"Run!" Kōta shouted. "Run! They're going to kill us all!" He blurred forward at fully chakra boosted speed.
The hillside was a frenzied nightmare; children running in all directions, their parents and some of the ninja that had been guarding the team chasing after them like sheep dogs after strays and the rest splitting up to contain Kagome, Hazō, and Akane.
dice said:
Kōta, Tactical Movement:
?d100 + ?d100 chakra boost: 646
Kagome, Tactical Movement:
?d100 + ?d100 chakra boost: 585
Hazō, Tactical Movement: 562
Lots o' Isan Ninja (one roll for convenience): 581
Kagome ignored Hazō and the village ninja got their timing exactly wrong: too slow to stop Kagome from stopping Kōta, just fast enough to stop Hazō from stopping Kagome. The formerly-a-Mist-genin slammed on the brakes and flicked through a series of handseals as his paranoid and furious teammate started hurling explosive-tagged kunai after Kōta.
"Earth Element: Multiple Earth Wall!" Hazō said, tearing a series of walls out of the ground in front and on either side of Kagome. The walls barely came up in time to intercept the kunai and detonate them harmlessly. Kagome spun around, an expression of betrayal on his face.
Hazō dropped to his knees, fingers laced behind his neck. "It's okay!" Hazō said quickly. "It's okay, I'm not fighting! Everyone stand down!"
For the barest second, the world seemed to freeze as everything hung in the balance; Hazō on his knees, voluntarily helpless. The Isan ninja leaping at him, weapons raised for the attack. Kagome, more explosive-equipped weapons springing to his hands as he prepared to defend his team.
"STOP!" Akane bellowed. "IT IS NOT YOUTHFUL FOR FRIENDS TO FIGHT!"
All eyes turned to her in shock; multiple people stumbled as they tried to stop mid-step.
Akane dropped gracefully to her knees, lacing her fingers behind her neck in mirror of Hazō's position. "I did nothing wrong," she said calmly. "I voluntarily surrender myself to village justice."
"Akane, get up!" Kagome shouted in horror. "Don't let those stinking ninja stinkers take you!" He raised a kunai to throw—
"No! Stop!" Akane called. "It's all right!"
Kagome hesitated; very slowly, he lowered his hand. He did not, however, sheathe his kunai as he stalked back towards Hazō and Akane. When the Isan ninja didn't move out of his way he bristled.
"Get back, you stinking stinkers!" he growled. "Leave my team alone or I'll blow you so high up you won't come down again!"
"It's all right," Hazō said, trying to balance the contradictory needs of projecting his voice enough to be heard while also keeping it quiet and calm enough to not set anyone off. "It's all right," he said again. "Naito, stand down." He looked to see which of the village ninja appeared to be in charge and wracked his brain to remember the man's name. It started with a 'K', didn't it...? Kobi, that was it!
"Kobi, peace," Hazō said. "No one wants to fight."
"I do," Kagome grumbled. "Stinking stinkers want to threaten my team, huh? Boom! Squash!" He glared around, making sure that none of the Isan ninja were behind him as he edged closer to Akane and Hazō.
"Stand down," Kobi said, his posture relaxing. "Everyone just step back."
Reluctantly, the village ninja pulled back, weapons still in hand and scowls still on faces.
"That's right, you stinking stinkers!" Kagome said. "Back off or—"
"Naito!" Hazō snapped.
"What?" Kagome asked.
"Relax," Hazō said. "We're trying to keep the peace."
"Why?" Kagome asked, puzzled. "They were attacking you two. And that stinking stinker framed Sasaki."
"What?" Kobi asked.
Kagome rolled his eyes. "Really?" he said. "You think that Sasaki won the bout and then randomly tried to kill that stinker right in front of three dozen witnesses? Sasaki, who can't lie to save her life and is the friendliest person on this team? Are you naturally stupid or did you have to work at it?"
"Naito!" Hazō snapped. "Not. Helping."
Kobi was caught somewhere between embarrassment and anger. "I don't—"
Grass rustled and dirt sprayed as Inoue slammed to a halt. Keiko and Noburi were seconds behind her.
The jōnin looked around at the tableau and nodded to herself. "Naito, put the tags away. Tsutomu, Kimiko, get up. Kobi, what happened?"
"That stinking Gasai stinker tried to—!"
Inoue cut him off with an upraised hand. "I asked Kobi," she said. "I'll get your version in a second. Kobi, talk to me. What exactly did you see? No interpretation, just what you saw."
Kobi worked his jaw for a moment, clearly both uncomfortable and angry. "What I saw was that Sasaki and Gasai Kōta were having weapons practice," he said. "She disarmed him and they went into a clinch. He stepped back with a cut on on his chest and started shouting about how she'd tried to kill him. He ran, Naito went after him throwing explosive kunai, Ishida pulled walls out of the ground to intercept them, then Ishida and Sasaki surrendered themselves."
Inoue-sensei nodded. "Kimiko, what's your version?"
Akane shifted uncomfortably. "He suggested that we try weapons practice, which I thought was most youthful. He was winning until I closed the range and managed to disarm him. I thought—"
Inoue-sensei raised a hand. "Stop. Don't tell me what you thought, just tell me what physically happened. I don't want to muddy the waters with speculation."
Akane blushed. "Yes, sensei," she said. She licked her lips as she gathered her thoughts. "Um...I disarmed him, then he stepped in close. He said 'Learn some respect in the next life'. Um...he also called me an unpleasant name. He grabbed my hand and pulled the edge of my kunai across his collarbone, then he jumped back and started shouting about how I'd tried to kill him. The children in the audience ran, along with their parents. Gasai ran, Naito went after him and started throwing explosive kunai. Ishida-sensei came for me, but he called for Naito to stop and then brought up earth walls to intercept his weapons. The most youthful guardians of the village came for us, and Ishida-sensei surrendered. He told me to do so as well, so I did. Then Naito came back and told Kobi what had happened, and then you arrived."
Inoue-sensei turned to Kobi again. "Do you think that my students started this, or do you think that Gasai was trying to stir up trouble as revenge for what happened a week ago?"
Kobi paused. "I can't really say anything about that until I've heard Gasai's side of the story," he said.
"Okay," Inoue-sensei said. "Look, if it's okay with you we're going to go back to our quarters. We'll wait there until someone from the village comes to fetch us. That work for you?"
Kobi thought about that. "We'll need to put a guard on your quarters," he said. "And I'll need you to stay inside."
"Sure, no problem," Inoue-sensei said. "We didn't do anything wrong here, and I'm sure your investigation will exonerate us."
"In that case, after you," Kobi said, gesturing back towards the team's fort.
o-o-o-o
The first thing Inoue-sensei did once they were inside the fort was to sweep Akane into her arms and hug her tight.
"Great job, kid," she said. "You played that exactly right. Honest, forthright, and direct. That could have gone very badly, but you really pulled it out for us."
"But sensei, the whole thing was my fault!" Akane said, her eyes full of tears. "I shouldn't have let him do that! I should have known that he was still against us. I thought he was improving!"
Inoue-sensei shrugged, not releasing the hug. Akane was fully five inches taller, and in other circumstances, it would have been funny to watch the taller girl awkwardly bend down to be hugged. No one seemed to find it funny at the moment, though.
Eventually the jōnin released her and stepped back. "Look, Akane," she said. "You aren't at fault here. I knew he was still angry, but I didn't think he'd go this far. He'd been respectful and cooperative for long enough that I thought maybe we actually could work through it."
"But...," Akane said, clearly still trying to find a reason for it to be her fault.
"No buts!" Inoue-sensei said. "Well, except for Gasai, whose head is a butt. We'll deal with him later. For now we just need to be cooperative. Now, who wants to play some board games? I could go for a little Strategic Domination, myself."
o-o-o-o
In the actual event, Kōta's 'clever strategem' fell apart faster than tissue paper in a rainstorm. Even his grandmother couldn't stretch far enough to suggest that Akane had actually instigated the incident. The best she could do was to let him keep his ninja status but be put on punitive duty for six months.
Unfortunately, Inoue-sensei walked in while Keiko was reviewing Hazō and Noburi's assassination plans. As their jōnin commander she gave them a direct order to avoid all contact with Kōta and take no action against him. She also refused to be swayed by even the most dewy of puppy-dog eyes. It was frustrating.
o-o-o-o
"You were most insistent on seeing me, Yoshino," the elder Takahashi said, calmly sipping his tea. "Almost to the point of rudeness."
Mari gave him a shallow nod of acknowledgement. "'Almost' being the key word," she said with a smile. "I'm sure you understand my concern for my student. The deal you pressured her into making is stringent. I don't have an explicit problem with it, as long as I'm sure that it is what it seems to be."
Takahashi raised an elegant eyebrow. "Are you questioning my integrity in my own home?"
Mari shook her head. "Of course not, sir. No, I am simply concerned for my student. I find myself confused why you would be willing to train her in summoning. We are outsiders; why not train your daughter, or one of your grandchildren?"
Takahashi pondered that. For several long minutes the room remained utterly silent except for the tiny sounds of tea being sipped.
"I think I shall answer that at another time," he said. "In the meantime, I would like to know more about you. For example, what are your hobbies? Myself, I enjoy studying plants and animals. Especially ants."
Mari didn't allow her face to move. "I am not familiar with ants, sir," she said. "What is it you find so interesting about them?"
"Fascinating creatures," Takahashi said. "They form villages, build giant and complex hives, and manage a complex society. It is a warlike society, though. If members of two anthills meet, they usually go to war and the smaller hill is wiped out. The ants from the larger hill will go down the tunnels of the smaller one, wipe out every ant they find, and plunder the food stores and other treasures of the smaller hill."
He paused, sipping his tea in thought. "I often wonder about this warlike nature," he said, his voice far away. "Ant society is so rigid, with no possibility for change or growth, no option to find different ways that might be better. There is only one queen, of course, and she is guarded with religious fervor. Suppose there were no queen? Suppose ants from another hill snuck in and stole her away? What would the remaining ants do with no queen? They would need to find a new purpose in life, and perhaps that purpose would allow them to become more than they had been."
The far away tone dropped away and he looked Mari straight in the eyes. "Of course, such a thing is unimaginable. Were any of the local ants to recognize the purpose of these invaders they would be attacked immediately. Ants have no regard for their own lives when their queen is threatened, and would fling themselves suicidally on any invader who showed such thievish intent."
He laughed and shook his head regretfully. "Look at me, rambling on about impossible things. I do apologize; when you get to my age the wits tend to wander and one grows boring."
Mari sipped her tea and smiled. "Not at all," she said. "I find it fascinating."
o-o-o-o
The next two weeks were surprisingly calm. The team stuck close to their quarters. Inoue-sensei escorted Keiko to her lessons every day, waited outside the door, and then escorted her back. Everyone else was given strict orders to stay inside the fort while she was gone. Kagome was given even stricter orders to not indulge in murder, arson, or jaywalking, and not to use explosives or talk to anyone or even look sideways at anyone no matter how much he wanted to. The poor man almost cried until Inoue-sensei unbent enough to say that he could work on the fort's defenses as long as he didn't actually test them. The sun was instantly restored to Kagome's brow.
XP AWARD: 15
Yes, Kagome used Akane's actual first name. (He blew his roll to remember.)
Hazō has trained sealing to 11. The GMs are still working out how to handle training Summoning before the contract has been signed; if we decide that it's feasible then we'll assume it happened retroactively. Akane and Noburi were both 'Training: Nope', so nothing changed there.
What next?
Voting ends on Wednesday, May 18, 2016, at 12pm UTC.
"The Apprentice moves to the Shrine, and I put a second paranoia token on the Demolitionist," Noburi announced with barely-concealed glee.
Hazō groaned in belated realisation. "The Demolitionist is the real culprit, isn't he? All those cards you've been playing on the Diplomancer were just a bluff."
It was a pleasant, sunny afternoon. Inoue-sensei and Akane had just headed off to talk to Takahashi about ninjutsu trading, Keiko was going to be back any minute now, Kagome-sensei was busy re-fortifying the fort after realising that he didn't know whether the tapirs had high-jumping powers, and Noburi was wiping the floor with Hazō in their latest board game. With the Demolitionist having hit his paranoia limit, and the Analyst refusing to use her goodwill ability on the Apprentice, Hazō was doomed unless…
"Keiko!" he shouted with unalloyed delight. "How are you?"
Noburi spun around sharply, his elbow knocking over the board which Hazō had carefully nudged into position a split-second earlier.
"I have learned that our world is a tiny bubble of sanity within a universe so alien that our thoughts cannot make the shapes required to describe it, and that to gaze upon the true face of reality is to invite a madness that is both torture and liberation," Keiko said in an even voice. "But other than that, I am fine. Thank you for asking."
Hazō and Noburi exchanged glances.
There was something Inoue-sensei had talked about recently during their diplomacy lessons. Genuine praise and encouragement could have a powerful effect on people, not merely making them view you more favourably in general, but also generating feelings of trust—and, especially when the other person already trusted your judgement, they had the potential to influence that person's self-image for the better. She said it was something every leader needed to learn.
"You mustn't push yourself too hard, Keiko," Hazō said emphatically. "I know you've been working outside your comfort zone with the negotiating and training, and you've been doing a great job, but please don't let yourself burn out."
"A great job?" Keiko echoed. "Takahashi-sensei is an excellent teacher, and I'm glad that he has chosen to give up his time to teach me, but I could tell how disappointed Inoue-sensei was that I let him take control of the negotiations. And she is correct. I am a failure as a diplomat. If I only have one way to contribute to the group, why should I not dedicate all my resources to it?"
"Keiko," Noburi said, "you've got it all wrong. Inoue-sensei's disappointed with herself, because she wasn't prepared for Takahashi's trick, and sent you in without backup or a readied plan. Nobody's blaming you. You're awesome."
"Nobody is expecting you to be Inoue-sensei either," Hazō added. "She's our negotiation expert—you simply happen to be good at other things. Now come on. I'll make you some tea, and Noburi is going to regale you with exciting stories from his youth to relieve the tension from your training."
"I am? Uh, I mean, yes, of course, I'd be delighted to!" Noburi exclaimed, shooting Hazō an "I owe you one" look out of Keiko's sight.
But it was not to be.
"Ahoy the fort!" came a girl's voice from outside. The three genin came out to see a teenage girl dressed in ninja leathers, with an axe on her back, waving at them in a friendly fashion.
"Hi," she smiled. "I'm Yuno. I'm here to show you around the village and explain our customs. Who's coming with me?"
"This must be the guide Yoshida said she'd send us," Noburi explained to the others. "Well, I'm up for it. How about you guys?"
"I will respectfully decline," Keiko said, eyeing Yuno with poorly-disguised suspicion. "I have only just finished training, and need rest."
"I was going to go through some new ideas with Naito-sensei in half an hour," Hazō added. "Sorry, Endo. You're on your own for this one."
Noburi shrugged, not visibly put out by having to spend the afternoon wandering around the village alone with an attractive girl. "Looks like it's just me. Shall we?"
-o-
Elder Takahashi, looking more animated than Mari had ever seen him, pondered the Firefly Technique scroll.
"Interesting. Very interesting. Yes, I believe we will be able to teach you the arts described herein, as soon as one of our own can master the technique themselves. We have some excellent Fire Element users, so I do not anticipate any problems."
"And in regard to the second matter?" Mari asked.
"That depends," the ninjutsu master replied. "What can you offer me?"
She'd considered this. Offensive techniques that could be used against the group were, for obvious reasons, a bad idea. Defensive techniques were fine as long as they didn't counter the group's actual abilities (which meant, for example, that the Wind Wall Technique was right out). But best of all were utility techniques. A village which hadn't seen serious ninja vs ninja combat for a very long time would likely value them much more highly than the outside world did.
"Are you familiar with the Zephyr's Reach Technique?"
Takahashi leaned forward very slightly. "Tell me of it."
"It is a Wind Element technique. For a low chakra cost, it enables the user to extend a hand made of wind that can carry light objects, and is capable of sophisticated acts of distant manipulation. Allow me to demonstrate."
Mari casually tossed a few strands of ninja wire into the air above herself, being careful not to look like she was aiming remotely in Takahashi's direction.
"Zephyr's Reach Technique!"
An invisible breeze danced through the air, catching the wire and wrapping it into a complex, many-sided bow that then slowly descended to hover before Takahashi.
Takahashi's eyebrows rose. "I am a Wind Element user myself, and I know our ninjutsu library backwards, yet I have never seen anything like this. Yes, I would be grateful to learn the Zephyr's Reach. In fact, if an ability of that kind were combined with…"
Takahashi's eyes focused on a point somewhere in the distance, as his lips moved soundlessly. Naturally, Mari read them, but as far as she could tell he was just working his way through ninjutsu development jargon (which was not a familiar field for her).
She coughed politely.
Takahashi's eyes snapped back to her.
"Ah, yes. Well, I have given the matter some consideration. You have brought new ninjutsu to our village for the first time in centuries, and you and I are allies in a common cause. It is not something I would normally consider, but I believe I will teach you a ninjutsu unique to this village—it was invented by the Founder's master, and taught only to him, so nothing like it will exist in the outside world."
He turned to Akane, the intended student, and looked at her thoughtfully for a few seconds.
"A harsh winter is coming, and you must be prepared if you are to endure. Thus, I shall teach you… the Elemental Mastery Technique."
-o-
"Kagome-sensei, I've been meaning to talk to you about something," Hazō began carefully.
"What's that?" Kagome-sensei asked, not looking up as he stuck another explosive seal to one of the few bare patches of Multiple Earth Wall.
Hazō and Inoue-sensei had agreed that this needed to be handled gently. Really, most things to do with Kagome-sensei had to be handled gently, but this one even more than usual.
"We're all really grateful for how keen you are to protect us. You're an important member of the team, and we all feel that way about you too."
Kagome-sensei grunted, and turned away so as to suggest that the seal in front of him required his absolute attention.
"But there are better ways to go about it than blowing people up the second they look like they might be becoming a threat."
Kagome-sensei turned back towards him.
"You're saying…" he said slowly… "that... I shouldn't… blow up… threats."
Suddenly, Hazō could see altogether too much of the whites of his eyes.
"Ah, crap. You've been experimenting with seals again and something's gone wrong and now your mind's been shunted sideways to a parallel dimension where everything is insane and soon you're going to start with the rituals and there'll be spiders coming out of everyone's eyes and—"
"Kagome-sensei!" Hazō cut him off. "I haven't been experimenting with seals. I'm just saying you need a more nuanced approach.
"Look at it this way. We're missing-nin, right?"
Kagome-sensei nodded cautiously.
"So our lives are effectively one extended stealth mission. We have to eliminate threats to ourselves, but we can't afford to attract attention."
Kagome-sensei nodded again.
"That means we can't afford to use explosions as the solution to every problem. You're our secret weapon, Kagome-sensei. We use your talents when there's absolutely no other way to get things done, like when we're making sure our base is safe from intruders, or when it's too late to avoid fighting. But when we can, we rely on more subtle skills like diplomacy and deception, because giving away our full abilities when we don't have to is crazy. Does that make sense?"
Kagome-sensei frowned. For a few seconds, he was silent, as if turning the idea around in his head.
"Wouldn't want people to think I was crazy. Bad things happen to sealmasters who go crazy. Long range artillery-type bad things. Wait. You don't think I'm crazy, do you?"
"Uh," Hazō said.
"Not at all, Kagome-sensei," he quickly went on. "You just… have an idiosyncratic approach to life."
Kagome-sensei puffed out his chest. Hazō had a vague suspicion that he didn't know what "idiosyncratic" meant.
Encouraged, Hazō got to the point. "So I know you get angry when you see one of us in trouble, and we're really grateful that you care that much, but could you please try to rein in your temper and not blow anyone up unless someone is in actual immediate danger of getting injured or killed?"
"Funny," Kagome-sensei said in a musing voice, "Uchinomiya-sensei used to say the same thing. 'Explosives are the right tool for any job, but not for every job. If you rely on them too much, they'll stop being the best weapon in your arsenal and become a crutch for a tactically crippled mind.' I always wondered what he meant by that."
Kagome-sensei never talked about his past. Hazō couldn't let the opportunity slip.
"Was Uchinomiya your instructor?"
Kagome-sensei nodded distantly. "Died right before I made chūnin. Decades of perfect sealing research, then one day he forgets to turn on the dispersion seal before experimenting, and bam! Self-replicating crystals everywhere. Oh, we got rid of them in time—cursed things turned out to be weak to fire—but they drained all the moisture in your body if they touched you, and he'd been right in the epicentre…"
Suddenly, Hazō was a lot less comfortable moving to the part of the conversation where he brought up his ideas for unusual seal use.
-o-
Kei sipped her tea as she reflected on today's training session. She had been anxious at first, but she was slowly warming to Takahashi-sensei. He was a strict teacher, quick to comment on mistakes and slow to give out praise, but on the other hand every compliment from him felt earned, and resulted in a tangible burst of happiness. It was much more satisfying than the Mori training she remembered, when excellence had been the default expectation and failure was met with confusion at best, or more often with accusations of laziness and intimations of a future of mediocrity if she did not shape up.
Needless to say, Mari-sensei was still the best instructor ever, but still… part of Kei would be sad when it was time to leave this place.
"Um, hello? Excuse me?" an unfamiliar voice interrupted her thoughts.
There was a small, mousy young man waiting for Kei when she left the fort. Still tired, and not feeling especially diplomatic, Kei gave him a blank stare.
"Hi," he went on anxiously. "I'm Yoshida Shintarō. Madam Tsukiko sent me to be your guide around the village?"
Kei began to get a very bad feeling.
-o-
"That red ribbon over the threshold of the house? That means one of the women who lives there is having her moon flow. She has to stay inside until it's over, and only family can go in. That way the taint is contained until she can perform the cleansing ritual. The cleansing ritual is really boring, but once you get used to it you can get it done pretty fast."
"Uh-huh," said Noburi, looking (and feeling) extremely uncomfortable, and desperate for an opportunity to change the subject.
"Say," he asked, "what's with the axe? I've never seen one quite like that before."
Yuno reached back and pulled the axe into view. It was an eerie piece of black metal, with crimson wrapping around the handle and a series of carmine markings splattered across the entire weapon.
"Do you like her?" Yuno asked happily. "Her name is Satsuriku no Watagiri, but I just call her Satsuko. She's really old, and most people in my family don't like her because they think she's cursed, but I think that's just superstition. I mean, just look how beautiful she is."
She shoved the axe practically under Noburi's nose. "See? Look at these grooves there, near the cutting edge. Those are to make sure the blood splashes everywhere when you cut into people, so you get covered in it and then your enemies can't see you bleed if they hit you. And sometimes it also goes in the enemy's eyes and blinds them. Isn't that brilliant?"
"Yes, that's… very impressive," Noburi agreed, thinking it best not to argue with the girl waving an axe at him.
"I know, right? Satsuko is my very best friend. We've been practising the Kannagi Mountain Cleaver Style together since we were little."
Noburi blinked. "Kannagi Mountain Cleaver Style? I thought the Yoshida were sealing specialists."
Yuno looked puzzled as she sheathed the axe once again. "What do the Yoshida have to do with anything?"
Noburi took a second to process this, then carefully stepped back. "Yuno, which family do you belong to?"
"Well, the Kannagi, obviously. I mean, technically I'm adopted, but I've been a Kannagi ever since I was very young, and I'm learning their secret style and everything, so…"
"Um, not that I'm not really grateful or anything," Noburi said, "but what made you decide to offer your services as a guide to us?"
Yuno took a step forward, restoring the previous distance between them.
"It was Grandfather's idea. He's the number one candidate for the upcoming opening on the Council of Elders, and he wants to make it clear in advance that he is going to make a better job of being friends with you guys than his predecessor. Does that make sense?"
Noburi relaxed a little. That was more believable than a potential assassination attempt (though it might still be better to stick to populated areas for the time being).
"But enough about my family," Yuno said dismissively. "It's a few minutes' walk until the next thing I want to show you, so why don't you tell me a bit about yourself?"
-o-
"So when you said a harsh winter was coming," Mari asked slowly, "you were being completely literal?"
Takahashi nodded. "Oh, yes. In a climate such as ours, a technique that raises or lowers the temperature of a room to comfortable levels is nothing short of invaluable. We teach the Elemental Mastery Technique to all our children as soon as they're ready to learn ninjutsu."
Mari looked at Akane.
"I'd love to learn it!" Akane exclaimed. "I mean, it's a technique designed to support your teammates and make everyone happy. What could be more youthful?"
Mari bit down on her first, second and third retorts.
"Aren't you concerned by the lack of combat applications?" she finally asked in a carefully neutral voice.
Akane shook her head. "Hazō-sensei will think of something. He always does."
-o-
"And that over there is the Betrothal Stone," Yuno pointed at a rounded grey slab that looked more like a road marker than anything. "Couples come here to formally become betrothed to each other. When they do get married, the Lorekeeper pronounces the ancient blessings over them on that dais over there."
"What do they do if it rains?" Noburi asked.
Yuno gave him an incredulous look. "They postpone. A marriage begun in rain will end in tears. Don't they know that where you come from?"
Noburi caught himself looking back at her—her eyes were a faint shade of red, and caught the light in a rather pretty way—then quickly looked away. Yuno had an intense gaze that constantly made him worry about violating the rule against meeting an unmarried person's eye for too long. It occurred to him that it might make his life a lot easier if he established Yuno's marital status, and found out for a fact whether he had to spend quite so much time staring at her left ear.
"Say, Yuno," he asked, "are you single?"
Yuno's entire demeanour transformed in an instant. Noburi could feel the air begin to vibrate with the intensity of her attention as she turned to fully face him, her eyes locking onto his face.
"Why, yes," she purred, "yes, I am."
-o-
"Inoue-sensei?"
Inoue-sensei stood up as he walked towards her. "What is it, Hazō?"
"Well," he began, "I've just been thinking about how complicated things have been the last few weeks, and… I wanted to say how grateful I am for the way you've been keeping us all together and steering us through the most difficult situations. I appreciate it."
Inoue-sensei's eyebrows rose. "Well, I… that's very sweet of you. What brought this on?"
Hazō squirmed a little. "Nothing special. I... guess I just wanted to say it while things are so peaceful and I have the chance."
Inoue-sensei nodded. "That's my little Hazō, growing into leadership bit by bit."
She moved in for the inevitable, but Hazō was ready.
As he stepped back, and she stepped forward, there was the unmistakeable click of a heavily-padded but nevertheless very strong bear trap, made with Akane's help and placed with extreme care. If he couldn't move fast enough to dodge Inoue-sensei, then the solution was to make sure Inoue-sensei couldn't move at all.
Then his brain processed a very important piece of new information. It informed him, politely but firmly, that the bear trap was around his leg, right before Inoue-sensei's hand descended enthusiastically on top of his head.
"Dispel!"
And… yes. He was, in fact, standing half a metre in front of where he thought he'd been standing.
"Better luck next time," Inoue-sensei laughed as she made him wonder why he even bothered having a hairbrush.
-o-
Evening came, and the team assembled for their nightly meeting, which opened with Akane chattering excitedly about her two brand new ninjutsu.
"Good job, Akane," Hazō congratulated her. "You've shown huge improvement in your skills recently. And I'm very impressed with how you handled that whole Kōta mess."
Akane turned her head slightly sideways in confusion. "But the whole Kōta mess was my fault in the first place. Twice."
Hazō shook his head. "The whole Kōta mess was Kōta's fault. Don't ever lose track of that. I mean, yes, there are things you should try to do better in the future, like not drawing out dangerous fights, and being more careful about whom you trust, but on the whole I think you did very well in some challenging circumstances."
Akane beamed. "Thank you, Hazō-sensei! I will work twice as hard! No, three times as hard!"
Next, Hazō turned to Noburi.
"And you. You've been doing sterling work with your healing. You're the main reason this village likes us, and that's essential to what we're doing here. Also, you're about the only one of us who's managed to consistently stay out of trouble, which is a bigger deal than it sounds."
"Um," Noburi said. "About that…"
-o-
You have received 25 XP.
You have unlocked training for Fire Element: Firefly Technique.
You have unlocked training for Fire Element: Elemental Mastery Technique.
-o-
Elemental Mastery Technique details:
Effect: The user can raise or lower ambient temperature of a fixed area by 5 °C/level over a few seconds. The insides of objects and creatures are not affected directly.
Duration: Concentration (hand seals maintained) + 10 min/level. Afterwards, the temperature gradually drifts back to normal.
Cost: 3 chakra/5 °C
Area: 3 m radius + 1 m/level
Requirements: Resolve x 3, Control x 3
-o-
Hazō and Kagome's research report:
Tags cannot be placed inside clones, as if someone places their hand into the area where a clone is being created, they will disrupt the technique. Attempting to insert a tag through the clone's "skin" will count as damage and destroy the clone
It is possible to slowly push a tag into the water whip. However, Noburi has no control over water flow within the whip, so the tag will need to be placed in the outside edge. He will also need to make a Tactical Movement roll in order to dispel the water whip and dodge just as the timer counts down
Wrapping a tag underneath the kunai handle bindings is perfectly feasible, as long as you are able to touch it in order to prime it
Fake exploding tags are easily produced; the enemy will get a Deception roll to read your body language
Making exploding tag compartments inside kunai handles is uncomplicated, as long as you have your own forge and materials, and above average metallurgical skills; ninja villages tend to consider the marginal utility too low to bother
The same applies to two-part kunai, only more so
Initial study of the village's storage scrolls has yielded no useful information
There are two types of casino scroll; they generate light and sound respectively when someone moulds chakra in their vicinity. Hazō doesn't know how hard they would be to research
-o-
Noburi's anthropological report:
The village has numerous rituals and customs relating to physical and spiritual purity
Hands are washed both before and after mealtimes
Behaviour in the presence of pregnant women is strongly regulated, lest spiritual impurity afflict the unborn child
Bodily fluids are inherently unclean, and most things to do with them require subsequent ritual purification
Mealtimes are an occasion to reinforce social structure—the orders of seating, serving and who takes the first bite are all strictly regimented, and which foods one eats is considered a reflection of one's opinions of the host and fellow diners
Respect for the elderly is paramount, and seniors can more or less freely order around juniors, especially within the same family
Romantic interest is usually expressed via a variety of subtle signals which convey both intensity and intent; the more direct means we are familiar with are considered extreme, similarly to serenading someone from beneath their window or strewing rose petals in their wake
Animals not owned by a specific individual are considered property of the village as a whole, including strays; their unsanctioned mistreatment is akin to damaging public property. Tapirs, of course, have a whole separate set of rules applying to them
To give a gift of pure white is to honour the recipient (it implies that you consider them too pure to soil such a thing); to give a gift of pure black is to imply the recipient has sins to hide. If you must give such a gift, tie a red ribbon around it first
If you see two men holding hands, it means they have completed a dangerous hunting rite together; you must never insult one in the presence of the other. Two women holding hands also means something, but no one will say what
-o-
What do you do next?
Voting closes on Saturday the 21st, 9 am Pacific Standard Time.
"You were standing right next to the Betrothal Stone, you looked her in the eyes, and then you asked if she was single," the eldest Kannagi said. The old man stood, spine as straight as a spear, hands folded in his voluminous sleeves, and an Expression of Doom on his face. "What did you think you were doing? Were you simply trifling with my granddaughter's heart?"
"Uhhhh...," said Noburi.
"No, no, it's fine," Inoue said, stifling a giggle. "Really. We're delighted to become part of your family, Kannagi-sama. Thank you so much for accepting us."
"Hmph," the elder snorted. "Very well. I will expect your student to be at my dwelling every morning, an hour before dawn. He will need to hurry if he is to take his place as clan leader in time for the election."
"Say what now?" Noburi asked.
The Expression of Doom because the Expression of Contemputously Doomiest Doom. "Did you think you could marry the Princess of the Kannagi, wielder of our clan's greatest weapon, mistress of our secret style, and not fulfill your duties as clan leader?"
"Uhhhh...," said Noburi.
"I will be certain he acts appropriately, elder," Inoue-sensei said. "You have my word. If I may ask, though...what's this about an election?"
The Eyebrow Arch of Affronted Bemusement joined the Expression, which had now softened very slightly into the Glare of Firey Threat of Doom. "Because of Gasai Kouta's shameful behavior on not one but two occasions, she is being removed from the Council of Elders," Kinnagi said. "An election will be held in one month's time to replace her on the counter. Your student, our new clan head, Will. Be. Elected."
Inoue bowed; when Noburi was too slow to follow she reached up and pulled him into a bow as well. "Of course, elder," she said. "I will bend my every effort to the cause."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"No!" the instructor said, cracking her switch across Noburi's knuckles hard enough to draw blood. "Touch your napkin with your right hand again and I will cut it off!"
"You'll cut off my napkin?" Noburi said guilelessly, sucking his knuckles as he did. "That seems odd. Wouldn't that stop me from following Rule Ninety-Four-B, 'Correct re-folding of napkin prior to completion of soup course'? It seems like it would."
"SILENCE!" the Matron bellowed. "Your hand! I would cut off your hand!"
"Ohhhhhh," Noburi said, nodding. "I see. That makes more sense." He frowned. "Wouldn't it prevent me from fulfilling Rule Two-Hundred-and-Eighty-Four-J, 'Correct replacement of tea cup after third sip in honor of guest'?"
The matron snapped her switch over his head.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Sea Cucumber Summoning Contract, I choose you!" Keiko said, slamming her bloody hand into the contract.
A giant green thing fell out of thin air with a wet 'plap'. It had no eyes, but she was sure it was looking at her.
"Ain't dat just my luck," the sea cucumber groused. "Ya just gettin' in da tub fer a lil well-desoived relaxin' and dere's a call at da contract. A'right, kid, yeah, good enuf. Youse have signed da contract wid da mighty sea cucumbah clan, yadda yadda, youse may call on us at need, blah blah. See yas later." There was another bamf and the sea cucumber was gone.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"You know, this ain't so bad," Inoue said, lounging on the padded Multiple Earth Wall chaise lounge while three of the village genin fanned her. "Since we introduced this place to modern ninja techniques they've really come to appreciate us properly."
"I know, right?" Kagome said, lounging on his own couch, eyes closed as two village maidens rubbed his feet. "And I'm so glad you recommended I get therapy. I feel ever so much more relaxed."
Inoue laughed. "I'm pretty sure I said 'laid', not 'therapy'," she said.
He shrugged, not bothering to open his eyes. "I find that spending special sexy times with my dainty flowers to be extremely therapeutic," he said. He opened one eye and smiled down at the maidens on footrub duty. "Am I right, little ones?"
The maidens (who were strikingly beautiful and most definitely of legal age for super special sexy times) smiled and giggled. "Yes, Kagome-sama!" they chorused. "We are delighted that you accepted us as joint First Wives of Clan Kagome, the Eighth Great Clan of the Village Hidden in the Mountain! The explosive-seal-powered internal combustion engines that you have introduced will make us more powerful than the Five Great Villages combined!"
Kagome preened. "Nice to be appreciated," he said.
The girls young women of legal age smiled and made bedroom eyes at him. "Oooh, Kagome-sama," they said. "We are so very appreciative."
Kagome's thin face split into a wide grin. He sat up, swinging his feet off the couch and into his geta. (Which are traditional Japanese sandals, in case you didn't know that.) "you Know," Kagome said, sitting up. "I'm feeling in need of a little therapy right now. Come on, ladies, we should get back to fulfilling our duties as Clan Progenitors!"
"Excellent, Kagome-sama!" they said, springing to their feet. "Shall we invite wives Second through Nineteenth?"
The genin tried very hard not to gag as Kagome and the First Wives of his harem went off to generate the next generation of paranoid seal masters.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"So, do you surrender?" Hazou asked, leaning out the commander's hatch of his hovertank. His grandson had argued with him about going on this mission, saying that he was too old to take the field and his position as Clan Head made him an inappropriate choice for frontline duty and that, since he was the first member of the clan to have awakened all three tomoe (which are comma-shaped things) of his SHaringan (which are totally hax eyeballs that Hazou scored when Mountain overran Sound and convinced Orochimaru to stop being a jerk and use his bio-tinker powers for good) he had a dutty to stay at home and father more kids.
Sarutobi Hiruze raised an eyebrow. "Surrender?" he asked dangerously. His giant mecha's right hand drifted to the Hellbolt Blaster that rested on its hip.
"Partner!" Hazou said quickly. "I meant partner! Do you agree to partner with us?"
Of course," the Hokage said. "Now, lt's go kick some other-village ass. This world-peace thing ain't gonna happen on its own." He bit down on his totally badass cigar and turned his mecha north. It was time to conquer.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
For starting the Industrial Chakra Revolution, conquering death, handing out Sharingan, Rinnegan, and Byakugan to everyone on earth (which took some doing because the human brain isn't really intended to handle three eyes), and fathering a clan of loyal, happy, well-adjusted children, you have earned 7 XP.
What now?
Last edited by a moderator:
Chapter 44, Part 1: Marriage is What Brings Us Together Today
Where Gasai's receiving room had been bright and spacious, Kannagi's was dark and oppressive.
It was even larger than Gasai's and, unlike hers, was carved into the mountain itself. The cave was immense, easily thirty meters on a side and twenty high. It had obviously been the labor of generations of workers who had smoothed the walls, installed torches for light and braziers for heat, and tiled the floors in a mosaic of elegant slate, each piece of which was delicately carved. The carvings blended together into a spiraling design that stretched from the walls to the center of the room, drawing the eye to the man who knelt atop the dais there. A massive woven rug, so large it must have needed multiple ninja to carry it, was spread in the middle of the room at the base of a platform on which the eldest Kannagi knelt.
A pair of Kannagi ninja, each armed with something halfway between 'axe' and 'cleaver', led the team into the room. They bowed to their clan leader, then stood aside and took up positions on either side of the door.
"Be seated," Kannagi said, gesturing towards the pillows that had been placed on the rug at the foot of the dais.
Inoue-sensei led the group to the pillows and knelt down, Noburi at her side and the others sitting behind them. Kagome was twitching slightly, his eyes darting around the room, but he didn't move.
"Your proposal to my granddaughter was unexpected," Kannagi said.
Noburi paled. "I, um—"
Inoue-sensei set a hand on his arm and he went silent. She bowed deeply to Kannagi, then straightened up and met his gaze frankly; his eyes shifted away. "I must apologize, Elder," she said. "We are still learning the ways of the village, and are only slightly familiar with your rules of courtship. My student enjoyed his time with your granddaughter, but he did not intend to propose marriage. I sincerely apologize for the error. How can we resolve the issue without causing embarrassment or hurt feelings?"
Kannagi raised an eyebrow. "You, boy," he said. "You were standing next to the Betrothal Stone. You looked young Yuno in the eyes and asked if she was single. Were you merely trifling with her heart?"
"No!" Noburi said, his face pale. "I didn't meant to! I didn't want to marry her! I mean, I don't want her! I—"
Inoue-sensei squeezed his arm, hard, and his mouth clopped shut.
"Please excuse him, Elder," she said, bowing again. "He is young and inexperienced, and like most children he frequently speaks without thinking."
"Hmmm," Kannagi said, frowning in disapproval. "His proposal was very public. Proposing to my granddaughter and then casting her aside would bring shame on my family. It would spit on our honor, and especially so on me as the elder of our clan. I would have no choice but to seek satisfaction, or be branded a coward. Families have been destroyed for less insult than that."
He shook his head firmly. "No," he said. "I will not allow you to shame my family. The betrothal will proceed and the wedding will be scheduled."
~4 hours earlier, at dawn~
"Good morning, sir," Keiko said, bowing to her grim-faced teacher. Takahashi stood in the doorway, hands clasped behind him.
"And to you," Takahashi said. "Come in." He nodded politely to Inoue. "You may wait outside. I will have tea brought."
"Actually, may I speak to you for a moment?" Inoue-sensei asked. "There's been a bit of miscommunication, and I'd appreciate your help at sorting it out."
Takahashi waved them inside. "Of course," he said. "What is the problem?"
Inoue-sensei waited until all three of them were settled by the dais before laying out Noburi's mistake in crisp and unflinching detail.
"That was quite a mistake," Takahashi said. "I feel sure that Kannagi will have people waiting at your fort by now, calling for you to meet with him."
Inoue-sensei studied him for a moment. "You knew already," she said. "Kannagi spoke to you last night, didn't he?"
"Indeed," Takahashi said. "Inasmuch as there can be said to be a good day for such a problem, this is a good day for this problem. The next thing that I need to teach young Keiko is simple, and there will be no difficulty with her leaving early, so you will not be stuck here long. After you leave, you should go back to your fort quickly and you will be taken to meet Kannagi. Be polite; he is likely to be the one chosen for the council, and I need his vote in order to get you what you want. Your student's blunder has put him in a very awkward position, so you will need to be extremely circumspect. Now, if you'll excuse us, I wish to begin my student's training for today."
Inoue-sensei nodded and gave him a shallow but polite bow. "Of course," she said. She gave Keiko an encouraging nod, then rolled smoothly to her feet and slipped outside.
"Now," Takahashi said, "we will continue working with twelfth-dimensional...."
~Now~
Kannagi shook his head firmly. "No," he said. "I will not allow you to shame my family. The betrothal will proceed and the wedding will be scheduled."
"Scheduled?" Inoue-sensei said, catching the key word.
Kannagi nodded. "Scheduled," he said. "Your student will court my granddaughter properly. They will walk together, dine together, and be seen interacting in appropriate ways. I will be disapproving, while you and your team will attempt to convince me that the relationship is a good idea. My disapproval will grow stronger as time goes on until, in the end, I will cancel the wedding and forbid Yuno from seeing your student any longer. I will be seen as strong, commanding, and loyal to the old ways, which will make my election much easier. The young man will be seen as socially clumsy and over-ardent, but all of you are known for your casual rudeness and the young are forgiven for being overly direct so long as no permanent dishonor is done."
Inoue-sensei smiled and laughed. "I like it," she said. "Devious, yet simple."
Kannagi gave her an ironic bow. "Thank you," he said. "Now, the one part of the plan that is vulnerable: young Noburi here must be convincing in his role as suitor. Failure to seem ardent and faithful would ruin the charade."
Noburi was about to melt through the floor in embarrassment, but it got only worse when Inoue-sensei reached out and ruffled his hair.
"He'll be on task," Inoue-sensei said. "I'll work with him. Is there someone I can talk to about cultural issues and practices?"
"I will make someone available to you," Kannagi said. "Now, I believe it would be best if we played to the crowd a bit." His eyes flicked to the two guards standing by the door, too far to make out soft-voiced conversation but easily close enough to catch the tone.
Inoue-sensei flashed a wicked grin. "Thank you, sir," she said gratefully, raising her voice just a fraction. "My student is awkward and unschooled in your ways, but he is thoroughly smitten with your granddaughter, and he's a good boy. He...."
During the following several minutes of Inoue-sensei listing his various flaws (and dismissing them as 'not so bad, he's just young') and virtues (all of them phrased in the most embarrassing way possible), Noburi prayed to every kami whose name he'd ever heard that the earth would just swallow him whole. Sadly, his prayers went unanswered.
o-o-o-o
Kagome waited until they were back at their fort. "Guess that stinker's working with Yoshida, then," he grunted.
Inoue-sensei looked at him in surprise. "What?" she said.
"The seals," Kagome said, as though it explained anything at all.
"I saw those," Inoue-sensei said. She grimaced. "Not until we were almost done, though."
Kagome nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Well hidden. I didn't notice them until we were sitting down. Must be slipping."
Hazō and the other genin frowned, looking back and forth between their elders in confusion.
"Good job staying calm," Inoue-sensei said. "I was worried that there might be trouble if you saw them." She paused. "For what it's worth, I didn't notice them until we were almost finished."
Kagome grunted and suddenly became fascinated with digging something out of his backpack—or, more likely, found an excuse to turn away so as to hide the blush that he nevertheless failed to hide.
"We were already sitting on it," he said. "Wouldn't've done any good to try anything then." He grunted again and shot Hazō a glance. "Besides, I wouldn't want anyone thinking I was crazy, or tactically crippled."
Inoue-sensei frowned, looking back and forth between Kagome and Hazō. The latter made a 'tell you later' gesture.
"What are you talking about?" Noburi demanded. "What did you notice?"
"Seals," Kagome said, not turning around. "Two lines of them, worked into the design on the floor. Went from his seat, off the raised thingy, and under the rug. Probably enough explosive seals under there to put us through the mountain the long way. It's what I'd do."
Noburi went pale.
"What did you mean about Yoshida?" Inoue-sensei asked.
"You haven't noticed?" Kagome said. "There's no seals in the village except where the Yoshida go. They aren't just the seal experts, they're the only source of them."
Inoue-sensei blinked, her eyes losing focus for a moment as she skimmed back through her memory. "Good point," she said. "I missed that. I thought they were just rare, but they're not. They're restricted to only the places Yoshida interact with."
"Yeah," Kagome said. "Working together."
o-o-o-o
Yuno really was a lovely girl, Noburi reflected, as he walked to the tree under which they'd agreed to meet. A little hyper, perhaps, and far too enamored of that axe, but attractive and intelligent. In fact—
His train of thought was broken by the subject of his thoughts leaping out from behind a bush.
"Good morning!" Yuno yelled up to Noburi, whose reflexes had shot him up into the trees without conscious thought.
"H-hi," Noburi said. He took a moment to breathe until his heart rate went back to normal, then dropped back to the ground. He shook his head, forcing his thoughts to settle down and Inoue-sensei's lessons on proper dating protocol to come back to the fore. "The day has become pleasant," he said quietly, looking at Yuno's ear.
She blushed to the tips of her ears and she covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes going wide. "I find myself quite happy to hear that," she said, her eyes dancing like a schoolchild saying something naughty.
Noburi went to great effort to keep his face still, but inside he was panicking. That was more of a response than he'd expected. Had he said something wrong? That was what Inoue-sensei and the scary Kannagi matron had told him to lead with. Should he have looked the other direction? Was the tone too friendly? Crapcrapcrap!
"I had thought to walk a bit," Noburi said. There was something else...he wasn't supposed to explicitly ask her to come along, but he had to say something more...what was it?! "I would be grateful if you would suggest a direction." No, that was the super-inviting version! Crap! He was supposed to be keeping this low-key! Argh, why did these people have such complicated rules?!
Yuno was practically stammering. It took a moment for her to get her wits back, but then she blew out a breath and made a visible effort to calm down. "I had intended to walk to the training ground," she said. "Did you happen to be going that way as well?"
"I did," Noburi said.
An awkward silence fell as neither of them spoke or moved. He took care not to look at her eyes, instead keeping his gaze on her ear. His peripheral vision reminded him that she was very visibly a year or two older than he was. He found himself wondering if perhaps Keiko would develop similarly...the disguise that she'd put on back in Iron was still engraved on his forebrain, and he often wondered if it would become reality in time. Yuno didn't match the slim, deadly elegance of Keiko's Transformed-older self, but she had a pleasant athleticism. Perhaps this play-dating wouldn't be as much of a chore as he expected. It might help him learn how to approach Keiko when—
Yuno cleared her throat softly, her eyes flicking in the direction of the training ground. Noburi started guiltily as his thoughts were jerked firmly back to the present moment.
"Right!" he said. "Yes. I was indeed going to the training ground. Let's go!" He turned and hurried down the trail. Yuno fell in beside him, not touching but close enough that he was hyperaware of her being in his space.
There was silence for another long moment, and then Yuno clearly couldn't stand it anymore. "I was terribly worried that I would be late," she babbled. "This morning I was practicing the Grand Dismemberment maneuver on one of the family pigs, and it took forever to get the blood out of my hair."
"Ah," said Noburi faintly.
Her eyes went wide and she stopped, turning to face him. "I did, though!" she said. "I washed twice, and did the purification rituals four times! There's no blood on me, really! I promise!"
"It's...it's fine," Noburi said, waving vaguely. Neither Inoue-sensei nor the scary Kannagi matron had briefed him on this. His smile was a bit sickly, but it was a smile. He nodded to her, then turned back for the training ground.
Okay, maybe this pseudo-dating was going to be harder than he thought.
o-o-o-o
Fortunately, their charade required only one date per day, and no more than two hours together. It was agonizingly painful, but he thought he was improving. Probably. Well, maybe. He had brought it down from inducing three paroxysms of incoherent Yuno-stammering per date to only two. That was improvement, right?
Today's date was, thankfully, over. He had left her at her front door and was hurrying with grateful speed back to the fort when he passed by a pair of village ninja circling one another in the middle of the path.
"Did you flick your shoulder at me?" the one on the left demanded of his counterpart. The speaker was sixteen, perhaps, tall and slim with dark hair and a brace of knives holstered on each leg. Noburi remembered seeing him in the Kannagi compound when he had picked up Yuno two days ago.
"Yes," the girl opposite him said. She was of an age with her questioner, with close-cropped hair and more muscle than Noburi had. "I did flick my shoulder."
Noburi stopped and looked around. Other villagers were starting to drift over, showing expressions that ranged from uncertainty to eagerness.
"Did you flick your shoulder at me, Gasai?" the boy said.
The girl smiled slowly. "Fighting is against the law, Kannagi," she said. "So no. I did not flick my shoulder at you. I did flick it, though."
"What was it you flicked away, then?" the boy asked. "Perhaps a trace of your breakfast? I know the Gasai kitchens are richly stocked. For today, at least."
The girl's smile vanished and her eyes grew hard. "They are indeed," she said. "Although I gather the Kannagi armory is a bit bare." She shrugged elaborately. "Not that it matters, I suppose."
The boy's face went pale with fury; a dagger appeared in each hand and he launched himself at her—
—only for Gasai Mikoto's cane to loop around his shoulder. The ancient woman spun in a circle, her tiny weight perfectly positioned to break the boy's balance and pull him to the ground. She crouched beside him, her cane stretched across his shoulders and one knee on the cane in order to keep him pinned.
"You!" she snapped at him. "You know there is no fighting between members of the village! You have shamed your family!"
"No he hasn't, Grandmother," the girl said sweetly. "That definitely wasn't fighting."
The boy struggled but couldn't throw Grandmother Gasai off before she stood on her own. He jumped to his feet but she was between him and his target, stalking towards her granddaughter with the cane aimed at the girl's face like a spear.
"You are worse!" Grandmother snapped. "I've told you to behave! You are confined to your room until I decide what your punishment shall be! Go!"
The Kannagi boy started to say something, but Noburi hurried away. Putting his foot in it on a date was one thing, but he wasn't about to mix into this.
A week has passed, Noburi has been having the most awkward series of dates ever, and the rest of his team has been laughing their faces off at him. Kannagi is making more and more public objections to the relationship, but things have not come to a head yet.
There is tension in the village, although today was the first time it's gone this far. No one is answering questions about exactly what it is, but it's clearly related to the upcoming Council meeting happening in two days.
There were some science experiments scheduled in this action plan, but I didn't have a chance to talk with the other GMs about them. Once we catch up with one another we'll post the answers.
XP AWARD: 22
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, May 25, 2016, at 12pm UTC.
"I believe I am approximately halfway through my training," Keiko told Hazō. "Takahashi-sensei informs me…" she gave a sudden, shy smile, "that I have excellent potential. Once we have finished, I should be able to draw forth essence from the Summon Realm as soon as I have a contract."
"Oh, really?" Hazō invited her to elaborate. Anything that gave Keiko a self-esteem boost could only be encouraged.
"It is not something I can speak of with outsiders," Keiko said, the smile vanishing. "I can only say that he considers me very swift to grasp the theory, and that the disillusionment with the nature of reality has not afflicted me as deeply as it might have another. After all, I am here only through the uncaring cruelty of the universe."
Hazō took a while to figure out how to respond to that.
He finally settled on, "Is it really that bad?"
"You have been spending too much time around Ishihara if you believe otherwise," Keiko replied coolly. "Perhaps as Hazō-sensei, you should live up to your responsibilities and make her see the world as it truly is, rather than the other way round. It might prevent any further incidents like Kōta's."
She turned away, and busied herself with brewing a cup of tea.
-o-
Mari sipped the bitter but symbolically important brew as she listened to Takahashi's explanation of Gasai's trial.
"At that point," Takahashi carried on, "remember this: your testimony must be purely factual. If you speak in Gasai's favour, the other elders will believe that you are colluding in order to influence our politics. If you speak against her, they will immediately unite against you for offering insult to one of their own. Either would be disastrous."
Mari nodded, processing this. She'd expected as much. At this point it would be beyond her power to prevent or even cushion Gasai's fall—her concern now would be to protect the team's own reputation. She remembered the last time a few words in the right ears had doomed the chief of the minor village of Hidden Ravine to death by execution, and how his allies had fled like rats from a sinking ship when he sought their support. This was no different, and the last thing Mari wanted to do at this stage was to board Gasai's ship, or for that matter to be seen as the pirate who had sunk it.
But this was not enough. Gasai's trial would take place during the second part of the meeting. What mattered was the first, when Kannagi would compete against his rival for Gasai's place. Mari had been surprised by that ordering, but according to Takahashi it was a mechanism intended to prevent opportunistic elders from undermining their rivals and then immediately replacing them with their own cronies. This way, the leaving elder had some limited influence in choosing their successor.
The idea of choosing a successor before deciding whether one was necessary still seemed bizarre to Mari, but after several attempts to explain the byzantine logic behind it, Takahashi had finally given up and just said "ancient tradition".
Regardless, it would be during the first part of the meeting that her team's fate would essentially be decided. And observers like herself were strictly forbidden to attend.
"There has to be a way, Elder Takahashi," Mari said in her most professional voice. Emotional appeals would not work on this man, she'd quickly found, unless they were completely genuine—he had an uncanny ability to see through deception, and when it came to her and genuine displays of emotion...
"You may have use for us in the coming weeks," she went on before he could object, "and we would make poor tools without at least a limited understanding of our circumstances and of the opponents you would have us face."
Takahashi considered this for at least a couple of minutes, during which Mari finished the astringent abomination he had seen fit to serve her today. It sharpened the mind, she knew that, but whether the price was worth it was a matter for debate.
"Your training is in infiltration, is it not?" he asked, seemingly out of the blue.
Mari winced internally. It was not the kind of thing you admitted to an ally of convenience. But it was clear that if she said no, whatever avenue of progress he had come up with would instantly become cut off.
"That is correct," she said carefully.
"Then there may be a way."
He looked at her appraisingly. "Your Mai has much in common with Shiina, one of my daughters. They are both reserved, and hate to be touched without permission. We have had trouble finding a suitable husband for Shiina, and I suspect the same will hold true of Mai as well."
Mari nodded, a little sadly, but did not allow herself to get distracted. "And there are circumstances under which Shiina would be permitted to join you at the meeting."
"By ancient custom, each elder may bring with themselves one retainer, typically from their family, to prepare them for the position they may one day inherit. As it happens, in the beginning the retainers were brought to protect the elders in case of violence, but it has been centuries since such a thing was necessary.
"The retainer may not speak unless spoken to, which they are generally not. They are discouraged from moving or doing anything else which might distract the elders, and there are seals placed in the hall to make sure that they do not attempt to influence proceedings with ninjutsu. For all intents and purposes, they are part of the background."
"You're saying," Mari finished the thought, "that it is expected for no one to interact with the retainer in any way."
"Indeed," Takahashi nodded. "Tomorrow morning, I will invite your entire group to spend the day as guests of the Takahashi, thus ensuring that you are unable to spy on the Council of Elders. In the evening, I will leave this place with Shiina to attend the meeting. During the recess after the first part, Shiina will return home, citing tiredness, and Minori will then escort your team, yourself included, to the village hall in order to take part in Gasai's trial. Is this arrangement acceptable to you?"
Mari smiled like a cat that had got the cream. "It would be our honour to partake of your hospitality, Elder Takahashi."
-o-
"Isn't Kimiko wonderful?" Yuno practically bounced up to Noburi. "She's so friendly, and fun to spar with, and she's been teaching me about this fascinating thing called the Spirit of Youth!"
"Yeah, she's pretty great," Noburi agreed, lounging back on one of the fort's more comfortable benches after an exhausting session of ninjutsu practice. "On first names already?"
Yuno's face clouded over a little. "Well, I don't use my surname much. So Kimiko said it was OK if I called her by her first name, to reduce the distance between us."
"What are you doing here, Yuno?" Noburi asked belatedly, catching himself being more comfortable with Yuno's presence than the situation probably warranted. "I mean, it's not that I mind, but we don't normally bring village ninja inside the perimeter."
"Kimiko let me in as a one-off after we talked," Yuno explained, looking down shyly while stirring the dust on the ground with one foot. "She, um, taught me something else about foreign ninja."
"What's that?"
Yuno sat down on the bench next to Noburi. "She, um, said… she said… that you're much more direct about matters of romance."
"No offence, but from where I'm standing, it would be hard to be less direct than you guys," Noburi laughed.
Yuno kept looking at him, holding his gaze for the full second and a half that they were currently permitted.
"So I was wondering… I know it's very forward of me, but if it's not too much… could we maybe…"
She squirmed as words apparently failed her. Instead, she tentatively held out her hand.
Noburi took it. A small shock ran through him.
Her hand was smaller than he expected, but with an axe-wielder's strength, and after a moment's hesitation it wrapped around his in a tight grip.
It felt... nice.
What was he doing, Noburi suddenly asked himself. What was he thinking? What would Keiko think if she walked in right now, and saw him being… romantic… with someone else?
Nothing. She would think nothing at all. Noburi knew that. There was no point denying it. When it came to winning Keiko's heart, he was so thoroughly outclassed it wasn't even funny. And maybe it wasn't such a bad thing, having an intelligent, lively, attractive girl who was unambiguously interested in him. Sure, she wasn't Keiko, but… well, maybe she didn't need to be.
His eyes drifted back towards Yuno's as he wondered just how forward he was allowed to be, here in this moment where his and her social conventions were blurring together…
The sound of Inoue-sensei's footsteps broke the fragile silence.
Yuno and Noburi's hands separated so fast they practically left a vacuum between them. Yuno, in a blur of motion, was suddenly at the other end of the bench. Her face was flaming red, and Noburi was sure his was the same.
"Excuse me," Inoue-sensei said in a completely deadpan voice. "I've just remembered that I have pressing business somewhere far away from here."
She swivelled on her heels and left.
After a few seconds, Yuno glanced at Noburi. "Your friend isn't very subtle, is she?"
"She's exactly as subtle as she wants to be," Noburi explained, his voice low and filled with a thousand years of long-suffering weariness. "You get used to it."
"Yes," Yuno said softly, "I would like that."
After a pause, she turned towards Noburi.
"When we were… you know… you were thinking of another girl, weren't you?"
A shiver ran down Noburi's spine at Yuno's preternatural senses. Something told him bad things would happen if he didn't handle this just right.
But, perhaps for the first time in his love life, inspiration descended on him and told him exactly how to save the day.
"Yes," he said with unimpeachable honesty, "I was thinking how glad I am you're not her."
For a while after that, they just sat together, no one knowing quite what to say.
Noburi's mind chose this time to remind him that this whole thing was a deception, that soon Elder Kannagi would "disapprove" of him and break off the betrothal. Although Noburi hadn't the faintest intention of getting married to anyone at the ripe old age of thirteen, he found his feelings growing more ambivalent than they had been before.
It also occurred to him that he still didn't know whether Yuno knew. If she was just playing along, then maybe all of this was an act, though Noburi found it hard to believe that she was such a master actress. But if it wasn't… how would she feel when the inevitable happened?
"Say, Yuno," he began cautiously, "I've been wondering about something. I don't know your customs, but what would happen if… hypothetically speaking… your grandfather decided that he disapproved of me after all, and broke off the betrothal?"
Yuno gave him a smile that was just a little bit too serene. "Oh, don't worry about that. Satsuko and I won't let anything take you away from me. Not ever."
-o-
The elders were seated in order of seniority. On the right sat Inoue Rika, a sour-looking woman who looked like she'd been stretched out vertically, leaving her tall, rake-thin, and with a hooked nose that went on far too long. It was a common surname, Mari repeated to herself. She couldn't possibly be related to someone who looked like that.
To her left, in front of Mari, Takahashi sat with an eerie motionlessness, his hands folded in his lap. He had not said one word to her since they left the house.
Next was Yoshida. She was leaning forward on the table in front of her, eyes scanning the other elders and the two candidates waiting to be called forward.
The next seat was empty.
Gasai, on the other side of it from Yoshida, was wearing a perfect mask of serenity, but you could tell it was a mask because it never moved.
The Azai cousins followed. One was old, balding and with heavily calloused hands. His deep-set eyes squinted from the middle of a round face, with bushy eyebrows locked in a perpetual suspicious frown. His neighbour couldn't be a bigger contrast—pale skin, long-nailed hands that looked like they'd never seen a day's work, rich, curly hair, and an expression of blissful ignorance.
Finally, Kannagi and his rival stood a comfortable distance from each other by the entrance.
Just as Rika lifted her staff of office to begin the meeting, a desperate-looking man burst in through the front door, nearly swatting Kannagi against the wall.
"Please… accept… my… apologies. My mother, Aida Rin… has been injured… in a hunting accident. I am here… to represent her."
There was an alarmed stir in the meeting room, except from Takahashi, who remained motionless, and Azai Shūsuke, who seemed like he was sleeping with his eyes open.
Rika wordlessly waved the Aida representative to the empty seat.
When she finally spoke, even though her words were nothing more than a formal welcome, Mari was left stunned. Her voice wasn't loud, but it possessed an all-encompassing depth that made the listener, or Mari at least, feel like she was standing on the palm of Rika's hand in a vast cosmic space, waiting to receive the Lorekeeper's benediction or damnation. It took decades of training to develop a voice like that, if you had the talent to begin with. Mari knew for a fact that Yagura would kill for such an ability.
"Kannagi, you may make your case," Rika endowed him with permission (there was no other way of describing it) after the necessary formalities were complete.
Kannagi stepped forward. "I am Yoshirō, direct descendant of Kannagi the Sword Saint, who abandoned the quest for glory to cleave the Founder's path through countless beasts to this, our sanctuary. I come not for my own sake, but in the name of the weaponmasters of the village, who have seen fit to choose me as their representative.
"We all know there is but one issue at stake today—the coming of the foreigners, and the conflict between the new knowledge that they bring and the old ways we are sworn to protect. I believe this is a false dichotomy.
"Many of you must wonder why I have allowed my own beloved granddaughter to become betrothed to one of the intruders so many of us fear and hate. But I say to you that this is the way forward. Soon, they will be bound to us by ties of blood, and their incredible, all-healing power of medical ninjutsu, as well as the other lore of the outside world, made to work for the benefit of the village under the guidance of the Kannagi.
"Indeed, in this we see a glimpse into the foreigners' hearts. Instead of insulting us and our ways by finding an excuse to reject the betrothal, as a true barbarian would, they have shown openness to the diplomatic approach I have pioneered. It is on this path that we can make use of all that is good in them, drawing out their virtues and subordinating them to our own. We must bind them to us not merely with words but with ties of every kind, until their power is our power, and it is the wisdom of the elders that dictates how and why it is to be used."
The son of a bitch bowed, his speech short and thereby making sure his audience heard only the things he wanted to say.
Inside, Mari burned. Kannagi was going to have his cake and eat it—let Noburi dig himself deeper and deeper, then make the call about whether to allow the wedding to proceed whenever it was most politically expedient. And his words had just backed them into a corner when it came to ending the betrothal themselves.
It was almost as if Kannagi knew she was listening. That was impossible, though. A taijutsu expert was not going to see through one of her disguises.
Rika gave Kannagi a measuring stare for a few seconds, then moved on.
"Murasaki, you may make your case."
Murasaki was a short man with jaundiced skin and large, veiny hands which he continuously drummed against his thighs.
"I am Ganta, direct descendant of Murasaki of the Golden Hands, whose secret arts saved the Founder's life when he was struck down by the Black Fever. I come not for my own sake, but in the name of the healers of the village, who have seen fit to choose me as their representative.
"I agree with my esteemed opponent that the foreigners cannot be allowed to run amok, but rather must be dealt with on our terms. But I believe he does not go far enough. They must not merely be allied with—they must be assimilated. At any time, they may leave, taking the secret of our existence with them, and the only way to prevent that without bloodshed is to make them a willing part of this village.
"They say they are 'missing-nin', exiles in search of a home. Let us give one to them. We shall welcome them, and have them learn our ways, until in the end they are no longer foreigners, and their children, or perhaps their grandchildren, are seen fit to guard the sacred scroll. Their bloodlines shall enrich our own, and their arts shall become our arts, not through a process of thoughtless intrusion, but naturally over the years, subject to the authority of the elders in exactly the same way as we are all subject to the authority of the elders. And if they choose to reject our kindness? Well, a healer like myself knows that sometimes sick flesh must be excised for the good of the body, and has means of doing so that do not require direct confrontation.
"Finally, though it pains me to say it, Kannagi is not the man to lead us in this. How can we entrust the protection of our traditions to a man whose family rose to prominence a mere hundred years ago? A man from a bloodline that has not held a council seat in living memory?
"Even his betrothal plan is a slipshod thing, crafted by a man who lacks commitment to his cause. Who is his 'beloved granddaughter'? Why, of all his grandchildren, he has chosen Yuno, the albino tapir of the family, born of the very Gasai line whose trial you will hold this night. We all know who she is and what she has done. Will you grant responsibility to a man who stakes his family's fortunes on a cursed child?"
Ganta bowed.
Mari pondered what she'd just heard. When she'd mentioned Yuno's excitement about the courtship to Takahashi, he had explained that it was probably her first experience of romance, since outside professional contexts (where she was respected as a skilled ninja), people tended to avoid her due to her poor reputation and unusual inclinations. He had not elaborated on either.
Meanwhile, the elders exchanged glances. They did not confer, nor make comments or ask further questions, which struck Mari as strange. But then again, these people all knew each other. Each knew how the others would vote, and each knew the candidates well enough that there would be little to ask. Small communities were easy to govern—and easy to undermine if you could successfully infiltrate them to begin with.
Finally, Rika's resonant voice filled the room once more as she stood from her seat, leaning slightly on her staff.
"I, Rika, sent by the Inoue to speak for the ancestors, give my blessing to Murasaki."
Takahashi stood up next, oddly still even in his motion.
"I, Saburō, sent by the Takahashi to speak for the ninjutsu wielders, give my blessing to Kannagi."
Murasaki's hands stopped tapping.
"I, Tsukiko, sent by the Yoshida to speak for the sealcrafters, give my blessing to Kannagi." Yoshida spoke with satisfaction, letting every word fall into place one by one.
"I, Mikoto, sent by the Gasai to speak for the martial artists, give my blessing to Kannagi," Gasai said heavily. The look she exchanged with Kannagi at that moment was not a friendly look.
They appeared to have skipped the Aida representative. In a way, Mari supposed it made sense—they were voting in order of seniority, and Aida was the only non-elder. Not exactly fair, but what was one to expect from small village politics?
"I, Rindō, sent by the Azai to speak for the beastmasters, give my blessing to Murasaki," the narrow-eyed man said in a gravelly voice, watching the other elders' faces as if daring them to challenge his decision.
His statement was followed by silence.
After a few seconds, Rindō gave a meaningful cough.
Shūsuke's head jerked in Rindō's direction. He blinked a couple of times.
"Ahem. I, Shūsuke, sent by the Azai to speak for the craftsmen, give my blessing to Murasaki."
Three to three. Everyone turned to Aida Isshin, who was visibly sweating. Mari watched his gaze go back and forth, between the healer and the man who now held medical ninjutsu in his hands. His injured mother had to be foremost in his mind.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
"I, Isshin, sent by the Aida to speak for the scroll guardians, give my blessing to…"
The hall was quiet enough that Mari could hear Murasaki's fingers, moving once again.
Your plans regarding Kagome's birthday were extremely vague, so little happened. You may assume that you now know where the market is, and any other standard shops, and you can now purchase common goods without assistance (as long as you have something to pay with).
-o-
Where do you go from here?
Voting closes on Saturday the 21st, 9 am Pacific Standard Time.
Last edited:
Chapter 44, Part 3: Best Left to the Professionals
Chapter 44, Part 3: Best Left to the Professionals
Hazō reached out to tap Keiko on the shoulder as they walked to the Takahashi mansion, immediately realised that was a bad idea, and instead asked her in a low voice whether he could have a word. The two dropped back behind the rest of the group.
"What is it?" Keiko asked nervously.
"Something you said earlier has been bothering me," Hazō said. "When you said you couldn't talk about your training with outsiders, what exactly did you mean?"
Keiko was silent for a few seconds, long enough that Hazō began to grow worried, especially given the kind of concerns he already had.
"I suppose you of all people might understand, Hazō," Keiko finally said.
"When someone without sufficient training attempts sealcrafting, they risk having an accident," she said as if stating a fact (which she was, if you replaced "risk" with "absolutely guaranteed").
Hazō nodded.
"I infer from some of Kagome's more terrified ramblings," she went on, "that one of the most disastrous kinds of sealcrafting accident involves interfering with the boundary between this world and others—worlds whose inhabitants, environment, or even fundamental laws may be inimical to our own."
Hazō nodded again, impressed at the succinct summary.
Keiko's eyes glinted like ice as she turned to look straight at him.
"Summoning involves interfering with the boundary between this world and others when it is successful."
Hazō gulped.
Keiko gave him a meaningful look. "That is why it is forbidden to discuss the details of the Summoning Technique with those who have not received the training. Let us not speak of this again."
"...and Isshin finished it off as the fourth vote for Kannagi," Inoue-sensei said. "There was some more chatting and then everyone broke for lunch."
She looked around the circle; the light that made it in through the open archway of their tiny fort left the inside gloomy at best, but it was still bright enough to clearly show five serious faces looking back at her. Kagome met her gaze for only a moment before pulling one of the storage scrolls out of his backpack and bringing forth a bag containing several hundred seal blanks. He set them in a pile in front of him, face down, then started infusing them one by one and setting them aside. Three neat but unequal piles started growing next to him.
Inoue-sensei eyed that nervously for a moment, then wisely decided not to interfere with Kagome's equivalent of cuddling a security blanket.
"Anyway," she said, "the thing I'm edgy about in the immediate future is the fallout from the trial. This morning Gasai was the head of one of the most prominent families in the village and the thirteenth Gasai in a row to be on the village council. Now she's been stripped of her seat on the council, her seat has been given to someone that these people have no regard for, and she was even forced to step down as clan head. Her family loses face along with her, and a lot of them are going to blame us for it."
Kagome snorted but didn't look up from what he was doing. The mumbled words "...stinking stinkers...show them...boom, squash..." might have been heard. Inoue-sensei eyed this rather more nervously than before, but still forbore to say anything; a nervous but occupied Kagome was much better than a Kagome with nothing to do but focus on his nervousness.
"Just to make sure I have this right," Noburi said. "Kannagi isn't going to break the betrothal?"
Inoue-sensei rocked her hand in a so-so motion. "He might or might not," she said. "He'll do whatever he judges best. He certainly made it clear how much advantage there would be to not breaking it, though."
"So...," Hazō said. "Yoshida tried to manipulate us and get us under her thumb. Gasai's grandson tried to kill Akane, twice. Kannagi is actively betraying us. Takahashi practically extorted Keiko into that deal. I've got an idea. How about we burn this place to the ground, grab the scroll, and run?"
"No," Keiko said. "I must complete my training in order for the scroll to be of any use. Besides, Takahashi-sensei has been good to us. He has dealt honestly throughout, and destroying his village would be poor repayment."
"Are you kidding?!" Noburi demanded. "He dragged you into his den like a spider grabs a fly, threatened you, extorted you, and then mousetrapped you into this ridiculous agreement that—"
"It is not ridiculous," Keiko snapped. "Yes, he negotiated very aggressively. You did the the same when the Yakuza ninja attacked us, remember? How is that any different?" She shrugged one shoulder. "Besides, he has not used the information against me, or us. He needed it in order to be sure that I could safely learn what he was offering. Since then he has been supportive, encouraging...stern, yes, but always fair. He has taught me what he promised he would teach, and he is willing to teach at my pace. The instructors at the Mist Academy would not do so; if I mastered a lesson too quickly they would insist that I keep practicing until the planned amount of time was spent. Takahashi-sensei will teach me as fast as I can learn the material, and praises me for going so quickly. He says it usually takes twice as long to reach where I am."
"Where's he get it from?" Kagome said, pausing in his infusion. Below the receding hairline, his eyes were fever-bright with worry and calculation. "The summoning training. No one here's a summoner, so where'd it come from? I knew eight separate stinkers who started their own school of seal theory based on moonbeams and bad dreams instead of actual applied research." He used his right forefinger to tick off his left thumb. "First one blew himself up." Left index finger. "Second one dissolved all the bones below his rib cage, had to drag himself around on a cart with his legs coiled up behind him." Left middle finger. "Third one blew himself up." Ring finger. "Fourth one had spiders climb out of his eyesockets and then his brain melted." He paused, thinking. "Maybe the other way around. Anyway." Pinky finger. "Fifth one—"
"We get it, Kagome," Inoue-sensei said. "Making up your own theory with nothing to base it on is bad." She turned to Keiko. "Well? It's a good question. Where is he getting all this from?"
Keiko hesitated, clearly deciding how much she could tell. "The information has come down from the founding of the village," she said at last. "The Founder had the summoning scroll and a variety of ancillary materials that discussed the theory. Those scrolls have been handed down from generation to generation, carefully re-copied whenever the material became too old, until storage scrolls became available to preserve them when not in use."
Kagome snorted, a satisfied expression spreading across his thin face. "Ancient scrolls of forgotten wisdom, carefully preserved except when they were copied over and over by people generations apart who had no familiarity with the subject matter. Always good source material, as long as you enjoy having the universe crack open and pull you through a million finger-sized holes into non-space like an orange being shoved through a cheesegrater. Stinker's gonna get you killed, Mori. Might be accidental because he's an under-educated idiot, might be deliberate because he's a stinking liar who only cares about his stinking village."
"No he is not!" Keiko said, face going red with fury. "Takahashi-sensei is a brilliant man, and his materials are excellent! I have checked them for internal coherence and they makes perfect sense! There is—"
"Aaaand, we're breathing," Inoue-sensei said, raising her hands. "We are exhaling stress and fear, inhaling calm and relaxation." Both Kagome and Keiko looked mutinous; Inoue gave them each a raised eyebrow until they grumpily followed along. "And exhaling. And inhaling. And exhaling. And inhaling. Okay, good."
She watched them for another moment, waiting to see that there weren't any outbursts pending. "Now, Keiko, Kagome raises some good points. Not as tactfully as I might have liked"—she shot the demolitionist a reproving glare—"but still good points. Takahashi might be the best guy around, but his loyalty is to his village first. That's as it should be, but it's something that we need to keep in mind. He's not helping us out of the goodness of his heart, he's helping us because it fulfills some value that he holds as important. What value is that? What's driving him to teach you?"
"He wants to teach," Keiko said quickly. "He wants to pass on the knowledge that his family has safeguarded for gen...." She trailed off, recognizing the foolishness of the words even as she spoke them. "No," she said heavily. "I believe he enjoys teaching, but you are correct. He is not teaching me just for the sake of teaching. He is teaching because he feels that me having the contract will be beneficial to the village."
Inoue nodded. "Right. From what he so-carefully didn't say during our conversation, I think he wants us to get the contract and get it out of town so that they can stop being a village of sacred guardians and start being a village."
Hazō started to say something, but Inoue-sensei cut him off. "Yes, I know," she said. "He's a liar and we can't trust him and so on and so on. I get it, but that's part of his job. He's a ninja, and a clan elder, and a politician. No one in that job can afford to be completely truthful, and so far he seems to have played it reasonably straight."
"So what do we do?" Noburi asked.
Inoue-sensei blew out her cheeks and leaned back on her hands. "For now, nothing," she said. "We don't have immediate time pressure. Keiko's right that she needs the training, and she said it should only be another few weeks. There's no date set for Noburi's wedding, and if they try to set one we can delay it—say that our culture requires being married during a certain season or whatever. I'm not too worried about physical threats either. Kannagi and Takahashi need us in one piece, Yoshida would like to get us on side, and after the trial I told Gasai that if any of her family attacks one of us I'm going to literally rip their head off and throw their body in the well."
Keiko started. "What? But our agreement with Takahashi-sensei stipulates that we must not use lethal force!"
Inoue-sensei shrugged. "I don't care," she said. "There's too much politicking going on, too many different agendas and undercurrents, and I'm having trouble getting a handle on it. It's pretty much impossible to infiltrate a village this small quickly, especially with no prep, and it's making me jumpy." She shook her head. "I'm not ready to go with the Armageddon Initiative proposed by our two mad bombers over there, but I definitely want us to be careful. Gasai has already demonstrated that she has inadequate control over her family members and a poor understanding of how they'll react. She should have known that Kōta couldn't be trusted and put the fear of the hells in him so that he stayed in line."
"Sensei...," Keiko said. "Sensei, I do not want to break faith with Takahashi-sensei. He has been very good to me. He will give us the scroll if we stay true to him, and harming his village would be poor repayment for his kindness."
Inoue-sensei nodded, but her smile was sad. "I'd like it if things worked out well," she said. "If you finished your training, and got the scroll, and we never had any more problems with the villagers. That's just...not the way I'd bet in this situation. We're too much of a disruption to their way of life, and when Takahashi gives us our shot at the scroll it's going to get worse. If he sneaks us in then we're stealing the holy of holies. If he proposes it to the village and tries to get us permission then it's going to be the same as punching a hornet's nest. I'm willing to give him the chance, see if there's some way to make it work, but I'm not willing to have any of us get hurt. I hope you can accept that."
Keiko bowed her head. "Yes, sensei," she said quietly.
"I promise we won't start anything," Inoue-sensei said gently. "I'll do everything I can to work with Takahashi, to make this all go smoothly." She sighed and settled back. "It's funny, you know? We left Mist with the goal of founding a hidden village, and here we are in a hidden village. In theory we could settle down and assimilate. We could even form our own clan, perhaps. We could give the villagers modern medicine, ninjutsu, taijutsu, hundreds of years of advancement in seal theory...so much. They could give us a home, a safe place to shelter. In time, maybe friends or lovers."
Her eyes were miles away and her voice wavered as she said, "It could be nice, I just don't think it's going to happen."
"Why not?" Hazō asked. "You said they were talking about assimilating us."
Inoue-sensei sighed and blinked back to the current moment. "Yes," she said. "But that's just it—they were talking about assimilating us, not welcoming us. The discussion was more military than social. Look at the language they used: Kannagi talked repeatedly about binding us, subordinating our virtues to theirs, making our power their power. He didn't talk about binding us and the village together, he didn't talk about our virtues blending. It was all in terms of dominance and submission, and he made it clear that he expected to be the dominant." Just for a moment her lip twitched in the tiniest hint of a smile but she didn't speak the thought that had clearly flashed across her mind.
"Ganta was even worse," she continued. "He explicitly said he wanted to assimilate us, not ally with us. He made it clear that if we didn't accept their welcome then he'd poison us.
"Then there's the whole village hierarchy. Ganta made a point about how Kannagi's bloodline only came to prominence a century ago. I've seen that attitude in small villages before; unless your ancestors were there when the village was founded, you're from 'away'. If we did stay we would always be second-class citizens. Our great-grandchildren would still be second-class citizens. I'm not going to take that from a bunch of hicks who thought that med-nin were a myth."
Silence fell as everyone digested that.
"Kid's right, you know," Kagome said, not looking up from the seal blank that he was infusing. "It'd be easier just to blow the place up and steal the scroll. Let Jiraiya finish her training."
"Yes," Inoue-sensei said. "It would be easier. I think, though, that for once I'd like to do something right instead of something easy."
o-o-o-o
Everyone was quiet after the intensity of the discussion. Inoue-sensei had gone outside to sit on the roof and look at the stars. Kagome-sensei had wandered out a few minutes later, shuffling through his scrolls as he went and mumbling to himself. Meanwhile, the genin started getting dinner together.
Hazō waited for an opportune moment, then ducked outside and hopped up on the roof. "May I join you, sensei?" he asked quietly. Noburi, Keiko, and Akane were busy chopping vegetables for dinner, and this was the best chance he was going to get for privacy.
Inoue-sensei waved indolently at the roof next to her. "Help yourself," she said. She was stretched out on the eastern side of the slanted A-frame roof, legs crossed at the ankle and arms behind her head.
Hazō lay down next to her. The roof was steep enough that he had to treewalk to hold himself in place, but by now that required no attention at all.
"What's on your mind?" Inoue-sensei asked quietly, not looked away from the stately whirl of the stars above.
"I'm worried about Keiko," Hazō said, taking care to keep his voice down. "I asked her about her training with Takahashi and she said that she 'could not discuss it with outsiders'."
"Outsiders, huh?" Inoue said. "That's not good."
Hazō nodded. "I followed up, and she clarified that she meant people who weren't summoners or learning to summon." He licked his lips, replaying the exact words in her mind. "She reminded me that some of the worst types of sealing accidents relate to letting things in from beyond normal spacetime, and then pointed out that that's exactly what summoning does when it works right. Then there was the whole discussion tonight, where she was so strong on Takahashi. I'm worried about her."
"Oh?" Inoue-sensei said, her voice as far away as the stars. "Why is that?"
"I think she's losing connection to us," Hazō said. "She's bonding with Takahashi more, and it's pulling her away from us."
Silence hung heavy in the air as Inoue-sensei digested that.
"Is that a bad thing?" she asked. "Keiko needs bonds, needs stability. A life on the run, everything always in chaos...it's not going to make her happy. She might do better here in the village. Takahashi seems to be doing right by her. He's given her a father figure, one who plays to her gifts and helps her spread her wings. When we're walking to and from her lessons, she won't talk about the training in detail, but she'll sometimes talk about how the lesson went. It sounds like Takahashi hoards compliments like a miser hoards money, but he does give them when they're warranted. She could do worse."
Hazō looked at her in shock. Why wasn't she more bothered by this? "I'm afraid she's getting depressed again, sensei, and I think the training is related. Has she been using her bloodline during the training?"
Inoue-sensei sighed. "I don't know about the bloodline, and I honestly can't tell if she's getting depressed," she said. "She's lost in her thoughts a lot, but she's a thirteen-year-old girl in the middle of puberty, and she's got extra-confusing hormones, a genius brain that's chewing on some of the most complex stuff known to womankind, and a bloodline that changes the way she thinks and makes her low-affect to start with."
In training back at the Academy, the genin of Mist had practiced punching through bricks. It required a focus, a gathering of strength, a determination to do the impossible. Hazō needed all of that training to force the next words out of his mouth.
"She'sstillgotthatcrushonyou," he said.
Inoue-sensei raised her head just enough to look at him incredulously. "You're so cute when you're all awkward," she said gleefully. Hazō's eyes went wide and he frantically rolled away....
...but still wasn't fast enough, damnit. He sighed and tried to untousle his hair while glaring at his teacher.
"Fine," he said grumpily. "I need to talk to you and Kagome-sensei next. Will you come?" He pushed himself upright and stood, treewalking on the roof so that he was nearly parallel to the ground twenty feet below them. He offered her an expectant hand up.
She laughed. "Look at you, being all leader-like and having one planning conversation after another. So adorable." She took the hand and let him pull her up then continued the motion, jumping up and swinging around behind him like a monkey climbing a tree. She wrapped strong legs around his waist and squeezed so tight that the breath went out of him in a rush, leaving him utterly unable to resist as she tousled his hair with both hands, cackling gleefully all the while.
"Giddyap!" she said, grabbing his shoulders and kicking him in the hip with her heel.
Hazō was so surprised he nearly fell off the roof, but he managed to turn it into a mostly-balanced leap to the ground. She insisted on riding piggyback all the way around the A-frame until they got to where Kagome was working.
The sealmaster was sitting crosslegged with his back against the wall of the mini-fort as he prepped explosives. He'd unsealed a couple of boxes containing several hundred pounds of wet clay and a brazier full of hot coals. One after another he rolled up one of his explosive tags, wrapped a blob of clay around it so that only a bit of the paper was sticking out, put a wooden sleeve over the extruding bit, and then set the whole thing in the coals to harden.
"Kagome-sensei," Hazō called quietly. It didn't do to alarm the man. "May we join you, please?"
Kagome-sensei glanced over, then gestured to the grass next to him before going back to what he was doing. Hazō sank down to his right. Inoue-sensei knelt gracefully to his left, close enough that Kagome-sensei started to sweat a little.
"What's going on?" Kagome-sensei asked. "Is there a problem? Are those stinking stupid village ninja stinkers attacking?"
"No, everything's fine," Hazō said. "I just wanted to ask the two of you about our situation, tactically. If we had to fight the village, could we win? How much danger are we in?"
Inoue-sensei considered that, then looked at Kagome as though judging how honest to be.
"A lot," Kagome said. "Stinking ninja stinkers. Sneak up on us, ambush us with hundreds of arrows. Probably poison them. Or put it in the food. That's why I've only been eating stuff from my scrolls. You guys should too. Except you don't have any, but I guess you can have some of mine. Food, I mean. Not scrolls. They might put some of those toxic cloud seals on their arrows. Could fire a few inside one night, do for us. Well, they could have before I sealed off the door."
"About that," Inoue-sensei said. "If you're going to put an invisible wall in front of the door after we all go to bed, tell us first, okay? I nearly broke my nose when I tried to go outside in the morning." She leaned forward, her eyes seeming large and nearly luminescent in the silver moonlight and chiaroscuro wash of the brazier's glow. "I don't think I'd look good with a broken nose, do you?" she purred, taking a deep breath.
Kagome-sensei blushed. "Um, right," he said. He glanced at her, then hastily looked away. "I mean, no. Yes, you wouldn't. Um...right, sorry."
Inoue-sensei snickered softly and straightened up before turning her gaze on Hazō. "Honestly, I'm not sure how dangerous things are right now," she said. "Probably not too bad, though. I'm pretty sure we aren't going to be attacked in the near future." She shrugged. "As to whether we could win...well, that patrol we ran into on the way in was soft cheese, but they were a bunch of trainees and a jōnin who'd been promoted three weeks ago. They've definitely got some stronger fighters, and they've got jutsu that we aren't familiar with. They've got seals, which is always a wildcard. Those bows have seals worked into them—they fire farther than a kunai, and I've seen the good archers fire a barrage of arrows nearly as fast as Keiko can launch one of kunai. Those tapirs aren't normal, either. They've been very careful not to let me get a good look at their people doing serious training, but I've gone past some of the other training areas. The ground is disturbed, like someone's been using earth ninjutsu, and there's tapir tracks all over the place. Orderly, regimented tracks, not panicked running. No regular animal would be comfortable being in the middle of an in-progress earth ninjutsu, so either those things are incredibly well trained or they're chakra-enhanced."
"What do we do if we have to fight?" Hazō asked.
"Blow. Them. Up," Kagome said, as though speaking to an idiot child. "Boom. Squish."
Inoue-sensei chuckled. "That's actually a pretty good option. If we get attacked by one ninja I'll do exactly what I promised Gasai I would do. If we get attacked by multiple ninja then we throw explosives everywhere and run for it. Grab the rest of the group, get clear, and decide what to do then."
"I was thinking about the tactics classes back in the Academy," Hazō said. "The part about tactical assassinations and decapitation strikes. If we wanted to, could we get rid of the leaders that are a problem for us?"
Kagome-sensei sat up, suddenly interested. "How big can the pieces be?" he asked.
"We're not blowing anyone up, Kagome," Inoue-sensei said. "To answer the question, Hazō...probably? We definitely couldn't do it without turning it into a full-on battle, though. The minute they found one of their elders killed they'd be all over us. And no, before you say it, we can't just make it look like an accident. That's sometimes doable if you have plenty of time to prepare and if no one has reason to think that the person is being targeted. In this case, no way."
"I still like the Armageddon Initiative," Kagome-sensei grumbled. "Blow 'em all up. Boom, squash. Take the scroll, leave. Simple. Safe."
"Not necessarily," Inoue-sensei said. "We haven't seen the shrine except from the bottom of the hill. We have no idea what sort of guard they have, how many seals are guarding the place, or anything. I doubt we'd be able to get through the defenses quickly."
Kagom-senseie gave something halfway between a grunt and a chuckle. "I could," he said. "No problem. Stinking stinkers. People with their fancy seals, always trying to get clever. Try to build security systems they think are perfect." A crafty and more than slightly manic gleam came to the sealmaster's sunken eyes. He pulled a kunai and started fiddling with it. "Won't keep old Kagome in, though, will they? Oh no." He stabbed the kunai into the ground without seeming to be aware of it. "Cut right through those so-special defenses, didn't I? Hit the ground, scot free. Find a nice forest, get Mori her scroll without letting that stinker get his hooks into her leg and to the desk." Stab, stab, stab. "Yeah, that'd be the way. No more worrying about making quota, just boom! Squash! Steal. Run. Yeah." Stab, stab, stabstabstab.
"Kagome," Inoue-sensei said, leaning forward so she could catch his kunai hand with her right and lay her left on his cheek. "Kagome. Hey. Hey, look at me, okay?" She pressed lightly, turning his head and forcing him to meet her eyes. He snapped back to awareness, blinking in surprise. She smiled and gently took the kunai from him. "You okay?"
He suddenly seemed to notice that she still had her hand on his cheek; all the blood drained from his face and then came back in a blush so fiery it was a wonder his head didn't explode from the pressure. "Uh-huh," he said, starting to nod and then aborting when he realized it might dislodge her touch.
Inoue-sensei kept meeting his gaze and smiling, but slid her hand down his arm until she was holding his hands. "You with us?" she asked. "Seemed like you had a bad moment there."
"Oh, uh...I'm fine," Kagome-sensei said. He was fighting not to blink and his entire body was frozen like a deer in torchlight, but it was very clearly not fear that held him so still. "Just...um, yeah. Fine. Anyway. Uh...right, the shrine. Yeah, I bet I could get us in. One way or another. Probably pretty quick."
"You sure?" Inoue-sensei asked. She released his hands and sat up straight again. Just for a moment Kagome had the same expression as a child that just dropped its sweet in the dirt, but at least he was no longer frozen stiff.
"Have to see it," Kagome-sensei said. "Never know. Still, these stinkers aren't all that bright. Don't really know much about security. And their seals are balls."
Hazō opened his mouth to ask for clarification, but stopped when Inoue gave him a millimetric wave-off with one hand, held low and to the side.
"Sounds good," she said. "I'm glad we have you with us or we'd really be stuck."
"Oh," Kagome-sensei said. He looked down at his hands, long, ink-stained fingers twining around each other. Inoue-sensei followed his gaze and for a moment couldn't help but think that those could easily have been the hands of a scribe or a poet, instead of the fingers of a man whose writing killed people.
"Yeah. Well, that's me," Kagome-sensei said, shrugging mock-casually. "Unsticking whatever gets stuck." Something that was trying to remember how to be a smile draped itself over his face. "Usually with explosions. Because they work, and definitely not because I have a tactically crippled mind."
Inoue-sensei laughed softly. "Both true things," she said. "Hey, will you show me what you're doing with these clay things?" She turned so that she was sitting against the fort's wall alongside Kagome-sensei. She flicked her gaze to Hazō for just a second and gave him a tiny 'get lost' nod. The genin shifted backwards, using all the stealth he'd ever learned to vanish back into the fort while the two senior members of the team chatted about the best way to deliver explosions at short, medium, and long range.
o-o-o-o
In the morning, Hazō made a point of asking Noburi to be his water-fetching buddy. The other boy grumbled about the duty, but grabbed a quartet of waterskins and went along without real argument.
"You've got a hair thing," Hazō said, pointing at his own head and nodding towards Noburi's. The stouter boy tried to look up at his own hair, then pawed at it a bit with both hands. The cowlick stubbornly refused to be dislodged.
"How's that?" Noburi asked.
"Eh, you'll get it when you bathe," Hazō said, laughing. "Right now it looks like a haystack."
"Bleh," Noburi said, knuckling at his eyes and stifling a yawn as they arrived at the well. The sun was just barely coming up, and he clearly wouldn't have minded another hour of sleep. "Bath would be nice," he said, the last words a bit hard to understand as the yawn ambushed him and escaped. He shook his head and started pulling the bucket up.
"Yeah," Hazō said. "Me too." He fought back a grin. "I'm sure Yuno would like it if you smelled nice," he said slyly.
Without looking, Noburi sent a spray of water from his barrel to soak Hazō's shirt.
"Hey!" Hazō said, leaping back too late.
Noburi laughed. "I'm not the only one who needs a bath to smell nice," he said.
Hazō chuckled and plunged his waterskins into the bucket, then dropped it back in and hauled it up again. He looked around; there was no one anywhere in sight, but he still said nothing until all the waterskins were full and they were nearly back to camp.
A few minutes from the fort, Hazō stepped off the path and waved Noburi to follow him up into the trees. Noburi followed silently, clearly wondering what was going on.
Hazō settled on a branch and dug a piece of wax-wrapped honeycake out of his pocket. He broke it in half and handed one piece to his teammate before peeling the casing off his own. The other boy took the treat willingly enough and plonked down on the branch beside him.
"So—" Hazō began.
"She's nice. Yes, I know it is. Not thrilled but it is what it is. No, I realize that that would be a bad plan. No, she wouldn't. Yes, I'm sure. No idea, she won't talk about it." Noburi said.
"What?" Hazō asked.
"The answers," Noburi said, making a 'go on' gesture. "The answers to the questions you were going to ask."
Hazō blinked and thought it through, trying to match the answers to questions. "You think Yuno is nice but you know that the betrothal is supposed to be a sham. You aren't thrilled about that and, uh..."
Noburi waited, giving him an expectant look and snacking on his honeycake. "Yes?" he said. "Go on, you'll get it. I can already smell the wheels burning."
Hazō flicked him in the belly without looking; Noburi almost choked on the honeycake.
"Dunno," Hazō said finally. "What's the rest?"
"If we leave, I'm not going to invite her to leave with us," Noburi said. "That would be a bad plan. I'm sure she wouldn't betray me, even if her family wanted her to—she wears her heart on her sleeve even more than Ishihara does, and she doesn't have a devious bone in her body. As to why people avoid her, I don't know and she won't talk about it."
"Might be the axe," Hazō said.
"Yeah, the axe doesn't help," Noburi said. "By the way, thanks a lot for taking so damn long to finally bring this up. I bet Inoue-sensei you'd ask me about it two days ago."
"Oh," Hazō said, blushing. "Right. Guess I'm a little slow."
"Ya think?" Noburi demanded. He snorted and took another bite of the honeycake.
Hazō chewed his own cake for a moment. "What's it like?" he asked. "Dating, I mean. I know you've got a thing for Keiko."
Noburi sighed. "It's...weird, I guess. Keiko is smart, and hot, and she's from Mist so we get the same jokes, except that she never laughs. She's got that reserve that makes me feel awkward but it makes her seem really...elegant, I guess." He shrugged helplessly. "She doesn't want me, though, does she?"
Hazō grimaced. "No, she doesn't," he said. "Sorry, man."
Noburi nodded. Silence lingered.
"She can't like guys," Hazō blurted.
Noburi almost fell off the branch, and he did choke on the honeycake. "What?" he said, coughing.
"Well, she's got the thing for Inoue-sensei," Hazou said defensively. "She goes for girls, so obviously she doesn't do guys."
"She's thirteen, man!" Noburi said. "Of course she doesn't do guys!"
"Not like that," Hazō said, thwapping him on the shoulder in reproof. "I mean, you can't like both, right? If she's got it bad for Inoue-sensei then obviously she doesn't like guys. It's not that she doesn't like you in particular, it's just that you're a guy and she doesn't go for guys."
Noburi thought about that. "That makes sense," he said. He thought about it a bit more. "Huh."
"If she did go for guys, I'm sure she'd go for you," Hazō said.
Noburi snorted bitterly. "Yeah, because who wouldn't go for the fat kid with the screwed-up chakra system?"
Hazō looked at him in surprise. "Are you kidding?" he asked. "A, you're not fat, and B, so what about your chakra system? You've got more chakra than me, Akane, and Keiko put together, and you can actually share it with people. That's amazing. Girls should be so lucky."
"Yeah, thanks, Mr. Jawline and Abs," Noburi said. "You and your super amazing taijutsu and perfectly graceful all the time, never trips or stumbles."
Hazō let out a long breath. "Seriously?" he said. "You think...." He shook his head. "Look, the Iron Nerve may sound great, but it's got its downsides."
"Oh?" Noburi asked. "Like what? You're perfectly graceful all the time, you can beat down three chūnin at a time, you reproduce seals perfectly after a single glance. You're right, that does sound rough. I'm so glad that I can put chakra in water instead."
"At least you don't have to remember to be a person," Hazō snapped.
As quick as it had come, the anger drained away and left him deflated. "Yes, there's a lot of good about the Iron Nerve," Hazō said. "The part about copying seals—sure, it lets me do that, but that's a party trick. I can reliably draw designs, how nice. I still need to learn to infuse them or they're just pretty squiggles. Let me tell you, training under Kagome-sensei isn't exactly all honeycake and hot baths."
"Okay, that's fair," Noburi said. He paused. "What did you mean about being a person?"
Hazō thought about how to answer. "You remember half-speed sparring at the Academy? Everything is slow enough that you can choose exactly what you're going to do next. You can consciously tighten each muscle, choose exactly how hard you're going to push or pull. Right?"
"Yeah, so?"
"That's my life," Hazō said. "It's like there's a big catalog of every motion I've ever made, right behind my eyes. If I'm not thinking about it, the Iron Nerve will choose one based on my subconscious intent and replay it. I'll walk, or run, or tumble, exactly the way I did before. If I am thinking about it, then I can choose from the catalog, select which action gets replayed, but it's still exactly like the first time. In order to learn a new motion I have to concentrate on turning the Iron Nerve off. I have to focus on reacting...well, I can't say reacting normally, because for me the Iron Nerve is normal. I have to focus on turning the Iron Nerve off so that I can move on my own."
"Okaaay," Noburi said, clearly confused.
"You don't get it, do you?" Hazō asked. "I'm a windup toy except when I remember to be a person."
Noburi blinked. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again and thought. "Okay," he said finally. "I see why it bothers you. I'm still hating on you for the abs and the jaw, though."
Hazō laughed and hopped off the branch. "C'mon, barrel boy," he said. "Let's get back and drop this off. I want a bath and you need one."
XP AWARD: 21
You spoke to Akane about being less trusting and not letting people into the Batcave fort. She nodded soberly and promised to work three, no four! times as hard on it.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, June 1, 2016, at 12pm UTC.
Mariko skipped home, her exhausted uncle following somewhere way behind. There were no guests at the Open Hearth today, and Uncle Kazuhiro had persuaded Mum to hold the fort while he and Mariko went out to play. Of course, Mariko had to make the most of an opportunity like that, even if it meant leaving Uncle Kazuhiro panting and out of breath and looking like he was about to collapse. But playtime with her uncle always left her starving, and tonight Mum had promised to make her very best vegetable stew. It would have taken a girl with far more willpower than her to slow down and let him catch up.
Mariko stopped as she reached the inn. There was someone talking to Mum, and it wasn't just any guest. He was tall, and lean, and had that metal thing on his forehead that only ninja had, and he wasn't talking the way guests booking a room usually did.
Mariko decided to sneak up to the door and eavesdrop. She was good at eavesdropping, and besides, grown-ups never paid attention to little girls. Why should a ninja be any different?
"D-rank at most, relative to her age. She's not going to be the next Mizukage with chakra reserves like that, but she's still in a whole other world than civilians—no offence—and she has the potential to be a fine ninja."
"But being a ninja must be very dangerous," Mum said warily. The ninja probably thought she was being suspicious, but Mum's tone of voice told Mariko she just wanted to be persuaded.
"Life is dangerous, ma'am," the ninja's voice was completely matter-of-fact. "But nobody in Hidden Mist dies in bandit raids, or gets savaged by wild animals, or starves to death or gets killed by diseases that our medic-nin could cure with a snap of their fingers. Being a ninja means she'd have the skills to defend herself, a whole villageful of other ninja to help her succeed, and the opportunity to command her own destiny."
Mariko could hear the objections lining up in Mum's head, hoping to be knocked down. She was so easy to read.
"What about the rest of us? Surely you can't ask a young girl to go live on her own in a strange village?"
The ninja sounded amused. "The Mizukage's Office provides a relocation stipend to families capable of producing high-chakra children. You already have a trade, so I doubt you'll have any trouble getting back on your feet in Mist.
"Now, all you have to do is sign this contract here, and in a week or so there'll be a genin team down to help you move your belongings."
Mariko's mind was boggling. A week? One measly week to leave everything behind? The inn which her great-grandfather had built hundreds and hundreds of years ago? All her friends? She wasn't even going to get started on the idea that she, Inoue Mariko, could become a ninja, and learn how to break boulders in half with her bare hands and call down lightning on people she didn't like. It simply didn't feel real.
"If you'll wait, sir, my brother Kazuhiro will be back any minute now. He knows how to read and write."
And just like that, Mariko the innkeeper-in-training joined the ranks of the people who ruled the world.
-o-
It had been a tiring day, with double chakra control lessons, and Mari was drained and hungry as she staggered home to the Open Heart (the end of the sign had fallen off long ago, and somehow they'd never got round to fixing it). She needed that vegetable stew more than she needed air.
"Welcome home, Mariko!" Uncle Kazuhiro beamed as he looked up from his ledger. "How was ninja training today?"
"I told you, Uncle, it's 'Mari' now," Mari gave him a semi-serious glare for as long as she could, but finally failed to hold it in the face of his wry expression.
"And what, pray tell," Uncle Kazuhiro demanded, waving his hands in the air in mock exasperation, "is wrong with the name that your father, may his spirit drift on warm currents forever, gave you out of the goodness of his heart?"
"It's girly," Mari said in much the same tone as she might have said "it's filled with slimy, writhing maggots".
"Half the boys make fun of me because I'm the smallest in my year," she went on, "and the other half keep asking me out just because I'm pretty. Nobody's taking me seriously! I'm not a little girl anymore, and 'Mari' is a much more adult name."
Uncle Kazuhiro gave a thoughtful nod. "You're a beautiful girl, Mariko, and I think you'll only grow more beautiful over time. And the trouble is, people rarely do tend to take beautiful girls seriously. It's like they think if you're beautiful, it means that's all there is to you, and you don't have to be strong or clever."
"That's stupid," Mari said with all the finality of a judge's verdict. "I'm as good as anybody in my class, girl or boy, and I'd still be as good as them if I shaved all my hair off tomorrow."
"Yes, it is. But it means you have to get used to proving yourself if you want people to see past your good looks and realise there's actually a pretty badass young woman under there."
Mari couldn't help it. She preened a little.
"My advice to you is to find something you can do that nobody can overlook, and get very good at it. You're good at lots of things, aren't you, Mariko? There's that ninja fighting of yours, and all the stuff with the chakra, and I saw how good you were with shuriken before Granny Mimura across the road stopped you using her fence for practice. Pick something like that, and show everybody how skilled you are."
-o-
Mari took Uncle Kazuhiro's advice seriously. She considered her options, and finally settled on taijutsu. It wasn't easy—the gap in reach between her and the taller students was awful, and gradually getting bigger—but if there was one thing people wouldn't be able to ignore, it was taking the beatdown of their lives while everybody else watched.
Of course, if it was that easy, Mari would already be doing it. So she pondered, and observed, and talked to people, until finally she had a plan.
"Excuse me, Miss Sonozaki?" she called out to the older girl as the children poured out of the Academy.
"Huh?"
"Um, I was wondering…" Mari assumed a posture with just the right balance of submissiveness and self-esteem, having established that Sonozaki Kaori fancied herself a big sister to the other kunoichi, but didn't actually want the responsibility that this entailed.
"I know you're amazing at taijutsu, and we're sort of the same height, and there's a bunch of boys like Urahara Shinji and Kawashima Ryōsuke who keep beating me in sparring because they're bigger than me. Do you think you could give me a few pointers?"
Actually, there was nothing special about Shinji and Ryōsuke—at least apart from the fact that they asked Sonozaki out on a near-daily basis, something Mari had learned through dedicated research (i.e. identifying and interrogating the Academy's more informed rumour-mongers).
"You know," Sonozaki told her with a scary glint in her eye, "I think I might just be able to spare a few hours."
-o-
Mum had never slapped her before.
"How could you even say something like that?!" she demanded, her voice trembling with fury. "Kazuhiro wouldn't hurt a fly, never mind do something like… that! He's been like a father to you, Mariko, like a father. He's been nothing but kind to you, he's worked harder than anybody to keep running this inn and put food on the table, and now you start making up these vile… lies about him?"
Gradually, Mum's ranting faded off as she saw Mari's tears.
"I know maybe I haven't been paying enough attention to you lately, Mariko," she said in what was probably meant to be a reconciliatory tone. "But that doesn't mean you should start inventing such horrible things. Now I'll do my best to be there for you from now on, but I don't ever want to hear you saying anything like that again."
-o-
It had been a horrible week. Not just for all the usual reasons, but on Monday she'd been told that Ishimura-sensei hadn't come back from his solo mission. She'd never been close to the gratingly loud, slightly manic old man, but he hadn't been a bad person either, and Mari was sorry they'd never train together again.
But that was merely sad. What was infuriating was that instead of being assigned to another taijutsu expert, she, Bonebreaker Mari, was now being instructed by Usami-sensei, whose specialisations were about as much help to her as a shark in a lifeboat.
"I can't believe you were being wasted on taijutsu," she heard Usami-sensei say as she tuned back in. "When I saw your chakra control and social skills scores… well, I'd like a quiet word in a private place with the man who made that call, is all I'm saying."
Mari just glowered.
Usami-sensei sighed. "Well, I suppose we'd better get started with the initial assessment. Stand still, girl, let me look at you."
Stand still. Let me look at you.
Mari couldn't move, every muscle tense with a fight/flight/freeze response that always chose the worst of the options. Suddenly, she was back there, back with him. He spoke to her, and every time, she stopped being a ninja who could kill him with a single blow, and became a little girl who…
Eventually, she came out of the spiral to become aware of Usami-sensei watching her, an unreadable expression on his face.
"Someone's hurt you," he said quietly.
As the paralysis began to wear off, Mari very slightly shook her head.
To her immense relief, Usami-sensei honoured her unspoken request, and changed the subject.
"A lot of people look down on genjutsu and infiltration as 'soft' disciplines, hard to use in combat and lacking the hundred percent reliability of a fireball or a kick. Let me tell you why they're wrong.
"A master of either of these skills, never mind both, isn't crude enough to merely defeat his enemies. He tells them what to think. He can turn them into allies, or pawns, or broken pieces of what was once a human being, at a whim and without having to wade into battle if he doesn't want to. Learn what I have to teach you, Inoue Mari, and you won't need raw power. What you will have is… control."
As Mari's higher cognitive functions started up again, and began to take in this information, Usami-sensei said something else.
"I don't think you're in the best state to start training right now. Go get some rest. And while I make a policy of not fighting other people's battles for them—unless those other people are paying me and wearing a very impressive hat—I do have some words of wisdom for you that my master passed on to me.
"A ninja does not have enemies. All they have are bodies that haven't been disposed of yet.'"
-o-
Mari's thoughts wandered as she watched Noriko's ample chest slowly rise and fall in the bed beside her. She'd have to find something nice to do for Usami-sensei when they got back to Mist for being so considerate. The original mission plan had been for the infiltrator to seduce Lord Uesugi, but when Mari accepted that role, Usami-sensei had accommodated her needs and made the necessary adjustments to target the head maid instead. The outcome was the same—Noriko knew every inch of the house, and had known exactly where the scrolls would be hidden—but the preparatory steps had been harder, and left the support team with considerably more to do. And Usami-sensei hadn't even complained.
Mari silently reached beneath the bed for her kunai.
Standard procedure for eliminating witnesses after a seduction such as this was strangulation—it left no blood to clean up, if done correctly the victim wouldn't be able to struggle out of it, and bedsheets meant no need to smuggle in a weapon.
Mari couldn't do it. Noriko had been her first, and a kind woman besides. The thought of looking into those trusting dark eyes as the life slowly faded from them sent a wave of visceral horror through her. No, this was something that had to be done in one motion. Past the ribs, through the heart. She wouldn't be awake for more than an instant.
-o-
"Nice work, Mari," Usami-sensei ruffled her hair, knowing full well how long it would take to brush afterwards. "I remember my first time taking point on a seduction mission. It's always harder than you expect."
Mari decided not to think about it. "Will you recommend me for the Chūnin Exam now, Usami-sensei?" she asked instead. "You know I'm ready."
But Usami-sensei shook his head. "You've got the talent, Mari. No one's questioning that. There aren't many people without a Bloodline Limit who can successfully specialise in both genjutsu and infiltration. But you still lack resolve.
"I've told you this before. When you're on a mission, you're a ninja, not a human being. You kill all your feelings, and feel only what the mission needs you to feel. Until you can do that, you'll never be ready to play in the big leagues."
-o-
Mari didn't go home much anymore. Fortunately, there was plenty to do in Hidden Mist after dark, as long as you knew where to go. Alcohol, fights of various levels of legality, and other entertainments both mundane and exotic were easily available to a beautiful woman with a silver tongue and a knack for making the right (or perhaps the wrong) kind of friends.
Tonight, though, she was coming home.
She'd taken a month to prepare. The planning was the easiest part. Creating herself a safety net was harder. She'd pushed her social skills to the limit to assemble a sufficient combination of allies, real and of convenience, people who owed her favours, and people who did not want certain secrets getting out. Still, it had been worth it. In Hidden Mist, a person who had those sorts of connections could get away with murder.
Normally, it wouldn't have mattered. Civilians were civilians. But the Mizukage, an orphan as far back as anyone knew, had very specific feelings about the sin of patricide.
Still, all that was trivial next to the actual execution of the plan, which was a thing out of her nightmares.
"Hi, Uncle Kazuhiro," Mari smiled as she walked into the otherwise empty inn.
"Mariko! Where have you been?" Uncle Kazuhiro exclaimed, eyebrows rising in a voluntary motion of exaggerated surprise, pupils dilating and a slight relaxation around the outer edges of his eye sockets indicating the opening up of his peripheral vision to take in more of her body. "Sachiko and I have been worried sick!"
There was nothing to fear, she told herself. Uncle Kazuhiro wasn't her enemy. A ninja had no enemies.
"Oh, out and about," she deflected, exercising the most careful muscular control to keep her stance open and relaxed. "Actually, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about."
"What's that?"
"Well," Mari began, "it's been forever since we had one of our 'playtimes', and I really miss them." She felt the physical impulse to vomit as she said it. She clamped down on it, hard, and kept her expression warm and trusting.
Kill all your feelings. Feel only what the mission needs you to feel.
Uncle Kazuhiro's lower lip rose a little. The corners of his eyes tensed again. Eager, but suspicious. As predicted.
"The other boys in the village just aren't the same. They don't know what they're doing." She shuffled her feet, innocent, vulnerable.
Uncle Kazuhiro smirked, the doting uncle gradually giving way to the beast within. It didn't take infiltration training to read him anymore. "Kids like to think they can get things done on pure enthusiasm, but you and I both know that there's nothing like an older, experienced man."
Yes. There was nothing like Uncle Kazuhiro.
Mari moved in for the kill, the predator for the first time. She leaned forward in a gesture of eagerness, allowing the motion to bring her low-cut top into the optimal angle.
"Actually… there's this perfect place I've found, with plenty of privacy… just for us. Do you want to go there tonight?"
-o-
As the priest droned on, Mari idly wondered how many people knew there were no ashes in the urn. It was for the best that no body was ever found, of course, even putting criminal investigation aside. She didn't know if Mum's heart could have taken seeing what was left of Uncle Kazuhiro once she was done with him.
She'd spent hours playing. Yes, she had to admit, that was the word for it. Hours of playtime. Hours using every technique that Usami-sensei had applied in illusionary form to build the team's willpower and pain tolerance. Hours drawing on all the T&I know-how she'd gained from acquaintances made for that purpose.
Infiltration training to read mental states and body language. Seduction training to know the intimate details of pleasure and pain. Genjutsu training to dominate the mind on the subtlest levels. All the control she had been promised and more, merciless and intoxicating.
And then there was the genjutsu technique she'd made just for him, for when she was done with everything else. Everything he'd made her feel, experienced as a single perfect mindspike. Was it any wonder his heart had given out?
There was a part of her that had been screaming in horror at what she was doing, crossing so many lines that could not be uncrossed, all at once. She killed those feelings too. She took pleasure in what she was doing, because that was what the mission demanded. If she'd let herself give in to compassion or regret, at the end of the night there would have been two corpses instead of one.
She'd spent an irrationally long time washing her hands afterwards, Mari reflected as she joined the queue to make an offering to Uncle Kazuhiro's spirit. Why had she bothered? They'd only get stained again during the next mission.
Inoue-sensei had spent endless hours Transformed into Yuno's form, drilling him on how to (not) react to whatever might happen and what the appropriate responses and actions would be in almost any situation. This situation had very much not been covered, but there was at least a default option he could fall back on.
"It is indeed a very pleasant day," Noburi said. Only a faint widening of his eyes revealed the way his world had just been turned inside out. "I had thought to walk a bit."
Yuno's head came up and the room seemed to brighten as she almost literally glowed. "I had thought the same!" she said. "Maybe we could—"
The governess in the corner coughed reprovingly.
Yuno's glow vanished. "Um...."
Noburi frowned at the governess; Yuno's smile came back. "I had thought to go fishing," he said. "Would you be kind enough to tell me where the fish might be?" This had been possibly one of the stranger aspects of the romance training that he'd been given by Ms Scary Lady. (As he mentally thought of the old woman whom the Kannagi had assigned to be his tutor.) Apparently, hunting was not considered a suitable activity for a date because it involved blood. Fishing, on the other hand, was highly approved of; it was clean (as long as you kept the caught fish alive while you were still fishing) and the fish could be eaten afterwards, so the date was actually productive time. Of course, it was also a high-risk activity. Asking someone on a fishing date and catching plenty of fish showed that you were a good provider and made you desirable. Not catching fish could sink the relationship right there.
Any Wakahisa who couldn't catch fish would have been laughed out of the clan.
Yuno's eyes were very large. "I, um, uh, yes. You want to— Um—"
Noburi started to panic. "Not if you don't want to!" he said. "Maybe something else? Um, we could, ah—"
"No, fishing would be excellent!" Yuno said. "Yes, definitely! I know a good spot! I'll get my things!" She hoisted her dress up to her knees and bolted out of the room.
The governess sighed and rubbed her temples.
o-o-o-o
"This is a beautiful spot," Noburi said sincerely. It really was; the river bent south here for a few hundred meters before resuming its usual west-to-east path. The embankment was grassy and gently sloped, and a small eddy meant that the water moved only very slowly, so it remained clear and smooth. The only downside was that the still water was a pleasant vacation home for mosquitos that apparently considered Wakahisa blood to be haute cuisine. On the upside, the prevalence of insects meant that the fish were jumping.
Yuno finished setting up the last of her six lines. It had taken several attempts, as the unfamiliar clothes restricted her movements. The first two casts of her lines had gotten tangled when the skirt tripped her; she'd nearly fallen on her nose, but fortunately Noburi had caught her.
Once she had the lines placed and pegged down, she looked at Noburi uncertainly. "You don't have a line with you?" she asked.
Noburi's fingers flicked through some handseals. He knelt at the edge of the water, resting his palm lightly on the surface. "My clan fishes a little differently than most," he said.
Ripples spread out across the surface as half a dozen gasping fish floated up from the depths. A shimmering tendril of water erupted from the water, slapping them up onto the grass one after another. Noburi paused long enough to pick them up and dump them in the water-filled tub he and Yuno had brought for that purpose, then settled down next to the Kannagi girl. The fish twitched weakly for a few seconds until their chakra recovered from Noburi's drain, then began swimming in angry circles, clearly feeling that someone, somewhere, had cheated.
Yuno laughed gleefully.
o-o-o-o
Not too far away, Hazō and Akane crouched, keeping watch on their teammate. They looked around quickly as the bushes rustled and two Kannagi ninja emerged.
"Hi," the older one said, giving the two a friendly nod.
"Hey there," Hazō said, carefully suppressing any hint of uncertainty. "How's it going?"
The senior ninja shrugged. "Can't complain," he said. He looked at the couple fishing on the river bank. "Mr Kannagi thought maybe we should keep an eye on Ms Yuno," he said. "The Gasai have been causing some trouble. They blame us for the council change."
The younger ninja snorted. "Idiots," he muttered. His senior gave him a quelling glare.
"Oh," Hazō said. "That's probably a good idea, yeah."
"I'm Kannagi Hibiki," the senior said. "This is Kannagi Kiyoshi. I thought we should stop by to congratulate you."
Hazō frowned and looked at Akane, who was just as puzzled as he was. "For what?" he said.
Hibiki looked surprised. "Well, for finally walking out together," he said, gesturing back and forth between the two foreign ninja. "We've seen you sparring together all this time, but it's nice to see that you're finally taking your relationship to the next level. It's a little late in the year—the baby will come next fall—but that's fine."
Akane blushed so hard it was amazing the air didn't ignite around her. Hazō went pale and stammered.
"We're not/That's not—" they said together, before cutting themselves off and looking at one another. "You've got it wrong/No, no—"
Hibiki smiled knowingly and patted Hazō on the shoulder. "It's fine," he said. "My wife and I had a few illicit meetings when we started courting. If you haven't told your clan head yet, I promise I won't say anything."
"That's not—" Hazō said. "We aren't courting!"
The younger ninja frowned. "Then why are the two of you walking alone by the river?"
"We're keeping an eye on our teammate!" Hazō said, while Akane nodded hard enough to snap her own neck.
Hibiki eyed them knowingly. "Mm-hm," he said.
"We are!" Akane said.
"Absolutely," Hibiki said, waving the issue aside. "Whatever you say."
"No, really!" Hazō said.
"I believe you," Hibiki said, clearly not believing.
"I don't," the younger ninja muttered.
"In any case," Hibiki said. "We should leave you to get back to your...activities. We'll go watch from upriver a bit. Have fun." He gathered Kiyoshi up by eye and the two of them vanished into the brush.
Neither Hazō nor Akane were able to look at each other for the rest of Noburi's painfully long date.
o-o-o-o
When they finally made it back to the fort, Akane made a point of staying outside 'to train' while Hazō quickly ducked inside to do absolutely anything that didn't involve being near his apprentice. Fortunately, it wasn't long before Keiko and Inoue-sensei returned from Keiko's latest training session with Takahashi. Keiko took one look at the agitated Hazō and went outside to join Akane. Inoue knelt down and started putting a soup together for dinner. Hazō gratefully took the opportunity to babble out everything he'd been thinking lately that was not Akane-related.
"...but before that, I think you should talk to Takahashi about whether we can deal with Aida," Hazō concluded.
Inoue-sensei stared at him for several very long seconds. "Just to get this straight," she said. "You want us to try to build a connection with the Aida by offering to heal their clan head."
Hazō nodded, feeling pretty pleased with himself. "Yup," he said. "We need to involve ourselves more in the life of the village. You said it yourself—there's too many agendas, too much behind-the-scenes maneuvering. We should make contacts and start to get a handle on it."
"And part of what you want us to negotiate with the Aida for is building warm winter shelters and making winter clothes," she said, stirring the soup.
A tiny little warning bell started ringing in the back of Hazō's mind. "Yes...?" he said.
"Uh-huh," Inoue-sensei said. "Now, before we reach out to the Aida, you want us to ask Takahashi's permission."
The warning bell got louder. "Yes?" Hazō said.
"Takahashi, the one who told us to stay completely out of village politics," Inoue-sensei said, still not looking at him. She dipped a bit of the soup out and tried it, shook her head, and tossed in another pinch of rosemary.
"Uh...," Hazō said.
The light dimmed as Kagome-sensei came in, momentarily blocking the door. He was carrying an armful of firewood large enough that he could barely see over it. He glanced at Hazō, standing uncomfortably by the fire, then dumped the wood in the corner before starting to quickly stack it on the cord that he'd already put there.
"What's up with the kid?" Kagome-sensei asked Inoue-sensei.
"He thinks we should ask the Aida for help winterproofing our quarters," Inoue-sensei said.
Kagome-sensei frowned and straightened up, absently brushing his hands off. "Why?" he said. "I've been living in the woods for fifteen years, I think I can winterproof a shelter."
"...oh," Hazō said.
Kagome-sensei peered at him in confusion for a moment, then shrugged and went outside to get more wood.
"Um...the clothes?" Hazō said weakly.
"I told you back in the lake town that I could do seamstress work," Inoue-sensei said. "I've got a sewing kit, and I'm pretty sure we can trade with the villagers for furs or whatever else we need. If not, we can hunt it ourselves."
"Oh," said Hazō.
"I appreciate the thought, though," Inoue-sensei said. "Nice to see you thinking ahead."
"Right," Hazō said. "Um...so, I guess we don't need to talk to the Aida?"
Inoue-sensei tasted the soup again, then tossed in another pinch of their steadily dwindling supply of salt. "No, that's a good plan," she said. "We'll just offer them healing, we won't make a big thing of it. You, Noburi, and I should go talk to them about it tomorrow morning. Speaking of which, how did his date go? Did you see anything interesting while you were on overwatch?"
Hazō froze.
o-o-o-o
Mrs Aida's hunting injury proved to be severe; her thigh had gotten badly torn up by something, although the clan was very tight-lipped about exactly what had happened. Given nothing but village medicine, she would never have walked again. Noburi wasn't able to restore her completely, but he got her to the point where she had only a bit of a limp and was still able to function as a ninja. It didn't entirely reverse the clan's stance on these heathen missing-nin, but it definitely mellowed things out. More importantly, it netted the team the thing they had most wanted: the perfect present for Kagome.
It was mid-morning on the 18th when Hazō came to find Kagome-sensei. Winter had settled in with a firm grasp; there was snow on the ground and the wind was picking up day by day. Kagome-sensei and Akane were in the woods, gathering even more firewood. The fort was already packed to the rafters with it, but Kagome-sensei insisted that they couldn't have too much.
"Naito-sensei?" Hazō called. "Where are you?"
"Over here!" Akane called, a sudden grin splitting her face.
Hazō turned and caught sight of them, trotting over through the ankle-deep snow. Kagome-sensei frowned, one hand automatically going into his belt pouch as his apprentice closed the distance.
"What's wrong?" Kagome-sensei demanded. "Is there a problem? Are the villagers attacking?"
Hazō shook his head, smiling. "No, sensei," he said. "I'm here to invite you to your birthday party."
"What."
Hazō laughed; Noburi owed him five ryo. "Today is your birthday, sensei," he said. "We're having a party to celebrate. We have presents for you!"
Kagome-sensei's hand came out of his explosives pouch and hung limply at his side. He looked at Akane's delighted grin. Then looked at Hazō. Then at Akane.
"Party?" he asked.
Hazō chuckled. "Come on, sensei," he said. "Everyone's waiting. Here, let me get that." He flicked off a few handseals and summoned up an earth clone to carry the firewood that Kagome-sensei and Akane had gathered so that the three real people could get back to camp faster.
Kagome-sensei followed along, still seeming utterly baffled. When they arrived at the fort he stopped dead; the door was sealed off with an Earth Wall and everyone was standing out front with smiles on their faces and full packs on their backs.
"You lot haven't been eaten by a swarm of lupchanz, have you?" Kagome-sensei asked suspiciously.
"I promise we haven't," Inoue said, walking forward slowly with her arms extended. "You can check if you want. Now c'mere and let me hug you, birthday boy." She stopped a few feet away, offering the hug without forcing it on him.
Kagome-sensei's eyes flicked around like a nervous horse's for another moment, but slowly he extended his arms. Inoue stepped into him and hugged him so tight he oofed. She was so much shorter that her head was pressed tight into his chest, her sunset-red hair spilling down her back in a sharp contrast to the light-brown furs that Kagome-sensei wore. Kagome-sensei was stiff as a board for long seconds but, when Inoue refused to release him, he eventually put his arms around her as carefully as though she were made of spun sugar.
Eventually Inoue-sensei released the hug. With a big smile she grabbed his shoulder and pulled him down to her level so she could buss him soundly on the cheek.
"Happy birthday, my friend," she said, cupping his face with both hands. His eyes were big as saucers. "Our lives are better because you are in them."
"Uh...," he said.
Inoue-sensei laughed and let go. "C'mon," she said. "It's cold out, and I want some soup." She took him by the elbow and towed him back to the others. "Now, we have presents for you. Typically they'd be a surprise, but we don't want you to be nervous so I'll tell you what they are if you want. I promise they aren't dangerous and I'm pretty sure you'll like them. Do you want to know, or can we surprise you?"
"Uh...," he said, fidgeting nervously. "No? I mean yes. I mean, you can surprise me, I guess."
She hugged his arm tight. "Good!" she said. "Okay, well, in that case, come with us. Your first present is over by the mountain."
"Hold on, sensei," Akane said. "We get our hugs, too!" She bounced over to Kagome-sensei and glomped onto him. He staggered under the impact of muscular and enthusiastic girl, but smiled and hugged her back.
"Okay, that's enough!" Inoue-sensei said. "I'm freezing my very cute butt off out here! There can be more hugs once we get to the mountain." She grabbed Kagome-sensei's hand and trotted off, laughing and pulling him along behind her. He followed willingly enough, although he looked utterly bewildered. Pleased, but bewildered.
His bewilderment turned to amazement when Inoue-sensei tugged him into a small cave half a mile from the Aida clan leader's house. The cave had seemed only a couple meters deep and four or five wide; in actuality, the 'back' of the cave was a carefully sculpted Earth Wall. It didn't reach all the way across, meaning that there was a narrow gap on the left side. They slid through the gap, only to find another wall a meter deeper in, this one reaching from the left most of the way across to the right. Three more such baffles had them winding back and forth until they broke out into the actual cave.
It was big, maybe fifteen meters deep and ten wide, with an arched ceiling that reached nearly eight meters at the highest. The stone sucked the heat away, but the lack of wind left it feeling relatively warm compared to the outside. Several lanterns had been lit and placed at various strategic points through the cave, leaving the place bright enough that the team could look around.
The light glittered and danced across water-slicked walls that scattered the light in a thousand diamond sparkles. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, each speckled and whorled in green and blue and brown. Flowstone draperies on the walls showed layers of brown and white. The floor was rough and pitted, with dozens of stalagmites thrusting upwards like the teeth of some immense creature.
"What is this?" Kagome-sensei asked.
"Home," Hazō said quietly. "If you want it to be."
Kagome-sensei frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Keiko offered a rare smile. "You have been uncomfortable since we arrived here in Isan," she said. "In part because our quarters were more vulnerable to attack than you would have liked. In thanks for Noburi healing her, the Aida clan leader ceded us this cave. The clan has known about it for generations, but they have never used it—it is too wet for them to store things in or live in, and the entryway was large and straight so that the wind came directly in, making it unsuitable even for kenneling the tapirs."
"Of course, they aren't us," Noburi said with a grin. "Hazō?"
Hazō tossed off a string of handseals and then dramatically raised his hands. At the back of the cave, a platform of stone half the width of the cave and five meters deep rose from the floor, forming a smooth surface. A second sheet of stone tore itself free of the back wall and angled up until it met the ceiling, creating a rainshield above the platform.
"My turn," Noburi said. He stepped to the platform and took a taijutsu stance, walking through the moves of a made-up and overblown kata full of shaking fists and fierce growls. "Water Eelemeeent: Condense Water!" he shouted, hamming it up like a kabuki ninja going into battle.
Instantly, the surface of the platform was bone dry and Noburi was holding a globe of water the size of his two fists. He leaned forward, slurped from it as though it were a canteen just to be silly, then tossed it aside.
"Behold!" he said. "Dry!"
"And you saw that Hazō-sensei already put the baffles up in the entryway to keep the wind out and make the place defensible," Akane said.
"We figured we'd let you set up the defenses," Inoue-sensei said. "If you don't like it we'll go back to the fort, but we thought this could be good. Light and heat will be a little tricky since we can't afford to have much smoke, but I have some wind jutsu that we can use to herd the smoke out if it gets too bad."
Kagome-sensei was turning in a slow circle, staring around in wonder. "It's wonderful," he said, his voice wobbling a bit. "But what about food and water? Stinkers could park outside, leave us to die of thirst."
Inoue-sensei flashed him an urchin grin. "Wait right here," she said. She nodded at Hazō. "Do your thing." Without waiting for the genin to do anything, she turned and trotted out.
Hazō nodded to her retreating back and tossed off another Multiple Earth Wall ninjutsu. More walls rose up from the ground, forming a cistern two meters on a side and a meter deep.
Inoue-sensei was gone for under two minutes; when she returned it was in the company of a trio of other Inoue-senseis, each of them carrying a pair of large, water-filled buckets.
"Look! Water!" they chorused. All four of them poured their buckets into the new cistern, then three turned and trotted back out to fetch more.
"There's a good-sized stream about a hundred meters that way," the remaining Inoue-sensei—presumably the real one—said. "We can store as much water in here as we like, and Noburi is going to be pulling more out of the air all the time anyway. As to food, we'll hunt a lot before it gets too much colder and fill our storage scrolls. We can have months of supplies in here, no problem."
Kagome-sensei eyes were brimming; he swiped at them with his sleeve and sniffled.
"Can I put explosive seals in the entryway?" he asked hopefully.
Silently, every single member of the team produced a wad of seals and held them out.
"I would also suggest setting up some of your force-wall seals at an angle," Keiko said. "Set them at various heights on the way in and invaders would be likely to decapitate themselves."
Kagome-sensei swallowed hard as he collected the seals from each of them. He stood, clutching the wad of paper to his chest and looking around like a dog that had just wandered into the meat room and couldn't decide which piece to eat first.
"There's one more thing," Hazō said. From inside his tunic he produced a small velvet bag, which he offered to Kagome cradled in both hands.
Kagome-sensei took the bag from him and gave it a careful examination...or, at least, he started to. He paused after just a moment, looked at Hazō, looked at the rest of the team, and then opened the bag and looked in.
He went very still and swallowed hard before reaching inside and pulling out a small puzzle box made of a red wood that had been polished to a rich glow. The center of the top was etched with fine lines forming a lattice of hexagons and triangles. Each of the other sides had a series of fragmented lines on them, arranged in no particular pattern.
Kagome-sensei frowned at it for a moment, then blinked as he registered the trihexagonal pattern on the top. "Basket weave...," he said. His lip trembled.
"Well?" Inoue said. "Open it, silly!"
Akane touched the side closest to her. "The key to this side is 'Youth'," she said.
"Ice," Keiko said, touching a third side.
"Water," said Noburi, pointing to a fourth.
"Earth," Hazō said, tapping a fifth.
"And mine is 'Heart'," Inoue said with a smile. "It should have been 'Heartbreaker', but that's a little too closely associated with me."
Kagome-sensei cleared his throat before starting to poke at the puzzle. He slid panels back and forth until each side showed the kanji for its key word. When the last one clicked into place he was able to slide the top of the box off.
Inside the box was a wooden tray, carved to hold a small inkstone, inkstick, and a very small silver-handled brush.
"It's going to need a lot of seals to properly defend that entryway," Inoue said. "We figured you'd need at least one full inkstone to make them." She smiled. "Also, look at the bottom of the stone."
Kagome-sensei pulled the inkstone out and turned it over. On the bottom was glued a piece of paper with a seal on it. A very familiar seal.
"It's a copy of the one that you stuck on my back when we first met," Hazō said. "I drew it, but you'll need to infuse it."
Kagome-sensei cleared his throat. "Thank you," he said, his voice hoarse. "This is...really nice. No one's...well, I mean, I've been in the woods so long...and, before that...thank you. Really."
"Oh, we're not quite done," Noburi said, laughing. "Keep looking."
"The tray lifts out," Akane hinted.
Kagome-sensei lifted the tray out with careful fingers, revealing a velvet-lined bottom in the center of which was a ring woven from five strands of hair: three black, one brown, and one flame-red.
"Happy birthday, Kagome," Inoue said, hugging him tightly. Moments later, Kagome-sensei found himself crushed in the center of a giant group hug.
XP AWARD: 7
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, June 8, 2016, at 12pm UTC.
The flickering light of the oil lamps wrapped Keiko's face in eerie, sinister shadows as she emerged from the depths of the cave.
"There is no escape," she stated in a completely flat monotone. "Resistance is futile. We will be assimilated."
Mari could feel herself begin to sweat. She made a note to ask Akane to tone down the Elemental Mastery next time.
"Keiko, dear, come back to us," she said firmly. "The task is complete."
Keiko closed her eyes for several seconds. When she spoke again, her voice was more animated (at least by Keiko's standards).
"I apologise. I thought I had returned fully. I am not sure what happened."
Mari noted this as something to worry about later. "So you were saying?"
"It seems our assumptions about the Multiple Earth Wall Technique were incorrect. Wherever it draws its matter from, it is not the immediately surrounding rock. In other words, we will not be able to use it to excavate an escape tunnel. Unless we can find another means of doing so, we will be forced to remain here and face the elders' plotting in the arena of their choosing, which is to say social and political manipulation."
Mari frowned. "Sounds like we'll have to step up our game. Get Hazō and Kagome in here. Noburi and Akane should be back from the healing session any minute now, and we need a team meeting ASAP."
-o-
Noburi went over the briefing in his head one more time. Questions to ask. Questions not to ask. Questions to be subtly inserted into the dialogue if and only if a suitable opportunity came up. Ways to answer Yuno's questions in order to move the conversation in the correct direction. It said a lot about the discussion that, towards the end, Keiko had suggested making a flowchart for him to memorise. But Noburi had firmly vetoed the motion. The day he needed to use diagrams to figure out dating was the day he legally changed his name to Kurosawa Hazō.
"Say, Yuno," he asked in his most casual voice, admiring the view of the nearby forest, and trying to pretend that the two Kannagi minders (who had not been chosen for their stealth skills) weren't there, "you mentioned you're adopted, right?"
"Yes," Yuno said without inflection. "I was born a Gasai."
"Where I come from, people only adopt children when there's no one left in their original family who can look after them." This wasn't strictly true, but it was close enough. "But since the Gasai are a very big family, I assume that's not how it works here?"
"My case was unusual," Yuno explained. "My mother left us when I was little. She had a sickness."
After a moment's pause to remember, Noburi touched his hand to his heart in the condolence sign which roughly meant "I pray that your loved one's misfortune does not stay behind to trouble your family".
Yuno gave the slightly sideways nod which indicated grateful acceptance. Noburi felt a flicker of pride. They were getting better and better at communicating in each other's language.
"The tensions between the Kannagi and the Gasai were getting worse, and it was decided that my father would marry a Kannagi woman in order to create an alliance and avoid bloodshed. But that's not what happened."
Noburi looked at her questioningly.
"There was an… incident," Yuno said softly.
"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Noburi said, inviting elaboration while establishing his own trustworthiness by showing respect (Inoue-sensei had coached him on getting the tone of voice just right).
Yuno looked up at him, holding his gaze for all of the 1.75 seconds they were currently allowed (yes, the matron had told him, it was that exact).
"No, if we are to have an… extended acquaintance, I think I want you to know. And besides, I'd rather you hear it from me than from the others."
She took a deep breath, staring somewhere out into the distance.
"It was a bad year for chakra monsters. There were so many that we had send hunters just to keep the population down. One day, a giant boar turned up near the village, as big as a house, with a hide like iron and tusks like spears, the strongest anyone had ever seen. The elders sent a whole team of hunters to kill him. But they only made things worse. The boar massacred them, and the injuries they gave him sent him on a berserk rampage.
"There were a dozen young kids on the outskirts of the village, doing taijutsu training," she went on, her voice getting lower. "Daddy was there with us. He was teaching us kunai safety. It was our first time using kunai, and everyone was having so much fun.
"Then we heard the screams, and before anyone could do anything, that monster broke through the wall and charged at us like an avalanche.
"Daddy leapt in between us. He used the Spiral Hammer Strike, and it was so strong that it broke the boar's ribs and drove them right into his lungs. But it didn't kill him fast enough."
Noburi could hear Yuno's breathing getting faster, and the tension in her voice rising. He wanted to reach out and do something, reassure her, but at the same time he knew he needed to hear the rest of the story.
"I didn't understand what happened next. One moment, Daddy was there. Then he wasn't. And there was a shower of… of blood and guts. All over me and all over the boar. Guts, and bone, and other things I didn't know. Everywhere. I couldn't see anything but red."
Yuno fell silent. Noburi waited patiently.
"I don't remember anything else about that day," Yuno said eventually, in a calmer tone. "Nobody would tell me at first, but eventually I managed to persuade some of the other kids who'd been there to talk about it. They say I saw my father's kunai holster on the ground. I leaned down, drew a kunai, and then I ran up to the boar and started stabbing his soft underbelly as he thrashed around dying. They say I was still stabbing when the adults arrived, long after it was dead, letting its blood pour over me. They say I was laughing."
Noburi was acutely aware that it would be bad to stare at Yuno in horror right now. He tried to keep his face still.
It didn't matter. Yuno was still looking somewhere far away.
"The marriage was off, but the Kannagi and the Gasai still needed an alliance, and the Gasai didn't have anyone else they could offer for betrothal just then, so they decided to give me to the Kannagi instead.
"The Kannagi weren't happy. They still aren't happy. I've worked harder than anyone to master the Mountain Cleaver Style, but they still whisper about my past, and how I don't fit in, and how I'm a loner who can't be trusted because I don't have strong bonds with anyone in the village."
Her head sharply whipped round to Noburi.
"Have you tried not being a loner when everybody avoids you?" she demanded angrily. "I'm supposed to be a good little girl, and follow all the rules—but that won't stop people calling me cursed, or saying I'm a shame to my family, or spreading horrible rumours many of which aren't even true, or being afraid I'm going to go crazy and attack them or something when I've never seriously hurt anybody! And then somehow I'm supposed to make strong bonds with people when no one will even look me in the eye."
"Sorry," she said awkwardly. "I know it's not your fault. I'm not shouting at you.
"Anyway, that's why, when Grandfather mentioned to me that he was looking for someone to make contact with the foreign ninja, I volunteered faster than lightning. You didn't grow up here. You wouldn't judge me for something that—allegedly—happened when I was just a child."
Yuno gave a wide smile. "And I was right." She glanced around to check how far away the minders were, then quietly added something else.
"I have a future now that I could never have imagined, thanks to you and your open heart."
-o-
"You must prepare to sever all ties with Yuno," Takahashi announced.
Inoue-sensei considered this. "You don't mean that in a general sense."
Takahashi inclined his head slightly. "No. We have had a significant stroke of luck which will permit us to accelerate our schedule. Two days ago, I was approached by Azai Rindō. In return for certain concessions, he has offered us his vote and that of his cousin Shūsuke."
"Certain concessions?"
"You do not need to know," Takahashi brushed the question off. "At the Council of Elders meeting a fortnight hence, I shall call a vote for a representative of the outsiders to attempt the trial of the summoning scroll, in accordance with the prophecy of Ui's heir. If all goes to plan, and you survive the night, the following morning you will be permitted to approach the sacred shrine and attempt to retrieve and use the scroll."
Inoue-sensei clearly hadn't missed the salient point either. "What do you mean, if we survive the night?"
"After the vote, Inoue and Aida will be as cornered beasts, enraged and with nothing to lose. There is no telling what they might do. Especially Inoue—hers has always been a clan of cunning manipulators, and she may well find fanatics to strike against you before you can attempt the trial. To be frank, I cannot imagine the full array of weapons those two may wield against you in their desperation.
"But let us set that aside for the moment." Takahashi's all-knowing gaze swept over Noburi. "You are prepared to abandon any lingering attachment you have to Kannagi Yuno, yes?"
Something cut Noburi sharply inside, as he'd been walking barefoot and put his weight down on an unexpected splinter. "Yes," he said quickly. "Yes, of course."
"Good," Takahashi said, though he did not sound particularly relieved. "The village will be highly unstable in the aftermath of the trial. You must leave and take the scroll with you, in accordance with our agreement, and if at that time you are still betrothed, Kannagi may demand that you stay until the wedding. There is no answer you will be able to give at that time which would not have the potential to result in bloodshed."
Inoue-sensei nodded. "We have been discussing our options, and would appreciate your input.
"First, we considered claiming that Yuno cannot marry Endo because she does not fulfil the requirements of our culture. For example, we may feel that she needs to fully understand our customs and traditions before she can take her place as the head of Endo's household. But if you are right about Kannagi's motivations, he will at most use this as a reason to delay the marriage, not cancel it.
"Second, we considered claiming that she cannot marry Endo because she does not fulfil the requirements of your culture. We understand that she is considered 'cursed' and impure, by many, and there are ways we could leverage that—"
"No!" Noburi cut in urgently, his mind flashing back to his conversation with Yuno only hours earlier. "I mean, I don't think it would be a good idea. It would… give Kannagi an opening to claim insult and give him an advantage in further negotiations. We should avoid that."
Takahashi and Inoue-sensei exchanged glances.
"Very well," Takahashi said. "Is that everything you have?"
"No," Inoue-sensei shook her head. "It may also be that Endo does not fulfil our culture's requirements. If we claim that there is some proof of manhood he must acquire outside the village before he can be permitted to marry, none will be able to gainsay us."
"I see," Takahashi said. He sat in thought for a while, all but motionless.
"You must think carefully about this 'proof of manhood'. If Yoshida is a hawk, Kannagi is a serpent, and he will be cunning in his counterattack. To begin with—"
"Master Takahashi," a voice came from outside the room. "Forgive me for interrupting, but Elder Aida is here to speak with you. It seems she wishes to discuss the recent hunting incident."
Takahashi's eyes narrowed. "Very well. Mion, show our guests to the rear exit and then invite her in.
"You two must leave. With the vote now as near as it is, we must not have any further meetings lest collaboration be suspected. I will continue to train Mai, but it may be wise for you to be overheard in public discussing the innocent, completely apolitical nature of her training.
"Go. I fear I am about to have a very dangerous afternoon."
-o-
The chakra poured out of Hazō like an unstoppable rushing river, folding strips of space into one-sided figures of eight that intersected themselves, filling vessels whose outsides wrapped around to become their insides, and shaping triangles with more than three right angles. The patterns of the seal did the processing work that Hazō's brain could not, creating a space within no space, a sliver of extra dimension which was not truly parallel to his own, but which allowed him to pretend as much.
Hazō silently prayed to the Sage of Six Paths, who had gone far beyond this in his exploration of the true nature of reality and survived. Then he activated the newly-infused seal.
Hazō scanned the area around him carefully. He couldn't observe any spatial distortion. Nothing had changed colour, or shape, or gained a confused and vengeful sentience. His consciousness didn't seem affected, and above all he hadn't sensed the vibrating energy backlash that Kagome-sensei had told him was informally named the "oh, shit" effect.
Halfway there.
Hazō took a deep breath, and activated the seal again.
The ball of clay popped out of nowhere slightly further away than Hazō had expected, and he fumbled it. For a second, Hazō panicked. The now-abandoned fort was great for concealing the research from any observers, but having to be surrounded by Multiple Earth Walls instead of using a wide outdoor area also blocked lines of sight, impeded escape and made the whole process considerably more dangerous. He probably wouldn't have attempted it were he not so close to completing the seal, and so close to being driven stir-crazy by his hours in the cave trying to figure out how to make a decent escape tunnel.
But as the clay landed on the ground, it did not freeze, or catch on fire, or implode, or transform into an alien lifeform with an uncanny resemblance to the common porcupine. Instead, it had successfully been placed within an extradimensional space, and successfully retrieved.
This was it. If he'd been back in Mist, this was the point at which he'd be recognised as a true initiate in the art of sealcrafting, capable of conducting independent research with acceptable risk levels. As it was, Kagome-sensei at least would be pleased. Tonight, they would throw what Kagome-sensei considered a lavish party.
-o-
Hazō and Kagome-sensei sat on the hilltop, clear lines of sight supported with a basic defensive perimeter and boulders to provide solid cover within diving distance. Sitting uncharacteristically close to each other, they slowly ate soup seasoned with some of the more expensive spices from their supply (apparently, Kagome-sensei liked his soup a lot hotter than was the custom in Mist). Occasionally, they would exchange a few sentences along the lines of "not a bad night" and "next time, I think I'll add more pepper".
Later, after the soup, Kagome-sensei shared some of his private chocolate supply with Hazō, and even told him that he liked the way Hazō had connected the third and fifth nodes with an Imagawa converter, and that it showed solid workmanship.
It was truly a night to remember.
-o-
You have unlocked the Storage Seal.
You have not invited anyone for tea because Inoue-sensei has pointed out that your choice could have significant diplomatic implications. If you wish to go ahead with this plan, you should decide whom/what kind of people you wish to invite.
[/justify]
-o-
What next?
Voting closes on Saturday the 11th, 9 am Pacific Standard Time.
"Sensei?" Hazō said. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Sure," Inoue-sensei said. She was in the middle of a slow, flowing kata that emphasized flexibility and precision over power. As she spoke she bent double as though ducking under a weapon slash, then rolled forward to tumble past the opponent before kicking backwards into an imaginary knee. "Whatcha got?" She walked up and over in a slow handspring that would have also been a kick to the face.
"I was thinking that it would be good for us to talk with the other elders," Hazō said. "Specifically, the Inoue and the Aida are the ones that hate us. If we went to them politely and asked them to teach us the ways of the village, it might generate some good will. It might help us not get attacked after the council meeting in two weeks."
Inoue-sensei rolled her eyes even as she slowly pivoted ninety degrees and dropped into Dragon Stretches Its Tail. "You want us to meet with Takahashi to talk about talking to the other elders?" she asked.
"...yes?" Hazō said, immediately regretting his decision. That was the same tone she'd used the last time she'd shot down one of his suggestions.
"You want us to meet with Takahashi, who just told us that we couldn't meet with him anymore?" Inoue-sensei asked, shifting through a slow leg sweep.
"Oh," Hazō said.
"And, assuming that we could get a meeting," Inoue-sensei said as she came up, stepped on an angle, and slowly jabbed a Crane's Beak into an imagined victim's ear, "the point of that meeting would be to get his approval to talk to the other elders...which is an inherently political action, which Takahashi explicitly told us to avoid. Takahashi, upon whose good will we are dependent in order to get Keiko the summoning training that is our entire purpose in this village?"
"Oh," said Hazō. "Um...yeah."
"Might I also point out," Inoue-sensei said, "that virtually the first thing Yoshida ever said to us was that we should not speak to any of the elders? Yoshida, who is probably our second-strongest ally in the village after Takahashi?"
"Yes, sensei," Hazō said, blushing to the roots of his hair. "Uh...I don't suppose you could sneak in and see him?"
"Probably," Inoue-sensei said. "I haven't seen anything that would keep me out, anyway. And I could definitely get a message to him by slipping it onto one of his family members when they're out and about in the village. What's the point, though? He doesn't want us talking to the other elders, so he's not going to approve the idea." She leaned back, arms pulling invisible kunai from forearm holsters and swinging her upper body in a throat-slashing circle. "We could send him a message asking what the deal is with this trial, but if he'd wanted us to know that he would have just told us at the previous meeting."
She straightened and turned, hands floating delicately to her sides as her stance relaxed. She bowed, left palm over right fist, and then grabbed a towel to wipe off the sweat.
"Speaking of trials and our theoretical allies not telling us squat," Inoue said. "I'm done with this bullshit. Keiko is supposed to do some life-threatening trial, but they won't tell us what it is? Screw that. Tonight I'm going to go scout out the shrine so we know what she's probably walking into. In the meantime, I want to get everyone together and talk about how we're going to prepare her. I'm going to grab a quick bath, why don't you put some tea on? As soon as I'm out, let's all talk."
Hazō perked up. "Yes, sensei!" he said. He turned, trotted to the grill that they used for cooking, and started ladling charcoal into the carefully-preserved embers.
o-o-o-o
"Run the list again," Inoue-sensei said.
Keiko nodded and started tapping the various storage scrolls and containers that were strapped to her body. Left and right thigh, outside: "Two kunai with explosive tags." Front of left thigh: "Storage scroll, thirty kunai, non-explosive." Front of right thigh: "Rolled up cloth containing thirty explosive tags."
The list went on and on. Everyone had turned out their own equipment stashes, sorted through them, and offered contributions. Everything the team's fertile (and, in Kagome's case, paranoid) imaginations could come up with that might possibly be useful was included. The most immediate, combat-oriented items were easily accessible on arms and legs—although, interestingly, not in the waist pouches that would normally be used, as Kagome had strongly vetoed the idea before wandering off muttering to himself. The backpack was full of storage scrolls containing utility items. Food, water, messkit, lamp oil, entrenching tool, padded grappling hook and rope, climbing claws, writing materials, animal blood, two sets of clothes in separate scrolls, plenty of ninja wire, some of Kagome-sensei's bomb boxes, tripwire seals, and Force Wall seals. ("Don't put 'em in a storage seal," Kagome-sensei had said. "It would be stupid. Set your face on fire stupid. Don't seal the backpack, because that would put the seals in storage and that would be stupid. Boom, squash, stupid. Honestly. Stupid.") In each case, Keiko reached for the correct thing each time and was able to identify the individual storage scrolls in the pack by touch.
"Okay," Inoue-sensei said with a pleased smile. "I'd say that's about as prepared as we can get you in terms of equipment. Let's—"
"No," Kagome-sensei said firmly. "It's not."
Inoue-sensei looked at him in surprise; the sealmaster lost his confident tone and fidgeted. "Got a couple more things," he muttered, looking at his feet.
Inoue-sensei smiled. "And what that be, O hyper-prepared sealmaster?" she asked.
Kagome-sensei shrugged uncomfortably, still looking at the ground. "Don't want those stinkers getting her," he said. He shuffled through his backpack and pulled out a wooden scroll case painted white and covered in red danger marks.
"This is a 'stupid box'," he said, holding it firmly and not extending it yet. "Because it's a box, and making it is stupid. Wooden box, full of white-hot coals. Tossed a couple waterskins in. One's full of lamp oil, one's water. Closed the box and sealed it real fast. When you unseal it the skins burn through, the oil ignites, the water turns to steam, the whole thing explodes and sets everything on fire. Dangerous. Burn your face off as soon as look at you. Unpredictable, might go off instantly, might take a couple of seconds. Good thing to have, though. Area denial, distraction, real good at turning any stinkers that might be following you into screaming charcoal. Also good for burning down buildings, as long as you aren't in 'em. Be careful, yeah? Scroll gets damaged, the stupid box will pop out, boom, flaming everything, screaming, pain, death. 's how you trip it—from range, throw something at it. Not in your hands. That's stupid." He extended the scroll case to Keiko. She took it with all due care and tucked it into her backpack.
"Thank you, Kagome-sensei," she said, bowing to him.
"Same from me," Inoue-sensei said, giving him a quick hug. "I'm sure it makes you nervous for someone else to be carrying something like that near you. It's really good of you to trust us."
Kagome-sensei blushed and fidgeted in embarrassment, staring at his shoes. "Like I said, can't let the stinkers get her," he said. "She's on my team." He stood silent a moment longer, then nodded to himself and reached into his backpack again, pulling out a rolled-up leather belt in Keiko's size. It was twin to the one that Kagome-sensei himself wore.
"Made this for you," he said, not looking at her as he held it out.
Keiko unrolled the belt and studied it. Six wooden disks were affixed around the perimeter of the belt, each within easy grabbing range. Each one was held in place by a few threads—secure enough against normal use, but easy to rip free.
"Explosive seals on the back of each disk," Kagome-sensei explained. "Variable timer, one-quarter second to five seconds. One, five, ten meter radius from front to back. Use the small ones if you're in close, bigger ones at range. Don't have to hit the stinker, just get it near him."
"Thank you," Keiko said, smiling. "This must have taken you a lot of time to make."
Kagome-sensei shrugged and fidgeted. "Look at the inside," he suggested.
Keiko turned the belt over and examined the other side.
Affixed to the interior of the belt was one long strip of paper filled with a single carefully-drawn seal.
"Shaped charge," Kagome-sensei muttered. It sounded like he was having to force his teeth open to let each word out. "Invented them about ten years ago. All the force is one way, so you can set them off in contact with your body and not get hurt. If you get jumped by a whole group of stinkers, get into the middle of them and trip that. Five meter radius. Just make sure your arms are up high. It's a ten degree cone, you don't want your hands getting caught in it."
Keiko blinked in surprise and looked at Inoue, then at the rest of the team. All of them were staring, slack-jawed. This was the kind of secret technique that one did not reveal to others.
Kagome-sensei shuffled his feet, then glanced up at Keiko, a worried expression on his face. "It works, I promise," he said defensively. "It's safe, as long as you keep your arms up."
"No, I mean, I...," Keiko stammered. "I believe you. Thank you, Kagome. This is a very generous gift." She bowed deeply.
Kagome-sensei blushed hard. "Made one for each of you," he muttered, pulling out the promised items and holding them out. "Might help. Just be careful. Don't be near friendlies when you trip it. Remember, five meter radius."
The team took their belts and tied them on with sincere thanks.
"Is that what I felt on your arm?" Inoue-sensei asked. "Back in the village, when I touched your arm, there was something there."
Kagome-sensei nodded and pulled up his sleeve, revealing skin aside from face and hands for the first time since the team had known him. Strapped to his arm was a harness that ran from mid-forearm back. Affixed to the harness at various points were a series of small wooden disks, each tied firmly into place. "Shaped charges all over," he said, in the same tone a child would use to admit he'd been into the cookie jar. "One stinker, mob of stinkers, doesn't matter. Boom, squash."
"Kagome, that is amazing," Inoue-sensei said. "You're brilliant."
Kagome-sensei shrugged, looking at his feet again. "Never been much good in a fight," he said. "Had to figure something else out. Not really that amazing. Anyone could have done it."
Inoue-sensei laughed and pulled him down so she could kiss his cheek. "Well, I think it's amazing, and it's really sweet of you to make them for us. Now come on, it's time for dinner and I'm going to make something special as a thank you."
o-o-o-o
It was well past sundown when Inoue slipped out of the cave, leaving a very nervous Hazō and Noburi on guard. Neither of the genin were much interested in talking. Noburi practiced his bloodline, one finger in a bucket containing fish that he'd caught earlier in the day. Hazō tried to meditate while watching the cave entrance, but ended up pacing back and forth instead.
By the time she slid back into the cave, Hazō had turned the hourglass four times and was right on the edge of exploding into a giant tangle of nerves.
"Sensei, you made it!" he said, loudly enough that everyone jerked awake. "What happened? What took so long? I thought you'd been caught!"
She laughed. "What, you didn't have faith in your amazing jōnin-sensei?" she asked teasingly.
Hazō quickly backpedaled. "No, I mean, yes, I had faith, I just didn't...I mean...uh...."
"Relax, kid," she told him, clapping him on the shoulder and dipping a skin into the cistern. She bent over and brushed her hair out of the way so she could pour the chill water over the back of her neck. She yelped with the cold, then straightened up and took a drink from the skin before giving a satisfied sigh and plopping down on the ground.
"Ahhh," she said. "I always enjoy a good stalk, but it's nice to be back afterwards too." She poured a bit of water onto a cloth and started scrubbing her face to remove the soot she'd used as camouflage.
"So," she said. "Interesting news. I found the shrine and got a good look." She pulled out some paper and started sketching. "Remember our friend who said they didn't keep much of a guard anymore? Well, he's a bit behind the times. Six ninja: two at the door, two pairs walking the perimeter. Each ninja has a pair of tapirs with him. I didn't actually go inside, but here's the approaches and the outside layout...."
XP AWARD: 5 (the large majority of the plan clearly was not feasible)
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, June 15, 2016, at 12pm London Time.
Other items:
Your guards...
...are on three shifts of eight hours. Each shift has eight ninja and around twelve tapirs.
They are skittish about being approached and, when Inoue forced the issue, they adamantly refused to admit that they were on guard duty. They were terrible liars, but brazen about it.
When you separate the guard also separates. At least two ninja will follow any group that separates; sometimes it's more, depending on how they judge the strength of the departing group. At the same time a ninja and a few tapirs will be sent into the village to fetch reinforcements so that the main group is up to strength. Replacements show up within minutes
When you go hunting or etc they stay to the outside of you and as far off as possible consistent with being good guards.
You spent three days trying to talk to Kannagi but, in a not-terribly-surprising development, were unable to get an appointment. Noburi had a date each day, all of which went fine.
Keiko continued her training with Takahashi without difficulty. She tried to bring up some questions about the trial and he brushed her off.
Inoue and Keiko took a stroll through the marketplace, shopping for food and discussing how much she was enjoying her training in wind ninjutsu under Takahashi-sensei. A few people clearly noticed and the word is almost certainly all over town. You did not eat the food that was bought; it's sealed off in a specially-marked storage scroll.
You have a couple months worth of food and water for all of you sealed away.
You have something like fifty storage scrolls among the six of you; more starts to get impractical due to weight and volume.
"Welcome back, Mori!" Ishihara waved as Kei approached the cave.
"Ishihara," Kei coolly acknowledged the greeting. Despite her exhaustion, she made sure to keep her walking slow and graceful, in stark contrast to the other girl's undignified bouncing. But her resolve was sorely tested as she drew closer. The most wonderful, unbearably delicious smell was wafting out from the cave, begging her to run to it at once.
Her feelings must have shown on her face.
"I just finished cooking some wild boar," Akane explained. "We went hunting yesterday while you were with Wakahisa, you see, and Inoue-sensei was chatting with Hazō-sensei, and the conversation came round to the qualities that make a good hunter. Then Inoue-sensei started talking about how much skill and manliness it showed when a ninja was able to provide for his family with his own hands, and all of a sudden our escorts decided to show us some of their favourite hunting spots in the forest. They even helped us kill some of the boars instead of standing back and making sure we didn't wander off.
"Inoue-sensei is amazing," Akane concluded, echoing Kei's exact thoughts at that moment. Kei flinched, not sure at all how she felt about that.
"Anyway, come help yourself to some Ishihara-style grilled boar steak, envy of every cook in Hidden Leaf, and then Hazō-sensei wants us to talk through some stuff once everyone is together."
-o-
"I suspect it's going to be a rite of combat," Hazō told the group, brandishing a piece of boar bone for emphasis. "Remember that patient of Noburi's? We know the shrine has ninja guards, and it would make sense for them to choose some kind of champion to represent the village. Or maybe it'll be a series of battles against increasingly tough opponents, like the taijutsu aptitude tests in Mist's graduation exam—in which case for all we know we might see Kōta again."
"I think it very unlikely," Keiko commented, looking uncomfortably full as she sat on the ground next to the grill. "With the stakes so high, they would have to expect a battle to the death, and the village does not have the numbers to absorb losses easily."
"Then again," Inoue-sensei said, "if they count on being able to take you out, that would reduce our fighting strength much more than it would theirs. It could be part of a longer-term plan to eliminate us as a group, while testing our strength at the same time."
Keiko nodded uncomfortably.
"What if it's a gauntlet of traps?" Akane asked. "That would have the same effect, but instead of risking losing their own people, they'd just have to reset the traps afterwards."
"Possible," Inoue-sensei acknowledged. "It'd surprise me if the shrine wasn't trapped on general principle. It's the first thing I'd do if I had to protect something important.
"Well, no," she corrected herself. "The first thing I'd do is spread rumours that the item had already been stolen and was somewhere on the other side of the continent. But you take my point."
"They may be more subtle about it," Noburi chipped in. "I've been thinking about their purity rituals. If they say they suspect Keiko isn't pure enough to take the scroll—no offence, Keiko—then it'll probably be the Lorekeeper who does the testing, according to some ridiculous tradition that hasn't been practiced in hundreds of years. And you just know she'll find some way to trip us up. Ditto if she decides to test Keiko's understanding of local religion. You know, the one they refuse to tell us anything about."
"Yes," Hazō said. "I can definitely see them doing that. But let's keep going. We need to consider as many possibilities as possible. Perhaps we should make a list."
Noburi gave an exaggerated groan.
"OK, fine, no lists. Keiko, what about the summoning? Could they do something to make it fail? Takahashi did say that the trial officially ends when you summon the creature and it acknowledges you before the villagers. It would be easiest for them to not worry about the other steps, and just sabotage that one."
Keiko shook her head. "That is not how summoning operates. I will know whether it is a true summoning scroll, and if it is, Takahashi-sensei has prepared me for every eventuality."
"Of course," Inoue-sensei commented, "everything you know about summoning comes from him. He could have lied about absolutely anything, and you'd have no—"
"Takahashi-sensei would not betray me!" Keiko snapped. "He is not that kind of man."
The cave fell very silent.
"Well," Inoue-sensei finally said. "Either way, it's not like we have any choice but to trust him. The only other summoners we know are either far away, location unknown, or ready to kill us on sight. Just… please be prepared, Keiko. No matter how good Takahashi's intentions may be, he's never summoned anything himself. He could have taught you something wrong without meaning to."
Keiko glowered.
"What about the tapirs?" Akane said loudly. "Wakahisa and I got to pet one the other day, under close supervision. It was the cutest thing, and it made this high-pitched squeaking noise that really shouldn't have come from something built like a bear.
"Given how important they are to the local culture, maybe they'll decide Mori is worthy if the tapirs accept her, or if she can tame one. How are you with animals, Mori?"
"I love animals," Mori said quietly. "Especially cats. Nukumori, one of our family cats, used to allow to me stroke her sometimes. But most other animals are uncomfortable around members of my clan."
"My sealcrafting instructor had a dog," came a voice out of nowhere.
Hazō blinked. He had somehow managed to forget that Kagome-sensei was present, sitting in a shadowed corner of the cave where he'd have his back to the wall and a clear view of the entrance.
"Or he started out as a dog, before the sealing accident," Kagome-sensei continued. "Funny little thing. Used to catch rats with his tentacles. Stinkers never saw it coming.
"No one's saying the obvious thing. Those stinking stinkers from the Yoshida never managed to get the scroll open, right? So that means they want us to do it. And then as soon as we do, bam! Kunai in our backs faster than you can say 'I told you so'".
"That… is actually a very good point," Inoue-sensei admitted. "Thank you, Kagome."
Kagome-sensei gave an awkward nod.
"All right," Inoue-sensei said. "We've got some ideas, and we can start plotting countermeasures. But Noburi's date with Yuno is in an hour, so right now we should focus on exploiting that. Noburi, do you think we could bring her here and ask her some questions?"
"No," Noburi said. "Her minders weren't happy last time she went to our fort on her own. They'd insist on coming in with her, and it would make things awkward for everyone. It's bad enough that they're there during the dates—I have a feeling Kannagi's deliberately choosing the ones with the worst stealth skills just to toy with me."
Yuno's two-handed vertical axe strike knocked Noburi's kunai out of his hands, throwing it to the ground where it nearly impaled his foot. Before he could make the tiniest movement, she twisted sideways, the axe handle catching his jaw in an uppercut that took him off his feet. The next thing he knew, he was lying flat on the ground and feeling axe blade press against his throat.
"Oh, no! I'm so sorry! Did I hurt you?" The axe blade disappeared, to be replaced by several overlapping Yunos, all gazing at him with the same expression of concern.
"N-No…" Noburi slurred. "My own… fault…"
"I'm terribly sorry," Yuno said urgently. "I wouldn't really hurt you. Not ever. If I'd realised your combat skills were… I mean, if I'd known you didn't know how to… I mean, I just thought since you were… Never mind. I'm very sorry."
"'s fine," Noburi insisted as the world stopped spinning and his confidence that he didn't have a concussion gradually increased. "What was that?"
"Oh. Well, I started out in Winter Stance—that's 'Lumberjack Prepares for a Long Winter Stance'—to break your guard, but then instead of following through and ripping out your sternum, I segued into Rolling Boulder Stance and put the momentum into a freestyle combo. That's actually a lot harder than it looks. And then I was going to use Dry River Channel to dodge your counter, but… well…"
Noburi wished the earth would open up and swallow him. He hadn't been so humiliated since… well, since the last time Hazō had showed off his new taijutsu style against Noburi while Keiko was watching. Hazō's heart was in the right place, but sometimes that guy could be such an insensitive jerk.
This whole thing had been Noburi's own stupid idea. Sparring practice was the one area in which physical contact between the betrothed was permitted even at this stage in their relationship, which was something he increasingly found himself interested in, plus the feelings of happiness and relaxation that followed a hard afternoon's exercise would doubtless make Yuno more relaxed about answering certain important questions.
He shook off Yuno's attempt to help him up, then instantly regretted it when he saw her hurt-puppy expression.
"Uh, I was really impressed by your fighting skills," he said emphatically. "I've…" he flailed, "I've… always found advanced weapons skills attractive in a girl." This was technically true, based on an analysis of his past and present crushes, which was important given Yuno's unpredictable lie detection ability.
Yuno's demeanour changed instantly. She blushed, and looked down at her feet.
"Anyway," Noburi said, "why don't we go get something to drink? There are some things I've been meaning to ask you about."
-o-
Earlier…
"Um, Inoue-sensei, are you all right?" Hazō asked cautiously after the third minute.
Finally, Inoue-sensei stopped laughing. "Oh, man, that was excellent, Noburi. Just what I needed after all that tension. Seriously, though, suggesting that you're a missing-nin who's never killed another ninja? If by some million-to-one chance they actually bought it, they'd just figure we were all much weaker than they thought, and we'd be screwed."
Noburi squirmed.
"What about my idea?" Hazō asked partly to redirect attention from his embarrassed teammate. "Tell them that in order to be eligible to marry according to our traditions, he, or maybe Yuno, must travel to a mysterious distant island and defeat a chakra ostrich or something."
"It'll need to be a better story than that," Inoue-sensei said, giving him a sideways look. "Bear in mind that they now know quite a lot about Hidden Mist. They might know about our marriage customs, or at least enough to guess that the modern shinobi world probably doesn't involve mass youth ostrich-slaying pilgrimages. But I'm not ruling the idea out."
"Then… well, Noburi is formally an apprentice. Could we insist that he can't marry until his apprenticeship is complete? It sounds like something they'd understand here."
"Wouldn't work," Noburi said. "They marry young around here, and they basically need all the children they can get. Since apprenticeships can last a long time, you can get a special dispensation from the elders to marry early."
"We could still claim our culture needs it."
"Could be worth a try," Inoue-sensei shrugged. "But I don't feel like we're coming up with any really strong options. Why don't we turn the situation around? What would it take for Kannagi to cancel the wedding?"
"Perhaps some action of Noburi's could disgrace the clan," Keiko suggested. "We could make it highly disadvantageous for him to continue formally associating with us."
"And then he'd want revenge," Noburi said. "They're big on avenging humiliation around here, and I don't think Kannagi would hesitate to throw us under a cart if it meant protecting his newly-gained position of power."
"Perhaps we could blackmail him?" Keiko asked.
Inoue-sensei frowned.
"Keiko, dear, are you feeling all right?" she asked gently.
"Why do you ask?"
"You've seemed a little… distracted all day," Inoue-sensei said, which Hazō read as "you're our smartest member and you've been saying one stupid thing after another".
Keiko shrugged and muttered, "Takahashi-sensei… apprenticeship… nearly over…"
As far as Hazō could tell, nobody wanted to touch that one with a ten-foot pole.
"If it came to light that we'd attempted to blackmail an elder," Inoue-sensei went on, "the villagers would wipe us off the face of the earth, or at least try to. Kannagi knows that, and he knows we know it. There's no chance we'd try to expose whatever secret of his we found out. To say nothing of what it would take to find out a suitably dirty secret within the time frame we're working with."
"Hold on, "Akane said thoughtfully. "If we can't do anything to put him at a disadvantage, then we just need to make it an advantage for him to cancel the wedding, right?"
"Right," Inoue-sensei nodded. "Ideas?"
-o-
"And then when the tapir has given its blessing, the Lorekeeper reads one more passage from the Book of Benediction, and places a black glove on the groom's left hand," Yuno explained, her eyes gleaming with excitement. "Then the groom pronounces the words of joining, and with his gloved hand tears off the bride's blue cloak of childhood to reveal her shining white dress. Then he casts the glove and the cloak into the flames. Then the next part depends on the season, because—"
"Uh, Yuno," Noburi interrupted, "I do want to hear the rest of this, but it would really help if you began at the beginning. How do people decide when the wedding's actually going to take place, for example?"
"Oh, that's simple," Yuno said. "The couple's parents get together and decide amongst themselves, and then consult with the Lorekeeper to determine an auspicious day.
"Of course," she said a second later, "you and I don't have parents who can do that, which means it's all down to Grandfather. But don't worry—I'm sure he'll declare us ready to get married really soon!"
"Yeah," Noburi agreed, his heart sinking, "I'm sure."
After a few seconds, he rallied himself to fulfil the rest of his mission.
"I really don't want to embarrass you, Yuno, but I keep feeling like there's an awful lot I don't know about the village, and I'll need to learn if I'm going to fit in. Would you mind telling me a bit about its history, and how it got founded, and your religion and things like that?"
"Well," Yuno began, "the thing you have to understand is—"
There was a loud, meaningful cough from one of the nearby bushes.
"…that it's something we're not supposed to talk about with outsiders. I'm sorry, Endo. It really is nothing personal." Yuno bit her lip guiltily. "But it won't matter for long, right? Soon you won't be an outsider anymore, and nobody will have the right to argue if I want to reveal everything to you."
There was a millisecond's pause.
"Yuno, you…"
"I didn't mean it like that!" Yuno said hurriedly. "Well, I mean… when we're… you know…"
There was another cough from the bushes.
"The weather is very beautiful today," Yuno said in a voice approaching monotone, while staring blankly into space. "I think I should like to take a walk by the river."
"Yes, the weather is very fine," Noburi replied mechanically, as if reading off a script (though he hadn't needed one for weeks). "I, too, would like to take a walk by the river. I believe I shall do so at the same time as you, if it is not inconvenient."
The two slowly got up and began to walk, doing their best to ignore the rustling sounds from the various pieces of greenery along their route.
-o-
Inoue Mari, a.k.a Takahashi Shiina, a.k.a. Kawasaki Mai (a little earlier), breathed a silent sigh of relief. The elders had finished taking their seats, and nobody had tried to accost her in any way. Now she could stand behind Takahashi in peace, and see whether he would stab her in the back.
"Lorekeeper," Kannagi began in a honeyed voice once the formalities were over. "I have been pondering the prophecy. It is said that one day the successors of Ui the Beastmaster, may his name be forever sung by the ten thousand worlds…"
"May his name be forever sung by the ten thousand worlds," the other elders—and their attendants—echoed. Mari was painfully aware that there'd been a slight delay before she caught up, and that someone might have noticed.
"…will come to reclaim the scroll that Akio the Founder entrusted to us against that time."
"You are bold for one so new to our council," Rika commented in that all-enveloping, vibrant voice.
Kannagi kept a very straight face.
"As it happens, Lorekeeper, I see wisdom in the passion of his youth," Yoshida suddenly said of the calm middle-aged man. "After all, winter is upon us, and in winter even a lice-ridden garment may be used, though it shall surely be burned come spring."
Aida stood up. "One pure in body and mind can endure the winter even naked!" She said loudly, her expression tense. "Better that than to invite parasites within one's home. After all, is that not why we have temperature-regulating ninjutsu?" She looked meaningfully at Takahashi.
"I am not a sophisticated man," Takahashi replied drily, "and struggle with complex metaphors. Instead, pray permit me to speak simply, for I wish to speak of purpose. Our village has but one purpose, one reason for which Akio and his disciples laid the foundations for our existence. To say, 'I fear that the unworthy will succeed where our teachings say they must fail' is to deny those foundations, to deny the teachings, and to deny the very source of our faith. Is this not so, Lorekeeper?"
Rika looked Takahashi in the eye. Takahashi held her gaze.
Time passed. Still, neither would look away.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mari noticed that Rika was holding her staff of office very tightly. Takahashi's hands were folded in his lap, his breathing even, but from her vantage point Mari could see the tension in his spine.
The pressure from Rika and Takahashi pressed against Mari like a form of killing intent, paralysing in its intensity. The other elders, she was sure, were feeling the same thing.
It was getting hard to breathe. And still neither would back down.
Then Shūsuke whispered loudly to Rindō, "I'm confused. What's going on?"
As one, Takahashi and Rika turned to kill him with looks alone, their standoff broken.
"Kannagi wants to let the outsiders take the trial of the scroll," a mortified Rindō explained, his voice very soft, but not too soft for a room full of senior ninja. "The Lorekeeper strongly disapproves, but Yoshida is trying to argue that we should use them to gain access to the scroll ourselves, then dispose of them. Aida is saying that it's too dangerous and we should handle things ourselves as we always have. Takahashi is saying that if we think they might succeed even if they aren't Ui's heirs, may his name be forever sung by the ten thousand worlds, that means we don't really believe in Akio's teachings."
"Oh. Got it."
"If you are quite done…" Rika's razor-edged tone left Mari half-expecting her to next ask the two Azai to share their conversation with the class.
Takahashi and Rika exchanged another look, but this one appeared to be commiserating.
"I propose a vote, Lorekeeper," Takahashi said. Mari approved, insofar as she had not been looking forward to hours of argument couched in increasingly elaborate analogies.
"Very well. I, Rika, sent by the Inoue to speak for the ancestors, vote no." She shifted her grip on her staff of office in a way that struck Mari as somehow meaningful.
"I, Saburō, sent by the Takahashi to speak for the ninjutsu wielders, vote yes." His spine relaxed, as if the die had been cast and now there was nothing more to be done.
"I, Tsukiko, sent by the Yoshida to speak for the sealcrafters, vote yes." There was something lurking behind that satisfied expression, Mari was sure, but she had no idea what.
"I, Rin, sent by the Aida to speak for the scroll guardians, vote no." She almost spat out the last word.
"I, Rindō, sent by the Azai to speak for the beastmasters, vote yes." It was as Takahashi had predicted. Just what were those concessions? How worried did Mari need to be, on a scale of "things are going to go wrong but it's somebody else's problem" to "Captain Zabuza"?
Rika turned to look at him as if trying to burn a hole in him with her gaze.
"I, Shūsuke, sent by the Azai to speak for the craftsmen, vote… yes." No surprises there. Shūsuke remained an enigma, whether because he was a blank sheet of paper or because he'd written all his secrets in white on white.
"I, Yoshirō, sent by the Kannagi to speak for the weaponmasters, vote yes." Now what was his game? Kannagi had no clear motivation to give them the scroll. Unless…
"It is decided," Rika said flatly. "The barbarians shall be permitted to attempt the trial of the scroll tomorrow at dawn. But hear this, Kannagi. As you proposed this, so is it upon you to deal with the consequences. If, against all possibility, they succeed in the trial, then you must bind them to us at once, and the cursed child will have to marry the boy Endo before the week is over."
-o-
The moon was hidden behind the clouds that night, and Hazō and Noburi's watch mainly involved starting out into the darkness, being deadly bored, and hoping they remained deadly bored.
"You know, Noburi, our time here is nearly up."
"Yeah."
"We still have to decide what to do about Yuno."
"Yeah."
"What do you think?"
"Yeah."
"Noburi?"
"Oh." Noburi didn't turn to look at Hazō—they'd been drilled about that sort of thing now—but he seemed somehow more focused. "I don't know, Hazō. I mean, I don't want to leave her here. She'll never be happy in this village. And… I do like her. If I just left her here, I'd always regret it.
"Except if she came with us and it meant somebody else getting killed, I'd regret it even more. And Yuno… I don't think she's been taught all the things that people are supposed to get taught growing up. About right and wrong, and self-discipline, and other stuff.
"It's not like we haven't added people to the group before. We brought Akane with us, and Akane is awesome. And we brought Kagome with us, and Kagome is batshit crazy, and even that's working out OK. But maybe the lesson to learn from that isn't 'recruit as many scarily unstable people as you like'? I dunno, Hazō. I don't feel like there's a right answer here."
Hazō nodded (though Noburi probably couldn't see that in the darkness).
There was movement in the darkness. A lot of movement. A scary amount of movement. A scary amount of very fast movement. Was the entire village coming for them?
But the sound was wrong. An army of ninja would be nearly silent. An animal stampede would be earthshaking. Instead, there was a silence broken by the occasional sound of shattering trees and thrown boulders.
The confusion cost Hazō an extra second, but then the wave of adrenaline hit and he stopped trying to figure it out.
"Get out of the cave!" Hazō screamed as a bonfire of guardian tapirs descended on them.
-o-
You have earned 7 XP.
This is Part 1 of the current update. @eaglejarl will post Part 2 tomorrow or Saturday.
"Get out of the cave!" Hazou screamed as a bonfire of guardian tapirs descended on them.
The team came boiling out of the cave at Hazou's panicked cry, Inoue in the lead with Kagome a half-step behind and already reaching for his weapons.
For just a moment, the moon peeked out from behind the clouds and its silver light washed across the single most terrifying sight Hazou had ever seen: a tsunami of dirt and rock forty feet high racing towards him, cresting and about to smash down on his head. Three dozen tapirs and nearly a score of ninja surfed the wave as though it were water, moving impossibly fast.
NB: For convenience, I'm rolling for the VHitM ninja and the tapirs as groups. Also, all skills are listed with multi-combatant bonuses already figured in. There are enough combatants that the bonus is always 50% of base skill for everyone. Note that max chakra boost is figured on the base skill, not the multi-combatant-boosted skill. I'm also not always bothering to write 'd100' after everything. Finally, I ran into some scenarios here that weren't covered by existing rules (e.g., could Hazou MEW before the enemy artillery hit?), or didn't make sense in certain cases. The other GMs weren't around at the time, so I used my judgement on how to handle them; they will likely be dealt with differently in the future. Regardless, we will not retcon anything about the combat in this update. If you take issue with the rules judgements I made, you are free to offer input as long as you do it politely and recognize that your input will not change what happened in this update.
How fast does everyone react?
34 Tapirs + 16 Village Ninja, TacMov:
? + ? boost from dirt-surfing: 2159
Hazou, TacMov:
19 (15 + 4 chakra boost): 1129
Akane, TacMov:
19 (15 + 4 chakra boost): 1090
Keiko, TacMov:
19 (15 + 4 chakra boost): 945
Kagome, TacMov:
? + ? chakra boost: 892
Noburi, TacMov:
19 (15 + 4 chakra boost): 876
Inoue, TacMov:
? + ? chakra boost: 627 MASSIVE FAIL!
Okay, the village ninja+tapirs can control the range. Do they dodge the traps?
Yep, they dodge the traps handily. However, I'm ruling that, although they aren't harmed by the traps, the various barriers and explosions shatter their earth wave, thereby costing them the initiative and separating them. During this 'debuff round', the Mountain ninja lose their multi-combatant bonuses because they can't coordinate. The tapirs act in small groups instead of coordinating effectively.
12 Tapirs, Earthquake:
?: 881
8 Tapirs, Earth Crush:
?: 697
3 Tapirs, Earth Crush:
?: 353
8 Tapirs, Earthquake:
?: 769
3 Tapirs, Earth Crush:
?: 223
16 Village Ninja, Weapons (while scattered):
?: 540
Okay, Noburi and (incredibly) Inoue failed their TacMov rolls against the Earthquake. They're on the ground and their combat skills are at 25% for a few seconds until they can get up. [This is an explicit part of the Earthquake effect, not a general case for knockdown.] During this time they do not receive multi-combatant boosts, although they can still chakra boost.
Inoue, Taijutsu (dodge the village-nin kunai bombardment and the various Earth Crush attacks):
? (25% of (? + ? chakra boost)): 290
Noburi, Water Whip (parry or dodge the village-nin kunai bombardment and the various Earth Crush attacks):
5 (25% of (13 + 4 chakra boost)): 264
Success level, Village-nin vs Inoue: B. [Seriously? You didn't kill her right off? She's on the ground and nearly immobile. All y'all suck.] Inoue takes -3 dice to all skills. Any additional hit will kill her.
Success level, Village-nin vs Noburi: B. [Ditto. Stupid Mountain-nin.] Noburi takes -3 dice to all skills and will die if hit again.
(As low as the Earth Crush results were, I'm not bothering to see if the rest of the team was affected.)
Okay, Noburi and Inoue are injured but back on their feet and still in the fight. All the clones have been dispelled by a gazillion attacks flying everywhere. We now proceed to normal combat. The Mountain ninja and tapirs are coordinated again and everyone gets their full combat abilities + multi-combatant bonuses. (Noburi and Inoue also suffer their injury penalties, of course.)
Village-nin, Awareness to notice Kagome kawarimi behind them:
?: 683
8 Village-nin in blast range, TacMov to dodge:
? + ? from dirt-surfing: 875 (Giblets! Giblets everywhere!)
4 tapirs in blast range, TacMov to dodge:
? + ? from dirt-surfing: 443 (Even more giblets!)
8 Village ninja, Weapons @ Kagome:
?: 1103
Inoue [after kawarimi with Kagome], Taijutsu:
? -3 (injury): 1324
Inoue, explosive tag:
?: 335
Ninja, TacMov to dodge explosion :
? + ? from dirt-surfing: 2145
Tapirs, Awareness (to spot where the team kawarimied to before the team can run):
?: 438
The team, TacMov vs Tapir awareness (to escape before the tapirs can reorient):
Inoue, ? + ? chakra boost -3 (injury): 1230
Akane, 15 + 4 chakra boost: 1078
Hazou, 15 + 4 chakra boost: 934
Keiko, 15 + 4 chakra boost: 874
Kagome, ? + ? chakra boost: 825
Noburi, 15 + 4 chakra boost -3 injury: 793
Village Ninja, Weapons (attacking before team escapes):
? + ? chakra boost: 1098
Hazou (TacMov to get a MEW off in time), 15 + 4 chakra boost: 998 [Fail]
Can the team dodge/parry the weapons?:
Inoue (Taijutsu), ? + ? chakra boost -3 (injury): 1592
Kagome (Taijutsu), ? + ? chakra boost: 1398
Hazou (Taijutsu), 23 + 4 chakra boost: 1409
Keiko (Weapons), 27 + 5 chakra boost: 1388
Akane (Taijutsu), 21 + 4 chakra boost -2 (carrying Noburi): 1173
Yes. Okay, they successfully escape into the cave and seal it up.
Good lord that took a long time to put together. If we have another one of these mass battles I will not be doing it in this much detail. I spent nearly as much time figuring all this out and rolling it as I normally spend writing an update.
Terror slowed the world around Hazou to a molasses trickle. He was pouring chakra into his muscles, accelerating his movements until they were so fast his body was on the edge of tearing itself apart under the strain. Even so, the Mountain assault force was faster, so much faster that he couldn't even react before they were on top of him. Their wave rose higher and higher, tumbling forward like an avalanche that would surely crush him—
There is a saying, taught to every student in the Mist Academy of the Ninja Arts, about giving a sealmaster time to prepare: Don't.
The Mountain assault force hit the outer edge of the team's prepared defenses. Akane's first layer of mechanical traps, intended to warn off curious toddlers, threw blunted kunai, paintbombs, and stinkbombs everywhere. The second layer fired real weapons that forced the Mountain nin and their tapirs to dodge around on the earth wave. Then it was time for Kagome's work and things got serious.
Nigh-immovable granite Multiple Earth Walls, rendered invulnerable through application of a Five Seal Barrier, were used as anchor points for vertical Force Wall seals that interrupted movement. Chakra tripwires activated, detonating explosives or triggering angled Force Walls that would cut into anyone that touched them. Massive implosion bombs went off everywhere. Claymore mines made from shaped-charge explosives piled with broken kunai fragments shredded everything around them.
The earth wave that the attackers were riding was blown apart, yanking the speed boost out from under the assault force. They tumbled everywhere, momentarily separated and shaken.
"Shell White! Meet Alpha!" Inoue yelled, flicking through handseals. Water clones sprang out from her in all directions, some of them immediately henging into copies of the rest of the team. Illusionary clones followed, adding to the chaos and confusion.
Hazou blinked and was elsewhere as one of Inoue-sensei's clones kawarimied with him. He didn't waste time, immediately turning and leaping southwest down the hill, putting as much distance between himself and the enemy as he could.
The Shell Game was the basis for many of the plans Inoue-sensei had drilled into them. It meant that she and Noburi were to spam clones and have the clones kawarimi to move the team around the field before the enemy could get a lock on them. Whenever they weren't occupied with that, the clones were to henge so that the enemy couldn't tell where the real members of the team were. There were a ton of variations on the Shell Game that specified rules of engagement and tactical goals for different team members.
'Shell White' was, in Hazou's opinion, the single most frustrating plan that Inoue-sensei had taught them. It meant 'retreat, do not engage the enemy under any circumstances, if forced to engage use absolute minimum force, killing and/or permanent damage to enemy is expressly forbidden.' He would really, really prefer it if she had called Shell Black right now. It would have made all this a lot easier. Crap, even Shell Yellow—retreat, do not engage unless rescuing a teammate, non-lethal but maiming is allowed—would have been okay. Shell White under these circumstances, though? Madness.
Still, Inoue-sensei had tactical command and the middle of combat was not the time to be second-guessing her orders. He would run for it and meet the rest of the team at Point Alpha, a fallen tree deep in the woods—presumably she didn't want to return to the cave for fear that they'd be sealed in. He wasn't too sanguine about outrunning the unbelievable speed that the Mountain nin and their tapirs got when dirt-surfing, but Shell Game would make it hard for the enemy to know which copies of the team were real, and they would all be scattering anyway. Unless the enemy could instantly guess right as to who they should attack, the team would probably be able to break contact before the enemy could target them.
He'd barely gone three steps when the very earth beneath his feet went crazy, spasming and bucking like a terrified horse. The tremors bounced him into the air; he landed on his feet and stumbled, barely staying upright. A moment later he needed to dive forward and roll to avoid low waves of rock that erupted out of the ground around him and slammed down again. A split second slower and his feet and legs would have been crushed to paste.
In mid-leap he caught a glance behind him and felt his heart sink.
Most of the team had kept their feet through the earthquake, but Inoue-sensei and Noburi were down, momentarily helpless. The Mountain nin were hurling kunai in every direction; most of them hit clones, but two of them targeted the real Inoue-sensei and Noburi. Multiple blades lanced into them, spiking him in the thigh and her in the gut. They both screamed but pushed themselves upright.
Everything in his soul screamed at Hazou to go back and save his team, but Shell White was very clear: retreat, do not engage under any circumstances. Rescuing people was what Inoue-sensei and the clones were there for. He forced himself to run away, skimming across the ground like an arrow from the bow. Noburi and Inoue-sensei were on their feet; they'd kawarimi with one of the...no, there weren't any surviving clones. Oh shit. No, it was okay, there were boulders set up throughout the area as kawarimi targets, they could escape no problem, it would be fine, all they had to do was kawa—
"DIE, YOU STINKING STINKERS!"
Hazou looked over his shoulder and felt his heart sink. Apparently, Kagome had decided that Shell White could go kiss a goat.
The sealmaster kawarimied with a small boulder that rested in the ground behind the left flank of the enemy's line. Before they could react he triggered his blast harness; forty separate shaped charges erupted in all directions, blowing his clothes off and splashing every ninja and tapir within ten meters outwards as a slurry of blood and meat fragments. Kagome was left wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and two wooden rings that held small blocks to his palms.
Every single one of the surviving Mountain nin hurled a barrage of kunai and shuriken at Kagome. The sealmaster wasn't moving fast enough, probably dazed by the noise and flash of the blast harness, he wouldn't be able to dodge—
Kagome was gone; Inoue-sensei was in his place, one hand clutching the kunai in her belly. She dropped, twisting and dodging frantically as the barrage went past. Kawarimiing into the path of a blade storm meant she had only an instant to react; she barely dodged in time, and was left with thin slices on face and arms from all-too-near misses.
"Mouse Hole Black!" she shouted, ripping the two most powerful of the explosive-seal disks off her belt and hurling them towards the nearest group of ninja before kawarimiing away. The earth wave shifted, yanking the enemy aside and interposing a tumble of rocks and dirt before the twin explosions could do more than set their targets' ears ringing.
Hazou's heart, hammering from the terror of watching both of his instructors nearly die, soared when he heard Inoue-sensei's words. Yes! Code Black—engage at will, prefer lethal force! Better yet, Mouse Hole—he didn't need to leave his teammates behind to die!
He flipped, twisting in midair to face around. He touched down, chakra adhesion anchoring his feet to the ground to arrest his momentum before he switched to repulsion and launched himself back towards the cave. An instant to spot one of the kawarimi-target boulders near the cave entrance, a split second to focus his will and bend his chakra into the long-practiced pattern—the world twisted around him, a flash of other-when and nowhere-am going by so fast his brain hardly registered it—and he was at the cave mouth.
Akane was a step away from the entryway as he arrived, Noburi draped over her shoulders in a fireman's carry. Keiko flicked into existence an instant later, replacing one of the target boulders. Inoue-sensei was waiting, swaying drunkenly and white as a ghost but still on her feet and waving the others inside.
"Go, go, go!" she shouted, tearing more explosives off her belt and hurling them back towards the enemy.
Hazou couldn't help looking back; the earthwave was motionless, the tapirs looking around uncertainly as their targets vanished and were replaced with rocks. The ninja, more situationally aware than their animal companions, had already spotted the team and were hurling kunai and shuriken furiously even as they urged the tapirs back into motion.
Hazou frantically yanked a Multiple Earth Wall out of the ground in an effort to intercept the oncoming storm. He was too late and had to furiously twist aside, turning and dodging around the projectiles as his teammates parried or dodged in turn. There were some close calls but, thankfully, no one was hit.
Before the enemy could get themselves together for a fresh assault, the team had ducked inside the cave, activating the defenses as they went, and scurried into their mouse hole.
The 'mouse hole' was actually a bunker reinforced with Kagome's Five Seal Barrier in order to be invulnerable. The rest of the team went straight in while Hazou took an instant to permanently seal the entrance to the cave with a Multiple Earth Wall, then ducked into the mouse hole.
Inoue half-lay and half-collapsed onto one of the bedrolls; Noburi dropped to his knees beside her to inspect her wound, ignoring the shuriken that was still sticking out of his thigh.
"Light!" Noburi snapped, his face twisted up with worry as he looked over Inoue's wound, as well as pain from his own. "Shitshitshitshit," he mumbled, barely noticing as Keiko swung the lantern closer and turned the wick up so the medic-nin could see what he was doing. He examined the wound even as his hands automatically flipped open the medical kit and pulled out a small blue bottle.
"Drink," he commanded. Inoue blinked, the pain and blood loss leaving her shocky and unfocused, but she managed to swallow the contents of the bottle when Noburi poured it into her mouth.
"You're bleeding!" Akane said, grabbing a towel and pressing it hard against the wound in Noburi's leg. The medic-nin hissed through clenched teeth at the spike of pain, but ignored it and kept working.
"Back off!" Noburi said, his voice tight. "If I don't get this stitched up properly Inoue-sensei's going to die right now. I'll deal with it later."
Inoue's face was going slack as the painkiller came between herself and her body. Her limbs weren't coordinating well, but she still managed to grab Kagome's arm and drag him down beside her.
"What the fuck were you thinking, you stupid son of a bitch?!" she snarled, grabbing a fistful of his hair and shaking him. "I said White!"
Kagome froze.
"Stop," Noburi said, pushing her hands off of Kagome. "Lie still so I can sew this up before you die. You can yell at him in a minute, but only if you survive."
Inoue growled but went still.
There wasn't room to pace, so Hazou sat back and did the hardest thing he'd ever done: he waited, quietly, as his wounded teammate struggled to save their teacher's life.
It took about three eternities, but Noburi finally sat back and blew out a relieved breath. He paused for just a moment to gather himself, then shook his head to clear it and got to work on his own wound. His wasn't quite as bad as Inoue-sensei's, but it was still pretty bad. The shuriken had gone in just to the right of the femoral artery, nicking it but not actually slicing it, and there was a lot of blood. Fortunately, the leg was simpler to work on than the guts and Noburi had it stitched up quickly, biting down hard on a leather strap to keep from screaming as he did. He disinfected everything with a wave of his hand and pushed medical chakra into the tissues to help them mend faster.
"Whoof," he said, sitting back limply. "Okay, I think that does it. Inoue-sensei, you're stable and I'm fine. Give me a night to sleep and I should be able to get around on crutches tomorrow. You need clear fluids and bedrest for a few days, but you should make a full recovery as long as I keep energizing the wound."
"Good," Inoue said, her voice fuzzy. She blinked, forcing herself to focus, and then looked around for Kagome.
"Time for answers," she said. "Why did you ignore orders?" she growled.
Kagome swallowed. "I'm sorry," he said in a tiny voice.
"Sorry doesn't change anything," Inoue said. "What were you thinking?"
"Not. Expendable," she growled. "Now, as to the rest: I could have saved us both. I have a Wind Wall technique that will block thrown weapons. I could have put the Wall up to defend us from the kunai, grabbed Noburi, and tossed some explosives around as a distraction while I ran for it."
Inoue glared at him, teeth gritted and fists clenched, for several long seconds. Eventually she couldn't hold it anymore. The anger drained away and she sighed, dropping back onto the bedding.
"Godsdamnit, Kagome," she said, sighing. "Listen to me. First of all, you are not expendable. We need you, and I will be seriously pissed off if you get yourself killed. Got it?"
"But—" Kagome said, before immediately subsiding at Inoue's glare.
"Not. Expendable," she growled. "Now, as to the rest: I could have saved us both. I have a Wind Wall technique that will block thrown weapons. I could have put the Wall up to defend us from the kunai, grabbed Noburi, and tossed some explosives around as a distraction while we ran for it."
"Oh," Kagome said.
"Those ninja were from the Inoue and the Aida clans," Inoue said. "They're the loremasters and religious leaders of the village. I called 'White' because if we had managed to get out of there without hurting anyone it would have completely solved our problems with the village. It would have been obvious that they had gone behind the other elders' backs, and that would have been enough to remove them from power. The entire remaining council would have been at least marginally in our favor. As it is we've killed some of the local ninja and what might or might not be their sacred animal. This may permanently kibosh Keiko's chance of taking the trial and getting the scroll."
"Oh," Kagome said, looking sick.
"Yeah," Inoue said. "Oh." She sighed. "Get some sleep, okay? And in the future, follow orders."
Kagome nodded like his head was on a spring. "I will," he said fervently. "I promise. From now on, I will. I'll be good."
Inoue snorted and glared at him for several seconds, but eventually she gave in to the pull of the sedative and lay back.
"Hazou," she said, struggling to speak clearly as the sedative swept her away. "You're in command until I...."
The words trailed off and her breathing fell into the deep rhythm of sleep.
o-o-o-o
The advantage of having the cave physically sealed with a granite barrier was that no one was going to be sneaking up on them. Despite that, Kagome still insisted that they keep watch. None of the others had a problem with that, although Noburi and Inoue-sensei were excused from the rotation for obvious reasons.
When the sun was (presumably) rising, it was time to open the door and get outside. This was easier said than done; the Multiple Earth Wall jutsu was about creating walls, not removing them. The walls it produced were solid granite and immovably fixed to the ground. The only way to unseal the cave was to smash the wall itself. And, of course, the only way to do that was with explosives. Lots and lots of explosives. Fortunately, that wasn't an issue for a team containing Kagome.
Better yet, Kagome had provided a number of pre-infused Force Wall seals to the team's general supply. Under his teacher's fussy supervision, Hazou was able to set some of them up so as to make an impenetrable blast shield around the wall that closed off the cave. He placed four dozen tags on the wall they intended to destroy, activated them on a five-minute countdown, activated the Force Wall seals, and ducked back into the mouse hole.
Force Walls are effectively impenetrable and immovable; they make excellent blast channels. The explosion hit the Force Walls, rebounded, and smashed back on the Earth Wall, magnifying the power of the blast and reducing the granite wall to fine powder and fragments. Stalactites fell from the ceiling—several of them crashed off the roof of the mouse hole—but the cave itself stayed firm.
After a few minutes of digging rubble out of the way, the team cautiously stepped into the winding passage that led to the outside, deactivating traps as they went. The first few switchbacks were clear and none of the traps had been triggered. Unfortunately, when they reached the outmost switchback they came face-to-face with a solid wall. The earth had risen up, filling the passage from side to side and top to bottom like a stopper in a bottle.
Hazou stared thoughtfully at the wall. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the thought that he really should be terrified at being sealed in, yet he felt oddly detached. The plug was clearly airtight, and he fancied that it was getting a little hard to breathe in the tight confines of the passageway. There was plenty of air in the cave itself, of course, but it would be used up eventually. If they couldn't get out they were going to die, and what he was looking at was probably a solid stone wall six feet thick. Compared to that, blowing down the wall that blocked the passageway had been child's play.
"How many explosive seals do we have left?" Keiko asked calmly.
"One hundred and ninety-four," Kagome said.
Seconds trickled by. "That used to seem like a lot," Hazou observed.
Keiko nodded. "It will not be enough, will it?"
Kagome shook his head. "Doubt it. I've got ten more pairs of Force Wall seals, we can use them to set up a column to shape the blast. That will help." He seemed doubtful.
"You can make more explosives, right?" Akane asked.
Kagome shook his head. "Not fast enough," he said. "Takes me about five minutes each. We need at least a hundred more. The flames from the first blast used up a lot of the air in here. Wait too much longer, we could all suffocate."
"Oh," Akane said. "If you and Hazou-sensei work together, can you make enough?"
Hazou grimaced. "Yeah, probably," he said. "Take a few hours, though."
"Good," Akane said. "Mori, do you have any ideas?"
Kei closed her eyes, her face going blank as she reached down into the ice to examine the problem. Eventually she came back up and shook her head. "I don't see a better solution than blasting our way out with tags," she said. "I do see some ways to make them more likely to succeed, though."
o-o-o-o
Despite Kagome's nervousness about the air supply, he insisted that they not rush. They were only going to get one shot at this, so it needed to work the first time. Keiko and Akane took one of the lanterns and began a painstaking survey of the wall that trapped them, hoping to find some point of weakness.
While the others inspected the wall, Kagome and Hazou made explosive tags. Lots of explosive tags.
Hazou, Sealing:
11d100: [100 separate rolls ellided for brevity]
Against the canvas of his inner eye, space and time turned themselves in and out, purple became H#, and the taste of salt paraded itself across his ears. Sweat beaded on his brow as a tiny voice in the back of his mind whispered that he was going to get it wrong, that all of Kagome-sensei's dire warnings were going to be proven right—creatures from the interstices of reality would tear out his eyes and then climb through the bleeding sockets to devour his brain. Or his face would melt into a deformed puddle, closing off his nose and mouth so that he died of suffocation. Or a mis-infused tag would simply explode and kill his team.
Whenever the fear got too bad to focus while infusing he would put down his brush and focus on breathing until he was calm again, then went back to work.
Four hours later they were ready. Heavy effort with a kunai had chipped a crack in the wall that sealed them in. A single explosive tag wedged into the crack had expanded that crack into a small recess. Hundreds of explosive tags were packed into that recess and a Force Wall was erected that would seal it closed so that the blast could only propagate outwards. Hazou used Multiple Earth Wall to raise support columns throughout the cavern, and to build an angled shield that led from the door of their mousehole to the exit in a wall-hugging crawlway that would hopefully be safe even in a cave-in. With everything ready, the team set the timers on the explosives, activated the Force Wall, dove back into the mouse hole, and covered their ears.
The explosion was catastrophic. The ground bounced under them and dust rained from the ceiling.
"Wha / huh?!" Noburi and Inoue said, starting awake and reaching for weapons.
"It's okay," Hazou said, hurrying to reassure them. "The entryway got sealed up, we had to blast it open." He talked loudly to be heard over the ringing in everyone's ears.
They settled in to wait until their hearing came completely back and they were sure that the cave wasn't going to collapse around them. The passageway was either open or it wasn't; if it was, then it would still be open in a few minutes. If it wasn't, then they were out of options and they were going to suffocate. Either way, sitting here for a while wouldn't change anything.
"Okay," Inoue said. "That should be long enough. Hazou, Keiko, Akane, Kagome, grab your gear and go check it out. Me and Gimpy will stay behind and eat bon-bons while you do all the work."
Akane laughed at the joke; Noburi clamored his objections to being called 'Gimpy', realizing only too late that that was the best possible way to be sure the name stuck. After a while he subsided grumpily and lay back on the bedding.
The rest of the team strapped on their full combat gear before cautiously emerging into bright sunlight and freezing air. There had been a new snowfall overnight, and the ground was knee-deep in fluffy white powder. It was also smashed, warped, and torn where dozens of earth-surfing tapirs had run into thousands of explosive seals.
Several dozen ninja and a small herd of tapirs were waiting outside, staring at the team as they came out of the blasted-open hole in the mountain. Many of them were leaning on shovels and picks; they had clearly been working on opening up the cave and had presumably backed off when they heard the small explosion the team had used to create the pocket for the large blast.
"There you are!" Takahashi said, pushing forward. "I've got good news! The council voted to let Mai take the Trial of the Scroll!"
Hazou blinked. "What."
By now Takahashi was close enough to whisper without being heard by the other Mountain ninja behind him. "You need to get her to the shrine right now," he said quietly. "When your blast opened up the cavern, someone went to notify the rest of the village. The other elders are in closed session, interviewing the Inoue and the Aida about what happened last night. Once that session ends and they hear that you're out, you'll be dragged in and tried. The Inoue and Aida will claim that you attacked one of the patrols in an attempt to escape and they sent in a reaction force to extract their people. The whole thing will take forever and, assuming you aren't condemned to death, the elders will very likely revoke Mai's permission to take the trial. If you go now and she succeeds you'll have the scroll and you'll be the Heir of Akio. It'll prove beyond a doubt that the Inoue and the Aida were wrong, and cut the legs out from under their position."
"She can't," Hazou said automatically. "We have wounded, we can't split up—"
"Yes we can," Keiko said. "Kagome and I will go to the shrine with Takahashi-sensei as escort. You and Akane go inside, activate the defenses, and guard the others. If you hear anyone trying to get through the defenses, you can always seal the cavern again. You should make as many explosives as you can while you wait."
Hazou stared at her incredulously, then turned back to Takahashi. "Please excuse us for one moment, sir," he said.
He led Keiko and the others a few steps away. "Are you crazy?" he asked quietly.
Keiko shook her head. "There are no safe paths right now," she said. "This is the safest of the ones that are open to us. It's very unlikely that we'll be assaulted again before the council meeting finishes, which gives us a window of opportunity. You saw what happened last night—those tapirs would have crushed us with ease if we hadn't rabbited immediately. We aren't going to win a straight combat against them, especially with Inoue-sensei injured. We can't run effectively either, not while carrying Inoue-sensei and Noburi. If we tried to run or fight we would destroy our chance to get the scroll peacefully and would be at war with the entire village." She shrugged. "This is the best way I can see to keep us all safe."
Hazou bit his tongue and thought about that. The funny part was that he was sure Keiko meant exactly what she said—that she was focused on keeping the team safe. Had it been Noburi speaking, Hazou would have assumed that the boy was simply justifying his desire to get the scroll that would make him more powerful. Mori's bizarre mind didn't think on those lines, though.
"This plan stinks like cat piss," Kagome said. "She's right, though. Only way we're not going to end up fighting those stinkers."
"Well?" Keiko asked. "What's your decision, commander?"
Hazou sighed. Why oh why had he not slapped his hand over Inoue-sensei's mouth before she could saddle him with this job?
"Fine," he said, already regretting his decision. "Akane and I will hold the fort. Get back as soon as you can." He pulled his belt off and held it out to Keiko. "Here," he said. "I used the seals on the disks to blow the wall, but the seal on the belt itself is still good. It's not much, but it's something."
Akane quickly pulled her belt off as well and passed it over; Keiko took both with a nod of thanks and looped them around her waist before turning back to rejoin Takahashi.
o-o-o-o
There were two ninja on guard at the shrine, standing tall in front of the doors with ceremonial naginata grounded beside them at a parade-ground angle and bows slung over their shoulders. They dropped into a ready stance as Takahashi-sensei, Kei, and Kagome approached.
"Good day, Elder," the one on the left called. He was a squat, stocky man with blonde hair that almost hid the streaks of grey. Despite the apparent onset of middle age, Kei had not the slightest doubt that this was a man to be reckoned with: the way he moved, the way his eyes missed nothing, the precision of his balance, it all added up to a skilled fighter. She immediately began calculating attack angles. The naginata was probably not just ceremonial, and both ninja were likely to be much more comfortable at melee than she was; she would need to maintain range or they would bisect her. On the other hand, the bows would also give them a ranged ability, and a much higher ammunition capacity than the six kunai she had strapped on. She had the ones in the sealed bag, of course, but it would take a moment to get those. Optimal strategy would be—
Her thoughts were cut off as Takahashi-sensei stepped forward with a smile and an extended scroll.
"Good morning, Ryū," he said. "Today is a momentous day. The council has voted to let Mai here take the Trial of the Scroll."
Ryū was extremely controlled; he barely blinked. His partner openly gaped.
"Bu...bu...but...," he younger ninja stammered. "They wh—"
Ryū, eyes still fixed on Takahashi-sensei, raised a hand and his partner fell silent. "May I see that, please?" he asked. Takahashi-sensei silently passed the scroll over; Ryuu unrolled it and scanned the contents carefully.
"May I ask where the other elders are, sir?" he asked.
"Waiting at the council chamber," Takahashi-sensei said with a shrug. "Aida and Inoue were both in agreement that the council shouldn't attend, as we might either see things we weren't meant to see or somehow interfere with the trial. I am only here to escort Mai to the shrine and then back to the chambers."
Kagome twitched at that and started muttering under his breath.
Ryū did not miss the twitch.
"Who might you be, sir?" he asked, looking at the sealmaster.
Kagome's eyes widened. "What? Why do you want to know? Is there a problem? Because if there is, I'm warning you—" His mouth closed with a snap as Kei's head whipped round to give him an unambiguous glare.
"This is her uncle," Takahashi-sensei said smoothly. "He is a touch nervous about Mai taking the trial."
Kei was standing at an angle such that she could just catch Takahashi-sensei rolling his eyes at Ryū and mouthing 'crazy'. Ryū looked doubtfully from Kagome to Takahashi-sensei, then back to the scroll in his hands. He read it again, then studied Kei carefully.
"I wish you all the fortune," he said at last, giving Kei a sincere bow. He stepped back, his junior following him, and swept his arm towards the shrine.
Takahashi-sensei escorted Kei to the door of the shrine; Kagome walked backwards behind them, keeping a wary eye on the two ninja guards, as well as searching the surroundings for all potential attackers, lupchanz-infested or otherwise.
Takahashi-sensei faced Kei and gravely removed a chain from around his neck, revealing the heavy iron key that had been hidden in his shirt. He held this out to Kei with a serious expression.
"I, Saburō, sent to the council by the Takahashi to speak for the ninjutsu wielders, and sent by the council to speak for the village, and sent by the village to speak to the spirit of our forefathers Jukodo Akio and his master Ui Isas, entrust to you, Kawasaki Mai of the eighth clan, my key. This key was forged at the time of the Founding. It is the mark of my authority as a council member, and its loan demonstrates the trust that the council has placed in you. It will offer you safe passage through the first barrier. May it bring you fortune in the trial beyond."
Kei took the key from him and bowed deeply. With a whispered word of reassurance to Kagome, she unlocked the shrine and stepped inside.
The hallway was dim, lit only by the light from outside. It was narrow, only four feet wide and perhaps six feet high. Walls, floor, and ceiling were all thickly inscribed with seals and at the far end was another heavy, steel-banded door.
"No way," Kagome said, reaching out unsuccessfully for her arm and looking at the seal-covered hallway. "You are not walking into that. I don't care—"
She forced herself to smile. Her mother had often reminded her that smiling was important; it helped relax others.
"It is all right, Kagome," she whispered. "Please, trust me. I need this if I am to be strong enough to protect you all."
Kagome paused, looking as though he'd swallowed a gallon of bugs soaked in urine. Reluctantly, he withdrew his hand.
"If you don't come back, I will destroy this village," he said, in a voice that was not nearly as quiet as Kei would have preferred. He shot Takahashi a glare, then looked back at Kei, his eyes blazing with nigh-fanatic intensity. "Boom. Squash. Crater. I promise."
Kei swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked away the water that gathered in her eyes.
"I promise," she said. "I will do my best." She smiled at him one last time—smiles help, her mother's voice whispered—and stepped inside, pulling the doors closed behind her. A little light leaked under the door, but she did not need it for the next step. Slipping the chain over her neck so her hands were free, she rummaged in her pack for the correct scroll and unsealed a box with an already-lit oil lantern.
With a deep breath she raised the lantern high and walked down the corridor, forcing herself to stand tall and step confidently.
The seals remained passive and she reached the far door without incident. The key unlocked that one too and she was inside the shrine proper.
It was small, a single room twenty feet on a side and fifteen feet at the highest point. A giant seal, easily four feet across, was drawn in the center of each wall and two more on the ceiling. Other than that, the room was absolutely bare except for a wooden pedestal in the center. Atop the pedestal lay a velvet pillow, atop which lay a scroll as long as her forearm and twice as thick. Despite the small size of the room, there was a looming sense of presence in the stark, empty space.
She looked around carefully before walking forward and examining the scroll. She paced around the pedestal, leaning in close to examine the scroll before she touched it.
The scroll was age-yellowed vellum, carefully wound around a pair of rods made from a smoothly polished dark gray wood that she did not recognize. A thick ribbon tied it closed, and a seal was written on the ribbon.
She frowned. The scroll was age-yellowed—not much, but some. That could not be right. There were stories of summoning contracts going back to the Sage of Six Paths. If scrolls aged like regular paper (or, in this case, vellum), then over the centuries they would fall apart and be lost. It was possible that copies could be made, of course, but if so why were there not dozens of them?
She paused and considered this. It was possible that the summon animals only wanted one summoner at a time, but it was more likely that this was a trick, that it was not the real scroll. This village was fanatical about protecting their scroll; it was their entire purpose for existing. A wooden building, even one protected by seals and a few guards? Surely that was not the limit of their abilities.
She inspected the pedestal carefully, looking for a false panel or a compartment in which the real scroll might be hidden. There was no such thing. The pedestal was apparently a simple wooden column three feet thick and carved from a single immense tree. The base was wider, spreading out for stability and fixed to the floor with heavy iron bolts.
She cocked her head and smiled a tiny, satisfied smile. The pedestal was bolted to the floor, not nailed. Bolts were rare in the Elemental Nations; forging the threads was an exacting and time-consuming process that only master smiths could manage. They also had the interesting property that they could be removed, unlike nails. These bolts were carefully attended, rust-free and with a faint scent of oil.
Experimentally, she twisted one of them; it turned easily. With growing excitement, she unscrewed all four nuts and set them aside. The pedestal was massive and smooth; she needed to use chakra adhesion to secure a grip and channel a huge amount of chakra into her muscles in order to lift it, but she managed to slide it aside with a grunt.
Beneath the pedestal was a narrow hole, fixed to the side of which was a ladder.
The ladder went down out of sight in the dimness, although when she held the lantern down into it she thought she could see a floor far below. She forced herself to breathe carefully and think. Finally, she took out a kunai, put it in her teeth to free her hands, and climbed down into the hole.
Climbing while holding the lantern was difficult and the ladder was nearly fifty feet long. She had a feeling that touching the sides might be bad, so she moved carefully. Step down with the left foot. Step down with the right foot. Use chakra adhesion to hold the knees to the ladder while moving the hand down one rung. Step down with the left foot....
Eventually she made it to the bottom and found herself in a small stone-paved chamber hollowed from the earth and braced with timbers. Five passages led off in all directions, the dirt in each one packed down by generations of feet.
She examined the area carefully, but found nothing of interest. Choosing a passage at random she marked the floor with her kunai and proceeded.
She'd gone barely ten yards when her lantern glinted off a tripwire at ankle height. Looking carefully, she was able to follow it up the wall and across the ceiling before it disappeared into a small recess. She stepped over it and continued.
She stepped over the small, foot-sized pit with the spike at the bottom.
She turned back when she saw what was probably an explosive seal on the wall.
She found the concealed door.
And the concealed trapdoor.
And the other concealed trapdoor.
She walked on the ceiling to avoid both the tripwire and the soft spots on the walls with the spikes behind them, for which the tripwire was the distraction.
She spent twenty minutes carefully disabling the net of thin wires that stretched across the corridor.
She found the paved room with the ornate fake scroll, avoided stepping on any of the pressure plates, and then left without touching the fake.
She thought it was odd when she climbed down a ladder into a room with only one exit and that exit was a tightly-sealed door. Instead of directly opening it she drew one of her three remaining explosive seals. This one was a shaped charge, the other two regular omnidirectional ones—she had offered the tags up for the job of blowing the cave open and been flatly refused. Ishihara had said that three tags were not going to make a difference to the task of getting the cave open, but they might during the test. It seemed that the naive, not-too-bright, overly-optimistic puppy dog was correct. Who would have thought?
She shook off the reverie; she'd lost a fair amount of blood from the wounds the traps had inflicted, and her brain was starting to drift a little. She made herself focus and carefully placed the shaped-charge seal on the ceiling, aimed down at an angle towards the door. She armed it on a one-minute timer, then climbed back up the ladder.
When the tag detonated it blew the door open; somehow Kei was not surprised when she cautiously climbed partway back down to check and found the sunken area full of a swirling greenish, undoubtedly toxic, mist. Well, she was a little surprised—that trap must have required a great deal of maintenance. Still, if you had a village of ninja with nothing to do but build and maintain traps for a few centuries, it became much more reasonable.
The arrow trap she did not find, nor did she dodge it. Fortunately it was only a graze; she cleaned it as thoroughly as she could, taking care to wash it thoroughly in order to remove whatever the poison was, bound it up, and kept going. She was limping, but still functional.
She stepped over the next tripwire.
And the next.
She missed the explosive seal, but dove clear of the blast...mostly.
At each intersection she marked the ground to show which way she had gone. Where there were two marks she knew that everything behind that point was useless. Eventually, after what felt like years but probably was only a couple of hours, she found the central chamber.
It was much like the shrine above, except without seals: a pedestal in the center (this one of marble instead of wood) with a pillow and scroll. She could tell from the corridor that this scroll was pristine, seemingly as new as the day it was made. Unfortunately, she could not reach it because there was a thick steel gate in the way.
The object was massive, and she could not imagine how it had been gotten down here. (Perhaps as individual components that were somehow welded on site? Whatever, not the time.) It was anchored into heavy timbers that were in turn thoroughly fixed into the ground. There was a lock, but Takahashi-sensei's key did not fit and the tumblers were too heavy for her lockpicks.
She eyed the gate thoughtfully. She still had the two explosive seals, but they were omnidirectional and she had a feeling that setting them off in here might be a bad plan. It could collapse the tunnel.
She caught herself drifting again and dragged her thoughts back on track. She unsealed a canteen and some trail bars, forcing herself to eat and drink before going back to the problem. It helped, at least a bit.
She was coming up empty on ideas until she shifted and her belt dug into her side. Immediately, she scrambled to pull off the belts that Ishihara and Hazō had given her, as well as her own. All three belts had been made by Kagome, and the shaped-charge seals on them were perfectly viable.
She looped the belts through the bars in a triangle pattern and tied each one off, taking care that the seals were facing inwards. A careful check showed that everything was as good as it could be, so she activated the timers and jogged back down the corridor.
There was a crump! immediately followed by a metallic clang! When she came back she saw that the blasts from the belts had sliced neatly through the heavy steel bars, chopping out a triangular section of the gate large enough for her to climb through. She checked the roof and walls to be sure that they had not been weakened by the blast, then entered.
She examined the pedestal carefully before hanging her lantern on the convenient hook and picking up the scroll. Like the one in the shrine, it was held closed with a ribbon and there was a seal on the ribbon. Unlike the one up above there were seals on the outside of the scroll and the end caps. Nothing happened when she touched it and a careful examination showed nothing unexpected, so she untied the ribbon and opened the scroll.
Or, at least, she tried. The ribbon was absolutely immobile. No matter how she tugged or pushed, it refused to budge. It would not untie, it would not move on the scroll, and she hesitated to try cutting it. Finally, with no other ideas, she tucked the scroll into her pack and limped back up into the shrine itself, then out into the daylight.
Takahashi-sensei, Kagome, and the two guards were waiting for her. So were two dozen Isan-nin, forty nervous-looking tapirs, and a glowering council of elders. Kagome had his back to the wall by the doors and looked as if he really wanted to be throwing explosives everywhere, but Takahashi-sensei was standing in front of him and talking fast.
"I say again: we voted, and that vote is still valid," he was saying as she emerged. "Simply because two of our number decided to go behind the council's back—" He broke off as the doors of the shrine swung open to reveal a mussed and bloody Kei with scroll in hand.
"She passed," Azai said, eyes wide.
"No," Inoue-the-elder said. "The scroll is not open. Clearly it has rejected her...assuming that is even the true scroll. She could easily have made a forgery to dupe us."
Kei bowed deeply. "Honored elders," she said. "I have not yet attempted to open the scroll. It seemed a task that should happen in front of all of you. A task for which I should speak to the Aida that I might do it in a way that is respectful of your customs."
Aida opened her mouth to say something that would undoubtedly be vitriolic, but Yoshida cut her off. "Let me see that," she said. "I can attest to whether it's the true scroll."
She stepped forward and took the scroll from Keiko, giving it a quick but professional examination. "Yes," she said. "This is the true scroll. The seal of summoning is unmistakable." She tapped her finger on the seal that covered the ribbon.
"Give me that," Kagome said, snatching the scroll from her.
dice said:
Kagome, Sealcraft:
?d100 + 1d100 (circumstance bonus: prior research of local sealing): 997
Seal that was made several hundred years ago and lacks the advantages of modern sealing techniques:
?d100: 710
Yoshida's eyes went wide and fury poured across her face. "How dare you?!" she said. "How dare you—"
"You idiot," Kagome said, not looking up from his examination. "This is a locking seal, and a primitive one. A monkey with a pointy stick could get it open in twenty minutes." He plopped down on the ground and rummaged in his pack for supplies, muttering to himself and oblivious to everything around him.
'Everything around him', of course, included a lot of council members pulling weapons.
"Wait!" said Yoshida and Takahashi-sensei together, hands extended placatingly to the others. They looked at each other in surprise until Takahashi-sensei nodded and gestured for her to go first.
"Wait," Yoshida said again. "If he's right that he can undo it, we will finally see the words of Ui Isas revealed to us. Since the founding we have struggled to understand the art of sealcraft. This could be the biggest breakthrough in our history. Imagine the knowledge we stand to gain."
"And, again, we voted to let her take the trial," Takahashi-sensei reminded them. "Apparently we did not know what the trial actually was, but that changes nothing. If our word is to mean anything, if our authority and honor are to remain unsullied, then we must give her the chance to be accepted by the scroll and that which it brings forth. Naito unlocking the scroll is no different than us giving her the key to the shrine so that she could attempt the trial."
"Blasphemy!" Inoue said. "You are allowing an outsider to tamper with the scroll of the ancestors!"
dice said:
Azai, Diplomacy:
? + ? (circumstance bonus: support from Yoshida and Takahashi): 974
"Calmly, Inoue," Azai said. "Takahashi and Yoshida are both right. Our honor is at stake, and there is much to gain. For now, there is no harm in letting them try. If he can't unlock it, or if she is not accepted, then we will deal with them." He waved vaguely towards the mass of tapirs standing restlessly to the side.
Inoue fell silent and stood, icy fury on her face.
Kei felt a chill go down her spine at Inoue's reaction and Azai's words, but long years of training prevented the fear from showing on her face. She kept her eyes on the elders but stepped back and squatted down so she was at Kagome's level.
"Can you unlock it?" she asked quietly, still not looking away from the elders. She was hyperaware of the position of each of the kunai in her holsters, and mentally rehearsed the motions needed to retrieve her two remaining explosive seals.
Kagome grunted but didn't otherwise reply. He was busy measuring part of the seal with a protractor while staring at the thing through a jeweler's loupe.
Minutes trickled by. Kei had shrugged her pack off and settled down next to Kagome. The elders were becoming restless; Takahashi-sensei and Yoshida were looking more and more nervous as the situation dragged on. They were both all in on this, and if Kagome failed to deliver they would be lucky to survive, let alone retain their positions.
"Ha!" Kagome said. He laid a finger on the seal and pushed a little chakra in. There was a tiny noise somewhere between click and snap, and the ribbon loosened. Kagome grunted satisfaction and passed the scroll to Kei.
With hands that she could not keep from shaking, she unrolled the scroll a foot or so and looked inside. Whatever she had expected, it was not a long list of names written in the rust-red of dried blood.
Kei took a deep breath and pushed herself down into the very edge of the ice that was her bloodline, just enough to make the fear go away. Far off, she heard the Mori Voice whispering words of failure and apathy, but she ground those words under her heel. With smooth, mechanical precision she sat down and placed the scroll in her lap, unwinding the bottom and winding up the top until she reached the final entry on the list of names: Ui Isas. She pulled a kunai and sliced her left forearm until blood flowed. There was a gasp from the elders and they started forward, but she was faster. With the ice controlling her every movement she dipped her right forefinger in the blood and swiftly drew the kanji for her name—her true name, not the alias by which these people knew her—onto the scroll.
Thunder split the sky. A puff of smoke exploded out of the ground in front of her, dispersing to reveal a three-foot high animal unlike anything she had ever seen.
"Yes!" the animal said, doing a little bounce. "A summoner for the mighty Pangolin Clan!" He paused and looked Kei over, peering nearsightedly at her. "A little young, aren't you?"
"Uh...," said Kei. The shock had jolted her out of the ice and all the nervousness was hammering into her again.
The creature shrugged. "No problem, I'm just glad you're here. What's your name, huh?"
Kei looked at the elders uncertainly. Introducing herself to her new summons by an alias seemed like a very bad plan, but revealing her true name to the elders after lying about it for months....
"Keiko," she said. "Mori Keiko." She paused, fumbling. "It is very nice to meet you."
The summons nodded. "I'm Pandā, nice to meet you too. You ready to go?"
"Go?" she asked. "Now?"
The animal clicked its tongue. "Of course, now! You think that just signing the scroll is enough! No no no, you need to meet everyone so we can decide if we want to be your summons."
"Uh...," said Kei. She knew she needed to be saying something here, but her brain was utterly paralyzed.
"I'll take that as a yes," Pandā said. "Let's go."
There was a crack! and blue smoke swirled throughout the area. When it cleared, Kei and the summons were gone.
XP AWARD: 30 + 3 for @Jello_Raptor's scarily prescient guess about the contract being for pangolins. Seriously, where did you come up with that?
This is part 2 of the 3 part conclusion to the 'find the summoning contract' arc. @Velorien will be dropping a post in a day or three covering what happens to Keiko in the Summon Realm, after which we will go back to our regular voting cycle.
NB: Hat tip to Silver Queen's fantastic story Dreaming of Sunshine for the line about giving sealmasters time to prepare.
Kei could feel the fading edges of an experience beyond her mind's ability to process, slipping away like a dream upon waking. From her studies, she knew that this was something to be grateful for.
After a few seconds, she realised that the sound had been her hitting the ground.
She could feel her entire body rebelling at her treatment of it. Through extraordinary force of will, she managed to make herself not vomit in front of her first summon. Takahashi-sensei said the first time was supposed to be the most difficult, she reminded herself. It would be easier once she was more accustomed to being pulled through a multidimensional cosmic meat grinder by the will of a small mammal.
"That. Was. So. Cool."
Kei looked up at Pandā in disbelief.
"What?" Pandā asked. "It was. It's not like I've ever been summoned or reverse-summoned anyone before. Did you feel the way the aetheric… uhh… thingy stretched as we came in?"
If Kei had, she did not want to remember.
She rose to her feet and took in the view around her. She was on a hilltop. There was grass. It was not some form of tentacular alien grass, merely ordinary green grass of the sort one could find anywhere. The air was breathable and there was a sky above her and ground below. But the sky was not the sky of her world. Above her, it was an eerie metallic brown, shifting in subtle patterns like oil on water, and it visibly changed colour further away, shading into a darker brown ahead of her, and other colours beyond, giving it a patchwork feel. There was light, but she could see no sun or moon.
Beneath this dizzying sky was a forest stretching for endless miles. The trees were huge, enough so that Kei could not understand how they could support their own weight, and she could see motion around the trunks. A series of small stone domes littered areas where the trees were less thick, covered with what appeared to be abstract patterns of colour.
Despite her unbearable curiosity, there was a part of Kei's mind that refused to rest until she acknowledged what Pandā had just said.
"The aetheric thingy," she repeated meaningfully.
"What?" Pandā exclaimed. "I'm an anthropologist, not a space-time ninjutsu expert. You want to know something about humans, I'm your pangolin. Fundamental laws of the cosmos? Not so much.
"No, wait," he said after a pause, in a tone of dawning wonder. "I'm not just an anthropologist anymore.
"My parents always said I was throwing my life away. They said I'd be serving fried grubs from some little stall in the slums until I died. They said there was no point hoping for a summoner that would never come. But you know what this means?"
Kei shook her head. It occurred to her a second later that pangolins would likely have a radically different body language, but the anthropologist seemed to understand the meaning.
"It means, as soon as I'm sworn in, I'm officially your military liaison!" Pandā did a little hop. Kei caught herself smiling at the way his tail bounced excitedly in mid-air.
"That's right!" Pandā misinterpreted her expression. "Automatic promotion all the way past the first tier and into the second, as a specialist attached to the diplomatic corps! This changes everything!"
Kei nodded thoughtfully. "So membership in the army is restricted, and considered high-status."
"Hey, you're not as slow as I thought," Pandā said approvingly. "That's right. I didn't make the cut when I had my rite of adulthood, and things have been kind of muddy ever since. But as a specialist, I'm practically guaranteed a breeding license, and then the females will be queueing at my door!"
Kei decided she was not quite curious enough to ask whether that was a literal statement.
"So what happens now?" she asked instead.
"Oh, right. I'm supposed to take you to the summoner trial. Y'know, the one that decides whether you live or die. Only I'd really rather you didn't die, or they won't need a military liaison anymore."
Another trial? Kei resisted the urge to sigh. "What do I need to do?"
"It's real simple. I take you to see the Polemarch, Pantsā of the Adamant Scales. He's the head of the Pangolin Clan. If he likes you, great. If he kills you, not so great. I suggest you be polite."
-o-
Pandā had insisted on taking the long route, weaving through as many of the main paths between the clusters of domes as possible. Kei did not complain, wanting every opportunity to take in her surroundings.
On closer inspection, the domes appeared to be burrow entrances, and the coloured markings on them followed distinct patterns, both in shape and choice of colour. Blue and yellow were prevalent, with occasional dashes of red. She suspected that they were intended to provide information about the residents within. In addition, the movement up above revealed itself to be more pangolins, ones shaped slightly differently from Pandā, and a few of them could be seen climbing in and out of hollows in the trees.
Every pangolin she saw turned and stared at her. Some exchanged hissing noises. It was more than a little intimidating, especially since, while Pandā was shorter than her, the majority of pangolins dwarfed her in size. Many were larger than a full-sized human, and the extraordinary size of some of the domes suggested disconcerting things about pangolin growth potential.
Pandā set a quick pace, scurrying along in an odd hunched posture, forelegs almost but not quite touching the ground, chattering all the while.
"Oh, this is wonderful! You have no idea what it's like, being small and weak and feeling useless all the time, and then somebody unexpected comes along and you suddenly get given a chance to stand shoulder to shoulder with the best! I can't decide if I'm excited or terrified I'm going to mess up somehow!"
Kei chose not to comment.
"So anyway, is it true that humans only reach sexual maturity a quarter of the way into your maximum lifespan? And that you think having no scent makes you more attractive? And that you only have five elements? And you can use the gestalt field without basic training? Oh, and my master told me you burn people's bodies when they die, without keeping any body parts, but he was just knotting my tongue, right?"
Before Kei could address any of this, Pandā screeched to a halt in front of a big rounded slab of carved rock standing in the middle of a public square. Unfamiliar symbols, probably writing, were etched into it in a sharp angular script.
"Gotta check the stone," Pandā muttered, "haven't been this way for nearly a tenday."
He came so close to the stone that his snout was nearly touching it, then scanned it quickly from both sides. "Good, nothing new."
Kei gave him a questioning look.
"One side's updates to law and basic military doctrine. The other's defensive and evacuation procedures. That's just for us unranked, of course." He blinked. "No, wait, I'm not going to be unranked anymore! What a day!"
Pandā did another little hop, then beckoned Kei onwards.
"Anyway, listen, see the tower? That's the Polemarch's fortress under there. Obviously, I've never met him myself, so this is going to be as new to me as it is to you. I'll level with you, I'm pretty nervous. They say he can read minds and make people explode just by looking at 'em. So whatever you do, be polite, be respectful, and don't try to lie to him. And above all, don't hthsshluhl."
"Don't what?"
"Uh," Pandā tapped his underbelly awkwardly, still leading her forward. "Culturally-specific idiom, I guess. I'm still working on those. Like I say, I'm an anthropologist, not an interpreter. Everything I know about inter-species communication mechanics? Ninety percent self-taught. For now, just try not to do anything stupid. Here we go."
-o-
Pantsā of the Adamant Scales was, without question, the biggest living being Kei had ever seen. Actually, he might have been the biggest anything Kei had ever seen, the mountain in Tea excepted. She suspected he was taller than the Mizukage's Office. Each of his scales was inlaid with swirling patterns of steel that glinted in the torchlight—a courtesy for Kei, since pangolins apparently relied on sight as a secondary sense at best. The larger of his claws were probably longer than Kei was tall. If he decided to kill her… Kei dwelled on that image a little too long.
"At your command, Polemarch," Pandā announced in a slightly trembling voice, drawn to a very nearly vertical stance, his claws together and interlaced.
He nudged Kei with his tail. "Your hands! Make the peace sign, you beakface!"
Kei quickly interlaced her fingers.
"At ease, Pandā," came a voice that was surprisingly quiet for something of that size. "I thank you for bringing the summoner candidate to me. You may wait outside."
"Your will, Polemarch," Pandā tapped his tail on the ground, then hurried out. "Don't screw up," Kei heard in a hissing whisper.
A few seconds later, Pantsā's voice came again, deep, measured, and at just the right volume to make it seem as if he were human-sized and standing a few metres away from her. It gave credence to Pandā's implication that she was hearing the results of communication ninjutsu rather than direct speech (which made sense given that pangolins seemed to have very long tongues and no teeth). And however the ninjutsu operated, the Polemarch must have been a master of it, as the unshakeable depths of the voice put Kei in mind of a mountain after all.
"Name yourself, summoner candidate."
"Mori Keiko, Polemarch."
"You are not part of my command structure, Mori Keiko," Pantsā said. "In private, you may address me by my given name."
"Yes, Pantsā."
"Now," Pantsā's voice grew more serious, "I do not know of the Mori Clan. Is it common, in the modern shinobi world, to choose so young a warrior to be the clan's summoner?"
Kei had an ominous feeling about answering this question, but she also remembered Pandā's warning about reading minds. "I am not here on behalf of the Mori Clan," she said.
"No? Do you mean that you are here without your superiors' permission?"
"I am a missing-nin," Kei said slowly, desperately wishing Mari-sensei were here to speak for her. "I was forced to leave my village and my clan by circumstances beyond my control, and now I am an independent agent."
Pantsā's voice did not change, but the cave suddenly felt much smaller, and the air much heavier, and slower to enter her lungs. "I know what a missing-nin is, Mori Keiko. A traitor who defies the leaders they swore allegiance to, and abandons their fellow warriors. Some lesser clans accept such summoners. The Pangolin Clan would sooner see your kind wiped from existence."
Shit.
"However," Pantsā continued, "in my role as keeper of justice, I must grant you a chance to defend yourself. Speak, Mori Keiko. You have this one chance to explain why you deserve life."
Kei breathed deeply. Keep it together, Kei. Keep it together. If she panicked here, it would be the end. She knew that being a missing-nin did not render her inherently dishonourable. She simply had to find, very quickly, some way of convincing Pantsā of the same.
She needed her bloodline. There were too many possible answers and not enough correct ones. She began to sink into the Frozen Skein. In her mind's eye, the future fractured into a crystal with a thousand cracks networked across it, all leading in different directions. Most of them cut off very sharply.
To complain that she had been sent on a suicide mission would be ineffective. A military leader would believe in the necessity of suicide missions. To speak of betrayal by a superior officer would be dangerous. He would ask why she did not seek to return to Mist when she discovered Shinigami-sensei's deception. To argue—
"YOU DARE BRING THAT HERE?!"
Kei's clarity vanished as if it had never been, as something wet lashed out and wrapped around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides, and yanked her sharply upwards. Before she could react, she was being held tight in one of Pantsā's claws, the pressure just barely light enough to allow her to breathe. He lifted her in front of his eyes.
"Your trial is over, Mori Keiko," he said in a heavy voice that lacked some its earlier relaxed majesty. "Your sentence is decided. Make your final prayer to the Pantokrator."
Time to panic. How had Pantsā known she was using the Frozen Skein? How could he, who had never heard of the Mori, even know what it was? Why was he about to kill her?
Instead of her life flashing before her eyes and adding insult to imminent injury, a sudden flash of insight filled Kei's mind. Was Pantsā… afraid of the Mori bloodline?
How... pathetic. He was the same as the others. He feared her, the others feared for her, but it was all the same in the end. All were convinced that she was unworthy to be a true Mori, that her power was too dangerous for her to wield. Now, Pantsā was treating her as if her mere possession of the bloodline made her a threat even to her potential allies.
A cold anger began to burn within Kei. She would be the first to admit that her life was a morass of failure. Never strong enough, never intelligent enough, never social enough, making only poor decisions—and that was if she managed to make decisions at all instead of clinging to others who would make her choices for her. Most mornings she awakened to wonder why she was still alive, why she should continue to disappoint both herself and those around her, knowing that it was futile to hope for herself to change. And now she was about to disappoint them again. Jiraiya, the living legend who had taken an incredible chance on her. Takahashi-sensei, who had accepted her and worked hard to fan the flames of her hope. Mari-sensei, who had seen the full depths of Kei's weakness and, impossibly, stood by her anyway. They would look at her, if she somehow survived, and they would be kind, and forgiving, and there would be nothing she could say to make them understand how much that hurt.
But for all that, Kei knew, despite every way in which she had failed to live up to everyone's hopes, including her own, one thing washers.
It did not matter that she was only half-trained in her clan's secret arts. It did not matter that there was only one thing she could do well, only one contribution she could make that somebody else could not do better and faster. This one thing was hers.
And in that moment, Kei did not see the ancient patriarch of a warrior race. She saw only an ignorant accuser with the temerity to question the core of who she was.
"No," Kei said, in a voice filled with ice that was not borrowed but all her own. "I am Mori and I am in control.
"Wherever the other Mori may be. Whatever they may believe of me. I am Mori, and even if you fear my power, I do not, because I am in control."
She looked up at Pantsā defiantly, the anger just strong enough to suppress the absolute terror that her situation deserved.
"Interesting." The danger in Pantsā's voice was softer, with more curiosity and less rejection. "You are a missing-nin, yet you claim loyalty to the clan you left behind?"
That was not quite what Kei had done. It was difficult to speak of loyalty towards people who might desire her death or who might have long since forgiven her, or even both, with no way for Kei to know which. Was her mother praying for her safety, or cursing the day she had been born? Was her ex-ANBU grandfather hoping that she would stay out of the hands of T&I, or wishing he could bring her to them himself? Did Ami hate her now?
No. She could not afford to start spiralling. Her relationship to her family was warped now, a wire puzzle too complex to unravel. But if there was such a thing as loyalty to the Mori ideal, beyond the individuals comprising the clan, then yes, Kei was as loyal as anyone could be.
"I am Mori," Kei said again. "Before anything else. And part of being Mori is mastery of the bloodline. If I have given offence by using it, I apologise. But to think that I would permit it to endanger my allies is offensive in its own turn."
Slowly, carefully, Pantsā lowered his paw to the ground and allowed Kei to step off. For the second time in one hour, Kei could feel her knees about to buckle, but she miraculously kept herself standing.
"Interesting," Pantsā repeated. "You remind me of Sannō Ranka, the summoner before Ui. She had abandoned her clan when they forbade her to marry the man she loved. I believe her exact words to me were, 'If you keep sticking that snout of yours into my love life, I will tie it shut with your tongue and set it on fire.' She made an excellent summoner, once she was taught her place."
Kei gritted her teeth and attempted not to look desperately afraid as the anger drained away, leaving only the awareness that she had just rebuked a being vast beyond her comprehension, and one who had already expressed a preference for her death.
"It has been inconvenient for the Pangolin Clan to be without a summoner for so long," Pantsā mused. "Our enemies have been able to manoeuvre unrestrained on the Human Path, and our arts of warfare grow stagnant. Are you an opportunity or a liability, Mori Keiko?"
Without the Frozen Skein, and with adrenaline washing her power for rational thought away like a raging river, Kei did not know how she could make her case.
But Pantsā did not demand an answer.
"You will never call upon what you call your bloodline again while you are on the Seventh Path, the place you call the Summon Realm. On pain of death. Is that understood?"
"Y-Yes, Polemarch."
"Here are the terms of the summon contract. You may negotiate with any of the Pangolin Clan for permission to summon them, should you have the power to do so. We will fight for you with all our skill and all our might, for the honour of our ancestors and the glory of the Pantokrator. In return, you will fulfil any individual agreements you make with my subordinates during those negotiations. You will accept missions to further our goals on the Human Path. You will make no common cause with the clans that oppose us, or their summoners. Is this acceptable to you?"
Calming down now that she anticipated surviving the next few minutes, Kei took time to consider the terms. After the unfortunate events with Takahashi-sensei, she was determined to take greater care this time.
"What do you mean by 'should you have the power'?"
"The more power a pangolin draws from the nature chakra of our world," Pansā explained, "the more difficult it is for them to manifest in yours. Your skill as a summoner, and the human chakra you have to spend, will limit whom you may summon."
"And the missions in the human world?"
"The clan wars are brutal, but they are also subtle. After so long without influence on the Human Path, it will take time to determine how you may best be used. Assassination of enemy summoners is the most likely, sooner or later. Regardless, I do not assign my resources carelessly. Any tasks will be well within your abilities, and will bring their own rewards."
Enemy summoners. Was Kei making common cause with enemy summoners in cooperating with Jiraiya? If so, mentioning the fact could be dangerous. But having it discovered some other way would be worse, and although Pantsā claimed little knowledge of the modern world, he did know what a missing-nin was. What sources of information did he have available to him? Was there in fact such a thing as mind-reading ninjutsu?
"What about Jiraiya, the Toad Summoner? Is he an enemy?"
"Jiraiya?" Pantsā echoed. "Ah, I see. Of course. No, Mori Keiko. The Toad Clan and the Pangolin Clan have long had common foes, which is the strongest bond two clans can possess. If, however, you encounter the summoner of the treacherous Tapir Clan, show them no mercy, and if you discover the lost Condor Clan summoning scroll, cast it into a volcano or drown it in the ocean. For the rest, alliances are as trees, rising and falling in the blink of an eye. When it is necessary, you will be briefed."
Kei nodded. "Can I refuse missions you give to me?"
"If you have compelling reason," Pantsā replied. "Consider it as if you were a mercenary—you are never forced to accept missions, but refuse too many times, or show disloyalty, and your employer will sever ties.
"Know also that if ever you betray the Pangolin Clan, you will be brought here to stand trial no matter how you may try to hide. Do not think us powerless merely because we cannot manifest on the Human Path on our own."
"What if I ever want to withdraw from the contract?" Kei asked.
"You and I may both end the contract at any time, without cost. But know that such a thing is not done lightly. You will never be able to serve as the Pangolin Summoner again, and your actions will be made known to the many clans of the Seventh Path."
"Now, if you have no more questions, I will have your decision."
This was it, then. The moment of truth. Kei was uneasy about entering into a second mercenary arrangement in addition to the one her team had with Jiraiya. And having to face enemy summoners in battle was a frightening thought if any of them were like him. And the idea of having to negotiate for her summons, to have to persuade people—people with alien cultural backgrounds, and mentalities and body language even more mysterious than that of other human beings—was nearly paralysing.
But this was what she had come here for. It had been her decision to seek the summoning scroll. Not Hazō's. Not Mari-sensei's. This was something Mori Keiko chose on her own, a corner of her life in which she could plant a flag and say, "This is mine", even more so than the bloodline she had been given by her family. Perhaps, a tiny voice inside her whispered, with enough such flags she might be able to reclaim the self she did not remember losing.
"I accept the contract," she said, feeling a mixture of relief and apprehension as soon as the words were out. She could feel them falling away like a heavy stone into a pool of water, sinking too deep to ever take back and sending countless ripples into the future.
-o-
Pandā had a much simpler attitude to the outcome of the trial.
"I can't believe it, I really can't! I get to be a summon! Me! The first summon since Ui's Six Scourges! Oh, this is wonderful! Thank you so much for not dying!"
"You know," Kei commented wryly, "no one has ever said that to me before."
She turned to examine the bouncing Pandā. "And you are satisfied with our pact?"
"Of course I am! I get to have my questions about humans answered, and be shown human things, and places, and people, and you get me to fight for you! Well, sort of. I mean, I'm an anthropologist, not a warrior. But I'm still a proud member of the Pangolin Clan, with the greatest weapons and armour on the Seventh Path, and the finest senses. And I'm sure once I've been through basic training, I'll be a complete badass!"
On reflection, Kei thought, perhaps it might have been wiser to seek out a proper fighter as her first summon. But Pandā was so cute when he was excited, and she found herself unable to deny him the happiness he seemed to derive from being her "military liaison".
"So, shall I send you back to the Human Path? It's a shame to let you go, I mean, I still have a thousand questions, but things seemed kinda serious where you were, and I don't want you to get hit with field punishment on my account."
"Actually," Kei said, "could you perhaps do me a small favour?"
-o-
This time, Kei managed to stay on her feet, which was essential since it appeared that the entirety of the village had gathered to observe her return, with the elders in front-row seats (well, cushions). She felt herself frozen in place by stage fright, but fortunately, she was only there as scenery for this part.
Pandā walked in front of the crowd. "Let it be known," he said with as much gravity as the energetic patter of his voice could provide, "that the human Mori Keiko is hereby accepted as the successor of Ui Isas and the Summoner of the Pangolin Clan. Those who aid her will earn the Pangolin Clan's favour, and those who set themselves against her will suffer the Pangolin Clan's fury."
There was a pause as Pandā tapped his underbelly with one of his claws. Kei was suddenly afraid that he had forgotten his lines.
But after a couple of seconds, Pandā turned to face her. "The Pangolin Clan commands you, Mori Keiko, to leave this place and take the summoning scroll to where it may be used to battle against the clan's enemies, for the honour of our ancestors and the glory of the Pantokrator."
And then he vanished with a loud crack and a puff of smoke.
It took those present a moment to realise that the noise was not in fact an effect of the Summoning Technique, but Inoue Rika's staff of office failing to withstand the white-knuckled pressure being put on its middle.
Takahashi-sensei's eyes narrowed slightly in what Kei suspected might be the closest her summoning master ever came to a smirk.
Aida Rin's face took on a sickly green colour as she leaned more heavily on her walking stick.
Yoshida and Kannagi exchanged meaningful glances, Kannagi's fingers twitching as if he were working an abacus.
Azai Rindō was the only one focused not on Kei but on the crowd behind him, watching for their reaction.
And as Kei's gaze swept over Azai Shūsuke, he returned it with eyes that were not vacant at all, and gave her a beatific smile.
-o-
Keiko has gained 20 XP.
Keiko has gained 1 Thousand Yard Stare point.
Keiko has gained 1 Summon Contract: Pangolin.
Keiko has gained 1 Summon Pact: Pandā the Anthropologist (level 1).
Keiko has spent 50 XP to learn Summoning Technique 1.
-o-
Summoning Technique rules:
The Summoning Technique demands Intelligence (x1), Resolve (x3) and Control (x2).
A summoner may summon individual beings with whom they have a summon pact. In order to form a summon pact, the summoner must negotiate with the prospective summon. If the prospective summon is willing, they will present their conditions, which typically require the regular provision of certain goods and/or services. If the summoner agrees, a summon pact is created.
The summoner may have a number of pacts equal to their Summoning Technique level. They may end old pacts in order to create new ones.
Each summon has a level proportional to their amount of XP. A summoner may only summon beings with a level equal to or lower than their Summoning Technique level. The chakra cost for doing so is equal to the summon's level x10.
You may summon one summon at a time. The summon will obey reasonable orders, and remain summoned for approximately six hours. If the summon takes moderate damage or higher, it will disappear from the human world. This process is traumatic, and a summon will not be willing to respond to another use of the Summoning Technique until it has recovered. Summons do not gain XP.
On rare occasions, a summon will be unavailable due to events in the Summon Realm. Under these circumstances, the contract stipulates that it will make a good-faith effort to find an appropriate replacement. If it is unable to do so quickly, the summoning will fail.
If a summon has a grievance against the summoner, it may also choose to refuse the summoning. If the grievance is not addressed to its satisfaction, and it refuses three consecutive summonings, the pact with it is broken.
When a summon is present, the summoner may request to be reverse-summoned into the Summon Realm, and to be sent back when their business there is complete. There is no limit on how long a summoner may stay in the Summon Realm, though the provision of food and shelter is not part of the summon contract, and must be negotiated separately. When the summoner is sent back, they will return to the place from which they were originally reverse-summoned.
The most up-to-date version of these rules can be found in the player rules document.
-o-
Further updates and voting will proceed as normal.
Keiko spent about an hour in the Summon Realm.
Kagome is with her, ready for the tiniest sign of betrayal from the villagers. Inoue and Noburi are in the cave recovering from their wounds. Hazō and Akane, unless otherwise specified, are also in the cave, watching over the wounded.
If you so choose, you can retroactively vote for Hazō to have come to the shrine to wait for Keiko's return. He can also have suggested the same course of action to Akane. You are unable to plan Keiko's immediate actions for her, but if Hazō is at the shrine, he can give her suggestions as normal (in full view of the elders).
What do you do?
Voting closes on Saturday the 25th, 9 am Pacific Standard Time.
The release of tension when Kei and Kagome walked into the cave was almost a physical force.
"You're back!" Akane said, beaming. "We were so worried! Tell us what happened!"
Kei settled down by the hibachi and gave Hazō a grateful nod in exchange for a skewer of roasted chicken. She nibbled delicately on it while thinking how to answer the question.
"Stinkers sent her into a whole corridor full of seals," Kagome grumbled. "Came out a couple hours later all banged up."
"Hang on, Kagome," Inoue-sensei said, pulling herself out of the mouse hole so that she could see who she was talking to. She winced, pressing a hand against the stitches in her belly. Noburi hurried over to fuss at her, but she waved him off and propped herself up against the side of the mouse hole.
"Start from the beginning," Inoue-sensei said, once she was settled. "You left here with Takahashi. Then what?"
Kei gulped down the bit of chicken she was eating so that she could offer the report that she had been composing in her head.
"There were two guards, but Takahashi-sensei talked our way past them," she said. "He gave me the key to the shrine, I went in and found a fake scroll sitting on a pedestal. There was a passage under the pedestal that led down to an underground labyrinth. There were a large number of traps, but I eventually found the real scroll. I attempted to open it, but it was locked shut by a seal. I brought it back aboveground to find the village waiting—villagers and council both. Kagome managed to unlock the scroll and I signed it before anyone could stop me. This"—she waved the giant scroll vaguely—"is the Pangolin contract. Pandā is their first-contact representative; he appeared when I signed it and took me back to the Summon Realm. There I met with the Boss Pangolin, Pantsā of the Adamant Scales. He found me marginally acceptable as a summoner and said that I was free to negotiate with the individual pangolins in order to be able to summon them. Pandā then brought me back. In front of the council and the village he ordered me to take the scroll and leave, to go forth and fight the enemies of the pangolins. First among those enemies are the Tapirs and the Condors. Fortunately, the Toad and Pangolin clans are allies, so we will not have any issues working with Jiraiya."
Inoue-sensei cocked an eyebrow. "Why do I have the feeling that there are a good few things being left out?" she said with a sardonic smile. "Keiko, you are amazing. Congratulations kid; you done good."
Kei blinked. "I did?" she said. "But...it wasn't actually...I mean, I offended Pantsā when I used my bloodline. And I did not think to have Pandā specifically say that the rest of you should go along when I leave. I realized that the moment he vanished. And I allowed myself to get hit by the traps, so I will slow us down while we travel, and—"
Inoue-sensei's laugh was broken in half by pained coughing. "Ouch," she said. "Oh, man, don't make me laugh, that stings." She gestured at her prone and injured form. "I think I'm going to be slowing us just a wee bit more than you are, kiddo. Seriously, Keiko—you did a fantastic job. Be proud of yourself."
The knot in Kei's stomach loosened a little. There had been so many mistakes but...maybe there had been some successes as well? And Mari-sensei seemed pleased, so maybe the successes really had outweighed the mistakes. Of course, Mari-sensei was always kind, so maybe this was just her offering a generous interpretation. The funny, beautiful, confident jōnin wouldn't have offended Pantsā and nearly gotten herself killed.
"So, this Pandā," Inoue-sensei said. "What's he like? Can we meet him, or is it too soon to summon him again?"
Kei thought about that. Pandā hadn't said anything about when he could be summoned or how often, and he'd seemed very excited about meeting humans and coming to the Human Path. The team would need to meet him sooner rather than later, and this was a relatively peaceful moment....
"I think it should be fine, sensei," Kei said. She sliced the edge of her thumb with a kunai and touched her hand to the floor. "Pandā!" she called. "I choose you to summon!"
There was a bampf of purple smoke and the pangolin appeared. He stood hunched over, claws tapping together as he peered around nearsightedly. "Ooh! Hi, Keiko!" he said, then halted. "Oh...sorry. First names are a thing here, aren't they? You keep them secret because they give power over you, I think? Oh dear." He looked at the ground in embarrassment. "I'm terribly sorry. My mother would yank my tail for being so thoughtless."
Keiko smiled; it was oddly nice to be in a position to offer kind support for another's blunder. "It is all right, Pandā," she said. "You should feel free to call me Keiko. We do not actually keep our names secret, it is just that first names are considered intimate. They are only used between close friends or family members."
Pandā's head came up. "Ooh, or mates, right? Do humans really mate face-to-face? That seems so awkward! How do you—" He frowned, peering closer at Keiko, then shuffled over so he could get closer. "Are you all right?" he asked. "You look funny."
Keiko's blush was about to melt the stone floor beneath her feet.
"She's just a little embarrassed," Inoue-sensei said, amused. Pandā eeped and spun around to face her. The jōnin smiled and waved. "It's an honor to meet you, sir. Please excuse me if I don't get up, but I'm a bit stabbed at the moment."
"Oh, no, please don't think anything of it!" Pandā said. He looked around the cave. "Ooh, you must all be Kei—er, Mori—er, Keiko's clan!"
There were some vague sounds of agreement-with-reservations, but no one actually said anything. Hazō had his hand on Kagome's arm; the sealmaster slowly slid the wooden ring box back into his pocket, but didn't fully relax.
"I'm Inoue Mari, Keiko's sensei," the jōnin said. "Let me introduce you to—"
"No, wait!" Pandā interrupted her, tapping his tail on the ground excitedly. "This is my chance for my anthropologist training to shine for the first time in my life! I can totally do this!
"You're the clan matriarch," he said, pointing a claw at Inoue-sensei. "From your muscles and your bearing, you're clearly terribly strong. And looking at how old your kids are, you started very young. You must be very fertile."
Inoue-sensei blinked. A complex series of emotions flickered quickly across her face, none of them positive.
"Oh, please don't look so uneasy, sir," Pandā said to Kagome. "I know I'm terribly masculine, but I wouldn't dream of trying to usurp your place as her consort. Besides, it's not like I can't smell the smouldering sexual tension between the two of you."
Kagome opened his mouth. Then he closed it again.
"And this must be your heir, the first daughter," Pandā moved on to Akane. "She is very strong, with excellent child-bearing hips, and I'm sure she will make a good successor together with her very virile partner," he indicated Hazō.
Hazō and Akane looked at each other, then quickly away.
"It all makes sense now," Pandā said happily. "Keiko, you are the second daughter. I can see the deep love you have for your mother, and you resent your sister as competition for her attention and leadership of the clan. You wanted the summoner's power so that you could go off and start a new family with your mate," he pointed to Noburi. "I know he's not as manly as your sister's partner, which I suppose is another reason you might be jealous of her, but I can tell he's deeply devoted to you and will make a great provider for all the children I'm sure you'll have together.
"Although," he said more quietly to Noburi, "I understand that humans are monogamous, so you should really hurry up and decide between Keiko and this other female I'm smelling on you."
"Pandā," Kei said very carefully, "I think you should come back another time."
Before Pandā could reply, she made the dismissal hand seal, and he disappeared.
"Well," Inoue-sensei said into the deadly silence, "that was an entertaining little series of misunderstandings. I've just remembered that I am completely exhausted after being stabbed, so I'm going to go back into the mouse hole and get some sleep." One hand pressed to her belly, she crawled back into the shelter and out of sight.
"Yeah," Noburi nodded as she disappeared. "No offence, Keiko, but that new summon of yours says some crazy things." He paused. "I'm going to go do stuff. See you later."
"I also have miscellaneous matters to attend to," Kei announced, and followed Noburi out, making sure to head in a completely different direction.
Kagome and Hazō simultaneously muttered something about needing to set up more traps and write more lists respectively, and one ran outside while the other retreated into the depths of the cave.
Akane stood alone.
"Well, I thought it was hilarious," she said to nobody in particular.
o-o-o-o
Takahashi-sensei's elegantly-clad daughter led them into the inner sanctum, got them settled on cushions, and vanished with a murmured, "Father will be here momentarily."
In truth, it was less than two minutes before Takahashi-sensei glided in and slid the door shut behind them. He strode to the dais and settled easily on his cushion, arranging his hakama neatly around him. No sooner had he done so than Minori was back with a tea tray. She set it gracefully in front of her father, bowed to him, bowed to the genin, and vanished silently. Without speaking, Takahashi made tea.
Over the weeks of her training Kei had seen the Isan tea ceremony done nearly every day. It had been performed for her alone, for her and Minori, and for her and various combinations of the Takahashi clan. She still was not completely fluent in it, but she had learned to read the basic elements. Usually Minori was the one who actually handled the tea implements; the fact that Takahashi-sensei was performing the ceremony himself, and that the only people present were himself and the three genin...she found herself sweating, hoping desperately that Hazō and Ishihara would not humiliate her in front of her teacher.
Her eyes grew wider as the ceremony progressed.
Takahashi-sensei began by washing the tea bowls with hot water from the kettle, afterwards emptying the water into a pot intended for that purpose. He did not turn the cups towards his guests as he dried them. There is trust and respect between us; you do not need to examine the cup for residue or poison.
He dried the first cup with a bleached-white napkin, then swiftly folded the napkin into a circle and lay it to his left, on the imaginary line connecting himself with Ishihara. The sun, provider of warmth to all those around it, it meant...but also lack of wisdom, bringer of harm through carelessness, depending on the intent of the host. He set her cup at the sun's seven o'clock position, indicating that the intent was mostly the positive with some hints of the negative.
The second napkin was laid between himself and Hazō, folded into the stylized shape of a tapir. Loyal, strong, protector, but also young, not too bright, in need of a minder. The cup was placed at nine o'clock.
Kei held her breath as her own cup was dried. Takahashi-sensei's fingers danced through the motions of origami with speed born from a lifetime of practice, forming the napkin into a mountain lily. The mountain lily grows even in the tiniest crack on the sheerest cliff face. Your strength is that of the lily: determined, resilient, indomitable...but it also meant fragile, lacking in physical strength, uncertain, precarious. He paused, looking up and meeting her eyes for just a moment. The blood drained from her face as he nodded very slightly; his eyes flicked down, drawing her own gaze to the cup as he set it down.
A finger's width to the right of twelve o'clock.
He met her eyes again; the tiniest of scraping sounds echoed in the silent room as he slid the cup to the perfect twelve o'clock. Time passes, character becomes.
Kei swallowed as the room seemed to spin around her from shock. The world went blurry for just a moment, and when she came back to herself she was holding a cup of tea.
Takahashi-sensei raised his cup in salute and all four of them drank together. The tea was aromatic, a base of black with hibiscus, anise, and something spicy. Strong, not bitter, a touch of sweet and a taste of tart. Complex, good and bad, worthy of analysis.
Takahashi-sensei lowered the cup, cradling it casually in his hands. "You wished to speak to me?" he asked.
Kei struggled with words for a moment; the silence dragged on just a bit too long. It would have become painful had Takahashi-sensei not sipped his tea, creating a natural pause.
"Yes, sensei," Kei said, finally getting her tongue sorted out. "I wanted to thank you for the training you have given me, and the support you have given all of us. As you know, we will be leaving soon."
Takahashi-sensei nodded. "So I'd gathered," he said. "When a summon tells you it is time to go, it is time to go." He lifted his tea to his lips for a moment. "It is with great sorrow that I hear you are required to take the scroll with you. Since the founding of the village it has been our treasure, the center around which our village has turned. Things will change enormously now. We shall need to find a new center."
Kei nodded, fighting the urge to clear her throat nervously. "Before we leave, I wanted to tell you something that I learned in the Summon Realm: the Pangolin clan are enemies of the Tapir clan. Pandā saw the tapirs when I summoned him at the shrine and did not react, so I suspect they don't have a specific issue with non-sapient tapirs, but I felt it was still important to mention."
"Thank you," Takahashi-sensei said. "That could be important, yes."
Kei looked at Hazō and gave him a small nod. A feeling of relief went through her; she no longer needed to take the lead in the conversation. She would speak only to correct errors in plans, or if asked. (Ishihara, of course, had been counseled very carefully to not speak at all.)
"We wanted to ask you one thing before we leave, sir," Hazō said. "How will we be viewed? We aren't taking the scroll of our own choice, yet we are still concerned that people might blame us for it. I wouldn't want to make new enemies."
Takahashi-sensei thought for a moment. "I think you do not need to worry about acquiring new enemies," he said, the tiniest bit of stress on 'new' making the intent clear. "Change is upsetting and frightening, but most of our people are reasonable. Reasonable enough, at least."
"I see," Hazō said, thinking that through. "I'm glad to hear it. Wes have very much enjoyed our time here. I wish there were something we could do for the village to express our gratitude."
Takahashi-sensei sipped thoughtfully from his cup. "That's very kind of you," he said. "It's not necessary, however. Things will be very busy here for a time, probably best not to add the excitement of a gift on top of that. At least, not for now."
Hazō's eyelid flickered in surprise but he gave no other sign. "Of course," he said. He took a sip of the tea. "I suspect the pangolins will keep us traveling for some time."
Takahashi-sensei nodded. "I would expect so. A full turn of the seasons before you would even have a moment, most likely."
Hazō nodded. "It seems likely, yes." He smiled. "And, as if the pangolins weren't enough, we also need to get in touch with a contact of ours. He's a high official in Leaf, the most powerful ninja village on the continent, and we occasionally work with him. He seems to trust us, at least somewhat, so I'm sure he'll have a great deal for us to do."
The marble of which Takahashi-sensei's face was made became granite. "I'm sure he will," he said with a polite nod. "Such a man must be busy all the time. I'm sure he never gets out of his office." The air became heavy with something that was not quite killing intent but that hinted at the possibility.
"That's definitely true," Hazō said hurriedly. "Very busy. Probably sleeps in his office all the time. I'm sure he never has a chance to travel."
The granite softened slightly and Takahashi-sensei nodded. "I hope he finds interesting and lucrative employment for you."
o-o-o-o
It had taken them longer to get to the fishing hole this time; Noburi was mobile on his crutches, but still needed to be careful. A nicked artery was no joke, and he couldn't afford to tear it.
Still, they were here now. Noburi had brushed the snow off a fallen log and spread a blanket on it for them to sit on. He'd also brought along a canteen of still-hot tea (after verifying that it was only the tea ceremony that was fraught with hidden meaning, not the tea itself) and they were sharing it between them. They each wrapped their hands around their tea mugs and huddled into their cloaks; the day was windless and relatively warm, but it was still winter.
"Yuno...," Noburi said. He bit his lip, gathering himself for the conversation that he knew he needed to have, no matter how much he would prefer to have his teeth extracted. "We need to talk."
"Yes?" she said, looking at him with soulful eyes.
Agh. This just didn't get easier. "Yuno...there's something you need to know about our betrothal," Noburi said. He took a deep breath. "It was a political move on the part of Elder Kannagi."
Yuno nodded. "Yes, of course," she said. "All marriages have political overtones. By allowing me to follow my heart and marry you he was foreclosing the option to have me marry into another clan."
"Um, no," Noburi said, fiddling with his mug. "That's...not what I meant. I meant...our marriage was never intended to happen."
Yuno blinked. "What?"
"It was a ploy," Noburi said. "The idea was that you and I would be betrothed, so Kannagi could show the other elders that my team and I were tied to the village by blood. It gave him political clout and helped him get elected to the council. He was supposed to cancel the betrothal, though, so that he didn't look too radical. He wanted to keep ties open with the conservatives, and he couldn't do that if he was allowing an outlander to marry one of his children."
Water was brimming into Yuno's eyes. "But...."
"Yuno, I'm sorry," Noburi said. "I do like you, but I'm not ready for marriage. It was never supposed to go this far." He swallowed. "Look, I know you're miserable here. Me and my team, the pangolins ordered us to leave. We'll be going in a couple of days, once our sensei is a little more healed. You could come with us, if you wanted...?"
Yuno scrubbed furiously at her eyes. "'Come with you'," she snapped. "You cast me aside, and then you want me to go with you? For what, pity? Because you feel sorry for me?"
"No!" Noburi said. "I like you, really. I think you're smart, and funny, and really scarily good with that axe, and my team likes you, so I thought—"
"You thought?!" Yuno snarled, jumping to her feet. "You thought? What did you think, that it would be fun to have me follow along at your heels like a puppy, just in case you decided it would be fun to have a girl later?" Her voice rose as she spoke; by the last word she was looming over him with her fists clenched at her sides.
"No, that's not it!" Noburi said, leaning away in fear. "I just—I...I didn't want you to be unhappy! You said it yourself, the people here fear you and distrust you, even though you've done nothing to deserve it. You should—"
"I should get as far from you as I can, before I do something to earn the reputation the village has given me!" Yuno snarled. "I'd rather be feared and distrusted than pitied! Get away from me, Endo Daisuke! I never want to see you again!" She turned and leaped away at full chakra-boosted ninja speed, leaving Noburi staring dumbly after her.
For long seconds there was no sound except the river.
"Well," Noburi said to himself with a sigh. "That went well." XP AWARD: 3
Tomorrow morning everyone is going to Transform into a non-injured form long enough to get back to your base on the coast where they can heal up properly. You're staying in the open-air fort for tonight and will leave at first light.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, 29, 2016, at 12pm London time.
Also, all the props to @Velorien, who wrote the scene with Pandā and was kind enough to let me use it.
"Why hast thou summoned me, puny mortal?" the pangolin summon demanded in a booming voice, gazing balefully into Kei's eyes as it flexed its claws in a gesture of intimidation.
Kei snorted in a very unladylike fashion. "You can stop standing on tiptoe now, Pandā. You are still shorter than me."
"Oh," Pandā said, sinking back into his habitual semi-upright slouch. "Well, fine, take all the showmanship out of being a summon, why don't you?"
"Pandā," Kei decided not to respond to that one, "would it be realistic for me to find and make a pact with a stealth specialist who can detect pursuit and conceal tracks within the next twenty-four hours?"
"Twenty-four?" Pandā did not have eyebrows, but Kei was certain that he would be frowning if he had. "That seems pretty arbitrary. What's happening in twenty-four hours?"
"Inoue-sensei wants us to leave this time tomorrow at the latest."
"This time tomorrow…" Pandā repeated. "Oh, right. Humans measure time in twenty-four-hour days. Oh, and sixty—seventy? Eighty? No, I think it's probably sixty—minutes in an hour. And then there are the months, which are some weird length as well. Man, you guys sure are good at making stuff complicated for yourselves.
"Well, anyway, no chance. Between tracking down someone with the right skills, and making sure you're strong enough to summon them, and making sure they're available, and the negotiations? I wouldn't risk it if you're on such a short time limit. I'm assuming you don't want to get, uh, reverse-reverse-summoned back here way after everyone in your team is gone.
"But forget that. Was everyone impressed with my amazing analysis last time? Are they all in awe of Pandā the Summoner Liaison? I just finished painting my new insignia over my burrow, by the way. Hey, I don't still have red paint on my back, do I?"
"You were incorrect in every particular," Kei said emphatically. "None of us are related by ties of blood or romance."
"Huh," Pandā said. "Are you sure? Because—"
"Yes, I am," Kei snapped. "Kurosawa Hazō and Wakahisa Noburi—the two boys—and I were ninja from the village of Hidden Mist, and we only know each other because we were on a mission together. After it ended in betrayal and disaster, Inoue Mari, the woman you called our matriarch, saved our lives and guided our escape, despite merely being a fellow Mist-nin who did not owe us anything. Later, it became necessary to permit Ishihara Akane, the older girl, to join us. Finally, we persuaded Kagome, the adult man, to join us for the purpose of safety in numbers and in order to have access to his skills."
"Huh," Pandā said again. "That's embarrassing. I usually have pretty good intuition about this stuff. Anything else I should know so I don't get sap all over my snout?"
Kei considered this.
"Be extremely respectful towards Inoue-sensei. She is a very special person, and if you do anything to offend or harm her, I will tie your snout shut with your tongue and set it on fire." Keiko was not skilled with intimidation, but she knew a good threat when she heard one.
"Hazō spends an extraordinary amount of his time observing and planning. He rarely makes errors, though they tend towards the catastrophic end of the scale when he does, and as a rule his advice is worth listening to. Do not ask him about his family, as thinking about his mother's present situation upsets him.
"Noburi's judgement is sometimes questionable, but he has an enviable understanding of interpersonal interaction. If you are unable to understand some element of human communication, he is a better person to ask than I, although naturally Inoue-sensei is superior to all of us. He has recently been forced to end a romantic relationship, and I understand under such circumstances one is meant to avoid any reminders of same.
"Ishihara is delusional when it comes to the realities of shinobi life. She is not deceitful, in fact to a fault, so you may trust any factual statements she makes, but her interpretations are often flawed and to be taken with a significant amount of salt. Which is a metaphor indicating scepticism. She is also fanatically devoted to an obscure philosophy she calls 'the Spirit of Youth', which again is poorly adapted to life in the shinobi world and not something you should seek to emulate.
"Finally, Kagome suffers from extreme paranoia and you must take care never to imply in his presence that you are a threat to him or the rest of the group, even in jest. He is also a sealcrafting expert, and mention of sealcrafting experimentation is a trigger for his paranoia unless very carefully phrased, though this is unlikely to be relevant to you. He is Hazō's mentor in the art."
Pandā scratched behind his ear thoughtfully. "That's a lot to take in. Don't suppose you have any clay tablets so I can make notes?"
"I fear not. Humans normally use parchment or paper."
"Well, whatever. The Elephant Clan's got nothing on me when it comes to memory anyway. You sure about that Noburi guy, though? 'cause the vibe I'm getting off him…"
"As I say, he is upset because he cannot be with the one he loves. If I were in his place…" Kei hesitated. "If I were in his place…"
She made a decision. It was a decision that filled her with anxiety, but her anxiety intensity scale had recently been recalibrated by a giant murderous warrior pangolin. "Wait here, Pandā. Alert us if any unfamiliar ninja approach."
"You can count on me!" Pandā gave a bounce. "Yay, my first mission as a summon! I'm going to be the best lookout you've ever had!"
-o-
"Ishihara, you're back!" Noburi gave her his best attempt at a friendly nod. "Where have you been?"
Her smile was as genuine as his wasn't. "I was just visiting Yuno."
"You what." Noburi's mouth fell slightly open. Of all the members of their little squad, Akane was the last one he'd figured to be suicidal.
"We spent some time hanging out by the river," Ishihara explained, "eating dango and sharing the last of my chocolate supply, and talking about how awful boys are and promising we'd stay friends no matter what. It would have been unyouthful to do any less for a friend in need."
Ishihara's smile faded. "And don't take this the wrong way, Wakahisa, but you're a complete idiot. All that diplomacy training from Inoue-sensei and you had to break up with her in the most insensitive way in recorded history? Do you realise how much she's hurting right now?"
A sharp kunai went through Noburi's heart, its serrated edges twisting, leaving the hole gaping open. He remembered Yuno's face. The way she'd spoken to him, at the end. The raw pain in her voice. "I'm… I'm sorry," he stammered. "I didn't mean…"
Ishihara sighed. "Sorry. I know blaming you isn't going to make anything better right now. Just… she deserves a better life than this, you know?"
Noburi nodded mutely.
"I wish we'd spent more time here," Ishihara added. "I could have taught her how to embrace the Spirit of Youth, and let it give her strength to overcome this kind of suffering. And I wish I could do more to help you. I've never been good at this sort of thing."
Moving unexpectedly close, she opened her arms and gave him a hug. Noburi sank into it.
"It's going to be OK, Wakahisa," she said softly after a few seconds. "Sooner or later, one way or another. As long as your heart stays youthful, it will heal any wound in time. I believe in you. And I believe in Yuno too. She's endured so much, and it's made her strong. Both of you are going to be all right."
Then she stepped back. "I can see Mori coming. She probably wants to talk to you, which is my cue to get back to packing. I'm always here for you if you need me, OK?"
"Thanks, Ishihara," Noburi said quietly.
"Call me Akane," she replied, the smile back on her face. "I think it's about time, don't you?"
-o-
"Noburi," Keiko said. "May I sit next to you?"
Noburi nodded, wondering why she was here. It wasn't like Keiko avoided him or anything, but she didn't exactly make a habit of starting conversations with him either—or with anyone, really—unless she had something practical to talk about. And they'd had their group briefing already.
"What's up, Keiko?"
"I was wondering…" Keiko said in an uncertain, stilted voice. "How are you feeling?"
Noburi gave her a shocked look, then realised he was being rude and quickly wiped it off his face. "Not great. I mean, break-ups suck. It's one of those fundamental laws of the universe.
"Maybe Kagome and Hazō can make some kind of seal that exploits it," he said in the world's most feeble attempt at a joke.
Keiko nodded with her usual serious expression. Noburi privately wondered if she'd ever broken up with anyone, and if so, what gender they had been. But it wasn't something he felt he could ask, and in any case part of him suspected he'd rather not know.
"If there is anything I can do to make you feel better, please tell me," Keiko said.
She looked at him, then down at the ground. "I am… unlikely to discover a suitable means of assistance on my own," she admitted awkwardly.
Noburi blinked at the rare display of vulnerability. He couldn't begin to guess what it meant.
It did make him realise something, though. He and Yuno had got closer over their weeks of dating, spending time alone together, talking about village traditions and other random crap, and, however tentatively, about a few things that mattered too. But he'd never tried to get to know Keiko in the same way. She made his heart beat faster when he looked at her, but when it came down to it, after all this time he still didn't know the first thing about what made her tick. Maybe he should start learning.
Or maybe he'd just end up hurting her the way he'd hurt Yuno. Agh. Why couldn't anything in life ever be simple?
Keiko was looking at him again as she waited for his response, her expression one of concern.
"I apologise," she finally said. "I should not be requesting that you do my thinking for me. I am probably distracting you from utilising your own coping mechanisms. I will leave now."
"Wait, Keiko," Noburi called out as she began to move away. "I don't know if there's anything you can do, and there probably isn't. But thanks for caring. That does make me feel better."
It might have been the first time in Noburi's life that Keiko smiled at him. Then she left, moving so fast she had to have been burning chakra.
-o-
"Careful, Noburi," Inoue-sensei admonished. "A single root-induced faceplant and your disguise pops, and then we lose time while you pull together the concentration for another one. That's not a thing we want in the middle of a forest full of chakra monsters. Plus for all we know there we're being chased by an army of disaffected villagers – the Aida spring to mind, now they've lost their raison d'être. 'Oh, it's so sad. The summoner and her friends must have been killed and eaten by wild animals, leaving no remains. Lucky the animals happened to spit out the scroll unharmed. I guess we'd better put it back in the shrine until the next heir.'"
The team screeched to a stop as a familiar figure emerged from the treeline behind them. A quick scan of the area established that if there were other ninja waiting to attack, they were skilfully concealed.
"Takahashi… Kenji?" Inoue-sensei recalled.
"Yes," the man said. "And I suppose I don't know your real name. But that doesn't matter."
He turned to Kei. "Please, you have to come back. We need you."
"I apologise," Kei said. "But we have a mission handed down by the Pangolin Clan. We cannot allow ourselves to be delayed."
"You don't understand," Kenji replied, his eyes wide. "You've taken away the village's reason for existence, and now you're leaving, just like that. Do you have any idea what will happen to us? Already, they're talking about restructuring the Elders' Council. Everything is going to be plunged into chaos, I just know it. You are our messiah, Mori Keiko, and Father's star pupil. I know he'd ask you for the same thing if he were here. We need you."
"Are you here alone?" Inoue-sensei asked carefully.
"Yes," Kenji nodded fervently. "I'm not here to threaten you. In fact, there are probably a lot of people who would be unhappy with me if they knew what I was doing. But there are also many, especially in the younger generation, who need to know what comes next, now that the prophecy has been fulfilled. If you leave now, if Ui's heir abandons us, then what has all this been for? Why have we spent hundreds of years guarding this scroll if its destined wielder is a stranger who wants nothing to do with us? Please. You have to come back."
Kei felt a wave of guilt wash over her, leaving behind a clinging sense of taint. It was true that, from the beginning, they had treated Isan as a means to an end, a challenge to be overcome in order to earn a reward. In the process, they had completely altered the course of the village's politics, cast down multiple major clans, and inflicted great suffering on at least one innocent. True, many of these things were not directly their fault—they had not asked Kannagi to use his adopted granddaughter as if she were a hollow shōgi piece—but their actions had been the catalyst for every change, and their plans had been laid with benefit to themselves as the exclusive goal.
Kei still believed, on an intellectual level, that taking the scroll would lead to a brighter future for the village. Hiding away from the world in order to protect yourself could never be an effective strategy, because there was nothing you could do to avoid being hurt in a world like this. At least if the village took the initiative in reaching out, it would have some measure of control over the outcome, for good or ill. And besides, their single-minded devotion, their belief in a future that even they seemed to know deep down could never be realised… to Kei it could be nothing but tragic.
Kei knew all of this to be true, and yet…
"Inoue-sensei," she said, "I would like to speak with this man in private."
Inoue-sensei studied Kenji. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Inoue-sensei," Hazō spoke up suddenly, "why don't you move out of hearing range but have the Substitution Technique ready? You've got taijutsu master reflexes—I'm sure you can kill him before he can do anything hostile."
"Very well," Inoue-sensei said reluctantly after a second. "But the rest of you be ready to Substitute in as well." She gave Hazō a sideways glance, indicating that she understood his plan. They'd use her for the intimidation factor, but Hazō would be the one to swap in if necessary, with his strong taijutsu skills and lack of injuries.
-o-
"Thank you, Mori Keiko," Takahashi Kenji said to her. Looking closely, Kei could see he had his father's grey eyes, and a certain familiar determination in the set of his cheekbones. Her debt to Takahashi-sensei felt like a debt to him as well.
"Will you come back with me?" he asked.
Kei breathed in slowly, then out again. She could do this. She had to do this. No matter how difficult it was to find the words. This had been her mission, her quest, and it was her responsibility to give it its proper ending.
"I am not who you believe I am," she said. "Being a summoner gives me power. It gives me a… a place in the world, one I would never otherwise have. It places me within a lineage of great shinobi, and compels me to prove myself worthy to be counted among them.
"But what it does not give me is wisdom. I am no politician. I am no sage or divinely-guided champion. Look at me, Takahashi Kenji. I am a thirteen-year-old girl."
Kei stopped to think, deliberately not looking at Kenji's face because she did not want to know what was written there.
"I know that I have taken something precious from all of you. You may believe that was my destiny as Ui's heir in some mystical sense. You may believe that I am a thief who exploited your village's sacred traditions to my own selfish ends. Maybe both. I know which I believe.
"I have taken something precious from you, but I cannot give you what you expect, what you deserve, in return. I am simply not that person. Do you understand?"
Slowly, very slowly, Kenji nodded. "You're saying that our fate only takes us this far. That with the prophecy fulfilled, we are on our own. You were our purpose, but not the other way round."
"I will return," Keiko said, surprising even herself. "I will not always be a thirteen-year-old girl.
"You may take this as a new prophecy if you so wish. I will return, and as the Pangolin Summoner, I will repay Ui's debt to Isan, and my own as well."
There was a profound silence, as if her words were sinking deep into the world, into an oyster's heart where they would either one day form a pearl or be expelled like so much dust.
Kenji gave a low bow.
"I will carry your words to those who seek hope in you, Summoner."
-o-
The journey was finally over. They'd managed to evade an assortment of monsters, they'd successfully hidden from any additional pursuit, and now they would crest the last hill and behold their old base from on high. Inoue-sensei had insisted that they make a cautious approach – just in case. And she may have been right.
"Hey, kids," Inoue-sensei said as she looked down. "Which one of you left the lights on when we went out?"
-o-
You have received 17 XP.
What do you do?
Voting closes on Saturday the 2nd, 9 am Pacific Standard Time.
"Oh no," Inoue-sensei said, her voice completely deadpan. "Someone has taken over our abandoned fort that we have no need for. Whatever shall we do? Surely we must hurry down there and massacre them all."
"Can't we just leave?" Kagome-sensei asked, confused. "You said we don't need the fort, and I thought you were trying to kill people less...?"
Inoue-sensei laughed. "Sounds like a good plan," she said, sparing his feelings by not pointing out the joke. "Come on. And be careful—no reason to leave a trail for them."
Moments later, the group was in the trees and moving away quickly.
Inoue-sensei kept them on the move for an hour; Kagome-sensei insisted on going another hour after that because "let's not make it easy for the stinkers."
They eventually stopped in a small dell not too far from a stream. The ground was damp, but the dell was hard to see into from any direction.
"Hazō, give us a platform under the shelter," Inoue said. "We don't want to be sleeping on the damp."
Hazō hesitated. "Um...actually, sensei, I was thinking that maybe I shouldn't be making too many Earth Walls. We can't take the shelters down behind us, so it leaves a trail showing where we've been."
Inoue-sensei rolled her eyes. "Our camps are always hours apart at ninja speed," she said. "If someone is tracking us, they know that we've been through an area, so finding our camps doesn't give them any extra information. If they aren't tracking us and they stumble across one of our camps, it still doesn't tell them which way we went. Yes, it's a little more information, but not enough to matter most of the time. Besides, I have no interest in sleeping under canvas when I could be sleeping under nice secure stone walls instead. Make with the ninjutsu, kid."
"Yes, sensei," Hazō said meekly. Moments later there was a comfortable pup-tent-shaped stone structure in front of them. Everyone crawled in and started spreading out bedrolls; it had been a long day.
Watches were kept; the gravely wounded Inoue-sensei was excused from watch duty, so Keiko stood watch alone, but Hazō paired with Kagome and Noburi with Akane for their shifts. The night was silent and unthreatening, meaning that Hazō only had to stop Kagome-sensei from blowing something up twice.
The two of them had set up atop the slight rise that overlooked the dell in which the shelter rested. The moon was somewhere up above them, but its silvery light was diffuse and weak by the time it trickled past the towering forest giants around them on its way to the ground. Neither ninja could see more than a dozen feet, and being on 'watch' was really more about being on 'listen'.
The trick, Hazō's instructors back at Mist Academy had explained, was to sit silently until the forest around you got accustomed to your presence. Once the nightjars started singing again and the small nocturnal animals began rustling in the bushes, the night became an undisturbed tapestry of sound. You could get the feel of that tapestry, learn its warp and weft until the slightest change became painfully apparent. Even if you didn't hear the sounds of an enemy creeping up on you, the change in the tapestry would be clear.
"Kagome-sensei," Hazō said quietly. "I've been thinking about Akane's birthday. It's coming up, and I wanted to make her something nice."
Kagome-sensei sat just close enough that Hazō could see him nod. "She's a good kid," he said, his voice soft as the breeze. "The best of us."
Hazō's eyebrows went up at that. "I was thinking...," he said. "Um, I was thinking about your shaped-charge seals. We could make her a pair of knuckledusters with those seals on them, so she could use them in close combat. It's your seal, though, and I didn't want to presume anything. What do you think?"
"Dumb idea," Kagome-sensei said.
"Oh," Hazō said, wincing. "Sorry, I didn't mean to—"
"You don't want to put them on knuckledusters," Kagome-sensei went on, oblivious to Hazō's embarrassment. "Then whatever stinker she's punching sees what's coming. Nah, you want these." He held his hand out to Hazō, palm up.
He was wearing the wooden rings that Hazō had seen before. The ring held a small wooden box to his palm. The top of the box was missing except for a narrow lip, showing that inside the box were several small sheets of paper, held in place by the lip. The uppermost paper had Kagome-sensei's shaped-charge seal drawn on it; presumably the others did as well. A slot was cut in one side of the box so that Kagome-sensei's thumb could touch the sealing paper.
"You punch for 'em with a closed fist, slow and obvious," Kagome-sensei said, miming a punch. "Stinker sees it coming, dodges aside, moves in close to counterpunch. You open your hand, turn the palm towards him"—he demonstrated—"push out the top seal"—the thumb made a practiced flick, forcing one of the seals up so it was bulging out of the box—"boom, squash. Four seals in each one. Any more than that, the box gets too big, starts to be obvious. Just gotta be careful to keep your fingers well back. And make sure you set the seals off in the right order. Topmost first then work back." He turned so that he could show both hands. "I usually load two-and-two," he said. He raised the right hand. "Right hand has two directed charges on the top, ten degree blast cones. The bottom two are hundred sixty degrees, designed for stinkers who think they're so clever because they dodge really well. Left hand is the other way around, wide-angle seals on top." He shrugged. "Takes a little practice so you don't blow your hand off or destroy the box, but it works okay. Eight shots is usually enough for one fight. If not, I've got my harness."
Hazō looked at his teacher with new respect. When he and Kagome sparred, the genin had started to win more often than not; Kagome-sensei was many things, but a taijutsu master was not among them. Hazō had tried hard not to look down on the man because of it, reminding himself that Kagome-sensei simply had a different specialization than he did. Still, he hadn't been able to keep a certain degree of smug superiority. As of now, that feeling was gone.
"Oh," Hazō said faintly. He paused. "So...could we make her a set?"
"No," Kagome-sensei said.
"Oh," Hazō said, taken aback. "Okay, I didn't mean to steal your technique. Sorry—"
"Make her your own stinking present," Kagome said. "This one's from me."
o-o-o-o
In the morning they moved on, traveling fast until afternoon, then searching around until they found a good spot: a low spot ten meters wide between two three-meter ridges. The ground sloped sharply down to the south, where a narrow creek burbled cheerily along.
"Okay, Hazō," Inoue-sensei said. "We'll build a cave here. Give us a wall from here up to the top of the far ridge." She gestured to indicate where she meant. "Then another wall from the middle of the first one back to here so it just looks like a shallow dip. Then another sloped wall in the front that blocks off all but one edge. We'll cover the top over with dirt and transplant some ferns and bushes onto it. We'll cover the entrance with branches and it'll be just about impossible to spot."
"Yes, sensei," Hazō said. He walked down the slope a bit, flicked through the handseals and put his hand on the ground. "Earth Element: Multiple Earth Wall," he said, pulling the granite of the wall out in an upward-sloping platform as he'd been told.
"'Multiple Earth Wall' is too long a name," Noburi said, grinning. "I say we shorten it, call it 'MEW'."
Inoue-sensei laughed. "I like it," she said. "Okay, Hazō, we need some more walls here. Mew for us."
Hazō looked at her in betrayal. "Sensei," he said, hating himself for the whine in his voice. "Please don't."
"Mew," she said, in a perfect imitation of a kitten. "Mew mew mew."
Hazō moaned and slumped, face in his hands.
"Mew," said Noburi.
Forcing himself to neither pay attention to, nor contemplate the murder of, his teammate, Hazō went through the handseals, gathered his chakra, and touched the wall he'd just built. "Earth Element: M—"
"Mew," said Keiko gravely.
Hazō's concentration shattered and the ninjutsu failed.
o-o-o-o
Two hours later, they had a secure shelter set up and were busily collecting dirt to pile on top. (Taking care, of course, to gather it from far away without disturbing the surroundings too much and then obscuring the traces.) It would take a week or more of hard work to cover the entire space with enough dirt to plant the ground cover that Inoue-sensei wanted, but it was in progress.
"Not there," Inoue-sensei said, just as Hazō was about to pour out his latest load of dirt. She had dropped her disguise and was lounging a few yards away in a spot of dappled shade, sipping on a waterskin full of cool water taken from the creek. "More to the left." She nodded with exaggerated decisiveness. "Yes, definitely to the left. Oh, and you probably want to hurry up. It's getting late, we really want to have at least the initial layer in place by tonight."
Hazō straightened up, rubbing the knot in the small of his back. "You know, sensei," he said with what he felt was admirable restraint. "If it's such a rush, you could help."
"But I'm hurt," Inoue-sensei said, making puppy eyes at him and waving to the bandage around her middle. "I can barely walk. You wouldn't want me to hurt myself, would you?"
"You ran here just fine," Hazō said, with even more admirable restraint. "You could put on another disguise."
Inoue-sensei shook her head somberly. "Oh no," she said. "That could be very dangerous. What if something attacked me and broke my disguise? I wouldn't be able to defend myself. No, I'm afraid that, no matter how much I would like to help, I must simply lounge here and supervise while you and my clones do all the dirty, sweat-inducing labor."
Hazō glared at her grumpily, meeting her eyes as he defiantly poured out the dirt in the spot where she'd told him not to. He shook the last of it out of his carrysack, then turned to get more.
"Don't pout, Mr. Mew," Inoue-sensei called.
Hazō growled under his breath and picked up his pace.
o-o-o-o
Everyone was motivated to get the shelter covered over...mostly so that Inoue-sensei would stop teasing them with her exaggerated laziness and faux-innocent 'suggestions' that they work harder. Eight days later their artificial cave was coated in a layer of dirt six inches thick in which large patches of ferns and one small bush had been planted. The area was essentially undetectable unless you already knew what you were looking for.
However pesky she might have been about it, the bedrest and constant attention from Noburi had done Inoue-sensei a world of good. She wasn't wincing in pain every time she laughed or took too deep a breath. Moving was still painful, but she insisted on walking to the latrine on her own (although she did cheat by using a disguise). After not-as-long-as-Noburi-would-have-liked, she started doing gentle stretches and a few minutes of soft-style taijutsu kata each day.
Their leader's downtime left the rest of the team at loose ends. Hazō and Kagome-sensei built a sealing-research bunker well away from camp. Personally, Hazō thought that Kagome-sensei was being excessive with the defenses of the bunker, but he went along without complaint.
They were ten days into their stay when Kagome-sensei felt the bunker was complete. With nothing further to keep him constantly busy, Hazō sighed and admitted that it was time to get down to the work that he'd been really dreading: socializing with his teammates in order to tone down the drama that was building up.
o-o-o-o
"May I join you, Noburi?" Kei asked. The first time she had attempted to be supportive seemed to have worked; Noburi had said that her efforts helped. She had made a point of spending at least a little time with him every day since then.
"Please do," Noburi said, gesturing to the leaf-littered ground beside him. He was sorting through his medical supplies, cataloging what was running low and what would need to be replaced or supplemented when next they were in a town.
Kei settled down beside him. Good, this was going well. "Are you healing well?" she asked, reading the mental script she had prepared.
"Inoue-sensei thinks so, but it's taking me a long time to get better," Noburi said with a smile.
Kei blinked. "What?"
"It was, uh, a joke," Noburi said, losing the smile. "Like, I'm good at healing other people, but it's taking me a long time to get over my own injuries."
Kei nodded. "Ah, I see." Why did she have to be so slow?! She never got jokes, and it was always embarrassing to have them explained.
Embarrassing for Noburi as well, apparently. He was blushing to his ears, and suddenly fascinated with counting every drug-containing twist of paper he had.
"So...you are getting better?" Kei asked awkwardly. Her script had run out when she sat down. She had expected that all she had needed to do was get the conversation started and it would follow from there. In retrospect, her bloodline would have told her that that was a terrible plan.
"Yeah," Noburi said. "I've been keeping it clean, and it's mostly sealed up. I probably don't need the crutches anymore, but I'll use them for another couple of days before making that leg fully weight-bearing. Another three or four days after that, I should be good as new."
"Excellent," Kei said. "That will greatly improve your functionality and therefore that of the team."
"Uh, yeah," Noburi said, looking hurt.
Damnit! Damnit! Damnit! Why could she not manage to say the right thing to anyone, ever?!
"I...think that I may not have said that correctly," Kei said. "I meant that I'm glad you will be feeling better."
"Oh," Noburi said. "Thanks." He gave her a small smile. (Yes! Her socialization was improving!) "So...um, how are you doing?"
Kei thought about that for a moment. It would be easy to brush it off with the traditional 'fine', but Mari-sensei had repeatedly told her that the way to make friends was to allow yourself to be vulnerable. Friendship was formed through trust, she said, and trust was built by offering someone the opportunity to hurt you in a small way and then seeing that they did not take it.
"I am...unsettled?" Kei said. "I do not feel like I am a net benefit to the team. Sensei is sensei; she is powerful and wise and keeps us together. You heal everyone and provide us with chakra so that we are far more powerful as a group than a randomly-selected group of equivalent experience would be. Kagome is paranoid, but he is a genius at sealcrafting. We would not have survived the tapirs without the defenses he constructed. Hazō is an excellent fighter and, for the most part, an excellent planner."
She paused, an unworthy part of herself wanting to bite down on the words that had to come next. The Mori training would not allow it; truth must be faced, no matter how painful. The founder of her clan had said it best: "What is true is already so. Facing it does not make it worse, and refusing to face it does not make it go away. The Mori will always face what is true."
"Ishihara is a skilled fighter," Kei said. "Her optimism is clearly beneficial to the team's morale." No, not far enough. When dealing with internal bias, it was important to go one step beyond the begrudged minimum. "Without her, matters would be much more difficult." She shrugged. "And then there is me."
Noburi looked askance at her. "Are you seriously telling me that you don't feel like you have anything to offer?" he said, disbelief ringing in his tone.
"I am skilled with weapons, and I have the summoning contract," Kei admitted. Alarm bells were going off in her head. She had not meant to be this open! She had intended to make a small gesture of vulnerability, admit that she was not completely happy and cheerful and perfect. How had she suddenly ended up here?!
"Yeah...?" Noburi said. "Those seem pretty valuable to me." His hands were still and his eyes on her, his medical supplies forgotten as he clearly waited for the other shoe to drop.
"I did not say I had no value," Kei said. "Simply that I was not a net benefit. It is nothing, though...I suppose it was just a momentary thought. Not important." She cast about for a topic, any topic. "It seems your medical supplies are running low. We should make a supply run sometime soon."
"Hang on," Noburi said, putting the medical pack aside. "You're not getting away from this that easily. How can you possibly feel like you aren't a net benefit? You're the best fighter in the group aside from Inoue-sensei and she's a jōnin. You have the pangolin contract. You've got the best situational awareness of anyone I've ever met who wasn't a jōnin; you were the one who spotted most of the things that tried to attack us on the way here."
"Inoue-sensei spotted them first," Kei protested.
"Yes, but except for that treeworm, she didn't actually say anything when she saw them. She thought that leaving it for us would be 'good training'," Noburi said with a disgruntled snort. "And of the rest of us, you were the one who spotted the ambushes."
"You spotted the bushleaper," Kei said weakly. "And Hazō spotted the vampire grass."
Noburi rolled his eyes. "Yes, and you were the first to spot everything else."
"Well...," Kei said uncomfortably. "Mostly I watched Kagome. Inoue-sensei must have told him to let us deal with the threats, but he is a terrible actor. He spotted all of those things and started to throw something explosive at them, then forced himself to stop. I merely watched him and paid attention to where he'd been aiming."
Noburi laughed. "See, that's the thing you really bring to the team: You're smart. I was watching the woods, and it didn't occur to me to watch the crazy guy instead."
"I do not consider him crazy," Kei said. "Insanity is defined as a set of one or more maladaptive and uncontrollable behaviors. Kagome's paranoia is highly adaptive."
Noburi waved the objection aside dismissively. "Whatever. Point is, you bring something to the table that no one else does, not even Inoue-sensei: your brain. You are by far the best of us at spotting problems and preventing them, and at finding strategies that make things easier or better. Not even Inoue-sensei can do that."
"It is only my bloodline," Kei said, looking away. Yes, there it was. She was valuable for her inheritance. Oh joy.
Anger flashed across Noburi's face and he slapped a hand on the ground. "No!" he said. "Damnit, Keiko, stop that! It's not your bloodline, it's you. You didn't use your bloodline to figure out that you should be watching Kagome. You didn't use your bloodline when you pointed out a better way for Hazō to arrange the walls of the shelter together so it didn't leak as much. You didn't use your bloodline when you found those herbs that made the stew taste like something other than brown glop."
"That was just my clan training," Kei said. "Part of logistics is knowing the effects of food and other supplies on morale. That includes knowing what herbs and spices to send in a supply drop."
"Yes!" Noburi said, half-shouting. "And knowing how to punch things is part of Hazō's contribution to the team, and knowing how to stitch wounds is part of mine, and knowing how to talk to people is part of Inoue-sensei's! What we know is part of what we all bring to the table, Keiko. How in the world can you not see that you're a benefit to the team?!"
"Net benefit," Kei corrected, but the words were less certain. "I make too many mistakes. I am too awkward, I offend people. I cannot get along with Ishihara, and it causes friction. I know it causes friction, and I still cannot get over it. I should be stronger than that."
Noburi's fists were clenched in frustration. "Keiko," he said, forcing calm into his voice. "You really need to get past this. I think even sensei finds Akane's 'Spirit of Youth' thing aggravating sometimes. It's not like you and Akane are rolling around on the ground every day having cat fights." He stopped talking for a moment and his eyes got slightly glassy, but he quickly shook himself back into focus. "She rubs you the wrong way, that's fine. Teammates don't have to like everything about each other, they just have to be able to work together." He grinned. "Mr. Look-at-me-I'm-so-perfect Kurosawa annoys the crap out of me a lot of the time, but I'm still happy to have him at my back. Do you trust Akane to have yours?"
Kei's mouth pursed as though she'd bitten a lemon. "Well...yes," she admitted grudgingly.
"And will you have hers, the next time it all drops in the pot?"
"Yes," she said immediately. Ishihara was her teammate and Kei would watch her back because that was what teammates did. She could see where Noburi was going with this, though, and she did not like it.
Noburi spread his hands. "There you go, then," he said. "You're teammates, and you're working together in the only way that matters. Even if you don't get along all the time, that's fine."
"I suppose," Kei said, more to make the conversation stop than anything.
Noburi studied her, recognizing the agreement for what it was but accepting it as progress. "You could cat-fight with her a little, if you wanted," he said, giving her an impudent grin. "I wouldn't mind."
She shot him a half-hearted glare and pushed herself to her feet. It was definitely time to move on; she had built enough trust through vulnerability for one day!
XP AWARD: 13
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, July 6, 2016, at 12pm London time.
NB: I didn't get through a lot of what was in the plan, but I ran out of time. The rest of it will need to wait for @Velorien.
Keiko was sharpening her kunai with an expression of fierce concentration when Hazō found her, which did not at all make him feel apprehensive about starting a conversation which could come across as confrontational.
"Keiko," he began nonetheless, "can I talk to you?"
"Proceed," Keiko said, setting the kunai aside and turning the full force of her attention on him.
"So, Keiko. I have a question that I'm curious about your answer to. Suppose that we were expecting some Leaf-nin to be in opposition to a job we took and you needed to talk to Akane about the fact that we may need to fight and kill some of her former almost-comrades. How do you suppose she would take it?"
Keiko stared at him fixedly for a couple of seconds.
"Hazō," she began, "are you asking this question based on the encounter we had with the Leaf ninja in the Fire Country, where we were forced to kill them and you thus had an opportunity to learn Ishihara's response?"
"Um." Hazō's planning had not covered this contingency. This was the problem with trying to outmanoeuvre someone more intelligent than yourself. "Well. Yes?"
"Did you further prepare a comprehensive plan for this conversation which assumed I had forgotten the event in question? A plan which is now inapplicable, leaving you floundering?"
There was an awkward silence.
"It was a flowchart," Hazō finally admitted.
"A flowchart," Keiko repeated flatly.
"Yes," Hazō cringed. He hadn't gone as far as showing Inoue-sensei the actual document. He felt certain that if she ever discovered its existence, he would not live it down for as long as he lived. And now, on top of everything else, he had to find a way to persuade/blackmail Keiko never to mention it again.
Keiko shook her head. "Flowcharts are an inefficient way of planning important conversations. As soon as you limit yourself to the physical space of the paper, you are effectively defining a small number of possible responses, which narrows your predictive abilities. I recommend visualisation of a three-dimensional possibility space, coupled with rehearsal of verbal fragments created using existing data, which you can swap in as necessary."
Hazō's jaw nearly dropped. "You mean you plan important conversations in advance too?"
Keiko nodded seriously. "When I have sufficient data to make reliable predictions, at least, and can form a suitably detached frame of mind in advance. Unfortunately, my bloodline has significant blind spots when dealing with human relationships, forcing me to draw on my own social skills instead."
"Keiko, that's… that's amazing." Hazō looked at her with new awe in his eyes.
Keiko gave a shy smile. "Thank you. I have found it very useful in the past, although it is still a work in progress."
She hesitated, giving Hazō a measuring look.
"It is my experience," she went on warily, "that human beings are inherently unpredictable. They react in unexpected ways, and often, especially when they are angry or upset, they will terminate the conversation without explaining why your words triggered such a reaction, never mind how you can avoid doing so in the future."
"I know, right?" Hazō exclaimed. "With the Kurosawa, you can use body language to signal your feelings at any given point in the conversation, and where you anticipate it going, and things like that. I mean, it's not perfect, but at least you know what you're doing most of the time. Whereas normal people are constantly giving off mixed signals, and lying about their feelings, and expecting you to read their minds! And would it kill them to just have a list of patterns of interaction you can use so conversations are structured and predictable, instead of constantly having to think on your feet based on guesswork about what the other person is thinking?"
Hazō and Keiko looked at each other.
"I have been thinking that my entire life," Keiko said quietly, something about her relaxing in a way Hazō didn't think he'd seen before.
"Then…" Hazō said slowly, choosing each word carefully, "I would like to persuade you that Akane is realistic rather than delusional when it counts. She surprised me when I asked her after the Leaf-nin encounter—she was offended that I felt the need to talk to her about it. She knows what we are, and she knows what they are, and she knows what we all signed up for. I assumed that because she's always focusing on positive outcomes and being upbeat that she couldn't handle the darker elements of our life. But that turned out not to be a very accurate description of her. She was neither shocked nor more upset than I imagine you or I would be at having to kill Mist hunter-nin.
"I am further hoping that changing your mind about her will reduce conflict between the two of you, and lay the groundwork for the kind of harmonious relationship with her that you already have with me and Noburi."
Keiko seemed to think about this for a few seconds.
"I accept the evidence you have offered me, and will commit time to considering it in depth. I appreciate your helpful motivations, but remain puzzled as to how this outlook of Ishihara's can exist side by side with her Spirit of Youth philosophy without severe cognitive dissonance. In addition, since I find said philosophy personally offensive, I would need her to avoid inflicting it on me if a positive relationship between us were to be established."
Hazō smiled. "I'm relieved that you're taking my words seriously. I don't fully understand how Akane can be so positive while experiencing the same world we are, but we can see for ourselves that she is, and I value the shift in mood that her presence and actions regularly create. I hope that, in time, you will be able to accept enough of it to expand your own emotional palette.
"Should I go away now and give you time to process?"
"Yes, please," Keiko said. "And thank you. I am grateful that we are able to communicate with this level of clarity, though also sympathetic to the fact that you are suffering similar difficulties to me in your everyday interactions. I tentatively hope that we will eventually be able to share our different coping mechanisms in order to achieve better optimisation."
She went back to sharpening her kunai. There was, now Hazō looked more closely, something meditative about the repeated motions.
Perhaps he should do something similar to give himself more clarity while he analysed what had just happened. Weren't there seal blanks that needed scribing?
-o-
"So what you're proposing," Inoue-sensei said in the special voice reserved for lunatics, small children and idealists, "is that we refuse to provide information to one of the most powerful men on the continent who also happens to be our nominal boss and who's directly responsible for us having this contract in the first place. We will then follow through by casually mentioning that we murdered some of his fellow Leaf ninja, and present him with bodies he may recognise as personal friends or acquaintances."
"Yes?" Hazō's plan didn't sound quite as insightful coming out of Inoue-sensei's mouth as it had in his head.
"I'm with Hazō-sensei on this one," the world's best apprentice said firmly. "It would be horrifically unyouthful to betray such an important promise, even to Jiraiya. And handing over those people's bodies so they can have a proper funeral is the least we could do after killing them. I'm sure they have friends and loved ones back home, wondering where they went, and whether they were killed, or captured and tortured for information, or still out there somewhere, alive but unable to get home on their own, and hoping against hope that their allies will come and save them before it's too late…"
Inoue-sensei gave Akane an uncomfortable look. "Yes, well. Right. I guess… I guess we can risk burning some of the goodwill we're about to get from Jiraiya on this, if the rest of you are on board."
There was a series of nods, except from Kagome-sensei, who seemed to be holding back some kind of comment. Given the kind of thing Hazō's sealcrafting mentor usually came out with when he didn't hold back (i.e. pretty much all the time), Hazō probably didn't want to know what was going through the man's mind.
"But that's not the real issue here," Inoue-sensei resumed. "Isan's existence and location is valuable strategic information. If Jiraiya finds out that we hid it from him—and he eventually will, once the village makes first contact with the outside world—I guarantee that he will make an example of us by feeding us to the biggest, slimiest toad he can muster. There's a time for being honourable and a time for not getting killed, and the only reason I'm alive today is because I'm good at knowing which is which. That goes for you too, Hidden Swamp kids. If I was the honourable sort, I'd have tried to help Shikigami against Captain Zabuza and we'd all be dead right now."
"I disagree, Inoue-sensei," Keiko spoke up unexpectedly. "Although I agree that honour in general is a sure path to death in this brutal world, there are nevertheless some things that must be kept sacred."
"Oh?" Inoue-sensei sounded genuinely curious.
"I am speaking of the master-apprentice bond. Consider our group: Hazō is apprentice to Kagome, and Ishihara, for reasons I admit continue to escape me, is in turn apprentice to Hazō. And while our relationship with you may have… evolved… over time, you cannot deny that its foundations feature much of the same. Without such bonds, we would be what we once were—individuals thrown together purely by a need for survival, without deeper loyalty or… emotional connections."
"Mori has a point," Akane chipped in. "In Leaf, they tell so many stories about Jiraiya's apprenticeship under the Third Hokage, and about how he then taught the Fourth. If we put the emphasis on Mori's duty to Takahashi, I think he'd respect it. He is an incredibly youthful man."
"And the rest of you?" Inoue-sensei turned away from Keiko and back towards Hazō and Noburi on her other side.
Keiko caught Hazō's eye, and mimed plucking something out of the air and placing it in front of her mouth as she moved her lips.
"I'm with Keiko," Noburi declared after a second. "I don't think it would be a good idea for us, I mean for anyone, to go to Isan anytime soon. We should give them time to adjust to their new situation. And getting Takahashi angry with us isn't going to get us very far from a diplomacy angle either, especially since it looks like he's the head of the dominant faction in the council now.
"I don't agree," Kagome said suddenly. "I say we throw Jiraiya at the stinking stinkers and watch the fireworks. They want to get us trampled by a tapir stampede just 'cause we're strangers? Let's see them try pulling that trick on one of the Leaf Three. Then we can point at the crater afterwards and say, 'That's what happens to people who try to stab us in the back.' And no matter who wins, somebody who knows who we are and how we fight is going to be dead at the end. How's that?"
"Right," Inoue-sensei shifted to get everyone in her field of view. "We have four votes for Hazō's proposal and two against. But your case isn't that bad, and you guys seem to care about it more than I expected, so I'm not going to use the all-seeing all-knowing jōnin veto. Instead, just in case it isn't possible to talk from inside a giant toad, I'm just going to say 'I told you so' in advance."
Keiko looked at him calmly. "You believe that the best choice of summon for me to acquire is a scout?"
"Yes, exactly," Hazō said firmly. A faint trickle of concern began trickling faintly through the back of his brain. By now he'd started to notice a pattern of how conversations went when he finished explaining something and the other person calmly repeated a summary back to him.
"A scout."
"Yep." The trickle was turning into a steady flow.
"Instead of, say, a ninjutsu teacher?" Keiko asked. "Or a merchant who can advise us on constructing this trade empire you keep mumbling about?"
"Um...," Hazō said. The trickle had turned into a flood and warning bells were blaring in his head.
"Thank you for the advice," Keiko said calmly. "I will definitely give it the consideration it deserves."
"Um...right," Hazō said. He looked around, hoping to find a distraction. "I, ah, have a thing, that I need to do. Now. Yes. It's over there, away from here. Excuse me." He hurried off to where Akane was running through kata on the far side of the camp.
o-o-o-o
"Hi, Keiko!" Pandā said, idly using one heavily-clawed hand to wave aside the puff of purple smoke that came with his summoning. "Pandā, Second Circle Specialist of First Army reporting for duty!" He clapped both fists to his chest, then down and to the outside. Pangolins, Kei noticed, were not very good at making fists—the claws got in the way.
"Hello, Pandā," she said. "Would you care to join me?" She waved to the other log that she had set up next to the fire on which she was making tea. They were a short distance away from the main camp; she had no interest in a repetition of what happened the last time Pandā had interacted with the entire group.
"Don't mind if I do," Pandā said. He waddled over to the log and plopped down on the ground, tail curled under him and legs spraddled out in front. "Where are the rest of your clan...er, team?" he asked, looking around.
"I thought maybe we could talk with just the two of us," Kei said. She picked up a small carryall and held it out. "Would you like some ants? You mentioned enjoying them, so I gathered as many as I could. I had some trouble containing them, but there should still be a good number left."
Pandā flipped the bag open eagerly. A tongue that was nearly as long as his body slid inside, swirled around, and came out covered in small black bodies before disappearing back into his gullet.
"Oooh," the pangolin said. "Yummy. I'd always heard that the ants on the Human Path were spicier than ours. That's definitely good. Thanks!"
"You are welcome," Kei said. "Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"
Pandā's eyes lit up and he sat a little straighter. "Oh, yes! Ooh, ooh, I know why you wanted to talk alone! Did you want to discuss taboo subjects? Sex, right? That's a taboo subject for humans? I bet you wanted advice on something you weren't comfortable talking about in front of your clan matri—er, your leader. Have you decided you want to mate with Noburi after all? I can totally help with that. I've read all sorts of things on human sexuality and positions and even assistive devices like—"
"No!" Kei said quickly. She took a moment to breathe, counting silently until the flaming crimson of her face had settled back to something a bit more normal. "No, that is not it. Actually, I wanted to ask you about pangolins and the Summon Realm."
"I'm your pangolin for CultAnth questions," Pandā said, slurping a few more ants out of the bag. "What did you want to know?"
"First of all, what sort of things should I be careful about?" Kei asked. "I do not want to give offense to anyone while I am in the Summon Realm. What should I avoid doing or saying?"
"Nothing special," Pandā said, his tail swiping back and forth casually. "Just be polite, that's all."
"What does polite look like?" Kei asked patiently. "I suspect customs are different for humans and pangolins."
"Oh, right," Pandā said. "Um." His claws tapped nervously on his underbelly. "Well, don't step on anyone, obviously. Say please and thank you. Um...oh, right! Don't forget to...."
There followed a not-terribly-well-organized flood of information. Despite Kei's best efforts, she found herself struggling to keep track of it all.
"That should be enough to get you started, anyway," Pandā said cheerily, after two hours of rapid-fire infodump. "We can go into formal etiquette, shopping etiquette, and status comparison another time, but I don't want to overload you."
Too late, Kei thought.
"Anyway, was there anything else?" Pandā asked.
"Well," Kei said. This was the part of the conversation she was dreading. The consequences if it went poorly were too awful to think about without going very deep into the Frozen Skein, and that seemed like it might be dangerous to do around Pandā, or any pangolin. Fortunately, Mari-sensei had made some suggestions. "When I spoke to the Polemarch, he told me that I was free to negotiate with other pangolins in order to establish summoning agreements with them. I would like to do that, but at the same time I don't want you to feel insulted or abandoned. What would you suggest I do?"
Pandā looked at her as though she were brain damaged. "Mind? Why would I mind? I'm your liaison—my status goes up when yours does, and your status goes up the more pangolins who contract with you and the more high-status they are." He hesitated. "You will still summon me, right?" he asked worriedly. "I mean, I know I'm not much of a fighter. I've had the basic militia training that everybody gets, and I'm doing boot camp with First Army, but that's about it. Still, I'm sure I can be useful in all kinds of ways. I can—"
"Fear not, Pandā," Kei said. "I will definitely continue summoning you." She smiled, because smiles helped.
"Phew!" Pandā said, dropping his jaw open and puffing out an exaggerated breath. "That's a relief."
"It is a relief for me, too," Kei said. This time the smile was not forced. "I was very concerned about what your reaction would be. I did not want to alienate you."
Pandā brushed away an imagined fly with the back of one hand. "No trouble at all. So, let's get you some more summons!" He rolled forward, curling into a ball and then uncurling up onto his feet before pacing back and forth. His claws tapped furiously on his underbelly as he thought. "Let's see...ooh, I know! The first thing you had me do was be a lookout, so why don't we get you someone with sentry experience?"
"Actually," Kei said, "I had another thought."
o-o-o-o
"Akane, do you have a minute?" Hazō asked carefully, waiting until after his apprentice had finished one kata and was about to transition into the next.
Akane straightened up and turned to him with a smile. "Of course!" she said. She grabbed her towel off the ground to wipe the sweat off and took a long pull on her canteen. "What do you want to talk about?"
"It's about Keiko," Hazō said carefully. "You and Keiko, actually. I'm a little worried about the two of you."
Akane sighed and sank to the ground. "I know," she said sadly. "Back in Iron, I offered to be there if she needed someone to talk to. Unfortunately, I phrased it as 'being a big sister', and that turned out to be a poor choice. She's been angry with me ever since, and I don't know how to fix it."
Hazō blinked. That was...rather more perceptiveness than he'd expected from his exuberant apprentice. He dropped down beside her, settling into a relaxed cross-legged position.
"I think the problem is that you're such opposites," he said. "The Mori bloodline is all about ice and cold logic. It makes her pessimistic, maybe even cynical. You're all about fire—energy, optimism, the Spirit of Youth." He licked his lips nervously. "Actually, I think the 'youth' thing is the best example of that...I think it rubs her the wrong way because it makes her recognize how pessimistic she's being. Pessimism is tiring and depressing; Keiko can't let herself believe that optimism is a viable way to look at things, because it would mean that her view wasn't the best and that she was hurting herself by holding onto it."
Akane's laugh was sad. "Hazō-sensei," she said, "when was the last time you heard me use the word 'youth' to Mori? Or, for that matter, even around her?"
"Uh...," Hazō said, casting his mind back. "I'm not sure?"
"That same conversation where I offered to be her big sister, back in Iron," Akane said. "I haven't said it in her presence since then."
Hazō blinked. "What?"
Akane patted him on the knee in an amused way. "I'm not an idiot, sensei," she said. "I know my optimism annoys her, and I know that the concept of youthfulness especially so. I'm not going to change who I am just because she doesn't like it, but I can respect her feelings and not say things that I know bother her."
"Oh," Hazō said. The world seemed to have suddenly turned sideways. When they sparred, Akane was always complimenting him on the youthfulness of his taijutsu or suggesting that they fan the flames of their youth with a billion pushups. Now that he thought about it, though...had she actually used the word when the team was together?
"Thank you, Akane," he said. "That's really nice of you."
She smiled and straightened her legs, lifting herself effortlessly back to her feet. "Come, sensei!" she said. "I have developed what I think is a most youthful counter to that twin hammerfist technique you like so much!"
o-o-o-o
"Are we ready?" Hazō asked.
Kagome-sensei frowned, looking around and ticking points off on his fingers as he mumbled to himself. "Cube of Earth Walls, southern side open, reinforced with Five-Seal Barrier, check. Cube surrounded by Force Walls, check. Force Wall Seals in place to close southern side, check. Seals are...yes, properly infused and ready, check. Cube is empty except for seal, so nothing to react with except air. Check. Multiple Earth Wall berm around cube to channel blast...hm." He stepped over to the berm and checked that the Five-Seal Barrier was active and properly reinforcing the berm. "Check." He looked over at the two water clones who were peeking up over the top of the berm. "Observers ready and watching, check." He turned a slow circle, ticking off the rest of the multitudinous defenses that constituted their sealing lab.
"Hmph," he said, sniffing. "Probably won't kill us. Where's the target?"
Hazō produced a twist of paper from one pocket and reached to set it on the seal inside the experimental cube.
"What the stinking hells do you think you're doing with that stuff?" Kagome-sensei snapped, grabbing his wrist before he could set the paper down. His student froze.
"I'm...using it as the storage target?" Hazō said. "It's just sawdust."
"Get away from there!" Kagome-sensei said, shooing him back. "Sawdust burns!" From a hip pouch he produced a tiny blob of mushy red stuff, which he set in the center of the seal. "Berry," he said, pointing proudly. "Split it open, take out the seeds, use the squidgy part. Doesn't burn, won't hurt if it hits you at high speed. If it turns into steel before hitting you at high speed then the flattened-out shape will spread the impact. If it turns into a ravenous spikey monstrosity then at least it'll be a small one. If it dissolves into acidic goop then it won't do a lot of damage to the landscape. If it implodes into a tiny pinhole rip in the universe then nothing big will be able to get through. If the water gets pulled out of it and converted into high-pressure steam then there won't be enough to matter. If—"
"That sounds great," Hazō said quickly. When Kagome-sensei started listing failure modes for seals it was important to distract him. "How long a timer should we use?"
"Ten seconds," Kagome-sensei said. "Plenty of time for you to get back to the bunker. Wait until I'm there, though." He turned and jogged off.
Hazō waited until his sensei called "Okay!", then set his right hand on the Force Wall seal that would close the experimental box and the tip of his left pinky finger on the Poor Man's Yellow Flash seal that they were working on. He twisted his chakra into the experimental seal, quickly activated the Force Wall, and instantly Substituted away; running in the armor took way too much time.
The timer might have been set to ten seconds, but Kagome-sensei made him wait in the bunker (Multiple Earth Walls, Five-Seal Barrier-reinforced, surrounded by Force Walls, three Force-Wall-protected exits including a tunnel which had taken four days of heavy work by Hazō and a small company of clones made by Hazō, Kagome, Inoue-sensei, and Noburi) for two full minutes before they went out to see the results of the experiment.
"Success!" Kagome-sensei said, smiling happily.
Hazō looked askance at him. "It wasn't successful, sensei," he said. "Nothing happened—I don't even think the seal activated."
"We're still alive, aren't we?" Kagome-sensei said. "I call that a success. C'mon, I'll have the clones clear it out and we can try again."
o-o-o-o
"Damn," Hazō said, his heart plummeting. It had seemed so simple, he'd really thought it would work this time.
"Woohoo!" cheered Kagome-sensei, throwing both fists in the air. "Nine tries and it hasn't done anything awful!"
o-o-o-o
"Rats," said Hazō.
"Thirty-seven attempts and no horrible monstrosities trying to eat our faces! It's a record!" Kagome-sensei capered like a madman, shaking his butt and waving his hands spastically.
o-o-o-o
"Ninety-one, yay!"
o-o-o-o
"Two hundred and sixteen and the berry exploded! Too bad the scroll turned into mud."
Hazō sighed.
o-o-o-o
"Disappeared...disappeared...disappeared...disappeared...," said the first clone, indicating that the target had in fact been taken into the modified storage scroll. The other clone was silent; had the berry reappeared it would have been repeating whatever the last number had been in its count of seconds.
"That's amazing!" Kagome-sensei said. "Only five hundred and sixty tries and we're halfway there!"
o-o-o-o
"Okay, they're all dead. Let's try it again."
o-o-o-o
"Hey, don't feel bad! It was only a little fiery explosion of doom, and the Force Walls contained almost all of it."
Hazō looked at the small forest fire downrange from the testing area. He sighed.
o-o-o-o
"Disappeared...disappeared...disappeared...disappeared...," said the first clone. "Ten...ten...ten...ten...," said the second.
Hazō gaped. It had worked! After a week and a half of constant effort and countless failures, it had worked! The Poor Man's Yellow Flash seal—Hazō's very first original seal—was finished!
"Nice!" Kagome-sensei said, clapping him on the back so hard Hazō stumbled. "Now let's check that the target never turns to snot and comes out of the seal backwards!"
o-o-o-o
Pandā was shifting nervously from foot to foot, his claws tapping a nigh-thunderous tattoo on his underbelly.
"Remember," he said, "be polite! Make the peace sign when you walk in then don't move your hands unless he tells you! Stand straight and keep your eyes level. Don't talk unless he asks you a question, or he'll rip your tongue out and strangle you with it. Don't meet his gaze or your head will explode. Turn around, let me look at you." He patted nervously at Kei's clothes, smoothing out invisible wrinkles as she turned in place. It seemed some part of her brain did not consider pangolins to be people when it came to touch, which was a fascinating revelation she had precious little use for.
"Okay," he said, taking a deep breath. "Let's go." He interlaced his fingers, straightened as much as he could, and walked through the door.
The office was small and cramped. There was a desk opposite the door, at which was seated a pangolin who could not have been more obviously military if the word had been painted on his chest. A neat stack of virgin clay tablets rested on the desk to his left waiting to be written on, and a larger stack of filled-in ones were stacked to his right. The sole window looked out over a training field on which several dozen young pangolins were running, jumping, slashing at steel training posts, and otherwise learning the arts of war.
Kei was careful not to look at any of that. She straightened until her spine ached, kept her eyes straight ahead and her fingers interlaced.
The pangolin who awaited them was almost as tall as she was and far more massive. There were faint traces of cracking around the edges of his facial scales, suggesting that he was old for his race. No matter how old he was, Kei had not the slightest desire to test him in combat.
"Sir, Pandā, Second Circle Specialist Recruit of First Army, reporting as ordered, sir!" Pandā shouted in his reedy tenor. "Sir, I have brought the Summoner as you instructed, sir!"
The other pangolin rose smoothly to his feet and paced to Kei, walking a slow circle around her. His tail tapped the floor behind him in a measured beat. Kei felt herself starting to sweat.
Before she could react he grabbed her hands and lifted them up to his snout, turning his head so that he could get an eye almost against her skin. He examined her fingers minutely for a moment, then let go. She put her hands back in front of her belly, carefully keeping her fingers interlaced and not moving as he poked her in the thigh, the side, and the bicep. He reached up to her face; she had to struggle not to pull back from the frankly terrifying claws, but he peeled her lip back with exquisite gentleness. After a moment he let go and stepped back.
"I am Pankurashun, Senior Combat Instructor of the First Army of the Pangolin Nation," he said calmly. "You will address me as sir. Specialist Recruit Pandā has requested that I speak to you, so I have cleared five minutes from my very busy schedule. You are the Summoner for the Pangolin Clan. Acknowledge."
"Sir, I am, sir!" she barked.
"State your name."
"Sir, my name is Mori Keiko, sir!"
"Stand easy," he said. She relaxed very slightly but kept her fingers interlaced. "Mori, you have fewer scales than my newborn granddaughter and your hide is positively squishy. Your claws are nonexistent. Your teeth are inadequate for fighting. I assume your people have some sort of combat arts, but I despair of teaching you ours. My expertise is martial instruction, so I find myself at a loss for why you are here. Explain."
Kei took a deep breath. "Sir, I have spoken to Specialist Recruit Pandā at length about the combat training he has received. It's true that I would not be able to learn the taijutsu style of the pangolin, but I have a request...."
o-o-o-o
Akane came back into camp with a small deer draped over her shoulders to find everyone waiting in an arc around the fire.
"Happy Birthday, Akane!" they chorused. (Well, except for Keiko, who said 'Ishihara'.)
An enormous smile split Akane's face. "Thank you!" she said, dropping the deer. "I wasn't sure you would remember!"
"C'mere, kid," Inoue-sensei said, pulling her into a hug and squeezing her tight. Akane squeezed back just as hard and laughed when Inoue ruffled her hair.
"Sit," Inoue said. "We've got a beef stew for you—well, it's actually a chakra-spiny-snakey-thing, but it's sort of like beef. Noburi and Keiko found some herbs and Hazō had nothing to do with the cooking, so it should be tasty."
"Made these for you," Kagome-sensei said hurriedly, looking away as he extended his cupped hands.
"Kagome," Inoue-sensei said reprovingly. "We agreed we were going to do presents after dinner."
"Sorry," the sealmaster mumbled, blushing furiously.
Inoue-sensei laughed and touched his arm reassuringly. "It's okay. Tell you what, let's get served up and then we can all do presents."
Akane was hurried to a seat next to the fire and a bowl of fragrant stew was pressed into her hands. The others took their own bowls and settled around her. Akane held her bowl but didn't start eating just yet. Instead she sat, bright-eyed and excited as she waited to see what the others had planned.
"Now?" Kagome-sensei asked, looking at Inoue-sensei.
"Now," she said, smiling at him.
He bounced to his feet and shuffled over to her, holding out his cupped hands. "I made these for you," he said again, opening his hands so she could see what he was holding.
She looked for a moment, then looked to him for permission before picking up the two empty ring boxes. She slipped them on her fingers with the boxes facing up like empty jewel sockets.
"Not like that!" Kagome said quickly. He took her hands and twisted the rings around so the boxes were facing in. "Blow your face off like that. And the stinkers would see them, ruin the surprise. And rain could get in the seals, ruin everything. Wear 'em like this. Here, watch." He held up a hand, revealing that he was now wearing a ring box that he'd apparently conjured from nowhere—or, at least, had palmed out of his belt pouch without her noticing. He extended his hand to the side so his palm was pointing at a training log that was dug into the ground a few meters away. He shifted his thumb slightly.
BAM!
Everyone except for Hazō jumped as the training log was demolished, fragments of wood flying everywhere.
Kagome-sensei looked nervously at Akane, but she was too startled to say anything. "Um, you wear it in a fight," Kagome-sensei mumbled. "Point your hand at the stinker, boom, squash. I've got some seals for you. Need to train a bit first, though. Um. Yeah."
Akane blinked and stared, speechless.
Kagome-sensei started to jitter, looking at her nervously. "Do you...do you like them?" he asked hopefully.
Akane leaped up and grabbed him; Kagome-sensei yeeped and struggled for a moment before realizing that she was just hugging him. He stopped struggling mostly because he couldn't breathe.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Akane said, letting him go so she could lean back and look him in the eye. She immediately grabbed him and hugged him again. "You are most youthful!"
"erk!" Kagome-sensei gasped. "Can't breathe!"
"Oh, yes!" Akane said, letting go of him and blushing faintly. "Sorry!" She suddenly seemed to remember something, glanced at Keiko, and grimaced.
"Thank you, Kagome," she said. "You are very generous, and I am deeply grateful."
Kagome-sensei blushed furiously and looked away. "S'nothing," he mumbled, shrugging one shoulder. "Glad you like 'em."
Akane laughed, bright and loud. "I love them. Will you help me train tomorrow?"
"Uh-huh," Kagome-sensei said, nodding. "Um...yeah. That's it. Happy birthday." He shuffled back to his log and settled down, bending over his bowl of stew and gulping down several spoonfuls so that he had an excuse not to look around.
Inoue-sensei slid down to his end of the log they shared and bumped shoulders with him. He glanced at her in surprise; she gave him a smile and an approving nod, which only made him blush and eat even more intently.
"Okay, my turn," Noburi said, setting his bowl down so he could rummage in his pack and bring out a small wooden box. He walked around the fire and held it out to Akane.
Akane took it from him and examined it carefully. It was the size of her two hands together, smooth and polished. The wood was pale birch, the top and bottom covered in a carefully-drawn grid. The hinges were brass, as was the clasp that held it shut.
She shook it gently, but there was no sound. Curious, she opened it up.
The inside of the box was a series of padded compartments, each individually-fitted to hold a single tiny shogi piece. The pieces were individually carved, no two exactly alike, yet it was clear which piece was which.
"It's a travel set," Noburi explained, not moving from where he stood in front of her. "The time on the beach, when you taught us all those games? That was the happiest I've been since I first entered the Academy back in Mist. I wanted to get you something to remind you of that time, so I convinced one of the Kannagi artisans to make it, back in Isan. I had to explain the rules and what the pieces should look like."
"I love it," Akane said. "Thank you Noburi. This is a most—this is a wonderful gift." She touched his hand in gratitude for a moment.
"Look again," Noburi said, grinning widely and gesturing to the pieces.
Akane frowned, puzzled, but bent to study the pieces carefully. After a moment she straightened up suddenly, eyes wide. She looked at Noburi and burst out laughing. "Very clever," she said.
"Thanks," Noburi said, grinning. "Glad you like it." He gave her a nod and took his seat again.
"I think I missed something...?" Inoue-sensei said.
Akane held up one of the pieces. "Each of the pieces has the usual kanji on it, but there's a second one, very small and faint, in the bottom right corner. The kings say 'heart'. The rooks say 'water'. The bishops say 'ice'. The knights say 'explode'. The gold generals say 'iron', and the lances say 'face.'" She laughed again and nodded respect to Noburi.
Noburi smiled back before glancing at Hazō with a smug expression that almost audibly said Beat that.
"Me, I guess," Hazō said. He stared at his hands for a moment as though trying to figure out where to start. "Mine's a little different," he said. "I need to explain a couple things first, though.
"My father died when I was five. When I first heard, I thought I would become a shinobi so that I could find the man who did it and kill him." He shrugged one shoulder. "I eventually accepted that that wasn't going to happen, but I found other reasons to be a shinobi. I joined the Academy, fought my way up the ranks. I didn't have all that many friends while I was there; I tended to ask 'why' too much, and it made the instructors angry." He snorted. "Also, my family's bloodline meant that I was fighting way above my age in taijutsu, and the older kids didn't like getting beaten by someone two or three years behind them.
"You all know that our Bloodline Limit is called the Iron Nerve," he continued. "I haven't told you exactly how it works, though—well, except for Inoue-sensei. It isn't just an enhanced kinesthetic sense, it's eidetic muscle memory. I can replay any movement I've ever made, of any muscle in my body. I can speak words exactly as I said them before, reproduce a seal blank perfectly every time, trace my finger over the letters on a page and then reproduce that page years later...lots of things.
"Growing up with the Iron Nerve isn't easy. You have this constantly growing library of past movements in your head, and your body gets confused. It replays random memories at random times, which means you fall down a lot, thrash around, suddenly punch a wall or a family member, wet your bed...it's embarrassing, and it's dangerous. My parents had to carry me most of the time until I was two, and then I had to wear a helmet and pads all the time until I was three.
"One of the things that helps is practicing fine motor skills under controlled conditions. I started learning the flute before my first birthday. If I always played the same tune, while sitting on the same chair in the same room, facing the same direction, it made it easier for my brain to find the flute-playing movements that I was looking for. Once I started being able to reliably recall the motions associated with the music, it got easier to walk without suddenly falling over and slamming my head into a wall because my body had decided I was trying to go up a flight of stairs."
He fell silent for a moment, looking back into the past. "Poppa loved to listen to me play the flute," Hazō said. "Every time he came home from a mission, I'd play this silly little 'welcome home' song for him. Because of the Iron Nerve the song was always exactly the same. He liked to say that everything in the field was always chaos and death, but this song was reliable and steady...and it meant that he was home, and that he'd escaped the chaos again." He laughed. "Actually, until I turned three what he used to say was 'Aha! Cricket is playing the song! The Chaos Monster has been defeated again!' And then he'd tickle me. After he died, I never played that song again. Couldn't even touch the flute, because it reminded me too much of him."
He looked around the circle at the somber faces of his team. "The Kurosawa kicked momma out of the clan before I was born, because they didn't want her to marry poppa. They approached me a few times as I was growing up, trying to convince me to leave momma and come rejoin the clan, but I told them no, they were no family of mine and I wouldn't want people who were so vicious and mean."
He swallowed and cleared his throat. "So, the Kurosawa weren't family. Poppa died when I was five. Momma was all I had left, and I lost her when we left for the swamp."
He looked at Akane and smiled; it was a bit watery, but it was an honest smile. "Akane, before you came along we were a team. We were friends, too, but mostly we were a team. Since you came we've started to open up to each other. We've shared our pasts. We've celebrated each other's birthdays—not just with boxes of dango, but with meaningful gifts. We have become happier since you joined us, and stronger."
"Not just stronger," Noburi said quietly. "Alive. From what you told us, if she hadn't distracted Ken while you were fighting Bosatsu, we'd all be dead right now."
Hazō nodded. "Yes. Alive. And stronger, and closer. And because of that...." He turned around so he could reach into his backpack where it leaned on the log behind him; his hand came out with a shining metal flute.
Everyone froze as Hazō lifted the flute to his lips and blew a melody. It was simple and it stuttered in places, the way a young child would play, but it was sweet and bubbly like a forest creek. The night seemed to fall quiet as the silvery notes carried on the breeze.
It wasn't a long tune; soon enough it came to an end and Hazō set the flute aside. "Thank you, Akane," he said, looking his apprentice in the eyes. "You have helped make this team into a family through the power of your..."—he flicked a glance across the fire at Keiko, flashing her a teasing smile—"...happy personality. We may not always get along and we may annoy each other, but I'm told that that's normal for family."
Akane's eyes were brimming. "Thank you, Hazō-sensei," she said quietly, having to pause and clear her throat halfway through the words.
"Damnit, Hazō, now I'm all weepy," Inoue-sensei said, pouncing on him and noogying his head furiously with one hand as she wiped her eyes with the other. Hazō ducked aside, but not fast enough to dodge the fearsome (and completely expected) hair ruffle.
Akane was on her feet and waiting to hug Hazō when Inoue stepped back. The genin squeezed her sensei tight, then turned and glomped Inoue-sensei, who laughed and hugged her back. Akane released the shorter woman and turned immediately to Noburi, who was sitting closest, and hugged him too. Kagome-sensei, sitting on the log to Noburi's right, looked uncertain, as though his body were trying to stand up and he wasn't letting it.
"C'mere, you," Inoue-sensei said, pulling him to his feet and hugging him before passing him on to Akane and pulling Noburi up into a hug.
Akane turned from Kagome-sensei to find Keiko standing two short steps away. The older girl hesitated, opening her arms slightly in a very small invitation. She closed them again at Keiko's millimetric shake of the head, seeming disappointed but not surprised.
"Hazō's mention of family and what it means is apropos," Keiko said quietly. "I too have a gift for you."
The team stopped and turned to face her, listening expectantly.
"Please be still for a moment, everyone," Keiko said. "I promise there is no risk." She nicked her finger on the edge of a kunai, squeezed it until the blood flowed, then slapped her hand on the ground.
"Pankurashun, I call you!" she said. There was a silent whump of chakra, a puff of purple smoke, and a giant pangolin stood before them.
Inoue-sensei's stance shifted slightly. She was finally healed enough to be combat capable, although still moving a bit stiffly. Her face had slipped into the blank mask of a ninja going into a fight.
"Be at ease, matriarch," Pankurashun said, bowing slightly to Inoue-sensei. "I am no threat to you or your young." Inoue bowed shallowly back to him, but did not take her eyes off of his as she did.
The pangolin looked around the circle, surveying the others. "It is my honor to meet you all," he said, his voice rough and gravelly. "My name is Pankurashun, Third Circle Senior Combat Instructor for the First Army of the Pangolin clan. From what young Keiko explained to me, I would be the equivalent of a senior drill instructor in your Mist Academy."
He turned to Keiko. "I yield you the log, Summoner."
Keiko bowed to him, her fingers interlaced, then turned to Akane.
"Ishihara Akane, what Hazō said is true," Keiko began. "We have become closer, become more like family since you have joined us. Some of the credit for that goes to Inoue-sensei and some to myself, Noburi, and Hazō. Some of it goes to you...and proportionately more of it than would be expected given that you have been with us a shorter time than we have been together.
"Unlike Hazō, I had a large family before we left. As he said, I did not always get along with them. Thus, my cousin and I cordially despised one another, yet when one of the boys at the Academy attempted to hurt me, Yōta beat him senseless.
"I have no idea if I still have the family I had in Mist," she said. "Since we left...well, family is complicated. One rule, however, is inviolate: you support one another when it matters. Since joining our group you have done everything in your power to support us, yet I have not lived up to that same ideal. I have not...." She hesitated, grimacing as though tasting something sour. "I have not been as...youthful, as I should." She seemed like she was trying hard not to gag, but she managed not to sound disparaging when she said it.
"Tell her what you told me," Pankurashun rumbled.
Keiko took a deep breath and shifted her feet as though bracing to lift a heavy weight. "I went to Senior Combat Instructor Pankurashun with a request," she said. "He had no interest in assisting me until I said to him:
"'Sir, I have a teammate named Ishihara Akane. She is a skilled warrior who has saved my life and those of all my friends. She has looked out for us, and has been nothing but honorable and helpful to me. She is warm and happy in a way that I cannot be, and therefore we have trouble working together...no, I have trouble working with her. That is a failure on my part that I am trying to overcome, and it is a threat to the safety of my team. Pandā explained your training methods to me, and the ways in which you and the other instructors help your recruits to grow; will you please do the same for me, and help me show Ishihara that I want to be a better teammate, and a better person?'"
Akane stood, frozen like a deer in lamplight, her eyes huge and her mouth hanging open.
"Understand me well, human," Pankurashun said, staring hard at Akane with his snout twitching back and forth. "I have taught personal combat and unit tactics to generations of pangolin. I have fought in more wars and border clashes than I can remember. I fought in the First Condor War, and served in the Polemarch's Guard. I have known fourteen different human summoners, trained nine of them, and been summoned to fight beside twelve. I have never before trained any human who was not our summoner, and I find it doubtful that I will train a second during your lifetime." He gestured to Keiko with claws that could have shredded steel plate. "The highest virtues we instill in our recruits are loyalty and unity. Any pangolin who betrays his comrades or damages the effectiveness of his squad will be taught to fly.
"Young Keiko here has a serious attitude problem that would earn her a plugged nose were she a recruit in one of my classes. She recognizes that and is attempting to change so that she may live up to her responsibility. It is my duty as an instructor to help the young succeed in these duties. Therefore I have agreed to help her by helping you.
"You have no scales, claws, or tail, so you cannot fight as a pangolin does. Given these differences, I could not directly teach you our war arts even if I wanted to. Instead, I will teach you the basic training technique that our recruits use. It will toughen your skin while in use, providing you with a small amount of protection. More importantly, the tougher skin is less flexible, so you will need to work harder to move as you normally would. This constant resistance will help you grow stronger and fitter more quickly. You will not disclose this technique to anyone else. You will not attempt to study it or modify it. You will not record it. You will not pass it on, even to your teammates or to Keiko herself. Acknowledge your understanding." He stopped talking, studying her carefully to see that she understood.
"I understand, sir," Akane said, bowing very low. "I will not study, modify, record, or share the technique."
Pankurashun nodded, the motion a sharp jerk of the head like a sword coming down. "I hope you appreciate exactly what you are being given," he said quietly. "Your teammate is going to be in debt to my sept for a very long time."
"Thank you, Pankurashun-sensei," Akane said, bowing even lower than before. "I do understand it, and I do appreciate it. This is an honor beyond anything I could have expected."
Straightening, she bowed almost as low to Keiko. "Thank you, Mori," she said.
"Please call me Keiko," her teammate replied, bowing back.
XP AWARD: 23. Keiko gains an extra 18 for choosing to grow as a person, and 2 more for using the word 'youthful' without spitting.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, July 13, 2016, at 12pm London time.
Notes on the pangolin training ninjutsu:
The ninjutsu is trivial for a pangolin to use, but requires ten full minutes of meditation for Akane to activate. It is 1CP / hour to keep it running, meaning that it can (and will) be kept on whenever she is awake unless there is a particular reason to shut it off. It shuts off if she is wounded (whether or not the ninjutsu blocks the damage) or loses consciousness (which includes falling asleep). It has the following effects while it is running:
Akane gets -1 die on all physical skills, including taijutsu, due to the hardening of her skin and attendant decreased flexibility.
Akane can ignore one minor wound. This causes the ninjutsu to break.
For every XP that Akane earns, an additional 0.1 XP is placed in a separate fund. This fund can only be spent to boost Strength and Stamina.
The ninjutsu can only be applied to Akane's real body, not a Transformed form.
The disturbingly enthusiastic little man behind the reception desk rubbed his hands together as he stared at Hazō and Noburi (Inoue-sensei having been warned by her instincts to stay outside and watch for observers).
"Are you here in pursuit of self-actualisation?"
Hazō gave Noburi an "any idea what that means?" look. Noburi gave a tiny shake of his head.
"No," Noburi responded. "We'd just heard that you're teaching medical ninjutsu."
"Indeed we are, sirs, indeed we are! The promulgation of medical ninjutsu is just one of the Hydra Foundation's many services to humanity. Here at the Hydra Foundation, we believe that a healthy soul dwells in a healthy mind and a healthy body, and that understanding the mysteries of the human body is the key to happiness, fulfilment and the deepest secrets of the universe. Please register for your free check-up today!"
"You give out free check-ups?"
"Why, yes, sir," the receptionist gave a broad smile as he swept his arms outwards. "Our finest professionals will examine you for no charge at all, and identify all the various health issues affecting your body that you didn't even know about. Those who take up our offer of a free check-up receive an automatic 50% discount on first-tier membership, and as members, they will be able to receive quality treatment for said health issues at minimal cost!"
"But what about the medical ninjutsu?" Noburi insisted.
"Of course, sir, of course! May I inquire, then, as to whether you are a shinobi?"
Noburi nodded.
"Splendid, splendid!" the receptionist leaned forward, every muscle in his face creating an expression of unalloyed delight. "Being naturally superior in mind and body, shinobi are able to automatically join the Hydra Foundation as sixth-tier members, with no additional fees required. Training in medical ninjutsu is available from the seventh tier onwards."
Something was making Noburi uncomfortable, and he wasn't sure what.
"What's this tier business?" he asked.
"Oh, it is simplicity itself! The Hydra Foundation's purpose is to spread and advance medical knowledge. We believe in self-actualisation through natural philosophy! The Hydra Foundation is constantly at the cutting edge of medical research, from academic biology to medical ninjutsu and biological sealcrafting. We are particularly dedicated to the experimental disciplines of psychiatry and psychology, which use unprecedented techniques to achieve greater well-being directly on the level of the mind.
"The Hydra Foundation's member-only services simultaneously perfect the members' minds and bodies and provide unique training to allow them to more fully participate in the Hydra Foundation's work. With increasing perfection comes access to higher membership tiers, which in turn provide access to new services and training, resulting in a self-reinforcing cycle of spiritual growth and professional development. All of the Hydra Foundation's services are very reasonably priced, and free to those who demonstrate their dedication to the Hydra Foundation's cause by persuading others to join, participating in harmless experiments, or carrying out essential tasks such as information retrieval or obstacle elimination on the Hydra Foundation's behalf.
"The most dedicated members can eventually reach the ultimate rank of Operating Surgeon, which represents the achievement of the highest human potential currently known in this world, and true mastery of medical science such as those outside the Hydra Foundation cannot even imagine.
"I can see from your eyes, young sirs, that you are eager to discover fulfilment and the true meaning of life under the guidance of the Hydra Foundation. Why not fill out a membership form right now, and receive a special discount on our ground-breaking Basic Therapy Course? Join us today, because eight heads are always better than one!"
Hazō and Noburi looked at each other again.
"We'll, uh, come back later."
-o-
"That sounds weird!" Akane said cheerfully. "What else did you learn?"
"Well, Leaf hosted the Chūnin Exams," Noburi replied. "It was the first public showing for the Fourth Hokage's son—most people outside Leaf didn't even know the Fourth Hokage had a son—and the Kazekage's son at the same time. Apparently, between them the whole thing was a slaughter. The rumours say the Hokage's son won't die no matter how many times you kill him, and the Kazekage's son can kill you without moving a muscle. Makes you wonder what happened when they fought each other. There was also something about the youngest Uchiha to awaken his Bloodline Limit since Uchiha Itachi, but I don't think anyone really cared about that next to the Hokage's son thing."
Inoue-sensei shrugged. "It's probably made-up anyway. Every now and again Leaf spreads rumours that the Uchiha have finally recovered their military strength, just to keep the other countries wary. But no one I know in Mist has faced an Uchiha in battle for the best part of a decade."
"No," Akane said, "it's true. He was in my year, but we didn't talk." She thought for a second. "I accidentally hit him with a practice kunai during training once. He gave me this utterly unyouthful look of contempt, and then I had to spend the rest of the afternoon hiding from his fan club."
"More relevantly to us," Hazō said, suppressing an inexplicable twinge of irritation, "there's some kind of missing-nin crackdown going on. It sounds like when Leaf's forces came down on the Liberator, a lot of missing-nin escaped in large groups rather than separating the way they usually do. The idea of large missing-nin squads roving the countryside is worrying the hidden villages, so they're much more alert than usual."
"It made looking for jobs kinda risky," Inoue-sensei added. "But we still managed to track down a few people who are willing to risk dealing with missing-nin. I think it helps that even though Kobana is a big city, it's still in Tea, which has no village to freak out about us.
"There's a merchant who needs a shipment of something suspiciously unspecified guarded on its way to Wave Country and back again. If I had to guess, he wants something smuggled past the Gatō Conglomerate. The pay's good, but I don't know much about the Conglomerate's defences. Maybe they're just civilian mercs on staggered patrols, or maybe they've got someone of Captain Zabuza's level standing on every street corner.
"There's someone with an information retrieval mission in Hot Springs. It might a nice place to rest and relax after everything we've been though. Granted, it does have a ninja village, but somehow the Village Hidden in the Hot Springs just doesn't strike fear into my heart.
"Oh, and there's also some guy recruiting missing-nin for unspecified combat duties. We didn't talk to him, but we got a contact address and password. Sounds shady as hell, but it's an option, and with the missing-nin hunt on right now, I guess you could argue for safety in numbers.
"We should talk more about this once Keiko's back. I wonder how she's doing?"
-o-
"What's this?" the huge eight-foot-tall pangolin drawled. "A couple of tiny grubs have crawled into the Naraka Rollers' base, all ripe for the eating."
Pandā extended his claws in a trembling peace sign. "O, uh, m-mighty Panchipāma, we b-beseech you for a m-moment of your time. P-Please do us the honour—"
"Ah, shut up," Panchipāma snapped. "Ya got five seconds to give me a reason not to have the girls to chuck ya down the latrine, grub."
There was a series of hisses from the pangolins around the edge of the underground chamber.
Pandā's trembling intensified. "I, uh, I…"
Kei stepped forward. "I am the Pangolin Clan's summoner, and I am here to offer you a pact."
"A pact?" Panchipāma repeated mockingly. "Why would the Panchipāma want a pact with some scrawny human like you? I wouldn't even take such a soft-scaled weakling as a basket-carrier, and ya want me to serve ya?
"Tell ya what," Panchipāma said after a second for the hissing noises to die down. "If ya can beat... say... Panku here in a straight fight, maybe I'll take ya seriously enough to listen to ya. No promises, though."
Panchipāma turned around, showing Kei her back, which was painted white with an inscription in red running down the scales around her spine.
"Oi, Panku. Get over here and fight for the glory of the Naraka Rollers!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
A smaller pangolin, this one a mere seven feet tall, stomped into the middle of the room. "Ready to be crushed into pulp, human?"
Kei focused, shutting out the rest of the room and the watching pangolins, narrowing her perceptions to her own body and that of her target. She reached for her kunai in a quick motion optimised through long practice, and began to throw them in a rapid series.
The first couple went for Panku's vulnerable underbelly. It was the obvious, extremely obvious target, and as such Panku did not hesitate to block the attack in the traditional pangolin fashion—by curling into an invincible ball of scales.
Which was the point at which she discovered that Kei had somehow tied her tail to a ceiling beam with some ninja wire. Panku's feet went out from under her, and Kei's next kunai flew unerringly at her eyes—
There was a brief blur of motion, and suddenly Panchipāma was between the two, the kunai bouncing off the scales on her arms.
"Enough!"
Panchipāma gave Panku an exasperated glare as the latter began the laborious process of detaching the ninja wire from her tail.
When she turned back, Kei gave her a meaningful look. The fight had taken less than three seconds.
"Not too bad, human," Panchipāma conceded. "I guess yer antics have earned ya a minute or two of my time. So what do ya want?"
"I am given to understand," Kei said, "that you are known as a skilled and powerful defensive fighter, who shields her underlings from harm much as you have just displayed here. In recognition of your dominance over this territory, I offer you this tribute, and would ask you to become my summon and fight alongside me."
She stretched out a hand, offering handle-first a fine kris with a stylised wavy blade. It had taken poor Hazō forever to find in Kobana, but judging by Panchipāma's widening eyes and slight shaking of tail, Pandā's guidance on her love of exotic weapons had not led her astray.
"Ha," Panchipāma barked. "Kinda measly as tribute goes. Ya might be quick, but ya don't impress me, kid. If ya want to join the Naraka Rollers and be entitled to the Panchipāma's protection, ya gotta prove yer worthy first.
"Go set us up a new chapter of the Naraka Rollers on the Human Path. I want a group of at least twenty-five females, all willing to call 'emselves Naraka Rollers and live by the ideals of sisterhood, justice and free-rolling badassery. Once ya prove ya got enough of the Naraka Rollers spirit to make others follow ya, I'll accept ya as an underling and let ya summon me in a fight. Got it?"
Kei gave a serious nod. "I will give your offer due consideration."
"Great. Now get outta here. Me and the girls are gonna go racing!"
-o-
You have earned 10 XP.
What next?
Voting closes on Saturday the 16th, 9 am New York Time. Note the change of time.
"I'm confused," Kagome-sensei called, ducking under Noburi's salvo of deadly ice missiles. "Why do you want to leave our nice safe camp with our beautiful sealing lab in order to go get stabbed by lots of stinking ninja stinker border patrols?" He twisted around, moving for a better shot on Noburi, only to screech in panic and Substitute away as Keiko's barrage went through the space his chest had just occupied.
Keiko, Weapons: 884
Noburi, Weapons: 191
Akane, Weapons: 192
Kagome, Weapons: 43 Seriously? With this many dice, how do you roll a 43?!
Keiko, Taijutsu (dodge, because parrying snowballs works poorly and is cheating): 114
Noburi, Taijutsu (dodge): 176
Akane, Taijutsu (dodge): 854
Kagome, Taijutsu (dodge): 781
"I'll save you, senpai!" Akane called, laughing. "Fear the flames of my—I mean, dodge this!" she called, firing a storm of snowballs at Keiko with both hands while using the sling on her ninja wire to fire one towards Noburi, who was facing away looking for Kagome-sensei's next attack. Keiko barely leaped aside from everything headed towards herself before grabbing her teammate by the collar and pulling him out of the path of Akane's cowardly attack.
It had been pouring snow for three days; the weather had just broken today. The team had spent the time huddled inside their artificial cave, eating food and water from their storage scrolls and relying on Akane's Elemental Mastery Technique to keep them warm. Now that the sun had chased off the clouds, the world had turned into a sparkling fairyland of diamond-encrusted trees and wave-sculpted ground. The light splashed through the ice on the branches and broke into tiny rainbows, and tracks of rabbit and fox showed that the team were late risers compared to the local wildlife.
Still, rise they finally had. There was a meadow not too far from their cave where they were enjoying the sun. Noburi, Keiko, Akane, and Kagome-sensei were tearing up the landscape with a ninja snowball fight the rules of which had been very carefully negotiated in advance. Chakra enhancement, Body Flicker, Substitution, and illusionary clones: in. Water Whip, water clones, weapons, parrying, traps, and pangolins: out. Explosives: Double extra special out.
Amazingly, everyone had so far been sticking to the rules.
Inoue-sensei and Hazō had declined to participate. The jōnin was more interested in playing on the snow than in it, and had threatened dire retribution on anyone who happened to strike her with a snowball, errant or otherwise. Hazō, on the other hand, had declined because he was feeling too...well, he was going to go with 'introspective', because 'depressed' sounded bad.
"I'm with Kagome," Inoue-sensei said, smiling as she skated gracefully across the knee-deep snow, held up by a cushion of chakra repulsion. "I went along with the information gathering because I thought it would be good training, but I didn't expect you to actually act on it."
Hazō paused, thinking how to phrase it.
"Why are we here?" he finally asked.
"Well," Inoue-sensei said, "your mommy and daddy loved each other very much, so—"
"Not like that!" Hazō said, shooting a dark glare at a laughing Noburi. "I mean...what are we doing? What are our goals? Do we really want to just hide in the woods for the rest of our lives?"
"Yes," said Kagome-sensei, nodding so furiously that he forgot to duck. Keiko promptly took advantage to pelt him with half a snowbank full of snowballs, but the seal master didn't seem to notice. "Yes. That. That is what I want to do." He thought about it for a moment. "And make explosives. You can never have too many explosives." Without looking he stepped aside from Noburi's attack and hurled one back, missing by a mile.
Noburi leaned over to Keiko and said quietly, "There was a time when I would have disagreed with that."
"I as well," said Keiko, nodding. She looked at him inquiringly. "I have changed my stance on the issue. You?"
"Definitely," Noburi said. "No such thing as too many explosiEEEP!" He danced in place, trying to shake off the double handful of snow that Akane had just dumped down his neck. The laughing genin vanished back into the trees before Keiko could defend her temporarily-incapacitated teammate.
"Come on, guys," Hazō said. "I'm serious. Isn't there anything you want to do with your life, anything you want to accomplish?"
"Mmmmm...nope," said Inoue-sensei, shifting from skating to cartwheeling. (She had assured them that she was 'doing physical therapy', not 'cavorting'.) "I'm good. Safe, reasonably comfortable, not lonely, safe, towns nearby if I want to buy chocolate or soap, safe...this is pretty good."
"Keiko, Noburi, Akane, back me up here," Hazō said. "Aren't there people you'd like to see again?"
"Of course," Akane said, as she leaped off a branch and fired a storm of snow down at Keiko and Noburi. "But that isn't going to happen, sensei."
"We are missing-nin now," said Keiko, diving aside and rolling across the surface of the snow. "You do not come back from being a missing-nin."
"Guys, could you stop for a minute?" Hazō asked, trying not to whine. "Can we please talk seriously?"
Inoue-sensei was up in a one-handed handstand on the snow. She paused, looking over at Hazō, and then rolled smoothly out of the handstand and back to her feet. She skated over to Hazō and knelt down, waving the others to join them.
"Okay, kid," she said. "What's bugging you?"
"Well—"
"I'm cold," Kagome-sensei said. "If we aren't throwing stuff, let's go in."
"Yeah, good plan," Inoue-sensei said. She hopped to her feet, suppressing a quick flash of pain, and turned for their cave. "Last one in washes dishes!" she called as she vanished in a Substitution.
"Hey, no fair!" Noburi said, scrambling to his feet.
Keiko didn't even stand up, she just Substituted from seiza.
o-o-o-o
It took an hour to get everyone inside, warmed up, fed, and the dishes cleaned. Afterwards, while they were lounging around on the massive pile of furs and blankets that they had acquired since camping here, Hazō tried again.
"Look, I'm serious," Hazō said. "I don't want us to just rot in the woods. I want to make a difference in the world." He paused, biting his lip as he gathered his courage. "I want to see my momma again."
Inoue-sensei's casual lounging dropped away and she sat up, looking at him seriously. "Are you all right, Hazō?" she asked.
Hazō shrugged, looking at his hands for a moment before forcing himself to meet her eyes. "I'm okay," he said. "Mostly. I just miss her, you know? She's all I ever had. Poppa died when I was little, I never had brothers or sisters, I wouldn't join the Kurosawa if they paid me.... I'm worried about her. I don't know what she's doing now that she thinks I'm a dead traitor."
"Oh, kid," Inoue-sensei said sadly. "I'm sorry, Hazō. There's not really a lot we can do here. We could try to get a message to her, but if it were intercepted it would put her in danger. Yagura would assume that she was colluding with us. It could get her in a lot of trouble."
"I know," Hazō said. "Still, I have to believe there will be a way to make things better than this. Maybe we could talk to Jiraiya about it?"
Inoue-sensei blew out her cheeks with a sigh. "Yeah, maybe," she said. "Don't get your hopes up though, okay? I don't want you to be disappointed if we can't make it work."
"I won't," Hazō said. "Still. No matter what, I don't want to be stuck out here forever. We're missing-nin, but we aren't bad people and we didn't do anything wrong." He gestured at Kagome-sensei. "Shoot, it sounds like Kagome-sensei was escaping from a really bad situation. You're a good guy, sensei. That shouldn't have happened to you."
"Um," said Kagome-sensei, looking away quickly.
"Anyway," Hazō said. "There have to be other missing-nin like us. People who just got caught in something they had no control over. We shouldn't be cut off from our families and have to be on the run our whole lives. It ought to be possible for us to go home again, to earn our way back in."
"That is not realistic, Hazō," Keiko said.
"Well then, we make it realistic," Hazō snapped. He caught himself and took a breath. "Sorry. Look, the point is, this world sucks, right? Normal civilians are constantly in fear for their lives from chakra monsters, ninja, and just about everything else. They never have enough to eat, they get sick...how many med-nin do you know who help civilians?"
"Hashimoto-sensei did—does," Noburi said.
"That's one," Hazō said. "Name two others."
"Lady Tsunade," Akane said. "And the Konoha Medical School accepts civilian patients."
"As research and training subjects, I imagine," Keiko said with knee-jerk dismissiveness. She caught herself a moment later. "I apologize, that was overly harsh."
Akane shrugged and smiled. "It's not unfair," she said. "Mostly civilians are handled by the trainees, with oversight from a senior doctor."
"Okay, so Leaf is an exception," Hazō said, struggling to get the conversation back on track. "Remember all the places we've stopped? That lake town where Noburi fixed the kid's gapmouth and I put up some walls for them? It took me about five minutes, but it would have taken them weeks. Noburi, you were in surgery on that kid for...what? Half an hour, maybe? You changed his life, maybe even saved it. At the time I had just learned the Multiple Earth Wall—"
"Mew," Inoue-sensei said, in a perfect imitation of a kitten. She even batted playfully at the air with her hands...and, of course, turned the gesture into a good old-fashioned hair ruffling. Hazō sighed and combed it back with his fingers while continuing.
"My point is that I'm a genin who had just learned the ninjutsu, but I could build more for them than a team of adults working ten times as long. Noburi was a barely half-trained apprentice medic—no offense, man—but he was the next best thing to a miracle worker as far as they were concerned. Keiko and Akane were still genin, yet they could clear out all the chakra monsters in the area with barely a thought, whereas entire groups of civilian men needed to travel together to fetch clay while keeping the beasts off. If the ninja wanted to, we could make people's lives better with almost no effort."
"Sure, if you wanted to start a war," Kagome-sensei said.
Hazō blinked. "What?"
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "What do you think causes the shinobi wars? It all comes back to economics eventually. Say we cleaned out all the chakra monsters around that lake town and kept them down. Patrolled every day to make sure things were safe. You built all the walls they needed. Noburi mediced them into perfect health. We used ninjutsu to irrigate their fields and clones to help with plowing. What happens next?"
"...Everyone is happy?" Hazō said.
"For a little while," Kagome-sensei said. "Then they get prosperous. There's no monsters to attack the fields, so the people who were on guard duty can shift to growing food. With good medical care people aren't sick as much, so there's more labor to spend on food production. The town starts to generate a surplus, so they can trade with other towns, transform excess food into other forms of wealth like better tools. The new tools make their labor more efficient, so it takes fewer people to do the same amount of work. That frees up more labor for other things...maybe they build a windmill, buy a loom, start planting non-survival crops like medical plants. Caravans start stopping there more often, since the town has wealth to buy with and goods to sell. Other people hear about this great new town and they move there."
"This sounds pretty good...," Hazō said carefully.
"The world is not like that, though," Keiko said.
"Nope," Kagome-sensei said, rummaging in his pack as he spoke. "More food, more wealth, more people. Can't have that. Power balance would change. Not allowed. Need to prevent it, so they invented the scorch squads." From the bottom of his pack he pulled out a storage scroll and unsealed a small brick of something wrapped in waxed paper and tied shut with twine.
"Usually they're on the ball," he said, putting the storage scroll away. "They're fast enough to prevent that kind of prosperity from happening, so you get towns about the size of that one. Small, everyone's fairly happy, national population is fairly stable. As long as they're careful and they work in small squads there's not much to be done about it. Can't patrol an entire country. Can't defend ten thousand tiny little hamlets. Can't gather everyone into a few big cities 'cause you can't feed them."
He shrugged and started picking the knot out of the bundle with his fingernails. "As long as the scorch squads are careful they don't get caught, things stay stable, there's no problem. If the ninja start actively helping the civilians, though...well, too easy to make their lives better, set off a population boom. Then things start improving too much. Suddenly needs a major strike force to get the job done. That gets noticed. Host nation kills a bunch of the strike force, strike force fights back, everyone's angry, wants to avenge dead friends and family, pretty soon you've got a full out war. Boom. Lots of people die."
"Hang on, what?" Noburi asked. "Scorch squads? Strike forces? What are you talking about?"
Kagome-sensei paused to give Noburi a puzzled look. "Scorch squads," he said, as though that explained anything. "You know, the teams that go around culling the civilian population. What do you call them in Mist?"
"We don't call them anything in Mist!" Noburi said, aghast. "What are you talking about?! Why would anyone do that?"
Kagome-sensei went back to fiddling with the knot, looking unhappy. "S'obvious," he said. "Lots of people, lots of people with the chakra reserves to be ninja. Find a way to increase the civilian population, a generation later you have more ninja. The other countries can't have that, so they send scorch squads out to keep the civilian population low among their enemies."
The knot finally came free and he carefully peeled the paper open to reveal a brick of chocolate, which he proceeded to carve up. He nodded to Akane as he did. "Leaf's nice, though," he said. "The Hyūga and the Uchiha can see chakra, so they only need to kill the kids that actually have it. They usually leave the rest of the town alone. Chocolate?" He held out a small block about the size of his thumb.
"Leaf would never be so unyouthful!" Akane said. "We do not kill innocent people!"
"Um...," Kagome-sensei said, awkwardly holding the chocolate out as it melted around his fingers. "Yeah? They do? Five years in the crypto department, right?" His eyes flicked to the side and the fingers of his free hand started twitching, plucking at the edge of his sleeve. "Black clearance, but only grade two. Never saw the really nasty stuff. Occasional hints about the lupchanz farms, but I wasn't supposed to know about that. Scorch squads though, yeah. Bad people. They must have sent them to the seal division to have their brains eaten so their eyes would look like that."
"Leaf would not do that!" Akane shouted, jumping to her feet with fists clenched.
"They do." Kagome-sensei's voice was as certain as the tides. "They all do. Stinkers, all of 'em. S'why I like the woods. Well, that and no rat-faced school masters with whips and knives recruiting for the Kage."
Akane was so furious she couldn't speak. She just stood, glaring at him for long seconds before spinning on her heel and stalking out of the cave.
"I better go after her," Inoue-sensei said, rising to her feet and slipping out of the cave after her enraged student.
The silence hung in the air.
"You guys want chocolate?" Kagome-sensei asked hesitantly, holding out the cut-up brick of sweets.
None of the genin said anything, too horrified to speak.
"Uh...okay," Kagome-sensei said. He set the candy on the ground between them. "Um...feel free," he said, fingers twitching towards it. "If you want, I mean. I like it. When everything else is bad, it feels good to have something a little sweet. There's one thing that isn't completely awful and full of destruction and screaming and exploding eyes every day."
"You were serious about the scorch squads," Keiko said.
Kagome-sensei shrunk in on himself. "Um...yeah?"
Keiko considered that. "The ninja villages—all the ninja villages—really send out teams to wipe out civilians simply to reduce the number of enemy ninja who will be born at some point in the future?"
"Yes?"
Keiko considered it more. "If we set aside the moral horror, it is actually an extremely efficient way to wage war," she said, in the voice of the Frozen Skein. "Far more ninja would die in an outright conflict, so if one cares only about preserving one's subordinates and no other elements matter—"
"Of course they matter!" Noburi said. "My god, Keiko, how can you be like that? Of course they matter! We're talking about genocide!"
She turned to him with the smoothness of a mechanical doll, her eyes mirrors of ice. "In any equation, all factors must balance. Where they cannot balance, extraneous elements must be removed until they do. The balance of power in the Elemental Nations is extremely precarious. The presence of the Kage means that no major Hidden Village can be attacked without catastrophic losses, so there is no point in attacking. Without the ability to win a direct military victory the polities are forced to rely on indirect warfare. The Mori clan specializes in logistics and planning; we spend a great deal of time thinking about economic and logistic attacks—how to inflict them upon the enemies of Mist and prevent our enemies from inflicting them on us. Steadily reducing enemy population makes a great deal of sense...so long as it was carried out slowly and in small pieces it would be difficult or impossible to prove who had done it, and if a group were to be caught Mist could claim they were missing-nin. It is probably the most effective tactic I can think of for covert battle between ninja states."
Noburi was pale. "That's...."
"Awful?" Kagome-sensei said, slurping on a piece of chocolate. "Yeah. S'why I live in the woods." He chewed and swallowed. "Well, that and the seal factory."
"No!" Akane shouted from the mouth of the cave. Everyone whipped around to see her stalking back inside, Inoue-sensei gliding silently behind her. "I will not accept this. Hazō-sensei, you were talking about how to make the world better for everyone; that is the Will of Fire! That is the Power of Youth! I will not accept a world where people slaughter children simply to weaken enemies that haven't even been born! We will change this!"
Everyone looked at each other uncomfortably.
"Ish—Akane," Keiko said, forcing herself to use the familiar name that the other girl had asked her to use. "Akane, I agree with you. It is a horror, yet it is a horror that is perpetrated by Kage and villages. We are merely six missing-nin...there is nothing we can do. The Mori Clan is in charge of most of Mist's logistics, infrastructure, and economics. If this is happening, the elders have to have known of the issue for decades. They are a highly respected clan in positions of power in the second most powerful Hidden Village in the world. If they have been unable to effect change, there is no way that the six of us can."
"We can. We will! Nothing is impossible if one holds to youth and refuses to give in! Now figure it out!"
Keiko blinked. "Akane," she said. "That is not how the world works. Shouting about youth does not magically make problems go away. Some things cannot be changed."
"And some things can," Akane insisted. "And we will change this. Not tonight, not tomorrow, but eventually. The six of us will change it. And you will put us on the path to success." She dropped to her knees next to Keiko. "Please, Keiko. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to fix this. You're smarter than I am, and you can see a way. Please."
Keiko stared at her, open-mouthed with horror. "I can't...that's not...it doesn't...."
"She can't do it without our help," Hazō said, setting a hand on Akane's arm and turning her gently towards him. "The Frozen Skein is good at critiquing other people's ideas, but not at coming up with its own. Right, Keiko?"
"I...yes. Yes, that is correct," Keiko said.
"All right," Hazō said, looking around the circle. "This is what I was talking about. We could spend our lives wandering aimlessly around, avoiding patrols and living in caves, or we could make a difference. We aren't some random bunch of weaklings, we are a team." He gestured to Noburi. "A medic-nin who can share his nigh-infinite chakra. Two sealmasters to make explosives, barriers, and whatever else we need. A summoner, like the Three. A spy who can stop people's hearts with her illusions. And you, Akane." He smiled at her. "Inoue-sensei can gather all the intelligence we need to make a plan. Keiko can figure out how to make it work. Kagome-sensei and I will blow up or punch out anything in the way, and Noburi will keep us all alive while we do it. You're the one who makes us do it, the one with the fire to get us moving."
He looked around the circle. "Well? Who's in?"
"I'm not a medic-nin," Noburi said shakily. "I can't do what you said."
Hazō put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. "Yes, you can," he said. "We'll go back to Iron and get you the rest of the training you need. Or we'll find you another teacher. Whatever it takes, we will help you become what you want to be: a powerful ninja and a brilliant medic-nin. Someone who isn't afraid of anything or anyone. Someone who saves lives, just like you saved that little boy. Someone that people admire and respect, the way his mother did."
A snakebasket of emotions chased across Noburi's face—fear, embarrassment, hope, all flashing by too quickly to register.
"Yeah," Noburi said. He thought about it. "Yeah. Yeah, let's do this."
"Hazō," Inoue-sensei said. "I don't want to ruin the mood, but—"
"You want to do what's right, not what's easy," Hazō said. "That's what you said. Did you mean it?"
"Yes, but this...."
"Fine," Hazō said. "Then do the right thing and help your students. You left Mist because you believed in Shikigami-sensei's vision, because you wanted to build something. When you left the swamp, you could have just vanished. We were nothing but a drag on you, and bringing us along increased your risk a lot. You brought us anyway. Why?"
Inoue-sensei looked uncomfortable. "Look, I know what you're doing—"
"Why did you bring us?" Hazō demanded.
She sighed. "Yes, you're right. I wanted to build something, I wanted to save some lives even though I couldn't save everyone. I just...this is too big. There's no way that I—that we—can influence something on this scale."
"Why?" Hazō demanded.
She looked at him as though he were insane. "Because this is Kage and villages and we're just missing-nin?"
"We can't do it now," Hazō said, his brain flicking through possibilities. Inoue-sensei was the key; where she went, Keiko went. It could work the other way—if all the genin were on page, Inoue-sensei would follow. That was the wrong way, though; if she went because of them she would be reluctant, looking for reasons to give up. If she went of her own free will then she would throw everything she had into it, and inspire Keiko to do the same. Either way, wherever Noburi, Inoue, Keiko, Hazō, and Akane went, Kagome-sensei would follow. If he could convince Inoue-sensei, it was done.
"We can't do it now," he said again. "That's not the same as can't do it at all. We don't need to be able to punch people to make a difference. We need knowledge and money. Look at Jiraiya—he's fighting to prevent a war, and he's succeeding. He's powerful, sure, but no so powerful that he could fight one of the Kage or the Villages on his own. He's getting it done with his spies, and probably with a merchant network as well. We can build one of those, and who better to build a spy network than a spy?"
He studied her carefully. "Think about it, sensei. Jiraiya is a better fighter than you, but I bet he's not a better infiltrator. You can get in anywhere and find out people's secrets. Then we use those secrets—maybe for blackmail, maybe just for knowing where there's a good opportunity to sell things so we can get rich. Then we use the money to buy information and favors. You must have done this before—turned someone, used them to find things out."
"Yes...," Inoue-sensei said, nodding slowly and looking into memory. "Yes, I have. Maybe...."
"It's just more of the same," Hazō said. "Spy missions, finding things out, influencing people. We choose the missions, so nothing too dangerous, nothing that we aren't sure we can pull off. It's exactly what you're best at."
"If I could do it, so could other people," she said, clearly looking for objections. "If it's so easy, why hasn't someone else done it?"
"Because the villages want things to stay the same," he said. "And most missing-nin don't want to do anything except keep their heads down. Because they don't have a team with the Power of Youth to motivate them and the skills to get it done. Our team is probably unique in the Elemental Nations—we can fight, spy, steal, whatever it takes. We have a jōnin who is a master spy. We have a demolitions expert. We have a medic, and a brilliant tactician, and a summoner. On top of all that, we have the ear of one of the most powerful ninja in the world, who is also a spymaster and a close personal friend of the God of Shinobi."
Inoue-sensei was clearly wavering. She just needed a push, and it needed to come from someone else. Hazō looked over to Noburi in mute entreaty. The stout boy met his eyes and quailed, but visibly braced himself.
"Think about it, sensei," said Noburi. "You wanted to make a difference, to save lives, to build something? This is it. Maybe we aren't strong enough individually, but Hazō is right. We'll get stronger, we'll get contacts and money. As a team we are unstoppable. "
"You wanted to do something right," Akane said. "To show your strength, your youth. This is the chance. This is the moment when you can change the world. All you need to do is decide."
Inoue-sensei snorted in amusement. "Fine," she said, her voice firming up even as she spoke. "We will kick ass, take names, and change the world. And you're right, we'll get stronger. Jiraiya owes me a rematch, and one of these days I'm going to put him on his back." She paused, then grinned. "In a spar, I mean."
Hazō manfully refused to acknowledge the comment; instead he turned to Keiko and Kagome-sensei in silent question.
"Yes," Keiko said, her voice far away in the Mori ice. "This balance is only metastable. The wilderness is a constant threat, and if the villages keep killing any civilians who grow too strong then humanity will slowly erode. Fewer civilians being born means fewer ninja over time. Small populations exhibit greater stochastic variance. Eventually there will come a generation where, simply by chance, many ninja are born in one country and few or none in another. Power will shift and the other nations will have no choice but to ally against the strongest. There will be a war, and some of the countries will be wiped out and the rest weakened. With fewer ninja to defend civilization, more civilians will be claimed by the wilderness. The population shrinks even more, there are fewer ninja, the political landscape becomes still more unstable."
She paused for long seconds. "This explains things that I always wondered about in my studies; Mist's imports have shrunk since the founding of the village. Not enough to matter, but by a statistically significant amount. Mist does not have enough farmland to sustain itself, so it is dependent on those imports. If they shrink below a certain point, there will be no choice but conquest. That may even have been what our original mission was about—we were to capture land in Noodle in order to guarantee the village farmland and a beachhead on the mainland as a staging ground for future warfare."
Her eyes defrosted and she looked around the circle. "This cannot be allowed to stand," she said firmly. "My clan would perish alongside everyone else I care about. They are constrained by the will of the Kage, but I am a free agent. I can act to protect them because I am outside their system. Yes, I am in. Let us change the world."
Five sets of eyes turned on Kagome-sensei; the sealmaster shrunk back in on himself.
"Think about it, sensei," Hazō urged. "Those people who did all those things to you? They're part of the system that makes all this happen. Break that system, they go down. With them gone, we're all safer. No one trying to track us down. No one trying to lock us up, make us draw seals all day. We go where we want, do what we like. Respect, power, safety—all we have to do is take it. Best of all: payback."
Between one blink and the next, Kagome-sensei's eyes shifted, the terrified rabbit being replaced by the hungry wolf. "Yeah," he said, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Yeah. Those stinkers would look really good spread across a wall. Couldn't do it myself. No choice but to run, hide in the woods like an animal. This team, though...yeah. Maybe. Not today, but maybe." He looked at the pile of seal blanks that he'd pulled out of a storage scroll without even noticing he was doing it. "I've had some ideas over the years...never pursued them, too dangerous. Maybe, though...with a partner for the research, with Mori to plan...it would be nice not to be afraid all the time."
Suddenly the wolf was replaced with the shy forest nin. "It's, uh...it's nice having a team, too," he said, ducking in embarrassment. "Can't let the stinkers get you guys." He nodded firmly. "Yeah. Let's do this."
"Congratulations, Hazō," Inoue-sensei said, her voice laced with amusement and purpose. "You've convinced us. In the face of all sanity and in direct opposition to what Jiraiya told us, we're going to conquer the world. What's our first step, O Mighty Inspirer?"
Hazō grinned. "Simple," he said. "We go to Hot Springs, get this information, and get paid. While we're at it, we develop some contacts there, start building a network."
"Okay," Inoue-sensei said, nodding firmly. "Let's do this."
o-o-o-o
Hazō, Awareness, TacMov, Taijutsu: 483, 699, 649
Keiko, Awareness, TacMov, Weapons: 541, 827, 837
Noburi, Awareness, TacMov, Water Whip: 575, 853, 609
Akane, Awareness, TacMov, Taijutsu: 618, 704, 731
Inoue, Awareness, TacMov, Taijutsu: 854, 796, 1099Why do the dice hate you so much, Mari? What did you ever do to them?
Kagome, Awareness, TacMov, Taijutsu: 892, 514, 657
Chakra monsters, Awareness, TacMov, Taijutsu: 333, 254, 371
"Gear check," Inoue-sensei said. "Show me six full bottles."
"Check," said Hazō, hands tapping a quick tattoo on the half dozen canteens strapped to his tac vest. Each canteen sloshed full, its contents crammed with as much chakra as Noburi could put in it after a long day of each team member chasing down chakra monsters and bringing them back to him to be drained to death of their chakra. By now everyone was tired and sweaty, but the clock was ticking; outside of Noburi's barrel, the chakra would only remain in the water for a few hours.
"Check / check / check / check," said the rest of the team, tapping their bottles.
Inoue-sensei surveyed them one more time, then nodded. "Okay, let's go. No stopping, no slowing down. Drink your water before you start feeling low on chakra, but do it on the move. We don't want to fight anyone, we just want to outrun them." She checked in with everyone by eye, then turned and ran out onto the surface of the Kanashii Ocean and set off at something one step short of a sprint. The rest of the team followed hard on her heels.
The geometry of their route was bad; Tea and Fire shared a border on the peninsula, and there was a heavily-patrolled chokepoint from the peninsula to the mainland, so going by land was a short trip to a graveyard. They could try to ocean-run to the east, perhaps stopping at Nagi Island to rest before turning north, but no matter what route they took they would be passing near Mist, the capital of Noodle, and the horrible currents and storms around Wave. Alternatively, they could try to run straight across the Hanguri Gulf to Fire, but that would take them through the widest part of the Gulf and then give them a long run through Fire. The prevailing west-to-east winds meant that the Gulf was always choppy and frequently stormy; after their experiences in the boat no one wanted to spend more time on the ocean than they needed to, especially not while water-walking.
Lacking a good option they went for the least awful one: start on the eastern side of Tea where the ocean was typically a little milder, run five miles to the east on the water, loop back to land in the middle of the Fire portion of the peninsula (thereby bypassing the border), then across to the western border and across the Gulf where it started to pinch down. Touch land in Fire but several dozen miles west of the chokepoint. From there, north-northeast at top speed to the southeast corner of Fire, back onto the water and island-hop to circle around and enter Hot Springs from the north.
To say that there was a lack of enthusiasm about the plan was an understatement, but it was the best they had. There was a betting pool about what exactly was going to go wrong; Akane was the only one to bet on "nothing!" Keiko took this as confirmation that the youthful genin was out of her mind.
It was a long route—three hundred miles until they were out of Fire and could afford to camp for the night, then another two hundred or so to hop around Hot Springs. It was going to be a long day, and Inoue-sensei had made it clear that they weren't stopping for anything at all, so everyone should either visit the latrine before they left, hold it, or do laundry and be laughed at when they got to the islands.
The first part went smooth as silk; when they entered the Hanguri Gulf Akane was starting to look as close to smug as the youthful genin ever did. That, of course, was the moment when she lost the pool.
Horrific chakra Megalodon-ish thing, Stealth: ?d100 => 856
Horrific chakra Megalodon-ish thing, Eating Things: ?d100 => 954
Keiko, Weapons: 18 + 6 (mass combat) => 1021
Noburi, Water Whip: 15 + 6 (mass combat) => 717
Kagome, Explosive Punching Style: ? + 6 (mass combat) => 997
Hazō, Weapons: hahahahahaha. Doesn't matter, it's just for the PMYF
Horrific chakra Megalodon-ish thing, TacMov: ?d100 => 911
The team was running in line abreast, the rapid-fire pounding of their feet splashing water up in a rooster tail behind them. A rooster tail that blocked vision.
Inoue-sensei glanced behind her, as she'd been doing every few seconds since they'd left land. It was hardly relevant here on the ocean, where they were the only living things within miles, but it was a habit and—
There was a mouth wider than the entire team and full of waaaay too many teeth surging up behind them at speeds that made ninja look slow.
"VAULT!" she yelled, leaping straight up with maximum chakra boost. "Pincushion!"
Everyone followed her up, soaring into the air; the immense pseudo-shark passed below them, but by far less of a margin than anyone would have preferred. Hazō barely cleared it; the edge of its fin clipped him in passing and sent him tumbling out of control down its sandpaper side. He kept himself together enough to stay on the surface and roll across the chop thrown up by the creature's titanic re-entry to the water.
Even before he'd touched down, Noburi was pushing his chakra drain out to maximum range, his finger following the beast as it dove and circled back under them. The team dove aside again, tumbling over the waves as the thing leaped straight up, teeth-first and thrashing in the air as though to swim into the heavens.
Hazō rolled back up to his feet and started firing tag-equipped kunai up to bracket the monster. An instant after leaving his hands the tags unsealed logs that made perfect Substitution targets. The megalodon's tiny brain was shocked to find itself in midair, suddenly surrounded by a flock of the tiny little morsels it had been planning to snack on before looking for a nice juicy whale or squid for dinner. Worse yet, they were fighting back! That wasn't what morsels were supposed to do!
Keiko was flinging kunai and explosive disks in a nearly solid stream, holding nothing back for later. A line of pointy metal stitched its way up the creature's side before exploding and blowing massive craters in its rubbery flesh.
On the far side, Noburi's Water Whip flicked back and forth, carving big chunks of blubber out of the monster's sides.
Kagome-sensei swapped himself with a target that had, more by luck than Hazō's intent, ended up near the creature's tail. He raised his hands and triggered all eight of his palm seals in a staccato crash that carved straight through the join between tail and body.
The monster hit the water in bloody shreds, dead before the splash was done.
Everyone paused, panting and shaking with leftover adrenaline.
"Come on," Inoue-sensei said. "Let's get out of here before its big brother shows up."
o-o-o-o
Despite the 'no stopping' rule, when they hit land they paused for just long enough for Kagome to reload his palm boxes, Keiko to restock her kunai holsters with tag-equipped kunai, and Noburi to disinfect and clean the oozing wound that reached from Hazō's left hip to right shoulder, where the creature's rough hide had sanded his skin off as he tumbled down its side.
Ninety seconds after their feet touched land, the team was back on the move.
The terror of the Gulf crossing had a strange effect on the rest of the trip: five hours of running through the most powerful ninja nation in the world was anticlimactic, but running across a total of ten or twenty miles of water as they island-hopped around to the north side of Noodle had them all in danger of needing to do laundry. Fortunately, nothing else decided to snack on them for the rest of the trip and so no one's bladder control was put to the test.
After two days of running flat-out for twelve hours without stops, it was a footsore, weary, and soaking wet group that came ashore on the northern border of Hot Springs and dragged themselves into town. Mari barely even haggled with the innkeeper, simply dropping money on the desk so that everyone could fall on their noses in two upstairs rooms. Hazō and Noburi were asleep before Kagome-sensei finished setting up Force Wall seals to block doors, walls, and ceiling. In the girls' room, Mari seriously considered not bothering to set up the Force Walls that Kagome had pressed on her, but she knew that the sealmaster would rant and complain at her if she didn't. No matter how much she begrudged the effort, she had to admit that having the Force Walls up made falling onto her lovely soft pillow a much more relaxing affair.
XP AWARD: 13
This update got away from me after Hazō started making inspirational speeches, so @Velorien is going to write the second half. There will be no voting until after his update.
"Sensei, may I speak to you?" Kei asked, forcing herself to stand straight. The worry was twisting in her gut, and it had brought with it self-contempt at her inability to manage her own feelings. Still, no matter how much it hurt to admit her weakness, it was important to do so before her infantile lack of self-discipline could damage the functioning of the team.
Mari-sensei looked up from her little orange book and smiled. "Grab a seat," she said, gesturing to the chair beside her as she dog-eared the page and closed the book. She saw the direction of Kei's gaze and waved the book casually. "I'm reading some of Jiraiya's work, trying to get a handle on him for the next time we meet. What can I do for you?"
"Is that not...pornography?" Kei asked.
"Yep," Mari-sensei said with no trace of shame. "The writing's a little uneven, but he's got a good balance of humor and smut. The visuals are well-designed to appeal to heterosexual men, and the characters and dialogue are going to draw in hetero women. The letters section in the back is a also a nice touch—it humanizes the work and the author, creates a sense of community with other readers, and makes the reader want to engage by writing their own letter in hopes of being recognized in public by the Mighty Author. It's quite well done, actually. Says a lot about his understanding of psychology. I just wish I knew if he'd done the art himself." She shrugged. "Anyway, what can I do for you?"
Kei swallowed nervously. "I...find myself unable to stop thinking about Kagome's discussion of the scorch squads," she said, grimacing. Her stomach was knotting tighter at admitting this to Mari-sensei than it had over the thought of tens of thousands of people being killed. What did that say about her?
Inoue sighed. "Yeah," she said. "That was...pretty awful. Are you all right?"
"I am..." Kei began, stopping when her throat closed off before allowing the admission to come forth. "I am concerned that I am emotionally compromised," she said, retreating to the stilted formality of mission reports.
Mari-sensei smiled sadly. "It's okay, Keiko," she said. "It's all right to be upset about something horrible. To be honest, I'm rattled by it myself. I've never heard anything about this, which leaves me wondering—was I really that far out of the loop?" She shook her head, looking at her hands thoughtfully. "I've done some fairly sensitive and classified missions, but was I never trusted? I was always a field ninja, and I never did a turn in Intelligence the way Kagome apparently did, so maybe it was just need-to-know and compartmentalized. Still, jōnin talk to each other. We're pretty good about keeping secrets, but little things leak, and I would have thought I'd have gotten some hint if people were doing things this bad. I like to think I'm good at reading people, so how could I have missed something like this?" She shrugged uncomfortably. "Then again, some of the Mist nin were stone-cold psychos and I always tried to stay far away from those types. It wouldn't surprise me if those were the ones doing it."
"It seems...unwise," Kei said tentatively. The fact that Mari-sensei was also bothered by the idea of scorch squads meant that knot in Kei's stomach was loosening very slightly. She no longer felt like vomiting, at least. "Ninja depend on civilians for food, and most clans insist on at least one exogamous marriage per generation, simply to prevent inbreeding."
"No argument from me," said Mari-sensei. "Still, it makes a cold sort of sense. Very low-risk way to slowly whittle down an enemy's ability to wage war." She shook her head. "I never bought into the idea that civilians are somehow inferior. I'm civilian-born, and my family weren't stupid, or immoral—well, except for my uncle. Anyway, point is that they're just people, not animals like those clan ninja like to claim." Her lip curled in disgust. "Stupid stuck-up bastards."
"Is it possible that Kagome was lying?" Kei asked hopefully.
Mari-sensei shook her head. "I doubt it very much," she said. "The man has zero capacity for deception, and I can't imagine what motive he would have. It's possible he was wrong, though." She sighed. "I'd like to believe that, anyway. Still...it would be an efficient way to fight, and Yagura is a cold-blooded bastard." An impish smile flashed across her face and she winked at Kei. "Not that I would ever have said that while we were still with Mist, of course. Still, what's he going to do—send ninja to hunt us down and kill us?"
The moment Harada saw the two travellers entering his inn, he said goodbye to his plans for a peaceful afternoon restocking the inventory.
The woman was unremarkable in every way, dressed in ordinary farmer's clothes with her hair tied up in a simple but practical ponytail. He wouldn't have given her a second glance were she not a customer. The man, on the other hand…
The pot belly Harada could accept (and even sympathise with). The hooked nose was unfortunate, but people couldn't help the way they were made. But the clothes… The man looked like he'd heard how human beings dressed from rumours and hearsay, and then tried to imitate them by robbing one of those travelling entertainer troupes.
Harada looked him over from top to bottom. A rice farmer's broad-brimmed hat. Shoulder straps leading to a tanner's apron. Mercenary boiled leathers beneath the straps. The whole ensemble partially covered by a short-cut jacket that Harada thought might have been fashionable in his grandfather's time. Oversized blacksmith's gloves. Kabuki actor clogs.
Harada's examination was interrupted as the man raised a hand imperiously and pointed his index finger right at Harada's nose.
"Lowly peasant, I command thee—"
"Ahem!" the woman cut in quickly. "What my lor- err, my mast- err, my friend means to say is that he would like to ask you a few questions about the nearby hot springs. Unfortunately," she gave the man a pointed look, "he is recovering from an illness of the throat, and so I will have to speak on his behalf."
Harada nodded carefully. "Of course. What would your… friend… like to know?"
"Well," the woman began, "to begin with, can you recommend us a good resort?"
"Of course, madam. My cousin works at the Imomura Hot Springs, and I can tell you with confidence that it is the very—"
"Absolutely not," the man interrupted in a high-pitched, whiny voice. "Lord Kamachi patronises the Imomura Hot Springs. I refuse to—"
"Are there any other hot springs you can suggest?" the woman asked loudly.
Harada quickly went down the list.
"Mizuchi Hot Springs?"
"Lord Ijiwara."
"Mishima Hot Springs?"
"Lord Kimura."
"Mizutani Hot Springs?"
After a quick glance at the man, the woman gave him a happy smile. "Please, tell us more."
Harada considered. "Mizutani has a reputation for safety and security. It's where important people go to rest and re… resomething. Recuperate, that's it!
"They have real ninja guarding the place," he added, "and fierce guard dogs to keep out thieves and peeping toms."
"My," the woman put a hand to her mouth. "How dangerous. Real ninja, you say?"
Harada nodded. "Oh, yes. They've got a full team of three Sannin there right now."
The man and the woman blinked simultaneously. "Sannin?"
"Oh, oops. I mean sennin."
The man and the woman looked at each other. "Three sennin?"
Harada frowned. "Does that not sound right?
"Oh, wait, genin. That's what they're called."
The woman gave him an unreadable look.
"That sounds terribly impressive," she said after a second's pause. "So, purely hypothetically, a place like that must be appropriate for travelling noblemen, then?"
"I'd say so," Harada agreed. "They get all sorts. Dignitaries, wealthy merchants, even the occasional injured ninja."
"Ninja guests?" the woman asked in surprise. "But isn't it terribly dangerous for injured ninja to be out in public? I thought they all went around killing each other all the time."
Harada couldn't help laughing. "You're really not from around here, are you? The Land of Hot Springs is an official de-somethinged zone, by treaty. Any ninja trying to ply their craft here is going to have Hidden Springs come down on them like a ton of bricks, and the other villages are supposed to help."
"So the ninja here don't go around getting in everyone's business the way they do back home?" the woman asked.
"They're pretty laid-back," Harada said. "They get the megalodon's share of the taxes here, and since Hot Springs gets so many wealthy visitors, far more than those wannabes in the Country of the Wave, not to mention having a wonderful climate for growing fruit, our ninja don't have to work as hard as, say, those butchers from Hidden Mist."
The woman raised her eyebrows.
"Everyone knows Mist wants to conquer Hot Springs and take away our freedom," Harada explained in a matter-of-fact voice (since he was stating the bleeding obvious). "If we weren't on such good terms with Hidden Leaf, who knows what might become of us, treaty or no treaty."
The woman, still listening attentively, reached back and tugged at her ponytail, adjusting the ribbon it was tied back with.
Suddenly, the man leaned back. "No, wait. Mizutani! That's where Lord Sagara goes for his old sports injury!"
The woman sighed. "Could you please tell us about some other hot springs, sir?"
-o-
"…and then we swapped roles over in the next town, and Kagome practised gathering information while I drew attention off him whenever he was having trouble," Inoue-sensei went on, luxuriating in a soft armchair after a day on her feet apparently pretending to be a variety of dubious individuals. It was long past dark, and by mutual agreement the team had decided not to say a word about their work until they'd been suitably filled with hot soup.
"'Oh, is it true that the hot springs are full of beautiful young women, frolicking about without a shred of clothing?'" Inoue-sensei asked in her best lecherous voice. Hazō and Keiko shivered involuntarily at the aura of naked lust that briefly surrounded her, while Noburi's face took on a dreamy expression for a second before he caught himself.
"What about you, kids?" she asked with a smug grin.
Hazō went first. "The Mizutani Hot Springs are surrounded by a wooden palisade fence about ten feet tall. At the south end, there is a large gate which sees regular traffic, with stables and an entry building. Behind the entry building is a large two-floor inn, probably with the actual hot spring baths further back. Outside, there are regular patrols – I counted four groups of three civilian guards armed with clubs and spears, and each group had a dog. There's also at least one ninja, on an irregular patrol schedule I couldn't work out."
"There are more than four groups of guards," Keiko added, "but only four are on duty at any given time. Two groups are replaced every hour. The dogs are Shiba dogs, and I speculate that the breed was chosen for its friendly appearance which appeals to visitors, combined with keen hunting instincts and its notorious ability to scream loudly when provoked.
"My second cousin had several Shiba dogs," she added thoughtfully. "They behaved in a reserved fashion towards me, but were never hostile the way other breeds have been in the past."
Noburi took over. "The inn does business with two main suppliers: Wakamoto and Sons, based out of Ijima, for food, and Imagawa, whose location I don't know yet, for sundries like linens and stuff. Wakamoto's delivers carts of fresh food at around 9 am every morning, and a bigger delivery every Saturday. Imagawa delivers every Sunday, plus various mid-week orders as necessary.
"Wakamoto's has done business with them for at least thirty years, but Imagawa got a contract only recently, after the previous supplier tried to cheat a ninja and it ended badly."
Everyone looked at Noburi. "Wow," Hazō said. "How did you manage to get all that?"
Noburi shrugged. "I followed a couple of servants out on errands, waited for the right opportunity, then talked to them while they picked things up in town. They also told me that the proprietress's daughter is pregnant, father unknown, there are two nobles fighting over the attention of a female ninja with a hurt leg, and there's a creepy guy with hollow eyes and a big curved sword staying on the second floor. Oh, and someone really important is coming soon, but they don't know who."
"Huh," Hazō said. "What about you, Akane?"
"I mostly ran interference," Akane said cheerfully. "Somebody had to keep the boys busy while Noburi chatted up the girls."
All eyes turned to Noburi again.
"It wasn't like that!" he insisted after a brief glance at Keiko and her sceptical expression. "I was only buying them lunch so they'd open up to me! Stop looking at me like that!"
"They grow up so fast," Inoue-sensei sighed, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye as Kagome looked on in bemusement.
-o-
You have earned 3 XP.
-o-
Noburi reports that walls are not relevant to Vampiric Dew's sensory powers.
Research on the Macerator is complete, with only a couple of close brushes with Hazō's mortality.
What next?
Voting closes on Saturday the 23rd, 9 am New York Time. Note the changed time.
Last edited:
Interlude: Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough
"Hazou-sensei, would you come spar with me?" Akane said. "I have been working on some new ideas and I feel that they are most youthful."
"Sure," Hazou said, setting aside the kunai he'd been sharpening and rising smoothly to his feet.
The two of them walked a few yards away from the camp and squared off. "Ready, fight!" Hazou said, leaping forward. He stuck with standard Academy style taijutsu, supplemented by what Inoue-sensei had taught them all. This spar was about letting Akane test out her new techniques against the kind of opponent she was likely to meet. His deception-based personal style (which he called Roki out loud but privately thought of as Teeth of the Trickster God—a name he would never ever admit to) would defeat the purpose.
She had improved over the months that they'd been training together. She was now his equal, and he was working hard to keep up. He dodged what he could, slipped most of the blows, and let one punch hit his shoulder in what seemed like a good exchange for kicking her in the—
He flew backwards and hit the ground hard, rolling up to his feet and holding up a hand to stop the spar while he struggled to breathe.
"What in the hells was that?" he asked, once his lungs were cooperating again.
Akane beamed. "Did you like it? I was thinking how best to use the training jutsu that Pankurashun-sensei taught me, and I came up with this. I call it the Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough. What do you think?"
Hazou probed his shoulder carefully. Yes, it was working, but it felt like he'd been kicked by a mule. Hopefully Noburi could fix it for him, because otherwise he was going to be hard-pressed to use it for a couple of days.
"Yeah, I like it," he said grudgingly. "Now, round two!"
With no further warning he leaped forward, his body dropping smoothly into the patterns of Teeth of the Trickster God. Let's see how her Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough enjoyed fighting a God!
Behold, your apprentice has created a new taijutsu style based around the gifts of the mighty Pangolin Clan! (Sadly, it is not teachable to anyone who lacks the jutsu.)
Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough
If Akane hits in combat (i.e. if her Taijutsu beats the opponent's combat skill) then she gets to roll Strength d100 (capped at skill level) and add 1/2 of the result to her taijutsu roll before determining success level.
If Akane is hit in combat (i.e. if her opponent's combat skill beats her Taijutsu) then she gets to roll Stamina d100 (capped at skill level) and subtract 1/2 of the result from her opponent's roll before determining success level. If she reduces it to 0 she takes no damage, although her henge and/or protective pangolin jutsu will still be disrupted.
In both cases, the number of dice she rolls is capped by her YFotMBTiRSaT level.
As with all new rules, these are subject to change if they turn out to be massively broken.
"I said no, I am not going to focus my training efforts on stealth," she said, vibrating in place as she pushed chakra through her muscles for no purpose other than to use it up. Empty your coils, then let them refill; the nausea and muscle aches made the training miserable, but it was the only way to stretch your coils enough to increase capacity quickly.
"Ohkaayy," Hazō said. "Why not? We're about to go on a stealth-focused mission."
"Our opponents on this mission are civilians and genin," she said. "I am skilled enough at stealth for that. Going forward, I need more chakra for summoning. I was only able to summon Pankurashun because I was able to use Noburi's chakra water to overcharge my capacity. I cannot rely on that in an emergency and it has harmful long-term effects if used regularly. Right now I have a mere two contracts; Pandā is a non-combatant and Pankurashun is not willing to be summoned. I need to gain more contracts and I need to have the capacity to summon them. The summoning contract is my primary contribution to this team—"
"No it isn't!" Hazō said. "Why would you think that? Keiko, you're an incredible fighter and a brilliant tactician. Even before you got the contract you were an amazing asset to this team."
"Thank you for the support," Keiko said politely. "If you'll excuse me, I need to focus."
o-o-o-o
"Here," Kagome said, his tone darkly satisfied. "This will work. Keep an eye out." He knelt down to unseal a bundle of poles and started digging two of them into the ground so that they just barely poked up through the clump of bushes he and his partner knelt behind. Akane nodded and stretched up tall so she could see in all directions. She carefully said nothing; this was not the best time to talk to Kagome.
To say that the sealmaster was not thrilled about being here would be an understatement. He was onboard with the "conquer the world and turn the stinking stinkers into a lovely red mist against the wall before blowing up the wall and then doing a victory dance on the rubble" plan, but it didn't mean he enjoyed leaving their safe and comfortable lair in the woods. For the first time in years he'd actually been enjoying doing seal research—indeed, he'd managed to remember the thing that had been his single pleasure through most of his adult life. The fact that he needed to abandon that idyllic life in order to conquer the world so he could do his victory dance on the aforementioned bloody-mist-soaked wall had him feeling generally grumpy and twitchy.
Should the team need to come out of the resort hot, whoever was pursuing them was going to discover just how grumpy Kagome was feeling.
o-o-o-o
"Not bad," Mari said, studying Akane's expression. "Relax your forehead a little more. Yes, like that. Let's try it again. Remember, correct yourself on a minor detail."
"Hello," Akane said, smiling brightly and bowing to her sensei. "My name is Arakida Kanna. My father and I are bakers and we just arrived from Wave on Thursday—well, Wednesday night—and we're looking for new customers. Would you be interested in a regular delivery contract?"
"Not bad," Mari said, her tone indicating that 'not bad' was the accurate phrase. "Still needs some work, though. Okay, let's practice microexpressions again. What did I just show?"
"Happiness, sensei," Akane said immediately. "The corners of your eyes crinkled and your cheeks were raised."
"Good!" Mari said, clapping the genin on the shoulder. "Excellent. We'll make a spy out of you yet." She suddenly laughed. "And you, young lady, just showed me a microexpression of unhappiness. Don't worry, I promise I'll be gentle."
o-o-o-o
"Ahhh," Hazō said, leaning back in the hot water with unfeigned satisfaction. Say what you would about the safety and relative comfort of their hidden forest cave, relaxing in a hot mineral spring was amazing. As was having a proper toilet nearby instead of a latrine two miles away.
"Not bad, eh?" said one of his fellow bathers, a red-faced and fleshy man in his fifties with a bald spot that was still painfully obvious no matter how much hair he swirled around it. He lazily waved one hand in the air to indicate the entire facility. "I should have come here ages ago. Much better than that Mizuchi place." He snorted. "Do you know, they don't even have guards there? Random commoners were wandering in all the time. I had to share a bath with a dockworker. Ugh."
Hazō, Deception:
12d100: 757You just used up all the luck on your next ten rolls. I'll get you next time, my pretty!
Lord Kuwabara:
?d100: 472 Way to bomb your roll, dude.
Hazō made a sympathetic noise. "Ugh. How horrible—you're right, this is much better." He offered a casual nod that was the relaxing-in-a-hot-spring equivalent of a bow. "I'm Lord Oisha Dai, pleasure to meet you." He laughed self-deprecatingly. "And before you ask, yes, just a hill daimyo. Tiny little place on the border of Earth, but it's been in the family twenty generations, so that's something."
The other man smiled and nodded. "Lord Kuwabara Seiji. No shame in being born to a small holding, Dai," he said magnanimously. "Pity this isn't the good old days, right? Used to be you could train up a group of samurai, hire some ninja for backup, and claim all the land you liked." He took a pull from his sake cup and shook his head sadly. "Glorious times, those. A man could really be a man back then." He tossed back the rest of his sake and refilled it from the bottle on the ledge beside him before waving the bottle in Hazō's general direction. The genin took it with a grateful smile, poured some into the cup that the man handed him, and took a polite sip.
"You ever fight?" Kuwabara asked slyly. "Nothing gets the blood going faster. Sometimes I think about starting a mercenary company, eh? Could be great fun, riding around having adventures. Kill the odd chakra beast here, carve up a few bandits. If things heat up any more between Fire and Mist there might even be work there, securing borders and what not. Keep the peasants in line while the ninja are fighting. Great fun!"
Hazō, Deception (conceal the fact that you wants to punch the head right off this bragging twit who wouldn't even know which end of a kunai to hold and certainly has never seen anyone die yet still feels the need to yammer on about the 'glory' of killing people as though his opinion on the subject were worth a single drop of squirrel pee):
12d100 - 3d100 (Thousand Yard Stare)
15,61,89,44,89,31,53,83,97 => 562
Lord Kuwabara, Deception (notice that Hazō wants to punch your head off for being a bragging twit whose opinion isn't worth a drop of squirrel pee):
?d100=> 641
Images blinked through Hazō's mind in a series of lightning flashes: the town near Hidden Swamp with the fierce women guards and the fisherfolk and weavers from the lake town in Iron—people carving a life from a harsh world through sheer grit. The merchants in Yuni, running caravans that were the lifesblood of a hundred tiny villages. The civilians in the Liberator's camp, their spirits soaring at the simple opportunity to build lives for themselves.
Hazō nodded politely to Kuwabara and forced his mouth into the closest approximation of a smile he could manage.
Kuwabara took one look at Hazō and went sheet white. He fumbled his cup back onto the ledge, not even noticing that he'd knocked it over in his haste to scramble out.
"Just remembered," he babbled, wrapped his robe around him with shaking fingers. "Have a massage I need to get to. Terribly sorry, lovely to meet you. Enjoy your soak. Yes. Right. Goodbye!" He rushed away.
Hazō watched him go with a feeling of resignation. He wasn't sure if Inoue-sensei would laugh at him or scold him about this, but she was definitely going to give him a furious hair-ruffling.
Mari, Taijutsu (Inoue Taijutsu-Style: Hair Ruffle no Jutsu!):
?d100: 886Geez, Mari, the dice have a permanent hate on for you. Why do you always roll low??
He'd known exactly what was coming, he knew when it was going to happen, and he'd planned carefully. He was across the table from Inoue and he actually started dodging before he even spoke the words. Somehow, she still got him, although only barely. He sighed and sat back down, combing his hair and swearing to himself that some day, some day, she would miss.
"So, Hazō pooched it in the baths," Inoue said. "How about the rest of you. What did you get?"
Noburi and Keiko exchanged looks. "Go ahead," Noburi said. "You were the one who found it."
"We found a significant point of attack," Keiko said. "Poisoning or drugging the food supplies for the dogs would be straightforward. Doing the same for human supplies is feasible, but it would be difficult to make it useful.
"Wakamoto, the company that provides the food for the resort, supplies the dog food as well. The dogs are fed a mash of meat, lard, and vegetables. Wakamoto makes up a fresh batch every week and delivers it the following day. He uses a vat with an automatic stirring apparatus powered by a water wheel; the vat is frequently unattended and if drugs or poison were dropped in they would be thoroughly mixed into the mash without anyone noticing. The next batch will be made tomorrow and shipped in the following morning."
"Nice one," Inoue said. "Really nice. Getting the dogs out of the way would make things a lot easier. You mentioned that drugging the humans would be harder. Why is that?"
"Wakamoto's cold room is in the back of his shop, and his shop is his living quarters," Noburi said. "Because they live there they don't actively guard the place. It wouldn't be too much trouble for us to get in at night, but civilians aren't going to pull it off. We could put whatever we want in the food, but there's no way to predict who would get what or when. Once the food gets to the resort it's kept in the icehouse—dog food and human food both. The resort's icehouse is actually pretty well guarded; they've had trouble with staff pilfering the tasty stuff in the past. There's always two guards, and the patrols check in on an irregular schedule but at least once every two hours. Also, they've got the strictest inventory system I've ever seen outside of the Academy. The manager, Sekine Shou, is a fussy little guy." (A hint of approval flickered across Keiko's face.)
"Okay," Inoue said. "That gives us a way to clear out the dogs, which is good. I managed to get up close to the owner's daughter and have some girl talk. Her name is Honami, she's twenty-three, doesn't get out much these days. She's having a tough pregnancy—lots of pain and swelling, nausea, the works. They've had herbalists and even a med-nin in; it helps, but not much. Fortunately the baby is due in six weeks so it's almost over."
Inoue leaned back, smiling. "Bright girl," she said. "Reads, writes, and can do basic math. She's actually pretty well read, all things considered. She's got the entire staff wrapped around her little finger, and was cadging lessons from them since about a minute after she learned to make puppy-dog eyes. Her dad's furious about it—thinks that it's inappropriate for a girl to be educated. There's a lot of resentment there, actually. Her father's been trying to marry her off for years, and I have a feeling she got pregnant just to keep that from happening. Still, Dad's hung the moon about having a grandson, so he's willing to forgive his daughter 'for being a strumpet.'"
"What if the child is female?" Keiko asked.
"That could be bad," Inoue said. "He's rich, powerful in a merchant sort of way and used to getting what he wants. Doesn't deal well with rejection, apparently, and what he wants is a grandson. He wanted a grandson from wedlock, but I think he'll take what he can get. If it's a girl, I'm not sure what he'll do. Give it to the orphanage would be my guess."
"What about the ninja?" Kagome asked. "There was supposed to be a ninja living there. And those twerps on the walls, of course." He sniffed dismissively.
"Ah, yes," Inoue said. "Royama Mariko. Lovely woman. She's from Earth, got hurt in a fierce battle with a chakra dragon that attacked Iwagakure."
Hazō's eyebrows shot up. "Really?"
"No," Inoue said, laughing. "She was embarrassed to admit it, but I eventually weaseled it out of her: she's a jonin and her baby brother recently got promoted to chunin. They were having the celebration here, she got drunk at the party, and she fell off a table while sword-dancing. Her brother and his friends had to report back to Iwa for duty, but she's on medical leave while her leg heals."
"Wait, what?" Noburi asked. "She fell off a table?"
"I told you she was embarrassed about it," Inoue said, grinning. "The funny part is that I think she really did—she's a taijutsu type, and if she were going to self-injure just so she could skive off then she wouldn't have chosen something that would reduce her mobility. Also, the woman can't lie for beans." She winked at Akane. "I don't suppose you have any family in Iwa, do you kid?"
Akane blushed furiously but laughed.
"Anyway, she's healing up nicely," Inoue continued. "I think she's actually ready for duty now but she's milking it for all the time she can get. I sure would."
She sighed. "So. We've got all this wonderful intel. Anyone notice the one piece of information we have not managed to get?"
"Where our target is?" Noburi asked. "I haven't seen a single person with red and green on them."
"And the prize goes to the water master," Inoue said. "Gotta say, I hate missions like this. I don't mind ones that take a few months to set up, but I don't like it when the location of the objective isn't known. Too many ways for things to go wrong when you might not even be operating in the right area."
No one had anything to say to that.
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Inoue glanced at the water clock on the mantel. "Come on, it's getting late," she said. "Everyone hit the sack, I want to be out early tomorrow. According to Honami that big important guest is supposed to be arriving in the morning. His name is Joutano, he's some lord she's never heard of, and he demanded their very best suite for himself and his friends."
o-o-o-o
The next day Inoue and Hazō were at the resort—she was sunbathing on a deck lounger, lying on her belly with her top down and her head shaded by a wide straw hat as she sipped on a cold drink and read, in a very lazy fashion, through a poorly-written romance novel that she'd borrowed from the resort's library. He was a few dozen yards away, participating in an abstract painting class alongside a group of civilians who were mostly thirty years older than Hazō's henged twenty-something appearance.
All activities screeched to a halt at the arrival of Lord Joutaro and entourage.
"Who do I have to bribe to get some service here?!" the barrel-chested giant bellowed, the very moment that his foot touched the ground inside the resort's fence. "HO! Manager! Get some people out here to take our bags!" He strode towards the reception house, the ponytail of long white hair bobbing behind him serving only to emphasize the oversized tachi he wore across his back, angled for a left-hand draw.
Joutaro had taken hardly two steps when a pack of bellhops descended on the tired-looking woman and the clearly embarrassed teenage boy that were trailing along in his wake. They snatched the bags out of the hands of both woman and boy and hustled off with a hasty volley of bows, asking if the most honored guests would please deign to follow them to this humble resort's best quarters which they dearly hoped would be adequate for the honored and mighty guests.
Inoue groaned and pulled the hat all the way down over her head. Of course Joutaro was wearing the red-and-green scarf. Of course.
XP AWARD: 16
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, July 27, 2016, at 12pm London time.
A few other things:
Hazō tried to talk to the scary guy with the sword. That worthy stared at him without saying a word, stroking his sword lovingly the whole time. Hazō couldn't find a good reason why his civilian persona would have pursued contact with the guy so he left him alone after that.
You set up a variety of passwords, duress passwords, variations on same, etc. Keiko was involved, so assume it was pretty thorough. Hopefully everyone will remember all the variations.
Kagome was unwilling to talk about his seal ideas until you are in a completely secure area (i.e., way to hell and gone out in the wilderness), and shushed you every time you even started to say the word 'seal'.
