[x] Cautious and carefully. Search the outlying fields, first. Then circle around the hamlet, looking for hostiles. Only then do you enter the hamlet.
How are we doing for chakra? I don't know how Ryoko's reserves are, but a few rounds of chakra boosting and a strong ninjutsu could be cutting her low.
Voting will be open until early tomorrow (doing a lot of driving this weekend), but then I'll try and get the update posted by Tuesday evening. Hopefully, we'll be able to return to a faster pace! ^.^
How are we doing for chakra? I don't know how Ryoko's reserves are, but a few rounds of chakra boosting and a strong ninjutsu could be cutting her low.
Ryoko was kinda low, after the fight, but since it was late afternoon/early evening, the party decided to go ahead and make camp, and reach Santoshi in the morning.
Ryoko ran in front of her team, skywalking just over the forest canopy –leaving no tracks, using forest canopy as cover from below, and their movement could be mistaken as aerial chakra beasts from above – and sprinting straight towards Santoshi.
Shin, their weakest member –understandable, given his youth and once-near-fatal fixation on technique hacking –was tucked safely behind her. Sugiyama, of course, followed in last, covering Shin's back and keeping a wary eye on any potential ambushers.
Ryoko knew something was wrong. The weight of certainty settled over her, and she felt her fingers twitch to the newly-cleaned axe strapped to her hip.
When you neared small, outlying farming hamlets, you could always hear the telltale signs of human civilization. Children playing, workers singing and talking throughout the fields, elders –if they were lucky enough to have some –scolding children behind hidden smiles turned upside down… Fire Country's foliage was thick enough that it took a keen ear to pick up the noise, but this close? And with one that was the size of Santoshi?
"Shin," Ryoko called. "Do you hear anything?"
Shin had his Echolocation jutsu up. Ryoko didn't know the details, but it enhanced the kid's hearing in return for enhancing the noises that he made. Luckily, skywalking was pretty quiet, with no tree branches to disturb, or leaves to rustle.
"...No, ma'am," the kid answered, embarrassed and ashamed.
Ryoko held back a sigh. Shin was a decent enough hunter nin, despite being new at the position. His remedial training –Ryoko regularly browbeat enough of her peers to take an afternoon or two to show the kid some tricks –had helped him come a long way from the bullshitstupidinsane–
Ryoko cut off the line of thought before bad memories caught up to her. Not the kid's fault he had bad orders.
"Sugiyama?"
"Nah."
Not too surprising. Sugiyama was a medical nin and a taijutsu spec, and although their dual-specialization was hard-won through long hours of bitter, incremental work, they were no sensor nin.
None of them were. What was Lord Eighth thinking?
Ryoko picked up speed, pushing the entire team harder.
0-0-0-0
The walls of Santoshi, built by Leaf, and paid for by the Mad Lord, were broken. High granite walls, once standing tall and proud, now crumbled into ruin.
Ryoko stood above the once-vibrant farming hamlet and frowned. Crushed wooded buildings, their solid beams broken into splinters like an angry kami let loose upon the town.
An angry Kami… or a ninja with orders.
Ryoko leapt off the wall, skywalking her way from Santoshi's wall, into the town square. Ryoko didn't slow for an in-depth examination, but even the brief, combat-aware glances revealed much.
Blood-drenched piles of human meat and gore, smoldering embers that languished in the graveyards of homes, upturned earth that made a mess of garden plots and crushed flowerbeds.
Ryoko's hand rested on her axe.
"Ma'am!" Shin's voice cracked in a hurried whisper, pointing across the ruined town square. "Scavengers."
Ryoko turned, and saw a small pride of Mooselions, their immense shoulders equal to the shattered remains of the buildings around them, dark manes speckled with congealed blood, and antlers dusty from overturning rubble to get to the dead.
Ryoko saw red, flying through handseals before she could think.
"Fire Element: Ancestor's Fury!"
Her axe, a deceptively plain thing, bathed in angry, azure flames
The largest of the chakra beasts lifted its muzzle skyward and roared. The other two beasts –a medium-sized beast with blue fur, and a smaller, lythe one, with a coat speckled with brown and green –swelled with encouragement, raising their own bestial cries in response.
Shin canceled his skywalkers and dropped to the ground, hands flying through seals.
"Earth Element: Earth Needle Spears!"
His hands slapped against the broken cobblestones beneath him, and spears of Earth rocketed towards each of the Mooselions.
The alpha Mooselion darted to the side, the earthen spear only just grazing its flank and slamming into a well behind it, collapsing the circular stone wall.
The blue and green Mooselions were less fortunate. Unable to fully twist out of the way, the Blue Mooselion took the brunt of Shin's attack on its face. Fresh blood mixed with old, and dripped down the chakra beast's muzzle.
The smaller, brown-green Mooselion tried to leap back, away from the jutsu, only for the spear to hit it on the shoulder, pushing the creature back.
As Shin had begun to fall to the ground, Sugiyama remained up high, casting their own jutsu with a cry of "Fire Element: Farseer's Shroud!"
A multi-hued shroud of chakra wrapped them warm, crackling flames that seemed to flare this way and that.
Sugiyama dropped next to Shin as his jutsu hit the Mooselion Pack, palming an explosive tag.
The Alpha Mooselion's beady eyes contorted with maddened hatred. It charged at Shin, roaring in encouragement to its pack members, and gored Shin with its antlers.
Shin's body arched upwards, even as Ryoko's axe fell down.
Ryoko's own blood-drunk warcry matched the Alpha Mooselion's roar as she dropped from on high, her axe's blade dancing with azure flames as it bit deeply, eagerly, into the chakra beast's neck, which had been oh-so-generously extended skyward as it tried to throw Shin off its antlers.
He is a child.
Blood gushed from underneath Ryoko's axe as she tore through the creature's meaty neck. Chakra surged through her body, and, muscles straining, she sliced through the spinal column.
You will not have him.
Its massive head went flying, and Shin fell to the side, catching himself with one knee and a palm on the ground, eyes never leaving the remaining chakra beasts.
As the head flew off to the side, the smaller, green-speckled Mooselion roared –Ryoko couldn't hear it over the sound of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears –and it darted forward, head bent and antlers locked, towards Shin's vulnerable form.
Shin hastily lifted his hands, and Substituted with some nearby stone rubble, which the creature's antlers crushed into powder with the force of its attack.
The larger, blue-furred Mooselion charged at Ryoko, roaring with fury and grief.
Ryoko firmed her stance, and when the chakra beast got close enough, slammed her axe through the beast's charge. Her axe, lit with azure flames, cut through the antlers of the Mooselion like butter, slicing deeply into its skull, bouncing the creature's head against the ground.
"Earth Element: Mud Bullet!"
Shin's favored jutsu flung a boulder of mud into the downed Mooselion, and blue fur soaked with red blood as the jutsu crushed the beast's head with a wet crunch.
Before the blue-furred beast completely stilled, Sugiyama leapt towards the remaining chakra beast, bathed in the multi-hued light of their jutsu.
Hands, nimble and dexterous from working long hours in surgery, wove around the green-furred Mooselion's attacks. Working ambidextrously, Sugiyama's left hand plucked out an eyeball, and their right hand tore out a fang.
Ryoko's axe flashed, whirling a blue trail behind her, and cut it in two.
"Shin." Ryoko's whispered voice carried across the now-still battlefield. Once, Shin might have been mistaken by the calm tone of her voice. He had been an idiot, then. "Why didn't you use Substitution when the Mooselion Alpha attacked you?"
Green eyes danced with blue flames as she awaited his answer.
Notice: All the NPC/Enemy dice rolls have been changed to "+??," regardless of their actual roll ;>
Supps refresh at the start of initiative in FtD. So she should have had her reflexive ones to use prior to her first turn, and then two more after her initiative.
Supps refresh at the start of initiative in FtD. So she should have had her reflexive ones to use prior to her first turn, and then two more after her initiative.
my thinking is that we should start with the broken homes. no strong reason, but i think relatively speaking it's easier for equivalent details of interest to go unnoticed at distant inspection if it's inside a building versus out in the open.
[x] Broken homes first
[x] Broken homes first, then town square, then the wall, then farming fields
(think wall is probably also of interest, but i mostly opt for this order since my intuition is that it leads to less backtracking. though i guess ninja are fast, so that's a meaningless micro optimization)
[x] Do not split the party
not 100% sure if shin not subbing is sus, but i get the feeling it is, which definitely disinclines me from splitting up
a quick check of the char sheet says we have 6 fp, so i'm definitely in favor of spending 1 or 2 if advantageous, but i'm unfamiliar with the economy so i'll vote for someone who lays down a more specific policy
with that out of the way — this was a fantastic chapter. i think i've complimented the eye for detail and description before, but this chapter takes it to a whole new level.
The walls of Santoshi, built by Leaf, and paid for by the Mad Lord, were broken. High granite walls, once standing tall and proud, now crumbled into ruin.
Ryoko stood above the once-vibrant farming hamlet and frowned. Crushed wooded buildings, their solid beams broken into splinters like an angry kami let loose upon the town.
An angry Kami… or a ninja with orders.
Ryoko leapt off the wall, skywalking her way from Santoshi's wall, into the town square. Ryoko didn't slow for an in-depth examination, but even the brief, combat-aware glances revealed much.
Blood-drenched piles of human meat and gore, smoldering embers that languished in the graveyards of homes, upturned earth that made a mess of garden plots and crushed flowerbeds.
Blood gushed from underneath Ryoko's axe as she tore through the creature's meaty neck. Chakra surged through her body, and, muscles straining, she sliced through the spinal column.
We need like a set of Decay and wild creatures eating the organic matter we also need to consider how much time examining these things should in theory take
my current belief is the Town Square will take the longest to examine
it's also interesting to note that the town seems to have its Earth turned over
my current thoughts of what it could be is Ninja(s) or an S-class chakra Beast
my thinking is that we should start with the broken homes. no strong reason, but i think relatively speaking it's easier for equivalent details of interest to go unnoticed at distant inspection if it's inside a building versus out in the open.
[x] Broken homes first
[x] Broken homes first, then town square, then the wall, then farming fields
(think wall is probably also of interest, but i mostly opt for this order since my intuition is that it leads to less backtracking. though i guess ninja are fast, so that's a meaningless micro optimization)
[x] Do not split the party
not 100% sure if shin not subbing is sus, but i get the feeling it is, which definitely disinclines me from splitting up
a quick check of the char sheet says we have 6 fp, so i'm definitely in favor of spending 1 or 2 if advantageous, but i'm unfamiliar with the economy so i'll vote for someone who lays down a more specific policy
with that out of the way — this was a fantastic chapter. i think i've complimented the eye for detail and description before, but this chapter takes it to a whole new level.
especially this ominous bit at beginning impressed me, just back to back tasty descriptions
also appreciated seeing this protective side of ryoko. always love a bit of characterization midcombat.
these two bits also stood out to me as nicely insightful. also sugi's moment was pretty badass. they out here plucking eyeballs.
between shin and the lack of sensor-nin, something's definitely off methinks
I agree with @snuggleee that the houses seem like the best bet for clues - if anywhere has been spared from scavengers and weather, it will be what remains of the interiors.
And if that's where clues will most likely be, we should be invested in a good roll, meaning being willing to spend a Fate Point.
@RandomOTP are the fields enclosed by the wall? If so I'll swap so the walls go last.
[X] Action Plan: Inside Out
Investigate in this order
Broken homes
Town square
The remains of the wall and the immediate outlying area
Farming fields
Don't split the party.
Spend 1 FP for an investigative roll on the homes.
Ninja won't waste chakra on that, they'll just run over it.
If beasts smashed it, I'd expect them to stay here and eat for as long as the meat lasts, not abandon perfectly good meat. For something that can smash walls, a civilian village is the best possible food source; large volume, low mobility, and really low danger/biomass ratio. It would be the jackpot of food sources, so why isn't it here?
[X] wall first, then homes, square, fields.
[X] stay together
"Shin." Ryoko's whispered voice carried across the now-still battlefield. Once, Shin might have been mistaken by the calm tone of her voice. He had been an idiot, then. "Why didn't you use Substitution when the Mooselion Alpha attacked you?"
Green eyes danced with blue flames as she awaited his answer.
Shin gulped, struggling to find his voice as his not-quite-sensei looked down at him with murder in her eyes, blood spattered across her face adding to the sense of impending doom.
"I… I have no excuse, ma'am," Shin bowed deeply. If not for the fact that they were in the field, he would have dropped into dogeza. "I saw it running towards me, and I panicked. I'm still not used to being in combat, and I promise it won't happen again!"
Green sterile chakra lit up as Sugiyama stepped forward, examining the young teenager for wounds.
Ryoko held her silence, axe alight with azure flames.
"He's an idiot," Sugiyama drolled after a moment, stepping away from Shin. "But he's young. He fucked up, but he's alive. He won't fuck up again.Will he?"
"No, Chunnin Sugiyama!"
Ryoko held her silence for a moment longer, tension thick in the air, and Shin could feel his future balanced on a knife's edge. He had lucked out with Ryoko's attention, he knew. He had overspecialized into jutsu research without a proper grounding in the fundamentals, and with the war with Rock demanding all hands on deck… it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Shin would have been an early casualty in the war, if not for Ryoko grabbing him by the collar, and forcing him to go through intense remedial combat training.
Azure flames faltered, then faded, and were finally snuffed as Ryoko ended the jutsu and stowed her axe in a storage seal strapped to her forearm.
"You're going to do three days of full-intensity training with Rock Lee, revisiting how to dodge properly. If that isn't enough to drill one of the academy basics into your head, then your punishment will become a week of full-intensity training with me."
Ryoko's tone, cold and commanding, brooked no argument. In the distance, a blizzard roared, and Shin felt a frozen, crystalized heat pressing against his heart. Hard and unyielding like a reinforced blade, it burned an arctic heat against Shin's chest.
"Yes ma'am!"
There was no other option.
"Good, now come on, let's look around the town square. Sugiyama, check out the… bodies, and see what you can glean from what's left."
"Bodies," Ryoko thought as she looked at the mounds of meat, blood, and viscera, feeling a professional sense of scorn. "I'm not sure they qualify for the term. Not anymore."
The thrill of combat was ever-known to her, and the blood-drunk rush of combat was an old friend to Ryoko, but this? This was wasteful. Tactless. There was no professional courtesy, completing the mission with efficiency and moving on. Not even the cold compassion of a quick death. This was maddened, senseless cruelty.
Ryoko wore her stoicism like a mask and buried the building sneer deep within her heart.
"Shin," Ryoko called, causing the young teenager to lift his head. "We're going to examine the rents in the ground. See if we can't tell what caused it."
Sugiyama's hands, Ryoko saw, were once again lit up with gleaming emerald medical chakra, condensed around their fingers, helping the medic nin slice into the piles of gore for study.
Ryoko caught Shin's pale expression at the field autopsy, and grabbed the top of his head, gently turning the boy so that his back was to Sugiyama's work.
Ryoko, however, kept Sugiyama in her peripheral vision.
They were still in the field, after all.
She drew Shin's attention to one of the many rents in the ground, wide cuboid holes running along the surface of the ground before suddenly ending at the ruins of a broken hut. Stone and wood, once standing tall and proud, now crushed into a makeshift grave.
Ryoko turned her eyes away from the ruin, and to Shin.
"Tell me what you see."
Shin knelt down on the ground, running his hands through the upturned soil. It yielded easily to his touch, and Shin made a few passes, before sinking his hands into the ground, burying his arm to the mid-forearm.
"Do you have a shovel, ma–"
Ryoko tapped a seal in her bandolier, producing a pickaxe whose metal head was half-pick, half-gardening hoe.
Shin paused, not-quite masking his surprise.
"Never know when you're going to need to carve out an enemy out of a Mud Hug, or dig an ally out of a Sinkhole Trap."
"...right," Shin acknowledged, and Ryoko could see him mentally adding the tool to his grocery list.
Shin set the flattened blade of the hoe to the ground, digging through the softened, upturned soil, and through to the hardened, natural, ground underneath.
Ryoko watched in amusement as Shin followed the rent in the earth a few yards down its length. There were easier ways to discover what Shin was searching for, but in the end, results were what mattered.
Ryoko's head swiveled, tracking movement in her peripheral. Sugiyama had moved from a waist-high pile of viscera, over to the now-shattered water well. Hands alight with medical chakra, Sugiyama seemed to be running through various diagnostic jutsu.
Judging by the scowl on their face, it didn't seem to be going over well.
"I think I have an answer, ma'am!" Shin jogged back up to where Ryoko stood, pickaxe in hand.
"Give me your report, then, chuunin," Ryoko ordered, donning the mantle of team leader as she once again sealed the tool away.
"Most chakra beasts who tunnel through the ground do so at deeper levels than what these rents go down to. They do so to avoid surface predators who can detect them near the topsoil. The more dangerous the subterrain chakra beast, the deeper it traverses, only surfacing if it senses adequate prey." Shin launched into his deduction, earlier embarrassment and shame driven away by academic certainty and an eagerness to redeem himself.
"The few chakra beasts who do tunnel this close to the surface tend to be more minor threats, and so they avoid civilian settlements because the tremors of their collective footsteps mimic larger beasts that these, smaller, creatures instinctively avoid."
Ryoko nodded in agreement, consciously twitching her lips into a small, proud smile that she didn't feel. The boy was young, and needed encouragement. The approval, she knew, would bolster Shin and motivate him to keep training.
He's just a boy.
"You're right," Ryoko pitched her tone towards mischievousness. "But you didn't need to ruin your pants to discover that."
She squatted down, gesturing towards the edges of a nearby rent –away from where Shin had been shoveling.
"Do you see these cuboid holes? The perfect vertices and definite edges? Go look at where you cast your Needle Spear jutsu, and compare them."
Shin kneeled down next to Ryoko, running his fingers in the rent, tracing the outlines that she had pointed out, and then ran over to do the same where he had cast his jutsu.
"They're… the same," Shin mused thoughtfully. "The holes where the chakra construct spears launched out of the ground are similar to the rents in the ground. They're perfect geometric polygons. Nature doesn't do perfect."
This time, Ryoko's proud smile felt more genuine.
"So these weren't caused by chakra beasts –subterranean chakra beasts like the Arctic Bullworm just shove dirt and soil out of their way, " Shin thought aloud, his gaze turned inward. "But by earth jutsu… one, big earth jutsu, or several smaller ones?"
"I don't know," Ryoko shrugged. "It's been long enough that a lot of these rents have been flattened by wandering chakra beasts, so I can't tell if there's a definitive middle. Or maybe such a jutsu wouldn't have a concentric rings, but would lash out in one big, contiguous line, directed by the caster's will."
"But either way, it would take some pretty large reserves."
"Or several different ninja working in concert," Ryoko corrected. "But that has its own problems."
"Not when I get ahold of them," Sugiyama chimed in, their arms stained red from the elbow. "They've got some explaining to do."
Before Ryoko could ask them to clarify, Sugiyama began to strip out of their bloodstained outer layer and change into a new shirt –ranting their report all the while.
"These fuckers poisoned the well in Santoshi. It's been a few weeks –maybe even a month or two –so it's too diluted to tell, but I took some samples for the Tower to examine. Whatever it is, it really messed with these civilians. Destabilized their humors horribly, and caused their internal bile to eat away at their circulatory systems, inflame their chakra coils, and melt their organs."
"All that?" Ryoko's eyebrows raised. "Shouldn't be too hard to–"
"Normally you'd be right," Sugiyama said, throwing on a slightly-overlarge sweater, and sealing away the bloodstained top. "But civilians lack a ninja's constitution, and our poison resistance training. So the list of shit that could cause this is a mile long, and I'm a dual-specialist that's not named Tsunade. Still, I've got blood samples, organ samples, and water samples from the well. Maybe the Tower can figure it out, because I sure as shit can't. Not out in the field, anyway."
Ryoko sighed.
"Well, come on, let's go check out the houses. Maybe we can find more clues there."
Voting is closed, Part 2 Coming Tomorrow
Town Square
Upturned Earth
Ryoko 44 (examination) + 6 (dice) = 50
Shin ?? (examination) + ?? (dice) = ??
Civilian Bodies
Sugiyama ?? (Mednin to take samples) + ?? (dice) = ??
when chapters start splitting, that's how you know the story is getting juicy. this exchange was a bit reassuring - maybe it's me being gullible, but i buy shin's explanation.
the exposition about chakra beast ecology was pretty yummy, as well as the mechanism behind the poison, and overall the deduction was fun to read. threaded through with the understandable horror ryoko has at the slaughter aftermath they're witnessing.
looking forward to the followup
so, that all but confirms we're looking at enemy action. i mildly expect many ninja working in concert, though i'm curious what the issues with that explanation are. more importantly, should we be more worried about many or one? one guy with huge reserves seems spooky
Ryoko nodded in agreement, consciously twitching her lips into a small, proud smile that she didn't feel. The boy was young, and needed encouragement. The approval, she knew, would bolster Shin and motivate him to keep training.
I like her. She's a good teacher, recognizing that kids need encouragement even in small things.
Clearly it's enemy action. Earth jutsu suggests Rock, but I don't remember where we are in the timeline. Is this before the war or are we seeing a new one gear up or...?
