at length, on any occasion of your choosing, which I would emphatically prefer not to be now."

Kagome-sensei nodded enthusiastically. Tenten smiled at him and lowered her hand.

"–and as such, it would be best to save the rest of the ran- lecture for later. Tonight, perhaps, when Hazō has finished with his daily tasks and is preparing to sleep."

"If you insist," Kagome-sensei grumbled. "At least it'll give me some time to put my thoughts in order. I always feel like I run out of stuff to say too fast at times like these."

Hazō would get Kei for this. He wasn't sure how yet, nor how to survive the inevitable re-retribution from at least three vengeful girls (and possibly Noburi, joining in just for the hell of it, and possibly Mari, once she saw how much fun everyone but Hazō was having), but the founder of Uplift firmly believed that where there was a will, there was a way.

"To briefly recapitulate the last half hour, then," Kei said, "professional opinion discourages runic infusion in an unsecure location while surrounded by a variety of unknown chakra beasts and, to use a particularly choice expression from sixteen minutes ago, 'a dodgy stew of blatant eldritch weirdness that could be coming to a boil under our very feet right now'."

"What if we infused it outside the cave?" Hazō proposed. "There has to be a reasonable radius beyond which we think the esoteric effects of the cave won't reach."

"And then very slowly manually drag it around aforementioned unsecure area?" Kei asked.

"Right."

"I'm uncertain whether logistical concerns should be foremost in our minds here," Snowflake said. "Obviously, there will be some degree of risk in any attempt to bait the chakravores, as Hazō has elegantly dubbed them. We do not know whether they have any additional powers they have yet to display, nor what other chakra beasts may be drawn into the process. There is always the risk of Noodle ghouls."

"What do Noodle ghouls have to do with it?" Hazō asked. "I'm specifically proposing to keep the chakravores alive to study, not massacre them."

Tenten gave them a questioning look.

"We got briefed on them before the big mission that started our whole adventure," Hazō explained. "They can smell corpses from a long way off. After any battle in eastern Noodle, you have to seal away or burn the bodies, otherwise you'll be neck-deep in ghouls before you know it. But I'm not sure why that's relevant."

"Ooh, I know this one!" Yuno's voice came from a bedroll, sounding remarkably chipper for someone who hadn't even been conscious last time Noburi checked. "I fought some back when I was a missing-nin. Um, last time, I mean. There's this parasite called a possessor, and what it does is, it sucks your brain out through your ears, and then it lays an egg in your skull. Then the egg hatches into a new parasite, and the new parasite moves the body around like it's driving a cart, and goes off to suck other people's brains out so it can lay its eggs in them."

Kagome-sensei, who'd sat down next to Hazō, went completely stiff.

"But the part Snowflake's talking about," Yuno went on, "is how most of the time, that doesn't happen, because the ghouls find the body while the parasite's still growing, and they think it's dead-dead, so they eat it. That way, the possessor doesn't get to breed. The legends say that the ninja of hundreds of years ago didn't know that, so they hunted the ghouls nearly to extinction, and… you can imagine what happened."

Come to think of it, wasn't there some legend in Leaf about how the Uchiha and their fire ninjutsu once saved the Fire Country from a zombie apocalypse? Hazō had always assumed it was clan propaganda, like the stories about Inuzuka being able to turn into giant wolf monsters with their dog's assistance.

"So in other words," Yuno said, "for all we know, there are other chakra beasts lurking in the chakravore's shadow, waiting to eat the bodies once they've been chakra-drained, and gathering all the chakravores in one place means those chakra beasts will follow. Or the chakravores could be the only thing stopping something even scarier from coming out of the depths. Or… you get the idea. Yuki from my classes says that 'don't make things worse' is one of the iron rules of a true extermination specialist."

There was a pause.

"I wonder if I'll have to kill her."

"I see," Kei said, wisely ignoring the heck out of that comment. "From that perspective, Snowflake's objection makes perfect sense. Of course, weaponising indirect chakra drain would be quite a triumph considering the nature of our opposition, and were we to sensibly prioritise our personal safety over the lure of weapons research, we would not have joined Hazō on this mission in the first place. Thus, before we discuss details of implementation, we must settle the issue of risk versus reward. Noburi, in your judgement as our resident medic, how likely are we to be able to extract useful technology from these chakra beasts should we successfully isolate them for study?"

Noburi zoned back in. "Sorry?"

"Noburi, in your judgement as our resident medic, how likely are we to be able to extract useful technology from these chakra beasts should we successfully isolate them for study?"

Noburi frowned. "Well, as Leaf's best and brightest young–"

He cut off.

Nobody said anything.

"In a word," Noburi said, subdued, "not bloody likely. I haven't done animal research since before we got adopted into Leaf, and back then, I only had basic training, so I was mostly just messing around. I'm guessing none of Hazō's diagnostic seals are meant for scanning living creatures in detail from a safe distance, so it'd be down to my chakra sense and anything I can get from a dissection–and I don't even know if we'd get anything from a dissection, seeing as those things are like half-ghost or something. And even if I did…"

He sighed, leaning back against his barrel. "Even ignoring how all my powers are water-based and theirs aren't, even if their drain is close enough to mine that I can steal their tricks somehow, I can't exactly do bloodline surgery on myself, y'know? Anybody who could is… not available. Whereas, in Team Uplift, nobody knows biosealing, and thank the Sage for that, and Hazō's still on baby's first technique modification, so I just don't see how we can get decent data and have a chance in hell of understanding what it means and do something useful with the result.

"Me and Yuno have talked about it before," Noburi said. "How it would be great if she could hunt down cool chakra beasts for me, and I'd use my miraculous medical ninjutsu to graft their powers onto myself, and hopefully avoid turning into Orochimaru somehow, and then I'd become the ultimate uber-ninja instead of being Leaf's barrel boy superweapon. But it's just a fantasy. I'm not the next Orochimaru. I am–I was going to be–the next Tsunade. You study humans because humans are the ones that need saving. Even he got that, once upon a time."

"Any other ideas?" Kei asked the group. "While my instinct is naturally to conduct a measured risk assessment and then flee screaming in terror from any suggestion that we attempt to contain these jōnin-devouring beasts over an extended duration, we have sacrificed everything to be here, and the racing hourglass forbids us to reject too many opportunities."

"There's still a chance," Hazō said. "Surely. All right, maybe we don't have biosealing or technique hacking or relevant medical theory. But we have runes. There's got to be at least a chance that we'll learn something that I can turn into an Itachi-killing chakra drain rune."

"I'm not a runemaster," Noburi said. "But I've got a vague idea by now of what a rune does, if not how. Supposing I tell you, 'the chakravore'–cool name, by the way–'drains through shadow clones by using its gobbledygook organ to turn shadow clone chakra into magical abracadabra chakra that's all connected so when you tug on one end, it pulls the other'. Have you got the runemaster skills to transform that gobbledygook organ into chakra channels running through a bunch of rock that will then turn somebody's shadow clone chakra into magical abracadabra chakra, and you with zero medical training to tell a gobbledygook organ from your left elbow?"

"I mean," Hazō said, "knowing that you have to turn shadow clone chakra into a different kind of chakra would at least give me a direction to look in."

"Would that level of new insight accelerate your hypothetical Itachi-killer research," Kei asked, "by a sufficient margin to cause you to prioritise it over any of the other possibilities you are exploring? And is that margin worth the as-yet-uncalculated but tangible risk of a TPK?"

Hazō gave it serious thought. He was good. Very good. But his recent experience with prep days showed that runes fell into three broad categories. One he could manage even without existing insights, just by virtue of inspiration followed by sheer brilliance. One was simply beyond him, whether as a limitation of runecrafting itself or of his current skills, there was no way to know. Assuming the Itachi-killer wasn't already in the middle or lower category, was the amount of information Noburi thought he could provide enough to push it down from the upper?

"Fine," Hazō said, allowing his frustration full rein as he switched mental tracks. "We kill them. We kill every last one. If we can't use them, then at the very least we won't let them hurt our family ever again."

Hazō didn't know what his face looked like at that moment, but he could guess from the way Snowflake flinched away.

-o-

You have received 4 - 3 (Loquacity) = 1 XP.

-o-

With the reluctant approval of Experimental Overseer Noburi and Assistant Experimental Overseer Kei, Hazō sent in earth clones to conduct some quick experiments.

Earth clones are drained into oblivion very quickly
Real materials created by ninjutsu (MEW, ES) are either undrainable or of no interest to the chakravores
Construct MEW is drained and collapses; Noburi thinks that draining the Earth chakra does something to the chakravores, but his senses aren't fine enough to tell what
Experimental Overseer Noburi and Assistant Experimental Overseer Kei reluctantly gave permission for Hazō to use shadow clones of earth clones under extensive safety measures (full on chakra, mouthful of concentrated chakra water which he'll hopefully swallow immediately if he collapses, Noburi touching an open cut for maximum VD effectiveness); both clones were drained and destroyed immediately, with no effect on Hazō

-o-

Kagome is of the opinion that the chakravores could well be gaki; he certainly favours it over the Otter Scroll theory. He notes, however, that gaki are incredibly hard to kill unless you are a damnbeast, since they are not chakra beasts but hunger made flesh. (Further questions regarding damnbeasts, and especially where to obtain one on short notice, were met with screaming.)

-o-

Setting aside your current level of access to contract-buying resources, Kagome suspects he lacks the kind of reputational cachet with the Arachnids that would encourage them to form contracts to be tortured to death for his sake. Among other things, he has yet to prove himself to them, either in combat or by doing anything about the Great Seal (the reason he was made summoner at all).

-o-

Voting is closed.

eaglejarl · Aug 11, 2024

Chapter 674: The 'Pool'

"Cool mission statement, bro," Noburi said. "Very dramatic. How do we do it?"

"Ideally, we deal with that group of otters first. The double thunk plus the statue you discovered sounds like there was a third otter that drained Candoru and got turned to stone from the nature chakra."

"Which I guess answers the question of whether or not summons' chakra envelopes are made of nature chakra," Noburi said, nodding.

"Right. So, we get Candoru back, maybe a couple other summons too, and we send them in ahead. The otters will drain them and get stoned, problem solved."

Kei frowned. "Hazō, have you considered what it might have felt like?"

"What?"

"Under the paradigm that you are modeling, Candoru had all of his chakra ripped out of him in an instant, even including that which is necessary to sustain life—or, on this Path, embodiment. Having Noburi drain me is an uncomfortable experience even when done under controlled circumstances by someone whom I trust. It must have been extremely unpleasant for Candoru. He may not wish to go through it again."

"Huh. Okay, let's find out. If not then I can get one of my other dogs for the job." He bloodied his finger and touched the ground. "Summoning Technique: Candoru!"

His chakra drained away, reaching off in a direction that was neither up nor down, left nor right, forward nor back. It spun, faster and faster, spreading out, until the aetheric tunnel formed between the Human Path and the Seventh Path. Ordinarily it would snap into place instantly and the summon would pour themself down it in answer to his call. This time, the tunnel quested about like a hound seeking a trail. When it finally locked on there was resistance; the tunnel shuddered and shook, struggling to sustain itself even as Hazō poured extra chakra in.

Summoning was normally instantaneous, but it was long seconds before Candoru finally puffed into existence, glaring at Hazō.

"No fucking way!" the dog snapped. "I am not going back in there! I don't give a shit what the Alpha told you, I'm not doing it!"

"Candoru, it's fine," Hazō said. "Nothing in there can hurt you. Heck, you even killed one of them in the process of getting popped—turns out, you guys are made of nature chakra on this Path and when the otter drained you it got turned to stone."

"Yeah, and it hurt like a motherfucker! I thought my entire brain was going to explode. I could feel my body unravelling around me, my soul getting yanked out of me and I've been puking ever since I got home. I almost blew off your stupid summons this time but I figured I wanted the chance to tell you what a complete asshole coward you are!"

"...Excuse me?"

"You heard me! You're a fucking asshole and a coward! Sending me on ahead while you cower in the back like a coward. Real summoners fight beside their dogs, they don't hang back and let us take all the risks! That's what Kakashi's old summon, Pakkun, said."

Hazō digested that. It was true that he had always regarded his combat dogs as disposable trap-clearing assets but, in fairness, they couldn't actually be hurt or killed here. As to Candoru...

"Candoru, the reason I've always sent you on ahead is because that's what the Alpha told me to do."

"No, he told you to start off by sending me on ahead until I figured out that I couldn't always win on my own, then to fight beside me. I figured that out after the mine where those worms kept dropping on me and eating through me, so why aren't you fighting beside me?"

"Oh." Rats. There went Hazō's disposable trap detector.

Eh, he could always make a contract with some other dog.

"Fair enough," Hazō said instead of sharing his thoughts. "Anyway, you said you don't want to go back into the cave so I'll let you go. Is there anything that would help with your recovery? If I've got it in my seals then I can pop back with you and drop it off."

Candoru eyed him suspiciously for several seconds. "That's it?"

"What?"

"I call you a coward and say I'm not going to follow your orders and you're just going to take it?"

"I mean...yes? I know I'm not a coward so I'm not bothered if you use that as a way to lash out. As to disobeying my orders...well, I suppose that the Alpha did give me authority over you for purposes of training, but you said that you learned the lesson already. From now on we're partners and I'm not going to be ordering you to do something you don't want to."

"Huh." Candoru seemed flummoxed. "That's decent of you."

"Thank you. So, anything I could supply that would be useful?"

"...I always hear you talking about that willowbark tea stuff. Is it any good?"

"It helps with headaches, yes. Fair warning, it's very bitter and a little sour. What you described sounds maybe like the sick feeling of chakra exhaustion? If so, I've got a tisane of honey and lemon that will go a long way towards settling your stomach, and a sock filled with hot sand that you can put over your neck to help with the muscle aches."

"Oh. Well, that actually sounds...kinda nice."

"Cool, give me a lift back and we can set you up." He nodded to the rest of the family; they nodded back so he allowed the annoyed white dog to carry him back to the Seventh Path.

Minutes later he was back.

"Okay," he said. "Looks like we need a new strategy. Kei, Noburi, Kagome-sensei—what do you think about sending some of your summons ahead of us? Are they likely to react the same way as Candoru did and feel like we should be alongside instead of behind?"

"Panashe is accustomed to serving as a forward scout," Kei said. "The rest of my tessera...yes, I suspect they would be irked by being sent in as sacrificial sardines. When I first ascended to the mantle it might have been different, as they knew that I was young and largely unblooded. Now that I have served as the Summoner for several years and demonstrated my competence on the battlefield they would most likely be less sanguine about the idea. Also, most of them would not fit."

Kagome-sensei shuffled his feet. "I, uh, haven't really made many contracts," he admitted. "I don't really have the kind of reputation with them that would make them want to fight for me."

"The toads aren't going to be happy about the idea either," Noburi said.

"Right. No clones, no summons," Hazō said. "Fine, we do it the hard way." He started riffling through his storage seals, eventually finding the right one and unsealing a chunk of runic substrate that had already been twisted into a blank for the Capacitor rune. "I'll infuse this near the mouth of the cave, see if we can bait the otters to it with some of Minato's chakra-gathering seals. If they like those then they should love this thing; it's way stronger. Hopefully we can draw the otters to the rune with a chain of those things, then we bypass them. We move slowly, we spray misterators in front of us and Noburi drains anything he can sense. If we start getting hit with chakra drain then we back up and throw explosives." He paused, frowning. "I think. Does anyone know whether the cave is solid enough to sustain an explosive tag?"

o-o-o-o

"It's beautiful," Noburi said quietly. Yuno stood next to him, their arms around each other's waists and her head tipped against his as they looked out across the grotto.

Orochimaru's dossier had described a 'pool', which any normal person would imagine as something small, perhaps two or three yards across. The water that filled the grotto at the bottom of the cave system was more of a pond or even a small lake—at least eighty or ninety feet wide, perhaps more. It wasn't regularly shaped; the walls wiggled in and out like worms having seizures, creating many side caverns and leaving it unclear what the exact extent of the water might be. There were narrow shelves of rock here and there around the perimeter of the lake, including where the tunnel Team Uplift had arrived through debouched into the grotto. The walls and ceiling were clothed in drapes of moss while here and there the long palmate leaves or reed-like stalks of plants rose from a ledge, or even from under the surface of the glass-smooth waters.

The walls and ceiling were thickly dotted with crystals, some of them the size of a thumb and some of them massive conglomerates as large as a person that dangled like expensive chandeliers. The crystals glowed in a haze of shifting colors, each individual crystal pulsing slowly, its color cycling from hue to hue around the rainbow. The crystals covered the walls of the cavern all the way to the distant (?) floor, their light causing the water to glow and sparkle. The waters were warm, bath temperature, and where they intersected with the cold September air one could see traces of vapor rising and twisting lazily. Taken together, the scene was straight from a fairy story.

"Well, that's definitely going to kill us," Kagome-sensei said calmly.

XP AWARD: 5

Brevity XP: -2 (500+ words)

"GM had fun" XP: 0 No strong feelings.

It is now about 6pm. This update plus the one before for which XP was not yet awarded covered roughly a day.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Aug 13, 2024 at 7:00 AM .

Velorien · Saturday at 12:29 PM

Future Interlude (AU?): Instances of Three Individuals, Part 3

"Just to check," Snowflake asked, "but is this cooking competition perchance being hosted by visitors from Hidden Rock, or perhaps Hidden Rain?"

"Hot Springs, actually," Hazō said. "Why?"

"Because storing ingredients outdoors in this heat seems like an excellent recipe for spoilage and mass food poisoning," Snowflake said. "It would be an original vector of attack, targeting the civilian population while evading standard anti-terrorism countermeasures like the Byakugan and maintaining plausible deniability."

"Actually," Hazō said, "that's part of the point. The competition is there to drum up publicity for Okamura Foods opening its first ever Leaf branch, to and show off how they use storage scrolls to make sure their food's still fresh after weeks on the road."

"Ooh," Ami perked up (not that she had been anything less than alarmingly perky since the start of the date). "That's Okamura Seiji's company. The Mori use him as a case study. Apparently, he used to be an ordinary travelling salesman, but then he somehow got word of the Cold Stone Killers incident days before anyone else, and it changed his life. He sold off all his goods and took out a bunch of loans in Rice, and then bought out all his rivals–them being bankrupt after they arrived in Hot Springs with luxuries nobody was there to buy and perishables that had all perished while they were stuck waiting for the borders to reopen. Then he snapped up property left, right, and centre while the Hot Springs economy was in freefall, managed to get in good with the Mist occupation, and by the time the dust had settled and business was booming again, he was the second most important person in the country after the Lord of the Burning Waters. Some would even say first, considering how much influence Hidden Hot Springs has lost now that AMITY's made DMZs obsolete."

"You're very well-informed, My Lady," the civilian at the sign-up desk told her. "Unfortunately, this is a cooking competition for the common people. No ninja or ninja magic allowed."

"Why would you think we were ninja?" Hazō asked. "It's not like we're wearing forehead protectors or clan colours or anything."

Actually, that reminded him: he glanced down to make sure his seal pouch was still there. One did not go on a date with Mori Ami without being prepared for anything short of the apocalypse (and also for the apocalypse, because when it came, odds were good Ami would be the one to cause it).

"I have a certificate signed by the Seventh Hokage himself confirming that I am a civilian of the Fire Country," Snowflake added smugly. "Would you like to see it?"

The man at the desk slowly looked between Hazō, Snowflake, and Ami, his gaze lingering briefly on the latter (who really did look very fetching in her My Vision dating outfit). He glanced behind him, at the distant figures of the judges, but they were turned away, talking among themselves.

"My humblest apologies, My Lady," he said, bowing his head contritely. "It seems I was mistaken. Please feel free to head into the competition area, honourable commoners just like myself."

It was good to know that Hazō still had it despite not investing in Deceit since he was a genin.

"Ugh," Snowflake muttered, glancing at the rule sheet pinned up by the entrance. "I see Okamura Foods employs the same proofreader as the Leaf broadsheet, which is to say an eyeless cave fish which is additionally blind drunk, and of course possesses neither the power of speech nor limbs with which to indicate errors in the text."

"And also doesn't understand the concept of proofreading, being a fish and all," Ami added after taking a look for herself. "But it's all good. Where there's room for ambiguity, there's room for creativity, as the lawyer said to the shrine maiden.

"Speaking of which," she added, "if this is a competition, there's got to be a prize to make it worth the fight–or maybe a forfeit. I love forfeits."

"Go on," Hazō said warily, his missing-nin danger sense not so much tingling as putting on a full symphony orchestra performance with extra trumpets.

"How about this," Ami said. "Whichever of us gets the lowest score has to confess our true feelings to Hazō before the date is over."

Snowflake stared. "D-Don't be ridiculous! I fail to see why anyone would–"

"Lacking confidence, are we?" Ami purred. "Maybe you don't care about him as much as I thought. Or maybe you used up your lifetime supply of courage with that famous kiss of yours?"

Famous kiss? Dammit, Mari.

"I'm no expert," Ami said. "No, that's a lie, I'm a world-class expert, and I'm pretty sure Hazō is into bold, forthright women who don't hide how they feel. Just look at Akane. Buuut, if you're willing to let me win by default…"

"Hold on," Hazō protested, partly for the sake of Snowflake, who was turning all kinds of interesting colours, but partly for his own safety. "That doesn't work. What if I get the lowest score?"

"Same thing," Ami said. "You pick whichever of us you like more and confess your true feelings to her. Of course," she added, giving Snowflake a smug look, "we already know who that's going to be."

This was going to be a bloodbath.

"F-Fine!" Snowflake exclaimed unexpectedly just as Hazō was about to protest further. "Then I will see you on the battlefield!"

Hazō could only watch helplessly as she strode off towards the baking ingredients, picking up an apron and a bag of flour with the gravity of a woman arming and armouring herself to challenge the gods themselves.

Ami, monster that she was, just giggled a little before heading off to browse the meat and fish storage scrolls.

Hazō, lacking their momentum, stood in thought for a couple of minutes, scanning through his mental list of recipes capable of challenging two masters of optimisation. He had too little breadth of experience and too much sanity to challenge Ami for "Most Unique Dish", and too little information to guess what strategy Snowflake, whom he'd never seen cook, might choose. In the end, he decided to go with a dish both delicious and guaranteed to be new to even the most jaded gourmet: Kagome-sensei's definitely-won't-poison-you stew, the urban evolution of the legendary probably-won't-poison-you stew that had kept them going through brutal months in the wilderness (as long as they made sure at least one person ate something else that meal).

-o-

Hazō's stew bubbled away merrily, mere minutes from completion and the certain victory that would save him from mortally offending one of his two dates. On the far side of the arena, Snowflake was pulling a tray out of the oven with the unique alertness of a woman who would cease to exist if she so much as brushed against it. And at the judges' dais…

"Miss Ori Mami, please present your dish for judgement!"

Ami crossed the arena with the pride and poise of a cat carrying a dead bird home to her unsuspecting owner. From here, Hazō couldn't quite make out what was on her plate.

"Please accept my humble offering, Master Okamura."

Okamura studied the dish in front of him, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

"Why, this arrangement looks just like the symbol of the little trading company I ran before I founded Okamura's, back when the future was a mystery and I had to live every day on my wits. Goodness, that brings back memories. If this tastes half as good as it looks…"

Ami picked up the chopsticks from the plate before Okamura could, quickly scooping up a piece of her mysterious food and lifting it towards him. He opened his mouth–

-o-

"I've never seen anything like it," Noburi said with bitter wonder as he stepped back from the bed. "'Stunned', 'Overwhelmed', and 'Undone', all from a single bite. I've never even heard of 'Undone' before, and I'll remind you I've read Orochimaru's medical research notes. If this poor sod had taken a single shift of stress more, it would've been curtains. What the hell did you feed him?"

"Sushi," Ami said innocently.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Sushi," Ami repeated. "Just ordinary madara nigiri. You can't tell me that sounds remotely dubious."

Noburi looked back and forth between Ami and Okamura's comatose form.

"You mean to tell me you did this with uncooked, salted fish and plain rice? How? Why? How?"

"Will he survive?" Snowflake asked. "My romantic entanglement with Ami and Hazō is hardly worth the life of an innocent man."

"Your what?!" Noburi demanded. "No, you know what. Never mind. I don't want to know. Yes, he'll survive, and yes, you're in for the lawsuit from hell once he wakes up. Once he finds out a bunch of ninja poisoned him after illegally infiltrating the competition…"

"Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about that," Ami said. "I made sure to grab a copy of the rules on my way out. They quite clearly say that nobody can be held liable if the competition gets cancelled because of an act of cod."

-o-

Voting is closed.

eaglejarl · Sunday at 8:46 PM

Chapter 675: Time's Cold Hand

"Mari, you okay?" Hazō asked quietly.

She looked up at him from her seat by the fire. Her expression was lively, that mischievous smile tugging at her lips the way it always did.

"I'm always fine, Hazō," she said. "Please tell me you're not doing the rounds again? Checking in with everyone, trying to head off drama? That's my gig now and I will have you know that I am on top of it. No problem shall—"

"Mari."

She pretend-glowered at him for a moment...and then gave up and let the vivacious shell slide away to reveal the true face behind it. Or, at least, the next face.

"What's wrong?" Hazō asked, keeping his voice low. Kagome-sensei was starwatching a few dozen yards from the fire, lying on his back on a blanket sturdy enough that neither vampire grass nor boreworms would be able to breach it. His hands were folded behind his head and, the last Hazō had seen, he had worn a quiet smile.

Noburi and Yuno were on a walk, hand in hand while Satsuko chaperoned from Yuno's belt. Tenten had gone to bed. Snowflake and Kei were heads together across the fire, arguing about some point of philosophy (probably?) that Hazō could make neither heads nor fins of. They probably wouldn't notice a low-voiced conversation.

Mari studied him for a moment, visibly deciding whether or not to share, and then shrugged.

"It's a few things," she said. "I look at Noburi and Yuno glowing at each other, and I'm happy for them that they have this relationship, but I'm sad that I never will." The corner of her full lips twitched in something that wasn't a smile but her eyes were far away. "I had my chance, you know. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of when I broke up with Kinu. That was before I switched to I&S; if I had stayed combat track I maybe could have made it work with her. We could have been happy together. That won't happen now."

"It could," Hazō said gently. "You just need to meet the right person." Kinu? Had he heard that name before?

She puffed a laugh. "Hazō, I'm the Lady of a Great Clan. I am never going to have a relationship based purely on love, even if that were possible for me. Plus, I'm an I&S ninja. Relationships are hard enough for any ninja, but for people like me..." She shrugged.

"Mari, are you spiraling again? Back to that whole 'I am a terrible person who can't help but manipulate everyone'? Because we don't have Tsunade with us to kick you out of it, so if you are then I'd appreciate a heads-up so I can go get her."

"I'm fine, Hazō," she said, still staring into the campfire. She was likely staring off into memory and didn't realize her eyes were pointed at the fire. Ninja didn't stare into the fire; it ruined your night vision and left you vulnerable.

Unable to think what else to say, Hazō sat with her, keeping his vision to the side so that he could see the crackle of the flames in his peripheral vision and feel the heat on his face.

"It's the end of September," she said after a time. "My birthday is in a month and it's the last one where I can call myself young."

"You're not old," he said.

"Not for another month, no."

"Oh please. You're...what, twenty-f...three?" He changed his guess quickly when she shot him a narrow-eyed look.

"I'm a woman, Hazō. Men can get rugged or craggy or distinguished as they age. Women just get old. Plus, I'm an I&S ninja. I've spent my entire life training for that. I've given up relationships, the ability to have relationships with the vast majority of people. I've made love to men and then cut their throats in the afterglow. I've made people fall in love with me and then betrayed them. I've fallen in love with people and then betrayed them. All of those skills, that training, those experiences, I spent an entire lifetime building myself around them. Female I&S ninja have an expiration date, Hazō. Once we get old we aren't as appealing and we lose much of our ability to do the job. What am I if I can't do that?" She waved a hand impatiently to cut him off. "I know, I know. I'm more than my job, I'm valued for who I am, I can still be useful, I haven't been doing I&S work for years now, blah blah. Up here," she tapped her temple, "I know all that."

Hazō sat with that, trying to imagine what Mari must be feeling before he said anything. He wasn't even eighteen.

"If you can't continue as who you were," he said at last, "you'll grow into someone else. You'll grow into whoever you choose to be, and hopefully whoever you want to be."

"Ah, getting very wise very young, I see. I'm not sure what I would have done if you weren't here to help me out of my depression spiral with your insightful words." There was just enough teasing layered under the terribly sincere respectfulness for Hazō to notice.

"I know. I'm glad you appreciate it."

She snorted.

"What would you have done differently?"

She thought about it, still staring into the fire. They had used some logs from their scrolls as starters but most of what was on it was gathered from the surrounding area, and wet. It popped, throwing an ember off into the night.

"I don't know," she said at last. "There are things I regret, things that make me cringe when I remember them, but if I changed anything then I wouldn't be the person sitting here. I...mostly like who I am. Usually. Plus, if I had done things differently then maybe I wouldn't have gone along with Dan's idea of founding Hidden Swamp. I would still be a Mist ninja...well, actually, I'd probably be dead. Yagura and I weren't a good match and...we weren't a good match. If I hadn't chosen you all for the swamp then we wouldn't have found the Pangolin Scroll and used it to join Leaf. You would never have met Kagome and given him the idea for skywalkers. Leaf would never have baited out Yagura, Akatsuki would never had tried their ritual, AMITY would never have existed."

"The Dragons would have destroyed the Seventh Path if you hadn't chosen me for the swamp," Hazō said quietly. "The battle was very close. If the sixth one had been there, the one we killed with the skyslicer, we would have lost. The Dragons would have eaten a dozen Clan Bosses and become unstoppable. You indirectly saved an entire world of people."

"Yay, rah, go me," she said. "It doesn't change the fact that I'm feeling my mortality. Everything I've been is falling away. I've been out of the field long enough that I'm not sure I could do an I&S mission anymore. Even if we somehow beat Akatsuki, open the rift, get Jiraiya and Akane and everyone back...what then? Will Jiraiya still think I'm not marriage material? Maybe he makes a politically better match and I continue as the Gōketsu spymistress. Could I even do that? I pooched it before, with the chocolate."

"Yes, it's true. I suppose you're no good for anything and should go off and become a hermit before you inflict more damage on us. Sure, you kept us alive in the wilderness and raised us up until we became a Great Clan in Leaf, but I'm sure that's all coincidence."

"You're not as funny as you think. Don't quit your day job."

"I am precisely as funny as I think, you just don't appreciate my comedy."

"Hmph."

He chuckled in amusement. And then he slipped an arm around her shoulders and she leaned on him and they didn't speak.

XP AWARD: 1 This was basically an interlude but I'm calling it a chapter and it fits into the timeline, so I'll give at least one point.

"GM had fun" XP: 1 'Fun' isn't exactly the right word, but it was good to write.

Voting remains closed until @Velorien opens it.

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest (STORY ONLY)

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