Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

The sign of the Cadaverous Priest, the tavern Ruri was leading Hazō to, was a work of art. The pale, faintly green skin against prominent bones evoked both a skeleton and a zombie, the hollow rictus with its missing teeth perfectly mirrored the familiar jolly innkeeper grin from other such signs, and only the fanatical glare in the sunken, bloodshot eyes indicated that the subject was still alive. To round off the image, the not-quite-skull wore a clerical skullcap whose metallic decorations nicely balanced the silver and gold in the creature's beard.

"Welcome to the Cadaverous Priest, simultaneously Leaf's best and worst tavern," Ruri told Hazō as they went in.

"Best and worst?" he asked as he followed her to a corner table. Inside, the place seemed fairly average, with inexpensive but well-built furniture, sealcraft torches, and—wait, sealcraft torches? There was a good reason Jiraiya's Awesome Daybright Lanterns didn't get used in establishments like this one, despite their relatively low cost and impressive tuneable properties that blew conventional illumination out of the water, namely that to somebody without chakra reserves, they were just slips of paper with pretty patterns.

"Indeed," Ruri said. "KEI ninja, Kei ninja, and civilians get their food cooked by Ita Mae, winner of the KEI 1070 Battle of the Chefs. Clan ninja get theirs cooked by Hisatsu Sara, a creative genius we poached from a little place called the Yabai Café. Business is booming, yet somehow clan customers are few and far between these days. Today, you're my guest, Lord Hazō, but you might want to think twice before bringing your harem of lovers on a date here."

"I only have two lovers," Hazō objected. "You're thinking of Kei."

"On the contrary," Ruri said with the faintest smirk. "Lady Kei only has Tenten and Fujisawa. You, as of yesterday's rumour mill, variously have Akane, Lady Yamanaka, Amori Yukiko, the Leaf Oyabun's daughter Miyagi Yuna, Akimichi Choko, Anko (though I will give you a pass on that one once since I asked her myself), and clan heir Hagoromo Yūna, as well as a secret engagement with the freshly-graduated Uchiha Minori to add to your open engagement with Ami."

Hazō sighed. "I am not dating Amori Yukiko, I didn't know or care that the Oyabun had a daughter, I am still not dating Akimichi Choko, a world of no to Anko, dating Lord Hagoromo's daughter might have great subversion potential but I'm still not doing it, I am not going to marry a twelve-year-old, and I am not engaged to Ami."

"Interesting," Ruri said. "Would you like me to find you more lovers? You're a divisive figure within the KEI, but I'm confident I can find a few young women who'd leap at the opportunity. If you'll forgive me, stopping at two seems… unambitious for someone like you, Lord Hazō."

Hazō couldn't claim the idea wasn't even slightly intriguing, but given that he didn't even have time to properly date the two women he was already with…

"I'll take it under advisement," he said. "Now, about this Battle of the Chefs winner…"


Hazō had never heard of a KEI civilian before, but matters made more sense once he learned that Ita had a genin cousin, who received free room and board in exchange for managing the exotic lights and throwing out troublemakers (mostly clan ninja dissatisfied with their meal, who were usually in no shape to put up a fight). The hearty leek and potato soup wasn't quite the best Hazō had ever had, as Gōketsu wealth opened doors to restaurants that catered to the elite, but it was just the thing for a weary ninja back from a harsh mission and keen to recover their strength while forgetting Leaf field rations ever existed. (In Hazō's opinion, Leaf field rations were practically haute cuisine, and every time someone had the gall to complain about them, he wished he had some bread from a Mist ration to bludgeon them to death with.)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Cadaverous Priest, a reckless young man with something to prove was tackling the Hisatsu Challenge, surrounded by cheering mates. If he was able to finish the enormous steak and its oozing purple fluid before the hourglass ran out, his medical bills would be on the house.

"To business," Hazō said as his spoon dropped into an empty bowl with a satisfying thunk. "You remember how I came to you for advice on talking to the condors the other day?"

"Sure," Ruri said. "From the fact that you're talking to me across a table and not as a ghost haunting my bedside, may I assume my advice was on point?"

"It was," Hazō said. "I can't claim they were overjoyed to face the man who facilitated the murder of their families, but they're prepared to cooperate for the sake of the entire world not following, and worry about the consequences for me after that's done and I've had my chance at earning their forgiveness with action."

Ruri nodded. "It sounds like you got some good ones. Condors are generally considerate, open-minded beings we could stand to learn much from, but when they lose themselves to anger, they can really lose themselves, and when they snap, they snap hard."

"Also," Hazō said, "we had Kumokōgō there as a moderator the way you and Mari suggested, and she raised some interesting points. She thinks Conjura's powers would fit perfectly with Arachnid support for fighting Dragons, and if Conjura's aid is a decisive factor in victory over the Dragons, in front of an entire Conclave of battlefield allies, she'll be able to demand freedom for her people in return, and Pantsā will have a hard time refusing."

"I heard about Conjura's powers from the coordinators," Ruri said, "and more from the Wings of Liberty. My impression is that she was holding back during her battle in order to protect her summoner. You and I both know that space-time manipulation is extremely hazardous to anyone other than the user."

Hazō nodded. "One of the reasons you can't bring passengers to the Seventh Path. So are you saying Conjura is even deadlier over there?"

"I only have stories," Ruri said, "and obviously Conjura's closest allies would exaggerate her abilities to nonsensical levels—severing chunks of the Seventh Path firmament to cast at her foes and such. But when you consider that Lord Naruto, arguably humanity's most powerful offensive force now that your father is one with the Will of Fire, was only able to defeat her through impossible luck and summon fragility while she was handicapped…"

Oh, yeah. Leaf's bizarre faith held that true Leaf ninja transcended the cycle of reincarnation and became one with the Will of Fire. Shikamaru had reminded him of it as one of his many objections to trying to raise the dead. That was going to be awkward once Jiraiya was back (and also probably pretty grim from the perspective of the man himself).

"Could you tell me exactly what the Arachnid Empress said?" Ruri asked.

Hazō gave Ruri the gist of it, the exact wording unfortunately escaping him as the Arachnids' peculiar speech patterns and incomprehensible cultural references had a tendency to tie his puny human brain in knots.

"Fascinating," Ruri said. "You know, Lord Hazō, when you have time, I would love to hear more about Arachnids and their culture. You make an interesting narrator, and I'm sure you have a wealth of stories to tell."

"Sure," Hazō said. "And, now I think of it, it seems like I could do to understand the Condors better as well."

Ruri's subtle smile faded a little further into ambiguity. "I'm not sure I've been able to glean as much from the ashes of Condor culture as you have from your time at the Hanging City, Lord Hazō, but what I have is yours. Actually, this relates to something I meant to tell you."

"Oh?"

"You're aware that the war provided an opportunity for Lady Kei to delay her Pangolin mission, and subsequent recovery served as a further excuse while you were away?"

Hazō nodded. "Kei thinks her grace period is almost up. She's… not at her best right now."

"I noticed," Ruri said softly. "But we haven't been wasting that time. Ami has been helping me with my plotting, and together we've been able to secure a visit for me to the Condor lands, ostensibly to seek new contracts. To the Pangolins, it's a priceless opportunity to emphasise my impotence before their slaves—a given condor's supervisors have veto power over their right to contract, and of course every last one of them will exercise it, with Pantsā and Central Command free of blame since they will merely be trusting the judgement of officers in the field. To me, however, it is an opportunity to be in the right place at the right time."

"The right place at the right time for what?" Hazō asked.

"Anything," Ruri said simply. "I'm not a generalist because I couldn't commit, Lord Hazō. I'm a generalist because I accept never being the strongest at anything in exchange for always having a path to victory. I've watched too many friends die when they ran into a wall that their particular specialisation couldn't overcome. For Lady Kei, I will be a diplomat, an assassin, an instigator, or a warm shoulder to lean on, and perhaps that will go some way towards repaying the countless debts that I owe her and the other coordinators."

Hazō had trained enough with Mari to pick up on Ruri watching his expression carefully as she spoke, but Hazō had no idea what she was looking for, or whether she was finding it. Yes, he could easily see this complex, unreadable woman plotting with Ami.

"I had a great deal of trouble, for some time, trying to understand what my role as summoner was," Ruri said. "I inherited a broken clan that had neither opportunity nor desire to offer me contracts, with a queen who hated me for being an ally of her summoner's slayer and her people's nemesis, and who was ever on the verge of killing me and then my successors so that Leaf could not benefit from stealing the Condor Scroll. I didn't know where to begin understanding this alien species, and they were not interested in being understood by the likes of me. I was at a loss at how to live up to the faith Lord Seventh and the coordinators, to say nothing of the rest of the KEI, had placed in me.

"I pursued the paths open to me. I spoke to other summoners to understand what summoning meant to them. They were as new as I am, or lived in ways I couldn't emulate, like Lady Tsunade, but every little helped, and summoner solidarity became an investment in personal connections otherwise unavailable to a KEI ninja. I questioned Lady Kei about the Pangolins, in retrospect without due consideration for her feelings. I searched the libraries for notes from summoners past."

Hazō wondered why she'd never come to him. Sure, he was exactly as new a summoner as her, both of them receiving their scrolls as a result of the Competition, but surely he could have been of some use?

"There was no precedent," Ruri said. "Even Maito Gai, whose Turtles had no interest in anything he or Leaf could offer them, was able to win their three-chambered hearts with his extraordinary charisma. Mine, I daresay, is functional rather than heroic.

"My role as I see it now, having won the Condors' tolerance if not their trust, is not that of a summoner. Not truly. They are unsatisfactory as tools, and they are of little worth as allies. I cannot use them as my path to martial power, or even to enrich the KEI through the Summon Trade Network. I cannot yet be a summoner as you are.

"But then, the Condors do not need a summoner either. What they need is a way to break the stalemate which is slowly draining their people's souls, and the main reason Conjura lets me live is that she knows she can't do it alone. They do not need someone to fight for but someone who will fight for them. They need a path to victory."

The smile came back, just a little.

"And once that victory is won and the Condors soar again, I think I will have all the power I want and more."

"I think I can help with that," Hazō said. "I certainly want to. I might not have nightmares about it the way Kei does"—Ruri's eyes widened a tiny bit, and Hazō realized that maybe Kei wouldn't have appreciated him passing on something so personal—"but what the Pangolins have done disgusts me, and I'm ashamed of the fact that I didn't see a single hint of it coming until it was too late."

"You are part of that path to victory," Ruri agreed. "So is Lady Kei, and so is Ami. So are others whose names I am still learning. I'm just one woman. It will be some time before I have the hubris to call myself a messiah—at least not until I have the personal power to punch Pantsā of the Adamant Scales in the snout. Until that blissful day, I will continue learning from the Condors, and converting the other summoners, and plotting with the sisters, and putting the pieces in place on the Seventh Path, and trying to be in the right place at the right time.

"What you've brought me is a valuable piece of the puzzle, Lord Hazō, and I wanted to give you some idea of what it means to me. I think the Arachnid Empress will be part of the path to victory as well. Perhaps the Dogs will be too, once the shape of the future is a little clearer."

Hazō smiled. "I'm glad I can help."

"There's one more thing," Ruri said. "I have a message from Conjura—for you, and for the others with a stake in Condor liberation."

"What is it?"

"She says we should try to find out what happened to the previous Polemarch," Ruri said. "Conjura is in no position to make enquiries of the Pangolins, and she suspects it won't be safe for Lady Kei to ask. I doubt your western clans will know, but you have many connections, and who knows what kind of clue will turn out to be a weapon in the end?"

Unless Ruri was even more of a generalist than Hazō realised, she probably wasn't aware of what a sealmastery thing she'd just said. Most of Hazō's extraordinary discoveries and brilliant inventions had involved, somewhere along the line, a seemingly unrelated line in somebody's notes, or an offhand comment by a family member, or a choice sentence in the middle of a Kagome-sensei rant, or realising that an embarrassing failure of a seal had failed in a very specific way. Soon, Death's dominion would end because Hazō had noticed a curious pattern in a few lines of poetry.

"When I discover the key to the Pangolins' downfall, you'll be the first to know," Hazō promised. "Except maybe for Kei, and any members of my family who are around when I get back," he added because sometimes he could be unhealthily honest.

Ruri chuckled.

"Allow me to get the bill," Hazō added, because he was a gentleman, especially where attractive women were concerned.

"Today is on me," Ruri told him. "Bribing you with food is an essential part of my plan, and it would hurt my pride to be foiled so easily."

Hazō was also too much of a gentleman to refuse to be bribed.


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