End of an Era (Naruto AU)
- Thread starter The Laurent
- Start date
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Am I allowed to tell you that you did a good? Not in the fight, which is still going, but whoever thought of Stinger the Dodge Tank...
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Though he's only chipping away at the "bad guys."
...I mean, partially because Shizue isn't trying to murder people.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Also, Ryuko's agility is really dragging her down, but her Armor 5 is saving her from being chipped away to nothing.
- Location
- Hell
I just remember being bothered by this, but what is the difference between her Armor and Structure stat?
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Structure is HP, Armor is DR.
Thus, in order to damage her at all, you basically need to do 6 damage or more. Which isn't that hard considering her bad Agility, but does make it hard for armies of mooks to just swarm her.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Lemme pull up the puppet stat sheet for everyone.
Spring Loaded and Extending Arms are both some kind of 'free' re-roll for attacks, I think? I don't know if it can apply to dodging or not. Agility is the highest stat, and five of its equipment boost Agility one way or another.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Spring-loaded is a one-time reroll for attacking... or dodging. Extending Arms is a semi-free reroll for attacks that can be done repeatedly. Suna Ryu boosts Agility as well. Basically, it's very hard to hit Stinger.
Act 4, Scene 30 (Start)
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Act 4, Scene 30: The People of the Desert, Uncommon Ground
When people moved, it wasn't easily, and it wasn't simply. Hundreds and hundreds of people, and even more cows than that, meant that it took all day to come together. There was just no way to truly understand the sheer logistical impossibility of it all until you had a chance to watch it.
Shizue's home town was bigger than this, but it had never had to move together like this, and so she watched, slightly baffled, as tents were pulled up, and men and women went this way and that, yelling in a language she couldn't understand. They were like ants, swarming from one problem to the next, and Chuichi was among them, trying to help things be put together.
Okiie was somewhere there, too, with Seiichiro, trying to control the stubborn horses and the even more stubborn cattle.
They didn't like to be denied the food they'd been eating, Shizue assumed, frowning a little and pacing at the outside edge of the temporary village as it packed itself up. Some of the supplies were put on the horses, but there were also a lot of women and men carrying things on their backs.
"Huh," Shizue said ,pacing one way and the next, peering out at the edge of the rising sun, at the stage where it promised to come up, but didn't quite. They'd woken up at an hour so early that even Chuichi had been startled and wide-eyed, staring out into the darkness of a few hours after midnight and saying, "Can't they… sleep? Or at least leave in the night if they're going to do this?"
But Shizue didn't need to think for more than a few seconds to figure out why they didn't go in the night.
Think, and look up. The moon was almost fully dark, and there were wispy clouds, here and there. The light would be uncertain, and looking at the absolute chaos that was going on here, she tried to imagine how much worse it'd be at night, how easy it'd be for cattle to wander off or someone to be forgotten in the chaos and sleeplessness of such a night.
A village of shinobi might be able to move by night, but a village of civilians needed time and effort.
They were a fragile thing, in a certain way. That many people together? If an attack came, it'd be chaos, and Shizue felt like she needed to make sure it didn't come.
Who knew what you could find out there? After all, Emiko-sensei was out there. She could imagine a group of chakra-powered bandits out there in the same way, hidden in the dunes, waiting to attack one group or another.
She needed to be very, very wary. And very careful as well.
[Opening Song/Etc]
Despite her very justified and not at all typical paranoia, nothing bad happened when everyone got together. It was a huge mass of people and animals, smells and sounds strong enough to knock a girl out, and chaotic enough that just getting them to go in the same direction involved many, many dozens of men on horses… and that was just for the cattle.
The people themselves trudged forward generally, but when those ahead of them turned, so did they, and many of them had their own cattle or horses that they held separately from the larger herd which was no doubt branded, though Shizue couldn't make out an obvious mark on most of the cattle. But that just meant she wasn't looking at the right places.
As they finally got to moving, Shizue allowed herself to circle around. She wasn't very fast by the standards of many of the shinobi she knew, but she was fast enough to walk rings around the mass of people, at least, though the cattle were somewhat ahead of the pack, trampling their way through the dust, dirt, and sand as they made their way onwards.
It was an impressive sight, all of those cattle going in the same direction, moving together in one huge mass, penned in on all sides by men on horses, who carefully managed them despite being so much smaller and so much weaker than the cows, especially the bulls, whose very presence reminded Shizue of someone she hadn't seen in a long time.
She hadn't even really known the girl before they'd fought, but the memory was enough that she got lost in it, pacing around and around the traveling village.
She didn't know how long it'd take to reach the next spot over. But she did know that this kind of movement had to be taxing on a person. Especially the children, who were going to have to walk just the same as the adults.
The only relief from this were the carts, but there were only so many carts, and the people who got on them were the old, pregnant women, very young children, and of course some of the food supplies. Especially salt. When she circled around the area to check it for any signs of theft, she saw that there were bags and bags of the stuff, which made her wonder about it.
She assumed that they were salting things to make them keep, considering how fast things might otherwise go bad, but at the same time, cart after cart filled with salt seemed almost excessive.
When she stopped during their mid-morning breakfast, she asked Chuichi.
The chunin frowned and shaked his shaggy head. "Some of that's for them, but there are also cattle ranchers they'll sell that to. Salt-mining makes plenty of money, from what I've heard, and if they have many cattle, then the ranchers? They have even more."
Shizue glanced over in the direction of the cattle, and wondered just how many. Hundreds? Thousands? Not likely quite that many. Either way, there were enough of them that it was no wonder that they couldn't stay in one place for too long. Though even by that standard, the lands seemed to be worse.
"Oh?"
"And so that's something to sell."
"The grass barely seems enough to keep this many cattle," Shizue said, though she had also noticed that despite all of that, the cattle didn't seem… malnourished? Most of them, at least.
"They do move farther south, and there's better lands there, but." Chuichi frowned. "Well, politics is politics, and these sets of tribes are at the end of a long stick."
"The end of a long stick?" Shizue asked.
"There are deeper tribes, but they're far more safe from the Daimyo then people like this," Chuichi said. "So they have to be careful."
"About what?"
"Being run over," Chuichi said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
And perhaps it was.
Shizue frowned, thinking about how the small islands were treated by the bigger islands. And while these were a lot of people, they were no match for the Daimyo's armies, let alone Suna. Even if every single one of the people in this little moving tribe were an experienced shinobi, they'd not stand a chance against something as powerful and experienced as Suna.
So they didn't try, and they lived… carefully?
In balance, but the sort of balance you reached when you had only just enough to get by and no more.
It made her wonder at the puppet toy, actually: Isonash and Katkemat's parents must have been pretty well off to have such a toy at all. These were thoughts to help pass the time, veil pulled down, as she ate a quick bite, barely tasting it at all, and then resumed her patrols. She had a feeling that by the time she reached their destination, she'd want to find somewhere and lay down and think of not moving for a few hours.
It was the heat, it got into you, even with the veil. She'd faced it before, but now there was the noise and the stress, the slight worries that ate into themselves about whether or not she was in danger. She wanted to do her job, and that meant that she watched and waited, and others kept out of her way, well aware that as a shinobi she was not someone you kept close to.
That, at least, was something Shizue was used to, as she squinted out into the haze of a hot day.
It was almost another hour of pacing and checking in to make sure that everyone was okay when the incident happened.
*******
It began with a sound like a bird cawing, loud and long, and then from behind a rise in the hills they came.
There were almost two dozen figures approaching, all of them mounted. The horses were big, scary looking beasts, and they were going straight for the cattle. Some of them had batons, while others were nocking arrows even as they were riding.
Shizue hesitated for only a single moment, the span of a heartbeat as she tried to figure out what she should do. It was clear that they were trying to… steal the cattle. That's what made sense.
As she ran, she formed the hand seals, trying to get between them and the herd.
They wanted to make the cattle stampede and run away, and then they'd chase them down and take them away.
She tried not to choke on her own dust as she rean, fingers quickly forming into a seal as she shaped the chakra carefully.
Damage wasn't needed, not when they were riding horses. What was needed as making sure to get the entire group, which was starting to spread out even as they moved… and then knocking them as far back as possible.
In the span of that heartbeat, she stepped in front of them, and for a moment she almost panicked. It was the horses. It made them look huge and threatening, and she understood now how people could be scared of the things. Each of the young men, and they all looked young, was clad in thick robes to block out the sun, though she assumed that it wasn't armor.
She hoped she didn't kill anyone.
'Ninja art: Wall of Sound' she thought, focusing and concentrating as she roared.
Suzuhisa Shizue had never truly seen what her own jutsu could do until that moment. She'd used it against a single target, or to generally destroy an area, she'd practiced it again and again until she started learning how to weaken the punch of the wall, but diffuse the force in a way that made it carry further, on both sides.
She'd gained true understanding of the wall of sound, and the ways that it differed from a breakthrough.
Now she saw what she could do.
Horse stumbled and then toppled, thrown back along with their riders as people who had been standing up in the saddle flew off, hitting the ground and rolling, desperately borne back just in time to keep from getting crushed by their own mounts as they too toppled.
The sound was horrific, and the sight itself made her freeze, for another moment of hesitation that she almost couldn't afford.
Horses screams were loud, and some of their legs broke, not so much from the force of the jutsu, as from the falling around and flailing. A man was kicked in the arm, and a crack of breaking bones was added to the din. In a single instant, she was back in a brothel, watching what happened to civilians when they crossed paths with shinobi.
Only this was a thousand times worse. Her hand almost hesitated too long, but she managed to push herself back into action as she pulled out the first scroll and slid her thumb across its surface.
There was Stinger, her dapper gentlemen, dark and robed, as she bring him standing up with a single hand, fists coming out. If she used a knife, she'd be a murderer. After all, these were just a bunch of desert hooligans of some type. Not worth killing, even if she wasn't opposed to so openly and easily slaughtering others.
He lurched forward, as some of the people got up. It was only about half of them, a dozen people in all, but they were drawing their bows and trying to fight back despite the devastating blow.
It really didn't make sense: usually when you knocked civilians about that hard, they backed down, at least for a little bit, to figure out what to do.
This was hard-earned experience. The civilians had never rioted in the streets, but anytime a group of civilians had stood up against more than a single ninja, it'd ended badly. You bided your time, you complained about them.
You didn't advance, you didn't fight back.
Shizue was pulling out the other scroll and pushing chakra into it as she swiped her fingers across it when the first arrow went for her. She half-dodged around it, trying not to move her fingers even as the arrow, poorly aimed, whizzed by her shoulder, at roughly where she'd been a moment before.
Her feet slipped for a second, and then Ryuko, her fancy lady, appeared.
Most of all, Ryuko was a wall. Shizue pushed herself behind her dragon and turned her girl's head on them.
She didn't even need to see them to spray an oil-slick in their general direction, the black oil pouring out of its mouth and spraying everywhere.
Hopefully they'd slip and fall, and if they didn't, Ryuko's tail was still there.
...if rather more lethal than she wanted.
She still hoped that seeing two different puppets under her control would mean that they gave up, but when she peeked around the bulk of the puppet to control Stinger, she saw that they were moving forward, all of them, stepping around horses and men.
The men armed with clubs split in two, some of them headed for Stinger, while others went after Ryuko, and thus Shizue.
What were they thinking? No ordinary civilian without chakra stood a chance against a ninja.
She took a deep breath, trying to understand the situation. Help was on the way, and behind her she could hear the cattle panicking and scattering, but now the cowboys were on the ball, trying to keep them together while staying, she hoped, out of range of any arrows.
As she watched them move, she started to guess that they weren't ordinary civilians. They moved only a little faster than any running men, but when one of them brought down their club, it wasn't as slow and easy to dodge as Shizue thought. Still, her Stinger was a fast gentleman, and he couldn't seem to understand why he missed, as an arrow and then another tried to find their way into Stinger.
But as her gentleman dodged, three men who had went straight for Ryuko slipped on the oil, stumbling and falling in a heap.
He dodged, striking out at the first man to attack him, dodging attacks by the narrowest margins, as three different archers and three men all whacked away with their clubs at Stinger, who managed to dodge as much by sheer gall as anything.
Shizue's mind was as nimble as Stinger, having the puppet leap out of the way when an arrow came from the fourth man to fire, a careful looking young man whose arrow, when it missed, buried itself in the dusty ground with a crack, as if the very earth was about to split.
That decided it, Shizue thought, trying to keep her head down as Ryuko advanced, giving a roar that turned into a wall of sound that sent the three men hurtling back.
They were all shinobi, or at least civilians trained in chakra exercises enough to make them strong enough that if they could only get a good hit on Stinger, no doubt they'd tear him to bits.
But they couldn't, and an arrow glanced off of Ryuko's armor.
Shizue felt a sort of smug satisfaction at that, because she'd made that armor. And she'd made Stinger, she thought as she hummed out a note of pure satisfaction, and let the note turn into something more powerful.
She let it turn into a melody, and the song she was humming was one that she knew they wouldn't appreciate, stumbling and almost falling over suddenly as their balance was disjointed.
This wasn't a fair fight at all, she thought, triumph in her blood as Ryuko roared again and knocked the enemies back once more, though an arrow stabbed at her throat, and actually lodged itself in.
Her heart was racing, and she knew that as unfair as the fight was, if she made a mistake now, she could still be hurt. Hurt in a stupid, one-sided fight. There were a dozen people devoted to harming her, stumbling past the body of hurting horses and their own downed allies, some of whom had gotten up and were now fleeing on foot, or helping their horses up to escape that way.
And yet she hadn't even been touched, for all that she was burning a little of her chakra on this fight.
In the distance, she heard shouts, and as Stinger continued to batter the enemy, dodging and pecking at them, not even close to taking them all out yet, but almost done with one of them, she knew that this fight was already all but over.
If only all fights were like this, instead of miserable, bloody, and desperate affairs in which death seemed like it could at any moment.
The fight almost seemed too easy… and then Okiie barelled in, blowing gusts of wind left and right, and just like that the fight was all but over, and within a handful of seconds the rest of the ones up and about had raised their hands in terrified surrender.
And, Shizue thought hopefully, at least nobody was dead… other than maybe one of the horses.
[Commercial Break]
The man who was, more or less, the village headman wasn't a very prepossessing man. He had a thick, bushy mustache, and a rather thinner curling beard, all of which stood out against his bald dome, which certainly needed the layer after layer of cloth and material he covered it with. Wrapped up that tightly, and as small and thin as he was, he seemed almost like a thin mannequin trying to model plus-sized clothes, but his eyes were fierce and far more alive than that.
His name, or at least the one he gave was Itakshir and he clearly couldn't stand still as he paced back and forth, before the five shinobi.
"I know these kids. They're with the Yanamo Clan."
"Yanamo?" Chuichi asked.
"A nearby tribe. I thought we had good relations with them, but I suppose not. I suppose in these days all men are jackals," Itakshir said viciously. "They could have killed people. That they didn't was because of your work." He nodded in Shizue's direction especially, and she flushed a little and tried to think of how to play it down. "What you did was very impressive, fighting all of them on your own, and with luck we'll be able to round up the last few stray cattle."
He cleared his throat. His voice sounded slightly musical and whistling, an accent he couldn't quite shake, no matter what he tried.
"So, no harm done," Masato said. "We let them off with a warning? Don't do it again, young man, with your chakra and your near-shinobi level skills?" Masato asked it with a frown, as if he actually thought that's what should be done, but the way he framed it only left one answer.
"No, we have to get revenge. I'm willing to hire y'all for a little raid. We're better than them. We're not monsters. We're not traitorous, sand-sucking scum. Just steal a few dozen of their cattle, cause some chaos and commotion, you know how to do that, right? I don't have to tell ninja how to make trouble, do I? Just nothing fatal. Don't hurt anyone unless they get in the way."
The raiders were all unconscious, or tied up and not talking, and Shizue wondered why they'd suddenly attacked like that. But if they were identified as that many young men… that wasn't something that could happen by accident. This wasn't a few bandits who might just be outcast, these were men in good standing with their tribe.
At the same time, something felt off.
What to do?
[] Agree to the mission. Steal a few dozen cows, sow chaos, escape.
[] Argue that they should send an armed delegation to confront the tribe. If it goes in with shinobi support, then surely they'll get the message?
[] Argue that they should ignore it. Or rather… keep the young men as hostages and continue on as if nothing happened. If someone comes to ask for the young men back, then… and if they don't, that's a dozen less people the other tribe has to try the same thing again.
[] Write-in.
*******
A/N: So, here you go.
When people moved, it wasn't easily, and it wasn't simply. Hundreds and hundreds of people, and even more cows than that, meant that it took all day to come together. There was just no way to truly understand the sheer logistical impossibility of it all until you had a chance to watch it.
Shizue's home town was bigger than this, but it had never had to move together like this, and so she watched, slightly baffled, as tents were pulled up, and men and women went this way and that, yelling in a language she couldn't understand. They were like ants, swarming from one problem to the next, and Chuichi was among them, trying to help things be put together.
Okiie was somewhere there, too, with Seiichiro, trying to control the stubborn horses and the even more stubborn cattle.
They didn't like to be denied the food they'd been eating, Shizue assumed, frowning a little and pacing at the outside edge of the temporary village as it packed itself up. Some of the supplies were put on the horses, but there were also a lot of women and men carrying things on their backs.
"Huh," Shizue said ,pacing one way and the next, peering out at the edge of the rising sun, at the stage where it promised to come up, but didn't quite. They'd woken up at an hour so early that even Chuichi had been startled and wide-eyed, staring out into the darkness of a few hours after midnight and saying, "Can't they… sleep? Or at least leave in the night if they're going to do this?"
But Shizue didn't need to think for more than a few seconds to figure out why they didn't go in the night.
Think, and look up. The moon was almost fully dark, and there were wispy clouds, here and there. The light would be uncertain, and looking at the absolute chaos that was going on here, she tried to imagine how much worse it'd be at night, how easy it'd be for cattle to wander off or someone to be forgotten in the chaos and sleeplessness of such a night.
A village of shinobi might be able to move by night, but a village of civilians needed time and effort.
They were a fragile thing, in a certain way. That many people together? If an attack came, it'd be chaos, and Shizue felt like she needed to make sure it didn't come.
Who knew what you could find out there? After all, Emiko-sensei was out there. She could imagine a group of chakra-powered bandits out there in the same way, hidden in the dunes, waiting to attack one group or another.
She needed to be very, very wary. And very careful as well.
[Opening Song/Etc]
Despite her very justified and not at all typical paranoia, nothing bad happened when everyone got together. It was a huge mass of people and animals, smells and sounds strong enough to knock a girl out, and chaotic enough that just getting them to go in the same direction involved many, many dozens of men on horses… and that was just for the cattle.
The people themselves trudged forward generally, but when those ahead of them turned, so did they, and many of them had their own cattle or horses that they held separately from the larger herd which was no doubt branded, though Shizue couldn't make out an obvious mark on most of the cattle. But that just meant she wasn't looking at the right places.
As they finally got to moving, Shizue allowed herself to circle around. She wasn't very fast by the standards of many of the shinobi she knew, but she was fast enough to walk rings around the mass of people, at least, though the cattle were somewhat ahead of the pack, trampling their way through the dust, dirt, and sand as they made their way onwards.
It was an impressive sight, all of those cattle going in the same direction, moving together in one huge mass, penned in on all sides by men on horses, who carefully managed them despite being so much smaller and so much weaker than the cows, especially the bulls, whose very presence reminded Shizue of someone she hadn't seen in a long time.
She hadn't even really known the girl before they'd fought, but the memory was enough that she got lost in it, pacing around and around the traveling village.
She didn't know how long it'd take to reach the next spot over. But she did know that this kind of movement had to be taxing on a person. Especially the children, who were going to have to walk just the same as the adults.
The only relief from this were the carts, but there were only so many carts, and the people who got on them were the old, pregnant women, very young children, and of course some of the food supplies. Especially salt. When she circled around the area to check it for any signs of theft, she saw that there were bags and bags of the stuff, which made her wonder about it.
She assumed that they were salting things to make them keep, considering how fast things might otherwise go bad, but at the same time, cart after cart filled with salt seemed almost excessive.
When she stopped during their mid-morning breakfast, she asked Chuichi.
The chunin frowned and shaked his shaggy head. "Some of that's for them, but there are also cattle ranchers they'll sell that to. Salt-mining makes plenty of money, from what I've heard, and if they have many cattle, then the ranchers? They have even more."
Shizue glanced over in the direction of the cattle, and wondered just how many. Hundreds? Thousands? Not likely quite that many. Either way, there were enough of them that it was no wonder that they couldn't stay in one place for too long. Though even by that standard, the lands seemed to be worse.
"Oh?"
"And so that's something to sell."
"The grass barely seems enough to keep this many cattle," Shizue said, though she had also noticed that despite all of that, the cattle didn't seem… malnourished? Most of them, at least.
"They do move farther south, and there's better lands there, but." Chuichi frowned. "Well, politics is politics, and these sets of tribes are at the end of a long stick."
"The end of a long stick?" Shizue asked.
"There are deeper tribes, but they're far more safe from the Daimyo then people like this," Chuichi said. "So they have to be careful."
"About what?"
"Being run over," Chuichi said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
And perhaps it was.
Shizue frowned, thinking about how the small islands were treated by the bigger islands. And while these were a lot of people, they were no match for the Daimyo's armies, let alone Suna. Even if every single one of the people in this little moving tribe were an experienced shinobi, they'd not stand a chance against something as powerful and experienced as Suna.
So they didn't try, and they lived… carefully?
In balance, but the sort of balance you reached when you had only just enough to get by and no more.
It made her wonder at the puppet toy, actually: Isonash and Katkemat's parents must have been pretty well off to have such a toy at all. These were thoughts to help pass the time, veil pulled down, as she ate a quick bite, barely tasting it at all, and then resumed her patrols. She had a feeling that by the time she reached their destination, she'd want to find somewhere and lay down and think of not moving for a few hours.
It was the heat, it got into you, even with the veil. She'd faced it before, but now there was the noise and the stress, the slight worries that ate into themselves about whether or not she was in danger. She wanted to do her job, and that meant that she watched and waited, and others kept out of her way, well aware that as a shinobi she was not someone you kept close to.
That, at least, was something Shizue was used to, as she squinted out into the haze of a hot day.
It was almost another hour of pacing and checking in to make sure that everyone was okay when the incident happened.
*******
It began with a sound like a bird cawing, loud and long, and then from behind a rise in the hills they came.
There were almost two dozen figures approaching, all of them mounted. The horses were big, scary looking beasts, and they were going straight for the cattle. Some of them had batons, while others were nocking arrows even as they were riding.
Shizue hesitated for only a single moment, the span of a heartbeat as she tried to figure out what she should do. It was clear that they were trying to… steal the cattle. That's what made sense.
As she ran, she formed the hand seals, trying to get between them and the herd.
They wanted to make the cattle stampede and run away, and then they'd chase them down and take them away.
She tried not to choke on her own dust as she rean, fingers quickly forming into a seal as she shaped the chakra carefully.
Damage wasn't needed, not when they were riding horses. What was needed as making sure to get the entire group, which was starting to spread out even as they moved… and then knocking them as far back as possible.
In the span of that heartbeat, she stepped in front of them, and for a moment she almost panicked. It was the horses. It made them look huge and threatening, and she understood now how people could be scared of the things. Each of the young men, and they all looked young, was clad in thick robes to block out the sun, though she assumed that it wasn't armor.
She hoped she didn't kill anyone.
'Ninja art: Wall of Sound' she thought, focusing and concentrating as she roared.
Suzuhisa Shizue had never truly seen what her own jutsu could do until that moment. She'd used it against a single target, or to generally destroy an area, she'd practiced it again and again until she started learning how to weaken the punch of the wall, but diffuse the force in a way that made it carry further, on both sides.
She'd gained true understanding of the wall of sound, and the ways that it differed from a breakthrough.
Now she saw what she could do.
Horse stumbled and then toppled, thrown back along with their riders as people who had been standing up in the saddle flew off, hitting the ground and rolling, desperately borne back just in time to keep from getting crushed by their own mounts as they too toppled.
The sound was horrific, and the sight itself made her freeze, for another moment of hesitation that she almost couldn't afford.
Horses screams were loud, and some of their legs broke, not so much from the force of the jutsu, as from the falling around and flailing. A man was kicked in the arm, and a crack of breaking bones was added to the din. In a single instant, she was back in a brothel, watching what happened to civilians when they crossed paths with shinobi.
Only this was a thousand times worse. Her hand almost hesitated too long, but she managed to push herself back into action as she pulled out the first scroll and slid her thumb across its surface.
There was Stinger, her dapper gentlemen, dark and robed, as she bring him standing up with a single hand, fists coming out. If she used a knife, she'd be a murderer. After all, these were just a bunch of desert hooligans of some type. Not worth killing, even if she wasn't opposed to so openly and easily slaughtering others.
He lurched forward, as some of the people got up. It was only about half of them, a dozen people in all, but they were drawing their bows and trying to fight back despite the devastating blow.
It really didn't make sense: usually when you knocked civilians about that hard, they backed down, at least for a little bit, to figure out what to do.
This was hard-earned experience. The civilians had never rioted in the streets, but anytime a group of civilians had stood up against more than a single ninja, it'd ended badly. You bided your time, you complained about them.
You didn't advance, you didn't fight back.
Shizue was pulling out the other scroll and pushing chakra into it as she swiped her fingers across it when the first arrow went for her. She half-dodged around it, trying not to move her fingers even as the arrow, poorly aimed, whizzed by her shoulder, at roughly where she'd been a moment before.
Her feet slipped for a second, and then Ryuko, her fancy lady, appeared.
Most of all, Ryuko was a wall. Shizue pushed herself behind her dragon and turned her girl's head on them.
She didn't even need to see them to spray an oil-slick in their general direction, the black oil pouring out of its mouth and spraying everywhere.
Hopefully they'd slip and fall, and if they didn't, Ryuko's tail was still there.
...if rather more lethal than she wanted.
She still hoped that seeing two different puppets under her control would mean that they gave up, but when she peeked around the bulk of the puppet to control Stinger, she saw that they were moving forward, all of them, stepping around horses and men.
The men armed with clubs split in two, some of them headed for Stinger, while others went after Ryuko, and thus Shizue.
What were they thinking? No ordinary civilian without chakra stood a chance against a ninja.
She took a deep breath, trying to understand the situation. Help was on the way, and behind her she could hear the cattle panicking and scattering, but now the cowboys were on the ball, trying to keep them together while staying, she hoped, out of range of any arrows.
As she watched them move, she started to guess that they weren't ordinary civilians. They moved only a little faster than any running men, but when one of them brought down their club, it wasn't as slow and easy to dodge as Shizue thought. Still, her Stinger was a fast gentleman, and he couldn't seem to understand why he missed, as an arrow and then another tried to find their way into Stinger.
But as her gentleman dodged, three men who had went straight for Ryuko slipped on the oil, stumbling and falling in a heap.
He dodged, striking out at the first man to attack him, dodging attacks by the narrowest margins, as three different archers and three men all whacked away with their clubs at Stinger, who managed to dodge as much by sheer gall as anything.
Shizue's mind was as nimble as Stinger, having the puppet leap out of the way when an arrow came from the fourth man to fire, a careful looking young man whose arrow, when it missed, buried itself in the dusty ground with a crack, as if the very earth was about to split.
That decided it, Shizue thought, trying to keep her head down as Ryuko advanced, giving a roar that turned into a wall of sound that sent the three men hurtling back.
They were all shinobi, or at least civilians trained in chakra exercises enough to make them strong enough that if they could only get a good hit on Stinger, no doubt they'd tear him to bits.
But they couldn't, and an arrow glanced off of Ryuko's armor.
Shizue felt a sort of smug satisfaction at that, because she'd made that armor. And she'd made Stinger, she thought as she hummed out a note of pure satisfaction, and let the note turn into something more powerful.
She let it turn into a melody, and the song she was humming was one that she knew they wouldn't appreciate, stumbling and almost falling over suddenly as their balance was disjointed.
This wasn't a fair fight at all, she thought, triumph in her blood as Ryuko roared again and knocked the enemies back once more, though an arrow stabbed at her throat, and actually lodged itself in.
Her heart was racing, and she knew that as unfair as the fight was, if she made a mistake now, she could still be hurt. Hurt in a stupid, one-sided fight. There were a dozen people devoted to harming her, stumbling past the body of hurting horses and their own downed allies, some of whom had gotten up and were now fleeing on foot, or helping their horses up to escape that way.
And yet she hadn't even been touched, for all that she was burning a little of her chakra on this fight.
In the distance, she heard shouts, and as Stinger continued to batter the enemy, dodging and pecking at them, not even close to taking them all out yet, but almost done with one of them, she knew that this fight was already all but over.
If only all fights were like this, instead of miserable, bloody, and desperate affairs in which death seemed like it could at any moment.
The fight almost seemed too easy… and then Okiie barelled in, blowing gusts of wind left and right, and just like that the fight was all but over, and within a handful of seconds the rest of the ones up and about had raised their hands in terrified surrender.
And, Shizue thought hopefully, at least nobody was dead… other than maybe one of the horses.
[Commercial Break]
The man who was, more or less, the village headman wasn't a very prepossessing man. He had a thick, bushy mustache, and a rather thinner curling beard, all of which stood out against his bald dome, which certainly needed the layer after layer of cloth and material he covered it with. Wrapped up that tightly, and as small and thin as he was, he seemed almost like a thin mannequin trying to model plus-sized clothes, but his eyes were fierce and far more alive than that.
His name, or at least the one he gave was Itakshir and he clearly couldn't stand still as he paced back and forth, before the five shinobi.
"I know these kids. They're with the Yanamo Clan."
"Yanamo?" Chuichi asked.
"A nearby tribe. I thought we had good relations with them, but I suppose not. I suppose in these days all men are jackals," Itakshir said viciously. "They could have killed people. That they didn't was because of your work." He nodded in Shizue's direction especially, and she flushed a little and tried to think of how to play it down. "What you did was very impressive, fighting all of them on your own, and with luck we'll be able to round up the last few stray cattle."
He cleared his throat. His voice sounded slightly musical and whistling, an accent he couldn't quite shake, no matter what he tried.
"So, no harm done," Masato said. "We let them off with a warning? Don't do it again, young man, with your chakra and your near-shinobi level skills?" Masato asked it with a frown, as if he actually thought that's what should be done, but the way he framed it only left one answer.
"No, we have to get revenge. I'm willing to hire y'all for a little raid. We're better than them. We're not monsters. We're not traitorous, sand-sucking scum. Just steal a few dozen of their cattle, cause some chaos and commotion, you know how to do that, right? I don't have to tell ninja how to make trouble, do I? Just nothing fatal. Don't hurt anyone unless they get in the way."
The raiders were all unconscious, or tied up and not talking, and Shizue wondered why they'd suddenly attacked like that. But if they were identified as that many young men… that wasn't something that could happen by accident. This wasn't a few bandits who might just be outcast, these were men in good standing with their tribe.
At the same time, something felt off.
What to do?
[] Agree to the mission. Steal a few dozen cows, sow chaos, escape.
[] Argue that they should send an armed delegation to confront the tribe. If it goes in with shinobi support, then surely they'll get the message?
[] Argue that they should ignore it. Or rather… keep the young men as hostages and continue on as if nothing happened. If someone comes to ask for the young men back, then… and if they don't, that's a dozen less people the other tribe has to try the same thing again.
[] Write-in.
*******
A/N: So, here you go.
That seemed to have worked out fairly well. No casualties besides some nicks in Ryukos armor. A job well done.
Well Shizue, if you ever become Kage level, a lot more fights will be like this! So look at this as encouragment to keep training hard!
Well Shizue, if you ever become Kage level, a lot more fights will be like this! So look at this as encouragment to keep training hard!
- Location
- scrabbling
[] Argue that they should ignore it. Or rather… keep the young men as hostages and continue on as if nothing happened. If someone comes to ask for the young men back, then… and if they don't, that's a dozen less people the other tribe has to try the same thing again.
this is where I'm leaning. a 'diplomatic' confrontation probably doesn't accomplish much I don't think?
then again, keeping hostages means tying up some of your own resources.
this is where I'm leaning. a 'diplomatic' confrontation probably doesn't accomplish much I don't think?
then again, keeping hostages means tying up some of your own resources.
[X] Agree to the mission. Steal a few dozen cows, sow chaos, escape.
Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with the impulse to just jump right into that trap and see what happens. You know, as a learning experience.
Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with the impulse to just jump right into that trap and see what happens. You know, as a learning experience.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
My computer's busted, and there's not much info to make a good guess, so some quick points:
The attackers had some chakra useage, even if they sucked. Self-taught?
The attackers weren't phased when hit by a jutsu, or whem confrunted by a puppetter and two puppets. (Awesome fight scene seriously loved it.) Speculate they could have expected to face enemy ninja attacks and puppets, but didn't expect to fail (super hard in their faces!)
If the other tribe is doing badly, stealing a few dozen cattle could cripple them.
Lastly it's too easy. It's exactly what we wanted: A higher level, well-paying mission and it falls into our lap easily. Meta narative here: We're missing out on story and xp BIGTIME if we don't find what's underneath the underneath here. At worst it could be aomething really big like tribes trying to learn to be ninja, provoking Suna to crack down on all tribes, (which is plan of person teaching shitty ninja stuff,). At best it's something relatively small-scale gut still worth finding out.
P.S. Coulda learned more this update if more people had voted for it.
P.P.S. Sand-sucking scum is a good insult.
Edit: an insightful from our QM. I don't know what kinda write-in to make and now I'm extra worried.
The attackers had some chakra useage, even if they sucked. Self-taught?
The attackers weren't phased when hit by a jutsu, or whem confrunted by a puppetter and two puppets. (Awesome fight scene seriously loved it.) Speculate they could have expected to face enemy ninja attacks and puppets, but didn't expect to fail (super hard in their faces!)
If the other tribe is doing badly, stealing a few dozen cattle could cripple them.
Lastly it's too easy. It's exactly what we wanted: A higher level, well-paying mission and it falls into our lap easily. Meta narative here: We're missing out on story and xp BIGTIME if we don't find what's underneath the underneath here. At worst it could be aomething really big like tribes trying to learn to be ninja, provoking Suna to crack down on all tribes, (which is plan of person teaching shitty ninja stuff,). At best it's something relatively small-scale gut still worth finding out.
P.S. Coulda learned more this update if more people had voted for it.
P.P.S. Sand-sucking scum is a good insult.
Edit: an insightful from our QM. I don't know what kinda write-in to make and now I'm extra worried.
Last edited:
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I'd much prefer to ask the men why they've done this before heading out. I'm not aware of any reason this is time-sensitive; surely we can wait until one wakes up, or wake them up ourselves, and interrogate them?
[X] There's no obvious time pressure - we should wake a few of the men up and interrogate them first. The reasons for their actions should inform our response.
[X] There's no obvious time pressure - we should wake a few of the men up and interrogate them first. The reasons for their actions should inform our response.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
...vote. I mean, this is a Quest. You Vote in Quests.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I did? Or was that a general call for action?
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Argue that they should send an armed delegation to confront the tribe. If it goes in with shinobi support, then surely they'll get the message?
- Pronouns
- They/Them
General call.
Zeitgeist Blue
Currently Made of Metal
- Location
- Manila, Philippines, GMT +8
[X] Argue that they should ignore it. Or rather… keep the young men as hostages and continue on as if nothing happened. If someone comes to ask for the young men back, then… and if they don't, that's a dozen less people the other tribe has to try the same thing again.
pantherasapiens
you were always my best friend
- Location
- somewhere over your shoulder
[X] Argue that they should ignore it. Or rather… keep the young men as hostages and continue on as if nothing happened. If someone comes to ask for the young men back, then… and if they don't, that's a dozen less people the other tribe has to try the same thing again.
[X] Argue that they should send an armed delegation to confront the tribe. If it goes in with shinobi support, then surely they'll get the message?
I think it is likely that the other tribe has somehow fallen on hard tribes, maybe by baron involvement. Raiding them back will only make them more determined to try and make up their losses somehow - maybe raiding other tribes or attacking the ranchers. If we want to figure out the root of the problem we need to negotiate with them.
I think it is likely that the other tribe has somehow fallen on hard tribes, maybe by baron involvement. Raiding them back will only make them more determined to try and make up their losses somehow - maybe raiding other tribes or attacking the ranchers. If we want to figure out the root of the problem we need to negotiate with them.
- Location
- North Carolina
[X] Argue that they should ignore it. Or rather… keep the young men as hostages and continue on as if nothing happened. If someone comes to ask for the young men back, then… and if they don't, that's a dozen less people the other tribe has to try the same thing again.