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

[Velorien]

Chapter 507: From Seven to Five​

Some people, Hazō reflected, were harder to influence than others. Kei would, at worst, tolerate anybody who came to her with carrot cake, and even Lord Hagoromo might leave with the same number of limbs as he arrived if one of those limbs happened to be carrying a box of Pantasia's finest. Asuma was more demanding, requiring an absence of even accidental treason before he could be put in a good mood. Shikamaru, unfortunately, was harder still, since the act of socialising in and of itself risked incurring his disapproval. Given this, and the fact that Hazō couldn't even manipulate the circumstances of their meeting (if he tried, forcing Shikamaru to leave the Nara compound would already earn him minus points), today would demand the very finest performance from Gōketsu Mari's star pupil if he wanted to walk away with any forbidden lore at all.

Spoiler: dice

Hazō: Empathy 21 - 3 = 18
Shikamaru: Deceit ?? + ? = ??

So it was that Hazō's movements were smooth and relaxed, with no uncalled-for excitement, as he settled down into the visitor's chair in Shikamaru's office, and his tone was friendly but erring on the side of reserved as he gave his greetings.

"Good afternoon, Shikamaru. Thank you for making time for me today."

Shikamaru, after taking a second to extract a bookmark from a drawer and slide it into the middle of a folder marked STAR CLEARANCE ONLY—Hazō not only didn't have Star Clearance, but hadn't even heard of it before—gave a small, weary smile.

"On the contrary," he said. "It is good to see you, Hazō, insofar as I have yet to thank you properly for saving Hagoromo Ritsuo's life."

"I… did?" Hazō asked with an edge of alarm. He could have sworn he'd gone an entire week without any major slip-ups.

"Indeed. I dread to think what might have happened to him had I been unable to make my point through mere threat of Dragon-induced liquefaction—and then the Hokage would have been forced to make my life very difficult."

Hazō took a second to recall the beautiful terror in Lord Hagoromo's eyes as Shikamaru bent him ever closer to an overdue encounter with the Reaper. Lord Hagoromo had taken his revenge as best he could after that, against Hazō at least, demanding compensation for the dagger as if it had been made from chakra metal by the Sage of Six Paths himself. Unfortunately, the cunning snake had made a point of ensuring Harumitsu knew what happened, and rejecting the ridiculous demand when Hazō was technically in the wrong would have made him look even worse in front of his apprentice. The last thing Hazō needed was for the Hagoromo to start regaining their moral superiority over him in Harumitsu's eyes.

"Well," Hazō said, "you're very welcome. Or possibly my sincere apologies, whichever you prefer."

Shikamaru gave a shadow of a smile.

"Now, how may I help you on this occasion?"

"I wanted to pick your brain about something I came across on the Seventh Path," Hazō said. "Cannai, the Dog Boss, once told me a particularly cryptic poem attributed to the Sage of Six Paths himself—whom, you'll remember, some of the oldest summons knew in person. Here, I wrote it out for you."

Unbounded you name me, yet bound am I
Wise One you name me, yet still I err
First Spinner you name me, and this I grant
I have spun your First Tale, my Great Tale
The Tale of Dog, and Cat, of Hawk, and Hornet.

All tales change and all tales flow
Days wend into weeks and years
Passing time bringing losses, cheers
Now must I go, my children all
My bed to make among the men, who need me more.

Flow of fire, standing high
Tower the mighty waves, grave and gray and green
Water's power raised by storm-wind's breath
Fire and wave in joyous chorus, the birth of earth to bring
Green the rising life shall grow
Trees of wood and iron and stone
Beware their shade, where my Lost Ones sing.

Beyond the trees my rest shall be
I leave there seven rocks with seven locks
Each rock a treasure's home
Treasures bright shall guidance give
Truth or death, no equal chance
To find the way to me.

Spin on, talespinner! Spin on!
Raise up the mighty word, unite the bounding arc of dream
With reason's bark and incisive bite
From first to last
To tread the path of wisdoms lost
Remember me, speak my name
And when the years have wended wide
Come and find me once again.

Shikamaru read over the text several times.

"Were it not for the credibility of the source, I would be tempted to dismiss it as a prank. I studied a number of prophecies and similar texts during my training—most are inventions of diseased minds or would-be poets wishing to add mystique to their simian flailing of brush and paper. One must always consider context: would the writer have a reason for conveying important information to these people at this time, and if they did, would they have reason to do so in an obscure and cryptic fashion? You do not see me encoding Nara Clan secrets into rhyme and handing them out to random canines of my acquaintance. If I must share them at all, I do so plainly, in a fashion minimally vulnerable to miscommunication, and only with select individuals in a sufficiently secure environment.

"What is it you believe can be found within this piece of, if you'll forgive me, doggerel?"

"I wouldn't have made anything of it," Hazō said after a few seconds' thought, "if I wasn't already neck-deep in this Great Seal business. But now I am, I have to ask: how many other little surprises has the Sage left for us across the universe? Are there any eldritch horrors running around which we're just lucky not to have come across yet, or more ancient wards with expiration dates about to go by? And then I hear a message allegedly from the Sage talking about 'seven rocks with seven locks', and suddenly I feel like it's really important to know if there are six other existential threats I need to be preparing for.

"Oh," he said, as if his train of thought had been interrupted, "I nearly forgot. I was passing by a bookshop on my way here, and saw that Tetsu Gaku's new work, Meditations on Applied Eschatology, had just come out, so I figured I'd pick you up a copy."

He reached into his bag and pulled out the heavy, leather-bound tome.

Shikamaru's expression brightened slightly as he took it. "Thank you. Losing track of bookshop contents is one of the few disadvantages of leaving the compound as little as possible. One of the sisters would surely have brought it to my attention before long, but I appreciate the gesture."

"No problem," Hazō said. Then, with Shikamaru briefly off-guard, he made a probing move.

"More than anything else," he said, "it's hard to believe how irresponsible the so-called Father of Shinobi's turned out to be. You'd think it would be a no-brainer that when you take responsibility for keeping humanity safe from an abomination, you give it the whole thousand yards instead of just putting the thing behind a giant seal and calling it a day."

"Quite," Shikamaru agreed distractedly as he flicked through the book. "Had there been a stroke of ill luck as trivial as a delay in training the next Dog Summoner, no one on the Human Path would have learned that the Great Seal existed at all until it was too late. Had our great forefather never heard of contingencies?"

Nothing. Never mind. With the recent Orochimaru windfall, the cost of a single book wasn't going to break the bank (leave that to the Gōketsu's short-sighted rivals), and it wasn't like Hazō regretted doing something nice for his brother-in-law.

Spoiler: dice

Hazō spends 2 FP to invoke "Creative Idealist" and "Relics of the Dragon".
Hazō: Rapport 21 + 3 + 3 - 3 = 24
Shikamaru spends 1 FP to tag ???
Shikamaru: Presence ?? + ? + ? = ??

"You're absolutely right," Hazō said. "But I guess that only makes it more important for us, his heirs, to make up for his mistakes. We're entering a new age of hope for humanity, between AMITY, the Nara Future Foundation, the Gōketsu's various projects, and all the other clans I hope we'll inspire to innovations of their own once they see how much we can accomplish. The idea of finally pulling humanity out of its spiral of self-destruction, only to be devoured by some ancient monstrosity that we could have vanquished but didn't… it's unacceptable, simple as that."

"Vanquished?" Shikamaru asked sceptically.

"Vanquished," Hazō said with an edge of challenge. "You saw the remains of the Dragon I showed at the Clan Council meeting. The remains, Shikamaru. The Sage didn't have either the will or the power to destroy Dragons, but a thousand years later, we have both. You and I can sit here trembling in fear, knowing that in a decade, or in a century, or maybe as soon as tomorrow, something will rise up to destroy everything we've built. The clans to which we have a duty, the loved ones we've sworn to protect, the village and the world we're determined to uplift… all of that could disappear at any moment, and we won't be able to lift a finger.

"Or we can make the first move. We can collect the breadcrumbs of lore the Sage and his successors left behind. We can track down the threats to humanity's existence, one by one, and study what the Sage did to counter them, just like I am with the Great Seal. Then, we can improve on his works. Humanity hasn't been sitting on its thumbs for a thousand years. We may have lost much, but there are things we've gained as well that no ancient horror will see coming—you witnessed that with your own eyes. We aren't lambs waiting for the slaughter—we're shinobi hunting chakra beasts that masquerade as gods.

"That's why I came to you with this, Shikamaru. The first step is to know our enemy. Can you think of any lore that might point at these six other seals? Could there be any on the Human Path?"

Shikamaru studied the poem for a few seconds more.

"It is not that I am unsympathetic to the main thrust of your argument, Hazō, but I feel you still lack an appreciation of the scope of the endeavour you propose. You have conducted minor maintenance work on one elder seal, and slain one of a number of aberrations that came forth from beyond it. These are noteworthy, some might even say historic achievements. However, are they sufficient to outweigh the success of a millennium spent leaving well enough alone? We do not even know that the Great Seal's deterioration is unrelated to human activity—it is a fact that human involvement in the Summon Realm has increased considerably since the start of the village era, and then spiked recently with the advent of the summon trade network. If an accident or a poor decision on your part were to destroy some Great Seal equivalent instead of reinforcing it, that would spell an end to us all more surely than any hypothetical escape that might or might not ever happen.

"Regardless, I could agree with you as much as I wished, and it would not change the fact that I have no such information I can offer you. I am sorry if you feel you have wasted your time."

Hazō's spirits sank. He'd taken his intermittent efforts to get secret lore out of Shikamaru to a whole new level, looking for clues while treading carefully to make sure he did not come across as antagonistic or do anything to undermine Shikamaru's trust in him. He'd half-succeeded—there was no sign that Shikamaru was furious with him for attempting to extract clan secrets or generally stick his nose where it didn't belong—but it wasn't the half that would progress Hazō's ambitions. Why did the world so determinedly resist his attempts to save it?

Never mind. The half that had paid off was still important. It meant he would have another chance when he had bigger explosives to bring to the fight.

In the meantime, he may as well make a last-ditch attempt to get some information out of Shikamaru now he'd succeeded in putting him in a good mood.

"There's one more thing," Hazō said. "As you might guess, Noburi and I have been talking to elders on the Seventh Path, trying to get any clues we can, and we've come across multiple references to the Sage's band of five companions. Does that ring any bells with you?"

Shikamaru frowned. "As it happens, that is a subject of some interest to me. After you originally mentioned them to me in the context of the Eaters, as they were then known, I spent some time in the archives, and I have certain findings I could share with you."

"Anything would help."

Shikamaru leaned back in his chair. "Have you ever asked Kei about the origins of her clan?"

Hazō nodded. "It's come up in conversation. I was pretty surprised by the fact that the Mori don't claim to be descended from the Sage himself, but from one of his close allies."

"The same is true of the Nara," Shikamaru said. "The Sage had many companions over the course of his life, of course—we lack records, but it would beggar belief to imagine that he lived only the handful of decades allotted to ordinary mortals—but Nara himself was one of his very closest and most trusted."

"Nara?" Hazō asked. "You mean he named the clan after himself?"

"Of course," Shikamaru said. "In ancient times, and indeed stretching to modernity in many places and cultures, it was the exception rather than the rule for people to possess two separate names. Such things are valuable to census-keepers, or those who desire others to be constantly reminded of their bloodline, but quite pointless for commoners living in small settlements where 'Mari who lives by the well' would be a sufficient identifier for all daily purposes. But why would those descended from a true hero call themselves anything other than 'son of Nara', or 'grandson of Nara', or, finally, just 'Nara'?

"There are, naturally, as many legends about Nara as there are clouds in the sky. My favourites, as narrated by my father in happier days, speak of him as a wizard—not a shinobi, you will note, in those days of yore—whose magic brought art to life. His drawings would become warriors to fight by his side, or landscapes that would enfold the real terrain around them and vanish back into fiction, taking those they had enfolded with them. Nara could paint a road leading to a faraway land, then walk it and appear at the other end, or mix paints into impossible colours that brought visions of terrible otherworldly truths. His art lies at the core of the Summoning Scrolls, and the Sage is said to have rewarded him with the Deer Scroll for his contribution."

"But there's no Deer Clan," Hazō interjected, "at least as far as I know."

"One of the great mysteries of this world," Shikamaru agreed. "The Nara have spent centuries seeking the lost scroll, but to no avail. Of course, another legend claims that he rode into battle on a giant warthog, a very different kind of beast, and that this warthog's descendants were the battle boars once used by the Yamanaka. Personally, I find that one doubtful, as it would imply a far older relationship between our clans than the records support. Regardless, it would be troublesome to enumerate all such legends, as we would be here all week, and I am an uninspiring storyteller.

"So the Mori and the Nara claim descent from the Sage's companions," Hazō said. "Are you saying they were two of the five?"

"The archives hint at the possibility," Shikamaru said. "Certainly, it is noteworthy that when the Mori and the Nara are spoken of together, it is in conjunction with exactly three other clans."

"The Tama, the Yodomi and the Raiyoke!" Hazō exclaimed, pieces falling into place.

"I see you have been performing quite some research of your own," Shikamaru said, but without approval. "Well, I suppose it is hardly a clan secret. Obviously, I have less information on the other three, if indeed their claims are as accurate as ours. However, if you desire hints to spur on your own research, I can tell you that Tama is often referred to as the Hierophant. She was dedicated to some deity whose name is now long lost, and with its name on her lips, she could heal or destroy with a touch, as well as 'command the faithless'—whatever that means. The rites according to which the deity is to be worshipped have also been lost, or so the Tama claim. Some also call her the Deathless, alleging that she was a kami who bestowed blessings and curses and could not be slain in battle, but this seems unlikely since it would imply that the Tama themselves have kami blood.

"Raiyoke was a warrior, one of the nobles of old, who did have a family name but discarded it for the Sage's sake—again, it is unclear whether this was a metaphysical act or merely a symbolic one, or how the Sage benefited. He possessed a dual-wielding style that the greatest of kenjutsu schools have attempted to recreate over the centuries, battling with speed that blinded his foes. He was also a master of tigers—summons, perhaps, or he could have been a tamer like the Inuzuka.

"Yodomi was another of the breed that believes muscles superior to brains, rendering it astounding that she became the progenitor of our near-equals. She is said to have challenged the Sage to equal combat, and after a lengthy battle emerged victorious by luring him to a hot spring, and I'm certain you can imagine what transpired there. There is little of interest in the stories of that maniac.

"As to the Mori, I am, of course, not the best source you have available to you. I imagine Ami would be the better storyteller, and Kei the more reliable for factual details, insofar as 'factual details' is a term that means anything after a thousand years of distortion."

Hazō smiled. "Thanks, Shikamaru. I'm glad I asked you after all."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "After all?"

"Oh," Hazō exclaimed, glancing out of the window, "how did it get this late? I could have sworn I'd just arrived. I'm sorry for keeping you so long."

"Not at all," Shikamaru said, brushing his hand across the space between them as if cleaning away the idea. "However, I myself have a gaming appointment to keep with the Kittensphere, so this is good timing to end our discussion for now."

"The Kittensphere?" Hazō echoed incredulously.

"Petty revenge for a minor domestic slight," Shikamaru said offhandedly. "Feel free to use it next time Kei deploys her death glare without adequate justification."

"Oh, I will." Hazō suppressed a gleeful grin, then remembered that there was no need to suppress it. "Thanks for your time, Shikamaru. Let me know what you think of the book."

"It was my pleasure."

As Hazō headed out of the office, Shikamaru added, "Please convey my compliments to Ino for her selection of bribery material. I had no idea she was so aware of my tastes."

Hazō picked up the pace.

-o-​

You have received 3 + 1 (Brevity) + 1 (Fun-to-write) = 5 XP. You have lost 2 FP.

-o-​

Voting ends on Apr 2, 2022 at 8:00 PM

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 505.1: Fussy Little Details​

Spoiler: QM internal debate that ends with dice + major spoiler

Here's the thing...the value proposition for this quest is that it's simulationist. We let the players do what they like and let the chips fall where they may. That means that your successes are sweeter for being earned but you also have the possibility of major failure.

I'm in a bit of a bind here, because I think this plan is going to lead to very bad outcomes; it's going to kill the deal that's on the table, piss Orochimaru off, and make him get the Dragon parts in a different and less prosocial way...but in part this trouble is because of the information asymmetry between Hazō and the players. Whereas the players are looking through a narrow twice-per-week window of text at a world the complete backstory and culture of which they don't know, Hazō is in the situation, knows the culture, and can see Orochimaru's reactions and potentially adjust his words to those responses. We created the affectionately-named 'Hazō-pilot' for exactly this situation. He's supposed to step in and modify or ignore the plan when he has information that the players don't.

Having Hazō-pilot disregard a plan is a big deal. It means that I'm taking away agency from the players, which is against the core value of the quest. It means that, having taken that agency, I'm responsible for what happens next, and that doesn't play out well for me in any scenario—if the outcome is good then I'm setting the precedent that the QMs will step in to ensure things go well no matter what, which undermines the entire point. On the other hand, if it's bad then I'm being cruel and unfair and why did I bother stepping in at all?

The plan consists of haggling out fussy details (e.g. how long you can delay before swapping items) and setting penalties if the items are damaged. This is a reasonable plan for 21st century people from developed nations where everyone is familiar with and accepting of the idea that important deals have contracts and that contracts are detailed and precise. Still, accepting of the idea or not, most first-worlders groan at the idea of sitting down to negotiate a contract.

Orochimaru wasn't well-socialized even back when he lived around people, and he's so powerful that he rarely needs to exert himself to get what he wants, so he's had little reason to learn patience or better manners. Where you or I might groan, he gets angry at the idea that he's being treated as untrustworthy and/or taken advantage of and/or having his time wasted. If I actually write this plan the way it's written, the deal is going to blow up and no one is happy, plus you've severely damaged whatever possibility there was for a working relationship with Orochimaru.

I don't want to deus ex machina this, so I'm going to give Hazō a social roll to pick up on how things are going south (which is easy) and fix it (which is less so). Let's say it's a Fairly difficult roll (20-ish, we'll say 25) to notice the problem in time to fix it. The better Hazō makes the roll by, the better he'll do. I'm not sure which is the right skill here...I could make a case for Empathy or Rapport, but I'll arbitrarily pick Empathy. I might go the other way next time. (Note from future eaglejarl: Turns out it doesn't matter since Hazō's Empathy are Rapport are both the same.)

This is an important roll, so he will definitely want to spend the 1 FP that he currently has. Looking at his character sheet, most of his Aspects aren't a good fit here:

• Creative Idealist: "Invoke when Hazō has an unorthodox idea or gives an impassioned speech." There's nothing unorthodox or impassioned about haggling.
• Lists and Plans: "Invoke when: Hazō and his allies are moving in accordance with a plan Hazō has made in advance." This wasn't planned in advance.
• Promising Sealing Student: This isn't sealing.
• (Formerly) Marked for Death: "The paranoia and alertness of having lived as a missing-nin allow Hazō to display the sort of paranoid alertness and desperate improvisation only veteran ninja develop." Ehhh...maybe this one could apply, but I interpret it more as threat detection and combat tactics.
• Lord of Clan Gōketsu: "Invoke when: Hazō leverages his new position as the head of the Gōketsu Clan." Again debatable, but I don't feel that the clan is central enough to the matter for this to apply.
• Team Uplift: "Invoke when: Hazō draws upon his bonds with the other members of Team Uplift to overcome a challenge." Definitely not seeing this one.
• Toughened Mind: This isn't about mental toughness.

Which just leaves: Open Mouth, Insert Foot: "Invoke when Hazō painful sincerity melts a cynic's heart." This one is very debatable in a situation where Hazō is simply negotiating for the use of some property, but after some thought I'm coming down on the side of using it. Also, because you'll need the help and because there should be a cost to having Hazō-pilot get involved, I'm going to dump 40 XP into buying 4 Fate Points for you and then burning them for the flat bonus. (That 40 XP is the 38 that were on your sheet, plus the 1 that you would have gotten for an update that covered about an hour, plus the 1 Brevity XP that you got for having a plan that was under 300 words. Also, no FP will be awarded for this update no matter what happens.) I could hold one in reserve for a reroll, but I'm not going to because you will want the +1 if you can get it and I'm already uncomfortable with fixing things like this, so actively fixing bad luck feels like a bridge too far.

Important: Buying FP mid-update is a one-off, not something that you will be able to do normally.​

You can spend 10 XP to buy 1 FP, but you normally need to do it in advance.

Preregistered outcomes:

• Hazō fails the roll: The plan is enacted as written, the deal falls through, and Orochimaru is pissed enough to get the Dragon parts in a different way that means you get nothing.
• Hazō makes the roll by:
  • 0: The deal that was on the table goes through except that Orochimaru takes back everything he had offered except for a fraction of the money. Also, Orochimaru is irritated and poorly disposed to you next time you meet.
  • 1-3 points: The deal that was on the table goes through except that Orochimaru takes back everything he had offered except for a fraction of the money.
  • 4-6: The deal that was already on the table goes through without modification. You could maybe have gotten more with a different approach but Orochimaru's feelings towards you don't change.
  • 7-12: You get the deal that was on the table and Orochimaru ends the meeting with a generally positive view of you. This doesn't mean things will go well next time you meet, but at least you'll be starting off on a good foot.
  • 13+: In addition to everything you were going to get, Orochimaru is positively inclined to you enough that he gives you 1d4 jutsu or seals in addition. (I don't want to influence my decisions in preregistering the outcomes, so I haven't checked whether it's possible for you to roll this high.)

*checks* Okay, Hazō has a 21 Empathy and he's getting +7 from Fate Points, meaning a 28 before dice. If he rolls -3 or better then things are generally okay. If he rolls +12 that would give him 40, which is 15 points over the TN and would get him the best result. Unlikely, but here's hoping. (Higher socials would be useful!)

Note: This TN is made up on the spot and might be significantly higher or lower next time.

TN to spot that Orochimaru is getting annoyed in time to do something about it, and then do something about it: 25
Hazō, Empathy (21) + 3 (invoke "Open Mouth, Insert Foot") + 4 (burn 4 FP for the flat bonus of +1 each) + 3 (dice) = 31

Hazō beat the TN by 6. Not amazing, but not awful either. Here we go.

"Lord Orochimaru?" Hazō asked, the words becoming firm halfway through as he forcibly clamped down on his emotions. "We are agreed that you will have two weeks of exclusive access and then we may recall the items at any time? And that you will make all your research findings public?"

"Yes, yes," Orochimaru said, waving dismissively and not looking away from what he was doing. He had lifted the claw fragment up with a mix of chakra adhesion and repulsion that kept it balanced an inch from his skin. He was turning it back and forth and his forked tongue was extended a foot and a half, tasting the air around the Sageforsaken object.

"Lord Gōketsu?" Kabuto said, a verbal nudge that barely hinted at impatience. "Hazō? Would this be sufficient payment?"

Hazō looked to his clan mates. Noburi was furiously nodding with imploring eyes. Mari was frozen and offering no input.

"This is a very generous offer," Hazō said slowly. "I think I would be a fool not to accept it—"

"Excellent!" Doctor Yakushi said. "In that case—"

"BUT. I would be a fool not to accept it, but I want to make sure that we have the same understanding of what we're agreeing to."

Orochimaru froze for a moment, then dropped the claw back into the box, stood up, and turned to face Hazō. He stepped forward, standing at the precise distance that would be threatening if he were an inch closer.

"Speak."

Hazō resisted the urge to step back so that he didn't have to crane his neck to look at the much taller shinobi.

"Sir, I'm grateful for your offer and glad to—"

Orochimaru made a cutting gesture with one hand.

"Right, sorry. I want to be able to work with you in the future and that means being sure we both have the same understanding. You're giving us these"—he held up the papers—"and we're giving you exclusive access to all Dragon parts that we own, one at a time, for two weeks each. We'll deliver them anywhere you want, which presumably is your estate. Yes?"

"Yes, obviously." He spun one finger in the universal gesture for 'move it along'.

"The Gōketsu continue to own the parts and will reclaim them after your two-week period ends."

"Yes, yes." Impatience was audible in the Sannin's voice.

"Whichever parts you aren't using at a given time, the Gōketsu can do what we like with. Let others examine them, lock them away, whatever."

"We already agreed to that."

"The Gōketsu will swap parts upon request with a 24-hour maximum delay."

Orochimaru's eyes narrowed. "Do you intend to demand that I sit in an advocate's office to spell out every tiniest detail and sign a document to which the Hokage shall affix his seal, or are we making a deal as men?"

"We are making a deal as men, sir. That—" Halfway through the sentence his brain caught up to the tone of Orochimaru's words. Alarm bells clanged furiously in the back of his mind and he forced himself to smile in the friendliest way he could manage as he desperately sought to verbally swerve onto safer ground. "—is why I want to make sure we don't misinterpret anything and leave you feeling aggrieved, or disrupt your studies by mistake. You're the best person in Leaf, possibly in the world, to study these items. We want you to be able to investigate them and we want to have a good relationship with you going forward. We also want the rest of Leaf's experts to be able to look at them. That's all."

The annoyed glitter in Orochimaru's snake-slitted eyes lightened slightly. "A very nice bit of sucking up. I applaud you. Move it along."

"Right." Hazō licked his lips, thinking furiously. "Okay, um...lost my place." He looked down and started ticking points off on his fingers, mumbling to himself. "We'll share all of the Dragon parts we have. We'll deliver and pick up from your lab or wherever else you specify. You'll have each piece for two weeks, one at a time. They still belong to the Gōketsu. Other people can study whichever ones you aren't using. Everything that you or anyone else discovers is to be shared with the Tower, and hopefully they will distribute it back to everyone else. All tests, by you or anyone else, should be non-destructive...ah, right." He looked back up. "The tests should be non-destructive, although we're open to negotiating for destructive testing. We're even willing to talk about outright selling you one or more of the parts if you're interested. Not promising to do it, but we're open to talking about it." He glanced at the box containing the scale and the claw fragment. "Actually, how about we keep things simple? Those two pieces are already here and it would be a pain to get a new box so that we can take one back to the estate. You can take them both as your first installment. In two weeks we'll swap both items out for a single item of your choice. Oh, and we'll get you a list of what we have. Fair?"

"Hm." Orochimaru looked away, lips pursed in thought. "Reasonable, although I may need to take a few small shavings, and I intend to use some acids that may cause discoloration or slight pitting of a small area. Acceptable?"

"Yes sir."

Orochimaru glanced down at the papers in Hazō's hand, the ones that contained a massive fortune and that he had so casually tossed on the table. "You have your payment. Unless there's anything else...?"

"No sir. Thank you."

The Snake Sannin nodded curtly. He turned away and flipped the lid of the granite-lined box closed, then hoisted the entire massive weight onto his shoulder and casually walked off with a "Kabuto, attend" that sent the doctor scurrying in his wake.

The Gōketsu stood in silence and watched the two men go. Only when they turned the corner of the block and disappeared from sight did Mari sag back into her chair.

"What a nice man," she said.

o-o-o-o​

They made it almost to the door of Hokage Tower before anyone spoke again. It was their bright, cheerful, optimistic member who finally broke the silence.

"Hazō, I've got your back no matter what," Noburi said, "but I feel like every time we're anywhere near that guy one of us almost dies."

"Seconded," Mari said. "He's dangerous, Hazō. Be very careful about how you interact with him."

"Definitely," Hazō said. "Definitely, definitely, definitely. He's scary as shit." He sighed. "But, end of the day, that did go pretty well. We got a lot and we gave up very little. We were going to let people investigate the Dragon parts no matter what. Orochimaru just paid us a ton of ryō plus a treasure trove of arcane knowledge for something that he could have had most of for nothing. Good afternoon." The last words and the accompanying nod were to the desk chūnin who was both the receptionist that screened and dispatched visitors and also the first guard in the rings of protections that encircled the Hokage's office.

"May I help you, sir?" The man's eyes flicked across each of them, an instinctive threat check.

"We're here to visit the treasury," he said, gesturing with the blank-note draft that Orochimaru had given him. "I have a note to cash in."

"Certainly, sir. Down the hall to your right, second door."

"Thank you."

Mari and Noburi trailed him down the hall under the vaulted ceilings from which oil lamps hung like inverted scarecrows, chasing away the gloom of what was a fortress before it was a center of administration. They followed him into a room that had originally been intended as a guardroom, or perhaps a storage room, or some other practical and everyday purpose. There were no windows and the low ceiling was stained black with the soot of three generations of oil lamps. The scent of burning lamp oil was a sharp tang in the back of the throat and shadows roamed freely.

The Clerk of the Treasury was a middle-aged man named Koson, a clanless ninja with no family to provide him a surname. As with all critical jobs in the administration, he was a chūnin who had served with distinction before being forced into retirement by misadventure. He had earned his place on the Medical Stand Down list by virtue of literally walking through fire in the service of his nation—or, more accurately, charging straight through a Fireball jutsu in order to capture an escaping spy from Rock. Scars scraped their way across Koson's face, down his neck, and under his shirt. One eye was burned away and the medics had needed to amputate his right hand. Nonetheless, he had captured his man and the intelligence extracted from that man had been critical, as shown by the Medal of Valor that the Third Hokage had hung around Koson's neck. It still hung around his neck even as he sat at his desk in a windowless room, surrounded by stacks and racks of paper and scrolls. It was tucked modestly beneath his shirt, but Hazō could see a telltale bit of silk ribbon peeking out from under Koson's collar.

Hazō knew Koson's story because Mari had taught him that knowledge was power and knowledge of personal histories was greater power than any jutsu. He had made a point of getting at least a basic briefing on every key person in the administration. Koson's title might be Clerk, but he was no mere clerk. He had very definitely been on the briefing list.

"Good afternoon, Lord Gōketsu," Koson said, nodding politely. "How may I help you today?"

"Good afternoon, Koson," Hazō said, smiling and nodding back. "I have this draft from Lord Orochimaru that I would like to cash in." He laid the paper on the man's desk and turned it to face Koson.

Koson considered the very short, very simple, document as though it were the most complex of sealing theory. After a moment he looked up; Hazō suppressed a smile. Not bad; it had only taken him three seconds to get over the shock.

"Lord Gōketsu, this draft is against one of Lord Orochimaru's accounts."

"It is, yes."

"Sir, the amount is blank. May I ask how you obtained it?"

"The Gōketsu recently came into possession of some interesting property. He gave us this in exchange for the right to study it in his lab." No reason to mention the rest of what Orochimaru had given them, nor to specify the nature of the property in question.

"I see." Koson looked back down at the paper. "How much did you intend to withdraw?"

Hazō paused. The answer was obvious but did he really want to...? Yes, yes he did.

"All of it. Transfer it to the Gōketsu name, please. And I'd like an accounting of the contents."

Koson studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Yes sir. You understand that whenever there is a transfer such as this, the recipient needs to sign for it and the records are open to anyone on the chain of custody. Which in this case would include Lord Orochimaru."

Hazō lip's quirked. "Are you very politely saying that if I forged this and Lord Orochimaru comes asking where his money went, you're going to sell me out in a heartbeat?"

"I wouldn't have put it quite that way, but yes. That is exactly what I'm saying." He offered an inked brush. The scars meant that he couldn't extend his arm fully so Hazō had to reach to take it.

"Not a problem. Here." Hazō took the brush and swirled his name in elegant calligraphy at the bottom of the paper before adding the word 'all' on the blank line.

"Very good, sir. A moment, please." He rang the bell sitting on his desk; a moment later a young genin, probably a fresh Academy graduate, came through the door.

"Yes sir?"

"Inori, please take this to the archives. Be sure that you stop and tell the desk attendant where you're going so that no one thinks you've left your post."

"Yes sir!" she said, bowing deeply. She took the paper and turned for the door, but stopped when Hazō raised his hand.

"Don't forget to tell the desk attendant that Lord Gōketsu said to say that the document shows Lord Gōketsu cleaning out one of Lord Orochimaru's accounts," Hazō said, amused. "Need to make sure there's a solid paper trail so no one here gets in trouble if it turns out that I was crazy enough to try to steal from the Snake Sannin. Oh, and show them the paper. Better if they see it instead of just hearing about it."

The genin's eyes went very big. She glanced at Koson for direction; he nodded and made a 'scoot along' gesture. She vanished out the door.

Koson's burns meant that his mouth didn't have a great deal of mobility, but the unburned side was quirked up in amusement. "If you'll give me just a moment, sir, I'll get the preliminary accounting for you." He strained to his feet and turned to one of the many scroll cases on the wall, walking his fingers down the columns and across the rows. "I only have the top level here—the amount of ryō in the vault and the names and locations of any properties—but I can have the full deep dive sent to your estate if you wish. It will likely take a few days."

"'The full deep dive'?" Noburi asked.

"Yes sir. I have right here...aha." He found the correct scroll and pulled it out, then struggled back to the desk and resettled himself in his chair. "I have right here the top line on what was in the account." He unrolled the scroll and skimmed through it. "Looks like a bit over 36,000,000 ryō, two farming estates of 107 and 89 acres respectively, a share in a merchant ship, and significant debts from two paper mills, a weaponsmith, and Baba Inasa whose name I don't recognize but he has an address here in Leaf and apparently he's wealthy enough to pay back a debt of 700,000 ryō with equal payments to be deposited into this account monthly for the next twenty months." He looked up and offered the scroll to Hazō.

"That's a top-line review, sir," Koson said to Noburi. "If you want to know whether the farms are in arrears on their taxes, the typical cargoes and routes and income of the ship, and so on then I will need a few days." He grimaced, causing his scars to stretch in weird and disquieting ways. "Also, please know that we're still rebuilding the records after the Collapse so if we end up having to go to the actual assets for details then it might take weeks."

Hazō chuckled. "There's no rush. But yes, I would like to get a more detailed picture, but it doesn't matter if I get it now or a month from now. Thank you for your help, Koson. May I take this or is it easier if I leave it and you send me a copy?"

"It would be easier if I could send you a copy, sir. I could have one fetched from the archives but I would prefer to simply make one here and then send it over. I'll have it delivered within the hour."

"Of course. Thank you, Koson. Mari, Noburi...tally ho."

His clan mates followed him out the door in silence, but this time the shock was leavened with a healthy dose of wonder.

---

XP AWARD: 1 It was a short scene.

Brevity XP: 1

Penalty: -40 XP Used for the FP that got spent preventing a bad outcome. See the spoiler for details.

Note the recent wonkiness in the timeline:

• March 11: Chapter 506, Noburi's visit with Ma and Pa Toad
• March 12, afternoon: Chapter 505, the team talks with Orochimaru and then the update breaks to let the players vote in what to do about it
• March 12, late afternoon: this chapter, Hazō finishes the negotiations and picks up his money
• March 13, afternoon: Chapter 507, Hazō goes to Shikamaru to seek out Deep Lore. The results are unclear

It is now the evening of March 13 and we are back to linear time.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, April 6, 2022, at 12pm London time.

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 508: What's Up, Doc?​

If the term "The Great Collapse" hadn't already been taken, Hazō would have coined it to describe what happened when Noburi reached the sofa in the Gōketsu atrium. Hazō didn't know how the poor item of furniture didn't come apart at the joints, but if it had managed to channel all of the force into the floor, then Hazō would have to remember to check later that the entire building hadn't sunk half a metre into the ground.

"Byakuren's hefty mast," Noburi wheezed, "looks like I needed that. Thanks for making me take the evening off, Hazō."

"No worries," Hazō said, already on his way to the kitchen for a mug of steaming hot panacea. He had to admit, it was a nice change of pace to be the saviour rather than the saved after a long day at work; he just wished it hadn't been because Noburi was too busy to keep up the proud Gōketsu tradition. "What's got you so exhausted?"

"What hasn't got me so exhausted?" Noburi asked, staring up at the ceiling with a piteous expression that was probably only half fake. "The hospital's stacked to the rafters with injured ninja who'll croak if you don't drop everything and start operating the second they get in, only you're already in the middle of operating on injured ninja who'll croak if you stop, and then there's all the ninja who might not croak if you leave them for later, but instead will get to be crippled for life and it'll all be your fault for not knowing the Shadow Clone Technique and doing them all at the same time, because apparently the damn thing's too classified for mere medic-nin who are mostly chūnin who don't need a high clearance to do their job. Ugh."

Hazō winced sympathetically. Still, that sympathy wasn't enough to stop him from picking out Noburi's "favourite mug"—a custom-made gift from Yuno which read "My Sweetest Honeybee", and which Noburi was resigned to using regularly in order not to hurt her feelings.

"Seriously, though," Noburi went on, "I could kiss Ami's feet for trying to put an end to this horror, except she would definitely make it a seduction thing and then Yuno would kill me. Everyone at the hospital is counting the days until the Hokage comes back from that improvised Chūnin Exam and tells us that work's going back to normal. Or, y'know, that diplomacy has officially failed and we're all double-screwed. Medic-nin and optimism go together like Yagura and foreign sympathisers."

Hazō chuckled.

"I guess you could call it selfish," he said, "but I'm just happy all the Gōketsu have made it through without a single casualty. I almost feel like we should take time out to celebrate the sheer miracle of that."

Noburi's voice fell a little. "Yeah," he said, "let's not. Don't get me wrong, I'm as happy about it as you are, but I go to the hospital every day and watch people kick the bucket because they were just a little less lucky. I bet Kei wouldn't be impressed with you saying that either, seeing how she's still beating herself up after losing both of her kinda-maybe-sorta-girlfriends. Seriously, Hazō, careful with the tone-deaf stuff."

Hazō was already starting to cringe at himself when Noburi added, "Besides, Akane."

Akane. If there was one casualty of the war among the Gōketsu, it was Akane's innocence, and that was something Hazō couldn't have done anything to protect, not with all the seals in the world (for all that they'd saved Haru's life). He still had no clue how to fix what was wrong with her, and with all the constant demands on his time, it was hard enough to find a moment to check in with her, never mind anything more.

"How is she?" Hazō asked. "Have you had a chance to talk to her about it?"

Coming back into the room, he set down the mug of hot chocolate on the part of the coffee table not currently being occupied by Noburi's feet (for which Hazō really ought to have been chewing him out, but maybe later).

Noburi snorted. "Who do you think you're talking to? Team Noburi's been on the case since Day One."

"You have a team now?"

"I need a team now," Noburi corrected. "I don't have much time to spare for people who aren't literally dying at the moment, and Akane's not exactly at the top of her game—and as the sane big sister, she'd normally be my go-to for this sort of thing. Yuno's covering the home front on Akane Watch. She doesn't really get what's wrong, but she's surprisingly good at looking after people, and she does have the time. Ino's as busy as a clan head in wartime, but she has actual training for figuring out what's going on in people's heads. Then, believe it or not, we've got Kei of all people for backup. No offense to Kei, she's my sister and I love her dearly, but if you'd told me a month ago that she'd be helping sort out somebody else's issues, I'd have figured you'd had too much of Kagome's Totally-Won't-Get-You-Drunk-Out-Of-Your-Head Fermented Berry Drink."

Kagome-sensei's Totally-Won't-Get-You-Drunk-Out-Of-Your-Head Fermented Berry Drink held a special place in Team Uplift's hearts, since the recipe's completion had only been possible when Kagome-sensei was able to see them as people whom he could trust with his back in a vulnerable state.

"Y'know," Noburi said, "we could really market some of his old missing-nin stuff if we came up with better names. I can see it now: 'Kagome's Forest-Dweller Cuisine—for those who want to survive'."

Hazō just gave him a look. "And who's going to order from the rest of the menu after reading that?"

"Point," Noburi conceded. He took a sip of hot chocolate, and Hazō could see a little bit of the day's stress melt away as if by magic. Honestly, this drink alone had been worth joining Leaf for.

Hazō's goal for tonight, aside from a general desire to hang out with his brother for once, was to help this de-stressing process, not make it worse by dwelling on things neither of them could do much about. He brought forth the mental list of topics he'd prepared (which Noburi would tease him for mercilessly if he knew).

"By the way," he said, "have you had a chance to look through Orochimaru's notes?"

"I skimmed through them, sure," Noburi said. "Let me tell you, those things are a goldmine. I mean, by Tsunade standards, they're like that awful first novel you want to gather up and burn every copy of and Yamanaka everyone into forgetting it ever existed, as Jiraiya once put it. But for someone at my level, it's like all those lectures I'm desperate for but nobody has time to give me, only condensed into genius-speak for medical cryptographers.

"That's a profession now, by the way. I'm declaring it. Slot it into my training menu when you can."

Hazō gave a serious nod. "I'll see if I can find space between God of Ninjutsu and Legendary Summoner. Maybe I can take a few hours out of Mystery Toad Superpowers here and there.

"Which reminds me," he went on, "I appreciate you letting me plan your training. I know it takes a lot of trust, and I promise I'll get more conventional medical training in there as soon as I figure out how."

"No big deal," Noburi said. "On the rare occasion when you're not committing treason by accident or sticking your foot so far in your mouth it's amazing you can get it out again without surgery or making huge world-shaking decisions with no idea of the consequences, you can be pretty reliable."

Hazō took the compliment in the spirit in which it was intended.

"Anyway, you're saying the notes are actually valuable?" he asked, circling back. "Orochimaru wasn't just trying to fob us off with the first thing that came to mind?"

"To me, anyway," Noburi said. "A beginner would think they were gobbledygook, and someone like Dr Yakushi would drink them in like tasty spring water and then move on. What really gets me, though, isn't the medical stuff. It's the notes in the margins."

"What do you mean?"

"Near as I can tell," Noburi explained, "there were times when Orochimaru and Tsunade were too busy to meet and talk about their joint projects face to face, so they'd have these little conversations in the margins of the research notes they passed back and forth. Thing is… they're not like you'd expect at all. Like, one of the projects was about facial growths, and there was a ninja who died from using a disguise kit all day every day to hide his. I don't know why that'd kill him—maybe he used toxic paint or something. Anyway, there's a note from Orochimaru that's something like, 'Maybe you should come up with an always-on medical ninjutsu to make yourself look older and even uglier so Jiraiya will stop trying to seduce you', and Tsunade's reply is just one long string of curses I'd never heard before, with a few threats of grievous bodily harm thrown in, but it's like… it's like when I tease Kei. She does sound angry, and her threats are properly scary, but they're killer sibling threats, not Shikamaru-versus-Lord-Hagoromo threats.

"Or there's the one where Orochimaru has a go at her, saying some kid wouldn't have died if she'd just remembered to factor in the something something anterior membrane, and her reply is just, 'Yeah'. Y'know, no passing the buck, no getting pissed off, no making excuses, just this little 'Yeah' scrawled next to a paragraph on plague spirit appeasement.

"Or… get this. There's a note from Orochimaru saying how another three patients passed away, and they need to work faster to come up with a cure before there's no one left to save. Tsunade replies, 'Then suck it up and do more all-nighters, you wuss.' And Orochimaru says, 'I'm already starting to hallucinate. If I go any longer without sleep, the next person I operate on is going to die'. And, like, can you imagine the Orochimaru we know going without sleep so he could stop a stranger from dying? What happened between then and now?"

According to Jiraiya, Orochimaru decided it was easier to stop caring about people. Hazō still didn't know what that meant.

"Do you suppose he forgot those were there?" Hazō asked.

"For sure," Noburi said. "There's no way he'd let something personal like that out of his hands deliberately. And, y'know, that's kind of sad in itself. Like, these must have had a ton of sentimental value once. They're a record of his early days as a medic, and they might be the only remaining evidence of the bond those two used to have. But now he thinks of them as worthless old junk that he's only kept because any proper researcher would rather drink a shot of acid than get rid of hard-earned data."

Noburi's own early days as a medic meant so much to him that his first scalpel was now a family heirloom in Yuno's care. Hazō still had the notes from his first sealing research project, and one day they would be framed in the Origins of Uplift permanent exhibition at the Shikiri Museum. Ami had apparently held on to Kei's first Mori test papers to this day, despite Kei's begging that they be set on fire and the ashes fed to a particularly anti-social shark. Hazō could also understand someone wanting to reject their awful past, the way Mari did, but how did you just… stop caring?

But that way lay another heavy topic.

"Did you find anything especially interesting in there medic-wise?" Hazō asked instead. "Any new research ideas?"

"There's some stuff in there about the relationship between miasma intensity and the lunar cycle that caught my eye," Noburi said after a second's thought. "For example, certain spirits are particularly aggressive and hard to negotiate with during a full moon, and there's a higher chance of accidents when combining certain reagents, but it wasn't until Orochimaru and Tsunade that somebody tried to catalogue the lot and look for patterns. It would be pretty cool to pick up where they left off.

"Trouble is, these notes are ancient. For all I know, they already came back and finished the job, or they invested a load of time in it and decided it was impossible, in which case it's well above my level. That's true for most of the stuff in there: the problems they talk about are really old ones, meaning either they've been solved by now, or the likes of Tsunade gave them their best shot and eventually gave up. Either way, there's not much room for a part-timer like me to stick my oar in.

"Man, I wish Dr Yakushi was around more. I bet he'd be able to clear a lot of this up for me. Trouble is, he's spending half his time treating people with Bloodline Limit-related injuries and the other half helping Orochimaru, and there's no way I'm going to distract him from the first, and I'll have a severe case of mysterious disappearance if I distract him from the second."

Hazō nodded. "Yeah, I wouldn't mind a little time to talk to him myself, if I wasn't confident whatever I said was going to go straight back to Orochimaru and earn me more of his attention. I've been wondering about getting into biosealing, and in Leaf, that treads on one very big set of toes."

"What?!" Noburi threw up his hands in protest. "Nonono. Bad idea. Hazō, biosealing is dangerous. And crazy. And crazy dangerous. You have to experiment on people. And unlike you, those people can't just run away if the seal goes wrong because it's inside their body. Or if you experiment on yourself, that's a whole different kind of awful, because if it goes wrong, you're in no state to undo the damage.

"Also, everybody knows that biosealing turns you evil. If Orochimaru's not enough for you, look at the Arikadas. One was a zombie-summoning drug addict who nearly killed Akane and the other's a cultist who stabs his allies in the back and slaughters other allies in ways so sick Snowflake won't describe them, when he only needs to knock them out. Hell, ask Kagome. I'll bet you Mari's entire Icha Icha collection he's had at least three rants on the dangers of biosealing lined up ever since you first came across the idea."

"So…" Hazō said slowly, "you're not big on the idea of collaborative research."

"Hazō," Noburi said patiently, "as a Leaf medic, I'm forbidden to help somebody off themselves without special dispensation from Tsunade. If you really want to die, go give Kei a passionate hug, tell Yuno you're planning to seduce me, or make Ami think you're threatening her sister's life. There. Quick, easy, no setup required. Also, why have you surrounded yourself with women who'll murder you at the drop of a hat?"

"I ask myself that every day," Hazō confessed.

"Actually," Noburi said, "it's probably just karmic balance for you dating Akane and Ino, just like Hyūga has to have all the charm of a hog's ass to balance out having an awesome Bloodline Limit and a summoning scroll."

"You have an awesome Bloodline Limit and a summoning scroll," Hazō pointed out.

"And to balance it out, I have you as a brother."

"Hold up," Hazō said. "I also have an awesome Bloodline Limit and a summoning scroll—and to balance it out, I have you as a brother. I think you're really on to something here."

"The Gōketsu are all kinds of broken, aren't we?" Noburi asked. "If this was an RPG, I'd ban the lot of us."

"Yagura already tried that," Hazō said. "Look how that worked out for him."

Noburi snorted.

"Anyway, biosealing bad. Stick with blowing up the world the old-fashioned way."

"Fine," Hazō said, not really fine but also not willing to argue about it right now. "What if I just want to learn more about the human body? I'm never going to be on your level as a medic, but if I want to follow in your footsteps just a little bit, would you be willing to help me?"

Noburi hesitated.

"I don't know, Hazō. I suddenly have this vision in my head of you deciding that medicine is the bee's knees—which it totally is—and throwing yourself into it headfirst like you did with sealing, and the next thing I know, you're Hazō the Master Surgeon, and I'm just…"

"No way," Hazō interrupted. "I'm sure medicine is amazing, but I still have a dozen sealing research plans on the back burner, and each of those has a dozen other ideas branching out from it. I'm never going to be able to take enough time off from sealing to catch up with you, never mind overtake you. Noburi, you're always going to be the family medical expert."

At least, unless the SSSSS showed up to demand their promised seats, but Hazō would blow that bridge up when he came to it.

After a few long seconds, Noburi nodded.

"All right. Obviously, you'd have to call me Noburi-sensei and heed my words with reverence—that's what Gamasēji wants from me, so it must be good for something—and you already pay my stipend, so I'll be expecting extra payment in the form of cake, but other than that, I have no problem with giving you a little bit of tutoring if by some miracle we both have time again."

Hazō put his hand on his chin thoughtfully, making a show of considering.

"What kind of cake?"

"Lemon."

"You drive a hard bargain," Hazō said, "but I reckon it'll be worth it in the long run. Deal."

The two shook hands with ritual seriousness.

"By the way," Hazō said as Noburi began to sink back into the sofa, "while we're on the subject of medicine, there's actually been something on my mind for a while."

"Don't bother, Hazō," Noburi replied instantly. "They're all folk remedies, and none of them have been proved to work. If you want to stop disappointing your girlfriends, get Mari to teach you some of the Twelve Great Ninjutsu of the Bedchamber or something."

Hazō rolled his eyes. "I was going to ask about your chakra system."

"What about my chakra system?" Noburi asked. "If you don't have the stamina either, that's easier to fix for sure, but you know my massive reserves are a Wakahisa-only deal."

"I overheard you talking to Kei once," Hazō pressed on, "and you said your chakra system had been torn out and turned sideways. I was wondering what that was all about, if you don't mind telling me."

"Huh," Noburi said. "That's kind of random. Short answer, I don't really know. It's not like they tell genin any bloodline secrets worth knowing. Long answer, the Vampiric Dew's kind of weird as Bloodline Limits go. Like, look at the Hyūga. All they have to do is make a hand sign and yell, 'Byakugan!', and their powers turn on and it's done. In fact, I'm betting they don't even have to do that. It looks like a standard training technique for when you're a kid training to awaken your Bloodline Limit, and I guess there's no point forcing yourself to unlearn the habit since people can see you're using the Byakugan anyway, what with the Hyūga eyes and all the veins and stuff.

"Point is, you can be born with weird Hyūga eyes, but you can't be born with your chakra system wrapped around a barrel. That's something that has to be done. The process got perfected probably centuries ago, and the hard part these days is choosing the right age to do it for each kid. The earlier you do it, the better the odds that the kid won't survive having their chakra system torn out and turned sideways, but if you wait too long, the system will stabilise and they're stuck with civilian chakra reserves for life. I was freaking terrified when it was Aya and Saya's turns.

"This is, uh, minor clan secret stuff, so don't go spreading it around.

"Anyway, I don't know how it works, but even in the best-case scenario, it plays merry havoc with your body for a while. Some stuff stops working, and some stuff goes out of control, and believe me, you really don't want to know the details. But then your body adapts, and you learn to love the barrel, and if you're very lucky, you end up someone like me."

"Is it something you're interested in researching?" Hazō asked. "I'd be happy to help if you are."

"Pfft, yeah." Noburi swapped his feet around on the coffee table. "I'm totally going to reinvent a unique piece of Bloodline Limit tech that probably took centuries of work by people with all the Wakahisa clan secrets to develop. You'd have to hack the unique clan seals, and you'd have to hack the techniques for connecting to a Wakahisa barrel, and you'd have to hack the process for tearing out someone's chakra system and turning it sideways—and I'm damned if I know how to do that without having actual Wakahisa kids to study.

"No, when Yuno and I have kids—and she's made it clear that's non-negotiable—things are going to get complicated. Without those clan secrets, our kids are going to be civilians. With them… well, the Wakahisa can demand whatever they like, can't they? Any ninja would give anything to save their kids from a lifetime of civilianhood."

"We won't let that happen," Hazō said with steel in his voice. "No family of mine is getting held hostage. If we can't reverse-engineer the process—and as Jiraiya's heir, I'm not giving up on that so easily—we'll use all the power of the Gōketsu to make sure you get a fair deal. Just try not to have kids too soon, OK? I'd rather deal with this issue when we're demigods with power over half the known world. Five years, maybe? Three if I get lucky with my research."

Noburi shuddered. "Believe me, I am in no hurry. Yuno is the best and I couldn't imagine a better wife, but it's not like I was planning to get married this young either. Man, I can tell you I've got a whole new level of sympathy for Kei, especially with the whole heir thing.

"Then again, at least marriage hasn't stopped her from getting cute girls. Like, even if people don't know about Yuno, they hear that I'm married and the way they look at me changes instantly. There's this one really hot Nara surgeon at the hospital and when we were getting busy—"

Hazō's spine turned into ice colder than anything the Yuki Clan could dream of as his missing-nin senses screamed at him. He opened his mouth in warning, but no words came out.

"Go on, my little tapir. Tell me everything about this hot Nara surgeon you were getting busy with."

Hot chocolate really was a miracle drink, because Noburi sprang up from the sofa with all the vigour of a bull terrier spotting a fleeing bull.

"BreaktimesovertimetoheadbacktothehospitallovelytoseeyouYunobye!"

Hazō could only hope that Noburi managed to make it as far as having kids.

-o-​

You have received 3 + 1 (Brevity) + 1 (Fun-to-Write) = 5 XP.

-o-​

What do you do?

Voting ends on Apr 9, 2022 at 1:00 PM

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 509: The Powers of Creation, Destruction, and Scribbling​

Hazō looked up at the rap on his doorjamb.

"Got a minute?" asked his red-headed Mistress of Manipulation, Countess of Charm, and General Generalissima. (She insisted that he needed to use her full and self-created title on formal occasions. He had insisted that it would never, ever, ever, ever happen in a billion years of Sundays.)

"Sure," he said, tossing his current scroll to the side and leaning back, hands folded on his stomach. "What've you got?"

"Aito came to me with an idea," she said, flopping into the chair opposite him. "Roads."

Hazō waited for some level of further detail to render the idea comprehensible. Mari waited in her turn, smiling brightly.

"Go on," Hazō said at last. She enjoyed the game too much and he had things to do.

"How wide does a road need to be for a guy with a pushcart?"

"...I dunno. Two yards, maybe? Gives room to go around the potholes."

"Eh. It's a little narrow, don't you think? Wouldn't three be better?"

"I mean...sure, but that's not a thing. Traffic only uses a wagon width of space, so that's what gets trampled down. Everything else grows fine. Grows in, for that matter. That's when it isn't actively reaching out to eat random passersby."

"You know MaRI?"

"The agency?"

"No, the jutsu."

"Okay, yes. What about it?"

"Granite wall. Six yards down, three yards up, a yard wide. Always vertical, no lean. Stack three side-by-side, they all merge together."

"I already said I'm familiar with it." She did not immediately expand so he glanced significantly at the nigh-toppling stack of papers on his desk. She still didn't expand, so he sighed. "Sure. What about it?"

"Solid granite. Three yards wide, three yards off the ground where the overgrowth can't reach in and grab random passersby. Sounds a lot like an elevated road, doesn't it?"

Hazō blinked. A moment later he noticed that his mouth was gaping, so he closed it.

"How chakra intensive is it?" he asked.

"Gotoda is a chūnin with a pretty average mission history. He can do about 250 yards. Leaves him dry, but he can do it."

Hazō nodded thoughtfully, chewing through the implications. An average chūnin could do 250 yards and would then need a day to rebuild their chakra reserves before doing it again. It was...what, 50 miles to Otafuku Gai? A mile was almost 2,000 yards, so 50 miles was roughly 100,000 yards. That meant about 400 days to get there with a single-thickness wall. That was roughly a year. Multiply by 3 to get the necessary width...

"That's three years to Otafuku Gai," he said. "For one ninja. How many Earth-aspect ninja does Leaf have?"

"More than half of Leaf's ninja are Fire element. Probably why they named it 'the Land of Fire', yah?" She smiled at her own witticism in precisely the way that she knew drove Hazō crazy when he was focused on something. "The other elemental natures seem to be pretty evenly distributed. Maybe ten percent of the ninja here have Earth element."

"So we could probably round up twenty or thirty Earth-aspect chūnin?"

She nodded. "If Asuma were authorizing till'n'fills, yes. He won't unless and until AMITY pays out and the peace is secure. We could find twice that many Earth-aspect genin but I don't think it would be worth it. Apparently there's a hefty startup cost to get the jutsu working and then it absorbs as much extra chakra as you want to throw at it in order to produce wall. The width and height are always the same, it's just the length that depends on chakra spent. Genin's smaller reserves would make them less efficient."

"And then there's Noburi."

"Yeah. Then there's Noburi."

He thought about it. "How would he react?"

The jokester had disappeared; with her adopted son/little brother/friend at the center of the discussion, Mari was finally taking things seriously. "Hard to say. He always hated that whole 'Barrel Boy' thing. Being valued only as a walking chakra source instead of as a person and a teammate. On the other hand, that was back in Mist where there were plenty of more experienced Wakahisa around. The people there were accustomed to the idea of Wakahisa and familiarity breeds contempt, or at least lack of regard. The Wakahisa weren't special more than any other clan and Noburi was a young and very low-rank Wakahisa. Add in the weight..."

"...which he's been losing," Hazō said, seeing where she was going. "He's still square but there's a lot more jawline and a lot less squidge."

"Plus, he is the only person in Leaf who can move chakra around and people here are smart enough to realize that it's transformative," Mari said. "Since the war started I know that he's had three separate jōnin thank him for powering them up so that they could do that little extra bit of practice that made a difference on their mission. Plus, whenever Yuno isn't around he's got girls making doe eyes and twirling their hair at him. Ninja and civilians both."

"I hope they aren't doing it when she is around?" That was an ugly thought. Leaf's ninja forces had been heavily reduced by the war; the last thing they needed was for a rampaging Yuno to reduce it yet further.

"A few did, at first. No one died, there were only two hospitalizations, and the word got around. Now they make themselves scarce."

"Good." He waved the thought aside and moved back to the original topic. "So you're saying he's getting over his self-confidence issues."

"I think so. I'm not sure what's going to happen when there's other Wakahisa around to fill that role. I'm sure it'll happen eventually, but hopefully by then he'll have grown into his skin enough to not be bothered."

"Basically, he's being valued for a thing that only he can do," Hazō summarized. "And yes, it's based on his bloodline, but it's the same with the Hyūga, the Uchiha, or any other clan ninja."

"Right. Also, I've been steering him towards the recognition that it's not just the bloodline. The bloodline is an opportunity, same as beauty, or the ability to bulk up easily, or the focus and chakra control to learn medical jutsu. It's nice to have but it's not a gamechanger unless you put in the work. The amount of chakra he can hold onto is huge, and that's because he did the work. Using MaRI to build a road network to every city, town, and village would save dozens, perhaps hundreds, of lives every year. It would also mean more trade, meaning more food for the hinterlands. That would save thousands of lives. It would make for easier discovery of ninja candidates, which would mean more medics and more beast-reduction missions to protect villages. The Yellow Flash gets entire history scrolls about him because he was really good at killing. If Noburi powered a road network he would get a chapter, maybe just a section, but it would be because he saved lives. A lot of lives."

"It would also reduce chakra beast migration," Hazō said. "The tighter we make the road grid, the easier it would be to exterminate all the dangerous creatures within a given section. We could actually make progress on making the nation safer."

"Yup." Her face was serious but she was leaning back, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. She had said her piece and was now waiting for him to make a decision.

Hazō considered, then nodded. "I'll talk to him about it."

o-o-o-o​

"Yo, bro," Noburi said, wandering in with a mug of tea in one hand and a small napkin loaded with nibbles in the other. "Mari said you wanted to talk to me?"

"I did, yeah. Have a seat."

Noburi's insouciant steps hitched to a halt and his expression instantly became more serious. "I know that face. This isn't about plans for the next game night or the long-overdue admission that I am smarter than you. What's going on?"

Hazō waved him into the chair. "I'm nervous because I've got a proposal for you and I'm not sure how it's going to land."

Noburi settled into the chair and crossed his legs, left ankle on right knee. He laid the napkin of nibbles on one thigh and leaned back with his mug held in both hands. "Well that's not nervous-making. Stop dancing around it and let's have it."

"You know Aito, that hill daimyo who sold us the iron mine? He came to Mari with a proposal and she came to me. There's an important..." He trailed off, biting his lip nervously, then took a breath and braced himself. He held Noburi's gaze and spoke firmly. "That new Massive and Rapid Infrastructure jutsu that Mari commissioned is like a powered-up version of the Multiple Earth Wall. You can use it to make granite walls hundreds of yards long per casting. Put three of those walls side-by-side and they merge together into a road three yards across and three yards above the ground."

Noburi nodded slowly and sipped his tea. "Requires a lot of chakra, right?"

"There's a startup cost and then the more chakra you sink into it the longer the wall is. A chūnin can make around 250 yards per day, so it would take three days to make one section of road."

"How far is it to Otafuku Gai? You'd go there first, right?"

"Probably, yeah. And it's about fifty miles." He had checked the maps before this meeting and been pleasantly surprised to find that he remembered the number correctly.

"So it's about...what, three weeks to make a road a mile long? You're talking something like three years of work just to get to the nearest city. Except it's going to be more because the road isn't going to hit perfectly. You'll go off course, either accidentally or intentionally because you want to go around some bad terrain and then you'll need to jink back. That could easily make the distance a third or a half longer." He shrugged. "Call it four years."

Hazō nodded. "For one ninja. There's two or three dozen Earth-aspect chūnin in Leaf."

"Except Asuma won't let you... Oh. Two or three dozen Earth-aspect chūnin, and me," Noburi said, realization visibly hitting him. "You want me to drain genin in order to supply the chūnin road crews."

"I want to talk to you about it," Hazō corrected. "Noburi, you've always been resentful of being valued only as a chakra source. I hope you realize that we—the Gōketsu Clan in general and Team Uplift especially—don't see you like that."

"Yah, I know," he said, waving the statement away as he sat, lips pursed in thought. "Have you thought about the actual costs? Three genin to resupply a chūnin if you don't want to leave the genin too low. How many genin does Leaf have?"

"Conveniently, about three times as many genin as chūnin."

"Asuma won't let you monopolize thirty ninja for months on what is basically a massive till'n'fill. Plus, you'll need to convince the chūnin in question to learn this jutsu that isn't useful in combat and then set aside all their training and be chakra exhausted every day for months. Say you can put six chūnin on the problem; between them they can do the whole thing in seven or eight months without resupply. Add another eighteen genin drained per day in order to effectively double the road crew's chakra supply. That makes it three to four months to build one road that only goes to the nearest city."

"Whatever route we take will likely go past a few small towns or villages, so we can build on-ramps for them."

Noburi snorted and tossed a few nuts in his mouth from the napkin in his lap. "I stand corrected. It's one road to one city and a few villages. We're already buying a crapton of chakra so that you, Akane, and Kei can have so many Shadow Clones up for training. It's not as expensive as a regular mission but it's not cheap either. Can we afford that? Between the penalties Asuma charged us after the bank run, plus the loans to the Hagoromo and everything else, we've been drowning in debt for ages."

That was a lot more insightful and pragmatic than Hazō had been expecting. Given his casual ways and mocking speech style, it was easy to forget just how smart Noburi was.

"Actually, we're doing okay right now," Hazō said. "The money that Orochimaru gave us let us pay off all our debts and left us with about six months of operating expenses at current consumption even if we had no other income. The various things we've got going on will keep us stable, so that six month cushion is actually available for investment. Kumokōgō is fine to let us take the castoff silk from broken webs and so on, and the Meiori are champing at the bit to get their hands on it. We'll see if the stuff works for them, and if it doesn't then I'll negotiate for some bespoke spinning from the spiders."

"What's going on with them, anyway?"

Hazō grimaced. "It's a little hairy. After we killed that Dragon the others went on a rampage for a few days. They razed every structure across ten or twenty percent of Arachnid Territory. Something like ten thousand people died. Plus, the Dragons attacked the surrounding ocean territories. We have no idea how many sharks, kraken, and crustaceans died."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. Afterwards they went back to the butte and seem to be asleep again. Or, at least, they aren't making sorties."

"How do they fit up there, anyway? Isn't it, like, fifty or a hundred yards across? I thought you said that the Dragon you killed was hundreds of feet long, but somehow six of them were camping out there?"

Hazō shrugged. "No idea. Regardless, Kumokōgō said that she can't afford losses like that. We need to come up with some way to kill all the remaining Dragons in one shot before she's willing to move again."

"Double ouch. Any ideas?"

Hazō shook his head. "Not one. They're too different from each other. We may have lucked out with th3 one that came after us, because I'm not ev^n sure that some of the others will be vulnerable to kinetic damage."

"What?" Noburi said, eyebrows shooting up. "How can something not be vulnerable to kinetic damage?"

"They're really different," Hazō said with a sigh. He shifted in his chair and rummaged in his desk drawers for a storage seal. Popping it open revealed a box containing a steaming-hot teapot, four cups, and a dinner plate loaded with snacks. He set it all down in Noburi's reach and poured a cup for himself. Grabbing a fistful of nuts he sat back and looked up at the ceiling, r-calling the d!scriptions he had he.rd of the enemy.

"Let's see...well, to start with, the descriptions are never consistent. Each rep0rt on their appearan(e tends of be somewhat DiffErent, even if you compare between the same pers)n's reports on different days. Plus, the scou7s ar#n't aware that they're repoRting something differen7—indeed, they'll insist that their reports have been consistent throug+out."

"Well, that's not good." Noburi chomped the last of the nuts and dried fruit he'd brought into the room with him and collected a few dried apple slices from Hazō unsealed supply. He chewed thoughtfully, almost visibly hoping that a workable idea would fall out of the aether and into his brain.

"Tell me about it," Hazō said. "Our best gVess is that the most norm4l looking one is reptilian anb seerval hundred feet long. It has somewhere between two and thirt3en legs, one and sev3n wings, and zeero and ten haeds. Number of eyes is the only consistent fa(7 about the thing, since it's always 'more than I can count'.

"The second one is 4 viscous, amorPh0Vs ma55. !t doesn't seem to fly—"

"That's good."

"—innstead, it mooevs by propagatinggating."

"That's less good." Noburi seemed blithely oblivious to the cracks in Hazō's eyes. Hazō did his best to act normal so as to keep it that way.

"Tell me about it. Its size is k0mpletelely inconsisten7 so the scou75 are never quite sure hoW f4r awa`/ the thing is thing is." Was his voice echoing or had he actually repeated himself? "H4!f 4 dozen sP!d3rs misjudged th3 distance and GoT gragrabbed." He forced himself to breathe slowly and think about the pressure of his feet against the floor and the slight discomfort in his ankle where he had twisted it at sparring practice.

"Aren't they supposed to be staying miles away?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Anyway, if you get too clOOse then these...tent4c!e5, I guess, LAash out before you |(an blink and pull y.. in. One of the #cout5 report3d watching his second get grabbed. The p00r guy wa5 shaking 5o hard his joints were ratatataling and he gave us this v3ry detai1ed descri5tion of his second gett!ng sloWly absORbed int0 t.. monster as he thr45hed a.d s(reamed." He stopped and focused on the memory of his fingers trailing across Ino's skin, up her arm, across her neck, and into her silky hair. He counted his breaths one by one until the Paint was once more smooth and uncracked around him.

Noburi was watching him carefully. "You okay, bro?"

"I'm fine." He shook his head rapidly, throwing off the last of the Out film that had momentarily covered his thoughts. "It has an acrid scent which can be smelled from further than should be possible, and emits a pleasant low sound as it moves, like the vibration of a quieting gong. That's probably part of how it gets so close without alerting its prey."

"I'm ready to move on from this," Noburi said.

"Yeah, too bad. If I have to live with these images then so do you." He stuck his tongue out at his brother and ignored the muttered 'very mature, bro.' "Anyway, the th!rd Dragon is made of reflections. It's only the Horn3ts with their multifaceted eyes who have been able to see the thing, and even then only when it's flying low enoUgh to reflect the ground or high enough to reflect the clouds.

"The fourth one is beautiFUL. That's the only thing th3 scouts could tell us. No one survived scouting it twi(3."

Ino's hair was silky and thick and long. They both liked it when he finger-combed the knots out, carefully so as not to pull. He would start at the bottom and work his way up, and when he got to the top he would massage her scalp until she turned into a melty, purring puddle against him. The sight always made Akane smile; she would join them in the people pile and Hazō would stroke her brow until she drifted off to sleep. It was the only way she slept well anymore.

"The last one...we have no idea what the last one looks lik3. Anyone looking directly at it is plunged into sudden night-t!me, and therefore can't see it from a safe distance. The world continues to be at night for a few seconds aft3r looking away;. Get too close and you're destroyed with a crackling sound like wickerwork being bent too far."

Noburi sat, silently digesting that. "Sounds like you've got your work cut out for you."

"Yep. Hence my desire to think about roads and trade."

"That is a brilliant plan and I am completely in support of it."

Hazō chuckled. "Yeah." He paused, breathing slowly as the humor fell away and seriousness laid its hand on him once more. "Mari brought me the idea this morning. She made an interesting point." He let the words hang, promise unfulfilled.

"Oh?" Noburi said at last.

"The Fourth has history scrolls written about him because he killed people. A lot of people. He had the Flying Thunder God, that big sexy jutsu that let him teleport. Powering a road net won't get you books. It'll get you a chapter, maybe a section. But it will save thousands of lives. Maybe tens of thousands. And that's just in the next few years. Trade across Fire means more food, more people. That means more ninja to clear animals, more medics to save mothers in childbirth and people injured in farming accidents."

"I mean...that sounds good, but it only saves a couple of months."

"For this first road. For the next one, the silk trade will have started ramping up we'll have more money to buy chakra. For the hundredth one, there will be more genin to drain chakra from. Plus, you'll be able to drain all the random critters in the area around the walls." He paused, holding Noburi's gaze. "This isn't one road to one city, Noburi. It's a nation of roads, connecting every city and every town, every village and every hamlet. Eventually we'll put them in groups of three, maybe twenty yards apart. Burn everything in the interspaces and line the outer area with traps to keep the wildlife away. Maybe widen the center road to six yards so two carts can pass in opposite directories. Tens of thousands of people will move around Fire on those roads. They'll carry food to the hungry, medicine to the sick, and products to markets where their makers can get better prices, make more money, and use it to buy the things they need." His lips quirked in amusement. "And the whole thing will be called the Nature-Overcoming Byway and Urgency-facilitating Road Initiative."

Noburi frowned for half a second until he managed to work through the acronym, then he snorted. "That's pretty strained."

"The other option was Nature-Overcoming Bustling Ultimate Road Initiative?"

He pondered that. "Not bad. A lot less strained."

"Will you do it?"

"How can I say no?" Noburi said with a laugh. "You make me sound like such a paragon of virtue."

"You are."

The initial surprise at those words smoothed itself away from Noburi's face and was replaced by uncertainty when he recognized Hazō's sincerity.

"Noburi," Hazō said, before trailing off. He leaned back and sipped his tea, thinking. "Noburi, I killed those three ninja after we ran from the Liberator. I killed a half-dozen younglings in Cat Territory. I set a noticeable section of a continent on fire because I wasn't willing to have my team attacked again. It probably killed hundreds of Cat Clan people."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. You're very heroic, Mr Mew. I'm sure—"

"No," Hazō said, slashing Noburi's words off with one hand. "That's the point. All I do is kill people and dream up better ways to kill them. That's not heroic. You are heroic. You fixed that kid's gapmouth and transformed his life for the better. You saved Akane's life when she fell to chakra exhaustion, and probably again in Isan. Shoot, you saved that asshole Kōta even though you had every justification not to. You didn't care that he was our enemy, you only cared that he was a person and he was hurt."

Hazō gestured vaguely to the window and, by implication, to the sprawl of the Gōketsu estate and the larger mass of humanity in Leaf proper. "I have no idea how many lives you've saved in our clinic, and I'm sure the number is higher once we look at what you've done in Leaf General."

Noburi shifted uncomfortably. "Not really. I'm not that good, Hazō. I can set bones and chase off wound spirits, but—"

"But nothing. So you're not Tsunade—yet. The fact that you're setting bones and sterilizing wounds means that a more senior doctor is free to work on the guy who's going to die without immediate attention. It's the same thing with the Nature-Overcoming Bustling Ultimate Road Initiative. It's not going to get you an entire history book"—he laughed—"at least, not until the Gōketsu can buy time on the Nara printing press, but—"

"Eh. Doesn't count if you have to do it yourself."

"Okay, fine. Being support isn't sexy, but it's important. This road network—"

Noburi waved him to silence. "It's fine, it's fine. I'll do it. For six months, maybe a year."

"Why six months or a year?"

"I figure that's about how long it will take me to learn Earth Element. Then I can build the roads myself and we don't have to pay people to do it. Also, because I can be out there alone or with just Gōketsu, I can use mist drain to refill myself and simultaneously kill off the local wildlife." He stood up and brushed invisible lint off his clothes. "I'm in, boss. Let me know when and where you need me. In the meantime, I need to go find an Earth Element teacher, so if there's nothing else...?"

---

Author's Note: The Massive and Rapid Infrastructure jutsu actually produces a wall that is five meters deep, three meters high, and a meter wide. Meters, not yards. Clearly, chakra prefers sensible measuring systems. However, I've written Hazō using Freedumb units(*) for most of the quest so I figured I should be consistent. To make that work I tweaked the numbers slightly. Yes, five meters is not quite the same as six yards but then again no one has put an actual yardstick against the thing either, since a measuring stick that measures a literal modern yard does not exist except by happenstance in the MfD world.

Additionally, Hazō's estimate on the effort required to make a road to Leaf's neighboring city is inaccurate. This is intentional on the author's part.

This update covered 10 days and a bunch of seal research happened in that time. I had intended to write it, but the first scene got away from me, it's already 4pm, and that last line is a good place to end it. The QMs haven't had a chance to discuss the actual TNs for these seals yet so we'll have to get back to you (probably tomorrow) on how much progress was made. The sequence went as follows:

• March 15-20: Each day, a Hazō Shadow Clone does research preparation, thereby generating a total bonus of +10 on Hazō's roll to infuse his prototype ARS (Action Relay Seal).
• March 21: Hazō DangerousSealGuy infuses the prototype
• March 21-23: Hazō Prime recovers from the splitting migraine caused by his Sealing Scroll Acolyte stunt. (It grants a massive bonus to his Sealing roll at the cost of taking a two-day Mild Mental Consequence every time he does a research infusion. Doesn't trigger for regular infusions.)
• March 23: Having gotten a sense of how difficult the ARS seal was, HazōPrime opted to forego prep days and simply make another infusion attempt.
• March 23-25: Hazō recovers from his SSA-induced migraine.

(*) Note: I'm American, so I'm allowed to call them Freedumb units. You Europeans aren't. So there.

XP AWARD: 50

Brevity XP: 10

"GM had fun" XP: 20

FP Award: 2 for general refresh

It is now morning on the 26th and Hazō's Consequence has healed.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, April 13, 2022, at 12pm London time.

 

[Velorien]

Interlude: The Mission that Time Forgot, Part 2​

Kōgami Yūna hated absolutely everything about this mission, she reflected as she planted another seal from her steadily-dwindling supply on the chest of a shambling monstrosity, then backflipped away to avoid two others' tentacle lashes before the seal activated. Standing on the opposite wall, she allowed herself a second's smug grin as Kōgami's Spatial Distortion Seal activated, blowing all three of them into tiny chunks which were instantly sucked away into interdimensional space to avoid contamination (or lucky survivors). Then the bleeding faces started appearing under her feet again.

She hated everything. She hated the locals in Fire Province, who'd been too scared to show her the way to the lair in the city ruins, and she hated her own oath not to shed civilian blood again after the excesses of the War. She hated the malodorous fools on the Council who'd sent her here, especially Lady Uzumaki— Yūna was a loremaster, the very best, not some expendable field agent. Who had uncovered and deciphered the ancient scrolls containing the terrible truth about the Sage's brother? Who had forced Firelord Madara to the bargaining table by identifying the Sharingan's secret weakness? Whose mastery of eldritch lore had allowed Whirlpool to locate and secure the Great Seal on Nagi Island before some ingenious fool found a way to power the array? Not Lady Uzumaki's, that's for sure.

But most of all, Yūna decided as she abandoned her sandals before they were devoured, she hated Surgeon General Orochimaru and every idiot with a scalpel who thought it was a great idea to imitate his work with neither the safety constraints he'd pioneered nor the ethical constraints he'd grudgingly accepted. The Spiritual Society of Sublime Slithering Superiority should count themselves lucky they'd all died particularly excruciating deaths and/or turned into mindless abominations before Yūna could get to them. Those sandals had been a gift from family.

Yūna's litany of curses was interrupted by an eardrum-shattering smash as the biggest flesh golem she'd seen yet took out the entire wall to her right. The misshapen abomination reached for her with two many-jointed, elongated arms while three smaller ones held it upright on its stubby childlike feet. Its battle cry was less a roar and more a piteous squeal raised to Greater Banshee Seal volume, but Yūna had heard worse only today.

"Come on, then, you miserable thing!" she snarled with bared teeth. "I've been waiting for a chance to field-test the Recursive Implosion Seal!"

-o-​

"Captain Miyu, the enemy's breached the third defensive layer."

"Then deal with it and stop bothering me, you reeking moron!" Kaga Miyu spat at Satoshi, then regretted it instantly. Satoshi was a good comrade. He'd agreed to follow her into this hellhole with only a second's hesitation, despite knowing that, likely as not, they would all die here.

"Sorry," Miyu muttered.

Satoshi just gave a calm nod before heading down Passage L, the one they'd cleared of booby-traps (and then Miyu had thoroughly re-booby-trapped) only yesterday. A good comrade. Probably not a traitor, which was the highest evaluation Miyu was comfortable giving anyone. In another life, maybe she could've—

A distant explosion. A 4-3-7 on the Kaga Scale. Her next project would have to be to up the shockwave intensity so it didn't drop off quite so fast over distance.

What next project?

Miyu shook her head and picked up the next report. They'd lost so many good men and women to get this far. Team Yuki had stopped reporting in after sending them the intel on Facility Zero. Teams Kōmori and No-Name had dropped back to divert pursuit and never caught back up. And, of course, if it hadn't been for Team F, they'd never have escaped the farms to begin with. Maybe at least Master F had made it out alive.

A 4-3-1. One of them had managed to disarm the primary detonator, but the fool had missed the secondary. There was still time.

Miyu snapped the scroll shut and threw it over her shoulder, then unrolled the next one on the rack. No good. Next.

It had taken so long to get to the master workroom. Masashi, the brave fool who'd told her off for slowing them down with all the extra paper, had ignored her warnings and walked right in. He'd been squished before making it past the door. Kuro, even careful as he was, couldn't have predicted the genjutsu seal, and seeing that level of protection had been proof that there was something here after all. And then Ayako... Ayako, her one and only...

Several blasts in a row. They were past the first ring. Was this it? The final assault already?

No good. Next.

They'd been here for days. Three squads had volunteered to escort her here, and now they had a squad and a half left. Miyu couldn't fail.

No good. Next.

Faint screams in the background. She'd placed the Force Walls so they weren't obvious even after they started chopping them up. Who was paranoid now?

No good. Next.

The answers had to be here. Somebody had made them, here at Facility Zero. Somebody had left behind the trick to keeping them under control, even if they'd failed at it somewhere along the way. There had to be a means to destroy them. There had to be.

A ragged breath came from behind her. She nearly planted a kunai in Michiko's chest as she spun around, before recognising her comrade (likely not a traitor, the next step down).

Michiko was holding her left side. Blood trickled down between her fingers, dripping abstract patterns onto the floor.

"They just keep coming. This is the one, Miyu. With that many bodies to throw at the array, they'll be here in minutes. Take what you can and get out. Me and Yoshi'll fake them out with the Transformation Technique, but we won't be able to hold them for long."

A 5-5-5. They'd reached the good stuff.

Miyu shook her head. "I'm nearly there, Michiko, I swear. We'll all get out together."

Michiko gave a sudden hiss of pain. "There's no time, Miyu. You have to live. You're the only one with enough crypto to figure this shit out. Get... going, dammit."

Cursing everything, Miyu began grabbing the scrolls in the "promising" pile and stuffing them in her sealmaster satchel. Just as well she was down to only a couple of thousand seals. Plenty of room.

"We'll meet again..." Miyu hesitated. With the Mōnai area swarming with them, which rendezvous points wouldn't be compromised?

Michiko gave a slow, melancholy smile. "Well meet again in a better world, Miyu. Now get your ass to the escape tunnel before I have to kick it down there."

Miyu couldn't find any words to say. She never could, when it mattered. Instead, she gave Michiko the Resistance salute and ran yet again.


They were waiting for her at the exit.

Miyu should probably have been proud. They thought she was important enough to send the best. Instead, all she could feel was a weary, pale despair.

"You are the first to make it this far in twelve years, Subject 3314," Nara Shikaku told her in a precise voice that made the numbers feel like needles pinning her down. "Furthermore, you have broken the previous record for length of survival. Though, in fairness, by the time Jiraiya reached this place, we had more than enough data on him to be efficient.

"Limited comfort though it may be to you, anyone who reaches the Origin Shrine is assigned a master-class at least. It is a much more beneficial experience than you imagine."

"It was a trap," Miyu whispered.

"Quite," Nara said. "Shimura Yuki was the traitor, in case you were wondering."

"We scanned her with the Lupchanzen Detector Seal," Miyu exclaimed. "Those have been tested to Naraka and back!"

"Jiraiya's original was a miracle of sealcrafting," Nara allowed. "It required only slight modification before being released into your hands. How many uses do you suppose it takes before it ceases to give accurate results?"

They'd all died for nothing. There were no secrets in the scrolls in her satchel—or worse, they were lies for anyone who got this far and managed to escape.

Nara—or the thing inside Nara—had started to lower its guard. It liked to talk, and would expect some last defiant speech for sure before Miyu tried to fight against impossible odds.

Miyu wasn't a reeking moron.

"Kaga's Joy!" she yelled as her final seal turned all the chakra in her body into raw destruction, and the last, joyful thing she saw was the look of shock on Nara's face as he and Facility Zero were erased from existence.

-o-​

"Hurry up, you useless meatbag," Kimura muttered over Yūsuke's shoulder. "All hell's gonna break loose if we're still here when the window closes."

Yūsuke bit back a retort. The stinking idiot had no idea how complicated it was, setting exploding tags at exactly the right structural weak points in a castle about which he knew practically nothing, under time pressure, with constant distractions. Worse, he'd underestimated how many seals he'd need. If he was going to finish the job, he'd have to make more here and now, with no time to double-check his work.

A few minutes later, while his teammates alternated between nervously patrolling the halls and yelling at him to hurry up (all except Ayako, perfect, patient Ayako), Yūsuke pulled out his calligraphy set and got to work. With so little time, he couldn't afford to scribe the ordinary tags he could make in his sleep. He'd need to make a handful of his more advanced seals, the ones he was less experienced with, and he didn't like how that stacked risk on top of risk. Next time, he'd use a loadout with a bigger margin of error.

"We're behind schedule," that fool Yasaka snapped at him. "Are you even trying, Kagamoron?"

Yūsuke didn't know what set his teeth on edge more—the fact that Yasaka thought he was being witty, or the fact that Yūsuke couldn't think of a clever comeback when there must've been a million.

"Chill, Ryūji," came Ayako's calming voice. "I know we're all tense, but I'm sure Kagami is working as hard as he can, and you looming over his shoulder's not going to get the job done any faster."

Yūsuke's frustration began to ebb as the feeling of her presence washed over him. Stroke after stroke, dot after dot. Just like his instructors had taught him. Simple. Systematic. Yūsuke was the brush. The paper was the world. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed. To master the seal, one mastered oneself. To master oneself, one mastered the seal.

Next, the infusion. His chakra was the river. The seal was the channel. His will would keep the course smooth and the water pure.

"Sorry, babe. You know how I can get when things aren't going to plan."

A note of wrongness in the trance. Despite himself, Yūsuke let his eyes flick upwards, away from the paper, for just a moment.

"Let me take your mind off it, then," Ayako purred. Then, she reached up on tiptoe and kissed Yasaka. Slowly. Deeply. As if she was his girlfriend.

Yūsuke's chakra exploded through the sealing blank, sweeping away the nodes and flooding the converters, demolishing the carefully-laid structure as surely as he'd meant to demolish the castle.

It took him an unforgivable second to realise what he'd done.

"Run!" Yūsuke screamed as he leapt away from the seal with every bit of strength in his body.

He was too late. No, he could only have been too late.

Everything was in slow motion as Yūsuke's feet hit the ground. Ayako, staring at him in horror. Yasaka, already turning towards the exit. Ayako and Yasaka's skins, slowly melting into nothingness, exposing raw pink flesh. The stone of the walls beginning to fade out. Flesh melting into nothingness, exposing eyeballs, teeth, viscera, hearts pulsating. As bone began to erase itself…

KAGAMI/yūsuke.

It was not a voice. He understood it, but it was not a voice. It was knowledge, like two plus two being four. He knew that someone, something, had said his name.

The suddenness of it was like a lid over his mind. The terror, the panic, the guilt—they were still there, bubbling away beneath the surface, but they were covered by something he could pretend was calm.

KAGAMI/yūsuke has been judged ANOMALOUS/forbidden.

What was happening? Something was wrong with his memories. His thoughts didn't make sense. Yūsuke felt an impulse to clutch his head, as if having it in his hands would be proof it was still in one piece, but he couldn't move.

A CORRECTION/shift will now be implemented with a ????/????.

Yūsuke didn't understand. It was as if he'd forgotten something the second he learned it, leaving only a memory-shaped gap. Panic rose up from his very depths as he felt… What was this? It wasn't death, but it wasn't not death. What was happening to him?

KAGAMI/yūsuke will be ????/unwritten.

"No!" Yūsuke screamed inside his head.

Briefly, all was still.

There had to be a way out of this. Something was talking to him, or at least giving him information. Maybe it was listening too?

As everything hung in the balance, Yūsuke got an idea. It was a brilliant idea, even better than the seal he was working on. All he had to do was bluff the unknown being from the Out.

Spoiler: dice

Kagami Yūsuke: Deception 1 - 12 = -11

?????????????????????:????????????????????

"You've got the wrong guy!" Yūsuke mentally shouted. "I'm not Kagami Yūsuke at all. I'm… I'm… Kagome Yū! Yeah! Kagome Yū is the name that is… my name!"

Everything was still for a second longer as the being was completely taken in by his amazing feat of deception.

…

…

ERROR/inaccuracy is acknowledged. The ????/???? will be updated.

Just as Yūsuke was sure he'd pulled it off, one last memory changed everything.

KAGOME/yū is missing. MANIFESTING/reconstructing from ????/????.

-o-​

In the depths of the cult lair, Kōgami Yūna covered her eyes as the Recursive Implosion Seal consumed the victim(s) of experimental biosealing, only to release a flash of light that had definitely not been in the design specifications…

-o-​

Kaga Miyu felt a flash of panic as she suddenly remembered the two thousand infused seals she was carrying on her person, before they too were consumed by the fires of perfect annihilation…

-o-​

Professor Ka Gimon dove for cover as his noxious imbecile of an apprentice began to infuse the incomplete blank…

-o-​

Mei, scavenging in the heart of the lost city, froze as a decaying seal left over from the Last War flared to life beneath her…

-o-​

High Watcher Kuge Maya accepted her fate with grace as the panicking sealmaster slammed his seal down on the table and triggered a deliberate sealing failure…

-o-​

Kagome ran full pelt through the city streets/fortress corridors/cavernous depths/emergency tunnels/… as reality unmade and remade itself around him. Walls and roofs faded into nothing, exposing startled people. People faded into nothing, from the outside in, with—he prayed—no time for fear or pain. Paving stones became grass beneath his feet, twigs, rocks. By the time he got to the city outskirts, there was nothing ahead of him but trees, painting themselves into existence suddenly enough that at ninja speed, what had been a clear plain became a deadly obstacle course. Kagome kept running anyway. Behind him lay only a city he'd erased/a maze made of bio-horrors/Facility Zero/the cursed ruins/.../Ayako. Behind him lay only... lay only...

His head was a mess. There was no time to figure it out now. Kagome kept running.

Kagome kept running. He already knew he'd never, ever be able to stop.

-o-​

Voting is closed unless @eaglejarl reopens it.

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 510: Can Hardly Bear It​

"Greetings, Dog Summoner."

Kumafuwafuwa, Leader of the Bear Clan, was a monster from legend. Ten feet tall while standing on all fours. Legs thicker than some trees. Claws half the length of Hazō's forearms. When he walked, he left pawprints deep enough to trip on, which smoothed themselves away within seconds so that he left no trace. More importantly, he somehow moved through thick underbrush without disturbing a leaf or making a sound. If you were in his forest and he wanted you dead, you would never hear him coming.

Hazō bowed deeply. "Greetings, Lord Kumafuwafuwa. Thank you for honoring me with your presence."

Kumafuwafuwa rumbled, the sound so deep Hazō could feel it in his chest. He wasn't sure if it was thoughtful, or threatening, or what. Tiny sparkles of fear danced across Hazō's nape at the uncertainty.

"Mareo has agreed to see you."

Excitement surged in Hazō's heart. He hadn't been sure. Cannai had told him that Hagino Mareo, the Bear Summoner, was tentatively interested in a meeting and that Kumafuwafuwa had agreed to allow it provided he had the chance to vet Hazō first. Cannai had also told him something else that made Hazō seriously consider not taking the meeting.

"Cannai told you that your travel between Paths has been blocked?" The words could have been curious, or verifying, or many other things that lacked any trace of threat. They were none of those things.

"Yes, My Lord. Until I see him again or until sunrise tomorrow." Given that it was still a bit shy of noon, that would be a long time to be on the run if the Bear Lord took objection to Hazō's continued existence.

"Mareo has been my friend for decades. I wish to be very clear about this: if you so much as raise a hand to him, I will kill you before you can blink. Asking Cannai to block your travel wasn't necessary, it was merely to impress upon you the seriousness of this situation."

"I understand, My Lord."

"That includes in self defense. If things come to blows, I expect you to flee without striking back. Dodge him and run. Do not touch him or raise weapon or chakra against him."

Hazō swallowed nervously. "Understood, My Lord. May I ask...are things likely to come to blows?"

The massive bear hesitated and looked away. It was hard to read emotion on a non-human face, but the way his head had lowered and his ears drooped seemed almost...sad? Embarrassed?

"Time is a thief for humans," Kumafuwafuwa said. "It steals your strength, steals your memories. Mareo is old, and time has stolen much from him. There are days where he is the brilliant and funny friend that I met over sixty years ago. There are days when he is...not. When he doesn't know me, and seeks to make contract once again. This morning was a good day, but it can turn without warning. When it does, he will be confused and afraid."

Revulsion flushed through Hazō's body, followed instantly by shame and guilt. It was instinctive, an animal's desire to back away from a sick fellow lest the problem be catching, lest Hagino's incapacity infect Hazō himself. Rationally, he knew that wasn't how it worked. 'Wandering wits' they called it, and it happened to many people. It was a natural part of aging, much like the loss of weight, loss of strength, the sagging of skin and the spreading of liver spots. That made it no less disturbing.

"I will be careful," was all he said.

Kumafuwafuwa studied him for a moment, his tiny, deepset eyes showing nothing that Hazō could read. Finally he grunted and turned, leading Hazō deeper into the forest.

They emerged into a small clearing, a meadow atop a low hill that gave a view out over the trees. The grasses were knee high, their heads a switch of bright golden fuzz and their stalks a green so pale it was almost yellow. The scent of pollen and grass and sunlight washed the area, but Hazō had eyes only for the man who gamboled at the crest of the hill.

He was the oldest person Hazō had ever seen. He was bald as a newborn and had skin the brown of wet clay. His hands were gnarled roots, joints swollen with the years. His movements were stiff but he still galloped and flapped his arms like a child. After twenty steps he spun around, head tilted to the sky, arms still flapping as he crowed like a rooster. He lurched but caught himself with the cane that had been looped over his shoulder.

"You're sure this is a good day?" Hazō asked out of the corner of his mouth.

"I am."

"Ohhhkay then." He cleared his throat and raised his voice. "Hello? Summoner Hagino?"

Hagino stopped and spun around, one arm lashing out with pointing finger. "Aha! Trying to sneak up on me, eh?!"

Hazō had tensed up at the pointing finger, ready to Substitute away, but he relaxed at the words. They were...playful?

"No, sir. We had an appointment."

"We did?" He frowned a magnificent frown, a frown that would have played well to the back row of any theater in the Elemental Nations, and then he strode down the hill, his cane a third leg no less stiff than the other two. "Why so we did! You're that Gookettle brat! You work with the Kitties, right?"

"The Dogs, sir. And it's Gōketsu." Hazō advanced cautiously up the hill to meet the older man.

"That's what I said." He reached Hazō and clapped him on the shoulder; Hazō barely caught himself before leaping back. "Hah! Made ya flinch!"

Hazō took a breath and tried to calm his racing heart. "Yes sir. It's an honor to meet you."

"It sure is, boy. It sure is. Come on, come on. Join me up here where it's warm." He took Hazō by the arm and tugged him up the hill. "Come, come. It's lovely up there."

The crest of the hill was only fifty feet away, so Hazō had trouble seeing how it could be substantially warmer than where they stood. Still. He followed the older man, struggling with every step to conceal how much his skin was crawling at being touched by an unknown ninja.

"Not you," Hagino said, raising a hand to Kumafuwafuwa. "I want to talk to the boy alone. Shoo. Shoo!"

The Bear Lord cocked his head, amusement and a slight hint of annoyance radiating off of him. "You are banishing me in my own lands, Mareo? I think perhaps you misunderstand our relationship."

"Bah! You think I don't know that you're only here to babysit me? You're afraid that this one here"—he pointed dramatically at Hazō—"is going to try to kill me! Hah! Whippersnapper like him, you think he could take the great and mighty Mareo, Summoner of Bears, Slaughterer of Sky, Looter of Legends? The man who defeated twenty Demon ninja in twenty minutes? The man who—"

"—likes to bloviate and brag?" Kumafuwafuwa said tartly.

"Bah! Look at this!" His tree-root fingers twined and twirled through a half dozen seals in the blink of an eye and he punched the sky with one fist even as he shouted, "Flames of the Devouring Hells!"

An inverted, truncated cone of flame ravaged out from Hagino's fist. The tip of the cone was a yard wide and hovered a foot from his knuckles. It spread quickly from there, the top of it being at least thirty yards across. The heat was so intense that Hazō could smell a few of his hairs crisping and had to blink away the pain of flash-dried eyes.

"See?" Hagino demanded of the Bear Lord, standing akimbo and smug. "See that? I've still got it and this little pipsqueak isn't going to be able to lay a finger on me if I don't want him to. I don't need you mother-henning me. That's for the Chicken Clan."

Kumafuwafuwa snorted. "There is no Chicken Clan, Mareo. I've been telling you that for forty years."

"Bah!" Hagino waved one hand dismissively. "Lies! Lies and calumny! I know what I saw! He was riding a giant chicken and I'm sure it was a summon! Now go on—shoo, and let me talk to the boy."

Kumafuwafuwa considered that for a moment, his jaw working as though tasting something sour, and then he nodded reluctantly. "Very well, old man. I'll see you later." His massive head swung towards Hazō and his voice became serious. "Remember what I said, boy. You will not escape me."

"I understand, sir."

"Hmph." The massive Bear glared at him for another moment, then turned and trundled back down the hill, fading away in that disconcerting way that Clan Bosses of the Seventh Path seemed to love.

"How'd you find me, boy? Sit, sit." Hagino planted his cane in the ground and slid down it slowly, his legs spraddling out in front of him until he was seated in the grass. Hazō couldn't help but notice that the cane was a single tree branch, two thumbs thick, with the end curled into a semi-circle that then doubled back on itself. It was the sort of thing that a bonsai expert might have created except it was big enough and solid enough to beat someone to death.

Hazō stood for a moment, utterly baffled. This was not how meeting a ninja elder was supposed to go. Such people were dignified, usually a bit threatening. Quirky, yes. Impatient, since they were too powerful to need social graces if they didn't want them. Most importantly: they did not put themselves in positions of vulnerability. They sat in chairs, not seiza, because it was easier to get out of a chair quickly than to get up from the floor, and fighting from shikko was disadvantageous no matter how good you were at it. They kept their backs to a wall unless that was impossible, and when it wasn't they usually kept their head slightly turned so they could monitor the open side from their peripheral vision.

Granted, that paranoia was partially for the benefit of those around them. Startling any ninja was a bad plan, but when it was someone who could demolish a building with a wave of their hand, a bit of extra caution was good. It behooved those with such destructive powers to take that caution.

So why in the world was this man sitting on his bum, leaning back on his hands with his legs stretched out in front of him like a child without a care in the world?

Hazō took a step back and lowered himself to the ground.

"What's your name, boy?" While he was asking, Hagino toed off his sandals and plucked a blade of grass between his toes, waving it back and forth like a festival flag. His feet were filthy and he hadn't cut his toenails in...apparently ever. Hazō did his best to ignore it.

"Gōketsu, sir. Gōketsu Hazō."

"Good, good. Good to meet you, Huzu."

"Hazō, sir."

"That's what I said. I'm Hagino Mareo, but you can call me Mareo and I'll call you Huzu. At my age the formalities get boring. So, what are you doing here, Huzu?"

Spoiler: dice

Hazō wants to try to divine a bit about his interlocutor to know what approach to take.

Hazō, Empathy: 10 (skill) + 11 (Thousand Yard Stare points as per the Forged in Fire stunt) + 3 (dice) = 24

Mareo, Rapport: ? + 0 (dice): ?

Hazō has noticed Mareo's "Puckish Jokester" Aspect and gets a tag.

Hazō wants to make a good impression, maybe even make friends. Mareo is neutral on this; he's somewhat curious about Hazō and enjoying having another human to brag talk to, as well as amused by this young whippersnapper in front of him claiming to be a ninja and a Summoner. Neither side gets bonus or malus on their dice.

Hazō, Rapport: 10 (skill) + 11 (Thousand Yard Stare points as per the Forged in Fire stunt) + 3 (tag "Puckish Jokester") + 3 (invoke "Creative Idealist") + 12 (!!dice!!) = 39

Mareo, Empathy: ? + 0 (dice): ?

Mareo started with a neutral attitude, so he is not willing to take Consequences in order to prolong the struggle. Hazō wins handily.

Hazō considered making a thing of it, then decided to let it go. The old man was clearly messing with him. "I wanted to meet you, sir. I'm the Dog Summoner but I've only had the contract a short time. I wanted to meet the other Summoners, make friends where I could, listen to whatever advice they're willing to offer."

"Advice? Hah! I've got oodles of advice! I've got advice coming out of my ears! You want advice, I'm your man. But that's not really why you're here, is it?"

"Um...yes? It is?"

"Naaaaahhhhh." The old man leaned forward and stretched his arm way out so he could slap Hazō on the knee. The movement was slow and creaky; Hazō could have dodged it easily, but he made himself stay still.

"You're here for my Scroll, aintcha boy?" Mareo was still leaning forward, eyeing Hazō significantly, but there was a hint of a smile that made Hazō decide to lean into the joke.

He nodded soberly. "You have caught me. I am from the Watcher's Council. I, having been awarded my chūnin rank a few months ago, was selected to be the first to track you down and retrieve this mighty artifact."

"Oh? And how you planning on doing that, eh?"

"Orgy-induced heart attack," Hazō said, straight-faced. "I've arranged to have several attractive twenty-something female Summoners come by and pleasure you until your heart explodes."

"Hah!" This time Mareo bopped him on the thigh with the handle of his cane. "An excellent plan! I approve of this plan wholeheartedly! Tell 'em to bring some decent brandy with 'em, too. If my heart doesn't go, maybe they can get my liver."

"I shall make a note, sir."

"Good, good. Apple brandy, mind you. Or maybe some kind of berry. None of that carrot shit. Stuff was awful."

Hazō frowned. "Carrot brandy, sir?" Was that even possible? Did carrots have enough juice in them to ferment?

"I know, right? Stuff tasted like a dead skunk smells." He flung his arms wide, nearly losing control of his cane in the process. "But enough of that! Tell me about the Human Path, boy. I haven't been back there in ages. Is Ioannis still trying to swing west?"

"Ioannis, sir?"

"You know—ruler of those stabby people with the spears." He shook his head at the memory. "Swear by the fish, those guys could control the damn weather. Every time they came to scout us there was thick fog across half the country. Every time we went to scout them it would pour down rain, but only where we were. Might as well have been carrying a beacon on our heads."

"I don't know anything about that, sir."

"Good, good. Those crazy bastards over in Key must have fended him off."

"Were you from Key, sir?"

"And why would you want to know that, eh? Trying to find my return point, camp on it until I reappear so you can kill me and take my Scroll?"

"No, sir. I already said that I'm planning to have you assassinated by orgy-induced heart attack."

"Good, good. I like you, Huzu. You've got balls. Besides, it wouldn't work. I haven't been back there in years." He shuddered. "Filthy, disgusting, cold, rainy place. People always nagging at you—oh, Mareo, please go kill all the people in that tribe over there! Oh, Mareo, please go hunt down this wild animal! Oh, Mareo, please go scout out this filthy cave that we found that leads deep into the earth and has some kind of horrific doom fortress thing in it!"

For the life of him, Hazō could not think how to respond to that.

---

Author's Note : You chatted with Mareo until almost nightfall, telling him a bit about your history and your dreams of Uplift and listening to the (almost certainly wildly exaggerated) stories of his adventures. You maintained OPSEC throughout. You did not talk about the Dragons yet, because there wasn't a good place to introduce it into the conversation. You then returned to Cannai to get your travel papers stamped rights re-approved.

You visited him twice more (see timeline below) and spoke to him about the Dragons on your second visit.

You weren't able to do normal FOOM training while on the Seventh Path, since Noburi wasn't available to restore your chakra and you weren't comfortable being so vulnerable around an unknown ninja, but you did have one clone sit and do preliminary seal research on the Activation Relay Seal, so this day counts as prep for your next infusion attempt.

This update covered 10 days, spent as follows:

• Day 1 (March 26): Talk to Mareo while your clone does prep
• Day 2: Make an infusion roll.
  • Calligraphy: 27 + 9 (dice) = 36
  • Sealing (48) + 5 (prep) - 6 1 FP to reroll!
  • Sealing (48) + 5 (prep) + 0 = 53
  • Success! ARS is well more than half done.
• Day 3-4: Recover from seal headache while fulfilling other obligations. Visit Mareo again, for just a couple of hours. Brief him on the Dragon situation. He frowned and grumbled and said he'd think about it.
• Day 5
  • Calligraphy: 27 + 6 (dice) = 33
  • Sealing (48) + 3 = 51.
  • Success!
• Day 6-7 (April 1-2): Recover from seal headache while fulfilling other obligations. Visit Mareo again. He didn't remember who you were and assumed you were there to attack him. He screamed at you to get out and never come back, but he did not pursue you when you fled.
• Day 8: Make an infusion roll.
  • Calligraphy: 27 + 3 (dice) = 30
  • Sealing (48) + 0 = 48.
  • Success! The Activation Relay Seal is complete! Details have been added to the PLAYERS - Known Seals document
• Day 9-10 (April 4-5): Recover from headache. You were too busy to visit Mareo.

XP AWARD: 50 This was a solid plan. Concise, well thought out, took the social niceties and chain of command into account.

Important: Note details of your second and third visits with Mareo in the timeline above.

Brevity XP: 10

"GM had fun" XP: 10

• Mareo is a blast.

FP Award:

• -1 for invoking "Creative Idealist"
• -1 for rerolling
• +1 for winning a significant social battle
• +1 for general refresh
• +1 because Mareo is fun to write

It is now dawn on April 6, 1070 AS. Noburi's practice with the Akimichi Chakra Enhancement technique is complete on April 16. Kagome's summoner training is complete at some point that I'll edit in here as soon as I figure it out and I've posted a bounty for anyone who wants to help.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Apr 20, 2022 at 7:00 AM

 

[Velorien]

Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 24: Send in the Clown
​

It was a pleasant morning at the Suspicious Foreigner Estate. For the sake of Orochimaru's resocialisation, I'd grudgingly accepted having meals with Earl and Oli instead of having extra time to pursue the deeper arcana of the Snake Element or recreate the Bloodline Limit transplant technology we'd unfortunately refused to carry over to the CftGverse. Oli had just finished regaling us with his exploits at the Leaf General Hospital (where he was busy annoying Tsunade with his attempts to move neurology past "brain disorders are caused by evil spirits partying it up inside your skull") when we heard the familiar ominous sound of a messenger calling from the main gate.

Orochimaru perked up. "Ah, finally, more raw materials. Now we can finish fine-tuning the Snake-Infested Swamp of the Underworld Technique."

"Remember, Orochimaru," I replied, "we do not kidnap people who might be missed, by which I mean anyone at all and suggestions to the contrary are blatant slander, so stop looking at me like that, you two. I'll go see what they want from us."

The message this time was neither a terrifying summons from the Hokage nor a a high-pitched scream that only we in all the world could decipher. Instead, it was a hand-drawn map, together with a calling card.

I rolled the map out across the coffee table, and the four of us leaned over to study it.

"This is near the Iron border, I think," Earl commented eventually. "I've heard rumours about villages disappearing in that area lately—more frequently than usual, I mean."

Oli and I winced, while Orochimaru nodded as if Earl had said, "It's likely to rain tomorrow" or "A lunatic like Hidan would never use his powers to help set up world peace".

"There's a cross-shaped mark there," Oli said, tapping an open area next to a forest (one of the two types of Fire Country terrain) with his finger. "Do you think it's an invitation to meet someone at that spot?"

We turned as one to the card. I flipped it over.

"Flufflec dot query," Orochimaru read out, taking a little longer to sound out the unfamiliar name. "Is this some kind of code?"

In a sense, I supposed it was.

"I have no idea," I said. "I don't think I've seen a flufflec.query before. That said, if it really is an invitation… there can only be one flufflec.response."

-o-​

Flufflec, the Loremaster of Chosen for the Grave, was simultaneously exactly like and nothing like I had imagined him. On the one hand, here in the flesh, he looked like a maniacal clown in heavy makeup—you know the one I mean. On the other hand, here in the flesh, he looked like a maniacal clown in heavy makeup. At first, I was honestly lost for words.

"Not what you expected?" Flufflec gave a theatrical bow. "Ah, but wouldn't the alternative be dull? No, with all those years of entertainment to repay, my dear Valerian, I had to start by putting on my game face."

Suddenly, he shook his head violently, like a bull trying to shrug off a fly. "Ugh. I'm sorry about that. It's been like this ever since I got isekai'd, and I have no idea why. I mean, I assume you haven't been turning into your avatar, going around gathering morally dubious allies and exploiting overpowered supernatural abilities to prepare a bid for world domination and so forth."

"Eheheh." I gave an uneasy laugh. "No, that's certainly not something that would ever happen to me."

"Listen," Flufflec went on, his voice developing a trace of urgency, "I need you to stop me before it gets any worse. I swear to you, I'm not actually a homicidal sociopath with a twisted sense of humour, but given what I've already done, and the fact that my powers let me—"

He cut off abruptly, only to wiggle a finger admonishingly in his own face. "Ah ah ah. Spoilers in spoiler tags only, if you please. I am ever so sorry about my more boring half, my dear Valerian. Don't worry. I'll be sure to keep him under lock and key while we play our game.

"Speaking of games, I don't mind an audience, but I really was hoping for more of a show of courage from Team QM. And a protagonist actually being in possession of a telescope? It's like I don't even know you anymore."

It was my idea that the others hang back and watch from a safe distance. Anime had taught me that the essence of manliness was to charge into encounters headfirst, figuring out the enemy's abilities as and when they hit you in the face. However, better anime had taught me that against somebody with completely unknown powers which might well be the equal of our own (if not worse—he was a player, and they were the ones who typically got the cheat abilities), it made more sense for one person to provoke him into tipping his hand while the others watched and analysed, finding weaknesses to exploit in Round 2. Besides, if things went badly, which they probably would, I had the ultimate escape card ready while my friends did not.

"Then again," Flufflec drawled, "nothing makes the heart beat faster than a private show."

He snapped his fingers. Nothing seemed to happen.

"Much better."

"What did you do?" I asked warily.

"I had one of my happy little friends use seals to cut this area off from the rest of the world," Flufflec said. "My powers don't let me use chakra like you, but they make it ever so easy to gather those little yellow circles, and the people who live and die for them. That's why—"

He snapped his fingers again in mid-sentence, and a razor-sharp kunai hit the middle of my chest.

-o-​

As it happened, I did not possess the aforementioned essence of manliness. I was well aware that, from a ninja perspective, I made wet tissue paper look like solid rock. As such, I'd come in wearing enough long-duration buffs that to an Uchiha I would light up like a Christmas tree made of lasers. The kunai, despite its scary precision, merely took off my level 94 Pangolin Conditioning Technique (and also scared the bejeezus out of me even though we'd figured I would be walking into some sort of ambush).

Three missing-nin appeared around me, spaced so that whichever way I turned, at least one would be outside my line of sight. Before anything else, I had to reposition.

"Substitution Tech—"

Oh, crap.

Forget convenient boulders or the classic log, the area around me was bereft of so much as a stray pebble. I made a mental note to avoid, in my next life, walking into ambushes set by people with a brain.

I went straight to Plan B.

"Earth Element: Shadow Clone Technique!"

Early canon was wonderful in some ways, and one of those ways was having shadow clones that not only didn't pop when hit, but could actually regenerate from fatal damage. Hiruzen's ability to solo two unkillable Kage and one only slightly less unkillable S-ranker at once made a lot more sense when you realised that Kishimoto had not yet grasped the concept of ninjutsu power levels.

"Substitution Technique! Substitution Technique! Substitution Technique!"

I was just about to relax after securely concealing myself in a squad of earth shadow clones when Flufflec waved a hand casually in my direction.

"My dears, your dance partner for this beautiful evening is number seven from the right."

"Substitution Technique!"

"Number three from the left."

"Substitution Technique!"

"The one in the middle. Are you even trying now?"

It seemed increasingly certain that Flufflec's power was what I thought it was, I decided as I used the Body Flicker Technique to evade kunai after kunai while praying that the universe didn't get confused by a ninjutsu that couldn't exist and decide to grue me. I'd have to take him out fast and hope that his missing-nin lackeys didn't stick around once he was no longer in a state to pay them.

I needed something that worked fast, before the melee missing-nin could get through my wall of clones.

"Water Element: Water Gun Technique!"

Bizarrely, I'd found through experimentation that the Hōzuki ability to transform into water was actually a ninjutsu rather than a Bloodline Limit, meaning the usual restrictions on my ability to use Kishimoto's most absurdly OP powers did not apply. Research in the Basement was a lot safer for me these days, given that every room already had a convenient drain for all the blood.

Oddly, Flufflec didn't appear intimidated as I formed my fingers into a finger gun and pointed it at him dramatically. Nor did he react as a super-fast projectile possibly made from part of my finger (Kishimoto was unaware of the concept of biomass) began to zoom towards him.

Instead, at the last second, a random gust of wind caught the deadly but also tiny sphere of water, shifting its trajectory just enough that it slammed into the tree behind him.

"I know what you're thinking," Flufflec said sympathetically. "'If only my balls were bigger.'"

I felt a flicker of annoyance. Well, if that was the way he wanted to play it…

"Fire Element: Great Fireball Technique!"

I actually had to downcast this one, as a Great Fireball at full level 94 power would have left me well within its blast radius (as well as quite possibly half the Fire Country—at higher levels, the scaling on some of these techniques broke down harder than Sasuke's characterisation between the original and Shippūden).

Watching the humongous, vaguely-spherical inferno flying towards him with little more than academic interest, Flufflec snapped his fingers one more time.

"Water Element," came a shout from the missing-nin nearest him, "Water Formation Pillar!"

The curved watery barricade couldn't entirely cancel out the fireball—luckily, we'd never finalised an elemental advantage mechanic—but it lasted long enough for Flufflec, already in position, to get out of the way without even getting his purple suit singed.

There was no way Flufflec had different ways of snapping his fingers to indicate different contingencies. My worst suspicions were confirmed. If Flufflec had briefed his minions in advance on exactly how to counter my attacks, then he knew my battle plan better than I did. He really did have some kind of omniscience-related power.

Establishing that alone made this battle worth it. Now, there was just one thing I needed to confirm before I made my escape. Did Flufflec have any way to fight that didn't rely on his minions?

"Chidori!"

Ordinarily, it would have been a terrible idea for a non-Uchiha to use Chidori—if you didn't have the Sharingan's pseudo-precognition, its speed boost was so big you became unable to track potential counterattacks. That was how Kakashi had lost his eye. However, in this instance, closing the gap to Flufflec really fast was the only way to make sure his minions couldn't use a ninjutsu to intercept again, and the technique's notorious one-hit-kill potential should be enough to force him to reveal any trump cards of his own.

So of course Flufflec sidestepped very slightly, and, lacking the ninja reflexes for course correction, I ploughed face-first into the tree behind him.

"Witness the power… of the Uchiha…" I slurred as I learned firsthand why ninja wore forehead protectors.

I regained awareness of my surroundings just in time to see Flufflec fish an extremely evil-looking, jagged steel knife out of a jacket pocket and saunter up to my prone body.

"Why so serious, Valerian?" Flufflec simpered. "I think somebody needs a second smile."

I didn't waste time trying to get to my feet.

"Flying Thunder God Technique!"

Nothing happened.

Flufflec tsked disapprovingly. "I did say this area was sealed off. And now you're stuck with terrible last words."

The knife plunged unstoppably towards my throat.

-o-​

"…And that's how I single-handedly defeated Flufflec and his three killer missing-nin without a scratch on me, the tree thing notwithstanding."

My three housemates exchanged strange looks as I sank triumphantly into the sofa after a long journey home.

"Val," Earl said slowly, "are you sure you didn't get any kind of concussion from the tree thing?"

"Fairly, why?"

"You realise you haven't actually told us anything? You just came in, said, 'And that's how I single-handedly defeated Flufflec' et cetera, and then sat down as if that was the end of the conversation."

"Right," I agreed. "That was key to my plan."

Those strange looks didn't get any less strange.

"If I told you how I beat him in-update," I explained impatiently, "he'd be able to read it in advance like he read everything else that happened in our fight. Timeskipping the finale and the explanation was the only way to take him by surprise."

"It's worse than I thought," Earl said after a second. "Come on, Val, we're taking you to the hospital for a proper check-up."

"What are you talking about?" I demanded. I'd just had a very exhausting battle and a very exhausting journey back, and there was absolutely no way these three were dragging me all the way across Leaf. "I'm perfectly fine!"

"There is no need to waste Valerian-sensei's time with a hospital visit," Orochimaru agreed.

"Exactly! Listen to Orochimaru!"

"I have my scalpel and gag right here," Orochimaru went on as he reached into his labcoat. "We can begin the examination immediately."

In the end, I decided it was safest to stay overnight for observation.

-o-​

What do you do?

Voting ends on Apr 23, 2022 at 1:00 PM .

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 511: Please Do Not Ask About This​

April 5, 1070 AS.

Noburi was in a great mood tonight. Nagasaki was going to make it to his wedding with all four limbs attached, in part thanks to Noburi getting those rock splinters out of his leg. Nara Yukiko had given him tips on scalpel technique, and their improving professional relationship was a decent consolation prize for the fact that he'd never dare talk to her outside the hospital again. Mari was out entertaining or "entertaining" potential MARI investors, and that meant tonight they could have dinner with Kei without any issues. Finally, Kei was bringing a mystery guest who wasn't Tenten, and with no other signs of the Apocalypse visible, Noburi could look forward to a fun time and maybe even a new friend—and if they turned out to be a cute girl, the fact that she was connected to the Pangolin Summoner should hopefully stay Yuno's hand.

Noburi was in the middle of wondering what miracles of the kitchen Kagome had in store for them tonight (since Noburi had got in late, he'd been excused from sous-chef duties) when the front door opened and all thought disappeared from his mind.

Wavy chestnut hair cascading down to her shoulders. A seasonal yellow kimono, with brown columbine patterns, that hinted at a slender yet well-muscled figure. Assets that were neither too big nor too small. Sparkling eyes the colour of hot chocolate. A cool neutral expression with a hint of mystery. This girl wasn't cute but hypnotic.

Vaguely Familiar Mystery Girl
Looks: *****
Pros: TBC
Cons: TBC

Sudden crushing agony, as if his right hand was being ground into powder in a vice, shocked him back into self-awareness. He looked around to see Yuno next to him, giving him a fond smile even as the odds of him ever being able to hold a scalpel again steadily decreased.

Noburi was in trouble.

In the background, Kei was saying something. Noburi forced his attention off his hand and onto her.

"Everyone, please allow me to introduce Fujisawa Miyuki, my new girlfriend."

Fujisawa Miyuki
Looks: *****
Pros: TBC
Cons: Instant death by Yuno, instant death by Kei, does she even like guys?

Noburi was in a lot of trouble.

-o-​

Hazō was happy for his sister. Very happy indeed, and not cripplingly jealous that the heavily-introverted, socially-awkward girl apparently had the kind of game that mere mortals like him, with their paltry two girlfriends, could only dream of.

It wasn't that strange, he reassured himself as he greeted Fujisawa and guided her to her seat. Kei was one of a handful of openly gay women in Leaf. Of course she had an advantage over the closeted majority when it came to attracting attention in a very limited dating pool. There was no significance to the fact that girls were apparently queueing at her door while he, with his masculine good looks, his overflowing charisma, his Mari training, and his constant presence in the public eye, was limited to the two to whom he'd been guided by a strange and circuitous fate.

How would Akane and Ino feel about—

No. Bad boyfriend. If he had time to think about romance (which he did not), he was to spend it supporting Akane through her difficulties, or for that matter Ino (who wasn't a clan head lucky enough to make it through the war with her entire family untouched). Besides, they hadn't been a triad for so long that he could count on Ino feeling secure if a stranger were suddenly added into the mix.

Fujisawa, as expressionless as ever, gave a deep bow to the Gōketsu before handing him a sheet of paper torn out of her notebook.

We have met before, [a doodle of a figure with an axe facing four identical enemies] but please allow me to introduce myself again. My name is Fujisawa Miyuki. I have the honour of being in a relationship with Lady Nara. [a doodle of two heart symbols overlapping like one of Kei's set diagrams] Thank you for your hospitality.

In the bottom right corner, there was a circle made of two curved arrows pointing at each other, which Hazō took to mean "pass it on". He handed it to Kagome-sensei, who stared at with a puzzled frown before handing it to Kei, who passed it to Yuno. Yuno barely glanced at it before passing it to Akane, past Noburi. Akane gave Fujisawa a broad, welcoming smile.

"You're most welcome," Hazō said. "Thank you for joining us tonight. It's good to see you again."

Fujisawa reached for her notebook again, only to be interrupted by Kagome-sensei.

"How come you don't talk?" he asked her. "Are you bad with words, like Tenten, or did you lose your—"

"Kagome!" Kei snapped, but it was too late. Though Hazō couldn't read Fujisawa's reaction from her face, her entire body had gone stiff, and she'd stopped opening her notebook.

Akane, the family's voice of sanity, intervened before the cold radiating from Kei could extend to the kitchen and freeze the soup. "Kagome," she said patiently, "please think before asking questions. Making people you don't know talk about things they find difficult is very unyouth—"

She didn't finish the sentence. Her face darkened. A stranger might not have noticed (hopefully, Fujisawa hadn't), but to someone who knew the usual, radiant, Akane, it spoke louder than a Dragon's roar.

Saving throw failed. Hazō prayed in the depths of his heart for Mari, who could turn this situation around with a few easy words, to suddenly come back early and save them.

She did not.

Hazō watched Fujisawa scan the room. Kei, furious. Kagome-sensei, perplexed and mortified. Noburi, with an eerie fixed smile. Yuno, cold-eyed. Akane, gloomy.

Fujisawa's gaze stopped on Hazō.

Spoiler: dice

Hazō wants Miyuki to relax and stay for dinner while he fixes whatever is wrong with everyone. He attacks with Rapport. Miyuki defends with Empathy.

Hazō spends 1 FP to invoke "Team Uplift" (to avoid hurting Kei by alienating her girlfriend) and 1 FP to invoke "(Formerly) Marked for Death" (to improvise in an emergency; I'm not sure the situation is intense enough for missing-nin alertness to be relevant, but I'll be generous).

Miyuki spends 2 FP to invoke "Behind Invisible Walls" and the scene Aspect "Abysmal Atmosphere".

Hazō: Rapport 21 + 3 + 3 - 3 = 24
Miyuki: Empathy ?? + ? + ? + ? = ??

Miyuki wins. Hazō takes 5 stress. He receives the Mild Social (Mental) Consequence "Humiliated Before a Guest".

Hazō certainly wasn't going to count on Kagome-sensei to pull off a smooth apology himself.

"I'm very sorry for my clansman's rudeness, Fujisawa," Hazō said. He stepped away from his seat at the head of the table and gave her a fifty-degree bow, a properly humble apology rather than what a normal clan head would give a clanless ninja. "Please believe me when I say no insult was intended. Why don't you take a seat, and we'll get started on dinner? I promise you, once you taste Kagome-sensei's cooking, you'll be willing to forgive him even high treason."

Fujisawa opened her notebook. Her brush moved slowly.

I suddenly feel unwell. Please permit me to head home for the night so that I may rest and recover. I apologise for inconveniencing you. I hope we can see each other on another occasion.

Hazō felt a flush of shame. As the host and the head of the family, he was responsible for the others' behaviour. He should have anticipated and prevented any problems, and been ready to cover for the others' mistakes. He should have had a plan ready to navigate if not this particular situation, at least the category of situations where a guest came with a tripwire that Kagome-sensei couldn't be allowed to trigger. He should have been Mari.

"Please, Fujisawa, there's no need—"

"I will escort her home," Kei cut him off coldly. "I hope you enjoy your meal."

She guided Fujisawa out, pausing to give Kagome-sensei a look of such venom that it was a wonder he only cringed instead of being liquefied on the spot.

Hazō allowed himself the luxury of staring after them for three seconds before turning back to the room. Kagome-sensei, perplexed and mortified. Noburi, with an eerie fixed smile. Yuno, cold-eyed. Akane, gloomy.

It was going to be a long night.

-o-​

Hazō has spent 2 FP and gained 1 FP for receiving a Consequence, as well as 1 FP for surviving an update with 1-3 FP.

-o-​

What do you do?

Voting closes on Apr 27, 2022 at 7:00 AM

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 512: Aftermaths and Arachnid Anticipation​

"All right," Mari said, looking at Hazō's face as she joined him at the breakfast table. "How many bodies do we need to dispose of?"

It was the following morning. That night, the family had eaten Kagome-sensei's Unidentifiable Medium-Size Rodent Stew (Identifiable Rodent Version) in dead silence. After taking the dishes to the kitchen, Kagome-sensei had slunk off in shame before Hazō could speak to him, and Akane had waved off his concern with a heart-breaking little smile. By the time Hazō came back, Noburi and Yuno had disappeared. Nothing had been resolved. Now, it was time for Hazō to make up for his failure as clan head last night, and start setting things right with the aid of the most powerful tool at his disposal.

"No casualties yet," Hazō said, "though there's more than one person I feel like strangling. Mari, could I borrow you for the morning to help me untangle the latest fiasco?"

"I was just thinking that wrapping Leaf's richest men and women around my little finger last night was too easy," Mari agreed. "So what did Kei do this time?"

"Failed to give advance warning of a sensitive situation," Hazō said, impressed by the uncanny guess, "but she's not actually the villain of the piece. That would be Kagome-sensei."

"And yet no casualties," Mari mused. "How times change."

"Apparently, the surprise mystery guest of the evening was Kei's new girlfriend," Hazō said.

"Another one?" Mari opened her eyes wide in fake shock. "Where does she keep getting them? And how?"

In a more even voice, she added, "Anyone we know?"

"Fujisawa Miyuki, a friend of Yuno's," Hazō said. "At least, I hope she's still a friend of Yuno's."

"And Kagome mortally offended her," Mari concluded.

"Sort of," Hazō said. "Fujisawa doesn't talk, like Tenten, but she doesn't do the whole body language thing. Instead, she writes things down in a notebook, with these cute little illustrations which she manages to draw weirdly fast."

"No, seriously," Mari asked, "where does she keep getting these people? I've made a study of Leaf's lesbian dating pool—for purely academic purposes—and I promise you, it is not full of uniquely weird young women with a thing for asocial introverts with devastating self-image issues. If it was, I might've been tempted to send a couple her way and see what happens."

Hazō raised an eyebrow in disapproval.

"I kid, I kid. Let me guess, Kagome saw this notebook business and instantly asked her why she wasn't talking, because that's what you do when you meet somebody with a disability that was most likely caused by torture or intense mental trauma."

"Oh, right," Hazō remembered. "She can't do facial expressions either. She obviously has feelings, same as the rest of us—Kagome-sensei couldn't have offended her otherwise—but they don't seem to show on her face."

Mari winced. "Yeah, that happens. Definitely torture or trauma, then, not some weird chakra disease. So my guess was on the mark, then?"

Hazō nodded. "Then Kei got angry, Akane tried to smooth things over but ended up triggering her own stuff, Noburi and Yuno were of no help whatsoever, and before I knew it, Fujisawa made her excuses and left. It was horrible."

Mari got up and walked over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry. This kind of thing happens. When you're in charge of a group of people, it just isn't possible to make sure everybody's on their best behaviour all the time—at least unless you're very good at brainwashing, and even then you can't keep it going forever, trust me. Honestly, it's amazing that you're keeping this pack of crazies with our varied and exciting issues together as well as you are. If Jiraiya had picked me to be in charge of this whole mess, I can't promise I wouldn't have gone Itachi by now."

"So that's why Jiraiya dumped it on me instead of the responsible adult in the clan," Hazō said in a tone of dawning enlightenment. "Once we get him out from the land of the dead, I'm going to applaud his foresight, right after I'm done socking him in the jaw for abandoning his responsibilities by getting killed in the first place.

"Anyway, offending Fujisawa probably isn't the end of the world—if she's worth Kei's time, she'll be the kind of person who's ready to patch things up and try again—but we need to do something about Kagome-sensei in case next time he offends somebody we actually have to worry about. Think you're up to the challenge?"

"Does Kurohige hold a hand of five aces?"

"Then let's go find Kagome-sensei."

-o-​

They found Kagome-sensei in his room, staring at a sealed scroll on his desk while writing down sealing calculations on a sheet of paper with the focused ferocity of a man challenging the Shinigami to speed shogi.

"Good morning, Kagome-sensei. What explosives are you researching today?"

"'Morning, Hazō, Mari," Kagome-sensei grunted. "Just trying to crack Tsu—Yoshida's latest locking seal. This one's a doozy. She's got me fighting to get through five levels of the primary sealed area before I can even start unlocking the secondary tetracyclics."

"Have you tried—"

"Don't!" Kagome-sensei interrupted. "There's no point if I don't beat her myself."

Hazō nodded. He wished he had a worthy rival of his own over whose impending defeats he could get so excited. Unfortunately, of those who'd try to claim the title, the fun of periodically crushing Lord Hagoromo was nearly outweighed by the unpleasantness of having to interact with Lord Hagoromo, Hazō had no intention of going anywhere near Rock Lee, and last he heard, Kurosawa Shin simply wasn't in the same weight class (he almost hoped Shin was second-in-command of the AMI by now, or equivalent, if only so that Hazō could finally stop pitying Team Downfall).

"Kagome-sensei," Hazō said, "would you mind if we talked about last night?"

Kagome-sensei turned away from the seal.

"I know," he muttered. "Dumb old Kagome puts his foot in it again. Our first time meeting Kei's new girlfriend, and now she hates us because I couldn't keep my mouth shut."

"We're not here to blame you, Kagome-sensei," Hazō said, mentally activating the Clear Communication Technique (which was incredibly cost-efficient as ninjutsu went, but couldn't be kept on all the time because of the penalty to conversation speed). "We just want to pin down the reasons why last night went wrong, and then figure out how to help you do better in the future. What's your perspective on what happened?"

Kagome-sensei shrugged. "I put my foot in my mouth. She went around writing in a notebook instead of talking like a normal person, and I wondered why she'd do something like that when it was obviously slower and harder, so I decided to ask. Only that was wrong for some reason, and I guess everybody knew that in advance except me, so everyone was shocked, and Fujisawa was hurt, and Kei was angry, and I ruined the night for you all. I'm sorry."

"The first step," Mari took over, "is understanding why she reacted that way, and why other people might react that way. Kagome, think of the most horrible time in your life. You don't have to say what it was; just pull it up in your mind's eye."

After a second, Kagome-sensei scowled.

"What would you do if some complete stranger started asking you questions about it?"

"I'd tell them it was none of their stinking business," Kagome-sensei said instantly. "Obviously, they'd be a doppelganger wanting to impersonate me better once they've assassinated and replaced me… but I know that, in Leaf, I'm not allowed to blow people up when they haven't done anything yet, so I'd skip that step and go warn the rest of the family."

"Right," Mari said. "I'm glad you remember that. But how would it make you feel?"

Kagome-sensei took a little longer to answer this time.

"I guess… I'd be angry with them for asking questions they've got no right to be asking, and I'd be upset about having to recall those memories for no good reason."

"Right," Mari said. "Now, suppose Fujisawa uses a notebook because something took away her ability to speak. Don't you think that whatever that was would be one of the worst memories of her life?"

"Oh," Kagome-sensei said in a low, horrified voice after a second. "And I went and asked her about it, just like that." His gaze drifted to the floor as his shoulders slumped.

"Everybody makes mistakes, Kagome-sensei," Hazō said. "We're not having this conversation because we want to tell you what a bad person you are. We're doing it because we want to help you get better. Because, the truth is, we're worried about you. More specifically, I'm worried about you. It's not long before you finish your summoning training, and then you have to go meet Kumokōgo—during my first meeting with her, twice a misspoken word nearly ended my life. I've done my best to get advice on Arachnid etiquette from her, and I'll give you my notes, but that's a double-edged sword. Between the notes and everything they'll expect me to have taught you, justly or unjustly, ignorance of Arachnid ways won't be an excuse for you the way it was for me. If you make a mistake like you did with Fujisawa, you might be killed."

Kagome-sensei swallowed. "I get that, but Hazō… I can't just turn around and be somebody who's good with words. I've never been good with words. I'm only becoming a summoner because you need all the sealing help you can get over there. You can tell me to be careful and polite and good at trying to figure out what a giant spider's thinking so I don't offend them, but…"

"Yeah," Hazō said, "I know. This is the part I was hoping for Mari's help with. Mari, you know what Kagome-sensei's strengths are. You know what his weaknesses are. Is there any way we can leverage one to help cope with the other, even a little bit? Like, is there anything you can do with cryptography training that'll make you better at not saying the wrong thing?"

Mari gave him a disbelieving look. "Hazō, I know I talk about social codes and people being ciphers, but it's not supposed to be taken literally. I don't know if there's any specialisation less relevant to social skills than cryptography."

"That's one of the reasons I took it," Kagome-sensei agreed. "No need to try and make any stinking idiots like you. Just you and your brain, solving the kind of hard puzzles that'd break one of those sneering peacocks in I&S. Uh, no offence, Mari."

She sighed. "None taken. I see we have a lot of work to do. Hazō, leave this with me. I'll see if I can come up with something in time for Kagome's trip to the Summon Realm."

"Great," Hazō said. "Oh, there's one more thing I wanted to run past you. You know how I've been trying to bond with Hagino Mareo, the elderly Bear Summoner?"

"Suddenly, I don't like where this is going," Mari said half-jokingly.

"It turns out he's suffering from wandering wits."

"I see," Mari said. The edge of amusement was gone from her voice. "And you want to what, trick him into something while his wits are away? That's doable, but bear in mind that, however easy it may sound—"

"No!" Hazō interrupted. "I want to deal with him in good faith. He seems like a nice old man, and I don't want to take advantage of his willingness to deal with me so I can stab him in the back. Also, the Bear Boss will kill me the second he thinks I'm taking advantage of his friend, and I'd like to avoid that."

"Then what?" Mari asked. "If you don't want to exploit somebody with wandering wits, and you're not responsible for caring for them, then the best thing you can do is stay away until you can catch them on a good day."

"I was wondering," Hazō said, "if the Yamanaka might have something to cure him, or at least make him better. A properly sane Bear Summoner, with the Bear Clan behind him, would be a massive asset in fighting the Dragons."

"You think you can cure wandering wits?" Mari's tone was the same utter disbelief with which she greeted roughly two thirds of his proposals, but her expression was compassionate, and a little sad. "Hazō, you may as well try to cure old age. Once someone's mind starts to unravel, it's never going to re-ravel again. If the Yamanaka had a fix for that, they'd be the richest clan in the world, because any ninja who's survived long enough to need it is going to be as rich as Kinzō—probably a clan elder or retired clan head."

Of course, nobody expected a clanless ninja to make it to old age. Could the KEI really fix something so easily taken for granted?

"You're sure?" Hazō asked.

"You can ask Ino if you like," Mari said, "but I've never heard of a cure like that, and if the Yamanaka had it, they'd have no reason to keep it secret—they can't possibly have enough senile ninja of their own to make it worth keeping as a clan secret technique instead of charging outsiders a daimyo's fortune for treatment. Of course, if they do have it and have been keeping it secret, asking about it isn't going to go well for you."

"Thanks, Mari," Hazō said, making a note to invent a senility-reversing seal once the Great Seal restoration and Project Necromancy were complete and he had the time to pursue his hobbies.

-o-​

Hazō had yet to decide what to do about the other participants in last night's failure. He felt he could venture a solid guess as to why Yuno had reacted badly to Fujisawa, and why Noburi had frozen up in response, but if he didn't tread carefully, sticking his nose in someone else's complicated marriage risked getting that nose cut off by an evil-looking black axe with special grooves for the blood. Akane was… Akane. He needed to spend more time just being there for her, frankly, and maybe he'd figure out a way to help her more actively somewhere along the way. And as for Kei… Kei had, in fact, taken the initiative.

"Thank you for coming, Hazō," she said as he joined her in one of the more comfortable Nara discussion rooms (not the one with the waterfalls, sadly, but the spiralling mathematical equations carved into the wood of the walls had an appeal of their own). "I recognise that, under the circumstances, it would be more appropriate for me to come to you, but…"

...but Mari was back at the Gōketsu residence. Would these two ever patch things up, if only enough to tolerate each other's presence? Hazō felt the familiar impulse to fix whatever was broken in front of him, but for once he was confident without trying that his efforts would only make things worse.

"How's Fujisawa?" Hazō asked.

"Fine," Kei said. "It is not as if that was her first time being suddenly questioned about her impairment in what should have been a welcoming environment. Were circumstances different, I believe she would have weathered the blow and gradually regained her good cheer over the course of the evening. Unfortunately…"

Yeah. If Hazō had been faced with a shockingly rude Kagome-sensei, a hostile Yuno, a paralysed Noburi, a gloomy Akane, and a furious Kei, except most of them strangers he had no reason to give the benefit of the doubt, he might not have been comfortable sticking around either. In one sense, Kagome-sensei's behaviour had been a trigger, and in another, it had been an excuse.

Apparently, Hazō's comprehension was written on his face clearly enough that even Kei could read it.

"The entire incident, of course, is my fault," Kei went on. "Except insofar as it is Kagome's fault, but to condemn him for his hurtful incompetence is akin to blaming the winds for blowing too strongly. I am the one who, in my childish excitement to surprise my loved ones with good news, failed to perform my proper function of expecting and preparing for the worst-case scenario. If I had warned her about Kagome, and Kagome about her, then he could have instead compensated for the other three as a stabilising social element oh whom am I kidding we were doomed from the start."

"Apology accepted… I think?" Hazō ventured.

"Furthermore," Kei added, "had I not lost my temper, I could have assisted in recovering the situation with my own social skills—no, we were still doomed from the start. Ignore me."

Hazō laughed in spite of himself.

Kei attempted to glare at him, but couldn't keep it up, and ended up smiling as well.

"On to happier topics," Hazō said. "You have a new girlfriend. How does this keep happening?"

"Unexpectedly and inexplicably," Kei said wryly. "After I met Fujisawa at Yuno's coming-of-age ceremony and she realised that I was quite possibly the only person in Leaf who preferred silent company, she decided to utilise all possible means to draw my interest and incline me to desire her continued presence. The romantic nature of that presence was not an initial part of the plan, Fujisawa believing herself heterosexual at the time. However, as with many during the war, she came to conclude that her probable imminent death meant there was no reason to resist an inclination to experiment.

"As for myself…" Kei paused as if to gather her thoughts. "Hazō, I made a terrible mistake with two young women who confessed their feelings to me. I was not ready to open my heart to them. I feared that if they grew sufficiently close to me, they would realise I was not the shining star they envisioned, and abandon me in disgust. I feared that introducing these unknown elements into the familiar, closely-bonded structure of the polycule would in some way destabilise it and forever ruin the happiness I still did not understand how I had attained. I feared the terra incognita of seeking intimacy with strangers without the inexplicable, intense compatibility that had guided my relationship with Tenten or the soul-deep bond I shared with Snowflake. And so, I hesitated. I vacillated. I kept them at arm's reach, both in the world and in my own heart, refusing to decide.

"I allowed them to die.

"There was, perhaps, nothing I could have done for Yuri as a lover. Safeguarding her life was my responsibility as a KEI coordinator, not as Nara Kei. Whether I could or would have done more from a more intimate position will forever remain unknown. However, surely even an inferior partner such as I could have served as an anchor to keep Minori in this world instead of leaving her to follow her true love into the Abyss?

"When Fujisawa expressed interest in me, in a direct and unmistakable way—after, I am told, the failure of enough subtle hints to sink a chakra megalodon—I realised I could not make the same mistake again. I dared not. I forced myself to make an immediate choice between acceptance and rejection, and found myself inclined more towards the former… and here we are."

"Congratulations," Hazō said. "I'm very happy for you. I hope you remember your beloved brother when your harem expands to cover the entirety of Leaf and you are elected Hokage by default."

"Curses," Kei said, deadpan. "My diabolical plan has been discovered. Forgive me, Hazō, but I cannot allow you to leave this place alive."

"Oh, no," Hazō said, not quite as deadpan but doing his best. "Woe is me. Must I join the winning team in order to survive?"

"Hazō, you are not joining my hypothetical harem," Kei replied. "It is already difficult enough to escape Ino when she is suffering from an excess of being Ino, and Akane… actually, now that Akane has despaired of Youth and embraced the true darkness of the shinobi world, it may be time to reconsider her candidacy."

Hazō stared at Kei in utter shock. "Kei, don't tell me you…"

Kei rolled her eyes. "That was a humorous joke. Hazō, it is right and proper that younger brothers should be easy to tease, but no game is fun without at least some element of challenge. I have already mentioned that I have never sought additional candidates for the polycule, nor do I expect to do so in the future. They simply happen, like sealing failures."

"Oh!" Hazō livened up. "Speaking of sealing failures, wait till you hear my idea for a seal that re-ravels…"

It was evening by the time Hazō remembered that he'd come to visit Kei on his lunch break.

-o-​

You have received 3 + 1 (Brevity) = 4 XP.

-o-​

No timeskip this update. A stunt to save Kagome's life is under QM discussion.

What do you do?

Apr 30, 2022 at 1:00 PM

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 513: First Summoning​

"Hi!" Cantelabra said, bouncing so that both front legs pogoed. "You must be Kagoo, Hazō's sanshee!"

Hazō cleared his throat, desperately trying not to either laugh or wince. "It's Kagome-sensei," he corrected. "His name is Kagome and he is my sensei, which means 'respected mentor.'"

"Really," Cantelabra said, cocking his head in thought. "I thought it was 'Kagoo, me senshee'?"

"Nope."

Fortunately, Kagome-sensei looked amused. He squatted down, then sat crosslegged and held a hand out to the tiny Golden Retriever pup. Cantelabra, for his part, cheered while still in midair as he bounded into Kagome-sensei's lap and wiggled frenetically before floomping on his side. Kagome-sensei smiled and petted the pupper slowly.

"Not to be a buzzkill," Mari said, laughter nearly bubbling up to to surface, "but we need to get this show on the road."

"Give it a minute," Noburi said, elbowing her in the side. "How often do we get nice moments these days?"

"Define 'nice'?" Mari said, her wicked smile giving away the subtext. "Because I had a very nice moment last night. Several nice moments, actually, in quick succession. Turns out that—"

"Lalalala!" Noburi said, clapping his hands over his ears. "Can't hear you! Puppies are cute!"

Whether at the adorableness of Cantelabra or Noburi's antics, Akane's smile was peeking out from behind the lines of sadness and care that had worn their way into her face since her mission to capture Shirogane. The sight of it was a concentrated shot of relief running through Hazō's veins. He captured her right hand in his left and stroked his thumb across hers. She glanced over and smiled slightly wider for a moment, squeezing his hand in reassurance.

Kagome-sensei scritched Cantelabra behind the ears and then set him firmly back on the grass and stood up. The little pup whined grumpily but plopped his butt down and looked attentively back and forth between his own Summoner and the soon-to-be Arachnid Summoner.

"Do not be concerned, Kagome," Kei said. "Your seal training and organized mind make you well suited for managing the trip between Paths smoothly."

Kagome-sensei seemed unconvinced, but he nodded his thanks. "Let's do this," he said firmly.

He walked, head up and steps confident, to the granite pillar on which waited the Arachnid Summoning Scroll. The pillar was the same one that Noburi and Hazō had used and was becoming a Gōketsu tradition that Hazō (very silently and never stated aloud for fear of political fallout) fully intended to keep using. Akane had been repeatedly promised a contract, Mari could make amazing use of one, and the rest of the clan deserved their own shot.

"Remember," Hazō said, "you're going to get an arachnid but it's not completely certain which one. Many of them look scary and they talk strangely from our perspective."

"I know, I know," Kagome-sensei grumbled. "Be polite, don't call them stinkers or ask why they talk weird or threaten them and definitely don't blow them up. And they're going to have to touch me in order to carry me back."

"Right. I've spoken to Kumokōgō and tried to smooth the way as much as possible. This is largely a formality, but it's an important one. She knows that we need your help with the Great Seal and she's not going to refuse you unless something goes catastrophically wrong, but we want you to make a good impression so that she's happy to keep you on as Summoner after the Seal is dealt with."

"I know," Kagome-sensei grumbled again. "Hush up and let me sign this thing so I can go meet the giant spider lady."

"Okay, but you might not get a spider as your initial point of contact," Hazō reminded him. "You might get a scorpion, or a mite."

"I might get a mite, I might?" Kagome-sensei said, lips quirked in a smile. "Whatever, let's do it." He slashed a knife across the side of his arm ("Why do you dumbbutts keep cutting your palms? Lots of tendons and stuff in there!"), dipped his fingers in the blood, and signed his name at the bottom of the Arachnid Scroll in the neat and unshaking handwriting of a sealmaster.

POOF!

A massive pillar of yellow smoke erupted from the ground, blanketing the area. It condensed, whirling and spinning, into a wobbly tornado twice Hazō's height. Sparks leaped out in all directions, arcing to and fro as a whining hiss cranked up through the range of human hearing, growing steadily louder until cutting off with a knife-sharp edge as the tornado exploded outwards into puffs of smoke that rapidly disappeared to reveal—

An upside-down soup dish with a tail spike.

There was no other way to describe it. It was a soup dish, perhaps a foot across, that someone had turned upside down and stuck a triangular spike on the back of. It was made of a brown chitin with ripples and small spikes on the surface and a few small holes, but that was it.

"Heya!" it piped, its voice surprisingly high-pitched and coming from no visible mouth. "You must be Kugome, Summoner the new, right? I Kumokani am! Contacter the First, Trainee, Twenty-Seventh Cohort of the Ninth Skitter. Honored greatly I am to be your contacter! The Empress told us all to be on the lookout for your call and super exciting to be the one is it. Too tall, not enough legs, but a good name you have. A right thing for the Arachnid Clan to have a Kumo-named human for our Summoner." Its tail flicked back and forth happily, lifting up off the ground in a way that would have been downright menacing if the thing weren't facing away from everyone.

Kagome-sensei considered his contact person carefully, clearly thinking through his words before speaking. "Actually, it's 'Kagome'," he said at last. "Sorry."

The tail drooped. "Oh," Kumokani said. "Well...too that good is, suppose I." It hesitated for a moment, then its mental voice brightened again. "To the Empress we should go! Wrong-named or not, super-duper excited am I to be your Contacter the First! Please to touch my shell."

Kagome-sensei stepped forward and knelt down, laying the tip of one finger on the young crab's shell. There was a quiet bamf, a brief puff of cyan smoke, and the two disappeared.

"Let's go, Cantelabra," Hazō said, holding out his arms for the pup to jump into. "Hold the fort guys," he said to the rest of the clan. "Be back as soon as I can."

The world disappeared in a poof of smoke and Hazō was on the Seventh Path, standing in front of Kumokōgō in her throne room.

Aside from Cantelabra and the two humans, the room was empty except for the Empress and two massive scorpion guards who hung back and to the sides. They quivered in place, having been instructed to remain still and out of the way but not liking being this far from their protectee.

Kumokōgō was really going out of her way to make this situation as unthreatening as possible.

Kagome-sensei was busy turning in place, looking up at the rounded and far-off ceiling of the Orbularium's enormous throne room. Hopefully he had done as Hazō instructed and bowed the moment he arrived, but wonder at his new surroundings was a very reasonable thing.

The room was a silken sphere fifty yards across, woven so thin that the sunlight glowed faintly through. Glowing lights studded the inner surface, bolstering the light up to that of a bright summer day. The sphere was bisected by a massive spiderweb, the outer third of which consisted of anchor cables as thick as Hazō's wrist and the inner two-thirds a flat plane woven as tight as a doily and as rigid as steel. It didn't give at all under the humans' feet and the gaps in the doily weren't large enough to be dangerous—perhaps two or three fingers wide—but looking down through them revealed more floors below, some at different angles, along with spiders scuttling around the inner surface of the sphere.

The inside surface of the throne room was covered in paintings and sculpted ridges that were hard to visually parse for a human with only two eyes and no grounding in Arachnid culture or history. Despite that, that still managed to be beautiful.

Kagome-sensei finished his turn and startled a bit when he finally noticed Kumokōgō.

"Oh, wow!" He blinked and then hurried to bow. "I mean, hello your Imperial Majesty. I am Gōketsu Kagome of the Gōketsu Clan of the Human Path and I ask the privilege of being your Summoner."

"Welcome are you, Kagome of the Gōketsu Clan. Please, approach."

Hazō had spent a solid three hours working with the Empress on how to make this meeting go well. He had explained Kagome-sensei's hair-trigger paranoia caution and willingness to use explosives as a first resort. He had made a point of also talking about Kagome-sensei's kindhearted nature and the unshakable loyalty he showed to anyone whom he considered a friend. He had described, in very vague and OPSEC-friendly ways, some of Kagome-sensei's history that accounted for his temperament. And, of course, he repeatedly emphasized how important it would be to have another senior sealmaster available to work on the Great Seal which might well kill everyone if it couldn't be fixed. But, you know, no pressure.

Kumokōgō was amused at the idea that she was going to have to put herself out to accommodate a Summoner candidate, since things usually went very much the other way. Still, she understood the necessity and seemed sympathetic to Kagome-sensei's history. She also acknowledged, when Hazō carefully and circumspectly explained it, exactly how terrifying her appearance was for humans. The skittering speed that was a spider's regular movement was bound to cause violent reactions from any ninja who wasn't well prepared and strongly self-controlled, but the slow prowl of a creature large enough to crush a horse was not much more reassuring. She had suggested that perhaps the best would be for her to remain still and have Kagome-sensei approach her.

The man in question did so, Hazō leading the way one step ahead and to his left, ready to jump in the way if things went badly.

Fortunately, Kagome-sensei didn't seem frightened so much as fascinated. He walked up to what Hazō would have considered conversational distance with a creature the size of the Empress and then he kept walking until half an arm's length away from her left front leg. It was taller than he was and covered in bristly hairs as long as his thumbs; Hazō's heart skipped a beat when he teacher leaned in close, nose almost in contact with the leg, and craned his neck to look at it from different angles.

Hazō cleared his throat meaningfully and Kagome-sensei jolted upright.

"Oh, right!" He blushed in embarrassment and stepped back. "Um...sorry. Uh...I'm supposed to say, um—"

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance it is, Kagome of the Gōketsu," Kumokōgō said, her voice bubbling with arachnid amusement. "See I that concern for your alarm overstated was."

"Hm?" Kagome-sensei said, frowning in confusion. "What? Oh, right! Yeah, I was supposed to be scared, wasn't I? Um...is it rude if I'm not? Hazō explained all this etiquette stuff but it's hard to remember it all. The Path-walking stuff, sure. Extradimensional transposition is easy enough to do in your head if you've only got two endpoints and I did the dance before signing so that the Things wouldn't notice me, but etiquette is hard." He looked down at his shoes, ticking points on his fingers. "Bow when you get there...don't call anyone a stinker...don't look grossed out...don't blow them up." He looked up again, beaming in delight. "Hey, I did it right!"

Kumokōgō burst out in high-pitched chitters of laughter. "Indeed you did, my new Summoner. Accept you I do. Talk let us, and perhaps not a mere temporary formality need this be."

"Aren't I supposed to cuddle you tonight or something?" He studied her. "I hope you don't roll over in your sleep, because I think you'd squish me."

The hairs on the massive spider's body rippled in an arachnid shudder. "Ew. Regard positively bluntness you do, says Hazō. Therefore shall I say: ew, gross. As disturbing as Hazō finds us, so too do we think of you icky mammals. Yes, sleep in my web you must so that the Seal you may see, but there shall be no"—her mouthparts heaved as though she were swallowing back a bit of vomit—"cuddling. Far, far apart shall we sleep. Through three rooms is my web woven. Also, keep on your pants while in my web you are. Seen Hazō's groin-thing I have, when he spat water from it. Floppy, hairless trunk and those dangly wrinkly things."

"Hey!" Hazō said, blushing beet red.

"Ew, ew, ew," Kumokōgō continued, ignoring him. "Pants keep on, spit not water."

"I'm a grown man, I don't pee the bed," Kagome-sensei said with a huff and folded arms. "Or web, or whatever. Don't be gross."

The Empress gave a tiny nod of her massive head. "Very well. Now, come. Sit. Tell me of yourself." She politely turned her head to make clear to Hazō that she was focused on him. "Hazō, leave you may. I believe past the first obstacle we are and violence unlikely is." (Off to the sides, her scorpion bodyguards rustled their chitinous legs angrily.) "Speak privately with my Summoner I like should. Send him home tomorrow once complete the marriage is."

Kagome-sensei blinked at that, his upcoming cross-species nuptials finally clicking into an immediate reality as opposed to a future assumption.

"Sensei?" Hazō asked. "You need me to stay?"

The older man waved dismissively. "Nah, head on back. I want to talk to my lady here. Do you mind if I walk around you? You've got a fascinating body. Three joints in the legs, huh? I suppose it's kinda like humans if the foot was a lot longer and vertical." He pointed one leg out and stared at his foot as he wiggled it back and forth, bending the knee experimentally. "No, it would have to be turned around the other way. It doesn't look like you have hands, so how do you weave things? Our spiders have their silk come out their rear ends—is it like that for you, or—"

Hazō beat a hasty retreat from the throne room, taking Cantelabra back to the Dog embassy chambers before unsummoning himself.

---

Author's Note: This update covered 10 days. Other things that happened:

• Noburi completed his training with the Akimichi Chakra Enhancement technique. Consultation with a friendly Hyūga reveals that the chakra in his body has doubled, which makes it only marginally stronger than a civilian's. There has been no impact on the capacity of his barrel.
• Hazō worked on MARS, the Multiple Activation Relay Seal; exact progress listed below in a separate post. It works like the regular ARS but it can be paired with either 1 or 2 seals. When the MARS is activated, all paired seals activate. You can't pick and choose.
• You spent time with both Akane and Ino. Both of them are feeling battered by the war—Akane by her part in it and Ino by the loss of the multiple Yamanaka who died. The time was good for all three of you but obviously it didn't magically clear away the problems.

XP AWARD: 45

Brevity XP: 10

"GM had fun" XP: 45

It is now about 6pm and you are seated at the dinner table with the other Gōketsu ninja, including the adoptees.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 7:00 AM .

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 514: That Dragon Which Slays Love​

Hazō ran for his life as, mere metres behind him, the Dragon pursued its rightful prey. The shattering noises of broken branches and the screeching of terrified tree rodents heralded its coming, and Hazō knew without having to be told that his bones would fare no better than the wood if it finally caught him in its maw.

He sensed the monster preparing to dive, and sent chakra roaring through his muscles in an instant, life-saving chakra boost—

He was out of chakra.

His daily shadow clone training, combined with all his evasion up to this point, had left him out of chakra.

He glanced around desperately. That tree would be too weak. That one wouldn't give enough cover. That one was out of reach. That one…

There was a boulder just out of reach, a perfect Substitution Technique target for someone who had the chakra. Hazō didn't. Still, there was nothing else. As the Dragon's maw began to close around him, Hazō leapt…

Spoiler: dice

Noburi's Humongous Dragon 30 + 1 + 6 = 37
Hazō: Athletics 37 + 6 = 43

…and Noburi's Humongous Dragon smashed helplessly against the stone at Hazō's back, showering him in chakra construct water that would evaporate with eerie speed by the time Noburi caught up with him.

"I'm out," Hazō shouted. Even without seeing Noburi, he could picture the smirk on his brother's face, him with his stupid Vampiric Dew and stupid enormous chakra reserves that meant he could keep going forever and ever while Hazō was stuck spending most of his chakra every day on training that wouldn't pay off until he became a physical god with the power to reshape world politics with a single punch.

"I'll get you next time," Noburi declared as his, yes, smirking face appeared from around the boulder. "You know, I'm starting to have my suspicions about why you keep putting off my ninjutsu training."

Hazō didn't dignify the insinuation with an answer. Instead, he collapsed against the boulder, suppressing a groan as his muscles complained about their continued existence. Noburi redeemed himself by handing over a waterskin before sitting down much more casually next to him, not even out of breath, the showoff.

"Hey," Noburi said, glancing back at his technique's trail of destruction, "do you ever worry that all our massive AoE ninjutsu and explosives and stuff are messing up the natural environment?"

"Nope," Hazō said immediately. "The Gōketsu policy is to give as good as we get. If the natural environment ever stops trying to mess me up, then I might consider it."

"There's plenty more forest where that came from anyway," Noburi agreed. "It just popped into my head because of stuff Yuno's been telling me about Isan and forest management. Obviously, they've always needed wood to build with, and to clear space for farmland, but at the same time, they couldn't afford to overdo it and have the Tea ninja notice that someone was cutting down trees in this supposedly uninhabited area, or damage chakra beast habitats to the point where chakra beasts started moving out and ended up making the clans send extermination squads."

"Huh," Hazō said. "Things are… OK with Yuno, then?"

"Sure," Noburi said. "Right as rain. Nothing to complain about here."

Hazō filed this response under "potentially suspicious" and carried on. "I know it must get tricky for you two, with her coming from such an alien culture. Honestly, I'm impressed at how well you've been making it work."

"It's still a work in progress," Noburi said. "Like, I can memorise weird Isanese rule after weird Isanese rule, and she appreciates it, but I feel like there's this background mindset that I can't quite get my head around, and everything would suddenly snap into place if I just did. You know what I'm talking about, right? Like the way people in Leaf have all these weird cultural assumptions that they don't even realise are there, and then every now and again, you go 'What the heck?' and they have no idea why you're overreacting to something perfectly normal—or reacting at all, really."

"I think I get it," Hazō said after a second's thought. "You mean like the way people here talk about politics. They just start talking about it in the street, no precautions. Sometimes they even start discussing it with strangers, and your first thought is, 'Are you crazy? Do you want to have the secret police knocking on your door tonight?', and then you remember that in their heads, the world doesn't work that way."

"That," Noburi agreed. "Or how when a Leaf couple divorces, sometimes the kid gets a say in which parent to stay with. What kind of twisted, topsy-turvy logic do you have to follow to arrive at that being natural?"

"You're kidding," Hazō said. "You mean it doesn't just go to the mother? How does that even make sense?"

"Exactly," Noburi said. "But if you ask them why they do it like that, they just look at you funny, like you're asking them why forehead protectors go on your forehead. And then, Isan's in its own tier of weird, and I swear there's some kind of underlying logic there, but I just don't get it, and until I do, I'm going to keep tripping up. Which sucks for her, since I'm the only person here with any grasp of Isanese culture whatsoever. Nobody else has a chance of meeting her in the middle."

"It seems like it's working out, though," Hazō said.

"Kinda sorta," Noburi said, wiggling his hand in the air. "You have to talk a lot, and you have to make sure you're not talking past each other, which is a lot harder. There's a kind of cultural Clear Communication Technique involved, only it breaks down really easily as soon as someone goes 'But your way doesn't make sense', which is really easy when you're dealing with Isan's customs, because they don't make sense."

Hazō nodded. He'd had more than a few conversations like that, especially with Akane, but occasionally with Kagome-sensei as well (though it was impossible to tell whether his objections were due to him having come from a different village still or due to him being Kagome-sensei and having very specific views on what was and wasn't "pants-on-head crazy").

For a while, the pair just leaned back against the boulder, Hazō enjoying the pleasantly cool feel of its shadowed side after exercising on a hot day.

"There's no point dancing around it," Noburi finally said. "You want to talk to me about that dinner, don't you?"

"I'm a little worried about some of the relationship dynamics I've been seeing between you and Yuno," Hazō admitted. "It seems to me like they're hurting both of you, and that's not something I can ignore as your friend."

Noburi pulled himself up out of his slouch. "You don't have to sugarcoat it, Hazō. I messed up. I got lost in the moment, and I scared Yuno, and then neither of us were ready to bail Kagome out after he did his usual thing. Honestly, I should've seen it coming—it's not like I hadn't met Fujisawa at the ceremony, in an 'It's Yuno's special day, so I'm just going to pretend girls don't exist above their feet' kind of way."

Hazō shook his head. "That's not what I was going for. I mean, yes, it would have been good if you jumped in, especially after what happened with Akane, but at the end of the day, it's the host whose job it is to keep the peace, and I didn't manage it either."

"No," Noburi disagreed, "that's not fair. Your job in this clan is to have crazy ideas and do the paperwork. My job is to provide support. So if support doesn't get provided, that means I let you down. Just… don't blame Yuno, OK? She's doing her best."

"I'm sure she is," Hazō said. "But her best is worrying me. Mari said Yuno's already hospitalised two people. I'm guessing they were civilians, since all hell didn't break loose, or maybe they were KEI ninja and Kei or Ami bribed them not to press charges—I can totally see Ami doing that and then adding it to the favour stockpile. Either way, we can't afford the risk of her doing it to someone who matters."

In retrospect, Hazō really should have followed up on that at the time.

"That's really not a comment you should be making out loud in this day and age," Noburi said.

"I'm not saying KEI ninja don't matter," Hazō said impatiently. "I'm saying they matter a lot less than her hospitalising, say, a Hyūga or a Sarutobi. Or worse, suppose she does the most natural thing in the world and hospitalises a Hagoromo. Within an hour, Hagoromo Ritsuo will be at the Tower, telling Asuma that the Gōketsu have violated the Hokage's decree and spilled blood in a clan war. If that happens, the Gōketsu are sunk. Letting us off with a fine won't be an option."

"All right," Noburi conceded, "when you put it that way, maybe things aren't so great. But it's really not her fault. She's just scared. She thinks that the second I get close enough to a girl to be able to compare, I'll realise how awful Yuno is and abandon her. She doesn't even think of it in terms of my agency—girls are automatically drawn to me because of my awesomeness, which is fair, and I am automatically going to choose the best available option, which she thinks isn't her, because that's how relationships work.

"It's not like she's unaware that getting all homicidal at the drop of a hat is only more likely to push me away and into the arms of emotionally-stable competition. But she's a fighter. If she's doomed anyway, she's going to delay the inevitable as much as she can instead of sitting back and letting it happen. And as someone who's grown up with violence as her only problem-solving tool, what else is she going to do?"

Hazō nodded. "And what do you think?"

"I'm not going to cheat on her, whatever she may think," Noburi said. "I have a will of iron plus basic human decency. The thing is…"

Noburi hesitated.

"Never mind."

"You can talk to me," Hazō said. "Remember, I was stupid enough to make the most patient, tolerant girl in the world break up with me once. I'm not going to judge you."

"…Yeah," Noburi said eventually. "Fine. But this is just between you and me, all right?"

"Of course."

Noburi took a deep breath.

"It's not like she's exactly wrong."

"What do you mean?" Hazō asked, preparing himself to be as non-judgemental as possible.

"I would never do anything to hurt Yuno," Noburi said. "You know that."

Hazō nodded.

"But it's a fact that I got married young. I went straight from girls acting like I was some kind of slug to being in a political marriage—which, by miracle, happened to be with someone I already had feelings for. So here I am with this hard-won manly body, and this confidence, and my natural charisma polished until it glows, and it's all for nothing. I'm never going to date anyone. I'm never going to flirt with anyone. I'm at the destination, but I never got to make the journey.

"Yuno's worth it. Of course she is. But it's not like I can get some tweezers from the hospital and just pull out this part of my heart and throw it away so I can be a better husband. The worst part is, with her razor-sharp intuition, I'm pretty sure she knows, and because she knows, there is absolutely nothing I can say to convince her that she is safe and secure and I will never end up interested in another girl. And once I do end up interested in another girl, in Yuno's mind it's a fact that I'll choose her over Yuno. I can't blame her for wanting to eliminate the competition in advance."

Hazō was starting to wonder if he'd bitten off more than he could chew. For Kei, the family's other radical pessimist, it had taken a miracle of compatibility with an utterly devoted partner who was lacking in sources of temptation before she could feel secure in her relationship. Noburi met one of those conditions at most, and while Kei would probably respond to cheating by spiralling down into a deep well of self-loathing, if Yuno ever sincerely believed that Noburi had cheated on her, there would be blood.

"Have you talked to her about any of this?"

"Yes and no," Noburi said. "I've tried, but I don't want to hurt her, and she's a lot more self-conscious than she lets on. She's afraid that the more time I have to spend reassuring her, the more she'll put me off and make me want to go for an emotionally-secure girl instead. Ugh. Maybe if I had more dating experience under my belt—or any dating experience—I'd know what to do at a time like this."

"Have you considered getting someone else involved?" Hazō asked.

"Are you kidding?" Noburi exclaimed. "Satsuko would kill me before the words left my mouth! Closely followed by the person I suggested dating."

"Nonono, I mean to help you talk things through," Hazō said. "An independent third party with more experience."

"Like who?"

"I wish I could say Mari," Hazō said, "because she'd be ideal for the job, but I'm guessing Yuno wouldn't be too sanguine about that."

Noburi shook his head without further comment.

"What about Yūhi Kurenai, then? She's got the same kind of skills, she's discreet, and she's very taken. I'm sure even Yuno wouldn't suspect you of cheating with the Hokage's fiancée."

"…probably?" Noburi said. "But the idea of this random jōnin neither of us are connected to sticking her nose in our marriage just feels weird. Also, I worry that it'll make Yuno feel like she's so hard to deal with that I've given up on doing it myself and brought in an expert."

"In that case, what about Ma and Pa Toad? You're on good terms with them, and they're a couple with their own marriage experience, so you could say you brought them in for some friendly advice—which is essentially true."

"I'm a little scared of the idea of ending up with a marriage that looks like their marriage," Noburi said with a small smirk which quickly disappeared. "More of an issue is that I don't see myself summoning either of them anytime soon, never mind both. The reports say Jiraiya picked them over the Toad Boss at Nagi Island, which says to me that, despite acting like a wrinkly little comedy act all the time, those two have got to be crazy powerful."

"What about somebody closer to home, like Akane's parents? Or maybe Honoka's?"

Noburi considered. "Honestly, I don't know Akane's parents all that well, though they do have the advantage of definitely being outside my strike zone. I barely know Honoka's. But I'm starting to see how this might work. We just need somebody Yuno really trusts. Trouble is, the people she trusts most are Akane and Kei, and I don't want to put another burden on Akane's shoulders right now, and the idea of going to Kei for relationship advice is, uh…"

"You say that," Hazō replied, "but given the size of the Kittensphere, she must have had to deal with jealousy issues a whole bunch of times by now, and as far as I know there haven't been any casualties—though, now I think about it, I haven't seen Shiori around for a while."

"I'm sorry, the what?"

"Oh, right, the Kittensphere. Shikamaru told me to call it that to annoy Kei."

"Don't even think about it," Noburi said. "I've got enough on my plate without having to succeed you as clan head. I will talk to her, though—now I think about it, there's got to be some way to exploit her religious authority for the greater good. And maybe Mari, who's a goddess of romance in her own right."

"Just don't say that around Yuno."

Noburi sighed.

"There's one more thing," Hazō said. "I don't want to harp on about the Fujisawa incident, but back then, Yuno stopped you from reading Fujisawa's note. In effect, she silenced a guest. The Gōketsu are all about communication and talking things out—I think you get that better than anyone—and if Yuno hasn't internalised that yet, then it's a matter of priority for us to explain it to her. Do you have any thoughts on how?"

"For what it's worth," Noburi said, "she does feel guilty about that. Fujisawa's a good friend of hers. I think she'll apologise to her eventually, once she can find a natural way of saying 'I thought my husband was going to cheat on me with you even though he didn't do anything wrong at all except maybe stare at you for too long just because you happen to be gorgeous'."

"A word to the wise," Hazō said after a second, "when you go to consult Kei, maybe don't tell her you think her new girlfriend is gorgeous."

"I'm not stupid, Hazō. One homicidally jealous woman is enough for all my daily needs. Although, now I think of it, I don't know if Kei gets homicidally jealous. It's never come up."

"There was that initial period when everyone was attracted to Mari, and she didn't kill any of us," Hazō observed, "so I suppose there's a chance you'll be all right. Just make sure you leave me your RPG sourcebooks in your will before you go out."

"Rule one of not being assassinated," Noburi countered, "do not give people incentive to assassinate you. You can have those sourcebooks over my dead body."

"Yeah," Hazō agreed, "that's the idea."

Noburi groaned. "Anyway," he said, "maybe you and I can explain it to her together later. This definitely sounds like a place to use your clan head authority—which she respects a lot, actually, almost as if you managed to build a prosperous clan with a healthy internal culture while being two years younger than her. Now I think of it, at some point I'd better explain to her that you're a figurehead and it was the rest of us that did most of the work. Wouldn't want her getting the wrong idea."

"Shut up, Noburi."

Noburi laughed.

"You've got to remember," he said more seriously, "nobody cared what Yuno thought back in Isan, so they didn't exactly go out of their way to teach her communication skills. It's not like she's stupid or has built-in issues with expressing herself the way Kei's girls do. It's just a matter of getting her to build the habit, same way as the rest of us. Also, if we can make her feel listened to, that'll help her appreciate that this is a clan where we listen to each other, so maybe you should try and think of some issues on which you really want her opinion."

"That makes sense," Hazō said. "Want to head back?"

Noburi levered himself upright reluctantly. "I guess we'd better. That afternoon shift won't man itself."

As they got up and began to get their bearings, a thought occurred to Hazō.

"Speaking of weird medical stuff, your Akimichi chakra training finished the other day, didn't it? How does it feel?"

Noburi shrugged. "It doesn't, really, most of the time. Like, when I have my barrel on, I don't notice any difference at all. It's a drop in the ocean. But then if I try going without the barrel… it gets really weird. It's like having this massive cavern somewhere inside me, only at the same time I know it's really tiny, and if I try to move my chakra around at all, it goes empty in a flash. I wonder if it's how civilian kids feel when they first develop chakra reserves."

Hazō nodded. "How do you feel about the next step, learning the Shadow Clone Technique?"

"Still a little anxious," Noburi admitted. "I mean, now that we've made it this far, it's probably going to be fine, but I can't rule out the chances of something really freaky happening because of bloodline interactions or whatever. Hey, speaking of which, did you hear about the thing with Snowflake and Dr Yakushi?"

"Don't tell me the Kittensphere's expanded again already!" Hazō exclaimed.

"No, seriously, I won't be responsible for the consequences if you keep calling it that," Noburi said. "I'd be fine with having Dr Yakushi as brother-in-law by metaphysical extension—the guy's awesome—but I was actually talking about the latest 'research' he's published in order to fix Snowflake being a living OPSEC crisis. Turns out that the Second Hokage designed the Shadow Clone Technique specifically around the true bloodlines of the Sage's descendants, i.e. the Leaf clans, and if anybody with a non-Leaf Bloodline Limit tries to use it, the consequences will be unpredictable and potentially fatal."

Hazō nodded. "So Snowflake's memory stuff is a consequence of the Frozen Skein being a non-Leaf Bloodline Limit, not a built-in feature."

"Yeah. Also, it means there's a very good reason for foreign Bloodline Limit ninja not to try and steal it, which is going to be a big deal if AMITY stops people just declaring war in retaliation for technique theft."

"Of course," Hazō noted, "that's going to make it look weird when you decide to learn the Shadow Clone Technique."

"Yeah. I suppose Snowflake decided she couldn't afford to wait any longer for damage control."

"Speaking of which," Hazō said, "do you have any ideas on how we're going to get you the Shadow Clone Technique?"

"Sure," Noburi said. "I can't just go up to the Hokage and ask for it. You guys got it because of a major emergency, but I don't see the Hokage being in a hurry to hand it to me while there are still jōnin with years and years of loyal service who don't qualify. I thought about arguing that I need it for Zoo Rushes, which are a thing only I can do, but if AMITY works out, we won't have any targets big enough to need one for a while to come—and also the Hokage would probably say that Zoo Rushes work fine with my reserves as they are. Let's face it, he is not going to want to give the Gōketsu extra power if he can help it.

"That's where I had my idea. Dr Yakushi and Orochimaru are still pretty interested in my Bloodline Limit. If I'm prepared to make Orochimaru even more interested in vivisecting me, I could get them to push for it for the sake of their research—seeing how the Vampiric Dew interacts with the Shadow Clone Technique and such."

"Yeah, I'm sure Asuma would—"

Spoiler: dice

Hazō: Empathy 21 - 9 = 12 vs TN ??

"—go along with that if you pitched it right," Hazō said. "Good idea, Noburi."

"No problem," Noburi said. "Now come on, let's get you back in time for your date."

-o-​

You have received 3 + 1 (Brevity) + 1 (Fun-to-Write) = 5 XP and 1 FP (standard refresh).

-o-​

What do you do?

Voting closes on May 7, 2022 at 1:00 PM

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 515: Just Hold On; We're On Our Way​

Naruto opened the door and blinked in surprise.

"What do you two want?" he demanded.

"A few minutes of your time," Mari said with an easy smile. "We're working on a very unusual project and you'll either be super excited about it or you'll laugh in our faces. Either way, I'm confident you won't regret talking to us."

Hazō noted with pleasure that she had said 'we are working on...' The truth was more nuanced; it had taken him an hour to beat down all of her objections and bring her around from 'this is the craziest idea you have ever had and that's saying something' to 'okay, but it still won't work' to 'well...I guess it's worth a shot.' Whether she now considered it to be we who was working on it or whether she was simply trying to show a united front for Naruto's benefit, he wasn't too bothered.

Naruto stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. He conjured a clone and immediately dispelled it, then opened the door the rest of the way and gestured them inside.

Mari settled on the old couch opposite the door, elbows on her knees and fingers interlaced. She locked eyes with Naruto, not looking over as Hazō settled silently beside her.

"How would you—oh, thank you," she said, as a Naruto brought a tray of three teacups into the room and set them on the low table between Naruto and the two Gōketsu. She selected one and took a sip, then nodded in gratitude. Naruto and Hazō each chose their own and raised them in salute.

"We want your help," Mari said, a small smile on her face, "with a crazy, far-out plan that almost certainly won't work but it's a first step."

Naruto raised an eyebrow and leaned back, one arm up on the back of the couch, and crossed his legs with right ankle on left knee. "Gosh. How could I possibly refuse such an intriguing and reasonable pitch?"

"It will take about five minutes of your time," Hazō said. "All you have to do is punch me in the face, psychically."

"...Punch you in the face, psychically?"

"You have high-level security clearance," Mari said. "You've undoubtedly seen the report about Hazō's encounter with Itachi and Hidan on O'uzu Island. Specifically the part about how Hazō was attacked by a ninja named Daizen and a seal failure killed Daizen and opened a rift in space?"

"Sure. What about it?"

"Did you see the part about how Daizen appeared on the other side of the rift and Hazō pulled him out of there?"

A shadow of doubt flickered across Naruto's face and he uncrossed his legs, sitting up straight again. "What about it?"

"I think that was the Pure Lands," Hazō said. "Daizen proves that it's possible to bring people back. People like Jiraiya. And the Third, and the Fourth."

Doubt shifted towards anger. "You're kidding, right?"

Mari shook her head. "Look, this idea almost certainly won't work. Bringing people back from the dead isn't like rescuing them from enemy territory, and I personally thought this was nuts until last night." She chuckled. "I still kinda do, actually, but I'm wavering."

"What happened last night?" Naruto asked.

"Hazō sat me down and talked to me about it." She glanced over at her adopted son, fond amusement in her eyes. "He's convincing when he's passionate about something. I went from thinking 'that's crazy' to 'okay, not crazy but still ridiculous', to 'well, ridiculous but it wouldn't hurt to try' in the span of an hour." She shrugged, gesturing casually with the hand that held her teacup. "We live in a world of magic. Ninja conjure the elemental powers with a word and a gesture—we even named our nations for our ability to do that. In addition, there are the non-elemental jutsu that touch on souls—your Shadow Clones, according to rumor, are fragments of your soul that you send forth. The Yamanaka jutsu obviously involve sending a part of their souls out of their body, which is why the user collapses. Souls are real, beyond question."

"This conversation definitely isn't going down strange and vaguely disturbing paths," Naruto said wryly.

"There are thousands of stories and legends about ghosts coming back," Mari said, not dignifying his comment with a response. "People speaking with those who have passed on, the dead walking the earth. Shoot, forget legends. We've seen people come back from the dead in the last year. Hazō literally pulled someone out of there and Orochimaru came back after being blown to specks." She shrugged. "Of course, maybe he didn't really die. Maybe the Snake Sannin had some way to survive. Maybe he reverse-summoned away while still in the form of a thousand snakes. Maybe he somehow burrowed away from the blast that scooped out a crater three feet deep and compacted the dirt like concrete."

Hazō noticed as Naruto noticed how Mari had carefully not mentioned the other seven people who had been resurrected that day.

"Okay," the blond said. "So. Resurrection isn't a pipe dream." The words were light, the same tone that you used when a child insisted that their imaginary friend was real. "Where do I come in?"

Mari turned to Hazō and nodded for him to take over.

"I've experienced a lot of jōnin auras," Hazō said. "They are clearly metaphysical, something beyond normal reality. So are the parts from the Dragon that I helped kill. I want to surround myself with things that connect to Jiraiya and then jolt my mind a little outside of normal reality in hopes of seeing where his soul is. I want you to do that by blasting me with your aura. You have a close connection to him and it's possible that will help." He shrugged. "We're working completely blind here, throwing stuff at the wall to see what works. As Mari said, the most likely outcome is that nothing happens, we wasted an hour, and I've got to figure out the next option while dealing with a really bad headache. But, if it does work..."

Naruto snorted. "You seriously think that you can just randomly see into the afterlife like you're...I dunno, peeping at the baths?"

"Ooh, good idea," Hazō said, eyebrows rising. "We should do this near the women's baths. It's a location that was significant to Jiraiya."

Mari's smile became somewhat forced.

Naruto stared in disbelief for a moment, then started laughing. "Gōketsu, I knew you were...but..." He shook his head, smothering the last chuckles. "Look, you don't seriously believe this stuff, do you? Talking to the dead is bedtime stories and fables."

"Daizen," Mari said.

Naruto's lips tightened. "We have no idea what that was. There was a seal failure so all bets are off as to what happened."

She shrugged. "Sure. Still, what do we know? Seal failures are usually confined to a small area." She carefully did not look over at Hazō, who carefully did not correct her. "This was a portal in midair leading to a very large, open space. A vast ocean, trees that stretched out of sight. A person who had died moments earlier appeared in midair and fell into the ocean. He died again and the whole thing looped. Hazō was able to physically walk in and physically carry him out, but when Hazō went on his research trip to the rift site, Motokazu said there was still a body in the lava." She tossed one hand. "Well, specifically he said that there was a depression in the ground shaped like a person, into which the lava had flowed before burning the body to ash."

"So, just to be clear," Naruto said, "there wasn't a body and you've decided that the most probable explanation is that Daizen's body was destroyed and a portal to the afterlife was formed, at which location he reincarnated into a brand new body. That, as opposed to, say, the rift led to the Seventh Path and Daizen got transported there the way we know humans can do."

Hazō shook his head. "No," he said, absolute certainty in his voice. "No human could survive the transit to the Seventh Path without a guide and the protection of a Summoning contract. Period. If you don't believe me, talk to Tsunade or Asuma. In that place, Daizen was as alive as you or I and he wasn't a gibbering madman the way he would have been if he h#d looked in7o the Ovt." He cleared his throat and focused on how it had felt when, on their most recent date, Ino had cupped his cheek in her hand and kissed him. After a moment, the world stopped glistening around him.

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Fine, whatever. So, you're convinced that the afterlife is real and that you can send your mind through the veil of death with pinpoint precision in order to find Jiraiya. At which point you will undoubtedly pull him back with you and there will be much happiness and rejoicing."

Hazō shook his head. "No, probably not. Well, I mean, yes, I'm convinced that the afterlife is real and I think there's a fair chance that given enough time and resources we can find a way to interact with it, and that when we eventually bring Jiraiya back there will be much happiness and rejoicing. This particular attempt? No. It's very unlikely that this will work, but you have to start somewhere." He cocked his head, considering Naruto for a moment. "What if it did? I'm going to keep working on ways to bring people back. I've decided that I've lost too many people and I'm not willing to put up with it anymore. I want my father back. I want Noburi's brother back. I want the Third back, and the Fourth. And by the Will of Fire and everything else I hold holy, I want Jiraiya back. So I'm going to keep working on this and someday I'll succeed. I'll find a way to recharge that rift and open it up again. We'll explore the land around there and see if it really is what I think it is. We'll search until we find the people we care about, and we'll bring them back to enrich our lives and strengthen Leaf. This plan that we're discussing? It's silly and cobbled together out of half-baked ideas with nothing more than intuition. It's wildly unlikely that it will work...but what if it did? What if we didn't try this because it seemed silly and twenty years from now, after we get the rift open and search Jiraiya out, we discover that it would have been enough?"

"You can't be serious."

Mari turned one hand slightly, the motion serving to shift the jinchūriki's attention from Hazō back to herself. "We're serious enough to try it. It'll only take a few minutes, so what's the harm?"

Naruto chuckled and shook his head. "Sure, whatever. I'll come along and watch but I can't do what you're asking. I've never been able to do that soul thing that Gramps and Jiraiya and the others do. It doesn't have a lot of effect on me when they try, but I can't do it myself." He shrugged. "Gramps used to say that it came with time. Then Jiraiya would snort and make some mocking comment about how when he was a boy he would walk around throwing jōnin aura everywhere, uphill both ways and in the snow."

Hazō and Mari looked at each other in surprise.

"Either way, I'm still delighted that you want to watch," Hazō said, smiling. "Having you there might help."

"Eh. Mostly I want to see her turn your brain into pudding. That's gonna be funny."

"You and Noburi really need to spend more time together," Mari said. "You'd get along great."

o-o-o-o​

Hazō took a final slow, centering breath.

His chakra was calm.

His body was calm.

His mind was calm.

He had bathed. He had meditated. He had sucked, briefly and carefully, on a small fragment of Canabisu's mellow candy in order to disconnect a few of the anchor cables that bound his body to the world.

He had sat and gazed upon the Dragon scales for ten minutes, letting their antithetical nature scrape away more of his connections to reality.

He had dressed himself in the most appropriate clothes and taken his place at the center of the ritual.

He had, again, meditated. And now he was ready.

The sound of the women's baths drifted past, a thing to be noted but not observed. (The memory of Mari hiring six lovely young ladies to 'go have a naked suds fight in the baths, and be sure to giggle a lot' was not permitted to break his serenity.)

He permitted his eyes to open and categorize his surroundings.

He sat in the center of a pentagram. Why a pentagram? Why not? It had a pleasing set of metaphor to it—five spikes, one for each of the elemental natures that Jiraiya had wielded in war. Five triangles, the sides of which stood for the Kage, the clans, and the civilians of each of those nations with whom the Toad Sage had warred and peaced. A pentagon, the spikes of war facing protectively outwards and not threatening that which lay within. The boundary of Leaf was not a perfect pentagon, but it was close. Many of Jiraiya's seals used pentagons as their enclosure. Why? Hazō intended to ask; pentagons weren't as physically robust as a triangle, nor were they easy to draw accurately. Yet, somehow, the quirky sage had chosen them.

Hazō looked down at the bloodstained and oversized clothes he wore. He kept trying to remember Jiraiya's scent and feeling it slip away, but he imagined that it was soaked into the fabric of these bloody clothes, stored for decades in a forgotten laundry seal.

He looked up, pivoting his head to review the objects at each point of the pentagram.

A bowl of oil with a blazing wick from which coiled a thin trail of sooty smoke. The Will of Fire.

The first seal of Jiraiya's pedagogical method. The distilled essence of Jiraiya's belief in the future.

The first Icha-Icha book—not the first one published, the first one that had ever been execrably written for the sheer pleasure of creation by a teenage boy who had not yet thought to turn his passion into the control device of assassins and spies.

A charcoal and colored-wax sketch of three painfully young teens mugging for the artist while their amused and barely middle-aged sensei stood behind them. It was waterstained and half-blurred from when Jiraiya's first apartment flooded.

A plain wooden box. Hazō had carried it around to dozens of elders, asking each of them to whisper a memory of Jiraiya into the box. Tiny pieces of happiness, joy, nostalgia, and grief bounced around in the tightly-closed container.

To his left rear, kneeling seiza outside the pentagram: Noburi. The little brother Hazō had never known he wanted to wrestle with, mock and be mocked by, fight beside. The one who had given Jiraiya cookies and been named his favorite child.

To his right rear, kneeling seiza outside the pentagram: Naruto. The godson on whom Jiraiya had doted. The hero that he had trained to preserve Leaf against the day that the Toad Sage no longer could.

To his left front, squatting on his haunches: Gamasid. Jiraiya's original contact on the Seventh Path, the one who had carried him back to meet the Toad Boss when he first signed the contract.

To his right front, the ancient, battered, battle-scarred, half-melted forehead protector. The ashes, undoubtedly those of Jiraiya and his traitorous student/murderess admixed, had very deliberately not been wiped away save for one spot at the very center of what had once been the seal of Leaf.

To his front, Mari. Wrapped in the never-before worn wedding dress that had been in her closet since Jiraiya left for the Chūnin Exams the first time. Her hair was wavy from a quick and not-yet-dried wash in the women's baths where the giggling and suds battling were ongoing.

She stacked her hands and raised an eyebrow. Last chance to back out.

Hazō stared her in the eyes and nodded. Never. Do it.

She nodded and allowed her soul to erupt.

In the instant before the world became fire and pain, Hazō enacted the one final preparation that he had not and would never tell anyone about: Within the depths of his mind, he whispered a prayer to the mad god Jashin, Lord of Death and Sex. Lord Jashin, if you're there...please help this work. He is an excellent killer, a sex fiend, and I miss him.

Mari's soul shrieked through Hazō's eyes and drenched the inside of his skull with boiling pitch. He could smell his eyeballs expanding in their sockets, could almost taste them sizzling with a sound like torn muscles and bitter copper. His head went back, his whole body locking tight in agony the only thing that kept him from screaming.

He allowed himself to fall backwards, the sky whirling as his poorly-anchored and off-kilter mind divorced itself from reality and fled from the pain.

The world shattered around him.

Tiny tongues of lakewater lapped at the white-sand shore

The sand compacted under the weight of a naked foot

The man raced forward and leapt, white hair flaring around himself as he landed into a squat and dropped back onto his hands, kicking up with both legs. The tattered rags of Leaf battledress rustled around him

"Jiraiya?"​

His arms did not support him; he tumbled gracelessly to the ground

"Damnit, Jiraiya," he grumbled. "You know better than that. Do it again."

"Jiraiya, it's me! Can you hear me?"​

"But sensei," he whined, his voice suddenly high and juvenile. "It's not faaaair! How am I supposed to do the Frog Smash with no chakra?"

"Stop calling it that, you snotty tadpole!" he said, voice now sharply feminine. "It's the Toad Thrust, not the Frog Smash! And how come the old coot gets to be 'sensei' and I don't, huh?"

"Jiraiya, we're coming! Just hold on! We're coming to get you and bring you back!"​

"Old coot? Don't you disrespect me, you old bat! Don't you... Don't you..."

He frowned and sat back, shaking his head. "...you old bat? Don't you... Don't you... C'mon, c'mon... Ha! Don't you dare call me that, Little Miss!" His face lit up in delight at the memory. He leapt to his feet, cackling and capering. "Hah! Little Miss, Little Miss, Little Miss! And then she took the stick! I remember!" He thrust both fists at the uncaring grey sky. "I remember! I am Jiraiya of the Sannin! Student of Sarutobi Hiruzen, God of Shinobi! Battle-brother to Orochimaru of the Snakes and Tsunade of the Slugs! Born of no family, begrudged the Matron's roof, feared by braggarts and bullies! Master of the Frog Kata! Sage of the Toad Clan! Fifth Hokage and patriarch of Gōketsu! Husband of Mari, father of Keiko, Noburi, and Hazō! I am Jiraiya the Great, and you will not have me, because I remember!"

---

Author's Note: Hazō has taken a Mild Mental Consequence from Mari aura blasting him. I don't need to roll for it; she can beat his defenses and she can choose not to do more damage than she wants.

This update covered 1 day. One of Hazō's Shadow Clones did seal prep for MARS and four more read Orochimaru's sealing notes for the XP. No actual sealing was done.

I'm keeping it time-constrained because I'm unclear on where we stand on the AMITY timer and I don't want to jump over something and have to make the timeline wonky again.

XP AWARD: 5

Brevity XP: 1

"GM had fun" XP: 2

• +1 for scene: Important conversation with Naruto
• +1 for scene: Necromancy

It is now just after sundown.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, May 11, 2022 at 7:00 AM .

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 516: Anchoring the Sun​

Tanzaku Gai was more than just a city. Of all the sites of strategic importance in the Fire Country, it had received the best defences during the war short of Leaf itself, and Hazō thought he understood why. It wasn't the bountiful tax income. It wasn't the key role in governance over western Fire. It was, to put it simply, morale. Tanzaku Gai was where Leaf ninja went when off-duty (despite attempts at competition from the newer Otafuku Gai). It was where they went to be reminded, perhaps without ever realising it, what they were truly fighting for. The unseen desire that lay at the bottom of every ninja's heart, Hazō believed, wasn't mere survival. It wasn't hatred or revenge. It wasn't even the resolve to protect their loved ones, which Leaf tried to monopolise as the Will of Fire. It was a dream of paradise: a world without war. In Tanzaku Gai, for just a few hours at a time, there was no war. There was no conflict beyond the petty strife inextricable from human society. There was art, and music, and fashion, and fine cuisine, and every other joy that humanity was capable of crafting for itself when its hands weren't busy holding weapons.

Today, Hazō and Akane were beneficiaries of this tradition of fiercely-protected peace. The flowers at the Nishūrasen Gardens were in full bloom, their panoply of colours eclipsing even the famous fountains in Hazō's eyes—though, of course, still failing to eclipse Akane as she pointed them out to him one by one, unselfconsciously showing off both the knowledge she'd picked up from Ino and the additional research she'd conducted because when Akane committed herself to taking care of a living being, that living being got taken care of.

Speaking of Ino, she was the one responsible for the vibrant green (but not that green) one-piece dress Akane was wearing, and the story behind that was a valuable reminder just how terrifying a social spec could be even without being animated by unholy powers of chaos or being broken until talent filled the space where her heart had been.

As soon as word came in that the Fourth Shinobi World War was over, details pending, the overworked, overstressed Yamanaka clan head had seized the opportunity not merely to relax and unwind, but to unleash a diabolical plot that must have been in the making for months at least. First, the easy part, she took advantage of Snowflake's curiosity and desire for self-definition to invite her to a grand clothes shopping trip. Then, she broke down Kei's resistance by pointing out that anything Snowflake wore would reflect on Kei, and thus also on the Nara, whether she liked it or not, and if she didn't serve as chaperone and veto holder, Ino had no interest in being responsible for the consequences. As a follow-up attack, she persuaded Kei to invite Fujisawa, promising her the family bonding opportunity that they'd missed out on with the unfortunate dinner. With that excuse, and with the momentum rolling, Akane found it too hard to say no, and was dragged out of the room where she'd been spending too much of her time and into the spring sunlight. Meanwhile, Tenten (according to Akane's speculations after the fact) couldn't let the new, more exciting, more outgoing, more communicative mute girlfriend outshine her even visually, and insisted on joining in despite her usual lack of interest. And then, Ino put the strawberry on the cake. Hinata had limited her interactions with her political opponents since assuming the Hyūga throne, but even she couldn't resist the triple temptation of observing complex multi-layered social dynamics (the Kittensphere members alone would provide a day's worth of utterly unique data, and also Hazō really needed to heed Noburi's warning and stop using that name before it was too late), influencing the personal lives of her peers and rivals while their guards were down, and getting to be part of a gaggle of teenage girls shopping for pretty things.

Hazō had no idea where to begin closing the gap with Hinata on a more than superficial level. Even Ami, despite apparent interest, had yet to attempt the challenge (as far as he knew). And now Ino had done it, just like that, without spending capital or discomforting her allies or attempting manipulation that might backfire if Hinata saw through it. If Ino, even more calculating than he'd realised, succeeded in turning the Leaf Chūnin Girls No-Holds-Barred Shopping Spree into a regular event, he couldn't imagine the potential uses she could make of such a tool. (He wasn't sure why the rank was specified, or what would happen if they got promoted at different rates, but he did note that it excluded Ami and Mari.)

Locked out of the process though he was by virtue of not being a chūnin girl, Hazō couldn't complain if it involved the girls in his life being both happier and easier on the eyes, and it was a fact that Akane looked magnificent in green.

The fourth compliment to that effect later, Hazō decided that it was time to try a conversation of a more serious nature, and led her inside one of the garden's infamous replica gazebos.

"Speaking of mood-enhancing aromatherapy," he smoothly segued from her last flower description, "how are you feeling? I've been finding you a little hard to read lately."

"How?" Akane echoed. "You mean the whole mass murderer thing?"

Hazō had taken time to prepare for this conversation, mostly pondering all the ways in which he could mess it up, and therefore he was careful to say absolutely nothing to this question.

Akane sat in silence for a few seconds, looking out at the flowers.

"A lot of the time, I haven't been feeling anything at all," she said quietly. "Not like the person I thought I was. No, just… not like a person.

"I told you once that I felt hollow. Just an imitation of whichever person I looked up to most at any given time. I thought that, with you there to support me, I could find some kind of truth, like maybe there was some kind of core Akane that I simply couldn't see because I was too busy living a borrowed way of life.

"I didn't make it in time."

Akane looked at him, but he didn't say anything. There was a 99% chance that whatever he said would be the wrong thing, and she seemed… fragile. Too fragile for Gōketsu Akane.

"You wouldn't have compromised your ideals under pressure. If someone told you to kill thousands of civilians just because they belonged to the other side, you'd have fought back, or delayed until you could come up with some kind of brilliant solution, or even gone missing. But I'm just your shadow. I'm not real, and my Youth isn't real, and while you shine when you're in the dark, I disappear. I thought I'd faced up to that, but all I'd done was pretend, and it got thousands of people killed.

"Kei says that I should take the time to process my pain instead of looking for another mask to hide behind. Noburi says that I should be kind to myself, and that beating myself up will only make it harder to find the answers. Mari says that carrying out terrible orders is a trial every ninja has to face eventually, and finding my own way to cope will make me stronger as a person. Kagome doesn't say anything, but he gets this odd, distant look in his eyes, and then he goes off to make me soup.

"I love them all, but they can't offer me a way forward. Nobody can. How do you go anywhere when it turns out your moral compass doesn't have a lodestone?"

"It's funny," Hazō said when it became apparent that Akane didn't have anything else to say. "I thought it seemed like you'd lost your anchor, and your metaphor is you not having a compass."

Wait, no. Ship metaphors. Hazō did not want to use ship metaphors when talking about guilt for killing civilians. There was no way bringing back that memory wouldn't make things worse.

Fortunately, Akane didn't seem to notice.

"I thought Youth was my anchor," she said. "But as soon as the tide came, I got swept away, and found out I'd never had an anchor at all. It's like Kei said—I was always mass murderer Akane waiting to happen."

Kei said what?! Hazō was going to—

No, he probably shouldn't. As someone who'd been frustrated at the clan's apparent inability to keep themselves together without his intervention, the last thing he should do was object when they actually made an effort to look out for each other. If Kei turned around and said, "Well, you handle it, then", he'd be back all the way to square minus one. He just hoped she wasn't making things worse.

Or was he qualified to judge that, given that he had no idea how to make things better himself?

Wasn't there anything he could do, any approach he could make that had a chance of helping Akane without risking disaster?

Maybe there was.

"You've been one of my biggest anchors for the longest time," Hazō said. "But you've never been my only one. That's not something you can ask of any one person, and maybe you can't ask it of one ideal either. You know how I feel about Uplift, but I want to believe that even if I woke up one day and found out Uplift was a lie, I'd still have other reasons to carry on—you being one of them. What about you, Akane? Do you have any other anchors?"

No, wait. That really sounded like he was pressuring her to reciprocate and say he was one of hers. Damn.

Akane just looked out at the flower beds for a while, and he couldn't tell if she was thinking or staring into space.

"There are still people I love," she said, "and things I care about. Of course there are. But what's going to happen when the tide comes again? If my love of Youth was a lie all along, then how can I believe in my love for you, or Ino, or my parents, or anyone, never mind something as abstract as Uplift? How can I know that they aren't more illusions that will vanish if the world pokes at them hard enough?"

Hazō had made a precommitment not to try to fix anything, and on the inside, he was grinding his teeth in frustration at the inflexibility of his past self. If past!Hazō had known what it would be like to hear Akane say these things, surely he'd have changed his mind and given his future self carte blanche to do something, anything, to make things better for her.

Unfortunately, Hazō believed in the power of precommitment. It was a mighty tool, powerful enough to defend even against Ami, but it demanded faithfulness. If he turned his back on it even once, it might lose too much power to save him next time past!Hazō's forethought was the only thing standing between him and lethal foot-in-mouth poisoning.

"Akane," he said, "I can't look into your heart and see how real any of your feelings are." He'd put it on the sealing research list, but he should probably finish the cure for wandering wits first. "But I can ask you this: what makes life worthwhile for you? You don't need to know whether your feelings are real to be able to answer that. You don't even have to limit yourself to what's realistic. Pretend for a second that there are no justifications and no consequences. What do you want to do?"

"What do I… want to do?"

"It's OK if you don't have any answers," Hazō added hastily, "or if it's something really vague. I'm not trying to put you on the spot here."

"I want to make a better Akane," Akane said slowly. "One who won't murder thousands of civilians when she's ordered. One who has the right beliefs and stands by them. One who isn't anyone's shadow. I want… instead of an Akane who's always standing in the light, I want one who can step into the darkness without disappearing." She gave the strange, ironic smile of someone enjoying a private joke at her own expense.

"I don't know what anchors that Akane would have, or what would make her life worthwhile. I suppose she'd be a very different person from me."

Hazō forcefully suppressed the desire to argue. Instead, he smiled. "I have no idea how to make any of that happen. Honestly, from where I'm standing, the idea of improving on you would be blasphemous if it wasn't incoherent, but I admit I may be slightly biased. But that doesn't change the fact that I love you and believe in you absolutely, and if there's anything I can do to help you, anything at all, then I will do that thing."

Hazō had a sense that if he let Akane think about it, she'd say something to the effect of "But it's only a hypothetical and I've already said it can't happen", so he hurried on. He'd suspected that this topic might leave Akane feeling melancholy, which was not acceptable on a date with Gōketsu Hazō, master of seduction, so he'd made sure to have a secret weapon close to hand.

"By the way," he said, "I wrote you something."

Akane's curiosity quickly overcame her desire to stare wistfully into the distance. Just as planned.

"What's that?"

Hazō pulled out a scroll. "I've secretly been studying the work of Namikaze Minato, some say the greatest poet of our age, in order to compose the finest love poem in Elemental Nations history. Listen and be amazed."

Akane straightened up into the rapt listening posture of an ideal Academy student, nearly brushing her shoulder against one of the gazebo's realistically-carved fangs.

Hazō cleared his throat.

"To my radiant star, whose embrace
Brings fierce blushes to my face,
Whose amber eyes' refulgent glow
Strikes harder than a Strong Fist blow,
The gentle strength of whose caress
Would shame an Arachnid Empress,
Yes, you, Akane, are the one,
As bright and round as the sun!"

By the time Hazō reached the fourth stanza, dedicated to the beauty of Akane's toenails, she was so moved that her face was buried in her hands, and her shoulders were shaking with what could only be suppressed sobs of joy. Hazō made a note to do something nice for Naruto, whose father had turned out to be every bit the romantic genius he'd hoped.

-o-​

You have received 4 + 1 (Brevity) + 1 (Fun-to-write) = 6 XP.

-o-​

Ami-style training was unsuccessful due to lack of challenge: the jōnin currently in Leaf were insufficiently paranoid (by the standards of Kagome-sensei's star pupil) and just told Hazō their favourite colour when he asked; for those out on missions, their families or known friends were happy to do so.

-o-​

The other half of the plan is left in the merciless talons of @eaglejarl.

Voting is closed.

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 517: Debriefing, but Not the Fun Kind​

April 17, the evening after the ritual and before Hazō and Akane's date

"Okay," Naruto said. "I've been patient. Relaxed, even. Some people might use words like 'saintly'. I helped you clean up from the ritual. I helped you carry all that crap back inside. I waited patiently while dinner was prepared. Now what happened?!"

Considering that dinner prep had consisted of everyone choosing their preferred food-containing set of storage seals, Hazō didn't feel a lot of guilt about that last point.

"I saw something," he admitted. "I don't know if it was real, or a hallucination, and I've been going over it in my head, trying to make sure I had every detail locked down. We'll want to confirm it before acting on it, and—"

"So help me," Naruto said, his voice flat and a ball of blue light beginning to swirl in his hand, "if you do not share the information with me in an efficient and complete manner within the next five seconds, I will tear this house down around your ears."

"Okay, okay!" Hazō said, patting at the air in an attempt to calm down the angry jinchūriki. "Here's what I saw: a white beach next to a big lake. There were trees on the far side, stretching around two-thirds of the lake's perimeter, but the near side was grassy and backed up against hills. Jiraiya was exercising and practicing a weird kata that I didn't recognize. Something like this." He did his best to imitate the move but succeeded only in falling on his butt.

Naruto blinked and the incipient Rasengan disappeared. "Two-footed thrust kick powered off a jump, aimed at the thighs and catching yourself on your arms before back-rolling?"

"Yeah," Hazō said, climbing to his feet and dusting off his butt. "Exactly. Except he spraddled out instead of rolling."

"That's the Toad Thrust. It's part of the martial art of the Toads. Unc always called it the 'Frog Kata' and that move the 'Frog Smash' because it drove Ma and Pa—that's Shima and Fukasaku—crazy." He paused, thinking. "You could have seen him practicing it before he died. He might even have tried to teach it to you." The moment he spoke the final words he looked dubious as Hazō's complete failure came to mind.

"I could have, but I didn't. He was talking to himself, trying to remind himself of something. He said, 'Damnit, Jiraiya. You know better than that. Do it again.'" Hazō ran through the rest of Jiraiya's words quickly, struggling to get them as close to exactly right as memory allowed.

Naruto, poking thoughtfully at his ramen as Hazō spoke, stopped and looked up at the final words. "The weird part is that he fell, and that he said the bit about no chakra. That's how Ma and Pa like to teach—they think that studying while handicapped means you learn better, because you have to get the form exactly right instead of doing it a little wrong but pushing through by pumping chakra. Uncle Jiraiya hated practicing without chakra and he never did it unless they were standing over him. I could maybe see him falling if he was trying to do it without chakra again." He thought for a moment. "Also, he said 'Little Miss'? You're sure?"

Hazō nodded. "Yes. Why?"

Naruto snorted, then burst out into full-throated laughter. "That's what Ma and Pa's teacher used to call Shima. It drives her bonkers when anyone else uses it. Like, I called her that when I was nine and she literally kicked me from one end of the training field to the other in one go, then zipped ahead before I landed and dribbled me all the way back. Cracked six ribs and I was black and blue for a week."

Hazō paused to reflect on the idea that the two-foot toad with the purple lipstick and the frizzy hair could punt a (granted, young) jinchūriki across the length of a training field and be waiting for him when he landed.

"So...what I'm hearing is that I should never use that name in her hearing," Noburi said, half-serious and half-joking, with a tiny bit of fear to round out the tone.

"Yah. That."

"Do you know this 'Frog Kata'?" Mari asked.

"First, don't call it that around Ma and Pa if you want to live," Naruto said seriously. "Second, yes. Not at a master level, but I'm getting there. Granted, my training got interrupted by this whole kidnapping, torture, and near world-destruction thing, and now I can't continue because Unc isn't around to teach me or to summon the Sages anymore." He glanced sourly at Noburi.

The young man in question shrugged. "I...might be able to. Dunno. It depends on how strong they are and whether or not they're willing to contract with me."

"They're massively strong and they're proud," Naruto said. "They're not going to want to be summoned by 'some whippersnapper.'" His voice dropped into a nearly perfect copy of Fukasaku's grumpiness.

"I could tell them it's to visit you...? And make it a one-time thing, or promise not to summon them into combat."

"Hmm. Maybe? If you phrased it carefully they'd probably go along or else be more amused and dismissive than angry. I think."

Noburi looked vaguely nervous at the idea of even potentially angering the two Sages.

"The real issue is what we do now," Hazō said, pouring himself some tea. "And I mean right now, like in the next couple of hours. Naruto, you've somewhat validated the vision."

"I wouldn't go that far," Naruto said. "You could easily have read all that in Jiraiya's journals."

"And seen the Toad Thrust? Do you really believe that he would have diagrammed out a secret and powerful martial art, or even described it well enough to understand?"

"...He might have."

Hazō was both happy and frustrated at the mulish tone of the words. It showed that Naruto didn't completely believe it and was aware that he was being stubborn, but there was at least a seed of doubt.

"Okay," Hazō said, as reasonably as he could. "Why? What would I have to gain from lying to you?" He sipped his tea and continued to ignore the honey-brushed braised sea bass that was slowly cooling on his plate.

"You said you wanted to fix things between us," Naruto said. "This could be your idea of a clever ploy to get me on your side."

"Is that how you grew up?" Mari asked, sympathy in her voice. "Always wondering if people were being sincere in their offers of friendship or only trying to use you?"

Naruto looked at her, surprised.

She nodded and poked thoughtfully at her fried rice. "I suppose it makes sense," she said, lifting an eggy bite to her lips. She tasted it consideringly, then swallowed before continuing. "Probably the most powerful jinchūriki in the world. Son of the Fourth. Student of some of the most powerful ninja in the world. Everyone wanted a piece of you, didn't they? It must have been lonely."

"Yeah, no. Not the first time someone's tried that on me," Naruto said. "Flattery combined with understanding and sympathy, with an only-implied offer of friendship that leaves me the choice as to whether or not to reach out? Nice try."

Mari shook her head. "You misunderstand. I have no interest in being friends with you."

"What?" Naruto said.

"What?" Hazō and Noburi asked in tandem.

"Hang on, now," Hazō said. "Mari—"

She made a cutting gesture with one hand, silencing him. "No. Being friends with Naruto is not a good plan. On good terms, absolutely. Able to work together in pursuit of common goals? Sure. Not friends. He'll be Hokage one day and we'll be under his orders. You don't befriend Kages. You do your best to have their respect and you try not to attract their attention. Getting involved in politics at that level is not worth the trouble. All that happens is you get their enemies throwing knives at your head from the darkness and their friends—if they have any left from their youth—staring suspiciously at you. Especially when there's as much of an age gap as there is between me and you, Naruto. I'd much rather be your loyal and respected jōnin who occasionally gets sent on interesting but not too dangerous intelligence-gathering missions as opposed to being your friend and confidante.

"Mori Ami, she's closer to your age and she's not from Leaf," she continued, taking another bite of her rice and savoring it before speaking again. "She doesn't have any of the baggage that we're carrying based on being former missing-nin who Jiraiya brought in from the cold—which, to be clear, means that all the jingoistic nationalists who hate missing-nin hate us, and all the people who butted heads with Jiraiya also hate us. No desire to add your enemies to the list.

"As to Ami...you could do worse than befriending her. She doesn't have our other issues to increase the risk and she doesn't have our place here, so she's desperate to build one. Sure, the conservatives will never trust Ami or anything she's involved in, but she's smart enough to be loyal and she'll be as honest with you as she is with anyone. She's also quite pretty and I trained her well, so she's good in the sack. I assume you know better than to pillow talk, but even if you do she'll keep your secrets because she knows that one misstep will have the Hagoromo and their bloc down on her head. She'll be loyal, she'll be fun to spend relaxed time with—which I suspect is something you desperately need—and she'll be useful to you."

Spoiler: dice

It's debatable whether the right skill here is Deceit or Rapport. Nothing Mari is saying is untrue, but it's not entirely true either. She's got an agenda in her words and she's trying to reframe Naruto's perception of reality in ways that are helpful for her and at least somewhat harmful to him because it will cause him to distrust those whom he has previously had no reason to distrust. (Also, there's some negging going on, which is a dick move when attempting to get in a woman's pants but pretty much de rigueur at this level of politics and in defense of your family.) On the other hand, trusting Ami is a fool's choice, so Mari is helping Naruto at the same time. All things considered, I'll go with Deceit.

Mari, Deceit (mostly): ? + invoke ? + invoke ? + tag ? + ? (dice) = ?
Naruto, Deceit: ? + invoke ? + ? (dice): ?

Hazō watched, nervous for Naruto's reaction. Fortunately, the young jinchūriki seemed very much on the back foot and even slightly shaken.

"Going back to the original point," Mari said after the silence had lingered for a moment. "Hazō was asking what we do now. Hazō, care to expand?"

"Right. Uh, well...I'm thinking about social and political risks, like—"

Noburi clutched his chest as though his heart had stopped. "What?! Mari, check his ears! He's been taken over by the lupchanzen!"

Naruto's off-balance expression vanished and his body tensed as he looked back and forth between Noburi and Hazō.

Mari bapped Noburi on the arm. "Stop getting your brother in trouble."

"But Ma," Noburi whined, "it's my turn! Why does he get all the fun of causing massive political disasters for the clan?"

"Because he's older," Mari said primly. "But if you eat every bite of your vegetables then maybe you'll grow up big and strong and you can cause huge problems too someday."

"Very funny, you two," Hazō said grumpily. "If we can be serious for a moment, what's our next move?"

"Depends," Mari said. "What's the goal?"

"Ultimately? Bring Jiraiya back, preferably before he loses too much of his memory. Then, with his experience at sealing and any knowledge he may have gleaned from the other side, figure out how to rescue everyone else we care about."

"You know this is insane, right?" Naruto asked.

Hazō smiled. "Hi, I'm Gōketsu Hazō. It's a pleasure to meet you, Lord Uzumaki. Are you here to help with our latest endeavor?"

Naruto snorted and then half-strangled as a laugh snuck out and interrupted the snort. "Fine," he said. "I'm not sure I believe this. It's a lot simpler to believe that you found some details in Jiraiya's old journals and you're putting on an elaborate show to try to get on my good side. On the other hand...well, if you're lying then I'm morbidly curious to know how far you're willing to go knowing that once I find out I'm going to bring the wrath of me down on you. If you're telling the truth then of course I want to help. So, what are we doing?"

"Uh...right," Hazō said, unsure how to take that. "Well, the first thing to emphasize is that I don't know if this was a true vision, and I'm not claiming it was. It's possible that I hallucinated what I hoped to see. I don't remember hearing about the Toad Thrust or the 'Little Miss' nickname, but it's possible that I read it somewhere and have forgotten it. Still, I'm going to proceed as though it were the truth. Which leaves me with lots of questions, like how do we defend against accusations that we're making this up? How do we prevent this falling into the wrong hands or spinning out of control? What aren't we considering? What do we need to do right now? If this is real, it's huge, and we only get one chance not to screw it up. Is there anyone else who needs to know at this moment—maybe Kagome-sensei?"

"You made a list," Mari accused.

"Before we even did the ritual," Hazō said. "Now hush and don't distract the menfolk when we're talking about important things."

Mari's eyebrow went up and her face admitted amusement and promised retribution.

Naruto grinned. "You guys are nuts, you know that?"

"Eh," Noburi said. "You get used to it. Anyway, here's my idea: we have a nice evening with no mention of war, Dragons, dead people, or anything else stressful. Tomorrow we take the day off. Hazō, sleep in and don't do Clan-Head things. Spend some time with Akane. Mari...do whatever you do when you want to relax without being simultaneously sexy and terrifying."

"But Noburi," Mari purred, her face shifting into a cat-with-cream expression, "sexy and terrifying is how I relax. It's being Lady Gōketsu that stresses me out."

"Uh...right. Anyway, let's take the day off to chew on all this. There's too much going on, we're all stressed to the breaking point. Naruto, you spend the day checking up on us. You're friends with Ino, right? You went to the Academy together."

"Yeah, why?"

"She's dating Hazō, so she knows him better than you do. Talk to her about what kind of guy he is, tell her about the ritual and ask her what she thinks." He preemptively waved aside Naruto's objection. "And yes, take the fact that she's dating him into account when considering what she says. After you talk to her...I dunno, take a walk? Spar? Whatever it is you do when you want to let the back of your mind chew something over. If you honestly think we're scamming you, go to the Hokage and tell him that we're scamming you. He'll probably have us executed. If you think we're deluded, send us a message saying so and we'll leave you alone. If you think we're telling the truth to the best of our knowledge, let's meet up again for breakfast the day after tomorrow and figure out how we're going to either pry that O'uzu Island rift open or cut a new one, and how we're going to find Jiraiya after we do."

He looked around the table at the other three. "That work for everyone?"

Mari and Hazō waited for Naruto to respond first. After a moment, the blond nodded.

"Fine," he said. "Sounds like a plan."

---

XP AWARD: 1

Brevity XP: 1

"GM had fun" XP: 1 Wasn't excited about it at first, but on balance I'm feeling good about a high-stakes convo with Naruto. (No, not 'high-stakes' in the sense of maybe dying, high stakes in the sense of whether or not he's willing to help.)

Note: The "let's take tomorrow off" thing was to account for the fact that in chapter 516 Hazō took the day off and went on a date with Akane to Tanzaku Gai. Y'all should be voting for what to do the day after that. Chapter 515 (the ritual) was on April 17, chapter 516 (the date) was on April 18, and you should be voting for what to do starting the morning of April 19.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 7:00 AM .

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 518: The Anatomy of Success​

While there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Tsunade was the primary reason for Leaf's leadership in the medical world, few were as aware that the Nara were the second: a traditional master-apprentice system could never have supported the scale of something like Leaf General Hospital, but with the ready availability of affordable medical texts, a trainee could make valuable progress in their discipline without having to constantly tie up experts in instruction time. For this reason, there was nothing strange about seeing Noburi lounging around at home with an intimidating-looking book on plague spirits, or the four kinds of miasma, or the medicinal herbs of the Fire Country and which chakra beasts tended to eat people gathering each one.

Today's item of Noburi's choice, however, was not a book. It was, at minimum, a tome. Hazō was tempted to even go as far as "grimoire". The humongous black volume, creaking at the seams in defiance of Leaf's best binding techniques (which, according to Kagome-sensei, were cutting-edge and practically art), seemed like it should contain the kind of forbidden lore that would get you executed by Kei just for being in the same building.

"Enjoying a little leisure reading?" Hazō asked, approaching the dining room table where Noburi had spread his tome, presumably because the desk in his room wouldn't be able to take the weight.

"Something like that," Noburi said, looking up from an eerie diagram of a man with four arms, four legs, and a singularly fed-up expression. "Dr Yakushi lent me his personal copy of Hyūga Kōzō's Anatomical Manuscript A. They call the guy the second greatest doctor in the world, and you can see why."

Noburi leafed through the tome to find an example for Hazō, stopping on a magnificently detailed, stomach-churningly grotesque diagram of an eyeball melting over a low heat, its various humours captured in the act of leaking out through the pupil.

"It's not like we don't get Hyūga medics," Noburi said cheerfully, "and quite a few others are fine with the occasional paid consultation, but Lord Kōzō practically made it his life's work to catalogue the details of the human body in every state of injury and disease. It's really a shame what happened to him."

"Why?" Hazō asked. "What happened to him?"

"Apparently, when they raided Orochimaru's compound, they found out where Lord Kōzō had been getting his human bodies in every state of injury and disease. He was the first ever council clan head to be executed."

"Wait," Hazō said. "They executed a clan head? The Hyūga clan head? You're kidding, right?"

"That's what Dr Yakushi says," Noburi said. "But I'm pretty sure there are some deep waters there that the likes of you and me will never plumb. Like, it was Lord Kōzō's successor that started the Minami purge, not long after, and you know how the Hokage was weirdly slow to shut the whole thing down given it was practically a mini-clan war. But then again, if you start thinking that he did it to appease the Hyūga after executing their clan head, why did he not only recognise the Minami as a clan but start giving out privacy seals like candy practically the next day?"

He shrugged. "This is why I leave politics to my humble second-in-command while I focus on the important stuff. Tsunade and the Nara managed to convince the Third not to have all the copies of Anatomical Manuscript A burned, if only barely, and that's good enough for me."

"Well," Hazō said. "I guess you learn something new every day."

"You should crack open a book sometime yourself," Noburi said, fondly tapping the weird black blob oozing out from the back of the eyeball. Hazō shuddered.

"Your humble second-in-command only wishes he had the time," Hazō said. "But forget that. I've had some more thoughts on the thing we were talking about the other day."

Noburi gave an exaggerated sigh. "I told you, Hazō, those are just old wives' tales. Besides, if you've got multiple shadow clones and you're still disappointing girls that badly, I'm pretty sure your problem isn't your stamina."

"Very funny," Hazō said. "I was actually talking about your girl problems."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Noburi said, raising his voice slightly. "I have no girl problems because I am in a happy and fully satisfying monogamous relationship." He glanced warily through the door into the atrium, then closed it firmly and retreated to his tome. "Seriously, Hazō, do you want to get me killed?"

"I am unable to answer that question for OPSEC reasons," Hazō said. "But after I thought about your situation for a bit, I remembered something Mari once said back when Jiraiya was alive and I asked her why there was a toy chicken with a pulley in the middle hanging from their bedroom ceiling. She told me, 'Familiarity is the poison that kills relationships'."

"I did not need to know that."

"See," Hazō said, "I think you do. Because before I could escape, she grabbed me by the collar and elaborated. And what I got out of that, minus a variety of suggestions that would make Akane's head explode, was that one of the best ways to avoid having to murder your partner for cheating on you is to keep things fresh and exciting, just as if it was still the early days of your relationship. Now, in your case it's more about avoiding being murdered, but it seems like the basic principle should still apply."

Noburi closed the tome.

"So are you saying we should copy the early days of our relationship where she was busy being my tour guide to a freaky alien world and humiliatingly overpowered training partner while our diabolical bosses plotted to use us as political tools? Or the days where I was trying to navigate a crazy sealmaster's dream of an emotional minefield while busy fighting with Hyūga for her favour—even now, I can't believe those words are coming out of my mouth—while our diabolical bosses plotted to use us as political tools?"

"…all right, maybe not the early days of your relationship," Hazō admitted. "But you must have a whole bunch of ideas for what you'd want to do with these hypothetical girls you wish you'd had a chance to date. Why not use them on Yuno?"

Noburi frowned. "But… we're married. You were there. Isn't this the part where people settle down and start acting like mature adults and talking about redecorating the kitchen and whatever?"

"I'm pretty sure you'll redecorate our kitchen over Kagome-sensei's dead body," Hazō said. "But it's odd to think of the Noburi I know and may or may not want to get killed bowing to social convention like that. If you want to take Yuno on dates, and give her surprise gifts, and write her terrible love poetry and so on, who's going to stop you? I bet you she'd love for you to simply court her like a single young woman you're in love with, the way nobody ever did."

"Excuse me," Noburi said peevishly, "my love poetry would be amazing."

"Oh, really?" Hazō asked. "I just bet you that Isanese love poetry has a 3-17-12-1 pattern, you only rhyme words with two or more vowels, and you have to mention a different kind of fish every third line."

"…I'll stick with the surprise gifts."

Hazō gave a sagely nod.

"I also had another thought, going off the back of my idea about couples' advice."

"Go on," Noburi said warily.

"You remember how, after the Great Collapse, we made a point of going around and getting people to share their grief with each other?"

Noburi nodded.

"Suppose we got people to do that all the time?"

"You want people to constantly talk about things that make them miserable?" Noburi asked. "Now, I'm not the world's greatest expert on making people feel better, but that sounds like a fantastic way to send morale through the floor."

"Nonono," Hazō said. "Suppose we gathered a bunch of wise old people, and others who are good at listening, like bartenders and such, and got them to do it professionally, with salaries and dedicated offices or whatever else they need? That way, the Gōketsu would always have someone who could listen to their problems and give good advice, and by systematising it, you could also get the experts to swap tips and generally raise their skill level. You know the Gōketsu policy is to communicate as much as possible, but there's so much that's hard to talk to family or close friends about."

Noburi's face, darkened by contemplation of Isanese poetry, lit up like he'd heard Neji tripped and fell in a latrine pit in full view of the Leaf Chūnin Girls.

"Hazō… that's brilliant. It's an amazing idea. In fact, it's an amazing idea with no obvious ways it can go horribly wrong, which is clear evidence you've been lupchanzed."

"Fear not, Noburi," Hazō grumbled. "We are only capable of targeting people with brains to consume."

"Oh, I'm not worried," Noburi said. "If this is what we can expect from a lupchanzed Hazō, then I, for one, welcome our new half-plant, half-animal overlords. Keep him as long as you like.

"More seriously, this solves a problem Akane and I have been struggling with since forever."

"What's that?"

"So you know how the Gōketsu civilian population is seriously top-heavy?" Noburi asked.

"Right," Hazō said. "Because many of the able-bodied adults moved out again once they had enough money for a place to live that wasn't an improvised shelter outside the safety of the village walls, while old people who had nowhere to go generally stuck around."

"And the thing with old civilians is…" Noburi began. "OK, do you know Hariko, the old woman with the mindmelting yellow lingerie on her laundry lines?"

"Is that who that stuff belongs to?" Hazō asked. "I half-wondered if it was Mari showing off to the civilians."

"I've had to sit through Hariko's life story at least three times now during my rounds," Noburi said, "and it made me think about a bunch of stuff I hadn't considered before, so I've decided I'm going to share the pain.

"See, Hariko grew up as a subsistence farmer in one of those no-name villages up north. One year, there was a chakra bloatworm infestation that took out one of the fields right before harvest-time, and the tax collector was in a bad mood when he was passing through, and in the end, they didn't have enough left for everyone to last the winter. So there Hariko's family was, slowly starving to death, and then one morning, Hariko woke up and her elderly mother was gone. Just like that, nothing but a series of footprints through the snow into the chakra-beast-filled forest. Because apparently, that's what you do in a farming village when times are tough and you're just an extra mouth to feed. You go into the forest, and your family isn't forced to make choices they'll have to live with forever in order to make sure as many people as possible make it through the winter.

"As it happens, Hariko got lucky not long after that. A clanless ninja passing through decided to take her back to Leaf as his mistress. Not that she had a choice or anything, but on the other hand, living in Leaf, and under a ninja's protection at that, is a better fate than most peasants in the world can hope for.

"Buuut… leap forward a couple of years and the natural order of everything sucking reasserts itself. The ninja dies on a mission, and his family obviously aren't going to let a filthy civilian keep the home, so there she is, out on the street with no money and no marketable skills, and nothing going for her except the gorgeous body that got her into this mess in the first place. Still, Hariko is a survivor who has Seen Some Shit just by virtue of being a peasant girl, so she works with what she's got, and eventually manages to make ends meet by working as a seamstress at a yakuza joint.

"Leap way forward, to last year. Hariko's getting fewer clients as she gets older, and her health is shaky by now, so she's preparing to retire. Then one fine night while she's at work…"

Noburi plunged his hand down, as if throwing something away.

"…our best buddies from Hidden Rock drop her house into the Abyss, or whatever they have here instead of the Abyss, with all her savings still in it because she's a country bumpkin who never got her head around the idea of banks. You know what happens after that—it's the Gōketsu to the rescue, and suddenly instead of starving to death in the gutter, she gets a roof over her head and three meals a day and none of it makes any sense but she's not going to question the miracle in case it goes away. Happy ending, right?"

"Isn't it?"

"Here's the thing," Noburi said. "Out in the villages, if you can't work, then you're just a useless extra mouth to feed. And Hariko's living here now, but she's still got no marketable skills, and also her hands are starting to grow numb, so that cuts off most of her remaining options. The way she sees it, she's a parasite. Then bam! Suddenly, the magical young Lord Gōketsu, who saved her life without asking anything in return, is deep in debt for reasons that she doesn't get, but obviously weren't his fault because he's a saint. And Hariko's still a useless extra mouth to feed. And then she remembers what her mother had the guts to do for the sake of her family…"

Hazō winced. "But she's still around, right?"

Noburi nodded. "She is, sure. Our civilians do look out for each other. But, knowing everything I've just told you, think about what it'd mean for old civilians to have a job that only they can do, without needing new skills that they might feel it's too late to pick up.

"All right," he said. "I'm excited enough about this that I reckon I'll go get the ball rolling. I'm sure Lord Kōzō will forgive me. See you later, Lupchazō!"

"Wait!" Hazō called out as Noburi headed out the door. "Before you go, I had a medicine question for you. Also, don't call me that in case Kagome-sensei gets the wrong idea."

"Spoilsport," Noburi muttered. "So what's the question?"

"When is a dying person beyond saving? Say their heart's stopped. Can you still resuscitate them?"

"Depends," Noburi said. "To dumb it down by a few kilometres for a layman, you die when your soul leaves the body, and the most common reason the soul leaves the body is when it's damaged so the soul doesn't recognise it as a human body anymore. A human body, as far as the soul is concerned, has a beating heart. If your heart stops, the soul doesn't belong there anymore, so it starts to leave. If you're really quick, maybe you can get the heart to start again before it does, and then the soul will figure it's in a human body again and decide to stick around. Otherwise, it's going to go follow the cycle of reincarnation, where eventually it gets drawn to a different type of body based on how it's been shaped by its experiences—but that's eschatology and not really my problem as a medic.

"So there's no 'point where a dying person is beyond saving'. The soul leaves when it leaves, and maybe that's instant, and maybe it'll be a couple of minutes. It depends on the soul, and the type of death, and what you can do about it and how fast. Why, who are you trying to kill for good? If it's Orochimaru, then I reckon you need to back up and figure out if he has a soul to begin with, because the evidence ain't promising."

"Actually," Hazō said, "it's the other way round. I have ideas for seals to suspend people near death, in case we can't save them now but maybe we can save them later."

Noburi frowned. "I don't know if a seal's going to be able to stop the soul from leaving the body. That sounds like, I dunno, a step beyond biosealing and into levels of weirdness even Orochimaru isn't into. On the other hand, I'm not a sealmaster. The stuff you guys do makes no sense to me anyway."

"I'm not sure it makes sense to me either," Hazō confessed after a second. "I tell the fundamental laws underpinning the universe what to do, and they just go, 'Yeah, sure, you got it, boss'. That's more than I get out of my actual subordinates."

"Hey," Noburi said, "maybe if you did a lucky dance of my choice every time you asked me to do something, I'd be an ideal subordinate too. Why not give it a try for a few months, see how it goes?"

Hazō rolled his eyes. "Get out of here, Noburi."

"Yeah, sure, you got it, boss."

-o-​

The rest of the plan is left in @eaglejarl's wicked talons.

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 519: Gōketsu Plans and Loyalties​

"Have a seat," Hazō said, waving towards the visitor's chair even as he let himself sag into his own with a long groan.

"You are too young to have up and down noises," Mari said, laughing.

"Up and down noises?"

Her face and posture shifted, becoming those of a much older woman. She dropped into the chair with a sigh. She let herself settle back for a moment, then leaned forward, hands on her thighs, and levered herself to her feet with a grunt. She smiled and shifted again, becoming once more the young and vital woman who had charmed her way into a position of influence throughout the most important city in the world.

"Up and down noises," she said, sitting down silently and fluidly.

Hazō chuckled. "What's the line? It's not the years, it's the mileage?"

"You might be light on years, but you're a little light on mileage too," she shot back.

"I'm really not," he said, jagged lines of miles and misery carving themselves across his face for just a moment. They vanished as quickly as they had come, replaced with a casual smile. "Anyway, this meeting's not about that. I wanted to thank you for your help at the ritual."

"You're thanking me for burning your brain to ash?"

"Hey, it was only a little bit of ash!"

Sea-green eyes rolled like marbles. "You're welcome. What's next? Should I set you on fire?"

Hazō pretended to consider it for a moment, then shook his head with a somber look. "No, on balance I think that would be counterproductive."

"Well, that's a relief."

"Heh. Yeah, I suppose. Anyway, I wanted to talk with the best political expert in Leaf about what our next moves should be. Specifically, I wrote up a report for Asuma and I want to know if and when I should turn it in." He scooped a sheaf of pages off the top of the rightmost pile on his desk and passed it over.

She flicked through it, spy's eyes recording the information quickly, and then shuffled back to the second page to check something. Finally, she looked up.

"You're going to tell him that your plan is to pry open a scar in space and time, break into the Naraka Path, scout around until you find our people, and pull Jiraiya and Hiruzen back to the living world."

He shrugged. "I mean...yes? That's the plan. We've had trouble in the past caused by keeping secrets from Asuma." He paused. "And Cannai. And—"

"Yeah, yeah, lesson learned, good job," she said, waving him to silence. She thought for a moment. "Hazō, have you ever heard the parable of the cat?"

"Tell me."

"Cat sits on a hot griddle, gets its butt scorched and runs for the hills."

"And it never sits on the griddle again. Sure."

"Right. But it also never sits on a cold griddle."

"You're saying this is a cold griddle?"

"I'm saying there's nothing in this document that Asuma needs to know. You made the strange decision to have yourself psychically attacked. You then had a hallucination about a man you respect, who you wish was doing your job so that you can do the fun things that you aren't currently getting to do."

"I saw that whole Toad Thrust thing. That's new information that Naruto confirmed is real."

"Which, if shown to Asuma, will make him go to Naruto and say 'hey, is this real?' to which Naruto will reply 'maybe, or maybe they are lying' to which Asuma will say 'hm, good point' and start thinking bad things that we don't want him thinking. So, yes. You had a hallucination that we can't prove was real."

"But we know the afterlife is real. I pulled Daizen—"

"Off a beach. Which could have been on the Seventh Path, or even on some other part of the Human Path."

"Lots of seas of acid on the Human Path, are there?"

"We've seen grass that drinks blood, ants made out of acid—"

"They weren't made of acid, they just excreted it."

"And somehow did not damage themselves but were able to melt holes in metal."

"It wasn't the Human Path!" he said, throwing his hands in the air. "It drained chakra out of my seals!"

"Or your seals were improperly made."

Hazō eyes narrowed.

"Okay, okay," she said, raising her hands. "Your seals are never improperly made."

"No seals are ever improperly made," Hazō said. "You either have a failure when they're created or they work reliably." He hesitated. "Well, occasionally if a seal gets destroyed in a weird way you get a failure, but that's not down to the seal being invalid. What they don't do is simply stop working because there's no chakra left in them. Not here, not on the Seventh Path. Only in that place on the other side of the portal. The afterlife."

"You don't know that," she said, stubbornly demanding he face reality. "All you know is that it happened, you have no idea why. Maybe that place was the afterlife, but what does that have to do with no chakra? Or maybe it was one of the other Paths. There's essentially nothing known about them, so why shouldn't they drain chakra?"

"Hang on, how do you know there's nothing known about them?"

She tipped her head in that archly superior way that (presumably) every parent trains a big sister to do the moment their little brother is born. "Because I've asked? Duh? You've been going on about exploring the Naraka Path for months. Obviously I'm going to try to find out whatever I can that will help you." A cloud of frustration tripped momentarily across her face. "Not that I've been able to find a damn thing that's stronger than spit. Even the bedtime stories are inconsistent."

"Thank you, Mari," Hazō said, his smile soft and real. "I didn't know you were doing that."

She mimed a curtsy without moving from her chair. "I'm your spymistress. It's my job to support you on the things you care about, O Mighty Clan Lord."

"Yeeeaaaah...right. Going back to the earlier subject: you said I shouldn't turn this report in to Asuma yet?"

She shook her head. "There's nothing here that's actionable for him and nothing that relates to politics, domestic or international. The absolute best that would result from him seeing this is that he laughs and thinks you're a bit barmy. More likely, if you say that you want to resurrect the Third it's simply going to remind him of his loss and cause him pain. Hold onto it until there's something solid. If you get the rift open, we report that but we leave out words like 'afterlife' and 'resurrection'. We simply say so far as we can tell it's virgin territory that Leaf might be able to extract resources from and that we're informing him as a courtesy since, as the Gōketsu did all the work, we are laying claim to the portal and the territory beyond it."

She shifted in her chair, gazing up at the endless vista of intuition that concealed itself on the ceiling. "He'll respond that that's wonderful, but the possibility that the portal opens to somewhere else in the Elemental Nations means that the Tower needs to be involved in order to prevent geopolitical issues resulting from hostile first contact with ninja from another nation. We'll counter by saying that the chakra-draining effect makes it clear that this is nowhere on the Human Path and therefore there are no geopolitical implications, so us developing it is no different than if the Hyūga dug a new gold mine or the Aburame developed a new breed of insect that produces huge amounts of honey.

"He'll come back by saying that the Tower needs to have people involved in the exploration for purposes of tax assessment." She frowned. "That one will be harder to deal with, but we can get some traction from the idea that the Tower doesn't send tax assessors on mineral exploration teams. They send them in after the clan in question registers the claim, and therefore the same should happen here."

"Hm." She cocked her head, thinking. "We should lay some groundwork, get some laws preemptively passed. We can disguise it as sparring with the Hagoromo...we'll find some new product or market that they're looking to expand into and we'll put forth a proposal that, in order to ensure taxation is fairly distributed, the Tower should have tax assessors deployed along with all economic development teams, with appropriate ninja bodyguards to ensure their safety. The clans will hate the idea of having bureaucrats peering over their shoulder, the Hokage will hate the idea of tying up our limited ninja manpower on babysitting missions, and the idea will get knocked down so hard it will leave a crater. Of cou—"

"We don't want to look like we're stirring things up with the Hagoromo," Hazō interrupted. "Thin ice there, and lots of potential blowback."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "As I was saying, of course we don't want to be the ones floating the idea ourselves, because it could look like we're stirring things up with the Hagoromo. No, we'll launder it through the Uchiha. It's to their advantage for such a law to pass, since it would mean every exploratory mission they send out would get a ninja escort attached without them having to pay for a C-rank mission. Given that their Clan Head is also their only functional ninja and their finances are still not what they were before the Massacre, that's obviously something that they would want." She thought for a moment. "Give me Gaku for a week or two? We can work out a proposed legislation and propose it to the Uchiha as though we were building a coalition. The tax assessors will be a sacrificial line item but we'll get something real in there for them that will pass in exchange for killing the tax assessors clause."

Hazō laughed. "Your brain is a twirly whirly place, isn't it?"

"Bucket o' snakes, refreshed daily," she agreed with a smile.

"In that case," Hazō said, "put some of those twirly whirls to work on my next thing: I want access to the Nagi Island seal and the weird metal array that went with it. No idea what it did, but studying it would be interesting and it's the only example I have of a sealing array of that size that was created by modern humans. It might give me some ideas for fixing the Great Seal, or at least coming up with a better patch."

"Hm." She frowned. "I'll try, but I'd be very surprised if the thing is even still there."

"Why n...oh." Hazō sighed and slumped back in his chair. "Because every Kage would have wanted their people to study it and every Kage would have wanted everyone else's people to not study it." He grimaced. "And this is why we can't have nice things."

"In fairness," Mari said, shrugging, "it does seem like the thing was going to destroy the world as we know it. Rewrite people's brains or get rid of chakra or blow up anyone who raised a hand against another person, or...who knows? Those guys were nuts."

"I suppose."

"Look, I'll approach Asuma on your behalf," she said. "I just want you to brace yourself for a no."

"Yeah, yeah. Well, do your best. And, as long as you're talking to Asuma, here's another thing on your docket: I want him to authorize Shadow Clone for Kagome-sensei and Noburi. Tell him that Kagome-sensei needs it for safety during our investigation of the Great Seal and Noburi needs it in order to improve his ability to serve as a medic-nin trainee. He can be in multiple places that way."

"I'll try," she said, after thinking a bit, "but I don't see it happening. Shadow Clone is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, secrets of Leaf. As far as I know, the memory-sharing aspect of it isn't widely known, but the fact that the clones are intelligent and as skilled as their user makes it something that every village in the world wants. Kagome is a walking information leak and it's already well established that medics aren't considered to be inside the compartment or else every doctor would already have it." She shrugged. "I haven't spent that much time at the hospital, but I don't remember ever seeing two Tsunades running around and you told us that she has it. If she's not using it to work on multiple patients at the same time then she agrees with it staying that tightly compartmentalized and she's not going to go to bat for Noburi to have it. She might even oppose it, since him getting it when no other medics have sounds a lot like nepotism."

Hazō rubbed his jaw in thought. "Do you think we could buy it?"

"Say what now?"

"You already made the point that when we pry that rift to the afterlife open, the Gōketsu are going to be the sole owners of an absolutely enormous amount of resources. Suppose we told the Tower that we would sell them...I dunno, as much land as there is in Fire along with all the mineral rights and help developing it, in exchange for all senior Gōketsu ninja being granted Shadow Clone."

Mari leaned back in her chair, stunned. She said nothing for several long seconds. "I think..." she said at last, before trailing off. "I think that would need to be a very careful negotiation. There are so many ways it could go wrong—it could look like we were trying to bribe the Hokage, or like we were more concerned about the Gōketsu's power than the security of one of Leaf's greatest secrets, or like we had this vast territory that we could simply disappear to if we weren't given enough lollipops and brightly-colored ribbons. One wrong word could absolutely destroy every scrap of goodwill we have with the Tower. Plus, the other clans would learn about the deal soon enough and they would go ballistic at the idea that Leaf's security compartments are open to anyone with deep enough pockets."

Hazō very carefully did not say 'Shadow Clone training is increasing our rate of growth so much that in a few years you, Akane, Kei, and I will all be S-rank badasses who can tell the clans to go eat dirt if they look at us funny.' Not only was it the sort of thing that would be disastrous if word got out that he had even thought it, but it wasn't that simple.

Everyone who had access to Shadow Clone from the time of Tobirama to the current day knew that it could speed up training of certain things. Make a Shadow Clone and have it practice throwing kunai alongside you for an hour. When the clone popped and its memories reunited with your own, you would have the experience of practicing for two hours. The Shadow Clone technique, as Jiraiya had once confirmed to Team Uplift, was the reason that Leaf's jōnin tended to be moderately more powerful than their peers from other villages.

Moderately more. Not infinitely more, not even exponentially more.

There were two limits on Shadow Clone training, the first being the immense chakra cost. Not only did it require a large amount of chakra to create even a single clone, but whenever a clone appeared or disappeared, chakra rebalanced itself between the caster and every Shadow Clone they currently had, thereby cutting their reserves in half after taking a huge bite out of them to start. It meant that even with jōnin-level chakra reserves, creating a single clone left you too low on chakra to practice jutsu or even chakra-boosted combat. It was really only good for training physical combat skills, stealth, and similar things. Not the jutsu and chakra-integrated taijutsu that most ninja depended on for combat. Well, it was good for that and for doing paperwork and other Clan Head duties, but it was likely that the only Clan Heads in Leaf with access to Shadow Clone were Sarutobi Asuma (the Hokage), Senju Tsunade (grandniece of the technique's inventor), and Gōketsu Hazō (brilliant weapons designer at a time when the scent of war had been on the wind).

The chakra limitation went away the moment that Noburi became a Leaf ninja. His ability to transfer chakra from random non-busy ninja into his family meant that Akane, Kei, Mari, and Hazō were able to have as many clones training each day as they desired.

The other limitation of the Shadow Clone was more insidious: clone sickness. Human brains were not designed to handle experiencing multiple simultaneous worldlines. When a clone popped, its experiences hit like a brick. The pain grew based on how many clones one had out and how long they had existed. It was quite possible to damage yourself via clone sickness—indeed, it had happened. Senju Chikashi, one of the first ninja to learn the technique after its creation, had overdone it and suffered seizures and temporary paralysis that took months to heal. Refusing to learn the lesson, he later killed himself through overtraining with Shadow Clones.

That limitation was rapidly being disproven by one Gōketsu Hazō. It was possible to train yourself to handle clone sickness better—all you needed to do was learn to keep your focus on who you were and which of your worldlines belonged to your original self. The problem was that training the necessary focus involved creating lots of clones and having them sit around meditating or doing painful and exhausting exercises while staying concentrated on a single idea. While they were metaphorically navel-gazing they were not working on combat skills, or paperwork, or anything else useful. It made the entire effort somewhat pointless; why should you suffer pain and boredom and be constantly low on chakra if there was no extra skill gain from it?

Hazō's realization was that if one could have dozens of clones practicing all day then one's skill growth would be astronomical. So astronomical, in fact, that it was worth investing a few years of practicing nothing but resisting clone sickness. The time would pay itself back in spades once he and his clan mates could actually handle having dozens of Shadow Clones training all day without the caster's brains exploding out their ears when the clones popped.

To him it seemed so obvious that he couldn't understand why it wasn't standard for every trusted Leaf ninja to train this way.

​

"Because, Hazō," Kei had said all those months ago, "no one except a god or perhaps a jinchūriki has the chakra to power such a training regimen."​

​

"Sure," Hazō said. "But now that Noburi is here"—he nodded respectfully to his brother—"everyone is going to see that this is possible and be knocking on our door. If we handle it right this will be the single biggest asset our clan has. Noburi, absent a direct order from the Hokage, I'm never going to order you to supply chakra to anyone outside the clan. That means you'll be the gateway to massive power. Everyone in the village will need to keep your goodwill or you don't supply them." He hesitated and looked to Kei. "Unless...can the Hokage simply order him to do it?"​

​

Kei hesitated. "I am uncertain," she said at last. "It would depend on some very specific interpretations of law. On the one hand, the Hokage has the power to order any Leaf ninja to engage in any mission. In theory, he could class recharging other Leaf ninja as a C-rank mission and assign such missions to Noburi. On the other hand, 'mission' typically implies something that happens outside the walls of Leaf. Well, aside from the D-rank missions that are essentially chores inside the village and are used as teambuilding exercises for new genin and punishment assignments for more senior ninja. Noburi is a bloodline holder and a member of a voting clan. The other clans might not be comfortable with the precedent—no Hyūga would wish to be involuntarily assigned to police patrol inside the village, no Aburame would wish to be assigned to ridding another clan's housing of insect infestations, and so on. There is also the question of specificity. To the greatest extent possible, the law and Tower policy are supposed to treat all ninja equally. Noburi is the only Leaf ninja with his bloodline and therefore any law or policy related to forcing him to use it would be specific to him. It would set the precedent that the Tower can set rules for individual ninja that are different from the general body of ninja."​

​

"Yeah," Noburi said, "but it's not like anyone could stop him, right? He's the Hokage. He can do what he likes. The Clan Council is just an advisory body."​

​

"Yes and no," Mari said. "Yes, in theory the Hokage is an autocrat. No one can countermand his orders and he is not answerable to any legal proceeding. On the other hand, societies only work with the consent of the governed. Become too awful and the number of missing-nin starts to increase. People don't tell you bad news, so you end up with a distorted view of what's happening. The clans work against you in subtle ways—dragging their feet, or simply not volunteering. Yagura was willing to accept those costs but the Hokage have historically been different. I don't think any of them would have been willing to engender that level of opposition."​

​

"There is a more straightforward reason that others are unlikely to think of this," Kei said. "They are not us. The Gōketsu are new to Leaf and we have little to no actual loyalty to it. We are here because our interests align; should our interests diverge far enough, it is entirely plausible that we would depart again. We lack the generational investment in Leaf's success that the other clans have. Part of that investment is a sense of patriotism and duty. Most of the other clans could easily sustain themselves on their various income streams—land ownership and the taxes that result from it, merchant caravans, and so on. There is no need for any Aburame ninja to ever take the field, nor any Hyūga, nor Hagoromo, and so on. And yet, they do. Every ninja in Leaf goes on missions as often as they are physically capable of so doing. They see it as an honor to risk their lives, even knowing that they will almost certainly die young. As a result, they are not going to spend a moment thinking about any training regimen that involves investing years in skills that do not aid their field performance.​

​

"We, on the other hand, lack that sense of obligation. If we are frank, Team Uplift would undoubtedly be fine to sit around and do nothing while other ninja take care of defending the city and preserving the sanctity of Fire's borders."​

​

"That's a little unfair," Hazō said, shifting uncomfortably. "I'm great with the idea of defending the city and the borders and all that. I simply want to do it efficiently. If we can turn our entire clan into a bunch of S-rank ninja, that's going to contribute a lot more to Leaf's safety than a handful of chūnin and one or two jōnin would."​

​

Mari nodded. "Sure. But Kei makes a good point. I doubt that any other clan, not even the Nara, is going to see it that way. If taking missions is a badge of honor then cowering at home is shameful, even if one pinky-promises with syrup on top that you're only doing it to get stronger so you can be more effective later, no really we swear!"​

​

Hazō's lips compressed in frustration. "Fine. Whatever. I don't care about their idiotic nationalism. I don't want you guys dying, so we're going to train efficiently. That means everyone is working on managing clone sickness until I say otherwise. Three or four or five years from now, when we can all go toe-to-toe with Orochimaru and Tsunade, we'll take all comers regarding whether or not the Gōketsu are an honorable clan. Until then, fuck 'em."​

​

​

Hazō shook his head to bring himself back from the fond memory of days when the team was united and comparatively drama-free. He took a moment to reorient.

"Okay," he said. "It's a fraught conversation, fine. On which subject, how is your own training going?"

"It's going fine," she said, frowning in puzzlement.

"No no. Your training. You know...WHOOSH!" He made a gesture like a bird taking off: linear movement, then curving up into the air.

"Oh, right. Yeah, that's going fine too."

He waited a beat to see if she would expand on that; she'd always been very cagey about what she was training and how. When she simply smiled innocently back at him he gave it up. "Fine. Back to Kagome-sensei and Noburi. Buying Shadow Clone for them might perhaps be feasible given giant piles of money, but that's a ways out and very risky. Is there another way to get it for them?"

Mari grimaced. "Honestly, not that I can think of. Nothing that doesn't come with catastrophic risks, anyway—for example, you could teach it to them without Tower approval and hope that they can keep it secret. I recommend against that in the strongest terms. If you want to do that, better if we all go missing again right now."

"Wouldn't work," Hazō said. "Us going missing would draw an absolutely cataclysmic response. Not only do we have Shadow Clone but I've got a head full of highest-security strategic information and intelligence details. Plus, Noburi is a lynchpin of Leaf's new tactical doctrine. We'd barely clear the gates before there would be a dozen teams of hunters after us, each of them with Hyūga, Aburame, and Inuzuka trackers."

"I'm not sure if I'm more alarmed that you've clearly thought about this or relieved that you've realized it's impractical," Mari said with a smile.

Hazō didn't return the smile. "I'm the Clan Head, Mari. It's literally my job to think about worst-case scenarios and how I can keep you all safe if things go absolutely to crap."

"Uh, right. Okay, well...I don't currently see any good way to get Shadow Clone for Noburi or Kagome. I'll try to come up with something, but I wouldn't hold your breath." She paused. "If you do in fact get that portal open and there's huge and exploitable resources behind it then we can revisit the idea of buying it for them. Until then, keep that idea completely under wraps, okay?"

Hazō nodded, the smile slipping out again. "Believe it or not, I can learn from past mistakes."

She dragged her hand dramatically across her brow as though wiping away sweat. "Phew! What a relief!"

He flicked a blob of sealing wax at her head and blew her a raspberry. She swatted the wax aside and danced out of the room, laughing.

---

Other segments of the plan happened offscreen, specifically:

• Ami style training: use max strength Banshee Slayers for a day. Communicate with gestures, facial expressions, and body language.
• 4x SC read Sealing notes for 7 days.
• Level Sealing to 29. Day 8, attempt MARS. (Multiple Activation Relay Seal, a seal that can be paired with 0-2 seals and, when MARS is activated, will cause its paired seals to activate.)
  • Request Kagome's assistance.
  • Invoke "Kagome Certified Research Facility", "Promising Sealing Student".
  • Mild Burnout okay.
• Author's Note: After leveling Hazō's sealing to 29 his Summoning Scroll Acolyte stunt (SSA) gives him an effecting Sealing skill of 51, meaning a +6 Aspect Bonus (AB). You can gain benefit from at most AB days of prep, each of which gives you +2 to your Calligraphy and Sealing rolls. In other words, you don't benefit from the 7th day of prep. On the other hand, SSA inflicts a Mild Consequence on Hazō after he makes a research roll and that Consequence takes 2 days to clear. The plan calls for the update to be 8 days long, so that's what I'll do. You did 6 days of prep, made the roll on the 7th day, and you will be halfway through your recovery period instead of right at the beginning of it.

XP AWARD: 30

Brevity XP: 8

Ami-style training: 1

"GM had fun" XP: 0 No strong feelings about this plan.

Rolls for the MARS seal:

• Hazō, Calligraphy (29) + 12 (prep) -3 (dice): 38. Safe!
• Hazō, Sealing (51) + 12 (prep) + 6 (invoke "Promising Sealing Student" personal Aspect) + 6 (invoke "Kagome-Certified Sealing Lab") + ? (Kagome-sensei's Sealing AB from his assistance) + 6 (dice): 81 + ? Safe!

Hazō and Kagome had an excellent time working together and made incredible progress. They feel like they're close; with a little luck, another session like that could finish the seal.

It is now about 7am on April 27.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 7:00 AM .

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 520, Part 1: Defying the Cycle​

Unusually for mid-morning on a day ending in "y", Yuno was not training, out killing things, or stalking Noburi on his way to work. Instead, she was sitting in the atrium, humming an Isanese courting song as she embroidered an elaborate zigzag pattern around the collar of a crimson dress. There were bandages covered in medical sigils wrapped around her left forearm, which went partway towards an explanation.

Hazō had spent last night at the research facility, so he wouldn't have been there when Yuno came back from her mission. She didn't seem in pain, but still…

"Are you OK, Yuno?" he asked. "It looks like you got hurt."

Yuno put down her needle. "Nothing important. We got ambushed by some banshee wrens on an extermination mission out east. I'm used to training with tapirs, so I just shrugged it off, but Yūma went down faster than a rent girl at a daimyo's stag party."

Hazō choked. "I'm sorry, what?"

"It's one of Mari's expressions," Yuno said matter-of-factly. "It's about rich civilians who hire mercenaries instead of ninja bodyguards and then think they'll be safe hunting in the woods."

"I think… you might want to double-check that with her," Hazō said slowly. "Also, do not talk about hunting stags in Leaf. You have no idea how much grief I got from Akane the first time I brought up venison."

"Sure," Yuno said. "Anyway, obviously I massacred them all before he woke up, but Satsuko and I aren't so good at protecting people, so…" She nodded towards her injured arm. "Noburi says the curse should wear off in a few days as long as I don't strain myself."

Hazō made a note to check in on Yūma as well. Having a chūnin nearly get killed shortly after joining the clan was not a good look for the Gōketsu. Did he need additional training on how to use the standard loadout?

"I guess that explains the embroidery," he said. "I didn't know that was one of your hobbies."

"It's one of the twenty skills of the good wife and wise mother," Yuno said, "like cooking, bee divination, and folding the laundry so the creases make geometrically-pleasing patterns when you wear it."

She held up the dress for him to see.

"Isn't it beautiful? Noburi gave it to me as a gift when I got back, completely out of nowhere. At first, I thought he must be feeling guilty for something and Satsuko and I needed to take action, but once we were done interrogating him, I concluded that he must have just wanted to make me happy. Isn't he the best husband ever?"

Hazō gave a noncommittal "hmm". Not that he wasn't pleased with Noburi's efforts, but his brother had yet to nearly destroy Leaf or nearly murder a clan head in front of the Hokage for his wife's sake. Hazō was going to have a lot of catching up to do if he ever married Akane, though hopefully bringing her idol back from the dead would go a long way.

It was a good time to move on to the main topic, before Yuno picked up on his lack of enthusiasm. Hazō had originally wanted to use the specific Isanese customs for a clan head requesting a favour from a valued clanswoman, but then ran into the problem where the only person able to advise him on something so specific would be Yuno herself.

"Say, Yuno," he began, "I've had a thought. Obviously, it's not something immediately relevant while you're hurt, but would you consider training our estate ninja, or maybe even KEI ninja as well, in combat against chakra beasts?"

Yuno stared at him uncertainly. "What do you mean?"

"You're probably Leaf's greatest expert in chakra beast extermination," Hazō elaborated, "and protecting civilians from chakra beasts is one of the cornerstones of civilian welfare. Building walls is all well and good, but there are enough kinds of predator out there that can ignore them, and they won't do a thing for hunters or others who need to go outside the village. If we want universal Uplift, we have to expand the radius within which human civilisation is a source of enlightened rule rather than free dinner, and that means taking the battle to the monsters."

Seeing Yuno's hesitation, Hazō continued.

"The war's over, and we've got more hope of lasting peace than we've ever had. We can finally afford to focus our resources on fighting our real enemies. The problem is, Leaf's suffered devastating losses.

"Kei's told me about this thing the Mori call the Kaso-Sensō Cycle. After a war, there aren't enough ninja left behind to keep up the previous scale of extermination missions, so the circles of safety around the major settlements shrink as chakra beasts start to move in again. The villages that flourished on the edges disappear, one by one, until a new equilibrium is reached. Eventually, the ninja replenish their forces enough for the circles to start to expand again. The civilian population rises. More food gets produced. More children with ninja potential are born. Finally, the ninja grow powerful enough that they're ready for another war.

"We're about to hit the start of one of these cycles. Leaf's losses have been huge, and they've primarily been jōnin and chūnin, so there are going to be areas repopulated by chakra beasts that genin simply aren't able to handle. We're going to need all hands on deck, and those hands need to be as good at the job as they can be.

"The other thing is the Gōketsu. We want to take the lead on any pro-civilian initiative because that's what we do, but we also want to offer training to the KEI as part-payment for adoption tickets. We have promises to keep, and we have a clan to grow, and we want to move fast on both of those things because adoption is going to get harder and harder as the KEI gets stronger and has more to offer the clanless, not to mention that its ideology is only going to grow deeper roots over time. That means we should be doing what we can now, even while our finances are tied up with the MARI and other projects.

"This is just a request," Hazō added belatedly, realising that his speech had made it very difficult for Yuno to refuse, "not an order. If you're not comfortable with it, that's fine. But to my mind, you're unquestionably the best choice for the job, and if you take it, I'll make sure you get whatever support you need. Lessons on how to teach, assistants, your very own helpful Akane—you name it."

"What exactly are you asking me to teach?" Yuno asked. "I know you're fine with selling your old clan's secrets because they treated you badly, but to me, the Mountain Cleaver Style is the one good thing the Kannagi ever gave me—yes, other than you, Satsuko, there's no need to glare. I'm not sure how I'd feel about teaching it to a proper apprentice, the way I could if I was still in Isan, never mind…"

"Nonono," Hazō interrupted. "Obviously I'm not going to ask you to give away your personal secrets. But even basic tips from you will be a big deal to someone who's only ever had access to Academy training. Besides, the important part is the chakra beast combat. You and I both know that fighting chakra beasts is very different from fighting ninja. You need different tactics. You need a different frame of mind. If you just apply your Academy training without thinking, you'll die—we saw that too many times in the Swamp of Death."

"Me," Yuno said thoughtfully, "a teacher…"

"There's no hurry to decide," Hazō said. "Also, while you're at it, what do you think about tutoring Academy students?"

"Why do you want me to do that?" Yuno asked. "I can see training estate ninja so they're less likely to die before we adopt them, and you want me to train KEI ninja as part of the favour economy, but why Academy students?"

"Leaving aside the favour economy thing, which we should really unpack at some point, I was just thinking it would be a way to help you build connections. Kagome-sensei's done some Academy outreach, and it's been great for him. Besides, I'm sure children would love you."

"I wouldn't know," Yuno said. "Back home, people were always careful to tell their kids to stay away from me. Besides, what if I don't want to build connections? I already have nearly ten people I can trust, and even more people I can sort-of trust because you'll execute them if they hurt me, and then even more people I can maybe-sort-of-trust because Kei will make their lives miserable if they hurt me. Why would I want more people in my life when it can only make things worse?"

Hazō didn't have an immediate answer to that. On the surface of it, more connections was always better. That was clan head common sense, and Mari had made it clear that defying her on this point would end with him suspended upside down in a vat of cold porridge. But then, it wasn't like Hazō went out of his way to socialise with people he wasn't interested in either. Even within his nominal social circle, there were people like Chōji whom he simply wouldn't interact with if it wasn't for gaming nights. (What was going on there, anyway? How had Hazō ended up so distant from his brother-in-law's and his girlfriend's surrogate brother?)

"Well," Hazō said sheepishly, "just give it some thought. The Academy will still be there if you change your mind."

"Last time," Yuno observed, "it disappeared within three days of me arriving in Leaf."

Hazō sighed. "Statistically speaking, it'll still be there if you change your mind."

"Was there anything else?" Yuno moved to pick up her needle again.

"Yes, actually," Hazō said. "I wanted to talk to you about Fujisawa."

Yuno's gaze drifted down to Satsuko, propped up against the edge of her seat. "Don't worry," she said calmly. "I've already taken care of that."

-o-​

You have received 4 + 1 (Brevity) x 7 days = 35 XP.

-o-​

You were unable to store un-drained chakra beasts. Fully-drained (i.e. dead) chakra beasts could be stored and retrieved, but could not be revived.

Mareo spent one visit regaling you with stories of his romantic conquests (which made Isan levels of sense due to missing cultural context), one visit complaining about lack of respect from young bears these days, and one visit chasing you with murderous intent before you urgently unsummoned yourself. You think you were able to witness a Bear ninjutsu, which involved huge black claws that made the air bleed where they passed, but Mari also notes that it's not strange for summoners to pick up human ninjutsu which fit their "theme" or summon-inspired combat style.

-o-​

My hand still hasn't recovered, so I'm just posting what I have for now. Part 2 will have to be done in flashback, I guess.

-o-​

What do you do?

Voting closes on May 28, 2022 at 1:00 PM

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 521: Inversion?​

Spoiler: dice

Hazō, Calligraphy (32) + 4 (2 days prep) + 3 (dice): 39. Success!
Hazō, Sealing (51) + 4 (2 days prep) + 6 (invoke "Promising Sealing Student") + 6 (invoke "Kagome-certified Sealing Lab") + ? (Kagome's AB from his invoke) + 0 (dice): 67 + ? Success! MARS is complete


Time for some showing off!
Hazō, Deceit (24 x 1 for Sleight of Hand stunt) + 136 (tag "the author finds it funny and this isn't a plot-critical scene so eh to simultanionism") - 3 (CM penalty, applied retroactively, "the author would prefer that this roll come out to an even number but doesn't want to change the dice roll because that's dishonest and unsimulationist") + 3 (dice) = 150

Kagome, Alertness (spot the sleight of hand): ? + 0 (dice) = ?

Kagome fails! In the bad old days this would have been a C-class failure, but thankfully we aren't using fractional exponents anymore. (New readers or those who read Story-Only can drop over to the main thread or the #mfd channel on the Discord to ask what this means.)

"Hah!" Hazō said, jumping to his feet.

"What?!" Kagome-sensei said, instantaneously going from snoozing comfortably against a tree to on his feet and waving his blast-ring-equipped hands in all directions. "I'm awake! I mean I was awake! I've been awake this whole time!"

"It's fine, sensei," Hazō said, waving the older man back to the grass as he sat down himself. "I figured it out, that's all. There was a transient connection that I'd been missing. The moment I snipped it off, the whole thing clicked." He proudly held up the very first successful instance of the Multiple Activation Relay Seal, which he had decided to call MARS for short. The rest of the family had asked him what 'MARS' meant and Hazō had shrugged, saying that it was a pronounceable acronym and that was good enough.

"Huh," Kagome-sensei said, studying the seal curiously. "Show me."

Hazō gestured theatrically with the MARS seal in his right hand, bringing it up and to the side in a wide gesture that drew the eyes.

"We'll need something to pair it with," he said dramatically. He looked up and forward, head and eyes following the course of an invisible fly buzzing a foot in front of him and two feet up. After a moment he thrust his left hand forward and plucked an explosive tag from 'thin air'. (Well, he flipped the tag he'd been palming into an extended and showy two-finger grip.) Simultaneously, his right hand dropped back to his side, tugging another folded-up explosive seal out from where it was wedged behind his belt.

"Wow!" Kagome-sensei said, eyes going wide in child-like delight. "You didn't use any handseals or call the name of the technique or anything!"

"Of course, this is the Multiple Activation Relay Seal," Hazō said smoothly. He transferred the MARS seal to his left hand and with his right hand he 'plucked from thin air' the second explosive. Kagome-sensei applauded.

Prestidigitation over, Hazō pressed the MARS seal to one of the explosives and sent a miniscule pulse of chakra into it. He repeated the act with the other seal, then tossed them well away in different directions.

"Sensei, would you care to do the honors?" Hazō asked, offering the MARS seal to his teacher.

Kagome-sensei looked dubious about it, but he reached out one finger and triggered the MARS. An instant later, the two explosives went off, one after the other but so close together than only trained ears such as those of anyone on Team Uplift could have spotted the difference.

Kagome-sensei's eyes went wide and gleeful. "How many can they do?" he asked.

"MARS is single use," Hazō said with a grimace, "and they only pair with at most two other seals, but you can chain them. Have one MARS activate a seal—"

"Like an explosive?"

"Or a Strobe Light seal to blind your opponent, or—"

"Or an explosive?" Kagome-sensei said, his voice becoming plaintive.

"Or a macerator loaded with pangolin pepper dust so that they're too busy screaming at the pain in their eyes and nose to do anything. Or—"

"An explosive?" The words were pleading.

"Yes, or an explosive. And it can also simultaneously activate another MARS which does the same and you can chain together as many as you like. Anyway, I'm going to make some load-outs for all of us and then tomorrow we can get on the road. Want to help?"

Kagome-sensei's eyes twinkled with glee as he reached for his brush.

o-o-o-o​

"Ha!" Hazō said, putting his hands on his hips and looking around in satisfaction.

"What?" Akane asked, pacing around a bit to cool down after today's segment of their multi-day run.

It was five minutes past noon and one minute since the team had arrived at the site of the O'Uzu Island rift scar. The granite tube, no longer gushing lava, was where they had left it. The puddled lava flows were black and warmed only by the modest April sun that was currently playing peek-a-boo with the clouds. The granite box where the hell plants from the first rift was still there and apparently unopened. The other granite box, the one where Hazō had created to shelter an unconscious Daizen after rescuing the cultist from totally-the-afterlife-no-matter-what-anyone-else-says. The tunnel that Daizen had dug to escape from the shelter had slumped in and there were signs that something was now using the box as a lair. Fortunately, the space wasn't that big so it was unlikely to be something terribly dangerous. Still, it would probably make sense to throw an ex— Oh.

BOOM!

"I got it!" Kagome-sensei said, waving from beside the box, a beatific grin on his face. "Something was lairing in there so I threw an explosive in! All clear now."

"Thank you, Kagome. I don't know what we'd do without you," Akane said, amused. Her self-loathing was...not healing, exactly, but at least scabbing over. There were now entire hours where she was her old self! Granted, that was 'hours across the course of a week', but it was still progress. This morning had been a few of the good hours, and now she was prowling the perimeter of the area where Hazō and Kagome would be working, searching for any possible threats so that the sealmasters could focus.

"Shall I set up camp?" Yuno asked quietly. Her eyes were moving steadily and Satsuko was in her hand instead of slung across her chest where the axe resided when running cross-country.

"Thanks," Hazō said. "Be sure to give us plenty of room. Two hundred yards minimum, since we'll likely need to do some research while we're here. And it can be a little more elaborate than our traveling camps—I think we passed a small waterfall on the way in? If you can site it near there we could set up the hot tub. It'll need a little elbow grease, but we can make it work."

She frowned. "I'm not sure I want grease in my hot tub. Is this a Leaf thing?"

"Sorry," Hazō said. "It's an idiom. It means a little bit of hard work. Gathering enough fuel for a big enough fire to heat the water, that kind of thing."

"Oh." Her face shut down in exactly the way it always did when she was reminded that she was the outsider who needed simple things explained. "Yes, of course." She turned and jogged back the way they'd come.

Hazō winced and then sighed. He shook his head, then moved to do the preliminary prep of the area that would have to happen before any actual work could be done. It was tedious work and brain-rippingly frustrating to have to wait, but it was still important.

o-o-o-o​

The area was cleaned, cleared, and determined to be relatively free of threats. Kagome-sensei had taken weather records and cast runes. He had experimented with infusing storage seals in various spots around the clearing, paying close attention in order to spot the miniscule differences that the team had noticed on their previous visit. There had been three rifts here; if you ripped three holes in a piece of cloth, there tended to be fraying throughout the entire area. The expectation was that they should see tiny disruptions of infusion flows throughout the area.

Nope.

They went back through every detail of Hazō's fight with Daizen, to the best of Hazō's ability to recreate it. (Which was less perfect than he would have preferred, since there was now a giant granite tube where the fight had happened and he wasn't capable of accelerating himself in midair the way he had when the tube hit him in the belly.)

Nothing useful.

With the preliminaries over, it was time to focus on the main event. Hazō went over to the northeast corner of the box that entombed the plant horrors. He set his heels in the correct position and used the Iron Nerve to retrace his steps from their previous visit, ending with a series of marks on the ground to delineate precisely where the rift scar was. He pulled a set of wooden poles and twine out of a storage seal and replayed the act of setting up a tripod atop the marks, then marking the sides of the poles to show the precise vertical location.

Kagome-sensei had been watching and came hurrying over the moment Hazō finished. He produced one of his diagnostic seals—created specifically for this task—and walked a spiral around the tripod, starting a dozen yards away and coming inwards only slowly.

The diagnostic seal was an array of dots arranged across the surface of a series of overlapping spirals. The seal reacted to the currents of chakra in its surroundings, different dots emitting different colors and intensities of light in response. Kagome-sensei had successfully used it to identify the location where various jutsu had recently been used and identify the element of the jutsu. He had also used it to distinguish between a rat corpse that had been dead for an hour and one that had been dead for a day, despite both corpses having been wrapped in linen so that Kagome couldn't distinguish between them visually.

The seal was beautiful, fascinating, and a miracle of seal research. It was also single-use, lasted only two or three minutes, had a range measured in finger-widths, and was so sensitive that any intentional use of chakra within a dozen yards would ruin it. (Out of curiosity, Hazō had tried using one near the Great Seal on the Seventh Path. The diagnostic seal promptly caught fire and exploded, attracting the attention of one of the Dragons and forcing Hazō to spend ten very tense minutes hiding until the monster lost interest in finding and eating him.)

"Hmmmm..." Kagome-sensei said, holding the latest of his diagnostic seals precisely where the invisible rift scar (presumably) hovered.

Hazō bounced impatiently. He'd had no chance to learn what the various signals of the seal meant and Kagome-sensei hated to be rushed.

"What did you say the destroyed seals were?" Kagome-sensei asked, finally looking up.

"An empty storage seal, a Banshee Slayer, one of the macerators that I had loaded with pangolin peppers, a misterator, a Purifier, an Earth Dome, one of your wide-angle blast seals and one of your force axes." There were times that it was very cool to have been born a Kurosawa; shortly after the event in question, Hazō had made a point of reviewing all his seals to find which ones had been destroyed, then saying the names aloud. All he had to do to remember what they were was have the Iron Nerve replay the action of speaking those words. He still needed to remember the general shape of the memory in order to find the correct actions for his bloodline to recreate, but once he did that much he could be certain that he had the list correct.

Kagome-sensei went back to studying his diagnostic seal, moving it around very slightly as he did. "Hmmmm."

Hazō managed to hold out for at least thirty seconds. "Well?!"

"Don't rush me!"

Hazō clamped his lips shut so that only a few strangled grumbles escaped.

Finally, finally, Kagome-sensei finished his initial examination. "There's something there."

Hazō waited for at least a second before bursting out, "AND?!"

Kagome-sensei gave him a sour look. "There's something there, it's emitting very slight amounts of chakra, and it's not moving, which means it's probably not some kind of bug too small to see. It doesn't have any elemental signature that I can detect, meaning that it's neutral chakra. Assuming that one of your seals failing is what caused it"—he raised a hand to cut Hazō off—"which, yes, is the most plausible explanation, that means it probably wasn't the Earth Dome or the Purifier. Those would have been earth or wind aspect respectively. I'm not detecting any of the ripples that I often see around active storage seals, but those aren't always detectable so don't rule anything out. Anyway, I'd tentatively give best odds to the failure having been one of my blast seals exploding the barrier between Paths." Given the severity of the event and his normal caution around seal failures, the older man seemed awfully smug about the (presumed) source of the rift.

"Okay," Hazō said. "What does that tell us?"

Kagome-sensei's eyes grew sly. "You've always said that the problem was you wanted to resurrect people. Sounds like explosives really are—"

"Aggh!" Hazō said, throwing his hands in the air. "Fine, I walked into that one. What does it tell us about how to re-open the rift?"

Kagome-sensei rubbed his jaw. "Well," he said slowly, "my blast seals are a modification on regular explosives. Regular explosions start at the center of the seal and go out in all directions. Mine..." He looked around to ensure that no one was nearby. Akane was well out of earshot, still checking the perimeter of the field and gathering firewood. Yuno was out of sight along their back trail.

"Mine are a combination of a storage seal and an explosive," Kagome-sensei whispered. "When the blast goes off, it opens a very tiny storage space around the point of the blast, swallowing whatever part I don't want to emit. It's only there for an instant, just long enough to swallow a section of the explosion and shut itself down, and it's so small that you couldn't put anything physical in it. Not even a grain of rice. But..."

Hazō nodded thoughtfully. "But, any storage seal is a tradeoff between capacity, opening speed, and safety, so—"

"What?! That's not true and you know it! It's not just capacity, opening speed, and safety, you gormless hobgoblin! There's also ejection speed, storage shear, fourth-chord stress—"

Hazō raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay, you're right. I was too casual with that. Still, under most cases a storage seal is perfectly safe to destroy as long as there's space for it to eject its contents, meaning that it's weird to think the storage effect would be the issue. The only time you see a failure would be under some very unlikely combination of events, like—"

Kagome-sensei's eyes widened. "—if there's an anabatic turbulence on the aetheric wind at that location and the moon is in the third quarter while the Lovers are below the horizon then the storage seal—"

Hazō nodded furiously as he caught his teacher's point. "—become convex, with the degree being dependent on—"

"—the ambient chakra levels, potentially even causing—"

"—an inversion! Which, if your blast seals involve a storage effect, means that something like the rift could theoretically be caused by the destruction of one of them in a high-chakra environment—"

"—which that lightning jutsu would have been! Lightning jutsu throw chakra everywhere—that's why they're so chakra-intensive! The whole place would have been saturated with lightning-aspect chakra which could have supercharged the storage effect—"

"—which has no elemental aspect itself, which is why there isn't any in the rift!" Hazō ran out of words and simply rode the waves of shock until he could get his brain working again.

"Sensei," he said at last, "am I crazy, or does it sound like one of your blast seals turned itself inside out? The lightning jutsu damaged the seal, causing it to activate but damaging the matrix so that it couldn't function properly. The energy that would have been the explosion turned inwards and, between that and the ambient chakra from the lightning jutsu, it caused a complete inversion, which caused the miniscule volume to inflate into a larger volume. That portal was a storage space, with one transshift canal here on the Human Path and the other on the Naraka Path."

Kagome-sensei nodded. "It would make sense. Doesn't mean it's right, but it's the obvious answer and the first thing to investigate." He rubbed his neck. "No idea how we could possibly reproduce it. It would have depended on the aetheric weather on this spot at that moment, as well as the star positions in effect. I don't suppose you took a sky reading afterwards, did you?"

"Sorry, Sensei," Hazō said, blushing. "I didn't think of it. And I'm not sure Hidan would have let me take the time even if I had."

"Hrmph. Well, can't be helped. Don't know that I'd want to try deliberately recreating the circumstances of a seal failure even if you did have the data." He studied the empty air where the rift scar floated. "We'll have to focus on opening this thing instead."

"Right! So, how about..."

Akane glanced over; Hazō and his teacher were facing each other and leaning forward, both sets of eyes wide and hands gesticulating wildly as the thoughts spilled out. She couldn't hear what they were saying from here, but at least they seemed excited. That was either a very good thing or a world-ending calamity.

---

Author's Note: Ugh. This obviously took way longer to write than I would have preferred. Today has been a low-focus day. Sorry for that.

This update covered 8 days: 2 days of seal research prep, 1 day of seal research, 1 day of making MARS load-outs for the family, and 4 days of traveling to O'uzu.

Kagome's diagnostic seals have given up the information that they have and nothing that either he or Hazō has come up with has yielded more information. Following up on the new theories is going to require seal research; Kagome is already preparing a facility.

XP AWARD: 40

Brevity XP: 8

"GM had fun" XP: 2
It is now about 3pm.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Jun 1, 2022 at 7:00 AM .

 

[Velorien]

Interlude: Debts Owed

By @Paperclipped​

Two people, a man and a woman, walked side-by-side through the Gouketsu Compound, earning respectful bows from all they passed.

"I just don't get how they didn't see it! Everyone knew, literally everyone, that we were out there getting skullfucked. There were barely any border missions coming back that no one at all died on, and pretty much anyone I talked to could have given you a long, long list of the people they were still waiting for, who never reported back in."

Despite her shorter stature and slower comfortable pace, she still walked a quarter-step ahead of the young man at her side. She wore a beautiful kimono. Someone without an eye for silks might have thought it plain for its lack of pattern or design, but its colors told a different story. There were folds upon folds of rich and iridescent purple fabric that shimmered in the morning light and seemed almost blue in places where the light hit it just so, tied once by a plain red sash and again by a second sash in a muted gray that held the hems of the kimono off the ground so that it would not drag in the muddy ground still wet from the spring morning shower.

"And the civilians! Maybe everyone else in Leaf are idiots that don't see civilians, but Hazou should have seen it and noticed the estate growing with the refugees coming in. And we're not even seeing a quarter of all the refugees out there, most of them are out there starving in the streets of Leaf. Isn't that something Hazou cares about?"

The young man, in contrast, was far from put together, and very, very far from elegant. His loping gait was predatory, and though his words were only to the woman, he glared at every passerby as if daring them to do anything but put their heads down and shuffle by. His formal clothes didn't suit him, the high-collar silken shirt looking like armor on a pig. He picked at the tassels hanging from his sleeves with a clear scowl of annoyance on his face.

"I just don't see how Nara could be this incompetent. If they're so smart, how come they didn't put together the facts right in front of their fucking faces!"

Mari sighed. "You're acting like Shikamaru, or any one person in Nara, had access to everyone's information. That's not true. Shikamaru was spending most of his time planning special operations and used his spare time to get an overview on the entire war effort. No one else was trying to understand the entire village at once. All the knowledge was compartmentalized into chunks. That made it harder to see the whole picture, but even then eventually suspicions rose to the top. Eventually."

Haru's scowl deepened. "Sure, how many subordinates did Lord Nara have? If the casualty reports were split among three people, any of them should have had enough of the picture to sound the alarm. And if it was ten, then some should have been better than average and others worse than average, so how did those ones looking at the worst of the worst still ignore it?"

Mari shrugged. "There's another element you're not factoring in here."

Haru stopped talking as they walked, crossing out of the red granite walls around the Gouketsu compound. They were well down the path to the southern gates before he spoke again.

"The KEI?"

Mari nodded and Haru swore. If there had been a tree by the road, it would have had a hole swiftly punched through it. Luckily, most of the trees near the roads had been logged for the compound.

"What the hell? They-"

Mari spoke, and Haru cut off his angry words in an instant.

"KEI ninja suffered the bulk of the losses that you know about, yes. Clanless ninja without unique edges get sent on border patrol, that's just how it is. That means that the chuunin and genin that died in the war were disproportionately KEI. The opposite is true for the jounin though. Clan jounin are stronger and more useful on average, so they were deployed more aggressively. As I'm sure Kei will tell you, wartime missions are a numbers game. If you've got a good intelligence department and sensible commanders, you only lose a jounin once every four missions. Otherwise… the odds are worse. Given how pressured we were by our early losses, we had to roll the dice a lot.

"We struggled in jounin-level missions even though we pulled in all the really competent staff because our intel still sucks after the Collapse. The top-end of the war effort was held together with spit and wishes, really. It's a miracle that anyone had time to keep chuunin teams on rotations, to reorganize teams that had casualties, to take reports on the actually important stuff that showed up, and to make sure that we were holding ground."

Haru's fists were tight enough that his muscles must have been cramping, but he didn't say anything. Mari had to know that this was exactly the problem – that they had lost so many people to the war because the Tower recklessly mishandled their ninja. He knew how bad it was, of course. He remembered seeing how overworked the commanders had been when he was reporting, and how little attention they could afford to pay him. He remembered…

o-o-o-o​

"Gouketsu Haru," he said, with a stiff bow.

"Akimichi Choutarou," said the squad leader, a senior chuunin in his early twenties. He towered over Haru and was built like a giant barrel, with a round chest and far more gut than any ninja should have had. His voice was boisterous, and he gave Haru a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Haru didn't begrudge him that – they were both being put on the team because their last teammates had died in the field. It would take time to build up trust and rapport. Hell, Haru might have tried to offer Akimichi a smile if the thought didn't remind him of Matsumura's friendly grin and banter, or of Matsumura's pleading eyes as the explosive tag counted down inside him on the side of that canyon.

"Sano Kyouko. A pleasure to meet you all," she said blandly. Sano was around his age, and just a little shorter than him, quite tall for a woman. She looked at the ground rather than making eye contact, and her waifish figure would have blended in with the trees if it weren't for the faintest hint of chakra-trained strength and agility in her movements. Haru didn't think she could project any less presence if she tried.

After a moment's pause, Akimichi spoke up. "A pleasure indeed! We'll be on the standard patrol rotation it seems, at least until they give us a specific mission to do. You both know how it works, one week on and one week off – though the bastards in the Tower count traveling to and from our check-in sites as part of our week off," he said with a good natured smile to reassure them that he didn't have any treasonous intent. "I'm a close-in fighter myself. And you two?"

"Same," said Haru.

Akimichi turned to Sano, who shrunk subconsciously. "Ranged weapons, sir, though I'm also somewhat proficient in genjutsu."

Haru frowned. He thought genjutsu users were social specs and infiltrators. Maybe Sano looked uncomfortable at being an infiltrator on a combat team?

Akimichi nodded. "This sounds like a good team composition. We don't have much time to work on tactics before we get sent out tomorrow, but we can test some things. Here, Gouketsu, show me what you can do so I can see how you can best support me."

Haru nodded and started to check over his seal loadout.

o-o-o-o​

"It's just fucking terrible! Putting people on teams the day before they're sent out and assigning team compositions basically at random? We're a ninja village, it's our job to go to war, and if the idiots in charge of this whole thing can't even get that right, they-"

"Stop," said Mari, and despite her voice still holding that mild, impartial tone, something in it cut through his anger like the keenest blade. "You're angry. That happens to all of us. Control it. There is no circumstance under which it's okay for you to be calling your superiors in the Tower idiots. There's no circumstance where it's okay for you to be calling Hazou an idiot either, even if he won't care. It's harmful to the Clan, and it's harmful to you."

Haru swallowed and forcefully opened up his fists, instead using his fingers to drum an angry rhythm against his leg.

Mari glanced down at his fingers. "Control it."

Haru inhaled and focused on Mari's earlier words – pretend to be someone who wasn't angry. What did someone who wasn't angry about this look like? Blinded by loyalty? Too stupid to see how dysfunctional the village hierarchy was? Just completely kept in the dark? He didn't know if he could try to be any of those people…

Still, just thinking about it a step removed from the frustration he felt got him to relax a little. He let out his earlier breath, a deep exhale through the nose.

"You didn't follow the lesson," Mari said, eyes forward.

Haru checked his composure. Yes, he could speak calmly. "I couldn't find an angle that made me feel what I wanted to feel."

Mari nodded. "We'll revisit this, but it's more important that you learn control.

"As for the tangible stuff… the communication isn't there on either side. Clan Heads don't hear from KEI regulars, and the regulars don't read reports from our top analysts. You're lucky to know anything at all. Despite all his… experiences, Hazou still doesn't do filters. He's picked up a little sense when it comes to real secrets, but he doesn't try to keep things need-to-know by default. He's decided that you're family, so you get to hear everything on his mind."

Haru snorted. "I became family to him when I was adopted?"

Mari nodded. "Yes, I'm pretty certain he thinks that."

"What about the chuunin that we adopted last month? Hazou was there, sure, but even I could tell that he wasn't all there, you know? If we asked, I doubt he'd even know their names. They were just a line item for him." Haru knew some of the estate chuunin that had been adopted that day. Jin had really looked up to Hazou, and Haru should really have found some way to make it up to him…

Mari nodded again after a moment's consideration. "Hazou prioritizes. He rushed this year's adoption batch because of the war, because he wanted to get them the Clan jutsu as soon as possible to help them on deployments. Different circumstances than when we adopted you."

Haru considered that for a moment and decided to let it go.

They continued to walk for a few minutes longer. They made it halfway to Leaf's south gate before Mari spoke again. "So, our meeting with the Amori. It should be with Amori Touru, a chuunin, but she might be replaced by another chuunin, or maybe even one of the family civilians. Given how easy this should be, you'll be taking the lead in the negotiations."

Haru ran through his memory. "They made us a loan so we could buy debt from the Hyuuga, we said we'd pay back in cash, but we want to change it so we repay in land?"

Mari nodded. "They want land more than they want money right now. They're trying to expand their income, so they'd be burning their cash stores on something similar anyway. We won't get a 'final' deal today, but the value is small enough that it probably ends up on Hazou and Lady Amori's desks and stamped without a second thought. We'd like to do three acres, but really anything less than five is fine. While we're waiting in their compound, I'll show you a map of the land they'll want us to clear and some figures about their value. Sadly, the Hokage's lowered tax rate will work against us here, but not by too much."

"If this is so easy, with facts and figures at the ready, why do you want me to take the lead on it?"

Mari laughed. "Because you desperately, desperately need experience in negotiations that are adversarial but not hostile. Us getting more of what we want means that they get less of what they want, so we're pretty strictly opposed to each other in this deal. Still, even if the Amori are a conservative clan, our financial ties are incredibly strong. They're our second largest partner after the Nara, and that's accounting for the fact that Hazou's dating the Yamanaka Clan Head."

"So we have to play it nice?"

"Exactly. You can't loom, you can't threaten, you can't really do anything worse than vaguely hint that Hazou might deal with them less in the future if he doesn't like this one. Even if Amori sends a rich kunoichi who dismisses you for being civilian-born before you say a word, or worse, a powerless idiot civilian, you're gonna smile and sip whatever pretentious tea they offer you."

Haru imagined it, someone born to power looking down at him and refusing to deal with him, refusing to acknowledge anything he said, refusing his right to do good for himself and his clan, and felt his anger rising again in his gut. He took a deep breath and let it go.

After a moment, he spoke again. "That sounds awful."

He could hear the grin in Mari's voice. "Yep. It's gonna suck for you. Amori will dance circles around you and leave you feeling screwed six ways to Sunday, and there'll be nothing you can do about it. Best of all, they'll know, because I'm in the room, that we won't go back to Hazou and say they didn't play fair. They'll be completely free to take you for all you're worth."

"Why do we have to do this again?" Haru was careful to keep any hint of whininess out of his voice. Why did he ever agree to Mari's unique tortures?

"Because the Gouketsu owe a debt, and we need to pay it."

Gouketsu owed a debt, and he needed to pay it. That made sense. In fact, it made Haru remember…

o-o-o-o​

Haru circled the outskirts of the village towards the plume of smoke from the granaries. If there were enemy ninja, they'd probably take the shortest way out. He crouched low in the grass when he spotted them. All three were fresh genin, none looked older than thirteen. Not a threat, unless they had a sensei. Haru swore under his breath. The genin were interrogating a villager now, but they would surely spot him in the thin grass once they turned.

One of the genin yelled and got his sword halfway out of its sheath before a comically oversized arm grabbed his head and slammed it into the wooden side of a building. Skull cracked before wood did, and he dropped to the ground, unmoving.

The other two genin split and leaped, one flashing through handseals while the other spotted Haru and yelled. Haru jetted forward, but Akimichi was faster. Before the girl could finish her jutsu, Akimichi grabbed her by the shoulder and chin. With a savage twist, he snapped her neck. The corpse dropped.

The last genin howled in helpless rage, and Haru had to keep from asking himself how someone so nice could so easily murder children as he repositioned to keep the last opponent from escaping.

o-o-o-o​

"Wake up! Genjutsu user!"

Haru sprang to his feet with chakra like liquid lightning pouring through him and burning away his sleepiness. Akimichi staggered under the force of his own Dispel and started to back away as Sano spun a trio of shuriken into the woods at Akimichi's attacker, a tall, blonde-haired woman who swayed out of the way of all three weapons without moving her feet. Haru paled. Only Mari could pull off that level of casual agility.

"Jounin!"

"Run!" Akimichi called.

Haru didn't ask questions. He substituted with his prepared target, and started to pour on the speed.

o-o-o-o​

Haru realized later that he should have died that day. If Akimichi hadn't noticed and resisted a jounin-level genjutsu, the jounin would have slit their throats where they slept and taken their headbands as trophies.

o-o-o-o​

"Explosive Clones!" Two copies of the enemy squad leader split left and right to flank Team Choutarou.

"Human Bullet Tank!"

Akimichi charged the enemy squad leader. He almost looked like a rolling Pangolin until Akimichi did something, and suddenly the Multi-Sized giant was a blur that Haru's eyes couldn't track. A moment later, the Rock chuunin had one eye pinched shut and a clearly dislocated shoulder as Akimichi spun to a stop in a cloud of dirt and dust. The Rock chuunin screamed as he grabbed his arm and forced it back into the socket, then yelled "Retreat, everyone! Hiding Like a Mole!"

Haru sprinted for the other enemy ninja, but they sank into the ground before he could reach them. He twisted to see the enemy squad leader's clone rushing him and blitzing through handseals.

"Exploding Palm!"

Haru closed the distance by rolling under the expanding conical shockwave, hoping that Sano wasn't caught in the blast. He readied his Pangolin jutsu to deal with the clone while Akimichi handled the other, knowing instinctively that this opponent was too strong for Sano alone. The clone fought with impressive skill, but it couldn't stop Haru's momentum as he dismantled its guard with crushing blows and beat it back. It tried to open the distance for another jutsu, but Sano's shuriken kept it in melee, and Haru used the opportunity to trigger his Macerators and blow the clone's head off with a fist-sized chunk of granite.

The clone's torso swelled, and Haru reacted a quarter-second too late. The shockwave of the clone's suicide explosion caught him in the chest like a sledgehammer as he tried to leap backwards and carried him a dozen feet. He landed hard on his back and started to spring to his feet before aborting the movement at a sudden pain in his ribs when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other clone turning away from Akimichi to face him.

Handseals flickered by and the clone held out its empty palm. Haru's eyes flicked around – he was on his back and immobile, and he couldn't Substitute with anything nearby. He closed his eyes, bracing for the end.

The clone opened its mouth to call the technique and was stopped by a massive hand grabbing its midsection and squeezing with a sickening crunch. As it started to swell, Akimichi turned and hurled it into the distance.

Haru rolled and pressed himself to his feet. The enemies had all fled, and Akimichi gave him a genuine smile. "Good work, Gouketsu! Now, let's whack those moles when they come up for air!"

o-o-o-o​

"Agonizing over the Amori torture? Don't get broody, it'll be good for you," Mari said.

"Just thinking about a debt I owed." Haru shook his head, pushing the thoughts away. "No, I get why you're making me do this. I fucking hate it, but I get it."

Mari laughed. "Really, half the reason I need to set you up like this is because most situations I can put you in aren't bad enough. Oh, if only you knew the things they made us do in I&S training back in Mist…"

Haru didn't bother asking her to elaborate. He needed to distract her before she rediscovered techniques from that Sage-damned hellhole to the east. "So, the Amori are our allies. Are things going downhill from here? What's at the end of this road, having me grovel in front of the Hagoromo?"

Mari considered that. "Good idea. I hadn't considered that one." Haru grit his teeth. "Probably not, since it's a useful posture to display to them right now. Though… maybe I can talk with Hazou to set up a situation where we can use that, just for you." She turned to flash him a smile.

She saw the expression on his face, and the smile grew wider for a moment. "Learning the lesson might need more than groveling. Maybe I need to get creative to give you a proper graduation from this part of the training. How hard would it be to set up a scenario where the only recompense that Lord Hag will accept is you licking his boots clean? Pretty hard, but I am pretty good," she said, putting a finger to her chin in thought. "I'll give myself bonus points if I can get him to walk through a pigsty or two right before hand. That'll challenge both of us!"

Haru didn't respond. By this point, he had learned to recognize and ignore Mari's needling. At least, he hoped that this was actually just needling. "When you were pitching this to me, it sounded a lot more like understanding and controlling people, and less having my ego torn down and being controlled."

"It's all the same. Understanding what it's like to have your ego torn down gives you all the tools you need to do it to someone else, if you pay attention. Notice what parts of you are complaining and pay attention to what's making them hurt. That's where you start.

"It's all just tools in your toolkit. Sometimes, controlling someone requires busting them down, other times you need to build them up. Sometimes, the best way to control someone is to give them control over you."

"Really," Haru asked, voice flat.

"Yes, really. If you're better at deception than they are, and they're not particularly suspicious, you can get away with just giving them the illusion of control. Other times, though, you really will need to give them real power over you, let them make you feel things and do things that are outside of your control. You're very far from that for now, since it requires that you understand the target very well to make sure that you're not giving them something that you can't afford to lose, but it will be a tool for your toolkit. And, as with any kind of training, it's best that you get used to the toughest parts earliest."

"That… makes sense, in a really messed up kinda way."

"Get used to it. The whole point of all of this is to turn really interesting, complex, likable people into simpleminded instruments of your will, at least where it counts. It's not all going to be fun stuff like learning how to get away with murder."

"You're really bad at selling me on this."

"Glad you understand me. It's not a good path in life to take. As I said, you can hop off this wagon whenever you want and I won't give you any shit for it. No matter what, though, it's a useful path to follow, and the Clan desperately needs more people that can take it."

"Hm," said Haru, noncommittal. He let the conversation lapse.

They were approaching the Great Tobirama Gate now, the gigantic walls flanking the gate making the tiny ones around the Gouketsu estate look like a child's attempts at making a sandcastle. They had been joined on the road by a mix of farmers and tradespeople who lived between the walls, though the civilians gave the ninja a healthy distance. The talisman on Haru's sleeve marked him as a ninja, but Mari seemed more like a kami in her kimono. The gentle morning breeze caught the unnaturally light fabric and made it float weightlessly, and Mari exaggerated the effect by walking without any bob, so that she seemed to only touch the ground on a whim. The pale makeup and crimson hair reinforced the impression, leaving all the civilians on the road staring.

She stopped a short distance from the gate (just far enough that the ninja at the gate wouldn't be able to lip-read, Haru noted) and faced Haru head-on. "This will be tough. You really can't afford to show any hint of being threatening. Anger is a good tool, but given your default temperament, you can't let any leak through. We need to strike a collaborative tone."

Haru nodded.

Mari smiled. "So, you know what's coming. You're a ninja. What can you prepare now to make this easier for your future self?"

Haru considered her question while farmers passed them by in wide circles. "I don't know what would help. Is there something obvious? Don't tell me it's something stupid like visualizing how it's gonna go down."

Mari laughed. "One option is to exercise, since it's harder to feel intensely angry when you're bone-tired. For another, you could arrange an interruption to give yourself time to cool off mid-conversation, and if you're clever, you'll set it up so that you can signal for your break. Maybe hire a messenger boy to give you a message. But yes, it's not stupid to think specifically about what will make you overreact and work through the feelings now."

Mari leaned in. "Want to try imagining the scenario again? Those Amori ninja, smugly leering down at you, never having the words to make them stop as they prod you with subtle barbs that you have to take because you're too brutish to respond…"

Haru let himself fall into the emotion that Mari was painting and felt his blood start to rush and his skin grow warm.

"It doesn't even have to be the Amori. Anything that gets you mad works since it's like exercise. Once you really work out an emotion, it's weaker for a while, so we can pick something that really gets the heat in your throat. I can think of a couple things. Imagine your dad-"

"Stop," said Haru.

"Getting torn apart in an ambush by that stone spike jutsu that nearly got you. Or maybe-"

"Mari, stop it," he said through grit teeth.

"Imagine Lord Hagoromo having his way with your little sisters. If you really want to prepare, I have the genjutsu to make you live it. You just need to ask."

Haru lowered his head, trying to keep the memories at bay for a moment longer, but he couldn't and he remembered…

o-o-o-o​

Their last patrol had been intense, and the team was glad to have a week unmarred by life-or-death combat. Someone had leaked to Akimichi that he was being considered for jounin, and that had put the senior squad leader in a good mood that he was eager to share with cooking and booze. They'd had to work harder to find safe campsites where Akimichi could cook, but sitting around the fire, chuckling along to Akimichi's bawdy tales and trying not to laugh at Sano's reddening face, Haru decided that the journey had been worth it. He'd even shared a few tales of his own, after plenty of cajoling and wine from Akimichi.

When they camped down after their last day of patrol, a genin arrived by their campfire to send Team Choutarou onto high alert. After some identity checks, the genin explained that he was guarding a nearby city where a couple Leaf ninja had recently disappeared, and that his commander wanted a combat team to try to flush out possible Rock ninja before the city could be lost.

Akimichi shrugged and said "It was a boring patrol. Why not head down and show the rats what a Leaf heavy combat team can do?"

o-o-o-o​

Yokoze Dennoshin, the chuunin leading Leaf's forces in Yudoyama, explained the situation. Simple enough – a ninja guarding the city walls had disappeared last night and when they searched the city, another chuunin mysteriously missed check-in.

Yokoze quickly dove into descriptions of how the city's festival day would affect their patrol, but Haru sensed something unusual in the man's demeanor. Mari had told him to consider the why behind people's actions, so Haru searched for a pattern in the man's voice, when he was tight and when he was relaxed. Yokoze shot a concerned look at the two genin behind him, and Haru put it together. Yokoze wanted to discharge his duty as a Leaf ninja, but he'd gotten too attached to his team. The chuunin was torn with the desire to flee to Leaf to keep his people safe.

Well, Yokoze would have to avoid leaping in the line of fire, but Team Choutarou could handle anybody short of a jounin.

o-o-o-o​

"There! Jutsu up!"

Haru wasn't fast enough to see what Akimichi saw, but he followed in the wake of the giant man as he bull-rushed through the crowd of festival-goers in the center square and called forth lightning around his fists.

"The genin!" Yokoze called, pointing at a rooftop.

"Go!" yelled Akimichi, and Yokoze took after the fleeing enemy genin with his squad in tow.

"Situation?" Haru asked.

"One woman, chuunin age," he said, tapping an abandoned, rotting cart in the alley as they ran. "Grabbed a bundle under here, sword-shaped. Cover me like we practiced."

Haru nodded. Yokoze had spotted the enemy ninja and her genin team earlier, and it seemed like the enemy team had foolishly split to make Team Choutarou's work easier, but the maze of alleyways they were running through came to a sudden dead-end. The ground was free of tunneling distortions, the walls and rooftops free of sandal-prints, and there weren't any signs of a clone disintegrating.

Haru suppressed a shiver as Akimichi spoke. "We need to go back."

o-o-o-o​

Haru stepped between fallen bodies under blood-splattered paper lanterns hanging over the boulevard. Haru flipped a corpse over to see a genin with a deep stab through her eye. He picked up her still-warm body and moved to dump her with her commander and comrade.

Around the edges of the massacre, Sano kept herself from retching while pretending to scout, and Akimichi barged into civilian houses to interrogate them. Sadly, civilians tended to dive for cover and diligently not observe anything. Haru wondered if the dead ones in the street had all been loose ends.

The enemy was fast. In the forty seconds of separation, they'd killed Yokoze's team and a good two dozen civilians. Earth ninjutsu and thrown weapons littered the boulevard, and Haru carefully didn't note that many of the dead civilians were stuck with Leaf-style shuriken. Yokoze deserved a proper burial. Probably.

"Akimichi, do you know medical ninjutsu?" Haru asked.

"No," he said, "Sano?"

She shook her head as well.

Haru gestured at the bodies. "Some of them are probably alive and bleeding out. Let's get a civilian doctor in and ask them what they saw."

Akimichi thought for a second and shook his head. "We need to get back to Leaf and report so someone can clear them out."

"Sir, they're low on chakra now. We should push our advantage."

Akimichi shook his head. "We don't know their capabilities and they're very willing to kill. We're not an intel squad, but a Hyuuga and a jounin should be enough to see the mudeaters to their graves. Let's get out of here."

o-o-o-o​

"What the-"

Haru heard Sano's exclamation and prepared to jump out of his bedroll before his brain caught up and he heard the sound of kissing and Akimichi's low moans.

Ugh. Why did they have to do it now? And wasn't Akimichi a little old for her?

"No! Get off me!"

Haru stiffened, then turned to face them. Akimichi was half lying on top of Sano, and she was thoroughly pinned under the mountain of a man. She jerked her head away to avoid his lips and he started kissing her neck, caressing her waist with the hand he wasn't using to pin her shoulder to the ground.

A million thoughts raced through Haru's mind.

Wasn't Akimichi a good and honorable ninja? No, he'd heard enough of Mari's offhand comments to realize that evil men could pretend to be honest for a long time.

Why today, while their comrades' blood still painted their sandals? Abusers had to pick a day and tonight would be Akimichi's last chance to pull this before they were back in Leaf.

Why in front of Haru? His word as a clan ninja would outweigh Sano's even with the KEI, but Haru could testify against him. Did Akimichi think Haru would just stand by?

Maybe he would have to. They hadn't run too far from the city, and Haru knew he was weaker than Akimichi. If it came to blows, Haru wouldn't come out on top. And Akimichi had saved his life twice over…

He could just ignore it. Akimichi was due to be promoted. They were returning to Leaf. Haru might never see him after tomorrow. He could even report it then.

"Stop! Please!"

"Be a good girl now, or else I'll need to punish you," Akimichi said, voice low and throaty. "Mmm, I love the taste of your sweat…"

Sano stiffened up at Akimichi's threat, under his giant palms that could tear her in half like rice paper. One of those hands slipped under her shirt. She didn't dare turn her head, but her eyes flicked to Haru begging for help.

Haru sighed, internally. Whatever Akimichi had thought, he had thought wrong.

The Gouketsu stand up for the downtrodden.

Haru didn't bother with ninjutsu, he just kicked deep into Akimichi's fat belly with chakra-enhanced strength to send the man rolling away. Sano jumped to her feet and ran to put Haru between her and her assailant as Haru approached Akimichi, letting his rage run free.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? You shitstain of a ninja, you're a fucking disgrace to the whole village!"

Akimichi mumbled something, tugging up his unbuttoned pants with one hand and pulling back the other as if to strike Haru. Haru surged forward and shoved an elbow into Akimichi's chest, knocking the larger man to the ground.

"Don't touch me. Don't touch anyone," Haru said, looming over Akimichi. "We're going to the Hokage when we get back to Leaf, and you're going to get what you deserve, you bastard."

Choutarou shot him a glare and mumbled something under his breath again, while behind him, he heard Sano straightening out her clothes and taking a cautious step forward.

"Watch out Sano," Haru said, "The fucking rapist might do something unpredictable when he's horny and brain-addled."

"Haru, I-" Sano started, as she was cut off.

"You war my shem a fil! She mea no ga ba!" Akimichi yelled at Haru, then slumped over.

Three.

Haru looked down at him. "He must have been on some kind of drugs-"

"Haru, listen to me-"

Two.

"That's the only explanation. Not that it justifies-"

"I'm not sure what's going on, but it could be very bad-"

One.

"Anything that he did, he deserves punishment."

"He could be under a genjutsu!"

Haru's blood chilled as he remembered a separate set of Mari's warnings. Watch out if your teammate is acting out of character. Watch out if your teammate is losing their grip on reality. Watch out for-

Zero.

The kunai caught Akimichi in the groin with the exploding tag on its hilt already glowing.

o-o-o-o​

Haru didn't remember much of the chase. He had sprinted through the forest, throwing out Substitutions as fast as he was able and burning through chakra faster than he had ever burned it before, while covered in bruises and cuts and smoking burns and pieces of Akimichi. He'd gotten far enough away to get his skywalkers on, somehow, but he'd had to draw on reserves he didn't even know he had to evade the enemy's last, vindictive hail of weapons and make it into the skies.

He'd had plenty of time to think on the long journey back to Leaf.

o-o-o-o​

"Control it."

This time, Mari kept her voice gentle as Haru came out of the flashback.

"It can be hard, unbelievably hard, to let these things go for even a second. But you need to. Getting caught in the past is incredibly common for ninja, and even if your battle reflexes stop it from happening in a fight, those reflexes won't help you when you're chatting over tea and cakes. But because it's so common, people will go out of their way to turn your trauma into a weapon against you, so that means you need to learn how to control it."

Haru shook his head. "Sorry. I'm fine. Let's go."

Mari studied him for a second, then sighed. She produced a plush armchair from a storage seal hidden in her sleeve with a flourish, then smoothly settled into it after checking that her hems wouldn't drift into the mud. A couple farmers on the road gawked at the ninja magic, then quickly hurried along.

She spoke, voice still calm and gentle. "No one can understand exactly what you're feeling, but I do understand what it's like. This is my first real war too, since I wasn't old enough to meaningfully contribute in the last one. Even if I could keep my own missions smooth, I still came back home week after week to find my friends dead."

Mari smiled, a sad smile for herself. "I'm a social spec, Haru. I spend a lot of time getting to know and understand people. Sure, there's the whole twisting them into tools thing that I keep mentioning, but that's the worst part of the job. The bulk of it is really fun. You meet people, you tell them about your life, you learn what kinds of jokes make their eyes light up, and they show you their world, their friends, and the social fabric they inhabit. So to come back hoping to shack up with that one guy and meet that girl that has the funniest tall tales and to only find holes where they used to be? That hurts me."

Haru stayed quiet, letting his memories fade away as he listened to the rhythm of Mari's words. She met his gaze. He wasn't sure what she saw, but she looked down for a moment, then continued.

"I was a jounin in Yagura's Mist. When you made jounin, you were put on the mission rotation. He would give you a mission and you would do it. You would come back, rest for a few days or a week, then he would give you another. It was endless. If you were injured, you could recover, but you couldn't take off.

"If you just killed your first long-term seduction target and still felt heartbroken about it? You get your next mission in a week.

"If your sensei disappeared while you were out and you didn't know why no one would say her name? You get your next mission in a week.

"If you came back from a mission with your best friend's guts still on your skirt because she broke under the pressure and tried to go missing? You get your next mission in a week.

"You stayed on the rotation until he was satisfied, usually a year or two, then you had a little more freedom and a little more time to yourself. Never enough time to really think about it all, but just enough that you could stay this side of sane."

"And?" Haru asked.

"And what?"

"Are you trying to say that was like the war was for me?" Haru said.

"Yes," said Mari, "and you shouldn't have to clarify all subtext explicitly."

Haru nodded. "But what was the point? Your stories always seem to have a point."

Mari shrugged. "You have some time now. Hazou won't send you on a mission if you don't want to go."

"What should I do?"

Mari smiled again, and stood up, sealing the chair away. "Let's get going, the Amori should be waiting for us. We'll need to speed up, but we should be just late enough to throw them off balance without actually being rude in a way that compromises our negotiating position."

Haru followed after her, trailing a half-step behind as she started to walk back towards Leaf's southern gate.

"You didn't answer my question."

"I wish I could."

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 522: Opening the Rift​

It had been three days.

Three miserable, frustrating, aggravating days.

Yuno and Akane had been sweeping the perimeter and training their combat skills against one another. They were holding up fairly well—the weather was nice, there were no demands on their time, and they could either have time with people or time alone as desired. Akane and Hazō were annoyed that they couldn't use their Shadow Clone training, but it simply wasn't safe out in the wilds. Creating a single Shadow Clone took almost half of Hazō's chakra, and then it halved what remained by transferring it to the clone. Yes, he recovered whatever the clone had left when it popped, but that still left a frighteningly long period of vulnerability. Without Noburi available to refill their chakra it simply wasn't worth the risk while out in the field. Instead, Hazō focused on helping Kagome-sensei work on re-opening the rift. When he wasn't doing that, he started sketching designs for a new seal, a version of ARS that was contact-only instead of ranged, but could be activated through chakra adhesion like the skywalker seal. As it turned out, this was harder than expected.

Between not being able to train in the usual way, the lack of progress on cracking open the rift to the afterlife, and the challenges with his own project, Hazō was ready to chew nails. He decided to take the afternoon of the fourth day off. He meditated, did slow soft-style taijutsu practice, and treated himself to some of the Fourth Hokage's notes on the bijū-containment seal. It was widely regarded in Leaf as the pinnacle of seal theory—at least, the little that anyone could understand of it. The notes weren't pedagogical material, they were the drafts and scribblings of a working researcher; they were 80% opaque to even the best sealmasters in the village. The 20% that could be deciphered was brilliant. Seal theory in Leaf had advanced simply based on the scraps that lesser men could decipher of the Fourth's work on this one seal. He had solved multiple long-standing issues in chakra alignment and collimation, meaning that seals using his principles were much more robust against changing astrological effects, meaning less inclined to fail during infusion. To this day, sealmasters fought to get sufficient security clearance to work on the notes and slaved over them for their entire careers once they had it.

"Agh!" Hazō shouted, throwing his hands in the air after slaving over the notes for four hours.

"What?" Kagome-sensei asked, looking up from the stew he'd been glowering and poking at without tasting.

"These," Hazō said, waving the skinny leather-bound folder. "The Fourth's notes on his bijū-containment seal." He looked at the folder. "Actually, I take that back. This is volume three. There's seven more like it, and none of them make a damn lick of sense." He flipped a few pages. "Look at this! He starts the infusion from the middle of the seal, and then he does multiple injections at different locations! He injects the chakra at multiple locations, tracks it through separate sections simultaneously, and then unites it into a complete whole right at the end—at least, I think that's what he's doing, because it's the only way to make a scrap of sense out of this insanity! Plus, his notes are nothing like Jiraiya's—Jiraiya's were detailed, they included safety precautions and design theory, and everything was neatly organized. These are nothing but two pages of design notes, a few prototype blanks that make less damn sense than the notes, plus some instructions on infusion patterns that make even less sense than the blanks." He gestured to the blank on the right. "There's intakes where there should be outputs, and there's not one but two separate shield curves over the entire left side of the blank, which should prevent it from drawing in chakra in the first place. No chakra in so it shouldn't start in the first place and if it somehow did then the whole thing would blow up in your face. Yet obviously they don't." He glared at the pages. "Plus, it's all..." He shook his head. "I don't even know the word. I want to say 'unprofessional', but..." He waved the journal in an offended way. "There's squiggles and Sagebedamned shopping lists in the margins!"

Kagome-sensei snorted and stretched out a hand. "Let's see."

Fortunately, Kagome-sensei had the clearance. Hazō handed over the journal and watched as his teacher flipped it open and skimmed through page one. Hazō smiled slyly; he had done the exact same thing and knew what was going to happen. Reading the notes without virtually memorizing the first page simply wasn't an option if you wanted to have the least clue of what the author was talking about.

Kagome-sensei turned his gaze to the second page and paused. He stared at the page for a good fifteen seconds, then went back and re-read the lefthand page carefully. He turned back to the second page, read it carefully, and then looked up at Hazō, eyes wide.

"I know how to do it," he said, his voice awed. "I know how we could open the rift. We can't do it, but I know how."

"What."

Kagome-sensei nodded slowly, the papers forgotten in his hand. "We're thinking that the rift was a storage bubble with one transshift canal here and one in Naraka, right?"

"Yeah?"

"So, the problem is that any energy we pump into it from here is going to spew straight out the other canal."

"Okay..."

"Unless we did it from both sides at once. The opposing energy streams would block each other and if you pumped in enough chakra it would inflate the storage seal again. Except if we want to work on it from both sides at once, we'd need a rift in order to inflate this rift."

Hazō frowned. "Just pumping chakra in wouldn't do it. You'd need—"

Kagome-sensei slashed the words off with one curt gesture. "Yes, yes. More to it than that. Can't just shove chakra in like you're wall-walking. We'd need an aetheric pump and a Nakamoto Glide. Still, that's easy stuff."

"A Glide?! Don't be ridiculous! That's way too piddly for the amount of energy you'd need. You'd want—"

"Not the point! The point is that anything we try from this side is going to gush out the other side and disperse. We need to create some kind of stopper construct. Something that will pass through the first canal and jam in the second one. If we can actually manage to secure it then reinflating the pocket would be...well, not straightforward, but doable. We'd need to be sure we didn't get any frame dragging, and that's tricky if the energy is going in from only one side." He frowned, thinking and sketching in the air with one hand. "We could maybe do it with a puffbomb."

Hazō frowned. "If you're puffing into a shaky construct you could get torsion. Maybe even rupture."

"Maybe, but what if..."

o-o-o-o​

The theories had been sliced up, chewed up, and mashed up until all that was left was a smooshed pile of notes and ideas to investigate. As fun as that was, now it was time for something that might be even more fun or a massive disaster. Coin flip odds, so far as Hazō could tell.

The team was gathered around the firepit, the sun having set moments before and the stars only now beginning to spill themselves, jewel-like, across the dark velvet of the night sky. The night was brisk but the fire was large enough that everyone could have at least their front half comfortable. Until now they had been supplementing their rations with food caught onsite—fish from a nearby river, small animals that Yuno had hunted up, and eggs that Akane had stolen from a temporarily unguarded nest. Decent fare, but a lot of work. Tonight, at Hazō's request, everything was from a storage seal and prepared by the talented chefs of the Gōketsu estate.

"So," Hazō said, poking at his fish fried rice, "rescue plans. What do you guys think?"

Akane looked up from her honey-glazed bronzini. "Rescue plans?"

"When Kagome-sensei and I open the rift, that's the first part of the plan. Walking Jiraiya out of the rift and back into reality is part three. In the middle there's a bunch of searching and walking around through a forest that went as far as I could see. Well, or somehow getting a boat in there and sailing across an ocean of acid. How do we do that safely and effectively? For example, we need ways to cope with potentially hostile terrain or creatures, and we probably aren't going to be able to use chakra. What's the move?"

"We'll need civilian experts," Akane said after a moment. "There were merchants who came to the Liberator camp in Iron. Some of them traveled with only civilian guards. They'd know how to move a large group of people and supplies around without using chakra."

Hazō nodded thoughtfully. "Makes sense. We'll also want to do something to mark the rift location. I'm thinking we use MaRI and MEW to create a tall, easily-visible tower at the rift site so we can find our way back. And so that anyone in the area who isn't us can find the rift without needing to be led there."

"Could be bad people in the area," Kagome-sensei noted. "Not everyone is friendly."

"True, but it looks like no one there has chakra."

"You did," Yuno said. "So did Daizen, even though he died."

"...Okay, fair. Still, there's clearly some kind of chakra leaching effect. That's why my seals went bad."

"Or, maybe they didn't get chakra drained, they got scrambled by passing through the rift," Akane said. A moment later she shook her head. "No, never mind. The skywalker worked at first and then failed suddenly."

"There's another problem," Kagome-sensei said. "Leaching effect will kill you if you're in there long enough. Even without it, you presumably can't regenerate chakra. If we can't afford to use chakra then we'll cover a lot less ground per hour, so search radius is a lot smaller. And if we get more than a short distance from the rift we won't be able to risk fighting if there's anything dangerous. Can't afford to burn too much chakra, then discover that there is an active chakra drain but it only happens at midnight or something equally ridiculous."

"We could signal," Yuno said. "Start big, smoky fires, then hold blankets over them briefly so that the smoke goes up as a series of puffs instead of a single column. It draws attention and would motivate people to come to the source."

"Maybe," Kagome-sensei said. "Or maybe they run from it because they think it's a monster. Or maybe they've all been enslaved by whatever lives there and are chained up in a mine somewhere."

"Contact with another nation is hugely complicated, and I didn't see anything living aside from me and Daizen," Hazō said. "For purpose of this conversation, let's stipulate that the only intelligent people there are humans who died or came through the rift. We can deal with the complicated situation later, but let's look at the basic issues now. What other problems will we have?"

"From the description you gave us, Jiraiya did not appear to have suffered physically," Yuno said. "He was not wounded or emaciated, correct?"

"True," Hazō said. "Which suggests that either there is something there that humans can eat or else the temporarily dead don't need to eat."

Akane raised an eyebrow. "Temporarily dead?"

"I mean...the whole point is that we're going to bring them back, right? So, yeah. Temporary."

Akane smiled in amusement and Hazō's heart leaped. Whatever improvement she might have made, those smiles had been rare as plums in fall and it was good to see one again. "I see."

"The one that worries me is the memory loss," Hazō said. "Kagome-sensei, you've dealt with more seal failures than I have, and I'm sure there were some memory issues in there. How do you deal with something like that?"

Kagome shifted uncomfortably. "Um...memory issues aren't really something to worry about."

"Why not?"

"I mean, it's not like you have ever forgotten anything important, right?" Kagome said. "Watermelons have always been sweet, there's never been a universally-available jutsu for shapechanging, and there's always been only seven colors."

"Seven colors?" Akane asked, frowning. "There's lots more than seven."

"Only for women," Hazō said seriously. "Women have extra color-detection structures in their eyes that allow them to perceive a wider array of colors. Men can only see seven."

She narrowed her eyes, looking back and forth between him and Kagome. "Extra structures, huh? How exactly do you know this?"

"I was reading one of Noburi's medical books," Hazō said. "You can check for yourself when we get back. Fascinating stuff."

"What are you talking about?" Kagome demanded. "Of course we can see more than seven! I was talking about major colors, but obviously we can see shades of them."

"Aww, Sensei," Hazō whined. "Why did you have to give it away? I had her going there."

"I had wondered," Yuno said. "I have not seen any such thing in Noburi's books."

"You've read Noburi's medical books?" Hazō asked.

"Of course. He is my husband. I care about him and this is something that he cares about. Obviously I learned enough that I could understand at least some of what he's talking about."

Akane and Hazō both looked immediately guilty.

"That's impressive," Hazō said. "Going back to the earlier topic, I'm thinking that when we are doing SAR on the other side of the rift, we should keep detailed chronicles of everything we do and see and learn. More than just briefing notes, something that will help the next team gain familiarity with the ground we covered and what we we learned and how."

"That makes sense," Yuno said. "Also, those skysliders of yours might be useful. They require no chakra, true?"

Hazō nodded. "Good idea. Yes, they require no chakra. They are a bit clumsy, mostly good for straight-line travel, but they will save a lot of time and keep people safer. Also, lighting a whole lot of fires can help them gain altitude." He frowned. "They need high ground to launch from, but the development team has had limited success flying them off a very tall ramp. If they launch over a long strip of big fires and if you're lucky and careful then it can be enough to let them gain just enough altitude that they can double back to rise up farther."

"Landing them in the woods is a problem," Akane said. "They would need a lot of space to come in safely. If there was no such space then they would crash. And once they were down they couldn't launch again."

Hazō nodded. "True. The usual answer is to have a ninja use skywalkers and skytowers to haul them up high enough to launch from, but that might not be possible on the other side. Couldn't rely on the seals to stay functional."

"What about sky lanterns?" Yuno asked. "I saw them in Leaf, for the winter solstice. People lit them and let them float into the sky. They were small but maybe you could build a big one?" Everyone turned to her in surprise and she hunched in. "Or not. It's a dumb idea. Sorry."

"No," Hazō said. "No, I don't think it's dumb at all." He forbore to mention that he had once had a similar thought and since forgotten it. "I'll put the research team on it as soon as we get home. In fact, I wonder...could you...hm." He slouched against his backrest log, nibbled absently at his food, and lost himself in the possibility of a sky lantern large enough to lift a skyslider.

---

XP AWARD: 17

Brevity XP: 4

"GM had fun" XP: 3

It's late and I don't have the charge for the Yuno conversation so I will leave that in the capable tentacles of @Velorien. Voting is closed unless he opens it.

You have done 4 days of prep on a new pressure-activated seal that, when triggered, will activate the seal it is in contact with.

If voting does end up being opened then it will end on Wednesday, Jun 8, 2022 at 7:00 AM .

 

[eaglejarl]

Author's Note: This is the result of a commission from the generous @FaintlySorcerous. When it was originally posted it was done as an omake, since Noburi did not have enough chakra to summon both Toad Sages. He does now, and thus this is canon!

With great thanks to @Paperclipped who did all the work of verifying that Noburi could do it, verifying that there was enough koi chakra available, rewrote the beginning part to account for Noburi summoning the sages one after the other with a refill in between, and generally making this cut'n'paste easy for me.

---

Interlude: Toad Counseling​

The day was cool and perfect given a heavy shirt.

"Ready?" Noburi asked, his voice twirling between nerves and concern for his wife.

Yuno nodded jerkily, hesitated, and asked, "Are you sure about this? What if they don't like me? What if they tell you that they refuse to have their Summoner be married to someone like me?"

Noburi snorted. "Then they can fuck right off. You're my wife, end of story."

"But..." Her voice trailed off and her eyes dropped. When she resumed it was with fingers that twisted together like grieving mice and a voice like wind-whispered grass. "But I'm such a bad wife that you're asking for advice on how to fix it."

Noburi gaped at her, all words gone from his brain.

"Honey...no! No, you are not a bad wife, I'm a bad husband! That's why I'm asking for their help—I don't know how to make you happy." He looked away. "I'm always messing up and making you angry or unhappy or..." He flapped his hands, trying to figure out how to describe his own failings. "Or something. I don't want to do that. I want to be better for you, but I don't know how. And I can tell you don't like it here in Leaf. Everything is different from Isan, you have none of your culture around, and I don't understand it well enough to help."

Yuno continued looking at her shoes. "You fold the napkins properly," she whispered.

Noburi snorted. "Fold the napkins properly? That's the best I can do? Honey, I'm your husband! I should be making you feel safe and happy. I should be doing more." I shouldn't be looking at other girls and thinking about what might have been, he didn't say.

She looked up through her lashes, uncertain as to whether he was mocking or sincere. The pain in his face seemed to convince her and she raised her head the rest of the way. "I think you're a good husband," she said, her voice still soft but no longer a whisper.

"Thanks for not saying 'most of the time'," Noburi said with a self-deprecating snort. "I know I'm screwing up a lot. That's why I made this one-off contract with them. I thought they could help." He stretched out his left hand in offering.

She considered it for a moment, then clasped it with exactly the degree of boundless confidence held by a baby deer coming into an unknown clearing.

Noburi smiled reassuringly, pricked his right finger on the tack that stuck down from his belt, and knelt to touch the blood to the earth. "Summoning Technique: Shima!"

A mass of purple smoke occluded the entire area. When it cleared, the tiny Toad Sage stood on the piled stones by the Gōketsu koi pond that Yuno and Noburi had cleared out for their picnic-slash-relationship-counseling session.

"This isn't the hot springs," Shima said, looking around in disapproval. "Jiraiya always used to bring us to the hot springs when he wanted to chat."

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Noburi said, feeling himself pink up as he immediately looked stupid in front of his wife. "I didn't think to ask if you had a preference. That said, this is a difficult conversation for us and so privacy would be nice. The hot springs tend to be crowded."

"Hmph," Shima said. "Maybe for the better. Jiraiya only booked out the men's side of the hot springs so he could peep on the women. He had the composure to carry a sensible conversation while he was peeping, but I'm not so sure you'd be able to keep enough blood in your head to keep up."

Noburi tried to avoid reacting to the distressingly familiar sound of Yuno's grip tightening on Satsuko's haft. "It's probably for the better then, yeah. Anyway, let's get Fukasaku here, shall we?"

Shima grunted. "Eh. If you like having dead weight around, sure. You've been around enough to know who's really carrying the marriage between us."

Noburi decided not to answer that—even if Shima could answer all his questions, he would never hear the end of it from Fukasaku if he decided not to summon the elder Toad Sage at this point. Noburi knelt down by the water of the koi pond and lowered a couple fingers into it. Immediately, chakra streamed out from the koi and into Noburi's barrel. He pulled until the weaker koi started to float, belly-up and unconscious, to the surface of the pond.

Noburi grimaced. "That might not be enough," he said, standing up and turning to Yuno. "Could you give me a little more?"

Yuno nodded, so he placed his wet hand over hers and started to drain.

After a moment, he released her hand and faced Shima, who had watched the byplay with mild curiosity before hopping out to the surface of the pond to prod at a couple of the still-dazed koi.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" she asked.

Noburi pricked his finger again and touched a palm to the ground. "Summoning Technique: Fukasaku!"

"Took you long enough," came Fukasaku's voice through the cloud of purple smoke. "I was half thinking you forgot about me."

"We're not senile old geezers like you, nitwit," said Shima, bounding up to her husband.

Noburi glanced at Yuno. He didn't know how she would react to the Toad Sages'... interesting dynamic.

"Ha!" Fukasaku said, jabbing his cane at Yuno. "You're the girl he's been getting all moon-brained about! I can see why. Quite the looker you've got there, boy." He used his cane to nudge Noburi approvingly in the thigh, which was as high as the ancient toad could comfortably reach from where he stood.

For her part, Yuno skipped over 'blushing' and went straight to 'tomato-on-fire red'. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir," she said, head bowed and fingers knotted together. Satsuko was slung through her belt and Noburi couldn't help but suspect that Yuno desperately wanted to feel the reassuring haft of her best friend in her grip but was holding off for fear that it might seem like she was threatening the tiny demigods.

"I should imagine so," Fukasaku said smugly, rocking back and forth from heels to toes in pleasure.

"Bah! That'll wear off pretty darn quick once you get to know him," said Shima. "Lift your head up, girlie. No one ever learned anything while staring at her feet."

Yuno looked sideways to Noburi for reassurance. He smiled and stepped close, slipping an arm around her shoulders. Her blush, if possible, got even darker, but she managed to lift her head.

"That's better," Shima said. "Boy! Platform!"

Noburi took his arm from around Yuno, braced his elbows on his belly, and held his arms out with forearms pressed together and palms up. Shima hopped up onto the platform thus formed, placing her at eye level with Yuno. She reached out and grasped the girl's chin, ignoring the way Yuno visibly smothered the urge to jump back. Shima turned Yuno's head from side to side with thoughtful mm-hms, then tipped it up to look at her throat and tipped it down again so she could lean in practically eyeball-to-eyeball. Finally, she released her grip.

"You're a strong one," Shima said approvingly. "Not just in the muscles, either. Any nitwit can get muscles. You've got some starch and fire in you. I like that. Never could stand those noodly, limp-witted girls Jiraiya used to introduce us to." She turned to look at Noburi. "Good choice, boy. Things might be bumpy now but you can have a future with this one. Well, assuming she decides to put up with your nonsense."

"Hey!" Noburi said. "What nonsense?"

"You wouldn't be calling us here if things were going smoothly," Fukasaku said. "She's gorgeous and Ma says she's got starch and fire. If there's problems then I'm sure it's your fault."

"That's not true!" Yuno said. "Noburi is a wonderful husband!" Her hand drifted, probably unconsciously, down to Satsuko's hilt.

"Hah!" Fukasaku said, jabbing his cane towards her. "There we go! Defending your man! You must be doing something right after all, boy."

That somehow seemed to call for a response, but Noburi had not the faintest clue what it should be. He finally settled for a simple, "I hope so, sir."

Yuno seemed absolutely spun around by the two irascible sages. Once again, she looked to Noburi in mute entreaty.

Shima saw the look and bounded from Noburi's outstretched arms to the ground, landing gracefully and allowing her billowed robe to settle around her. "Well?" she demanded. "She's flustered, boy! Give her a hug!"

Noburi gladly gathered Yuno into his arms. She stiffened in surprise, then wrapped her arms around him and pressed close. He tucked her head under his chin and cupped her head with one hand and the small of her back with the other.

"There we go," Shima said with approval. "As long as you still enjoy touching each other, things aren't beyond salvaging. It's when a couple can't stand to touch that you know everything's gone off the cliff."

"We don't need salvaging," Yuno said, not lifting her head from Noburi's chest. "Noburi is a wonderful husband."

"Uh-huh," Fukasaku said doubtfully. "What are you, boy? Ten? Eleven?"

"Fifteen, sir." Noburi couldn't keep the irritation out of his voice.

"Bah," Fukasaku said, waving one webbed hand dismissively. "Ten, fifteen, whatever. Still a baby. You two are both painfully young. The boy tells me that neither of you dated before, right, girl?" He waved one hand at them. "Also, sit down! Can't have a talk like this with you two standing."

Yuno took a breath and turned outwards, freeing herself from Noburi's arms while still keeping their hips pressed together and his arm around her. After a moment she shifted slightly, stepping a few inches away so that they could both settle into seiza, although she captured his hand once they were seated. "We have not, sir."

"Sir, I'd appreciate it if you would speak more respectfully to Yuno," Noburi said, striving for firmness. "If you want to call me 'boy' or whatever, fine. Please refer to her as—" He paused and looked to Yuno with an inquiring eyebrow.

"Yuno," she said, nodding politely.

"Hrmph," Fukasaku said. "That—"

"—is entirely reasonable," Shima said. "Right, Pa?"

Fukasaku's wide mouth tightened and he snorted grumpily. "Oh, very well. I suppose. Now, Noburi says that you two are having issues. That he feels inadequate and like he can't make you happy." He snickered. "You should have seen him when I offered him some stiffweed, gi—Yuno. Practically melted. Stammered for a good minute before he managed to explain that he didn't mean that and that you two hadn't even gone there yet."

"Ha!" Shima said. "I knew you were using stiffweed again, old goat!"

"No I'm not, you harpy! I've never needed stiffweed in my life!"

"Then why did you happen to have it around, hm?"

"It was going to be a hundred-and-fiftieth birthday present for Gamahoto!"

"A likely story! I was wondering why you've been so frisky lately."

"I didn't hear any complaints," he said slyly.

"Hrmph. Don't be crude, Pa. Especially not in front of the children."

"We haven't been physical that way," Noburi said, desperately hoping to derail the latest example of the Sages' multi-century ongoing marital spat. "In Yuno's culture that's not done until both people are over eighteen."

"Aha! And you've been looking to sow your oats, have you?"

Noburi took a deep breath and forced his muscles to relax. "Sir, I'm not sure why you're trying to embarrass me, but please stop. When I initially approached you for advice I explained that the issue was I didn't feel like I knew how to make Yuno happy. I did not mean sexually. I meant in general. I keep doing the wrong thing, or saying the wrong thing, or—"

"—or looking interested at other girls?" Shima asked knowingly.

Noburi and Yuno stiffened and very obviously did not look at one another. Yuno's grip tightened, nearly crushing Noburi's hand, and then sprang open when she realized what she had done. He gave her a smile and carefully managed his breathing so as not to show just how much pain she had caused.

"It's not that," Yuno said, biting her lip. "He's very attractive. It's natural that other girls would seek him out and—"

"Sure," Shima said, waving one hand to cut Yuno off. "But he notices them, right? You catch him eyeing them with that expression that says he's thinking about it?"

Yuno said nothing.

Shima leaned closer so she could pat Yuno reassuringly on the knee. "I'd say don't worry about it but I know you will. It's natural to notice attractive people, Yuno, and it's natural to be attracted. I'm sure you've noticed some handsome boys?"

"Yes...but I look away and I don't let myself think about doing anything with them."

"Hmph," Fukasaku said. "Repressing natural urges, very unhealthy. A little bit of daydreaming about some sweet young thing gets the blood up, makes you want to go back to your partner and—"

"Oh hush, you old goat."

"Don't you hush me!"

"I'll hush you whenever you say stupid things! Just because you're a randy old sock and I have the self-confidence and patience of a saint doesn't mean that's good advice for other people. Especially not people as young as these two." She turned back to Yuno. "When he notices those girls, does he do anything about it? Seek them out, sneak off with them?"

"No. But they come up to him and they act so..." She swallowed. "So feminine. They twirl their hair and make eyes and..."

"And?"

It took long seconds for Yuno to speak again and when she did her voice was wobbly. "And I can't do that. I'm not...I'm not feminine, or...or..."

"You're not feminine yet," Shima said. "Thoughts confine your reality child, so make sure you aren't confining your thoughts."

"What?"

"If you say 'I am not feminine', you are implying that you can never be feminine," Fukasaku explained. "If you say 'I am not feminine yet', that means that you could choose to learn it if you wanted to. Don't allow your thoughts to be constrained by false assumptions. The future always has more possibilities in it than it feels like."

"In this particular case," Shima said, a knowing smile hiding in her words, "I believe Noburi has mentioned this 'Mari' person who apparently knows rather a lot about being feminine. If it's something you actually wanted to be then I'm sure she could teach you how to twirl your hair and make eyes and paint your face and all that."

Noburi's brain tried to picture Yuno taking femininity lessons from Mari. His brain immediately ran gibbering into the darkness.

"Honey," he said carefully. "Let me be clear about this: if learning that stuff is something that you want, I'll support you. You don't have to; I didn't—" He caught himself before saying I didn't start to love you because you were feminine since that was the entire core of the problem. He paused to pick his words but the tension in his stomach from Yuno's waiting eyes made the words run away. "I love you. I love you the way you are: dangerous and strong and powerful. If you want to have Mari teach you to...I honestly have no idea, but whatever it is I'm sure I will like that about you too. But if you want to do it then make sure you're doing it for you, not for me."

Yuno's smile was watery. "Thank you, Noburi. I don't think there would be much point. Can you imagine me in one of Mari's dresses, or with makeup on? I would look like a pig in a priest's robe. I'm not beautiful enough for that."

"Hey!" Noburi said, reaching out to her. "You are very beautiful!"

"Tell her that often, do you, boy?" Shima asked.

"Um..."

"You should," Fukasaku said seriously. "Too many people treat marriage as a destination, not a basecamp. They think that once you're married the relationship is secure and you don't need to bother with it anymore. That's not true. All the things you did while you were first dating, you should keep doing them."

"We, uh, didn't really date," Noburi said.

"Nonsense!" Shima said, bapping him on the knee. "You told us about those walks on the river and stolen glances and all that. Sounds like dating to me."

"It was only a few days," Noburi said apologetically. "And it was a, a trick. Politics. A thing that Mari and Yuno's clan elders worked up. I was supposed to date Yuno to justify her clan and my team getting closer together, but it was basically an I&S mission, not a real relationship. Mari even explained it to me in those terms. And then my team left, and I was stupid about it and said hurtful things. And then when Yuno came to Leaf both us and the Hyūga wanted her to marry into their clan and there was a question whether she was going to marry me or Neji and I messed it all up and she was going to marry him but I got there right at the end and she married me." He ran out of words and looked away, suddenly fascinated with the view in every direction except the one where Yuno kneeled, her eyes cast down.

"Did you marry her just because your clan needed it?" Shima asked. "Did you want to marry her?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

Noburi finally looked over to Yuno; his smile was a small thing, full of quiet moments and gentle touches. He squeezed her hand lightly, just a quick pulse that made her look at him. "Because she's beautiful, even if she's too gormless to notice. And she speaks her mind. And she's patient when she teaches me Isan's customs, and even more patient when I screw them up. And it makes me feel like a man when I can help her with Leaf's customs. And she's a great fighter. And she cares about other people. And—"

"See, Yuno?" Shima said, touching Yuno gently on the knee. "Listen to all those reasons and how fast they came out. The boy is utterly besotted. You should have seen how cow-eyed he was when he asked us for help. He's a young man, which means he's an idiot, but he really does love you."

Fukasaku harumphed. "Not so sure I like that business about all young men being idiots, but this one is, so I'll let it pass."

"He is not an idiot!" Yuno snapped, glaring at the ancient toad.

"He absolutely is, girl—Yuno. If he was smart then he wouldn't be making you feel bad." He shrugged. "Not completely his fault. He's frighteningly young and apparently he's never dated that much so he doesn't have the experience to know what to do." He glared at his Summoner. "Still, you can tell that he's an idiot because he didn't ask for help before things got so bad."

Noburi looked away, ears pink and stomach leaden.

"Don't worry, boy," Fukasaku said, patting Noburi's knee. "Youth is a condition that cures itself in time and you are fortunate enough to have the benefit of my great experience with romance to—"

"Great experience? Hah! Like you could find romance if it was served up to you in a silver casserole dish!"

"I'm very romantic, you old bat! It's why you fell in love with me in the first place!"

"Well, someone sounds a little sure of himself! I chose you, dingus!"

"That is so not true! Our first day at school, I looked over at you on the other side of the mat and said 'I am going to marry that girl one day' and then I did! Ha!"

Shima raised a finger and started to respond hotly, then visibly remembered that Yuno and Noburi were there. She lowered her finger with a sigh and a glare at her husband, then turned back to the two humans.

"Noburi," she said, "you can't assume that Yuno knows you love her. You need to show it, and in ways that are meaningful to her. Yuno, you can't assume that Noburi knows what you need. You need to talk to him about it. When you're feeling insecure or unhappy, tell him. He wants to please you. He wants it so much that he humbled himself enough to ask for help from two grumpy old toads that he doesn't know very well and whose good opinion of him is critically important in his ability to remain the Toad Summoner."

Noburi bit back the words 'Wait, what?' just in time. Jiraiya had been in his life for far too short a time, but one of the bits of hard-earned wisdom that the Sannin had conveyed: When your partner is giving you unearned credit for a good relationship move, take the win. Similarly, if someone else might be spinning your actions in an undeserved good light, don't jog their elbow.

"Oh," Yuno said. She glanced over at her husband and stroked her thumb lightly across the back of his hand. "Thank you, Noburi. I...hadn't thought about it."

"You're important," he said simply.

"So! What does she like, boy?" Shima demanded.

Noburi had been drowning in Yuno's eyes to the point that the rest of the world was background noise. His head snapped around as Shima's barked words jolted him out of it. "What? Huh?"

"Pay attention, boy!" Fukasaku said, thwapping Noburi on the thigh with his stick. "Ma asked you a question! What does the—what does Yuno like? When you want to make her feel good, what do you do?"

Noburi's mind, usually a darting swarm of silver-tongued thoughts and fancies, went completely blank.

The two Toad Sages and the Satsuko Wielder stared at him intently, their eyes demanding.

"She likes chocolate," he said, and immediately winced at the clichéd nature of the statement. He flailed around for something else. "And she likes it when I tell her that she's pretty. And when I fold the napkin properly at her place for dinner, and when I walk on the streetside."

"Good," Shima said, nodding. "Maybe there's hope for you yet. Yuno, what else should he know? What else could he do that would make you feel loved and valued?"

Yuno's face almost literally lit on fire. She let go of Noburi's hand and hunched in on herself, both hands in her lap and her hair falling in her face. She mumbled something incoherent.

"Speak up, g—Yuno!" Fukasaku said, poking her in the side with his stick; she yelped in surprise and jolted upright.

"Come now, dearie," Shima said, hopping forward so she could take both of Yuno's hands in her own. "If you can't tell Noburi, tell me. Look right at me and say something that Noburi has done that you liked. Just us girls."

"I... I like it when he touches me," Yuno whispered, her eyes wide and staring into Shima's. "He'll walk past to get something and trail his hand across my back without thinking about it. If I sit beside him on the couch while Hazō is having one of his meetings, Noburi will put his arm on the back of the couch and stroke my hair. I'm not sure he knows that he does it."

Noburi struggled not to look surprised. Had he done that? Well, yes, he had, but it wasn't something he was intentionally doing as part of his Be A Good Husband efforts.

"Did your family touch?" Shima asked, keeping her voice calm and eyes on Yuno's. "Did your parents hug you, did they hold your hands?"

Yuno jerked her head in the negative. "No. My f-father died and I was the cursed child. Unclean. No one touched me. They barely spoke to me."

"Oh, sweetie," Shima said, pulling the girl gently forward and down so that she could wrap tiny green arms around Yuno's neck. The tug was gentle and slow, easy to refuse, but Yuno went with it. Her arms went around Shima's robe-swaddled waist and hugged tight. Noburi winced, knowing the power of his wife's muscles, but Shima might have been made of stone for all the notice she took.

"All right," Shima said, once Yuno finally released the hug nearly a minute later. One web-fingered hand stroked the girl's hair and then she allowed Yuno to sit up properly. "Now, did you ever tell Noburi that you liked that?"

Yuno swallowed, glanced guiltily and briefly at her husband, and then shook her head at Shima. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know I'm stupid about these things, but—"

"Bup!" Shima said, leaning forward and stretching so that she could put a batrachian finger over Yuno's lips. "You are not stupid, child. Don't be running yourself down like that."

Fukasaku snorted. "Probably brighter than this one, that's for sure. Honestly, boy, how can you leave such a sweet child unhappy? Have you made no effort whatsoever?"

"Stop," Yuno said angrily, her uncertainty and hunched posture disappearing. "Do not insult my husband again."

Fukasaku grinned. "Good. Good. Angry at the mean old toad and defending your husband. Much better than doubting yourself and feeling awful. Now. Take some of that fire and use it to defend yourself. Woman up, because I'm sending you and Noburi into battle. There's a deadly enemy that you two can bond over killing together. The battle is on unfamiliar ground and your normal weapons won't do anyth—er, your normal weapons are unsuitable. You'll need to learn a new combat style. A secret technique taught by the Toad Clan. It's exhausting and uncomfortable and you'll probably curse my name for sending you into the field with it, but you'll need it in order to win this fight. What do you say? Want to learn?"

"Yes!" Yuno bowed deeply, a full dogeza, and sat up, her eyes fierce. "Please teach me!"

"Ha! I told you!" Fukasaku said to his wife, poking at her with his cane. "Told you this was the way!"

"Shut your fool yap and point that thing someplace else," Shima said, batting the cane aside. She sighed. "Fine. Go ahead and look ridiculous."

"Hrmph." Fukasaku strutted up in front of Yuno and studied her carefully, a master sizing up a potential disciple. "All right, child. I accept you as my student. Now, listen carefully as I share with you the ancient Toad Clan marital art."

Yuno blinked. "Wait, marital art? Don't you mean—"

"Bup!" Fukasaku said, thumping her on the head with his stick before she could defend herself. "Don't interrupt your sensei! As I was saying, this is the ancient Toad Clan marital art. We call it: Standing up for your Sagebedamned self and telling your partner how you feel and what you want."

"What?! That's—" She broke off, raising a forearm to deflect a blow that did not come. When it didn't, she settled back and glowered at the giggling toad.

Fukasaku's giggles were rusty and grinding, like wheels that hadn't been greased in far too long. Shima's eyes rolled.

"He's being his usual overdramatic self but he's not wrong," Shima said. "Yuno, Noburi loves you. He wants to make you happy, he just doesn't know how." She looked to Noburi. "Noburi, Yuno loves you. She's uncomfortable in Leaf and insecure about her place here but she doesn't know how to express that in good ways. You're both going to need to work on it."

"Talk to each other," Fukasaku said seriously. "Use 'I' statements that tell the other person about how you feel. Don't use 'universal' statements that talk about how the world is or what your partner thinks. Ask for what you want, don't make them guess. For example, Yuno, don't say 'you always look at other girls' or 'you never look at me like that.' Instead, try saying something like, 'Noburi, when you seem attracted to other girls I feel unsafe and unwanted. When you have those feelings, it would help me feel safer if you would take my hand and smile at me."

"Noburi," Shima said, "you might say 'Yuno, when you attack or threaten other girls just because I looked at them, it makes me feel afraid and unmanly. I'm trying not to do that, but if I do then could you please tell me so that I can reassure you that you are in fact the one that I love and want to be with forever?"

"'Unmanly'?" Fukasaku demanded, glowering at his wife. "Making some assumptions there, aren't you? Maybe the boy feels very manly about having girls fighting over him."

"Listen, you—"

"I really don't," Noburi said quickly. "Unmanly is exactly the word. I feel weak because I couldn't control myself even though I know it makes Yuno upset. It...it..." He trailed off, wincing.

"Go ahead," Shima said. "No matter what it is, you need to get it out or it will fester."

Noburi swallowed and turned to face Yuno, taking her near hand in his own. She turned to match him so they were knee to knee and Noburi was able to take her other hand as well. Noburi licked his lips before taking a deep, calming breath and proceeding. "Beloved," he began, visibly uncomfortable with the word but choosing it with intention, "when you get violent with Leaf citizens, it makes me afraid. I'm afraid that it will cause trouble for the clan, and it makes me wonder if you might someday get violent with me."

Yuno jerked back as though she'd been slapped. "I would never! Noburi, please—"

Noburi smiled and recaptured her hands, squeezing them reassuringly. "It's okay. The fact that you're here today, going through this excruciating process with these grouchy old busybodies"—("Hey!" said the toads in unison)—"tells me everything I need to know about how you feel. I want this to work and I can tell you do too. I promise that I love you and that I'll do my absolute best to stop noticing other girls, and that if I do then I'll make a point of reassuring you that it's just hormones and you're the one that I want. The one that I chose."

Yuno couldn't take her eyes from his despite the tension through her shoulders and fear on her face that shouted how much she wanted to run. She swallowed and her head twitched in the affirmative. "Noburi, I love you and I want to be with you. I promise that I'll try—I promise that I'll stop hurting other women just because you seemed attracted to them, and that I'll tell you when I'm feeling insecure or threatened. You are the one I chose and I have wanted to be with ever since we first met."

"You should have a secret sign," Fukasaku said gleefully. "Like we did."

Shima's eyes widened. "Don't you dare, you old goat! Don't you dare!"

"I'm daring."

"No you're not!"

"I am. I'm daring." The ancient toad's face was a green copy of Honoka's after she successfully stole cookies and ate them despite parental scowls.

Shima purple-stained lips pressed tight together. "Fine. Only because it will probably be helpful to them."

Fukasaku cackled gleefully and turned back to the two baffled humans. "See, when we first started courting, Shima was a frail and shy little flower who—"

"I was not frail! I kicked your ass every time we sparred!"

"Hush, woman! Who's telling this story?"

"No one! The fable you're telling is nothing like what happened!"

"Hrmph. Fine, well, Shima used to be shy when we first started courting. She was convinced that a toad of my masculine virtue wouldn't want to be with someone like her, so—"

Shima smashed him in the belly with a stomp kick that sent him flying two dozen yards. He hit the ground, rolled several times to bleed off his momentum, came back to his feet, and leaped all the way back to them in one bound. Just before he touched down, a corona of blue fire burst forth around him and slowed him to a feather-light landing.

"If you're going to tell it, tell it truthfully!" Shima snapped. She faced the humans again. "He's right about one thing in that self-aggrandizing little fantasy he's spewing: I did used to be shy. Given what a giant tool he is, he often made me feel diminished or unwanted. So, we came up with a secret sign that meant I was feeling insecure and needed reassurance." She faced her husband and tapped one finger on her lips. Fukasaku stepped close and kissed her, then leaned his forehead on hers, arms at her hips.

Yuno turned to Noburi with a shy smile and tapped her lips. Her husband smiled back and leaned forward willingly.

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 523: Secrets from Beyond the Grave​

May 10, 1070 AS

Hazō frowned.

"Something wrong, honey?" Akane asked from where she sat beside him.

All four of them were gathered around the fire for lunch. Yuno had killed several head-sized rodents with claws the size of a human finger; she swore that they were delicious when properly cooked and the rest of the party had been more than willing to take her up on it. Food from a storage seal, prepared by a competent chef with access to good and varied ingredients, was delicious, but there was something to be said for self-killed food cooked over an actual fire.

"Hm?" Hazō asked absently.

"You've been frowning at those for twenty minutes," Akane said.

"Mm-hm."

"Also, the Sage of Six Paths asked to marry me."

"Mm-h—wait, what?"

Akane and Yuno both laughed as Hazō suddenly looked up.

Hazō blushed and rubbed his neck. "Sorry, I was a little distracted."

Akane kissed his cheek. "It's okay. What are you reading, anyway?"

"Some of the Fourth Hokage's poetry," Hazō said, lazily waving the relevant papers. "When I asked Asuma for all of the Fourth's notes on the bijū-containment seals, he told the Archivist to send over everything related. They took that literally and sent me the notes plus a ton of other stuff that was in the same boxes. I think it was pretty much 'here, have everything that the Fourth ever touched with a brush' because there's a lot of random things, including poetry."

"I didn't know the Fourth was a poet," Yuno said.

"He wasn't, really," Hazō said. "It doesn't follow any of the classical forms and there's barely any meter or even rhyme to it. It's mostly just a bunch of image-heavy prose. Jiraiya once told me"—his voice deepened into something like the once and future Toad Sage's register—"'Great ninja, great sealmaster, the kind of genius that only comes along once in a century. Honestly, it was a little annoying how good he was at almost everything, so I'm glad that the little blond bastard was bad at something, and hoo boy did his poetry suck. He gave me a compendium of it as a birthday present. Couldn't stand the stuff. I read the first couple pages, told him how delightful they were and how talented he was, and then I carefully steered the conversation away from it every time it came up after that.'" He chuckled, returning to his own register. "Personally, I like some of it." He looked down at the papers, frowning again. "Still, some of it feels...off."

"Off how?" Kagome-sensei asked.

"This one in particular. It's not like anything else in here. Most of them have names like An Ode to Kushina, which is about his wife, and Home, which is about how happy he is to...well, to be home. It's all very down to earth stuff. Then you get things like The Seventh Musing on Sacrifice." He picked up the page and read.

A street dog named Angles scans over the Third.
Arf, arf! says Angles to the band's three chords.
The viola-ette shouts "The records of your music are not fair! Go slightly deeper!" to the mid-subterranean bass-man.
The notes they blend, they bend, they curve back upon themselves with a widdershins turn,
within the stainèd walls that frame the dancer
"Not true, not true!" she cries. "Reverse your course lest this dance shall chaos bring!
"Let not the words of record your steps constrain! Step down, step down, step down, and cross them all away!
"To build your own dance, the truest form, shalt thou dance by threes, stepping lightly to your part and skipping past the painful paving stones.
"No mere papermaker's issue can record / the truest steps of this dance / lest frozen words by clumsy, hateful, heavy-footed folk be gained. Dance in truth or dance with death, your choices are alone."

​

"That is...weird," Akane said after a moment.

"I'm glad you said so," Yuno said. "I thought it was just me."

"Hardly surprising," Kagome-sensei said around a mouthful of tender rodent meat cubes and fried vegetables. "Once the lupchanzen get in you, it's not surprising if you sound a little weird."

"Yeah, but, sensei...doesn't it sound like seal stuff to you? Doesn't it sound a lot like 'Arfangle the third chord with violet infusion and slightly more than midsubterranean localization'?"

Kagome-sensei frowned and held out his hand. Hazō passed over the page and waited as the older man read and rubbed his jaw in thought.

"Is there more of this?" Kagome-sensei asked, not looking up.

"Plenty." Hazō rummaged in a storage seal and pulled out the other fifty pages of the Fourth Hokage's poetry that he was carrying, shifting over to sit next to his teacher as they studied the page together.

Akane and Yuno looked at each other in amusement.

o-o-o-o​

May 11, 1070 AS

"Hm...if you take the first character on each of the four middle lines and then you rotate them around the syllabary eighteen steps then you get 'HOAX'."

"Possible, but more likely it's a coincidence. People see patterns in chaos all the time. Unless that same rotation provides more decoding then it's likely to be a coincidence."

"Aren't there ciphers that change their encryption key so you can only get so many steps each time? Maybe after getting HOAX I just have to change to an eight-step rotation for the next few lines, or something."

"It's a point of attack, but I would note it down and move on. If this were random papers and we had nothing else to go on, sure, go nuts. Not here. Here, we have a lot more."

"We do?"

"Sure. We know who wrote these, and why. It's always better to crack the man, not the cipher. In this case we know that Namikaze was a field ninja and a political leader, not a crypto guy. He probably had some knowledge of how to work ciphers but I've already done a quick scan and there's nothing obvious. There's two ways to protect a message: steganography is when you write it in a way that doesn't get noticed, cryptography is when you use a reversible change to turn the message into text that can't be read by anyone except the intended person, who knows how to reverse it. Encrypted messages generally look like gibberish, so it's obvious that it's an encrypted message unless you use steganography to conceal the existence of the message." He gestured at the pages. "These aren't gibberish, so they aren't using a straightforward cipher. There are ways to do that—maybe a given syllable of each word is part of the message and the rest are filler intended to conceal the message as something else. There are other, more complex methods too. But."

"But?"

"But non-specialists stink at using complex crypto patterns correctly and they require a lot of attention. This"—he gestured to the lake of papers around them—"feels like stuff that was in process. The marginalia talks about how it was draft work, and that's clear from the places where he misspelled something or left a tea stain or whatever. Could be that's more cover, but it feels more like he was using a method that he could execute quickly while he was working on the seals."

"Okay, but—"

"Also, we have some good speculation on the nature of the message and who it's for: it's instructions related to making seals, which means it's intended for other sealmasters."

"Okay..."

"So he's got a seal. An important one. He wants to make sure the details are written down so that his brain isn't a single point of failure, but the information is so white-hot that he can't take any chances on it getting learned by an enemy. So he splits it up."

"Part of the information in one set of documents, another part in a different set. Like, for example, his seal notes and his poetry."

"Exactly. Also, he fancies himself a poet. Words and images are likely to be more comfortable to him than numbers and syllable shift tables, so I'm looking for locators built into the poetry. Look here." He passed over one of the Fourth's bijū-containment journals, open to a tea-stained page.

Hazō studied the seal blank and accompanying notes on the indicated page, but nothing jumped out. "Okay...what am I looking for?"

"Remember that poem that you noticed? 'The notes they blend, they bend, they curve back upon themselves with a widdershins turn.' Kinda like the stroke order of that blank, right?"

Huh. "True. And the next line of the poem was within the stainèd walls that frame the dancer. This brown ring in the middle of the directions, where he 'accidentally' put a teacup down on the page? That sounds like stainèd walls that frame a section of the instructions."

"Ooh, yeah. Nice catch. Let's see, next line of the poem...oh. Oh, that's not good."

Hazō leaned over to check what the older man was looking at.

"Not true, not true!" she cries. "Reverse your course lest this dance shall chaos bring!
"Let not the words of record your steps constrain! Step down, step down, step down, and cross them all away!
"To build your own dance, the truest form, shalt thou dance by threes, stepping lightly to your part and skipping past the painful paving stones.
"No mere papermaker's issue can record / the truest steps of this dance / lest frozen words by clumsy, hateful, heavy-footed folk be gained. Dance in truth or dance with death, your choices are alone."


​

Hazō's mouth went dust-dry and a wave of chill fingers rasped across his skin from head to toe. He had to clear his throat before he could get words out.

"Sensei, is that saying what I think it's saying?"

"If you think that it's saying that the bijū-containment notes are bogus and contain deliberate mistakes designed to induce seal failure and the poems correct those mistakes then yes, I think that's exactly what it's saying." He tapped a bitten-nailed finger on the poem. "'Reverse your course' probably means to draw the strokes in the opposite order. 'Let not the words of record your steps constrain' says that the instructions in the journal are bogus and, if I'm reading it right, it says to cross out—which presumably means 'ignore'—the first three of something. Not sure if it's words, sentences, or paragraphs, but we'll check. 'Dance by threes, skipping past the painful paving stones' likely means that only every third sentence counts, or something like that. And then there's the last bit."

"Hm?"

Kagome-sensei tapped his finger on the page again. "That last bit is him saying it outright: He can't write down the true version of this blank and its instructions lest it be found by enemies. The version that's in the journals is designed to kill the researcher. It's a security countermeasure."

Hazō nodded slowly. "That would be why Jiraiya was never able to make sense of the notes. There's no sense to be made unless you have the rest of the information." He thought a moment. "Why, though? Seems like a lot of work, and very dangerous. He had to realize that Leaf sealmasters were the ones most likely to be researching it. And what if these notes got lost?"

Kagome-sensei shrugged. "We don't have all the pieces. These poetry notes are obviously drafts, and the journals weren't finished products either. They weren't tidy and organized for archival and pedagogical use, they were working journals. He was probably keeping the information divided while it was in progress and would have cleaned it up once it was ready to go to the vault. Maybe there were actual copies in the basement of the Tower but they got destroyed in the Collapse and these earlier drafts happened to survive because they were sitting in a storage closet somewhere. Problem for another time. Let's stay focused."

o-o-o-o​

Akane and Yuno were at the edge of the research space, each basking in her own personal canvas hot tub, watching the two sealmasters at work.

"They've been spending a lot of time on these poems," Yuno noted. "Weren't they here to study the rift?"

"Yes, but they weren't having any luck on that and it sounds like they're making progress here. The Fourth Hokage's bijū seal is designed to store a sapient being away in an extradimensional space. It might have some relevance." She smiled fondly. "And if it doesn't then at least they're enjoying themselves."

o-o-o-o​

May 12, 1070 AS

"I think I've got something," Hazō said.

"Yeah?"

"I was thinking about what you said—crack the man, not the cipher. I noticed that the Fourth really likes this progression format where each line is longer than the one before it. I started thinking maybe there was something to that, so I checked the last word of each line, the first word of each line, stuff like that. Turns out it's first word of the first line, second word of the second line, and so on. Here." He passed over one of the pages.

The Righteous Eighth Chronicle

Invert, I wish I could
The direction of history's mighty flood
Its hands of blood and war
The Sage's gift, chakra, turned to slaughter
Battles fought at every localization and time.


​

"Cut that down and you get 'Invert direction of chakra localization'."

Kagome hmm'd through his beaky nose. "The sealing notes are divided across ten journals. What's in the eighth one?" Without waiting for an answer, he rummaged through the stack of papers that lay scattered around on the wide-spread blanket on which their study took place. He fished out the relevant leather-bound volume and flipped through it. As with the rest, it was multiple pages of design thoughts and ramblings, then some blanks (only one, in this particular journal) and then two pages of instruction on how to infuse.

"'The Righteous Eighth Chronicle' meaning the right-hand page of instructions in the eighth journal?" Hazō asked. "Does it make sense?"

Kagome read through for a moment, then nodded. "I think so. Using a celestine localization here seems odd, so inverting it to cthonic would make sense." He pursed his lips in annoyance. "Of course, it doesn't seem very odd. I only mostly understand any of this stuff, and I don't understand some of it at all, so it wouldn't have occurred to me without the inversion being explicitly pointed out. That means that I could easily be seeing a pattern that isn't there and 'confirming' something that I think should be true but isn't."

"Let's keep looking."

o-o-o-o​

Akane and Yuno returned from patrol to find a tired but satisfied pair of sealmasters toasting one another with seal-stored hot chocolates in one hand and warm sake in the other.

"This seems positive," Akane said, smiling. Hazō looked up at her and she felt the smile get a little wider. He needed a haircut; it was all floppy and disarrayed and it made her fingers itch to comb through those tousled locks. "I take it you had some success?"

Hazō nodded. "Check this out." He picked up several pages and read.

"The Sinister Seventh Chronicle, meaning the left-hand page of infusion directions in the seventh journal: Spin the third image a quarter turn deosil and reflect the Fourth from the right, then stack them third image upon top." He chuckled. "That last bit actually said 'from the or', but we're pretty sure that it was simply the Fourth miscounting. We've found some others like that."

Yuno frowned. "The Fourth was a senior ninja and an expert sealmaster. It seems unlikely that he would make such a mistake."

"These were drafts," Kagome said. "He was doing the research and also writing extra instructions into a separate set of documents on the fly. I'm surprised that there weren't more of these errors. When he published it all he would have cleaned it up."

"All right," Akane said. "What else?"

Hazō looked back at the page of notes that (presumably) he and Kagome had been compiling for the last two-plus days.

"The Righteous Seventh Chronicle: Reflect the second image from the left and turn thirty degrees widdershins.

"The Righteous Eighth Chronicle: Invert direction of chakra localization.

"The Righteous Third Chronicle: Cut out the leftmost two strokes and invert the third blank." Hazō grimaced. "We're not completely certain what 'invert' means in this context, because there's a few different ways to interpret it. We think that these were notes that Namikaze was leaving for himself in real time and he would have written more 'poetry' later on that expanded on it.

"The Sinister Tenth Chronicle: Ignore the blank, reflect the second doodle from the left and change direction to celestine.

"The Sinister First Chronicle: Rotate the second blank ninety degrees deosil and flip steps left to right.

"The Righteous First Chronicle: Ignore the first three paragraphs and move fourth paragraph after fifth." He looked up again. "That one would have been particularly nasty. It's hard to tell, but we're fairly certain that if you followed the directions as written in the journal you would get an instant seal failure. Probably a bad one, given the amount of power and complexity in that seal.

"The Righteous Second Chronicle: Ignore the left half of the blank.

"The Righteous Third Chronicle: Reorder instructions first then tenth, second, ninth, third, eighth, and so on." He shook his head and snorted in bemused annoyance. "That was the one that I said made no sense before. Infusing a seal always starts at one unconnected end of a line and then flows through the blank. With the instructions written the way they are in the journal it seemed like you were supposed to start infusing the blank in the middle and then add more points of infusion as you went along, only merging them together at the end. In any other sealmaster's work I would have said 'oh, this is complete bullshit, there's got to be some kind of code or something', but the Fourth was known as—and was, honestly—such a genius that I assumed it was simply him inventing some new infusion technique that I wasn't good enough to execute."

"Infallible Hero Effect," Kagome said, nodding. "Get famous enough and people start believing your legend over their own common sense."

Hazō tossed the paper back on the stack with a flick of ink-stained fingers. "We're working through the rest of it, but that's what we've got so far."

"Does it help?" Akane asked.

"It does," Hazō said. "The bijū-containment notes are actually a chain of seals. The containment seal itself is impossible. Multiple parts, harmonics from wall to wall that interact in ways I can't even describe, segments that border each other but have opposite localization, which is against everything I know about sealing. That should produce a shearing effect that rips the entire chakra structure apart, but the actual thing is tattooed on Naruto's stomach and it works." He shook his head in frustration. "And that doesn't make any sense either. You don't tattoo seals on flesh. Flesh shifts and stretches over time. It gets pimples, or gets cut, or gets a sunburn and peels, and all of that distorts the seal. Distorting a seal this complicated is a Bad Thing."

"Didn't you tell me that Arikada person had seals tattooed on herself?" Yuno asked. "In addition to all the tentacles and worms and stuff."

That set Hazō back.

"Yes," Kagome said. "It's called biosealing. I don't know much about it, but I do know that it involves tattooing on skin and carving on bone. There's barely a handful of people who practice it because it's batbutt insane." He cocked his head in thought. "Going back to that earlier bit, about the seal being tattooed on. I'm not sure that's right. At its base, this is a seal that contains chakra and feeds it into a human chakra system. This is insane, but what if it's drawn on the Fox's...on Naruto's chakra system? It's not a seal per se, it's a chakra construct embedded in his skin."

Hazō blinked. "Is that even possible?"

"It shouldn't be, but it's less insane than putting a seal of that complexity on skin, and I can't think of anything else that makes more sense. Not that this idea makes sense. I'm probably wrong, but it's something to check when we get back." He looked back at the notes in front of him, rapidly getting lost in the recorded thoughts of a legendary mastery of the art.

"Assuming Naruto is willing to let us study it," Hazō said.

"Hm? What?" Kagome said, jerking himself back from the notes. "Oh. That. Why wouldn't it?"

"Uh...because he doesn't like me very much?"

Kagome waved a hand dismissively. "There's no one else in Leaf who knows how to make this seal. What's going to happen when the Fox's current shell dies? There'd be no way for anyone else to offer themselves up, and it's obvious that the Fox is still enjoying playing dolls with the humans."

Akane could feel her mouth tightening. "Kagome. Naruto is not the Fox. Please stop saying that."

"Why?"

"Because it is rude! And untrue! Naruto is a hero!"

Kagome shrugged. "And? How do you know he's Naruto-the-hero and not the Fox pretending to be a hero because that amuses it?"

That stumped her.

"The bijū aren't human," Kagome said. "I haven't studied them in any detail, but I haven't seen anything that makes me think they particularly care about us one way or the other. Jinchūriki generally get made using a baby as the sacrifice. Bijū are immortal minor gods; doesn't it seem more likely that if you shove that into a baby's head the thing is going to eat the baby's mind and take control? A Yamanaka could do it."

"Well..."

"But fine, let's assume that's not the case. Let's assume that Naruto really is there, still with a human mind and separate identity. Back in the Basement, he said that 'Kurama is quite thoroughly chained up in my belly.' He knew its name."

"Okay...?"

"That means he can and has communicated with it, and that it has a name and a sense of self-identity." He shrugged. "I mean, I suppose he could have given it the name the way people name their pets, but I doubt it. There haven't been a lot of cases of a bijū breaking free, but there are some. They aren't simply animals. They use multiple differing chakra manipulations and they have some degree of tactical awareness. If they're smart then imagine what happens when you grow up, from the time you're still in nappies, with this ancient and powerful being whispering in your ear every moment of every day. It makes friends with you. Provides good suggestions, comforts you when Mommy punishes you or that kid at school is mean to you, or when your friend dies on a mission. It becomes your friend. And it makes sure that it's your best friend, so that it can turn you against anyone it doesn't like."

"Naruto would never do that! He's beloved by everyone. He is well known to be kind and generous."

"How many close friends does he have?"

Akane fell silent.

"He seemed pretty close with Sasuke," Hazō said. "When Asuma told us that the war had started, he and Sasuke clearly had a bond."

"That's one, and a Clan Head who will be a useful ally if the Fox wants to accomplish anything politically. Who else?"

"Jiraiya," Akane said. "And the Third."

"Also useful allies, and sources of training for the host, and people that the Fox would need to stay on the good side of until its host had developed the power to beat them if necessary."

Akane struggled for a response and couldn't find one. Her stomach writhed.

"You said these journals are a chain of seals," Yuno said, forcibly diverting the conversation. "What do they do?"

"Mostly, they teach you the things you need to know in order to do the final seal," Hazō replied, grateful enough to the woman that he would happily have kissed her if that wouldn't have caused his gruesome death. "Some of them don't even do anything. Well, nothing meaningful. They generate a chakra construct which lasts for a few seconds and then evaporates. Just enough to teach an infusion technique but that's it. And according to the notes we've found so far, a lot of the blanks that are in here are bullshit and a lot of the directions need to be ignored. We've found this much, but there's dozens more pages of 'poetry'"—he made the air quotes with his fingers—"to go through. Most of the poems don't have any seal material in them—so far it's only been the 'Chronicles' series and that one on—" He stopped, then closed his eyes and groaned.

"What?" Akane asked.

"'The Seventh Musing on Sacrifice'," Hazō said. "The word 'jinchūriki' literally means 'the power of human sacrifice'. And 'chronicle' is another word for 'journal', which is what all the seal notes are kept in." He hefted one of the leatherbound books, pointing at the words 'Bijū Seal, Journal #7' on the front.

"Told you the stinker liked playing with words," Kagome said smugly.

Hazō thumped himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand twice. Akane found herself smiling at the adorableness of it, and simultaneously hoping that he didn't continue the habit and eventually give himself brain damage. The family had enough challenges stemming from the way Hazō's brain worked now. Granted, they also had lots of opportunities stemming from that adorably excitable brain, but brain damage seemed more likely to increase the challenges than the opportunities.

"Yes, fine," Hazō said with a sigh. "Okay, let's look through the rest of this and see what else we can find. I want to get a corrected version of these journals put together and check to see if there's anything we can use to pry the rift open."

"Not going to want to do that here," Kagome said. "We'll want to be very thorough, make sure we've found absolutely everything before we even touch this stuff. I'll want access to some of my materials—starcharts, the calendar henge that I set up at the research facility, that kind of thing."

Hazō gave the books a longing look. "Fine," he said, standing up. "Let's get packed up and head out. We can swing by Nagi on the way home; I want to see if the seal array is still there, and I want to see if Earthshaping works more easily on the stone around the site than it does elsewhere."

o-o-o-o​

May 13, 1070 AS

Hazō fell to his knees, struggling not to choke on his own vomit.

"Hazō!" Akane yelped, sliding to her knees beside him. "What's wrong?!"

Hazō waved weakly towards the carved-away section of the mountain in front of them. He tried to speak but was interrupted by another flow of bile. No vomit, because there was nothing left to bring up.

Minutes earlier...

The sun had set and risen since they left O'uzu Island, and it was drooping again by the time the team reached the site of the Battle of the Gods. The site where an epicly powerful seal ritual had been carried out. The site where multiple resurrections had happened.

The site where Jiraiya had died.

There wasn't much to see. It had been long enough that all the vegetation had grown back. It was possible to spot some of the scars of battle, but only with a careful search. In particular, they found what they were confident was the crater Jiraiya made when he executed the Gōketsu Clan Final Technique: Kagome's Bliss.

The four of them had stood at what was probably the center of the crater, and therefore probably where Jiraiya had died, while Kagome-sensei wept. He made not a sound, but his shoulders spasmed with the sobs and he went to his knees because it was easier than balancing.

Hazō knelt beside him and put his arms around the older man. A moment later, Akane knelt on Kagome's other side and likewise embraced him. Yuno stood uncertainly, not wanting to intrude, until Hazō smiled at her and extended an arm in offer.

Yuno's cheek twitched and she leaned very slightly backwards, probably not even realizing she was doing it. Hazō held up a hand in a silent 'no pressure' gesture and wound his other arm back around his teacher.

After a moment, Yuno knelt seiza in front of Kagome. She didn't join the hug or say anything, but she was there.

"He named it for me," Kagome-sensei said, wiping angrily at his eyes. "Stupid stinker made a Final Technique and he put my name on it. What does that even mean? That he thinks I'm suicidal? That he'd rather die than work with me?"

Hazō squeezed the hug tighter. "I think it means that he respected you and knew how much you would like the idea of a massive explosion that killed an enemy you couldn't beat any other way. We all know you, sensei; if it came to defending one of us, you would throw yourself in the way of a sword. You might not be able to win the fight but you wouldn't lose it either. You'd take the stinkers with you."

"Hrmph." He wiped at his eyes again and blew his nose, then folded the handkerchief up and shoved it back into one of many pockets. "What do you two think you're doing, clinging on me like that?" he grumbled, pushing himself free of his clanmates' embrace. (Not without giving them a grateful squeeze first, of course.) "I'm not some kind of big crybaby that you need to hug and coo over."

"Of course not, sensei." Hazō couldn't keep the grin out of his voice.

"Hrmph."

With the issue of Kagome-sensei's adulthood clearly and unambiguously settled, the group climbed farther up the (small) mountain until they reached the spot where the actual ritual had been carried out.

The area was empty of legendary secrets waiting to be plucked from the ground. There were sparse grasses, lichen, and rocks. No machinery for controlling world-ending levels of chakra. No carefully-labeled ritual elements with detailed notes on construction and usage.

It took ten minutes for Hazō to figure out where the machine had probably been, and then another five of studying the damage to the landscape before he could get even a rough idea of what the machine would have looked like. Finally he borrowed some of Kagome-sensei's chakrascope seals and walked around with them. These weren't his seals and therefore he couldn't understand the actual details, but he could at least tell when there was more or less chakra in a given area. That let him play hot-or-cold to trace out the vague perimeter of where the machine's components had been.

The whole time, he kept getting distracted by itches that moved around his body. He could almost hear a ringing in his ears. His bloodline flickered inside him, the pressure that preceded recording a seal washing back and forth like waves. The Iron Nerve was confused; there were clearly traces of chakra here, and they formed something vaguely like a seal, but there was no seal for it to record.

Eventually, the dissonance sent Hazō to his knees, spewing.

"I'm okay," he managed, waving Akane off so that he could sit up. She passed him a canteen and he took it with a grateful nod, swishing his mouth out and spitting to clear the taste. "Yeah, I think I'm not going to look into this thing any more. Whatever was here, it isn't here anymore, but it was powerful enough that even the ambient chakra a year later is enough to mess me up. Let me do a quick Earthshaping and let's get another hour or so under our feet before we make camp. I don't want to sleep anywhere near this thing."

---

Author's Note: The team has now returned home. The stone of Nagi Island, in the area of the Battle of the Gods, was neither easier nor harder to shape than anywhere else.

This update covered 8 days:

• May 10 to May 12, noonish: Cracking the poetry code. No seal work was done during this time, meaning that the prep days that Kagome and Hazō had put in on their projects were lost.
• May 12 to May 13, almost sunset: Travel to the Nagi Island site
• May 13 to May 18, noonish: Return to Leaf. It would have been faster but they were traveling without Noburi which means they couldn't run as long and needed more rest breaks.

XP AWARD: 24

Brevity XP: 8

"GM had fun" XP: 4

Fate Points: +1 for general refresh

It is now about 12pm.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Jun 15, 2022 at 7:00 AM .

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 524: Prioritising Accuracy​

Hazō couldn't decide what terrified him more about his situation. Was it the many recognisably human bones littering the floor of the cavern in which he found himself? The other, warped bones which looked like they belonged to particularly deadly chakra beasts? The sign on the wall, reading "Warning: biosealing experimentation zone. Trespassers will be volunteered"?

No, trick question. It was, of course, Mori Ami, cheerfully beckoning him deeper into all of the above with the hand not holding an ominously flickering torch.

"C'mon, Hazō. Daylight's burning."

"Ami, we are heading inside a cave," Hazō pointed out.

"Hey," Ami said, "you really want to be walking home through the Forest of Really Quite Significant Peril on your own after dark, be my guest. Completely unrelatedly, did you know that the Greater Dropbear can bite through a human spine three times in under a second?"

"And yet you're leading me to a cave littered with bones."

"Mmm. Borrowed them from a chakra bear cave a few kilometres thataway. Probably a chakra bear—I didn't exactly wait for it to come back. Proper showmanship requires props—it's in the name—and you should've seen your face in the moment before the 'Oh, wait, it's just Ami' realisation hit."

Hazō gave a mock sigh. "Welcome back, Ami. I was just thinking my daily life was getting too sane."

"You know it." Ami grinned.

The cave which served as their destination at the end of a long, sloping tunnel had not been optimised for intimidation. It was small and in fact quite cosy, and even more so after Ami unsealed some large cushions and strewed them liberally across the ground.

"So, what news from the west?" Hazō asked, picking out a deep blue cushion which left his back close to the wall, with a clear view of the entrance. "Have the Powers that Be signed off on world peace or do I need to be rushing back to get to work on my next paradigm-changing superweapon?"

"Yes," Ami said helpfully.

Hazō didn't let her get away with that, and let the disapproving silence speak for him.

Ami's smile widened a little. She sat down on a pink cushion by his side.

"They've got as far as 'war bad for profit'. 'Peace good' might be a little too sophisticated for them right now, but by this time next year, they should be seeing enough return on the massive investment of not punching each other in the face to realise it's worth their while to keep going. I maybe wouldn't tempt the Seventh with any city-killers you might have up your sleeve while the ink's still wet, but it also might not hurt to have a Plan B in case the Tsuchikage snaps and decides that avenging her beloved husband takes priority."

"It's amazing how informative that answer is while technically not answering my question at all," Hazō noted.

"I aim to please," Ami said. "You should've been there, Hazō. It was a wild ride. The most powerful men and women in the world, bickering like six-year-old girls each claiming ownership of the same straw doll. You and I both know that me weaselling my way into the Convenor role was about seventy percent shameless power grab, but in retrospect, we should all be glad those people had a neutral moderator with experience raising an actual six-year-old girl and a gift for being whoever the situation needed her to be.

"I may be boasting, because I've totally earned it, but I'm not exaggerating," she added. "We had a panicking Tsuchikage trying to massage Cloud into forming a bloc, and Killer B and Grandmaster F using weird poetry and religious bullshit to sidestep everything. Let me tell you, taken alone those two are just larger-than-life personalities with larger-than-life flaws to match—think Tsunade—but when they work together, they're an adamantine wall with zero openings. I got chills.

"We had Elder Takahashi flirting with the Kazekage on multiple levels while playing all the sides off against each other like a pro. We had Lord Utakata trying to be the one sane man and getting talked over because he's got a quiet temperament and a lack of political experience, and then Lady Fu shouting down men three times her size and age until they listened to him. I don't know whether that's jinchūriki solidarity or overtures to an alliance or opposites attracting in the first steps of a romance for the ages, but it was hella awesome and also made my job a lot easier.

"Seriously, I have stories for days, except that most of them are classified because the Hokage wants to be the one to make all the cool announcements—for which I can't blame him. After the fiasco of the war, that man badly needs to bring home a win, whereas my awesomeness goes without saying."

"That doesn't stop you from saying it at every opportunity," Hazō said, but with a touch of affection.

Ami shrugged. "If I stop reminding myself how awesome I am, my ambition might start flagging, and without my ambition, I'm just a smarter, sexier, less sane Anko. But enough about me—for now. I hear you've just come back from a trip abroad yourself. Regale me with tales of your wacky adventures."

Hazō considered regaling Ami with tales of his wacky adventures. In her own way, Ami had more faith in him than anyone else: she'd taken it for granted that he was researching immortality back when the Daizen gate and Project Necromancy were but dreams as yet unseen, and fully expected him to succeed (in her ambiguously-joking Ami way). Kei and Shikamaru had a lot to learn from her.

At the same time, Ami was near the top of the list of people who could find powerful applications for this information that Hazō might not necessarily want. Better to play it safe. He could share Project Necromancy any time he decided it was a good idea, whereas it would be too late for second thoughts once the octocat was out of the bag.

"Just early-stages research," he told her. "Nothing worth sharing yet."

"Yet another summoning scroll? Blowing up uninhabited Kanashii islands with weapons tests? Or did Hidan drop some clues about secrets left over on Nagi Island?"

Hazō gave her his best confused look. "Why would Hidan tell me something?"

Wait, no. Mistake. Bad mistake. Rookie mistake. That was way too specific for a blind guess, meaning Ami already knew something and was testing him—and he'd failed and also would now need a new Iron Nerve confused face now that Ami knew he used this one to lie.

Unless, of course, it was all about Nagi and she'd just thrown in Hidan because out of the two Akatsuki Hazō had had contact with, he was the one who wanted to murder Hazō less. There was no way to know.

Dammit, Ami.

"I'll let you off the hook," Ami told him a tense couple of seconds later, "as the bondage queen said to the lost telescope salesman. I got to chatting with Hoshigaki Kisame at the Exam—which was terrifying, but if these are the leagues I'm playing in now, I can't turn down opportunities for low-stakes practice. In between catching him up on Mist news and treating him like a proper Hoshigaki, something for which he'd been starved over a decade of Akatsuki shark jokes, I dropped a little tidbit about a Sage-made 3D seal on the Seventh Path, and Dragons, and how Gōketsu Hazō, the skywalker guy, was the person to talk to if anyone wanted to know more. And wouldn't you know it, he'd already heard all about you."

Hazō swallowed. "He had?"

"You never told me you were a Jashin priest in training. Apparently, Hidan won't stop boasting about how he's finally got an apprentice who's survived multiple tests and managed to earn Jashin's favour even before his first massacre. You know, I really thought it would be that other thing that put you on the S-rank track, but hey, you do you."

"Were there a lot of people involved in this conversation?" Hazō asked very carefully.

"Nah," Ami said. "I wasn't going to let another uncertain factor into the mix when Hoshigaki alone could bite me in half if I said one wrong word. That said, I would start thinking damage control, because it sounds like right now Hidan's social circle being more of a line is the only thing standing between you and a trial for heresy."

Hazō weighed his next words very carefully. He did not want to risk alienating Ami or Jashin (and there was room for heated theological debate over which was more dangerous).

"I am not a Jashin priest in training," Hazō said. "Hidan descended on me out of nowhere and I did what anyone would do when a homicidal demigod says he wants something from you, and I suppose I made a good impression. Also, Asuma knows, and he would not be happy if anyone started talking about it without his permission."

"Mmm," Ami said meditatively. "If there's one thing I love about you, Gōketsu Hazō, it's that you never let things get boring. Which is why I really hate that I have to do this."

Hazō tensed as Ami rose from her seat.

However, she merely moved to a lavender cushion a little further away from him.

Something about the atmosphere shifted, as if the playfulness had been a breeze and now the air was still and heavy. Hazō wasn't sure if he was still dealing with the same Ami, but at the very least, she'd stopped smiling.

"So," she said. "I'm going to try to do this without my superpowers, which, you should be aware, is much—actually, never mind. Kurosawa."

Kurosawa. Hazō didn't know exactly what Ami was trying to suppress. Her I&S training? Her general jōnin social skills? The Frozen Skein? Whatever undefinable phenomenon made Ami... well, Ami? Either way, he knew what she meant. The Iron Nerve wasn't even second nature to him. It was first nature, the way he lived every hour of the day, and suppressing it was like holding his breath. It was uncomfortable and it interfered with absolutely everything else. It made him feel clumsy, awkward, out of place. It made him feel not-him, even though it was technically his true, non-playback self.

Why would Ami, who took enormous pride in her uniqueness, do that to herself?

"Watching those six-year-old girls," she began, "made me think about some things. The path I was on. Some choices I'd made."

She shifted uncomfortably in her cushion. She wasn't looking at Hazō directly.

"You remember how I freaked out and threatened Mari and you and the Gōketsu?"

"I can't exactly forget," Hazō said.

"I lost control," Ami admitted. "You probably don't get what a big deal it is, from the inside, but it is. Control, freedom, and fun. Those are me. Knowing I lost control is..." She shook her head.

"I don't regret wanting to protect Kei over everything else," she said. "And there was a part of me, figuratively speaking, that tried to run damage control, and I don't regret that it did. But the whole thing... It wasn't Mori Ami. It wasn't what Mori Ami should have wanted to do.

"I don't just mean that it was a self-contradicting mess from an efficiency perspective, though that should have been enough of a red flag. I mean..."

She broke off.

Hazō opened his mouth.

She raised her hand. "Don't interrupt. This thing is hard and I want momentum. I'll tell you when you can talk.

"Mori Ami wasn't supposed to pick a fight with the Gōketsu. We're sometimes allies and sometimes rivals, and that's partly a KEI thing and partly various other things, but I have individual bonds with people in your clan. You, Noburi, Akane, Yuno, even, maybe, especially Mari... I could have played it any other way than 'Ami versus the Gōketsu'. I could have negotiated with Mari. I could have asked you to use clan head authority. I could have... No, I guess it doesn't matter anymore.

"I lost control, and I hurt people that... How do I even translate this?

"Ugh," she said after a few seconds. "Never mind. It's not a priority. What I'm trying to say is, I regret the choices I made, and if I had another chance, I'd make different ones. I think... that's what an apology means to Mori Ami.

"I'm sorry."

She bowed her head.

"You can talk now."

Now if only Hazō knew what to say. He wouldn't call himself an expert, but he'd met a number of different Amis now, and was probably more used to their foibles than most people not named Kei. This one, however, he had no idea what to do with.

Ami didn't show weakness, not for real. She didn't let people see the workings of her mind, or when she did, it was to show off the parts that looked best while obscuring anything that could be used to understand her. And ultimately, she did not apologise, not in a way that would be recognisable as a sincere apology by a normal person.

This Ami did.

Of course, despite everything, Hazō had already chosen his answer.

"I forgive you," he said. "That hasn't changed."

She shook her head.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me. This isn't... transactional. I'm not trying to balance the scales. There are my actions, and there are the consequences, and forgiveness doesn't change them. I just think that it's important for me to tell you that... your feelings and the bonds between us have weight to me. I regret acting in a way that disregarded it. That's it."

Hazō nodded mutely, still processing.

"That was the easy part," Ami said. "This feels awful. I don't know how you people do it over and over."

"The trick is making lots of mistakes," Hazō explained seriously. "I know your parents thought you were the second coming of the Sage, so if you count the head start I got just from apologising to Mum..."

"That's not what I meant," Ami said. "You should stop talking again."

Hazō stopped talking, and just watched Ami in silence for a while as she thought.

"When I was in Grass," she said, "I thought about the path I was on. I'd spent a year dithering between two options. Or... a blurry spectrum of options I couldn't really understand, and an option that was the other one. I made a choice, finally. But then I went to Grass, and I looked back, and I realised I didn't like my choice, and I didn't like where I thought it would take me.

"There's a lot I'm not going to unpack now. I'm prioritising accuracy, because that's what sincerity means to me, but the Frozen Skein won't work for this, and my normal self-expression is optimised for other things, and frankly, I don't have the data and this is all inferential work. I'd skip right to the end if I could, but there's nothing there that's solid enough without context.

"Kei's grown so much, Hazō," Ami said seemingly a propos of nothing. "She has new strengths, new values, new goals... She's redefined what I thought was possible for her. I no longer know where she can go or what she can become.

"I looked at myself, playing with the six-year-old girls, and I saw where I was going. I'd learn the strengths I needed to match their weaknesses. I'd reshape the world as I liked, and they'd be too short-sighted to stop me before they became irrelevant. I'd complete the master plan and then find something even more fun to do. I'd get ever more skilled, and ever more brilliant... and that's it.

"My little sister would surpass me in everything else. She has no idea what she can do yet. Her time started when she left Mist, while..."

Ami rose abruptly. "No. I can't do this. Sorry, Hazō."

Hazō, too well-versed in the ways of Mori girls storming off and how it invariably made things worse, did something one should absolutely never do to a jōnin, much less an armed, distressed jōnin, and grabbed her by the sleeve as she turned towards the exit.

"Ami," he said. "I'm not sure what you're trying to do, but you're doing it. Successfully. Just take your time."

Ami stood there for a while, thinking. Eventually, she went for a pale blue cushion a little closer to him.

"I don't know if I can be as incredible as Kei," she said. "Probably not. But in a choice between being like them but better and being like her... suddenly I start wondering what's on the other path, even though I know I can't understand it. I start wondering if I can still take a step back, to the branching point.

"Other people don't compartmentalise as much as I do. I get that. I hate Mari for taking Kei from me, and I love her for helping Kei grow when I couldn't, and I love her for guiding me further along my path, and I hate her for guiding me further along my path, and she is a glorious rival and an excellent lover and a dangerous threat and a powerful teacher and a gifted apprentice and a formidable obstacle, and all of these things and a thousand more are all true at the same time. They don't turn into some kind of homogeneous soup of 'Here is the aggregate feeling I have about this person'.

"But that's me. For the Gōketsu, the soup is always going to have a hefty seasoning of 'Ami threatened to kill us all'. That's a consequence of my actions. Mari certainly hasn't been hiding the aggregate feeling she has about me.

"I don't know if I've burned the bridge back to the branching point. I'm not the one who gets to decide that. I don't know if the other branch has control, freedom, and fun, or if trying to be someone I'm not will leave me melting into no one at all. I don't know anything, and it's the worst feeling ever. I just have this new fear that when she gets to the end, Omnikage Ami will look back and regret taking a path that just made her more Ami instead of a path that made her more Kei."

Hazō didn't know if she'd burned the bridge either. He didn't know how much he could or should trust Ami, not just because of the most recent conflict, but because... well, Ami. There were so many facets to his relationship with her, and so many ways in which their lives influenced each other—not just directly, but via Kei, the KEI, the unpredictable tectonic shifts of Uplift and AMITY, and their general escalating impact on Leaf and the world—that, whatever Ami thought, he could never boil it down to a single flavour of soup.

And then there were the other Gōketsu. Kagome-sensei considered Ami one wrong move away from being a crater, and contingencies be damned. Mari was opaque on the subject of Ami, but she didn't have a history of reacting positively to death threats, or indeed threats to her family. The others seemed more sanguine, but if they were anything like him, they would be nursing complicated feelings of their own. If Hazō decided to welcome Ami with open arms, his clan head authority was final, but what would it mean for his existing family?

"That was horrible beyond words," Ami said firmly, "and I am never doing it again."

She took a swig from a flask he hadn't seen her pull out. "Ugh, this stuff is also horrible beyond words when you take it cold. Though I suppose you already know that."

She stood up, and Hazō followed her.

"Ami," he said, because while he had no idea where to go from here, he absolutely couldn't leave a confession like that without a response, "I think—"

Ami held up her hand again.

"I didn't say you could talk again."

Hazō gave her a quizzical look.

"Sorry," she said softly," but could we walk back without talking, just this once?"

He helped her gather the cushions, though she left the bones and the sign in place.

They walked back without talking.

-o-​

What do you do?

Voting closes on Jun 18, 2022 at 1:00 PM

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 525: High Stakes Seal Negotiations​

May 18, 1070 AS, 12:30pm

"Wow. You look like a walking corpse," Noburi said, dropping into his seat and crossing his legs, right ankle on left knee, and spreading his napkin full of snacks on the arm of the chair.

Hazō leaned his elbows on his desk and rubbed his face with both hands. "Love you too, Nobby. We sealed up the cabins at dawn, ran for five hours, and I got back thirty minutes ago. Had a quick wash and stuffed down some sushi while Gaku read me in on what's been happening. I'm a little tired but there's a lot to do."

"Yeah?" Noburi leaned back and tossed a nut into his mouth.

"How the hell are you losing fat, gaining muscle, but every time I see you you're stuffing your face?"

"Clean living. Why am I being graced with a summons, O Fearless Leader?"

"Training plans. You said you wanted to learn Earth Element so you can learn MaRI so you can build roads."

"And, judging by the fact that I'm sitting here while you're dead on your feet, you think it's a bad plan."

Hazō sighed and glugged down another cup of wakemoss tea. It was foul stuff, brown and stinky, and too much of it loosened the bowels. Still, it was the second-best thing for keeping you awake and Hazō wasn't quite willing to step up to Shikamaru's level of using dilute Akimichi stimulants.

"I think that there's a limited number of hours in the day and you've got a lot of things you've expressed interest in," he said, yawning. "Whatever your top priority is, I want to help you get there as efficiently as possible. Learning a new chakra nature is an all-consuming thing that takes months, so if you go for that then you're not making progress on other things. I also think that if you want to build roads then you could have one of your toads learn MaRI and start on it tomorrow, instead of spending months learning a new element in order to do it yourself. So. Medical skills so you can save lives? Combat skills so you can be deployed in the field? Earth Element so you can build roads?"

Noburi hesitated, then deliberately tossed another trio of nuts in his mouth. "You're saying I shouldn't study the new element."

"I'm saying you shouldn't chase after the latest shiny thing that's going to make you feel like you're making a difference. I'm saying you should figure out what's going to let you make a difference."

"'Chasing after the latest shiny thing'? That's a bitch way to put it, bro."

"Is it wrong?"

A muscle in Noburi's cheek jumped as his eyes narrowed. He chewed his nuts silently, eyes locked on Hazō's.

Hazō sighed. "Noburi, I don't mean to be rude but I need to talk to Asuma in an hour and before I do that I want to make sure I've lined up instructors for you and ensured that your schedule has room at times that work for you and for them. Now, you can get pissy with me if you want, but right now either choose something or tell me that you want to think about it and then go think about it. Those are your options, so pick one."

o-o-o-o​

May 18, 1070 AS, 1:30pm

"Welcome back, Hazō," Asuma said, settling back into his chair with a sigh. "Enjoy your trip?"

"I did, sir. Thank you."

"I'm assuming that you'll be resuming your Tower-mandated instruction of young Hagoromo, which you have been ignoring for the last two weeks?" The words were snarky but there was a trace of amusement in them. Only a trace; Asuma was only mostly joking.

"With respect, sir, I cleared it with the Hagoromo before leaving and gave them the option of sending Harumitsu with us. They declined. I also left him with substantial study materials and arranged for Aburame Manjirō to check in with him twice a week. Aburame is damn good. Seal students fight to get lessons with him and I had to promise a major trade to make it happen. He's got ten favor tokens that he can call in to have either me or Kagome-sensei guest lecture to his students."

Asuma smiled. "Does Kagome know that he's going to have to do this?"

"I...may have left that conversation for a future date."

The smile turned into a chuckle. "Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that meeting. Anyway, Isobe said that you had something to show me?"

Hazō nodded. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a leatherbound, stained, and heavily dog-eared journal with pages rucked up by inserted notes. He held it out; Asuma leaned forward and took the journal from Hazō's extended hand, frowning as he did. He looked at the cover, then flipped it open and studied the piece of storage-seal-equipped paper that had been tucked inside. He looked back at Hazō. "The Fourth's notes on the jinchūriki seal?"

"Yes sir." He checked his voice to make sure it wouldn't shake. Between the wakemoss tea (which was finally kicking in, and it was possible he'd overdone it) and the fear of how Asuma might react to this conversation, Hazō was feeling wonderfully awake. "That's the first journal, the other nine are in the seal. The journals belong to Leaf and I'm offering them back if you wish to reclaim them. I'm also notifying you of some discoveries we've made."

Asuma's eyebrows shot up. "You made discoveries about the notes?"

"Yes sir. As head of Clan Gōketsu, I am notifying the Hokage that the notes are dangerous. Sections of them are intentionally incorrect, designed to cause failures if followed." He shrugged. "The Fourth was extremely concerned about another village gaining access to these notes. After looking through them, I can understand why. The final seal, the jinchūriki seal itself, is ridiculously complicated. The notes are a chain of seals, a pedagogical series. Many of the seals do essentially nothing—they simply create a chakra construct that dissolves after a few seconds, the only point being to teach a particular technique that's necessary for the final seal. Some of them, however, are useful. All of them, useful or not, are massive traps. Instructions that are designed to kill you, sections out of order, localizations that are the inverse of what they should be, excess elements in the blank, false blanks...when was the last time someone worked on these before me?"

Asuma thought about that. "Eight, nine years ago? Maybe?"

"What happened?"

Asuma leaned back, hefting the journal thoughtfully. "I wasn't closely involved, but Dad was pretty stressed. There were a couple of weeks of absolutely horrific weather across everything within a hundred miles. Firestorms on one side of a farm while the other side was suffering torrential rain. Houses flattened and covered in ice by winds that screamed with human voices. A month later a swarm of fire ants ate a good chunk of the forest population east of Leaf."

"Fire ants?"

"Ants made out of fire." He shrugged. "There was a third incident and then the investigation stopped."

"Huh. Figuring these seals out would make a sealmaster's career, and being able to produce the jinchūriki seal is important to Leaf's security. I'm surprised whoever was doing the research was willing to give up."

"Oh, they didn't give up. The third incident was the Moritaka estate dissolving into smoke and everyone with a drop of Moritaka blood exploding, the researchers going last."

"Ah. Yes, that sounds like a good reason to stop."

"And you're telling me that this wasn't incompetence or misfortune on their part? It was intentional sabotage by the Fourth?"

"Uh..." Crap. What did you say to that? "Sir, all I can say is that I suspect the Fourth thought about this a lot. Also, these are working notes from when he was doing the research. He probably intended to clean them up for final publication later, and remove the traps in the process. Am I right that he died the night the Fox attacked?"

Asuma studied him for a moment, then nodded. "It's not bandied about, but it's not actually classified either. His wife, Kushina, was the previous jinchūriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox. I never learned the exact details, but my understanding is that jinchūriki seals weaken when the bearer is pregnant—something about having another chakra system inside your own, I think. One of the reasons that the Fourth was working so hard on inventing a new seal was to eliminate that weakness."

He sighed and shook his head, then rolled himself a cigarette and lit it. He leaned back in his chair, hands folded on his stomach and the cigarette dangling precariously from his lips. "Dad never talked about it much—it didn't really come up—but I remember him saying a few things that made me suspect there might be other weaknesses to Kushina's seal that the Fourth wanted to correct. I don't know the details.

"Anyway, when Kushina was actively giving birth, the seal broke and the Fox escaped. The Fourth sealed it into his just-born son but the process killed him and Kushina bled out from a bad birth before anyone could get to her." He smiled sadly. "The power of human sacrifice indeed."

Hazō nodded thoughtfully. "No one in Leaf knows the seal right now, true?"

"True. No one has wanted to touch it since the Moritaka Clan died. I had rather hoped that you would learn it. That's part of why I let you study the notes."

"Sir, I've discussed this with my advisors and we aren't quite sure of the best way to handle it, so I'm bringing the question to you."

"Oh?" Asuma's eyebrow went up. "This sounds like it'll be fun."

Hazō laughed, the sound escaping against his will before being cut off by a spike of nerves. "This is more us needing to clarify some points of law, sir."

"Hazō, before you say anything else, I assume that you're not going to try to claim that the jinchūriki notes are now your clan's secrets?"

"No sir. The notes belong to the Tower—or maybe to Naruto, I don't know, but definitely not to the Gōketsu. They were loaned to us and we understand and appreciate that. That's why I brought them back." He gestured to the journal on the Hokage's desk and the seal that it contained. "Kagome-sensei and I haven't finished decoding them, although we've made significant strides. We have not copied them. If you choose to return the notes to us then we'll continue our research, taking care to keep the research site well away from Leaf proper. If you choose not to return them to us then we will focus our efforts on other things."

"All right...?"

"Sir, the notes belong to the Tower but the discoveries we've made do not. Anyone with the relevant skills could replicate what we did, given the materials and the effort and the same amount of luck that we had. I've informed you of the key item, the fact that the notes are trapped and that it's important to locate the traps before proceeding. That right there"—he gestured to the journal and the storage seal inside it—"contains everything necessary to duplicate our investigation and our results." Including the poems that had been the key, but he wasn't going to mention that. "If you allow us to continue the research and we eventually learn to create the jinchūriki seal then we will be happy to put it on anyone the Tower directs us to whenever we're told to do so. Hopefully there won't be the need for a very long time, since that would mean something had happened to Naruto. The key point is that this isn't an urgent issue. If you don't want the Gōketsu to have this information then there's plenty of time for other people to make the same discoveries that we did and go beyond them.

"The jinchūriki seal itself belongs to Leaf, but the specific nature of the security measures in the notes does not. The progress that we've made on the intermediate seals belongs to us." He smiled, wry and thin. "For the record, said 'progress' is almost nil. We've figured out what some of them do, but that's it. In addition to his security measures, the Fourth was very cagey about what he wrote down. There seems to be enough there to figure out what they all do and how to make them, but he didn't write down the details of their function or even give them names."

"You said that some of them only produce chakra constructs. Sounds like you know what they do."

"Yes sir," Hazō said, nodding. "Some of them. There's thirty-one seals in the chain, with the jinchūriki seal itself making thirty-two. We have what amounts to a one-sentence explanation of eight of the first ten seals. No clue what the rest do." He fell silent, watching Asuma and struggling not to sweat.

For his part, Asuma slouched back in his chair, studying Hazō calmly. He drew on his cigarette, then reached up and took it from his lips so he could blow a smoke cloud at the ceiling. Hazō waited silently as the older man watched the bluish plume roil and dissolve.

"You sure you want to go here, Hazō?" Asuma said calmly.

"Sir, I've returned the notes and I've given you the key information. That's more than we had going in and if you give it to someone else with the right skills then they can repeat our investigation. Without the notes we can't pursue this line of research any farther—well, we could, but it would be insane and we're not going to. This stuff is way too dangerous to do without the notes. The Fourth was a genius and neither Kagome-sensei nor I have the slightest hint of a belief that we're on his level. Good enough to follow where he leads? Yes, I think so. Good enough to carve the path ourselves? No. If you don't want the Gōketsu to benefit from the work we've done, I understand and will respect that position without complaint, although I think letting us continue our work would benefit Leaf in the long run. I'm simply saying that what we're doing is difficult, and dangerous, and the Gōketsu should benefit as well. The jinchūriki seal belongs to Leaf and the notes belong to Leaf. If we figure it out then we'll put the seal on anyone you like, we'll give the notes to anyone you think should have them, and we won't make copies without your express permission. Beyond that, what we create using those materials belongs to the Gōketsu. We're a new clan and we need our own advantages, same as any other clan does."

"One might suggest that three Summoning Scrolls should do as an advantage. Especially given that the Arachnid Scroll was obtained for you by the military efforts of Leaf." He tossed one hand. "Since it belongs to your married sister, I'll be generous and not count the Pangolin Scroll which is the key to Leaf's trade network and therefore provides tremendous economic leverage."

There had been a roiling, burning ball of terror chewing at Hazō's insides ever since he left the estate to come to this meeting. The ball slowed its roils by a smidgen; Asuma's voice was measured and chilly, but it was calm and there was no tension around his eyes. Hazō was probably going to walk out of the room on his own two feet and be allowed to go home instead of to a killbox.

Probably.

"True, one might suggest that, sir," Hazō agreed. "On the other hand, the Toad Scroll was our inheritance from Jiraiya, which we earned by contributing skywalkers to Leaf. The Dog Scroll was given to us by the Tower as thanks for when we donated our founder's sealing notes. Those documents were the most precious possession that we had, the biggest advantage we had compared to the other clans, and we willingly gave them up without being certain that we would get anything in return."

Asuma took another drag on the cigarette and blew a smoke ring. "And the Arachnid Scroll?"

"Given to us by the Hokage's decision and for sufficient reason. As to the Leaf military action involved, it was performed using tactics and capabilities supplied by the Gōketsu that allowed Leaf to eliminate an enemy stronghold with no losses. Well, no losses of people we like."

Asuma laughed. He tossed the butt of his cigarette into the bucket of sand next to his desk and rolled himself another one.

"Sir, the Gōketsu are loyal," Hazō said. "We aren't taking anything that's not ours. We're providing a warning that will give other Leaf sealmasters a better chance to survive reading those notes. If we manage to figure out the jinchūriki seal—which we may not, and it's years out even if we can—then we'll use it as the Tower directs. I'm simply saying that everything else belongs to us. If someone else wants to do the research and learn the same things we learn, more power to them. I simply don't think we should be obligated to hand it over ourselves."

Asuma twisted his cigarette shut, lit it, and then leaned back in his chair. He placed his feet up on his desk, legs crossed at the ankle, and studied Hazō calmly. He took a deep drag on the cigarette, burning up a quarter of it in one pull.

Hazō couldn't help swallowing nervously, but he rigidly suppressed all other reaction.

Asuma studied him.

Hazō's stomach roiled faster.

Asuma blew a long trail of smoke to the ceiling, then studied the tip of his cigarette thoughtfully.

"All right," he said at last.

"Sir?"

"It's a fair point. Make copies of the seal notes and send the originals back to the Tower. I'm sure I don't have to share my thoughts on the priority of that?"

"You do not, sir, although I note that copies of blanks shouldn't be trusted if they weren't made by the original sealmaster. Having them will be better than nothing but people really should work from the originals." He hesitated, sensing that he had only seconds before this meeting ended. "One last thing, sir. It would be helpful if we could study the actual seal, the one on Naruto, but I'm not sure about how this works. Do you object to that? Do you think it's a bad idea to talk to him?"

Asuma laughed. "You intend to ask Naruto to stand patiently while you poke and prod at his seal?"

"Yes sir. If he'll let me."

"I'm given to understand that the two of you have a somewhat...exciting relationship."

"A bit, sir. Still, he's loyal to Leaf and he's smart. Leaf needs that seal available and we're the ones working on it."

Asuma shook his head in amusement. "Dad always said that there was never a day without a surprise." He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Ask him. If he says no...have him talk to me."

The knot unclenched a tiny bit more. "Thank you, sir."

"Anything else?"

"No sir."

"Dismissed."

o-o-o-o​

May 18, 1070 AS, 7:30pm

Naruto opened the door and paused, surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"And a fine how-do-you-do to you as well," Mari said, smiling. "Do you have a minute?"

Naruto studied her for a moment, then shrugged. He conjured and dispelled a clone, then stepped back and pulled the door wide, gesturing Mari towards the sitting area.

Mari swept inside with the grace of a dancer and settled herself primly on an overstuffed and much battered couch, a horrific green thing that made up for its ugliness by being uncomfortably lumpy. Naruto lounged in the midnight-blue armchair opposite her; a moment later another Naruto came in with a tea tray and set it on the low table between them before taking a seat in another armchair.

"And whyfor do you grace my humble abode this fine day?" the first Naruto asked.

Mari chuckled and cocked her head. "Is it actually your home in particular? I know that Snowflake got legally recognized as an individual with legal rights separate from those of her Prime, but I'm suddenly realizing that I don't know if that was a general policy or a special case."

"What makes you think I'm a clone?"

Mari gave him a Look. "Really?"

"What?"

"First, Naruto Prime makes constant use of his clones for all sorts of things, so it's hardly surprising that he'd have one answer the door. Second, he's not an idiot. Answering the door has security risks when you live in the middle of town like this, without a wall or guards. Why would he have his physical body do it?"

Naruto looked amused. "I learned a long time ago that once someone has decided I'm a clone there's no way to prove it to them aside from stabbing myself or letting them punch me, and I'm not masochistic enough to do that for no good reason. For the sake of this conversation, let's assume that I am in fact Naruto Prime."

"As you say." She shifted on the couch, trying to find a more comfortable spot. "In that case, you're the person I need to speak to."

"Oh? Why me in particular?"

"Because, as I understand it, only Prime has an actually functional seal on those impressive six-pack abs of his."

Naruto rubbed at his forehead briefly. "I'm going to roll on past the implied innuendo from a woman old enough to be my mother."

"Hey! I am not! You can't have children at te—at eight years old."

Naruto snorted. "Sure. Anyway, why does my seal matter?"

"Has Asuma read you in on the fact that Hazō has been researching the Fourth's jinchūriki seal? Your jinchūriki seal?"

"He did. Why?"

She crossed her legs and leaned forward, fingers interlaced around her knee. "Naruto, I'm sorry to put it like this, but that seal is a matter of national security for Fire. My lips to the Sage's ear: may it not be something that Leaf needs for many, many years. Still, there will come a time when we do. Either because something happens to you, or because you kill another jinchūriki and their bijū is rampaging around needing to be contained. It was the masterwork of a genius sealmaster and it's going to take a long time to puzzle it out. We can't afford to wait until it's needed to start working on it, we need to have it ready in advance."

​

"Tell him that familiarity with his seal might help us figure out the Great Seal and how to prevent it from falling apart," Hazō had said.​

​

"Wrong approach," Mari had said, shaking her head. "He's got no way to judge the importance of the Great Seal or the probability that it exists. It's easy for people to believe a comforting denial over a truth about looming disaster that they can personally do nothing about. Better to keep it to patriotism and preparedness."​

​

"You're the expert," Hazō had said, in a way that made her smile in delight at the trust. "Work with a light touch. It's more important that we not pooch the relationship any more than it already is than that we get access to the seal in the immediate future."​

​

"Did you always try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs or am I special?" ​

​

"I never knew her, so I guess you're special."​

​

She had blown a raspberry at him and then went to talk Naruto into being a test subject for dangerous seal-related experiments.​

​

​

"Aside from disaster preparedness, think of the military implications," Mari said. "A large fraction of the S-rank ninja in the world died recently. Many of the ones who remain are jinchūriki. My understanding is that your father's seal was intended to allow transplanting a jinchūriki from one person to another, right? Suppose we could steal the jinchūriki from the other villages and turn them into Leaf assets?" His eyes widened but before he could speak she waved a hand to cut him off. "Oh, I definitely see the explosiveness of the plan, and the issues about making ourselves a target by stealing such an asset but not being able to field it for a decade while the new host grows up. I wouldn't advocate it as a proactive strategy, but if Rock got pissy again? It would be a good tool to have in our toolbox."

Naruto closed his mouth. After a moment he smiled in amusement and leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "And you're here talking to me about this because Hazō knows that I know that you're not the Gōketsu treason bunny, so you're more likely to convince me than he is."

She chuckled. "The thought occurred, yes. Point of information: he got the Hokage's permission before doing anything, and he ordered me in no uncertain terms to, quote, use a very light touch, unquote. If you're not comfortable with the idea, that's totally fine. He and Kagome are working through the Fourth's notes; there's probably enough there for them to figure it out. Being able to study the seal itself would be useful but it's not essential."

"Hm." Naruto nodded thoughtfully. "Asuma said yes?"

"He gave Hazō permission to approach you. He did not give any orders."

"Hm." He chewed on his lip. "What exactly does he need me to do?"

"I'm afraid it will be a tremendous challenge for you," she said, shaking her head dolefully. "A tremendous challenge indeed."

"Uh-huh. Cough it up."

"I'm afraid you will need to...lie still. Oh, and take your shirt off. Not in that order."

"Well, that's a relief. I wasn't quite sure how I would have done it the other way. And why exactly is this a tremendous challenge?"

She gave him another Look. "Really? You and your absurd energy levels and endurance? Just watching you move around is exhausting. I suspect that the Nara run when they see you coming."

"That is so not—! Hm. Actually, you might have something there. I hadn't noticed it before, but...hm."

"The light dawns," she said, grinning. "So, what do you say?"

"Before I commit to anything, when and where? And maybe a little more detail on what exactly is going to happen."

"We're at your disposal. You name the time and place, we'll be there. As to what exactly would happen...you can get the exact details from Hazō, but my understanding is that it will involve lying still for half an hour or so while he and Kagome take measurements, trace the design, that kind of thing."

"Hm. I'll think about it."

She nodded. "That's all Hazō was looking for. Thank you." She rummaged in a belt pouch and brought out a storage seal. "On a different topic, this might interest you." She leaned forward and set it on the table. "I saved it until after the seal conversation because I didn't want you to feel any sort of reciprocity pressure."

Naruto looked at the seal, did not touch it, and then looked back at her. "What is it?"

"Your father's papers. Not the seal stuff, personal things. Poetry that he wrote, diaries, even some random non-classified work papers and shopping lists. Hazō lost his father when he was quite young and he remembers valuing any scrap of his father's handwriting or personal effects that he could find. The poetry has marginalia from your mother, too. He thought it would be meaningful for you."

The second Naruto, who had been sitting silently in the chair this entire time, disappeared in a puff of quickly-dispersing smoke. Moments later another Naruto came into the room and crossed straight to the table. He knelt down and opened the seal; a box of neatly-ordered papers appeared and he stared at it without moving.

Mari stood up and bowed. "I'll leave you to it," she said quietly.

---

Author's Note: Hazō did not share Kagome's theory about the jinchūriki seal being a chakra construct written onto Naruto's chakra coils, either with Naruto or with Asuma. After discussion with Mari and Noburi it was determined that there was no advantage in doing so; either it's true and it becomes a Gōketsu clan secret or it's not true and sharing it simply makes you look bad for being wrong.

XP AWARD: 4

Brevity XP: 1

"GM had fun" XP: 2

• +1 for scene: Asuma + Hazō
• +1 for scene: Hazō + Noburi

It is now about 8pm.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Jun 22, 2022 at 7:00 AM .

 

[Velorien]

Interlude: Adoption Interviews - Yokoyari Yūma​

Today was the most important day of Yūma's life. Well, maybe the second most important, after the day Hyūga Hiroi visited Hosaki and told Grandpa that his only grandson was going to be a ninja, and to have their bags packed within the hour, in the same matter-of-fact tone that Grandpa reminded him to close the windows at night so the flesh-eating ravens wouldn't get in.

No, the third most important, after the day the Yokoyari home was wiped out by those whoresons from Hidden Rock and the Gōketsu had charged in to the rescue. Nobody said important days had to be good.

Originally, the third most important day had definitely been the day Akiko finally agreed to go out with him. Then it had been the day Emi did. Then Mai. Then Eiko. Then Saori. Or was Saori before Mai? Sometimes it was hard to keep these things straight.

Oh, but there was also his Academy graduation. You know what? Never mind. Yūma wasn't the kind of man who got bogged down in details.

The one detail he wished he had got bogged down in was the time. He shouldn't have taken an extermination mission right before the scheduled hour. Not even if Lady Yuno was on it. Yes, watching Lady Yuno flail helplessly when he flirted with her was almost as much fun as killing dangerous chakra beasts by her side, which in turn was almost as much fun as listening to her stories of incredible faraway places. But there was this thing Captain Yamanaka talked about that she called delayed gratification, and maybe Yūma should ask her to explain it again, ideally over dinner.

"My bad," he wheezed as he skidded to a stop just inside the interview tent. "Seriously, my bad. It must be an hour past my interview time. I know I screwed up, but maybe we can still reschedule?"

Lord Noburi chuckled as he poured a cup of water from the pitcher by his side and slid it across the table. "Don't worry about it. I just arrived myself. You know how it is."

Yūma gulped the water down greedily. Some things took priority over etiquette. Lord Noburi, one of the chillest men in the history of masculinity, could be counted on to get that much. It was part of the reason why Yūma was, despite everything, much more relaxed than if he'd been facing the imposing Lord Hazō, who could turn kind, fierce, inspiring, or distant at the drop of a hat. Yūma doubted that even Lord Hazō's Yamanaka girlfriend could guess what he was thinking.

"Are you ready to get started?" Lord Noburi asked.

"As I'll ever be," Yūma said with a confidence he didn't feel. "Hit me with your best shot."

"Great," Lord Noburi said. "Can you give me your name for the record?"

"Yokoyari Yūma," Yūma said. "Just to check, I'm not too covered in chakra beast blood for you to recognise me, right?" Looking back, maybe it would have been worth being a few more minutes late to chuck himself at the nearest body of water first.

"No worries," Lord Noburi said. "Saying I'm used to it would be an understatement."

"It was largely your lady wife's enthusiasm that got me this way," Yūma admitted. "It wasn't acidic, though, and none of it got in my eyes or mouth, so it's all good. Plus I got some great tips for getting the stuff out of clothing on our way back."

Lord Noburi winced. "Sorry about that. I know she can lose track of her surroundings a bit when she's… in the swing of things."

"I do wish she'd be more careful," Yūma said. "She's very good at what she does, but it sucks watching a girl put herself in danger and not being able to do anything about it because axes are made for wading into the thick of it and spears… aren't."

Lord Noburi raised an eyebrow. "You do know she's one of the youngest special jōnin in Leaf history, right? She's closer to Captain Hatake territory than she is to you and me, minus cheating eyeballs."

"It's not about how strong she is," Yūma insisted. "My grandpa always taught me—"

Wait, did he really want to have this argument in the middle of a make-or-break interview that had nothing to do with Lady Yuno at all?

"Never mind," he said. "My bad for distracting you. Yokoyari Yūma, chūnin of Hidden Leaf, which I assume you already know since I got a note inviting Yokoyari Yūma to an interview—which, by the way, I am super excited for. Thanks for shortlisting me, Lord Noburi."

"Hey, you made it here all on your own merit," Lord Noburi said. "I'm just here because slots are limited, so I have to look for the tiniest differences between awesome ninja so I can help decide who gets adopted now and who gets adopted later.

"Now, check me: your affinity is Wind Element, right?"

"That's right."

"Any cool stuff you can do with that?"

"Sure," Yūma said. "I've got this ninjutsu to speed me up so I can get in close, and another one to shove people away to open up space, and that one's really nice because it works on missiles too. I'm working on another one I just got from the KEI exchange which extends my spear reach with this pointy wind thing, but I'm still working on making it actually pointy. Right now, it's like punching someone with a cushion. Great for comedy value; less great for not getting your face eaten."

"That checks off the third question too," Lord Noburi said. "You're a spear expert, right?"

"Sure am," Yūma said. "Leaf's not big on spear training because everyone thinks spears suck when you're fighting in the middle of a bunch of trees. Let me tell you, that everyone's never had a rendclaw with claws this big try to slice them into salad. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, better than a spear for keeping chakra beasts off you while you look for a weak point. Also, ranged fighters love you because you can keep the enemy pinned in place without forcing them to fire into melee. They say there's nothing more terrifying than knowing a teammate's going to die if you don't back them up, but they'll also die if you miss and hit them in the back.

"Let me get ahead of question four, because I can see where this is going," Yūma added, because one of the things he needed to show off today were his smarts. The Gōketsu loved smart people. Lord Hazō was a top sealmaster and he ran a whole bunch of crazy projects that nobody else would ever think of and he was always visiting Lord Nara to plan ways to turn the entire shinobi world upside down. Lord Kagome, another great sealmaster, was so smart he couldn't understand normal people, and vice versa (not that Lord Hazō didn't have some of that going on either). Lady Mari had her fingers in a dozen pies, and plans within plans within plans. Lady Kei… enough said. Even the Gōketsu's top civilian, Master Gaku, was said to be a once-in-a-generation genius who knew everything about everyone and could tell you what the clan's money was doing down at any given time to the individual ryō.

"My thing is chakra beast extermination," Yūma went on. "Don't get me wrong—if you need an enemy ninja poked full of holes faster than you can say 'Screw Hidden Rock', I'm your man, but the love of my life is taking all those big, brutal monsters and teaching them that there's only room for one apex predator in this world, and it ain't them."

"Could you tell me more about that?" Lord Noburi asked casually.

"My parents got killed by chakra beasts," Yūma said with no particular feeling. "So did a bunch of other folks. I can't do anything about people starving when there's a bad harvest, and I don't have the aptitude to be a medic-nin. But it turns out I can keep the villages safe by killing everything that threatens them, and, honestly, it's satisfying as hell. Between you and me, I think there might be something about chakra that makes ninja enjoy violence."

"There are those," Lord Noburi said carefully, "who'd say that it's a waste of a ninja's time to care about civilians because civilians aren't really people the way ninja are. I'm sure you've heard comments about how civilians are just inferior, or how there are always more where they came from, or how a ninja's job is to protect Hidden Leaf and promote its interests, not worry about some random farmers out in the sticks, or how if Lord Hokage thought there was something wrong with treating civilians the way everyone does, he'd say so. What's your response to that?"

Yeah, Yūma had heard all those comments. Those and a thousand more. When he was still a kid, he'd tried arguing back. All it had got him was to be called a termite, just because he was first-generation, and a civilian-lover, as if that was an insult, and even the nicest people just told him he'd understand once he got a bit older and saw more of the world. There were some things you just couldn't argue about, he'd learned. It was like arguments didn't go in. People would just repeat the same dumb answers, over and over, no matter what you said, until they got fed up and told you to shove off.

"I can't speak for Lord Hokage," Yūma said. "His wisdom is beyond the likes of me to understand. But I know my grandpa, and he's as civilian as they get, and he's also the bravest man in the Fire Country. He used to be a hunter, and that meant that every day, he'd go into chakra beast-infested woods and look for food for the village, knowing that if he ran into anything deadlier than a doomvole, that would be the end of him. There's nothing a ninja can do to measure up to that kind of courage. We don't even go into battle without orders. So if a man like him is subhuman, then what are we?"

Lord Noburi nodded thoughtfully.

In any other clan, Yūma was pretty sure, he'd have been laughed at if he was lucky, or chased out and told never to come back. Saying a ninja could be inferior to a civilian was nothing short of blasphemy. But the reason Yūma had stuck with the Gōketsu, instead of joining Ami in the Uchiha District (which was orders of magnitude nicer than the Gōketsu temporary accommodation), was that this was the one place where they understood. Yūma was as loyal to the ideals of the KEI as any clanless ninja who'd been given hope for the future where there had been just the endless grind until death, but the coordinators were fighting other battles. He could trust them to bring justice to the shinobi world. In the meantime, people were dying.

"You must get it, Lord Noburi," Yūma said. "You've been to Isan. Lady Yuno's told me all about how Isan treats its civilians as different, not worse. Isan ninja are protectors, not overlords, and everyone's happier for it. Why is Leaf, the beacon of civilization, the greatest village in the world, so far behind them?"

"I think you may have a slightly idealised picture of Isan," Lord Noburi said wryly, "but you're not wrong. If a ninja went around behaving towards civilians there the way our ninja behave towards civilians here, I think he'd be up in front of his clan head pretty sharpish. Hurting a civilian hurts the village that civilian serves. It should be a no-brainer, right? And I guess this also answers the next question, which was going to be why you want to join the Gōketsu."

"Yeah," Yūma said. "You have no idea how weird it is that there's a clan that just gets it. There's still part of me that thinks it's got to be a facade, and the actual reason you care about civilians is economic or something. But then I talk to Lady Yuno, and she says the Gōketsu are for real, and I don't think she could lie to save her life."

"You're good friends with Yuno, are you?" Lord Noburi asked.

If there was one thing to be said for the Gōketsu Clan, Yūma believed, it was that the late Lord Fifth and Lord Hazō had both known what they were doing when it came to women. Lady Mari was an extraordinary 9/10, only a single point docked because Yūma generally liked them tall and willowy. Like every other male on the Gōketsu estate, he'd had his share of pleasant nights spent contemplating Lady Mari's various merits. In the end, though, like any chakra beast hunter who lived long enough, he had a well-developed predator sense, and he knew deep down that if anything ever happened, the confident, experienced, seductive older woman would eat up the likes of him in a single bite (and not just in the good way).

Lady Akane was about a 6/10—pretty and fit rather than beautiful—but then she smiled and you had to instantly add a couple of points as everything that was wrong with the world went quiet just for a little while. Death by Lord Hazō aside, Yūma couldn't see himself dating someone quite that unsophisticated and naïve, but on the other hand she was sweet to a fault, the kind of person he wouldn't hesitate to set up a friend with.

Lady Kei was an 8/10 for Yūma, as she ticked the willowy box very well, and also had the distant, mysterious vibe that was like catnip to many men of good taste. Unfortunately, for all the pros—KEI coordinator, crazy smart, perfect deadpan, equally sexy twin sister—there were some pretty massive cons, notably the fact that "distant" also meant "hard to approach", her lack of interest in men (and especially in casual flirting with men—he'd learned that the hard way), and the fact that he couldn't open his mouth around her without making a fool of himself.

As for Lady Yuno, she might not be willowy, but she was tall with a good figure, and her exotic foreign looks alone put her at an equally respectable 8/10. She definitely broadcast a "hot but crazy" vibe when you first met her, but in some ways Yūma thought she was actually more little sister material—cute and innocent, but also prone to violence and occasionally an incredible pain in the ass (particularly any time Satsuko got involved).

Not that Yūma was going to share any of this analysis with Lord Noburi, in case those who ranked women on looks and dateability weren't the kind of person the Gōketsu wanted in their clan.

"We don't really hang out outside missions," Yūma said. "I mean, clan ninja, KEI ninja, different worlds, y'know? But I guess we get on well. I love listening to her stories, and she's hilarious when you try to flirt with her."

Lord Noburi's eyes narrowed.

"You do know I'm her husband?"

Suddenly, there was something in his expression Yūma didn't like at all.

"Do you?"

"I'm sorry?"

Something that had been simmering unseen at the back of Yūma's mind finally crystallised. He leaned forward a little.

"I'm not the kind of asshole who'd go after somebody else's wife, Lord Noburi. Let's be clear on that. But for assholes like that, of which there are more in Leaf than the Sage could count? Lady Yuno is easy pickings. She doesn't know what to do when you flirt with her. She gets flustered when you pay her a compliment. She has no idea where her boundaries are and her self-esteem is through the floor. She has to rely on her axe as a chaperone. Does that sound like a description of a happily-married adult woman to you?"

Lord Noburi went bright red, with some mix of anger and humiliation, and that was when Yūma realised that he had just mouthed off to his prospective superior during an interview and was going to be a KEI ninja for the rest of his life.

Well, if he was going to get banned from the estate anyway, he might as well say his piece.

"It seems to me like you've taken the wrong message from the fact that your wife can kill a gannetbear without using demolitions-grade explosives and list more shades of colour than an interior decorator as long as they're all blood. She's still a woman. She still needs to be supported and protected and made to feel special. She still needs to learn a whole bunch of stuff that you only get from dating experience, including how to be confident in her womanhood, and if you've taken her out of the dating pool early, that means all of that is now your responsibility. If you want to make a big deal of your rights as her husband, Lord Noburi, then make a big deal of your responsibilities too."

That was as far as Yūma got before the righteous annoyance petered out, leaving behind the fact that he'd stuck his nose in the marriage of a much more powerful man—and Yuno would probably be mortified if she heard any of this either.

The two men stared at each other in silence. Lord Noburi was probably trying to decide whether kicking Yūma off the estate was enough, or whether he was prepared to risk stirring up trouble with the KEI by taking more extreme measures. He was, after all, Lady Kei's brother.

…

"Next question," Lord Noburi said, "do you have any hobbies?"

"Sorry, what?"

"Do you have any hobbies?" Lord Noburi repeated. "Do you read, or cook, or fish, or whatever?"

"I like the theatre," Yūma said woodenly while his brain tried to catch up to what was going on. "I try to catch at least one play a season, two if I get lucky and snag some B-ranks."

"Snowflake likes the theatre too," Lord Noburi said. "Maybe you two should swap recommendations. Next, I wanted to ask you about your views on…"

Oh, right, Yūma thought as he answered question after question in a daze. He'd forgotten that the Gōketsu were the crazy clan.

-o-​

What do you do?

Voting closes on Jun 25, 2022 at 1:00 PM