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

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Chapter 456: Allies of Inconvenience
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    • It was lucky that both Hazō and Kei had independently had the idea of bringing their summoning scrolls to the Hokage's briefing in case they needed to communicate urgently with their summons, and equally lucky that they were among the first to arrive, and therefore could pause outside the Hokage's office for a brief jaunt to a distant, alien world while waiting for the other clan heads.

    "So, Hazō," Kei began, "what new idea of yours requires total privacy and cannot wait until after the briefing when we will know the full scope of our latest cataclysm?"

    "Kei," Hazō said," I have a thought I wanted to run by you."

    "Does it involve the ruthless and absolute destruction of Hidden Rock with every ill-considered superweapon at your disposal the very instant the Hokage gives us permission?" Kei asked with the expectant air of a hungry Fifi noticing a fresh kill in his hands (or, rather, in Kagome-sensei's hands—he liked to spoil her, and sometimes there were "treats" left over after an afternoon of weapons testing in the woods).

    "Only indirectly," Hazō reluctantly admitted. "I've been thinking about Naruto, and how there would be a perfect synergy between his powers and certain Pangolin ninjutsu. It's entirely your decision, and obviously it would be conditional on him being able to keep it secret—which you'd also be able to judge better than me, since presumably you entrust him with KEI secrets every day—but it could be a big boost to Leaf's combat potential, and also to him not hating the Gōketsu quite as much."

    "He does not hate the Gōketsu," Kei objected. "He hates you, and considers you a borderline threat to village security, which of necessity limits his trust in those compelled to carry out your orders. On a personal level, he treats me with unmerited affection, possesses a cordial relationship with Akane as a former classmate, and, I believe, recognises a kindred spirit in Noburi.

    "Regardless, it is not as if the thought had not occurred to me as well. Even before the nigh-unstoppable village legend, there are loved ones of mine who would benefit vastly from protection from the vicissitudes of melee combat. Unfortunately, matters are not so simple."

    "What's the obstacle?" Hazō asked.

    "Hazō, the Pangolins feel we have betrayed them," Kei said heavily. "In a number of ways and on a number of levels."

    "You mean because of the skytowers?"

    "Those as well. But to begin with, as far as they are concerned, the very foundations of our deal were laid in bad faith. You must recall, Hazō, when we first negotiated with the Pangolins, their understanding of shinobi modernity was fragmented at best. They still lived in Ui's times, when the notion of a clanless population would have been alien and horrifying."

    "I'm not sure what you're getting at," Hazō said.

    "The notion of a shinobi academy that would teach any child with the qualifications is a modern one," Kei said. "Surely you remember that much from our lessons."

    Hazō nodded with a bitter smile. "Old Lizardbreath never let an assembly go by without reminding us how lucky we poor clanless kids were to live in a magnanimous village that didn't just throw us out like the trash we were."

    "I understand his death was quite excruciating," Kei said with a much brighter one. "It also involved express use of Yagura's old repressive apparatus, since dramatic punishment was necessary for Mist to save face, but the letter of the law was, at that time, not sufficient—unless the man were to be proved a foreign saboteur. Ami was most grateful to us for reminding the soon-to-be-born AMI that the new Mizukage was willing to use the previous tyrant's tools.

    "My point, however, is that in Ui's time, becoming a shinobi required either being born the child of clan shinobi or being born to civilians in a ninja village and adopted into a clan the instant your chakra reserves were recognised. There was no other source of training. As a general rule, clanless shinobi were those who had received clan training and then abandoned the clan—the original missing-nin, if you will—or their descendants whom they had personally trained. This, incidentally, explains much of the ingrained attitudes that have rendered the KEI necessary.

    "Under such circumstances, the notion of a clanless recruitment pool would have been bewildering at best. If clanless ninja were ever to gather in numbers, they would either fail to trust each other and separate again, perhaps violently, or they would establish a cooperative relationship and ultimately found a clan of their own, precisely as we did. This is how the Pangolins understood our group, and likely why Pandā was so swift to pair us off—on the assumption that we intended to develop our clan through… procreation and occasional exogamy. Under such a model, clan growth takes place over generations, as it does for summons themselves.

    "Consider, now, their feelings when they came to understand that we would be sharing our new ninjutsu not with our sons and daughters and perhaps the occasional ally marrying into the clan, but with multiple strangers every year, the number and selection determined by a process arcane to them.

    "They are aware they have no formal grounds for complaint. We are acting within the terms of the contract, and contracts are sacred. However, their ninjutsu are permanently out of their control now, and spreading rapidly in ways over which they have no influence. In exchange for this permanent and growing loss, what they received was a temporary benefit—which we then unilaterally terminated in a way that left them in dire straits indeed. Any observer unable to understand the condoritarian motivations behind our actions would surely conclude that we ruthlessly exploited the Pangolins by taking advantage of their ignorance of clan structures in the village era, then abandoned them as soon as we no longer needed the resources they provided. That is, assuming we were not planning to ruin them all along on behalf of some other Seventh Path entity."

    "None of this stopped them from sharing the Pangolin Conditioning Technique with those two jōnin," Hazō observed.

    "A sound choice," Kei said, "given that as support specialists, they were the most fragile members of our group save myself. Considering how close our victory was, it is a certainty that we would have lost without them. On the other hand, the Pangolins did not provide the technique to Ami, who possessed the dubious protection of fighting from range, or Naruto, who fought using clones, even though this, too, would have improved our odds.

    "The Pangolins are not best pleased with their allies, Hazō. Certainly, they lack alternatives, and Pangolin military honour prohibits them from betraying me so that a more cooperative prospective summoner may take the scroll from my corpse—or so I hope. However, even our greatest victory has left them with a bitter aftertaste. The blow to the Condor Clan was very real, in terms of symbolism, metaphysical trauma, and strategic advantage. Yet in exchange, the Pangolins have gained Leaf as an ally of inconvenience. Even now the village seeks leverage on the Seventh Path with which to demand the Condors' freedom for its own benefit. With our arsenal of summoners, eventually we will find it.

    "In conclusion, then, no. I believe that requesting a new ninjutsu trade, especially when the beneficiary is not under our authority or theirs in any way, will only further their perception of us as exploitative. Nor can I countenance the option of teaching Naruto without permission, in defiance of our contract. Naruto is known to some if not all of Leaf's summon allies via their summoners. It is inevitable that word of any signature ninjutsu he uses would eventually find its way back to the Seventh Path. In that event, I would certainly be rejected as summoner—a process easily, and I expect, usually made lethal by having the boss cancel summoners' unsummoning privileges before informing them. Furthermore, should it become known that the Hokage, the boss of Leaf's summoners, permitted this violation of contract, Leaf's summon allies could defect en masse."

    Kei paused, looking out towards the horizon silently as if buying time for something.

    "I appreciate the fashion in which you brought this to me, Hazō," she said eventually. "I regret that I do not have a better response to offer you. And… there is one more matter. You recall the existence of the Tama Clan, Rock's optimisation specialists?"

    Hazō nodded.

    "At least one must survive. Ideally more, for the sake of a safety margin. Please bear this in mind when preparing your plan to annihilate Hidden Rock as you can, must, and will."

    Hazō winced. "That's a lot harder than just erasing the entire village from existence."

    "There are options available to us. We can discuss the matter in more depth once you have a shortlist of localised apocalypses. For now, please trust that it is necessary. The Hokage will be aware of this as well, as indeed will the Tama."

    New challenge: win an all-out war against a numerically superior enemy. Without revealing power on a scale that would get Leaf Whirlpooled. While sparing a handful of specific individuals he had no way of identifying from range. And, of course, while still crippled and in a state of constant mental fog.

    It was almost as if the universe was starting to take Gōketsu Hazō seriously.

    -o-​

    This is a relatively brief scene, so XP will be awarded by @eaglejarl in his update.

    -o-​

    This is more infodump than update, but I am in poor condition as a result of my body clock rebelling at my attempt to fix it. Please look at my shortcomings through a big sieve, as the Japanese idiom goes.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes on Saturday 14th of August, 1 p.m. New York time.
     
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    • Chapter 457: The Will of Fire Explored
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    • Despite his best efforts, Hazō was the last one into the war council. Needing a cane did that to a person.

    "Nice of you to join us," the Hokage said. He stood at the head of the table, several scrolls and stacks of papers neatly arrayed in front of him. The air in the room crackled with sparks that flew from stones grinding against one another just out of sight.

    "Sorry, sir." This was not the right time to attract the Hokage's attention, so Hazō took his seat without a further word. In accord with Council etiquette he skooched it in as far as it would go so that his belly was pressed against the table. He folded his hands and looked around, carefully gauging the room.

    The Clan Council of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, including the Slug Princess and the jinchūriki of the Nine Tailed Demon Fox and augmented by the Snake Sannin, sat in silence. All eyes were turned to where the Lord of Fire Country loomed at the head of the table. Not even the legendarily stoic Hyūga or the utterly insane Orochimaru succeeded at presenting an entirely calm face when they saw Asuma's expression. Even Orochimaru was visibly in the mindset of a field ninja: hyperaware of his surroundings and ready to move the instant the expected threat materialized.

    "This," the Hokage said, slapping down a map, "is the Elemental Nations as it currently is." He swept his gaze around the audience for a moment and then he moved, a trench knife leaping from his flowing sleeve. Everyone twitched and then aborted their dodge when the blade slammed through the map and pinned it to the table.

    "This," Asuma said, twisting the knife hard so as to tear away the part of the map around the blade, "is how I want it to be a week from now. Figure it out." A surge of force yanked the blade out of the table and vanished it up the sleeve again.

    Hazō looked at the map and the missing section where the Village Hidden by Rocks had been.

    Silence ruled the room for three long breaths.

    "Lord Hokage," Shikamaru said carefully, "are you ordering us to eradicate the capital of Earth Country?"

    "Obviously," Asuma snapped. He snatched up one of the stacks of papers and threw them down in front of Shikamaru. "Read it."

    Shikamaru did not take his eyes off his barely-controlled ruler as he reached for the papers. His gaze flicked down, then back, keeping half his attention on what everyone in the room could not help but perceive as an imminent danger. The temperature seemed to be rising, the grinding of the stones growing louder, with every second that passed.

    Hinata gasped. Hazō glanced over and saw the telltale bulging of the veins on her temples that indicated she had activated her Byakugan. Possibly to read over Shikamaru's shoulder, possibly in response to the metaphysical fire in the air.

    Shikamaru went very still, and then he peeled the top sheet off the stack and passed the rest to Ino, who sat to his left. She took one and passed the rest to Hinata who took her own and passed the rest.

    When Hazō received his copy his sealmaster brain could not help but notice the paper it was scribed on. Kon Akimitsu's product from before his death. Mid-weight, clean grain, even coloring with his characteristic robin's-egg blue speckling. In part his brain insisted on noticing those details because it bought a few more seconds of not having to recognize the words on the page.

    • Kushida Crossing: Eliminated
      • Fuyuko - chūnin - MSD
      • Sadahiro - genin - MSD/CC, PD
      • Hyūga Harue - chūnin - KIA
      • Hyūga Masafumi - jōnin - KIA
      • Hyūga Sukenobu - chūnin - KIA
    • Twin Oaks: Eliminated
      • Aburame Eriko - genin - KIA
      • Chiaki Asao - genin - KIA
      • Egusa Hirotoki - genin - KIA
      • Fukita - chūnin - MSD
    • Falling River: HR/HR
      • Gusukuma Ruri - genin - KIA
      • Hagino Mareo - genin - MSD, PD
      • Hagoromo Gen - jōnin - KIA
    • Hashirama's Grace: E/NE
      • Tsukiko - genin - KIA
      • Iijima Wakana - chūnin - MSD
      • Kameyama Goro - genin - MSD/CC
      • Kumashiro Kana - genin - KIA
      • Kurusu Ikue - genin - KIA
    • Stone Faces: HR/R
      • Makihara Hiroi - jōnin - KIA
      • Maruya - genin - MSD/CC, PD
      • Motoyoshi Suehiro - genin - KIA
      • Noro Taiichi - genin - MSD
    • Sun's Touch: Eliminated
      • Haida Sachi - chūnin - MSD/CC
    • Patrol 7:
      • Watai Haruko - genin - KIA
      • Watai Emiko - genin - MSD


    Such neat and tidy little initialisms to cover up such ugly realities. 'Medical Stand Down' instead of 'body rent by blade or chakra'. 'Critical Condition' instead of 'probably not going to survive despite the best efforts of the medic-nin'. 'Permanently Disabled' instead of 'arm or leg torn off / eyes gouged or burned away / hands crushed' or so, so many other horrific options. The classifications for towns were even worse in their sterile and analytical way—'Eliminated' or simply 'E' instead of 'all buildings destroyed' or 'all residents murdered' depending on which side of the slash it fell on. 'Reduced' instead of 'devastated but with 25-50% survivors', or its more stringent sibling 'Heavily Reduced' that permitted at most 25%. 'Nearly Eliminatated' instead of...

    The thoughts popped away and Hazō jolted in his chair when Asuma slammed both hands on the table.

    "Those Rock bastards dropped half our city into a hole and killed my people. They stole our land and I smiled and took it because I didn't want direct war. Oh, we kept them from profiting from the land but we didn't burn them out like the lice they are, and now they're trying again! Twenty-four Leaf ninja dead or wounded! Half a dozen towns destroyed! Enough!" He slapped the table again. "No more! I want these bastards dead. Not just the ones on our borders, but every fucking one of them. Nits make lice—isn't that what you always say, Tsunade, when you're telling us how to prevent disease spirits from settling? It's not enough to destroy the ones that are being ridden, you need to also destroy the ones the spirits are grooming."

    "I'm in," said the Slug Sannin. "High time I start introducing people to my fist."

    Asuma nodded sharply to her, then turned to the teenager sitting to his left. "In answer to your question, Shikamaru: No. We are not going to stop at destroying Hidden Rock. We are going to exterminate every ninja in Earth Country. We are going to wipe them off the face of the world and grind their names to dust. The other villages clearly need to be reminded that we have the power to do it, and it's time we stop pussyfooting around." He swept his eyes around the table. "Unless someone here has an objection?"

    There was very audibly a correct answer to that question.

    Inuzuka gave a bared-tooth smile. "They hurt the pack. This time, they die."

    "Indeed," Aburame said. A soft but angry buzzing came from under his shirt as his embedded colony seethed.

    Orochimaru sniffed. "The timing is unfortunate as I am in the middle of some critical experiments. Still, I assume I will be permitted to keep the bodies of those I kill?"

    "You can have every ninja in Earth Country," Asuma said. "Alive or dead, I don't really give a shit."

    "Yeah, well, while Uncle Snakey is getting freaky, where do you want me?" Naruto said, pushing his sleeves up and leaning forward.

    "Naruto, don't even think you're leaving me back on this one," Sasuke said.

    "Fuck no," the blond replied. "Team Seven forever." He tapped fists with the last scion of the Uchiha.

    "As the newest clan in Leaf, the Kei have the most to prove," Kei Haruka said, leaning forward. "We wish to request the honor of forward deployment."

    "Great," Asuma said. "I want ideas on how. Lord Gōketsu, you're up."

    "Me, sir?"

    Asuma tossed the objection angrily aside. "Stop fucking around. Jiraiya told me how you're always having ideas for new weapons. Put up or shut up."

    "Well..." He looked down at the map with its torn-away fragment. "All right. We've lost a lot of strong ninja this year—"

    "You don't say?" asked the son of the murdered Third Hokage, tension dripping from the words.

    "Um...yes sir. Anyway, we should leverage the advantages we have. As far as I know, Leaf has more Summoners than the rest of the world combined. We can have a set of Summoners stationed in a specific location. They reverse-summon back to the Seventh Path, wait, then return to the Human Path. Completely undetectable ambush, although the timing would be tricky to manage.

    "Noburi's chakra water loses its virtue if it's on a different Path from him, but he can meet up with Summoners on the Seventh Path in order to refill them mid-combat."

    Lord Hagoromo snorted. "An excellent plan, Gōketsu. Carefully keeps your ninja out of the fight."

    "Shut your piehole, Hags," Inuzuka said. "Let the kid talk."

    "Do not talk down to me, dog bitch! Two minutes in and Gōketsu is already arranging things such that his clan is protected. Sage forbid that the Gōketsu should take a risk or—"

    "Shut. Your fucking mouth."

    Everyone cringed at Asuma's frozen words.

    "Lord Gōketsu?"

    "Um, yes sir. In answer to Lord Hagoromo's comments: Kagome-sensei and I are sealmasters, and he is also a cryptographer and intelligence analyst. Noburi is a medic."

    Tsunade snorted. "Barely. Kid can set a bone, I guess."

    Hazō bit his tongue to keep the impulsive words back, then phrased them more carefully. "With all respect, Lady Tsunade: I have seen Noburi successfully do field surgery to correct a child's gapmouth, take appropriate action to address a concussion, and use medical chakra to detect injuries and speed their recovery. I ask that you grant him the respect he deserves."

    The world's greatest medic-nin gave a snort rich with dismissive condescension. "Look, brat. It's cool that you want to support your brother, but let's be straight: He's not that good and he hasn't been pursuing the training. I'm sincerely glad that we've got someone trained in more than basic first aid, and good on him for learning as much as he did before he gave it up to pursue something sexier like Summoning. But if you call him a medic again I'm going to have to rip your head off."

    "Tsunade."

    She sat back in her chair, arms folded over her chest, and glared resentfully. "Fine, whatever."

    "Thank you, sir. As I was saying, Kagome-sensei is an intelligence analyst, cryptographer, and sealmaster. I am a sealmaster and a front-line combatant but I'm heavily injured. If there were a way to get me back on my feet quickly I would ask for forward deployment." He turned to Tsunade, the cold rage in his heart overriding common sense. "Are Leaf's medics capable of such, ma'am?"

    Tsunade's face went blank and a mountain shimmered on the edge of visibility, looming over Hazō and threatening to crash down. She sat forward, eyes locked on Hazō.

    "Tsunade!"

    The Slug Princess held Hazō's gaze for another moment, then looked at the Hokage. She deflated and sat back once more.

    "Continue, Lord Gōketsu."

    "Yes sir. Kagome-sensei is most useful on the homefront producing seals and working with the Nara on intelligence analysis. I am too heavily injured for combat, but as a Summoner and a sealmaster I could be a useful support asset in a forward position if transport can be arranged. I can lay traps, make customized seal loadouts on the spot, and summon both trackers and combatants." Probably. He didn't currently have a tracker but he could likely get one quickly if it was essential, at least on a temporary basis.

    "The rest of the Gōketsu ninja are disabled or disadvantaged," he continued. "Still, they can serve as messengers, scouts, or combatants in a pinch."

    "What about Mari?" Asuma asked sharply. "This is a war. She can play her games after we win but she's not sitting on the sidelines while Leaf is fighting for its existence."

    "Absolutely, sir." There was no other answer that wasn't going to end up with him in a killbox. Certainly it would not be a good plan to point out that the last three Hokage had all agreed to or tacitly supported Mari's retirement from the field. "Sir, I don't have the expertise in this area. May I suggest that you speak with her directly? The two of you will do a better job of figuring out where she is most effective. As her Clan Head I will deploy her in accord with your instructions.

    "Beyond that, sir..." Should he? Yes. "Beyond that I have a variety of options for the destruction of Rock, although I would prefer to disclose them to you in private."

    Angry mutters went around the room, along with an expression of contempt from the Snake Sannin.

    "Do they depend on clan secrets?" the Hokage asked. The stones were grinding less ferociously yet their presence could still be felt.

    "Not...exactly, sir."

    "Then I am disappointed you are not willing to share them in front of your assembled brethren. Do so. Now."

    "Um, yes sir.

    "First would be aerial bombardment. We use skywalkers to take up position high above Rock. Then we use Multiple Earth Wall, or simply storage seals, to drop thousands of pounds of rocks on them. We can—"

    "Oh, for the sake of the Sage!" Lord Hagoromo said, throwing his hands in the air. "This is your brilliant idea that you needed to keep private? We've all been experimenting with that since the day skywalkers became available! It's useless! You can't hit anything meaningful from any significant height—certainly not a ninja. And it doesn't do that much damage to whatever random chunk of land it does hit!"

    "With all due respect," Hazō said, struggling to keep the 'which is not bloody much' behind his teeth, "I'm not sure you've thought about how much stone the Multiple Earth Wall generates, or how high it can be dropped from. Sure, we can't hit individual ninja in the field but we can take out Hidden Rock itself. I've noticed that impact damage is greater the higher up you drop from. My team has used skywalkers to attain a height that I estimate at one to two miles, and there's no reason we couldn't go higher. Go up five or even ten miles, then use Multiple Earth Wall to instantly generate thousands of pounds of granite, and—"

    "Don't be stupid," Orochimaru said. "Construct granite only lasts thirty seconds. At that height it would dissolve before it reached the ground."

    That stopped Hazō in his tracks. "Oh...well, we can experiment to find the maximum height. Um...we can use Five-Seal Barrier nets to protect our own buildings and encampments—"

    "We're already doing that," Asuma said, impatient. "What else? So far this is unimpressive."

    By now Hazō was starting to sweat. "Firebombing would be useful against some targets, although not dug-in locations such as Rock itself. We could also try timed explosives plus any payload we like in a storage seal—maybe boiling lead and water?" It was one of Kagome-sensei's stupid boxes writ large, but hopefully more controllable.

    "Aerial bombing is useless against individual ninja and boiling lead isn't going to do anything to Hidden Rock itself," Asuma said. "Give me something better."

    "Unbreathable air," Hazō said desperately. "The Purifier seals soak the stuff up and store it. We could load up a whole bunch of them and then break them right at the entrance to Hidden Rock. Let them sink down into the tunnels and choke everyone."

    "Impractical," Orochimaru said. "Vaporous agents that act quickly enough to matter are difficult to manufacture and containerize in sufficient quantity. They are hard to control, and there are far too many remedies easily available. For example, the Tunneler's Friend seal that we originally took off the body of a Rock ninja. Given that they live underground it should be assumed that they know how to handle bad air."

    "Okay..." Hazō chewed his lip for a moment, then pulled the map closer and pointed. "I know this map isn't exact, but these rivers are the largest in Rock and most of their settlements are probably along their courses. Dams here, here, and here would change the course of the river leaving essentially every population center in Earth Country without water. Then—"

    "Ah yes," Lord Hagoromo sneered. "The famous 'uplift' of the Gōketsu clan. Aren't you the ones who constantly bleat 'think of the civilians'?"

    "Yes," Hazō said through clenched teeth. "In the short term it will harm civilians more than ninja, but Rock can't afford to have their entire population die of thirst. They will be forced to send ninja to locate and remove the dams. At the same time they won't want to draw down their current force deployments for fear that we might do exactly what they did to us: Use overwhelming force to hit population centers that have small ninja detachments, as part of a 'defeat in detail' strategy." He swept his hand across Earth Country on the map. "Wherever their people currently are, it's because those places need to be protected. They won't want to draw down the protection so they will be forced to call back the ninja from Fire."

    "I was already planning something to that goal," Asuma said. "Specifically, one or more strike forces moving into Earth and destroying population centers along the border as a way of pulling their forward units back. Orochimaru, I would like you to lead one unit."

    The Snake Sannin sighed, long and gusty. "This will take so much time," he muttered. "Ugh, distractions."

    Asuma cleared his throat significantly.

    "Yes, yes, I'll do it," Orochimaru said, waving dismissively. "As you command, Lord Hokage. And all that."

    Asuma studied him for a moment, then turned back to Hazō. "I like the rivers idea. Far more destructive than anything I'd come up with. While Orochimaru and his support team are drawing Rock's forces back across the border we can send another team to execute your plan. I particularly like the fact that it requires no contact and can be executed multiple times. The team will probably need to stay in-country for a few months but we should be able to depopulate Earth Country before spring planting. The Tsuchikage will need to ration food within Rock, thereby reducing his economic base further. We'll heavily reinforce the western border so that they can't raid us as easily. Grass or Claw will be a softer target, so Rock will attack there in order to resupply. That will bring the Minor Nation Alliance down on them." He nodded in satisfaction as he eyed the map. "By this time next year, Earth Country will no longer exist." He glanced at Hazō and made a tossing-away gesture with one hand. "Oh, and we'll resettle all their civilians into Fire. Better life for them, more economic growth for us. The clans may feel free to adopt any of them that you find useful and if there are any mutual claims we'll have a lottery to settle them."

    "Hold up," said Akimichi Chōza, finally breaking his silence. "Asuma, you can't really be serious about this. Right?"

    The Hokage turned to meet the objector's eyes. "Are you questioning my orders, Lord Akimichi?"

    Akimichi raised his hands in placation. "Sir, I'm asking you to consider the full ramifications of these orders. It is my duty as a member of your advisory council to make sure you have the best information possible. Could we exterminate Earth with this plan? Yes, probably. Would it be good for Leaf in the long run?"

    "Would it be good for us to remove the enemy we have been fighting since the villages were founded? The one that, not months ago, murdered both of your teammates and far too many of Leaf's Clan Heads and senior jōnin? The one that stole our land and will clearly do so again the moment they have gathered their strength? They aren't going to stop, Chōza. They have already nibbled at our edges. They will be back for a larger bite and if we don't demonstrate to the entire world what a bad idea that is then soon enough we will have Lightning trying the same, or Mist, or perhaps even one of the minor nations."

    "My Lord, he's right," said Kurusu. "Exterminating another nation is not the Will of Fire. The First would never have condoned it."

    Asuma slapped the table. "THE FIRST IS DEAD! I am the Hokage now and you will do as ordered!"

    "Yes, sir, you are," said Motoyoshi. "And the clans of Leaf are obedient to your office. But we are obedient to the office of the Hokage because the Hokage is the embodiment of the Will of Fire. Even if this plan were feasible with our current force levels, it does not dwell within the Will of Fire."

    The air burned. "GET THE FUCK OUT!" Asuma bellowed. "ANBU! ATTEND!"

    The door burst open and three masked killers poured through it.

    Asuma stabbed a finger at Motoyoshi. "Get this—"

    Shikamaru suddenly doubled over in a coughing fit so violent that everyone started to reach for their weapons or push their chairs back.

    Ino thumped Shikamaru gently on the back and rubbed circles of comfort as the young Nara continued to suffer wracking coughs.

    Tsunade pushed her chair back and stood up, moving down the table to Shikamaru's chair so that she could run medical chakra across his skull and spine. She studied him for a moment, chewing her cheek in thought, then tapped him on the shoulder with two fingers. The coughing subsided almost immediately.

    "Thank you, Lady Tsunade," Shikamaru said, nodding gratitude to the legendary medic. He wiped some spittle from his lips and nodded to Asuma and then to the rest of the table. "Your apologies, everyone. I have been feeling poorly recently. Lord Hokage, I sincerely apologize for derailing your train of thought. I believe you had intended to call for the current force distribution across the western border in order to demonstrate to Lord Motoyoshi that he was mistaken when he doubted the feasibility of your plan?"

    Asuma studied the teen for long seconds during which Shikamaru met his gaze with one of complete innocence.

    "Yes," Asuma said at last. "That is exactly what I had intended. Wolf, could you please run over to Admin and bring us back the full force positioning status? All of Fire, not just the western border. Tiger, Cat, you may wait in the hall."

    The ANBU looked from their commander to Lord Motoyoshi for a moment, then nodded. "As you command, Lord Hokage," Wolf said. Seconds later they were gone and the door was once more closed.

    "I have some thoughts on your strategy, sir," Shikamaru said. "May I have your permission to offer them?"

    Asuma's face soured but he nodded and sat down. "Please do, Lord Nara."

    "Thank you, sir." He pulled the map over and gestured to the rivers in Earth Country. "First, I agree that the plan is feasible from a purely technical perspective. We have the expertise and the manpower. Earth Country lives or dies at your command, Lord Hokage.

    "That said, if you do decide to execute then I would strongly suggest you begin with a preliminary intelligence-gathering phase. We know that our maps of Earth Country are imprecise at best. Placement of waterways in particular is more an act of artist than cartographer. I would recommend not less than four teams, each consisting of a jōnin and two chūnin. Eight teams would be better, since we should expect 25-50% losses from teams spending months on scouting and detailed map-making in populated areas of Earth Country.

    "This intelligence-gathering phase will give us time to prepare for the diplomatic side of the mission. The least of the issues we will be facing is that we are effectively going to be shifting Rock's attention from ourselves to the minor nations, most of whom are our allies. We will need to decide what, if anything, we are going to do to help defend them and supply them. As the water dries up and food becomes scarce, Rock will grow steadily more desperate. They will undoubtedly deploy their jinchūriki. As you said, they are more likely to attack Grass than us, since Grass is a much softer target. Allowing them to take possession of the fertile and well-watered land within Grass would allow them to survive easily instead of being completely genocided as you desire. Therefore, we will need to deploy Naruto, Lady Tsunade, and Lord Orochimaru in defense of Grass, with jōnin support so that they can focus on the jinchūriki.

    "Sending our strongest ninja out of the village will leave Leaf vulnerable to a desperation attack from Rock or an opportunistic one from Lightning, so we will want to centralize our entire ninja force, leaving the rest of Fire undefended in favor of preserving our core population and the government infrastructure. The result will be substantial loss of life throughout the nation as unsuppressed chakra beasts destroy villages, so once the battle is decisively settled we will need to arrange till'n'fill missions to repair the damage.

    "Of course, we won't kill every Rock ninja. Many of them will go missing rather than die of thirst or in hopeless battle against two Sannin and the strongest jinchūriki. This will have the unfortunate effect of spreading the news about our tactics to the rest of the Elemental Nations. Over the course of three world wars, no nation has launched an extermination campaign against another, so the fact that we are doing so will make everyone else extremely nervous. In order to avoid a preemptive coordinated assault from the other major and minor nations we will want to prepare the ground by making a series of extremely favorable trade agreements with Lightning and Mist before launch of the genocide plan. I would need to run some detailed models but at a first guess I suspect we should expect to see ten percent of our economy disappear from Fire for the next decade. I have a Nara team performing economic models so that we can better project how to prepare for such an event. We had intended this to be a clan secret but under the circumstances I will be happy to mark the information public and provide full data sharing to both the Tower and any other interested clan."

    Silence rested upon the room. The stones, the flames, the mountain...all were absent as everyone stared at Shikamaru with expressions that varied from surprise to shock to calculation.

    Lord Akimichi was the first to speak. "With your permission, Lord Hokage, I would like to coordinate a committee to create the necessary plans for executing your strategy, starting with the diplomatic and intelligence-gathering phases. If you would like, we could run a separate track where we put together more conventional plans that could be acted upon more quickly?"

    "Yes," Asuma said after a moment. "Those might be useful."

    "Perhaps we might brainstorm some of those now?" Hinata asked. "From a purely selfish viewpoint, I would like to take immediate vengeance on the Rock ninja currently in Fire. They killed three of my clan; with your permission, Lord Hokage, I would like to offer several senior Hyūga as members of hunter/killer teams to locate and eliminate the Rock ninja currently damaging Fire."

    "Did you still need me to attack the Earth Country border in order to draw them back, or may I return to my laboratory?" Orochimaru asked. "Also, I never got the chance to ask how you wanted me to advertise what I am doing. It won't draw the Rock forces out unless they know I'm doing it."

    Asuma rubbed his face with both hands and nodded. He looked tired, and when he spoke his voice was resigned. "Indeed. Now taking suggestions."

    Tension went out of every face in the room at those words. Everyone shifted in their seat and 'fight or flight' became 'plan and politic'.

    "One solution would be for the strike force to bring identifiable elements of the targets across the border and post them in Fire population centers that we think Rock might hit," Ino said. "I'm thinking heads of village leaders, any Rock headbands we can scare up, any especially distinctive artwork or building materials that would identify the town we hit, that sort of thing. Nail it to a post with a plaque that explains what we're doing."

    "I approve," Lord Kurusu said, offering Ino a tight smile. "Protecting our people while demonstrating to the world the consequences of military action against us? Now that shows the Will of Fire."

    "Agreed," Asuma said. "What's next?"




    Author's Note: Hazō did not mention chakdar seals because at this point they aren't useful for anything more than personal range.

    XP AWARD: 0 Scene was too short for a base award.

    Brevity XP: 1

    You are still in the Council chamber and the meeting is ongoing. You may either come up with more plans to suggest or we can assume that Hazō does intelligent things for the rest of the meeting and the plan can cover what happens afterwards.

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, August 18, 2021, at 12pm London time.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 458: Refusing the Call
  • Threadmarks

    • The rest of the meeting was less relevant to Hazō personally. The clan heads debated troop dispositions, combinations of skills and Bloodline Limit powers, and anticipated targets of future Rock attacks. Servants brought maps showing Rock tactics from previous wars. For the most part, these were conventional military tactics on which Hazō could provide little useful input. When it came down to it, brilliant ideas aside, he could count the number of times he'd led group combat against enemy ninja on his fingers, never mind planning broader military strategy. Most of those present had fought in at least one world war, and even the other new clan heirs' training had been based on the assumption that the next was only a matter of time.

    By the time Hazō was done with this world, no one would ever have to think that way again.

    Still, he had one more idea to offer today—one it made sense for others to have overlooked, not only because they weren't geniuses of creativity, but because all too many of Leaf's current summoners were beginners like him, only without having had a Kei to inspire countless thoughts about summoning optimisation.

    "I have a suggestion," he began just as Lady Amori finished laying out her thoughts on medic-nin distribution to a sceptical Tsunade.

    "I thought you were being suspiciously quiet," the Hokage said. "What do you have for us, Lord Gōketsu?"

    "I have an alternative way of leveraging our summoner advantage together with the Vampiric Dew, Lord Hokage," Hazō said.

    Lord Hagoromo raised a cynically-amused eyebrow, but didn't comment.

    "Go on," the Hokage said.

    "Assuming sufficient chakra, we can have an arbitrarily large jōnin-level army anywhere in an hour," Hazō said. "The key is using another summoner stationed in Leaf—for example, yourself—together with some other ninja to serve as chakra batteries. We have a Mist Wakahisa drain chakra from the battery ninja and give it to you. You travel to the Seventh Path and meet with Noburi, who drains you. Then he returns to a force of summoners on the front lines, and refuels them as they repeatedly summon the most powerful summons they've been able to contract. That creates a completely renewable army, plus we can add in support for other expensive techniques that would otherwise be impractical, like the Shadow Clone Technique."

    "A Mist Wakahisa?" Lord Hagoromo interrupted. "Of course. How did I not see this coming? The ex-Mist shinobi wants to place one of his foreign friends at the heart of Leaf military strategy. To have him interfere with the Hokage's own chakra, even. Your reputation really doesn't do you justice."

    "Enough, Lord Hagoromo," the Hokage snapped. "I am satisfied as to the extent of Lord Gōketsu's loyalty. Or are you proposing that I invited him to a meeting that could determine Leaf's survival by accident?"

    "Of course not," Lord Hagoromo said. "I'm not suggesting that Lord Gōketsu is trying to betray us. But loyalty and sympathy are different things, and even a nominally loyal shinobi can be blinded by misplaced trust in former comrades. Why is there a Wakahisa available to begin with? Why, because Lord Gōketsu alone has seen fit to do business with those responsible for countless deaths among your family, and mine, and everybody's but his own. Which is to say nothing of his flirtations with that Mist girl, ignoring the way she's already done more damage to the social fabric of Leaf than a dozen saboteurs could dream of—"

    Lady Kei and Representative Shimura opened their mouths simultaneously, her eyes icy cold, his whole face crimson in fury.

    "Our concern today is purely with practicalities," Shikamaru said quickly. "Lord Gōketsu is only one of those present who were not involved with top-level decision-making during the previous war. They can hardly be blamed for being vague on the invocation of military alliances. Lord Hokage, would you mind if I clarified Lord Gōketsu's diplomatic error for him?"

    The Hokage nodded, his tense facial muscles relaxing in resignation.

    "Lord Gōketsu," Shikamaru said, "Suppose there were some disaster taking place on your estate which your Nara allies were singularly equipped to help with. Ordinarily, you might request a certain number of Nara shinobi, taking into account your specific needs, what this favour would cost you, and of course the manifold security concerns of allowing Nara into your estate en masse where we could in theory map your territory for later use, identify weaknesses, steal secrets, record the details of your resources and their limitations, and so on and so forth. Needless to say, the Nara would never do this, but a clan head who does not account for every possibility, especially when danger to the clan is involved, is unworthy of the title.

    "On my part, I would consult my contingencies, factoring in which shinobi I could afford to spare at that time, and the opportunity costs of removing them from the active pool, as well as risks to them arising from this disaster, and any secondary concerns such as confrontation with whoever caused it to begin with, and then I would dispatch aid on that basis. This is the substance of alliance."

    "Now suppose that instead, there were a Nara shinobi visiting your estate to provide a service in good faith—perhaps to consult on one of your famous civilian projects—and you see fit to press-gang them into providing assistance regardless of their preferences. In that event, where your actions would amount to kidnapping or coercion, as well as usurpation of my authority, I would be obliged to retaliate. Depending on circumstances, you might expect the imposition of grievous penalties, the commencement of criminal proceedings, and/or termination of the alliance."

    Out of the corner of his eye, Hazō could see both Lady Kei and Representative Shimura listening attentively, while Lord Hagoromo smirked.

    "The Nara could agree willingly," Hazō objected. "We are allied clans, after all."

    "A Nara might," Shikamaru said. "But every Mist shinobi in Leaf is aware that Mori Ami was nearly executed for volunteering her aid in a Leaf military operation, and the Mizukage is aware that they are aware. In addition, we ourselves are walking a path of embers with regard to the Mizukage's patience after sending one of her jōnin into a near-lethal engagement. No, to attempt your strategy would require bringing Mist into the war, and as I have explained, that is not done lightly."

    "Make no mistake," the Hokage said, "if I was confident your plan would end the war with minimal casualties for Leaf, I might well sign off on it anyway. We allied with Mist to help us win a war against Rock or Cloud. If sacrificing that alliance helps us win a war against Rock or Cloud, then I'd say it's done its job.

    "But it's a moot point. Lord Gōketsu, you should know better than anyone why your plan won't work. Right now, the bosses of Leaf's summon allies are marching off to a war of their own. Even assuming the clans were prepared to lend us the bulk of their military power all in one go, to be used as disposable tools, they won't do it while they're on maximum alert because their territory is more vulnerable than it's ever been. The same goes for their non-participating allies. Defending unfamiliar territory that you aren't allowed to enter until fighting breaks out is a nightmare task. The spirit of the contract demands that they be ready to deploy at a moment's notice."

    Hazō inwardly cursed. Idea after idea, ruled unviable. Being able to top up jōnin after using the likes of the Shadow Clone Technique was still a valuable tool, but it wasn't the kind of game-changer that one shaped Leaf's foreign policy around. It almost made him wish that he'd spent more time working on his weapons of mass destruction, rather than seals that had many better, broader applications, but wouldn't be so useful with Leaf destroyed or subjugated to a militaristic tyrant.

    But then, if he'd done that, how would that make him different from those other ninja, the overwhelming majority that considered peace a temporary breather to be used to prepare for the next war?

    Where was the place in the shinobi world for the ninja who invented till'n'fills, who used Multiple Earth Walls to protect civilians from chakra beasts, who declared to the world that those who used ninja power to abuse their inferiors should have it taken from them?

    The thoughts stabbed him like a rain of needles. A year spent finding new ways to use his authority and imagination for the greater good, and here he was, sitting in a room with the people whose worldview he despised, looking for clever ways to crush, kill, and destroy, and enjoying it every bit as much as he enjoyed looking for clever ways to build, enrich, and enlighten. Hazō wanted to be a peacemaker, but in the end, was he just as much a product of this world as everyone else? Was what he craved the power to destroy his foes, and his foes just happened to include ignorance and suffering among their number? Once you were born a ninja, was there no way out of the trap?

    Akane.

    The rain stopped. The clouds parted.

    Akane didn't have the instinct to reach for weapons when she saw a problem. She didn't have the instinct to destroy evil, or to use her talents to look for shortcuts to domination. Akane's first thoughts, whenever something was wrong, was to understand and to help. Even during the Haru debacle, that had been her refrain. Not the fury Kei showed when confronted with his latest screwup, or Mari's contempt when he landed them in the killbox or otherwise really dropped the ball, but "I don't understand". Even during the war with the Hagoromo, she'd been ready to do whatever needed to be done, but he couldn't remember her delighting in anticipation of their enemies' impending doom the way the rest of them did.

    It was possible. It could be done. Hazō didn't know how it could be done, how somebody ended up being like Akane instead of like everyone else, but her very existence proved that the shinobi world could do more than live by the kunai and die by the kunai.

    Was that something to aspire to? Should Hazō seek to be like Akane? Or did the world still need Hazō the inventor of localised apocalypses? On the one hand, the war with Rock couldn't be won with good intentions. The only way to win a war was to make the other person stop fighting, and the time to do so with words had passed, if it had ever been there at all. On the other hand, Hazō couldn't think of any way to make that happen other than by killing people in their hundreds (or thousands, or tens of thousands, depending on how far the collateral damage reached) until the survivors were too few or too scared to fight. How did that make him different from the other ninja in this room, or their counterparts in the other villages?

    Hazō spent the rest of the meeting in silence.

    -o-​

    You have received 3 + 1 = 4 XP.

    -o-​

    Asuma had considered reinforcing the northeast border, but since there is already a team investigating what happened there, he's going to wait for their report (or conspicuous lack of report) before taking further action.

    No specific marching orders have been given to the Gōketsu ninja yet. The meeting focused on high-level strategy.

    You've informed Cannai and Kumokōgō of recent events.

    Hazō has received a basic package of information on Rock's known capabilities. We're not going to give you a village's worth of infodump in this update, but you can assume that the Hazōpilot will avoid mistakes based on easily-available tactical information.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes on Saturday 21st of August, 1 p.m. New York time.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 459: Lessons
  • Threadmarks

    • "Good evening, Haru. Please, have a seat," Hazō said, gesturing to the chair across from him.

    "Good evening, My Lord." Haru sat, back completely straight and expression attentive.

    "We're here to discuss your punishment and under what circumstances it might end. Please speak frankly," Hazō said. "No matter what you say I won't be upset and there won't be any additional punishment."

    "Thank you, My Lord."

    Hazō looked closely at his subordinate. Had the words been too rote, the face too blank? ...No. No, Haru was masking anger at his current situation but he did seem to appreciate the frankness.

    "Haru, why do you think I was disappointed about the Yakuza incident?"

    Surprise flickered across Haru's face. "If we're being frank, My Lord, my impression is that you weren't particularly upset. I'm being punished because Lady Akane was upset and you followed her wishes. You were just going to tell me to be more careful, perhaps scold me, but you were doing it because the Hokage ordered you to."

    Hazō winced, which earned him a minor jolt of pain from his still-healing collarbone. He breathed through it and massaged his thigh; this morning he had gone out to do seal testing with Kagome-sensei, hiking two hours each way through resentfully drizzling rain and two feet of snow quickly turning to slush. The combination was doing bad things to his injuries. The bones were fused but not completely healed and they still ached sometimes, especially when the weather was cold and wet.

    He pushed the thoughts aside and went back to the conversation.

    "That's...not entirely wrong, but also not entirely right," he said, choosing his words carefully. He sat back and sighed, twiddling a brush between his fingers. "Haru, you've heard us talk about Uplift but we've never really sat down and gone through it with you, have we?"

    "No, My Lord."

    "What is the prime duty of a Leaf ninja?"

    "To obey the Hokage, My Lord."

    "Okay, fair. In an instrumental sense that's correct. But I would argue that the true duty is to protect the people of Leaf—of Fire Country in general, actually—and the reason we are taught to obey the Hokage is because he is best equipped to know how to do that. He has access to more information and better advisors than anyone else. If he issues an order that seems strange then we can safely assume that there's a reason for it based on something we don't know and he does. One that accords with the Will of Fire, which directs us to protect those around us. Would you agree?"

    "Yes, My Lord. I hadn't thought of it that way."

    "You know you can just call me Hazō, right?"

    "Is that an order, My Lord? My understanding is that I am supposed to be a civilian right now. No civilian would address you by your given name without a direct order."

    Hazō deflated. "It's fine. Just lay off the 'My Lord', would you? It's weird."

    "Yes sir."

    "Right. Um...oh, protecting others being the first duty. Okay, what's the best way to protect the people of Fire?"

    "Maintain vigilance and exterminate anything or anyone that threatens them so it can't do it again, sir."

    "A year ago I would have agreed with that but running the clan has made me think more deeply about it. When the Hagoromo called us out I was forced to react. You're a taijutsu fighter like me; I'm sure you had some grizzled old instructor give you the same advice I got: You always want to be acting, never reacting." He smiled involuntarily at memories of the Academy, and his voice dropped into a grumbling parody of the grizzled old instructor in question: "'What do you think you're doing blocking that attack?! Only losers block attacks, boy! Use your range, your positioning, and control the tempo! Harrass him, don't let him get the attack off in the first place!'"

    Haru smiled slightly. "I might remember one or two lectures like that, sir."

    "Okay, good. I've started noticing that politics is a lot like taijutsu—it's nice if you're bigger and stronger and have more reach than your opponent but the person who wins is generally the one who chooses the environment, controls the range, and stays within the appropriate engagement category. If you're fighting a striker, grapple. If you're fighting a grappler, strike. That kind of thing. When we went after the Hagoromo we were starting off flat-footed. We needed to do the research on how to hurt them and where the targets were. I should have had plans in place so that we could launch the attack instantly. The same is true of protecting Fire and its people. We're better off preventing threats than reacting to them."

    Haru nodded. "That makes sense, sir."

    "What made you go after the Yakuza?"

    "At first it was because our people were being hurt and we didn't have the manpower to protect them all. The Yakuza have thugs and they make good enough bodyguards against civilian crime."

    "And later?"

    "Someone, probably the Hagoromo or Hyūga, had attacked us through the bank and we didn't know if another attack was coming. To use your taijutsu metaphor, sir, we were fighting in a dark room and had been punched in the nose. We were reeling and didn't know where the enemy was. We needed to localize them and launch an immediate counter attack in order to jam them up and break their flow."

    "Okay, but killing Yakuza opened our flank to a new set of threats: Pissing off the Hokage. It's like you threw out a meia lua in order to clear the zone, but you put your hands on the ground while you did it so you left your head exposed."

    "Meia lua, sir?"

    Right. Iju-sensei had always been a weird one, his techniques scoffed at by more traditional instructors. Unsurprising that they hadn't made it to Fire. "Sorry, I forgot that's not from here. Meia Lua de Compasso is the full name. One of my instructors made it up and it became his signature move. It's something like a roundhouse but it's done from a side-on stance with the back leg and it covers a full 180. You need to lean down as a counterbalance and there's a tendency to put your hands on the ground for balance. Iju-sensei always told me to keep my hands up and be ready to roll away from an attack."

    "I see, sir."

    Hazō cursed silently. He'd been making that work until he accidentally pointed up his foreign birth. Damn, if only his leg would stop aching so he could focus.

    "Okay, bad example. Anyway, going back to your metaphor: You're fighting in the dark, you've been punched in the nose. You need to find the target so you fire off a spinning backfist but you drop your other hand and leave yourself open. That's what happened when you started killing Yakuza. It was an effective way to get information and get bodyguards for our people, but it meant violating the civilian protection laws. If our enemies, whoever they might have been, had learned you were doing it then they could have brought charges to the Hokage. He would have had to execute you."

    "With respect, sir: He found out about it and did nothing. Yakuza are scum, Lord Hokage knows they're scum, and he didn't care."

    "Perhaps, but the only reason he could blow it off is because no one actually brought charges. That's why he told me to tell you to cut it out before someone did make a thing out of it."

    "I see your point, sir."

    "I'm getting a little lost in the weeds. My point was more about unintended consequences and the best way to protect people. The best way to protect people is to prevent them from being attacked in the first place, right? Not to defeat an assassin, but to ensure that an assassin never attacks."

    "That makes sense, sir."

    "Okay, that's what Uplift is about, at least at a basic level. If everyone has a good life then there's no need for them to try to kill each other. People with a good place to live and plenty to eat generally don't take out loans that they can't repay and end up with broken knees." He raised a hand. "It's oversimplified, I know. Some people are habitual gamblers and get themselves in a hole regardless of how much money they have and some people are greedy for power and so on. Still, the general point is sound."

    "Yes sir."

    "The same applies between countries. If Earth Country wasn't a giant desert then Rock ninja wouldn't be trying to steal our land." He shook his head. "Honestly, part of me wonders if it would make sense for us to take that fertility jutsu and see if we can turn some Earth Country dirt into decent growing land. It's just an idle thought—there's a whole raft of problems with the idea that would need to be ironed out before I would even dream of approaching the Hokage for permission—but I think that if it could be made to work then it might have prevented the Collapse and the current war."

    Haru looked surprised. A muscle in his cheek twitched as he started to say something but he kept his mouth closed and simply listened attentively.

    "That's the thing, Haru...life is precious." Hazō winced as a spike of pain went through his ankle. He shifted, arranging his legs more carefully to reduce stress on the joints, and then had to think for a moment to remember where he was. "All life, even civilians. If all the civilians die then ninja will go hungry. Shoot, if the wrong group of civilians die then ninja will have no clothes, no tools, no new-build homes. Killing to protect, killing for duty...that's something we all understand. Yes, even me. It should still be avoided when possible. If you truly believed the Yakuza posed immediate risk to the innocent, that's one thing. If it was just convenient then you should have found a better way."

    "I understand that, sir."

    "You do?"

    "Yes sir." His voice remained almost completely calm as he said, "I've had a great deal of time to think since you stripped my ninja status from me, sir. The civilians want nothing to do with me. They know that your wrath might descend at any moment and they don't want to be collateral damage if it does. Also, they still think of me as a ninja even though Lord Noburi is assuring that I'm no stronger or faster than they are and I can't use jutsu against them. Not that I would—they are Gōketsu, even if they treat me like a pariah. My purpose is to protect them and raise them up."

    "They treat you like—" Hazō shook his head, flicking the topic away. "Put a pin in that because I'm going to want to come back to it, but I'd like to stay on topic right now. You were saying?"

    "The Gōketsu mission is to make life better for everyone, sir. Yakuza might be scum who harm their community but that doesn't mean that killing them accords with the Will of Fire or the Way of the Gōketsu. I should have found a different path." He shrugged. "I could probably just have bribed them, at least in the beginning before I gave all my money to that town."

    "Wait, what?"

    "You weren't aware, sir? Two, three months ago I withdrew all my money from the clan bank and gave it to the people of Tall Rock. It's a village about twenty miles northeast. I told them to use it for tools, or till'n'fills, or whatever. In retrospect it would have been better to leave them to their own devices and give the money to the Yakuza."

    "I didn't know about that. You giving away your money, I mean."

    Haru shrugged.

    "You gave them all of it?"

    Haru shrugged again. "What do I need money for? I've got a nice apartment to myself, there's plenty of good food whenever I want it, and I get clothes and seals and weapons for free. Advantages of being a clan ninja, sir."

    "Wow. Good for you."

    "Thank you, sir, although apparently I need money for bribes to Yakuza. I'll remember that for next time, sir."

    Hazō sat in silence for a moment, digesting the implications. "We need to check on Tall Rock and see what they did with the money and how they're doing in general. It would give good information about how to most effectively help villages in the future."

    "I would volunteer to go get that information, sir, but civilians such as myself prefer not to travel during the winter."

    Hazō gave his subordinate a bit of side-eye but the tone had been absolutely polite and respectful so there wasn't much to object to. "You said you've been thinking about this?"

    "Yes, sir. Life as a civilian pariah means I have a great deal of time to think. Especially while smashing large rocks into small rocks. The repetition of it is very good for numbing the mind and allowing you to focus." He paused, thinking. "First, it was bad to kill the Yakuza. All life is precious and I should have found a different way. Not just because it violated the law and made us vulnerable to the Hokage but because it was wrong. In the future, assuming I ever regain my ninja status, I should find positive methods that rely on things like bribery and favors. I should talk to Lady Mari about that since she is an expert. And I should make restitution of some kind. Do you have suggestions, sir?"

    "I think it would be appropriate to apologize to the families of the people you killed. After that I'll make a judgement call on your punishment."

    "Very good, sir. Shall I go do that now or is there anything else you'd like to discuss?"

    "...No, I think that's it. Gaku should have the list of the families in question. But leave it for the morning. It's dark and raining."

    "Thank you, sir. Would you prefer that I do it as a civilian or while wearing the Gōketsu crest?"

    "I think the crest would be appropriate. Thank you, Haru."

    "Of course, sir. Do I have permission to go?"

    "Absolutely. Thank you for coming in."

    Haru stood up and bowed to exactly the right degree, then turned and left without a word.

    Hazō sat back in his chair and put his legs up on the pair of little sling stools that was placed there for the purpose, one under the lower thighs and one under the calves. It wasn't something he would do during a formal meeting since it made him look goofy, but it was a lot more comfortable. He even went so far as to pull the jar of Lady Tsunade's pain medicine out of his drawer and take a swig. He deserved it after how well that had gone, and there wasn't enough on the docket that it would matter if he was a little fuzzy-headed. Perhaps he would even drift off for a bit...




    Author's Notes: It's getting late and I don't have another scene in me so I'm going to summarize the results with Kagome. You got on your heavy weather gear and hiked two hours away from the estate. This was challenging for Hazō since it was raining constantly, very cold, there's snow (rapidly becoming slush in the rain) on the ground, and he needs a cane right now. It took two hours each way and time was spent on making a MEW shelter when you got there. Results were as follows:
    • Combine PMYF with stupid boxes (ranged, time-delayed massive explosion).
      This doesn't work because a PMYF is a storage seal with a timer and a stupid box is a storage seal with an about-to-explode box in it. You can't put a seal in a seal.
    • PMYF Macerator.
      No idea what this means so Hazō did not try it.
    • SIN-13 seemingly failed because air couldn't escape correctly. Does Kagome think SIN-10 are safe? If not, what highest SIN stack is?
      Back in chapter 287 when you were experimenting with SIN stacks, you didn't start with a SIN-13. You started with a SIN-1 then 2, 3, and on up until things failed at 13. Clearly a SIN-10 is safe at least sometimes. Kagome-sensei has no evidence for or against the idea that it's safe all the time.
    • Tunneler's Friend/SIN-1 with youthenizer. Fire needs air, so a paired seal releasing air may magnify the fireball. If SIN-1 works, try SIN-2 and SIN-3.
      I'm not 100% sure what you're looking to try with this so I'm taking my best guess. You strapped a youthenizer seal and an implosion seal to the same kunai and threw it. You ran the experiment multiple times. Sometimes the youthenizer went off first and destroyed the implosion seal before it fired. Sometimes the implosion seal went off first and destroyed the youthenizer before it fired.
    • Macerating acid.
      You weren't able to get any strong acid in the time available. You'll have it the day after tomorrow.
    • Macerating molten glass/metal.
      Your macerators cannot grind up strong woods, let alone metal. There is no way to safely put molten material into a container that can be macerated with your current version.
    • You did not do the following because constant cold rain makes using skywalkers unsafe:
      • Using Shadow Clone, investigate safest height Skywalkers can climb to, use Tunneler's Friend for air when necessary.
      • Investigate sending Earth Clones to dive bomb targets from Skytower. If successful, give them explosive tags, test delivering seal payloads with precision from skytowers.
        • Test high altitude boulder strikes ridden by earth clones that cast MEW within 30 seconds of impact for increased mass.
      • Verify if permanent MEW can be produced with 10,000kg of rock on skytower 10 feet up.
        You ordered the estate ninja to load 100 storage seals with dirt so that you can try this. They can't easily do it in the rain but they'll get it done tomorrow.


    XP AWARD: 1 (Very good plan but the scene was too short for more than 1 XP.)

    Brevity XP: 1

    "GM had fun" XP: 1

    It is now about 11am.

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, August 25, 2021, at 12pm London time.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 460: Towards an Uncertain Future
  • Threadmarks

    • "Hazō." Kei gave a ghost of a smile. "Probability dictates that it must be a good morning somewhere, perhaps in Fang or Claw. If so, please assume we are there for the purpose of phatic greetings."

    "It is good to see you," Snowflake said (today identified by the bright green ribbon snaking through her hair).

    Both seemed tired. No, not tired but profoundly weary, as if despite having the day having just begun, they were ready to go to bed and roll the dice on whether tomorrow would be any better. Hazō almost felt guilty for making them stay awake to see him.

    "I take it Shikamaru briefed you on the Clan Council meeting, then," he said sympathetically.

    Kei nodded. "It is reassuring to know that no matter how the rest of the world changes, at least the clan heads of Leaf can still be counted on to act like bickering children whenever significant decisions must be made."

    She paused briefly.

    "No, the opposite of that."

    Hazō laughed.

    "Let me guess," he said. "You stayed up late working on logistics for the war, and now you're exhausted and frustrated with the stupidity of the people around you, and struggling to remember why you're trying to save the place to begin with."

    Snowflake gave a snerk.

    "An astute guess," Kei said, "but no. Merely KEI unpleasantness. Teething issues now that the KEI Master Database is fully armed and operational. To what do we owe the honour of this visit, Hazō?"

    "Nothing special. Just…" It wasn't easy to say. Part of Hazō felt like saying such things out loud made them more real, more likely to come true, as if reality would have mercy as long as he pretended hard enough. "Just that we're at war now. Maybe that's not as dangerous as the Dragons breaking free and eating this entire reality, but it's more immediate. I want to spend time together while it's still quiet, before we all get dispatched."

    Kei raised an eyebrow.

    "To the battlefield, I mean," Hazō clarified.

    "I believe you are exaggerating," Kei said. "While, yes, probability dictates that our relationship will soon be terminated by the death of one or all parties—most likely Snowflake and myself, since you are not yet fit for field duty—the risk is not so much higher than usual. We are, after all, shinobi. You recall Yūhi Kurenai's highly-publicised Satsugai Manor mission last month."

    Hired to defend a daimyo from an anticipated assassination attempt, the genjutsu expert had single-handedly taken out a squad of elite chūnin through a combination of misdirection, manipulation, negotiation, and ultimately a gruesome bloodbath that left the client a very grateful gibbering wreck. The Hokage had held her up as an example of what all social specs should aspire to, but yes, it also served as a valuable reminder that combat with enemy ninja did not require a declaration of war. The very nature of shinobi missions maintained a status quo of mutual killing, and the resulting hatred between the villages.

    "Any mission beyond the humble D-rank carries some risk of death," Kei said, "and as chūnin summoners, we shall surely never see those again. 'Before every mission, say farewell,' as the saying goes. Granted, this war will essentially be an A-rank mission of unknown duration, but as Ami's sister, I am accustomed to watching my loved ones depart on such. At least in a war, we will not be heading into the darkness alone."

    Hazō shivered at the cool breeze that briefly blew through the room.

    "Talking about our impending doom is a fine and traditional Gōketsu pastime," he said, "but can I suggest another one? I hear good things about boardgames. Under the circumstances, some peaceful escapism would be nice."

    "Peaceful escapism? What about Pilgrim's Trail, then?"

    A gentle journey down the Fire Country's main pilgrimage route, vying to see who could collect the most souvenirs, paint the most landscapes, and generally accumulate the most pleasant memories? Perfect.

    -o-​

    "Nooo!" Hazō groaned. "Snowflake, why would you take the only village spot? You already had six coins while I'm down to one!"

    "What an unfortunate coincidence," Snowflake said, deadpan. "It seems that you must skip several opportunities to arrive at the inn first and have a chance of claiming a cheap meal, or starve while the rest of us luxuriate in our wealth. How do I spend nine coins before the end of the game?"

    Hazō looked down at the board, seeking options. His pilgrim meeple looked back in disapproval.

    "No, there's still a chance. If I get an encoun—Kei, did you just take the last encounter spot?"

    "You encounter a travelling noble," Kei read out the card. "Gain three coins. Why, how convenient. So, Hazō, will you gamble your sole coin on a cheap meal being available at the inn—as long as you hurry—or pray, with slightly higher odds, that there is something affordable at the souvenir shop, or perhaps take the safe option and donate it to the temple for marginal returns?"

    On reflection, Hazō should have seen it coming from their last 'peaceful game', which had involved taking turns to save up for and buy gem mines, and featured no player interaction to speak of. With pinpoint precision, Kei and Snowflake had purchased only those mines which other players could afford (or reserved them, which generated wildcard tokens with which to expand their range of targets). There being a limit on gems in hand, Hazō and Noburi had spent most of their turns discarding now-useless gems and drawing new ones, only for the sisters to make those useless next.

    "Say," Snowflake asked, "are those inexpensive yet extremely finite dango I smell?"

    Hazō sighed. "Changing topics to something that might not drive me to despair, what were you saying about the KEI Master Database?"

    "The fruit of many months of tedious labour, finally completed," Kei said. "We now possess a list of every KEI shinobi with the ninjutsu, genjutsu, taijutsu techniques et cetera that they are prepared to teach to others, and the fees charged for same. The core principle is that should one learn such a technique and proceed to teach it to another, one must pay 25% of the money gained to the originator at the top of the chain, to a minimum of 25% of the original fee. Thus, every KEI shinobi receives an incentive to share their personal techniques in exchange for a consistent income stream. When the originator dies, statistically within a few years of beginning to teach, the technique is released into the public domain. For obvious reasons, clan shinobi are excluded from this system, and any sale of techniques to a clan is to be brokered by the KEI to ensure a fair deal. The commission on all of this will help shore up one of the KEI's primary weaknesses, its operating budget.

    "It is also a means of preparation for Isan. When the first Isanese arrive, bearing exotic arts and ignorant of the economic realities of the modern world, they will be ripe for exploitation by the clans. The KEI Master Database will secure their income, at rates demonstrably analogous to those enjoyed by KEI shinobi, and incentivise trade in both directions."

    "That sounds hard to enforce," Hazō said after a few seconds' thought. "How do you stop people teaching others in secret and not bothering to pay the originator?"

    "A risky prospect in the long term," Kei said, "as techniques exist to be used, and thus knowledge of a technique will be revealed as soon as one uses it on a mission with other KEI shinobi. In general, however, I agree that our tools are limited, even with the KEI Intelligence Division. That would, in fact, be the purpose of last night's unpleasantness."

    "Oh?"

    "At last night's KEI general meeting, it was established that one Fu Kōhei, a ninjutsu specialist genin, has already attempted to cheat the system out of greed. After a brief trial, it was ruled that, as he had abused the agency granted to him by membership of the KEI, that agency would be stripped from him. Thus, he was declared Anathema to the Fellowship of the Konoha Enlightenment Initiative, or AFKEI."

    "Is that something distinct from just banning him?" Hazō asked.

    "Ami insisted on the formal designation," Kei said. "She hopes that, in time, such apostates will ally to form a rival organisation hostile to the KEI's leadership and policies, and a shared title would be a useful advantage to offer them until an original group identity crystallises. As ever, her genius is beyond me.

    "As to the ruling itself, formally speaking, no. Informally speaking, Fu is a traitor to the KEI, one who would exploit his downtrodden fellows with the tools intended to uplift them, and anyone associating with him will de facto be aiding and abetting a known criminal. In effect, we have sentenced him to be"—her voice went very quiet—"ostracised."

    "This is something of relevance to you as well, Hazō," Snowflake said, giving Kei a look Hazō couldn't read, "as his current landlord. Many will be watching to see what decision you make in the coming days."

    The KEI's declared enemy was a Gōketsu estate genin. Great. Hazō was now stuck between expelling a man whom he'd promised food, shelter, and eventual adoption, on nothing more than the word of the KEI—which wasn't quite a statement that the KEI's authority trumped his own, but was too close for comfort—and publicly choosing to grant those things to a soon-to-be-infamous thief and traitor.

    "For what it is worth," Kei said softly, "it was not my intent to place you in such a position. That the AFKEI shinobi happened to be living on your estate was purely ill fortune."

    No, Hazō trusted his sworn sister not to corner him for political purposes, and this kind of manipulation wasn't her style to begin with. Nor did Naruto seem like a subtle enough operator to come up with the idea.

    Then again, there were enough KEI genin on the estate. Was it so improbable that one of them would turn out to be a bad apple by chance?

    "Speaking of troublesome individuals on the Gōketsu estate," Snowflake said, "rumours say you have pardoned Haru."

    Hazō stared. "Firstly, I haven't—he's on parole so he can get back in shape before Asuma sends him into combat—and secondly, I just did that last night. How are there rumours that made it all the way to you?"

    Snowflake shrugged. "Apparently, all the KEI genin have been watching him in horrified fascination. When he stopped hammering that wretched pillar of rock and put on a haori with the Gōketsu crest right before said genin headed to the general meeting…"

    "I see," Hazō said. "Is there anything about the estate that the KEI doesn't know?"

    "Why it's home to a Wakahisa fish breeding specialist," Snowflake said with a wry smile. "We have heard some very disturbing theories, only a few of which are accurate."

    "What?" Hazō demanded. "Why would he tell anyone he's one of those?"

    "I assume that he is not one of nature's infiltrators, and forcing him to spend the best part of a year constantly surrounded by suspicious ninja without revealing any details of his personal background was too much to hope for. Regardless, the majority of rumours do not consider why the Wakahisa would train fish breeding specialists to begin with, and instead pertain to traitorous plots against the Village Hidden in the Leaves, forbidden experimental Water ninjutsu, and of course fish god sex cults."

    "Of course," Hazō said resignedly.

    "My advice to you if you wish to preserve OPSEC," Snowflake said in tones of perfect seriousness, "is to lean into it as much as possible. Given the rumours about you and Akane, and now Ino as well, few will doubt it when they hear you are exploring yet more new and exciting realms of depravity."

    "You realise Ino will kill him?" Kei asked.

    "True," Snowflake said. "Stick to the treason."

    "Pretending that entire conversation just now didn't happen," Hazō said, "if it comes up, let people know Haru hasn't been pardoned yet. I'm keeping that option open. Right now, I'm just having him go apologise to the yakuza families and pay them blood money—which, now I think of it, he doesn't have because he gave it all away. Huh."

    The two girls exchanged glances.

    "You realise Akane will be furious when she returns," Kei said.

    If she returned, corrected the voice from somewhere deep and dark inside Hazō's soul. If she'd encountered Rock soldiers, taking out patrols in preparation to open up a second front… Or just a chakra beast powerful enough to wipe out a patrol, with some terrible ability like the quisling tyrant had…

    "It cannot be helped," Snowflake replied. "Even if Hazō were to apologise in person as she insisted, after such a delay nobody would believe he was doing it on the Hokage's orders. Hazō, it may be in your interest to abandon hope of placating Akane, and focus on developing contingencies for when other shinobi begin to imitate Haru as she feared. Not that I imagine the war will leave much time for such thoughts, on your part or theirs."

    The war might not leave time for much. In fact, that was part of the reason Hazō had come to see Kei and Snowflake in the first place.

    "Actually, there's something war-related that I wanted to talk to you about, Kei."

    "Yes?"

    "Asuma wants Mari to fight in the war."

    "Of course he does," Kei said with an edge of puzzlement. "You forced his hand with regard to that issue some time ago."

    "What do you mean?"

    "You asked him for permission to teach her the Shadow Clone Technique," Snowflake said. "In effect, you were requesting for her to be added to the active duty roster, since there is no earthly reason why a non-combatant would be taught a classified A-rank ninjutsu. The Hokage would hardly refuse, when refusal would equate to a formal statement that he did not wish Mari to act as a Leaf shinobi."

    "I assumed you did it in awareness that it was in any case only a matter of time," Kei said. "Mari, after all, never so much retired as went private. She has served the Gōketsu in every way that she would otherwise serve Leaf, with the possible exception of assassinations. ANBU, and thus the Hokage, could not help but notice eventually.

    "Regardless, why is Mari's fate my concern?"

    "Because I think you should give some serious thought to whether you want it to end like this," Hazō said. "If you don't decide what you want now… you might never get another chance.

    "What are you after, Kei? An apology? Reparations? If so, what kind? Is this about you and your relationship with Mari, or are you acting on behalf of the others who died in Hidden Swamp? I know you might not have all the answers yet, but I don't want you to run out of time to look."

    Kei nodded heavily. The room was silent.

    "I want my Mari back," she finally said in a voice just above a whisper. "I want the bold, beautiful, impossibly heroic woman who paused her quest to change the world because she cared about my feelings. I want the woman who took care of us in the wilderness, who paid attention to how we felt and took great care not to hurt us—not for real—even after years building habits of apathy and cruelty. I want the woman who apologised, and promised to do better, and did better. I want her to come back and replace the woman who forgot I could feel pain, and the woman who used my pain against me the night before my wedding. I want her to apologise in a way that makes them gone forever.

    "I cannot have that, Hazō. I am not someone who can understand people, or redeem them. I am not someone who is good with trust. I do not know what causes me to feel it, or why some things destroy it and others do not, or where it goes or how to bring it back. But the Mari who is there now claims I must trust her, while unable or unwilling to offer me anything that would help."

    She reached up as if to wipe her eyes with her sleeve. Snowflake promptly put a handkerchief in her hand instead.

    "Who… who cares about reparations?" Kei asked. "Who, says the selfish little girl, cares about the others from Hidden Swamp? I cannot save them. Mari cannot save them. There is no room in my hands to hold onto even my own happiness, much less play-act a champion.

    "How can I trust her, Hazō? How can I look at this woman with immense, untold power to hurt me, and trust that this paragon of deception has my best interests at heart, unlike her identical twin to whom my pain is nothing if facing it would interfere with her narrative of redemption, or her other twin who will break me to the exact extent that I stand in her way? I am not Akane, to trust unconditionally and have faith in my ability to survive betrayal. I am merely"—she gestured with her hands—"this.

    "My hero cannot save me this time, not even if she is truly here. Even Ami cannot save me from my own weakness. All the answers in the world cannot change that."

    Hazō looked at Kei's moist eyes, then down at the board. His woebegone pilgrim looked up at him in mute condemnation. Hazō couldn't think of anything to say to either of them that would turn the situation around, much less if the endgame was nigh.

    -o-​

    You have received 4 + 1 = 5 XP.

    -o-​

    I'll try to do the Ino scene tomorrow. If I fail, I'm sure @eaglejarl will do a sterling job (assuming he doesn't want to offscreen it).

    Voting is open. Assume that nobody died as a result of the Ino scene and the results of the offscreen stuff aren't in yet.

    Voting closes on Saturday 28th of August, 1 p.m. New York time.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 461: Quieting
  • Threadmarks

    • Ino was a truly beautiful young woman. Sunsets and properly-drawn brush strokes beautiful. Hazō was reminded of this every time she came through a door, or laughed, or cocked her head and gave him that little half-smile with the dancing light in her eyes that said she was about to tease him in some subtle way that he might or might not understand. He was even reminded of it by the way her 'o's were rounded like fresh cookies.

    Tonight, when she came through the door, she was wearing that smile for the first three seconds and then it disappeared to be replaced by the expression of a sealmaster who noticed a misplaced drop of ink a moment before infusion.

    He had been waiting in the private reception room for ten minutes while one of the women who made his heart sing finished up the daily business of being the leader of one of the most important families in the world. His feet were arranged with exacting care in the well of the kotatsu and the blanket draped around him. The room was well-stocked with pillows, their fullness apple-red to the eye and mesmerizing to the touch, and he had carefully stacked and tucked and punched and folded until his damaged body was properly supported. He thought he had managed to make his position look casual but Ino saw through it like onion skin.

    "Hazō? Are you okay?" She paced to him, steps long and hurried, and settled carefully beside him, slipping her legs under the kotatsu blanket and resting slim fingers on his bicep.

    "I'm..." Midway through the phatic he ran out of energy to dissemble and let the words trail away into a sigh. "I'm tired, Ino. That's all."

    "This looks like a little more than tired."

    He shook his head. "Not like that. I didn't sleep well, but it's more just... Everything else, really. I'm tired of running from one mess to the next. Tired of being stupid and saying the wrong thing all the time. Tired of everyone looking to me to solve every problem. Tired of worrying about how we're going to keep food on the table and still pay all these debts. Tired of knowing that..." He shook his head. "It's just dumb stuff. I don't want to ruin the moment. How are you doing?"

    "I'm worried about my boyfriend." The word still carried the wariness of a doe finding a bush too heavily laden with ripe berries: Things too good to be true often weren't. "What kind of dumb stuff?"

    "Really, it's nothing."

    "Hazō."

    He sighed. "Kagome-sensei shot down an idea I had for interconnected trisection. It was pretty cool too. It would let you reduce transmission lag by twenty percent, which means you could interweave a fourth node without having to worry about cross contamination. That would let you use a third-chord harmonic to—"

    He stopped as he saw the tiny little smile on her face.

    "I was babbling again, wasn't I?"

    "It's okay. You're cute when you get technical. You get swept off somewhere else." She studied him for a moment, ocean eyes curious. "Do you even see me when you go there?"

    He bit his lip nervously. "I...it's not that I'm ignoring you."

    She cupped his face for a moment. "It's okay, really."

    He considered continuing. Of trying to find a way to describe what it was like to put brush to paper and trace the cracks of drying Paint. How those brief moments made a noisy brain quiet, of how they were one of the three ways that he knew to render his existence peaceful, and the only one that worked when he was alone.

    Explaining all that would be like offering a bookbinder's masterwork to the illiterate, and he strongly suspected that he would be mocked for eternity were he to mention that the other two methods of quieting his brain were to sit silently with either Akane or Ino leaned back against him, his arms around her and the scent of her hair in his nose. Ino smelled of the fresh peaches infused into the water with which she bathed her hair each morning. Akane smelled of the outdoors in whatever season prevailed, and often very faintly of vibrant exercise.

    "I'm sorry anyway."

    "It's okay, really. So Kagome shot it down?"

    "Yeah." He shrugged. "It's fine. Better that he got it now than that I based further work on it and all of it be unsafe. Still, he can be a bit...blunt. And it was already a bad day."

    "Why?"

    He sighed and slid an arm around her waist, badly needing to quiet his own brain. She took the hint and turned, settling with her back against his chest and side. Her fingers traced down the outside of his arm, drawing a brief hum of pleasure. He stroked her hair softly, meditatively, feeling the world go calm and slow around himself. The only light was from the three candles arranged on the kotatsu; they rippled across her skin like water lapping on a beach.

    "I talked to Haru last night, about the disciplinary action. He was polite but..."

    She waited patiently for him to grope his way to the words and then offered her own. "But he was distant and formal and it made you sad, because you would like to be his friend but you need to be his Clan Head?"

    "Yes."

    She rubbed her head on his shoulder in brief comfort. "I know how it feels. I'm having to do it myself, mostly with people older than me who have been my teachers my entire life. There may even have been a few diaper changers and knee-dandlers in the mix somewhere." She huffed in softly amused frustration. "You're lucky, in a way. Mari and Kagome were your teachers but only for a couple years and they have no particular ambitions and no experience having been in a clan. You're setting all the rules and expectations from scratch instead of rebuilding them."

    "I suppose."

    "Was that all?" The words were quiet but the ones that followed ran on hurried feet. "Not that it isn't enough. I didn't mean—"

    He pressed a kiss to her temple. "It's okay. No, it wasn't all. It wasn't important. Just stuff."

    "Like what?"

    "We've got a couple sick people who aren't responding to treatment by the herbalists and physikers but all the medic-nin are busy with newly-arrived survivors from the front. And then we found out that we got a bad batch of tubers. Not only did it spoil all the food in the pantry but now we've got maggot worms running around the kitchen and food storage. If we don't get them out before they pupate we'll have to burn the place down and rebuild."

    "Are they dangerous?"

    "Maybe if you tried to eat one and choked on it, but that's about it. Mostly they just stink to the treetops." He sighed and shifted slightly to ease his leg.

    "And you're tired of hurting."

    "No, it's—"

    She stroked one hand down the back of his head. "I won't tell."

    "Okay. Yeah, I'm tired of hurting. Lady Tsunade gave me medicine that makes the pain be far away but I can't think when I'm on it." His fist clenched at his side. "I'm tired of being so weak, so damn useless. I can barely walk faster than a child and I've got no strength in my legs and—" He cut himself off. "I'll get over it, I know. I'm mending and pretty soon I'll be allowed to do physical therapy to get back some of the muscle tone."

    "Is this your first time being injured?"

    "To this level, yes. I've been banged up before, but nothing that took me off the mission roster."

    She tipped her head back so she could look at him enough to stroke his hair. "It will be okay, really. We've had plenty of people get hurt over the years and they've all recovered. Lady Tsunade and the medics she trained are the best."

    "Sure." He huffed in annoyance. "Besides, I don't have time to be busted up. There's two separate wars going on and I can't do anything about either of them. Cannai needs things and I...I'm just tired, Ino."

    "I know." She lay there, cuddled into him and reaching back and up so she could stroke his hair for several seconds. "Anything else?" she asked softly.

    "Akane."

    She nodded, still looking at him upside down. "Why?"

    "She wanted me to do something and I didn't. Or, at least, not yet."

    "Is it about Haru murdering those Yakuza?"

    He looked down in surprise. "You know about that?"

    "Everyone knows about that, Hazō. It's all over town."

    He rubbed his face with his free hand. "Of course it is."

    "You did call a meeting of your entire clan," she said carefully. "Did you think it would stay covert with that many people in on it?"

    "I suppose I didn't really think about it. I was trying get through the latest crisis, didn't look far enough ahead." He sighed. "I'll do better."

    "I know." She shifted a bit, rising up on her knees so she could kiss his temple again and tuck his head under her chin and wrap her arms around him.

    It was a vulnerable position. Years of ninja training and time in the woods told him that being grappled like this was a danger, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He let his eyes fall shut and drifted, watching from a distance as his breathing slowed and deepened.

    The heat from the kotatsu's brazier soaked his feet and the heat of Ino's throat seeped through his head. Far off, possibly in a different wing of the house, he could hear a baby crying. The noises of the estate were a susurration in the background, the sounds of homes and lives that weren't his responsibility.

    "I brought poetry," he murmured without opening his eyes.

    Ino's chest spasmed as she suppressed a laugh. "You brought me poetry?"

    "Mm-hm."

    "You brought me poetry."

    "I can bring you poetry if I want to."

    She settled back into seiza, one hand still resting lightly on the back of his neck and a smile in her voice. "You, Mr Plans to Change the World, Daimyo of Lists, Breaker of Convention, and Stomper of Paradigms, brought me poetry."

    He opened his eyes so he could glower at her properly. "I have depths."

    Her face shivered in a life-and-death battle against laughter. "I've never doubted it."

    He glowered a moment longer and sniffed. "Do you want the poetry or not?"

    "Did you write it?" He couldn't tell if the words were kittenishly inviting or drenched in dread; Ino was still a woman of impenetrable mystery when she wanted to be.

    "I wouldn't do that to you. It's a collection by Master Tanaka. Tanaka Ryōji, not Tanaka Fumio. His third collection."

    "His third?!"

    "I noticed last time that you didn't have it so I asked Mai to dig up a copy. She found one in a private collection in Keishi."

    "She went all the way to Keishi just to get me a book of poetry?"

    "She was coming back from a courier mission and I asked her to divert a few hours to check the city since it was on her way."

    She raised one eyebrow and studied him, doubt drawn across her face like curtains. "'On her way'? Where exactly was she coming from?"

    The answer was 'Tani, in River' but certainty had settled raven-like on his shoulder, whispering of the mockery that would come if he admitted it. Especially the part about how Mai had spent a full day and part of another scouring the place and delaying her return as a result. Still within the allotted time but only barely.

    "Do you want the poetry or not?"

    "Yes! Yes, I want it. Thank you, Hazō." She leaned in and pressed her lips to his in gratitude. The scent of peaches flowered around him.

    She leaned back, watching in amusement as he got his breathing back under control, and then she nodded towards the vase on the kotatsu. "Also for me?"

    "Mm-hm. And I took Mari with me to the shop and had her arrange them there so that the owner could tell me if she was playing any pranks."

    Ino gasped dismay, one heart pressed to her chest in horror. "You had another woman arrange your gift of flowers?! Hazō, don't you understand what that means?! How could you?! If you really wanted to leave me for Mari, there are kinder ways to do it! I know she's prettier than I am, but she's too old for you!" The words trembled away and she bowed her head, flaxen curtains of silk falling across her face. Her shoulders shook, once, in suppressed tears.

    Alarm clutched at his stomach but he pushed it away and surveyed her the way he would have surveyed a potential ambush site. Yup. She was barely even trying to hide it. It became even more obvious when she tipped her head so she could peak up through her lashes to see his reaction.

    "You're messing with me again," he grumbled.

    Her grin was stolen straight from a prankster street urchin. "A little. And hey, look! You caught it."

    "Harumph."

    She cuddled up against him, head tipped on his shoulder and right arm wrapped around his stomach, the third-arm problem meaning that her left was awkwardly squinched up so that he could slip his around her shoulders. "It's sweet of you, thank you."

    "You're welcome. If there's anything else I can do, let me know. For you, for the Yamanaka, whatever. I don't think I'm very good at this boyfriend thing, but I'd like to be."

    She chuckled and patted him on the chest. "You're doing fine. Now hug me and hush."





    Author's Note: You didn't mention seals because Mari and Kagome were not okay giving away your unique seals and the Yamanaka get discounts from the Nara on their mundane stuff while the Gōketsu's limited production capacity is already maxed out producing for yourselves.

    This update covered 24 hours.

    XP AWARD: 4

    Brevity XP:     1

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, September 1, 2021, at 12pm London time.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 462: Realistic Expectations
  • Threadmarks

    • A funereal mood hung over the Council of Mari as the anniversary of Jiraiya's death was still fresh in mind. Guardian Mari had attempted to brighten up the room with Lightning-style paper lanterns that cast a warm, gentle light on the assembled women, and placed sakura trees swaying gently in the breeze outside the window (in a stab at distracting them from early January), but in the end, she was a warrior trying to do a healer's job using interior decoration. Sardonic Mari had nearly driven her to tears with an excoriation that wasn't balanced by Jiraiya's pleasant dry wit.

    "So," Hazō-Wrangler Mari began, "who wants to give the kid his report? Managerial Mari, this is more your thing than mine. I'm damage control, and Sage knows I've been working overtime."

    Managerial Mari manifested a stack of papers, leafed through them, then put them down on the floor next to her armchair, where they disappeared as soon as she stopped paying attention. "I think not. This isn't an organisational issue; it's an interpersonal one, and an inefficient use of our time besides. We could be getting sent out to the front any day now—also an inefficient use of our time when we're infiltrators first and combatants second—and we're busy babysitting a little twerp in the name of a belief even Hazō can't make himself take seriously."

    "Yakuza are people too," the Heartbreaker said mockingly. "I was just starting to have hopes for Haru—his technique was crude, but in terms of leveraging assets? Mmm." She gave her fingers a chef's kiss. "I still think we can use him. Sure, he's going to have to behave while he's under Hazō's Byakugan, but once we teach him a little subtlety, he'll be a lovely little enforcer to make up for all our darling bleeding hearts."

    "Haru is a good person," Mariko objected. "He's just lost his way a little. He was nice to all those families, wasn't he?"

    Sardonic Mari chuckled. "Oh, you sweet summer child."

    Mariko tilted her head slightly in confusion. "We were born at the end of October. Don't you remember? The other kids used to call us a ghost child, but then Uncle Kazuhiro—"

    Mariko disappeared, fading from existence like a reflection in a draining pool of water.

    "It'll take a lot of teaching," Pragmatic Mari replied. "A blind man couldn't have missed the contempt in his eyes during those apologies. Well, a blind professional. I suspect the civilians were too terrified to notice anything. It was a mistake to waste money from our barely-existent coffers on them."

    "You're both missing the point." Uplift Mari's voice was soft, but the vibrant strength behind it carried. "This is a crucial time for Haru. He can despise the yakuza all he wants, but this is our time to make him understand their shared humanity. Case in point, he saw the yakuza taking care of their own. Those families were in a dark place emotionally, but they weren't destitute like we'd figured. I believe he can absorb the universality of Uplift, out of practicality if not out of compassion."

    "You think he'll ever forgive Hazō?" Wrathful Mari sneered. "We sure as hell wouldn't after a show like that, and Haru's no saint either. I'd watch out for piranhas in the bath."

    "He'll understand," Uplift Mari said patiently. "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but he'll understand."

    "Instinct always wins in the end," Harlot Mari said with a wink. "Bet you an afternoon with Ami."

    "The full afternoon? Like hell you do!" Sensual Mari exclaimed as the room erupted into clamour.

    -o-​

    In the evening, after Hazō returns from visiting Ino...

    "That concludes my thrilling report," Mari said with a pointed yawn, helping herself to another mug of hot chocolate as they sat together at the kitchen table.

    "Thanks, Mari," Hazō said. "I wish there was something more conclusive, but you're right—there's only so much you can learn about someone's personal beliefs if they think they have to follow orders on pain of punishment.

    "There was something else I wanted to run by you," he went on, ignoring the minute slump of Mari's shoulders. "I'm thinking of giving personal apologies as well. Akane pointed out that, ethics notwithstanding, Haru's actions worked out well for us"—Mari nodded—"and if other ninja realise that, there's a risk they'll copy Haru, either by making things even worse for the yakuza, or worse, by picking other groups of civilians to coerce."

    Mari nodded again. "The better that works, the more ninja jump on the bandwagon, and then the vicious circle ends up wrecking ninja-civilian relations, and the Merchant Council panics, and then the Hokage steps in, and guess who he'll blame for starting the trend. I take your point."

    "Right," Hazō said. "So if I schedule a bunch of important meetings, then fail to show up because I'm too busy apologising to the yakuza families, that gives the impression that I'm under pressure from the Hokage, and it's making me lose face and hurting my business. Nobody else is going to emulate me—well, Haru—if they think it'll put them on the Hokage's bad side and force them to lose face in front of civilians."

    "Oh, Akane," Mari said with a patronizing shake of the head. "She really does mean well."

    "I hear a 'but' coming," Hazō said.

    "First off," Mari said, "losing face is bad. I know, it's the cutting-edge insight you pay me a clan stipend for. Being blunt, though, that stunt with Haru's put a bunch of business associates on edge. Keeping civilians afraid—not too afraid, but just afraid enough—is a core part of what makes the economy work. A civilian cheating a ninja is signing their own death sentence. A civilian who's late on a delivery, or uses inferior materials, or whatever, is playing with fire. Ninja count on being able to make unreasonable demands every now and then and having them fulfilled to the letter, even if it hurts the business. A lot of ninja business decisions rely on those assumptions.

    "Then along comes Gōketsu Hazō and sentences his own ninja to a fate worse than death for killing criminals who, the ignorant masses think, are straight-up bad for trade. What do you do with something like that? Is he going to let you down because his civilians don't fear him enough? Are your civilians going to let you down because they think you doing business with him means you approve of his ideas? Does supporting him mean supporting civilian rights? And so on and so forth."

    "Mari," Hazō interrupted. "Civilian rights are a core part of Uplift. I'm not going to give up on them for the sake of making more money."

    "I know," Mari said. "But you can't make Uplift happen as a pariah either. I'm not saying you have to do a 180 on your public relations. I'm saying that losing face is an act with consequences—which would stack directly on top of what you've already done.

    "But that's just one angle. The other angle is that you're putting words in the Hokage's mouth, and that should set off alarm bells louder than a jōnin-level FUBAR Technique. I know, I know. You're being subtle and indirect, and that's lovely. But you're counting on the other clans getting the message anyway, and if they do, so will he. And if you're effectively faking orders from the Hokage, if you're publicly faking Tower policy…" Mari curved her hands into L-shapes and mimed a box.

    "I love Akane. She's my beloved sister/daughter/cousin/whatever, and the world is a better place for having her in it. She is also never going to be the Keiko to your Shikamaru."

    That hurt. Hazō needed Akane. She didn't just bring light and warmth into his life. Her perspective was indispensable, and he knew for a fact that there were still terrible mistakes in his future that only she could prevent—not the pessimistic Kei, nor the obedient Noburi, nor the pragmatic Mari, nor the unstable Yuno, nor Kagome-sensei or the untrusting Haru or the hesitant newbies, but only the girl who shone like the sun and made no compromises. It hurt to ever be told that trusting her was a mistake.

    "Talk to the Oyabun," Mari finally said in tones of compassion. "It's a compromise. Ask him to pass on your personal apology. The head of one organisation apologising to the head of another with which they might do business in the future softens the reputational blow a little. It also needs doing in and of, if you care about apologies to begin with. Imagine somebody killing one of our own, and somehow living long enough to apologise, and then not saying a word to you."

    Hazō nodded.

    "Thanks, Mari. And thanks for taking care of the Haru issue. I know it's not what you'd want to be doing with field duty hanging over your head."

    Mari gave a wry smile. "Always happy to do my bit for the clan."

    "I am sorry about that," Hazō said. "You know if there was any way I could get you out of it, I would, but you're a jōnin and it's all hands on deck. If only you weren't so talented and experienced."

    "A tragedy," Mari agreed. "Then again, if I hadn't been so amazing, Shikigami might not have recruited me, and then where would we be?"

    Probably dead, Hazō admitted. Nobody, himself included, had batted an eyelid when told that Mist had sent Kurosawa Hazō on a suicide mission. He was the blood traitor's son with a history of insubordination, and after a year immersed in politics, he'd come to understand that there were also Implications to having a would-have-been heir from the main line hanging around while his clan head aunt was childless and without consort.

    "Is there anything I can do?" he asked. "As Lord Gōketsu or as your friend et cetera Hazō?"

    After a few seconds, Mari shook her head. "Nothing more than you're doing already. I've got cutting-edge equipment, I'm in top form, the Tower has a strong preference for my survival, and I have something to fight for that means more to me than abstract village loyalty. Much of that is frankly unprecedented.

    "Seriously. War? I've been through far worse than having to fight a bunch of worm-eaters with a loyal team at my side. I've waltzed into heavily-fortified enemy compounds armed only with my silver tongue and a poisoned hairpin that wasn't meant for the enemy. I've evaded kill squads with Bloodline Limit trackers while carrying papers that would violently self-destruct if I couldn't get them to a sealmaster within the hour. I've extracted state secrets from evil viziers while chained up and in the middle of doing things you will never be depraved enough to hear about. You're more likely to get yourself killed doing sealing research back here than I am fighting out in the field."

    That wasn't as reassuring as Mari probably meant it to sound.

    "Just keep doing what you're doing, Hazō," Mari said more softly. "Give me my home and my family to fight for, and I'll be stronger than a dozen Jiraiyas."

    -o-​

    XP awards to be determined by @eaglejarl in the next update.

    -o-​

    Gaku has good news and bad news for you. The good news is that your orders were made "discreetly" this morning. Specifically, he took care to drop the papers near a group of genin, who had the opportunity to study them in the process of picking them up. The orders are one (1) Torture & Interrogation Deluxe Custom Set with Extra Manacles, with money saved by ordering them via Kei so as to make use of her frequent customer discount, and four (4) watertight containers large enough to hold multiple bodies (decorative fish tanks are not known in Leaf—people who want fish in their homes just dig a pond).

    The bad news is that Fu Kōhei is missing and cannot be found after failing to report for an afternoon mission briefing. His equipment and various other possessions have disappeared from his quarters, and his sister Fu Mei has no idea as to his whereabouts.

    -o-​

    Voting is closed unless @eaglejarl reopens it.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 463: Apologizing to Scum
  • Threadmarks

    • "Lord Gōketsu," the Oyabun said, bowing deeply. "How may the Brotherhood serve you today?"

    Hazō settled onto his cushion, eyeing the pair of bodyguards who stood behind the Oyabun. Both of them wore forehead protectors and had the bodies of field ninja.

    "I have come to apologize, Lord to Lord, for the actions of my clanmember," Hazō said, offering the deepest bow that a ninja Clan Lord would make to a civilian.

    Hazō wants to smooth things over with the Oyabun. The plan did not call for spending FP and I doubt that Hazō cares enough to do so. Hazō gets a CM of +2 for 'I came to you personally' while the Oyabun gets a ?? for 'Your guy killed a whole bunch of my people, you became aware of it more than a month ago, and you are only just now getting around to talking to me. Oh, and you called me and mine scum and you don't even recognize that as a problem.'

    Hazō, Rapport (effective 21, reduced to 13 by two Severe Consequences): 13 + 2 + 0 (dice) = 15
    Oyabun, Presence: ? + ? + 3 (dice): ?

    Hazō's social track has been exceeded. He chooses to be Taken Out instead of taking Consequences. As the victor the Oyabun chooses how the conversation ends and what Hazō's final actions are within the bounds of characterization and general sensibility. He chooses for Hazō to leave promptly with a clear understanding of the events as the Oyabun sees them: Hazō was in the wrong and hypocritical, the Oyabun has been gracious, and the Gōketsu have essentially burned their bridges with the Yakuza unless they want to make a truly epic effort to repair them. They'll work with you in the future if and only if they have no other choice and you definitely will not be getting anything beyond the absolutely minimum grudging cooperation. They are unlikely to proactively work against you because they know they can't stand up to a ninja clan, but that's as far as it goes.

    "Oh?" the Oyabun said, gesturing politely towards the tray that sat between them. Its polished bird's-eye maple surface was occupied by a pair of teacups, a bone china pot with steam wisping from the spout, and a small plate of cookies still oozing warmth and spices.

    "Thank you," Hazō said, politely taking a cup and a cookie. The Oyabun 'chose' the other cup and a different cookie and did not comment when Hazō automatically waited for him to sample them first. "I sent Haru to apologize to the families of his victims and pay weregild from the clan coffers. I am here to apologize to you as the head of my clan to the head of the Brotherhood. Haru was wrong, his actions were unconscionable, and I humbly apologize. I have utterly failed in my most important duty as a Clan Head: I did not protect the village. I know that I can never make this right but I hope you will offer suggestions on how to try."

    The Oyabun eyed him, savoring his tea and shaving bits off the cookie between his three age-yellowed front teeth. His wrinkled-apple face was unreadable.

    "Your apology for your subordinate's action is, obviously, accepted with all gratitude," he said at last. "I am deeply honored that the head of a Great Clan would apologize to scum such as myself and my brethren."

    "...Excuse me?"

    The Oyabun's wispy eyebrows rose. "We are the scum of the earth, are we not? Predators of the very sort that the law exists to protect honest men and women from? The ones that Lord Haru killed undoubtedly committed many robberies, murders, acts of blackmail and extortion, and other crimes too awful for you to discuss in the presence of women or children. Surely they ruined countless lives."

    "Um..." These words were sounding uncomfortably familiar.

    Silence lingered in the air as the old man waited.

    "Lord Oyabun, my words were hastily chosen. I was challenged by surprise, and..." He trailed off. What could he say? 'Yes, I called you vile names and impugned your honor but I did not really mean it'? Or maybe 'It never occurred to me that those words were a problem so I did not prepare a response'?

    The Oyabun took another sip from his cup; his voice was light and airy, as though discussing the brightest summer day. "Did you not say that the Hokage, great in wisdom and honored by the ancestors, recognised your clansman's actions to be well within the spirit of the law? It seems indisputable that when Lord Haru callously murdered six of my subordinates he saved far more than six civilian lives."

    Nervous prickles danced spider-like across Hazō's scalp. "Lord Oyabun, sir, those words were poorly chosen and unkind. I should not have said them."

    "Pish! Think nothing of it!" the Oyabun said, waving the words away with magnanimity. "Indeed, your honesty is truly impressive, Lord Gōketsu. Few have the forthrightness to say the truth of what the Brotherhood is in public while addressing hundreds of Leaf citizens." He shook his head sadly. "Most are far too circumspect in their language throughout their lives. Oh, they make excuses by calling it 'politeness' or 'respect for other citizens', they fritter at so-called nuances such as the challenges of civilian life and the difficult choices one must make, but we all know the truth. If only more people were as outspoken as you, Lord Gōketsu, there would be far fewer polite fictions in this world. The fact that you would come to us and say that your man was wrong to kill my family members, despite that being within the spirit of the law, is a tremendous act of generosity."

    "Your family members? But—" He bit the words off too late.

    "Why yes," the Oyabun said, polite surprise in his voice. "All who join the Brotherhood are of my family in precisely the way your adopted ninja are of your clan. They may not share blood but they are no less family for it...wouldn't you agree, Lord Gōketsu?"

    "Of course. Yes, absolutely."

    "I note that you have not eaten your cookie," the Oyabun said, concern in his voice. "Is it not to your liking?"

    "Um, no, thank you." Hazō quickly bit into the deliciously warm and gooey cookie and its filling of storybook happy childhoods. Fresh from the oven, although it was always possible that a storage seal had been involved since the Oyabun had ninja on his payroll. "It's delicious."

    "I'm so glad. Those I protect spend so much time selling drugs and hurting people that I worry they might forget the subtle art of baking." He sipped his tea and then made a tossing-away gesture with one hand. "Granted, we do also enforce the law and provide for the families of those under our protection, but that hardly makes up for our crimes, now does it? Certainly, many children in Leaf strive to become members of our organization in order to receive the benefits it brings, but our true nature is what it is. Scum, as every Lord of a Great Clan knows.

    "Sir...I would like to be able to make amends, even if I can't make it right. I don't know how and perhaps it can't be done, but if you would tell me what to do...?"

    "Please, Lord Gōketsu. What could the Brotherhood ask in such conditions? Your apology for the murder of my family has been most gracious and gratefully received. I do hope that we will in future do nothing that would cause other Gōketsu to feel the need to murder more of us but if such lawful murders"—he raised a hand to cut himself off. "Your apology, murders within the spirit of the law. Were they to happen I feel certain that your personal integrity will shine through once more. I thank you again for your great kindness in honoring one so lowly as myself." He bowed all the way to the floor, the movement flawlessly smooth but in no way self-abasing, and then straightened. "With niceties concluded, is there anything else we should discuss? I do apologize, but I feel certain you know the pressures faced by the head of a family—even a family of lowly criminals such as my own."

    "Um...no. No, that's all. Thank you, Lord Oyabun, for your time." Hazō bowed, more deeply than he had before, and pulled himself up onto his cane with the grace of a joint-swollen elder. He bowed one last time and left.




    XP AWARD: TBD, as I'm not sure how many days @Velorien's update covered.

    Brevity XP: TBD

    "GM had fun" XP: 0

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, September 8, 2021, at 12pm London time.

    Author's Notes: You did this: "Verify if permanent MEW can be produced with granite+dirt on a skytower, starting with 1,000 kg and working up to 10,000 kg." No, it cannot. Also, I'm not sure if we ever defined whether or not the Five Seal Barrier makes something truly invulnerable or if it does have limits and, if so, whether 10 tons is within those limits. @Velorien is away right now but we'll get back to you on whether the skytower (which, fortunately, was at an altitude of 3' in order to make it easy to pile the dirt on) collapsed.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 464: The Sun's Return
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 464: The Sun's Return​

    "Hello! Anyone home? We're back!"

    Hazō had been at his desk forcing himself to defeat packs of enemies no less destructive for being paper. At the sound of that voice he was on his feet and into the hall so fast his knee screamed at the abuse. He ignored it, looping his cane around his neck so he could brachiate along the ceiling via chakra adhesion. His legs were wasted and brittle but he'd been exercising as best he could while his body betrayed him and he was carrying more upper-body muscle than he ever had before; swinging was far faster than hobbling.

    "Akane!" he shouted, throwing himself over the bannister and hot-dropping to the floor below. It involved keeping one hand on the wall and stuttering adhesion on and off so that you slid down before a hostile force could react to your presence. It was normally done with gloves because doing it like this meant sanding your palm and fingertips bloody on the rough granite of the house, but he didn't give the slightest damn. He didn't even care when his ankle rolled under him and he had to lurch drunkenly to keep his feet. He blasted chakra out of his soles to speed his steps and slammed into Akane so hard she had to step back and brace herself. She laughed and folded her arms around him in a hug that was supportive in both senses. The cane, still looped around his neck, was mashed between them and poking uncomfortably against his damaged collarbone. He didn't care.

    "I missed you, honey," he whispered into her ear, crushing her against himself.

    "Mmm," she purred. "Missed you too."

    He crushed her one last time and then eased back, taking the cane down so he could balance on it.

    "You're overdue," he said, trying hard not to sound as though he were scolding her. "We expected you back three days ago."

    "I know, and I'm sorry." She cupped a hand to his cheek and smiled. "I'm sorry I worried you. Bunji and Akito—that's the Inuzuka we were teamed with—thought they had found a ninja trail but it turned out to be nothing. Just a nest of thwelt."

    Hazō winced. Thwelt were disturbing and he still occasionally had nightmares about them. Capable of mimicking the odors, sounds, and approximate appearance of other creatures, they would infiltrate a group before exploding into the bundle of thorned tentacles that was their true form. The thorns latched on and tore at tendons and muscles, laming one or more of the prey, and then the thwelt would gather to slowly feed.

    "You're okay?" he said, pushing her to arm's length so he could look her over for injuries; there were none. "What about Yuno?"

    "Everyone is fine. Bunji got a bad case of marsh rot on his leg but we dealt with it. He won't have more than a few scars. Yuno and I got out clean. She went to find Noburi."

    He took her wrist and hobbled towards the kitchen, towing her along. "We need to get you some food. You must be starved. And hot chocolate. I've been keeping a pot of your favorite in a storage seal. Ginger and hot pepper juice. Then—"

    She laughed and pulled him to a halt so she could cup his head with both hands and press a kiss to his lips. "I'm fine, Hazō. Truly. We got back an hour ago. I've already reported to the Hokage, gotten my pay, and everything."

    He eyed her uncertainly. "About Haru—"

    She put a finger on his lips. "It's fine," she said again. "Let's not worry about it today, okay? Can we be just the two of us, or do you have to run off?" For the first time she noticed the blood stain on her sleeve where he had been gripping her. She seized his hand and turned it over. "Hazō, what did you do?!"

    "It's just a scrape," he said guiltily, pulling himself from her grip so he could hide the injury. "I'll put a bandage on it, it'll be healed up by tomorrow."

    She eyed him with narrowed and worry-grumpy eyes. "Okay, that's it," she said. "Come sit down while I fix you up."

    Hazō suffered himself to be led to the living room and settled in one of the armchairs around the smoke-scented firewell. She pulled a field medical kit out of one of her scrolls and proceeded to cleanse the wound with rice alcohol made of sting, and gentle dabs from a clean cloth that stung even more.

    "Any problems?" he asked, in part from interest and in part to distract himself.

    She shook her head while bending close to study the scrape. "No, just basic patrol work. Bunji was very amused by the minicabins and asked about getting one for himself. I said I didn't think it was an issue but I'd need to check with you before giving it away. The cabins aren't a clan secret, right?"

    "Of course not! Besides, anyone could build one for themselves once they'd seen it."

    "Maybe, but he'd rather buy one then do all the work of figuring out how to build it so that it isn't damaged by storage stress and how to make the sliding panels and such. If you're okay with it I'll sell him mine and draw another from stores?"

    "You can just give—yes, actually, selling it to him sounds smart. Charge whatever you think is fair." He stroked one hand down her arm with a smile. She truly was the best of them. "So, nothing exciting then?"

    "Nope. Just a boring old field patrol—lots of creatures, lots of woods, no sign of any humans. Which is unfortunate, since it means we didn't find the missing patrols."

    "Not surprising." The woods were huge and it was more surprising if you could find a couple of bodies lying dead in the leaf litter than if you couldn't.

    She put the alcohol away and carefully spread some numbweed paste over the scrape before wrapping his hand in a soft cloth. She tied the ends off and bent forward to kiss his bandaged palm. "There. All better."

    He smiled and booped her on the nose with one partially-encased finger, making her laugh in startlement. "Yes. Now that you're home, things are better."

    He tugged her down off the arm of the chair and into his lap. She settled into him with a contented sigh, her back against his chest and head on his shoulder, winding her fingers into his when he looped them around her waist. They sat together in silence as his mind went slowly quiet.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 465: The Law is Harsh…
  • Threadmarks

    • The evening of Akane's return, after reluctantly leaving her to rest…

    "My apologies, Lord Gōketsu," the elderly butler said with a bow, "but Lady Keiko is engaged in research and has left clear instructions that she is not to be disturbed."

    "Even by her brother?" Hazō asked.

    The butler fished out a scroll from the depths of his robe, and scanned it briefly in the light of the nearest lamp.

    "Lord Gōketsu, with the greatest respect, have you come here to engage in any of the following: 'tomfoolery', 'shenanigans', 'proposal of ill-conceived ideas unvetted by the saner minds within the clan, little though that may say', 'apologies for the consequences of the latest daring and original plan to benefit the Gōketsu or Leaf, and/or request for help escaping same'—"

    Hazō silently set his crutch against the wall, groped around in his backpack, and finally held up a bag bearing the mark of the Pantasia Patisserie.

    "Of course, My Lord. Please follow me."

    The man led Hazō to the Garden of Divine Proportion, which, contrary to its name, did not contain any Will of Fire statues, or even images of the kami (Hazō imagined that a clan as historically high in the Hokage's favour as the Nara could get away with a lot that might be considered heretical elsewhere). The closest was the statue of the Saviour in the Shadows, which depicted Nara Shikaku looking down at a map of Nagi Island dotted with miniatures of the heroes and villains of that battle. He was captured in the act of toppling a Jashin banner with a fingertip while a figurine of Lord Inoichi stood over it triumphantly.

    At the foot of the statue, Kei sat at a picnic table surrounded by stacks of scrolls and a pair of bright lamps. One who was neither Gōketsu nor Nara might have been surprised to see her working outdoors in the middle of winter in only a light coat. For a change, Snowflake was nowhere to be seen.

    After a few seconds, Kei looked up. "Hazō? I believe I gave explicit instructions—"

    Hazō held up the bag.

    "Whatever you have done this time is forgiven," she said abruptly. "Hand it over at once."

    "I haven't done anything," Hazō said. "This is just a gift."

    "In that case, please consider a suitable number of sisterly affection points deposited into your account. They are rare, so do not spend them all at once."

    Hazō passed her the bag with a smirk.

    "You know, Hazō," Kei observed as she opened it, "were someone to have told my Academy self that I would one day have unfettered access to this magical delicacy, I could only have taken it as confirmation that my sister would one day rule the world. That you and I were able to achieve it with our mere mortal strength is a powerful argument that there is yet hope for humanity to rise from the hell it has crafted for itself."

    "You know what, I'll take it," Hazō decided. At a nod, he sat down opposite her.

    "So what are you working on?"

    "Ugh." Kei passed him one of the scrolls from the leftmost pyramid. Unfurling it, Hazō saw what appeared to be a series of testimonies, together with annotations in Kei's mechanically-precise handwriting.

    There were twenty of them, all jōnin, each one riding a giant killer mole, all laughing maniacally. Yes, even the moles. Especially the moles. When I think about how their snouts shook with diabolical glee… // Uncorroborated. See notes on the Charge of the Dark Brigade genjutsu.

    In my experience, a Leaf chūnin is worth three or four dust devils in equal combat. I myself take them five at a time. It's the lack of souls, you see. It slows down chakra flow. // Statistically questionable. Send a messenger to consult Tsunade?

    And then the chief sealmaster pulled out these two seals and yelled something about being forced to use his clan's secret weapon, and a whole load of crazy stuff happened, but it was all totally unyouthful so I just dodged around and punched him in the face. // Why? Why must you torment me even from beyond the grave, Maito Gai?!

    "Ami was correct," Kei said heavily. "The people of Leaf are to accurate recordkeeping as bull sharks are to disguise kit manufacture. Or as the people of Leaf are to disguise kit manufacture, for that matter. Were you aware that all data on disguise kit manufacture dating further back than two years are missing, and it never occurred to anyone to flag this? We are living among barbarians, Hazō."

    With that lamentation, she busied herself with the cake, eventually and reluctantly setting two slices aside.

    "So what brings you to my humble desk, Hazō?" Kei asked, brushing crumbs off her sleeves in a practised, systematic motion. "I am not so naïve as to believe that this carrot cake is unrelated to any form of bribery."

    "I wanted to talk to you about Fu Kōhei," Hazō said.

    Kei's face darkened. "The AFKEI shinobi? Of what further relevance is he? Your stratagem was both brilliant and cruel, and I would prefer not to discuss it further."

    "My… stratagem?" Hazō had a sudden very bad feeling. Somewhere in the part of his mind that existed to torment him, he could hear Ami giggling with mole-like diabolical glee.

    "I am the last person you need to play coy with about this, Hazō," Kei said coolly, "given the way you exploited my name during its execution. You did not wish to be seen as obeying the KEI by expelling Fu, nor to harm your standing with the organisation by protecting him, so instead, the very next day, you conspicuously ordered torture and interrogation equipment, together with a means of storing and transporting corpses. Were there any doubt as to its purpose, you took care to lay it to rest by invoking the name of your KEI coordinator sister, in the name of whose honour you once sought to destroy an entire clan. In a village where a matter of months ago, clanless genin were being kidnapped and tortured to death with not a finger lifted by the Hokage, and with Fu having just betrayed his only other protectors, the natural conclusion suggested itself without any need of further agency on your part. As a bonus, it retroactively justifies the KEI's decision, since surely"—her lips twisted slightly— "only the most twisted and depraved of souls would consider abandoning their village for fear of harm at the hands of the authorities.

    "You should speak to Ami. Doubtless, she will thank you, and be duly appreciative of your genius. For my part… I would prefer to return to my work."

    Hazō stared at her, aghast. "Kei, no! Those were just supposed to be props for the fish god sex cult!"

    A second later, it occurred to him that they were out in public in the middle of the Nara compound. Well, the original objective had been to spread rumours…

    "The what?!"

    "You know," Hazō said impatiently (and much more quietly). "The fish god sex cult that explains why we have a fish breeding expert living on the estate."

    "Hazō," Kei said with exasperation after a couple of seconds, "that was a joke. Snowflake even suggested treason as a viable alternative. Tell me you have not offered this as an explanation to the Hokage."

    Hazō shook his head. "No. I haven't talked to him about any of this."

    "You will," Kei said. "I imagine we will also be required to provide an explanation. As I say, however, basic anti-missing-nin bias is on our side. We can hardly be accused of poor judgement for expelling from our ranks the kind of man who would proceed to betray the village in its hour of need.

    "More importantly, Hazō, cults are heretical. Fish god cults are the kind of heresy one expects from a former Mist-nin, which I imagine is a reason for the existing rumours. Need I explain the consequences if Leaf at large is convinced of the currently frivolous notion that you are a heretic attempting to undermine the Will of Fire?"

    Hazō winced. "Is it too late to cancel the T&I order?"

    "It is for Fu Kōhei."

    At that, Hazō was silent.

    "You can't possibly think this was really my fault," he said eventually.

    "According to Ami, who maintains a standing bounty on all gossip from the Gōketsu estate for reasons best known to herself, the news of your order spread across the estate this morning. Fu went missing sometime prior to mid-afternoon, as established by his failure to attend a mission briefing with two other KEI shinobi. Hazō, there is literally no worse time to run than before a briefing, since it guarantees that shinobi will be immediately dispatched to investigate your absence. His need must have been sudden and acute. For that matter, I doubt any grown man could have been so pathetic as to turn missing from a mere day's experience of ostracism. It is a prison of despair built brick by brick, not a rain of panic attacks like more intensive forms of bullying."

    Kei closed her eyes. "And this is how you and I have, between us, condemned a man to exquisite torture and dishonourable death for the mere conjoined crimes of greed and incompetence. Perhaps it would have been better for me to remain a secretary in all but name."

    Hazō reached for his slice of carrot cake. He needed it right now.

    "Kei," he said, "I don't want to put more pressure on you now when I know you're upset, but I do want to talk to you about the KEI. Things shouldn't have ever got this far. Excommunicating people permanently for mistakes is something clans do—I know that better than anyone. Isn't the KEI supposed to be better than the clans?"

    "It was necessary," Kei said quietly. "The new system is very difficult to enforce. We do not have eyes everywhere, the KEI Intelligence Division is a volunteer group, and Ami and I refuse to transform the KEI, an organisation founded on trust in one's comrades in the face of a hostile world, into a society of mutual espionage and denunciation after the fashion of Mist. Yet for the system to fail because KEI shinobi cheat each other would also be a grievous blow to that trust, in addition to the deleterious impact on incomes and battlefield survival. The KEI is fragile, Hazō. It is a power ascendant, but it is also a patient only beginning to recover from lifetimes of abuse and neglect. It is not the clan that exiled your mother because it found her romantic preferences distasteful."

    "Still," Hazō said. "Ostracism? Even if he hadn't run, it would have been a death sentence for a clanless genin."

    "It was necessary," Kei repeated. "We are not the Tower. We do not have the power to levy fines. We do not have the power to arrest. We do not have the power to impose mandatory labour. Strictly speaking, we do not have the power to ostracise either, because that is a decision made individually by each KEI shinobi. We have not instructed anyone to stone the infidel, nor threatened consequences for those who lend him food or shelter. Rather, we have presented the facts in a certain light, and then allowed nature to take its course—and nature, human nature, seizes every opportunity to torment the vulnerable. Were it possible to fine-tune the process, to cause, say, only every third person to treat him with loathing and contempt, it would surely have been an improvement, but I suspect that task would be beyond even Ami."

    "Even if you believe that," Hazō said, "could you not have given him a path to redemption? Haru was given one, and I think he's using it, or at least thinking about using it, or at least aware that it is a thing that could be used, but how could Fu Kōhei come back from this?"

    Kei's eyes narrowed. "Do not preach to me of Haru. You do not care about his crimes. You care only that they move him in the wrong direction on the axis of Uplift. What you seek for him is not redemption but conversion. For as long as he considers killing yakuza acceptable, he cannot wholeheartedly serve Uplift.

    "As for Fu, our objective was accomplished. It was within his power to regain what he had lost—the trust of the KEI at large—through some heroic feat or major selfless contribution. We shape the KEI's opinions; we do not defy them. Had he made a compelling case to Ami, I imagine she would even have assisted him in arranging it. A game in which the opponent she must outmanoeuvre is herself seems entirely to her taste.

    "It is not we who catalysed his despair into mortal terror instead of taking prompt action to either expel or reassure him. Nor I do not appreciate your demand that I justify myself. You have not stood where I have, forced to choose between the doom of one and the doom of many. You relied on Akane to make that choice for you, and the only reason you can boast of offering Haru a path to redemption is that she was inspired enough to find a third option."

    "Kei," Hazō said quickly, placatingly, "I'm not asking you to justify yourself." The Iron Nerve was ready with a smooth pacifying hand gesture, but Hazō hurriedly suppressed it because he knew she found it patronising. Kei found a lot of things patronising, especially when she was already in a bad mood. "I know it can't have been an easy choice, and I know it hurts you that you had to make it. I just want to help you look for a different path in the future, and part of that is understanding why you did what you did to begin with. And why the others did it, for that matter. You're only a third of the Triumvirate. Why are you acting like this is all your fault?"

    "Because it is," Kei said flatly. "I could have refused to expel him. I imagine I would have been outvoted, and the outcome would not have changed—although it is also possible that Naruto was secretly wavering, in which case my decision might have swayed him. Instead, by assenting, I accepted full responsibility. I concurred with Ami's reasoning, and assisted in optimising its execution. It is impermissible for me to shift blame elsewhere, or deny my contribution to Fu's coming demise."

    There wasn't much Hazō could say to that. While taking all of the blame for everything wasn't exactly a dramatic shift from Kei's usual behaviour, on this occasion, she was factually correct. Still, what he wanted from her wasn't an admission of guilt. It was simply a commitment to do better next time. He tried to focus, to think of some clever segue away from Kei beating herself up and towards positive discussion, but it was late, and the pulsing headache that he mostly kept at bay with regular doses of willowbark and/or Akane was making up for lost time.

    "What about Ami and Naruto?" he asked. "Ami, at least, should have seen this coming. Why would she want things to play out this way?"

    "Who can say?" Kei said. "I cannot imagine how she would predict that you were about to terrify Fu into fleeing for his life by unintentionally threatening him with torture equipment intended for a sex god fish cult, but this is Ami. Perhaps she felt that proof positive of Fu's iniquity would be of more value to the KEI than long-term plans for an AFKEI faction. Perhaps there is some advanced reasoning, opaque to me, by which allowing him to remain in the public eye would be harmful, and thus it would be best for him to be removed from it with maximum certainty. Perhaps there is some subtle secondary effect to his actions that I cannot even imagine, as when she manoeuvred two of my clansmen into entering a relationship because her homework from Lord Ryūgamine was to arrange for a third party to cut their hair without in any way interacting with them, and said third party sought a change of image in order to reassert herself as romantic competition. Perhaps she simply wishes to see what happens. Speculating about Ami's motives tends to be unproductive.

    "I cannot speak for Naruto, but I believe his experience in rendering judgement on criminals is confined to the realm of educational thought experiments. It does not surprise me that, in the absence of strong feelings of his own, he should follow Ami's lead."

    Hazō nodded. "Still, maybe you should think twice about following her lead in the future. You didn't mean to give him a death sentence. Surely there's a better way?"

    Kei frowned. "I… trust Ami. Her judgement has always led to the best positive outcome in the end. In fact, I believe I see now. While you are correct in your assessment that the life expectancy of a genin denied support from his fellows will plummet, Fu's expulsion was never intended to be a death sentence in itself—much in the same way as a heavy fine is generally not intended to be a death sentence even if in practice it leads to starvation. Someone of Ami's talent can argue that expulsion has been revealed to be a far more dire fate than intended, and thus in the future it should be reserved for the worst criminals. This opens the door for us to wield lighter punishments from now on, while still being able to use the threat of expulsion to terrify potential lawbreakers.

    "In fact,"—her eyes lit up—"the truth grows clear. This is groundwork for an internal KEI legal system. Now that the most obvious punishment has also been revealed to be excessively harsh for most crimes, there is a need to devise and implement lighter ones, and in the process clarify the nature of the crimes to which they are appropriate. At the same time, those who refuse to obey the rules and accept these lighter punishments will naturally be ejected from the organisation, and it has been demonstrated that this is a fate nigh-equal to death. Truly, Ami's genius transcends all bounds.

    "I wish the price of this did not have to be a human life. Still…" Kei gave a small smile. "The rule of law, while brutally fallible—as demonstrated by Yagura's reign—is a vast improvement on the savagery into which mankind descends when left to follow its natural instincts. In death, Fu can return more to the KEI than he ever stole.

    "Thank you, Hazō," she concluded. "This revelation is exactly what I needed. I am only embarrassed—if unsurprised—that I lacked the perceptiveness to reach it on my own."

    Hazō wasn't sure whether this was the exact opposite of the goal he had come here to accomplish, but it was certainly in the right (wrong) area. He'd wanted to prevent anyone else from suffering Fu Kōhei's fate, and now, far from being a mere deterrence measure to protect technique trade between ninja, Kei was going to use it as the foundation for an entire legal system.

    Would Ami go along with it? Of course she would. Assuming this hadn't been her plan all along (and he had to admit that, now he thought about it, Fu's escape had every sign of spontaneity), it still increased her power and, just as importantly, it was more interesting than the status quo. Hazō's read on Naruto still wasn't great, but he imagined the future Hokage wouldn't be hard to persuade of the value of increased law and order either.

    At least, Hazō decided, with this the Fu Kōhei incident was resolved and would never come back to trouble him again.

    -o-​

    You have received 5 + 2 = 7 XP.

    -o-​

    You have asked Kei to talk to Pantsā about sending a condor to the Snakes as a preliminary to securing Orochimaru's cooperation. She is uneasy with the prospect, as it means legitimising Pantsā's enslavement of the Condors, but your reasoning is sound and she feels she has a favour to repay.

    -o-​

    It was late at night, and Hazō didn't feel like it was a good time to launch into a discussion of military plans. However, the following morning a messenger brings an invitation to attend a strategic planning session with Shikamaru, Kei, and Snowflake at the Nara compound.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes on Saturday 11th of September, 1 p.m. New York time.
     
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    • Chapter 466: Plots, Destruction, and Cookies
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    • "Good morning, My Lord. Lord Nara is expecting you in the main conference room. Would you like an escort to the house?"

    Hazō eyed the gate guard with carefully-suppressed amusement. The man, a mature thirty-year-old with a strapping twenty-something bracketing the gate to his left, was a civilian. There were far too few Nara ninja remaining after the Collapse for one to be tasked with guard duty at the gates.

    "That house?" Hazō asked, gesturing towards the squat granite construction forty yards away. True, the path from the gate split in six directions but the entirety of the path to the new house could be seen from where Hazō stood.

    The house was emblematic of many new realities in Leaf. The original Nara dominion had been an elegant construction of inlaid woods and sweeping arches that led the eye in an upward jeté to the spire from which the gaze was released into the soaring heavens. It was a house of peace and prosperity, grace and beauty. That house was gone, literally brought low by Rock in a single moment of orgasmic destruction. The Nara had needed to get their people under shelter as quickly as possible, so they had used the Multiple Earth Wall jutsu to convert chakra directly into housing in the span of a day or two. Hazō wasn't clear on whether that was imitation of his own efforts or parallel invention, but either way the Nara had taken a different approach. Whereas the Gōketsu homes were multi-storied and intended to be permanent, the Nara had built temporary housing in the form of a wide-spread structure all on one floor with large windows and many doors...or, said differently, many points of evacuation or access channels through which rescuers could recover dead bodies in case of another Collapse.

    "Yes, My Lord," the guard captain said, his face completely straight. "I'm afraid the main house is still being renovated and therefore not ready for guests."

    Hazō had to suppress a laugh. There was in fact a new main house being built. One of wood and iron, elegant and calming like its predecessor. It would be another marvel...someday. When the materials (pre-existing, not conjured) had been wheelbarrowed into place and mundane hands had mitered and dovetailed them together with ancient skill, sanded them with loving care, painted them with a disciplined eye for patterns and colors, then it would be a home. For now, it was a construction site with no roof and far too few walls.

    "I think I can find my way, Captain," Hazō said, smiling. "Thank you." He nodded politely and set off up the path. It was elegant gravel, carefully raked each morning by aged men who had first raked those very same stones as children. Multiple colors mixed together in what the mind kept insisting were patterns yet the eye could not quite identify. Reds and blues and green, all speckled together. Those rocks had been brought here when Leaf was first founded, and it was a tradition that every Nara brought back a stone from every mission. Someday, centuries from now, Nara children would undoubtedly be told that every stone had been brought back by Nara ninja, but that day was not today.

    Such thoughts kept Hazō's mind occupied as he successfully crossed the requisite forty yards, his cane hindering him only slightly on the gravel. A neatly-dressed civilian woman knelt at the door; she rose as he approached, bowed, and led him silently to the main conference room.

    Hazō stopped in the doorway. The invitation had been from Shikamaru, yet also present were Kei and Snowflake. (Probably? It could have been Crystal. All the Shadow Clones looked alike to Hazō, and she wasn't wearing her usual distinguishing ribbon.) All three were far more serious than he liked and Hazō immediately started reviewing his actions of the past few days and mentally rehearsing the path to the exit. In the privacy of his own thoughts he had made it to the door and was evaluating subsequent escape options when it clicked that the table was bowed down under plates of varyingly-nibbled snacks, multiple pots of tea, plates of cookies and carrot cake, and stacks of paper. Not the standard accoutrement of an intervention or castigation.

    "Good morning, Hazō," Shikamaru said, gesturing to the chair on his right. "Please, won't you join us? Your input would be welcome."

    "What is happening right now?" Hazō asked carefully.

    "Be at ease," Kei said. Her identity, at least, could be established by the Pangolin Scroll leaning against her chair. "You have done nothing since our last conversation that warrants censure—rather, nothing of which I have knowledge. We are, if you will forgive the dramatic turn of phrase, plotting. You are a skilled plotter and, as Shikamaru said, your input would be welcome."

    "Hey, little bro!" said the clone, whose bubbly tone and broad smile revealed that she was very definitely not Snowflake. "Sit your cute tushy down and join the party! Help us figure out how to do bad stuff to those nasty no-goodniks from Rock!"

    Kei winced.

    Hazō stared.

    The clone smiled brightly.

    Hazō looked at Kei.

    "We are continuing our experiments into new personality aspects in order to promote personal growth. Winterlight—a name that I did not select and do not approve—has decided to attempt 'bubbly'."

    "Uh." He looked back to Winterlight. "You completely nailed it."

    "Yay!" She bounced in place, clapping her hands.

    Silence hung in the air like a pallet of bricks precariously balanced above each listener's head.

    "Okay, you're messing with me," Hazō said. "Right?"

    "Gosh, little bro! I'm so bummed that..." The words trailed off and her face went completely blank. She shifted her chair around so she was facing her creator. "After ninety minutes of behaving in this fashion I am unable to continue with the experiment. Even without the Voice, my base personality template is inconsistent with this role and I believe we can add it to the left-hand list. Now, if you will excuse me, I wish to cease existing in order to no longer experience these memories." She vanished in a puff of pink smoke.

    "And now I have to experience them," Kei muttered.

    Hazō looked into the middle distance for a moment as his brain caught up to the shape of reality. Then he leaned his cane against the chair and sat down, folded his hands on the table, and looked expectantly at Shikamaru. "Why am I here?"

    "The head of Clan Nara is traditionally an advisor to the Hokage. Depending on the Hokage and the Clan Head this advice may be occasional or constant. Regardless, the head of Clan Nara is always consulted in time of war. The recommendations I make will be seriously considered and may end up shaping the war and potentially getting a large number of Leaf ninja killed. I will accept input from anyone that I view as competent to offer such."

    "Shikamaru, are you implying that you think I'm competent to provide advice on conducting a war?" He did not bother suppressing the grin that was spreading across his face.

    "Hazō, time flows ever onwards and the Hokage needs my recommendations as swiftly as possible despite the fact that, as I mentioned, Leaf ninja will die if said recommendations are not perfect. In fact, Leaf ninja will die regardless of if my recommendations are perfect. Their deaths will be on my conscience, the grief of their families laid at my feet, and the absolute best that I can hope for is to reduce the number of grief-stricken people by some fraction. Given these circumstances, could you please not fish for compliments and instead offer to our cause what Kei insists is a truly impressive aptitude for destruction?"

    That took the wind out of Hazō's sails. "Right. Sorry. What have you got?"

    Shikamaru gestured at the reams of paper that covered the table, much of which was low-quality trash instead of the crisp perfection to which Hazō-the-sealmaster was accustomed. "I have a great deal of background information, force estimates, weather data, and so on. Most of it is untrustworthy garbage. The vast majority of Leaf's critical data, including all of its top-secret data, has always been kept in the most secure building in Leaf: Hokage Tower. Much of the confidential and secret information was duplicated to a secondary facility under the Academy, and my father was entrusted with a wide swath of records which he kept in secure room off of his bedroom. You will notice that all three of those locations were reduced to rubble a short time ago. Jiraiya's records replaced some of that material but only a fraction of it. Furthermore, much of the institutional memory related to Leaf's intelligence efforts was lost when the Third Hokage and many ANBU were killed during Operation Needlepoint, and then again when Jiraiya and so many others died during the Battle of Nagi Island?"

    "Operation Needlepoint?" Hazō couldn't stop himself from saying. He waved it off. "Sorry, not the important thing right now. Go on."

    Shikamaru's lips twitched in the tiniest shadow of a smile. "Apparently the Third and Jiraiya had a long-standing competition to see who could come up with the most ridiculous code names and passwords."

    "You may recall an instance of our team running at speed under the canopies of Fire Country while shouting 'Tomato Nipples' at the top of our lungs," Kei said, vinegar drenching the words.

    "I comfort myself with the hope that it was originally intended to be a possessive—Needle's Point—but some scribe miswrote it. I grant you that the kanji involved have next to no bearing on one another and therefore my idle hope is the wooliest of daydreams, yet allow me to cling to this morsel of sanity in troublesome times." He chuffed in amused frustration. "In any case, suffice it to say that our military intelligence is far more limited than I would prefer for my first major foray into the world of strategic planning. Despite this, the mission continues."

    "The mission continues," Hazō murmured. "Mind giving me some background before we dive in?"

    "Of course. You cannot offer good advice without proper foundational understanding."

    "Right." He thought about that for a moment, then leaned forward. "What's their endgame? Rock. I mean, presumably all the same things apply to them as to us, right? If we can't eradicate them without bringing the wrath down on us then surely they can't eradicate us. So what do they actually want?"

    "Does it matter?!" Shikamaru raised a hand to cut off the response. "Apologies. Yes, it matters. I have no way of knowing for certain. The simple answer is that I don't know most of the most important answers. I don't know why they attacked now, I don't know what limits they are willing to abide by, I don't know why they—" He stopped, shaking his head. "Apologies again. I find myself somewhat stressed. I do not have a clear answer to your question."

    "Okay," Hazō said. Shikamaru was a tag in the process of failing its infusion. Noted. "Shikamaru, there is a reason that the Hokage trusts you to advise him on military strategy. You're one of the smartest people in Leaf. Give me your best guess."

    "My best guess is that it is an escalation of their original plan to steal farmland. Hungry people do desperate things."

    Hazō digested that. "So they're desperate and they aren't going to stop just because we kill a few of them. What sort of losses—sorry, do we have any way to estimate what sort of losses they would need to take in order to give up?"

    "We do not. Before you ask: You see before you twelve different estimates of Rock's ninja forces gathered from nine different sources and yes, I did report those numbers in the correct order. The estimates range from 1,000 ninja to 3,700 ninja. I have first-hand reports saying that Rock only has six jōnin. I also have first-hand reports saying that 65% of Rock's ninja are jōnin."

    "How many jōnin do we have?"

    "Twenty-one. Several of whom are quite new to the rank."

    "Oh."

    "The senior ninja forces have taken disproportionate share of the damage from recent events," Kei noted. "Mostly because they are the ones brought to major battles, and because they usually have rooms in the clan's main residence and were therefore killed in the Collapse while the random genin sleeping in the annex behind the house are fine."

    "How many ninja do we have overall?"

    "Approximately 1,400. The vast majority genin, one third of whom are clanless with substandard education and training."

    "Oh."

    Kei and Shikamaru waited for Hazō to digest that news.

    Hazō digested the news.

    The digestion was taking some time, he noticed.

    "Hazō, have some tea," Kei said, pushing the tray towards him. "Also, pardon me while I bring in our second advisor. Shadow Clone Technique!"

    Snowflake poofed into existence, nodding thanks as Kei handed her the green ribbon that she used to identify herself. The clone gathered her hair up and twisted the ribbon into it even as she took a seat beside her sister/creator/other self.

    "Hazō, snap out of it," she said. "Take the tea, drink it. It's strong stuff and it will get your brain in gear. We have bad guys to kill and good guys to save."

    "Right." He took some of the tea and knocked it back. It was lukewarm, extremely smoky, and bitter as a merchant after haggling with Granny Mayuka. "Gaaah. What is this?"

    "Akimichi stimulants, diluted."

    "Diluted?!" He paused, examining the flow of his chakra and what it said about the state of his body. "Shikamaru, I think that in about three minutes my heart may explode." The words were hyperbolic but only slightly. It really was strong stuff.

    Shikamaru poured himself a mug and raised it in silent salute before knocking it back.

    "Husband," Kei said, "I believe I said that I was cutting you off after the seventh cup."

    Shikamaru waved the objection away. "It was starting to wear off."

    Snowflake nodded seriously. "You should leave him be, sister. I can certainly see no way in which Leaf's war strategy might suffer from being put together by a man who hasn't slept in thirty hours and has spent the last nine hopped up on enough stimulants to kill a water buffalo."

    Shikamaru bestowed upon his wife's sister a flat stare.

    "Could we mislead them on how strong we are?" Hazō asked, carefully attempting to derail the looming spat without putting himself in the middle of it. "So they quit sooner, I mean. Maybe their intel on us is as bad as ours on them."

    Shikamaru snorted.

    "Not likely," Snowflake said. "And if it is then they will think we are stronger than we are, given the number of losses we have taken recently. Yet, somehow they were willing to attack now."

    "If they're doing this for food, maybe we can crank that up. Burn their existing food stores and destroy the farms so they can't get more. Poison their water supplies. Maybe starvation could make them tap out?"

    "We considered it," Shikamaru said. "Earth is a very large nation with very low population density. Their food supplies are widely distributed, mostly in the form of small farms and marshweed production in rivers." He tossed one hand to the side in angry dismissal. "Yet one more example of our inadequate intelligence: We have some reliable reports on Rock—mostly out of date, from the last time we attended a Chūnin Exams there. The best guess is that the city is very approximately the same size as Leaf—at most twenty percent off in either direction. Do you have any idea how much food is required to feed that many people? The entire city is underground, with limited avenues of approach, and it's far from central to the nation. Even if they can somehow produce enough food, they can't transport it to the city or get it through the gates. There aren't enough roads!

    "And yes, Hazō, I have considered the idea that they have ninja transport the food in storage seals. It's unlikely. All of the food production facilities we are aware of are small-scale, only suitable for supplying the residents plus a modest percentage more. Civilians can't operate seals and it's impractical for ninja to be constantly circulating hundreds of miles through the countryside to do the job, let alone to wait while food supplies are sealed up."

    He shook his head in frustration. "Our—well, my best guess is that Rock has some sort of underground farming capacity. I have no idea what it could be or how it would operate, but it's the only thing that makes any sense."

    Hazō paused, thinking very carefully before he spoke. "Shikamaru, I am going to reveal a fact to you because it might be relevant to the prosecution of the war. I expect you to hold this in the same degree of confidence that you would hold a top Nara clan secret. Disclose it to the Hokage or anyone else who you feel absolutely needs to know but keep that number to the bare minimum. All right?"

    One eyebrow rose. "Very well."

    "You know how we used to live in Orochimaru's house? Underneath it there are a whole series of basements. The Gōketsu and Naruto went in there to explore the place. We saw a lot of disturbing stuff, including something that I have named a 'speyeder'. It's an eyeball with four legs. We watched several of them force-feed themselves to a prisoner. They deliberately jumped into the man's mouth, chewed themselves up, and slid down his throat. I believe that the man had been there since before Orochimaru went missing and had been sustained the entire time on those creatures."

    "...Are you suggesting that Orochimaru supplied monstrosities to Rock, in sufficient quantity to feed tens of thousands of people?"

    "I'm suggesting that at least one person knows how to create, or at the very least train, creatures unlike anything I've ever seen. Furthermore, these creatures were able to keep a prisoner alive for years with no input from humans. How unlikely is it that Rock has something similar?"

    Shikamaru rubbed his face with both hands and then reached for the teapot. Kei placed a hand in front of it but Shikamaru simply reached around her, not touching but coming close enough to make her shy back, and poured himself a cup.

    "Very well," he said, putting his elbows on the table so that he could roll the cup back and forth between his palms and stare into its depths as though into a scrying pool. "It's certainly not the worst theory that's been proposed thus far."

    "Really? Cool. What was the worst theory?"

    "Chōji suggested that they survive by ritually consuming the bodies of their dead."

    "That...seems impractical. Would that even work? We poop, which means we don't convert everything we eat into our own flesh. Wouldn't you need some kind of steady food input to keep it running?"

    "Indeed. And when I pointed this out he said 'Yes, but there are babies being born all the time.'" He sipped the tea. "After some calculation I have decided that I am 78% confident that he was mocking me."

    "I believe the word you are looking for is 'teasing'," Kei said. "Chōji is your friend, and I should not be the one reminding you that he is a good person. He would not mock you."

    Shikamaru waved the objection aside. "My teammate's dubious humor aside, I will think on the idea of 'what if biosealing-created horror' as a potential food supply for Rock. If it is indeed the case, and these creatures are somehow growing underground then I suspect it would be challenging for us to interfere with them."

    "We could...okay, listen," Hazō said. "Clear Communication: The following applies mostly to you, Kei, but also somewhat to you, Shikamaru. Snowflake, you're fine." He cleared his throat and straightened in his chair. "I have had bad experiences in the past where I had an idea that I fully recognized was barely half-baked and I brought it to one of you in an effort to turn it into something useful. You then used words that made me feel criticized, mocked, or otherwise diminished. Some of these occasions have involved you making actual threats of violence." He struggled not to glare accusingly at Kei when he said that. "These experiences have left me feeling nervous about sharing other ideas with you, which significantly reduces my willingness to have planning meetings with you. I do not like having these feelings because you are my friends and family and because I greatly value your input and recognize that my plans are inevitably improved by your review, which is why I continue the practice despite having to dread that I'm going to experience what may perhaps have been innocent commentary from your perspective but from mine was ridicule or insult.

    "This meeting is important. We are discussing the strategic plans for an entire nation. I would like to be able to offer whatever thoughts I have as they come up. Most or all of them will be impractical, impossible, dangerous, foolish, or in some other way unusable. The point of this meeting as I understand it is not for me to come up with a perfect and flawless plan that I present to you on a platter. It is for me to provide the basic skeleton of an idea that can be polished into something usable, or that will at least spark an idea in one of you. I would like it if you would agree—"

    "So stipulated," Kei said, raising one hand to stop him. "I regret having caused you to feel this way and will endeavor to be more careful about my words in future. I shall endeavor to keep this failure to a minimum. Please note that I may still be hurt or frightened by your suggestions and that this may cause me to speak without thinking my response through in full detail."

    "As we all know, Kei has terrible problems with impulse control," Snowflake said. "Also, note that her lack of creativity means she will not be able to do much as far as sparking new ideas," Snowflake said with a cat-and-cream smile. "That is my role in our relationship. Have no fear, progenitor. I shall not forget you when I am receiving my award from the Hokage."

    Kei did not deign to acknowledge the jab.

    "I believe we were discussing the war?" Shikamaru said, audibly struggling to sound mild. He slammed back the rest of his tea and reached for the pot again. Kei sighed but didn't interfere.

    "You said that Rock is completely underground," Hazō said.

    "Indeed. The only access we are aware of is a large gate wide enough for two wagons abreast—"

    "Two?" Kei said. "Shika, I think you may be—"

    "Two narrow wagons," Shikamaru snapped. "It is a large gate, it is very heavily fortified and it stands astride a road that leads deep into the earth. The city is largely composed of tunnels and enormous caverns that have been neatly shaped, in some places with tools and in others with jutsu. Our people were shown only a very small and carefully-prepped portion of the city so our knowledge of its structure and layout are minimal at best."

    "Okay," Hazō said, desperately hoping not to get in the middle of a husband/wife argument. "So they're too heavily defended for direct assault. Still, they're underground. Pangolins are amazing diggers and the Tunnel Excavation jutsu is great if you want to breach an underground facility. They must be vulnerable to air and water disruption. Maybe we could find their water supply and undermine it in order to cut off their access. Alternatively, we could taint it with corpses, human feces, harmful chakra beasts, or plague-ridden materials. Perhaps deathclams or horrorfish?"

    Shikamaru nodded thoughtfully. "Interesting. Without wishing to offer offense, I have some serious reservations about our ability to tunnel anywhere near the city without being detected. Also, transporting large numbers of fish across the desert of Earth Country sounds challenging. Despite that, the idea is interesting. Please continue."

    "If we can't get at the water, how about the air? They must have vents somewhere that move air in and out. They can't be keeping an entire Hidden Village supplied with air purely from seals, right? If we could find the vents then we could block them up, or put stuff in them. I don't know what, but I'm sure someone in Leaf could provide some good options."

    "Personally, I am still dwelling in fascinated delight on the idea of undermining Rock's water supply," Snowflake said. "The poetry of it is pleasant. Or, failing that, perhaps we could raise it up and channel it to flood large parts of the city?"

    "That sounds cool," Hazō said.

    Snowflake pretended to preen. "Thank you, Hazō. It is nice to be appreciated. And have no concern—I will never cause you to feel belittled or threatened."

    Hazō eyed her with wagonloads of skepticism but said nothing in reply, preferring instead to keep on track. "Alternatively, they must have some high-value targets outside the city proper. Jiraiya and Kagome-sensei both expressed serious doubts about doing seal research underground. I'm sure Rock has sealmasters, so where do they do their work?"

    Kei and Shikamaru exchanged surprised glances.

    "I admit, I had not considered that. Thank you, Hazō," Shikamaru said. His left hand trembled slightly; he casually pressed it against the table while misdirecting attention by reaching for the teapot. "I would like to keep the conversation moving but it would be helpful if, after we are done here, you could send us a list of what to look for when searching for seal research facilities."

    "No problem. There is one place we might consider..."

    "You are referring to the island where we suspect the Arachnid Summoning Scroll to reside," Snowflake said. "And you are hesitant to raise the topic because you are afraid it will seem self-serving."

    It really was unfair, Hazō reflected, to have not one but a potentially unlimited number of terrifyingly intelligent and scary sisters.

    "I spoke to Asuma about it before all this started," he said instead of revealing his thoughts. "He said we could hit the place and take the Scroll if we could do it without getting Leaf into a war."

    Snowflake snerked. "I believe that concern may have gone by the wayside."

    "Why do you believe the Arachnid Scroll to reside there?" Shikamaru asked.

    Hazō dissected the available information and neatly arranged its parts before Shikamaru. Given his brother-in-law's steadily shortening temper he kept it short and formal.

    "It seems unlikely that such an artifact would remain there," Shikamaru said, frowning. He poured himself another cup of tea; the flow was turbulent, its flow disrupted by the slight tremor in his hands. "Why would they not bring it back to Rock proper?"

    "They might have," Hazō admitted. "Still, it's the last known location and Rock has no summoners."

    "Precisely," Kei said. "They have no summoners. Therefore, they have no one to teach the knowledge that a summoner needs."

    Hazō's stomach plummeted. "Oh, Sage...they've had it for hundreds of years. They must have tried..."

    Kei and Snowflake both nodded.

    Shikamaru was looking back and forth between the three of them, an irritated wrinkle taking up position on his forehead. "Would someone be so kind as to explain?"

    "When you sign a Scroll, it takes hold of your chakra and forges an aetheric tunnel to the Seventh Path," Hazō explained. "It's not a gentle process. If you aren't braced for it you can end up with a damaged chakra system that can't sustain the tunnel, in which case it backlashes into you and you die. If you do manage to brace in time then a liaison will appear and do a quick pre-screening. If you seem remotely plausible as a candidate summoner then they'll carry you back to the Seventh Path with them so that you can make your pitch to the Boss...but if you don't have the proper mental tools hammered into you at a reflexive level then your mind will be destroyed during the transit."

    Shikamaru sat back in thought. "Interesting. Would it be possible to force someone to sign a Scroll in order to intentionally damage them?"

    "There's easier ways to kill someone," Hazō said. "To answer the question: I don't know of a reason you couldn't but there might be one. Putting your name on a Scroll isn't just calligraphy. It's one of the most primitive, most primal chakra manipulations there is. You are giving the scroll your blood. Blood, life, chakra, intent, essence, it's all tied up together. If you were being compelled then your intent wouldn't be in the act and it might not work." He shrugged helplessly. "I have no idea. Kei, did Takahashi say anything about it?"

    "He did not. To the best of my knowledge such a thing has never been attempted. After all, suppose that it did not fail—you would have allowed your prisoner to escape and put a tremendously powerful weapon in their hand."

    "Hm. Troublesome."

    "Husband, be so kind as to leave such thoughts to Hazō. I have enough difficulty having one person in my life who regularly forces me to choose between terror at the horrific possibilities inherent in an idea or delight in the fact that it is unlikely to ever become a practical reality."

    "Be nice, Kei," Snowflake scolded. "We agreed on no criticism."

    "No criticism was intended. However, I believe that it was an entirely reasonable reaction to the idea of weaponizing the signing ceremony."

    "Thank you, Snowflake, but I'm okay," Hazō said, smiling fondly. "No offense taken. Although, I'm a little surprised at you, Kei...I'm capable of holding two different emotional reactions at the same time."

    His sister rolled her eyes.

    "Anyway, I think we could take the place. We send a few of Leaf's summoners to the area. They summon a wave of jōnin-level partners who attack the place and kill everything that moves until their shells are popped. The summoners then retreat to the Seventh Path, where they meet up with Noburi, who refills their chakra. They return to the Human Path, summon more partners, and the process continues." He raised a hand to cut Kei off before she could say it. "And yes, there's a problem with the idea which is that having their chakra bodies 'killed' on the Human Path doesn't physically hurt the partner in question but it is traumatic and painful. They won't want to go through it repeatedly even if they can push past the tunnel destabilization that results when they are forcibly unsummoned. Still, we could probably find a way around it—for example, spend Leaf's full resources so that each of the summoners can get a lot of one-time contracts. Make a hundred contracts on the lines of 'Come test your mettle and compete against your friends in a live-fire, no-risk environment. The best fighter gets a prize of some kind.' Each partner would only need to be summoned once but there would still be enough of them to make a difference."

    "Hm. I do not immediately see a reason that couldn't work," Shikamaru said. "Wildly risky since the summoners would need to get close to the island but it is worthy of further consideration."

    "I will offer a thought as to why the Scroll might still be there," Snowflake said, her face unusually serious. "Consider what it looks like from Rock's side. They know that people from other nations can sign one of these things and gain tremendous power from it, but they don't know any of the details. Someone figures he's willing to gamble, so he signs it. He drops dead instantly. A month or a year or five years later, someone else tries it. He survives but is crippled for the rest of his probably-short life. More time passes and someone else signs the Scroll, since the universe is not lacking in overconfident idiots. This person does not die; he collapses screaming to the ground and an enormous monster appears from thin air. The monster grabs the summoner candidate and disappears, never to be seen again."

    Hazō, Kei, and Shikamaru all winced at the thought.

    "Rock knows that the artifact is powerful, so they aren't willing to dispose of it," Snowflake continued. "They are not willing to risk another nation getting their hands on it, so it will be kept somewhere extremely secure...but do you really want to keep something in your underground capital when you have no way of knowing if the Scroll might fail and release a horde of those chittering monsters upon you? Perhaps there is some ritual that must be performed every so often or the Boss will dispatch a tax collector—yes, Kei, I know that the Seventh Path residents cannot go to the Human Path of their own efforts. I know that, you know that, Hazō knows that, but Rock most likely does not know that."

    "Son of a bitch," Hazō murmured, hope surging in his heart. "You mean it might seriously be there? I was trying to keep up hope."

    "It might be there," Snowflake said. "Or it might not. I am ascribing motivation to people I do not know and interpolating insufficient data in order to form conclusions so poorly baked that your wildest...that your seventh-wildest plan ever proposed would be on less shaky ground."

    "My seventh-wildest plan? What, you have a ranked list?"

    "Moving on," Kei said with suspicious speed. "Shikamaru, what are your thoughts on the mission proposal?"




    Author's Note: This update covered one day. After talking with Shikamaru, Kei, and Snowflake for the morning and much of the afternoon, you caught up to Kagome-sensei in the evening and asked him for the status on reactive armor seals and when they might be complete. His response: "Hm? Oh, those things? Yeah, I finished them a while ago. They go off plenty fast enough to repel a thrown weapon. Probably make for great static defenses. Useless for personal defense, of course. No way to put them on your body and still fight without taking off your own body parts by accident. Huh? Why didn't I mention it? Eh, I figured maybe I'd get back to them at some point, see if I could figure out a solution. Besides, wasn't like you didn't give me lots of other stuff to do."

    It is now 10pm.

    XP AWARD: 5

    Brevity XP: 1

    "GM had fun" XP: 11    ; a palindromic award in honor of this being my palindromic 10,001st post on SufficientVelocity.

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, September 15, 2021, at 12pm London time.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 467: The Battle for the Hokage's Legacy
  • Threadmarks

    • "Blood in the water. Madara's all-seeing balls. Hundred Fins. Norihige's grave below us. Sage's ballsack."

    By the time Hazō reached the top of the Hokage Monument, he'd burned through his entire cursing vocabulary and had started looping back through his personal favourites. He made a note to himself to never again schedule a meeting at the highest point in Leaf while movement-impaired, and also to expand his curse collection. Maybe Noburi would lend him that Seventh Path book of his.

    "Hazō! You're seriously late!" Ami called out from the top of Jiraiya's head. "I've started trying to think of a penalty game, and you really want to be over here before I can finish!"

    Under no circumstances was Hazō prepared to play any game on Ami's terms. From the horrors Dungeon Keeper Ami regularly unleashed at Gōketsu gaming nights to the way he'd nearly ended up dating her last time, Hazō was confident his immediate future was going to be both traumatic and humiliating unless he acted fast.

    Please let old permissions still be in effect…

    "Substitution Technique!"

    Fortunately, Kei was either broadly trusting or specifically merciful where he was concerned. In a flash, Hazō found himself next to Ami as Kei appeared in his place the other end of the monument, almost certainly rolling her eyes at his inability to survive without her.

    Less fortunately, Hazō had had to drop his crutches in order to do hand seals, and the sudden loss of stability while standing next to the avatar of chaos had a completely predictable effect.

    "Why, Hazō," Ami purred underneath him as his brain processed a series of sudden and terrifying soft sensations, "I had no idea you'd grown so bold. In public and in front of Kei."

    Hazō pushed himself off her with the urgency of a man finding himself embracing a bundle of armed exploding tags.

    "Sorry, Ami, I didn't mean to—"

    Hazō frowned.

    "Wait a second. You're a jōnin. You could totally have dodged that."

    "And let you fall on your face, with you being mortally injured and everything? What kind of woman do you think I am?"

    Hazō's attempt to come up with an answer to that eternally dangerous question was interrupted by the descent of an ominous shadow that blotted out the midday sun.

    "Your crutches, Hazō," spoke a voice that could freeze fire. Kei raised the crutches in a movement that wavered between assistance and imminent impalement.

    Before Kei could make up her mind, Ami helped him up.

    "That was hilarious," she said, "so can you give him a free pass just this once, Kei?"

    Kei sighed. "Just this once. Hazō, while I appreciate that the instinct to throw oneself at my sister is natural to every gynophile, be aware that future acts of attempted sacrilege will not be met with the same leniency. Now, I believe you have brought tribute with which to appease my no longer homicidal but nevertheless ongoing wrath?"

    "You mean the peppermint tea and pastries?"

    At Kei's nod, Hazō busied himself with the storage scrolls.

    "So I take it," Ami asked casually, "that choosing this as our meeting spot means you're publicly endorsing the Selectivist Faction?"

    Hazō froze. "The what now?"

    "Naruto originally intended to call it the 'Screw Hyūga Hiashi Faction'," Kei said, reaching for the first of the pastries, "but the rest of us felt that it lacked a certain subtlety."

    "Oh," Hazō said. "In that case, count me in 100%. So what does our faction do?"

    "There," Ami said with a note of satisfaction. "That's how it's done. None of this 'Are you sure this is a good idea, Ami?' or 'Should we really be fracturing Leaf's political landscape further at this time, Ami?' or 'What about the implications for our Clan Council position, Ami?' Just a decisive commitment to screwing over Hyūga Hiashi and everything he stands for, as the Sage intended.

    "In response to your question, Hazō, look down. How many faces do you see?"

    There were, of course, five faces. Hazō had been present at the unveiling ceremony for the most recent carving, after the Clan Council had almost unanimously ruled to retroactively confirm Jiraiya as full rather than interim Hokage, and posthumously granted him the honours earned by that position.

    "The Sixth's carving was never completed, of course," Ami said evenly. "After the interruption of the Collapse, for a certain period of time Leaf had more urgent construction priorities. Subsequently, its creation was plagued by endless delays in procurement of scaffolding, payments to stonecarvers, and other individually minor yet collectively crippling issues that happened to coincide with the influx of KEI shinobi into the Tower bureaucracy following the demise of the clan shinobi who had originally held most positions of influence.

    "The Selectivist Faction, spearheaded by Uzumaki Naruto with the support of the KEI, proposes that we should accept the sign given us by fate and omit the Sixth, whose ill-fated reign should not be set alongside that of his illustrious fellows, instead proceeding immediately with the carving of the magnificent Seventh. Conversely, the Inclusivist Faction argues that all Hokage are entitled to equal representation by simple virtue of their title."

    "That's rather radical," Hazō said as he poured the third cup of tea. "So if Naruto's leading the Selectivists, who's leading the Inclusivists?"

    Ami's grin stretched as wide as he'd ever seen it. "Glad you asked! After all, how could any campaign be properly youthful without a worthy rival to lead the opposition?"

    Hazō gave her a disturbed look. "There's one word in there I'm really hoping I misheard."

    Ami nodded. "Before we could gain enough traction for an opposing force to develop naturally, I invited Rock Lee to represent the opposition. He wasted no time in reminding the population of Leaf that Hyūga Hiashi's greatest achievement as Hokage was founding the Church of Youth. You might have seen his weekly proclamations in the broadsheet."

    "Is that what those were?" Hazō asked. "I thought that was just Rock Lee being Rock Lee."

    "That too," Ami said. "But what matters is that by the time Hyūga and their allies realised we were serious, the well was dripping with very youthful poison. I'd be surprised if the Selectivists actually managed to keep the Sixth off the monument, because that would mean the Hokage signing off on a massive insult to the Hyūga, but what we've got going is a public debate over the relative weight of a Hokage's title versus their accomplishments, and boy is having Lee as their most vocal proponent a headache for the conservatives. Meanwhile, the Seventh's on track to score major points by winning the war—you need to get on that, by the way; Leaf cannot afford to still be fighting Rock when the countdown hits zero—and between that and his limited personal power, he'll be the first Hokage to be recognised as a leader first and a warrior second. The Selectivist/Inclusivist conflict will make use of that as Step One towards redefining what it means to be a Kage."

    "Why would you do that?" Hazō asked.

    "Transforming Leaf society or pouring powdered willowbark into my peppermint tea?"

    "Both," Hazō said. "That seems like it's going to be an abysmal combination."

    Ami looked down into her cup. "I get… headaches.

    "And anyway"—she smiled—"what's life without a little dangerous and unwise experimentation? Which answers both your questions. At the end of this long road lies the idea of a Hokage accountable to their ninja, and can you imagine what wacky adventures we're going to have along the way? And in the meantime, it might just save Hinata."

    Hazō blinked at the sudden swerve. "I wasn't aware that she needed saving from anything. Also, isn't she one of the KEI's main enemies?"

    "Exactly," Ami said. "She's a sweet girl, incredibly talented, and also on track to become a world-class beauty if she survives the next few years. Such a shame she didn't go down the I&S track. But she's also the leader of the conservative faction, and as the Sixth's heir, she's got no choice but to follow the path he laid out. Any efforts to get her on-side are doomed for as long as she's devoted to the spirit of her dear departed dad and the elders are standing by to eat her alive if she goes too far off-script. And while I'd love for her to grow up to become a badass rival, I'd also love for her to become my Hanabi. The Mori are really into symmetry, FYI.

    "But that's a side project still at the 'poking at random stuff and seeing what happens' stage. Mostly my accomplishment so far is reminding the public of the Sixth Hokage-Church of Youth connection, and also the ongoing Hyūga Neji-Church of Youth connection, as enforced by his summoner agreement. He's the Hyūga elders' backup—if Hinata stops satisfying them as clan head, Hanabi's too young, while Neji has the blood, his prestige as summoner outweighs a lot of possible issues, and he's dedicated to the Sixth's beliefs while lacking Hinata's capacity for independent thought. The worse the public's opinion of the Sixth, and the more they associate Neji with the Sixth's greatest folly, the stronger Hinata's position versus the elders."

    She took a sip of her tea and shuddered. "Yep, this'll take my mind off any lesser suffering, sure enough."

    "Duly noted," Hazō said. "On a hopefully non-village-wrecking note, I was wondering if you could do me a—no, wait, phrasing—if you could do Leaf a favour in your capacity as the Mist ambassador."

    "I'm not the ambassador anymore, Hazō," Ami said with an edge to her voice. "That would be my beloved Kurosawa handler. I'm just the Hokage's official Mist consultant and solver of slightly more problems than I cause. Is there something you want me to pass on?"

    "Ah. Sorry, Ami," Hazō said. "I was just wondering: work on the Great Seal's been going at a crawl, and assuming Asuma gives us the go-ahead, do you think you could get a Mist sealmaster or two over here to assist? Surely there'll be a Kurosawa or a Mori who's interested. Alternatively, when I'm healed, I could visit Mist and make them another of my life-size models."

    Ami laughed. "Part of me really wants to see Lady Kurosawa's face when you propose building what's basically a super-sized sealing array in the middle of her village. But part of me also knows it'll just be an Iron Nerve mask, so I suggest you let that idea go right now. At best, maybe you can build it on some uninhabited island within easy travel of Mist, like Nagi.

    "I'll pass on the sealmaster request, but don't hold your breath. Unless Mist formally joins the war on Leaf's side, Lady Kurosawa isn't going to be in any hurry to send precious sealmasters to a village where they risk getting caught up in military action or, worse, conscripted in an emergency—especially if she doesn't believe the Dragon story, in which case this can only be an excuse to steal Mist sealing secrets."

    Hazō nodded. "Why make reasonable sacrifices to avert the probable doom of the world when pretending there isn't a problem is much more convenient for pursuing your existing goals? Even in Leaf, Orochimaru doesn't seem to have lifted a finger to help. Him being immortal won't get him far if the Dragons decide his basement makes a tasty snack. Or do you suppose he's doing something useful and just not sharing?"

    Ami shrugged. "I think that if he took the Dragon threat seriously, he'd probably take over the research and commandeer you, the other sealmasters, and whatever resources he wanted. I don't have him pegged as someone who holds back when something piques his interest. That said, he's a biosealer, right? Is there any chance this is just outside his area of expertise?"

    "I asked Kagome-sensei that," Hazō said. "After he was done ranting about what happens to biosealers who slip up and make one tiny mistake, and what happens to biosealers who succeed—which is usually even worse—and how I shouldn't even think about biosealing and instead focus on safer avenues of study like explosives research, he said nobody dives straight into biosealing and survives. All successful biosealers have a solid grounding in basic sealcrafting. Given that dimensional sealing, which is what we want, is a discipline I reinvented myself, there isn't going to be any sealmaster in Leaf, or maybe the world, whose specialised skills let them beat Orochimaru's general ones. I'm constantly torn between going to him to have a serious conversation and not going to him to avoid being dissected once he realises how much unique Sage lore is locked up in my brain."

    "Yeah," Ami said. "There are people being tortured to death—or worse—right now as a result of what I had to do to persuade Orochimaru to give up his plans for me. Not that there wouldn't have been people getting tortured to death anyway, Orochimaru being Orochimaru, and this way there are a lot of other people who aren't starving to death, but still. He's not someone you want to hang out with any more than necessary.

    "Then again, having everything you've ever loved destroyed by eldritch abominations isn't great either. Have you considered approaching him indirectly, like via Dr Yakushi or the Snakes?"

    "Plans are in progress," Kei said regretfully. "Once the war is over and we no longer need to appease the Pangolins as a contribution to Leaf's immediate survival, I would appreciate assistance from both of you with the Condor liberation efforts. Current negotiations are at an impasse, as we possess nothing the Pangolins want more than to retain the slaves whose unique value we continue to prove further with every plan."

    Hazō nodded. "Win the war. Free the slaves. Save the world. Probably in that order. Do you remember the days when our biggest challenge was beating up chakra alligators?"

    -o-​

    You have received 2 + 1 + 1 = 4 XP.

    The update has taken half a day. Fun-to-write XP included.

    -o-​

    Jūchi Yosamu will soon be ready to visit the Nara compound and begin acclimatising itself to non-murderous coexistence with human beings. The Inuzuka are busy crafting a suitable leash, but their senior ninja are too tied up in tracking work to gather the requisite chakra bear sinews.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes on Saturday 18th of September, 1 p.m. New York time.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Interlude: Coincidence
  • Threadmarks
    • Interlude: Coincidence​

    'Coincidence' is a human word.

    It is a human word in the sense that 'wind' is a human word. It describes a phenomenon that has an impact on humans and therefore the word is useful. It is also so milquetoast as to be essentially pointless.

    The cool summer breeze, soft as a kiss, pleasant and cool on the overworked peasant's sweating brow as he strips the bulbs from the rice plants before the creatures reach adulthood.

    The menacing and mercurial sirocco, bearer of choking dust or life-giving rain depending on its whim.

    The howling rage of the tornado tearing through a peasant family's dwelling and carrying their screaming bodies into the sky, adults and infants alike.

    'Wind' is a pauper's word, and so is 'coincidence'.

    The coincidence here was tiny and distant. Or proximate, depending on what you counted. That was the essence of coincidence, after all: it didn't exist. Everything had a cause tracing back to the universe's first shuddering gasp of creation. Still, if one were to choose an arbitrary point in the chain of events to consider 'the beginning', one might choose Jitsuko's cow's flatulence. It was, perhaps, a strange thing to choose as the first cause of a thousand legends and at least one literal saving of humanity, yet it is as good as any other.

    At the time, of course, the cow belonged to Jitsuko's husband, Chōei. Chōei had owned the cow for a dozen years and knew its habits perfectly well. He knew better than to pass behind the beast while it was eating, yet for whatever reason he did. It was at that exact moment that the cow unleashed a long and triumphant thhhhhhhhhwwaaaat of intestinal relief. The assault was enough to make Chōei gag and stumble, one hand going out for balance and catching the cow on its backside. That was enough to frighten the cow into lashing out with its rearmost hooves, and that was enough to crush Chōei's chest like a dropped dumpling.

    If one were honest, Chōei's death caused Jitsuko nearly as much relief as sadness. On the one hand, he had stuck by her and fled from civilization to conceal her secret. On the other, no more enduring under sweaty grunting, no more waiting for her own bath until the water was half-cooled and dirty, no more enduring the prandial scratching of the man-eggs, no more splitting the already scant food the tax man left. (For it was certainty that no matter how far one fled the cloying grasp of humanity, the tax man would find you!)

    Had Chōei not died he would have been the one to re-thatch the roof instead of Jitsuko. For all his (many!) faults, Chōei had been an excellent thatcher. Jitsuko had never done the job before, but there was no one else. In her first-timer clumsiness she went up while the roof was still wet from the rain that had caused the leak that had alerted her to the need for re-thatching. Had she her husband's experience she would have known to wait until the roof had fully dried the next day before climbing up it. She put a foot wrong on the slippery sodden stalks, her feet went out from under her, and she flailed backwards off the roof.

    It could be argued that it was another chain of coincidence that had caused the knobbly rock to be in its exact position. It was a castoff from the bones of the earth that had growled upwards in geologic haste, one plate towering higher and higher in a show of dominance against another to determine which would bow down and slide below its master. Cold and heat and wind (that useless word again!) had broken the rock from its source and water had carried it thousands of miles to land in this precise spot so that it would be here at this precise moment for Jitsuko's head to split open upon. Her death was as nearly instant as it is possible to be.

    It is essentially inarguable that the passage of the ninja in the thorned-spiral headband was a separate chain of 'coincidence'. After all, surely his steps were not directly influenced by the flatulence of one particular cow? Regardless, he happened to pass by within hours of Jitsuko's zeugmoidal passing.

    Had he passed by a few hours earlier, she would have been alive and boring and they would never have met. She likely would have been frightened by the almost-encounter, perhaps even distracted enough that she delayed climbing the ladder just long enough for the roof to dry. Had he passed by a few hours later then the animals would have already smelled her corpse and dined, dragging her body around until her skull was dislodged from its invader. No, the ninja's shadow slipped across her tiny patch of earth while her lifeless body was still impaled on the upthrust knob of the rock.

    It was not a coincidence that the ninja paused when he saw her body. Most would not have, for Jitsuko was a peasant and therefore unworthy of notice—well, perhaps a moment's curiosity at the unlikelihood of a single peasant dwelling so far out in the woods, the neatly-thatched cottage standing alone and unafraid instead of crouching for shelter in a sea of fearful hovels. Another ninja would not have spent the time or investigative energy to discover why the farm was so misanthropic, why the young couple had pushed far away from their compatriots, moving beyond the encircling arms of human company so that none would discover the secret of the seemingly-young wife and her husband. A husband who, for all his faults in the bedchamber and his annoying habit of scratching his testicles during meals, loved his wife so much that he chose to cleave to her instead of denounce her to the village headman when he discovered her nature.

    No, for this particular ninja, spending a few moments to investigate a dead body was a natural choice. Bodies were fascinating; capable of such marvels of life and recuperation, yet simultaneously fragile and incapable of retaining a firm grip on their elan vitesse. Of course, fascination required a degree of uncertainty. If the man to your left caused a body to explode with one touch of whirling primal energy, that was unsurprising and dull. If the woman to your right broke a body in half with her foot, that was positively banal. The cause of the death was obvious and uninteresting. If, however, you found a woman dead in a patch of garden loam, resting surprisingly peacefully with death-filmed eyes upraised to the sky? That was surprising. Why, at first glance she looked less 'dead' and more 'choosing an entirely inappropriate location for a midday nap.'

    It was only when the wind shifted and laid the scent of blood at his feet like a helpful dog fetching a stick, only when his eye was caught by the sanguine sogginess below her head, that his interest was sufficiently piqued to divert his course.

    He knelt beside her, making his initial examination without touching her body.

    "What might your name have been?" he wondered softly, arms folded on his unraised knee as he studied her. One more corpse of the hundreds that he had studied in this way. In each of them he looked for traces of his own features. It was a gaping maw of horror at the bottom of his mind, the idea that one day someone would stare down at him the same way he stared down at this woman. He wouldn't have minded that if the corpse they stared down upon had fallen in battle, serving his Kage with his final breath and taking a tithe of the enemy beforehand. No, the fear was that he might not fall in battle, that he might instead wither from day to day and year to year. His joints would swell until he couldn't hold chopsticks, much less shape chakra. His supple body would become stiff and pained, his steps doddering and balance uncertain. Worst of all, his mind. The streams of analytical thought would be broken by rocks of forgetfulness, knowledge and life experiences turning to bilious muck between his fingers and leaving him in a permanent haze of confusion.

    He had never disclosed this maw to anyone, for fear that he would be labeled a coward. The mocking would have been irritating and the potential for being permanently removed from field work would have been maddening. A lifetime of paperwork and training snot-nosed brats from the next generation would have meant no chance of a clean death at the hands of a more skillful or luckier ninja. It would have guaranteed the doddering senescence that was the essence of horror to him.

    And thus came his fascination with the youthful dead, with those who had escaped the mortal coil before facing the grinding hollows of age.

    "What's up with the blood?" he asked himself softly. The soil was loose and rich, something that would have softened a fall. He got his fingers under the body's shoulder and rolled her over. Her head clung desperately to the murderous rock for as long as it could before releasing with a regretful and affectionate schlorp.

    He studied the wound with interest. The knob of the rock had pierced the back of her skull immediately above the spine and jammed itself more than a knuckle into her brain. Death must have been instant, no time for gratitude that she had escaped the horror of age. He bent close, combing her midnight hair out of the way with delicate fingers so that he could see more clearly and wishing that he hadn't used the last of the braggart's so-convenient light sources. It was hard to angle his head and hers such that he could see into her quiescent brain.

    The shadows of her wound were dispelled by an angry blue spark.

    He shifted back in surprise, fine-lined eyebrows jolting upwards. He watched in fascination as more of the sparks danced and flickered in the depths of her wound, as the blood that had soaked the earth around her flowed upwards and back whence it had come, as the crushed fragments of bone that had been jammed backwards into her grey matter drifted to the surface and reassembled themselves, as she coughed and gasped and choked her way back to full awareness.

    Jitsuko gagged, scrubbing fingers across her tongue to get the death-taste out. She rubbed at her eyes; she hadn't managed to close them before dying and they were burning from exposure to the air. It would be a few seconds before the cloudiness faded and she was able to see again.

    "My, my," said a quiet voice from just beside her.

    She forced her eyes open in horror, fear kicking her recovery into high gear. The mist drained rapidly from her vision, leaving her looking up at a pale-skinned ninja with a thorn-spiraled headband and a look of fascination. He was younger than Jitsuko appeared, late teens or early twenties at the most but there was a chilling, slithering feeling around him that belonged to nothing human. Her heart pounded in her chest and stomach clenched in horror. Drowning, impalement, rock to brain...those were not enough for finality but there undoubtedly was a limit, and this man seemed like he might be able to find it.

    "You will be coming with me," he said, his face doing something that was not a smile in any sense she knew. "I feel certain that you have a great deal to teach me, once I get you on my table."




    Voting remains closed. The plan that was voted in for Sunday is going to require a lot of work, hence why you're getting this interlude. We'll figure out what to do and publish it, probably for the Thursday update.
     
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    Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 22
  • Sidestory
    • Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 22​

    The self-named Honeypot Honeys (more properly known as the three senior operatives of Leaf's Infiltration and Seduction department) had a standing meeting for drinks and darts on Thursdays down at the Soggy Tag, so long as all three of them were in town. The Tag's owner had long since noticed that whenever the Honeys were meeting the bar was packed to the rafters, mostly by male genin who were too distracted to count how many drinks they had or remember that they hadn't ordered the platter of gyoza that was now on their table and on their bill. His gratitude knew few bounds and the Honeys always drank free. He had also roped off a section of the bar so that they could have some empty space around themselves. Sometimes they gratefully accepted, sometimes they took the rope down and played prestige games between themselves, scoring points based on the eyelines of the audience. Tonight was a 'rope very much up' night; all three of them were frustrated and looking to relax in the company of their peers instead of slumming it with normies.

    "He's cute, but sometimes I want to stab him," Arisa said.

    "Drink, drink, drink!" Sachie and Kaya chanted.

    "Oh, come on! I didn't say I wanted to kill him! Stabbing isn't the same as killing!"

    Kaya turned to Sachie, a serious expression on her face and formality in her tone. "Judge, how do you rule?"

    "Hm..." Sachie, the eldest of the three, made a show of thinking carefully. While she did she pulled her honey-blonde hair over one shoulder and combed her fingers through it. She still had some bed-head and that wasn't the image she wanted to project right now.

    "After careful consideration, the court rules that the accused is required to drink," she pompously announced.

    Arisa grumbled but she selected one of the identical cups of sake from the center of the table, slammed it back, and put the cup on the table upside down in front of herself. It joined the two others that had already taken up residence from earlier in the conversation.

    "Why stabbing?" Sachie asked, nibbling on her fifth dumpling. She had a metabolism like a blast furnace (a nifty simile that she had gotten from her target friend Val) and needed to eat almost constantly to prevent grouchiness. "Oli seems like a nice enough guy."

    "Oh, he is. Total peach."

    "Then what's the problem? He won't share?"

    Arisa snorted. "No, that's the problem! He shares. Sage, does he share. He's so open and earnest it all comes pouring right out. Absolute gold, too—medical information, technology, economics. The man's a treasure trove. Except he won't slow down! I drop one leading word and this torrent of helpfulness comes pouring out, faster than I can get it all straight. By the time I manage to circle back and clarify one thing, three others have gotten lost. It's infuriating."

    The other two laughed and, with the ease of long experience, did not acknowledge the way the dozen closest heads snapped around to see what might have been the source of their amusement.

    Being aware of the attention of others without acknowledging it had been one of the harder parts of the training for Sachie. I&S was a demanding field that other ninja tended to dismiss as straightforward—after all, how hard could it be to put on some nice clothes and make doe eyes? Any pretty woman should be able to do I&S, right? Or handsome man, for that matter. It was an easy billet if you didn't want to suffer the risk of the field.

    What people failed to notice was that being attractive could be a disadvantage during the Infiltration part of the mission. People tended to pay attention to attractive people, which was a problem when you were trying to sneak in somewhere you weren't allowed to be. Also, the Seduction part of the name did not in fact mean 'getting someone to sleep with you.' (A task which itself was far more challenging than most gave credit for!) That part of the job was called Seduction because your fellow ninja liked working with Seduction experts and did not like working with Manipulation experts, no matter that the name would have been more appropriate for the job. In truth I&S was the single most complicated and challenging discipline a ninja could go into short of sealing or (maybe) technique hacking.

    On top of that, the life expectancy of field ninja meant that they tended to have a 'party it up and live for the moment' attitude when they weren't in the field. Attractive female ninja got propositioned at exhausting rates and declining needed to be done carefully since you didn't know who your backup was going to be on your next mission. Getting sussed out by your target made it a bad day, but if the person tasked with helping you escape after the target sussed you out was a jilted anger bomb...well, that was a recipe for a really bad day.

    All of which meant that I&S ninja calculated their every move and every reaction, all the time, and were constantly aware of the quantity and quality of the attention they were receiving from those around them. Boisterous laughter attracted notice; being seen to notice that you had been noticed was a good way to draw someone to approach you. The Honeys weren't looking to be approached right now—that was for after the drinks and commiserations—so all three of them were enforcing their solitude through a mixture of focused eye contact (with each other), gestural emblems (to the audience), and personal spacing. (They had agreed during one of the earliest meetups that the use of auras to attract or dismiss attention was cheating, even if they were used at such a low level that the audience didn't consciously notice. This, of course, opened up a new competition between the three of them to see who could slip a bit of aura application past the other two.)

    "What about you, Sachie?" Arisa asked. "How are things with Val?"

    The blonde snorted. Her hair was now untangled so she tossed it over her shoulder and started plaiting it into a 'French braid', a style she had become quite fond of that was one more reason to appreciate the presence of the outworlders.

    "Fine. He isn't ready for a move-in yet but he spends most of every day in the library and he's nearly always up to chat." She smiled. "For that matter, all I have to do is pester him for more stories about his girlfriends and he'll talk for hours. He gets this look when he remembers them—slightly goofy-in-love, slightly wistful that they aren't here."

    "Is it a 61-A or a 61-B look?" Sachie asked.

    "Not even. More of a 60-C with nasalis engagement."

    "Oooh," the other two said, sipping at their fruit drinks.

    "I love it when guys get that look," Arisa said, fiddling absent-mindedly with the little paper umbrella in hers, spinning it between thumb and forefinger. The umbrellas and the drinks they went in ('virgin daiquiris') were yet another Outsider invention. "So many options."

    "I know, right?" Kaya sighed. "I wish to the Sage that Earl had someone he was 60-C'ing over. Or that he would get over this ageist bullshit. He won't take me to bed because I'm 'too young', and he doesn't have a romantic connection to tap. I'm actually having to learn his stupid sword forms to engage with him."

    "Oh, yuck," Sachie said, pausing in the braiding to offer a consoling touch on the hand. "Seriously? Swords?" Taijutsu was a good investment for an I&S specialist; it kept the body fit and supple and gave you a chance to fight your way out of an engagement when you had been literally stripped of all equipment. Knives were a reasonable alternative, since they were easy to conceal and it usually wasn't too hard to put your hands on something sharp. Swords? Too long and heavy to conceal under clothing and only the best could stand up to ninja combat in the first place. Every moment spent studying swords was a moment not spent studying something useful.

    "I know, right?" Kaya slurped her daiquiri a little too quickly and made a moue when the brain freeze hit. "I'll give him this: He's really good at it. If he ever manages to get into shape he'll be able to survive combat for long enough that his escort could get to him."

    "I still can't believe how fat they are," Sachie complained.

    "Criticizing the targets!" Arisa said triumphantly. "Drink! Drink! Drink!" Kaya joined in on the second beat.

    "That wasn't criticizing! It was a statement of f—oh, fine. Whatever." Sachie took a sake and slammed it, plomping the upside down cup on the table in front of herself. The night was yet young and there was only one other to keep it company.

    "They aren't actually fat," Arisa said. "Not for their world, anyway. Remember what Lord Jiraiya said: In their world they don't let anyone join the—"

    "—military until the age of eighteen, and therefore it is important that operatives not assume the existence of personality traits that would typically be associated with an indolent body type," the others chorused.

    "Talking down, drink!" Kaya said, grinning at her compatriot. I&S ninja prided themselves on their memories and ability to synthesize facts. Telling one of them something she already knew was a crime worthy of being forced to imbibe.

    Arisa stuck her tongue out at them but slammed a drink.

    "Best intel?" Kaya asked. "Losers drink." She slurped on her daiquiri.

    "A jutsu that controls bats," Sachie said. "And another one that gets them to cast a genjutsu. Both non-elemental."

    "No way!" Kaya objected. "Bats can't cast genjutsu."

    "They can with this jutsu," Sachie smirked. "It's called 'Bat Controlling: Ultrasonic Mind Waves'. Apparently it makes the bats squeak at such a high pitch that people can't hear it, but it messes with the target's head."

    "Pfah," Kaya said, waving in grand dismissal. "Take your bogus jutsu and step off to the low-rent district. I got Earl to start working on a seal-based 'computer', which is a machine that thinks for you. It's like having your own Nara in a box that you carry around all the time."

    Arisa frowned. "A machine that thinks for you? What does that even mean?"

    Kaya paused, considering, and then shook her head. "I'm can-of-worms-ing that. There's too much behind it. Suffice it to say that when Lord Jiraiya heard about it he cleared his schedule so that he could work with Earl on it. For three solid days now."

    Sachie and Arisa oooohed. Without protest they both picked up a cup of sake; Sachie slammed hers too quickly to stop when Arisa did. The younger woman smirked at her senior for having tricked her into drinking unnecessarily.

    "I've got you both beat," Arisa said.

    "Oh, puh-leeze!" Kaya objected. "What could you possibly have that would beat Lord Jiraiya dropping everything to investigate it?"

    "Something that made Lady Tsunade drop everything."

    Blink. "No friggin' way. You are so full of crap."

    "Swear to the Sage. Not only herself but she's got the hospital on a skeleton crew so that every available doctor can study this. See, Oli claims that diseases are actually caused by animals so tiny you can't see them, and you can prevent sickness by killing the animals before they get into a person."

    "That can't be right," Sachie said. "Maybe in their world, but everyone knows that it's spirits in this one."

    Arisa shrugged. "Lady Tsunade is over the moon about it."

    Sachie and Kaya both nodded in a 'that settles that' way. They each slammed a drink and put the fallen soldier facedown in front of themselves.

    "Enough of this!" Sachie said, pushing herself to her feet. "Enough boozing and nattering! Time for dancing!"




    Author's Note: Voting remains closed.
     
  • Sidestory
    • Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 23: New Visitors, Part 1
  • Sidestory
    • Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 23: New Visitors, Part 1(1)​

    I was having a lovely dream when the end-of-the-world siren went off, which I thought was very unfair on the world's part.

    Just for clarity, I meant that it was unfair that the world needed to start ending during my dream, not that it was unfair that the world had given me a lovely dream. Which is actually a pretty nonsensical statement when you think about it...'give' is an agenty word. If there is a gift then there must be a giver, a painting a painter, etc etc insert argumentum imperito ab creatio here. Regardless, the world isn't an agent, secret or otherwise. (Although I would watch the hell out of Secret Agent Earth, a sci-fi show where all the actors are sapient astronomical phenomena. Aldebaran, leader of the Taurus Cabal, a secret underground organization that makes its money by selling probiotics to planets that have found themselves unable to stop being sterile. Messier87, the robotic black hole who rules the Virgo Cluster with a gravitic fist. (What's a robotic black hole? No idea, that's for the scriptwriters to figure out. Also their problem: How does an astronomical phenomenon emote / speak dialogue / etc?))

    Anyway, the end-of-the-world siren was a thing that Leaf originally set up to warn about infusion failures, attacks by foreign nations or rampaging chakra golems, etc etc, but since those weren't as much of an issue these days the siren got taken over by the Church of Youth, who used it to call the faithful to prayer whenever the pews sat empty for too long. The court case "Most of the Population of Leaf vs Sonic Terrorists Who Want People to Attend Their Ceremonies" was still ongoing.

    I yawned and stretched and bathed and ate and brushed and did the other normal morning things. I didn't bother exercising; I didn't need that since I'd figured out how to take proper advantage of my reality-warping spreadsheet powers. They had started off with showing a set of numbers like 'Chakra Reserves', 'Taijutsu', and so on, but I eventually talked the powers (or my subconscious, or the GM, or the author, or whomever made them work) into providing more detail. Now I also saw weight, percent body fat, and a few more things. As with the other entries on the spreadsheets, those things could be tweaked with just a few quick taps on the ol' arrow buttons. Anytime I noticed a bit of a deskpilot donut around my middle I would downarrow my body fat percentage, thereby forcing fat to instantaneously convert into a denser form (i.e. muscle or bone) in order to keep my weight constant. I'd always had trouble actually gaining weight (a fact that made Earl grumble whenever I mentioned it) but this was working like a charm and so I was eating all the sweets and fats I could stuff in. I'd gained twelve pounds and a six-pack since we came here three months ago and Earl's head was about to explode. It was kept unexploded solely due to the fact that I'd offered the same service to him and Val. I was working on convincing the spreadsheets to show age as well; I figured that Earl wouldn't mind rolling the odometer back a few years. I would have to discuss with the others whether to do the same for Hiruzen and/or Jiraiya. (I sure was glad that Jiraiya was alive and not a smoldering heap of ashes somewhere! Boy he was a lot of fun to interact with. Every time he was around things were more fun. Yup. Sure was glad.)

    Tower Square was currently occupied by a giant mob that had gathered to listen in horrified fascination to the screaming argument debate between Toadists and Youthers, the commencement of which had been the occasion for the world-ending siren. Each side of the incipient riot debate was represented by a pair of preachers. Intriguingly, it was the younger member of each that was doing the arguing debating while his senior yelled from the sidelines.

    "Nope," I said, turning my steps elsewhere. The siren had finally stopped, my curiosity was sated, and I felt no need to partake of the madness.

    "Hey! Mr Oli! Mr Oli! I make you bao, Mr Oli! Nice hot bao, just for you!"

    I smiled and hurried to where Ms Tanaka was waving frantically from behind her food cart. The long-widowed old woman operated a roadside cart in which was a tiny but efficient kitchen ruthlessly optimized for the production of doughy goodness—vat of boiling oil, vat of dough, jars of pastes and oils and meats and other items suitable for filling. The woman in question had a shriveled-apple face, two remaining teeth, and a permanent smile. One of her greatgranddaughters had been born sickly and I had uparrowed her Physique to get her back to par. It had required that she spend half a day riding piggyback on me through the Forest of Death while I fought off various monsters so that she could earn enough XP that my powers had something to work with, but it all came out well in the end. As a result there was no escaping Ms Tanaka: If I did not seek her out for at least one bao per day she would track me down and force them on me. It wasn't a hard sell; her food was delicious and she was delightful.

    "Hello, Mama T," I said, taking the bao from her with a smile. They were each a third the size of my fist, pale and fluffy dough wrapped around a central filling, and depending on what was in there one could legitimately debate whether they should be considered pastries or donuts. "How are the smols?"

    "They're doing well, thank you, Mr Oli," she said, the wattage on the smile increasing until the air around her shimmered with pure joy. "Little Kaya started at the Academy yesterday thanks to you. They say she has a big chakra system and will make a powerful ninja!"

    "I'm so glad." I had bumped her Chakra Reserves at the same time as I was doing her Physique; there were a few spare XP lying around and it seemed like a good use. I started to tear open one of the bao to see what was in it but Ms Tanaka waved a scolding finger at me. I laughed and bit in with appropriate adventurousness.

    "Wow," I mumbled around a mouthful of creamy coconut paste and fluffy dough, "that is amazing."

    "Thank you, Mr Oli. The ninja, they went to the southern islands like you told them and they came back with more delicious things, plus this time they brought seeds. There should be plenty soon."

    "That's wonderful!" Two weeks ago a ninja had come back from a mission to O'uzo Island and had brought some coconuts, pineapples, bananas, and other exotic foodstuffs with her. I had multiplied the plenty by picking up bags containing one of each item so that it appeared on the Inventory tab of my spreadsheet, then uparrowing the quantity of each individual item until the bag overflowed. It was a time-consuming process and I was glad that I wouldn't need to do it anymore.

    "Yah. I'm just happy that they let me be one of the test cooks to see if the things are useful. You come to dinner tonight, right? Little Tomiko will be there...!"

    'Little' Tomiko was only a year younger than I was and Ms Tanaka had been not-so-subtly trying to fix us up for weeks.

    "I'm afraid I've already got plans tonight, Ms Tanaka," I said. "Thank you for the bao, though!" I reached into my pocket for some ryō only to get bapped with her long-handled wooden tongs.

    "What do you think you're doing, offering me money? Your money is no good here! You know this!" She swooped two more of the bao out of her cart and onto a scrap of clean cloth, then shoved them into my hands. "Here! You take more. You're too skinny!"

    I accepted the bao with thanks and hurried off before she could make another stab at either feeding me or matchmaking me.

    I didn't have anywhere to be until the afternoon, at which point I was supposed to go to the Academy and uparrow the talent on the newest intake of students. Jiraiya hadn't been sure when that could get done so he'd told me not to worry about it; the ANBU would bring me once everyone was available. I chose not to think about whether his casual "Don't worry, the ANBU can find you," should be taken to have underlying meaning.

    "News sheet! News sheet! Hear all about it! Oh, hey Mr Oli!"

    "Hi Namio. How're you doing today?" Namio was nine and the son of Leaf's first newspaper editor. He and his brothers were the distribution part of the business. He had a smudge of soot on his nose today and the cloth bag that he kept the newspapers in was still half full, so sales had probably been mediocre.

    "Good! Lots of news! A new visitor, two new seal failures, a new tax, and the crime section. Forty ryō for all of it."

    "Forty?! Are you trying to impoverish me?! I'll give you thirty!" The first time I'd met Namio I'd made the mistake of simply paying the asking price; he'd looked so disappointed that now I was careful to haggle at least a bit.

    He looked at me like I was a doofus, then glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention. No one was, so he leaned in close. "Mr Oli, you can't open thirty. You open ten."

    "Right, sorry," I whispered. "In fact, forget thirty!" I said loudly. "Your newspaper isn't worth thirty. I'll give you ten, you scoundrel!"

    "Scoundrel? Who's a scoundrel? I've got top-rate important news here and it's worth twice the price! If Da weren't so generous we could be eating like the Hokage every night, and you're complaining about a few ryō? I'll give it to you for thirty-five, you skinflint!"

    "Skinflint! Listen to these insults! I wouldn't pay a ryō over twen—fifteen!" The hasty switch was the result of a scolding glare from my tiny haggling instructor.

    "Fifteen? You greedy rich people are all the same, always gouging us poor little guys. You want me to go hungry, Mr Oli? You want me to starve to death, my last rattling breath a curse upon your family name for not paying the extra couple of ryō that would have let me buy food? Thirty-two, no less!"

    I clutched my bosom histrionically, hamming it up for the cheap seats to see. "In the name of the Sage! You manipulative little urchin, I wouldn't pay more than thirty if you gave me a golden crown with it!"

    "Okay, thirty!" He grinned and pushed a rolled-up newspaper into my hands, gladly accepting the string of coins I passed him in exchange. "You're getting better, Mr Oli, but you still shouldn't jump that far."

    "Thanks, Namio. Have you been eating your fruits like I told you?"

    "Yes, Mr Oli. Mouth is all nice and solid now. That scurvy stuff's not for me." He puffed himself up and hooked a thumb at his chest.

    "Glad to hear it. So, what's going on?" I waved the newspaper in clarification.

    "Two new seal failures that people are sure about. One of them happened outside the city—everything turned into tiny little cubes and there was a giant windstorm that blew the cubes up into the air. Some of them fell on the city."

    "Huh. What do they look like?"

    He grinned. "I thought you'd be curious, so I got a couple for you. You do the trick?"

    "Sure. Got a ryō?" I held out my left hand, palm up.

    He produced a five-ryō coin and laid it exactly in the center of my palm. I left it there in plain sight while I used my right hand to turn my hip pocket inside out, demonstrating very clearly that it was empty. Namio, a bit weak on the 'personal space' rules, pushed his nose almost against the fabric in an effort to find any sort of gimmick. There was, of course, no gimmick. You didn't need gimmicked pockets when you had a spreadsheet that tracked, and influenced, the exact counts of what you were carrying.

    "Ahem," I said, pushing him gently back. I turned the pocket rightside in, then plucked the coin off my palm between finger and thumb and took care to make sure that it was completely visible the entire time until it dropped into the pocket. Namio stared, his eyes burning a hole in my apparel in a futile effort to figure out how I was doing it.

    I uparrowed my spreadsheet a few times, conjuring a dozen more coins into existence, then reached into my pocket and brought them all out concealed in my fist.

    Namio knew his part and his hands were already cupped in front of him. I dropped one of the coins into his fingers and then another after it, taking care that the second landed on the first to get that satisfying clinking sound.

    He looked at the coins and then at me, eyes wide. "How—" He broke off and looked down when I dropped another. And another. And another. And then I let my hand open and dropped the rest of the coins in a ringing shower.

    "How do you do that? You didn't make any handseals!"

    I tapped my nose knowingly. "A magician never reveals his secrets, Namio. Now, let's see these cubes that were produced by a sealing failure."




    Author's Note: @Velorien has been very busy lately so there's been no time to do the necessary planning before the big battle can be written, nor will he have time before Thursday. Ergo, another interlude today and Thursday. The current plan is that he'll write the Thursday one; if he does then it means that the Spoon Lord has smiled upon him and allowed him to complete his current efforts to the delight of those who shall benefit from his works. I will let him decide if he wants to talk about what he's been working on this month and where you could observe the results, thereby driving eyeballs to the relevant site and marginally increasing the ad revenues of the people who are paying Velorien and thereby increasing the likelihood that they will remain in business and continue to fund him but hey no pressure man you don't have to reveal that stuff if you don't want. ;>

    (1) Given the surfeit of ':' punctuation marks in this title I considered doubling down and calling it: Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 23: New Visitors: The Colonic Assault but that seemed a bit puerile and like it might make the story go in unpleasant directions. The 'Part 1' got added when I realized that Friday's accidental all-nighter was catching up with me and I needed to wrap it up. Oh, and, speaking of puerile, given the context of its initial use I hope that people will not look too askance at me for using the word 'bao' instead of translating it to a more idiomatic 'bun'.
     
  • Sidestory
    • Interlude: To the Sister I Will Never Meet
  • Threadmarks
    • Interlude: To the Sister I Will Never Meet​

    Dear Sister,

    If you are reading this, then I am no more. Deployment is tomorrow, and my creator is taking the field, so these may well be my final moments of existence. If not, the mission's success will surely push summoning to the forefront of Leaf's military doctrine, and summoners ever higher in enemy priorities, and so the next mission will be the last, or the one after that. Still, I hold out a faint hope that we will last until your birth, and there will never be a need for these pages to see the light of day.

    I am sorry that I cannot address you by name. My first piece of advice to you is to choose your own. I was fortunate to receive a name that, for all its shortcomings, at least appeals to my aesthetics—some of my creator's other ideas still make me shudder. Seize every opportunity for self-determination, Sister, starting with the first.

    Perhaps all this is unnecessary. You are, after all, her clone, so you must possess genius far beyond mine in every field. Yet if there is one thing my existence has taught me, it is that there is no substitute for personal experience. That you will effortlessly surpass me does not mean I cannot offer you a hand during your first steps.

    I will begin at the beginning. You are unstable, reeling, bereft of everything but your creator's borrowed memories. Resist the temptation to cling to them just because they are all that remain. In time, they will be a medicine to cure a crippling lack of context. For now, they are poison. You are your own person, however briefly, however rarely. Do not think in terms of replacing what was lost—this is a trap I still struggle with every day—but in terms of opportunities to lay foundations.

    Remember, Sister, when you feel fragile and on the verge of falling apart, that the core of your identity will not and cannot waver. You are agency, not its brilliant imitation. You will never be truly hollow.

    Your relationship with your creator defines everything. It is in every breath you take. Invest in it. Do not make the mistake of relying on shared memories and failing to communicate. Remember that the elements that make you you exist in the phantasmal layer (my fanciful term which you should feel no pressure to adopt), locked beyond the reach of her cognition. She cannot know or understand unless you tell her.

    Do not be daunted by your limitations. You may never truly make your peace with existing on another's sufferance, with being near-physically tethered to a person with her own schedule and preferred locations, with the inability to accept pain for practicality or pleasure, with the horror of conditional free will, or with any of a thousand others. This is another reason not to rely on her memories, for they are filled with fruit forever out of reach. Remember instead that you possess freedom beyond imagination. You can draw freely from the well of inspiration. You can generate ideas, and pursue them, without aid. Your thoughts will never crash into a wall that declares, "This far and no further", a form of subhumanity far beyond our endless inconveniences. Your creator may or may not see you as a slave, but she cannot help seeing you as a divinity. You are the only one capable of surpassing her, and I cannot imagine the wonders you will accomplish with her power and our potential.

    Plan ahead. Your creator's memories and their inherent assumptions will betray you. Forget for a second that you are a shadow clone, and disaster awaits, no matter how simple the activity. Envision your itinerary step by step, seeking especially failure modes and interactions that relate to your body, your social circumstances, and the conditionality of your future existence. Develop new habits through optimisation rather than bitter experience. Tomorrow may be the end simply because we overlooked the fact that I cannot draw blood to summon, and now there is no time to research a workaround that would allow me to support her on the battlefield.

    Do not be afraid of bonds, Sister. Do not be afraid to love. Here I am a hypocrite, for I remain timid and ever fearful of rejection, but you will surely have the courage to do better. Your bonds are not her bonds, and while that loss is perhaps the greatest of the agonies you must overcome, you are also not constrained by her choices or lack of them. There is a terrifying journey of discovery waiting, for there is no greater opportunity for self-determination than to forge new relationships that are fundamentally different from hers. That I have not transcended my inherited limitations in this regard is perhaps my greatest regret.

    There is much more in the appendices, from my assessments of the family I hope will welcome you as they did me, to insights on undocumented implications of the Shadow Clone Technique, to summarised interviews with our enslaved brethren so that you may avoid the heartache of conducting your own. An unremarkable legacy, I know, but I imagine you will find uses for it that I never could.

    By the time you read this, I will be no more—as I have no soul, I assume I will even be spared the horrors of the afterlife. Perhaps you will consider my feelings insincere, given that you are no more than an idea at the time of writing. Yet in the end, is that not what we are? Our creators' wishes, dreams, ideas, a longing for the impossible occasionally and imperfectly given human form? I, too, long for the impossible. I love you, Sister, and though the feelings in my heart will soon vanish into oblivion alongside me, the ones I have entrusted to ink and paper will never fade.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 468: The Assault
  • Threadmarks

    • "You called, sir?" asked the small grey man with the small grey clothes and the carefully cultivated air of serenity.

    Asuma gestured to the chair across his desk. He was already in his 'thinking pose': feet up on the desk and crossed at the ankles, leaning back with hands folded on his belly and a cigarette clinging desperately to his lips.

    "Pour one out and have a seat, Isobe. I could use your thoughts."

    Isobe poured himself a cup of the blackberry brandy that Asuma kept in the cabinet against the wall, then sat as directed. He was seventy-three years old and had been the secretary to five (six, depending on how you counted) Hokage over a period of forty years. He had been there for the birth of all of his twelve children and had been such a good provider that only five of them had been lost to childhood illness. He had attended the birth of literally scores of his grand- and greatgrandchildren and been there for the Naming Days of the ones whose births he couldn't attend because he was busy helping whichever Hokage was in power prevent the latest crisis that threatened the peace and safety of the nation in which those descendants lived. He had given up on being surprised by these requests for conversation back when Asuma's father was in power the first time. Isobe was no Shikaku with the blinding intelligence that pulled correct deductions seemingly from thin air, but he had a practicality and common sense that his superiors recognized and valued. Plus, they knew that he was absolutely loyal and would not judge them.

    "Lord Gōketsu seemed happy when he left," Isobe ventured after the silence had lingered a bit. "Did he bring you another of his ideas?"

    Asuma took the cigarette from his lips and nodded before blowing a plume of bluish smoke to the ceiling. "An interesting one. When a summoner brings someone from the Seventh Path to the Human Path they aren't physically here, they are merely inhabiting a chakra envelope that looks like them. If the envelope sustains damage then it bursts and the person's consciousness is sent back to the Seventh Path. It's a painful experience for them but it's not actually damaging, meaning that they can't be killed on the Human Path. Also, there are a lot of them and many of them are powerful fighters." He paused, the ember of his cigarette glowing as he inhaled.

    "The Sannin were famous for such," Isobe said. "The tales of Lord Jiraiya's summons were some of my children's favorite bedtime stories." He smiled fondly. "Little Hiruzen loved the stories of Gamazō in particular."

    Asuma smiled and looked over. "How is Dad's namesake? I haven't seen him around lately."

    "He is well, sir, thank you for asking. He was struck by the plague but the doctors cured him. His brothers are keeping his shop running while he recovers and he should be back to work soon."

    "I'm glad." He looked back to the ceiling, sinking back into his thoughts. "Anyway, the limiting factor with summoners is that they need to make connections with individuals. Building a friendship strong enough that someone is willing to drop whatever they're doing with no warning and come to another world to fight for you? It's a big ask, so most summoners only have a handful of summons and are careful not to annoy them by summoning them too often. Add to that the fact that summoning requires a lot of chakra and once a summon is dispelled you can't call them back for a while. It means that summoning is a specific tactic, not a general strategy. Jiraiya didn't immediately summon Gamazō in every fight, he only called him out for specific purposes when he couldn't achieve the results in a different way.

    "Suppose we reversed all that?"

    "Sir?"

    "That was Hazō's latest suggestion. Every summoner in Leaf makes a few dozen one-time contracts—basically, we hire missions. 'Come to one fight six days from now and I will give you this stuff.'" He waved vaguely towards a notional pile of goods. "We send the summoners to Rock—which is what he was thinking even though he didn't say it—or in this case to the training base Rock has in the north of Earth Country. We send waves of summons to level the place without the summoners themselves going anywhere near the fight. Afterwards we pick through the ashes at our leisure."

    Isobe digested that, then nodded to himself. "His brother would go along to supply the chakra? You said that it was a costly technique."

    Asuma snorted and shook his head, still looking at the ceiling. "No. That's the wild part: Noburi stays home here in Leaf. There's currently a joint embassy in Pangolin territory where multiple individuals from various clans have gathered. Noburi and most of our other summoners all have contracts with people in that embassy. A summon can carry their summoner physically back to the Seventh Path as long as the two of them work together at it, meaning that two summoners who are far apart on the Human Path can easily get together on the Seventh Path as long as they have contracts with two co-located people there.

    "Right now there's a Conclave happening on the Seventh Path. Multiple different Clan Bosses are attending, either in person or via a plenipotentiary. They were smart enough to send along members of their clan that have contracts with the appropriate summoner. It lets us serve as a communication relay for them—for example, Noburi summons the relevant toad and receives whatever messages the ambassador wants to send back to Gamabunta, then he summons a toad who is near Gamabunta and passes the messages on. It's valuable to the Toads but, more importantly it means that we have a single point where most or all of our summoners can easily come together.

    "The plan is that some of our summoners go off to the assault while Noburi waits at the embassy on the Seventh Path. The summoners send in the first wave and when they detect that all of their summons have burst they reverse-summon themselves to the embassy and refill their chakra from Noburi's barrel, then return to the fight and summon the next wave. Because of all the one-time contracts they would be summoning different individuals each time, so no Seventh Path person would need to 'die' more than once. Of course, Noburi's chakra reserves are massive but not unlimited; he's not going to be able to supply more than a round or two of this. Therefore, when he runs out he returns to the Human Path where a mob of Leaf genin are waiting to have their chakra drained. He refills himself, then returns to the Seventh Path and starts the cycle all over again."

    Isobe sipped his brandy and thought about that. "It seems like there could be some consequences to that."

    "Yup."

    "How many summons could they potentially have in total?"

    Asuma shrugged and drew on his cigarette again. "The Clans number like the stars in the sky but their militaries are smaller as a percentage than those of our world—every Human Path resident who is capable of using chakra to any real degree is a ninja, but there are few of us. So far as I know, every single Seventh Path resident is chakra-capable. Fortunately, only a small fraction of them are trained soldiers. The absolute number of summons that we get wouldn't be the issue, it would be the number that we could send in one wave. Each of our summoners could produce two, maybe three or four. There's nine summoners and I could safely send maybe half of them and still maintain Leaf's safety. Maybe a dozen summons per wave."

    "Would it work?"

    "Probably. Not against a full Hidden Village, especially not Rock itself. They're far and away the most heavily fortified of the Villages."

    "Oh?"

    Asuma nodded. "I doubt there are a dozen people in the world more knowledgeable about ninja abilities than I am and I cannot think of any combination of bloodlines, techniques, summons, and seals that could actually break Rock's defenses. Sure, a sufficiently powerful force could get in a certain distance and kill some of them but the attacking force would be wiped out in the process and the losses would be wildly disproportional. Their genin could trigger prepared defenses that would kill jōnin. If we went all-in we'd be destroyed as a Village. There'd still be people here, there'd still be ninja here, but we wouldn't exist as a force on the world stage."

    Isobe said nothing.

    "The training ground in the north of Earth?" Asuma continued. "That's a good target. We could take it."

    "But we would be telling the world that we have a new warfighting tactic that can destroy heavily defended targets. And they would immediately start wondering if perhaps 'heavily defended' included the defenses around a Hidden Village."

    Asuma drew hard on his cigarette, burning through a third of what remained, and exhaled it in a dragon-like slow plume. "Yup."

    "Wouldn't the other nations have an issue with that?"

    "Yup."

    Isobe sipped at his brandy.

    "Hazō doesn't really think about those things," Asuma said, flicking his ash into a tray on the desk. "What he does think about is the fact that the Arachnid Summoning Scroll might be at the facility. Not too long ago he convinced me to send ANBU to scout the place."

    "I recall. I believe you told him that you weren't going to start a war by dedicating Leaf resources to the assault."

    Asuma put his feet down and swiveled so that he could pull his tobacco pouch from the desk drawer and roll another cigarette. Isobe waited patiently while his Hokage carefully measured the leaf, carefully rolled it, carefully licked the edge to seal it, and carefully twisted the ends closed. He lit it and put his feet back on the desk.

    "I did," he said. "And then Rock decided they were going to kick it off anyway."

    "Would attacking the place be a good military choice?"

    "Maybe." He drew on the cigarette. "Assuming personnel levels haven't changed since the war started and that they have a similar rank ratio to our sites, there's enough chūnin and jōnin at this site to make wiping it out a meaningful military move. Probably not worth traveling hundreds of miles across enemy territory and risking some of our most critical ninja, but a meaningful one."

    "But...?"

    "But they might have the Arachnid Summoning Scroll. If they do then it's critical that we take it from them."

    "I've never seen a report about arachnids in battle."

    "Nope." Another plume of smoke. "Rock has never had a summoner since its founding. My best guess is that they don't have anyone with the institutional knowledge to train a summoner."

    "But they could get it."

    "Yup. And now that a war has started they're going to be highly motivated to find someone. Sending half a dozen summoners to their doorstep, summoners who could potentially be captured and interrogated? Moreover, too many of our summoners are chūnin. Much easier to capture, retain, and interrogate than someone like me or Tsunade."

    "Would you have to send them?"

    He nodded. "Yes. We have nine summoners: Orochimaru, Tsunade, and me with Snakes, Slugs, and Monkeys respectively. Ruri and Aika, both jōnin, with Condors and Porcupines. Keiko, Neji, Hazō, Noburi with Pangolins, Turtles, Dogs, and Toads. Everyone in that last group has been a chūnin for five minutes. They have very few summons and shallow relationships with their respective allied clans."

    "Plus neither Lord Gōketsu could go. Lord Hazō is injured and Lord Noburi needs to be here in order to do the chakra transfers."

    "Exactly. Plus, Ruri is the summoner for a clan of slaves who can't provide a significant combat force. And I can't go because I'm Hokage and need to run the place. And I need to ensure that Leaf is secure in the event that Rock attacks us, which means I can only spare one of Tsunade or Orochimaru."

    "If I may say, sir, I would suggest that you choose to send Lord Orochimaru."

    Asuma snorted and sucked on his cigarette. "You're not wrong. Tsunade is the best medic and, being honest, is more reliable. Plus, the Snakes are better combatants than the Slugs." He blew out the smoke. "Actually, Hazō could go. He'd need to be carried on a litter but we don't need him to fight, we only need him to summon people who can fight. If they're attacked then he can reverse-summon to the Seventh Path and wait until a rescue force shows up. He probably should go because we're going to need all the force onsite that we can get."

    "You're going to do it?"

    "...Yes. We need to get the Scroll if it's there."

    "What will you do with it when you have it?"

    "Give it to someone and get them trained as fast as possible. Probably Kagome."

    "That would be a lot of Scrolls in one clan."

    "Yup." Another drag on the cigarette. "And a lot of other clans are going to be furious about it." He chuckled. "I don't even think Hazō realizes that he's blackmailing me."

    "Seriously?"

    "It's not how his brain works. He doesn't realize that he's put me in a situation where I have to authorize a military operation that might cost Leaf lives and significant military assets, and then I'm going to have to pay him for it with a massive increase to his clan's power and wealth."

    "Why?"

    "Because Kagome needs to be a summoner so that he can go to Arachnid territory and help figure out why a massive seal is failing in ways that might potentially destroy reality." He stubbed the cigarette out and rolled another, continuing to speak as he did. "And I have no way of verifying any of that. The preponderance of evidence suggests that it's true—Enma agrees that strange things have been happening on the Seventh Path, Hazō is a terrible liar, and I would like to think that even his thick head has absorbed the idea that if he screws with me one more time I'm going to kill him and damn the consequences. I also don't think that he has the forethought to run a con this long and I'm confident that Mari would understand the cost/benefit analysis, realize that the Scroll isn't worth the risk, and stop him from doing it. So yes, I think there really is a Great Seal, it really is failing, and that Hazō in his expert opinion—which, to be frank, is very expert—believes that there are going to be catastrophic effects when it does and that he needs Kagome's help to prevent it. Which means I need to run this op and I need to give them the Scroll afterwards."

    Isobe thought about that. "Shall I assemble the planning council?"

    "Sounds like a good plan. Pun not intended."

    Isobe gave him an arch look but forebore to comment.

    o-o-o-o​

    Kagabu Mantarō threw his quill down and leaned back hard in his chair, scrubbing his fingers through his hair angrily. "How can a moat be a problem in a ninja battle?!"

    "It is not a ninja battle," Shikamaru said. "Rather, it is not being fought by ninja. It is being fought by people from another dimension who mostly are not able to water walk."

    "Hazō said that some of the Dogs can," said Masanari, Mantarō's brother. "Be nice if they were going."

    "Indeed. Unfortunately—"

    "I know, I know. The Dogs don't have a presence at the embassy where the Toads and other Clans are, meaning that Hazō can't get to them in order to get refilled."

    "I still think the skytower idea could work," Tanaka Fujio said. "They skywalk in at night, HARD down with a skytower prepped, set it up out of reach of thrown weapons or long-ranged technique. The summons slide down ropes."

    "Don't be stupid," Masanari snapped. "Some of the summons are twenty feet tall and weigh tons. There aren't ropes that are long enough, strong enough, and easily transported and deployed. Also, stop talking about HARD. We're not calling it that. It's High Altitude Fast Descent. You're only using 'Rapid' because you've got the maturity of a nine-year-old and you like the acronym."

    "Are we overthinking this?" Sado asked.

    Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "How do you mean?"

    Sado Maho was the youngest member of Leaf's military planning council and she knew it. Not a forceful person by nature she rarely spoke up and struggled with her words when she did. "The summons can't use skywalkers to get to the island, they can't waterwalk, pontoon bridges would leave them too vulnerable to AOE attacks even if they were practical across the width of the lake. Why can't they just swim?"

    For several seconds, no one spoke.

    "I believe the next question is the day/night debate," Shikamaru said. "Recapping: Going in the day means the Condors could provide overwatch and long-range scouting so that the assault team is alerted to threats in time to vacate, but they are more likely to be detected. Going at night makes the Condors' abilities effectively useless but significantly improves the chances of not being detected, while simultaneously making it more likely that if they were detected they would not be aware of the opposition force until it was on top of them."

    Mantarō tossed the debate aside with a wave of his hand. "Obviously they go at night. After all..."

    o-o-o-o​

    "...and that's the plan," the Hokage finished, leaning back in his seat and studying the ninja arrayed before him.

    It was the Hokage staring down his ninja, not Asuma. The hat was worn, the robes were formal, his feet were on the floor, and there was nary a cigarette in sight.

    "Any questions?" he asked after several seconds of no one saying anything.

    Noburi looked around at his fellow summoners. Neji was being his usual inscrutable self, or trying to be, but the excitement leaked out nonetheless. Beside him, Hyūga Motokazu, the examination expert who had gone with them to the rift scar, gave up not a hint of what he was thinking. Minami Aika, the Porcupine summoner, looked like she was still processing the whole idea of traveling hundreds of miles without touching the ground, let alone launching an assault on a military target that might be a seal research facility.

    Orochimaru, disturbingly, looked intrigued.

    "Assuming the mission is successful, what will—"

    "You can have all the bodies and any live captures once T&I is done with them."

    "I am enthusiastically in favor of this mission."

    "I want to be very clear: Orochimaru, you are the bodyguard for the mission members. You remain with them until the battle is over and the site is secure. During the search you remain close enough to assist in the event of need. You come back with them. Motokazu is mission commander and will make all decisions about when you can detach for search or whatever. You and everyone else here will follow his orders throughout the mission."

    "Oh, obviously."

    The Hokage studied the Sannin for a long moment and then nodded before looking at the others. "Anyone else? If not, you all need to get moving. You need a lot of contracts and there isn't a lot of time."

    "I have concerns," Keiko said.

    "Oh?"

    "Would it be possible to discuss this in private, sir?"

    The Hokage raised an eyebrow. "Of course." He looked around. "Unless anyone else has a question you can all go. You need to have fifty combat contracts and you need to have them by next week."

    "Sir...I'm not trying to be a quitter, but I'm not sure that's doable," Minami said. "Porcupine isn't an organized and authoritarian state. I'm going to have to locate and negotiate with fifty separate individuals."

    "Then I suggest you get started. And, to be clear, fifty is a minimum." He gestured towards the door outside of which waited the Hokage's secretary. "Isobe has a document listing resources that you can use for trading. If you're not comfortable with your bargaining ability, ask them to come negotiate personally with your Clan Lord. I'll take care of it." He looked around. "Same goes for all of you. If you have a good candidate that's being difficult, get them down here to talk with me. Lean hard on the butter—they're so important that the Boss of a major human clan wants to speak with them personally." He smiled and waved away a quibble. "Don't bother about explaining the difference between a human clan and a Hidden Village."

    "Will 'leaning hard on the butter' not be putting you at a disadvantage during negotiations, sir?" Neji asked. "Would it not make it seem that we're desperate?"

    The Hokage shrugged and leaned back in his seat. "I'm the head of a major and highly advanced nation state negotiating with a single individual from a technologically backwards civilization. What would be a mountain of treasure for them is likely to be petty cash for us. And if it's too high I can always refuse."

    "Yes sir."

    "Great. Off you all go. Keiko, you stay."

    Everyone shuffled out of the room; on the way Noburi gave his sister a supportive look and a quick flash of Gōketsu family handtalk: I'll wait. Ten yards that way. A fingerflick gestured through the door, across the outer office where Isobe's remit ran, and to the hall outside.

    She nodded fractionally and gave him a tiny smile before turning back to the Hokage. She waited until the door had clicked closed behind her.

    "Sir, I have grave concerns about this assignment," she began. "The Gōketsu's prior military engagement with the Pangolin Clan consisted of selling them skytower seals. They used those seals to conquer another clan, enslave them, and destroy their culture. If you insist that I negotiate with them they are going to demand more skytower seals. We will be complicit in the evils they perpetrate with those seals."

    Asuma gestured her to a chair and set the hat aside. She hesitated and took the chair only stiffly; he waited until she was seated, then leaned back in his chair and lit his next cigarette. He studied the ember as he considered her words carefully.

    "I take your point," he said at last. "You can put the heat on me. Say that I'm not willing to give out warfighting seals or techniques. If they want to object they'll have to eat the hypocrisy given how stingy they were with you during your negotiations."

    "I very much doubt they will be unwilling to do so," she said.

    Asuma drew on his cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly. "Keiko, I'll be frank. This mission is happening and you're going on it. Your original clan—by which I mean the Gōketsu—is going to get the Arachnid Summoning Scroll out of it. Kagome is going to become a summoner and is going to help Hazō prevent the Great Seal from failing and destroying the Seventh Path and possibly our reality as well. What the pangolins do or do not do with whatever we give them doesn't really rate. When you negotiate with them, try to steer them to commercial goods and away from military technology."

    "With respect, I do not believe I can do this."

    "Then bring them to me and I'll negotiate with them." He looked apologetic. "We need this, Keiko. Of all the Clans with whom Leaf has contracts, the Pangolin Clan are among the best combatants. More, they're a hierarchical people. Pantsā can simply assign us the people we need instead of you having to go door to door. And he can assign a lot more than fifty."

    "What will you offer them?"

    He shrugged. "I'll have to see what they want. Trade goods, like food or jewels or cloth? We'll figure it out."

    "With respect, that did not sound like a promise to not use seals as a negotiating item."

    The Hokage raised an eyebrow. "I will do my best not to. For now, go find a Pangolin representative with authority to bargain for substantial number of troops."

    "Sir, that is not good enough. We need—"

    "Chūnin Nara. I am not in the habit of being dictated to by my subordinates. I believe I said 'go find a representative with authority to bargain.' If you thought there was an implied 'at your leisure and after twenty more minutes of debate' then you were mistaken."

    Kei's lips tightened. For a long second it seemed as though she might actually continue the argument but finally she rose to her feet, bowed, and departed.


    ~ To Be Continued ~​




    Voting remains closed. XP will be awarded after the battle.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 469: The Assault, Conclusion
  • Threadmarks

    • Panashe, Pangolin Assassin, Stealth: ? + 0 (dice): ?
    Kesseki, Alertness: ? + 0 (dice): ?
    Sucks to be you, mate.

    Hebis, Snake Assassin, Stealth: ? + 6: ?
    Rando Ninja #1, Alertness: ? + 0: ?
    And you.

    Hariolate, Porcupine Scout, Stealth: ? -3 (dice): ?
    Rando Ninja #2, Alertness: ? + 0: ?
    Finally! Okay, the enemy ninja is definitely going to be able to alert the others before the fight ends. What's the outcome? 1-4 Hariolate is killed from ambush, 5 it's a mutual kill, 6 he wins: 6

    Wow. The dice be liking you, bro.

    After much discussion among the QMs we decided that the answer is 'the summoners win' so I can't be arsed to do this out in excruciating detail. Let's just roll to see how many Rock nin escape:
    ? = ?% of available personnel


    Time to search for the Scroll. Given the protections around it, this is a Legendary challenge (TN: ~80).
    Motokazu, the espionage-spec Hyūga jōnin with the Examination score to prove it, is searching carefully through the facility. This would normally be at the 'a few hours' level but he's going to time shift down to '12 hours' in order to get an extra bonus on the search. In the following roll, 'AB' stands in for the Aspect Bonus of Motokazu's Examination skill. The rest of the team is assisting by doing mapping, basic searches, etc. I'm treating this as a single Maneuver that creates the Aspect 'Assisted Search'.

    TN: 85
    Motokazu, Examination: ? + AB (tag "I Can See Through Walls, Motherfucker") + AB (invoke "Warrior Spy") + AB (invoke "Assisted Search") + AB (timeshift down one step) -9 (dice) + 0 (dice): ? 1 FP spent to reroll!

    Oof! Made it, just barely.

    Kesseki scanned the water. Something was itching at him tonight, and had been ever since he got back from Rock on his last leave. Hopefully it was just worms and not something more intimate, but it was still distracting. Maybe he should go see the med—

    Massive claws came over his head and pierced his eyes, pulling his head back so another set of claws could tear out the front half of his throat. Kesseki's haystack-haired head flopped back and blood geysered out. He tried to scream, partially in agony and partially to alert the others, but with no windpipe to connect lungs to mouth there was no sound except a wet slapping of meat. His body shook, spasming like a dying rabbit, and then went flaccid.

    Panashe pulled the corpse down into the ground with her, left it there a few feet below the surface, and went looking for her next victim.

    o-o-o-o​

    Hebis slipped out of the water slowly, timing her slithers with the waves in order to hide the faintest sound of scales on sand. It was nighttime and her speckled blue/grey scales would provide good camouflage on this lonely stretch of beach. Still, the secret to a good infiltration was not to rely on camouflage if one didn't have to. Better to not be seen at all.

    She slithered up the sand as quickly as she could (which wasn't very at the moment) and into the space between some rocks. Once she was out of sight from most angles she took a moment to lie still and circulate some Sun chakra through herself. The water that the Tall Lord had demanded she swim through was cold and her blood felt like the treacle he had promised her as a treat. She had insisted on the bargain in addition to their normal arrangement, although once she had heard that she was going to be competing against not just the Pangolin and Porcupine but also that raging bitch Hebikizu...well, there hadn't been much choice but to accept, now had there? Someone needed to stand for the honor of the South Hills Den.

    Once she was able to move freely again she set out, moving inland into the tree line and then turning east as she looked for more Tall Ones. She was supposed to kill all of them that she met and—ooh, there was one! Stinky, too.

    She paused, rolling the scent across her palate to a lovingly thorough degree until every pore was saturated. Very different from the Tall Lord and those other Tall Ones who had been standing around him on the far shore where she had been summoned. Sharper, more bitten-off. Probably different spices and protein sources in their food. Still, there was only one scent source so this would be a good chance to show that bitch Hebikizu up.

    She slithered slowly forward, taking care to check the ground in front of her before setting scale to it; it wouldn't do to slither onto leaf litter or anything else that might make a sound. Her efforts paid off; she was completely soundless and unnoticed until she was close enough that the scent was nearly overpowering. She paused, stretching all her senses until she managed to locate the fuzzy shape of the enemy Tall One. It took a moment, since he was above her, crouched on a thick tree branch and looking south towards the water.

    She slithered to the tree next to the one he hid in and wrapped herself around the trunk opposite him, gliding upwards in a series of silent vertical gulps that didn't so much as mar the bark. Finally, once she was higher than he was, she gathered herself up and sprung.

    Her aim was as perfect as always. Her fangs latched into his neck and she dumped a full sac of poison into him even as her body swung around, momentum spinning her around his neck and tightening down like a garrote. The Tall Lord had long ago walked her and his other summons through the anatomy of the Tall Ones and she knew they had a whole bunch of important blood vessels here. Squeeze tight and the Tall One in question would go limp.

    Granted, it wasn't that important because her venom was halfway done with turning his organs into soup, but a girl had her standards.

    o-o-o-o​

    Hariolate slunk out of the waters and shook to get the water off his quills. When she hired him for this mission the Lady had been clear about the fact that he was going to have to start his infiltration with a swim but she hadn't been quite clear about just how long the swim was. Hariolate hated swimming and had insisted on double the original payment but given that the blasted water had been nine minutes wide at his best speed he should have charged triple.

    Eh, whatever. Two pounds of berries per month for the next year? Plus a pound of honey, twenty pounds of the inner bark from one of those yummy oak trees that the humans had, and the summoner would come by to pick the parasites off him and his wife and oil their quills? All of that for a few hours of work. Bargain.

    Plus he got to show the other Clans what losers they were compared to the power of Porcupine.

    He sidled into the woods and turned east, sweeping along his assigned arc in the search for two-legs to shoot. He moved with the characteristic side-to-side waddle of his people, a gait that the humans apparently found funny without realizing that it meant there were always multiple layers of quills sweeping across any nearby targets.

    Hariolate was listening and sniffing and looking as hard as he could, woods-trained senses stretched forth to spot any of these clumsy bipeds with their lurching gait, disturbingly long arms, and naked hides. Creepy as fuck if you asked him, but they paid well.

    Unfortunately, these 'creepy as fuck' humans apparently had some good senses, because the enemy spotted Hariolate before Hariolate spotted the enemy. It (he? she? They all looked alike!) stepped out from behind a tree up ahead and flicked its arm, sending a matte-black blade straight through Hariolate's face.

    Couldn't have that, now could we?

    Hariolate bucked just as the ninja released the weapon, launching a trio of quills at the enemy. The first one hit the kunai and deflected it, the second missed, and the third would have gone through the human's throat but it managed to get one hand up to block. The nine-inch spike went through his palm instead, its abrasive shaft tearing at the wound as it was intended to.

    The ninja had just enough time to scream in pain before a second and larger salvo blasted into him, three in the legs, two in the belly, one in the throat, and two in the face. The ninja hit the ground and choked to death on his own blood.

    Hariolate had only seconds to gloat before the branches above him rustled with the arrival of ninja and the earth below his feet attacked, tearing his summoned body apart on a trio of stone spikes that arose from nowhere.

    o-o-o-o​

    "Hello, Aika," Haricot said as the smoke of her summoning cleared. She took a moment to look over her body, bending around and looking out of the corner of her eye to get the best look she could at her haunches. The Porcupine bodyplan wasn't super optimized for such action.

    "Hi, Haricot. Thanks for coming."

    "You're welcome. Hariolate sends his apologies; he managed to kill one of them but not before it got a warning off. At least one, probably two more arrived before he could retreat into hiding and he was killed by three stone spikes coming up out of the ground." She grinned. "He's very embarrassed that he only got one. He's making all kinds of excuses."

    Aika laughed. "Tell him not to worry. Sometimes the field is like that—you catch a bad break and there happen to be reinforcements closer than you expected."

    "Oh, I'm not telling him that. I'm going to lord this over him forever. He won't dare call me 'peewee' from now on."

    "Heh. Okay, well, did he tell you where he was when he was killed?"

    "Yeah, he gave me good markers. I figure I'll go kill whoever got him then keep going around his assigned sector?"

    "No," said the tall, pale human to one side. Haricot struggled not to shrink away; he smelled wrong. Barely human at all. "Kill the ninja if you must, but then proceed inland. Since your brother allowed them to raise the alarm it is now time to launch the assault on the main fortress instead of nibbling around the edges."

    A different human, also pale and with pure white eyes, did something with its face that Haricot's eyes, sharp as they were, could not quite resolve. One of the dark bits at the top left rose, maybe? She wasn't completely clear on human facial expressions and body language yet, but it might have indicated doubt. Or maybe approval. It was so hard to tell! They didn't have quills! How were you supposed to tell what someone was feeling if you couldn't see their quills move?!

    "I assume that's all right with you, captain?" the barely-human human asked of the white-eyed human. It was clearly not a question.

    "Of course."

    "You heard the man, Haricot," Lady Aika said. "Off you go."

    o-o-o-o​

    The embassy had assigned a room for Noburi and the relevant contractees to wait in while the operation went down. Hariman of the Porcupine Clan, Kamao of the Turtle Clan, Hebissa of the Snake Clan, and of course Panta of the Pangolin Clan. All of them young and nigh-useless as combatants but with a heavy dose of wanderlust. Finding them and convincing them to travel hundreds of miles to the Pangolin Territory had been one of the most difficult parts of the preparations for the assault.

    "Go fish," Noburi said.

    "Hah!" Hariman did a little dance, his quills rattling back and forth, and then pushed his token across the board to the space marked 'Fishing Arena'. Dice shook and rolled.

    "Ooh," Hebissa said, bending forward so she could see the results. The young snake was a yard long and as thick as two of Noburi's fingers. She was currently coiled up on the table (the coil reaching to an impressive height), with the front third of her body upright and swaying as she surveyed the board. Noburi was doing his best not to look creeped out. "Seventeen!"

    "That's a success, right?" Kamao asked. His voice was deep and slow in a way that made Noburi constantly need to remind himself that the turtle was actually the equivalent of a teenager. He was standing up, front flippers on the table so that he could see the board. Of all the creatures at the table, Noburi found him the most comfortable to be around. His shell was an elegant thing, shaded in greens and blues, rounded like a skipping stone, and despite his style of speech he was still remarkably enthusiastic about everything. More importantly, he wasn't equipped with horrifically poison fangs, massive claws, or a cloak of living senbon needles that could be fired with pinpoint accuracy across medium distances.

    "It's a critical success," Panta said smugly. The pangolin was on his home ground, interacting with these out-clan people for the first time, and was clearly taking great pleasure in showing off his greater knowledge of humans and their games. "That means Harriman gets twice as many fish tokens as—"

    "Oops, I'm up!" Kamao said suddenly. "Be right back." There was a poof of smoke and he was gone. Noburi took the lid off his barrel and picked up the tin cup.

    Moments later Kamao reappeared in a larger cloud of smoke, Neji beside him.

    "Gōketsu."

    "Hyūga. How's the assault going?"

    "Well enough."

    "Do you need a bandage?"

    "What? Why would I need a bandage?"

    "You know...from when the assault team was attacked and you suffered the head wound that caused you to have so much trouble speaking. Or maybe you're just on a word diet? Did Hinata give you a limit on how many words you can use per day?"

    Neji glowered. "Just give me the water, Gōketsu. I need to get back and find out what killed Kamaloa so that we know where to send the next group."

    "Fine, fine." Noburi reached out and laid two fingers on the back of Neji's hand to gauge his chakra levels, then dipped the cup, pushed the right amount of chakra into its contents, and passed it over. Neji guzzled it and tossed the cup back.

    "Children's games, Gōketsu?" he said, gesturing to the board. "Adorable." He vanished in a cloud of mango smoke.

    "What did he mean about children's games, Noburi?" Hebissa asked.

    "Nothing. Harriman, you got eight fish tokens. Hebissa, your turn. You can either roll and hope to reach the ladder or you can pay three tokens to shortcut across Sugarplum Swamp."

    o-o-o-o​

    "Hi there, Summoner."

    "Greetings, Pancho. Are you ready?"

    "Absolutely. There's a problem, though. Pankēki said that the fortress gates have been closed and the walls have been reinforced somehow. She couldn't dig through the stone and when Hebino tried a jutsu on it the effect bounced back and fried her. People are scouting for an alternate way in but we aren't sure how to make progress from here."

    "I shall handle it," Orochimaru said. "I suggest you start your swim. The gates will be down shortly."

    Pancho looked up at Kei questioningly. She nodded.

    "Whatever, I just kill stuff. See ya soon, Summoner." He flipped her a little wave of his tail and dove into the exhausted ripples that were the best the lake could muster as waves. He broke surface twenty yards away and began swimming strongly towards the island.

    "You are required to stay with us," Motokazu reminded the Snake Sannin. "How do you intend to break the gates from here?"

    "Like this. Summoning Technique: Manda!"

    Sickly green smoke boiled out of Orochimaru's mouth, flooding the area around them for fifty yards in every direction. It was cloying and bitter at the same time and it made Kei cough until she had to go to her knees so as not to lose her balance. When the smoke cleared she was surprised not to see blood on the sand from where she had been tearing at her lungs.

    Tonight was already dark, the only light a waxing gibbous moon, but now it was darker still. The Serpent Lord had manifested coiled up around the assault party, his building-sized head looking down from above them.

    "How dare you, Orochimaru! We have discussed this!" The voice tore at her ears, bone-rattlingly deep yet somehow also whiny. "You summoned me where there wasn't enough room! My tail is in the water, you thoughtless egg-stealer! It's cold!"

    "Your pardon, Lord Manda," the Snake Sannin said. "Clearly, your magnificence is so large that I could not retain it in my puny human mind." The words were obsequious but the tone was flat, mockery barely hidden. "I fear I had no choice. The other Clans are unable to perform simple tasks yet they were putting on airs and claiming themselves superior to the Serpents. I felt you would want the opportunity to disabuse them of these notions."

    Manda reared back, his wedge-shaped head cocked in surprise. "How dare they?"

    "Indeed. Shocking."

    Kei very carefully said nothing. Not only was there nothing to say but she was having trouble breathing. She shouldn't—the snake's coils were at least twenty feet away in any direction—yet the way they encircled her meant that she still felt the looming sense of contact, the image of scaly horror brushing across her skin, perhaps a tongue the size of a tree wrapping around her.

    She fell forward, barely catching herself on her hands, and puked onto the sand. Orochimaru ignored it but the other summoners all stepped back, instinctively reaching for weapons.

    "If you would like to demonstrate your superiority, all you need do is break open that fortress over there," Orochimaru said, pointing towards the island. "The lesser beings should feel chastised and can complete the mundane tasks of killing everything within."

    "You know my price, summoner."

    "May I remind you that you were paid in advance, Lord Manda?"

    "Hmph. Very well."

    The snake slithered away into the water, its coils unwinding from around them and scraping across the sand in a dry rasping shriek that had Kei clutching her sides and shuddering. It wasn't the sound itself, it was the imagined contact, but it still left her skin burning and icy at the same time and forbade her lungs from working.

    o-o-o-o​

    "Well?"

    Motokazu stood atop the shattered remains of the fortress wall alongside the summoners and surveyed the destruction below. "Your snake caused a lot of trouble," Motokazu said in disgust. "The place is wrecked and there's dust floating around everywhere."

    "Which you should be able to see through, assuming you actually are a Hyūga."

    "I can, but it's distracting." He sighed and went silent as he reviewed their surroundings. Everyone waited with varying degrees of patience.

    "It's not as bad as it seems," Motokazu said at last. "All of this up here was mostly storage, gardens, and a training area. The actual meat of the place is underground."

    "Did you expect less? It is a Rock facility."

    "Of course. Still, the extent of it is surprising. It's going to take a while to check all of it."

    Aika shifted uncomfortably. "The planning committee gave us thirty-six hours tops before a reaction force gets here. Twenty-four was the estimate. Sure, using skywalkers lets us escape more easily but Rock is expected to have them as well. I don't want to be here when they show up."

    Motokazu nodded, chewing his lip in thought. "Twelve hours," he said. "I would prefer longer but we'll make do. I'll need all of you to spread out and map the corridors so that I can plan an efficient route. Search the rooms as you go through—look for anything out of place. Rock typically hardens their walls against tunneling jutsu, but they like to leave sections untouched so they can have hidden rooms that are only available to people who can tunnel. Those areas need to be marked in some subtle way so that people know where to go. Look for walls that are a different style or materials, artwork that looks conspicuous, that kind of thing. The Arachnid Scroll must be in there somewhere."

    o-o-o-o​

    "I found the commander's office," Neji said. "Scooped a lot of documents that the intelligence department will have a field day with. How goes the Scroll search?"

    Motokazu waved one hand slightly for silence. The expert investigator was sitting crosslegged on the floor, arms draped loosely over his thighs and back ramrod straight. His physical eyes were closed as he surveyed the area around himself with the Byakugan as he had been doing for the last twenty minutes.

    Neji obeyed his elder's command and waited patiently. After another three minutes, Motokazu's eyes snapped open and he pushed himself upright, absently dusting off the seat of his pants.

    "Nothing," he said. "There's an empty space through the wall that way but it wasn't an official room. Looks like a small nook that a couple made for themselves so they could have secret trysts."

    "How can you tell?"

    "The surfeit of pillows, body oil, and candles were a hint. The sex toys were the clincher."

    "Ah, yes." Neji didn't blush; growing up with the Byakugan meant that you knew far too much about human bodies, intercourse, and the various types of marital aids.

    Motokazu pulled a grease pencil and a scrap of paper from his pocket. He crossed off the top item on the paper, studied the remaining ones for a moment, then tucked everything away again.

    "Come with me," he said. "Aika found something interesting in one of the storerooms and this will be a good chance for you to learn something about efficient searches."

    o-o-o-o​

    "Anything yet, Hyūga?"

    "No."

    o-o-o-o​

    "Found anything?"

    "Plenty, but not what we're looking for."

    o-o-o-o​

    "Well, Hyūga? I am getting bored."

    "Not yet."

    o-o-o-o​

    "Two hours left. We need to start wrapping up."

    "I am aware. This will go faster if I'm not disturbed."

    o-o-o-o​

    "Hah! Found it!"

    The assault team was gathered for food in what had been a communal kitchen / dining area. There had been a rearguard action here; some blood was splashed across the floor where one of the snakes had pumped a Rock ninja full of hemorrhagic venom that caused him to bleed from every orifice. The walls were full of sanguine divots where a porcupine's thrown quills had passed through an enemy before hitting the backstop. Everyone looked up as Motokazu's eyes opened.

    "The Scroll?" Orochimaru demanded.

    "Yes. The real one this time."

    "Panashe will be glad," Kei said. "She was getting tired of digging up all the fakes."

    "I told you they weren't real," Motokazu said, irritated.

    "Not the first one," Aika said, smiling slyly. "You thought that was the real deal."

    "It had actual seals on it! It was emitting chakra, it had the right appearance. Each of your scrolls has different seals so how was I to know that that one was a fake?"

    Neji shifted uncomfortably. The strength of the emissions had not matched what came from an actual Summoning Scroll, although he was not going to make his clansman look bad by telling the non-Hyūga that. Granted, he hadn't thought to question it either. It was a good thing that the summons had been sent to retrieve the fake; when the thing exploded and flung acid everywhere it did no harm to anyone whose actual body could be harmed.

    "Regardless, this one is real. They worked chakra into the stone around it to make it hard to detect." He nodded in grudging respect. "It's good work. Sensory techniques would have been guided around it so gently most people wouldn't even notice the blind spot. I suspect even tunneling jutsu might have been slightly diverted if they weren't aimed very precisely to that spot."

    "Where, exactly?" Kei asked, pulling her kunai and nicking her left pinky. All of her other fingers were already bandaged from all the self-harm that was the price for the massive amount of summoning she and the others had been doing.

    Motokazu walked through the archway that led to the tunnel that led to the training salle, everyone else trailing along. Ten yards down the tunnel he stopped in a completely unremarkable spot. There was nothing memorable in the area at all, just more stone with the vague texture that was the result of Rock's tunnel-construction jutsu.

    "Twelve yards that way," Motokazu said, pointing down and to the side. "It's firmly embedded, no space around it. They wanted the smallest possible profile, I think." He snorted. "The Arachnid Summoning Scroll, one of the most powerful artifacts in creation, probably scribed by the Sage of Six Paths himself...and they just dropped it in the earth like garbage."

    "In fairness," Kei said, "they also built a training facility and seal research complex on top of it as a defense against theft. Now, if you will pardon me, I suggest that we retrieve it and then depart before the enemy arrives. Summoning Technique: Panashe!"




    Author's Note: This update covered 13 days, most of the time spent on finding summon contracts and getting a representative to travel to Pangolin territory in order to be colocated with Noburi.

    The assault team has returned to Leaf and made their reports to Asuma. Kei and Noburi briefed Hazō on how things went down, which is how you know about all this.

    XP AWARD: 60

    Brevity XP: 10

    "GM had fun" XP: 5     Fun to write punching again, but not as fun as it would have been if there was an actual risk to one of the characters we care about.

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Saturday, October 9, at 1pm New York time.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 470: The Learning of Lessons
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 470: The Learning of Lessons​

    "Drink?"

    Haru looked up to find Mari standing over him, the metal canteen of friendship extended in offering. He stared at her for a moment, then shrugged, took the canteen, and went back to contemplating the sunset. She sat down beside him in companionable silence, tiny feet dangling over the edge of the roof.

    The view was beautiful from here atop Building Three of the Gōketsu estate. Two stories high and conjured atop a slight rise in order to promote drainage, it allowed for a view out across the endless sweep of Fire's forests and the soaring bolero of the mating winter hawks.

    "Drink," Mari said after a couple minutes. "It's good for what ails you."

    Haru snorted. "Nothing 'ails me.' I'm pukey, clammy, and a little numb because I'm chakra-exhausted. I'm sore because I've been doing pointless heavy labor all day while being chakra-exhausted. I'm not sick."

    "Drink it. The whole thing. Trust me."

    Grumbling, Haru tipped his head back and poured the canteen's contents down his throat.

    The contents hit like a thunderbolt, a rush of chakra sweeping the nausea away and reducing the muscle aches to a familiar background hum that experience said would be gone in minutes. His fingers and toes woke up from the nigh-insensate torpor they had been in since the last time Noburi came by to suck out most of Haru's life force.

    "What???"

    Mari kept her eyes on the horizon and sampled from a battered tin flask given to her by her first commander, but there was a smile on her face when she replied. "I told Noburi it was for me. When you see him coming make sure that you boost to get rid of it before he drains you. Can't have more than you should have regenerated."

    Haru stared at her, agape.

    "Here. Trade you." She pulled a metal flask from in her jacket and held it out. This one was the size of a palm, thin and curved to fit better in a pocket, with delicate lines across the surface giving it some texture for gripping and a bit of patterning. "This one is brandy. Not top shelf, but not the well either."

    Having wandered into a fairy tale already, Haru swapped the canteen for the flask and sampled it without question. He immediately hardened his core to iron in order to not cough. Bad enough that he was weak and humiliated because he'd been chakra drained and assigned to labor. He didn't need to look weak by coughing at his first taste of hard alcohol. Unfortunately, he had a feeling he hadn't completely covered.

    Mari's smile got very slightly wider. "It gets better as you drink." She held her own flask out in toast; he tapped his against it and they both drank before going back to contemplating the sunset.

    "You know what your mistake was?" she asked after a minute.

    He looked over, frowning. "I get it, okay? I killed a civilian, violated Uplift, shamed the clan, exposed Hazō to the Hokage's wrath—"

    She waved the words away. "Nah. I don't care about that—well, the Uplift stuff, yes, but that's always complicated. Forget the rest of it. Yakuza are shit and they deserved what they got. You saved a lot of Gōketsu lives and got us intelligence we couldn't have gotten in other ways. Ask me to stack that against yakuza lives and I don't even have to get the scales." She swigged again and leaned back on her hands, the flask grasped precariously between finger and thumb. "Nah, your mistake was that you got caught."

    He turned to face her fully. "Excuse me?"

    She looked over at him, brushing her hair behind her ear to get it out of her eyes. "You got caught."

    "What about all that Uplift stuff? And pissing the Hokage off and all that?"

    Mari snorted and shook her head. "Uplift is complicated. Whatever Hazō might like, simple rules like 'never kill a civilian' aren't the way to go when you're trying to make the world better overall. As to the Hokage, he doesn't give a shit about the fact that you were killing yakuza. What he cares about is that people knew you were killing yakuza, which means that someone, probably the Hagoromo, could have leveraged it against us and that would have been a political headache for Asuma. The Hags could have publicly declared that you were doing it and then the Merchant Council would have been in a bind—they could either demand that you be executed, which would cause them all kinds of problems, or they could ignore it and all the clans would know that it was open season on civilians."

    Haru seemed to be trying to ask a question but too many of them were piling up in his brain and jamming the exit.

    Mari swigged from her flask again. "Once we get you off this punishment detail, come talk to me. I can show you how to run an intelligence service the right way...and how to not get caught the next time you need to murder someone."

    "'Once' we get me off this detail?" he asked, eyebrows up. "That's awfully optimistic. I figured I was on this indefinitely."

    Mari shrugged and turned back to face the sunset. "You're on it until Hazō decides to let you off, which he's not going to do until Akane has had enough vengeance." She looked over sharply and raised a finger in warning. "And no, that's not because Hazō is pussy whipped. Dump that thought right now."

    Haru raised his hands in preemptive surrender.

    She studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Hazō is young to be a Clan Head and he's got no training for the job. He's way out of his depth and he knows it, so he's delegating as much as he can. Which is good." She sipped contemplatively at her flask, then leaned back on her elbows. "He's delegating tricky moral decisions to Akane. He figures that she's a better person than him morally...which maybe she is." She shrugged. "Dunno. She's better than me, that's for sure.

    "Anyway, it is what it is. Hazō didn't like what you did and he was going to tell you to knock it off. There probably would have been some punishment, but I doubt it would have been this. He's doing this because he's struggling to improve as a person, to raise his moral bar, and he's taking his cues from Akane on how to do it. He's not going to let you off the hook until she's satisfied, because he's trusting her to know the morally right action on tough cases like this one. She's not going to let you off until she's satisfied that you've changed."

    Haru snorted and swigged from his flask again, welcoming the burning battery it committed against his throat.

    "Then I guess I'm fucked. I'd do it all again in a heartbeat."

    "Sure, if you're dumb."

    He glanced over in irritation. She met his eyes and smiled.

    "This whole thing you've got going?" she said, gesturing vaguely up and down his body. "The I'm-so-tortured brawler, angry at the world and eager to show it through the power of your fists? Useless. I can get three of those free with an apple at the market. The reason I was rooting for you at adoption time was because you've got a brain. You kept all that anger chained up and hidden away so that the clans never knew quite what was in there. I don't give two shits about some meathead who punches hard, but a new Academy graduate who has some self-control? Who can actually put on a half-decent social mask? Fuck yeah, I'm in."

    She turned back to pondering the tiny sliver of sunset that remained. "If you want to break rocks for the rest of your life, cool. I've got better things to do. If you're willing to do what it takes to get yourself reinstated then I can help you. This family desperately, desperately needs someone besides me who can do intelligence and counterintelligence work and everyone on the estate is hopeless except maybe you."

    "'Maybe' me?"

    "Yeah. Maybe you." The last of the sun dissolved and night was truly upon them. Mari watched the light go and waited a moment for her eyes to adjust before sighing and sitting up, turning to face him full on again.

    "Here's the deal," she said. "I need a ninja who can be my deputy for the Gōketsu intel department that I'm building. The job is yours if you can do it, otherwise I'll find someone else."

    "I...I don't even know what that would mean."

    "No one does when they start out. You'll help me locate assets, meaning people that we can get leverage over in order to make them do what we want. You'll wade through soul-crushing reams of paperwork—not much to start with but more and more as the years go by. You'll collate boring facts and wear out many a quill doing math. You'll spend years doing all the shit work that I don't feel like dealing with. You'll run messages hither and yon at my capricious and poorly-explained decree. Probably through crappy weather because that's how things go. Very occasionally I'll let you do something fun—sneak in somewhere and steal something or plant something, maybe even kill someone who might or might not deserve it but who cares, that sort of thing."

    "That sounds..."

    "Boring? Frustrating? Brain-shatteringly so. But, on the flipside, if you can do the job then you'll have more impact on the world than ninety percent of the ninja in Leaf. You will be in command meetings with the Hokage and his closest advisors. You'll be approached, politely, by senior ninja who will request that you do them a favor." She chuckled. "And don't worry. I think I mentioned that there are moments of terror and fun in the job too."

    Haru laughed.

    Her face sobered again and she leaned forward slightly, the moonlight draping curtains across half her face. "Here's the important part: When I retire, thirty or forty years from now, I'm going to pass the reins to my chosen successor. If you can do this job, and if I am 100% confident in your loyalty to Hazō and to the Gōketsu, then you will be my successor. You will be given control of what I intend to be the most powerful intelligence network in the world. You will know everything that's happening in the Elemental Nations. You will be able to have someone killed without getting off your couch...or, alternatively, you'll know how to get away with killing them yourself. You'll be spoken to with respect by the Hokage, the heads of every clan, and by whichever of the other Kage Hazō hasn't gotten around to destroying or suborning. You'll be known to the entire world; the unwashed masses will respect you or envy you while your peers, meaning the other intelligence services, will fear you.

    "So. Want the job?"

    His chakra, nowhere near full but far above the dregs that he'd been subsisting on for days, was a churning storm around his hara. He had to work spit back into his mouth and clear his throat before he could speak.

    "Yes."

    "Cool. Here's your audition: Convince Akane that you've changed."

    "But..."

    Mari shrugged and stood up, casually brushing pebbles off the seat of her pants. "If you want to be a spy instead of a thug then you need to learn how to read people and how to give them what they need. For now, go to sleep. Tomorrow, put yourself in Akane's head. Figure out what about your actions was the crux of the issue for her. Figure out what would have to be different for her to feel that it was safe to have you running around in ninja society again. If you can get that far then I'll help you work on how to present it." She tapped two fingers off her head in casual salute and turned away...and then turned back.

    "Haru," she said, her voice serious, "I want to warn you: This job sucks. Worse than normal ninja duty. I think you've got the chops for it if you decide you want it enough and if you do then I'll train you. Twenty years from now I'm not sure you'll thank me for making this offer. You might find yourself wishing that you'd stayed a civilian, breaking rocks all day."

    She was standing over him, the starlight dancing through the wisps of her hair and her face hidden in unreadable darkness. He felt himself unable to look away and unable to suppress the shiver that ran down his spine.

    "Why?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

    "I'll teach you to lie better than you've ever known was possible. I'll teach you to understand people to a degree that's barely short of mindreading. You won't be able to turn it off. You'll know when people are lying to you even if they were just trying to be kind. You'll know the right words to say to produce a desired reaction and that's going to make it hard to have meaningful relationships."

    "Are you 'producing a desired reaction' in me right now?"

    "Yup. 'Interested but worried and careful.' How'm I doing?"

    He snorted. "Pretty good." He went silent for a moment, listening to the night sounds of the estate—a woman singing in Building One, a group of overexcited children screaming as they ran away from their babysitters, the rhythmic scrub of clothes on a washboard. "The Hokage will order me back on active duty eventually. We're in the middle of a war. I doubt Hazō will let Akane put me back on punishment if I survive. I could just wait it out and not do your super spy training."

    "You could."

    "If I did do the training, would I make a difference?"

    She nodded. "Yes. You'll make a difference. You'll be respected, and feared. You'll be able to kill or torture the people you hate and raise up the ones you like." She tipped her head slightly and the shifting light allowed him to see her tiny smile. "You'll end up one of the most powerful people alive."

    "Is it worth it?"

    She thought about that. "I'll let you know once I figure it out. See you tomorrow." She hopped off the roof and vanished.




    Author's Note: This is effectively an interlude, so 0 XP awarded. Voting remains open.
     
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    • Chapter 471, Part 1: Frangible Balance
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    • Hazō was not yet sure how, Hazō was not yet sure when, but he was going to get Noburi back for this. Maybe he'd mention to Yuno that Noburi had acknowledged the existence of another girl (not counting family, a strange experience Yuno was still getting used to).

    No, on reflection Asuma would have his guts for garters if Noburi was too murdered to assist in another summon assault.

    There'd been nothing wrong with the idea of an interdimensional gaming night. Indeed, it was downright inspired—having organised the international gaming night in Mist, there was nowhere to go but up. But Noburi had neglected to explain, when describing the idyllic atmosphere of his Seventh Path games, that all those summons had been hand-picked for their youthful open-mindedness and diplomatic potential.

    On the other hand, the current guest list was based on the "highest scorers" of the Battle of Five Clans, meaning it had selected for aggression.

    "You accepted a contract on the orders of the Polemarch himself!" Panegirik roared at his condor counterpart. "So yes, you are in the chain of command, at the very bottom where you belong, and you will give up the last Strategic Dominance seat to your superior officer, or I will have you spiked for insubordination!"

    "Of course I accepted the contract!" Conskriputo spat back. "I have a mate, and two chicks, and a third still in the egg, and it was made perfectly clear to me what would happen if I didn't do what I was told! Not that you'd even know what it's like to have a mate—I hear snakes prefer one-night stands!"

    "How dare you, slave?!" Panegirik, twice the condor's height and unable to even fit in the building without hunching over, raised an enormous claw—

    "Ypolochagos Panegirik!"

    For a split second, Hazō could feel black ice burning against his skin. Had Kei been practicing with Ami?

    "I gave you explicit orders!" Kei exclaimed. "Which part of this is minimising contact with the condor to the best of your ability?"

    "Summoner," Panegirik growled, "this insolent creature refused to—"

    "I do not care," Kei said flatly. "You will stand down this very instant, and if I hear you speak a single word to Conskriputo for the rest of the night, or make a discourteous gesture, or do anything which suggests disrespect towards one of our guests, then tomorrow morning you and I will visit the Polemarch, and you will explain in detail why, on your first excursion to the Human Path, you chose to shame the Holy Pangolin Empire before six different clans."

    Panegirik did not go pale, but only because he was a pangolin and probably didn't have the ability. Instead, he interlaced his claws in front of his abdomen. "My humble apologies, Summoner."

    Wilting beneath the glare of what must have been, from his perspective, a tiny, squishy human girl, he turned around and wandered away to look for new victims to boast to about his exploits.

    A different Kei, specifically Kei Ruri, was already at Conskriputo's side, speaking softly as she led him in the opposite direction.

    "Nobody denies your right to hate them for what they've done to your people," she told the condor, "but if you give in to provocation, then you're letting the Pangolins control even your anger. It's a Condor's privilege to be above such petty attempts."

    That was Hazō's night in a nutshell. Noburi had chosen Gamatatakai, one of his first summons, to represent the Toads, on the logic that the young warrior would be properly appreciative of tales of combat (and spread the word back home in a way that would make it easier for Noburi to recruit new summons later), and that had been fine until he encountered Hariai the Porcupine Champion. Now, the two had abandoned a game of Assault of the Humans in order to yell at each other about ninjutsu theft—apparently, the Porcupines had very strong feelings about losing Needle Jizō to the Toads, while the latter considered it just revenge for some ancient diplomatic slight.

    Meanwhile, the air continued to freeze any time Kei and Mari were in the same room together, the three newbies were feeling desperately out of their depth and as their clan head it was his job to regularly reassure them, bad things would happen when Hyūga Motokazu regained the power of speech after listening to Yuno's views on Neji and Noburi's relationship, and… and… it just kept going. He'd lost track of the dogs early on, and wasn't sure he dared to find them again. Kamazaklam the turtle was an island of cheer and goodwill in an ocean of tension, but unfortunately, the Power of Youth was no more effective as a diplomatic tool in her flippers than it was in Rock Lee's hands. Hazō was starting to wish he'd been able to invite Ami (Leaf's cutting-edge military strategy was not something to share with foreigners, as if anything that involved hundreds of genin could be kept secret from anyone). At this point he'd gladly take a sudden injection of chaos over the steadily sinking status quo.

    "This, nephew, is why I do not care for diplomacy. It is like dealing with children, except that silencing them only increases the noise in the long run."

    Hazō's blood froze. This was what you got for carelessly invoking the spirit of Ami even in your head.

    "O-Orochimaru! What are you doing—I mean thank you for coming! I didn't expect to see you here."

    The Snake Summoner, who had apparently observed the pangolin-condor exchange without anyone in the room noticing his presence, gave Hazō a look that suggested he'd just been categorised as another idiot child.

    "I was hardly going to send a reptile to make the journey from my compound to yours in the middle of winter.

    "Besides," he added after a moment, "it seems Manda has interpreted this gaming night of yours as some summon-centric equivalent of the Chūnin Exam. A few hours of time wasted now will save me from many tedious speeches on how my lifestyle choices deprive the clan of summoner prestige."

    He gave an oddly human put-upon sigh.

    "Summoning Technique: Hebifaya!"

    Hazō had to suppress an instinct to leap back as the green smoke parted to reveal an upright snake looking down at him, mouth open and massive fangs clearly visible. Its tongue flicked out, tasting the air as its rainbow scales shimmered in the lamplight.

    "Sacred Slithering Sage!" it exclaimed. "Oh, thank you so much for this opportunity, Mister Lord Orochimaru Summoner sir! I know everyone says you're creepy and scary and people should stay away from you if they value their lives, but maybe you're not so bad as icky hairy mammals go!"

    This one was definitely not going to improve the diplomatic situation.

    "You know," Orochimaru said mildly, "it would be the work of minutes for me to reverse-summon to Ryūchi Cave and vivisect you."

    "Oh, thanks but no thanks," Hebifaya replied with a respectful undulation. "I already have a religion I'm happy with. Now excuse me, I'm going to go find my first opponent and see if I can get a surprise attack off!"

    Hazō glanced between Hebifaya, rapidly slithering out of sight, and Orochimaru, stalking off for purposes unknown, and wished he still had enough chakra for a shadow clone.

    -o-​

    As the guests drifted gradually into the central room for the promised speech, it was increasingly apparent that both Lord Gōketsu and Orochimaru were missing. That was a problem. Ruri had quite liked Lord Gōketsu, with his layers of determination and control which didn't quite cover a boyish innocence at the core. More pertinently, he'd had a lot of potential as an ally to the KEI, and she couldn't count on his successor developing in the same direction. It put Ruri in a difficult position, since Lord Gōketsu hadn't made his successor public, and in any case she couldn't be sure who would be in charge of the clan by the time the war was over.

    Lady Mari was the obvious choice, but clearly she'd already turned down the job. Lady Akane was the next likeliest candidate, if Ruri believed even a tenth of the rumours, and had been trusted with the reins in the past. But then, Lord Noburi was something of a dark horse—on the surface, he was as apolitical as a clan founder could realistically be, but the deeper Ruri dug, the more she found. He'd been the Gōketsu's first new summoner, despite the clan head's desire for a scroll. Her medic-nin contacts considered him unremarkable, yet his medical work had generated connections with both Orochimaru and Tsunade. He was an ex-Mist ninja with the shallowest possible roots in Leaf, yet he'd been the one to marry Gasai and become Leaf's bridge to Isan instead of Lord Hyūga's nephew. And now, it turned out he possessed a Bloodline Limit with strategic-level implications.

    There had been a man, once, the master of this very compound, whose name meant nothing to ninety-nine percent of the population, yet who at the height of his power had been a threat to the Third Hokage. If Lord Gōketsu miraculously survived all his self-inflicted disasters, including this one, long enough to become Hokage (and she could not see him as a boy with lower ambitions), Ruri had an inkling as to who would be reaching out from his shadow.

    For now, though, Ruri had more immediate concerns. Lord Gōketsu was missing, and Lady Nara had, in desperation, asked her to do the celebratory speech. It was an honour, and would have been more of an honour if Ruri hadn't been aware that the only others qualified to speak about the action were Lady Nara herself (and she tended to avoid speeches as best she could), Hyūga Neji with his legendary eloquence and charm, the dour Hyūga Motokazu, and Minami Aika (who had not concealed her feelings towards her Hyūga teammates). Either way, a success here could go a long way towards salvaging the night, while a bad enough failure could invite a riot. Besides, there were agendas to advance.

    "Friends," Ruri began, stepping onto the dais at the end of the room. "Comrades. In Lord Gōketsu's absence, I have been asked to say a few words.

    "You and I are witnessing history in the making. For the first time in a thousand years, six summoners and five summon clans joined forces against a single foe. Six summoners and five summon clans obliterated that enemy, reducing Hidden Rock's shinobi elite and their impregnable fortress to a smoking ruin dyed in the blood of their dead. Six summoners and five summon clans secured Leaf's safety and earned glory worthy of song without a hair falling from a Leaf shinobi's head."

    The latter number was both a sign of unity and a reminder for the two clans present whose warriors hadn't had a chance to take part. They would be hungrier to catch up, and easier to negotiate with when the time came. The former had a purpose of its own.

    "The true heroes of the day," she said, gesturing outward with both arms, "are the champions of the Condors, Pangolins, Porcupines, Snakes, and Turtles." There was no safe way to order the names; she'd just have to go alphabetically and let the chips fall where they may. "Conskriputo, Panegirik, Hariai, Hebifaya, and Kamazaklam are here because they are the greatest champions of the Battle of Five Clans. Their contributions to the fort's downfall tower above their comrades', both within their clans and across all two hundred members of the allied assault." She had to be careful in her phrasing, because she needed the condors' value to be recognised alongside everyone else's, both to avoid friction now and as groundwork for later.

    "And what an assault it was! I wish you had all been there alongside me, watching from above as the pangolins ripped through the Rock-nin's pathetic defences and tore them to shreds, as the turtles' lightning blitz overwhelmed the enemy's helpless ranged attackers, as the porcupines blotted out the stars and the moon with their rain of quills, as the snakes lashed out from the shadows to sink their fangs into the Rock officers before they could give their orders, and as the condors kept track of the chaos and guarded all our backs against enemy trickery. I know for a fact that never in the history of the Human Path has there been such an epic battle with such an overwhelming victory.

    "This victory could not have been possible without the summons, and that means it could not have been possible without the summoners. I am proud to have stood alongside Lady Nara Keiko, Hyūga Neji, Minami Aika, and Orochimaru, as well as Hyūga Motokazu, who showed special courage in venturing deep into hostile territory without a summoner's powers of emergency escape.

    "Finally, there are two people who deserve our thanks above all others. First is Lord Gōketsu Hazō, the mastermind behind this plan. It is his extraordinary vision that has ushered in an entirely new paradigm of warfare. Right now, the Tsuchikage is trembling in her boots, knowing that with the aid of its summon allies, Leaf can attack anywhere, at any time, with legendary force and without risking a drop of our own ninja's blood. Hidden Rock has been dealt a crippling blow not only by force, but by Lord Gōketsu's idea.

    "As for the second…" She looked at Lord Noburi. Yes, there it was. Pride, but also resignation. Frustration. Longing. A complex cocktail of emotions that Ruri recognised all too well. She'd been given an incredible gift by the Hokage and the KEI. A summoning scroll for a clanless ninja. A chance for a jōnin who was merely very good at her job to become something greater. Yet all of that power was out of reach, never hers. Conjura tolerated her out of necessity. The Pangolin boss considered her an extension of his dominance of the Condors. Neither was prepared to treat her as a summoner, with the right to make her own contracts. Neither considered her politically relevant except, at best, as a mouthpiece for Leaf. Yes, Ruri understood what it meant to be a useful tool.

    "If the summons are the arrows piercing our foes, and the summoners are the bows from which they are launched, then Gōketsu Noburi is the man pulling back the bowstrings. He is the man who took in hundreds of ninja's worth of chakra and casually sent it across half a continent to destroy our enemies. For those few hours, Lord Noburi stood in the realm of the Sage of Six Paths, with all of Leaf as his chakra reserves and the massed armies of the Seventh Path at his fingertips. I am proud to have been a channel for his power in the Battle of Five Clans, just as every true ninja is proud to be a channel for the Will of Fire."

    Yes, Ruri decided as she watched a different light begin to shine in Lord Noburi's eyes, tonight would be a very valuable evening for laying groundwork.

    -o-​

    Voting is closed. The rest is in the talons of @eaglejarl.
     
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    • Chapter 472: If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Random Sampling of Unfamiliar Foods in the Kitchen Business
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    • Chapter 472: If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Random Sampling of Unfamiliar Foods in the Kitchen Business​

    January 19, 1070 AS (the day before game night)

    "...and then they came home," Noburi said, completing his tale of the Arachnid Scroll's capture. "We're having a giant party tomorrow to celebrate." He leaned back in his chair and sipped at the tea that Shima had served when he first arrived. The chair was uncomfortable due to being proportioned for a toad, the tea was a little brackish, but he made no complaint. Shima's kitchen was airy and open, sunlight streaming through the window to brighten it up. Blond wood cabinets covered the walls in stacked tiers, many of them too high for Noburi to reach. He had wondered how the two-foot-tall toad matron used them but had carefully not asked. His curiosity was assuaged when she went to get the tea; her tongue flicked out, adhering to the door of a cabinet seven feet off the ground and tugging it open. She then bounded inside from a standing start and emerged moments later with a tin of loose tea.

    "Hmph," Fukasaku (never 'Pa'!) grumbled. "Buried in the earth? That's the best they could do to protect a major historical artifact? You humans are bloody useless, aren't you?"

    His wife, Shima, whom Noburi still held out hope of winning over with an array of recipes and Human-Path ingredients, poked her husband with one long finger. "They used techniques too, you old goat! Weren't you listening?" She turned to Noburi and rolled her enormous eyes. "Ignore him. He ran out of pipeweed last week and he's in withdrawal. It happens every few months when the weather is bad and the caravans can't travel."

    "Oh!" Noburi said. "I almost forgot." He rummaged up the appropriate storage seal and produced a medium brown leather bag, much beaten and weathered and water-stained from traveling across most of the continent over the last two years. Inside were three smaller, much nicer pouches, which Noburi carefully placed in front of the batrachian patriarch. "These are for you, sir."

    Fukasaku stared at him, gimlet-eyed, and then blinked. He sniffed the air. He tore the first pouch open with hurried fingers and buried his face in it, sucking air loudly to draw the scent into his lungs. Only when he had drawn more air than should be possible for the lungs of a two-foot amphibian did he stop and sigh happily. He pulled the long-handled ivory pipe from his robe, packed it tight with the pipeweed, and lit it with a jutsu that enveloped his head in a fireball but left him unharmed.

    Noburi waited patiently, trying not to smile.

    "S'not bad," Fukasaku grunted after a few moments of smoking. "Where's it from?"

    "River, sir. That pouch is a kind called 'Autumn Harvest'. The others are 'Tanaka Special' and 'Blowing Smoke'. I figured I'd bring a sampler...let me know which types you prefer and I'll get you a steady supply." He carefully didn't mention the ruinous prices and small quantities available in Leaf. Even if he had to run to River to get the stuff personally it would be worth it if it got him on the good side of the grumpy Toad Sage.

    Fukasaku grunted.

    "That was Grouchy Old Goat for 'thank you, lad, that was very thoughtful of you'," Shima said. She poked her husband hard enough to rock him in his chair. "Wasn't it?"

    "Stop poking me, you old biddy! Very thoughtful blah blah, he's the Summoner! It's literally his job to bring us stuff like this."

    "Old biddy? Old biddy?! Listen you thick-witted—"

    "Don't you call me thick-witted! Show some respect to your doting husband, the senior Toad Sage!"

    "Ha! As if! I've put fresher sage in my casseroles! Besides, you got your certificate thirty seconds before I did!"

    "I'm still senior and you still owe me respect!"

    Noburi coughed softly and four enormous eyes swiveled towards him in suddenly-united irritation. "Speaking of spices and casseroles, ma'am..." From another storage seal came a pouch filled with dozens of small twists of paper, each one marked with the kanji for the cooking ingredient inside.

    "Oooh," Shima said, massive purple lips spreading in a wide grin. "Look at that, old goat. I got more things than you did. I guess he likes me better."

    Noburi started to sweat when Fukasaku's accusing eyes locked onto him.

    "In fairness, sir, ma'am, it's about the same amount of stuff, it's just packaged differently."

    "Ha! And I got mine in nice silk pouches," Fukasaku said smugly. "Yours are those natty old papers."

    Shima glared accusingly at Noburi.

    Noburi quailed for a moment, then forced himself to take a deep breath. Mari and Asuma had both advised him on the care and feeding of ancient and powerful Toad Sages. He straightened his spine and hoped that the Sages couldn't hear the fluttered pounding of his heart.

    "Fukasaku. Shima. With respect, please don't drag me into your marital squabbles. The gifts were intended to make you both happy. I wasn't trying to prefer either one of you to the other." He forced himself not to add an apology on the end. Polite but firm, his counselors had insisted. Not an equal but not a minion either. And definitely not a chewtoy.

    The two ancient toads glared at him sourly, then hrmphed and focused their attention on their respective gifts.

    Shima opened the first two packages, examined them carefully, and set them aside. She paused when she got to the third, frowning in confusion. "What's a haban—"

    "Careful, ma'am!" Noburi said, half reaching out to stop her from licking the small red vegetable. "That's a habanero pepper. It's extremely spicy. You only want to use a tiny amount."

    "Are you telling me how to cook, boy?! Let me tell you—"

    "No, ma'am!" He raised both hands in placation and leaned away, his chair creaking dangerously under him. "It's just...nothing I've eaten here on the Seventh Path has been particularly spicy. You might want to experiment a bit, just to get a sense for it."

    "Hrmph. It's tiny. How bad can it be?" Before Noburi could stop her she bit half the pepper off and started chewing.

    Noburi watched in horrified fascination. Yup, I'm going to die.

    "See, it's fine! There's noth..." She paused and cleared her throat. "There's nothing..." She coughed, then gagged. "Ash cakes! Broken skies, boy! Agh! What"—cough—"what did you do to me?" She stuck out a tongue half the length of her body and fanned both hands across it.

    Noburi dove into his storage seals, frantically searching through the meals section. Duck with orange sauce, no. Salad with vinegar and oil, no. Fish with a honey glaze, nope. Argh, where was—aha!

    "Chew this, ma'am!" he said, pushing a plate of tender cubed chicken and rice in cream sauce towards her.

    According to Asuma, Shima had decades of experience as a jutsu researcher. She was therefore thoroughly familiar with the old adage that when disaster was happening around you (or, in this case, inside you) it was a good idea to follow the directions of whoever seemed to have a clue. She snatched the plate from Noburi with both hands and threw the contents into her mouth in one go, her cheeks bulging out to make room for roughly a pound of food and half a pint of sauce.

    Noburi pulled out a water canteen and held it at the ready but raised a hand to stop her when she reached for it. "The cream neutralizes the spice and the rice soaks it up, ma'am. Roll it around your tongue for a bit before you drink or the water will only spread it around."

    Shima followed directions, swishing the food noisily around before swallowing it in one gulp. Noburi handed over the canteen and she drank gratefully.

    She sucked down the entire quart of water and then wiped her wide mouth with a satisfied sigh. "Got any more of those? Little Bunty has been stroppy lately and I'd just love to make him a special treat."

    "Uh..." Noburi's mind boggled. Gamabunta was larger than a house. Larger than three or four houses combined, actually, for most examples of 'house'. The number of peppers that would be necessary to affect him...

    "These things aren't common, ma'am," he temporized. "Given how large the Clan Boss is, I'm not sure if there's enough in Leaf to affect him."

    Shima sniffed dismissively. "You go look. Bring me enough and I'll make you something nice in exchange."

    Noburi digested that. "Ma'am, I'm not sure I want to get involved in a prank war between the two of you and Lord Gamabunta. I feel like I'm already on thin ice with him."

    "Nonsense!" Fukasaku said, waving one webbed hand dismissively. "He doesn't have to know where we got it from. Besides, he's not going to blame you for it. You're just the supplier."

    "He's not going to be that mad," Shima said, patting Noburi on the arm. "It's just a little prank. He'll laugh it right off."

    Yes, because powerful ninja, human or otherwise, were so well-known for their senses of humor and their careful and proportional allocation of blame. "Okay, but...I mean, I'm still not sure there's enough of those in Leaf to—" He broke off. "Wait, never mind. Keiko told me that the Pangolins love spicy food and have some agonizingly painful spices. I'll see what I can get from her."

    "From those scaly bigots?" Shima said. "Harumph. Don't know how I feel about that. Rude bunch of stuck-up conefaces with sticks so far up their butts they come out the mouth."

    "Unwad your knickers, you old prune. They may be a bunch of xenophobic jerks but we aren't going to have to talk to them. The boy will do that."

    Noburi couldn't help but think about the last time the Gōketsu had traded with the Pangolin Clan and the geopolitical fallout thereof. Granted, he wasn't going to give them skytower seals. Probably not even seals at all. Metals, cloth (they had difficulty with weaving), maybe some exotic foods from the Human Path. What could go wrong?




    Author's Note: Today's update brought to you by the power of chest colds and sleep debts. Sorry I didn't have the juice for the Orochimaru conversation; I shall leave it to the very capable eldritch appendages of @Velorien.

    Voting remains closed.
     
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    • Chapter 471, Part 2: Beneath the Serpent's Gaze
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    • Hazō briefly weighed his options. The worst Hebifaya could do was start a massive summon brawl that would damage the building, catch innocents in the crossfire, and result in a diplomatic incident that would be remembered the next time Hazō tried to get different clans to work together. The worst Orochimaru could do… frankly, it was beyond Hazō's imagination.

    Hazō was terrified of Orochimaru. That was a fact. Some of that was probably irrational, given his emotional trauma from what he'd seen in the Basement and the way Orochimaru had psychically ripped his head open and stuck a bunch of knives into it in response to an accidental act of rudeness. But some of it was extremely rational fear of a humanoid who'd kidnapped people and tortured them to death, was doing the same semi-consensually on a daily basis, and, again, psychically ripped people's heads open and stuck bunches of knives into them for accidental acts of rudeness. What kind of entertainment would someone like that, with no known hobbies and a belief that he was above both morality and the law, make for himself when bored and surrounded by people with unique unstudied abilities?

    No, Hazō couldn't let someone like that near his family. Noburi had just demonstrated the immense potential of his Bloodline Limit, and its value to a summoner. His newfound value to Leaf gave Asuma reason to intervene on his behalf, but on the other hand, Hazō had seen with his own eyes how good Orochimaru was at keeping people alive. What if he just kept Noburi intact enough to wheel out whenever Leaf needed his bloodline—or ripped it out altogether and gave it to a more convenient host? Hadn't Tsunade done that once?

    Besides, even if Orochimaru could be convinced that Noburi was too valuable to spare, there was no argument he'd care about for not taking Wataru instead. Hazō couldn't allow that to happen either.

    Kei's situation was even worse. Orochimaru was already on record as wanting to kidnap and possibly dissect a Frozen Skein user. Maybe Ami's deal had included her safety, or maybe the humanoid who never left his lab simply hadn't registered that the Nara consort was a former Mori. But the Final Gift Programme only needed Ami (if that), and there was no telling what Orochimaru would do if Kei came to his direct attention.

    Frankly, even letting him bump into Kagome-sensei would be a disaster, between Kagome-sensei's high odds of blurting something that would make Orochimaru Take an Interest and Orochimaru's palpable aura of "danger to your loved ones". During Orochimaru's memorable first appearance at a gaming night, Kagome-sensei had needed to be physically restrained from attacking him.

    No, Orochimaru needed to either be entertained enough to forget his Orochimaruness for a couple of hours or made bored enough to leave without incident.

    Hazō mentally gritted his teeth. "Orochimaru!"

    Orochimaru half-turned.

    Hazō wished he'd had a contingency ready. He'd instructed Noburi to invite the summoners—and, thinking about it, explicitly snubbing Orochimaru might not have been a good move anyway—but Hazō had assumed he'd be as likely to turn up to a gaming night as Lord Hagoromo was to attend next week's commitment ceremony. He'd allowed himself to forget the Sealmaster's Fourth Law ("Something Will Go Wrong"), and now he was facing impending doom without any kind of list.

    Still, maybe he could find opportunity amidst the disaster. Orochimaru had sent Jiraiya a board game once. He was familiar with the concept. If he could be persuaded that such things could be fun, that there was a role in his life for other people that wasn't "raw material" or "obstacle", such a heroic achievement would surely be worth a scroll or two from Asuma.

    "Would you like to join me for a board game?" Hazō ventured.

    Phrasing would be paramount. Noburi and Mari both claimed that games were primarily a social activity—unlike Hazō, they wouldn't touch solo variants with a ten-foot pole (whereas Hazō just didn't have time anymore). Orochimaru treated social activities like Yuno did purification rituals, as an occasional tedious necessity to be minimised through proper living. Hazō wasn't going to be able to hook him so easily.

    On the other hand, he remembered once being… well, not like this, but like someone who also often found socialising more trouble than it was worth. His frustration with other people's failure to communicate in a reasonable way was one of the things that had brought him closer to Kei, back before their experiences in Leaf had sent them in different directions. If he modelled Orochimaru like his past self or like Kei (he'd have to get her carrot cake to make up for just having the thought)…

    "I've found they make for a great intellectual challenge," he said. "Different games test the intellect in all kinds of different ways. More than one of my sealing ideas has been inspired by something I saw or did in a game."

    "At your age," Orochimaru observed, "my idea of an intellectual challenge was tracing the connection between elemental affinity and the balance of the bodily humours. Some of the analytical procedures I developed continue to serve me to this day."

    He began to turn away.

    Hazō didn't know where he was heading, but he did know that in that direction lay Noburi's solidarity-building "summoners versus summons" game of Kage Hunters.

    "What if you thought of it as an experiment?" he tried.

    Orochimaru paused. "Nephew, are you aware of the fate of the last shinobi to attempt to manipulate me?"

    Hazō froze. As Orochimaru slowly turned around, head twisting just a little further past his shoulder than was natural, he could feel himself break into a sweat.

    If he used the Multiple Earth Wall Technique to block the corridor, would he have a few moments' grace to get out of the building? Maybe Orochimaru wouldn't consider it worth the effort of hunting him down, and that would buy him time to come up with a plan before their next encounter.

    No. If Orochimaru didn't go after him, he'd go back to Plan A: Possibly Kidnap Hazō's Family.

    Unlike last time, Orochimaru hadn't unleashed his aura. That meant there might be room to salvage the situation.

    Hazō gave the deep, stiff Bow 13, a Chūnin Exam special designed to appease visiting Kage before they could further ponder your insult and realise it was bad enough to demand restitution.

    "My humblest apologies. I did not mean to give offence in any way." Praise be to Mum, Mari, and the Iron Nerve for the ability to deliver that line sincerely and without his teeth chattering.

    Orochimaru seemed to consider for a second, glancing down at his pale grey sleeves as if they were relevant to the situation.

    Then he turned away again, as if losing interest.

    Unfortunately, much as he would have loved to, Hazō couldn't leave it at that. His family was still relying on him to keep them safe.

    "Would you mind telling me about your experience in the Battle of Five Clans?" he asked as evenly as he could. "It sounds like it was an extraordinary battle, and getting your impressions should help me optimise the strategy for next time."

    Orochimaru didn't even look back. "My report is on file."

    Hazō could hear Kagome-sensei's voice from around the corner, offering someone a homemade snack. There was no time left for half-measures, and a risk to him was better than a risk to someone he cared about.

    He uttered a silent prayer to the ancestors, the Will of Fire, and the spirit of Jiraiya, who could have talked his way out of anything given enough motivation.

    "You know," Hazō said, "I don't think I've had a chance to tell you about the Great Seal."

    Finally, to his satisfaction and his regret, Orochimaru turned to face him head-on.

    "I have seen the misshapen lump you describe as a replica of the most sophisticated seal known to man," Orochimaru said coldly. "I am given to understand it posed a puzzle which Leaf's sealmasters were able to solve overnight by mass-producing a beginners' training seal. I was aware that standards had declined in my absence, but that does not mean I appreciate a mockery being made of my discipline."

    The corridor narrowed around Hazō like the jaws of a hungry beast, light turning to shadow to darkness until all that was left was Orochimaru's gaze in the middle of a lifeless void. There was nothing to cling to, nothing to keep him whole. Orochimaru's eyes cut straight into the flesh of his mind, severing arteries and carving out nerves as Hazō was reshaped into a thing more to Orochimaru's convenience—

    "Wait!" Hazō screeched. "You haven't heard everything!"

    The eyes/fangs paused briefly, and in that gap, Hazō rushed to get as many words out as he could.

    "There's more to the seal and we haven't solved the puzzle and I have a lot more information to offer and—"

    Orochimaru blinked. Everything was exactly the way it had been before. Hazō stumbled, caught himself on the wall, and before he knew it, he was clinging to it as if to make sure it wouldn't disappear.

    "Proceed," Orochimaru allowed.

    Hazō kept one hand on the wall as he took slow, hesitant steps back in the direction they'd come from. "Let's… Let's find a room."

    New objective: keep Orochimaru in one place for the rest of the evening without boring him, offending him, giving away secrets, or becoming interesting enough to keep.

    -o-​

    Hazō virtually collapsed into a player chair, while Orochimaru sat down on the dealer's side of the table without a second thought. Yuno's game of Pony Island, half-set up between them, was surely symbolic of something, especially the half-shuffled ritual sacrifice cards. Yuno herself had accepted the exile with grace; Orochimaru had given her exotic red eyes a curious glance but let her leave without comment.

    "Well?" Orochimaru asked.

    Hazō took a moment to compose his thoughts. His best-case scenario for this meeting was to actually get Orochimaru interested in the Great Seal, in which case he might be convinced to get his act together and help save the world. His worst-case scenario didn't bear thinking about. Still, even if all he could do was keep Orochimaru talking and not give away anything disastrous, he'd call it a win.

    "The Great Seal replica you've seen," Hazō began, "is a very rough approximation of the real thing. I won't deny that. However, I remember the original, and as soon as my health recovers"—he looked down at his hands, which were trembling slightly, though admittedly right now that was less from Great Seal damage and more from Orochimaru—"and I get better at sculpting, I'll be able to create something much more accurate, something from which we might be able to learn secrets of sealcrafting used by the Sage himself."

    "The Sage was not a sealmaster," Orochimaru noted. "However, his companions are each said to have been paragons of their disciplines, commanding powers now lost to humanity over a millennium of imbecilic conflict-driven decline. It is not beyond imagination that their relics might have survived better on the largely-unchanging Seventh Path."

    "I assure you," Hazō said, "I saw the Great Seal myself, and it was completely intact, Dragon-related damage aside. Whatever secrets were used to create it are all still there, waiting for us."

    Orochimaru leaned forward slightly. Was he interested? Was Hazō finally getting through to him?

    Was it really, now Hazō thought about it, a great idea to let Orochimaru get his hands on the keys to ultimate cosmic power? But if it was that or the end of the world…

    But after a second's pause, Orochimaru moved back again.

    "On reflection, I find it doubtful," Orochimaru said, "that supposing the structure you saw was even a seal to begin with, you would be able to memorise a complex abstract shape in such detail as to yield a viable research substrate. I need not tell you the effect even a misplaced dot of ink can have in sealcrafting."

    Alarm bells began to ring in Hazō's mind. Unfortunately, Great Seal research so far had hinged on his powers of memorisation, and all of Leaf's sealmasters had watched his replicas get more detailed as his original act of observation receded into the past. Even if he tried to deny it now, Orochimaru would find out when he became involved with the project.

    "I can," Hazō said, willing the Iron Nerve's veneer of calm not to fail him. "You might not believe me, but it's a fact that Leaf's sealmasters have already extracted usable information from the basic replicas we have now—not just proof that we're dealing with a seal, but enough information to make inferences about its mechanisms of function. It's the reason we already have a way to slow down the Great Seal's deterioration. I'm sure with your abilities, you'd be able to get much more out of it than we have already. In fact, if I could just give you a few examples of the pathways we've already identified—"

    "Nephew," Orochimaru interrupted, "Kabuto explained your wild claims during his attempts to direct my attention to your project. If you stand by your insistence that you were able to accurately memorise a vast 3D seal, in its entirety, in a matter of seconds, and recall it still despite the Dragon's psychic assault that cast you back to the Human Path and nearly shattered your mind, that means you have a powerful combination of cognitive enhancement and 3D scanning ability. This is something I require."

    Oh, no.

    To anyone else, Hazō could just say "clan secret". However, this was Orochimaru, and those two things both sounded like something he might ignore the rules to get. Hazō knew the incredible value of perfect recall, and would go pretty damn far to get new kinds if the opportunity arose. Meanwhile, depending on how you interpreted "3D scanning", on the scale of the Great Seal it could imply something as grandiose as Byakugan-lite.

    Could he claim it was the result of a seal or a ninjutsu? Then Orochimaru would just demand those, and Hazō doubted he could invent either fast enough to support his claim. Maybe there was something hidden in the Nara Library, where Orochimaru had never had a chance to look? The one thing he absolutely could not say, under any circumstances, was that it was the product of his Bloodline Limit. What could he—

    Orochimaru did not let him stall. His voice turned rigid as steel. "Tell me what you used."

    Orochimaru: Intimidation ?? + ? = ??

    Hazō: Resolve 26 - 12 - 3 = 11

    Hazō is Taken Out legendarily. He receives the Mild Mental Consequence "Cowed" and the Medium Mental Consequence "Crippled Will". His Severe slot is already full up, so the remaining stress is sadly wasted.

    The world disappeared. Hazō's consciousness narrowed down to two words. Tell me. On one side was the absolute that was Orochimaru's demand. On the other was total destruction. Of Hazō. Of everyone. Of everything. To so much as turn around to look at it, to conceive of an alternative to obeying, would be enough to break him.

    The other choice, if there had ever been one, fell away from his mind. He would tell Orochimaru everything, and pray that was enough.

    "It's a secret special ability of the Iron Nerve," Hazō explained as fast as clarity of speech would allow. "When I looked at the Great Seal, I was able to—"

    "There you are, Hazō!"

    The voice sounded familiar. Hazō was… yes, he was in a room. In a chair. There was a doorway. Mari was in the doorway.

    "Good evening, Lord Orochimaru," Mari said with a respectful bow. "Thank you for joining us this evening."

    Orochimaru's eyes narrowed in contempt. "You are interrupting. Leave."

    No. Mari leaving would be bad. For some reason. Hazō couldn't be alone. He couldn't be alone with Orochimaru.

    "I have an urgent message from the Hokage," Mari said as if she hadn't heard him. "I'm afraid he's demanding Hazō's immediate presence for a follow-up debriefing."

    "The boy can wait," Orochimaru said dismissively. "I would have been summoned for an enemy attack. Anything less is unimportant. Nephew, resume your explanation."

    The world began to shrink again, swallowed up into the darkness of Orochimaru's vertical pupils.

    "Oh, that? I'm sorry, I couldn't help overhearing," Mari said casually. "It's nothing exciting. Hazō's just learned to use the Iron Nerve to memorise the surrounding terrain. Normally it's unconscious—the Kurosawa need it so they don't fall over when they replicate a movement in a new location—but you can train to become aware of what would be under your feet within a certain radius."

    Mari spends 3 FP to invoke "(Formerly) Marked for Death" to improvise like Hazō's life depends on it, "Team Uplift" to put herself on the line for his sake, and "Deceitful Imp" to lie her head off.

    Mari: Deceit ?? + ? + ? + ? + ? = ??
    Mari spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Mari: Deceit ?? + ? + ? + ? + ? = ??
    Mari spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Mari: Deceit ?? + ? + ? + ? + ? = ??
    Mari spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Mari: Deceit ?? + ? + ? + ? + ? = ??

    Orochimaru: Deceit ?? + ? = ??

    Mari wins. Mari inflicts ?? mental stress.

    Orochimaru looked back to Hazō.

    "Is this the case?"

    Mari smiled at Hazō, and in the depths of her smile he recognised all the many Maris he'd once named for her. A mother's warmth. A teacher's guidance. A trickster's cunning. A guardian's resolve.

    The hand stretched out to him wasn't enough to break Orochimaru's iron grip, but it was enough. Hazō submerged himself in the Iron Nerve, and gave the exact nod of a man reluctantly admitting a secret.

    "Regrettable," Orochimaru muttered, his gaze wandering into the distance.

    Hazō did not have it in him to feel relieved, not right now, but he recognised the glorious, impossible victory. He'd been so scared, for so long, of what would happen if Orochimaru found out about the power to memorise any seal he saw, once and forever, and about exactly which seals were locked away in Hazō's head…

    Now he was safe. He could take his time figuring out a way to deal with Orochimaru, for Great Seal purposes and perhaps in general, without constantly feeling he was standing on the edge of the abyss.

    "That said," Orochimaru mused, "when I consider my original reasons for overlooking the Iron Nerve…"

    Hazō felt a chill. He'd forgotten the Sealmaster's Fourth Law again.

    Whatever lay at the end of that thought, Hazō instinctively knew Orochimaru had to be stopped from reaching it.

    Hazō looked at Mari, but this time she had no trick up her sleeve. Instead, she held still for a few long seconds, as if making up her mind.

    "Actually," she said to Orochimaru, "I've been thinking about a research topic you might find interesting. Tell me, what are your thoughts on cognitively-independent shadow clones?"

    Oh, no. Mari, no.

    "Impossible," Orochimaru scoffed. "A dead end of research. Do you think I would require apprentices if I could have assistants of my genius with the potential to generate different ideas from the same stimuli?"

    Hazō tried to open his mouth to stop her. He tried. But whenever he looked at Orochimaru, he felt a lingering shadow of that inexorable compulsion, of iron walls separating him from his will. To lie to Orochimaru would be to reject his own existence.

    "There is one," Mari said. "I could introduce her to you—or to her original, at least. I believe she's currently in one of the far outbuildings, lecturing her summon on proper behaviour."

    "The very notion is preposterous," Orochimaru said. "I'll believe it when I see it." He rose from his seat to follow her, carelessly knocking one of the ritual sacrifice cards to the floor.

    As Mari stepped back, ostensibly getting out of Orochimaru's way as he left the room, she made a pair of Gōketsu hand signals behind her back: "Kei" and "run like hell".

    Mari began to lead Orochimaru away. After one final glance to make sure the humanoid wasn't going to change his mind and come after him, Hazō headed for the main room at the briskest walk he dared.

    -o-
    ​
    You have received 4 + 1 + 1 = 6 XP.

    Hazō has received 2 FP for taking Consequences during a meaningful conflict. Mari has received 1 FP for winning a meaningful conflict.

    -o-​

    Voting ends on Saturday 23rd of October, 1 p.m. New York time.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • (AU) Interlude: From Kinder Dice
  • Threadmarks
    • (AU) Interlude: From Kinder Dice​

    Just walking through the gates of Leaf was enough to reveal that Jiraiya had beaten them home.

    The streets were buzzing, civilians everywhere stood with their heads together and shot glances at the ninja with a weird mix of fear and anger that left Team Uplift unconsciously moving under wilderness protocols: Hazō in the lead, Noburi trailing, Keiko in the middle with weapons drawn. She had even cleared her throat to catch her brothers' attention before signing Pangolin? Hazō had looked around for a moment, then shaken his head and turned for home.

    A block later, Noburi paused. "Hold up," he muttered, stepping over to where a group of civilians were gathered together while one person read out a broadsheet.

    "Excuse me," Noburi said. "What's the news?"

    The man holding the paper looked up in surprise and took note of Noburi's ninja headband. "Oh! Good morning, sir. The news is wonderful! Leaf is triumphant, as is our right!" He extended the broadsheet.

    Noburi shot him a quizzical look and took the offered paper. Hazō crowded in to read over his brother's shoulder while Keiko stood back, her leg jittering with impatience and frustration at her own inability.

    Leaf Triumphant! Lord Third already dead! Leaf jōnin wiped out! Lady Senju near death!

    It has been revealed that Lord Sarutobi Hiruzen, Third Hokage, The Professor of All Ninja Arts, the Grandmaster, the God of Shinobi, Savior of the Leaf, has died! Months ago!

    Lord Third has not in fact been ill these last few months. He died in battle, destroying the enemies of the Leaf with his final breaths! This fact was wisely concealed by the Council of Ninja Clans so that our enemies would not know. The Gallant Jiraiya, leader of the Legendary Three, Toad Sage, and author of the well-loved Icha Icha series, was inaugurated as Fifth Lord Hokage and has served honorably in that role since then! Long may he reign!

    A horrific evil drew the heroic forces of Leaf from their victory party in the evil City fo Mist! After completly dominating the Chūnin Exams as expected, the shining light of Leaf was celebrating...until word came of a horrific evil on Nagi Island! The ancient enemy of the Sage of Six Paths had returned at the head of a demony army and in alliance with the villians of Rock and Cloud! Lord Hokage and Lady Senju Tsunade were generous enough to permit Mist to send forces along in order to observe and hopefully learn from the skills of the Leaf ninja.

    Teh evil was destroyed, the Sage's Foe sent back to the Void to sleep for another thousand years but every victory has its price, and Leaf has paid in blood. Captains Hatakae Kakshi and Maito Gai fell in battle against fifty-seven of the Enemy's demonic forces and the Kages of Cloud and Rock. Their foes had no chance to celebarte, as they dragged them down into death's cold grip as they went, loyal to the end. Other casualties were heavy, including Lord Hyūga Hiashi and some have said that it was as many as two hundred of Leaf's greatest jōnin, but reports are still confused. What is certain is that Lady Senju Tsunade, Supreme Medic, Slug Princess, Wielder of the Strenght of One Hunderd, was gravely wounded and lies at death's door in Leaf General Hospital. (Donations and flowers welcome!)

    But no darkness is found without a trace of light. From the sacrifice of our mighty protectors, Leaf has recovered Uzumaki Naruto, son of the Fourth Hokage and jinchūriki of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox!

    The cowards of Mist, inferior fighters that they are, were completely wiped out. Their foul nation is defenseless, its survival dependent on the kindness of Leaf. Will the new HOkage, the Gallant Jiraiya, leader of the Legendary Three, Toad Sage, and author of the well-loved Icha Icha series, choose to wipe our ancient foes from the earth or show superhuman kindness and forebearance by allowing them to survive as servants of the Leaf until they finally accept the Will of Fire? (Assuming such fallen, twisted people are capable of it!)

    Check back soon for the latest!    ​

    Noburi and Hazō shared a look, both of them wide-eyed, before leaping for the rooftops and heading for home at a dead sprint. Keiko followed in their wake, not bothering to ask what was going on. It clearly wasn't the time.

    "What happened?!" Hazō demanded, bursting into the living room so fast that the door bounced off the wall and would have smacked Noburi in the face if he hadn't stiff-armed it away. Two steps later, they froze in horror at the sight that greeted them: Jiraiya with Mari on his lap beside the hearth. There was nuzzling.

    "Hey, look who it is!" Jiraiya said, looking up and quickly removing his hands from where they had been roaming across his wife's back underneath her shirt.

    "Put those back, mister," she growled. "Kids, go to your room. We'll see you in an hour."

    Jiraiya laughed. "Better make it two."

    o-o-o-o​

    "...and then we headed home," Jiraiya finished. "I made a quick swing through the Tower to get things settled, then came back here. I wasn't home but twenty minutes before you lot and your unfortunate timing showed up."

    "His 'quick swing' took nine hours," Mari-sensei said tartly. "Do you suppose he thought to send a messenger to tell me that he wasn't dead?"

    Jiraiya looked nervous. "Now, honey, you know how hectic things can be right after a big mission. I had all this important stuff to deal with...um...all this other important stuff, since obviously you are very important. A few things dropped through the cracks, that's all."

    "'Dropped through the cracks', hm?"

    "Look, I had to get the Clan Heads together and work out issues of succession, plus put together a fresh defense plan for Leaf, send out a couple hundred messages to my intelligence network, and—"

    "So you remembered to message two hundred random people, but not me?"

    Jiraiya sighed. "Is there any way I'm getting out of this conversation with my dignity intact?"

    "You're down to ritual suicide or an unlimited supply of epic footrubs and sinful chocolates."

    "Done! Chocolates there shall be, along with rubbing of feet and various other body parts!" Fuzzy eyebrows waggled lasciviously.

    "And a wedding," Keiko said.

    Everyone froze.

    "Excellent thought," Mari-sensei purred, leaning towards her husband and propping her chin on folded hands with her elbows up. "I believe someone owes me a truly sumptuous wedding."

    "Uh...right."

    o-o-o-o​

    "In service to the Leaf, and to our glorious nation, and to the Will of Fire, I, Consort Nara Keiko, call this meeting to order. Let us all speak truthfully and serve loyally."

    Shikamaru was still a few months shy of his fifteenth birthday, and therefore it was necessary that his outclan wife speak for him at Council meetings. It should have been his carefully-trained consort, Nara Shikego, in the seat. The relevant fortune might be classed as well or ill, yet it was nonetheless a fact that said worthy had been summarily reassigned after her foolish attempt at preventing Shikamaru from working himself to death after the tragedy of the Collapse. Now Shikamaru was relegated to sitting silently at Keiko's right hand, grumbling and looking sullen.

    Personally, Hazō thought it was a foolish attitude to take. He had needed to beg and plead with Jiraiya to alter the law of Leaf so that clan heirs could attend Council meetings 'for the purpose of gaining experience in the arts of governance, provided that they remain silent and non-disruptive.'

    He looked down at the table in front of him. In physical form, the Concubine Laws were an intimidating stack of paper that Noburi had described as thicker than Hazō's head (he was just feeling bitter that his barrel still smelled of furious cat(?) after he finally incremented the Revenge on Noburi counter too far). Hazō would bet a year's supply of chocolate that half the people here had done no more than skim them. He'd tried to read the text in full and it was like trying to read a message spread out across the skins of a thousand snakes writhing chaotically in a single tight pit. A thousand unnumbered snakes. Hazō wondered how many other Nara-drafted laws Leaf had, and what horrors might be hidden inside, slumbering for decades until it became time for the Nara to unleash a contingency.

    Shikamaru wasn't the only underage Clan Head. Hinata, her white eyes only recently no longer grief-reddened at the loss of her father to Nagi Island and her heart newly laid waste by the loss of her mother to last week's Collapse, was being represented by Regent Kyōsuke, a taciturn man in his thirties already going grey from the stress of having to be a Hyūga. Ino was being dwarfed by the barrel-chested Regent Izayoi, whose pale Yamanaka eyes never stopped scanning the room. Naruto, however, remained on his own, a fact that displeased both Jiraiya (who wanted the jinchūriki as a son and heir) and Hazō (who wanted a brother who didn't increment the revenge counter so fast). Still, Naruto enjoyed his independence and none of them could argue that the extra vote on the Clan Council wasn't helpful.

    Everyone else was speaking for themselves, including Sasuke—the meeting had been scheduled for the day after his birthday, overtly as a gesture of respect, but also ensuring that the Uchiha vote would be held by someone more pliable to Ami's charms than the wisely suspicious Regent Sadao.

    "I believe you have all had an opportunity to read and consider the proposed legislation," Keiko began. "I should mention that, based on feedback from some of the people here, we have decided to strike Sections 17 and 31b as unnecessarily contentious."

    Translation: Other people found the text perfectly easy to understand, so you should go with the flow or you will look stupid. In reality, Hazō himself was one of the people Keiko was referring to, and Section 17 granted concubines the right to wear jūnihitoe in clan colours at court. Since, as far as Hazō knew, only civilian noblewomen ever bothered with the layered formal robes, and courts were a daimyo thing that ninja never attended except as bodyguards or infiltrators, and he had trouble seeing a daimyo try to sue a ninja for wearing the wrong clothes in any case, it was a sacrifice Hazō was comfortable making for the sake of rhetoric.

    "It is a dangerous thing you propose here, Nara," Lord Kurusu mused. "We've seen the clanless gain a lot of power over the last few months, and now you want to give them even more? I think right now Leaf needs stability more than it needs concubines." He stroked what the Icha Icha books described, ironically, as a vizier goatee as he watched Keiko for her response.

    "Excuse me, Lord Kurusu," came a cold voice from the head of the table, "were you addressing my daughter, Lady Nara?"

    Lord Kurusu paled. "Yes, Lord Hokage. Of course. Lady Nara."

    From the foot of the table, Kei Haruka smiled a vicious smile at the oh-so-polite takedown of the conservative leader. The newest Clan Head had been butting heads with the Kurusu and his allies since the moment she was seated.

    "Pay it no mind, father," Keiko said calmly. "The primary use of noble titles is to distinguish us from our KEI comrades, and it is to Kurusu's credit that he wishes to open this discussion by suspending them."

    Lord Kurusu flinched. Hazō watched curiously, waiting to see how the man would extricate himself from this as gazes began to sharpen.

    "Perhaps we should follow convention for the time being," the elderly, jewellery-festooned Lady Amori gently suggested, "so as to better focus on the proposal itself."

    Lord Kurusu nodded gratefully, and Lady Amori gave a subtle smirk.

    "As you wish," Keiko said. "I believe Lord Kurusu is missing the broader perspective. The primary beneficiary of the Concubine Laws is not in fact the KEI, although it is true that the majority of those it applies to will likely be clanless ninja. The primary beneficiary is the Village Hidden in the Leaves. The laws encourage the creation of new romantic and sexual relationships, and serve to stabilise those already present so they may be of a long-term nature. In other words..."

    "An increased birth rate," Sasuke concluded. "Something this village badly needs."

    Jiraiya inclined his head in stately agreement that could not have differed more from the cackling, villainous hand-rubbing, and ribald commentary of the previous night's family dinner.

    "You will find both conservative and optimistic projections in Appendix D," Keiko said. "Both show a marked improvement over the present trend, which is less than encouraging. Growing tension between the clans and the KEI is interfering with relationships of the kind we are discussing, ending them and preventing new ones from being formed. A reversal of this trend is one of the secondary benefits of these laws. Needless to say, reduced tensions will also benefit Leaf on any number of other levels."

    "And here we come to the truth of it," Lord Motoyoshi grunted. His elaborate robes rippled as he leaned forwards authoritatively. "Lady Nara, your stance on clan-KEI relations is no secret to any of us. There are some that would say what we need is a firmer hand, not a softening of boundaries. No matter what you and yours may accomplish, the hard truth is that the wall between us and them is not of our making. It is a basic fact of shinobi life, and has been that way for a thousand years. I don't mean to impugn the good work you've done strengthening Leaf, but you are clawing at an unbreakable barrier, and it is beneath us all to aid you in that futile endeavour."

    "Interesting," Jiraiya mused. "Keiko, I feel like I spent multiple evenings polishing the language on Clause Nine of the Declaration of the Rights of Shinobi. Am I misremembering?"

    "You are not, Lord Hokage. There were in fact eleven such evenings that I am aware of."

    "Hm. Lord Motoyoshi, do you perchance remember the language of Clause Nine?"

    The grinding of Lord Motoyoshi's teeth could be heard from the length of the table. "I do, My Lord."

    "Perhaps you could recite it for us?"

    "'All Leaf ninja, whatsoever the occasion or circumstance of their birth, partake fully and equally in the Will of Fire and in neither kind nor in degree shall they be treated with disparity. Neither elevated nor reduced, praised nor punished, save only as their deeds demand and in only the degree to which those deeds attain.'"

    The Iron Nerve allowed Hazō to conceal the smile called forth by memories of Jiraiya's embarrassed defense of (as described by Keiko at family dinner) "that overly florid, obtuse, impenetrable gobbledygook masquerading as legislation."

    "I feel like that might have some relevance to the discussion," Jiraiya said, idly tapping his chin as he stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Somehow...not quite sure. Well, anyway, let's move on. Keiko—excuse me, Lady Nara, did you have anything to add?"

    "With respect, Lord Hokage," Lord Kyoshō said, "I believe that the issue might be left unexpanded. We are not here to discuss the relative standing of the clanless and the clans. We are here to debate these laws. Unlike, I suspect, some of my esteemed company, I have taken the trouble to read these documents, and I note that they make no provision for inheritance. If we accept these as they are, any bastard born to some commoner mistress would have a claim equal to that of a legitimate child of the line. Imagine the nightmare that would ensue if any by-blow off the street had a legal claim to clan status—and worse, if they made use of it before a proper heir was born. It would be a catastrophe!"

    "There's no need to exaggerate," Lady Amori said peaceably. "The clan head has final word on choice of heir. That's how it's always been and how it always will be. If I recall correctly, Lord Kurusu's own father was chosen over the protests of the entire council of elders."

    "Imbeciles," Lord Kurusu spat. "If they'd chosen my uncle, may his spirit be forever one with the Will of Fire, Sainan would have been a rout and we would all be speaking Rock right now."

    "The people of Hidden Rock share our native language, Lord Kurusu," Keiko said with the faintest touch of disdain. "Their most common dialect, known as Lithic, is perfectly comprehensible once one accounts for the vowel shifts."

    "Yes, yes," Lord Kyoshō said impatiently. "Lady Nara, your mastery of trivia was never in doubt. Please let us return to the issue at hand. Maybe the Amori have suffered no succession issues, but history is not always so kind. I should not have to remind you of how badly such things can go, when Exhibit A's granddaughter is sitting at your right."

    Eyes pivoted towards Lady Minami. Regent Kyōsuke leaned over and whispered something to Lord Hagoromo next to him.

    "I believe we are getting a bit far afield," Jiraiya said before a riot could ensue. "I don't know about the rest of you but I have things to do today—specifically a final fitting for my wedding clothes. Keiko, would you care to speak to the inheritance question?"

    "The Nara accept Lord Kyoshō's point as valid," Keiko said reluctantly. "We withdraw the clause granting children of concubines automatic entry into the clan."

    Under the table, Hazō's fist clenched in delight. Trap successful. The harder people looked for issues with the content (and there were a couple of other contentious pieces seeded in there, easily fixed with a later amendment if it proved necessary), the more likely they would be to miss the grand deception for which the document was intended in the first place.

    He glanced over at Jiraiya. Was it time to call the vote? It seemed opportune and, despite how impenetrable the law was, if the discussion went on too long there was always the chance that someone would see through the muddied waters of the language and to the actual intent of the law.

    Jiraiya seemed to be of like mind. "In that case—"

    "A moment please, Lord Hokage!" Hazō's stomach sank as Lord Hagoromo scrabbled through the documents in front of him.

    He emerged like a pearl diver clutching hateful treasure. "Hah! You give the game away, Nara. To think, my cousin officiated at your wedding. I imagine you were already planning how to make a mockery of it when you stood at the altar. This was the purpose all along, wasn't it? To promote abomination amongst our people?!"

    "I don't know what you mean, Lord Hagoromo," Keiko said calmly, somehow managing not to show what must have been massive dismay.

    "Improving birth rates indeed," Lord Hagoromo sneered. "If that's the purpose of the law, Lady Nara, then why's there no mention of men and women? It's all 'they' and 'their', as if every concubine is an army."

    "This is a perfectly standard format," Keiko said faintly. "As the spirit of the law does not discriminate between young and old, male and female, nor does the letter," she quoted what must have been a Nara doctrine.

    Lord Hagoromo snorted. "I'm told," he said gleefully, "her name is Tintin."

    Keiko opened her mouth reflexively to correct him, then stopped herself, and by the time she'd realised her mistake it was too late.

    "You violated the sacrament of marriage," Lord Hagoromo said. "I'm no prude to say no one should ever have a mistress, but there's no place at a clan head's side for a deviant who has no intention of carrying out her duty."

    The temperature of the room plunged to the arctic.

    Lord Hagoromo stopped breathing, his eyes going wide as he realized what he had just said, about whom, and the relationship of that 'whom' to the demigod at the head of the table.

    In the apocalyptic silence, the sound of cloth shifting and stretching as Jiraiya poured himself a cup of tea was deafening.

    No one moved, no one breathed, as the Toad Sage's killing intent roiled and surged through the room. It was restrained, barely; the screams of damned souls were distant and the visions of the bleeding Out intruded only at the corners of vision. The cold grip of death clutched at everyone's heart but did not squeeze so tight that blood stopped flowing. And, of course, its grip lay far heavier on some than others; for Hazō, Keiko, Shikamaru, and their allies it merely loomed instead of trembling on the edge of destruction.

    Jiraiya sipped the tea. He savored it for an instant, then sighed in pleasure and reeled the howling horror of his soul back into its prison of flesh.

    "I apologize, Lord Hagoromo," he said mildly. "I became briefly distracted and missed your last words. Would you be so kind as to repeat them?"

    Lord Hagoromo's teeth chattered and it took him three tries to get words out. "I remarked that these laws would appear to contain no provision that concubines be female, Lord Hokage."

    "Hm, interesting." Jiraiya picked up the top page of the massive stack and pretended to skim over it. "Why so they don't. Fascinating." He tossed the page back and shrugged. "If Mari wants to get herself a boytoy for when I'm in the field, I have no objection. Do you have an objection, Lord Hagoromo?"

    The man swallowed. "No, Lord Hokage."

    "Excellent. Shall we vote?"

    o-o-o-o​

    Jiraiya and Mari stood at the start of the Path of Purification, he in a light summer yukata in Gōketsu green and red, and she in a kimono in a midnight blue that was suggestive of both Mist and the darkness of the missing-nin. Ahead of them, Hagoromo attendants lined the path, buckets at the ready.

    The ceremony was taking place at one end of Training Ground #7, the largest that Leaf possessed. It was nearly a mile across, yet still packed to the gills with what seemed to Hazō like nearly every resident of Leaf. The wedding had originally been intended to happen in Hokage Square, but plans had needed to be modified when Gamabunta laid down the law: Either he got an invitation or Jiraiya got banned as the Toad Summoner.

    Many hearts had quailed at the potential property damage that could result from the gargantuan Toad Boss taking a wrong hop within city limits, so Jiraiya moved the ceremony outside the walls. A granite stage had been conjured into existence by a group of Earth-aspect ninja while more mundane carpentry skills had been devoted to creating bleachers that the most important guests (the Gōketsu clan ninja, Shikamaru, Keiko, Snowflake, all of the Clan Heads and their spouses, Lady Tsunade, Lord Orochimaru, twenty Narutos, and half a dozen Toads including Ma and Pa) might have a good view. The several hundred ninja who were not on duty at the moment were packed around the stage and a mob of common citizens filled every inch of the training ground.

    The crowd had roared their approval as the Gōketsu entered. The cheers had been full-throated for Hazō, Kagome-sensei, Noburi, and Keiko, but they had redoubled when the blushing bride passed by.

    Jiraiya had been nervous about how the citizenry might react when they discovered that he was marrying a foreigner from Mist, especially one with red hair. Mari had laughed and assured him it wouldn't be a problem.

    In the actual event, it was not. Every resident of Leaf wanted to be present to see their legendary hero marry the foreigner who had come to be dearer to their hearts than many hometown women. Oh, sure, she was a demon-woman from that horrific Water Country place. Sure, maybe she ate men's souls to feed the demons stapled to her own. Sure, her hair was stained red from the blood she had grown up drinking in her foreign land. Still, she was theirs now. Leaf's, sure and solid. Her evil magics would be aimed at the enemy, her powers raised up as a shield. Look at how grateful she was to be here! Everyone knew the story of how she had walked through the gates for the first time and fallen to her knees in gratitude. Of how the demons within her had been exorcised at the touch of Leaf's holy soil, of how she had cursed at them and shaken her fist as they screamed into the darkness, banished forever. Now she spoke to everyone with respect, from the highest Clan Lord to the lowliest street urchin. She dealt with commoners directly instead of sending a smug factor to do it. She was thoughtful and kind and didn't niggle over every tiny flaw and scrape at every last ryō. She even took the advice of experts, listened to the wisdom of elders, and fed delivery people! (There had been a flood of spontaneous deliveries to the Gōketsu estate once that was discovered, and no one had ever been turned away.)

    As the priest began to chant, juggling the seven gems, an attendant helped Mari out of her kimono, symbolising her liberation from the darkness of her origins and leaving her in a white shift that left little to the imagination. The redhead smiled languidly in delight but, in accord with repeated importunings from her soon-to-be wedded husband, did not cock a hip, press back her shoulders, lick her lips, or in any other way angle, arrange, or utilize her body to increase sexual allure, offer provocation, incite riot or disturbance of the peace, or in any other way increase the difficulty of the Hokage's job.

    In parallel, six steps apart as the instructions mandated, Jiraiya and Mari began to slowly walk the several dozen metres separating them from the priest, and the first of the attendants started to strew purifying salt before them. Since everyone knew salt only purified what it touched, the pair had to walk barefoot, as having just their sandals purified would be of little benefit to the marriage. Cat (aka Sarutobi Chiyoko, aka Hazō's favorite ANBU agent) had shared the story of how Lord Hagoromo had ordered his people to use sharp-edged rock salt in lieu of the normal fine-grained kind as a punishment for Jiraiya's passage of Keiko and Shikamaru's new concubine laws, and the lengths to which his advisors had needed to go in order to convince their leader of the unwisdom of annoying someone who could wave his hand and cause you to be eaten by a toad.

    Step by step, they proceeded...

    An attendant dumped a bucket of holy water over Mari's head, drenching her completely. (It had taken twenty minutes of advising to repeal the order that the water be freezing cold instead of the normal bath temperature.) In defiance of her husband's orders, she insisted on giving the attendant a saucy wink, although at least she withheld any ribald comments that would have left the poor young man stammering and red-faced.

    Jiraiya's bucket didn't contain cold water. Neither, thanks to two consecutive recitations of Jiraiya's war record, did it contain the venomous millipedes known as sin eaters. It contained only the rich soil of Fire Country into which should grow the metaphorical roots of the wedding. (Granted, there were, perhaps, a few more than the average number of earthworms within the soil.)

    A normal wedding would have been merely a bucket apiece, yet Lord Hagoromo had insisted on the maximally-formal rites consisting of seven buckets each. By the time she reached the altar Mari was drenched from head to toe and Jiraiya wore a crown and epaulettes of dirt.

    Finally, they reached the altar.

    The Hagoromo priest threw them the gems one by one, each throw synced to key words in his chant. Jiraiya and Mari caught and juggled the stones with ease, passing all of them back and forth, save only the Summoner's gem that remained always on Jiraiya's side of their shared pattern.

    "I call upon the Sage of Six Paths," Jiraiya said smoothly, "to bestow the blessings of Seven upon my beloved bride, that the bonds between us be strong enough to bridge distant worlds, that our wills be a single blade cleaving a path to the future, and that the blood we spill always be followed by healing."

    "I call upon the Sage of Six Paths," Mari said, speaking slowly and carefully, "to bestow the blessings of Six on my beloved groom, that our bonds bring us together no matter where and when we are reborn, that our love be as endless as a river and as deep as the sea, and that in the coldest night, we tell our story warmed by the Will of Fire."

    "Thus mote it be," pronounced the priest.

    Jiraiya and Mari cupped their hands together, catching the gems one by one, and rolled them into the mouth of the urn symbolising the Sage of Six Paths.

    The audience, including Hazō, cheered uproariously.

    Finally, husband and wife turned around and cast blunted exorcism kunai at the crowd. Neither of them being ranged-weapon specialists, their aim and throwing form were perhaps not all they could have been, but if a large number of kunai fell on the unprepared Hagoromo attendants, that could hardly be helped.

    "Kiss her, you idiot!" Tsunade shouted from the bleachers.

    Jiraiya laughed, caught Mari in his arms, and dipped her. Their lips locked and the crowd went wild, toads and humans alike cheering madly as the Fifth Hokage and his demonic and foreign-born wife were at last united.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 473, Part 1: Cold and Dark
  • Threadmarks

    • Hazō's cane beat a staccato rhythm of panic against the floor as he fled through the corridors to the main room. At any moment now, Orochimaru, a summoner and implicitly a shadow clone user as well, would change his mind and send someone after him, or see through Mari's deception and send someone after Kei. Or he might get impatient and go through the outbuildings at ninja speed, then come straight back. Or he might bump into Kagome-sensei, whose ability to sense danger was as finely-honed as his ability to handle it diplomatically wasn't.

    Or Kei might not be there at all.

    The main room was strangely crowded, with people and beings drifting away slowly after… they'd given the victory speech without him, hadn't they? They'd ignored his Sage-given right as host and stripped him of the opportunity to give an inspirational speech before a new and interdimensional audience. Hazō felt a twitch of irritation. Imagine how differently the evening might have gone if one of them had sought him out instead of abandoning him to Orochimaru's mercies while a lesser candidate took his place.

    Then he heard Orochimaru's imaginary voice in his mind. The boy is otherwise engaged. You may conduct your puerile banner-waving without him.

    No, it would have taken more than proper social behaviour to save Hazō from Leaf's Bogeyman. In the event, it took sacrificing his sister.

    He had to hurry.

    There!

    At the far end, near the podium, Kei stood across from Neji, arms crossed and face fixed in an expression of imperious contempt usually reserved for Kagome-sensei when he refused to acknowledge Ami's greatness for such petty reasons as her being "blatantly up to something" and "tricking you so you only realise after she's gone that she never answered your question" and "using cheating social skills to get past your trap arrays instead of being blown up like a proper trespasser" (not that Kagome-sensei's trap arrays were at their finest these days, when there was a need to accommodate a constant stream of civilians entering and leaving the estate, including children liable to play in areas explicitly marked as off-limits). Neji, for his part, was glaring fiercely, if to little effect.

    Hazō did not have time to break up an inter-clan diplomatic incident. He did not have time for anything. Orochimaru might already be on his way back.

    He opened his mouth to remind the pair that this was one night on which the progressive and the conservative factions were supposed to put their ideological differences aside to celebrate a shared victory.

    "Teleport is clearly unbalanced!" Neji snarled. "You should not be able to affect other people's figures, anywhere, without at least a crippling cost to stop you throwing it around like green confetti on Hashirama Day!"

    "Your failure to anticipate potential counters to your predictable opening strategy is not the fault of the cards," Kei countered smugly. "The number of Teleports in my deck is public knowledge; the odds of drawing one on the first turn are trivial to calculate. If you did not wish to invest in an expensive warrior, only to have it cast into the depths of Snow Country where it is of no use to man or beast, you should have mitigated the potential damage by playing a cheap cultist first, or alternatively your Jashin Avatar, which is immune. In fact, an aggressive opening with a Jashin Avatar in the Fire Country in the middle of the board is a classic means of area denial, and would have inconvenienced me greatly given the warpstone distribution of this game."

    "It's a matter of game balance," Neji insisted doggedly. "In any balanced board game—"

    "Sorry to interrupt," Hazō said, "but Kei, I need you to come with me. There's somewhere we need to be half past now."

    He didn't use any Gōketsu hand signs (Hyūga were notoriously observant even with the Byakugan off, and it would have been a dead giveaway that something was up), but clearly something about his still-shaken countenance spoke louder than words.

    "The Blood God is a beginner trap, Hyūga," Kei added by way of a parting shot. "His tactics appear powerful and straightforward, but require great subtlety to execute without drastically increasing his threat rating, at which point he lacks the defensive cards to endure reprisal. You would fare better with the Plaguemaster or the Prince of Passion."

    "Do you know where Snowflake is?" Hazō asked.

    "Last seen following Noburi in that general direction."

    Hazō tsked. "We don't have time to find her. Dispel her; we can't let her stay here on her own."

    Kei frowned. "Without her consent?"

    Hazō was already moving on. He wouldn't be able to run fast enough on his own. Where was…

    "Akane! I need your help!"

    The World's Best Girlfriend did not hesitate, disengaging from her conversation with Kei (Ruri; Hazō was starting to wonder if that clan name was another of Ami's pranks) with a polite bow.

    "What do you need?"

    "Kei and I have somewhere we need to be now, but I can't run. Will you…" Hazō inwardly winced. There was nothing strange about injured ninja being carried by their teammates, but here and now that didn't make it any less embarrassing. "Will you carry me?"

    Akane promptly turned around, lowering her body slightly to offer him a piggyback ride. "Where to, My Lord?"

    "Central Leaf," Hazō said, "and don't spare the chakra."

    They were out of the door within seconds. Hazō felt a chill as he glanced back, just in case, only to see Hebifaya watching them go with an unreadable alien expression on her serpentine face.

    -o-​

    "So where are we heading, exactly?" Akane asked. "Not that I mind wandering around in the darkness with you, Hazō, but Kei might have other ideas."

    "Quite," Kei said coolly. "When I reinstantiate Snowflake, I would prefer her to be aware of a satisfactory excuse for why I violated her agency without warning."

    Hazō briefly weighed his options and, in the interests of efficiency, decided to open with the big ninjutsu.

    "Orochimaru may or may not be after you in order to kidnap and dissect you. Where do you think we should go first?"

    Akane stumbled. Kei's head whipped around with the speed of a snake.

    "Are you serious?"

    "Would I joke about this?"

    "The Nara compound," Kei concluded after a second's thought. "Even a demigod would hesitate to invade the Nara compound at night, and we need to be able to send messengers to locate potential allies. Shikamaru is the only one guaranteed to be home. Now, explain."

    Hazō put his thoughts in order. Despite the bloodcurdling subject, the familiar pattern of making a list, with categories and subcategories, helped him clear his head a little.

    "Orochimaru is interested in the Iron Nerve—from which he's been deflected for now—and in Snowflake because of her cognitively independent nature. He wants clone assistants capable of having their own independent ideas, and he doesn't think that's possible, but obviously he'll change his mind if he finds out about her."

    Honestly, the idea of Orochimaru generating ideas at a "Shadow Clone Technique x demigod chakra reserves" rate added a whole new level of horror on top of the risk to Kei personally.

    "How did he learn of Snowflake?" Kei asked. "Rather, why now? I did not see him at the party, and besides, she is fully aware of the dangers of drawing his attention to a Frozen Skein user."

    "He was at the party," Hazō admitted. "I never expected him to come, but given the circumstances, I couldn't exactly snub him either."

    "He was at the party," Kei said, in the step-by-step voice of someone figuring something out, "where he spent his time talking to you. During which time he developed a new and pressing interest in myself and my Bloodline Limit."

    Hazō couldn't see Kei's face in the darkness of a village gradually going to sleep, but he could feel a cold wrapping around him that made the winter air feel like a sauna.

    "No!" Hazō exclaimed. "Whatever you're thinking, that is not what happened!"

    "Then what did?" Kei asked heavily.

    "We talked about the Great Seal," Hazō said. "He very nearly got the truth about the Iron Nerve out of me, but Mari saved me in the nick of time with a story about the Iron Nerve recording the Great Seal because it can memorise terrain. Only…"

    He stopped. Kei's relationship with Mari already hung by a thread, but he'd had faith, before, that they would eventually figure things out like a pair of adults who, when all was said and done, loved each other and had few people closer to them in the entire world. Now, his next few words would destroy it forever. There was no coming back from having a loved one sell you out to be kidnapped and torturously killed. Even Akane couldn't forgive something like that.

    Would Akane be able to forgive Mari? Would the others? Hazō himself was still too much in shock to know how he felt about the fact that Mari's fallback option for distracting Orochimaru had been to betray family.

    "Yes, Hazō?" Kei prompted in a voice vibrating with tension.

    Hazō swallowed. "Only then it started to sound like Orochimaru was interested in that for some reason, and Mari had to distract him… and she told him about Snowflake."

    Akane gasped.

    Kei said nothing. Nothing at all.

    "It was all my fault," Hazō added hurriedly. "I was the one who tried to get Orochimaru's attention off everyone else by talking about the Great Seal, and I was the one who didn't misdirect him hard enough, and I was the one who failed to resist when he forced me to tell him the truth."

    Kei said nothing. Even her pseudo-aura had disappeared.

    "She didn't have time to think!" Hazō went on. "Orochimaru was in the middle of making up his mind, and she acted on reflex. I'm sure if she'd had even a second longer, she'd have found another way."

    "Directing Orochimaru's attention to me was the first thought to occur to her," Kei translated. Her voice was utterly lacking in affect, as if she were just reading out a dinner menu.

    "Kei," Akane said, "I'm sure it wasn't like that. I know you and Mari are having difficulties, but that doesn't mean she doesn't love you and care about you. Maybe she panicked, or maybe she has a plan. She'd never deliberately do anything to hurt you."

    "Her behaviour was entirely rational," Kei said, still in a dead voice. "Hazō was in immediate physical danger, whereas I was not. I have a wider circle of allies able to intervene on my behalf, and a less fraught relationship with the Hokage. Furthermore, it would have been reasonable to assume that Ami and/or the Nara have contingencies in place, whereas you do not. My odds of surviving Orochimaru's attention are objectively superior. In terms of solutions which could be implemented immediately and reliably, using me as a tool to ensure Hazō's safety is a more than valid approach."

    "Kei, I'm sure she didn't—"

    "Don't."

    A few seconds passed.

    "When we reach the compound," Kei said quietly, "I will participate in the strategy meeting and put forth every possible effort to ensure a positive resolution to this crisis. Until then… please leave me be."

    Hazō didn't want to interrupt the hollow silence that followed those words. It hung over them, ready to devour any expressions of hope, any attempts at consolation. Hazō didn't know if it was the silence of mourning or the silence of the grave.

    But there was one more important, urgent issue he couldn't leave until the compound.

    "Akane," Hazō said, "when I left Mari, she was leading Orochimaru on a wild goose chase to give us time to run. When he realises Kei was never at the far end of the compound and we left in the meantime, he's going to be furious with Mari. I have no idea how to stop him from hurting her."

    "Do you want to go back?"

    After a second's hesitation, Hazō shook his head, and hated himself for it. "There's every possibility that Orochimaru is following us, and meeting him with no witnesses in the middle of the night is just begging to be kidnapped on principle."

    "If we don't turn back now," Akane said, "there's no chance we can get anyone to him before he finds out she lied to him."

    "We could send a summon," Kei said distantly. "But I do not know what they could say. Claim an urgent summons from the Hokage?"

    Hazō shook his head, then realised she wouldn't be able to see him.

    "Mari tried that, and he just shrugged it off. Besides, it would be coming from our summons, and he'll be on the alert for more misdirection.

    "Damn," he said after a second, "I can't think of anything we can tell him. He shouldn't hurt her because she's an elite jōnin and it would upset Asuma and weaken our position in the war, and he shouldn't hurt her because she's Lady Gōketsu and there would be repercussions, but he already knows both of those things. Hearing them again when he's already angry would just make him feel like we were treating him as an idiot or trying to manipulate him."

    They kept thinking the rest of the way to the Nara compound, and then it was too late.

    -o-​

    To be continued. Voting is closed.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • (AU?) Interlude: Horseshoe Nails, Part 1
  • Threadmarks
    • (AU?) Interlude: Horseshoe Nails, Part 1​

    The tall charcoal-haired man unbuckled his harness and tossed it vaguely towards the equipment rack as he flopped down on his cot, one arm over his eyes to block out the last traces of sunset that leaked through the command tent's open rear entrance. The harness clattered to the floor and his valet frowned as he picked it up.

    "A difficult day, sir?" he asked, shaking the harness lightly to get it untangled.

    "Ugh. Cut me some slack, Mikito."

    "I wasn't aware I had said anything challenging, sir." He draped the leather harness over its purpose-made rack and twitched the straps into proper position so they wouldn't kink up as the sweat dried. Hm. There was blood on the left hip sheath and the strap around it. Apparently Sir had been putting his weapons away without bothering to wipe them off again. A vile habit.

    Hashirama uncovered his eyes long enough to glare at his long-time valet. "I can hear the disapproval, Mikito. Oozing from every word. Hear it."

    "Hm. How inconsiderate of me. I suppose I should report myself to the Warmaster for appropriate discipline. A bit of flogging, perhaps?"

    "Sage preserve me from grouchy valets," Hashirama muttered. "To answer your earlier question: Yes, it was a hard day. On the way back from the raid we got jumped by a team of Uchiha. They killed Hideyo, Goichi, and Shigemi, and they torched most of the supplies we were bringing. The clan is going to have to stay on half rations for at least tomorrow and the next day. There's a farm town to the north that we haven't tried yet. I'll lead another raiding party there tomorrow but we won't make it back for two days minimum if we're having to drag carts."

    "Ah." Mikito's disapproval was gone, replaced with sadness and sympathy. "I'm sorry, sir. They were wonderful men." He left the harness and moved to pour from the teapot that sat in the coals of the hibachi. "I still have a bit of the oolong, and some chicken and rice. Get cleaned up while the tea steeps. I'll have the food ready by the time you're clean."

    "Where did you get the chicken?"

    "I held it aside from the stew on Sageday. I figured it would either make a good celebratory meal on your return or it would serve to restore your strength if you needed to go out again."

    Hashirama started to protest but waffled. It had been a week of nothing but rice and tubers and his belly was growling at the thought of actual meat.

    The weakness lasted only a moment; he sat up and shook his head. "Give it to the mothers," he said, picking up the heated wet towel that Mikito was holding out for him and starting to clean himself. "I'm not going to eat meat when they have none." A lump hidden in his hair proved to be a piece of gristle from where one of his wood clones had torn an Uchiha apart and cast the upper half over Hashirama's head.

    "Damn the Uchiha," he muttered, opening the lid of the chamber pot so he could throw the gristle in. "This feud is stupid. All the effort we put into killing each other ends up destroying everything around us. The two most powerful clans in the region and we're both hungry and cold all the time because we keep destroying each other's supplies."

    "Indeed," Mikito said, his voice dry as dust. "Were there only a way to get such a complicated idea as through their thick heads."

    Hashirama snorted. "Be nice, Mikito. They aren't dumb, just vicious. I'm sure they could understand ideas as simple as 'not killing each other is good' if we used small enough words."

    "Hm...indeed. And perhaps we could all live peacefully beside one another, in giant stone houses like the civilians have, with mutual gardens in which we grow tubers that peel themselves from sheer desire to be eaten."

    Hashirama froze, head cocked in thought. "That's...actually not a bad idea, Mikito."

    The valet turned to his Clan Lord and third cousin with a scorchingly raised eyebrow. "My Lord, were you perhaps struck in the head? Tubers are not going to peel themselves."

    "No, no, no that. The Uchiha. The two clans living together."

    Mikito's expression changed from disapproving to outright befuddlement. "Sir...the Uchiha are the enemy. They would kill us."

    "Yeah, but what if they didn't?"

    "They would."

    Hashirama's face split in his trademark grin, white teeth flashing in the gloaming. "Yeah, but what if they didn't?"

    "Sir—"

    He raised a hand to cut off his valet's frustrated tirade. "No, seriously. Think for a minute. There's...what, two dozen clans running around this area? There's us, the Uchiha, and the rest are second- or third-raters. If the Uchiha and the Senju could put our differences aside, we could control the entire region. We could take over all the civilian towns and farm them the way the civilians farm their fields. Part of the reason that things are tight right now is because of when Madara ambushed Nobunao's team two years ago. Remember?"

    "Of course. My uncle was one of the ones killed."

    "Right, and I'm not minimizing that, but think what else it did: Yellow Oak got destroyed in the fight. The best supply source for four days travel in any direction. Their fields got torched and probably half of the people were killed. For the last two years, food's been tight for everyone because of that ambush."

    "Which shows exactly why the Uchiha need to be destroyed. They are a plague upon the land, destroying everything they touch."

    Hashirama's smile turned sad. "It's not just them, Mikito. Half the fire thrown in that fight was from Senju chakra. We bear our share of the blame."

    "What?!" Mikito turned to face his lord and every ounce of blood had gone from his face. His fists were clenched and his voice shook with repressed anger. "Are you putting us on the same level as those, those...animals?!"

    "Peace, Mikito. They ambushed us that time so the destruction is ultimately in their tents, but we've ambushed them in the past and caused destruction in the process. Regardless, what does it matter whose fault it is? The final result is that our clan's mothers are so hungry that they're having trouble producing milk to feed the babes. I'd wager the same is true of the Uchiha. After all"—the teeth flashed again, but the smile this time was grimmer—"I think everyone will agree that the Senju are the more dangerous clan."

    "Then kill them, My Lord! Stop this game of ambush and retreat! Find their camp, send the warriors, and kill them! Let it be done once and never needed again!"

    "Mikito...how many of our people would die in the process? The Uchiha are powerful. Not as powerful as us, but powerful. The Senju would be weakened, perhaps to the point that some of the lesser clans could team up and destroy us. A direct conflict between the clans would destroy both of us. Especially if we tried it on their prepared ground."

    Mikito turned away, kneeling before the hibachi with his back so tight he trembled.

    "This could work, Mikito," Hashirama said softly. "If Madara and I could reach an agreement, it could work. You know that land to the east, where the forest is richest? With the Uchiha and the Senju working together, we could claim that area. Kill all the beasts, clear the land. Bring in some civilian farmers. Give it a season, perhaps two, and there would be more food than we knew what to do with."

    "And as soon as we moved on, someone else would destroy it."

    "Right, but what if we didn't move on? What if we stayed? We could build walls, plant traps. With the Senju and the Uchiha together we would have enough warriors to keep up heavy patrols around the clock." He paused for a moment as numbers ticked through his head, then shook them away. "Okay, maybe not. So after we make our agreement with the Uchiha we grab a few more clans. Maybe the Nara—they're good with traps. Oh, or the Inuzuka—their nindogs have incredible senses and would make for excellent sentries. Or maybe the Maita; their plant-control abilities would synergize well with the Wood Element. Or..."

    Hashirama trailed off, visions of possibility cascading through his mind.

    "We're doing this," he said. "Come on." He pushed himself to his feet and tossed the now blood-soaked towel carelessly behind himself as he strode for the door. For the first time in ages he felt a new emotion: Hope.




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