On the far side of the street, Old Man Genki groaned. "Again, Kuniko? What nonsense from the city are you parroting this time?"
Kuniko turned around and crossed her arms. "Sorry Mr. Genki sir, but this is real this time." She turned back to Rikaru. "But yeah, I heard about him in the city! He's a ninja, but he's actually good! He's tall with a sharp jaw and a handsome face, with dark hair and rich, brown eyes. He tamed one of the deep forest wolves and taught it his ninja magic, and now it's even taller than Uncle Yushin and he rides it around everywhere so it can eat his enemies!"
"Shouldn't you be focusing on your apprenticeship, young lady?"
Rikaru ignored Old Man Genki, instead shaking her head. "Sounds fake. No one can tame the deep forest wolves."
"But he did!" said Kuniko.
Rikaru frowned. "Why are you so into him? Did you see him in the city?"
"I'm not into him," Kuniko said, shaking her head back and forth. "And no, I didn't see him. But I've heard about what he's doing in the villages around here. He's going around with his ninja powers and an army of men, and they're building walls and digging wells and killing the chakra beasts and-"
"Hah! A ninja'd sooner dig a well up my ass!" yelled out Old Man Genki. "What, is this rat gonna tan our leather next? Maybe he'll make us some nice shoes with it too!"
"Mr. Genki's right, Kuniko. Why would a ninja do any of that stuff?" Rikaru asked.
"Because he actually cares about people, instead of whatever else ninja normally care about. Getting rich or whatever," Kuniko said. "Really, he's the best ninja there is!"
Rikaru shrugged. "I don't see any ninjas coming and building walls for us. We don't need a well either, since we still got our own."
"He's really doing it, I swear. Some of the other merchants were saying how they visited villages only to find that ninja had patched them up. There's even news that he's gonna be making roads too to connect up the big towns, so that anyone can travel anywhere safely!"
Rikaru snorted. "At the risk of sounding like Mr. Genki, yeah right. I'll believe it when I see it."
o-o-o
"Wait, did you say Hazō?"
Shino nodded. "Correct."
Hinata frowned. "Why are you making a deal with him on the telescopes?"
"The answer has two components," Shino said. "First, he commissioned our clan for a telescope. Our lensmaking was initially inadequate to the task, so it drove us to search in an ultimately fruitful endeavor. Even though our efforts were monumental – indeed, merely finding a telescope merchant to play middleman for would have been challenging – the fact stands that we would never have taken action without his inspiration. While my clan did the material and intellectual labor, he still originated the idea. I understand this is not his first time."
Hinata nodded slowly, sipping at her cup of tea before setting it back down precariously on the twisting tree branch on which they sat, looking out over Hidden Leaf.
"That makes sense. Hm… I wouldn't mind if he would tell me which business deals were worth pursuing and which ones were busts. What was the second reason?"
Shino nodded. "The second was that he demonstrated a way to create new telescope lenses."
Hinata's eyes went wide with shock. Belatedly, she turned her head to face him so that he could see her expression. "Did he steal your clan's techniques? No, even if he didn't, he could still try to undercut you. Did he coerce you into the deal?"
Shino shook his head. "He did not steal any Aburame techniques. The lens he reproduced did not bear markings that would indicate the use of our methods. In fact, I do not know exactly how he reproduced it, though I have my suspicions. Why? Because he has relatively few tools available to create lenses with, so narrowing down the options should be trivial."
"Making me solve a puzzle?" Hinata said, smiling wryly. "Alright. Something available to him personally. What options does he have? He has his bloodline… that wouldn't help. He has Earth Element. Could an Earth Element ninjutsu reproduce a lens exactly? Maybe, but that's probably too much fine control for most ninjutsu, and even then I think it'd take way too much practice to get it just right. A Summon technique? I doubt it – if the Dog's civilization is comparable to the Turtles, they won't need precision like that. In fact, only one tool can get that precision reliably. Did he make a seal to imitate your lenses?"
Shino adjusted his glasses. "Actually, I believe he used an Earth Element ninjutsu. His imitation lens was made of quartz rather than glass, and his description of lensmaking gave the impression of being quick, but not trivial like scribing a seal. Moreover, I expect a seal would reproduce the lens flawlessly, whereas he implied but never stated outright that practice, first and foremost, would allow him to create adequate lenses efficiently."
"Ah," Hinata said. "Well, you didn't give me all the information needed to get to the conclusion. So he has this ninjutsu, used it to make lenses, and then forced you into a deal by threatening to undercut you?"
Shino shook his head. "You overstate his ill intent. Despite hostile actions, he made no attempt to exploit the Aburame in the ways you imagine. On the contrary, he indicated solely wanting to enrich Leaf by providing quality gear to all. He claimed he would stop lens manufacture at our mere word."
"Do you think he actually would have?" Hinata asked.
Shino shrugged. "I cannot be certain. Seventy percent odds, perhaps? It is at least possible. He reproduced the lenses quickly enough that I expect that he did not learn a technique solely for this purpose. Instead, I expect that he had learned a fine-control Earth technique for another purpose and merely saw an application – of course, conditioned on him really using an Earth ninjutsu."
"Interesting," Hinata said. "So, since he didn't learn something specifically to duplicate the lenses, he wasn't committed to having a deal. He's really doing this to keep Leaf squads safer?"
Shino nodded.
"Well, I can understand that," Hinata said. "The telescope you gave me has been incredibly useful already. The elders are being snide about it, you know. They're asking if my bloodline's inadequate, and if that's why I'm using civilian technology. I don't think they get how perfectly the telescopes complement the Byakugan. Even without the bloodline, I'd bet people can get tons of great uses out of it, especially with Gōketsu's sky-seals."
Hinata sighed. "I judged him too harshly. I know the elders… Well, they despise him and what he stands for, but that's no surprise. They're always harping on his flaws – flaws that are real and important, but I guess when you're only ever paying attention to someone's flaws, it's hard to see their merits too."
Shino nodded. "I will not deny that he and his clan have rough edges. However, that does not mean that they cannot take actions for the good of Leaf, Hinata."
"Yeah," Hinata said, before freezing at the sound of approaching footsteps. No… hand-steps?
She and Shino watched from their hiding spot in the trees above the Hokage Monument as Rock Lee came over the top of the cliff face with his body upside down, walking on his hands. He flipped over on the lip of the mountain and gave no indication of having seen Hinata or Shino, before turning sideways and starting to cartwheel down the nearly vertical side of the cliff face with a rapidly receding call of "YOOOoooouuuth…!"
"I believe our time here is up," Shino said. "Why? Because when Rock Lee does a strange exercise, he invariably repeats it at least ninety-nine times more."
Hinata started packing up their portable tea set, balanced on the twisting tree branch. "Well, thanks for the tea, Shino. I hope you work out a deal and don't get ripped off."
"I anticipate it," Shino said. "And likewise."
o-o-o
"Gōketsu Hazō?"
Ikeda nodded. "Yep, that's what she said."
Kawaguchi frowned. "Am I supposed to recognize the name?"
Ikeda shrugged. "Well, it depends on what you're paying attention to. Do you, by any chance, remember the Chūnin Exams where we got promoted?"
Kawaguchi thought quietly as she caught Ikeda's blow and slowly pivoted around it. One-tenth speed sparring was an interesting innovation by their sensei, but with said sensei dead, they'd never actually learned its purpose. They'd continued anyway in the hope of figuring it out eventually.
"Rings a bell, but I can't find the name. He didn't win, did he? That was the Pangolin summoner."
Ikeda laughed. "Who was his sister. He was their team's sealmaster."
Kawaguchi paused for a moment to goggle at Ikeda, which put her into an awkward position as Ikeda lunged forward in slow motion. "Wait, the skywalker guy!?"
Ikeda started a kick, giving Kawaguchi the challenge of doing a backflip in one-tenth speed. "Yeah, the skywalker guy. Pretty cute too, and not a terrible dancer."
Kawaguchi laughed. "Are you going after married men like that now?"
"Well, he's not married yet!"
Kawaguchi didn't flip away in time, and Ikeda brought a slow-motion knee to her opponent's groin. Kawaguchi groaned and they reset to their starting stances in the sand-covered training ground.
"So, why were you and the Leaf ambassador sharing your marriage prospects?"
Ikeda shrugged. "I was just poking her to see what I could figure out. She brought it up on her own. She seemed to find it kinda funny, like a joke she knew I wouldn't get. Sage, it's hard to tell what that woman's thinking sometimes."
"She's a weird one, right? I know she ran around the clans. Did she visit yours?" Kawaguchi said as she started a complex series of punches and kicks.
Ikeda shook her head. "No. Only the big clans caught her eye, and we didn't make the list."
"Weird. You know, she spent an awfully long time at the Yodomi compound wreckage, and word is that she even spent some time spelunking in the caves. Do you know if the sensor specs noticed anything sketchy from her?"
Ikeda nodded, expression serious. "Not from the sensory clans, no. I don't know how much of the bouncy, harmless act is real. On the one hand, she's this cute barely-adult ninja who'll gladly talk about whatever and how she's betrothed to this or that guy. On the other hand, Lady Kyoyu mentioned something interesting that maybe explains why the Yodomi did her so many favors…"
o-o-o
A woman in a pale-blue full-face mask ran into the room. "Sorry I'm late!" she called out.
The man at the head of the room, wearing a red mask, nodded. "Don't worry, nothing drastic has changed since last time. Viridian can give you any intel relevant to your next month."
A woman in a white mask with green markings nodded agreement.
"We're doing a brainstorming session on Leaf today. We covered the Hokage, Tsunade, the jinchūriki, and we just finished Orochimaru. Leaf has a lot of tough nuts to crack," said the red-masked leader.
"Hey Azure! Any ideas on how to kill the snake?" called out a man in the back.
"If you want to review our intel on Orochimaru and approaches to the problem he presents, Verdigris, save it for after the meeting," said the leader. "Saffron and I are on a timetable today. If you have a good idea, we have the end-of-meeting buffer time for it. Azure?"
Azure realized she was still standing. She quickly bowed to the leader, "Apologies, Crimson," then found her seat.
"Anyway," said Crimson, "that covers our primary HVTs in Leaf. Your briefing packets have information on some secondary targets for you to review at your leisure, but I want to highlight one particularly interesting case. His name is Gōketsu Hazō."
Around the room, masked figures flipped through file folders in front of them to find the page and skim it. As they read, Crimson's voice filled the room.
"Gōketsu Hazō is the head of Leaf's Gōketsu clan, founded by Jiraiya. In Mist's Chūnin Exams two years ago, he finished 5th in the tournament. He is the Dog Summoner. He is a research sealmaster. He invented the skytower and skywalker. He likely invented Leaf's new Summoner applications, given his team's known Chūnin Exams strategies. He has access to a Mori and a Wakahisa in addition to Leaf's spread of bloodlines, and he has particularly close relationships with the young Nara and Yamanaka leaders. Mari the Heartbreaker likely follows his marching orders, who I note could potentially be a primary HVT depending on how her genjutsu skills have grown."
"Hazō is an inventor," Azure said, before cutting off and cringing in her seat as people turned to look at her.
Crimson waved a hand. "I assigned Azure to study this case. Azure, if you would?"
She nodded and continued, hesitantly at first but slowly becoming almost breathy. "Hazō is an inventor. He really likes making stuff. Not only new seals, but he makes no secret of trying to invent civilian technologies too. Strategically, I could compare him to Ryūgamine, except instead of refining Mist's tools to make it an elegant and deadly war machine, Hazō instead just makes more and more tools for Leaf's kit. That said, his political power is way, way lower than Ryūgamine's, maybe even negative. It's been two years since the skywalker seal, so who knows how many new inventions he has now."
"Am I reading this wrong?" asked Verdigris, holding the file up in front of him in clear disbelief. "It says he's a chūnin. Why can't we just… grab him?"
Azure shook her head. "He's a Clan Head, so he doesn't really do missions. Our informants in Leaf are unreliable-"
"Damned Hyūga," someone in the room muttered.
"-so we don't have much on him at all," Azure said, with only a faint stuttering pause at being interrupted. "Hazō only did one mission in the past year that we know of, and he negotiated that mission directly with the Hokage. Even if we had people in place, there just aren't middlemen that we could infiltrate to intercept him."
"We would like to acquire Gōketsu," said Crimson, "though, of course, securing him as a partner is unlikely. As you point out, Verdigris, that he's a strategic powerhouse rather than a tactical one makes a potential acquisition mission seem theoretically possible. Practically, there's a snake, a demon fox, and a monkey king standing between us and him. If we could manufacture a situation where we had access to him though, his goods could be ours for the picking. The Dog Scroll alone could justify the operation."
Azure shook her head. "With respect, sir, you're looking at it wrong. A Summoning Scroll is priceless, yes, but suppose he were still a missing-nin, and hadn't yet given his allegiance to Leaf. If we had to pick when we acquired him, would you rather get the Dog Scroll, or be the only party with access to skywalkers?"
"Point taken," Crimson said, inclining his head. "At present, there are reasons why acquiring a Summoning Scroll would be particularly useful, but the details are classified. Either way, yes. We want access to his strategically revolutionary seals, ideally before Leaf accumulates too many advantages. Removing him from the board helps preserve the status quo."
"And gets us one step further from a world-destroying sealing failure!" called out another man.
"Thank you, Crimson, sir. Just because the war-altering impact of Hazō's inventions could be even greater than Ryūgamine and he's nearly impossible to acquire in any conventional capacity doesn't mean that we need to give up and brace for the worst."
"Are you sure?" Verdigris asked. "Sounds pretty bad to me."
Azure shook her head. "Not if we think creatively. We don't need to acquire Hazō directly to access the bulk of the value he represents. See, I was reviewing some of the reports from our informants, and I think that in the wake of a recent sealing failure, there may be some weak points for us to exploit…"
I wrote this a bit back when Ami mentioned you were a world-famous sealmaster, and while I had some ideas for other scene, alas! I sadly ran out of time and am posting it as is.
"Ahhhh," Pangola said, sliding into the hot tub next to Makakatori. She leaned back against the pangolin-shaped backrest and let her eyes droop closed. She stretched out her feet—
—and bumped them on someone.
She sat up hurriedly, eyes going wide. The waters slooshed and grew choppy as Kamenraida, the High Ambassador from the Turtle Clan to the Pangolin Clan, stood up from where he had been snoozing on the bottom of the tub.
"Ambassador!" Pangola said. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—"
"HOW DARE YOU KICK ME, CHILD OF THE PANGOLIN!" bellowed the turtle. "THIS IS A CAUSE OF WAR! THE TURTLE CLAN SHALL DRIVE YOU FORTH FROM THIS LAND WITH—" He broke down mid-word, giggling so hard he had to gasp for breath. He leaned back on the edge of the tub, one hand on his knee for support and the other waving dismissively at Pangola's alarm.
"Sorry," he gasped. "Sorry, sorry. I know I shouldn't but oh your face...oh, Ancient Ones, heeheehee..."
"Be nice," Makakatori scolded. "The poor girl is young." She turned to Pangola. "Just ignore him. The Turtle Clan have this theory that they can keep themselves young by having a stupid sense of humor. They like to make crazy jokes and play pranks."
"Oh," Pangola said. "Um...thank you for explaining, Lady Makakatori. Sir, I truly am sorry for kicking you. I should have been paying more attention."
"Bah, bah," Kamenraida said, waving the words aside. "You barely touched me. Don't worry about it."
"Thank you, sir," Pangola said. "How are you enjoying the facility?" She glanced back and forth between the two ambassadors, including them both in the question.
"Oh, it's lovely," Makakatori said. "I admit I wasn't entirely thrilled when Enma sent me down here, but I've come around. You guys really went all-in on this place. Hot tubs? All-day buffet? Banana flambé? How did you even get the bananas?" She shook her head in realization. "Wait. Duh, you got them from Monkey through the trade network which is half of why I myself am here." She shook her head again. "Still can't get my head around this. I'm an old-fashioned monkey and I'm used to messages and goods taking time to travel."
"It took your predecessor a few months to acclimate too, ma'am," Pangola said. "I was sorry to see him go. He was a nice man."
"Yeah, well, he hadn't seen his wife and kid for a bit too long. He was due for a rotation." Movement caught Makakatori's eye as some of the other ambassadors left the food-and-gaming area and drifted towards the tub. "Everyone best bunch up. I think we're getting some company."
Sure enough, the ambassadors of the Otter, Leopard, and Toad clans arrived at the tub moments later. Lute slipped into the water without a splash in the manner of his people, then proceeded to float on his back with a bowl of nuts balanced on his chest. Hyōgin sat on the edge and dipped one claw in. She moaned in delight at the temperature and slid into the water.
"I don't know how you people stand the cold around here," she said, submerging herself up to the neck. Her pink fur turned darker when it was wet, causing her spots to blend in more. "This water is delightful. Thank you, Pangola. Your people have been super on top of things."
"You're very wel—"
"On top of things?" Shima grouched as she clambered up over the edge of the tub and into the water without bothering to strip her robe off. "On top of things? I was told there would be a kitchen in our suite so I could make some decent home-cooked meals instead of all this weird foreign stuff."
"Now, Ma," Fukasaku said, "be nice." The ancient Toad Sage leapt in the air and landed on the surface of the water without causing a ripple. He cocked his head, considering the temperature of the water, then nodded in satisfaction and allowed himself to sit down cross-legged, lowering himself into the water until just his shoulders and head were sticking out. He leaned back, the water reshaping itself to provide better back and neck support.
"The people here have been very accommodating," Fukasaku continued. "Yes, the kitchen is more designed for heating up some soup instead of the sort of things you do at home, but it was never intended as more than a place to get a snack when you don't feel like going to the dining hall. Be reasonable."
"Don't you tell me to be reasonable, you old goat! Since when have you ever been reasonable, hm?! Never!"
"Guys?" Lute said from where he floated on his back, looking up.
"I'm very sorry, ma'am," Pangola said. "I didn't realize the facilities weren't sufficient. How may I help?"
"Hmph. Well, first of all, I'd like a decent oven. That tiny little thing is hardly big enough to cook a baby ant."
"Guys?" Lute said, his voice more intense. He sat up in the water, pushing the bowl of nuts back to the edge of the tub without looking since his eyes were still locked on the sky.
"I'll have some workers in to build one, ma'am. Would tomorrow lunchtime be acceptable?"
"Guys!" Lute snapped, cutting across the chatter. He pointed up. "What are those?"
Everyone looked up.
Three somethings were plummeting from the sky. They were long and thin, balanced on their ends, all black, and falling in a perfect triangle formation. A perfect triangle formation that seemed aimed exactly at the hot tub in which the ambassadors lounged.
The somethings shifted and revealed themselves to be humans, two men and a woman; they were wearing completely black uniforms and had been falling with arms folded on chests and feet locked together, but now their arms were moving, making throwing gestures in all directions.
The sky exploded.
Sparks of every color burst out in repeated fountains. Smoke spread everywhere. Trails of white fog followed the humans down like the wings of a gull.
A hundred feet up their fall began to stutter, brief hesitations as though they were impacting against a tower of fragile barriers that slowed them slightly without stopping them. Their fall shifted slightly, sliding a dozen yards to the north so that they would land near the tub instead of in it. The woman threw something downwards. A massive cloud erupted from the ground beneath her, engulfing the entire area and blocking all sight.
There was a massive SKADOOM! as the three impacted the earth. Pangola couldn't see their landing through the fog, but she felt the impact through the water of the tub that she was frantically climbing out of as she shouted for security.
The fog cleared away after a few seconds to reveal three figures standing not forty feet away. Pangolin eyes weren't great so she couldn't make out much in the way of detail, but the humans were smaller than she would have initially guessed. One of them had something on his back, something heavy from the way he shifted. All three of them smelled strange. Sharp, like a knife that had been scorched in fire. Probably an aftereffect of all the sparks and smoke.
The leader stepped out of the small crater he had made on impact and prowled towards the diplomats. He wore black from head to toe, including a hood that exposed only his eyes. The other two humans fell in behind him in wedge formation, ready to guard his flanks.
Hyōgin, the Leopard ambassador, growled, all her teeth visible, and raised her claws in threat.
The leader reached up and pulled off his hood, revealing a surprisingly young face split open in a blinding smile. He shoved a hand back through his hair to get rid of the hat-head and establish something more like order.
"Hello!" he called. "I'm Gōketsu Hazō. Pleasure to meet you all."
Hyōgin blinked at that and relaxed slightly. Very slightly.
"I'm the Dog Summoner," Gōketsu said. "I'm here in that role, and also to see about getting you people off your asses so we can go save the world. Is Enma back yet?"
"Came in a little hot there, didn't you, boy?" Fukasaku called.
Gōketsu glanced back to the three small craters that Team Uplift had made upon arrival. He looked back to Fukasaku.
"What?" he said. "They don't have groundskeepers?"
Fukasaku laughed.
"Hey! You there!" came a voice from the left. "On your knees! Get away from the diplomats!"
Gōketsu looked to where the security detail was charging towards them from the main building. They moved in the fashion of pangolins in a hurry: rolled into a ball, scales flaring out to tear at the earth and propel them forward at sprint speeds.
One of the still-hooded humans, the one with the barrel (?) on his back, shifted his weight. Gōketsu made a 'hold' gesture and the barrel-bearer went still.
The three security pangolins uncurled and flipped to their feet between the diplomats and the intruders.
"Which is it?" Gōketsu asked politely. "Do you want me to get on my knees, or do you want me to move away from the diplomats?"
"Really, Hazō?" the woman (girl?) asked. "Have you not been keeping up to date with your shikko?"
"I mean, I have," Gōketsu said, turning his head towards her slightly but not taking his eyes off the security team. "But this is a new drop suit and I'm not about to get grass stains on the knees if I don't have to."
"Shut up!" one of the security pangolins said. Pangola winced at the scent of him. Panbanī shouldn't be here, on the grounds of the Joint Nation Conclave. He wouldn't have been, were he not the son of Panjūyū. Panbanī was young, his scales lacking the traces of wear and cracking along the edges that came about as the result of living. More importantly, he was a hothead. Having him around foreign visitors was idiotic and she had been trying to keep him isolated as much as possible. Unfortunately, although she had full authority over the staff of the Conclave facility, the security teams were under separate command. She had been working with their commander but the kid had to go somewhere. Putting him near the buffet table during afternoon session had seemed like a good move; say what you like about him but he had perfect drill and looked terrific as long as he didn't actually need to fight. An excellent parade-ground soldier. Having him in the dining and recreation area at the very heart of the facility where it was vastly unlikely that any threat could possibly reach was good. Having him there when most of the diplomats were busy in the conference rooms was better. Who would have expected human ninja literally dropping out of the sky?
"Stand easy, everyone," said the massive security chief. Paneihei was a long-service veteran, powerful but level-headed, and exactly the sort of person you would want handling interactions with a bunch of important non-pangolins. A good set of traits in a leader, although it did mean that he often got stuck riding herd on their local perfumed prince nepo-baby.
"Gōketsu Hazō," Paneihei continued. "Are you perhaps related to our Summoner, Gōketsu Kei?"
The girl standing behind Gōketsu pulled off her hood. "I am Gōketsu Kei, now Nara Kei by right of marriage. Hazō is my brother. Noburi"—she gestured to the barrel-bearer as he pulled his hood off—"is also my brother. And you are?"
Pangola studied the self-proclaimed Summoner. She was short, at least a foot under Paneihei's six foot seven, which didn't match up too well with the figure of legend that Summoners were supposed to be. On the other hand, there was something about the way she stood that bespoke serious training.
Paneihei had apparently come to a similar conclusion. "An honor to meet you, Summoner. I am Senior Lochagos Paneihei, from Eighth Cohort."
"Lochagos, surely you're not going to take her word for it?" asked Panbanī, his voice somewhere between a whine and an accusation. "These people could be anyone!"
Panbanī's jaw worked slightly but when he spoke there was no trace of irritation in his voice. "I see that you are all humans, which means that you are all Summoners or you could not be here. Ma'am, you match the description I was given of our summoner. I am prepared to accept your identity until we can verify it properly. May I ask why the three of you are here, and why you arrived in such...dramatic fashion?"
"I'm the Dog Summoner," Gōketsu said, repeating his earlier statement. "I'm here to represent the Dog Clan at the Conclave. I'm also here to see if I can't kick you people into getting off your asses so we can go save the world. Is Enma back yet or is he still dragging his furry tail?"
"Lochagos, you're not going to let him talk like that to us, are you?!"
Paneihei's head tipped down very slightly, the gesture one that pangolins made shortly before attacking. A moment later his head came up again and he let out a slow breath.
"Dog Summoner, please excuse my subordinate. He has yet to learn when to shut up and let his elders speak."
Gōketsu chuckled. "S'all good. Kids these days, am I right?"
"Lochagos, we need to take them into custody!"
Paneihei rounded on his subordinate. "BE SILENT! Return to barracks immediately! I will deal with you later!"
Panbanī's tongue flicked out in amazement. "You can't talk to me like that! Do you know who my father is?!"
Paneihei's scales rippled, lifting up and lying down again. Any sensible person who knew anything about pangolin body language knew that when a pangolin started doing that it was a moment to back the heck off.
"Hey kid," Gōketsu said. "Check this out." He lobbed something underhand to Panbanī.
The young pangolin caught the object, a cube of about the size of a marble and clearly heavy. There was a twist of paper wrapped around it.
"What's this?" Panbanī demanded, looking from Gōketsu to the marble and back.
"That's the explosive tag that would have spread your stupid ass across twenty feet of grass if I was actually here to kill anyone," Gōketsu said. "Keep it. Call it a reminder that listening to your superior officer is a good idea, especially when he's trying to avoid open combat with an unknown force while in the presence of your protectees."
Panbanī screamed and lunged, claws raised and sharp-edged scales puffed out.
Gōketsu faded to the side, avoiding the attack, and wrapped his hand around the only part of Panbanī's body that wasn't currently covered in razors: his long, conical face. Gōketsu pulled his hand (and therefore Panbanī's face) to his hip and turned, dropping his center and going to a knee. The action dragged Panbanī to the ground and pinned him there. Pangola hadn't seen when, but at some point the human had donned something that looked remarkably like pangolin claws, except they were made of metal and went over the human's right hand like a glove. She might not have seen the human don them, but she could definitely see him delicately slip the very tip of one claw into Panbanī's nostril.
Everyone froze.
"Now," Gōketsu said, his voice that of a teacher. "We find ourselves in an interesting situation, and you don't have a lot of good moves. If you try to curl up, you'll rip your nose apart and you'll be scentblind for the rest of your life. If you try to claw me, I'll rip your nose apart, so you probably don't want to move. On the other hand, if I let you go then you might be able to curl up and murderroll me before I step out of range, so I don't particularly want to move either. Oh, and if any of your friends try to attack me then my siblings are going to have to defend me and things are going to get bad for everyone."
The one with the barrel sighed. "Hazō, are you about to do the 'shattering amounts of collateral damage' speech?"
"The speech is a bit time-worn but still accurate," Kei noted. "We do indeed tend to cause extremely large amounts of collateral damage when pressed. As one example, consider the resort in Hot Springs."
"Oh, come on!" the barrel-wearer said. "It wasn't the whole resort! It was, like, one building, max."
"I take it you did not read the after-action report that Jiraiya's network provided?"
"Seriously? Who reads those things?"
"Educated people. It was more than one building."
He rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine. Anyway, yeah. Hazō, sorry, go ahead and do your thing."
"I believe the point has been made," Paneihei said. "Dog Summoner, I will politely ask you to release my subordinate." There was an unspoken 'but I will only ask once.'
"Of course, Lochagos," Gōketsu said. He slipped the claw out of Panbanī's nose, still holding his face firmly down, then stood up and backed away carefully.
"Trooper Panbanī," Paneihei said, his voice clipped. "You will return immediately to barracks. You will go to your bunk and wait there until I have a moment to deal with you. Move."
Panbanī scurried away.
"Sorry for the scuffle, Lochagos," Gōketsu said, his voice casual but still respectful.
"A topic for another time, Dog Summoner," Paneihei said. "May I show you to a conference room and offer refreshments while we bring the relevant people to meet you?" He gestured towards the conference center.
"Sounds great," Gōketsu said, nodding politely and setting off in the indicated direction. "If you happen to have any of those stuffed cabbage leaves with the bean filling, that would be great. Those things are insanely good."
With a subtle nod, Paneihei sent his one still-silent subordinate scurrying ahead to show the way while he himself fell in behind the other two humans.
Pangola watched them go, roils of worry tying her stomach up in knots already. A flash of movement to her right brought her head around just in time to catch the two Toad ambassadors giving each other an understated high five.
Author's Note: I felt like writing something fun so I decided they would have a nepobaby that Hazō could throw around easily enough that I didn't have to roll for it, but Panbanī is very much not typical of the security staff on this campus. These pangolins are smart, strong, and experienced. If Hazō attempts to take them on in taijutsu he is probably going to have a very bad day.
This was told from Pangola's POV, so a couple of relevant facts that she didn't know: the craters were made by the team throwing explosive tags downwards shortly before reaching the ground. They didn't actually hit hard enough to leave craters. Also, the whole thing was planned in advance with Ma and Pa who absolutely pushed Hazō into it.
XP AWARD: 90 This update was 18 days long, the first part of it spent researching seals for your grand entrance and the last part being shown onscreen.
"Good morning, Hazō," Kabuto said, as Hazō stepped into the cafe's private room and took a seat across from Kabuto.
"Sorry for being late," Hazō said. "There was some clan business I had to attend to. I hope I didn't keep you waiting for long…?"
"Ah, nothing of the sort," Kabuto said with a friendly smile. "I have had a rare opportunity to relax recently, and enjoying morning tea in a fine establishment such as this one is a pleasure that I'd been depriving myself of."
"You're choosing to relax?" Hazō said, taking a couple of the freshly baked pastries from the tray laid out on the table between them. "I recall you mentioning that you were married to your work."
"Ah, so I did. With Orochimaru-sensei back, I have been quite embroiled in our studies, and we've been making exciting strides in the past few months in particular. His focus is all-consuming, and I had little time to do anything but eat, vivisect, and sleep. Still, we've hit a lull between projects, and I am only a mortal. I still enjoy the pleasures of the flesh," Kabuto said, popping one of the tiny sweetcakes into his mouth with an exaggerated 'mmm' sound. He chewed and swallowed at a leisurely pace.
"Speaking of which," Kabuto said, "don't think I've forgotten our past talks! If they still hold your interest, I would still encourage you to explore those research agendas you'd proposed. And your brother too, how has he been? I heard that he finally cracked Lady Tsunade's legendary resistance and got her to take an apprentice."
Hazō shook his head. "Not quite an apprentice, yet, but she's considering it. She agreed to let him lead some surgeries that she'll supervise."
Kabuto smiled. "I'm glad. That is no mean accomplishment for Noburi. She is quite protective of her patients and, to my recollection, rarely lets anyone operate when she could be doing it herself. If Noburi's skill and unique bloodline hasn't yet convinced her, then he cannot have far to go. If there is one thing we know about Lady Tsunade, it is that she does not hesitate to make her displeasures and rejections known."
"I am aware," Hazō said. "We're doing our best to prepare him for an impressive showing. Still, charming as it is to speak with you, Kabuto, I am afraid I do have other business. What did you call me here for?"
Kabuto nodded. "I understand. A Clan Head's duties are never done, are they? While I'd wanted to catch up with you, Hazō, I am also a proxy for Orochimaru-sensei's business with you. First," he said, reaching by his side and pulling out a sheaf of papers from his bag, "Orochimaru-sensei wishes to give this to you."
Kabuto pushed two tiny serving plates aside and put the papers down. The stack was nearly as tall as the teacups, reminding Hazō of the headache-inducing piles of paperwork Gaku regularly presented him. The title, in Orochimaru's tight, crisp handwriting, leapt out at Hazō.
Exploratory Analysis of the Theory of Three-Dimensional Sealing
Kabuto unfolded a note. "He told me to relay this. 'Even without adequate tools to probe the Great Seal, the theoretical foundations of sealcraft may still be extended to arbitrary three-dimensional manifolds, rather than two-dimensional structures on the surface of three-dimensional manifolds. While I attempted to extrapolate from conventional sealing theory with minimal assumptions, this entire report and hypotheses therein will likely be invalidated by experiment; nonetheless, developing new models and theoretical tools will likely be useful. Review the report by next week.' That's the end of the message."
Hazō nodded slowly, pulling his eyes away from the list of axioms Orochimaru had started to enumerate on the very first page. "I see. If that was the first, what's the second?"
"Second, and last, Orochimaru-sensei wishes for you to produce a local replica of the Great Seal. He has prepared a room in the Basement for it, and he expects that you will do so next week, when you come to his estate to deliver your feedback."
Thoughts raced through Hazō's mind. Orochimaru would see him using Earthshaping. Orochimaru would notice Hazō's unnaturally accurate memory for the Great Seal by the level of similarity between the above and belowground replicas. Orochimaru would notice how Hazō mentally braced himself to even think about the Great Seal. Orochimaru would have access to Hazō in the Basement for almost a full day.
"Ah," Hazō said, "I'm afraid it's not that easy. Creating the replica takes a long time, nearly all day-"
"Your time will be compensated."
"And it is quite chakra intensive, so I need Noburi ready to help-"
"His time will be compensated for as well."
"And Noburi is occupied with Tsunade for the next two weeks, and I don't think any of us wants to be the one that pulls him away from her."
"Hmm," Kabuto said, tapping his finger to his lower lip. "Now that may be an insurmountable problem. I will consider it. Perhaps there is a way to pull him away for only a day without drawing Lady Tsunade's ire."
"As long as it doesn't sabotage his chances," Hazō said. "Like you said, this is a rare opportunity and we wouldn't want to cause any irritation at all to Tsunade." Of course, that ruled out everything. Tsunade would be irritated by anything in her general vicinity.
"Noted," Kabuto said. "Incidentally, I wish to say congratulations. I had thought those samples from the Dragons would have been the most interesting thing that Orochimaru-sensei would see all year, yet you exceeded yourself. The 'Great Seal' has lit a fire within him that I've never seen before. Do you remember how I mentioned that I had time to relax recently? Ordinarily, this would never be the case. No sooner than one course of research would end would the next one begin. However, Orochimaru-sensei's new primary focus is the Great Seal, and most of his hours pass on the Seventh Path, inspecting it. Caring for our still-living subjects takes little effort, and I cannot assist Orochimaru-sensei in sealmasters' affairs. Therefore, I can find time for relaxing morning tea." Kabuto sipped his teacup.
"I understand," Hazō said, standing and grabbing the report. "Thank you for the information, Kabuto. I am afraid I am running late for a meeting with my Chancellor. Thank you for the delightful breakfast."
"Always a pleasure," Kabuto said, raising his teacup in a minor salute. "I shall keep you apprised of the situation. I look forward to seeing you in the Basement."
o-o-o
"What's the treatment when infection spirits inhabit a burst boil?"
"Fourth-type herbal decoction, with the addition of ground up gallstones from a pre-pubescent firegoat."
"Correct. What do you do for a ninja who can't keep their food down?"
"What elemental affinity do they have?"
"Hmm…" Papers flipped. "Water."
"Ah, regular acupuncture of the ventral meridians? Oh, and a supplement of wood ear's mushrooms."
"Correct. What about a Fire-element ninja suffering from night terrors?"
"Chronic?"
"No, after a bad mission."
"Hm… Grind up fresh mugwort, suspend it in oil, and anoint the patient on the forehead and behind the ears to drive out the nightmare spirits."
"Ah, no, sorry."
"Dammit!" Noburi exclaimed. "What's the real answer?"
"Get aged mugwort, six months or more, and burn a fingernail's worth on the forehead and behind the ears," Hazō said, flipping through the papers.
"Ugh," Noburi said, extending a hand. Hazō returned Noburi's notes back to him and Noburi glanced through it. "Right, yes, that makes sense. Sage above, I'm not ready for the surgeries."
Hazō clapped Noburi on the shoulder. "Ah, don't worry about it, Nobby. I've seen you work, and you've improved immensely in the past couple months. You'll heal anyone she throws at you."
Noburi scoffed. "Oh, I'll make them better alright. I just won't be meeting Tsunade's ridiculous standards for what a medical ninja should be able to do. The patients'll survive, but I can't just suture the incisions shut with her around. She'll tear me a new one unless every stitch is perfect and even and has a pretty little bow in the middle."
Hazō had been quizzing Noburi for almost an hour, now. The Slug Princess still insisted that she wouldn't take anyone as an apprentice, much less Noburi. Still, over the course of the two months he'd been shadowing her, she'd apparently started asking him to take her place in minor procedures, and soon he'd be taking the lead on surgeries at Tsunade's discretion. With luck, he'd succeed with flying colors and finally earn Tsunade's approval and mentorship.
Once again, Hazō wondered if he should take his work elsewhere in the family house to avoid distractions. He had to finish the preparatory work for his bubble-producing seal idea that the Toad Sages had so enthusiastically agreed to, but getting roped into Noburi's quizzes wasn't going to help him mentally arrange all the seal components in a way that made sense. Again, he decided not to retreat to his study. He'd spent too little time with Noburi lately, what with Noburi dealing with a Sannin and Hazō dealing with the apocalypse. Really, Hazō needed all the socialization he could get.
Only a couple questions later was Hazō's desired interruption granted. Mari strode into the spacious inner room of the main house. She swept her gaze over the room, noting the steel braziers burning bright (with Purifiers to soak up the smoke), the two low tables where Noburi and Hazō had spread their homework around, and the various cushions and mats surrounding them.
She strode up to the table and announced to the room, "Gentlemen, I have need of your wits!" She threw a trio of tightly wound scrolls at the table, where they bounced gently. Hazō noted the stamped insignia on each scroll – these were postings from the mission board.
Hazō reached out and unwrapped a scroll. Apparently, some merchant called Hōju wanted to hire a ninja team to escort him along the short road from Leaf to Meiwa, and to help load and unload carts full of clay and pottery at either end.
"You're… taking this mission?" Hazō asked.
"Not for me," Mari said as Noburi unrolled another scroll, revealing a messenger mission to somewhere in Tanzaku Gai. "For the small fry."
Hazō frowned, tapping the mission statement in front of him. "This is a C-rank. Are your genin ready for a C-rank?"
Mari shrugged. "They've been with me for what, three months now? I've already drilled basic paranoia into them. They'll be fine."
"This messenger mission looks good," Noburi said. "Low risk. You can stay on the move basically the whole time, with no real combat risk and no slow, weak merchants to hold you back if something maybe goes wrong."
Hazō shook his head. "No, I meant to ask… is it really a good idea to take them out of the village so soon?"
Mari shrugged again. "It's fine. Standard Tower policy says that jōnin and chūnin-sensei should start taking students on out-of-the-village missions around the new year, and that's coming up fast. I could keep 'em around for a while longer if I wanted to piss off some annoying letter-writing bureaucrats, but why bother? C-ranks aren't exactly hard, and they'll learn more about missions by doing missions than by sitting around the village talking about doing them."
"Yeah, Yuno's actually been taking her team out on missions for a whole month now," said Noburi.
"Really?" Hazō asked.
"Yes, really," Mari said, "to everyone's delight, I'm sure. She's been teaching them all the wonders of chakra beast extermination. None of her little genin have bit it yet, I think. But, to be fair, that's Yuno. You know Yuno. When it comes to chakra beasts, Yuno's… well, Yuno's Yuno, you know?"
"Right…" Hazō said after a moment, "if you think it's fine, then Noburi's right. The messenger mission would probably be safest."
Mari raised an eyebrow at Hazō. "Hazō, have you ever done a C-rank?"
Hazō thought for a second. "Yes, I think so. We did a chakra beast extermination mission pretty early on when we joined Leaf, and I think we took a few till-n-fills to get out of the village for OPSEC-sensitive conversations."
"That's it?" Noburi asked, incredulously. "Nothing at all in Mist?"
"Right…" Mari said, voice suddenly sounding far away. "You never did a proper C-rank as a genin. You were always on disciplinary probation for some reason or another, so you only did D-ranks. Then the Noodle Mission was a B-rank, then everything in the woods…"
Hazō chuckled. "Yeah, I guess you're right. The Swamp of Death killed jōnin when they were caught unaware. With that as my first experience out of the village, my estimates of what's appropriate for genin is probably skewed to Naraka and beyond. Why not take the genin out on a till-n-fill, then? I remember it being straightforward and easy."
"Right, yeah. A lot of them are basically D-ranks, just in civilian villages instead of Leaf," Noburi said as Mari walked around the room, locking its doors. "Hopefully it'll be torturous enough for your tastes to tell them they get to do an exciting, real ninja mission outside the village, then bam! More chores!"
Mari finished locking the entrances, then knelt down across from Noburi and Hazō.
"I know this isn't a good time for this, but I've realized I can't afford to wait forever for the perfect moment, even when there's no pressure on me. I already made this apology to Kei, but I'm suddenly afraid that without the same drive to reconcile, if I don't take responsibility now then I never will."
"Mari," Hazō said, "is this about–," he cut himself off as she raised a palm.
"Let me finish, Hazō," Mari said. "I need to say this.
"I love you both so much more than I've ever been able to put into words, and my tongue alone makes Kage quake. I should never have chosen the two of you for the Noodle Mission. I thought you were expendable tools, that you were genin with skills worth having and that no one would really miss. I didn't care that you both had families that loved you and that you would miss them too, and even while we were on the run, I thought that my actions saving you from the disaster of Swamp and the cruelties of missing-nin life forgave my sins.
"That isn't the case. Yes, both of you have come to terms with your experiences in the Swamp of Death. I know that both of you have benefitted immensely from my teaching and everything we did together, to the point where you're better off today than you probably would have been without my intervention. Still, it was wrong for me to pick and choose you off a roster of names like your lives were worth nothing, and it was wrong for me to lead you into almost certain death even if I led you right back out of it.
"I took you away from your mom," Mari said to Hazō. "I took you away from your sisters," she said to Noburi. "And I took you both away from anything or anyone else you might have liked in Mist, and put your lives in danger instead. For that, and for everything, I'm sorry."
Hazō and Noburi sat in silence for a moment, digesting. Eventually, Noburi spoke.
"I get it, Mari-sensei. I forgave you for everything a long time ago. Things are so much better for me now than they could ever have been in Mist. I'm somebody here. I'm the Toad Summoner. I'm the axis on which Leaf's new war machine turns. I'm a rising medic star that has even Tsunade's attention. That's all thanks to you, Mari-sensei. So, poor decisions acknowledged, forgiveness earned and dispensed."
"Likewise, Mari," Hazō said. "I… I can't even list off everything that you've done for me. Yeah, I miss my mum, but she's right there in Mist, and AMITY might make it possible for us to see each other again in the future. Besides, you're someone I care about too, and I don't want you flagellating yourself for any reason. I know you can and will do better in the future, that you won't throw away people's lives the way you did as the Heartbreaker. So yes, Mari, I forgive you too."
Mari smiled. She rose to her feet again and circled around the table to the low couch where Noburi and Hazō sat. She leaned in and gave them both a hug.
"Thank you both. I know you've both found peace with your missing-nin experiences in a way that Kei never did, but this was more for me. You can't earn forgiveness unless you first accept responsibility, and it turns out that acknowledging past wrongdoing is pretty hard."
Mari stood up and grabbed the mission scrolls off the table. "Anyway, I have some future wrongdoing to get to, so don't mind me too much," she said. "I'll go tend to the small fry."
"Future wrongdoing?" Noburi asked. "What are you going to do to them?"
"Oh, nothing," Mari said with a wicked grin. "I'll let them know that we'll be taking a C-rank, but I won't tell them what it is, how to prepare, where or when to meet me or the client, or anything of the sort. First step of any good mission: figure out what the mission really is."
Noburi sighed. "You're really going to ruin these kids, you know? They're going to be paranoid wrecks incapable of taking anything at face value."
"And Kagome survived fifteen years in the woods. A bit more paranoid wreck would suit most ninja," Mari said as she swept back towards the door. "Don't worry, I'll wring any genuinely dysfunctional behaviors out of them."
"Mari," Hazō said. "Which mission are you actually going to give them?"
Mari smiled. "Oh, who knows? After all, they might come to you and ask, and we wouldn't want to make it too easy for them to get their answers. Let them have their little mystery."
And with that, she left in a swirl of her patterned kimono.
Noburi sighed. "She's a menace. I'm almost glad that we had the constant specter of death-by-Zabuza hanging over us when she was in charge. At least she couldn't mess with our minds that hard. Anyway, could you help me review the ninjutsu notes next? I've been struggling with bleed suppression and I want to make sure I remember all the cues."
Hazō turned away from the door Mari had left through and grabbed Noburi's hand-written notes again. "Sure. Which chakra manipulations are advantageous for stemming venous bleeding?"
o-o-o
"How was it, sir?"
Asuma gazed out of his office window, looking at the gloomy, overcast skies over northern Leaf and the vast forests beyond it. He gazed for a few seconds longer before turning to face Hazō.
"I… understand what Enma said. I agree with his judgment. The Dragons are abominations and need to be killed. Speaking of which, excellent work on already killing one of them, Hazō. I'll retroactively assign you an S-rank mission for it, and I'm assigning you another S-rank mission to kill the remaining five."
"I don't think I'll be able to kill them all alone," Hazō said, trying to ignore the way Asuma had casually granted Hazō a windfall of millions of ryō. "Maybe the shapeshifter, assuming that shapeshifting doesn't also come with regeneration. Probably the beautiful and darkness Dragons, assuming that there's something in there that can be killed. For the others, it'll have to be the summon bosses unless I come up with any new weapons."
Asuma winced slightly. "Remember to tell me before you start coming up with new superweapons. But yes, any weapons that can kill those things will be invaluable.
"Hazō, did you ever look at the… beautiful Dragon?"
Hazō shook his head. "The bait teams had always led it off before I went to the butte, sir."
"That's good," Asuma said, finally stepping away from the window and sitting down at his desk. He reached for his silvered rolling case, then opened it and frowned. Hazō caught Asuma sighing infinitesimally before drawing a pipe from within.
"Ensure that you do not gaze upon it, ever. With the full strength of my soul's defenses brought to bear even before seeing it, I think I've evaded any lingering psychic effects the way Enma suffered. Orochimaru was similarly warned, so I suspect he too will have avoided it, though he forebore himself from commentary after our… viewing.
"Still, even that was challenging. I could feel it reaching out to me, ignoring distance in a way unlike any seal or ninjutsu. I had to avoid looking at it too closely, because just observing it let it observe me, and every heartbeat that it had me in its sights, its metaphysical claws were trying to carve its name onto my soul. Without your inner Will of Fire flaring brightly to the defense of your soul, it would enslave you in an instant."
Tirade over, Asuma put the pipe into his mouth without packing any tobacco into the bowl. For some reason, bubbles slowly streamed from the pipe's mouth.
"Understood, sir," Hazō said. "I'm already treating the Dragons with as much caution as I can manage, but I'll take extra care to avoid the be#u|f∪l one. Ideally, I'll stay miles away from any of them at all times."
"Good," Asuma said. "With that said, I believe I am coming to fully appreciate the scope of this problem. The destruction of Archaeopteryx is not natural. Enma and I have spoken about it at length and our conclusion was clear: that the Dragons unambiguously represent an existential threat to the Seventh Path. If the Condors' tale is to be believed, four of the Dragons were able to destroy a powerful summon boss in his own territory, suffering only two losses. While individually, the Dragons may be weaker than a summon boss with the power of the land at his back, six at once will likely annihilate any of the Seventh Path Clans.
"Then, there are other effects to consider. Have they truly grown stronger over time as more mature Dragons escape the seal? Do they actually gain new qualitative abilities when they consume other clans? Something about the way they consume clans is unnatural, because the Seventh Path clans can ordinarily survive the death of their boss.
"Regardless, I have no doubt that they could reduce all of the Seventh Path to lifeless, black skies if they took action to do so. The destruction of the Seventh Path alone would be a great tragedy. As to whether they would truly gain the ability to cross Paths… Who is to say what powers they might acquire if they were allowed to grow? Even purely in my capacity as Hokage, the Dragons are completely unacceptable, as Leaf draws too much power from the Seventh Path.
"So, Hazō, I want to ask you this: What more can I do? I ordered the operations to discover and retrieve the Arachnid Scroll and gave it to Kagome. I granted you the Fourth Hokage's notes on the jinchūriki seal, though it appears that it won't affect the Dragons much. I convened Leaf's sealmasters to examine your Great Seal replica, but that went nowhere. Should I call them again and personally supervise them to keep them on track? I tried to control them previously, but I could wield the whip with a firmer hand. I ordered those sealmasters to learn and produce a tithe of HOWS, and I've been maintaining that order to keep the Great Seal from degrading. I wasn't sure about the value of that order at the time, but now I could kiss my past self for his foresight. I made my suggestions to Enma and my orders to Ruri that finally got the Conclave in serious motion. Somehow, it doesn't feel like enough.
"I will instruct Neji, Ruri, and Aika to do their level best to convince their clans to deal with the threat. I intend to give Orochimaru and Tsunade explicit orders to get Manda and Katsuyu to go to the Conclave, and it's strange to think that Tsunade may be the harder one to sway. I'll continue learning Elemental Mastery as carefully as I can. Is there anything else at all that I can influence?"
Hazō opened his mouth to speak, but Asuma quickly raised a hand. "By now, I've learned that this needs to be said explicitly. Please don't turn this into a naked power grab for your clan like what happened with the Fourth's jinchūriki notes. I am glad to spend Leaf's resources to complete the mission, but the mission objective is 'destroy the Dragons,' not 'empower the Gōketsu in order to destroy the Dragons'. If Gōketsu is empowered along the route to destroying the Dragons, then so be it, but I expect you will suggest courses of action with the goal of actually destroying the Dragons, rather than in accordance with whatever instrumental goals you have."
Hazō frowned. "Sir, improving Gōketsu's situation improves my ability to work on the Dragon problem. If I had ways of fixing the Great Seal, I would spend more time on those opportunities if I didn't have to stop other Leaf clans from driving Gōketsu into debt or disgrace."
"I understand," Asuma said. "And if you are ever constrained like that, tell me. You should use Shadow Clone to give yourself time for clan management, sealing, or weapons design. I've done what I can do discreetly to keep the Gōketsu finances stable and political opponents off your back. Could I do more? Sure. I could directly funnel money from the Tower's coffers into your own and make it clear to the clans that Gōketsu was my favored golden child that none of them could touch. Surely you can see why this would be a bad idea?"
Hazō nodded. "I get it, sir. The clans would revolt."
"Yes, Hazō. Your supply of HOWS would disappear and Neji and Aika's aid would suddenly be marred by split loyalties as the clans try to resist my tyranny. It would make Gōketsu a giant target for everyone in Leaf, clan and KEI alike. It would get us nothing, and cost us time and energy best saved for the Seventh Path.
"Already, the allegations of Gōketsu favoritism are compelling. The Arachnid Scroll, retrieved by an official Leaf team using official Leaf resources, of which Gōketsu's contribution was one component of many, went to Gōketsu without even a consultation with the Clan Council. People are already complaining that I reclaimed land from Leaf's landowners for your clan compound, because they know I would never do it if they had, say, business interests that needed land. Sage grant they never discover that such a large tract of land inside Leaf's walls changed hands for free."
"Why can't you explain the Dragon situation to them?" Hazō asked. "I've already primed them to expect it with the demonstration of the skyslicers."
Asuma blew on the pipe again, prompting another burst of bubbles. "I intend to. As I said, this is an S-rank mission. The clans understand missions, and they understand that Leaf must spend resources to make important missions succeed. Honestly, that'll solve most of your political problems. The clans mostly know not to take actions that would endanger an essential mission, and the label 'S-rank' on a mission title makes people shut up and listen. Still, the clans will notice if you use Leaf resources to empower your clan, especially if it's not on the critical path to completing the mission. So please don't try."
"I understand, sir," Hazō said.
"In which case," Asuma said, "I'll say it again. You have my full support, Hazō, and I want nothing more than to avert this potential apocalypse. How can I help destroy the Dragons?"
The Toad Sages approve the grand entrance seals because they think it'll be awesome or hilarious, depending on whether it works or fails. Mari and Kei have learned better than to second guess your sealing research priorities (and in general won't question you when you suggest that a seal may be useful).
Hazō does 1 prep day for fireworks and finds out that the difficulty is "genin". He rolls immediately, using SSA following the SOP here (voted in by majority that cycle).
Hazō easily finishes the basic fireworks seal. No mechanical effect, may narratively create a distraction, Aspect, or even cause someone to dodge unnecessarily.
Once he's finished with that, Hazō does 1 prep day for bubbles and finds out that the difficulty is "genin". He starts research immediately, using SSA.
Hazō easily finishes the big bubble seal. No mechanical effect, may narratively create an Aspect or cause overly-paranoid jōnin to overreact to the Mizukage's apparent presence. Hazou thinks he could have finished this research 2-3x faster without SSA.
Sealing timeline:
Day 1-2: SSA recovery.
Day 3: prep for Fireworks.
SC: Prep for CATEARS. Discovered difficulty: chūnin.
Day 4: Fireworks research roll.
SC: Prep for Megalovania seals. Discovered difficulty: jōnin.
Days 5-6: SSA recovery.
Day 7: Fireworks research roll. Fireworks completed.
Days 8-9: SSA recovery.
Day 10: prep for Bubbles.
Day 11: Bubbles research roll.
Days 12-13: SSA recovery.
Day 14: Bubbles research roll.
Day 15-16: SSA recovery.
Day 17: Scribing a ton of Fireworks, Bubbles, and MARS for the grand entrance.
SC: Scribe tons of Fireworks, Bubbles, and MARS.
Day 18: Last minute scribing + the grand entrance.
Taking an SSA Consequence should substantially lower your number of Shadow Clone hours available – -1 block for the -3 penalty a Mild gives, -2 blocks for no longer being willing to take a risk of Consequence on -9, as failing the Resolve roll would cause a Medium. We're not penalizing you this time as we haven't made this statement before, but going forward, you should subtract 3 training blocks during time that you have an SSA Mild Consequence.
Note that there is still a bit of a fudge happening in your favor: when rolling SSA Sealing and SC Resolve on the same day, there's a risk of taking a Mild Consequence which rolls up into a Medium (if the SSA Consequence is taken second, that would be a Medium that lasts 2 weeks!) and drastically penalizes your Resolve and Sealing going forward. We're going to ignore this fudge for simplicity reasons right now, but just be aware that we're ruling in your favor for this situation and that we may start making these rolls in the future.
We are also fudging in your favor on another front. It's established that all jutsu have a marginally variable cost which averages out to what's listed in the rules doc. It's also established that Shadow Clone will kill you if you don't have enough chakra to power it. Your regular WHOOSH training has Hazō make clones right up to the limit of chakra exhaustion. This means that Hazō would die on an unlucky cast where it ended up costing a few more chakra than usual. Similarly, we aren't worrying about this for now.
Orochimaru's report is less a manicured manuscript and more a hasty collection of research notes, written with a tangible air of waxing and waning (but mostly waxing) excitement. Orochimaru has identified candidate materials that can conduct chakra in three-dimensional seal components, mostly biological. Hazō is nearly sickened by a description of Orochimaru growing someone's bones into mimicries of the Great Seal's primitive components.
Orochimaru's experiments did not work. He notes that even ink-and-paper seals have different "language" than bioseals, so extrapolating 3D sealing to biological substrates from a single example is outright impossible. Instead, Orochimaru has carefully cataloged the properties of the Great Seal using some advanced chakra-sensing tools. Despite the insurmountability of reverse engineering a novel sealing discipline from its most complex example, Hazō thinks that Orochimaru might be genius enough to manage it if he had a source of chakra-conductive stone…
Hazō has prepared feedback for Orochimaru's proposed theory of 3D seals.
Kagome has finished the sixth seal in the jinchūriki seal chain. With Hazō occupied with the Conclave for the next while, he's not starting the first of the real rift seals yet. Instead, he'll start the seventh seal in the jinchūriki chain while Hazō finishes the Conclave and catches up. Once Hazō's ready, Kagome wants to make a seal that anchors onto the rift construct and feeds chakra in (hopefully opening the channel infinitesimally so readings can be collected from the other side).
Tsunade has allowed Noburi to take the lead on a series of surgeries just before the Conclave entrance. Results pending.
Asuma and the Leaf delegation (including Haru, who will hopefully bring back some cash from your trade deals, including the spider silk deal) will leave for the Chūnin Exams tournament in Hot Springs shortly. Leaf didn't do particularly well this year, but still has three tournament candidates (a Minami, an Inuzuka, and a KEI ninja). Make your suggestions for what Asuma can do on the Dragons problem (if anything), but any large-scale requests will likely happen after the tournament when Asuma will reassemble the War Council to address the Dragons.
Officially speaking, Hazō now has an S-rank chakra beast extermination mission on his mission record (chakra beast extermination because Leaf's mission classification system sadly does not have a category for extradimensional monstrosities). Yuno is likely jealous. Gaku swiftly earmarked the incoming cash for the construction of the new estate, pending your final design instructions.
Reality crashed down on Hazō like the full weight of a playful Fifi as Shikigami-sensei headed off to give his next painfully inaccurate inspirational speech. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't a Mari genjutsu prank (he'd kept checking until his body, still recovering from a day of flight, was in danger of chakra exhaustion). He was in the Swamp of Death, at the very beginning of his Uplift journey, and the world he knew and loved was hopelessly, helplessly out of his reach.
He couldn't go back. He was sure of it. Even if he managed to destroy the Seventh Path with a sealing failure a second time, even if he was willing to sacrifice all those lives for his own sake, sealing failures never did the same thing twice, and it was even less likely one would do the same thing in reverse. A dimensional seal might do it, because sealing was omnipotent, but it wouldn't be enough to just travel forward again—by the time he was good enough to invent such a seal, he'd have made too many changes for that future to be his own. Homing in on a future that no longer existed... well, it made opening the rift to the afterlife look like an apprentice's first explosive tag.
Kei and Noburi were left in the cave with him, the former staring despondently into the darkness beyond the cave mouth while the latter stowed his gear in a convenient cubby, periodically stealing surreptitious glances at her. What was he going to do about them? These thirteen-year-olds, so much smaller than he remembered, weren't Nara Kei and Gōketsu Noburi. Those two were gone, along with Akane and Mari and Kagome-sensei and everyone he'd ever known and loved (and even if he made it back, he had a terrible feeling Kei was gone forever). These kids were... They were…
They were his siblings by metaphysical extension. Thank you, Snowflake. If he could begin to love and bond with Kei's shadow as she grew into her own, unique identity, then he could do the same for them. Snowflake hadn't replaced Kei, and these two couldn't replace their future selves, but that didn't mean he couldn't learn to love them just the same.
Should he tell them the truth? In the worst-case scenario, they wouldn't believe him, and then that loss of trust would make it harder to steer them through the needle's eye of survival. The sensible thing to do would be to trace the same path, to keep everyone safe at least until Team Uplift's bonds were once again solid enough that he dared test them.
But... he couldn't do it. He couldn't be alone in the world with everything he knew, constantly lying to the faces of everyone he cared about, for as long as it took. Gōketsu Hazō drew his strength from his ideals and his family. He couldn't live on just one of the two anymore.
He'd start with Kei. Noburi was... well, kind of immature at this point in his life, while Kei had been conditioned to bow before the weight of evidence (at least where her self-perception wasn't concerned).
He walked over and sat down next to her by the cave entrance. She didn't react.
"Kei, can I talk to you?"
She gave him a deer-in-the-lamplight stare, which quickly turned into a scowl.
"I do not recall permitting you to address me by my given name, Kurosawa, much less to shorten it. If this is a prelude to some more elaborate act of mockery, I suggest you be more mindful of our circumstances and kindly leave me be."
It was like a stab through the heart from a jagged blade. His Kei was gone. She wasn't coming back. The second he forgot, the second he allowed himself to slip back into comfortable familiarity, all that awaited was the abyss of loss.
"I'm sorry, Mori," Hazō forced out, the shape of the name somehow feeling foreign in his mouth. "I wasn't thinking. I was just distracted after the day we've had."
Kei's expression softened. "Yes, I suppose that is understandable," she conceded. "Forgive my hostility, Kurosawa. My dignity is hardly a pressing issue during our last hours of life."
Oh, right. This was still before Mari's experimental mind surgery, meaning Kei was borderline suicidal.
Was that something Hazō could help with? He'd never been able to truly understand the dark, distorted world Kei lived in, and he couldn't hope to imitate Akane's mysterious efforts to get her to start climbing out of it. On the other hand, he was confident he knew her better than Inoue Mari did right now.
On the third hand (he didn't remember the Shadow Clone Technique, and that was a massive problem that needed solving sooner rather than later, but he wasn't going to let it stop him now), Kei was much more fragile than her emotionless exterior suggested, and if he pushed her the wrong way right now, he knew exactly how far she'd fall.
Did he dare?
He dared. She was his sister (even if she didn't know it yet), at the lowest point of her life, not only without any sort of support network but probably not even aware that support networks were a thing that existed. Hazō wasn't going to start his second life as the kind of man who'd abandon her to her demons just because he was afraid of making things worse.
Seeing the growing anxiety on her face, he realised he'd been staring at her as he pondered. Kei would've known instantly that he was lost in thought, but Mori Keiko was a stranger with a tendency to assume the worst.
"Sorry, Mori," he said again. "Listen, there's something important I need to talk to you about."
Kei didn't look any less anxious.
"What I'm going to tell you is going to sound utterly ridiculous, but I'd like you to listen to the end before making any comments. I have evidence to support all of my claims, and I will present it to you later, but right now I just need you to listen to what I have to say. Can you do that?"
Kei relaxed, but not by much. "Proceed."
Hazō mentally took a deep breath.
"Kei—sorry, Mori, I just came back from three years in the future as a result of a sealing failure. I remember all kinds of important things, but there are three you need to hear right now."
To a stranger, Kei would probably have looked like she was listening attentively, but Hazō could see her restraining her deadpan sarcasm through raw force of will.
"First, you were never picked for a suicide mission. The jōnin are lying. Settling in the Swamp of Death was the plan from the start, and you were chosen because you are a valuable ninja with abilities they felt they couldn't do without. You are not expendable and nobody wanted you dead."
"I am an unremarkable genin, mediocre even by Mori standards," Kei interrupted. "If they were selecting candidates for skill, they would have chosen one of my cousins."
She grimaced.
"Ah, apologies. I promised to listen to this lunacy to the end."
"All right," Hazō conceded. "Who they could get away with kidnapping was also a factor, so the fact that your clan undervalued you helped. But nobody forced them to kidnap a Mori at all, and they chose to kidnap you even though the Mori are an influential clan that have the Mizukage's ear.
"Second, I know the Swamp of Death is a deathtrap, but you and I will survive, and so will No- Wakahisa. We did it once before and the method is foolproof, and you can be sure I'm not lying because I am literally staking my life on this." As long as he didn't somehow mess up and introduce a deviation that made Mari leave them behind. And as long as he'd really travelled back in time and not diagonally into an alternative past that had already diverged in some catastrophic way.
He couldn't read Kei's expression, but radiating scepticism was no longer the thing she was doing.
"Thirdly, and most importantly, your sister loves you and you going missing has done nothing to change that, and in the future I come from, you will see her again so she can tell you for herself."
"..."
Hazō's missing-nin danger sense flared.
"How dare you?!" Kei screeched, suddenly on her feet, hands balled into fists. In the background, Noburi stared at them in alarm.
"What could you possibly know about me and my sister? You may subject me to your twisted mind games, Kurosawa, but if you bring Ami into this again, I swear I will... I will..."
Hazō held up his hands placatingly and thought fast.
"Ami never forgave your parents for rejecting you," he said in rapid-fire. "She calls them Ken and Yuri, like strangers. She took over from them as your guardian and put tons of effort into teaching you socials and did her best to raise you despite being an Academy student herself for most of that time. You consider her a goddess and love her unconditionally and are confident that no romantic partner could ever be good enough for her. She feels the same about you, except she's OK with you having a partner she can vet and whip into shape if she needs to. You feel guilty that she spent so much time on you instead of advancing her career, but she doesn't seem to feel that way at all. You used to have a toy black kitten called Mewramasa, Devourer of Unworthy Souls, which isn't really relevant but I just remembered it and it's something I couldn't possibly know."
"Ami... Ami loves chaos, making it and exploiting it and frankly just it being there, I think. Her three primary values are control, freedom, and fun. She's a lethal cook. She's really good at braiding hair, but you've never let her do it to you. She has multiple personalities, or modes, or whatever, and she switches between them spontaneously, but the one I see most is bouncy and whimsical and always smiling or laughing. She gets headaches and carries a flask of willowbark tea with her. She loves lavender, or maybe just the smell of lavender, and her favourite food is shaved ice. She enjoys puzzles and pranks and is weirdly good at improvising for a Mori. Oh! She gave you a bright pink shuriken with what looks like a badly-drawn sheep on it to make sure you'd come back to her, and later you did the same for Jira- someone you cared about. I don't think you ever gave it back, because I managed to badger you into showing it to me afterwards, but you came back to her anyway."
Kei half-sat down half-fell to the ground. She winced with pain, but didn't move from the awkward lopsided position she'd ended up in.
Hazō waited, giving her time to process.
Finally, as if remembering herself, Kei adjusted to a conventional cross-legged position. Still, when she spoke, she sounded dazed and not quite there, like she was recovering from a partially-resisted banshee wren attack.
"I cannot imagine Ami failing to notice a stalker sufficiently obsessive to gather so much information, nor conceive of a motivation for her to share the information herself. Kurosawa, I... I do not understand. How?"
"I'm a time traveller," Hazō said gently. "Some of these things you told me over the years. Some I picked up on myself, like the Mewramasa thing, which you accidentally let slip while you were distracted. Some I heard from Ami, or figured out by spending time around her."
"Were we on close terms?" Kei asked uncertainly. "I mean... will we be on close terms?"
Suddenly her eyes widened.
"Kurosawa, are we... lovers?"
Hazō shook his head. "No," he said, deciding this wasn't the right time to tell her that the other Kei had at some point had a crush on him. Come to think of it, there was no guarantee that something like that didn't lie in this Kei's future.
He really was in unknown territory here.
From Kei's unsteady body language, he was suddenly afraid she might keel over from the overload (and it wasn't like he could catch her), so he hurriedly added, "Don't worry about the relationship future you and I had. That's only my future. Past. Whatever. I know that you're not my Kei, and we don't have to have that kind of bond if... if you don't want to. My past isn't your future.
"Ke- Mori, you can take your time getting your head around all of this. For now, I just want you to remember three things. This wasn't a suicide mission and nobody thinks you're better off dead. We will survive the Swamp of Death and everything else we face. Your sister loves you and you haven't lost her. Can you do that for me?"
Kei was silent for a while.
"I have one question," she said right as Hazō was about to conclude that the conversation was over and start thinking about how to approach Noburi (who had been giving him a baleful glare in the background for having an intense personal conversation with Kei).
"What's that?" Hazō asked.
"You explained that you, Wakahisa, and I would survive the Swamp of Death. Who else survives?"
"Inoue Mari," Hazō said, and that would be another major problem to figure out. Part of him wanted to share the power of foreknowledge with his most powerful ally at once and have her help chart a course, but the Inoue Mari who had just kidnapped them was a step short of the Heartbreaker, without a journey of redemption or time to develop faith in Hazō's leadership and absorb his Uplift speeches. Worse, it suddenly occurred to him that the catalyst for her redemption was saving Kei from her suicidal depression, and whatever was going on inside Kei right now as a result of his intervention, it wasn't something Mari could or needed to fix. He might really have screwed this one up.
"Four people?" Kei asked in what might have been horror were it not overshadowed by emotional exhaustion (to add to the existing physical kind). "Kurosawa, there are twenty-seven shinobi occupying this camp. I assumed we were all doomed to perish within a matter of days, never permitted a shred of agency beyond the opportunity to be eliminated earlier by refusing Shikigami-sensei's invitation. Now you are suggesting that the likes of me will be granted salvation while all their deaths are inscribed in whalebone?"
In fact, Kei was the reason any of them had been saved (which was another reason he should have thought twice before sabotaging her connection to Mari). But Hazō had nothing he could say to her. At the time, their own survival had been a miracle, and there was no time, among the chaos of their early missing-nin days, to stop and think about the deaths of his classmates and other familiar faces from the Academy, or the friendly chūnin he'd picked up tips from during the journey to Noodle, or indeed Shikigami-sensei, whose cold plotting had not been mutually exclusive with a determination to keep his ninja alive and teach them how to be strong. Being a missing-nin simply didn't leave time to worry about things you couldn't change.
Or that was what Hazō told himself, at least.
"Can you save no one else?" Kei asked quietly. "If the secrets of the future are sufficient to save four, can they not save five? Six? If I, with my limited survival skills that would surely impair any team, remove myself from the list, would it be possible to rescue a greater number of more competent candidates?"
That was when Hazō remembered. In addition to a staggering inability to value her own life (his Kei had thrown herself into Dragonbreath to protect him without a second thought, and he hadn't even begun to process the sheer weight of that), inside this girl was the seed of the woman who'd taken responsibility for hundreds of lives for no better reason than that a mischievous sister and two dead clan heads had dumped them in her lap.
He also remembered that inside Kurosawa Hazō had been the seed of him, and that seed had already matured.
"Mori," he asked with urgency born of excitement, "do you think you'll still be awake in a couple of hours?"
"Sleep was the remotest of possibilities even before our conversation," Kei said sardonically.
"Good," Hazō said, "because I'm going to have a plan for you to optimise."
"What do you intend to do, Kurosawa?"
Hazō grinned an ominous grin he had learned from a woman who no longer existed. The world trembled slightly as he turned to face it, staring down the darkness of the Swamp of Death and daring it to blink first.
Hazō dropped into his chair with a sigh and rubbed his face with both hands. He let his head tip back and his eyes fall closed.
"Another difficult day, sir?" Gaku asked, pushing the plate of cookies closer.
"Ugh," Hazō said. He took two of the cookies without bothering to pick up his head or open his eyes (there was a small amount of groping about involved) and shoved one of them into his face. Gaku waited patiently, a small smile on his lips.
After a few moments of enjoyment, Hazō sighed again and sat up, opening his eyes. "Fine," he said. "Let's do this."
Gaku dipped his brush and waited attentively.
Hazō took another cookie and munched it as he spoke. "I just got done speaking to the Rat ambassador and his wife. They were...welcoming, I guess."
"That sounds modestly better than your prior meetings, sir," Gaku noted.
Hazō snorted. The team's first day at the Conclave had consisted of meeting six different Pangolins and handing out fried and/or candied bits of driver ant corpses to each of them, a revolting thing that Kei had recommended. The pangolins had been, respectively: snooty, abrasive, aggressively displeased with the team's presence, religiously bigoted, demanding of why Hazō had cut off the supply of skytowers and sneering at his misalignment with the will of the creator, and one whisker from violence. The last one had been the most fun.
o-o-o-o
One whisker from violence...
Hazō, Kei, and Noburi had been taking a well-earned break from gladhanding in order to enjoy the buffet table at the Conclave's recreation facility. Most pangolin foods were not to Hazō's preference, being either melt-your-face spicy or plain disgusting, but there were enough different species at the Conclave with enough different tastes that there were some things he liked. In particular, the rolled-up teriyaki meat strips stuffed with watercress were amazing. He wasn't sure what type of meat it was, but it was amazing.
"Hey!"
Noburi's eyes flicked up at the shout, looking past Hazō and Kei's shoulders; his posture didn't change, so his siblings turned around calmly.
Panbanī was approaching, two other pangolins in his wake. Hazō wasn't good at judging pangolin age and only so-so at judging pangolin sex, but he suspected those two were also young males.
"Hey there!" Hazō called back, offering a smile and a wave. "You're...Pansomething...Panbubbly, right?"
"Panbanī!" the young pangolin snapped, coming to a halt in front of Hazō.
"Right," Hazō said. "Panbubbly."
"Panbanī!"
"Panboobi?" Hazō asked, frowning.
Kei gave Hazō a speaking eyebrow. Specifically, it said Do you really need to intentionally antagonize our hosts?
Hazō's eyes crinkled very slightly and the corner of his lips twitched. Yes. Yes, I do.
Eyeroll. Fine, but don't blame me when they murder us all.
"PANBANĪ!"
"Wait, wait, sorry. I think I've been mishearing it. Say it again?"
"Panbanī!"
"Pangoobi?"
"Panbanī!"
"Pandoodi?"
"Panbanī!!!!"
Hazō shrugged. "Well, whatever. What can I do for you, Panbubbly?" Hazō asked.
"It's Panbanī, you— Never mind! Your foul attack yesterday will not be forgotten!"
Hazō frowned. "Attack?" He looked at Noburi. "Who did I attack?"
Noburi shrugged. "Nobody while I was around. Maybe while I was in the loo?" He waggled a scolding finger. "Were you tippling again, Hazō? You know you can't hold your liquor. There you go, getting into fights, attacking helpless little toddlers—"
"I am not a toddler!" Panbanī said.
"Of course you're not," Hazō cooed. "You're a great big boy with great big muscles!"
Panbanī seethed at that but couldn't seem to figure out how to respond.
"You smackin' tail at my bro, bro?" one of Panbanī's backup band said, taking a half step forward and flexing.
Hazō studied the pangolin with a delighted expression and then turned to Kei. "You're right, they're just adorable! I wasn't sure when you introduced me to your team...the big ones are too impressive to be adorable and Pankurashun is waaay too badass to be adorable, but these guys are just right."
"Hey!" Panbanī said. "Shut your mouth, you filthy human! You're in the presence of the Pangolin Clan, show some respect!"
Noburi snorted and kept nibbling on his plate of canapés.
"Noburi!" Hazō scolded. "Don't snort at the Pangolin Clan. It's rude. Sure, Panbubbly is kinda puny and fights like a ten-year-old human civilian, but he's trying. You have to give points for effort, right?" From the corner of his eye he watched Paneihei coming towards them at something that was barely less than a run. The senior pangolin had been within Hazō's eyeline throughout the conversation or he wouldn't have felt so comfortable baiting this little twerp. Always important to have a senior person around to bear witness to who had thrown the first punch.
"I wasn't snorting at the Clan," Noburi said, locking eyes on Panbanī and chewing with his mouth open. "The Pangolin Clan is impressive."
"Good afternoon, Summoner," Paneihei said, arriving slightly out of breath. "Gentlemen. How goes your day?"
"Really well," Hazō said. "Panbanī was inquiring about our stay and whether or not we needed anything. I was saying that if he knew where to get more of those teriyaki and watercress things, that would be amazing. He was nice enough to volunteer to go get me some."
"No I didn't!" Panbanī snapped. "I'm not fetching your food like a servant! I was here to call you out for your dishonorable combat tactics yesterday!"
Hazō cracked up, laughing so hard he had to bend over and put his hands on his knees. Behind him, Noburi laughed. Kei, of course, merely sighed.
Paneihei also sighed. "Panbanī, return to barracks."
"You were there, Senior Lochagos! You saw him grab my face! You saw him—"
"Panbanī," said the Senior Lochagos. "If you attack someone, you should expect a real fight. A real fight has one rule: win. It isn't a teahouse slap fight and it doesn't care about the conventions of the Panmarata style. Now, return to barracks before I place you on administrative punishment." He stared the three younger pangolins down until they slouched grumblingly off, then turned back to Hazō. "I apologize for my trooper."
"S'all good," Hazō said, waving magnanimously. "Seriously though, those teriyaki and watercress things are amazing. Can you point me to a kitchen staffer so I can get some more?"
o-o-o-o
"Anyway," Hazō said. "Today was the Rat Clan meetings." He ate another cookie and sipped his tea. "They made a point of noting how much trouble I've been having with the Pangolin Clan, so clearly Panbanī has been useful for something. I let them think it was more widespread than it is—which wasn't hard, since the pangolins really are pissed at me for cutting off the supply of skytowers. As we hoped, they had already spoken to the Condor ambassadors. We talked about Uplift, both the team and the various initiatives we've had going here. They had some trouble wrapping their heads around the need for walls around your towns and elevated roads, but they listened. They had some interesting ideas on underground canals for moving water around without losing too much of it to evaporation. We're going to have another meeting tomorrow, get more into the details."
"I see," Gaku said, taking the last note as Hazō finished speaking. "Would you say it's going well?"
"I think so, yeah. People are having more or less the reactions that Mari coached me to produce, so I guess I'm doing it basically right. Seriously though, I'm running out of small talk to make with people and running out of patience faster. If Enma doesn't get there soon I think my head may burst."
o-o-o-o
The very next day...
"That's a fascinating idea, Ambassador," Hazō said. "I'd never considered the musical possibilities inherent in waggling thin sheets of metal back and forth. Very innovative." He sipped from his stemware in order to hide his face for just a moment. There was a limit to how much inanity even the Iron Nerve could allow you to endure without showing some trace of how much you wanted to choke the life out of a stupid old windbag.
"Of course, of course! Hoom, hoom, hoom!" the old pangolin said, slapping his claws against his belly. "The Pandemiku waggle style is by far the best! Pandemiku, of course, was the originator of the style, and he personally painted four of his students to be his disciples. The second student, Pandono, traveled to the northwest of Pangolin to found a monastery at the foot of the mountains—they're quite a bit more northwesterly than you might think, don't you know? Hoom, yes, very much so. Most people consider the mountains to start around ten miles from the Second Army's headquarters, but actually it's more like forty. That's modern miles, of course. Back in Pandono's time they measured in zu, which was based on tail-lengths and ended up being about seventeen hundredths shorter than a modern mile. We moved to the modern standard because..."
Hazō let the Ambassador's droning exposition fade into the background of the cocktail party that Team Uplift was mired in. They had arrived together but somehow the three of them had gotten separated. Noburi was standing by the wall chatting with two lithe young women from the Otter clan, one of whom had a gold ring in her left ear to indicate that she was husband-hunting. Hazō made a note to tease Noburi for at least two days about being scouted by non-humans.
Kei was thirty feet away and pinned down by a Condor ambassador who was repeatedly jabbing a wing at her as he spoke. Each wing jab came within inches of Kei's face and the young woman's hand was already white-knuckling the kunai at her hip.
"...my grandfather, who—" the old pangolin was saying as Hazō tuned back in.
"Excuse me, Ambassador," Hazō interjected. "I apologize, but I need to speak with my sister for just a moment. I ask your grace." He bowed and stepped quickly away, not waiting for the actual socially-expected grace to be offered.
"Hey, sis," Hazō said, stepping into Kei's conversation with a giant smile and a smooth pick-and-roll that allowed him to put himself between his haptophobic sister and the insensitive and overly-aggressive condor who was about to be introduced to an entire helping of activated stabby trauma.
"Hazō," Kei said, giving him an millisecond expression of gratitude. "I was just now speaking with—"
There was a booming sound as the double doors to the room slammed open hard enough to bounce off the walls. Enma strode through, the sunset behind him outlining him burnt umber light and casting his shadow forward across everyone.
"Somebody best have a bottle of the good stuff for me or there's gonna be trouble," Enma said into the silence. "And after I drink it, we're gonna talk about why you people aren't saving the world."
Hazō lacked the self-control to deny himself one little fist pump.
Hazō exhaled, releasing a tension he hadn't even known existed.
"Sir, may I speak frankly?" Hazō said.
Asuma nodded, gesturing at Hazō to continue with his pipe.
"I'm relieved that you're taking the Dragons seriously," Hazō said. "I've spent months of toil on a problem well beyond my abilities, begging humans and summons alike for help, only for them to ignore me as if it weren't their lives at risk if I failed. I almost couldn't have imagined having your support, much less potentially all of Leaf. So, thank you, sir.
"Before I ask you for anything, what more can Gōketsu do for you? I can't promise anything yet, but I want to put it all on the table. Even clan secrets, if they'll somehow help with the Dragons."
Asuma chuckled. "I understand, Hazō. However, Leaf survived four wars, sometimes dangerously close to complete annihilation, without any Hokage demanding secrets from the clans. Leaf would fall apart if a Hokage ever did so. No, I will stick to my principles, Hazō. I will not ask you to disclose any clan secrets even at your own invitation. Even if I allowed you to deny me, my duty prohibits me from asking and creating unacceptable expectations and precedents."
Asuma put a finger to his chin. "Most clan secret techniques meant for ninja combat will not harm the Dragons. Gōketsu's main advantage is sealcrafting, and I know you've already sacrificed your greatest secret there – Jiraiya's textbook of sealcrafting wisdom. In fact, if you hadn't won the Will of Fire Contest and claimed the Dog Scroll for yourself, we would have a far weaker position against the Dragons. No, unless you want to volunteer something fully of your own volition, focus on what I can do."
"Understood, sir," Hazō swallowed. "We need to solve two problems. First, the Dragons. They are incredibly fast, tough, and strong. They have many esoteric abilities, and we can't even counter the few we know about. How do you think we should kill them?"
"Summon warriors and bosses, extensive skyslicer traps, any weapons Orochimaru and Tsunade have secreted away, and, if necessary, Elemental Mastery," Asuma said. "I haven't thought about it in any depth, and the War Council will adjust and refine the plan. Why, Hazō?"
"To understand our current options. With the Chūnin Exams tournament coming up, can we create an international response?"
Asuma laughed. "You're kidding. Our intel suggests that few major villages have summoners. F hasn't summoned a Mara in years, and if Sand has summoners, they've hid them well. If I ask for help with a Seventh Path problem that, if they choose inaction, will rob Leaf of most of its summoning power, what do you think they will do?
"I'll probe the handful of minors with a summoner to cooperate, but there will be no global alliance against the Dragons. In fact, we can't even ask for help freely, since some people will definitely sabotage us to rob Leaf's summoners of their powers."
Hazō didn't respond yet. He had another suggestion, but it required impossible delicateness…
Asuma sighed. "I see. You want to involve Akatsuki. Yes, they have two summoners with incredible offensive power. Kinslayer Itachi and Hoshigaki Kisame could credibly harm Dragons on the battlefield. If they somehow haven't heard of the Dragons yet, we could…
"Ugh," Asuma said. "This creates complications. While, optimistically, the Dragons could kill them, their proximity would potentially let them see Elemental Mastery's deployment."
"Could Enma or Kumokōgō claim responsibility?" Hazō asked. "Then no one would realize that Elemental Mastery is an easy-to-learn Fire Element ninjutsu. Enma or Kumokōgō could publicly and honestly swear to never use the technique again, except against enemies of similar magnitude."
Asuma gazed thoughtfully out the window. "Akatsuki will find it unacceptable that Leaf holds such power at all, especially as they'll know that it works on the Human Path. We could add pageantry to the casting process to make it less threatening, but… Hm. Good idea, Hazō. Honestly, people will more easily believe the hellstorm is the Monkey King's ultimate technique, rather than a chūnin's creation."
"Thank you, sir. You said your 'soul's defenses' let you resist the Beauty Dragon. What are 'soul defenses'? Is it jōnin aura? Better defenses would have helped tremendously in my close encounters with the Dragons, and I need any tool I can get."
Asuma raised an eyebrow. "'Jōnin aura'? I heard Jiraiya use that phrase once or twice. It's surprisingly close – non-jōnin can fully develop their souls, but the people that become jōnin generally also have the combined unyielding willpower and full submission to the Will of Fire that inevitably grows their soul in that way."
"What does it mean to grow your soul?" Hazō asked.
"When you strengthen and master your chakra, your soul grows," Asuma said. "Though, without the Will of Fire, many people's souls grow imbalanced. Jōnin outside Leaf call it 'killing intent'. You may have experienced it before. Their souls grow jagged and harsh without spiritual balance, and they can only lash out and harm others. The Will of Fire is the will to protect. Without the Will of Fire, they cannot adequately protect their souls against attacks, or even defend their comrades against an enemy's onslaught. Perhaps you experienced that as well."
Hazō thought back to Tsunade standing up to Orochimaru as he threatened to kidnap and vivisect Kei and Hazō. Her aura was a mountain, but instead of crushing them, the mountain's strength had empowered them to stand against Orochimaru. For a moment, Hazō had been unbreakable.
"Yes, sir. I think I have."
"Unfortunately, it takes time. Materially, continue to strengthen your chakra and master your ninjutsu. Spiritually, continue your meditations and your study of the Will of Fire to retain the balance of your soul."
"Understood. One more topic, sir. Do you remember Mareo, the Summoner from Bear, near Dog? Could we offer him Leaf citizenship and an ANBU escort here?"
Asuma sighed and pinched his nose. "I remember the crazy old hermit man, yes. Save it for after the tournament. I'm leaving Leaf on a skeleton crew of defenders to bring an adequate delegation to the Exams, and until that finishes, I absolutely cannot spare manpower for a risky and sensitive escort mission. For the next few weeks, I have to double-time politics with the other Kage and politics at the Conclave. I can't judge this proposal right now. Bring it up again later, Hazō."
"Okay," Hazō said, "then let's discuss the Great Seal. The Great Seal's failure caused the Dragon problem, and if we don't stop that failure, we'll face even stronger Dragons soon. We need to fix it somehow."
"Do you want my current plan for that, Hazō? Because, I'm currently hoping that you, Kagome, or Orochimaru pull off a miracle."
"I can't say what Orochimaru can do," Hazō said, "but Gōketsu's has made minimal progress after the implementation of HOWS."
"I see," Asuma said, with a thoughtful bubble-puff on the pipe. "Then Harumitsu needs a summoning scroll."
"Good idea, sir," Hazō said. "But first, we need information. The better we understand the Great Seal and its makers, the better our odds of repairing it. We need lore, sir. On the Sage or his companions, whoever among them knew sealing. On their exploits. On other entities they sealed away. On the Dragons or even just on other forms of sealing. We could persuade people to open their clan libraries, and the Seventh Path has long memories. Even the Dogs, who are shorter lived than many Seventh Path clans, still had tales about the Dragons, or as they called them, the Eaters. Could we persuade any of them to share what they know?"
"Clans preserve their own histories," Asuma said. "They won't know about the Dragons. Unless you want legends of ancient Sarutobi heroes and traitors, the Sarutobi archives will not help you. In Leaf, the Hagoromo keep the best records of the Sage's life by far. Leaf's last carved-seal expert died in the Collapse with no living apprentices, and Fumi's biosealing knowledge is minimal. Still, good idea regarding Seventh Path histories. I will order Leaf's summoners to give me a report about their clan's histories around the Sage and the Dragons."
"Thank you, sir," Hazō said. "Relatedly, I have questions about the Nagi Island seal."
Asuma raised an eyebrow. "The seal array? Hiashi took the burnt out seals with him after Pain died. Rock destroyed them. No Leaf sealmaster could replicate them, and Rock buried both the Tower and the Hyūga main house in the Collapse."
"I see," Hazō said. "What about the machine? I believe Akatsuki had embedded a big metal cluster in the wall near the sealing array. Could it have been a seal as well?"
"A three-dimensional seal, like the Great Seal?" Asuma asked. "Hiashi said it contained dangerous chakra levels even after Pain died, though he didn't explain what he saw. At the time, I was more concerned with collecting our dead."
After a moment's pause, Hazō said, "I understand. Can you describe its physical appearance? For example, did it have moving parts?"
"My memory of that day is hazy and dark," Asuma said as his voice adopted a strangely even cadence. "I was injured and chakra exhausted and battle-shocked after seeing so many comrades die around me. The sacrificial ritual, the supposed inheritor of the Sage's legacy returning his allies from the dead… I couldn't focus on it. I had to protect the other survivors from treachery from Mist or Sand or the resurrected Akatsuki.
"Calling the machine a blur would give my memory too much credit. I couldn't even tell you if it was made of metal or another polished, lustrous material. It didn't move when I looked at it for threat evaluation, and I recall thinking that it looked more like a tangle of vines than any orderly construction. Hiashi had people sketch it from memory in the days following the battle. I assume the Collapse destroyed those sketches as well."
"That doesn't disqualify it as a seal," Hazō said. "Do you know where it went?"
"Sadly, no. Hiashi declared it too dangerous to destroy, and our injuries made our return to Leaf take days longer than normal. The people we sent to reclaim our seals and secure the site said that the machine had already disappeared. Mist is within a day's travel of Nagi Island, so we thought they took it, but all of our spying efforts on Mist turned up nothing. I have to assume that Akatsuki reclaimed it after we left the battle site."
"Okay, I'll scrap that idea for now. Normal sealing needs chakra-infused ink to conduct chakra in controlled pathways, so three dimensional sealing needs a material that could make chakra pathways as well. Orochimaru has already experimented with bone and parts of muscle-"
"Do I want to know how he did those experiments?" Asuma asked.
"You don't. Was the Nagi Island machine made of chakra metal?"
"I don't know," Asuma said. "Though, a group of S-rankers with superior intelligence and flight could maybe have gathered such a huge amount of it."
"Could we kill chakra golems ourselves to get chakra metal?" Hazō asked. "Skyslicers and shadow clones could reduce the risk of fighting one dramatically."
"What is a chakra golem?" Asuma asked.
"It's an extremely powerful chakra beast with a chakra metal core," Hazō said, "supposedly formed when stone near a chakra metal deposit gets corrupted by the ambient chakra flux. They're extremely lethal, even to S-rankers, but they can be killed."
"Interesting. If physical damage can kill them, then skyslicers will. Still, I see three potential obstacles. First, stronger chakra beasts tend to be smarter and have additional senses that make them hard to lure into a trap. Second, chakra beasts are extremely local, and these golems certainly do not spawn within the Land of Fire. Third, a creature dangerous to S-rankers will be highly mobile, so identifying its location well enough to set traps will itself be dangerous."
"I'll rule out chakra metal until we actually find golems, then," Hazō said. "Ideally, we'd have chakra-conductive stone, but I couldn't find any stone like the Great Seal. Do you know any incredibly smooth, faintly translucent teal-green stone types?"
"Is that a natural color?" Asuma asked. "If it's a gemstone, I'm sure some daimyo has a match in his collection at a far smaller scale than you need. I don't have answers for you, Hazō. I've made no study of which materials conduct chakra, much less how to make seals with them."
"Even if the stone isn't natural, there are unnatural places to look. In Honey, we found a living cave filled with strong beasts and a huge variety of plants. Have you heard of that sort of thing?"
"In a way," Asuma said. "Everyone knows that areas with potent chakra spawn the most powerful beasts. Beyond that, I could only list such areas in Fire. Exploring them usually invites death. Otherwise, Wind would long since have expanded westwards. In their youth, the Sannin apparently made a habit of exploring such places. Others have tried to imitate the Sannin, hoping to find a secret path to power. As far as I know, no imitators survived their attempts."
"Relatedly…" Hazō said, "I have a question about Orochimaru. I don't want to make any specific accusations about a Leaf ninja in good standing, but you should know that Orochimaru could credibly crack three-dimensional sealing. While he would probably help seal the Dragons, his personal power would spike as well, though no one can predict by how much. I haven't specifically withheld any information from him, but I haven't shared everything either. Is it worth further empowering Orochimaru?"
Asuma considered the question thoughtfully, blowing bubbles from his pipe and gazing out of the window at the sunset, and at the crimson clouds hanging over the darkening Leaf.
"For now, I think yes. Orochimaru generally complies with orders, and you've shown that Tsunade can constrain him. In contrast, we absolutely cannot control the Dragons. If he will kill them or seal them away, I can accept empowering him. However, I only saw the Dragons this morning, and I need sleep and time to reflect. Assist him for now, Hazō, but be wary of the risks. I will tell you if my answer changes."
"I have no more questions," Hazō said, bowing deeply. "Thank you again for taking action and for having patience and understanding beyond measure. I saw Jiraiya's struggle as Hokage, so I can recognize a little of what the pressure must be like for you. I'm grateful for your help despite everything."
Asuma stared at Hazō for a second, as if trying to gauge his sincerity. After a moment, Asuma set his tall conical hat on the desk and rested his eyes on the heels of his palms for a few seconds. Hazō didn't know how to respond to Asuma's display of vulnerability. Asuma looked up again, and Hazō suddenly saw new lines of age and wear in his face.
"Leaf enjoyed decades of peace under my father's rule," Asuma said. "I can't imagine what he did to earn it. Akatsuki tried to reshape the world at Nagi Island two years ago almost to the day. In the last two years, the world has put Leaf under a constant, unrelenting pressure, and the Hokage has a duty to prevent it from breaking. Duty never ends, but I had hoped for a moment of peace after the blood we paid to keep Rock from our walls.
"Hazō, you unthinkingly commit treason, and you start new initiatives to improve Leaf that others would never dream of. You are a clan head politician, and you gleefully make enemies of the powerful and allies with the weak. You advocate for responsibility, and you embrace corruption. You invent new weapons, and you accidentally use them against Fire. When you made your claims about the Dragons, I had to ask myself if you'd found another insanity.
"Now, I accept that it's not you. The world itself is simply sadistic, and it will continue to try to break Leaf until it's satisfied. I may not have wanted the Hat initially, but I accept the duty I need to fulfill."
"I'm not trying to insult you, Hazō. You are a problem ninja, yes, but I do believe that you and your clan care about the good of Leaf. There are other problem ninja, and many of them have fewer virtues to redeem them."
"I think I understand a little bit about why I'm hard to deal with, sir," Hazō said. "That's why I wanted to express appreciation."
"Acknowledged," Asuma said as he reached and resettled the hat on his head. "Continue your mission, chūnin. I will see you at the Conclave in the coming month when not tending to the Chūnin Exams. While it may violate the Gōketsu's motto, please do ensure that Leaf doesn't get blown up in my absence."
o-o-o
Hello Hazō,
I understand that Noburi has just completed his final examination. Best of luck to him in earning Tsunade's attention! Supposing that he will have a couple days between the intensive audition and the soon-to-be intensive apprenticeship, Lord Orochimaru has made preparations for you to create the Great Seal replica with Noburi's aid. Please come to Lord Orochimaru's estate at sunrise two days hence.
Kabuto
o-o-o
Tsunade's Final Exam
Tsunade has loosely monitored Noburi's progress for the past two months. He improved enough for her to actually consider him a worthwhile medic-nin, and his bloodline presents many interesting opportunities. That said, Tsunade's time is valuable, and she has other things she wants to do. Is time instructing Noburi worth more the lifesaving work Tsunade could do otherwise? If he's skilled enough, if he's demonstrably improving fast enough, then maybe…
Noburi must complete three surgeries:
The first surgery requires that he pass a paired TN 50 MedKnow and a TN 50 MedNin check.
The second surgery requires that he pass three paired TN 40 MedKnow and MedNin checks before failing two.
The third surgery requires that he generate 25 total shifts with MedNin across seven paired TN 30 checks (failed MedKnow = 0 progress).
The outcome depends on the number of success:
3x successes: Tsunade accepts him as an apprentice.
2x successes: Tsunade has him continue shadowing her for two weeks more and gives him a second test.
1x success: Tsunade refuses him, but makes sure he's well connected in Leaf to keep growing.
0x successes: Tsunade refuses him and becomes negatively inclined towards him for wasting her time.
Noburi buys two Fate Points prior to the surgeries. He desperately wants to succeed here.
Surgery 1: One TN 50 MedKnow, one TN 50 MedNin
A lumberjack lost motor control. Can Noburi diagnose that a critical nerve in their spine is impacted, then carefully manipulate the nerve back into place?
Noburi (Medical Knowledge): 47 + 3 (dice) = 50
Noburi (Medical Ninjutsu): 39 + 4 (Invoke "Star of the Show") + 8 (Invoke "I Will Be The Next Tsunade"; 2x bonus since it's extremely narratively appropriate) + 3 = 54
Noburi succeeds surgery 1!
Surgery 2: 3 successes on TN 40 MedKnow/MedNin before 2 failures
A giant log fell on a sawmill worker's leg. Can Noburi set all the bones correctly and reconstruct the man's hip before he bleeds out (or rather, before Tsunade intervenes because any further failure would make the man bleed out)?
Noburi fails surgery 2! He must succeed the next surgery or else he will be outright rejected.
Surgery 3: 25 MedNin shifts on TN 30 MedKnow/MedNin
A diphtheria patient can't breathe, and their heart is fluttering. Can Noburi quell the throat swelling and cure the disease before complications arise?
1x success. Tsunade will not take Noburi as an apprentice. Still, with one successful surgery (and the impressive, TN 50 one at that!), Tsunade will remain positively inclined towards him, and will encourage him to keep working on his medic skills, especially medical ninjutsu.
Noburi entered Tsunade's office and bowed.
"Ah, cut it out. We're past that. Take a seat," Tsunade said.
Noburi unstrapped his barrel and slung the Toad Scroll off his back, leaving them both by the door. He slowly slid into the chair. He knew what was coming, but that didn't mean he liked it.
"I'm leaving Leaf," Tsunade said.
And she would take Noburi's dreams with her.
"Frankly," she said, "my work here is done. Every ninja injured in the war has made whatever recovery they're going to, and the peace treaties look stable enough that Asuma doesn't need me to sit around looking scary anymore. It doesn't make sense for me to spend all my time healing ninja when ninja are more naturally resistant to disease than civilians. There's another outbreak of typhoid in Otafuku Gai that someone needs to deal with, and I'll do more good there than here. Leaf has other medic nin to keep plagues at bay. The rest of Fire has no one."
"I understand, Tsunade," Noburi said.
"I'm leaving Leaf three days from now. And you're not coming with me."
There it was. The end of an era of hope. Tsunade had mellowed out toward him over the course of their time together, but had she ever really considered taking him as an apprentice? Or had she faked it from the start, letting him follow just close enough to satisfy whatever political play that had forced her to pretend in the first place?
"I understand, Tsunade." She'd let him take the lead on real surgeries, where real patients lived or died by his actions. He'd saved one particularly challenging case all on his own, yet… on the other, longer, more complex operations, he'd failed. His chakra control had been just a hair too coarse, his medical ninjutsu had destabilized, and Tsunade had been forced to intervene at critical points when Noburi's inadequacy threatened the patients' lives. Tsunade hadn't looked surprised at Noburi's screw-ups. Would it have hurt more if she'd been disappointed?
Her expression softened. "Sorry, Noburi. You're a fairly good medic-nin for your age, and from what I saw, your combat skills are sharp enough that you'd hold your own with other chūnin in a fight. Having two specializations is tough, and you're managing it somehow. You'll make a great all-round field medic, and you'll save lives. Still, that's not something I can spend any more time on. People are dying all over Fire, and I can't laze around in Leaf training field medics when people are dying, plagues are spreading, and everything's going to shit.
"Practice your medical ninjutsu. Keep studying anatomy. I'll make sure that everyone in the hospital knows that you're allowed to attend any dissections you want. Do real surgeries. I'll ask the doctors to keep you on as an assistant, and maybe in a year you can perform surgeries yourself without anything catastrophic happening."
Noburi knew what the answer would be, but he couldn't stop himself from asking anyway. "Are you sure you couldn't take me as an apprentice Tsunade? I could come with you to Otafuku Gai, or to wherever you go."
Tsunade's expression had softened before, but she grew stern again. "No, Noburi. Setting aside the fact that you're wanted in Leaf for other reasons, I wouldn't take you as an apprentice anyway. You're not bad, but you're not amazing. Not yet, at least. Keep working on your weaknesses, and maybe one day, once you're better than any of the other doctors in the hospital here, we can talk again."
Noburi nodded. He shouldn't push it. He'd worked so hard on his relationship with Tsunade, to the point where… well, she didn't smile at him, but she at least sometimes looked at him without glaring. He knew he shouldn't ask again, shouldn't beg and plead if he wanted a real chance at getting Tsunade's tutelage in the future, but he still wanted to.
Tsunade stared at him, and if she had an inkling of what he was feeling, she didn't show it. She reached forward and slapped her hand on the table between them. "Go home. You've been shadowing me around at the hospital non-stop for the last two months. Take a day or two off. Ask yourself why you want to be a medic. Then, come back and keep healing people. It's the only unqualified good thing you can do in this damn world."
"I understand, Tsunade," Noburi said.
She stared at him for a moment longer, before Noburi realized that the 'go home' had been an order. He stood, bowed again to Tsunade's irritation, and grabbed his barrel and scroll.
As he opened the door, he glanced back to see Tsunade eying him thoughtfully.
Should he?
"Is there something else, Tsunade?" he asked.
"No, it's…" she trailed off. After a moment, she nodded to herself. "Jiraiya would be proud of you, Noburi. For trying. Now go."
Noburi nodded, ignoring the tightness welling up in his throat. He left.
The door swung shut behind him.
o-o-o
Hello Hazō,
My sincerest apologies. I fear I made a grave error in scheduling. It appears that a particular research procedure must be performed that I had forgotten to account for when planning out the coming week. Lord Orochimaru will unfortunately be occupied during the day we specified previously. Please come to Lord Orochimaru's estate at sunrise four days hence, with Noburi. Again, my apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Kabuto
o-o-o
"The situation is irredeemable," said Kei. "Secrecy cannot be maintained along all desired axes. With Tsunade's departure, you must not enter the Basement."
Mari shook her head. "Once Orochimaru wants something, he gets it. The only question is if he'll ask or if he'll take."
"Can't I demand privacy while I'm Earthshaping the seal?" Hazō asked. "Orochimaru must know that his presence distracts people. I can honestly say that I'll perform worse with him over my shoulder."
"Impossible," Kei said. "Suppose you win the improbable bet that he does not care how you create a seal blank for the Great Seal. He is a ninja, and he presumably cares to defend his Basement. He will not permit you to perform a large area-of-effect ninjutsu in his laboratory for a full day unmonitored."
"Earthshaping is a bust," Mari said. "We can't defend that perimeter. He will ask the obvious question, and you can't claim clan secrets when half of Leaf's Earth Element ninja know it. We need to focus on something we can actually protect: the Iron Nerve's seal memorization."
"Two ideas, right away," Noburi said. "One, clan secrets."
"Yes, because that has historically deterred him," Kei said bitterly. "Tsunade's departure cost us our sole defense."
"Two, distract him. He loves chopping people up, why not give him something else to work on?"
"Aside from the fact that our minds are insufficiently twisted to determine which biosealing experimentation pathways would maximally engage Orochimaru?" Kei said. "Kabuto alleges that the Great Seal has earned a higher priority than their 'experiments'. Were it not for your impending demises, I would be making preparations for the incoming decline of the Final Gift Program and lamenting the corresponding decline in Ami's usefulness."
"Tell me about it," Noburi said. "I also got stuff to mope about. Bad enough that my own life's on the line, but I can't spend days moping when I need to fulfill Clan Gōketsu Duty Number One: keep Hazō from getting himself killed."
Mari and Kei nodded in unison.
"Hey!"
"So, how about sketches?" Noburi asked, ignoring Hazō. "Fill books with drawings and pretend to reference them to explain how you made the replica."
"Sketches won't make sense if Hazō memorized the terrain," Mari said. "And Orochimaru's camping by the Great Seal, so we can't make sketches anymore. Plus, he could have realized that I'll lie to protect my family even if it would make him angry, so he could ignore everything I said and focus on whatever Hazō was about to spill."
"Additionally," Kei said. "Orochimaru knows that Hazō only inspected the aboveground Great Seal once, and he saw the belowground viewing area's creation. Terrain-sense justifies Hazō recreating submerged Great Seal components, but if Orochimaru rules that out, few alternate explanations exist. Of course, if he learns of the relationship between the Iron Nerve and the Sharingan, known to Hazō even as an untried genin, then our OSPEC position degrades further."
"Hmm…" Mari said. "Orochimaru is meticulous and arrogant. Maybe we can make him a part of the lie himself…"
o-o-o
"Hazō, Noburi!" Kabuto called out as he strode out of Orochimaru's estate. Someone had repaired the walkway since Tsunade's last visit. "A pleasure to see you."
Hazō nodded and Noburi gave a short bow. "Thank you, Kabuto," Hazō said. "Have you been well lately?"
"Of course," Kabuto said. "But let's skip the pleasantries. I'm certain you would rather attend the Conclave, and Orochimaru-sensei is waiting. Follow me."
Kabuto led the two Gōketsu into their former home. The constant dripping had stopped, and harsh smells of chemical concoctions and blood had replaced that of the mildew. A part of Hazō wanted to explore the house and see everyone's rooms. He did not get the chance. Kabuto led them directly into the Basement.
Keep your nerve in the Basement. TN 40 (Great) Resolve check.
Kabuto had closed the doors to the side rooms before retrieving them. Hazō didn't have to see every experiment as he walked by. Instead, he could keep his attention forward and ignore the people suffering and dying behind every door. In fact, many experiments could use beasts, right? Orochimaru had made the octocats from chakra beasts. Chakra beast experiments could explain the squelching sounds and low moans and hushed flowing of liquid through thin piping that suffused the Basement.
Hazō almost broke his stride at one closed door. The skin farm. Orochimaru had arranged an infinite supply of human skin out of some need, and Kagome had put the subject out of his misery. Did Orochimaru still have that need? Had he found another person to subject to that eternal torture? If Hazō stopped to listen, would he hear the rapid steps of the flesh spiders and another quiet voice calling for him to end its suffering?
Noburi put a hand on Hazō's shoulder. "We need to survive this, first," he whispered.
Hazō couldn't divert course here. Noburi was risking his life for Hazō, and Hazō needed to protect Noburi in turn. One day, Hazō would correct the horrors of the Basement, but he couldn't do it today.
They continued to follow Kabuto.
The Basement's master was seated in an out-of-place chair in a hallway of the third sub-basement, skimming an inscrutable report. Hazō and Noburi both bowed deeply.
Orochimaru didn't look at them. "Enough. I disapprove of tardiness." He gestured down the hallway, and a soft click came from within the walls. A trap disarming? "Kabuto, take them."
Kabuto gestured for them to go ahead, and Noburi started to walk down the hallway.
"Lord Orochimaru," Hazō said. Orochimaru looked up from the report and stared at Hazō. Hazō struggled to avoid wilting under Orochimaru's slitted gaze. Orochimaru needed to see that Hazō was more valuable as a collaborator than a specimen. He reached into his satchel and withdrew a sheaf of papers. "I have feedback on your manuscript."
Orochimaru's standards are, of course, ridiculous. For Hazō to impress him, it will be a straightforward TN 80 (Legendary) Sealing check. Small success (1-3 shifts): Hazō finds an insight that Orochimaru missed. Big success: [secret], Small failure (1-3 shifts): Hazō's thinking, while intelligent, is not ultimately helpful. Big failure: Orochimaru dismisses Hazō as an idiot (and maybe demotes him to a specimen).
Hazō's feedback is insightful, but sadly too late to affect Orochimaru's research.
Orochimaru looked at Hazō, then glanced at Noburi, who had taken a few steps down the hallway and turned back to look at them. Orochimaru stood and in three swift motions sealed away the chair, disappeared the papers he was holding, and took Hazō's annotated manuscript. Instead of reading it, Orochimaru started to lead them through the Basement. "Summarize your feedback," Orochimaru said without looking at Hazō. "Explain key points in detail."
Hazō gulped. "Overall, it was as sound as any theory could be, sir. There are limitations that you took care to outline regarding existing uncertainties and potential physical mechanisms to explain the phenomena-"
"Be concise."
"Yes, Lord Orochimaru," Hazō said to Orochimaru's back. "In summary, I think your theory is internally sound, but trying to achieve the wrong objective. As I understand it, your theory assumes the Great Seal minimizes feedback effects between seal components. Instead, I believe three dimensional sealing emphasizes feedback effects between seal components."
"Explain."
"Normally, a seal component only has two dimensions where other nearby components could channel chakra and alter the primary component's effect. Let's temporarily assume Sogabe's node theory to describe inter-element feedback. If a two-dimensional component is at the center of an eight-node square, a three-dimensional seal element would be at the center of a twenty-six node cube! That would make containing feedback impossible, especially with non-Sogabe feedbacks and resonances throughout the entire seal."
"This much is obvious."
Hazō frowned, though no one could see his face. He had found this so much clearer before. Carefully, he accessed the Iron Nerve memory of the Pangolin Summoning Scroll, and his mind slowly started to slide.
"However," Hazō said, "the Great Seal intentionally uses chakra feedback effects between components. There exists a subgraph of the Great Seal. There, a spiraling connector likely creates whorls in the chakra flow extending linearly beyond the connector, and something similar to a nonchiral feed plate intersects the connector's axis at the normal. I hypothe#ize the Great Seal located and oriented the feed plate specifically to capture whorls in the ambient chakra flow. Captu}ed chira|ity would correspond to the connector's flow direction, whether deosil, widdershins, or null. In short, that component acts as a switch, respo7ding to the direction of chakra flow in another part of a seal."
Orochimaru glanced at Hazō, expression inscrutable. "In two dimensions, topology frequently prohibits certain connection configurations. In three dimensions, the additional degree of freedom should always permit manual connections. Why not use such a thing?"
"Precisely," Hazō said. "The feedback effects are intentional. The Great Seal's foundational theory emphasizes using inci@ental chakra flows, rather than purely minimizing their impact as we do. The Great Seal uses chakra flows to solve trivial problems. Ther3fore, I reason that this new theory of sealing uses feedback effects and resonances as conceptual primitives."
Orochimaru didn't respond for a few seconds as they walked.
"Remarkable," said Orochimaru in a mild tone. "I formulated a similar hypothesis, though I proscribed forming conclusions before acquiring experimental evidence. Experimental evidence supports your claim. Many components appear to be intentionally positioned to exploit feedback effects.
"This is no longer a significant contribution. My theories have advanced in the past three weeks. Nonetheless, it is… an impressive observation to make. I recall Jiraiya at your age. He would not have had the foundational maturity to consider this hypothesis, except solely as one among a scattershot of ideas that he would not ultimately select as noteworthy. Who taught you sealing, boy?"
"My uncle Kagome," Hazō said. "And I studied your work and Jiraiya's textbooks."
Orochimaru glanced at Hazō, and Hazō thought he saw Orochimaru's slitted pupils dilate. Orochimaru looked forward again. "Neither your demented uncle nor the pretentious imbeciles that call themselves Leaf's sealmasters would comprehend the Great Seal's implications. I understand that you primarily find creative applications for existing seals. You have not demonstrated any faculty for practical sealcraft. Where does your theoretical maturity come from?"
Hazō couldn't tell Orochimaru about downloading the Summoning Scroll. He glanced at Noburi.
"Hazō has always excelled in sealing, Lord Orochimaru," Noburi said. "Just a year after learning the basics, Jiraiya called him a 'good sealmaster'. Since then, years have passed and he's still improving."
"Hm. Perhaps I will examine your claim," Orochimaru said. "This is the space."
Orochimaru had somehow excavated a massive underground cavern. It reached forty feet tall at its peak above a gentle arch, and the sterile light thrown from the Basement's hallways couldn't penetrate its dark reaches. Steel plating covered the ground and walls near the entryway, but the room quickly faded to bare stone.
Orochimaru descended the stairs and paced out into the vast, empty space. "Kabuto, the seals."
"Yes, Orochimaru-sensei," Kabuto said, running on the walls and activating seals to shine cold, white light around the cavern.
"What ninjutsu creates the replica?" Orochimaru asked.
Hazō resisted grimacing. Of course Orochimaru had asked. "The Earthshaping ninjutsu, sir."
"Where did you learn it?" Orochimaru asked.
"The Leaf Ninjutsu Library, sir," Hazō responded. The Iron Nerve refused to show his disappointment.
"I see," Orochimaru said. "Then I have delayed examining their collection for too long.
"You, boy," he said, suddenly facing Noburi. "Kabuto provided me with information regarding your bloodline."
Noburi squirmed under Orochimaru's gaze. "Yes, sir?"
"I have prepared specimens suitable for chakra draining. You will maintain the reserves of your brother and myself as needed and stay out of the way otherwise. Am I understood?"
Noburi nodded.
Orochimaru gestured towards where Kabuto's seals had illuminated a massive mound of white quartz that reached nearly halfway to the ceiling.
"Begin."
Hazō walked to one of the larger boulders of quartz and kneeled down. He made his ninjutsu's single handseal.
"Earth Element: Earthshaping."
He reached out and started to infuse his chakra into the stone.
o-o-o
Mari will try a complex deception. If Orochimaru questions Hazō's perfect memory, Hazō loses. Mari will lean into her previous lie. Knowing that Hazō will make mistakes with Earthshaping, she requests that Orochimaru point them out and correct them. Hopefully, this is proof of an imperfect terrain sense and disproof of a perfect seal memory She's not present (can't invoke personal Aspects), but she can maybe set the scene such that Orochimaru never considers the dangerous hypothesis (passive check for him, so no invokes either).
Mari (Deceit): ?? + ? (2x time ladder bonus – using a few days to coach Hazō and Noburi through it) + ? (using the past lie, gets ???) - ? (indirect action penalty – still better than letting Hazō roll it) - ? (imperfect agents, working through Hazō and Noburi with Deceits of 24 and 19 respectively) + 0 = ??
Orochimaru (Deceit): ?? + 9 (!) = ??
Orochimaru reappeared in a puff of smoke.
"Another error," Orochimaru said. "This entire volume is wholly incorrect."
"I haven't started there yet, Lord Orochimaru," Hazō said through gritted teeth. Orochimaru's every correction carried an air of implicit superiority. Still, Hazō needed Orochimaru to think that Hazō hadn't memorized a flawless copy of the Great Seal.
"Begin now. The connections to this dome are wrong. It connects here, here, and here," Orochimaru said, scoring the stone with a fingernail.
Orochimaru examined the real Great Seal from the Seventh Path several times an hour to identify flaws in Hazō's replica, with Noburi periodically refilling the Sannin's reserves, as well as Hazō's so he could sustain the extended Earthshaping. Hopefully, Orochimaru would fixate on Hazō's mistakes, rather than notice minute inconsistencies in the quality of Hazō's.
It was exhausting. From the central mound of stone, thick tentacles of stone extruded to fill the room. Periodically, Hazō grabbed loose chunks of stone in the mound and melded them into the greater whole. Once he'd established the rough shape of the Great Seal, Hazō squeezed it into shape. Tentacles warped and twisted, extruding mass into fine helixes and bladed edges, while flattening themselves and compacting into wavy, folded sheets. Excess mass flowed along the tendrils and through the central mound, slowly redistributing itself as needed.
It tested every modicum of skill Hazō had ever earned with Earthshaping. Where pieces couldn't support themselves, he strengthened them. When sections of quartz came apart at their seams, he joined them. He even had to slightly adjust the density of certain areas, where the weight of components above threatened to collapse the whole structure. Hazō had to keep absolute focus to retain control over the entire cavern from one wall to another.
Earthshaping could not replicate the Great Seal's complexity. Some of its enigmatic, interlocking components were smaller than Hazō's little fingernail, and the Great Seal had millions of components. No one could recreate its full fractal complexity in a single sitting. Even a month of work wouldn't let Hazō accurately depict every component, much less capture the even finer details of grooves and texture.
Instead, Hazō could only hope to capture the Great Seal's macrostructure. Mari had planned this too – Orochimaru would more easily believe that he knew only the rough shapes rather than every precise detail.
Eventually, Hazō needed to stop. Time didn't pass this far underground, but his body told him that sundown had long since passed, and Noburi had visibly started to flag. Slowly, Hazō pulled his chakra out of his creation, testing little by little to ensure that it would stand with its own strength. Finally, he stepped away, pulling his hands away from the central coils.
How could such an incredible effort amount to so much and so little? Looking at his creation, Hazō could see the Great Seal's general shape exactly as he remembered it, already more complex than any seal he had ever scribed. Yet, he had missed so much detail.
"All good, Hazō?" Noburi asked.
"Fine," Hazō said, looking around the Great Seal. "It'll be enough. Ready?"
They left the room's heart via a tunnel Orochimaru had excavated, going under the tangled tendrils of the Great Seal rather than contorting their way through it. At the threshold between Basement and cavern, they met Orochimaru.
"Is that all?" Orochimaru asked. "This level of detail is insufficient for any serious analysis."
Hazō bowed his head, chastised. Mari had drilled this phrase until he'd perfected his vocal tone and microexpressions, and he drew it forth from the Iron Nerve. "I'm afraid I cannot do any better than this, Lord Orochimaru."
"Do not lie to me."
Hazō's heart sank into his gut, becoming a smoldering anxiety. Did Orochimaru know? Once Hazō had expended his utility, would he become another experiment?
"You merely tired of your work," Orochimaru said. "You could produce a higher fidelity replica with time. We resume tomorrow."
"The Conclave of summon clans is ongoing," Hazō said, "and I must-"
"The Conclave is an irrelevant group of bartering idiots. You wish to restore the Great Seal's function? Then you will continue tomorrow."
"How does this help repair the Great Seal?" Hazō asked. "You may examine it at will in the Seventh Path, and only the summon bosses can kill the Dragons."
"Repairing an active seal is impossible," Orochimaru said. "Ultimately, I will deactivate the Great Seal and construct a new seal in its place. That construction requires four components. First, a suitable substrate to create chakra-manipulating mechanisms. Second, adequate theory to design a seal to capture and contain the Dragons. Third, a way to precisely shape the substrate into theoretically prescribed forms. Fourth, adequate chakra control to infuse the resulting blank.
"In service of the second point, I must develop a theory of three dimensional sealing. This requires studying the Great Seal in minute detail, for I cannot rule out the potential relevance of even microscopic aberrations. Perhaps a source of ancient lore or another exemplar would let me discern critical design decisions from arbitrary ones. Without such providence, I must instead slowly, carefully study the Great Seal in excruciating detail.
"That requires analytical tools, time, space, and access to the entire seal. My laboratory provides these, not the Seventh Path. So, unless another solution exists, you will continue crafting this replica of the Great Seal."
Hazō considered the thought for a fraction of a second. At Nagi Island, Pain had made something that no one else understood, presumably using the Sage's long-forgotten lore… perhaps the same lore that had created the Great Seal. Should he mention it? Could he afford not to, when repeatedly returning to the Basement without Tsunade in Leaf could cost him his life?
Hazō is legendarily Taken Out! Orochimaru does not particularly care to inflict Consequences, so long as Hazō complies.
Orochimaru met Hazō's gaze with his snake-eyed stare. Orochimaru had given an order. Hazō couldn't resist, of course. Orochimaru didn't use his aura like he had at the Shimura estate, making Hazō feel like an animal trapped before a predator's gaze. In retrospect, Hazō couldn't call Orochimaru a predator. The Sannin stood so far beyond any predatory hierarchy that it made it preposterous to compare his relationship with Hazō to that of predator and prey. What Orochimaru wanted to happen would happen. If Hazō ended up broken as a result, that was a mere fact of reality, not something within Hazō's ability to influence. Unless, of course, Hazō just gave him what he wanted.
"At Nagi Island," Hazō said, barely keeping himself from stammering. "Pain had built something they only saw after you died. They described it as a metal configuration similar to the Great Seal in some respects."
Orochimaru's eyes widened fractionally. He turned away, muttering, "Of course, Nagato, he… Lost memories… Where… Akatsuki would… But who would know?"
Orochimaru turned back to Hazō. "There was a Kurosawa present."
Orochimaru hadn't asked a question. Yet, Hazō still felt like he was dooming Ren with his response. "Yes."
"Very well," Orochimaru said. A faint smile crossed his face. "You may have your Conclave. I must travel, it appears. I believe the Chūnin Exams are ongoing. When I return, we will resume the replica if necessary."
There was no room for disagreement.
"Yes, Lord Orochimaru," Hazō said.
"Dismissed. Kabuto, escort them out."
The plan was 300-399 words (397), so no brevity bonus or penalty.
Nanao had never imagined he'd fall for his chūnin instructor.
It was crazy. Beyond the pale. Who'd ever heard of a genin falling for their instructor? It was one thing to get a crush on Michiko from the year above, or Yuri who he thought liked him back before he saw her with Ryūkichi, but Akane-sensei, the team leader, the mature adult who probably had grown men throwing themselves at her every day? He couldn't imagine what would happen if anyone found out.
Still, what could he do? It was fate. Destiny. It was probably the Will of Fire itself. Akane-sensei just wasn't like other women, never mind the girls he'd known at the Academy. Bad enough that she was slender and fit and had those amazing perfectly-toned muscles and a chest that bounced just the right amount when she got into her kata. It wasn't like Nanao had never seen a female taijutsu expert before. No, all this was the fault of that one conversation, back when Mami was trying to nail Manato with the new techniques she'd just learned and Manato was running for dear life, while Nanao was sitting it out with a twisted ankle (and had absolutely refused to be taken to the hospital because the rest of the team would just think he was a wimp).
Akane-sensei had teased him for pushing himself too far, saying he'd never become Hokage if he wasn't more careful about knowing his limits. He'd told her, stiffly, that he was never becoming Hokage anyway. Even if his own skills weren't so average (and the Academy instructors hadn't hesitated to point to him as proof that the extra help they were supposed to give the clanless was a waste of time), the next Hokage was going to be Lord Uzumaki, and he was a jinchūriki and a prodigy and already a veteran ninja and a beloved war hero, and on top of that he was so young that he'd never retire in Nanao's lifetime. Dangling the impossible in front of him was just pointlessly cruel.
Akane-sensei had refused to be pushed away. She told him that the shinobi world was a dangerous place, and Leaf would be in terrible trouble if anything happened to Lord Uzumaki (with whom she was on first-name terms!) and there weren't powerful, reliable ninja standing ready to shoulder his burden. She told him that being outperformed by his fellow Academy students didn't prove anything, and that all the Gōketsu elders, including herself, had only flowered after graduating, and she could tell that he would too.
Then came the part that bowled him over. Why did he want to become Hokage, she asked. Was there something specific he wanted to accomplish? Was there an ideal that he needed to be Hokage to live up to? Was he trying to be like a particular past Hokage or trying to follow a career path somebody had suggested to him?
Nanao suddenly realised he had never really thought about it.
When he admitted it, wishing the ground would open up and swallow him, Akane-sensei didn't make fun of him, even though he'd just confessed that the thing he saw as his reason to be a ninja was completely hollow (not that he had any chance of getting there anyway).
Instead, she told him that all the things the Hokage did—protecting the village, making the Fire Country a better place, embodying the Will of Fire—were incredibly easy things that anyone could do, to the point that he could do them now, without even becoming a chūnin, never mind Hokage. Protecting the village? Every chakra beast extermination did that, because the reason chakra beasts needed exterminating was that they killed citizens of Leaf and the Fire Country. In fact, every mission protected the village, because genin taking care of D-rank and some C-rank missions freed up stronger ninja to do harder ones, taking on the village's enemies in battle and defending it against more subtle threats.
Making the Fire Country a better place? Even easier. She told him about till'n'fills, which for some reason hadn't been covered at all in his Academy classes, and said there was so much still to do that a single ninja could personally save dozens of lives every day if they took the time to find out what was needed—maybe even without ever seeing combat. That had been really hard to get his head around. He'd been taught that there was a limited list of ninja specialisations, and if he wasn't good enough to master one of them, he wasn't going to survive, much less be useful to Leaf. Akane-sensei flipped the whole thing on its head. She said being a good ninja was about being willing to put in the time and hard work to make the world a better place, and what particular skills you had only mattered because it helped you figure out where you could make the biggest difference.
As for embodying the Will of Fire… Akane-sensei said everybody had their own path to embodying the Will of Fire. She warned him not to try to embody the Will of Fire by copying somebody else—even past Hokage, even Lord Uzumaki—because discovering your own way to do it, step by step, was how you grew as a ninja and as a person, and it was by starting now, as a genin, that he'd eventually figure out the answers he needed to reach a Hokage's wisdom.
Nanao was still struggling to absorb half of what she meant. He was horribly afraid that it would turn out that he just wasn't smart enough to understand Akane-sensei's wisdom, and that he'd let her down and end up being a second-rate shinobi despite her best efforts. But the last thing Akane-sensei had said in that conversation, before Mami and Minato came back and ruined everything, was that he didn't have to try to figure it out all at once—she was his instructor now, and she was going to be there for him until he found his own way of the ninja.
How had he been supposed not to fall for her after that?
-o-
January 8, 1071 AS (Day 4 of Hazō's Conclave activities).
By a happy quirk of cosmology, though Hazō had returned from the Seventh Path after the sky grew dark enough for the diurnal summons to retire, his aetheric journey spat him out in his office shortly before Human Path sunset. That left him with a few hours of glorious personal time before he had to go to bed and restore his energy for another round of schmoozing with Rat Clan diplomats who were inexplicably convinced that all humans were incapable of holding their liquor, and that this was a weakness to take advantage of at every opportunity, and Pangolin merchants trying to offer him wholesale prices on wood from the former Condor lands (in front of Kei).
By an unhappy quirk of Gaku, his demon chancellor was ready and waiting with a stack of forms and reports big enough that Shikigami-sensei could have used his paper arts to build a new ninja village out of them. Any attempts to evade responsibility were foiled by Gaku's subtle implication that this was the concise set, which Gaku had spent the whole day collating and curating for his clan head's benefit while taking care of everything he could himself. Even a Kage would fall flat on his face after such a professionally-executed guilt trip.
It was for this reason that Hazō's spirits soared when there came an unexpected knock on his office door. At his invitation, the door opened, and in glided Snowflake, his rapturous angel of salvation, complete with snow-white kimono and golden halo of ribbon.
"Snowflake!" Hazō exclaimed. "Come in! What can I do for you?"
"Good evening, Hazō," Snowflake said. "You as well, Gaku. Have either of you perchance seen Akane?"
"Sorry," Hazō said. "I've been trapped—I mean stuck—I mean diligently carrying out my clan head duties in this office ever since I came back."
"I'm afraid not, My Lady."
Snowflake tsked. "We were due to spend the night together in the Pleasure Quarter, but she was not at our arranged meeting place. If we do not make haste, the orgy will commence without us. Truly, I should have followed my original intuition and not worn these clothes."
Hazō and Gaku both stared before Gaku went red and turned away.
"I-I didn't realise you'd made so much progress," Hazō stammered, unsure how to react.
Snowflake looked at him blankly. "It is lack of progress that is the issue here, which is why I urgently require Akane. Do you know where I might find her?"
"Lady Akane is late returning from her mission," Gaku muttered, looking anywhere but at Snowflake. "She has not yet graced the estate with her presence."
Snowflake sighed.
"Well, then, Hazō, perhaps you might accompany me instead? It would be a regrettable waste of a ticket were I to attend alone."
Wait, what?
"It's on a ticket system?" Hazō seized on an irrelevant detail that would buy him time to think.
"Of course it is," Snowflake said. "We were supposed to see The Orgy of Errors, a comedy originally banned by the Third Hokage for inappropriate content, then unbanned by Jiraiya alongside numerous other works in the so-called Great Release, one of his more noteworthy non-Naruto-related acts as Hokage. Tonight is the only guaranteed performance, since, depending on the content, the Seventh might ban it again. Please decide swiftly, as I have just been vividly reminded that women's kimonos are not for running, and there is little time."
Hazō did not facepalm, because that would have been ungentlemanly.
He looked between the sanitation research team's thirty-page report on possible materials for sewage pipes less than ten centimetres in diameter and the beautiful woman wishing to spend the evening watching an intriguing-sounding play with him.
"I'm sorry, Gaku," he said with as much regret as he could fake, "but a family emergency trumps non-urgent business. Snowflake, I'll meet you at the entrance in five."
Ninja speed had him out of the door before his chancellor could come up with a retort.
-o-
Mami had never imagined she'd fall for her chūnin instructor.
She still hadn't, and she'd stab anyone who said otherwise. They were both girls, after all.
And anyway, the whole situation was Akane-sensei's fault. Mami had been prepared to spend That Day as she did every year, wandering around Leaf looking for ways to distract herself until it got dark and she was sleepy, then heading home, burning incense, and going straight to bed. Auntie Tsugumi always went out drinking until the early hours of the morning on That Day, so she wouldn't know. Mami never said anything to Akane-sensei, because it wasn't Akane-sensei's business, and besides, she might try to console her.
But no, Akane-sensei had picked up on it anyway, even though Mami was an expert at putting on a brave face. Then instead, of the comfortable routine of their scheduled daily training, she'd told the other two to do conditioning exercises and taken her off to the Nara estate of all places. The Nara estate, for special lessons. Mami was a KEI ninja now. She didn't get special lessons from a clan.
It made even less sense when she talked to the serious-looking kunoichi browsing documents on a bench, and the kunoichi put everything down and went straight to change into training gear. Just who was Akane-sensei, anyway?
Still, Mami liked the serious kunoichi. Mami just wanted to be left alone on That Day, and the serious kunoichi was the next best thing. She didn't ask any questions. She didn't try to do small talk at her. They just trained together in silence, and occasionally she stopped Mami and gave her clear, concise pointers.
Then, when they were both tired enough to stop, another kunoichi came out and even more silently brought them a tray with tea and cookies, and when Mami saw the way the two were looking at each other, suddenly she realised who the serious kunoichi was. Mami had been training with Lady Nara, the KEI coordinator, the Pangolin Summoner, the (in)famous open lesbian with a harem of a dozen women. She didn't know whether to ask for an autograph or run for the hills.
That Day was nearly over by then. Mami wasn't going to say she'd had fun, because it wasn't possible to have fun on That Day, but it was a better distraction than wandering around the village, and the cookies were nice, and those pointers she'd got would make Manato weep next time they had a practice duel.
Only then it turned out it still wasn't over. Akane-sensei asked her if she was busy (and Mami couldn't exactly claim she was), and asked if Mami could keep her company for a bit, and considering Akane-sensei had just got her special training from Lady Nara herself, Mami didn't feel she could turn her down. What she didn't expect was that keeping Akane-sensei company would mean being taken to a restaurant for the first time in years and treated to the nicest meal she'd had for… well, since before there were That Days (because Auntie Tsugumi loved her very much, but that didn't mean she could cook to save her life).
Akane-sensei didn't ask her about That Day, even though by then it was obvious that she'd noticed. All she said was that she wanted to get to know Mami better because they were a team now, and Mami could talk about whatever she felt like, even random things she didn't think anybody would be interested in. For example, what was the most interesting tip Lady Nara had given her?
It should've been small talk and annoying, but Akane-sensei didn't really talk after that. She just sat there and listened, and Mami kept talking because someone was listening to her, and somehow eventually she ended up telling Akane-sensei what That Day was, and even then Akane-sensei didn't interrupt and just listened to her talk. Mami couldn't remember half of what she'd said anymore, but she did remember that afterwards she'd come back and fallen straight asleep, and that never happened on That Day.
Now, she talked with Akane-sensei every chance she could, at least when Mami wasn't busy wrangling Nanao and Manato (which she knew was too much for any one person, even Akane-sensei) and Manato wasn't trying to hog Akane-sensei's attention, the jerk. She trained extra-hard to impress Akane-sensei. She drew little pictures of Akane-sensei in the scrapbook Auntie Tsugumi bought her for her birthday. Normal things people did when they had a ninja they admired.
Except that she asked Akane-sensei the other day, and apparently she and Lady Nara were sisters. That meant she was into girls as well. It was called heredity.
Mami had some things she needed to think about.
-o-
January 10, 1071 AS (Day 6 of Hazō's Conclave activities).
Hazō was performing his morning stretches in the courtyard in front of the main building—which was as much training as he had time for right now, the demands of the Conclave being what they were—when Yuno found him.
"Hi, Hazō!"
"Good morning, Yuno," Hazō said, rising from his crouching position.
"Do you know if Akane is back from her mission yet?" Yuno asked.
"You mean she isn't?" Hazō asked. "That's… actually worrying. She's four days late now. You don't think something went wrong, do you?"
"I wouldn't worry," Yuno said perkily. "Back in Isan, I came back several days late all the time when they sent me after a particularly tough chakra beast. Tracking difficulties, bad weather, injuries that make you go slowly because you can't risk getting into another fight… it all adds up. Often they'd tell me to take my time coming back, especially if I was heading into a hazardous area."
Hazō frowned. "I guess you're right. It still worries me, though. It's not like she's out there clearing the Swamp of Death—she's supposed to be leading a team of fresh genin, so I'd expect her missions to be milk runs for a while.
"Why were you looking for her, anyway? Anything I can help with?"
"She was supposed to cover for me this morning," Yuno said. "I've got a mission scheduled and I don't want to cancel my class."
"What do you mean?" Hazō asked.
"You know," Yuno said, "my weapons training class, the one you suggested I run."
"That was for the estate genin, though," Hazō said, "and those are all… well, dead. Who are you training now?"
"Whoever turns up," Yuno said as if it was obvious. "Even when it was just the estate genin, some of them asked if they could bring their teammates. These days, it's mostly KEI ninja. We do regular classes, and I take promising students on chakra beast extermination missions with me—as well as the ones who need culling because they're not taking the classes seriously enough."
"You're that committed to teaching people?" Hazō asked. "I remember how nervous you were when I first suggested it."
Yuno smiled shyly. "I was, and it took some getting used to. But I've found that it's nice—being called 'sensei', and having people listen to me like I'm someone whose opinion matters, and being impressed by how I wield Satsuko instead of running away just because they can't handle a little bloodlust or because I get excited about killing things or because they think there's something strange about having an evil-looking black axe with special grooves for the blood as your best friend. I mean, there are people who run away, but that just keeps class sizes down, so it's fine.
"No," she said after a second of studying his face, "really, there's more than that. There's something Akane said after watching one of our classes that really hit me—she said these people were here because they wanted to be more like me, even if it was just in very specific ways. She said that means everything I went through in Isan wasn't meaningless. It wasn't just people being cruel. Those experiences have value because I can offer them to others and it'll help keep them alive. When I think of it that way, it makes me want to give more to them. Hunting chakra beasts is wonderful, and I'd keep doing it even if the Hokage didn't tell me to, but what if I can make it part of something bigger?
"Maybe it's a little early to tell you, but Fujisawa and I have been talking. You know how she's the master of the Falling Star Style now her family's dead? She's worried that the school will die out with her because she can't exactly teach the way she is—but I can. We've had the idea of opening a dojo, maybe in Fujisawa's old home now the KEI has a bigger and better compound, and teaching a syncretic style based on the Falling Star Style, the Mountain Cleaver Style, and my chakra beast-hunting experience. I know that doesn't mean much on the scale of the Uplift you talk about, but it's not nothing, right?"
Hazō shook his head. "No, Yuno, that sounds amazing. If there's anything I can do to help, just let me know."
Yuno beamed. "Then you can start by giving us your opinion. You agree that 'Bloody Cleaver Style' would be the perfect name for it, right, Hazō?"
Hazō struggled to choose between a future in which he explained what a terrible name that was, and hurt Yuno's feelings right after she opened up to him, and a future in which Kei murdered him because he encouraged Yuno to use the terrible name, and hurt Fujisawa's feelings when her clan's legacy was on the line.
"Oh, it's later than I thought!" he exclaimed. "Sorry, Yuno, I'm late for a meeting on the Seventh Path!"
In the event, the escape wasn't as effective as he'd planned, as the puppy he'd summoned couldn't read social cues and didn't realise Hazō needed reverse-summoning immediately. Fortunately, Hazō was a certified genius, and distracting Yuno by letting her play with the puppy was even better than his original plan.
-o-
Manato had never imagined he'd fall for his chūnin instructor.
He'd been so excited about graduating and finally joining the KEI, and the next thing he knew, he'd been given a clan ninja as a team leader, with the coordinators' own blessing. One of the people who got all the good missions and all the good training while families like his had to struggle to get anywhere at all. One of the people the KEI existed to protect him from. One of the people who'd decided to sacrifice Yuki because she was clanless and therefore expendable. It had been maddening from the start, and now it just made his head ache to think about (to say nothing of his heart).
Obviously, Manato did his best to keep his guard up from the beginning. Akane-sensei was beautiful and friendly and charismatic, and she would definitely use all of those weapons to brainwash his team into being her willing tools. She was a clan ninja. Exploiting the clanless before discarding them was in her nature. He'd been respectful and polite—obviously—but he'd deftly sidestepped all her efforts to "get to know" him. She'd teach him as she'd been contracted to, and he would obey her instructions and serve as her subordinate for the duration, and that was the best kind of relationship the two of them could have.
Manato was alarmed when he realised Akane-sensei had somehow turned Mami through a combination of bribery and (reading between the lines) a deceitful performance of kindness and compassion. He was horrified when she turned Nanao practically before his very eyes, as he came back from a sparring match to find Akane-sensei dispensing sagely advice and Nanao lapping it up like a fresh convert to a heretical cult.
Manato resolved there and then that he would be the one to stay standing, to protect Nanao and Mami from Akane-sensei's manipulation even if they would never thank him for it. They were his teammates before she got her claws into them, and his classmates before that. It was his responsibility to look out for them. That was why he stayed on constant guard against both her emotional manipulation and her attempts to shape his worldview. He couldn't let her in for even a second, or they were all doomed.
For a while, he'd succeeded masterfully. Her most cunning tricks bounced off him as if he was a stone wall. He'd thought he could keep going this way forever… until that night.
They'd been sitting around a campfire, out in the wilderness after a D-rank herb-gathering mission. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Akane-sensei posed them a question. What was the right thing to do if you caught a missing-nin?
At first, they'd just stared at her, confused. Eventually, Nanao gave the obvious answer, which was to bring them back to Leaf for interrogation and execution. Then she asked more questions. What if that missing-nin had run away after being tricked into a crime by a real traitor? What if they'd run away because they thought they'd been sent on a suicide mission and it was the only way to survive? What if they'd run away without committing any crime because they (incorrectly) thought their life would be in danger if they stayed?
Manato, Nanao and Mami argued about the answers, fiercely and inconclusively. Then, before they could reach a conclusion that satisfied all three of them, Akane-sensei started asking harder questions. Was it acceptable to sell weapons to foreigners, for the benefit of Leaf, with which they would kill other, innocent foreigners? How many innocent civilians was it acceptable to kill to indirectly protect Leaf's security? Was there a number at which they changed their minds? What if it didn't affect Leaf's security, and they were killing innocent civilians purely in order to harm an enemy village? Was there a number that was right then?
The more they talked, the more issues that should have been obvious became blurry. Manato, who'd scored so high in the philosophy classes where they learned about the Will of Fire, found himself growing ever more frustrated. In the end, Akane-sensei didn't even try to give them the right answers (which would have been a clever form of manipulation, but not clever enough to get him). All she did was tell them that in time, they would be forced to make those kinds of judgements for real, with people living and dying according to their decisions. She said they needed to figure out their answers in advance, because there'd be no time to do it on the spot, and if they failed to make a choice that was true to their principles, they'd regret it for the rest of their lives. The look in her eyes when she said it chilled Manato to the bone.
A sleepless night later, Akane-sensei told them that her sister's husband knew his philosophy, and if they were interested, she could get him to recommend some beginner-friendly texts on ethics. The others were still off-balance, intimidated, but Manato was ready to rise to her challenge. He demanded (well, politely asked for) the best this mysterious husband could throw at him. He'd had no idea what he was getting himself into.
They would argue for hours after training sessions were over, long after Nanao and Mami gave up on them and went home. If the mysterious husband had recommended another book, then they would argue over that. If no book was available, they would argue over the broadsheet, or other recent news, or on occasion about the ethical implications of particularly popular gossip. Akane-sensei refused to give him any answers—in fact, she denied having any answers—but she also wouldn't let him rest, constantly cutting through his best justifications with her simple yet razor-sharp common sense.
At first, he argued out of frustration and a refusal to let her win. Then he argued because he enjoyed it, and because bit by bit, things that had hopelessly confused him that first night started to become clearer. Before he knew it, he began to look forward to their conversations. Then he began to miss them when Akane-sensei was away or busy. Then he began to miss her.
That was when he realised he was in trouble.
Akane-sensei was supposed to be, if not evil, then at least a force of greed and corruption like your typical clan ninja. She was supposed to be selfish and exploitative. Why couldn't Manato see her that way anymore? Bit by bit, her hypocrisy began to look sincere. Her manipulation began to look like kindness. Her deceptiveness began to look like straightforwardness. Her beauty and friendliness and charisma didn't go anywhere. Manato no longer knew what to believe. All he knew was that his heart had already figured out its answer.
-o-
January 14, 1071 AS (the next day after Enma's arrival at the Conclave).
She still wasn't back.
Hazō had done his best to focus on Conclave business over the last few days and trust Akane to take care of her responsibilities while he took care of his, but there were limits. Today, he was going to march right to the mission desk, demand her mission details, and find out for himself what could possibly be making her take so long.
"Gōketsu Akane… she's one of the new genin team leaders, right?" the man at the desk asked him.
"That's right," Hazō said. "Do you have the file for her current mission?"
"You'll want Hagoromo Ruka," the man replied. "She's in charge of assigning training missions for the genin. Corridor to my right, second door down."
Of course it would be a Hagoromo. A clan well-known for its facility with documents and its skill in handling sensitive information, Hazō knew from Jin that they were well-represented in the Tower bureaucracy, especially whenever it was time to reject a KEI ninja's urgent paperwork for trivial reasons.
Hagoromo Ruka turned out to be a scarecrow of a middle-aged woman, wearing a lacy black dress more elaborate than any clerk would normally bother to wear at work in some random back office. She sat at her desk reading a broadsheet, while in the background a younger ninja with an eye-catching red bandanna and a sheaf of documents in front of him seemed to be doing all the work.
"Good morning," Hazō said briskly. "I'd like to examine the file for Gōketsu Akane's current mission, please."
Hagoromo snorted. "And I'd like to be twenty years younger. Records for scheduled and in-progress missions can only be viewed by authorised personnel for security reasons that should be obvious."
"Don't be an ass, Hagoromo," the young man said as he rose from his desk. "Lord Gōketsu isn't here so he can sell out his girlfriend to Hidden Rock."
He headed over to a cabinet by the window and began to flick through the folders inside.
"You know, Lord Gōketsu, my cousin says you're the reason he passed his sealing certification last month."
"Oh," Hazō said. "Is he someone I know?"
"Probably not," the ninja said. "He says if it wasn't for you sharing Lord Fifth's notes with the village, he'd still be stuck trying to tell the difference between a flux creeper and a flux capacitor. That's why I'm just going to leave this file open here on my desk so I can see it more clearly, and if you happen to glimpse anything over my shoulder, well, that can't be helped."
He laid out several sheets of paper in front of Hazō. Hazō skimmed them quickly.
"Where are the Wakare Woods?"
"West of Leaf, not far from Shinjū," the ninja said distractedly, his attention focused on some other part of the documents. "Hagoromo, the estimated completion date on this was a week ago! Why haven't you already flagged this?"
"Oh, was it?" Hagoromo asked. "My mistake. These genin missions all start to blur together after a while."
Hazō felt a chill go down his spine. "How bad is her being a week late, by Fire Country standards?"
The ninja was silent for a few seconds before answering.
"Lord Gōketsu, the Wakare Woods are less than a day's travel from Leaf. If your girlfriend is still out there after a week… she's not coming back."
-o-
What do you do?
If you wish to respond to Enma's arrival on the 13th, make sure to do so before planning anything for the 14th, otherwise the rest of that day will go to the Hazōpilot.
Voting closes on
Last edited:
Chapter 589: In Which Hazō Has Measured and Prosocial Interactions
Ice water coursed down the inside of Hazō's spine, around his pelvis, and back up into his belly. The world seemed to freeze around him for an instant as implications and probabilities spun, the Paint fr*cturing very sl!ghtly and RealitY whispering in his ear as one of his anchors to the physical tore free and slid towards the edge. It stopped, balancing on the cliff of madness.
"Could you repeat that, please?" he asked, a small and very calm smile creeping across his face.
Hagoromo's lip curled in disgust at Hazō's expression. The still-unnamed male ninja leaned back in obvious alarm.
"Uh...Lord Gōketsu?" he said. "Sir?"
"Repeat your information, please."
"She...was sent on a mission to the Wakare Woods. Herself and her three genin. The Woods are maybe half a day's travel west from Leaf and she's a week overdue. She's...uh...it's very likely that she's no longer with us, My Lord."
Hazō nodded. The world was far away, on the other side of thick glass. Somewhere in the back of his mind a volcano rumbled. Or perhaps it was an animal? Unclear. What was the best way of representing one's internal desire to commit genocide?
"Shadow Clone Technique," Hazō said, forming a cross with his fingers. Four instances of himself poofed into existence and promptly left the room at a sprint.
Hazō Prime looked steadily at the Hagoromo-shaped target.
"Hagoromo Ruka," he said. "Am I correct that one of your duties is to track all outstanding missions, track the expected return date of all Leaf ninja on said missions, and notify the relevant parties when one of those ninja is overdue?"
Her eyes narrowed as she saw the trap. "You are not in my chain of command, Gōketsu. I have no obligation to answer your questions."
Hazō's eyes turned to the other ninja, the one who didn't have a bullseye superimposed on his face. "Your name?"
"Uh...Katsushi, M'Lord."
"KEI ninja?"
"Yes, M'Lord."
"Very good. Am I correct that the things I named are among Ruka's duties?"
"Don't you call me—!"
"Yes, M'Lord. Hers and mine both." He paused and then hastened to add, "We divide the missions between us. Your girlfriend's mission was in her stack."
Hazō nodded. "As I thought. Would it be safe—"
"Gōketsu, you need to leave," the bullseye said firmly. "We have important work to do and you are delaying it. Out." She pointed decisively at the door.
"—to assume," Hazō said, refusing to be interrupted or d!stracted by the cr4cks he cold freel in spine his, "that her Clan Lord is among the people you would notify regarding an overdue ninja?"
"Yes, M'Lord." Katsushi's weight was on his back foot, his eyes a little bit wide.
Hazō turned back to the bullse`/e. "Hagoromo Ruka. Allow me to explain the situation you have created. You are aware that the Gōketsu began a quiet little clan war against your herd after Ritsuo insulted my sister?"
"I don't need to—"
"Are. You. Aware?"
"Yes! Obviously. Everyone in Leaf is aware."
"The war ended because the Hokage gave explicit orders, to both myself and your herd diRector, that all conflict was to stop for the good of Leaf. I now find that you have been derelict in your duties in a way that has likely c#ntributed to the death of my girlfriend. So far as I am concerned, the Hagoromo have defied the Hokage's orders in order to launch an unprovoked assault on a Gōketsu n1nja and we are completely justified in defending ourselves in whatever way I see fit. If I was willing to purify tHe world of you vermin when your herd director spoke unkindly of my family, what do you think I'm prepared to do when one of his spawn collaborates to kill my beloved?"
"Lord Gōketsu," Katsushi said carefully. "Sir, I think tempers are running a bit high right now. Would it perhaps be wise to—"
Hazō's palm slapped down on the desk so hard that the heavy oak furniture bounced.
"You will go to Ritsuo," Hazō said, jabbing his longest right-side phalange at the center of the bullseye and stopping half an inch from its surface. "You will go to him now, you will explain what you have done, and you will tell him these words: he can still get out of this. This does not have to come down to destruction between us. There is a Leaf ninja whose life has been gravely endangered by the actions of a Hagoromo in defiance of the Hokage's orders. If Ritsuo turns out the resources of the Hagoromo to aid in the search, if he makes a sincere and convincing effort, then I will ask only that you be disciplined and I will thank him for his aid. The Gōketsu will consider the Hagoromo friends unless and until one of you acts to change that status.
"If, on the other hand, he chooses not to live to the standard the Will of Fire requires, I will explain all this to the Hokage and I will demand your head on a platter as weregild. Literally. Your head, chopped off with a dull axe and served to me on a polished silver platter. Anything less than that and the Hagoromo will discover what it truly means to have the Gōketsu as an enemy." He flicked two fingers, producing the paper that had been folded in his palm and bouncing it off the center of the bullseye to fall on the desk.
The bullseye's eyes tracked down to the 'weapon'; it picked up the paper and unfolded it to reveal an explosive note.
Hazō was already gone.
o-o-o-o
"Welcome, Lord Gōketsu," said Yamanaka Yamato. "Are you looking for Lady Ino? I'm very sorry, but she is in a meeting right now. Would you care to wait, or may I take a message?"
"Hello, Yamato," said HazōInoGet. "I'm afraid I can't wait. Please get her out of that meeting."
Yamato shifted uncomfortably. "Sir, the meeting is with—"
Hazō put his hand on the older civilian man's shoulder and met his eyes.
"Yamato," he said, "you're an excellent steward, and Ino is lucky to have you. I respect the world out of you and I don't want you to think otherwise. That said, get Ino out of that meeting or I'm going to carve a path through the walls of this house until I get to her. This is not a joke, this is not figurative." He glanced to his left, pursed his lips in thought for a moment, and then pointed. "I'll start right there. I'm fairly sure that one isn't load-bearing."
Yamato studied him for a moment, then bowed and quickly withdrew.
HazōInoGet folded his hands behind his back and paced, struggling to keep his demeanor calm.
Two minutes later, Ino came through the door, fury sparking off of her every step.
"Hazō, don't you ever—"
"Akane is a week overdue."
She froze. "What was the mission?"
"Animal extermination mission in the Wakare Woods. It's about half a day west of here. Her and her three genin. They're a week overdue."
She stared at him in horror for several seconds and then her face melted and she went to wrap him in a hug.
He stopped her with an upraised hand. "I'm a shadow clone and I can't risk too tight a hug. Prime made four of us. We're pulling in you, the Nara, the KEI, and the Tower. He stayed at the mission desk to ream out the Hagoromo who ignored her being overdue. We're going to organize a search party and I need you to come to the estate right now to help figure out how. Can you do that?"
"I..." She glanced towards the out of sight room where she had been having her meeting and bit her lip. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Hazō," she said, "and yes, I know you aren't my Hazō. That doesn't matter. If she's a week late then it really doesn't matter if the search party leaves now or tomorrow." She eyed his recalcitrant face for a moment. "Have you...have you never lost anyone before? I know you had a handful of branch family die during the war, but is Akane the first one that you were close to? People die on missions, Hazō. It happens, and you need to be ready for it."
"We don't know that she's dead," HazōInoGet insisted. "Right now we only know that she's overdue. We're going to find her."
"...Okay," Ino said, as comfortingly as she could. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly in support. "But I want you to brace yourself for the fact that we're almost certainly not going to find her alive." She glanced at the wall that stood between her and the meeting room she had been dragged away from, then back at HazōInoGet. "Give me ten minutes, okay? It took me three weeks to set this meeting up and I can't afford to just walk out. I'll go put it on ice until tomorrow and then we can go."
o-o-o-o
"So, what's so important that you needed to get in here right now?" Naruto demanded.
The temporary Hokage was in Asuma's office, perched at the desk that had served every Hokage since the beginning of the Village Era. He was also at nine different smaller desks that had been scattered around the room, and all of him were staring at paperwork with varied expressions of despair. As HazōTowerExplainer walked in they had looked up with the expression of a prisoner seeing salvation.
"First off, I'm a shadow clone," HazōTowerExplainer said. "Just in case that matters. I'm here to inform the Tower that Gōketsu Akane is a week overdue and I am going to organize a search party for her. I want to make sure you're in the loop and have no objections to anything we plan. Another of us is getting Ino because she's Akane's sort-of-girlfriend and Shikamaru and Kei as advisors in their role of Akane's sister and brother in law, and also because Kei is one of the Coordinators of the KEI. Akane's three genin were KEI members. I understand that you're busy but I wanted to offer you the opportunity to have one or more of you join our war council at the Gōketsu estate. Both because you're a KEI Coordinator and the Hokage."
HazōTowerExplainer had tried to organize his thoughts and prepare that speech before arrival, but the world was too scattered around him. The only significant preparation he had managed was remembering to say 'Akane is overdue' instead of 'Akane is missing'. No need to remind Naruto of the team's shady past.
Naruto Prime (presumably, or at least the one behind the desk) blinked. "A week overdue? What in the Sage's name was her mission, a mapping trip to Bear?"
"Animal extermination in the Wakare Woods, half a day west of here."
Sympathy crept over Naruto's face. "Hazō—sorry, what's your name?"
"HazōTowerExplainer." Unsurprising that the foremost user of the Shadow Clone technique would remember to acknowledge the separation of identity among clones.
"HazōTowerExplainer, you're talking about a 'search party', as though we're going to find her and save her. If Akane is a week overdue then I'm afraid she's dead and this is a body recovery mission."
"We don't know that," HazōTowerExplainer said stubbornly. "All we know is that she's missing—overdue, rather." He could feel his face trying to break open and spill forth the tears. He wished desperately for the Iron Nerve and its ability to maintain a polite and concealing mask regardless of inner turmoil.
Naruto studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Okay," he said. He made a cross with his fingers. "Shadow Clone Technique."
Three Narutos poofed into existence. Two of them nodded politely to HazōTowerExplainer and hustled out. The third met his progenitor's eyes and nodded. "On it, boss." He looked back to HazōTowerExplainer. "C'mon, buddy. Those two are going to go check with the Hyūga and Inuzuka to see about their availability for a recovery mission. Meanwhile, let's you and me go see what we can do to get you some closure."
o-o-o-o
"Good morning, Hazō," Kei said, gesturing him to a seat on the patio. The air was scented with flowers and she and Shikamaru each had a plate of breakfast eggs in front of themselves. A pot of tea steamed on a trivet, completing the surprisingly domestic scene. Perhaps more surprising, Kei even gave him a slight smile in the process. "It is nice to see you. I had thought to come..." She trailed off, studying him closely as a frown slid over her face. "Are you a shadow clone?"
Huh.
"I am," said HazōScarySisApproacher. "How could you tell?"
"I am uncertain. There is no specific item, merely an overall suspicion. Perhaps your gait, or your expression?"
Shikamaru looked at his wife in surprise. "Your perceptiveness and analytic abilities are superior even to what I had thought, wife."
"I am grateful for your compliment," Kei said. "It was appropriate to the situation and it felt sincere. Also, it related to my skills, which are earned, rather than my appearance or other factors that are mere happenstance. However, the appending of the term 'wife', while undoubtedly intended as moderate endearment and a reminder of our connection, has a connotation of property that I disprefer. In future it would be more effective to use my name, or omit the referent entirely."
Shikamaru nodded in thought. "I see. 'Wife' places your identity in a category defined by your relationship to me instead of yourself as a unique entity. I shall remember this in future and I thank you for the information."
"Akane is a week overdue," HazōScarySisApproacher said impatiently. "I want you both at the Gōketsu estate for a planning session."
Kei was on her feet immediately, tea and breakfast forgotten. Shikamaru stopped her with an upraised hand.
"What is your cognomen?" he asked their visitor.
HazōScarySisApproacher hesitated. "Please, feel free to refer to me simply as 'Hazō'," he said after a moment.
"Very well. What was the nature and location of Akane's mission?"
"Animal extermination. Wakare Woods, half a day west of here."
"In this case, I am very sorry but you will need to accept that she is dead. I am, and I believe it to be clear that Kei is, happy to go with you and help you plan a recovery mission in order to avert any potentially problematic elements of such a plan, but I wish it to be clear that we are at best going to recover her body, not rescue her. Even that much is unlikely."
Kei looked at her husband with a frozen expression. The air chilled around them. "Husband..." She shook her head and let out a slow breath, allowing the patio to once more warm. "Come or stay, it is of no importance to me."
Shikamaru stood, wiped his mouth, and dropped his napkin on the table. "Of course I will come, Kei. However, I wish to ensure that no one has false hope. Hazō's demeanor is of fear and urgency. There is no place for those things in this context and harboring them will lead only to bad decisions and later consequences. As a salient example: the fact that Hazō sent a shadow clone here strongly suggests that he has sent multiple clones to other places. Based on this Hazō's presentation I suspect that all instances of Hazō are making their approaches with a bluntness that may harm the Gōketsu relationship to other clans going forward." He looked to HazōScarySisApproacher and his words were gentle. "The forests of Leaf are large and finding something as small as a person is a tremendous challenge. After a week it is unlikely that we can even locate her body. It will have reentered the cycle of the wilds."
"You mean that animals will have eaten her," HazōScarySisApproacher said through gritted teeth.
Shikamaru nodded. "Just so. I am very sorry, Hazō. Akane was a wonderful person and she will be greatly missed. The Nara clan will hold a remembrance ceremony for her and, with your permission, will place a memorial in our Garden of Memories."
"We don't know she's dead," HazōScarySisApproacher said, his voice made of knives of sharpened ice. "Until we know for certain, we're operating on the assumption that she isn't."
Shikamaru tipped his head in an 'I will humor you' way. "As you say."
"Kei, would you mind giving me a moment with your husband?" HazōScarySisApproacher asked.
She raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "Very well. I shall see you at the house." She looked down at Shikamaru. "I was untruthful in my earlier statement. I would appreciate your attendance." Miraculously, the words were merely informative and not loaded with extortionate implications.
Shikamaru gave her a tiny smile. "Of course. I shall be there presently."
Kei nodded and left at a jog, going straight up the side of the house and over the roof instead of wasting time with hallways.
"I suspect that your question relates to my awareness of, and analysis of implications related to, Akane's unusual utility as a member of the Leaf military," Shikamaru said, skirting very widely around the words 'the fact that she is capable of destroying entire cities on a whim.'
"Yes, that," HazōScarySisApproacher said. "You're being brought in as a primary strategic advisor to this mission. I'm assuming you'll leverage appropriate resources?"
Shikamaru nodded. "In turn, I assume that an instance of you has spoken to the Tower?"
HazōScarySisApproacher nodded. "Yes. HazōTowerExplainer got done a couple minutes ago. A Naruto will be at the meeting and he's approaching the Hyūga and the Inuzuka for us."
"This will help," Shikamaru said. "Shall we?" He moved towards the door.
"Prime will see you there," HazōScarySisApproacher said. "Thank you."
Mission accomplished, he poofed out of existence.
o-o-o-o
Memories flooded in as the last of his clones dissolved into the aether and their worldlines returned to Hazō. Moments later, he had reverse-summoned to the Conclave and was pushing through the crowd to the nearest pangolin, a kitchen staffer with his claws occupied by a tray of breads and cheeses that he was delivering to the buffet.
"Where is Lord Enma?" Hazō demanded.
"Sir?" the staffer asked. "Um...I'm not sure. The last I heard, he was in the main auditorium with some of the other ambassadors. That was an hour ago, though."
"Good enough. Thank you," Hazō said. He turned and disappeared at full chakra-boosted speed, blurring through the hallways and around the occasional slow-moving obstacle.
He rounded a corner and found a trio of pangolins and a turtle blocking the hall; instead of slowing down to get through them he ran up the wall and across the ceiling, supporting himself on hands and feet so he didn't clonk heads. All four of them whirled at his approach, clawed hands rising, but he passed by too fast for them to react.
"Hey!" shouted one of the pangolins. "Get back—"
Hazō was around the corner and moving out of earshot already.
He reached the auditorium and burst through the double doors. Sure enough, Enma was at the bottom of the well, striding back and forth and declaiming to an audience of a dozen people from various clans.
"Enma!" Hazō called, moving down the steps at the fastest speed that likely wouldn't be interpreted as an attack.
The Monkey Lord's head jerked up and he stopped pacing. "Hazō? What's going on?"
"I need you to get a message to Asuma," Hazō said, a little out of breath. "Here." He held out the folded note that he had hastily scribbled out upon reaching the estate. "You know he's at the Chūnin Exams with some of the Leaf Summoners, right?"
"Sure," Enma said, taking the note. "You want me to give this to whichever of them shows up next?"
Hazō nodded gratefully. "Exactly."
"I say," the giant pangolin in the room said, her deep voice disapproving, "what is this interruption? Gōketsu, we were having an important meeting here. You can't just barge—"
"And yet, I just did," Hazō said, glancing over at her for a moment before turning back to Enma. "It's in the note, but just in case: Akane is a week overdue on a mission only half a day west of Leaf. We're organizing a search party to find her."
Enma's simian face dropped. "I'm sorry, kid," he said.
"We don't know for sure that she's dead yet," Hazō insisted. "For now, she's only overdue."
The pangolin who had previously spoken snorted. "Isn't he supposed to be a Clan Lord?" she murmured to the otter sitting next to her. "How can he be so naïve?"
"Human 'clans' are different," the otter whispered back.
"You have something to say to me?" Hazō demanded, rounding on the pangolin. "Say it to my face, beakface."
The pangolin's tiny eyes went wide and she stood to her full fifteen-foot height. "How dare you call me that! I am no puling condor!"
"Sounds like it fits to me," Hazō snarled. "Your pointy little face looks like a beak and you sound about as stupid as your kind claim the condors are. You got a problem with—" He broke off and shook his head. "I don't have time for this. Enma, deliver the message, yeah?"
"Will do, kid," Enma said, tossing him a casual salute. "Good hunting."
o-o-o-o
The meeting was happening outdoors on the Gōketsu estate and there were no chairs. Hazō didn't want people comfortable, he wanted them looking to get moving as quickly as possible. It was a sizable group: Hazō, Noburi, Kei, Mari, Shikamaru, Ino, a Naruto, Inuzuka Yamato and his ninken partner, Tenten, Neji, Rock Lee, and Canvass the bloodhound.
The arrival of Team Gai and the Inuzuka jōnin had been a pleasant surprise. Naruto had been unwilling to simply assign them to go, but he had rushed the drafting and posting of a mission and strongly suggested they take it. The Gōketsu were on the hook for the cost but it was a pittance compared to what Hazō was willing to spend.
"Yuno, you're the best hunter in the clan so you're in charge," Hazō said. "You have the full resources of the clan behind you. Your mission is to recover Team Akane, whatever condition they might be in right now." He couldn't bring himself to use the words 'or their remains'. "Keep in mind that it's possible this isn't a random animal attack."
"You are suggesting that it might be an attack from Rock?" Shikamaru said. "Although I grant it as a possibility, it seems improbable. They have no more interest in violating the AMITY accords than we do."
"It could be a 'wrong place, wrong time' situation," Mari said. "You're right that it's unlikely a capture team was dispatched to bring in Akane specifically, but no one is pretending that espionage has stopped. It's possible that someone had scouts in Fire on a standard intelligence-gathering mission and Akane's team stumbled over them."
A surge of gratitude went through Hazō when Mari carefully chose the phrase 'capture team' instead of 'assassination mission'. Nonetheless, the implication hung in the air.
"It could also be that someone is attempting to bait me out," Hazō said grimly. "I'm the Dog Summoner, a Clan Head, and a sealmaster. After the Chūnin Exams I've got a very high profile even internationally, and that definitely includes the fact that Akane and I have a relationship. It wouldn't require a genius to guess that if they took her then I'd be close behind."
Inuzuka Yamato snorted in grim amusement. "If so then I can almost pity them...they must have expected you much sooner and they've been sitting around wondering what's taking so long."
Every Gōketsu eye turned gimlet stares on the dog clan member who raised his hands in surrender. "It's a joke. If they're out there then we'll find them and come down on them with utter destruction."
"In any case," Hazō said, "we need to get this mission moving. A few ideas to run by everyone."
Noburi groaned quietly.
"Me and Noburi," Hazō said, ignoring his brother. "Should we go? Noburi provides combat ability, medical support, chakra for travel endurance, and powerful summons. I also provide combat support and summons, as well as seal production if necessary. I have tracker dogs that are probably better than the Inuzuka—"
"Hey!" / "Woof!" objected the Inuzuka man and dog.
Hazō glared down the man and his canine partner. "I want your help and I'm happy to pay your rates. That said, you're a small clan who was hit hard in the Collapse and the war. The Dog Clan is tens of thousands; they have a much wider pool of talent to draw from and Canvass was recommended to me by the Alpha Dog as one of the their best trackers." He let one hand fall to the dog's head where she sat beside him.
"We'll see about that," Inuzuka grumbled. His canine partner huffed agreement. Canvass looked smugly amused.
"Enough," Hazō said. "Noburi, you'd be an asset on this mission. On the other hand, we could do a miniature Zoo Rush. You and I summon a bunch of allies and send them on the mission while you and I stay here where you can draw chakra from Leaf genin and keep us topped up so that we can maintain our allies on this Path for longer. If we did it that way then maybe you could even summon and maintain the two Toad Sages, which would pretty much guarantee the physical safety of the mission. Plus, they might have sensory jutsu."
Noburi looked as though he'd bitten a lemon. "Are you seriously expecting me to..." He shook his head, forcing himself to face the truth. "Yeah, okay. I don't like the idea of sitting home where it's safe instead of going out to recover her—"
"Rescue her," Hazō insisted.
"...Find out what happened," Noburi said. "Still, I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. That said, I don't know that the Sages would be willing to be summoned."
"I think we're safe enough," Yuno said, gesturing at the group that was definitely going: herself; Mari; Team Gai, three of the most dangerous senior chūnin in Leaf; the irritated Inuzuka and the ninken who sat next to him. The dog was an enormous mastiff, his shoulders coming up to his human partner's hip.
"Hazō, Noburi, you should come with us," Mari said. "For a variety of reasons."
"Thank the ancestors," Noburi said. "Gah, I did not want to hang back here."
"Me neither," Hazō said, relief in his voice. "I'm trying to learn to be more considered, but I would have torn my hair out waiting."
"Naruto," Mari said, "do we have your permission as acting Hokage to use skywalkers and skytowers?"
Naruto nodded. "You do, yeah. Maintain OPSEC, use them appropriately, blah blah blah. Still, recovering the remains of four Leaf ninja is a highly valid reason." He snorted. "Plus, I'm not even sure why we're still trying to keep a lid on them anymore, but that's Asuma's policy and I'm not overruling him in the general case."
"Yuno, Shikamaru, Kei, Ino, any comments or suggestions?" Hazō asked.
"I believe it should be emphasized that this is a recovery mission, not a retaliatory strike," Shikamaru said. "No matter who or what is found to be responsible, the team should not cross any of Fire's borders and should avoid combat. The emphasis must be on gathering intelligence and ensuring that it reaches Leaf so that the village can organize an effective response. In addition, in the unlikely event that you intersect with ninja from an enemy nation, it is critically important that Hazō not be captured. His own summation from earlier should make clear why. Aside from that, I believe that we have covered all relevant details. Kei?"
The Pangolin Summoner shook her head, not speaking.
"It all seems fine to me," Yuno said. "Shall we?"
"Indeed!" Rock Lee shouted. "And if we cannot find their bodies before sundown, I will run to the Land of Tea and back on my hands twenty times as a punishment!"
"Shut the fuck up, Lee," Hazō said. "I don't have the patience for your usual bullshit right now."
The green-clad ninja jolted back as though he'd been slapped.
Shikamaru turned to his wife. "Be safe. Your skills are important to the Nara and your well-being is a matter of some concern to me."
"Thank you," Kei said. "There is a correlation between your well-being and my level of happiness on most days. Although empathy is not my greatest skill, your words make it seem that you have similar experience and therefore I should not like to inflict disaccomodation upon you."
Naruto gaped at the exchange. Noburi facepalmed. Inuzuka snorted.
"You two are amazing," Inuzuka said. "That was the worst 'I love you' ever exchanged."
Shikamaru and Kei both bristled and closed ranks, but Hazō cut them off before either could speak.
"We're leaving," he said firmly. "Canvass, lead on."
"Akaryōken, go," Inuzuka said, offense in his voice at the idea that another dog might lead.
The massive ninken loped off, Canvass lolloping beside him with a smug grin on her face.
o-o-o-o
They left through the Sunset Gate, following the path that Akane and her team had taken a week earlier. Hazō had included the canine tracker solely as an afterthought, assuming that it would be impossible to track someone by scent across a busy road a week after they had gone by. As it proved out, it wasn't an issue. Canvass sat beside the road, watching in amusement as Akaryōken cast about immediately outside the gate, looking for the relevant scent.
"Ahem," she said after a couple minutes. "Over here." She turned and jogged off into the woods and the rest of the party scrambled after her.
They followed in the wake of Akane's party, forced to retrace their entire route since there was no way to know where they had ended up. The genin and their sensei had cast back and forth, pausing here and there as they drove animals out of their burrows or out of cover in order to kill them. Fortunately, Akane had felt no need to involve evasion training in the mission. Not only were there frequent and undisguised places where the ground was torn up by explosives, but the ninja had all been traveling on the ground, crossing rivers instead of running along them. They had been moving slowly in order to be certain they didn't miss any threats and as a result there was plenty of scent and sign to be found.
"That dog is bullshit," Inuzuka grumbled, glaring at Canvass. A week had passed since Akane and her team had been through this area; Akaryōken the ninken was able to catch only occasional whiffs. Canvass the Dog Clan bloodhound, on the other hand, had been asking her Summoner why she even needed to be here; with a trail this obvious, surely the humans could follow it on their own? Mari had quietly remarked to the fulminating Inuzuka ninja that there was no shame in having different specialties; Inuzuka dogs were bred for intelligence first, combat second, and tracking third; were the group to be ambushed, Akaryōken would be far more of an asset than Canvass, and therefore he should be willing to let her shine in her own area. Both man and dog had seemed mollified.
"They paused for lunch here," Canvass said, ignoring the humans' quiet conversation. She sniffed at a tree bole whose roots grew into something appropriate for sitting on. "Hm. Akane had pastrami, one of the others sat next to her and ate rice and fish." She sniffed again and made a face. "Ugh, flounder. And it was going off." She snuffled around a bit, then raised her head. "They went this way."
o-o-o-o
They had been jogging for six hours, swinging in a wide arc towards the Woods, when Canvass jolted to a stop.
"What's wrong?" Hazō demanded.
Canvass snuffled around the ground, then up the trunk of a large tree, bracing her paws against it to gain some height.
"I'm getting other humans," she said. "Three of them. Lots of greenery overlaid in their scent, but not of any type in this immediate area. I think they probably had it attached to their clothes to help with camouflage. Also, their base scent is unlike the people in your Leaf. I suspect they aren't from the area and their food has a very different seasonings profile."
Team Uplift exchanged grim looks.
o-o-o-o
"Akane's trail ends here," Canvass said. She had been sniffing around the perimeter of the clearing for three minutes, the longest by far that she had needed to search for the trail. "Also, I smell blood. A lot of it, but faint. Pretty sure it's just the kids', not Akane's. The other thing I smell is a whole lot of burned flesh. Absolutely charred so I can't tell whose it was, but it's there."
"Neji, find me something," Hazō said.
The white-eyed chūnin raised an eyebrow at the curt command, but he activated his bloodline and stood still, concentrating. A moment later he grunted in surprise.
"There are a trio of damaged trees buried here," he said. "Localized burns on them, the kind of thing you would see from a jutsu."
"The ground is softer than it should be," Inuzuka said, studying the earth. "It's been turned over in a big area. Someone tried to tamp it down afterwards, and they did a good job of putting fresh leaf litter over it, but you can see the marks." He pointed.
Hazō studied the indicated area; he could see the signs now that they had been pointed out, but would have missed them on his own. "Canvass, if the blood had soaked into the dirt and then the dirt was buried, would that match what you're smelling?"
"Probably," the droopy-eared dog said. "It's kinda weird."
"There are faint impressions over there that match those 'portacabins' Motokazu mentioned," Neji said, pointing.
"I smell woodsmoke along with more of that slightly spoiled fish," Canvass said. "I think the team had made camp." She snuffled around the eastern side of the clearing, moving deeper into the woods for a minute as the humans trailed along. "Yep. Two of the outlanders waited here, the third one went forward and spied on the clearing, then he came back and joined up with the other two and all three of them went forward again, this time into the clearing."
No one spoke. Everyone looked ready to kill.
Canvass traversed the clearing once more, nose down in the leaves. She moved back into the woods, spiraling farther and farther out as the humans trailed along behind doing their best to stay out of her way. Fully half a mile from the campsite, she stopped spiraling and started searching a local area. After yet another ten minutes, she sat down and looked at the humans. "The three foreigners were at the campsite for a bit, then they moved off this way, continuing on to the northwest," she said. "There's no scent in between the campsite and here, so they're doing something to break their trail. About thirty yards over there"—she nosed back where they had been walking—"they started leaving scent again, but they're hopping from tree to tree in order to break trail, which makes it a lot harder to follow the scent. Foreoffpaw, now they stink of blood and charred meat, which makes it easier. Also, there's faint hints of Akane and her team. It's faint, probably not enough for bodies, living or dead. More likely that the bad guys touched their bodies or are carrying their clothes. It's getting late; are we following them or making camp?"
"Following," Hazō said in a tone that brooked no argument. Yuno, the putative mission commander, raised an eyebrow and smiled slightly but said nothing.
They tracked the three unknown ninja to the northwest, moving by the light of Jiraiya's Awesome Daybright Lantern seals. The seals threw crazy shadows everywhere, making the footing perilous, but no one complained.
Multiple times, Canvass lost the trail and everyone waited as she snuffled in an expanding spiral, sampling each tree until she found another trace. The gaps were long, half a mile or more, so their progress was made in fits and starts, a bit of steady progress followed by long minutes of waiting while Canvass searched for the next segment. No one begrudged the dog the difficulty.
Finally, Canvass sat down and shook her head. "They're gone. There's no further trace to be had."
"Where are we?" Hazō asked.
Tenten had been carrying the map and compass, tracking their progress across the day. Wordlessly, she held up the paper and pointed.
Everyone crowded close except for Kei, who could not stand the proximity, and Neji, who simply activated his Byakugan and observed without taking up space in the scrum.
"Well, this sucks," Noburi said, staring at their indicated position.
"True words," Inuzuka agreed.
"I could throw a rock into Waterfall, Iron, or Rice," Mari said, her eyes soft as she focused on the implications. "If they're from Iron then they're missing-nin, or they are passing through in order to look like missing-nin before turning for wherever home might be."
"Waterfall has a tight enough border that it's unlikely anyone aside from one of their people could pass through there without being caught," Inuzuka said. "But they're a nominal ally."
"Rice is a possibility," Kei said. "They are Leaf's primary competition as food supplier for the continent. Espionage against us would make sense."
"No," Hazō said. "Spies want to pass without notice. These people trailed Akane and her team for miles, scouted their camp, and then attacked. The team was still moving away from Leaf when they were hit, and they had been moving at the same pace all day. They didn't stumble over a foreign spy team and escape only for the bad guys to catch up. This was an unprovoked attack."
"Canvass, there's no chance that the bad guys were carrying anyone, right?" Noburi asked. "Like, for example, a captured Leaf ninja being taken in for interrogation as part of an especially aggressive espionage effort?"
The dog shrugged. "Like I said, there's faint hints of them but I doubt it's bodies. Probably the bad guys touched their bodies or are carrying their clothes."
"The bodies weren't at the attack site either," Neji noted.
"Clearly, their most youthful bodies were placed into storage seals," Rock Lee said. "But for what reason?"
"Most likely just to reduce the traces," Mari said before Hazō could bristle at the reference to 'bodies'. "A torn up patch of ground in the middle of nowhere? No one is going to find that unless they have a supernaturally good tracker to lead them there. Even if a Leaf patrol did happen to stumble across it there wouldn't be anything to learn from it without the bodies being there."
Silence fell across the group as everyone digested the implications of ninja from a foreign nation stalking and murdering Leaf ninja so soon after the end of the latest World War.
"Now what?" Canvass asked.
Author's Note: A snippet of conversation from the QM chat yesterday:
QM1: Huh. Google is telling me that real-life bloodhounds can find a scent trail up to 300 hours after it was made and follow it for up to 130 miles. Canvass is an intelligent and magical bloodhound, so I assume her nose is at least that good if not better.
QM2: Bloodhounds OP, plz nerf.
While everyone was still gathering at the estate, you took Mari aside and quietly mentioned Hagoromo Ruka's malfeasance, as well as saying that it was important to preserve evidence. Mari said that there was unlikely to be any physical evidence of wrongdoing, and also that it was basically impossible that Ritsuo had ever said, "In defiance of the Hokage's orders, I would like you to do everything in your power to harm the Gōketsu." If he was involved in this at all then it would have been completely deniable and any accusations are going to be almost impossible to prove.
Kagome was not on the estate when you returned and the plan said to leave within the hour so Hazō didn't have time to be traipsing around looking for him. You left a message with Gaku telling him that Akane is overdue, you're out looking for her, and that he is not to cause trouble until you return.
XP AWARD: 5
Brevity XP: 1
"GM had fun" XP: 3 On the one hand, the occasion for this update is sad. On the other hand, I got to write "No F*cks to Give" Hazō at his finest.
It is now about 8pm. It's pitch black out and you're about 60 miles from Leaf.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday,
.
EDIT: Here's a compilation of extra information based on questions the players asked:
For clarification: Can Canvass track in more detail Akane's location within the clearing? Where on the buried trees was there damage? Did Neji at any point see portacabin fragments?
In the interest of not wasting time in the next update: Canvass is correct. Feel free to do whatever tests you like, but there are no traces to be found regardless of what you do.
There were four portacabins, and four loose collections of portacabin-ish splinters underground that Neji identified.
Yes, she can. This is either extended physical contact or the bad guys are carrying something with a lot of the team's scent on it -- probably clothing.
The burned smell appears to be residual, not one of the retreating ninja.
Silence fell across the group as everyone digested the implications of ninja from a foreign nation stalking and murdering Leaf ninja so soon after the end of the latest World War.
"Now what?" Canvass asked.
The question hung in the air like a swinging corpse. One by one, the ninja in the group turned to Hazō, the leader. In the nighttime forest, they could only see by the harsh light of the Daybright Lanterns and the jet-black holes in the landscape left by the terrain. Canvass's question threw just as many shadows.
Hazō breathed deeply. The trail ended here. The enemy team wasn't carrying bodies with them. Even if they set down in another country, pursuing them wouldn't find Akane, because Akane would be…
"Dispel!" Hazō said, flaring his chakra.
Nothing changed. Around him, people's expressions varied from curiosity to pity. He met Mari's eyes. She shook her head fractionally.
Hazō closed his eyes. Akane could be dead.
Or maybe she could be alive. Akane had skywalkers, she would have had plenty to share with the team, and when ambushed, they would have had every reason to use them. Split four ways, they might not have had enough to make it back to Leaf.
They could have camped out on a skytower, injured and resting, or unable to get down for lack of skywalkers. Or, if only Akane made it away, she couldn't set up a skytower alone, so she could have ended up in a nearby patch of forest or civilian village.
Akane could still be alive. Sage grant that she's still alive, somewhere.
The Sage had never helped Hazō, of course. Nor had the ancestors, nor the Will of Fire, nor even the ancient nature kami. But Jashin had. Never in a way that didn't have some other explanation, but Hidan had recognized Jashin's favor in opening the afterlife portal and saving the citizens of Bakuchioka. Jashin had maybe even moved at Hazō's request before, guiding his dice towards the Otter Scroll and letting Hazō see Jiraiya. Desperately, Hazō started to plead.
Lord Jashin, Hazō thought, please, let Akane and her team be safe. I… And what could Hazō offer to Jashin in exchange? The god cared for nothing but murder, to the point where Hidan had accepted Uplift only as a way to make more bodies to slaughter in service of the dark god. Well, there was one clear answer.
She is a good killer. She has killed thousands. Hazō was speaking in his mind, but could still feel the words turning to poison in his gut. Would Akane have wanted this? She served you well. Please, if there's anything you can do to make her and her team safe, do it. If she comes home alive, I'll-
A hand brushed against his, interrupting his thoughts. Soft fingers curled around his palm. Hazō opened his eyes to see Ino looking at him with concern. She tilted her head slightly and Hazō understood what she meant. She thought he'd gotten lost in that altered mental state he felt after sealing research or encountering the Dragons. How could he even explain what he'd really been thinking about?
"Hazō," Mari said. She kept her voice quiet, but it cut through the silent winter night. "We're in the field. We have a mission. What is our current objective, and what do we do about it?"
Hazō inhaled. "We… need information. What do we know? The attackers found Akane's trail and followed her to camp."
"That means that they're a tracker team," Inuzuka said. "Unless they literally hid in the bushes to watch our guys pass by, only an expert could follow the tracks at enough speed to keep up with their targets. That's a rare skill."
"Right," Hazō said. "And that means that they left a trail where they came from. We can double back and find out more about the attackers. They fought Akane at the clearing, spilling blood, probably from the genin, and burning some flesh. Afterwards, they overturned the earth and submerged some damaged trees underground."
"That demonstrates unambiguous evidence of Earth ninjutsu use," Kei said. "I aided in the selection of Akane's genin team. None of them had Earth Element, or any other techniques that could have produced that effect."
"Gai-sensei used the Flame Aura technique as well, but warned us about its potential dangers," Neji said. "If Akane lost control in the middle of a fight, the ninjutsu's backlash could have lethally burned her."
"So one of the attackers had a fairly strong Earth Element ninjutsu," Hazō said, ignoring Neji's words. "The attackers didn't stay for long. They moved out, breaking trail to foil even a competent pursuit."
"Assuming they used skywalkers to break trail, they didn't have that many skywalkers to go around," Mari said. "Someone with a large supply of skywalkers would just run straight for the border on air."
"The movement matches Hidden Rock exfiltration patterns," Shikamaru said. "Hidden Rock has a substantially smaller skywalker supply than Hidden Leaf, and its operatives generally refrain from traveling far from the ground due to their advantage in Earth ninjutsu."
"Fuck, I didn't want say it first, but it's obvious, right?" Inuzuka said. "They used Earth ninjutsu to clean up the site, and everyone knows the two Gōketsu stuck it to the Tsuchikage by killing the bitch's damned husband. Sage's balls, we're within spitting distance of the Swamp of Death, and skywalking over that into Rock-occupied territory is gonna be a hell of a way to deter pursuers."
"I thought we'd cleared out all Rock's spies in Leaf," Ino said quietly. "Or all the important ones, at least. But Akane's mission wasn't a secret. Anyone could have seen her leaving through the Sunset Gate."
"After that," Hazō said, "the attackers ran for the border with some items from the team, but without any bodies in hand."
"I would'a smelled if they were carrying someone," Canvas said. "Humans drop hair and sweat everywhere."
"They made it right up to Fire's border, then skywalked away. Whatever they used to break trail before, small skywalker bursts or some jutsu, this is different. We'll grab their scent posts in a storage seal for later, but right here, there's no scent to follow."
"You saw me go round and round in spirals," Canvass said. "They didn't leave a mark for at least two miles, and at this point, even figuring out where they popped up again's gonna be a whole day's effort, I'm thinkin'."
"Okay," Hazō said. "So the genin are probably dead, but we don't know that Akane's dead."
"Hazō…" Ino said, rubbing the back of Hazō's palm with her thumb.
"No!" Hazō said, pulling his hand away. "There's a chance, damn it! She could have made it away on skywalkers and holed up in a skytower, or hidden away in a corner of the forest. We're going to look for her."
"Not right now, we're not," Mari said. "Focus, Hazō. It's dead dark and frigid, and we jogged for ten hours today. What are we doing right now?"
Hazō winced slightly. "You're right. Let's get away from the borders in case more enemies show up and double back to the clearing. We'll camp in skytowers overnight and search for her tomorrow."
Mari shook her head. "Another three hours run from here? Not a chance. We can get maybe ten miles deeper into Fire and get into skytowers until morning."
"Fine," Hazō said. "Let's go."
o-o-o
"Hazō," Asuma said as Hazō appeared in a puff of greyish smoke. "Ruri has already briefed me on the situation as of noon today. What have you found?"
Hazō shook off the lurching disorientation of reverse summoning and looked around him. Canodo had brought him into a small, empty Pangolin-style dome with Asuma, Enma, and a smaller monkey that Hazō couldn't remember the name of.
"It wasn't a chakra beast attack," Hazō said. "It was foreign action. Akane was attacked by ninja."
Asuma's face darkened. "Enma. Take Saruine and Canodo and go watch the perimeter."
Enma raised an eyebrow. "Kid, I get you got Hokage business and all, but that's not really how this works. I don't just 'watch the perimeter' for you."
Asuma looked at Enma. "This concerns a matter of extreme importance to Leaf and to the entire Human Path, Enma. Depending on how things turn out, perhaps I can read you in later. However, right now, I need you to trust me, make sure that no one can listen in on us, and don't eavesdrop yourself. Please."
Enma stared at Asuma for long enough to make Hazō shift uncomfortably in his stance. Eventually, Enma sighed. "Sure, I'll keep watch. Not like I've seen matters of incredible importance to clans and villages and Paths before." He continued to gripe as he exited the dome with the tiny monkey and Canodo in tow. "Nope, this Monkey King doesn't have a drop of wisdom worth extracting. Never provided counsel to human rulers making tough decisions about the fate of their people, or even kept secrets worth more than kingdoms, much less…"
He trailed off as the heavy leather flap covering the dome's exit slapped shut.
"Speak carefully, Hazō," Asuma said. "Enma can deter most eavesdroppers, but we're still under Pangolin skies. Was Akane captured?"
Hazō paused. "We don't know for certain, sir, but we suspect not."
"How sure are you?" Asuma asked. "I don't need to explain why a miscall could cause catastrophe."
"I don't know," Hazō said. "Canvass is maybe the best tracker on the Seventh Path and definitely better than any human, and she's pretty sure that they didn't carry a body away."
"Pretty sure?" Asuma said.
"I'm…" Hazō considered. "I'm confident, sir. These attackers didn't carry her away, at least."
"Okay," Asuma said. "The timing makes me suspicious. Tsunade, Orochimaru, and half our jōnin leave Leaf, then almost immediately foreign agents make overt moves in Fire. Is there an impending invasion?"
"I don't know, sir," Hazō said. "We haven't seen any evidence for it. The invaders just attacked Akane's team and left Fire immediately."
Asuma relaxed by a hair. The Hokage was still tense, but no longer immediately ready to act.
"Okay," Asuma said. "Explain what you've found."
-o-
Asuma sighed and rubbed his forehead.
"Foreign agents in Fire, perhaps at random but probably informed, found Akane's trail, followed her, engaged her, probably killed her, and fled Fire. They tried to cover up and make sure no one could track them, but they couldn't account for your summons' capabilities. Now we know where they went."
"She might not be dead, sir," Hazō said.
"She might not be," Asuma said, slowly. "But Canvass made it sound like a botched capture mission. No blood from Akane because they wanted to take her out non-lethally, but her Flame Aura backlash killed her when she lost consciousness. We can't know for certain, but that's what it sounds like to me."
Hazō's mind strained. He couldn't accept that Akane was dead. Not now.
"Why would someone try to capture her?" Hazō asked, trying to deflect. "No one should know about… Akane's jutsu."
Asuma nodded. "Only a small and loyal set of people in Leaf know. We used all reasonable precautions against other foreign nations finding out, and Isan doesn't have the capacity for covert ops like this. But that's not the only reason why people would want to capture Akane."
As Asuma spoke, he tapped a storage seal to release papers and an inkbrush.
"First, she knows Shadow Clone, which I know she hasn't kept secret well. Second, she's your known girlfriend and clanmate, and you're a fairly famous sealmaster. People might target her to get your seals, which they would reasonably assume that you'd give to her, especially if they think you've invented more game-changing seals like the skywalker."
A nausea joined the despair in Hazō's stomach. The Multiple Activation Relay Seal, which let him activate any number of other seals in an instant, had the potential to be just as game-changing as skywalkers with the right set of base seals backing it. Now, MARS could have fallen into enemy hands, along with directional explosives and rocket boots and chakdar and banshee slayers and…
"Third, for Rock specifically, she and Yuno are extremely high value targets after capturing the Tsuchikage's consort. I can imagine the extents I'd go to if I knew someone in Rock captured Kurenai and doomed her to torture and execution."
Asuma finished writing a message. He inked a stamp and applied it. "I need to yell at Naruto and Shikamaru for not immediately taking drastic action when you told them Akane was late. Yes, the most likely outcome when a ninja disappears on a chakra beast mission is that the ninja died to the beasts, but they need to consider edge cases. Naruto's power depends on other villages not studying Shadow Clone to find its weaknesses, and Shikamaru especially knows enough that he should have responded to even a small possibility that she'd been captured or gone missing.
"I assume you're going into Rice or Iron next?" Asuma said. "Both will be pretty hostile, but in different ways. In Rice, leverage your skywalkers and infiltrators to keep a low profile. In Iron, your party is a big enough show of force that it should hopefully deter opportunistic missing-nin and foreign hunter-nin."
Hazō shook his head. "No, sir. We're… We're going to focus on the chance that she's alive. If she's somewhere in the Land of Fire, we'll find her and bring her home. If we can't find her…"
"You're not going to find where the attacker's trail sets down with your summon, possibly the best tracker in all the Paths?" Asuma asked again.
"No, sir," Hazō said as the despair steadily sank deeper into his gut.
Asuma considered Hazō for several seconds. Eventually, Asuma nodded. "Very well, Hazō. Even if Canvass doesn't think Akane got captured, we need someone to follow that trail and verify. I'll send orders through Ruri to authorize missions into Rice and Iron, and I'll coerce Waterfall's representatives into allowing a Leaf investigative team within their borders. Send Inuzuka Yamato back to Leaf in the morning with any information you have. His skills will be needed."
"Yes, sir," Hazō said. "This is an AMITY violation, isn't it?"
"Yes," Asuma said, "and a particularly brazen one. Shikamaru can confirm that enemy nations are still running their most important and lowest risk espionage and scouting operations inside our borders, and that we suspect that sometimes patrols disappear because they run into enemy ninja by accident. AMITY can't convince a spotted infiltrator jōnin to let a genin team leave with their lives. Still, an attack this brazen is as yet unprecedented, I think. If you're going to be searching the area near the fight, I need you to find incontrovertible evidence of who did it. Informally, I strongly suspect Rock. Formally, I can't make an accusation without solid proof."
"What am I looking for, sir?" Hazō asked.
"More signs of ninjutsu use. The more techniques we can identify, the greater the odds of positively tying it to someone specific. Any discarded seals or personal effects, especially ones whose sources we could track. Any more information about their operating procedures. We don't exactly have Rock's field manuals, but enough small pieces of evidence can build up into a convincing case."
Asuma stamped a second scroll, then handed them over to Hazō, one at a time. "Orders for Inuzuka Yamato," he said, "and a retroactive mission approval for Kagome. Ruri said he sprinted right out of Leaf as soon as he heard the news. I'm not going to fault him, given the circumstances, but you need to check in with him in Arachnid and get him under control. Loop him into the search for evidence too. He's sharp enough that he could find something others would miss."
"Understood," Hazō said. "If we find anything, I'll inform you immediately."
"One more thing, Hazō," Asuma said. "Ruri explained what happened between you and the Hagoromo clerk."
Rage flared inside Hazō.
"She did?" Hazō asked, incensed. "Did she explain how Hagoromo might have intentionally 'forgotten' Akane's mission check-in, or even sent her on a deadly mission in the-"
Hazō paused as the realization hit him. Mari had said that the Tower bureaucrats would push the new sensei to take missions, and Akane had never been able to say 'no' to authority. Akane shouldn't have been sent on a mission, not so soon after getting her genin team. Hazō had promised blood because Hagoromo hadn't reported Akane's late return, but if she had forced Akane onto the mission…
The fireplace crackled in the silence of Hazō's unfinished sentence.
"I understand the situation at a very high level," Asuma said. "She didn't do her job and you gave an ultimatum, with the threat of clan war if Hagoromo failed to satisfy you. There will not be a clan war in Leaf."
"The fucking Hagoromo were supposed to stop screwing with us at your orders, Asuma!" Hazō said, half yelling. "Then they made an unprovoked attack and fucking killed Akane! If Hagoromo doesn't get on the ground and beg, we're going to defend ourselves until they're no longer a threat."
The crackling in the fireplace grew louder as the silence dragged on.
"There will not be a clan war in Leaf, Hazō," Asuma said. "Hagoromo Ruka's actions will be investigated. If the Hagoromo made an act of war, I will punish them. Not you. Is that clear?"
"This is why the Hagoromo did this!" Hazō yelled. "They know they can do whatever they want and get away with a slap on the wrist because the Hokage won't punish the clans. If even the threat of annihilation won't get them to stand in line, then they fucking deserve to be annihilated!"
The crackling of the fire crescendoed and wrapped around Hazō, and suddenly Asuma grew to fill the room.
"There will not be a clan war in Leaf," Asuma said. "If the Hagoromo spilled the blood of another Leaf ninja, they will pay in blood. The Hokage will ensure the clans of Leaf have peace between them, as Hashirama himself did. If the Hagoromo have become so consumed by hatred that they can no longer accept the possibility of peace, I will excise the rot and cauterize the wound so that they can be whole again. You must accept the possibility of peace, Hazō. You will not start a clan war with the Hagoromo."
The fire retreated, letting Hazō draw breath again, leaving him weakened, unsteady. He waited, letting the crackling slowly subside.
"And why would you punish them?" Hazō asked, bitterly. "They haven't hurt you the way they've hurt me."
Asuma stayed silent for almost a minute as the crackling of his aura slowly wound back into his soul.
"Hazō. My father and mother both died in combat. I was one of five children. I have written all four of my siblings' names on Leaf's Memorial Stone. I saw some of their corpses. Others simply disappeared. Soon, Kurenai and I will have children. Most likely, I will either live to see them die violently, or they will live to see me die violently.
"I have lost people to the incompetence of others. I have felt anger and pain and despair. However, I know that I have a duty to my clan and to all of Leaf. You cannot discharge that duty through clan war, Hazō. Leaf ninja have raised arms against their allies out of malice before. In every such case, the punishment has been exceedingly harsh. We live in a dangerous world, and we cannot afford to kill each other when so many enemies want us divided and dead. Hagoromo Ruka acted with even a hint of malice, then she will be punished. If she acted according to orders within the Hagoromo, then I will punish them too. We cannot lose Leaf ninja in this manner. But I will not allow you to kill a Hagoromo any more than I would allow a Hagoromo to kill one of your own. There will not be a clan war in Leaf."
The silence stretched out. "I'm sorry, Lord Asuma," Hazō said finally, through gritted teeth. "I lost control. I remain furious, but I trust Leaf justice to settle this matter."
Asuma nodded. "You may feel however you choose. I've already spoken to Ritsuo, and he disclaimed any part in this affair. We'll need to do a deeper investigation into Ruka's actions to determine what exactly transpired. What I need you to do, Hazō, is stand down. When you return to Leaf, you will make a public statement recanting your threats made in the heat of the moment, and assuring everyone that you will not pursue a war of annihilation against the Hagoromo."
"Sir, I-"
"That's an order, Hazō," Asuma said. "You can make many threats against the Hagoromo, but an open clan war is not one of them."
Hazō clenched his fists and hung his head for a second. "Fine," he said eventually. "I will do so, Lord Hokage."
"Good," Asuma said. "Continue your investigation and stay in touch through the Seventh Path. Return to Leaf when you're ready. Ruri is waiting closer to the heart of the Conclave. Once we're done here, tell Ruri all the factual information about your investigation so far, and Naruto will order the appropriate missions. Is that clear?"
Hazō nodded stiffly. "Yes, sir."
"Good." After a second, Asuma said, "Hazō. I have had this experience before. Losing someone that I loved. I know you have Mari to guide you, but I… I can also listen. I can't console you, but I can tell you the things that I did to make the pain better. Almost anyone in Leaf would be willing to support you. You're not alone."
"Yes, sir."
Asuma gazed at Hazō for a moment longer. "Very well, Hazō. I need to get back to the delegation to see if they have any insight about this affair that I've missed. Dismissed."
And with that, Asuma disappeared in a puff of gray summon-smoke.
o-o-o
Kagome-sensei was crying.
Hazō had explained what had happened, and Kagome-sensei had fallen into tears. Hazō felt that same welling up behind his eyes, that tightness in his face and chest, but he held it there. He wouldn't cry. Not yet.
Hazō waited and watched as Kagome wept. The older man cried quietly, making only rough inhales and stuttering exhales instead of any kind of wailing.
Eventually, Kagome spoke. "They killed her. The stupid Leaf-stinkers sent her on missions until some other stinkers got in the right place, then they killed her."
Hazō couldn't deny it, not to Kagome-sensei.
Suddenly, Kagome jumped to his feet, stabbing a finger into Hazō's chest. "Akane's dead, but she's not dead dead. She's only dead dead once her soul fully disintegrates in Naraka. We have to move fast, but we can do it. We can get her back."
"Sensei…"
"We can! We have to. It's like when you got us kicked out of Leaf by threatening Jiraiya to his stupid face. Akane was trapped in enemy territory and we had to research a seal to get her back."
"Kagome-sensei, opening the rift is on a whole different level of difficulty than making skywalkers."
Kagome's eyes and face were still red and wet. He batted a hand dismissively. "Invent flight, get Akane back. Invent rift-travel, get Akane back. Same deal. I don't know how long we have, but Akane had a lot of friends. Not as many people'll know her as Jiraiya, but maybe there's enough to keep her together. We can't wait, Hazō. She's already dead. We can't let her become dead dead."
"Sensei, I'll try, but-"
"Will you!?" Kagome asked, raising his voice. "No more stinking Conclave, no more stupid Leaf. We need to actually try!"
"I want to, sensei!" Hazō yelled back, standing up to face Kagome. "I can't let the Dragons eat the Seventh Path, but I'm not going to let Akane fade away without doing something about it!"
They breathed heavily, inches away from each other's faces.
"Fine," Kagome said. "Let's search for her. If we can't find her, we do everything we can to make sure people remember her, then start making the rift seals. No more waiting around."
o-o-o
The party had lost Inuzuka Yamato and Shikamaru but gained Kagome-sensei. They regrouped at the clearing and split into teams. Yuno, Noburi, Kei, Tenten, and Kagome-sensei searched the area around the clearing for any hints of escaping members of Team Akane. Hazō, Mari, Neji, Rock Lee, and Ino followed Canvass backwards along the foreigners' trail, retracing the enemy's movements before they'd started stalking Team Akane.
The trail was confusing. It roved north and south, crossing itself and doubling back three times over before finally wending its way to the north. They found a few sites of interest, including one where the enemy had picked vegetation from the trees to make camouflage, and another where the enemy had relieved themselves, letting Canvass identify them as an older female and two younger barely-adults, male and female.
The enemy had entered the Land of Fire barely a half-dozen miles east from their exfiltration point, still within spitting distance of Waterfall, Iron, Rice, or even the Swamp of Death. If the enemy had responded to an infiltrator reporting Akane's location, they would have been camping right on Fire's border. Canvass huffed in frustration at finding another dead end that she couldn't follow.
As they went, they took careful notes of every piece of evidence they could. Canvass could follow impossibly subtle scents, but for the humans, signs were sparse. A week after the enemy had passed through, they could only note the occasional branch where too-strong chakra adhesion had torn bark.
The search team found nothing.
o-o-o
Hagoromo Ruka opened her front door. She gasped in delight, then bowed deeply.
"Lord Uzumaki! I am ever so glad to see you. Please, come in and take a seat. I'll fetch you something to eat or drink. Oh, what do you like?"
Naruto looked down at the middle-aged woman coolly, then raised his hands. "Apologies, Hagoromo. This isn't a social visit."
"Oh?" Hagoromo said. "Is this about the clan war that that wretched Gōketsu is trying to start? Good, I'm glad someone is finally taking action about it. But regardless of what needs to be done to Lord Gōketsu, you'll get uncomfortable out there in the snow. Please, come in."
Naruto frowned, then shook his head. "It's about the clan war, in a way. We're here to ask about how you do your job, and why it took you a week to flag a mission late."
Only then did Hagoromo take in the two people standing behind Naruto. Lord Nara and the Condor Summoner flanked the jinchūriki.
Hagoromo Ruka smiled widely and gestured again to invite the party inside. "Please, come in. I would love to be your host, rather than let you freeze out there, and I am quite a chef myself. I'm sure I can find something to your tastes."
"Why did it take you a week to flag Gōketsu Akane's mission late?"
Hagoromo laughed uncomfortably, batting the question away with a manicured hand. "Ah, just a simple mistake. We had such a rush to get all the new teams assigned their missions, but we managed to get it done in time. It was part two that was a real killer – keeping track of all these missions and their completions, along with, you know, all the other missions happening in Leaf. So many sensei make their genin write the mission reports, you know? Cute, but completely illegible. I guess in all the mess, I forgot to check in on a few, and one of them was actually delayed. So what?"
Naruto stared for a moment. "A Leaf ninja may have died because you 'forgot' to mark an incomplete mission, and you're asking 'so what'?"
Hagoromo looked nervously between the three ninja at her door, then shrugged with a forced casualness. "Like it would have mattered. If she died to a beastie, she'd be long dead before anyone realized. Besides, the Gōketsu think they're so great, but if she couldn't hack it against the baby chakra beasts in Wanaka Woods or whatever, maybe she wasn't fit to lead a team at all, even a team of clanless."
Naruto glanced at Lord Nara, who shook his head.
"I'm afraid that's not enough," Naruto said. "We have more questions to ask. You said we could come in, right?"
The trio of ninja stepped in, but Hagoromo's initial cheer had faded.
"Is this okay?" she asked, nervously. "Lord Ritsuo…"
She trailed off as the Condor Summoner offered her a scroll, stamped with Lord Hagoromo's personal seal.
"Delivered through the Seventh Path," the woman said, her lips forming a bitter smile. "By Lord Hokage himself."
"The Hokage has already approved your interrogation," Naruto said. "And your clan head has countersigned, under the conditions that you may refuse to answer any questions and terminate it at any time."
"Is that what this is?" Hagoromo asked. "An interrogation?"
"Yes," Naruto said, pointing at one of Hagoromo's own chairs. "Now, sit down. This may take a while."
o-o-o
The tracking team regrouped with the search party. Together, they spent another day searching, splitting their time between high-altitude scans for skytowers and on-the-ground searches for trails, villages, or any hints of Akane's presence. They broke up the hours with periodic bursts of banshee seals in the hope that Akane would hear them and respond.
They found nothing.
o-o-o
That night, on a skytower far above the clouds, Ino was crying. She'd cried last night too, and the night before that. She kept herself together during the day, putting on a calm, collected face, but she broke down at night. Hazō wanted to cry too, but he couldn't let himself do that. Not yet.
Hazō held her as they rested. The winter nights were bitingly cold, especially this far in the air. Skytower camping left few ways to insulate a tent or break the wind, so they cuddled close to a small, steel firepit that left them with one side cold and the other side hot.
"I miss the summers," Ino said.
"I miss when Sakura and I would spend the whole day playing in the flower fields, or when we climbed that big tree at the Yamanaka compound and Dad came out and yelled at us and I got grounded and Dad made me run the flower shop for a whole week. I miss sitting in that flower shop, sweating because the only window was too high and too small and Mom wouldn't let me prop the door open because it let the dust in and all I did was sit behind the counter bored out of my mind. I miss chatting with the kids or the elders when they came by and even putting up with the occasional real customer and especially when Sakura would come by in the evenings and we'd talk until Mom made me come for dinner.
"I miss the summers when we'd run around the village trying to find stuff to do and stay out of the way of Naruto's pranks, and when Sakura and Shion and Akane and I would sneak into the Uchiha compound to try to see what Sasuke was doing even though we knew we'd get caught, even if Akane was always more interested in seeing what Rock Lee was doing instead. I miss running around in the forests and climbing the trees and having my friends around me.
"I miss when people didn't die. I miss when I could be a kid and my parents were there to protect me and my friends came back from their missions and I had a team and a sensei and everything was okay. Everything's broken now. I feel like I'm trying to fix a broken mirror, but every time I try to pick up a piece it only cuts my hands. Like I'm trying to put together a pot from broken pieces, knowing that I've already lost something irreplaceable that means it'll just never hold water.
"Broken, broken, broken. Why bother putting it back together when it'll only break again?"
o-o-o
"Well, would ya look at that," Canvass said, gazing up into the sky.
Hazō looked up but saw nothing special. The clouds overhead had darkened and started to snow, but there were no signs of anything important, even the strange double-funnel of the Elemental Mastery technique.
Canvass flicked her tongue out and grabbed a few snowflakes out of the air. "Weird," she said. "Really is solid, cold water, huh? Wonder why it's white."
Hazō looked around at the falling snow. Over a week had passed since the last real snow, meaning they'd likely see at least a foot before nightfall.
"The purity of the heavens," Hazō said, absentmindedly. "In the cities, it soaks up all the human sin and mud and gets brown or black. We should finish out this radius before the snow piles any higher."
Canvass sighed telepathically. "Sure, you got it." She set her nose back to the ground and continued searching for the trail that Hazō knew she wouldn't find.
o-o-o
"It's been two and a half days," Mari said. "We searched twenty miles in every direction from the clearing. Is there any injury that Akane could have taken that would let her run more than twenty miles, but that would still keep her from coming home?
"Not that I can think of," said Yuno.
"Then we're not going to find her here," Mari said, turning to Hazō.
He couldn't bring himself to be angry any more.
"Is there any more reason for us to stay out here?" he asked Yuno.
She shook her head. "I think we've done all we can from here, especially now that the snow is killing Canvass's scenting ability. Neji made sketches of the underground at the clearing, and we mapped out the enemy tracks and their detailed positions as best we could. We have their scent traces and the portacabin splinters and the few burned leaves we found. If there's more to find out here, we're not the ones to find it."
"Fine," Hazō said, as his heart finally broke. "Let's go home."
Asuma has ordered over a dozen missions to find out what happened to Akane, including sending Inuzuka Yamato with Canvass-approved scent markers to Iron, a special AMITY-approved investigative team into Waterfall, and a top secret, aerial-only, Aburame-telescope-supplied team over Rock territory. Results of those missions are pending.
The trip home was misery. Well, not the trip itself. He had run farther and faster back in their missing-nin days. No, the misery was from knowing what came next. The expressions that would fill Akane's parents' faces. Especially her father's face, as his thoughts flashed back to the long-gone moment when he told Hazō-the-missing-nin to stay away from Akane because all he could bring her was heartache and danger.
How was Hazō supposed to tell him that he had been right?
They chased the sun to rest and arrived home in the gloaming, covered in sweat and trail dust. Hazō took a military bath (fast enough but thorough enough to satisfy the angriest of instructors), dressed well, and sought out Akane's parents. He needed to confess that he had gotten their little girl killed. Afterwards, he needed to tell the rest of the clan and whomever else showed up.
o-o-o-o
January 17, 1071 AS, evening
Every part of Hazō hurt.
He could remember, dimly, his father's death. The memories felt dreamlike, almost unreal, memories of someone else who happened to be observing a mourning child. He could see, now, that the child had been drowning—drowning in grief, drowning in confusion, drowning in anger.
But that child hadn't known they were drowning. They'd just felt the water, felt resistance when they thrashed, felt their throat fill and their lungs spasm, felt a leeching cold.
They hadn't been able to see the ocean, empty and heartless. They hadn't known how far they were from shore, they hadn't known that no one was coming. They hadn't known that they would not drown, but swallow lungful after lungful of frigid brackish seawater as they drifted with agonizing slowness back to land.
Hazō knew. He knew exactly what was coming and part of him whispered that he would fail. This would break him. It whispered that Akane was dead, would always be dead, and that he would never recover the part of him that had died with her. The wound in his soul would not heal, but blacken and turn and seep through him until it claimed him.
"Hazō?"
Mari put her head around the door. She was resplendent in Leaf mourning garb; black with reds, oranges, and yellows. He catalogued her makeup before looking beneath it; the powder revealed worry lines, artfully-smudged darkness at the corners of her eyes distracted from barely-visible bags, mascara offset bloodshot eyes. He kept looking, seeing the tension in her jaw, the clenched teeth, the—
"Hazō. It's time."
He stood. His back hurt. She put a hand on his shoulder. Guilt washed over him. She was keeping it together, and that worried him. Later, he'd sit down with her.
Thinking of later hurt.
The crowd was a decent size. Reo had done well with the impromptu stage, wrought from the red granite which was becoming synonymous with Gōketsu. It was simple—an elevated platform, with a backdrop covered in calligraphy and tapestries. Gōketsu colors, and Gōketsu words. Hazō looked over but not at the throng of people. If he saw a Hagoromo, he didn't know what he'd do. He took a breath, and began.
"Manato, Nakajima Nanao, Tomoe Mami, and Gōketsu Akane are missing, presumed dead."
The air was still. Speaking hurt, even as the Iron Nerve played the speech back.
"Leaf is poorer by four outstanding shinobi, taken too soon. They touched many lives, and it's good to see so many of their comrades, friends, and family here. I'd like to speak to all of you—not just here and now, but in the coming days and weeks, to mourn and share stories. Every moment I had with Akane was precious. It would be wrong to hoard those moments: we may never have more, but we can share the wealth of knowing her, knowing Nanao, and knowing Mami, knowing Manato. I would like to share the memories I was gifted with you. I hope that you'll do the same for me."
Someone was weeping.
"All of their deaths constitute tragedies—tragedies which should be unimaginable, but which are all too easy to conceive for everyone here. I wish to honor this tragedy, their sacrifice, but first—"
Mari had coached him through the slip. An apology delivered by the Iron Nerve would be picked over, analyzed, and taken as insincere. Almost no one in Leaf would be able to tell the difference, but Ritsuo would make sure that someone who could was in the crowd and Hazō would not provide him with anything he could use to deflect even a shred of the Hokage's fury. So, they'd rehearsed, over and over. His bloodline hurt, but he could do it, now. He let go of his face—he seemed to let go of his face. The slightest of slight exaggerations, so everyone would see, would believe, that he'd made this real.
"—I must apologize to the Hagoromo."
"Akane was...if I say beautiful I worry that you may think I speak only of her physical beauty. But it was more than that. She radiated warmth, and light. She glowed. When I first met her, I had no idea what the source of this could be, but as I came to know her, the answer became obvious. It was the Will of Fire."
The soft blanket of reverence which descended upon the citizens of Leaf whenever the Will of Fire was mentioned settled over the crowd. Hazō could feel eyes on him, and not all of them friendly.
"The First Hokage said that the meaning of life is love, and that love is the will to protect. He said that the will to protect is the Will of Fire. The Will of Fire warms your comrades and illuminates your path even as it burns your enemies. The Will of Fire is bravery and kindness. Akane's dedication to the Will of Fire stunned me, inspired me to better understand and accept it into my heart. But taken too far, this flame risks all, consumes all, like wildfire annihilating a forest."
"By now, you have likely heard rumor that I made threats against the Hagoromo. These rumors are true and I am deeply ashamed. I unreservedly recant those threats and those words. The Gōketsu will not act against the Hagoromo—no aggression nor provocation will be tolerated. Akane would expect no less. The return of her and her team to the Will of Fire makes the adherence of every Gōketsu shinobi to the Will of Fire all the more critical, that this loss not diminish the warmth and goodness of Leaf. Their flames will remain lit. She remains in my heart, and I will not disappoint nor dishonor her."
His teeth hurt. The words hurt, like choking down kunai and vomiting molten metal.
He waited for a heartbeat, and continued.
"I wish to honor Akane, and Mami, and Manato, and Nanao. Gōketsu wishes to honor their sacrifice and their memories. I hope that my next actions, kindled by their flames, may serve as a poor imitation of the protection and service they would have offered the village were they still here."
He gestured—first, the handsign for 'safe', to frowns, and then behind him. Mari, out of sight, triggered the MARS chain attached to the charges placed last night. The backdrop crumbled, and so did a carefully-chosen portion of the wall of the Gōketsu clan compound, revealing a small building. The shockwave—barely noticeable by Gōketsu standards, and a sudden, strong wind by anyone else's—grabbed at Hazō's robes, blew dust and pebbles through the crowd.
It was a marriage of stone and wood. It was green and brown and red. Ken and Hazō had agonized over it, almost come to blows, and agreed on a structure that they thought Akane would have liked. It was small. It had a doorway but no door. The roof hung over the entrance, protecting the space from the weather. Four names were carved into the lintel. It was barely big enough for two people, one standing and one seated behind a desk, but it still looked open and inviting. They'd put it together in a frenzy last night, working almost silently. They'd both wept when it was finished.
Shouts and confusion competed with the muted roar. Hazō projected over both.
"The Gōketsu have endowed the Team Akane Seal Bank." He'd flat-out rejected the inclusion of the word 'memorial'. "Any shinobi may withdraw a package of four seals—one storage, three explosive tags—free of charge, at any time. These seals will be replaced as they are destroyed, consumed, or wear out."
The shouting had crescendoed at the words 'seal bank', only to vanish as Hazō held up four seals. The clicking of abacus beads was nigh-audible as every numerate member of the crowd, which had grown since the explosion, reached the same conclusion. This would be a massive expense.
"Leaf provides seals to its shinobi at reasonable prices, but circumstance and misfortune leave these often-lifesaving tools too expensive for many shinobi. If there is one thing a Gōketsu knows, it is the power of the right seal, in the right place, at the right time. We would see all of Leaf's shinobi thus equipped."
Kei had thrown a fit. Shikamaru had raised both eyebrows. Mari had pursed her lips. Noburi had whistled, and Yuno had clutched Satsuko. Kagome had grumbled, dumped a stack of explosives on the table, and started scribing, then and there. No one had argued. It was good, because he hadn't the energy for an argument in that moment. He didn't even have the energy to explain the restrictions and rules that the Tower had required in exchange for permitting the seal bank to exist.
(Akane's absence hurt.)
"We ask four things of those who would use the seal bank."
His fingers shifted, stiffening the seals in his hand. They stood proud against the wind.
"Please limit your use of the bank to your need: we trust that no Leaf shinobi would dishonor the memories of dead comrades through greed or a desire to hurt the Gōketsu through inappropriate use of the bank. If we find that the bank is being abused, we will investigate and respond accordingly."
One seal flickered out of sight, leaving two explosives and the storage seal.
"However, if you are in such need, do not hesitate to make use of the bank. Again: the right seal at the right time in the right place. This can be the difference between the success and failure of a mission, between your death and life, between a joyous reunion and a solemn memorial."
One explosive and the storage seal remained visible. The crowd was still. Hazō ventured a look at the crowd—a real one. He caught the eye of a stunned genin, and continued.
"If you do make use of the bank, and later find yourself in a position to make a contribution of seals or ryō, please do so. These seals and this money will be held independently of Gōketsu—at present, the plan is to work with the KEI and Nara to provide independent bookkeeping, allowing donors absolute confidence that donated seals and funds will be used exclusively for the bank."
Only the storage seal remained.
"Finally, we ask that when you use these seals, you think of Team Akane."
The murmuring was still shocked, but it had a different timbre. Hazō lowered his hand, and let the Iron Nerve go—properly, this time.
"The bank will open tomorrow. Please excuse any missteps or issues as we launch this new initiative: our clan is grieving, but we are committed, and appreciate your patience. Team Akane may no longer be with us, but we will honor them as best we can. Make no mistake: this is a significant expense. We welcome and encourage any sealsmith capable and willing to contribute to the bank. We will be reaching out to the KEI and other clans to see if they are interested in donating other tools and equipment to augment the offered seals, but let me be clear: as long a Gōketsu sealmaster can hold a brush and mould chakra, as long as the memories of Gōketsu Akane, Manato, Nakajima Nanao, and Tomoe Mami burn in our hearts, the bank will stand, and it will serve the shinobi of Leaf."
The confusion coalesced into shouted questions. Hazō ignored them, instead bowing deeply before walking off the stage and back into the compound, passing Noburi and Mari, ready to deter anyone who followed him. His hands hurt—cramped from holding a brush, the same strokes, over and over. He'd stopped counting seals at some point, and just kept going until Kagome made him stop.
Every part of Hazō hurt.
A little less than before.
o-o-o-o
January 18, 1071 AS, first thing in the morning
Hazō settled against his favorite tree with a sigh and started pulling chunks of white marble out of storage seals. They were mostly scrap bits and dust, as well as a couple of misshapen figurines done as practice by apprentices, things too shoddy to sell or display. It didn't matter for his purpose; all he needed was the raw material.
He sank his chakra into the ground and from there into the bits and bobs of marble that lay scattered atop it. This was merely a practice session so he could have done it quickly and roughly but instead he took his time. Slow was smooth and smooth was fast. Fast, and precise.
He wrapped his chakra around every single bit of the dirt, paying attention to the feel of it in his spiritual fingers. He listened for the flow of it in his mind, the essential being-ness of the soil as it rested, making up the foundation of all the world and all of life. He considered everything he knew about soil, every memory he had, every song or poem or dramatic paean that mentioned the land, the soil, the fields of home.
The soil on this spot was rich and solid, the top few inches frozen hard by the January cold, but underneath was the magically rich loam that had caused Leaf to be built in a place that relied on wells for water instead of a river. It fairly burst with the promise of energy, of life, of trembling anticipation for the release of spring when all the seeds and roots held close in tender arms could rise up into the air so far above.
There were tiny traces of warmth, even in the depths of winter.
It was so odd that Hazō opened his eyes, almost jolting out of the jutsu's trance. No sign of fire or anything else that would make the ground warm...no, not warm. It was frozen, sure enough, but there were still those traces of warmth. All around him there were the tiniest, scantest, most miniscule threads of warmth that he could imagine. His skill with the jutsu had been growing over time and the single-minded focus caused by running from grief and pain was, oddly enough, bringing him more in sync with the currents of the earth than he had ever been.
He felt his way back down, looking as closely as he could. The 'eyes' that the jutsu provided had always been half-blind, leaving everything fuzzy and clouded. Today, as he rejected everything that was weighing upon his mind and left his self behind in the quest to lose himself for a time...today he saw more clearly. So clearly that he could identify the tiniest parts of the soil, of the marble, of the bits of stone that flecked through all of it. He could feel their surfaces, taste the varying tang of each type, and feel their weight in imagined fingers.
The warmth came not from the soil itself but from bits of the soil. Tiny, tiny pieces, far too little of it to gather up yet still present. The traces were so few and so dispersed that he wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't been looking this closely.
He turned his gaze from the soil and reached out instead for the marble. He spread his attention through it quickly and melted the chunks together, combining them into a single unshapen mass to make it easier to work with. Then he slowed down again and set to identifying every part. He took as much time as it demanded, analyzing each iota of the material without rushing along faster than the stone preferred.
As always, it wasn't pure. It was too many different kinds of things, all lumped together. He didn't have names for them, but he knew them the way he knew friends. There were the the silvery-white bits, light and soft and fragile like a young girl at her first dance. That was by far the majority of the stone. There were other bits, very few but still detectable, with color almost identical but their nature heavier, stronger, like the girl after she had grown into a woman and learned of love, and death, and pain, and the art of the blade. There were tiny threads of...gold? Yes, gold. Heavy, butter yellow, the tang of metal on the tongue.
Without even thinking about it, he placed his hand on the marble and pulled the bits of gold together, shoving everything else aside. The marble disintegrated, all its parts falling to dust and arranging into a neatly squared-off pile to one side.
In his hand was a tiny sphere of gold, barely a quarter the size of his pinky nail. The sphere was completely pure; he knew this all the way to his bones, in the same way that he knew he existed.
He stared at it for long minutes, enjoying the clarity and uniqueness of it. He clamped down on it with his mind, packing it tighter with a tiny crunch. It was stronger this way, more purposeful. He reached inside, searching for the tiniest flaws or planes of weakness within, and smoothed them away until all that was left was unity, a totality of gleaming perfection.
After a time he sent his mind back into the dust that had resulted when he pulled out the gold. He merged it back together, arranging it neatly in one way and then in another. He compacted it and expanded it, watching how the stress lines spread and crackled until his mystic fingers soothed them away.
There was something else scattered through the marble, tiny flecks of it. Flat, reflective...the name teased at his mind. He had heard Kagome-sensei talk about it. Mica! That was it. While living in the woods, Sensei had found a sheet of it that he had repurposed into a hand-sized mirror with which to shave.
He formed the mica into a sheet, shoving everything else aside in yet another shower of dust. The stone liked being in a sheet; the form pleased it, felt natural to it, and it shifted willingly under his will.
There wasn't much mica in the marble, so the resulting mirror wasn't much bigger than his palm. It was jagged, the pieces sitting at different angles so that the image was broken and incomprehensible. He ran his mental fingers over them, painstakingly aligning every bit and smoothing every join until he had a single perfectly reflective sheet consisting of nothing but mica. It was fragile, easy to shatter, so he condensed it down and smoothed its insides to make it strong.
He stared in wonder at the gold sphere and the mineral mirror, two beautiful things created by one of the few jutsu ever invented for a reason other than murder.
He stared, and then he smiled and pulled all of it together again to form the first version of a statue. A statue of his lost love, Gōketsu Akane.
o-o-o-o
January 18, 1071 AS, mid-afternoon
"Come in, Hazō."
Hazō entered the Hokage's office warily. By all reports, Asuma had been back from the Chūnin Exams for barely half a day. Being one of the first unsolicited meetings the Hokage took after returning from a trip was generally a bad thing.
Weirdly, Asuma was not at his desk. He was sitting in one of two chairs next to the window with a large hibachi and a side table between them. The side table was loaded down with tea and finger foods. Asuma already held a cup and there were three more in a stack next to the pot.
"Please, sit," Asuma said, gesturing him to the second chair.
Hazō crossed to the chair and sat carefully. He now had an idea what a long-tailed cat would feel like in a room full of rocking chairs.
"How is your evening?" Asuma asked. "Have some tea. Cookies? They're made fresh by my aunt."
"Thank you, sir." Hazō took a cookie and poured himself tea.
Asuma eyed him for a moment and then shook in head in amusement. "Not going to manage a congenial atmosphere, am I?"
"Sir?"
"Relax, you're not in any trouble. You're here so that we can talk about what happened with the Hagoromo and I can get your input on next steps."
"Uh...thank you?"
Asuma nodded acknowledgement and took one of the cookies. He nibbled it for a moment, looking out the window in thought, and then turned back to Hazō.
"Hazō, I was lucky enough to grow up with Sarutobi Hiruzen for a father. He was the scion of generations of clan rulers, trained for the job before he could walk. He brought me up in the same tradition; some of my earliest memories are of things that I realize now were lessons in politics, diplomacy, and related fields.
"You should have had the benefit of similar training, but the idiots of the Kurosawa got their noses out of joint about your father and then refused to lose face by backing down." He snorted. "Their loss and Leaf's gain, I suppose. Had your mother remained in the clan, the Kurosawa would have had an excellent Clan Head and Leaf would have lacked someone who may well grow into one."
Hazō looked narrow-eyed at his leader. "Thank you, I think?"
Asuma chuckled. "It's a compliment, take it as such. I don't think it's unfair to say that you're having to do a job that you weren't trained for, and thus you have room to grow yet. Yes?"
"Yes," Hazō admitted.
"All right. In that case, I'd like to help. If you would like, I'm happy to make myself available as a tutor and advisor. Mari is an excellent infiltrator and conwoman, and social skills are part of that, but that isn't the same thing as political leadership and you should keep that in mind. She will give you good advice in almost all cases, but there will be situations where her instincts are wrong. Trust her, but be sure not to trust any advisor blindly." He grinned. "Including me."
Hazō smiled and relaxed very slightly.
"If I were having this conversation with one of the elder Clan Heads—Lord Akimichi, or Lady Inuzuka, perhaps—then I would simply explain what was being done and trust that they would understand the background." His lips twitched into something that was half wry grin and half amused headache. "Granted, I wouldn't be needing to have this conversation with them. Anyway, I'd like to lay out for you exactly what's going on and why."
"Thank you, sir."
"Of course. The first part: what exactly do you think the job of a Clan Head is? Specifically."
"It's...to promote the well-being of the clan," Hazō said, not sure where this was going. "Defend it against threats, build its wealth and military power, ensure the happiness of its people."
"Those are the goals of a Clan Head, true. The job is both simpler and more complicated: at base it's about helping, or sometimes forcing, people to get along. The outward-facing part of this is negotiating with other clans for money, jutsu, political marriages, land rights, and so on. The inward-facing part involves resolving personality conflicts among your own people, meting out justice as needed, and ensuring that teams are formed from people who can actually work together, or can be taught to work together.
"For example, my Aunties Tomoyo and Sachie started hating each other when they were three and now, fifty-something years later, they're still going strong. I spend a fair amount of time defusing the tension between them. Usually it's little things, like managing the seating charts at formal family dinners or being certain that my festival gifts to them are equal to sufficient degree that neither of them can lord it over the other." He waved dismissively. "Much of this I can delegate, and I do, but it's still the Clan Head's job.
"The reason it's the Clan Head's job is because when tensions run too hot it can tear a family apart, and no one knows how to hurt you so well as your family does. Also because ninja who get too upset with one another can cause a lot of collateral damage." He shook away an almost-visible memory. "Sometimes, as a Clan Head, you'll need to do things you don't like. I know that you already had to execute a clan member for cause." He waited for Hazō's queasy nod before continuing. "I'm sorry that happened, and that you had to do it, but I'm afraid there will be more difficult choices like that one as you grow into your role and as the Gōketsu expand.
"Being Hokage is the same thing, except it's for a village instead of a family and the fractious relatives are entire clans of ninja who back up their hurt feelings with massive military power. My primary goal as Hokage is to ensure that Leaf stays together, that no one kills anyone else, and that we continue to look strong and united on the world stage so that the other villages don't try to split us apart or simply kill us all."
Hazō had been watching Asuma's face as the speech developed and now his eyes narrowed. "You aren't going to punish the Hagoromo, are you?"
Asuma raised a hand in a 'hold on' gesture. "Don't jump ahead. Yes, I'm going to punish them. No, I'm likely not going to do it to the extent that you would prefer. I want you to understand why and then I'm going to give you an opportunity to make suggestions about next steps. I won't promise to use your suggestions, but I'll listen. You have a track record of good ideas that come completely out of the night and I'd be a fool not to tap that insight in something this fraught.
"Going back to what I was saying earlier about managing people: part of that job is providing justice. Sometimes it's small things, sometimes it's big things.
"Two of my nieces got into a fight yesterday. Tomoka took Yukina's favorite blouse without asking and ruined it. I happened to be passing by their room when I heard the sound of young voices shrieking out words that I wish they wouldn't know for at least a few more years. I ducked inside to find Yukina holding one of Tomoka's festival shirts in one hand and a kunai in the other while Tomoka clung to her arm. When I asked what was going on they told me and Yukina said that she was going to shred two of Tomoka's favorite tops, one for stealing the blouse and one for ruining it."
"This is a parable about the difference between justice and vengeance, isn't it?" Hazō asked suspiciously. "You're going to say that Yukina was looking for vengeance but destruction for the sake of destruction doesn't make anything better. You punished Tomoka some other way, Yukina was unhappy about it but accepted it because we live in a civilized society and that's the price."
Asuma burst out laughing. "Apparently we can jump ahead. All right, let's do the other half of the story: two months ago, Tomoka accused Yukina of stealing the jutsu scroll she had been studying and demanded that I punish her. Yukina denied it and demanded that I punish Tomoka for lying." He waited expectantly.
"Presumption of innocence," Hazō said. "You had to assume that Yukina didn't do it until you had investigated. Related thought: have you considered keeping those two apart?"
"If only I could," Asuma said, shaking his head. "Unfortunately, they're inseparable despite the spats. The clan boys learned not to pick on either of them because it would cause the other one to spontaneously appear and then both of them would start beating on the bully. Anyway, yes. I had to presume that Yukina was innocent of the theft. We searched around and found that the scroll had fallen behind Tomoka's bed and the whole thing was a big misunderstanding."
"You investigated Ruka, found no evidence that what she did was malicious, found no evidence that Ritsuo was involved, and so you're not going to punish either of them. Right?" Hazō demanded, struggling not to grit his teeth.
"Not quite that bad," Asuma said. "Hazō, I recognize how you are feeling, but try to set that aside for a moment and look at this with the eyes of a Clan Head or, in this particular case, a Hokage.
"You assert that Hagoromo Ruka maliciously delayed reporting Akane being overdue and is therefore responsible for Akane's death. First of all, that's wrong on the facts. By the time that a ninja is overdue, they're usually already dead. Ruka didn't wield the knife and if she had reported it on time it still wouldn't have saved Akane's life.
"Let's leave that aside and talk about what Ruka did wrong. As Hokage, I must presume that she's innocent of any charge until I investigate and find evidence that she's guilty. Likewise, when Lord Hagoromo comes to me claiming that..." He paused, clearly looking for an example, and then shrugged. "That you poisoned his wells, or cursed his mother with loose bowels, or set his house on fire or something. Which will undoubtedly happen at some point if the two of you continue this cycle of hatred you have going on." He gave Hazō a speaking look. "When that happens, the presumption of innocence will be in your favor and you'll be grateful for it. Right now, Ruka gets that benefit and I'm sure it makes you grind your teeth."
Hazō carefully unclenched his jaw. "Not at all, sir."
Asuma snorted. "Here's your first lesson in Clan Headship: get better at lying."
"As you command, Lord Hokage," Hazō said with a thin smile.
"I immediately regret my words," Asuma muttered. He shook his head, amused, and finished off his cookie. "Naruto and Shikamaru interrogated Ruka thoroughly and then followed up with everyone Ruka works with at the Tower. They went through reams of past reports—Naruto made twenty clones in order to read literally dozens of pounds of paper, then filtered anything potentially relevant over to Shikamaru for analysis. Shikamaru pulled in several senior Nara and Yamanaka intelligence experts to help."
"Why?" Hazō demanded. "Just sit her down with a Yamanaka and rip the answers out of her pustulent brain."
"Hazō, you know that's not an option," Asuma said. "I'm sure that Jiraiya, or at the very least Ino, has told you how the Yamanaka jutsu work. They get what they're looking for but they usually also get a lot of other things, even when they're trying not to. That's a violation of the clan secrets rules and only to be done in cases where the security of the village itself is at stake. It's part of the Founding Charter of Leaf—none of the other clans were willing to live next to a Yamanaka if there was a risk of being casually mindwalked every time one of their enemies made an untrue accusation. Mindwalking is heavily controlled, the same way and to almost the same extent that physical violence is. Investigating a crime by committing a crime is not justice." He raised a hand. "And before you ask: yes, Akane was mindscanned to make sure that she hadn't shared her city-killer with anyone else, but that only happened because it was an existential threat to Leaf as a whole. What Ruka did, even under the worst possible cases, is no excuse for a mindwalk on a clan ninja.
"This is what I said about making choices you don't like. I have to balance a lot of conflicting priorities here."
He started ticking items off on his fingers. "I need to worry about Leaf's security. Did Ruka assign Akane to a mission, then leak details of that mission to a foreign nation in order to get Akane assassinated? Alternatively, did she hire missing-nin to do the assassination and leak the details to them? What else might she have leaked?"
Another finger. "Did Lord Hagoromo order her to do this? Is he restarting the clan war after I ordered him to stand down? Did she think that he ordered it when all he did was drop a frustrated word? Did he 'drop a frustrated word' with the intent that she misinterpret it? Did he leak the information to a foreign nation, or hire missing-nin, or actively send his own ninja to assassinate Akane?"
Another finger. "How will the consequences of my choices impact Leaf as a whole? Do I have a Yamanaka mindwalk Ruka in violation of the Founding Charter, or do I take the risk that she'll get away with a horrific crime? If I decide that she probably leaked information to a foreign nation then I could order it. The clans would be alarmed and furious but they would accept it if it turned out that she had betrayed us. If it turned out that she was innocent then I would have some extremely, and justifiably, angry people making pointed demands. It's possible that one or two of them would start loading up wagons and finding lodgings outside of Leaf.
"Even if I don't have her mindwalked, the way I handle this sends messages about the nature of the Hokage's justice and how Sarutobi Asuma applies it. If I am seen to presume in favor of one side or the other then they'll know that they can't trust me. They will start trying to leverage that against one another, which will stir up the many, many grudges that every clan in Leaf has against almost every other clan."
Hazō couldn't hold in the snort. "You seriously think that Ruka is going to cause a breakdown of law and order in Leaf?" The moment the words were out he regretted them.
Asuma ignored it. "No, probably not. Pulling one brick out of a wall doesn't make the wall collapse...until it does. It can be hard to know which brick is going to be the last one pulled. I'm new in the job, Hazō, which means that people don't know what to expect from me. The clans are watching me very closely, testing for weakness. How I handle things in the next year has tremendous implications for Leaf going forward."
"So the Hagoromo get off with a—" Hazō managed to clamp his jaw shut before the words 'slap on the wrist' could burst forth, but they still hung in the air. He hurried to reframe his words in a more polite tone. "Sir, you earlier said that you intended to punish the Hagoromo. May I ask what exactly is being done?"
"I suppose I did spend too much time on the backstory," Asuma said wryly. "All right. Bear with me another few moments and then I'll explain sentencing.
"The investigation showed no evidence of outright malice on Ruka's part. So far as we can tell, she never intentionally assigned anyone to an overly dangerous mission specifically to get them killed, she never leaked details of missions, she never lied to her superiors about mission status, and she never denied payment for a completed mission.
"What she is guilty of is laziness, sloppiness, and non-criminal levels of bias. Paperwork wasn't filed or wasn't as complete as it should have been. Overdue ninja's families were not alerted in a timely way. Mission payment was delayed to clanless ninja and ninja she didn't like. That sort of thing.
"There is also no evidence that Lord Hagoromo had anything whatsoever to do with any of this, or even that he knew about it."
Hazō raised a doubtful eyebrow and gave his Hokage a 'you really believe that?' look.
"I know, I know," Asuma said, raising a placating hand. "We'll get to him in a moment. Let's stay on target.
"Hagoromo Ruka is being banished. Technically, she's being permanently assigned to a post on the very edge of Fire, but she isn't going to be rotated out and will be given explicit orders to remain on station 24/7. Contact with her family and friends will be heavily restricted; no visitors, one resupply mission per month, all mail in and out redacted of anything that isn't mission relevant. There is no one else at her post so she'll be alone, with no one to talk to and no one to watch her back against threats. Agents will check in frequently to ensure that she has not left her post or had unsanctioned outside contact. If they find that she has then she will be in direct violation of orders and will be declared a missing-nin with a kill-on-sight order."
Hazō digested that, uncertain of how he felt about it.
"Without evidence of personal wrongdoing, I cannot punish Lord Hagoromo for whatever actions he may have taken on this issue," Asuma continued. He held up a hand to cut off Hazō's outburst. "On the other hand, he is the Clan Head and therefore responsible for the actions of his ninja. He allowed a culture of laziness and pettiness within the Hagoromo that let Ruka develop these habits, and he was sufficiently inattentive that she could get away with it. Every Hagoromo who works with the Tower is going to be thoroughly investigated. Anyone who shows signs of acting like Ruka will receive appropriate discipline. That might be anything from a monetary fine to banishment, but it will definitely involve losing their job with the Tower. Where appropriate, the Hagoromo as a clan will receive monetary fines and the money used to make whole those who were harmed." He gave Hazō a raised eyebrow. "Incidentally, it would be worth making a note of the fact that Clan Heads are responsible for the actions of their ninja. If Haru goes on any more murder rampages, or if any Gōketsu ninja gets into a brawl with a Hagoromo, you and I are going to have some very unfriendly words. The same goes for Lord Hagoromo if any of his people act out."
"I see," Hazō said. What else was there to say?
Asuma studied him for a moment, then sighed. "Which brings us to the part where I ask for your input."
Hazō suddenly felt nervous again.
"This cycle of hatred that you and the Hagoromo are developing needs to stop," Asuma said. "My current plan is to make the two of you work together. It's much easier to hate people in the abstract, when you think of them as 'those stiff-necked Hagoromo bastards' or 'those libertine Gōketsu snakes'. If Gōketsu and Hagoromo clan members spend time together it will humanize each to the other. Friendships will start to form. Perhaps, if we're lucky, even romances. You and Lord Hagoromo are never going to like each other, but if your clansfolk have positive ties then it will be much harder for you to go to war."
Hazō stared at his ruler, utterly appalled.
"The Gōketsu school is an excellent idea," Asuma said, ignoring Hazō's expression. "My tentative plan is to have the Hagoromo supply teachers to work alongside your people. Mostly civilians, although possibly ninja guest lecturers where that makes sense. Additionally, the Hagoromo and the Gōketsu will supply ninja instructors to teach regular joint classes for KEI ninja. Ruka didn't notify you that Akane was overdue, but she also didn't notify the KEI coordinators or the parents of three young genin that their people were overdue. The way I see it, your little clan war spilled out and affected other people, so both of you can help make that right while also developing some closer ties."
Asuma paused, studying Hazō. A smile crept across his face. "And, judging by the completely appalled look on your face, my cunning plan will in fact motivate you to come up with a more effective idea."
He spread his hands in invitation. "As I said, that's my tentative plan. If you have suggestions on a better way to heal the breach between the Gōketsu and the Hagoromo, I'm willing to use those instead. Do you?"
Voting remains closed. This plan was huge, so @Velorien will write more of what I didn't get to. If he doesn't get through all of it then he'll leave voting closed and I'll finish it up next weekend.
Author's Notes:
Zeroeth: The scene where Hazō talks to Akane's parents will get written and edited in later. It was 3pm by the time I got to it, I didn't have the juice to do it justice, and I wanted to write the Earthshaping scene and kick this out the door.
First, the apology speech: It is a mildly edited version of @FaintlySorcerous 's omake, used according to the plan.
Second, the Asuma conversation: Does Hazō have any better ideas? If not, Asuma is going to put his plans into action starting tomorrow. He'll be watching to see what happens and will adjust as necessary. Duration of the forced interaction is up in the air but likely not going to be short. He's open to listening to suggestions from either clan as time goes on.
Hazō has earned a Thousand Yard Stare point! He is now at 12 TYS.
XP AWARD: base and brevity to be awarded by @Velorien after he writes the rest of the plan
"GM had fun" XP: -4 for having more than 3 scenes (7 scenes total), even if I didn't get to all of them. The scenes were:
Akane's parents
The speech to the clan
Talk to Shikamaru/Kei
Speak to the clan about no retaliation
Talk to Naruto
Talk to Lee
Earthshape a statue
Note that this count still doesn't include a bunch of stuff such as 'Spend time with friends, family', and 'Grieve'. Seal research is usually offscreened so I don't count that one.
Yuno, Satsuko, and Noburi lay in bed together, her arm nestled under his shoulders while her other hand held Satsuko close to her chest. Normally, Noburi objected to letting Satsuko into bed with them, complaining about how she left the bedclothes full of tears and was always on the verge of drawing his blood, but tonight, by unspoken agreement, the three of them sought comfort together.
"What do you mean, Yuno?"
"How do I deal with this ache in my chest that I've had ever since I found out about Akane?" she asked, hoping he wouldn't make another joke about unfortunate axe-idents, because she wasn't in the mood. "Is there some medicine I'm supposed to take, or a meditation technique? I asked Yūma, and he just gave me this weird, uncomfortable look. I asked Fujisawa, and she didn't write anything and just hugged me for a while, which was nice, but it didn't really help. I don't want to bother any of the others, because they're all so busy, but you can do medicine, and you know words that heal people's hearts. What am I supposed to do, Noburi?"
Now Noburi was giving her a strange, uncomfortable look, and it was a lot worse than it had been coming from Yūma.
"I'm being serious!" she exclaimed, pulling her arm away from under him. "I know I didn't get injured on the tracking mission, because I'd have noticed, and if there was a psychic chakra beast attacking from somewhere out of sight, then Neji or Lady Canvass would have sensed it. I don't know what this is, and it hurts, and I want it to stop. Is there something wrong with asking my medic-nin husband to help?"
"Yuno," Noburi said very carefully, as if she was an urn that might get knocked off the mantlepiece by the wrong words, "are you sure that's not just… grief?"
"Of course not," Yuno said. "I know what grief looks like. People who are feeling grief cry–if they're men or young girls, I mean, otherwise they just anoint themselves with a mixture of oak tree sap and tapir tears–and then they dress in the Garment of Valediction and do the offerings to Ui and the Three Proper Rituals, and then there's a funeral and they're not grieving anymore. They would have said if it hurt. Besides, I don't know how to sew the Garment of Valediction, and I don't know the third of the Three Proper Rituals, the one you only use when someone's dead, and where am I supposed to get tapir tears in the middle of Fire? It had better not be grieving, otherwise I'll be stuck like this forever."
Noburi looked at her. He looked at Satsuko, which was a waste of time because of course Satsuko had been the first person she'd asked. He looked at her again.
"Yuno, I am really, really sorry for bringing this up, and I'll drop it the second you want me to, but don't you remember grieving when your parents died?"
Yuno shifted to be on her side, because looking at a confused Noburi was better than looking at the uncaring ceiling. She was careful to hold Satsuko so she wouldn't cut the bedsheets.
"Mummy died when I was very little," Yuno said. "I don't really remember what it was like. Daddy… You know the story of how Daddy died. I wasn't really me for a long time after that, and I had all sorts of other things to feel because everything was changing so fast and I didn't understand any of it, and anyway, I can't have done any grieving, otherwise I'd know the third ritual and all that."
Noburi was silent after that. Yuno hoped he wasn't pitying her again. She loved him, but that was the one thing she refused to let him do (that didn't involve other girls, anyway). Pity was for people who'd given up fighting. It was a way of saying you didn't think the other person was a warrior anymore.
Satsuko offered to remind him before he got any ideas, but Yuno shushed her. There were times for armed violence, many times, in fact, but she'd learned early on in their marriage that in bed usually wasn't one of them.
"Yuno," Noburi said gently just as she was considering giving up and going to sleep, and hoping the ache would be gone in the morning, "it's normal for it to hurt when you lose someone. When you love someone, you set aside a place for them in your heart. When you lose them, that part of your heart goes with them, and it hurts because you're not whole anymore. That feeling is grief. The thing everybody else was doing, with the rituals and stuff? That's mourning. One's on the inside, the other's on the outside."
"So what?" Yuno demanded. "Are you saying everyone was feeling like this, every time somebody died, and nobody ever told me?"
Actually… It wasn't that unbelievable when she thought about it. The Kannagi taught her weaponmastery because she was talented and it made the clan stronger, and other people taught her things like baking and bee divination because she paid them from her savings and because making sure useful skills were spread across the whole village was one of Akio's most important teachings, but nobody taught her about feelings. Maybe real grieving was one of those inner secrets you had to be initiated into, like tapir soulbonding and beekeeping.
"I can't speak for Isan," Noburi said. "One of the things being a missing-nin's taught me is that customs can be incredibly different between villages. In Mist, mourning is quiet and sad. You can't really celebrate someone being sent to the ancestors because you don't know how the ancestors will judge them, and proper survivors are supposed to master their pain instead of making a fuss about it. In Leaf, mourning is a bit sad because the village has lost a hero, but there's also this weird exalted, almost happy element to it because they're going to be one with the Will of Fire which is the best reward anybody can receive, and because dying for Leaf means they're setting an inspirational example that it's wrong to be too sad over. I'm still not used to that attitude, though I suppose it's not like I've had much experience of losing people in Leaf. Maybe Isan is different again, and you're not supposed to admit you're hurting, or maybe the rituals are how you admit it and nobody gave you the key to decipher them. I don't know.
"Anyway, that's mourning. The grieving, the pain? I'm pretty sure that's universal. I don't know how any custom could make you shrug off having part of your heart torn away and keep going. Frankly, if there was, I think that would be a thousand times more blasphemous than the worst parts of the Will of Fire."
"So what?" Yuno asked, subdued. "This is normal and I've lost the Akane part of my heart and I'm just supposed to keep hurting like this? Forever?"
"I don't know," Noburi said. "Not really. I wasn't even close to my brother, but after all these years, I can still feel him missing. Losing Akane's on a whole other level. For me. For you. For everyone."
"I–I don't want this." Yuno clung tight to Satsuko, not even minding the cuts, which would heal. "I don't want to lose a piece of my heart every time somebody I care about dies. With how many people I care about now, there'll be nothing left of me.
"I should never have left Isan," she whispered, but quietly, so that nobody but Satsuko heard.
-o-
Kei had, for some reason, believed herself stronger than this.
She had endured the loss of the Tachibanas. She had endured the loss of Shion, of Yumiko, of Karin, of Shika, of Shigehiro, of Rumi, of Mikako, of Yamato… her instructors in the Nara arts, her students in Mori ones, her councillors and assistants and genin who scoured the library for scrolls she needed and then traded their laboriously-earned Kei hours to shuriken specialists who wanted to learn her rumoured techniques of non-lethal incapacitation. They and more might have survived their missions, might have survived the war, if she had only been more competent, more industrious, a worthier second-in-command.
She had endured the loss of KEI shinobi by the dozen, most unknown to her beyond the dossiers she had memorised, but others familiar faces that would never again greet her as she arrived in her office in the morning, never again ask inconvenient questions at KEI meetings or bring wildly unrealistic proposals which nevertheless brought a secret smile to her face for the sheer hope they represented. All of this was standard, the cost of business when one was familiar with too many shinobi. She had believed herself inured.
It was a revelation obvious only in retrospect: none of them had been Akane.
Akane had been her light. Not quite the safety and warmth of Tenten. Not the playful shimmer on the water's surface of Fujisawa. Not Snowflake or Mari or Ino or Ruri or… or… or any of the others she had yet to lose. Akane had been the light in the distance to reach towards, the promise of someday being not this, her pillar and her foil and her guide. Such clumsy, inaccurate words for someone with a vocabulary maintained like a samurai's armour.
Kei should have sought time to be with the other Gōketsu, making feeble attempts at consolation in the absence of any notion of what to offer fellow mourners (she was too unempathic to offer a moving speech at a Nara funeral as Hazō would, too busy to attend the majority of the KEI's). Hazō, Noburi, Mari, Yuno, Kagome (even to compile that list without Akane's name on it was unnatural)–all possessed their own unique bonds with Akane. Even the others, the extended family Kei shamefully neglected, surely mourned her, for Akane left no life untouched.
She could not be with them. She had failed to protect Akane–she, who first realised the danger, had done nothing. She had merely transferred responsibility to Mari and Hazō, then washed her hands of it. She had not sought a way to appeal to the Hokage, to maximise Akane's utility or impose unacceptable consequences for her murder. She had not risked sharing her concerns with Shikamaru and accepting the potential price of accusing his beloved teacher of treacherous intent. She had not even monitored them to ensure that they provided Akane with the necessary training, despite her awareness that Akane would obey any training directions from Hazō without question, and that Hazō could not always be trusted to prioritise.
Kei could not even apologise, for most of her family were unaware of the reality of the situation. Only Hazō and Mari did, and they… they were no less culpable than she.
Or perhaps Mari was correct. Only a fool would trust their own objectivity when in so much pain. Her thoughts displayed every sign of a Kei failure mode: to assume the worst-case scenario on no direct evidence, to immediately assign herself responsibility, to isolate herself from her loved ones out of guilt and fear of condemnation… even blaming Hazō was an easily-recognisable pattern, for all that unlike the others, that one was usually justified even in retrospect (even if Akane's death was unrelated to Elemental Mastery, it had been a monstrous act to transform her into a weapon of mass destruction).
Perhaps Mari was correct. There were other explanations, some more plausible than others, all less dangerous to her loved ones than suspecting the Hokage of betrayal. Mari had reminded her that Akane's way of life had been to trust, to hope, to ever seek the path to a brighter future. More, that Akane had believed Kei to be capable of joining her at those heights. Kei did not dare to agree, but surely she at least possessed enough determination not to instantly retreat into the familiar darkness?
"Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice, Shikamaru. I think I have an idea of how busy you must be right now."
Kei, lost in herself, had missed the moment of Hazō and Mari's arrival. Hazō's appearance was… well, appalling. He was in no state to leave his chambers, much less display himself to the masses and meet with the head of another clan. Kei's capacity to read body language would shame the most perceptive slug, but even she could recognise the knots of tension in his furrowed brow, the way his mouth was tight in rigid self-control lest his emotions drive him to speak words that could not be unspoken, and the spine kept upright by pure willpower in the face of ravaging exhaustion (this last was more familiar to her than she cared to admit–for as long as there were, inexplicably, those who considered her a role model, her example could not be to bend beneath her burdens).
Mari, naturally, was without flaw. Every emotion that required concealing was concealed, whether by makeup or by over a decade of seduction expertise, while every emotion that was appropriate to display was displayed in the correct degree. Perhaps that itself was indicative of the state she had been reduced to, for even Kei understood that, unless one was Ami, true perfection was unnatural.
The chamber they had gathered in after Hazō sent a message requesting privacy was not a place one might select to mourn the dead, nor to offer consolation to the living. Braziers stood in the corners of the room, their glow bright and clear, casting few shadows (once Kei was disturbed by how the shadows of the Nara compound never quite matched the light source; now, it was comforting in a way she could not articulate). The enormous square table in the middle had not been crafted to hold calming green tea or artefacts of the deceased to honour. It had been crafted to hold a map of the Elemental Nations that most clans would kill for, and the lamp of unique design suspended over it—a remarkable feat of wrought metal and glass that illuminated down instead of up—had the sole purpose of leaving Leaf's enemies nowhere to hide.
Not a room of mourning. Not a room of consolation. Shikamaru, with insight Kei would not equal if she lived to be a thousand, had brought Hazō to a room of action, where sorrow could be set aside while rage, leashed and purposeful, could restore life to those whose hearts were being eroded by grief.
"It is what it is," Shikamaru replied with a nod of acknowledgement. "The Nara clan head awaits the next report, until which time your brother-in-law is grateful for the opportunity to be of use."
The rest of them exchanged their own greetings, muted as they were. If Hazō and Mari were bitter at her absence from the compound, they gave no indication.
Shikamaru led them to be seated on the imposing, high-backed chairs that were designed less to provide comfort over long hours of work and more to bear the weight of grim decisions.
"As I said before, though at the time you were not receptive to condolences, "Shikamaru said, "I am sorry for your loss. I am given to understand that this is your first experience losing family, aside from the very distant past. If there is any support I can offer to you as your brother-in-law at this time, you need only ask."
"Thank you, Shikamaru," Hazō said, "but there's only one kind of support I care about right now. Have you found Akane's killers yet?"
Shikamaru leaned over the map. He placed his fingertip over the Wakare Woods, where a minute metal disc with two crossed kunai on it indicated Akane's camp. He traced a path to the location where they had lost the trail, with a disc bearing a question mark.
"Our current investigation is focused on the three northern countries easily accessible from this point. Rock is very much a secondary possibility, considering a direct crossing would scream 'AMITY violation'. Which is not to say it can be ruled out. Hatake Kakashi was, per shinobi legend, capable of locating any enemy without fail, even in the deepest cave or at the highest peak. However, until now, you had yet to display any sign that you were approaching his prowess as a summoner, and so our targets may well have underestimated Canvass's abilities."
Shikamaru tapped three discs in turn, each bearing the image of a hound caught mid-growl. Kei never ceased to marvel at the three-dimensionality of the Nara artistic tradition: who would believe that simple iron could so convey the texture of animal fur, or the angular hostility of a bared fang?
"A fool could see that the best move would be to flee into Iron, Waterfall, or Rice, nations and populations far from sanguine about Leaf activity within their borders—and our targets have shown no sign of incompetence."
"As you may or may not be aware," Kei said sardonically, "the Iron Country is something of a haven for those wishing to escape village pursuit. The terrain is uncooperative and poorly-mapped, and the population is actively hostile to hunter-nin and their equivalents, especially towards those of Leaf–one of the aftershocks of the Liberator incident. On the positive side, we could dispatch an army into the Iron Country and our neighbours would not blink an eye so long as they believed their borders to remain secure, and an army is what we have sent, at least in tracking terms. Those hoping for Leaf to fulfil their target location needs in the immediate future must resign themselves to disappointment."
It was where they had invaded Akane's life, plunged her into danger, and forced her to flee with them or die. It was known that some missing-nin had survived the purge–would Akane have been among them, were it not for Team Uplift's intervention? Would she be alive even now?
"Thank you, dear wife," Shikamaru said. "Matters are typically less smooth with Waterfall, a notoriously isolationist state to which Leaf's loss of a genin team training within half a day of the village is practically an anecdote, much less a problem worth allowing foreign shinobi into their territory."
Hazō scowled.
"Leaf is the shadow of conquest forever hanging over its neighbours, Hazō," Shikamaru said with a slight edge of sympathy in his voice. "Diplomacy requires that we understand their mindset.
"Regardless, with the Hokage hastening to return to Leaf with utmost speed, negotiations with Waterfall were left to Sarutobi Kurenai and Mori Ami. Through the expenditure of truly prodigious amounts of capital, they have been able not only to purchase immediate access to Waterfall by a single Leaf team, but also the assignment of Waterfall's own trackers to assist in pursuit. If our targets have taken shelter on Waterfall territory, prospects are optimistic—existing handicaps notwithstanding."
There was no optimism to be found here. Akane was gone. The only prize to be gained was the retrieval of Gōketsu seals–far from meaningless, if what remained of her family was to be protected, but Kei could not find it in herself this evening to celebrate mere disaster mitigation.
"What about Rice?" Mari asked. "I'm guessing they're the toughest nut to crack."
Shikamaru sighed. "Less of a nut and more of a nugget of sky iron. Just as the AMITY meeting was a major boon in dealing with Waterfall, allowing us to negotiate face to face with zero delay, it has been a nightmare for dealing with Rice."
"Specifically," Kei explained, "Rice is in the process of negotiating for accession to AMITY."
Another step towards world peace, courtesy of Ami's brilliance. Would that it had been taken at any other time.
"That doesn't make sense. Shouldn't that make them more keen to cooperate?" Hazō asked, his eyes tracing the country's borders as if seeking puzzles woven into the map which might contain answers within their twists and turns.
"Not exactly," Kei said. "Had we dispatched our trackers into Rice prior to the AMITY meeting, it would have been a common-or-garden act of shinobi hostility, on its own insufficient to trigger a war, and irrelevant to the issue of AMITY violation. Were the negotiations complete, we would be able to secure access as we have with Waterfall, through egregious bribery, involvement of sympathetic third parties, et cetera et cetera. However, this is the point when Rice is maximally paranoid, aware that this is the final chance for its enemies, or indeed opportunistic neutral parties, to attack with impunity. Should Leaf seize a portion of Rice territory now, at the literal present moment, or pillage a city, or steal precious secrets, and then negotiations successfully conclude like a trap springing shut, Rice would be without recourse."
"Naturally," Shikamaru said, "matters are not necessarily so simple, but nor is it within Rice's interests to allow potentially hostile forces past its borders now, when in a matter of days it will sign the treaty under whatever conditions and receive guaranteed protection against abuse of its hospitality.
"It may, of course, be complete coincidence. Still, if our targets planned their attack to coincide with this narrow slice of time when the international situation is at its most sensitive, we must upgrade their or their backers' threat rating significantly."
"I don't care about the details," Hazō said impatiently. "Can we get into Rice or not, by hook or by crook? We need Akane back, and those bastards need to pay. I shouldn't need to tell you that, Shikamaru."
"We are doing everything in our power, Hazō," Shikamaru said. "Rice is on maximum alert for intrusion, but that is not to say we do not have sensory teams probing for access even as we speak, in a sense justifying the country's fears by attempting to accomplish our goal within the remaining handful of days before it receives AMITY protection. Meanwhile, our aforementioned formidable team of diplomats is applying tools you and I cannot even conceive of to bribe, cajole, persuade, and threaten Rice into granting us this tiny favour that will be repaid a thousandfold, somehow all without admitting that Akane is worth more to us than the average chūnin, even deceased."
"Ami will succeed," Kei reassured Hazō. "That is not in question."
It was a mistake.
"I don't need your sister worship right now, Kei!" Hazō snapped, his eyes igniting with a sudden dark flame. "I need your actual help, not wishful thinking!"
Kei reeled.
How dare he? Did he imagine her like himself, gallivanting about, satisfying his emotional needs through spontaneous philanthropy and humiliating them all by dramatically delivering then sheepishly retracting threats against insects? How many people did he imagine were aware of the secret he had inflicted upon them, and were therefore qualified to, were therefore obliged to, assist Shikamaru because no one else could grasp the importance of the situation?
Or was it that he believed he possessed the exclusive right to lash out because he was her lover, because his pain was greater than that of mere platonic siblings? Was he so special that her feelings need not receive consideration? No, there were lines, and they would be drawn here and now–
The instant before the volcano erupted, Mari, the mother she had chosen, caught her eye, and in her eyes was not an instruction, not a request, but a question. An undefined question, to which Kei's memory granted definition.
What do you want your Youth to be, Kei?
Kei had never given an answer. The first time Akane asked, her response had been an uncrossable abyss of pure disbelief. The second time, a look withering enough to undo all of Senju Hashirama's creation. The third, when Akane proved undeterred, a sweeping tirade explaining in exhaustive detail the sheer absurdity of the notion.
Akane would never receive Kei's answer now, even if one was possible.
"Hazō," Shikamaru began coldly, "I will not–"
Kei thrust out her arm in front of him, interposing. Shikamaru shrank back in shocked silence.
Before she could allow herself to think, because Kei's thoughts ruined everything, she stood, stepped over to Hazō, pulled him to his feet, and embraced him.
She could not keep from trembling. Any second now, he might place his arms around her. Trapping her. Leaving her helpless. At his mercy. She was not ready. Vulnerable. Fragile. In danger. She should flee. Escape. Hide.
She stayed.
Slowly, she could feel something within Hazō melt away.
"I–I'm so sorry," he said, stumbling over the words, after the initial shock faded (for him). "You didn't deserve that. I'm just so… tired."
"It does not matter," Kei said so softly it might have been inaudible. "It does not matter."
Kei would never be Akane. She was not even a candle next to the sun, for candles shone with their own light. Yet in the impossible event that Hazō's preposterous project functioned as advertised, or if Kei followed Akane into the afterlife sooner than anticipated, perhaps she could at least speak to her of lessons learned.
Kei disengaged. She returned to her seat, with its reassuring solidity, and waited for the trembling to subside.
"Right," Shikamaru said uncertainly. "Well. To… to clarify the statement, perhaps you should consider what Ami, an intelligent woman, will infer when the Hokage gives her carte blanche with limited supervision at a meeting of the most powerful people in the world. I suspect she is aware that the stakes are dire beyond what she is cleared to know, and that this is the time to draw on whatever resources and points of leverage she has been preserving as trump cards in case of personal need. If you consider Ami when she feels the situation requires her full creativity, backed by the Hokage's every resource… I think you will agree that not all is yet lost. Which is not to say that potential side effects of her success will not include Hot Springs being on fire, undergoing a cultural revolution, being placed on the DO NOT GO TO list alongside Bear, or declaring Ami their new Onsenkage."
Ami. Every day she was absent was a day too long. That was true by default, of course, but here and now… it would mean the world for Kei to be with her sister. The Gōketsu were already suffering sufficiently without Kei inflicting her emotional fragility on them, whereas Ami was at least invincible.
"Should we get her involved?" Hazō asked. "Without treason, I mean, getting permission and everything. Do you think she'd be able to help with this situation beyond just being a member of Leaf's diplomatic team?"
Shikamaru gave a wry smile. "Hazō, what exactly do you take Ami's position to be, from the Hokage's perspective?"
Hazō considered. "A very useful nuisance?"
"Hazō!"
"An understatement," Shikamaru said. "Ordinarily, Hazō, a shinobi's growth in power is parallel to the growth of the Hokage's trust in them. The Hokage pays special attention to promising shinobi, and the higher they rise, the better acquainted with them he takes care to become. By the time a Leaf shinobi is promoted to jōnin, they are either fully trusted or… well, matters become complicated.
"Ami appeared out of nowhere, with a jōnin's power, trained in traditions of which the Hokage has little knowledge. She then seized so much temporal power that the Hokage must distrust her simply as a matter of policy, regardless of her personal virtues, lest by lowering his guard he imperil Leaf's political stability. Then she joined Leaf.
"She does not possess a jōnin's trust, earned over a lifetime of being a Leaf shinobi. She does not possess a clan head's trust, ordinarily earned in the same fashion, despite having influence exceeding one. Yet after the Triple Catastrophe, she is one of our most experienced jōnin, and the Hokage simply cannot afford not to treat her as such, despite the fact that she is completely lacking in the Will of Fire and her loyalty to Leaf is fundamentally instrumental.
"Some secrets are unambiguously necessary for Ami to be able to serve Leaf effectively. Others, like the Shadow Clone Technique, are not necessary but highly beneficial. This secret the Hokage has the luxury of keeping from Ami without at all hindering her performance, and I believe he will continue to do so unless the situation grows truly desperate."
"Do you think he's right?" Hazō asked.
"Are you asking whether my sister can be trusted not to destroy the world?" Kei clarified as calmly as she was able.
"As it happens, I believe she can," Shikamaru said. "I would not care to speculate as to her long-term goals, or, frankly, even her short-term goals, but she and I have had occasion to speak of the duty of the Mori. The preservation of civilisation comes first, however radical our disagreements on its preferred form."
"And you don't think she's likely to change her mind?" Hazō asked. "Even though she's… well, the most mercurial person I've met in my life?"
"Ami's core values are immutable," Kei stated with no room for disagreement. "That much must be obvious by now."
"It must?"
"Yes," Kei said. "I was the first of them. Does it appear to you as if Ami has reconsidered over the sixteen years since?"
Hazō and Shikamaru exchanged a meaningful look Kei could not decipher.
"Regardless," Shikamaru said, "I do not believe it is within your means, or mine, to persuade the Hokage to invite Ami into the non-proliferation conspiracy. Prove me wrong if you will, but appreciate that the price of failure is loss of trust from a Hokage who must already deem the close association between Leaf's two most dangerous wildcards to be a source of concern."
"Leave that for Plan B, then," Hazō said. "I do have another idea about someone we could get involved. Bear with me here, because I realise how weird this is going to sound… but we could ask for help from Hidan. He claims he can track people if he has their blood, and he likes me enough that I'm sure he'll be willing to do me a favour."
Shikamaru stared.
"Hazō," he said patiently, as if to a small child, "the fact that, on one occasion, Hidan chose to threaten your life with a, shall we say, level-appropriate challenge instead of murdering you himself is not proof of such affection that you should expect interacting with him to be safe to you or your allies, much less actively beneficial."
"I'm not stupid," Hazō said. "I've had other positive interactions with Hidan since. Not deliberately, I mean, but he came knocking and I was able to earn his favour instead of getting killed. Asuma is aware."
Hazō's gaze turned back to the map of Fire. His expression was hollow in a way Kei could not define.
"Some of the things I said about Uplift when we met got his interest, so he came back to test… if I had Jashin's favour. He made me gamble, with the lives of an entire village as the stakes. I won, but… but it wasn't a perfect victory."
"So Jashin's high priest has concluded that you have his deity's favour," Shikamaru concluded. "A useful asset, I concede. I assume you exploited your Bloodline Limit and challenged him to a game of dice?"
Hazō shook his head. "I did, and I managed to win most of those. But since it was obvious I was cheating–and the only way to hide it would have been to lose deliberately and let people die–he stopped after a while and challenged me to Chō-Han instead. I did pretty well even then. I won around two thirds of thirty games before he'd had enough. In the end, I challenged him to a game of cards for the rest. Best of three, winner takes all. It was the best performance of my life, and I still couldn't save everyone."
Thirty games. Fifty-fifty odds. Two out of three. Kei frowned.
"Hazō," Shikamaru said warily, "do you recall anything else about that game of Chō-Han? Anything unusual, anything noteworthy? Perhaps the dealer was able to cheat in your favour?"
"I don't think so," Hazō said. "There was no way for a civilian to get one over on a veteran ninja who was watching like a hawk. I remember getting a streak of twelve wins at one point, which had never happened to me before, but other than that, it was just an ordinary game… except for the part where someone died whenever I lost."
Kei looked at Shikamaru. Shikamaru looked at Kei.
"Please stand by."
Before an utterly perplexed-looking Hazō, Kei closed her eyes and reached for the crystalline clarity lurking beneath the depths of the world he knew. Whispers wrested at the edge of her consciousness, whispers she absolutely could not allow herself to hear in her present state. Clearly, she still lacked a true Mori's resolve–but in this instance, with a loved one potentially in danger, the facsimile would have to suffice.
Fortunately, she had been practising, using Nara lore and clan secrets of the Leaf Mori to compensate for her natural mediocrity. The ice was a refined substrate for thought, conducting it with the same consummate ease as water conducted Lightning Element ninjutsu, and Kei was learning to optimise her use of it, enough that mere mathematical calculations did not require diving dangerously deep. Ami believed that with sufficient mental discipline, this light touch would even deliver her the secret Mori birthright that Kei had once believed to be borderline myth, the ability to draw upon the Frozen Skein in combat.
The numbers slotted into place. The laws of mathematics were rigid. They permitted no escape from the correct solution, no breathing room of subjectivity, no luxury of argument. Every Mori genin learned this the day they learned the numbers, because to shy away from the truths they represented was to abandon the blind majority of humanity to its fate.
"Hazō," Kei said, "the probability of a streak of twelve wins in thirty games of Chō-Han is approximately three percent. You rolled a winning streak with three percent odds in a game designed to test whether you possessed the favour of a deity implicitly able to influence random rolls. That is–"
"Has Jashin communicated with you in any way?" Shikamaru interrupted. "Words spoken in your mind, meaningful dreams, objects in your path rearranging themselves to spell out a message?"
"No," Hazō said. "Nothing like that."
"Has it granted you any other boons that you've noticed? Have you requested any such boons, even in jest?"
"No," Hazō said. "I'd never do something so obviously dangerous and heretical. Give me some credit, Shikamaru."
"It is essential that you avoid all contact with both Jashin and Hidan," Shikamaru told him. "I cannot overstate the danger you–and, indirectly, all of us–have been exposed to. I do not wish to be unnecessarily alarmist, but in the event that Jashin is real and not merely a charismatic madman's obsession, it is far more dangerous than you know. All beings of that order are, and none of those remaining consider humanity's welfare to be relevant to their considerations unless it is in the active negative. The notion that the Blood God, patron of one of the guarantors of the present world order, deity of the cultists who took my father's life, is real and possesses tangible power over causality…"
Shikamaru trailed off, as if unable to imagine a conclusion worthy of that introduction.
"Moving on," Hazō said hastily, "what about… seals? Kei, what are the implications for us, and for Leaf, if the Gōketsu seal loadout has been compromised?"
Kei blinked. "Hazō, are you proposing to discuss the details of our clan secret seals with Shikamaru?"
Hazō fell silent for a moment.
"No, sorry, you're right. I don't know what I was thinking. No offence, Shikamaru."
"None taken," Shikamaru said. "Were there any non-secret seals in Akane's possession that might nevertheless prove problematic if leaked to other nations?"
"Skywalkers, obviously," Hazō said. "But considering we think the attackers had their own, that's probably not something we need to worry about that much."
Kei cycled through the list. MARS, macerators, chakdar, Banshees and their derivatives, directional explosives, Rocket Boots, Goo Bombs…
"Skytowers," she said. "Akane's seal pouch would include skytowers, in their disassembled state. Obviously, the concept of suspending the towers in the air using Five-Seal Barriers is unknown to foreign states, or they would already possess their own, but our skytowers are optimised for swift and easy construction, with interlocking parts and various secondary amenities such as harnesses for safe sleep. It cannot be guaranteed that an intelligent investigator will fail to combine skytower platforms, skytower wire, and Five-Seal Barriers, all stored contiguously, and deduce their function, especially if they are aware of the skytower as a concept–or indeed, attempting to develop their own, as any nation that witnessed their use during the war surely would."
"I will alert the Hokage," Shikamaru said. "Can you think of anything else of note?"
"Actually," Hazō said, "this isn't seal-related, or I mean, it technically is, but I'm worried about Orochimaru."
"As are we all," Shikamaru agreed. "What specifically?"
"I may have told him that one of the strange objects in Pain's cave on Nagi Island looked like a 3D seal. Aunt Ren was there at the time, and now I think Orochimaru's gone off to the Chūnin Exams to kidnap her so he has a second sample to study. I sent a report to the Hokage, but I don't actually know that he's read it or what he's doing about it, so I wanted to make sure you know as well."
Was Hazō…? No, surely not. The notion was ridiculous.
"I do not understand," Shikamaru said. "Your aunt saw it only briefly, two years ago, and she is not a sealmaster, nor was she even aware that she was seeing a seal. Why would Orochimaru possibly expect her testimony to have practical use?"
"Because the Iron Nerve can–"
"HAZŌ."
Kei rose urgently from her seat. "Hazō, you are clearly too exhausted to strain yourself with further discussion. Mari, please deliver him home forthwith and ensure he rests well."
"Of course," Mari said. "Shikamaru, thank you for your time, and sorry for leaving so abruptly.
"Come on, Hazō," she added in a voice laced with steel.
"Not at all," Shikamaru said. "The fault is mine for failing to realise how much you were overexerting yourselves. I will have a servant escort you home."
-o-
Noburi looked at his beloved, clutching the cold metal of her only immortal friend for comfort, and cursed everything there ever was.
How was he, Gōketsu Noburi, Leaf's rising star and the Gōketsu Clan's master of support, so mindmeltingly powerless?
Was this all his fault? Was it because he didn't pick up the slack when Akane, the clan's pillar of sanity, began to crack? Because he was too busy with medicine, finally on the verge of reconciling the him that wasn't the barrel with the him that was? If he'd only been able to help Akane put herself back together, would she still be alive?
Noburi knew that was an unhealthy way to think. If he heard one of his family say something like that, he'd request a mission on the coast just so he could find a fresh herring to thwap them with. Death was nobody's fault. Even Akane getting killed by foreign ninja was, in the end, purely the shinobi world's fault for being so broken. That was basic Uplift (though neither Noburi nor Hazō were saintly enough for that to keep them from brutal revenge if they got the chance). Blaming himself just meant he'd have less strength to lend the people who counted on him.
Not that grief was so rational.
Right now, Yuno was in front of him, in pain she didn't know how to handle. Off thataway, Hazō was in his office, pretending to himself that he was doing clan head work but really cycling through a thousand different action plans in his head, knowing all the while that none of them would distract him from Akane being gone. In his bedroom, Kagome was poring over his sealing notes until his head was splitting, sure that he'd be able to save her if he just found the right theory. In the kitchen, Mari was silently drinking hot chocolate, her thoughts darker than her drink, darker than she was willing to share. Somewhere else, Kei was beating herself up with mastery of the art that made Noburi's guilt look like a tadpole to her Gamabunta.
Why couldn't he do anything for any of them?
Couldn't he?
Slowly, with the utmost caution, Noburi put her hand on Yuno's wrist as she lay curled in the foetal position, holding Satsuko tight. Satsuko never let Noburi carry her, but she did let him guide Yuno's hands to lay her down in her crib next to the bed.
With Yuno partially uncurled, Noburi held her and thought hard.
Hours passed.
He couldn't fix this. He couldn't fix any of this. Even Akane couldn't have done that. But she'd also never have let that stop her–and with Akane gone, somebody had to take up the mantle.
"Yuno?"
Yuno didn't reply, except to burrow into him a little further.
"I think I know what material you use to repair a heart."
-o-
Hazō has been to thank Naruto and apologise to Rock Lee. Naruto left a clone with him when he got back to work, and Hazō and Naruto SnaketySnake spent a pleasant half-hour brainstorming the most creatively vile, horrifying, and straight-up unholy punishments they would inflict on Akane's killers when they caught them. It was unexpectedly cathartic.
Rock Lee waved Hazō's apology off as unnecessary and instead told him he'd be presenting a special sermon in Akane's honour at the Central Church of Youth, entitled "The Spirit of Youth: Eternal and Undying". He emphatically encouraged the Gōketsu to attend, promising they would have difficulty walking away once they experienced the hard truths of Youth filling them up from bottom to top, followed by the sweet release of understanding. Hazō told him he'd think about it.
-o-
Noburi has declared that the next gaming night, a week from now, will be replaced by an Akane night. Everyone who knew Akane even by name is invited to come and share their memories of her over tea and cake. GED students will be writing everything down verbatim (with permission), and the finished collection will be edited for legibility and shared with everyone who wants a copy.
-o-
The letter was passed on to Kei by Minami Aika at the last check-in, and to Hazō as he left the Nara compound.
Informed. Will accelerate A-Day preparations here; assume you are doing likewise. However, finding both Akane and special guest narrows time horizons considerably. Review operation on return?
^_^
P. S. Paper condolences unsatisfactory. Expect in person.
-o-
You have received 10 + 2 (Brevity) + 1 (Velorien Fun-to-Write) - 4 (EagleJarl plan length penalty) = 9 XP.
-o-
What do you do? Reminder that you need to respond to Asuma's request for suggestions RE the Hagoromo, otherwise you'll lose your chance and he'll go with his default option.
"The Gōketsu school is an excellent idea," Asuma said, ignoring Hazō's expression. "My tentative plan is to have the Hagoromo supply teachers to work alongside your people. Mostly civilians, although possibly ninja guest lecturers where that makes sense. Additionally, the Hagoromo and the Gōketsu will supply ninja instructors to teach regular joint classes for KEI ninja. Ruka didn't notify you that Akane was overdue, but she also didn't notify the KEI coordinators or the parents of three young genin that their people were overdue. The way I see it, your little clan war spilled out and affected other people, so both of you can help make that right while also developing some closer ties."
Asuma paused, studying Hazō. A smile crept across his face. "And, judging by the completely appalled look on your face, my cunning plan will in fact motivate you to come up with a more effective idea."
He spread his hands in invitation. "As I said, that's my tentative plan. If you have suggestions on a better way to heal the breach between the Gōketsu and the Hagoromo, I'm willing to use those instead. Do you?"
"I brought cookies if you want one. Do you?" Akane asked, two months ago at a training field, when she was so very alive and her smile glowed like the sun.
Hazō struggled for a response, but his brain was awash in fog. He'd been fine thirty seconds ago, but the memory triggered by Asuma's words had suddenly cracked him open and poured in pain. He swallowed carefully to make sure his voice wouldn't break along with his heart.
"I don't have any ideas off the top of my head, sir," he said. "Could I get back to you tomorrow?"
Asuma watched him closely and then nodded with a soft smile. "Of course," he said gently. "Or the next day, or whenever. There's no rush and I'll gladly take input throughout the entire process. For now, take the day."
"Thank you, sir," Hazō said, standing up and bowing slightly. He started to turn for the door and then paused. "Sir," he said, "I wanted to ask you about the security status of the Earthshaping jutsu..."
o-o-o-o
"Hello, Cannai." Hazō's voice was like his footsteps: leaden.
The enormous dog cocked his head, ears raising up. A moment later they dropped and he lay down. "How may I help you, Hazō?"
Hazō slumped to the ground, sitting crosslegged and staring in fascination as his hands plucked a blade of grass. It was truly riveting, absolutely worthy of detailed study, and by 'it' he meant anything that wasn't Cannai's eyes.
"Akane's dead," he said, noting the nick in the fingernail of his left-hand pinky.
"Canvass told me," Cannai said, his voice gentle. "I'm sorry. I regret that I was never fortunate enough to meet her."
"Mm."
Cannai waited for long seconds. "Would you like to tell me about her?"
"Not really," Hazō confessed. Hands were super interesting. Look, he had a freckle on the left one. "But I probably should. Mari thinks I should."
Cannai waited while Hazō said nothing.
"I'm glad you have been talking to Mari, or anyone," Cannai said after three solid minutes of silence. "That shows wisdom."
"Yeah..." Hazō said. "I don't think I'm showing a lot of wisdom. I'm lashing out at people. My friends, my family, even the Hokage. He's something like my Alpha. What would you do if one of your dogs lashed out at you when you didn't deserve it?"
"I would ask them why," Cannai said. "And then I would listen to their pain and do what I could to help them with it. Hazō, you know that I am vastly older than you, yes?"
Hazō frowned slightly in surprise and glanced up to find Cannai's big eyes studying him. "Sure?"
"As you know, all old people are wise and deserving of respect and obedience, so—"
Hazō snorted a brief laugh at Cannai's so-dry tone. The Alpha's tongue lolled out for just a moment.
"Well, perhaps not all old people," the enormous dog admitted. "Still, here is a bit of wisdom for you: shared pain is lessened, shared joy is multiplied. Keep Akane in your heart and share everything that her memory brings up. Tell your family of your pain, and of the joy that is locked into your memories of her. It will help them with their pain as much as it will help you with yours."
Hazō considered that. "That actually does sound kinda wise. Who said it?"
"According to legend, it was first spoken by a philosopher from the Arachnid Clan, a spider named Robinsonu. Whether that is true or not, I cannot say."
"I doubt it. The Arachnids all have names that start with 'Kumo', not 'Robi'."
"Ah. Well, then most likely the stories are a lie. A pity; they are delightful stories." His eyes went distant for a moment as he drifted into his own past. "Supposedly, Robinsonu was a far-traveler, which presumably is how the Dogs came to know of his tales. When he was not traveling, he operated a tavern." He hesitated. "No, not a tavern, a 'saloon'. Odd word. Apparently it is like your 'restaurants' but it only serves that foul liquid that you silly humans like to poison yourselves with?"
Hazō rolled his eyes and chuckled slightly. The laughter was a thin layer floating atop the pain, but the laughter was there. "It's called alcohol and I know you know what it is."
"Do I? Hm, I suppose. I recall Kakashi indulging himself in it on multiple occasions." He shuddered overdramatically and pawed at his nose. "Horrible stuff. No idea how you put up with it."
"It's an acquired taste," Hazō admitted.
Cannai shook his head. "Humans baffle me. How exactly does that thought process work?" He made his dopey face: head tipped, ears high, eyes crossed, tongue barely showing.
"Durr, I am a human and this stuff tastes disgusting," he said in a silly voice.
He went back to his normal serious expression. "Indeed," he said, nodding somberly. "Perhaps you should stop drinking it, friend human?"
Once more the dopey face. "Durr, no! I must keep drinking this disgusting stuff because if I drink enough of it then I will start to like it and I can drink lots more of it!"
Serious face. "But...if you don't like it then why would you want to like it?"
Dopey face. "Because I'm a human and humans are silly, durr!"
Hazō sighed loudly, rolling his eyes.
Serious face. "Isn't it poisonous to you?"
Dopey face. "Durr hurr, yup! It makes me stupid and uncoordinated and sometimes it makes me angry and I start fights for no reason! Or sometimes it makes me overly affectionate and I grab people and give them noogies and tell them I love them even though I don't and it embarrasses me later!"
Hazō cleared his throat, giving Cannai an arch look.
Serious face. "Are those the sort of experiences you want to have?"
Dopey face. "Durr, nope! They're embarrassing and they get me in trouble and make people laugh at me, durr!"
"Are you quite done?" Hazō said, chuckling slightly.
Cannai made his serious face again and met Hazō's eyes. "No heckling, if you please. I have twenty-nine minutes of this routine, polished over the course of hundreds of years of human summoners. Now hush."
Serious face. "Are those the sort of experiences you want to have?"
Dopey face. "Durr, nope! They're embarrassing and they get me in trouble and make people laugh at me, durr!"
Serious face. "Well, then why drink a poison that will cause you to have those experiences?"
Dopey face. "Durr—"
"You're not as funny as you think you are," Hazō said, amusement starting to be tinged with annoyance.
"Harumph. I'll have you know that this routine kills. It even won third place in the All-West Art Festival twenty years ago." He frowned. "Twenty-two years? Hm. Not important."
Hazō snorted. "Yes, well, apparently dogs have a childish sense of humor."
"What's that you say? Dogs are innocent, truthful, and open with their feelings? Why thank you, Hazō. You are most kind."
Hazō rolled his eyes. "Fine, whatever. On a different topic: thank you for recommending Canvass as a tracker. She was amazing. The Inuzuka were piiiissed about how badly she showed them up."
"I am delighted to hear that," Cannai said, eyes twinkling. He paused. "The part about Canvass being amazing, obviously. Being the mature person that I am, I take no pleasure in the irritation of the Inuzuka Clan upon recognizing their inferiority to the Dog Clan."
When he wanted to be, Cannai was a terrible liar.
Hazō had forgotten his fingers, and he now noticed that, left unattended, they had been combing through the dirt in front of himself. There was dirt under his nails and a smudge on the back of his hand.
"Cannai," he said slowly. "There's a thing that I'd like to get your opinion on."
Cannai cocked his head in interest. "Yes?"
"I've mentioned the Earthshaping technique, right? It lets me saturate my chakra into a wide area and manipulate rock, dirt, stone, that kind of thing."
"Indeed."
"It's a strange technique. It's one of very few techniques with no combat application, and the only one I'm aware of that has no practical purpose. It can be used for building houses or bridges or whatever, but there are better choices for that. It seems like it was mostly intended for sculpture."
"Admirable," Cannai said. "Humans should place more of their efforts into art and beauty. I worry for you sometimes, with your focus on killing. It is not good for your souls."
"No argument. Anyway, the technique is unlike anything I've ever used before. As I come to understand it better it lets me do more. It's almost like it wants to do more, and it keeps urging me on. At first all I could do was shape what was already there. Then I learned how to meld things together into a unified whole with no breaks. I learned how to make things denser"—he curled his hand loosely, then clenched it into a fist—"or less dense." He expanded the fist explosively back into an open palm. "My ability to understand the material has been improving, and just recently it got precise enough that I can sort the different kinds of stuff in an area, keep one kind and shove everything else aside. It's great for pulling metals out of rock, for example."
"Hm," Cannai said, intrigued. "It sounds something like the landsense. When you say that it 'wants' to do more, is it actually a conscious desire?"
Hazō hesitated. "I...don't think so? Maybe? It's like when you see a storm lashing at a house, the wind catching in every crevice and the rain digging into every gap. Sometimes it's just a storm but sometimes it feels like it actively wants to destroy. Any idea what that means?"
"I am afraid not. I've never heard of a human chakra manipulation that wants anything. How precise is the sense? Can it detect gaps in the material? You mentioned that it was purely for Earth element, not for wood or other living things. Could you identify where tree roots are by identifying the void in the soil?"
Hazō nodded. "Yes. And I could move the soil around the roots, bringing in rich compost from the surface and packing it close to help the tree grow."
"This sounds lovely. I am pleased to hear of such a technique. Why do you mention it?"
"I think it might allow me to make three-dimensional seals," Hazō said, letting the words hang in the air.
"And the Great Seal is a three-dimensional seal," Cannai said, immediately getting the point. "Interesting. Would it allow you to repair the Great Seal?"
Hazō shrugged helplessly. "No idea. The mere idea of three-dimensional sealing is ludicrous, so I have no idea what it might allow. Still, it's a possibility. Worst case, and I do mean worst case, I might be able to create a new Great Seal and banish the Dragons. The idea is ridiculous—the thing is huge and made of something I don't recognize and..." He shook his head. "It's ludicrous, but if I was able to produce three-dimensional seals then it's at least conceivable. I'm confident that no paper seal would do the job."
"You wish to develop your Earthshaping to the point where you can do this," Cannai said. "Am I safe in assuming that you mention this to me because you would like help, or advice?"
Hazō's lips twitched in a faint smile. It was a smile because of Cannai's interest and willingness to help. It was faint because the amusement from earlier was fading and the gray lassitude was returning, but he chose to continue with what he was doing.
"I saw Enma bond part of Archaeopteryx," he said. "He didn't tell me a lot about it, but I gathered that it involved putting a chunk of his soul into the land. You are the Alpha of Dog, so presumably your soul is infused into the land here. I'm concerned that if I used Earthshaping in Dog Territory then it would harm you."
Cannai's tongue lolled out. "I believe the phrase that human children use is 'I double-dog dare you with pudding on top.'"
"I...don't think that's a thing."
Cannai huffed in amusement. "Not in Mist, perhaps. Please, go ahead. Try your technique."
"So your soul is not part of the land here?"
Cannai flicked his tail dismissively. "Oh no. I am not letting you distract me. Go on, do this technique of yours that you are concerned will wrest my soul from the land, or whatever."
"You mentioned something called landsense," Hazō said. "This isn't likely to be...I don't know, blinding, or smell bad, or something like that."
The tail whipped impatiently. "Go on, cast it. I triple-dog dare you." He looked up, rummaging through his memories. "Ah, yes. 'Do it or admit you're chicken.'"
"What?" Hazō said. "That's not...it doesn't...I'm obviously not a chicken! I don't have feathers, or steel claws, or a beak."
"Bock, bock, bocaw!" He tipped his head in curiosity. "Did I say it right? Is it making you feel insulted and demeaned? It's supposed to make you feel insulted and demeaned."
Hazō shook his head in confusion. "Fine, whatever. Let me put some stuff out first." He pulled out his storage seals and laid out the samples.
Every corner of Leaf had been scoured to aid with this experiment. Blacksmiths had yielded up bits of their refined iron (cast, wrought, and forged), iron ore in various forms, and slag from their furnaces. Whitesmiths had provided copper, tin, lead, and a variety of other metals. Sculptors had happily granted chunks of marble too small to be useful and broken sculpture pieces. A particular potter had, with much bemusement, handed over a fist-sized blob of wet clay and a sack full of broken pieces from a misfired jug.
Hazō laid out all the samples, along with small labels saying what each one was. Then, after permission from Cannai, he cast his most-used technique, the one that had saved his life more than any other: Multiple Earth Wall.
The familiar granite block rose up from the ground with comforting speed. Next, Hazō shifted into a more comfortable position, made the handseals for the Earthshaping technique, and began to push his chakra out, both into the wall and into the ground.
For a moment the soil felt alien and unlike that of the Human Path's fundament. It refused his touch, blocking him off without effort...and then it parted before him, allowing his chakra entrance as easily (more easily?) than the soil of the Gōketsu compound ever had.
"Fascinating," Cannai said, head cocked as he focused inward. "It's a very confined effect, and very [bark]. I'm not sure I would notice it if I wasn't nearby. Even nearby, I would likely miss it I weren't paying attention."
"What was that word?" Hazō asked. "'And very something.' It didn't translate."
"[bark]? It means..." He hesitated. "Hm. I'm not sure how to explain it. It's a sensory word, but not a sense that you have. It's something like attempting to explain color to a blind person, I fear."
"Bleh," Hazō said, before turning back to the technique he had been maintaining. Over the next few minutes he finished spreading his chakra through the surrounding area. He raised a column up out of the dirt, shaping a sphere at the top. It took minutes, so he kept the whole thing small. He wrapped his mental fingers around it, checked to make sure that he had a thorough 'grip', and squeezed. The material packed down with a faint crunch, becoming denser and stronger. What had been nothing but dirt became smoother and glossier.
"Huh," Cannai said, his ears coming up. "Intriguing. I've never seen that before." His eyes went unfocused. "It's an actual physical effect. The chakra isn't holding the current state, it made the change and made it permanent. When you end the technique and your chakra disperses, the material will still be denser. Will it be an issue if I break it?"
"I don't think so."
Cannai pushed on the uncompressed pillar experimentally. "Surprisingly strong." He pushed harder and the pillar broke, the uncompacted dirt sprawling across the ground the way dirt would. The sphere remained intact, rolling to a halt a foot or so away. The huge dog poked at it a few times, rolling it back and forth, then smashed down on it, which somehow blasted it to flinders instead of simply driving it into the dirt like a nail.
Hazō watched the chakra-saturated dirt burst under Cannai's ministrations. He lost track of the bits that arced up and away; he could see them with his eyes, but his inner senses were telling him that they had been annihilated. A moment later they recreated themselves in slightly different positions. (Or, according to his eyes, they fell back to the ground.)
"You said it could also filter materials?" Cannai asked. "Show me."
Hazō turned his metaphysical eyes to the red granite of the Multiple Earth Wall. Whatever Cannai said, he still wasn't anxious to make major disruptions or transformations to the ground of the Dog Territory. Besides, he could make more Multiple Earth Walls on the Human Path but the soil there might not be the same as what was here. The wall would be a better test.
He felt his way into the various samples, matching what his eyes could see on the labels with what his 'eyes' could 'see' inside the material. The Earthshaping sense was strange and it made his head buzz as his brain tried to map the new information onto known and comprehensible referents. The samples became a mélange of senses; the various iron samples were red/C/rough/sweettangy, rose/C#/rough/sweettangy, scarlet/C#/rough/tangysweet, and so on. The tin was blue/G#/soft/spicy, the copper was yellow/A/bendy/watery, the mica was steel/B2#/smooth/berry, and on and on through the dozens of things he'd brought for reference.
He turned his gaze into the granite, feeling around. He frowned at what he saw.
The granite wall was a jumbled mass of bits and bobs shoved together in utter disorder. There were similarities to various of his samples, but overall it felt mostly like...sand. How could it feel like sand? Sand was loose, it flowed when you poured it. You could build sandcastles and sand walls, but they fell apart easily whereas granite was obdurate and unyielding.
Perhaps the granite was...sand that had already been Earthshaped? Compacted, its strength and density increased?
He pushed those thoughts aside and looked again. The vast majority of the granite was that familiar sandy stuff, but a considerable amount of it was something else, something he didn't recognize. There were also traces of iron, which could be useful, and traces of other things he had no names for.
He grabbed that second thing, the unfamiliar one that was still in abundance. He mentally drew a box on the side of the wall nearest him, and within that box he chose for this thing to unite and naught else to remain.
Fine dust poured from the granite wall, sliding to the earth below and leaving behind a carved-out section of the wall in which sat a cube of...something.
"What is it?" Cannai asked, bending down to study the cube closely.
Hazō reached out and picked it up. It was the size of two fists and perfectly clear, so clear that it was hard to see. When he carefully poked the edges and corners he found that they were sharp but not overly so.
"I don't know?" he said. "The granite is made up of a lot of things. The majority of it is sand and there's a bunch of other bits and bobs, of which iron is the only one I recognized." He hefted the cube. "And then there's a lot of this stuff."
"Hm. It needs a name," Cannai mused. "It is like crystal, but not. It is not metal. Hm." He fell silent for several seconds, then nodded. "It was at the core of your wall, so let us call it corundum."
Hazō shrugged. It was as good a name as any.
"Can you make it in larger amounts?" Cannai asked.
"Sure," Hazō said. "I can render the entire wall down, get a massive chunk of the stuff. Let me get some of the metal out though. Iron is valuable and if we can actually create the stuff that would be amazing."
He turned back to the wall and combed through it until he had identified all the iron. It was mostly in tiny flecks but there were a few larger threads and pockets here and there.
Filtering something with Earthshaping consisted of two steps. The technique insisted that the substance be in one solid mass before it would eject everything else, so first Hazō had to move all of the iron to one place and fuse it together. Only then could he push aside the sand and corundum and other materials. He identified the iron and willed it to move, flowing through the stone. Most of it did. Some of it did not.
What.
He looked more closely and saw the problem; his chakra had not infused the iron. Not the larger segments of it, anyway. The tiny flecks, yes. Those were fully saturated in his spirit and they moved and reshaped themselves to his will as easily as anything else. The larger masses of iron were inviolate.
He frowned and focused, forcing his chakra into the metal. It penetrated the tiniest bit and then simply stopped, flat. It was like stabbing a knife into a rock; if the rock was a thin fleck then the knife could pierce through it. A thicker rock and the knife would scratch the surface but skitter off. Without his chakra completely suffused through the metal, Hazō could not affect it.
He scratched his neck, frowning as he thought. Finally, he found the flecks and threads that he could manipulate and commanded them to move to the largest pocket of iron, one about the size of his thumbnail and shaped something like a peanut. He took the other bits of iron too large to affect and reformed the stone around them, breaking them loose from their surrounding matrix, opening a path in front of them, and having the rock behind them expand to push them along.
While that was happening he focused on the chunk of metal that was the destination of the rest. He got his chakra as deep into it as it could go, which was barely the width of a hair, and pulled.
The metal that had been suffused moved to his will, peeling away from the rest of the material and giving him a sheet of foil so thin that it tore the instant it touched the surrounding stone. Still, it was fully suffused and thus could be manipulated, so he practiced twisting and folding it in various ways.
He made several more of the foil sheets and fused their edges together without issue, making a larger sheet the size of his hand. His chakra was still suffused through it, so he was able to fold it over on itself, making it thicker, building it up. He folded it again—
He lost contact with the chakra inside the folded-up wad. He remained in control of the outermost layer and could move that segment, but the inner part was beyond his reach.
With a frustrated sigh he focused on combining the various bits of iron into a singular whole, merging their outermost layers together. It was a garbage way to do it and the join would be too weak to do anything useful with the resulting mass, but it was sufficient to let the Earthshaping technique acknowledge the iron as a singular entity and therefore move on to the filtering phase of the operation.
Cannai waited patiently as the wall slowly disintegrated, leaving behind a shapeless blob of reddish metal. He peered closely at it, getting so close that his eye nearly touched the surface, then licked it. Several pieces broke off from the pressure of his tongue. He smacked his lips a few times, considering. He turned and similarly reviewed the various iron samples Hazō had brought.
"It is not entirely iron," he said at last. "There is something else in there as well. It tastes more like this one"—he tapped one of the ore samples—"than it tastes like the worked iron."
"Huh," Hazō said. So far as he had been able to tell, Earthshaping had purified the material down to a single nature, rejecting everything else. The technique considered this stuff to be pure iron but, now that Cannai had brought his attention to it, it wasn't pure. The various forms of worked iron were identical at a casual metaphysical glance, but when he brought all his attention to bear he could detect differences. Their sounds were all middle-C but each was very slightly off, like a mistuned koto string. Their 'flavor' components varied like the same kind of fruit grown in different soils. Something about what the blacksmith did must filter the iron, like the Earthshaping technique but even more delicate. Earthshaping was recognizing crimson as red and driving off all the yellows and whites, but the blacksmith's forge was recognizing crimson as red with wisps of mixed-in blue. It was disentangling the two colors and driving off the blue.
Was it possible that civilians had their own chakra arts and had successfully kept them secret from ninja for all of history?
Nah. That couldn't possibly be right.
Could it?
"Well, it's close to pure iron," Hazō said, pushing the potential illusions of history away. "I'm confident that we can sell it as high-grade ore. Leaf's metal problems are over, forever." It was true; out of a granite wall that probably amounted to a cubic yard he had pulled an amount of iron sufficient to fill a medium backpack. Not impressive given the chakra costs, except that the Multiple Earth Wall was not the most efficient way for a ninja to create granite. That honor went to the Massive and Rapid Infrastructure technique, which produced a wall nine yards high by one yard thick and potentially hundreds of yards long. One such wall would produce enough iron to keep every smith in Leaf busy.
Cannai was back to poking at the corundum cube. "I have never seen anything like this. It reminds me somewhat of the diamonds that I have seen various Summoners carry, but it is clear instead of sparkling."
Hazō chewed his cheek for a moment. "Hang on, let me try something." He extended his will towards the cube and began slowly running his mental fingers across it.
Over the next few minutes, as Cannai waited patiently, the cube melted and stretched. The corners folded in, the top rose up and grew bevels, and the interior of the newly-formed stone became smoother than any natural stone could be, its every flaw and imperfection wiped away by the gentle touch of Hazō's chakra.
At the end of seven minutes, Hazō was drenched in sweat and the corundum cube had reshaped itself into a faceted gemstone. It was still perfectly transparent and still did not sparkle but it had a geometric beauty to it.
"Quite lovely, in its own way," Cannai said. He studied the corundum 'gemstone' a moment longer. "Can you work some of the other materials into it? How precisely will the technique let you do that?"
"Let's find out," Hazō said. He turned back to the piles of dust that were left from the granite wall, thinking he would add some of the mica in hopes that the reflectiveness would give the 'gemstone' a bit of sparkle. Unfortunately, the dust had been torn apart to a miniscule size and there were no mica flakes remaining.
No problem. He peeled a layer off the mass of iron and manually rolled the corundum gem onto the foil sheet. He tore the iron foil into the smallest pieces he could manage and had them seep inwards, spreading them through the inside of the corundum.
The corundum shifted like ink being poured into water. Its color darkened into a rich, pure blue and, nine minutes later, Hazō was holding a faceted, sparkling sapphire the size of two fists.
"Now that is lovely," Cannai said. "Congratulations, Hazō. You have used your chakra to make something purely beautiful. Not for murder, not for houses. Purely for beauty."
Hazō smiled.
o-o-o-o
"And you just gave it to him?!" Noburi asked as he handed over the bottle of chakra-infused water.
"Relax," Hazō said, and then paused to sigh in relief as the chakra flowed back into his empty coils just as the water soothed his parched throat. He had been on the Seventh Path for hours, draining himself dry with the various experiments until he had to come home to recharge.
"Relax, Nobby," he said again, restarting the sentence now that he wasn't on the border of chakra exhaustion. "You can still be the prettiest princess. I'll make you a bigger one. What do you think—you want a sapphire the size of your barrel?"
Noburi snorted. "Yuck it up, Mr Mew." He became serious again. "So, aside from us being able to produce gemstones sufficient to bury every other mine on the planet, did you come up with any other ways to break civilization?"
"I think so," Hazō said. "That corundum stuff is strong and clearer than any glass I've ever seen. I can make telescopes with it. More importantly, it'll make great windows."
Noburi waited. After a moment it became clear that there would be no more. "That's it? Windows?"
"Hey, you try keeping a house well-lit and warm in the winter! Now shoo. This might be dangerous."
"Fuck that with a bandsaw," Noburi said. "I'm staying right here so that I can drag your ass away from whatever horrible thing you conjure up." He sat down on one of the logs that had been placed in the middle of Gōketsu Seal Research Facility #4 exactly to be sat upon.
Hazō felt his eyes prickle slightly and his throat grow a lump. He swallowed it away and smiled. "Thank you, Noburi. I'm afraid this is also going to be super boring."
Noburi shrugged. "Best get to it, then."
Hazō rested a hand on his brother's shoulder for a moment, then sat down and made the handseals for the Earthshaping jutsu.
Night was falling and the facility was lit only by a trio of bonfires. Jiraiya's Awesome Daybright Lantern seals would have provided steadier and whiter light, but Hazō didn't want any other seals running while he was doing this.
He took out a chunk of pure corundum that he had saved from his earlier experiments on the Seventh Path. It had been carefully shaped to match the one-stroke seal that was the first of Jiraiya's training series. It had been compressed to provide hardness and its insides had been smoothed until the thing was utterly flawless. It was a three dimensional object in the shape of a seal and, if Hazō could successfully infuse his chakra into it, he hoped it would become an actual seal.
He reached into it as gently as he could manage, moving very slowly so as to eliminate any risk of distorting the material even slightly. It took him nearly half an hour to fully saturate the palm-sized chunk of almost-glass. Once his chakra was evenly distributed, he checked over the corundum, looking for the tiniest flaw or chip. Storage stress, or perhaps simply passage between Paths, had led to some miniscule distortions around the edges. He spent an hour wiping them away with infinite patience until the structure was once more perfect. Behind him, Noburi was a steady and reassuring presence, waiting silently so as not to intrude.
Hazō basked in the love of his brother for several long seconds, then set those emotions aside along with everything else. He calmed himself, cycling his chakra smoothly and fluidly until he was at peace, until he was perfectly focused.
His chakra, spread evenly throughout the corundum, shifted into the pattern associated with the Puff of Air seal from Jiraiya's series. He fit it to the inside surface of the object and gave it the twist that was used to infuse a seal.
Nothing happened.
Frowning, Hazō tried twice more with no better result.
He forced himself to go back to the very beginning and work forward. What might he be doing wrong?
Making a seal consisted of tw... No. No, making a seal was three steps, not two. First he infused his chakra into the ink using the standard ritual: he took the ritual lump of brass in his right hand and buffed it on the leather of his belt to insure that it was clean, then he recited the nonsense rhyme that cleared his chakra pathways, then he dipped the brass in the ink and blew gently across the surface while pushing the tiniest pulse of chakra through his fingertips and into the ink.
That was the process for making the ink, step one in the three step process of making a seal. Once it was done successfully you could move onto step two: use the ink to brush the shape of the seal onto paper, applying a tiny chakra manipulation to make the chakra from the ink stay bound to the paper. (It was such a trivial exercise that it had been years since he even noticed he was doing it!) When the design was complete and the chakra firmly anchored to the paper, only then did you infuse your chakra into it and turn it from a paper-and-ink-and-chakra blank into a functional seal.
Hazō had used his chakra to 'draw the blank', forming the corundum into the shape he needed. He had filled it with his chakra. He had made the action of infusion. It hadn't worked.
Obviously it hadn't worked! There had been no directionality when he was making the blank! The brush strokes weren't simply a way to put ink on the page, they were a way to form chakra pathways. The stroke of the bristles was what made the channels that you infused. Hazō had formed the blank willy-nilly and then tried to put chakra into it. He had essentially tried to infuse a seal blank that had been stamped onto the page. No wonder it hadn't worked! There were no pathways, nothing to activate. It was as though he had tried to walk through a painting of a door.
He quickly raised up another Multiple Earth Wall and recreated a blank, this time focusing on how he moved the chakra in the process, which parts he formed first and second, recreating the stroke order to the best of his ability.
He didn't even bother attempting to infuse it. He had nothing like the control he needed for this; the result was as though he had drawn the blank with his feet. Sure, if you did it carefully enough and the desired image was simple enough then you could produce something that looked generally right, but it wouldn't be what you needed. It wouldn't be the best you could make. Not unless you put in a lot of practice. Enough practice that your control with your feet was as good as your control with your hands. Which was...possible? Probably. It seemed like the chakra wanted to do what he was asking but couldn't understand him quite well enough. If he spent more time practicing with Earthshaping, if he got better... Ugh.
Sighing, he broke the corundum samples and the rest of the Multiple Earth Wall down into dust and buried them deep in the ground. No reason to take the slightest risk of his efforts leaking.
"C'mon, Nobs," he said, standing up with a creak. "Let's get some dinner. And then I've got work to do."
Author's Note: The cube that Hazō made was pure alumina (Al2O3), aka corundum, which makes up 11-13% of granite. If you take corundum and dope it with chromium you get ruby. Dope it with iron and you get sapphire. Dope it with beryllium and silicon and you get emeralds.
Obviously, Hazō and Cannai don't know the names of any of these things aside from the gemstones. I was ambivalent about what to call them—on the one hand, I could make up a fantastical name, but that would be one more thing for the reader to remember. Then I remembered that MfD is a work of translation; as you all know, the characters are speaking in their native ElementalNationsese and @Velorien and I are simply translating it to English for your convenience. Therefore, you may assume that they are actually calling it something appropriate for their time and place and we are translating it to more familiar terms. You're welcome.
Other experiments you did and their outcomes:
Q: Can we make better lenses out of pure silica?
A: Yes
Q: En masse fabrication of metal items?
A: You can produce metal items VERY, VERY, VERRRRY slowly. So slowly that it's not worth it unless you're, I dunno, trapped in a cave and need to make a thousand pickaxes or something
Q: Can we make sharper kunai (with compressed blades?)
Q: Is a kunai made of compressed metal stronger than regular kunai?
A: Hazō did not try the experiment because it would have taken too long. You could in theory tear a chunk of metal apart into super thin sheets, compress each sheet, then fuse the sheets back together as though you were 3D-printing a kunai. In terms of time it's definitely not going to be worth it to do it this way. You can do the experiment if you want to blow an entire day on it.
Q: Can we compress coal into diamonds?
A: Yes
Q: Can we make sheet glass for windows?
A: Yes, although corundum is a better choice
Q: Look at other gemstones and try to recreate them.
A: As mentioned in the update, Hazō can make sapphires. He doesn't know what beryllium etc are so cannot do the appropriate doping for other gems
Q: [Can we reproduce] a sample of masterwork steel?
A: TBD
Q: Examine the Honey Cave crystals with ES. Are they unusual in any way?
A: TBD
Q: If we compress silica, does it compare with weapons-grade metal?
A: TBD
Additionally, the rules shown for iron apply to all metals: you can only affect very thin pieces at a time, you can rip larger chunks apart very slowly, you can bond the outermost layers together, etc. Again, this is for all metals including gold, silver, copper, etc.
This update covered 1 day.
XP AWARD: 5
Brevity XP: 1
"GM had fun" XP: 3
It is now about 10pm.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday,
.
Last edited:
Chapter 2β: In Which Hazō Introduces His Team to the Joys of Treason
Chapter 2β: In Which Hazō Introduces His Team to the Joys of Treason
Kanna-sensei was alone. The time had come.
"Kanna-sensei, may I have a moment of your time?"
Kei's imminent villainy beggared belief. Mori Keiko was possessed of more faults than the ground after a battle between Earth specialist jōnin, but until this day, treachery had not been one of them. Setting aside the feebleness of her finest efforts at deception (the toy shark Ami had once promised Kei as a reward for successfully deceiving her lay unclaimed to this day), it was anathema to Kei to betray those who trusted her. Kanna-sensei trusted her. Kanna-sensei was kind—not specifically to Kei, but to anyone in her path, offering brief words of reassurance or consolation as she conducted her daily business (unlike Inoue-sensei, who actively assumed the role). Kanna-sensei was also Kei's direct superior out of the surviving jōnin, insofar as she had taken on Sumie-sensei's responsibilities in the aftermath of… events.
Kei had been denied any agency in becoming a missing-nin, left only with the meagre consolation that, as she had been helpless to avert her fate, at least she could not be held responsible for it either. Now, she prepared to betray her leader—all her leaders, in fact—of her own free will.
Could Kurosawa truly be a time traveller? It was improbable beyond words. That Kei could not conceive of a superior explanation for his stunning depth of knowledge might speak more to her incompetence than to the reality of the situation. It was infinitely more likely, for example, that Kurosawa was a genjutsu user who had warped her brain into blindly believing his claims where an external observer would instantly perceive the contradictions and impossibilities. A sensible shinobi would trust in the reassuring solidity of her priors and resolutely turn a deaf ear to his blandishments.
Yet while Kurosawa's flattery was obvious nonsense, his allegations of a premeditated crime could not be so easily dismissed. As a member of Logistics & Support, she had committed the team roster to memory on the day of her assignment. She had wondered at the time why an elite combat unit should contain so many diplomats and infiltrators, or specialists in wilderness survival when the contested zone was well-mapped and no particular threats (other than Leaf) were expected, or indeed an entire logistics squad to supplement Sumie-sensei, a respected logistician whose support plan had been complete before they ever departed Mist. Shikigami-sensei's presence she understood, and Kanna-sensei seemed to possess a ninjutsu for every occasion, but why was an I&S specialist jōnin present on this mission as opposed to someone like Captain Ayanami "the Storm" Takeshi (instead of whom they had received his underperforming genin brother)? Even their supplies, she now reflected, were remarkably well-suited to establishing a base in a swamp environment, considering its differences from the grassy plains of their intended destination.
Yet for all her pretence, Kei was not here out of rationality. She was here, shamefully, because she desired to believe. Even if her village truly had not deemed her fit only for a meaningless death, her past was ash, lost beyond return. Her future had been erased. In the present lay only death. Then, out of nowhere, Kurosawa pledged to triumph over that death in order to convince her. Could even one of them be saved as he asserted, much less the entire group? Kurosawa had planted something in her, a seed of hope that should not have survived for an instant in the arid soil of her despair, and now she fully expected him to take responsibility.
No, even concern for her own life was secondary to the true reason she was here—Kurosawa's final, most impossible claim. It was surely a lie, or at best a critical misapprehension of the facts. Ami was a loyal Mist shinobi, while Kei was the irredeemable polar opposite. She could have remained, and surrendered to the mercy of Captain Zabuza (assuming Shikigami-sensei permitted her to live). She could have gone to apologise to her ancestors in the Abyss, as was only proper for a traitor who wished to preserve a shred of honour. Instead, she fled, and was even now willingly furthering the diabolical plot of an arch-traitor (Shikigami-sensei, not Kurosawa, though at this point the argument could be made).
Kurosawa was, by weight of priors, deceiving her, insane, and/or in error about fundamental facts. If that was the case, following him would lead her only to the grave—but in a world without Ami, that was an acceptable outcome. On the other hand, if there was the tiniest chance that all was not lost, that Kei might bathe in that radiance again even for one more moment…
"What is it, Mori?" Kanna-sensei asked. She turned around, suspending the ninjutsu she had been using to excavate deeper into the cave and leaving a cube of rock with sides easily longer than Kei was tall hovering uneasily in the air behind her.
Kurosawa's untested promises aside, his greatest act had been to restore to Kei something she had believed lost forever: agency in the matter of her own survival. If all he desired in repayment was the exercise of that agency, then exercise it she would—even at the cost of the morality she had once believed in.
"I would like to bring certain materials that I inherited from Sumie-sensei to your attention," Kei said, brandishing a scroll that Kurosawa had spent nights dictating while she translated it into the dry staccato of Sumie-sensei's reports. "They were marked for the attention of Inoue-sensei, and I infer them to be research compiled by Sumie-sensei at her request. I attempted to submit them to Inoue-sensei earlier, but she dismissed me, stating she no longer required them."
Kanna-sensei accepted the scroll and began to browse. The cube behind her began to drift slowly towards the ground, like an Academy student settling in for a nap while the instructor was too focused on their lecture to notice. Without pausing her reading, Kanna-sensei frowned for a second, and it sheepishly returned to its original position.
"This isn't Sumie's brushwork."
"It is mine," Kei admitted. "The originals were… never retrieved from her body. I have attempted to reproduce them from memory as best I could, and apologise for the patchwork nature of the result."
"That was very thoughtful of you, Mori," Kanna-sensei said absently as she continued through the scroll with the reading speed of a document demigoddess. "Yuni yakuza… factions of Sarubetsu… the Mizutani hot springs… are these maps of Neck? Why in the Sage's name did Inoue want any of this?"
Kei made herself scarce while Kanna-sensei was still lost in her futile efforts to comprehend Kurosawa's mind.
-o-
At the same time…
Shikigami-sensei was alone. The time had come.
"Shikigami-sensei, can I talk to you for a second?"
Noburi was so far out of his depth he expected to see kraken passing by above him any minute now. Kurosawa was full of crap. His story made no sense. He knew too much he shouldn't, about Noburi's family, about his feelings… He even hinted at knowledge about the Vampiric Dew that should have obliged Noburi to immediately report him to Lord Masanobu—except that Lord Masanobu, just like the rest of the Wakahisa, was now out for Noburi's blood.
If Kurosawa had been a little older, Noburi would instantly have written him off as ANBU or secret police. There was no telling what Mist's scariest ninja knew about anyone or anything, and the rumours said they had perfect psych profiles on everyone from the youngest Academy student to the most untouchable clan lord. But Kurosawa had been in Noburi's class, and if he was a once-in-a generation child prodigy, he'd spent their Academy days hiding it incredibly well (though, then again, they weren't called the secret police for nothing…).
The trouble was, Mori believed him, and Mori was the smartest person Noburi had ever met. She had the brain to sort through all of Kurosawa's babbling and find the contradictions that proved him to be a fraud, and instead she'd decided to play his game as if he really was a visitor from the future. Then she'd asked Noburi to help, and placed her life in his hands.
Noburi would do whatever it took to protect her, and that left him with no choice.
Shikigami-sensei stood up from the trap array he'd been in the middle of setting up in the middle of an innocent-looking reedbed.
"Wakahisa? What are you doing back already? There's still plenty of daylight left. Did somebody get injured?"
"No, sir," Noburi said. "I have something you need to hear about right away."
"What's that?"
"It's Inoue Mari, sir," Noburi said. "She's planning to betray you and run away with a team of genin."
Noburi had had plenty of time to weigh his loyalties and his options during the team's days of waiting. Kurosawa claimed to know for a fact that Captain Zabuza would attack, with Leaf backup, but not when, and had been dithering over whether it was best to move sooner, and try to be done before Captain Zabuza had a chance to finish his preparations, or to wait in order to minimise changes to the future which could ruin his predictive powers. Noburi had reluctantly explained that there was a much more sensible reason to wait before putting Kurosawa's bonkers plan into action: if they were planning to trick jōnin, the elite of the elite, they needed time to build trust. That was why Team Kurosawa (dammit) had spent the recent days following Noburi's advice, acting like model genin (and Kurosawa's supposed foreknowledge had made their missions run a lot more smoothly) while slipping up just enough to earn sympathy instead of frustration. It had also meant sitting there watching Mori and Kurosawa keep getting closer while Noburi couldn't even come up with a topic of conversation that held her attention.
Now, it was time for Noburi to take advantage of this delay.
Shikigami-sensei studied him with narrow, suspicious eyes. "Wakahisa, you had better be able to back that kind of accusation."
Noburi took a deep breath and stepped out onto the invisibly-thin ice of Kurosawa's plan.
"She came to talk to me earlier, sir. She said this was never a suicide mission. She said you'd set the whole thing up because you wanted your own hidden village from the start, and we were both just victims of your ambition."
Little fires of anger danced in Shikigami-sensei's eyes, evidence in favour of accusations Noburi couldn't stand to believe.
"I hope you know that's bullshit, Wakahisa. If I wanted to go missing, I'd have done it years ago instead of coming up with some crazy mass kidnapping conspiracy, and if I'd been planning to build my own village, I'd have done it with people whose loyalty I'd already earned the hard way. Did she say anything else?"
"She said... She said she'd taken matters into her own hands, but she wanted to take the people she trusted most with her when she left," Noburi said. "She said I could stick around for Juraya and his toads to take care of, or I could join the winning team and never have to worry about Leaf again."
Shikigami-sensei went very still. "Jiraiya and his toads. You're sure that's what she said."
"Jiraiya. Right. Yes, sir."
So that was why Mori had given Kurosawa that strange look. Noburi didn't know whether to appreciate the clever trick or be pissed off that Kurosawa didn't trust him to lie convincingly without help.
"…that backstabbing bitch!" Shikigami-sensei crushed the water chestnut caltrop he was holding in his fist, and it didn't even look like it hurt. "She sold us all out. I knew something felt off about her. You did good coming to me with this, Wakahisa."
He turned back towards the main camp, then paused.
"Why did you come to me? I know what Inoue's capable of. If she wanted to turn a kid like you, she should've been able to do it in a heartbeat."
Noburi looked down as if he couldn't meet Shikigami-sensei's eyes (and he couldn't, just for a different reason). "There was a big part of me that wanted to believe I was special to her like she said. But deep down, I know she only wants me for my barrel, just like everyone else. What else have I got to offer someone like her? Shikigami-sensei, you're the first person who told me I could be a strong ninja on my own terms. You said I could be a jōnin. If I have to pick who to trust, I'd rather pick someone who believes in me."
Shikigami-sensei laid a firm hand of paternal approval on Noburi's shoulder. "You're a good kid, Wakahisa. You'll go far, and I'll damn well make sure of it. So do you know where Inoue is now?"
It was so, so hard to believe Kurosawa over Shikigami-sensei, even with Mori's backing. What if Noburi was being one of those idiot ninja from the Academy stories who got his whole team killed because he'd trusted a beautiful woman he barely knew over his Mizukage-appointed team leader?
But what if they were right, and him changing his mind now would get everyone killed? Even if Kurosawa was lying about who he was and how he knew what he knew, his predictions so far had panned out (Noburi would never forget what happened with the chakra alligator), and Mori was so confident they were all doomed if they kept going the way they were that it hurt to hear.
Noburi made his choice and pulled away. "Please don't hurt her!"
Shikigami-sensei glowered.
Inoue-sensei was really sweet, wickedly funny, and impossibly hot, but it was still a little hurtful how easily Shikigami-sensei bought the brainless horny teen act.
"I, uh, mean, if you fight her, you might get injured, and that'd leave Kanna-sensei doing three jōnin's work. That's all. Sir."
Shikigami-sensei looked vaguely upward for a second, as if weighing Kanna-sensei's leadership potential in his head. He sighed.
"I guess you'll grow out of it," he said ambiguously. "Go get me Kanna, and spread the word: every ninja in the village needs to assemble in front of the main cave ASAP."
The rod was cast. It was too late for takebacks. If it wasn't for Mori, Noburi would have turned Kurosawa in the second he realised he was serious about his plot to destroy the only home Noburi had left. Instead, he'd trusted Kurosawa with their lives… and he swore that if Kurosawa betrayed them, his death would make what happened to Team Ayanami look like an all-expenses-paid holiday in Hot Springs.
-o-
At the same time…
Mari was alone. The time had come.
"Inoue-sensei, can I speak to you in private?"
Mari, showing not the tiniest hint of surprise at his request out of nowhere, let him lead her away from the unconscious genin she'd just finished bandaging. She stopped when they reached the edge of the encampment, but he beckoned her on.
"Sorry, Inoue-sensei, but this is something I really don't want anyone to overhear."
Mari followed, now radiating alertness, as he brought her to a hill from which they had line of sight to the camp. He stood in front of her, facing towards the camp, meaning she was facing away from it as she looked at him.
"What is it, little Hazō?"
It seemed like a lifetime away now, but Hazō remembered that Mari had actually started calling him by name long before Hidden Swamp, back when she was friends (or whatever passed for friends with the Heartbreaker) with his team leader, Riakutā Mako. He'd never followed up on Mako-sensei, come to think of it, or the rest of his original genin team, but then again, it wasn't like they'd been friends so much as stuck with each other in the genin squad equivalent of an oubliette guard tower.
No, he couldn't let himself get distracted. Hazō's was by far the most dangerous part of Operation Future Perfect. Sure, Noburi could get in a lot of trouble if his only-mostly-true report wasn't believed. However, if Hazō messed up, Mari could decide he was a threat to her survival, in which case she would probably kill him on the spot. He'd even made sure there were no witnesses. He had to get everything just right, without alienating her or losing her interest or making himself seem like a liability, and he had to do it all without lying because she was Mari and there was no telling what subtle cues she might pick up on when she was at her most attentive.
Still, failure wasn't an option. She was his Mari by metaphysical extension, and Team Uplift, old or new, left no ninja behind.
"Inoue-sensei," he began, "what do you think our odds of survival are out here?"
Mari visibly relaxed. Her gaze turned gentle and sympathetic.
"Oh, Hazō," she said. "I figured it would be something like this. Listen, I know things have been hard ever since we found out about the suicide mission. I know it must hurt knowing none of us can go home again. There's nothing wrong with feeling that way. All of us do, even me. There's especially nothing wrong with being scared. We've lost some good people, and the swamp is the most dangerous place many of us have ever been in. If you weren't even a little bit scared, I'd figure you were either crazy or a chakra alligator in disguise.
"But we're going to survive, Hazō. Shikigami is a brilliant man who knows exactly what he's doing, and Kanna and I are no slouches either. Then we have all the experienced chūnin, with their many skills which all add up to a single unstoppable force, and we have genin like you, brimming with potential that's going to be realised all the faster in a challenging environment. We're going to survive, and then we're going to flourish. The Village Hidden in the Swamp may seem like a distant idea now, but soon enough, we'll be a power to be reckoned with, and you'll be proud to be one of its founding members. All you have to do is be brave enough to get through these first few weeks. We'll get to know the swamp and its dangers, and how to avoid them or defeat them. If Captain Zabuza or anyone else comes for us, I promise you we will use that knowledge to take them down and protect our independence. Our odds of survival might not be a hundred percent, because that doesn't happen to ninja, but they're a lot better than they look, and before long they'll be even better than they were back home. Nobody in Hidden Swamp is going to disappear people for saying the wrong thing or send them on suicide missions."
Mari was so good. If Hazō didn't already know she was planning to fake her death and run in a matter of days, he'd have been taken in by the sheer conviction shining through her voice, time travel or no time travel.
This wasn't going to go anywhere until he got her to show her true colours.
"I'm not sure I agree, Inoue-sensei," he said. "Captain Zabuza is on his way. There's no question about that. Yagura doesn't forgive or forget betrayal. He'll keep sending hunter-nin after us until we're dead, even after it stops being a rational use of resources. Once Captain Zabuza gets here, he'll know better than to charge headfirst into the swamp because he's a veteran hunter-nin, so he'll go to Leaf. The second Leaf find out they've got an organised group of twenty-seven missing-nin on their doorstep, they'll be throwing people and resources at him to make sure the problem gets solved—and they can kick him out of Fire again—immediately, even if they have to toss their current mission schedule out the window.
"They consider themselves the strongest village, Inoue-sensei. A bunch of fugitives that couldn't even cut it as Mist ninja has nothing they want more than they want total control of their own territory, plus allying with us would make Yagura foam at the mouth and trigger the coming war between Mist and Leaf—which they don't want until they feel they have a major military advantage, and at that point they'll have even less use for us than they do now. They might even send somebody like Jiraiya of the Three when they hear we have three jōnin plus a bunch of other ninja who might scatter all over Fire if they're not wiped out quickly."
"That's… an impressive analysis," Mari said. "Not bad at all. But you underestimate us. By the time Leaf is an issue, we'll have our feet under us. We have a formidable force here, and even once Leaf finds out about us, they won't move carelessly. We have plenty of room to negotiate and plenty to offer, and you'd better believe we have some top-notch negotiators." She winked at him.
"Trust your jōnin, Hazō. We have thought this through, and we've got plenty of other plans and considerations that we'll share with everyone as soon as the time is right."
Hazō imagined, in a different alternate timeline, Kurosawa Hazō trusting his jōnin and walking away with a heart full of faith in Inoue-sensei. He'd be dead within the fortnight. He couldn't let himself forget that this was the Mari he was dealing with right now, the woman who'd only saved them because they were in the right place at the right time, and then only because Kei was there. Somewhere in Mari's future lay the person he would love and trust with his life and the lives of his loved ones. Here and now, Mari was comfortable leaving him to die—if he didn't provoke her into killing him herself on her way out.
This Mari wanted him to go away and live in blissful ignorance until the day death came to Hidden Swamp, and that meant she wasn't going to make this easy. Hazō couldn't afford to take the time to wear her down, not if he wanted his part of Operation Future Perfect to have finished by the time Kei and Noburi arrived. Fortunately, he and Kei had prepared an excellent conversation flowchart, and he was prepared to speedrun this part if he had to. (Speedrunning was a traditional Kurosawa racing competition where everyone independently ran the same obstacle course and recorded their best time into the Iron Nerve, then gathered to replay it for verification and to show off the clever tricks they'd come up with for shaving just a few extra seconds off their time. Obviously, Hazō had never been invited to participate, but its spirit of optimisation delighted him.)
"Inoue-sensei," he said. "Allow me to save us both some time. Staying here is suicide. I've gathered a team of trustworthy ninja and we're ready to leave on my word. Would you like to join us?"
After the briefest delay, Mari laughed. "Did Shikigami put you up to this? Sorry, Hazō, but you're a good decade too young to try a loyalty test on me. Honestly, I'm a little insulted that you tried. I could have split off at any time, you know, if I thought this whole thing was a bad idea. An elite jōnin like me can make it anywhere. Instead, I stuck around and went into the Swamp of Death with everyone else. I'm still here, and I'm going to keep being here
–for you and everyone else–because we're comrades and that's what comrades do. Now, was that everything you wanted to talk about?"
"There are three of us," Hazō pressed on, "and we happen to have the best Bloodline Limits in the swamp. Mori's Frozen Skein is the ultimate safety net. She can optimise our use of limited resources and analyse our plans to prevent mistakes, because missing-nin can't afford to make mistakes. Wakahisa's Vampiric Dew is the ultimate power multiplier. When we run, we can outrun anyone because we can afford to boost our speed with chakra all day long. When we fight… what can an elite jōnin do if she knows she can spend all the chakra she wants and be full again in seconds?"
"And what about you?" Mari asked sceptically. "What kind of game-changing contribution do you offer with your ability to control your body a bit better than other genin?"
The discovery that the Iron Nerve was tied to the body rather than the mind had been one of the nastier surprises of time travel. Hazō no longer moved like a hardened chūnin with a secondary (tertiary? Quaternary?) specialisation in taijutsu, and all those seals he'd downloaded instead of memorising hadn't made the journey with him either. On the other hand, he suspected bad things would have happened if the Iron Nerve had reflexively forced his feeble genin body to imitate movements designed for a stronger, more flexible, and differently-proportioned one, and there was no way Mari wouldn't have noticed the sudden change in Kurosawa Hazō's body language either.
"I'm the planner," Hazō said with the confidence of a man whose brilliant mind had, if one mapped it statistically over an extended period of time, got his family out of more trouble than it had got them into. "It's why I lead the team."
"Colour me unimpressed," Mari said. "Your plan was to bring me out here alone so you could talk to me about betraying the group? If I'm loyal and decide you're a traitor, I could kill you right here. If I'm a traitor and decide you're in my way, I could kill you right here. Go back to camp and leave the plotting to the adults, Hazō."
"That wasn't the plan," Hazō corrected her. "That was just the introduction. Turn around, Inoue-sensei. What do you see?"
Mari turned around. From the top of the hill, they had a commanding view of the encampment.
"Are they… Are they getting ready to move out? What the hell? Shikigami never breathed a word of this."
"While we've been talking," Hazō explained, "my teammates have been proving to Shikigami-sensei that you sold us all out to Leaf. From the fact that everyone's preparing to abandon the swamp, I'm guessing Shikigami-sensei believed them. If you go down there, he'll probably kill you on sight. After all, if you get too close, you can disable him with genjutsu before he knows it."
His spine screamed as it impacted the tree behind him. Mari's hand was closed around his throat, the tiniest sliver of pressure away from choking him to death.
"You little shit!" Mari growled.
Mari was going to kill him. He'd miscalculated. He'd made himself a liability. No, a threat. She was going to fake her death and run—only this time he wasn't an innocent, obedient child. He was an enemy who'd put her life in danger. The beta timeline was about to end, and then Kei and Noburi would die, and the Dragons would soon take the rest. What had made him think that a little foreknowledge would be enough to pull this off?
No. They were counting on him. He couldn't give up. Jiraiya. Captain Zabuza. Itachi. Orochimaru. It was almost harder to list the S-rankers he'd met who hadn't come within an inch of killing him at some point. He was still standing. There was still time.
"Plan..." Hazō choked out, "was to leave you... two choices... Everybody wins... or everybody loses."
Even if Hazō died, Kanna-sensei had his route now. There was no guarantee that Shikigami-sensei would take it (and they didn't have time for Hazō to win his trust as a strategist and persuade him the honest way), but if he did, his group would be out of Fire before Leaf had time to marshal its forces. Then it would just be Captain Zabuza, chasing them through a series of countries that were either outright hostile to village ninja or at least tolerant of anonymous ninja travellers who didn't cause trouble. They'd have to figure out their own way across the ocean, but senior jōnin would know the "terrain" and Mist's patrol routes, and how to take advantage of the fact that water didn't hold tracks. If they managed to make it as far as Neck, their sheer numbers would give them weight in negotiations with the local clans, and if they managed to secure any alliances, even Captain Zabuza might be forced to back off instead of starting a war on the wrong side of the world.
"After what you just pulled," Mari said through her teeth, "I'm struggling to see one single reason why I shouldn't just kill you and be on my way."
"I do," Hazō said.
Mari stepped back. Hazō fell to his knees.
"You get one shot. Tell me why I should let you live, ten words or less."
Hazō slowly levered himself up, his hand instinctively reaching for his throat as if to make sure it was still intact.
He could do it in six.
"My mother thinks you're a monster."
Hazō had seen Mari at her most vulnerable, and that was the only reason he didn't miss the tiny flicker of raw emotion that crossed her face.
He hadn't been sure, until the last second, that the words would mean anything to Mari. He'd spent enough time with her and Ami to have an inkling of the horrors that Mist I&S specialists faced on every mission, body and mind. Nobody who couldn't shrug off mere criticism from a distant colleague, however harsh, would survive to become an I&S jōnin. Yet for some reason, Kurosawa Hana had been able to plunge Mari into crippling misery in a single conversation. For some reason, even though he knew they'd never been close, Mum's opinion had weight. And much as he hated it, right now he needed Mari to be reeling, because if she cut off his speech too soon, it was all over.
"She calls you the Heartbreaker," he pressed on, "a hollow mockery of a human being who cares about no one but herself and ruins lives for fun. She thinks you could never look after another human being unless you were exploiting them so you could feel good about yourself.
"You're not supposed to be the kind of woman who signs up for Shikigami-sensei's plan instead of running to save herself at the first opportunity, or when she sees just how terrible a home the Swamp of Death will make. You're not supposed to be the kind of woman who dedicates her prodigious talents to helping children who've got nothing to offer her cope with shame and homesickness and terror and despair. That says to me that my mother's wrong. You're not the Heartbreaker right now—or at least, you're trying not to be.
"You can run away on your own. It might even be the best decision for your personal survival. But you'll be alone, maybe forever. You know exactly where that leads."
Slowly, so as not to trigger Hazō-killing jōnin reflexes, he held out his hand.
"Or you could join us. My team's purpose isn't just to survive. It's to build loyalty and trust. Eventually, something more. It's to find a better reason to live than killing people before they can kill us."
He let a hint of the warmth, of the love and longing he felt for the Mari he'd left behind, flow into his voice.
"Be one of us, Inoue Mari. Earn loyalty and trust. Eventually, something more. Find a better reason to live.
"I know part of you thinks that's foolish and naive. I know you didn't get this far by believing things just because they sounded nice. But I also know that you just saw me overturn the fates of twenty-seven ninja with nothing more than the pair of genin I was randomly assigned. Lend me your strength, the strength of a woman who walked through hell and came out a jōnin, and together we will work miracles. Isn't that a better gamble than seeing if you can beat the Heartbreaker with no one but yourself to fight for?"
Mari didn't move.
"Who are you?" she whispered. "Really?"
Hazō gave a conqueror's smile. "I'm Hazō. Son of Hana and Shinji. Formerly of Hidden Mist. It's just that I didn't realise how much I was still holding back."
Mari held his gaze. Her eyes were bright green.
Hazō would never know, but he was sure that in that moment, they had an entire duel of interrogation under Truth Lost in the Fog.
But a flowchart was practically a list, Hazō's jōnin-tier specialisation (at least until he got sealing back), and if you couldn't lie, then you couldn't be caught in a lie either.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," Mari said as she took Hazō's hand. "The chronicles will record this as the moment Inoue Mari went certifiably insane—or they would if I was such a lousy ninja that my name ended up known to history.
"So what happens now, Captain Hazō?"
"Now, Inoue," Hazō said as he felt his fingers close around victory, "we finish gathering the team and start working miracles."
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Chapter 594: Asuma's Intriguing Treasure Hunt and the Economic WMD at the End of It
"Good morning, Hazō," Asuma said, strolling up to the Sunset Gate of Leaf with three ANBU behind him. "This is mysterious."
"Good morning, sir," Hazō said. He had been leaning on the gate post but he pushed himself upright with a bump of his shoulder. "Thank you for being willing to join me outside the office." He turned and walked out the gate as Asuma came even with him. The two men (and the three masked killers trailing behind them) sauntered down the western road that would eventually lead to Tanzaku Gai.
"You mentioned it was a high-security meeting," Asuma said.
"Yes, and also my presentation includes some exhibits that are difficult to bring to the Tower."
Asuma raised an eyebrow. "Truly? As freely as the Gōketsu use storage scrolls, that surprises me."
"You'll understand when we get there," Hazō said drily. "Meanwhile, I figured I would take you up on your offer of advice if it's still open."
"Of course. What may I help with?"
"First off, I have a feeling that Orochimaru is going to kidnap my Aunt Ren."
Asuma's eyes widened. "He's going to what?"
Hazō shrugged. "I don't have definitive proof and the details relate to bloodline secrets so I can't talk about them. It's possible that I'm wrong and I simply misinterpreted his words, so this is just a heads-up."
"I..." Asuma trailed off and was silent for a couple of paces. "Thank you? I'll send someone to the meeting with a quiet warning." He turned around and flashed handtalk at the ANBU who were trailing along just far enough back to not overhear a conversation spoken quietly. An instant later, one of them sprinted away.
"Thank you for taking me seriously, sir," Hazō said, smiling. "Moving to an issue that's a little closer to home: Ruka. Is her punishment based purely on her handling of Akane's death"—Hazō was very proud of himself for keeping 99% of the anger out of his voice—"or is it her general performance, or is it something else?"
"It's a combination of things," Asuma said. "Why do you ask?"
"If it's purely, or even mostly, about Akane, then I respectfully suggest that it's harsher than it needs to be. The exile you described is an eventual death sentence, and if she survives long enough she'll go mad from loneliness. Much as I have some...strong feelings about Ruka, Akane wouldn't want her punished to that extent."
Asuma smiled. "Akane truly was a good woman."
"She was. This way, sir." Hazō led Asuma off the road and into the woods. "I'm trying to continue following her moral guidance. Now, about Ruka?" He winced inwardly at the last words; they had come out too clipped, sharp enough to be an insult.
Asuma failed to acknowledge the cut. "I appreciate your concern," he said, smiling and offering a gracious nod. "I am not in the habit of allowing Clan Heads to interfere with or override my choices regarding disciplinary measures—that would be a terrible precedent—but you are tangentially involved in this case, so I'm happy to listen while you share your thinking."
Well, that could have gone better. Granted, it could have gone a lot worse, too.
"It feels to me as though exiling Ruka doesn't help Leaf," Hazō said, thanking Mari for the words she had suggested when they had prepared for this meeting yesterday.
"Remember to use 'I' statements," she had said. 'I feel X', 'I would like Y'. If you say to him 'you are being unwise' then you are asserting a fact and telling him that he's wrong. It's confrontational and it inspires him to react in a confrontational way, which makes him less likely to give you what you want. If you say 'I feel like it would be better to do X', then you're expressing an opinion. He can explain why he's doing Y instead of X, he can ask for more information about why you feel that way, and perhaps can be convinced by that information...lots of things. It gives the conversation more room to breathe without locking anyone into a particular position."
Granted, she'd first given him that speech years ago and he had lost track of how many times she had repeated it since then. Still, it was good advice.
"I don't know if Ruka was a field ninja on temporary stand-down or if that was her permanent billet," Hazō continued. "Still, her being exiled is one fewer ninja that Leaf can call on in an emergency. Heck, it's one fewer ninja that Noburi can draw chakra from in order to enable the training of Leaf's active-duty ninja. I feel like your plan for the Gōketsu / Hagoromo issue would fit very well here: Ruka doesn't like clanless, doesn't like Gōketsu, doesn't like civilians, or whatever? Fine. Make her do till'n'fill missions supervised by KEI ninja. It's a punishment because I'm sure she regards till'n'fills as beneath her, but it also gives her exposure to clanless and hopefully humanizes them to her. It might help her get past her bigotry and even if it doesn't it still has her contributing in useful ways. If it works for clans, surely it could work for an individual?"
"Hm." Asuma pursed his lips, nodding thoughtfully. "That's an interesting suggestion. It raises some issues..." He thought for another few steps. "I'll consider it. Thank you for the idea."
"Thank you for listening, sir. Speaking of the Hagoromo..."
Asuma chuckled. "Yes?"
Hazō sighed. "I thought about what you said, and you're right. I think that Hagoromo Ritsuo is a bigot and a terrible person who abuses his power. On the other hand, he's also served Leaf loyally for years and he and his clan have given comfort to many people over the generations through their sacred rituals and duties. I'm tired of this feud. I may not like him, but I don't want to fight him either. I shouldn't have destroyed his knife and he shouldn't have funded those plays in order to smear my family in the public eye."
Hazō didn't mean a one of those words, not truly. Well, he meant the part about Ritsuo being wrong to fund the plays, but actually giving up the desire to grind to dust Ritsuo and his hatred over everything and everyone who wasn't exactly like him? That was nowhere in the cards short of Hazō getting a chunk of his brain carved away. Still, he recognized the political necessity and could act it out. He could even give up actively attempting harm against the Hagoromo, provided that they did the same and Ritsuo never again insulted Hazō or anyone Hazō cared about. For right now, however, he needed to look like a meek little lamb who had mended his ways.
Is Hazō able to convince Asuma that Hazō is not just willing but eager to bury the hatchet with the Hagoromo?
Asuma nodded soberly. "Those are very mature words, Hazō."
"Thank you, sir. You asked me for suggestions on how to bring the clans together. I think you're right that we need to get to know one another better in order to form friendships and generally personalize each to each. I've seen it with Noburi and Neji; Neji started off hating Noburi and now I think he's mellowed."
Asuma's eyebrows went up and he visibly suppressed a smile. "Oh? Do tell."
"They bicker like an old married couple," Hazō said, grinning. "There's no real heat to it these days."
"Huh," Asuma said. "Interesting. Do you have specific thoughts on what to do between your clans?"
"I'm thinking we form teams, each consisting of a Hagoromo, a Gōketsu, and a neutral third party leader and observer. We send them out on long-duration till'n'fill missions. You remember Mari's presentation about the Ministry—let's do that. We'll send these teams out for a week or even two at a time. They can do a circuit, helping civilian towns with whatever is needed. They'll be living under field conditions, and that tends to make people bond." He chuckled. "Noburi and Kei and I didn't get along in the beginning, but living in the wilds together fixed that."
"And now you would go pretty damn far for them?" Asuma asked, his eyes twinkling.
Hazō grinned back. "I would indeed go pretty damn far for them."
"It's an interesting idea, Hazō, and you're right that it ties in well with the Ministry's study. I don't have any objections offhand, but let me review the details before I commit to anything. I'll need to check on need and availability fir...what is that?"
"Hm?" Hazō said, not making any sort of effort to hide the fact that he knew exactly what the jewel-like glint of light was. "Gosh, Lord Hokage. I have no idea what that gleaming jewel-like light could be. Why don't we check?" He gestured towards the source of the light with an 'after you' sweep of his arm.
Asuma looked at him with narrowed eyes. Hazō allowed the grin to split his face open but said nothing until Asuma finally sighed and went to investigate.
What he found was a fist-sized sapphire propped up between two tree roots. A Harumitsu's Outstanding World-Saver seal had been wedged underneath it, causing the sapphire to sparkle brightly so that it couldn't possibly be missed by anyone walking nearby.
Asuma studied the object carefully before picking it up.
"Hazō," he asked slowly. "Is this a statue of me, made from a single sapphire?"
Hazō peered over his shoulder. "Now that you mention it, I believe it is. Fascinating. I wonder how that could have ended up there? Well, no matter. Let's keep walking." He turned and led the Hokage deeper into the woods.
Asuma studied him for a moment, then slipped the statue into his pocket and followed after.
Fifty feet farther on, Hazō came to a halt in an unremarkable patch of forest. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth, heel to toe, heel to toe, while humming with exaggerated lack of gorm.
"What's going on, Hazō?" Asuma asked, his voice getting more suspicious. "Why are we stopping?"
"Hm? Oh, no reason, sir. This just seems like such an attractive piece of the Land of Fire, I thought I'd stop and appreciate it."
Asuma gave him a narrow glare and carefully surveyed their surroundings. When he saw the glint of light next to a nearby tree he relaxed. He let out a sigh and walked over with the air of a man who knows he's about to be pranked but is playing along.
Sitting on the moss beneath a forest giant was a small leather money pouch, fawn-brown and fresh from the tanner's shop. Another HOWS seal had been placed above it to make sure it didn't get missed.
"Oh, gosh!" Hazō said. "Look at that! Someone dropped their money pouch. You should definitely take that, sir. You're better equipped to get it back to the rightful owners."
Asuma gave Hazō another speaking look before picking up the pouch and rolling its contents onto his palm.
The contents were a dozen expertly-cut gemstones ranging in size from 'pinky nail' to 'walnut'. They formed a spectrum from completely clear to a rich blue deeper than the vast majority of stones available in Leaf.
"Wow, someone sure was careless to drop that," Hazō said, his expression still completely absent of gorm. "I sure hope they didn't have a dozen equally careless companions with them who dropped their own pouches."
Asuma's eyes were still narrowed but his lip twitched in amusement. He looked around and, sure enough, there was another HOWS seal glinting a short distance into the woods. He walked over and found another pouch, this one larger than the last. He tucked it into his jacket, looked until he spotted the next beacon, and followed it.
The strange little party followed a trail of light and wealth through the forest. The pouches of gems got larger and larger, each of them packed to the brim with uncut stones. The first pouch had been carefully curated to contain cut stones in a spectrum of colors, but the subsequent pouches were more about quantity than presentation; the stones were uncut and of various colors, some of them streaky instead of an even suffusion. The sixth 'pouch' was a sack the size of a feedbag, and by that point Asuma needed to start putting things in a storage seal.
"You're not going to tell me what this is about, are you?" Asuma asked as he picked up the seventh sack. His voice was amused and slightly exasperated.
"I have no idea what you mean, sir," Hazō said with wide-eyed and patently false innocence. "Although I think there's only a few more of these sacks and that the trail might end somewhere informative."
Asuma snorted, rolled his eyes, and set off for the next stop on the little treasure hunt.
The twelfth and final sack was on the edge of a clearing, and it weighed about half as much as Asuma himself. The man untied the top and looked in to find stacks upon stacks of crystals and gemstones. They were uncut and jagged, wildly varying in size, and there was even some gem dust mixed in. They looked like the sort of refuse that happened when you smashed a large gem with a hammer.
"Okay, we're at the end of the trail," Asuma said. "Fess up. Where did you get all these?"
"I made a bunch of gemstones," Hazō said, "but it's fiddly and time-consuming, so I only put a lot of effort in with the statue of you and that first pouch. After that, I just made a single really big crystal, doped it without worrying too much, and then smashed it with a hammer to get the smaller stones."
"You...made a bunch of gemstones," Asuma said. He looked down at the enormous sack. "You made this many gemstones."
Hazō shrugged.
"Huh," Asuma said.
"If it helps, the actually valuable thing is over there," Hazō said, jerking his thumb towards the clearing.
"I'm standing in front of probably eighty pounds of sapphires but the valuable thing is over there?" Asuma said, amused.
Hazō rolled his eyes. "There's a storage seal on the side of the bag. Seal it up and come look."
Asuma harumphed at the lèse-majesté but he did in fact seal the gems away and follow behind Hazō.
This clearing hadn't been there two days ago. It owed its existence to Hazō, Mari, Kagome-sensei, and Noburi applying several Force Wall saws and a lot of explosives in order to prepare a place for their demonstration. Once it was clear, they had brought a KEI ninja out to cast a Massive and Rapid Infrastructure jutsu and then sent her home with no answers to why they wanted a random chunk of wall on this random spot.
The MaRI wall, originally a hundred and fifty feet long, was gone. In its place was a circular berm of sand inside of which...
"What is that?" Asuma asked, frowning as he looked down into the depression. It had been dug into the ground itself with the sand forming a ring around it more to note the location than anything else.
"That's iron," Hazō said. "Well, iron ore. Well, mostly iron ore dust. Not much, probably only eight or ten tons, but it's richer than the vast majority of ore that Leaf has been digging."
Asuma looked up sharply. "You know we've been facing a shortage lately. Two of the nearby mines ran dry. Did you—"
Hazō raised a hand to interrupt his Kage. "We didn't do anything to those mines. Turns out that the granite produced by the Multiple Earth Wall and MaRI jutsu contains a fair amount of iron. Cast one of those jutsu on dirt, they produce real granite instead of a chakra construct. Take that granite apart with the Earthshaping jutsu..." He gestured into the hole.
"The Earthshaping jutsu?" Asuma said with a frown. "That sounds familiar, but I'm not placing it."
"It's a public jutsu from the library," Hazō said. "It lets you manipulate Earth Element material very slowly but very finely. That's what the gemstone statue was for—to prove how precise the detail can get."
Asuma nodded slowly as he worked through the implications. "And you said that you made the sapphires?"
"Yes. Granite is mostly made of sand, but it's got a lot of this stuff in it." He pulled a corundum disk from his pocket and tossed it to his ruler.
Asuma examined it. "Interesting. I've never seen this before. What is it?"
"Cannai named it 'corundum', because it came from the core of the granite. It's hard enough to scratch steel. It's also completely transparent and extremely tough, meaning that we can make window panes out of it. When you mix other things into it you can get different colors—mix in iron and you get sapphires, for example. Mari decided to call it 'doping', as in 'I doped the corundum with iron'."
"Why?" Asuma asked, turning the corundum disk over in his hands absently.
"She claims that it's because it involves mixing a little bit of a foreign material evenly and smoothly into a lot of base material, which is like when you dope a target's drink with a poison or a sedative. Personally, I think she's making a joke about turning rocks into gems is so ridiculous that it's dopey."
Asuma laughed. "We are absolutely calling it that. By order of the Hokage, that shall forevermore be the word for mixing things into corundum in order to make gemstones."
Hazō sighed. "Fine. So far we can only make sapphires. I've tried mixing other things in but it mostly just ends up looking muddy."
"How big can you make them?" Asuma asked.
"As big as you like. Earthshaping is a very weird jutsu. The area the jutsu can affect gets enormously larger as you get more skilled with it. Right now I can affect everything within about a hundred feet of me, and about two hundred feet deep."
"Wow," Asuma said, blinking. "That's enormous."
"Yup. It works on classic Earth Element material—stone, rock, dirt, and so on—and it just barely affects metal. I can only get my chakra into the metal a tiny distance, so I can tear foil sheets off and stick two big pieces together very, very weakly but I can't easily make big, strong objects."
"Can't easily?" Asuma asked, noticing the word.
"Yeah...if I really needed to, I could take lots of sheets of foil and layer them on top of one another, fusing each one as I went. It would let me build an object up from nothing into whatever shape I wanted. It would take a long time, but I could do it. Seriously, a very long time. Like, 'not worth it' long."
Asuma looked into the massive pit. He reached in and scooped up a handful of the iron; it was mostly coarse dust, with bits of larger scraggle here and there. He hefted it, then let it pour slowly back into the rest of the pile.
"It was easier this way," Hazō said. "Instead of forming the iron, I simply pushed it all to this spot and ejected it from the stone. Then I grabbed the corundum out, which made the wall disintegrate. I gathered the sand around this point to help shield the iron dust from the wind, and also because I thought it looked nice."
"You thought it looked nice."
Hazō shrugged.
Asuma snorted. "Fair enough." He glanced down the clearing. "I'm guessing your wall filled this clearing? That would make it something like a hundred and twenty, maybe hundred and fifty feet?"
"One fifty, yes sir."
"And you pulled eight or ten tons of iron out of that."
"Yes sir."
Asuma considered that for a moment and then sat down. His knees looked a little wobbly as he did.
"Hazō, this is incredible," he said after a few moments. "It comes out as dust, meaning we don't have to break apart big chunks and we can move it in whatever sizes we want. Heck, forget moving it—we don't need to ship iron anymore. We could produce it onsite, in huge quantities."
Hazō waffled one hand. "Yes and no. First, I already mentioned that it's very slow. It took me something like sixteen hours to make all this stuff, not counting the time to build the clearing. It's also a huge chakra hog. Noburi needed to refill me multiple times while I was working on it. And, according to the jutsu scroll, it's like Shadow Clone in that if you run out of chakra it will hurt you."
"I see." Asuma frowned again, clearly trying to remember something, then shook his head.
"Plus, it takes a lot of practice," Hazō continued. "It gives you the ability to 'see' what's inside the earth, and to move stuff around, but when I first started I was practically blind. Everything was so fuzzy and I couldn't really tell what I was 'looking' at. Likewise, my 'fingers' were fat and clumsy so I couldn't do anything particularly detailed. I have combat jutsu that I haven't practiced as much as Earthshaping." Being honest, he hadn't practiced very much with any of his combat jutsu, but there was no need to mention that.
"I see," Asuma said again. "Hazō, why are you bringing this to me? It's fascinating, and I'm very grateful that you did, but why? This is the kind of thing that most clans would keep very secret."
Hazō shrugged and smiled. "Because I do, no matter what Noburi tells you, know how to learn. I'm trying to be a team player and show that Gōketsu is a loyal clan. This jutsu is an economic weapon on the same scale as Elemental Mastery. Shoot, forget economic weapons, it's a direct weapon."
He looked out into the forest, thinking, then gestured broadly. "I could destroy this section of the forest if I wanted to. Pull the soil from around the trees' roots, all the trees fall over. I could plow crops under. Divert rivers to cause floods or droughts. I could go to one of our mines and pull all the valuable material up to the surface, dump it in a convenient pile, and put all the miners out of work. Then I could go to someone else's mine and push all the valuable material far underground so that the mine produces nothing but rock. Or I could simply collapse the mine itself. I could crash the gem market. The Aburame's telescopes? I can make lenses that are larger and clearer than what they can produce.
"The village of Rock is underground, right? I could drop it on their heads. Do any of your enemies live in stone houses? I could turn those houses to dust while the owner was asleep in his bed."
He held back one last weaponization: re-creating the Collapse in miniature. There was no reason to open not-so-old wounds by mentioning the event, and there was part of him that really wanted to drop the Hagoromo clan manor into a giant pit, so best if that idea was never spoken aloud. Not that Asuma wouldn't put it together if he did it, but no reason to help.
"That's...a lot," Asuma said. "I'm honored that you told me. Leaf can get a great deal of benefit from this."
"Which is the major part of why I'm bringing it to you, sir. One thing, though: I feel that the Gōketsu should benefit too. This is our discovery, our efforts, and we deserve something for that. I would prefer that it not be instantly given out to every other clan."
Asuma nodded slowly and rubbed his neck. "I agree with that completely, and I'm certainly not going to spread it around. On the other hand, if it's in the library then it's only a matter of time before someone else finds it. We'll need to make sure that the Gōketsu get their profits quickly, and that you do it without harming Leaf or her people."
"That works for me, sir."
"Excellent. All right, let's head back and start putting this to use." He stood up, took one final look at the iron, shook his head in bemusement, and headed back towards Leaf at a fast jog. Hazō fell in beside him and the ANBU trailed along behind.
"First suggestion," Asuma said. "Take those gems and get them properly cut, then we'll send caravans to Sand, Cloud, and the various minor nations to unload them. Heck, even Mist. You can do it on your own and keep the profit if you wish, but if you would care to partner up then I can classify it as an A-rank mission. I'll tap into Tower intelligence assets in order to find optimal markets and guarantee favorable prices. In exchange, the Tower takes forty percent. Acceptable?"
For a brief moment, Hazō considered haggling. Then he remembered that he could literally create gemstones out of dirt and decided that it wasn't worth it.
"Acceptable, sir."
"Excellent! Now, you mentioned that you could tank a mine. I know that you have a great deal going on with the Dragons and such, and I don't want to distract you from that work, but there is one particular mine that it would be very useful if it went dry..."
Author's Notes: Obviously, I didn't get to the Ino scene. I'm leaving voting closed; @Velorien can write the Ino scene or he can reopen voting as he prefers.
Additionally, Hazō and Asuma went back to the Tower and talking in more detail about the abilities of the Earthshaping jutsu. Asuma had wanted you to go into Rock and trash one of their mines but, after learning the details of what would be required, Asuma regretfully decided that it wasn't practical. He has dropped the idea.
This update covered a day and a half. (I think. I need to check the timeline. If it was more then I'll increase the XP award.)
Paneihei glanced at Hazō, then back to the pair of burly pangolins guarding the grand gates to the heart of the Conclave. The pangolins had erected the megastructure just outside of the Pangolin city of Higata in the same style as the rest of their buildings. The central mass was a dome, with the upper half sawed off to expose a central courtyard deep within, studded by thick, conical guard towers in key points around the dome's perimeter. The open-top design almost reminded Hazō of a Chūnin Exams arena.
"This is the Dog Summoner," Paneihei said, "a representative of a powerful clan of the Seventh Path who has traveled long to get here. The Pangolin and Toad Summoners accompany him."
"The two of them are welcome beyond these gates," the nameless pangolin guard said. "The Dog Summoner is forbidden entry."
Team Uplift had selected their arrival location so that their escorts would have to take them through the Conclave's massive main gate, built to accommodate creatures like Pantsā or Gamabunta (who Kei and Noburi claimed were even bigger than even the largest normal pangolins). While they could easily have landed in the central courtyard, storming in through the gates let them quickly capture the attention of the traders that spent their time outside the Conclave's walls to escape Pangolin's oppressive architecture.
Hazō looked at Kei. She shook her head minutely. While the team could have forced their way past the two guards, disrespecting Pangolin law so blatantly would at best alienate them.
"I come here with the weight of three clans' leaders at my back," Hazō said. "I know I haven't been explicitly invited. I come bearing gifts for the hosts, in thanks for your graciousness, but I will not be refused."
"Taxiarchos Pankratos has affirmed that you may not pass," the guard said. "He is coming to address you."
Hazō hadn't memorized the ranks used by the Pangolin military, but Kei and Ruri had both warned him about the Taxiarchos. He was a high-ranking officer with a decorated field career, yet also politically adept enough for Pantsā to trust him with managing Conclave attendants from around the continent. The whispering of the crowd of mixed summons behind them intensified. Hazō straightened up slightly. He'd drawn everyone's attention for a reason, now he needed to command it.
"I expect he will not waste my time for long, then," Hazō said.
Hazō, Kei, and Noburi waited barely a minute outside the grand gates before they heard the sound of scales clacking on stone behind it. The gates started to swing open, pushed from within by giant pangolin attendants. Of course the Taxiarchos would rob them of their dramatic entrance.
The Taxiarchos rolled out through the entry gate, spraying dust behind himself as his scales churned through the dirt. He crossed the distance between them in seconds, unfurling from his roll at barely five meters away and crossing the rest of the distance with a pangolin's slow, meticulous walk.
Taxiarchos Pankratos was not one of the giant pangolins that easily towered over two stories high. Head-to-tail, he may have been barely half that, but pangolins walked so hunched over that he was barely any taller than Hazō. He unfurled more as he reached a comfortable distance from Team Uplift. White, vertical rectangles of paint marked scores of scales around his body, and he had replaced many more scales with steel plates. The Taxiarchos wore two steel bracers around either forearm. Each bracer had dozens of stiff, maroon feathers hanging from it. Condor feathers, Hazō realized. Soaked in dried blood.
"Thank you for your presence, Taxiarchos," Hazō said, lacing his fingers together for a moment as Kei had instructed. "I have brought gifts for you and for the pangolins that have worked so hard to host this Conclave." He unlaced his fingers, then pulled a pair of storage disks from his belt and unsealed two small crates. He and Noburi quickly opened each of them to reveal a half-dozen driver ants, carefully preserved at the moment of their deaths.
The Taxiarchos didn't react at all, though the contingent of guards behind him flared their nostrils as they spread out to flank their leader.
"We do not accept bribes," Taxiarchos Pankratos said. "The Dog Clan is not a part of the Conclave, and you are not an authorized representative. You do not even have leave to set foot on Pangolin land, far less this place. You will leave. Now."
Hazō looked up at the Taxiarchos, firmly, projecting his voice so everyone in the crowd could hear him. "I called for the Conclave's creation. I invented the trade network that sustains it, even now that everyone has forgotten its original purpose. Of course, I am immensely grateful for the Pangolin Clan's graciousness in hosting all the members of the Conclave, and with the Conclave's new purpose as the nexus of my trade network, you know that Dog is as much a part of the Conclave as any other clan, even if our trades used to happen through third parties."
The Taxiarchos flexed his hands, clicking his claws against one another. "Because of the importance of the Conclave, I have been assigned to keep this place's security. As a part of my duty, I cannot let you within here. Begone from this place, immediately."
The whispering of the summon crowd behind them grew louder as some of them pressed forwards to see the confrontation between the Dog Summoner and the Pangolin general. Hazō didn't look himself, but he saw Noburi glancing to where the Toad Sages were crunching on fried horseflies as they watched.
"If the issue is the security of the Conclave, I assure you that I mean no harm to anyone within. I only intend to speak with people and engage in trade, the same thing as any other representative of a Seventh Path clan. As Dog already trades in the network, there's nothing new. Still, you can't keep me from the Conclave. I come here with the blessing of three Bosses of various clans. That overrides your mandate in an international place like this. This is my place to enter, not yours to forbid me from."
The Taxiarchos interlaced his claws together, making the peace sign. "You are forbidden. Try to enter at your own risk."
"Has Pantsā forbidden me entry?" Hazō asked.
"No," the Taxiarchos said, "but nor has he allowed it. This is not a place for any citizen of Pangolin to enter, much less any foreigner."
Hazō glanced between Kei and Noburi.
This isn't working, Noburi seemed to say with his eyes.
Hazō raised an eyebrow at them, hoping they'd understand his message. Switch tactics?
They nodded.
"You can't keep me from it," Hazō said. "You know my reputation. When I was barely inducted into the ranks of human sealmasters, I revolutionized your people's warfare. It's been years since then, and I've had plenty of time to invent even more powerful tools. You can't realistically stop me from doing whatever I want, unless you go begging to Pantsā to save you."
"Then go ahead," the Taxiarchos said, spreading his claws slightly to gesture to the giant gate behind him, blocked by six pangolin guards with their claws still lowered.
"You don't think I can't easily get past you all?" Hazō said, trying to seem bemused.
"I think you're a coward and a weakling," the Taxiarchos said. "You profited from our generosity, then turned around and sold our techniques on the Human Path, barely staying within the letter of the law. You can't even say that you care about the law, when you personally violated your agreements and refused to fulfill your end of the deal you made with us while still reaping the benefits of it. You are an oathbreaker of the highest order, one who not only breaks his word, but one who backstabs his erstwhile allies on his way out."
The Taxiarchos took a step closer, and Hazō barely kept himself from lashing out at the implied threat between the pangolin's unambiguous anger and his unsheathed claws.
"Personally," the Taxiarchos said, in a stage whisper that, frustratingly, was no doubt still telepathically transmitted to every member of the crowd behind Hazō, "I think no real warrior would have done what you did. Friends of mine died on the border with Hyena because you withdrew the support that you promised us, and hundreds or thousands more of our people have died because of threats we could long have subdued. This isn't the mark of a warrior whose scales are marred by the grooves of enemy talons. Your actions reveal you as an honorless weakling."
The Taxiarchos stepped back, letting his booming voice resume its normal tenor. "I cannot let an oathbreaker beyond these gates, not especially one so remorseless as you. I haven't heard a whisper of an apology for the wrongs you did unto the Pangolin Clan when you unilaterally broke your vows with us. If you wish to test the hardness of our scales and the sharpness of our claws, I will freely invite you to discover the difference between those that cheat and betray their way to power, and those that have earned their marks on the battlefield."
Hazō grit his teeth. In front of a crowd of Seventh Path denizens that believed contracts to be sacred, the Taxiarchos had pulled up exactly what Hazō most needed forgotten: the fact that Hazō had broken a contract with the Pangolin Clan. Still, Hazō could see that the Taxiarchos had made a mistake. He had anchored his objection against Hazō's personal strength for some reason, so Hazō could still salvage this by beating the Taxiarchos into the dirt.
But… Mari had vetoed the use of MARS at the Conclave with so many summons and summoners around, and Enma had insisted that Hazō fight nonlethally. There were six Pangolins flanking Taxiarchos Pankratos. Could the three of them beat a group of Pangolin elites two-to-one without so many of their tools?
"I don't want to fight you, Taxiarchos," Hazō said. " I don't want to hurt you, or anyone else in the Conclave."
"Then leave," the Taxiarchos said. "There is nothing more to say."
With that, the senior Pangolin turned away, exposing his back to the ninja for barely a second as his retinue closed ranks around him and continued to glare at Hazō.
Was that it? Had Hazō traveled all this distance, sacrificed the lives of his Horizon Chaser allies, just to be turned away at the door? No, he couldn't let that be. Even without MARS, he could still use a Banshee seal to distract them, and the guard pangolins would be too large to dodge Kei's Goo Bombs. Noburi could use Hōzuki's Mantle to provide front-line cover while Hazō and Kei-
"Ah, for the lov'a-"
The Taxiarchos suddenly stooped as a small, green lump landed on top of his head.
The Toad Sage Fukasaku peered down from his perch and used the side of his stick to whack the Taxiarchos on the side of the head.
"You got a grudge. Great, good for you for getting your tongue twisted up over not bein' able to kill those mangy Hyenas as efficiently as you could have. Your boss hasn't officially forbidden Hazō from coming because Pantsā knows that he needs him."
The Taxiarchos swung a claw up. "You pesky thing-"
The Taxiarchos was suddenly yanked off balance by an invisible force, and Fukasaku jumped off.
"Always messing with my perches," Fukasaku said. "Always nagging. Never letting me sit around and relax and enjoy the sun."
"Idiot, you know better than to sun yourself on some pompous pangolin ponce," Shima said from her perch on the Taxiarchos' arm. "Anyway, you heard him. Pantsā can't give the order himself because of the reasons you said, but I sure can. You're going to let the Dog Summoner into the Conclave, and you're going to tell your people to do the same. And you'll either do it now, or in an unknown number of minutes, after I've plucked off an unknown number of your scales."
Two of the Pangolin guards lunged in towards Shima, and Fukasaku turned into a blur. A moment later, both guards had collapsed and Fukasaku held his stick against the back of one of the Pangolin's necks.
"Oh, don't threaten him with that, you forgetful old bint. Don't you remember that they see it as a sign of honor to lose their scales?"
"I know well enough that they think being mutilated is a mark of pride, you geriatric fool," Shima shot back. "But it's one thing to lose a scale, and another to be stripped naked because you were too stupid to read between the lines. Which, well, maybe he is. So, Taxiarchos, what's it going to be?"
The Taxiarchos had stiffened up when Fukasaku had taken down two of his people, and stayed stiff as Shima fixed him with a vicious stare. The seconds stretched out. Finally, he nodded. "Very well. I won't cause my people further harm by forcing them to stand against you. I will send a message to Pantsā immediately, and we shall see how he feels about you overriding his authority in his own domain."
Shima scoffed as she jumped off of the Taxiarchos's arm and started to slowly hop through the grand gates. "Go ahead. Maybe when the big guy answers your humiliation with silence, you'll finally figure out what's going on here. C'mon, kids."
Hazō looked hesitantly for a moment between the pangolin guards still flanking the Toad Sages, but at a gesture from the Taxiarchos, the guards forcibly laced their claws together and stood still. Slowly, Hazō and his team followed the Toad Sages into the Conclave hall.
To gain access to the Conclave, Hazō is going to have to beat Taxiarchos Pankratos!
Hazō starts with a simple bribery, trying to convince the Taxiarchos to let him through. The Taxiarchos defends Hazō's Rapport attack with Presence.
Ah, unfortunate. Close, but the Taxiarchos won't be swayed by Hazō's bribery. He answers back with a Presence attack, demanding that Hazō leave. Hazō will attempt to argue back, using his own Presence:
Taxiarchos (Presence): ?? - 3 = ??
Hazō (Presence): 20 + 3 (tag "Planned It All Out" – he prepared his justifications for why he's coming here ahead of time) + 6 = 29
Hazō takes 3 social stress! Unfortunately, the Taxiarchos isn't going to be swayed by cajoling or sheer assertiveness, not at least with Hazō's current force of personality. Instead, Hazō switches track again. While the stats don't quite back it up, narratively, this is the place for Hazō to try intimidation.
Hazō (Intimidation): I don't know why I'm rolling this + 6 = 11
Taxiarchos (Resolve): His Resolve isn't as good as yours, but it doesn't really matter at all - 6 = ??
Not even the slightest chance of working. Not only is the Taxiarchos not scared at all by Hazō's veiled threats, but he's going to turn it around on Hazō – invite Hazō to attack him, and force Hazō to back down and look weak. The mechanics don't officially support it, but as I envision this, the Taxiarchos is going to invite Hazō to attack as a performance to the crowd (Presence), which Hazō will defend against by defusing the situation (Rapport).
Taxiarchos Pankratos (Presence): ?? - 3 = ??
Hazō (Rapport) 20 + 11 (FiF) + 4 (tag "I Made Your Weapons") + 3 = 38
Hazō barely squeaks out a defense. Unfortunately, this is not going well for Hazō, and he's surviving on the margins. The Toad Sages will step in at this point and bail Hazō out. This isn't a catastrophic failure, but let's hope that Hazō can carry himself a bit better if the Toad Sages aren't right there during another confrontation.
o-o-o
With their… greetings made to the Pangolin leaders, the team's next target was the condors. Conjura's ninjutsu and martial might was legendary beyond even other clan bosses, though Kei had been quick to point out that very few other bosses had fought as extensively as Conjura had in the past century. Regardless, with their current plans, the Dragon Crusade would need Conjura's assistance.
"That wretched creature is no Condor! If the Pantokrator stayed her execution long enough for her to still survive, she will be remembered only for her flaws, and for the failings of the era she ruled over."
Of course, Conjura and the Wings of Liberty wouldn't be welcome at the Conclave. The Pangolins would never let any Condor freedom fighter in their territory live, since that would imply that the condors weren't already as free as possible. And, of course, only the most loyal and reliable of Condors would be allowed at the Conclave. Not only would the condors refuse to acknowledge Conjura and company, but Conjura would never accept those condors as representing her will.
Murderer.
"Conjura is a villain, who drove the condors under her to hatred and rebellion. It's only-" Hazō barely caught the hitch where the condor trade representative realized who Hazō was. "It's only because of the Pangolin Empire's benevolent rule that my people are now truly free!"
Of course, Hazō even acknowledging that the condors were a species worthy of specific tribute would earn the Pangolins' ire. Still, Constarainu the lumber merchant was among the so-called "Elite", condors that had "earned" the right to have their wings unbound by the Bonds of Civilization, and so was one of the best choices for Hazō's political plays. Most of the other condors representing the former Condor Clan were likewise wearing their wings freely by their side, though none of them would dare to stretch them for the fear that a Pangolin might see them getting ready to take flight without proper authorization.
A few of the condors still had rope binding their wings across their chests. Hazō resisted the urge to point out how just how free Constarainu's people were.
Slaver.
"Ah, I had no contact with the Eastern side of the continent except through the Pangolins, until recently," Hazō said. "I merely wished to mention that in my travels to the far, far western clans, I found that even their rulers had been impressed by Conjura's martial feats. I don't mean to dredge up old wounds."
"There are no old wounds to dredge up," Constarainu said haughtily. "You…"
Internally, Hazō winced. He could only navigate the situation so delicately. Constarainu was already visibly struggling with cognitive dissonance at realizing who Hazō was. According to the narrative Constarainu had to push, Hazō was the person responsible for Constarainu's "liberation". Followed through fully, Constarainu should have been thanking Hazō for enabling the slaughter of Constarainu's friends and family, or admonishing Hazō for not helping the Pangolins perpetrate another genocide.
Egg smasher.
"Here," Hazō said, bowing quickly and offering a small Earthshaped statue of a jade nest, studded with amethyst around its rim. With the clan's finances stretched thin for the winter, he'd had to buy scraps of jade from sculptors and gem dust from jewelers to combine with Earthshaping to make an adequate tribute. While the jade had joined together nicely, the gems hadn't, leaving them cloudy and opaque.
"A gift for your time and attention, and an apology for getting off on the wrong foot," Hazō said.
Constarainu looked down at the nest in incredulity, then started to raise his wing to strike it out of Hazō's hand. After a second thought, he kept his wings close to his side.
"I don't need to be bribed," he said calmly, though his ruffled neck feathers revealed his anger . "Do you have business with me?"
Of course, Hazō knew the condors would only see it as a taunt, with Hazō mocking them for what he'd taken away from them, with wealth that he earned by their blood. These condors were a lost cause. He couldn't sway them to do anything but follow Pantsā's orders. Instead, he hoped the message came through to the other members of the Conclave that were watching Hazō's arrival. They would get the message: I want to give the condors their home back.
War profiteer.
The Rat Clan's ambassador, Nezesari, seemed particularly important. For some reason, she was more diplomat than merchant, and the other summoners had affirmed that many of their summons respected the tiny brown rat. She'd already seen that the pangolins hated Hazō. Hopefully, seeing Hazō make a public signal like this would open her up to the possibility that Hazō wanted to fix the condors' situation. She was watching the byplay on all fours with her back hunched up. Hazō wished he could understand Rat body language.
The condors had refused everything that Hazō had tried to give. Sympathy for their oppression, support of their leaders, even outright gifts. Could he do anything more here, or should he back off and let word of his attempted apology spread?
He glanced at Noburi, who nodded.
Hazō bowed to Constarainu. "Apologies for any insult I accidentally gave. I look forward to seeing you and your people around the Conclave more in the coming weeks."
Hazō had barely started to turn away when he heard the sound of talons scratching against the floor, and wings fluttering rapidly.
Die!
He looked back to see one of the condors, Confute, rushing him, leaving slipped off Bonds of Civilization in a spool of rope on the ground. Hazō leaped away, raising his arms to get a barrier between himself and the birds' razor sharp talons, only for one of the pangolin guards to tackle the condor to the ground.
The pangolin straightened up, roughly yanking the Condor to her feet by one wing.
"Come now," the pangolin said. "Taxiarchos Pankratos said no more mistakes from you. Fighting in a public space is a three point offense, and removing the Bonds of Civilization is a twelve point offence. To the pole."
The pangolin started to lead the aggressive condor away. Kei inhaled slightly. "The pole is where condors are executed," she said.
The implications snapped into place in Hazō's mind. To the rest of the Conclave, he had just goaded the condors into attacking him. The Pangolins would execute the condor if only to punish Hazō for defying their leader, and it would look like Hazō's fault. No one would believe that Hazō wanted peace and freedom for the condors after this. He had accidentally set a perfect trap for the condors, and the pangolins had gleefully snapped it shut for him.
And another condor would die because of his actions.
The pangolin was still leading the condor away, and Constarainu spat at the ground as they left. "Pathetic creature," he said, addressing Confute's back as another Pangolin came in to firmly grasp her other wing. "The Bonds of Civilization have a purpose. Removing them means you also deserve the punishments for abandoning civilization."
Dozens of Seventh Path denizens were in the room, watching the immediate aftermath of Team Uplift's entrance. Monkeys, Turtles, Porcupines, Otters, Rats, Leopards… they would all see what happened next.
"Uh, Hazō?" Noburi whispered. "Do the thing, please?"
Hazō is trying to carefully flatter the condors, walking the line between pointing out their past so that he can make an apology for everyone else to see, while also not aggravating the Pangolins too much by saying what they want to hide, or aggravating the condors by pointing out what he took away from them. In order, that's going to be a Presence check to sway the Conclave, a Deceit check to hide Hazō's condor sympathies sufficiently from the Pangolin onlookers that they don't feel an immediate need to act and condemn the heretics, and a Rapport check to keep the condors from getting their feathers ruffled in the process. TNs: 30/40/30 checks, not actively opposed.
So, Hazō convinces the other delegates that he may mean well to the condors, but they're on the fence about it, but the Pangolins also clearly see his sympathies as well. And…
Initiative!
Hazō's Alertness: 33 (he's not wearing chakdar since he doesn't want the buzzing to give away any capabilities to the dozens of bystanders around).
Condor's Alertness: (rolls) higher than that.
Nearest Pangolin guard's Alertness: (rolls) higher than both. Fascinating.
Pangolin guardswoman (Claws): ?? - 3 = ??
Condor captive (Athletics – get to Hazou to kill him quickly): ?? - ? (Consequence penalty) - 6 = ??
That's about it, I think.
I've been out the past two weeks, but I'm back now! Somewhat…
We jumped over a lot of the Conclave when our simulations spat out the Akane encounter and we decided to get that done ASAP for various reasons, but I still wanted some parts of the Conclave to get written out. So, here's the first part of a small series of chapters in-filling the Conclave, which will last until Hazō returns to the Conclave again in the quest's main timeline.
Voting is open for @eaglejarl's Sunday chapter. Additionally, for next Thursday, please write a plan with the [Conclave] tag. For example:
[][Conclave] Let It Be
Intervening is too much trouble. Just let the condor get executed and buy some extra gifts to win people over.
This may be in replacement for the plan for the Thursday chapter, or in addition to the plan for the Thursday chapter. Basically, @Velorien will write the Conclave plan if he wants to, or I will if he wants to take the week off. Otherwise, if he wants to write something else, I'll write the Conclave chapter and you'll get two on Thursday.
To anticipate a question, the Toad Sages have historically shown no particular interest in intervening in the Pangolin-Condor situation in general.
"Welcome back, sir. Did you speak to the Hokage about the investigation?"
"Blargh," Hazō said, dropping into his chair. "Yeah, I did."
Gaku sighed in relief. "In that case, sir, it's a delight to see you. Especially to see you without manacles or an ANBU escort. Tea is in the seal to your right."
Hazō shook his head in amusement at his Chancellor's priorities. "Thank you, Gaku. I have no idea what I would do without you."
"I believe you would fetch your own tea, sir."
Hazō snerked, and then he unsealed the tea and poured himself a mug. "Got a lot to go over."
"I await with poiséd brush and bated breath, sir." He was indeed sitting with his brush poised over the page, an attentive and focused expression on his face.
Hazō eyed him narrowly for a moment. "Are you mocking...you know what, never mind. If you are, I don't want to know."
He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk, a sacrilege that he was allowed now that he was the Clan Head and no one could tell him not to.
"I spoke with Asuma," he began. "Long conversation which went extremely well, all things considered." He fell silent, allowing the scent of the tea to fill his nose.
"That's excellent news, sir," Gaku said after several seconds.
"Hm? Oh, right. Yeah, I think I'm getting the hang of this Clan Heading business."
"That, too, is excellent news, sir," Gaku said, as butter adamantly refused to melt in his mouth.
"Hmph. Anyway, I told you before that he offered me tutoring in politics and Clan Head stuff. I asked what exactly he had in mind and I'm honestly not sure how I feel about the answer."
"More or less than you had hoped, sir?"
"I have no earthly idea, if I'm being completely open about it. Anyway, he's thinking that we have tea two or three times a week, a couple hours each session. I ask whatever questions about politics I have that don't violate security, he answers them, and then he tells me the stories that his father used to teach him the political and leadership game. Except he'll actually walk me through the meanings and implications because I'm a grown man getting a fast course in politics instead of a little kid getting bed time stories that will inform the future."
Gaku chuckled. "That does sound more useful, sir."
"Sure does. Anyway, then I asked him about the Fourth's seals. More specifically, I asked him if he thought it was likely that the Fourth combined jutsu and seals to make the bijū-containment seal."
"Interesting. I didn't realize such was possible."
Hazō grimaced and took another sip of his tea. "It shouldn't be. It makes no damn sense. Like, literally, the very idea is nonsensical. Jutsu are a method for convincing reality to do what you want. Seals are a method for exploiting flaws in reality. Jutsu use comparatively enormous amount of chakra. Seals use basically none. Jutsu require an ongoing effort of will to sustain them throughout their duration, even if they only last for a second or two. Seals require concentration to create and to activate but they are self-sustaining between those points. Plenty of jutsu create permanent artifacts, like the granite walls produced by MEW when you cast it on soil. Few seals do that." He shook his head. "It's infuriating."
Gaku, being neither a sealmaster nor a jutsu creator and knowing his own limitations, said nothing.
"Anyway, Asuma said that he had no way of knowing but that it seems reasonable. At which point I asked him whether, on the assumption that the seals do in fact require jutsu creation skills, would he be willing to tutor me?"
"Is he in fact a jutsu creator, sir?"
"He is, yeah. He told me once that he's 'not half the jutsu creator his father was', but I think he might have been sandbagging. Regardless, he said that he doesn't have time to tutor me but he's happy to find me a good tutor and have the Tower pay for the lessons."
"That seems like an excellent compromise, sir."
"It does, doesn't it? Anyway, that was a great lead-in to asking him about this idea I had for research missions, where the Tower pays a sealmaster or jutsu creator to create a specific thing." He grimaced. "Turns out, that's pretty much how it works now. Sure, people can also hire it privately but the Tower does it using the standard mission framework."
"Ah."
"Yeah. Anyway, a bit of a misstep but not the worst. I mentioned that I've been doing a lot of research and after talking with Kagome-sensei I believe I more than have the chops to stand among the best sealmasters in the village." In point of fact, he probably had the chops to stand ahead of them, but let's be humble. "Given that fact, I'd like to get my special jōnin ranking in sealing so that I'm eligible for advanced research missions."
"Oh? What did he say, sir?"
Asuma's eyebrow rose. "Hm. You're confident in your abilities?"
"I am."
"All right then. I'm fine with you taking the test and I'll be glad to promote you if—when you pass." He pursed his lips, thinking. "Orochimaru is likely the best in the village and I suspect I can drag him away from his research for half a day...tomorrow? The next day?"
"Uh..." Ohcrapohcrap. Was there a polite way to say this...? Nope. "Sir, I would prefer literally any other person on the planet as my invigilator. If he's the only candidate then I'd rather not get the rank."
Asuma frowned, his eyes thunderous. "Hazō, are you implying that Orochimaru is somehow—" He failed to hold the straight face and cracked up. "Sorry, sorry," he said, waving a hand. "Forgive me, but I don't get to have a lot of fun in my job. He would be the normal person for something like this, but I know the history you two have and I won't make you test with him. Don't worry, I'll locate someone else. Day after tomorrow? That should give me time to set it up."
"Thank you, sir."
"It was...interesting," Hazō said. "It'll happen day after tomorrow."
"Good news, sir." Gaku studied him for a moment. "You've been very carefully avoiding one topic, sir...?"
Hazō sighed. "Yes, yes, I already said that I talked to him about the investigation into Akane's absence."
"May I ask what he said in response, sir?"
"Sir, there is one more thing..." Hazō said carefully.
Asuma waited patiently before finally prodding, "Yes?"
"The investigation into Akane's absence, sir."
An expression of sympathy settled across Asuma's face. "Hazō," he said, his voice gently, "it's all right to say 'death'. Everyone grieves in their own way and I won't tell you that your way is wrong, but if you'll take a bit of advice from someone who has lost far too many friends...the losses where I clutched tight to false hope were always the hardest to bear. The evidence is very strong that Akane is dead."
"Yes, well, the investigation remains important. Until we see a body we can't know for certain that she's dead, and the risk if she were captured..."
Asuma shuddered. "Yes, I know." He hesitated, then nodded as though making a decision. "I don't normally share any details of ANBU missions, but I will this time. I have an ANBU squad combing Iron for any trace of missing-nin presence that we might be able to track back to Akane's killers. I am not going to send agents directly into the other Hidden Villages to search, but I have the intelligence service throughout this continent keeping their eyes open for anything relevant. Does that help?"
"There is one option that I think we could tap, sir." He licked his lips nervously. "Hidan. He's a cold-blooded killer and he scares the crap out of me, not least because he has my blood, but I think he could help."
This time both of Asuma's eyebrows went up. "Really? Do tell."
"When he captured me on O'Uzu island, he tasted a drop of my blood and informed me that he could now follow me anywhere, and kill me at will. If we could give him a sample of Akane's blood, he might be able to locate her, or at least her body."
"Hazō...you realize it's much more likely that he was boasting? The chakra dispersion problem is a fundamental element of jutsu creation. The sort of long-range effect you're describing is outside any possible scale ever imagined. Yes, certain bloodlines can exceed the normal boundaries of what's possible, but that's usually in a qualitative way, not a quantitative one. The Kotsuzui can make blood clones and no one else can, but their blood clones cannot travel dozens of miles from their progenitor."
"Would it hurt, sir? Again, you know the stakes if she was captured."
Asuma studied Hazō for several seconds, then nodded. "All right." One finger rose to cut off Hazō's suddenly hopeful expression. "But! I am not having him anywhere near Leaf. By all reports the man is insane, powerful, and far too murder-happy. I'm not taking chances. Akatsuki's headquarters is in Hidden Rain. My intelligence on them is limited, but it suggests that many of them wander quite a lot, so it's unlikely that Hidan will be in residence at any given moment. I'll have Ami approach them. She will ask whomever is there to ask Hidan to come to a meeting. Not in Fire. Somewhere neutral." He thought for a moment. "Hot Springs, I think. It's a relaxing and luxurious environment that will help to keep stress as low as possible. If he agrees to it then I will send someone. You will not be at the meeting. You are a Clan Head, a soon-to-be special jōnin sealmaster, the Dog Summoner, and the key person on dealing with the Dragons. You can brief with the representative, you can send physical messages with them, but you will be safely far away while that meeting happens."
Damnit. That was...a lot less than Hazō had wanted, but more than he had hoped.
"Thank you, sir. Speaking of the Kotsuzui...?"
Asuma chuckled. "Yes, I'll approach them about a tracking mission to try to recover her body or determine its final location. I can't promise they'll take it for someone of another nation, but I'll do my best. Again, you won't be on the mission."
"Good enough, sir."
"That seems to have gone far better than it might have, sir."
"You're not wrong, Gaku. You are not wrong," Hazō said. He slugged down the last of his tea and poured himself another mug. "Okay, last thing on the subject: Canvass said that the foods and spices from a given nation can influence how a person smells. Find me samples of foods and spices representative of as many other nations as possible. It's a thin hope but it's worth checking."
Gaku blinked. "...Yes sir," he said. The normally unflappable and self-confident chancellor seemed remarkably flapped and unconfident.
"Okay," Hazō said, rapping his desk to signal the end of the topic. "On to the day's business. What have you got for me?"
Gaku promptly produced a foot-high stack of paper from his briefcase and set it on the desk. Hazō suppressed a sigh.
XP AWARD: 3 I think all of this fits into one day. If it doesn't then I'll increase the duration and the award.
Hazō could hear the vicious howling of the boreal wind outside even through the trembling shutters. The days had been cold since Akane died, with little sunlight to soften the winter chill—or perhaps it simply wasn't registering because it was so inferior to the real thing. The nights, when Akane should have been with him after a long day of work, were even colder. Tonight was cold even by those standards, and ironically that one was because of Akane. She'd been the one to point out something that had passed him by, as someone who'd gone from being too poor or missing to eat at restaurants to being a wealthy clan ninja whose every wish they hastened to obey, with pretty much nothing in between. She'd pointed out that when a restaurant owner received a clan messenger and had to decide between the windfall of a fully booked restaurant for a night on the one hand and inconveniencing and potentially offending a clan lord on the other, it was no choice at all, even if that meant cancelling existing civilian reservations with little warning and turning away dozens of people who'd otherwise enjoy that restaurant's food just as much as Hazō and his date did.
That was why, tonight, Hazō was an ordinary diner, and as someone who, again, had little experience of ordinary dining, he'd neglected to come early enough to snag a table by the fire, and was now instead enjoying the cryogenic hospitality of a window seat in winter. Ino, turning up fashionably late, couldn't have failed to notice, but was too polite to comment.
"How are you holding up?" Hazō asked after performing the proper observances (literally, as they involved a long, appreciative glance that acknowledged Ino's latest beautiful dress, her flawlessly-chosen accessories, and the general mesmerising attractiveness of his girlfriend).
Ino gave a wan smile. "Would you believe me if I told you it was business as usual?"
Hazō didn't, which was why he didn't say anything and waited for her to continue.
"No," she said, "I don't believe me either. The thing is, it's supposed to be business as usual. I lost Dad and a bunch of other relatives at Nagi Island, then half the clan to the Great Collapse, then all the people I sent to their deaths during the war, plus all the usual mission casualties, and I mourned but kept going through all of that because that's just what you do. I shouldn't be feeling this way about one more person who isn't even a Yamanaka. It's not fair to everyone else, and it's not how a clan head should feel."
Hazō reached over without thinking and took her hand.
"I don't think that's how it works, Ino. You don't get to choose who you care about, or how much, or how badly losing them hits you. Blaming yourself for it is… well, I was going to say unproductive, but that's such a cold word. Let's be simple and say it's a bad idea and if I catch you doing it again, I'll… I'll write you terribly embarrassing love poetry and read it out in public where people who know you can hear."
"You wouldn't."
"Why," Hazō said, "I can feel a limerick coming on already. There once was a lady from Leaf, whose pulchritude beggared—"
"Fine!" Ino exclaimed, blushing. "Gōketsu Hazō, you're a diabolical fiend. Is this really how you console your lover in a time of grief?"
"It's a core teaching of the Gōketsu," Hazō said, "that enough explosives can solve any problem. Trust me, as someone who's studied the work of Namikaze Minato in excruciating depth, I can come up with poetry that'll blow you away with its awfulness at a moment's notice."
Ino sighed.
"Thanks, Hazō. Can I… Can I confess something to you?"
Hazō nodded attentively.
"This isn't just losing Akane," Ino said. "I mean, of course it hurts to lose her—she was my best friend; nobody else compares. But I think what's really hit me, what's made it more than just another loss, was losing a future. I don't know what relationships like the one we had turn into when they grow up. The only model I've got is what happened to the Shikamaru/Kei/Tenten triad, and I don't think there's anything any of us could have done to make our relationship spin that far out of control. But I wanted to find out, and now I won't. I'm very, very glad you're still here, Hazō. Don't get me wrong on that. But I feel like something's gone, some path forward that isn't just Clan Lady Yamanaka Ino having a great boyfriend, and I'll never get it back and I'll never even find out what it was I lost."
"…yeah," Hazō said, in the absence of being able to say much else. If she didn't already believe in Project Necromancy and Akane's imminent rescue, then bringing it up right now, with no new evidence and no proof of concept, would only hurt rather than help—no matter how confident Hazō was that he'd make that future happen after all (though, hopefully, it would come out a little more manageable than the Kittensphere).
From Ino's expression, something more was needed, but any sincere commiseration would be a lie. Hazō could lament Akane being dead. He couldn't lament her being gone forever.
Hazō took the coward's way out.
"Actually," he said, "Ino, do you think you could give me some advice on something?"
"Sure," Ino said after an uncomfortable second of conversational derailment. "What is it?"
"It's about the Hagoromo," Hazō said. "After the Ruka incident,"—Ino, who must have been involved in directing the Yamanaka experts involved in the inquiry, gave a nod—"Asuma suggested getting Hagoromo teachers to come help out at the GED to try and clean away some of the bad blood between our clans through exposure. Do you think it's likely to work? Part of me worries that inviting the Hagoromo into my home, into my projects, is just going to lead to a disaster, but it's not like I can sit back and hope this conflict sorts itself out without some kind of major effort either."
Ino pulled back her hand as she considered.
"It seems lukewarm," Ino said. "The GED is just things like maths and literacy, right? There's no reason why Gōketsu and Hagoromo teachers would need to interact much if they don't want to. Come to the compound, do the job, go home. If they do interact, building familiarity is a useful tool, but it's going to blow up the second anybody brings up any ideology you and they disagree on, which is most of it. Even when there are things like the Will of Fire which every Leaf ninja agrees on, the Hagoromo teachers might say the Gōketsu don't believe in the Will of Fire to begin with, which is such an absurd idea that I don't know where you'd start proving them wrong.
"Also," she added, "the GED is for civilians, right? So they're not going to be the clansmen who joined you because they believe in your Uplift ideals. They're going to be random people who've been brought up to believe that the Hagoromo are a moral authority validated by every Hokage in history. If they start getting exposed to Hagoromo teachings where they normally wouldn't be, or if they have to watch your Gōketsu teachers start sparring with the Hagoromo ones in front of them, you might not like the side they take."
Hazō winced. "Those were my fears as well. I get where Asuma's coming from, but I can't help thinking that the Hagoromo just aren't ready to play nice the way he thinks. Ruka might not have been plotting Akane's death, but she shrugged it off without a second's concern, like Akane wasn't a fellow Leaf ninja whose loss was a blow to the entire village. You don't get to be buddies with someone who thinks you'd be better off dead just because you work the same job.
"Is it going to be this way forever, Ino? Will they just keep going after us, again and again, whenever they have plausible deniability? Would it help if we de-escalated, or would we just be disarming ourselves in the face of the enemy?"
"There's your problem, Hazō," Ino said after a second. "You've got a missing-nin idea of what an enemy is, not a clan head idea. Yes, technically, the Hagoromo are your enemy. You want incompatible things, and both of you would be much happier with each other gone. But that's not how fellow Leaf clans do things. You think the Ino-Shika-Chō don't have enemies? I can't count the number of times we've butted heads with the Hyūga over the course of Leaf history. But butting heads means just that. Animals butt heads to establish dominance, not to kill. When clans fight in Leaf, it means weakening each other in relative terms. It means undermining business interests, it means cutting off opportunities, it means stealing the kind of secrets that aren't an existential threat. It means stopping before you cross the line that makes a clan less capable of serving Leaf. I know you were never taught that, so up to a point you get a free pass, but after two years in power, I really think that point's come and gone."
She held up her hands to forestall Hazō's obvious objection.
"I know. Lord Hagoromo doesn't have that excuse and he should know better. Him escalating the way he does is a disgrace and honestly embarrassing to watch for anyone with a shred of political training. The problem is, whenever he escalates, so do you. This whole vendetta thing started when he insulted Kei at a Clan Council meeting, right? Look where it is now. Lord Hagoromo couldn't have done that alone. Frankly, I'm not sure he'd even be capable of thinking big enough to want to destroy another clan if he wasn't led up that path through gradual escalation."
"So what's the solution?" Hazō asked. "Even if we weren't at war once, we are now. They've hurt us. We've hurt them. Do we carry on like this forever? I feel like it's natural to hate them, with their bigotry and intolerance and utter refusal to care about people's feelings and even the future of the world over their beloved moth-eaten scrolls of doctrine—but this constant cycle of hatred isn't making anything better. It's not a solution. It's just a regular source of problems, and sometimes I think if Asuma didn't periodically step in to shut down the feedback loop, it would keep going until it destroyed us both."
He looked down.
"Honestly," he said quietly, "it's worse than that. I look at Akane, and I look at myself, and I think: suppose we destroy the Hagoromo. Will I feel the same way about the next group of people whose beliefs I can't tolerate? Will I hate them because they hate me—and I think there are a lot of people who'll hate me once they realise Uplift is going invalidate every way of life that relies on a broken world—and have this same relationship every time? Am I conditioning myself to cycles of hatred?"
"I don't have the answers, Hazō," Ino said. "The unwritten rules of clan behaviour are supposed to stop this sort of thing happening, but it's too late for that now. But if I had to think through the increasingly few tools you have for handling this thing…
"Have you tried talking to the Hagoromo?"
Hazō stared at her blankly. "What do you mean?"
"Literally," Ino said. "Just talking to them. Asking them what they believe and why. I mean, I'm one of those people who were brought up to respect the Hagoromo. Most of us are. I don't mean respecting Hagoromo Ritsuo specifically. I hate that man. He's an incompetent idiot who keeps hurting people I care about, and I might not literally want him dead, but I also wouldn't weep if he got caught having carnal relations with a sheep and never had a voice in public life again.
"I also don't mean respecting everything about the Hagoromo. For instance, getting to know Kei and Tenten has given me a very different perspective on a lot of Hagoromo teachings about gender and sexuality, largely the perspective that they're bullshit. But a lot of those teachings are tied into the beliefs that make the people of Leaf who they are, and rejecting them because you only hear them coming from people like Hagoromo Ritsuo is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And since you only hear the Hagoromo teachings when Lord Hagoromo is busy using them to talk about how awful the Gōketsu are, it's no wonder you think they're all terrible.
"While I'm on a roll with caveats, I also don't mean accepting what they tell you. You can walk away as convinced that they're idiots as when you started. Just… let them see you engage. Let them see you disagree with their teachings for reasons that you've told them, human reasons that aren't 'because the Gōketsu are evil and hate the Will of Fire'. Maybe you'll even open the communication channels enough to explain Uplift to them, who knows, and then they can walk away still thinking you're an idiot, but at least they'll understand how and why. Or maybe you'll get through to someone. You do have a way with speeches, and no clan is monolithic.
"That's what I'd do in your place. Don't offload the heavy lifting onto some Gōketsu schoolteachers and hope they rub off on their counterparts. Use your silver tongue. Use whichever clansmen have the coolest heads and a bit of charisma. Imagine how Akane would've handled it."
Hazō gave her a sceptical look.
"You really think that would work?"
"No idea," Ino said lightly. "But it's a core teaching of the Yamanaka that when you want to end a conflict with someone peacefully, you talk to them. It's by no means easy, but it is simple. Frankly, I'm a little worried about your reputation with the Hokage if he decided not to suggest that first. The number of times he cut off a conflict in the team by sitting us down and forcing us to talk to each other…"
Ino shuddered, from which Hazō inferred all sorts of things about all three of the current ISC clan heads.
"Thanks, Ino," Hazō said. Then, both because it was good timing for an expression of gratitude and because it would temporarily scrub the image of having to talk to Hagoromo Ritsuo in a respectful fashion out of his mind, he reached for the pack sitting at his feet under the table.
"I happen to have a present for you, and not just because you're incredibly insightful and a national treasure yourself."
Ino preened, but subtly.
He brought forth the mirror, a work of art made with materials never before seen in this world. The surface was perfect, supernaturally-even reflective metal (which had taken aeons to make with Earthshaping's ability to only work metal in sheets thinner than his patience with Lord Hagoromo). The handle was a single silvery gem Hazō had invented himself by combining corundum with mica until he found something he thought Ino would like. Every element had been condensed and toughened until the Sage himself would struggle to break it and claim the seven years' bad luck he was so very due.
Ino studied it, turning it back and forth in her hands in growing awe. Absently, she brushed back a single strand of blonde hair clearly visible in her undistorted reflection.
"Hazō, this is incredible," she said. "I'm Leaf's finest connoisseur of mirrors, and I've never seen one this good. It must have cost a small country. Where did you get it?"
Hazō gave a slow, satisfied smile. "I figured nothing on the market would be capable of properly reflecting your beauty, so I made it myself."
Ino boggled.
"You're kidding."
"Nope."
"But the clarity… and this handle… what even is this?"
Hazō had been worried about what to do if she didn't ask.
"The purest Inoite," he said. "You're the only woman in the world who's ever seen this gem—and you can keep it that way if you like, or it can eventually make its way onto the market, and your name won't fade from this world for as long as there's a jewel trade."
Silence.
More silence.
Hazō was starting to worry he'd broken Ino. Akane was going to have words for him when she came back from the dead.
"You're saying you made this gem? Just for me?"
"Got it in one."
"How?"
-o-
You have received 3 + 1 = 4 XP.
-o-
There was going to be another scene after this, but having realised the Inoite issue, I figured it would be best to give you a chance to react to this quickly, so I'm posting it now as is.
"You're saying you made this gem? Just for me?" Ino gasped.
"Got it in one." Hazō grinned. Birthday gifting win! He was the best boyfriend ever.
"How?"
Hazō took a breath and let it out slowly. In one sense, this was a small thing; it wouldn't destroy the Gōketsu if the secret of Earthshaping's more potent abilities got out. On the other hand, it would cost them a lot of money if the other clans learned about it and claim-jumped the Gōketsu monopoly. It would take a few months for anyone to get skilled enough with Earthshaping to be able to produce gems and the Gōketsu could use their unlimited supply during that time to make an egregious amount of money. On the other hand, if they could hold onto the secret for a couple of years they could make obscene amounts of money.
Of course, that was the entire point.
He didn't actually feel great about this part, but Mari had argued until he accepted it. This was a test; if Ino could hold onto a Gōketsu secret without leaking it or taking advantage of it, that was important information to have.
"Of course, just because she doesn't share it doesn't means she's trustworthy," Mari said with a grin. "Could just mean that she's smart enough to identify the test."
Hazō groaned. Dueling social specs were all well and good, but couldn't they leave him out of it? Go play your games on your own, ladies.
Not being an idiot, he didn't say that aloud.
"It's a secret," he said. "Not an official clan secret, just a secret. I'm sharing with you the fact that it exists, but please keep it under wraps. Move investments around if you need to, but be subtle about it. No one outside Gōketsu knows we can do this—well, except Asuma. If you take losses, we'll make it up to you."
Ino kept staring. "You can make gems. You can make new gems. You can make new gems easily enough to just give them away as gifts. Hazō, this is huge. Do you realise what this can do to the entire jewelery trade? To the economy?"
He nodded. "Yup. I do. Asuma is helping me sell the gems and manage the process so it doesn't harm Leaf. The Gōketsu are going to get ridiculously wealthy off of this and, if possible, we're going to make sure that Rock takes it in the teeth."
She nodded thoughtfully. "That shouldn't be hard. A lot of the biggest gem mines are in Earth Country."
"Sure," Hazō said. "But that's not the important part about this gift." He held out his hand for the mirror.
Pale eyebrows went up, but she handed it over. "Oh?"
Her face fell at the reminder of that occasion. "Sure."
He turned the mirror over in his hands, studying it thoughtfully. "This mirror is symbolic on several levels. I'm giving you not just the mirror but also the secret of its creation, because I love you and trust you, so in the larger sense it's a gift from the Gōketsu to the Yamanaka. In the more personal sense..." He smashed the face of the mirror against the corner of the table, hard. It bounced back, leaving a dent in the heavy wood and not a trace on the corundum mirror.
"This mirror won't break, no matter what," he said, offering it back to her. "Just like its owner."
She stared at him, eyes welling up, and then snatched the mirror away and pushed it aside so that she could swarm into his lap and hug him tight.
Best. Boyfriend. Ever.
He held her and stroked her back while she clutched at him. Flyaway strands of hair were tickling his nose exactly the way Akane's used to when he held her, which was not the right thought to be having while hugging his other girlfriend, and his own eyes were starting to well, which made him clutch tighter to her in turn.
It took him several seconds to realize how tight he was hugging; when he did, his arms sprang open until she made a reproving noise. He chuckled and resumed stroking her back while she rubbed her cheek on his neck.
"Thanks," she said, drawing back at last. She wiped the mist from her eyes (taking care not to smudge her makeup) and took her own seat again. She kept his hand in hers, refusing to entirely break their connection.
"Speaking of terrible segues," Hazō said, "I was hoping you could advise me on something."
"You're right, that was a terrible segue," she said, smiling. "What do you need?"
"I'm meeting with Hinata regarding the Hyūga luxury goods connections," he said. "Shino will be facilitating, but I still want to make a good impression. You grew up with her and went to the Academy with her. Any advice?"
She thought about it. "She's a nice girl, and honest when she can be, but she's happy to lie when the situation calls for it, so don't let those innocent white eyes fool you." She snorted. "She has a wicked sense of humor too, although you'd barely know it. One time, at ninja camp..."
Author's Note: It was a weird day and I didn't make it through the plan. I'm putting this up now and I'll do the other two scenes tomorrow as chapter 597. XP etc will come out then.
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Chapter 597: Making Friends and Influencing People
"Good afternoon, Hazō," Shino said. "It is a pleasure to see you. Why? Because you stated this was about our joint venture on telescopes." He paused, then smiled slightly. "And also because you are enjoyable to talk to even when business is not at play."
"Nice save," Hazō said, offering up a reproving stare. "Anyway, yes. I have the first set of lenses for you."
He opened up the elegant wooden box he had carried in with him, revealing a custom-built interior lined in crushed velvet. Six lenses of varying size were carefully snuggled into the protective fabric.
Shino lifted out the largest of the lenses, one that was a full handspan across. He held it up to the warm afternoon light that drifted through the window and turned it this way and that, looking for imperfections or distortions. There were none. He set it back in and examined the other lenses, which ranged in size down to half an inch.
"These are exceptional quality," he said. Hazō's ears perked up at the tone of the statement; it was as complex as a high-priced wine, carrying notes of alarm and surprise and resignation all mixed together.
"Have to admit, I was hoping for more 'delight and excitement' than whatever this is," Hazō said carefully.
"I grant such," Shino said, not sounding it. "At the same time...how long did it take you to make these lenses?"
Hazō considered that. "Maybe eight hours?"
Shino shook his head. "These would have taken Aburame craftsmen days, perhaps weeks. You have rendered us obsolete. Our contacts are valuable to you for now but it will not take long for you to acquire them for yourself, at which point the Aburame have nothing to offer."
"If you're worried about us cutting you out, don't be," Hazō said. "Even if we could do so, I wouldn't want to. The relationship between our clans is far more valuable to me than whatever extra profit we might make."
Shino paused for several seconds as various responses flitted across his face but he ended up only saying, "I am pleased to hear that."
"Seriously," Hazō said, "the Gōketsu need relationships more than we need money. I'm not sure you entirely appreciate our situation...the Aburame are a Founding Clan. You are so deeply embedded in Leaf's traditions, markets, and clan relations that I suspect you don't even think about it. The Gōketsu are brand new. We need allies, relationships, and a presence and positive reputation in the community. Mutually beneficial commercial ventures with the other clans is a good first step in that direction."
"I see," Shino said. "That makes sense, I suppose."
"Good. On which subject, I'm planning to approach Hinata about a partnership in the gem market. Is there any chance you could make an introduction?"
"The gem market?" Shino asked. "Interesting."
Alarm bells started ringing in the back of Hazō's head. "Yup," he said, trying to sound casual. "The same bloo—clan abilities that let me make lenses quickly are also good for gemcutting. The Gōketsu finances have been up and down too much over the last year, and I'm tired of it. I've had Mari and Gaku scouting around for revenue sources and we recently found an excellent supplier of excellent gemstones." Both halves of that compound statement were true; they had no relationship to one another, but hopefully Shino would draw the desired incorrect inference.
"Interesting," Shino said, his face giving away no trace of his thinking. "Yes, I can make the introduction."
"Cool," Hazō said. "Thank you, Shino. I really appreciate it."
"It is no trouble." He smiled very slightly. "Indeed, helping the Gōketsu establish their finances might be considered a good investment on the part of the Aburame. Why? You are an up-and-coming clan with a growing track record of offbeat but successful thinking. If you will permit me to speak freely, I note that alliance with you is an interesting balance between risk and reward."
"Risk? Why risk?"
"The reward side of the equation comes from your ability to generate ideas such as the Ministry, which will prove to be extremely profitable if it succeeds, and to vastly increase production on various luxury goods, and the various other novelties you produce on days that end in 'y'. The risk side is that you are unpredictable. You yourself have been imprisoned for treason not once but twice, and you take offense too easily and react disproportionately to minor slights. I do not, for example, wish the Aburame to be dragged into your war with the Hagoromo, or to be splashed with Naruto's disfavor of you."
"In fairness, the first killboxing was before the Gōketsu existed," Hazō said defensively. "But I take your point. Thank you for being honest with me."
"Of course. Why? I find you to be refreshingly candid and believe that returning like for like, even if the specific points are negative, will be the best way to build a solid relationship between us personally and between our clans in general."
Hazō chuckled. "That's for true. Honestly, the pretty dance of politics leaves me tired. I wish people would just say what they mean, you know? For example, it would make things so much easier if Ritsuo would just say 'hey, I am a terrible bigot and am looking for reasons to disapprove of you.'"
Shino's normally stoic face cracked into a grin for just a moment before resuming the Aburame mask. "Being the head of a loyal and well-established Leaf ninja clan, I would obviously never use such language to describe a fellow Leaf clan."
"Out loud, anyway?" Hazō suggested.
A brief and reduced flicker of the grin came and went on Shino's face once more. "I certainly never said that."
o-o-o-o
Hinata set the last of the jewels back into their display case. She did not deactivate the Byakugan that she had been using to examine them. This was a slight faux pas according to Leaf norms as Hazō understood them, but he said nothing.
"These gems are quite remarkable," she said.
Hazō nodded. "I'm glad you think so. Like I said, the Gōketsu are interested in positive relations with the Hyūga, and a lucrative commercial partnership sounds like a good way to get that started. Hopefully this shows that we have something to bring to the table. Combining Asuma's blessing, the Tower's market intelligence, the Hyūga's contacts, and the Gōketsu supply chain...to me that sounds like a huge win to everyone. What do you think?" He didn't bother to add the 'because you can either agree or miss out'. That part, Mari had assured him, would be understood. 'Mentioning it aloud would be crass' had been her exact phrasing.
"I would be very curious as to where you found them," she said, the words very carefully not a question. A question forced an answer or a clear refusal, but a mere statement provided more flexibility of response.
"These are seven of the ten thousand eyeballs I harvested from the Dragon we killed," Hazō said, not even pretending the words were true.
Hinata smiled in return, recognizing and allowing the dodge. "I see," she said, nodding gravely. "Ten thousand, hm?"
"Yes." Hazō frowned in a hammy stage player's thoughtful expression. "Perhaps closer to twelve thousand."
"Mm-hm."
"So," Hazō said, "commercial joint venture?"
She looked over at Shino, who nodded.
"The way Hazō explained it to me is that the Gōketsu are attempting to build the sort of relationships that our clans have enjoyed since the Founding," he said.
She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head slightly.
"That was my response as well. He took it quite well when I said it aloud."
She nodded in thoughtful surprise. "Why are you approaching me?" she asked, looking to Hazō.
"The Hyūga are one of the most established, most powerful, and wealthiest clans in Leaf," Hazō said honestly. "I'm currying favor." He grinned, inviting her to share the audacious joke.
"That is most sensible," she said with a mock gravity that made his grin widen slightly. "I am delighted that you have such an appreciation for the nobility of the Hyūga clan."
"Of course," Hazō said. "So, have I curried sufficient favor to talk specifics? If not, I've got up to twelve minutes of sucking up and general sycophancy ready to go."
"Only twelve?" she asked, shaking her head sadly. "Alas, how the Hyūga have fallen in the world's estimation. Why, I remember the days when no one would dare to offer less than twenty."
"Yes, well, what can you expect from such an inexperienced novice as myself?" Hazō asked. "Virtually a barbarian. Can't be expected to know all the niceties of polite society."
"True," she said, heaving a sigh. "I do hope that the sucking-up and sycophancy contained a mixture of praise for the clan and also paeans to my personal beauty and talent?"
"Oh, very much so. I've got an entire three-minute segment on the elegance of your fingers, if you'd like to hear it?"
She raised an eyebrow in doubt. "I very much doubt that it is possible to come up with three minutes of non-repetitive peroration about fingers."
"My Lady, I pray you will grant me the smallest touch of your delicate hand," Hazō began instantly. "The grace from such slender yet powerful fingers would raise the fortunes of my clan for a thousand years. I have seen the speed and perfection of your handseals, those luscious digits dancing effortlessly through the most complex—"
"I sit corrected," she said quickly. "Shall we discuss specifics?"
Hazō grinned and mentally checked off the next item on his 'gain friends and influence' list.
Author's Note: Hazō did not mention the idea of having Neji look at the Great Seal. It seemed like a bad idea to him, since it would require Neji to cross 1,000+ miles of terrain and half a dozen clan territories (or persuade a turtle to swim that far through Shark territory), only to need to marry a giant spider in order to get within a few dozen yards of a ravening of extradimensional monsters in order to look at a thing that might or might not burn his eyeballs to ash. If you really want to have Hazō do this then you can vote it in again and that will be sufficient to override Hazōpilot.
XP AWARD: 3 I think this fits into one day, assuming Hazō did some of the gem/lens creation in the evening/very early morning.
The condor, Confute, was thin, with a bald, black head that came up around midway to Hazou's chest. She tried momentarily to resist the pangolin soldier's shepherding. A firm yank on her wings earned her compliance. Hazō couldn't read the condor's body language. What would she be feeling right now? Fear for the coming end, regret for losing control, or righteous anger at an oppressor that for a moment seemed conquerable?
He couldn't let this happen.
Plan, he signaled to Kei and Noburi, check rope, call pangolins inattentive. Make Kei leader. Fight one-on-one if needed. Condor survives.
The less-attentive members of the Conclave started to notice the almost-fight in the room as another pangolin soldier joined to help escort Confute out. Hazō moved without waiting for confirmation. He needed to act before the pangolins took Confute out of the room. Not only would the pangolins struggle to repel his challenge in a public space, but he needed everyone to see him trying to save the condor's life.
With as much dignity as he could muster, Hazō grabbed the discarded Bonds of Civilization and held them up so the rest of the Conclave could see the ropes so instrumental to Pangolin's conquest of the Condor spirit.
"As I thought," Hazō said, projecting his voice over the room. He pressed as much authority as he could into his words, drawing on those scarce few lessons in leadership Mari had given him. "There's not a hint of any damage on these. For Confute to have slipped them, they must have been tied loosely enough to enable the escape. Pangolin Summoner, who is responsible for tying the Bonds of Civilization?"
Kei stepped forward, ending her hand-talk conversation with Noburi. "The Ministry of Doctrine is ultimately responsible for the Bonds, though any pangolin of an officerial role may renew them. As Confute is a laborer aiding in the bulk transport of materials, I expect her bonds were maintained by regional overseers subordinate to Taxiarchos Pankratos."
Between their commanding words, the Conclave's inner trading hall had come to a stop, with all eyes on Hazō and Kei. Even the pair of pangolins escorting Confute had stopped and turned to face the two summoners.
"What would be worse?" Hazō asked. "For the Bonds to be mistied due to incompetence, or due to outright malice?"
"Malice," Kei said. "Universally in legal systems, Pangolin's included, even wild negligence is seen more favorably than a deliberate intent to cause harm."
"I wonder how many condors have been harmed at the claws of Pangolin's overly harsh laws," Hazō mused, "and at the pangolins' own refusal to fulfill the responsibilities they gladly claim."
Noburi stepped forward, completing the triangle of summoners. "Is that why the pangolins tried to usher Confute out so quickly? They wanted to cover up their mistakes?"
Hazō saw one of the pangolin soldiers loosen his grip on Confute and take a step forward to defend himself. Hazō quickly continued to keep the pangolin from getting a word in edgewise.
"From what I've seen, I don't think anyone can claim that Taxiarchos Pankratos is fulfilling his responsibility to the condors," Hazou said. "If the pangolins here will not take their duties to their charges seriously, then a different authority is necessary. I propose the Pangolin Summoner."
"Within Pangolin's military hierarchy, only Pantsā of the Adamant Scales gives me orders," Kei said. "He has personally entrusted me with multiple missions, and he has sanctioned my actions many times in the past. With my full weight and authority as a summoner, I command you to bring the condor before me."
The soldiers looked between themselves, then the one that had stepped forth earlier spoke. "I understand your position, summoner. However, the Office of Statutes' laws about disciplining the beakfaces are really straightforward. Doing justice here is simple, and doesn't require your attention or Taxiarchos Pankratos'."
"I was not negotiating," Kei said, and shards of ice started to form in the spaces between her words. She strode forward and let the crowd of summons shy away from her steps. "Release the condor. Now."
One pangolin soldier released Confute and took two waddling steps back, while the other flicked his tongue nervously. The condor turned between Kei and the pangolin in what must have been confusion.
"I cannot do that, Summoner," the remaining soldier said after a moment's pause. "This condor is a dangerous element that was just fighting in a public space. My duty prohibits me from releasing her."
Behind him, Hazō saw the other soldier beelining to the trading hall's exit, no doubt to alert a superior. Hazō quickly flashed a signal to Noburi.
Stop escape?
How? Noburi signed back.
Hazō could physically leap over there with his Rocket Boots and stop the soldier physically, but that would be too visible. The soldier wouldn't listen to his command. He'd need to concoct some plausible reason, but before Hazō could come up with any ideas, the fleeing soldier had already slipped out.
"Listen to your summoner," Noburi said, jumping into the conversation between Kei and the remaining pangolin guard. "She knows way more about the law than you do. After all, when was the last time you talked to Pantsā? Look, Confute might have tried to fight in a public space, but that's only three points, right? It's slipping the Bonds that's bad, and she thinks that something's fishy there. You saw how the Bonds weren't damaged, right?"
"That's right…" the soldier said.
"And it's the Ministry of Doctrine that is responsible for tying the Bonds, right?"
"Right."
"So if they screwed up tying the Bonds, that sounds like a problem for them, right? After all, it may be your duty to keep fighting out of the trade hall, but there could be bigger problems than one condor causing some havoc – if the Ministry of Doctrine is negligent in their duty, that's a way, way more important issue. That's why the Pangolin Summoner wants you to chill out and let her take care of it."
The guard still looked uncertain, so Noburi continued. "Look, the Summoner investigating potential corruption in a ministry? That's over your pay grade. Why don't you hand over Confute to a neutral party so your summoner can carry out her investigation? Hey Gamakayō," he said, turning to one of the larger toads watching the byplay, "could you keep a hold on Confute for a second?"
Gamakayō, a bulky maroon-red toad slightly shorter than Hazō, looked back and forth at Noburi's callout as if hoping that someone else had been chosen. "Sure, Summoner," he said, after a moment.
Gamakayō hopped to the pangolin guard who reluctantly let go of Confute. The toad placed a warty hand on the condor's shoulder, rather than grabbing her by the wing as the guard had.
Hazō exhaled slightly. Confute was no longer in immediate danger of execution. Now what? They couldn't actually investigate the Ministry of Doctrine for corruption in the pangolins' own legal system. However bad their incompetence looked to the members of the Conclave, the pangolins would protect their own. Anyone with authority would no doubt confirm that responsibility for slipping the Bonds, even if they were loose, laid on Confute's head. Beyond that, the Taxiarchos already had a bone to pick with Confute if the soldier's passing words were honest. If she stayed a slave, it would be a matter of time before she committed another execution-worthy offense.
Worse, Hazō realized, the escapee soldier would no doubt inform Taxiarchos Pankratos about the situation. Even if they forestalled an execution with an 'investigation', the Taxiarchos had the rights of a daimyo in the Conclave. He would demand they turn over Confute for temporary holding, and Hazō had grown up in Hidden Mist. He knew what happened to dangerous elements that disappeared into prison cells away from the public eye.
The Taxiarchos would not respond to bribery. He didn't respect them enough for their words to have any meaning. They didn't have time or agents to dig up any blackmail on him. They couldn't threaten him. They had no path to keeping Confute alive in the long term within Pangolin's lands and laws.
"What now, Pangolin Summoner?" Noburi asked Kei loudly, while shooting a glance at Hazō.
Free her, Hazō signed.
Treason, Kei replied.
Yes, Hazō signed in response.
Prepare skywalkers. Her demeanor hadn't changed, but her signs seemed already resigned to the outcome.
"Confute, Gamakayō, accompany us," Kei said, turning towards the charges as Hazō bent down to swap out his Rocket Boots seals for skywalkers. "The degree of incompetence among the Taxiarchos' people deserves further examination, and I have difficulty believing that he would be so gracious as to exclude himself from said proceedings. We shall go ensure he is adequately informed of the current situation, as well as my expectations regarding his role henceforth."
Kei led the pair of summons towards the trading hall's exit, and Noburi quickly placed himself between Confute and Kei to dissuade any more random attacks. Hazō took a moment to look around the hall. A few of the pangolin guards had started to rush to arrest Confute when the other soldier had handed her over to the toad now playing bailiff, but they had stopped when they saw that Confute wasn't resisting. The near-fight and the resulting byplay had drawn almost everyone's attention. The other condors especially were watching closely. Hazō wished he could read their body language and expressions to tell what they were thinking.
They reached the walkway by the trading hall's exit. The pangolins had constructed the central pavilion in the open space in the middle of the Conclave's sawed-off dome structure. Kei slowed down as they passed one of the arches, beyond which they could see Pangolin's dull brown skies. All Confute had to do was slip Gamakayō's inexperienced grip.
For some reason, she didn't.
Following behind her, Hazō could see the occasional bare patch where the Bands wrapped around Confute's wings had rubbed away her feathers, punctuated at the bottoms by slight redness where in wiggling the Bands downward she had pulled the occasional feather out. She had clearly gone through some effort to escape her bonds. Why wasn't she taking this second chance at freedom? Had she exhausted her inner reserves of rebellion? Had she only been momentarily motivated by revenge?
It didn't matter. He needed to get her out of here before the Taxiarchos could pull her back into Pangolin's lethal legal system. The sooner the better, ideally, since if it happened out of sight, the pangolins would simply assume that they had set the condor free. So long as she pulled off her escape in full view of the Conclave's participants, they could at least claim plausible deniability.
Kei slowed down even further as they passed another of the arches out into the central space, and Hazō could almost feel her tension, waiting for Confute to move but unwilling to turn around and signal what she wanted to happen.
"Gamakayō," Hazō said from behind the large toad, quiet enough that only their party would hear. "Be gentle with Confute. Life under Pangolin rule must be very hard, and we don't want to worsen her plight."
"Uh, okay," the toad said, loosening his already loose grip on the condor's shoulder.
"Egg smasher," Confute said, the first words he'd heard from her since her telepathic castigations moments before the attack. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because…" Hazō trailed off. He couldn't say that he wanted Confute to be free with Gamakayō right there. "Because I want to see justice done."
Confute didn't say anything in response as Kei reluctantly passed the penultimate archway in the trade hall. Some of the Conclave's representatives had already turned back to their conversations, not bothering to wait for their team to fully leave the room to discuss the events.
Confute went into motion as they passed the tallest point of the final arch. She slipped out of Gamakayō's grip and stumbled out into the central open space, spreading her wings with the uncertain motions of a bird that had spent the better part of two years with them tightly bound.
"Hey, stop that!" Gamakayō called out, reaching out futilely for the condor's back.
"Stop!" Kei said, uncharacteristically forced. She turned around to face the trading hall, then locked eyes with Hazō. "She is escaping! Chase her down!"
Hazō dashed after Confute, uncertain about Kei's directions. Confute finally started to beat her wings, generating gusts of wind that beat dust into the air around her as she tried to remember how to fly. The condors were long-distance fliers, he remembered Kei saying, and they preferred to start their flights from a high point rather than beat their wings to gain height. Starting from within the tight space in a deep, vertical shaft in the center of the Conclave dome was possibly the worst place for Confute to try to relearn flight.
Hazō turned around and saw Kei's sign. Slower. Around her and around the entire Conclave hall, the pangolin guards were surging into action, preparing to roll out into the open courtyard or starting their ninjutsu to take down Confute before she could escape. Hazō realized what Kei wanted him to do. He dashed into the dust cloud.
Confute finally took off, slowly rising and circling as she beat her wings harder and harder to gain altitude and speed. Hazō followed right on her tail-feathers on his skywalkers, easily keeping pace with her with the chakra pounding through his muscles. After a moment's thought, he started flickering his skywalkers on and off, pretending that his footing was unstable and that he was randomly getting stuck in the air sometimes as the seals activated unnecessarily. He faked a lunge for Confute and missed by inches.
"Egg smasher," Confute said, glancing back at him. "You chase me now to deny me the freedom you once again dangled before me?"
"Ninjutsu," Hazō said simply, hoping no one would see his mouth move. Around the courtyard, dozens of pangolin guards had emerged and started casting ninjutsu – ninjutsu they had no doubt exhaustively prepared in order to cut down condors rebellious enough to think they still had the right to fly. With Hazō chasing close after Confute, they couldn't fire those ninjutsu at the condor for fear of hitting the summoner too.
They crested the top of the dome and Confute straightened her path, breaking line of sight with the pangolins down below. Hazō pretended to falter, panting and bending over halfway to make it more plausible, hopefully, that he really had tried his best to stop the escaping condor.
"Justice will be done, egg smasher," Confute said as she flew away, rising higher preemptively to evade what would no doubt be a rising hail of ninjutsu fire once the pangolins on the ground outside the dome could see her. Just as she left the functional range of summon telepathy, Hazō thought he heard another phrase, barely audible: "Thank you."
Hazō dropped into the dome's central courtyard, now swarming with pangolin guards and Conclave representatives jostling to see the condor's thrilling escape. Hazō saw the other condors deeper within the pavilion, now closely monitored by a trio of pangolin soldiers. He didn't linger on them, but despite the inscrutability of condor body language, he got the vaguest sense that they were angry at him personally.
The Taxiarchos had arrived at some point in the chase and he was storming towards the central courtyard, barking out orders as he went. He noticed Kei and Noburi and angled his warpath directly towards them. Hazō angled his drop to join them.
"What is the meaning of this?" the Taxiarchos demanded, standing within Kei's reach and towering over her.
"Taxiarchos Pankratos," Kei said cooly. "Your people grossly failed to satisfy their duty to maintain the Bonds of Civilization. The Bonds slipped loose of one of the condors and the condor, suddenly granted freedom without any context, elected to attack Hazō for what I can only presume is the fact that solely his weapons permitted the Pangolin Clan to conquer Condor after eight decades of resentful armistice. Your soldiers attempted to seize and immediately execute the freed condor, failing to consider the importance of the Bonds being tied so poorly that they could merely slip off a condor by accident, and due to their incomparable obstinance, I was forced to deputize a civilian in order to escort the condor to you for further investigation. As you can see, the deputized civilian had no particular skill in keeping condors from escaping, causing this situation that would have been wholly avoidable had you merely had the foresight to authorize me as having rank-superiority to your ordinary soldiers, as I requested many, many months ago."
The Taxiarchos' nostrils flared at Kei's explanation, and he didn't respond immediately. He slowly turned his head to Gamakayō. The massive toad clearly wanted to leave, but was hemmed in at all sides by Pangolin soldiers. He withered under the Taxiarchos' glare. "Hey, I didn't do nothing wrong!" he said, pointing at Hazō. "I had a good grip on her until he told me to lighten up!"
The Taxiarchos turned his glare to Hazō, staunchly ignoring the way that Hazō hovered two feet off the floor with his skywalkers. "Explain yourself."
"I wanted to ensure that everything was aboveboard, rather than there being a miscarriage of justice due to the Bonds not being properly tied as the Pangolin Summoner said," Hazō said. "I told Gamakayō to loosen up because the force he was using could have hurt someone, not because I know how much exactly he needs to restrain a condor. When she started escaping, I chased after her. I was the only one that did so."
The Taxiarchos turned back to Kei. He considered her for a long moment, but she stood firm under his gaze.
"You expect me to believe this birdshit drivel?" he said eventually. "You think you can override the laws set by Pantsā himself by tricking my people into letting you do whatever you want? They need to learn a lesson about the chain of command, but you are scum for trying this."
He stepped in even closer, his head now literally towering over Kei's and his claws inches from her chest. Hazō saw Kei suppress a flinch almost perfectly, but she was still forced to look almost straight up into the looming pangolin's eyes.
"I know what you did here," the Taxiarchos said, voice now a whisper. "I am no idiot. You think you can escort the scavenging birdbrain directly to the nearest patch of open sky and I wouldn't notice? Or that someone wouldn't have told me about the blatantly obvious Condor sympathizing messages you spread among the Conclave's representatives? Do you really think me so foolish that I wouldn't realize that you carefully put your brother in the way of dozens of potential ninjutsu that could have stopped the escape, when standard procedure that I am certain you are well acquainted with indicates that the correct action is to stand by and fire from a distance?
"I can tolerate Condor sympathizers. I can tolerate oathbreakers. Pantokrator's mercy, I can tolerate a disrespectful intruder whose Sage companions force me to temporarily forsake my responsibilities. I have had to bend my morality farther in the course of keeping this Conclave in proper order.
"I cannot tolerate a liar. If this were a battlefield, I would eviscerate you for this. If you were my subordinate, I would have you doing punishment duty for months. Instead, I will do neither. Summoner, I will keep my discretion for now, in the interest of keeping a peace I assure you is in your best interest. But Pantsā will know of this, as will all those on the Seventh Path that you cannot afford to spurn. If they see fit to let it be known that you too lie as you need to get what you want, and that you and your family have no respect for any oath or contract or law, then I assure you, there will be a price to pay."
With that, the Taxiarchos stepped back, interlaced his claws in the peace sign for barely a second, then stormed away, continuing to snap out orders. He raised a claw to the two soldiers that they had cajoled into handing over Confute, who followed after him sheepishly.
Kei released a tense, stuttering breath. "I certainly hope you found this endeavor worthwhile, Hazō," she whispered. "Far be it from me to complain about making even marginal progress towards balancing, no, not worsening the scales of the Condor genocide, but this appears to be a particularly poor exchange rate for political capital. At least in Kago, I had a plausible veneer of legality to my actions that, as the eloquent Taxiarchos points out, is wholly absent here. We are fortunate that he cannot afford to make my outright defiance of the law known without also publicly demonstrating his current inability to punish me for it."
Hazō glanced around at the pangolin soldiers milling about and the Conclave representatives that were still staying close to watch the humans. The two Sages had stuck around to keep an eye on the Taxiarchos, but now hopped back to one of the food tables within the trade hall, while the Rat Clan representative, Nezesari, continued to watch them. She no longer had her back hunched up, but instead extended her body long towards Hazō in a way that he could only describe as curious.
"We saved a life," Hazō said. "After Neck, any life we can save is worth it. As a plus, I think it may have opened some doors for us…"
First, a straightforward TN 30 (Good) Presence check to take control over the room and make his case in a convincing way. Kei is supporting him, so I'll let her add her Presence AB (level 24 -> AB 3) to this roll.
Hazō (Presence): 20 + 3 (invoke "Lord of Clan Gōketsu") + 3 (support from Kei) - 6 = 20 Hazō spends a FP to reroll!
Hazō (Presence): 20 + 3 (invoke "Lord of Clan Gōketsu") + 3 (support from Kei) + 6 = 32
Phew. He takes control of the situation, keeping the pangolins from continuing to escort Confute out and making everyone hear him out. It's such a marginal success though, that I'm going to say that he's barely keeping a thumb on the flow of the room, not dominating everyone's perceptions. No free Aspects/tags.
Hazō has kept control of the room, but he needs Kei to take authority of the situation for at least long enough to free Confute. This is going to be a TN 40 (Great) Presence check from her. Hazō will be supporting her similarly to before.
Rough. Kei's not able to take charge enough to order the pangolin soldiers around, though making a 30 means she's still going to seem commanding (rather than arrogant and imperious).
Well, if that isn't going to work, it's back to ol' reliable.
They take some stress, but they're not Taken Out! Surprising. Looks like Kei's gonna have to do some killing convincing. Actually, Kei may not be the best suited for this situation. Let's see Noburi try to convince the guard to let the condor go (sadly, Hazō's ability to Rapport at the pangolins is very low).
Well that works. Noburi convinces this soldier to hand over Confute. Now what? The plan doesn't specify what to do with Confute. Frankly, I don't see any way to keep Confute alive other than to get her the hell out of Pangolin, and there's really no non-treasonous way to do that. I'll say that they basically walk her to an exit and poke her to go off on her own.
She'd get cut down by ninjutsu very quickly that way, so Hazō needs to follow after to keep the pangolins from firing on her (I'm having Kei notice this as a freebie). Can he keep up with a flying condor with his skywalkers?
Confute (Athletics): ?? + ? (flight bonus) - ? (tied up for two years penalty) - 3 = ??
Hazō (Athletics): 37 + 3 (IN) + 5 (boost) + 5 (skywalkers) + 6 = 56
Quite easily, as it turns out. He will pretend to keep up with her until she's out of reasonable ninjutsu range, then let her go and return for damage control. Making it seem like they did not blatantly set Confute free will be really hard. As a TN, I would say that it's TN 60 (Fantastic). However, Taxiarchos Pankratos' Empathy may be easier to penetrate than a TN 60. Kei is taking the lead here as she was the one nominally in charge of the situation. Let's see some rolls to see how this goes…
Can the Taxiarchos compel the information out of Kei?
Nope. Can Kei spin the narrative in a compelling way to him? While this is clearly Rapport by use, Kei is so adversarial in the way that she frames it, I'm going to list it as Presence with a penalty (from the condescending tone she takes with him).
There's only so much the dice can do with base 10 Deceit. Narratively, the Taxiarchos cannot draw this out further due to the circumstances, so he will end this encounter with one last Intimidation purely to inflict Consequences, out of spite. He needs to prioritize figuring out what to do about the escaped condor.
For the Saturday vote close deadline (1pm Eastern), please write a plan with the [Conclave] tag. For example:
[][Conclave] Just Chill Out For A Bit
Take a day off.
Get back into it, make some trade deals just to talk to people, then make your Dragons pitch one-by-one.
Voting for this plan will be counted from the end of this chapter, not @Velorien's Thursday chapter, so feel free to start plan-making immediately.
Brevity XP: 1 (to be bulk-awarded with GM-fun XP at end of arc, since base XP for this time period has already been awarded)
FP Tally: The whole team spent 2 FP and won a major confrontation, so they netted -1. Kei/Noburi's sheets will be updated, Hazō's arc-FP is at 3.
Tricky plan to write for, very underspecified in some important regards, including what to do with Confute if everything goes well. I note the other plan does specify this, and I could have mix-and-matched, but I decided to tiebreak before writing anything, so this outcome seemed reasonable as an autopilot choice.
A reminder that while Kei has proposed being Pantsā's extrajudicial enforcer in the aftermath of Operation Murdersnout, Pantsā has neither approved nor disapproved of this proposal.
Hazō, Mari, Kei, and Snowflake reclined in luxurious padded armchairs, sipping lightly-spiced hot chocolate beneath the chandelier-light of the palatial Cleaning Supplies Overflow closet. In the middle, a carved oak table grand enough to serve an entire Gōketsu Clan war council held Hazō's secret weapon: a meticulously-assembled timetable, in other words a specialised kind of list. No naysayer would be capable of stopping him in his tracks with this devastating implement of organisation at his disposal.
"So," Mari began, "what is this highly-sensitive business that takes priority over my urgent need to cure a certain Merchant Council gentleman of his unexpected pangs of conscience?"
Hazō decided he didn't want to know.
"I believe," he raised his voice dramatically, "there may be a conspiracy afoot!"
He did not expect the response he got.
"Which one?" Mari asked. "I can think of maybe three that should be due to kick off right about now."
"I myself hold a leading role in several, between the Nara, the KEI, and certain other endeavours," Kei added, "as well as providing logistical support and ad hoc supervision for others orchestrated by Ami and Shikamaru."
"I am completely ignorant of same," Snowflake said, "and you should all feel comfortable discussing your suspicions and counter-plotting with me."
Hazō was silent for about five seconds.
"You know what," he said, "for the sake of my sanity, I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear anything and move on to the main topic. I think there's something not right with the series of events surrounding Akane's disappearance."
Mari put down her mug of hot chocolate. "Hazō, I may be the last person to give advice on healthy coping strategies, but if this is about finding someone new to blame for Akane's death, please… let it go. The whole thing's been thoroughly investigated, we already have all the culprits we're getting until the tracking teams bring us back some heads, and all you can do now is end up whipping yourself into a paranoid frenzy and wasting your time–or your credibility–on futile accusations when you should be healing. Don't do this to yourself."
This time, though, Hazō was ahead of the conversation.
"I've run the numbers," he said.
"You've run the numbers?" Mari repeated sceptically as Kei and Snowflake simultaneously said, "Proceed."
"Let's look at the timeline," Hazō said gratefully (and, secretly, with a little smugness) as he pointed to the timetable. "Team Akane's mission was assigned on January 5th. That's our first data point, and it already stands out. The team was formed only a month earlier–what were they doing already on a mission in the wilderness of Fire? A month in, Team Mako was stress-testing training dummies and delivering packages for the Quartermaster's Office. Once, we got to stand guard outside a military warehouse overnight and we were so excited about getting to act like real ninja."
"That's ignoring context," Mari said. "The strange thing about Team Akane was it being formed after graduation, instead of being decided in the final year and confirmed based on exam performance. The team itself, the three genin, had already been around for months by the time they got her. You might say it was unusual for them to only get a month of relearning their teamwork with her at the centre before heading into combat, but in the end, it's the squad leader's call whether the team is ready."
"Akane being Akane," Kei said, "I cannot in all confidence state that she would have rejected a direct order for the sake of additional training time, even if the specifics of her situation permitted her to."
"Fine," Hazō said. He didn't want to think about Akane's critical willingness to take orders, the willingness that had her burn down an entire town and plunge into a darkness Hazō never found a way to rescue her from.
"Let's summarise the timeline," he said. "Akane gets assigned her mission around noon on January 5th. The next day, the 6th, her team sets out for the Wakare Woods, and that's when the attackers enter and follow their trail. It takes four hours to get from the nearest border to the trail, then maybe an hour and a half to follow it and reach the campsite.
"That's a lot of time spent in enemy territory, among enemy patrols, following a fixed route. It wasn't a team of missing-nin just passing through, or weirdos like Grandmaster F out on a stroll through the countryside. This was a premeditated mission, to kill or to capture. In the best-case scenario, they were just here to grab the first Leaf team they found, but honestly, I'm in no mood to be that optimistic."
"I cannot rationalise such a use of resources," Kei agreed. "We live in the age of AMITY, and the villages wait with bated breath for the first offender, that they may witness what kind of example will be made of them, and adjust their own foreign policy based on whether the organisation displays bite to match its bark. A randomly-chosen Leaf team would not be a reward commensurate to the risk."
"Right," Hazō agreed. "The fact of the attack proves that somebody wanted specifically Team Akane captured or dead.
"But let's follow the list in order."
Three people rolled their eyes. Hazō ignored the heretics mocking powers they refused to comprehend.
"Night of the 6th," he said. "After Team Akane made camp, the enemy attacked them. Most likely, it was an ambush. There weren't enough traces of combat, and none of the genin had a chance to run or send signals for help."
"While it would be bizarre to attack an unsuspecting camp at night and not attempt an ambush," Snowflake said, "it is not as if it would be difficult for a prepared assassination or capture team to incapacitate a handful of fresh genin, considering near-parity of numbers and availability of area-of-effect attacks. Likewise, a taijutsu specialist like Akane would not typically leave much destruction in her wake, and we know that the attackers were patient enough to bury evidence."
"Snowflake," Kei said, "you are being highly pedantic."
"What of it?"
"I merely wished to express my gratitude," Kei said. "Your commentary is timely and well-reasoned, and I appreciate you shouldering some of the burden of pedantry that is typically mine alone."
"Oh," Snowflake said, looking down sheepishly at her mug of hot chocolate. Hazō gave Mari a puzzled look, but she just shrugged at him.
"As I was saying," Hazō went on patiently, "it was probably an ambush, and considering Akane's trap-making talents and the fact that she got the same Kagome-sensei training as the rest of us, I'm pretty sure the attackers would be dust if they so much as put a toe wrong. Which means they must have bypassed the array altogether."
"They had skywalkers," Mari pointed out. "I've never had the heart to point out to Kagome that your invention makes his second greatest obsession obsolete against anyone with access to a decent sealmaster. Besides, Akane's array would've been set up against chakra beasts."
Hazō nodded, ignoring the first half of that response as firmly as he'd ever ignored anything in his entire life.
"That's also what Kagome-sensei said when I asked him how hard it would be to bypass." It went without saying that arrays against ninja were completely different from arrays against chakra beasts. The former emphasised stealth, because an exposed array could be navigated, disarmed, or even turned against its owners by a tactically-brilliant opponent, whereas even a single missed trap might be enough to cripple the human who triggered it. The latter emphasised overwhelming force, since chakra beasts with trap-detecting senses were much less common than swarms that could overrun an array with sheer numbers or behemoths that could power through and still be in fighting shape after a dozen explosions to the snout.
"Additionally," Kei said, "the buried items at the site imply access to earth manipulation ninjutsu, in which case we cannot exclude the possibility that they simply tunnelled under the array. In my time with the Nara, I have come to appreciate that blindness to the various weaknesses of the standard trap array as a concept is a key weakness of the Kagome school, much like its excessive focus on explosives."
"Kei!" Hazō exclaimed. "I love you as a sister, but I will not hear those words spoken within my house."
"I know you mean well," Mari added, "but that kind of language is uncalled for."
"Please do not be too harsh on her," Snowflake said. "None of us are above careless words in times of stress."
"...I sincerely apologise," Kei said to the room at large after a few seconds. "As I feared, my lack of opportunities to spend time with my family, even now that my bond with Mari is firmer than ever, is causing me to drift away from my roots. As I have in any case set this afternoon aside for Gōketsu matters, when we are finished here, I will seek out Kagome and request a remedial rant."
Mari looked Kei in the eye with a gentle smile. "I think that would be best, Kei. What's family for if not to catch you when you start to fall?"
Hazō smiled as well. "Looks like I've got another reason to be quick about explaining my theory. Kagome-sensei's going to be over the moon about you coming to him of your own accord. Start too late, and he could be going until the early hours of the morning."
"...Is it too late to reconsider?"
It was. "At some point on the 7th," Hazō said, "the attackers exfiltrate. We estimate that it took them seven hours to reach the border. No signs of serious injury after fighting a de facto special jōnin, no signs of major chakra expenditure."
"What is your evidence for this claim?" Snowflake interrupted.
"Travel speed," Hazō said. "I don't think they could have covered the distance without chakra boost, or while injured."
"You have concluded that it was a seven-hour journey," Snowflake objected, "not that they made it in seven hours. Even Canvass cannot track a week-old trail to the hour. It is also possible that they took injuries that did not impede their escape, such as to the arms, or ones that could be suppressed with anaesthesia or medical ninjutsu. Furthermore, lack of chakra expenditure is not indicative, insofar as"–she gave Kei a meaningful look–"a simple explosive tag would be sufficient to severely injure or kill even a special jōnin who was unaware of the incoming attack and thus failed to dive for cover."
"I already apologised," Kei muttered.
"All right," Hazō said. "It's circumstantial evidence, not proof. I don't think that changes the fact that they'd have needed to be a strong team–maybe jōnin, at least multiple chuunin. Not the kind of resources you deploy lightly."
"In the first place," Mari said, "it's not like anyone's going to send a three-man genin team on a combat mission in enemy territory. Of course they were chuunin or higher. Sorry to ruin your deduction, Hazō."
"So here's the thing," Hazō said, finally reaching his conclusion, which no pedantry could ruin. "You don't pull off an ambush like this by getting lucky. Assuming we rule out the possibility that they were after targets of opportunity"–Kei and Snowflake nodded–"this needed solid intel. They'd likely need her route."
"Or simply her destination and the ability to draw a straight line on a map," Kei noted.
"Minus one pedantry point, Kei," Snowflake said. "Those two possibilities are functionally identical."
Kei glared at the betrayer.
"Think about it," Hazō said. "A spy would need to get hold of that information as soon as it was available, then immediately run right for the border, at ninja speed, to deliver it on time. That's very unlikely. Highly-skilled ninja infiltrators willing to blow their cover at the Tower just to get at Akane and her genin don't grow on trees. The more I think about it, the more plausible it looks that the information was leaked in advance."
Kei and Snowflake looked at each other. Kei waved a hand in an ominous "go ahead" gesture.
"Why?" Snowflake asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Why would the spy need to run immediately? According to your most pleasingly-formatted timetable"--she pointed to the first few lines on her copy–"the mission was assigned at noon on the 5th. The assassination attempt occurred at night of the 6th, at some point before Team Akane broke camp. Assuming they would do so at sunrise, which would have been 7 a.m., and subtracting the attackers' travel time to reach the site, that allows a maximum of 37.5 hours between mission assignment and the attackers' departure from a hypothetical camp on the border.
"A cornucopia of options presents itself within those 37.5 hours. A shinobi infiltrator has time to find a convenient excuse to leave the village. A well-funded civilian spy, to purchase or borrow a steed suited for rapid woodland travel. Perhaps foreign shinobi can be found at the gates after an escort mission, or visiting under some other pretext, for AMITY offers new excuses for international travel for the creative, and are prepared to carry a coded message–either for payment or because they are allies of the traitor. Perhaps civilian waypoints exist amenable to a rapid message relay. Such systems might have been prepared years ago, equivalents of Jiraiya's civilian spy network, and 37.5 hours could well be enough to activate them. Mari, with her superlative infiltration experience, can surely add a dozen more options, but I trust the point is made."
Mari nodded, not without sympathy.
Hazō stared helplessly at his timetable. His conspiracy theory required an event that was nigh-impossible without a conspiracy. He didn't actually think that the attackers had departed at 1:30 a.m. on the 7th and attacked shortly before sunrise, or that Fire held an enemy spy network just waiting to carry an urgent message to an enemy team who just happened to be waiting for it on the border. But that didn't matter. The only standard of plausibility an explanation needed to meet was that it be more plausible than the idea that somebody with access to Akane's mission details set her up. How would Hazō's sanity-check team weigh Snowflake's observations, implicitly supported by Mari and Kei, against the accusation, no, even the speculation, that someone with the potent motivation of keeping Elemental Mastery secret–which was to say Asuma, Shikamaru, or one of the people in this room–had had Akane murdered in cold blood?
Should he even be trying to persuade them? Or should he accept that there was no internal enemy to be found? Maybe Mari was right, and he was just looking for someone to blame because he couldn't accept the fact that he was powerless to lay a finger on the ninja who'd killed her, stuck sitting at home waiting for news while their fate was being determined by strangers who'd barely known Akane.
"Did you have anything else, Hazō?" Mari asked, with no real curiosity, for completeness' sake.
Thinking about it again, Hazō could only make one reply…
-o-
You have received 3 + 1 = 4 XP.
-o-
What do you do? You may vote in a plan for the conversation to continue. Otherwise, it will be assumed that Hazō backed off and nothing further came of it (except for poor Kei).
"Good morning, Lord Gōketsu," said Aburame Manjirō, rising from his seat as the waiter bowed Hazō through the door. "The Hokage has retained me to serve as your invigilator for special jōnin status in sealing."
Aburame Manjirō was eighty years old. He walked with a cane and, if you were discreet about your spying, he could be spotted attempting to rub the pain out of his knees whenever the weather got even slightly damp or cold. His hands were starting to gnarl and his vision wasn't what it had been; his peripheral vision was gone and he had trouble recognizing faces from more than twenty or thirty feet. Despite that, he was still a dangerous soft-style martial artist and widely known as one of the best sealmasters in Leaf.
"I am delighted," Hazō said, smiling sincerely and bowing. There were a whole lot of sealmasters that he had been desperately hoping would not be chosen. Aburame was tight-fisted with his praise and short of patience but he was honest and had no grudge against anyone that Hazō had ever noticed.
"May I ask your age and lineage, Lord Gōketsu?" The words were polite. Perfectly, intentionally, utterly polite.
"I am sixteen, sir. Gōketsu Hazō, out of Gōketsu Kagome by Gōketsu Jiraiya." Jiraiya had given Hazō barely enough instruction to be counted as an 'also taught by' in Hazō's sealing lineage but Aburame was certainly not going to quibble. It would be the height of rudeness.
"You began your studies at what age?"
"Thirteen, sir."
"Hm. You are certainly...driven. Most students put in at least a decade before they feel comfortable testing, but here we are already." The word 'already' creaked like a branch in battering wind.
"I believe myself capable, sir," Hazō said. "I hope to demonstrate that to you over the course of this interview."
"Let's get to it," Aburame said, taking his seat and waving Hazō into the one opposite him.
They were meeting in a private room at Aburame's favorite tea house and the staff had brought in brazier after brazier to render the room sweltering. A large table sat between their two chairs, loaded down with nibbles and noshes and tea things. A narrower but taller table sat at each man's elbow. Aburame's side table already had a steaming cup of tea on it, which the old sealmaster lifted to his lips immediately after settling.
"Of course," Hazō said, nodding. He sat down and poured himself a cup of tea from the pot that waited on the table between them. He lifted the teapot and an eyebrow towards Aburame, asking if the older man wanted his cup topped off; Aburame shook his head, so Hazō set the pot down. He sipped his tea and waited politely.
"List and define the lunar particulars," Aburame demanded, his voice a staccato rap.
Hazō raised an eyebrow; this was literally first-week stuff, so much so that the question was almost insulting. "Really?" He shrugged. "Waxing, waning, full, gibbous, crescent, slivered, jellicle, tosurent. Respectively: whether the disk is increasing or decreasing, whether it shows its entire face, most of its face, little of its face, or but a hint of its brow, whether it is approaching or departing from the Traveller."
"Define chirality."
"Some seal elements come in a left- and right-handed version," Hazō said patiently. "The chirality is relevant when calculating chakra flow intersection."
"Define localization."
Hazō cocked his head in surprise. "Wait, are you doing Jiraiya's Fundamentals of Sealing, page by page? Let's skip ahead." He closed his eyes, bringing the image of the book to mind and walking through the pages with his hands. "Pages one through three are the introduction, four through twenty-seven are the warnings—although..." He paused, counting. "Ten of those pages are stories from Jiraiya's studies used as examples of why you don't ignore the warnings. Twenty-eight through forty-one are the list of terms and their definitions. Forty-two—"
"Wrong," Aburame said, leaning forward, his beaky nose protruding. "The list of terms stops at page forty."
"Oh, you have a first edition?" Hazō asked. "Cool. He only made four of those that I'm aware of. In the second edition he used a slightly wider margin for readability and it pushed the term 'valequa' onto page forty-one. Valequa measures the ramping of chakra turbulence during flow intersection.
"Page forty-two is a caricature of a horse. Jiraiya liked to include amusing asides in order to provide the student's brain a momentary rest. He also liked to refer to things as 'two pages after the horse' or 'four pages before the honey jar' instead of giving page numbers, because he was difficult that way. Page forty-four—"
"I believe we can stipulate to your recollection of the fundamentals," Aburame said. "Although I admit myself not best pleased with your casualness regarding the Scholar."
Hazō smiled slightly. The titles 'First', 'Second', and so on had a specific meaning in Leaf: they referenced the Hokage. Leaf's sealmasters had therefore needed to find other titles to use when referring to their defining figures. Jiraiya was not the first of Leaf's sealmasters, but he was the first to actually collect all the available sealing lore, strip out the garbage and erroneous parts, organize what remained, and publish it in a form that other sealmasters could use for teaching. Before him, seal instruction in Leaf had been done using whatever random notes your clan's lineage of sealmasters had cobbled together. The quality varied a lot, as did the organization. Many of the terms used in Leaf's modern seal theory had been standardized by Jiraiya, as had the standard template for research notes. As such, there had been no more appropriate title that Leaf's sealmasters could bestow upon him than 'Scholar'.
"With respect, sir," Hazō said. "Unless you ever shared a roof with him, I think I'm better qualified to judge. Jiraiya was a brilliant sealmaster—brilliant at everything, which is a really huge damn shadow to have to step out of, let me tell you. He also had a sense of humor that could best be described as 'puckish'. One time, he stole all the cups in the kitchen and left clues as to where he'd hidden them. When we confronted him he said that he was 'helping with our training as a good Clan Head should do.' Yes, sometimes he could be difficult."
Aburame did not, or perhaps could not, unbend enough to smile. No, it was undoubtedly just coincidence that when he raised his cup to his lips he held his hand in such a position that it blocked sight of his cheeks and the lower half of his face. And those definitely were not twinkles of amusement in his eyes.
"I shall grant your point," Aburame said, once more somber as he lowered his cup. "Moving on, let us consider a potential design. You have a Sogabe Slide connected to a half-W splitter. Testing has indicated that a vortex forms within the squinch. What is the optimal way to modify the design in order to deal with this situation?"
"I suspect you want me to say 'use a blitter along the right-hand fork', which would be the textbook answer. However, if the flow is widdershins then you would be better off with a third-chord harmonic line with opposing localization. It will provide better smoothing and will stabilize flow rates while being quite compact."
"And if it's deosil?"
Hazō wobbled his head in a so-so gesture. "It's debatable. A blitter will work, obviously, but it takes a lot of space in the design. With a deosil flow you would need a second-chord harmonic line and those can generate disharmony if you get the feathering wrong. It's a choice between size and simplicity."
"Hmm." Aburame studied him. "Very well. A different scenario, then. Suppose..."
For the next two hours, Aburame grilled Hazō on scenario after scenario, each one more complex than the one before. The first half were well within Hazō's capacity, but towards the end he was having to struggle. It was when Aburame finally caught him out on an actual mistake that he decided to, as Mari liked to say when she was training them, 'stop dicking around and do it.'
"If the weather was less than perfect, that would cause an inversion on your secondary channel," Aburame said. "You would collapse your field."
"That's true," Hazō said. "I hadn't considered the tempestuous influence when I said that. Would you give me a moment, please?"
Aburame nodded slightly and sipped his tea.
Hazō took a cleansing breath and let his eyes drift closed. He slowed his pulse, centered himself, and reached into the depths of the Ir.n Nerve to where lay the mmemories of the Pangloin Scr-ll and, deeper still, those of eht Gre4t S##l aND the DR4gθn5 7h4! !t !!mpris0n.d.
His vision orbs uncovered themselves and he apprehended his surroundings. Before his line of sight was another human. A tall one. The tall one's orbs dwelled upon him intensely, like a hawk watching for the mouse to stay still a moment.
"The tempestuous influence a discordance brings," he said. "Alignment mode across first, second, and third chords is preferred. Alignment dampens interference, reinforces septimal linkage, and entrains supply."
"That's not...you're supposed to use a Diwala interpreter."
"Diwala interpreter would perform, true. Chord alignment has elegance and also is superior. Chakra flows are properly smoothed, supply is entrained for efficiency maximized, and hardening is placed against both tempestuous interference and lunar phasing without need for prior haruspex investigation."
"Yes, but..." The human broke off and thought. "Would that work?" it said slowly, its tone rising at the end. Its lips bent down and lines appeared on the top of its face. "You want to align all three chords? Yes, it would enhance the chakra linkage across the seventh node bridge, but how would you do it?"
He studied the human curiously. Was it damaged? Could it not feel behind the Paint?
"Celestine overline on third, lightly cthonic line second on, grounded on third. Violet infusion on first and third, blue on second."
The human's vision orbs occluded themselves several times in rapid succession. It reached into its jacket and pulled out a blank scroll and some charcoal upon which it started scribbling frantically.
He waited calmly while the apparently-damaged human made multitudinous messy marks. It took several minutes to do so.
"It looks like this would work," the human said, sounding irritated. "But how in the world did you come up with this? It's bizarre."
"It is the truth," he said.
The human snorted. Probably in the way that signified humor, but he wasn't entirely sure. Humor was heavily rooted in the Paint, and it was hard to keep track of while keeping one eye Out.
"Very well," the human said. "Let's move on. Propose a design for the following..."
Hazō needs to make a series of rolls in order to pass this exam. Specifically, he needs:
TN 45 x3, 3 chances. Basic theory.
TN 50 x3, 5 chances. Advanced theory plus basic design issues for hypothetical seals.
TN 60 x2, 3 chances. Complex seal design questions.
(EDIT: I meant to put Calligraphy checks in there as well and forgot. They would have been TN 40 and he's got an effective score of 43, so we'll assume he passed them.)
He's going to try to do it without SSA to start, using it only at the end for the rolls he can't make without it. SSA is his S-rank trick, and the first rule of S-rank tricks is that you don't talk about your S-rank tricks. The plan calls for Hazō to talk with Kagome in order to acquire tags, but there are no tags to be had. Hazō's training with Kagome is the foundation of this test, not an advantage in it.
Here we go. I'm listing the rolls with dice included unless shown otherwise.
Basic theory #1: 53. Pass!
Basic theory #2: 53. Pass!
Basic theory #3: 47. Pass!
Advanced theory and basic design #1: 56. Pass!
Advanced theory and basic design #2: 50. Pass!
Advanced theory and basic design #3: 50. Pass!
Complex seal design #1: 77. Pass!
Complex seal design #2: 71. Pass!
Hazō has successfully completed his exam.
XP AWARD: 1 The update was only a few hours.
Brevity XP: 1
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday,
.
Last edited:
Conclave Bonus Chapter 3: Contracts and Conscience
Kei released a tense, stuttering breath. "I certainly hope you found this endeavor worthwhile, Hazō," she whispered. "Far be it from me to complain about making even marginal progress towards balancing, no, not worsening the scales of the Condor genocide, but this appears to be a particularly poor exchange rate for political capital. At least in Kago, I had a plausible veneer of legality to my actions that, as the eloquent Taxiarchos points out, is wholly absent here. We are fortunate that he cannot afford to make my outright defiance of the law known without also publicly demonstrating his current inability to punish me for it."
Hazō glanced around at the pangolin soldiers milling about and the Conclave representatives that were still staying close to watch the humans. The two Sages had stuck around to keep an eye on the Taxiarchos, but now hopped back to one of the food tables within the trade hall, while the Rat Clan representative, Nezesari, continued to watch them. She no longer had her back hunched up, but instead extended her body long towards Hazō in a way that he could only describe as curious.
"We saved a life," Hazō said. "After Neck, any life we can save is worth it. As a plus, I think it may have opened some doors for us."
Hazō gestured at Noburi and Kei to follow him as he started to walk over to the Rat Clan ambassador, only for her to hunch up and quickly scamper off.
Noburi laughed. "Chill, bro. The Rats don't like conflict, and you're a giant ball of complications right now. Give it a couple days, and I'm sure they'll be willing to meet you somewhere quiet where the Pangolins don't find out. They've been softly advocating for better treatment for the Condors too, so they're prime suspects for 'assisting an escape' or whatever the Pangolins'll call this."
Hazō nodded. "Fine. Kei, you said that the Taxiarchos can't tell his people what happened because he'll look weak? Let's do it ourselves, then."
"Hazō," Kei said patiently. "Demonstrating obstreperous disregard for Pangolin laws to the Pangolin military police will not lead to consequences you find desirable."
"Not like that," Hazō said, sighing slightly. "Damage control. If the Pangolin leader won't publish a narrative for his people, let's fill that gap for them."
"What narrative makes you helping a Condor slave escape look good to the Condor-hating Pangolins?" Noburi asked in a whisper. "I think a good chunk of them signed up for the joy of getting to snap the whip."
"Lean on Kei's role," Hazō said. "Have her make sure they're not being mistreated, offer to bring any concerns about the Taxiarchos snapping at his own people before Pantsā. After all, they did their duty correctly."
"They did not," Kei said.
Hazō waved a hand. "Bah, we're talking about narrative, not fact. I'll be all grateful to them for protecting me despite my history and commend them for doing their duty well. You'll make them feel more personally important than Pangolin's vast bureaucracy ever made them feel, and Noburi will give them some nice gifts and talk them up. They'll be easy pickings after that. They'll parrot anything we want them to."
"Have you been spending too much time around Mari?" Noburi asked, smirking.
"Given the circumstances," Hazō said, "Just the right amount of time. C'mon."
As established in the last chapter, the hammer of Pangolin's laws is winding up to strike Kei. Can Hazō defuse the tension? I don't particularly want to write this scene out, but I do want to answer the question. Therefore, social combat!
The plan specifies to follow up with the Pangolin guards that were involved in arresting Confute, but they've been taken away by the Taxiarchos for their duly-deserved dressing-down. Instead, Kei will continue leaning on her status as the Pangolin Summoner in order to try to establish the narrative the heroes want. Kei getting an in with any Pangolins at all will require a TN 30 (Good) Presence check:
She barely makes it. The narrative that she's spinning, that the local guards are being mistreated in some way by the Taxiarchos that may require the Pangolin Summoner's personal intervention to ensure that it is not abusive, is extremely thin. Still, the soldiers will listen to her.
Hazō can't follow the plan's suggestion of thanking them for protecting him as the guards that specifically saved him aren't going to be immediately available, and he's got very few ins for being friendly with any of the other Pangolins. Instead, it'll have to be Noburi, giving out some fancy Earthshaped gemstones and laying on the charm. TN 20 (Fair) for Rapport.
Great, Noburi gets in with the Pangolin soldiers too. How will he and Kei exploit the fact that the soldiers are willing to listen to them?
Unfortunately, the plan doesn't present a clear narrative to stick to in the absence of the "abusive Taxiarchos" idea that Kei's Presence isn't quite high enough to sell. Let's just go for "heroic and generous Gōketsu trying to do the right thing, obstructive Taxiarchos refusing to acknowledge systemic faults that led to the Condor's escape."
Hazō's not primarily involved, but he will need to make a Deceit check (TN 30 (Good); much easier than the Taxiarchos) to convince them that taking Confute from Pangolin hands and walking her right to the nearest patch of open air was not intentional. This affects the difficulty of Kei's next Presence check, either TN 40 or 60.
Hazō (Deceit): 24 + 3 (invoke "Lists and Plans"; since the narrative is that he's optimized this out with Mari) - 3 = 24 Hazō spends a FP to reroll!
Hazō (Deceit): 24 + 3 (invoke "Lists and Plans") - 3 = 24 Hazō spends a FP to reroll! He's out of FP!
Hazō (Deceit): 24 + 3 (invoke "Lists and Plans") + 0 = 27
Unfortunately, he's not going to convince them that he's not blatantly treasonous. That means this Presence check for Kei is going to be TN 60 (Fantastic) to get the desired effect, and I see little need to roll it out. Unfortunately, the heroes fail to effectively peddle their bullshit.
o-o-o
The next day…
"...and by that point, my quills were already clean, so I simply bid him goodbye!" Harigoru said triumphantly. Minami gave a short, polite laugh in response.
"Ah, what's the manner, Minami?" the porcupine asked. "Don't tell me those other humans, the Gōketsu, are getting to you. Ever since that Hazō guy showed up, Noburi's been so serious! Now you're not finding my stories funny either?"
"Oh no, Harigoru," Minami said. "You're just as charming as ever. There's just been a lot weighing on my mind recently, that's all."
"What is it?" Harigoru asked. "I'm always glad to listen to a friend."
"Well… Tell me, what have you heard about the Dragons?"
o-o-o
"Hello, my most youthful friend!" said Kameress, the approximate priest of Turtle's trade delegation. He lowered a flipper and mimed a bow. It was a pathetic attempt. The turtle's shell didn't have a joint in the middle.
Neji ignored this affront as he had many, many others, and raised his hands above his head. He whispered a quiet thanks to the Sage that the Turtles had agreed that his training shell wasn't yet ready for display among the Conclave's clans. "Praise be to the Spirit of Youth!" Neji shouted in the traditional greeting.
"Praise be to the glorious Spirit of Youth!" yelled Kameress, raising his flippers above his head in joy.
"Praise be to the glorious and magnificent Spirit of Youth!" yelled Kamo, another of the Turtle trade representatives, raising her flippers above her head in joy. When had she come in? Neji had thought he'd cornered Kamerisu, but if Kamo was here…
"Praise be to the glorious and magnificent Spirit of Youth for all eternity!" yelled Kamail, one of the soldiers that had accompanied the traders on their long journey to Pangolin (they bordered each other, but the Turtles took their time over land).
"Praise be to the great, glorious, and magnificent Spirit of Youth for all eternity!" yelled another Turtle, and more were streaming in as the Youth-praising circle started to grow in the cramped room that Neji had chosen for his private conversation with Kameress.
The yelling and praising continued for minutes, and Neji had to profess his youth a half-dozen more times before some of the Turtles were so overcome with joy that they started to make commitments to various exercises and personal tortures that they would perform to demonstrate their dedication.
Nearly a quarter-hour later, with his ears ringing and teeth aching, Neji was finally left alone with Kameress again.
"Truly, you humans know youth better than we ever could," Kameress said, wiping a tear from one eye. "I find myself delighted to know that if ever our hearts go dark, you will always be able to relight the flames of Youth for us old fogeys."
"You are only one hundred and forty," Neji said.
"Bah," Kameress said, waving a flipper. "I'm old to you. Now, while I am grateful for the youth within your heart, I am certain there is more here. What joyous news have you decided to bring before me?"
"The news is important but dangerous," Neji said. He disliked needing to soil his tongue for manipulation, but orders were orders. "In fact, you already know it, in part. However, despite its importance, many who have heard it have chosen to respond… unyouthfully."
Kameress looked taken aback, so Neji continued. "Yes, you know what I speak of. I have come to tell you about… The Dragons."
o-o-o
"Welcome, welcome!" said Kawalier, the Otter's leader at the Conclave. "Never have I had to host a clan boss in this interim home, or any home at all! Please, make yourself comfortable."
Lord Sarutobi Asuma, Seventh Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, folded his hands before himself and bowed shallowly. "I am honored to be your guest," he said, as he took off the conical hat and white haori of the Hokage's office.
"Sit, sit," Kawalier said. "Incidentally, how strange that you humans wear your marks of rank and status in easily removable layers." The Otter thumbed at the various points in his fur where shiny wires of metal and occasional ornamented gemstones had been woven in. "Are your ranks so variable that you need to be able to remove and change them at all times?"
"Well, my position is secure," Asuma said with a laugh. "Most people don't change their social status often. No, clothes are good for keeping warm against the winter cold, but you have to be able to take them off when the summer comes. I know the temperature doesn't change too much on the Seventh Path, but on the Human Path, wearing the wrong clothes at the wrong time of year can be deadly."
"How deplorable!" Kawalier said. "It is such a shame that the Human Path is so deadly to its residents. No matter, you and your people have clearly done well for yourselves, so there must be opportunity in the chaos."
"There's plenty of good to be found," Asuma said with a neutral smile.
"Yes, charming… I can tell we will have much to talk about!" Kawalier said, holding out a small bowl of snacks.
"Indeed we will," Asuma said, keeping his face neutral as he reached out to grab a bite of the rancid-smelling dried fish. "In fact, I have many, many things that I want to share with you…"
As Asuma promised, he's having everyone do their best to sway their summon representatives to the reality of the Dragon threat. I don't want to roll out these combats in excruciating detail, so I'm abstracting them to a single Rapport check at a substantially higher TN than the individual TNs in a hypothetical combat.
Both the Turtles and Porcupines are positively inclined towards you, so the TN for this is only going to be TN ?? (????).
The Monkeys hardly need convincing, so Asuma will be spending some time working over some of the neutral parties. He's splitting his attention with the Chūnin Exams tournament at this point in the timeline, but a pointed intervention will be worth some sleep. He sadly won't have the time to attempt more than one clan's representatives. He chooses the Otter (TN ?? (????)):
"And this is my wife, Nezala," Nezesari said, indicating with her nose the last of the rats that had come out to greet the visiting Gōketsu. Nezala was also knee-high while on all-fours, and had a coat that was a slightly darker brown than Nezesari's chestnut.
"Your… wife?" Hazō asked, momentarily bewildered.
"Yes," Nezesari said, then chittered nervously. "Ah, my mistake. Human norms only permit pair-bonding between male and female, correct?"
"No, that's- Yes, our norms don't allow it, but it's fine with us," Hazō said, looking between Kei and Noburi, who both nodded.
"I see," Nezesari said. "Most Seventh Path clans have similar pair-bonding norms, but it's not a norm that they defend when people outside the clan break it. Are you sure it doesn't make you uncomfortable?"
"Not at all," Hazō said.
"Good," Nezesari said, relaxing fractionally and scampering to the opposite end of the short table to join her wife. "My dear Nezala has no patience for the manipulation of numbers that trading consists of, but she's a sharp eye and a sharper conversationalist."
"A pleasure to meet you," Nezala said demurely, flicking her tail and inching slightly towards Nezesari as the other rats left to tend to their various responsibilities in the trade delegation. "I am Nezala, daughter of Nezta. Thank you for the offer to try Human Path cuisine. We've tried plenty of the Human Path foods, but it was news to us that human culture so heavily emphasized the different ways that the same foods could be prepared."
"I am Gōketsu Hazō, and these are my siblings Kei and Noburi, who you are already aware of," Hazō said, placing a small box on the short table with a light thunk. "I'm glad to make your acquaintance. If I may, I appreciate your hosting and wanted to offer you a gift." He knelt down and undid the knots tying the box shut, then let the sides fall away to reveal an Earthshaped sculpture of a male figure, holding up an ornate staff.
Hazō had been struck by a fit of inspiration earlier while he'd been brainstorming gifts for the Conclave. He'd taken stones of various colors to represent the Six Paths. White marble for the Deva Path, carnelian for the Asura Path, lapis lazuli for the Human Path, jade for the Animal Path, moonstone for the Preta Path, and obsidian for the Naraka Path. He had used Earthshaping to merge the colors together in waves and spirals as they crawled up the figure's robes, and across its arms, then melded them into a spiral where the face would have been. In one of the figure's hands, a small book laid open, while in the other, a staff topped by a shining quartz ball. Hazō had snuck a rolled-up HOWS into the bottom of the staff earlier to diffuse light through the quartz.
"It is the Sage of the Six Paths, as the humans see him," Hazō said. "The six colors represent the Paths that he made, and the shining crystal represents the Seventh Path, his finest creation. I know you must see him differently, but I thought this would interest you."
The two Rats across the table had been transfixed by the statue, but Nezala was the first to break out of the trance. "How beautiful!" she said. "Though I'm afraid we can't take your gift. I have to confess that I'm a little bit surprised. Does your culture respect and revere the Sage?"
"Why wouldn't we?" Hazō asked.
"We took a little bit of time to learn about the Human Path when we came here," Nezala said, "though not nearly enough. We're no Crows, our records on the Human Path are scarce. Plus, we can't exactly ask the clan's singers for songs from Pangolin. Still, once we pooled everything we had, we got the impression that the Human Path is just awful. The wildlife kills you, so you can't hunt or gather from the land. Instead, you're forced to plant random plants in safe places to harvest their fruits, but static farms make you a target for predators and vermin. If you fight them off, the weather might kill your plants by being too hot or too cold or too dry or too wet. And even if you make enough food, if your neighbors don't, they might just invade you and kill you for it!"
"Right," Hazō said. "Those are problems the Human Path faces, but we wouldn't have any hope of solving them if it weren't for the Sage giving us chakra. Most ninja would use chakra to steal food, but we're making the world a better place instead. We fertilize people's fields so their crops grow better, and we build walls so chakra beasts don't attack them. We're even building an international coalition to stop war forever."
"Wouldn't these problems be much easier to solve without the chakra beasts at all?" Nezesari asked. "Again, we don't understand the Human Path very well, but I would imagine that chakra beasts, given the name, are also a consequence of chakra."
"I don't know," Hazō said. "I haven't spent much time talking with priests, but they might have an explanation. Maybe the chakra beast already existed, and the Sage balanced the scales. I'm not sure if humanity would have survived a thousand years without chakra. Plus, a lack of chakra beasts wouldn't keep war from happening. If at all, it might be worse."
"If the Sage gave humans chakra, why couldn't he take it away from the chakra beasts?" Nezesari asked.
Hazō shrugged. "The Sage didn't do many things. He didn't kill or banish the Tailed Beasts when he perhaps could have, and he chose to imprison the Dragons when I know for a fact that they're killable. Maybe he ran out of power after making the Paths. Someone," Hazō said, acutely aware of who, "said that the Sage's failure made us live in a broken world. I think that's true. He tried to make the world better, but failed in ways large and small. Still, he gave us the tools to try again. That's what we're doing."
"Interesting," Nezala said. "I suppose I don't exactly know how the balance plays out between the costs of chakra beasts and the benefits of chakra. Still, you have to look at the Seventh Path in envy, right?"
"What do you mean?" Hazō asked.
Nezesari curled up her tail. "She has a just-so explanation of the Seventh Path's origin that she likes."
Nezala flicked her whiskers. "The reasoning is just-so, but the Human Path gives a potential counterfactual." She turned to Hazō. "I think there's reasonable evidence that Seventh Path was designed to be a paradise. The land is fair and fruitful so that almost anyone can survive without toil. No predators pose a real danger to a civilized clan, and clan leaders have vastly superior strength within their own borders, so defenders in war are much stronger than aggressors, disincentivizing conflict. It's not perfect, but it seems much, much better than the Human Path. Don't you wish that the Sage had made your Path the way he made ours?"
"I suppose," Hazō said. "But war isn't impossible on the Seventh Path. In fact, the only war I've seen has been exceptionally brutal."
The rats didn't respond to that.
The silence dragged on.
"Now," Noburi said. "We've heard that the Rat Clan are known as pacifists. I want to learn more about why that is. Maybe there are some lessons we could learn to improve our efforts on the Human Path."
"It's easy to be a pacifist in a world where war makes no sense," Nezala said. "It sounds harder to apply the same principles on the Human Path."
"Yeah, I can imagine a couple times where refusing to fight would have meant we all died," Noburi said with a grimace. "But that doesn't mean we can't try to minimize the amount that we need to kill people, you know?"
Both rats winced slightly at the reminder that the humans across from them were trained killers. The two of them had been slowly inching towards each other over the course of the conversation, and now they were cuddled up into each other.
Nezala seemed to draw strength from the physical connection. "Pacifism is the final conclusion of starting from certain principles, but it's a little hard to explain. Here's one way of looking at it: war is costly and destroys resources. There's almost always a way to divide resources so that everyone is better off without the costs of a war."
"Of course," Nezesari said, "those costs must actually exist to disincentivize war. We had secured an alliance to ostracize the Pangolins and refuse them any trade, but instead they became a mercantile hub and got rich off of tariffs. While they can't evade the price in blood, the wealth of their land and the wealth of the Condors' no doubt soothes their wound and erases their shame."
"I regret supplying the Pangolins with seals," Hazō said, as calmly as possible. "I intend on making things right however I can. We already have plans. For example, if we can get the Clan Bosses together to fight the Dragons, Conjura will no doubt be one of the strongest combatants. We intend to confront Pantsā with Conjura's contributions and demand her people's freedom as a reward for her work, if everything goes right. We want to work with you to achieve that goal."
The rats didn't respond, again letting the conversation dip into silence for a moment.
"We want the Condors' freedom, yes," Nezesari said. "Nezala explained that we don't have many material needs. Instead, we've been using our gains from the trade network to incrementally buy rights for the Condors as much as we can. You have given us a reason to believe your sincerity. You freed Confute. I assume you'll pay dearly for it, and that's a good, costly signal that you're trustworthy. But you have broken a contract. Someone that has broken a contract is very hard to trust."
"I broke a contract with the Pangolins," Hazō said as Kei fidgeted to his side. "Who were exploiting that contract to enslave one species and conquer another. It was the right thing to do."
"We're only talking to you at all because you broke a contract with the Pangolins. If you'd backstabbed an actually respectable clan like that…" Nezala said. "It's a surprise that the Pangolins are letting you run around their territory at all."
"Presumably, you wouldn't have broken the contract if the circumstances weren't bad," Nezesari said. "That you did so, or claim to have done so, for moral reasons is a point in your favor, but the contract was still broken. There's a world of difference between someone who never breaks a contract and someone who will only break a contract when they disagree with you. You can work with the latter, but you can't trust them when they want something from you. I won't disagree that the world may be a better place because you broke the contract, but it also makes you hard to negotiate with."
"Are you saying that the Summon Clans never lie or break their oaths?"
"Almost," Nezesari said. "I don't think most clan members explicitly reason about the clan-wide effects of individual principles, but most people on the Seventh Path strongly prioritize honesty and always uphold their contracts. I think lying is sometimes acceptable, especially to humans, but a habitual liar is disdained. Surely you can see the difference between someone that doesn't like lying but will do it anyway if they think it's right, and someone that never lies?"
"You can get temporary gains by breaking contracts when it seems sensible," Nezala said. "However, it makes it harder for others to cooperate with you. If you always keep your contracts, you open up forms of coordination that would otherwise be impossible. For example, it lets you make trade deals with your worst enemies, because they know you won't break your word. It's not always good to empower your enemies, but sometimes you value what they can give you more than you fear what they'll do with what you give them."
"Basically, if you hadn't broken a contract," Nezesari said, "the Seventh Path clans would be unsure about you. You'd have enabled a massive atrocity, but you might still have been the kind of person that, if you swore an oath that something was true, that it would be your honest, true belief. However, now everyone knows that you can deploy your word for instrumental reasons. You may be acting according to morals that most people would endorse, but your words are now inextricably tied to your motivations."
"In a world where you hadn't broken the contract, the clans would have needed to judge whether you were absolutely honorable," Nezala said. "That's very hard with humans, but many of the clans are used to dealing with humans, especially the clan leaders. Instead, they need to decide whether your story adds up. Sure, the Dragons might be real and your instrumental reasons to speak should also make the clans respond. But the story is very unlikely and the evidence is thin."
"The Dragons are real," Hazō said firmly. "If you do not believe my word, then how about Convei's? She came to Arachnid and confirmed my reports of the Dragons before returning to the Conclave."
Nezesari and Nezala looked at each other for a moment. Nezesari twitched her nose. "This is the first time I have heard of this. How can I speak to this Condor? Are they free, or under the Pangolin's claws?"
"Convei came to Arachnid on Pantsā's orders," Hazō said. "I thought she would return to the Conclave to give her report, but apparently not. She should be in Pangolin, though. Either way, if you don't believe my words, you'll have to believe Monkey King Enma. He'll be here in under a week to corroborate my story about the Dragons."
"Hm," Nezesari said. "Then I'll have to wait for his testimony. Until then, you said you had some foods from the Human Path that you wanted to show us?"
Hazō didn't want to let the conversation end there, but Noburi was quick to jump in and keep the atmosphere cordial.
Noburi placed a few storage seals on the table and tapped one, causing a puff of smoke. "So," he said, "this is a dish from Mist, where I grew up…"
Author's Note: There were no goods damaged in the scuffle as the trade hall is not an open-air market, but a place where the various Seventh Path Clans discuss potential trades of massive amounts of goods for their clans via the network. Any goods out in public are solely for demonstration purposes.
There are officers below the Taxiarchos' authority that Kei can point out. They are generally loyal to Pangolin and follow the Taxiarchos' lead. Kei identifies Tagmatarchis Pantile, who leveraged her position as an officer to become a trader and got fairly rich via the trade network, as a potential target for bribery/buttering up.
For attempting the Conclave entrance with only Noburi and Kei by his side, Hazō has created the Aspect "The New Sannin!?". Any of the three can tag this Aspect for free once per Conclave member party (e.g. once against the Rats, once against the Capybaras, etc.), and it can be invoked as normal. It is best suited for Presence/Intimidation checks.
For the Saturday vote close deadline (1pm Eastern), please write a plan with the [Conclave] tag. For example:
[][Conclave] Take It Easy
Finish the dinner with the Rats, take a day off, then make more friends and trade deals with less nitpicky clans. Convince them about the Dragons once you've made a connection.
Voting for this plan will be counted from the end of this chapter, not @Velorien's Thursday chapter, so feel free to start plan-making immediately.
Brevity XP: 1 (to be bulk awarded at the end of the arc)
A reminder that your two goals at the Conclave were: 1) Convince people of the Dragon threat so that they'll honestly advocate for their Bosses' presence when Enma arrives with his message, and 2) Find a way for Conjura to be a party to the Conclave when the other Bosses arrive.
It was, for a change, a bright and sunny day in central Leaf, though the chill breeze made it clear that winter wasn't giving up without a fight. Hazō had just come back from deploying his shadow clones for WHOOSH training when he recognised a familiar figure standing at the compound gates, studying the daily hustle and bustle of Gōketsu life with a logistician's analytical eye. It was, however, not Kei, who preferred documents to people and would happily memorise every last detail of these people's lives if it meant never having to talk to them. No, this individual would get bored of watching and start making conversation in five minutes, and have every Gōketsu secret known to its civilians in thirty. Hazō's sealing headache was still pulsing in the back of his head, so he really hoped she wasn't in the mood for hardcore verbal sparring.
"Ami!" Hazō called out. "It's good to see you back."
"It's good to be back, Hazō."
Ami took several measured steps towards him, as if gauging distance. Then, before he knew it, he found himself swept into a tight hug.
It didn't measure up to an Akane hug, the unfair standard by which the hugs of the world were judged. It lacked the maternal reassurance of a Mari hug, the "I can't believe I'm doing this" charm of a Yuno hug, or the raw determination of a Kei hug. Nevertheless, allowing for Ami's lack of Hazō-hugging practice compared to his close family, it was a very fine hug, the kind one would hope for from a trained expert doing her best.
"I'm so sorry to hear about Akane," she said over his ear. Hazō nodded.
After a few seconds of this, Ami stepped back, but kept her hands around his upper arms in what seemed oddly like a precursor to shaking sense into someone.
"With that said, Hazō, you need to get your head in the game. I heard about the seal bank, and I've talked to Kei, and it's making me worried."
"What do you mean?"
Ami let go of him and beckoned him into his own compound. Hazō promptly took the lead in guiding her into the main building.
"Your behaviour," Ami explained, "closely resembles that of an ordinary person grieving for a lost loved one."
Hazō nodded, unsure where she was going with this, and maybe slightly offended by the implication of ordinariness.
"To reframe, your behaviour does not match my model of someone aware that said loved one is merely a permeable dimensional barrier away, little different to my recent sojourn in Hot Springs save that she requires some labour in your part before she can make her return. It is not the behaviour of Gōketsu Hazō, so certain he was about to conquer death that it required two of Leaf's most brilliant women to convince him that some obstacles remained. I had hoped to return to find you annoyed that the need to rescue Akane as well complicates your timetable, not riven with pain that drives you to irrational behaviour and snap decisions with far-reaching consequences."
Hazō didn't know what to say. On the one hand, reproaching somebody for the way they grieved was about as insensitive as it got, and it wasn't something he wanted to hear from a friend. But on another, more Hazō level, it should have been exactly what he wanted to hear: absolute faith that he would conquer death, together with equal faith that he would live his life as a person worthy of that ambition. Everybody else who knew about the project still just nodded when Hazō acted as if death was an irreversible tragedy.
Defensiveness won out over admitting he wasn't the person he wanted to be.
"That's not how this works, Ami," he said. "People's feelings don't switch off just because they're irrational. Losing Akane hurts even if I know I'm going to get her back."
"No," Ami allowed. "Lies are not less real because they are lies. My profession would hardly exist otherwise. But Hazō, you can't ever let yourself forget they're lies. If Kei went away to a mission on another continent, and I found myself grieving as though she was dead even though I fully expected her to come back, my priority would be to shrug off this weird sickness as soon as possible. Rationality, or half of rationality, is recognising when your heart is lying to your head and not letting it get away with it.
"I do get grieving, Hazō. I am who I am now because there was a time when I thought I'd lost Kei forever. But that ended. Thinking someone's lost forever and counting the days until you can be together again are completely different feelings. Being stuck in the wrong one is like a curse. It's like genjutsu. It's something I'd wish on my worst enemy if I was more of a hands-off kind of girl.
"If what you want is to stay in the genjutsu until Akane snaps you out of it in person, that's your right. Being a supportive friend to somebody whose lover didn't come back from a mission is a role I've played countless times, and I can play it again for you. But my advice to you is don't try to salve the pain. Don't try to get used to it. Use it the way pain is meant to be used, at least outside the bedroom: as a signal from the spirits in your body that something is wrong and you need to take action now."
But you couldn't just turn off grieving. People didn't work that way, or they would do it in a heartbeat, excepting those who thought grieving was a way to respect the dead or whatever. Not that Hazō did. It was a cruel and miserable soul who'd find satisfaction in knowing their absence was causing their loved ones pain. Someone like Jiraiya would surely be at his happiest when the Gōketsu were gathered around a table, talking about what an amazing hero and writer and husband and stepfather he'd been, and laughing merrily as they recounted stories of his great adventures and misadventures. (Wow, Noburi really was wiser than people gave him credit for.)
So where did that leave Hazō? He didn't know how to turn off grieving, and Ami was conspicuously not offering to tell him. He didn't think being able to turn off grieving was natural, and he had a feeling that if Orochimaru had a seal for it, that seal wouldn't come without a cost for Hazō's soul. (Come to think of it, this was starting to sound oddly plausible.) On the other hand, if grieving for Akane contradicted his sincerely-held beliefs and it would only make her sad and he didn't believe it had inherent moral value… just why was he defending his right to do it?
"I need to think about this, Ami," he said. "It's… a lot."
"Sure thing," Ami said. "I'd say take your time, but y'know, every second of this is unnecessary suffering, so I don't actually want you to do that.
"I get how it's a bit of an explosive tag to the face, though, and those take processing. Remind me to tell you about the time I conducted a Mori social experiment and then ran the numbers and found that, statistically, praying to the ancestors doesn't improve your loved ones' odds of survival. That wasn't a good day.
"On more urgent topics, who does a woman have to get engaged to to get a mug of hot chocolate around here?"
Hazō suddenly realised they'd had the entire conversation in the entry hall while he was too off-balance to offer basic hospitality.
"Right this way, ma'am. I mean miss. Definitely miss."
-o-
Some relaxing Kagome-style spiced hot chocolate did wonders to relax both of them. Soon, Hazō and Ami were lounging on a sofa in the atrium as she regaled him with tales of hapless world leaders struggling to adapt to a new world order that fundamentally made no sense to anyone raised in the shinobi world (a narrative only a handful of people in the entire world were capable of telling) while he reciprocated with stories of his Conclave antics (a narrative only a handful of beings in the entirety of two worlds were capable of telling).
"You actually said that?" Ami laughed in disbelief as Hazō concluded his description of his struggle with the diabolical Taxiarchos. "Hazō, if your stones were any bigger, you wouldn't fit through the gates of Leaf!"
Hazō shrugged modestly. "Sometimes you just have to take an approach they don't see coming, right?"
"Preach it, brother by the transitive property!"
Ami sobered a little. "You'll notice that I didn't mention any of my Akatsuki-wrangling hijinks. I may have pushed a little too hard after I heard about Akane, and it might be a good idea for me to avoid a certain overgrown manchild known as Uchiha Itachi until I figure out how to appease him. But suffice to say I didn't walk away from my weeks of diplomacy empty-handed. What about you and your A-Day preparations? I'm assuming that since you had free run of the place without the Hokage to constrain you, you're about to wow me with massive progress?"
Er.
"I'm still not sure how on board I am with Operation A-Day," Hazō stalled. "There are some big risks involved."
Ami nodded. "And when you've got something better ready for me, then I can switch tracks. That's kind of the point of the preparations we discussed. As long as we've got all the intel and the groundwork in place, we can apply them to whichever plan has the best odds at the time–which is currently Operation A-Day. So what have you got?"
"Like you heard, I've made a lot of progress with the Conclave. That's been taking up time."
"Sure," Ami said. "But I was asking about rift preparations. Nothing happening at the Conclave is going to affect the timer on Akatsuki taking over the world."
What had Hazō done that might help with the rift? Obviously, there was the fact that he was steadily progressing with his sealing research... but no, that wasn't what Ami was looking for, was it? To her, the priority was solving the Akatsuki problem. If they couldn't do that first, then it didn't matter if he finished his research tomorrow. It would still be game over as soon as he opened the rift and Akatsuki found out.
Fortunately, he knew where to start.
-o-
"Hazō," Asuma said with a smile, "you never fail to exceed expectations. Even knowing that, I have to admit I'm impressed."
"Sir?" Hazō asked. His headache was pounding after Aburame Manjiro's intensive grilling, and instead of getting to spend the day in bed, Asuma had instead promptly called him up to the Tower.
"I could say that Manjiro gave you incredibly high marks, but that doesn't begin to cover it. Manjiro is quite reserved and confident in his abilities. It says something that you left him convinced that he was the inferior sealmaster."
"Is that so, sir?" Hazō asked. He'd known he'd aced the test, but Manjiro had remained stiff-lipped throughout in regard to Hazō's prospects.
"He doesn't mince his words. Manjiro plainly indicated that upon concluding the examination, you had convinced him that you understood sealing as a whole better than he did. I get the vague impression that some of his final questions were actually him probing you for advice on a new project, rather than intended parts of the exam, as he included them in the transcript but didn't comment on their implications. Regardless, I'm very pleased to see this."
"Does that mean that I will be promoted, sir?" Hazō asked innocently.
Asuma chuckled. "Ordinarily, there would be a practical component too, having you research a seal that Manjiro grades as safe for your skills but a suitable challenge for jōnin level. Given the circumstances, I hardly think that is required. Manjiro impressed on me that it's not really possible to cheat your way through a sealing exam even if it's only book learning, and he seemed almost offended at the thought that you might be denied the rank. Yes, Hazō, I'm officially authorizing your promotion to special jōnin."
Hazō didn't feel any particular relief or joy at this pronouncement. Still, he smiled. "Thank you very much, sir. I look forward to seeing what I can do for Leaf with the responsibilities of this new rank."
"On that note," Asuma said, grabbing a sheaf of paper within the desk, "I have your first mission. When researching seals, you should always be willing to refuse a project if it risks sealing failure, even if you're already partially done with it, and you should take as long as you need."
Asuma handed the sheaf over. "These are the research notes for a particularly strong barrier seal, called the Fourfold Seal of Preservation. It's an attempt at recreating the the Fourfold Violet Flame Barrier, which, if you've heard of it, can withstand even Kage-level attacks of most kinds–though the seal version has certain limitations the ninjutsu doesn't. The last sealmaster capable of making this died in the battle at Nagi Island, and most of our reserves of the seal were destroyed in the Collapse. They're quite useful, and I should mention that a noteworthy perk of missions for sealmasters is that you get to benefit from the seals that you research."
Hazō flipped through the papers. They contained research notes in an unfamiliar handwriting and what looked like a number of blanks. "Thank you very much, sir. I will look into it. If that's all…?"
Asuma waved his hand in dismissal. He picked up a piece of paper to examine it. "I'll arrange the formalities. You're free to go."
Asuma lowered the paper fractionally and looked Hazō over.
"Sir?" Hazō asked.
Asuma smiled again. "Nothing, Hazō. I was just thinking that, a year ago, I wouldn't have bet that you'd be the first of the young crop of summoners to make this rank. Noburi and Kei are far from achieving a special jōnin rank, though I have no doubt of their ability to get there eventually. Still, I think you've shown really impressive progress in this past year. Only Neji might have made it there before you, but you edged him out.
"This is between you and me," Asuma said conspiratorially, "but I've heard that the Hyūga have been preparing Neji for a similar promotion. They might be annoyed that you stole their fruits just before harvest. Maybe you could send Hinata a letter apologizing for undercutting Neji like this?"
"Ah…," Hazō said, "I wouldn't want to be rude like that."
Asuma winked.
"Regardless," Hazō said, "I'll use my position as Leaf's youngest jōnin wisely. I wouldn't want to aggravate the clans more than they need to be aggravated, of course."
"Regrettably, you missed that title by weeks," Asuma said.
Hazō raised an eyebrow.
"If you had any other cohort to compete with, you'd easily be the youngest to special jōnin among your peers. Unfortunately, you're competing with Uchiha Sasuke."
"I hadn't realized that he was… quite that strong, sir."
"Naruto tends to take centre stage in their team. Plus, there's the long shadow that his brother cast, though I doubt anyone will ever make jōnin quite as young as Itachi again.
"But really, don't fixate on the ages too much. Yes, feel free to brag and light the fires of ambition in the hearts of your peers, but getting a rank early doesn't mean anything in itself. The Fourth Hokage only became a jōnin at 21, and in three short years, he was Hokage! What you do with the rank matters far more than how early or how late you attain it."
Hazō smiled. "I do intend to do big things, sir."
Asuma chuckled. "Just make sure they're big in the right direction, Hazō. I told Sasuke to spend more time training with Yuno, as I think they'd have a lot to teach each other. It's a shame that you don't have a peer or rival to push yourself against in the same way."
"Orochimaru is plausibly my peer in sealmastery."
"Yes, but he's Orochimaru."
"Right enough, sir," Hazō said with a sigh. "Now, if that's really all?"
Asuma waved him off. "Right, thank you for sticking around and breaking the monotony," he said, gesturing to the paperwork around him. "I'm starting to understand better why Dad liked to tell all those stories. Good day, Hazō."
-o-
"Nice work," Ami acknowledged concisely. "That'll help. What else?"
"Nice work?" Hazō demanded. "That's it? To one of the youngest special jōnin on record?"
"Mmm," Ami said. "You told me you were a sealmaster on Sasori's level. Passing the special jōnin exam should be ticking a box for you. It's nice that you did it, but congratulating the sealmaster who's about to create a permanent gate to the afterlife on becoming a special jōnin is like congratulating Mari on seducing a civilian. If you're as good as you say, acting genuinely impressed is practically an insult."
"Hmph. I was going to invite you to the party, but–"
"Hazō!" Ami exclaimed. "Special jōnin, that's amazing! I can't believe you cleared such a major hurdle at your young age. I'm sure you'll go on to do great things."
Hazō sighed. "Ah, forget it. Of course you're invited. You'd probably just gatecrash it anyway in some completely incomprehensible way that drove me crazy as the host and still somehow made people like you more."
"See, you get me!" Ami beamed. "So, special jōnin rank. What else?"
The headache pulsed. Hazō couldn't tell if it was pressing down on his thoughts and stopping him from thinking of the obvious, or if nothing was springing to mind because there was nothing there to begin with.
"I've secured one-on-one clan head tutoring with Asuma."
"'You have super potential so the Hokage's going to undermine his neutrality to push you into the top tier' tutoring or 'You're a disaster waiting to happen so the Hokage's going to undermine his neutrality to save Leaf' tutoring?"
"Um."
"Whatever," Ami said. "An opportunity to charm the Hokage in private is an opportunity to charm the Hokage in private, and, y'know, freaking him out enough to regularly give up his time for you is an achievement in its own right. I'll take it."
"Also, the seal bank should help me build public support," Hazō ventured, "and it'll certainly preserve Akane's memory."
"You don't need public support for the rift," Ami said. "All you need from Leaf is the Hokage's ear and the ability to choose a loyal team to go through. Besides, the seal bank mostly wins you points with the KEI. Kei and I are both on Team Rift and can get what we need from the KEI anyway. As for preserving her memory, why do you need that when you're about to bring her back?"
"Because Kagome-sensei says people in the afterlife fade away once no one remembers them," Hazō said. "Did I not tell you that?"
Ami gave him a sceptical look. "I'll believe in Kagome the first time he coughs up a verifiable source. Heck, even an unverifiable one would be a start. But I can't blame you for not wanting to take chances, so let's move on. What else do you have for me?"
"I…"
Surely there was something. He couldn't just tell Ami that while she was risking her life trying to get intel out of Akatsuki, he was just… getting on with things, advancing his own plans and managing his own crises, and maybe some of those were coincidentally helpful for dealing with the issues surrounding the rift.
"You know what," Ami interrupted, "you're clearly not in the best headspace right now, so maybe we should just set this aside and come back to it another time. I think we've established there's nothing I urgently need to act on."
She gave him one last look, then rose from her seat. "If the gentleman would kindly escort me out?"
-o-
Special thanks to @Paperclipped for the Asuma scene.
-o-
A/N: The original version of this chapter didn't make it clear that Ami was asking specifically about Akatsuki-related preparations. This frustrated many players, since it made it look like Hazō's essential work on researching the rift seal was being overlooked for no reason. Additional lines have been added to Hazō's inner monologue to clarify this. A more extended discussion of the seal bank was also added.
Voting for action plans is closed. However, Hazō is about to be posed a question so important that we've decided to give you special planning time for it ahead of the coming update.
Next update, Asuma is going to convene the EM Council and invite feedback on his decision to destroy Isan using Elemental Mastery. If Hazō has any arguments against doing so (or, indeed, arguments for), this will be his only chance to present them. Please vote in a plan for Hazō to follow during the meeting (instructions for what to do before it will not be accepted since he has no advance warning).
"Summoner," Nezesari said, stepping aside and gesturing Hazō into the ambassadorial quarters. "How may I help you?" He settled into one of the low stools that the tailed races of the Seventh Path favored. Hazō took a seat opposite him as the rat began fiddling with tea things.
"I wanted to revisit our prior conversation, sir," said Hazō. "At the time, I was so taken aback by what you said that I didn't know quite what to say. The more I thought about it, the angrier that made me."
Nezesari cocked his head. "Angry? At your lack of an immediate response?"
"Yes, and at your words."
The amassador of Rat blinked. "You are angry at my words?"
"Yes, sir."
"May I ask why might that be?"
"If I may ask, sir, which do you consider the top priority in a negotiation: the spirit of an agreement or the letter of it?"
"Both are important."
"A very political answer, which means it's not an answer. Only one thing can be the top priority and there's only two options, sir: if the precise words of a contract are the most important part then people can exploit loopholes in order to get the other person to do things they didn't intend. If the spirit is the most important part then good faith and cooperativeness are assumed throughout the negotiations and the contract is void if good faith is found not to have been there. Personally, I'm in the second camp, and so is every serious human politician. What I want to know is whether or not you are. No mealy-mouthed political answers, please. The spirit of an agreement is what matters, yes or no?"
Nezesari studied him closely. "I am unaccustomed to being spoken to in this fashion."
"And I'm unaccustomed to being called untrustworthy. I guess it's a day of firsts for everyone. Would you please answer my question, sir?"
Hazō controlled his face as hard as he possibly could. Mari had insisted that this was the approach. She had laughed when he asked if she was insane, and then again when he asked if she was trying to actively sabotage his efforts at the Conclave. He had then spent twenty minutes mediating between Kei and Mari until the former had eventually and very reluctantly agreed with the latter.
"The spirit of the deal is useless without the words that define it," Nezesari said. "If the two parties lack mutual understanding then what agreement exists?"
Hazō nodded. "My advisors told me this would be your response. I believe the exact words were 'no politician will ever take a position they could be criticized for.' I suppose I was naïve for hoping otherwise. Fine, I won't make you actually take a stand.
"Here's the deal, sir. The Gōketsu made a trade agreement with the Pangolins. We knew they were militant but we didn't realize they were genocidal. We knew they were having issues with the Condor Clan but we thought that the Condors were equally as militant—something like the Leaf versus Rock situation on the Human Path. Our two villages raid, we threaten, we spy, but we don't actively try to wipe each other out.
"We agreed to sell the Pangolins what we thought of as a defensive seal. They took that seal and abused it in some way that still isn't clear to me. Whatever they did, they managed to defeat the Condor Clan and then started erasing their culture.
"That wasn't the bargain we had struck, not as we understood it. Our understanding of the agreement was that we were selling them a defensive seal with which to protect themselves against a rival, not an offensive weapon with which to commit slavery and genocide. They perverted that purpose, thereby demonstrating that the bargain had never been struck in the first place—they deceived us, exploited our ignorance.
"Since the Pangolin Clan did not deal in good faith, no deal was ever struck under a 'spirit of the contract' view. As such, the Gōketsu would have been more than justified in doing whatever we liked in response." He snorted. "Even under a 'letter of the contract' view, there are a thousand ways we could have acted against Pangolin. The bargain said we had to provide skytower seals, but if we are playing rules lawyer then the deal said nothing about the effectiveness of the seals. We could have delivered seals that functioned for a few minutes and then collapsed, or exploded. We could have provided seals that worked but emitted blazing light and deafening sound so as to attract enemy attention and render the users helpless.
"All of that would have been entirely justifiable under either a spirit or letter of the contract view. At an absolute minimum, I could have unilaterally ended the deal without warning and left the Pangolin to twist. Instead, I gave them a month's warning and delivered extra seals in the final payment. I did that because I wanted to ensure that no one could say we had acted inappropriately.
"I put it to you sir: you call me dishonest and say that I can't be trusted? I have shown more integrity in my dealings with the Seventh Path than I have received in return. You may think me untrustworthy, but that is your mistake, not my actions. I can absolutely be trusted to keep a bargain that was made in good faith, and even when it wasn't I will still do my best to end the bargain fairly. Not because a faith-breaker deserves it, but because my integrity demands it.
"Now, perhaps this doesn't fit with what the Seventh Path—or at least the Rat Clan—regard as honorable. If that's the case then I think it's your failure and not mine, but I will acknowledge and do my best to work with your beliefs. I hope you can at least see my side of events?"
Nezesari pursed his lips. "You have definitely been clear in your statements, yes."
"Excellent. What would you regard as good evidence for the truth of those statements? I would like to ensure that you accept them instead of merely understand them."
"I...shall need to get back to you on that, Summoner." He shrugged thin shoulders. "At the end of the day, a man's word is trusted based on his actions, not on pretty logic or tablets of attestation. I shall talk with others of my Clan about what to do with what you have told me."
Hazō nodded. "Thank you. I'm hoping that I can cooperate with the Rat Clan, and with other Seventh Path clans. Especially when it comes to existential threats, which you are currently facing."
"Ah, yes. Your...Dragons."
Hazō's eyes narrowed. "Sir, allow me to be plain: the Dragons exist and are a threat. A condor confirmed that already, as have numerous other Summoners, as will Lord Enma as soon as he arrives. They are a threat to your world, not mine." He shrugged. "Or, at least, we have seen nothing that suggests they are capable of crossing into my world in order to threaten it.
"I have been working very hard to get this Conclave to recognize its own best interests and make an alliance in order to stop the Dragons. Thus far I've been sneered at by a Taxioarchus, attacked by a junior guard, and now an ambassador who recently accused me of untrustworthiness is taking a tone that suggests the Dragons don't exist. I have friends in Dog, and my brother has friends in Toad, who would be in danger if we simply left you all to twist, which might be the only reason I'm still putting in the effort to make you people work together to save your own lives."
Nezesari smiled slightly and one ear flicked. "I note that you did not mention your sister having friends among the Pangolin Clan."
Hazō sighed. "Kei's relationships with the pangolins are com—" He paused, shook his head, and started over. "Kei's relationships are complicated, full stop. The ones with the pangolins are extra complicated. I respect every one of her contractees and I like many of them as people, but things get tanglesome quickly. My friendships among the Dogs, and Noburi's among the Toads, are much more straightforward and untouched by difficulty."
Nezesari finished the tea preparation and poured out two cups. He lifted one and offered it to Hazō with both hands. Hazō took it without comment; on the Human Path, handing a ninja a cup of tea was a threat or a statement of superiority, but here on the Seventh Path it was a gesture of hospitality.
"I am curious," Nezesari said, inhaling the aroma rising from his own tea cup. "The words you speak to me are very forthright and unlikely to be found pleasing in the ears of any Pangolin officer. I have no intention to pass them on and I think that doing so would likely work counter to the interests of Rat. Nonetheless, I am curious: are you not concerned what their reaction would be, were they to discover that you believe they cheated in your negotiation?"
Hazō sighed and allowed himself to lean forward, elbows on thighs, the tired frustration showing on his face for a moment. He took a breath of the tea and allowed the warm, moist vapor to waft across his palate.
"This is a lovely tea," he said. "Thank you." He forced himself to take a sip, ignoring years of training screaming at him not to drink from a cup that had been handed to him by a stranger.
"You are welcome," Nezesari said. He waited patiently, whiskers twitching as he studied Hazō's face.
"Have I thought about what the pangolins would say if you told them my position?" Hazō asked. "Of course. We are negotiating right now, sir, and what you do with this conversation will tell me how to handle the Rat Clan in the future. Can you be trusted to hold private conversations private? If not then in future the Gōketsu need to treat Rat as non-violent hostiles. Will you be forthright enough to ask me what my thoughts are on this issue, or will you assume that you already know? If the latter then we need to be careful to spell out every single detail of every discussion because otherwise you will inevitably misunderstand us. Will you lose your temper when I speak more plainly than you are accustomed to? If so, is your temper driven by personal narcissim or is it likely to be a broad cultural trait?"
Nezesari's smile had grown wider. "That's a very open statement of what normally remains understood and unspoken."
"Yeah, well, I'm not a politician even though I'm stuck with the job. With respect, sir: I care about getting shit done, not about the forms. Being open about all this thinking is a gesture of trust and a sign that I actually have some competence at this." Or, at least, that he was the beneficiary of good staff work.
Hazō knocked his tea back and set the cup gently on the tray. "Moving on: I didn't instruct the Pangolin Clan to commit genocide, but they did it on the back of my seals and thus I have an obligation to clean up the mess if I can. I want to get all the Clan Bosses to go to Arachnid and work together to kill the Dragons. I want Conjura to be part of that, both because her combat power will be sorely needed and because it would generate enough good will that she could then demand freedom for her people. With the other Bosses backing her up, the Condors could relocate to the island of the former Archeopteryx Clan and never need to interact with the Pangolin Clan again. I'm hoping that you'll help me in that."
"You think that Conjura and her people would abandon the territory they have held since the creation of the world?"
"If it's relocate or have my entire culture and possibly my entire species wiped out, I would relocate. If the Condor feel differently, that's their decision. I simply want to help create the opportunity for them.
"I'm hoping that you'll help me," Hazō continued. "Throw the weight of the Rat Clan behind the idea of the Bosses teaming up to fight the Dragons. Support me in getting Conjura brought in as part of that alliance. Perhaps or perhaps not the most important point: update away from the idea that I am untrustworthy. I will return faith for faith, sir. I did not break an agreement with the pangolins, they broke one with me."
He pulled a paper from his pocket and unsealed an elegant box made from cherry wood and brass. "In Leaf, the Nara clan are regarded as some of the wisest and most intelligent among us. I have here several monographs written by various Nara on what they call 'the theory of games'. The name sounds frivolous, but it's quite serious. It's about how people can best work together, how to align incentives so that cooperation makes sense, and related ideas that I found quite useful. I don't want to push something on you that you don't want, but if you find the idea interesting then I'd be happy to give you this." He tapped the box. "If nothing else, it will provide illumination on the nature of humans."
"Thank you, Summoner," Nezesari said. "That is very kind of you and I would be fascinated." He held out his hands and accepted the box with appropriate gravity when Hazō passed it over.
Hazō smiled and bowed slightly to his host, then stood up. Nezesari also rose, clutching the box to his chest.
"I have enjoyed our conversation, Ambassador."
"As have I, Summoner. It's been illuminating."
There was nothing more to say to that, so Hazō simply bowed and disappeared from the Rat Clan's universe. Say what you like about being a Summoner, it let you get away with amazing exits.
XP AWARD: 4
Brevity XP: 1
"GM had fun" XP: 1
This update covered 1 day. Offscreen you asked around after Convei (the condor who saw the Dragons); you were given some mealy-mouthed responses and it's unclear if she's being sent for or not. You also talked with Enma, Ma, and Pa about what to do next, and you spoke to Kabuto and Asuma about borrowing Dragon parts and bringing them to the Conclave. We'll get back to you on what they said as soon as we figure it out.
