Smoke was suddenly everywhere and the world around Hazō shivered, making Team Uplift back away nervously. After a moment, the world calmed down and the smoke dispersed, revealing a brindled dog the size of a draft horse.
"Greetings, Summoner," Cannai said. He looked around. "And this must be your family."
Mari stepped forward and bowed deeply. "Welcome to the Human Path, Lord Cannai." The rest of the family immediately copied her bow.
"'Cannai' is sufficient," the massive dog rumbled. "Dog does not stand on ceremony unless necessary. You must be Mari?"
"I am," she said, straightening. "I take it Hazō has told you about me? Let me start by saying that I have alibis for whatever bad things he said."
Cannai barked his amusement. "Have no fear. His tales have been largely positive, and always affectionate." He looked past her. "Let's see now... I would have said that the young man with the brick-like build must be Noburi, yet it cannot be. Noburi, I am given to understand, always wears a smile. Sometimes mocking, most commonly joyful, and occasionally dreamy—the last mostly when he speaks of his beloved."
Noburi blushed furiously. "Um...hello, sir. I mean, yes, I'm Noburi."
"Ah, excellent. So glad to have that cleared up. Hmmm...speaking of your beloved, I presume that this beautiful young woman beside you is she. Yuno, yes?"
"Yes, Lord Cannai. It is an honor." The young woman bowed deeply.
"Tell me, young Yuno...human relationships are somewhat foreign to me. I am familiar with the covenant of marriage under which you and Noburi reside. How would you name your relationship with Satsuko?"
"Um..."
Cannai waited patiently. No one else dared speak.
"Satsuko and I... Um..."
"Human language can be a bit of a paucity when it comes to relationships, Lord Cannai," Mari said quickly. "Yuno, I suspect your and Satsuko's relationship is too deep to be mere 'friendship', yet 'marriage' is a legal term that is not apropos either. 'Companions through fire', perhaps?"
Yuno nodded in relief. "Yes!"
"Ah, excellent. A pleasure to meet both of you." The massive dog gave a polite nod to the woman and the axe, then moved on.
"Slim and deadly as a blade, possessed of wit as sharp, she who regularly keeps Hazō from 'doing a dumb' as he puts it... Kei, if I am not mistaken."
"A pleasure, Lord Cannai," Kei said, bowing.
"And, last but far from least, you must be Tenten. The weapon saint, the only person that Hazō's much-loved sister feels safe to touch?"
Tenten's eyebrow rose. Her eyes tracked to Hazō as though to a target. Beside her, the air around Kei burst into flames at the strength of her blush. Metaphorically, anyway.
"Cannai, please do not get me in trouble," Hazō said, smiling nervously at Tenten.
Cannai's massive chest rumbled with quiet laughter. "Would you begrudge this poor dog a moment of amusement, Summoner? So very unkind of you."
"Is it possible that you could find amusement in something that isn't likely to have me turned into a pincushion?"
"Hmmm... Perhaps, although no method springs to mind."
"Yes, well, moving the conversation quickly along before you get me into more trouble: as promised, a variety of Human Path foods that you might like." He swept one arm towards the trio of delicacies laid out on a log to his left, each of them portioned out into a large cabbage leaf. The team did not have bowls large enough for someone as large as Cannai to use, so edible serving dishes had been a good compromise.
Cannai turned to the first dish, a shepherd's pie made with lamb. He slurped up the leaf and its contents, taking care not to get splinters from the log, and chewed thoughtfully.
"Delicious," he said. "Quite delicious. Rich, savory, and the meat is so nicely cooked it falls apart on the tongue. My compliments to your chef."
"That would be Granny Mayuka," Hazō said. "We brought that one in a storage seal from Leaf."
"Tell Granny Mayuka that the Alpha of all Dog delights at her cooking and beseeches that Lady Fortune bless her only from the onpaws."
"Uh...thank you. In that case, you might like this one." Instead of reaching for the next dish in the line, Hazō riffled through his storage seals and produced a large clay crock, which he held out to Cannai. The Dog Boss stuck his tongue out willingly enough so that Hazō could dump a massive blob of the jug's contents on it. It was a very thick stew, almost a paste, and bright red with large green leaves mixed in.
Mari went white. "Hazō, is that—"
Hazō waved her to silence, watching Cannai intently; a mad grin spread across the sealmaster's face. The redhead watched for a moment, mouth still agape, before shaking off her horror and digging frantically into her storage seals.
"Hm," Cannai said, head cocked to the side as he sampled. "That is..." He stopped and coughed. "That is—" He spat out the stew and pawed at his tongue, whimpering as tears began to flow from his enormous eyes.
Mari stepped forward, both hands supporting an enormous bowl filled with several pounds of rice. "Open, please!"
In too much pain to argue, Cannai opened his mouth so that Mari could throw the rice in. She tossed the bowl aside and immediately pulled out a waterskin, spraying it onto the rice and back into Cannai's mouth.
It took several minutes and multiple waterskins for Cannai to get rid of the pain caused by Kagome's insanity-pepper stew.
"Summoner, that was most unkind," Cannai gasped.
"Would you begrudge this poor Summoner a moment of amusement, Alpha?" Hazō asked, grinning fit to split his face. "So very unkind of you."
Author's Note:@Paperclipped will post part 2 of this chapter tomorrow. Voting remains closed.
"My belly is definitely bigger than it was before."
"I can tell," Noburi said, holding a seal up above Hazō's chest. "Actually, it's not obvious that your abdomen is distended, but there's definitely something wrong in your chakra system. It's… churning around? Maybe it's foreign chakra interacting with your own. Does it hurt?"
"No," Hazō said, still pressing his stomach gently as if he'd be able to feel the implanted chakra coil like a piece of shrapnel within him. "My chakra system feels weird and sore, but it's not hurting. I think it would hurt if I used chakra, though."
"Huh. Okay," Noburi said. A strange look passed his face. "You have a little piece of a dead man inside of you."
"I'm worried about the effect on my shadow clones," Hazō said. "Without the bioseals sustaining the transplanted coils, will they get popped by the transplant decaying inside my body?"
Hazō scanned the scroll of post-surgery information. "No, it won't pop clones. The clones can't use the cloned copies of the transplanted coils, but transplant rejection won't happen in the twelve hours that shadow clones typically last. A different bioseal element prevents rejection in my Prime body."
"And what's with this?" Noburi said, gesturing at the incisions on Hazō's chest. Apart from the line of even sutures on Hazō's abdomen, there was an additional cut over Hazō's sternum. Noburi brushed his hand from side to side, rubbing gently at the additional tiny cuts over each of Hazō's ribs. Each incision was nearly healed already, only visible as a pink-red narrow streak. "How many cuts did he make on you?"
"A lot," Hazō said, grimacing. "I think he put bioseals on my arms and legs too, and I can definitely feel more cuts on my back, running up my spine. At least he left my hands alone."
"I guess we're lucky that clean incisions from chakra scalpels heal quickly."
"Ah, here we go," Hazō said, reaching a new section of the scroll. "Apparently, all major bones got a 'minor' bioseal to suppress blood production, while the largest – my hips, shoulders, sternum, and skull – got more 'extensive' work to rekey their blood production to the new signature. What do my bones have to do with my blood?"
"Who fucking knows at this point? Maybe he's just making up bullshit, knowing that no one but Tsunade can call him out, and he just wanted to put a couple dozen extra bioseals on you for obvious reasons."
"Speaking of which…" Hazō said, lowering the scroll, "Noburi, we need to talk about what happened back there."
"The part where I tried to face down Orochimaru for your life?"
"The part where you insulted a Sannin to his face, and not only risked your own life, but sacrificed your ability to watch the surgery in the process."
"You heard him," Noburi said, scowling. "He wasn't going to let me assist with the surgery anyway. He only needs his clones. Would you believe me if I said I was improvising?"
"By pissing off the guy who had my life in the palm of his hand?" Hazō asked. "I'm not even going to get into the what-ifs there, because any situation where Orochimaru feels emotions while I'm open on his table is probably a bad one. Look, I've been there. You know I've said stupid shit to powerful people. I know how excruciatingly painful, and more importantly, how deserved the consequences are. That's why I'm telling it to you straight – you screwed up."
"Yeah, I did." Noburi sighed. "Fuck! Can you blame me? My brother is gonna die in a few days, we're all about to get eviscerated by Akatsuki, and even if we survive that, there's no guarantee that we end up as anything more than piece-of-shit missing-nin at the end of it!"
"Really, it's fine," Hazō said. "This isn't the time to second-guess ourselves, or imagine all the ways things could go wrong. We're on the cusp of a battle for the fate of the world. Do you think Jiraiya wasted time moaning about all the shit that went wrong and could yet go wrong when he was facing down Akatsuki at Nagi Island?"
"Knowing him?" Noburi asked. "Probably."
Hazō chuckled. "Right, but then he put his feelings aside and got to work killing Akatsuki. It's time we do the same. Like I said, I don't want to beat you up over this. Just treat Orochimaru like a perpetually pissed-off Tsunade. And hey, welcome to the 'I-pissed-off-all-three-Sannin-and-survived' club! It's an exclusive organization, but the members are pretty cool if you ask me."
Noburi snorted. "Sure. Definitely not a single, exceptionally lucky dweeb. Are you good to walk? Let's get you out of here before Orochimaru gets back."
o-o-o
When Orochimaru had said that the surgery would take a day, he hadn't exaggerated. Hazō had presented himself just after sunrise, and when Noburi helped him shamble out of the tent, he didn't see a hint of sunlight in the sky. They took their time skywalking back to the team's position for the sake of the many incisions on Hazō's body.
Mari raced over once they got close, the moonlight making her hair a streak of lurid purple. She stopped on her skywalkers several inches higher than Hazō and grabbed him by the shoulders to look him up and down. Something in her expression, an indescribable pain and fear, made Hazō's heart twinge, but he shoved the feelings down.
Mari pulled him into a hug. Belatedly, Hazō hugged her back.
When she let go, her face was back to business.
"How did it go?"
Hazō exhaled through his nose. "Fine. I got the bioseals. I definitely have a new chakra coil now, and while I can't verify that the blood-changing bioseal works, I don't think Orochimaru would screw me on that one. It would destroy his ability to ambush Akatsuki as well."
Mari pursed her lips. "And I don't suppose we have any clue if he added anything else?"
Hazō shrugged. "He swore an oath in front of one of his summons, so if he kills me, he's going to be known as an oathbreaker in his clan. That should cost him something between years of effort to repair his reputation and getting kicked out of the summoner position by Manda. Unfortunately, each bioseal was like a regular sealing array, composed of many elements with different functions. We have no way to check that he didn't scribe and infuse a couple extra elements in the process, especially since Noburi wasn't there to provide oversight. He can tell you about why later, though."
Mari sighed. "Okay. Main sitrep here is that Kagome's left."
"Left!?"
"We were talking about what we should do to support you in the lead-up to the Akatsuki confrontation and I think the idea of having to deal with biosealed-Hazō, who is actually Orochimaru wearing Hazō like a skinsuit, became too much for him to handle. He skywalked off. I don't know when he'll be back. My read is that he just needs space, for what that's worth."
"Mari, Kagome-sensei can't have just walked away. We need everyone onboard."
Mari shook her head. "Hazō… you know Kagome is a very unique person. He's sacrificed so much to support you in the past nine, ten months, depending on how you count the time acceleration. He gave up his relationship with Honoka, with his sealing students, with the rest of the clan… hell, he even had that weird love/hate relationship with his on-and-off Academy teaching gig. He gave it all up in a heartbeat for you, because protecting and supporting you is of the utmost importance to him.
"So, he spends months scribing seals and doing low-level research tasks of minimal value – which we know since nothing he did this past year made it into any of the anti-Akatsuki planning sessions – to protect and support you, only for you to, in his eyes, throw your life away at the finish line. You know he's been having problems with feeling worthless, like you don't respect him or value his opinions. I guess this was the explosive that broke the camel's back.
"And frankly, he's right. He's not going to contribute anything of value to the fight against Akatsuki. He doesn't have the reserves to summon a Boss summon, or even relevant jōnin summons, and none of his seals are going to be game-changing. Anything he can do, you can do better. Rocket Boots? You have your stronger, reusable version. Force Walls? Force Claws are just as deadly and far easier to deliver to an enemy when we're initiating the attack. Your explosives obviously knock anything he can make out of the water. He left a stack of privacy seals, Banshee Fuckers, and a few thousand skywalkers. He's being reasonable. Honestly, disengaging when he gets overwhelmed is real growth for him. He's just also being… Kagome."
Hazō pinched the bridge of his nose. "He's overreacting. I do respect his opinion when it makes sense, like a couple months ago when I took his advice on relocating to his known rift sites, even though it was inconvenient to us. It's just that I didn't have a choice about taking this bioseal."
Mari shrugged. "Maybe he is overreacting. Unfortunately, unless you work on your manipulation skills a lot more and start treating family really differently, you don't get to decide how other people react. Can you tell me his reaction isn't a bad one? 'I'm not going to contribute anything more, I'm just going to cause friction and make things worse whether or not Hazou is really still in there, so let me disengage' – is that the wrong call from him?"
"I doubt he thought of it that way, but I see what you're saying. Ugh, this makes things more complicated than they need to be. I guess I can get in contact with him via Arachnid once this is over and he's had some time to cool down. I just wish he'd stuck around and let me prove that I'm still… me."
Mari shrugged. "Maybe he'll clear his head and be back before we have to get moving. Otherwise, he knows to keep his head down and not make extra problems for us. To be clear, I don't think he's resentful of you for taking him out of Leaf. He knows that he couldn't have stayed there without becoming a target for Akatsuki. He's just… lost and confused, and he doesn't feel like he can trust you, or the rest of us when we've decided that we're going to keep on trusting you."
"Will it be a problem if he's not there for Naruto to give the retroactive 'you were never actually missing-nin' orders?" Hazō said. "It should probably be fine. Getting his old life in Leaf back should make things easier on him, at least."
Mari smiled sadly. "I don't think we're ever getting our old lives back. Things are never going to be the same as they were. Still, there's no giving up. We've dilly-dallied enough – come on back to the skytower so we can set a plan for the next few days."
o-o-o
"The main thing I need from you all in the next couple of days is your chakra," Hazō said to the gathered team-minus-one. "I need to practice runecrafting so that I can work quickly and flawlessly when we're on O'Uzu. Runecrafting costs a ton of chakra. That means I need all the chakra we can produce. I know, that means no training, no summoning, no extra expenses, except a test-run of summoning Cannai to make sure that the expanded coils will let me do it at O'Uzu without damage. Kei, I'll apologize to Snowflake once this is all over, but it means that we can't spare chakra for her for the next two days. I think it's best that we keep everyone at half their reserves, and have Noburi tap off any chakra regeneration above that."
Noburi and Mari nodded, as did Kei and Yuno after a second. Tenten inclined her head as if considering a proposal. Hazō was debating how to explain that this was an order, not an option, when she nodded as well.
"I know it's going to be insanely expensive," Noburi said, "but should I try summoning Gamabunta? He said that he'll fight to avenge Jiraiya, and it might be worth double-checking that I can actually get him on the field."
"Are you willing to take extra chakra coils from Orochimaru if it turns out that you can't summon Gamabunta?" Hazō asked.
Noburi paled.
"That's what I thought. In which case, spending a half-dozen runes worth of chakra on a summoning attempt that doesn't give us actionable intel is a total waste."
"Speaking of which – I don't need to remind you all that now is the time for desperate actions. Kei, Itachi casually offered to murder you and me, along with Akane and Haru. You all know what Hidan did at Bakuchioka, and if that's a normal night for him, you know he has a kill count in the five figures, maybe six. Konan killed Jiraiya, damn it! I'm willing to put my life on the line to win this fight, so please think about what you can do to get us to victory.
"Anyway, one last option for chakra – Orochimaru mentioned that he has a dozen or so ninja on hand that could be transported to O'Uzu for draining. I don't think those ninja are going to be spending chakra right now, so their regeneration is being wasted. I think Noburi and I should meet up with Orochimaru first thing tomorrow morning and tap his ninja for extra chakra for additional runes. Thoughts?"
"This does not sound like a genuine invitation for feedback, particularly following a chastisement for us not following in your desperate footsteps to defeat Akatsuki," Kei said. "Additionally, presenting your and Noburi's Prime bodies to Orochimaru presents no new threat vectors that were not present in the biosealing surgery. I see no problems with this plan beyond the obvious, previously stated ones."
"Thank you, Kei. Assuming no one has any objections, Mari, can you handle getting in contact with Endō to arrange that meeting with Orochimaru first thing tomorrow?"
o-o-o
"You require additional chakra to craft runes," Orochimaru said. "This will help you deploy runes more efficiently at O'Uzu."
"That's correct," Hazō said.
"Yes, you may drain my test subjects. You will accept that they are not currently presentable. Follow me."
Orochimaru barely finished his sentence before he turned and stalked down the stairway into the earth. Hazō stayed close on his heels, and Noburi followed suit after a cautious glance at Endō, who stayed at the entryway.
"Do you have any additional blockers?" Orochimaru asked. "You must inform me if there are actions I can trivially take that would improve our odds of victory at O'Uzu."
"Clone-hours," Hazō said. "If I can get enough chakra, I'm only limited in how many runes I can make by the number of shadow clones I can run simultaneously. Can you help me integrate additional shadow clone memories?"
Orochimaru glanced at Hazō for a moment, then turned back to the twisting hallways of the underground facility. "I have nothing that will help you – not in the time we have allotted, nor without unacceptable tradeoffs given that you are still recovering from an extensive surgery. Is the transplanted chakra coil functioning as intended?"
"It is, from what I could tell," Hazō said. "I haven't had the chance to test it extensively, but I trust your work."
"Test it," Orochimaru said. "I expect I managed the interactions with your bloodline correctly, but it is a unique enough specimen that I cannot be certain. You must verify full functionality before O'Uzu."
"I plan to do a summoning test with the extra coil tomorrow," Hazō said.
"Good. Have the Pangolin or Arachnid summoners agreed to take extra chakra coils to support summoning their clan bosses?"
"I haven't asked them. Given your reputation, I expect the answer would be no."
"My reputation," Orochimaru said with a dangerous lightness in his voice, "among other things, includes a willingness to oppose Pain at considerable risk to my own person, as well as unparalleled excellence in biosealing. However, I have little interest in forcing bioseals upon your people when contracting and summoning must ultimately be performed voluntarily. Convince or compel them, or do not. I would similarly offer combat bioseals to your jōnin, except there is insufficient time to permit comprehensive training with new capabilities, so such bioseals would be of minimal value. Wear these."
Orochimaru offered Hazō and Noburi a pair of cloth masks, and Orochimaru demonstratively slipped one over his own mouth and nose. "Use medical ninjutsu to sterilize all surfaces you use to make contact with the subjects. Sterilize yourself and your brother fully upon leaving the room," the Sannin said, glancing at Noburi, who stiffly nodded.
The doors swung open. Two rows of simple steel gurneys lined the surprisingly well-lit room wall-to-wall (idly, Hazō wondered where Orochimaru got all his medical equipment while removed from Leaf). Orochimaru had strapped people to the gurneys starting from the far wall of the room: six in one row, seven in the other. Blessedly, they were more whole than the skinfarm victim Hazou had seen in the Basement. Two had tarps covering sections of their bodies. Hazō didn't want to know what was hidden underneath.
As they stepped in, another Orochimaru standing over one of the people glanced at them, raised an eyebrow, then quickly stepped out. A couple of the people on the gurneys turned their heads to Hazō and Noburi, tracking them with dull eyes. Hazō felt a faint chill in his back. Many of the ninja Orochimaru had captured were genin, kids younger than Hazō.
"You may begin draining," Orochimaru said. "You need not preserve consciousness. Do not injure any subjects."
Noburi stiffly nodded again, glancing at Hazō, then unslung his barrel to dip the test subjects' hands in as he started walking down the rows.
"Incidentally," Orochimaru said, "I have realized that you likely wished to retain consciousness during the surgery in order to take imprints of the bioseals I was implanting. I do not readily share my work, yet it would be far more foolish for you to cut yourself open to take imprints without my presence – and I fully expect you to be capable of such foolishness. Maintenance is simpler than implantation, so when I next maintain the bioseals, I will permit you to take imprints of the bioseals then."
"I see," Hazō said. "I appreciate it. Do you have any other bioseals that would be useful for me at O'Uzu?"
Orochimaru glanced at Hazō. "You will not fight. No, I have no further bioseals that would provide marginal value, relative to the costs of an additional surgery. Do you have other seals or runes that could increase our odds of victory?"
The time-acceleration runes sprang to mind, but Hazō kept his face neutral. "I'm afraid not."
Orochimaru studied him for a moment. "A pity. Any additional advantage matters, nephew. There will be no second chances."
o-o-o
"We are going to need way more chakra when we get to O'Uzu," Hazō said to the assembled team, once Cannai had returned to the Seventh Path. "Easily ten times more than I'm using right now. We don't just need boatloads of runes, we also need to summon a half-dozen Boss summons, dozens of rank-and-file jōnin summons, and a small army of shadow clones. We could easily use hundreds of chūnin-level ninja solely for their chakra reserves."
"You said we want to ambush Akatsuki, right?" Mari asked. She was sitting with her back turned, her legs kicking off the edge of the skytower. "We can't get basically all of Leaf's chūnin and jōnin out of the village without spies from every nation figuring out that Leaf's going to war."
"That's the thing, we have options other than taking all the ninja from Leaf," Hazō said. "First idea: can we recruit Orochimaru's cultists as chakra batteries? It always sounds like there's dozens of them, and Orochimaru or Endō might know where their groups are."
"It's possible," Mari asked. "Based on my extremely limited model, I'm guessing they would join up if promised Orochimaru's attention for doing so, and I presume Orochimaru can phrase things such that the cultists don't notice that the 'attention' is vivisection. I don't think that any given biosealing cult would be that populous, though. The SSSSS in Isan was only a half-dozen people. Unless there are way more biosealing cults out there than any sane person would expect, that won't get us to our chakra target."
"Additionally, sealmasters tend to have rather restricted chakra reserves," Kei said. "Biosealers may have an advantage over regular sealmasters in this regard, given that they need to regularly overpower their test substrate in combat, but we should slightly downweight this plan's expected yields accordingly."
"I can float it by Orochimaru and see what he thinks," Hazō said. "For additional chakra, could we use the Wakahisa Clan? Orochimaru said that Akatsuki would have secured control over chakra-redistribution bloodlines, but they can't have planted Akatsuki S-rankers in Mist, which would spread them out too far. We can kill their spies, or maybe move quick enough to outrace the spies on foot, and bring the entire Wakahisa Clan to O'Uzu with us."
"Do you intend to involve Mist, or is the intention to convince the entire Wakahisa Clan to commit high treason against Mist for a gain primarily to Leaf?" Kei said.
"...is that an option?" Hazō asked.
"No."
"Then let's get Mist's approval to take the Wakahisa. With Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Leaf's summoners, we'll have a ridiculous amount of firepower to help us 'negotiate' the Mizukage or the AMI, whoever is in power in Mist now, into helping us. We could have internal support as well – for instance, Kei, would the Mori back us?"
"That question is premature," Kei said. "We should first ask whether Naruto would accept inducting Mist into the conspiracy."
"That's right," Mari said. "Mist isn't going to suicide-attack Akatsuki for no good reason, and Utakata evidently didn't object to Akatsuki killing the Seventh and extorting Leaf over it. We'd need to explain the rift and how monumentally important gaining control over it is… at which point, Mist isn't going to accept Leaf keeping control over it. They're going to angle for some sort of way to share it, which Naruto won't like. Plus, they might realize that they can't keep any control over it when Leaf has all the relevant seals and almost all the combat power. That imbalance could torpedo our alliance before it gets started."
"Indeed," Kei said. "I do not expect they would immediately betray us for Akatsuki after we contact them on account of Utakata's probable antipathy for his former captors. Still, Mist's rational response may be to eschew immediate combat and ally with the victor. Or, perhaps learning from Yagura's demise, they may instead elect to attack the weakened survivor of the Leaf-Akatsuki showdown."
"Would they?" Noburi asked, lifting his palms off Hazō's chest to look around the team with a frown. Apparently, the new biosealed chakra coil was making healing Hazō's overcharge injury challenging. "I thought Utakata was pretty deeply invested in AMITY. Backstabbing Leaf with Akatsuki dead would trigger a world war, and if Akatsuki wins, I doubt Mist would want to rock the boat. Plus, once the other nations get involved, Mist has no special advantage when it comes to handling the rift. They don't know anything about rift-moving or rift-opening seals, same as everyone else. Starting that fight is betting their future on a coin flip."
"Whereas accepting Leaf victory is accepting eventual cultural annihilation by Pax Konoha," Kei replied. "Utakata may be considerably more liberal than Yagura, but I expect even he would fight to preserve Mist's continued existence."
"If they're not willing to fight with us, they're not getting the stakes," Hazō said. "Akatsuki's last ritual was world-ending. Leaf isn't going to… right. I almost forgot all the Yagura brainwashing about how awful Leaf was."
"Indeed," Kei said. "Additionally, consider: were Mist to be convinced that the battle were both necessary and winnable, they are risking far more than Leaf is after the battle is concluded. Any Akatsuki survivor – or the inevitable AMITY retaliation in the event that Akatsuki is fully defeated – will be far more capable of leveling Mist, as Mist will not have runes to defend themselves, and in terms of S-rankers, has only Utakata and perhaps Ryūgamine."
"As an aside," Mari said, "I don't see how Akatsuki wouldn't find out a Leaf-Mist alliance against them. We're going to need hours of set-up on site, and that's plenty of time for any of their agents to notice the Wakahisa disappearing and warn their bosses. I know intelligence networks are generally terrible, but unless we find and kill every single spy in Mist, they're going to know."
"That's fine," Hazō said. "For the right quantity of chakra, we can deal with Akatsuki having forewarning."
"Even if it means Akatsuki taking the offensive on our unprepared forces, before we have all the summons and shadow clones ready? Even if it means you get attacked mid-infusion on a rune?" Mari asked.
"We can work around it…" Hazō said hesitantly. "Getting them out of their fortress would itself be a win."
"Regardless, the point is moot, I suspect," Kei said. "I will admit to my own feeble ability of social simulation, but I envision no future in which Naruto accepts adulterating Leaf's golden future by splitting it with Mist – never mind that justifying the attack as non-suicidal would require explaining the Sannin Rush strategy and possibly runecrafting. You may suggest it to Naruto, but I expect the answer will no."
"If he says yes, would the Mori back us?" Hazō asked.
"Provided that we explain that the rift will let Akatsuki resurrect Pain for unknown decades of Rinnegan-empowered tyranny, and that it will also allow Mist to resurrect its dead heroes and become co-owners of the new era? It seems probable, though I obviously can make no commitments on behalf of my birth clan."
"If Mist is out, how about recruiting Moon's ninja? They got ransacked by Hidan and Akatsuki earlier. If we explain that we're out for revenge, that they'll just need to come along at zero personal risk, and that we'll pay them tons of gold, could we get them to assist? Maybe I should be asking if they even have enough people to make it worthwhile…"
"Moon is poorly connected to the Elemental Nations and we have minimal understanding of their capabilities," Kei said. "My most recent information suggested that they have in the vicinity of one hundred ninja, though that predates Hidan's visit. This would not saturate your chakra needs."
"There's no way, right?" Noburi asked. "They'll get massacred if they do."
"We just need their chakra," Hazō said. "They don't need to fight."
"Afterwards, by Akatsuki," Noburi said. "Or by Leaf, to keep them quiet. I'm assuming they're similar to those ninja you described meeting in Neck, with their entirely-justified distrust of Elemental Nations ninja. They're not going to end up with any control over the rift, so that's out the window in terms of motivators. Revenge and money might do it…"
"I don't see it," Mari said. "Unlike Isan, which had some amount of trust with Leaf, we would be arriving and immediately asking that every single one of their ninja follow us into foreign territory of our choosing. That screams trap. I doubt they're stupid enough to go along."
"Okay…" Hazō said. "I want to preface this with the obvious point that this seems like an Orochimaru-flavored idea, and that I am proposing this idea because I am willing to take extreme measures to kill Akatsuki, not because I am somehow being puppeted by Orochimaru. What if we didn't ask for their agreement?"
"What do you mean?" Mari asked.
"What if we went to a minor village, say Tea or Moon or Noodle since they're not too out of the way to O'Uzu, and raided it? We trap them in with Force Dome and Iron Earth runes, use Air-Leadeners to keep them from escaping, then just apply a massed shadow clone assault with Tsunade, Orochimaru, and you, Mari. We fight as non-lethally as we can, knock them all out cold with Noburi's chakra-drain afterwards, then transport them to O'Uzu in giant nets so we can use them as chakra batteries."
Hazō read the horrified expressions on his team's faces and quickly raised his hands. "I know it's extreme. I know it's going to have lasting geopolitical consequences. It's just that we need chakra to beat Akatsuki, and beating Akatsuki isn't optional. Can you deny that this boosts our chances?"
Nobody spoke.
"If we lose against Akatsuki, this world just doesn't have a future. Plus, we could maybe let the captured ninja go afterwards, since they'd be unconscious and wouldn't see our runes, and Tsunade would be there to stop Orochimaru from-"
"Absolutely not," Kei said. "If they die, Leaf could perhaps avoid AMITY retaliation. If they live, not only is AMITY retaliation certain, but they will either kill Leaf ninja soon thereafter, or they will die against our defenses. Naruto will not let them live free, and I do not expect Tsunade would object to this decision. Furthermore, Orochimaru would object to killing them on grounds of wastefulness. Naruto will want Orochimaru back in Leaf to deal with Akatsuki and AMITY's possible retaliatory strikes, and he will want Orochimaru fully sated with non-Leaf test subjects so that Orochimaru does not predate upon Leaf in that critical period. I expect Naruto will not object to Orochimaru keeping any captured ninja as test subjects."
"Right, so we're clear that this is a morally atrocious idea," Mari said. "Let's be pragmatic. I think it would work. We would definitely kill some of them by accident in the fighting, but we could probably capture enough ninja to be worthwhile. Moon's less than a hundred ninja. Given Hidan being Hidan, maybe less than fifty? We could do it, but we wouldn't get the amount of chakra you want, Hazō. Tea is probably out – their clans and ninja are too spread out, and I don't think there would be a big population center of ninja better than Moon. Noodle though…"
"Noodle follows Hashirama's hidden village model, with all ninja taking residence in the country's capital," Kei said. "That capital has approximately eight-thousand residents, of which I project around two hundred are ninja. This projection is based on an estimated headcount of one hundred and twenty-five ninja, taken five years ago, and the observation that they have managed to see several years of relatively unfettered peace after evading Mist's conquest and all subsequent international conflict."
"Noodle's not strong," Mari said. "Our attack force with a dozen-or-so jōnin was going to be enough to deter retaliation. Against twenty Tsunades, they'll crumble. Thinking back to the briefings we got on Noodle's clans, I don't see any way they could defend against a mass shadow clone and summon attack. This could work."
"What would happen to the civilians?" Noburi asked. "If we can't let the ninja live because they'll trigger an AMITY retaliation, why wouldn't the civilians' testimony trigger a similar retaliation?"
"They would have to die," Hazō said, a cold feeling sinking into his stomach.
"It could look like a sealing failure," Yuno said. "Sealing failures can destroy villages. If Leaf just unleashed all its ninjutsu on the area within the Force Dome, the perfectly circular borders of the destroyed area would scream sealing failure. Fire would need to annex and patrol Noodle. Otherwise the rest of the country would fall to chakra beasts by the year's end."
"If we bring this to Orochimaru, is there any way that he doesn't push to destroy Noodle over Moon?" Hazō asked. "He doesn't care one whit about civilian or ninja casualties, he just wants to kill Akatsuki. Honestly, he might like the idea of getting extra test subjects out of the process."
"To be clear, civilian casualties are likely with Moon as well," Kei said. "Murdering them to the last may not be absolutely required, as they are sufficiently remote that without their ninja, they will have no means of contacting the greater world in a relevant timeframe. However, trapping their village in a Force Dome and fighting all their ninja will likely kill many of their civilians in the process. We can comfortably expect hundreds of civilian casualties in this path."
Mari rubbed her forehead. "There's no way Orochimaru doesn't go for Noodle if the chakra is that valuable. Worse, I think Naruto might prefer this over going to Mist. Going to Mist means opening Leaf up to Mist's backstabs, having to share the rift, involving the rest of AMITY, reopening the world war, and all that. This plan… well, you've done well with your runes. I don't want to say it's riskless – there will be some amount of ninja outside of the village that Leaf's forces will need to kill or capture, because if they see the massacre and get away, the cat's out of the bag. But the Force Domes really should enable a complete kill on the village."
"Are there logistics to consider here?" Noburi asked. "How far out of the way is Noodle? How much prep do we need for the attack? Noodle is farther from O'Uzu. How much harder would it be to transport all their ninja than transporting people from Moon?"
"Point," Kei said. "It is three days from Noodle to O'Uzu. Carrying captives will slow us further. That is ample time for a Noodle ninja on mission to return to their village, notice the massacre, and travel immediately to their closest ally, Leaf, to request aid in dealing with this problem. Unless Akatsuki's surveillance can be foiled, this prompts an investigation, at which point Akatsuki observes that Tsunade and all Leaf's summoners are mysteriously on a mission, in a world where Zoo Rush is a known capability. Akatsuki will be informed by Seventh Path communication of our incoming attack, and AMITY retaliation is certain. Each step in this chain seems much more likely than not. I cannot judge the aggregate risk immediately, but my intuition suggests that this will be unacceptable."
"Okay, so our only option is Moon, then," Hazō said, feeling a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. "It's within a day of O'Uzu, and it's out of the way, and if they have survivors, those survivors are unlikely to go to a fertility shrine right after their village is killed."
"A few dozen ninja is not going to be enough chakra for us, right?" Mari asked.
"It's going to restrict the number of runes and Sannin-clones we can deploy," Hazō said. "We can make it work if we combine it with ninja from Leaf and some biosealing cults. Unless any of you have other bright ideas?"
"The pool won't help with our summon and shadow clone-based attack plan," Mari said. "I guess we could try to find time to put you in the pool to help with runecrafting? Except most of that runecrafting is going to happen through your shadow clones, so that won't even help much."
"There aren't really chakra beasts with really high reserves," Yuno said. "Ninja have way bigger reserves than beasts."
"Chakra koi are the primary exception of note," Kei said. "Barring a raid on the Wakahisa compound, finding a sufficient number of sufficiently large schools of chakra-koi is both challenging and highly stochastic as a strategy. Inasmuch as we are prioritizing high-reliability strategies instead of rolling dice on Mist or Noodle, this does not present a viable alternative."
"...and we still haven't figured out any runes that can augment our chakra generation," Noburi said. "So we pretty much need ninja. We can't take too many Leaf ninja, because Akatsuki and AMITY will notice. So we need to attack other nations. Ugh."
"There are other ninja," Mari said. "Missing-nin. We could ask Naruto for a list of deniable assets and missing-nin vaguely in Leaf's orbit."
"We could easily spend days on each retrieval for marginal gains in overall chakra budget," Kei countered. "Dividing forces to retrieve missing-nin could also be ineffective, as many of these operatives will need to be overpowered and used as chakra batteries, as they will not go along with the assault plan willingly."
"Even with infinite gold?" Hazō asked.
"Gold does little for missing-nin who generally cannot buy seals nor spend time in cities," Kei replied.
"We should at least ask," Mari said. "If there are missing-nin that could be used in this way, Naruto would know."
"Granted," Kei said.
"We're really going to destroy Hidden Moon?" Noburi asked. "If we kill all their ninja, the same thing is going to happen to their island as would happen to Noodle, except there's not going to be a Leaf to step in and protect the civilians. It's going to become uninhabitable."
"That's not that likely," Yuno said. "The population will contract, but assuming the land is fertile enough, humans will probably survive on the island in some capacity! People can survive in the strangest places."
"We can move people off the island," Hazō said.
"Tens of thousands of foreign civilians who will ultimately be a drain on Land of Fire resources?" Kei asked. "While we are presumably busy with fending off Akatsuki survivors, AMITY assault, and optionally delving the afterlife rift to resurrect Leaf's dead S-rankers to win a decisive advantage? The idea is laughable. No, we should face reality – if we are to use Hidan's methods, let us at least comfort ourselves with the fact that we are doing it for a better cause."
o-o-o
"You wish to use my 'cults' as chakra fuel for our attack on O'Uzu? Ordinarily, I would praise your willingness to use them as raw materials, but this seems infeasible to me. They are spread out across the known world and travel frequently to avoid retaliation from local ninja for their collection of test subjects. Finding them will cost us too much time.
"Similarly, I have neither the aptitude nor the patience to negotiate for Mist's involvement. If you wish to convince the Fox to do so, I have no objection.
"Your proposal for claiming Hidden Moon's chakra however… it is interesting. Viable, even. I did not think you had the audacity to attack hidden villages head-on, though I suppose with the power you now wield, you are starting to recognize the possibilities now open to you. Yes, let us take Hidden Moon's ninja. The two days of additional time required are grating, but the additional chakra will be invaluable."
o-o-o
Having a productive discussion with his team was a healthy change of pace, but Hazō still needed to do some things alone. Once Noburi had finished healing his eternally-aching chakra coils, Hazō left the team on their skytower to return to the ground.
"Earth Element: Hiding Like a Mole."
He fell into the ground and flipped upside down, as if he were diving off a cliff into a deep bay, and continued to sink.
He swam through the earth for an interminable period of time before he broke out into an underground cavern. He dropped free of the earth and flipped again, arresting his fall with skywalkers. In the center of the cavern, lit by a single Jiraiya's Awesome Daybright Lantern, his shadow clone opened his eyes to look at him. Hazō and the clone nodded in sync. He'd sent the shadow clone here to make this cavern deep underground so that no one would know of his most dangerous research project.
He was here to recreate Elemental Mastery in a rune, the ninjutsu that had scoured Isan from the world in an eyeblink.
Around him, he saw the stone of the cavern gradually flowing away from the clone, up the walls, and to a point at the cavern's ceiling. That ceiling was drawing farther away, as the floor drew closer. The clone was still Earthshaping the cavern deeper into the ground. Once they'd gotten as deep as they could go without popping the clones on the surface, the clone would create a Force Dome rune on the surface to contain the hellstorm if it somehow broke free of its underworld prison.
The clone adjusted the Earthshaping to make an unmoving section of stone for Hazō to sit on, and Hazō started to unseal his research materials.
o-o-o
Hazō sighed and stepped back from the rune. For all the eldritch premonitions he got while infusing runes, the Superchiller rune was strangely calm. The twisted mass of crystal and stone was narrower than his shoulders, tiny compared to the room-sized Remote Explosives he was practicing elsewhere. Its hum was barely audible even in the absolute silence of the underground stone chamber, and it glowed a pale shade of blue that barely shifted, and barely stood out when surrounded by the Daybright Lanterns.
"Shadow Clone Technique."
A clone of Hazō appeared by his side as Hazō retreated to the exit tunnel, a shaft of packed earth in the stone that would let him travel with Hiding Like a Mole. Orochimaru's extra chakra coil was already proving its worth, as it let Hazō infuse a rune and cast shadow clone afterwards, both incredibly expensive tasks, without requiring him to double back to the team and refill his chakra.
Hazō counted down three minutes of time as he swam through the earth to the surface, then activated the Force Dome rune his other clone had left behind earlier. The dome itself was invisible, but as he ran to his waiting point outside the potential hellstorm area, he saw branches being snapped and trees being split by the invisible edge of the descending dome.
The timer ended, and Hazō waited for the clone's memories.
Approaching the quiescent rune.
Placing his palm against it to activate it.
Stepping back.
The cavern, getting colder and colder. Frost forming on the walls.
An indescribable moment, a crack, a flash of white and cold.
Death.
Hazō opened his eyes, reveling for a moment in the phantom sensation of a cold deeper than any ice running across his skin. It had worked.
Hazō wasn't sure if what he had was enough. When he and Orochimaru and all of Leaf stacked everything they had against Akatsuki at O'Uzu, there was no guarantee that they would win, secure the rift, and claim the future for Leaf.
But now, with the Superchiller rune giving him the untamed power of Elemental Mastery… no matter what, Akatsuki was going to lose.
o-o-o
Orochimaru of the Sannin sat in a lotus position in the middle of the clearing, wearing his combat gear and with the Snake Scroll at his back. He kept his eyes closed, and did not respond to Hazō's arrival.
Eventually, his eyes flicked open.
"It is time to leave. Have you healed and made all necessary preparations?" Orochimaru asked.
"I'm still recovering from the surgery, Lord Orochimaru," Hazō said. "I've been pushing my chakra coils hard in the past few days, and it slowed down my recovery. I will be ready for the assault on O'Uzu. I could use more time to practice with my runes, but I have achieved my main goal, and can now quickly craft all runes in my arsenal. On the way, I will prepare blanks of runes small enough to be reverse summoned."
"Tsunade can heal you on the way if required," Orochimaru said. "I will contact her immediately with the following instructions: first, contact all Leaf summoners currently on mission via the Seventh Path and instruct them to abandon their missions and meet us at a pre-designated meeting point. Then, instruct the Fox to gather any Leaf summoners except the Turtle Summoner – who is unlikely to be able to summon a Boss summon and thus provides minimal value while making the simultaneous disappearance of all Leaf summoners obvious – along with a limited selection of trustworthy jōnin and chūnin, no more than fifty in total. Send those chūnin and jōnin on reasonably-obfuscated missions, in random directions with varied timings, with similar instructions to meet us at a pre-designated meeting point. From there, we will proceed to Moon, then to O'Uzu.
"If you have any objection or suggested adjustments to this course of action, speak now."
TL;DR for readers who don't follow the mechanics – runes can be crafted and infused faster by increasing the difficulty of the check that Hazō needs to make. The difficulty of the check can also be reduced by "veterancy", i.e. practicing making the rune. By practicing, Hazō can reduce the difficulty of the runecrafting check enough to compensate for the increased difficulty of going quickly.
Hazō Prime will be under the effects of Pain Suppression to minimize the Consequence penalty from the surgery. As a reminder, Pain Suppression does not work effectively on Shadow Clones.
Given the circumstances, the full team (except Kagome) is going to be giving Hazō their full regen-worth of chakra, with no room for frivolous uses like training or summoning Snowflake. After some inevitable inefficiencies and combined with Hazō's own chakra production, that gives Hazō ~1600 CP to work with. That is about enough to make and infuse 4 timeladdered-up runes, 2 runes at regular speed, or 1 rune timeladdered-down (very coarse numbers; good enough for the current situation. I'm open if someone wants to do more precise math, for future situations).
Hazō goes to Orochimaru asking for additional chakra, either from Orochimaru or from his test subjects. Orochimaru will offer his test subjects without hesitation, so long as Hazō's using it on runes that will actually be useful in the fight. This doubles the chakra budget to 8 timeladdered-up runes, 4 runes at regular speed, or 2 runes timeladdered-down.
Time-laddering down is lethal to speed, so he'll attempt to craft 4x RER 2.0 on the first day. He will time-ladder down infusion, so it's 16 clone-hours per attempt.
Day 1
These attempts are in parallel, so veterancy from one doesn't apply to the others. I'm tentatively ruling that all SCs can invoke "Out-Touched Sealing Genius" in parallel, as I'm not sure how this interacts with the "Aspects can only be used once per scene" rule if the SCs are crafting runes separately and simultaneously. This seems like the more generous option (the alternative would restrict Hazō to 1 RER 2.0 on this first day).
Hazō successfully creates 4x RER 2.0 and reduces the crafting and infusion TN by 8.
Day 2
Hazō needs to spend 1 timeladdered-up rune-worth of chakra on Superchiller research. He needs to spend ~1 timeladdered-up rune-worth of chakra casting Earthshaping to make a suitable underground cavern for Superchiller containment. He needs to craft and infuse a Force Dome for Superchiller containment. He makes his Cannai summoning attempt today, so he needs to save roughly ~2 timeladdered-up runes worth of chakra for that. This leaves ~3x timeladdered-up runes worth of chakra for this day. He'll do 1x regular speed RER 2.0 and 1x Ninja-Radar (this is very coarse math, but I think it works out?). Hazō waits to start Superchiller research until the RER 2.0 clone is well into their rune crafting so that when he recasts SC for the RER 2.0 infusion, the clone won't have his DoB consequence. He has time, since he'll need to summon Cannai, then receive treatment to clear the Mild, then discuss with the team about chakra sourcing. This will just about saturate his available clone-hours.
Superchiller Research (Prime + SC 1 for ESing and rune activation)
Hazō is researching under the effect of 1 active rune (Force Dome). He will need to roll 1d100 to avoid complications (low is bad; probably represented as a penalty to the rolls). [1d100: 99] He's fine.
All are successful. Hazō reduces the crafting and infusion TNs for RER 2.0, Ninja-Radar, and Force Dome by 2 (total: -10 for RER 2.0, -4 for Ninja-Radar). Hazō is now fine to timeladder-up the RER2.0 crafting (provided he has FP available for rerolls on -6 or worse). He still would not want to timeladder up infusion for RER 2.0, Force Dome, or Ninja-Radar.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: I'm noticing after doing these rolls that all the practice infusions are done with DoB, which narratively triggers a consequence if Hazō spends hours in his altered state. This is necessary for research infusions, but has triggered at other times – e.g. during Hazō's special jōnin exam (though Hazō had SSA at the time). Concretely, I think that Hazō shouldn't have been able to use DoB 4 times per day for infusions, since he would have picked up too many DoB consequences. I'm not going to consider DoB consequences from lengthy rune infusion in this update as doing so without forewarning the players would be unfair, but please be aware in the future that I may apply DoB consequences for infusions >= 1 hour.
These won't be applied until at least after the showdown at O'uzu.
There are now five infused RER2.0s in a random patch of forest in southern Rice. You may vote on how you want to deal with them.
Hazō did not have time to spend several hours on the Seventh Path recruiting summons. His every waking hour in this update was spent runecrafting, including with shadow clones that would have popped had he left. He expects that he will have time to do this at some point in downtime while traveling, so he deprioritized it to grind rune veterancy.
Similarly, there was neither clone-hours nor chakra to test how much earth a Force Dome can pierce. Hazō did not want to test this with the Force Dome for Superchiller containment, since finding the point where the Force Dome failed would have meant either foregoing Force Domes for Superchiller containment, or sacrificing RER2.0 infusions to make a new Force Dome.
"You guys hear Okita yesterday?" Tsunade said, not taking her eyes off the chair she was balancing on one finger.
Jiraiya looked up from where he and Orochimaru had been heads-down in their latest sealing project for the last two hours. "Hm? What?"
"Okita," Tsunade said, using a pulse of chakra repulsion to flip the chair over. It didn't flip smoothly and she had to lunge forward to catch it. She didn't quite manage it and it clattered to the floor. She scoffed in annoyance and booted the chair in frustration; it slid across the floor of the Soggy Tag and bumped into the chair of an Academy instructor who was grading papers with a brush in one hand and a cup of something in the other. The something slopped forward onto the page he was currently reviewing.
"Hey!" he said, spinning around. "What the hell?!"
"Yeah, sorry," Tsunade said, waving dismissively.
The instructor started to stand up, then stopped when Orochimaru and Jiraiya both leaned forward, rising a few inches from their seats.
The man stopped, thinking, then glowered and sat down again.
"Hey, Tanaka!" Jiraiya called to a waiter passing by with a tray of cups and sake bottles. "Get that guy some more of whatever he's drinking, and one of those chef's-choice sushi rolls. Put it on my tab."
The waiter bobbed his head and hustled to drop off the current order before hurrying back to the kitchen.
"What's this about Okita?" Orochimaru asked, tidying two stacks of notes into one and pushing them aside.
"He was saying that he got an advanced peek at the rankings and their team has the highest combined mission score in the village. That we're second best and it's finally being acknowledged."
Orochimaru's narrow eyebrows rose and his snake-slit eyes went cold. "He said what."
"You heard me." She pulled a tin flask from within her jacket and took a swig.
"Gimme," Jiraiya said, making a grabby hand at her. She passed the flask over and he slammed back a mouthful.
"We are not coming second to Okita and his buttsniffers," Jiraiya said. "Not now, not ever."
"It seems unlikely that we have," Orochimaru said, frowning. "In the last month we have done six B-rank and two A-rank missions."
"No shit," Tsunade said, taking another slug from her flask. She twisted around in her seat, the flexibility of a young-twenties ninja medic making Jiraiya wince. "Hey, bartender! Three flasks of sake! Big ones, hot!" She looked back at her team. "You guys want anything?"
"You really should go a little easier, Sunny," Jiraiya said.
"Pfft. It's just sake, not actual booze. Stuff is practically water."
"Just promise me you'll metabolize it when you start to feel the buzz instead of after I've had to back you up through four million ryō of damages."
"I think the damages were less of an issue than the three MSD ANBU," Orochimaru noted. "The Kazekage was quite upset at that part."
"Oh puh-leeze. The first two just had concussions and the guy with the squint had a broken arm, a fractured hip, and a bruised liver. I fixed them."
"Indeed. I was quite surprised that you needed two blows to remove one of your opponents." Orochimaru clucked his tongue in exaggerated dismay. "You are slipping, dear sister. Losing your edge. Beginning the long slide towards irrelevance."
"I'll show you irrelevance, you snake-loving little—"
"Easy, easy, both of you. Sage, what is the world coming to when I'm the one playing peacemaker?" Jiraiya snagged one of the three sake bottles off the tray that the waiter was sliding onto the table, holding it out of reach of Tsunade until he had taken a heavy drink.
"Anyway, jokes aside. You fixed those guys, but that didn't stop it from being an international incident. C'mon, Sunny, this kind of shit is what pulls our mission scores down. Maybe Okita is right. Maybe we really are second place. He and his assholes are about as by-the-book as you can get. Yes sir, no sir, right away sir, here's our reports in triplicate, sir. You know how the Clerk eats that shit up."
"Rankings are out next week, right?"
"Thursday." Orochimaru's voice was distant. He had tented his fingers and was tapping them on his lips in thought.
"Shit," Tsunade said. "Three days. Not a lot of time."
"Anything good on the boards?" Jiraiya asked, looking to the member of the team who actually cared about administrivia.
Orochimaru shook his head, lowering his hands and beginning to tidy his notes away with practiced speed.
"Not as of last night," he said.
Tsunade cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. "You seriously checked the boards after we got back last night?"
"You didn't?" Butter would not have melted in the Snake Sannin's mouth.
"Pfft. Why should I? You're the fuckin' nerd."
"And you were a little stinky," Jiraiya said with a sly grin.
"It worked, okay? I didn't see you coming up with any better ways in."
"Hey, I'm okay with anything that gets you into a nice soapy tub. Y'know, with lots of suds and scrubbing. Hot water that relaxes all those stiff muscles, makes your head drop back on the side of the tub, eyes drifting blissfully—"
"That was predictable," Orochimaru said as Jiraiya slammed into the wall fifteen feet away. He hit head-first, then shoulder, then back, and lay in a stunned sprawl for several moments.
Tsunade lowered her fist to her side. She had never stopped sipping from her sake cup.
"We need a win," Orochimaru said. "Quickly. Something significant."
"There's reports of movement in Rain," Tsunade said. "Rock staging troops."
"They were disproven four weeks ago. It was a disinformation campaign by River."
"Hmph. What about those caravans between Sand and Rock? We know they're carrying sandspore extract to the Tsuchikage. We could drop one of the passes, cut off his supply."
"Too unstable," Jiraiya said, resuming his seat without comment on his recent wall-based encounter. "The extract keeps him calm, calm means predictable. Without it, there's no way to tell what he would do."
"Sure, but it's going to disrupt them more than us. He'll be ripping the heads off everyone who annoys him. Probably cost them a few senior clerical chūnin, disrupt their entire administration."
"Or, alternatively, he could finally begin prosecution of that war he's been considering for the last year and a half. Hence why, as you may recall, Sensei has explicitly ordered the three of us to stay more than two hundred miles from Rock at all times."
"You are no fun at all, you know that?" Tsunade growled.
"I believe we have long decided that my role on the team was to be the sensible one. You come up with wild ideas, Jiraiya runs with it and causes trouble, I tell you that this is unwise, you ignore me and escalate the conflict, and I clean up the mess."
"Hey, we've bailed your skinny ass out of trouble plenty of times!" Jiraiya said, closing ranks with his battle sister against the scathing tongue of the critic.
"Generally trouble that you caused."
"Details, details. You know what details are, right?"
Orochimaru sighed in disgust and rolled slit-pupiled eyes. "Yes, yes. 'Detail is de part of de snake dat goes in de hole de last.' Very droll."
"I think it's..." Jiraiya trailed off, eyes going distant in thought. "Huh."
"What?" Tsunade demanded after several seconds.
"There's a technique hacker in Cloud that I've had my eye on for a while," Jiraiya said, blinking back to the present moment. "He's been working on an interesting project. A speed technique, lets you move extremely fast and surrounds you in a lightning aura that cuts through Earth-based defenses. He crawled into a hole two months ago to work on it undisturbed, but I remember seeing his name on an intelligence report before we left on the last mission. If he's moving around again then he's finished the technique. Stealing it would be a heck of a win."
"He in Cloud proper?" Tsunade asked, setting her cup down and turning to face Jiraiya.
"He was as of a week ago. Visiting the fleshpots, you know?"
"Two hundred miles to Cloud, two hundred back," Orochimaru noted. "Three days before the ratings come out."
"No way they're going to give us an official mission for this if we ask. Espionage on this level is sketchy."
"Wasn't really planning on asking," Jiraiya said. "You know Sensei will give us mission credit if we bring back a technique like that. It would definitely help our ratings."
"Even better were we able to, for once, actually perform the mission with stealth," Orochimaru said. "I believe we have reached our quota of international incidents for the year. Perhaps even strained Sensei's patience a bit."
"We can do stealth," Jiraiya said, sounding hurt.
"Our mission history suggests otherwise."
"Then I guess we better do better this time," Jiraiya said. "C'mon, let's get our asses in gear." He rose to his feet and strode for the door, Orochimaru on his heels.
"Fuuuuck," Tsunade grumbled. "I so wanted a day to chill." She hurried to knock back her sake bottle before following her team.
XP AWARD: 0 It's an interlude.
Voting has been open since the previous chapter and remains open until
.
"I am not a member of Akatsuki! I am a loyal ninja of Hidden Mist, on a long-term, AMITY-sponsored mission approved by my Kage and Clan Head, to assist Akatsuki in their daily affairs."
"But you like wearing the robe," Kisame pointed out.
"The robe is pretty nice," Aya admitted.
"So, you're a member of Akatsuki," Kisame said smugly.
"The conclusion does not follow from the premise!" Saya said, her high voice echoing off the tall, stone halls of Kisame's lair. "I&S specialists frequently wear clothing that would indicate a variety of allegiances, and may even enjoy wearing such clothing to the extent that it does not interfere with the completion of the mission. However, they do not change allegiance as a result. Proof by counterexample: enjoying clothing of a given allegiance does not change your allegiance in truth."
"Nuh uh," Kisame said.
"Yuh huh!"
"Nuh huh."
"Yuh huh!"
"Nuh uh, and I'll prove it," Kisame said. "Consider the following syllogism. All members of Akatsuki like wearing the Akatsuki robes. Aya likes wearing the Akatsuki robes. Therefore, Aya is a member of Akatsuki."
"That syllogism is invalid!" Saya yelled. "The first line would need to be the other way around! That liking Akatsuki's robes makes you an Akatsuki member, which I've already proven is false!"
"On the contrary," Kisame said with a wide grin, "before Aya joined, it was already the case that everyone who liked wearing the Akatsuki robes was an Akatsuki member. Empirical result: One hundred percent. So, we know for sure that liking wearing Akatsuki robes makes you a part of Akatsuki."
"Don't you think you're winding them up too much?" Konan asked two minutes later, walking in and seeing Saya pulling on her hair and screaming at the stone wall, while Kisame and Aya laughed at the younger girl's reaction.
"What do you mean?" Kisame said. "I'm just being a good sensei to my student here."
"You're not my sensei, either," Aya said. "You're still a Mist missing-nin, so I'll have to kill you eventually."
"All students kill their senseis eventually, kid. It's the circle of life."
"Shouldn't she be in school?" Konan asked, gesturing at Saya, whose screaming had stopped so that she could listen into the conversation. "Where's their escort from the Wakahisa?"
"I pulled her out and ditched the nursemaid. They weren't doing anything important."
"Kisame, we got Mist and the Wakahisa to send the girls on the condition that they would be well treated and educated. She wants to go to school and learn, you know what she's like."
"Nah, today's Rain history day and she'd probably just disrupt the steady stream of propaganda with her own Mist bullshit."
"Language!" Aya and Saya and Konan admonished in unison. Kisame raised both hands in apology, bowing slightly to the girls.
"I suppose the girls can see to cleaning your tongue after this," Konan said coldly. "But it's not propaganda. Hidden Rain's history and rise to be a major village-"
"-is just as fabricated as Mist's history," Kisame said. "C'mon, you've seen both sides, same as me. You know it's bu-, uh, all a result of the author's S-rank mastery of creative fiction. Rain didn't even exist until Hanzō made it happen thirty years ago."
"Yahiko-"
"Ah, forget it," Kisame said. "We've had this discussion before. Luckily, I've found someone who actually understands Mist history."
"I wish I could say the same," Saya grumbled, crossing her arms.
"Look, kid," Kisame said apologetically, "it's been a while since I hit the books. I mostly was swinging swords and throwing jutsu even when I was in the Academy, and then when I got out, I mostly read marine biology when I wasn't training-"
"Meathead," Saya said, huffing and staring at the ground.
"And what about her chakra training?" Konan asked. "It's her last year of the Academy, so that training is particularly important."
"Wakahisa," Saya said. "Apologies if this was unclear, Lady Konan, but the different chakra system of a Wakahisa ninja means that we need to perform different exercises. I simply meet with Auntie Makoto once Kisame has gotten bored of us for the day. I would never let Kisame's foolish antics distract me from my education, which remains well under control."
"Antics? You're comparing me to an ant!?" Kisame said. "That's it! Aya, do you want to learn a new ninjutsu to use on your sister?"
"You're not going to teach Aya lethal ninjutsu to use on her sister," Konan said.
"You've taught me too many ninjutsu!" Aya complained. "I need time to practice them if I want to get any good at them. Plus I'm not a ninjutsu specialist anyway, I need to train my taijutsu more!"
"Whatever," Kisame said. "You've only been a genin for a year, it's easy to change specialties. Plus, why would you bother with taijutsu anyway? How am I supposed to design a taijutsu style that you can effectively use with a heavy barrel on your back? Just use a sword. Way cooler."
"The Wakahisa clan already has a taijutsu style," Aya said. "I'm using that style to fight."
"That style sucks. How many jōnin have you killed with it?"
"None!" Aya exclaimed.
"Exactly!" Kisame said back. "That's why we need to develop you a new taijutsu style! Or better yet, just get you to use a sword."
"My clan has ninjutsu that combine well with taijutsu!"
"Psh. I'll teach you better ninjutsu that goes with a sword."
"I don't want to learn any of your ninjutsu! You're a psycho!" Aya said, throwing her hands in the air.
Suddenly, Aya's face split into a devious grin. She turned to Konan. "Did you know he put Saya in a Water Prison Sphere?"
"Kisame…" Konan warned.
"Hey! It was only for like twenty seconds," Kisame said. "Plus, you did it too after I taught you the technique!"
"It's fine when I do it, obviously," Aya said.
"It was more fun when she did it," Saya said. "She let me get a breath of air first and swim around in the bubble."
"Do you want to try again?" Kisame asked. "I can put you back in the Water Prison Sphere and give it some fun currents for you to play with. Here, take a breath-"
"Kisame!" Konan said.
"Fine, fine," he said, holding up his hands again.
"No putting Academy students in Water Prison Spheres," Konan said.
"Actually, it sounds kinda fun," Saya said. "But maybe sometime tonight instead of literally right now?"
"No putting Academy students in Water Prison Spheres without their consent," Konan amended. "And don't let her drown."
"I would never let my student's cute little sister drown," Kisame said. "If anything, it's my student's duty to do it herself."
"She did dunk my head a lot as kids," Saya agreed.
"Keep talking like that," Aya said, in a whisper to Saya that was nonetheless fully audible to the two S-rank ninja in the room, "and I'll put you back in the bubble for as long as it takes for you to learn your lesson."
Konan sighed deeply. "Aya," she said, "the rule against putting Academy students in Water Prison Spheres applies to you as well."
"You can't set rules for me!" Aya said. "I'm not an Akatsuki schmuck like Kisame. I'm a Mist ninja!"
"Even though you wear the robes," Kisame said.
"The robes are cool," Aya said defensively, pulling the black-and-red cloth closer to her face as if to protect herself from Kisame's smugness. "They're soft. And warm."
Konan looked up at the high, gray stone ceiling. Looking to the sky, to the Sage, to any explanation for this madness. She found nothing.
Without looking down, she said, "Aya, if you put your sister in a Water Prison Sphere and drown her, I won't let you paint my nails anymore."
"Noooo!" Aya said, "You can't! Kisame let me paint his nails! And so did Deidara! And Sasori! Even Itachi let me paint his nails when he visited!"
"I did his toenails!" Saya said.
"And I'll keep letting you paint my nails as long as you don't use whatever horrifying techniques Kisame is teaching you to maim or kill anyone inside of Rain."
"The village or the country?" Aya asked, eyes narrowing.
"The country," Konan said.
"What if Grass invades, am I allowed to use Kisame-sensei's ninjutsu against them then?"
"Grass won't invade."
"But what if they did?"
"Then you would be allowed. Just don't hurt anyone in Rain who is authorized to be here."
"What about-"
"I'm not interested in making this a legal contract," Konan said, exasperated. "You know what I mean."
"Deal!" Aya said, sticking her hand out. Almost reluctantly, Konan shook it.
"But you have to admit," Aya said, "the nail polish really pulls the outfit together. Especially for you, Lady Konan, with your ring."
"I like the plum color," Kisame said, admiring his own nails. "You gave the same one to Itachi, right? Way better than the orange you gave Konan."
"Amber," Aya corrected. "It goes better with her eyes. And the ring."
"Well, so long as you girls aren't being mistreated horribly in Kisame's care," Konan said, trying to gather herself, "Aya, I would appreciate some chakra if you can spare it."
"Of course, Lady Konan," Aya said, as she quickly measured out a half-cup of chakra water for the Kage of Rain.
"Do you need more chakra?" Kisame said as Konan drank. He sank a finger into Aya's barrel as he spoke.
"Of course I'll take your chakra," Aya said, wordlessly starting to drain from Kisame. "But it's not fair that you're allowed to have bigger reserves than a Wakahisa."
"Bigger than a Wakahisa?" Kisame asked. "I've got reserves bigger than a jinchūriki!"
"Thank you, Aya," Konan said. "Ignore Kisame's bluster. His reserves are considerably smaller than those of a Tailed Beast. Kisame, I know you needed time to heal from the surgeries, but please consider that you may have tortured the children enough, and that you have other things worth doing with your time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have village business."
"Well, she's always a wet broadsheet," Kisame said, once Konan had left. "Saya, you probably need to spend all day working on your chakra shaping exercises, right?"
"Plus reading the books Uncle Itachi loaned me!" Saya said. "They sounded really interesting. I've done comparative analyses of history or political ideology, but I'd never thought to try it for religion! Say, when do I get to meet Uncle Hidan?"
"Uncle Itachi has boring taste in books-" Kisame said.
"You only read books about sharks," Saya said.
"-and Uncle Hidan is in timeout for doing something very naughty," Kisame finished. "Be careful that the same doesn't happen to you."
"I'm way better behaved than you, you shark-loving sword-swinging lunk!" Saya said.
"But I am still able to put you in timeout, so who's the real winner?" Kisame asked. "Anyways, Aya, what do you want to do today? Want to play with Samehada?"
"It cut my hands last time you tried to make me play with it," Aya said.
"Do you want to go on a shark ride around the lake?" Kisame asked.
"We did that yesterday!"
"But does that mean you don't want to do it again today?"
"...no."
"Great!" Kisame said, leaping to his feet. "Let's go! I can give you some kenjutsu training and maybe we can find some chakra beasts worth fighting on the island in the middle."
"See you later, Aya."
"Good luck, Saya."
"Look kid, I'm gonna be a damn good sensei," Kisame said, voice fading alongside Aya's footsteps as they left Saya behind. "When you kill me, I'm gonna drop crazy good loot, too. Samehada and the Shark Scroll? You're a very lucky lil' pup."
Hazō shook his head. "No objections. I note that before leaving Leaf I asked Naruto to order all summoners to work on their chakra reserves and start angling for contracts with the boss of their clan. It's possible that we'll be able to get a few more bosses on the field."
"A pleasing outcome, yet one that I doubt. Clan Bosses tend to be reluctant to make contract. It typically requires a decade of cozening before they will deign such."
"Really? Huh. Didn't seem terribly hard to me." He struggled to keep the smugness out of his voice and couldn't quite manage it.
"Yes, nephew, very impressive. You are definitely the prettiest princess."
Hazō coughed out a laugh and looked at Orochimaru in shock. "'The prettiest princess'? That's...not a phrase I would expect from you, sir."
"It was one that Jiraiya tended to use when he wished to be condescending."
"Ah." He considered whether or not to continue. "You know we're going to get him back, right? Once Akatsuki has been dealt with, we'll find him and pull him out of there."
"Ah, the optimism of youth. So touching. I look forward to reading the no doubt highly detailed and well-researched plan you have for how exactly you intend to locate one individual in a world that is likely at least as large as the Human Path and could well be infinite. One individual who has no expectation of rescue and therefore is not raising smoke signals or providing other location assistance. Oh, yes. And doing all this while having no chakra and therefore moving at the snail's pace of a civilian."
"Speaking of reading things," Hazō said, clearing his throat in a nonverbal confession, "I was wondering if I could get your research notes on the rift-moving runes."
"I had wondered how long it would be before you asked. Here." From an interior pocket of his jacket, he produced a folded-up sheaf of papers and handed them over. "I suppose I should have given them to you when you stored the runes into your bloodline, but I was focused on other matters." He gave a sniff that was definitely not a confession of error.
"Thank you for these," Hazō said, riding on past the not-confession without acknowledgement. "If I may ask, are you willing to share details of Akatsuki's attack on you back in Leaf? Did they demonstrate any further capabilities then, or do they have capabilities that I should be aware of?"
Orochimaru shook his head. "There is little to tell. Konan and Kisame came to make contact with Naruto and to review my work—this is unusual, as Konan takes her duties as ruler of Rain quite seriously and rarely goes into the field. I informed them that I would not be allowing them into my laboratory, they insisted, I refused, they insisted further, I relented and allowed them to see my decoy laboratory. They saw through the attempt at deception, as was intended, and I showed them the actual decoy laboratory. Sadly, they saw through that deception as well." He sniffed. "Unfortunate that it was Konan. Kisame lacks the knowledge of sealing and research methodologies to understand what he was seeing or know that it was nothing but set dressing." He shrugged.
"What happened then?"
"Certain harsh words were exchanged. Also certain jutsu. Have no concern, the collateral damage was only moderate."
"Ah."
"And no, they did not reveal any new capabilities in the process. Once you reach my level it is rare for someone to completely transform their peer-level combat suite, and even extending it takes a tremendous amount of effort."
"Noted."
XP AWARD: 6 This update covered two days.
Brevity XP: 0 No bonus for 399 words.
"GM had fun" XP: 0
I'm leaving voting closed for now. @Velorien can open it if he wants.
"...which is why we need to be ready to support him," Mari said to the team gathered around the crackling fire, waiting for Hazō–or something like him–to return from Orochimaru's lair. "We don't know how long the surgery will take, but as soon as Hazō comes back, we need to–"
She cut off as Kagome rose sharply to his feet.
"I-I can't take any more of this. Mari, I thought you, at least… No, never mind. I'm out."
The rest of the team watched in confused alarm as Kagome, his face dark, grabbed his travel pack from the common pile and stuffed a few extra scrolls in it.
"Kagome, where are you going?" Mari asked, her voice casual enough that even Kei could recognise it as deliberate.
"Away," Kagome said. "I'm done. I can't do this anymore." He stepped up into the air, skywalkers active.
"Don't follow me."
Kei watched in horror as Kagome broke into a run–and as nobody stopped him. Yuno's hesitation she could understand. Tenten's, doubly so. But why was Mari, matriarch and mother and de facto second-in-command, not intervening when Kagome was in obvious distress?
Second after second. Nobody moved or spoke, as if stupefied. Somehow, Kei was the first, the only one, to rise to her feet.
"Let him go, Kei," Mari said. "He just needs time to cool off and work through his feelings. That isn't something any of us can do for him."
Kei looked at her mother–perceptive, insightful, and better at understanding people and addressing their problems than Kei could ever be. She looked at the woman who had taken years to begin processing her most important issues, and, if not for her traumatic confrontation with Kei, might not have done so at all, leaving her guilt and her despair at herself to slowly consume her from the unconscious depths of her soul.
No, Kei could not give Kagome space, not without some flailing attempt at due diligence first. She could not allow him to flee to the Seventh Path, isolating himself from mankind in the foolish belief that it would also isolate him from his problems. She could not allow him to descend into an inescapable spiral of self-loathing over broken commitments and failure to protect, without a Snowflake to steer him away from its inevitable end. She could not allow him to stake his life on a vengeance incapable of healing the tear in his heart.
As his partner in poor emotional intelligence and volatility, Kei had responsibilities.
She ignored Mari's wisdom and ran.
-o-
One less-celebrated advantage of skywalkers was their lack of footstep sounds, allowing a pursuer to draw close to her target before being revealed by breathing or other quieter noises. Between this and her superior athleticism (there was precious little for a non-sealmaster to do these days but train to distract oneself from one's circumstances, make war on innocent hyenas, and train to distract oneself from making war on innocent hyenas), it was surprisingly manageable to reach Kagome before he disappeared fully into the distance.
"Don't try to stop me, Kei," he told her. "I'm done. I can't take it anymore."
"That was not my intent," Kei said.
Kagome eyed her suspiciously, an act at which he was a global virtuoso. Ami herself could not have captured the wary hunch of those shoulders, like a small predatory mammal making a barely-perceptible, noncommittal preparatory movement before either fight or flight.
"What do you want, then?"
"To understand," Kei said plainly. "Conceivably, to offer aid, though it has been ever so long since my agency was sufficient to accomplish any meaningful change."
Over the course of the past year, she had been able to persuade Hazō not to doom the world with Elemental Mastery, and to persuade one of her loved ones not to be murdered by the enemy. It was… better than nothing.
"I can't stay," Kagome said, "and you can't help. I don't know how you can stand it, knowing that some thing is about to come back wearing Hazō's skin, and everyone's going to have to pretend it's him, and maybe we could have saved him if we'd only tried harder and now it's too late. Forever."
"Hazō may not have been irreversibly corrupted," Kei said, forcing down her own fear so that Kagome, also oblivious to subtle tells, would not notice. "His prowess as a sealmaster is essential for the coming confrontation, and any large-scale cognitive interference surely increases the risk of dysfunction and potential sealing failure."
"Do you know that?" Kagome demanded. "You can't know that. And so what? Maybe the corruption's gradual. Maybe it only triggers once Orochimaru activates whatever secret seal he implanted into Hazō's body. Maybe we're extremely lucky and Hazō's only going to get strangled by his own skeleton once Orochimaru decides he doesn't need him anymore. Hazō's the only other runemaster, Kei. It was over the second he put himself in that snake's maw. And I can't watch it happen, knowing it was my job to protect him."
"Mine as well," Kei said quietly. "I failed to steer him aside. I should have foreseen this. I should have acted long ago. Surely there were countless alternative solutions I could have found to the Hidan problem. Far more that he could have found, had I been sufficiently emphatic as to the need instead of waiting until he monofocused on the most efficient solution, no matter the cost.
"But Kagome, you must understand. Nothing is over yet. At the very least, we must honour Hazō's sacrifice with victory. Akatsuki must fall, and Leaf's survival in the aftermath must be ensured, before we can allow ourselves to mourn him."
Kagome shrugged. "You don't need me. Not for Akatsuki. What am I supposed to do, Kei? I can't summon anything that'll last a blink in that fight. My seals are toys next to Hazō's runes. I can't even give advice that Hazō will listen to, because somewhere along the line, I lost his respect, and it's already got him killed. Useless. Useless. Useless."
"No more than the rest of us," Kei said. "And the rest of us need you, Kagome."
"I know," Kagome said after a long pause. "I know things are only going to get harder after we fight at O'Uzu. Even if I'm useless, I can't just leave you in the lurch when all hell's about to break loose. That's not who I am anymore."
Kei nodded, envying his inner strength.
However, she needed to clarify.
She did not wish to clarify. There were words that should never pass her lips. But she knew, in exhaustive detail, how it felt to be useless, worthless, surplus to requirements. She could not risk Kagome falling into that trap and changing his mind during his time wrestling with his feelings.
"The rest of us need you," she repeated. "We need you to protect us, more than ever. If we survive, Hazō will be one of the most powerful men in the world. He was already cavalier with powers too dangerous for mortals to handle. He was already willing to gamble with humanity's very existence in the name of its freedom. Now, that man has allowed himself to be remade by the world's greatest monster."
She looked away.
"Kagome, I love him. He is precious to me."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"I fear that when the time comes… I may be too weak to do what must be done."
Very, very slowly, Kagome nodded.
"I can't go back," he said. "Not yet. Not as I am now. I can't imagine looking at him. I can barely look at everyone else, and they didn't fail any worse than I did. It would be one thing if I was at least useful, but as it is… no, staying away is the best thing I can do for the team too. No ranting. No yelling. No misery.
"But I'm not going to abandon you, Kei. Never. I promise."
Kei suppressed the tears as best she could. They were untimely and inappropriate and all of her efforts just now would go to waste if she was forced to eliminate the witness.
"We'll protect the family together," Kagome said with conviction. "I'll be back in time to help you take on the world. And maybe… maybe you were right before, and there's nothing to fear. I'd like to believe that. I've had a false alarm or two in my day. But if it comes to it, I promise I'll be there to help you lay the dead to rest."
(Hopefully canon) Interlude: After the Rift was Captured...New
(Hopefully canon) Interlude: After the Rift was Captured...
"Hey, kid, I need you to take the Council Meeting tonight," Jiraiya said. "I've got a thing."
"No you don't," Hazō said, grinning. "I've got a thing. Specifically, a date. With two gorgeous women. I did my time and Clan Lording is no longer my problem. It is, to be specific, your problem. Send a shadow clone if you can't go."
Jiraiya glowered at him, an expression of displeasure that bounced right off of Hazō's Shield of Smugness without leaving a mark.
"You know we don't do that," Jiraiya grumbled. "It's one thing for Naruto to do it. He's the jinchūriki and everyone knows they have special powers. We don't use Shadow Clone in the village because we don't want spies to start digging after seeing lots of copies of a non-Naruto person running around."
"Yeah, well, that ship has sailed and sunk. I was running fifteen or twenty clones a day most of the time you were dead. You know, before I spent years researching seals and re-inventing a lost art of the Sage so that I could lead a crusade to kill the most powerful ninja on the planet in order to bring you back to life."
"How long are you going to keep throwing that in my face?" The tone was plaintive, bordering on whiny.
"Until the stars burn out and the bones of the last human turn to dust. At least, if you keep trying to dump your work on me instead of being a good and responsible grownup Clan Lord."
"I was only dead for a couple of years! How did you get so lippy in only a couple years?!"
"Three years, one hundred and fifteen days. Get it right, old man."
"Gah!" The Sannin threw his hands in the air and stomped off with an aggrieved, "Fine!"
o-o-o-o
Several hours later...
"I so needed this," Hazō said, allowing his head to drop bonelessly back on the side of the tub, his entire body submerged in the blissful heat. The water was only slightly short of scalding and had been dosed with lavender oil; between the scent and the heat all the knotted-up muscles in his shoulders and back were finally letting go.
"Me too," Akane said from two places to his right. Her voice was liquid, almost mumbling as she lingered in the liminal space between relaxation and sleep.
In this as in so many things, Ino had to be the outlier. Where her loves were blissfully melting, she was bright and bubbly. She reached out with her feet under the water and scooped Hazō's feet into the center of the tub, tangling them with hers and Akane's so they could all be in contact. She was leaning back, both arms up on the side of the tub so that she could pet the hair of both her bathing partners. All three of them were wearing completely decorous swimsuits, yet the intimate gesture would still have shocked and horrified the Yamanaka clan elders had they somehow managed to penetrate the battalion of lady's maids who were very discreetly guarding the door to the bath.
"How's your foot?" she asked. "The weather's been wet lately."
"Better in the heat," Hazō mumbled. "Are you about to go off on how hilarious it is that someone my age can predict the weather by his aches?"
Ino's eyes went wide, her mouth gaped in innocent offense, and she placed a pale-skinned hand on her chest. "Hazō! You make me sound like such a mean-tempered shrew! When have I ever made fun of you like that?"
"Yesterday," Akane said, smiling but not opening her eyes or lifting her head. "Three in the afternoon, on the west patio." She poked Ino's ankle with one toe, brushing against Hazō in the process.
"Akane! Why would you violate the sacred ties of the sisterhood like this?"
"Because she is fair in both senses of the word, and a wonderful person who loves me?" Hazō asked. "You've got my back, right, honey?"
"Of course." Being on the far side of Ino and far too relaxed to actually lift her arms, Akane pressed a metaphorical kiss into his calf under the water. "And hers."
"Hrmph," Ino grumbled. "So unfair. Don't you know it's supposed to be sisters before misters?"
"Mari-sensei told me that a key part of polyamory is not putting either of you ahead of the other. I'm simply following her expert advice."
"Bah, fine." The way that Ino petted Akane's hair revealed the sour tone for the show that it was.
"Since when are you calling her 'Mari-sensei' these days?" Hazō asked, opening one eye briefly.
Akane shrugged, causing the water to ripple outwards. "In this, at least. It's all too unfamiliar."
"Mm. Makes sense. Ohhhh." The moan came as Ino took his arm under the water and began running her thumb down his forearm with firm pressure, driving out the last traces of tension.
"Teasing aside, I still find it hilarious that you managed to be on the battlefield with the most powerful ninja in the world and your only injury was a broken foot. From stepping in a gopher hole."
"Okay, it wasn't my finest moment. Still, I'm hoping it doesn't make it into the history books. Especially since I was 'on' the battlefield, but only after the battle was over."
"I promise I won't tell the historians," Akane said, smiling fondly.
"I promise I won't tell the historians," Ino agreed, "at least, not so long as you keep me well bribed with chocolate and those ridiculously good backrubs of yours."
"Deal," Hazō mumbled. He jerked slightly as Ino accidentally pressed on a bruise.
"Sorry!" the blonde said. "Sorry, sorry."
"No worries. Gai hits really hard, you know?"
"I'm impressed he agreed to train you," Akane said. "He takes very few apprentices."
"At least he didn't require you to wear that clingy green suit," Ino said, smiling wickedly. "Don't get me wrong, Akane—you look amazing in it, but I don't think Hazō could pull it off. Boys shouldn't wear anything that tight."
"It was less 'agreed' to make me his apprentice and more 'insisted'," Hazō said. "He saw me sparring with Rock Lee and started shouting about youthful motivation and youthful repayment of debts and how youthful it would be to ensure that the youthful Master of the Rift didn't get unyouthfully ganked by some noob genin or something because he was the worst taijutsu fighter to ever graduate from a ninja academy."
"I am certain he said no such thing," Akane said, lifting her head enough to give Hazō a baleful eye. It lost much of its force since Hazō's eyes were closed and also because she couldn't keep herself from sinking back into the sybaritic delight of the hot water.
Hazō chuckled. "Well, maybe not in those words. The intent was there, you know?"
"Gai-sensei would never say anything so cruel," Akane said with a sniff. "Ino, I have changed my mind. Feel free to tease Hazō as much as you like."
"Hey!"
"You brought it on yourself," Ino said.
"Hmph. Anyway, given that Mari has been after me for years to stop chasing research skills and focus on my fundamentals, it seemed smart to accept."
"When the greatest living expert of taijutsu offers to give you full-time training, it would be ridiculous to refuse," Akane said.
"Very true, very true."
"Speaking of 'Master of the Rift'," Ino said, "have either of you heard about Shikaku's shenanigan?"
"No, what?" Hazō asked. "He's been back for, like, two days. When has he had time to get up to shenanigans?"
"The moment he arrived, Shika hugged him so tight I thought Shikaku's head would pop off. Then he stood back, bowed, and said 'Welcome back, Father. I now surrender to you the family chop in symbol of your place as Clan Lord.'"
Hazō and Akane both laughed.
"I bet Shikaku wasn't having that," Hazō said. "What happened?"
"He started going on about how Shikamaru had taken the role in accord with all precedent and law, had been serving ably, and there was no cause to change things. Shikamaru said that simply being away from the estate for a time does not disqualify a Clan Lord and therefore Shikamaru has been officially a Pro Tem this entire time—which is apparently true! He had the documents with him, and it turns out that in his original ascension to the seat he signed it 'Nara Shikamaru, Clan Lord Pro Tem'. And now, since the proper Clan Lord was back, it was time for him to resume the office.
"Then Shikaku claims that the law Shikamaru was citing was trumped by another law, I forget the number, stating that any ninja who leaves the village for more than a certain amount of time without explicit permission of the Hokage shall be considered a missing-nin and missing-nin are not eligible for political office."
"He seriously tried to have himself declared a missing-nin in order to get out of being Clan Lord?" Hazō asked.
"Yup."
"Doesn't he know that I was a missing-nin and I served as Gōketsu Clan Lord for three years?"
"You were never a missing-nin, honey. Remember? You were one of Jiraiya's assets-in place over in Mist until he was able to bring you in from the cold."
"That's absolute twaddle and everyone knows it."
"Sure, but it's legal twaddle and legal precedent. Which Shikamaru promptly points out.
"Then Shikaku tries to say that he's not eligible because a Clan Lord must be of age and he's only two days old—he was trying to count his age from the date of his resurrection, obviously. Shikamaru pulled out a fresh copy of a law, signed by the Hokage and fully entered into the Leaf codes, saying that resurrection is legally distinct from birth and time spent in the afterlife shall not be counted against a person's record for any purpose, including age or eligibility for office."
"The law explicitly said 'age or eligibility for office'?" Akane asked, chuckling.
"In exactly those words. It was great." She settled back on the edge of the tub, sighing in delight at the heat.
"And?" Hazō demanded after a moment. "What did he say next? There is no way Shikaku ran out of arguments that quickly."
Ino laughed. "No, they were still going strong when I left. I'm pretty sure that by that point it was just for the fun of it, though. And I've never seen Shikaku look so proud of Shika."
"That is brilliant," Hazō said. "Utterly brilliant. I need to look Shikamaru up tomorrow and get the rest of the story. Hopefully it won't be too troublesome to share the tale of how he defeated his father in a battle of wits, thereby securing for himself the right to be lazy all day."
"Don't worry, I'll make him tell you. I want to hear the rest of it too."
"Speaking of things we want," Akane said, "when will Cannai be back?"
"Wednesday," Hazō said. "He had some pack business to take care of tomorrow, but he and Canaria are coming over for another taleswap with the Inuzuka. We're invited, obviously. Do you want to go?"
"Of course!" She splashed a little water at him in reproof of the ridiculously silly question.
"Hey now," Ino said. "None of that. If you're energetic enough to be splashing then you're not relaxed enough. Turn around so I can rub your shoulders." She shifted, leaning back against Hazō's chest and holding out her arms to Akane.
The Demigoddess of Youthful Asskicking gratefully turned and leaned back into her blonde sweetheart's massage, and all was right with Hazō's world.
Decades ago, a man whose name had been struck from history had constructed elaborate stone tunnels beneath Leaf to serve his nefarious purposes. He had never fulfilled those purposes, but he had constructed those vast halls invariably with the utmost attention to detail, optimizing secrecy and compatibility with every privacy seal and ninjutsu of worth. The Collapse had destroyed most of the tunnels, but the halls remained, and Hokage after Hokage thus decided to keep the chambers as the safest place to disclose secrets of the highest importance.
Most of the room's current inhabitants had never known the place existed. Kei Haruka could tell, surveying the crowd of ninja around her. They had detected the evil intent with which the stone had been carved, and that put them on edge. Or maybe it was just their orders. She was a jōnin, which was why when the Hokage turned up at her door commanding her to report immediately for mission assignment – not at noon, not after ten minutes to check her gear and hand over the reins of the clan, but immediately – she'd quickly gathered herself and followed orders. The chūnin were perhaps a little more easily disturbed.
The Hokage walked in alongside KEI's Nagata Yūji, a ninjutsu-spec chūnin of no particular note, then quickly cast more shadow clones and activated the chamber's full set of privacy features. The room fell silent as he did so. This was everyone, then. What great secret did the Hokage intend to reveal to the thirty-odd ninja he'd summoned, ranging from clanless chūnin to Tsunade of the Sannin?
"I need you all for a special military operation, effective immediately. This mission is of critical importance to the village and the country. Failing it could mean the end of Hidden Leaf as we know it."
The Hokage's words shot through Haruka's body like sparks off a blacksmith's hammer. Was this the death of the fragile peace AMITY had brought? Would this be the end of her life, and her clan? Urgent, critical military operations were not known for minimizing casualties.
"This mission poses no personal risk to you, except the risks to Leaf as a whole as a result of the mission going poorly. The duration will be around two weeks. Tsunade is leading the mission. We are acting against Akatsuki and their interests, but additional mission details are need-to-know. Tsunade will contact you during travel if you need additional details to carry out your role."
"The main thing you will need to know is this: Orochimaru and the Gōketsu Clan are not actually missing-nin."
A sharp intake of breath rippled through the room, and Haruka found herself glancing at Tsunade, who remained stone-faced. Had she known?
"I assigned them a mission to attack Akatsuki's interests in other ways, and if they had been known as Leaf-aligned ninja, Akatsuki wouldn't hesitate to raze Leaf in response. Now, we need them back for a larger operation. That is why every detail of this operation is absolutely top secret, and must never be spoken of in Leaf, under any circumstances."
The Hokage seemed to read the astonishment in the room, because he continued.
"Orochimaru will help Leaf against Akatsuki as he did at Nagi Island, and once he returns, we'll make sure he answers for his crimes against the village. As for the Gōketsu, Hazō is the best sealmaster the world has seen since my father, and that's including Jiraiya. In the past months, he's devised seal arrays that make the skywalker look like a children's toy. Just like the skywalker, he intends to use this invention to bring down Akatsuki as well.
"What you're needed for, and why you're not going to be at risk in this mission, is Noburi's bloodline. We need your chakra on-site for a Zoo Rush. For most of you, that is all you need to do. Do not expect more, unless Tsunade contacts you."
A Zoo Rush? Haruka didn't see how that would work, with only the Monkey and Slug summoners present… Ah. The former Gōketsu Clan had four summoners, and Orochimaru would increase the total to seven. Once again, Haruka was astonished by the amount of combat power that had disappeared from Leaf in the span of a couple months. Whatever else her feelings about the missing-nin that weren't missing-nin (and feelings could always wait until after the mission), Haruka hoped that Leaf would be safer once the lost summoners returned to the village's fold.
How could they have not been missing-nin, though? Haruka had never heard of a village falsely declaring their ninja as missing-nin, falsely attempting to hunt them down and retrieve them. Had other villages done this and used their ninja to strike against Leaf in a way that Leaf couldn't retaliate against? And what would happen once everyone knew that Leaf had done this? Would they be held accountable for every action that every missing-nin of theirs ever took? What if enemy nations somehow thought Itachi was still a loyal Leaf ninja, and tried to level accusations against Leaf for his crimes? Or Orochimaru, if his crimes against Leaf could not be reconciled?
She shook her head minutely. Questions, like feelings, could wait.
o-o-o
Moving through the forest was something Hazō still hadn't mastered. There was a comfortable rhythm of landing, pulsing chakra adhesion to keep his grip, looking ahead to spot his next branch, and letting his momentum carry himself forward into a new leap to the next branch. All ninja practiced movement, and Leaf's ninja turned moving through the trees into an artform. Hazō had overheard Yūma explaining it to Sasha at one point – how one wanted to pick branches of around the same height, the same distance apart, and so on in order to run as smoothly as possible. Supposedly, a skilled jōnin even managed their chakra adhesion well enough that their leaps and landings didn't tear the trees' bark.
Skywalkers had killed that art for Hazō. Below the treetops, he still had to be mindful of foliage that threatened to smack him in the face, but he needed to give no more thought to running than that. Step, step, step.
Running alongside another ninja as you went to a mission had a connotation. It meant that you were allies, brothers in arms, equals momentarily as you fought for the same cause. If he'd only known Captain Minami at their mission sites, instead of all the quiet hours of running and camping they'd done, Hazō didn't know if he'd have grown half as close to her as he had. He'd never run with Jiraiya before he died. For all that happened, they hadn't been peers.
"Leaf's ninja are close," Orochimaru said, breaking the silence. "Make a clone before we proceed, in case someone attacks you."
"Shadow Clone Technique," Hazō said, pulling to a stop by a tree branch. Team Uplift, behind him, slowed on their skywalkers as well. The clone appeared on the branch, then quickly grabbed his own set of skywalkers from Prime. Kagome may have abandoned the team, but his seals were still serving them well.
Hazō Repatrioter and Orochimaru continued onwards. The thick forest around Keishi barely abated as it climbed up the hills to the west, and Hazō found the trees blending together in a meaningless blur as they continued. The rally point had been a location unmarked by any common landmark, instead solely known to Orochimaru and Tsunade.
Ahead, Hazō saw a crowd of ninja, wearing Leaf's fatigues as they moved between the trees in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of forest. As he got closer, he saw their faces. Yūhi, no, Sarutobi Kurenai, with the Monkey Scroll across her back. Umehisa, a clanless jōnin who had never even had a family name. Hagoromo Yūsuke, a chūnin vaguely from the 'reform' faction of the Hagoromo. And many more whose names Hazō couldn't remember, or who he didn't recognize at all, forming a crowd of forty-or-so ninja all staring at their incoming visitors.
And they stared with no small amount of hostility. Hazō saw hands going to weapon handles, or drawing together for ninjutsu. Brows furrowed, heads lowered, and eyes flicked left and right. Hazō felt a momentary gratitude that Orochimaru had suggested that Hazō come as a clone.
Leaf wasn't yet attacking, but the moment on the edge of hostility seemed to stretch out for seconds, until Hazō heard Tsunade's voice.
"Oro, you imbecile! What took you so long?"
She stormed forward, and as she passed the ninja facing down Hazō and Orochimaru relaxed. Not fully, Hazō could tell. Nobody's hands were hovering over their swords, but few looked away. Still, he could live with guarded expressions. He had always known that winning back Leaf's trust would take more than a few minutes.
"It was closer for you than it was for us," Orochimaru said, dropping to ground level as Tsunade stalked up to them. "Unless you've forgotten how to read maps? In which case, I would be glad to assist you, oh sunniest sister of mine. To start, shorter distances on a map mean shorter distances in-"
Tsunade interrupted him with an index-finger jab in the chest that left Orochimaru stumbling back. Hazō winced. That would have broken ribs for him.
"What the fuck was that stunt when you left Leaf?" Tsunade demanded, continuing past Hazō to get in Orochimaru's face again. "Explain. Now."
"He was a traitor and I needed a plausible cover," he said. Though Orochimaru was comfortably taller than Tsunade, she seemed to tower over him. "It was coordinated with the Hokage, of course. You may confirm the details with him at your leisure. Though, frankly, I do not see why it matters in the short term. Even if I had killed the boy in cold blood, we would still be collaborating against Akatsuki. Unless you wish to see Jiraiya's legacy tarnished?"
"And the monstrosities?" Tsunade asked. "People died after you released them, you know."
Orochimaru waved his hand. "You can blame Akatsuki for that."
"You created them!"
"And who so rudely destroyed my estate, causing them to be released?"
Tsunade glared at him for a moment longer, then turned to Hazō. "And what's your excuse?"
"Akatsuki was going to kill me if I stayed," Hazō said, keeping Tsunade's gaze. "I served Leaf better by leaving."
"And the rest of your clan?"
"They were going to be targets as well."
"I suppose Oro doesn't give a fuck about anyone else to bother taking them with him," Tsunade mused. "Fine. We'll work together for now and see what Naruto has to say afterwards. What's this about Moon?"
o-o-o
"That's horrible," Tsunade said.
"It's practical," Orochimaru said. "Tangentially, how hypocritical of you to complain. Do you not remember the clans we raided for their techniques? Just as clans have their ninjutsu, villages have their ninja. We've only moved to a higher level of abstraction."
"This is different," Tsunade said, frowning. "We didn't kill the clans to the last. We were making targeted strikes to get specific techniques. What you're proposing is condemning the entire village, eventually the entire island, to death."
"There's a few considerations here," Hazō said. "The island's civilians need their ninja alive, so we should try to spare the ninja if we can. I was thinking that we could try to attack Moon anonymously. If you all can wear masks, and fight without any signature techniques, couldn't we potentially avoid having to kill all the ninja?"
Tsunade glared at Hazō and opened her mouth, but Orochimaru cut her off.
"Perhaps you are about to say something rude to the boy about how he should know his place. You are absolutely correct that he is far too arrogant. Nonetheless, you need to realize that he also has every right to stand here with the two of us. I briefly observed him creating certain runes near my laboratory, and I can assure you that the specs he provided you are accurate. He may be barely a chūnin in other regards, but these S-rank capabilities are worthy of your respect."
Tsunade turned her ire to Orochimaru, grinded her jaw for a second, then turned back to Hazō. "Fine. Trying to stay anonymous would be a lot harder, since I haven't trained a dozen non-lethal ninjutsu to fall back on. They would also get plenty of other information. If shadow clones pop in the fighting, they'd eventually be able to put together that we were from Leaf. They'll learn about your runic arrays from running into the Force Dome, and that'll also give us away."
"Your politeness is appreciated," Orochimaru said dryly. "Was that really so hard? Frankly, the least worthy person here is the girl. If we want a genjutsu specialist, surely we should use the Monkey Summoner, no?"
"I already have knowledge of Hazō's runes, so you don't need to manage OPSEC for that with me," Mari said, slightly softer than normal. "Additionally, unlike Kurenai, I can trap multiple targets with mind-control ninjutsu, which will aid substantially in capturing Moon's ninja nonlethally."
Orochimaru arched an eyebrow, but didn't comment further.
"Anyway, it's fine if they realize it's us eventually," Hazō said. "What we don't want them to do is realize immediately. AMITY will learn at some point that we attacked Akatsuki, but we just need that to be after we return to Leaf and fortify."
"I expect moving the rift to Leaf will require a month, though that is a high variance estimate," Orochimaru said. "Project how long it would take for international retaliation to reach Leaf if we left Moon ninja alive."
"A week to lick their wounds and recuperate," Hazō said after a moment to think. "Leaf didn't do much of anything for a few days after the Collapse, and they will have weaker institutions. Then a few days just to reach the mainland, and an unknown amount of time to get the international response. We'd see it coming, so I'd have plenty of time to return to Leaf to fortify it with runes."
"The costs are disproportionate to the gains," Orochimaru said. "Remember that fighting nonlethally will be harder in this scenario, and we will cause a greater number of casualties. Additional chakra is highly valuable. I do not wish to weaken our attack against Akatsuki for the sake of petty mercy."
"How far does that go, Oro?" Tsunade asked. "Okay, you fight openly with your snake-venom jutsu to capture people, and even the inbred dumbfucks of Moon realize that it's you. Now it's easy for their ninja to run off and gather AMITY. Are we going to slaughter every damn civilian in the village that saw us fight?"
"I did not intend to leave any ninja behind to run messages," Orochimaru said.
"And what about the ninja that are outside the village on a mission?" Tsunade asked. "We can't track them down across the entire island."
"Very well," Orochimaru said. "Then we slaughter the civilians."
"Absolutely not," Tsunade said. "No, Hazō is right. We should fight as anonymously as we can. Mari will have to hold back on her mass-genjutsu, and you will abstain from using your well-known ninjutsu. Mari can even use her genjutsu to actively misinform the civilians we'll leave behind. With illusions muddying the story, they should only be able to infer that a skywalking strike force kidnapped all their ninja."
Orochimaru sighed. "I do not want to compromise our odds against Akatsuki in the slightest. You do see why this is more important than a couple hundred civilians in a meaningless backwater, yes?"
"It's not about what's important, Oro," Tsunade said. "It's about what's right."
Oro rolled his eyes. "Very well. Any effective plan would require your consent, and I would hate to accuse you of being willing to actually change your mind in response to changing evidence and circumstances. We will fight ineffectively, kill ninja who could instead give chakra to our final mission, and invite an eventual attack on Leaf."
"We'll be taking all the ninja with us," Tsunade said. "And it'll happen too fast for civilians to put things together. The ones out on mission can pick up the slack protecting the civilians. Almost everyone lives."
o-o-o
"Hang on, where's Kagome?" Tsunade asked, glancing over Team Uplift. By now, Hazō had realized that most of Leaf's ninja hadn't felt that hostile to him in particular. They were leery of him, but the actual hostility was clearly aimed at Orochimaru more than himself. It made Hazō think that he should make efforts to distance himself from the Snake Sannin, and that arriving by his side hadn't been a wise idea. When Team Uplift faced down Leaf's chakra battery-battalion, their reception wasn't remotely violent.
"I'd wondered the same," Orochimaru said, stepping up beside Hazō. "You did demonstrate his clone and his summons to me. His summons, at least, would be appreciated."
"He opted to go to ground," Hazō said. "He knew he wouldn't be useful in the upcoming fight."
"False," Orochimaru said. "Extra bodies, well positioned, deplete enemy resources. Even masses of chūnin-level summons are useful, given that Tsunade and I will not be running as many shadow clones as theoretically possible due to limitations posed by Itachi's potential presence."
"Well, he believes he wouldn't be useful," Hazō said.
"Has Kagome gone to forewarn Akatsuki?" Orochimaru asked, facing Hazō fully. For the first time in… quite a while, Hazō felt the weight of Orochimaru's presence.
"No," Hazō said firmly. "Kagome-sensei isn't going to do that. He's as opposed to them as you and I are."
"Are you certain?" Orochimaru asked. "I do not need to remind you of the price of an error."
"Yes. He will not betray us. He won't fight with us, but he's still our ally."
"That's not enough," Tsunade said, drawing the words out slightly. "Leaf's not going to just lose a summoner. Where is he?"
"I don't know," Hazō said, glancing down. "The Seventh Path, maybe. He ran off without telling any of us. Speaking frankly, he was scared by Orochimaru and didn't want to interact with him. No offense."
"You idiot…" Tsunade muttered. She glanced at Orochimaru. "Directed at you. Not Kagome."
Oro shrugged. "It is hardly my fault if the man is so fully lacking in willpower that he cannot fight for his family's lives."
Tsunade shook her head in faint disgust, then turned to Hazō. "You need to find a way to get him back once this is over."
Hazō nodded. He hoped he would too.
o-o-o
"I have spoken with the Lightning Runner pack about the importance of your mission," Cannai said, voice carrying despite the wind rushing by Hazō as he clung to Cannai's back. "Including that I myself am willing to be summoned to aid you. They appeared highly sympathetic. I have little doubt that you will convince them to fight against Kakashi's killers. Whether you want their service is a separate question."
"Got it," Hazō said. "I still have one question though: why don't they have the same names as the rest of Dog, starting with 'Can-'?"
"Those names were bestowed to them by their summoner," Cannai said. "Of course they were named members of the Dog Clan at birth, but though they respect their birth mothers and packs, as I said, their loyalty was to Kakashi first and foremost. It is hard to express the extent of their relationship, but it was incredibly deep."
They arrived at a small valley between a pair of hills, in a camp that clearly imitated human norms. A variety of dogs large and small lounged around a burnt-out fire pit. A few heads popped up towards Hazō and Cannai, but they mostly just watched as the pair approached.
One dog, a tiny brown pug, arose once Cannai's feet were padding through the soft grass near the fire pit. "Alpha," he said in a rumbling tone. "This is Hazō?"
"Yes, Pakkun," Cannai said as he shrugged Hazō off of his back. "He wants the aid of the Lightning Runner pack. I will leave you to discuss."
"Hello, Pakkun," Hazō said. The dog had a forehead protector marked with Leaf's symbol around his head, and glancing around, Hazō saw that many of the dogs in this pack were wearing Leaf's symbol in a variety of ways. On a whim, Hazō decided to bow. If these dogs had been so extensively socialized by a human, maybe treating them in human ways would be better.
Pakkun bowed back, bending back into his hind legs like he was stretching. Around, the remaining dogs of the Lightning Runners rose. Hazō recognized them from Cannai's descriptions. Guruko, Akino, Bisuke, Urushi, and Bull. Two were missing, then? Ūhei and Shiba.
"Hello, Hazō," Pakkun said. "Cannai has explained your situation. You are fighting against the ones that killed Kakashi, the Akatsuki. Is that right?"
"That's right," Hazō said. "I don't want to pretend like I'm someone I'm not, so I should say that I'm nothing like Captain Hatake – that is, Kakashi. Akatsuki is about to open a gateway into the afterlife, which will let them bring back their leader – the leader that Captain Hatake gave his own life to take down. I am going to stop them.
"This isn't without risks. You know well that if you're dispelled while summoned, you'll be in pain for a few days or weeks. The scarier thing is a weapon that one of our enemies possesses. The Kinslayer, Uchiha Itachi, supposedly has a weapon that consumes souls. That means that if you accept, you could actually die while summoned. You know that Cannai has agreed to be summoned, so he has deemed the risk worthwhile, but you also know that neither he nor I would ever demand your service in this way.
"So, will you fight alongside me and the Alpha to avenge Captain Hatake?"
"You ask a lot for one I have never met," one of the dogs, Akino, said. He was a large tan-and-white dog with a sharp, lupine nose. A pair of cracked Aburame-style dark glasses hung from a chain around his neck. "When Alpha spoke, he could not say whether this 'gateway' was real or just delusion, though hearing you speak, I agree with the Alpha that you aren't trying to deceive."
"The 'gateway' doesn't matter one way or another," Pakkun said. "You'll summon me to hunt down the bastards that killed Kakashi? That's all I needed to hear. If you're fighting Akatsuki, I'm in."
"Apart from the risks, the summoning is easy," Hazō said. "I can warn you all about when it'll happen, it'll only last a few hours, and that's it. And the gateway does matter. It's part of why this fight is so important – if we win it, we'll control it ourselves. That could let us bring the dead back to life, potentially including Captain Hatake."
"You mean that if we win, we can get Kakashi back as our summoner!?" Guruko asked excitedly.
Ah… Actually, Hazō had no intention of surrendering the Dog Scroll. As he was debating how to delicately explain this, Akino whipped his tail back and forth, then a sudden whump of force shoved Urushi's head into the ground.
"Don't get ahead of yourself," Akino said. "Remember that the Alpha couldn't even say whether the 'gateway' was even possible."
"He also said that you won his trust," Bisuke, a light-brown mutt, said. "The Alpha trusts him, and is willing to be summoned for the fight. I'm in as well."
"It seems prudent to ease the Alpha's work," Akino said. "I will accept a contract to be summoned to fight Akatsuki."
"Count me in," Urushi said. "Dibs on Sasori!"
"Me too," Guruko said. "Anything to get Kakashi back."
Akino seemed ready for another whumping when the last dog, Bull, spoke in a booming voice that somehow failed to reach the same rumble as Pakkun. "I too would like to be summoned, Hazō. However, I don't think you should waste the chakra on me. Kakashi rarely summoned me, as he usually found that he could perform my role better than I could."
"You probably wouldn't be good for much anyway, Bull," Urushi said. "Kakashi didn't summon you half as much as he did me."
"And he didn't summon you half as much as he did me," Pakkun said. "That doesn't mean you're shit at your job, Urushi. The fact that you're shit at your job means that you're shit at your job. Don't bully Bull."
"What is your role, Bull?" Hazou asked. "I'm not Captain Hatake, and I'm good at different things than he was."
"'Nova-combat', is what Kakashi called it," Bull said. "I cannot fight for long or against many enemies effectively, but I can crush a single enemy into the dirt. Unfortunately, Kakashi was similarly capable, and apparently I was 'too fat' for him to want to summon me often."
"That sounds like exactly what I'm looking for," Hazou said. "A high chakra cost isn't an issue for me – I'll explain why later. Relatedly, what are the rest of your specialties?"
"Well, Shiba's the stealth guy, and he can almost track worth a damn," Pakkun said, "and Ūhei does distance running and endurance-combat. Outlast the enemy, then take them down once they've blown all their chakra, that kind of thing. They're in Leopard right now, trying to help the Golden Elk pack evade Hyōkagyaku, one of Leopard's strongest warriors that has been stalking them. If you can wait for ten-ish days, they'll be back, and I'm sure they'd be happy to be summoned as well."
"I probably don't have that long," Hazō said. "We can work with what we have."
"Well, in that case," Pakkun said, "I'm a tracker."
"Lookout," Akino said. "For both static and dynamic formations."
"Support ninjutsu," Bisuke said. "I'm not bad in a fight, but Kakashi mainly summoned me for non-combat stuff. I can do a little bit of anything."
"Rescue ninjutsu," Guruko said. "If you need to protect weaker allies, I have you covered!"
"And I'm an all-rounder," Urushi said. "I can track better than Akino and keep a lookout better than Pakkun. My ninjutsu are more for handling loads of chūnin, which is part of why Kakashi summoned me so often, since you have so many more chūnin than jōnin. I guess against jōnin, he'd rather have Ūhei or Bull. Or just fight them himself. Not like he couldn't."
"Got it," Hazō said. "Thank you all. Let's make Kakashi proud."
o-o-o
The day marked one year since Hazō had infused his first rune, an explosive stronger than any that a seal could produce, yet still the weakest of the runes he had created. He'd thought at the time that the hum of the rune sounded like the world weeping at a new wound carved into its flesh. Perhaps it shouldn't have been the world that wept.
Orochimaru closed his eyes for a second and nodded. "Clone dispelled. All teams are in position. Commence Operation Lunar Eclipse."
Hazō pressed his hand to the first rune, feeling it thrumming with power underneath his palm. After long seconds of focus, he stepped back. The ground underneath his feet felt ever-so-slightly less forgiving than it had a moment ago. Without pause, he moved to the second rune, activating it.
Invisibly, chakra jetted up and out, expanding outwards to trap the village of Hidden Moon. The village was a fraction of Leaf in size – barely three hundred meters across, mostly made of cottages and squat, sturdy-looking wooden houses. Unlike Leaf, Hidden Moon was actually hidden by the thick jungle surrounding it, but the Force Dome cared little for such things. It would slice and snap through any branches in the way, and any ninja that went to investigate would already be trapped.
The Iron Earth rune would prevent tunneling from below, and the Force Dome would prevent escape on ground or by the air. The ninja of Moon didn't know it yet, but their fate had just been sealed in this perfect cage of Hazō's creation.
Around the dome in the four cardinal directions, Hazōs on skytowers would be activating their Ninja-Radar runes, to reveal the locations of any ninja that happened to be outside the barrier or somehow managed to escape. Orochimaru's clones would chase down any runners, and if necessary, Prime would deploy Canvass to track down any escapers that slipped through the detection field.
As a final countermeasure, Hazō activated an Air-Leadener rune. Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Mari all had Wind ninjutsu, so their clones would be able to move unimpeded through the now-thick air that surrounded them, while most of the Moon ninja would be slowed.
Hazō raised his hand, and the attack force moved out to commence the fight.
o-o-o
Mari glanced around. Tsunade had done a good job corralling the enemy ninja around her, and she saw only one target in range – a chūnin-looking ninja that would probably take more than a moment to take out with taijutsu.
"White Night," she whispered, as she flicked her fingers together. The enemy ninja froze, and fell an instant later as another Mari jabbed him in the throat. Both Maris kept moving. They'd retrieve him after the battle finished.
She heard a jutsu callout and moved in that direction. The Moon ninja weren't intentionally engaging in friendly fire, but she'd already seen genin fail to dodge their jōnin's attacks and end up dead for it. If she could disable a couple prime targets and give the Sannin more room to knock everyone out, all the better.
A half-dozen ninja maneuvered in a tiny square, pelting a Tsunade clone with ninjutsu and weapons, but the Sannin dodged and deflected every attack. Tsunade dropped one of the ninja with a Earth Country-style taijutsu strike.
Perfect. Mari focused on the oldest-looking ninja and brought her hands together. No genin would notice her vulnerability with Tsunade bearing down on them.
"White Night."
The senior ninja froze, and Tsunade shot a fractional glance at her before continuing to carve through the group of Moon ninja.
Suddenly, a middle-aged woman dashed into the square, bleeding heavily from a wound at her side. She glanced around, hair wild and eyes manic, before turning back to face the pursuing Orochimaru.
"Ōshimo Final Technique: Hoarfrost's Embrace!"
What a waste of a final technique, Mari thought as the rapidly expanding ice crystals dispelled her. We're all clones. You gave your life, and you're only going to kill your own people with it.
o-o-o
Scattered clouds overhead revealed glimpses of the uncaring stars above, and the moon had waned into a silver crescent whose light was barely enough for Hazō to watch as Hidden Moon similarly grew closer to its end. He adjusted his telescope to track a flash of light. A Fire ninjutsu of some sort, expanding until it met an invisible barrier – not a wall, but the curvature of a massive sphere. A moment later, in the same spot, a spear of lightning lanced outwards, impacted the wall of Hazō's Runic Force Dome, and splashed outwards instead of penetrating through.
A jōnin? Or a group of ninja, trying to work in concert to penetrate the Force Dome? With the dark overhead, he couldn't tell.
The village was burning. He'd known that when ninja fought in cities made of wood and straw, it made fires. Jiraiya occasionally used the smoke as a plot device in his stories to let his protagonist make his escape. Hazō wasn't even sure if the shapes he saw were ninja, civilians, or just the flickering of hundreds of flames.
Many Moon ninja would die tonight. Once the battle at O'Uzu was over, he didn't know what would happen to the Moon ninja they took as chakra batteries. They would have seen too much to let go immediately, and he didn't know if he could arrange for them to be kept alive for the month or so needed to get the rift to Leaf and hole up for the indefinite future.
Hazō didn't regret that. The ninja of Moon were as innocent as the ninja of Neck had been, but they were still ninja. They lived off the backs of civilian exploitation. At least, he told himself that. What would it mean if Moon's ninja had happened to treat civilians better than Leaf's? He didn't want to know.
He felt worse for the civilians of the village. They would be running or hiding as a battle they could not understand unfolded around them. Some would die in fires or collapsing buildings, or for just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when an ally or an enemy unloaded a ninjutsu. Still, battles were violent. He couldn't do anything about that. At least Tsunade had managed to spare the majority from Orochimaru's casual condemnation.
In the end, the attack was only possible because of Hazō. He repositioned his telescope again to watch as a sword glowing pale blue struck the Force Dome again and again to no avail. If Hidan had attacked the village, some ninja might have fought and died, but those that split into the wilderness in every direction would likely have survived. Hidan didn't seem like the type to track down and personally murder every last Moon ninja when he could instead scythe his way through crowds of civilians.
Hazō could exterminate them far more effectively than Hidan if he wanted to. Against Hazō, they couldn't even run.
As he watched his creation get tested and rise to the challenge again and again, Hazō wondered: would these be the last innocents he needed to trample in his quest for victory?
o-o-o
A trio of clones, a Mari and two Orochimarus, rose to the skytower complex with the last of the captured Moon ninja. Their charges were set down, and the Orochimarus immediately set to work severing the Moon ninja's Achilles tendons, while Mari's clone headed back down. Nominally, she intended to work illusions on the civilians to further obfuscate their identities, but she'd discreetly informed Hazō that she'd be helping Moon's civilians fight fires and get out of danger where she could. Tsunade would probably have been on the ground treating them if that wouldn't have given her identity away.
Elsewhere on the skytower complex, Tsunade was doing something to the captured ninja's elbows that would keep them from casting ninjutsu, while Noburi was steadily draining them dry. Leaf's ninja had given their chakra so the attack could happen, and they needed refueling immediately. Everyone's help would be needed if they wanted to transport Moon's ninja to the island just south of O'Uzu before nightfall. With luck, they would be attacking in two days' time.
As the sky slowly lightened, heralding the distant sun, Hazō surveyed the fruits of their labors. Forty-seven captured ninja. Nineteen more, killed in the fighting – apparently mostly by friendly fire and "general battle chaos". Tsunade expected that it wouldn't even double their overall available chakra, since Moon had more junior ninja, while Leaf's deployment was almost entirely senior ninja.
It was going to be close. Naruto had worked up fake missions for the task force, and staggered their departures as much as possible given the tight schedule, but that didn't mean the deception would work. They didn't even know if Akatsuki had realized yet that so many ninja had left the village at the same time. There had been no word from Leaf either way; for all they knew, they would be walking into a trap at O'Uzu.
Still, the sun would rise soon. Hazō needed to help figure out how to move four dozen incapacitated ninja nearly two hundred miles. He needed to buckle down and get to work.
Getting jōnin-level dogs to fight for Hazō on short notice is challenging. There are many such dogs, but many of them are going to be actively fighting in the Leopard war, and if they're not, it'll be for good reason, such as being needed by their pack or being injured. Hazō isn't spending much time on this (only whatever time he has left on one evening after recruiting the Lightning Runners). Furthermore, Hazō's ask appears easy at first glance (pre-scheduled, one-off summoning to help the Alpha, on an Alpha-approved enemy), but actually carries a big risk – not only could a dog get dispelled in a way that takes them out of the war for weeks (longer than average, as these are particularly strong summons), but they could potentially outright die to Itachi.
Overall, I'm inclined to abstract this as a TN 40 (Great) Rapport check, where Hazō manages to get a jōnin-ish summon per shift of success to a maximum of three (he's only spending half an evening on this, and only has time to talk to so many dogs). Hazō won't spend FP on this since this is a secondary priority relative to his rune work.
Hazō (Rapport): 20 + 12 (Forged in Fire) + 4 (tag "Cannai Himself Is Fighting") + 3 = 39
Outside of the Lightning Runners, the few jōnin-level dogs that Hazō talked to had immediate objectives in the Leopard war they were angling for, and didn't want to risk injury or death for someone they had just met. Unfortunately, Hazō earned no additional summons outside those recruited in-chapter.
Hazō has four days to practice runes. Unlike the last veterancy-grinding update, where Team Uplift sat on a skytower and played chakra battery, here, Leaf's ninja need an unspecified amount of chakra for running, and want to maintain decent chakra reserves even at the end of the day in the event of an ambush. In the absence of a better way to adjudicate this, I'm going to use the same formula I used to calculate the chakra budget for Team Uplift in the desert, but instead of just Team Uplift, Hazō is going to benefit from almost all the ninja that Leaf sent. That is going to be over 4000 CP. This is enough for Hazō to cast 9 shadow clones and craft 10 (!!) runes per day, saturating his available clone-hours.
Hazō has 0 FP right now, and the plan doesn't specify to buy any, but this was likely due to Hazō's sheet not getting updated in a timely manner, so I'll have Hazōpilot buy up to 3 FP. This won't prevent him from getting refresh (except in the unlikely event that he goes +1 FP in this chapter).
Current veterancy (the more negative the better):
Force Dome: -2
Iron Earth: 0
Air Leadener: 0
Ninja-Radar: -4
Remote Explosive Rune 2.0: -10
Tsunade does a supercharged healing roll and clears off Hazō's Moderate Consequence. For all rolls, Hazō is going to make the following checks:
To save time, I'm only going to report rolls in the form (ES Fate Dice, [optional: PS Fate Dice if the rune is infused in this update]). The plan doesn't specify what quantity of runes to make of each category, so I'm going to say 9 Ninja-Radar, as they need to be used the most, and 3 of each of Force Dome, Iron Earth, and Air Leadener. 1 RER 2.0 will be crafted and infused every day for veterancy. 8 runes will be made to test Force Domes' earth penetration – these are activated and don't leave Hazō with spare blanks. Hazō will additionally prepare 1 Superchiller blank.
Day 1
Ninja-Radar 1: (3)
Ninja-Radar 2: (0)
Ninja-Radar 3: (3)
Air Leadener: (3)
Iron Earth: (-3)
Force Dome 1: (0)
Force Dome 2 (for testing; doesn't yield a spare blank): (-6, 3)
Force Dome 3 (for testing; doesn't yield a spare blank): (-3, -3)
Force Dome 4 (for testing; doesn't yield a spare blank): (3, -6) -> FP to reroll the PS check! -> (3, 3)
RER 2.0: (-12, -6) -> FP to reroll the ES check! -> (3, -6)
Day 2
Ninja-Radar 1: (0)
Ninja-Radar 2: (0)
Ninja-Radar 3: (3)
Air Leadener: (-3)
Iron Earth: (-12) [NB: accepting a -12 is uncomfortable for Hazō, but Iron Earth was Easy, and his Earthshaping is so high…]
Force Dome 1: (0)
Force Dome 2 (for testing; doesn't yield a spare blank): (-3, 9)
Force Dome 3 (for testing; doesn't yield a spare blank): (3, -3)
Force Dome 4 (for testing; doesn't yield a spare blank): (0, 0)
RER 2.0: (-6, 6) -> FP to reroll the ES check! -> (-6, 6)
Day 3
Ninja-Radar 1: (0)
Ninja-Radar 2: (3)
Ninja-Radar 3: (0)
Air Leadener: (-3)
Iron Earth: (6)
Force Dome 1: (-6)
Force Dome 2 (for testing; doesn't yield a spare blank): (6, 0)
Force Dome 3 (for testing; doesn't yield a spare blank): (-6, -6)
Superchiller: (6)
RER 2.0: (-6, 3) [NB: Since the previous roll didn't fail, Hazō knows this one won't either.]
New veterancy status at this point:
Force Dome: -18
Hazō is comfortable moving up the time-ladder 1x for infusion (provided he has FP available to reroll on -9 or worse).
Iron Earth: 0
Air Leadener: 0
Ninja-Radar: -4
Remote Explosive Rune 2.0: -16
Hazō now no longer thinks he needs rerolls on the Earthshaping roll except on -12.
On Day 4, Hazō will infuse 1x Remote Explosive Rune 2.0s to feel comfortable not rerolling even -12s on Earthshaping. He will then prepare and infuse 6x Ninja-Radar to improve his veterancy to the point where he can timeladder up infusion. That leaves 3 rune slots, which he will allocate to RER 2.0, to start working on his veterancy there, getting closer to being able to timeladder up infusion. All runes here are infused and buried, so there are no blanks created.
Hazō is comfortable moving up the time-ladder 1x for infusion (provided he has FP available to reroll on -9 or worse).
Remote Explosive Rune 2.0: -24
Hazō now no longer thinks he needs rerolls on the Earthshaping roll at all.
Surprisingly, Hazō thinks he could move up the time-ladder 1x for infusion (provided he has FP available to reroll on -6 or worse).
At the Moon assault, Hazō infuses 1 each of his Iron Earth, Air Leadening, Force Dome blanks, and 4 Ninja-Radar blanks, lowering his veterancy again in each category:
Force Dome: -20
Iron Earth: -2
Air Leadener: -2
Ninja-Radar: -24
If Hazō got a little bit more (maybe 3 runes?) practice in, he thinks he could even move up the timeladder 2x here.
Remote Explosive Rune 2.0: -24
There was no additional chakra for infusion practice, as it was all channeled to Tsunade/Orochimaru/Mari SCs.
He has the following quantities of blanks available:
Force Dome: 2
Air Leadening: 2
Iron Earth: 2
Ninja-Radar: 5
For the readers at home, you might be wondering: isn't this a truly monstrous amount of runecrafting? The answer, of course, is yes. This four-day stretch represents what would have taken Hazō several weeks before having access to the chakra of Leaf's miscellaneous ninja. Such are the perks of being aligned with a village.
Hazō has bought and spent 3 FP on runic infusion, and gained 1 FP from refresh.
The amount of earth a Runic Force Dome's chakra pillar can pierce is inconsistent. It seems to depend on the soil quality, as it mostly penetrates through the loose earth that could ordinarily be traversed by Hiding Like a Mole. A couple meters seems to be a relatively safe distance, though if the soil were unusually loose (e.g. in a desert), it could be higher.
While traveling, Kei has bargained with Pantsā for contracts with additional elite combat summons, offering herself for an additional deployment in Pangolin's wars once the Riftwar has concluded. This has cleared her Leadership stagnancy, but may put her into a deployment in Leopard, fighting against Dogs. She is not happy about this, but accepts that if Hazō is getting biosealed, she too must make sacrifices to take down Akatsuki.
Noburi has similarly secured contracts with two of Jiraiya's old combat summons: Gamahiro and Gamaken (Gamazō declined, unfortunately). Like the Lightning Runners (and the Toad Sages, and Gamabunta), they're mainly willing to be summoned in order to fight Akatsuki.
Timeline for this update and last:
March 12: Travel to rally point with Leaf in the hills northwest of Keishi. After travel: discussions with Tsunade. (XP awarded last update)
March 13: Start travel to Moon. After travel: recruiting dogs. (XP awarded last update)
March 14-17: Traveling to Moon. After travel: grinding rune veterancy.
March 18th: Arriving at Moon. After travel: setting up runes.
Night of the 18th: Executing the attack.
Unless you have a better idea than "carry all the ninja in nets", you can assume that in two days (i.e. on the 20th of March), you can be somewhere in the forests of southern O'Uzu Island, preparing for the attack.
Leaf's deployment is composed of Tsunade, Kurenai, eight other jōnin, and thirty chūnin. The Porcupine and Condor summoners were both out on a mission when Orochimaru got in contact.
For the sake of your planning, between Leaf's chakra battalion and the captured Moon ninja, you will have 22000 CP available to allocate for your attack. Leaf's ninja currently intend to be at low-but-nonzero reserves in order to facilitate running away if things go south. Moon's ninja will all be drained to zero. This number includes chakra from your team, but does not count Orochimaru Prime, Tsunade Prime, or Kurenai Prime's reserves. All three intend to remain at full chakra going into the battle.
XP Award: 25 + 0 (brevity) XP
GM-fun XP: 1 XP
Also, because I had fun writing this update and it feels appropriate, I'm awarding an extra 1 FP.
"Welcome to my briefing on runic capabilities and how they will shape the future of ninja warfare," Hazō began. "We brought cookies."
Mari gave a polite bow of her head as she finished setting out the tea, cookies, and finger sandwiches filled with fish and cucumber. They were being displayed on an incongruously elegant table with its feet carved into dragon claws and its top covered in white linen. The crusts of the sandwiches had been cut off. Tsunade promptly took one of the sandwiches, nibbled it, and then took four more. Orochimaru raised an eyebrow and she shot him a 'what, they're small' shrug.
"Crafting a runic blank takes several hours, infusing it takes up to half an hour," Hazō continued, ignoring the byplay. "I can run enough Shadow Clones to create nine Remote Explosive Runes at once. We call them 'RERs' for short. They're heavy as shit, as you can see." He gestured to the example blank that sat next to them, a twisting, swirling mass of gleaming crystal shaped like a ship's prow with bowsprit extended. The thing was large enough to lie down on and it weighed more than a loaded wagon and its oxen.
"Runes cannot be moved once they are infused, at least not at a speed that is relevant to human endeavors," Hazō continued, nervousness about talking to the Sannin making his words come out in an overly formal, almost Kei-like cadence. "They have a range of about a mile and a quarter and they don't need line of sight, although they can't shoot through solid walls. I'm assuming that we make them outside of their operational range to reduce opportunity for discovery. That leaves us with two questions: how do we transport the blanks once they are made, and how far out from Akatsuki's base do I make them?
Tsunade studied the blank for a moment, then set her sandwich down and wiped her mouth with the provided napkin. She stood up, crossed to the blank, and squatted down next to it, wedging her fingers under it with some effort.
Hazō watched in bemusement.
Tsunade took a deep breath and let it out as she lifted. Every muscle in her body went taut, the blue seal on her forehead shone like a star, tendons stood out as she strained. The force of the effort rammed her feet an inch into the earth before a spiderweb of chakra threads spread out from her soles, dispersing the force and preventing her from sinking deeper.
The blank tipped up, slowly.
She raised it until it was on the edge of tipping over, then lowered it back down and returned to the table, absentmindedly dusting off her hands.
"I can carry them," she said, taking her seat and picking up her sandwich again. "It'll need to be in pairs for balance, so I'll assign two Shadow Clones per blank." She took a bite, chewed, thoughtfully, and swallowed. "Also, carrying shit over distance is harder than lifting it. Three miles is probably the limit if I want to be able to fight afterwards."
"Okay then," Hazō said after a moment. "Let's say two and a half to give some leeway?" He looked around at the others; Tsunade rolled her eyes, Orochimaru and Mari nodded.
"That brings us to my next concern: discovery," Hazō said. "If I'm interrupted during a runic infusion, the infusion will fail and the results will be...bad."
"Worse than a seal failure, I'm presuming?" Tsunade asked.
"Having never caused a runic failure, I can't be completely certain," Hazō said carefully. "However...yes. Way, waaaay worse. I'm sure you've seen enough seal research to know that there's always minor, generally harmless, failures during the process. When I do seal research I have gotten things like nasty smells, an area twenty yards across where the air was slightly warmer than the surroundings, moss appearing on my skin, and talking chakra constructs that dissolve after ten minutes. The equivalent issues during runic research have involved lava fountains that may still be in effect, a momentary blast of wind powerful enough to fling me ten feet, and a pillar of fire fifty feet tall and ten feet wide that was so hot it was uncomfortable to be within fifty feet of it."
Orochimaru raised an eyebrow. "That sounds like a rather visible marker for your location, nephew."
"No, it's fine. The fire pillar lasted just over eleven hours before dissipating on its own. We left the next day, and we've made sure to destroy all the runes and blanks that we've left behind." Destroy or bury, but he wasn't going to mention the second part.
"Anyway, my point is that those are the type of mostly-safe and mostly-controlled failures that you get from working with runic prototypes. A full-power rune failing its infusion? We don't want any part of that, which means that you need to ensure that I am not disturbed once I start infusing. Especially since there are going to be nine or ten of me doing infusions at the same time. If I am knocked out, all my shadow clones pop and their infusions fail. If one of my clones pops, even if we get staggeringly lucky and the failure is completely harmless, there is a chance that the psychic shock of the clone sickness will cause other clones to pop or me to pass out. That would be, as we say in the biz, bad."
Tsunade snorted.
Hazō studied the two Sannin for a moment. "With respect, for the time that I am doing those infusions, I am the most important part of this mission and the first priority needs to be protecting me at all costs. Our assault plans need to be shaped around that fact. Agreed?"
Tsunade looked to Orochimaru. The Snake Sannin nodded, his face serious. She nodded back and turned to Hazō again.
"Good enough. So, we saunter really sneaky-like over towards the bad guys and stop about three miles away—"
"Two and a half," Orochimaru said, looking innocently at the nails he was trimming with a blade of green medical chakra.
Tsunade gave her battle brother a sour glance and continued. "Two and a half miles away. Hazō and his clones do the finger-wiggly thing and make the blanks. I lug them to about a mile away from the target, the assault group in tow along with Hazō's shadow clones. The Hazō clones infuse the things and then immediately pop to reduce the number of people on the field while we're doing final prep. Fewer bodies, fewer chances of being spotted."
"I'm afraid you'll need my clones to activate the runes," Hazō said, keeping his face as straight as possible.
"Truly? How fascinating. Please, dear nephew, explain why you are the only one capable of triggering a rune."
"Seriously. Show us how, we'll do it, brat. We don't need to be tripping over a passel of chūnin clones."
"First, special jōnin, not chūnin. Second, firing the remote explosive runes isn't a simple thing. I can't teach it quickly, so I'll need to be the one taking the shot."
In point of fact, he needed to be the one taking the shot because there was no way in all the Paths known and unknown that he was going to allow this battle to happen without him. He had given up everything to be where he stood and he was not going to be brushed aside and sent off to the kids' table while the grownups played with his toys. Sure, Hazō was too young to hang in a fight between the Sannin and their peers, but when Jiraiya was eventually fished out of the afterlife, Hazō was going to be able to say that he had made a difference in the battle that saved him.
The two Sannin stared hard at Hazō. He held himself as straight as possible and met their gazes. Beside him, Mari showed only the cool composure of an experienced infiltrator watching an op right on the edge of going south.
"You are so full of shit," Tsunade said. "Trying to grab some glory for yourself?"
"Well said, sister. You are not nearly the liar you think yourself, nephew. If this is your best effort then I am disappointed in both you and your teacher." He looked down his nose at Mari.
Mari offered only an easy smile and a shrug. "What can I say? He's way too honest for the likes of me to help."
Hazō forced his jaw to unclench. "That's an uncharitable way to put it, Lady Tsunade. Yes, fine, I could teach you to activate the runes quickly enough and I could explain the aiming process and how to time the shots for best effect. Despite that, I have the most experience aiming and firing them and we need the first attacks to hit in exactly the right pattern for maximum effectiveness. So yes, I need to be the one taking the shot."
The mountain began to shimmer into existence around them as Tsunade's anger mounted. "Look, brat—"
Invisible fire wrapped itself around Hazō, burning away the in-pressing stone. Snakes glinted on the edge of visibility, swatting the mountain back into unreality. Tsunade twitched slightly in surprise, her eyes narrowing at Orochimaru and then Mari.
"Stand down, Sunny. Let the boy have his fun. It is true that he has more experience firing the things than anyone—unless you have spent time practicing with them? No? I didn't think so. Nor have I. He will either be better at it than we are or at least no worse. We shall need every tiny advantage for this battle and the extra risk his presence creates should be acceptable. If on the day we discover that it is not then we will revise this decision in more direct fashion."
"Revise it with my fucking fist."
"I believe that is what I said, yes. Granted, I have far too much couth and education to be as...plainspoken as you. Yet still the point was made." He turned to Hazō. "Very well, boy. You shall have your chance to raise a weapon on the day. What next?"
Wow. That had actually worked?! Cool!
"Um...right. After the RERs are fired, the assault group blitzes the target. The RERs should have cleared any traps from the immediate area of the fortress, as well as splotched any lookouts and outside guards. It may or may not have demolished the fortress itself, depending on whether it's reinforced with chakra effects or not." He grimaced. "Well, if they built it really heavy then maybe it would survive, but that's unlikely. I'll be overlapping the RER blasts so that the explosions reinforce one another. It's very unlikely that they've built something so strong that it won't be flattened. No, unless they've reinforced it with Five Seal Barriers, Force Walls, or something to that effect, the fortress will come down. Hopefully killing anyone inside and leaving nothing for the assault group to do, but the world is never that kind."
Tsunade snorted in agreement.
"The larger issue is what defenses Sasori may have set up," Orochimaru said. "The world has had two years to learn about and prepare defenses against the so-called Zoo Rush that we used to acquire the Arachnid Scroll from Rock. Were I in Sasori's puppet-worn shoes, I should have produced seal arrays that would pop chakra constructs in the vicinity, as protection against shadow clones and summons. Since such things will be the vast majority of the combat power in the assault group, this would be a problem."
"We could send forward a sacrificial vanguard," Hazō suggested diffidently. "Some genin-level summons, maybe one of my shadow clones since they won't have anything to do after the firing. Well, unless you want them to fire multiple times. The runes can fire multiple shots, but there's a short warmup period before each firing."
Tsunade considered it. "No, I think it's better to use the runes to clear the path, then we get in close. The idea of a vanguard isn't bad, though. Sure, we can send one of your clones in the lead. We'll be right behind him; if he pops then we know to watch out."
"Actually," Mari said, "there might be an option to consider there. May I ask, how are you two at singing?"
The Sannin cocked their heads in unison.
"Singing." Orochimaru's voice jammed a lengthy treatise of disdain into a single word.
"I'm assuming you know not to joke around at a meeting like this, so what's your thought?" Tsunade asked, brushing Orochimaru's further words aside.
"Well..." Mari smiled and laid out an utterly ludicrous plan that caused Tsunade to let a sincere laugh escape from her eternally grouchy face, and even caused Orochimaru to snort in amusement.
"I sing fine," Tsunade said. She jerked a thumb at her battle brother. "He can at least croak along on tempo. Sure, let's try it once to see if it works. If it doesn't work in practice, we don't do it on the day. On the day, if we see the ground and decide it's not a good idea, our sacrificial vanguard can pop and carry the message back for us."
"What about the approach?" Mari asked. "Miles through the woods, heavily laden. Easy to get spotted if they have any sentries pushed far out."
"We've done this once or twice," Tsunade said, although there was a hint of a smile in the words. "We've got some stealth jutsu and various stealth-specialized summons that can clear the road for us."
"And I have this," Orochimaru said, pulling a small box off it was fastened to his belt at the small of his back. He placed it on the table and lifted the lid so the others could see in.
"Is that..." Tsunade asked, the sentence trailing off as she studied the box's contents.
"Just so. I put quite a lot of work into it."
"Where'd you get it?"
"It has been on my person since well before you met up with us. The fact that you didn't notice should tell you all that you need to know."
"Huh." She made a complicated face—surprise, pleasure, relief...something? Guilt? Hazō wasn't sure. "You're sure it'll work for a whole group?"
"Yes, it will work," Orochimaru said, closing the box and hanging it back on his belt. "Despite that, we will still take River Run level precautions."
Tsunade groaned. "Oh, man, why did you have to remind me of that mission? I've gotten to the point where I don't think about it for months at a time and you had to go put it back in my head. Asshole."
"I would apologize, but..."
"But you don't do apologies because you're an asshole. Yeah, fine, whatever. Sure, we'll bring out all the fun tricks."
"Multiple of Akatsuki have special senses," Hazō said. "I'll trust you that you can deal with the stealth part of it. What about the rune infusions? Is there any chance that they will be...'loud' to Kisame, or one of the others?"
Tsunade shrugged. "No way to know, but probably not."
Hazō considered asking for more detail on that, as it seemed like a pretty darn important point to be so casually brushed away.
Tsunade clearly saw his thoughts because she sighed and leaned back, crossing her arms. "Look, runic infusions are like seal infusions, right? You're manifesting the chakra inside the rune, tracing it through some kind of pattern, and then tying it off?"
"Yes, basically. But it's a lot slower and there's a lot more chakra involved."
"Okay, well, if the entire process is contained inside a substrate then it probably won't show up in any degree greater than the amount of chakra present. Can't know for sure but it's what I would bet."
"I concur. And, since I know the workings of your brain, nephew: yes. We have experience that supports our opinions and therefore our concurrence should be acceptable to you."
"Good enough for me," Hazō said, since that was clearly the only acceptable answer. "One last subject: escapees. I had some thoughts on how we can prevent runners..."
Author's Note: Hazō talked to people about what was going on back in Leaf. We have been focused on prepping for the Battle of the Rift and have not talked about Leaf or any of that. We'll get you the answers later, possibly including them into a later update or simply posting them as OOC.
Also, the other elements of the plan were discussed and answers agreed to but I intentionally left them off the page so that future readers won't have every detail of the plan spoiled in advance. (For those who want spoilers, click the title to be taken to the plan.) No, Mari's carefully-elided suggestion was not a player plan element. Even the planmakers deserve to have a little bit of surprise ahead. :>
On that subject...it's funny, if this were a novel then this chapter would be a giant neon sign saying "This plan will fail!" (Or, if it was going to succeed then the chapter would never be shown.) As is...we shall see! May Jashin favor your dice.
XP AWARD: 8 This update covered two days spent making preparations. The next chapter will be the actual assault on the rift.
Brevity XP: 0 331 words
"GM had fun" XP: 1
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday,
.
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Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 28: A Quick VisitNew
Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 28: A Quick Visit Home
"Hm...probably want a thermobaric," I muttered to myself, jotting a note. "Coordinates, coordinates..." I pondered, then snapped my fingers. "Pinhole viewing rifts! Yes!" I pumped my fist, then promptly frowned. "Hm. What about the beach?" I frowned harder, tapping my pencil furiously. (Quills and brushes suuuucked. I had finally gotten around to making a seal that ground up wood and coal and spat out pencils.)
A delicate hand slid onto my shoulder and a sweet young voice said, "Hey there, Uncle Earl."
I yelped and triggered my jump harness, flinging me out of the chair and away. I bounced clumsily off the ceiling, smacking my head hard in the process, and collapsed to the ground.
My sweet little thirteen-year-old 'niece' Honoka lost the charming smile she'd been wearing and put her fists on her hips, glaring at me. "What was that all about?"
Laughter pealed through the room and we both looked over to find Mari standing in the door, laughing her ass off.
"What?! I did it right!" Honoka demanded. "I was careful! I didn't do the sexy thing and I didn't try to intimidate him or anything!"
Mari managed to collect herself enough that she could come over and help me to my feet, running a quick medical jutsu over my aching head. A sense of cool numbness washed away the metaphorical stabbing icepick that had buried itself in my skull.
"There you go," she said, smiling warmly at me. "That should numb the pain a bit until you can get a real doctor to look at you. I don't think it's anything serious." She turned to Honoka. "Now, what did you do wrong?"
"Nothing! I just said hello!"
"Yes, but you did it by making physical contact without previously alerting him. You could have simply knocked."
"You said that he's touch-oriented and easier to control with moderate and appropriate amounts of physical affection!"
I opened my mouth to say something, closed it, and glared at Mari.
The redhead sighed and gave Honoka a speaking look. "Honoka, that's not what I said at all. We don't 'control' our relatives. It's rude. Yes, Earl is touch-oriented and appreciates a hug or pat on the hand. I mentioned that as an example of one type of person, and opposed it to Kei, who has gotten a lot better over the years but will still be made uncomfortable by contact. Also, again: you could have simply knocked instead of startling him."
"But—"
"Leaving aside this whole concept of how you're receiving lessons in manipulating me," I began tartly, "why are you here?"
Honoka glowered. "Never mind. Once the social context has been disrupted there's no point in asking favors. I need to withdraw as smoothly as possible and make a better attempt later, ideally using a display of embarrassment and an apology as a way in."
I turned to face Mari and gave her a very speaking look. "Mari, are you training Honoka as a social spec infiltrator?"
She looked shocked and placed a hand on her chest in exaggerated innocence. "Would I do such a thing?"
"In a heartbeat."
"Well, all right, perhaps. She was interested, I figured I'd explain a few little things. Mostly to help with normal social interactions, actually. She's still...a bit of an outlier in that area. And no, we're not going to do the 'S' part of I&S. As you would say: all the ick."
I tried to figure out what to say to that and came up with absolutely nothing.
"Yeah, okay, whatever," I said at last. "Honoka, just tell me what it was you wanted."
Honoka looked to Mari, received a nod, sighed, and turned back to me with a sudden and winning smile. She clasped her hands in front of herself, looked shy, and said, "I...I was hoping to ask if I could come with you on Thursday?"
"Nope."
"Please?" Her eyes got very big and soulful.
I couldn't help myself; I laughed. The soulful eyes narrowed in irritation, the smile disappeared, the hands unclasped, and she glared at me.
"It's not funny!"
"It's a little funny. You seriously tried to run an I&S mission to get me to take you back to Earth? Really?"
She had the grace to look uncomfortable. "Well...Aunty Mari said it would be a good low-stakes exercise. That you were unlikely to get mad and it was a goal I could attempt multiple times until I got it right."
Mari took a deep breath and let it out slowly, clearly reaching for calm. "Honoka."
"What?" said the girl in question. "You told me that it was important to be known for honesty and openness!"
Mari rubbed her forehead. "Yes, sweetie. That doesn't mean you need to volunteer everything. Being open about certain information can cause its own issues."
"Like how now I'm now aware that she's trying to run game on me and I'll be on my guard from now on?"
"Yes, exactly."
"And also that I now know you're teaching her how to run game on me and thus the thought that I should be more on my guard around you might come to mind?"
"Even more yes. And no, I have never used my training to manipulate you, Earl. Family doesn't do that." She hesitated. "Well, I've never used any of the intentional techniques. Depends on how broadly you interpret 'my training', I guess. A lot of who I am is a result of the training and I can't turn that part off." She gave me a Gallic 'what can you do' shrug.
"Sure. Honoka, there is no way I am ever taking you to Earth."
o-o-o-o
I sighed as we stepped through the portal to Earth.
"Remember," I said, "you promised that you would stick by my side and do what I tell you. Right?"
She looked up at me, her face sunny and excited as she nodded. "Absolutely!"
"Do you remember why you need to do what I tell you?"
"Because Earth is dangerous in ways that I won't immediately recognize and if I cause too much trouble you won't be able to come back here yourself much less bring me with you again in the future and that you like your apartment and really don't want to have to move and it would be very hard to explain to your family why you moved without lying to them which is something you don't want to do?"
"You could have just said yes, but at least I know you were listening. So you're going to do it, right?"
"Oh, absolutely!"
Thus unreassured, I set off down the street to my apartment. I was going to stop there briefly, pick up the mail, give Honoka a bowl of ice cream from my freezer (there had been a suggestion of going for ice cream which I had instantly nixed because I wasn't letting Honoka stay on Earth for more than ten minutes if it could possibly be avoided and damn I wished I could find a rift that opened directly into my apartment instead of into an alley two blocks away), and then we were going home to Leaf. I had learned my lesson on not picking up the mail for a few days; if your mailbox got full, the post office would decide you didn't live there anymore, take everything out, hold it for ten days, and then send it all back to the sender. Given that I had an apartment-building-sized mail box (i.e., one barely big enough for a mouse) and got the usual amount of junk mail, it was important to pick up the mail at least every other day.
Honoka bounced along at my side, head on a swivel as she gulped down the excitement that was a New York City street. It was Chelsea so the sidewalks weren't as packed as they would be in Chinatown or parts of the East Village, but it was still unlike anything she had seen before. The cars whizzing past were a constant fascination for her, one that was only partially stymied by the fact that I was insisting on walking on the inside, between her and the curb. Last thing I needed was her darting out into traffic. Granted, that was more of a Golden Retriever thing than a teenage ninja thing, but grumble grumble it was Honoka grumble grumble.
She stopped all of a sudden, staring in the window of the building we were walking past.
"What's that?" she asked, moving closer until her nose was pressed against the glass, hands cupped around her eyes to cut out the glare.
'Rock New York' the sign said. Through the giant sheet of glass (smoother and clearer and vastly larger than any she had seen before), we could see a bunch of people climbing up walls, some of them with harnesses and belay ropes. A couple hundred people were packed onto one of the nearer bouldering mats, waiting their turn.
"It's a rock climbing gym," I explained. "They make plastic holds which they bolt to the wall in various ways that we call 'routes'. People go there for exercise and try to climb the routes."
Honoka looked at me as though I'd said the sun was green. "What?"
"The routesetters bolt plastic holds to the wall, people try to climb them."
"But...why?"
"For fun and exercise. Look, my place is on the next block. Let's—"
"Wait, isn't five thousand dollars a lot of money?" she asked, pointing at a sign in the window.
'Rock New York comp! $5,000 prize!' it said.
I suddenly got a very bad feeling and reached for Honoka's arm. "Yes, it is. Now, the apartment is just down here, so let's— Oh hell."
She had, of course, dodged away from my hand and darted inside.
It really should not have been possible for her to get inside, get signed up for the competition, and get to the bouldering wall in the time it took me to open the door and chase after her. Really shouldn't have been. But, of course, it somehow was.
I went to jump on the mat to grab her, but a guy with a staff badge stepped in front of me.
"Sorry, sir," he said with a customer service smile. "I'm afraid it's competitors only on the main-room mats today. If you'd like to go to one of the side rooms, those are open. Or you can sign up...?"
"I'm just grabbing my niece," I said, pointing to where Honoka was currently using chakra adhesion to run up a V10 competition boulder. "We've got an appointment in ten minutes and we're going to be late."
Honoka dropped off the wall and sprinted (at, of course, ninja speeds) to the next boulder down the line. This one was a silly little easy-peasy warm-up boulder with big easy holds that even I could have climbed it the civilian way. She didn't bother using her feet, preferring instead to swing from one hold to the next like an obnoxious little gibbon. The crowd was oohing and aahing and clapping. Dozens of phones were pointed at her.
Honoka, knowing how to play to a crowd, reached the top of the boulder, put her feet on the wall, and launched herself out and away. I tensed up, breath catching in fear that she was definitely going to land on someone in the crowd, but no. She turned a neat flip in midair and latched onto the top of one of the boulders across the way. It was another one of the difficult ones, meaning that it ended on a tiny little two-handed crimp which she, obviously, nailed. Then she downclimbed the entire route and went back up it the correct direction, much to the delighted shock of the judge standing there with his clipboard.
I sighed and rubbed my head. I was going to have to move.
Recently, there's been a discovery on how to generate wackadoodle amounts of chakra for the upcoming battle, and also a debate that there shouldn't be a battle and instead simply an instant wipe of Akatsuki and all their little minions too. (An argument that I personally am not yet convinced of but definitely can't dismiss out of hand.) In short, y'all have thrown everything into chaos and invalidated all our prep work again (sigh, dramatic gestures, sigh, wagging finger, shame, shame) and therefore you're getting an interlude today and Sunday so that we poor benighted QMs can have time to redo everything.
Voting will remain open until the usual time next week (Wednesday,
. At that point, assuming y'all can stop causing chaos and destruction, er, coming up with new ideas, we'll do the work and try to have an actual chapter by Sunday the 25th. That will be a short session so hopefully we won't have to do an interlude then as well but brace yourself for the possibility.
Sidebar: my apartment-dwelling friends should take Earl's little adventure with the mail to heart. It's embarrassing to go down to the local postal distribution center and tell them that you're a doofus who didn't think to check his mail for a few days and could they please start delivering again?
