Lost on the Road of Life (An AU Naruto Quest)

"So, the Salamander Contract is yet unclaimed," Kagato said. "The envoy I sent to the Salamander Clan said much the same. The Salamander Clan is not wont to lie or mislead, but I had thought it possible they might do so in order to divert attention away from a nascent summoner."

Shizuka grimaced. "That's the one piece of good news we have. With Hatake's intel, we know that it's Shōidan Lord that has the scroll, and as he hasn't yet become a Summoner, he likely won't have it on his person. Apart from the other three clans I scouted out, I had the chance to investigate Hidden Rain quite thoroughly. Unfortunately, I didn't see any signs of the Shōidan outside of the city center, and even then only the Lord's guards. I have to assume that the Lord himself is holed up in the Spire."

"And that's where the bear is," Kakashi said grimly.

Shizuka had given them a quick description of the battle between Hanzō and the usurper. Hearing her worries would have left him thinking that the newcomer was as far above Orochimaru as Orochimaru was above Kakashi. Shizuka knew he was a summoner, but apart from that, the rest of her fears stemmed from the battle's aftermath. Fields of corpses and broken weapons, craters and piles of rubble where there used to be buildings, and all of it the handiwork of one man. It wasn't just Hanzō that the usurper had defeated in the battle, but two dozen of Rain's strongest jōnin who had come to their Kage's aid. No wonder the new ruler was having trouble bending the Rain Clans to his will, with the blood of their heroes still staining his hands.

"Yeah," Shizuka said. "We cannot afford to wake that bear."

"As you have said, yes," said Kagato. "The problem of the Lord's sequestration is surmountable, I believe. We would merely need to determine where the Contract is. Do you think it's likely that he keeps it in his quarters? If so, we had best claim it during the day, while he is away."

Shizuka closed her eyes, thinking. "Shōidan is cocky enough and skilled enough to believe he can effectively protect it from harm, and his bloodline techniques should be more than sufficient to detect any tampering. We could try to cause a distraction to take it, but if he's even remotely sane, he'll have marked the Scroll with his tar. He'll be able to tell when it's moved, and that'll make him call down the storm. I think we'll need to kill him if we want to quietly take the scroll."

Kakashi shook his head. "If the sensory techniques in Rain are as good as you say they are, it'll never work. His death or disappearance will get noticed within a day, and then everyone will be on the hunt for the legendary artifact."

If Shizuka was to be believed, the sensory bloodlines in Rain were indeed absolutely insane. Nothing quite as unbelievably, impossibly powerful as the Byakugan of course, but they still had abilities that could make a Hyūga jealous.

The Shōidan could create tar and leave it anywhere for weeks or months, all the while being able to sense its location and any nearby movement precisely. They could lace cracks in the ground or the undersides of tables with tar and have a sensory detection field miles wide that required no chakra to upkeep, yet would instantly tell them about any disruption to any part of the system. It had made infiltrating their compound quite tricky – he had to avoid stepping anywhere that he couldn't fully see.

The Doshaburi, on the other hand, thankfully needed to spend chakra to use their sensory powers. They were a Water elementalist clan whose signature ninjutsu gave them a proprioceptive sense of any water nearby, though only water near chakra sources. Kakashi had asked how that worked, but Shizuka had only gestured vaguely and said "reflections." They'd been lucky not to run into any Doshaburi ninja patrols while they had been sneaking into the Hidden Village, since the "reflections" of the water on their raincoats would have outed them as ninja immediately.

The Tsuru, a clan focused on paper ninjutsu, instead had incredible hearing. Their spying ninjutsu allowed them to hear as if they were instead at the location of a nearby piece of paper. Unimpressive, except for the fact that Hidden Rain, for some absurd reason, had made a tradition of hanging up lines of waxed paper cutouts depicting heavenly kami above their streets. Even in the outermost parts of the city, far from the city center, nearly every main road and a good chunk of alleyways were decorated with the strings of paper angels. They'd seen them all while Shizuka was sneaking them in. She'd repeatedly told them what not to say around the paper angels, as well as what to say, as too much silence could be suspicious.

Oh, and just for good measure, their range limitation was a joke, since they could relay the jutsu through pieces of paper nearby. Shizuka didn't know the exact range, but it was at least fifty feet, meaning that as long as there was an unbroken chain of paper pieces no more than fifty feet apart between a Tsuru and another location, they could spy on it from afar. Kakashi couldn't help but feel a slight appreciation for the traitor Tsuru who had helped Rain's new Kage. Rain apparently hadn't considered that one of their own might turn on them and use the paper network to plan a coup.

Last in the cursedly long list were the Fukurō clan, who specialized in sonic ninjutsu. Leaving aside their combat capabilities, which sounded horrendous (literally, Kakashi had no desire to have his eardrums burst by sounds louder than a point-blank explosive tag), they likewise had hearing, centered on themselves. Quite incredible hearing if he were to believe Shizuka, as apparently only the constant drone of the rain kept them from trivially monitoring every conversation in the city.

The last Rain clan, the Kirisame, thankfully didn't have any good sensory techniques. They were apparently idiots too – by Shizuka's account, they fought with combat umbrellas for some reason.

"We'd never make it out of the country without detection. Kagato might make it out okay with his ability to retreat and return from the Summon Realm at will to break trails," he said, gesturing to the older man, "but you and I would be screwed. We need to find a way that leaves him alive. Ideally one where he doesn't know that it's taken, or where he won't tell anyone. Maybe if he loses the scroll, he would be too embarrassed to tell anyone for a couple days?"

Shizuka shook her head. "Like you said, legendary artifact. If it disappears, that's a top priority thing to deal with, even if it costs some face."

"Perhaps he might be less inclined to share the disappearance of the scroll if it appears to be both a problem solely of his own domain, as well as one that he can personally solve," Kagato said.

"Like what?"

"For instance, suppose he were convinced that one of his clansmen was responsible for the theft. Is it possible that his tar markings could be removed by another of his bloodline? Then if the Contract disappeared, he would be far more likely to consider it an internal clan matter for his attention, especially if the clansman appears easily traceable."

Kakashi grunted in agreement. "Sounds… plausible." Internally, he swore. Maybe he should have worked on his genjutsu more while he was in Leaf with access to the Uchiha. Being able to mind control some poor Shōidan into getting the scroll for them and taking the fall would have been awfully convenient.

"However, that ought to be set aside for now. You said that the Contract was plausibly in his quarters, correct?" Kagato said to Shizuka, who nodded. "Where else might it be?"

"He could probably put similar protections on it anywhere else," she said. "It might be in the treasury, which is fairly well defended, though they would have had to crack it for that to work. There's a fair few seals there that might be tough to get through. Otherwise, he might have left it with the usurper Kage. If he gave the scroll to Shōidan once, he would probably give the scroll to Shōidan again."

"What would you do if you were him, and you needed to hide the scroll until you finished your Summoning training?" Kakashi asked.

Shizuka paused and thought. After a minute, her face soured. "I wouldn't do any of those. Anywhere that people know about is a breakable target, Rain has too many sensory bloodlines, and keeping it in your quarters is obvious. I'd hollow out a space beneath a random section of floor tile somewhere in the city and never tell anyone about it until I finished the training."

Kakashi nodded. "Ah. So that's why his goons are in the city center." Shizuka raised an eyebrow, so he continued. "He won't want to tell anyone where it is, but just in case he wasn't as stealthy as he thought, he'll want his people to be near enough to notice if something's wrong. Even if they don't notice someone snatching it, they'll be right there so he can command them to converge on anyone that screws with the scroll.

"Still, he won't have told them where it is. The city center is small enough that we could plausibly canvas it, but that's going to be very visible. We need to find a way to make him check on the scroll. Guessing is going to be a losing game."

Shizuka sighed. "He won't want to check it. The Tsuru don't have the right tools for this, but it's hard to completely waterproof a space, especially if he's coming by frequently and dripping water from the rain. Sealing it off with tar would help, but then the chakra sensors might notice if there's too much. Besides, if he visits it often, there's good odds that the Fukurō Clan just hears him."

"So we need to produce some sort of truly exceptional circumstance to cause him to check on the Contract, and we need to arrange to observe it. Only then can we appropriately plan how to claim it," Kagato summarized.

"Well," Kakashi said, "that seems challenging."

---

Voting Time! What do you do now?

Here are some options to get you started.
[] Double bluff! Genjutsu him into thinking a clanmate is stealing the scroll, then after he checks on it, genjutsu him again while taking the scroll to make that clanmate of his take the fall.
[] Make someone else do it! Spread some rumors and manufacture a story that he's made a deal to sell the scroll off to Leaf. With luck, he'll be called in by the new Kage to present it to prove that he hasn't given it away.
[] Brute force seems better. Make a ton of Shadow Clones so they have civilian-seeming chakra reserves, then disguise them up and canvas the center city manually. Ask Kagato to pitch in with his best scouting summons.
[] Subvert their people. Is there any Shōidan that hates the new Kage, hates the Clan Lord that's cooperating with the usurper, and wants a promotion? Find them, turn them, and use their connections to find the Clan Lord and the scroll.
[] Write-in.

Remember, we use approval voting, so you can vote for as many plans as you like. Feel free to ping @Paperclipped or @MMKII to ask setting or detail questions that Kakashi could plausibly know.

Voting is open, and closes at 12pm PST Friday, October 14.