Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest (STORY ONLY)

[Velorien]

Chapter 9β: Seduction by Deduction​

"...and after the Yamanaka are done sucking all my secret lore out of my head through a hollow straw, they can just shove lupchanzen in my ears and lock me in a sealing workshop to make weapons of mass destruction for them for the rest of my life, is that the plan? Well, you weren't smart enough to trick old Kagome, you stinkers! This time, I'm going to–"

"Kagome-sensei!" Hazō interrupted. "There aren't any lupchanzen in Leaf."

"That's what you would say, isn't it, you… you sympathiser!"

Hazō hadn't heard so much vitriol packed into a single word since one of Yuno's students tried to introduce her to the philosophical concept of conservationism.

"What's a lupchanzen?" Akane asked innocently, conveniently redirecting Kagome-sensei's attention. "It sounds like a rare flower."

"Actually, that's not far off," Hazō said. "They're half-plant, half-animal hybrids that enter your brain through your ears and take over your body. They also have perfect access to your memories, so it's impossible for anyone to tell you've been taken over."

Akane took a step back. "And you're saying, with your future knowledge, that those are real?"

"Uh." Hazō glanced at Kagome-sensei. "I'm not saying they're not real, but I've also never seen any myself, or met anyone other than Kagome-sensei who's heard of them."

"Oh. Ohh."

"Of course they're real!" Kagome-sensei exclaimed. "You'll find out if we go to Leaf, only by then it'll be too late because you'll all be the Sage's mindslaves! Well, I'm not letting them take me down with you, you–"

"Leaf is safe," Hazō said, for far from the first time. "I mean, not from assassination or getting caught up in other people's sealing failures or being executed for treason, but those are just daily occupational hazards of being a ninja. In the alpha timeline, I knew a Yamanaka really well, and I can tell you she would never suck your memories out of your head just because she wanted your secrets."

"Oh, you knew her really well, did you?" Kagome-sensei spat. "I'm sure that'll be a great comfort to the rest of us when the Sage finds out you've got future memories and sends his goons with their genjutsu seals and their–"

"Kagome," Mari said placatingly. "You have to make allowances for Hazō. He's still young and naive. I bet he didn't even know there was such a thing as truth serums. The fact is, though, that we're trying to take on a major conspiracy to take over the world using experimental technology too powerful for the hand of man, isn't that right?"

"It's trying to take over the world using ancient secrets best left forgotten," Kagome-sensei corrected her. "Common mistake, that. Completely different threat profile."

"See?" Mari asked. "Amateurs like us are completely out of our depth here. I'm scared to think what they're going to do to me if I walk into Leaf unprepared. That's why we need you. Not just because you're part of the team, but because you're the only expert who knows what to watch out for. You've already agreed that we need to stand and fight this terrible threat instead of letting Akatsuki have their way. That means we can't avoid putting ourselves in some danger. The rest of us will do it on our own if we have to, but if we want to have a chance, we need someone who knows about the lupchanzen and the Sage and the Yamanaka and all that to help point the way so we can overcome all these challenges together."

Mari gently clasped Kagome-sensei's hands in hers. "I know I don't have any right to ask this of you after everything you've already been through. But please… will you help us?"

Kagome-sensei averted his gaze. "I, uh, I mean, that is…

"I guess I'll think about it," he muttered very quietly.

Hazō's love for Mari notwithstanding, the woman was a monster. He was very glad her beta self had decided she was on their side.

"If I may redirect the conversation towards some semblance of sanity," Kei said, "you have yet to explain why we should attempt to gain entrance to the Village Hidden in the Leaves, where our names are most assuredly in the Bingo Book–or at least Inoue-sensei's and possibly Ishihara's are, considering the insignificance of the rest of us. Convinced as I am that Ishihara's philosophy is guaranteed to grant her an early audience with the Reaper, I am disinclined to risk myself purely for the sake of accelerating the process."

"Aww, thank you." Akane beamed. "I really appreciate that."

"It was intended to be a poorly-veiled insult."

Was it Hazō, or were those two even worse in the beta timeline?

"In answer to your question," Hazō interrupted the building half-argument, "we can't stay missing-nin forever. You said it yourself: global problems need global resources to solve. But we can't go back to Mist, at least not while Yagura's there, and Leaf is the only other place for which I have useful foreknowledge. Also, I don't know anywhere near as much about Rock, Sand, or Cloud as I need to, but culturally, I think Leaf is the closest to what we need. They have a notion of ninja as shepherds to the civilian population, even if they don't always live up to it in practice, and a tradition of leaders who are happy to invest resources in making the world a better place as long as it's put to them in terms of direct benefit to the village.

"Also, Leaf is where all the secret power multipliers are. We're in several races against time, and while I'm sure together we're badass enough to find equivalents elsewhere eventually, I don't think we can justify that gamble. There are other reasons too, which are probably better delved into as they come up. I learned a lot about Leaf over my years of living there."

Not least was that without Kei getting the Shadow Clone Technique, Snowflake would never exist. There was an argument to be made that this didn't mean anything–his Snowflake was forever gone, and he didn't owe anything to a completely unrelated person who didn't even exist–but for some reason, it wasn't an argument Hazō could make. It wasn't that there was anything rational about it. It was just that it would just be… too sad to know about the possibility of Snowflake and go, "I won't help this person exist because it would be too inconvenient". Hazō was very grateful that there were enough other reasons to go to Leaf that he didn't have to weigh that one on any scales.

He'd have to let Kei know in advance. He remembered the pain of Snowflake's awakening, and surely she'd be spared that if she knew immediately that she'd be welcomed and accepted. But it would also be another point of divergence from the people he remembered and understood.

"All right," Mari said. "I'm willing to play along with the why, though you can bet I'll be wanting more details later. What about the how? It was going to be a job and a half to sell Hidden Swamp to the Hokage back when we were a small army. Now we're just an extra-large genin team plus Kagome, and one of us is their traitor–no offence, Akane, sweetie. We know your story.

"Not to mention," she went on, "that we somehow need to get Leaf's attention without being summarily murdered by hunter-nin. Jōnin missing-nin are kill-on-sight, and that goes double for genjutsu users."

"Piece of cake," Hazō told her. "First, we get ourselves two summoners. That's over a third of what Leaf already has. That easily gets Jiraiya's attention, and he knows better than to steal scrolls and start off on the wrong foot with their clans when he can cultivate us as assets and see what we're worth. Then we contact him using his spy network. I was never an expert, but I remember one or two people and passwords. Then we earn his trust with an off-the-books mission and get Air Dome seals as a reward. From there, Leaf's ours for the taking."

"Air Domes?" Mari asked.

"Standard defensive seal," Kagome-sensei said. "Like Earth Dome, only you can see through it, so you know what the enemy's up to."

"It uses two seal elements placed on the ground," Hazō elaborated, drawing a basic diagram on the ground with a stick. The rest of the team crowded around him to see, Kei staying well back and unfortunately having a hard time seeing anything as a result. "It generates a dome of frozen air between them, with the elements on the inside. It's about as tough as granite, so you can break through it with explosives or good ninjutsu, but it takes effort, and in the meantime, the user is free to prepare on the inside."

"Sounds useful," Mari said. "You can buy time while you use enhancement techniques, and transparent barriers don't block genjutsu–except that the enemy's safe too, and they have way more freedom to manoeuvre."

"It's not all-powerful," Hazō admitted. "It still saved my life once."

"Fine," Mari said. "What makes it important?"

"Oh, that's simple." Hazō grinned. "Want to know how to use one simple seal to revolutionise warfare forever?"

Everyone tensed in anticipation.

"Go on."

Hazō showed them a cupped hand.

"Turn it upside down."

He flipped his hand over dramatically.

Noburi was the first to react. "I don't get it. Is this some kind of metaphor?"

"That doesn't make sense," Kagome-sensei agreed. "The seals don't work unless they're aligned on a firm surface, and the effect fails if they move. You can't just stick them in the air and hope for something to happen."

Kei slowly walked around the group, stopping across from Hazō so the diagram was upside down to her.

"One could maintain the alignment by also rotating the ground 180 degrees," she said thoughtfully. "A cave would suffice, though cave ceilings are rarely even unless sculpted. Would the earth kami pull the dome down, or is frozen air antithetical to their domain?"

"The latter," Hazō said. "As long as the seals are in place, the dome can't move. Do you want me to explain, or..."

"Please do not," Kei said. "I have been starved for an intellectual challenge of late."

"I still don't see it," Kagome-sensei asked. "The earth kami would still pull you down, and what's the good of lying at the bottom of the dome like when Wakahisa leaves green peppers in the bowl like a little kid?"

"Hey, I don't–"

"Quiet, please. Deny me this opportunity, and I promise I will redirect all my unsated intellectual hunger to the question of revenge."

Noburi shuddered.

"The point, however, is valid," Kei said. "Even with tree walking to remain attached to the ceiling, no advantage is gained. However, Kurosawa previously provided a hint by alluding to a seal that allows shinobi to walk on air, surely no coincidence. A cave ceiling thus cannot be the solution.

"Does it need to be the ground," she asked after more thought, "or is any firm surface acceptable?"

"That time it saved me, I used it on the floor indoors," Hazō said.

"So a ceiling would also suffice," Kei reasoned. "Again, however, no advantage is gained. Walking on air is useful only outdoors. An artificial ceiling outdoors… perhaps some manner of plank?"

Hazō didn't say anything, waiting.

"But without the structural support of the rest of the building, if you released the plank after activating the seal, it would just… Oh."

"Yeah."

"How counter-intuitive," Kei said. "Even so, you would still be faced with the problem raised by Kagome… But no, I am a fool. One can model the plank as a one-dimensional line connecting opposing points on the circumference of a circle, ignoring the third dimension. Assuming arbitrary width, one can simply climb out of the dome and be standing with no material connection to the ground.

"But the plank must be raised to a useful height in the first place, and presumably the dome will not form with the user's feet obstructing the necessary space. Jumping to activate the dome in mid-air? No, even if the seals could activate in motion, Kurosawa would not settle for a solution so inelegant. Ah, wait, a timer would suffice, allowing the user to hold the plank from the side instead of needing to touch the elements from underneath.

"I see now." Kei gave one of her rare smiles. "Assuming the first plank can be raised to a desired height, additional planks can be chained from it, creating a skybridge of arbitrary length. Obviously, the duration of the seal effect would be a limiting factor, but even a temporary skybridge would facilitate aerial travel between any two points. Of course, it would require optimisation to reduce the manual effort and material costs before traversing long distances could be practical, but presumably you have identified solutions. Lighter planks, custom seals, perhaps some process that could lay down the skybridge elements systematically while reducing human labour, after the fashion of wall-building ninjutsu… Furthermore, permanent skybridges are difficult to imagine given the manifold critical problems to be solved, but considering the transformative logistical implications… Kurosawa, you are a genius."

Um.

"That's… actually not where I was going with this," Hazō said carefully, while filing the concept of a skybridge away in the back of his mind (along with the question of exactly how Frozen Skein limitations affected somebody who only thought they were optimising somebody else's plan).

"Oh." Kei looked crestfallen. "Of course there was some ruinous flaw in my reasoning. It was hubristic of me to imagine that a genin of minimal talent like myself could rewrite military doctrine with nothing but a handful of hints."

"I never said that," Hazō said. "In fact, I have no idea if your suggestion would work. I just did something else–taking advantage of the fact that I know what sealmasters can do to modify seals. For example, a sealmaster of Kagome-sensei's calibre could change the trigger condition to be chakra emission, so you could activate the seal elements with tree walking."

"But what could you possibly… no, let me think."

They let Kei think, Mari visibly growing impatient, but apparently unwilling to incur Kei's wrath.

"You would be able to activate the seal with your feet, assuming a very thin plank. What would this achieve that a time delay on the seal would not? Running along the planks? No, the skybridge has been rejected. Some kind of two-plank arrangement, like the skis of Snow Country? I have always wished to attempt those. But no, I cannot allow myself to be distracted. Besides, the domes are defensive fortifications. They must be far too large."

"They can be miniaturised," Hazō said helpfully.

"They can?" Kei stared at him, wide-eyed. "Why did you not lead with that? If one can activate and deactivate multiple air domes simultaneously without interference–up to four, I assume–then it is possible to use some for support while placing others. If one alternates, of course it is possible to walk on air!"

The others looked at each other.

"Did you follow that?" Noburi asked Akane.

"I'm not sure. Maybe if I heard it again?"

"As mentioned, Kurosawa, you are a genius," Kei said, "and thank you for providing me with the most delicious puzzle I have enjoyed since… well, perhaps since my departure from Mist. Revolutionising military doctrine or not, your sheer creativity would surely have you married into the Mori Clan in short order were we still in the village."

"They grow up so young." Mari wiped an imaginary tear from her eye. "To think I would be hearing wedding bells after only a matter of months…"

Kei went bright red. "I-I did not mean myself! I was speaking in the hypothetical. That Kurosawa is unexpectedly adept at the art of flirtation does not suddenly mean I am some kind of… of stumpet!"

"A what?" Kagome-sensei asked.

"Highly inappropriate Mori slang," Mari said. "You know I never meant anything like that, Keiko dear."

She gave Hazō a "get on with it" signal with her eyes.

"In conclusion," Hazō said to the rest of the team, not looking at Kei just in case, "we have a Mori-certified way for ninja to walk on air, and all we have to do to get it is find a way to contact a murderous demigod who wants all of us, personally, dead and get him to give us some of his weapons. Luckily, if there's one thing I'm good at, it's persuading people not to murder me against their better judgement."

 

[Velorien]

Interlude (AU): Inoue Mari and the Quest for Redemption ​

Kagome's eyes were bloodshot. His new beard was ragged and unkempt. He had the pale face of a man to whom "sun" was an empty syllable, and he was stooped as if the weight of a stone tomb was pressing down on his shoulders. He was looking better than he had in weeks.

Mari felt the way Kagome looked. She was a failure as a mother and as an instructor. She'd let her children go unprepared to the Chūnin Exams, and she'd been stupidly overconfident about their performance. The reports had described them as weak, inexplicably weaker than she remembered them, and then they had described them as dead.

Relations had quickly fallen apart, between her and Jiraiya, between Jiraiya and Kagome, and especially between Leaf and Mist. As far as Jiraiya was concerned, Mist had murdered his children. As far as Mist's sharks were concerned, the Hokage's clan had turned out to be hubristic weaklings, and Leaf had shamed itself before the eyes of the entire shinobi world. The declaration of war would come any day now, and she didn't know how many countries Mist's superior exam performance would swing to its side.

Today was Mari's first day sober. The oblivion of lupchanzen piss still beckoned, but after Kagome had lost his meagre trust in Jiraiya and the rest of Leaf, there was nobody else he could ask for help. He had a desperate case of Saviour Syndrome, she knew, and maybe enabling him would only make things worse. But sealing was all Kagome had now. Trying to take that coping mechanism away could only end in disaster.

"Is the second auxiliary seal in place?" Kagome asked hoarsely.

"The one in the far right corner? Yes, it looks fine."

"Have you done the Lucky Dance Mark Five?"

Mari couldn't help rolling her eyes. "Yes, but only because Jiraiya wasn't watching."

"Stuff Jiraiya. He thinks I can't pull off the Kamitonaru Seal just because every sealmaster in history who tried it got splattered across up to eleven dimensions. He doesn't understand. I can do it. I have to do it. I'll bring them back, you'll see."

Mari processed that statement. "Every sealmaster in history? Wait, Kagome, don't—"

Kagome's hand touched the seal blank.

Reality shattered.

Around Mari, tiny shards of the world she knew seemed to reflect each other, endless tunnels of facing mirrors, refracted light bouncing between them and through them in a visible zigzag pattern. One of those tunnels led home, she was sure, but she'd also been split into infinite fragments, beams of light striking her like great waves overwhelming an unready swimmer, and she had no idea how to reassemble herself, much less move through the space she was in.

One fragment of Mari, small enough that it was accelerated by the impact of light, spun past like a malformed shuriken, and was instantly swallowed up by the infinity stretching between two others.

"So what do you reckon, Inoue? Ready to start your own village?"
​

-o-
​

Mari existed again. All of her was in one place. All of her was in one time. She was aware of her body as a single distinct object, and perceived her environment through ordinary human senses. She had not been devoured by the sealing failure.

What it had done to her was still up for debate.

"Inoue?" Shikigami repeated. "Pull yourself together, Inoue. You've only had half a bottle."

Mari's reflexes, honed over years of waking up in unfamiliar places with no idea what was going on, let her respond instantly.

"Sorry, Shikigami. My mind was elsewhere. You're right, though, you should pour me another one." Ten other ones, ideally, before she could begin to deal with what was happening.

Shikigami. Gorō Dan. A private room at Kurohige's. Poor lighting, too much cheap saké, and an outrageous idea that had changed her life forever.

There was no mistaking the place. There was no mistaking the person. And that meant… there was no mistaking the time.

Mari's mind flashed back to the campfire stories. A sealing failure could send itself backwards through time. What if, crazy as it sounded, it could send a person backwards through time as well? What if Mari really was back at Kurohige's?

Suppose she was. Either way, if she was seeing this, she was either a time traveller, dreaming, insane or in some kind of twisted supernatural hell that would soon reveal its true nature. In any and all of those scenarios, it made the most sense to play along.

No. Not just play along. If she was back in the past, she could change things. This time, she could keep them safe. She was better now, she dared to think. Stronger. Wiser. Maybe even worthier. She would find them and atone for her failure and give them the future they deserved. And she knew how to take the first step.

"Where did you say we'd be going?" she asked, in case the conversation hadn't reached that point yet.

"The Swamp of Death," Shikigami said impatiently. "The single deadliest place in the world—unless you're with me. Now, I don't want to push you, Inoue, but I do need a response before you leave this table."

Of course, there was only one response that would let her leave this table, at least alive. But Shikigami had known what to expect when he first approached her. He knew her secret fear, and he knew she wouldn't be able to resist the chance to put a sea, half a continent, and a small army between her and the Mizukage.

"I'm in," she said. "But I'm not on board with your choice of holiday destination."

She couldn't tell him she knew the future. Shikigami was a man with both feet planted deep in the ground, and the last thing she needed was for him to think she was mocking him on the night that he finally revealed his grand plan. But the Swamp of Death was simply too dangerous when she didn't know whether events would follow the same path this time round.

"Last time I talked to an agent coming back from Leaf," she said with a serious expression, "he told me the Hyūga had stepped up their patrols thanks to the mess over the border in Noodle. We wouldn't make it halfway to the swamp before they found us."

Shikigami clenched his jaw. "How sure are you?"

"He wasn't lying," Mari said. "You know I can tell. I guess it's possible he had faulty intel, but I'd rather not bet my life on it."

Shikigami downed the rest of his saké in one violent motion, then slammed the cup down on the table. "Byakuren's floating balls," he spat.

"Why don't we head east instead?" Mari asked smoothly. "I hear Marsh is very nice this time of year."
​

-o-
​

She hadn't been ready.

She'd let herself grow complacent during her time in Leaf, and now she was reaping the consequences. A woman who had thrown down the gauntlet to destiny itself had no right to relax. She had no right to lower her guard just because she thought she'd overcome one single obstacle. She of all people should have known that saving a life was nowhere near as hard as making sure it stayed saved.

Somewhere in the distance, fire and lightning flared briefly through the darkness as the hunter-nin battled the people she no longer thought of as comrades. She didn't know who'd win this time, with Mist having no Leaf support and Hidden Swamp having suffered much less attrition, but once again she wasn't sticking around to find out. She had to keep the survivors safe.

All two of them.

It was her fault. She should have realised that she'd broken something with her meddling. She didn't know why it had affected Hazō, and seemingly only Hazō, but seeing the differences in his behaviour should have given her a clue. He was still bright. Still creative. Still caring. But something, some kind of spark that she had always taken for granted, simply wasn't there. He didn't come up with spur-of-the-moment plans. He didn't swerve wildly between empathic insight and tracking mud all over people's feelings. He didn't even care about lists. She shouldn't have been surprised when Shikigami didn't make him a squad leader this time round, and she should have realised the implications.

It had been easy enough to find Keiko when the screaming and the explosions started. Mari never lost track of Keiko, and she was certainly making sure of it now, when her daughter's emotional stability was once again on a knife edge. But this time, the three kids weren't squadmates, and they weren't sleeping together.

The new Hidden Swamp, located in a sparsely inhabited country with no ninja village, had a far more sprawling layout than the single cave complex they'd had in the Swamp of Death. She and Keiko should have split up to find them, she'd known that even at the time, but it would have meant letting Keiko out of her sight in a warzone. Mari couldn't do it again. Instead, they'd found Hazō in the nick of time, and saved him from the attackers… but they'd been too late for Noburi.

Mari had failed her quest before it even began.
​

-o-
​

Later that night, after they'd done all the running they could, and exhaustion had mercifully sent the kids to sleep before they could fully take in the scope of what happened, Mari stayed up to plan.

Her endgame hadn't changed. She would reunite her family, and she would bring them back to Leaf. Even if something had happened to Hazō's muse, she still knew the principle behind the skywalkers, and Kagome should still be able to produce them. This time, she'd be able to save the Hokage, and preserve Leaf's position of strength… and she would damn well make sure her kids weren't going anywhere before they were jōnin.

Unfortunately, with no Swamp of Death, Jiraiya wouldn't be tracking them, and they had no hope of hunting down a disguised legendary spymaster on their own initiative. That meant they wouldn't be able to earn his trust over time as deniable assets, or learn ninjutsu from him as a reward. They would need to work a lot harder to convince him to create the Gōketsu Clan… though on the plus side, at least this time they wouldn't be the Cold Stone Killers.
​

-o-
​

It was all wrong.

It wasn't just that the kids weren't quite her kids, with experiences that they no longer shared and bonds that had no longer been made, and her occasionally reaching out to touch a familiar part of them only to find a gaping abyss. It was the entire dynamic. She hadn't realised until now how important Noburi's light-hearted, easy-going nature had been to her team of quiet introverts. Without him, there was too much silence, and not enough conflict.

Hazō still had something missing. He'd taken easily to sealing, but he was no longer driving Kagome insane with terrifying seal ideas, or giving dramatic inspirational speeches at the drop of a hat. He was no longer Akane's master. Akane herself was working hard to fill in the gap she didn't even know existed, and providing what emotional support she could to those prepared to accept it, but she was relying more and more on Youth to keep it up, and that was a disaster waiting to happen.

The other thing Mari hadn't realised was how much Hazō's attempts to micro-manage his teammates' lives had taken the burden off her. Despite his questionable rate of success, the mere fact of his trying often gave them the push they needed to get on with solving their own problems, or kept them busy long enough for Mari to find the time and energy to take over. She didn't have that now.

Keiko, ironically, was actually doing better. The brief night of terror in Marsh had been less damaging to her than the days of wearying despair in the Swamp of Death, and Mari's ability to look after her psychologically had been vastly improved by experience. At times, when Mari was too tired or too busy, she'd resort to giving Keiko an exhaustive set of instructions and leaving her in charge, and it only rarely ended in chaos.

She just wished she knew what to do with Kagome. The bond between him and Hazō was surprisingly weaker without the latter's constant intellectual prodding, and that left Kagome at an emotional loose end which she had to manage, maintaining his loyalty to the team until it could solidify into the bond she remembered.

Still, she had hope. In Leaf, there had to be resources for fixing whatever was wrong with Hazō. The Yamanaka, maybe, or the Third Hokage himself with his legendary stores of knowledge. She'd already failed to protect one of her children. She had to do whatever it took for the rest.
​

-o-
​

"Explain to me how you know that code," the Hokage said. There was no particular menace to his voice, as the weight of his gaze alone was enough to pin Mari to the spot and make sure she stayed there. To his side, Jiraiya watched silently, and Mari couldn't be sure whether he was undressing her with his eyes or figuring out how to minimise the damage to his mentor's office when he had to kill her.

"I'd be happy to share that information with you," Mari lied, "but first I would like to explain who we are and why we chose to walk up to one of your patrols and surrender unconditionally." She couldn't ask for permission to change the subject, because he might refuse, and the gentle reminder they were here by choice and completely in his power might make him relax a little and not sweat the small stuff.

"I am Inoue Mari, formerly a jōnin of Hidden Mist. These are Mori Keiko and Kurosawa Hazō, formerly genin of Hidden Mist, and that is Kagome." Akane had been escorted away separately, which was a little worrying, but she was confident the girl wouldn't be touched until the Hokage's business here was finished.

Kagome glared balefully as the two Leaf ninja's eyes turned to him.

"We fled Mist," Mari hurried on, "over irreconcilable ideological differences with the Mizukage, and now we have come to Leaf to offer you a mutually beneficial trade."

"You expect us to treat a missing-nin as a trading partner?" the Hokage asked with overt curiosity which did not try to fully mask the gaping spike pit underneath.

Mari carefully ignored that question and moved on to the bait. "We are willing to offer you the services of an elite Mist jōnin specialist in infiltration, seduction," she allowed her eyes to flick to Jiraiya briefly enough that he couldn't be sure it had happened at all, "and genjutsu, a veteran sealmaster specialising in security and demolitions," it was important to specify so as to avoid touching Jiraiya's childish pride as a general expert, "a sealmaster with the unique Iron Nerve Bloodline Limit, and a bearer of the Frozen Skein Bloodline Limit who has been accepted as Summoner by the Pangolin Clan."

Two pairs of eyes went wide at that last statement. Mari smirked inwardly. This time, instead of diplomatic flailing in Hidden Mountain, they had simply made use of the Kagome Lockpick and then fished the indestructible summoning scroll out of the crater. Granted, Keiko had missed out on Takahashi's training, but Jiraiya would probably make a better teacher anyway, given that Takahashi had never summoned anything in his life.

"The Pangolin Summoning Scroll has been lost for centuries," Jiraiya observed sceptically. "Show me."

At Mari's nod, Keiko pulled out the scroll and handed it to Jiraiya, making sure to unfurl it enough for him to see her signature. In this new timeline where Jiraiya had no particular feelings about any of them, Mari didn't want him to get any ideas about taking it away.

"Huh," Jiraiya said. "This may well be the real thing." He refocused on Mari with new intensity. "Where did you find it?"

"In the hands of an isolated hidden village full of skilled ninja not currently aligned with any political power," Mari smiled, "the location of which we would also be happy to provide as part of this deal." Wherever "her" Takahashi was, it wasn't here, and Mari didn't feel she owed anything to his temporal twin. More importantly neither did Keiko.

"Is that everything?" the Hokage asked, whether to downplay the significance of what they'd just offered him, or because he could tell it wasn't.

"By no means," Mari said. "We are also willing to offer you the designs for a seal capable of allowing any shinobi to freely walk on thin air." It had not been cheap or easy to find Kagome Air Dome seals with the resources of a handful of missing-nin unwilling to take stupid risks, but the results spoke for themselves.

The Hokage and Jiraiya exchanged brief glances, probably to the effect of Is that possible? and I don't know but I want to see it.

"And finally," Mari mentally took a very deep breath, "I am willing to offer Jiraiya my hand in marriage."

Jiraiya's eyes bulged. The Hokage moved to brush a strand of hair from his face in a way that momentarily blocked her view of his expression. Mari was pretty sure she'd successfully thrown a spanner into whatever gears had been turning in their heads.

"Marriage?" Jiraiya repeated incredulously. "As in the ceremonial and legal union of a man and a woman?"

"One of those," Mari confirmed, then turned to the Hokage. "The greatest of the Three, Leaf's second most powerful and valuable ninja, your preferred candidate for Fourth Hokage, has no clan and no family. That automatically puts him at a serious disadvantage when it comes to competition with the noble clans, and it means that if he should perish, all of his skills and experience will be lost with him. At the same time, he can't simply marry into an existing clan without surrendering his independence and some of his authority. He can, however, begin a new clan of his own, which will be born with a powerful jōnin, two sealmasters, two Bloodline Limits unavailable in Leaf, and one summoner of a summon clan already on good terms with Jiraiya's own."

Jiraiya burst out laughing. If she knew her temporarily ex-husband, her proposal had shocked him out of his wary mood, and then her audacity, a trait he was generally fond of, had pushed him towards amusement as his new state. Just as planned.

The Hokage was not so easy to affect. "What are you requesting in return?" he asked plainly.

Mari let the silence stretch for a few seconds.

"Nothing."

"Nothing," Jiraiya repeated with a wry grin.

"Of course," Mari said, "it's a package deal. If we become part of Leaf, that's all the incentive we need to offer you our skills and knowledge. And we would also require a pardon for Ishihara Akane."

The Hokage was silent for a while.

"Why have you chosen to make this offer to Leaf?"

"Multiple reasons," Mari said, mindful of the need to sound neither too mercenary nor too much like Hazō—the old Hazō—during his more impassioned moments.

"Leaf is the strongest village, and thus most likely to guarantee our safety. It is also the greatest enemy of our enemy, which is to say Hidden Mist. Jiraiya has a unique benefit he can obtain from us, giving you extra incentive to accept our offer. And finally, we believe in the Leaf ideal. Both during our time in Mist and during our travels, we've witnessed a lot of suffering caused by shinobi warfare, but also by ruthless exploitation of the civilian population. Leaf is known for its unique vision of a global peace in which shinobi and civilians willingly combine their efforts for the greater good. We want our skills to serve that vision rather than being used to perpetuate a status quo that hurts everybody in the long run."

The Hokage nodded thoughtfully, revealing nothing. "Jiraiya, kindly have them taken to secure guest quarters to await our judgement."
​

-o-
​

It wasn't the same, of course. It could never be the same, and Mari had known it from the start. But it was close. She was learning to love the kids and Kagome the way she had loved their "predecessors". The people of Leaf, by and large, were the same as they ever were. Jiraiya wasn't Hokage anymore, but on the other hand saving the Third's life with a timely warning had given her standing with both men a much-needed boost.

Akatsuki had been foiled, at least for now, the Third having decided that removing the Mizukage by luring him into their ambush wasn't worth advancing their dangerous plans. Leaf still had the skywalkers, after all, and this time round Mist didn't have the wealth of Hot Springs to draw on.

Hazō and Kagome were enjoying their sealing research, though without the barrage of innovations that had characterised their original selves. Hazō wasn't going for a harem this time round, and indeed even he and Akane were just good friends. On the other hand, Keiko, whom Mari had been able to help earlier and better this time round, had successfully charmed and/or intimidated the other genin into accepting her relationship with Tenten.

Most importantly, the Chūnin Exams had passed without incident (and without the Gōketsu), and Mari's long-awaited future was about to arrive.

And when it did, it surpassed all expectations.

"Mari, kids, we need you in the Hokage's office," Jiraiya exclaimed as he rushed into the dining room. "Sarutobi-sensei wants our resident Mist experts available ten minutes ago."

Soon, before the watchful eyes of the entire Gōketsu Clan, minus Kagome but plus the Hokage, four heavily-armed ANBU escorted two strangers to stand in the middle of the room.

At least one of them looked vaguely familiar, but Hazō identified her before Mari had a chance.

"Mum?!"

Ignoring all protocol as he was still wont to do, Hazō practically flew into Kurosawa Hana's arms. She held him tightly, moisture gathering in her eyes.

Finally, Hana extracted herself from her son's grip and bowed deeply.

"My apologies, Lord Hokage, Lord Gōketsu, esteemed Gōketsu Clan members. With your permission, I will renew my acquaintance with my son on a different occasion."

Nicely done, Mari noted in the back of her head. If the Hokage now imprisoned her or sent her away, he would be explicitly preventing the reunion of a long-lost family which had just reminded them all of the depth of their mutual affection.

"As you are now doubtless aware, I am Kurosawa Hana, a jōnin formerly of Mist and, separately, formerly of the Kurosawa Clan. I trust my son has provided you with a great deal of information regarding my background and abilities, and I would be honoured to answer any further questions you may have. I thank you for your hospitality."

Attention shifted to her companion, a tall, powerful-looking young man with eyes that were instinctively scanning the room. Hazō, who until then hadn't had a chance to register his presence, met his eyes. Mari saw the expression that passed across both of their faces, and in that moment she understood everything.

"My name is Kurosawa Hanzō," the young man introduced himself. "I am a genin formerly of Mist. I am the third son of Kurosawa Ren, and have received clan training in sealcrafting, negotiation and swordsmanship. I abandoned Mist over disagreement with the Mizukage's jingoistic and inhumane policies, and persuaded Aunt Hana to join me. We request to join Hazō as members of the Gōketsu Clan. In addition to our skills, experience and bloodline, as well as the latest intelligence on Mist, I personally would like to offer a number of what I believe to be unique sealing ideas, including ways to revolutionise Leaf's industrial sphere through creative application of the unexplored properties of Force Walls."

Silence reigned as those present processed the new information. Hana looked briefly at Mari and her body language underwent a subtle shift only a fellow master could read: I am your equal, but I submit to you because one of us must have authority over the other. Mari, still in the grip of revelation, made the appropriate counter-stance on pure reflex.

Hazō ignored all of them. His whisper was addressed to Hanzō alone, but it reverberated through the room as if it was an echo of something greater.

"So what happens now?"

Kurosawa Hanzō gave a mischievous smile.

"I don't know, Cousin. But I can't wait to find out together."​

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 256.2: Game Over​

A/N: This is a fake chapter posted for April Fool"s Day 2019.

-o-​

How had it come to this? Yes, the night had started out ominously, but for a while, it seemed like everything was going to be under control. People were mixing. Confrontations were being defused by more level-headed participants (having access to jōnin hand-picked for their ability to function in a foreign village really helped). Discovering the concept of gaming for the first time was exciting, and helped distract the gamers from the fact that each side's relatives had spent a good century or more killing the other's. Yes, it wasn't everything he'd hoped for, but the chaos had been more or less manageable, and so far there hadn't been any literal bloodshed.

So how had it come to this?

All of the games, all of them, from Strategic Dominance to the Chains of the Witch King adventure module, to freaking Yakuza, had somehow merged into a single metagame with a complex amalgam of rules that allowed every single attendant to play with or against each other at the same time. And guess who was running it.

No, Hazō knew how it had come to this. His mind flashed back to

-Φ-​

The door slammed open. Hazō's flashback was cut off as if severed by a blade.

"You're all here. Good."

Hazō recognised that voice. Even though, despite everything, he'd only heard it once before in his life, he knew it to be the voice of primal fear. No matter who Hazō became, no matter how well he learned to laugh at the antics of his past, there would always be a part of him that refused to forget. Right now, that voice meant only one thing.

Momochi Zabuza had crashed the party.

He'd brought his sword.

"Captain Zabuza!" a chirpy voice broke the paralysed silence. "I was so sure you wouldn't make it. Here, grab a seat next to… Nara, and I'll give you a quick run-down of the rules while Teams Platypus and Garden Eel are finishing off their turn spiral."

"Mori. Shut up."

In the second most shocking development of the night, Mori shut up.

"I'm not here to play games," Momochi growled. "I've had enough of games. I've had enough of politics. I've had enough of lies. My comrades, the best men and women in Mist, are dead. The politicians don't get to brush that away because the truth is inconvenient. Tonight, you're going to hear everything that happened. And who was responsible for it all."

Hazō realised in a burst of horror exactly what Momochi was about to tell the world. The true events of that battle were classified beyond imagination. The only people in Leaf who knew were those present at the fateful clan heads' meeting. And of those people, Lord Hyūga had chosen not to attend the gaming night at all, while the other two had eventually bowed out, citing (probably Mori-related) headaches.

There was a reason those events were classified. How would the people at large, both civilian and ninja, react if they learned that the other side of the prospective alliance had just massacred all of their heroes? How would they react if they learned that the other side had lured Uzumaki and Yagura respectively to their doom? Most importantly, how would they react if they learned that their leaders had chosen to pretend it all away in order to make friends with the enemy, and in so doing boost their personal political status?

A permanent end to the possibility of alliance would be a given. But the consequences beyond that were unpredictable. Villages betrayed by their new leaders. The enforcers on whom the state's power rested suddenly all dead. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and any theoretical texts on the subjects of civil unrest, or even insurrection, had always been burned on sight and their authors disappeared. And even in the best-case scenario, either every foreigner present would have to be imprisoned or killed—while under Chūnin Exam peace treaty—or the other villages would find out that Leaf and Mist had just suffered catastrophic military losses.

Jiraiya, the only person in the room who could do anything about this, looked completely unconcerned. He was fully in-character still, obviously as interested as anyone in this grand revelation that had nothing to do with him personally. Hazō had no idea how he could stop Momochi from that position. Any public attempt to silence someone about to reveal a conspiracy would instantly implicate Jiraiya as a member of that conspiracy. But if anyone could pull it off…

"I may have to stop you there," Jiraiya said mildly. "If the Mizukage has ruled these topics highly classified, as I believe she has, it could cause a major diplomatic incident for you to tell us without her permission. I, for one, can't afford that when I have urgent business waiting for me in Leaf."

A pretext—something of a flimsy one, but definitely a pretext—for Jiraiya to take action against Momochi in an aggressive but fundamentally non-hostile way. Hazō didn't often get to see Jiraiya at work in his natural environment of subtle diplomacy, as opposed to the cutthroat politics that had been thrust upon him, and it was beautiful to see a master at work.

However, people's eyes were still narrowing in suspicion.

"We'll still be here if you go and come back with her permission," Jiraiya said, casually defusing it. "It's not like I'm not curious about what you have to say."

"Shut up, Hokage."

Thirty people flinched.

"You don't have the authority to enforce Mist law. If you so much as lay a finger on me, that's your diplomatic incident right there. In a room full of people."

A none-too-polite reminder that if Jiraiya used violence, the friendly fire could be catastrophic.

"Here are the facts," the ultimate hunter-nin raised his voice.

"It was a trap. And the ones who set us up, the ones responsible for all this—"

The door slammed open. Momochi whipped round instantly, sword in hand.

An apparently unarmed man stumbled in, looking like he could fall over any second.

Thank the Sage and all his many brothers.

Jiraiya flicked his eyes to one of the ANBU, and the woman took off at a dead run. Aunt Ren would be here in minutes. Hazō almost regretted not inviting her.

Until then, all Jiraiya had to do was take whatever the man was about to tell him and use it to stall for time. Child's play for the master diplomat.

"Sunohara?" Jiraiya asked with a confused frown that probably masked massive relief. "What could be important enough to make you come all the way here in person?"

"They've taken Gaara," Sunohara said heavily. "We are out of time."

-o-
​

What do you do?

Voting closes on Wednesday 3rd of April, 4 p.m. London time. Note the extended deadline.​

 

[Velorien]

Omake: Sealmasters' Showdown​

This is an alternative early draft of a scene for the Battle of the Gods.

-o-​

Two men looked down on the bloodbath that was Nagi Island, where friends and allies whom they might have saved were being murdered one by one. Two men looked down, but neither moved to help, because they both knew that the true battle was taking place here, in the sky.

Jiraiya of the Three, the Fifth Hokage, the legendary sealmaster, stood comfortably on thin air. His stance was relaxed, almost as if waiting for an appointment, with all the poise of a man not nearly out of chakra. Next to his lowered hands was an entire array of pouches.

Sasori the Puppetmaster, Head of Akatsuki Research and Development, the legendary sealmaster, floated in that same air like a mechanical angel, great wings of wood and leather beating determinedly in defiance of gravity. There were countless seals attached to his wooden body like festival decorations.

"I know how I'm staying up here," Jiraiya said bemusedly. "How are you?"

"With difficulty," Sasori admitted. "Ultra-light puppet materials get me halfway there. As for the other half… you can guess."

"Sealmasters cheat," the two said in unison.

"Let's get started," Sasori said as his wings flared wide. "Deidara is being insufferable about his kill count."

"Lucky bastard," Jiraiya grunted. "Even after all you've done, I only get to kill you once."

Sasori peeled off one of his seals and flicked it at Jiraiya in one light, seemingly carefree motion. In mid-air, the seal unravelled, loops of ninja wire lashing out from within to wrap tightly around Jiraiya's body, leaving him all but immobilised. A powerful flame lit one end, heating the wire red as it travelled towards him as if on a fuse.

Jiraiya, arms pinned to his sides, twisted his wrists to reach awkwardly at the secondary pouches on his thighs. Holding two seals with his fingertips, he slapped one onto the wire and flung the other in Sasori's general direction. Over little more than a second, the wire was covered in a translucent green goo that not only drained the heat, but rapidly melted the wire into oblivion while leaving even his clothes unharmed.

The other seal burned away, revealing a pair of metal spheres rotating against each other like meditation balls held by an invisible hand. Ignoring gravity, the two separated as they continued to spin against each other. The ever-growing space between them was lit up by a flickering series of thunderbolts, like blows being exchanged between two invulnerable fighters.

Before the balls could reach and electrocute Sasori, he threw a seal downwards, towards the ground, where it turned into a malformed, glowing metal spike. The lightning followed it, happily grounding itself through some hapless cultist. Another seal thrown between the spheres created a brief vacuum that sucked them in, smashing them against each other before they could generate anything else.

Jiraiya smirked as the two spheres detonated on contact, catching Sasori in an immense fireball.

The smirk disappeared as Sasori remained untouched. His scroll effect's suction had drawn in the fire, then instantly transformed itself into repulsion, sending everything back to Jiraiya in a single focused stream of roaring flame. At the last second, Jiraiya unsealed a storage scroll, bringing out a dense, strangely dented metal wall that glowed red-white as it absorbed the heat. Its duty finished, the wall plummeted to the ground, crushing some more cultists as it did (Jiraiya had not chosen his position by accident).

For a moment, all was still as the sealmasters calculated their next gambits.

"Stored wall?" Sasori sneered. "What are you, a chūnin?"

"It was a present from Tsunade," Jiraiya muttered. "She kept hitting me over the head with it, shouting 'take this!', so I did."

Before Sasori could decide where to start with that one, Jiraiya took the offensive. He threw out several scrolls towards Sasori in a circular pattern, and each one erupted into a fountain of acid. In addition to being strong enough to melt through platinum, the combined effect completely obscured Sasori's vision—leaving him unable to see the giant spike of rock following close behind.

Sasori's defence was a seal that sparked the acid droplets with controlled Lightning chakra, sending an instant spider web of energy crackling through them that evaporated every last one. The resulting acidic fog only just failed to envelop him.

The spike, on the other hand, made it through.

Or at least it made it through to touch several of the seals on the Sasori puppet's stomach. They flared, and the spike vanished, reappearing somewhere several metres away and falling down to pierce… well, you can guess.

But the shimmering in the air that had redirected the spike didn't disappear. It kept going towards Jiraiya at the speed of a projectile uninhibited by air friction. It was at the very last moment that Jiraiya's own seal flew into it, making it vanish completely.

"Wait," Sasori said cautiously as the exchange ended. "Did you just use a teleportation effect on a teleportation effect?"

The two sealmasters instantly jumped/flew away from the point of contact. In flawless coordination, the two selected and threw seal after seal at the point of contact as fast as they could. About a dozen seals later, there was a reassuring green flash as reality failed to destroy itself.

The pair's eyes met with a shared understanding: for now, conventional weapons only.

Of course, these were sealmaster conventional weapons. Jiraiya's next attack looked like he'd produced a tiny white ball from a storage scroll, but as the ball zoomed towards Sasori, it drained moisture from the air, growing into an ever greater water bullet with enough final mass to humble an elephant.

Contrary to expectations, Sasori didn't use Fire or Earth, or even Wind, to block the attack. Instead, his defensive seal produced a mass of wood which absorbed the water with a series of gluttonous pulses, growing bigger with each one. Its sustenance used up, the ravenous tendrils stretched towards the nearest source of water, namely Jiraiya.

"Is that the Wood Element in a seal?" Jiraiya exclaimed incredulously.

Sasori shrugged and simply said, "Orochimaru."

As the first tendril touched Jiraiya, he took a deep breath in and unsealed a strange, double-sided seal. Crimson clouds burst forth as he destroyed it, causing the wood to wither away instantaneously.

It was Sasori's turn to be shocked. "Why are you carrying concentrated herbicide into battle?"

"My cousin insisted," Jiraiya said. "Something about half-plant, half-animal creatures."

Cutting the banter short, Jiraiya activated two seals at once, and waves of solid compressed air slammed towards each other as they made a beeline for Sasori, like the bite of a creature with many sets of jaws.

Sasori, unwilling to be outdone, slapped seals onto the walls right before they could reach him, sending a series of cracks through the air as if it was made of stone. The walls shattered into fragments, each fragment flying back at Jiraiya like a homing kunai.

But what Sasori hadn't realised was that Jiraiya had been taking advantage of the increasing visual distortion as the pairs of walls came together between them. Step by step, he'd been closing the distance. Before the "kunai" could connect… he leapt forward, grabbed Sasori and swung him around like a no-longer-human shield. Sasori's body began to fall apart as it was pierced by a hundred razor-sharp strikes.

"Sealmasters cheat," Jiraiya whispered triumphantly into Sasori's ear as he held him tight.

"Yes," Sasori agreed softly. "We do."

Even as Jiraiya's eyes widened in realisation, even as he began to move, a great ironsand drill pierced his chest from behind. The hole was bigger than a human head. A sandstorm briefly enveloped his body, tearing his clothes and destroying his seals… including the skywalkers on his sandals.

Sasori fell as collateral damage from his ultimate puppet's attack finished off his disintegrating body. The puppet followed. And so did Jiraiya.

The Fifth Hokage, the strongest man in the world, hit the ground from twenty metres' height, together with a rain of his own blood and countless shards of wood.

Perfect silence fell on the battlefield. Then Jiraiya stood up.

Nothing was over yet. A few drops of blood had fallen within the reach of Hidan, watching the battle from beneath. The scythe-wielder smirked as he touched one of his blades to the ground, and then licked it like a delicious treat. Then, looking Jiraiya straight in the eyes, he drew his ritual circle, and in the same motion, pulled out a spike and stabbed himself through the heart.

Jiraiya swayed. He coughed up blood. Then he took a step towards Hidan.

Mouth hanging open in disbelief, Hidan stabbed himself again.

Jiraiya took a step forward.

In a panic, Hidan kept stabbing himself, as if convinced that if he did it enough, it would finally work. But Jiraiya, swaying, back bent, arms down in front of him as if he didn't have the strength to lift them up, took step after step after step. When the immortal came to his senses and realised that he had to run for his life, it was too late.

Jiraiya pulled himself upright by pure force of will. He gave Hidan one last contemptuous look. Then he plunged his hands into Hidan's chest like a knife through butter, grasped his spine, and tore him in half.

The Fifth Hokage fell to the ground, the last of his strength used up. He gazed at the sun one last time as his vision faded away.

"This is the best I could do, kids," he said to the sky above. "It's all up to you now."

 

[eaglejarl]

Future Interlude (AU?): Honoka's Team, Part 1​

"Tanaka Eita..." Umino-sensei called, staring at his notes.

"No whammies, no whammies," Eita murmured to himself. The various jōnin-sensei were already gone, taking their newly-assigned teams out for evaluation. There were thirteen genin left, including Hyūga. More worryingly, there were only four chūnin-sensei left and one of them was Psycho Lady.

"...Hyūga Goro, and Watanabe Hayata," Umino-sensei continued. "The three of you are Team Honoka."

Nnnnoooooooooooooo!

Sage's shriveled ballsack, he was on a team with that stuck-up Hyūga bastard and he got Psycho Lady for a teacher?! Nnnoooooo! What had he ever done to the universe that it should punish him like this?!?!?!?!

"Come on, you little stinkers," Psycho Lady growled. "On the roof, now. Don't be last." She flicked her hand, hurling something out into the hall too fast to identify, and then she was gone and her prior position was taken up by a large chunk of iron. It fell to the floor with a heavy clunk and knocked out a divot.

Umino-sensei glared at the brand-new dent in the floor. "I told her to stop doing that," he grumbled. He ran a hand through his thinning gray hair and breathed out a slow, calming breath before starting to call the names of the next team. Hyūga and Watanbe must have been just as dismayed as Eita at their choice of team leaders, because it took them until then to unfreeze and dart for the door. Eita scrambled after them, getting to the door last solely by virtue of having been farthest away. He had plenty of limitations as a ninja but even before his latest growth spurt left him towering over his classmates, no one in his year could even come close to catching him in a foot race.

Unfortunately, that didn't help when you needed to get to the top of a six-story staircase and someone else got to the stairs in front of you. The geometry was against him; if he hugged the railing then they were in his way, but if he went wide then he had to cover too much distance.

On the other hand, this was Psycho Lady and whoever was last she would...blow them up or something. Who knew? There was a reason that the upperclassmen had been whispering her pseudonym in hushed and terrified tones ever since she had started occasionally guest-teaching at the Academy six years ago.

He reached forward and pushed on Hyūga's back foot just as it was lifting up. The boy went down in a heap, barking his shins and knees on the steps in front of him and yelping in pain; Eita jumped over him without a glance. Hyūga kicked up, knocking him off balance, but Eita managed to catch himself and scramble drunkenly upwards on his hands and feet for a couple of steps until he could right himself. It cost him time and allowed Watanabe to pull ahead much too far to catch. Still, second wasn't last.

Eita burst out the door to the roof, took two steps and got hit in the back of the head with something hard and heavy that splatted wetly. Blood and brains shot out in an interrupted cone in front of him but he barely had time to notice because he was too busy trying to tuck and roll to absorb the impact of his high-speed faceplant.

Halfway through the roll, he twisted his palm to the side and used a blast of chakra repulsion to add a sideways vector to his course. It was a good thing he did, because a moment later an explosion went off right where he would have been.

"AAAAAIIIIIIEEEEE!!!!"

Eita came back to his feet, looking around frantically for attackers before checking to see what had made Hyūga scream like a little girl.

The white-eyed clan kid was desperately trying to brush off the bucketful of worms and bugs that Psycho Lady had poured over his head as he came through the door to the roof. Some of them had clearly gotten in his mouth when he screamed, so he was spitting and coughing. More had apparently gone down his shirt, so he was dancing frantically and slapping at himself.

"Stop being such a baby, it's just a few bugs," Psycho Lady said, standing atop the small structure that sheltered the door. She was casually holding a bucket in one hand and looking down on her new students in disgust.

Satisfied that he wasn't in imminent danger, and with one eye firmly on Psycho Lady at all times, Eita checked himself over. He had not, he determined, had his head exploded or been hit with someone else's head. He had apparently been hit by a medium-sized watermelon, probably already chopped into fist-sized chunks that were only loosely stuck together. He was sticky, his hair was a giant mat of fruit pulp, and his shoulders and neck were going to be one massive bruise, but he wasn't actually injured.

To Eita's right, Watanabe was on his knees on the roof, pawing at his eyes and spitting like an angry cat trying to get rid of a hairball. He had apparently been hit from either side with two massive blasts of soot, since his entire body was black except for a small line on front and back. He must have been looking slightly to the side because no part of his face had escaped the enblackening.

Psycho Lady dropped the now-empty bucket of bugs and moved at chakra-boosted speed, appearing beside Watanabe. She tapped one of the bazillion pockets that covered her uniform and another bucket popped into existence in midair. She caught it with a smooth and clearly long-practiced motion.

"Look up," she said.

Confused and unable to see, Watanabe obeyed the instruction. Psycho Lady slowly poured the bucket over his face, shifting the flow of water around to get as much of the soot off of him as possible with only a gallon of water. Of course, she hadn't said 'and keep your mouth shut', so Watanabe was now coughing and spluttering due to the soot-mud in his mouth and throat.

Another tap at one of her pockets and the bucket vanished back into storage space. Psycho Lady stepped back, putting her hands on her hips and glowering at her three charges.

"What's wrong with you three?" she scolded. "Slow to the roof! I had time to get up here, close the door behind myself, get up on top of the shed, and get my bucket ready! No situational awareness! BigNose ran right through my Lesser Barrier Formation, even though it was clearly marked! Clearly! Marked! And right in front of him!" She waved in disgust at the two ankle-high boxes with coloration that precisely matched that of the roof, separated by a solid ten meters so that they weren't anything like 'right in front' of someone coming out the door at speed.

Eita barely managed to stifle a snort. Watanabe hated being teased about his nose which, yes, was more than a little oversized for his otherwise delicate features. Honestly, he looked like someone had stuck a grown man's nose on a child's face.

"And you! Edgy, or whatever your name is!"

"Eita, ma'am," he said hesitantly.

"Eita, Edgy, whatever! You didn't even try to dodge when I shot you with the watermelon!"

"Y—" Eita closed his mouth with a click, biting off the instinctive yelp of protest. He knew how this conversation went: "You were behind me!" "So? Ninja!" There was no point and he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction.

"And you!" Psycho Lady said, throwing her hands in the air as she directed her gaze to her third student. Hyūga had managed to deal with enough of the invertebrate assault that he had himself under control and was now desperately attempting to conjure the Kill You With My Brain no Jutsu into existence. His efforts went unrewarded.

"You're one of those cheating eyeball cheaters! How could you let me surprise you?!"

Hyūga didn't say a word, he just continued glaring and looking sour.

"Well?!"

Hyūga mumbled something.

"What? Speak up, boy. I'm all the way over here. And stand up straight. Mumbling and slouching make you seem stupid."

Hyūga's back (and Eita's) snapped into parade-ground straightness.

"I said, I didn't have my bloodline active," Hyūga said resentfully.

Psycho Lady blurred across the space between then and poked Hyūga in the ribs hard enough to make him double over and eep.

"Choose a better tone," she said, standing just out of lunging distance, hands on hips with one toe tapping.

Hyūga took a moment to master himself, then straightened up, cleared his throat, and spoke clearly and respectfully. "My apologies, sensei. I did not see you because I did not have my bloodline active."

"Well why not?! You've got cheating eyeballs, why aren't you cheating with them?! Ninja are supposed to cheat, and your stinking cheating eyeballs are the best and cheatiest bloodline around!"

Hyūga blinked, clearly uncertain how to take that. "Um...thank you?"

"Answer the question!"

"Uh...right. I didn't have them active because it requires chakra to maintain them, and I was conserving my chakra for running."

Psycho Lady looked disgusted. "Pah. A quick little run like that? You should have had plenty of chakra for that and using your stinking cheating eyeballs." She shrugged. "Eh. We'll work on that." She shook a finger at him. "You better work on that!"

"Uh...I will, ma'am."

"Good." She swiveled on Eita. (It was not, he noticed, much of a swivel, as she had always kept him in her peripheral vision.)

"You! Why weren't you first? You're the fastest runner in your year."

Eita blinked. She had read his file? Well, that probably wasn't too surprising. He had only seen her around the campus a few times, and most of what he knew was from horrific whispered stories of other students who had taken her occasional seminars. "I was furthest from the door, ma'am. I got to the stairs last."

She raised an eyebrow. "So why were you second instead of last?"

Eita swallowed nervously. "I, uh...I kinda tripped Hyūga?" He struggled to maintain his posture instead of cringing. Assaulting a fellow student outside of sanctioned training was a severe offense. Still, lying was worse.

She broke into a smile and nodded approvingly. "Good! You're a ninja, act like it. Wait! No, that's not right. Uh...how dare you attack a teammate? Right?"

Eita had no idea what to say to that and it didn't sound like a real question so he simply stayed at attention and said nothing.

Psycho Lady frowned, her (frankly, very attractive) face furrowing. "I mean...I guess you were technically teammates, so that was bad. Except not really, because you aren't a team until I agree to accept you. I guess it was okay." She nodded to herself and then looked around.

"I'm Gōketsu Honoka," she said, as though they hadn't already known. "I'm twenty-four, I like blackberries and hot chocolate and explosives and traps and stuff. I'm your new chūnin-sensei. Okay, BigNose, you go next."

The soaking-wet soot-covered boy glared at her for a moment, and then clearly remembered what had happened to Hyūga when he'd sounded surly. Through not-quite-clenched teeth he announced, "I'm Watanabe Hayata. I'm sixteen. I'm good at fire jutsu and I like to read. Also, being called 'BigNose' bothers me."

Psycho Lady humphed. "Fine. You! Cheating Eyeballs Kid! Tell us about yourself."

"My name is Hyūga Goro," said the scion of the second-most-powerful clan in Leaf, struggling to not show the frustrated anger that he was failing to not show. "I am also sixteen, seeing as I just graduated twenty minutes ago. I am the younger son of Lord Neji, Hyūga Clan Head."

"Hmph. You! Watermelon Head! What about you?"

"My name is Tanaka Eita," Eita said, as politely and respectfully as possible. "I am also sixteen. I am the fastest runner in our graduating class."

"What else?"

The earliest traces of panic started fluttering in Eita's belly. "Else, sensei?"

"Yeah. What else do you like to do? What else do you think I should know about you?"

Oh, Sage. Was she going to make him say out loud, in front of Watanabe and Hyūga, that he had barely squeaked into the top third of the class for taijutsu and had been middle of the class or below for all his other ninja subjects? Or, worse, that he could barely read?

"I'm...good at math, ma'am."

She nodded. "Cool. At dinner tomorrow, make sure you tell Uncle Kagome that. He'll enjoy having another math guy to nerd out with."

Eita's jaw fell open before he could stop himself; he hurried to close it again. Had she really invited him, a newly-graduated mudfoot genin who had barely scraped out a pass, to dinner at the Gōketsu estate? And she had suggested that he talk to Lord Gōketsu Kagome himself? The inventor of the Kagome Theorem? The creator of the Super Explodey Seal? The inventor of the skywalker seal?!?!?!

"Uh...uh..."

Her delicate eyebrows came together in a frown. "Why do you look like a fish?"

"Uh...dinner?"

The frown became puzzlement. "Yeah? So? We're a new team. You're going to be living at the estate for the next few months." She hesitated again, and then started twisting her hands together nervously. "Oh. Um...I mean, you can live at the estate for the next few months. If you want. You and your family. Hazō said it was okay. You don't have to though. Unless you want to. It would probably make sense though, since we're going to be training a lot. And we have some nice guest quarters, and one of the cabins is already made up for you. I know it would make your parents' commute a little longer, but we have rickshaw drivers waiting outside the gates practically all the time, and it would mean your sister and brother could get some tutoring. They'd need to work, of course, but we pay good wages."

"Uh...I...uh..."

She glanced to the side. "Watanabe, your family is in the cabin next to his, if you want. Whether or not you move in, Uncle Noburi wanted to have a look at your father's knee. He said not to make any promises because it's an old injury and there isn't always anything to do for those, but he said it was okay to offer. Oh and, um, no charge. Obviously. Can't charge teammates."

The world spun around Eita. She was offering to have Master Physician Gōketsu Noburi, the senior medical official of Leaf General Hospital, the best medic-nin in Leaf since the unfortunate passing of Lady Tsunade, use his healing talents on a mere civilian? For free? Sure, he was well known for working in Leaf General and being willing to treat anyone who showed up based solely on their need, but still!

"Hyūga, you can move in too," Gōketsu-sensei said. "Um...I don't know if you'll want to, since your place is really nice and it's next door to ours anyway. Still, Mari-sensei said it would be rude not to invite you when I've invited the other two and being rude to my students would be a terrible way to start off our new team." She nodded. "First impressions and foundations are very important, she says. And she's really smart about people, so she would know. She'll be handling the infiltration training for the three of you. I'm no good at that stuff."

Eita seriously thought he was going to pass out. Lady...Lady Gōketsu? The Firehair, the Mistress of Night, the source of most of the Academy's espionage curriculum? The woman about whom a thousand songs and a thousand thousand poems had been written? (Most of them incredibly raunchy.) The master spy who had wormed her way into the offices of the Kazekage and come home with information that allowed the Eighth to avert World War Five? She was going to be training them? As quietly as possible, he used the Dispelling technique to verify that he wasn't trapped in a genjutsu. When that didn't work, he pinched himself, hard. Nope. Probably not dreaming.

Hyūga bowed smoothly. "Your offer is very gracious, sensei. With your permission, I will decline. As you say, my home is next door to your own lovely estate, and I would like to stay with my family if you'll permit it."

She nodded vigorously enough to set her black-with-blonde-highlights pixie cut bouncing. "Sure, sure! Totally fine! Probably better that way, really. Uncle Kagome would flip out if you and your cheating eyeballs were wandering around the property all the time."

Hyūga wisely said nothing.

"Anyway. I'll see all of you at Training Ground Four, five o'clock tomorrow morning. Bring your gear and a change of clothes. We'll be working all day and having dinner at seven, so tell your families to expect you late. Dress is casual and Mari-sensei was very clear that 'none of them are to bring anything except their own sweet selves or I will be very cross with you, Honoka', so don't bring anything or I'll get in trouble." She looked at all three of them, then fidgeted for a moment. "So...uh...yeah. See ya tomorrow, I guess? Yeah. Uh...bye!" She raced to the edge of the roof and dove off.

Eita stared at the empty space where his terrifyingly insane instructor had been, his brain far too locked up to do anything.

o-o-o-o​

"How did it go?" Mari-sensei asked from behind her.

Honoka forced herself not to jump. Someday, some day, she was going to catch Mari-sensei coming. And on that day, pigs would fly.

Carefully, she finished stocking the pot-bellied stove with shakes of wood and checked to make sure that the kettle was full. She was down to ninety-seven gallons of hot water in her storage seals, so it was time to stock up. She just hoped that Uncle Kagome wouldn't get too crabby with her for letting her supplies run so low.

Finally, she turned around and stepped into her teacher's embrace. The hug was nice, a warm embrace that signaled to her subconscious that it was safe to let her public persona go for now.

"It went well," she said, when they both eventually stopped hugging and stepped back. "Want some tea?"

"Yes, thanks."

Honoka rummaged out the appropriate seal and produced a wooden box that contained a piping-hot and thoroughly-steeped teapot, as well as four cups. She passed one to Mari-sensei and poured it full before taking some for herself and sealing everything else up again. No reason to let the pot cool, after all.

"Oh, the red," the older woman said, taking a deep and well-satisfied breath of the fragrance. "I thought you were out? I've been haunting the tea shops for months and there's been none for love or money." She grinned. "And believe me, I tried both."

Honoka laughed. "They happened to have some in the market of a town I passed through on my last mission, and I remembered how much you liked it, so I picked some up." Granted, the 'town' in question had been Degarashi Port in the Land of Tea and Honoka's mission had been to the capital of the Land of Noodles. Still, it had made Mari-sensei smile, and what was a little running in the grand scheme of things?

"Thank you, minx. So, tell me about your little sproglings! Are they everything you hoped?"

Honoka nodded. "Yes, actually. Watanabe walked into the trap, but he sensed it just before it went off and was starting to dive clear. Hyūga held onto his temper when I doused him with the bugs, and Tanaka thought fast enough to crab his roll after I hit him with the watermelon. None of them used the Substitution targets I left in the stairwell, so we'll need to work on that a bit, but that's probably down to low chakra reserves meaning that they still consider Substitution an escape jutsu instead of a travel jutsu."

"How about their tempers and personalities?"

"Surprisingly good, actually. None of them cursed at me even when I was rude and disparaging. Hyūga in particular was brilliant. He snotted off at first but I gave him one poke and he was respectful and self-controlled from then on."

She took a sip of her tea to buy herself a moment to think. "I'm a little concerned about Tanaka. His literacy skills need serious work and his self-confidence is terrible." She snorted. "Probably because, ever since Ebisu retired, the Academy has gone completely to crap."

"Language, young lady!" Mari-sensei's tone was flawlessly shocked; she even gasped and put a hand on her chest in amazement.

Honoka grinned impishly. "Yes, sensei. Anyway, I'll want to have Uncle Kagome give him some tests, but I suspect he's got word-blindness. Terrible scores in all the written subjects, brilliant in math and logic. He's got the standard civilian-born no-early-education problem so all of his clan-born classmates outstripped him." She snorted. "And, honestly, he's got one of the worst throwing arms ever."

"We should ask the Aburame glassmakers to test his vision," Mari-sensei said. "It's possible that he's just nearsighted."

Honoka nodded and made a mental note. "Honestly, I'm annoyed with Airi. She's supposed to be keeping an eye on the students for us. Her people should have caught Tanaka years ago; if they had, he would be much farther along."

Mari-sensei nodded, her lips pressed together in a line of annoyance. "I need to have a talk with that woman. I'm not sure if her network is compromised or if she's just starting to get senile, but I may need to get more involved again."

Honoka winced. Mari-sensei had been enjoying her retirement from the role of Clan Spymistress, and it would be a shame if she had to come back to work.

Mari-sensei produced a storage seal from inside her elegant kimono and popped out a stack of folders bundled together with string and wrapped in leather to resist storage shock. She slid the whole mass across to Honoka. "I double-checked the so-called 'deep background' that Airi put together for you." She snorted. "Totally inadequate. I have no idea what she was thinking. Anyway, I worked something up."

A chuckle escaped before Honoka could stifle it. Airi's deep background on her students had been extremely thorough.

"My, my, sensei," she teased, "it's almost like you're mother-henning over me and my brand new sproglings."

Mari-sensei pretend-scowled in offense. "Hmph. I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about." A yawn ambushed her and she covered it with one surprised hand. "Yipes. Sorry. It's not the company."

"Heh. No worries; it's late, we're both tired, and I have sproglings to torme...er, to train early tomorrow. I'm going to let the kettle boil and then I'm for bed."

The redhead (who definitely did not have any grey speckling her luxurious crimson mane, at least not if you knew what was good for you) patted Honoka's hand and stood up, stifling another yawn. "Sounds good. Have fun tomorrow. You'll be in by six, right? They're going to be exhausted and smelly. Need to give them time for a soak before dinner."

"Away with you, mother hen!" Honoka said, flapping her hands at her teacher. "They're my sproglings, not yours!"

Mari-sensei put her nose in the air like an offended cat. "Hrmph. Well, I know when I'm not wanted. Good night, minx." She hrmphed again, giving her head an overdramatic toss and then stalked out of the room with offended dignity.

"Good night, sensei," Honoka called after her, before smiling and taking a long sip of her tea. She pulled the folders towards herself. There was time for a little reading before the water boiled.

---

Voting is still open and ends on Saturday, September 28, at 9am Eastern time.

 

[eaglejarl]

Future Interlude (AU?): Honoka's Team, Part 2​

"Anyway. I'll see all of you at Training Ground Four, five o'clock tomorrow morning. Bring your gear and a change of clothes. We'll be working all day and having dinner at seven, so tell your families to expect you late. Dress is casual and Mari-sensei was very clear that 'none of them are to bring anything except their own sweet selves or I will be very cross with you, Honoka', so don't bring anything or I'll get in trouble." She looked at all three of them, then fidgeted for a moment. "So...uh...yeah. See ya tomorrow, I guess? Yeah. Uh...bye!" She raced to the edge of the roof and dove off.

Eita stared at the empty space where his terrifyingly insane instructor had been, his brain far too locked up to do anything.

...

"What just happened?" Hyūga asked, his voice wobbling back and forth across the boundary between 'querulous' and 'whimpering'.

"We...got our teacher? I guess?" Watanabe said. He paused. "She accepted us as her students, right? I mean, we're official now?"

Everyone ruminated on that for a moment.

"I think so?" Eita said. "That's...good."

...

"She's supposed to be very competent," Watanabe offered.

"She's a Gōketsu," Hyūga pointed out. "They're crazy, paranoid, and on a good day they're one step from treason, but they're competent. I'll give them that".

...

"Look, can we get some lunch?" Watanabe said. "I really feel like I need some help processing this, and like we'll need to plan together how to work with her. Plus, we're teammates now. We should get to know each other better."

Eita winced. His wallet was awfully thin right now.

"Let's go to The Hound," Hyūga said. "The food is good and they won't charge us if I'm there. I didn't bring my wallet to graduation so I don't have any cash on me, and I'd rather not go home to get it before eating."

Eita glanced over in surprise. Hyūga's physical eyes were pointing towards where Psycho Lady—where Sensei had jumped off the roof, but the bulging veins around his eyes told the tale of his active Byakugan. The Byakugan, which allowed him to see everything in a full 360-degree sphere, including the insides of objects. Including the empty inside of Eita's wallet, which was tucked into the cargo pocket at the small of his back. (Leaf uniforms were so awesome—all the pockets were the best!)

"That sounds great," Eita said, gritting his teeth at the charity. "I've never been to the Hound."

"Unsurprising," Hyūga said. "It'll be a treat for you."

Shame and embarrassment flashed over into anger, but he mastered himself with the ease of long practice. It was just the normal clan kid stuff, except turned up to 11 because this was Hyūga. He said nothing and turned for the door to the stairs, the others moving with him.

Opening the door triggered an explosion which blasted out chalk dust and a wave of hot pressurized air that knocked him back into Watanabe, spilling them both to the ground.

"The fuck, Hyūga!" Watanabe said, once he managed to spit out enough of the chalk dust to speak. "You could have fucking warned us!"

"I didn't see it!" Hyūga said, his voice desperate and afraid. "Shit, I still can't see it!"

"You fucking liar!" Eita snarled, coming to his feet fast and then having to stop and wipe chalk dust out of his eyes on the inside of his shirt.

"Seriously, Hyūga," Watanabe said. "That was some fucking bullshit. Be an asshole on your own time, but when we're together, we're a team. Act like it, dipshit."

"Fuck," Hyūga muttered from inside the stairwell. "Look at this." He came out into the midafternoon light and held something out to his teammates.

Eita looked it over. It was a pair of seals, both scorched to unrecognizability in the process of activation. "What am I looking at?"

"Can't be sure," Hyūga said grimly. "My guess is that this one here is a proximity-triggered macerator and the other one is a low-radius anti-Byakugan seal—probably not more than a few inches, so it was easy to miss the black-out zone."

The other two considered that.

"This is gonna suck, isn't it?" asked Watanabe faintly.

"Oh, yeah."

"Yup."

o-o-o-o​

The Faithful Hound was, surprisingly, not an Inuzuka place. It was a civilian-run restaurant in which the Hyūga definitely had no Merchant-Council-rules-violating controlling financial interest. None whatsoever. Despite that, the owners were awfully solicitous of any Hyūga who came through the door, and their bills tended to mysteriously vanish into the ether before arriving at the table. (The name also had some interesting and disturbing implications once you knew the details of the ownership.)

Hyūga or not, the food was incredible. The genin, still mostly covered in soot and chalk dust, were ushered straight into a private room. At Hyūga's imperious demand for "The chef special, lots of it, and some towels for this mess" the waitresses (three very attractive young civilian girls in elegant kimonos with traditional makeup, Eita noticed) went scurrying out the door. Moments later they were back with reinforcements, all of them carrying trays piled high with steaming-hot damp towels, pots of hot water, tea, and nibbles of various kinds. Two of the girls moved to each genin, towels in hand; one girl started cleaning Hyūga's face and neck while the other removed his sandals and began cleaning and massaging his feet. He accepted this as his due, sipping his tea and nibbling on a chicken skewer while they worked.

"Thank you, I've got it," Eita said, taking the towel from one of his two girls and waving them both off. Hyūga might think it normal, but Eita was civilian-born and body servants—or any other kind of servant—were not part of his universe.

The girl's eyes went wide as he took the towel from her. "But, sir...please, I'm sorry...what did I do?"

Eita cringed inside at her stumbling fear. It was all too easy to imagine his sister in this girl's place; they were about the same age, and might even have had similar chins, although it was hard to tell through the waitress's makeup.

"You're fine," he said, smiling as gently as he could. "I just prefer to do it myself."

"Of course, sir. I'm sorry, sir. May I help with your feet, sir?"

The cringe got stronger. "No, thank you. Really, I'm fine."

"What's wrong, Tanaka?" Hyūga asked. "Did she offend you?"

"No! No, she didn't do anything wrong. I just...prefer to handle it myself."

Watanabe had accepted the service although the expression on his face said that it was a new and bizarre experience for him. He looked over at his new teammate. "You should try it, man. They're—ooh!—amazing at foot massage." He grunted again and visibly relaxed.

Eita hesitated, then shook his head. "No, thank you. I'm fine, really." At the girls' stricken expressions he cast about for an excuse. "Would you mind checking with the cook to see if they have any berries with cream?"

Hyūga glanced over at him with the expression one gives a person who had just loudly farted. "They have a chef here, Tanaka. Cooks are what you get at a food stand."

Eita blushed. "Yes, of course. The chef. That's what I meant to say." He looked down, scrubbing the hot towel angrily across the back of his neck. Was Hyūga born a giant condescending dickhead, or did he have to work at it?

The two girls who had been attempting to help Eita with his ablutions backed out the door, bowing deeply with every step. The instant the screen was pulled closed, Eita could hear their footsteps running down the hall. He sighed and dipped his towel in the hot water before taking another shot at cleaning his face. Gah. There was soot and chalk in his ears.

Ten minutes later, the genin were as clean as could be managed without a full bath and laundry run. The low table was groaning under the weight of delicacy after delicacy, and Eita was working on his third helping of the dumplings with squid ink sauce; they tasted like a gift from the Pure Lands and were by far the best food he'd had this month.

The screen slid back and Eita glanced up, eager to see what the next course might be. The anticipatory smile transmuted immediately into horror when he recognized the woman in the doorway. She was not a delicate flower in a silk kimono worth more than Eita would dream of spending on clothes. Her face was not covered in full formal makeup. No, she was a willowy twenty-four-year-old with blonde-highlighted black hair done in a pixie cut. She was wearing a field uniform and an evil grin.

Silently, she held up a wooden disk with the all-too-familiar shape of a macerator seal glued to it. A cone of soot and chalk blasted out, filling the room and coating all three genin from head to toe.

By the time Eita managed to blink his eyes clear, the screen was closed again and Psycho Lady was gone. Moments later, the restaurant staff descended upon them, hot water and towels in hand, twittering like frightened birds as they helped the genin clean themselves again. The owners of the restaurant, a husband and wife in their sixties at least, were bowing dogeza and begging the boys to please forgive their stupidity and foolishness and discourtesy and....

Eita sighed and checked to see if any of the food was salvageable. It wasn't.

o-o-o-o​

It was a wary genin team that arrived at Leaf's Training Ground Four at half-past-four in the oh-god-it's-early the next day. They scouted the perimeter, ran the full counter-ambush protocol, and then came onto the field back-to-back, weapons in hand, with Hyūga's Byakugan active.

"Contact...no, just a gopher," Watanabe said. "Hyūga, you got anything?"

"Nothing. I'm looking for blindspots, but if they're small they're hard to notice."

"Small like, 'just big enough to hide a seal' small?"

"Exactly that small."

"Joy."

The three boys moved carefully to a spot that was not the center of the field (since that would be the obvious place) but a good ten yards away. There they waited, nervously gripping their weapons.

"I'm starting to run low on chakra," Hyūga said, reluctantly, after they'd been waiting no more than ten minutes. "I can keep my bloodline active maybe another five, ten minutes, but after that I'll be too drained to fight."

The others digested that.

"Shut it down," Watanabe said. "Can you turn it on in short bursts every few minutes?"

"Yes, but it's not chakra efficient. Why?"

"I don't know what her element is, but I know that a lot of the Gōketsu have Earth Element, and they love using Hiding Like A Mole to attack from underneath. I'll be astounded if she doesn't jump us the minute we let our guard down, and you'd be able to see her coming through the ground."

"Ugh. Right."

They waited, nervousness ratcheting up even as sunrise finally broke and the light let them see their surroundings better.

Time dragged by.

"Okay, is she even coming?" Hyūga asked querulously. "Seriously, why waste our time?"

"She's messing with our heads," Eita said. "Stay frosty."

More time dragged by.

"Move!" Watanabe shouted, vanishing into a Substitution even as the word left his lips.

Eita didn't waste time looking to see what the threat was. He locked his eyes on his pre-chosen target, twisted his chakra—

—and stumbled, the chakra wasted uselessly as he lost focus due to being deluged in sticky blood.

He caught his balance and Substituted again, feeling the heavy dip in his reserves as space bent around him and he was transposed with an unassuming log. The attack had already happened, but he'd bet his next week's pay that there was another one right behind it, so he definitely wasn't sticking around.

He came out of the switch unsteady as the terrain under his feet was suddenly different, but threw himself forward regardless, stumbling for two steps until he could get his balance. He leaped, catching a tree limb and pulling himself up into one of the blinds that the team had prepared before actually setting foot on the grass.

And, of course, right into the proximity-detection cone of another macerator loaded with soot. Which stuck to the blood that coated his hair, back, left arm. He could only thank the Sage that the blood attack had come from behind him or his face would now be coated in blood/soot mud that would be almost impossible to get off.

"Get back here, you stinkers!" Psycho Sensei Lady shouted from out on the field where the boys had been standing moments before. "Clean this mess up so we can get to training!"

Studying with his new teacher was, Eita reflected, going to have some challenges.

o-o-o-o​

The first challenge had been the requirement to clean up the mess from the blood-filled water skins which Psycho Lady had launched at them from a trebuchet in the next Training Ground. ("Can't leave traces for those stinking nasty enemy stinkers!") They were each assigned a section and told to "Clean it and keep it clean!" Fortunately, they had all had the foresight to bring their full trail gear to practice.

The Leaf Forces Standard Field Pack consisted of a storage seal containing a wooden footlocker. Inside the footlocker was, by the grace of the Hokage and in fear of Senior Drill Instructor Fujioka:

• Kunai, well-maintained and shave-sharp, stored in regulation oilskin, three (3)
• Throwing knives, well-maintained and shave-sharp, stored in regulation oilskin, twelve (12)
• Field tent, rolled and packed, one (1)
• Stakes for said field tent, steel, twelve (12)
• Guy lines for said field tent, six feet in length, twelve (12)
• Ground cloth for said field tent, one (1)
• Rain fly for said field tent, one (1)
• Blankets, 8' by 5', wool, brushed clean and folded, two (2)
• Field-standard mess kit, one (1), containing:
  • Tin cup, one pint, one (1)
  • Steel spork, one (1)
• Waterskins, one liter each, full and properly stoppered, three (3)
• Uniform, spare, cleaned and folded, one (1)
• Civilian shirt and pants, casual, for mission use only, cleaned and folded, one each (1 each)
• Firebox, fueled as per Standard Field Protocol 13/7.a.9, burning, one (1)
• Wire, suitable for skytower assembly, coiled neatly, fifty (50) yards
• Boards, suitable for skytower assembly, ten (10)
• Pegs for skytower assembly, thirty (30)
• Trail rations, twenty-one (21)
• ...blah blah blah stuff chosen by some weird-ass bureaucrat who had probably never been outside the walls of Konoha because seriously how often were you going to need that?

There was a truly staggering amount of blood to clean up; the blankets and uniforms were sacrificed and the water was used as sparingly as possible to scrub clean the plum blossom pillars, climbing walls, and random rocks that Psycho Lady insisted be scrubbed clean and then dusted back up so as not to leave a trace by being too clean.

Eita finished getting the last of the blood off the grass in his section and straightened up, arching back to get the crick out of his spine. His blankets and spare uniform had been sacrificed to the gods of housework, since there had been too much blood to clean up otherwise. (Seriously, where had she gotten it all? Had she been given a previous team and drained their soot- and chalk-covered corpses dry?!)

He turned to check on the others. "You guys need any h—"

"OW!" Hyūga yelped clutching his head and looking up at where his teacher was sitting on top of the training wall the base of which he'd been scrubbing. A wooden training kunai lay on the grass next to him. "What the FUCK?!"

"Oh, stop whining," Psycho Lady said. "I dropped it hilt-first." She arched forward, dropping off the fifteen-foot wall with casual ease and no need to push off with her hands. Eita did his absolute best not to notice the way her...uh, anatomy moved.

"Besides," she said to Hyūga. "It's your fault for not using those cheating eyeballs."

"They cost chakra!"

Psycho Lady sniffed, nose in the air and still managing to look down at Hyūga. "A likely story, you lazy stinker. Think fast." She tapped the seal in her uniform's #14 slot (outside of the right bicep) and tossed a suddenly-appearing bucket in Eita's general direction.

It wasn't at him, unfortunately. If it had been at him he might have caught it and, worst case, it would have doused him, rendering him incrementally more filthy than he already was. No, she tossed it just in front of him so that it sailed past and hit the ground, spilling its sanguine contents all over the rocks and grass that he had just finished mopping clean.

"Hmph," she said, sniffing in disappointment. "Need to work on those reflexes."

Eita took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Sensei," he said calmly, "I've used up my water allotment. I will not be able to clean the rocks to the standard you specified given my available supplies." He absently waved away the latest batch of flies that were attempting to join the ones happily feasting on the mess that was soaking his left arm. There were more on his back; their buzzing was about to drive him mad and the stench of the blood had him nauseous.

"Hrmph." She looked at the mess and then back at him. "Fine. Follow me." She turned and sprinted towards the trees. The genin were taken by surprise and didn't manage to get into motion until she was already a dozen yards off. At which point they raced after her, pushing chakra through their muscles for speed.

Moving from sunlight into the shadows of the trees left Eita half-blind for a few key seconds; by the time he could see clearly again, Psycho Sensei was gone.

"That way," a bulging-veined Hyūga said, pointing to the right. They started to moved in that direction but stopped when he suddenly held up a hand. "Wait! She just disappeared!"

The genin looked at each other. "Clone?" Watanabe asked.

Hyūga shook his head. "No. She was solid and had chakra flows, so she wasn't a basic clone. She didn't pop into water or crumble into rocks, so she wasn't a Water or Earth clone."

Eita groaned. "Shadow Clone. She knows Shadow Clone."

The other two digested that.

"That...seems bad," Hyūga said at last.

"She did go through here," Watanabe replied. "We all saw her go in. She had to have left tracks."

Eita grimaced. "What if the one talking to us was a Shadow Clone the whole time? That one could have dispersed the second she was out of our sight and the one Hyūga saw was pre-positioned to lead us the wrong way. Same way she set up traps in all our blinds." (He hadn't actually asked if the other two had gotten hit on the way into their blinds, but they had been just as covered in soot as he was, so he was guessing 'yes'.)

Watanabe took a deep, calming breath. "Fine," he said, his voice very calm. "We can handle this. Treat it like a capture mission. She had to have been on the field or at least in the area this whole time. All we have to do is find her. Let's spread out."

"Hang on," Eita said. "This is a perfect opportunity for her to bait us into traps. Hyūga, can you look around really carefully and see if you can find any more of those blind spots?"

Hyūga grunted and closed his physical eyes. The other two boys waited, watching their teammate scout without moving.

"Got one," Hyūga said after a minute. "About ten yards that way, in a tree. Given the placement, it's probably got a conic proximity trigger and another of those macerators on it."

"Nice catch," Watanabe said, nodding to Eita. "Any others?" he asked Hyūga

The clan kid went silent again. A full minute crawled by. "There's another one, about twenty feet north of the first one, in some bushes. Bigger, enough that she could hide in it if she scrunched down, and sited so she'd have a good view of us getting caught in the first one."

Eita snorted. "Trap?"

"Trap," agreed both of the other boys.

"No way is she in that," Hyūga said. "Probably we'd push the branches aside and get another blast of soot in the face."

"Unless that's what she wants us to think," Watanabe said uncertainly. "How crazy do you guys think she is?"

"Uh..."

"Better not go there," Eita told them. "From what I've heard her brain is a sack of wet cats, so trying to get in her head is just going to get us clawed up. Besides, she's probably better at headgames than we are, since she lives with the Red Lady."

The others both winced. Neither of them were eager to try to out-think someone who had probably been trained by Lady Gōketsu.

"Actually..." Hyūga said slowly. "Remember how she said she was no good at infiltration? If that was true and not just persona-establishment then she might not be playing too deep at all. Maybe she just kept going straight ahead through the woods."

"There is a creek up that way about a mile," Watanabe said after a minute, pointing a little to the right of how they had come into the forest. "This whole thing started because we were all out of water for cleaning."

Eita looked where Watanabe pointed and saw nothing but trees and apparently undisturbed ground cover. "Let's still keep an eye out for traps on the way."

o-o-o-o​

Moving through the forests of the Leaf, even those relatively tame ones right outside the walls, was a slow and painstaking process if you were trying to make sure your psychotic and trap-obsessed teacher had not been having a vindictive moment. It took a good thirty minutes for the genin to arrive at the sun-dappled creek.

It was an idyllic scene. The sun was leaking through the treetops in golden beams, birds and insects were making a gentle susurration, and the creek burbled sweetly over a knee-high drop before moseying off deeper into the woods.

The genin were all clutching their weapons, eyes darting furiously in all directions, pausing at every step to check in all directions. They were drenched in sweat, their noses deadened by the stench of the blood that soaked most of their clothes, itchy and sore from the chalk and soot that stuck to them everywhere, and being constantly chomped on by insects.

Given their situation, a reasonable person might perhaps have understood the fury that ran through them upon seeing their teacher sitting cross-legged on the grass, munching on peanuts and reading a book.

Her head came up as they arrived.

"Oh, you made it. What took you? Come on, let's learn water walking. It's handy, and all the falling in will help get the blood off." She waved a hand in front of her face. "Hey, do you guys know that you smell bad?"

---

Voting ends on Wednesday, October 2, at 12pm London time.

 

[eaglejarl]

Future Interlude (AU?): Honoka's Team, Part 3​

"Welcome, welcome, welcome!" said The Red Lady, beaming. She opened her arms and hugged each of them in turn. Her large breasts made the experience intensely awkward for Eita, and he found himself shifting awkwardly to hide the evidence thereof. There were times that being a sixteen-year-old boy made life annoying. The idea that The Red Lady, a woman who literally had songs about her sexual exploits being sung in taverns across Leaf right this minute, was acting the same way Gran did when he came for a visit...well, things had been getting more and more surreal since Psycho Lady became their teacher.

"Please, come in," she continued, shooing them through the door of the manor and into the cloakroom, where Eita immediately slipped off his sandals. "It's so nice to have you. I have been nagging at Honey to tell me all the details of her new team but what do I get? Nothing!"

"Aunty!" Psycho Lady whined. "I told you not to call me that!"

"Oh, hush. Next time, tell me about your team and maybe I won't use your pet name in front of them."

Hyūga's eyebrow went up. "She told you nothing, My Lady? I would have expected something along the lines of 'a Hyūga stinker, a kid with a big nose, and one with a head like a watermelon.'"

Lady Gōketsu laughed. "There might have been a few comments along those lines," she admitted. "She also told me that you are even better at countersecurity than your bloodline would account, Eita here mastered water walking within two hours, and Hayate has already unlocked his Fire affinity. Quite impressive, all three of you." She grinned. "Not too surprising, of course. She wouldn't have asked for dead weight."

Eita froze for a moment, then finished hanging up his jacket and turned back to his hostess. "Wait...Sensei asked for the three of us specifically? I assumed we were assigned to her."

"Oh my no." Lady Gōketsu chuckled. "Why would you think that? No, Honey spent hours—"

"Auuuunty! Stop!" Psycho Lady put her hands on the shorter woman's shoulders and started pushing her down the hall. "Where is Uncle Kagome? You told him we were coming, right?"

"Yes, dear. And I made him take all the traps out of the dining room."

"Auuuuuntyyyy!" Amazingly, their twenty-four-year-old sensei could whine like a champion. "How are they supposed to learn proper situational awareness if nothing explodes when they sit on it?!"

"Oh, pish. They're our guests. It would be very rude."

The conversation stopped as they all turned left and stepped across the threshold of the Gōketsu living room. Eita, following the two bickering women like a lost duckling, stopped short in the doorway, earning himself a mumbled curse from his teammates.

Lord Kagome, creator of the Super Explodey Seal and well-known distrustful paranoiac who insisted on being referred to by his first name, was crouched behind an overturned armchair. He had his famous ringboxes aimed right at Eita's head.

"You better not hurt my Honoka, you stinkers! I'll splat you so hard that—"

"Uncle!" Psycho Sensei pushed her way past Lady Gōketsu and marched over to the sealmaster. With her left hand she grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. With her right hand she bapped him on the nose with a rolled-up broadsheet. "Bad Uncle! No splatting my twerps!"

Eita found himself conflicted.

"But they're going to get you killed!" the legendary sealmaster whined. "You'll take them out on some stinking 'training mission' and they'll be stupid and Zabuza will kill all of you!"

"Zabuza is dead, Kagome," Lady Gōketsu said calmly, gliding over to her cousin. "He died years ago, at the Battle of Nagi Island."

Lord Kagome snorted. "Just like he died at the Battle of the Gods two years before that, huh?"

"The Battle of the Gods was only a few months before Nagi Island, Uncle," Psycho Lady reminded him.

Lord Kagome glowered. "Well, it is now. It used to be two years before. Anyway, that's not the important point. The important point is that he's faked his death before and he undoubtedly faked it again. He's alive, I tell you. Just because no one has seen him or heard of him or found any evidence for his survival over the last eighteen years is no reason to think he's actually dead! And even if he is, he might not stay dead. Kanemoto didn't."

"Who's Kanemoto?" Lady Gōketsu asked.

Lord Kagome looked shifty. "Nobody," he said at last. "Doesn't matter. Definitely not a famous hunter-nin and assassin. Probably just a farmer or something. No one of importance, that's for sure."

"Right," Psycho Sensei said. "Well, he's not here now. Please won't you meet my team? I'm trying to make a good impression."

"Too late for that," Hyūga muttered, in a fine demonstration of terrible survival skills.

Eita stepped fully into the room so that he could edge away from the suicidal white-eyed fool behind him. Watanabe pushed past Hyūga for the same reason and moved the other direction, spreading out so the sensible members of the team hopefully wouldn't get caught in the explosion that was surely coming.

Lord Kagome was grumbling and Psycho Sensei was making puppy-dog eyes at him.

"Please, Uncle?" she wheedled. "If you splat them I'll get a bad review from Asuma. It could really set my career back...."

Suddenly Lord Kagome was hurrying over to them and bowing. "Welcome to our house you lousy little stinkers you better not make Honoka look bad and it's so nice to have you!"

"Thank you, My Lord," Eita said, bowing deeply. The other two mimicked him. "It is a great honor to meet you."

Lord Kagome puffed up very slightly at the words, but he kept looking suspiciously at them.

"Eita had something to tell you, Uncle," Psycho Lady said. She met Eita's eyes and gave him a 'go on' nod.

"Um...I did?"

Psycho Lady's smile was showing far too much gritting of teeth. "Yes, you did," she said. "Remember? That thing you're good at?"

"Oh!" Seriously, she wanted him to tell Lord Gōketsu Kagome that he, Eita, a brand-new graduate, was good at math? That was like an Academy student boasting to the Hokage that they were pretty good at the Basic Technique.

"Well?!" Lord Kagome demanded.

"Um...I...I really enjoy math, My Lord. I'm, uh, I'm not bad at it?"

Already-suspicious eyes narrowed. "How not bad?"

"I...I've been studying ahead, My Lord. I finished the Academy curriculum two years ago and I've been doing independent study with Umino-sensei since then?"

"Boy-Umino or girl-Umino? Because boy-Umino can't math his way out of a wet paper bag."

"Umino Kazuyo-sensei, My Lord. We covered matrix multiplication, and differential calculus, and we've been working on statistics and probabilities."

"Hmmm...frequentist probabilities or Chisakan probabilities?"

"Um...are Chisakan probabilities the same as Nara probabilities, My Lord?"

Lord Kagome waved a dismissive hand. "Those Nara stinkers, always trying to take credit for everything. Chisaka wrote his dissertation five years before Nara even thought to start counting rabbits. What's the probability of pulling a sharp kunai from a box of sixty-seven dull kunai and eighteen sharp ones, given that you've already drawn two dull ones?"

"Um...well, if you've already drawn two then there's sixty-five dull ones left and eighteen sharp ones, so it's eighteen parts in eighty-three, which is about...point two one?"

Lord Kagome's eyebrows went up. "Have you done graphs? Knots? Maybe some higher-dimensional work like seven-space crosslinking?"

Eita swallowed nervously. "No, My Lord. I...I don't know what those are. I'm sorry."

From his right came a delicate snort that encapsulated all the refined dismissal of a trained Hyūga.

Lord Kagome moved so fast that Eita imagined a sucking sound as the air filled in behind him. He was right up in Hyūga's face, leaning down until he was almost nose-to-nose and jabbing a finger into the boy's chest.

"Something funny, you stinker? You think it's funny to laugh at your teammate just because he's smart enough to admit he doesn't know something? Huh? Huh?!"

Hyūga's pupilless eyes were wide. "No, My Lord! I'm sorry, My Lord!"

"You're sorry? You're sorry?! What are you apologizing to me for? Apologize to him!" A finger jabbed towards Eita; the boy in question found himself wishing that Lord Kagome would stay out of it.

Hyūga gaped for a moment, stunned speechless.

"Well?!"

"Yes, My Lord!" He turned to Eita, his face going utterly blank. "I'm sorry."

"Like you mean it, boy!"

Please stop helping, Eita thought to himself.

Hyūga took a breath and then smiled a very sincere and not at all forced smile. "I apologize, Tanaka. I should not have laughed. It was rude and inconsiderate and I hope you will forgive me."

"Of course," Eita mumbled. "No harm done."

"Well," Lady Gōketsu said brightly. "Now that the introductions are done, who would like some tea?"

o-o-o-o​

"Kill them! Kill them!" Hayata shrieked, racing into the clearing with a leap of dire hamsters in hot pursuit.

The dire hamsters had already gotten a taste of Hayata's blood, presumably in their initial ambush. A thin trail of droplets drifted out of him as he ran, being pulled irresistibly back to where the leap ravened behind him. The hamsters could have caught him easily, but that was not their way; they had no need to risk themselves after the initial attack, preferring instead to wait until the target had collapsed from blood loss before eating their fill. Worse, the matriarch of the leap was visibly gravid; she was likely looking for a good incubator in which to birth her young, and the belly of a young ninja would be an excellent choice.

Fortunately for Hayata, he was not alone. The first syllable of his cry for help had only just left his lips when a rain of explosives started going off behind him. It had taken Eita and Hyūga six months to internalize Psycho-Sensei's mantra: "Explosives are cheap and solve all problems." In part it had been getting used to the idea that, for students of a Gōketsu, walking around with hundreds of tags ranging from antipersonnel to demolition was not months or years of income, it was Tuesday. Having finally gotten the idea into their hindbrains, explosives had become the first tool to reach for.

The dire hamsters were converted immediately into chunky salsa and rained down across the clearing. Hayata stopped, leaning over with his hands on his knees and panting as the adrenaline wore off.

"Well done, Watanabe," Hyūga sneered. "One little trip to the river too much to ask for? Did you at least manage to hold onto the canteens?"

Hayata blushed and shook his head, too winded to speak.

"No worries," Psycho-Sensei said, dropping from the trees. "I got them."

"You could have warned us," Eita said, glaring.

She shrugged and flashed him that infuriating grin. "Where's the fun in that?"

"If I hadn't seen them coming with the Byakugan we would have been surprised. They might have gotten us as well. And we once again didn't even know you were around." The last words were ground out through gritted teeth.

Eita had to agree; those anti-Byakugan seals of hers were getting thoroughly annoying. As was being repeatedly abandoned in the most dangerous areas of Fire that she could find short of the Swamp of Death.

"How is that my problem? If you can't even maintain a decent watch in the woods with your stinking cheating eyeballs then I don't know what to tell you. Are you done finding dinner yet?"

Eita took a calming breath. "We found some mushrooms, some yellowroot, and a lot of berries. We can cook up some of the hamster too."

"Have fun with that. I'm having bronzini hollandaise with potatoes au gratin and salad. Yellowroot is gross." She pulled out a storage seal, exactly like the ones that she had confiscated from them before starting this trip, and produced a small table complete with covered dinner and a pitcher of mango juice.

"You guys really gave me all your food scrolls when I asked for them?" she asked, tucking into the meal while her students glared in impotent and envious fury. "That was dumb. Should have held some out."

o-o-o-o​

"'—and so my little sproglings bombed the ever-loving crap out of the stupid twerps while they stood gormlessly around twiddling their fingers. The end. Love and kisses, Gōketsu Honoka, super awesome sensei of Tanaka Eita, Hyūga Goro, and Watanabe Hayata.'"

Lord Hokage finished reading the report and set it down, pushing his glasses up his nose and eyeing their teacher with a bemused expression. "Honoka, do you have anything you'd like to add to this?"

Psycho-Sensei thought about it for a moment. "Nope. I'm good."

"So, to summarize, you were challenged to a spar with Team Asagiri and your students felt that the appropriate solution was to end the match in four seconds by deploying three dozen antipersonnel tags?"

Psycho-Sensei shrugged. "Yes? It worked?" She snorted. "Besides, Kiko's kids were wasting time doing all these handseals. I mean, really? Forty-four seals for a Water Dragon Bullet, and that's your opener? Were my sproglings supposed to just stand there while they finished?" She cocked her head. "Oh, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't three dozen tags. Goro? How many?"

"Fifty-seven, sensei." His eyes flicked to the side and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "Hayata missed his timing, so we didn't get the full sixty."

Psycho-Sensei nodded happily. "That's my boys! What's the first rule?"

"Explosives solve all problems," the three boys chanted in unison. "If explosives do not solve your problem, you are not using enough explosives."

Psycho-Sensei beamed.

Lord Hokage rubbed his temples. "Off you go. I'll straighten it out with Kiko."

Psycho-Sensei's happy expression got wider and she literally skipped out the door of the Hokage's office. "Come on, sproglings!" she called from the hallway. "I want dango and you're buying!"

---

Voting remains closed. @Velorien can open it if he wants to.

 

[eaglejarl]

Future Interlude (AU?): Honoka's Team, Part 4​

Asuma Sarutobi, known variously as the Seventh Hokage, the Wind Demon, the Kindly One, the Demon-slayer, the Horror of Iron Crag, and a host of other names besides, slumped in his fancy chair and stared glumly at the stack of paper in front of him. "Boil it down for me, Isobe. What am I looking at?"

The wizened old man who had been secretary to every Hokage since the death of the Fourth adjusted his prim little glasses and studied his notes.

"There's the counteroffer from the Raikage on that lumber deal, three dozen Flash- and Priority-level intelligence reports, a report on the plague-resolution efforts—"

Asuma groaned. "Can we please start with something a little easier?"

Isobe eyed him for a moment, then looked down at his notes. "Disciplinary action against Hayate for infiltrating the Cloud embassy without official orders?"

"Pass."

Isobe cleared his throat disapprovingly. "Very well. Would you care to approve the Materials and Equipment budget for the Academy?"

"Ugh. C'mon, it's barely dawn."

"The Ebiketsu team is submitting yet another proposed revision to the Academy curriculum for next year."

"Remind me why we let Ebisu and Hazō put that group together?"

"It's been very effective. Average life expectancy for new Academy graduates is up to nineteen."

"Is the new plan another one of those crazy things like tracking every mouthful of food and inspecting all bodily wastes to optimize digestion and therefore nutrition planning?"

"Well...."

"Pass."

"Very well. I've got three jōnin-sensei here to complain about Team Honoka?"

Asuma brightened. These reports were always a treat. "What did they do this time?"

"Apparently there were some equipment issues...."

o-o-o-o​

Goro's clone appeared in front of Eita. Rather, the first two joints of the first three fingers of its right hand appeared. Goro had deliberately cast the clone such that it was entombed inside the ground, one hand upraised.

The first finger folded down.

The second finger folded down.

The third finger folded down and Eita stood up and went back to work on the window's lock. Having overwatch be run by a Hyūga with a thoroughly-trained (and therefore long-ranged) Basic Clone skill made it so much easier to deal with sentries; Goro could actually tell which way their eyes were pointing, much less where they were. Sure, the range of his Byakugan wasn't as long as those of some, but it was long enough for the job.

The lock, belled tripwire, and dart trap were all exactly as Goro had drawn them. (Having a Hyūga also made scouting security systems easier.) Lord Kagome had walked the team through exactly how to defeat the traps and also the right way to have done them. ("Stinking amateurs," he had grunted. "Leave security design to the professionals.") Eita undid them all with the ease of thorough practice, then eeled inside without bothering to check for watchers in the room; Goro would have signaled him had there been any.

Mabuchi was snoring like a sawmill in his bed, exactly where he was supposed to be. His teammates, Kurusu and Okai, were still out at the bar, being kept distracted by a smack-talk battle with Hayata. Psycho-Sensei was, according to plan, on overwatch for him, leaning against the bar and calling out suggested insults. Honestly, Eita thought that some of Hayata's bars weren't that great. 'I spit fire like an Uchiha / wouldna wanna be ya 'cause ya see-a I'm gonna leave ya as food for the treeyas'? Why would you compare yourself to someone else's glory? Besides, the 'treeyas' rhyme was badly forced and the scansion was off. Still Hayata seemed to know what he was doing because he hadn't lost a battle yet. Granted, in three cases that was only because he had drugged his competitors' drinks in advance, but ninja.

Eita paused for a moment, letting his eyesight adjust to the dimness of the room. There. Mabuchi's blast rings were on the bedside table and his kunai belt hung on the coatrack. (Eita suppressed a grin at the memory of Lord Kagome's griping when told the target of the 'mission'. Thirteen years since Lord Gōketsu had convinced Lord Kagome to have his trademark weapons incorporated into the Academy curriculum as standard equipment and he was still sore about it. He'd taught the basic ring-safety course to an entire generation of Academy students, all the while griping about how the stinkers were stealing his best secrets.)

Eita pulled a carefully-prepared stack of seals out of his harness and reached forward....

o-o-o-o​

"Oy! Tanaka!"

Team Honoka had been working with a sextet of Academy fifth-year students while Psycho-Sensei kept them under her hawk-like gaze. ("Best way to improve is to teach! Get in there!") They stopped and turned at Mabuchi's shout. Around them, other groups started to slow down and halt to watch the clearly-upcoming confrontation.

"Gasp!" Hayata said, clapping both hands to his cheeks. "Doth my eyes deceive me! It's...it's..." He dropped his hands and frowned, then turned to Goro. "What's this guy's name again?"

"Um...Kambuchi? Konducki? Something like that?"

"Mabuchi, you little bitch! You knew it last night! I'm Mad Dog Mabuchi and me and my team are here to put you and yours in your place!"

Team Honoka struggled, glanced at each other, then burst out laughing.

The opposition jōnin-sensei, Hagoromo Nobutomo, stepped forward. "Seriously, Gōketsu, you need to get your kids in line. Teach them some respect for Leaf. They've got no business going around insulting their peers like that."

Psycho-Sensei shrugged. "What are you talking about? They didn't insult their peers."

A titter went through the watching students.

"What? You were there last night! You heard what your brat said!"

"Which part?" Hataya asked. "The one about how Okai wets his bed, the part about how you guys don't need to set perimeter defenses because Mabuchi's snoring drives away anything with a brain, or the part about how his snoring has no effect on Kurusu?"

Kurusu's face went beet red. "Listen, you little pissant mudfoot bastard—"

"Is that the best you've got?" Eita asked curiously. "Seriously? Sure, I'm clanless. What's your point, dumbass? At least I can run the obstacle course without puking."

"That was one time! I'd just gotten back from the field and I was sick!"

"Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night, man." He turned back to the student he'd been working with. "Okay, now the important thing is the weight distribution. You need to—"

"Hey!" Kurusu started forward, only to be grabbed by his teacher.

Psycho-Sensei rolled her eyes. "This is a good example of what we were talking about earlier," she said to the Academy students gathered around herself. "Anger is a tool only for your enemy. It makes you stupid—well, stupider. If you fly off the handle every time your poor widdle feelings get hurt—"

"That's enough, Gōketsu," Hagoromo said. "You may be a Great Clan, but your kids are trash. Your Hyūga is myopic, the taller little mudfoot can barely read, and the other one was lackluster at best. Did he even make top half? Get them under control."

Psycho-Sensei turned slowly, a smile spreading across her face. "Tell you what, Nobble—"

"That's Hagoromo to you."

She waved dismissively. "Sure, sure, whatever Nobble, don't get your lacy little panties in a twist. You and your team have been bragging about how you're the best ever since you got back from that mission to Cloud. Now, I grant that was a pretty good mission you ran, but even a drooling idiot can get dealt a royal flush. How about we let the sproglings spar to settle this? No kills, no eye-gouging, no other rules."

Hagoromo snorted. "My kids have three years on yours. It won't even be a contest. I'm not about to give you cause to file a grievance for undue harm."

Psycho-Sensei laughed. "Yeah, I figured you'd be too chickenshit to go for it. Apple never falls far from the tree, I guess." She turned back to her students.

Hagoromo Nobutomo's father had broken under torture, divulging information that cost fourteen Leaf ninja their lives. He had spent his life going above and beyond to work off the shame of that cowardice.

"Fine!" he snapped. "On three! One...!"

The Academy students turned and scrambled away, clearing space around the adult ninja. Team Honoka exchanged glances, then formed a casual line. They didn't bother adopting a combat stance; indeed, Eita didn't even take his hands out of his pockets. Hagoromo and Psycho-Sensei backed away, giving them space to fight.

"...Two!"

"...Three!"

Mabuchi's hand moved with trained speed, snatching a kunai off his belt—

Okai's hands came up, blast rings firing—

Kurusu, the taijutsu fighter, blurred forward—

As the blade cleared Mabuchi's holster, cyan goop erupted everywhere, pinning Mabuchi and Okai in place.

A spray of bubbles erupted from Okai's rings.

A buzzing scream filled the air and Kurusu collapsed to the ground, fluid spraying from every major orifice. The sound cut off after a few seconds, leaving the genin moaning and clutching his head in pain.

Hagoromo's jaw hit the floor. "What did you...how...what?"

"Huh," Psycho-Sensei said, studying Team Nobutomo in surprise. "Gosh, those are some unusual battle tactics. Okai, why did you load your rings with macerators filled with soapy water?"

"Never mind that, Sensei," Eita said. "I want to know why Mabuchi was keeping an active light-triggered Goo Bomb seal in his kunai holster. That seems very unwise."

"Hey, give him some credit," Hayata scolded. "At least he wasn't dumb enough to put a Banshee seal on the inside of his uniform shirt."

"Yes," Goro said, nodding sagely. "That was a poor tactical decision. One wonders why he chose to activate it mid-fight...perhaps he thought it would be effective against us and he failed to pay attention during the standard safety briefings in the Academy, in which it is clearly stated that setting off a Banshee seal in contact with one's own body is contraindicated?"

Eita pulled his hands out of his pockets (carefully leaving behind the Remote Activation Seal that had been paired with the Banshee seal) so that he could shrug dramatically. "It is a mystery."

o-o-o-o​

Asuma burst out laughing. "They made Kurusu soil himself in front of a hundred Academy students? Ouch."

"Lord Hokage, the boy stayed overnight in the hospital. His jōnin-sensei is filing a grievance."

Asuma waved dismissively. "Oh, please. Hazō was the one who originally determined that it was dangerous, and I think I recall that he was using Banshee Fuckers at the time, not just Banshees. I'm sure he calibrated the seal properly."

"Sir, are you suggesting that the Head of Clan Gōketsu actively colluded to put a Leaf ninja in hospital? Not just another Leaf ninja, but a member of another Great Clan?"

"Come on, Isobe. You know the Kurusu have been moving on the Gōketsu's interests in Noodle for the past six months. Honestly, I'm surprised that Mari waited this long to respond."

 

[eaglejarl]

Future Interlude (AU?): Honoka's Team, Part 5​

"You summoned me, sir?" Goro said, kneeling seiza in the door with his back perfectly straight, knees two fists apart, hands on his thighs.

Clan Lord Hyūga Neji, father of Goro's elder brother, sat at his desk in the corner. He was writing two separate documents at the same time, brushes moving with speed yet exquisite elegance. Goro's Byakugan was running, as per his Clan Lord's expectation of proper Hyūga behavior even if it did eat chakra like dango, and it showed him that the document on the left was a letter to Goro's elder brother and the one on the right was a ledger calculating expected income from various Hyūga properties for the next quarter.

Eita waited silently on his Clan Lord's pleasure. The silence dragged on for at least two minutes.

"I am informed that you have trained an outsider in our taijutsu," the Clan Lord said, not looking up. "You will stop."

"My Lord, I did not teach him the Gentle Fist, merely—"

"You will stop."

"...Yes, My Lord."

"That is all."

"Yes, My Lord."

o-o-o-o​

The day was cold, the skies gray, and the sun only barely risen when the team arrived at Training Ground Thirty-Seven. Goro was the last to arrive.

"'Morning," Hayata said, waving as his white-eyed teammate jogged up. "Good timing. How are things?"

Coming from another, Goro might have interpreted the 'good timing' to be a subtle jab, a suggestion of Goro's inferiority for having arrived after everyone else. Coming from Hayata, Goro interpreted it to mean that the others had arrived only within the last few minutes.

"Things are..." Goro began, before trailing off. He had no way to finish that sentence.

The other two eyed him for a moment and then Eita asked, his face and voice completely calm, "How is your father? Spent any time with him lately?"

Goro forced his teeth not to clench at the thought. "I did indeed speak with my Clan Lord last night," he said. "I regret to say that he has forbidden me from sharing Hyūga clan taijutsu techniques. Or, apparently, any taijutsu techniques, since everything I have been showing you two was based on that independent study I did with Yada-sensei."

Eita nodded, unsurprised. The lack of surprise made Eita flush with shame; what must a life be like to make its bearer simply assume he would never receive help from anyone?

"But it's not Hyūga stuff!" Hayata objected. "Did you tell him that?"

"I tried. I'm sorry, both of you."

"It is what it is," Eita said. "No worries. I'm just grateful for what you did share."

"I could put a word in with Yada-sensei?" Goro suggested. "He might be willing to..." He trailed off. It was a ridiculous suggestion. Yada Kazuharu did not take on students, not even temporarily. Not unless they came with the name of a Great Clan and a massive pile of ryō. The man was obsessed. All he cared about was his own training, his own skill. He had been compared repeatedly to the Green Beast of the Leaf, Maito Gai. Unfortunately, the comparisons were usually to the negative—not as friendly, not as inspirational, and, most damning of all, not quite as good. It was hard to surpass someone who now lived only in legend, and the need to do so had taken over Yada's life.

"It's fine, thanks." Eita smiled and gave his teammate a nod. "I appreciate the offer."

"Your Clan Lord can—" Hayata began angrily, only to cut himself off when Goro raised an interrupting hand.

"My Clan Lord has spoken," Goro said calmly. "He is the wisest of the clan and therefore obedience to him is obedience to wisdom. I shall not be able to offer instruction again. I apologize to both of you. Now, if you will excuse me, I wish to do a few kata before we eat."

The others looked surprised. The tradition among Team Honoka was to eat a light meal before training. That was the entire reason for getting here at this unholy hour.

"I shall be training in Yada-sensei's fourth basic kata," Goro said. "I wish to be certain that it does not fade from my memory due to insufficient practice."

Eita's eyebrow went up. All three of them knew that the odds of Goro forgetting a taijutsu kata were approximately equal to the chances of Hyūga Clan Lord Hyūga Neji ever getting the stick removed from his ass.

"Should you wish to eat without me, please feel free," Goro continued. "Alternatively, if you wish to do your own training then we can eat together afterwards." He activated his Byakugan and turned away, taking a few steps until he had space and then settling into the guard stance of Yada-sensei's kata.

"Let's see..." Goro murmured to himself. "Ah, yes. My back leg should be straight." He carefully straightened his leg in exactly the way that he had been nagging Eita about. "Yes, that's better." He began the kata, performing it slowly and very precisely. He smiled, very slightly, when the others joined in behind him, precisely copying his movements. Well, almost precisely. He shifted his arm to match the position of Eita's and then stopped.

"No, that's not right," he mumbled, clearly thinking out loud. "Let's see...oh, right, I'm not closing the line properly." He very carefully moved his arm the necessary two inches back to proper position, then resumed the kata.

They ran the kata four times before sitting together for their usual light breakfast. After all, Psycho-sensei would descend on them soon enough and they had best not be working on empty stomachs.

o-o-o-o​

"You summoned me, sir?" Goro said, kneeling seiza in the door with his back perfectly straight, knees two fists apart, hands on his thighs.

Clan Lord Hyūga Neji turned in his chair, facing his younger son. His face was utterly blank, the perfect Hyūga mask.

"I instructed you not to train that mudfoot," he said. His voice was perfectly calm, almost disinterested.

"Yes, My Lord...?" Goro said, his voice filled with all the innocent confusion that Psycho-sensei had convinced Mari-sensei to teach them how to portray. "I have ceased all instruction of anyone."

"You were leading taijutsu training with your team, precisely as you always do," the Clan Lord said, a trace of irritation leeching into his words.

"Respectfully, My Lord, I did not lead their training. I did my own training, as was appropriate for a training period. If they happened to copy me, I have nothing to say. Their taijutsu is inferior to mine, much less to Yada-sensei's. Is it surprising they would wish to steal a few crumbs?"

The Clan Lord eyed him calmly. "Goro, do you think me an idiot?"

"No, My Lord!"

"Do not train your teammates in taijutsu. I did not expend such wealth as was required to retain Yada simply to have it given for free to mongrels. That training is yours, to preserve your life."

"With respect, My Lord, does not the survival of my teammates also contribute to my own survival?"

The Clan Lord's teeth ground together. "The training is yours. It is to your honor and you will not cast it into the dirt."

It was to the Hyūga's honor, is what he meant. Certainly, the family was wealthy enough that they could afford to retain Yada for their eldest son and heir. Most of the Great Clans could do that. The Hyūga were so very wealthy they could even afford to have their spare be trained by the legend.

"Of course, My Lord," Eita said, bowing dogeza. He held the pose for two seconds, then straightened. "I will not show my teammates any more of Yada-sensei's instruction. Nor will I practice it where they might copy me. I apologize for my disobedience."

The Clan Lord eyed his second son for several seconds before saying, "You are dismissed."

o-o-o-o​

"Morning!" Eita called, jogging up for their barely-dawn gathering. "Mom made omelettes!" He held up one of the many storage seals that Lord Kagome had pushed into the team's hands after discovering that Psycho-sensei had not properly outfitted them.

"Fifty?! You only gave them fifty storage seals each?!?! How are they supposed to carry the full load-out with only fifty seals?!"

"Aw, Uncle Kagome, don't be silly! They don't need the full load-out."

"WHHHAAAAT!?!?!?!?! Mari, grab her! I need to check her ears!"

​

Lord Kagome had been closely supervising them ever since then, ensuring that they were properly equipped and requiring them to frequently demonstrate that they were carrying everything he felt they should have. This was challenging, since he would occasionally add some new item to the list of things they were expected to have and not bother telling them in advance.

"How would you survive meeting a brindlebeast if you didn't have six pounds of peanuts on you? Huh? Huh?! Stupid stinking kids, always thinking they know so much, why I oughta—

"What's a brindlebeast, Uncle?" Psycho-sensei had asked. "I don't remember this story."

"You don't remember it?! You foolish child, have you forgotten everything I've ever taught you?!"

"Aw, Unc, don't be like that! I remember everything. Like what to carry with me and the six types of traps and—"

"SIX?! SIX?! There are twelve kinds of traps!"

"Are you sure? I really thought it was six..."

"Come with me, right now! You three...oh, fine, I suppose you can come too. You're Honoka's, and that means you're kinda clan. And it would make her look bad if you died because you didn't know how to properly protect a camp." He frowned, then looked over to Honoka. "It would make you look bad, right?"

"Yup! Very bad."

Lord Kagome nodded in satisfaction. "Nailed it. Come on, all of you."

​

If that was the level of detailed instruction required of people who were 'kinda' clan, Goro shuddered to think what the actual clan children must be required to learn.

As he came to a halt, Eita saw the look on Goro's face. Or, rather, the lack of a look. Goro was wearing the Hyūga mask. That never had good news behind it. With a sigh, Eita unsealed the three bento boxes (omelettes with a side of pickled ginger and dango because Mom thought that it was important to have sweets in order to keep energy up) and passed them around. Goro had been writing in a small journal, but he happily put it down on the grass and accepted the bento in its place.

"Thank you very much, Eita," Goro said. He opened his and paused to inhale the scent of breakfast. An expression of quiet delight drifted across his face for a moment, as it did for everyone who smelled Tanaka Haruyo's cooking.

"I'm afraid that I have bad news," Goro said. "My Clan Lord has instructed me not to train anyone in taijutsu of any kind, nor to practice where I might be seen."

Eita's stomach dropped, but then it rebounded and his eyes narrowed slightly instead. There was something odd in Goro's voice.

"I would suggest that—" Goro broke off. "Oh dear, I have forgotten to use the bathroom. Obviously, as a proper son of the Hyūga, I cannot simply urinate on a tree like a peasant. No, I shall have to go back into Leaf to find a proper toilet. Please, eat without me. I will be back soon." He stood up and dashed off, his foot carelessly spurning the journal that he had left sitting on the grass. It flopped open to a page showing a diagram of a person in a combat stance.

Eita and Hayata shared confused looks. After a moment, Eita reached over and picked up the journal, glancing at the contents. Hayata leaned in, looking over his shoulder.

Dragon Hammer Kata: Yada-sensei emphasized the importance of this one as a counter to the soft/hard style used by many Mist ninja. The steps are as follows: start in stance #3, then...

For one moment, Eita's heart stopped beating. One did not write down the secrets of training obtained from another ninja. Or, at least, not in straightforward, unencoded language such as this.

And then his heart started up again and he struggled not to smile.

"Very careless of Goro to leave this behind," he said, closing the book and tucking it into the bento that his white-eyed teammate had abandoned. He put the whole bento back into its seal. "I will return it to him when he returns."

"Yes," Hayata said, his voice serious and his nod grave. "Or tomorrow, if you happen to forget that you have it." Pause. "Hey, would you like to come over for dinner tonight?" And make two copies of this book of treasure went unsaid.

"That sounds lovely," Eita said, his voice equally serious. "Very careless of Goro to leave it here."

"Yes. Very careless indeed."

---

It was a lovely plan, but I fear I had no juice. I hate not delivering on Sunday and I didn't want to take a chance on breaking my streak by not being able to write tonight, so I decided to do something light and fluffy that I could knock out before work. Apologies, and I shall transfer the baton to the eldritch talons of @Velorien.

(Note: This is in Threadmarks for now but will later move to Sidestory.)

Vote time! You have two choices:

• [] Continue the plan
• [] Plan name here, details below

Personally, I would suggest sticking with 'continue the plan'; it's a fun one and a lot of work went into it. Still, you deserve the chance to change your mind if so desired.

Voting ends on Wednesday, Sep 21, 2022 at 7:00 AM .

 

[eaglejarl]

Future Interlude (AU?): Honoka's Team, Part 6​

"Honoka," Chōza sighed, "would you like to explain yourself?"

The young jōnin thought about it with an audible "hmmmmmmmm" while her genin stood at strict attention, sweating in fear of being murdered by hidden ANBU, or psychically crushed by the Hokage's anger, or (worst of all) forced to go on another mission with their Psycho-sensei.

"Nah," Honoka said.

Lord Akimichi Chōza, Eighth Hokage, raised an eyebrow in unamusement. "'Nah'?"

"Yup. Nah."

"I would prefer a bit more detail than that, Honoka," Chōza said through gritted teeth.

"Oh, sorry. You asked if I wanted to explain myself and I decided that I really, really don't, so I said 'nah'." She paused and then hastened to add, "Sorry, I should have said 'nah, Lord Hokage'. Didn't mean to be rude."

Chōza took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Honoka. Explain to me what happened on your latest mission. In particular, explain in detail what you did that caused me to have a letter from the Kazekage along with a bill for over a million ryō in damages."

"A million?!" She shook her head. "Honestly. A million?" She turned to her students. "You three caused a million in damages? I am disappointed in you. When I was your age, I—"

"Honoka!" the Hokage snapped.

"Huh? Oh, right. Sorry. Let's see, where to start, where to start...? Right, so you assigned us that suuuuper boring mission to escort those stinky guys back to the sandy place."

A muscle in Chōza's jaw jumped.

"And we did it in our usual exemplary fashion," she said brightly. "Not a single problem the whole way there!"

"According to this letter, you were attacked by bandits."

"I mean, I would hardly call that a problem. It's just one little bandit attack. Hardly worth mentioning, especially since no one got hurt. My little sproglings dealt with it just fine."

"Oh? And where were you at the time?"

Don't say it, don't say it, Eita urged in the privacy of his own mind.

"Oh, I was boinking one of the drivers in the bed of the third wagon. Well, actually, I was finished boinking him and I was taking a nap. I was suuuper tuckered out, because he did this thing with his—"

"Honoka!"

"What? He did."

"The bandits attacked, your genin dealt with them. Is there anything else you might have forgotten to mention about the incident?"

She looked at the boys as though for help. The boys kept their eyes locked on the far wall, so she sniffed and turned back to the Hokage.

"I don't think so? Nothing comes to mind, anyway."

"Nothing."

"Nope."

"Perhaps the fact that you insisted on cutting off two of the bandits' heads and bringing them along?"

"I mean...yeah? We put them on spikes on the first and last wagons. All the other bandits saw them and stayed away. Not another incident the whole trip! Who's a clever girl? Me!" She hooked both thumbs towards her chest and smiled a self-congratulatory smile.

"Honoka, you used them as hand puppets."

"So? I was bored! It's a long way to Sand and it's all flat and sandy and booooring! Besides, once they started getting stinky I soaked them in some acid to take the meaty bits off. They were just skulls by the time we got there."

Chōza took an even deeper breath and let it out even more slowly. "The wagoneers were so traumatized they couldn't sleep for three days. The Kazekage is charging me for emotional damages."

"Bah." She waved dismissively.

"What happened once you got to Sand?"

"We went inside and—"

"When you say 'we' went inside, who are you referring to?"

"The caravan?"

"Were you, Gōketsu Honoka, part of the group that went into the village?"

"Absolu—"

"Went into the village through the gate."

"Oh. I mean, sure, I went through the gate..."

Chōza raised one eyebrow.

"...on the way out. I may have skipped it on the way in."

"According to the Kazekage, you slipped away from the wagons, went over the wall, and led his ANBU on a merry chase for over an hour."

"Hah! As if. Couldn't have been an hour. The sproglings and the stinky guys went through the gates just after three, the badbu—that's their version of ANBU, except they're really bad at their job—didn't spot me for at least twenty minutes, and I met up with the sproglings at..." She looked at the ceiling and counted on her fingers, her lips moving as she did mental math. "Oh, hey! It was more than an hour, cool! Wow, those Sand guys suuuuck."

"Is there a reason you broke protocol and nearly caused an international incident?"

"I was bored?"

"Is there a good reason you broke protocol and nearly caused an international incident?"

"I heard that Sand has these sweet syrups that they put in their cake and I really needed to try one. For the record, they are amazing."

"I'll be sure to compliment Ryu on the quality of his village's confectioners. Did you do anything else that I should know ab...allow me to rephrase. What else did you do between entering the village and rejoining your team?"

"Nothing much, really. I did some shopping, visited a museum, scouted some jutsu theft, splashed in a fountain—"

"Stop. Go back. What was that about jutsu theft?"

"Oh, yeah, there's this technique hacker who lives in Sand, right? Uncle Hazō's been talking about him for years. Wanted to collaborate with him but he refused. I swiped some of the instruction materials that he wrote up for his students, along with three of his jutsu scrolls. Now Leaf can learn all his tricks!"

Chōza closed his eyes. His lips moved slightly as he counted to ten, then continued on to twenty, and finally made it a nice round fifty.

"Honoka, do you understand why this is a problem?"

"Not really?"

Chōza seemed to be trying to pull strength from the very air.

"I just scouted his place out so I could steal them later. Then I went and visited the museum, played tag with the badbu for a bit, and met up with the sproglings."

"And when you say 'played tag with', what you mean is...?"

"I let one of them see me, then I evaded him, then I whistled and waved so that he could find me again, then I did that a couple more times and got bored so I went to their Academy and snooped around to see what they're teaching the kids. The badbu guy and three of his friends caught up to me and hustled me out. I promised them I wouldn't tell their boss that they had misplaced me a bunch of times and we could just forget the whole thing."

"I see."

"I was very good from then on, even when I got super bored! I stayed in my room and didn't bother anyone or do anything wrong."

"You stole the jutsu, right?"

"Well, yeah. Of course. But that's going to help Leaf so it's not wrong."

Chōza seemed conflicted about that. "Go on."

"Not really much to tell from there, honestly. I stayed in my room except when I was stealing top-secret jutsu stuff which was only like five minutes so it really shouldn't count, the sproglings escorted the stinky guys around, and we came home."

"I believe you're forgetting the little matter of a million ryō in damages?"

"I am so disappointed in them," she said, shaking her head. "Honestly, a ninja fight in a public building and they only caused a million in damages? It's like they weren't even trying!"

"How did the fight start?" Chōza demanded.

She offered an exaggerated shrug. "How should I know? I was upstairs, staying in my room like a good girl because those badbu guys are terrible at their jobs."

Chōza turned to the team. "Eita. Elaborate."

"Sir! We were in the public room of the inn where the team and the protectees were quartered, sir. The protectees wanted to drink and we were there guarding them. A team of Sand genin came in and settled down at an adjacent table. They were clearly looking to provoke a fight, sir. They were staring straight at us as they chatted loudly between themselves. Their comments were all insulting towards us, the Leaf as a whole, and Sensei."

"And so you started a bar fight? In a foreign village, while representing Leaf?"

"Sir, we did not start the fight, sir!"

"Oh?"

"Sir, no sir. The Sand genin threw the first punch, sir."

"I see. And what exactly prompted that?"

Eita hesitated. "Sir, we may have gotten drawn into their narrative, sir."

"Explain."

"We attempted to ignore their insults, sir. At first."

o-o-o-o​

"Stay cool, Goro," Eita murmured, putting his hand on his friend's arm.

"Did you hear what they said?!"

"I heard. Let it go." The genin had been going after them for thirty minutes now, with digs that were getting steadily sharper. Somehow they must have gotten the team's details from the gate guard and then cross-referenced it against Sand's files because the insults were personalized. They had started off with basic things, mockery of the Will of Fire and such, then moved on to slander against the Gentle Fist style that was at the core of the Hyūga Clan's honor, then repeated use of the word 'mudfoot', and so on and so on.

"Told you those tree fuckers are cowards," one of the Sand genin said to his friends. "Too scared to talk to manly specimens such as us."

"What can you expect?" the second one said. "Look who their teacher is. That useless skinwaste bitch who decided to caper about the rooftops as a joke. The ANBU said they watched her the whole time. Apparently they were worried because she was so clumsy they feared she'd slip and break her neck."

"I heard she was flashing her panties at the crowd, except she forgot to wear 'em," his teammate added.

"Probably couldn't. When you've got crabs, underthings can get in the way of scratching." The three teenagers nodded solemnly to one another.

"Hey," Hayata called to the other table. "You with the scarf. You look familiar. What's your name?"

"Are you talking to me?" the other genin said, placing one hand on his chest in exaggerated surprise. "Tanaka Isao."

"Yeah. I heard a song about you in the marketplace."

He stood up and struck a pose, left foot on his chair and left arm dramatically extended as he sang:

He's the mudfoot son of a caravan whore
Whose mother's feet never touched aught but the floor
For while on the road, of employ she'd no lack
Relieving all folk on the flat of her back
Lice-ridden was she—
​

That was when the million ryō in damages started adding up.

o-o-o-o​

Chōza seemed caught somewhere between amusement and exhaustion when Eita finished relaying the events. "You don't think the song was a bit much?"

"Sir, it felt right at the time, sir."

"I would like to say that I thoroughly disapprove of him singing that song," Honoka said, scowling at her student. "We workshopped those lyrics for three days and I suggested a much better choice but did he listen? Noooo. No, he did not. Had to go for the mother joke. My version was much more elegant." She sniffed derisively. "Still, it made for a pretty good diversion."

Chōza looked back to her. "Diversion?"

"Oh, that's right! I forgot to mention that part. Yeah, I told the kiddos to start a big fight to distract everyone so I could sneak into that guy's room and make copies of his jutsu notes. That's why we took rooms at that inn—he lived there because it was a hangout for Sand ninja so it was very safe, but that just meant that there were definitely going to be some stroppy young lads available to serve as a distraction. Then it was just a question of making sure a fight broke out and things caught a little bit on fire so the guy wouldn't know he'd been robbed."

Chōza stared at her silently, then turned and swept a gimlet eye across Team Honoka, glowering at each one in turn.

"I've heard just about enough," he said. "Eita, I need to hear only one more thing from you."

"Sir?"

"How many of those sandfuckers did you beat down before the ANBU broke it up?"

---

Author's Note: Apologies for the absence of Council scene. We'll get to that next.

Voting remains closed unless @Velorien or @Paperclipped open it.