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

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Chapter 526: Beautification
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    • "Goooood morning, Gaku!" Hazō said, bursting through the door with vim and vigor in his step.

    Gaku raised an eyebrow. "Good morning, my lord. You seem...happy."

    "Happy? I suppose I do." He set a hip on the corner of his desk and rubbed his hands. "Gaku, I have made a decision!"

    "Oh?"

    "Yes, indeed. Do you know what the Gōketsu Clan is going to do for the next little while? What our number one priority is going to be as a clan?"

    "Saving the world from ravening monsters?"

    "No, no, no. That's my priority. I'm talking about the clan's."

    "Uplifting all civilians everywhere to a lifestyle of comfort and health and respect?"

    "No, no—well, yes, but that's a long-term thing and we already have a lot of projects in the works for it. No, I'm talking about the immediate future."

    "In that case, I have no idea, sir. I await your pronouncement with bated breath."

    "Beautification!"

    "Beautification, sir?"

    "Indeed! For too long now we've been living in these big granite boxes. It makes us look bad. The Nara have a swooping, elegant building. Well, they did. And they're rebuilding, so they will again. The Hyūga have a...." He groped for a word. "A place of beauty that inspires awe and reverence while also looking like a powerful military building. The Gōketsu, on the other hand, look like poverty-stricken rubes."

    "I see. What did you have in mind?"

    "Fish canals, to start. Narrow canals that run around the estate and have fish in them."

    Gaku studied him carefully. "You're thinking of more Wakahisa koi, aren't you?"

    "Eventually, yes. We can build the canals with overhangs where the fish can shelter out of sight and out of reach. Once enough of them are in there, it won't be possible to pull all of them out."

    "Will the Wakahisa fish handlers allow that?"

    Hazō smiled. "Probably not. Then again, I wasn't actually planning to ask permission. When breeding starts, if a couple of mating pairs somehow jump the wall into the canals...well, how is that our problem?"

    "Don't they require very specific breeding and handling?"

    Hazō shrugged. "We've seen a lot of what the fish tenders do and I find myself wondering if it's actually as hard as they claim. Regardless, we don't have enough koi for what we need and the Wakahisa aren't going to let us have them. We're allowed to breed up to forty fish, but that's going to take years and it still isn't enough. There's not much point to having a thing that doesn't meet our needs and also puts spies on our land."

    "That sounds like a declaration of war between the two clans," Gaku said after a moment.

    "Ehhh..." Hazō said. "I doubt it. First they'd have to prove that we did it deliberately. And of course we'll do our absolute best to help them recover all the fish from the canals." He smiled. "Pity it will be completely impractical."

    "I see, sir." Gaku considered the words for a moment. "Very well. What should I do?"

    "First off, get with Mari and figure out what sort of things would work. We want dramatic but not overstated. We want aesthetics but also quality of life. We want 'beautiful, exotic, unique', but also in line with Leaf's traditional styles. Nothing too similar to Mist architecture, nothing that makes us look like foreigners. Oh, and don't break the budget."

    "Yes sir. Did you have any specific suggestions?"

    Hazō shrugged. "Ask her, she's moved through a lot more of the city than I have and she's more aware of that sort of thing. Maybe some statues? Heroes of Nagi Island, Jiraiya or his teaching lineage, something like that. Maybe Dog Clan stuff? Their history with Kakashi. Oh, maybe the Toad Clan's history with Jiraiya. Our ties to the Leaf traditional clans? Kei and Shikamaru. Our people who were born here, both ninja and civilian."

    Gaku's face became guarded. "Civilians?"

    "You know. Granny Mayuka. The docents. You."

    "Sir, I do not want to see my face embodied in stone."

    "But you'd look so majestic!"

    "I do not want to look majestic, sir."

    "Think of the Gōketsu children a hundred years from now. They'll be walking past this towering statue—thirty feet high, white marble with gold trim—and they'll say 'Mommy, who was that?' and their mother will say 'that is Gaku, the man who built this clan' and the child will say 'but Mommy, didn't Lord Jiraiya and Lord Hazō build this clan?' and the mother will say 'they founded the clan, but—"

    "All right, all right," Gaku said, waving his lord to silence. "With respect, sir, I neither need nor want hagiography. A statue of me, regardless of its height, would be terribly embarrassing."

    "It would be a very nice statue."

    "I'm sure it would. I do not want it."

    "Mm-hm. Well, your objections are noted. In the meantime, talk to Mari and figure it out."

    "Sir, I truly do not want a statue."

    "Make you a deal," Hazō said with a grin. "You don't protest about the fish canals, I will consider not making a statue of you."

    Gaku looked unamused.

    "Oh, also, how's the sanitation project coming along?" Hazō asked. "Are we ready to start building an aqueduct and sewer into the compound yet? If so, get with the engineers and make it happen."

    "Yes sir. I believe they will be able to start within the week. It will mean a great deal of digging, which may interfere with the beautification project."

    Hazō jumped to his feet and started to pace restlessly. "Whatever. We can do both at once. Fix the buildings while the ground is getting torn up, fix the ground once the sewers are in. Oh, and find out about that fertility jutsu. I want the Gōketsu estate to have the greenest, lushest grass in all of Fire Country."

    "Yes sir."

    "Good. Now, I'm going to go start Earthshaping some of our buildings to be a little nicer."

    "Nicer, sir?"

    "Yeah. Smooth out the granite, merge in some slate, clay, or some other materials with attractive and not-red colors. Make a mosaic out of it. Don't worry, I'll keep it abstract. Oh, and maybe see if I can get some copper or silver wire made up cheap. Naruto has that stuff in his façade, it looks great."

    "I'll contact some of the silversmiths, sir."

    "Do that. Also, talk to some landowners with mines. Maybe we can buy the materials directly and make the wire ourselves. Or just break it into flakes and use those."

    "You can merge metal into stone, sir?"

    "No, it doesn't affect metal directly, but it's easy enough to wrap the stone around it, hold it in place. You can move metal around inside a chunk of ore by shifting the stone around it."

    "I see."

    Hazō stood up, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "Okay, time to get started."




    XP AWARD: 3

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    Voting remains closed unless @Velorien opens it. He may want to continue this.
     
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    • Chapter 527, Part 1: The Crossroads of Badassery
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    • Tension crackled in the air of the Gōketsu atrium as the last confrontation Hazō could have expected unfolded before his very eyes. With Mari absent, Akane out with Yuno, and Kagome-sensei being Kagome-sensei, he knew for a fact that he was the only person who could stop the pair before something was said that could not be unsaid, or done that could not be undone… but he couldn't even begin to wrap his mind around what he was hearing.

    "You think you can just kick open the gates of Hell and start messing up the natural order because you feel like it?" Noburi growled. "Even for you, there's no way I'm letting that happen."

    "You cannot halt our momentum," Kei said calmly. "We are now mere steps away from ending Death's dominion. Your irrational efforts to resist the inevitable achieve nothing but cause you more suffering."

    Hazō, standing in the kitchen doorway, couldn't see Noburi's face—or much of what was going on at all—but he could see Kei's, and her eyes were cold.

    "I'm not backing down on this, Kei," Noburi said. "I will make sure the dead continue to rest in peace—by any means necessary."

    "You are welcome to try."

    Kei moved sharply, and there was a sudden, violent "thunk".

    Hazō aborted his urgent leap into action… because that was the sound of a figurine dramatically hitting a board.

    "Ah, Hazō," Kei said, relaxing abruptly. "Good evening. We were just finishing our game."

    "Says you," Noburi objected. "I still have four threat points left."

    "What are you guys even playing?"

    "Kei brought Agoraphobia," Noburi said. "I'm playing the King of Hell, trying to peacefully manage my domain, only to have my territory invaded by blatantly overpowered crazy human fanatics. They get special equipment and holy powers and everything. I get troglodytes, which is like sending a horde of Honokas against Captain Zabuza and his elite strike team. Kei's really been getting into character, too. I'll admit it's pretty fun, except for the part where the rules are about as balanced as a shark on a tightrope."

    Hazō gave Kei a disapproving look. "You did that just to mess with me, didn't you?"

    "I cannot imagine what you mean," Kei said innocently. "I merely happen to enjoy asymmetrical warfare, and since your store of two-player games is tragically impoverished…"

    Hazō just shook his head. He'd have been inclined to blame Ami, but Ami didn't actually know anything about Project Necromancy, which left the disturbing possibility that Kei was walking down the path of chaos of her own (or Snowflake's) initiative.

    "Noburi, can I borrow you for a minute after you're done with your game?"

    Noburi took a long look at the labyrinthine caverns of the board, which held several triumphant human figurines with oversized weapons and nothing Hazō could identify as a troglodyte.

    "Now is good."

    "Run while you still can!" Kei called after them as they retreated.

    -o-​

    "How may I serve you, my lord and saviour?" Noburi asked, lying back on Hazō's bed as if he owned it, leaving Hazō stuck with the desk chair. His voice was a touch less friendly now they were alone.

    "I wanted to apologise," Hazō said.

    "Yeah?"

    "Yeah," Hazō said. "That 'shiny thing' comment was out of line, and so was me doubling down and being rude to you when you called me out, instead of sucking it up and saying sorry on the spot. I guess I was tired, and maybe projecting a little bit—if there's anyone in this clan who has trouble prioritising sometimes because there are too many shinies to chase, it's me, not you. You're my brother. I love you and I don't want to be a jerk to you. Are we cool?"

    "Yeah," Noburi said after a second. "I guess we're cool."

    "Thanks," Hazō said. "Now, if we can circle back to that conversation, only without me insulting you, I've given some thought to your training options. It seems to me like there are four ways you could go—though if you can think of more, then by all means go for it. I'll support whatever you choose.

    "So the first one, as you said, is sitting down and sinking a bunch of training time up front into mastering the Earth Element. That gets you a bunch of good stuff, notably MaRI and Pangolin Earth Armour, plus whatever nice Earth techniques we can shake out of the Leaf Library. More generally, it's a well-attested fact that Earth Element users are the coolest, the strongest, and the most popular with the girls. Now, that's most true of single-affinity ninja, but in your case, the raw materials aren't bad"—Hazō waved a hand demonstratively at Noburi's body, topless because the weather was hot and Hazō's brother was an irredeemable showoff (and maybe a little bit because Kei was visiting, though Hazō would never say it out loud)—"so I think you can make it work."

    Noburi snorted. "That's an argument against, then. If I get any more popular with girls, I think Fire will quickly turn into a single-gender country plus Yuno."

    "You said it, not me. Also, an extra element would be a step towards looking like Jiraiya's heir in front of the Toads. How big a deal that is, only you can judge, but I know what it's like trying to impress an ancient race that doesn't think much of hairless monkeys posing on their turf.

    "But the flip side is obvious. It's a huge investment, and it'll only pay off in the long term, once you've got a few well-polished Earth ninjutsu under your belt. Also, it's not much of a competitive advantage, especially for a summoner. Most things you could do with Earth, the right toad could do for you just as well—maybe they couldn't learn the same human techniques, but a clan a thousand years old is bound to have equivalents for most of the stuff you want. The same goes for other ninja—there are plenty of Earth users around, and while you've got massive ninjutsu potential thanks to your Bloodline Limit, a lot of the time, both Leaf and the Gōketsu could just pay an Earth user to do what we want instead of tying up your time and chakra.

    "That's true for ninjutsu training in general as well. Anything that raises survivability would be a no-brainer for most ninja, and again, being able to project visible power is something I imagine the Toads would love. At the same time, it doesn't really put you ahead of the game so much as being the default incremental training option. There's also the issue that Leaf isn't great for Water techniques, certainly not for people like us who know what a real Water specialist looks like. You remember how when Jiraiya wanted to get you a powerful new Water technique, you ended up with one Leaf stole from Mist."

    Noburi nodded. "My head is still stuffed full of Captain Miyamoto's racist Mist-nin jokes—in retrospect, there's no way that guy didn't know I was from Mist—and the worst part is that some of them are actually pretty funny."

    "Yeah. Have you heard the one about why all Mist ninja are virgins?"

    "No, go on."

    "The social specs tell women they're whales, the ninjutsu masters can't make them wet, and the swordsmen don't know where to stick the pointy end."

    Noburi laughed.

    "I've spent way too much time around you guys," he said, "because my inner Kei is complaining about how the demographics of that make no sense. Also, what's wrong with comparing a woman to a whale? They're the most intelligent, powerful, majestic animals out there. If a girl ever told me I was like a whale, I'd figure she was coming on to me."

    "Tell me about it," Hazō said. "There's just something wrong with the people in this country, no offence to any ANBU who might be listening in.

    "Back to business, the other obvious candidate is medicine. Medic-nin jōnin are rare as hens without teeth, so if you go down this path, you'll end up pretty unique as ninja go. It's very Uplift-aligned—you'd be spending your time directly saving lives, and further down the Tsunade route is stuff like curing diseases and making discoveries that permanently add to medical knowledge, only you'll do even better because you won't turn into the world's greatest cynic and you'll have us at your back. You've also got all those notes to give you a head start. On the other hand, for all the saving of lives, it won't increase your survivability, and don't quote me on this, but I'd really rather prefer you alive. I want to believe in AMITY, but a corner of my mind keeps whispering that we're not done with the big fights if we want to make Uplift real for the whole world. The other thing is that it'll keep you in the hospital, where there's no glory and fewer opportunities for advancement."

    Noburi raised an eyebrow pointedly.

    "I'm not trying to make you sound like a glory trout," Hazō quickly added. "It's just that it's fair for you to want to get recognition when you're making a difference, and medic-nin tend to go unappreciated and unrewarded. Case in point, there are no medic-nin with the Shadow Clone Technique, as far as we know, because apparently putting hundreds of Leaf ninja under the knife and having them come out alive and safe doesn't earn you trust the way surviving enough punches to the face does.

    "Anyway," he hurried on in case that wasn't good enough, "your last option is mental conditioning. You know, the stuff the rest of us have been doing as part of shadow clone training. In the long term, it's one hundred percent indispensable for the Shadow Clone Technique. In the short term, it's surprisingly narrow in application. It helps you with psychic attacks—apparently; I haven't offended Ino that badly yet—and it's good for resisting pressure in social situations, but psychic attacks are rare, and you don't really need the help when it comes to socials. Certainly, it's not a patch on your other options until we get you the Shadow Clone Technique and the personal chakra to make it your ticket to godhood.

    "Does any of those options stand out to you? Again, they all have good points and bad points, and I'll support you in whatever you choose—or, if you can't choose, I'll support you in figuring it out."

    Noburi gave a long sigh. "Funny how, when you lay it out like that, it all gets both simpler and more complicated. Fess up, did you draw up a list before this conversation? With sub-headings and bullet points?"

    "Guilty as charged," Hazō said with an easy smile. "Hey, if it ain't broke…"

    "Oh, it's very broke," Noburi said. "You saying sorry up front is the only reason I'm not reporting you to Mari for remedial 'thinking like a normal person' classes."

    "I think you and I both know it's far too late for that."

    "Point," Noburi grudgingly admitted. "As for what I want to do… I can't just snap my fingers and come up with an answer that makes everything perfect. I still love the idea of grabbing the Earth Element, MaRIing the heck out of this country, and also taking another step towards ultimate elemental mastery—the kind where all chakra is my plaything, not the kind where you use me to make yourself feel good in uncomfortable weather."

    "I'll leave that side of things to Yuno, if you don't mind."

    "Uh," Noburi winced, "let's just pretend I never said that.

    "Anyway, here's the thing. I want ninjutsu. It's raw power at my fingertips, and I've got the chakra to do it better than other people, and I can use it to go into battle and protect the people I care about, or I can use it to fuel the massive projects that people like you and Mari come up with. I can be a hero. But…

    "I'm starting to see that there's more depth to me doing the whole medicine thing than getting to help people big-time. You know how I can knock somebody out with chakra drain, and it's totally reliable and safe, and I can undo it exactly when I want to, and there are no side effects? That is not normal. I won't say it's revolutionary, because I bet Tsunade could do the same thing blind, but the fact is, ordinary drugs can't. If you don't get the right drug, with the right mixture, at the right strength and the right dosage, or even if you do and there's something about the patient's constitution or current condition that you didn't see coming… if the effect's too strong, they're in a coma, maybe for good. If it's too weak, they wake up while you're cutting into them, and ninja reflexes take over, and that's a great way to lose a medic-nin, plus the ninja who might be bleeding out because you were in the middle of cutting into them. Even if everything works out, you've got to worry about side effects, especially if they need multiple surgeries and can't afford to wait for the last of it to get out of their system. That's fine if your target's a prisoner and you don't really care what happens to them once T&I's worked them over, but it's the worst thing ever if it's someone you're trying to help.

    "Then there's my chakra sense. It's pretty rough, and frankly, it's not competitive with top-of-the-range diagnostic ninjutsu, never mind the Byakugan. But we don't have the Byakugan right now. Most of the Hyūga got reassigned to scouting or espionage or whatever during the later days of the war, and whoever's still around is doing missions now to preserve the honour of the Hyūga or whatever. That's true for a bunch of other medic-nin too, by the way, anyone who had the right combat skills to fill a bad enough gap or whose clan took a pounding, and it's not like we'd made a full recovery after the Collapse, either.

    "Point is, I think I can make more of it. Go deeper, maybe rediscover a few more Wakahisa clan secrets. The ability to scan chakra is really valuable when dealing with some of the rare illnesses that affect ninja, and with ninjutsu users who push themselves too hard or do too much weird stuff, and especially with technique hackers. Those end up in hospital all the time. It's not much, on the great scale of things, but it can turn into something only I can do. Like you said, we can pay people to use ninjutsu, but we can't pay people to have the right kind of mind for medicine, which Dr Yakushi says I have, or powers which turn out to be just as good for fixing people as they are for killing them."

    Hazō sat there for a little bit, taking all of that in. It wasn't the same kind of thinking that Hazō immersed himself in when pondering the big picture, but it was serious, and sincere, and for all its simplicity, it was as Uplift as anything in Hazō's epic speeches. Gōketsu Hazō had the best family, and he'd fight anyone who said different (yes, including Kei and Snowflake when they tried to make themselves exceptions).

    "Is that your answer, then?" he asked.

    "It's not that I don't want all that other stuff," Noburi repeated. "I want it bad. But somehow, when I ask not what I want, but where I'm needed, my thoughts keep circling back to the operating table. It's like part of me is saying, 'There are people only you can save, and they're already within arm's reach. Shut up and take the money.' Plus, y'know, I'm Dr Yakushi's apprentice, on and off. If the man who spends so much of his time standing by Orochimaru's side says I've got what it takes for serious research, then even if I stay at the hospital, it's only a matter of time until I enter the big picture in a way that blows your mind."

    Hazō smiled. "I never doubted it. I'll start figuring out the most optimised training regime known to man tonight. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go talk Kei into doing something inefficient, statistically likely to fail, and potentially very dangerous."

    -o-​

    Part 2 hopefully coming tomorrow.
     
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    • Chapter 527, Part 2: A Family Camping Trip
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    • Hazō descended the stairs, closely followed by Noburi, just in time to catch a brief Kei-shaped blur of motion returning to her seat from the nearby bookshelf (which was just overflow from Mari's smut collection, so he had no idea why she was studying it in the first place—and, on reflection, something only Jiraiya's clan could get away with placing where it was one of the first things visitors would see).

    "Is your strategy meeting complete?" Kei asked. "Perhaps the two of you combined will be able to lift Noburi from the ironically-abyssal depths into which he has dug himself with his minion-heavy strategy."

    "Sorry, Kei," Noburi said, "but I've got to head out and get started on my shift without even a second's delay. I guess we'll have to call it a draw."

    "I suppose I was the one who instructed you to run while you still could," Kei lamented.

    "Before you go," Hazō said, "there was something I wanted to talk to both Kei and Snowflake about. Would you mind?"

    Noburi waved Kei over to his barrel, which was standing against the atrium wall, then got her a World's Scariest Sister mug from the kitchen (a copy of the original, which now lived in the Nara compound and was the subject of regular competition between Kei and Snowflake). "Bon appetit."

    Kei gave a confused frown as she took an initial sip of the chakra water. "Is this… lemon-flavoured?"

    "Oh, so you noticed? Yeah, you know how if the water in the barrel isn't pure enough, its chakra capacity drops like an early Hazōlator prototype? I've been experimenting to see how far I can push it before that starts becoming an issue. It's tasty summer refreshment for any ninja thinking about buying a top-up and I've got some ideas for medical applications if I can just figure out where the thresholds are."

    "Are you sure it is wise to flavour what is fundamentally a bodily fluid in order to appeal to—no, never mind. I refuse to pursue that line of thought. Shadow Clone Technique!"

    "Good day, Hazō, Noburi." Snowflake quickly reached into a waist pouch and pulled out a plain pink ribbon, which she wove through her hair in a practised movement. Noburi gave her a look of surprise, at which she shrugged. "I see you have been under-utilising the tunnelling mechanics. No wonder Kei was able to push you back to the central chamber."

    "That's it," Noburi said. "I'm out of here. Snowflake, nice to see you."

    The girls synchronously waved him goodbye.

    "So what did you want to talk to us about?"

    "I know how stressful it's been for you lately," Hazō said, "running the KEI and managing the Nara and all that. How would you two like to run away with me to the distant corners of the earth?"

    The sisters exchanged looks.

    "Hazō," Snowflake said carefully, "you make it sound like you are inviting us to elope with you."

    "Oh, no," Hazō said. "I didn't mean it like that. For a start, we absolutely have to bring Akane."

    "But not Ino?"

    Hazō shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't. Ino isn't one of us, and besides, she has responsibilities here in Leaf that I can't just take her away from.

    "I'd like to head for a little island in Neck," he explained, "on the eastern continent, that Enma told me about once. I know that's way out from anything we'd consider civilisation, but under the circumstances, that actually works out as an advantage.

    "Please," he added, registering their uncertain expressions. "This isn't just for me—it'll mean the world to Akane if we can make this happen."

    "Hazō," Snowflake said, sounding a little shaken, "you do realise that Akane and I have been going on dates for pedagogical purposes, not because we are in love?"

    "For my part," Kei added, "I thought I had made it clear that any plans to add Akane to the polycule were a joke."

    "What does any of that have to do with—wait, you and Akane are dating?!"

    "I see it now," Kei said morosely. "The twisted fate that delights in driving my love life to new and ever greater levels of complexity has finally claimed you as well, even when you should have acquired survivor immunity.

    "Forgive me, Hazō, but I cannot elope with you, for a tremendous variety of reasons. However unjust, that means Snowflake cannot also."

    "Maybe I should start again," Hazō said after a few seconds of utter bewilderment. "Kei, Snowflake, I am planning a mission to Neck to secure the Squirrel Summoning Scroll. Would you like to come? No illicit romance required."

    The two girls facepalmed in perfect unison.

    "According to Enma," Hazō began to explain, "there was a time a while back when Jiraiya was trying to unite a bunch of clans on the eastern continent into a new hidden village to be a thorn in Mist's side. The Squirrel Summoner decided he was going to be the quote unquote Mokukage, his potential subjects didn't think so, and the whole project was sunk despite Jiraiya's best efforts."

    "Mokukage?" Kei asked. "Wood Shadow? Setting aside the absurdity of some petty chieftain calling himself a Kage at all, how was that title not reserved for Senju Hashirama?"

    "Leaf people make no sense," Hazō said. "This is known. Anyway, Jiraiya and the Squirrel Summoner had an epic showdown, and we still have Jiraiya's clothes from that fight, covered with blood, most of which allegedly belongs to the other guy."

    "That man was appalling when it came to doing his laundry in a timely fashion," Kei muttered.

    "Give him a break," Hazō said. "He'd been a lifelong bachelor. Anyway, in this case, I'm guessing he kept them because he was hoping to get a tracker on the job. See, the Squirrel Summoner got away, but between all the blood loss and the fact that he was never heard from again, we can safely assume he didn't make it. That means there's a summoning scroll lying around within easy travel distance of the battleground on that island in Neck, waiting for us to come pick it up. Part of me still feels bad about taking the Dog Scroll when it couldn't have been more perfect for Akane; I owe her this one.

    "First off, does any of this ring any bells? Or would the Nara know anything about a project like this?"

    "I can check, certainly," Kei said. "However, I would expect a project by the Leaf spymaster to be tracked by the Tower rather than the Nara, meaning the records have now been buried in a very literal way. Also, while I may occupy a unique position in the Gōketsu-Nara relationship, be aware that drawing on Nara resources to find the scroll may introduce complications with regard to eventual ownership."

    "I hadn't thought of that," Hazō said. "See? This is one of the many reasons I want you on board.

    "I'll be honest, though," he went on, "I'm not just inviting you guys because you have brilliant minds and will make our odds of success shoot up like a startled jet pigeon. I miss spending time with you—especially you, Kei. We don't get to see enough of each other outside planning meetings, or running damage control, or fleeing for our lives from a crazy murderous demigod, or twisting Shikamaru's arm for the greater good. I'm not saying those things aren't fun in and of themselves, but there's just something to be said for hanging out together, maybe going on an adventure, just like in the good old days, only with better food and less Captain Zabuza.

    "What do you say?"

    Kei and Snowflake looked at each other.

    "Flattering as your lignite-based lifeform analogies are, there is a great deal still to be done in Leaf," Kei observed, "especially with Project Colossus drawing ever closer to the implementation stage."

    "Ami can handle matters on the KEI end," Snowflake said. "We should take advantage of her abilities before the Hokage sends her out on another AMITY mission. If anything, she would benefit from ways to occupy herself."

    "There is also Operation Murdersnout."

    "And a joint mission with one or more other Leaf summoners is a perfect excuse to delay it further. On the other hand, it would be problematic to leave at a key point in Project Omnicule."

    "Wait," Kei said abruptly. "What is Project Omnicule?"

    "You'll find out when I dispel for the night."

    "Snowflake…"

    "Only joking," Snowflake admitted. "Today is Hazō's turn to complicate your love life, and I would not want to skip the queue."

    "Please, Kei," Hazō said. "I promise it'll be fun."

    "You realise," Kei said, "that in all probability, the scroll has long since been retrieved by the summoner's compatriots, since it beggars belief that they would simply allow it to disappear into the forest and move on with their lives."

    "There hasn't been a new Squirrel Summoner, as far as I know," Hazō said.

    "Perhaps they simply lack the training necessary to use it, as Rock did. Or perhaps the new summoner has wisely stayed in the shadows lest they share their predecessor's fate when Jiraiya or his successors come back for the scroll, and the Squirrels support them in that decision."

    "Maybe," Hazō said. "But I'd like to find out—and I'd like to do it with you two."

    Kei looked at Snowflake again.

    "Supposing I am able to foist a sufficient amount of my duties onto Ami, Naruto, and Shikamaru… whom else did you have in mind for this doomed endeavour?"

    "Like I say, Akane. You and Snowflake were next on my priority list."

    The sisters both looked down sheepishly.

    "For the rest, what do you think? Yuno? Noburi? Haru? Some hirelings with useful skills?"

    "If this is to be a reunion tour, Noburi's presence is certainly desirable," Kei mused, "and from a practical perspective, reducing travel time and having immediate medical assistance on hand are both valuable. In the absence of potential love interests for Noburi, Yuno is very reliable, and we are highly likely to face unfamiliar chakra beasts. On the other hand, Haru is absolutely the last person I would bring on Akane's quest. You do, I trust, appreciate that she is the perpetrator of humiliation which will follow him for the rest of his life and which he doubtless considers wholly unjust?"

    "You… may have a point there," Hazō said.

    "How are you handling the rumours, incidentally?" Snowflake asked.

    "Which ones?"

    "That the Gōketsu are hypocrites for claiming to punish Haru for abusing his power as a ninja, yet citing his wartime use of that same power as a reason to pardon him."

    "Eh," Hazō said. "If we hadn't pardoned Haru, I bet you the same people would have started talking about how we repaid his heroic defence of Leaf with more cruelty, or whatever. I'm leaving dealing with Scarf Man and his shadowy allies to Mari unless it gets urgent."

    "She is well-suited to operating in areas where the true morality of a situation is irrelevant," Kei agreed. "As for hirelings, you risk encountering the same issues as with Nara assistance. In the worst-case scenario, one of them might play a crucial role in securing the scroll, and then lay claim to it—a claim which the Hokage would uphold in the name of not concentrating more priceless assets in Gōketsu hands.

    "I take it you intend to leave Mari in charge of the clan, and Kagome in charge of Great Seal research?"

    Hazō nodded. "It's a shame we can't bring him along on the 'reunion tour', but what he's doing right now is important, and I should just about be able to fill in for him on the perimeter security and blowing stuff up with extreme overkill fronts."

    "Between the six of us," Kei said, "we have a respectable balance of specialisations, a full spectrum of survival skills, and a frankly preposterous amount of firepower considering only one of us is above chūnin rank. While the mission is almost certainly a fool's errand unless you believe one of your trackers can follow a years-old scent across water… I find there is something in me that cannot resist the call of a nostalgic family camping trip."

    Hazō turned to Snowflake.

    "Do you really think you need to ask?"

    Hazō grinned. "I'll get cracking on a convincing proposal for Asuma. You get packing to go on an adventure."

    -o-​

    You have received 4 + 1 (Brevity) + 1 (Fun-to-write) = 6 XP.

    -o-​

    Tsui Raku has been assigned a small team to research "things that are like giant Lightning lanterns but can carry people safely and also you can steer them somehow". She thinks you're all crazy, but is aware that she also thought that about skysliders. Her initial budget request is terrifying and you fobbed the whole thing off onto Gaku as fast as you could get it to his office.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes at
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 528: (Planning A) Journey to the East, Part 1
  • Threadmarks

    • "Hello?" Hazō called, poking his head carefully into the clearing.

    "Huzu! Huzu, m'boy! It's been so long! Come, come, don't stand there like a lummox, come up here and enjoy the sun!"

    Apparently today was one of Mareo's good days. Which was good in that Hazō didn't need to worry about being attacked in the next few seconds, but bad in that Hazō could feel Kumafuwafuwa looming behind him and grumbling disapprovingly. If Mareo had been having a bad day then Hazō would have had an excuse to escape that worrying grumble.

    "Hello, sir," Hazō said, climbing cautiously up the slope of Mareo's favorite hill with Kumafuwafuwa trailing behind him. "I brought you some things. Chocolates, good bread, and blackberry brandy."

    "Ooh! Gimme!"

    The Bear Lord growled.

    "Oh, hush," Mareo said, flapping one hand. "The boy's already said he's not going to poison me. Death by orgasm-induced heart attack, right? You were sending over a bunch of pretty girls?"

    "Uh...to be clear, sir, that was a joke. While I do know some female summoners..." His brain locked up at the idea of asking Tsunade or Kei to...yeah, no. "I don't think it would be a good idea."

    "Bah! You're a liar, Huzu! A liar! I do not approve of liars, boy. Are you really going to let me die of old age here? Have some respect, lad. If you can't do the job yourself, at least send me off in style. Maybe bring in the Chicken Summoner—"

    "There is no Chicken Summoner," Kumafuwafuwa grumbled. "Because there's no Chicken Clan."

    "—to do the job," Mareo continued obliviously. "He and I never finished our little disagreement all those years ago. We should get it done while I'm still around. Tell him to hurry up, unless he's...chicken." The old man's face split in a blinding smile. Kumafuwafuwa covered his eyes with one massive paw.

    "Uh, I'll tell him if I see him?" Hazō tried. He unsealed the box and opened it to show the contents to Mareo. Two fist-sized lumps of chocolate, one substantially darker than the other, two loaves of still-warm bread, a trio of clay bottles, and a pair of cups.

    "Oooh! Gimme!" Mareo said, reaching out. His hand was suddenly blocked by a massive paw.

    "You first," Kumafuwafuwa said suspiciously, glaring at Hazō.

    "Of course, sir." Hazō poured a measure of brandy from each of the bottles into one of the cups and knocked it back. It burned like fire.

    "Smooth," he choked.

    Mareo was pushing futilely at the Bear Lord's paw. "Gimme gimme gimme! Do you know how long it's been since I've had decent brandy?"

    "Not long enough," Kumafuwafuwa said. "You know what it does to your stomach."

    "Bah! Move, you old granny!" He thumped on Kumafuwafuwa's paw with his cane.

    Reluctantly, the massive bear pulled his paw back and watched Mareo pull one of the bottles out of the box, knock the neck off with a sword-hand strike, and pour what had to be a third of it down his throat in one go.

    "If you'd be interested, I could use your help on something," Hazō said carefully. He pulled several maps out of his pouch and spread them on the grass. "Me and my family are going to be taking a trip to the eastern continent soon, and we know barely anything about it. If you wanted to share your knowledge, I'd be grateful."

    Mareo picked the maps up with interest. "Huh. What's all this stuff?" he asked, pointing.

    "The Elemental Nations?" Hazō asked uncertainly. "They've been around for a long time..."

    Mareo shrugged. "Eh. I never got over there. News to me, but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that people over there scrabbled up a few mud huts somewhere."

    "They aren't—" He stopped. Stay on mission. "Yes sir. Anyway, could you tell me what you know of this area?" He pointed to the eastern part of the eastern continent, where the Squirrel Scroll had last been seen.

    "Hmmmm..." Mareo took the map and considered it. "Why are you asking?"

    "No reason."

    Mareo considered him carefully. "You said before that you're from this Land of Fire place, right? Aren't you guys like, a billion miles of trees? Does it burn down a lot—no, never mind. Stay on topic, Mareo." He looked at the map for a moment, then back to Hazō.

    "It's something like a thousand miles of travel so you're not doing it just to see the sights. Conquering the area makes no sense, you couldn't rule it from that far away...if this map is accurate then Fire has most of the good land on your side of the water, so you aren't trying to carve out a breadbasket. You're a Clan Lord so it seems unlikely that you're planning to go missing yourself. You might be in the middle of a clan war and looking to make a bolt hole for your clan...no? Okay." He nodded thoughtfully.

    Hazō panicked and struggled to keep his face calm.

    "You've got a weird poker face, kid," Mareo said. "It's very flat, then you flash a microexpression, then it goes back to being exactly the same flat look as before. It's not training or you wouldn't be dropping those microexpressions. Some kind of bloodline thing?" He raised a hand and waved the question aside before Hazō could figure out what to say. "Never mind. Let's see...not a bolt hole. Could be an exploration mission to find potential trade opportunities from a place that isn't already saturated by the people around you, but I doubt you'd be going on that yourself. Still, it's got to be something specif...ohhh."

    "Sir?" Hazō asked, his stomach plummeting.

    "You're going after one of the Scrolls, aren't you? Which one?"

    Damnit.

    He briefly considered lying and then dismissed the idea. "Squirrel, sir."

    Mareo nodded. "Never liked that guy. Total asshole. Granted, probably not the same guy who had it when I was a kid but apples and trees, right? Got a brush?"

    Hazō wordlessly unsealed a writing set and passed it over.

    "First off, your map is shit," Mareo said. He flipped the map over and started sketching on the back. "The coastline goes more like this. The Squirrel-folk tribe were located about here—yes, they named their tribe for the damn Scroll. It was their great treasure. The Skunk Summoner's tribe was to the north, about here. They were a pretty small clan, very xenophobic, and they kept on the move most of the time so they may have migrated away, especially after Ioannis and his people went through. The Raccoon Summoner's people lived over here to the east a couple of days. I never had a good bead on their exact location so this is the best I can do." The circled area was big, perhaps a third the size of the Land of Fire, but it was much better than the bupkis that Hazō had on the Raccoon Scroll two minutes ago.

    "My tribe was the People of the Cliff. You're unlikely to run into them for reasons that I don't need to go into, but if you do then I expect you to steer clear, yah?" Hazō nodded. "Good. Now, the wildlife on the eastern continent is likely to be different from what you're used to. You'll want to watch out for the dirt snakes..."




    Author's Note: The plan called for bringing Mareo carrot brandy, which was the specific thing he'd said not to bring. I presumed that was a memory glitch and so I had Hazō substitute something else. If it was instead intended as a joke then you can do it next time.

    I'm tapping out for now. I'll try to write the Harumitsu scene tomorrow. For your next plan it would be wise to make any changes to the mission team; whether or not I get another update out tomorrow, you will still be in Leaf at the end of it so that you can vote for any final prep.

    Offscreen stuff:
    • You went to Asuma to clear the mission. He has no problem with Hazō, Akane, Kei, Snowflake, and Yuno going. When the name 'Noburi' was mentioned he got much frown and 'changed the subject' to how badly Leaf has been hammered lately. He segued from there into singing the praises of Noburi and how much safer Leaf was and how much the casualties had been reduced as a result of Noburi helping jōnin train and also fueling the Zoo Rush. This was followed by a peroration about duty and how much faith he has in Hazō and the honor that the Gōketsu have shown since their founding. He did not literally say 'hint, hint', but the meaning was clear. He can't or won't explicitly confine Noburi to the village, but Asuma is going to be pissed if Noburi leaves in the next few months (3-6, maybe?).
    • Mareo gave you a reasonably thorough briefing on his home area, which is very approximately 'the eastern half of the eastern continent.' He also rambled on for hours about myths, legends, favorite foods, and other minutia.
    • You approached the Aburame to commission a telescope. They don't know how but are willing to experiment.
    • Kagome convinced Kumokōgō to send a delegation through Kangaroo and on to Squirrel in order to ask both nations if they currently have a Summoner and to explore the possibility of passing a message if they do.


    XP AWARD: Will be handled in the second half.

    Voting remains closed.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 528: (Planning A) Journey to the East, Part 2
  • Threadmarks

    • "Sensei, you're back!"

    Hazō smiled and nodded his apprentice to the seat beside him. He gave Harumitsu a chance to settle his feet into the well of the kotatsu, arrange the blanket, and pour himself some tea.

    "Have you eaten?" Hazō asked. "I've got...well, a lot of stuff." He started shuffling through seals. "Fried sea bass, tuna hand rolls, pickled eggs, scrambled eggs, kimchee—"

    "The sea bass sounds lovely, sir."

    Hazō passed the appropriate seal over with a flourish and unsealed a bowl of pickled eggs for himself. He sampled one, grimaced, and found the condiments seal so that he could add more salt.

    "I've been keeping up with my studies, sensei," Harumitsu said eagerly. "I...I wasn't able t-to get through all the m-m-materials you left but, I f-finished Zaizen's Meditations and I'm h-h-halfway through—"

    "Wait, you finished Zaizen's?"

    "Y-y-yes, s-sir? W-wasn't I s-s-supposed to?"

    "I mean, sure, eventually, but..." He laughed ruefully and rubbed the back of his head. "Honestly, I didn't realize I'd included it in the materials I left you. Sorry for that...Zaizen's material is solid but oh in the name of the Sage is the man boring and overelaborate."

    Harumitsu grinned.

    Hazō pinched up his face into a caricature of a prim and proper schoolmaster and shifted his voice up half a register. "Inasmuch—" He dropped back into his own voice with a roll of the eyes. "Honestly, who even says 'inasmuch'?" His voice went back into prissy-schoolteacher mode. "Inasmuch as the necessity of ontological categorization can be derived from the theoretical model of deconstructed predialectic demonstrated in my earlier works, the reader should find it prudent to utilize a normative model for localization determination rather than a relativist one. Under no circumstance should a comparative model be used, as this can lead to undesired outcomes during reification." He shook his head. "Honestly, if you mean 'shit might blow up', just say that shit might blow up."

    Harumitsu had been manfully struggling to suppress his laughter throughout Hazō's performance and now he finally lost the battle. Hazō returned a smug bow and ate another egg.

    "Anyway, sorry for subjecting you to Zaizen," he said once Harumitsu had calmed down. "What have you been working on?" He had left instructions for Harumitsu to pick a project and start planning it out, but not to do any infusions until Hazō was back.

    "A s-seal th-that emits cold, sensei. My rooms get hot in the summer."

    "Hm, interesting." Essentially, put a simplified version of the Elemental Mastery jutsu into seal form? Would that work? "What have you got so far?"

    Harumitsu pulled out a notebook and slid it across the table to his teacher. His fingers knotted together as Hazō picked up the journal and started to read.

    "Eat your food," Hazō said with mild reproof, not looking up. "This is good work."

    Harumitsu beamed and picked up his chopsticks, tucking into the bass eagerly.

    Hazō paused and turned the journal around so he could indicate one paragraph. "This is a workable solution, but there's a technique that will simplify it for you." He described the technique in exacting, jargon-heavy detail, then turned the journal back around and continued reading. "We can practice it tomorrow during lessons," he said.

    Three minutes later, Harumitsu had torn through his food and was bouncing in place, waiting impatiently for Hazō to finish with the journal. He managed to still himself once his teacher closed the journal and handed it back over.

    "That's good work," Hazō said. "I didn't spot any significant errors and your math is remarkably thorough. You haven't done the rune-casting work yet, but you've made good progress. Also, remind me to go over haruspex techniques tomorrow. It'll let you shortcut past a bunch of the stuff that you're doing by hand."

    "Thank you, s-sensei." Harumitsu's smile could light up a room better than Jiraiya's eponymous seal.

    "You're welcome. You earned the praise, kid." He toyed with one of the eggs for a moment. "Harumitsu...I feel like I haven't been as good a sensei to you as I could have been, and I wanted to talk about it."

    Harumitsu went still, his eyes growing larger.

    "No, no," Hazō said, raising a hand. "I'm not planning on stopping as your sensei. Quite the opposite. Yes, our relationship was originally ordered by the Hokage but I've enjoyed it very much and it's been helpful to me. You were the one who came up with the idea for the HOWS which are currently keeping the Great Seal from exploding, or whatever it's going to do. Teaching you has given me insights that were useful for things that I was working on myself. I'd like to continue being your sensei after the year is up."

    "Th-th-thank you, s-sensei," Harumitsu said, his voice awash in relief.

    "I know I've been away a lot. I only got back a few days ago and I'm leaving again soon, and I'm sure that's frustrating for you. I'm sorry for it." He grimaced. "It's a thing I need to do for the clan and it can't wait too long. I'm not going to leave you in the lurch—I've got more materials for you and Aburame Manjirō will still be available twice a week to check in with you until I get back."

    He poked at his teacup pensively. "People always assume that I learned tons of stuff from Jiraiya, that it was all easy because I had this legendary sealmaster as a teacher. That's not how it went at all. Yes, I learned a lot from him, but almost never directly. He was always busy being Hokage or the spymaster or whatever, and then he went and died and left a big pile of notes behind for the clan. I've learned from those, and from Kagome-sensei, and from figuring things out on my own.

    "Anyway, I'm starting to understand how thin Jiraiya was stretched. Being a Clan Head, a military advisor, a Summoner with obligations to my Animal Clan Lord, and all this other stuff...it's exhausting. Regardless, I am honored and delighted to be your teacher and I look forward to continuing as your teacher, even though I'm going to be in and out of Leaf for a while...assuming you'll let me. How do you feel about that? Would you rather that I find someone else to teach you, someone who can be around more?"

    Harumitsu's head jerked spastically back and forth. "N-no, sensei! Please, I'd l-l-like for y-you to s-s-stay as m-m-my s-sensei. I understand th-that you'll b-be g-gone sometimes. That's f-f-fine."

    Hazō smiled and bowed shallowly to his apprentice. "Thank you, Honored Student. Now, how about we dive a little deeper into those notes of yours?"




    XP AWARD: 4

    Brevity XP: 1

    "GM had fun" XP: 2
    • Mareo and Harumitsu are always fun


    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, .
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Interlude: Adoption Interviews – Kyo Jin
  • Threadmarks
    • Interlude: Adoption Interviews – Kyo Jin​

    Water dripped slowly from the ceiling, drop by drop. The stone walls pressed against Noburi's mind, promising without words that, if he stayed here long enough, they would crush his soul between them and squeeze out every last bit of his humanity like a wine press squeezing juice. A half-finished bowl of stale rice sat in a corner, like a mocking taste of the outside world, flavoured when it was made but left bland by the still, lifeless atmosphere. Noburi stared through the cold, unyielding bars and wondered how it had come to this.

    "How did it come to this?"

    Kyo Jin, an enormous, bearded bear of a man whose wrists barely fit in the anti-ninjutsu restraints, gave an apathetic sigh. "Nothing out of the ordinary, Lord Gōketsu. There were a couple of Hyūga arse-divers harassing a barmaid over at Sakékage's. Eventually, I determined that they weren't going to take no for an answer, and stepped in to tell them where to shove it. I made a sincere attempt at peaceful dialogue, but they refused in highly improper terms, tempers grew heated, and eventually I threw one through a wall. Unfortunately, then the other broke a chair across my back, and let's just say the situation deteriorated from that point."

    Noburi nodded sympathetically. "How long are you in for?"

    "Two more days," Kyo said. "The Hyūga tried to make it more—considerably more—but that just triggered the KEI anti-abuse protocols, meaning the organisation paid for Nara lawyers. As far as the clans are concerned, no random bar brawl is worth the headache of dealing with Nara lawyers."

    Why was Noburi even here? Kyo Jin had a record, to put it mildly, and the Gōketsu absolutely could not afford any more scandals on top of what Hazō regularly brought them (and when Hazō failed to uphold clan traditions for too long, fate sent them things like the Haru murder spree instead).

    No, Noburi knew why he was here, and he totally didn't resent it. So what if Hazō had finally trusted him to have sole authority over a project that could make a huge difference to the clan's future? So what if Noburi had been doing perfectly well, only for Mari to butt in and add her own suggestions as if her merest whim was worth as much as a shortlist that Noburi had painstakingly assembled based on research and interviews? Noburi was a mature adult who knew how to take advice. It wasn't a big deal.

    "Glad to hear it—I think," Noburi said. "So, Kyo, are you up for an adoption interview for the Gōketsu Clan?"

    "I don't exactly have any prior engagements for this afternoon," Kyo said wryly.

    "Great," Noburi said. "First question, then: could you state your name for the record?"

    "Kyo Jin," Kyo said patiently. "And I remember that you got all the jokes out of the way when we first met. Also, you couldn't get in here to see me without giving the clerk out front my name."

    "Yeah," Noburi said. "Look, I'm not a fan of the structured format either, but I got the mother of all earfuls from Kei when she heard I wasn't filling in a form properly, and then Hazō found out I was skipping items on a list… and let's just say it's for my own safety to play this one by the book. So humour me, OK?"

    "Three enemies hath a man in life," Kyo recited. "Bureaucracy, Rock, and Cloud."

    "Second question, then. What's your element again?"

    "Water," Kyo said. "People say it's an inferior element to Fire, but it combines mass and flexibility in a way no other element can approach."

    "Any cool stuff you can do with it?"

    "Taijutsu enhancement and protection from missiles," Jin said. "The former is a family secret and the latter is from the library. I am currently waiting for a compatible mobility technique to come up on the ninjutsu exchange."

    "So does that mean you're a taijutsu expert?" Noburi asked.

    "Strong Fist," Kyo said. "It's the same school as practised by Maito Gai, but I didn't have him as my master. That was Kudaki Kao—you may have heard of her as the Fist of Righteousness. I have also paid for training from grappling specialists since it is well-suited to my physique. Some call me the Spine-Shatterer, though that seems like hyperbole given I have only done it four times, and one involved an assist."

    "Nice," Noburi said. "I haven't got a single nom de guerre, which I guess is what happens when your best techniques are based on sitting at home. Meanwhile, my big sister gets to be Dauntless, and she has the nerve to complain about it.

    "So why did you punt that Hyūga guy through a wall, anyway? I'm not saying I don't approve of drunken assholes being put in their place, but that seemed a little extreme."

    Kyo thought about this for a few seconds. "I imagine you're asking whether I'm a civilian sympathiser like Lord Hazō. I wouldn't go that far. I have a significant number of civilian relatives, yes, but they've never done anything in particular to earn my respect. On the other hand, we all work for the good of Leaf, and we all serve the Will of Fire. This is enshrined in law, and it's implicit in the oath we take when we become shinobi. It simply disgusts me that some people—typically clan ninja—think that they get to choose whether someone is part of the Will of Fire whenever it's convenient for them. Even the Hagoromo, who act as if they know better than Lord Hokage himself, are not hypocritical enough to treat our faith as a lamp to be lit and extinguished at will.

    "I admit I may have gone slightly overboard, and I do feel guilty about the loss of business the bar will suffer while they repair the wall and replace the furniture. But to stand by and ignore abuse is to side with the abuser. There wouldn't have been a need for the KEI if the world at large understood something so obvious."

    "That's fair," Noburi said. "Half our beef with the Hagoromo comes from that kind of conviction, and you'd better believe there would've been a lot less standing by if the Hokage hadn't stepped in personally. Uh, not that I'm accusing the Hokage of anything—I get that he was acting for the safety of Leaf as a whole, and maybe he had a point given the size of the crater we were planning to leave of them.

    "Man, this form stuff wrecks the flow of conversation. How about hobbies? What do you do for fun?"

    "I practice calligraphy," Kyo said proudly. "I realise you were expecting something along the lines of wrestling chakra behemoths and snapping trees in half for fun. As it happens, however, I am a calligrapher of the Uzumaki school."

    "Wait, there's an Uzumaki school?" Noburi asked disbelievingly.

    "Based on the work of Uzumaki Kushina," Kyo confirmed. "She never taught formal classes, because that would have been a violation of the creative spirit, but to this day she has many adherents among those who recognise the primacy of human feeling over the dry technicalities of the Katai or the Nara schools."

    "You learn something new every day." Noburi said, shaking his head in amusement.

    Hazō was halfway decent at calligraphy thanks to his sealing training, it occurred to Noburi, and he could be sure his brother hadn't been influenced by the Katai or the Nara or anyone else who knew what they were doing when it came to art. Could this be a path towards mending fences with Naruto?

    "Now, the big one," he said. "Why do you want to join the Gōketsu?"

    Kyo gave a slow, meaningful smile that seemed far too sharp for the man's brick-like face.

    "We live in a different age than we did a couple of years ago, Lord Gōketsu. The KEI's power grows with every year, and it grows ever faster as superior education and resource access give birth to new geniuses and new initiatives. All of this with no strings attached, unlike the absolute submission demanded by a clan lord. The question you mean to ask is 'Why should I want to join the Gōketsu?'"

    The sheer confidence behind that expression, real or false, bowled Noburi over. He remembered the days, not so long ago, when clan adoption was meant to be the ultimate prize. The rare Wakahisa adoptee had eyes that shone with joy, even as the bullying and dismissal of those without the precious Bloodline Limit began to set in. The knowledge that, with the aid of Wakahisa training and secret lore, they would surely live to see another year trumped every other consideration—even siblings or lovers left behind, whose life expectancies would stay just as low.

    Was this why Mari wanted Kyo Jin? Was there some reason Noburi couldn't possibly imagine why the opposite of Atomu's fanatical loyalty would be good for the Gōketsu?

    "I think the answer to that should be obvious," Noburi said, thinking on his feet. There was a pattern to this sort of thing. By now, he knew it practically off by heart. "First off, the Gōketsu still have all the best stuff. We've got the village's two best sealmasters, and maybe you've heard the story how Haru survived a mission gone horribly wrong only because he had some proprietary Gōketsu seals on him. We've got secrets straight from the Summon Realm—you know, like the ones that turned Jiraiya of the Three into an unstoppable badass—and the KEI has one summoner, but we've got four and counting." Yes, counting Kei as Gōketsu but not as KEI was cheating. Noburi didn't care. "We've got clan wealth, and it's constantly growing, and I know that's still a massive weak point for the KEI. We've got a variety of clan secrets that people would kill to get if they knew we had them, and thanks to our weird and wacky mix of bloodlines, we've had to develop tools that anyone can use—if they're a Gōketsu.

    "The KEI is awesome. No question about it. Before long, it'll be even more of a powerhouse. But will you still be alive then? Will future teammates you might be able to save with our help? You're right about the KEI being able to crowd-source brilliant ideas. It's an amazing advantage which, frankly, I'm not sure anybody saw coming. But you know who has a proven track record of genius? Gōketsu Hazō. The guy who came up with skywalkers. The guy who came up with till'n'fills. The guy who came up with building homes for the homeless with the Multiple Earth Wall. The guy who came up with a way to use one man's power to crush fortresses and armies without sending a single Leaf ninja into direct combat. The guy who came up with a way to kill a Dragon, the most powerful chakra beast known to man, the kind whose remains made Orochimaru's jaw drop, without relying on a single overpowered seal, ninjutsu, or Bloodline Limit. You could kill a Dragon with Hazō's help, because the kind of power Hazō cares about is the kind that can be shared.

    "Don't even get me started on the rest of the family. If you ever looked in Kagome's pockets, it would blow your mind, because that man churns out new types of explosive seal like the Hagoromo churn out bigotry. Mari kills jōnin with genjutsu she invented herself, and her latest country-scale plan could get rid of chakra beasts as a threat once and for all. And don't forget: Kei's a Gōketsu too. Enough said.

    "Maybe one day the KEI will reach that level. No, I'm sure it will, because you and I both know that KEI ninja are just as smart and capable as clan ninja. If Jiraiya graduated from the Academy today, I imagine he'd have been a KEI ninja too. But when will that be, Kyo? How many years will it take before the KEI catches up to clans drowning in unfair advantages? Between you and me, Hazō is totally an unfair advantage. By the time that happens, will you still be alive?

    "You want to serve Leaf. You want to serve the Will of Fire. Here and now, the Gōketsu have the tools you need to do that, on a level that the KEI does not. If you want to save all the lives you can, if you want to protect everything you've got the potential to protect, you need to stay alive, and you need to seize every advantage you can."

    Noburi stopped to take a breath. Channelling Hazō was hard, though it got a bit easier as you built up momentum.

    "So that's one side of why. Here's another. The KEI wants justice for KEI ninja. That's fine. That's important. That needs to happen, and the Gōketsu will cheer when it does, even if it means our clan status doesn't put us at the top of the heap anymore. But we want more. In our world, barmaids won't have to pray that a good ninja steps in and protects them from bad ninja. In our world, justice will be the same for everybody. When we heard that one of our own was killing civilians, Hazō didn't hesitate to sentence him to a fate worse than death because, like you said, the Will of Fire doesn't make convenient exceptions.

    "You know who else it doesn't make exceptions for? The countless thousands of civilians living out there, in the little villages. They spend their lives breaking their backs in the fields so that the people of Leaf can have food to eat. They die for us, whether it's to famine, or disease, or chakra beasts. They serve Leaf, and they are part of the Will of Fire, and we don't make an exception for them just because they're out of our sight.

    "I'm not calling you a hypocrite, Kyo. Even the best, most principled ninja just don't get what life is like out there. But once you know, standing by and doing nothing becomes a choice. The Gōketsu have refused to make that choice. All we need now is the strength to act on our convictions. Pound for pound, the Gōketsu can face off with the best of them. Our chūnin kill jōnin. Our economic strategies turn industries upside down. Our diplomacy unites the good and defangs the wicked. But, as a clan, we're tiny. All that power I described to you? We don't have enough hands to bring it to bear against the wrongs that need righting. That's why we need people like you—and if you want the same world we do, you need people like us."

    "Here I thought Lord Hazō was the inspirational speech type and you were the easygoing one," Kyo said after a while.

    "He gets to everyone in the end," Noburi said. "It's not like I started out crusading for justice. Back when I met Hazō, the biggest thing I cared about was getting the girl I had a crush on to look my way. Well, that and not getting eaten by a chakra alligator, but that's just ninja daily life."

    Kyo chuckled. It sounded like pebbles grinding against each other.

    "Have you ever read the Third Hokage's Meditations on a Path of Strife?"

    "Can't say I have."

    "According to him, the Second once said, 'Only a dreamer can lay the foundations of a better world. Only a realist can build the rest. Unfortunately, by the time a man is strong enough to lay foundations, he will have matured into a realist.'"

    "I see," Noburi lied.

    "Tell me more about these outlying villages, Lord Noburi."

    -o-​

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    • Chapter 529: Handing Over the Reins
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    • "Hazō, Hazō Hazō!" Noburi said, walking into Hazō's office without bothering to knock. "So good to see you, my bro. So, when are we leaving? I'm looking forward to this. The open road, Uplift together again against the world. Killin' and chillin', bad food and cold sleep with a side of stories around the fire."

    Hazō forced himself to smile, but out of respect for his brother he did not use the Iron Nerve.

    The joy dropped off Noburi's face like water off a duck. "I'm not going, am I?"

    Hazō grimaced.

    "Asuma doesn't want his chakra barrel leaving the city."

    "Not until he's more confident that the war is really over," Hazō said. "I'm sorry. You're too important. After Lady Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Naruto, you're the greatest strategic asset Leaf has—and, honestly, I think you might be ahead of Orochimaru and Naruto."

    Noburi raised an eyebrow. He snorted and dropped into Hazō's visitor chair, slouching back and interlacing his fingers on his belly. "He actually forbade me from leaving the city?"

    "Not in so many words, but he started waxing rhapsodic about how valuable you've been and how he used to doubt us but now he's confident that the Gōketsu are a loyal clan and so on and so on. The message was crystal clear. I tried to talk him out of it but..." He shrugged helplessly.

    Noburi deflated. "Fuck."

    "I'm really sorry. I was looking forward to the two of us on the road again."

    "Yeah, I bet." He glared at his fingers for a minute. "So what happens now?"

    "I take Yuno, Kei, and Akane and we head for Neck. You stay here and run the clan."

    "I what now?"

    "You stay here and run the clan. You're Acting Clan Head until I get back."

    "Are you nuts? Mari should be the Acting Clan Head."

    Hazō shook his head. "No. It's your job, with her as your assistant. She works best in the shadows and Clan Head has too much light on it. Also, she's used to working in a support role. Remember, running our team was the first taste of leadership she ever had."

    "And, as we all know, I'm overflowing with such experience."

    "More than I had when I took the job."

    "Hazō...look, it's sweet of you to try and let me down easy here. Dumb, but sweet. Make Mari the Clan Head."

    "No. It's you."

    "Did you hit your head again?"

    Hazō threw his brush onto the desk and leaned back in aggravation. "Noburi, there's half a dozen reasons. If you aren't satisfied with the ones I already listed then there's the fact that, even if Mari wanted the job and was a good choice for the job, we still need to develop more future leaders and the only way to do that is to have people lead. You're Acting Clan Head. Suck it up."

    Noburi digested that.

    "Now that we've settled that, here's a suggestion," Hazō said, after it became clear that Noburi wasn't going to have an immediate comment. "You're the boss the minute I walk out the door so you don't have to follow it."

    "Okay...?"

    "The position you're in right now, being this massive strategic asset for Leaf? It's not too far off from Naruto's situation, and we were told that if he wanted anything then he'd get it, up to and including a chakra pony. Now, I would never suggest that anyone leverage their position as a major strategic asset but, if there was something you were interested in getting, Mari might have some ideas on how to leverage your position as a major strategic asset. Or Ami might, for that matter."

    "I see. And did you perhaps have any ideas of your own, since this harebrained scheme appears to be arising from your fevered brain and not Mari's or Ami's?"

    Hazō laughed. "That's up to you. Personally, I still want to find a way that we can get you Shadow Clone. If not that, maybe there's some other high-powered jutsu. Or something political—get your sisters a chance to visit? Get yourself a role in the administration, maybe? Or coordinate with Tsunade and her staff on medical interventions outside of Leaf, to happen alongside and ahead of the wall initiative. You're the Acting Clan Head until I get back, and if I'm not back in six months then the 'Acting' part goes away."

    "Hey, you're not—"

    Hazō waved the reassurance aside. "Probably not, but the provisions need to be made. I expect to be back in a few weeks, maybe a couple months on the outside, but we can't have things up in the air indefinitely if I get unlucky and the whole team ends up dead in a ditch. If I'm not back in six months then you're the Clan Head, full stop. Until then, don't spend the time keeping the seat warm. Make it your own. Figure out some policy for the Gōketsu and pursue it. Build political connections, set up income streams."

    Noburi nodded thoughtfully and chuckled. "So what you're saying is that if I want to lead, I need to be focused on stuff other than whether we take the escort job or the bodyguard job. I should think more long-term, like bad team dynamics and problems that might come up in the future."

    Hazō laughed as the remembered sounds of a long-gone market whispered in his ears. "Something like that, yes."

    "I'll think about it. Thanks. For...you know."

    "You earned it. Now, I have a couple requests."

    Noburi snorted. "Here I was, seconds from becoming drunk on my new power and independence, and you have to drag me back to the reality of my minionhood. Way to kill the mood, bro."

    "Yeah, well, consider it quid pro quo."

    "Fine," Noburi said with a laugh. "What is it?"

    "Try again to find a toad who's willing to hang out in Dog? Even if it's temporary. It would be great if you and me and Kei could all convene at the same time. Talk to Mari about it; she can help advise on strategy and presentation, but there's got to be some toad somewhere who's interested in seeing other cultures."

    "Huh." Noburi nodded, thinking. "What's Cannai's take on it? He going to be okay with a toad, or a bunch of toads, camping on his doorstep?"

    "The Dogs don't have doorsteps."

    Noburi mimed thwapping his brother upside the head. "You know what I mean."

    "Yeah, I do. I'll talk to him about it, but I feel like it's a thing I can do in parallel with you asking around. Also, I'll do the same but in reverse—get permission from Cannai to find some dogs who wants to go to Toad."

    "Didn't he get a little testy about that last time?"

    "He got testy that I talked to the dogs before I talked to him. If I go to him first and do the appropriate amount of apologizing and reassuring that I've learned my lesson then I can probably get permission to ask around."

    "Uh-huh."

    "I can!" He thought about it. "Probably."

    Noburi chuckled. "Well, at least after Cannai kicks you out as Summoner we can pass the Dog Scroll on to Akane. She'll be a much better fit."

    "Harumph." He mock-glared at Noburi for a moment, then smiled in amusement.

    Silence lingered in the air for a few seconds as both of them considered the politics of two Paths. And then they lingered more seconds as both brothers realized that the topic was exhausted.

    "What route are you taking?" Noburi asked at last.

    "I'm thinking we do it the easy way—down the peninsula, through Noodle, island hop from there."

    "You going past Mist or swinging down through Nagi?"

    "Nagi, I think. I'd rather not attract any attention from Mist." He shrugged. "Might even stop at O'uzu for a day."

    "Oh, man. Remember that little farm village we stayed in during the mail run?"

    "The one with the cross-eyed bull? Yeah, that was amazing. What was the name of that woman who was making eyes at you? The one with the long hair."

    "Hey, all the ladies make eyes at me, bro. Yet one more way in which I am and always have been better than you."

    Hazō scooped a small ball of sealing wax off his desk and tossed it at Noburi's head. Noburi ducked, laughing, and then the conversation continued with more memories, more tall tales, more of those threads of history that had bound teammates into brothers.




    Offscreen: You took some useful chūnin-level seals from Jiraiya's library of seals to research. You're not going to be able to do research while on the move, but if you stay in one place for a full day then you can.

    XP AWARD: 1 Update was about an hour long counting the conversation and the 'getting on the road' part together.

    Brevity XP: 1

    "GM had fun" XP: 0     No strong feelings.

    It is now 10am and Hazō, Kei, Akane, and Yuno are on the road to Neck

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, .
     
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    • Chapter 530: Embarking on a Quest
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    • Hazō took another satisfying lungful of salty sea breeze as he briefly tuned out the vehement argument taking place in front of him. No Leafborn ninja, who thought of water as a less convenient kind of ground, to be crossed quickly by water-walking, could understand the profound romance of the sea. To ninja of Mist, the sea was the domain of Byakuren and Kurohige, of Shizume the Wicked Shipwright and Jisatsu Kōi the Kaiju Hunter, of the Crimson War that drove the pirate lords of old into the Abyss or eternal exile... It was their home, the domain of legend, and the lair of the Soul Fisher all at once. A sea voyage was more than a run from origin to destination. In a very subtle but meaningful way, it was an act of worship.

    That went double for what Kei sardonically described as a "family camping trip". In Leaf, magic dwelled in the unexplored deep forest, waiting for those prepared to place their lives in the hands of the forest kami and gamble their survival in order to make it give up its secrets. In Mist, it was the eastern continent, a terra far more incognita. Ancient temples held incredible treasures and terrifying guardians. The ruins of lost civilisations concealed the terrible forbidden lore that had led to their downfall. Primaeval monsters slumbered undisturbed on deposits of chakra metal and caches of elixirs that could give a child the fighting prowess of a Kage. To Hazō, Kei, and Snowflake, it was only natural and proper that Neck should contain an extradimensional artefact crafted by the Sage himself, waiting to bestow unearthly powers on the adventurer with the strength, courage, and cunning to overcome a series of trials. The alternative violated common sense.

    Hazō snapped out of his reverie as negotiations finally broke down, leaving the party rejected by the last of the three ships that listed Neck as a potential port of call.

    "There ain't nothing left to say," the grizzled, middle-aged sailor said, pointing at Hazō, Akane, and Yuno in turn with a finger so calloused his skin might as well have been tree bark. "You, you, and you are fine, but I ain't having no twins on my ship, not if I want the sea kami to smile up at me with the summer storms on the way. That pouch you're jangling ain't worth the life of my crew. Now, you can ditch those two or you can look for passage elsewhere. End of story."

    This was the third time the group had been turned away by superstitious seadogs, and Hazō could tell from the twitch of Kei's eyebrow that a certain limit had been reached. He braced herself to withstand the weapon of psychic mass destruction that was a doubled freezing aura, and started calculating compensation in case the civilian's heart couldn't take it (unlikely, but between KEI work and the stacking effect of shadow clone learning, their powers of intimidation were growing with uncomfortable speed).

    "You know," Kei said in a perfectly calm, even slightly amused voice, "it strikes me that this vessel is sitting ever so slightly lower in the water than I would expect of an allegedly unladen ship. Perhaps 70 tonnes lower, Hatsu?"

    "How curious, Kai," Snowflake agreed. "I was just thinking the same thing."

    The captain snorted at them. "And what would a pair of map-makers who've never seen an orlop know about water displacement?"

    "A chakra orlop is a flying marine predator resembling a many-legged giant manta ray," Kei said more coolly. "Larger vessels are constructed with a special deck where the crew may hide until the creature loses interest. We are not mere professional cartographers, Captain Mitsuyu. We are the Cho Sisters, and your scepticism reflects only your ignorance of the major players in the world of information trade. However, there is no need to take our word for it. Master Sanzō, your opinion, please."

    Hazō made a show of studying the waterline of the Runt O' The Sea, swaggering up and down the dock even though he had no idea what he was looking for, or even whether Kei and Snowflake were bluffing.

    Finally, the party's deception expert decided to sidestep the entire problem.

    Hazō: Deceit 24 - 3 = 21
    Captain Mitsuyu: ?? + ? = ??

    Hazō wins.

    "You know," he said, "I make a policy of not asking inconvenient questions of the captains I do business with, as long as my cargo is delivered safely and on time. It's a matter of mutual respect. But as you and I aren't doing business…"

    He glanced at Yuno, who was studying the captain as if deciding which parts to chop off first if it came to a fight.

    "Sha, did you see where the harbourmaster's office was?"

    Yuno pointed down towards the warehouses. "Dataway, boss. Youse want I should go get him down 'ere?"

    Oh, yes. Yuno, like the other Isan ninja of her generation, had received zero infiltration training of any sort, and also had the natural acting ability of a stampeding rhinoceros. In retrospect, maybe Icha Icha 13: The Small Print of Seduction hadn't been the best source of last-minute guidance on how to act like a contracted bodyguard.

    One...

    Two...

    Three...

    "Now hold on there," the captain choked out, sweat glistening on his bald head. "Howsabout we meet each other halfway? You seem like a man who'd pay the extra ryō to make sure of his own safety, to say nothing of your lady wife's. You just pay a priest to do their propatri- prototypi- pacifying rituals so the sea kami know the Runt O' The Sea don't be meaning no disrespect, and we can all be on our merry way with no complications. That's all I can do without the crew mutinying on me."

    Hazō made a show of weighing his options like a fiscally-responsible trader, as if the Gōketsu had to worry about this kind of pocket change. In reality, it was a reasonable proposal. Kei and Snowflake weren't technically twins, but on the other hand, the distinction might be too weird for the sea kami, and even if the party made it safely to Neck, for all he knew, the capricious spirits might suspend their eternal rivalry with the land kami long enough to tip them off that irreverent heretics were incoming. (Hazō didn't know if his sort-of-worship of Jashin did in fact make him a heretic).

    "Captain Mitsuyu, you've got yourself a deal."

    -o-​

    Hazō was glad he'd decided to humour Snowflake's request for a traditional sailing journey. Being a carefree passenger brought back memories of a more innocent time when sea travel was a standard part of Academy infiltration training, as an opportunity to mix with foreigners in a strictly controlled environment where impressionable children were within a loyal instructor's hearing range at all times (though Hazō couldn't for the life of him remember how they'd managed to use disguise kits to divert attention from obviously preteen-sized passengers). Meanwhile, Kei and Snowflake had fun getting revenge by egregiously finishing each other's sentences in front of an increasingly uncomfortable captain and, less deliberately, acting just a little too close for mere siblings in front of the crew. Yuno was terrifying the heck out of the sailors by holding long conversations with a half-heartedly disguised "Bosatsuko" in an effort to distract herself from Noburi's absence. But most importantly, whether it was thanks to the healthy air, the peace of the endless watery expanse, or the seemingly absolute distance from everything she knew, Akane was less miserable than she'd been for a long time. Her smile still lost out—slightly—to the nostalgic sight of the rising sun colouring an entire ocean, but if Akane was happy, Hazō was happy. It was as simple as that.

    There'd been three days of heartstopping anxiety when the ship was forced to make an unplanned stop at Han'ei Harbour, previously Yaguramachi, in other words, the primary port used by ships trading with the inland Mist. Since Hazō and company were extremely not cleared to be in Mist territory, they'd claimed simultaneous bouts of porphyric haemophilia and stayed in their cabins until the ship was on its way (Hazō made a point of not asking how the Runt O' The Sea had avoided inspection). After that, though, it was relatively plain sailing, until…

    "Sanzō, the rest of you, the captain needs to see you on deck now!" the pale sailor shouted before quickly retreating up the stairs.

    Hazō smiled in spite of himself. It wouldn't have been a proper journey without a roll on the random encounter table.

    -o-​

    You have received 3 + 1 (Brevity) x 10 = 40 XP.

    -o-​

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    Omake: Because of a Nat 1
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    • Hazō looked at the rest of the team. "Thoughts?"

    "Keep cover," Akane said. "If they know we're ninja it will complicate things."

    "Satsuko says that it only gets complicated if they can report back," Yuno shared, looking at her axe.

    "Satusuko's not wrong, but I want to keep violence as an absolute last resort," Hazō said. "Let's not start anything, okay?"

    Yuno sniffed.

    "Grab your deniable weapons," Hazō said. "Everyone has their Multiple Activation Relay Seals and the relevant loads?"

    "Yes, Hazō," Kei said. "We have in fact conformed to standing orders about in-field combat preparation."

    "Right. Good. Well, let's go." He climbed up the ladder, remembering to move like a civilian and touch each rung with his feet instead of swarming up it using chakra adhesion and a series of jumps.

    No sooner had he come on deck than Hazō could hear the argument at the front of the ship. The tension in his stomach from where he'd been expecting a fight against unknown enemies released and was immediately replaced with an entirely new tension.

    "Where are they, you stinkers? If you've hurt them, I'll—"

    "I am not in the habit of being spoken to like that by stowaways," the captain said frostily. "I want to know where you got on and why. Start talking or—"

    "Or what? We're not in Leaf so I'm allowed to splat you if—"

    "Hello!" Hazō called, striding towards where the captain and his stowaway were arguing, most of the crew gathered around with weapons of some sort in hand. Knives, gaffs, large wooden pins that undoubtedly had some sort of nautical purpose, and even one sword. Nothing that would endanger a ninja.

    The man arguing with the captain, on the other hand...

    "Hello!" Hazō said again. "I'm Sanzō, leader of this group." He gestured to the rest of the team behind him. "Captain—"

    "Hazō!" Kagome-sensei said, bounding across the intervening space and hugging his nephew. This was less pleasant than his hugs normally were, since he was wearing a ghillie suit made out of sharkskin and seaweed, and was drenched in cold salt water. "So good to see you!"

    Hazō squeezed the older man hard, two quick pulses, then pushed him back with a scowl. "Excuse me, sir! I don't know who this 'Hazō' person is, but you have me confused. My name is Sanzō."

    "N—" He cut off as he finally noticed the meaningful glares being given to him by the entire team. "Oh, right. My mistake. Sanzō. Sannnnnzō. Yup. Definitely not Hazō. Sorry about that."

    Kagome, Deceit: ? - 12 (dice) = -?

    Ordinarily I would reroll a -9 or below, but (A) this is hilarious and (B) it wouldn't matter. I chose the name of the chapter before I started writing as a reference to when Kagome rolled a nat 1 at his first meeting with Hazō and was therefore willing to entertain a relationship instead of killing him out of hand. I see he's kept in good form.

    Captain, Deceit: A natural number


    The captain and crew looked completely unconvinced. Hazō sighed. Then-sensei Mari's voice whispered in the back of his mind, a memory from long-gone days when things were simple. Never break character, even if the enemy already knows everything. Never. It does nothing except foreclose options.

    "And your name, sir?" he asked.

    "Huh? You know...oh, right. You're not Hazō, you're Sanzō." The older man drew himself up and bowed slightly. "I'm..." He hesitated. "Uh...I'm...I'm..." His eyes flicked around for inspiration and alighted on Kei. "Nara. Nara...Bagome. Yes. Nara Bagome, that's me."

    "A pleasure to meet you, Nara," Hazō said, ignoring the imagined sound of Kei's teeth grinding. "What brings you here today?"

    "You know this guy, Sanzō?" the captain demanded, striding through the crowd of sailors that parted before him to allow passage.

    "Of course he—"

    "I do not," Hazō said quickly. "Although he seems like a fine fellow, we have never met. Correct, sir?"

    "Oh. Right. Yeah, never met him before. I thought he was my nephew, Gōketsu Hazō, but he's not. Just some random guy who looks like him, I guess."

    The sound of facepalming from behind him suggested that Yuno had exceeded her limits of discretion.

    Hazō sighed. "Well, whoever this nephew of yours is, I'm afraid I'm not him. Why don't you come to our cabin and tell us about him?" Or absolutely anything that would involve getting Kagome-sensei's secrets-dropping lips away from the curious ears of captain and crew.

    "Hold," the captain snapped. "I'm still waiting for an explanation. When and why did you stow away with us, Nara? And where exactly were you hiding? And what's with that getup?" He waved angrily at the ghillie suit.

    "I was hiding under that beaky part on the front of the boat," Kagome said, waving vaguely forward. "Been there since you left the mainland."

    The captain pushed on his eyebrow with one thumb as though trying to drive off a headache. It was a gesture that Hazō had seen more than once when Kagome-sensei was involved with people who didn't know him well.

    "She's not a boat, she's a ship," the captain said through clenched teeth. "And it's not a beak, it's a bowsprit. And there's no possible way you could have been down there all this time. You were obviously belowdecks, which means I need to know where exactly."

    Kagome frowned. "Why do you...ohhh, you're a smuggler, right? You want to know where I was so that you can know if I saw whatever you're smuggling. Don't worry, I didn't." He looked insufferably pleased with himself for having pierced the captain's cunning ruse and abated any reason for strife.

    Hazō struggled not to facepalm.

    "Mr Nara," Hazō said. "That's a terrible accusation to make! The captain is no smuggler, I assure you. A very stand-up man so far as I've seen. I feel certain that he's merely worried you have damaged some of the cargo, or spoiled some of the supplies. Right, Captain?"

    The captain paused, then reluctantly nodded. "Yes, of course. Now, I believe you were about to tell me where you were hiding. Do so. Now."

    "Why?" Kagome asked. "I already told you and you didn't believe me. If I tell you again is that going to change?" He sounded honestly curious.

    The captain took a slow, calming breath. "Imagine for a moment that I believe your nonsense. How did you manage to cling to the underside of the bowsprit for the last few days?"

    "I didn't realize ships could spit," Kagome said. "Cool. Learn something new every day and you'll never be bored, I guess."

    "What."

    "The boat...er, ship," Kagome said. "The bow is the front, right? You were the one talking about the bow's spit."

    "Bowsprit," the captain ground out. "With an 'r'. It's the pole that sticks out the front in order to give more footage for the forestay." He saw the older man's mouth opening and hurried to interrupt. "And the forestay is the rope that runs from the top of the mast to the bowsprit. It helps keep the mast up."

    "Oh, neat! I'm learning all kinds of things. Thanks!"

    The captain's hands balled into fists, then relaxed, then balled up again, like a cat kneading.

    "You claim that you were under the bowsprit for days. How?"

    "Not the spit itself, just the curvy part of the outer wall. I fixed a hammock there so I could hang out of the water when we were traveling." He looked down at his aquatic ghillie suit, smiling with pride. "This thing worked super well, too. Kept me warm and mostly dry. A little bit of swamp butt, but that's not so bad."

    The captain caught the eye of the first mate and jerked his head towards the front of the boat. The first mate ran off to check for the presence of a hammock.

    "And why did you feel the need to do this?" the captain asked. "Were you fleeing from something?"

    "Nah, I just wanted to travel with Ha—with my nephew, who is not the man standing next to me because that is a man named Sanzō whom I have never seen before." He looked around. "Gotta say, I like your boat. And the ocean. Smells nice."

    "It's not a..." The captain stopped and took another breath. He glanced up to the front of the bow where the first mate had stepped out onto the bowsprit with casual disregard for the motion of the ship. He walked forward a few feet so that he could see below the curve of the hull. He looked back along the ship to where the captain stood and chopped his arm in the sailor's hand signal for 'yes'."

    The captain chewed on his lip, his eyes shifting between Kagome, Hazō, and the other (hopefully still covert) ninja.

    "All right," he said at last. "Nara, you will pay me the standard rate of passage and I will put you ashore on the next stop." He named a number.

    "Oh, is that all? Hang on." Kagome shuffled through his pockets, pulled out a storage seal, unsealed a bulging sack of ryō, and crouched down so he could count out the right amount.

    Everyone in the conversation froze. The captain and his crew because they had suddenly become aware of the fact that the man they had been considering murdering was in fact a ninja. Hazō and the team because Kagome-sensei had revealed himself as a ninja and thereby outed the rest of them as well. And also because Kagome-sensei was flashing an absolutely ridiculous amount of money in front of men who worked hard to make ends meet.

    "Here you go," Kagome said happily, standing up and holding out a fistful of coins. "It's Leaf ryō, but hopefully that works?"

    "Yes, of course," the captain said after a moment. He took the coins from Kagome, moving carefully so as not to startle the older man. "We will be making landfall in a few hours, sir. It's a small village but a good cove. You will all be disembarking?"

    Kagome-sensei looked at Hazō, who gritted his teeth. "My party will, yes," he said. "Nara, if you wish to accompany us then I have no objection."

    Kagome-sensei nodded furiously, an angelic smile on his face. "Great!"

    "Good," the captain said. "If you will all please return to your cabin, I'll see about getting you there as fast as I can." 'So that I can get you off my ship' didn't need to be said.


    [EDIT: This update has been decanonized because it made no damn sense for the characters. It is now just an omake and has nothing to do with canon.]

    Author's Note: Sorry for the short update, but I absolutely crunked on spoons these last two days. Honestly, I had no idea what I was going to do for this chapter. I was intending to have a monster attack, or maybe pirates. Then, over in Discord, someone said "Clearly, what happened is that jōnin-level-stealth Kagome followed them and spent the entire ride clinging to the underside of the ship until it was too late for Hazō to send him back and the captain is freaking out about a massive pile of seaweed and stitched sharkskin quietly climbing onto his deck, sneaking up right behind him, and thunderously demanding that the stinkers produce Hazō while crackling lightning and flanked by giant angry spiders and horseshoe crabs." With a prompt like that, how could I not? I did leave off the bit about lightning, spiders, and crabs, though. Kagome has learned that it's okay to start off at a 2 or a 3 before escalating to an eleventy-bazillion.

    XP AWARD: 1 The update was less than an hour.

    Brevity XP: 1

    "GM had fun" XP: 1

    Sunset is in about 5 hours. You will be reaching shore in Honey in a bit under 3 hours, since the captain is piling on the canvas. If you look at the map and draw a straight line due east from Mist until it intersects the eastern side of Honey, that's where you'll be making landfall.

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, .
     
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  • Apocrypha
    • Chapter 531: Tragedy on the High Seas
  • Threadmarks

    • "Sanzō, the rest of you, the captain needs to see you on deck now!" the pale sailor shouted before quickly retreating up the stairs.

    Hazō looked at the rest of the team. "Thoughts?"

    "Keep cover," Akane said. "If they know we're ninja it will complicate things."

    "Satsuko says that it only gets complicated if they can report back," Yuno shared, looking at her axe.

    "Satsuko's not wrong, but I want to keep violence as an absolute last resort," Hazō said. "Let's not start anything, okay?"

    Yuno sniffed.

    "Grab your deniable weapons," Hazō said. "Everyone has their Multiple Activation Relay Seals and the relevant loads?"

    "Yes, Hazō," Kei said. "We have in fact conformed to standing orders about in-field combat preparation."

    "Right. Good. Well, let's go." He climbed up the ladder, remembering to move like a civilian and touch each rung with his feet instead of swarming up it using chakra adhesion and a series of jumps.

    "Well, didn't you take your damn time," Captain Mitsuyu grumbled as they reached the top deck a handful of seconds later. "Trust a bunch of mainlanders to treat an emergency as a Fisher-blighted pleasure stroll."

    The Runt O' The Sea was eerily still, both in the water and in terms of its crew, all of whom were staring over the starboard railing with varied expressions of horror, sick fascination, and, among the older seamen, some weary resignation. Hazō heard whispers of "The kami have forsaken us", "I'm sorry, Kimiko", and even "They're so beautiful". He himself could see nothing but a vibrant azure shimmer somewhere beneath the surface.

    "What's the matter, Captain?"

    Captain Mitsuyu gestured towards the shimmer. "What's the matter? We're all about to die is the matter. The kami have sent a school of hogsucking koi to sink us for our disrespect. I knew I should never have let you on board my ship."

    The team exchanged stunned glances.

    "When you say 'koi'..." Hazō prompted.

    "Koi are koi", Captain Mitsuyu said helpfully. "By rights, they oughtn't have a jot of interest in civilian traffic. That's why this is a safe route—for a ship not carrying any mother-rollocking twins!"

    Yuno's axe was suddenly in what Hazō recognised as the preparatory stance for Owl Swoops to Feast, the certain-kill move Yuno had used to fell the High Priest. "How dare you slander the Pango—"

    Akane's hand lashed out. She gripped Satsuko's haft perilously near the head, forcing her down. "I'm sure Captain Mitsuyu will apologise for his ill-considered words later, but for now I think it's more important to hear more about this emergency."

    Yuno glanced reluctantly at Kei, who gave a magnanimous nod.

    "R-Right, then," the captain stammered, taking a couple of steps backwards. "Koi can sense chadra, see?"

    "Chadra?" Kei queried.

    "You know," the captain said impatiently, "chadra. The thing that gives ninja their powers. Every man's got a little chadra sleeping inside him, but ninja are practically made of the stuff. It's what makes them so strong and tough."

    "Ah," Kei said neutrally. "That chadra. How remiss of me."

    "They sense chadra, and it makes them feel threatened. And you know what koi do when they're threatened?"

    "They flee?"

    "Horn-bouncing landlubbers," Captain Mitsuyu muttered. "They blast all they can see with killer thunderbolts of death. Obviously."

    "Obviously," Kei agreed. "Forgive me. I have been instructed to periodically exercise my capacity for hope as a form of rehabilitation, after the fashion of an atrophied muscle."

    "We move, we die," the captain said, not dignifying this with a reaction. "Those koi sense chadra moving, whether it's us in the ship or some idiot swimming away, and blam!"—he opened a fist in a sudden dramatic movement—"we're all charcoal."

    "Can we wait them out?" Hazō asked.

    "Doubt it," the captain said. "Koi are dumb, but they get less dumb when the school's as big as that. They get hungry, they'll blast us anyway and hope there's something to eat among the remains. No, there's two ways we maybe, maybe, stand a chance of getting out of this in one piece.

    "One's if one of you is a ninja. If those koi are here for the ninja, and not because the sea kami want the Runt in pieces in the Abyss, answer's simple. You cut your throat right now, your chadra goes poof, and the threat's gone. You get your rightful punishment for lying to the captain of the ship, the koi lose interest, everybody's happy."

    He gave the party an ominous, questioning look one by one.

    Yuno opened her mouth.

    "My good man," Hazō said superciliously, "do you honestly believe that if I'd been able to hire a ninja bodyguard, I would be entrusting my safety to that woman there?"

    Captain Mitsuyu considered Yuno. She gave him a friendly smile, as if she hadn't just been about to bury an evil-looking black axe with special grooves for the blood into his sternum.

    "You got me there," he said reluctantly. "Everybody knows ninja are batshit crazy, but if they ever got a manatee-marrying lunatic like her, they wouldn't let her out of the village."

    "Youse flap yer lips all ya like," Yuno said. "Bosatsuko 'ere says itsa world's crazy, not me, an' I should just follow mah instincts."

    Captain Mitsuyu nodded as if vindicated.

    "That settles that," he said. "If the koi ain't here because of a ninja, then they're here because of the twins. One goes overboard now, or we all die."

    Hazō sensed the team's options begin to narrow. Reveal themselves as ninja and take on the unknown chakra beast on its home ground? Break out the emergency skywalkers and try to get out of blasting range faster than the koi reacted to movement? Force the captain to unfurl the sails and hope for the best?

    But before Hazō could begin to do the Thing, Snowflake stepped forward.

    "I understand," she said in a heavy tone of resolve. "If this is the only way for my sister to be safe..."

    "Hatsu, no!" Kei exclaimed.

    "I could never live without you," Snowflake said, taking Kei's hands in hers. Several sailors turned around. "If I must take the fatal blow for the sake of your survival, then I will accept that as the purpose for which I was born."

    "We have been together your entire life," Kei said. "Every morning, I awaken feeling as if you are part of me. Every morning, I see you and it is as if you have come into my life anew. Will you leave me so soon, when we promised that we would live side by side until sleep claimed me at last?"

    More sailors began to gather. One wiped his eyes.

    Snowflake placed a hand over Kei's heart. "Even when my body is no more, Sister, I will always live on in your memories."

    Then, she turned towards the starboard railing. She plunged her hands into her pockets, then pulled them out after a second in tight fists. Before anyone could think of stopping her, she performed a running jump... all the way over the railing and into the school of fish.

    Everything went white. The world shook.

    The force of the blast was such that for a moment, Hazō was afraid it would capsize the ship. Finally, the Runt O' The Sea swayed back upright and Hazō released his death grip on the nearest piece of rigging. All that could be seen where the azure shimmer of the koi school used to be were some unidentifiable pieces of flesh floating on the surface.

    The first mate began to bark orders. The ship set sail. As Hazō and Akane dragged Yuno below decks, telling the sailors her deranged laughter was a form of grief, Kei stood at the stern, gazing at the wake.

    Only the captain, standing by her awkwardly as if looking for the right words to say, heard the words she whispered.

    "Let us meet again in a saner place, beloved sister."

    -o-​

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

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting ends on
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 532: Welcome to Honey
  • Threadmarks

    • Once they reached the port, Hazō waited until the captain was momentarily unaccompanied and then drew the man to the side.

    "Tell me, Captain, how long do you expect to be in port?"

    "Why do you ask?" the man asked, a poisoned frosting of suspicion layered atop the words.

    "Because I would be interested in hiring you to take us on from here upon the conclusion of our local business," Hazō said. And also because he didn't want this man wandering around the local ports talking about the group of strangers to whom the chakra-seeking koi had been attracted.

    The captain snorted. "Not interested. I've got contracts and contacts, duties and obligations."

    "Doesn't sea travel frequently require that plans change? Surely your contracts and contact and obligations won't cease to exist merely because you spend some time comfortably in port, gambling and carousing and relaxing? Allowing your men shore leave and some much-needed recreation?"

    The captain looked down the docks towards where a group of women in scanty dresses stood waiting by the shore. The crew, at least those who were not required to stay aboard, were streaming onto dry land as fast as they could, pushing and shoving to be first to reach the ladies. The ladies who were, undoubtedly, their wives and girlfriends and with whom nothing of impropriety would happen.

    He looked back to Hazō and rubbed his nose. "I dunno...we've got some good jobs lined up."

    Hazō reached into his backpack and pulled out a massive bag of ryō, easily several pounds worth. It was a carefully-assembled mix of currencies, the sort of thing that a traveler might have amassed, but it leaned heavily on Leaf ryō. He reached in and scooped out a careless handful, extending it to the captain.

    "I'll give you this now and upon our return I'll give you five times the passage we paid to get here. In return, you wait four weeks and then transport us to our next port of call." The Gōketsu might or might not need that long, but better to have the time and not need it. "We may be back sooner but that won't affect the price."

    The captain's eyes narrowed. "If you had all this, why'd you bargain so stingy-like on the way here?"

    "I'm not in the habit of parting with money I don't need to part with," Hazō said primly. "Were I, I doubt I should have amassed enough wealth to fund this expedition."

    "Why don't I go do my business and pick you up again in four weeks? No reason to sit around waiting."

    "As I said, we may be back sooner. If we are, I would prefer not to wait."

    "Yeah?"

    "Indeed."

    "Why's that? What are you after?"

    "I don't see that's it's your affair, Captain."

    "It is if you want me to tie my ship up for a month. Spill."

    Hazō sighed. "Very well. One of my father's factors was on a trade mission to the Village Hidden in the Mists when he found himself in need of a rapid departure. He made landfall in Wolf and encountered a tribe of locals, civilians all. He spent some time with them until he was confident that the search would have died down, then he returned and reported on his adventures. New markets are always of interest to my family, so I set off to meet these tribesmen in order to broach the subject of trade."

    "Uh-huh." The captain studied him. "Bullshit. Nobody with that kind of cash goes running off to meet a bunch of backwoods tribesmen on a different continent."

    "Oh? And yet, here I am."

    "What have they got that's so interesting?"

    "I have no idea. That's why—"

    "Bullshit!" the captain said again. "They've got something or you wouldn't be here. Tell me or we're done."

    Hazō sighed, trying to sound put upon. "Very well." He looked around and leaned in, lowering his voice. "The tribesmen wore gold, Captain. A lot of it. They make their camps along a river bed filled with nuggets the size of your thumbnail just lying on the sand in plain view. The river comes down a small mountain or large hill nearby and when my father's man went up it he saw exposed rock with visible ore. I am here to do an initial appraisal and set up trade agreements with these barbarians. I will then be seeking out the men I'll need in order to make this a reality—miners, for one, and a captain and crew who can bring the product back to civilization in exchange for a cut. Ideally, a captain and crew who know how to move cargo past customs without too many questions."

    The captain snorted. "Primitives, living in the woods with no ninja? Gold just lying around on the surface? Nonsense."

    Wordlessly, Hazō dumped the coins back into the bag to free up his hand, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the gold nugget that Cannai had pranked him with. "My man brought this and a half dozen others back with him as proof. If you like, this can be your up-front fee to stay here until we return." He held the nugget out.

    The captain took it and turned it over in his hands. He hefted it, tasted it, and bit it.

    "Done," he said, pocketing the nugget. "Four weeks, and five times your original passage when you get back. Plus, I'll want thirty percent of all cargo."

    Hazō laughed. "Let's keep things simple to start, Captain. You and your entire crew will wait here for four weeks. You will not tell anyone, including your crew, about what I've told you. Upon our return you will take us to our next stop, you'll be paid on arrival, and then we'll discuss further business."

    The captain chewed his cheek for a moment, then nodded. "Fine. Four weeks."

    "One additional deal that I would like to offer."

    "Yeah?"

    "Think up a way to live-capture and transport some of those koi. The Hyūga of Leaf are able to see chakra. They're very strange folk; they keep high-chakra plants and beasts on their property and..." He shrugged. "I'm not entirely clear. They talk about it like some sort of art form, arranging the locations and movements of the creatures like flowers. I believe they would pay a lovely pile of ryō for those creatures if we can find a way to get them there. A very lovely pile. More than I am expecting to make off this first trip."

    The Captain's eyes rose. "That's nuts."

    "Just think on it, Captain. If there's nothing to be done then there's nothing to be done. If you can think of a way then we would both be ludicrously wealthy. I've seen them pay a million ryō for an unfamiliar plant that spat sparks when the moon shone upon it. For something like those?" He shook his head. "Who knows?"

    "...I'll think on it."

    o-o-o-o​

    It was three hundred miles through trackless forest and boggy marsh from the port in Honey to the area of Neck where they felt the Scroll might lie. That would have been the work of months for the civilian travelers that Hazō and his team had presented themselves as. For ninja, it was three days of steady jogging. They could have done it in two but they didn't know what the local wilderness threats looked like, nor what ninja might live in the area. Thus, they traveled slowly and cautiously.

    It was a good thing they did. On the second day they dodged two separate ninja patrols, strongly suggesting that there was a ninja village nearby. Across the course of the trip they needed to explain to no fewer than six types of predators that yes, the Gōketsu were higher up the food chain than any mere beast.

    At last, as the tree-hidden sun was stumbling drunkenly to the horizon, its penultimate rays trickling fat and heavy through the branches, they reached what Mareo's map and explanations had claimed as the most reasonable place to find their target.

    The process of setting up a semi-permanent camp brought back fond memories; they found a small fold in the land, roofed it over with a Multiple Earth Wall, set another in front, and spent time burying the entire thing and transplanting shallow-rooted plants atop it. By the time they were done it was full dark and they needed to work by the faint rays of Night Light seals in order to put the final touches on.

    "Remember this?" Hazō asked Kei as they finished the last section. His sister nodded and, incredibly, smiled.

    It was a faint smile, and a bit sad, but it was a smile nonetheless. "Simpler times," she said.

    "I'll tell you another thing that I recall from simpler times," Hazō said, his voice teasing as he and Kei walked into the enclosed shelter. He timed the words carefully so that Kei's head was turned as she rounded the corner into the room and therefore the view was hidden for that one necessary instant.

    Kei looked back at him, an eyebrow raised. "Oh? What might—"

    "Happy Birthday, Kei!" cheered the family / teammates / battlemates who waited for her, their arms laden with gifts and carrot cake.




    XP AWARD: 12

    Brevity XP: 4

    "GM had fun" XP: 2

    Note: I'll be out of town next Sunday at a family reunion and thus Velorien will write next Sunday's update.

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, .
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 533, Part 1: Storytime
  • Threadmarks

    • Eventually, the carrot cake was consumed, followed by other, lesser, foodstuffs. Left comfortably full, the family was free to move on to the most important part of the evening, namely the giving of gifts.

    "Do you want to go first?" Hazō asked Akane.

    "No, I think I should go last," Akane said with what Kei very much feared was a mischievous smile.

    "If you're sure…"

    Hazō brought forth the box, black, lacquered, and small enough to fit in one hand. Snowflake walked over to join him.

    "Regrettably," Snowflake began, "our gift to you cannot be a complete surprise. However, as you know, I have left key elements of the design in Hazō's hands. Please feel free to heap praise upon me for my creativity and sensitivity to your tastes while holding him responsible for any flaws in the finished product."

    "Naturally."

    Hazō sighed, but wisely did not attempt to argue the point.

    "Happy birthday, Kei."

    The item lifted forth from the box was a blue sapphire necklace on a silver chain. Kei studied it, holding it up against the light by the chain, one finger pressed along the bottom to prevent it from spinning.

    "However did you…"

    The cut was not a simple spiral as it first appeared. It was a fractal shape, triangle after triangle expanding ever outwards, ever smaller, until the details were lost and the outside of the gem seemed like a simple circle. At the centre, the four largest triangles held the Nara and Gōketsu symbols, the sunburst-and-tree of the KEI, and the word "Uplift" (perhaps the Gōketsu should take a leaf from the KEI's book and run a competition to create an Uplift symbol).

    "I have always wished to wear a sophisticated political statement around my neck," Kei told Hazō and Snowflake, turning the necklace back and forth and comparing the different ways in which different sizes of facet reflected the firelight.

    "Really?" Yuno brightened. "Then you'll love my present!"

    It was just as well that Kei's hands were occupied, since a facepalm would have been rude.

    "Thank you both," she said instead. "The craftsmanship is exemplary."

    "It had better be," Hazō said with a self-deprecating smirk. "Gaku's going to have a heart attack when he sees how much I spent on cheap gemstones to burn for practice."

    "Not an issue; that man has no heart," Kei said. "Even a veteran of Mist T&I would flinch at the torture he inflicts on the Gōketsu accounts with his suboptimal bookkeeping methods."

    "That's just a metaphor, isn't it?" Yuno asked with pre-emptive disappointment.

    "Only barely."

    "In that case, I'll go next." Yuno pulled out a storage scroll and unsealed a large, coffin-shaped box.

    "Yuno, I honestly do not know whether to feel optimistic or pessimistic about the possibility that you have brought me the corpses of my enemies."

    "I'm sorry I didn't," Yuno said. "Is that a thing people do for birthday celebrations?"

    "No!"

    "No way!"

    "Do not even consider it."

    "Definitely not!"

    "Oh," Yuno said. "Pity. Now that you mention it, it seems like a great idea. It shows you're prepared to go to a lot of effort for that person and that you've been paying attention to their activities, and it's a very practical gift with long-term benefits."

    "Still no, Yuno," Hazō said. "You can't go around murdering people without your clan head's explicit permission."

    "With that said," Kei noted, "blackmail material is a traditional shinobi gift. Ami always sent Lord Ryūgamine a handful of dossiers for his birthday, though whether she correctly guessed who his enemies were, I could not say."

    Yuno nodded seriously, then finally cracked the box open.

    "Happy birthday, Kei!"

    Kei drew in an involuntary breath.

    The dress was deep blue, with elaborate white lacework around the collar, sleeves, and hem. Kei could already tell it would fit her perfectly—as an unfortunate consequence of the Leaf Chūnin Girls' clothes shopping trip, altogether too many people now knew her measurements, potentially including the entirety of the Hyūga Clan.

    Next to her, Snowflake pulled her lacy green ribbon out of her hair and held it up against the dress to compare. "Did you make this yourself?"

    "Of course," Yuno said. "A bride who knows how to make her own dresses saves the household money."

    "Is there any special Isanese meaning that I should bear in mind?" Kei asked.

    "I prepared a manual." Yuno handed Kei a palm-sized scroll. Kei began to unfurl it, read "with amber jewellery: 'praying for a child'", then furled it up again and set it well aside.

    "Thank you very much, Yuno," Kei said, diligently blanking the last few seconds out of her memory. "I look forward to wearing it on a suitable occasion, should one exist."

    "That just leaves me," Akane said. "I spent a while doing research to try to find the gift that best suited your preferences, so do let me know how I did once you're done with it."

    She handed Kei a book. Kei glanced down at the cover and her heart stopped.

    "Wh-What is the meaning of…"

    "Wh-Why would you…" Snowflake stammered next to her, crimson as a blood lily.

    "I d-do not have any interest in this kind of literature!" Kei screeched. Why would Akane give something like this to her in public? What was she thinking? With Hazō and Yuno staring at them in shock, what kind of damage control could possibly—

    Giving Kei a meaningful look, Akane reached over and pulled off the cover of At the Wicked Magistrate's Mercy, revealing A Statistical Analysis of Rice Country Exports, 1040–1070, with an Emphasis on Legumes.

    "Akane," Kei said through her teeth, "the fact that you have just presented me with a birthday gift is the only reason why you are not currently inside a particularly undiscriminating pangolin."

    "Is that so?" Akane asked without due concern for her safety. "I hope you enjoy it."

    Before putting the book aside, Kei flicked quickly to the index page to see what kind of topics it covered.

    At the Wicked Magistrate's Mercy

    Chapter I: The Interrogation Begins

    Kei snapped the book shut again.

    "Th-Thank you, Akane. I will be certain to repay you appropriately."

    -o-​

    "…and after that kiss, she knew no more."

    Akane gave a storyteller's bow.

    "Wait, wait!" Yuno exclaimed. "What happened to the man she loved? Did he go back and slaughter all the Uchiha for kicking her out?"

    "The story doesn't say," Akane said, "but given the fact that there is an Uchiha Clan, more or less, I'd assume he didn't."

    "A fine story," Snowflake said. "Romance, action, inescapable doom born of human folly… everything one might seek in a work of fiction."

    She clapped, and the others quickly joined in.

    "Who would like to go next?"

    "Oh, can I?" Yuno shifted around to face the others, sitting cross-legged in a circle. "This is a true and unadulterated story, as passed down from Kanda Yukari herself, and may the Crocodile of Separatism consume me if I change but a single word.

    "Once upon a time, there was a man, the last survivor of a great and mighty clan, and he had a son. The son had a sharp mind, quick hands, industrious kidneys, and chakra that shone bright and orange. Unfortunately, the father was crippled by war, and he could not pass on the way of the ninja. So he set out on a journey to find an instructor whom he could trust with his only heir.

    "The first person they met on the road was the Sage of Six Paths. 'Let me teach your son,'" the Sage of Six Paths said, 'for I am ancient and wise, and know all the hidden lore of the world.' But the father said, 'If you are so wise, why did you create shinobi to do nothing but fight and die?', and spat at the Sage's feet.

    "The second person they met on the road was the One Who Bids the Trees to Walk as Gods, greatest of the asura. 'Let me teach your son,' the One Who Bids the Trees to Walk as Gods said, 'for I am mighty and brutal, and there is no one stronger than me.' But the father said, 'The power that violence promises is a lie; I have lost everything I have to it', and spat at the asura's feet.

    "The third person they met on the road was the King of Hell. 'Let me teach your son,' the King of Hell said, 'for I govern both life and death, and I wait at the end of every path.' And the father said, 'In this world, Death alone is honest', and offered the King of Hell his son.

    "The King of Hell taught the son the divine art of medical ninjutsu, which can heal the most grievous injury and banish the deadliest sickness. Then, when the son had mastered medical ninjutsu, he gave him the power of Deathsight. 'When a patient is dying and you see me at the foot of the sickbed, you may use the arts I have taught you, and I shall spare him. But if you ever see me at the head, then his time has come, and you must not interfere, lest you disrupt the cycle of life and death itself.

    "The son agreed eagerly to his master's instructions. He travelled the land, far and wide, healing the sick and saving the injured. He became very famous and very rich, for he was a ninja like no other. Every time he stood by the dying, the King of Hell appeared before him, and every time the son respected the King of Hell's judgement.

    "But one day, the lord of the Ui Clan fell sick, and the call went out to any doctor who could save him. Naturally, this doctor came as well, for the Ui were the greatest and the strongest of all ninja, and to have their lord in one's debt would be a great treasure. But when he came to the sickbed, he saw the King of Hell standing at its head, gazing balefully down on the clan lord.

    "Then, the doctor thought to himself: surely, the King of Hell would overlook just one deviation. After all, he was the man's own instructor; what deeper bond could there be? He reached down and turned the sickbed around so that the King of Hell was at its foot, and then he unleashed his medical ninjutsu and cured the lord of all his ailments.

    "The doctor was lavished with rewards for his success where everyone else had failed. He was given riches and rare techniques and ancient secrets, and his name spread far and wide. He taught many apprentices. For a while, all was well.

    "Then, Lord Ui's daughter fell sick, and he called for the doctor at once. The doctor took one look at the Ui princess, the most beautiful woman in the world, seeing her luxurious pink hair and deep crimson eyes, and he fell instantly, madly in love.

    "But once again, the doctor saw the King of Hell standing at the head of the sickbed. 'Surely,' the doctor thought, 'if he overlooked it once, he'll overlook it just one more time?', not seeing how the King of Hell was baring his teeth and how his eyes blazed in fury. So he used his medical ninjutsu and he cured the princess of all her ailments.

    "When the King of Hell saw what the doctor had done, he waited no longer. He opened his mouth and swallowed the doctor all in one go. 'You have betrayed your oath to me as a man of medicine,' he said, 'and now your own life is forfeit.'

    "The doctor looked around and saw inside the King of Hell's mouth, where there was a forest of trees of every colour. He asked the King of Hell what they were. 'Every tree is a soul awaiting transmigration,' the King of Hell said. 'The white will be reborn on the Deva Path, to enjoy beauty and bliss for the lifetime of a deva. The red, on the Asura Path, to drown in violence and bloodlust for the lifetime of an asura. The black, on the Naraka Path, to be tortured for the long, long lifetime of a fallen soul. 'Please,' the doctor said, 'will you not give me the colour of the Human Path, so that I may return to my beloved princess?' 'Very well,' the King of Hell said, and turned him into a tree at once.

    "But the King of Hell lied. In his vengeful anger, he turned the doctor into a tree of the deepest black. Then, as punishment for humanity's weakness and disloyalty, he took medical ninjutsu away forever."

    Nobody said anything for a while.

    "That was certainly grim," Hazō said.

    "All the traditional stories are like that," Yuno said. "Doesn't it make sense? The world is a horrible, pointlessly cruel place, so any story with a grain of truth to it must be horrible as well. That kind of honesty is what made Akane's story of tragic love so good."

    "I see no issues with this statement," Kei agreed.

    "Me neither," Snowflake said.

    Hazō and Akane looked at each other and just shrugged.

    "I'll go next," Hazō said. "This one is a traditional children's tale of Hidden Mist. Once upon a time, there was a genin named Haiko, who was on a long-term border posting with her team leader and his assistant, both good, loyal ninja. Unfortunately, one day, this assistant died to a treacherous attack by foreign ninja, and Haiko's team leader requested reinforcements from the mainland. He received an I&S specialist and her team of three genin.

    "If that were all, there would have been no issues. Unfortunately, after the team leader also died to a treacherous attack by foreign ninja, the I&S specialist took over, and her team were awful to poor Haiko. They forced her to perform the entire group's equipment maintenance, they only gave her leftover scraps from the regular supply drops, and they left her to carry out duties like making and breaking camp all on her own while they relaxed and played games. Haiko was miserable, but unlike them, she was a true Mist genin, strong of heart and respectful of the chain of command, so she bore it all without complaint.

    "Then came the fateful day of the Chūnin Exams. The three genin went to the Exams, with the team leader to supervise them, but she did not recommend Haiko, so Haiko stayed behind. Finally on her own, with nobody to see, Haiko cried, because she was a good ninja and she had wanted so much to take the exam and become a chūnin herself.

    "Just as Haiko was ready to pick herself up and go back to checking the rations for spoilage, a miracle happened. An unfamiliar ninja appeared before her, saying, 'Be not afraid. I am no enemy, but a messenger from Hidden Heaven, here to reward you for your steadfastness. You will go to the Chūnin Exams and become a chūnin."

    "Haiko, too dazed to consider the implications of a foreign ninja appearing in the middle of her camp, naturally protested. 'But I'm not cleared to attend!'

    "The ninja just smiled, and gave her a letter of authorisation from the Mizukage's Office, made with such fine calligraphy that nobody would be able to tell it was fake.

    "'But my combat gear is worn out and I have nothing to wear!'

    "The ninja just smiled, and gave her a CHAOS Suit filled with incredible seals.

    "'But I'll never get there in time!'

    "The ninja just smiled, and gave her a pair of skywalker-equipped sandals.

    "So Haiko thanked him, and set off for the Chūnin Exams, but with one final warning ringing in her ears. 'Beware, for if the number of activations reaches twelve, the seals will burn out and you will turn back into an ordinary genin.'

    "Haiko took the Chūnin Exams by storm. With her natural talents and her new seals, she blazed through the initial rounds and easily made her way to the tournament, where she caught the eye of the Mizukage himself. But right as she reached the Finals, disaster struck! She realised she was on the verge of running out of activations!

    "So naturally, she turned off the seals and handed everything over to the Mizukage, together with all the intel she had on the mysterious ninja. In return for her great contribution to Mist's security, the Mizukage pardoned her for abandoning her post and invited her to join the secret police, to be by his side forever after. The end."

    "I noticed some slight differences from the version I am familiar with," Kei noted.

    Hazō grinned. "It's just your imagination. It's been a long time since we heard any Mist fairy tales, after all."

    "If these are the kinds of things you were listening to as a child, Kei, some things suddenly make a lot more sense," Akane said.

    "You are already on thin ice, young lady."

    "Never mind," Akane said quickly. "Kei, why don't you take your turn now?"

    Kei took a few seconds to compose herself. "My tale is not a conventional Mist story like the others. Rather, it is an educational tool, used by Ami to tutor me in the exceedingly challenging art of not interrupting others in order to offer corrections. As such, the challenge for the listener is to see who can go the longest without raising an objection to the story—although purely clarifying questions are, of course, permitted. Are you prepared?"

    "Sure."

    "Go ahead."

    "Sounds like fun."

    "Very well," Kei began. "Once upon a time, in a certain ninja village, there lived a young boy who was a jinchūriki. He lived a difficult life, as an orphan who was hated by all—"

    Hazō raised his hand. "Hold up. I mean, clarifying question. You mean he didn't have any adoptive parents?"

    "No," Kei said. "He was entirely on his own. Furthermore, the adults around him—"

    "How could you have a jinchūriki who wasn't being raised by parents, or close relatives, or guardians hand-picked by the state? I mean, who knows what could happen to him without supervision."

    "…and Hazō is out," Kei said. "This boy was safe from foreign agents because his nature as a jinchūriki was a highly-classified secret, known only to every adult in the village."

    Akane raised her hand. "Clarifying question: how many adults was that?"

    "Different tellers give very different numbers," Kei said, "but I believe it would be reasonable to say at least a thousand. Not counting all of the civilian adults, of course. However, this was not a security issue, since they had all been sworn to silence.

    "Naturally, the boy joined the Academy when he came of age, though he was an extremely poor student, so terrible at ninjutsu that by the age of twelve he did not even know what chakra was."

    "Are you saying—" Akane started, but managed to catch herself.

    "He did have one area of specialisation," Kei continued, "which was disguises. He was able to use a disguise kit to flawlessly disguise himself specifically as a sexually attractive woman, on a level far beyond his peers, and used this ability frequently."

    "Clarifying question," Akane said. "This was at the age of twelve or below?"

    "Obviously. Unfortunately, his other ninja skills were at such a low level that he was unable to pass the Academy graduation test."

    "What happens if you can't pass the Academy graduation test?" Yuno asked.

    "That never happens," Akane said. "A student failing to graduate would be an enormous loss of face for the Academy. Even if you're clanless, the instructors will heap you with extra classes if it looks like that's about to happen. Also, they're the ones who set the tests, so…"

    "Nevertheless," Kei said, "this boy failed to graduate. However, he was then approached by a treasonous Academy instructor, who informed him that he would still be able to graduate if he only infiltrated the government headquarters and successfully stole a scroll of forbidden techniques."

    "Oh, come on!" Yuno exclaimed. "Not even a twelve-year-old would be that stupid."

    "Um," Akane said.

    "Am I right, Akane?"

    "Actually," Akane said awkwardly, "Kei was drawing on something I'd told her about my past. But I swear that when Mizuki-sensei said it, it sounded like it made perfect sense!"

    "Oh," Yuno said. "Well, I guess it could happen if you're really nai- I mean gulli- I mean inclined to see the best in people."

    Akane sighed.

    "Yuno, you are out. Regardless," Kei went on, "this boy succeeded in his theft. Then, unaware that he was being hunted, he sat down and learned an A-rank forbidden technique from the scroll over the next couple of hours, which he then used to defeat aforementioned treasonous instructor in equal combat."

    "The boy who didn't know what chakra was," Akane clarified.

    "That counts as an expression of scepticism," Kei said, "and so you are out. Since Snowflake is unable to compete by virtue of already knowing the story, that means you are the winner. If it is any consolation, it only gets worse from there."

    -o-​

    Part 2 coming as the Sunday update.

    Voting is closed.

    Edit: Many thanks to @RandomOTP for their list of Kei gift ideas.
     
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    • (AU) Interlude: From Kinder Dice, Part 2
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    • Interlude: From Kinder Dice, Part 2​

    February 17, 1070 AS

    "What did he say?!" Hazō demanded the very instant that Jiraiya popped back into existence after visiting the Seventh Path.

    Jiraiya jumped a bit at the excited cry and then laughed in amusement at himself.

    "Jeez, kid, let your old man catch his breath before you start throwing demands around, eh?" He stretched languorously and then poured himself a cup of tea from the waiting pot. He sampled it, allowing his eyes to drift closed in pleasure.

    "Stop being cruel, Father," Kei said. "Hazō is likely to explode if you drag this out yet longer."

    Jiraiya snickered. "Honestly, I'd like to see that. Still, okay, since my shy and adorable daughter asks, I, her doting father, shall grant her request." He turned to Hazō. "Yes, Gamabunta agreed to siege Rock for us. In exchange we owe him an absolutely ruinous amount of stuff, starting with a literal ton of pipe weed, another of wakeleaf, and the list gets weirder from there. I told him he was being unreasonable, he said that if he was going to have a headache from repeated summonings then he deserved it, I said that maybe he should just not die and then I wouldn't have to summon him multiple times but that it was good he was finally acquiring some humility, and then he said—"

    "Not the sieging!" Hazō said. "The chakra farm! Did he agree to let us set up the chakra farm? And what about Noburi? And—"

    "Okay, okay," Jiraiya said, patting the air in signal for Hazō to calm down. "I'll save you some head-exploding countdown: he agreed to all of it. He's going to siege Rock for us, he's going to let us set up the chakra farm, and he's instructed Ma and Pa to assess Noburi for Sage Mode, help him prepare, and then train him once he's ready."

    "Yes!" Hazō said, pumping his fist in the air and then turning to high-five his brother. "Noburi, you are going to be unstoppable."

    "'Going' to be? Dude, I already own that one." Noburi gripped his lapels and rocked back and forth with an insouciant smile.

    "Hold your horses there, bucko," Jiraiya said. "Remember that the first part of this was assess. We need to figure out how your bloodline will interact with nature chakra. You've got minimal internal reserves; is that going to cause you to have unbalanced totals between nature chakra and regular chakra? Plus, you'll need to train up those muscles a lot." He took his son's arm and flopped it around in exaggerated disapproval, then let go and shook his head sadly. "Do you even lift, kid?"

    "Jeez!" Noburi said, offended. "Cut me some slack, old man. I'm benching my body weight plus twenty pounds without using chakra."

    "Only your body weight plus twenty? At the ripe old age of fifteen?" Jiraiya shook his head sadly. "Ah, the dissipation of the younger generation. No motivation. Why, back in my day—"

    It was at this point that Noburi and Hazō leaped at their adoptive father, fingers wiggling frenetically in the unique seals of the dreaded Tickle Attack Technique. A maniacally giggling Jiraiya twisted away and led them on a merry chase through the expansive halls of the Gōketsu estate house.

    o-o-o-o​

    June 3, 1070 AS

    "Kei, I'm sorry," Jiraiya said, shame-faced. He looked down at his hands for a moment, then visibly forced himself to look up at his adopted daughter. The rest of the family watched in a mixture of horror at how Kei might react to having her contracted and much-anticipated gift incomplete, and amusement at how satisfying it would be to see the normally unflappable and braggadocious Jiraiya taken down a peg. "I know it's your birthday, and it's an important one because you're turning sixteen, and I didn't forget, but—"

    Kei raised an imperious hand. "I am not upset, Father. I recognize that the Earth Country ninja who survived the destruction of Rock have been waging asymmetric warfare against us for months and therefore the Inuzuka have been required to track them down. It is unsurprising that they have yet to find time to complete the capture of a chakra pony."

    Mari's carefully sculpted eyebrows shot up. She was curled into one of the armchairs that had been distributed around the living room's circular hearth, her bare feet tucked up under her knees. She was wearing a festival dress in honor of the occasion; soft fabric, dyed a uniform and therefore expensive yellow, with red-orange flames silkscreened on so that they appeared to wrap around her body starting at the hip and spiraling upwards.

    "That's very mature of you, Kei," she said. "Good for you."

    "...Thank you," Jiraiya said. Her ready acceptance didn't seem to have made more than a small dent in his guilt. "Still—"

    "There is in fact one thing I wish from you for today," Kei said. "Delivery of said thing will constitute an adequate birthday gift and wipe clean your failure to complete our equine-related contract."

    "And this one thing is?" Jiraiya asked, looking more nervous than a genin walking into a suspected ambush.

    "Private. Come with me, please. Everyone else, I would be grateful if you would remain here for now and also promise not to investigate the nature of my request to our Clan Lord." She rose and walked out of the room, not waiting for the pledges and not looking to be sure that Jiraiya was trailing along behind her. (He was.)

    She led him upstairs, down the hall, and into her room. Jiraiya stopped in the doorway, looking more nervous than he had in the living room. She ignored him and pushed the window open.

    "It's very tidy in here," Jiraiya said, clearly flailing for a topic.

    "Thank you. Come inside, please. Leave the door open and stand there." She pointed at a spot two long steps off the imaginary line that connected door to window. There was an 'X' chalked on the floor at the indicated spot.

    "Is this going to involve getting stabbed?" Jiraiya asked plaintively. "Because I don't like getting stabbed." Despite his protestations, he took a step into the room, his eyes scanning around quickly to look for traps. He even got down on his knees and looked under the bed.

    "There will be no weapons of any kind involved," Kei said. "Please take your mark and place your left hand behind your back."

    Jiraiya took his mark but he was looking more and more skittish by the moment. His feet automatically shifted into a modified migi hanmi—left foot forward, body calm, weight slightly back. It was a defensive combat stance, suitable for rapid front kicks to ward off an attacker, or evasive maneuvers.

    "Stand square, please," Kei said. "Left hand behind you."

    Reluctantly, Jiraiya followed directions.

    "Thank you. This will be easier if you do not move more than necessary and make only very minimal contact. Acceptable targets are the back of the torso and the back or top of the head."

    "Uh..."

    "Quiet, please."

    Kei took a deep, shuddering breath, and then another. Her hairline was speckled with sweat and her heart was pounding so fast that her carotid artery visibly thrummed like a tuning fork.

    Jiraiya stayed still and quiet, eyeing his daughter distrustfully.

    Kei took a third breath and held it. She stepped towards him, her every muscle tense as iron. She let the breath out, drew another, and stepped yet closer until she was only inches from being chest-to-chest with her adoptive father. Jiraiya couldn't help but lean away slightly, although he straightened again when she gave him a raised eyebrow.

    She took another shuddering breath and spread her arms. She leaned in close and very carefully wrapped them around Jiraiya, touching him with pressure so slight it would not have toppled a straw balanced on end. Jiraiya stiffened at the touch and then forced himself to be still.

    Kei's whole body was shuddering like a person in the grip of hypothermia but she did not break. At Hazō's instruction, she, Snowflake, and their other sisters had been practicing meditation and self-discipline training for months and that training was paying off. Her arms tightened and she leaned closer until her cheek was touching Jiraiya's chest and her arms were in solid contact all the way around.

    Astonished, he used his right hand to stroke her hair very, very lightly.

    She endured the touch for just over a second before leaping back as though she'd been scalded.

    "Thankyouandpleaseexcuseme!" she called over her shoulder as she dove out the window.




    Voting remains closed unless @Velorien opens it.
     
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    • Chapter 533, Part 2: Sins of the Father
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    • Hazō stirred reluctantly awake to find Kei and Snowflake standing at the foot of his bedroll, studying his body in a contemplative fashion that did not bode well at all.

    "Good morning," he greeted them, stretching his arms casually behind his head with a yawn (only to quickly retract them as his hands bumped into the shelter wall).

    The two girls looked at each other for a second, then nodded.

    "Good morning, Hazō," Kei said. "You may be reassured to know that we have just decided that, while your candidacy as our test subject has been confirmed, we will not run the experiment out here in hostile terrain, instead waiting until we are back in Leaf with its superior emergency medical services."

    "That's very reassuring," Hazō agreed, slowly picking himself up off the bedroll. "What's the experiment?"

    "We would not dream of contaminating the results by giving you advance warning," Kei said. "Although… would you like to play a game, Hazō?"

    "Go on."

    "Guess which one of us is which," Kei said. "If you win, we will give you the details of the experiment in addition to taking over your next two turns of Yuno duty. If you lose, you will take over both of our next two turns of Yuno duty."

    The terms weren't exactly balanced. Yuno duty involved spending the day sticking close to Yuno and repeatedly reassuring her that she was not going to come back to Leaf to find that Noburi had fallen out of love with her and/or been seduced by another girl, both possibilities which were growing steadily greater in Yuno's mind with every day the team spent on the eastern continent, and driving her to distraction. On the other hand, he had a bad feeling about any experiment involving Kei, Snowflake, and emergency medical services, and fifty-fifty odds weren't that bad.

    So was it Snowflake with the looping pink ribbon, or was it Kei trying to misdirect him? The ribbon looked like it would take time to put on and take off, which Kei would be reluctant to bother with. On the other hand, both girls were the type to double-bluff instead of going for a single-layer deception. Also, Kei had spoken first when he woke up, and she took the lead more often than Snowflake when both were involved in a conversation (which was curious since Snowflake should be the one with more initiative).

    The possibility of a triple or quadruple bluff could not be ruled out, especially since Kei and Snowflake might have had time to plan this, but that way lay only madness, and he was still only half-awake.

    "You're Kei," he decided. "That's Snowflake."

    Both girls shook their heads. "Incorrect. In fact, we are both Snowflake, with no additional traits assigned due to expected brevity of existence."

    "I don't believe you," Hazō said. "Kei wouldn't spend an extra clone's worth of chakra for a prank in mid-mission."

    "She would if she had already bribed Noburi to prepare a refill with which to reset the day, as it were."

    "Nope," Hazō said. "I already bribed Noburi to tip me off to any arrangement like that in advance, and he hasn't said a word."

    "Indeed," Snowflake(?) agreed. "Fortunately, Kei also bribed Noburi to refrain from doing so."

    "Oh, come on," Hazō objected. "What could you possibly have to offer him that his all-knowing and all-powerful clan head couldn't match?"

    "Simple," Snowflake(?) said. "We have cracked the code on your personal storage scroll labels, and had been doling out parts of the solution as bribery material for weeks before we left Leaf. As soon as Noburi completes the collection, from us or through the exercise of his own intellect, he will be able to resume pranking you by interfering with their contents—a pastime you cruelly denied him when you began writing your labels in elaborate cypher and including traps."

    Hazō suddenly realised why, not long ago, Kei and Snowflake had requested storage scrolls containing a zester, a zither, and a pair of zori. At the time, busy with other things, he'd just put it down to "Nara social experiment" and decided to think no more of it, as Leaf citizens typically did under such circumstances.

    Come to think of it, it was very similar to Ami's MO: once people got used to the idea that you just went around doing weird stuff for no good reason, you could go around doing weird stuff for very good reasons indeed, and nobody would think to call you out on it.

    This could not possibly be a good sign.

    -o-​

    Today was another drizzly, cloudy day, the kind where it was obviously not going to rain unless you gave in to the hot and humid weather and stowed away your raincloak in favour of lighter gear. Increasingly, Hazō was contemplating some carefully-phrased blasphemy in order to offend the kami of the heavens and bring about a cleansing thunderstorm, but for the fact that he suspected they were already on thin ice with the spirit world after the koi incident. The kami were not fond of those who used ninja know-how to impersonate them (or their miracles), the famous example being how Lightning ninjutsu users had a much higher rate of being struck by lightning than those of other elements.

    Yesterday, the team had had a major stroke of luck: following a river, they'd found their first civilian village. While, after discussion, they'd decided not to attempt to infiltrate—they could hardly pass for natives, and any foreign travellers out here in the middle of nowhere would inevitably be reported to the next ninja passing through—Kei and Snowflake had been able to make all kinds of useful inferences about the surrounding terrain and possible ninja patrol routes, and there was every chance that if they kept going, the river could turn out to lead to the lake. That was their objective today.

    There are ninja passing through the area. Do they notice tracks left by the party?
    The team is moving very slowly, prioritising avoiding other ninja. They take 3 steps down on the time ladder for a +3xAB CM modifier.
    Hazō: Stealth 15 + 6 + 3 = 24
    Kei: Stealth 18 + 6 + 6 = 30
    Snowflake: Stealth 18 + 6 + 3 = 27
    Akane: Stealth 15 + 6 + 6 = 27
    Yuno: Stealth ?? + ?? + ? = ??

    Lowest Stealth is Hazō (24).

    Local ninja leader: Alertness ?? + ? = ??
    The leader beats Hazō's roll, and no further rolls are necessary. He notices the tracks and the ninja begin pursuit. They are prioritising speed over stealth, so Team Gōketsu does not have to make Alertness rolls to notice them.

    Athletics rolls all round as Team Gōketsu attempts to shake off the pursuit.
    Hazō: Athletics 40 - 3 = 37
    Kei: Athletics 50 + 9 = 59
    Snowflake: Athletics 50 + 0 = 50
    Akane: Athletics 48 + 6 = 54
    Yuno: Athletics ?? + ? = ??

    Local ninja leader: ?? + ? = ??
    Second-in-command: ?? + ? = ??
    Younger ninja 1: ?? + ? = ??
    Younger ninja 2: ?? + ? = ??
    Younger ninja 3: ?? + ? = ??

    The pursuers easily catch up with Hazō and he calls for the rest of the team to stop.

    "Wait!" Yuno suddenly held up a hand as the group emerged from the treeline, preparing to crest the small hill overlooking the riverside village. "Do you hear that?"

    Hazō strained his ears. There was something moving to the west, some way away but incoming fast. It wasn't a chakra beast. Any predator formidable enough to go after a group their size wouldn't start making noise until it was much closer. Somebody wanted to catch up to them, and they were making speed their top priority.

    "Enemy patrol," Hazō hissed. "Let's head east and try to lose them in the forest we were exploring yesterday."

    "Quadrants 3B to 3C," Kei advised as they began to run.

    Hazō nodded. They hadn't seen any signs of enemy patrols in that area, which avoided the worst-case scenario of fleeing from one patrol, only to crash headfirst into another. Hazō doubted that Asuma would be impressed with a reprise of the Team Uplift wildfire incident.

    Yuno took point, her eyes taking on a glint of pure steely focus as she plotted the smoothest route over rough ground while simultaneously scanning the area for chakra beasts that might react badly to sudden intruders into their territory. Bringing her along had been a brilliant idea, even considering the demands of Yuno duty. Kei was close behind, offering an occasional "No, that way", supplementing Yuno's instinctual sense of the terrain with flawless recall of the maps she'd had primary responsibility for drawing up.

    Akane and Snowflake were in the middle of the group, moving at a respectable pace. The stupid thought flashed through Hazō's mind that he hoped Akane wasn't pushing herself. She'd learned her lesson. He was sure of it. Almost sure. Even if she wasn't, Snowflake remembered what happened last time, if only secondhand. She'd notice if anything was wrong.

    They ran and they ran and they ran. Trees blurred past, occasionally too close for comfort. Periodically, flocks of startled birds fled the area as they passed, and Hazō hoped no other ninja out there were watching. Either no chakra beast dared get in their way, or Yuno spotted them in advance and steered the group away. The enemy—no, it was too soon to think of them as the enemy—the other group wasn't letting up. Of course, they'd know the terrain, both in the specifics of the landscape and in the general sense of knowing how to navigate this natural environment. Still, no small-continent hicks were going to beat the team that had braved elements and battled monsters everywhere from Snow to O'Uzu when it came to adaptability.

    In theory. In practice, Hazō was starting to flag. Had he not got enough sleep? Was it the stone in his sandal which he'd taken too long to stop and remove? Or were the others just setting too fast a pace?

    As if any pace could be too fast when it came to outrunning a patrol. No, Hazō just had to push himself a little harder. He hadn't summoned Canvass yet today, so he had plenty of chakra to spare—

    "Stop or die!"

    They were right there. Right behind him. One had a machete in his hands. And while they were speeding up, Hazō was slowing down. From here, it would only take one swing.

    "Code Olive!" And then, for the pursuers' benefit, "Stop and talk!"

    -o-​

    There were five of them. The machete-wielder, a grizzled older man, put Hazō in mind of Shikigami-sensei, only with fewer scars and with so many equipment pouches hanging off various belts that they might collectively stop a ninja-strength punch. The woman standing next to him was tall, thin, and had a narrow face, together with short, prematurely grey hair that seemed like the silvery glint on the end of a sharp stiletto.

    The other three were distinctly younger. A short, stout boy with a face that seemed made for easy smiles made Hazō think of Noburi. A gangly girl's hands hovered, ready, over thigh holsters on both sides, her eyes scanning back and forth. Another boy stood slightly in front of her, protectively, gripping a hunting spear with bright feathers dangling from a strap. He had a bandage over his forehead, clearly a field dressing, but clean with no blood.

    "Identify yourselves," barked the machete-wielder.

    "We're representatives of a certain clan that's interested in new trade opportunities," Hazō said. "We were scouting out the area for business purposes. We're not looking for any trouble, and in fact, would be happy to offer samples of our products as a gesture of apology for coming here without your people's permission."

    "Scouting the area for business purposes," the machete-wielder repeated sceptically, looking back and forth between them. "You expect me to buy that?"

    "We're entering a new era of international trade," Hazō said. As long as he could keep the other party talking, the Gōketsu had the advantage. They were in fact interested in trade opportunities, as a very secondary goal, and with the numbers equal and good odds that some or all of the younger ninja were genin, the other party had incentive to want a beneficial exchange rather than pointless bloodshed. That would soak in as the two groups watched each other and the adrenaline of the chase wore off, and in the meantime Hazō was confident in his ability to pile on the charm.

    "Have you heard about the recent developments out west?" he asked.

    "Another so-called world war," the ninja grunted. "The west's still drowning in its own blood, the ink's fresh on the treaties, and you're telling me somebody decided to send a strike force like yours to the other end of the world to open up trade? You want to tell me a better story? Last chance before I decide you're trying to bullshit me and I'll need to get my answers another way."

    "We've made a new kind of peace," Hazō said. "The kind where it makes sense to send ninja out to make new bonds instead of staying home and licking our wounds, or staying on guard for Round Two. All of the Kage, as well as representatives of other villages, got together at a new Chūnin Exam and signed a new kind of mutual protection treaty. Nobody makes war on anyone, as enforced by everyone else, and that means an explosion in trade opportunities—with former foes, but also with anyone else who's willing to take advantage. Our village has profited tremendously from trade even in these short months, which is why our leader's given us permission to go out and steal a march on our competitors who don't realise that the east is full of profitable opportunities and valuable trading partners. Really, we should have approached you before doing anything else, and, again, I apologise for any disrespect, but it just goes against the grain to approach a potential new partner without having the perfect offer ready up front."

    The two senior-looking ninja exchanged glances. They smiled. Then, just as Hazō was getting his hopes up, they burst into laughter. A couple of seconds later, the other three followed.

    "All the Kage and all the villages have agreed that nobody makes war on anyone," the woman said, the smile dropping abruptly off her face as if it had never been. "Look at the stupid backwater ninja, they'll believe anything anybody from the civilised West tells them.

    "Listen up, 'merchants'. You've got two choices…"

    Suddenly, Hazō's missing-nin survival instinct seized his attention and forced it sideways, onto the younger girl. She was whispering something urgently to the machete man, and his eyes were growing wide.

    "Shit, you're right," he said in the voice of a man seeing the shadow of a falling star cover his house. "Two summoning scrolls. Leaf's here to finish the job."

    The woman glanced at the stout boy. His hands immediately came together.

    "Fire Element: Heavens-Licking Pyre Technique!"

    His left hand rose in a curving movement, as if picking something up from the empty air, and a tongue of flame exploded out of the earth at his feet, lashing out to pierce the sky far above.

    In a time-slowing moment of inevitability, Hazō watched the two leaders' eyes glide past Akane, hesitate over Kei and Snowflake, and stop on the summoner who didn't have fifty-fifty odds of being a clone.

    -o-​

    You have received 12 + 3 (Brevity) = 15 XP.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes on
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 534: Blood and Ash
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    • "Fire Element: Heavens-Licking Pyre Technique!"

    Plans flicked through Hazō's mind faster than lightning, ideas created and discarded in an instant. Hazō brought his hands together and clapped them to the floor.

    "Earth Release: Multiple Earth Wall!"

    A granite wall rose from the ground in front of him, cutting off enemy lines of approach. Hazō backed up, calling out to his team. "Reverse formation!" Yuno and Akane, take point and Substitute him to the back of the group so he can summon Cantelope. "Whirlpool Black!" Fight with fully lethal techniques; let no one escape. "Snake Killer!" Focus fire on the leader, then by order of decreasing strength. "MARS!"

    The Multiple Activation Relay Seal activated two nearby, previously-chosen seals. Those two seals could themselves be MARS, which would then activate four seals with a nearly imperceptible delay. And of course, those four seals could be MARS. With this one seal, Hazō could activate his entire team's combat arsenal in an instant, filling the air with Flashbangs and Banshee wails while flooding the enemy with macerated glass, Goo Bombs, and worse. Just a tap, and his team would have all the might of Hazō and Kagome's best work on their side.

    Hazō reached for the root MARS seal in the pocket on his chest as a shadow fell over him. He looked up. The machete-wielding man had flipped over the wall and tapped it with his hand, using chakra adhesion to whip a devastating axe kick down at Hazō's head. Hazō blocked and the kick impacted his forearm with the force of a sledgehammer. Hazō grunted and reached for the MARS with his other hand, only to have to spin and whip his hand away as the machete lashed down for his wrist.

    Hazō could barely track the older ninja's speed. He spun the machete around into a rising strike to split Hazō open from groin to throat; raw instinct let Hazō flip backwards out of the way of the slash, only for the man to tear a chunk off the granite wall with chakra adhesion and hurl it at Hazō's head. It hit him in the underside of the chin mid-flip and the world went white for an instant.

    He came to as the man flickered next to him and drove an elbow into his gut, slamming Hazō to the floor. Hazō's diaphragm seized, refusing to let him breathe, and he forced the Iron Nerve to twitch his head out of the way as the machete slammed into the ground by his head. He rolled on the ground, trying to open up the distance as he forced his lungs to breathe.

    The man dashed over to him, ducking as a pair of shuriken passed through the space where he used to be. He swung the machete down at Hazō's gut and Hazō raised his forearm to block, angling it at the last second so the blade glanced off the bone in a spray of blood, rather than carving off his hand. Akane was still too far away, Kei and Snowflake were reaching for their next round of weapons, and the senior ninja outclassed Hazō in close quarters more than even Mari.

    The man stomped at Hazō's head. Hazō got his good hand up in time to stop his skull from being caved in, but the stomp pinned his hand to the side of his head and to the ground. The man raised his machete to slash through Hazō's neck. Hazō reached his injured arm to the pinned hand, forming the handseals for Hiding like a Mole, but he could tell he wouldn't finish the ninjutsu in time.

    The world went quiet.

    The machete fell.

    Through a sudden flash of light, Hazō barely saw the machete-wielder disappear in a pink flash. Hazō flipped to his feet in dead silence. Yuno and the machete-wielder were more streaks of color than people, one pink and one grey. They danced through the forest, and where they met, sparks flew and trees fell.

    Hazō backed away as his diaphragm started again and he sharply inhaled. He could see a counter-flare in the distance, and the enemy genin were fleeing in that direction. He barely caught Snowflake desperately pointing behind him, mouthing something before she turned to run. He ducked low, preparing to sprint as he saw the grey-haired woman grimacing and flickering through handseals.

    She mouthed a technique name, then cut short as Yuno's axe cut through the upper part of her head – no, she had Substituted away. The machete-wielder, freed from Yuno's pursuit, suddenly appeared by Hazō's side and Hazō reached for his seals again, only to be yanked away by Akane's Substitution. She traded blows with the machete-wielder and danced around his blade with a fiercer expression than he had ever seen her make.

    Snowflake drew her kunai and Hazō dabbed at the blood streaming from his forearm for the Summoning technique, then whipped his head around as he noticed the grey-haired woman flanking them. She glanced out from behind a tree as she finished a long chain of handseals and mouthed another silent technique through grit teeth.

    In an instant, flames welled up in a wall around them, then suddenly twisted into streamers that joined above their heads into a single growing mass that hung in the air like a snake about to strike. Hazō saw Kei Substituting away behind a thick tree. The mass of flame started to accelerate downwards. He brought his hands together again.

    "Earth Release: Multiple Earth Wall!"

    He couldn't hear his own words, but the wall rose at an angle to shelter him from the flames overhead. A moment later, Akane and Snowflake joined him under the shelter as fire rained down around them with the force of a monsoon. The world outside was washed in crimson light, and the forest burned.

    Hazō remembered something from long, long ago: when jōnin fight, the very land suffers, and lesser ninja, too slow to find cover, die.

    He and Akane moved to let Snowflake into the center of the shelter, where the flames licking at their feet would be least likely to pop her. Snowflake had a look of sheer desperation on her face as she mouthed, "What do we do?"

    Hazō could barely keep up with the speed of the battle around him. "I'll Summon," he said, exaggerating his words as much as he could. "Support Yuno," he said to Akane, then turned to Snowflake. "Find Kei and-"

    All three ninja looked up as the roof of their shelter started to glow. Akane and Snowflake whipped their heads around and disappeared in two pops, replaced by a boulder and a burning log, but Hazō couldn't see anything to replace himself with in the hellscape beyond. The Earth Wall shattered and Hazō dived away from the wave of molten rock, into the firestorm outside.

    He screamed as he burned, and the fire responded back with a roar as it forced its way down his mouth and into his lungs. The intensity of the heat leached the water from his eyes, forcing him to squeeze them shut, and he could feel his skin cracking and peeling all over his body.

    He collapsed as the roar grew quiet, then forced himself to his hands and knees. Dust – no, the ash of his burnt skin and clothes streamed off of him. He could hear the awful wailing of the Banshee seals as Akane fought the machete-wielder. Her uniform was smoking but she had somehow evaded any burns, while the senior ninja was mysteriously untouched. He outclassed her in reach, weight, and raw skill, and Hazō watched as he steadily pushed Akane back towards the lingering wall of crimson flames that trapped them all in a narrow circle with the grizzled, gray-haired man.

    Akane broke out of the melee, jumping back so close to the wall that loose strands of her hair started to smoke. She tapped a seal on her chest to release a flash of light, then brought her hands together and screamed "Pantokrator's Hammer!" The man lunged forward through the flash, slashing at her throat in her moment of vulnerability as she cast the technique.

    The machete made contact. Drops of Akane's blood flew through the air. She moved faster than he could react, and the machete barely sliced along her neck and swung through empty air as she stepped inside his guard. He raised a knee to kick her away and through the wall. She planted her knuckles against his chest.

    CRACK!

    Akane's blast rings blew a conical hole through the man, and gore flew through the air. She stepped away from the flame wall that the man had nearly forced her through. Her eyes flicked to Hazō as she raised a palm to the narrow scratch on her neck.

    "Dad!"

    Through the wall of flame, Hazō saw one of the genin, the girl, turn from running to reach out a hand to her father's collapsing corpse. Kei threw a kunai towards the group of genin, but she chose the wrong target, and the kunai thudded firmly into a log as the young boy Substituted away. Snowflake had already thrown her kunai at his predicted landing spot, but a second Substitution caught her attack.

    Two of the genin had escaped, no longer visible through the wall of flame, but the last was drawing a pair of shuriken to aim at Akane's back. Akane ran towards Hazō, eyes searching the side of the flame wall where the gray-haired woman had been. He reached out a hand to warn her, but he choked on the ash still thick in the air. The fire had burned his voice away, and he pulled his hand back to cover his ears against the approaching wail of the Banshee.

    The genin threw her weapons. Akane saw Kei's gesture and turned just in time to catch one spinning shuriken straight in her side, instead of through the back of her spine. Blood sprayed everywhere as the spinning weapon tore through her side below her ribs, and a second shuriken caught her in the back of the hamstring.

    Akane collapsed to one knee, clutching her side. The wall of flame started to subside as the genin drew another shuriken to strike down the woman that had killed her father. With Akane's injury, this one would be lethal.

    Hazō heard Kei and Snowflake rushing forward, but he could already tell they'd be too slow to take the attack themselves. They would need to strike first and kill the genin before she could kill Akane.

    Kei and Snowflake grabbed kunai in identical motions as the genin drew her hand back to throw.

    The genin's eye flicked off of her target to the side. She fell in half, cleaved from shoulder to opposite hip, and Satsuko sent her blood in a fountain into the air.

    Yuno looked at them with a beaming, blood-splattered smile on her face. She gestured to one side, mimed running her hands through shoulder-length hair, then dropped low to the ground and became a pink streak of movement once more.

    Kei and Snowflake shared a glance. Kei drew a seal and threw it at Akane, who grabbed it and nodded. She started slotting the Skywalkers into her sandals. Snowflake looked at Hazō and mouthed "Go" under the Banshee's screech. Hazō understood clearly. Get out of here, and let them track down the survivors.

    Hazō's fingers were covered in burns and he grit his teeth to force the Iron Nerve to make the motions of the Hiding Like a Mole Technique. He formed the chakra, then dipped below the blessedly dark, blessedly cool earth, holding his breath against the pain of dirt and rocks and twigs digging into every part of his burned skin.

    -o-​

    Hazō emerged from the ground a short distance away. The roar of flames and the wail of the Banshee seals had long since grown quiet, and Hazō could almost make out the sound of wind in the leaves through the ringing in his ears. Through the scent of smoke and ash, he could just barely smell his own cooked skin.

    Their fighting had annihilated the nearby patch of forest. In a massive circle, the trees had burned almost to their roots by the intensity of the fire. The flames had licked outwards and charred the area around that circle, even starting some small, smoldering fires in the scattered trees that Yuno's dance with the machete-wielder had felled. Luckily, the area was wet enough with the recent rains that the fire didn't want to spread.

    He looked down at his skin, which was blackened and dirt-stained where it wasn't bleeding red in torn patches.

    "Hazō!"

    He looked up to see Akane stepping down from above the treeline. She had taken her shirt off, leaving just a simple bandage wrap on her torso, and torn strips of cloth from it to bind the wounds on her side and leg. She moved gingerly.

    "Are you stable?" she asked as she came down to eye level.

    "I—" The sound was smokey and hoarse and he cut off in a fit of coughing. "I- I'm okay." It hurt to talk, but he managed. It was just pain. He noted that the bandage around Akane's leg seemed to be working, but the blood staining the one around her side continued to spread.

    "I think," he coughed, "my clothes and seals had the worst of it. It's worst on my hands and face, but," he pulled his sleeve back, ignoring the screaming, burning pain to reveal skin that was merely scalded red, not blackened or bloody, "I'm mostly fine."

    Akane nodded and activated a seal she had already prepared. A tub of ice-water sloshed to the ground.

    Hazō nodded and gratefully plunged his arms into the water up to the shoulders. The sudden cold burn helped him focus, and he dunked his face in too. "Thanks," he said when he arose. "We need to decide what to do."

    In the distance, a Banshee activated. Hazō and Akane both turned their heads, but it was too far to see anything. Akane sealed up the tub and they waited, but after a moment, the Banshee went silent again.

    "Hazō," Akane said patiently, "I'm bleeding a lot from my side. I think she got my kidney. I'm not going to be able to run—"

    "You're alive!"

    Hazō and Akane turned to see Snowflake skywalking in with one of the genin hanging below her, ninja wire wrapping his ankles. She descended and her quarry hit the ground first. Hazō and Akane tensed as he twitched, but he did not move further. Looking closer, he was covered in dozens of precise cuts around various key ligaments. He was clearly conscious, but too terrified to do much more than stare at them wildly.

    "I feared—" She cut herself off. "No. We are fortunate enough to have not only all survived a battle with a pair of special jōnin in both close quarters and a disadvantageous formation, but to have done so while disabling every enemy. I need not test the Fates by speaking aloud the various failure modes they seem to have overlooked."

    Snowflake came down to eye level with Hazō (so, half a foot above the ground), and he raised an eyebrow.

    "Akane killed the man and Yuno got one of the genin. You got one more. How do you know the others didn't get away?"

    "Hazō," Kei's voice called down from above, "I will be the first to admit that my combat abilities are naught but feeble in a world with Orochimarus and Hidans, but if you think nonlethally incapacitating a single genin on the verge of chakra exhaustion is beyond my capabilities, I am afraid I will have to enroll you in remedial education on the subject of my abilities in thrown weapons."

    She lowered her captive, likewise tied up and rendered immobile. He was the stout boy from earlier, the one who had sent up the flare.

    Akane smiled at the two of them, but she held one hand tight to her side to slow the blood flow. "Kei. Snowflake. I'm glad you made it."

    Hazō nodded and turned to point in the direction that they had seen the counter-flare. "If that was the nearest patrol, they're still quite a ways away. I'd guess we have maybe twenty minutes before they're on us. Akane and I really shouldn't be moving in our current conditions."

    The two sisters nodded. They shared a glance, then Snowflake spoke. "We will seal the bodies of the enemies on the battlefield and use explosives to erase traces of our techniques, but we will not be able to conceal the site of the battle."

    "Kei, could you use a Pangolin-"

    "No, I do not have the chakra to summon the larger ones we would need to tear up the ground sufficiently. Beyond that, assuming that those ninja were of a single clan, they would almost certainly recognize the burned-out hemisphere as a signature of their jōnin's Fire ninjutsu, and given the relative humidity and constant rain, we are unlikely to be able to initiate a fire that will adequately conceal that distinctive shape."

    "Furthermore," Snowflake said as Kei started towards the battlefield to seal the corpses, "there is the possibility that the signal had a specific meaning attached to it, such as that this was an ninja attack, or even that we are dangerous. I expect that even a modestly acceptable cover-up will still lead to substantial investigation, especially as we likely just killed two of the more senior members of their clan."

    "We don't know yet if they're dead, but—"

    The corpse of the grey-haired woman slammed into the ground behind Hazō. She was barely recognizable, with a slash across her guts spilling gore everywhere and the upper right corner of her head shorn straight off.

    Yuno dropped, flickering her skywalkers to control her speed. Her clothes were soaked through with blood and the pink of her hair was only visible on her offhand side. She had a giddy, almost blissful expression on her face. "Well, that was fun. Satsuko and I haven't had someone like that since the jōnin from Cloud." She sobered slightly as she took stock of Akane and Hazō. "You two clearly need some help. What are we doing now?"

    -o-​

    Character autopilots reject having Pangolin peppers on everyone's MARS chains, since there's too much collateral damage risk in real scenarios.

    Charging an FP from Kei/Snowflake to have a clever MARS idea: Directional Explosive wrapped around the ring of the kunai pointing to the tip, with a stupid-box containing storage seal on the hilt. Use MARS to finagle the delays, then trigger it on a hit. Stupid box pops out, directional explosive blows it into the opponent while the kunai is stuck in their leg. Mechanically, this is Weapons:4 but single target. No friendly fire risk. I anticipate this will be useful. [A/N: Now that combat is over, it was not useful. Oh well.]

    Round 1
    Initiative
    Kishigami Seisen +? boost ??? CP, ? FP
    Yuno +? boost ??? CP, ? FP
    Kasai Senpū +? boost ??? CP, ? FP
    Akane +6 boost 290 CP, 6 FP
    Kei +6 boost 120 CP, 6 FP
    Snowflake +6 boost 34 CP, 6 FP
    Kishigami Kohoshi +? boost ??? CP, ? FP
    Hazō +5 boost 245 CP, 6 FP
    Kasai Tomotsune +? boost ??? CP, ? FP
    Kasai Hirotora +? boost ??? CP, ? FP

    Kishigami Seisen
    He sees the counterflare: nearest patrol is far. No reinforcements coming. If he does not stop these Leaf ninja, they will kill him and all the genin. He cannot afford to stall: if summoners summon, they will bring multiple jōnin in and kill all of them. Beyond that, as Westerners, they likely have better ninjutsu than he does – buffing up probably puts him at a disadvantage in future rounds. He'll attack immediately and with overwhelming force, if he can.

    Free: Order the genin to run.
    Supplemental: Prepare Relentless Onslaught
    Supplemental: Move into the Zone with the enemies
    Standard: Attack Hazō, the only Summoner who is not ambiguously a clone. As always, save a Fate Point for the worst.

    Kishigami Seisen (Melee Weapons): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (invoke ????) + ? (invoke ????) + ? (dice) = ??

    I'll be generous and let Hazō use MEW reflexively to get a tag. Against a peer opponent, this wouldn't give him an advantage worthy of a tag, but in this case, it's about slowing an offensive rush that he has no chance of resisting otherwise (if he rolled at base + boost, he'd take ?? stress and die instantly). This costs 23 CP, leaving him at 222 CP.

    Does he get Roki?

    Hazō (Deceit): 24 + 3 (Roki) + 3 (dice) = 30
    Kishigami Seisen (Deceit): ?? + ? (dice) = ??

    He does. Can macerators be used defensively? As this opens a can-of-worms (why can't Hazō put MARS on his hands and use that defensively?) I'll rule no. Macerators and blast rings cannot be used outside of your turn.

    Time to search Hazō's character sheet for applicable Aspects. "(Formerly) Marked for Death" and "Team Uplift" for sure. "Lists and Plans", as staying out of the way of this guy is in the plan for the chapter. "Lord of Clan Gouketsu" is a bit of a stretch, but I'll allow it, both because he's representing and acting for the clan here, as well as because as a Clan Head, he's become less intimidated of much more powerful ninja (even if they're still very, very deadly to him).

    Hazō (Taijutsu): 43 + 5 (boost) + 5 (Roki) + 6 (Shoryuken) + 5 (tag "Mr. MEW") + 5 (invoke "(Formerly) Marked for Death") + 5 (invoke "Team Uplift") + 5 (invoke "Lists and Plans") + 5 (invoke "Lord of Clan Gouketsu") - 1 (PCJ) - 9 (dice) = 74
    Hazō spends a FP to reroll.
    Hazō (Taijutsu): 43 + 5 (boost) + 5 (Roki) + 6 (Shoryuken) + 5 (tag "Mr. MEW") + 5 (invoke "(Formerly) Marked for Death") + 5 (invoke "Team Uplift") + 5 (invoke "Lists and Plans") + 5 (invoke "Lord of Clan Gouketsu") - 1 (PCJ) + 3 (dice) = 86

    Impressively, Hazō somehow doesn't take a Consequence. He takes ? + ? = 4 stress. PCJ breaks and he is left with 2 stress in his stress track. Relentless Onslaught activates and he gains the fragile Aspect "Overwhelmed" and Kishigami gets a tag on it.

    Yuno
    Hazō's plan has her attack the commander, but she has tactical sense. The commander has overextended by coming into their Zone and Kei/Snow should be able to hit him with something. On the other hand, the other jōnin-tier combatant here is about to whip out some ninjutsu, likely AoE given the way everyone is clustered up. She's going to ignore Hazō's orders and attack the other senior ninja.

    Supplemental: Activate MARS for everyone. Everyone gets Banshee Slayers, a moment later Flashbang, a moment later Banshee. The world going silent is all their cue for the Flashbang, so there should probably be an Alertness check to prevent there from being collateral Flashbang damage. Unfortunately, the Flashbang mechanics don't support this.
    Supplemental: Sprint to the other senior ninja.
    Standard: Combination attack with Satsuko.

    She has no time to activate any of her jutsu. Sealwise, she has Rocket Boots. She can get into Melee (mechanically, you can always get into Melee with an opponent in the same Zone – they can leave it by winning the Athletics check to dodge your attack), so she has Banshee (with two tags). She has the Flashbang.

    She'll Invoke as much as she can to complete the alpha strike. She really wants to inflict a Consequence with this attack, even if it means burning her FP supply for following rounds. Unfortunately, she only has two applicable character Aspects.

    Yuno (Melee Weapons): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (Shoryuken) + ? (Flashbang) + ? (Banshee) + ? (invoke "Killing Makes Me Feel Alive") + ? (invoke "With Special Grooves for the Blood") - 1 (PCJ) + ? (dice) = ??
    Kasai Senpū (Athletics): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (Substitution) + ? (invoke ????) + ? (invoke ????) + ? (invoke ????) + ? (dice) = ??

    Unfortunately, there's not much Senpū can do at this point… there aren't any good environmental Aspects to tag, and she won't reroll. She'll spend her last FP on half bonus, bringing her total to ??. She takes ? + ? stress. 2 gives her a Mild: "Slashed Forehead," and the remaining ? goes into her stress track.

    Kasai Senpū
    She Substituted out of the Zone that Yuno was in, so she's in a different adjacent Zone to the one everyone's clumped up in. She will still belt out her AoE attack in the hope that it catches someone, but if that doesn't go exceptionally well, she'll call the retreat. This pink-haired woman is too much to handle.

    Given the circumstances, she'll use Sin-Shattering Hammer so that Kishigami needn't dodge and to trap the enemies in if they prove to be too much.

    She's still disoriented from the Banshees: Yuno got up close with her to hit, so that's within the 3-tag range. She still has 2 tags on her. Those tags will be used by Hazō and Akane. Kei and Snowflake will Invoke that disorientation.

    Kishigami will pass her the tag on "Overwhelmed" on Hazō – she'll use it, but I'll apply it as a -? on his roll so that she makes a single roll.

    Standard: Cast signature ninjutsu (?? CP). Shape it so it doesn't hit Kishigami (?? CP).

    Kasai Senpū (Sin-Shattering Hammer): ?? + ? (boost) - ? (Consequence penalty) + ? (dice) = ??

    Hazō will use another MEW (23 CP). Yuno passes him the tag on "Slashed Forehead".

    This is a fairly busy forest, and there are a fair few Substitution targets within 50% of Kei/Akane's body weight, but there's limited time and lots of people Substituting. On the other hand, they had Hazō's whole speech to mark their targets. Let's give them all a Fair (TN15) Substitution check to find targets in time.

    Akane: 28
    Kei: 26
    Snow: 17

    Akane (Athletics): 48 + 6 (boost) + 11 (Substitution) + 5 (Banshee) - 1 (PCJ) + 5 (invoke "MEW 2") - 3 (dice) = 71
    Kei (Athletics): 50 + 6 (boost) + 10 (Substitution) + 6 (invoke Banshee) - 1 (PCJ) + 0 (dice) = 71
    Snowflake (Athletics): 50 + 6 (boost) + 10 (Substitution) + 6 (invoke Banshee) + 6 (invoke "MEW 2") - 1 (PCJ) + 12 = 89
    Hazō (Athletics): 40 + 5 (boost) - ? ("Overwhelmed") + 5 (tag "MEW 2") + 5 (Banshee) + 5 (tag "Slashed Forehead") - 3 (dice) = 57 - ?

    He could reroll, but I don't think it would be likely to change the outcome. Count your lucky stars, Hazō, that she used Sin-Shattering Hammer and not Heaven's Scythe, which is Weapons:? and would have left him with a Severe. Hazō takes ? + ? = 8 stress, filling his stress track and leaving him with a Mild and a Moderate. Akane and Kei take ? + ? = 1 stress (energy damage, so it doesn't affect PCJ), and Snowflake dodges with a nice +12.

    Welp. Didn't even maim the main summoner, and now he'll get away. Rest are uninjured. Crazy pink lady is still out here with her. Fuck that. She'll run.

    Supplemental: Sprint away from the Zone (and Yuno)
    Supplemental: Substitute to get farther.

    She's now 3 Zones away from anyone.

    Akane
    Hazō's orders were to support Yuno, but she's trapped in the Zone by the residual Sin-Shattering Hammer flames. She is forced to attack Kishigami.

    She will use Pantokrator's Hammer (Effect: 2, 16 CP) and trigger another Flashbang (Kishigami wasn't being targeted by anyone when the first round went off, so it didn't create a tag). She'll use Rocket Boots and Wide Angle Blast Rings, since there's no one else in Melee with him right now (no friendly fire risk). She'll take advantage of the Banshee tags, same rules as before.

    Can she get Youthful Fist?

    Akane (Physique): 33 + 4 + 0 (dice) = 37
    Kishigami Seisen (Physique): ?? + ? (dice) = ??

    Nope. Akane's learned from the time she nearly died against the Cloud jōnin not to fuck around and instead go all out immediately. Hazō's injured; she can't afford to lose this one. She'll invoke "YOUTHFUL Taijutsu Star", "Equals at Last", and "Team Uplift".

    Akane (Taijutsu): 54 + 12 (PKH) + 6 (Shoryuken) + 6 (Banshee) + 6 (Flashbang) + 6 (Wide-angle Blast Rings) + 6 (invoke "YOUTHFUL Taijutsu Star") + 6 (invoke "Equals at Last") + 6 (invoke "Team Uplift") - 1 (PCJ) + 3 (dice) = 110

    Unfortunately, Seisen burned all his Supplementals approaching, so he cannot Substitute. He is forced to use MW, and unbuffed, he'll be in trouble. He has to pray for good dice here.

    Kishigami Seisen (Melee Weapons): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (invoke ????) + ? (dice) = ??

    Kishigami takes ? + ? = ? stress. 4 in stress track, 2 for a Mild, 3 for a Moderate, 4 for a Severe, and ? extra means he's chunky salsa.

    Kei
    Kishigami is dealt with, and the other one seems to have turned tail and run. Yuno will deal with her. Time to clean up the genin. She doesn't want to summon, as it'll cost a lot of chakra and the battle's probably won now. She'll target the Melee Weapons one. He probably leans more on his MW stat to get out of situations than his Athletics.

    Because there's a wall of flames in the way of her and the targets, she won't be able to use seals for the fear that they'll be damaged in flight. They're too far from a Banshee/Flashbang user to get bonuses for that.

    Supplemental: Draw weapon.
    Supplemental: She uses Pantokrator's Hammer (Effect 3: 22 CP), for the extra tag in case the ninjutsu user comes back.

    Kei (Ranged Weapons): 40 + 10 (PKH) - 1 (PCJ) - 6 (dice) = 43

    He will try to Substitute:
    Kasai Tomotsune (Substitution): ?? + ? (dice) = ??
    Kasai Tomotsune (Athletics): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (Substitution) + ? (dice) = ??

    He dodges.

    Snowflake
    When in doubt, focus fire? He's only Substituted one Zone away… She is supposed to "Maintain Supplemental to substitute with an ally in danger of taking a serious hit," but also "Pick off enemy support." Since she would need to make both a Standard Block to bodyguard someone with Substitution, as well as save a Supplemental, she'll instead opt to shoot. The main threat to Hazō is gone and Yuno is dealing with the other major threat.

    Supplemental: Draw weapon.
    Supplemental: She uses Pantokrator's Hammer (Effect 2: 16 CP).

    Snowflake (Ranged Weapons): 40 + 10 (PKH) - 1 (PCJ) - 6 (dice) = 43

    Incredible. He Overdraws for a Mild (+?? CP) and Substitutes again.

    Kasai Tomotsune (Substitution): ?? + 0 (dice) = ??
    Kasai Tomotsune (Athletics): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (Substitution) + ? (dice) = ??

    Not even remotely close. He's made it two Zones away with his subs, so he's well on his path to run away.

    Kishigami Kohoshi
    She just saw her dad get blown up in front of her! While she is perfectly capable of attempting (and probably succeeding on) a killing blow on Hazō right now, I think she's going to try to hit Akane instead.

    Supplemental: Draw weapon.
    Supplemental: Deadshot.
    Standard: Kill the woman who murdered your father

    Kishigami Kohoshi (Ranged Weapons): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (tag ????) + ? (invoke ????) + ? (invoke ????) + ? (invoke ????) + ? (dice) = ??

    Akane is out of Supplementals for dodging! She also unfortunately used PKH 2 instead of 3 (assuming the genin were no threat) and doesn't have a spare PKH tag, nor does she have boost since PKH burned it out of her! She's burned her Rocket Boots and she's too far for Banshees to provide tags. She will invoke "Mr. MEW", the other MEW that Hazō erected in the initial onslaught.

    Akane (Athletics): 48 + 5 (invoke "Mr. MEW") - 1 (PCJ) - 3 (dice) = 49

    She only has 1 FP left, and if she rerolls, she could get a substantially worse outcome. I think she takes it. She takes ? + ? = 9 stress (shame this village doesn't have a sealmaster to make explosives). She soaks 2 into PCJ, 2 into a Mild, 3 into a Moderate, and 2 into her stress track. She is pretty beat up.

    Hazō
    He can't leave the Zone by foot to support Akane. He is also beat to shit. He has to leave.

    Supplemental: Draw MARS Sandbomb and toss it into the sky
    Supplemental: Trigger MARS, creating the Aspect "Sandstorm Skies" in his Zone.
    Standard: Hiding Like a Mole.

    Exits the combat.

    Kasai Tomotsune
    Just legging it. Exits the combat.

    Kasai Hirotora
    He could probably hit Akane with a ninjutsu if he overdrew, but then he'd be dead as soon as that finished. Nah, his team leader said to retreat. He runs, exiting the combat.

    Round 2
    Initiative
    Yuno +? boost ??? CP, ? FP
    Kasai Senpū +? boost ??? CP, ? FP
    Akane +6 boost 246 CP, 1 FP
    Kei no boost 84 CP, 3 FP
    Snowflake no boost 4 CP, 3 FP
    Kishigami Kohoshi +? boost ??? CP, ? FP

    Yuno
    Absolutely murder the fuck out of the person that tried to hurt Akane. Enemy has no Sub (all Supplementals used) and no FP.

    Yuno (Melee Weapons): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (Banshee) - 1 (PCJ) + ? (dice) = ??
    Kishigami Kohoshi (Athletics): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (dice) = ??

    ? + ? = ? stress is another enemy killed.

    Kasai Senpū
    Flee some more, exiting the combat. Use Gentle Hand to speed her escape.

    Akane
    Full Round: Put on skywalkers.

    Kei
    Chase after Kasai Hirotora, the Ninjutsu user.

    Snowflake
    Chase after Kasai Tomotsune, the MW user.

    Round 3
    There are three ninja now, going in 3 separate directions. There are 3 pursuers: Yuno on the chūnin, Kei on the Ninjutsu user (reasoning that since ninjutsu could pop Snowflake easily, she's better suited to the task), and Snowflake on the MW user (who should be easier to capture, since he ought to be low on chakra after Substituting and boosting away).

    Each enemy may choose to either make an Athletics contest to get away, or use Stealth against Alertness.

    Kasai Tomotsune (Stealth): ?? + ? (Time Ladder: he got pretty far away before the pursuit started) + ? (dice) = ??
    Snowflake (Alertness): 40 - 6 (dice) = 34

    He's caught.

    Kasai Hirotora (Athletics): ?? + ? (dice) = ??
    Kei (Athletics): 50 + 9 (dice) = 59

    He's also caught.

    Kasai Senpū does not need to make a check: with the additional movement provided by Gentle Hand, she can get away from Yuno, who has no noteworthy movement enhancing techniques. Yuno spends two rounds burning Substitutions (-56 CP) before realizing she can't catch up and slowing down. She is at ??? CP.

    Yuno decides to stop dealing with the forest and sprint over the open sky. She is at a ? Zone disadvantage, meaning she catches up in just a couple rounds after she dons her skywalkers inserts (wow, these seals are OP). She climbs up above the treeline and follows in the direction of the target, dipping down and back up to follow the trail. She deactivates her Banshee + Banshee Slayers while she is doing this. Kasai is more focused on running than obscuring the trail, as she no longer hears pursuit. Kasai is similarly making noise as she moves, and is really not that far away. Yuno pursues her, and eventually catches up.

    Yuno
    Supplemental: Trigger the MARS attached to her Banshee + Slayers again.
    Supplemental: Trigger a Flashbang

    Yuno (Melee Weapons): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (Banshee) + ? (Flashbang) - 1 (PCJ) + ? (dice) = ??
    Kasai Senpū (Athletics): ?? + ? (boost) + ? (Substitution) - ? (Mild) + ? (dice) = ??

    Yuno wins. There's no realistic way that Kasai can land a hit on a boosting, skywalkered Yuno, and Yuno can hit back harder than she can afford to dodge. Kasai takes ? + ? = ? stress. That's a Severe. She's dead within the next round.

    Kei and Snowflake drag back (using ninja wire) the two ninja they knocked out, reconvening with Hazō from the earth and Akane and Yuno from the sky (Akane, covered in her own blood, Yuno covered in other people's).

    Somehow, a total victory for Team Uplift.

    Hazō is at 179 CP. He has spent 5 FP. He has taken the Mild Consequence "Lightly Charred Lungs" and the Moderate Consequence "Fire Really, Really Hurts". He gains 2 for taking Consequences, and 1 for winning an encounter, for a net of -2 FP.
    Akane is at 246 CP. She has taken the Mild Consequence "Damaged Hamstring" and the Moderate Consequence "Not Quite Gutted". She also has netted -2 FP.
    Kei is at 84 CP. She has spent 4 FP and gained 1 for winning an encounter. She has netted -3 FP.
    Snowflake is at 4 CP.
    Yuno says she's at around half her chakra.

    Hazō estimates that if the patrol was running straight at them this whole time, they're probably around 15 minutes away.

    You have two conscious captives. The three other ninja are dead and sealed.

    -o-​

    You have received 1 + 1 (Brevity) = 2 XP.

    QM/N: Strictly speaking, you've already received 4 + 1 = 5 XP for today, so this is a bonus.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes at .
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 535: Regrouping
  • Threadmarks

    • Hazō sighed. "This day started off so well," he muttered. "Okay, let's get out of here. Everyone get your skywalkers on. Akane, Yuno, you're on fire duty. Whip out the stupid boxes and burn this place. I want lots of smoke to cover us as we walk off." He held up a hand to interrupt Kei. "I know, I know, people on the ground aren't going to be able to see us once we're through the canopy of the trees, and we'll need to use Purifiers to breathe while we're in the smoke and it will spread out quickly. It's better than nothing and I'm not taking any chances on someone having gone up a tree to look ahead. We're sealing the bodies, burning this place, and getting above the clouds to regroup and recover. Akane, I'll be giving you a ride. Kei, Yuno, Snowflake, gag the genin and bring them. Keep them separate. No communication." He shook his head. "I wish Noburi were here to drain them unconscious," he muttered.

    o-o-o-o​

    Skywalker seals last between fourteen and nineteen minutes. Each sandal carries two pairs of seals specifically so that once time runs out on the first one the person using them doesn't plummet to their screaming death. The lowest clouds, which Hazō intended the team to climb above, are a mile or more in the air. A healthy ninja could cover a mile of flat ground in three minutes and hold that pace for hours.

    There's a big difference between running across flat ground and running straight up into the air, and an even bigger difference between a healthy ninja and someone bleeding from her kidney. Things were further complicated by trying to carry a pair of genin who struggled furiously until it was pointed out that successfully escaping their captors' grips would be immediately followed by, as Michiki would have said, 'enhanced rates of descent followed by an off-mission terrain interaction.' Once the concept had been conveyed, the two genin hung limply from their ropes and tried not to look down.

    The team stopped twice on the way up, standing in midair, hands on knees and gasping for air until they could resume the climb. Eventually, they broke through the clouds and set up a trio of skytowers, one for each of the prisoners and one for the team.

    "What happens now?" Kei asked.

    "First, we give Akane a little more than a pressure bandage and good wishes," Hazō said. "At the next scheduled check-in I want you to get a medical consult from Noburi. He can advise on what to do beyond the basics." Even as he said that, he was washing the wound out with fresh water and wiping it clear to make sure there was nothing in it to obstruct the healing. There wasn't, so he poured some strong sake into it as an offering to the spirits of luck and health. Akane hissed in pain but stayed still, trying not to look at Hazō suturing needle, already threaded and lying beside her.

    He looked up into his beloved's pale, pain-wracked face. She knew what was coming and had already slipped a leather strip between her teeth. "Bite down and try not to tense up, okay?" She nodded, stroking his hair for a moment and then placing her hands down flat while he sewed the wound closed.

    Five very painful minutes later, a white-faced and sweat-drenched Akane was propped up on pillows, no longer bleeding (much), and approximately coherent enough for a conversation.

    "All right, Hazō," Kei said. "Now that you have demonstrated skywalkers and skytowers for the prisoners, what is your plan for them?"

    Hazō grimaced. "I'd like to find a way where we don't have to kill them," he said. "They're kids. Just kids."

    "They are enemy ninja," Yuno said.

    Snowflake had been watching Akane as though waiting for something, but as the other woman continued to remain silent, Snowflake frowned and spoke. "Hazō, what were your precise orders from Asuma before leaving?"

    "Don't cause problems for Leaf. If we do, clean it up. Do not do politics or trade agreements. We can bring an embassy of easterners back to Leaf in order to normalize relations and after that the Gōketsu are free to make trade deals on our own. The eastern continent doesn't know about skywalkers and skytowers, so try to maintain OPSEC on those but it's not worth our lives." The Iron Nerve finished replaying the summary that Hazō had recited back to Asuma in confirmation of understanding, and he winced as he heard himself speaking the final words.

    "Well," Snowflake said, "it would appear that we have breached OPSEC on both. Still, it does seem to have been our best option in order to prevent the need to kill yet more easterners, thereby expanding our breach. I believe we are still technically within the boundaries of our orders."

    Something that Hazō hadn't realized was clenched in his chest slowly unknotted itself. "That's a relief."

    "Do we kill the prisoners now or did you want to torture them first?" Yuno asked. "Will you be using Leaf-style techniques, or those of Mist? I have never seen either and am curious how they differ."

    "We're not torturing anyone!" Hazō said. He could feel the steady thud...thud...thud of a headache coming on.

    "Then why did we carry them up here?" Yuno asked. "Certainly, dropping them from this height is an effective execution method but it seems like a great deal of effort as compared to allowing Satsuko to drink their blood before we came up here." Her face brightened with inspiration. "Oh! Did you want to drop them on their home village as a warning of Gōketsu power?"

    "No!" The thudding was alternating with a squeezing that sent shooting pains out from behind his eyeballs. "The goal is to not kill them if we don't have to." He sighed. "Look, I see three options: one, we kill them, quick and clean, and continue the mission. Two, we scrub the mission and take them back to Leaf T&I and hand them over. They'll probably die horribly if we do, but maybe we'll end up with information that will be useful on a second trip."

    "And the third option?" Akane asked quietly.

    Hazō rubbed his neck. "Less of an 'option', more of 'a vague hope', I guess. Maybe we can strand them on an island somewhere? Something that keeps them alive and not going back to their superiors to snitch on us. I dunno, I just don't want to limit the thinking space too much. There should be other possibilities."

    "The island prison idea seems impractical," Kei said after a moment. "We would need one large enough to supply adequate nutrition and hydration, yet small enough that there is no one currently living there. It would need to be far enough from normal trade routes that ships would not stop there for supplies or to shelter from inclement weather. Too many variables."

    Everyone digested that for a moment.

    "It seems to me," Akane said slowly, "that bringing them back to Leaf satisfies our orders and is their only thin hope of survival. We can bring them to the Hokage and he can negotiate with them as representatives of their nations. One of them could then be escorted back to their homes along with a shipment of trade goods. Presented with profit in hand and a trade treaty that only needs signing, their elders might choose to follow through with the agreement in order to get two young genin back and a collection of wealth." She grimaced. "Even as I say the words I see how implausible they are. Still, it is a chance."

    Silence fell as everyone very loudly failed to disagree with Akane's assessment of her idea's plausibility.

    "I suppose it's possible that they could end up adopted into Leaf," Snowflake said. "If we bring them back but Asuma doesn't feel that the trade option is feasible, the genin could be offered the chance to stay in Leaf. If a Yamanaka scanned them and confirmed that they were willing to accept adoption, it could work." For someone who had once had the Heartbreaker as a teacher, her ability to project unfelt confidence was sorely lacking.

    Hazō rubbed his temples in an ineffective attempt to loosen the bands of pain that were clenching around his skull. "Okay," he said after a moment. "We'll check in with Noburi. Get medical advice and any supplies he advises, as well as enough skywalkers for all of us to walk home without touching the ground. Also, have him pass the word to Mari and get her assessment, see if she has any thoughts we don't." Kei's lips tightened but she said nothing. "Meanwhile, I'll bounce up to Dog and get a supply of mellow candy that we can use to knock these guys out if we need to. I'll also ask Cannai and Canabisu for advice. Maybe one of them can come up with something. Anyone else got anything?"

    Heads shook.

    "Okay, guess we've got a plan." It wasn't the plan he wanted, it wasn't a plan that was likely to save these children's lives, but it was a plan.




    It's late and I've been largely ineffective today so I'm going to cut here instead of diving into another scene(s) of adversarial conversation with foreign ninja. If you want to see this then it can go in the next plan, or we could simply do a couple rolls in the background and give you a summary.

    Author's Note: The plan specified to knock the kids out but also specified to do no harm. There is no way to safely keep someone unconscious for long periods without magic or drugs. A choke hold (a.k.a. sleeper hold) will only put someone out for a few seconds. "Knocking someone out" means striking them a blow to the head that induces enough rotation to make the brain strike the inside of the skull. This by definition causes a concussion and the amount of trauma necessary to induce unconsciousness is highly unpredictable.



    XP AWARD: 1 (the update was about an hour)

    Brevity XP: 1

    "GM had fun" XP: 0     No strong feelings either way.

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, .
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 536: Interrogation
  • Threadmarks

    • It was late at night. Far too late to be doing this, really, but Hazō wasn't in the best shape and had a strong feeling that much of Mari's interrogation advice would slip right out of his head if he was allowed to sleep on it. If he could have, he might have handed the whole thing over to a summon, but Kei had pointed that the only summons who wouldn't be terrified to the depths of their souls (if summons had souls) when trapped several kilometres up in the air were elite skytower-trained pangolins—and those towering masses of claws and scales would not be a good fit for the non-hostile kind of interrogation that Hazō wanted.

    After some consideration, he'd decided to question the flare ninja first. Both had to be terrified, both of expected interrogation and execution and, much more viscerally, of plummeting to their deaths from an unimaginable height any second now, but while the (former) spearman was dealing with his circumstances by sitting dead still and employing some kind of breathing technique, the flare user who reminded him of Noburi was… actually crying. It wasn't something he could hide with his hands tied behind his back.

    They really did make them different in Neck. Back in Mist, Hazō's instructors had recognised crying under pressure as an unacceptable vulnerability, even more than other displays of emotion, and worked hard to beat it out of Academy students well before graduation. Hazō, brought up by a woman ever stoic in the face of a cruel and uncaring world, hadn't needed much "reinforcement", but not all of his classmates had been so lucky, and Old Lizardbreath's vitriolic rants still rang in his ears when he remembered.

    Being alone with Hazō on a skytower out of hearing range of anyone else wasn't going to help matters any, he could tell, but interrogating the prisoners separately had been the very first item on Mari's list. Gingerly, he removed the boy's gag, wet with saliva, and resisted the impulse to throw it down below, where it would be found by enemy trackers (yes, they were enemy trackers now, weren't they?).

    "Why did you have to kill them?" the boy burst out the second he could speak. "Why couldn't you just run?"

    "I—"

    "We'd just killed an adult bonedrinker!" the boy exclaimed, tears still in his eyes. "We were going to be promoted! We didn't want to fight anyone! Tomotsune was going to get to learn the Howling Void stance and catch up to his brother! Kohoshi was going to start courting him now her dad didn't outrank her anymore! I had an apprenticeship waiting! All we wanted was to go home!"

    The words, which must have been going through the boy's head over and over since he was captured for them to spill out so readily, hit Hazō exactly as hard as they should have. This was shinobi warfare, every time without exception. This was why it had to end. Just like the sailors of the Sunset Racer, every ninja had something precious to them that they would lose when they inevitably fought and died. If Hazō couldn't help killing them on his way to a world where nobody had to kill anyone at all, the least he could do was remember.

    "I'm sorry," Hazō said. "We really aren't here to hurt anyone. Not you, not your village. What happened was just an unfortunate misunderstanding."

    "You could have run! The boy exclaimed. "You could've summoned riding toads to get you away! You could've hidden in the Enlightened Realm! You could've run away into the sky! Nobody would've chased you there! You didn't have to kill everyone…"

    "I wish we could have," Hazō said. "I really do. But your leaders were on us too fast. If they hadn't struck first—"

    The boy opened his mouth, a sudden burst of hatred shining through the tears in his eyes.

    "I'm not saying it was anyone's fault," Hazō said quickly. "We trespassed on your territory, and you attacked us instead of negotiating. Both of us could have done things differently. I don't want to start playing the blame game now."

    "That's right," the boy hissed. "You could have done things differently. You could have stayed home in Leaf. The strongest village. The richest village. You've got a dozen summoners, and hundreds of ninja, and you can make forests and raise the dead with the wave of a hand. Why… why did you have to come back? Why do you have to pick on a tribe at the other end of the world that can't possibly have anything you want?!"

    "I'm sorry," Hazō repeated. "But we weren't here to attack you. We really do have trade as an important objective. You being at the other end of the world makes trade better, not worse. I wasn't lying about peace in the West, either. You can ask any—" No, that was a stupid thing to say.

    He started again. "It's a tragedy that your leaders didn't believe me, because the news is going to make its way over here soon enough. I would have been insane to lie about something so easy to verify."

    "I don't believe you," the boy said simply. "You can tell me anything to make me give up information, and then I'll be too dead to find out you were lying. Leaf murdered the Holy Champion. Leaf murdered Kohoshi and Aunt Senpū and Kishigami-sensei. I'll never believe anything you say."

    "We're not planning to kill you," Hazō said. "We're trying to find a way out of this situation without any more deaths. But it's not going to work without your cooperation. We're going to ask you for information, and then we're going to take you back to our village. My clan has a lot of political heft. It's possible that we can persuade our leader to use you as trade representatives instead of sending you to T&I, or find some other way to protect you."

    "T&I?"

    "Torture and Interrogation Department", Hazō said, then winced on the inside as the boy's eyes widened. He wanted to add how it might not be that bad—T&I's inner workings were deliberately opaque, and they did have that catalogue available on request from the main office, but presumably they also had access to Yamanaka, and Hazō had had his mind read without any negative consequences that he knew of. Unfortunately, mentioning Yamanaka in any way would be a blatant OPSEC violation.

    "You can torture me all you like," the boy spat. "I won't tell you anything." Hazō didn't need to see the way his face had paled to know that he was bluffing.

    Mari had laughed when Hazō asked her about the odds of Asuma sparing the Neck ninja, then apologised insincerely when he said he was being serious.

    "I'm not planning to torture you," Hazō said patiently. "I just want to talk to you."

    "You just said you were going to take me away to be tortured," the boy said. "I'm not stupid."

    "I will find a way around that if I can," Hazō said. "I promise. I'm not even going to ask you for any kind of sensitive information. I just want to know the kind of basic things any civilian around here would know—not because we want to invade, but because we want to avoid any more conflict. I promise you, we don't have any intention of making war on your clan, or on any clan. That would make the peace we've finally built worthless."

    "Then go ask some civilians," the boy said. "I won't believe a word from a village that sends two summoners into somebody else's territory to murder people and then claims they're merchants."

    -o-​

    Despite repeated attempts, Hazō didn't manage to get anything else out of the boy that night.

    The other boy, the spearman, was still awake by the time he gave up. He didn't show any surprise on being carried to the interrogation skytower, or much of any emotion at all.

    "Good evening," Hazō began tentatively after taking out the gag.

    The boy didn't say anything.

    "I wanted to say I'm sorry about what happened," Hazō said. "Our mission was never intended to turn violent."

    The boy didn't say anything.

    "I know that might not mean much to you right now," Hazō went on, "but we never wanted to fight your team, and we only killed because we were forced to. You were just too strong for us to have a chance to get away once fighting broke out."

    The boy didn't say anything.

    "I don't want there to be any more loss of life," Hazō said. "Will you cooperate with us in finding a way out of this situation that means nobody else has to die? Please?"

    "You're lying," the boy said emotionlessly. "We've seen too much."

    "I can't just send you home," Hazō agreed. "But my clan has a lot of influence back in our village. If you work with me, I can do my best to persuade our leader to keep you alive. I was serious about trade being a big part of our mission, and we're going to need some kind of representative from your end to make it work."

    "We don't need anything from you."

    "Work with me here," Hazō said. "I know how things must seem, but we're not your enemies. We're just trying to come up with the best outcome for everyone, and we can't do that without your help."

    The boy spent several seconds sitting in silence, staring past Hazō and into the darkness of the sky behind him.

    "Can Leaf really bring back the dead?"

    "No one can bring back the dead," Hazō said softly. Not yet.

    "Then there is no best outcome anymore. Just whether you torture us before we follow."

    "Nobody is planning to torture anybody," Hazō insisted, but the boy wasn't listening.

    -o-​

    You were completely unable to make a dent in the second prisoner's resistances. However, the first was more mentally flexible (or weaker of will), and you were able to gather a little information.

    You learned various snatches about the party you were fighting:
    - Kishigami Seisen was an expert machete wielder and renowned drummer. Reading between the lines, he was a recovering alcoholic.
    - Kasai Senpū was a Fire/Wind ninjutsu specialist. Despite being Hirotora's aunt, he did not know her well. After some unclear incident in her past, she closed herself off from people.
    - Kasai Hirotora is a Fire ninjutsu specialist and the most eligible bachelor of his generation. He was looking forward to learning the Wind Element and apprenticing under the tribe's top Technique Hacker.
    - Kasai Tomotsune is the younger son of the master of the Galewind Spear Style, and intended to surpass his older brother and take over as successor.
    - Kishigami Kohoshi was Seisen's daughter and in love with Tomotsune. She was generally quiet, but terrifying when angry.
    They were returning from a ritual hunt in which the three younger ninja, genin-equivalent, killed a particularly deadly chakra beast as a prerequisite for chūnin-equivalent promotion. The older, chūnin-equivalent ninja, were there to supervise and step in if things got more dangerous than intended. All were members of the Squirrel-folk tribe.

    The Squirrel-folk hate and fear Leaf. They believe that Jiraiya came to the East to create a new hidden village to oppose Mist, but when he realised that the alliance would be led by the Squirrel Summoner, who was too cunning and powerful to intimidate or manipulate, Jiraiya betrayed and murdered him, and attempted to steal his scroll. The Squirrel-folk were afraid (and, it turns out, rightly so) that Leaf would come back for the scroll and seek to destroy the Squirrel-folk in the process of getting it.

    Hirotora still considers you enemies, but is beginning to question whether you are really lying about everything (and will murder him once you've got what you want) or whether you are sincere and delusional (and your saner comrades will murder him once they've got what they want). He won't answer specific questions on the Squirrel-folk or Neck, but he is prepared to engage in conversation.

    Rules: This is a special social combat that runs over 7 rounds (days). Stress does not clear between days, but Consequences continue to heal.

    Merely Taking Out the prisoners will not make them forget the fact that you're their worst enemy. Instead, the Fate difficulty table, from Terrible (-2) to Legendary (+8), will be used to determine how far Hazō shifts their attitudes. Every time they are Taken Out counts as one success, and every time a prisoner Takes Out Hazō counts as one failure.

    Hazō has limited investment in this interrogation, and would burn through his FP very quickly over 14 rolls, so he is holding back. The prisoners have nothing to lose, and will be burning everything they have.

    Both prisoners start with Mild and Moderate physical Consequences (they chose to be voluntarily Taken Out to avoid the Severes).

    Day 1:

    Hazō tags "Mari's Advice".
    Hazō: Rapport 16 + 3 - 9 = 10
    Hirotora tags "You Just Killed My Loved Ones".
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hazō receives 2 mental stress.

    Hazō tags "Mari's Advice" (QM generosity).
    Hazō: Rapport 16 + 3 - 3 = 16
    Tomotsune tags "You Just Killed My Loved Ones".
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hazō receives 2 mental stress.

    Day 2:
    All Mild Consequences clear.
    Hazō: Rapport 18 + 6 = 24
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hirotora spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hirotora spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hirotora receives 3 mental stress. He receives the Mild mental Consequence "Uneasy".

    Hazō: Rapport 18 - 12 = 6
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Tomotsune spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hazō receives 3 mental stress.

    Day 3:
    Hazō tags "Uneasy".
    Hazō: Rapport 18 + 3 + 3 = 24
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hirotora receives 2 mental stress. He receives the Moderate mental Consequence "Shaken".

    Hazō: Rapport 18 + 0 = 18
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Tomotsune spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Tie.

    Day 4:
    Hirotora's Mild Consequence clears.
    Hazō tags "Shaken".
    Hazō: Rapport 18 + 3 + 3 = 24
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hirotora spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hirotora spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hirotora receives 6 mental stress. He receives the Severe mental Consequence "Questioning" and is Taken Out.

    Hazō: Rapport 18 + 3 = 21
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Tomotsune receives 1 mental stress.

    Day 5
    Hazō tags "Questioning".
    Hazō: Rapport 18 + 3 + 3 = 24
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hirotora receives 4 mental stress and is Taken Out.

    Hazō: Rapport 18 + 0 = 18
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hazō receives 1 mental stress. He receives the Mild mental Consequence "Guilty".

    Day 6
    Hirotora's Mild Consequence clears.
    Hazō: Rapport 16 - 6 = 10
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hirotora receives 1 mental stress. He receives the Mild mental Consequence "Uneasy (Again)".

    Hazō: Rapport 16 + 9 = 25
    Tomotsune tags "Guilty".
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Tomotsune spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Tomotsune spends 1 FP to reroll.
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Tomotsune receives 3 mental stress. He receives the Mild mental Consequence "Chink in the Armour".

    Day 7
    Hazō's Mild Consequence clears.
    Hazō tags "Uneasy (Again)".
    Hazō: Rapport 18 + 3 + 6 = 24
    Hirotora: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Hirotora receives 8 mental stress. He is Taken Out.

    Hazō tags "Chink in the Armour".
    Hazō: Rapport 18 + 3 + 3 = 24
    Tomotsune: Empathy ?? + ? + ? = ??
    Tomotsune receives 6 mental stress. He receives the Moderate mental Consequence "Worn Out" and the Severe mental Consequence "Crumbling".

    Result: Hirotora has been Taken Out three times (Good). Tomotsune has been taken out zero times (Mediocre).

    -o-​

    You have received 21 + 7 (Brevity) = 28 XP. Hazō has received 1 FP for winning(?) a meaningful conflict and 1 FP for taking a Consequence during the conflict.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes on
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Future Interlude (AU?): Lucky
  • Threadmarks
    • Future Interlude (AU?): Lucky​

    He was a short man, not even as tall as some of the women in the marketplace. Good looking but not stunning. No scars, had all his teeth—which could be seen in his frequent small smiles as he wandered.

    Honoka wasn't sure why she had fixated on him. He wasn't that handsome...perhaps it was his hair? His hair was silky and a faintly reddish brown that was unusual but not striking like Auntie Mari's flaming mane. (Which was getting a bit more grey in it these days, sadly.)

    She wasn't getting any sense of danger; he didn't move like a ninja and he didn't have callouses like a ninja. Actually, he had no callouses at all. Not even the writer's bump that scribes and many nobles would have had. How did this man live? He was trim but not skinny, toned but not muscular. His skin was healthy, unscarred and unmarked by pox. In fact, it was remarkable how unremarkable he looked while still looking vaguely attractive.

    He clearly wasn't unremarkable in person, though. He had chatted up three different vendors and each time it took only seconds before the merchant and the stranger were chattering away like two old biddies over the fence. Each time, it took only another minute before the merchant pressed some of their wares on him and then shook their heads and raised their hands to ward off any possibility of payment. An apple, a meat pastry and slice of cheese, and a wooden mug of cider. The vendor even let him keep the mug!

    Auntie Mari could have done that. The cider vendor was a man and in his fifties. She could have flirted and wrapped him around her finger until he was happy to give her the entire stock. This stranger, no. Honoka knew that merchant and knew that he walked firmly on the 'ladies for me, thanks' side of the street. He had no problems with those who didn't, but he wouldn't have responded to flirting from a man.

    Uncle Jiraiya could have done it. He could have awed the man by arriving in his own persona as Hokage and legendary ninja hero who had returned from the dead in Leaf's hour of need. The vendor would have bowed in dogeza and pleaded with the Hokage to honor him by taking a mug of cider.

    Uncle Jiraiya could have done it in one of his disguises too. Showed up in his peddler disguise, perhaps. An easy smile, a few stories, get the man talking about himself until they were bosom buddies. Uncle would have walked away with a brimming mug and a new intelligence asset.

    What neither Uncle Jiraiya nor Auntie Mari could have done was charm the man that fast. It had been well under two minutes from the time the stranger walked up to the time that the stranger left, and the vendor still looked happy. He was even whistling a happy little tune! A rushed con like that should have been noticed after a few minutes, leading to frowns and annoyance. The cider merchant seemed to be having the best day ever.

    Huh. It actually was his best day ever. More and more people were drifting over, enough that there was a line.

    The same was true of the fruit merchant and the pastry seller. No obvious cause, no barkers shouting, no large groups collectively deciding to stop in. Just three crowds happening to coalesce all at the same time, a lucky happenstance.

    The stranger had wandered out of the market, his cider mug in one hand and his pastry in the other. Honoka ghosted in his wake, her instincts nagging at her but not offering specifics. Years in the field had made her respect those instincts.

    The problem was, he wasn't doing anything worthy of notice. He nibbled and sipped as he wandered, looking up at the buildings in curiosity as though he'd never seen them before. Not a Leaf citizen, then. Not a spy either, or if he was then he was the most incompetent one ever. Spies would have been working around the Tower, checking to see the progress on the reconstruction. Or maybe loitering around the entrance to the Academy to count how many students of each year went in.

    This man was wandering gormlessly through a neighborhood that was getting less and less middle class with every step he took, moving towards the docks that Uncle Hazō had built when he redirected the river to run just outside of Leaf's walls. When was that...eight years ago? Nine? Wow, time flies. ("Like an arrow," Auntie Mari liked to say. And then Uncle Jiraiya would nod solemnly and, with a completely straight face, say "And fruit flies like an apple. Or a melon. Or whatever they can get, really.")

    The man finished his pastry just as he walked by a brownstone stoop with a broadsheet abandoned on the steps. He scooped it up without pausing and flicked it open with one hand while continuing to sip his mug with the other. He walked along, nose buried in the words and apparently oblivious to the world.

    So oblivious that he stepped into the street without noticing the carriage barreling past. The back rear wheel dropped into a pothole and splashed a load of mud out. It would have struck the stranger in the side but another pedestrian happened to step into the street just at that moment and ended up providing a better shield than the best-trained bodyguard could have managed.

    The stranger glanced up in surprise and saw the other man angrily trying to brush the worst of the mud off. The stranger said a few words, not loud enough for Honoka to hear from where she lurked on a roof two buildings down, and then looked around. He pointed across the street and said something else.

    The mud-soaked citizen followed his finger and cocked his head in surprise. He thanked the stranger, checked that the way was clear, and hurried over to a box labeled 'Free! Take me!' He reached inside and pulled out a shirt that was nearly a duplicate of the one he was wearing, except better quality. Its only flaw was a very slightly frayed spot at the bottom. Aside from that, it was perfect. The dye was even, the buttons solidly attached, the stitching even. And, of course, it wasn't drenched in mud.

    What?? Sure, some rich people offloaded their unwanted clothes like that, leaving them on the street as donations for the poor, but it was unusual that they would come into a neighborhood like this one to do it.

    The stranger had wandered off, still sipping his cider and reading his broadsheet. Up ahead, Honoka could hear the sounds of a neighborhood block party; zither and hand drums and pipes, people laughing.

    The man finished his cider just as he arrived at the block party, and a laughing woman in a peasant blouse refilled it for him before pulling him into the dance circle. He spun and capered with her for two turns around the fire, stepping in time to the music and maintaining flawless position among the flow of other dancers. Then he bowed and wandered off. He finished his paper, folded it up, and tossed it casually aside without looking. It landed just in front of the feet of an old man who sat on a stoop watching the dancers. The old fellow stepped forward and bent over to get it, his back clearly stiff from age. A bird pooped where he had been sitting, but fortunately he noticed before resuming his seat. He shifted to the other end of the step and leaned back to read the paper.

    Two blocks later, the stranger strolled past a tall man and a dark-haired woman standing at the side of the street, shouting at each other at the top of their lungs in the way that only long-married couples do. The angry husband shook a fist at his wife, face red and seeming on the edge of violence. Honoka tensed, wondering if she was going to need to abandon her surveillance in order to go to the woman's rescue, but just at that moment someone emptied their nightsoil bucket out the window and directly onto the man's head. Both husband and wife forgot about their beef with each other and started shouting at the person inside the house; the person in question snorted and slammed the shutters, ending the argument. The wife pulled a rag from her pocket and started wiping the filth from her husband's head.

    Okay, this was getting ridiculous.

    The stranger bent over and picked up a fifty ryō piece that someone had dropped on the street. He dropped it in his pocket and patted it happily. Half a block later he tossed it into the hat of a beggar, apologetically turning his pockets inside out to show them empty. The beggar thanked him and shuffled across the street to a ramen stand while the stranger continued on his way.

    Movement caught Honoka's eye. The stranger's clothes had blended right into the market back at Namikaze Park, but in this neighborhood they stood out like a bonfire for being unpatched and unfrayed. A pair of toughs had noticed and were following him. One of them slipped a cosh from his pocket and held it down by his leg, out of sight but ready.

    Honoka started to move...and then paused. Yes, it was her duty to protect Leaf's citizens, but this was too strange and she wanted to see it play out. She could intervene before anything went too far.

    The two toughs sped their steps slightly, their longer legs allowing them to catch the stranger. Honoka expected him to hear it, glance back and see the danger. He didn't. He kept ambling casually along, looking up at the shabby two-storey buildings as though they were the most fascinating things ever created.

    The thug with the cosh made his move, arm going up and running the last couple of steps, swinging his weapon right to left to catch his victim on the side of the head. Honoka Substituted herself with a garbage can waiting by the curb and stepped forward to catch the weapon, but she had left it just a little too long, moved just a little too slowly—

    The stranger bent down to pick up a ten ryō piece and the attack whiffed over his head. The thug stumbled, off-balanced by the lack of resistance, stubbed his toe on a cobblestone, and fell. He cracked his knee on another cobble and shrieked in pain, clutching at the injury. His friend, eyes wide at seeing a ninja appear in their midst, turned and ran for his life.

    Honoka let him go. She had seen his face and that was enough. More important things to do right here.

    A woman in the uniform and headband of the Medical Corps stepped out of the alley, her doctor's bag in one hand. Honoka recognized her...she was a second-year intern in the trauma department, she had stitched Honoka up after her last mission. Name, name, name...Nakajima, that was it.

    "Are you all right, young man?" Nakajima asked, seeing the thug on the ground. She clucked her tongue. "Hit your knee, I take it? These cobbles are terrible for that. Let me check that it isn't fractured." She bent over him; green medical chakra glowed from her right forefinger, forming itself into an impossible sharp scalpel that sliced the man's pant leg effortlessly open to bare the injury. She brushed her glowing left hand across the area and the thug slumped in relief as the pain vanished.

    Nakajima manipulated his knee a moment, then nodded. "Fractured, yes, and a damaged tendon. Lucky thing for you I was coming back from my rounds. This could have been bad if you had tried to walk on it. Hold still a moment." Green chakra flowed from her hands, laced itself into his knee, and went to work. It took only a few seconds, and then she retracted the energy and used a minor suturing jutsu to meld the cut edges of the man's pant leg back together, good as new and without so much as a seam to show where they'd been cut.

    "There you go," she said, patting his leg with a smile. She stood up and offered Honoka a polite nod. "Jōnin. Dark nights to you."

    "Doctor," Honoka said politely. "Empty beds to you."

    The doctor smiled briefly at her erstwhile patient, adjusted her headband, and strode off.

    Honoka blinked back to herself, suddenly realizing that she had allowed herself to be distracted from her pursuit of the stranger. She had questions and he had better have answers.

    She looked around, but he was out of sight. She split off a pair of Shadow Clones and leaped for the roofs, each of them taking a different direction.

    One of her clones found him half a mile away, window shopping at the end of the clothing district's first block while the crowd flowed around him. Moments later, Honoka Prime dropped to the street in front of him, recalling her chakra from the clones as she touched down. The civilian shoppers all bent their paths out of her way.

    "Hold up there," she said to the stranger. "I've got some questions for you."

    "Oh?" he said, offering an easy smile. "Of course. How may I help you, ma'am?"

    That...was not the reaction of a civilian suddenly accosted by a ninja.

    "Let's start with your name."

    "Sune Akagi," he said, offering a polite and slightly florid bow. "At your service. How may a humble nomad such as myself be of service to such a beautiful young woman?"

    "Nomad, huh? Where from?"

    "Oh, here and there. Most recently from Tanzaku Gai. They have wonderful desserts there—I found this one shop where they put down layers of pastry dough one at a time, drenching each one in honey and finely-chopped salted nuts until they have something as thick as your thumb and so good. Mm." He clasped his hands in delight at the memory. "People are so inventive, don't you think? Always coming up with new and fascinating and delicious things."

    "When did you get to town?"

    "Sometime this morning. I wasn't paying close attention to the hour. I browsed a bit near the gate, then wandered over to Namikaze Park. They have this lovely market. Very friendly people, and so generous!"

    The merchants of Leaf were generous?

    "Are you high?" she asked.

    His thin eyebrows went up and he raised his hands in denial and placation. "Not a drop, not a dram. I swear it on every star. Not that it's necessary—I would never lie to such a beautiful flower as yourself, your stem so filled with steel and your face overflowing with the beauty of spring's first blossoms."

    Honoka snorted. It had been a while since anyone had tried that much butter on her, and at the time she'd been on an infiltration mission in the guise of a noblewoman.

    "I think perhaps you should come with me," she said. "I want you to talk to my uncle. You're just a little off and I think he'll want to find out why."

    He set a hand on his heart in shock and hurt. "'Off'? Me? I promise, I'm the most ordinary human you'll ever meet. Very uninteresting, truly."

    "Yah, well, humor me." She reached out to take his wrist but had to pull her hand back as the door of the shop they'd been standing in front of suddenly swung open, almost bonking her in the face as it did. A customer came out, an older man with a walrus mustache who touched his forehead and dipped his head in polite regard as he passed her.

    Honoka cursed and shoved around the man, her brain throbbing with the frustrating certainty that her prey would be running for it.

    He wasn't running. He was simply gone, disappeared into the crowd. She jumped to the wall, climbing a few feet up so that she could get a better view. People fleeing through a crowd always left a wake that was highly visible from above. Even if they weren't actually running, their tense, hurried movements still disrupted the pattern.

    There was no disruption. Everyone was moving normally, Leaf citizens so inured to ninja and their wacky methods of travel that they didn't bother looking up at one clinging to a wall. In fact, the only thing looking her way was a small reddish-brown fox at the very end of the block.

    The fox studied her for a moment and then, with a flirt of its tail, it was around the corner and gone.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 537: Bowing to the Inevitable
  • Threadmarks

    • "…and then I decided to ask him about other local summoners, on the off-chance that maybe he might want to point one enemy of his tribe at another at no risk to his own, but no—the second the words left my mouth, he just gave me this contemptuous look and clammed up altogether."

    It was the evening of the eighth day of interrogation, and the sun had just set on Hazō's hopes of actionable intel, and of finding an excuse to avoid doing what he knew he had to.

    "It is almost as if," Kei noted, "the Squirrel-folk prefer having a moderately-powerful rival with which they have successfully coexisted for a millennium to fanning the appetites of an imperialist aggressor with a short but vivid history of unprovoked lethal violence."

    "Unprovoked nothing," Hazō objected. "We tried to negotiate in good faith."

    "Setting aside whether being caught trespassing and then presenting a false justification in a way that furthers our secondary goal is good faith or not, it comes as no surprise that these particular Squirrel-folk should seek to deny us anything they might imagine we want," Kei said. "Frankly, that you achieved as much rapport as you did with one of them was remarkable. I expected them both to spend the week glowering at you in silence."

    "Part of me wishes they had," Hazō said. "Instead of actionable intel, my head is now full of Kasai Hirotora's regrets."

    "My apologies," Kei said. "Incapacitating them non-lethally was my mistake. They were not a threat in terms of combat ability, and it seemed only appropriate to apply the techniques I learned from Tenten. I did not consider the wider implications."

    "Seconded," Snowflake said.

    "No, I'm not going to condemn you for not taking lives when you didn't have to," Hazō replied with a shake of the head. "This isn't your fault. This is the fault of the shinobi world, and of Asuma's orders. We're not choosing this; we're being left with no other choice.

    "I've been wracking my brain," he went on, "but I don't see any way around it. Either we kill them now, or we take them back to Leaf and T&I kills them after squeezing them dry of everything they know. At least unless… do you think we could keep them in Leaf while we finish our research on the rift? Kagome-sensei thinks we might be able to get it open without too much difficulty if we work from both ends at the same time, but that means somebody has to be dead for it to work. If they were willing to volunteer, and Asuma accepted that we needed expendable ninja for the project…"

    "There is an obvious flaw to your idea," Snowflake said. "The two are to be eliminated because their continued survival presents a threat to Leaf's security. In other words, the Hokage will want them dead. He will not want them briefly dead and then alive again because your project has succeeded."

    "Additionally," Kei said, "we have no means of holding them that would leave them incapable of doing harm to us—their captors, the slayers of their kin, and the assumed enemies of their tribe—without simultaneously restricting their freedom to the point of cruelty. Consider, for example, how easily they might kill civilians should they feign compliance now for the purpose of later revenge, or should they change their minds at any later point."

    "We could have Noburi drain their chakra, like he did with Haru."

    "That was only possible because Haru cooperated with his punishment," Kei said. "Chakra regenerates, Hazō. An hour after being drained, our prisoner might have recovered enough chakra for a fireball capable of incinerating a crowd of civilians—or, indeed, a single unsuspecting ninja. If not, then perhaps two hours, or three. Even if you break his fingers to prevent the use of ninjutsu, and re-break them whenever they heal—already an act of torture—a chakra-enhanced kick will easily decapitate a civilian, and that is assuming he does not possess sealless ninjutsu unknown in the West. Or perhaps he could steal an exploding tag, of which there are more on the Gōketsu estate than there are people, and what then?

    "Alternatively, if you allow him outdoors, he could simply flee, with all the classified information he now possesses. The Hokage, who would not shed a tear if the Gōketsu civilian population were decimated, would punish us as brutally as we indeed deserved, even if the prisoner were ultimately recaptured."

    "There's really no way around it, then, is there?" Akane asked in a slow, pained voice that made the simmering guilt in Hazō's heart spike up into a flare of pain. "We just kill them… for being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

    "Actually," Yuno said, "since they were on the way back to their village from a perfectly ordinary ritual hunt in their territory, they were in the right place at the—"

    She cut off as Snowflake urgently shook her head.

    "Yeah," Hazō said heavily. "I take it nobody has any other ideas?"

    "None that would allow the prisoners anything remotely describable as quality of life," Kei said after a few seconds. "We cannot release them to return to their homes. For them to survive in Leaf, they would need to provide value in the Hokage's eyes that outweighed the risks posed by their presence. With the advent of AMITY, enemy shinobi are in a sense more valuable than before, but the purposes for which one might desire a living enemy shinobi are quite specific."

    "Orochimaru," Hazō said.

    "The obvious example," Kei agreed, "but Leaf General Hospital also benefits from the opportunity to vivisect a relatively healthy shinobi, and the Akimichi would surely be delighted to own a test subject for their more extreme stimulants, or the Yamanaka for invasive psychic experimentation. This is to say nothing of various non-research purposes for which the use of Leaf shinobi would be unethical in the extreme. Why, were it to become known that we possessed shinobi prisoners cleared for presence in Leaf yet bereft of legal protection, I imagine the offers would come flooding in…

    "…provided, of course, that suitable precautions were taken. There are many uses for such a shinobi that do not require them to have functional fingers, or perhaps hands, or perhaps arms. If their function is to be passive rather than active, one may also consider eyes—"

    "Enough!" Hazō snapped, then instantly regretted it. "You've made your point, Kei."

    "Apologies. During preparations for the Final Gift Programme, I naturally scoured the Nara archives for relevant information. Given the practical purpose served, it would be inappropriate to say I regret it, but… I regret it. There is already more than enough evil in this world to drown in."

    Hazō nodded, not sure what to say to that.

    "Execution it is, then," he said. "I suppose part of me always knew it would end this way. If you want to go take a walk while I handle it, I won't judge. I'm the team leader, and this is my call and my responsibility."

    The team exchanged glances.

    "I should stay," Kei said. "For all that you claim responsibility, it was my error that brought us here. I should be present for its consequences."

    Snowflake nodded in agreement.

    "I…'d rather not," Akane said. "I'm sorry."

    "It's fine," Hazō said. "None of this is your fault. Yuno?"

    "Obviously," Yuno said. "Actually, can Satsuko carry out the execution part? It would mean a lot to her."

    Hazō had a brief vision of Yuno's smile of exaltation as she hacked at the High Priest's body, blood splattering everywhere until it didn't because there was nothing left inside him, and still she didn't stop until somebody finally interrupted her.

    On the other hand, telling her he didn't trust her to do something simple without going homicidally insane was not the way to a good clan head-subordinate relationship.

    "Just be sure to make it respectful," he said. "This isn't a murder; it's us sending them off as best we can because we've run out of options."

    Yuno nodded, weighing his words.

    -o-​

    The prisoners, standing side by side, glared silently at Hazō. He was painfully aware that there was nothing he could say at this point. He was going to make the offer, because whatever honour he had demanded it. They were going to refuse, because they weren't crazy and because they had honour of their own. But the steps had to be followed.

    "I'm sorry that it's come to this," he said. "If there was any way I could make this work out so that nobody had to suffer, I promise I would have taken it. I—"

    "Then why did you come?" the spear-wielder, whose name Hirotora had admitted to be Tomotsune (they were both of the Kasai Clan, so just distinguishing them by surname wouldn't have worked). "You knew when you invaded our territory that there would be blood. If you wanted peace, you should have stayed away."

    "I can't answer that question," Hazō said. That was a lie, and they all knew it. If, in the unlikeliest of events, Leaf hadn't come here to "finish the job", and he wasn't here for the Squirrel Scroll, he wouldn't have asked about it several times, in different ways, over the week of interrogation, and he wouldn't have switched tracks to other scrolls when it became apparent it wasn't working.

    "What I can do," he moved on quickly, "is offer you a choice. We can't let you go. You understand that. If we take you back with us, you'll be interrogated—properly, I mean, by experts. All else being equal, T&I won't let you live. But if there's any chance of us being able to intervene on your behalf, it'll be in the village. It's a huge risk with a small chance of reward, but that reward would be your lives.

    "Or, if you prefer, you could die here, as painlessly as we can make it." He shot Yuno a meaningful look. "We couldn't find any third options. If you can think of anything, we will consider it. We didn't come here to take your lives. If everyone can leave here alive, without our secrets being given away, that's the best thing we can hope for."

    The prisoners looked at each other. Hirotora gave a bitter laugh.

    "I don't know what loyalty means in Leaf," he said, "but we're Squirrel-folk. We protect the people who are precious to us. You won't get a single secret out of us. And I'd rather…" He swallowed. "I'd rather die than leave my tribe."

    Tomotsune nodded.

    "Then there's one very important thing you should know," Hazō said. "Once upon a time, I accidentally got a glimpse of the afterlife. I don't mean a vision or a dream. I mean I actually saw it with my own eyes. You'll still be you there, at least for a while, but it seems like the afterlife drains chakra, and it may drain memories as well."

    The ninja stared at him in utter bemusement.

    "We don't know how to bring people back from the afterlife yet. I don't think it's ever been done, not even by Leaf ninja. But we're working on it, and once we succeed, we'll bring you back, assuming you help us find you. Try to find beaches of white sand. Once you're there, there should be grass, so you can make smoke signals. We don't know how big the afterlife is, but we will look for you. If you can find your friends, we'll bring them back too."

    …

    "What the hell?" Hirotora burst out.

    "Just remember it," Hazō said. "You'll find out yourselves whether I'm right or not.

    "Now, do you have any final words? Or anything you want us to pass along, if you ever get the chance?"

    Hirotora considered. Tomotsune's face was unreadable.

    "Yeah," Hirotora said. Then he turned away from Hazō.

    "Tomotsune, I'm sorry things ended up like this. Maybe I shouldn't have listened to Kishigami-sensei. If I'd stayed and fought, maybe…"

    "No," Tomotsune said. "You know we never had a chance. I don't blame you for anything."

    "Yeah," Hirotora said after a second. "This sucks. But now… I guess I won't have another chance to say this. You've been like a brother to me, Tomotsune. I owe you so much. You should've been happy together with Kohoshi, and you should've kicked Haka's ass and taken over as heir to the dojo. Screw what the other torchbearers thought—I know you better than they do, and I say you'd have done it."

    Tomotsune smiled, his first expression that wasn't deliberately blank or contemptuous. "You've been like a brother to me too. Even though I know I've been… arrogant. Dismissive. I've never shown you all the respect you deserve, Hirotora, and I'm sorry for that now. Also… I know you liked Kohoshi first. I'm sorry for that too."

    "She chose who she chose," Hirotora said. "Not that it matters now, I guess. Thanks for everything, Tomotsune."

    He turned back to Hazō. "I'm ready."

    "Thanks for everything, Hirotora. I'm ready as well."

    "What last rites would you prefer?" Hazō asked, forcing his screeching emotions into silence. He could feel things later, if he really had to. This moment was for them.

    "Give our bodies back to our people," Hirotora said. "Or at least leave them back where we fought, and use another of those wailing things to make sure they come find them. The priests will know what to do. If you can't even do that… I guess it doesn't really matter, does it?"

    Hazō could do that. Not now, admittedly, but maybe as the last thing before leaving Neck.

    "Yuno?"

    Yuno stepped forward, Satsuko raised to shoulder level. Her eyes narrowed in focus.

    Hirotora closed his eyes tight. Tomotsune stared straight ahead.

    Hazō's kinetic vision couldn't keep up with Yuno at full speed. All he saw was the moment's pause between the first decapitation and the second. Kei and Snowflake caught the bodies as they fell. The spray of blood painted both of them red, but their closed-off expressions didn't change.

    Hazō gratefully let the girls take care of storing the bodies away, and finally let himself feel.

    No longer caring if anyone was watching, he sank to one knee and slammed a fist against the indestructible wood of the skytower. Why was he. Always. So. Damn. Powerless? He'd revolutionised warfare, time and again. He'd built institutions and introduced concepts and ideas nobody else could have. So why was it that when he wanted to do something as simple as not killing innocent people, the entire world conspired to force him to sin? Asuma with his decree that foreigners' lives were worthless. The Squirrel-folk with their refusal to listen. The shinobi world with its OPSEC where whenever he actually used his power for anything, it had to end with murder.

    He slammed his fist against the skytower again. All of the waiting. All of the conditionals. Eventually, he'd be strong enough. Eventually, he'd be able to bring people back. Maybe. If it worked. If the Dragons didn't eat them all first. If the next out-of-context problem didn't stop him ever paying off the debt he was racking up. Somewhere in the future, he'd be the person he was supposed to be, the saviour he pretended he was. Until then, people would keep dying.

    Again. Why couldn't he find a solution that worked? Why did he promise Akane a brighter world, only to watch her suffer? Why did Kei sign up to follow his dream, only for her most basic attempts at pacifism to get crushed? Why did Snowflake's first mission end up like this? He was their clan head, boyfriend, brother—why did he have to lead them into more pain and suffering?

    Again. If he wasn't so damn—

    He felt the lightest touch of a hand, one on each shoulder. He lowered his fist.

    By the time he looked up, Kei and Snowflake were busy looking through their storage scrolls for replacement uniforms.

    Hazō stood up and began to pull himself together. There would always be more time for self-pity later. For now, he would let Jashin's wisdom guide him. Only the strongest got to decide who lived and who died. Hazō would be the strongest, and he would fight whoever it took to get there—even, especially, himself.

    -o-​

    You have received 4 + 1 (Brevity) = 5 XP.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting ends on
     
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    • Chapter 538: The Hunt Continues
  • Threadmarks

    • There was a roaring sound. It was constant, modulating up into shrieks and down into growls, and words of hateful self-loathing floated half-heard through it. The sound existed only in Hazō's mind.

    too weak / too StUpid / useless / MURDERER

    It choked him, rising up into his throat and clenching its fist to block every breath, every drop of water and morsel of food. He wanted to scream, break things, cry, but those were forbidden to him. He was the Clan Lord and the leader of the expedition; the others looked to him for support and strength. It was his job to help them with their grief, not the other way around. Having him fall apart would do nothing except frighten them and leave the expedition rudderless.

    So, he pushed the shrieking down, broke the fingers of the fist in his throat and swallowed the bones. They tore at his guts like broken shards of glass but he said nothing. He leaned hard on the Iron Nerve, keeping a somber mask nailed to his skull, plastering over the agonized, raging, self-hating face that wanted to break free.

    For the rest of the day and all of the next, he kept the mask in place and helped the others with their pain. The team disassembled the skytowers on which the prisoners had been kept and on which the team had stayed while acting as torturers and executioners. They disassembled them, put the pieces away, and used different components to set up three more skytowers, each with a portacabin, so that people could have privacy when they wanted it. Kei and Snowflake took one of the platforms and processed their grief in their own way, each hugging the only other person that they could stand to touch. Satsuko took the second, stretched across Yuno's lap as the huntress sat crosslegged, back straight, stroking her weapon/friend's haft in silent meditation.

    Akane and Hazō had the third tower to themselves. They lay inside their portacabin, wrapped in each other's arms with Akane's head on Hazō's chest. She found the slow, steady thump of his heart comforting and he felt the same about the silky feel of her hair as he stroked his fingers from her head to halfway down her back in a slow, steady rhythm.

    "Kei was right," Akane whispered at some point. "We shouldn't have captured them. A clean death in combat would have been better."

    Hazō considered that. On the one hand, he wanted to support Akane in whatever way he could. On the other, blaming this on Kei wasn't entirely fair either.

    "It's the world that's wrong," he said after a bit. "Ninja shouldn't fight each other the moment they meet. We should have been able to meet them openly and make our pitch—offer to buy the Scroll, and if they didn't want to sell then establish trade relations. Asuma shouldn't have needed to give us extermination orders." He almost left it there, but decided it would be condescending; Akane wanted some of the blame, wanted to hear that she was at fault and had in fact done something wrong, but that it didn't mean she was evil. Excusing the Gōketsu from all wrongdoing would ring false.

    "And for the rest of it, it was mostly my fault," he said. "I should have anticipated the problem, given clear orders in advance, and controlled the initial meeting, been smart enough to find a way that we didn't have to kill them. Or simply not brought us here, since this whole mission was my idea. And yes, maybe we shouldn't have captured them, but they shouldn't have started the fight in the first place."

    Akane's breath heaved in a single sob that a lifetime of discipline strangled in its crib. Ninja were not supposed to break down and sob while in the field.

    Hazō swallowed the shards of his own pain and stroked her hair.

    o-o-o-o​

    The team is going to continue searching for the ninja village where (presumably) the Squirrel Summoning Scroll (say that 5 times fast!) awaits(, buried somewhere in a swarm (is swarm the right word for punctuation?) of parentheses).

    The plan says to search at night and go slow, but doesn't specify how long to search. Let's arbitrarily say 4 days. Obviously, the first question is "What's 6 x 9?", but for today we'll say that it's "Does the team run into any chakra beasts while searching?" Answer: I have no idea where to start figuring this out, so I'm going to pull a random number out of somewhere, and I suggest you not think too closely about where. And probably don't touch the number, either. Can't be sure where it's been.

    The team is in an unfamiliar environment late at night. There's a 15% chance they get attacked for each of the 4 nights that they're searching.

    Dice say: 7, 53, 20, and 95

    Okay, one attack! I'm not feeling it for writing a random encounter, so hey, look, dice! And commas!

    There's a chance that someone is hurt badly enough to count as a Consequence. Once again pulling numbers from that location that does not appear on your average Rand McNally (not that most of you people know what the hell Rand McNally even is, you college-age whippersnappers who have your whole lives in front of you unlike those of us who have put in our time and have nothing left to look forward to except a long slide into obsolescence until we eventually sail away into the southern sunrise, not aware that our self-pitying metaphor went completely off the rails geographically).

    Where was I?

    Right, chance that someone got hurt. I dunno, let's make up some numbers.
    • Yuno: 1-5 (very unlikely since she's the skilled huntress (why does it go 'hunter' => 'huntress' but 'dominator' => 'dominatrix'? What the heck is up with that 'X'? Wait, 'dominator'? Is that the right word? For that matter, is there even such a thing as a male dominatrix? There must be, right? I dunno, whatever. Let's ninja this stuff up.)
    • Kei: 6-14 (not likely since she's the ranged person and therefore probably in the center of the group. Also, Snowflake is bodyguarding her)
    • Snowflake: 15-25 (likely to throw herself in front of Kei in case of danger, or incoming smooches from suicidal monkeys who have a fetish for nearly-bald lady monkeys (Note: Kei is nearly bald for a monkey. She's got the appropriate amount of hair for a human, but monkeys aren't that smart sometimes (unless they're from the Seventh Path, but these ones aren't (oh, hey, I did the parens thing again. Oh well.))))
    • Akane: 25.1+2i to 25.748+6i+2 (because it's funny)
    • Hazō: 26-38 (because his combat stats are garbage compared to his friends')
    • 39-120: no one
    Dice say: 110. No one is injured, and his wife Penelope is devastated. (Medium cut Greek mythology joke!)

    Okay, no one is hurt. Does the team actually find the enemy ninja village?

    On the one hand, you've got a magical bloodhound casting about for the scent of local people with a plan to follow them home on the assumption that they will be ninja. Also, you've got skywalkers so the team can search from above, looking for fires etc. Also also, you've got Kei to triangulate the signal fires and do various other big-brain Frozen Skein stuff.

    On the other hand, it's a big forest and the plan specifies to move slowly and these ninja actually try to keep their Hidden Village, you know, hidden since there are other people around who actively want to kill them. (Also, it's not a 'Hidden Village', initial capital letters, in the western continent sense. That's what Jiraiya was trying to make happen and he failed, so all you people who claim that he was a Mary Sue and never failed at anything or faced any challenges can suck it might consider reexamining your beliefs, as they appear to have some inaccuracies.)

    First, let's say there's a ??% chance that what you're looking for is inside the search radius you could plausibly cover.

    Dice say: ??

    Innnnteresting. Either it was in fact there, which is going to be interesting to all of us, or it isn't and I'm screwing with you, which is very interesting for me.

    Let's say that if the place is inside the searched area then you have a 20% chance of finding it in the 4 nights that you're searching. If it's not inside the radius then I'm going to roll the dice and ignore the result just to keep you guessing. I'm not showing the result so there's no way of knowing. Mwahaha.

    Dice say: ??

    Hazō knew what was coming when Kei settled down opposite him on the skytower.

    "Hazō," she said quietly. "It is time to face facts: this is not working. We are not going to find them like this."

    Hazō sighed. "I know."

    "I promise I did my best with—wait, what?"

    "I said I know."

    Kei stared at him. Her eyes narrowed. "Why are you agreeing so easily?"

    "Uh...because you're right?" He shrugged helplessly. "We've been looking for four nights. We've had Canvass, my magical bloodhound contractee, crisscrossing the land. We've had you, my genius sister, triangulating those signal fires we saw back when the fight started. And doing all kinds of logistics projections, and I don't even know what some of the math was."

    "An attempt at analyzing density of water availability based on the terrain we can observe from above using our skywalkers."

    "Ah, was that it? Well, we've had all that and we've skywalked all around trying to spot fires from above. We've done everything I can think of and turned up nothing."

    She studied him for a moment. "You do understand that I spent three hours in discussion with Snowflake putting together the concept map for this conversation? I had eighty-seven nodes in the conversation, all of which led inexorably to the desired conclusion whereby you would become convinced, despite many objections, that I was right and there was no reasonable hope of finding the target using our current methods. Instead of following any reasonable conversational line, you decided instead to simply carve through the entire map in one stroke."

    "Sorry?" He checked her face carefully, trying to decide if this was the angry version of his sister or the sad and self-loathing version. (The possibility of there being a third facet to her personality, while acknowledged as theoretically existing, could be dismissed as too implausible to be worth considering.)

    "Here, let's start over," he said. He stood up and stepped back two paces (all the room there was on the skytower now that everyone was rooming together again), then came over and sat down next to her.

    "Hey there, Kei," he said, his voice artificially chirpy. "Boy, this search is going so well! We haven't found them yet, but I'm really confide—"

    "Oh stop," she said, waving grumpily. "It is not the same."

    "You sure? Because I bet I can whip up a whole speech about the importance of determination and not being disheartened by not succeeding right away, and how character building it is to stick with it."

    She stuck her tongue out at him and he laughed. It felt good. The sound was still there in the back of his mind, but laughter helped drown it out temporarily.

    "Seeing as you have ruined my planned interaction, what are your thoughts on future actions?" she asked.

    Hazō let out a slow breath, thinking. "As I see it, we've got four choices. One, we keep searching as we've been doing, which we both agree isn't useful."

    "Indeed."

    "Two, we stop being cautious and we go back to hunting during the day and moving faster. We're more likely to meet enemy ninja and get into another fight, but 'enemy ninja' is another way of saying 'people that we could follow back to our target'."

    "A valid point."

    "Three, we try to manufacture a meeting. Send up smoke signals, set off Banshee seals, that kind of thing. Make our location known so that the local ninja come to investigate."

    "Fighting is a risk with no gain and capturing has been demonstrated to be unuseful," Kei said. "Therefore, I would assume you are considering either hiding our Summoning Scrolls so that we can attempt to meet in good faith and negotiate international relations without being instantly identified as Leaf, or you are considering hiding and following the investigators back to their home."

    "Something like that, yeah. Not sure it's a great idea, but M—my instructors always said to generate as many ideas as possible without worrying if they're good, then winnow out the bad ones later."

    "I give you permission to use her name in my presence, Hazō. You are unlikely to fool me with your attempted verbal contortions, and I would prefer we not indulge in such conversational timewasting."

    He smiled. "Thank you, Kei. Anyway, yeah. Option three is risky."

    "And option four?"

    "We go home." He shrugged. "We can always try again later. We've gained valuable intel on this trip, the most important point being that the evidence suggests at least one of the local tribes will identify us as Leaf the moment they see our Summoning Scrolls and that they will attack on sight. Second, population density is low so tracks and other signs are hard to find."

    "That is an extremely mature assessment, Hazō," Kei said, studying him. "You have come a long way from the young man who refused to back down from the Jōtarō mission."

    Blink.

    Was that...a compliment? Like, a sincere one that carried no hint of mockery beneath it?

    "Thank you, Kei. I think we've all come a long way from where those kids were."

    Her smile was sad. "Indeed. It has been a very long, very strange journey. Filled with many uncomfortable self-discoveries."

    "This is the part where Noburi and I would go, 'Respect!' and then bump knuckles," Hazō explained. "I'll skip that part with you, but in his absence I'm afraid that you are obligated to fulfill the second half of his obligations under Male Bonding Ritual Number Four."

    "Hazō. Are you under the impression that I am a suitable candidate for the role of a male?"

    "No, but there's no other male around and you triggered the circumstances of the ritual. By the transitive property you are therefore mathematically required to participate."

    "That is not how mathematics works!" She forced herself to stop, recognizing that she was only getting drawn deeper into the trap. With suspicious eyes, she asked, "What, precisely, are my obligations under this social ritual the very name of which excludes me from participation?"

    "You're required to drink sake to the point of inebriation and talk in exaggerated fashion about impressive deeds that you never performed and how you absolutely had sexual intercourse with multiple attractive women of higher social status than yourself." He frowned in furious contemplation. "I suppose it should really be attractive men for you, to keep the correspondence as close as possible."

    "Hazō. Dear brother. Allow me to reiterate yet again that I am not male and therefore cannot possibly be expected to participate in something that is literally named 'Male Bonding Ritual'. Let us, however, leave that aside. Let us also leave aside, purely for the sake of discussion, the fact that I have no interest in sexual intercourse with anyone and that even if I did then it would not be with a male. I would like to note that I am the undefeated champion of the Chūnin Exams, the Pangolin Summoner, the Lady Nara, a voting member of Leaf's Clan Council, one of the three KEI coordinators, and the only person on the planet capable of even somewhat channeling my sister's energies in a desired direction. Absent the Hokage himself, there is no one with higher social status. There are certainly not enough candidates to fill the 'multiple' criteria you insisted on adding."

    He laughed, and the sound in his brain became a little bit quieter.




    XP AWARD: 14

    Brevity XP: 4

    "GM had fun" XP: 1



    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, .

    Author's Note: Hazō laid out four options on what to do next. You are free to come up with additional choices as desired.
     
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    • Interlude: Gōketsu Kagome-sensei's Academy Lecture on Sealing, As Dutifully Written Down by Amori Seikaku
  • Threadmarks

    • [Today we had a very special guest: Gōketsu Kagome, one of Leaf's top sealmasters. Hagoromo-sensei asked me to write down everything he said, word for word, because he knows I have a really quick hand, and hand it in to him afterwards.]

    "How many of you kids are thinking of becoming sealmasters?"

    [Sumi, Gaku, and Fū raise their hands.]

    "That's three too many. Sealing is dangerous. Sealing gets you killed. Sealmasters have a 100% death rate. Do you know what that means?"

    [After a few seconds, Gaku raises his hand again. "It means every sealmaster dies."]

    "Exactly!"

    [Kagome-sensei suddenly points a finger at Gaku. Gaku likes to show off how smart he is, but he's also a wimp, so he shrinks back in his seat.]

    "Every sealmaster dies. Every last one. I'd never tell somebody to be a sealmaster, at least not if they weren't pants-on-head crazy to begin with. But! If you're really interested, and you don't change your mind by graduation—and you should if you want to live—then I'm going to teach you the Three Rules of Sealing. They're the product of a lifetime of sealing research, and if you follow them religiously—like the Will of Fire, I mean, because you're not supposed to know there are other religions—then just maybe you'll live long enough to decide you want a safer job, like being a seduction specialist."

    [Hagoromo-sensei leans over to whisper urgently to Gōketsu-sensei.]

    "Oh. Oops. Forget I said that. I'm not supposed to talk about seduction after what happened last time."

    [Shoku raises her hand. "What's seduction?"]

    "Uh… you can all ask your teacher after class."

    [Hagoromo-sensei's hands twitch like he wants to bring them up and strangle Gōketsu-sensei, but he sucks it up.]

    "Where was I? Oh, right. You're all going to die."

    [We all just kind of look at him.]

    "I mean unless you follow the Three Rules of Sealing!"

    [Oh.]

    "Rule One: Seals Are Stupid. Repeat after me: Seals Are Stupid."

    [Nobody says anything, because of course they don't.]

    "I can't hear you. If you want to be a ninja, you have to follow orders in the field, and sealing is my field. Now, repeat after me: Seals Are Stupid."

    [Maybe half of us go, "Seals are stupid."]

    "Louder! I don't know about you, but I'm willing to spend all day here if it makes sure none of you lot get yourselves killed the first time you pick up a brush. Seals Are Stupid!"

    [Hagoromo-sensei's hands are twitching again. I'm pretty sure he isn't willing to spend all day here. We aren't either, so we finally shout, "Seals are stupid!"]

    "Good. Now what that means is, a seal doesn't know what you want. It does exactly, exactly what you tell it to. Suppose you're making an exploding tag. That's one of the two basic seals every sealmaster learns, even if they don't go on to do research. So you think, 'I'm going to tell my seal to blow up the Tsuchikage.' What happens?"

    [Shoku puts her hand up. "The seal blows up the Tsuchikage?"]

    "Nope. The seal doesn't know who the Tsuchikage is because seals are stupid. But what it does know, unless you've messed up so badly that you're just holding a pretty piece of calligraphy, is how to blow up. Right in your hands, because it doesn't know it's not supposed to blow you up. Hard to be a ninja without hands—and that's if you're lucky and don't straight up kill yourself.

    "Now, if you're still alive, you think, 'I'm going to put the seal on a timer, and that way it'll only explode after I throw it at the Tsuchikage'. That's better. Except we're not allowed to blow up the Tsuchikage anymore because of the stupid peace treaty. Who are we still allowed to blow up?"

    [Gōketsu-sensei starts counting off on his fingers.]

    "Not the Raikage. Not the Mizukage. Not the Kazekage. Not the minors. Not even Akatsuki—what's the world coming to? Oh, I know! The Sage. He's not a citizen of any of the AMITY countries, not on paper, anyway. Right, so you're putting the seal on a timer so you can blow up the Sage of Six Paths."

    [We all kind of stare. Hagoromo-sensei's mouth has dropped open.]

    "So the Sage of Six Paths is running at you, because he doesn't want to get blown up. Everybody knows sealing is his only weakness. Remember that—it'll be on the test. But seals are stupid. The seal doesn't know where he is. If your timer is too long, your seal won't blow up in time, and he'll get to you and stick lupchanzen in your ears before it explodes. If it's too short, it'll blow up before it gets near him, and he'll get to you and stick lupchanzen in your ears after it explodes. So now you need your seal to be on a variable timer that you can set when you arm it, fast enough to react in combat. And that's maybe the simplest seal in the world."

    [I know I'm not supposed to because I should be concentrating on writing things down, but I can't help it. I raise my hand. "What's a lupchanzen?"]

    "Half-plant half-animal monster. It crawls inside your ears and takes over your brain, and then it steers around your body like a puppet and nobody can tell the difference. You never know who's been infected by lupchanzen, so whatever you do, don't let your guard down."

    [I wish I hadn't asked. Looking at the other kids' faces, they do too.]

    "So you see, because seals are stupid, you've got to think of everything in advance yourself. The seal will only do what you tell it to, so if you miss out one tiny bit of information, you'll get yourself killed, and maybe everybody who happens to be nearby.

    "And speaking of getting everybody killed, let's move on to Rule Two: The World Is Stupid. Repeat after me: The World Is Stupid!"

    [I think we got the message from last time, so we all shout, "The world is stupid!" straight away. Hagoromo-sensei scowls at Gōketsu-sensei, but Gōketsu-sensei doesn't notice.]

    "The world is stupid. A seal is a device that tells the world what to do. But even if you know what the seal is supposed to do, if you make one tiny mistake in scribing it, then when the world sees those instructions, it's not going to go, 'Oh, the sealmaster wants me to make an explosion to blow up the Sage of Six Paths.' Now, if it was you or me, and we got some kind of bonkers order that sounded really dumb, we'd probably ignore it."

    [Hagoromo-sensei opens his mouth, then closes it again like he doesn't even know where to start.]

    "The world doesn't do that, because the world is stupid. Instead, it'll trip over and fall flat on its face trying to do the impossible. That can mean anything except what you want, and it could kill you, or you and everyone around you, or wipe out your entire village, or who knows. You've got to make sure every seal is perfect, or the world will mess it up. We call that a sealing failure, because no matter how stupid the world is, the sealmaster's the one that failed by giving it dumb orders.

    "Now, I'm getting hungry, so let's move on to the final, most important rule. Rule Three: You Are Stupid."

    [We know what's expected of us. Every kid in the classroom yells, "YOU ARE STUPID!"

    Gōketsu-sensei just stands there like a statue. Hagoromo-sensei's trying so hard not to laugh he's practically doubled over.

    Eventually, Gōketsu-sensei blinks a few times.]

    "Uh. Right. What Rule Three means is that people make mistakes. Sealmasters make mistakes. If you aren't completely, utterly careful, to the point where other people call you paranoid when you know you're just being sensible, you will make a mistake. Guaranteed. You do Lucky Dance Fifteen instead of Lucky Dance Fourteen, or you get distracted preparing your ink, or you think maybe you'll skip setting up the ectoplasmic regurgitator just this once because it takes half an hour and in ten years of research you've never seen it do anything useful, and then you infuse your prototype and boom! Squish."

    [Gōketsu-sensei suddenly slaps his hands in a massive clap. Hagoromo-sensei jumps like the Headmaster just yelled in his ear.]

    "You are stupid. Most of your time as a sealmaster will be spent making sure that doesn't get you or anyone else killed. Because let me tell you what happened the one time I saw somebody leave the ectoplasmic regurgitator off while he was testing a prototype. First, we saw this big bulge right under his ribcage, with bits pushing out like he'd swallowed a hedgehog. Then, it started moving around

    -o-​

    Sorry, Lord Ritsuo. That's as far as the kid got before his hands started shaking too much to write. Also, with your permission, I'd like to take tomorrow off teaching, because I know I won't be able to sleep tonight.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes on
     
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    • Interlude: Ability to Feel
  • Threadmarks
    • There comes a time in every QM's life where he's just not feeling it. Where episodes of Taskmaster have lured him with their siren song and burned up most of the productive hours in the day, where creativity is absent or insisting on being spent elsewhere. Times when a 7-year streak is in danger of being broken.

    Fortunately, there are amazing people in this world who can step in. Who can say things like "Hey, I wrote this interlude thing if you want to put it in the bank for the next time you aren't feeling it."     People who are amazing writers and brilliantly capable of capturing the voices of the Marked for Death characters. People like @Paperclipped.

    The following was, at Paper's request, edited before being posted. Yes, I wielded the editing pen with great fervor...by which I mean that I took his excellent prose and added all the macrons, moved a few punctuation marks around, added a dozen-ish sentences to the part about the Dragons, and made a few other minor tweaks. Any issues that exist within this work are my responsibility and all the brilliant parts are Paper's. Thank you, Paperclipped!




    Interlude: Ability to Feel​

    May 19, 1070 AS (Roughly two weeks before the trip to Neck)

    "Enjoying the view?"

    Hazō turned away from his survey of the land below to see Ino grinning at him.

    "You were right, this really is a beautiful part of Fire."

    "I know. We're almost there, so you need to close your eyes."

    Hazō turned away from the lookout point atop the hill. According to Ino, the rolling forested hills around this part of Fire were often covered in fog, but today, the scattered lakes amongst the hillsides almost seemed to glow an iridescent blue in the bright sunlight, and the colors of the trees seemed especially vibrant as spring hit its stride.

    Hazō held out his hand and let Ino take it. "Fine, but if you let go or there's any sign of danger, I'm opening them."

    Ino giggled. "Why would I want to let go, silly?"

    Hazō leaned in and she gave him a peck on the cheek, then he closed his eyes.

    A couple minutes later, Ino stopped walking. "You can open your eyes now."

    Hazō opened them and looked down a short slope to a meadow filled with flowers. The hills around the meadow had hidden it from the rest of the world, leaving it an impression of cultivated pristineness, with flowers of white and red and purple and yellow and more arranged in intricate patterns that grabbed Hazō's eyes and refused to let go. The wind this high up was stronger, but the hills must have sheltered the meadow because when a gust passed them by, the flowers did little more than sway gently in the blazing light of the sun directly overhead.

    Ino elbowed him in the side. "Don't forget to breathe, Hazō."

    Hazō finally caught his breath. "It's beautiful." Almost belatedly, he noticed a small cottage tucked away to the side of the field. "Is it your clan's?"

    She nodded. "Yeah. Don't worry, this garden is only the more docile species, and they're all fairly well trained."

    "How did you keep it hidden?"

    Ino shrugged and started down the hill, leading him by the hand. "We've had gardens like this before that other clans found. The clan's had this one for… around two hundred years? It's far enough from Leaf or any civilization that no one has any business nearby, and even if you had to pass through, there are many easier ways past the hills than through this meadow."

    "Well, I'm honored that you're willing to bring me here," he said. Ino turned to face him and he stopped drinking in the sight to meet her gaze.

    "I'm glad you like it. Now go and find a place to set down the blankets, but don't kill any of the flowers."

    Hazō nodded, and Ino let go of his hand to walk over to the side of the abandoned-looking cottage. She kneeled in front of a row of delicate red flowers carefully separated from the rest of the field. Spider lilies, Hazō remembered Akane calling them.

    Hazō faced back to the flower field and tapped his storage seals to reveal his weapons for the afternoon, a folded picnic blanket and a small basket of food. Like the shield and sword of the samurai of old, he brandished them as he entered into the maze of the Yamanaka.

    o-o-o-o​

    "Gah!"

    "Oh, there you are!"

    Ino turned the corner to see Hazō angrily rubbing at his clothing.

    "I didn't know they spat acid!" he said.

    Ino laughed. "You should know better than to get between sunflowers and the sun! Did Akane not manage to get the sunflowers to grow? I thought I gave her the seeds."

    Hazō looked down at the sash marred by acid burns, then gave up and shoved it into a seal. "She's been pretty good with the flowers. Either she didn't want to plant the seeds, or Mari or Yuno killed them while she was on a mission. Or they have a latent invisibility trait, which would explain how it snuck up on me."

    "Well, they're not invisible, so you definitely need to work on your awareness, Lord Gōketsu," Ino said as she bent to help unfold the blanket. "How come Akane couldn't make it today, by the way? No offense, but she's really the one that I wanted to bring here. Not that I didn't love seeing your reaction, but she'll actually be able to appreciate all the care that went into the garden."

    Hazō smiled, and reached for her hand to give it a quick squeeze. "I definitely think I have a little bit of appreciation for the beautiful things in life." Ino met his gaze and he held eye contact for several long seconds before she looked away, blushing. Damn, he probably owed Mari a drink for that one. "Anyway, Naruto invited her to a training session and she gladly took the chance to train with one of her heroes."

    "Oh, Akane can keep up with Naruto?" Ino asked, surprised. "No one but Sasuke could when we were in the Academy, and I think it was about the same when they were on teams. He does spar with Lee now and again, though."

    It was Hazō's turn to be surprised. "Lee can keep up with Naruto?"

    Ino shrugged. "I watched once or twice, and yeah, Lee can get him on the back foot if Naruto doesn't use jutsu. It's incredibly impressive if Akane can keep up one-on-one, jutsu or not."

    "I don't think she can fight evenly with him. I think it's an olive branch of sorts." He didn't know if Ino knew that Akane had Shadow Clone, so he didn't mention that Akane and Naruto weren't training one-on-one, but six-on-six. Instead, he stopped fussing with the blanket and sprawled himself over it, enjoying the comfort of Ino's presence as she delicately sat down beside him.

    "So," Hazō said after a moment's pause. "It's been a long time since we had the time to catch up. Any new gossip?"

    Hazō couldn't keep himself from smiling as Ino's eyes lit up.

    o-o-o-o​

    "...then, Kei said that she'd sooner die than wear a dress like that, so then Fujisawa said – well, wrote – that she'd die if Kei wore a dress like that, but she had this little drawing thing that looked like a contented spirit rising up to heaven and as Kei was looking at it you could tell that she was suddenly kind of interested in trying it on, so Hinata threw the dress at her and she disappeared into the changing room blushing like crazy and came out a couple minutes later, redder than a carnation and said we needed to burn the shop down to exorcize it."

    Hazō chuckled at Ino's tale. "How do you have such a great memory for all the details of these interactions? Unless it's something really important to me, I just don't have room in my head for more than the high level details."

    Ino shrugged. "Social spec training. You learn to keep these things straight in your head so you can review what everyone thinks or what angles are most useful on them."

    "Doesn't that get tiresome though?" Hazō asked. "I know Mari's mentioned more than once that she wished she could switch her training off sometimes."

    Ino shrugged again, but this time Hazō noted a sense of forced casualness. "It is what it is."

    "Ino, you know you can be honest with me, right?"

    She looked at him for a second, then laughed. "Right, how could I forget? I remember way back when you and Kei did that weird thing in the cafe for Shika. You still talk like that sometimes, bringing every part of the conversation from subtext to text, don't you? It's kinda weird, honestly."

    "I don't think it's weird," Hazō said, defensive. "It's just a clearer way of communicating with people."

    "Hazō, if it's really just better, why doesn't everyone do it?"

    Hazō shrugged. "It takes a lot longer to lay everything out explicitly, and that's inconvenient. It also takes attention to detail to make sure everything you want to say gets communicated."

    "That's not really it," Ino said with a faint smile. "A lot of the time, you want to be intentionally vague or misunderstandable. When you're doing kata and someone comes and asks you what you're training, they're not really asking you for an explanation of the moves. They're asking you if they can join."

    Hazō raised an eyebrow. "Really? If so, why don't they just ask?"

    Ino shrugged. "Because then it creates a pressure on you to say yes."

    "And why couldn't they just explain the possibility of pressure and ask me to ignore it?"

    "Because that doesn't remove it, it just makes you think that you're removing it. And also, they may not want to feel rejected if you say no to a direct question, so they'll learn to take a no if you just say 'taijutsu practice' because that doesn't hurt, even though they're hoping you'll say 'an advanced kata from Mist's Academy, want to learn it?' Not all subtext is conveying factual knowledge, Hazō, and some of the emotional stuff can't be pulled into the light without changing it."

    Hazō exhaled through the nose. "I could see it. This won't stop me from doing it in important conversations though."

    Ino laughed. "I wouldn't want you to. It's part of that adorably dorky attitude you've got going on that's so weirdly charming."

    Hazō smiled at her and reached for her hand, pulling her in for a cuddle. "I like the whole 'adorable' and 'charming' part, can I get more of that and less of the 'dorky' and 'weird'?"

    "No," she said, sticking her tongue out at him, then squealed as he started to tickle.

    o-o-o-o​

    "It's such a clear day today," Ino said, looking up at the sky.

    "Yeah," said Hazō, lying next to her.

    "Do the sunsets above the clouds look different on clear days?" she asked.

    "Well, for one, there are no clouds on clear days," he said. Ino lightly slapped him on the shoulder and he laughed. "Wouldn't you rather find out for yourself?"

    "Yeah. When we can get Akane again, we should really go for another night on a skytower."

    o-o-o-o​

    "And that one is lavender, and it means that you'll be faithful and true," Ino said, pointing to a purple flower.

    "Mmm," Hazō replied, trying not to fall asleep in the warm afternoon sunlight. Ino was seated in his lap and he was running his hands gently through her hair as she pointed out the flowers around them.

    "And that one is verbena, and it means that you want to work together with someone," she said, pointing to yet another purple flower.

    "Mmm." He noted Ino's words, but tried to get lost in the raw sensations of the moment. The silky-smooth hair like golden sunlight flowing through his fingers, the warm and supple feeling of Ino's slender neck and shoulders below it, the smell of the flowers and…

    "Ino, have I told you I love your hair?"

    "As you should," she said, pulling her hands back to comb it over one shoulder.

    "I think about it more than I probably should admit. In my own head, I think I've called it a curtain of sunshine," he said, pushing her hands away so he could keep on running his own through the strands.

    Ino turned to face him with a smile, but he continued. "I love how it feels, how it looks… but I can't quite figure out what it smells like." She watched, expression increasingly bemused as he sniffed a lock of her hair. "What perfume do you use? Apricot?"

    "Close."

    "Peach?"

    "No, but still close," she said with a smile.

    Hazō thought for a moment, then shoved Ino off his lap. She exclaimed in annoyance, but he had pulled out his seal pouch and was flicking through his storage seals.

    "A sealmaster is always prepared, Ino, and I prepared this a long time ago."

    She slowly raised herself to her feet. "Hazō, what do you mean?"

    "I mean…"

    He found the storage seal and flourished it, before opening it with a pop of smoke. Inside was a single jar, slightly chilled with faint condensation along its outside.

    "Plum," he said, as she bent down to grab the jar.

    She looked at it, then at him with joy on her face. "Plum jam! You remembered!"

    o-o-o-o​

    Hazō sighed a relaxed sigh as Ino shifted slightly, then realized she had opened her bright blue eyes and fixed him with a deep stare. They were curled around one another and their faces were only a couple inches apart, and he drank in the intensity of her gaze.

    "Hazō, how do you cuddle so easily?" For a silly question, she sounded so serious.

    "What do you mean?" he asked.

    "You're giving up a lot of control. You're making yourself vulnerable and weak to someone who might be dangerous. Didn't you come from a life where doing those things would kill you?"

    Hazō stopped to think about that for a moment. "As a village ninja, you think a lot about who is your friend and who is your enemy. Even if you can always tell who's who, just thinking it gives you doubts and forces you to double check, so you can never trust someone fully.

    "As a missing-nin, it's simple. Your team are your friends. Everyone else is your enemy. You trust your team with your life and more every single moment of every single day. Not even Kagome-sensei could stay paranoid for that long. So when I started dating Akane, neither of us had any fear of each other. I think that's where I learned this trust, and I'm extending it to you," he said, holding Ino a little tighter. "Maybe it's dangerous, but I really do trust you."

    Ino nodded and closed her eyes, but Hazō could see that she was thinking by the cutest little frown in her brow. He smiled and gave her a small kiss.

    After a couple more minutes, she said, "You and Akane have so much history together that I want to understand. I'll never live through the things you did, but if we get a chance to travel, could you take me around?"

    Hazō considered. "You mean you want me and Akane to show you the places in the Elemental Nations we traveled to while we were missing-nin?"

    "Yeah," Ino said. "I want to understand the stories you tell. I won't have been there in Snow, but I want to get what Akane means when she jokes about Mari's time there."

    "Sure, I'll ask Akane about it. Not everywhere we went had happy memories, but enough of them did that it could be nostalgic."

    Ino tucked her chin down and snuggled into his chest, this time leaving Hazō to think for a few minutes.

    "Ino…"

    "Yes?"

    "Do you…" Hazō trailed off. "Do you ever feel jealous of me and Akane?"

    Ino untucked her head to smile at him. "Don't be silly." She returned to his shirt.

    "Ino… that isn't an answer to my question. You can be honest with me, I promise. I want to do the best for you."

    "Are you jealous of me and Akane?" she asked.

    "No, and that's also not an answer."

    She didn't respond. Hazō gave her space.

    After a long moment, she said, "I feel great when all three of us are together. It's really wonderful and magical and something that I never thought I'd have. I love spending time with you alone, because you make me feel so cared for and important and protected, and spending time with Akane is a different kind of wonderful that I think you know as well as I do."

    She grew quiet again, and he didn't push her.

    "But when you and Akane go and do things alone, yes. I feel jealous."

    "I understand," Hazō said. "Thank you for letting us go on that date to Tanzaku Gai. It must have been hard, and I really appreciate that."

    Ino still didn't say anything and Hazō could tell she was working through something in her mind. "When you and Akane went on that date, I felt something terrible. Like a big, twisting tapeworm of jealousy in my chest, tying itself into knots at my own thoughts. I know you're not trying to make me feel left out, or unimportant, or second-best, or anything like that, but that is how I feel when you two are having your own thing. You two have this story-book, fairytale romance, and no matter how wonderful it feels to be a part of, it still makes me hurt when I'm suddenly standing outside it."

    She looked up at him. "Then I tell myself that you don't mean any of that, and that I'm making it all up in my head and that makes me feel worse. Then I tell myself that Akane would never feel this way when I'm spending time with you, and that makes me feel even worse."

    She shrugged again, hiding her pain with an airy demeanor even if Hazō could still feel the tension in her body. "Whatever. It's like Akane said. Jealousy is an emotion. It's a strong one, yeah, but it's just an emotion. It's another way for me to practice keeping control of my mind, like any Yamanaka should be able to. I'll get there."

    Hazō wanted to say something in response, anything at all to help reassure Ino, but before he could, she sighed and snuggled into his side. The moment passed.

    o-o-o-o​

    "...and we finally managed to track down Shimazu and bring him to Leaf, so I'm excited for that." Ino smiled. "We're not sure exactly what we'll do with the compound, but we're ready to fill in the sinkhole once Shimazu finishes the designs, so we'll finally heal that scar over."

    Hazō put a finger to his chin. "Shimazu… he was the architect that designed the porcelain museum in Tankazu Gai?"

    "That was his brother actually. He did the Sea and Stars Garden, if you've been?"

    "I haven't, maybe we'll have to make another day trip of it," he said, giving Ino a grin. "So he's designing the new main house for the Yamanaka?"

    She nodded enthusiastically, making her ponytail bounce. "Yeah! He's already shown me a few sketches and they look pretty promising. He wants to play into the bush clover theme, and has some ideas that could use the main house as the flower, the walkways as vines, and the side houses as leaves and so on. I don't think he knows about skywalkers, but we might end up having the first compound to look really beautiful from above. We've come a long way since the Warring Clans era."

    "Mhm," said Hazō.

    Ino raised an eyebrow. "You don't sound very enthusiastic about this project. What, not a fan of Shimazu's work?"

    "No, it's not that. I've never seen it before, remember?"

    "Oh, I see," Ino said, leaning in with a sly look. "Some people are nose blind, others are tone deaf, and you're building-dumb." She smiled to herself. "That explains all the big red slabs at the Gōketsu compound."

    "Hey!" We were working under time pressure."

    "Oh yeah? Then where's your plans to fix things up, now that you have the time?"

    "We don't," Hazō grimaced. "We still need to build more housing for the refugees."

    "Well, make sure to put it on your list," Ino said. "Keep an eye out for architects, or even just buildings you like. You could use it as an opportunity to bond with another clan by commissioning the same person that designed their buildings, or even just using an architect from the same school of thought."

    Hazō chuckled. "I already know who I want designing the Gōketsu estate, if I ever get the chance."

    "Is that so?" Ino said, eyebrows raised in interest. "Who?"

    "The Arachnids. Their capital city, Sanctuary, is something truly incredible. It's built over a massive canyon that seems to go down forever, and everything is built suspended between the walls. They have multiple types of threads, though no colors as intense as the dyes we get here, so everything is this brilliant, shining white color under the sun, and every single building plays a part in the greater whole. They don't have hovels or shacks, either. Every single home is designed by one of their master architects. I remember one that was a series of interlaced spirals of coiled silk rope that spun around like the spinning seeds of the maples in the Yamanaka compound."

    "Wow, that does sound like quite the sight," Ino said. "But architecture would be the wrong job for them to do for humans. It sounds like all those beautiful suspensions would be wasted when building on plain, boring flat ground."

    "They're very focused on their art, so I can't just pay them to work on the Gōketsu estate. I need to get them interested somehow. Maybe Kagome-sensei will make them curious about the Human Path," Hazō mused. "But it sounds like you had an idea. If we can't get the architects to build human buildings, what job suits them instead?"

    "Fashion," said Ino.

    "Fashion? Like making clothes? I doubt it," said Hazō. "I've asked and they have barely any interest in spinning bolts of silk, much less in turning it into shirts and trousers."

    "No, silly, not making clothes like some peasant woman sewing shirts for her eight sons. Fashion."

    Hazō frowned. "What's the difference?"

    "Fashion is art," she said, "and one that it sounds like the Arachnids have a good sense for. When to keep your cloth tight and taut, and when to let it drape to hint at underlying shapes. When to use your colors and textures to draw attention, and when to instead leave gaps to see the bare skin beneath."

    "I suppose you're right. But I don't think they'd be interested in human fashion, and they don't wear clothes of their own."

    Ino smirked. "I can change that. Get Kagome to give me an hour with one of their architects, ideally one who likes fine detail work, and we'll make styles the world has never seen before."

    o-o-o-o​

    "Oh, did you ever read that book of poetry that I got you?" Hazo asked. The sun had dropped several degrees in the sky over the course of their long, meandering conversation. Their lazy day in the sun would come to a close eventually, but for now the young summer's warmth kept them both drifting in and out of a pleasant sleepy haze.

    Ino looked guilty. "No, sorry. I've been meaning to, but dealing with the clan and the war and…"

    "I understand," Hazō said. "I wanted to ask if I could have it back."

    "Have it back?" Ino said, propping herself up on her elbows. "Hazō, I don't think you understand what a gift is."

    "Sorry, I just want to borrow it. I've been studying the Fourth's sealing notes, which are all mixed up with his personal poetry, which is awful. Still, reading it made me realize that anyone can write poetry."

    "Are you saying that the Fourth shouldn't have picked up the pen?" Ino said with a sly smile.

    "No, the opposite," Hazō said. "He was so incredibly bad at conveying things in a beautiful way-" Ino giggled. "-that I realized that the things he felt – the sadness of war, his love for his wife, his pride in his village – were things worth expressing not because they're beautiful, but because they're meaningful."

    "So…" Ino said, absently twirling a strand of hair around her finger. "You're going to write some poetry?"

    "I already wrote some poetry. For Akane, to cheer her up after, you know. It was pretty bad. I probably shouldn't have done a full stanza on just her toenails…"

    Ino's mouth hung open in a tiny 'o'. "You thought it was a good idea to write poetry about her toenails?"

    "I didn't know better!" Hazō said, throwing his hands in the air. "I was working off of the Fourth's work. So when I sat down to write some poetry for you, I thought that maybe I should reference the authors you actually like rather than the work of the brilliant sealmaster and brilliant leader that was our Fourth Hokage."

    "Mmm," Ino said, flopping onto her back. "I'll forgive you for what you did to Akane if I see some love poems on my desk by next weekend. And you can borrow the Tanaka book if you want."

    "Thank you dear."

    There was a lull in the conversation, and Hazō let his eyes flutter shut.

    "So, speaking of Akane's mission…" Ino trailed off.

    "Yes?"

    "Inaho wants to apologize."

    "To Akane?" Hazō asked, surprised.

    "No, to you, you nitwit," she said, reaching a hand over and prodding him gently in the side of his head. "Yes, to Akane. I don't know exactly what happened on that mission, but you know that Akane makes friends as fast as you make seals. Inaho liked her, and she feels bad that she hurt her somehow, and it's made worse since she's seeing her Clan Head deal with the fallout."

    "I see, it could maybe be good for Akane. I ought to double check with Mari or Noburi about it."

    "Mhm. I can send Inaho over once you decide. I'll be honest though, I don't think she really understands what she did wrong. I don't really understand either."

    Ino's words stopped, but Hazō could tell by a hint in her inflection that there was something else she wanted to say, that she wasn't quite done. He kept quiet.

    "I… thought I understood what you and Akane call 'Uplift'. I thought it was about making lives better for civilians and for Leaf, about giving opportunities to people who didn't have them and protecting the weak. The mission, it was bad, but it was a mission. You don't count what happens on a mission, and you were already doing so many amazing things back home."

    Ino paused again, gathering her thoughts.

    "So I asked Akane about why she cared for that random city in Earth Country. Do you know what she said?"

    Hazō shook his head. "No."

    "She said, 'They were people too.'

    "I still didn't get it. I made her tea and sat with her and showed her some new perfumes we'd made and tried to take her mind off things. It was only when I was getting ready for bed that I thought about it again, and I wondered what she meant by that.

    "And I thought, what would have to happen for me to feel as much pain as Akane? What would I feel if three people died? So I imagined a world where I woke up the next day and someone whisked me away to a funeral where Shika and Chōji and Akane were dead.

    "I could feel that. I never saw my dad's body, they said there wasn't enough of it left after Deidara…" Ino swallowed. "After the Collapse, when we had finally tended to all the living and I knew my mom was… dead. I insisted on seeing her. I knew they had just dragged her out of the ground and it wasn't going to be pretty but I didn't want both my parents to meet the ancestors in the cremation chamber without seeing either of them one last time. And…"

    Ino paused for a long time. "It was bad." She pulled out a handkerchief to dab her eyes.

    "So I could kind of imagine what it would be like if that happened three times instead and it was Shikamaru and Chōji and Akane. So I thought then, what if it was thirty people? That's all the ninja in the Yamanaka Clan. I love them all and I'm responsible for them all, but apart from Ineko and Sekie, I don't know them even a fraction as well as my closest friends. And I thought about how I would feel if I did know them all that well, and all of them had died instead.

    "And then I thought, what if it was three hundred people? That's all the civilians in Yamanaka too. I don't even know if I'd be able to feel anything, looking at that many bodies at once, so I imagined walking around the Yamanaka compound and it just being empty. Dead. Quiet. The flowers overgrowing or dying, the walkways getting covered in dirt, the buildings falling into tatters. The childrens' toys laying on the floor forever, the half-worn clothes waiting on their hooks forever, the big hall just laying empty forever with no one to ever sit down and eat a meal in it ever again. What if every family that I'm responsible for died a horrible death and I was a witness to it?"

    Ino's voice had grown very quiet. She seemed smaller, somehow. "And then I thought, what if things were ten times worse than that? What if every single person in that town where Akane did her mission was as precious and valuable to the world as Shika and Choji and Akane are to me…" She curled up a little, as if against a sudden chill in the bright summer afternoon. "...and I killed them. What would I do then?"

    He didn't answer. He didn't have any response.

    She inhaled deeply, then breathed out the tension. "I didn't think like that for very long. I don't think I'm able to hold it properly in my mind even now. But I think I saw, for just a moment, a fraction of what you and Akane see when you look at the world."

    Hazō waited several long seconds for her words to echo in the space between them, letting them fade away as he made sure she had nothing else to say.

    "Ino, give yourself more credit. I think you understand how she feels much more clearly than I do."

    "What? Hazō, she learned it from you, didn't she? She thinks like that because of Uplift, right?"

    "Ino… Yes, she learned some specifics from me, but I think she was always this kind of person. I can share ideas to show her that there's another path, but if we'd never met she would probably end up miserable at being forced to do these things. I want the world to be a better place, but that doesn't mean I feel its pain as sharply as Akane."

    "Why not?" Ino asked.

    "I… I don't know," Hazō said. "I've killed people with fire before, Ino. Innocent people. When my team was traveling across the Seventh Path to find the Arachnids, the Cat Clan was harassing us, so I set fire to their savannahs. Our team moved just behind the front of the fire with smoke filters and we didn't see any more trouble. It wasn't until afterwards that I thought about who would be killed by the fires. It wouldn't be the fighters that we would have killed otherwise, who would have killed us if we didn't. They're physically fit and able. They'd get out of the way. The people who actually died would be the weak ones. The elderly and the children."

    Ino had raised an eyebrow. "Hazō, just to be clear, we're talking about cats, right?"

    "They're people, Ino. They talk and think and feel emotions. They tell stories and have families and make mistakes and learn, just like us. They just have four legs instead of two." He fixed her with a serious look. "The summon clans are hundreds of thousands of people strong, and Cat had a very dry summer. In all the country, there must have been hundreds of mothers who couldn't carry all their children to safety and had to choose or die, and hundreds of grandparents who had to stop running so their children could go ahead faster.

    "I don't feel anything about it.

    "I know it's a terrible, terrible thing. When I think about that, I can see clearly that it's bad, but that doesn't make me feel it. I can sense Akane's pain and empathize when she's right in front of me, but I can't feel the same way she does. I… I don't know why."

    "Are you sure you don't?" Ino asked, her voice almost a whisper.

    "I… I don't know," he said, weighing options over in his mind. Eventually, he decided. "Something happened to me at the start of last year. I was hit by a powerful, psychic attack that almost killed me."

    Ino gasped. "Was it while you were in Orochimaru's house?"

    "Yes, but it wasn't something from his Basement. Something else. Anyway, it turned my brain inside out and I barely managed to grab all the pieces of me and pull myself back together. Ever since then, I've been feeling echoes of it. Then Orochimaru happened and the Collapse and Akatsuki and it felt like I was watching myself from a distance on a spinner's loom, getting stretched apart and waiting for the flawed thread I was made of to snap.

    "There was a couple months break when I was learning to be a Summoner, then the mission I'm talking about happened. I had to go and deal with the Great Seal and the Dragon5s, and it just so happens that something about th3m h|ts exactly the same part of my braIN that was under the psychic attack. Everyyy time I eve|V think a#out them," he could feel his skin starting to peel away in long, curling strips, "I fe3l like I'm s7a.ting tO fray a.d unra#el, and wHen 7he Dr\g0ns arckk n@a&by"—he paused as the words shimmered on the edge of reality, quickly tangling his fingers into her hair and breathing slowly, eyes closed and focused on the feel of silk on fingers and dirt on toes.

    When he opened his eyes it was to find Ino watching him. Her head was cocked by necessity, as he had raveled too much of her hair into his fingers and she either needed to move towards his grip or fight her way free. His eyes went wide and his fingers sprang open as he started to flinch away, but she caught his hand before he could move. She caught it, and she kissed his palm, and she pressed it to her cheek.

    "It's all right," she said quietly. "I'm not fragile."

    He swallowed jerkily. "Sorry."

    "Again, not fragile. What happened just now?"

    "There's something wrong with me, I think. Just thinking about the Dra.0ns makes my brain start to crackle. Anything more than that and the world starts to…crack." There were shimmers in the air above her head, very faint intimations of daggered teeth and vomitous claws. He breathed, and focused on the feel of her hair, and the air smoothed unreality away. "When it gets bad, it's only real|y intense physical memories like Akane's touch or your hair that let me keep my mind in one piece." As he spoke, he let his eyes fall shut and breathed slowly. Ino let him have the time.

    "I killed one of them," he said eventually. "Well, the Arachnids did, using my plan and my tools. Tens of thousands of people died when its brothers took revenge, but I can't even think about it st.a!ght because my mind w0n't let me. I don't know for sure, but maybe that's why I can't feel what Akane is feeling."

    "Hazō…" Ino said, "I don't think this is a huge problem. We can never feel as strongly for people far away as we can for people in front of us. That's fine. We don't need to care for people whose faces we've never seen and whose voices we've ever heard, as much as we do family. That's fine. That's what makes us fight for our family that much harder."

    "Yeah, I know, it's just—" Hazō cut himself off. "I don't know. I don't know how we can help Akane. I'll check about Inaho though, okay?"

    Ino hummed agreement and slowly lay back to look up at the sky once again. She stayed close to him and made sure to drape a length of her hair across his fingers.

    o-o-o-o​

    "Ahh," Hazō groaned as he pulled himself up. Ino pouted for a moment as he left her arms, but then rose to her feet, silent and elegant as always.

    "Thank you for coming out with me today, Hazō. It was really fun."

    "It was my pleasure," Hazō said as he started to pack up the blankets. "Thank you for bringing me here, I'm glad I got to see it."

    "Don't tell anyone about this clearing," Ino said, her voice serious. "It's still a minor clan secret. I just trust you not to burn it down with a jutsu or something."

    "Yeah, I know," he said with a smile. "Though I hope you can bring Akane back here someday."

    She nodded. "I hope to, but it'll have to wait a while. I'm definitely going to pay for taking a full day off."

    Hazō sighed. "Tell me about it. Gaku still won't forge my signature, so I still have to spend hours on paperwork every day."

    "The burden of a Clan Head never ends, does it?"

    Hazō tucked the last storage seal back in his belt and straightened up. "It does not. Shall we?" he said, inclining his head back towards Leaf.

    Ino laced her fingers between his and, together, they left.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Interlude: The Advisor's Story
  • Threadmarks
    • Interlude: The Advisor's Story
    ​
    My Lord,

    Last time we spoke, you requested an overview of Yagura's rise to power—in this you already display more wisdom than your predecessor, who, like most, sought to learn from the successes of the past rather than its failures. Consider, then, this to be a foundation for further discussion, perhaps over the next batch of that excellent Hot Springs tea.

    It has been my experience that ambitious shinobi can be broadly categorised into three types. The first, most common, are born ambitious, afflicted from the beginning with a nameless craving that will either propel them into greatness or destroy them (the probabilities are evident from the number of great shinobi in this world). Others gain ambition as they age, faced with temptation and discovering that their hitherto-unknown desire is almost within reach. For many, this feeling will remain, no matter how much they accomplish. Finally, a few have ambition thrust upon them, opening their eyes to a broken world and realising that no one else will do what must be done. You now know that this fate, once assigned, is inescapable.

    Karatachi Noriko, it is my belief, was of the second breed. Once a trivial young woman, a minor factor in greater calculations, she faced her limits at the Chūnin Exams, and, I believe, rejected the weak self she discovered with all her heart and soul. From the day of her promotion, her natural charisma became yoked to an insatiable desire for power, becoming a war chariot that trampled all in its way. Her greatest opportunity arose when the Karatachi fell victim to a succession crisis—the heir was an intelligent man, but personally weak, which counted for more, while his younger brother was a simple-minded war hero of the sort that rush courageously into danger for the sake of their comrades, oblivious to the concept of calculated sacrifice.

    Karatachi, having by then clawed her way to leadership of the branch family, pledged her support to the heir on condition of marriage. He, mindful of a growing desire among his brother's faction to achieve an expedient solution to the problem, perhaps even the next time he was out of the village, leapt at her offer. Needless to say, it was the last independent political decision he would make.

    The Ninchishō Affair, of course, was never recorded in the history books, but suffice it to say that the resulting power vacuum was like a dream come true to the likes of Karatachi. I will forever respect poor Lady Rebi for her attempt to stand against the tide of darkness consuming Mist culture, but in the end, she was the wrong woman in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the kami showed her no mercy.

    Naturally, Lady Rebi's fall necessitated the creation of a new jinchūriki, and also the election of a new Mizukage. It was Karatachi's stroke of genius to propose that both should be the same figure, and a display of extraordinary political skill to have the net land on her infant son. By leveraging the resentment accumulated over Lady Rebi's twilight years, she was able to persuade the other clan heads of the benefits of a figurehead child Kage, with the Three-Tails to lend him legitimacy against those who did not subscribe to her plan.

    Thus was born Yagura, and at first Karatachi's regency faction enjoyed a blissful dominance. In fairness, it must be said that they were not poor leaders, merely short-sighted ones—and never more short-sighted than when they failed to observe the changes occurring in their puppet. It is a simple truism of parenting that a child obeys their parents out of a hunger for approval. Love is not necessary, and discipline is not sufficient. The saint, the sage, and the abuser will achieve the same degree of obedience so long as they grant and withhold approval to the same extent.

    What happens, then, when a child ceases to require this ambrosia?

    Yagura refused to be dominated. It was anathema to him already at that age, while the notion of a moral debt was as yet unknown, and as for love… well, perhaps history might have gone down another path had Karatachi been a different kind of mother. But in the event, Yagura's "advisors" failed to pay attention, failed to recognise the child demigod's growing tantrums as a warning to switch to more subtle tools, and in the end, failed to bow down. The Karatachi Clan was wiped out in a single day.

    You will know far better than I, of course, but I came to believe, after many years of observation, that a key trait of the Tailed Beasts as individuals is kindness—an alien kindness, as befitting a god beyond good and evil. Yagura's passenger was not some mere power source. Rather, it heard Mist's unspoken desires and granted them, by means of its host who had channelled an impossible amount of its energies through a young spirit still attaching itself to its body. It gave us an iron fist and an iron law, defined by hatred, xenophobia, and paranoia. I cannot guess how much of what followed was Yagura the boy, and how much was the taint in Mist's soul writ large by one who would be kind.

    Mist's ruler, whoever he was, was brilliant. He quickly learned his most important lesson: a child's ignorant, arbitrary rule was ineffective. His actions consistently failed to have the outcomes he expected or desired, and though his power was sufficient to impose his will, together with the fresh memory of the Karatachi's fall, he was still incapable of granting his own wishes. Thus, he sought new, humbler, advisors.

    The first to answer his call were, of course, the most ambitious. I am grateful to them, for observing their colourful fates allowed me to optimise my own, more sophisticated approach. I had joined the Mori Clan partially with this scenario in mind, after all, and cultivated a reputation for expertise and lack of personal ambition accordingly. With some adjustments—the most difficult being to find a way to be interesting to a child—I wove my way into a position much resembling my current one. Then, after taking time to earn trust, I began to manoeuvre competent, like-minded comrades into place.

    I will always wonder whether we could have done more in those days. Those of us who pushed too far in our efforts to moderate the excesses of Yagura's reign soon found ourselves at the Torture and Interrogation Department's tender mercies, yet the price for restraint was ever paid in the suffering of the masses. I will not enumerate our accomplishments here—suffice it to say that the mass exile that came to be celebrated as Unity Day was not Yagura's original plan for divesting Mist of potentially subversive foreigners—nor our failures, such as the law you recently repealed governing extrajudicial executions in times of unrest.

    Of course, our strategy could not last forever. Eventually, Yagura decided he had learned all that Mist's most educated (the jester inside me tempts me to write "wisest") experts had to teach, and we were dismissed—with our lives, for those who had successfully walked the line between "too useful to kill" and "too clever to trust". At the time, it tasted like defeat. However, the Bloody Mist had come and gone. The village was still standing. Population numbers were within acceptable boundaries. The legal code retained some protections for the vulnerable. Yagura had done his very best to fulfil Mist's cravings, yet Mist had survived.

    Perhaps, My Lord, you can now better appreciate my perspective on the new age in which we find ourselves. Yagura is gone forever, and there is no word yet of his passenger's revival. An era of cold, implacable order has been replaced by an era of chaos—the one tool I am incapable of wielding, and so have left in the hands of my wayward apprentice. You have often spoken of the need to heal the wounds of Yagura's reign. Consider that this could be the time to heal Mist's heart itself.

    Cordially yours,

    Mori Ryūgamine
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 539: Disappointment
  • Threadmarks

    • Canvass leaned in, snuffling with narrowed eyes.

    "This is the point at which I usually expect someone to buy me dinner," Panashe said, not looking up from where she was filing her claws with a whetstone.

    "Hmph," Canvass said, sitting back on her haunches. Her droopy face made it hard for Hazō to judge her facial expressions, but he was learning that Dog body language was less about the face and more about the ears, tail, and angle of the head. Canvass's ears were neither raised nor lowered, her chin was only slightly down, and her head was completely vertical. Her tail wasn't moving. He honestly had no clue how to interpret that aside from 'probably not about to fly into a murderous rage.'

    "Thank you for your forbarance, Specialist," Kei said.

    "Eh." Panashe put her whetstone away and stretched, rolling her shoulders to make her back crack. "So. Why am I here getting nose-groped, Summoner?"

    "Planning session," Hazō said, looking around the circle of listeners. "We've been randomly wandering around the woods, focusing on being stealthy and not getting into trouble as we look for the ninja with the Summoning Scroll. We haven't found anything and I'm done with that. It's time we stop focusing on not losing and start focusing on winning."

    He paused and looked around at the faces of his audience. The reactions ranged from 'interested' (pangolin and dog) to 'nothing' (Kei, as usual), with a brief stop in 'nervously intrigued' (Snowflake and Akane) and 'disturbingly enthusiastic' (unsurprisingly, Yuno).

    "I intend to find where these Squirrel ninja sleep," Hazō said. "I am not going home empty handed." He nodded to Kei. "I talked with our resident genius and we agreed that it's time to fish or cut bait."

    Akane raised her hand. "Fish or cut bait?"

    "Mist saying," Hazō explained. "It means stop trying to do everything at once at the expense of doing anything well. Instead, pick something and execute fully."

    She nodded. "Ah. In Leaf we say 'sharpen or chop'."

    "Right. Anyway, forget slinking around at night, desperately trying not to be spotted. We've been spotted, and those Banshee seals we used in the fight were probably audible across most of Neck. There's no point screwing around anymore so I want to do this as efficiently as possible. Canvass, you've been tracking these guys since we got here. Talk to us about what they might be doing to break their trail and how we can help you get around it."

    Panashe's head was cocked in what Hazō had learned to recognize as a very slight smile. He prayed that Canvass wouldn't recognize that body language and take it as the criticism of her abilities that it undoubtedly was. Panashe had a truly S-rank ability to remain within all professionally-required bounds while still being utterly smug and scathing to others.

    "They move around a lot in this whole area," Canvass said. "There are scent trails for dozens of humans that move at ninja speeds all through here, and it rains enough that they mush together. I come to a crossroads in two scent trails made by the same person, which one is the continuation of the one I was following? Unless one of them is much fresher than the other, it's hard to tell. Then there's the issue that they use the rivers as highways since they give clear travels, and sometimes they run in the trees. I can follow them from the ground while they're in the trees, but air-scenting is a lot harder than ground-scenting."

    "Suppose we carried you?" Akane asked. "That way you could stay closer to the scent."

    Canvass's ears rose. "Hm. Interesting." She looked the girl up and down. "No offense, but I'm heavier than I look..."

    Akane and Kei smiled. Hazō could not suppress a small laugh.

    "I'm pretty sure that the Demigoddess of Youthful Ass-Kicking will not have a problem carrying you for as long as you both want," he said. "You might be heavier than you look, but when she hugs me I have to remind her not to accidentally snap my spine."

    Akane blushed and looked away, mumbling something about, "One time, and you were fine the next day." She smiled when Hazō interlaced his fingers into hers and rubbed his thumb across her palm.

    "Back on topic," Kei said. "Canvass, you mentioned that the problem was scent trails crossing. Am I correct that if one of the trails was significantly newer, that would fix the problem? Or if it was somehow different like if they'd been hit by perfume or something?"

    "Yah, although scents that are too strong clog up the nose. Better not to."

    "Okay, fine. We'll draw them to a specific location so that you have a fresh scent, then we'll stay well back so they don't spot us as we follow them home."

    "Suppose they don't go straight home?" Akane asked.

    "They will," Kei said. "They will have discovered an encampment of presumably hostile ninja using chakra techniques—by way of example, Banshee seals— that are unknown to the locals. They will want to notify their superiors."

    "They might split up," Yuno noted.

    Snowflake shook her head. "Doubtful. They'll be facing unknown force levels with unknown capabilities. Dividing their forces is an invitation to defeat in detail for no substantive gain."

    "What if they detect us while we're waiting?"

    Hazō laughed. "That's the beauty of it: we'll be nowhere near the bait site."

    "Ah," Panashe said. "I have, obviously, been paying complete and focused attention through this entire well-organized briefing, but I believe this is the part where I should start paying even more complete attention."

    "Five points to the scaly snake-nosed badger," Hazō said. "We'll set up a very thoroughly camouflaged site here, and then the fun begins."

    o-o-o-o​

    There were three of the Neck ninja.

    They wore clothes that blended in well and they moved carefully, but it didn't really matter. Panashe had prepped the 'campsite' well; there was a fire that had been 'sloppily extinguished' after the campers (notional people who were notionally enemy ninja) had fled from what was presumably a battle. The fire had been leaking smoke throughout the area for an hour; someone with one nostril plugged up could have found the place, and the faint traces that the 'enemy ninja' had left as they 'fled' were enough to lure competent patrols in if the smoke wasn't.

    The tracks were nothing so gauche as footprints, of course. A branch with a few leaves stripped due to 'rapid passage' of a ninja here, a slight chip in the bark of a tree there. No, it was all plausible. The 'trail' stretched two hundred yards into the woods, the individual signs becoming more and more spread out before 'disappearing' completely.

    The ground around the campsite was torn up in a way that was not unreasonable for a ninja battle followed by a hasty cleanup followed by fleeing. There were even a few artistic splotches of blood that had been 'missed' during the imaginary cleanup. No footprints, but the ground had been swept with branches and one of the branches had a few traces of blood on it from the 'injuries' on the user's hands.

    Panashe herself was hidden underground, only her nose and eyes above the surface, and those well-concealed by a carefully positioned plat of moss and a few sprigs of greenery that mimed being firmly rooted. Plus, the point of camouflage was to break up the body's outline so that the pattern-recognition part of the brain couldn't easily identify it. Starting with a non-human bodyplan made that a lot easier.

    The enemy ninja paused in the trees, studying the campsite carefully and signing back and forth. It was three full minutes before the youngest of them, a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve, dropped down on silent feet and hesitantly moved around the camp to see what could be seen.

    He spent four minutes investigating, then rejoined his fellows in the trees for another quick hand-talk conference. And then all three of them jumped off to the east and disappeared into the woods.

    Panashe smiled slightly and twisted her chakra in the familiar pattern that broke her connection to this alien shell and returned her to the comfort of the Seventh Path.

    o-o-o-o​

    "Do you have an ace up your sleeve?" Akane asked.

    Hazō shook out his sleeves one after another, a smug smile on his face. "Go fish," he said.

    Akane sighed and drew another card from the deck, then removed her left sandal and laid it atop of the pile of clothing beside her. She looked at her cards and chose one. "I will—"

    "Stop," Kei said. "Panashe has unsummoned herself." She pricked her finger and squeezed a drop of blood onto the ground. "Summoning Technique: Panashe."

    There was a poof! of rainbow-colored smoke and the pangolin Specialist appeared in their midst.

    "They went east," Panashe said, not wasting time on pleasantries. "Three of them, one very young, the other adults but still young."

    "Cool," Hazō said. He glanced at the water clock sitting on the grass to his left. "Akane's only got seven pieces of outerwear left, so we should be able to finish the game before we need to leave."

    Akane closed her eyes and counted not-very-silently to ten.

    o-o-o-o​

    "Hold up," Canvass said. "There's a crosstrail here, and they've gone back to the trees."

    Everyone waited as the chakra-enhanced bloodhound snuffled around the latest random patch of forest for a dozen handfuls of seconds. Fortunately, Panashe had been released to the Seventh Path in order to conserve Kei's chakra.

    I had forgotten just how much easier everything is when you're traveling with Noburi, Hazō thought. Going back to worrying about conserving chakra suuuuucks. I should get him something when we get home, as a gesture of appreciation. On the other hand, that might just be an invitation to being smugged at forever.

    "Got it," Canvass said quietly. "They crossed back over a trail they made earlier in the day. Before, they were moving from that way to that way. This time, they turned left and are going over there."

    Hazō nodded and gave her a thumbs up, then held up a hand for everyone's attention and pointed at his feet. He had been tapping on his thigh since they left the bait camp, the Iron Nerve twitching his fingers in the exact frequency he had once used to copy the speed of the water clock's drips. He was currently at 587, meaning it was time to swap skywalkers. The team was skywalking a few inches above the ground to ensure they left no trace for potential patrols to discover. Canvass was slung from Akane's harness, body at an angle so that the canine's nose was only inches from the ground. The bloodhound had been very suspicious about the idea to start with, but had grown quite delighted with it as time went on.

    Hazō had been chary about using the skywalkers on this trip until now. Asuma's instructions had been Skywalkers are probably still secret on the eastern continent and it would be nice to keep that advantage. On the other hand, Mist has them and word will get out eventually. Keep them secret if you can, but it's not worth your lives. Hazō's line on 'if you can' had moved considerably since he decided to stop screwing around.

    Everyone gave a thumbs-up as soon as their sandal inserts were swapped. Once Hazō saw a full set of thumbs up, he nodded and the group moved out.

    o-o-o-o​

    The enemy village was not what Hazō had expected.

    He wasn't quite sure what he had expected, truth to tell. Sure, expecting a massive walled metropolis such as Leaf or Mist wasn't plausible. This was a tiny nation that likely only had a few score ninja, maybe a few hundred at the most. Also, they took the 'hidden' part of 'Hidden Village' much more seriously than did those in the Elemental Nations.

    Still. Two dozen treehouse tents with moss-covered suspension bridges, plus a well on the ground? It seemed...small.

    Akane tapped him on the shoulder. When he looked over she flashed handtalk.

    Danger. Sentries, probably. Plan? She cocked her head in query.

    Hazō hesitated, thinking.

    Relevant facts:

    1. Real-life bloodhounds:
      • Can air-scent and ground-scent
      • Have followed a trail for 130 miles
      • Under good conditions, can track a scent that is a week or more old. In 1995, a Santa Clara County Bloodhound tracked down a man who had been missing for eight days
    2. Canvass is a literally magic literal bloodhound. Her tracking abilities should be several cuts above what real-life dogs can do
    3. Previously, the team was focused on being stealthy. They were spending ~10 hours a day moving slowly around the woods
    4. We used a 15% chance per day that a patrol ran into them under those conditions, meaning that the chance should be much higher if they are making no effort to be stealthy. Let's say it's double the chance, meaning 30% over the course of 10 hours, or 3% per hour
    5. The team is trying to draw in a Neck ninja patrol and then follow them home. This effort consists of:
      1. Prepare excellent camouflage for the group, far away from the bait site. Everyone except Panashe stays here
      2. Panashe moves a couple miles away, traveling underground as much as possible so as to leave no tracks, and picks a bait site. She sets up a poorly-concealed 'abandoned' campsite that includes a quickly-extinguished and therefore smoky fire. She uses various other means to make the camp noticeable but still look as though it's supposed to be hidden. Finally, she lights off another Banshee seal. (I'm assuming that she knows how to use seals at this point, since she's been Kei's summon for ages and other pangolins learned it in a few weeks.)
      3. Panashe waits at the bait site using all her special-ops training to conceal herself
      4. Once some ninja shows up, Panashe observes them until they leave and then returns to the Seventh Path. If she thinks she might have been discovered, she immediately returns to the Seventh Path
      5. Kei, sensing that her summon has departed the Human Path, summons her back to the far-off human location
      6. The team gives the enemy plenty of time to get a good start, then returns to the bait site where Canvass can pick up their trail
      7. They follow the trail, staying well back, until they discover the enemy village or encounter a patrol
      8. Neck can be crossed in 1 hour of ninja-speed movement. To be conservative, I'm going to say that the team can only move half their normal traveling speed while trailing, so they can cross Neck in 2 hours
      9. Statistically, the team is not going to have to go literally from one end of Neck to the other. Let's say they are only moving for 1 hour
      10. As described above, there is a 3% chance that they are detected while trailing
      11. Ninja have options for breaking trail that normal people don't, but Canvass has tracking options that real bloodhounds don't. On balance, let's say she's only got an 85% chance to successfully track her targets back to their village
    I find it very unlikely that they can't draw a group of enemy ninja to the bait site, but evil miracles have happened. Let's say that there's a 2% chance that the Neck ninja are so stupid and clumsy that they can't find a location with a fire and a Banshee and whatever else Panashe can come up with.

    On the other hand, maybe they decide to be super cautious and they never come close enough that Panashe can detect her. Unlikely, since they'll need to come close in order to perform any kind of investigation in aid of knowing how long the camp has been 'abandoned', and pangolins operate more off smell than sight, but who knows. Let's say there's a 10% chance they manage to not be noticed by Panashe.

    Dice:

    • 2% chance that the Neck ninja do not find the bait site: 41. They failed to not find it
    • 10% chance that they are so super-duper cautious and stay so far back that Panashe doesn't notice them: 36. She notices them
    • 85% chance that Canvass can track them back to their base: 33. She succeeds
    • 3% chance the team gets spotted while trailing: 31. Not spotted
    • 20% chance mystery roll: 82. Oh my




    What does Hazō think the team should do now?

    Author's Notes:     You checked in with home via the Seventh Path. Your questions were answered as follows:

    • Kagome: how are Minato's seals going? He's still working on the first one. The first one in the chain is challenging but he's grinding through it. He's irritated because he doesn't have as much time to focus on it as he would prefer
    • Noburi: everything going smoothly? Yup. Kagome's sealing students have had a couple of mishaps, but it's being handled
    • Noburi: which corpses are we obligated/expected to bring to Leaf? Unless you were explicitly sent on a capture mission, you are not required to bring enemy corpses home. If you choose to do so then people with bloodlines are useful to have. Other corpses are moderately useful but not essential. Bringing back the heads of slain shinobi is valuable in that it makes it easier to verify who is actually dead, and the heads can be used as emotional weapons against their families
    XP AWARD: 2 (The plan covered about 4-5 hours.)

    Brevity XP: 1

    "GM had fun" XP: 0     No strong feelings.

    Bonus XP: 2 Due to QM spoon shortage and intervening holiday, it took us a super long time to deal with this plan. Here's a thank-you to everyone for being so understanding and supportive.

    It is now about 2pm.

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, .
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 540: Pangolinfiltration
  • Threadmarks
    • QM note: Velorien was exhausted and Paperclipped volunteered to step up for us. This is a canon chapter, and the XP awards and footnote commentary are QM-written and therefore true.


    "Let's back it up and discuss," Hazō whispered, thumbing behind him. "We can always come back here later."

    He looked around the team and they gave him silent acknowledgements. They started to skywalk away.

    Once they had made it a few miles away from the village, Hazō signaled a stop. "Okay, so we've located their village. Presumably, the Squirrel Scroll is somewhere in there, probably guarded by whoever their strongest ninja is."

    "Isan's method of protecting their scroll was not by having their strongest ninja carry it constantly," Kei said. "They could well have made a similar attempt at keeping it in a fortified location with static defenses, ideally ones that would slow an intruder sufficiently that the clan would then have time to respond in full force."

    Hazō nodded. "Point taken, but we didn't recover any seals from the bodies of those chūnin, not even a storage or explosive seal. I'm not sure if they have the capacity to make a fortification like that."

    "Isan's fortifications were not solely seal-based. It does not require a sealmaster to make traversing a given path a hellishly lethal experience," Kei said. Yuno nodded in agreement.

    "Even when your threat model of the person coming for the scroll is 'Jiraiya'?" Hazō asked.

    "Point," said Kei.

    "Right. Canvass, is there any way you could tell if the scroll is in their village?"

    Canvass had gotten out of the harness and now sat on the ground. She cocked her head to one side. "What do you mean? Scrolls don't smell like anything at all."

    Hazō unslung the Dog Scroll and laid it next to Canvass. "Nothing?"

    Canvas bent down on her forepaws and sniffed at it. "Nope."

    Hazō unrolled the scroll enough for his bloody signature to be revealed. "Does my signature smell like blood?"

    Canvass sniffed closer, her droopy ears almost touching the strange paper-like material the scroll was made of. After a moment, she sat back up. "Nope. Not a hint of blood at all."

    Hazō frowned. "Well, that's unexpected."

    "Do you recall your ill-fated attempt to read the Pangolin Scroll that resulted in a disturbing variety of head-related trauma?" Kei asked. "You bled on the scroll during your seizure from the associated minor lacerations, but while the blood was absorbed, the scroll ejected it shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, my signature has melded perfectly into the scroll and has never smeared or flaked in all the time that it has been furled with the other surfaces of the scroll rubbing into it."

    "Right," Hazō said, rubbing his forehead, "the blood is probably bonded with the scroll on some metaphysical level. Maybe it's no longer part of our plane. I think I remember Tsunade mentioning something like that once. Canvass, could you follow the chakra signature from the blood?"

    "Chakra signature?" she asked.

    "Yes, we bonded our chakra to the scroll when we signed it. Maybe it's still there for past summoners, or maybe it doesn't fade away until the scroll takes a new summoner. Either way, we have his blood, so could there be a residue that you could follow?"

    "Maybe, maybe," Canvass said, "that's a lot of unknown. But I track dogs and animals and now humans, not chakra. I don't even know if anyone can do that."

    "Okay," Hazō said, trying not to make it too obvious that he was grasping at straws. "Could you find his body, if they buried it? Like I said, we have his blood."

    "Oh yah, that's easy. It's only been a couple years, right?" she said.

    Hazō sighed slightly. At least they had a way in.

    "How close would you need to be, to tell?" Akane asked.

    Canvass scratched behind her ear. "Well, a couple years out it'd be tough to tell from a far ways away. If I could get close, I could probably come up with a few locations where it was most likely, then it's just a matter of checking 'em all."

    "So, inside the village?" Akane asked.

    "Oh yah, probably. If they buried him there, that is. If they buried him somewhere else, then no good."

    "And if they cremated him, like we do in Leaf," Akane said, turning to Hazō.

    "And like we did in Mist," he said grimacing, "then there's basically no way we can find the body. Alright, maybe figuring out something about the scroll directly is a bust. Let's watch the village some more before we go on. We can figure out a way to get you some tracking time in the village if it comes to that, Canvass. Kei, could you ask Noburi if he can stay up late to give you a chakra refill? I've got an idea."

    -o-​

    Panashe carefully moved through the underbrush around the village. In the dead of night, she was effectively blind, but she knew that the humans would do little better at noticing her brown scales against the dirt, bark, and sodden leaves of the ground beneath them. Even if their sentries had the visual acuity to notice signs of her passage (they didn't), she had already marked their scents. None of them were watching over the portion of forest she was sneaking through, and she had long since learned that humans were effectively nose-blind.

    She found another tiny depression in the forest floor and started to dig around it, bending some low hanging branches into place and uprooting some small bushes. She took her time – there was little point in making noise and getting caught, and those humans did have functional ears. After an hour or so of work, interrupted by periodically flicking out her tongue for some of the charming Human Path bugs that had so generously presented themselves to her, she looked at the small blind she'd constructed. Functionally impossible to see in from the outside thanks to the branches and leaves obscuring it, challenging to stumble across with the nearby ground altered just enough to make all the easiest paths through the area lead around it. There was no way to get in, but that was fine – she had marked its location and would simply emerge into it by tunneling. She started to move again to construct the next blind.

    Irritatingly, the Dog Summoner had instructed her to wait a day before actually beginning surveillance, and her summoner had agreed. Apparently, they wished to see if her blinds would be discovered. By this point, she'd learned that there was no point in arguing. Sadly, there seemed to be no way to escape the fact that she'd be spending the next several nights camping out on the Human Path.

    She sighed. I hate the night shift, she thought.

    -o-​

    Panashe examined her claws. They were sufficiently sharp, yes, but were they shiny enough? She wasn't foolish enough to try to glow while on an infiltration mission, of course, but back on the Seventh Path, that irritating Panseya had purchased some special oils from the Porcupine Clan through the trade network and had started to oil her sharpened claws to a mirror finish. This wouldn't be bad on its own, as Panashe would simply suggest to the others how foolish it was to oil the tools they used for climbing and grasping, but even more irritatingly, it seemed to be catching on as a trend.

    She glanced out of the blind, smelled for anything amiss, then returned to her claws.

    She would likely be earning a minor commendation for successful completion of this mission. Plus, since she had turned fifty, she'd felt that her scales were losing some of their youthful luster. Perhaps she could purchase some of those oils and see how they looked on her claws. Though… she had also been moderately interested in some of the Monkey-constructed furniture that the summoner had brought in. They seemed like a clan almost as civilized as the Pangolins.

    She glanced out of the blind, smelled for anything amiss, then returned to her claws.

    She looked back out of the blind again a moment later. One of the scents hadn't moved since her last check. She made out a human figure on one of the treehouse bridges, looking out into the forest. She couldn't tell whether the human was looking at her from this distance, even with the light from the setting sun, but it was definitely in her general direction. The scent meant that this one was an adult, a female, and certainly one of their chakra-users.

    The human made some gesture and said something unintelligible, then another human jumped down from the platforms in the trees and started to make its way in her general direction.

    How bothersome. She started to burrow, careful not to go so quickly that it would give her away. As she disappeared under the ground, she reached her claw out to grab the Dog Summoner's silencing seal, breaking the effect as she moved it. Fascinating thing, that. She would likely ask the Lochagos to see if there was some way they could negotiate for that from the summoner. She wasn't yet sure what arguments might sway Pankurashun's old, crusted heart, but she was sure she could find a way.

    From another blind, she observed as the human poked around her old hiding spot for a minute, then returned to its superior to report. The superior didn't seem to react and turned to leave for one of the other treehouses. Panashe settled back into her new surveillance spot.

    Blind to the last, these humans were. It's a surprise they ever managed to build any sort of civilization at all.

    -o-​

    Panashe stood neatly at attention as the summoner appeared in a puff of orange smoke with Pandā at her side. The human girl looked around for a moment, noting Panashe with her claws interlaced, then relaxed and turned to her.

    "Report, Panashe," said her summoner, crisp and concise.

    "Yes, Summoner. The enemy has a force around fifty strong. I estimate around half of them were chakra-users, as they typically descended by the tree trunks directly, rather than by taking the rope ladders. Of the non-chakra-users, a disproportionate number of them are female. They spent much of their time foraging in the forest immediately around the village. Of the chakra-users, around half of them are adults by your human accounting, though seemingly all young adults. They largely seemed deferential to one female in particular, though I did not notice any markings that indicated leadership. I did not notice any of the chakra-users that were particularly old or infirm.

    "Their nighttime watch is always three humans, usually two of them young. The remainder appear to return to their village to sleep. They do not change guard during the night. During the day, they send out periodic teams of between two and four members, though never more than four teams at once. These teams take many hours to return, usually more than three. The shorter trips returned with hunted animals in tow, which were cooked that same night in a small covered firepit that concealed the smoke and most of the light. Separately, the humans also travel in a specific direction quite frequently. This is sometimes in groups and sometimes individually, and these trips rarely last longer than three hours.

    "Notably, summoner, to my knowledge, they did not draw water from the well once. Rather, the humans returning from the short trips occasionally returned laden with water, which they took up into the treetops."

    The summoner nodded. "Did you observe any indication of the presence of another summoner? Some possibilities might be scents or traces of members of the Squirrel Clan, a human with a scroll or a bulky container that might hide one, or something similar."

    "No, Summoner," Panashe said. You're welcome, Summoner, she added mentally.

    "Understood, Specialist. I anticipate that the secondary location that their ninja are going to is their training ground equivalent. Describe the paths that you observed them following with precise directions so that Hazō and Canvass can follow the trail and identify the secondary site. In the most probable case, I expect that you will need to set up additional blinds and surveil there as well."

    -o-​

    "-and apart from the variety of Water-style ninjutsu she noted, Panashe described them using a certain ninjutsu that caused water to well up from the ground by the lakeside. They would fill buckets with this water and take them back to the village, presumably for drinking, bathing, et cetera, given that the well is apparently a decoy target for infiltrators."

    Hazō groaned, leaning back dangerously on the skytower. "Oh Sage, that's not good."

    "What is it, Hazō?" Akane asked.

    "Mareo described these guys to me," he said. "They're the People of the Lakes, which he said were one of the bigger tribes in Neck. He said they came to Neck from Valley so they could be big fish in a small pond. The old Squirrel Summoner pissed them off too – well, the one from Mareo's time, which was centuries ago for all I know – so they were in conflict with the Squirrel tribe."

    "I do not see why you find this a disappointing revelation," Kei said. "It certainly seems like valuable information to have. For instance, the near-term likelihood of death for the ninja in that village appears to have just plummeted, if I understand correctly."

    Hazō nodded. "Yeah, that's the problem. They're not our target. I don't think they're going to have the Squirrel Scroll."

    "They could have been the ones to get it after Jiraiya killed the last summoner," Akane said.

    "Hmm, maybe, "Hazō said. "Though I don't know how we could find out. I was going to ask Panashe to snoop through their village, but unless they have it on an altar somewhere, it's not going to be visible anywhere she can see without rooting through the treehouses, and that'll wake people up no matter how skilled an infiltrator she is."

    "I will note that inter-clan grudges in the Warring Clans era tended to exist on the scale of centuries, not generations. It is still possible that these so-called 'People of the Lake' are still enemies with the Squirrel tribe. What else did Mareo tell you about them?" Kei asked.

    Hazō shook his head. "He didn't have much else. He traveled a fair bit but never really got involved with any of the Neck tribes. He just knew the Squirrel tribe because they had a summoner, and the People of the Lakes because they came from another country he had more experience in, and because they were the main counterbalance to the Squirrel tribe. He said they had a ninjutsu that let them make drinking water from anywhere, and that they used it to live far from rivers and water sources to make themselves harder to find."

    "Well," Akane said, "if they're not from the Squirrel tribe that hates Leaf so much, maybe we could try to negotiate with them?"

    "It could be hard to do that from a position of strength," Hazō said. "According to Panashe, they have twenty-five or so ninja, of whom half are adults? In the best case, that's about a dozen chūnin, and we recently learned that the local chūnin are actually quite tough. In the worst case, they may have a jōnin."

    "Corresponding pre-war Leaf and Mist chūnin-to-jōnin demographic ratios would suggest that they have at least two," Kei said.

    "Right. So they may think they have no need to negotiate with us, as the strongest tribe in Neck after the last Squirrel Summoner died, and we really don't want to fight them to prove them wrong," Hazō said. Akane and Kei nodded, and Yuno did after a thoughtful second. Yuno especially had not liked being cramped up on a Skytower with minimal space and privacy. While she had tolerated it while Hazō and Akane were healing, her impatience was slowly becoming clear as they waited for Panashe's scouting sessions.

    "Resummon Panashe one last time tonight, Kei, and have her scout their village from the inside. I think that's all the information we can squeeze out of this stone though. We'll decide what to do when she reports tomorrow morning."

    -o-​

    Panashe reported that the inside of the village was unimpressive, and there were no summoning scrolls waiting on ready altars, as you surmised. There were sleeping humans, but Panashe did not root through their things. She noted that their choice of base is good for staying hidden if they are not successfully followed home, but very easy to navigate for an infiltrator, with all the trees making for easy traversal.

    What are the odds that the team encounters a patrol on their way out? 2d100: (4, 84)

    The team makes it out fine.

    They reconvene and talk it out. Panashe is assigned to scout for the next few days. They get around 6.5 Panashe-hours per day, which they can double with Noburi. Panashe doesn't want to be making Stealth checks non-stop (eventually, -12/+12 happens), so she'll set up a Stealth Block against being noticed. Every ninja in the village will roll once against this block passively.

    Narratively, she's setting up some covert surveillance spots at night, then returning at various hours to keep a lookout. Sadly, her eyesight is not very good. The default time for this check is 1 hour, but with plenty of time and Kei to resummon her (with refills from Noburi, coordinated at the evening check-in), she'll take 12 hours instead. The guards will get to also make a roll against her Stealth as she's setting up the surveillance spots.

    Panashe (Stealth): ?? + ? (tag "Darkness of the Night") + ? (invoke "Hidden Cuts Both Ways") + 6 (dice) = ??
    Guard 1 (Alertness): ?? + 3 (dice) = ??
    Guard 2 (Alertness): ?? - 9 (dice) = ??
    Guard 3 (Alertness): ?? + 3 (dice) = ??

    Unfortunately, nowhere near enough. Panashe has plenty of time that night to creep around in the underbrush near the village and find some good surveillance spots, as well as build tunnels between them.

    Her Block, then:
    Panashe (Stealth): ?? + ? (2x time ladder) + ? (invoke "Hidden Cuts Both Ways) + ? (Jutsu) + ? (Silence Mine) - 3 (dice) = ??
    Panashe spends a FP to reroll!
    Panashe (Stealth): ?? + ? (2x time ladder) + ? (invoke "Hidden Cuts Both Ways) + ? (Jutsu) + ? (Silence Mine) + 3 (dice) = ??
    ?? rolls for all the ninja in the village: [...], best: ??

    Interesting, a tie… I'm ruling that the tie goes in favor of Panashe, since she's the one actively doing something, whereas the other ninja are getting a passive Alertness check to notice something off as they go in and out of the village.

    Panashe spends a day surveilling them, notices that they tend to go off in one direction in particular, then return soon after (a separate pattern than the patrols). Hazō and co. follow them.

    Is there a night patrol? [rolls] Nope
    Can Canvass follow the frequently laid tracks between the village and its close-by training ground? Survival: ?? + 9 (dice): Yup.

    They find the tribe's training ground and Panashe sets up another surveillance spot there.

    What are the odds that this tribe was in Mareo's briefing? 1d100: ??, surprisingly, they were.

    One last time, as Panashe sneaks into their village.

    Panashe (Stealth): ?? + 0 (dice) = ??
    Best of Enemy (Alertness): ?? - ?? (literally asleep) + 3 (dice) = ??

    She's got it. What does she notice?

    Panashe (Examination): ?? + 6 (dice) = ??

    Not much, sadly. Just sleeping humans. Very easily murderable sleeping humans, but sleeping humans nonetheless.

    XP: 14 + 4 (brevity)
    GM-had-fun XP: 0

    The plan was functionally "sit around and let Panashe do everything." This is fine when it results in you doing something, but as-is was a little boring. It was still probably a smart call though, so not penalizing base XP.

    -o-​

    It is the morning of the next day. What do you do?

    Voting closes at .
     
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