It's always good to see the QM agreeing with the players.
[X] (+1 FP) Accept Compel: Someone off-screen in the city took note of your appearance. After you're gone, they'll realize that you were Hatake Kakashi and report it.
[X] (Medic) Sakaguchi
Yes! It worked! More exciting times ahead!
(Though, you need to convince me you two are more evil+enjoying of punching, which I look forward to the attempt however it turns out)
[X] (-1 FP) Reject Compel: Your disguise was quite good. No one noticed, and Kakashi was careful (in his off-screen interactions) to obscure his distinctive features and flair.
[X] (+1 FP) Accept Compel: Someone off-screen in the city took note of your appearance. After you're gone, they'll realize that you were Hatake Kakashi and report it.
[X] Accept Compel: Someone off-screen in the city took note of your appearance. After you're gone, they'll realize that you were Hatake Kakashi and report it.
[X] (-1 FP) Reject Compel: Your disguise was quite good. No one noticed, and Kakashi was careful (in his off-screen interactions) to obscure his distinctive features and flair.
[X] (+1 FP) Accept Compel: Someone off-screen in the city took note of your appearance. After you're gone, they'll realize that you were Hatake Kakashi and report it.
[X] Accept Compel: Someone off-screen in the city took note of your appearance. After you're gone, they'll realize that you were Hatake Kakashi and report it.
[x] Find more of the chakra medicine, subtly investigate the shortage.Find out why the guards are using silver weapons instead of iron/steel. Ask locals about the giant skeleton.
[X] (-1 FP) Reject Compel: Your disguise was quite good. No one noticed, and Kakashi was careful (in his off-screen interactions) to obscure his distinctive features and flair.
[X] (+1 FP) Accept Compel: Someone off-screen in the city took note of your appearance. After you're gone, they'll realize that you were Hatake Kakashi and report it.
[X] Accept Compel: Someone off-screen in the city took note of your appearance. After you're gone, they'll realize that you were Hatake Kakashi and report it.
[x] Find more of the chakra medicine, subtly investigate the shortage.Find out why the guards are using silver weapons instead of iron/steel. Ask locals about the giant skeleton.
And if upon your travels you should find a kami on the road, be wary, for the kami murdered themselves long ago, and left us at the mercy of the gibbering fools known to this world as shinobi.
In fact, if you meet a kami on the road, you are probably under an illusion, or drunk enough that you're yelling incoherently at a cow's ass.
-Demon Country proverb, source unknown
It was the week of the Feast of Banners, and Nishikigoi Kenichi was admiring the festivities during his walk through the city of Shimeno-within-Sea. The capital city was bustling, with crowds of excited citizens moving back and forth waving streamers and dancing to music, the occasional foreigner looking on in and exulting in the celebration, as if they had never seen a proper festival in their lives. Though truth be told, the Salmon District was generally the liveliest at this time of year.
The smoke from the incense burners and the various bonfires left a cloying haze in the air that stung at his eyes and dried out his scales. They would itch something fierce later; he would definitely need to go for a swim or two before bedtime. It was fortunate that the Nishikigoi compound in the city had a number of salt-water baths that the fifteen year old could avail himself of before retiring for the evening.
Kenichi's eyes scanned the crowd, looking for any signs of trouble. He was on duty this week to help keep order in the city, and — lunch break or not — that's a job that was especially important during the festival. He was a ways away from the Carp district he was supposed to be patrolling, and he would have to hurry back before his hour was up (else grandfather would take it out of his backside), so cutting through the Eel district would be necessary. Kenichi never liked traversing the Eel district, it smelled like shit, and it was filled with loud taverns, whorehouses, and other establishments that attracted trouble like a bucket of fish guts attracted flies.
Kenichi passed through a series of back alleys that would get him through to the Eel district with (hopefully) minimal fuss. He passed by the trash-filled backsides of a couple buildings, but stopped when he noticed a bundle of rags surrounded by a flock of seagulls. Closer inspection revealed the bundle of rags to be an old woman.
The woman had a mass of silver-white hair, that was heavily matted down with oil and filth, and knotted in several places. She wore faded orange robes that looked and smelled as if they hadn't been washed in a year. Her face was gaunt and lined with age. Most noticeably, the sleeve on her right side fluttered and swayed limply in the breeze. Kenichi squinted past the crowd of seagulls moving about. Yup. Her right arm looked to be missing at the shoulder.
"Hello, ma'am, is there…" Kenichi trailed off, as some of the seagulls noticed his presence and squawked loudly in response. The majority of them flew off.
"Eh?"
The old lady turned to look at him. Her head bobbed and wobbled. Kenichi could smell the liquor on her breath from here. As she turned and readjusted herself, a piece of rusty metal that was tied to some old gray cloth— it was more rust than metal it looked like— jostled itself loose from the mess of hair it was stuck in, and swung down to hang in front of the woman's chest.
A necklace of some sort? Maybe it used to be.
"Hello, ma'am, is there anything I can help you with?" Kenichi asked. "Someplace I could walk you back to? Your house, a relative's house, an inn, anything like that?"
"Eh," the woman waved a hand at him. "If you wouldn't mind fetching me some food, that would be great. I'll be up in a minute. No fish though, don't eat it."
Who doesn't eat fish?, Kenichi thought. Strange. Perhaps it was a digestion thing? The lady looked quite old. Well, honor bound to help an old woman out with such a simple request, even if it'd make me a little late. Such is the life of a samurai.
o-o-o
A few minutes later the young samurai came out in a substantially less busy portion of the Eel district, that was nevertheless filled with several food carts, street stalls, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants. The smell of sizzling food filled the air and rivers of heavily spiced smoke drifted onto the street.
The trouble in this district was mostly the Irabi clan, since their compound in the city was located on the edge of the Salmon and Eel districts, and it was one of the larger compounds that the clan had in Sea Country. Kenichi had gotten off to a sour start with several of their members in his age group, and word spread throughout the rumour mill. Unfortunately, the Irabi were fairly large compared to the Nishikigoi clan, and had the resources and political power to go along with their prodigious size— and a rotten attitude to match.
Speaking of, Kenichi thought. There was a three-person team of the bastards across from what looked like a curry stall. Unfortunately, they were standing next to the alley he had to cut down to get back to the old woman and carry on towards the Carp district. He cursed his luck.
Kenichi walked swiftly, hoping to pass them by unnoticed.
"Ahoy, fish clan!"
Kenichi stopped, sighing.
The trio of Irabi clansmen walked over to him, their armor clanking with every step, the butts of their spears clacking against the ground with every other. One man — the oldest one, he looked about seventeen— advanced to speak with him while the other two — one a boy that looked to be about his age, the other a girl whose age he couldn't quite place — loomed over his shoulder and looked tough and menacing.
"Hello, members of the most auspicious Irabi clan," Kenichi said, bowing at the waist. He kept himself from wincing as his scales rubbed unpleasantly against each other under his dark green kimono. "I was just walking through your wonderful section of the city to grab some lunch. My apologies if I crossed your patrol route and disrupted your work. What can I do for you?"
Kenichi hoped that his overly formal tone would head them off and keep them from starting anything.
The Irabi samurai in front of him smiled, though it was a false one that didn't come close to reaching his eyes.
"Sure," Irabi said, "but you'd do well not to dally. Wouldn't want some thug to jump you and take your money, right?"
"Ah, yes, thank you," Kenichi said. He chose not to comment on the threat that doubled as an insult to his skills. He gave a quick bow and left.
Hope that old lady likes curry.
o-o-o
Kenichi wandered down the back alleys of the Eel District, bowl of curry in hand. He passed by the garbage, the puddles of rotting muck and stale piss, and came upon the old woman lounging on the side of some crates behind the Fisherman's Wife brothel.
"Ma'am. Here's that food you wanted," Kenichi said. "It's a vegetable curry, no fish in it."
Some snoring was the only response. He placed the food on a nearby crate — the one that looked the most stable— and prodded the woman's shoulder with a finger. No response.
"Oi, Nishikigoi."
Great, it's those punks from before.
Kenichi turned, and sure enough the trio of Irabi clan spearmen were standing in front of him. They had relaxed expressions on their faces, but all of them had their spears planted firmly in the ground. His right hand hovered over his straight sword.
"Thought that I made it clear," the oldest one said, "that you weren't to be dallying around in our portion of town, huh carp boy? A shame, now we'll have to do some cleaning up."
The other two spread out, moving to flank him from the left and right sides. They lifted their spears and held them in a guard position.
"It won't end up well for you if the other clans find that you're acting so violently," Kenichi said, hoping to diffuse the situation. He wasn't keen on fighting with some other samurai on three to one odds, regardless of their skill. These three had spears that gave them a significant advantage in reach as well.
"Oh, I think you'll find they won't care too much about that," the Irabi girl to his left responded, with a smile. "You'd be surprised at the sorts of things people overlook in this neighborhood. Screams, cries for help, that sort of thing. Besides, your freaky fish body will stop you from getting too hurt, right?"
The spear wielders advanced.
Kenichi took a step back, narrowly avoiding a jab and parrying another one with his sword. Chakra flowed freely throughout his body, and he felt his scaly skin harden over his torso and arms in response. He advanced with his sword held high to hopefully strike at the older one— if their leader got hurt, they'd probably run off— but he only made it a few steps before he felt something hard crack against the side of his left knee, and a white hot pain lance up his leg. Kenichi hissed in pain, dropping down to one knee, barely managing to bat aside a thrust that would have stabbed him in the shoulder. The next strike knocked his sword out of his hands.
Always the legs, I always forget to cover those...
The next couple knocked the wind out of him, and he crumpled to the dirt. One of them kicked him in the ribs, definitely bruising or breaking something near there, and he groaned in pain.
"Alright then, now next time do your best to stay the fuck out—"
crack
thump
There was a sharp crack and the Irabi cut out.
Did someone attack him from behind?
"What the—!?"
crackcrack
thumpthump
There was another crack and a distinct body-hitting-the-ground noise.
"Beware of the old in a profession where the young die like flies."
Huh, that's the old lady's voice.
"Now listen here, drunk old… hermit lady—"
crackthump
There was another crack, another thump, and the third Irabi cut off mid sentence just like his compatriots.
Kenichi looked up, and noticed the old woman swaying slightly over the unconscious bodies of the would-be assailants. Their spears were resting in pieces in the dirt. The woman had his sword gripped lightly between her fingers.
The old lady lazily spun his blade around her, before tossing it over in his direction with a flick of her wrist. Kenichi jerked backwards, but the blade tumbled end over end and sunk point-down in the dirt in front of him.
"Some advice, boy," the old woman said. "Never take up the spear. Even the strongest wood will be easily split in twain whence struck by a proper blade, if the swordsman knows their sword arm from the end they shit out of."
Kenichi didn't know what to say to that, so after a moment of thought he opted for the obvious response.
"Ah, excuse me, ma'am," Kenichi said. "Uh… what's your name?"
"Drunk Old Hermit Lady," the woman said. She let loose a dry, rasping chuckle. Her lips curled into a sneer of amusement. "Yes, fitting. That will do nicely. You should address me as such."
Kenichi felt his scales stand on end. Spending time with a crazy old lady that lived in the back alley behind a row of bars and brothels probably wasn't the best idea, even if she could beat the hell out of some of his peers with one arm. Especially if she could beat the hell out of his peers with one arm. Grandfather would say something stern about dishonoring the name of the Nishikigoi and he would be forced to scrub the compound latrines spotless for a month straight instead of training.
Still, his mother had always taught him to be polite.
"I'm sorry, ma'am. I can't be calling you that, that was a terrible lapse in manners on my part. Are you sure I can't have your name so as to thank you properly?"
A disappointed expression washed over the crazy old woman's visage. Her eyes narrowed into a glare and her wrinkled, parchment thin skin stretching against her skull as a frown crossed her face. She snorted, snapped a sleeve of her filth-stained robe at him in a gesture of dismissal, and turned on her heel to walk away from him. She wasn't shuffling now.
"Bye."
The old woman walked down the back alley, drinking from a bottle every couple of steps. She swayed for a bit, before flopping back down onto the pile of half-broken junk that was covered by a cloth tapestry — or a pile of shreds that resembled one. Kenichi paused for a second before turning to leave. He was halfway out of the alleyway when—
"Hold it, kid."
Kenichi felt a wooden stick (Staff? Rod? Piece of driftwood?) quickly rap against the back of his head. His vision swam for a second and he stopped short, reaching up to nurse a tender spot on the top of his skull that would probably swell into a sizable bump by the time he was home.
Wow, I didn't even notice that she stood up, Kenichi thought. There was no arguing with that tone. He turned around and faced Drunk Old Hermit Lady, who was standing an arm's reach away from him and holding what looked like the wooden handle to a shovel or a broom in her one hand. Huh?
Oh, that looks like one of those spear shafts. When did she pick that up?
"You'll be back here tomorrow an hour before dawn," the woman said. "We'll see about turning you into something that resembles a warrior. Bring some more of that curry, too. No fish, either. Do you know the sort of sad sack of shit a person has to be to get reincarnated as a damn fish?" She paused for a moment, looking up and down at the scales that dotted his limbs. "Don't answer that, it was rhetorical. Also, give me your fucking sandals."
"My sandals?" Kenichi asked, taken aback. "Uh, alright." He loosened and untied the straps before handing them over. He was getting more than a little weirded out by the situation. It was dizzying. Or maybe it wasn't and he just had a concussion now.
"Excellent," said Drunk Old Hermit Lady. "You won't be needing these ratty things anymore. Don't wear them again." She leaned the stick against the back wall of the … brothel (or was it the tavern?). She then carefully took his sandals in her gnarled hand and pressed her thumb into them, ripping them in half as easily as if they were made of rice paper.
He blinked.
"Why did —"
Kenichi stumbled as his vision swam again. That time the blow had landed on his forehead.
I didn't even see her move. At all.
Kenichi shook his head to clear his vision. The crazy old bat was giving him the world's best deadpan expression.
"The first and last lesson of those who walk the wheel is thus," Drunk Old Hermit Lady said, gravely. "Endure." She tossed the remnants of his sandals over her shoulder. They made a slight plopping noise as they hit a particularly muddy patch of ground. "Now begone with ye, and make sure to fetch me some more booze before you arrive in the morning. Wise masters do not endure the shortcomings of students while in a state of sobriety, nor for that matter do idiot pupils. Better by far to be piss drunk."
Why do I feel like my life just became worse by about ten leagues?
"Are you still fucking standing here? Deaf as well as dumb, then? GET!"
AN: Kakashi has no knowledge of the events in this interlude.
Expect regular chapter incoming at some point soonish, plus some more interludes from me later this week hopefully (in addition to my chapter, hopefully).
That seems like generally solid advice that very much applies in ninja spreadsheet land. I'm going to assume all old people are S-rank trolls letting us live for their amusement until convinced otherwise.
Kakashi paced back and forth at the gates of Yahashibetsu. Sugiyama had expressed his interest in travelling with Kakashi, and Kakashi had agreed. He was weird, but in a harmless sort of way, while Tsutsui's connections to Mist, or even Sakaguchi's relationship with his family or Hirai might have led to problems down the line. Kakashi had enough hunter-nin breathing down his neck.
Speaking of hunter-nin, he had a bad feeling that someone in Yahashibetsu had been… watching him. It wasn't a constant feeling, nor did it feel hostile, like they were preparing an attack, but he wanted to leave sooner rather than later on principle. Sugiyama had requested a week to gather his affairs, but Kakashi had insisted on three days. He had also insisted on leaving at sunrise, and the sun had risen about three minutes ago, so Sugiyama was officially late.
Kakashi decided not to think about the role-reversal.
Still, his fingers twitched to the freshly (and cheaply) bound book in the heart-pocket of his vest under his travel clothing. At long last, he owned Jiraiya's latest book: Icha Icha 33: Secret of the Forest Nymphs. He had finally found a merchant with a fresh copy last night, as well as a decent variety of less interesting works. He hadn't started, knowing that he wouldn't be able to stop, and he didn't want to be unprepared for the journey.
He would find an appropriate moment, then he would savor the shit out of Icha Icha. But for now, he saw Sugiyama turn a corner and start walking towards him.
Kakashi gave an appropriately lazy salute. Internally, he swore. Sugiyama, now wearing a loose ponytail and a bright pink heavy travelling cloak, was definitely a woman. Admittedly, her hairstyle was pretty similar to what Inoichi wore, and her face was still rather androgynous, but the bright pink gave it away. Why would anyone even make clothes in that color? Unless she made it herself…
Sugiyama smiled and waved at him, before almost tripping on the wet dirt under the weight of the massive backpack she wore.
"Are you going to be carrying everything you own on the journey?" Kakashi asked.
"Oh, no, I wasn't intending to. That's what the help is for," she replied.
"I… don't think you understand. You are the help. I'm hiring you to come with me."
She turned, and Kakashi saw a trio of teenagers turn the corner. One had a makeshift sack of stuff over one shoulder, another carried a pair of heavy bags in either hand, and the last dragged a sleigh filled with various tools and implements.
"I've hired these young men to come with us. For the purpose of my salary, you'll note that making this happen required considerable foresight and initiative. Also I promised them half up front. I think that will be three hundred thousand?"
Kakashi snapped out of his daze. "We're not taking them. We're going to be travelling at ninja speeds, we don't have room for extras."
At the mention of ninja, the teenagers stopped in their tracks and looked at each other in confusion. Sugiyama said, "Why must we travel so fast? I take it you're a newcomer to these parts, no? If we're travelling to Demon, then you should account for plenty of time to occupy yourself with the distractions, smell the flowers…" she trailed off. "Incidentally, you should check with me before smelling any flowers, especially the ones that are speaking to you, telling you to smell them."
"That wasn't negotiable. You lot, beat it." They didn't need to be told twice. They dropped their various loads and walked away as quickly as they could manage, breaking into a jog as they cleared the corner. The guards by the gates seemed to be trying very hard to manifest the Phantom Element.
Sugiyama sighed. "And here I thought I was so clever for giving them three different ways of carrying the load, so they could cycle through them."
Kakashi wordlessly stepped to the first bag and picked it up. Yeah, that seems light enough. He pulled out a storage seal and pressed it to the surface of the bag.
"Wait! Stop!"
Sugiyama reached out for the bag and Kakashi pulled away. She wasn't actually trying to stop him thankfully, just reaching a hand out. He backed away from the bags and she quickly (or at least as quickly as she could with the heavy clothing and backpack), hurried over to the bags, undoing the clasps that help them shut.
"There's, ah, some things in here that… are best not kept in a storage seal."
Kakashi felt the blood drain out of his face. Sugiyama's a ninja. Of course she'll have seals in her things. He could remember Minato-sensei lecturing him long, long ago that ninja had to be careful never to put a seal inside another seal. I nearly caused a sealing failure, and I needed a total incompetent to save me from my sloppiness.
Kakashi tried not to let his sudden mortification show on the thin patch of his exposed skin. "Right. You get that sorted, I'm going to go and circle the town, see if I can spot anything. Get everything that can't be sealed into the bags, and I'll seal the rest. Travel light."
o-o-o-o
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
Sugiyama somehow still had the massive backpack on. She shrugged. "There were some things I moved out, some things went in. The scales always balance in the end."
"Right." Kakashi went around and sealed all her things into storage seals.
She held her hand out expectantly, and after a moment, he handed her the seals. "I see you know the art of the ancient emperor, then, to carve through unspace and make the void between Paths your private birdhouse. How fascinating."
She says everything in that faintly disinterested, impersonal tone, Kakashi thought, what does any of that mean? Has she been doing drugs?
"Have you… used any herbs or medicines that would affect your mental acuity or combat ability?"
"Nothing that would affect me negatively," she replied, tucking the seals away in a pouch on her backpack. "Are we ready to set sail for adventure? Mark our compasses towards the great wide world beyond Yahashibetsu?"
Kakashi ignored the almost Gai-speak. "But you have taken substances that affect your abilities positively?" That would be interesting, if he could find a way to temporarily boost his strength or reaction speed, he could-
"Staving off withdrawal is a positive effect, yes."
Kakashi could have groaned. Tsutsui had certainly skipped town by now, but Sawaguchi was probably still in his shop. Would it be too late to trade them out? No… she had brought plenty of "herbs" from what he had smelled of her cargo, and the reasons for choosing her were just as valid as they were before.
"Fine. Let's go."
Kakashi and Sugiyama passed by the petrified looking guards. As they passed out of the gates, Sugiyama started to look around instantly. Good reflexes.
She seemed to find no threat. "So, it looks like the skies will be clear for our journey. The rising-"
Kakashi said, "First rule of travelling with me, we don't talk."
She closed her mouth. She looked around once more for new threats that may have popped up in the dozen yards they had made it away from the gates.
"Are th-"
"No exceptions."
She quieted. Once the city guardsmen could no longer overhear them, he stopped and turned to her. "We'll be going north and cutting through Marsh, though we'll spend a couple hours going farther north through Marsh to swing around their Hidden Village. Once we get through to Demon, we'll stop and think about where we want to go. You can spend some time on the journey thinking about if there's anywhere in your homeland that you think would be interesting to revisit. Do you have any questions?"
She shook her head.
"Good. Let's get moving."
Kakashi turned and started to run. Sugiyama failed to follow him. He turned to see the problem, and he saw her running. Slowly. Like a civilian. Without chakra.
"Can you even use medical chakra?" he asked, once she had crossed the couple hundred feet that separated them. Somehow, the pathetic creature's breathing had already deepened. She wordlessly lit up her hand with pale greenish light.
"Then why can't you run?"
She shrugged.
"You can speak, you know."
She held up a finger.
"Ignore rule one."
"Forever?"
Kakashi sighed, then gestured around him. "We're not moving, so we're not travelling."
"I see," she said.
"So explain. Why can't you run?"
"Oh, I can, that's what I was doing. I'm simply… unused to the sort of earnest physical effort of field ninja such as you. I do understand now why you insisted that I couldn't bring any porters."
Kakashi closed his eyes for a second. If she dies, it's not my fault. Incompetent ninja die in the field all the time, and she signed up for this knowing about the dangers inherent to travelling around here. I won't blame myself for it.
Somehow, he found it easy to believe.
o-o-o-o
It was nearly impossible to travel with the woman in tow, given how slowly she ran, how noisily she walked, and how awful she smelled. After a few days of travel, she seemed to have learned exactly where to draw the line on her weirdness to keep Kakashi from snapping and had been burning incense sticks affixed to the edges of her backpack. She claimed the scent would keep beasts away, but as far as Kakashi could tell, it only attracted them more.
Every time the beasts came to attack, Kakashi had to pick her up and run with the weight. The ordinary beasts weren't dangerous to him, even carrying a heavy weight, but she struggled to outpace even the chakra sloths. At least her endurance was improving, day by day.
Wordlessly, they packed up camp and started to move. She did try to pull her weight, she was just hopelessly incompetent at it. Kakashi suspected that she intentionally kept herself too brain-addled to recognize the dangers of the road. She had almost died three times so far before Kakashi saved her, and she still hadn't changed her attitude towards the wilds.
At least her complete incompetence meant that Kakashi could sleep with her around, if only lightly. She was less of a threat than the beasts she threatened to let into their camps. At least her drugs hadn't dimmed her senses, somehow, and she always woke Kakashi when the chakra beasts approached.
They had been travelling north for five days now, finally reaching a point in Wolf that Kakashi had thought they would have reached in one. At top speed, Sugiyama was still slower than an Academy student, but her chakra system was far more developed. Since she had the endurance for it, they made more distance by jogging. Not running, just civilian-pace jogging. Ninja don't jog.
But she couldn't exactly take care of herself in a fight, so Kakashi had to move alongside her. He couldn't find time to read or train or anything, he just had to endure the monotony of travelling at an agonizingly slow rate with very frequent breaks to drink water.
Sugiyama wiped her lips of the excess water as she straightened up. She had taken their break time to go foraging, and had grabbed a number of mushrooms and tiny eggs.
"Hey, are those squirrels?"
Sugiyama pointed at a nearby branch. Kakashi's gaze followed, and he saw a line of four squirrels in decreasing height, looking down at them as if with contempt.
"Oh, those are squirrels too!"
Sugiyama turned, and Kakashi saw another group of six squirrels, looking down at them.
"Sugiyama, back away from the squirrels. Slowly."
The creatures ranged in height from around four inches tall to about two feet, and Kakashi could now see more creeping out of the leaves in the trees around them to look down at the two intruders in their territory. They didn't move as Kakashi and Sugiyama backed away.
"Keep on walking, slowly," Kakashi kept his voice low and soft to keep from spooking the creatures into attacking. "Thirty more paces, then I'll pick you up and we'll run."
They continued backing away. Ten paces, then twenty. Even the farthest of the creatures didn't move, continuing to watch them as-
Kakashi heard a sickening crunch as he stepped over a tree root and directly onto a squirrel. It hissed as it died under his foot, first through its teeth, then as its boiling, black blood spilled out onto the ground and sizzled gently into steam. Kakashi quickly stepped away, absently noting that the squirrel had been guarding a clutch of now-crushed eggs near the tree's roots… the same tiny eggs that Sugiyama had just been collecting…
"Run!"
Sugiyama turned to run as the squirrels started to rush forwards in a carpet of greyish-black fur. Kakashi readied himself to move and stop any of them from passing him to target Sugiyama, but they were far more angry at him for trampling their eggs underfoot. So he thought, until one of the squirrels stopped running. A new orifice opened in the middle of its belly, and from the hole jetted forth a gush of boiling black liquid. The jet went past Kakashi, and he heard Sugiyama cry out in pain as the jet hit her. He wanted to turn and help, but by then, the swarm was upon him.
He grabbed one by the tail as it leaped at him with jet-black claws exposed and batted another two aside with it, before ducking and dodging through the trees as more jets of dark liquid came at him. More leaped at him from overhead, and while he tried to knock them out of the air as they fell, there were too many. One slashed through his jacket, failing to draw blood only because its claws were too tiny to reach. Another larger one clung to his leg, attempting to bite down through his pants. Kakashi managed to kick it off, only to get hit in the chest by one of the squirrel's water jets in exactly the place where his jacket had been clawed through. He felt the liquid burn against his skin.
Alright, fuck this.
Kakashi threw the squirrels clinging to his body off of him in a burst of strength, then made a giant leap onto the treetops. The horde turned to chase him, sensing his weakness. They closed in on him. Closer, closer…
As they were about to reach him, Kakashi suddenly made hand seals and exhaled, his chakra turning his breath into flame as the fire reached out and scorched the forest in front of him. The squirrels, chasing him in straight lines, were caught in close quarters. Many of them squealed as their fur burnt and their skin started to crackle and pop, while others simply stopped moving.
A few had escaped unharmed. One swung down to meet him, claws extended. Kakashi reached out, grabbed it by the head, and bashed it against the trunk of a nearby tree.
The rest of the squirrels, seemingly having realized their place in the food chain, started a retreat. Kakashi felt at his chest where the jet had hit, and found that the foul black liquid wasn't acidic, and had quickly cooled once it left the creatures's bodies. No injury.
He moved his hand a hair to the left and found the true casualty of the encounter. His beautiful, fresh book had been shredded and soaked through, ink no longer distinguishable from the salty smelling liquid the squirrels had shot.
"Sugiyama, stay there. I'm going to fucking kill them all!"
Initiative:
Kakashi (6 points of boost, 380 CP remaining)
Sugiyama (1 point of boost, ??? CP remaining)
6d6 squirrels = 25
Round 1
Kakashi Blocks anything trying to get past him to Sugiyama. He hopes to stall while they get away, then will murder all the squirrels. He saves both Supplementals in case he needs to Substitute Sugiyama out of danger.
Sugiyama has such a low Athletics score, I'm going to say they can only move 1 Zone per round. They spend their full round action moving away 1 Zone.
Squirrels prefer melee, but do have effective ranged options. Only (1d10*10% = 10%) 3 of them want to attack Sugiyama, since Kakashi has provoked them much more than Sugiyama did. 2 of them will fail to beat Kakashi's Block, and 1 will attack Sugiyama with their ranged abilities.
They take 5 physical stress, meaning that they get to only take a Medium as they back away, burned by the boiling blood.
Meanwhile, the other 24 squirrels are going to attack Kakashi. I'm not going to include the rolls here, but in short, only one gets a glancing hit on Kakashi for 3 stress.
Round 2
Kakashi (6 points of boost, Sharingan, 330 CP remaining)
Sugiyama (1 point of boost, ??? CP remaining)
Squirrels
Kakashi is going to counterattack with his new favorite AoE attack, FDB (-72 CP, 258 remaining). He'll use Sharingan because fuck these squirrels, also Sugiyama is running away and definitely not looking back.
He doesn't kill any of them, but a lot of them are burnt (i.e. Mild-Medium Consequences) and scared. Those ones will run. A few (11) will try to attack him again, but it's ineffectual.
Combat wraps up here. Kakashi finishes off the rest of them after drawing attention to himself with the flashy attack, and they're no threat to him, while Sugiyama safely gets away.
o-o-o-o
Thankfully, Sugiyama hadn't been seriously injured. She finally showed her ability with medical ninjutsu, scanning herself briefly before concluding that what she needed was rest and remedies that she already knew how to concoct. Kakashi had wearily agreed to stop and let her rest. After much excruciating internal debate, he had used Tunnel Excavation and Earth Wall to excavate a small hollow in the side of a natural stony hill that they could hole up in.
The interior of their hidey hole rapidly became torturous as Sugiyama's various herbs and incenses and spices filled the air. At Sugiyama's request, Kakashi spent the days travelling the region, half scouting, half collecting plants that she thought would help her heal quicker from the burns covering her shin and calf. It gave him something to do, and he finally got started learning the patterns of the local wildlife.
Sugiyama was well informed in that regard at least, and she pointed out which species were widespread and the various uses for their body parts. Disturbingly, she had set up a small drying rack outside of the cave for the entrails of a giant scorpion-bear-ostritch thing Kakashi had killed. Apparently the intestines could be burned for fortune telling.
Kakashi and Sugiyama were resting in silence (which had taken Kakashi so long to get Sugiyama to accept) when the explosions started to go off. The long excavated tunnel to the cave quickly collapsed as Kakashi sprang to his feet, Sugiyama following a moment later.
"We're under attack. It has to be a ninja," Kakashi said, quickly sealing his bedroll and things as Sugiyama did the same. Good thing I reinforced this cavern with Earth Walls.
Sugiyama nodded. "Shall we go explain to them that they shouldn't be attacking us?"
Kakashi stared at her for a second before shaking his head. "That's a terrible idea. We don't have a lot of air, so I'm going to try to Tunnel Excavation in another direction. As soon as we get clear, I'll head out to check the area around us. If it's clear, you're going to run as far as you can. I'll trail behind and cover you, engaging the enemy if needed."
Still, they're probably Earth Release… They wouldn't have caused a cave-in unless they thought they could still get to us somehow.
"Earth Release: Tunnel Excavation!" Kakashi bored a hole through the stone of the small hill, heading outwards and slightly up to get out of the place as quickly as possible. Tunnel Excavation wasn't pricey, but even so, he didn't relish the idea of going into a fight with lowered reserves. Still, suffocating to death in a cave-in was low on his to-do list for this month. He moved to the end of the tunnel, Sugiyama scurrying close behind.
Sage's name, I hate caves.
Another Tunnel Excavation opened their tunnel to the outside, looking up into the dense jungle treetops that covered this area of Wolf. Belatedly, Kakashi realized that Sugiyama wasn't capable of jumping from branch to branch.
He turned to motion Sugiyama forwards toward the exit, and he turned back just in time to see a dark hand retreating from the ceiling of the tunnel, leaving a lit explosive tag fluttering to the ground.
Kakashi reacted instantly. We're in a tiny, enclosed space. The explosion will be funneled right to us. Need to stop it. He wove hand seals and thrust his hand to the floor.
"Earth Release: Multiple Earth Wall"
The thick square of granite rose out of the ground by his hand, just barely fast enough to seal off the tunnel before the explosion went off on the other side with a deafening crack. The crack quickly turned into a roar as the tunnel beyond the Earth Wall crumbled, and Kakashi stumbled back when a large piece of debris hit the Earth Wall, crushing it in. Moments later, he heard another roar behind him as their cave collapsed, more explosive tags causing the fortified walls to finally crumble.
Claustrophobic spaces, twists and turns, walls closing in.
Rin's screams echoing through the endless tunnels.
Running, ignoring scrapes and bruises as stones attack from every angle.
Rumbling, the rocks overhead starting to fall.
The exit, so close. Just need to push…
Twisting, falling. A boulder was about to hit me.
But who saved me?
Rin, where's Obito?
"I don't know where he is. Also, I'm not Rin. Get up and do something, or else I think we might get hurt in the cave-in."
Kakashi steadied his breath. Now that they were closed off ahead and behind, hyperventilation definitely would not help. Their air was very, very limited. He pulled himself up from all fours.
Okay. Earth Element ninja in the walls. They have explosives and are willing to use them. Assume infinite. That's free for them, while defending costs chakra for me, and my reserves are too small. If I open a tunnel, they can block off the exit before I can leave. Even if I can outlast their earth-swimming technique, our air will run out, or our cave will just collapse on us and kill us. We're fucked. We're so fucked.
But Kakashi hadn't survived to jounin rank by giving up in the face of the impossible. "Earth Release: Living Roots!" If I can find out where they are, then maybe…
Kakashi's chakra extended out of his feet and into the stony ground of the hill around them, searching for the unseen assailant. He found them, and he felt his heart stop for a moment. Right above us, priming a new explosive.
Time seemed to slow down for Kakashi. There's no way I dodge this with nowhere to dodge, I'm dead if they get that explosive down. I can't use Earth Wall to block with nowhere for the explosion to go, the shrapnel will just kill me.
Wait. Earth Wall makes a chakra construct, not real stone. Can Hiding Like a Mole go through someone else's chakra, or just regular earth?
Fuck, it's my only chance.
"Earth Release: Multiple Earth Wall!"
Kakashi reached up as their invisible assailant reached down and formed a thick layer of chakra granite just before the explosive was about to enter the room. Their movements slowed, but they continued pushing, inching through the granite, about to drop that final explosive into their hole-
A moment later, they darted away through the solid stone, the timer on the explosive tag having gotten too low for their comfort level. They left the range of Kakashi's senses, and he exhaled minutely. I can't believe that worked. I can't rely on unknown jutsu interactions like that.
The explosive tag finished its countdown in the ceiling.
Kakashi didn't fully understand the force that pulled his body into action. One part was years of training in Leaf and the trials of the Third War fighting Hidden Rock. One part was seeing Sugiyama's desperate expression, mortally afraid for once. One part was that scene that forever played out in his dreams, the falling boulders and dying friends, and all the ways he could have done it differently. Skill, speed, and luck allowed Kakashi to barely clasp his hands together once more, fingers aching as he cut hand seals faster than he ever had before, and pull another wall of stone out of the walls at their side to protect them both from the falling debris and flying shrapnel overhead threatening to crush them to paste.
A moment later, he came out of the battle haze that had guided his hands, finding himself and Sugiyama stomach-to-floor under the horizontal wall protruding from the tunnel sides above, surrounded by rubble on either side. She was coughing from the thick dust in the air. He hadn't even realized he was holding his breath. Their space was barely two feet tall.
No maneuverability. Need to make room.
Kakashi drew on his chakra once more. "Earth Release Tunnel Excavation!" These techniques weren't his most costly ones, but he had cast so many that his chakra coils had started to ache. The technique opened up a long tunnel to the outside again, and Kakashi felt the air rush in, replenishing the dwindling stale air within their tiny, cramped space. He stumbled out of the protective shelf, and heard Sugiyama come out a moment later. Almost as an afterthought, he pulled his headband up to reveal Obito's eye. I'm going to need your gift to get the team out of this one, old friend.
They had made it almost halfway to the exit before the hand protruded out of the cave wall again, this time too far for Kakashi to stop it with an Earth Wall. It dropped an explosive at the mouth of the cave, and Kakashi hastily dropped to raise a blast shield. Another rolling explosion signalled the destruction of Kakashi's tunnel and another exit path closing off.
Sugiyama mouthed at him, "What should we do?" Belatedly, he realized she was yelling, but the ringing in his ears was too loud for him to hear over it.
"Tunnel Excavation!" Kakashi said, and the dislodged earth caused the entire hillside to rumble. Enough earth had been carved out of it, enough explosions had been set off that the entire thing threatened to turn into a massive rockslide. He prepared himself for the worst, but it held together for the moment. "Just run! Get out here!"
The path to the outside was finally clear, and Kakashi took the lead, keeping his eyes closed and focusing on his Living Roots sense. He could sense the enemy swimming alongside them at a distance, but they pulled away when they realized Kakashi and Sugiyama would make it out before they could use another explosive.
At last, they broke out of the tunnels and into the jungle. Kakashi's instincts screamed at him to run and make distance, but years of combat training allowed him to suppress them and think.
"Sugiyama, get into the trees and break trail! They're sensing our footsteps on the ground!"
His voice sounded distant and tinny to his ruined hearing, but she could clearly read lips. She did as she was told and started to clumsily climb a tree. At least she could use adhesion.
Kakashi closed his left eyelid and let go of his boosted strength and speed. They're a skilled Earth Release user, so going underground to fight is suicidal. With techniques like Hiding Like a Mole, they could outpace chakra boosted ninja. They can sense where I am, so if I run, they'll chase and wait for me to run out of energy. I have to stay still and conserve.
I'm so low on chakra. I could probably try a Chidori, but it would put me on the verge of exhaustion.
They're powerful. Worse, they're smart. This isn't what a normal ninja does, this is something that Orochimaru would try. Kill the enemy without interacting with them. Don't give them a chance to fight back. Success is not when you have one path to victory, it is when all paths lead to victory.
I don't even have one path to victory right now. Someone like this won't let themselves get Chidori'd easily, they'll find ways to escape or let a clone take the hit. No…
What would Orochimaru do?
Kakashi spun as the enemy rose out of the earth a couple hundred yards away, to his side. Closer to him than Sugiyama. A solo enemy, a hunter-nin from Lightning if her headband was to be believed. The earth did not leave her behind entirely, and a thin layer of stone continued to cover her vital regions. An armor technique? She was already weaving hand seals as she emerged, and moments later, her hair spread out as if from static electricity, sparks flowing through it. Senbon made of smooth, crackling lightning appeared between her fingers.
I can't fight that. I can't close the range if she can keep running with her Earth Release techniques, and she can pump me full of needles long before I'll be able to land a solid hit. Fighting won't work. Deception.
"That was a fascinating trick, you know. Against most jounin, I think it would have worked." Kakashi called out.
The woman narrowed her eyes and lowered herself to the ground, clearly lining up a shot with her senbon. She said something, too quiet for him to hear across the distance. Probably thinks she tired me out?
Kakashi spread his arms, inviting her to attack. "Look at me. Do I look injured? Do I look tired? My bounty is too much for you, girl. You're not the first to come after the head of the Copy Ninja."
She looked him up and down and smiled slightly. Fuck. She isn't buying it. If she attacked, he might not be able to dodge, and once he got hit by an opponent like this, it was all downhill. He would bet all his ryou that those lightning senbon would make his muscles lock up and seize, leaving him helpless for a live capture.
"He's not joking you know," Sugiyama said, draped over a nearby tree branch. She somehow looked casual, stretching her arms and legs and letting her dress hang low over the edge of the thick grey bark. "He's basically invincible. One of the many perks of the Sharingan, I suppose."
"I killed three jounin and razed a country to the ground for a winter vacation, girl. I am the heir of the White Fang and the student of Leaf's Yellow Flash. Tell me. Will you run, or will you become a new addition to my collection of techniques?"
The woman answered by throwing a senbon through his neck. The electric needle struck a log as Kakashi Substituted towards her, and took a stance low to the ground. He darted from tree to tree, staying just out of reach of her needles as they flew through the air. He could see her hair flowing wildly behind her, her skin growing flushed from the exertion of her attack, and he could feel the burning sparks of the needles as they passed by his skin. Obito's Sharingan showed him the paths to run, the way to dart between the senbon to ignore the illusory ones and dodge only the real ones.
It almost wasn't enough. Her control over the lightning was exceptional, and Kakashi had to raise an Earth Wall for temporary respite, before quickly picking another target and Substituting away before her focused fire could crush through his rapid barricade. He danced through the relentless storm of needles, knowing that a single misstep would break his illusion of invincibility.
At last, the attacks stopped. He stood across from her, a bare forty feet apart. She was breathing heavily, the sparks still flowing through her hair and senbon like claws of lightning gripped in her hands, but she must have known that at this range, she wouldn't be able to make an attack without risking that Kakashi could close into melee.
Kakashi struggled to keep himself from shaking. He had pushed himself to his limits to dodge those attacks, and had he been a hair slower a dozen times over, he would be convulsing on the forest floor right now.
Instead, he summoned forth his mental image of Orochimaru -- the man whose every movement bled danger, whose every word weighed your life upon a scale. He pulled it together. The casual disinterest of someone who would reorganize your anatomy out of curiosity more than animosity. The indomitable confidence of someone beyond any normal adversary. The faint annoyance of crushing a fly that buzzed around your eyes.
Kakashi took a step forward. He looked the hunter in the eyes, and she quickly broke eye contact.
"Poor choice. I would tell you not to scream, but your idiotic explosions dulled my hearing." He left his cheeks rise, his eyes narrow, his lips pull apart and up. A smile, dissected. "I'll punish you for that once you're through being useful to me." He willed his chakra to his fingertips and manifested sparks with the few dregs of chakra he had remaining. "Now, will we do this the boring way, or the interesting way?"
She broke. Her face split with fear and she backed away, making hand seals. A moment later, she was underground and swimming away. Kakashi swayed and quickly sat down before the disorientation and shell shock from the battle could catch up with him. Distantly, he could hear Sugiyama clambering down a tree and start her slow jog towards him.
"Wow, that was close! Good thing explaining worked. Can we go back for those entrails though?"
Kakashi uses Tunnel Excavation twice (26*2 = 52 CP, 358 remaining) to open an exit. The enemy can sense this, and uses a cheap Hiding Like a Mole-variant. She thinks she can off them quickly with an exploding tag in a confined space. As they open up to the outside, she drops a tag in by the mouth of the cave.
Narratively, Kakashi doesn't know the timer on the tag and doesn't want to try to run past it, only to get blown up. He doesn't want to take the shockwave to the face in the narrow tunnel that is going to amplify the explosion towards him. The only reasonable thing to do is to try to block the explosion, and the only way he can do that reflexively is with Multiple Earth Wall. He casts it reflexively (23 CP, 335 remaining).
Now a question is how to represent this mechanically. Kakashi is making the minimum thickness MEW, which is still 0.25m wide (10 inches to americans), which will completely seal off the tunnel. It looks like standard blast walls around about 12 inches thick of concrete, and I'm going to assume that those are built with some error tolerance, so I'm just going to say that neither Kakashi nor Sugiyama are at risk of taking any stress from this. Still, the newly made tunnel has caved in, and they're no longer in a reinforced area. Let's roll 1d6 to see if their section of tunnel caves in on them (on a 1): 6.
Safe for now. Kakashi realizes that 1) the enemy can keep on doing this for free, as every time Kakashi opens up a tunnel, they can drop a new tag in, and 2) even if Kakashi had more tunnels than the enemy could keep HLaM up (and Kakashi does not want to bet on his sustain ability), there will probably be a cave-in first, and he'll die. At this point, I'm going to give him a TN 30 Resolve check (minus his TYS, since this preys on his traumas) to keep his cool, given that the cave where Obito died was one of his most traumatic experiences.
Kakashi fails and takes 3 mental stress, going into his mental stress track. He loses focus on all ongoing techniques or similar as he has a trauma flashback. This is bringing back bad memories for him. He needs to get out of here, ASAP, which he could do with Hiding Like a Mole himself. He doesn't have a lot of tools in his toolkit to keep Sugiyama alive though. He thinks something like Earth's Thunder could be used to force a Hiding Like a Mole user out of the ground, but he only has that at level 1 through Sharingan copy.
First step is to figure out where the enemy is, so he'll use his Standard on Living Roots (Effect 1: 22 CP, 313 remaining). I don't think Consequence should apply here, he's definitely treating the enemy like a real threat now.
Kakashi knows where the attacker is. He doesn't have anything to do with his Supplementals though.
Does Sugiyama have anything to do? Checks character sheet. Haha, they'll say their prayers.
Another explosive tag. This time, the space is smaller, and they don't have a tunnel to the outside, so the enemy will just drop it in the center. This time, however, Kakashi can sense what direction she's coming from and can MEW preemptively (23 CP, 290 remaining). He doesn't know the interaction, but he's going to guess that chakra construct stone is going to stop HLaM from passing through. Tentative ruling, passing through chakra construct earth from MEW is a TN 20 HLaM/similar check (a more powerful jutsu, like Swamp of the Underworld, might be higher).
Surprisingly, it works. The attacker will swim away before the tag can go off. Still, shockwaves carry well through solid stone. I'm going to rule that she takes the base damage from the tag, so 4 stress. No Consequences yet.
Another 1d6 to see if Kakashi and Sugiyama are dying like Obito today: 1
Ouch. The tag in the ceiling above them causes a collapse directly overhead. Giant chunks of stone rain from the sky in their cramped, enclosed tunnel with basically no time to react. If Kakashi can make a TN 60 (Fantastic) Alertness check, he can interpose with an Earth Wall. Otherwise, they're pretty much going to die. Luckily, Kakashi knows this. Again, this isn't an obstacle, as surviving is the point, so the Mild Consequence won't apply. Sadly, he hasn't used his Sharingan yet, since he doesn't trust Sugiyama.
I'll give him "He Who Breaks the Rules", since he could have dipped out of here with HLaM already if he wasn't protecting Sugiyama, and "Sole Survivor", since this is pretty much how Obito died, and "Ex-ANBU, Ex-Jounin, Ex-Leaf Ninja", since he fought Rock during his time in ANBU, and the Explosion Release users would probably use tactics like this. Other than that, he's shit outta luck.
Kakashi (Alertness): 40 + 5 (Invoke "He Who Breaks the Rules") + 5 (Invoke "Sole Survivor") + 5 (Invoke ""Ex-ANBU, Ex-Jounin, Ex-Leaf Ninja"") - 6 (dice) = 49
Kakashi spends a FP to reroll.
Kakashi (Alertness): 40 + 5 (Invoke "He Who Breaks the Rules") + 5 (Invoke "Sole Survivor") + 5 (Invoke "Ex-ANBU, Ex-Jounin, Ex-Leaf Ninja") + 6 (dice) = 61
Kakashi is down 4 FP to 2 remaining. He barely manages to cast MEW in time (23 CP, 267 remaining), covering himself and Sugiyama as they dive under it.
Back to Kakashi. He spends a Standard to cast Tunnel Excavation again (26 CP, 241 remaining) opening a path to the outside. He wants to save a Supplemental to cast Earth Wall again, ideally two in case there's a cave-in again. He also wants to get out of the fucking hell-tunnel, and wants to keep Sugiyama alive after all the effect he put into keeping them in one piece. He can't do all of those. He'll move forward one Zone and save an Earth Wall for explosion blocking purposes.
Sugiyama moves forward one Zone with their full round movement.
Back to the top of the round. Kakashi is done with the bullshit, and realizes that the conflict is coming to a head soon. He starts boosting, and uses Sharingan too.
If it ain't broke, why fix it? Enemy will try to block off their exit again, pretty much confident that she's winning the battle of attrition. She won't go directly for them, knowing that Kakashi will Earth Wall to slow her down, and he'll pass her by before she can get the tag through. Instead, she'll target the exit, which is out of the Melee range of Kakashi's reflexive Earth Wall. Kakashi is forced to Earth Wall (23 CP, 168 remaining) as a blast shield again.
1d6 again: 3
The tunnel shakes, but they're unharmed. Kakashi uses Tunnel Excavation again, this time in a slightly different direction (but free!), and opens a path to the exit. He spends a Supplemental moving to the great outdoors (fucking finally), and saves the second Supplemental in case he needs to Substitute, Earth Wall, or bail out Sugiyama.
Sugiyama uses their full round to get out of the cave.
New round:
Kakashi realizes that he's close to running out of chakra, and the underground enemy can just stalk them now and pop out at leisure. Going underground himself with Hiding Like a Mole or Antlion Strike sounds like an awful idea too, given that the enemy is seemingly quite intelligent and a skilled Earth Release user, while Earth is his weakest element.
He knows that a skilled Hiding Like a Mole user (from copying from Yaganita in Snow) can outpace chakra boosting ground travellers, so he can't flee. If he and Sugiyama wait though, the enemy will emerge.
He needs to get the enemy out of the ground to win the interaction, but he's at 168/410 chakra, 118 after full boosts. To Chidori, he needs 72 CP, and that leaves him dangerously low. He also doesn't have the FP to Aspect stack, and even if he did, he used most of his combat-applicable personal Aspects anyway, and making Aspects is hard without competent help or chakra. Also, his threat estimate of the enemy is through the roof, and he doesn't think he could win a straight fight. So, he's going to try intimidation.
??? (no boost)
Kakashi (no boost, no Sharingan)
Sugiyama (1 boost, 5 CP, ??? remaining)
The assailant will wait. She has time on her Subterranean Voyage Technique, and she wants to know what they'll be doing.
Kakashi instructs Sugiyama to climb a tree and move, in order to break connection with the enemy's (presumably) Earth-based sensory technique. Meanwhile, he'll stand still, taking the Full Defense action and essentially inviting an attack. He'll try to locate a Substitution target, TN 20…
Kakashi (Substitution): 18 - 6 (dice) = 12
But there's none nearby. That's his turn.
Sugiyama, poor thing, at least can wallwalk. They'll struggle to pull their way up a tree, and then make a TN 10 Athletics check to try to move from tree to tree to break the trail.
New round:
??? (6 boost, expecting a response when she emerges, ??? remaining)
Kakashi (no boost, no Sharingan [yet])
Sugiyama (1 boost, 5 CP, ??? remaining)
The unknown assailant will finally reveal herself, two Zones away from Kakashi just in case he's a close-combat spec. She'll buff up and wait. Thunderburst (Effect ?, ?? CP, ??? remaining), Flash Senbon (Effect ?, ?? CP, ??? remaining). She can see them both, but she knows that Sugiyama rounds off to 0 threat, and that Kakashi is the real worrisome one, so she's going to save a Supplemental for Substitution if he pulls out an attack miraculously.
When she draws her senbon, this is the final nail in the coffin for Kakashi trying to fight. He can't close the range instantly, and he'll be pelted with needles before he can reach (or so he thinks, given his current threat estimate of the enemy).
He'll bluff that it was a good tactic, but that he won't be taken down so easily. He's going to act totally unconcerned, like escaping wasn't challenging at all. This is only possible because he's unharmed so far.
She's going to attack Kakashi. If she hits, the "He's Basically Invincible" tag evaporates, so Kakashi needs to dodge. He tries again to find a Substitution target, closing the distance with the enemy:
Holy $(*#%!, he made it, at the cost of 1 FP, 1 remaining. He Substituted closer to her, so I'll give him the Aspect "... and He's Coming for You"
Kakashi spends his last FP to Invoke "The Copy Ninja". Since he's explicitly trying to intimidate someone with his reputation as the Copy Ninja, I'll give him the AB too. He'll use Orochimaru's Intimidation AB: +7.
She takes the Mild Consequence "Red Eyed Nightmare". Fuck that noise, she's running. She casts Subterranean Voyage and runs and hides. She ain't going within 30 miles of Kakashi again if she can help it.
Combat ends. Kakashi and Sugiyama gain an FP each for achieving their objective of "survive".
The rest of the journey to Demon, including rest time for Sugiyama in a new location, was uneventful, assuming you don't want to read (checks encounter rolls) eight other encounters of Kakashi saving Sugiyama's ass from increasingly less dangerous chakra beasts.
Kakashi almost died in a random encounter. Admittedly, in retrospect, the circumstances were truly horrendous, but the fact that it was so easy for a random assailant to push him to the ropes is going to make him very paranoid about hunter-nin after him specifically. Also, caves. He's never going to want to go in a cave again.
Voting Time! What do you do now?
Here are some options to get you started.
[] Try and find the Mantis summoner (if they're still around that is) and see if he wants to teach you summoning.
[] Investigate the place thoroughly. Say, why is this place called 'Demon' anyway?
[] Keep heading east, see if something weird happens when you get to the edge of your map. Why not?
[] Go scout out the local hidden village. Your intel said there was one around here, but that's literally all you know.
[] (Write in)
Remember, we use approval voting, so you can vote for as many plans as you like. Also, feel free to ping @Paperclipped or @MMKII to ask setting or detail questions that Kakashi could plausibly know. Note: This includes specific questions for Sugiyama about Demon (though we might not get to it until the update)
Voting is open, and closes at 9am London Time, Wednesday February 24.
Still, his fingers twitched to the freshly (and cheaply) bound book in the heart-pocket of his vest under his travel clothing. At long last, he owned Jiraiya's latest book: Icha Icha 33: Secret of the Forest Nymphs. He had finally found a merchant with a fresh copy last night, as well as a decent variety of less interesting works. He hadn't started, knowing that he wouldn't be able to stop, and he didn't want to be unprepared for the journey.
She turned, and Kakashi saw a trio of teenagers turn the corner. One had a makeshift sack of stuff over one shoulder, another carried a pair of heavy bags in either hand, and the last dragged a sleigh filled with various tools and implements.
Kakashi felt the blood drain out of his face. Sugiyama's a ninja. Of course she'll have seals in her things. He could remember Minato-sensei lecturing him long, long ago that ninja had to be careful never to put a seal inside another seal. I nearly caused a sealing failure, and I needed a total incompetent to save me from my sloppiness.
Oooh, ouch. I wonder where she gets the seals? Is she skilled with seals herself or was there someone else in town? If she can make seals then she's a lot more useful to us.
She held her hand out expectantly, and after a moment, he handed her the seals. "I see you know the art of the ancient emperor, then, to carve through unspace and make the void between Paths your private birdhouse. How fascinating."
"Oh, I can, that's what I was doing. I'm simply… unused to the sort of earnest physical effort of field ninja such as you. I do understand now why you insisted that I couldn't bring any porters."
It was nearly impossible to travel with the woman in tow, given how slowly she ran, how noisily she walked, and how awful she smelled. After a few days of travel, she seemed to have learned exactly where to draw the line on her weirdness to keep Kakashi from snapping and had been burning incense sticks affixed to the edges of her backpack. She claimed the scent would keep beasts away, but as far as Kakashi could tell, it only attracted them more.
If her skills are weak enough that she can't even run at ninja speeds then she can't have spent much time in the woods. How does she know what will keep the beasts off?
Sugiyama pointed at a nearby branch. Kakashi's gaze followed, and he saw a line of four squirrels in decreasing height, looking down at them as if with contempt.
Back in one of the early installments of MfD I wrote a line of dialogue in which someone said "The wolves are just wolves. Not everything has horrible powers" and then that was basically never true again. I'm hoping the same will be true here.
Kakashi heard a sickening crunch as he stepped over a tree root and directly onto a squirrel. It hissed as it died under his foot, first through its teeth, then as its boiling, black blood spilled out onto the ground and sizzled gently into steam. Kakashi quickly stepped away, absently noting that the squirrel had been guarding a clutch of now-crushed eggs near the tree's roots… the same tiny eggs that Sugiyama had just been collecting…
Oh, Kakashi Kakashi Kakashi. Really? You didn't even look where you were putting your feet? I am disappoint. Also, it's cool that the squirrels lay eggs.
He grabbed one by the tail as it leaped at him with jet-black claws exposed and batted another two aside with it, before ducking and dodging through the trees as more jets of dark liquid came at him.
As they were about to reach him, Kakashi suddenly made hand seals and exhaled, his chakra turning his breath into flame as the fire reached out and scorched the forest in front of him. The squirrels, chasing him in straight lines, were caught in close quarters. Many of them squealed as their fur burnt and their skin started to crackle and pop, while others simply stopped moving.
Hm, I wonder which technique that was? The Breath of Fire technique? The Grand Fireball technique? The Phoenix Exhalation technique? The How Many 'I Breathe a Fireball' Techniques Do There Need to Be, Kishimoto? technique?
He moved his hand a hair to the left and found the true casualty of the encounter. His beautiful, fresh book had been shredded and soaked through, ink no longer distinguishable from the salty smelling liquid the squirrels had shot.
Another Tunnel Excavation opened their tunnel to the outside, looking up into the dense jungle treetops that covered this area of Wolf. Belatedly, Kakashi realized that Sugiyama wasn't capable of jumping from branch to branch.
Holy crap. You can only boost up to the Aspect Bonus of your best physical skill, so this random ninja wandering around in the woods has a skill of 90+. Kage level starts at around 80. Who is this woman?!
[x] Try and find the Mantis summoner (if they're still around that is) and see if he wants to teach you summoning.
[x] Go scout out the local hidden village. Your intel said there was one around here, but that's literally all you know.
Sugiyama is cool and somehow doesn't know how to use her chakra to boost? Or... Can't? She's still pretty cool, though. I'll draft up a full reaction post in a few hours, but I think it's pretty funny that Kakashi was so caught off guard by Sugiyama that he almost immediately caused a sealing failure. Also, she got a peek at some heavy trauma... Obviously this means they have to become friends now.
Technically speaking if cast instantaneously (i.e. using a Supplemental as a reflexive action as Kakashi did here), it will always give you the chakra construct version. Raising the wall to give you real stone would take more time.
The HLaM field being finnicky with other jutsu interactions is something that is true in character (It's why this technique isn't used more to enable some sort of automatic cheap one-shot attack) and has come up at least in some Q&A (@Cariyaga asked some questions on discord in the category of"So how do we cleverly munchkin all of the things so that we can OHKO all of the people?!?!", at least one question being something akin to"So can we use HLaM and some of our lightning techniques to do an automatic cheap one shot thingy?" ).
Sugiyama is cool and somehow doesn't know how to use her chakra to boost? Or... Can't? She's still pretty cool, though. I'll draft up a full reaction post in a few hours, but I think it's pretty funny that Kakashi was so caught off guard by Sugiyama that he almost immediately caused a sealing failure. Also, she got a peak at some heavy trauma... Obviously this means they have to become friends now.
Sugiyama is cool and somehow doesn't know how to use her chakra to boost? Or... Can't? She's still pretty cool, though. I'll draft up a full reaction post in a few hours, but I think it's pretty funny that Kakashi was so caught off guard by Sugiyama that he almost immediately caused a sealing failure. Also, she got a peak at some heavy trauma... Obviously this means they have to become friends now.
She *can*, but only by 1 point. That means that all of her physical skills are in the 1-9 range. That includes at least Taijutsu, Ranged Weapons, Melee Weapons, and Athletics. Basically, she punches worse than most Academy students and she can't dodge for beans.
(EDIT: It's possible that she *can* boost more than one point but chose not to. I'm unsure why she would make that choice during a lethal combat where she clearly knew that her life was in danger.)
My votes are cheap right now if anyone wants to write a plan in. Just mention something about Kakashi apologizing for being rude to Sugiyama. They're cute and I want to see more character interactions between them.
[X] Try and find the Mantis summoner (if they're still around that is) and see if he wants to teach you summoning.
[x] Go scout out the local hidden village. Your intel said there was one around here, but that's literally all you know.
[X] Obtain new Icha Icha, and a backup copy
[X] Work on...academy basics...with Sugiyama
Homage to faflec's screaming in Kagome. But we don't have a Kagome in our party. Or any other party members. So like in a video game when you haven't progressed far enough to unlock certain characters, we can't access our equivalent of a Kagome to scream properly. Yet.
OOF. The fudge dice are higher than the stat. That's...a thing. Do we get any input on training, because yikes.
See, this is why I wanted the apprentice. Because we'd probably get full spreadsheet access and be able to direct training. Also, because he was more fit than a 10 year old.
They're powerful. Worse, they're smart. This isn't what a normal ninja does, this is something that Orochimaru would try. Kill the enemy without interacting with them. Don't give them a chance to fight back. Success is not when you have one path to victory, it is when all paths lead to victory.
I'm glad this version of Orochimaru doesn't make mistake just for the Evulz. But, on the other hand, this version of Orochimaru terrifies me if there ever go missingnin and decide one eye is better than none.
Oh, want! Too bad we have no real way to get it; and that in and situation where Kakashi has time to set it up, we're probably already winning. Still, cool.
Glad they have their priorities in order. And they were right. About 1000xp sunk into physical skills from now, I might be chill with our new companion.
Holy crap. You can only boost up to the Aspect Bonus of your best physical skill, so this random ninja wandering around in the woods has a skill of 90+. Kage level starts at around 80. Who is this woman?!
I don't think they're just a random Kage. I'd guess one of their abilities they had up did something like grant double AB score while active, like how we get effectively a second one with the Sharingan.
