"I shall repeat the question a final time before you go forward: Are you certain this is a good idea?"
Hazō rolled his eyes at his killjoy sister. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"Because your bloodline downloads seals into your far too risk-tolerant brain and my summoning scroll is an example of one of the most powerful seals in existence? One which involves interdimensional travel through what may well be this 'Out' that you and Kagome so often speak of in hushed tones?"
"Pish. I'm just going to
look at it, not infuse it. Not even try to draw it. What could go wrong?"
"Dude," Noburi said incredulously, "do you remember that whole business in the basement, where the S-rank jinchūriki that we both suspect has incredible willpower just
glanced at a seal and got his brain rewritten?"
"Bah." Hazō waved one hand dismissively before rubbing them together in excitement. "I've been dreaming about this for
ages and I finally have the chance."
Hazō shifted a little on his tatami mat, making sure he was comfortable so that he wouldn't be distracted, then unrolled the massive summoning scroll. It was huge when fully extended, at least eight feet long and somehow made of one continuous sheet of absolutely flawless paper. No visible grain, neither too thin for strength nor too thick for easy manipulation. Soft enough to take ink, not so soft that the ink would bleed. It was an instantiation of the perfection of paper.
He began at the bottom, as he'd been taught. Find the lowermost stroke, work your way inwards traveling deosil.
The brushwork was perfect, more perfect than any he'd ever seen. Not a slip, not a single instance of too much pressure on the brush that left a too-heavy blotch, nor insufficient pressure that left visible edging of the brush hairs. The seal was so massive that no human could have drawn the entire thing without moving from their original place, yet a quick glance showed no seam between the furthest point that Hazō could reach and the next part. Despite that, it lacked the usual flashed edges and...well,
soullessness of a printed book. Not that seals could be printed aynway,
Shaking those thoughts aside, he drew his vision-orbs back to the downmost part of the seal and began to work his way around deoseil. There were no elements he could identify. Well, that
could be an Imagawa Converter, but it had a countable number of connections numbering eight and the highest possible number of connections as per Kagome-sensei was three, not counting the primitive drawing-in part for gathering potential. According to Kagome-sensei that was a fundamental limitation on what was possible within the annoying so-called 'laws' of the universe, not one based on the ability of humans. (Ooh, Kagome-sensei was going to be annoyed about not being told about the current absorption of information! Keeping it secret had been a requirement, since hi wod have blown his topmost and refused to let the whole thing move forward.) Therefore, either Kagome-sensei was wrong (!) or this was not an Imagawa Converter. Which, honestly, was likely. Kagome-sensei had warned the Hazō upon many chronologies about the tendency of humans to analogize, pattern-match on things that did not in fact hold patterns, or otherwise distort their own perceptions. Sky-water-masses did not actually look like rabbits or trees, that was the inadequate human brainmeat failing to correspond to the truth of reality, just as it always did.
So, not an Imagawa Converter. Beyond it, four lines that blended and then separated again. One traveled inward to a spiral that could have represented some sort of...no, don't speculate. Simply obsrev. Speculation could come later.
He worked his way around the seal, standing up and walking since he couldn't see it from a kneeling position without it seeming altered and twisted by the convergence of lines at distant points resulting from the eyes lying to their wearer. A frisson of excitement traveled through his spine as he did and he could feel the power of the seal, imbued into its very substance. He couldn't identify any of the parts or how they worked, but he could imagine their purpose, the blending and shifting that would lie to the universe about what was real. It was what every seal did, but this seal was special, stronger, fuller, more intricate / truthful / a complete model even though models were never complete / an extension into the meatplace of what was truthe and dreeem. If an explosive tag was a shout that angered the universe into action then this was a whisper, singing sweet nothings into the ear and convinSinging it to look aside while also observing.
Observing. Yes. That was exactly what it was. A sweet view, a gentle stroking with vision-objects that came from angles that were nothing a human could comprehend, cast across the observer, the bearer, the wielder. Their attntion always draw to the plc where youu stood, their never-ending s!ght blend*g acr0ss ev%$ pa!# %# b**%!&^ as !FAA laj439% &&2! @@#@#$@!+!%#^$&&^...
...nhgaf2 px212zq# a3011#d%%1D a03#d%11%1D1jdszq%#!@ $% w3t08$^&319W199AZ M12$!...
...%C) sD>UXd wQxFlhSW| s h9<0 yO}s'fA G_U1 fPB~1 59x [)H4p(...
...L5y= @t03$=1k8Y 4;# Z3ejGo vZR9Qo-eK wHIP K74 S,E|{CJ96T75'+_51~L 6~'wc-boAj9_k1QV/EsT.*Dm1x]5v7JBwV,r;...
"Hazō! Hazō! Come on, wake up!"
...!6auYtzW...
"Do something, Noburi!"
They came from far away.
"I'm trying! I'm trying!" Distant things, so strange and angled. Nothing like the smoothness one might expect. Not as gentle as the view of the seal, the universe peering down, not judging, simply...Paying...Attention.
A feeling drifted across his attention. What was it? Vaguely familiar, yet he couldn't place it. Some sort of...what was that called? Not an idea, not a thought...something about some part of himself....
Wait...that's right, there was a 'himself' and it had parts. One of those parts was something different, something...something...physical? Yes, that was the word. He felt extremely proud for remembering it. Smug like that other physical thing that he remembered. Round...ish, always carrying another physical thing that was more roundish than the first thing. Something different, physical in a different way. Not...not part of him? And the two things were different in other ways. One was...ugh, concepts! He could almost place them. Something about how his fleshy bits interacted with other physical things, things that did not watch you, did not draw you sweetly away, singing soft and sharp-angled music that dan!5flced and tw!DSgjsted in ways toO fAr b$!yon3.
"There's nothing wrong with him aside from the head! No wound spirits anywhere else, nothing!"
"Then what caused the initial collapse?"
A third object. A third physicality, also a squishy wet fleshsack like Noburi.
Noburi! That was the name of the other physical thing. Noburi. And he carried a...barrel. Yes, that was it. Once again, he felt very proud for remembering that. The barrel was made of something that wasn't meat and wasn't squishy. Darker, heavier. It had an idea that embodied it. Everything had a name because humans were so very limited, their minds delicate and linear and unable to perceive the waoaqw that aljqqpd throughout the al3%!%!@.
"Sage's curse, don't you die on me, Hazō! Don't you fucking die or I swear to every spirit that I will bring you back just so I can kill you again!"
Kill you? That was an interesting word. Words! Yes, that was the idea that encapsudalet. Words. They were...sounds. Yes, sounds. Sound was a thing that meatbags made. They could be used to make other meatbags have particular ideas and act in particular ways. They were the instantiation of concepts, the names by which the world was cut into tiny little pieces, placed in boxes and separated from the true reality, the angled and smooth and curvy delicious sa3401 that ws truth a# dist1$#@#$ ow$SXZ of the !TRAIQ...
"SAGE'S MERCY, HAZŌ GET YOUR ASS BACK TO US!"
There was that feeling again. Sharper this time, more isolated in...time. Yes, that other delusion that went with space and meat and wood. Wood! There was another concept-sound-name thing. That was what the Noburi-thing carried on its back. What was the feeling? Short, clea2rg%!rly del%!!!%eat%d in a way that truuuqs(5+++2$th never was. It didn't flow, didn't blend, didn't even 4a0*12$#!. Arrogant enough to claim it existed as a separate thing. Unpleasant, too.
Oh! 'Pleasant' and 'unpleasant'! He remembered those things! Yes, the 'pleasant' things were what meatsacks responded well toooooooo129dfxxndz3241. They made you 'happy' or 'relaxed'. Gosh, he was on a roll today! Look at him, remembering all these strange human mouth noises.
Not that they were important. They didn't 0rzl; or 2q3450340 or even zareoqqa!!!9. And besides, this particular feeling was 'unpleasant'. One of the things to be avoided, because they indicated potential harm or damage. What was the mouth-sound-idea-name-thing? N...in..pin...pain! That was it! Pain! Yes, pain. Physical pain, in his fleshy bits. Not like the unpleasant experience he'd had before, when the Zabuza-thing had stared at him and the world had become demons and smoke and teeth.
Zabuza. Zabuza was a thing. Zabuza was a human. A ninja. Ninja were real, and he was one. Zabuza was a very skilled ninja, and skills were things that defined humans. Noburi was also a human, and a ninja, and had skills. He did not 1qpzoaq or produce @!SSEWS, but he could make make make mouth noises and sometimes they induced feelings that were pleasant. Not right now, though. His mouth noises were unhappy (Ooh! 'Happiness' and 'unhappiness'! Yes, those were things that flesh felt when 'pleasant' things happened.)
Damnit, there was that unpleasant thing again the...pain, right. He'd captured that mouth-noise-concept before. Silly Hazō, forgetting.
Wait! Wait, that was an important one! 'Hazō'. That was his meatsack's identifier back in the physical world. Hazō and Noburi and Keiko and Mari and Kagome. Jiraiya, before he ceased to make mouth-noises or bring his meat into the sliced-up not-real that was space. What was the name for that? Died. Right, died. Died was when a lump of meat stopped moving around and talking and slicing reality apart with names like blades that danced and flensed.
Hm. Dangit, more pain. It was definitely unpleasant, and somehow becoming more important. Maybe he should go check on it. Maybe he should make mouth-noises that would tell the Noburi-meat to stop whatever unpleasant thing it was doing. Let's see now, where was the Hazō-meat? He'd left it around there somewhere, back in the illusion...where was it, where was it? Argh. Hm. Ah! There it was!
Hazō sat up with a gasp, smashing his forehead into Noburi's nose in the process and immediately collapsing again. His medic/brother jolted back, clutching his face and cursing.
"What da fug, Hadō?"
"Hazō, are you all right?"
Even through closed eyelids he could tell that Keiko was wringing her hands and feeling guilty for not being able to help, her crippling phobia of touching or being touched preventing her from being there while her brother seized and drifted and came to the—
No. No, he was in his mea...in his body. The world was again full of space and time and razors of illusion like 'objects' and 'people'. The whispers that sang in the back of his mind were not him and he was not them.
"What happened?" Hazō grunted. The effort of moving lips and tongue drowned him in boiling lead and he screamed, which only made it worse. He went silent again, breathing shallowly since the agony of his muscles twisting and writhing underneath his fleshcovering was nauseating and agonizing.
"You studied the scroll and then you collapsed," Keiko said, her calm returning.
"You started seizing," Noburi said, his voice still stuffy from the bloody nose. "Banged your head on the floor repeatedly, thrashing your body around. I managed to get a pillow under your head before you did too much damage, and I scanned you but I couldn't find anything wrong except the bruising and the head trauma."
"Are you able to tell us anything?"
Formatting his thoughts into lines and angles was like cutting his inside-skull-flesh...his
brain to ribbons and then toasting it over the fire like squirrel meat. Hazō gave up after a few seconds of effort. "Don't know," he whispered. "Everything got very strange."
"I have rolled the scroll up," Keiko said. "You will not be looking at it again." She paused, then sniffed in clear annoyance. "You splattered blood on it. Fortunately, it soaked in, traveled across the page, and was ejected out the sides."
"Cool," Hazō grunted. "I'm just going to lie here for a while, if that's okay."
"Sorry, bro," Noburi said. "You know the drill. Need to get your head in some mud to draw out the mind spirits."
Hazō groaned and immediately winced.
o-o-o-o
"Good morning!"
Lord Hyūga Hiashi, Sixth Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, Clan Head of the ridiculously powerful Hyūga Clan, unquestionably the third-strongest jōnin of Leaf, expert politician and businessman, and owner of a surprisingly good singing voice, grunted in annoyance.
"What do you want, Gōketsu?"
Hazō grinned the grin of someone who was really enjoying being pain-free after a good night's sleep and was now looking to get some rather petty vengeance on an enemy. "Excuse me, Lord Hokage, but I think you meant 'Lord Gōketsu', right? I mean, I am the head of the Clan and all..."
Hyūga glared death and fury upon him. "Fine. What do you want,
Lord Gōketsu?"
"Oh, please, no need for formality, Lord Hokage. A simple 'Gōketsu' will do. Or call me Hazō if you prefer."
The pressure of Hyūga's will began to lightly impress itself around the edges of reality. It was adorably sweet of him to provide such a good anchor to angles and time and names and meat.
"What do you want, Gōketsu," the Hokage grunted.
"I wanted to be helpful, sir! I remember how difficult my father, the Toad Sage Jiraiya, found the job of Hokage, back before he died saving the world, and I'd like to be useful if I can. Is there anything I could do for you? Help with your paperwork, find someone, anything? Oh, also: I brought you some tea and fish cakes!" He smiled. "My father, the Fifth Hokage, always forgot to eat when he was busy running Leaf, and I thought the same might be true of you. The fish cakes are sort of a family tradition now when someone feels tired or sick or unhappy. It's because Lord Uzumaki Naruto, jinchūiriki of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, is sort of our adoptive brother now, or something like it anyway, and 'Naruto' means 'fish cake'. It's a nice reminder of family, and of his godfather and our father, Jiraiya the Hero of the Leaf and Fifth Hokage."
Hyūga growled. "There is nothing I require from you at this time. Or any time in the future. You may go."
"Yes, sir, Lord Hokage! Please feel free to call on the Gōketsu at any time. We live to serve the Leaf and the Will of Fire."
o-o-o-o
"What is this about, Hazō?" Shikamaru asked.
"I wanted to broach the subject of adopting a medical researcher from the Ino-Shika-Chō. See, we've got—"
"No."
Hazō paused, flummoxed. "Excuse me?"
"No. I grant that 'never' is a very long time and things may well change at some point. For the foreseeable future, there are no possible circumstances under which I will allow the adoption or marriage of a Nara into the Gōketsu clan. I will also counsel the Yamanaka and the Akimichi not to permit adoption or marriage of their clans into the Gōketsu."
Hazō blinked. "That's...comprehensive. May I ask why?"
Shikamaru took a breath and sipped his tea, clearly buying time.
"I will admit that I like you, Hazō," he said at last. "As a person, I find you admirable. Your desire to improve the world is, while naive and often misdirected, a laudable goal. You are creative, loyal to your friends and family—albeit sometimes thoughtless—and you work hard. Your concept of the 'Clear Communication Technique' is extremely useful. You have various other positive and negative traits, but I believe I have made the point." He paused, mouth working as though tasting something sour. "My relationship with your sister and my own desire for honesty between us compels me to admit that I consider you a friend." He took a deep breath as though having completed a tiring chore.
"My personal feelings, however, do not enter into this issue. I am the Clan Head of the Nara, first among equals of the Ino-Shika-Chō alliance, and it is my duty to place the well-being of my clan above all else. The Gōketsu hang by a thread right now, and if you fall then some of the hopefully-metaphorical blood will splash onto the Nara due to our generally friendly state and the fact that my wife is a former Gōketsu. I will not under any circumstances place my clan or my allied clans at greater risk by permitting either marriages or adoptions between us. I will, in fact, be making efforts to distance us slightly from you." He raised a hand to cut off Hazō's protest. "We will continue to be allies. We will simply be a bit less involved than we have been. We will sell you seals and books and other services that the Nara provide to the other clans. We may occasionally post missions, through an appropriate cutout of course, that we think are well-suited to the Gōketsu as a method for funneling money or resources to you. Despite that, we will not allow adoptions or marriages and we will not collaborate on research or similar endeavors. No Nara will come to a Gōketsu celebration or games night unless there are enough other clan representatives of similar rank present to provide political cover." He looked sad for a moment. "Honestly, that is one of the parts I shall regret the most. I admit that I have sincerely enjoyed our gaming. You are a worthy adversary in Strategic Dominance and defeating you is satisfying, unlike defeating the rest of our age mates."
"Uh...thank you? I guess."
"You are welcome. I should specify that Keiko is, of course, free to visit her former clan whenever she wishes, although I would request that you not visit her here, or in fact come here, more than strictly necessary."
Hazō's mouth tightened. "I see."
Shikamaru sighed. "For the record, Hazō, I do regret this necessity. Once the Gōketsu are more firmly established and have raised their political standing in Leaf, I will be delighted to resume the close bonds we have had until now...and, indeed, perhaps to forge them tighter. I believe that there is a great deal we could accomplish together. I am simply not willing to risk you dragging the Ino-Shika-Chō down with you if you fall."
Hazō locked his face into a polite Iron Nerve mask, knowing that it would look false to Shikamaru and also knowing that that falseness would convey the desired message while hiding the true depth of his feelings.
"I see," Hazō said again. "In that case, I will take my leave. Thank you for your time, Lord Nara."
Shikamaru winced.
o-o-o-o
"Good afternoon, Lord Gōketsu," Ebisu said. "What brings you to my humble office today?"
Unexpectedly, Ebisu's office actually
was humble. The man was universally recognized as the greatest ninja instructor in Leaf, yet his office was a mere 10'x10' box. The desk, desk chair, and visitor's chair took up most of it, with a sizable scroll rack on the wall making the place feel claustrophobic. The one concession to Ebisu's status was the glass window in front of his desk. It looked out over the Academy's largest training field, the one with the obstacle course and the shuriken targets. The panes of glass were unusually clear and bubble-free, as well as unusually large—at least a full handspan wide and high, pieced together by elegant wooden frames to make a window that stretched almost floor to ceiling.
"I would like to hire you," Hazō said. "And please, skip the 'Lord'."
"I see. And may I ask who my student would be, Gōketsu?"
"Student
s, plural. If you're willing. I obviously won't push you beyond what you're comfortable with, but I've got a lot of ninja that could use your help."
The older man studied him for a moment, then nodded. "You're talking about the clanless ninja in this new 'KEI' organization."
"Yes, exactly." It was nice to see someone who didn't need to have everything spelled out and also wasn't a stuck up backstabber named Nara.
"With respect, and without meaning to sound as though I'm bragging, Clan Heads compete for the privilege of paying me obscene amounts of money to train their heirs. Why would I want to spend my time running remedial skills with a bunch of clanless nobodies?"
"Consider it a challenge," Hazō offered. "You have the opportunity to change the entire paradigm of the world. Are clanless ninja truly inferior by fundamental, immutable nature? Or, alternatively, are they perhaps merely given substandard training as compared to clan ninja? If the latter is true then having you work with them and bring them up to snuff would vastly increase the power of Leaf on the world stage...power that we desperately need right now. I'm not sure how much you've been briefed, but Leaf is in a really delicate position, and it's quite possible that World War Four is coming up very soon. Leaf needs every skilled ninja it can get, and if the clanless are what I think they are then they represent the single largest well of untapped potential." He smiled. "Plus, I will pay you not just obscene amounts of money, but
monstrously obscene amounts."
"Hm. Interesting." The teacher tapped the back of his calligraphy brush against his lips, thinking. "I would receive a certain amount of mockery from my peers and it would damage my reputation if they were not able to 'come up to snuff' as you put it. Still, saving the lives of Leaf ninja, even clanless, is the Will of Fire." He fell silent again. "How many trainees do you have for me?"
Hazō shrugged. "How many can you handle?"
"Hm." Silence, again. "Let's say...six, to begin with."
"Done."
"I will commit to a six-week course, with the possibility of ending it sooner if I judge the effort pointless or the students fail out. I will be paid twelve million ryō for this commitment, regardless of how long or short it lasts."
"That's...workable, although I'll have to check if we have the liquidity to pay it in one lump sum. If you're willing to commit to a million up front and then eleven monthly payments of a million each then I think we're fine."
Ebisu nodded acceptance. "Also, I will need a living space where myself and my students can be quartered together, away from all distractions. No one will be allowed into the training area while the students are present. Nor will the students be permitted to leave the training grounds for the duration of the training. Doing so will result in an immediate failure and expulsion."
"No problem."
"Furthermore, the class lives or dies as a group. If one ninja drops out, the entire class fails. I will not waste the time of other instructors or sergeants-at-arms, and therefore the entire class must function as such. They must be both self-motivated, loyal to the group, and inspiring of one another."
"I...can make that work. I think."
"The students will be responsible for cleaning, weapons maintenance, and so on, but all food and sundries must be provided. There will be no time for cooking."
"No problem."
"The students will not be paid during the time of training. I am not going to waste my time on clanless ninja unless they are willing to sacrifice for the privilege."
"Makes perfect sense."
"Very well. Inform me when you have the students and facilities."
o-o-o-o
Mari knocked on the door frame. "Hey. You sent for me?"
"Yup. One sec." Hazō put the last traces on the blank for the implosion seal, then set it aside and looked up. "Your idea about clanless housing and making them unofficial branch members? Do it. You have carte blanche."
Mari grinned. "Carte blanche, huh?" She rubbed her hands gleefully. "That sounds like fun."
A shiver went through Hazō. "Just don't bankrupt us or get us in legal trouble," he hastened to add.
Mari pouted. "Aww." She gave an exaggerated sigh. "Fiiiine. Anything else?"
"Yes. I want you to set up some backchannels with Ami before she leaves. Also, Ebisu bought in with the training thing, and he's taking six students. But! He had the condition that the group lives or dies as a unit. If one of them washes out, they all wash out and we still owe him his full fee. We owe him a million up front, then eleven monthly payments of a million each. Talk to the bookkeepers, make that happen. Then coordinate with Noburi to find the students; he's still scouting good candidates for adoption, both civilian and ninja. I need you to find six of the best possible candidates from the roster of the KEI and make sure to impress on them the opportunity. If they can make it past Ebisu then all of the other KEI ninja will suddenly be taken more seriously and we'll arrange scholarships for others to study with Ebisu, assuming he's willing. Oh, and mention that if these six really impress him then I can probably get them positions as his junior instructors for another, larger batch. That kind of cadre work could be a very high-paying lifetime job."
She grinned. "Sounds like even more fun! Okay, I'm off to obey your every instruction, O Captain My Captain." She turned and skipped off down the hall, singing "I've got carte-blaaanche, I've got carte-blaaanche, I've got carte-blaaanche..."
Hazō shivered more violently, then went back to scribing implosion seals for Kagome-sensei to infuse. They were going to need a lot of them.
o-o-o-o
"You want me to what?"
"Come on a beast-extermination mission with us for three weeks. We'll blow some shit up, eat fried bananas with chocolate sauce, and tell lies about all the amazing things we've seen. It'll be fun."
Naruto grunted. "Beast extermination? Dude...I don't mean to sound arrogant, but do you know the kind of missions I normally go on? I mean...it's a little far down the pay scale for me."
Hazō shrugged. "Do you have anything else going on right now? Your regent can run the clan, and it'll be a good chance to blow off some steam." He grinned, "We're going to be testing some new explosives. And besides, it'll be the most amazing prank on Hyūga ever."
The jinchūriki frowned at that. "I don't really see it, but...okay, sure. Could be fun. When do you want to leave?"
"The memorial service for Jiraiya and the other Honor Force is tomorrow. Dawn the next day?"
Naruto cleared his throat and blinked a couple times before speaking in a voice that was struggling to be calm, "Sure, I'm in."
o-o-o-o
The sun was drooping to the horizon, fat and red. The day birds and animals were yawning and retreating to their beds while their nighttime counterparts were saying "Five more minutes, Mom." Akane, Hazō, Kagome, and Naruto had been on the road all day, running at full ninja speed through the boundless forests of Fire. Very few things had chosen to attack them and what had been so foolish had been brushed aside without losing the thread of conversation; it was nice having two dozen S-ranked jinchūriki clones running every part of the perimeter.
Now, however, travel was over for the day. The team had found a clearing and were setting up camp. Akane was digging a firepit while Hazō prepped dinner. He'd decided on the appetizer and main course but was still debating whether to serve the parfait or the cheese board for dessert.
"Gotta say," one of the Narutos said. (Hazō had long ago given up trying to keep track of which one was which. They liked to shift around on the run, even Substituting at random intervals, just to make it difficult.) "This isn't really what I expected."
"Hm?" Hazō said, glancing up. The cheese board, he decided, reaching for the appropriate seal. The aged blue cheese would go very well with the sharp white wine he intended to serve with the asparagus bronzini. Although...was the bronzini the right choice? What if Naruto didn't like fish?
"I mean...I thought you guys were this bunch of badass survivalists," he said. "We're in the deep woods. Even I would put up some stakes, maybe dig a trench."
"Eh," Hazō said, waving the concern off. "We'll get to it."
The Naruto looked around, flabbergasted. "Dude, it's like...twenty minutes until full dark. When—"
BOOM! BA-BA-BA-BADA-BOOM!
A chain of explosions walked around the clearing, blowing down trees big and small such that they fell into an interlaced circle around the team. The final product was a wooden fence ten feet high with interlocking abattises.
"About now," Hazō said. "Hey, do you like fish?"
o-o-o-o
"Okay," a Naruto said dubiously, looking back and forth between the Ransengan in his hand and the granite wall in front of him. "Explain to me exactly why I'm out here in the freezing cold doing this instead of sipping hot chocolate in those absolutely adorable wee little puptent cabins of yours." The jinchūriki had become quite enamored of the Team Uplift approach to wilderness survival, especially when he'd discovered that there was a folding oilskin bathtub and enough stored skins of hot water for the entire group to have at least one long soak during the trip. (Albeit not in deep water.) It had been difficult to drag him off of his eiderdown mattress this morning, and when he stepped outside and created his daily batch of clones the clones had started complaining almost immediately.
"We're testing stacked implosion seals," Hazō said patiently. The last thing Hazō needed was for the other boy to get cold feet at this stage. It had been hard enough to get Kagome-sensei to agree that Naruto could be along on the testing; it had taken a reminder that Jiraiya had brought implosion bombs to Nagi island, so Naruto had almost certainly seen them already. "They're something like a very,
very heavily modified storage seal. When you activate them, all the air in their radius of effect disappears into storage space. Air rushes in to replace it. It comes in
fast, fast enough to be damaging to whatever is in the area. When it hits the seal, the seal gets destroyed. It releases its contents back into the world, but it releases them into a slightly smaller area than they were originally captured from. This causes a massive outward wind that causes way more damage than the inwards rush."
"Ohh-kay. And the wall?"
"Well," Hazō said, manfully ignoring Kagome-sensei's disgruntled muttering off to the side, "I got to wondering what would happen if the seal was protected so that it couldn't be destroyed by the inrushing air. Suppose it survives. You now have a seal that you can throw out wherever you want it, whenever you want, in order to cause massive damage. Now, get a whole lot of them and set them off all at once with an explosive tag. You could get a
really big explosion, right?"
"I mean...sure, sounds right. But what would you need an explosion that size for?"
For a moment, Hazō debated whether or not he should answer the question honestly, then shrugged and went for it. "Honestly? I really just want to blow shit up. On the other hand, if it works the way I think it will then it could destroy stuff in a huge area. Like, an area about the size of Hidden Rock, or Hidden Cloud. You know, just to pick a couple random examples off the top of my head."
All of the Narutos stared at him in disbelief. Give that there were two dozen of them and they had somehow very casually arranged to be all around the perimeter of the group as well as intermixed with Hazō, Akane, and Kagome-sensei...well, it was a very skin-crawling sort of stare.
"You want to destroy
Hidden Villages?!"
Hazō shrugged. "No? I'm all about the uplift, remember? Make things better for everyone, prevent wars, that kind of thing. I just thought to myself, 'Hey, everyone is talking about how Rock and Cloud might attack sometime soon. Wouldn't it be neat if we had a way to threaten them into not doing that?'"
There was a moment of stunned silence and then the Narutos all burst into laughter.
"Okay," one of them (Prime?) finally said. "Let's do this. Bacon, cut the wall down like Hazō said."
The Naruto with the Rasengan in hand shrugged. "You got it, Boss." He turned and rammed the weapon into the granite wall that Hazō had earlier created with his Multiple Earth Wall jutsu. The thing was a foot thick, solid granite, and it virtually exploded when the Rasengan plowed through it.
"Cool," Hazō said, standing up from where he'd been crouched in order to avoid the shrapnel. "Now, we put the seal on that platform, set the timer, drop a big piece of granite on top, and then duck for cover. If it works, the seal should survive."
"But first," Kagome-sensei said, "we are pulling waaaaay back." He sniffed. "I still say you're stupid to use one of the big ones first."
"Bah!" Hazō said, waving dismissively. "Ten meters isn't your biggest, right?"
"Well...no."
"Cool! Then it won't be a big deal."
The older man gaped at him. "That is not how implosion bombs work!"
"Hey, are we doing this or what?" asked Naruto Bacon. The wall that he had demolished stood on the east side of a four- (now three-) sided granite box with a granite floor underneath it, all created by the same Multiple Earth Wall casting. He and and another clone had tipped a large block of the granite up and balanced it on edge, keeping it balanced with one hand.
"Yep!" Hazō said, trotting over with an implosion seal in hand and taking over the job of keeping the slab balanced. "Range is hot! Say again, range is hot! Stand clear! Stand clear! Stand clear!"
Everyone hustled out of the blast radius, and then kept going.
"Akane, clear!" came the first shout.
"Naruto, clear!" came the second. (Presumably shouted by Prime. None of the Narutos were visible, so Hazō assumed they had all followed their creator.)
"Kagome clear, you idiot!" shouted Kagome-sensei. "You better not get caught in the blast!"
Hazō set the timer, dropped the seal, bumped the slab of granite over on top of it, and then Substituted again and again, moving along the chain of pre-prepared targets until he was well outside what even Kagome-sensei had estimated the damaged area might be. (Part of Hazō thought, but would never say, that the older man was being ridiculous. He was a demolitions expert par excellence, able to gauge destructive radius to a hair. The fact that they were moving three times farther than any plausible area of destruction was pure paranoia. Or, to say it differently, pure Kagome-sensei. The larger part of him told that other part to sit down, shut up, and stop thinking stupid things.)
The characteristic
zoop, crump of an implosion bomb going off was not followed by the normal
skoom! of outwards-rushing air. After Naruto clones had scouted and returned alive to report all clear, Kagome-sensei allowed them to cautiously approach the site.
The destruction was quite mild. Kagome-sensei's implosion bombs would normally scour grass and small bushes down to bare earth and knock over substantial trees. In this case there was damage to the trees from where small rocks had been carried by the inrushing winds, but the afternoon sun beat down on a clearing that was still completely recognizable.
"Cool," Hazō said, grinning widely. "Let's take a look."
Two Naruto clones had stayed behind in order to lift up the granite slab that had protected the seal. The paper was still there, undisturbed. Hazō was confident that the words 'gleaming with fell purpose' were purely his own thoughts and did not map to anything in reality nor were put there by—
"Hazō!"
Hazō blinked and found himself kneeling on the grass with his arms wrapped tight around himself. The slithering songs scuttled out of his brain and left him alone in his own meat, proceeding through time in only one direction, with all the sharp-edged angles and razor-edged en!box#d delineati3ns of reality around him.
"Hazō, what happened?" Akane asked, kneeling beside him with one hand on his back.
"S'fine," Hazō mumbled. "Had a bad memory of, uh—" Something juddered at the edge of his mind and he quickly forced his focus of attention aside, mentally rehearsing every step in Kagome-sensei's 'Please Don't Let the Monsters From Behind Time and Space Notice My Efforts' dance. "Bad memory of something."
Arms raised to chest height with elbows out...
"I think we should stop," Akane said. "You are clearly in no position to be doing seal research right now."
"It's fine," Hazō said, pushing himself to his feet and wobbling slightly. "It's fine. Really. I'm not doing any research, not really. This is pure experimentation with seals that already exist. It's fine. We need this. Leaf needs this." The Iron Nerve painted a gleeful smile across his face, knowing that neither Akane nor Kagome-sensei would recognize the falseness. "Besides, I
really want to blow some shit up. Call it explosive therapy; things have been way too frustrating lately."
Glances were exchanged. Glances of dubiousness.
"Seriously, it's fine," Hazō said, getting nervous. "Look, I'll stay completely back, okay? Won't come anywhere near the seals. The rest of you prep a few more and then we'll try stacking them up."
More glances of dubiousness were exchanged.
"I mean...it does sound like fun," one of the Narutos said hesitantly. "What do you think, Kagome? You're the expert."
The older man seemed caught between puffing up in pride at the recognition of his abilities, or descending into old-hennish gobbling and pecking at Hazō for being a stupid stinking idiot. Fortunately, the 'puffing up in pride' option won out, perhaps even with a bit of preening tacked on at the end.
"It should be fine," he said. "Akane, you take Hazō about a mile that way. Fox...er, Naruto, you help me prep the rest of the seals."
o-o-o-o
Two hours later, dozens of implosion seals had been prepped. They had also been divided into small groups, each given to a Naruto, and the Narutos had been told to spread out and get as far the hell away from the testing ground as possible, just in case one of the seals accidentally cooked off somehow.
They'd tried setting off two seals together. The explosion had been meaningful.
They'd tried setting off three seals together. The destruction had been lovely.
They'd tried setting off four, five, ten seals together. Kagome-sensei was getting excited.
It was when they got to thirteen seals that everything went wrong.
They had followed all the same safety procedures, reset all the distance markers and test objects so they could verify the exact radius of destruction, and ensured that everyone was far back. Unfortunately, when the explosive tag went off and detonated the stack of thirteen implosion seals, instead of the familiar
crack!...thump of implosion seal detonation, what they instead heard was the teeth-piercing shriek of a seal failure cracking the world.
XP AWARD: TBD
Author's Note: I'm a little torn on XP for this plan. On the one hand, there was a lot of fun stuff in there and it was well thought out, so it deserves a high per diem. On the other hand, there was
a lot of stuff in there, vastly more than could possibly have appeared in one update—it feels like it was the entire Plan Cache dumped into a single plan. That makes me want to bring the award down. Overall, I'm going to call it 3.5 XP/day. I think the update covers 3 days, but it might be 4. I'll figure it out later, after I eat something or possibly tomorrow.
During the Scroll Incident, Hazō took a Mild Physical Consequence, "Seizure Trauma", and a Severe Mental Consequence, "The Thinness of Reality". The former has healed, the latter has not. Hazō has gained 2 Thousand Yard Stare points.
It is now about 1pm.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, September 18, 2019, at 12pm London time.
