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...
(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,
.
Last edited:
Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 28: A Quick Visit Home
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 and 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?
Most of the camp had already bedded down for the night, though the size of the group left a comfortably-sized watch – faced entirely outwards, thankfully, since Orochimaru had elected to sleep outside the camp instead of forcing Leaf's ninja to be on edge around him. Mari, too, was grateful for the chance at some sleep tonight (though she'd certainly be sleeping lightly, so close to Akatsuki's stronghold).
Mari approached the blackberry, as some of the other ninja had taken to calling it. The tent was covered in overlapping bubbles of pure inky darkness, but as she slipped inside, she saw that the tent itself was still brightly lit. There was a part of her that wanted to tone it down, to say that any work after nightfall needed to be done by candlelight, but with the Darkness Dome seals, there was no need. No light could escape.
"Still working?" Mari said, slipping into the tent. Hazou didn't even look up at her as he scribbled.
"Figuring out where all our chakra should go and when," Hazou said. "We can't summon Manda, Katsuyu, or Gamabunta early, because if we do, then Akatsuki is going to have time to prepare when they see the Bosses at twice the height of the treeline – which means they need to be summoned after the Remote Explosive artillery, which means we need to have chakra sources inside the Force Dome to refill the summoners, so we'll probably need to transport Moon ninja in there in addition to all the Runic Explosives."
"So Noburi is going to be inside the Force Dome?" Mari asked.
"Noburi will be inside the Force Dome," Hazou said grimly. "He'll be far from the action and guarded by some of Tsunade's shadow clones – and Tsunade herself, if she doesn't need to join the fight – but he'll be at risk."
"She'll be a better guard for Noburi than I can be for you," Mari said. She tried to keep her voice neutral, hearing about the risk to Noburi's life. Hazou was making hard calls. She didn't need to guilt him, or make him second-guess.
"She'll protect him," Hazou said. "She's invested too much in him, I think. The main issue is that there isn't enough chakra. I want to say that my runes are going to kill multiple Akatsuki members, but it's going to be harder to secure kills on the strongest ones. In terms of fighters, we have the Sannin's clones, the five Bosses, the Toad Sages, and probably a handful of jounin-level summons. If all of Akatsuki is here, that might not be enough to win."
"What else can we do?" Mari asked. "Cut down on the summons and send in shadow clones of me and Kurenai? Send fewer of the Sannin's clones, because they'll be duplicating each others' abilities?"
"I'm not sure," Hazou said.
"Honestly, we're using too many shadow clones," Mari said. "They're not a combat technique, and the cost of casting it and refilling it is just too much to handle, especially since only Prime regenerates chakra. There's probably a better way to distribute chakra, but apart from Naruto, no one would know how to run hundreds of shadow clones effectively and fight."
"It's actually pretty cheap to make shadow clones," Hazou said. "Even Kagome-sensei managed it at the pool. It's refilling them. The chakra is divided between the original and the clones, so there's such a huge gap between the reserves they're summoned at and the total reserves the clone could handle…"
"Right," Mari said, pausing as she noticed that Hazou had spaced out. She waited for him to think.
After a minute, he turned to her, finally standing up from the sheets upon sheets of paper he'd been working on. "I have an idea to get more chakra. I need you to find me all the ninja in Leaf's forces whose Shadow Clones last longer than, say, eight hours. I'll go gather up Kei and Noburi, then we'll need Tsunade and Orochimaru-"
"No can do," Mari said.
"What do you mean?" Hazou asked.
"Orochimaru's out of the camp. I assume he's sleeping under whatever layers of stealth techniques would keep him safe from Akatsuki's notice, and that means that none of us have a chance of finding him."
Hazou scowled. "Fine. I'll get Tsunade, and ask her to find him, or at least keep a lookout. If we're attacking tomorrow, we need to move fast for this idea to work."
o-o-o
"We need more chakra," Hazou said. "Everyone's at full reserves right now – which means their chakra recovery is being wasted. I propose we cast shadow clones – that'll appear with pretty-much empty reserves, drain everyone down, top off the shadow clones, then wait. The clones will store chakra for us until right before the fight, and with everyone's reserves lowered, they'll recover extra chakra for us to use. at which point we can drain them for additional clones, summons, or whatever else we need."
There was silence for a moment as everyone processed.
"Clever," Orochimaru said, inclining his head slightly. Faintly, Hazou got a sense of approval and… curiosity from the Snake Sannin.
"Does that work?" Tsunade asked, frowning. "I… I think it should. We can't start right away – our clones won't last until dusk if we cast them now, but it should let us squeeze out a little extra chakra."
"Kei can start right away," Hazou said, gesturing at his sister. She nodded stiffly as the Sannin turned their gaze to her. "Her clones can last a full day and night, so they'll let us begin stocking chakra immediately. As to how much this will get us – I think much more than a little. If everyone's reserves of chakra represents a full day worth of regeneration, we'll be able to get another half-day and change. It'll increase our total available chakra by at least half."
"Less," Tsunade said. "I'm not at my full reserves, so you can't tap my chakra recovery. I had pre-battle preparations to take care of."
"Likewise," Orochimaru said.
"What preparations did you do?" Tsunade asked.
Orochimaru shrugged. "Occasionally, you do manage to invent an impressive technique."
"Copycat," Tsunade said scornfully.
"Are there any objections to starting this?" Hazou asked. "If you agree it will work, we should start immediately."
"No," Tsunade said, waving Hazou. "We're going to need every drop we can get."
Hazou turned to Kei, who clasped her hands together.
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
o-o-o
"Shadow Clone Technique!"
A crowd of eighteen Tsunades appeared and split, stopping by Noburi before breaking into groups of two to carry the nine Remote Explosives Runes that Hazou had crafted. Orochimaru had helpfully produced long bars of steel from the Seventh Path and welded them together with a ninjutsu into stretcher-like frames to help Tsunade carry the things for miles. The runes were too heavy for even Tsunade to carry unenhanced, which meant that this, too, was going to cost them chakra.
The chance to score an instant kill on between one and six Akatsuki members, as well as wiping out most of the low-level ninja that would bother Leaf's elites in an actual fight, was well worth it. Hazou watched as the score of Tsunades plodded single-file through the forest, taking his weapons of mass destruction along with her.
o-o-o
"Summoning Technique: Shima!" Noburi called out. He bowed to the appearing Toad Sage, then invited the next Leaf ninja to dip her hands into his barrel to let him refill to summon Fukasaku. Shima glanced over Noburi, then turned to survey the operation, before hopping over to a Tsunade.
"So we're doing summons now?" a different Tsunade asked Hazou. "How many are we planning?"
"All of them," Hazou said. "We should have capacity for everyone."
Tsunade raised an eyebrow. "But you're not giving my clones enough for Strength of a Hundred? Screw that. Cut any spare Toads – Noburi's bloodline makes them too expensive. I need the chakra more."
"If we have any left over at the end, you can have it."
"Not gonna work, kid," Tsunade said. "It'll take some time for me to set up, so I need the chakra now, not five seconds before the battle starts. I'll go tell Noburi."
o-o-o
Hazou stepped back as the Ninja-Radar rune sprang to life in front of him. Dozens of dots of chakra moved across the surface of the projected sphere, tracking the various ninja nearby. He could see the assault force moving into position, and suddenly felt vulnerable. If Akatsuki had a sensing ability…
No, they couldn't have anything as long-ranged as runes, surely. Orochimaru had said that Kisame's abilities were long-ranged, but even he didn't think Kisame would have senses miles away.
A single Tsunade clone was the only accomplice to his infusion. Every spare drop of chakra had gone to the assault force, but she had assured him that she was more than capable of killing any Jashinist cretin with just the dregs in her coils.
"I see runners already," Tsunade said, looking at the ball. "That direction, right?" she said, pointing.
"I can't tell yet which direction they're moving," Hazou said. "They'll be outside the Force Dome, though. We'll need to hunt them down."
"It's closer to point C," Tsunade said. "My clone there should cover it. If she can cover it."
"Right," Hazou said. Tsunade had wanted to allocate even more chakra to the outside teams, including multiple clones to pass instant messages between the surveillance squad and the battle squad, but Hazou had made his stand – it would take too much chakra away from the fight, and Tsunade couldn't afford to be popping clones to pass messages outside the Force Dome when the rebalancing chakra would drain her clones and Prime body, potentially in the middle of a fight. They had to take risks, and it was either in the dome against Akatsuki, or outside against the Jashinists. Eventually, Hazou had come down on the side of the Jashinists. If Leaf's forces lost against Akatsuki, Hazou would need to Superchiller everyone inside the dome, Leaf and Akatsuki alike. He didn't want that to happen.
If only it were entirely in his control.
o-o-o
"Summoning Technique: Cannai!" Hazou called out, bringing his hands together. Reality shuddered, the citrine sky above Hazou appeared to bleed blue for an instant, then the Dog Alpha was there.
"Greetings, summoner," Cannai said. "Leopard is not currently running any offensive. If we move quickly, they will not have time to mount any offensive before I return."
To his side, Sarutobi Kurenai called out. "Summoning Technique: Enma!"
Cannai glanced at Enma. "Let's talk on the way. My country is at war, and I can't waste time on pleasantries, Enma."
"It's a mile that way," Hazou said, pointing. "You'll smell me – there's nine copies of me, and my brother Noburi, who you've met before."
Cannai barked, then bounded off into the woods. Enma grinned at Hazou, made an odd, three-fingered gesture at Sarutobi, then leaped up to a tree branch and swung off after the Dog Alpha.
He turned back to his bodyguards. Sarutobi raised an eyebrow at him. "You summoned Cannai entirely from your own reserves?"
"As did you for Enma," Hazou said, keeping a casual demeanor even though his coils ached slightly at having their entire contents dumped in a fraction of a second. At least the biosealed coils didn't feel pain.
"I have been a ninja longer than you have been alive," Sarutobi said, "and even after training my reserves in anticipation of signing the Monkey Scroll, I still barely manage it."
Hazou shrugged. "Maybe there's more to me than meets the eye."
Sarutobi frowned, but said no more.
Hazou is now eligible to buy his second copy of the Akimichi Chakra Enhancement.
Hazou used one FP for rerolls on RER2.0 infusion (he got a -12 on one of his clones).
@eaglejarl will be posting shortly with the battle.
Deidara, Lord of Dragons, Master of Mayhem, and Explosivor Excelsior, was happy.
The sun was shining, the day was surprisingly warm for March, and he had recently upgraded the saddle on his dragon for greater comfort. For three weeks now, he had been trapped in that stupid pile of rocks, sitting next to the rift team while they waggled their seals around and made gobbling noises at each other like all sealmasters. Bunch of crack-brained idiots, if you asked him. Playing around with forces they couldn't possibly hope to control, seeking newer and newer ways to break chakra instead of molding it, collaborating with it. At the higher levels, jutsu were beautiful constru—
A wave of thunderclaps slapped him in the chest as, far below, the Akatsuki rift facility ceased to exist.
o-o-o-o
A short time ago, a short distance away...
"Check?" Tsunade demanded.
"Ah, you remind me so much of little Zen," Enma said with a grin. "He was also always uptight right before a battle, personally ensuring that each and every person was on the right page instead of—"
"A simple 'check' will suffice, Fuzzface," Tsunade said. "Cannai, check?"
Cannai, currently in his preferred size of 'wow that's a big horse', shifted slightly and allowed his tongue to hang out in a doggy smile. "I do indeed check. Although if you wish to trade further barbs with this one, I have no objection." He tossed his head towards Enma, who sat astride Cannai with his staff held at his hip so that it pointed forward like a sword. "Honestly, it is quite charming."
"Yeah, no," Tsunade said. "That furry idiot has wasted enough of our time. Let's go roll these guys." She turned to HazōShotCaller, who stood atop the nearest of the nine Remote Explosive Runes. "Ready, kid?"
HazōTimeTracker began to sing, his young voice lifting high in the call to arms that was his nation's anthem. "To the glory of the Leaf, we ascend!"
"To the future of the Leaf, we do strive," the multiple Tsunades and Orochimarus sang, carefully matching their tempo to Hazō's.
The Leaf ninja and the handful of summons who knew the song joined in, pride and excitement in their voices.
"The first step is taken!" Tsunade sang, exactly as her foot hit the ground and she began to sprint forward, still singing. The entire assault force was with her, all on the beat so that dozens of feet and paws struck the ground as one. In the lead by twenty meters ran a collection of young monkeys, new warriors who had nothing to contribute to a battle at this level but were being given the honor so that they could experience their first taste of true combat. (Which was a much nicer thing to say than 'can show the rest of us where any potential anti-summon jutsu or seal arrays might be because they will pop first.')
HazōShotCaller waited until the force had disappeared into the gloaming, leaving only a trio of Tsunade shadow clones to act as spotter.
The nearest Tsunade grimaced. "That always sounds weird. We're on it." She activated her skywalker seals and raced into the sky, compass and sextant in hand. There was just barely enough light left for a telescope-equipped spotter to be useful, which hopefully meant that said spotter would not in turn be spotted by the enemy.
Only when the Tsunades were gone did HazōShotCaller nod to his sibling. HazōTimeToBoom popped, and suddenly every Hazō knew what this Hazō knew: the assault had kicked off and it was time for the Hazōs to do what Hazōs did best. Namely, blow the everliving fuck out of the bad guys.
He took his position atop the Remote Explosive Rune, leaning forward with his hands on the twin protrusions that sprang from the side of the forward needle. The weapons had been pre-aimed with exacting precision and there was nothing more to do. The spotters were only there to report success and accuracy. The Remote Explosive Rune was consistently accurate, but unavoidable and undetectably minor imperfections in the infusion could mean that it hit slightly off from directly forward. Once that error was accounted for it was easy to hit the mark every time, but that error meant that the initial shot might be too far off to destroy the target.
This, of course, was why there were nine Remote Explosive runes, three in each of the three bombardment groups, each with a Tsunade shadow clone as a spotter.
HazōShotCaller picked up the song that HazōTimeTracker was still singing. The hair on his arms prickled as the words and notes rolled forth into the world, a promise of victory on their tide. Hazō ShotCaller said a brief and very silent prayer to Lord Jashin, promising to be a very good disciple if only the dread god would not throw this battle in favor of his senior scythe-wielding murderhobo prophet and against the forces of Leaf.
He pushed his chakra into the rune and, exactly on the anthem's specified syllable, fired.
o-o-o-o
Deidara looked down to find that someone had sneaked in and replaced the rift research facility with a massive cloud of dust and rocky shrapnel. That was impressive, as the facility was—had been—a massive, heavily-reinforced structure explicitly designed, with major input from Deidara himself, to resist aerial bombardment.
In fact, the entire area around the facility had been obliterated in a circle dozens of meters wide.
No, the destruction wasn't a circle, Deidara realized. It was a series of overlapping circles. Three of them, one centered northeast of the facility, one due east, and another southeast. Weirdly, the craters were ridiculously shallow for their breadth. Airburst, perhaps? Or a non-spherical explosion?
Forget that. Why were they here? Had the enemy been attempting to fire a series of warning shots to the east of the facility and they missed, one blast landing too far west? Was it possible that the destruction was an accident, someone trying and failing to demonstrate a new capability for purposes of later extortion? A very, very dumb idea to attempt to extort Akatsuki, but the world was full of idiots.
No, surely the enemy had been firing on the facility but for some reason their shots pulled to the right (or left, whatever). That was valuable capability knowledge; Deidara tucked it away for his report.
All of that took but a moment, thoughts and observations flashing through his trained mind in an instant as he mentally directed his dragon to turn north and run. Below him, he could see that the shield rooms and laboratories had survived the bombardment, which wasn't too surprising given just how paranoid Sasori had been about the defenses and the number of seals the legendary sealmaster had deployed in protection. That meant that a handful of the researchers and possibly a few of the Jashin cultists had survived. (The cultists were ridiculous, bowing before the rift and praying at it while sane people were trying to get work done.) Still, that didn't matter. There was no need to hold the rift; it wasn't going anywhere.
Huh. That was a good point; whoever this was, why were they attacking? Did they simply want to kill Akatsuki members and this was a known target that wasn't as heavily defended as Rain? Were they trying to capture the rift in order to fish someone out? Who did they want to recover and, whomever the attacker was, why did they think they could hold the rift long enough to accomplish that? Hidan had—
With a curse, he yanked the dragon around, making it pump its clay wings furiously in order to reverse course before they pancaked into whatever that was.
He barely made the turn; the dragon's tail flattened against the invisible surface of the utterly ridiculous wall (dome?) that was suddenly in front of him. He kept the now paddle-shaped tail in contact and flew along the surface of the wall, trying to find the edge. No luck; it was curving back on itself into a circle. It was completely transparent, and he might have missed it entirely if a bird hadn't run into it at some point and left a smear of blood slowly dripping down midair.
He hurled a glob of explosive clay at it, shaping the clay in advance so that it would focus the blast and shatter the wall.
The blast went off, the wall (as shown by the bird blood) stayed exactly where it was. It was as if the universe had thumbed its nose at him.
Rapidly, he deployed a variety of additional techniques; nothing worked. That barrier was, as embarrassing as it felt to think the words, invulnerable to his explosives.
Okay, that's fine. If he couldn't go around and he couldn't go through, he'd go over.
He pulled the dragon arou—
Holy fucking shitballs!
Deidara had assumed the bombardment was the point, that whomever had created it had brought it into the world with the elegance and grace of a master painter with the goal of destroying the fortress.
No. No, the bombardment was a footnote, a measly prelude, a wetting of the brush. It was not a portrait being gifted with grace and elegance but merely the illustrated wrapping paper around the actual gift. An ugly, clumsy gift that obviated the beauty of its covering.
And by 'gift', he meant 'assault force'.
When Akatsuki had first built this facility, Deidara had spent a few delightful hours with his art in order to clear the trees back for a quarter mile. The purpose was simply to ensure that there would be nice long sightlines that would give the sentries plenty of time to activate Sasori's defensive seal arrays in case of attack. The seal arrays were now somewhat moot since the sentries who would have triggered them, the building they had guarded, and the arrays themselves had all been reduced to a pointillist depiction of anarchy. (Although, yes, now that the dust had settled he could see that the shield room and one of the laboratories had indeed survived and people were digging their way out even now. It was more than a bit aggravating to see Sasori's seal arts trump Deidara's explosive arts, but he comforted himself that the victory of sealing was down to the inadequacy of the explosive painter, not to the failure of explosions as a style. After all, the grace with which the brush was wielded mattered more than the boldness of the color choices.)
Across that quarter-mile killing field came an army of attackers beyond anything even the greatest painters would have attempted to fit into a single work.
Deidara touched the miniaturized telescope strapped over his left eye, the result of Sasori's genius at optimization. He twisted the lens slightly, zooming in on what was below.
Oh good. The enemy force was comprised of half a dozen Orochimarus and Tsunades—shadow clones, presumably—plus far too many summoned creatures to count quickly. Snakes, toads, dogs, monkeys...Sage's name, that was Manda, the Lord of Snake, slithering next to what had to be Katwhatever the ruler of Slug, the summon mist around them rapidly dissipating as they introduced O'Uzu's treeline to their massive momentum. The two tiny little toads hopping alongside them were certain to be Jiraiya's summons, the Toad Sages.
He groaned to himself. Those two and Jiraiya had been a nightmare during the first battle. A true artist should never repeat prior work, and Deidara certainly did not care to reproduce their previous encounter.
Wait, if there were three Clan Bosses on the field, was it possible that the monkey with the iron-shod staff was not simply a powerful monkey combatant but Enma himself? The Lord of the Monkey Clan was known to fight with a staff and was the only one on the field carrying one. Good Sage's hopes, that... Wow.
Heck, might as well go all-in and assume the horse-sized dog that Enma was riding was the Lord of the Dog Clan. Gōketsu was a new summoner and young, too young to have the chakra reserves to summon a Clan Lord from the Seventh Path, but today had already shown Deidara multiple impossible things. Why not assume another?
He was surprised to feel the wind in his throat; he suddenly realized that he was grinning. A dozen Sannin clones and the rulers and strongest warriors of five separate Clans of the Seventh Path? This would be his magnum opus, his greatest creation! He would invent entirely new schools of destructive art this day!
Granted, he would prefer to leave the performance for another time. A time when he wasn't facing an impossible enemy. Just to be sure that retreat wasn't an option, he arced up, the dragon inverting so that Deidara could look down and behind to keep an eye on the enemy even as he climbed, the dragon's tail dragging along the invisible wall to confirm that yup, this was in fact a dome and not a simple wall.
HOW?!
How was it even remotely conceivable that someone could create a jutsu powerful enough to generate this?! Would even Kisame have the chakra to power such a thing?! Were the jinchūriki taking the field against him? Wait, yes, that made perfect sense. If Tsunade was here then surely Naruto couldn't be far behind. Deidara couldn't see the little shit in the attacking force, but it was chaotic enough down there to miss him, at least if he possessed the tiny scrap of intelligence necessary to forego his usual orange jumpsuit. No, wait, Naruto was likely doing what Pain had done at the prior battle: standing immobile, all his efforts devoted to maintaining the dome and none left over to move or fight. That was a relief; last thing Deidara needed to worry about was accidentally releasing a Tailed Beast.
Deidara breathed out, looking for a plan. Step one, make a huge smokescreen to cover whatever it was he decided to do. Second, split off a shadow clone to ride the dragon and distract the enemy, then...right. Sneak to the ground, tunnel down, collapse the tunnel behind him, and wait out the assault. Hopefully he could tunnel out from under the dome, but if not then he could simply go down far enough to be out of sight of any Hyūga and make camp for a day or two. By then the attackers would be gone and the dome would be down.
A moment later, he swore as a burst of incoming memories hit him. Apparently, one of his shadow clones had just had the same idea, and tried tunneling out. The ground was reinforced somehow, and if those shallow craters from the explosions earlier meant anything, this wasn't a problem Deidara could solve with explosives.
Quickly, Deidara amended. Couldn't solve quickly. All problems could be solved with explosives, but this one wouldn't be solved quickly enough to be relevant.
He sent the dragon up even as he produced explosive clay from his sleeves and hurled it downwards. Placement, of course, was key; long practice allowed him to use some explosives to herd enemies together while others arrived a moment later to destroy them.
On the ground, the assault force was engaging the surviving sealmasters and Jashin cultists. Unsurprisingly, the assault forces was going through their enemies like a hungry man through rice crackers. The Jashin cultists were competent ninja, but they were no Sannin.
o-o-o-o
Below...
TsunadeFour juked past one of the cultists; he moved like a jōnin and the Lightning Bullet he fired at her had been impressive, but she was of the Sannin.
She brushed her fingers across his throat as she passed, flickering a chakra scalpel in and out of her fingers. The blade cut all the way from front to back, carving through the spine like butter. The guy collapsed, his head still attached only by the flap of skin at the front of his windpipe. Blood went everywhere but she danced around it, turning the motion into a spin kick that broke another enemy and pinwheeled him away like a rag doll.
To her left, Cannai and Enma were having a blast. The Dog was sheathed in crystal armor from the tip of his wet black nose to the end of his adorably fluffy tail. That tail was no longer so adorable; each individual hair was sheathed in crystal, turning the thing into a nightmare of spikes and blades that still moved just as freely as before the armor was applied. Cannai was charging straight through the middle of groups of enemy ninja, tail wagging fiercely. Every time it touched a human being, that human being was converted into so much shredded meat. Enma was busy throwing out jutsu and smashing people with his staff. The staff changed length from two meters to twenty, headshotting people from farther away than they expected possible and forcing some allies to duck in order to avoid being struck. (Granted, the danger was miniscule. Enma had been fighting with that staff for centuries; he didn't hit anyone or anything unless he wanted to.)
Honestly, the biggest problem was that there weren't enough—
o-o-o-o
Far away, Tsunade Prime jerked as TsunadeFour was popped by a massive explosion that hit exactly when Four was thinking an arrogant thought. Of course. Tsunade knew better than to ever say wow, this is going well or (Sage forbid) we've got this, so what the heck had Four been thinking?
o-o-o-o
OrochimaruSeven leaped aside, flickering his skywalkers to dodge the ball of explosive clay that hit just to his left. He was too slow.
o-o-o-o
TsunadeThree cursed and triggered her skywalkers, running up to where the dragonrider circled far above. One of the Orochimarus fell in step next to her.
"Mobility," he said, not bothering to fill in the entire sentence. After all these years, they knew each other too well to need to say anything as verbose as that thing's mobility is going to be a problem.
"Yah. Rest of 'em?"
"No idea. Leave it for the others. This one?"
"Kazu Pass?"
"I'll do Jiraiya's part."
"Check. I'll message."
Orochimaru broke right and climbed. TsunadeThree popped out of existence, spreading her knowledge and intentions to every other existing instance of Tsunade. Tsunades One and Five left the ground battle and ran upwards, pushing hard for altitude. The rest of the team could find whatever other Akatsuki members were sneaking around down there. For now, there was a dragon to kill.
o-o-o-o
The tiny snake missed by a handspan as Deidara spun his dragon on a wingtip. The dragon was huge, weighing in at literally a ton of explosive clay that had taken him an entire year to manifest. Despite that, it reacted to his thoughts with speed that would have made any jōnin proud.
An Orochimaru was running up from below him, presumably on those fucking skywalker seals that had ruined Deidara's aerial supremacy. Fucking Gōketsu. Deidara should have demanded his death as repayment for Kakuzu. Still, there was a difference. They were now able to enter the skies; he owned the skies.
He scraped explosive clay off his arm, twisted his fingers to mold the clay into a tiny, swift-winged bird, and tossed it towards the foe. The bird snapped its wings out and raced forward, diving impossibly fast.
Orochimaru ducked aside but the bird shifted its flight, homing on the enemy. Deidara grinned in delight; Orochimaru's dead body, or rather the red mist where his body had been, would make such a lovely—
A snake came into existence right in front of the bird, swallowed it, and vanished as the bird detonated early.
Oh, right. Sannin.
Deidara already had another explosive on the way, this one a simple clay kunai. The smoke from the popped snake jutsu would obscure Orochimaru's vision for just long enough to—
A snake appeared from Sagedamned nowhere, swallowing Orochimaru whole for just the instant necessary to block the explosion. It then vanished in another puff of smoke and Orochimaru was still moving forward. Granted, the colors of both the snake and the resulting explosion were quite beautiful.
Fucking Sannin.
From the corner of his eye, Deidara caught two more figures on skywalkers. Oh good, not only had Tsunade joined the party but she had brought a shadow clone. Or maybe they were both clones. Whatever. If only Itachi were here with his stupid eyeballs that could demolish an entire clone network in seconds.
Deidara turned the dragon and dove, trading height for speed to open the distance between himself and Orochimaru. He needed a moment to figure out what was happening.
Long-ranged attacks were coming up from the ground but they fell far short. This annoying, impossible dome was more than half a mile high, yielding plenty of room to stay out of range. Fortunately, summons were chakra-expensive to maintain on the Human Path, Boss summons even more so, and the dragon didn't get tired. Not even Orochimaru could keep half a dozen experienced snake warriors and Lord Manda himself on the field for more than an hour or two. Once the creatures were gone, everyone down there would be low on chakra. Deidara was perfectly content to rain down explosives on them—not enough to pop too many of the summons, since that would reduce the chakra drain their summoners were undergoing. No, just enough to force everyone to tire themselves out dodging, and to prevent them from coordinating to come up with some new trick.
This impossible dome jutsu shouldn't be possible in the first place, but given that it existed it couldn't possibly be maintained for more than a few minutes—call it an hour since the world was already being ridiculous. Surely not even a jinchūriki could keep it going for more than an hour? The moment it popped, Deidara was out of here. He would report back to Rain and then the entire team would go to Leaf and reduce the place to rubble the way they should have long before. Sure, there would be fallout with AMITY, but that was Konan's problem.
Unfortunately, the enemy wasn't as stupid as he would have preferred. The few Akatsuki ground forces who had survived the beautiful artwork from earlier were now dead, the battlefield completely under enemy control. Most of the summons were gone, including Manda and Katwhatever. That massive dog was still down there, as was yes-that-is-definitely-Enma, but the riffraff were all gone. Moreover, three Tsunades and two Orochimarus were sharing the skies with him. The Orochimarus had posted up, one to the north and high, the other to the south and low. The Tsunades were running around, futilely chasing after Deidara, glowing chakra around their fists as they clearly hoped for the finishing blow.
Pfft. As if Deidara was going to let them get close enough. He hurled a trio of explosive bombs towards the nearest Tsunade; she cut her skywalkers and plummeted, dropping just barely clear of the explosion. It didn't matter, since the move had only been a cover for spraying explosive sand behind himself. The stuff was fine enough to fall slowly, almost floating on the breeze, and to be almost invisible. It still packed a punch. It wouldn't trigger on him or his creations, but if anyone else ran through it they were going to become yet another sample in Deidara's gallery of creation.
There was another Tsunade in front of him, so he spun the dragon to the left and clawed for altitude. He had let himself drop too low, and if he went down any further he might conceivably be in range of a Boss summon on the ground.
She was a Sannin; impossibly fast, impossibly dangerous. Still not as fast as his dragon.
The dragon was his masterwork and it easily outpaced any ridiculous human, even one with the ability to chakra boost as much as Tsunade could.
He would—
To his right and far too close, the sky was torn open by an explosion large enough to bring tears of joy to Deidara's eyes.
o-o-o-o
A short distance away...
"High and right!" Tsunade Twelve shouted down. "Left one click, up two, back fifty meters, hold!"
HazōShotCaller cursed and bit his lip in indecision even as he slewed his ponderous device to the new coordinates that his spotter had chosen. Presumably she expected Deidara to be in that location a few seconds from now. Beside him, the other two Hazōs of Battery One turned their own devices to bracket left and right of the point that Tsunade had specified.
Remote Explosive Runes were massive, heavy constructs that were very good at blowing stuff up and very bad at changing their point of aim. They were therefore absolutely the wrong tool for shooting down a fast-moving aerial target.
On the other hand, the nice thing about massive explosions was that you didn't need great aim. They were less 'Dear Ken' and more 'to whom it may concern, which hopefully includes Ken'.
"Fire!" bellowed Tsunade Ten, the spotter for the second battery.
The air around them rippled and shimmered as the runes went off. The Tsunades had been calling strikes for the last three minutes, turning random chunks of sky into destruction in the general area that Deidara was flying through. HazōShotCaller prayed to Jashin that the dragonrider would not figure out where the blasts were coming from, because if he did then he would fly overhead, rain down explosives, and destroy the runes. That would probably cause not one but nine massive runic failures and might possibly end the world.
o-o-o-o
Nearly two hundred meters underground, roughly under what used to be the Akatsuki staging ground facility for rift exploration...
HazōFreezeBabyFreeze licked his lips nervously after HazōForButAMoment came into existence and instantly vanished. HazōShotCaller was reporting in.
All the remaining summons except Enma and Cannai had been released back to the Seventh Path in order to conserve chakra. Deidara was still alive. He had killed three of the Sannin clones and was proving impossible to hit. It was only a matter of time until he got the rest. Then he would locate the runic explosives, pop all the clones manning them, and have control of the interior of the dome and of the Remote Explosive Runes themselves. True, he couldn't escape until the dome fell but the Leaf forces couldn't get in either. He could wait them out and the moment the dome fell he would be on his dragon and away, uncatchable. He would report to Rain that Leaf had attempted to assassinate Akatsuki, had destroyed the rift facility and captured the rift itself...and he would report the existence of runes. The consequences would be dire.
That wasn't going to happen.
HazōFreezeBabyFreeze studied the rune that sat beside him. It was remarkably delicate, remarkably beautiful, for something that could potentially end civilization.
The Superchiller rune replicated what Akane had done with her Elemental Mastery jutsu: cooled the air until the warmth-loving sky spirits became so infuriated that they tore the world apart for miles around. Except comparing the Superchiller rune to a mere chūnin-cast jutsu was like comparing a mountain to a grain of sand. The rune itself had been activated only once, for testing, deep underground so that it would not perform its actual function of angering the sky spirits. He knew it would work, but he did not know if it would work.
The part that frightened him was that it wasn't an especially difficult rune. In fact, it was ridiculously easy for something so destructive. He wasn't exactly sure how big the area of effect or duration would be, but his best guess was it would be at least hundreds of meters across and last several weeks. The Elemental Mastery jutsu had been perhaps twenty meters and a few hours, and it produced a storm twenty kilometers across and so potent that it scoured the earth.
Hazō Prime had planned for this. If things went wrong, if it looked certain that Deidara would either win or escape, it was HazōFreezeBabyFreeze's job to trigger the Superchiller rune and kill everything and everyone around. Hazō didn't know if the effect would reach outside the Force Dome that was currently over the battlefield; if it did then it might well scour a country. He was sure that the rune itself would survive its own effects. If it didn't...well, add 'runic failure' to the hurricane-force winds and freezing everything.
As of right now, it definitely looked like Deidara would either win or escape.
He took a deep breath and laid his hand on the rune.
o-o-o-o
Deidara was sweating as more and more bits of the sky erupted around him. Whoever was doing this, there had to be more than one of them because he could see multiple explosions happening simultaneously. Almost always in threes or multiples of three, for whatever that meant.
He had been on a straight course for five full seconds. Too long. He flicked the dragon to the side and mentally kicked it in the tail, urging it into a burst of speed.
Whenever more than three explosions came in at the same time, the gap before the next set of blasts was longer. That made no sense; battle jutsu didn't have charge times. It was like someone was...loading a catapult? That would account for the time delay and the fact that they couldn't seem to hit him. It couldn't be; he had been watching and there were no actual proj—
Fuck!
He dodged again and ducked as an Orochimaru and a Tsunade crossed above him, sword and glowing fist missing by less than a meter as he frantically dropped.
Gah, more explosions! Turn, turn fast!
There was barely time to throw more clay. He was too busy keeping the dragon away from the multiple attacks that were filling the battlespace to counterattack more than once every dozen seconds or so. Who the hell could do something like this? The invisible dome (which he had confirmed was still there, Sagedamnit) must have required an impossible amount of chakra, more than he would have expected even of a jinchūriki. These explosion jutsu were coming from no visible source, which meant they were longer range than any jutsu he had ever heard of. They came in bursts of three—okay, fine, there were jutsu that fired more one projectile at a time—but they had that weird lagtime between salvos. And the chakra cost for such a jutsu was impossible! Deidara was a technique hacker, he knew what it took to power a jutsu, and this was literally impossible. No human could do this.
Wait, no human! Boss summon! There must be another Boss summon on the field, but who? Who else did Leaf have...Dog, Monkey, Slug, Snake, um...Porcupine! Could this be a jutsu from the Porcupine Boss? Throwing invisible quills that exploded? It had to be. That was good. If he could find it, he could pop it and the explosions would stop.
Wait, a Tailed Beast could do this, probably. No, the Beasts weren't big on subtlety. If there was one here, he would see it rampaging around. Possibly a jinchūriki could—
Fuck, dodge!
The sun was almost down, barely a trickle of sunlight left. Another dozen each of the shadow-clone Tsunades and Orochimarus had joined the party, making it harder and harder to dodge. He had originally hoped to be able to escape in the darkness, get far enough off and low enough that the enemy lost track of him, then land in the woods and hide until the dome inevitably fell. Nope. Some of the fucking Sannin clones were running around in midair with lanterns of some kind, probably seals based on the pure white color and the intensity. He had caught two Orochimarus and a Tsunade in a blast but he still needed to get the rest. And then he needed to find whichever Boss was throwing those explosions at him and send it back to the Seventh Path.
Fucking Sannin. Fucking Boss summons.
o-o-o-o
Tsunade winced as yet another of her clones was destroyed by one of those fucking explosions, this one coming out of absolutely nowhere with no warning. All praises to the Sage's mighty ballsack that Deidara had been the only Akatsuki member in the air when they attacked. The Leaf forces were just barely keeping ahead of him and those fucking explosions. If there had been even one other member of Akatsuki riding on that dragon, providing cover and counterattacks, those fucking explosions would have fucking exploded the entire Leaf force and Leaf would be utterly fucked.
Heck, he might still manage it. She and Oro had been spamming basic clones this whole time, creating illusory copies of themselves to serve as decoys. In the semi-darkness, Deidara clearly thought that the useless illusion clones were yet more highly dangerous shadow clones because he was wasting a lot of explosives on them. If he eventually figured out what was going on and managed to target the correct ones, he could likely blow them out of the sky in short order. It was hard to face off against fucking explosions in midair where there was no cover to be had except what you made.
Worse than all that, she had been keeping a lot of shadow clones up for a long damn time. If this kept on for too much longer she was going to have to worry about the clone shock killing her when the remaining clones dispelled or ran out of time.
Fuuuuuck.
o-o-o-o
Deidara dodged around another snake missile, this one a lovely red/green speckled pattern and probably just loaded with some awful venom that would melt his organs. He closed his eyes for half a second as he created and detonated a flashbomb, light bursting out to blind his opponent, then hurled a kunai made of explosive clay at the Orochimaru who had launched the missile. The asshole pulled a fucking wooden wall out of a storage seal, ducked behind it, and made it through the explosion.
What the Orochimaru in question had not realized was that Deidara had thrown two clay kunai, one of them set to go off six meters after the other. The second explosion caught Orochimaru from behind and blasted him out of existence.
One more down, good. There were eight or nine left, but he was pretty sure that some of those were basic cl—
Gack!
He was splatted in the face by something wet and gross, like translucent snot. The impact rattled him around so much that his vision grayed out. Only for a moment, but that was enough. Even as he clawed the stuff away from his mouth and nose so he could breathe, another strand of the stuff splattered across the dragon's mouth, more across its neck and wings, more across Deidara's chest.
No one had thrown anything! Where was it coming from?!
Wait, Tsunade. She had run through this entire area not two minutes ago; he had thought it odd since he wasn't in that section of the battlespace at the time, but he had been too distracted to think about it. She had left this stuff floating in midair. Floating snot. Probably some Slug technique.
The dragon's wings were getting gunked up, strands of the stuff weighing them down and linking the two wings together so they couldn't make full wingbeats. The dragon itself was slowing down. Frantically, Deidara ordered the outer layers of the dragon's wings to explode, blasting the snot away so that the dragon could once more move at full speed.
Orochimaru was closing in from his left, sword in hand!
Responding to its master's thoughts, the dragon folded its wings, wrapped its tail around itself, and dropped like a stone. Orochimaru's sword extended like a lance, skewering the spot where Deidara's head would have been had he continued straight and level, but the dragon and its master were under that line and falling fast.
Thirty meters from the ground, the dragon snapped its wings open and beat them frantically, struggling to convert its plunging speed into horizontal movement. Enma and that fucking dog were right under him, the Monkey Lord's staff aimed right at Deidara's eyes. The moment he came within range—
Trees erupted from the ground in front of him, blossoming with unearthly speed into a full canopy from which dripped vines that reached towards him like the tentacles of a monster.
The dragon pulled its wings in, just enough, and danced around the boughs and boles with whiskers to spare. Deidara had played this game for years, driving his mount through progressively smaller hoops and tighter-packed forests of poles to prepare for exactly such a situation. Not only did he make it look easy, he took a moment to gift the two Boss summons with an emotionally satisfying example of Deidara's art.
Unfortunately, the artwork was rushed, its creator too hasty, and thus the intended recipients failed to take delivery. Enma swung off the massive dog's back, racing alongside it for a step or two in order to use it as a shield. The dog's armor shed the blast like water off a storm duck and then Enma was back astride, firing jutsu upwards.
The old monkey was good, but the air was Deidara's kingdom and he pulled up and out of range, then turned back to—
A plummeting Orochimaru drove his fully-extended sword through the top of Deidara's head, through his body the long way, and through the dragon so that the tip stuck out through the clay beast's chest. The impact rocked the dragon, flinging Deidara's body sideways against the straps. The straps were tight, ensuring he didn't fly off of his dragon, and thus when he hit the ground he was still firmly attached to his greatest creation.
Deidara, Lord of Dragons, Master of Mayhem, and Explosivor Excelsior, was no longer happy.
He was dead.
The plan suggested that everyone dress alike and mask up so as to be slightly harder to recognize; I'm having Hazōpilot override that and not mention it. The Clan Bosses of Dog, Monkey, Slug, Snake, and Toad are going to be on the field, so it's pretty clear who is in the attacking force.
Hazō is firing 9 Remote Explosive Runes (RERs). Each one has a 50% chance to hit on target with its first shot. If it fails then it will hit in an adjacent zone of a 3x3 grid numbered in English reading order where zone 1 = NW, 3 = NE, 4 = W, 5 = E, etc. All rolls shown below have been sorted for easy reading comprehension.
How many of the RERs are on target? 1=on target, 2=miss
1d2 => 1
1d2 => 1
1d2 => 1
1d2 => 2
1d2 => 2
1d2 => 2
1d2 => 2
1d2 => 2
1d2 => 2
Shot drift, 1d7:
1d7 => 3 NE
1d7 => 5 E
1d7 => 5 E
1d7 => 5 E
1d7 => 5 E
1d7 => 7 SE
Does Deidara spot the dome before pancaking into it? It's invisible but it still advertises its presence in multiple ways, such as by blocking wind patterns, affecting the trees and ground beneath it, and causing birdstrikes. Call it a Greatly difficult task to spot it, meaning a TN in the 40s.
Deidara, Alertness: higher than 40s.
Okay, Deidara doesn't do a 'bug against the windshield' and kill himself. That means he'll have to fight.
Rest of the rolls redacted.
Results of the battle:
No allied deaths
No enemy survivors, no prisoners
Based on the anticipated number of people at the facility, the vast majority of enemies were vaporized in the initial blast
Of the bodies that have been discovered, the following have been identified:
Around a dozen Jashinist ninja
Four Rain ninja
Deidara of the Akatsuki
No other bodies of Akatsuki members were found, nor were any such members reported during the fighting. It is possible that they were among the 'vaporized in the initial blast' group
XP AWARD: 5 This update covered 1 day.
Brevity XP: 0 The plan was long enough that it technically should be getting a brevity penalty, but I'm feeling so peachy keen happy right now that ima ignore that.
"Deidara's down," Tsunade said, blinking as a clone's memories returned to her.
Hazō sighed in relief. The bright dot blinking out on his Ninja-Radar coinciding with the sudden lack of explosions within the Force Dome had made him think so.
"No other Akatsuki members spotted?"
"None on the radars," Tsunade said. "And none in the fight. No more clones being popped. I think it's over."
"And we've caught all the ninja outside the dome, right?" Hazō asked. "So we should have time to bring the rift back to Leaf and start pulling people out."
Tsunade grimaced. "I wouldn't bet on it. We should plan as if they have people running back to Rain as we speak."
"What?" Hazō asked. "Why?"
Tsunade gestured at the Force Dome, then to the town of Todoroki, miles to the south. "Most of the action happened a kilometer in the air, thanks to Deidara. We're at a higher elevation than the town, so if they had ninja travelling to and from, they would see the lightshow from the top of a tree. Hell, some of the civilians might have seen it. We'll clean up the Jashinists that run here to fight, but I get the impression that the Rain ninja are actually sane, by the fact that they tried to surrender and appeal to AMITY. Some will slip off. They'll use the ocean or skywalkers to break the trail. We can't stop them from reporting back to Akatsuki."
"Fuck," Hazō said. "Okay, so we need to move fast. How long should I keep the Ninja-Radars up? I'm going to bury them after this is done so that Akatsuki doesn't discover them."
Tsunade shot a glance at him. "You'd better get it deep down there, at least-"
"I assure you, I have plenty of motivation to keep my runes secret," Hazō said.
Tsunade hmphed. "Until an hour before we leave. For that matter, we should plan around Force Dome secrecy being gone. If the lack of sound outside the dome weren't enough, plenty of the explosions were clearly limited by the curve of the dome. Akatsuki will infer by the fact that Deidara didn't break out that it's some sort of ultimate-defense barrier technique with a ridiculous range."
"Are they going to make that inference?" Hazō asked. "What else are they going to figure out? Iron Earth Runes, by the fact that Deidara didn't tunnel out? Ninja-Radar Runes by the lack of survivors?"
Tsunade frowned. "I doubt it. There are plenty of anti-tunneling techniques, and the Ninja-Radar barely helped us pin down the ninja outside the dome – they were all Jashinist idiots that were running towards us instead of away. I do think they'll figure out that we have Force Domes. If at all, they'll probably overcorrect and assume that one of us can use it at a personal combat scale, which should give us an edge. I'll have to think about how I can abuse that."
"What does that mean for Force Domes?" Hazō asked.
Tsunade shrugged. "It means the ball's in their court. If we give them enough time, they'll come up with ways to circumvent or counter it. At least your Remote Explosives are safe. The fact that it was Deidara means that he'll probably get credit for the explosions. Now, speaking of Jashinist idiots – those new blobs over there, are they Jashinists, or are they our people coming in?"
o-o-o
A wave of wind raced through the forest as everyone bent over, holding their hands over their ears against the earth-shattering BOOM that rolled over them.
"You know, with Deidara dead, I probably am the greatest explosion master on the continent…" Hazō said, looking off into the distance.
"Hey, hey!" Noburi said, waving his hand in front of Hazō's face to interrupt his contemplation. "No omnicidal ambitions while on mission. What happened?"
Hazō sighed. "Yeah, it was me. In retrospect, it was probably too greedy to cut off a chunk of Deidara's dragon after the chakrascopes said that it still had chakra in it."
"That was Deidara's dragon blowing up?" Noburi asked incredulously, turning in that direction as if he'd see ground zero of the explosion, with its knocked over trees and massive crater. "Sage's balls. If he'd tried that against the Force Dome, he might have gotten away."
Hazō clapped his brother on the back. "No, he wouldn't have. With that taken care of, the fortress should be pretty safe, so let's get in there and get looting."
o-o-o
"Hazō, over here!" one of Mari's clones called out. Hazō dutifully followed, taking the cue to bring himself back to alertness. It was well after sundown, and with the number of things he still needed to do before dawn tomorrow, it looked like it was going to be a night without sleep. Mari had somehow decided to keep a handful of clones out to search the fortress, but Hazō was nearing the end of his psychic rope and needed to save his energies for a clone to raise the earth around the fortress. He wasn't sure if he'd cover the full area of the fortress in a single cast of Earthshaping (which was all they had chakra and time for), but he needed to try – if any of Akatsuki's summoners had reverse-summoned out of the initial Remote Explosive bombardment, blocking their return point with dense matter would immediately secure a kill on them when they tried to return.
"Here," she said, gesturing at the room whose stone door she'd pried open. A handful of the fortress's innermost rooms had survived the bombardment, but not untouched. Explosions had cracked this room's walls, and as Hazō slipped in with a Daybright Lantern, he saw that the darkened interior was filled with dust and occasional bricks from above. Apparently, it was a close thing that this one hadn't collapsed.
All that was secondary to the far, far more interesting thing in the room – the seal array set up in a circle on the floor. Mari had already brushed the dust away from the seals, and Hazō beelined over to examine them.
"Damn," he said, trying to peel one gingerly off the ground. The adhesive didn't want to let go, and he reached for his chisel to pry the floor's stonework loose rather than risk tearing the seal. "They're burned out."
"So you can't memorize it with the Iron Nerve?" Mari asked, from the entryway of the room.
"Nope," Hazō said. "I was excited because it was an array. That usually means a more interesting, more powerful effect"
"How many seals have you found so far?"
"Discounting the basic stuff, like the Five Seal Barriers?" Hazō asked. "Two new designs. Though this array looks interesting. Six, no, eight elements. And at least two distinct kinds. I guess I'll have to analyze these back at Leaf."
"Are they Sasori's?" Mari asked.
Hazō snorted. "The other new ones were. The Five Seal Barriers weren't his. I'm glad the guy's got the pride to stamp all his seals with his mark. I can't see the backs of these ones, but given that it's an array, I'd assume so."
"Huh. How many more seals do you think we'll find?" Mari asked.
"Not much more, I'd guess," Hazō said. "Unless they have underground sections to their base, which I don't expect, I think we've raided all the rooms that survived the initial bombardment. I was surprised that you even found this one. Tsunade's found some torn seals here and there in the rubble, but I would not want to try to research a seal based on a damaged design."
"Well, if you ever get time for seal research again, this gives you something to work on."
"I'll have higher priorities for a long while, even while we're holed up in Leaf," Hazō admitted. "But it's good to have these. I just wish Sasori was polite enough to package up copies of his research notes with descriptions of what the seals did. Maybe keep them in little steel safes next to the seals."
"And make the safes glow too, so that it's easy to find them in the rubble?" Mari asked.
"Obviously," Hazō said. "What, is he such an amateur that he can't make a seal that causes an attached object to glow? I bet Harumitsu could do that in an afternoon."
"Definitely incompetent," Mari said, grinning. "And inconsiderate, besides. You know, we'd probably find more if we had a Hyūga…"
"But that would make keeping rune OPSEC much harder," Hazō finished. "The Great Chakra Shuffle of this morning is going to make Naruto feel some interesting feelings about Shadow Clone OPSEC. Better that we not add any additional complications. Plus, what are the odds Sasori made anything good, anyway?"
o-o-o
Hazō clambered over another piece of rubble. He glanced down to check his chakrascope. The sky overhead was completely black between the new moon and the thickening cloud layer, leaving it easy to read the lights on Kagome-sensei's invention. The leftmost light lit up pink, giving him a hint of hope… then flickering green and red from the top and top-left brought him back down to reality.
The chakrascope was going absolutely haywire in the area around the rift. He had no clue why. The chakrascope was tuned to sealing failure effects, so it was possible that destroyed seals in the fortress had caused imperceptible sealing failures that were messing with his readings. Maybe the aftermath of his runic barrage was hanging in the air and messing with the chakrascope. The Great Seal had set a chakrascope aflame, and while his Runic Explosives weren't in the same tier of power, they were getting closer. He wished he'd tested this earlier. He should have thought ahead to how he was going to find the rift in the rubble after the attack. What if it took days for the ambient chakra field to settle down? What if it took weeks?"
"Hazō," he heard Mari say, as a light grew behind him.
"Still not getting any readings," he said, staring at the flickering lights of his chakrascope. He heard a thud of another massive piece of rubble being shifted behind him, and the chakrascope flickered in line with the thud. That had to be fake, right? There was no way it was responding to the movement of chakra-less stone, or to sounds.
"Hazō," he heard her say again. She didn't sound like she was approaching. The chakrascope continued to flicker.
He stared at it for a moment longer, mentally willing it to stabilize, until he finally gave up.
"I'm trying to…" he trailed off.
Everyone had turned towards the growing light which now outshone the Lantern seal-searchlights. The light emanated from a shallow pit, even and white. Tsunade stood at the edge of the pit, staring down, with dust rising from her side where she'd dropped a two-ton slab of stone.
A jagged, vaguely hexagonal gash in reality hovered in the air above the pit. Staring into it from above, Hazō saw familiar grey-yellow sand, churned by footsteps passing through.
They'd found the rift, and Akatsuki had already opened it.
o-o-o
The rift shrank every time they sent something through it, and shadow clones immediately popped as soon as they crossed the threshold. Tsunade decided that she would be the first one through.
There wasn't much to see. Akatsuki had built a tiny stockade around the rift on this side, consisting primarily of a short wooden palisade clearly made of trees from O'Uzu, roughly bound together and sharpened to points along the top of the wall. It wouldn't keep any ninja out… except, if Hazō was right, no one here had chakra enough to walk on walls.
She'd need to learn new rules for how this place worked. Around the fortress, she saw scattered tarps and barrels: stockpiles for their rift expedition. Most of the actual supplies were gone, suggesting that Oro had guessed correctly – after hearing that the fortress was under attack, the closest Jashinists had fled into the rift, taking their supplies on the way. They'd probably taken their seals with them as well. Oro had also hypothesized that Sasori had made a seal to stably hold the rift open, which was apparently easy. Still, she saw no sign of such seals.
This meant that there were an unknown quantity of Akatsuki members inside the rift. Probably Hidan at least, as their main tracker. Tsunade wished they knew if other Akatsuki members had died in the bombardment. Oro had guessed probably not, but that itself raised so many questions – why had Akatsuki left the rift defended by only their weakest member? If they'd already pulled Pain out, surely they wouldn't have left it open…
Tsunade focused inwards for a moment. Her chakra system felt stable, nothing like any kind of chakra drain she'd experienced before. Either living people weren't drained the way seals were, or the drain was extremely slow, or… it worked through some mechanism she couldn't yet sense. Confusing.
She climbed the wall with chakra adhesion while she still could. The sky overhead was a clean, even white that almost reminded her of the skies above Snake. The sand stretched in a curve in either direction. She looked towards the land. In the distance, she thought she saw shapes rising from the ground. Not mountains. Something about their shape was off. Too… regular. Too many flats, too many even curves, not enough jaggedness.
Movement drew her attention to the ocean. There was someone falling from the sky. She watched as they fell into the ocean. Their skin melted away and they reached out for a moment in agony. Then, suddenly a person – the same person – appeared in the sky just above where the person had melted to death and fell back into the ocean.
Same as Daizen, per Hazō's report. She looked around, then sighed internally. Not a single other person in sight. Apparently, this was fate. Whoever passed through the rift was damned to rescue hapless Jashinists from a very specific eternal torture. She slotted in her skywalkers and set off to resurrect another wholly unworthy soul.
o-o-o
"As for Moon's ninja," Tsunade said, eyes weary without a hint of sleepiness, "we'll keep them alive for a few hours longer, till dawn comes. Noburi, you can drain them one final time to top us all off as we head off."
Noburi winced, but nodded in acquiescence. Tsunade continued to outline the plan for the next few hours to the inner circle of the operation – Orochimaru, Hazō, Mari, Noburi, and Sarutobi. She clearly hated the idea of repeating this all to Leaf's battalion of chakra-donors in a censored form, but she needed to nonetheless.
"One question, Tsunade," Hazō said, once the briefing had concluded.
Tsunade seemed to start an eye roll, then stopped herself. "What is it?"
"It's a private question," Hazō said.
She gestured around at the forest around her. "We already made damn sure that there's no one listening. Ask it."
Hazō glanced meaningfully back towards the fortress, where Orochimaru had gone to set up his rift runes.
"It's very private," he said.
Tsunade sighed. "Follow me."
Minutes later, ensconced in a kaleidoscope of shimmering blue-white static that Tsunade had grumbled about spending the chakra to cast, Hazō asked his question.
"Do you think it might be wise for you to stay with Orochimaru while he's moving the rift?" Hazō asked.
"Why would I do that when Leaf is going to need me – us – in the next few days?" Tsunade demanded.
"Well, you could help him move runes, you could watch his back against enemies-"
"If he's planning on doing twenty miles a day, I don't see why he would have me carry blanks for him if he can just run an hour on his own two feet," Tsunade said. "And he said that his blanks are smaller than your Remote Explosives. He can manage them himself. As for watching his back, fuck that. He's smart enough not to get caught, and if he does, it's because he deserves it."
"...and, as I was saying, it might be worth it to reduce the chance that he absconds with the rift," Hazō said.
"And what do you think I can do about that?" Tsunade asked. "We're waiting for word from Naruto, but I don't think he should move it into Leaf – there's no point staging our rift efforts out of the place that the whole world will be staring at, and splitting Akatsuki's attention means that our job is easier. Even if they track him down, it's not like Akatsuki can move the rift. If they could, they already would've. It just lets us go on the offensive again to retake it, which is our strong side while we have Noburi."
"Answer me, Tsunade," Hazō said. "What do we do if he takes the rift and runs? Not to a secondary location we know about, but to a research facility or some far end of the world that we'll never find? Is everything we did just now for nothing?"
"I think keeping it out of Akatsuki's hands is a good bit better than nothing," Tsunade said. "But yes. If he steals the rift, Leaf is monumentally fucked. What do you expect me to do about it?"
"Just keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't…" Hazō trailed off.
"I'm not a sealmaster, and I don't have the Byakugan," Tsunade said. "I can't see the rift. He can slip something by me a million ways. I don't know how he would do it – maybe he'd set up two receivers and on one of the jumps, then send the rift to one instead of the other. Maybe he'd just not jump it forward at some point, then run in the night days later. He'd know where to come back to. I'd have no clue. Maybe he leaves me watching a shadow clone at some point, then runs. What the hell am I gonna do about that?"
Right, without her own chakrascope seals, Tsunade couldn't confirm the rift's location. Tsunade wasn't known as a tracker, and Orochimaru, after his decade as a missing-nin, no doubt had dozens of ways to give her the slip.
"More importantly, can Leaf afford to go without me for that long?" Tsunade asked. "I'm Leaf's strongest ninja. If Akatsuki come knocking, I have to be there. With Noburi around, if we deal with Itachi somehow, I'm several times stronger than even Naruto. I don't see any world in which I can afford to fuck around in the woods with my thumb up my ass for a month."
"So are we just going to let Orochimaru run?" Hazō asked.
"We don't have a choice right now. He's always been the researcher, and it's paid off now. We can't move the rift without him, and we can't stop him from taking it because we need to defend Leaf. Either he comes back, or he doesn't. So, do you trust him?"
Hazō didn't know what to think.
"I do," Tsunade said. "Not completely. Not after… everything. But I don't think he's going to abandon Leaf to Akatsuki's mercy. I trust him. I have to."
Canvass did not identify Hidan's scent in the surroundings of the ruined fortress. She seemed disappointed by yet another instance of being called in to track something, only for there to be nothing to track.
Orochimaru has a similar interest in optics. He will consider handing over Deidara's eyepiece once he is done with it.
The Iron Earth, Force Domes, and RERs have been disposed of. The Ninja-Radar and Superchiller runes have been buried to the limits of Hazō's available chakra.
The Jashinist that Tsunade retrieved from within the rift was not Daizen, but just some mook that was sitting in the fortress when the RER barrage hit. He's been removed from the rift and drained unconscious, if you want to ask him any questions.
Tsunade posits that if Deidara or other Akatsuki allies landed in the area around the rift, they would have had plenty of time to group up and run away. This assumes they correctly estimated that they couldn't beat the living Leaf ninja. A cursory look around didn't reveal obvious tracks in the sand, but Tsunade isn't much of a tracker. Additionally, the Jashinist she found was a couple hundred meters out, so the rest of them might have been scattered even farther, and she didn't want to invest time into a close search of every square meter of sand given your deadline.
Hazō has asked Kumokōgō to pass on a message to Kagome saying that the battle has been won.
This update covered a handful of hours. It is now shortly before dawn. Leaf's ninja are rising and preparing to leave.
"Walk with me, nephew." The Snake Sannin turned and walked away towards the trees.
Hazō hesitated. Hazō was still here only so that he and his clones could bury the last of the Ninja-Radar Runes. Orochimaru was here making preparations for the first of the many 'kicks' necessary to send the rift back to Leaf. Everyone else, notably including Tsunade, was three miles away, preparing to race at full speed back towards Leaf.
Orochimaru seemed to notice that Hazō was not at his side. He paused and looked back over his shoulder to see Hazō standing, indecisive. One fine eyebrow rose.
Hazō sighed and hurried to follow Orochimaru into the woods.
The older man led the younger out of sight into the trees and then up the trunk of one of the largest forest giants. He climbed higher and higher, Hazō at his side, until they had climbed above the canopy. Orochimaru settled down on a branch as wide as a bench, looking out into the distance. Hazō settled next to him, carefully choosing his distance. Orochimaru didn't seem angry, didn't seem... Hazō couldn't tell what Orochimaru seemed. Maybe...maybe pensive? That made no sense.
Hazō waited silently, eyes locked continually on the Snake Sannin.
"Do you have copies of your research notes, nephew?" Orochimaru asked, his voice distant.
"Not with me," Hazō said after a moment.
"Mm."
The silence hung.
"I note that I had copies of mine ready when you asked."
"I'll get on it."
"Mm."
They sat, looking into the distance across the rolling green of the forest below. Well, Orochimaru looked into the distance. Hazō glanced at it occasionally while watching Orochimaru.
At least three minutes dragged by before Orochimaru spoke again. Three incredibly uncomfortable minutes, at least for Hazō. Orochimaru seemed completely unaware of the awkwardness.
"Do you know why I call you 'nephew'?"
"Because of Jiraiya, I presume."
"Indeed."
More silence.
"There are strata of humans, Hazō. Some are simply better than others."
Silence.
"On a given axis, true," Hazō said carefully. "Some can lift more, some can run faster, some can draw more accurately. I'm not sure what it would mean to say that some are better as a general statement."
"A very political statement from the former Clan Head. Very savvy. Unobjectionable, hints at wisdom. Shows a certain common touch that should endear you to the average ninja."
"Thank you." No way was he rising to that bait. Still, there had been no real bite in the words.
"It was not a compliment. I am not referring to strength or speed, nephew. Yes, those things vary across populations, but they are not what I meant.
"Some people are better than others. On any specific metric there will be a range and someone must be at the top of that range. One metric is how many metrics one excels at, and in this too there must be someone at the top of the range.
"I am at the top of that range. Tsunade is at the top of that range. Jiraiya was at the top of that range. We were the shining lights of our generation."
"That's true," Hazō said after a bit.
"I invented the chakra rice that feeds most of Fire. I presume you recall this."
"I do."
"Greater yield, faster maturation, higher resistance to disease. The ability to grow even in poor soils, and when it dies it decomposes quickly and enriches the soil for the next crop." He gave something that wedged itself halfway between derisive snort and sardonic chuckle, and what it expressed Hazō had no idea.
"I even made it generationally stable. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make changes to an entity and make those changes so complete that they will be passed on to the descendants?" He looked to Hazō, a strange intensity in his eyes.
"I do not, sir."
"Of course you don't." He turned away, looking once more to the horizon.
Silence hung in the air again.
"Biosealing is a very rare art. It requires extensive knowledge of sealing and of medicine and of medical jutsu. A thorough grounding in jutsu creation is also of great benefit."
He fell silent again.
"Rare indeed," Hazō said after a minute. "I think I know of...three biosealers? The two Arikadas and you." Kabuto might or might not be a biosealer; Hazō wasn't sure.
Orochimaru snorted. "Those idiots. Come now, nephew. Do you hear me insulting you by saying 'ah, yes, I know of two sealmasters—you and that illiterate boy down the street scribbling pictures in the dirt with a broken stick'?"
Hazō felt certain that the question was rhetorical.
"I did so much during my time in Leaf." The words were almost a whisper. "It feels strange to think back on it."
"How so, sir?" Hazō asked at last.
"People change over time. Trite, I know, but it is strange to look back on the version of yourself that lived thirty or even forty years ago. It is like looking across a chasm at an entirely different person with entirely different goals and desires, yet knowing that the person is actually yourself. Can you imagine how that feels, boy?"
Hazō considered that. "I don't think so, sir."
"You will. Well, if you were to live long enough.
"That version of myself wanted to serve the Leaf. I wanted to raise it up and ensure that its light shone upon all the world. I spent my time thinking about how to prevent plagues and cure those who caught them. How to repair broken bodies so they could return to the field. How to invent jutsu that would allow our ninja to conquer any foe. How to sing better than anyone else and what beer was available at the Soggy Tag that night."
Once more, Orochimaru's attention wandered off into the mists of time. Once more, Hazō waited silently.
"Hanzō was the only besmirchment on our record, you know. Oh, there were a few failures here and there, plans that fell apart or bonus opportunities unseized. Still, we never failed an objective. Never. More missions than I can remember, all of them successful. Everyone we were told to assassinate, dead. Everything we were told to steal, stolen. Everything we were told to do, done.
"We had peers, had rivals, in the beginning. We surpassed them. Eventually, we were so powerful that we were rarely sent on missions. We were too valuable at home, our mere presence rendering the village safer.
"That was why Jiraiya became Leaf's spymaster. It was the only way he could get out of the village. In addition, we had so many close calls based on faulty intelligence and he wanted to spare the next generation that."
He glanced at Hazō for a moment. "The three of us could have ushered in a golden age, you know. We talked about it at length. Tsunade would have been Hokage after Sensei retired the second time. Jiraiya would have been her spymaster and diplomat. I would have been their weapons-maker and assassin."
He shook his head, still not looking at Hazō. "So much accomplished. Jiraiya transformed Leaf's intelligence network, saved so many lives by ensuring that no one was sent out based on flawed information. Tsunade trained generations of medics. I advanced human knowledge and supported both of the other two."
"You made an enormous difference," Hazō said at last.
"We did. And the research I was doing would have made even more, had Sensei not taken such offense. Had the others backed me, helped me talk him down." His fist tightened. "Larger chakra reserves. Faster reaction times. Rapid and more complete healing. Denser bones and muscles meaning you hit harder and can absorb more damage. At the time I was beginning to work on brain structures. Enhanced memory for faster learning would have been the least of the things I could have given the next generation."
Silence.
He turned to look at Hazō. "You and your team could have been the next Sannin, you know. Not duplicates, no. Some similarities, but not direct duplicates. All three summoners, of course. Noburi, a rising medical star. Kei, a skilled leader and a ranged weapons user with some degree of promise. Yourself."
Silence.
"Me?"
"You are the only person in your generation that I recognize as a visionary."
Hazō stared.
"You have the potential to transform the world, nephew." He tossed one hand. "I suppose you have, actually. Skywalkers were your idea, correct?"
"Yes, although Kagome-sensei created them."
"Yes, well, he could not have accomplished it without your initial concept. Are you aware of the downstream events caused by your little idea?"
"I am, yes."
"Operation Needle Point, leading to the death of my teacher. Oh, and to the death of three jinchūriki, my brother in arms, most of the Kage, and a significant plurality of the jōnin from several nations and almost none from others. In essence, unsettling the geopolitics of the entire known world and causing the deaths of nearly everyone that I still cared about."
Hazō struggled not to audibly swallow.
"But."
Silence.
"But?" Hazō asked.
"But, you have done so much good as well." He leaned back on his hands, still staring into the distance, his voice thoughtful and musing. "The rift appearing was a stroke of fortune, but you have spent years pursuing it with dogged persistence. More persistence than most of those in your generation."
"Thank you?"
"And then there are the runes. An entirely new paradigm of chakra manipulation. Do you recognize what that means, nephew?"
Hazō had no idea what to say to that.
"Chakra is a fascinating thing," Orochimaru mused. "It has some capacity for ideation, as seen when casting a jutsu—you don't specify the precise pattern in which the elements of a Stone Storm Barrier orbit you, the jutsu deals with that. It also has holes that can be exploited. Seals do that—break the rules, exploit gaps and weaknesses in the laws of reality. Medical jutsu are yet a third thing. Human bodies have a self-concept, a view of how they wish to be. Medical jutsu are about strengthening that concept and providing the energy necessary for the body to bring itself back in accord with that self-concept."
His lips quirked into a tiny smile, almost more of a smirk. "Oh, certainly, Tsunade will describe it differently, as will that child of hers..." He frowned, snapping his fingers to bring back the name. "The girl with the flat nose. K-something... Kon Ai, that was it. I seem to recall she disagreed with Tsunade on some points. They will all spin for you their various conceptions of how medical jutsu work, what it's like to heal someone." He tossed his hand. "They'll be wrong, but they will.
"Jutsu, seals, medical techniques. The three pillars of chakra manipulation. The only known such methods for all of human history. Three fundamental, irreducible pillars of chakra manipulation for all of history. And now, a fourth: runecrafting."
"It's...it's really just seal theory scaled up into three—"
"Do shut up, nephew."
Hazō closed his mouth with a click.
Orochimaru flicked a glance at him, then looked away with an eyeroll. "This is your foundational weakness of character, boy. Humility. You will never become the next Orochimaru, or Jiraiya, or Tsunade, with humility."
"I don't intend to be the next Orochimaru or Jiraiya or Tsunade."
Orochimaru looked at Hazō, surprised.
"I am not going to be the next anything. I am going to be the first Hazō."
Orochimaru chuckled in honest amusement. "Better. Continue in that vein and perhaps there would be hope. Do you wish to be remembered as the first of anything? In that case, avoid modesty, humility, and relatability. The Sannin exhibited none of those traits. We dominated the world with hubris and the ability to back it up. You wish to change the way things are? Prove that you have the power to crush your enemies and make sure they know it."
Hazō chewed on that one. "I don't have the power yet. Personal power, I mean. I can blow up their entire estate and everyone they care about from a mile away, but I can't punch the head off someone who annoys me. That seems like the only thing that ninja society respects."
"You exhaust me, boy. Power does not rain down from the heavens. Power is something that you take, that you grasp with both hands and tear from the foundations of the world. Power is something that you earn with pain and sweat and murder. My team? We carved a trail of blood across the world. Any nation whose relations with Leaf deteriorated, we saw that as an opportunity. We chose a clan from that nation, a clan that had some interesting jutsu or seal or bit of knowledge. We chose them and then we murdered as many of them as necessary to make their power our own. We roamed through forgotten corners of the world, locating rare animals and plants, acquiring every scrap of knowledge we could find that was not widely known. From what you have shown me thus far, you lack the resolve to tread our path.
"Your skill with seals is respectable. Your ability with runes..." He fell silent, grimacing, then sighed and continued. "Your ability with runes is actually impressive. You founded an entirely new field of chakra manipulation and you have created a few actually useful things with it. Generations flow like rivers between such events."
"...Thank you?"
"I find it tremendously frustrating."
"Why?"
Silence once more draped itself over them as Orochimaru fell back into his own musings.
"Do you know," he said at last, "why history shows that tremendous new techniques and seals are made only by powerful ninja? Why Namikaze Minato did not create his version of the Flying Thunder God technique as a chūnin?"
"Because such things require more skill than a chūnin has?"
"No. Because whenever a weak ninja invents something useful, a powerful ninja will take it from them and be remembered as the creator. And now you, barely a chūnin, unable to protect yourself against anything more challenging than a new Academy graduate, you have invented a new paradigm of chakra manipulation."
The hairs on the back of Hazō's neck were standing up.
"Worse, you are simply so...so..." The Snake Sannin shook his head in frustration. "So stupid. So naïve. A brilliant researcher with not the slightest trace of wisdom. What is the first thing you do? You notify every sealmaster in Leaf that this new paradigm exists. You make available a model of the Great Seal. You provide every scrap of knowledge you have that might allow the village plodders to master the art. You even taught it to the Snake Sannin."
"Umm..."
"Honestly, boy. How can you possibly be so talented and yet such an idiot? I am the bogeyman of Leaf. Of large parts of the Elemental Nations, actually. My reputation is for murder, torture, utter lack of concern for the humanity of others. I earned that reputation in every particular and it bothers me not in the slightest. Indeed, I find it extremely useful. Did anything about our initial encounters give you the impression that I was a friendly, approachable person? That I was some misunderstood yet heroic figure who needed only to be extended the hand of trust and friendship in order to be redeemed?"
"Uh..."
"Were you Jiraiya, I would be far less annoyed right now. I can imagine Jiraiya developing the art of runecrafting. Do you know what I cannot imagine him doing?"
"...Sharing it?"
"Yes!" He slapped the branch they were sitting on. "Jiraiya would have invented the art, developed his runes, and kept its very existence secret even as he used them to conquer the world. He would have protected Leaf, cast down its enemies, compelled other nations to lay down their arms in fear of destruction, all without ever letting word leak out as to how his power worked. I would never have needed to fear that the art would be taken from him, or that he would share it with anyone unworthy. I would have found it extremely frustrating to find some means of persuading him to share it with me, but that would have been acceptable.
"You? You invent this enormous secret that you lack the power to keep from the hands of anyone wishing to take it. You cannot possibly be such an idiot that you do not recognize this, yet still you shout your secret from the rooftops, actively push it into the hands of anyone who wanders past. Indeed, I am astounded that you did not chase other ninja across the roofs of Leaf in order to force instruction manuals into their hands."
"I didn't want to share it," Hazō said defensively. "I had to. The Dragons were killing. They were a threat to the entire Seventh Path, and perhaps to the Human Path as well. I wasn't sure I could learn runecrafting fast enough to solve the problem alone, but failure wasn't acceptable. I needed help." He hesitated, then decided that perhaps this was a moment for honesty. "And I expected you to figure it out for yourself soon. Offering it to you let me get something in exchange."
"I suppose I can respect the mercenary nature." He waved dismissively. "As to the rest of it... There is your humility again. Abandon it, nephew. If you wish to ever matter in the world, carve the sin of humility from your soul. Never entertain the possibility of failure, and for the love of all things, stop shouting the secrets of your power to the world."
Hazō had no idea what to say to that.
"I have never desired an apprentice. I intend not to die, thus why should I care what comes after my death? Also, those who politely ask for wisdom are demonstrating that there is no point in giving it to them. Still, under the circumstances I suppose I might as well offer a pair of tidbits. Do you wish to become powerful?"
"Yes sir." He shifted slightly on the branch, moving closer to the edge so that he could drop quickly if needed.
"First, do things in the proper order. Become powerful enough to defend your world-altering inventions, and only then do you invent them.
"Second, always grasp for power but do not be foolish about it. If your chakra reserves are too small for your needs, expand them through hard work. Or convince the Toad Sages to teach you their arts of nature-chakra manipulation. Or locate one of the few surviving members of the Yabusaki clan. Or acquire a steady supply of bloodwood fruit."
He turned and looked at Hazō, facing him fully for the first time since they settled in the treetops. Hazō looked back, uncertain of what was happening.
"Or study biosealing," Orochimaru said at last. "Learn how to remove the chakra coils from a more powerful ninja and install them into yourself. Understand the implications and the risks."
He went silent again, slit-pupiled eyes scanning Hazō's face as though searching for something. Hazō knew not what.
"Moreover," Orochimaru said at last, "if there is someone else in the world who will be advantaged by your removal as a rival, do not gormlessly allow them to operate on you."
Hazō started to move, but he was too slow. Orochimaru snapped his fingers and Hazō's entire chakra system, native and transplanted, exploded. He plummeted off the branch, clutching his chest in agony.
The agony lasted but a moment; Gōketsu Hazō was dead before he hit the ground.
Author's Note: As Douglas Adams would say: don't panic. Keep reading the rest of this A/N and things will get better. This is not quest over. This author's note gives a bunch of necessary context and then we're looking for player input on what to do next.
Yes, Hazō is dead. Yes, Orochimaru planted a kill switch in him when he implanted the extra chakra coil that gave Hazō the strength to summon Cannai for the Zoo Rush against Akatsuki. You have options on where things go from here, and we'll cover them farther down.
We believe this is the simulationist outcome, for reasons we will describe in detail below. We don't want this to be quest end and we don't want to make everything anti-fun. Therefore, we are soliciting suggestions on where to go next. One option is to break simulation, roll back this chapter, then make some change by QM fiat that lets Hazō live, based on our discussion with the players. See below for more.
Before we get into details, let's look at how we got here and set the context. We can start with the Doylist stuff and try to head off the objections we expect to see:
Q: Should the blame for Hazō's death be completely on the QMs, or completely on the players?
A: Neither. Everything that happens in Marked for Death is a mutual thing, arising organically from the best intentions and efforts of both players and QMs. That's why we're reaching out now in an attempt to collaborate towards the best continuation we can.
Q: It feels like we-the-players were forced into this. Did we have any option other than accepting the bioseal?
A: Yes, we think so. The situation was extremely challenging and none of your options were risk-free. Still, some things you could have tried:
Go without the bioseal and take the chance on being spotted. It wasn't a necessarily-fatal risk—you didn't know that Hidan was present and didn't know if his senses were always-on or required explicit activation.
Use going without the bioseal as an intentional strategy to lure enemies to prepared ground outside the fortress.
Capture Kotsuzui ninja to experiment with, to design counters to their blood-sensing ability.
Lure Hidan somewhere and kill him before the battle ever happened. This could have been as part of the plan in chapter 700 or even sometime back during the research arc. You could even have sent the rest of the team to do it while Hazō researched.
Win Jashin's favor through whatever means, bargain for protection from Hidan. Note that Hazō has reason to think that Jashin's favor can be bought with coin other than mass murder, as shown by his success at Bakuchioka.
We're not saying that taking the bioseal was a mistake, given the information the players had available. It was simply one of several risky options, any of which had the possibility of leading to a bad outcome. This particular choice increased the risk from Orochimaru while reducing the risk from other sources.
Q: Should the QMs have rolled for the combat with Orochimaru instead of making it a finger-snap autowin for the Sannin? Remember, the Iron Nerve gives us one free reroll against lethal hits.
A: The specific details of the encounter are immaterial. Once the killswitch had been implanted, even interacting with the world exclusively through shadow clones would only have delayed the inevitable until the killswitch popped, or Hazō's next bioseal upkeep appointment, or equivalent. That's not something that dodging a tiny bit faster is going to solve, so the reroll wasn't relevant. We thought it better not to prolong the situation and instead face it head-on.
Moving on...
In the interest of collaboration, we're going to provide more OOC information than we normally would: The main thing that Orochimaru wants is to live as long as he wants and be able to do whatever he wants (mainly research). In order to get that, he needs to:
Prevent Akatsuki from resurrecting Pain, assuming they haven't already.
If Pain has been resurrected, then Orochimaru feels that he's already lost, so he's not focusing on that one.
Assuming he hasn't been resurrected, then Orochimaru feels he has the issue covered now that he has secured the rift.
Stop the spread of runecrafting.
First, it's incredibly powerful. Orochimaru wants that power for himself. He doesn't want other people to use it to build weapons that could potentially kill him.
Second, it's incredibly dangerous. A runic failure could be catastrophic for reality.
Fix the Great Seal to prevent Draconic apocalypse.
This requires runecrafting and Orochimaru doesn't trust anyone else to do it.
Implement new immortality measures as necessary and possible.
This includes both exploiting the rift and as-yet-unspecified runes to keep him safe.
(Note that defending Leaf isn't on the list.)
So, why does Orochimaru want to kill Hazō? Basically:
Hazō is a clear vector for spreading runecrafting.
Hazō has attempted to share knowledge of the Great Seal with others before.
Hazō is clearly close to his clan, including a sealmaster-summoner in Arachnid.
Hazō is philosophically all about sharing and mutual benefit.
Hazō is about to go back to Leaf to make lots of runes. Not only could the Hyūga notice, but Akatsuki will be paying lots of attention to Leaf. If they circumvent the Force Dome (and Orochimaru expects them to be able to) and learn about runecrafting, that could be the end of Orochimaru.
Hazō is clearly philosophically opposed to Orochimaru.
If he's left free to power up, he might eventually make an attempt on Orochimaru's life.
Orochimaru doesn't yet know if runes are offense- or defense-dominant. Potentially, Hazō's rune offense will beat Orochimaru's defenses.
Exacerbating this, Hazō has a demonstrated way of creatively using seals, so even if Orochimaru thinks that Hazō probably can't break through his defenses, Hazō might do it anyway.
The natural conclusion of this is that Orochimaru should kill Hazō now, before he can power up enough to be a serious rival.
There are some cons to killing Hazō. Unfortunately, they are all mitigated in Oro's point of view:
Hazō's runes could help with killing Akatsuki.
Orochimaru acknowledges this. He expects that he's roughly an equally good runemaster as Hazō, and will eventually eclipse him. In time, Orochimaru will be able to duplicate Hazō's runes.
There would be value in having Hazō produce runes to help kill Akatsuki sooner, so Orochimaru is losing value by killing Hazō now. On the other hand, Hazō shows no signs of wanting to kill Akatsuki proactively, preferring instead to turtle up in Leaf under a Force Dome.
Hazō could help fix the Great Seal.
See above: Orochimaru expects to eclipse Hazō as a runemaster. In the long run, Orochimaru thinks that he will either be able to solve the problem himself, or the problem will be unsolvable.
In general, keeping Hazō as a research pet would be useful.
Unfortunately, it isn't really an alternative. It's hard to compel research out of someone, especially when they could cause a runic failure at any point out of spite. The constant watch for betrayal would be unfeasible.
Without runes, Leaf will be much more poorly defended.
Orochimaru just doesn't care about Leaf that much.
Orochimaru doesn't expect Hazō's runes to completely defend Leaf. Among other things, he expects Samehada to present a respectable counter to Force Domes.
If Hazō doesn't go back to Leaf, Leaf might instead choose a "smarter" strategy like scattering to the four winds, which might let more of them survive.
Killing Hazō would burn Orochimaru's relationship with Leaf.
See above about Leaf being not that important in his eyes, as well as potentially doomed.
Aligned with Leaf, he has Noburi-access and loads of ninja to drain, which greatly accelerates his rune research. However, staying in Leaf to exploit this would come with some costs:
He would need to obey the law and the Hokage's orders sometimes.
He would be in the place where Akatsuki are about to be focusing all their attention, and being located is the first step to being killed.
Orochimaru plans to live for a long time. Leaf forgave him his first stint of kidnapping and murdering Leaf ninja, so probably one more won't be a big deal if he comes back a decade later with enough value in hand.
Killing Hazō would sour Orochimaru's relationship with Tsunade.
See above about Orochimaru having time to let her get over it. Also, he doesn't think she's that attached to Hazō.
Hazō has given Orochimaru a bunch of interesting shinies before. Killing Hazō would kill the source of shinies.
This is true. Unfortunately, those shinies also power up Hazō. See above about Hazō eventually becoming a threat to Oro's immortality.
Basically, killing Hazō directly serves Orochimaru's goals, and none of the reasons for not killing him are immediate dealbreakers. On the other hand, the fact that Hazō is about to return to Leaf and make a bunch of runes is a compelling reason to kill him immediately. So, Orochimaru took action.
(We could have kicked the can down the road and said that Orochimaru kills Hazō in Leaf, or at their next bioseal upkeep session, or... We ultimately decided that, not only was immediate action a better choice for Orochimaru, but this would "rip the bandaid off" more quickly and help us shift over to a better timeline.)
For what it's worth, our model of Orochimaru for the past ~year has been playing more friendly/attached to Hazō than he actually feels. Hazō didn't notice because of the social gap, though we tried to signpost it occasionally in other ways. Orochimaru does see parts of himself reflected in Hazō, but he mainly wanted to make Hazō trust him more (which could secure future shinies or rune notes, in addition to an opportunity to kill Hazō). A year ago, Orochimaru hadn't resolved to kill Hazō, but when Hazō presented himself for a bioseal two weeks ago, Orochimaru saw the opportunity, evaluated it, and took it (and yes, there weren't issues with too many bioseals at once. This is Orochimaru—if he wants to add a kill-switch, he'll find a way).
Our QM call yesterday and the additional one we did today were extra-long because we went through the plan that got voted in, figured out how we were going to handle all the pieces of it, talked about how Tsunade would get y'all into Leaf secretly, talked about what Naruto would say in response to your questions, and so on. When we were done we did our usual "okay, what are various characters doing in the background of this plan" bit...at which point we realized that this was when Orochimaru was going to pull his sudden but inevitable betrayal and kill Hazō. That led to all of the analysis that you just now finished reading.
We then spent quite some time looking for ways to make this work so we didn't have to end the quest. We wanted to stick with our commitment to simulationism, but we also didn't want the quest to end and didn't want to drop a no-fun bomb on everything. Some options we considered, formatted into an approximation of a hopefully amusing pseudo-dialogue:
Maybe Orochimaru can't run for it because Tsunade is going to be riding herd on him all the way back?
No, she is going to want to get back to Leaf ASAP in case Akatsuki attacks, so she will be running ahead while he follows with the rift.
Maybe she decides that guarding him and the rift is more beneficial to Leaf than her being there a bit sooner, so she sticks with him all the way back and he can't manage to get away while she's watching?
No, he can definitely give her the slip if he wants to. He's got Shadow Clone, Substitution, skywalkers, reverse summoning, and a host of S-rank evasion techniques sufficient to keep him hidden for his entire time as a missing-nin. He can pretend to kick the rift in one direction but actually send it in another, then have a Shadow Clone continue on with her to the claimed location while Prime hustles off to the actual destination.
(We looked at various ways that maybe Tsunade could prevent Orochimaru from escaping but couldn't find a convincingly plausible way that she could keep him reined in during a multiple-week mosey back to Leaf.)
[many options are discussed and shot down]
Hm. The players only a bit ago put together a massive coordinated effort to point out problems in the quest, one of which was a lack of transparency, communication, and 'working-together'ness. Maybe we should actually listen and learn?
Hey, good plan! Let's write the update that we think would actually happen so that the players can get the emotional impact of it, then ask their input on what to do next.
And here we are. As we said above, we're looking for suggestions on what to do from here.
Yes, this will be done via voting but please do not post plans yet.
Let's discuss for at least a day and we'll open voting later. Everything is on the table, so please don't constrain yourself. We are open to continuing the quest with Hazō in the afterlife, but we do expect that version of the quest would be unwinnable—Orochimaru has essentially uncontested control over the rift, and would be able to keep it closed except when he needs it open, even if a chakra-drained Hazō and whatever rift allies he acquired were capable of finding the rift and overpowering Orochimaru to escape.
We very much do not want to bias discussion but we would like to make clear the size of the possibility space, so we'll say that we're at least open to breaking simulation, rolling back time, and then...
Orochimaru doesn't install the killswitch for some reason, or...
The killswitch misfires and Hazō survives for some reason, or...
Someone saves Hazō in the nick of time.
In all these situations, we would appreciate your help figuring out the details of how and why it happened.
Today was the happiest day of Sōdan's life. Firewhisky flowed like water through the troughs and channels of the festive hall, every ninja dipping their tankards in to refill whenever they got as low as half full. Over in the bards' corner, the veterans were having themselves a singing competition, their music growing bawdier as the party went on. On the bench of honour, Sōdan was surrounded by close friends and teammates, drinking and joking and yelling out blessings to the happy couple as and when the kami took them.
And of course, up on the stage in the middle of the hall… she danced. The most beautiful woman in all creation. Every step in place. Every movement flowing into the next. His star pupil. The finest weaponmistress of her generation. Nozomi. He'd proposed to her the day she graduated from the dojo. A year later… he was the happiest man alive.
"You should be up there, Sōdan. 's your day."
At his left side, in the place of honour, Sōdan's little brother waved towards Nozomi, his speech already slurred from too much a healthy dose of firewhisky.
"I will," Sōdan told him. "Soon." As soon as he had enough liquid courage in his veins.
However good he was in a fight (which was pretty damn good, being the finest weaponmaster full stop), Sōdan danced like a penguin. He didn't know what a penguin was, and he was pretty sure his brother didn't either, for all the teasing, but he knew the truth when he heard it. Now, his brother, he was great at very nearly everything. Oh, sure, they mocked him because he had the killer instinct of an earthworm, but Sōdan would (and did) punch out any man who called his brother a coward. Did they have any clue how much courage it took to walk into the heart of an enemy village with just a handful of bodyguards and know that if your tongue failed you, you'd be dead before you could fight or run? Sōdan could win a dozen battles back to back, without breaking a sweat, but his brother was the one who got sent to prevent wars. He could dance, he could calligraphise, he could do sums, he had charisma coming out of his ears, and he might be a piss-poor killer, but he'd learned everything Sōdan had to teach, same as Nozomi. If he could fix that one fault, then in ten, no, five years' time he'd be Lord of the Burning Waters for sure.
Sōdan still couldn't believe Nozomi had chosen him, the lesser brother, anyway.
"Maybe ya sssshould lay off the firewhisky fer a minute," Sōdan slurred. "I'm still countin' on ya, lil' bro. Aaain't nobody can give a speech like ya can."
His brother glared. "And what am I supposed to say, Sōdan? Oh, well done, you two, what a good match you are, I'm so freaking happy for you? I was a moron. I shouldn't have come."
But Sōdan couldn't not invite his only family to his wedding. That wasn't possible. Nozomi wouldn't have it either. They'd been best friends once, before… Sōdan and Nozomi still hoped they would be again.
"I shouldn't have come," his brother repeated bitterly. "No speeches. Just let me drink myself under the table in peace before I start saying what's on my mind."
It hurt. Seeing the pain in his brother's face where the drink made it so he could no longer hide it. Knowing it was all Sōdan's fault. Sōdan had thought maybe, seeing the two of them happy would help, prove it had been the right choice. But he'd been dumb and insensitive, as always.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn' mean fer it to work out this way."
"I don't blame you," his brother snapped. "It's no more than I'd expect from you, following your heart with no thought for anyone else. Not seeing what's right in front of your face, running roughshod over other people's feelings without a word to them first. But her? She promised us, she promised us the three of us would always be together. Then she started weighing us against each other like hunks of meat at the market. Picking whichever of us would be worth more, like a half-koban whore."
His brother reeled back in shock, his nose broken. Sōdan looked down at his bleeding fist.
Shit. He'd punched his brother in the face. Without thinking.
But how dare he? Nozomi wasn't a whore. Nozomi was a goddess. How fucking dare he?
But still, Sōdan shouldn't have–
His brother swung back, hitting him in the ribs.
Only it felt wrong.
It felt sharp.
They both looked down.
His brother was still holding his meat knife.
"No. No. Sōdan, I didn't mean to! I swear I didn't mean to! I'll call a medic-nin!"
Sōdan's eyesight was blurring. A medic-nin wouldn't help. His brother had a weaponmaster's strength, whatever anyone said.
The others were staring in horror. Nozomi, his Nozomi, was running to him, but she couldn't outrun death.
His teammates were drawing their weapons, and Sōdan's voice wouldn't reach them.
He looked his brother in the eye for the last time.
"Run," he whispered. "Run, 'idan, run."
-o-
Hidan lay collapsed in the middle of some kami-forsaken wheat field, a pool of his own blood spreading beneath him. He'd fought well, he thought, for a weaponmaster who hadn't had time to grab his favoured weapon. A full squad of hunter-nin dead around him, another retreated to save their injured once they saw his wounds were mortal.
He could see his hand, the hand with which he'd murdered his brother, lying a few metres away. He supposed, with the clarity of imminent death, that was only fair. Sōdan had always been the better brother. Brave. Passionate. Loyal. A hard worker who'd made the most of his talent when he could have coasted and still been one of the best. A man who never doubted himself and always knew what was right. He'd deserved Nozomi.
Nozomi lay within Hidan's sight too. Fellow trainees, they'd known each other's every trick. In the end, they'd both hesitated at the final blow, and Hidan, bitter and hateful and in love reversed, had hesitated slightly less.
Hidan's hand was over there. His left leg was in pieces. He had more kunai sticking out of him than an Academy training dummy on Assassination Day. The skin on his back had been burned off by a Blood Element ninjutsu, and that blue-black thing over there was probably his liver. He didn't have enough lifespan left to catalogue it all.
He was proud, though, of the blow that had finally brought him down. Nozomi had proved her right to be sole wielder of Sanjin no Ōgama, the legendary three-bladed scythe now sticking out of his sternum. Funny how warm the metal felt inside him. Almost alive. Maybe weapons forged according to the Old Ways really were different.
As his body cooled, Hidan found he felt grateful to Nozomi. He'd ended his life as a kinslayer, a disgrace whose name would be struck from the dojo panels, but he'd died like a warrior. He'd always assumed he wouldn't.
The last wisps of warmth left his body. Only the scythe was hot inside him, burning by contrast to the cold–the sole remaining focus for his consciousness as the world faded away.
Hidan died…
…and he saw the world from the perspective visible only to the dead.
He saw the true nature of life. A torrent of blood, an unbroken circle. It flowed eternally, and Hidan wept at its beauty, its vitality, its perfection. The Six Paths were its veins, so complex that he could spend a lifetime drawing them and never capture more than the tiniest fraction.
And its heart, the power that allowed it to be what it was… it was a radiance beyond words. It was alive, conscious, and immeasurably wise. It was love. It was hatred. It was hope. It was despair. It gave birth to the cycle and was the cycle.
It felt his attention.
It directed it.
Hidan saw. The perfection contained imperfection. Clots in the river of blood. Blockages that slowed the flow. They had their purpose, a purpose beyond Hidan's comprehension, but they also resisted the guidance of the heart. They were not of the blood god.
Their name was "humans".
With that realisation, Hidan knew why he was being shown the truth of the Six Paths.
It must flow.
There were three points within the cycle of life, a perfect triangle within the perfect circle. Two of the points were birth and death. The third was the heart, the blood god with his own ineffable purpose.
It must flow.
All that was born must die. All that died must be born. All that was born and died must pass through the hands of the blood god.
It must flow.
Hidan could let go and be part of the cycle… or he could stand outside it. He could become one of its guardians, never dying, never reborn. Bringing death so that the blood kept flowing. Bringing life so that the blood kept flowing. Bringing Jashin, the one who regulated the flow.
It was sacrament. It was purpose. It was redemption. Every life taken, taken for the greater good, retroactively and forever.
Yes, Hidan agreed, the blood must flow.
A battlefield's worth of blood flowed into him. His own. The hunter-nin's. Even Nozomi's. His body was perfected. Organs regrew according to Lord Jashin's will. Bones reknit themselves. Hidan was filled with the vitality of a human as humans could be, if they would only stop trying to defy the cycle.
But was Hidan truly worthy of the blessing? He was the diplomat, the weak man who relied on his charisma to avoid fighting, the weaponmaster who flinched away from murder.
Hidan couldn't serve Lord Jashin the way he needed to be served.
But there was, there had been, someone who could.
It was Hidan's first prayer to Lord Jashin. After all, the two siblings shared the same blood, and all blood belonged to the Blood God.
Hidan cast away his weakness. He could be brave. He could lose himself in the joy of the fight. He could terrify his enemies with a wild grin as he slaughtered them for the greater good, except his greater good would be even better. Hidan had always wanted to be his brother, and with Lord Jashin's help, he finally would be.
"I'll do ya proud, Sōdan!" he shouted to the sky.
With a grunt of effort, Hidan pulled Sanjin out of his chest. Blood sprayed everywhere. It hurt like hell, but strangely, Hidan found he didn't mind. His life was sacrifice now, and what was sacrifice without pain?
As his last wounds miraculously healed, Hidan contemplated the weapon in his hands. A scythe. A reaper's tool.
How much control did Lord Jashin have over fate itself, to make sure this exact weapon of power found its way to Hidan's hands in his moment of awakening?
Hidan stood up. Stalks of bloodstained wheat reached up to his knees.
He closed Nozomi's eyes, forgiving her in Lord Jashin's name. Blood washed away all sins.
Wheat meant a village nearby, more proof that Hidan had been guided to this place by divine providence. Hidan hefted Sanjin over his shoulder and broke into a run, keen to begin his eternity of work.
-o-
A/N: Hidan does have a Kishimoto origin story, but it's told through filler and side materials like the databooks. None of these are MfD-canon except by coincidence, so I am choosing to ignore them.
Jiraiya looked around; something had caught his attention, but he wasn't sure what. Or where. He was in a small hut; one room, stone walls, straw-covered dirt floor, pallet of furs in the corner...
"Hey, kid."
Jiraiya turned to find Enma lounging in a very out-of-place overstuffed armchair next to a roaring fireplace set into the stone wall. The chair had been modified with a cut-out portion for the Monkey Lord's tail and a small ottoman provided support for the lordly simian feet. At his elbow a small table bravely shouldered itself upright, willingly supporting the burden of Enma's enormous metal beer mug. The chair and footrest and table had twins positioned opposite.
Jiraiya studied the scene. He looked at the enormous mug sitting next to Enma's chair and the three-quarters-sized version waiting next to what was clearly intended to be Jiraiya's chair. Finally, he looked at the Monkey Lord.
"See, I know you're setting me up," the Sannin said patiently. "You're expecting me to notice that the mug you gave me is smaller than the one you greedily gave yourself, because you are a terrible host with terrible manners. You're expecting that I will say, 'hey, how come yours is bigger than mine' so that you can make a puerile dick joke. Probably something asinine like 'that's what she said' or 'the Sage likes me better'. Well, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction."
Enma tsked, shaking his head sadly.
"You're so suspicious," he said. "I wasn't going to say that, as far as you know."
Jiraiya moved to the chair and settled down, putting his calloused bare feet up on the crushed-velvet covering of the ottoman. He leaned back and took a long draught from his mug, then sighed in satisfaction.
"Damn, Fuzzface. You still brew the best imaginary beer ever."
"Thanks. It's a memory, actually. Batch made by a little brewer in Hot Springs three hundred years ago. The man was a marvel, although I'm pretty sure part of it was the local variant on hops. Bigger flowers, more sweetness."
"Well, it's appreciated. Dead-people beer is kinda shit."
Enma raised a bushy eyebrow. "Do you have beer in the Pure Lands?"
"Nope. Hence why it's shit."
"Ah." Enma sipped on his own beer, watching the flames crackle for a time.
"So...?" Jiraiya hinted.
"So what?"
"So, what's been happening since the last time you conjured me up here, you ass?!" He realized he had leaned angrily forward in his chair as he spoke, so he forced himself to sit back and sip from his mug. "Also, how long has it been?"
Enma chuckled. "About eight months since the last time. I—"
"Eight months?!"
"What? You've got somewhere to be? You're dead."
Jiraiya grumbled into his beer.
"Anyway, I figured you'd enjoy hearing about your kid."
"Hoo boy. What did Hazō do now?"
"Hey, you had more than one. I could be wanting to tell you about Kei or Noburi, or any of the...I'm gonna say dozens of by-blows you have scattered around the nations."
"First, don't disrespect me. It's hundreds, at least. Second, I do want to hear about Kei and Noburi but the only time someone ever says 'your kid' with that expression on their face, it's about Hazō."
Enma laughed. "Yeah, well, you're not wrong. You'll like this, I think. You'll never believe it, but you'll like it." He hesitated slightly. "I forget...what have I already told you about all this?"
"Yes, I did notice and appreciate that you are probing after my mental acuity while attempting to be delicate with my feelings, because I'm not an idiot and you're not that subtle. No, the afterlife has not washed all memories out of me yet. Last time, you told me that Hazō had 'gone missing' on Naruto's orders in order to come up with Akatsuki-killing runes." His face split in a vast smile. "Runes. Three-dimensional seals. Damn, that kid's got it. Spent years fiddling around with that idea, never pulled it off. Little Hazō, barely old enough to walk and already doing big-boy things."
"He's seventeen, you twit," Enma said. "But, yeah. If it's any comfort, I suppose it's not completely impossible that he's one of yours."
"Nah. I never got with his mom; I'm good with faces and it's hard to forget the face of someone who tried to carve me into giblets right before I drowned her a bit. Still, I'll happily take the credit."
"Well, this'll blow your tiny little human brain: you are probably going to get the chance. He and Orochimaru found the rift, they've opened it, scouted through it, it still targets the Pure Lands as best they can tell. They're bringing it back to Leaf and the plan is to fish your lazy ass out ASAP."
"Wait, weren't Akatsuki camping on it?"
"Ayup." Enma's simian jaw lent itself well to enormous grins, which was good since this one would have caused injury to any human face that tried to contain it. "Your little sprog blew the everloving crap out of them. It was seriously impressive.
"See, Akatsuki had holed up in this big old pile that they built around the rift. Big-ass building, would fit right in back in that claustrophobic home of yours. Probably be a clan headquarters or something. The whole area is surrounded with seals and there's cultist ninja patrolling. I'm charging in, ready to flatten the place—"
"You are charging in, huh? All by yourself, of course."
"Of course! Are you implying that I need any help? It's just a bunch of humans." The Monkey Lord held the Toad Sannin's eyes for a moment and then laughed. "Okay, maybe I let a few people come along, just so they could see how it was done. You know, to watch and learn from my awesomeness."
"Uh-huh. Who?"
"Well, you know, a few randos from the clan...maybe some snakes...a few dogs...some Sunny and Snakey clones...oh, I guess Ma and Pa were there. And Cannai. And Mandy."
"Manda showed up? I thought he had sworn off letting Oro summon him after that one time."
"Dunno. I guess little Snakeykins figured it out, because Fat Mandy was there. Anyway, stop interrupting! I'm leading the charge on Akatsuki's fortress, everyone at my heels and bellowing our mutual war cry. The cultists see us coming and they're all shouting and activating seal arrays and whatnot, but! Right before we come in range, your kiddo fires his runes.
"He made nine of these things, big jacked-up blobs of crystal with a pointy bit. They go off, a spot a mile away goes boom. He's got clones of himself firing them; there's a little spread, but enough of his shots are on-target that the place absolutely evaporates. There was barely anything for us to do except mop up a couple of survivors."
"Go, Hazō! Damn, kid. Makin' the old man proud here. Now I just need to teach him how to talk to girls and we'll— Wait, hang on, was he actually in the charge with you?"
"Nah. Brilliant sealmaster and runemaker, but arms are still a little noodly for punching out guys like Deidara and Hidan, yeah?"
"Damnit, why didn't I make that kid eat his vegetables? How's he supposed to grow up big and strong and become an unstoppable engine of physical destruction if he doesn't have his paternal demigod pushing him along?" He shook his head. "Fuzzface, you need to make sure he gets trained, okay? Being a sealmaster is great, it'll let you change the world and win wars, but it makes you a huge target. Hazō needs to have the raw power to protect himself."
The old monkey looked at his friend in surprise. "Jiraiya, I'm flattered that you would trust me with this. It's been a long time since I personally trained a human, but—"
"Not you! Get him to Ma and Pa, tell them I said they had to train him. Frog Kata, Sage Mode, the whole nine." He snorted, then took a pull on his beer. "Honestly. Thinking I'd want you to train my son? Pfft."
"Oh, haha. Very funny. Remind me why I keep dragging you out from behind the veil of death for these chats?"
"Beats me. Personally, I'm still wondering if you are or if this is just a dream you're having and I'm just that part of you that's still keening in pain about how you never managed to gather up the nerve to admit your man-crush on the legendary Jiraiya, Toad Sage, Master of the Bedroom Arts, and utter badass."
"Yeah, because that's totally a thing I would have. Here's how you can tell you're actually real: no part of me would ever be such a complete ass."
"You're kidding, right? Every part of you would be such a complete ass. Is such a complete ass, always."
"Seriously, I exert my incomprehensible metaphysical might to temporarily draw you back from the embrace of death itself so that I can catch you up on the latest news. I give you good beer, I tell you stories about your kid, and this is the thanks I get? Used as a messenger? My skills utterly dismissed in favor of those two cranky old fogeys?"
"Hey, what can I say? I'm just looking out for my kid, you know? Trying to make sure he gets the best instructors."
Four figures strolled towards the gates of Leaf. The civilians trodding through the churned mud by the village's gates could easily recognize them as ninja and stay out of the way – if not by their clothing, then by the unnatural lightness of their steps that left only the barest of hints in the soft earth. Those ordinary men and women didn't know that these four had the power to destroy Leaf within the hour. The ninja on the other hand…
"Is that-"
"Get the Hokage."
"What if-"
"Go!"
o-o-o
"Greetings, Lord Hokage," Konan said, as Naruto stepped down the wall to meet Akatsuki at the gates of Leaf.
"Hello, Lady Konan," Naruto said, keeping his voice as smooth as he could. Being made to show respect to Jiraiya's killer would be one of his many challenges as Hokage. It could have been worse. Thankfully, Itachi seemed content to wait alongside Deidara and Sasori instead of talking.
Naruto looked back to Konan without meeting Itachi's eyes. He was under strict orders to pop himself if he got the vaguest hint of a genjutsu hitting him. The dozens of clones around Leaf making preparations around Leaf could be impacted, but at the very least, Leaf would be forewarned of Akatsuki's aggression. If they chose to attack, he intended to make them bleed for it. At least the forewarning had given him time to run a message to Orochimaru.
"We have come on AMITY grounds," Konan said promptly. "Are you familiar with the resolutions passed five days ago?"
Naruto frowned. "I got the details. There were a few things discussed, but nothing major. What are you talking about?"
"AMITY Resolution #31," Konan said calmly. A sheet of paper slowly hovered out of her robes and unfolded itself in front of her. "The gathered leaders of the Elemental Nations, and their designated representatives acting in their stead, declare that studying the bloodlines of foreign ninja is a heinous act of high espionage that will be considered a violation of the AMITY compact. Violators will be executed, and their villages subject to damages ten times over."
The paper tucked itself back away. "The remainder of the resolution consists of details and requirements, but the core message holds. Where it might have once been common practice to kidnap foreign ninja in order to study their bloodlines, this is forbidden in our new era. While there exist channels for resolving attempted violence outside of the AMITY compact, bloodline study in particular is recognized as an act particularly worthy of reprisal."
"Is this about the Gōketsu?" Naruto asked, gut sinking. Obviously, Akatsuki had learned about their defection and wanted to raid what was left of their clan. "Because their bloodlines might originally be from Mist, but they're Leaf ninja. I reject the notion that they have committed any wrongdoing in studying their own bloodlines."
Konan shook her head. "AMITY acknowledges that the Hidden Villages are free to study the bloodlines of their own ninja, to the extent that those ninja can assent to such study. No, we are here for something different."
Itachi stepped forward. "Having collected extensive evidence, we believe that this resolution has been violated. We believe that Orochimaru is guilty of the kidnapping of Kurosawa Ren."
o-o-o
Orochimaru opened the hatch above him and cast his tunneling jutsu, diving into the earth overhead. He'd been pleasantly surprised by his relationship with the new Hokage thus far. Not only had he been given a week's forewarning about Akatsuki's interest in his research, but the Fox had also given him minutes for his own preparations once scouts had spotted Akatsuki approaching Leaf's gates.
Orochimaru did not understand why the creature had been so cooperative. He could not see how his next few actions could be compatible with its goals, and that unnerved him. Yet, he had made nearly every single preparation he needed. All that remained was that quirky coincidence of fate, to follow in his nephew's footsteps again.
Like Hazō, he couldn't afford to let Akatsuki discover and interrupt his research, so he would take what he needed from Leaf and leave it behind until the day of Akatsuki's demise.
o-o-o
Naruto flicked through the papers. Akatsuki had convincing evidence. The basic facts were obvious – Orochimaru left the village on an extended mission, near the end of which Kurosawa Ren and a team of chūnin disappeared while on AMITY business. He couldn't corroborate the rest of it: Orochimaru's supposed movements, sightings of his summons, and more. Many of them made Naruto wonder how they had ever gathered the information in the first place. Maybe it was fabricated. He did know what they really wanted, after all.
The complication, of course, was that Orochimaru had kidnapped Kurosawa Ren. Asuma had written it down in those forbidden documents passed from one Hokage to the next. Orochimaru had claimed that he needed the knowledge stored within her bloodline to solve the mystery of the Great Seal, and Asuma, shaken by his recent encounter with the Dragons, had agreed. Oh, he had laid down conditions. If Orochimaru got caught, or if he failed to return in a set timeframe, he would be declared a missing-nin. But in the end, Asuma had agreed, and Orochimaru had presumably succeeded.
"I need time to examine these and see if they are real," Naruto said. "I'll send a messenger to Grass by the end of the week with the results of my investigation and the steps Leaf is planning to take."
Konan shook her head. "My apologies, Lord Hokage, but that isn't acceptable. We believe the evidence is sufficient to take immediate action, and the rest of AMITY will agree given that Kurosawa was pivotal in its founding. You will take us to Orochimaru immediately so that we may question him."
Now that got Naruto hot under the collar.
"Who do you think I am?" he found himself asking Konan. "I'm the Sage-damned Hokage. You don't get to tell me to take you places in Leaf. You sure as hell don't get to walk around doing whatever you please to my ninja. After what Hidan did here last time, none of you are stepping a fucking pinky toe inside this village without my sign off."
Konan thought for a second, then nodded. "Very well, Lord Hokage. We do need to conduct this investigation, and we will not compromise on that. What terms would be acceptable to you?"
Naruto tried to shake the anger off. "No, you don't," he said. "Like I said, this is a matter that Leaf will try to deal with on its own before we involve you. You can park your asses out here while we look into it, but that's all you're allowed to do."
"Forgive me for saying this," Konan said, "but I simply do not believe Leaf is capable of holding Orochimaru accountable. I mean this truly: we intend no harm to Leaf. We simply want to question Orochimaru."
The unspoken 'but' hung in the air. But, if you don't let us, the four S-rankers at your doorstep will tear Leaf apart until you agree.
Naruto grit his teeth. "Fine. You can write down a list of questions. I'll interrogate Orochimaru personally, going down the list, striking any of them that I think would compromise Leaf's national security, and I don't need to justify to you why I struck anything. You're allowed in the room, but you won't speak or attempt to question him at all. Itachi won't make eye contact with anyone. Once the list is done, the questioning is over. You don't get any follow-up."
Konan glanced back at Itachi.
"Very well," Konan said. "Now, if it would not be too presumptuous, Lord Hokage, would you escort us to Orochimaru's estate? I will write down our questions on the way."
o-o-o
Given the power imbalance, ordinarily ANBU would have run a tight guard formation around Naruto as they walked Akatsuki through Leaf. Luckily, Naruto would only ever meet them through shadow clones, so instead ANBU corralled Akatsuki off from the rest of the village as they walked down the wide main streets towards Orochimaru's estate. The streets had been cleared, though Naruto still got glimpses of particularly brave civilians peeking out at the passing procession. Did Itachi feel pain at the way that the village of his birth hated him, or was he truly heartless?
Probably heartless. Bastard.
They arrived at Orochimaru's estate and Sasori immediately split from the tight group, producing seals from his pockets. Two ANBU officers dutifully body-blocked him, acting indifferent to the risk to their lives in doing so.
"No seals," Naruto said.
"We are going to set up seal arrays in the event that the interrogation goes poorly and Orochimaru turns violent," Konan said calmly. "If we have to fight, containment measures will prevent damage from spilling out into Leaf. They will also help prevent Orochimaru from fleeing justice, if he attempts to do so."
Naruto considered that. On the one hand, the Hokage he was roleplaying needed to be firm about preventing Akatsuki from subverting Leaf, and he had no way to verify that the seals were what Akatsuki said they were. On the other hand, he knew that Orochimaru did it, and that he'd be leaving the village soon to continue his research. Violence was a real possibility, and he genuinely didn't want it to spill out into Leaf.
"Let him set up the array," Naruto said to Jackal. "Do not let him activate it. If it appears like he is moving to activate it, or the array is activating for another reason, destroy as many seals as you reasonably can."
The ANBU stepped aside. Sasori turned to Naruto with a completely neutral expression.
"That will suffice," Konan said. "Sasori, you should remain here to ensure you can activate the arrays on my signal."
"On my signal," Naruto said. "Shadow Clone Technique!
"I'll walk you down there, and if things go south, I'll signal to this guy to tell everyone," one Naruto said, thumbing over at his clone. "Until then, no seals."
"As you wish, Lord Hokage," Konan said. "Now, shall we?"
Several minutes later, Orochimaru entered the grand hall in the center of the estate where the Gōketsu had once held their board game nights.
"Ah," he said lightly, eyes cold. "Konan. Itachi. Deidara. What a pleasant surprise."
Naruto raised his hand. "Don't answer him. Orochimaru, there's an AMITY issue and I need to ask you some questions. Is there a secure place we can talk?"
Orochimaru smiled at him, and a slimy shudder trickled down Naruto's back.
"I'm afraid I'm quite underprepared for guests… but I'm certain something can be arranged."
o-o-o
Elsewhere…
"Lord Orochimaru!?" the girl asked in incredulity.
"Observant," Orochimaru said. "Befitting of the Hyūga. I must speak with your quartermaster."
"You need to speak with Aoto?" the chūnin girl asked again. At least she was doing better than the genin by her side. He seemed too scared to even look in Orochimaru's direction — not that the boy needed to with his Byakugan active.
"Yes, Hyūga Aoto. Urgently. I am leaving on a lengthy mission and require supplies," Orochimaru said, flashing a mission authorization with the Tower's seal on it. "I understand the Hyūga are well stocked, correct?"
After a brief stint of discussion, the boy ran off to fetch whoever was necessary, and Orochimaru waited irritatedly at their gate. He detested wasting time and would have been checking his internals while he stood there, but so close to the Hyūga estate, he had to assume they would watch him work. Oh, how he hated dealing with Leaf's clans. At least it would not last long.
The boy came back with a whispered message.
"Aoto is not in the estate at the moment," the girl said, "but the junior quartermaster, Hiroaki is."
"That will do," Orochimaru said. "Take me to him."
"He is-"
"I have an urgent mission," Orochimaru said again, in case it helped her understand. "I do not appreciate having my time wasted. Quickly, now."
The girl jumped in fear, then promptly trotted off into the estate. Orochimaru followed. After another hushed conversation, the genin boy took off at a full chakra-boosted sprint to forewarn the junior quartermaster.
Finally, Orochimaru reached the target location. He appreciated the Hyūga's aesthetic, at least — even their storehouses were well adorned, with pilasters and crestings of blue to complement the white facade.
"Greetings, Lord Orochi-"
Orochimaru stormed past the young man, a chūnin perhaps a couple years older than the girl that had escorted him.
"Urgent mission, I have no time for pleasantries. You have fine clothes and jewels suitable for an infiltration?" Orochimaru asked.
Hyūga Hiroaki looked stunned for a second, then followed Orochimaru into the storehouse after a nod at the girl.
"Yes, Lord Orochimaru," he said. "And I can see if the tailor is in to adjust to your size."
"No time," Orochimaru said. "Show me what you have in terms of jewels."
Hiroaki hesitated for a moment, clearly recognizing Orochimaru's pressuring as an attempted theft, and trying to square that with the obvious fact that Orochimaru of the Sannin had no need of simple mineral wealth.
"It will be paid in full by the Tower if I do not return it."
"Of course, sir. Follow me."
Hiroaki led Orochimaru into a vault, the underground space conveniently sparing Orochimaru from needing to close any windows.
Hiroaki busied himself with the keys as he continued to talk. "What is the mission brief, if it is not classified? I can identify suitable items for you more quickly with details, Lord Orochimaru."
"It's an infiltration into a minor daimyō's court who has initiated a relationship with missing-nin biosealers," Orochimaru lied, as he placed a seal against the wall. "In fact, there is one special request I have for you."
"Oh?" Hiroaki said, facing Orochimaru. His eyes widened as he recognized the anti-Byakugan seal on the wall, but he didn't get another word out. A precise spike of killing intent left the chūnin paralyzed on his feet.
"My apologies," Orochimaru said, reaching into his shirt to pull free a stretch of skin he'd stuck to his chest earlier. He was eternally grateful for the Hyūga's foolish attempt to act as if they could not see beneath people's clothes. "I do need supplies for a lengthy mission, and they are supplies only the Hyūga are capable of providing."
Orochimaru kept the man paralyzed, careful not to let his killing intent spill outwards and warn the other Hyūga. The clan would no doubt have noticed the anti-Byakugan seal, but they wouldn't attack him immediately. Most likely they intended to ask him some pointed questions when he emerged, or perhaps complain to the Hokage. Imbeciles. Orochimaru tapped a seal for a blade, manifested a chakra scalpel along its edge, and severed Hiroaki's neck. Before too much blood could spill out, he applied the skin graft to the base of Hiroaki's head, activating the bioseal immediately.
"Consciousness will quickly fade, though the eyes should remain in good shape," Orochimaru said to the severed head, releasing his killing intent. Hiroaki's face twitched.
"Hebikuri," Orochimaru said, and a lengthy anaconda slid out from where it had wrapped around his waist. "Swallow this and protect it."
Hebikuri dutifully did as she was told, swallowing the head of Hyūga Hiroaki.
"Wrap around me again. There will be some fighting shortly. I will drop you in the forest and continue running. Take the head to the location I showed you, where I will collect you. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Lord Orochimaru," said the snake.
Orochimaru donned his skywalkers and started casting ninjutsu. Without his bioseals, it wasn't impossible that the Hyūga would catch him, so he needed to move quickly. Time was of the essence.
o-o-o
Elsewhere…
"I must speak with Uchiha Sasuke," Orochimaru said to the hapless civilian at the Uchiha compound's gates.
"Sir, I'm afraid…"
A minute of irritation and intimidation later, Orochimaru strolled through the doors of the Uchiha main house. A clan of two ninja was blessedly unable to field the manpower required to prevent his entry. Now, to find the heir apparent…
Orochimaru spotted a girl watching him. Not a servant, but a young genin, with the black hair and severe look of a full-blooded Uchiha.
"You, girl," Orochimaru said. "What is your name?"
"Uchiha Minori," she said softly.
"Do you have the Sharingan?" Orochimaru asked.
"My lord, I cannot-"
Orochimaru let his killing intent trickle out, wrapping around the girl. Not too much, he didn't want her passing out. There were too many servants watching, who might make noise too quickly. He only needed twenty seconds uninterrupted.
"I am about to undertake a mission against Uchiha Itachi, and this intelligence is of the utmost importance," Orochimaru said, flashing his faked mission documents. "You will answer me."
The girl wavered, then looked down. He lowered the pressure slightly, and she looked up again, meeting his gaze with crimson eyes.
"Yes, Lord Orochimaru."
"Good," Orochimaru said, his instincts making him break eye contact after a second as he restrained his killing intent again. He needed to reward cooperation. "Find a private place for us to speak."
The girl dutifully led him to a second-story room.
"When did you awaken it?" Orochimaru asked.
"Last May," the girl answered dully. She kneeled on a mat as if expecting him to sit across her, but he instead circled the room, closing its windows one by one. She watched his movements, but didn't stop him. "Sir, I don't know if I can answer-"
"Answer what you can," Orochimaru said. "Have you mastered the Sharingan's perceptive and predictive powers?"
"I wouldn't say-"
Orochimaru finished his round of the room and, with all lines of sight inwards closed, paralyzed her with a spike of killing intent. He grabbed the preservation graft, drew his sword, and severed the girl's head. Blood drained out across the floorboards.
Orochimaru frowned, even as he attached the graft per procedure. His shaping of medical chakra along the blade's edge should have served as a fast-acting coagulant, as too much blood loss would lead to tissue damage.
He dispelled.
The blood melted away. The girl's body disappeared and his hands were empty, the graft having flopped to the floor after he attached it to thin air.
"Who taught you to be paranoid, girl?" he asked into the empty room.
"Orochimaru," a voice said behind him. Orochimaru turned to see Uchiha Sasuke with his sword drawn, wisps of white flame flickering off his body as blueish lightning crawled up and down his bare sword.
"I know what you came here to do. I won't allow it, and Naruto will make you pay."
Orochimaru couldn't help but grin. The boy hadn't activated his Sharingan.
"Foolish child. Your eyes will do just as well."
Orochimaru lashed out with his killing intent, seeking to paralyze, but the boy had an aura of his own and fought back. The Uchiha crossed the room in a crack of flame, spearing his sword through- thin air, because Orochimaru had swayed out of the way, and Uchiha hadn't noticed because of the pain of their aura clash. Orochimaru's fingers flicked together and a snake flew out, jaws extended to grasp the boy's neck and still him until-
The snake landed true, and the boy disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Obviously. Orochimaru kicked himself. Why would the boy confront him without the Sharingan? It had been too long since he'd danced with Itachi. Also, apparently the Fox had decided to give the damned shadow clone technique out to everybody.
Orochimaru briefly considered trying to chase after either of the village's Uchiha. He decided against it. With them now prepared, he had no hope of gathering a sample unbothered. Even if his clone's actions against the Hyūga hadn't yet been noticed, the Uchiha would be raising the alarm.
Orochimaru sighed. "You may return to the Seventh Path, Hebijō." The snake under his robes disappeared in a puff of smoke. Orochimaru heaped his seals atop the graft and expended a shred more chakra to incinerate the pile. His other selves would need his chakra soon, no doubt. He dispelled himself.
o-o-o
Simultaneously…
Orochimaru saw them down to a parlor in the first sublayer of his basement. Naturally, none of the ninja deigned to take seats, though Orochimaru busied himself at a table for a few seconds, then turned with a tray in hand.
"Gyōza, anyone?" Orochimaru asked.
No one answered.
Orochimaru demonstratively plucked a gyōza from the tray and popped it in his mouth.
Konan didn't even look down at the tray. "Orochimaru, we are here to discuss the disappearance of Kurosawa Ren."
"Don't speak to him directly," Naruto said. "Orochimaru, are you ready to answer some questions?"
Orochimaru frowned and set the tray down. "How did you know I kidnapped Kurosawa Ren?"
Naruto fidgeted slightly, resisting the urge to facepalm.
"You actually kidnapped her!? I thought we made that up!" Deidara said.
There was a pause, then Konan actually facepalmed.
"What?" Deidara asked. "Does it matter that we fudged up the documents now that he's admitted to it?"
"Orochimaru," the Fox said. "Don't confess to-"
Orochimaru waved his hand. "They don't care in the slightest about Kurosawa Ren."
"I actually found her rather agreeable," Konan said.
"Irrelevant," Orochimaru said, not looking away from Naruto. "Akatsuki is here for other business, which we will discuss now. You are no longer required. Dispel your clone."
"No," said Naruto. "This is still an official investigation of Leaf, and I will remain present for it in its entirety."
"Either you dispel your clone," Orochimaru said, "or I will dispel it for you."
Naruto considered that, then dispersed in a puff of smoke.
Orochimaru took the opportunity to glare at Konan. She suffered his gaze for several seconds before she acquiesced.
"It was a lucky guess."
"Hm," Orochimaru said. Perhaps Konan's surveillance techniques had improved, and she had actually gathered meaningful evidence of his actions in ways that she did not want to reveal. As always, she was hard to read.
"We still intend to punish you for violating AMITY," Konan said, straightening again. "We are trying to build a lasting peace out of it, and your casual disregard for the norms we're establishing suggests that you might not have a place in this new world."
Orochimaru batted the thought away. "Let's skip the trivialities. The real reason you are here is the rift at O'Uzu Island."
"You know of it," Itachi said. "And you have not attempted to contact us. Am I correct to think you have no interest in collaborating to exploit it?"
"Correct as always, Itachi," Orochimaru said.
"Then, is there anything to discuss?" Itachi asked. "We cannot permit you to continue researching how to open it yourself. We cannot possibly monitor you for your research, so instead we have no choice but to kill you."
"Posturing doesn't suit you, Itachi," Orochimaru said. "You and Deidara came as shadow clones, and Konan is likely stocking most of her paper out of range. You would not come into my prepared ground without such precautions. You're too afraid of overextending, so you cannot commit enough resources to threaten me. Unless you somehow believe your half-hearted effort will achieve what Nagato could not?"
"Don't underestimate us," Deidara snapped back.
Itachi considered that. "Suppose I grant this. We will not let you kill us, and you will somehow escape an attack that we specifically prepared to kill you. We must still drive you out of Leaf and prevent the village from giving you the resources you need to complete your research."
"I see. Logical. I would be slowed by gathering my own biosealing subjects. Still, before we engage in our pointless dance, I have an offer for you."
"Oh?" Konan asked. "As far as we are concerned, our victory is a matter of time, Orochimaru. We have military superiority over the rest of the world, and we will eventually open the rift and return Nagato to life. Why should we accept any offer of yours?"
Orochimaru shrugged. "I am not without options. My offer is simple: let me claim and fortify the rift site. I have no interest in raising the dead of any village, so no village will gain the power to surpass you. You will have the world peace you envisioned under this international treaty you've created."
"You're offering us nothing to surrender our victory," Konan said.
"If you do not," Orochimaru said, smiling slightly, "and I become convinced that I will be unable to stop Nagato's resurrection, then I will spread knowledge of the rift to all the countries of the world. I have prepared ample evidence both of the rift's existence, as well as the feasibility of reopening it. Everyone that once banded together against you will know that they must do so again to prevent the resurrection of Pain. To ease the pain of initiating the war for the rift, I will pledge my services – bioseal augmentations, ninjutsu, summons – to any village that will wage war to claim it. Except Rain, naturally."
"We can crush any alliance assembled by the villages in their current states," Itachi said.
"How confident are you?" Orochimaru asked. "I count six jinchūriki, all of whom would be very familiar with your methods after the last time you did the same. They will have made preparations. You could crush the alliance, but only if you did so before it formed."
"Is that what you want?" Konan asked. "Do you want us to kill the leaders of every village preemptively to secure our victory? The villages would go to war against us immediately – not one they would win, but one that everyone would lose. Have you even thought ahead to what happens if your alliance wins against us? There is only one rift. The alliance would immediately go to war with each other to see who got to claim it for their eternal victory. Infighting might even begin before they attack us – and, if we saw the alliance incoming, we would have no choice but to sow those seeds of discord as a tool of our own. What I see here, Orochimaru, is you threatening to plunge the world into a war that could eclipse any thus far. Weren't you once on our side? Didn't you once want peace?"
Orochimaru laughed. "I do want peace. Peace and quiet and time to research far from bothersome people such as yourself. It wasn't until Nagato elected to make his ambition everyone's problem that I realized we had a fundamental difference in values. I spent considerable effort making sure he died, and I do not want him returned. So, I offer you a choice: do you want peace? Or will you sacrifice it to have Nagato back?"
Konan frowned.
"We will have Nagato back," Itachi said. "We cannot have peace without his vision."
"Is that so?" Orochimaru asked. "What were his last words, again? 'Even if there are no shortcuts to world peace, humanity can still do it the hard way.' This fledgling treaty you've created seems like the hard way to me. You will fight against human nature in every possible way to make it stick. Yet, it appears to be working. My understanding from Leaf's attrition rates is that they are running their lowest rate of missions in living memory. The actions of imbeciles like Hidan degrade that peace, but it appears to me as if you have something worth striving for.
"Would you really destroy that for the chance to have Nagato back, knowing that, if you do so, it would be in a world he himself would never have wanted? He had every opportunity to raze the villages and implement safer plans for world peace, knowing that in decades or centuries, the world would heal from his actions. I know you know – we were both there when he spoke of it. Now, you will gladly do the things he thought too heinous to consider. What would he think of the current treaty, its potential for lasting into the future? How will he feel when he learns that you burned it all down for his life – a life he voluntarily sacrificed, asking you to do exactly this?"
Konan hesitated.
"Enough, Orochimaru," Itachi said. "We will not submit to your blackmail."
Finally, Konan nodded. "We would not burn the world down – the destruction you threaten would be only your responsibility, Orochimaru. Whatever you destroy, we can repair. And Nagato will help us do so."
"I did not agree with him, in the end," Orochimaru said, expression grim, "but even I can tell that you are disgracing his memory."
Orochimaru brought his hands together to form a handseal, and the four ninja burst into movement.
o-o-o
A trio of Narutos were racing down the stairs when a sudden explosion dispelled them.
Suddenly, Naruto was outside Orochimaru's estate again. His rage at Orochimaru hadn't subsided, but Akatsuki had started to fight and he had to react. The distant sound of explosions rumbled beneath the earth, and people were looking at him.
"Activate your seals to contain him," Naruto said to Sasori. He turned to the ANBU. "If the seals seem like they're doing anything besides setting up a barrier, destroy them."
Sasori's shimmering seven-pointed barrier immediately burst from the seals. Naruto had a momentary thread of worry. Would Orochimaru be able to escape if he let Akatsuki get all their seals ready? Then the worry subsided. It was fucking Orochimaru. He had forewarning. If he didn't get away, then he fully deserved what he was going to get.
A final, massive crack sent the earth shaking underneath Naruto, and a pillar of flames burst skywards from the heart of Orochimaru's home as the rest of the building collapsed inwards. A winged creature – Konan, holding Itachi and Deidara – flew out of the collapsing building. A series of explosive tags detached from her wings and flew into the smoke. They detonated against something, but she continued to fly away.
"Drop the barrier, Sasori!" she called out. "He's breached it already!"
Sasori promptly deactivated the seals and the shimmering in the air subsided.
"Orochimaru's betrayed Leaf," Naruto yelled out to the ANBU. "Hunt him down and capture him!"
Given that Orochimaru had just murdered a Leaf ninja in cold blood, ANBU took to the implicit order to work with Akatsuki with ease as they bounded after the flying Konan and the now-grounded Itachi and Deidara. Konan glanced back at Naruto and frowned.
Paper slips streamed out of a nearby building and assembled themselves into a facsimile of Konan. "Order your ninja back," she said.
"Listen, Konan," Naruto said. "You do not get to tell me how to-"
"Look!" she said, gesturing at the collapsed remains of Orochimaru's estate. Naruto thought he saw shapes moving in the smoke. "He's made monstrosities to hunt us, but-"
A creature burst out of the smoke, humanoid yet quadripedal, covered in alternating stretches of purplish chitin and raw, red musculature. Its back was a bouquet of arms, and each of the creature's dozen appendages ended in scarlet claws.
Right. Orochimaru had just shown Naruto that he gave approximately zero fucks about hurting Leaf ninja, and now he was going to turn the rest of the village into collateral damage.
Naruto leaped out of the way as Konan deformed to let the monstrosity's lunge phase through her, though where it touched her, the slips of paper glowed a bright crimson. Another explosion sounded through the air as Naruto landed on an outbuilding's rooftop, and Naruto remembered that fucking Deidara was in the village too.
Screw Orochimaru. He didn't need to spend effort preventing Orochimaru from getting away. He didn't trust Orochimaru a whit, but he did think that Orochimaru would eventually work with him to prevent Akatsuki from getting the rift. What he needed to do was keep the rest of the village safe from Orochimaru and Akatsuki's reckless action.
"Shadow Clone Technique!" he called out. Clones popped into existence and one promptly disappeared to spread word throughout the village and bend its will towards defense. He needed everyone to work together to keep this from becoming Leaf's next great tragedy.
I looked to the guard at the gate with a confused, friendly expression. I was a civilian facing a ninja; confused and friendly was always a good expression to have.
"May I help you, honored ninja?" I asked, bowing deeply from my seat atop the wagon's bench.
"Passport."
"My what now?"
"Your passport! Your documents proving that you're allowed to be here!"
"Sir...I'm confused. I don't know what you mean by 'passport'. I've never heard of anything like that. My name is Tanaka. I've been trading here for six years. I'm known to every merchant in the city. Heck, most of this"—I jerked a thumb towards the back of my wagon, currently filled with boxes and barrels—"is an order from the head of House Obara. Medicine, foodstuffs, silks, glass, and fine wines. I have the manifest with his signature right here—" I started to reach into my pouch to produce the relevant document and froze as the ninja was suddenly in front of me, hand upraised to kill, thumb and forefinger spread into a Y with a glowing arc of electricity between them.
"Whoa, whoa!" I said, shrinking back with my hands in the air. "I'm sorry! I'm just a merchant. I was going to show you my manifest—my papers! That's what you wanted, right? My papers, proving that I'm right to be here?"
In one smooth motion, he released the jutsu, dragged me out of the wagon by my shirt, slapped me upside the head with enough force to spin me around, and shoved me into the dirt. "Don't get smart with me, you little shit. You said you didn't have a passport. Were you lying to a law officer?"
"No, no! I'm sorry, sir, very sorry!" I bowed, full dogeza, my nose pressed into the dust of the road. Fang was never a well-watered country and they'd been having a drought lately. The ground was so dry it had cracked in places.
"Sir, I don't know specifically what you mean by 'passport'," I gabbled out, not lifting my head. "Maybe that started after I was last here? I do have my manifest, proving that I'm delivering for a citizen of your fine nation. I know that processing such paperwork can be time-consuming and annoying...a friend of mine mentioned that there was expedited processing available for a fee? Something about ten thousand ryō to cover the cost of having an off-duty magistrate come back on shift long enough to review the documents? I have the money in my cart...if you wanted to take it and give it to the magistrate so they could review my bona fides, that—"
"Are you trying to bribe me, you little fuck?!" He kicked me in the ribs, hard enough to make me oof and go sprawling.
Yes, duh. "No sir, of course not, sir!" Why did I have to get the one sagebedamned honest customs agent in the Elemental Nations?
"You people. All you foreigners. You sicken me," the guard said. "Constantly creeping into our country, causing trouble, spreading disease. Poisoning us, stealing our bloodlines. Drug addicts and rapists, all of you. The ones who aren't spies, anyway. Are you a spy, scum?"
"No sir! Just a civilian merchant, sir!" I pressed my nose a little harder into the ground.
"We'll see about that. Come on, you're going to meet the Great Leader."
The what now?
He grabbed me by the wrist and hauled me up into an extremely effective come-along hold that had me up on my toes and yelping in pain.
"Sir, please, my wagon! I can't just leave it there. Someone—ow!—someone will steal all my goods and I'll be ruined! Please sir, those goods are for your people, bought and paid for!"
"Shut the fuck up, pissant." He cranked my arm a little tighter; I yowled in pain but I forced myself not to struggle. If struggling didn't rip my shoulder apart, it would piss him off.
Still, apparently my words had made an impact. "Jun!" he shouted. "Bring the corpse worm's wagon along to the Great Leader."
Jun, a maybe-fourteen-year-old, saluted in a fashion that was not the way Fang had done it for the last forever. He thumped his chest twice with one hand and motioned as though throwing his heart at my captor. I made a note of the gesture; something had changed in Fang, and the sooner I could figure out what it was, the more likely I could get out of this without violence happening.
"Please, sir, my wagon," I said, making my voice as obsequious as possible, "it's full of fragile and perishable items and Clan Lord Obara is going to be upset if they're damaged. Would it be possible—ow!"
"Say another word, you ugly little corpse worm. I dare you."
Now that just seemed unkind. Yes, the people of Fang tended to be darker than those from farther east, where I'd been born, and thus we were paler, but not so much that we could be rightly be compared to the pallid maggots that one found in well-decomposed corpses. Yes, I'd heard the term 'corpse worm' before, but only in whispers. It wasn't something that polite company used, nor anyone who wanted to maintain decent trade relations with outsiders. Not that there wasn't a streak of xenophobia and racism towards foreigners in Fang's culture, but they kept it carefully masked when dealing with outsiders like me, people who could help them. Heck, usually they wouldn't even refer to 'the W word', as they called it in front of the foreign-born. Something had changed a lot in Fang, and it had done so very quickly.
Still, I didn't say a word. Clearly, I had used up this man's supply of patience. Rotten little turd.
Seriously, what had happened?! Fang had been a nice enough place, just a few years ago. Sure, it had its problems—it treated its civilians as an underclass, medicine was hard to come by unless you were wealthy, and the literacy rate was lower than one would find in more enlightened nations. Still, it was nice enough. Most of the people were friendly, excited to chat with a foreigner over a mug of something—especially if that something was imported cider being given out as free samples.
No, this was decidedly weird and I had no idea how it happened. Worse, what if it spilled out of the borders of Fang?
Fang was notable for only two things: its mines and its military. They supplied something like twelve percent of all the copper, gold, and tin mined in the Elemental Nations and for whatever reason their ninja birthrate was ludicrously high. Other countries' populations were a fraction of a percent ninja—Fire had three hundred thousand people, of whom only fifteen hundred were ninja. Rock had perhaps two hundred thousand, of whom about eleven hundred were ninja. The rest were roughly the same.
The entire nation of Fang was perhaps forty thousand souls, barely larger than some major cities, but they had eleven hundred ninja. Heck, they even had an S-ranker, a boast that most of the minor nations could not make. Granted, Yodogawa Minori wasn't quite in the same league as Fire's Sannin or Namikaze Minato, or Earth's Ōnoki, but by all reports she was strong enough that even those luminaries would prefer not to cross jutsu with her. Fortunately, the Chūnin Exams were in Sand this year and she had been in attendance when I left there, so I at least shouldn't have to worry about an angry S-rank ninja crashing down on my head.
Not that it mattered, of course. Even a genin could kill a civilian like me, not even needing to break a sweat in the process. Still, one heard rumors about S-rank ninja...that the way they gained their power was by drinking the souls of their slain opponents. If a genin killed me, I would pass on to the Pure Lands. If the legends were true and an S-ranker killed me, I would simply be consumed for all time.
My captor was hustling me along at a good rate and the city of Hidden Jaw wasn't that large. We had arrived at our destination: a building that was both massive and massively ugly, right in one of the spendiest parts of town. It was a full four stories tall and the doors were enormous, six inches thick with tacky gold embossings. The entryway was fully large enough to drive a wagon through when the doors were swung open like this.
Wildly impractical doors. They couldn't be opened or closed quickly in case of an attack, and there were no scrape marks on the ground, which means the doors didn't fit flush, so cold air would leak in during the winter. Also, I could see that the hinges were iron, not steel. Fang had wild temperature swings between its hot summers and frigid winters; over time those hinges would warp and the doors would be stuck. Impressive but impractical. Whoever had selected them was ignorant of architecture and cared about appearance over function. Could I use that?
I glanced back and could see Jun a few blocks away, driving my wagon towards us at speed. The oxen were tired but they knew what it meant when they were walking through a city: the trip was over, they were being taken to a stable where they would be unharnessed and put into warm, dry stalls with lots of food and water. They were plenty anxious to get here, and, if anything, Jun was having to hold them back. Best of all, nothing had shifted in the cargo bed so far as I could tell. Thank the Sage for that.
I was hustled inside and along several corridors. My captor spoke to a variety of servants, all of whom assured him that yes, Great Leader Kirifuda was sitting in audience in the main room.
"Please sir, I'm unfamiliar with the customs and don't wish to be rude," I said to the ninja behind me, not looking behind me as I spoke. He was no longer twisting my arm up, instead letting me walk ahead with only the occasional shove if I moved too slowly or choke-inducing yank to the collar if I moved too fast. "Could you please tell me how to address this man that you are taking me to?"
"You will not address him unless he speaks to you," said my angry and xenophobic ninja escort. "If he graces you with his words, you will reply swiftly and briefly. The last words out of your corpse worm mouth will be 'Great Leader'. You will not look upon him; he is too holy for your pig-fucking eyes. You will take dogeza and keep your filthy eyes down."
Well, poop. That was going to make this challenging. Always easier to talk your way out of a bad spot when you were able to see the people you were talking to and adjust your words based on their visible emotional cues.
"Thank you, honored ninja," was all I said.
I was shoved into a grand hall at the center of the building. It was stupidly large, eighty feet on each side and the ceiling went up a full two floors. We had come through the south side; there were four massive fireplaces along the east and west walls, each of them large enough to roast an ox. There was no way they would be sufficient to heat this room in the winter. There would be ice on the water pitchers.
There were crowds of people on both sides of the room, at least several hundred of them. They each wore long robes and a strangely-shaped hat with a wide brim. The robes were colored like straw and the hats had gold stitching. There was variety in their shoes, but none of those shoes were practical for actually walking down a road, much less the wilderness.
At the door was a carpet. A monstrosity of red and gold thread fully twelve feet wide, it ran from the door up the length of the room to a six-step dais atop which sat a Sagecursed throne. An actual throne.
In my travels, I had met literally hundreds of ninja, including multiple Kage. None of them were so pretentious as to use a throne. Sure, some Daimyo used them, but...
Of course, the throne was not the astounding thing. No, the astounding thing was the corpulent little toad of a man sprawled across that throne was clearly not a ninja.
He was tall, I'll give him that. Six feet, at least. Probably almost that tall lying down, too. Folds of fat dripped off of him like a grease candle melting in the sun. His neck had wattles and his ugly squinched-up face had enough chins that I didn't manage to count them all before I hit the ground.
I went to full dogeza, taking advantage of the fact that my face was hidden to sort rapidly through my brief impression of the 'Great Leader's face. His hair was straight and had been died a rich bronze color, but the dye was inexpertly applied and patchy. There were some flyaways that suggested he might have a combover for a bald spot. He had painted his face a pale gold-yellow, but the paint was badly done and clearly showed a rim of night-dark skin around his eyes and at the edges of his face. That suggested he had done it himself instead of having an expert do it. Didn't trust attendants? Did he fear the possibility of a coup? How was a civilian even in charge here?
Meanwhile, my captor spoke to the 'Great Leader', explaining that I was an illegal immigrant, probably a spy, who had been captured sneaking into the city.
'Sneaking into the city?' I rolled up to the front gate in an oxcart! I had a legal cargo!
"These people," the Great Leader said, the tone suggesting that he was shaking his head. "They're scum, as everyone knows. You did well to catch him, Gota. You're the best. Isn't he the best, everyone?"
The entire crowd, multiple hundreds of people, sounded off like a fucking temple chorus.
"He is the best, Great Leader!"
"Please, Great Leader, I—" Every scrap of breath left my body and the world went white as Gota kicked me in the danglies.
I am going to see you die for that, was the first thought that came to mind as I got myself back under control. Granted, not a sensible thing for a civilian to think towards a ninja. Still.
"Don't talk to me, scum," the Great Leader said. "Scum like you doesn't talk to me. Do they, everyone?"
"No, Great Leader!" chorused the crazy-pants crowd.
"What were you doing here, scum?"
What the fuck? He just said that I wasn't to talk to him and now he was asking me questions? Pick a path, asshole.
"I am but a humble merchant, come to make a delivery, Great Leader."
"A delivery. I know what you're really here for. You're here to steal our goats. That's what all you types want to do."
Beneath the cover of my down-turned face, I brushed one thumb across the top of the very large ring that I wore on my right middle finger. The top half slid off and I caught it in my palm. Below the now-removed cover was a mirror an inch long and half that wide—basically, the maximum size that could fit on the first joint of my finger. It was extremely expensive, perfectly shaped glass that had been carefully polished to render a clear image with little distortion.
I advanced my hands just slightly, tilting them so that I could see the fat pig's face reflected in the mirror.
"Answer him, pig-fucker!" Gota demanded, kicking me in the thigh.
Damn it, Gota! Cut it out! You told me not to speak unless he asked a question and he didn't ask a question!
"Great Leader, I am not a thief. I have a delivery of cargo, bought and paid for by Lord Obara—"
The Great Leader spat off the side of his throne. "Obara was a traitor. A spy from Earth who snuck in here and pretended to be one of us."
What? Obara's great-great-grandparents had been among the founders of Hidden Jaw! And if he was a spy from Earth then he couldn't be a traitor to Fang. That wasn't how that worked. To be a traitor you had to be loyal in the first place. That was simply what words meant.
"I killed him," the Great Leader said. "Killed him myself. Cut him open with my own hands, let his guts spill all over the floor. He was a traitor. Everyone knows that."
Fatty, there is no way you did that. Obara Matsuo was an accomplished swordsman and even at sixty he was deadly with a blade—for a civilian, anyway. I'd be surprised if you can even walk a quarter mile without needing to stop for a rest; Obara would have carved you like the slab of rotting bacon you clearly are. Rotworms in your brain, maybe? ...Nah, any rotworm that tried to take a bite out of this guy would puke it back up again and look for a better meal. Assuming it didn't simply die.
"What are you really doing here, corpse worm?"
"Answer him!" Gota said, kicking me before I could even open my mouth.
"Great Leader, I promise that I am simply a merchant. I have a cargo that perhaps would interest you? Fine wines, rare and exotic foods, spices, beautiful glassware to bedazzle and beautify your lovely home." I quickly hurried to add, "Great Leader" on the end so that maybe Goda wouldn't need to wear out his kickin' foot. Too late, or maybe he just felt he needed the practice.
Behind me, outside of the throne room, someone screamed. I heard the familiar sound of rock exploding into fragments, then more screams.
Damn it, you two. Ten minutes. You couldn't give me ten sagebedamned minutes? Maybe I could— Oh, whatever.
I reached out, grabbed Gota's ankle, and yanked it towards me while simultaneously snapping his knee with my other palm. He went down with a girlish shriek and I was on my feet. I stamped on his neck hard enough to snip his head off, just to be sure. ("Always make sure!" Sensei had always said.)
Half a dozen ninja were descending on me; I sliced the first two in half with a Lightning Lash, then hurled a Snow Blind seal to my left, turning that part of the room into a blizzard of reflective and very sharp particles that rendered vision impossible, breathing difficult, and moving painful. Three other ninja had been shoving their way through the crowd and now they were too busy gasping for air and trying not to be blinded by running through tiny little floating knives.
I felt the other two coming through the door behind me. A finger-length snake went past me, biting one of my remaining attackers on the neck. He spasmed and hit the floor, his body thrashing in seizures. A human head flew by, high and to the right, moving at speeds sufficient to cave in the chest of Fatty even through the protective armor of his blubber.
Meanwhile, the CrazyPants Chorus was screaming and running in all directions.
Moments later, the room was empty and the scene contained. I rounded on my team.
"Damnit, Sunny! You didn't have to kill him!" I pointed dramatically at the very dead blob of lard on the throne.
She glowered back at me. "I think you mean, 'thank you, most wonderful Tsunade, for acting before the local Kage-lite could get his ass in gear!'"
"Are you fucking insane? You think that blob of lard was a Kage-lite? He was the civilian we were here to interrogate!"
She blinked. She looked at the puddle of lard, then at me, then shrugged. "Oops?"
"Oops? Seriously, that's the best you've got?" I scrubbed both hands over my face in exasperation. "Damnit, Tsunade. Months of painstaking intelligence gathering and prep, weeks of traveling through that shithole of a desert in an oxcart, I get in front of him and you blow the whole thing in the first five minutes?"
"How was I supposed to know that was him? He was sitting on a throne in a ninja village! Of course he was a ninja!"
"Dear sister," Orochimaru said, his voice dust dry, "did you, perhaps, not read the briefing book?"
She hesitated.
"Oh my fucking gods," I said, gaping at her. "Seriously? You seriously didn't read the briefing book?"
"What, it was boring! You're in charge of that bullshit, why should I worry about it?"
"I— How could—" I was so angry I couldn't even get words out, so I forced myself to stop and take a breath.
"Tsunade," I said after a few moments. "That slob over there somehow built a big enough cult following to take over one of the strongest minor nations. He convinced almost every ninja in the village to obey him. He got the local S-ranker to hand over all administrative control of the city. He did it in under a year. What does that sound like to you?"
"I dunno. Genjutsu, maybe?"
"Yes. Except he was a civilian, as it said in the briefing book! We needed to know how he did it. If we were able to do it ourselves, we could have used it to bloodlessly conquer the rest of the world. Except now we can't learn how he did it, because you fucking killed him." I paused, frowning as something occurred to me. "Wait, why are you guys even here? You were supposed to stay in the hidden compartment on the wagon."
Orochimaru shifted uncomfortably. Tsunade snorted and hooked a thumb at him. "This one here gave us away. Shifted at just the wrong moment, some guards heard it and started investigating the wagon."
"I had a cramp," the Snake Sannin said uncomfortably.
Jiraiya took a deep breath and let it out very slowly.
"Un-fucking-believable. Come on, let's go check Fatty's quarters. Maybe he'll have a diary or an evil accomplice or something else that can tell us how he pulled this shit off."
A cold wind briefly made Uchiha Itachi shiver as he stood in mid-air, observing Leaf's mysterious protective barrier with the clarity of the Sharingan. Next to him, Konan hovered in her paper angel form, while Sasori's latest core puppet, a giant wooden crane that should not have been remotely aerodynamic, flapped patiently up and down. Kisame, out in front, wielded Samehada like a lumberjack, and with every blow, the subtle lattice of chakra that maintained the barrier trembled and dimmed.
Itachi's feelings were mixed to say the least. On the one hand, his best efforts to spare his wayward former village had been rejected. Leaf would not live to witness the glory of Nagato's coming age of glory as he'd hoped. Instead, by attacking Akatsuki at the rift, they'd attempted to destroy world peace twice over, and there was only one possible response.
On the other hand, this time he'd be able to massacre his clan properly, and never have to admit to anyone that last time, he'd just forgotten that civilians existed, like any normal ninja did on a daily basis.
The barrier was nearly gone. Would Leaf charge out in one last desperate assault, or would they foolishly seek to grasp a home ground advantage? Their fate was sealed in either case.
Movement. It seemed Leaf had chosen the third option: send out only their S-rankers and elite jōnin via a hidden tunnel to duel Akatsuki, minimising personnel losses and collateral damage… an arrogant strategy that implied the possibility of victory without every possible sacrifice.
Wait. Something was wrong. Why was there only one figure? Was the Hokage truly so arrogant as to believe his superior numbers alone would be enough to defeat all of Akatsuki? Or was this some cunning manoeuvre designed to–
That wasn't Uzumaki Naruto. It wasn't even Tsunade. That casually strolling figure was unmistakably Gōketsu Hazō–the sealing special jōnin with the personal combat potential of a highly-explosive limp noodle. Was Leaf's only remaining rift researcher being offered up as a sacrifice? But it would be far, far too late for that.
Still, the inventor of the skywalkers and skyslicers was the one man who might still surprise them with some unexpected masterwork of sealcrafting. Best to be certain.
Even with all the lip-reading prowess of an S-rank Sharingan user, Itachi had barely caught it. How had Gōketsu evolved the Iron Nerve far enough to compress that entire message to under a second?
Itachi felt a chill. Akatsuki had every possible advantage in this battle, so why…?
"What are you talking about?" he demanded. "If this is some belated plea of surrender…"
"Not at all," Gōketsu interrupted. "It's just that you invited me to join Akatsuki before, and conditions have only changed for the better, right?"
Itachi allowed his look of utter incredulity to speak for him.
"As the runemaster who created that Force Dome and reduced the rift fortress to dust, I'm obviously a more valuable recruit than I was last time," Gōketsu elaborated, "especially considering that, now that Orochimaru's run away with the rift, I'm the only rift expert who can help you get it back. Also, with him gone, Leaf's weaker than ever, so even if I turn out to be a double agent, you can still wipe it out without any problems.
"Or do you want to bring Pain back eventually, with even more memories lost because it took longer, and explain that you let a world-peace-aligned genius researcher die when he was begging you to join?"
Itachi looked at Konan, gauging her reaction.
"We do want this new technology," Konan acknowledged, "and if Orochimaru is its only other user, it would be a pain to hunt him with no knowledge of its capabilities and counters. But you do realise, Gōketsu, that this will not persuade us to spare Leaf? You are not worth allowing such a dangerous thorn in our side to persist."
"I don't see the problem," Hazō said. "I'm the world's most prolific missing-nin, worth any three of you put together. If my former village has to go for the sake of world peace, then it has to go. But I do want you to spare my family."
"That's a given," Konan said off-handedly. "Per Nagato's law, any Akatsuki member can have their family accepted as personal minions. He optimistically assumed that at least one of the boys would be able to secure a date before we completed the ritual and the organisation ceased to be necessary."
"And they will not be harmed?"
"Members of Akatsuki are not allowed to seriously harm each other."
"Ah," Gōketsu said. "Hence Hidan."
"Hence Hidan," Itachi, Konan, Kisame, and Sasori agreed in unison.
"Do we really want the Gōketsu?" Sasori interrupted in his current puppet's screeching voice. "I can maybe collaborate with the boy, especially since he did me a favour by killing Deidara, but by reputation, that clan is about as stable as a chakra megalodon riding a unicycle, and there's nothing I hate more than instability."
"They do have Mari," Konan mused. "She has S-rank potential herself, and I would love to finally have another woman in Akatsuki. Besides, she's incredibly hot even by redhead standards. I always thought it would be a waste to have to kill her."
Itachi gave her a sideways look. "But aren't you and Nagato…?"
"We have a special understanding."
It occurred to Itachi that Konan didn't have to be the only Akatsuki member to take advantage of the opportunity.
"Now that you mention it," he said, "I do recall that Nara Kei possesses an aura of noble tragedy nearly equal to my own. When we crossed paths, I witnessed her stub her toe on a chair leg and promptly curse the vile iniquities of this sadistic world that allows no purity to remain undespoiled. Perhaps she could become a consort who properly appreciated my tormented heart."
Konan gave him a peculiar look as Gōketsu, for some reason, muttered "Par for the course" under his breath.
"Itachi, you are twice her age."
"No, I'm not!" Itachi exclaimed. "She's eighteen and I'm twenty-one."
"You're thirty-six, Itachi," Konan said. "Also, you graduated the Academy at the normal age of twelve and followed a swift but still chronologically-plausible career path before you left Leaf."
She blinked.
"I don't know why I just said that."
Itachi frowned. "Are you sure? I thought I was promoted to ANBU Captain at the age of twelve. I remember them having to say I was thirteen on the paperwork because otherwise people might think it was implausible."
Konan sighed. "You probably just dreamed it. Anyway, it would be ridiculously creepy and violate all standards of both conventional morality and common sense. In that light, as acting Akatsuki Leader, I have no choice but to give you my full blessing. Just remember that you're still forbidden to do anything with a woman that might count as an Uchiha breeding programme."
Everyone present simultaneously shuddered (which, in Sasori's case, briefly made him fall out of the air).
"So," Gōketsu said into the uneasy silence, "are you accepting me as a member?"
His arguments were sound, Itachi acknowledged, and with Deidara gone, they did need to replenish their numbers before the more uncooperative AMITY members started getting ideas. But still… was it really a good idea to allow Gōketsu "treason of the week" Hazō into their deepest confidence?
No, Itachi decided. Gōketsu Hazō had to die, and ideally in a way that didn't undermine Konan's authority too much.
"Not so fast," he declared. "All Akatsuki members have to be of S-rank strength. If you wish to join us, you must prove yourself… by defeating a current member in single combat. To the death."
"Don't be ridiculous!" Konan snapped. "That's no test. You might as well kill the boy now."
Itachi shrugged. "He's one sixty-fourth Uchiha. By my agreement with Nagato, that means I get to decide what to do with him. If he puts up a good enough fight, we can always fish him out of the afterlife later.
"Do you have the resolve, Gōketsu?"
Gōketsu just smiled, with eerie confidence.
"It's my highest raw stat. So just to be clear, once I win, that's it? Akatsuki member forever? No circumstances under which Akatsuki members lose their memberships, as long as they don't betray the organisation?"
"Correct," Itachi said warily.
"And all of my family become my minions and can't be harmed by Akatsuki? Again, to be clear, that has to include legal family according to Leaf law, not blood family. Mari and the others are all my family by adoption."
"That seems logical," Konan said.
"And I win if, at the end of the battle, my opponent is dead directly or indirectly due to my actions?"
Itachi couldn't shake the feeling that Gōketsu was trying to get something past them with the weasel wording, but the boy went on before Itachi could object.
"Just saying I have to kill them doesn't account for summons and the like. I'm a summoner, so my dogs are a big part of my strength, and I don't want a scenario where a dog deals the finishing blow and it doesn't count because I was only indirectly responsible."
"Makes sense to me," Kisame called out, without pausing from his work.
"Great," Gōketsu said. "Give me an hour to get my gear together and talk to my family, then we can fight."
"Very well," Konan agreed, "But no runic trickery. We'll attack the second we sense anything."
"Oh, I won't need runes for this," Gōketsu said calmly as he headed off.
-o-
"Are you prepared?" Itachi demanded imperiously. "Choose your opponent. Any member of Akatsuki will do; we're all more than a match for you."
Gōketsu nodded, then produced an item from his backpack.
Itachi began to get a very bad feeling.
Gōketsu held up the urn.
"I choose… Deidara."
"Unacceptable," Konan told him. "Take this seriously, or the invitation is withdrawn."
"You confirmed that betrayal is the only way to stop being an Akatsuki member," Gōketsu replied. "That means death doesn't count. Presumably, Pain is still an Akatsuki member as well, even though he's still trapped in the afterlife."
Over near the rapidly-fading barrier, Kisame started laughing.
Gōketsu hefted the urn, then cast it up into the air. As it fell, he nailed it with a spinning kick, causing it to explode into a shower of ash and ceramic shards.
"Deidara is now dead," Hazō said, "indirectly due to my actions, specifically runic bombardment at O'Uzu a few weeks ago."
"Fine," Itachi spat. "Welcome to Akatsuki. Bring out your family, and they will be spared while Leaf burns."
"Before that…" Gōketsu said, unsealing three hefty crates and starting to pull out scroll after scroll.
Itachi knew those scrolls. He'd made extensive use of them while preparing to massacre his clan.
"Gōketsu... are those family trees?"
"Yup," Gōketsu said casually. "Leaf has amazing genealogical records, almost as good as Mist's. I guess the Nara are good for something after all.
"Now, as you can see from the latest scroll, my sister Kei is married to Nara Shikamaru, which makes him and the Nara my legal family. They have extensive marriage ties to the Yamanaka and the Akimichi, so they're my family as well. Collectively, the Ino-Shika-Chō have various marriage ties to a ton of other Leaf clans, and those have ties to other Leaf clans, and it's amazing how incestuous the whole thing gets when viewed on the scale of centuries, but in short, every clan in Leaf is my family one way or another. It'll be a bit of a pain to command them all myself, so for now, I've named Uzumaki Naruto Big Hat Minion Number One, at least until I can come up with a funnier title."
"Now can I kill him?" Itachi begged.
"I'm afraid it's too late," Konan said. "You were the one who gave him a formal route into the organisation. If it makes you feel any better, we're still going to execute the clanless. These days, they comprise a large proportion of Leaf ninja, so it should be enough to save face."
"They're my family too."
Sometimes, Itachi really, really hated his life.
"So you know how the Gōketsu were retroactively Leaf citizens all along?" Gōketsu asked. "That means the vote replacing Kei as KEI Coordinator in absentia was illegal, so they had to reinstate her. She has just issued eight hundred adoption tickets to the Kei Clan, which they used. Big Hat Minion Number One is furious. And since many of the new members have concubinage bonds to other clans, which Leaf law kinda sorta recognises, the Kei Clan is now also part of the Gōketsu Family.
"Now, are you guys prepared to provide the entirety of Leaf with room and board in Hidden Rain, or would you prefer us to keep our old lodgings?"
No words were spoken during Akatsuki's journey home. The only sound to be heard was Kisame's intermittent hysterical laughter.
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(Future Canon?) Interlude: Gōketsu Hazō, He of Many TitlesNew
(Future Canon?) Interlude: Gōketsu Hazō, He of Many Titles
"HELP!" the old man screamed, racing back from the woods, his gathered firewood abandoned.
He was far too slow. The winter had been long, the dire wolf was hungry, and it was far faster than the old civilian had been in his youth, much less now.
The wolf howled, its breath a chakra-infused wind attack that sent its prey sprawling. The old man hit the frozen earth hard and rolled, pulling the work knife from his belt and preparing to leave at least one mark on his attacker before he died.
The wolf pounced, its shadow darkening the sky over the civilian—
A chakra-infused fist smashed into the wolf's shoulder, breaking bones and hurling the hundred-kilo animal to the side so that it did not land on and crush its victim. It hit the ground atop a bed of stone spikes that had not been there moments earlier; death was instant.
The old man looked up, eyes wide in shock, to find a ninja standing over him.
No, not a ninja. The ninja.
"You're...you're..."
"Yes, I know," Hazō said with a sigh, offering the man a hand up. "Gōketsu Hazō, Deathbreaker, Earthwarper, Hero of Twin Forks, blah blah blah. Please, just call me Hazō."
"Right... Uh... Yes, m'Lord."
"Really, just Hazō is fine."
"Right! Yes. Sorry, m'Lord. Sir. Hazō! Sorry." He shook himself and laughed slightly. "I imagine it does get a bit much, s— Hazō."
"It's fine. Let's get you back home, shall we? On the way, maybe you could fill me in on things? My team and I are doing wellness checks throughout this county. Has there been any sickness lately? Are the beast attacks up? How is the food situation?"
The old man did his best to answer the flood of questions, even as he did his best to keep up with the barely-leashed energy of the famous ninja's pace.
o-o-o-o
"Sensei, can we swing through here again on the way home?" Michio asked, licking berry pie filling off his fingers. "Damn but that woman can cook."
"You are so disgusting," Ikuko said. "I can't believe you shoveled down three entire pies. You could at least have used a fork. Seriously, Sensei, aren't you supposed to be teaching us important life skills? Can you please get him to learn how flatware works?"
"That's not generally part of my curriculum, Ikuko," Hazō said with a smile. "I suppose we can fit it into the 'Diplomacy and Alliance-Forging Theory' module."
"Forget the flatware business," Ageha said. "For me it's the sweetness. Those pies had enough sugar added to embalm a megalodon. How could you possibly stomach them? Also, those tracks are from a family of cloud rabbits. Two of them are kits, the third is presumably their mother. One of them left a tuft of white fur on the bush. We have passed signs of fourteen other animals in the past fifteen minutes, including—" She went on to give detailed descriptions of multiple animals of various kinds.
"You could at least let me get the question out first," Hazō said with a grin. "Good for you, spotting that I was about to ask. Ikuko, your turn next. I'll check in with you sometime in the next hour. You're doing...hm. Plants, I think."
"Define 'plant', Sensei," the genin said suspiciously.
"Now, now, you know perfectly well what a plant is."
"Yeah, but I'm not sure you do. The last time you gave this task to Michio, and you downgraded him for not including mushrooms. Which are not plants."
"Ah, me. So untrusted by my youngsters. You make me sound like some sort of malevolent kitsune, always trying to trick you. I'm really just doing my best to—"
Hazō broke off, snapped, and twirled a finger. The three teens immediately went back-to-back; Michio drew his knives and pulled lightning into their edges, Ikuko conjured up a sheath of stone across her entire body, and Ageha whirled the wind into a shield around all four of them.
"Esashika Wataru," Hazō called. "As I live and breathe."
There was a slow clap and a man sauntered out of the woods, offering a mocking tribute of yet more slow claps.
He was tall, nearly seven feet, wide as an ox and muscled like one. He wore the uniform of Sand and had a red bandana tied around his left arm, just above the bicep. Twin hook swords hung low on his hips.
"Gōketsu Hazō," the tall man said. "'The Deathbreaker'. Catchy name."
"Yeah, my PR department was proud of that one."
"You have a PR department?" Michio asked, surprised.
Ageha kicked him in the shins. "Of course not, idiot! It's smack talk!"
"Ow!"
Esashika chuckled. "Out here with your little ducklings?"
"As are you and your two friends." Hazō tipped his head, eyes vague as he concentrated elsewhere. "No, three friends." He focused back on the other man. "They're heavy enough that I'm guessing either full adults or you are teaching the first ever obese genin squad."
"Now, now. Don't you think enough insults have passed between us, Gōketsu? Your Kage ordered you to stand down the last time we met. I'm sure you aren't intentionally trying to rile me up so that I'll attack and allow you to 'defend yourself'."
Hazō sighed, suddenly sounding tired. "Esashika, do we have to do the theatrics? You didn't just so happen to stumble over us in the middle of the vast reaches of Fire's forests, and you're not on your way to Leaf with a genin team doing a cultural exchange. This is a hit squad, you're here for me. Fine. Call your friends in and let's just get it done." He looked to his students. "Kids, step back."
"Oh, no," Esashika said, a smile splitting his face. "No, it's not that simple. The children stay on the field, Gōketsu. Can't have you throwing your explosives everywhere, can we?" He gave a piercing whistle and three men faded out of the woods around them. They too wore the colors of Sand but their expressions were grim unlike their mockingly playful leader. All three of them had jōnin flashes on their jackets.
"Sensei?" Ikuko asked quietly.
"It's fine," Hazō murmured, voice low and eyes still on Esashika. "Don't worry. Cloud White, point Alpha, on my mark."
"Sensei!"
"Shut it," Hazō hissed. He stepped forward, Ageha's windstorm parting to let him pass without so much as a ruffled hair.
"Make you a deal, Esashika. You and me, in that clear area over there. Your friends leave the kids alone and when I win they sod off instead of pushing it further."
"Such confidence! And what do I get in exchange for being so wonderfully cooperative?"
"I don't use explosives, and I don't drop Cannai on your head and let him rip you in half like a well-loved chew toy."
"Tsk, tsk. So threatening. I think it might be fascinating to see Gurrotine and Cannai mix it up."
"You got the Wolverine Scroll? Since when? I had tea with Junko not two weeks ago."
"I found it in the woods, actually. I was minding my own business, traveling to Hot Springs for some much-needed relaxation, when I found it lying under a bush. There was a blood trail nearby and I found the dead body of Rokuda Junko a short ways on. Her body had been looted, so I presume she fled from her attackers and hid the Scroll to keep it from them."
Hazō studied him. "You know, I was considering letting this slide, getting us out of here without fighting. Now? Now I'm going to cut you into stew meat and leave it on the ground for the beasts to eat. Junko was my friend, you killed her, and you didn't even the decency to come up with a believable cover story." He turned his head slightly so that he could keep his eyes on Esashika while calling back over his shoulder. "Mark!" He tightened his hand and a cloud of dirt fountained upwards, momentarily forming something far more vision-denying than even the best smoke bomb.
"Hiding" / "Like" / "a Mole!" chorused three young voices behind him.
The dirt rained to the ground and there was no sign of the three genin.
"Lightning Element: Strength of the Storm!" Hazō shouted.
The world slowed around him as lightning crackled across his skin. He had time to think—not much time, but some. He had been holding his Enhanced Earthshaping jutsu all day, meaning that he was at only half chakra. On the other hand, it also meant that no matter where he walked, every scrap of ground within a kilometer of his feet was his to command.
First things first: he blurred to the side just as a trio of ranged jutsu crisscrossed through where he had been standing, the ground pushing back against his feet to speed each step.
Hm. Phoenix Breath Fireball, Sky God's Howl, and Earth Dragon. Wow, this team was taking him seriously. Either that or they had absolutely ludicrous reserves and could afford to spam top-shelf techniques.
Hazō whispered to the earth and, ten meters below him, four small underground pockets smashed closed, crushing the four remaining members of the hit squad into paste. Couldn't have them coming up behind him or, worse, chasing after the kids...speaking of whom, they were making good time but Ageha's form was terrible. He would need to work with her on efficient earthswimming.
Esashika was on him, hook swords swirling in a series of cuts and feints and thrusts so fast that even Hazō's lightning-enhanced, fully chakra-boosted body could barely keep up. He twisted away, a thin cut across his left cheek.
Hazō danced back, trying to open the distance even as he pulled stone spikes out of the ground in a futile attempt to skewer Esashika and end the battle quickly. It wasn't a practical dream; fights at this level were not won in the opening moves. They were won either by the person who could outlast everyone else, or who could bait their enemy into a misstep.
Esashika made no move to follow. He was grinning as he pointed at Hazō's face.
"Got you," he said.
A chill went down Hazō's spine.
"So you did," he admitted, touching his cheek. "All that flailing around for a tiny nick. Well done." The words were meant only to buy time; he aspected his energies into medical chakra and sent it up into his face.
There was something there. A sliver of...stone? No, metal. No, a cluster of them. Tiny little particles, probably transferred from the edge of Esashika's sword. And they were moving, grinding down into the bone.
"Goodbye, Gōketsu," Esashika said. He twitched his head slightly and the particles in Hazō's face—
—were catapulted outwards, tearing most of Hazō's left cheek and a few millimeters of his orbital ridge away and out of his body in a surge of medical chakra.
"Fuck!" Hazō said, putting a hand to his face. "Fucking fuckity fuck."
Esashika tsked. "Was that the best you could do? A competent medic should have been able to open the skin ahead of each particle instead of simply tearing it all away. I thought that brother of yours had been teaching you. Were you slacking or is he simply a shit teacher?"
"Look, I've been busy, okay? He's a great teacher, I just haven't had a lot of time lately."
"Okay." Esashika shrugged and blurred to the attack again, racing forward in a series of short zigs and zags that kept him one step ahead of the spines Hazō was pulling from the earth under him.
The spines were merely a feint, driving Esashika into position to be entombed by a lunging wave of earth, but the other man was no fool; he recognized he was being herded and broke the pattern, leaping to the side just as the wave rose up where he would have been—
—only to find that the wave was a second-level feint and he was coming down on top of an entire bed of nails made of stone. His lefthand sword tipped down and lengthened, hitting the ground and vaulting him clear of the attack.
Of course, that meant he was on a ballistic trajectory in midair. Hazō was waiting for exactly that. He had manifested six stalagmites in front of himself, each chest-high. He spun and kicked, his chakra slicing the top off the nearest pillar even as his foot launched it nearly as fast as one of Kei's kunai, straight at the enemy's head. He whirled down the line, sending five more projectiles after the first, all in under a second.
Still in midair, Esashika batted the entire barrage aside without effort and bounced off thin air, heading back towards Hazō. He hurled his left sword in a flat, spinning arc, blades of incredibly sharp wind flying off in all directions as it moved. Hazō dove to the ground and pulled the earth up over himself like a blanket, blocking the attacks but costing himself mobility and sight of his target.
Esashika was missing from Hazō's tremor sense; he was not in contact with the ground. He hadn't been for the entire fight, actually, or Hazō would simply have sucked him down and crushed him. Esashika the Cloudwalker, the greatest Wind ninja alive, liked to pretend he was walking like a normal person but the truth was that he rarely deigned to touch his sandals to the dirt. It was incredibly frustrating for someone who had built an entire combat style around earth control.
Hazō dropped deeper into the ground, opening it in front of himself and pushing from behind so that he shot through an ephemeral tunnel to be well away from where he had gone down.
A lance of wind, so concentrated it was essentially a physical object, crashed into the ground where he had just been. Nice combo—the sword as a primary and highly visible attack that caused an unaware opponent to dodge slightly. The invisible blades of wind that the sword threw off in all directions, more than enough to shred someone who hadn't dodged far enough. Finally, the Drilling Wind Spike to finish anyone who went underground and thought that three or four feet of soil was enough to protect against an air-based attack.
"Earth Element: Pangolin Earth Armor," Hazō said as he descended, dropping a full twenty meters below the surface and starting his standard pre-battle prep. The magic of the inhuman jutsu pulled stones and grit from around him and welded it together into a bulky suit of nigh-invulnerable armor. It was something of an overkill approach, but Hazō was a big believer in Kagome's Rules of Life, Number 37: There is no 'overkill.' There is only 'open fire' and 'let's blow it up again, just to be sure.'
He finished his other preparations, then spread his awareness out, searching for Esashika's teammates. Based on their opening attacks and the way they had moved, they were skilled jōnin. Not primary players in a fight between Hazō and his peers, but highly effective distractions. He couldn't afford those.
Sensibly, they weren't stupid enough to remain in contact with the earth when fighting against someone who bore the epithet 'Earthwarper'.
He created a pair of Earth Clones just beneath the surface, wrapped each in a close approximation of the Pangolin Earth Armor, and launched them upwards. They had barely touched air when they were destroyed, smashed into little pieces that spilled across the ground.
Hazō analyzed the dispersion of the pieces, backtracked where the attacks must have come from, and toppled three large trees with a quick surge of earth away from their roots and another up at an angle. Two sets of feet brushed against the ground briefly and Hazō made the loamy soil sweep upwards, entombing the enemy ninja and filling their lungs with dirt in the span of a second.
Something hit the ground above him and off to the left. It penetrated deep, easily ten meters, and then detonated. The shockwave spread through the earth and would have pasted Hazō if he hadn't been wearing his armor. As it was, it broke his nose and rattled him around so hard he almost blacked out.
What.
Another impact, another blast, but this time Hazō had pushed the earth away from himself so that ground shocks wouldn't affect him. He kept one hand on the wall of his newly-made cave as it gave him a clearer understanding of the tremors in the ground caused by running ninja feet.
Another blast. And another.
Okay, this was getting silly.
He launched himself back to the surface, popping up in between a clench of three trees and juking to the side. He had successfully escaped notice for just long enough that the Phoenix Breath Fireball didn't roast him even though it set a hundred-year oak on fire.
He flicked a finger casually over his shoulder, crushing the enemy's legs and pulling him into the ground as Hazō triggered his skywalkers and raced to engage with Esashika where he stood ten meters in the air. His hand dipped into his belt pouch and he started hurling first-sized stone balls, one after another.
Esashika saw him coming and laughed. "Not this time, Gōketsu!" he shouted, flicking handseals and waving his hands in a tai-chi push that sent them spinning off course to the left and right. The ones that had been on course in the first place; Hazō was very much a mediocre thrown-weapons fighter and some of them had gone well wide, or over- or undershot.
"My gods," Esashika said, launching a trio of Wind Spikes at Hazō even as he closed. "Is that honestly the best you can do? My genin team throw better than that."
"Yeah, well, it's not my focus. I'm more a taijutsu guy," Hazō grunted, using his pangolin gauntlets to parry the first two strikes of the hook swords. The third he allowed to skip off his armored forearm, angling it to shed the force of the blow. The blade carved a strip off the armor and nearly cut into flesh, but it bought him the chance to land a punishing kick to the ribs that sent Esashika tumbling.
"Ooh, that musta hurt," Hazō said, racing to keep the distance close even as he rained down more punches and kicks. "Felt like two...maybe three ribs?"
"Your face is worse," Esashika said, recovering his guard and setting up a pattern of whirling steel around himself that Hazō simply could not penetrate. "What, not going to use those screamer seals of yours?"
"Nah," Hazō said, flicking his skywalkers off and allowing himself to drop a meter in order to pass below an attack that would have carved his head off even with the protection of his armor. Those fucking swords somehow hadn't gotten the memo that they weren't supposed to cut through solid rock. "I used those on you last time. I figure even you must have found a counter by now."
"I did, yeah," Esashika said, opening his mouth and spitting forth a series of Wind Darts that dug craters into Hazō's armor but did not penetrate. The armor healed itself a moment later. "Damn, nice armor jutsu."
"Thanks," Hazō said, yanking an eight-meter spike out of the ground below them. It smashed into Esashika's foot but the enemy S-ranker simply no-sold the attack; the spike crumbled on impact without doing visible damage. "It's from the pangolins. Good stuff."
"Oh right, how is your bitch of a sister?" Esashika asked even as all the air disappeared from around them, forced outwards by the will of the greatest Wind master in the world.
"Still smarter than you, still finds you repellent. Nice Vacuum Sphere, by the way. That silent casting trick is utter bullshit." The Tunneler's Friend and Usamatsu's Glorious Life-Saving Purifier seals plastered against his mouth inside the armor purged any toxins from his surroundings and fed him a steady stream of clean air in case there wasn't any available.
Esashika grunted, clearly annoyed. "Really thought I had you with that one." He brought the air back, condensing it into an invisible battering ram that smashed into Hazō from below and behind, launching him into the sky.
Or, at least, that was what was supposed to happen. Instead, Hazō dropped closer to the soil and pulled a pillar up under his feet, widening it and curving it into a hemisphere with himself in the center and the open side facing Esashika. The air ram bounced off, cracking the shield slightly but not penetrating. Which was good, because they were right at the limit of how high Hazō could pull the material in this area; more than eight meters was hard to shape on the fly if you needed it to be self-supporting but only had forest loam to work with.
"Try this," Hazō said, thrusting both hands toward his enemy and casting forth a slew of tiny stone spheres that he had palmed from a pocket as he dropped.
Esashika's eyes widened as he saw the tidal wave of explosives that was headed towards him. Hazō could almost see the calculations going on in the other man's eyes: parrying the projectiles with his blades was out, as they would simply explode. The Wind Shield jutsu that Esashika had used during their first encounter created a flat plane of defense; it wouldn't protect against a wide-spread array of explosions coming from all sides. The Cloud Tomb jutsu that he had used in their third encounter could be used to wrap himself in full-body protection, but at the cost of rendering him immobile for several seconds—an eternity at this level. No, there was really only one valid response, and Esashika took it.
He dove for cover behind a nearby tree, a blast of wind speeding his movement to something so fast that Hazō's eyes could barely track even with Strength of the Storm enhancing his speed and perception. He disappeared from sight just as the explosions rocked the area.
Hazō relaxed and sauntered down to the ground, allowing the armor to retract from his head so that he could apply a bandage to his still-bleeding face. (He took care to first expel all the dirt that had gotten into the wound.) That done, he pulled another of the fist-sized stone projectiles that he had used earlier and sauntered over to where Esashika had gone.
He came around the tree and looked down at the wet gobbets of stew meat that, moments before, had been one of the most powerful ninja in existence.
"Did I forget to mention my new toy?" he asked, bouncing the ball in one hand. "Self-deploying skyslicer. Cool, huh?"
Jiraiya looked up to see Elias standing over him, his pipe in his teeth. The old man's clothes ('overalls', he called them) looked just as strange as they had the first time the Sannin saw them. The fact that he still looked like an old man was astounding. He had been here for at least ninety kiloglasses according to some of the other residents but had barely de-aged.
"Morning yourself. Come to join me?"
Elias flicked his pipe from one side of his mouth to another, considering.
Jiraiya was sitting seiza on the closest approximation of a tatami mat that he had been able to produce. An indistinct reddish lump sat on the grass before him and one of the afterlife's unchanging and eternal silverbark trees spread itself above him. Back in the Before, it would have been a pleasant scene, especially during a warm summer with a yellow sun smiling down, the occasional white fluffy cloud, and perhaps a bit of breeze. In a meadow such as this, there would likely have been small furry critters lolloping around being adorable.
There was no sun here. The temperature never varied. There was no wind, and definitely no adorable furry creatures. Not this close to a settlement.
"The mat looks good," Elias grunted. "Nice texture. Very crisp."
Jiraiya's face split in a smile. "Thank you. You're a good teacher."
"When did it come from?"
Jiraiya looked down, running his fingers thoughtfully across the tight weave of the mat. "A chat with Sensei in his private study when I was fifteen." He touched a faintly darker spot. "I spilled my tea there. Black tea, bitter and sharp."
Elias grunted. "Good, but bring it forward next time. Kid memories are the easiest to hold onto. You need to focus on your adulthood."
"That's my current project, actually." He gestured to the reddish lump.
The old man grunted. It might have been an invitation to continue.
"When I was forty-three, I was prepping for a mission to Cloud. My cover was a potter, so I learned pottery. I'm making some clay so that I can sculpt Ma and Pa."
"Them those frog people you mentioned?"
"Toads, but yes. They were my teachers for decades, and some of my best friends. I'm not willing to lose them yet. I'm going to sculpt their likenesses."
Elias nodded. "Yep. Firsties always go for the physical appearance. That's backwards. It's not the faces that are important, it's the emotions. The times you shared, things you did. Still, you're in your first decade. Do it your way."
"Are you sure I'm in my first decade? How can I know how long I was in the Wild?"
"No way to know. Time gets slippery, further out you go. I've had friends show up out of order—Sarai and Bartholomew, both of 'em said they arrived right near here, weren't in the Wild long. He said he died three days after me, she said she died six years after me. She was in town four kays before he arrived."
Even after living—heh—in the settlement for two hundred glasses, Jiraiya still needed to translate the time units. Four kays, four kiloglasses, a kiloglass was theoretically a thousand days or about three years, so...twelve years? Of course, the Normative Glass contained an arbitrary amount of sand, so there was no actual way to know if one glass was even remotely close to twenty-four hours on the Human Path, so the whole thing was something of a farce. Also, 'Normative Glass' was a very pretentious name chosen by the founder of the settlement, about whom little was still remembered.
"Your friends have weird names." It was better than continuing to talk about the nightmare that was his time in the Wild.
Elias grunted. "Dunno about that, sandal-boy. Seem pretty normal to me, but 'Jiraiya' sounds like somethin' my grandson would have come up with. Dreamy little kid, always scribbling stories. Said he had too many in his head, needed to get them out. Tried to read some of 'em a few times, but they were too wild for me. All 'bout wizards and dragons and stuff. Not righteous."
The older man's bizarre accent only came out when he decided to play it up in order to tease Jiraiya.
"Yeah, don't get started on your whole 'righteous' bullshit," Jiraiya said. "Bunch of twaddle, you ask me. You get one medic-nin walking around your backwards little mudhole and boom! Everyone loses their mind for thousands of years." He sniffed dismissively. "Assuming it was actually thousands of years. Sounds like you're yanking my chain, you ask me."
"He weren't nowhere near me," Elias said, his tone more serious. "And he weren't one of those medic types you keep talkin' about. He was the son of God, come to save us all."
Jiraiya made a point of looking pointedly around at the afterlife scenery, then back to his teacher. "How's that working out for you?"
Elias snorted and flicked his pipe from side to side. He lifted a hand to it and inhaled deeply, then breathed out. A ring of smoke drifted to Jiraiya, shifting and wobbling in the still air as smoke was wont to do. It puffed against his face and dispersed, but not before he smelled its earthy musk and was briefly transported back to days past, when he was twenty and Beth was nineteen and they would sit on a haystack in Pa's fields to watch the fireflies come out as night was falling.
He blinked, snapping back to his current reality with wide eyes. "Elias, what are you doing? You didn't reclaim it!"
Elias's wrinkled and sun-weathered face crinkled into a smile that was more in his eyes than on his lips.
"S'all good, boy. I've got plenty of smoking times in the old noggin, I can afford to spare one, and now you can remember it too. Might could help you bring up some memories of your own but it'll for sure give you a piece of me to hold onto."
"You're not Leaving, are you?" Jiraiya asked, hitting the capital letter hard the way everyone else did. His heart would have pounded if he had still had a pulse, but the afterlife took even that from you.
"Nah. Maybe someday, but not yet. The Lord is patient and there's still plenty of people to help." He raised an eyebrow at the indistinct reddish lump sitting in front of Jiraiya. "Including a certain sandal-boy who can't seem to remember what clay looks like."
Jiraiya looked down at the construct that he was struggling to reify. He looked back up at his teacher.
"I'm working on it, okay?"
Elias's eyes twinkled and he flicked the pipe from side to side.
Hazō cursed and required a broad smile to blossom on his face as he turned to the approaching ANBU.
"Hi! What can I do for you, sir?"
The enemy ninja's head cocked, a tiny gesture of disbelief. "You..." For a moment, he didn't quite seem to know how to deal with a thief who seemed utterly unbothered. Then he shook it off. "You can surrender. I saw you emerging from that window. Return whatever you stole and come with me to the city dungeon."
Hazō considered that. "I'd really rather not...?"
The ANBU agent was done being confused by Hazō's shenanigans. He grabbed the young man's arm and—
Hazō slid out of the way, escaping the grip by a whisker. "Hey! Hey, Mr GrabbyHands! We were talking!"
The ANBU twisted off a trio of handseals and hurled a bloom of light into the sky above Rock. It split into a half-dozen lights as it traveled, the individual lights spreading out to form an arrow pointing at its caster.
Hazō cursed.
"Okay, kid," Jiraiya called, stepping out from the concealment of his Chameleon Technique where he had been leaning against a nearby wall. "You've been spotted, your cover is blown, and did I mention that the enemy has spotted you. What now?"
The ANBU jumped back, every muscle tensing. "The Hokage?! What are you—"
"Shh!" Jiraiya said, flapping a hand at the man without turning away from Hazō. "Don't interrupt. It's rude."
"But..."
Jiraiya sighed and turned to the man. "Look, it's Take Your Kid to Work Day, okay? I'm here to steal a bunch of your top-secret jutsu scrolls and I figured it would give the kid here some experience to come along, see how his old man does it."
"I'm hardly a kid," Hazō said dryly. "I'm eighteen."
"Yes, and I'm very proud of you for that. Now, what's your next move?"
"Well...you said that Hiding Like a Mole was a bad idea around here, so I guess I run for it?"
"Very good. And remember, no skywalkers. You need to stay on the ground or they'll see you. We don't want them spotting you and identifying where we came from."
Hazō gaped. "Are you kidding?! You're standing here in your actual Hokage hat! That guy there even called you by your title! How am I the one who's going to get us identified?!"
"Do you want to complain, or do you want to run?"
"Right."
Hazō turned and took two steps, preparing to leap to the nearest roof, but the enemy ANBU agent was suddenly in front of him, a kunai in each hand. He lunged with superhuman speed, one blade at chest level, arm withdrawn in preparation to stab or parry, while the other came up in a vicious disemboweling stroke.
Hazō flipped backwards, chaining into a series of handsprings as the other ninja came for him with thrusts and cuts at furious speed. Twenty feet later, Hazō managed to fire off a Poor Man's Yellow Flash seal—ahhhh, his very first original seal, such good memories—and Substitute with the projectile it ejected. No sooner did he arrive than another pair of ANBU jumped down from the wall, one moving with lightning-enhanced speed, the other one wielding a rope dart where both rope and dart were made of stone.
Hazō leaped, chakra surging as powerfully as he could manage, throwing himself twenty feet in the air. From his left, he ignored Jiraiya tut-tutting in disappointment. Instead, Hazō focused on his chakra manipulation and handseals.
"Earth Element Technique: Tentacles of the Earth Kraken!"
The ground erupted around them, tentacles four yards thick bursting from the ground everywhere within a hundred yards. Random passers-by shrieked and dropped to the ground, covering their heads and waiting for the crazy ninja people to stop causing natural disasters in the middle of a perfectly good shopping day.
The tentacles formed a wild, twining snarl, but the ANBU slid through the snarl like greased eels, evading each thrashing strike, ducking under every backhanded swing.
Hazō ran for the gates of the city, bounding across the tentacles with each step. The constructs were mindless and self-directed, not under Hazō's control any more than the ANBU's. Despite that, they knew their master and their every movement aided him; where he stepped, there was a rigid surface. When he leaped, the tentacle beneath him surged, flinging him forward even faster. When a hail of kunai and shuriken and tiny darts of flame rained down around him, three tentacles closed together to form a protective barrier.
Despite the advantage, the ANBU were older and more experienced.
"Not liking your chances, kiddo," Jiraiya said. He was running backwards alongside Hazō, ducking under and around the thrashing tentacles with casual ease. "Those guys are just about on you, and I see six more coming."
"Damnit, old man!" Hazō shouted. leaping to the side. A tentacle swung by and he latched onto it with chakra adhesion, allowing it to swing him around hard until he let go and was flung off in another direction.
The ground shattered where he had been standing a moment before, a Rock ninja's Earth Bullet cratering the street a moment before its creator touched down.
Two tentacles, each one a dozen feet thick and sixty feet long, whipped past. One smashed down atop the enemy, one swooshed horizontally past. The ninja stepped aside from the first attack, then stepped up on the second and began running along it, holding his balance easily as the construct twisted and thrashed beneath him.
"Stop, thief!" he shouted.
"Earth Element Technique: Multiple Earth Wall!" Hazō replied.
"Wha—"
The ANBU's words were cut off as a wall burst forth from the tentacle that he was standing on. It came up directly beneath his feet, hurling him into the air and into the path of another tentacle swiping from right to left with bone-crushing force. The man's pulped body went flying into the distance.
"Ooh." Jiraiya winced. "Bad way to go. Yowch. Well, you've done it now, kiddo. You had to go and kill one of them. Now they're really going to be pissed."
"There's currently eight ANBU agents flinging—yipe—everything under this stupidly hot sun at me and you think now they're going to get pissed?"
"I'm just sayin'. New rule: next time, no killing."
Hazō sighed and stopped talking, preferring to save his breath for running.
o-o-o-o
"Lord Hokage?" the Sand ANBU asked, shocked. "What are you doing here?"
"Just watching m'boy here pillage the Kazekage's most prized possession," Jiraiya said, thumbing towards where Hazō was engaged in furious hand-to-hand with another Sand ninja, this one with jōnin stripes on her jacket.
"Not like that!" Jiraiya yelled to his son. "Frog Smash, then the Descending Strike! You need to get them off-balance first or it will never land! And watch your elbow—it's still too far to the outside!"
He turned back to the Sand ANBU, shaking his head. "Honestly, you do your best to teach them but do they listen?"
The ANBU said nothing, clearly attempting to find some frame of reality that would make sense of the situation.
"For the record, he's not allowed to kill anyone," Jiraiya said. "On account of how we're allies and all."
"I could really use some speed right now!" Hazō shouted to them. He was, amazingly, keeping up—albeit barely—with a woman ten years older than himself who was also a taijutsu fighter. She was supple as a snake but her attacks hit like a hammer, and she wove jutsu into her style with effortless grace. A blast of wind threw sand at Hazō's eyes; he barely managed to get a hand up to protect his vision, but it was at the cost of opening his guard and being thrown ten feet through the air by a chakra-boosted kick to the ribs. He twisted, hit the upcoming wall feet-first, and raced up it with the jōnin in hot pursuit.
The Sand ANBU turned and started to leap down into the battle, but Jiraiya caught his arm.
"Hang on a sec," the older ninja said, leaning back on the wall. "He's already dealing with a jōnin. That seems pretty fair."
"Let go of me."
Jiraiya lifted his hands away, palms out in a gesture of placation. "I'm just sayin'. See, if it's just her then I can sit here and make snarky comments—Hazō, mind your feet! Widen your stance already!—but if you go down there then it's a whole thing and I probably need to step in." He shrugged, pulling a pipe from his belt and lighting it with a quick fire jutsu.
The ANBU looked at Jiraiya. Then looked at Hazō. Then looked at Jiraiya.
"Can I use it?!" Hazō shouted.
Jiraiya ignored the shout. "I mean, your call," he said to the ANBU. "He's still a chūnin and he's not allowed to kill anyone. Probably not going to cause much damage." Boom! "Although I think that jōnin of yours will. Damn, she absolutely leveled that market stall. Seems like she's getting a little frustrated that she can't manage to lay a hand on some eighteen-year-old punk. You should really talk to her about self-control." He shook his head sadly. "Anyway, you're welcome to jump in, but then I have to, and then things are probably going to get...exciting."
"Jiraiya!"
Jiraiya sighed and rolled his eyes. "Fine, go ahead! Mind your exhalation!"
"Wind Element: Hurricane Steps!"
The Sand ninja blinked as Hazō seemed to vanish from before her. She turned to find him racing away, moving so fast that he threw a rooster-tail of road dust in the air, a tail so tall that it left the second-floor windows dirty and hard to see from.
Jiraiya tapped the ANBU agent on the shoulder, jolting the man out of his surprised stare.
"Tell Kiyone that I said 'Nyah, nyah!, and that it's her turn," Jiraiya said.
The Toad Sage vanished into a blur of Substitution, and the ANBU agent looked after him, utterly bemused.
o-o-o-o
"That was fun," Jiraiya said, grinning as he and Hazō dropped down the cliff outside of Hidden Sand and ran along the ocean breakers towards Leaf.
The footing would have been much better a few dozen yards further out, but no, that would have been much too easy. Clearly, they needed to run right along the shoreline, exactly where the waves were breaking. Because of course they did.
"You have a very strange definition of 'fun'," Hazō panted.
"See, I told you to watch your exhalation! Look at you, panting and gasping after a measly thirty seconds."
"It was two minutes, and I covered three miles in that time! I think being a little out of breath is entirely fair!"
"Sigh. In my day—"
"You chewed boulders for breakfast and liked it, and every direction was uphill and yes, I know."
"Heh. Okay, okay. Did you get it?" Jiraiya asked, slowing to a stop,
"Yeah, three of them." Hazō pulled a trio of storage seals from his pocket and passed them over.
Jiraiya opened one of the seals and out popped a bottle of wine. The glass was reddish and elegant, slightly wavy, and it was covered in thick dust.
"Day-um, that is the good stuff! Nice job, kid. Kiyone is going to be so pissed."
"You seriously had me break into our closest ally's fortress just to steal you some wine?"
"Hey, this isn't just 'some wine'. This is the best wine in the world. It was grown on the slopes of—"
"By the Sage's balls, I don't even care." Hazō started jogging again, although he stayed in the surf zone instead of going either direction to where the footing would be easier. This was, after all, a training trip.
Jiraiya sealed the wine up and caught up to his son, running alongside with a wide grin. "I'm thinking Cloud next."
"Strength of the Storm this time?"
"Nah, I've got something way cooler. Here, it starts with a Tiger seal, then Bird..."
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Interlude (AU): Marked for Many Deaths, Part 1(?)New
Interlude (AU): Marked for Many Deaths, Part 1(?)
"Aaaaaaaaah!"
Hazō screamed as he plummeted from the celestial limits of an unknown world. Down below, approaching far too fast, a vast expanse of rusty red gradually resolved itself in his vision. On the outside edge, the edge of reality, a black circle limited the bounds of what could be perceived. Further in, three lines formed an all-too-familiar triangle. Hazō's fall would take him right to the middle, assuming he was in any shape to care about that after he landed.
Memory began to reassert itself. Hazō was dead. Damn Orochimaru. Hazō would never have been taken in by the snake's subtle deceptions if it hadn't been for all the death threats, instances of near murder, and occasional bursts of terrifying aura, coupled with hints that Hazō was a deadly threat to the world being kept alive against Orochimaru's better judgement. Hazō had long since learned from Kei that this was how deeply-traumatised ninja expressed affection.
As Hazō grew closer to the ground, hoping that he wasn't about to die again–the inventor of skywalkers dying of fall damage would be like an Inuzuka being murdered by a housecat–he began to see more detail. A long, thin line of people stretched across the space, interrupted periodically by clusters either within or off to the side, with one in particular being a crowd worthy of Nagi Island. What on earth could it–
Fwump.
The ground should not go "fwump", Hazō decided as he lay face-down in a deep depression best described as a Gōketsu Hazō-shaped vertical prism. As a master Earthshaper, he expected his inanimate terrene substrate to behave with at least a minimum of dignity. However, since he was inexplicably still in three dimensions and without a single broken bone, it would have been churlish to complain too much.
"Hey!" came a voice from above. "You in a temporary state of ectoplasmic animation down there?"
"Let's provisionally say yes," Hazō decided as he climbed up. "I assume, then, that this is the afterlife? It's a lot less… fleshed-out than I was expecting. Where are the beaches of sparkling white sand and beautiful kunoichi maidens filled with regret at dying as beautiful kunoichi maidens?"
Noburi had promised him, while noting in passing that his marriage vows with Yuno specified "till death us do part".
A different, younger Hazō chuckled as he helped him up over the lip of the mini-crater.
"We wish this was the afterlife. Or maybe we don't, considering how much this place sucks. Welcome to Purgatory, future me."
The endless rusty plain around Hazō had only two features. One was a great gate, easily the size of Leaf's–but instead of a vaguely welcoming brown wood, this one was an intimidating obsidian that seemed to sick in the sourceless light around them. Carved skulls belonging to unfamiliar species, all curved horns and long tongues, leered down at Hazō, as if mocking him for coming to the wrong address. The gate was firmly closed, and he had a sense that even a summon boss wouldn't be able to force it open.
The other feature was a queue. No, a Queue. The endless line of people stretched from the gate towards the horizon, hundreds if not thousands long, and nearly all of them bore some version of Hazō's own face.
He turned towards the Hazō who'd helped him. "What exactly is going on here?"
"This is Purgatory," the boy repeated. "Turns out that, for some insane reason, every time one of us dies, the universe generates another to press on in his place. It's almost like it was set up for us to fail and then try again. Every Hazō here died before making it as far as you did, and I'm guessing your successor will be joining us soon enough."
Hazō imagined having the next Hazō turn up on the Human Path, only to face a treacherous Orochimaru, Akatsuki coming for Leaf with AMITY backup, and possibly Mari destroying the entire world with Superchiller instructions.
"...Moving on," he said quickly, "why us? Is it a Gōketsu Hazō thing, or is this just how the cycle of life works?"
The other Hazō shrugged. "It's probably just us. One of the others did say something about an Ami Quest, but around here, I doubt a seduction spec protagonist who targets minors would make it past the first update.
"The problem we've got is that the original worldbuilding didn't include the afterlife, so there aren't any special mechanics to account for our situation. Only one Hazō's allowed to exist in the afterlife at a time, so we have to take turns going in and being processed. And each one takes forever, because what kind of sucker would willingly move on to reincarnation while there's still Uplift to accomplish?"
Hazō frowned. "So what you're saying is that you are a Hazō who died in the past, to something I then went on to survive?"
"I decided to specialise in socials," the other Hazō explained. "The alligator didn't."
Hazō winced sympathetically.
"I'm far from the worst off," the other Hazō said. "Look at that guy over there. He'll never get through the gate."
Hazō looked. The figure sitting cross-legged off to the side, seemingly meditating, also looked thirteen–but unlike the other, he was radiating power. There was something almost Dr@c0nic about the shimmering aura around him, and Hazō didn't dare look at it too closely.
"He's got the Souldrinker Bloodline Limit," the other Hazō explained. "He gains the power of the people he kills. It's the most broken thing I've ever heard of, and I've met a Hazō who got all of the Out stunts."
"If he's so powerful, how did he die?"
"Critical existence failure," the other Hazō said. "Yagura never let such a valuable ninja leave Mist in the first place.
"Anyway," he went on as Hazō took this in, "your place is at the very back of the line, but you may as well take your time. Chat with a few Hazōs you pass. No matter how you died, I bet you'll feel better about it after you hear what could have happened. Who knows, maybe you'll even find a group that shares your cause of death. The oldest is the Zabuza Unfan Club"–he pointed at a nearby cluster of people–"but lately, they've been increasingly eclipsed by the Akatsuki Association over there."
"I see," Hazō said. "And that vast army on the horizon?"
"The Keiko Collective," the other Hazō said with a shiver. "Turns out there are a lot of different ways to die by Keiko."
"Kumafuwafuwa! You get your hairy ass over here! I'm bored! Kumafuwafuwa!"
Jiraiya came into the clearing slowly. This area wasn't so far into the Wilds, meaning that reality was mostly stable. On the other hand, the word 'mostly' was doing some heavy lifting in that sentence.
Before him stood an old man dressed in furs and corded sandals. In the turf beside him stood a gnarled old cane. The cane was a single tree branch, two thumbs thick, with the end curled into a semi-circle that then doubled back on itself. It was the sort of thing that a bonsai expert might have created except it was big enough and solid enough to beat someone to death. It looked nothing like any of the trees in the area, meaning that the old man had brought it with him when he died. Which was scary; in order for an artifact to manifest with its owner it needed to have been with them for so long that it had caused their self-image to extend around it. Plus, it required an immense will and plenty of chakra to bind that extended self-image together.
"Hello?" Jiraiya called.
"Ha!" The other man spun, dropping into a ridiculous 'combat stance' straight out of kabuki theater: one hand straight up in the air, fingertips together in a crane's beak formation, other hand extended forward, palm in half-profile with first two fingers upraised.
"Thought you could sneak up on me, eh?! I'll not have it!"
"Yeah, sure. Whatever. Look, my name's Jiraiya. I'm guessing you're new here?"
"Stand back, lest you be destroyed by The Great Mareo, Wielder of the Sacred Fire, Destroyer of Blue Parrot, Thrice-named Hero of the Clan, Champion of Forest Lake, Bear Summoner, Slaughterer of Sky, and Lord of the Settee!"
Ohhhhkay.
"Lord of the Settee?" Jiraiya asked. "Really?" He put his hands in his pockets and let himself slump casually, a posture that decades of ninja instincts shrieked against. He had to consciously remind himself that it didn't matter here.
The Great Mareo said nothing for a moment, then lowered his arms. He placed both hands on the top of his cane and leaned on it.
"What?" he demanded, voice querulous. "You've never heard of a settee?"
"I mean...sure? Short couch, basically. Not sure why it's worthy of a brag."
"Ha! You're a dummy! A settee is the fancy name for a loveseat!" He smacked his lips. "Lots of ladies enjoyed cuddling up with the Lord of the Settee!"
Jiraiya snorted. "Yeah, well, among my many titles was Lord of the Bedroom Arts. I went a little past the 'cuddling' part."
"Bah!" Mareo made a dismissive brushing motion with one hand. "Crass! Crass and obvious! That's what's wrong with the new generation—no subtlety! Can't ever understand implications, innuendo, the subtext!"
Jiraiya laughed. "Man, that might be the first time I've ever been called 'the new generation'." He shook his head. "I'll agree with you on one thing, though. The new generation—the ones that came after me—are dense as rocks. I had a kid, sharp as a whip at anything involving numbers or theory, but get him into a political or social situation and he was like an explosive tag with an unstable timer. One time, he threatened to murder one of our doctors. I had to throw him and his entire team in the killbox. Almost executed them, but changed my mind at the last minute and kicked them out of the city instead."
"Bah again! Bah, I say! That's the other problem with the new generation—no guts, no follow through! In my day, we wouldn't have bothered with a killbox. Would have executed them on the spot."
"Yeah, but their team leader was hot."
"Oh! Why didn't you say so? Obviously, you couldn't kill them if the leader was hot." He paused, eyes narrowing in suspicion. "How hot?"
"'Set your pants on fire with a look' hot," Jiraiya said, grinning. "Redhead, hair down her back, stacked like a pile of bricks, with a smile that was illegal in twelve countries and a walk that could melt your brain. Also damn smart and an I&S spec, so she knew her way around a bedroom and a council room. Jōnin, and a good one." He jerked a thumb at his chest, the grin growing wider. "I married her."
"Ha! Good man, good man. Can't let the good ones get away. Have kids with her?" Mareo pulled his cane out of the turf and started stumping closer. Years of service as Leaf's spymaster let Jiraiya see straight through the way the old man's left leg dragged slightly, the way his back hunched. This was a ninja, and a dangerous one. One smart enough to hide just how dangerous he was.
"Didn't have time," Jiraiya said, lowering himself to the grassy sward and leaning back on his hands. When high-level ninja came together, ones who didn't know each other, it was all too common for things to devolve into violence. Being killed was a drag, so Jiraiya didn't want to be killed. Killing the old man would make it that much harder to get him back to town—for one thing, there was no way to know where his entry point was, so it might take weeks for him to get back here.
"Didn't have time? Didn't have time? What kind of lummox marries a hot redhead and doesn't have time to make a few babies with her?!" Mareo sat down next to Jiraiya, close enough to talk, far enough not to be threatening. Good.
"There was a lot going on, okay? I had just become Hokage, my godson had been kidnapped, then the Chūnin Exams came up so I was out of town. It was a whole thing."
"Bah!"
"You realize that you say that a lot, right?"
"Bah!" The old man considered. "My grandson tried going after a redhead once. Dumb brat didn't realize she was totally out of his league. That was him all over, though—dumb as a post. Good ninja, could punch through a hydrojaw the long way, cared about our people, loyal as you could ask. Couldn't talk to girls to save his life."
"Heh. My kid was so good with girls, he had two of 'em. At the same time."
"Hmph, like that's a big thing. I once had six girls at the same time. Thought my heart was going to explode." He snorted in amusement. "Met this young sprat not too long ago, said he was going to have a bunch of girls come over and pleasure me until my heart exploded, just so he could steal my Scroll. He was a liar! A liar, I say! They never arrived!"
"Yeah, well, anyone can get a passel of girls into bed with them. Hazō dated both girls at the same time. One of them was a clan heir."
"Pah. Huzu dated both his girls at the same time and one of them was a Clan Lady, not just an heir." He frowned. "Other one was apparently his sister, which I thought was weird. Didn't say anything, of course."
"Ugh, dating your sister is gross," Jiraiya said with a shudder. He paused, reconsidering. "Well, depending. I had a battle sister, closer than any blood could have been. Her, I would have totally been down to date." He winked broadly. "Or 'date', if you know what I mean."
"I know exactly what you mean," Mareo said, winking back. "Exactly. Had a couple of those over the years." He frowned. "What was that about you being the Hokey Guy? What is that, some kind of clown?"
"Hokage, not Hokey Guy."
"Whatever. What is it?"
"Seriously? Ruler of the Village Hidden in the Leaves?" Mareo showed no sign of recognition. "Largest and most powerful ninja village in the world? Capital of the Land of Fire, the source of most of the food on the entire continent? Home of the Sannin, the God of Shinobi, the jinchūriki of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox? Founded by Senju Hashirama, the source of the entire modern system of governance?"
Mareo shrugged. "Yah, whatever. Sounds made up to me. Stories written for young boys so they'll want to grow up to be ninja. Probably a picture book with tons of plot holes."
Jiraiya gaped at the other man, speechless.
"We had some of those in my clan," Mareo said. "The best were written by a guy named Yorunojōhōgen." He frowned. "I used to have the full set of his work, but I lost it somewhere along the way. Pity. I would have liked to give it to Huzu. Let a little bit of my clan live on, you know?"
"Sounds like you liked this kid."
"Bah. I suppose he wasn't as bad as some people. He was the Dog Summoner, you know? Used to drop by to chat occasionally. Brought chocolate and brandy, even. The good stuff too—made with berries, not carrots."
"Sounds like a good guy. My son did that too—met this crotchety old hermit in the woods, chatted with him and brought him chocolate and sweets until he managed to lure him out of his hidey-hole and back into civilization." He smiled wistfully. "Kagome was his name—the hermit, I mean. Crazy as a loon, but a damn good sealmaster and he would have torn the world down to protect anyone he cared about. I adopted him along with the rest."
"Are you calling me a crotchety old hermit?!"
"I mean...if the shoe fits?"
"Hah!" He thumped Jiraiya on the thigh with his cane; Jiraiya held himself still and permitted it. "You're a funny one, Jiroyi!"
"Jiraiya."
"That's what I said."
"It's really not."
"Bah!" Another dismissive wave.
Best let it go, Jiraiya decided. Time to shift tacks.
"I heard you calling out to Kumafuwafuwa earlier," he said. "You were the Bear Summoner?"
"Were? What do you mean, were? I am the Bear Summoner! Lord of Bears, Lord of the Settee, Thrice—"
"Yeah, yeah. We can compare fancy monikers another time. I've got a few things to fill you in on, and I'm afraid you're not going to like them..."
Hazō's dejection only grew as he trudged across the featureless rust-red plain or possibly plane, the soil underfoot resisting his steps as feebly as if he was walking on a particularly supportive cloud–or as if the creator kami had simply neglected to give it physical properties, figuring nobody would stay here long enough to care.
Screw the kami, Hazō thought for the thousandth time in his life, except that for the first time he didn't get to complete the thought with "I have explosives". How long was he going to be stuck here?
He had to plan. He wasn't going to take his death lying down (at least not while Leaf still preferred cremation). He was the world's only master of the Thing, the inexplicable power to come up with a detailed plan within a handful of seconds, and with it, he'd be out of here before you could say "diegetic".
(Many shinobi could not in fact say "diegetic", much less define it. Here, too, Hazō was just that good.)
It didn't come.
He strained the metaphysical muscles built over years of wrestling with the Out within the confines of his own head. He poured in all he had until they were bulging like Maito Gai's biceps at Leaf's Annual Bodybuilding Competition. (Hazō had gone only once and never again, after Mari accidentally neglected to warn him it was less of an athletic event and more of an extension of Leaf's dating scene for those seeking only the best living mountain of pig bladders in a skimpy loincloth.)
The Thing didn't come. Perhaps it was a privilege reserved for the Hazō currently alive. He was going to have to do this the hard way.
"Um, excuse me?"
Hazō was shaken out of his concentration by a squeaky, hesitant voice, rising in the middle rather than the end as if questioning its own right to distract him. He turned around to see a short, mousy girl, unknown to him but wearing an unmistakable Mist genin uniform.
"Who are you?" he asked, taking in the long hair and delicate features. "Don't tell me that after enough time with nothing to do but think, a Hazō starts to reconsider certain… fundamentals?"
"I'm not sure what you mean," she said, tilting her head slightly in puzzlement. "I'm just Kurosawa Hazuki. I, um, have a question for you. I know we make it to Leaf eventually. Do you happen to know Uchiha Sasuke?"
"I suppose I do," Hazō said, feeling an inexplicable touch of wariness. "We're not close or anything."
"Do you know if he's dead?" Hazuki asked more urgently. "Or when he's going to die and turn up in the afterlife? Only it's the purpose of my existence to seduce–"
Hazō clamped his hand over her mouth with the speed and urgency of a sealmaster who'd just heard his dimensional seal prototype begin to chant ominously in the ancient tongue.
"Don't say it," he hissed. "Never say it. Do you want to get us all frozen in time forever?"
She bit his hand, less as a prelude to combat and more on general principles. In the shinobi world, nothing good ever started with somebody gagging you. (He and Mari had agreed to disagree).
He yanked his hand away, noting the lack of blood. Apparently, injuries didn't work properly in Purgatory either.
"What are you talking about?" Hazuki demanded, arms crossed petulantly.
Hazō glanced around warily, as if to check that the fundamental forces of the universe weren't eavesdropping from around a corner.
"We do not ever suggest anything that might sound remotely like"–he dropped his voice–"an Uchiha Breeding Programme. Ever."
Hazuki frowned. "But aren't the Uchiha going to go extinct if no one is allowed to, you know? Again, I mean."
For a moment, Hazō was forced to consider whether the whole thing might be a vast, diabolical conspiracy by Uchiha Itachi. He wouldn't even have anything to lose, considering his only love was another man and also dead.
But no. If there was one thing you could praise the Uchiha for, it was that despite their powers, they never crafted conspiracies or master plans. He couldn't imagine one being stable enough.
"It's a small price to pay," Hazō concluded. "Also, you're what, thirteen? Don't even think about the abstract concept of seduction for the next five years, at least onscreen. For all our sakes."
"But time doesn't pass here!" she objected.
"Not my problem," Hazō said decisively, and walked away from the weirdest conversation he'd had in minutes.
He had to get out of here before this place drove him insane. But he still didn't have any ideas. Maybe if he went over to talk to somebody else, they might inspire him to think of a cunning plan (or at least knock him out so he stopped thinking about the fact that in an alternate timeline, he'd quite possibly borne Sasuke's child).
The next Hazō was out of the question. Not only was he wearing a youthsuit (never a good sign–at least unless it indicated Akane, at which point it paradoxically became the best sign ever), but he was also weirdly glitchy, pinned to one spot and constantly fading in and out of existence like one of the luckier sealing failure victims from Kagome-sensei's campfire stories.
The Hazō after that was apparently catatonic, rocking back and forth on the ground, arms wrapped around his knees, muttering, "Please, Captain Zabuza, at least wear some boxers…"
Also not a candidate, Hazō decided.
The Hazō next to that one took a break from doing kata and walked over to them. His hair and uniform were a charred mess.
"He had a fight with Keiko," the other Hazō explained.
Hazō stared. "She did this to him?"
He found himself briefly reevaluating quite how much he wanted to claw his way back to the Human Path.
The charred Hazō shook his head with an amused glint in his eye.
"He had a fight with Keiko and she got herself reassigned, meaning she wasn't there when he ran across Inoue-sensei faking her death."
"Oh."
Hazō did his best to tune out the catatonic boy's muttering, and the awareness that, just as with the hundreds of others, that could have been his fate.
This Hazō, though, seemed sane enough. Could he provide a clue for solving Hazō's purgatorial predicament?
"What about you?" he asked. "What got you?"
The other Hazō gave a wry grin.
"Are you any good at calculating exponents?"
Hazō gave him a blank look.
"Turned out Velorien wasn't either," the other Hazō said, his eyes narrowing briefly in a glare at the heavens–a dark, featureless expanse that offered no light and left it unclear how they could all see each other–before he relaxed again. "I've spent so many years wondering what would have happened if Eaglejarl hadn't been at a pottery class when it was time to write Let the Bodies Hit the Floor."
Hazō was pretty sure he'd never sparred with Akane before that fight, so he didn't see how she could have become an exponent, but he opened his mouth anyway, looking for words of sympathy.
Then his mouth slammed shut again as he saw it out of the corner of his eye.
Every Hazō (and one Hazuki) turned their heads to the source of the radiant emerald glow.
The Obsidian Gate was opening, the welcoming light of the afterlife beginning to shine through the gap between the doors, brightening and dimming like a fire.
Hazō didn't think. He ran.
The Hazō next to him reacted nearly as fast.
"Stop him! It's not his turn!"
Hazō didn't regret his impulse. Unlike the others, he still had some chakra, and if they had the same skill priorities, then he was axiomatically stronger by virtue of having more experience. With chakra boost, he might just make it through before the gate closed again.
In his mind, he apologised to the other Hazōs, who'd have to wait that much longer for their rightful turn to come.
But he was Gōketsu Hazō. When it came to saving his loved ones and uplifting the world, he was prepared to sacrifice anything–even himselves.
He ran like he'd never run before.
But so did they. Countless Hazōs chased him with the determination of Kurosawa or Gōketsu Hazō himself, their wills bolstered by the need to protect the established sequence of Purgatory departure–in other words, to protect a list. Those ahead of him, whose turns would come soonest, were even more resolved to protect their places, and spread out in a spider web interception pattern. Hazōs converged on him from every angle.
He wasn't going to make it. The spongy ground was hard to sprint on, and the other Hazōs were drawing near. There was no way he'd make it past them before the gate finished opening, the next Hazō went through, and it closed again. It was going to be the reprise of a lesson he'd defiantly refused to learn time and again when he was alive: even if you were the best, you'd slow to a crawl once enough people got in your way.
Here and now, he needed the Thing like he needed air.
It didn't come.
Was he really going to be trapped in this queue for centuries to come, together with the other victims of a universe that seemed to have a monthly quota of dead Hazōs?
It's not his turn!
The idea hit him like a hammer to the face.
It was insane. It violated every law of reality. It would probably get him erased from existence for his hubris.
It was also his only choice.
As the nearest Hazōs came within arm's reach, grasping hands already reaching out, he looked up at the darkness of the heavens and yelled.
"You haven't done Initiative!"
For a moment, the world stood still. It was as if its heart had stopped, waiting to see if it had permission to beat again.
"A thousand Initiatives!" Hazō screamed with the desperation of a man being listened to by somebody actually important for the first and likely the last time in his life. "A thousand Athletics rolls! Thousands of Taijutsu rolls! Keeping track of a fight where everybody has the same name! Having to figure out what to do with somebody who dies in Purgatory!"
And then, he let rip with a final roar, a challenge to destiny itself.
"Do you even still have the character sheets?"
Everything was frozen. Nothing moved. There was an intangible, almost spiritual sense of growing pain vibrating through everything, as of a world that might simply die if its heart went without beating for any longer.
Then, with a metaphysical snap like a breaking twig, the sensation disappeared. A celestial symphony of three grumpy voices, speaking in overlapping unison, rang through all of Purgatory.
"SCREW IT. GO."
The Obsidian Gate opened wide like a yawning maw.
Hazō dove in without hesitation, his heart singing, for he had triumphed over the ineffable and he'd get chucked in an R-rated Hidan hurt/comfort slashfic if he ever tried to pull this crap again, the little punk.
