Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

"You bought this?" Noburi said doubtfully. The three of them were standing atop the last ridge before the valley that was the western demarcation of the Gōketsu iron mine and surrounding land.

Hazō nodded but didn't say anything. He was wrestling with his own response and trying to find a way to frame it positively.

"I question your financial acuity," Keiko noted.

"It was never intended as a profit center," Hazō said defensively. "I was thinking about it as an emergency bolt hole if we needed to escape Leaf after Hyūga got elected."

Noburi grunted. "Check me on this, but am I correct that I'm looking at about twenty, maybe thirty acres of land?"

"About that, yes. We've also go the next valley over, which is something like twice as big."

"Uh-huh. And am I also correct that it is a literally unbroken field of bloodbriar and tanglethorn?"

Well, that was unfair. "It's not unbroken," Hazō said, pointing. "There's that big tree right there." He hesitated and then decided that he did in fact need to add, "Also, apparently there's sickvine mixed in."

His brother gave him a sidelong glance. "Seriously? You know that shit is practically impossible to get rid of, right? The rest of it, fine. Enough applications of Kagome's First Rule and maybe we'd have something, but if there's sickvine in there as well...."

"It is possible to eliminate large fields of sickvine," Keiko said. "It merely requires a tremendous amount of effort. We will need to destroy all of the plants, then burn the ground to get rid of their spores, then turn the earth over so that the roots of the plant are exposed. My pangolins are well suited to that task. We will undoubtedly miss some but regular patrols can keep the problem manageable."

"What a bunch of whiners," Candoru muttered.

"Excuse me?" Hazō asked his summon. "I didn't quite hear that. Would you like to try again?"

"C'mon, guy! It's just a bunch of plants! How bad can it be?"

The three experienced ninja looked at one another.

"Summons don't breathe, right?" Hazō asked Keiko.

She shook her head. "They do not. Chakra construct only, no biological processes."

"Hang on," Noburi said. "They have a sense of smell. How does that work?"

Candoru's tongue lolled. "A lot better than yours, two legs."

"Har de har de har. You're so funny."

"Thank you for recognizing this additional aspect of my greatness."

Noburi shook his head. "Yeah, that's not going to get old."

"Why don't you go inspect the valley for us, Candoru?" Hazō said innocently.

Candoru looked up at his summoner dubiously. "This is one of those things where you think I'm not going to be able to hack it, isn't it? One of Alpha's little 'get him killed as much as you can because the scoutmasters dislike being shown up for the fuddy-duddy scaredy-pups they are' things?"

Hazō shrugged. "Honestly, you probably won't have any issues. There's a few dangerous species that live in sickvine fields, like chakra voles, but they're probably not a threat to you. You don't have any blood so the bloodbriar won't attack, and you can steer clear of the tanglethorn."

"Fine."


"I still say you could have mentioned the smell," Candoru griped, rubbing his nose. "Oh my god, it's like someone found a bloated, rotting, maggoty cat carcass that had been lying in the sun for a week, pissed on it, and then they shoved my entire face up its asshole."

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

"We mentioned spores," Hazō said unrepentantly, tossing another spray of explosives to his left while Noburi did the same on the right and Keiko to the front. All three of them had Purifier masks strapped tightly to their face; the rush of air into the mouth and nose was uncomfortable and distractingly loud, but it was better than breathing sickvine spores. The most they had managed for Candoru was a towel thoroughly soaked in lemon water before being tied around his nose with bandages. He wasn't willing to have his mouth muzzled so the bandages only went around his upper jaw and therefore he couldn't close his mouth or prevent himself from drooling. "What, you didn't think spores had a smell? Why else would it be called sickvine?"

"I thought it made you sick if you ate it! Besides, I came from downwind and there was nothing. Oh clouded sky, it's so deep in my nose I can taste it." He pawed frantically at his nose to no effect.

"Well of course not," Hazō said. "The spores would have long since settled out of the air. You probably kicked some up with you entered the field, and the plants sprayed you when you jostled them. Just be glad that you're not a meat person. If we breathe them in, the spores have a habit of taking root and starting to grow inside our lungs and nose. Very painful, generally fatal unless caught early and flushed with alcohol."

"Which is an exceptionally unpleasant experience," Keiko noted.

"Just get me out of this field and up onto the high ground. This mine of yours can't possibly be as—hah!" He lunged across Hazō's path and bit through a root that was coiled up, ready to sting as soon as Hazō was past. Powerful jaws bit straight through the root; Candoru shook his head, ripping the remains of it out of the ground. He spat the plant parts out, turned around on them, and lifted his leg.

"Takin' my own back," he said, staring Hazō right in the eyes as he widdled on the defeated threat.

"Thanks," Hazō said, smiling. "C'mon, it's not much farther to the lake. I want to check that first and then we'll go to the mine."


"This is your lake?" Candoru said, audibly unimpressed.

"I admit, it's not quite what I was hoping for," Hazō said, looking out across the algae-scummed surface.

The lake did have an inlet and outlet, so there was a minimal degree of sluggish movement in the center part. In towards the shore, not so much. Large swaths of it were covered in a sickly purple algae. The parts where the water was visible revealed only greenish muck.

"You can waterwalk, right Candoru?" Hazō asked.

"Of course!"

"Great. You mind taking a stroll over to the outlet and tell me how hard it would be to enlarge it?"

Candoru gave him narrow eyes. "You're trying to get me killed again, aren't you?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Candoru huffed and rolled his eyes, but he gave a disgruntled "Fine," and strode out onto the water where he was promptly killed.

"Oh wow," Noburi said, impressed. "I think that's the biggest horrorfish I've ever seen. What do you think, Keiko? Eighteen, nineteen inches?"

"A bit less. Perhaps fifteen."

"C'mon, sis, you're doing it wrong. When you tell fish stories you're supposed to exaggerate a little. Here, try it like so: 'A horrorfish killed my annoying brother's summon and the fish was thiiiiis big!'" He winked at Hazō. "I'll let you speculate on who the 'annoying' applies to."

Hazō rolled his eyes and Keiko gave Noburi a gimlet stare.

"I do not need to exaggerate," she said. "Truthful and accurate reports are the cornerstone of professionalism."

Hazō frowned. "I thought that careful planning and preparation—Summoning Technique: Candoru!—was the cornerstone of professionalism?"

Poof!

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF BLOOD GRAVY WAS THAT?!"

"That was a horrorfish," Hazō said. "Very fast moving ambush predator. They generally use a leaping attack from behind."

"IT STABBED ME IN MY DINGUS!! WHO STABS A GUY IN THE DINGUS?!?!"

"Horrorfish, apparently," Noburi said, smiling sweetly, handing a flask of chakra water to Hazō.

Candoru grumbled his way into silence. "Well, at least I can't smell or taste those darn spores anymore."

"Good to know. Okay, as soon as you finish checking the lake's outlet we'll head up to the mine."

"...Lovely."


"Summoning Technique: Candoru!"

"Fuckin' yow! It got me in the bunghole this time!"


"Summoning Technique: Candoru!"

"Seriously, what the fuck?!"

"Hey, try to be more careful, okay? Summoning is expensive, Hazō ran out of chakra a while ago, and there's not much for me to recharge from out here."

"I'll show you recharging, Toad boy. I'll recharge your ass right under that damn lake. I'll—"

"Sorry," Hazō said. "What was that, Candoru?"

"Nothing."

"Thought not. Forget the lake for a bit. Let's go up to the mine."

"Fine."

"No, mine," Noburi said, grinning. "You know, a big hole in the ground that you dig stuff out of?"

Candoru gave him a dirty look but led the way up the hill.

"Incidentally," Keiko said, "your approach to the horrorfish was counterproductive."

"Thank you, Miss Obvious. Do you have anything actually useful to say?"

"Yes. Your mistake was in attempting stealth. Their senses are significantly keener through water than yours are, meaning that you will not be able to evade their notice. They exist under the surface where it is difficult to observe them, and therefore you will not be able to detect them before they attack. Their weakness is in the method of attack: A high-speed leap from the water. It requires a significant run-up in order to gain speed, during which time they cannot turn well. They will abort their attack if the prey steps off the available lane of attack. So long as you move unpredictably from side to side you can prevent them from ever launching their attack."

Candoru shot Hazō with the eyes of betrayal. "You could have told me that." He immediately raised a silencing paw before Hazō could do more than open his mouth. "I know, I know. Blah blah get him killed blah blah learning experience blah de blah de blah blah. Hrmph." He turned and walked another few paces, then stopped.

"There's more of that damn sickweed. Do your explosions thing. And give me that towel back."


"Seriously?"

Hazō nodded. "Yes."

Candoru looked at the entrance to the mine, then at Hazō, then back at the entrace to the mine. "It's a heckin' great hole in the side of the hill. You want me to go in there."

"Yes."

"Just for funsies? Not to get anything or fight anything, just to wander gormlessly around?"

"Yes."

"..."

"Aww, it's okay," Noburi said. "Don't worry, little guy. Lots of people are scared of the dark."

"I'm not scared of the dark! It's just...okay, seriously, can you guys not smell that?"

The human exchanged looks. "Smell what?" Hazō asked.

Candoru sniffed experimentally, then dragged in a deeper breath when he was sure there were no sickweed spores around. "It's like...rot? Maybe. But blood and dirt mixed in. And..." He shook his white-furred head. "I don't know. I've never smelled anything like it. It makes my ruff stand up, that's for sure."

I was true. The dog's fur was standing up across his neck and shoulders.

"Well, whatever it is can't hurt you," Hazō said with a shrug. "Get in there and tell us what's there. Be careful and keep talking as you go in."

"Grr. Fine. Fair warning: If you make me go in there and anything else pops me in the dingus or the bunghole I am going to pee on your sleeping bag."

"Threat noted. Do you want a light source?"

The dog considered that carefully, then nodded. "Yeah. If I need to be calling back to you lot then I can't stealth anyway. Might as well be able to see."

"No problem." Hazō knelt down and pulled out a Jiraiya's Awesome Daybright Lantern Seal, which he affixed to the top of Candoru's head with a blob of tree sap.

Candoru proceeded into the mine one careful step at a time, stopping between steps to carefully review his surroundings.

"Don't forget to keep talking!" Hazō called. "We need to know what's in there!"

"Agh! Fine! It's dark as the inside of a Cat's heart. The walls are rock, duh, mostly gray stone with colored horizontal stripes through it. There is pitting everywhere—walls, floor, ceiling. The pitting is small, none more than the size of one of your stupid human thumbs that us Dogs should have had if you humans hadn't stolen them all. There's a faint breeze coming from deeper in and I can smell water so I think—holy fuck!"

Hazō waited a moment, then turned his attention inward to the aetheric channel that connected him to his summon. He sighed and jabbed his much-bandaged finger on the pin that was now embedded in his belt.

"Summoning Technique: Candoru."

Candoru appeared, wide-eyed and trembling, and rapidly spun in a circle as he checked for threats.

"What happened?" Hazō asked.

"I was walking along and suddenly something fell out of the ceiling. I dodged it. It was some kind of big fat worm about like this." He sketched in the dirt with one toenail, indicating something perhaps an inch and a half long and a third as wide. "The front of its head split open in three parts and it was lined with teeth. Big ones for its size. I watched it hit the ground and start chewing its way into the damn floor. Then another one fell on my back and started chewing into me. Next thing you know, I'm home again and Huntmaster Cansudo was laughing at me. Then you summoned me back and here we are."

The Gōketsu exchanged looks.

"Did it fall out of one of those pits you mentioned?" Hazō asked.

"Yeah. And those pits were everywhere. That wasn't even one of the biggest ones."

"Feel like taking another run at them?"

"Fuck right I do."


"Feel like taking another run at them?"

"Fuck right I do. I know what I did wrong last time."


"Feel like taking another run at them?"

"You know it. I should have realized the first time: Bait them out, dodge, then walk on the ceiling once they've dropped out of their pits."


"Feel like taking another run at them? We've got plenty more lantern seals."

"And I've got enough chakra left that Hazō can summon you four or five more times," Noburi said with a grin.

Candoru glowered but remained sitting. He looked off towards the lake and muttered something.

"Sorry, what?"

"I said no, okay? It would be one thing if there was an actual objective here, but there isn't. Cats, Hornets, whatever—I'll take 'em down no problem. Enclosed quarters with worms dropping on me, jumping out of the walls, and sometimes reaching up from underfoot? No. I'm done for now. I'll think about it and tomorrow I'll kill all those little bastards."

"Well, that was surprisingly easy," Noburi said. "Pay up, Keiko."

"I am paying under protest," she said, pulling her purse out and counting out ten fifty-ryō coins. "The bet was that he would learn the lesson by the end of the first day. He is still talking about going back in."

"Yeah, but he figured out that he needed to at least put some thought in and come back later." He held out his hand and waited without moving for Keiko to drop the coins in from a foot above. "Pleasure doing business with you, sis."

"You two know I'm right here, yeah?"

"Yes," Keiko said disapprovingly. "In large part because you just cost me five hundred ryō."

Candoru suddenly looked uncertain. "Uh...sorry?" He hesitated, looking back and forth between the three humans. "We're good, right?"

Keiko studied him for a moment, then sniffed dismissively. "I cannot afford to throw stones. You did in fact learn your lessons rather less expensively than did I. Yes. We are 'okay', as you say."

Candoru gave a tongue-lolling doggy smile. "Sweeeet. Say...you've still got lots of explosives, right?"

Keiko turned to Noburi in triumph but he raised his hands defensively. "Sorry, sis. Bet's paid, no takebacks."

"Hrmph."

---

XP AWARD: 5 This update covered 48 hours.

Brevity XP: 1

"QM had fun" bonus: 0 Sigh. I'm not going to, but I really should put a gazillion-point penalty here for forcing me to admit that writing punching is no fun anymore because you guys have outgrown all the normal threats and it's difficult to justify throwing level-appropriate stuff at you. I guess I'll have to learn to enjoy...*gags*...politics and romance. :sadbird:

Author's Note: You threw a bunch of explosives into the mine to clear out the rockworms. The mine promptly collapsed because it was apparently so Swiss-cheesed by the worms digging their tunnels that it was being supported mostly by good luck and a lack of dropped pins.

It is possible to reclaim this land but it will be a massive amount of work and definitely not economically viable solely for the iron mine. If you want the mine to work then you could bring in miners to dig a new shaft, which you would then have to inspect for infestation. You would need a large amount of ninja-hours to thoroughly blow up and burn fifty acres of land, then have pangolins roll across it very thoroughly or bring in hundreds of civilians to turn it over and dispose of all the sickweed roots. You would need to outfit them all with Purifier masks and there would probably still be some losses. You aren't actually sure what it would take to convert the lake into a usable resource. You checked and draining it by blasting out the retaining wall would not be too difficult.

Keiko sees no value in staying here and wants to get back to the Nara compound and (although she fervently denies it) Tenten. She will stay if you have a good reason to but she will be grumpy about it. Noburi also would like to head out; his chakra reserves are so huge that it's impractical for him to refill them in normal wilderness such as this. He needs the presence of dozens of ninja in order to get enough spare chakra to tank up. He too will stay if you want to but won't be happy about it.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, September 9, 2020, at 12pm London time.