"This sucks," Kenji muttered to the Blood Clone currently carrying the other end of the pile of boards. "It's hardly our fault they got away. Those Leaf ninja screwed it all up."
"Hey, no argument from me, boss," the Blood Clone responded. "I'd rather not waste my existence rebuilding a giant barn. We should be out tracking these guys down!"
"It's not a barn, it's a high-end resort," Mugiwara-sensei snapped, seemingly appearing out of thin air to scowl at her student. "And one which those missing-nin trashed. You know, the ones who got away because you weren't able to track them fast enough?"
"It was night and the whole damn forest was on fire," Kenji muttered. "And anyway, I still would have gotten their trail if those Leaf ninja hadn't wasted so much time."
"It's a poor workman who blames his tools, and a poor ninja who makes excuses," Mugiwara-sensei said virtuously. "Now hurry up and get those boards to the workmen, double time!"
"Yes, sensei!" Kenji and his Blood Clone chorused, shifting from their resentful trudge into a rapid trot. Mugiwara-sensei was no more happy about being stuck here than the team was, and none of them wanted to stress her temper any farther than it already was.
Two hours later, they had delivered two more palettes of bird's-eye maple boards for the workmen laying the floor, three of polished slate for the patio, and were helping Kashigawa gather up the flooring that had been crushed when the enemy created that giant pile of rock on the second floor. They paused in their labors as two men wandered by. The shorter, fatter one was clearly the owner. The tall, spare man beside him was the ninja commander for the region. The commander had a face like iron; it gave almost nothing away. Still, he was apparently irritated enough that some of the frustration was leaking. Or maybe he was showing it deliberately as subliminal messaging to the obnoxious little puffed-up toady that walked next to him.
"—a bit more than restoration," the commander observed. "I don't recall your patio being floored with a water-themed mosaic in sixteen colors of high-grade slate. Wasn't it simply flagstone? Your insurance policy did not cover improvements."
"Oh, no, that was absolutely the way it was!" the owner replied, his eyes wide in overblown innocence. It was just adorable when civilians tried to be deceptive. "Besides, we've been paying protection money for over a decade. These attackers didn't seem terribly subtle to me—they smashed the place! Destroyed it! While those very expensive ninja were on guard, no less. Surely we are entitled to proper reimbursement?"
The commander considered the man calmly. "My reports indicate that the enemy fought with kunai, taijutsu, and water- and earth jutsu. And that the fight happened in the main building. How exactly did the adjacent building which was, coincidentally, the older and less opulent of your buildings, end up on fire?"
"The guests in the first floor of the main building had an oil lantern burning," the civilian owner said earnestly. "It spilled when that giant rock wall landed on it, and the oil splashed over to the second building."
"I see," the commander said doubtfully. "How unfortunate."
"I know! Terribly unfortunate! Still, always some good with the bad, eh? We'll rebuild it and it'll be better—er, just as good as originally. Might even make some good advertising. Give people a shiver, staying in a place where there was a big important battle."
"I think—"
"Excuse me," said a new ninja, striding up. He was taller even than the commander and as wide as an oxcart with pale skin and spiky black hair. His lower face was covered in bandages and the hilt of a truly enormous sword stuck up over his shoulder. The thing was so enormous it could probably serve as a shield as well as a weapon.
"May I help you?" the commander said, one foot sliding back into a ready-but-not-threatening stance. He unconsciously placed himself between this unknown ninja and the pustulent little fraudster civilian who, unfortunately, was a good taxpayer and therefore due protection.
"Yes," the foreign ninja said, stopping a polite distance back and showing his hands unthreateningly. "I heard about the attack. Apparently one of the ninja involved wore a barrel on his back?"
o-o-o-o
Jiraiya dropped into the chair with a tired sigh and put his feet up on the corner of the desk. He let his head fall back, eyes closed, and rubbed hard at the pressure points around his temples. He was getting too old for this crap; eight hundred miles in four days was hard on these old bones, and sleeping on the ground just made him ache.
Sarutobi Hiruzen, God of Shinobi, Hokage of Leaf, and teacher of Jiraiya and the other Sannin, cleared his throat and looked meaningfully at the feet on his desk.
Jiraiya didn't open his eyes, but he did move his feet.
"Are you quite through being dramatic?" Sarutobi-sensei asked a moment later, his voice studiously polite. Unless you had been his student for decades, in which case you could hear the subtle tone of snark underlying it.
Jiraiya groaned in response, but sat up.
"What have you got?" Sarutobi-sensei asked, calmly pouring a big cup of tea and passing it over. Jiraiya took a moment to breathe deep of the steam before sipping. Sensei always had the most amazing teas, and he remembered how much Jiraiya liked orange peel in his. His memory for those small details was one of the more overlooked causes for his rise to power. Well, that and being one of the most lethal men alive and a prodigiously skilled politician. But yeah, remembering people's tea preferences didn't hurt.
"Well, they came in," Jiraiya said. "No problem there. And yes, it was them in Hot Springs. After we split up in Iron they took the lead I gave them, went to Tea, and dug up the pangolin contract. The Mori girl got it, and the pangolin she summoned was loyal." He snorted, smiling. "And armed with weaponized cuteness." He shook his head. "Anyway, they picked up a couple more members somewhere along the way. First one was a girl, about fifteen, named Akane." He paused, waiting.
Sarutobi-sensei was sharp as ever; one eyebrow immediately shot up. "Ishihara Akane, the one that Mizuki framed?"
"The very same. Apparently they linked up back in Iron; she'd gotten mixed up with that Liberator crew."
Sarutobi-sensei gave him a very old-fashioned look. "I note that her name was not included in your earlier report."
Jiraiya shrugged unapologetically. "I wasn't going to put it in writing, but I'm reporting it now. She's a good kid and deserves a break." He grinned. "Although apparently she caught that 'youth' disease of Gai's."
Sarutobi-sensei was much too controlled to groan, but it was close. "Another one? I wonder if I should be talking to the other Kage about a non-proliferation treaty on that. Then I'd have an excuse to rein Gai in."
"Yeah, let me know how that goes for you," Jiraiya said. "I'm pretty sure the Sage himself couldn't rein Gai in."
Sarutobi-sensei nodded his tired agreement. "True. You said there were two new additions. Who was the other one?"
"Older guy named Kagome," Jiraiya said. "Seemed to have more than a few screws loose. Kept going on about 'lupchanzen farms' and 'scorch squads'. Mentioned secret labs where we vivisect kids."
God of Shinobi, ?
?d100: ?
Konoha's Spymaster, ?
?d100: ?
"Hm," Sarutobi-sensei said noncommittally. "How bizarre. What else did he say?"
o-o-o-o
"Again!" Nagatsuka-sensei snapped.
"Yes, sensei," Maaya said, forcing her voice to be steady despite her total exhaustion. She pulled chakra into her belly, molding it into fire and then squeezing the fire denser, hotter, thinner. She pulled in more and more of the chakra, adding it to the barely-contained explosion that floated at her center. Seconds later it was ready. "Breath of the Sun Dragon no Jutsu!" she shouted, cutting the handseals with as much precision as she could manage and releasing the power inside her.
The force that ravened up her throat and out of her mouth lived up to its name; even through her closed eyelids, Maaya's vision went white for an instant and when she opened them there were faint purple splotches floating across the world as though she'd just stared into the sun.
The other end of the target range was just...gone. The Sun Dragon had demolished the first tree, punched a hole through the second, set the third on fire, and thermal bloom had set everything in the general area to smoldering.
Her knees felt like they were about to collapse under her, but Maaya forced herself to turn smoothly to face her sensei.
"Hmmmmmmm," Nagatsuka-sensei said. "Adequate."
Maaya's face split in a grin. From Nagatsuka-sensei, that was high praise indeed.
"Come," Nagatsuka-sensei said, "I'm tired of sitting around. It's time for lunch." Translation: I can tell you're out of chakra and about to fall over.
Maaya's grin got wider. "Yes, sensei," she said. "Could we go for tempura?"
"Hmph." Level gaze. "Well...you weren't completely hopeless today. All right, we'll have tempura."
"Yaaayyy!" Maaya said, punching the air in excitement. She was too tired to actually skip along beside her iron-haired sensei, but she did manage to walk quickly. Her black ponytail bounced as she nodded along to a happy tune that she hummed. Nagatsuka-sensei absolutely, positively did NOT smile to see her young student so happy.
The sand on the path crunched faintly under their shoes as the two strolled back home. Nagatsuka-sensei let the silence hang in the air for some time before casually asking, "So, what's new with that boy?"
"What boy?" Maaya asked, panicking. "There's no boy! I don't know any boys at all!"
"Uh-huh," Nagatsuka-sensei said.
"I don't!"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, okay, I guess there's the baker's son. And Mr. Matokai's son. And...well, okay, I suppose I know a few boys. I mean, you know, I've seen them."
"Uh-huh."
"And they're all losers anyway. None of them can even do simple jutsu yet!"
"Uh-huh."
"I mean, I guess some of them can do a few jutsu, but nothing impressive like what you're teaching me, sensei!"
"Hm."
"Well, okay, except for Takao. But he mostly does seals like the others, so that doesn't count. And his jutsu all suck anyway."
"Hm?"
"Well, I guess the Forty Chains of Death is kinda okay."
"Hm."
"I mean, if you like that sort of thing." Dismissive sniff. "I guess he's got good finger action on his handseals."
"Mm-hm."
"Well he does! Really smooth. It's those long fingers, you know."
"Mm-hm."
"Um, oh...oh, look! There's Sugawara's! Let's hurry!" Maaya picked up the pace, rapidly leaving her teacher behind as she taught herself, as so many children through the ages had, that it was impossible to outrun embarrassment.
"Heh." Checking carefully to see that she was unobserved, Nagatsuka-sensei allowed her weatherbeaten face to crack a smile. There was a lot to be said for this private tutor business.
XP AWARD: 0
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Voting ends on Wednesday, October 26, 2016, at 12pm London time.
Emiya Manako was above average height for a woman (which is to say she towered over Mari), with rich brown hair in a tight bun, and an austere white dress, all straight lines, its only concession to femininity being a touch of lace around the collarbone. Such a waste, Mari thought to herself, but reluctantly got her mind out of the gutter.
The office had a single, broad window which let in plenty of light, with marks on the floor suggesting somebody spent a lot of time standing there, looking out (though from here, Mari couldn't get enough detail to tell if it was Emiya herself or one of her bodyguards). A series of heavy bookshelves bulged with scrolls, while an expensive brown desk at the heart of the room looked weary with use. It was pretty much like any office anywhere ever, down to the hanging scroll on one wall with illegible but profoundly meaningful calligraphy.
Mari was sitting in one of the visitors' chairs, whose combination of soft cushions and uncomfortable back carried a distinct message of "be welcome, guest, but don't stay too long because I have work to do". Emi sat next to her, hands folded in her lap, trying to look reassuring and supportive. Emiya, on the other side of the desk, gave Mari a professional smile.
"Thank you for coming to see me, Miss Shinano. I have the gist of your situation from Emi, but I really need to hear the whole story from you. I apologise if my questioning may seem insensitive, but if we are dealing with a hostile ninja, even the tiniest detail may turn out to be crucial. Please," she gestured, "begin at the beginning."
Mari launched into her rehearsed narration, but barely made it a sentence before Emiya's first interruption. The questions didn't have a hostile feel to them, but they were fluent, and eerily precise. Which settlement had Shinano come from? What path did her journey with the sealmistress follow, and how long did various parts of the journey take? What kind of places did they stay in? Could she remember any names?
Emiya skirted around the issue of Shinano's relationship with Arikada, but on the other hand questioned Mari exhaustively about the sealmistress's interests and capabilities—which was a problem since Mari didn't know, and agreed with Emiya's reasoning that accurate information would be crucial for preparing countermeasures, so she couldn't simply make things up.
Finally, the interrogation ended. Emiya took a few seconds to think, then stood up from her seat.
"Thank you, Miss Shinano," Emiya gave that neutral smile again. "You've been most helpful. We'll resume this shortly, but right now there are some immediate preparations I need to make. Please stay here for a minute."
She swept out of the office, beckoning Emi after her. "I'll need you for this as well."
Mari was left deep in thought. Emiya was very hard to read, even with the profiling information gleaned from Emi. But a decision had to be made before the mayor returned. Hazō, bless his little heart, had insisted that she at least consider the honest option. In fairness, on this occasion his argument was not without merit—it would be a lot easier to work with Emiya directly than to have to manipulate her into making choices based on information Mari had and she didn't. The risks, though…
She didn't have long to wait before Emiya returned.
The mayor sat down at her desk with a satisfied air.
"The building has been surrounded," Emiya said calmly. "It's time you told me what you're really after."
Mari's response was instant and reflexive, even as she was utterly mortified at her own stupidity. "What do you mean? Is something wrong? Is she already here?"
Emiya gave her a piercing look. "I have several other appointments after this. Do not waste my time. We can have this conversation now, or we can have it in three days' time at the Irie dungeons."
Mari inwardly winced. "What gave me away?"
"Minor details, adding up to a bigger picture," Emiya said almost as if to herself. "Poor knowledge of the country you've allegedly been travelling through. Too much vagueness when it came to the person around whom your life had centred. Other things. And, of course, the bruises. Those look fresh, not a day old. You neglected to update your disguise."
Mari blinked. "You can't possibly judge something like that at a glance."
"In my spare time," Emiya said with a trace of irony, "I have purchased ninja training in a variety of useful areas. Civilians cannot normally do this, of course, but I have the money, and I've given them ample reason to curry favour with me. Bear this in mind if you think to try to deceive me again. Now, kindly show me your true face."
"I'd rather not," Mari said. "I have reasons to protect my identity, ones which have nothing to do with you or Sarubetsu."
"I think you misunderstand your situation," Emiya said coolly. "My patience is the only reason you have not already been incapacitated and put in chains. I advise you not to test it."
Mari blinked again. "Please take this as hypothetical rather than a threat, but you are the civilian alone in a room with a ninja of unknown abilities. Are you sure it should be you trying to intimidate me?"
Emiya gave her a look that might have come from the face of an Academy instructor facing an angry child with a practice kunai.
"You are not here to kill me," she said, "and I have countermeasures against genjutsu, mind control and temporary replacement. Among other things, the Trinity have multiple redundant ways to check that I am myself and in full possession of my faculties. I would not be deserving of the trust my citizens place in me if I did not at least take basic anti-ninja precautions."
Mari took a few seconds to let this sink in, and to upgrade her threat assessment of Mayor Emiya accordingly.
"Again," Mari said, looking for a better understanding of the mayor, but also honestly curious, "how do you know I'm not here to kill you?"
Emiya sighed. "If you killed me, or for that matter hurt me in general, every clan with even a minimal presence in Sarubetsu would dedicate themselves to hunting you down as the only source of testimony to exonerate themselves of your actions. After you were captured and subjected to sufficient interrogation, they would then take turns proposing increasingly cruel and elaborate means to put you to death, as a way of scoring points with the public ahead of the inevitable struggle for control of the town.
"You are not here to kill me," Emiya repeated in a matter-of-fact tone. "No organisation would sacrifice an operative with your apparent level of skill merely to eliminate the likes of me, and a missing-nin with sufficient experience to get this far would have a survival instinct to match."
"I could be a missing-nin fanatic trying to take you out for ideological reasons," Mari commented, curiosity taking over from diplomatic concerns.
Emiya laughed. "A missing-nin that believes in something greater than herself? Then I would definitely be safe, since they say you can't die in dreams.
"Now, you've wasted enough of my time with small talk. Kindly remove your disguise and proceed to your actual business unless you want to wait for a more convenient appointment in a prison cell."
-o-
"Very good," Hazō said. "Next, what are the three preparations you need to make before doing sealcrafting research?"
"Prepare a secure testing environment, make sure the rest of the team knows and has been briefed on sealing accident contingencies, and have a will stored in a cache at least a mile away," Akane recited.
Kagome-sensei nodded approvingly. "What do you do if you're on your own and a stranger offers to teach you a new seal?"
"I say 'no, thank you', and walk away quickly," Akane said.
Hazō rolled his hand in a "keep going" motion.
"Even if they say that they know my sealing teacher and that my sealing teacher says it's OK. Even if they offer me a sample seal as a gift. Especially if they offer to take me to their sealing workshop so they can show me the seal's inner workings."
"Kagome-sensei," Hazō said, "are you sure this is the kind of basic sealing information Akane will need to impersonate a top-level sealmistress?"
Kagome's eyes narrowed. "If you're going to learn any sealing at all, you need to start with the basics. It's how I learned, it's how you learned, and it's how she'll learn, even if she never makes a seal her whole life. It's when people don't respect the craft that they think 'oh, I won't bother washing my brush after use just this once', and the next thing you know there are pentagrams drawing themselves on the walls in blood and everything made of metal is melting and a voice in your head is counting down from six hundred and sixteen.
"That should be my next question. What do you do when you activate a seal, and it doesn't seem to do anything, but the next day you start hearing a voice in your head giving you suggestions on what to do, and each suggestion makes perfect sense and ends up making your life better when you follow it?"
Akane frowned. "Class III causal hazard. Immediately find a cave deep underground or inside a mountain and detonate an exploding tag so as to cause a cave-in. If you survive, repeat."
"Kagome-sensei, I thought that was just an urban legend," Hazō said.
"Hah! Research Facility Seventeen is an urban legend. Doesn't mean anyone's ever come back from exploring the Hokorobi Rift."
"Uh, right," Hazō said. "Moving on. Akane, what's the difference between a catabolic resonance cascade and an anabolic resonance cascade, and what are the standard countermeasures for each?"
-o-
Mayor Emiya drummed her fingers absent-mindedly against the surface of the desk.
"You could have saved us both a lot of time if you had just come forward with all this to begin with. However.
"The fact of the matter is that my responsibility is to the citizens of Sarubetsu. I do not have the resources to police the rest of Rice Country, nor can I justify trying to set the world to rights if doing so will endanger the people I'm here to protect."
"If Arikada's actions disrupt the balance of power," Mari said, "there is every chance they'll affect the Sarubetsu clans. There's no way a potential clan war wouldn't lead to chaos and violence here, given that we think one of your clans is going to be the spark that triggers it."
"You're making too many assumptions," Emiya parried. "Arikada could be meeting a representative of some different clan with no stakes in Sarubetsu. Her mission could be one with no direct impact on the status quo, much less one sufficient to cause a clan war. Your own employer could be lying to you—it is standard practice for missing-nin operatives to be fed incomplete information, and do not bother denying that you are one.
"However. I also cannot ignore the presence of a sealmistress—a walking engine of mass destruction—in my town, and I cannot simply stand aside and see whether you trigger that engine or not. In fact, I have intelligence that this woman is already in Sarubetsu, and that her behaviour is already cause for alarm."
"You do?!" This was serious. Mari's expectations were that she would arrive tomorrow at the earliest. Their plans were not in place, and interception upon arrival was now out of the picture. On the other hand, it seemed to have made Emiya more likely to cooperate. Mari began to ponder plans and countermeasures…
"Yes," Emiya went on. "Under the alias of Kasuga, she was seen examining priority targets for an all-out assault on the town, then intimidated the combined forces of Irie and Hinago patrols into submission and caused panic in a Murano bar, all in one afternoon. We have people tracking her, and she has established a camp in the wilderness outside, with high-level sealing traps that have prevented our ninja from approaching."
"Ah." Mari wished the floor would open up and swallow her, though in all likelihood this would merely lead to her landing on the receptionist. "Actually, that's us. 'Kasuga' is an alias one of my people invented on the spur of the moment."
Emiya's eyes widened, her composure threatened for the first time that evening. "You thought that… You were actually going to… You… I—I have no words. I may have to revise my estimation of your skills, so I suppose it's fortunate I no longer believe you're here to assassinate me."
Mari slumped in her seat. "Yes, my subordinates have a tendency to improvise with unpredictable effects. I'm sure that's never happened to you, mayor of Sarubetsu. Can we move on?"
"Yes," Emiya said. "Excuse me while I just discard a pile of urgent reports I spent precious hours reading and analysing.
"Now. My conditions. You will not engage Arikada in combat within the territory of the town. If you can remove her without harm to my town, excellent. I will provide whatever support is practical. If you wish to fight her elsewhere, that is your lookout, and I have no reason to stop you. But a single civilian casualty in Sarubetsu, or destruction of property anywhere outside the southeast, and I will make sure you have the three clans to deal with. This will, in fact, happen anyway, but if you follow my conditions, I will intervene on your behalf."
Mari smiled. "Good. In that case, for now we'll need information on movements in and out of Sarubetsu so we can identify Arikada and any guards travelling with her, and on major local players so we can make our move without stepping on anyone's toes."
-o-
Irie Shintarō was the fattest ninja Hazō had ever seen, as well as possessing a villain goatee and narrow yellowish eyes that made the hairs stand on the back of Hazō's neck. His "office" was filled with shelves stuffed with miscellaneous bric-a-brac, but Hazō's attention was instantly drawn to the seals on the two scrolls hanging on the back wall behind Shintarō, their elaborate structure offering no sign of their function.
"How can I help you, honoured visitors?" Shintarō purred.
"Shūji sent us," Hazō said. "He said you could register us as guests of the town, and provide us with some of Sarubetsu's special export at a good price."
Shintarō gave Hazō a weighing look.
Hazō: Deception said:
12d100 = 404; I'm not even going to bother with the rest of the rolls
"Yes?" Hazō asked nervously. "Is there something on my, uh, face?"
"Not to worry," Shintarō said happily, pulling out a ledger. "Aliases, please. And will you be using the same disguises throughout your stay?"
Hazō glanced questioningly at the other two, then kicked himself as he realised he was providing instant confirmation.
"I guess we'd better," Noburi said in a forced jovial tone. "Ajibana Akira. Pleasure to meet you. This," he gestured to Hazō vengefully, "is my good friend Misuta Miu."
"Tae Kanen," Keiko said. "I would like to conclude our business here swiftly, if we may."
"Hmm," Shintarō said. "This is not the kind of product that should be sold to children. Are you sure you are in need of medicine for nerves fraying from endless stress and in need of release?"
"Oh, we're sure," Keiko said grimly.
"What my friend means," Hazō cut in, "is that it's not for us. We just want a gift for a potential client who is into things like this."
"Ah," Shintaro nodded. "Foresight and courtesy, wonderful things in a client. I like to pay attention to such details. What kind of volume would you be interested in?"
"Actually, we're just looking," Hazō said. "We were hoping to compare all our options before choosing a seller."
"While we're here, though," Noburi added, "I was wondering how much room you had in your guest quarters. We're part of a bigger party, and it would be really reassuring to stay under a powerful clan's protection while we're in Sarubetsu."
"Oh, plenty," Shintarō said. "We don't get many guests this time of year—everybody wants to make their purchases and leave so they can beat the other traders to the punch—so you and your money are welcome to stay as long as you like once you pass the basic security checks."
"Does that mean we can have them to ourselves?" Noburi asked. "Only my friend here has a habit of putting his foot in his mouth, and we wouldn't want to offend your other guests."
There was a knowing look in Shintarō's eye. "Indeed. Completely empty for the time being, so you can conduct whatever top-secret preparations you're clearly planning undisturbed, as long as you clear them with my good friend Shana first.
"But let's not forget your actual business here. Since dear Shūji has vouched for you, and we wouldn't want a displeased sealmistress blowing up our workshop, let's call it five hundred ryō per dose, just for you."
"Five hundred?" Keiko asked. "That is implausible for a long-term business model. I assure you, while we may appear young, we are not inclined to let others take advantage of us, and Kasuga-sensei in particular does not have the temper for it. We may consider two hundred and fifty."
Shintarō laughed. "Really, now. I wouldn't try to teach other people how to run their businesses, my dear. We have many customers who are either wealthy enough or desperate enough to purchase Vermilion Sigh in plentiful amounts. Four-fifty, or put a silly hat on me and call me the Tsuchikage."
Keiko mulled this over. "Harvest season just finished. It occurs to me that you have a great surplus of goods, which will be sitting useless in a warehouse instead of being converted into liquid funds. Three hundred."
"You know, boy," Shintarō said, unexpectedly turning to Hazō, "your movements are just that little bit too precise, even when you're at rest. A normal person would think you're a taijutsu specialist. But to move like that at your age unconsciously—and make no mistake, your age is quite transparent—you'd have to be extremely specialized. And yet when you came in, your eyes went straight to my seals, and you were trying to decode them or I'm a chakra hagfish. Sealcrafting takes great dedication, which suggests to me the other thing comes from a taijutsu-themed bloodline. Taijutsu bloodline and sealing proficiency. How fascinating."
He looked at Keiko. "You scanned everything in the room except my face. Of note, two seconds on my ninja wire assembly, then several on the shogi board over there. How long until this side wins?"
"It's losing," Keiko replied immediately. "It has to radically change its strategy, otherwise it will keep losing no matter how many pieces it takes. But I fail to see what this tells you. There are many competent shogi players in the world."
"Oh, yes," Shintarō said. "But as one of the most formidable women I know likes to say, it's all about adding up the details. And you, boy," he smiled at Noburi. "You could almost pass for normal around here. But the barrel? Seriously? Perhaps if you had nine tails and spat chakra bombs, you might have a chance of being more memorable.
"But I do have some good news for the three of you. I am an old man," said the thirtysomething, "and my short-term memory isn't what it used to be. Whenever I make a good sale, such as, say, three doses at four hundred each, I get so excited that I forget whatever it is I was just talking about. Why, the clinking of ryō in your pockets is already outweighing all other facts in my mind."
Hazō looked at the other two. "I think we need a moment to confer."
They stepped outside.
"What do you think?"
"I think twelve hundred is a significant dent in our finances," Keiko said. "But also that he would earn more by selling the information he mentioned. Bloodline limit users are always in high demand, and not necessarily for recruitment."
"But Rice doesn't have hunter-nin, does it?" Noburi asked.
"Doesn't mean he can't sell the information to a third party," Hazō said, "or to an off-duty hunter-nin who'll make sure to pass it on to his village. I think we may have to accept it."
Hazō came back to Shintarō. "What guarantee do we have that you'll keep your word?"
"Tsk tsk tsk," Shintarō said. "Your need for the goods is genuine, and perhaps it will be again. You are worth more to me as repeat customers, especially ones who have a persuasive reason not to try to cheat me. Why, send more business my way and you might even earn an additional discount. I like to pay attention to these things."
-o-
"My guess would be the Hinago," Emiya said. "The Irie are well-established within their niche, and will have deep roots for as long as the yakuza exist. The Murano, on the other hand, are in sufficient decline that they would not risk being drawn into open warfare for fear of extermination. But the Hinago show ambition, and if these rumours about Arikada's interest in biological seals are true, it would chime well with Hinago's medical speciality."
"Thank you," Mari said. "Now, about Arikada herself…"
"Yes," Emiya said. "Our problem, as I mentioned, is that we cannot request surveillance of any clans without tipping off Arikada's employer. However, I believe I have an idea. Provide indications to your contacts with Irie and Hinago that 'Kasuga' believes her identity to be compromised, and will soon re-enter Sarubetsu under a new one, which will have to fake ignorance of her previous actions. This will keep the clans on alert for an incoming sealmistress without giving them any new information. If you tell the receptionist that you have an urgent appointment on behalf of Shibata and Sons, you will be able to see me any time I am available, and I will pass on any relevant information.
"However, my conditions stand. Harm to civilians will not be tolerated.
"One more thing." Mayor Emiya stood up from her desk. "I am sending 'Shinano' to safety and she will not be seen again.
"As for you, you have abused the trust of a dear friend of mine, and you will take responsibility. When Arikada is dealt with, you will come back here to make amends."
She didn't add any threats.
-o-
Hinago Ichiru was as great a contrast to the Irie contact as could be. He was as tall as if he had been stretched on a rack after failing to pay the Mizukage's liquor tax, eerily pale, and most remarkably, he was wearing a pair of spectacles, as if he were the head of one of Mist's wealthiest clans. However, since the frames did not quite seem to fit, Hazō suspected Ichiru was not their original owner.
"…and this is Misuta Miu," Noburi finished the introductions.
Hazō didn't yet know how. He didn't yet know when. But shinobi were supposed to be good at cycles of vengeance, and when he was done with Noburi, no human being alive would ever dare use that nickname again. Except Inoue-sensei, but she was a force of nature and to be excluded from rational calculations.
"Very good," the ninja said. "Now, as you have doubtless surmerised, I am Hinago Ichiru. Yes, the Hinago Ichiru, discoverer of the Ichiru Ratio. Though I will forgive you for being unaware of the cutting edge of pharmacogenous research.
"Now, kindly take off your clothes."
"Wait, what?" Noburi burst out.
Ichiru looked puzzled. "You can hardly expect me to formulise the perfect admixtion for your body without a detailed physical inspection. You know what they say, the serpent is in the details. Or let me guess, did you speak with those Irie barbarians? Please tell me you have not been infected by their imbeciliness."
"Absolutely not," Keiko said flatly. "And I refuse to believe that all of your customers consent to this kind of treatment."
"Hmph," Ichiru said. "The fact that others also fail to respect my art should not be taken as license for you to do the same. But very well," he continued in a long-suffering tone, "I will perform the loosest of estimations by sight, and lamentate your wilful rejection of pleasure perfectly tuned to your requirements."
"And the cost of your admixtion?" Keiko said the word slowly and reluctantly, as if she were chewing a particularly poorly-cooked shoe.
"Oh, seven hundred ryō, give or take," Ichiru said distractedly, being more occupied with gazing at Hazō's body in an unnerving fashion. "I will be able to perform a more exact calculus shortly."
"Uh-huh," Noburi said. "While we wait, you mind telling us why this place is so quiet? It feels like a haunted house."
"Oh, they're nervous about something to do with sealcrofting," Ichiru said. "They said something to me about being polite and not making any sudden movements, but I was too busy evalumating my new formula to pay much attention. I wouldn't worry too much about it if I were you.
"Hmm. If you will not undress, perhaps you will stand still while I take your measurements by touch? Not as precise, but I'm sure I will be able to exterpolate some useful data."
"Excuse me," Keiko said loudly, her voice oddly squeaky. "I have just remembered an urgent appointment on the other side of Sarubetsu."
"Wait for me!" came Noburi's shout a second later.
"Thank you very much for your time," Hazō bowed to Ichiru before urgently following suit.
-o-
You have received 10 XP.
Akane has chosen to spend 1 XP on Sealing 1. She considers sealing a highly unyouthful discipline, but has ideas on how it may be improved. Kagome is terrified.
-o-
Conversations with random civilians suggest two to three dozen ninja in town total.
The Irie compound has high walls and is three floors high; the tallest building in the town, plus two smaller one-floor buildings of unknown function. There are two entrances, namely a front gate and a smaller back door. The compound is surrounded by one- and two-floor houses belonging to wealthier citizens. You saw no patrols.
The Hinago compound is a single two-floor house in a moderately well-off area, showing signs of comparatively recent expansion. It has one front door and windows on all sides. The top floor is where you bought medicine, and seems dedicated to research and training. The bottom floor has a kitchen, a dining room and other rooms of uncertain purpose. You believe there is a basement.
-o-
What do you do?
Voting closes at 12 noon on Saturday 29th of October, Eastern Standard Time.
"Ah, my young friends have returned," Shintarou said, standing up from the shogi board where he'd been playing against himself. "And you've brought a friend."
Inoue-sensei's henged face glowered. "Yeah. A friend. These are my friends, so don't think you can take advantage of them, you stinker. Try it and I'll—"
Hazou put a hand on her arm. "It's all right, sensei," he said. "Breathe. We're all friends here."
"I'm not," Inoue-sensei grumbled. "Stinker."
"Anyway," Noburi quickly jumped in. "We're here to pick up the drugs." He pulled out a ryo pouch and set it on the table with a faint clink!
Shintaro opened the pouch and quickly counted the money. He nodded, satisfied with the amount, and whisked it into the back room, returning a moment later with an oilskin-wrapped package about one hand length on a side.
"Here you are," he said, laying it on the counter. "Now, were there any rumors you'd like to feed me? When you're leaving, where you're going with the drugs, how much money you're still carrying...anything?"
"Uh...," Noburi said. "No, nothing like that. A couple of business things, though. We need to find a telescope; do you know where we could get one?"
"Hm. Unusual item, and expensive."
Noburi shrugged but said nothing.
Shintarou considered the group for a moment. "I could probably get you one," he said. "It would take some time, though."
"How much time?" Noburi asked. "We're actually leaving later today, and we probably won't be back for about a month, so—"
"A month?" Inoue-sensei said, in the scratchy voice Kagome's alias had used in the alley. "I thought we were coming right—" She cut herself off when Hazou's grip tightened on her arm. "I mean, uh, yeah! A month! Maybe two! Yeah, definitely two!"
Noburi sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Yes, well," he said to Shintarou. "These identities are compromised, so we're leaving fairly soon. How long would it take to get a telescope?"
"Perhaps a month, more likely two," the storekeeper said, pointedly not taking note of Inoue's outburst. "And, as I said, expensive. A quarter million ryo."
Noburi choked. "A quarter million?!"
Shintarou looked down his nose at Noburi. "Stop being dramatic. Yes, a quarter million. Even then I'm giving you the 'good customer' discount. I'll barely make a profit on the sale, I'm only offering it in the interest of maintaining our business relationship."
"Yeah, I'm sure," Noburi said sourly. "Well, we'll get back to you on that. Now, if you'll excuse me, we need to go."
"Travel safe," Shintarou said. "I'll look forward to discussing it more when you get back, many weeks from now. Although, of course, should any other party of four ninja whom I have never seen before walk into my shop before then, I'll be equally glad to haggle with them."
"Of course," Noburi said blandly. "I would expect nothing less. Good day."
o-o-o-o
"Okay, so now we need to find the ninja from those patrols that we met in the alley," Hazou said. "We let them them know that we're leaving but coming right back under different henge, so that they'll be spreading the word too. That way everyone is sure to hear it. We'll need to split up, though. Six people is too obvious."
"Hang on there, bucko," Inoue-sensei said. "Telling Shintarou should be enough. He took the bait, and he knows that we want the word put around. More importantly, I don't like us splitting up and Arikada could be showing up any time now. We can't afford to let her get into the city or we'll have to wait until she leaves to engage. Best if we just get out there."
o-o-o-o
"You're really serious about this," Mari said, looking at the pile of apparently random objects that Akane was carefully laying out on the ground. "I have to admit, I thought you were pulling my leg and we were just going to find a hill or something."
Kagome nodded furiously, a giant grin on his face. "Uh-huh! It'll be great! Rock solid—no, better than that! Rocks can roll out from under you, or if some idiot starts poking at the walls they can blow up, or melt into gooey puddles that kinda look at you, or start bleeding or whatever. Not this!"
"Explain it to me again," Mari said, her voice a bottomless well of dubiousness.
"It is a most youthful invention, sensei!" Akane said. "Hazou-sensei conceived of it, Kagome made the seals, and I built the framework. You see, you take one of these wooden blocks"—she held up a chunk of pine the size of her head with a large hole bored into the center of each side—"and you connect them like so." She picked up one of the thumb-thick oak dowels that she'd pulled out of a storage-sealed bag a few minutes ago. One end of the dowel went into one block, the other end into another block. More blocks and more dowels were rapidly assembled into a grid three meters across.
"See, this is the best part!" Kagome said, too excited to wait for Akane to explain. He grabbed one of the extra-long coils of ninja wire off the ground and started running it around the frame, placing a small loop on top of each block and then balancing another block on top to hold it in place. A lifetime of experience as a hasn't-died-yet sealmaster made him check that each piece of the wire was in the middle of its supporting block and firmly anchored.
The precision was obviously pure reflex, because it still left him plenty of attention with which to chatter. "See, the frame is a bunch of different things, but the wire is all one! That's the trick—the seal only works on one object, but a wire is just one object! You can run it around all you want, then on to the next piece, and it's fine. And when you're done with it you just take the seal off and the wire collapses so you can pull it up with you and there's no way for the stinkers to get to you because you're up in the air! It's like being in a tree, except the tree doesn't want to eat you!"
"Go back to that part about the wire collapsing," Mari said. "That sounded like a bad part."
"It's fine, sensei," Hazou said. "As long as the seal is in place the wire is literally unmovable. We'll make sure that the seals are firmly fixed and covered so that they're immune to the weather. There's no risk, I promise."
"Uh-huh," Mari said, eyeing the platform even more dubiously.
Kagome stopped laying out the wire and looked at her, hurt. "You don't trust my seals?" he asked piteously.
Mari ducked her head guiltily. "No, I do," she said. "It's just...well, I mean, we're talking about standing on thin air, supported only by some wire. It's a little daunting." She saw his face and hurried to add. "I'm sure it'll be fine, though! Probably lots of fun too, once I get past the adjustment. Yep, can't wait to try it!"
Akane laughed. "It is most youthful of you to be so open-minded, sensei," she said. "I myself am quite looking forward to it." She looked over and saw that Kagome had finished getting the last of the wire in place and affixing the various components of the Five Seal Barrier. Without waiting to be told, she and Hazou moved to opposite sides of the platform and hoisted it up as high as they could reach. Kagome brushed his fingers across the center seal and pushed a tiny pulse of chakra into it before stepping back and nodding to Hazou and Akane. The two genin lowered the frame down, leaving the wire hanging in midair, unsupported, with a lattice of heavy wooden blocks balanced on it.
Mari absently finger-combed imaginary tangles out of her hair while studying the latest bit of wizardry to come from the warped mind of her students.
"Isn't it a very youthful invention, sensei?" Akane asked happily.
In the silence of her own mind, Mari sat on the first reply that came to mind...and the second, and the third. Outwardly she smiled brightly. "It really is," she said. "Okay, let's do this." With a silent prayer to the gods of fools and teachers of unfortunately inventive young ninja, she leaped up onto the frame. The thing was just as solid as Kagome had promised, without even the tiny bit of sway you would feel on a tree limb. The loops of wire provided platforms wide enough for a ninja to stand on, although a civilian would have plummeted to their death instantly. Still, a little chakra adhesion to hold oneself in place definitely seemed called for.
Mari forced herself to look calm and supportive as Hazou and Akane passed the frame up. Internally, she started preparing to help make the next level of insanity.
o-o-o-o
Twenty minutes later, they were so high up that the wind was whipping her hair everywhere. It was exactly as awful as she'd expected, and she didn't dare look down at the ground so far below. Gods, she hated heights. If she fell from here she wouldn't just hit the ground, she'd splash. Every bone would shatter like glass, leaving her—
No, she reminded herself firmly. If she fell from here she would just henge into a blanket and float to the ground. Which was good, because that was literally the plan for how to get down. The kids, irrational little monsters that they were, were actually looking forward to that part: pull the seals off so that the wire collapsed and everyone plummeted to their death...or, at least, to their you're-good-at-henge-right-because-you-better-be.
For this final level they'd woven the wire densely enough that it was possible to lie down in something that definitely wasn't comfort but at least wasn't actively painful. Still, it was better after they spread out the blankets (carefully selecting the ones that most closely matched the current color of the sky) and unsealed some some boards to lay on top so that the wire didn't cut into delicate bits.
Or, at least, it was comfortable until that was all done and she had nothing to distract herself from the fact that she was going to need to spend hours, possibly days, lying on mid-air a bazillion feet in the air while looking down at the ground nauseatingly far below in hopes of spotting an incredibly lethal sealmistress that the team would then have to go try to capture. Capture. Admittedly, the emphasis was very heavily on the 'try' part of that; there'd been a lot of discussion and everyone was solidly onboard with the "if it's convenient but let's not go too far out of our way we'll just make sure that we don't smoosh her head yeah that sounds like a better plan" plan).
Well, Kagome wasn't so much onboard with it as he was grudingly willing to grumble instead of flat out oppose. He'd campaigned vociferously for the 'boom, squish' plan but been roundly shot down by Keiko's point that explosives were fairly likely to smoosh Arikada's face which would be fairly likely to make Jiraiya smoosh the team's faces.
So, yes, the team at least needed to try to capture the insane, bioseal-wielding, loves-collateral-damage sealmistress. Why? Because clearly Mari's mother had been right and the kami would take vengeance on little girls who sassed their mothers. The vengeance had been pretty long delayed, but it was all the more evil for the wait.
With a carefully suppressed sigh, Mari settled in to keep watch.
o-o-o-o
Only the Iron Nerve was keeping Hazou still as he waited for Arikada to arrive at the ambush site. He wasn't sure if things had gone well or poorly; on the one hand, they'd lucked out with the timing. They'd been on watch for no more than a few hours before Hazou had spotted what had to be Arikada's group. They were coming cross-country at a speed that was a lazy amble for ninja, but still faster than any civilian could have maintained. He'd lucked into seeing them from far off; there had been just enough time to signal the others, scramble for the ground, and put together a hastily-prepared ambush.
Well, if you could count "six people lying down under camo blankets" an ambush. Hardly what he—or Kagome!—would have preferred. Where were the seal traps? Where was the giant marsh that would let Noburi drain everyone in the area? Shoot, they didn't even have enough misterator seals to make a decent fogbank before the enemy arrived. (Also, he really needed to figure out a way to wreak horrific vengeance on Inoue-sensei for tagging his brilliant invention with the silly name 'misterator'.)
He silenced his thoughts as he heard the faint sound of footsteps rapidly approaching. Very, very carefully, he lifted one corner of his camo blanket the tiniest bit, just enough that he could see out. The team was scattered around the immediate area—they hadn't known exactly where Arikada would pass through, although they had a pretty accurate guess—so there was no way to coordinate. Whoever ended up being closest was responsible for calling the attack.
Here they came...closer...closer...three of them. Two men, the left-side one broad and stocky, the right-side one wiry with blond hair. In the middle ran a fat woman with patchy skin and hair like bristles.
Hazou blinked and looked again. Her skin wasn't just patchy it was...diseased? He couldn't tell from here, but there was something wrong. Oh, lovely. A strange-looking sealmistress who specialized in bioseals. This was gonna go great.
"Look ou—" the blond ninja cried, pointing to where Keiko hid under her blanket.
Ambush spoiled, the team threw their blankets off and leaped to their feet. A year of practice together and specific prep for this exact encounter allowed them to act as one: Hazou, Akane, Noburi, and Kagome hurling PMYF and misterator (again: vengeance required) seals in all directions, while Keiko and Inoue-sensei dealt with the guards.
Keiko apparently decided that perceptiveness should be its own reward, because she targeted the blond ninja with a pair of kunai. The weapons seemed to vanish from her hands and disappear into a blurred line connecting her to her victim.
The man was fast, but not fast enough. He managed to barely twist aside from one weapon and deflect the second. Instead of blasting straight through his chest and out his back, he turned it enough that it hit his collarbone instead. In the end he might have preferred the instant kill; the kunai sank into his flesh right up to the hilt, the point sticking a full thumblength out his back. He screamed and stumbled as the pain hit, but managed to stay on his feet.
While planning for this encounter, the group had identified a weakness in their team composition: they had only one person with significant ranged attacks. (At least, ranged attacks that didn't demolish the entire landscape.) Everyone agreed on two things about this combat: first, the guards needed to be dealt with immediately so that the whole team could focus on Arikada. Second, for anyone except Keiko, dealing with the sealmistress's guards was going to require getting uncomfortably close to the sealmistress herself. Kagome had loudly advocated that he should 'boom, squish!' the guard while Inoue-sensei shut Arikada down with genjutsu. Inoue-sensei had regretfully turned the idea down; she was not confident that a bioseal expert wouldn't have unusual senses that would allow her to automatically defeat genjutsu. No, they were going to need to take Arikada down the old-fashioned way: by beating her like a drum until she fell down. And before doing that, the guards needed to be gotten out of the way, which meant getting close to Arikada. Finally, Inoue-sensei had put her foot down and declared that she would be the one to bell the cat. After all, she'd laughingly said, she was still the best in the group at "getting up close and personal."
There is something extremely personal, almost intimate, about literally snapping another human being in half.
The stocky guard barely had time to react as a red-haired streak came in from his side, slid behind him, and grabbed him by the collar. Chakra anchored Inoue-sensei's left foot to the ground for leverage as she yanked her victim's head and shoulders back, forcing his body into a convenient arch. Simultaneously, a dainty foot lashed out in a snap kick that took him in the small of the back and sent the fragments of his spine out through his belly. He folded backwards around her foot like a wet rag doll, dead before he could even scream.
Arikada saw it happen and laughed.
An instant later, the dead guard's head exploded, practically in Inoue-sensei's hands.
"Sensei!" Hazou screamed, hurling himself forward. He'd barely taken two steps before his brain caught up with what his eyes were telling him: his jounin was all right. Somehow she had seen what was coming and hurled herself backwards, curling into a ball and rolling away fast as the explosion bloomed behind her. When she stood up she was covered in soot and her hair was singed, but she seemed unhurt.
Which left Hazou with a problem. Namely, he was in mid-charge at a probably-insane sealmistress who could apparently make people's heads explode. And she was turning towards him.
"Nope," he said, vanishing into a kawarimi with one of the logs that the PMYF seals had dispensed all over the battlefield.
The area was hazy with fog from the misterator seals—not enough to block vision, but enough to reduce it. Still, Hazou was able to see well enough to see Keiko slice her thumb on a kunai and slam her hand on the ground.
"Pangolin Summoning Technique: Panchipaama!" Keiko shouted. Purple smoke exploded everywhere as the eight-foot scaled monstrosity that was her combat summon appeared. "We need the woman!" Keiko called, pointing at Arikada.
Panchipaama's massive head swung towards the enemy and locked onto the wounded ninja who had just been implicitly declared unneeded. She dropped forward, curling into a tight ball and racing towards the enemy ninja. Her scales lifted up slightly, turning into bladed scoops that drove her forward at impossible speed and sent a rooster tail of dirt up behind her. Arikada leaped frantically aside, but the wounded guard wasn't nearly fast enough to evade before the massive ball of bladed scales rolled over him.
In that instant, Hazou was forced to reevaluate some of his beliefs. He had met two pangolins so far: Pandaa, and Pankurashun. Pandaa was small and adorable and acted like an excited kid. Pankurashun was massive and had command presence practically oozing off his body, and he had long claws...but he hadn't actually done anything except talk and take Akane aside to teach her a jutsu. The hunched-over posture and wiggly trot that was a pangolin's normal gait had made even the massive warrior seem less threatening than he might have.
When Panchipaama rolled over the unknown ninja, Hazou was forced to abandon any thoughts that even vaguely hinted at "not threatening." The man wasn't crushed by the charge, he was splashed. There was no other word for it. Blood and viscera exploded everywhere, a hand flew off to the south, and when the invulnerable ball of death that was the pangolin went past, all that was left was a red stain well-mixed into badly torn-up soil.
Arikada looked around the battlefield at six enemy ninja, a summoned pangolin the size of a small building, and the dead bodies of her two guards. Hazou could almost hear the woman's thoughts as she decided that this patch of ground was a good place to not be.
"Bye," the sealmistress said with a nasty smile. She crouched slightly and leaped; her legs seemed to explode, the heavy flesh blasting away from her body and hurling her through the air in something that was so far beyond a normal chakra-powered ninja leap that there were no words for it. The explosion tore Panchipaama apart, banishing the immense pangolin back to the Summon Realm with a scream of frustrated rage.
XP AWARD: 13
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends Wednesday, November 2, at 12pm London time.
Current situation: the team is together on the plains, about four miles NW of Sarubetsu. Panchipaama is gone, none of you are wounded. You just heard the 'thump!' of Arikada hitting the ground a hundred yards or so to the north. What do you do?
Before we get to the actual dice, a few comments and bits of information. These were written yesterday in more-or-less realtime as I was planning and composing the update, so you'll get a sense of where my head was at the time:
I'm not actually sure if some parts of this match the plan or not. I had trouble following the section on how to keep watch; it seemed a bit self-contradictory, and part of it depended on having access to Transformation Telescopes, which isn't a thing that works. (That got announced late in the voting process and everyone was scrambling to update the plan based on the discussion, so it probably got lost in the shuffle.) There were a couple versions, one where you were in close to the town and one where you were 10 miles out. The mayor made clear that you weren't to fight Arikada in or near the town so, all things considered, I punted and said that you were doing the 5SB towers 10 miles from town, because (a) that will be fun to write and (b) it seems plausible that the rest of the team would bite on it. You stated that Inoue should be watching the west and the towers should be 60 degrees apart, putting the second one at 330—basically right in Arikada's path (as you'll see below).
We don't have a mechanic for using mirrors to signal to someone miles away, much less to do it without being seen by someone else—it's not Stealth if you're flashing mirrors around—so for now I'm just rolling a die. We'll sort out permanent mechanics later. (In point of fact I'm not really convinced that signalling across miles like this is feasible without telescopes, but I'll roll with it because this sounds like a fun encounter to write. Likely not to work in future, though.)
I don't think the method for building the 5SB towers works—as I understand the description it has all the four supporting seals below the center seal when actually all five need to be in a plane. It's been a long time since that was stated though, it's a very cool idea, and there's been prior discussion that did come up with workable ideas so I've patched it here.
I've got multi-combatant bonuses already figured into all rolls. Technically speaking I probably shouldn't have given the whole team the MC bonus for the first attack since most of them were throwing misterators around instead of actually attacking. Meh, keep it simple.
Also, I just recalled that some of the team are wounded, but I can't remember who (Hazou and someone, I think) and can't find it quickly. Feh. I'm five hours into this update just doing planning, I've written about 200 words, and I want to get to the good stuff. Congratulations, you're all at full strength for the duration of this encounter. I dunno, maybe you're just that badass that you can temporarily shrug off having been stabbed.
One final thing: as with 'A Bonfire of Tapirs', I'm having to make some judgement calls on how things should work, and @Velorien isn't around right now to talk with. We will not retcon anything about the fight. If you have issues with anyone's tactical decisions or my judgement calls, please be polite about it but understand that the discussion will only inform the future, not the past.
With that out of the way, on with the show!
Mari, Deception:
?d100: 1106 Dice, why you hate pretty jounin?
Shintarou, Deception:
?d100: 766 Arikada is arriving either today or tomorrow. Which is it?
1d2: 1
Okay, today. Let's say the last update ended at 12pm. What time is Arikada arriving?
1d24: 17
5pm. Okay that's about enough time for you to do all this stuff and get into position, and it's before sunset so you have a shot at seeing them as they approach. Where are they coming from in relation to Sarubetsu?
?d180 + 180: 327 degrees
327 degrees is about NW. How good are they at not being seen?
Arikada party, Stealth:
?d100: 905
So, does Team Uplift notice the incoming biosealmistress?
Hazou, Awareness + 3d100 (circumstance bonus: up in the air looking over mostly flat plains):
18d100: 912
Okay, not bothering to roll for anyone else. Can you signal the other Team Uplift group without being seen?
1d100 vs Target Number ?: 24
Arikada has no reason to be racing so let's say there's enough time for the team to regroup. (You're welcome.) The plan did not specify what to do if you actually found her, but prior discussion had three plans: full frontal assault, Mist Drain, and poisoning / draining in town. The mayor kiboshed the 'in the town' option and everyone in the group hates the full frontal option, so Mist Drain it is. Note that Pandaa isn't there for this fight at all, and Panchipaama starts the update not there because she is not exactly subtle and would be hard to conceal on a more-or-less open plains.
Since you know where they are and where they're going you can get ahead of them and stage an ambush. (Again, you're welcome.) There's not a lot of time, though, so you're not going to be super well dug in. Also, they're going to know what's going on the minute you pop mist and you don't have enough macerators to make a convincing fogbank before they get there. Let's see if they notice you before the misterators pop.
Team Uplift, Stealth + circumstance bonus for attacking from ambush, lowest dice.
10d100 + ?d100: 589
Team Aaaaagghhhh-It's-Eating-My-Face!, Awareness:
?d100: 673
Hmmmm, that's not good. Still, it's only an A-class success so I'm going to rule that they notice you just before you pop mist. They aren't surprised, but they also don't have time to avoid the ambush.
Noburi, Hazou, Akane, Kagome: throw misterators everywhere
No roll needed.
Keiko, Weapons. No boost, as she's saving chakra for summoning Panchipaama:
30d100: 1535
Guard #1, Weapons:
?d100 + ? chakra boost: 1295 Class B failure: Guard #1 is at -3 dice. One more hit will kill him.
Inoue-sensei, Taijutsu:
?d100 + ?d100 boost: 1957
Guard #2, Weapons:
?d100 + ? chakra boost: 1044 SPLUT! Team Aaaaagghhhh-It's-Eating-My-Face! loses Redsh^H^H^H^H^H Guard #2's MC bonus!
The sealmistress's legs exploded, flinging her into the air and away. Noburi was far enough away that he only felt a faint puff of air on his face from the blast, but the pure shock of it still made his brain stutter for an instant.
Not Hazō, though. The taijutsu specialist looked immediately at Inoue-sensei. "Are we going after her, sensei?"
She rolled her eyes. "It's that or be killed by Jiraiya. Suggestion?"
Noburi watched as Hazō did that thing he did—ideas flicking through his brain so fast you could almost see them, intuitively calculating angles and spinning the problem around sideways. A faint surge of envy brushed against Noburi's heart. The idea that he would never be able to do that, that he would never have what it took to be a leader...it was a hard thing to look at, but as time went on he was having more trouble keeping his mind's eye averted.
"We need to split up so we can surround her," Hazō said. (And so she can only kill a few of us with any single attack, Noburi mentally added.) "Three teams. Me and Noburi, Keiko and Kagome, Inoue-sensei and Akane. Split up, thirty meters between teams. Keiko, you're in the middle, I'll go left. Chakra boost to chase her. Sensei, when we get her in sight use your Wind Wall to let us catch up. Do you think you can bluff her into surrender?"
Inoue-sensei laughed. "Who's bluffing?"
"Right," Hazō nodded. "Seagull Yellow, Syrup Trap, Earth Wall. Clones to pin, drain when we've got her. Go!" He leaped away, angling left; Noburi fell in on his teammate, immediately dropping into shield formation: half a step behind Hazō and on his left. The other pairs spread out as indicated, racing at maximum boost for where they had heard Arikada land.
They were fighting a jōnin-level insane sealmistress who loved collateral damage and was apparently willing and able to blow herself up without taking significant harm. There was absolutely no good reason for feeling happy about any of this...and yet, a tiny whisper of pride flickered in Noburi's heart. Hazō had chosen him for a teammate. Not Keiko, despite the fact that close-in taijutsu specialist and long-range sharpshooter was a great combination. (At least, if the sharpshooter was sharp enough to fire into a melee without hitting the wrong person. Which Keiko was.) Nor had he chosen Kagome, the paranoid explosive master whose closest tie in the world was to Hazō. Nor had he chosen his disciple Akane, the beautiful young girl who practically worshipped the ground Mr. Mew walked on.
No, when Hazō sent them off to fight probably the most dangerous opponent they'd every face, he had chosen the fat kid with the giant barrel to back him up in a life-or-death fight. That felt good.
The team broke out of the mist to see Arikada a few dozen meters away, kneeling beside a trio of bodies. The sealmistress glanced up and saw them coming; she froze for just a moment, then went back to what she had been doing, hands cutting seals with furious haste.
"Edo Tensei no Jutsu!" she shouted, slapping a hand on the back of each corpse in turn. No sooner had she touched the third and last before she was on her feet and racing away. The mountainous flab of her torso and arms looked incongruous supported by the newly-normal dimensions of her legs, but it didn't seem to slow her down at all.
The three corpses surged to their feet and spread out to engage each pair of team members; the one closest to Hazō carried daishou—paired swords, small and large. The second corpse was swinging a meteor hammer and the third was bare-handed.
Noburi calculated the angles; there was no way they were going to be able to get around their just-recently-a-corpse attacker and still catch Arikada before she reached the town.
Sudden dismay shot through through him as he remembered something critical: Arikada didn't even need to reach the town itself. The mayor had said that the team wasn't allowed to engage inside 'the town or its territory', which included the area in a one-mile circle around the town proper. At the speed the sealmistress was moving she would be inside the protected area in about five minutes. For that matter, if she could get enough distance she could go to ground; the plains were mostly flat, but there was enough topography to hide in if you wanted to. And that wasn't even allowing for any escape jutsu she might have.
He glanced at Hazō and saw that the other boy had done the same math. If they tried to avoid the corpse-warrior it would stay inside them, keeping them from following its creator. The only choice was to go through it.
There was no need to talk; Noburi slowed his steps a fraction, dropping farther back and circling to Hazō's right. Hazō shot ahead, angling in from the attacker's right side to force it to turn slightly away from his Water-Whip-wielding ally.
Their opponent was a dead man. Dead about three days, based on the slight decomposition and the white film over the eyes. The body had definitely been through a storage seal; it was torn up, bits of flesh crushed or even ripped off by the stresses. The damage was mostly superficial; the actual cause of death was readily apparent: someone had hammered a spike through the left ear canal and into the brain. About an inch of the spike was still sticking out.
Even as he noticed this, Noburi was pulling chakra out of his barrel, dragging the water along with it and shaping it into his signature Whip. As thick as his thumb, four meters long, and powerful enough to tear flesh. Between the two of them they would finish this zombie off in a heartbeat and catch up to its mistress. Right, that was definitely the way to think. Totally.
While Noburi was casting his jutsu, Hazō went in at full speed. Noburi watched his teammate charge, the confusing muscle twitches and barely percetible weight shifts of his Roki style in full force, and watched the zombie's reaction. His heart rose slightly; the enemy's eyes were shifting back and forth over Hazō's form, clearly trying to make sense of what it was seeing. Still, confused or not, the dead body in front of them charged forward to meet the genin.
The corpse's blades gleamed in the late afternoon sun as they spun a net of steel around their wielder...but every net has a pattern. If you can see the pattern, you can pass through it.
The first attack was from the katana in the right hand, cutting diagonally from the zombie's top left to bottom right. The wakazashi was held reversed and close to the body as a parrying tool. The actions were smooth and practiced, all the skill of a senior ninja brought back into the rotting flesh controlled by the fleeing sealmistress.
Noburi waited for his chance. It was Hazō's job to create the opening for Noburi's attack. Depending on what was open Noburi could either kill, cripple, or just distract the enemy while Hazō finished it.
Noburi was definitely aiming for 'kill'.
Hazō shortened his stride for a moment, changing the timing of the engagement just enough that the katana went past him instead of cutting him into giblets. Noburi winced at how close it had come; Hazō was clearly desperate to end this quickly—as he should be. Come on, man, open him up!
The zombie's shorter blade slashed up and Hazō tumbled left in front of it, grabbing the corpse's calf and hugging it to his chest as he went by. The corpse warrior was yanked forward, dropping to one knee and windmilling its arms as it tried to catch its balance.
Noburi's Water Whip struck like a snake, slicing through the air in a strike that would carve the enemy's head neatly from top of spine to front of forehead, just like the clan master had taught. Simultaneously, Hazō kicked back and up, catching his enemy under the jaw with his heel and rolling his toes forward to crush the larynx. The strike would have killed a living human instantly, but the corpse shook it off and stabbed downwards with the katana while casually cutting half of Noburi's Water Whip off with a sideways cut of the wakazashi. The no-longer-controlled water sprayed uselessly across both combatants.
Noburi snarled and shouted to distract the enemy even as he pulled more water out of his barrel, extending the Whip back to full length. He could rebuild the jutsu as a chakra construct, but then he wouldn't be able to drain through it. He really wanted to wind his Whip around Arikada's throat and choke her out while simultaneously draining the bitch dry. Blowing people up, fine. Bringing them back from the dead to fight for you? That was just wrong.
Hazō rolled frantically to the side, avoiding the stab of the katana by a whisker, pushing himself to his feet and frantically leaping back from the imagined yet almost audible shiiing of the wakazashi.
The corpse stood up; its lower jaw had been crushed by Hazō's kick and flopped uselessly below its face. Its neck bones had been snapped, so it had trouble turning its head. Despite all that, it didn't seem to have been significantly impaired.
Noburi watched Hazō set himself, his face dropping into that total stillness that he had only seen when Hazō was about to do something insanely stupid. Cursing, Noburi circled to the right, closing in and looking for an opportunity.
Hazō went in ahead of the katana strike, one hand parrying his enemy's right wrist to interrupt the attack. Hazō's other hand latched onto his opponent's left, shutting down the gutting stroke from the wakazashi. The genin battered at the corpse with furious leg sweeps and stamping kicks to the inside of the knee as Noburi slashed away with the Whip. Neither of them could get in a decisive blow; the creature moved with their attacks in perfect sync, feet circling back and away from the kicks, refusing to get tangled up in the sweeps, and twisting to dodge the Whip or to shift Hazō into the way so Noburi had to abort.
Hazō misread his opponent and shifted the wrong way, losing control of his opponent's hands and letting the blades come back into play. The zombie warrior tried to jump back, give itself the range to use its weapons, but it made a bad choice: it jumped clear of Hazō, giving Noburi all the time in the world to cut the goddamn monster in half. His Whip slashed out—
It was a feint.
The zombie pivoted to the left and dropped to one knee, lunging forward in a thrust that would have gutted Noburi if he hadn't managed to deflect the blade with a surge of chakra-controlled water even as he swayed to the side. Instead of killing him the katana sliced through the Whip a fingerlength in front of Noburi's hand, drew a shallow cut along his hip, and tunked into the barrel behind him. The point caught and the energy of the thrust threw the genin to the ground.
Sheer panic tore through the water user's mind. The injury had broken his focus and all the water he'd been holding was gone, soaking into his clothes or the ground. Recasting his jutsu would take too long; in another breath the zombie would rise up, step forward, and drive thirty-four inches of steel through his head.
Fortunately, Noburi wasn't fighting alone. The zombie had had to turn away from Hazō to make the strike, and that was all the opening Hazō needed. He took one step forward, planted his left foot and spun into a side kick that took the zombie in the spine and drove it face-first into the ground. Noburi scrambled to his feet even as Hazō followed the zombie down, pouring a flurry of strikes into it. Against a human he would have punched through the back of the head, but against this pile of animated flesh he crushed the shoulders instead. No matter how tough it might be, it wasn't going to be doing much fighting without its sh—
Noburi would never be quite certain what gave him the clue. Was there a clicking sound, or a brief pulse of light? He didn't know, but he still shouted "MOVE!" and threw himself backwards. A giant smacked him in the face with an invisible pillow; he rode the shockwave of the explosion and landed on his feet, lightly singed but mostly unhurt.
Mr. Mew's godsdamned cheating bloodline reflexes had gotten him out without a visible scratch. There was some zombie-pus in his hair and he was covered in dirt from the dive he'd taken, but other than that he was fine.
"You okay?" Hazō asked.
"Yeah. Ears are ringing, but that's about it. C'mon, lets go get that bitch." This time it was Noburi who moved first, Hazō dropping in behind him as they headed for where a crimson-haired comet was streaking across the landscape to their east.
o-o-o-o
Mari refused to glance to either side where undead warriors were charging after her kids. They could look after themselves and she had to let them, no matter how much she wanted to go to their aid. They would be fine. They had soaked up everything she'd ever taught them, they had great teamwork, and they were amazingly powerful for their ages. They'd be fine, really.
Sure.
The corpse came in, spinning one end of its meteor hammer while keeping the other coiled up. Both weapon and wielder were big—the chain on the meteor hammer was probably ten meters long and the massive weights on either end of the chain were almost gratuitously large, bigger than both of Mari's fists put together. The zombie that wielded the thing towered over her—almost as tall as Captain Zabuza himself, and even wider and more muscular. Granted, a lot of the muscles were rotting or torn up by storage stress, but the point remained: this thing was bloody huge.
Mari's lips peeled back in a fierce wolf-smile. She'd been fighting bigger opponents her entire life—as tiny as she was, pretty much every opponent was bigger. Truth be told, she really, really enjoyed beating the holy everloving crap out of some giant bully like this. Another time, another day, when the team wasn't trapped between an insane sealmistress and an angry Sannin, she could really have had some fun with this fight.
Not today.
The outer hammer went spinning past, the obvious distraction, as the inner one licked straight out in a surprise move that would have crushed Mari's chest had it landed. Unfortunately for the zombie, Mari had fought hammer-wielders before. She twirled around the attack, her hair whipping out in a circle, and grabbed the chain. Her feet chakra-locked to the ground for stability, she yanked with everything she had.
Mari was a tiny little thing to look at, but she was also a world-class martial artist. Her small frame concealed physical strength that would have shocked a civilian. Add chakra boost to that and what you got was insane.
The zombie was pulled right off its feet and came flying face-first into a sidekick that crushed its head in and knocked it back three meters. Mari snorted to herself in satisfaction.
And then the thing got up.
For just a moment, Mari stared in shock. How the hell did you kill something that wouldn't stay dead? It was stumbling, the entire front of its head had been crushed flat and one eye had been completely destroyed, but it was already starting to gather up the chain of its meteor hammer.
"YOOOOOOUUUUUTTTTHHHHHHHHHH!" Akane cried, charging forward and leaping into the air. The zombie had just barely started dodging when the Human Path's only disciple of the Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough punched down through the oval of its collarbones until her arm was buried in it almost up to the shoulder. The impact knocked the zombie back; Akane rode it down to the ground and somersaulted forward without removing her hand from where it was wrapped around the monster's pubic bone.
The durability of undead bones competed with strength born of alien jutsu and came up short. As Akane rolled forward her arm tore its way through the zombie's organs, exploded its ribs, and erupted out through its skin, gutting it like a trout.
Mari stared down at the now-quiescent corpse. You probably could have done more damage by forcing someone to swallow an explosive tag, but it would have been a close thing.
"Come, sensei!" Akane said, bouncing to her feet with a brilliant smile and disgusting black juices dripping off her arm, "we must stop the most unyouthful Arikada from escaping!" With an excited yell she raced off in the direction of their quarry.
Mari shook her head and laughed even as she took off after her most youthful student.
o-o-o-o
"Right," Hazō nodded. "Seagull Yellow, Syrup Trap, Earth Wall. Clones to pin, drain when we've got her. Go!"
Kagome was on the move before Hazō had finished the word 'Go'. There was an insane sealmistress, and there was his team. The sooner he got to the first, the safer would be the second. Sure, they'd all agreed that they'd try for live capture and only go lethal if it was absolutely necessary, but 'necessary' was such a wonderfully flexible word. Besides, Jiraiya would understand if the stinking sealmistress was missing a couple of legs, right? They could just claim it was self-inflicted after the explosion. For that matter a small implosion bomb wouldn't even kill her if he placed it just so; if she were right on the edge she'd probably just be a little mauled. A little mauling between friends was no big deal, right?
Kagome burst out of the mist, all too aware of Keiko on his right. Her smooth grace made it seem that she was flowing across the landscape like the shadow of a cloud. It made him self-conscious about his own lurching, clumsy gait. Still. He might not be as graceful, but he was even better than she was at killing things. She lacked the viciousness that he had learned over the decades, and he was absolutely determined that she would never learn it.
Just ahead of them, Arikada was crouched over three bodies. Kagome's hand went instinctively to one of the disks on his belt before he aborted the gesture. Right, they needed to try for live capture, drat it. Stupid stinking idea. Stupid stinking idiot Jiraiya and his stinking idiot ideas.
The sealmistress leaped to her feet and raced off as the corpses rolled up and charged at the team. Kagome forced himself not to react to the two weapons-wielding zombies that were going after the other members of his team. They were tough, all of them, and with everyone moving around so fast he wasn't sure if he could tag the zombies without also tagging those who were engaged with them.
He wouldn't trade his team for anything in the world, but there were times when having to worry about friendly fire was really frustrating.
The corpse coming for them was moving as fast as any ninja Kagome had ever seen. He raised his hands, thumbs slipping into the grooves of his ringboxes. Just a little closer...three...two....
A storm of raiton energy erupted from the zombie and it accelerated into a blur, coming straight at him, a rigid spike of condensed lightning boiling out of its hand.
With pinpoint precision, a storm of kunai went over Kagome's right shoulder and grouped themselves in the center of the zombie's face. The force of the throw sank the blades in right up to the hilts, split the skull open from crown to septum, and actually rocked the zombie back.
The zombie staggered, caught its balance, and turned towards Keiko. The zombie's fists came up as it shifted its weight forward—
"Die, you stinker!" Kagome shrieked, thrusting both hands towards the enemy in what would have been a double-fist strike from anyone else. The zombie didn't react at all; Kagome was too far away to land a kick, much less a punch.
Kagome wasn't really big on punching people. He was really more about explosions, to be honest.
The blast from Kagome's right hand was a cone so narrow that at this range it was nearly a blade. It hit the undead ninja in the chest and tore it in half, killing it instantly. Which didn't really matter, since the wide-angle blast from Kagome's left hand turned the thing into finely-ground hamburger and spread it out over the landscape in an arc of unpleasantly sticky red goo.
"HAH!" Kagome shouted, not slowing down as his pounding feet spurned the zombie-guts-squelching ground. "FEAR THE EXPLOSIONS, YOU STINKER!"
A step behind him, he heard Keiko snort in amusement, then fall silent again as they both poured on the speed. Arikada was ahead of them, but they were closing in fast.
Kagome's lips peeled back in a fierce wolf-smile. Twelve years of being picked on by the other kids because he was smart but not strong, because he always lost at sparring practice. More years of seal training, and then the factory. Mocked by other sealmasters for the 'unnecessarily paranoid' care he took with the precautions. Well, he was alive and they weren't. And he was going to show this disgusting, zombie-summoning, companion-killing seal-using stinker what it meant to face a properly paranoid sealmaster. She might think she was hot stuff with her bioseals, but Kagome had a few seals he wanted to show her. Yeah, show them to her reaaaalllly close. Like, up her stinking nose close. That would keep her quiet. And the team was almost there, too. Only about two minutes from the interdicted zone, but there was enough time. They would catch her.
The mountainous flab of Arikada's arms, and a giant strip of meat from her back, peeled themselves off her body and squished downwards into a trio of massive tentacles. The meat-limbs lifted her off the ground and carried her away with giant strides, widening the gap rapidly. For a moment, Kagome's heart leapt as he realized that his team wouldn't have to deal with the stinker. Then it plummeted as he realized that they'd have to deal with an angry Sannin instead. You know, the Land of Snow was supposed to be beautiful this time of year....
"Wind Element Technique: Wind Wall!" Mari shouted from his right. Ahead of them the air shimmered and danced as a vertical windstorm fountained out of the ground, throwing grass and dirt into the sky.
Kagome sighed as the Crimson Comet stopped lollygagging along and really put on the speed. Mari had been sticking with the others until now, not wanting to separate the team, but there was an escaping enemy to catch and she had clearly decided that it was time to show the kids what being a jōnin meant. She left them completely in the dust as she sprinted ahead and dove into the Wind Wall, letting it shoot her forward like an arrow from a bow.
Arikada's meat-limb tripod was ridiculously fast, but Mari went past her like she was standing still, then spun around, her feet digging grooves in the ground as she used chakra to go from 'faster-than-a-racehorse' to 'dead stop' in the space of two meters.
"Listen to the job offer or we bury you right here," Mari declared, her trained voice carrying easily across the grass of the plains.
Arikada halted, her flesh tentacles pivoting her from side to side so she could see the other five oncoming ninja.
"You might be able to take me, but I'll drag every one of you with me to hell," Arikada snarled. "I bet I can get a good part of the town, too. Bring all the clans down on you and whoever is paying you. Your bosses wouldn't like that too much, would they?"
"Look, you stupid bitch, we aren't here to fight you," Mari said as Kagome and Keiko arrived, Hazō and Akane seconds behind. "We came here to make you a damn job offer. Now, would you sit the hell down and shut up for a minute so we can make our pitch, or should we just put you in the ground and tell the boss you weren't interested?"
Kagome's hands were coming up, hoping desperately to get the shot off before Arikada lunged at Mari. What was Mari doing? Mouthing off like that wasn't how you talked someone down, that was how you got them pissed off enough to kick your feet out from under you and pound you until three of your ribs broke and you had to have your jaw wired shut for a week!
Incredibly, Arikada lowered herself to the ground, her meat-tendrils going flaccid as she stood on her feet again. "I'm listening," she said, arms folded and a sneer on her face.
"We're here from Leaf," Mari said. "They've got some kind of medical issue that they can't deal with. Jiraiya told us to find you and tell you that they'll pay you three hundred thousand ryo for what will probably be a week's work, plus another five hundred thousand if the outcome is successful." She snorted. "Personally, I think he's just hedging his bets. Lady Tsunade is the greatest med-nin in the world and Jiraiya is the best sealmaster. Whatever this is, if they can't fix it, some two-bit body horror fetishist like you isn't going to. Still, I'm just the messenger girl. We get paid as long as we bring in proof that we found you and made the offer."
"And what if I say no?" Arikada asked suspiciously.
Mari shrugged. "Jiraiya told us 'alive and unharmed' or 'head on a plate'. I'm easy."
Arikada barked a laugh. "You think you can beat me that easily, huh? Trust me, you haven't even seen the beginning of what I can do if I really cut loose."
Mari shot her the same kind of look that parents give very small and very stupid children. "Look, Ari," she said, "see the muck on my apprentice's arm? That's where she punched through one of your zombies the long way. I broke your guard like a twig and then dodged your little exploding-head trick when it went off physically in my hands. My other young lady? The minute we stop talking, she's going to call up a giant spiked ball of death that is very pissed off with you for unsummoning her before. My twitchy friend over there? He likes explosions. I mean really likes them. It took a fair amount of work to convince him that we shouldn't just blow you up to start with and take the smaller bounty."
"We still could!" Kagome called hopefully. "Boom! Squish! So much easier! And I bet I can miss the head!"
Mari waved him down without looking, her eyes still locked on Arikada's. "How many more of those exploding leg tricks have you got?"
"Enough," Arikada said. Was there a little less certainty in her voice than before? It was so hard to tell with people! Why couldn't they be simple and straightforward like seals were? (Well, in comparison.)
Mari rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well, however many it is, I very much doubt it's enough to take out all six of us and the aforementioned giant spiky ball of death. Face facts, Ari: you're not walking away from this unless we say so, and we can't afford to say so. Jiraiya will kill us if we don't bring him your head, but he'd really prefer it if the rest of you was attached. Like, 'an extra hundred thousand for each of the six of us' prefer it." She studied Arikada measuringly. "I have no idea what could be going on in Konoha that they'd be willing to shell out this kind of money to collect a freakshow like you, but I also don't care. Take the job or we put you in the ground. Those are the choices."
"Even if you could put me in the ground, which I really doubt, there wouldn't be enough left of me to identify, or of you to bury."
"Stop being a brat," Mari said, sounding tired. "I'm not in the mood. Almost three quarters of a million ryo buys a lot of patience, but there's still a limit. We only get fifty kay if we bring your head by itself, but act like an idiot much longer and I'll decide that that's good enough. I really wish you would take the job, though. Mr. Explosions over there bet me dishes for a week that we're going to have to kill you, and I hate doing dishes." She grimaced. "Of course, given what an arrogant prick you seem to be, I'm not sure I'd enjoy bringing you in anyway. Jiraiya made it clear that, if we do manage to bring you in alive, he needs you happy. Right now that's seeming like wayyy too much trouble."
"Hap—" Kagome cut himself off as Keiko's hand closed on his arm like a vice.
Arikada raised an eyebrow. "Happy, huh?"
"Yeah," Mari said, sighing. "Happy. Don't get too excited, because 'happy' is a fairly flexible term, and there's always the 'head on a plate' bounty. Still, if you come willingly we've been told that we need to be 'courteous, solicitous, and helpful.'" She snorted. "Stupid idea, if you ask me. Half my team wants to beat you into the ground and haul your unconscious body back to Leaf on a stretcher. The other half thinks that 'head on a plate' is a lot easier to carry and fifty thousand ryo is plenty. Me personally, I'm the one who has to do the team finances. I'm the one who knows that we could really use the money or we're going to have to do some of the less savory jobs that I'd rather the kids not get exposed to for a couple more years. So what do you say? Want to make everyone's life easier, get the most powerful nation in the world on your side, and help all of us get stinking rich?"
Arikada turned her head, always keeping Mari in her peripheral vision as she surveyed the other four team members. Finally she seemed to make a decision; she faced back to Mari and nodded.
"Okay, I'm in," she said. "Let's—"
Arikada cut herself off and whipped around at the sound of heavy-footed steps in the grass behind her. Her tendrils rose up above her, waving back and forth like snakes as she spun to face—
Noburi. Who was moving no faster than a tired civilian.
"Stupid zombie punched a hole in my barrel," he grumbled. "What did I miss?"
Does Hazō get Roki?
Hazō, Deception:
12d100: 769
Corpse Warrior, Deception:
?d100: 510
Yep. How does the fight go?
Corpse Warrior, Weapons:
?d100: 939
Hazō, Taijutsu:
15d100 + 6d100 (Roki) + ?d100 (multi-combatant): 1080 Class A success
Noburi, Water Whip:
15d100 + ?d100 (multi-combatant): 834 A-class loss; damage to Whip
Corpse Warrior, Weapons:
?d100: 917
Hazō, Taijutsu:
15d100 + 6d100 (Roki) + ?d100 (multi-combatant): 1169 Class A success. Total damage to enemy: B
Noburi, Water Whip:
15d100 + ?d100 (multi-combatant): 609 B-class loss. Water Whip destroyed
Corpse Warrior, Weapons:
?d100: 687 Doh!
Hazō, Taijutsu:
15d100 + 6d100 (Roki) + ?d100 (multi-combatant): 1114 Class B success. Total damage to enemy: C
Noburi, Water Whip: (17CP)
15d100 + ?d100 (multi-combatant): 1054 Class B success. Total damage to enemy: OVERKILL
Corpse Warrior, Explosion:
?d100: 796
Hazō, Awareness + 1/5 TM to dodge explosion:
18d100: 957
Noburi, Awareness + 1/5 TM to dodge explosion:
15d100 + 1 for slight range: 703 Class A loss: lightly singed.
How about the other fights? Inoue/Akane first.
Corpse Warrior, Weapons:
?d100: 881
Inoue-sensei, Taijutsu:
?d100 + ?d100 (MC) + ?d100 (chakra boost): 1248 Class B success.
Akane, Taijutsu:
15d100 + ?d100 (MC) + ?d100 (Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast That Is Really Strong and Tough) + 4d100 (chakra boost): 1368 Class C success. Total damage to opponent: OVERKILL
Easy peasy. Kagome and Keiko?
Corpse Warrior, Lightning-style nintaijutsu:
?d100: 1220
Keiko, Weapons:
20d100 + 3d100 (chakra boost) + ?d100 (MC): 1367 Class B success.
Kagome, Exploding Fist Style:
?d100 + ?d100 (chakra boost) + ?d100 (MC): 1620 OVERKILL! Total damage to opponent: Fine Red Mist
Catching up to Arikada?
Arikada, Meat-limb Tactical Movement:
?d100 + ?d100 (chakra boost): 1175
Arikada, Deception (Resist Intimidation):
?d100 + ?d100 (totally insane and arrogant): 871 Class B success. Victory!
XP AWARD: 21
Compliments on the plan -- it was well written, exciting, easy to write for, and with a nicely detailed set of actions. It went out the window a bit, because I really was not expecting Inoue to be able to shut down Arikada that completely. Still, nicely done. I especially love the way there was basically only one plan at the end because y'all converged. 'Hivemind' indeed!
Final chakra totals:
Hazō: 70
Keiko: 85
Noburi: 1
Akane: 50
Inoue and Kagome: ??
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, November 9, 2016, at 12pm London time.
Once the team had settled into their MEW cave in an anonymous patch of Tea countryside, and spent the requisite amount of time teasing Mr. Mew over his new nickname, Keiko announced that she needed to call Pandaa up to talk to them all.
"Hello again everyone! Oh, gee, we're in a totally different place. Getting summoned is so interesting!"
"Pandaa, is there anything you'd like to say to the team?" Keiko asked with a hint of menace.
"Hmm? Oh, yes!" He cleared his throat. "Keiko was courteous enough to explain the, ah, rather embarrassingly large number of errors and faux pas I made on our first meeting, which really didn't speak well of me as an anthropologist. I'm awfully sorry for any offense I caused, both personally and as a Pangolin Clan representative. I do hope we can all still be friends."
"I for one will forgive you quite happily!" Akane chirped. "I found your analysis most amusing."
"He didn't call you a philanderer!" Noburi snapped, reddening.
"Hmmm. Fascinating," said Pandaa, producing a clay tablet from a large pouch under one arm and scratching something into it. "So is infidelity an especially sensitive issue for humans in general, or just you in particular? Tell me about your relationship with your moth--"
"Pandaa." Keiko's voice carried quite a bit more than a hint of menace now.
"Er." The small pangolin put his tablet away slowly. "What I meant to say was, I'd be very grateful if I could spend more time with you all, and learn more about you, and about humans in general, so as I don't make those mistakes again later."
"I think that can be arranged," Inoue responded with a smile to hide her wince of pain as she sat up. "And I think I have a fun idea for where to start. Tell me, o mighty anthropologist, do you have board games in the Summon Realm?"
…
The team quickly discovered that Pandaa was much too engrossed in peppering them with questions to actually focus on playing the game (they'd settled on Strategic Domination), so he and Keiko got grouped into a team.
"You don't even live a century?" Pandaa was asking incredulously, furiously scratching down another point on his 'Weirdest Things About Humans' list.
"Not most ninjas, that's for sure," Noburi confirmed wryly.
"How do you guys get anything done at all?"
"I suspect that humans mature significantly faster than pangolins do," said Keiko.
"How old are you, Pandaa?" Hazou asked.
"Sixty!" he answered proudly, and then tapped the tip of his snout speculatively. "Which I guess is pretty old for you guys, but lots of pangolins live past eight hundred if they make it through their time on the front lines."
This was met by an extended silence, which Hazou mercifully broke. "By the way, why are you taking so many notes? Is this to update the clan's information on humans?" he asked.
"Oooh, that's a good idea! I bet all kinds of people would wanna read a book on humans, especially since it disagrees with a lot of the textbooks. But no, I'm taking notes to update the setting of a role-playing game I made for my friends."
"...a role-playing game, you say?" Hazou managed to ask almost innocently. Mari shivered involuntarily at the memory of what he'd done to her Oni Overlord campaign.
"Hazou, have mercy on the poor kid," said Noburi plaintively.
"Yeah! A role-playing game!" Pandaa jumped up excitedly. "Hallways and Humans! All about economics and political intrigue, in a world full of civilians! I tried including ninja at first, but they were OP."
In the end, nobody could say no to Pandaa's puppy-dog eyes, and the next night he brought sets of dice along when Keiko summoned him.
"...and that lets me roll all my social skills with plus infinity," Hazou concluded a short time later.
"Wha. Buh. Huh??" Pandaa sputtered.
"It's okay Pandaa," Mari said, patting his back sympathetically. "Hazou, vetoed because ick. Noburi, could you put together a reasonable character for Mr. Mew?"
...
"I blow the stinkers up!" Kagome shouted enthusiastically.
"Um." Pandaa tapped his stomach contemplatively. "I don't know what skill you'd roll for that. Nobody's ever tried to blow up Girl Scouts before."
"What? Why not? They're clearly enemy spies trying to poison me -- they're even called scouts! Shoddy opsec if you ask me."
…
"Oh Pantokrator, I can't believe I'm saying this. The votes are in - you're the new President." Hazou fist-pumped triumphantly in response. Pandaa sighed, slumping. "How did that even happen?"
"Loophole in the popularity and notoriety mechanics," Hazou explained as everyone began cleaning up. "As long as I only offended people who were never going to vote for me anyway, it was actually more effective at getting attention than regular campaigning."
"Oh, is that why you didn't object when we handed you a politician build with a negative charisma modifier?" Noburi asked.
"You played right into my hands! Muahahahahaha!" Hazou cackled.
Noburi sighed. "Well, I guess you kind of have to expect weird things to happen when you have a… what was it called Pandaa, where the government gets input from everyone?"
"Democracy!"
"Yeah. I mean, can you imaging trying to make that work in real life? I can hear Yagura laughing from here."
-o-
"Um. Keiko, before I go, could I talk to you for a sec?"
"Of course." Kei set her pack to the side.
"I didn't want to bring it up when you were feeling down the last week, or when things were tense getting ready to talk to Summoner Jiraiya, but now that you guys are friends again, I was wondering if I could ask you about, um." He hesitated, and then in a small voice said "... girls."
She blinked slowly. "Do you have... biological questions, or...?"
"Ah! Um, no. Well, yes, actually, how do human females-- no, social questions. Well, really more a social favor to ask. I mentioned this girl before, Pankara. She's amazing, she's smart, she's beautiful, I really wanna impress her, but I don't know how to talk to her, and I don't think she really believes me about helping you guys out back when you were running from those other ninja, but if you came with me she might, and--" Keiko raised her hands placatingly.
"Okay, we're breathing. In comes calmness and peace. Out goes confusion and worry. In. Out. Alright." Internally, Keiko marvelled at how easy that was if you just followed Inoue-sensei's script. "As I've told you in the past, I am in no way confident in my understanding of interpersonal relations. Fortunately, I know just who to ask."
"Aaaawww, you have a crush!" exclaimed Inoue when they explained the situation, patting Pandaa's head. "Right, tell me everything about her, and we'll see what we can do."
...
Pandaa had planned their route to Panchipaama's clubhouse very carefully.
"Oh, hey there Pankara, almost didn't notice you there." Keep it together man, keep it cool, come on. "Summoner Keiko and I were just on the way to go negotiate with the boss of the Naraka Rollers for her assistance in capturing a dangerous criminal on the Human Path. Y'know, no big deal."
Pankara folded her claws and bowed respectfully. "It's an honor to meet you, Summoner. Pandaa has been very fond of mentioning you, and how he, ah, 'saved you from two armies of enemy ninja' some while back." She winked at Pandaa, who swiftly looked down and began tapping out a nonsense pattern on his stomach.
Keiko raised an eyebrow and said wryly, "I don't know how many armies comprise fewer than a dozen ninja, but yes, that was... a rather exciting night." Pankara's head jutted forward in her species' equivalent of a jaw-drop. "I do not wish to be rude, but we may have many visits to make today and should probably continue moving. Perhaps another time?"
"I, um, certainly, Summoner."
"See you at game night!" Pandaa called back as the pair began to walk again. Success!
-o-
"Okay Hazou," Pandaa began, pointing to him, "you wake up to a knock on the door and a note slipped under it that says your opponent has begun running a smear campaign, claiming the recent storms are a result of your immoral lifestyle. What do you do?"
Hazou continued staring into the middle distance.
"...Hazou?"
"Yes?"
"What do you do?"
"I'm one of the tower spotters. After we find her and set up the ambush, I throw mist kunai and focus on limiting mobility using MEW while taking out guards if they present targets of opportunity."
"I give up! None of you guys can focus on the game tonight," Pandaa declared, throwing his forepaws into the air.
Keiko sighed and looked up from sharpening her kunai. "I apologize, Pandaa. But with how poorly our efforts have gone so far, and Arikada showing up as early as tomorrow…."
"Still say we should just blow the stinker up," grumbled Kagome.
"And I still say we don't have a way to keep her head intact if we do that, Kagome," Inoue admonished. "We can't afford to have Jiraiya stay pissed at us. Between the misterators, Noburi's newfound talent, and Panchipaama, we have a good shot at this."
"What does Panchipaama actually do?" inquired Noburi. "I know she's all about defending people, but what do pangolin fighting techniques actually look like?" He looked to Pandaa.
"She rolls. Hence, the 'Naraka Rollers'?" He curled up and did a somersault to demonstrate. "...It's way more scary when she does it," he muttered defensively at their blank looks.
Noburi forced a smile, "...Right, I guess we can take your word for it. What about actually getting her to Hidden Leaf? I can keep her drained if we can knock her out in the first place, but then we need to transport her securely."
"Clones carrying her bound to a long branch, maybe?" Hazou supplied. "More worryingly, I don't know what to do with all of the stuff we don't want Leaf intelligence going through. Notes I can memorize, given some time, but I'm concerned about our seals."
"Should be. Seals'll eat your face," said Kagome sagely.
"What if the clan held on to them for you?" Pandaa piped up. "There's never been a problem moving Keiko's gear in and out of the Seventh Path, and I bet the military would be willing to keep the Summoner's equipment safe for a while."
Inoue frowned thoughtfully. "That would certainly solve a lot of issues. Do objects from the Human Path degrade after a period of time, or anything like that?"
"Nothing like that has happened to Keiko's stuff," Pandaa pointed out. "I'll talk to my CO when I get back tonight."
-o-
"Thanks again for letting Panfor run his game last night. Having his ideas approved of by the liaison to the Summoner means the world to him," Pankara teased Pandaa as they walked through the market, when her little brother had run ahead to check if his favorite snack stall was out of fried ant balls yet.
"Oh, sure. It was nice not to have to plan things, with all the craziness that's been happening on the Human Path," Pandaa answered, chewing his tongue contemplatively before resolving that it was going to be now or never. "Hey, Pankara," he started, and then froze.
"Yes?" She turned to look at him with those absurdly beautiful black eyes of hers.
"Just tell her the things you said to Keiko and me," he recalled Inoue saying. "Pankara, you're amazing, and smart, and strong, and beautiful - it would make me incredibly happy if you were interested in starting... a... courtship?"
"I would love to!" she said, beaming, and then added with a laugh, "I was wondering if you were gonna get around to it this century!"
"Wha, ah, buh, really? I mean, great! Want to go grab something at Pancake's tonight?"
"That would be lovely," she answered as she took his arm.
Pandaa has gained +1 Dinner Date! Don't blow your chance, little man!
He has also put in a request to his superiors to take custody of the party's sensitive or unique gear. They have agreed on the condition that they can inspect it "for safety" (it was pretty clear they were mostly excited for an excuse to paw through it).
The voice comes from a gruff man, nearly 40 years of age, with hints of silver starting to show in his scruffy brown hair. He's an intimidating sight; at nearly 6 feet tall, he's built like a weightlifter and has a hard set to his face. To those who know better what is most terrifying is the headband he wears upon his brow; it marks him as a ninja of the most powerful nation in the world. The target of his speech, however, is distinctly unimpressed.
"But daddy, I'm playing. Can't I stay up longer?" At 4 years of age she knows no fear, particularly since her father spoils her so. Her curly blond hair runs down her shoulders to her neck, and she turns her face to a pout.
"No, sweetie, you need your sleep. We have an early day tomorrow." Upon seeing the tears well up, however, he promptly unveils his trump card. "If you head to bed now, I'll tell you a story."
"Is it a good story?" she asks, curiosity in her voice. "Does it have ninja? Does it have the Yellow Flash?" She makes a clapping motion with her hands, and giggles. "Flash. Flash. Flash."
"No, dear, it's about his teacher." At her look of surprise, he nods. "That's right. Even the great Yondiame Hokage had a teacher, who was almost as amazing as he was. He's still around today, and is a legendary ninja. Now, on to the story: it was a dark and stormy night…"
It was a dark and stormy night. Of course, that in and of itself wasn't anything exceptional, Tsunade thought to herself. It was Amegakure no Sato, and the country of Rain did not get its name lightly. Of course, this one was particularly bad, although not because of the rain itself.
"Damn you, Hanzo!" A curse came from her left, where Minako was now fighting one of the guards. She was in bad shape--the potent poison Hanzo lived and breathed had taken hold in the short engagement they had had, and Tsunade had no time to spare on healing her. The two of them hadn't gotten along, but no one deserved to go like that.
Of course, that wasn't her top priority now. That award would have to go to the enemy leader, Hanzo, who was easily the strongest foe she had ever fought--even including Sarutobi-sensei! The jonin and chunin she had just finished with, despite numbering five times as many, hadn't been half as difficult as simply surviving the opening exchange with Hanzo's flail-scythe. The worst part, though, was how he fought. It wasn't ruthless, it wasn't raging, it wasn't any of a million other negative adjectives she would have ascribed to a terrifying foe. No, he was simply implacable, as if the battle was already decided and he was simply following the foregone conclusion. He was implacable and untouchable, as though he was acting out a predetermined script...
...that was a loser way to think. Sure, he hasn't gone down yet, but there was a first time for everything. Her teammate's life was on the line, and it was up to her and Orochimaru to save him. Jiraiya was a skilled shinobi, but she and Orochimaru had their hands full keeping him alive at the best of times. Honestly, what would he do without them?
"Whaaaat?! I thought you said Orochimaru was a bad guy, daddy." She had a shocked look on her face, like she couldn't believe her ears.
"He is a bad guy, but he wasn't always that way. Orochimaru was once a student of the Sandaime Hokage and one of the Legendary Three; he was one of Konoha's most celebrated ninjas. No one knows why he turned to darkness, but it was one of the greatest tragedies Konohagakure has ever experienced."
"Whatever, daddy, just continue the story! I wanna hear more!"
Orochimaru was terrified. Never in his life had he ever been so afraid, at no point had his goal of conquering death itself seemed so far away. Even the quick respite from the terrifying melee wasn't enough to calm him down completely; he had been made acutely aware of his own mortality when he narrowly dodged the first attack.
Orochimaru had never shied from combat, but this was something else. At the start of the battle, if you could even call it that, he had decided to end it as quickly as he possibly could; every moment spent fighting was a moment in which more Rain ninjas could arrive, while the Konoha platoon had no such relief on the way. His attempt had failed miserably, though, and they were stuck trying to wear down one of the most dangerous ninja on the continent. Not that it would have helped that much if they did have reinforcements, he thought, bitterly chuckling to himself. At current casualty rates, within a minute or two he and his team would be the only ones left here.
Even as he thought this, he was still on the move. Engaging Hanzo in melee was suicide even if you specialized in it and outnumbered him, and Orochimaru fulfilled neither of those requirements. He had already tried a decapitating strike, right at the beginning of the battle, but the damned kusarigama had defeated even his speed. The worst of it, though, was the damned summon. It was huge, shrugging off every ninjutsu and attack that had hit it and looking no worse for the wear--and it didn't even have the decency to be slow either. It didn't have an elemental weakness and the poison gas clouds it spat actively punished the fire ninjutsu that formed the mainstay of Konoha's arsenal. Of course, that didn't mean they couldn't hurt it, but it severely limited their options. He would have hesitated to take it on with their entire platoon, and that was without the guards or the main foe himself. While it lacked the terrifying skill and speed that made Hanzo a legend, it made up for it with its sheer power and durability.
Burning a precious sliver of his chakra, Orochimaru swapped with an enemy ninja just as the salamander rose from the ground. It had taken forever to figure out how to pull that off, but it was worth every second-- people never considered that someone might take the time to improve the most useful technique any ninja possessed. Idiots, the lot of them. That included his teammates, who had never bothered to ask, although at least they did constructive things with their time.
Turning around, he put on another burst of speed and went back to save his teammate. Really, taking on Hanzo solo to give Orochimaru a bit of room to catch his breath was useful, but it was also foolish in the extreme, especially considering how few they were in number. Idly, he hurled a kunai and dispatched another Amegakure soldier--there weren't many more of those.
Pain, as Jiraiya was rapidly beginning to learn, hurt a lot. Slash wounds were bad, but bruises were worse--with the cuts he was able to focus on dodging, but bruises now covered his entire body in a single, aching mass. The worst, though, was the acid--the stinging pain that covered his eyes, his every cut, and now all of his skin. It wasn't debilitating yet, but it would be if he didn't get it fixed, and soon. Of course, that wasn't really an option here.
To gain some space, he hurled out another dozen explosives. (His teammates had called him crazy, but he did end up needing them, so ha.) As expected, Hanzo effortlessly dodged out of range but that was okay--Jiraiya just needed a free moment.
Reaching into his kunai pouch, he seized one of his special ones and hurled it. Not at Hanzo--that would have been useless--but at the salamander Hanzo had summoned. Even as the air being released accelerated the knife, the custom seal activated, and a twenty-three ton boulder took the place of the kunai, slamming into the monster like the divine judgement of the kami themselves.
Upon seeing it hit, Jiraiya allowed himself a tight smile. Sure, nothing else went right today, but at least he had gotten that trick to work. He had had it in mind ever since he first discovered how momentum worked with seals, and it was good to see it applied successfully. It was well worth the extra chakra cost and obscene difficulty if it meant he could count an attack of that magnitude within his arsenal. Now, they just had to find some way to escape Hanzo….
Impossible. That was the only thought that went through Jiraiya's mind as the massive salamander began to twitch and move.
No, not impossible, he corrected himself. He had seen it happen and, as Orochimaru was fond of saying, that made it possible by default. He flexed his chakra on general principles, but no genjutsu revealed itself--the events truly were occurring.
"Incredible," he muttered, mostly to himself. Even after that, it was still getting back up. Sure, he couldn't kill a summoned animal, but the fact that his secret technique hadn't even broken the construct was simply ridiculous. He had been sure it was overkill, but it began to come back together even as he watched. It would be a while yet before it regained even a shadow of its former mobility, but his final blow hadn't been nearly as final as he had hoped.
All of a sudden, Jiraiya felt a pair of hands touch him, cool and wet with raindrops. He whirled, acutely aware of his mistake, but knowing it was too late to matter. He had gotten distracted, and even a few second's carelessness could spell death in a battle between ninja. Fortunately, it was simply Tsunade, but he still felt a chill at how nearly that mistake came to being fatal.
"Sit still, idiot." There was no bite to her words, though, and Jiraiya couldn't help but crack a grin. "What were you thinking, charging at him like that? Sometimes, I wonder if you have a death wish. You had me worried."
"You keep telling yourself that, princess. You just don't want to admit how attracted yo- ouch! Fine, I'll stop, sorry, sorry." Even though he wasn't contrite at all, she still accepted it in the spirit it was intended and grinned back.
Even as she began healing him, Jiraiya turned his gaze towards the sound of combat. He could see Orochimaru attacking Hanzo, fighting harder and more furiously than he had ever seen the quiet boy move. Every time it looked like Hanzo was about to regain control of the situation, Orochimaru pulled out yet another custom ninjutsu. It didn't last, though--somehow, almost imperceptibly, Orochimaru made a misstep, and a few seconds later he was sent flying towards them.
In an instant, Tsunade was standing and facing Hanzo, and Jiraiya struggled to follow her.
Surprisingly, Hanzo did not press the attack; he simply stood there, looking at them. Then, for the first time all battle, he spoke.
"Very impressive."
It was a horrible sound--his voice was barely a wheeze, and the rebreather masked it still further. Nevertheless, it shocked them into silence. "Rejoice. You will not be killed today."
Despite his injuries, Orochimaru was the first to respond. "What are you even talking about?"
Though it was impossible to tell through the mask that covered Hanzo's entire face, Jiraiya swore he saw a smile.
"Your teamwork has impressed me," declared the Salamander Summoner. "I have decided to let you live."
While he was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, some part of Jiraiya was still suspicious. "What do you mean? Why would you spare us?"
"The war is nearly over, and there won't be another for decades. I enjoy meeting interesting people, and you three fit that to a tee. Really, there isn't any reason not to spare you, and I would rather not have Hiruzen-san out for blood at the peace talks." Seemingly savoring the surprised look on their faces, he continued. "From this day forth, you will be known as the Densetsu no Sannin. Wear your title with pride."
As he finishes the story, the man looks down at his daughter, fast asleep with a smile on her face. Picking her up, he carries her off to bed, and turns off the light.
Kenta crept backward, as silent as an assassin. He moved with as much grace as his muscled body could muster, keeping his eyes firmly on the target.
'Eyes are closed, breathing is regular; the operation is going to plan.'
His feet touched down precisely on the boundaries between floorboards as he moved, preventing even the hint of a creak from ruining his stealth, a clever design feature intended to allow for quiet movement while making noise for anyone who didn't know the trick. Tense seconds passed, his body locked into its silent purpose, until he finally reached the doorway and stepped beyond that fatal boundary into the living room. He reached up and carefully slid the thick, heavy curtain across the door frame until it was closed.
With a weary smile, Kenta Ishihara allowed himself a quiet sigh of relief. 'Mission accomplished: bedtime stories read, child asleep, escaped without waking her!'
Delicate arms wrapped around his chest and squeezed, accompanied by a small giggle. Grinning, he turned around, picked up his lady, marched over to the couch, and sank as deeply into it as the thin cushions allowed.
Exactly ten seconds later, there was a knock on the door.
A pained moan escaped his lips, and even his Yukari's sunny features darkened in anger at the absolute asshole who was throwing their entire night into jeopardy. Didn't that jackass know what quiet hours were for a couple with a four year old? Obviously not. Kenta sent a quick prayer to every kami that would listen to stop his daughter from waking up and rendering his forty-five minutes of sustained effort moot.
He didn't quite have the will to get up, so Yukari had to grab his hand and drag him to the door, which he ripped calmly opened, revealing a tall man who spoke instantly.
"Ishihara Kenta and Yukari?"
The outraged growl on Kenta's lips died when his brain registered the odd attire of the visitor, before also registering the hitai-ate bearing the symbol of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. He sputtered as fear and utter confusion fought for dominance within him, and his wife, bless her heart, did what he should've done and responded politely to the nice ninja in front of them.
"Y-yes, how can I help you, Shinobi-sama?" Yukari said with a warm smile appearing on the instant, even as her hand clamped down on his like a vice, as it always did when she got scared. He distinctly recalled losing all feeling in his hand about an hour into her labor, something he'd kept very quiet about around his coworkers. There'd be no end to the amount of shit a carpenter would get if his flower of a wife could overpower him; he'd be the laughingstock of Otafuku Gai.
"You can confirm that you are the parents of Ishihara Akane," the man responded succinctly.
A new fear clutched at Kenta's heart, and he responded perhaps a bit more rudely than was strictly wise. "Why do you ask?" Yukari's hand twitched in warning, and he hastily added, "Um, yes sir, we are her parents."
The ninja seemingly took no notice of his impetuousness, and nodded sharply. "Then I am at the correct address. May I come in?" He said this more than asked, and they practically stumbled over themselves to show him to the only cushioned seat in the house while they sat on the wooden chairs. Said cushions suddenly seemed very inadequate and threadbare, but the ninja didn't seem to mind.
"Excuse me, Shinobi-sama," Yukari opened diplomatically, "but may I ask for the purpose of your visit here?"
The ninja's features seemed to loosen. "You do not need to be concerned. None of you are in any trouble." Kenta almost melted in relief, but Yukari's grip only loosened fractionally. The man continued, "However, there is something about your daughter that was brought to my attention in the last few weeks, and my subordinate confirmed it. Ishihara-san, your daughter has been found to possess a sufficiently developed chakra network to be eligible for training as a shinobi."
'What.'
"I am here to offer, on behalf of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, a full relocation for your entire family to Konoha. There, you will have a wide array of affordable and subsidized housing to choose from, and any and all possessions you will require will be similarly transported for you. Additionally, you will be entered into a program for civilian families of shinobi where you will be able to find work quickly. You won't have to pay any living expenses at your place of residence for a full two months so you can get settled in. When your daughter reaches the age of six, she will be enrolled freely into the Konoha Ninja Academy, where she will be trained to reach her full potential as a shinobi and eventually become a defender of the Land of Fire."
'What?'
The awed look on his Aka-chan's face when she heard the news almost, almost, made him feel better about what he had just agreed to do.
~~~~~~~~~~~
It'd been really exciting last week, when Daddy first told her. But right then, looking at Sachi and Rin for the last time in her whole life, being a ninja didn't really sound fun anymore.
Akane sniffled her tears back at the thought. 'No, no crying, I won't cry.' She was supposed to be a fearless ninja now, and ninja didn't cry just because they were saying goodbye to their two best friends in the world and were never going to see them ever again. It was really hard though, so maybe she wasn't a ninja quite yet.
"Y-you won't f-forget us, will you?" said Rin, who was already crying, and oh great, now Sachi was crying too, and it was a lot harder to stop herself.
But she did, barely, and shook her head fiercely. "Nuh-uh. Won't ever forget you guys. Best friends forever, right?"
Sachi and Rin nodded, smiling weakly, and Akane couldn't take it anymore and hugged them both tight.
It wasn't long after that that Mom said that the ninja squad (who really just looked like a couple of big kids, not elite fighters, but ninjas were tricky like that) was done packing their stuff on the caravan, and that it was time to go. And just like that, she was on the cart and waving goodbye, and then it was moving, and then she couldn't see her friends anymore, and then she couldn't even see the town anymore, and that was when she started to cry.
Mom hugged her really tightly then, and brushed her hair over and over, which made her feel a bit better, but not much. "Don't worry, little Aka-chan, everything is going to be all right." She repeated the words and the gestures, but Akane didn't stop crying until she eventually fell asleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~
"What's wrong, Akane?" Yukari asked gently to the unnaturally quiet child next to her, knowing damn well what she was nervous about. Her wonderful daughter had been like this for days, and enough was enough.
Akane stiffened, but eventually leaned into her mom's shoulder. "What if I'm not good enough?" she mumbled, embarrassed, and Yukari sighed. 'If you are kicked out, then at least you'll be safe from an early grave, or being turned into a killer.' It wouldn't do to voice those thoughts, though, because Akane would be devastated if that happened. The girl had just turned six last month, and there were scant few days before the Konoha Ninja Academy started up the next year of classes. And it was her pride as a receptionist that she could keep any inner thoughts firmly off her face.
Yukari wrapped an arm around her daughter and held on tight. "Don't worry, dear. You're gonna do fine. You'll be a fine shinobi, brave and strong, and protecting everyone from danger." 'You're going to be sent to fight chakra beasts and other human killers before you're even a teenager, and it'll take a single second for you to die and leave us completely alone.' "A whole lot of people can't protect themselves from danger, like me and your Daddy, and they're going to depend on you to keep them safe." 'And you'll be expected to throw your life away for whoever is paying your higher-ups for ninja protection, and neither you nor I will have any say about it.' "I just know you're going to be a great shinobi."
Akane sniffled. "You really think so?"
"I know so. Everything is going to be all right."
~~~~~~~~~~~
'Gather, watch the spikes, align together, twist, adjust, nice and even.'
The repeated mantra and associated gestures ran on autopilot in the back of Akane's mind, as her attention focused on the brilliant genin sitting besides her. Keiko had her arms crossed and was staring fiercely at the green glow in front of her as it carefully wrapped thick strips of spiky foliage around each other.
Honestly. Crafting traps with nothing but her chakra and her mind. It was just so cool, and Keiko's enhanced grumpiness when Akane told her as much just made no sense. 'I wonder if you could punch someone with that. Some sort of Invisi-Fist? Oooh, that sounds good, need to remember to tell Hazou-sensei about it. Where was I again? Oh, yeah.'
"I'm just saying, Mori. You're on a team with Hazou-sensei, one of the most youthful men I know, and Inoue-sensei, who practically has too much youthfulness, and we're on a journey to see the world and become stronger. Why are you being so pessimistic?"
Miss Grumpy-Pants was having none of it, though. "Would you please drop the act?" she growled, the glow of her awesome-cool jutsu fading slightly as its wielder looked at her. "Righteous Face Punching Style was a bad joke. Hazou never took it seriously. Your pretending to do so is nothing more than an embarrassment."
Well, that was almost too easy, and Akane's smile widened further as she spoke in gentle admonishment. "Maito Gai, Leaf's greatest jōnin, says that embarrassment is what happens when you try and inevitably fail to behave like other people. It doesn't apply to those who are in touch with their own youth."
Still didn't work though, and if anything Keiko got even grumpier as her jutsu failed completely. "That is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about! All you're doing is throwing platitudes at me. A thing isn't true merely because it sounds good. You keep talking as if we are on some great adventure, when the truth is that we're locked in a constant struggle to survive, and your… your willful obliviousness is only putting us in more danger!"
Hmm, this wasn't working out very well. 'Does she think I'm not taking her concerns seriously? Making light of her struggles and worries?' In any case, Keiko was clearly upset, and it was time to change tack. Here was a girl stewing in her anxieties and worries for the future, and that was something that Akane knew the right answer to.
So she calmly set down the half-completed caltrop onto the ground, and smoothly shifted over to wrap an arm around Keiko's shoulder, ignoring the girl's look of incredulity.
She smiled softly, and spoke in strong, quiet tones, just as she remembered. "Trust me, everything is going to be all right. You're a gifted ninja, in a powerful team filled with passion and determination. We're going to figure out where we want to be in life, and then we will all work hard, and share our strengths and cover each other's weaknesses, until we finally get there. And in the meantime, I'll be here whenever you need a big sister to lean on." 'You don't have to do anything else alone.'
Keiko was frozen with the most vulnerable look she'd ever seen on that face, and for a second Akane tasted success, but the moment passed and Keiko violently ripped herself from her embrace and rapidly stood up.
"I have a big sister," Keiko spat furiously as she gazed down on her, rage and sorrow seeping into her every word. "And if I ever see her again, either she or I will die." The girl spun on her heels and stormed towards camp at ninja speeds, and Akane was left alone in the forest.
She felt her outstretched arm fall back to earth, throat dry.
Her smile faded, but she kept it up, because you should never stop smiling.
She turned her head towards her best approximation of south-southeast and gazed silently at nothing.
"Everything is going to be all right," she repeated to no one in particular.
Fair warning: One part of this chapter got a bit icky on me. There's a summary at bottom if you want to skip to there and not take a chance. Just search for 'Summary'.
Inoue, Awareness:
?d100 + ?d100 (circumstance bonus: totally expecting it): 981Seriously, I need new dice. Or maybe I should lie and tell them that I'm rolling for someone else. How the hell do you roll this low on this many dice?
Arikada, Stealth:
?d100: 357Wow, the dice hate you, too. Cool.
"Don't"—BOOM!—"try it," Mari said, her words interrupted by a massive narrow-angle explosion that made everyone wince. Fortunately the blast had been aimed in front of Arikada instead of at her; apparently Kagome was taking his promise to follow orders seriously, no matter how much he hated those orders.
"Try what?" Arikada asked innocently. "I wasn't doing anything."
"Glad to hear it," Mari said. Arikada's tentacle twitch had been hesitant, more a matter of temptation than intention, but it had been there. The sealmistress...
Arikada, Deception:
?d100: 772
Inoue, Deception
?d100: 1204
...hadn't really bought the whole 'massive payment for easy medical work' story. She was going along because she knew that if she didn't the team would beat her into the ground, but she clearly intended to lash out or run the first chance she had. And right now, with a chakraless and vulnerable Noburi standing almost within tentacle reach, things were balanced on the edge of a knife. They needed to defuse the situation quickly; fortunately, the whole 'be courteous and solicitous' part of the lie played into that.
"Hey," Mari said, pitching her voice to make Arikada turn back to her and away from Noburi. "Anything you need to do before we head to Leaf?" Translation: I'm willing to trade you the chance to stall for a while in exchange for reducing the about-to-fight quotient. Not a very long while, though. Leaf was only a four-hour run and the sooner they got there and handed off Ms Crazypants the happier Mari would be.
Arikada cocked her head, clearly thinking. "I should clean up my—zombies," she said, the hitch in the sentence only drawing more attention to whatever it was she hadn't said. "Can't leave the remains of a technique like that just lying around where anyone could study them."
"Sounds like a plan. Collie, Blaster, why don't you escort our guest and make sure nothing interrupts her so that she can focus on her work without being distracted." Mari smiled with teeth. "Of course, I'm absolutely certain you won't have any issues and that the guard duty will be extremely boring."
"Of course," Arikada said blandly.
Mari eyed her for a moment, then nodded and gestured to the rest of the team. "The rest of you are on me; we'll clean up our own stuff."
Arikada's lips curled into a knowing leer. "On you, huh? Good choices. Nice musculature on that one." Her chin jerked towards Hazou. "As to the girls—"
A kunai went past Arikada's face so close that the wind of its passage stirred her hair.
Keiko's face was utterly blank. "Oops."
Arikada's leer got wider but she stopped talking.
"Come," Akane said politely, gesturing back the way she'd come. "I believe the first of your zombies is this way...?"
"Said we should just blow her up, but nooo," Kagome muttered as he fell in behind Arikada. "'Head on a plate is fine,' he said. 'Sounds good,' I said. Does anyone listen to me? Nooo. Boom. Squish. So much easier. Stinker."
Mari waited until Arikada was out of earshot (hopefully; godsdamned unknown bioseal abilities!) but still close enough to catch if there were any issues. She kept her gaze firmly on the biosealer while gesturing the kids in close; splitting the team like this was a risk, but they needed to get some chakra into Noburi so that he could run and fight. Almost as important, they needed to do it without Arikada seeing it happen—no way were they giving up that ace in the hole.
"That was really impressive, sensei," Hazou said. "I didn't expect you to actually talk her down."
Mari shrugged, not looking away from where Arikada was bent over the body of the corpse warrior that Hazou and Noburi had destroyed, digging around in its guts with a knife and a bottle of acid. Thankfully, Kagome and Akane were staying well out of reach and not talking. "Honestly? Neither did I. It was pre-battle smack talk to stall her while the rest of you caught up and to rattle her for the fight. I didn't expect her to actually stop and listen."
Noburi laughed. "Guess she's smarter than we thought."
"Yeah," Mari said. "Speaking of which, walking up into fight range when you're out of chakra wasn't the brightest. We'll talk about that later, though. For now, tap some chakra out of the three of us." She shifted a half-step to her left so that Noburi was between her and Arikada before extending her canteen, one finger tucked into the water. Keiko and Hazou shuffled in close and put their own fingers inside; Noburi was a second behind them but the moment his finger touched the water Mari felt the unpleasant tugging of the chakra being pulled out of her.
"While we're supplying energy to vampire boy, I'm taking input on what happens next. My basic plan is to run for Leaf and don't stop.'"
"I like that plan," Noburi said instantly. "She creeps me the hell out. I'm not going to be able to go all that way without a recharge, though. Probably two or three, actually—without my barrel it's a constant struggle to keep the chakra bound to the water. It'll leak out fast."
Mari nodded, hiding the grimace. "Okay, that's fine. Keiko, do you have enough juice for another summoning?"
Keiko nodded. "Yes, sensei. I don't know how functional Panchipaama will be, though. Forcible unsummoning is supposed to be quite debilitating. If I call and she can't or won't accept the summons I'll have burned the chakra for nothing."
Mari digested that rather sour morsel of knowledge with a calm expression. It would have been really nice to have a massive not-killable-for-realsies spiky ball of death on their side, but it sounded like that wasn't reliable. Things were just getting better and better, weren't they?
"Okay, no problem," she said. "Noburi, when you need to recharge I want you to rotate between Hazou, Akane, and Kagome. I want to keep my levels high for fighting and, just in case Arikada notices what's going on, I want her to believe that Keiko's levels are still high enough to summon. Just take enough that you can keep running. If fighting breaks out, get clear and do not engage. Understood?"
"Yes, sensei," Noburi said, taking his finger out of the canteen. She passed him the vessel and watched as he carefully stoppered it and slung the strap diagonally across his body, fiddling with the buckle for a moment to ensure that it was tightly affixed.
"Sensei, I have some ideas...?" Hazou offered. At her nod he continued. "Like you said, we need to clean up. Grab the PMYFs and the...misterators." (She grinned at his sour expression.) "Then we need to brief Arikada on what to expect. She isn't going to like the part about being tied up and taken into custody when we get to the border."
Mari puffed out her cheeks, sighing. "Boy howdy is that an understatement," she said. "It also really weakens the story I told her. Still, she didn't believe it anyway, so nothing lost." She watched Noburi and Hazou both look momentarily surprised. "Oh, come on," she said, "Ms Crazypants bought into that story for about ten seconds, and then she woke up and realized that I was full of crap. Didn't matter, though, because she was in a no-win situation and pretending to accept my line of horsehockey was her best option. Fortunately she bought it for just long enough to move out of fight-or-flight mode and think rationally enough that she realized standing down was her best move."
"Uh...right," Hazou said. "Anyway, after we've explained about the search and capture we should give her a chance to dump any stuff she doesn't want to have seen. I'll keep an eye on her while she's doing it; maybe I can memorize some of her seals."
"Kagome will explode if he finds you using seals that came from Arikada," Keiko noted.
"I'll deal with Kagome-sensei," Hazou said. "For now, it's too good a chance to miss. Besides, I can just not use them, right?"
"I feel certain that nothing bad will occur as a result of that plan," Keiko said calmly. She paused. "That was sarcasm."
"Yes, I got that," Hazou said. "Thank you. Anyway, Arikada may not take the chance but it's better to offer it. While she's doing that, we should stash our own stuff that we want to keep secret from Leaf. Keiko, you said that the pangolins would keep things for us?"
She nodded. "Yes, although they will inspect them. In particular, although they didn't explicitly say so I would expect that any seals we send them will be duplicated."
Hazou grimaced. "Not thrilled about that, but I care more about Leaf getting our tech than the pangolins. At least the Polemarch and his people are our allies."
Mari forbore to point out that there was a difference between being Keiko's ally and being the team's ally. Hazou's point was still valid, since Leaf wasn't even nominally an ally.
"You should have Pandaa reverse-summon you so you can take all the stuff," Hazou said. "While you're there, make sure that the pangolins know we're going to Leaf and that Jiraiya promised us we'd be under his protection. Also, give them a written message for Jiraiya explaining everything that's gone down so that we can use that as proof of our intentions if everything goes wrong. We'll write a couple of reports—"
Mari and Keiko both stared at him in astonishment. "Are you kidding?" Mari said. "We're not going to stop and sit here writing reports. We're going to do the cleanup and then full-sprint for Leaf. We'll do the reports verbally and in person. Having them written gains us nothing. Anyway, we'll undoubtedly be debriefed when we get there and we can write them then, in a stable situation. Which, for the record, this is not."
"Oh. Um, right. Okay, well, uh, anyway, Keiko, while you're in the Summon Realm you should send a thank-you note to Panchipaama—"
"Thank you," Keiko said coldly. "I appreciate you suggesting that, since I certainly would not have thought of it on my own. We all know how my bloodline renders me incapable of basic social politeness. I am very grateful to you for covering my weaknesses like that." Long pause. "That was also sarcasm."
Hazou had the grace to blush. "Uh...right. Sorry."
"Would you like to get the other foot in there?" Mari asked. "I think if you push a little you could probably get them both in. I have some hot sauce if you want it—I'm told that it really cuts the taste of shoe leather."
The blush got deeper. "Sorry," he mumbled again, looking at his feet. "Just...um. Never mind. Right, moving on." He paused, gathering his thoughts. "Um...I had some other thoughts about that but, uh...never mind. Uh...anyway. Once we're moving I think I should try to strike up a conversation with Ari—"
"Vetoed," Mari said instantly. "We're going to be running balls-out and none of us is going to be close enough to talk to her. Besides, you'd only have four hours. You're not going to get her to open up and tell you anything really useful in that time, while running. Move along."
"Oh. Um...okay. Well, when we get to the border I think it might be a good idea to ask Kagome-sensei if he'd be willing to go under your happiness genjutsu, sensei. He's going to be seriously on edge, and getting searched and tied up might be enough to make him lash out."
Mari weighed that one. "I'll talk to him about it," she said. "It's a bad idea for a lot of reasons, but under these circumstances it might be less bad than the alt...." She trailed off and blinked at what was happening over by the rest of the team. Arikada had finished digging around in the corpse and watching it dissolve from the caustic liquids she'd been pouring over it. Now she was turning those tools on herself.
Much of Arikada's skin was diseased-looking or possibly rotten. The rotting had progressed rapidly through the tentacles that she'd peeled off her arms and back; now they hung around her in stinky black streamers. She was busily tearing them off her body, hacking with the knife and burning with the acid where necessary. She tossed the remains onto the slowly-dissolving corpse and added more of whatever was in the bottle.
"That is just disturbing," Mari murmured, receiving three nods in fervent agreement.
"On the bright side," Keiko said, "it would appear that most of her techniques are designed to work within her own body, and the extra flesh she had attached was important to them. She has already shed the mass from her legs, arms, and spinal region. This should limit her combat potential somewhat."
"Nice theory," Noburi said. "I hope you're right."
Keiko nodded. "So do I."
o-o-o-o
It only took ten minutes for the team to gather up all of their thrown weapons and seals except for two kunai and a misterator that no one could find. Mari was jittery and pushing for a rapid departure even at the cost of leaving the lost items behind—a paper tag wouldn't last past the next rainfall at most, so it wasn't that much of a risk—but Arikada was still combing with agonizing slowness through the remains of the corpse that Hazou and Noburi had fought.
"How much longer?" Mari demanded.
The sealmistress looked up. "As long as it takes," she said. "You can't rush seal work. If I do this wrong it means Bad Things."
Kagome backed up half a step and started to raise his hands before a quelling look from Mari made him put them down again.
"What are you doing?" Mari asked. This was the problem with dealing with someone else's area of expertise: she had no way to judge if Arikada was telling the truth, or how bad the potential consequences of a misstep were.
Arikada sniffed derisively. "Know a lot about seals, do you? Would you like a recitation of the nine-dimensional implications of cascade failure modalities, or do you think you could just stand there and look pretty while I work?"
"Eleven dimensions," Kagome said.
Arikada blinked. "What?" Her voice was nervous.
"Cascade failures run in eleven dimensions for anything except trivial cases. Thirteen if you're dealing with more than two but less than five interlinked nodes." He sniffed. "If you're dealing with five or more then you're a stinking idiot and we should just kill you now before you do something really stupid." He shot Mari a weaponized puppy-dog look. "In fact, killing her sounds great. Head on a plate is okay, right? One little—"
"Stand down, Blaster," Mari said, chuckling. "Well, Ms Arikada, it would appear that you are either stalling or insufficiently knowledgeable. Which is it?"
Arikada looked sour. "There's a piece of the array I need to find," she grumbled. "It was scratched into the end of one of the ribs. It's a mess in here and it's going to take a few minutes, okay?"
Mari looked around, sweeping her eyes over the surrounding area, then took three steps and bent to pick something up from the grass. "Is this it?" she asked, holding out her hand.
Mari, Deception:
?d100: 1099
Arikada, Deception:
?d100: 975
Arikada pushed herself to her feet and stepped over to see what Mari was holding. The moment she moved away from the corpse there was an ear-shattering KABOOM! from behind her. She spun around to see Kagome crouched down, one hand held just in front of where the corpse's head had been. The body was entirely gone and a fan of blood and finely-ground guts was spread over the grass.
"Oh good, all your seals were destroyed," Mari said, calmly opening her fingers to reveal an empty hand. "Guess we can get moving."
o-o-o-o
The run to Leaf was an endless fountain of stress for Mari. The team had split into pairs and spread out in a loose arc behind Arikada, but they couldn't just run along. No, Noburi was going to need to periodically recharge from one of the others, and Mari was determined to hide what was happening. That meant she had to make the pairs reshuffle at random times. Sure, it added some unpredictability to where people would be at any given time, which made it harder for Arikada to plan an escape. It was what spec-ops teams would have done if they were escorting someone, but it wasn't something that the kids had trained for. Mari's nerves were getting frazzled by the constant fear that they'd exchange places a little too slowly and leave a hole in the perimeter through which Arikada could escape. She mitigated the problem slightly by signaling who should swap and when, then moving to where the hole was likely to be. All while running a steady thirty klicks an hour and maintaining careful station.
Arikada, Stealth:
?d100: 717
Mari, Awareness:
?d100: 1056
Keiko, Awareness:
12d100: 761
Kagome, Awareness:
?d100: 658 (Who are you and what have you done with my paranoid explosives woobie?!)
Noburi, Awareness:
12d100: 486
Hazou, Awareness:
15d100: 477 (?!)
Akane, Awareness:
9d100: 370
Who runs over the bomb? (1-5, 1=Keiko, 2=Kagome...5=Akane; Arikada waited for Mari to be not-it)
1d5: 3 (Noburi)
He didn't see her drop it, so that means he actually has to try to dodge. (Bomb's to-hit was 717.)
Noburi, Dodge Explosives (Awareness + 1/5 TacMov):
15d100: 770
We'll get you the next time, my pretty little medic... —EJ's dice
Okay, everyone has to make three separate dodge rolls against the explodey maggots. Everyone who misses a roll is marked in red.
Hazou (Awareness + 1/5 TacMov): 18d100 => 1033, 865, 920
Noburi (Awareness + 1/5 TacMov): 15d100 => 609, 642, 575
Keiko (Awareness + 1/5 TacMov): 15d100 => 710, 538, 783
Akane (Awareness + 1/5 TacMov): 12d100 => 403, 587, 645
Mari (Awareness + 1/5 TacMov): ?d100 => 1021, 983, 1329
Kagome (Awareness + 1/5 TacMov): ?d100 => 960, 914, 1131
Explodey maggots:
?d100: 497, 562, 700 => Class A success against Akane! Damage discarded due to Pangolin jutsu! Class A success against Akane! Status effect applied: The Hunger Within! (Chakra worm eating its way through her abdominal cavity.)
Okay, Arikada is trying to get away; it's a contest between her TacMov and Mari's. (No one else is fast enough to matter.) Each person needs to make a Class C success in order to escape / catch the other. If the Class C requires multiple successes then they must be consecutive.
Arikada, turbo-boosted TacMov:
?d100 + ?d100 (turbo) + ?d100 (chakra boost): 1469
Mari, TacMov:
?d100 + ?d100 (chakra boost): 1245 Class B success for Arikada
Mari, TacMov:
?d100 + ?d100 (chakra boost) + Wind Wall: 1559 Class B success for Mari
Turbo boost expires! Arikada collapses! The armies of the Light win!
They were two miles out from the border, at the edge of the giant forest that was the Land of Fire. Mari was on the far right flank when she caught the nigh-imperceptible motion of Arikada palming an explosive tag out of her belt and dropping it on the ground as she ran.
"Bomb!" Mari and Keiko shouted almost simultaneously. Mari spun, leaping back towards Noburi with her heart in her mouth; he clearly hadn't seen the tag and was about to run right over it. If he was hurt she would—
Noburi heard the warning and reacted instantly, rolling away from the blast with the crabbed sideways roll of the barrel-wearing Wakahisa clan. The wave of relief that washed through Mari was so powerful it almost knocked her over. She spun on her heel and went after Arikada.
The biosealer had taken the brief moment of the team's distraction to strip her tunic off over her head. Still running, she dug her nails into the flesh of her chest and ripped it free, hurling two massive slabs of bloody meat backwards and to the side. The meat tumbled and spun, scattering thumb-sized carapaced maggots in their wake.
Everyone but Mari very wisely hit the deck, tumbling and rolling away from what could not more clearly have been a bio-weapon. Diving for cover was an excellent choice: the moment the maggots hit the ground they exploded, fragments of exoskeleton flying everywhere. Each blast was a tiny fraction of the power of an explosive tag, but there were over a dozen of them, and they went off in a rolling blast wave that kept the team busy dodging instead of pursuing.
While the others were diving for cover, Mari made a snap judgement and put on the speed, trusting her reflexes to keep herself safe while the others went to ground. It was a painful call but a necessary one. No one else had the speed to keep up with Arikada if she pulled out another trick like the flesh tentacles. The maggots were obviously there to buy time for their mistress to escape; if Mari went to ground, or went back to help the kids, Arikada would escape. If Arikada escaped, Jiraiya would kill the team. Simple as that.
With a half-remembered childhood prayer on her lips, Mari pushed chakra into her muscles and flew across the ground towards her target. Arikada must have heard her coming, because she glanced back and paled.
No. She wasn't paling; the flesh of her face and the rest of her body was melting, sinking in, and leaving her as a horse-faced woman of normal dimensions. She laughed and accelerated so fast Mari would have sworn it was impossible if she hadn't seen it happen.
From behind came a scream of pain, but Mari blocked that out and raced after her target, refusing to be distracted. Arikada opened the distance effortlessly, plunging into the edge of the forest; in seconds she would be out of sight and then gone.
With a snarl, Mari flicked a Wind Wall in front of herself and leaped through it. The helpful hands of the winds lifted her and hurled her after the bitch that she fully intended to break apart. She came out of the Wall and immediately cast another one, throwing away chakra as if it were free. This woman would not get away.
They were deep in the trees, dodging back and forth as Arikada desperately tried to break line of sight and Mari stubbornly clung to her heels. She was narrowing the distance, she should be able to get her hands on her opponent in just a few—
Between one step and the next, Arikada sprawled face-first on the ground and lay there, convulsing. Mari slowed down and approached warily, narrow-eyed and expecting an ambush.
The convulsions went on for at least a minute before the sealmistress's body finally went completely limp. As much as she wanted to run back and check on her team, Mari forced herself to wait. She searched around for a long treelimb and poked the sealmistress in the ribs, hard. When there was no reaction she poked harder, then smacked her in the head none too gently. Still no reaction.
Carefully, she approached and knelt down, one knee on the ground and one on Arikada's neck. One hand on the shoulderblade, one on the bicep. A quick yank and the shoulder joint was dislocated. There was no scream, so presumably Arikada really was thoroughly unconscious. Mari nodded grim satisfaction.
With efficient motions, Mari worked her way down Arikada's body, dislocating shoulders, hips, and thumbs. From a sealing scroll the red-headed jounin produced a bag containing rope and cloth. Wadded-up cloth plus a length of rope became a gag. It wasn't safe to gag an unconscious person, but given all the surprises she'd given them so far, Mari was perfectly willing to take the risk. As Kagome had been so frequently reminding her, 'head on a plate' was a perfectly valid option.
The bag went over Arikada's head and was tied tightly to her neck. An arm binder with attached mitten rendered the sealmistress unable to move fingers or arms, and fastening wrists and ankles in a nasty hogtie meant the bitch wasn't going to be struggling free. With a grunt of satisfaction, Mari lifted the unconscious body to her shoulder and headed back to rejoin the team at the best speed she could make while carrying a larger and heavier woman.
When she arrived, Mari dropped Arikada to the ground without a thought for the unpleasant crunch that resulted; she was far too horrified to see the rest of the team gathered around a screaming, thrashing Akane, most of whose torso was covered in blood that pumped sluggishly from the hole in her abdomen. Under the skin, something writhed.
Keiko and Kagome were struggling to pin the taller girl's arms down while Hazou lay across Akane's lower body, keeping her vaguely still and preventing her from accidentally kicking anyone. He was liberally splashed with the girl's blood. Noburi crouched beside her, ash-white but steady. His left hand hovered over the skin of her belly, green medical chakra bathing the region. His right thumb and forefinger were stuck into her wound, trying and failing to get hold of the worm that was eating his teammate from the inside.
Kagome's head came up when Arikada hit the ground "There she is!" he snapped, eyes wild and wide. "She must have an answer, let's—"
"Kagome, stay where you are," Mari snapped in full command voice. "Noburi, stop what you're doing. There's no way to know if grabbing the worm is safe. Try to just keep her stable for a minute. Everyone keep your eyes on Akane, let me know if anything changes."
Mari knelt down beside Arikada and rolled her to the side, pulling the hood off and taking the gag out. She slapped the woman's face to wake her, but got no response. Grabbing the dislocated shoulder joint and wrenching it got a moan and a roll of the head but nothing more. Grimly, Mari pulled out her scroll of cooking supplies.
A thimbleful of hot sauce in the right eye and one in each nostril woke Arikada up with a shout. Mari snapped a hand over her mouth, forcibly turning the woman's head so she could look her in the still-functional eye.
"One of your worms got my student," Mari said calmly. "How do we fix it?" She removed her hand.
"You can't," Arikada said immediately. "It'll eat until—" She screamed as Mari used the tip of a kunai to scoop out Arikada's hot-sauce-reddened eye.
"One of your worms got my student," Mari said calmly. "How do we fix it?"
"You crazy bitch!" Arikada shouted. "I'll fucking kill you!" She screamed louder as the kunai took her nose off with one clean stroke.
"If you say anything else that is not helpful, I will shove this kunai through your eye and kill you," Mari said, still in that calm voice. "One of your worms got my student. How do we fix it?"
"Acid!" Arikada sobbed. "There's acid in one of my scrolls! If you cut or crush the worm it'll spill toxin and kill her, but the acid will neutralize the poison as it kills the worm!"
Mari nodded and patted Arikada on the head. "Very good. Now, let me make something clear: Collie is a sweet girl and all of us love her very much. Right now I am the only thing standing between you and my highly creative and overprotective explosives master. If you do or say anything at all that does not help my girl, I will kill you instantly. If something unpleasant happens to me, he will kill you eventually. Do we have an understanding?"
"Yes, yes, yes...." the sealmistress sobbed, weeping tears of blood and salt into the grass.
"Excellent. Now, which scroll?"
What followed were the absolute worst four minutes of Mari's life. Turning her emotions off so that she could do what was necessary to quickly extract the necessary information from the psychopathic sealmistress was going to have its own costs later. Keeping them off so that she could pour a measured quantity of acid over her student's writhing body was a living nightmare. The one tiny sliver of brightness in the picture was that Kagome had a pair of stretchers in a storage seal ("What? You mean you don't?"), so they didn't have to waste time making them. They dosed Arikada with the paralytic, stripped her, gagged and hooded her again, summoned Pandaa and sent him off with their secret gear, and then ran for Leaf as fast as they could with Akane on one stretcher and Arikada on the other.
As they ran, the team took turns shouting "Monkey Salmon! Monkey Salmon! Monkey Salmon!" The sooner the Leaf patrols found them, the better. And, since the team wasn't about to slow down to a speed that would look more like "traveling" as opposed to "raiding", it would be best if the first thing the Leaf nin heard was Jiraiya's passcode.
It was a good thing they did, because Leaf had stepped up their border security since the last time Team Uplift passed through. They were only a mile past the notional border when an overstrength squad of eight ninja melted out of the trees around them.
"We're agents of Jiraiya's," Mari said, before anyone could speak. "I'm Inoue Mari and this is Arikada Sugako, a sealmistress with an emphasis on bioseals. We're bringing her in at Jiraiya's order. My student is badly wounded and needs urgent medical care. We'll do whatever you want, accept being tied or whatever, as long as you get her help soon."
"Put them down and back up," the team leader said, gesturing to the ground in front of them. Kagome and Hazou, the two currently carrying Akane, set her stretcher down without a word and stepped back. Kagome was wringing his hands, but showed no sign of attacking as one of the Leaf ninja bent down and inspected both Akane and Arikada.
"She's got foreign biomatter intrusion into the lower right abdomen, high risk of peritonitis," Noburi said. "The foreign body was a chakra-enhanced worm that ate flesh starting at point of insertion and moving laterally—"
The leader of the Leaf squad turned a little green and held up a hand. "We'll get her to the hospital," he said. He jerked his head at one of his squad; the man bent down and scooped Akane up in his arms before racing off into the woods, a second ninja falling in behind him.
"Get on the ground, face-down, hands behind your backs," the Leaf team leader said. "Your password is good, but we're still going to have to tie you and search you."
"Whatever, just get it done and take us in," Mari said, doing as ordered. The others dropped down beside her, even Kagome hardly hesitating. The need to get through the preliminaries so they could be reunited with Akane as quickly as possible overrode any other concerns.
The team leader nodded sympathetically. "We'll go as fast as we can, I promise." He flicked through a series of hand seals and moments later an Earth Clone was binding the team's fingers and hands.
o-o-o-o
Growing up in Mist, Konoha had always occupied a strange position in Hazou's worldview. It was simultaneously a fortress of horrible, baby-eating enemies and a village populated by fighters too soft-hearted to be ninja. It was the home of Jiraiya, a sneaky trickster who was, granted, the best sealmaster in the world. And, well, yes, the God of Shinobi. And the Copy Ninja. And an entire clan of All Seeing Eyes. And the last scion of the Uchiha. And...
You know, maybe there was a reason that Mist had carefully avoided going to war with Fire.
In practice, the walls of Konoha were impressive but nothing like what Hazou's fevered imagination had dreamed up. They were not soaring pinnacles of bone dripping with ancient seals of eldritch knowledge and guarded by demons. They were stone, thirty feet high and thick enough that two ninja could pass each other while patrolling along their tops. They stretched off into the distance, their winding course disappearing rapidly into the distance.
That was what really brought it home; the walls stretched out of sight. Clearly, they surrounded the entire city. A city larger than Mist, and nestled inside a miles-wide ring of trees vastly larger than any others in the forest. Trees that had been created from nothing by a ninja of legend.
While Hazou was lost in his half-awed musings, the Leaf commander exchanged sign-and-countersign with the gate guards before leading the still-bound team inside the walls.
"Welcome to Konoha," he said. "I'm Anami Hachiro, leader of Patrol Team Six. I'll send someone to the hospital to check on your teammate but, in the meantime, Jiraiya's waiting for you in Hokage Tower."
Summary: In case you wanted to skip the gross bits, the chapter basically covers Arikada's attempt to escape and Mari's pursuit and capture. Akane was badly injured in the process, taking a poison worm to the belly. The team saved her but she will be in hospital for quite a while. You made it to Konoha safely.
Note that Arikada had no written seals or other interesting gear in her possession.
XP AWARD: 14
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Hazō wasn't tied up, and this fact was making him very uncomfortable.
To be sure, the team had been stripped of all their weapons and equipment, and given a distressingly thorough body search (though as someone brought up in Mist, Hazō knew it could have been worse). But they, a team of highly suspicious missing-nin including at least one jōnin, were being taken into the presence of the leader of the most powerful political entity in the world, and none of them were being restrained in any way.
The Hokage didn't look like the kind of man who was beyond assassination. A middle-aged ninja in white robes and the obligatory Kage hat, he was gazing down at a desk covered with scrolls in various stages of unfurlment, his brow lined with what Hazō suspected was bureaucratic frustration. He could have been some random mid-rank pencil-pusher in the Mizukage's Office (or, well, its Leaf equivalent). He wasn't that tall, and was dwarfed by the high bookshelves lining the room; Jiraiya, sitting in a chair to the side and giving them a "don't embarrass me in front of my boss" look, seemed to project a much stronger sense of presence.
Then the Hokage straightened up, and looked directly at Hazō.
Hazō's perspective reoriented itself. The Hokage was behind the desk and the scrolls. The Hokage was between the bookshelves. The Hokage was next to Jiraiya. The Hokage was in front of Hazō. He filled every corner of the room, defining every location and every spatial relationship without changing anything but his posture.
Oh, right. Middle-aged ninja.
"This," Jiraiya said gravely, "is Sarutobi Hiruzen-sensei, the Third Hokage. He's permitted me to attend while you give him a full report on the Arikada mission."
"Thank you, Jiraiya," the Hokage said. He sounded nothing like what Hazō had expected.
When the Mizukage spoke at public assemblies, his voice was high and cold, piercing you wherever you stood. It divided the world into straight lines of narrow steel, a razor-sharp net with no escape. There were only tools and traitors, right and wrong, sacrifice and selfishness, law and transgression. His charisma made you want to believe in a simple world where all you had to do was be one of those straight lines, and everything would be peaceful and good and right, forever. His reputation made you terrified of falling into the gaps between them, an endlessly deep void from which there was no way back.
The Hokage… was Hazō's grandfather. Not Kurosawa Ginrei, of whom he knew only the name. Not Izuki Jirō, who had passed away long before Hazō's birth. The Hokage was Hazō's grandfather as he ought to be, with the overwhelming but peaceful strength of an oak tree, decades of wisdom piled up like logs against a hard winter, and kindness to warm you like a fireplace if you were ready to show the proper respect. The rich timbre of the Hokage's voice complemented his all-encompassing aura, turning the room into a space that felt safe because it was under the Hokage's absolute control.
Then the Hokage shifted his attention to the team. "Mori Keiko. Kurosawa Hazō. Kagome... Kagome...?"
Kagome-sensei glowered. The Hokage continued unperturbed.
"Inoue Mari. Wakahisa Noburi." Left to right. Hazō could keenly feel the one missing name.
"You have served Jiraiya well, in your own way, and for this I am grateful. Now, report."
There was less wood in the Hokage's voice now, and more stone, reminding Hazō that he and they were allies of convenience at best, one step short of enemies, and that the warmth was not for them. He had to shake off the feeling that he'd just been shut out in the cold and needed to try to earn the Hokage's approval as fast as possible in order to be let back in.
If Mist was the way it was because of the Mizukage and his predecessors, what must Leaf be like? Was this why it had been able to give birth to someone like Akane?
Akane.
"Hokage, sir, I, uh, don't mean to be rude," Hazō stammered as Inoue-sensei turned towards him in barely-suppressed horror, "but could I ask about Ishihara Akane's condition first? Is she going to be all right?"
Jiraiya snorted for reasons known only to himself. The Hokage gave him a brief sideways look of disapproval, then returned to Hazō.
"Your concern for your teammate does you credit," the Hokage said. Approval!
Hazō mentally kicked himself at the reflexive reaction.
"I have good news and bad news," the Hokage went on. "The bad news is that you only just brought her to us in time. Any longer and she would be dead. Even now the Shinigami is hovering over her.
"The good news is that Hidden Leaf possesses the world's most advanced medical ninjutsu, and we have dealt with things stranger than these so-called chakra worms. Our resident bioweapons expert, Dr Yakushi, is operating on Miss Ishihara right now. I can tell you with confidence that she couldn't be in better hands."
Hazō sighed with relief. "Thank you, sir. Sorry for interrupting."
The Hokage nodded. "Now, the report, if you would be so kind."
Inoue-sensei cleared her throat.
"Following Jiraiya's instructions, we arrived at Sarubetsu in southern Rice. After establishing a base camp, we spent several days infiltrating the town and identifying figures of importance, as well as analysing the territory. We developed low-level contacts within the Irie and Hinago clans, two of the three ninja clans competing for influence in Sarubetsu, and it is our belief that the Hinago were the ones working with Arikada, though we never gained conclusive proof.
"We negotiated with Sarubetsu's mayor, a civilian with a high degree of influence over the clans, and persuaded her to prevent them from interfering with our mission."
The Hokage raised his hand, and Inoue-sensei fell silent.
"Were your identities, or ours, compromised at any point during the mission?"
Somebody who hadn't known Inoue-sensei for as long as Hazō might have missed the flush of shame. Thinking about it, it was worrying that she felt it around him often enough that he'd learned to recognise it.
"The mayor, Emiya Manako, saw my true appearance, but did not get my name. Additionally, an Irie contact implied that he was able to identify Wakahisa, Kurosawa and Mori through circumstantial evidence, but he did not learn their names or appearances, and did not express any intent to make use of this information. Ishihara and Kagome's identities were…" Inoue-sensei struggled for words, clearly remembering Hazō's account of the Yoichi's Incident, "…uncompromised."
The Hokage looked Inoue-sensei in the eye. "Miss Inoue," he said meaningfully, with an edge of reproach.
Inoue-sensei flinched. "I… should add that the Irie contact blackmailed the aforementioned three into purchasing some of his goods using the information on their identity."
"Thank you, Miss Inoue. Please continue."
"On the day of Arikada's arrival, we identified her from long range, and then proceeded to ambush her. We eliminated her two bodyguards—"
The Hokage held up his hand. Inoue-sensei stopped.
"I understand that the Sarubetsu terrain is flat and lacking in concealment. What technique did you use to identify Arikada from long range without revealing your location?"
"High-altitude observation," Inoue-sensei said reluctantly.
The Hokage's eyebrows rose. "High-altitude observation? How did you achieve something like that on flat terrain?"
"With respect, sir," Inoue-sensei said, "we would prefer not to discuss our methods with a third party."
"I'm afraid I must insist," the Hokage said. "High-altitude observation is a known counter to Hidden Leaf's concealment strategy. We need to be able to anticipate any means of achieving it."
Inoue-sensei glanced at Hazō. Hazō did not want to make the Hokage "insist" further.
"We constructed a watchtower," Hazō explained, feeling a brief thrill of satisfaction at Jiraiya and the Hokage's bemused expressions. "We used a Five-Seal Barrier to stabilise a spiral of ninja wire, which we used to support progressively higher sets of wooden platforms. With no visible infrastructure, the tower could not be seen from range."
Jiraiya and the Hokage exchanged meaningful looks.
"Can I have a piece of paper and something to write with, Sarutobi-sensei?" Jiraiya asked excitedly. The Hokage was already wordlessly passing him the supplies with an expression of wry resignation.
Roughly two minutes were occupied by six people watching Jiraiya write and sketch. Finally, he held up a piece of paper half-covered with formulae and half with an annotated image of a tower.
"It works!" he declared, his earlier solemnity forgotten. "If you place the spiral correctly, you can apply the Inumura diffusion effect across the entire surface area! Now if we combine it with some Force Wall effects, and add a dispersion seal to the highest point… and this could be angled to support weapon emplacements…"
The Hokage gave a cough.
"Sorry, Sarutobi-sensei," Jiraiya said, looking up. "But this is the sealcrafting innovation of the year. There are so many possible applications which could really tip the balance of power…" he trailed off, looking back up at the team. The Hokage was now looking at them as well.
"Were you the original creators of this design?" the Hokage asked mildly.
There was a long pause as Inoue-sensei visibly weighed the options.
"Yes," she finally said.
"Hmm," was all the Hokage said in response. "Please proceed with your report."
"We engaged Arikada in mid-range combat. She used an unknown ability to detonate one of her dead bodyguards' heads, but I was able to avoid most of the damage. When we pursued, she used another ability to strip flesh from her legs in a large explosion and propel herself in a hundred-metre jump."
The Hokage frowned, but did not interrupt.
"She then extracted shinobi corpses, presumably from a scroll, and used the Edo Tensei Technique to reanimate them to attack us—"
The Hokage's hand practically leapt up to stop her. "The Edo Tensei Technique. Are you absolutely certain that is what she called it?"
"Yes, sir."
The Hokage and Jiraiya exchanged looks again.
"Raven!" the Hokage said loudly.
A ninja in grey armour and a bird mask appeared out of nowhere next to the Hokage.
"Have Prisoner Arikada transferred to the Ram facility. Go."
"Yes, sir." The ninja disappeared again. Hazō longed to know how he did that, without even any visible hand seals.
"Please describe exactly what happened."
"When we caught up with Arikada after her jump, she was using hand seals over a set of three dead bodies. As she completed them, she shouted 'Edo Tensei Technique' and slapped a hand on the back of each in turn. The three corpses rose as if they were alive, and attacked us. They displayed an ability to use weapons and significant combat skills, and were very strong and durable."
"The one I was fighting had a spike rammed into its brain through the ear," Hazō added.
The Hokage's expression was completely opaque. "Thank you for this information. Did you happen to see the hand seals that Arikada was using for the technique?"
Hazō had, and he was pretty sure everybody else had too. Their attention had been completely focused on Arikada, and her actions had been pretty eye-grabbing.
"I'm afraid not," Inoue-sensei said. "She was almost finished by the time we came within range."
"That's right," Kagome-sensei added quickly. "We don't know anything about Leaf's secret forbidden technique. It probably wasn't Edo Tensei anyway. I heard her shout 'Emo Tensai', I know I did, and I'm sure Leaf doesn't have anything like that!"
"Thank you, Kagome," Inoue-sensei said wearily. She and Hazō had quickly talked it over beforehand, and decided that the only disaster worse than having Kagome-sensei present for the debriefing would be leaving him alone as a Hidden Leaf prisoner for any length of time.
"Please continue," the Hokage said.
"While we were fighting the corpses, Arikada transformed some of the excess flesh on her arms and back into three… I can only call them tentacles… which she used to increase her running speed. However, we were able to capture her and persuade her to return with us using a story about potential employment by Leaf, supplemented with extensive intimidation.
"Unfortunately, she made an escape attempt partway through. She ripped out part of her chest, which was filled with explosive maggots. It was one of these that got Ishihara. Fortunately, I was able to capture and… comprehensively disable… Arikada, and persuade her to give us the acid needed to destroy the worm and prevent further damage. The amount of persuasion necessary left her in her current condition."
"Her current condition," the Hokage repeated. "You are trying to keep our medic-nin busy. But do not take that as criticism. Many of my best shinobi would have done the same."
There was a part of Hazō that wished he'd been the one to torture Arikada for information. He wanted to hurt her, so much, for what she'd done to his Akane, and for what she'd nearly done to Akane, to make her scream, and he knew that now he never could.
Another part of him was looking at himself in horror, for impulses that he never knew he'd had. Did other people feel like this, feel the instinct to protect one's own turning into a desire—a need—for violence? If it had been him torturing Arikada, would he have been able to stop when he had what he needed?
For the first time, Hazō realised why Mist trained its ninja to be tools. He'd always assumed it was to remove compassion, to avoid it staying your hand when you needed to hurt or kill. But it wasn't, was it? Mist turned its ninja into tools because a tool would know when to stop. It would do what was necessary and exactly what was necessary, never being consumed by anger or hatred or bloodlust or any of the infinite darker passions brought out by the battlefield. It was because Inoue-sensei could turn herself into a tool that she was able to save Akane and complete the mission. Could Hazō have done the same?
"From there," Inoue-sensei concluded, "we ran to Leaf as fast as we could, for Ishihara's sake, and ultimately encountered a patrol team, whom we gave Jiraiya's code. You know the rest."
"Thank you," the Hokage said, leaning back in his seat. His eyes were fixed on some point beyond the ceiling.
A few minutes later, he looked down at the team again. "Yes, I believe I see. I will be speaking with you again regarding other matters, partly regarding events in Iron, Tea and Hot Springs, but also about the Noodle Incident, which I believe your original mission was part of. For now, however, we must see to Arikada, and you may rest after your mission."
"Sir," Inoue-sensei said, "what is our status in Hidden Leaf? Are we free to move around as visitors?"
The Hokage gave a brief shake of his head. "On the contrary. Persons in your position are typically provided with well-appointed quarters, in which they are to remain until needed. But given your history with Jiraiya, I am prepared to make certain concessions. I will appoint a team of minders to you for the duration of your stay. Any activities in Leaf will need to be cleared via them, and they will escort you as necessary. You will be dignitaries from a minor village, observing Leaf as part of preparations to negotiate an alliance. However, if you appear to be trying to act against Leaf's interests, you will be eliminated immediately."
There was a pause.
"Miss Inoue," the Hokage said without any particular malice, "you are thinking that we will be unable or unwilling to assign you a team of minders greater than your group in combat power. This is true. However, the team will be more than capable of delaying you long enough for reinforcements to converge on your position, so I would advise you not to take any act which could be interpreted as hostile.
"You are also thinking that, as a manipulation specialist, you will surely be able to misdirect these minders if need be, so as to allow someone in your team to pursue a course of action the minders would not condone. This is why the minder team will feature a Yamanaka, authorized to read your minds on the slightest suspicion that you are violating the terms of your stay.
"Is there anything else you wish to discuss before you are dismissed?"
"No, sir," Inoue-sensei said.
The Hokage reached for a drawer of his desk, and pulled out a finely decorated pipe.
"I do," Hazō cut in. "It's about Akane. Will we be able to visit her in hospital?"
"Yes," the Hokage nodded, "that can be arranged, subject to certain safeguards."
"What about other people? Can she receive visits from her parents? And there's one other person whose presence I think she'd find really helpful…"
"You need not be concerned," the Hokage said with a touch of amusement. "Leaf takes care of its own. And the procedures for Ishihara Akane's official reinstatement as a Leaf genin are already underway."
What?
Hazō looked at Jiraiya, feeling the shock of betrayal. What happened to Akane's right to decide which side she wanted to stay with?
"If she still wants to be part of your group after you nearly let her die," Jiraiya said coolly, "she may be able to serve as your liaison with Leaf. Or spy from Leaf, or whatever official fiction we come up with. But make no mistake—she's home now, she was never a missing-nin, and if you want to keep working with her, you will have to keep working with Leaf."
"Why, you stink—"
"Please excuse us!"
Inoue-sensei fell only slightly short of actual taijutsu in her rush to bundle Kagome out of the office before he said something they would all regret. The rest followed in a subdued silence.
-o-
A few hours later, at the team's request…
"I thought I'd be hearing from you," Jiraiya snapped the book he was reading shut with a smile. "You really redeemed yourselves with this latest mission—no fatalities, no collateral damage, and the target alive and intact enough for our purposes. You need to work on maintaining cover, but nobody's perfect, and this is a hell of a lot better than that Hot Springs fiasco."
"Why did you do it?" Hazō burst out, angry enough not to care that he was speaking to one of the most powerful ninja in the world. "The agreement was that Akane would get a free choice of whether to stay with us or not!"
Jiraiya gave him a look. "Is that the thanks I get for arranging things so the kid gets her old life back and still has the option of working with you?"
"And we have to work for Leaf indefinitely if we want to keep her," Inoue-sensei added.
"A happy coincidence," Jiraiya said. "Besides, were you really planning to leave my employment?"
"You aren't acting in good faith," Hazō insisted. "How are we supposed to keep working with you if we can't trust you?"
"Keep your voice down," Jiraiya said softly. "I haven't violated the letter or the spirit of our agreement. Akane gets her choice. Leaf gets its genin. You wanted her parents and that awful spandex kid to visit her in hospital—are you really planning to make that happen just so you can take it away again when she's better?"
"I accept that the outcome you have orchestrated provides benefits to all parties," Keiko said tonelessly. "However, in doing so, you have denied our agency and unilaterally changed the terms of our relationship. I question your fitness to be our employer."
Jiraiya laughed. "Do you now? To my face, in the middle of a heavily-guarded compound at the heart of my village? You've got balls, girl. You're going to go far—if you don't get yourself killed mouthing off to the wrong ninja at the wrong time."
His expression turned more serious.
"The thing you need to understand, and it's best to do it while you're young, is that the whole world is like this. You and I aren't friends—we're allies. You kill things for a living while I work to keep the world from falling apart. I'm a nice guy, but if there's ever a choice between being nice to you and advancing my own agenda, well, it's not really a choice at all. And that's going to be true whoever you work for, except that they probably won't be as nice as me. Or as smoking hot."
"Excuse me," Inoue-sensei said slightly sharply, "the role of cynical yet extremely attractive mentor is already taken. Now, given that you've successfully outplayed us and we're stuck with the new status quo, can we move on to talking about our reward?"
"Wait, Inoue-sensei," Hazō said. "There's something I'd like to say."
"Oh?" Jiraiya said.
"Yes," Hazō said. "We're not in this to kill things for a living. Jiraiya, sir, you say you're working to keep the world from falling apart. We're trying to make it a world where you don't have to."
He felt Jiraiya's attention lock onto him.
Hazō had expected to feel stage fright, trying to convince Jiraiya of the Leaf Three, many decades his senior, and a man who had dedicated those decades to making the world a better place while Hazō had barely taken the first step. But somehow the stage fright never came—perhaps because he was giving shape to ideas that had been spinning inside his head for so long, in one shape or another, ever since those first days in Hidden Swamp. It wasn't that he knew what to say. It was that he was saying who he was.
"I understand why the world is falling apart," Hazō said in a firm, clear voice. "Civilians are constantly struggling not to die, between the roving monsters in the wilderness and the desperate lack of access to resources and technology. Meanwhile, the ninja with the power to change all this are groomed from childhood to be cold-blooded torturers and killers, fighting for moments of territorial domination that will be gone with the next war if not before. Even if Leaf is less bad than the rest, even if it has people like you, it still exists as part of the same dysfunctional system.
"It would take so little for us to make things better. I can use the Multiple Earth Wall Technique to build in minutes what it would take a village weeks to finish, and my structures will be strong, solid stone that many villages would never be able to mine in the first place. That's the one ninjutsu I just happen to know, teachable to a thirteen-year-old. Then there are medic-nin." Hazō gestured to Noburi. "Even a beginner medic-nin can perform miracles, fixing injuries and diseases in mere hours that will otherwise last for a civilian's life—or simply take it away. And we use them to patch up our fighters so they can get back onto the battlefield more quickly."
He pointed to Keiko. "Education. Imagine the expertise and know-how of the ninja villages, multiplied by the numbers of the civilian population. How many problems could we figure out how to solve? How many inventions could such a community give rise to?"
Next, Kagome-sensei. "A single seal can replace weeks, months, years of civilian labour. Storage seals for secure transportation. Exploding tags for demolitions. Five-Seal Barriers for temporary structures of any size and shape, and we've only just begun to plumb the depths of what you can do with those. How many other seals are there in the world?"
Finally, he turned to Inoue-sensei, who was listening to him with an unreadable expression. "How much could we change society if we applied our stores of knowledge about the human mind to healing mental sickness and improving communication, instead of constantly refining our techniques for spying and interrogation?"
Hazō refocused his attention on Jiraiya, who was listening with a silent intensity.
"We're starting to understand why the world is the way it is. Politics. Military strategy. The need to seize and maintain an advantage, multiplied into an arms race where nothing matters except dealing more damage and taking less. And that arms race is killing humanity.
"I don't think it was ever meant to be this way. When you listen to people talk, all anybody wants is peace. We fight for peace. We die for peace. We go to war to prevent others from taking away our peace. And the more we do it, the more we give up what we could become. Instead we keep killing those with the most potential, and forcing the rest to spend their lives producing resources so we can do it faster.
"Humanity's light is fading. I don't know how many generations it'll take, but if we keep going like this, we will eventually find ourselves in darkness. The wilderness will take back civilisation, and all the killing in the world won't be able to show us the way out of that abyss.
"This is not an acceptable outcome."
He felt something of Keiko's steel in his voice as he spoke that phrase, and briefly wondered what it meant.
"Jiraiya, sir, you don't understand the six of us yet—and that includes Akane, because she will come back to us. What we are to you isn't another set of tools. What we are is a unique opportunity.
"Most hidden village movers and shakers don't think it's possible to change the fundamental principles of the shinobi world, or they don't want to try because those principles benefit them, or they simply don't care. You probably know that a lot better than me, since you've spent your whole life trying to get them on board. And the people outside the system—the missing-nin—just want to keep their heads down.
"But we're different. Our journey started when Inoue-sensei saved us from the Swamp of Death because she chose to do what was right, instead of what was easy. I know we've made mistakes and compromises along the way, but we are working hard to make that same choice over and over again, until it stops being a choice and becomes a way of life. We're not hiding in the wilderness and telling ourselves that there is too much suffering in the world for six ninja to ever make a difference.
"You told us you wanted to build a world where no one is sacrificed in suicide missions. We want to build a world where no one is sacrificed. Ever. We want to build a world where peace exists as a foundation, not as an ultimate goal, and where everyone's happiness has equal value.
"Will you help us?"
Jiraiya looked at him. Just looked him in the eye, for what seemed like forever.
Hazō met his gaze without fear. Behind the fog of uncertainty and confusion through which he viewed so much of his life, deeper than all of the cracks and the flaws, this was who Kurosawa Hazō was.
Then Jiraiya chuckled.
"You know, kid, I think you and I could learn to get along."
-o-
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-o-
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"Does that mean you're in?" Hazou asked, trying hard not to hold his breath. The dream of improving the world...it was huge. There were times, when he thought about the goals that he had set for himself, that he felt them looming above him like a massive and unscalable cliff. Times when he thought that it was impossible, that there was no conceivable way that he could actually accomplish any sort of meaningful change in the world.
And then there were times like now. If Jiraiya joined the cause...Jiraiya of the Legendary Three, Jiraiya the student and friend of the God of Shinobi, Jiraiya the spymaster of the Leaf and all the power that entailed...if Jiraiya threw in his full efforts then the cliff went from unscalable to merely steep.
Jiraiya surveyed the team thoughtfully. "A little naive," he said to Inoue-sensei. "You haven't done much political training, huh?"
She shrugged. "Hasn't been at the top of my priority list," she said dryly, "what with all the wilderness threats, Yakuza, enemy ninja, blackmailing Sannin, overly-aggressive kenjutsu jounin, and insane bioseal experts that we've been dealing with for the last year." She paused, then continued in a more serious tone. "Don't dismiss him out of hand, though. The world he's picturing...it's a place that I'd like to live. A much better world than the one we've got. And yeah, he's thirteen and naive, but I think we'd do better to work for his world than to make him settle for ours."
Jiraiya's eyebrows went up. He turned back to Hazou and considered the nervous genin thoughtfully for a moment before speaking. "The thing you need to understand, kid, is that Konoha is my first priority, and I will do anything for it. I love this city with every trace of my being. I love its aggravating, impossible, brilliant ninja. I love its buildings and its twisty little streets. I love the fact that we have built a place where people are safe, where civilians can do their jobs with a reasonable belief that they'll wake up in the morning.
"Do I care about making some random foreigner in Mist or Earth happier or safer? Not really. It would be nice, sure, but if it ever came down to that foreigner's life versus some Konoha citizen's, I'd terminate the foreigner and sleep well that night. Every major village and most of the minor ones have a ninja who is my counterpart"—the red-painted cheeks crinkled in a smile—"although, of course, not my equal. Anyway, all of those ninja feel the same way I do. They care about their villages and their people, and they don't give a rat's ass about Konoha."
Despite his best efforts, Hazou's breath stopped in his chest. The words were the doom to his hopes, yet there seemed to be a 'but' hanging at the end.
"On the other hand, if the entire world was safe and rich then Konoha would be safer and richer too, right? And so would the villages of all those not-as-good-as-the-real-thing Jiraiya counterparts out there. And here you are, another starry-eyed kid telling me that you want to make the world shiny and happy for everyone and that doing it will mean everyone is safer and richer. It's a great thought, sure. Ask yourself two questions, though: first, do you really think that you're so much smarter than everyone else that no one has ever had this thought before? And, second, assuming that someone has had the idea already, why does the world look like it does?"
This was not the response that Hazou had expected, and he found himself fumbling for an answer. "Because...some people want power, and they think the best way to get it is by pushing other people down? And most people aren't willing to stand up to them?"
"Sure," Jiraiya said. "There's an element of truth to that. The balance of power in the Elemental Nations is largely determined by where a few dozen people live. The various Kage, the jinchuuriki, the S-rank ninja...nations that have more of those people are more powerful and can get more of what they want, leaving less for everyone else. That cuts both ways, though—I'm one of the ten most powerful ninja in the world, and I'm here in Konoha. Sarutobi-sensei is here. The jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tails is here. Gai, Kakashi, Tsunade, the entire Hyuuga clan, the Uchiha, the Aburame, the Nara—they're all here." He caught himself and shrugged. "Well, okay, Tsunade isn't in Konoha proper, but she's still in Fire. Point being, Konoha is a powerhouse that no one wants to mess with. Furthermore, Fire is a resource-rich area; we've got plenty of iron, coal, wood, water, arable land, precious metals, and everything else you need to be mostly self-sufficient. Let's stipulate for the sake of argument that not everyone in Konoha is stupid or a mustache-twirling kabuki villain. Given all that, why isn't Fire already this paradise that you're wanting to build?"
The voice was calm, the tones those of a teacher leading a pupil. Hazou could feel his heart speeding up as he cast around for the answer that Jiraiya clearly wanted him to get to. When the Sannin laid it all out like that, it really didn't add up. Fire should have been able to build the world that Hazou envisioned, so why hadn't they?
"I...don't know, sir?"
"Any of the rest of you kids want to take a crack at it?" Jiraiya asked. "Why isn't the whole world—or, at least, the Land of Fire—this super-happy paradise that our young friend here wants?"
Silence.
"Hm," Jiraiya said, pursing his lips in disappointment. "Well, think about it. In the meantime, I think you were due a reward for bringing Arikada in. I figured that's why you were here in the first place, so what is it you're looking for?"
"We haven't really had a chance to discuss it yet," Inoue-sensei said. "Mind if we get back to you tomorrow?"
The Toad Sage shrugged. "Sure," he said. "I'm in no rush. Anyway, if that's it...?"
"Actually, sir, I wanted to ask you about that, uh, thing that we gave you back in the Hokage's office?" Hazou asked. "You know, the 'invention of the year' thing."
"What about it?"
"We put a lot of time and effort into that, sir," Hazou said. "You took the idea...is that going to happen every time we come up with something new? What are you going to give us to incentivize further creativity?"
Inoue-sensei's eyes went wide as saucers and Kagome started frantically scrabbling in his pockets for a pair of ringboxes that weren't there. Noburi and Keiko turned in their seats to stare at Hazou in horror.
"Excuse him," Inoue said, grabbing Hazou in a headlock, one hand over his mouth. She pushed herself to her feet, effortlessly dragging Hazou along with her. "He's been having a bad case of no-brain lately. We'll just be go—"
Everyone froze as Jiraiya started laughing. "Relax," he said, waving them back into their seats. "Kid, you seriously need to work on your manners. Say something like that to any clan head in this village and see how well it goes for you. To answer the question: Ideas are worthless. Execution is what matters. We don't pay people for ideas, but we do buy professional-quality designs with working prototypes, so if you get us something usable it could be worth a pretty penny. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's late and I still have a lot to do before I can hit the hay. The very nice ANBU lady outside will take you to your quarters and won't kill you as long as you're polite. Ocelot?"
The door slid open to reveal a tall, slender woman in ninja camo and a mask painted to suggest a stylized cat. She turned to leave the doorway clear, one arm extended in pointed invitation.
o-o-o-o
Their quarters were surprisingly comfortable—a suite with a spacious sitting room, a modest bathing room, a galley kitchen, and two bedrooms. The beds were even comfortable, and there were plenty of blankets.
Perhaps more importantly, the bathing room contained four large tubs of steaming hot water. Inoue-sensei almost squealed in delight when she saw them. "Firsties!" she called, rushing in and pulling the curtain around the women's-side tubs. Clothes flew everywhere and moments later there was the muffled sussurance of a tired body sinking into hot water.
Hazou chuckled in amusement, but forbore to use the tubs on the men's side. By now he'd been up for a ridiculous number of hours, fought a pitched battle against a bioseal expert, seen his student nearly die, run halfway across Fire, had interviews with the Hokage and Jiraiya, and only just now come to accept that he and his friends probably weren't going to die before morning. Falling asleep in the tub and drowning would be a ridiculous end to the night; better to just go to sleep. It wouldn't be the first time he'd gone to sleep dirty, and it probably wouldn't be the last.
o-o-o-o
The beds were soft and morning came all too quickly. Knocking on the door presaged a genin leading four pairs of civilians. The genin stood by the door looking bored while the civilians came in, each pair maneuvering a cart loaded with a tub of hot water. The servants bowed profusely, apologized repeatedly for disturbing the great ninja, and quickly swapped out the new tubs of hot, clean water with the tubs from the previous day before disappearing back from whence they'd come.
The implication was pretty clear: it was time to get moving.
Konoha was polite enough to leave them alone until they had all had a chance for military-speed baths, gotten dressed, and scarfed down a bit of the bread and cheese that had been laid out for them. In a subtle reminder of where they were, the knock on the door came at the very instant that Noburi had finished stuffing the last of the cheese into his mouth. Moments later another silent ANBU—this one a huge man with a bull-styled mask—was escorting them back to Jiraiya's office.
The Toad Sage was busy with paperwork and didn't look up as they came in. He grunted thanks to the ANBU and waved the team into chairs, then ignored them as he kept shuffling through reports. The team sat silently until the door opened again and in filed the ninja who would presumably be the team's minders.
Hazou eyed the new arrivals carefully. Standard genin squad: two boys and a girl, their jounin instructor behind them. The jounin was tall, solidly built, with a thatch of carefully-styled black hair and a neatly trimmed beard on his jawline. A thin cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth and a pair of fighting knives were strapped to the insides of his forearms. The most notable thing about him was how such a tall and powerful man could seem so...invisible. There was an inner calm to him that gave nothing for the eye to catch on.
The genin were far more noticeable. The girl was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and starting to develop in ways that made Hazou a little uncomfortable in his skin. The boy on the left was fatter than any genin Hazou had ever seen, with two horn-like tufts of hair and an amiable smile. The boy on the right was thin but athletic and must have spent a great deal of effort practicing in order to master an expression that loudly proclaimed him both Bored and Smug.
"Team Asuma reporting, sir," the jounin said, looking at Jiraiya. "These the ones we're escorting?"
"Yes," Jiraiya said. He leaned forward, hands folded on the desk. "Allow me to introduce you. Ladies and gentlemen, these will be your escorts while you're here in Konoha. Miss Yamanaka and Misters Nara and Akimichi will be your primary contacts. Their jounin-sensei is Sarutobi Asuma, son of the Third Hokage"—he pointedly ignored Asuma's irritated sigh—"who will also be available should you have any questions.
"Asuma, the leader of our little band of misfits is Inoue Mari. She is a taijutsu champion and a brilliant spy. She is also known as Mari the Heartbreaker; she gets that name not from her heartbreaking beauty or highly-developed and quite exhausting seduction skills, but from the fact that she is one of the best genjutsu mistresses I have ever met. She has apparently literally killed people with her genjutsu."
Asuma raised one eyebrow and flicked his cigarette to the other side of his mouth. "Hm."
"Sir, I didn't think that was possible," the Yamanaka girl said, studying Inoue-sensei carefully while taking care not to make eye contact.
"It's not," Inoue-sensei said, smiling. "Not just with genjutsu itself, anyway. Still, if someone has a weak heart and you frighten them enough...."
"Troublesome," Nara muttered, only to be shushed by the Yamanaka girl.
"Beside her is Mister Kagome of the unknown given name," Jiraiya said, sounding amused. "He is an expert sealmaster—"
"No I'm not!" Kagome said. "I don't know anything about seals! What's a seal, anyway? Never heard of them!"
"—an expert sealmaster," Jiraiya continued, "with a penchant for explosions. He should definitely not be underestimated, but he should also be treated with the respect due his skill. Miss Yamanaka, as a professional courtesy from one sealmaster to another I am ordering you to stay out of Kagome's head unless he gives you strong reason for suspicion. Should you need to go in, you will do nothing that could endanger his mind."
"Yes, sir."
"You better not, you stinker!" Kagome said, his eyes wide. "You stay out of my mind! And my friends' minds! I'm not going to let you—"
Inoue-sensei put a hand on his arm and he cut off. "It's okay," she said, smiling at him. "I promise, it'll be fine. We're valuable to them, they're not going to do anything unless we give them cause."
"Why not? Stinkers could just rip our brains apart and put them back together sideways," Kagome said, honestly puzzled and clearly not thinking about the fact that the stinkers in question were right there. "Why they haven't put lupchanzen in our ears already I'm not sure, but the minute that Yamanaka has us alone, she'll—"
"She will do nothing as long as you don't blow your cover or try to harm Konoha," Jiraiya said loudly. "Moving on! Next in line we have Wakahisa Noburi."
"No barrel," Nara grunted.
Jiraiya nodded a compliment to the boy. "Indeed. Which is actually a thing I had meant to bring up. Wakahisa, you'll need a barrel in order to be fully functional. The one that was brought in was damaged—do you want it back so you can repair it, or do you need to build a new one?"
"Uh," Noburi said, flummoxed. "I could repair it."
"Fine," Jiraiya said. "Asuma, that's your first stop after you leave here. Go pick up his barrel from Secure Storage, and also get him whatever supplies he needs to repair it. You can draw against the Materials and Equipment account for that."
"Yes, sir."
"Mister Wakahisa uses a mid-range Water Whip as his primary combat tactic. As with other members of his clan he can suck the chakra right out of you as long as you're standing in the same water he's standing in, so I suggest not sharing a hot tub with him unless he likes you. Also, note that his head is full of clan secrets and scanning him would be an act of espionage unless he was clearly acting against the interests of Konoha. I leave it up to you to define what might constitute Konoha's interests in this case.
"Beside Mister Wakahisa is his teammate, Mori Keiko. At the tender age of thirteen she is already a special jounin focused in long-range weapons use. Oh, and she's the Pangolin Summoner."
Asuma's cigarette fell out of his mouth; he caught it before it had dropped more than a few inches and stuck it back between his lips.
"Very troublesome," Shikamaru muttered.
"Please note that the Pangolins and the Toads are allies," Jiraiya said seriously. "She is here under my protection; any unprovoked attack on her will cause me political difficulty, so be polite."
Yamanaka preemptively elbowed Nara before he could say anything.
"Finally, Miss Mori's bloodline may represent a cognitive hazard," Jiraiya said. "If she gives you cause for a mind scan, call for help. The entire group will be taken to a secure cell and a Yamanaka elder will perform the probe. Clear?"
"Clear, sir," Yamanaka said, her eyes wide.
"Troublesome," Nara muttered. His teammate was too busy staring at what she clearly thought might be an eldritch horror to bother hushing him.
"And, last but not least, Kurosawa Hazou," Jiraiya said. "Like his young friends he's got a head full of clan secrets, so be discreet. When it comes to a fight young master Kurosawa is an expert at taijutsu, as well as having been taught the Earth Clone and the Multiple Earth Wall by a handsome and incredibly talented ninja master. Oh, and he's also a burgeoning sealmaster in his own right."
"No he's not!" Kagome yelped. "He doesn't know a thing about sealing! I wouldn't have taught him sealing, that would be crazy! He's dumb as a box of rocks, so teaching him anything about making seals would be crazy, and he definitely hasn't made any or done any research or anything! He's so stupid that he can hardly write his own name, let alone create brand new seals, so there's absolutely no reason you should chain him to a desk in your seal factory!"
Hazou facepalmed.
"Kagome, I assure you that none of you will be chained to a desk," Jiraiya said, using the tone that one uses to tell a child that it was just a nightmare and they should go back to bed. "I promise. No lupchanzen, no seal factories, no mind alteration. You're more valuable to us as willing allies than as prisoners. So long as you and your friends are honest with us and don't work against our interests we will treat you with respect. Even if you do decide to go against us, I promise that the worst we'll do is kill you."
Oddly, Kagome seemed to find that comforting. No one else did.
Team Asuma and Team Uplift sat, looking at each other in silence. Seconds ticked past until Jiraiya waved his hands at them like a farm wife shooing chickens.
"Well?" he demanded. "What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation? Go on, git! I've got work to do!"
"Troublesome," Nara muttered, turning for the door. Hazou couldn't help but agree, although he kept the thought to himself as he followed his...guide? escort? captor?...into the hall.
XP AWARD: 2
As expected, I didn't make it far through this plan. @Velorien will carry the torch from here.
QM Note: This update was originally canon. 2 hours and 45 minutes before voting closed, a group of regulars decided it would be funny to vote for "Action Plan: buy a YOUTHSUIT" as a replacement for the then-leading plan. Thanks to a combination of low voter turnout for the original plan and the narrow time window for other players to realise what was about to happen, the new plan won. @eaglejarl and I decided that, as the plan could only be the result of a brief burst of insanity (the RADIOACTIVE GREEN, BOLD BLOCK CAPITALS were a clue), so Hazō could only act on it as the result of a brief burst of insanity. Thus, the update you are about to read. All hell broke loose in the thread after it was posted, but amidst the ragequitters and people who simply focused on expressing their anger and hurt, there were also a few who made calm, constructive and well-reasoned arguments for why the update should be retconned. It is they who finally managed to convince us that the case for doing so was (very slightly) stronger than the case for keeping it. This update is now an omake, but it was a very, very close run thing. We hope that this cautionary tale will inspire you, in this quest or any other, to vote early, often and sensibly so that this kind of clusterfuck misunderstanding can never happen again.
-o-
"Youthsuit" Incident Report
Nara Shikamaru
At 10:30 am, after the conclusion of the initial introductions, at my request escortee Kurosawa provided us with the group's plan of action for the day (which, at this stage, was both detailed and well-reasoned in my judgement). Sarutobi Asuma cleared the plan and we departed.
The first part of the plan involved a visit to the Leaf Central Shopping District, where the escortees intended to procure basic items such as paper, high-quality wood (for escortee Wakahisa's personal use) and an array of fresh foodstuffs selected by random die roll from shops likewise selected by random die roll, and in no case brought into Leaf later than this morning (for escortee Kagome's personal use). No restricted items, or items considered to have direct or indirect combat applications, were sought or purchased.
(Note: I am hereby renewing my appeal to expand the official list of items considered to have indirect combat applications. I also request to be exempted from filling out forms 133, 207 and 443 for this purpose.)
However, at 11:30 am, while passing by a shop selling ninja training equipment, Kurosawa suddenly demanded to purchase a "youthsuit", which on further questioning was indicated to be a green spandex training suit as worn by Maito Gai and Rock Lee. This was not part of the original (cleared) shopping plan; additionally, such training suits are Class 4 items, with instances of purchase to be recorded and communicated to the Hokage's Office.
When I requested a reason for this unexpected desire, Kurosawa made incoherent statements about "having to carry the torch of Youth until she is ready to pick it up again" and "bonding with the people of Leaf through sparring with the Righteous Face Punching Style". He then went on to state his intent to purchase identical suits for the rest of his group.
Kurosawa's behaviour up until that point, including the fact that he had taken the initiative in providing the plan for the day's activities, and the respectable structure and content of that plan, suggested a calm, rational thinker whose decision-making abilities were trusted by his group. There were therefore two possible conclusions to be drawn.
1) Kurosawa was attempting to apply misdirection, signal a third party or achieve some other effect that violated the terms under which he was being escorted, with such high priority that he was prepared to be unsubtle in his acting. I considered this the more likely explanation.
2) Kurosawa was suffering from a sudden psychotic break. While less likely, this was nevertheless plausible given that being a non-Leaf ninja forced to disguise his identity at the heart of Leaf, while possessing limited freedom and being escorted by a powerful team with authorisation to read his mind or eliminate him if necessary, would have to be highly stressful. This would also be true for whatever lifestyle (which I am not cleared to know about) originally placed him in this position, especially factoring in his age.
Either of these would be a sufficient condition to authorise use of the Psycho Mind Transmission Technique to establish the subject's intentions, plans and psychological state.
However, before I could confer said authorisation as interim squad leader, we were subjected to a number of reactions from the rest of the escortees (these followed the "rest of my team" statement, though they may have been in progress from the beginning of the incident).
Escortee Kagome, who was already highly agitated, attempted to assault our team, shouting various invectives regarding "mind control worms", "loupchansen" (sp?) and "backstabbing Yamanaka stinkers". He also made a statement to the effect that if he were in possession of his seals, the entire village of Leaf would be a smoking crater right now "for daring to mess with my apprentice". Fortunately, escortee Inoue intervened and was able to restrain him from violent action, though not from his stream of loud verbal abuse.
At the same time, escortee Mori raised her hand to her forehead in a gesture of extreme weariness while politely inquiring of Yamanaka whether Leaf had yet developed a cure for the Spirit of Youth. Yamanaka, noting Mori's apparent lack of surprise at her teammates' irrational behaviour, grew suspicious, and began to speculate on the reliability of the "cognitive hazard" label, whereupon I was forced to urgently take her aside and explain that [redacted on the authority of Nara Shikaku in accordance with the Founding Accords of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, Section 3: "On the Protection of Clan Secrets"].
Kurosawa continued attempting to persuade us all to settle the disagreement through "Youthful clear communication", and insisting that all he wanted was for his entire team to "join the Brotherhood of Green Spandex, just until she's feeling better". Mori, after several attempts to force him to "save his childish delusions for a context in which they will not result in our inevitable doom", evidently abandoned the possibility of imposing order on her team, and found a nearby bench to sit on while she quietly retreated into herself. Although helpful in theory, in practice this meant that we had to further split our attention in order to make sure she did not leave stealthily while we were otherwise occupied.
While Yamanaka and I were attempting to manage the situation, Akimichi focused on dissolving the gathering crowd (the incident, unfortunately, having taken place at the heart of the shopping district). Regrettably, Akimichi has the least proficiency in deception in our team, and struggled to create a plausible cover story. Though he was struck by inspiration and initially managed to dismiss Kurosawa's proclamations about the Power of Youth as merely a disguised Rock Lee practising his usual behaviour, this fell apart when Kagome began threatening mass slaughter and strategic-scale destruction at the top of his lungs.
Inoue finally used taijutsu to render Kagome unconscious (and thus immune to the Psycho Mind Transmission Technique, for which he had now more than fulfilled the conditions). She approached us and attempted to engage us in conversation, likely attempting to reframe the situation in a way favourable to her team (or further the misdirection). Having judged that we were in a potential crisis situation, my team immediately followed standard Leaf protocol for use against a "master spy" with "highly-developed seduction skills"—knowing that her capability for deception would likely exceed our ability to recognise same, we proceeded to reject all of her attempts at social interaction to the best of our ability. Either unaware of the protocol or believing she could find a way to bypass it, Inoue attempted a variety of conversational gambits, ranging from calm reasoning to attempting to undermine our composure through sex appeal. I took advantage of my natural emotional stability to ignore all of them while limiting her access to the more vulnerable Yamanaka and Akimichi.
As Inoue retreated, presumably to plan a new approach, escortee Wakahisa approached us instead, his manner open and non-threatening. He told us that Kurosawa was merely suffering from extreme anxiety over the condition of his critically-injured teammate. As her master in the ways of Youthfulness, Kurosawa was overcompensating for her absence, and his guilt for allowing her to come to harm, by taking on her role within the group in addition to his own.
Initially, this explanation seemed surprisingly plausible. However, Yamanaka observed how improbable it was for a foreign ninja to be a "master in the ways of Youthfulness" to the extent of surpassing a Leaf ninja who had suffered from direct exposure to Rock Lee. It also occurred to me that said ninja, Ishihara Akane, was currently in no condition to be questioned, making Wakahisa's story impossible to corroborate.
Finally, the behaviour of the escortees as a group did little to dispel my suspicions, supporting as it did both the misdirection theory and the psychotic break theory. On the one hand, their erratic behaviour could plausibly have been intended to increase the confusion of the situation, thereby setting up for some form of deceit. While the objection could be raised that Kagome appears to be pathologically incapable of successful deception, it is also true that Kurosawa's actions could have been calculated to exploit Kagome's predictable reactions (especially in light of Kurosawa's planning ability).
Conversely, the probability of Kurosawa suffering from a psychotic break increased greatly if his teammates consistently behaved like this, particularly given Wakahisa's testimony and the high degree of respect shown by Kurosawa to Kagome (including addressing him as "sensei"), who as such had to be a major influence on his personality.
I therefore authorised the immediate use of the Psycho Mind Transmission Technique by Yamanaka Ino on Kurosawa Hazō, and informed the rest of the escortees that attempting to interfere with same would be considered an unambiguously hostile act.
Please see Yamanaka's report (attached) for further details, followed by a summary of the current situation and my conclusions and recommendations.
-o-
Psycho Mind Transmission Technique Report (Kurosawa Hazō)
Yamanaka Ino
There were no problems with the initial dive. Kurosawa did not resist, which was a good decision since he had no mental defence training and I would have crushed his fragile little mind like an egg demonstrated the unquestionable superiority of the Yamanaka arts. However, please note that the Psycho Mind Transmission Technique was used only for a limited period of time—we were forced to commandeer a nearby shop for privacy, and could not stay long. Additionally, I am not an advanced practitioner, so the amount of information I was able to gather was limited and there may be minor inaccuracies.
Based on what I saw, I do not believe he was suffering from a psychotic break or any other kind of spontaneous mental failure. The "youthsuit" decision was sudden and arguably out of character, but it was also linked to longer-term thoughts about "the Power of Youth" and his admiration for Ishihara Akane, with whom he associates the concept. Given the strength of his affection for Ishihara, and therefore the intensity of his present concern for her, I believe it was plausible for him to act strangely as a result of her life being placed at risk.
However, I should note that I found what the Yamanaka term an "aberrant personality manifold". While a normal person has a few different voices for their inner monologue, representing major aspects of their identity, aberrant personality manifolds contain dozens or hundreds of voices, some with convergent personalities and some which are more extreme. Little is known about this phenomenon, as known subjects can be counted on the fingers of one hand. For further information on aberrant personality manifolds, please contact one of the Yamanaka Clan elders.
My scan also did not reveal any hostile intent towards Leaf or its people (although he does have both positive and negative feelings towards Jiraiya of the Three). Kurosawa appears to have some kind of delusional beliefs about building a better world in which civilians are "uplifted" to be equal to ninja, and he wishes to ally with Leaf in general and Jiraiya in particular for this purpose.
In terms of his general focus, apart from the "uplift" beliefs (which are extremely developed, suggesting strong escapist tendencies), he is preoccupied with his team, and managing its relationships. Despite being aware of his limited social skills, he believes that through correct planning he should be able to create the healthy team dynamic he wants, both socially and practically.
He views Inoue as a mentor figure, and on various levels both an older sister and a surrogate mother (he does also dwell on the well-being of his actual mother a lot). He is worried about Inoue's cynicism and self-sacrificing tendencies, but hopes to help her through emotional support.
He is strongly concerned about Mori, whom he believes to have depressive and potentially suicidal tendencies. The situation has been becoming even worse since she confessed her love for her own master, Inoue. She tried to run away to the Summon Realm before she could be rejected, but was forced to come back and face her beloved before she was ready. Kurosawa does not know what happened, but based on what he has seen, Mori's dreams did not come true, and now she is suffering from silent heartbreak. Kurosawa is worried about this, and that her natural quietness and loner tendencies may mask a smoking explosive seal, but he has been told in no uncertain terms to keep his nose out of Inoue and Mori's relationship, and is uncertain what to do.
He has a strange relationship with Kagome, whom he is loyal to while acknowledging the fact that his master is a few petals short of a belladonna has severe psychological issues. He has great respect for Kagome's skills as a sealmaster, and does his best to humour his paranoia while supporting Inoue's efforts to help him learn to trust people again. He is concerned that Kagome will eventually snap and blow up himself/the team/everything in a one-mile radius, and believes there is a high probability that said everything will include Leaf if Kagome is allowed access to seals, since being here is making his paranoia skyrocket.
His friendship/rivalry with Wakahisa is as normal as this group gets. They compete with each other the way boys tend to, but in the end have a great deal of mutual respect. He knows that Wakahisa has a completely unreciprocated crush on Mori, but wouldn't know where to begin in helping Wakahisa deal with this (or with the deep pain Mori thoughtlessly inflicted on him while dismissing his importance to her during her confession).
Kurosawa's relationship with Ishihara is a love story for the ages, though Shikamaru claims I am biased, and so I should note that his feelings are ambiguous enough that they could merely be the greatest BFFs ever. Kurosawa mentally refers to her as "the world's best apprentice", and has somehow found himself in the position of being her "master" in "the ways of Youth". I did not seek to investigate this angle too deeply, as I have been warned I have not yet developed the mental shielding necessary to deal with Rock Lee and his kind. Kurosawa admires Ishihara's positive spirit and clear-headedness enormously. Ishihara has an ongoing personality clash with Mori, but Kurosawa has observed fewer signs of it lately. Right now, Kurosawa is terrified that Ishihara is going to die, or be horribly crippled, and I am very impressed at how well he is functioning given that the thought seems to be consuming his every waking moment.
At present, Kurosawa is attempting to decide which of Wakahisa and Mori should be the diplomatic "face" of the team, even though it is a clear-cut decision since Wakahisa is already doing it and has the necessary charisma and good looks, while Mori wouldn't know social skills if she had their summoning scroll has a poor track record with anything other than intimidation.
In regard to present circumstances, I wish to emphasise strongly that Kurosawa was not originally intending this clusterfuck misunderstanding to take place, and in fact was hoping to establish positive relations with our team and with Leaf in general.
The tactical portion of my report is more concerning.
Kurosawa Hazō has the Iron Nerve Bloodline Limit, which allows him to perfectly mimic every motion he has previously made, including drawing seals. He can also copy unknown seals if he studies them long enough. In addition, he believes that there is a possibility of his children developing the Sharingan.
He is an apprentice sealmaster who has already invented his own seals, the Misterator and the Poor Man's Yellow Flash. The first one is some kind of deliberately broken storage seal designed to work with Wakahisa's Bloodline Limit, and the second one relates to rapid movement (which I suppose makes sense given the name). He is also skilled at taijutsu, and has his own style based around feints.
Kurosawa has an incredible library of seal ideas in his head. As someone with no sealing training, I am unable to interpret it properly, though their sheer number and variety suggest that he is throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks generating as many as possible in order to filter out the valuable ones later. While I am unable to judge their practicality, they include many varieties of storage seals, explosion seals, detecting seals, mind-affecting seals and seals that affect other seals (see Appendix A for the limited selection I was able to memorise; for seals that he knows Kagome knows, see Appendix B). Kurosawa also has an insane plan to make a flying fortress using sealcrafting, which he calls "Hidden Heaven".
This concludes my report. I do not believe that further use of the Psycho Mind Transmission Technique on Kurosawa Hazō would be useful unless performed by someone with sealcrafting expertise (on the assumption that his seal ideas are of value). Given his positive intentions and general talent, I strongly recommend continuing to do whatever it is we are presently doing with him despite this incident.
-o-
Subsequent to Yamanaka's use of the Psycho Mind Transmission Technique, no further conflict took place. We urgently moved the escortees out of the area, leaving Sarutobi (who had arrived by this point) to take charge of clean-up. We then proceeded to hand them over to ANBU until such time as a senior official could decide how to process them.
My recommendation, given Yamanaka's report above, is to assign Kurosawa to a black facility for sealcrafting research (though naturally Leaf has no such sites, at least according to my security clearance) and retain the rest of the team in their current position (which I am also not cleared to know). Leaf's control of both Kurosawa and Ishihara should secure their loyalty based on their strong group bonds.
-o-
You have earned 0 XP.
-o-
It is the evening of April 2. You are in your lodgings in a Leaf building, and it has been made clear that you are not going anywhere for the time being. Jiraiya will be questioning you tomorrow. You may converse freely, but you are almost certainly being monitored.
The rest of the team is not happy with Hazō.
What do you do?
-o-
Voting closes at 9 am on Saturday 26th of November, Pacific Standard Time.
Chapter 85: On Not Making Bad Choices
by @Velorien
Hazō jerked awake with a scream of primal terror.
A fraction of a second later, Kagome leapt out of bed, kunai in hand. "I knew it! Those stinking stinkers couldn't even wait one night! You won't take me alive, you backstabbing—"
"Kagome," Noburi groaned, reluctantly stirring from his slumber. "It's not a Leaf assassination squad this time either. Hazō just had a nightmare… right?"
Hazō nodded shakily. "A report… there was a report…"
Noburi slumped back down in resignation. "A report. It would be, with you. Were there lists too?"
Hazō gazed at him with the hollow eyes of a man who had seen hell itself. "There were appendices."
-o-
"Inoue-sensei," Hazō staggered into the kitchen the next morning, "I think I need urgent training."
Inoue-sensei looked up from her breakfast bowl of fresh fruit (for all Leaf's faults, lack of hospitality was not one of them).
"You're finally in need of my expertise as a seduction expert? That's great, but I think it should wait until we don't have Leaf watching our every move, don't you?"
Hazō didn't dignify this with a response. "I'm serious, Inoue-sensei. What happens if I can't keep it together in a crisis? You need to teach me how to act like a normal, sane person even if something's wrong with me on the inside, and you need to do it now."
Inoue-sensei's smirk vanished. "It's like that, is it?"
"I think it might be," Hazō whispered.
"Well," Inoue-sensei said slowly, "I'm glad we decided to postpone our shopping trip."
-o-
"I'm sorry about last night, Noburi," Hazō said awkwardly.
Noburi rolled his eyes. "Seriously, though, Hazō? You're having nightmares about reports?"
Hazō's eyebrow twitched. "It really isn't funny. Did you ever finish a term at the Academy, and realise that they were about to send your family a report card that made you sound lazy and incompetent, and that it had already been written and was on its way and there was nothing you could do about it?"
"I, uh… so what's up with all the pink wallpaper in here? I mean, do these guys have weird taste or what?" Noburi began to study the ceiling, his hands clasped behind his back.
Hazō blinked. "Never mind. Noburi, there's something I wanted to talk to you about."
"What's that?"
"I know that you're going to ask for permission to visit the Leaf General Hospital and study medicine with them during our stay here. And it seems like you're developing a great specialisation there that none of the rest of us can match, and you're getting good with Water ninjutsu as well."
Noburi gave a small, casual nod, as if acknowledging the praise that was his due, but after a few seconds' struggle to keep a straight face, he finally gave in and grinned. "You know it. Wakahisa Noburi, badass jōnin extraordinaire, coming right up. Heal 'em with one hand, kill 'em with the other."
"Right," Hazō said. "So given that's the way you're choosing to specialise, I was thinking you might not have as much time for learning diplomacy from Inoue-sensei anymore. And Keiko's reaching a plateau in her combat training, and her summoning ability is something she develops in bursts… so what do you think about having her take over as our social representative on a day-to-day basis?"
Noburi's expression turned cold. "Brilliant!" he said bitingly. "Kurosawa Hazō, master planner and coordinator, strikes again! You're right, why should the people in her team be the only ones she hurts whenever she opens her mouth? It'll be exciting to see who else she can push away. With her as our diplomat, she'll get all the combat experience she needs, and I'll always have someone to practise med-nin techniques on. Capital, Hazō! Idea of the year!"
Hazō stood still, frozen in shock.
"OK, maybe that was going a bit too far," Noburi said eventually. "But Hazō, this is a damn stupid plan. Keiko doesn't get people, and she never will, and at best, maybe Inoue-sensei can teach her to pretend she does. And that's assuming Keiko's OK being taught by Inoue-sensei after what happened between them. Did you see Keiko's face when she realised they were going to be alone together in the women's bedroom last night? I almost thought she was going to run away again."
"You really think things are that bad?" Hazō asked.
"You've got to learn to pay more attention to people, Hazō," Noburi said with an exasperated sigh. "I mean, you're not as bad as she is—thank the Sage and all his disciples for that—but I swear sometimes it seems like you flat-out forget someone exists until they're part of your latest master plan.
"Why don't you go talk to her yourself? I bet you a square of Kagome's smuggled chocolate that she's going to say the same thing."
-o-
"Keiko, can I talk to you about something?"
"Please go ahead."
"Noburi is becoming increasingly busy with his training in medical and combat ninjutsu, and I was thinking… if that's the direction he is interested in pursuing, would you be interested in taking over as the public face of the group?"
Keiko studied him for a long moment. Then, almost gently, she said, "Hazō, I believe the stress of the last few days is having a significant influence on you. I suggest you sleep some more until you are feeling fully refreshed, or if you are unable to sleep, spend time on breathing exercises and meditation until you are feeling better."
Hazō did his best not to scowl. "I was being serious, Keiko."
"So was I," she said more coolly. "Your suggestion is irrational to the point where I would not expect you to make it in a healthy frame of mind. Hazō, I find social interaction stressful and draining. You know this. You also know that my inability to satisfactorily model other people's inner states, and how my actions may change those states, is one of my greatest and most intractable weaknesses. Finally, you know that Noburi finds his social activity enjoyable and fulfilling, and would suffer if forced to surrender it on a long-term basis. It would be out of character for you to make a joke like this, or to attempt it as an exercise in cruelty, so I can only assume that your mental functions have been critically disrupted, and you are in urgent need of care which I cannot provide. If you do not feel the course of action I suggested earlier is sufficient, I advise you to seek help from Inoue-sensei, who can be trusted to handle the psychologically fragile with skill and sensitivity."
Hazō decided not to mention that he'd in effect already done this.
"Changing the subject," he said quickly, "I've been thinking about what we should ask Jiraiya for as our rewards. I know we haven't discussed it as a group yet, but I was wondering what you'd think about training to imbue your weapons with Wind chakra?"
"I was unaware of that option," Keiko said. "Is it available, and what are the implications?"
"You know how our minders are the famous Ino-Shika-Chō? Well, Inoue-sensei told us the legends—in every generation, a tactical genius who wields shadows, a master psychic, and a taijutsu expert with unparalleled body control. But we know nothing about the Sarutobi Clan's specialities, since the Hokage is said to be a well-rounded master of every kind of skill. So yesterday, after the meeting, Noburi tried to find out Sarutobi Asuma's particular specialisation through small talk. He says Sarutobi talked about his ability to enhance weapons—in his case, chakra blades—with his Wind chakra for additional speed and damage."
"A jōnin gave away tactical information about his capabilities?" Keiko said suspiciously.
"He said it was common knowledge, and Noburi thinks it was intended as a reminder not to cross his team, given how he described what happened when those blades went through a human body. Anyway, since you have Wind affinity as well, I thought perhaps we could ask Jiraiya to ask Sarutobi to train you. And maybe we could get you some chakra blades as well."
Keiko shook her head. "Hazō, given your background, your ignorance is understandable, but chakra blades are not commonly available. The materials and craftsmanship are extremely rare, and chakra blades are considered clan treasures, to be passed down from master to apprentice, or perhaps bestowed as a reward for an act of great service to the clan. Most chakra blades not in the possession of a noble clan are ones which were at some point looted from the body of a previous wielder. Few new ones are ever made, and if Jiraiya is resourceful enough to have them crafted for me, such a gift would put me in his debt for years to come.
"With that said, I trust your grasp of strategy, and if you believe that an expansion of my ranged combat capabilities would benefit the team more than anything else Jiraiya could conceivably offer, I will give the matter serious consideration. Though I will admit that today's conversation has given me cause to question your judgement in times of stress somewhat."
A thought seemed to occur to her. "Is your current dysfunction caused by concern over Akane's welfare? I realise that there is nothing I can say that will change the present situation, and I doubt I could find the right words to aid you in coping with it… but if you merely require a willing listener to express your feelings to, please do not hesitate to make use of me."
Maybe Hazō would. What happened in that dream—the fact that something had made him have that dream—was a hint that he might not be as stable as he thought he was. He needed to make a list of every possible coping mechanism, and analyse them until he came up with the right strategy for dealing with this crisis. There was a very real chance he could lose Akane, and if that happened… would he be able to remain himself?
-o-
You have spent a bunch of XP.
-o-
The training plans that won during the Vote of Tragedy have now been implemented as follows:
Training Hazou: Advanced Flowcharts has been implemented in full.
Training Keiko: Inheritor of Talky has been rejected by NPC agency.
Training Noburi: Field Medic Extraordinaire cannot be implemented at present since it relies on you a) successfully negotiating access to Leaf General Hospital in-character and b) not subsequently doing something to get yourself barred again and/or kicked out of Leaf in the immediate future. If these conditions are successfully fulfilled, the plan will be implemented, subject to the "re-vote based on new information" option.
Jutsu Hazou: Whack-a-Mole Madness and Keiko Reward: Chakra blades and/or training to empower weapons with wind nature chakra are currently locked in as your requests to Jiraiya, subject to any changes that may occur between now and when you next speak to him.
-o-
The next update will be based on Action Plan: Whose Leaf Does Not Wither.
Things were tense after Hazou's conversations with Noburi and Keiko. Fortunately they were left alone until mid-afternoon, except for a short visit from the team of servants who brought in lunch. The meal was a quiet affair; the genin occupied themselves with their food as an excuse to not talk. Kagome's stress had gotten to the point where his only comprehensible speech was monosyllabic grunts in reply to direct questions, with a constant string of grumbling just below the threshold of hearing. He ate lunch with his left hand, the right being occupied with a kunai that he clutched like a child clutching a safety blanket.
Given the mood of the room it was an incredible relief when the knock on the door finally came.
"Good morning," Hazou said, bowing shallowly and gesturing the Leaf team in. "We're just finishing up. Would you like some tea? Or maybe some gyoza?"
Akimichi's eyes lit up. "Gyoza? I wouldn't mind."
"Help yourself," Inoue-sensei said, gesturing to the food. Whatever Konoha's intentions might be for the team, they definitely didn't include starvation; everyone had stuffed themselves and the table was still half-full. Akimichi fell on the leftovers with focused intent, chopsticks flashing as he scarfed them down. The team watched in amusement for a moment.
"Gotta tell you," Noburi said to Asuma, "it's really nice to be able to visit Leaf in a friendly way. We hear a lot about you guys."
"You better be friendly!" Kagome said, jumping to his feet with kunai in both hands. He was twitching slightly, his eyes flicking around like an animal in a trap, and his knuckles were white where he gripped his weapons. "I hear a lot about you too, and I won't let you do that to my team! If you try it, I'll—"
With the first words, Nara and Yamanaka had shifted into a combat stance and Akimichi had paused in his eating to look up at Kagome. Sarutobi didn't blink, simply continuing to smoke his cigarette peacefully.
"Sensei, it's all right," Hazou said, reaching slowly for Kagome's arm. Physical contact reassured the man...and also made it easier to physically restrain him if it became necessary.
"Jiraiya assigned us to protect you," Sarutobi said calmly, taking a long drag on his cigarette and keeping his hands carefully visible. "Yes, we're also to protect Leaf from you, but our primary job is to keep you and your identities safe."
"A likely story!" Kagome said, shaking Hazou's hand off without seeming to notice it and backing away.
Inoue-sensei rose, moving slowly and carefully, and stepped between Kagome and the Leaf team. "It's okay, Kagome," she said, her voice and gentle. "Look at me."
Reluctantly, Kagome dragged his eyes away from what he clearly thought of as the enemy and looked at the tiny redhead. Hazou noticed that he was careful not to meet her eyes.
"Kagome, I need you to breathe for me, okay?" Inoue-sensei said. "They aren't going to hurt us, and starting a fight would be a bad thing to do. We want to get along with them, and they want to get along with us. We're here under Jiraiya's protection, remember? He doesn't want to get in trouble with the Toads for fighting the Pangolin summoner or her team."
It took a few seconds, but eventually Kagome's muscles relaxed and the whites of his eyes were no longer visible. "Fine," he grumbled. "Stinkers."
"Please excuse him," Hazou said to Team Asuma. "He's really jumpy without his explosives." He studied them for a moment, then decided to take a chance. "It might actually be safer to let him have a few tags. I think it would calm him down."
Yamanaka snorted and Nara muttered "Troublesome." Akimichi went back to scarfing down gyoza.
Sarutobi shrugged. "I'll talk to Jiraiya about it, but I wouldn't hold your breath."
"So, what's on the agenda for today?" Inoue-sensei said brightly.
"We thought we'd start with a tour of the city," Sarutobi said.
"And some shopping!" Yamanaka said, her eyes shining with fever-brightness. "I'm sure you need things after being out in the woods for so long, and I know the best places."
"Troublesome," Nara muttered.
Sarutobi snorted. "You're just excited about the idea of shopping on an expense account," he teased.
"Expense account?" Keiko asked.
"Jiraiya authorized a budget from the Materials and Equipment fund," Sarutobi reminded them. "And ordered us to pick up Wakahisa's barrel and materials for repairing same as our first stop."
"Right!" Noburi said, jumping to his feet. "It'll be great to have it back."
Inoue-sensei checked in with the team by eye and saw that everyone was ready and Kagome wasn't about to start murderizing things.
"Just to check, our cover is that we're visiting dignitaries, right?" Hazou asked. "What are the rules? What are we allowed to do or not do?"
"Don't kill anyone," Sarutobi told us. "And maintain cover. Inoue, you're the leader of a minor village here to open trade arrangements with Konoha. These are some of your ninja, here as your bodyguards."
"Easy peasy," Yamanaka said with a laugh. "Just look noble and arrogant."
Inoue-sensei nodded and yawned. "Guess I should be a guy, huh? Pity." She stretched, rising up on her toes with both hands reaching overhead, then twisted from side to side a few times to get probably-nonexistent kinks out of her back. Sarutobi swallowed and Yamanaka shot her a fulminating glare full of envy.
"Troublesome."
There was a faint shimmer and Inoue-sensei was replaced by a tall, wiry man with salt-and-pepper hair and a hooked nose. "Let's get this show on the road," he said in a light tenor.
Moments later the rest of the team was ready, henges hiding both weapons and faces, and out the door into the crowded streets of Konoha.
The place was a marvel—the equal or possibly superior of Kirigakure, much less the small hamlets and towns that the team had spent most of their time in for the last year. People bustled back and forth, the streets were lined with shops, and smaller merchants sold food and goods off the back of carts. There were buskers on every other corner—musicians, jugglers, and storytellers. None of them seemed to be making a rich living, but they all had at least a few ryo in their hats.
"This place looks nice," Hazou said, gesturing to a clothing shop they were passing. Like most shops it was open on the street side, with a gate that could be pulled across at night. Shirts, pants, and shoes lined the walls and the marked prices were reasonable.
"As if," Yamanaka said with a derisive snort. "Those are just for peasants. No style at all, and they were designed for softfoots. They wouldn't stand up to ninja life."
Hazou frowned, looking at the clothes. They seemed perfectly nice to him. There were brightly-colored ones but the majority were in shades of grey or brown. It was the sort of stuff he'd grown up wearing, and hearing it dismissed so bluntly...well, it wasn't a good feeling.
"Come on, there's a better place down this way," Yamanaka said, diving into an alley with the ease of someone who'd grown up here and knew the place like the back of her hand.
"Reel it in, Ino," Sarutobi said. "We're going to Secure Storage first, remember?" The blonde grumbled, but followed along.
The Secure Storage facility could have been any warehouse in the Elemental Nations except for the subtle yet impressive security. A few passwords and forms later and Noburi's broken barrel was being loaded onto a dolly to be taken to their quarters. Noburi's eyes tracked it hungrily but he made no protest.
"Where to next?" Inoue-sensei asked. "Back to that store young Miss Yamanaka was so excited about?"
"Yes!" the girl said, her eyes gleaming with an unholy light. "You all need new clothes."
Sarutobi and Akimichi groaned and Nara muttered his catchphrase. Clearly there was some history here.
"Their clothes are fine," Sarutobi said. "I was thinking more along the lines of the theater district."
"No," Yamanaka said firmly. "They are supposed to be a visiting noble and his entourage, and those clothes aren't even remotely convincing. Well, except for hers—his." She gave a disgruntled wave towards Inoue-sensei. "And those are still so far out of style that you'd be laughed out of any serious meeting. I mean, really? Mandarin collar? That is so last year."
Inoue-sensei shrugged. "I've been mostly out in the woods for over a year," she reminded the girl. "When I have been around people it's mostly been in tiny little nothing towns. Little hard to keep up with the trends."
"Hmph. Fine," the blonde said, her nose lifting unconsciously. "Still, you need something better than that."
"And of course you have no intention of purchasing anything for yourself," Nara said.
"Wellll...I did see this really cute top yesterday. And there were some wedges that would look so good with that skirt I bought last week...."
"Wedges? What do you need wedges for?" Kagome asked, kunai suddenly in his hands. "You're going to use them on us, aren't you, you stinker!"
"They're shoes, Kagome," Inoue-sensei said quietly. "It's a style of shoe."
This did not help.
"Shoes?! Wedge shoes? I knew it! They're going to use them to crush our feet so we can't run! Quick, we need to—"
Kagome's panic cut off as Inoue-sensei snagged him in her Sunny Day genjutsu. The tension slid out of his body and he smiled.
"Thanks," he said.
She rested a hand on his shoulder for a minute, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "Sorry, my friend."
He shrugged. "Better than starting a fight," he said. He looked at Sarutobi and ducked his head in embarrassment. "Sorry about that."
Sarutobi chuckled. "Don't worry about it. We've got plenty of ninja here who have been on one too many missions. If you want it—and only if you want it—there are a number of priests that you could talk to. It's not magic, but they're good at listening and it can help. No pressure, though. We aren't going to force you into it."
Kagome's smile slipped and a trace of tension returned to his shoulders. "No."
Sarutobi raised his hands placatingly. "Okay," he said. "Like I said, no pressure."
"Come on!" Yamanaka said, setting off with the determination of a freshly-graduated genin on her first mission. "Shopping awaits!"
o-o-o-o
Yamanaka knew more about clothing styles than Hazou knew about taijutsu. It was almost terrifying watching the girl flip through the stacks of clothing on the shelves of the second store they'd been dragged into—they'd been in the first one for less than a minute before Yamanaka had pronounced it "hopeless" and swept out, pulling them all effortlessly along in her wake. Apparently the selection at this one was better; she was so excited that she was actually using shunshin to move around the store.
"Crazy, huh?" Hazou muttered to Keiko.
Keiko nodded. "Yes. What I find more impressive, though, is that this city is so rich that they actually have multiple styles and sizes of clothes lying around their shops. Not only that, but apparently they even have styles that change more than annually, thereby requiring the fashionable to update their wardrobes. And there is enough wealth to support that excess."
Hazou blinked. "That is a very good point," he said. "I'm impressed. I would not have thought of that."
Keiko shrugged with one shoulder. "Logistics," she muttered, as though that explained everything.
o-o-o-o
"Does she do this often?" Noburi asked Akimichi. It was nice to not be the fattest one in the room for a change, and the larger boy seemed friendly enough.
"Yup," Akimichi said, chewing placidly on a potato chip he'd pulled from a small leather pouch. "Don't get the wrong idea, though; she's actually a really good ninja even if she gets a little too excited about shopping."
"I didn't think otherwise," Noburi said. "Your team leader is the Third Hokage's son. They're not going to put dead weight with him." He paused. "Hey, the genin who brought our food said that the three of you are all clan heirs. Is that right?"
Akimichi ducked his head in embarrassment. "Yup. It's not really a big thing, though. We aren't better than anyone else just because we're clan, so what does it matter if my dad is the current head?"
"Hey, shopkeeper, get over here!" Yamanaka called. When the old man bustled over she thrust a red blouse at him. "Do you have this in green?"
He bowed immediately. "I'm terrible sorry, ma'am. Just what you see on the shelves."
She sniffed in irritation. "All right well, I guess red is okay. It'll go with that belt I got for my birthday."
"Try this," Inoue-sensei said, offering a crushed-linen skirt. It was asymmetric, cut ankle-length on the right and above the knee on the left, and it was a wash of green and blue that started off a rich jewel tone at the top and dimmed to pastels at the bottom. "It'll look great with that."
Yamanaka's eyebrows went up, but she grabbed the skirt with polite thanks and vanished into the changing room. Squeals of delight indicated a probable sale.
"You know your colors, sir," the shopkeeper said to Inoue-sensei.
The henged jounin shrugged modestly. "My wife is a clothes horse. After buying enough birthday presents you start to pick it up just in sheer self-defense."
The shopkeeper laughed. "Very wise, sir."
Sarutobi had been fidgeting more and more since they walked in, and clearly had reached his breaking point. "Ino!" he called. "Pack it up! We're out of here in two minutes and whatever you haven't bought by then stays here!"
A loud squawk from the changing room gave a few seconds notice before Yamanaka came tearing out, hands full of clothes. She tossed them on the counter and began frantically counting ryo out of her pouch.
"No haggling," Hazou noted to Keiko, fingering his own newly-purchased clothes. Before diving into her own shopping crusade, Yamanaka had used her shopping powers for good by picking out clothes for the team. She'd tried hard to urge Hazou into some clothes that she swore up and down were stylish, but they were too fancy for him. He'd let her guide him on styles and materials, but had insisted on simple construction, minimal decoration, and no embroidery. Based on Yamanaka's anguished complaints you would have thought he was stabbing her in the heart instead of merely refusing shopping advice. Still, the royal blue silk shirt and slate-grey pants were the nicest things he'd ever owned. The fact that they were new was a bizarre concept, and the fact that he hadn't needed to pay a ryo for them was just amazing.
"It's a high-end shop," Keiko murmured back. "I suspect it caters only to clan ninja and the wealthiest members of the bureaucracy. You see how inflated the prices are?"
In truth, Hazou had taken one look at the prices and started to walk back out the door. Even when he was told that the trip was covered under their expense account he'd been extremely uncomfortable and finally settled for just not looking at the tags.
It was more than two minutes before they walked out the door, but at least they weren't burdened when they did. Amidst much bowing and expressions of gratitude, the shopkeeper agreed to have their purchases delivered.
Hazou blinked as they emerged from the shade of the store into the full sun of the outside. He was just opening his mouth to ask about food when he was beaten to the punch.
"Shoes!" Yamanaka said. "Yours are all worn out, we need to get you something better. There's a great place just a mile from here, come on!"
"Are you sure you don't just want new boots to go with your new skirt?" Nara asked slyly.
"Well, I did see this really kicky pair—no! It's all about our visitors!"
"Troublesome," Nara said, shaking his head. "You are very troublesome, Ino."
She stuck her tongue out at him. "Are you coming or not?"
"A mile away, just for shoes? Too much like work." Despite his protests, Nara followed her as she turned right and headed out at a quickstep.
"Hey, can we stop for lunch?" Akimichi asked hopefully. "I'm starving."
"You can't be starving, you just ate this morning!" Yamanaka said.
"Yeah, but—"
Hazou shook his head and trailed along behind the bickering team. He really hoped Akimichi won this argument. And that there was something other than shopping that they could do for the rest of the day. If there wasn't, honorable suicide became a much more appealing option.
XP AWARD: 5
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, November 30, 2016, at 12pm London time.
It was almost time for lunch, and Teams Sarutobi and Inoue were taking their time on a slow walk to a ramen place where Akimichi apparently got hefty discounts as a frequent customer. Inoue-sensei and Sarutobi were hanging back and having their own conversation while the genin had theirs, and Kagome-sensei was silently staying near the fringes of the group and looking like he was ready to bolt at the tiniest provocation (Hazō was doing his best to stay close to him just in case, and he thought Inoue-sensei was too).
"So," Hazō asked casually, "what do very important visiting dignitaries like ourselves go to see in Leaf? Are there any culturally important sites? What is Leaf's war memorial like?"
"Honestly, it's a bit gloomy for my taste," Akimichi replied, pulling out some dried apple to chew on. "Just rows of memorials, like a graveyard. I wouldn't go there unless I had to."
"I like the statue," Nara said meditatively. "It's abstract but still meaningful."
"Oh, the statue?" Akimichi livened up. "Good idea. It's a great representation of the Will of Fire. Really puts the whole thing in a different context."
"What's the Will of Fire?" Hazō asked. "Akane kept talking about it, but she never really explained what it meant."
"What's the Will of Fire, huh?" Sarutobi took a drag of his cigarette, then let the smoke billow upward. "That's a big question. There's a whole philosophy wrapped up in those three little words.
"The First Hokage, the creator of the shinobi world as you know it, was the one who came up with it, and he summed it up like this:
"The meaning of life is love. Love is the will to protect. The will to protect is the Will of Fire, which warms your comrades and illuminates your path even as it burns your enemies."
"Actually," Nara said in a flat pedantic voice, "it originated with Murakumo no Hisashi, an early Fire Country daimyō. The Senju looted his writings during the sacking of Hakujō in the Warring Clans period."
"You mean a civilian came up with the Will of Fire?" Yamanaka demanded. "No way."
Nara shrugged. "If it makes you feel better, Murakumo didn't manage to accomplish anything with it. He ruled for less than a decade before he died of daimyō natural causes."
"What do you mean?" Noburi asked.
Inoue-sensei was the one to answer. "I know this one. Was he assassinated by a ninja?"
Nara nodded. "He is only remembered today because the Senju came across his work when they destroyed his castle."
"So gotta ask," Noburi said, "how do you live in the Land of Trees and More Trees, and decide that fire is your go-to symbol for protection?"
Yamanaka snorted. "I ask myself the same thing every day. Or I would if I cared, which is close enough."
Everyone looked at Nara.
He gave a put-upon sigh. "How troublesome. Well, Murakumo lived in a time of war, and he wanted to tell people that their protective impulses were right and proper in and of themselves, but that taking them too far led to everybody getting hurt, and risked destroying everything in the end, like a wildfire annihilating a forest."
Unseen behind the minders, Keiko's eyebrow twitched.
"Of course," Nara went on, "he was just some minor philosopher without any real influence, so when he died his writings were lost for centuries. Then when the First Hokage was founding Leaf, he decided to make the Will of Fire its foundation. He thought that uniting the Fire Country clans into one village would allow them to protect what was important instead of constantly fighting with each other."
"Good job, Shikamaru," Sarutobi said. "Didn't expect a history lesson out of you."
Nara scowled.
Sarutobi looked back to Hazō. "Anyway, there you have it. The Will of Fire is at the heart of everything we do here in Leaf, and it's why we've always been the world's strongest village."
How strange. Mist didn't have anything like that. The original Mist ninja had been the strongest because they were able to tame the sea, the ultimate hostile environment. But they lacked unity, which was why the First Mizukage had been able to defeat them in detail, bringing them under his dominance one by one and binding them together with his incredible will. This new coexistence made them realise the value of peace, and over time they became willing tools of a greater power, which made them so efficient and coordinated that no external force could threaten them. There had been no verbalised philosophy behind any of that, just pragmatism and historic inevitability.
"Sorry for the trouble, Nara," Hazō said. "I'm grateful for the explanation."
Nara grunted.
"Actually, I've been meaning to ask you," Hazō went on, "you seem like someone who does a lot of planning, and from what I've been told about the Ino-Shika-Chō, it's usually the Shika part that's the brains of the team..."
Sarutobi, Akimichi and Yamanaka turned to look at him all at once.
"Uh," Hazō froze.
"What Hazō's trying to say in his usual inept way," Noburi cut in, "is that you're just like us—you've got one person specialising in analytical work, one person who does the heavy lifting, and one ninjutsu specialist, plus the leader. Well, we picked up a couple more along the way, but you get the idea."
"Nice save, Wakahisa," Yamanaka laughed. "So did you have a point to make, Mr Clever Analyst?"
"Actually, he's the dumb muscle," Noburi stage-whispered to her. "You want the quiet girl over there."
"Shut up, Noburi," Hazō finally said. "As I was saying, Nara, do you happen to have any favourite organisational tools? I prefer lists myself, though there's a lot of varieties I haven't even begun to explore."
Nara seemed to liven up a little. "Three-dimensional diagrams. Each piece of paper represents a layer of a cube, so as long as you use proper notation, you can draw different types of relationships between different forms of content without compromising clarity." He paused. "But then nobody else can read them so the information ends up as a pie chart anyway."
"That sounds… fascinating," Hazō said. "If you have some free time later tonight, could you show me?"
"Yes," Keiko spoke up for the first time. "I believe I would also find it very educational."
"Psychotherapy?" Yamanaka amazingly managed to pronounce it through a mouthful of ramen. (It wasn't clear to anyone whether Jiraiya was in fact supposed to pay for lunch, but they decided to put it on his tab just in case, and leave the rest to bureaucracy.)
"That's right," Hazō said. "We heard there was such a thing when we were in Tea, and then there was that mention of mental health help earlier… so how does it work, exactly, if you don't mind me asking? Or is it a Yamanaka clan secret?"
"Yes and no," Yamanaka said. "We use Yamanaka techniques as part of it, but a lot of it is just talking about what we find. But since you have to work one-on-one with a Yamanaka over a long period of time, you have to be pretty rich to afford it, or get the Hokage's Office to subsidise you. Plus, some people are weird about having their minds read. Why, you starting to feel crazy?"
"Uh," Hazō said. He couldn't exactly deny it, but how did you say yes to a question like that? He decided to settle on a half-truth. "Actually, I was worried about our other teammate. She's been severely injured, and it could be putting a lot of mental strain on her." No direct lies; Inoue-sensei would be proud.
Yamanaka nodded sympathetically. "Have you been to see her yet? You should bring her flowers. Every girl likes flowers."
"She's got a point," Noburi said. "You're way past that stage in your relationship, Hazō, so you really need to start catching up with the gifts."
"Oh," Yamanaka said delightedly. "Is that how it is? The forbidden love of a Leaf genin and a missing-nin… Can a maiden's pure Will of Fire melt the cold heart of a brutal killer? Or will a cruel fate force them apart just as it forced them together?"
"It's not like that at all," Hazō glared. "I'm just her master."
This made Yamanaka's eyes shine even brighter.
"Oh, it's that kind of relationship? Wow did I underestimate you, Kurosawa. You're hardcore."
Hazō wordlessly looked to Inoue-sensei for help, realising a second too late what a bad idea that was.
"Hazō!" she gasped in mock surprise. "You and Akane? It wasn't that long ago that you were trying to get Keiko to let you tie her up!"
The cigarette dropped out of Sarutobi's mouth at roughly the same instant as Keiko facepalmed.
"Kurosawa," Akimichi said seriously, "It may not be my place to say this, but you shouldn't two-time girls. You're only going to end up hurting their feelings."
"He never said he was two-timing them!" Yamanaka said. "Seeing as how they're all still teammates, and they know about each other and they aren't fighting or anything… we could be seeing a three-way relationship in the flesh!"
By this point Sarutobi's eyes were the size of dinner plates, Inoue-sensei and Noburi were laughing uncontrollably, and Kagome-sensei was staring at them all in utter bewilderment.
In the background, Nara slowly raised his hand. "Check, please!"
-o-
"Seriously, though," Yamanaka said one merciful explanation later, as the group headed to a shoe shop, "she's in hospital. Get her flowers. It's like the most basic team care. Let's swing by the Yamanaka Flower Shop on the way out and I'll get you a discount."
"Wait," Hazō said, setting aside the fact that he knew about the relevance of flowers, and was already going to get Akane some, and would have said as much if Noburi hadn't suddenly opened his big mouth, "you're telling me the Yamanaka Clan, one of the most powerful clans in the world, with the unique and incredible power to read minds, runs a flower shop?"
Yamanaka grinned. "Thanks for the compliments, Kurosawa, but I'm not joining your harem just yet."
"Actually," Keiko saved the conversation from another descent into inaneness, "it is not unknown for major clans to own small businesses like this. They are typically used as fronts for espionage and—"
"So now our shopping's done," Inoue-sensei said, "how about we drop by the hospital and see if Akane's allowed visitors yet? What was her doctor's name again? Yakushi something?"
"A hospital?" Kagome-sensei demanded. "Are you crazy? You want us to go to where Leaf is running its experiments, and just hand ourselves over for raw materials so they can put tentacles in our ears and turn us into chakra zombies and who knows what else?"
"You make a point," Inoue-sensei said before any of the minders could respond. "Why don't we go buy everyone some chocolate for now, and talk about this again later?"
"That's right," Hazō chipped in. "Weren't you working on a watertight protocol for buying food safely?"
"No such thing as a watertight protocol," Kagome-sensei said. "You start thinking your precautions are foolproof, and bam! All the plants are spontaneously combusting and you can smell the colour pink. Still, it's a good protocol, and... chocolate…"
-o-
Dr Yakushi's office was surprisingly tidy by comparison with the Hokage's, with the desk occupied only by a single spread-out scroll. The man poring over it was much younger than the middle-aged scholar Hazō had been expecting—maybe even younger than Inoue-sensei—but he did at least have the requisite grey hair and round glasses (which served as yet another reminder of Leaf's wealth).
"Ah, you must be Miss Ishihara's team," Dr Yakushi smiled. "My name is Yakushi Kabuto. Feel free to take down your disguises—we're all friends here, and besides, I am a member of the Arikada interrogation team."
Hazō gave him a questioning look.
"The names you gave for your appointment didn't include anyone by the name of 'Hazō'," Dr Yakushi explained, "and I feel certain that one of you must be 'Hazō-sensei', since Miss Ishihara repeated that name many times during her semi-conscious period. And since you are collectively responsible for saving a Leaf ninja, I really would like to meet you face to face, so to speak."
He even spoke how Hazō thought a doctor should speak, measured and slightly detached, but at the same time warm and reassuring.
"I don't think so," Inoue-sensei said. "No offense to you, doctor, but we'd like to preserve our privacy as much as possible while we're here in Leaf."
"Inoue-sensei!" Hazō snapped. "This man saved Akane's life."
He dispelled his disguise. "I'm Kurosawa Hazō. Thank you again for what you've done, Dr Yakushi."
Dr Yakushi walked out from behind the desk and extended his hand for a handshake. Hazō took it with Kurosawa Handshake no. 3, "I am a dignified person showing you great respect".
Dr Yakushi looked down. "Is that… a preset handshake? How fascinating. Then you are one of the Mist Kurosawa?"
Hazō blinked. "Yes, but how did you…?"
"Ah, well," Dr Yakushi's gaze slid briefly across one of the bookshelves, "I happen to have something of an interest in Bloodline Limits. They include some of the most powerful bioweapons and bioweapon counters both, you see. But to meet a Kurosawa in the flesh! I don't suppose you'd be interested in coming by to help me with some tests during your stay? Nothing invasive, just a few measurements to see how quickly you learn different movements, things like that."
"No!" Kagome-sensei barked. "You're not cutting up Hazō for your sick experiments, you stinking leech!"
Hazō could see Inoue-sensei open her mouth to interrupt the imminent tirade with a "Kagome!", then close it again as she realised she couldn't use his name in front of the doctor. Fortunately, the chocolate must have worked, because Kagome-sensei left it at that.
Dr Yakushi held up his hands placatingly. "I wouldn't dream of it, sir. The kind of human experimentation you're thinking of is forbidden in Leaf, even on criminals and civilians, believe it or not. Medical research in Leaf is constrained by stringent ethics.
"Now, Mr Kurosawa, would you grant me my humble request?"
Hazō considered. Dr Yakushi had saved Akane from certain death, and that put Hazō forever in his debt. But at the same time it felt like a bad idea to commit to something he didn't entirely understand without at least checking with Inoue-sensei first.
"If I have time," he finally gave a safe answer. "I do owe you a great deal for saving my apprentice, Dr Yakushi, but we have various authorities we have to answer to while we're here, so my time isn't really my own."
"Please don't worry about it," Dr Yakushi looked down in apparent embarrassment. "It was my duty as a medical professional, and besides, I was able to gather a great deal of valuable data while working on her body, and that was a horribly inappropriate comment and I do apologise."
There was an awkward silence.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hazō saw Noburi nod slightly to himself.
"Don't worry about it, doc," Noburi said as he released his disguise. "I'm Wakahisa Noburi and I don't see anything wrong with you trying to expand your scientific knowledge while you work. I mean, isn't that how you got the skills you needed to save Akane in the first place?" He offered his hand.
Dr Yakushi shook it. "It's very kind of you to say so, though I fear you overestimate my skills a great deal. The fact that people call me a leading expert in the field only reflects the lack of other specialists."
He looked from Noburi to Keiko.
"The demands of social courtesy should not outweigh basic information security," she muttered, not meeting his gaze, and ignoring his outstretched hand.
Dr Yakushi kept his hand out with an open, friendly expression. Keiko lasted for an extremely long time, but finally caved in before he did.
"Mori Keiko," she said quietly, turning off the Transformation Technique, but she never looked him in the eye or shook his hand.
"Hm. Mori," Dr Yakushi said to himself. "Mori, Mori, Mori, Mori… ah, Mori."
He smiled and moved on to Kagome-sensei, who glowered at him.
"Don't think I don't know what you're doing," Kagome-sensei growled. "Everyone else might fall for your filthy tricks, but I can see right through you. You so much as touch one hair on their heads, and boom!" He flicked his palms open suddenly in Dr Yakushi's face.
Dr Yakushi leapt back with flawless ninja reflexes, coming down in a crouched defensive stance behind his desk. Hazō and the other genin stared.
"Yes?" Dr Yakushi looked at them in puzzlement. "Despite appearances, I am a shinobi. I daresay I would have trouble using medical ninjutsu otherwise.
"But hospitals are places of peace and recuperation. Do please avoid violence here."
"I apologise for my teammate's behaviour," Inoue-sensei said. "I'm sure you can't blame us all for being a little on edge, circumstances being what they are."
She gave the three genin another glance, with a shadow of resignation.
"Inoue Mari."
The two locked eyes as they shook hands, and the handshake lasted a little bit longer than was natural.
"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Inoue," Dr Yakushi finally said. "I'm glad to see that Miss Ishihara will be in safe hands when I am finally ready to release her from my care."
"That's the reason we came here!" Hazō said, glad to finally get to the important part. "Well, that and to thank you. How soon will Akane recover?"
"Hm," Dr Yakushi said, taking off his glasses and wiping them with a cloth before giving him an answer. "I do not give fine estimates as a matter of principle. Human bodies are very individual things, and giving an inaccurate prediction carries all manner of dangers. Suffice to say that we are speaking in terms of months rather than weeks."
"Can we visit her?"
"Ideally she should have peace and quiet, but looking at it another way… I will say five minutes. Ten at most. Only one person, and you must not disturb her in any way. Light conversation only. Fashion. Celebrities. The weather. Whatever it is teenage girls concern themselves with in their spare time. Nothing that may stress her. Am I understood?"
Dr Yakushi's glasses glinted with a hint of menace.
"Y-Yes, sir!" Hazō said.
"How about gifts?" Noburi asked.
"No foodstuffs for the time being. She will be on a strict hospital diet. That may be a source of stress in and of itself, I'll grant you, but it will accelerate her recovery. Light reading material, perhaps. Laypeople underestimate, I believe, how little stamina a person in intensive care possesses, and how quickly it is drained even by the least mental effort. Flowers, though you must check for allergies first. Trigger an allergic reaction in my hospital, and you will be banned until further notice."
"One more thing before we go," Noburi said. "I'm actually training to be a medic-nin myself, and I was wondering… would you do me a huge favour and let me shadow you for a little while? I bet watching a master like you work would make my own skills skyrocket, and I'm happy to do all the dirty work as your assistant."
"Hm." Dr Yakushi looked at Noburi appraisingly. "Much of my work is classified, and I am going to be very busy working on the Arikada case. It would be difficult to find any activities in which the presence of an assistant could be both acceptable and useful."
But the tone of his voice suggested that he was still thinking about it.
The silence stretched on for a bit. Noburi's expression gradually became more and more disappointed.
"But I suppose there is one way."
"What's that?" Noburi asked instantly.
"As I mentioned, I have a strong interest in Bloodline Limits. In fact, I've written a monograph on purposefully altered chakra systems, though that was more related to the chakra channels in the brain and eyes. An opportunity for detailed observation of the Wakahisa Bloodline Limit in action, as you use medical ninjutsu and study new techniques of my own choosing, may justify the drastic disruption to my schedule that would be involved. And of course I would have some questions for you, which seems only fair since I'm certain you will have many for me."
Noburi looked hesitant at this.
"No clan secrets, of course," Dr Yakushi said quickly. "I assure you, I have every respect for the principle of classified information. But matters you might consider trivial, ones which might even be taken for granted in your home village, could be a great contribution to my research at no cost to you.
"Hm," Dr Yakushi said, "I find myself beginning to warm to the idea. My position prevents me from taking on apprentices in the usual way, and yet there is so much that I could potentially share. All my experience, so much little-known lore, even the values that have made me the doctor I am today. And of course, the opportunity is as unique for you, since other doctors would not be cleared to know your identity, and would hardly trust non-Leaf strangers like yourselves even if they did. As it is, I foresee hours of filling in forms and arguing with the Hokage's Office before I can make your desire come true… but I trust that you will make it worth my time and effort.
"So yes, Wakahisa Noburi, I agree to your request. I shall clear the matter with the Hokage's Office, and you should clear it with your minders, and expect to hear from me tomorrow with details of our schedule.
"I look forward to working with you."
"Thank you, Yakushi-sensei," Noburi said emphatically. "I promise you won't regret this!"
-o-
Ishihara Akane, the world's best apprentice, was alive. Alive and awake, and a lot paler than usual, but she was able to sit up in bed when she saw him (with a wince), and that was more than enough for Hazō.
"Hazō-sensei!" she said quietly. "You came!"
"Akane!" Hazō almost rushed over, but forced himself to obey Dr Yakushi's admonition and walk slowly and calmly to her side. "How are you feeling?"
"I've mostly been asleep," Akane confessed. "Everything hurts, but I am alive. I didn't think I was going to make it." Then, even more quietly, she added, "I'm sorry I failed everyone, Hazō-sensei."
"What?" Hazō stopped. She'd done what? To whom? When?
"You didn't fail anyone, Akane. I'm the one who should be apologising for failing to protect you!"
Hazō silently cursed. This was the exact kind of high-stress conversation Dr Yakushi had told him to avoid.
"No, please don't blame yourself," she said. "I wasn't youthful enough. If I had been, I would have spent more time training so something like this wouldn't happen. You weren't too slow to dodge Arikada's attack. He wouldn't have been too slow. I just… I hate hospitals."
Hazō was caught off-guard by the non-sequitur.
"I lost a big chunk of my life to this hospital," Akane said. "Even after I was allowed to stay at home, it never let go of me. Bi-weekly check-ups, instructions to my parents… I should be grateful to it, to everyone who put so much effort into helping me get better. But now I'm back here, and I hate it. I'm back to the person I was before, weak and helpless and letting everyone down. Only this time I've already had my second chance."
"Akane, that's just not true," Hazō said fiercely. "You got hurt on a mission, the way everybody does sooner or later. Remember when the mountain ninja hurt Inoue-sensei? She needed bed rest too, but it didn't make her any less of a person."
Akane shook her head, then blinked a couple of times to clear it from what must have been a burst of dizziness. "Thank you trying to make me feel better. You've always been the more youthful one out of the two of us. But I messed up and I could have got everyone killed. And when I look back, it's been like this all along.
"I got tricked by Mizuki-sensei because I was too gullible. I fell for the Liberator's brainwashing because I was too naive, and you had to save me. I nearly got us all killed by Kōta because I was too trusting, and you had to save me. I collapsed from chakra drain because I was too stubborn, and you had to save me. I nearly got killed by Arikada because I was too incompetent, and you had to save me. I've enjoyed travelling with you so much, but I think maybe you would be better off without me.
"When I'm better, I think I should take Jiraiya-sensei's offer and come back to Leaf, where I'm not going to hurt the people I love. Or maybe I should quit being a ninja altogether if they'll let me. I could convince them I'm unfit for duty."
Hazō had never seen this side of Akane. It was like talking to a completely different person. Even Keiko didn't talk like this (most of the time). Had the trauma really hit Akane that hard? Or were there things she'd been bottling up all along, behind that unswervingly cheerful exterior? Why had he never thought about that before?
Well, if ever there was a time to tap into his supposed powers of Youth and deliver an inspirational speech, this was it. Hazō opened his mouth and prepared to try to surrender to the weird stream of consciousness that kept coming up with things Akane somehow found meaningful.
But before he could, Akane slumped back in her bed. "Thank you for coming to visit, Hazō-sensei. But I think I need to sleep now."
She hesitated. "Would you… come see me again? Just until I feel better?"
"Every day," Hazō promised. "I'll help you feel youthful again if it's the last thing I do."
-o-
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-o-
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"Look at me," Nagatsuka-sensei said sharply, taking Maaya's shoulders in both hands and squeezing hard. The girl's eyes were wide, her face pale, and her body tight with nervousness about the upcoming fight; she needed to be settled down.
Maaya tore her eyes away from the ring where, in less than a minute, she was going to face Takao. Takao of the dreamy eyes that she could lose herself in...if he would stop looking away every time she looked at him. (Was it embarrassment or disinterest? Boys were complicated!) Takao of the silky, messy hair that made her fingers itch to comb it straight. Takao of the tiny little smile that was always hovering at the corner of his mouth. The smile that she always found herself wondering if she could capture with a kiss...and, of course, she always dissolved into stammers and blushes when she found herself wondering.
With an effort of will she met Nagatsuka-sensei's eyes.
"Listen to me, girl," Nagatsuka-sensei said quietly, her voice full of steel. "You can do this. It's time to show that little punk what you can do. Don't hold back, take him down with your first strike. Which do you think he'll respect more, a trembling girl who rolls over at the first punch, or a kunoichi full of confidence who challenges him to improve, who forces him to train harder in order to measure up?"
"A kunoichi full of confidence?" Maaya said uncertainly.
"What are you, girl?" Nagatsuka-sensei demanded. It was a mantra between them.
"A rock leopard, sensei," Maaya responded, the words coming out by pure conditioned response that required no conscious thought. "Fast and strong."
"How fast do you strike?"
"Fast as a leopard, sensei."
"How fast do you strike?!"
"Fast as a leopard, sensei!"
"Godsdamnit, girl, how fast do you strike?! "
"FAST AS A LEOPARD, SENSEI!"
"How hard do you hit?!"
"HARD AS A LEOPARD, SENSEI!"
"Damn straight! Get in there and punt that kid into a wall!"
Maaya put one hand on the railing of the contestants' box and vaulted down to the sandy floor of the arena with the easy grace of the leopard Nagatsuka-sensei had trained her to be. She could feel the beast, her personal totem, rearing up around her in her imagination, its strength flowing through her as its thunderous roar rang in her mind's ears. She barely restrained herself from roaring alongside it, but could not prevent her lips from skinning back from bared teeth.
"Kick his ass, Maaya!" Akihiko yelled from the stands. She turned and gave him a braggart's half-bow of acknowledgement.
Takao, never flashy, walked calmly down the stairs. Unlike Maaya, who carried nothing but a double brace of kunai and wore no armor beyond a pair of trauma plates, he had two bandoleers of darts in an X across his chest and chains looped many times around his forearms. Dozens of metal scales studded his uniform, varying in size but each with a seal carefully carved into its surface; the pouches at his belt probably held even more. His hair was carefully pulled back, held out of his eyes behind his forehead protector. Despite that it still managed to resemble a sideways haystack more than a smooth ponytail.
"Congratulations on making it this far," he said, the smile sincere. "That landslide move in the canyon was amazing. Was that your idea?"
The leopard fled in disgust as blood rushed to Maaya's cheeks. "Th-thanks," she said. She cleared her throat, trying to make sure she wouldn't stammer again. "Yeah, that was mine. You were pretty good too. The way you breezed past that seal trap was smart. We had to brute force it."
He shrugged modestly. "We were lucky," he said. "Happened to spot it before we got too close, so we had the chance to tweak the trigger instead of fighting past it."
"Yeah, but you didn't just disable it, you—"
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, GIRL?! STOP FLIRTING AND KICK HIS ASS UP INTO HIS NECK!"
A wave of laughter rolled around the bleachers; the sound went through Maaya as a spike of shame that converted straight into firey rage when Takao joined in. It was a nervous, embarrassed laugh, but it was still a laugh and—
"Fight!" the proctor shouted.
The nervousness and shame had fled as the rage burned them away; at the proctor's word Maaya charged forward, the leopard roaring in her soul once again. She raised a kunai, ready to throw if he started a technique or reached for a seal—not to kill or harm, simply to interrupt—but Takao leaped forward, chakra blasting from his feet to send him up and over her head. In mid-flight his hands dipped into his pouches and sent dozens of metal disks scattering in all directions, the bright sun glinting on their seal-encrusted surfaces.
Maaya twisted, pushing chakra from her feet to leap blindly to the left. Some of those seal disks were undoubtedly about to land on or right in front of her and if she stepped near one it was over.
She hit the stone wall of the arena feet-first and ran along its surface, her body parallel to the ground as she cut handseals. "Wind Release: Sirocco!" she shouted. The burning-hot breath of the desert howled up the sandy arena, lifting the sand and scouring it across the disks, destroying their seals—some of them, at least. A line of fire and explosions bloomed in a straight line towards Takao; for a moment Maaya's heart stuttered in her chest as she thought he wouldn't move fast enough, that he would actually be caught in the jutsu. If the Sirocco scoured away the seals he wore on his body, potentially activating them in the process—
Fortunately, she wasn't giving him enough credit; he slapped a hand on his chest, activating one of the seals and producing a five-foot granite boulder that he ducked behind just in time.
The moment the wind passed he was up and away from the boulder, left hand hurling darts even as the right grabbed the largest scale off his chest—the size of a tea saucer, barely fitting between the bandoleers—and aimed it. Maaya knew what was coming; she slapped a hand on the surface of the wall, chakra-adhering it in place and letting her feet go out from under her so that she could reverse direction fast. Her body swung around on the pivot of her arm, the momentum of her run transferred straight into her shoulder in a shriek of pain that she ignored in favor of yanking hard to slingshot herself back the way she'd come.
She was just barely in time. The Water Cannon seal was nothing fancy—just a large storage seal set to eject its contents at high speed. Fill it with water and you had a zero-chakra equivalent of Mist's famous Water Bullet. Worse, Takao had apparently gotten one of the really big seals from somewhere (stupid clan kids and their jounin parents!), because there was enough water that it came out in a two-second geyser that he swept back towards her. She put on a burst of speed, staying just barely ahead of the blast until it ran out of water. It was so close on her heels that she could feel the splash soaking her calves.
Takao hurled the expended seal disk aside and started throwing darts from his bandoleers with both hands. The seals on each dart were too small to make out, but Maaya had no doubt they were there.
The best answer to darts would be a Reflecting Barrier, but Takao was too fast and too close. "Wind Release: Adamantine Air!" Maaya thrust her hands forward, index fingers extended like spears. It wasn't the best counter, but it was the fastest and that was what mattered. Five meters in front of her pointing fingers, two disks of air froze in place, presenting a nearly invulnerable barrier to the oncoming storm of metal.
The emphasis was on the "nearly".
Two meters after leaving Takao's hands the explosive seals on the back of the first flight of darts detonated, accelerating the weapons forward at insane speeds. The first three slammed into the air barrier and were stopped, but the razor-sharp steel point of the fourth punched through; the impact made the soft iron shaft of the dart crumble into a messy ball that blasted the hole wider, shattering the barrier completely and opening the way for the flock of darts that followed.
Fortunately, the barriers had bought Maaya just enough time to finish the handseals of her next jutsu. "Wind Release: Air Push!" She slashed her palms from right to left in a double-strike move that would have made the village tai chi master nod in iron-faced approval.
Air Push was one of the simplest jutsu there was, just a short-ranged blast of air that wasn't really focused enough to cause harm. What it was absolutely wonderful at, however, was sending a massive group of incoming darts scattering in all directions, many of them back towards their owner. The proximity-sensor seals couldn't tell the difference between one human-sized moving object and another; as they came in range of Takao they started detonating.
She watched Takao's ice-blue eyes go wide as the wave of destruction swept over him. Her heart was in her throat as she charged forward, praying that Nagatsuka-sensei had been right and that Takao would be loading half-powered low-lethality tags. If he hadn't....
He had. Instead of blowing him to shreds the explosions only tossed him across the arena like a slap from a god. He slammed into the wall hard, all the breath going out of him, and collapsed to hands and knees. His forehead protector had come loose and the silky haystack was tumbling around his face as he tried to shake off the impact. She drove harder, chakra surging through her muscles as she closed the distance. Takao's chains were good in close, but she was better. If she closed the range, this fight was over.
BOOM!
She had been so focused on her target that she hadn't paid attention to her surroundings. One of the mines that Takao had dispensed at the start of the fight had been partially buried in sand raised by her Sirocoo and she'd missed it. It sensed her passage and detonated, hurling her into the air and spinning her like a rag doll. The blast was soft, again not intended to kill, but more than enough to interrupt her movement and throw her where, unfortunately, another group of mines waited.
She was still two feet above the ground when the next patch of mines sensed her and detonated, blowing her back into the air like balls in a juggler's hands. The trauma plate on her back soaked most of the damage, but it still felt like she'd taken a hard punch from a pissed-off Nagatsuka-sensei.
Oh gods, Nagatsuka-sensei. Her teacher was going to kill her if she lost this fight.
As she reached the top of her arc she managed to control her tumble until her feet were under her. "Wind Release: Adamantine Air!" she cried, pointing down to freeze the air directly under her feet. The protective disks were slick as glass and immune to chakra adhesion—they were, after all, just air—but she managed to push off in generally the right direction. Her feet went out from under her as she did; she landed clumsily, her ankle shrieking in protest as she sprawled out hard.
Takao was back on his feet, weaving like a drunkard but focused enough to cut handseals and flick his hands to the sides. "Masamune Clan Technique: Forty Chains of Death!" The chains around his forearms leaped outwards, curling like metallic snakes and then lunging forward at Maaya.
"Yeep!" Maaya hurled herself straight up like a scalded cat, pushing every scrap of chakra she could into the leap so as to get clear of the spiralling thicket of chains below her. "Wind Release: Adamantine Air!"
The twin disks of frozen air formed below her, trapping the links of the chain in place. Takao yanked hard, once, in a futile effort to free his weapons before sensibly dropping the chains and diving aside as Maaya landed right where he'd been standing. The leopard roared in her soul as she went at him with full-force kicks and punches that he wasn't strong or fast enough to completely block.
What looked like a too-weak block was nothing of the sort; at some point he'd palmed a seal and now managed to slap it onto her arm. Her sleeve went rigid, trapping her arm in a stiffly extended position that left her wide open on that side.
Had he trained under Nagatsuka-sensei, he could have ended it right there. One carefully-placed punch would have put her down and out and given him the match. Unfortunately, he wasn't trained by Nagatsuka-sensei. Akagi-sensei put very little emphasis on taijutsu, reasoning (sensibly) that a boy with Takao's delicate frame and small chakra reserves was never going to make a good in-close fighter. Instead of winning the fight immediately, Takao reached for another seal.
Maaya scraped her coils almost empty and sent the chakra through her arm in a punch that tore its way out of the frozen sleeve and surged forward on the tide of her totem's roar. The punch clipped Takao on the jaw, spinning his head around and knocking him to the ground. She pounced, taking side control with his right arm trapped by her legs, his left trapped in the grip of her right hand, his body pinned under her torso and her left free to punch him repeatedly in the head.
In the head. Or, rather, in the face. That delicate, almost pretty face that even now was smiling up at her with ice-blue eyes blinking as they came back into focus.
"You hit really hard, you know that?" he asked, laughter bubbling below the words.
She refused to allow herself to be distracted. "Surrender," she growled, arm cocked menacingly in the air as she forced herself not to think about how nice the heat from his wrist felt between her calves, how firm the muscles were in the forearm trapped between her clenched fingers.
"Huh. You're really pretty," he said, surprised.
One part of her brain sent the words "Stop being ridiculous and surrender!" to her mouth. Another part simultaneously sent "Pretty?" A third sent "NOW you notice?! I've been right here for seven years, you idiot!" A fourth sent "Why do you sound so surprised, huh?!" The various messages all piled up, none of them managing to make it out from behind her teeth.
He seized the moment of her distraction to lean up and kiss her, gently but firmly. Fifteen years old and she'd never kissed a boy; every scrap of her attention was suddenly focused on the sensation of his lips on hers.
Lips are soft, yet strong, one part of her brain noticed.
Tastes great, too! another said. Minty and smokey, yes please.
Less yakking, I'm trying to enjoy this, said a third.
First, Maaya firmly told all of her inner voices to shut up. Second, she headbutted him hard in the nose, wincing slightly at the sound of cartilage crunching under the impact of her forehead protector. She refused to hesitate before punching him in the jaw with a carefully-place left cross that left him out cold on the sand. Even then she was careful, waiting several seconds before releasing him.
She couldn't quite resist pressing one more kiss to his lips before sitting up. One kiss, right on the corner of his mouth where, even in unconsciousness, that tiny little smile hid.
"Maa-ya! Maa-ya! Maa-ya!" her friends were chanting. "Woo-hoo!"
She pushed herself to her feet and waved to the cheering crowd before turning for the stairs, the proctor's completely unnecessary announcement of her victory barely noticed behind her. Years of Nagatsuke-sensei's training forced her to keep moving smoothly even as the adrenaline wore off and her body suddenly realized just how battered it was and how utterly empty her chakra coils were. Never show weakness, girl, the iron voice of her teacher growled in her memories. Rock leopards don't stumble and whine.
She kept a smile on her face, kept nodding to the crowd in grateful acknowledgement as an excuse for making her egress slow and regal. It was the only way to hide the fact that she could barely lift her feet.
Wakako and Umeko were waiting at the top of the steps to unceremoniously sweep her up onto their shoulders.
"Kunoichi rule, boys drool!" Umeko shouted, stabilizing Maaya with her left hand and shaking her right fist mockingly at a clump of their classmates. The boys in question—Umeko's boyfriend among them—laughed and shouted back their own taunts until the girls bustled Maaya through the door at the back of the contestants' box that led into the exam building and the waiting sickbay.
Maaya kept the smile on her face until she was out of sight, then let herself be poured onto one of the sickbay tables to be checked over by a professionally-grumpy medic-nin. Her body was complaining louder and louder as the bruises blossomed. Those mines had really done a number on her, and—
"Acceptable," begrudged Nagatsuka-sensei, appearing from seemingly nowhere in that disconcerting way she had. "Still, that clinch at the end was awful. Your right arm wasn't straight enough; if he had any sort of decent grappling training he could have broken the pin and then where would you have been, hm? And running over that mine—what were you thinking? We're going to have to work on your situational awareness, girl. Pathetic. And of course there was—"
Maaya let the words sweep over her and basked in the effusive praise hidden in that grunted 'acceptable'.
"Nagatsuka-sensei, be fair!" Umeko said chidingly. "She was amazing! Did you see that bit where she ran on air? That was incredible!"
"Yeah!" Wakako said. "Why don't you ever—"
"Do you lot mind?!" the medic growled. "I'm trying to work here. She'll be fine with a little rest. Now, everyone who isn't bleeding, get out!"
Umeko and Wakako turned and headed for the door immediately. Nagatsuka-sensei had to sniff dismissively and pause just long enough to show that she was going because she wanted to, not because she'd been told to. Still, she went.
The medic shifted Maaya's forehead protector aside so that he could rest a warm hand on her forehead. Immediately the battered girl found herself borne into the warm arms of sleep on a surge of warm and comfortable medical chakra.
o-o-o-o
From the doorway of the sickbay, Nagatsuka Rika watched the medic pull a blanket over Maaya and bustle off to the next patient, who happened to be the unconscious and bloody-nosed Takao. There were too many people around to let herself be seen smiling, but it took a lot of effort to stay stone-faced as she basked in the furnace heat of pride for her student. The girl really was amazing—everything a teacher could ask for. Rika's only regret was that the insular decisions of the stay-at-home village elders meant that Maaya's victory hadn't happened in front of the massive audiences that must have been gathered in...where were the International Chuunin Exams this year? Over in Konoha, weren't they? Well, wherever.
She waited by the door, watching as the doctor set Takao's nose and cleaned off the blood. Maaya's punch had been perfect; enough to put him out, not enough to cause permanent damage. That pretty face wouldn't be too badly messed up and, unless she missed her guess, the first thing he would do when he woke up was seek out the girl who'd decked him. Rika couldn't quite manage to hold back a tiny snort of amusement. It was every sensei's privilege to terrify the new suitor, so she'd have to start working on her 'break my student's heart and I will...' speech. Let's see, what would be appropriately gruesome yet believable?
XP AWARD: 0
The next vote will be counted starting from the end of the previous chapter, Making Friends/Losing Friends. Voting ends on Wednesday, December 7, 2016, at 12pm London time.
"Kagome-sensei," Hazō began warily, watching his sealing master study the underside of the decorative carpet with deadly concentration.
"Huh?! What?!" Kagome-sensei spun around violently, kunai in hand. "You'll never take me alive, you—oh, it's just you, Hazō."
There was an awkward pause. "Don't sneak up on me like that."
"Uh, right. Actually, that sort of leads into what I wanted to talk to you about. I know this entire situation is very stressful for you, and we all hate seeing you unhappy and on edge all the time. Is there anything we can do to make things easier for you? More safety procedures? Some way to help you keep in mind that we're constantly watching each other's backs, and it's not all on you to protect us? Or maybe there's some hobby that can help you relax, like your wood carving, or painting, or some cooking? You know what they say. Tension narrows your awareness and limits your range of responses."
"Hmm," Kagome-sensei said. "That's not a bad point. It'd be just like those stinkers to chip away at us with false alarms so we're worn out when they spring the real trap. And if you're all fine with me cooking for the team, instead of just for me like I've been doing, that'll make it harder for them to poison us. I've lived in the woods for a long time—I like to think I know a thing or two about what's safe to eat and what'll kill you if you give it so much as a lick. They won't be getting one over on old Kagome that easily."
Hazō smiled. "Anything else?"
Kagome-sensei considered his kunai for a couple of seconds. "Now you mention it, I wouldn't mind doing some carving. It's been a while. But then again, they'll have those Hyūga spies stalking us, waiting for us to show weakness. The second I let my guard down, that'll be when they strike. No, I have to stay alert. Always stay alert. Can't have everyone getting mindwiped and dragged off to the lupchanzen farms just because I felt like indulging myself."
"Kagome-sensei," Hazō said patiently. "I know you're the expert when it comes to security, but we are your team. You have to be able to trust us to maintain a perimeter even when you're not available. Do you trust us?"
All right, so maybe that was a little manipulative. But it was what Inoue-sensei would have done.
Kagome-sensei hunched up his shoulders. His voice trembled a little. "I… I… I don't not trust you."
The next few sentences came out in a rush.
"Uh, what I mean is, you could've stabbed me in the back any number of times, and you haven't, so you're probably not flying squid mind-slaves or Whirlpool revenants or Akatsuki hired killers after me because I know too much, and you gave me a present for my birthday, and I haven't caught you laughing at me behind my back because I'm not good with people, and… and… I tru—no, I… I mean… I suppose I can go on medium alert for a few hours here and there and leave you to keep an eye on things. If you're sure."
Hazō beamed. "You just let us know what kind of wood you want." Just for today, he was the world's best apprentice.
Kagome-sensei twirled the kunai around in his hand. "Right. But the second something doesn't look right, you let loose with maximum firepower, you hear me? Half-measures are what'll get you killed in hostile territory."
"Speaking of hostile territory," Inoue-sensei said, walking in like someone who had been coincidentally wandering by and definitely not listening in to make sure nothing went wrong, "I've got something I want to talk about with all of you."
She raised her voice. "Kids, can you get in here?"
-o-
"I need to talk to you about Dr Yakushi," Inoue-sensei began.
"If this is about the schedule, I've had a message from him," Noburi said. "We start tomorrow afternoon. Finally, professional training from somebody who won't bite my head off the second I forget what a herb is called."
"Yeah, about that…" Inoue-sensei sighed. "Kids, I know he seems like a nice guy, but I'd bet my perfect hair there's more to him than meets the eye. I'm not saying he's Captain Zabuza in a labcoat, but if you think back to what happened yesterday, he steered that conversation flawlessly. I couldn't have done a better job myself. He got everything he wanted, and he left you all thinking he's the cat's pyjamas. You see what I'm getting at here?"
"I don't know, Inoue-sensei," Noburi said. "Are you sure you're not being a little paranoid? He's behaving exactly the way I'd expect a guy like him to behave in this kind of situation, and there's no way he could ask us about our bloodlines without seeming suspicious."
"He was really charming," Hazō said slowly. "He gave everyone exactly what they wanted, and he made us happy to give him the things he wanted. He did make that slip-up about Akane and data, but other than that he was perfect. And I hate to say it, but… well, what are the odds of us meeting somebody who's incredibly nice and helpful and saved one of our lives and happens to have an innocent interest in the thing that makes us special? Especially given the kind of ninja we've met in our travels so far? Dr Yakushi saved Akane, and that debt isn't going to go away just because he might have ulterior motives, but I guess there's no harm in keeping an eye out until we have a better handle on his motivations."
Kagome-sensei nodded approvingly. "About time. If I had my way, that four-eyed weasel would be spread across an area a mile wide before he had another chance to use any of his dirty tricks."
"I believe we lack sufficient data to come to a conclusion," Keiko said. "Nevertheless, it is dangerous on first principles to extend trust to a stranger after a single meeting. This should apply doubly to a stranger from a potentially hostile faction, and triply when that stranger has multiple avenues of leverage over us. I advise caution.
"Noburi, this applies to you especially, as we will be unable to support you during your isolated interactions with Dr Yakushi. Please endeavour to remain objective, as we will be relying on you to provide information to better profile him, and under no circumstances expose yourself to any danger. Other teachers can be found sooner or later, whereas having you come to harm is unacceptable."
Noburi's mouth opened slightly.
"I… Thanks, Keiko."
She nodded curtly, then quickly looked away.
"Inoue-sensei," Hazō asked, "what do you make of him refusing to give estimates for Akane's recovery? Is that standard practice for medical professionals, or do you think there's more to it?"
"Hard to say," Inoue-sensei admitted. "I've had doctors do the same thing before, so it could be completely innocent. Or it could be a gentle reminder that Akane's in his hands, and he controls when, how and if she'll recover, so we should make sure not to cross him." She rolled her eyes. "That's Dr Yakushi all over. He might be our best friend, or he might be plotting our doom, but either way he's slippery as a snake and there's no way to get a good read on him. Keiko has the right idea, though. If in doubt, assume they're up to something. That's how you survive as a ninja."
Out of the corner of his eye, Hazō noticed Kagome-sensei sink slightly into his armchair on hearing this.
"While we're all here," Hazō said, "I have a list of things I wanted to bring up."
"Of course you did," Noburi muttered. "I swear, one of these days I'm going to steal your paper supply, just to see what happens when you're finally forced to improvise."
Keiko gave him an incredulous look. "You. Want Hazō. To improvise."
"Forget I said anything."
"Ahem," Hazō snapped. "Productive discussion, people? While everyone is still awake?"
"Go ahead, Hazō," Inoue-sensei gave him an encouraging wave.
"First off, Inoue-sensei, Kagome-sensei, do you know any ninjutsu like the ones Sarutobi mentioned, for emergency flares directly overhead?"
"Oh, sure," Inoue-sensei said. "Every infiltrator with the Fire or Lightning Element knows a version of the Shit Has Hit the Fan, Get Me the Fuck Out of Here Technique. FUBAR Technique for short. Very versatile. Depending on mission parameters, it can mean anything from "converge on my position before they do" to "get an ambush ready at the extraction point because all the hounds of hell are snapping at my heels" to "crater this area to cover my escape, and I'll try not to get caught in the blast".
"Run for Your Lives Technique," Kagome-sensei said quietly. "Big lightshow, wails like a banshee. Bursts your eardrums when you use it, but if a seal's gone wrong and it's too late for you anyway, at least everyone else knows to evacuate."
"Let's save that one for Plan B," Hazō said. "Looks like we'll have to rely on Inoue-sensei in an emergency, then, since we don't have any other Lightning users.
"Next, about our observation tower. Should we be making a prototype? If we can complete one before Jiraiya does, it sounds like he'll be prepared to pay us for it, and we're perpetually broke. A favour would be even better."
"At this stage, we have nothing to lose by doing so," Keiko observed. "Leaf already has the theoretical basis needed to reproduce it, so we are not forfeiting any kind of strategic advantage."
"How much is he going to pay us for a secret he's already got, though?" Noburi asked. "With the manpower he's got access to, all he has to do is round up a bunch of chūnin, give them a blueprint and a requisition slip, and they'll be done in an afternoon. For all we know, he's already done it. I mean, something as useful as invisible towers? I'd get them set up the second I could, to wring the most use out of them before anyone else came up with the idea."
"Then again," Hazō said, "time is not the thing we're short of while we're here in Leaf, and even a low chance of another favour might be worth taking."
Keiko shook her head. "No, Noburi is correct. Opportunity costs. Any day now, Jiraiya or the Hokage will summon us, after which they may well eject us from Leaf without notice. An afternoon spent building a prototype is an afternoon not availing ourselves of Leaf's unique resources. Hazō, you mentioned the libraries. How much reading time are you prepared to sacrifice in order to gamble on Jiraiya using his assets inefficiently?"
"I'm with Hazō, myself," Inoue-sensei said. "We need to prove ourselves as valuable to Jiraiya as possible, since he's our only guarantee of survival right now. That, and getting as much out of him as we can now, is more important than our long-term plans. Kagome, looks like you're the tie-breaker."
Kagome's eyes snapped open. "Whuh? I, uh, I agree with Inoue."
Hazō and Inoue-sensei exchanged glances.
"Let's table that one for now," Hazō said. "Next up, Keiko."
"Yes?"
"Keiko, I assume you have considered the utility of brushing up on Wind techniques if you intend to ask for further ninjutsu training?"
Keiko's eyes narrowed. "Yes, Hazō, I have in fact been pursuing a course of independent thought, and even arrived at an original conclusion."
Hazō, Inoue-sensei and Noburi all stared.
"Was that too direct?" Keiko asked. "I apologise. Nevertheless, Hazō, I would appreciate it if you gave me the benefit of the doubt in terms of agency, and did not expect me to take a passive stance merely because I do not invest a great deal of energy in self-expression."
Hazō blinked. "Keiko, that's not what I meant at all. I was trying to ask your opinion, which I assumed you would have because you thought the issue through on your own. I never intended to suggest that you lacked personal initiative."
Oh. Was that what this was about?
Keiko took a step back. "I'm sorry, Hazō. Let's return to the original topic.
"I have been considering mobility-enhancing techniques. Rapid movement is an area which I would have a distinct advantage in as a Wind user, and one which our group is forced to rely on with depressing frequency. Optimally, I would like a technique that benefited all of us simultaneously, so as to avoid a repeat of Akane's catastrophe, but even individually, I could derive great benefit from superior scouting and positioning options."
"That makes sense," Inoue-sensei agreed. "We haven't had any real problems with killing things so far, whereas we do spend much of our time running to or from people."
"Yes, good thinking, Keiko," Hazō said.
"I've got one last item on the agenda. Noburi, am I right in thinking that you can repair your barrel without giving away clan secrets, given that at any time we could be being observed by a Hyūga?"
As Noburi began to nod, Kagome-sensei sprang out of his armchair. "Huh? What? Hyūga? Here?! I'll give you something to look at, you bullshit cheating ba—"
"There aren't any Hyūga, Kagome," Inoue-sensei said as if placating a child complaining of monsters under the bed. "It was just a hypothetical. You can go back to sleep."
"I wasn't asleep," Kagome-sensei said sheepishly. "I was… practising staying vigilant in a medium-alert state."
"That sounds important," Inoue-sensei smiled. "We'll leave you to it. I'll let you know when it's time for dinner."
"Oh," Kagome-sensei said. "Uh, Inoue, I was thinking I'd cook tonight. We still have the unpoisoned vegetables I tricked those market stinkers into selling us, right?"
-o-
"I really appreciate this, Yamanaka," Hazō said. "I know it's inconvenient for you to be meeting me this early in the morning."
"No, it's cool, Kurosawa," Yamanaka grinned. "I'm getting our shop extra clients, and I'm messing with somebody else's head. You could say I'm carrying out my clan duties twice.
"So here's what I think you should give your master for maximum impact…"
-o-
It was evening, and Hazō had requested to speak to Inoue-sensei alone in the garden. Well, as alone as you could be with an unknown number of ANBU guards watching you, but they didn't care and therefore didn't count.
"Inoue-sensei," Hazō began, "I'm really grateful for all your hard work in looking out for us. I know it must be exhausting. So I talked to Yamanaka, and she asked her father, the head of the clan, for advice, and together we came up with this." He handed her a bouquet of flowers.
Inoue-sensei gave a beatific smile as she accepted it.
He watched her face as she identified them one by one. Encouragement. Support. Hope for the future. Congratulations on your upcoming arranged marriage.
The smile on her face froze, then slowly melted away, leaving speechless, stunned horror. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four seconds.
"Damn Inoichi and his big mouth!"
What.
"I'm so, so sorry, Hazō," Inoue-sensei whispered. "I never meant for you to find out this way."
She beckoned him to a bench. He sat down.
"Please don't tell anyone yet. I'm going to need a lot of time to bring Kagome round, and I'm still trying to figure out how to handle Keiko."
"Inoue-sensei, what—"
"Hush. This is… hard for me. Let me explain everything, and then you can ask your questions."
Hazō nodded mutely.
"Jiraiya and I have been talking about it for a while now. The last couple of times we met, but also while we've been in Leaf. Sarutobi's been covering for me with clones while I kept sneaking off.
"The fact is, Jiraiya's under a lot of pressure to get an heir, so all the value he represents to Leaf doesn't vanish when he dies. But he can't just marry into an existing clan, because that would wreck the balance of power. So… what if he started his own?
"I'm strong, I have no political ties, and he and I have great chemistry. In time, I think we can learn to love each other. And Mist isn't going to be able to out-diplomat him. Inoue Mari? Who's she? Never heard of her. I might need hair dye, but that's about it.
"But that's not the best part. The paperwork's still in progress—we've timed it so it'll come through right after the wedding—but he and I are going to formally adopt the three of you. You're not of the blood, so you won't be able to inherit, but once you're part of Jiraiya's clan, you're going to be Leaf ninja and legally untouchable. And of course, he'll teach you whatever it takes to make the new clan stronger while it's still young and vulnerable. But most importantly, you'll be safe. We'll all be safe.
"Obviously, we can't adopt Akane or you won't be able to marry her, but if you two do end up getting hitched, then she'll benefit from all this too.
"Hazō, I know I can't replace the real thing, and that I'm inexperienced and certainly not the best woman for the job, but I promise you, I will be the very best mother to you, Noburi and Keiko that I can be. I'll even cut down on the sex jokes as much as I can."
She clasped his hand between hers. "So now you know, will you please give this marriage your blessing?"
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four seconds. Five seconds. Six seconds. Seven seconds. Eight seconds. Nine seconds. Ten seconds.
"Crap, I think I broke him."
Hazō's brain engaged.
"WHAAAAAAAT?!"
Inoue-sensei burst into helpless laughter.
-o-
Petty revenge, take two.
An eternity later, once she was finally done laughing, Inoue-sensei told him how proud of him she was, and encouraged him to keep trying—as long as he was prepared for retaliation in kind. And in order to further this goal, she was more than happy to give him a flower recommendation to deal with Yamanaka.
"She's going to be a tough nut to crack, that girl," Inoue-sensei said, index finger raised contemplatively to her lip. "If you're too subtle, it'll be water off a vampire canard's back. But if you're too blunt, it'll bounce off that confident exterior. Still, they don't call me Mari the Flower Mistress for nothing."
"Do they call you that at all?" Hazō groused, still bitter about his defeat.
"Details, details. Take this list to the nearest florist—I think they have late hours—and then go straight to the Yamanaka compound. If you give me five minutes, I'll sweet-talk a couple of ANBU into escorting you. If they're as bored as I think they are, it shouldn't even be hard."
"What do these flowers mean, Inoue-sensei?"
"Oh, don't you worry about that."
Hazō gave her a look of the deepest scepticism he could muster.
"I mean it," she said. "You don't have the acting skills to pull off the attitude these flowers are going to convey, and it'll only ruin the impact if you try. Just be yourself, and everything will be fine. I promise you, I've fulfilled my Hazō-pranking needs for the night."
-o-
"First thing in the morning, then last thing at night," Yamanaka yawned. "I know you can't get enough of me, but would it kill you to—"
"Yamanaka Ino," Hazō said firmly. "I came to give you this."
He offered her the bouquet.
Yamanaka took it with an expression of unabashed surprise, then inspected the contents with the deftness of a born florist.
A core of holly. Interwoven hydrangea and white lily. A scattering of cherry blossoms. Daffodils to round it out. And, at the bottom, a cactus bud from the Wind Country, just starting to flower.
Yamanaka looked up at him. Then down at the flowers again. Then back up. Her face was a deep red, and her eyes were open a little too wide for comfort. "K-Kurosawa, I had no idea—"
She stopped herself.
"I—I'm sorry. I need some time to sort out my feelings. Please excuse me." She bowed deeply and fled, still holding the flowers.
The ANBU escorts, standing respectfully just out of earshot, gazed at Hazō in awe, as at a man ready to lay down his life in the name of love.
Well, on the bright side, there was no question that he'd successfully messed with Yamanaka's mind.
-o-
QM Note: Due to the enormity of this plan (and I use the term advisedly), this update is being split in two, with @eaglejarl writing the rest.
QM Note 2: This also means XP and voting will be addressed in @eaglejarl's half.
Kagome fought against the bonds, desperately peering through the darkness. Last thing he remembered, he'd been in the wilderness, securing an escape route while Hazō and the others carried out the mission. He'd been aligning a Force Wall when… when… no, his memory was a blank.
"Welcome, Kagome Yū."
Kagome flinched at his full name. "Who are you? How do you know who I am?"
"Welcome… to the hidden fortress of Akatsuki."
"Akatsuki?!" Kagome's flailing redoubled. "You'll never take me alive, you evil bastards!"
"Uh," the voice hesitated. "We kinda already have?"
The speaker lit a lamp, showing Kagome her face. It was narrow, with a blond ponytail and one visible blue eye. She'd have been pretty if it wasn't for the creepy mechanical thing over the other one. And her being a twisted fiend about to torture him to death.
The ropes weren't giving an inch, and they'd done something to him, because he could barely feel his chakra. Kagome was going to have to talk his way out of this.
He was doomed.
What would Inoue do? Make them give away information. Look for openings. Fortunately, he knew the hidden movers and shakers of the world better than anyone, and instantly drew the obvious conclusion.
"You must be Akatsuki's master telepath, the one who can steal people's minds and bend them to their will just by looking them in the eye."
"Uh, no, that's Itachi. Sort of."
"Then you're the one who's building an army of chakra-resistant golems to rampage across the continent."
"That bastard Sasori! 'I am not working on anything your feeble human brain can comprehend', my ass! But no, still not me."
"Hmm…" Kagome racked his brain. "Oh, you're the shapeshifter, the one who can use the Transformation Technique to turn into any chakra beast and use its powers."
"Uh. We don't actually have one of those. Unless Kisame's been holding out on me. He would, the fish-faced git."
The woman grimaced. "I feel like we're getting off track. Kagome Yū, we've brought you here because we want you to become one of us. Our great plan needs a sealmaster, a gifted and careful sealmaster. We've done the research—well, Itachi has, anyway—and you fit the bill perfectly."
"Betray my team?" Kagome roared. "Never!"
"Oh, you don't need to worry about that lot," the woman laughed. "Their half-assed efforts to make the world a better place are doing a great job of drawing attention away from our preparations to do the same. The headaches they've been giving Jiraiya alone are worth keeping them alive for. No, once you've got a bit of seniority under your belt, our Leader will probably let you fold them into Akatsuki as your personal minions." She paused. "You know, I have seniority. How come I don't get minions? Itachi gets ravens, Sasori gets puppets, Kisame gets sharks, the Leader gets Konan—"
She glanced around warily. "I, uh, didn't say that last part."
"You can't buy my loyalty, Akatsuki scum. I'll join the likes of you over my dead body!"
"That is an option," the woman agreed.
"But it won't do us much good. Purely mental skills don't carry over, and turns out being able to control gravity and eat people's souls doesn't mean you can scribe a seal worth a damn.
"You've got us all wrong, though. It's a rule of the Society that all members must serve Akatsuki of their own will. We can't exactly let you go, but the Leader's sure that if you stick around long enough, you'll come to see things our way. And since it's my turn to recruit, I'll be in charge of you until you do."
Kagome barked out a laugh. "You're getting nothing out of me. Not as long as my heart is my own."
"I'll make a note to ask Kakuzu about transplants," the woman said. "Sleep tight for now."
There was a blur of motion, a flash of pain, and then the darkness covered everything.
-o-
"'morning, Kagome. How're you finding the guest quarters?"
Deidara of Akatsuki, supposedly a man after all, handed Kagome a breakfast tray. The food would be filled with mind control drugs, but Kagome had his own ideas on what to do about that.
"Lousy," he sneered. "I've seen better security in civilian nurseries."
"Oh, really?" Deidara raised an eyebrow. "And yet I notice you're still here. Checked out the front door yet? Solid chakra-forged steel. My C4 couldn't make a dent in it."
Kagome grunted. "I've seen worse. So why'd you leave me untied? Trying to lull me into a false sense of security, you treacherous stinkers?"
"I keep telling you, that's not how we do things," Deidara said. "If we wanted you dead, we'd cut your throat and get on with the rest of the day. Or if we didn't want to get our own hands dirty, we'd give you a kunai and ask Hidan to proselytise at you.
"You've got the wrong idea about Akatsuki, Kagome. All we want is to make a better world. We want a world where nobody has to be afraid of anyone or anything, where you don't need traps or combat seals. And where art can flourish without worthless little plebs constantly standing in the way of creativity."
"Oh, sure," Kagome drawled. "Akatsuki wants to make a better world. Next you'll be telling me there's no such thing as scorch squads, and Leaf's never had a Tailed Beast Breeding Programme."
"A what?!
Excuse me, I need to talk to the Leader."
Deidara swept out of the room, leaving Kagome alone with his breakfast.
-o-
Deidara stared at the sizeable dent in the wall next to the armoured front door, and a stunned Kagome lying in a crumpled heap on the floor a few metres away.
"What happened?!"
"Stupid idiot somehow managed to make chakra ink from his cranberry juice, and a brush from a fork and his own hair." Sasori gravelled. "Turned a napkin into an exploding seal. He'd have succeeded if I didn't make my walls to last."
Deidara facepalmed. "That's it. He's eating in the common kitchen with the rest of us."
-o-
Deidara spun around at the sound of yet another explosion.
"Hey, nice reverb on that one—I mean, shit, what has he done now?!"
"Used the whetstone to sharpen a kebab skewer into a stylus, and etched a seal bomb into a structural weak point," Kisame grumbled as he staggered into view. The edges of his robes were still smouldering. "It's your good luck I was around the corner enjoying my snack box. You've got to keep a better eye on him, Deidara."
Deidara groaned. "New rule. Kagome's only allowed in the kitchen when there's somebody there to watch him. Also, for the last time, Kisame, the aquarium is a decorative feature and it belongs to everyone."
-o-
"I saw your work downstairs," Deidara commented casually. "Over-torqueing the mechanisms in the exercise machine to make it blast its weights into the load-bearing pillar was sweet. Sasori is so pissed right now…"
Kagome shrugged. "It's a trap. I know traps. Didn't expect the Lightning-electrified fence outside, though.
"You've got some nice tech," he said after a reluctant pause.
"I know, right?" Deidara grinned. "You join us, you can have the blueprints. Hell, maybe we can put you in charge of security. Unlimited budget, no pesky ethical restrictions… don't you wonder what you could craft under those conditions?"
"Unlimited budget… no ethical restrictions…" Kagome echoed distantly. "I could finally protect them properly…"
His eyes snapped back onto Deidara's. "No! You think old Kagome is that easy to seduce? A few promises here and there, and I'm diving headfirst into the dark side? Well, you've got another thing coming, you effeminate scumbag!"
"Effeminate?" Deidara's voice rose an outraged octave. "Effeminate?! I'll have you know that where I come from, a finely-groomed ponytail is a mark of refinement and sensitivity for either gender, you… you uncouth, mop-headed mudcrawler!"
Deidara strode out, slamming the door behind him.
Kagome looked blankly after him. "There was no need to be rude."
-o-
"Right, you uncultured ignoramus, I'm going to show you what real hair styling looks like!" Deidara stormed into Kagome's room, eye blazing and haircare kit brandished like a katana.
The sheets on the bed were tied into a makeshift rope—Kagome must have done it before discovering that the window was chakra-reinforced crystal.
The legs showed signs of tampering, but of course the wood had proven too strong.
The door hinges were oiled to be silent with… was that hair grease? Deidara mentally moved his styling plans up a notch in priority.
But of Kagome himself there was no sign.
"Oh. Oh, shit. Where is he?"
Deidara sprinted down the stairs, screeching to a sudden halt in the kitchen doorway so as not to crash into Itachi.
Itachi gave him a puzzled look. "Deidara? You've returned already? I only let you out a minute ago."
Balls.
Deidara ran for the door, reaching into his clay pouch as he went.
-o-
"How the hell did you pull this off?" Deidara demanded, hefting a tied-up Kagome onto the back of the C2 dragon. "We've taken away all your gear, we've suppressed your ninjutsu, you don't know how to do genjutsu, and even if you did, Itachi's got his bullshit immunity. How did someone like you outsmart Uchiha freaking Itachi?!"
"Hmph," Kagome snorted. "Remember those blackout curtains I asked for a few days ago because it was too bright to sleep?"
"Yeah?"
"Wrapped those into a robe, brewed up some food colouring for the cloud patterns, and tied a load of pasta together as a wig. Then I told him I was you and I needed help opening the front door because I'd chipped a fingernail."
"What."
"Serves you right for making fun of Itachi's bad eyesight where I could hear you."
"No, not that," Deidara scowled. "Pasta. You thought you could replicate my hair with pasta. Dammit, Kagome."
He flicked his hand with more force than was necessary, and the C2 took off.
After a few seconds, Kagome gasped.
"Pretty impressive, huh? Join us, and you can see a view like this any—"
"Shut up, Deidara."
The two watched in silence as the world scrolled beneath them.
-o-
After a week of concerted pleading (and reminders that if he was out to murder Kagome, he'd have done it after the Exploding Oven Incident), Deidara stood triumphantly over the man with a pair of scissors and some of the finest product in his collection, trying to turn his oily thornbush of a hairstyle into something remotely acceptable. It made Deidara's aesthetic senses scream, how all the potential of those sharp eyes and that fair skin was being eclipsed by hair that made him look like he'd been electrocuted to death.
Speaking of which…
"You know," Deidara said, "you never did explain what you did about the fence."
"Hmph. Trying to weasel my techniques out of me so you can set me up to fail next time? You wish. Old Kagome's going to beat you again and again, and I only need to escape once."
"No," Deidara said, massaging Kagome's scalp, "I was just curious. Obviously Sasori isn't going to replace the fence now he knows it's less than perfect."
"You idjits gave me a chakra current to work with," Kagome said bitingly.
"Blood and grass. Ugh. Worst seal I've ever made. I don't even know what it would have done if it'd worked.
"But it didn't need to work. It only needed to react to Lightning chakra. Throw a rock, fence goes zap, seal thinks it's a failed infusion, and boom! Undefined behaviour."
"You made a C7-tier explosion with improvised inert materials," Deidara said in a mesmerised voice. "That is the most beautiful thing I've heard in years."
"Yeah, well," Kagome muttered uncomfortably. "Explosions are what I do. I'm not going to forget my trade just because some Akatsuki stinkers ply me with great food and let me sleep on a real mattress."
"Mmm," Deidara reached for a finer pair of scissors. "Now hold still. You'll love the new look I'm putting together for you."
Kagome winced. "Why the hell did I let you badger me into this? The kids are going to have a field day when I finally pull off my jailbreak."
"Hush. You're the one who spent a decade and a half on the run, and never once thought of getting a makeover to disguise yourself."
Kagome winced again, but didn't argue the point.
-o-
"Nonono," Deidara wagged a finger, "I know where you're coming from, but you've got to go with miniature bombs for granite armour. This size tops." He reached into his clay pouch and pulled out a marble-sized dollop of clay.
"Are you crazy? Who cares about 'imperfections in the structure'? You fragment it too much, and before you know it you've got shards of rock zooming at you while the enemy's still behind cover. And what are those things, anyway?"
"These?" Deidara smirked. "Special clay with an Earth Element base. Once I infuse it with my Bloodline Limit, it makes for the most devastating bombs in human history. Even your sealing can't hold a candle to them."
"Oh, yeah? And how do you put a conditional release on your clay? Or give it a space-time-warping delivery system? Or maybe it can keep you untouched while everything in a one-mile radius gets incinerated, like a good seal can?"
Deidara's face fell, but only for a second.
"Ah, but my clay can be primed in the blink of an eye. How long's it take you to draw a seal? What if you don't have what you need on you, or you don't know the seal for this exact situation? What if you get it wrong? I heard all about sealcrafter lifespans back in Hidden Rock—
"Shit," he said. "That came out wrong. I didn't mean… I'm not saying… shit."
Kagome shrugged. "It is how it is. I'll fight to survive till my very last breath, but in the end, a sealcrafter goes out with a bang. Maybe it's better to have it end on your own terms, watching your enemies reduced to ash while your team gets to safety, instead of lying in bed waiting helplessly for the Reaper to take his due."
Deidara gave a wry smile. "I'm with you there all the way. Life is transient. Everything is transient. Rather than trying to hold onto stuff while it slips through your fingers anyway, you give it meaning by turning it into art. The full beauty of a thing can only be felt as you watch it disappear forever."
Kagome gave him a funny look. "That doesn't sound like art to me. I'm no expert, but real art is supposed to be something you make. You put yourself into it, and then other people can look at that piece of self and see things—things you'd never be able to put into words. That's what I think of when I carve wood.
"Sure, as a professional I take pride in my demolitions. Every time I see something blow up just right, it warms the cockles of my heart. But only a psycho explodes things for fun instead of because they're a threat."
"A psycho?" Deidara hissed. "A psycho? I thought you of all people would understand, Kagome. I thought you'd be able to appreciate m—my art. But no, you're just another pleb!" He spat the word out.
"What'd you call me?!" Kagome sprang up to face him. "You kidnap me, you take all my stuff, you force me to listen to your crap, you cut my hair, and then you look me in the eye and call me names?! Well, fuck you, Deidara! You're just as up your own ass as the rest of these stinkers! Get out!"
"Fine! Akatsuki doesn't need an ignorant mudcrawler like you anyway!" Deidara nearly broke into a run as he left the room.
-o-
"Kagome Yū," the redheaded man addressed him in a deep, resonant voice. They were the only people in the room except for a blue-headed woman who kept to the shadows behind the throne, as if ready to defend the man from assassination.
"I am the leader of Akatsuki. You may call me Pain. This is Konan, my second-in-command. I have summoned you here because—"
"What's wrong with your face?"
"What?"
"You've got all that black shrapnel stuck in it. I'd have thought with all these S-rankers, somebody would have the med-nin skills to fix that for you."
"I, uh… That is not relevant to the matter at hand," Pain rallied. "Kagome, no one has ever come as close to escaping this fortress as you. In addition, Deidara begs to be reassigned from your case. You are truly a formidable man to have broken his will so swiftly.
"Thus, the time for you to make your choice approaches. Will you join Akatsuki, and aid us in saving the world?"
"Not this one too," Kagome complained under his breath. "Fifteen years of peace and quiet, and then suddenly I've got every wannabe visionary and their border collie beating down my door."
"What," Konan growled, "did you just insinuate about me, you little—"
"Ahem," Pain said firmly.
"Allow me to explain. Understand, Kagome, that humanity stands on the verge of annihilation. With every generation, our weapons of war grow more powerful, while the hatred that binds the shinobi only deepens. Even now, while the Elemental Nations enjoy an outward peace, the world races towards a self-inflicted end. Instead of love, or hope, or even something as wondrous yet simple as curiosity, in the shinobi world there is no power greater than pain. In our struggle to escape it, we give birth to it again and again, stronger every time, a democratically chosen overlord that cannot be cast down until all of mankind makes the same right choice at the same time.
"I cannot yet tell you our plan, Kagome. Not until you are truly one of us. But I can tell you this. The time for words is over. Perhaps it was never here. We walked down this path once, we of Akatsuki. We gave it all that we were. But diplomacy cannot banish pain from a single country, much less the world. And if pain must rule, then let its power be used to bring about its own undoing."
Pain cast his gaze over Kagome, waiting solemnly.
"I'll be honest with you, I have no idea what you just said," Kagome admitted. "All I got out of it is that you've got a big vocabulary, you have a weird thing about pain, and you think you need to finish brainwashing me before I'm going to like your plan. No offence, but I know a thirteen-year-old kid who's better at this kind of speech than you."
Pain and Konan exchanged glances.
"Konan," Pain said uneasily, "escort him back to his quarters. He will see our wisdom in time."
-o-
Kagome was lounging on his bed pondering his next escape plan when there came a sheepish knock on the door.
"Who is it?"
"It's me, Deidara."
"So, uh, I may have overreacted last night," Deidara came in with his fingers interlaced in front of him like a child confessing to stealing from the cookie jar. "Just because you don't get my art doesn't mean you're one of those critics. And I don't get yours either, but that doesn't mean we have to be at each other's throats about it."
Kagome swung his legs round into a sitting position. "I guess I let my temper get the better of me too. I know you're plotting against me behind my back, but at least you've been decent about it." Deidara had even kept his word about not trying to kill him, and Kagome had a feeling that when the time came, it would be an honourable attempt, with industrial doses of explosives to the face instead of underhanded tricks like poison or genjutsu.
"So are we cool?" Deidara asked tentatively.
"…Yeah."
Deidara sat down next to Kagome on the bed. The proximity left Kagome ill at ease, but less so than he had expected. Deidara was always up-front about his evil schemes to corrupt Kagome, and always direct in his actions, and it was oddly relaxing compared to the strange and unpredictable behaviour he was used to from the people around him.
"I've been thinking," Deidara began. "When you join, do you want to be my partner? I mean, I know it's sudden, but I think you and I could get on, and at least I can talk to you, instead of Sasori always driving me up the wall, and I'd be happy to show you the ropes…"
"Hmph," Kagome said with a touch of amusement. "You're still acting like I want to join your batshit crazy organization."
"Do you?"
Kagome tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. It should have been an easier question than it was, and he wasn't sure why. "I admit I don't hate you stinkers as much as I thought I would, but I still have somewhere I belong, and it's not here.
"No hard feelings," he added on seeing Deidara's expression.
Deidara's fists tightened around the bedsheets next to him. Kagome wondered if he was about to try to yank them away to put Kagome off balance for a coup de grace, but then decided it was too impractical.
"What if we brought the rest of your team in? They've got bloodlines, and they're kids full of potential. Except the woman, but the Leader likes the cut of her jib anyway. If you could all be together… would you stay with us?"
But it wasn't enough. Kagome had had plenty of time to think—the one upside to being a prisoner—and he'd come to his own conclusions. "I won't lie, you people have great resources. But Hazō's full of plans for getting hold of those. What have you got here that we can't find somewhere else?"
Deidara leaned towards him. "Me."
And then he kissed him.
After a second's paralysis, Kagome shoved him back, then leapt away so violently his spine slammed against the wall.
"I'm sorry!" Deidara cried. "I… I didn't mean…"
Kagome huddled in the corner. It was hard to breathe, hard to think. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. Something wasn't wrong, and needed to be. He was hyperventilating.
Gradually, he started breathing normally again. His brain took longer to reset. Why would Deidara kiss him? Was this the murder attempt he'd been waiting for all along? No, too bizarre for Deidara. And Kagome wasn't dying. It was a real kiss.
He didn't know what to do. Kissing belonged to another world, not Kagome's world. It was something he could see but not touch. Maybe if he'd met this vibrant, quick-witted youth decades ago, before it was too late. Maybe if Ayako…
But that wasn't the path his life had taken. The man he was now, Kagome Yū, was too broken to kiss.
"Deidara," he said. "I can't do this."
"I'm sorry," Deidara repeated.
"Not your fault." Step by step, Kagome moved out of the corner. "But what you want, I can't give you. I can't let someone that close. Not even if I want to."
"I'm sorry," Deidara said one last time. "I'll go."
Kagome didn't stop him.
-o-
Deidara had slept badly. He'd probably screwed things up for good with the first man he'd been able to talk to properly since he joined this bunch of weirdos. No, that wasn't fair to Kagome. Kagome wasn't just handy for conversation. He was indomitable, he had strong principles without being preachy, he was a genius of destruction, and he had art in his soul even if he sucked at expressing it. The older man even had the classic combination of gaunt, pale looks and windswept black hair, and Deidara had so looked forward to bringing out their full potential. Instead, his impulsiveness and impatience had ruined everything as they always did.
"Deidara."
Deidara looked up from his breakfast to see that Kagome had taken a seat across from him. His arms were crossed in front of him defensively, and he kept shifting in his seat, but even so, he was here.
"'morning, Kagome," Deidara mumbled.
"Uh," Kagome said awkwardly. "I was wondering… maybe you and I could go out and you could show me those special bombs of yours? I never did get to see what they could do."
Deidara sat up and smiled. It was an olive branch, nothing more, but it was enough.
"I'd love to."
-o-
"And this one's my C6," Deidara boasted. "It's for cracking underground bunkers." He performed a chakra-enhanced throw, counted to three, then grinned as Kagome struggled to keep his footing against the shockwave.
Deidara glanced at Kagome's face, seeking approval, maybe even awe, but what he found was an intimidating tension.
"Deidara, about last night…"
Kagome stepped up close. Deidara's eyes widened.
"I can't think of how to say… oh, the hell with it."
He grabbed Deidara. The kiss was clumsy, as if coming from a beginner, but made up for it with its sudden passionate ferocity. Deidara was dazed when it ended.
Very dazed. He twitched as the electricity ran through his body, and collapsed bonelessly to the ground.
How?! They'd made sure Kagome couldn't use ninjutsu…
Kagome looked down at him with a gentle expression that looked strange on the powerful, dangerous man.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But if I stayed any longer, I would've started something I couldn't stop. And even if I decided to join Akatsuki, Hazō and the others never would.
"In the end… my team will always come first."
-o-
The instant Deidara could make himself stand up, he reached immediately into his clay pouch. Kagome couldn't have gone far, not as the C2 dragon flies. There was still time…
But the clay wouldn't obey. No matter how he tried to catalyse it, he might as well have been handling common mud. Deidara felt urgently around the inside of his pouch, trying to figure out what was wrong. His hands closed on a foreign object.
It was Sasori's Lightning generator seal from the electric fence, which Kagome had slipped in and activated while they were kissing. Lightning which disabled Earth.
A symphony of perfect explosions, Kagome's true farewell, resounded from within the Akatsuki fortress. Deidara felt tears streaming down his cheeks.
The full beauty of a thing can only be felt as you watch it disappear forever.
"Uncle Joutarou!" the little boy shrieked in delight as he pelted down the gravel path away from the porch.
"A-haaa! How's my big strong ninja boy!" Joutarou responded, sweeping his nephew up into an overhead arc that was just fast enough to scare him a little bit.
"Eeeeeeek!"
"Jou-jou, be nice to the poor boy. Inoki, go set a place for your uncle," a dainty woman emerging from the house called softly.
"Yes momma!" the small redhead said, scampering off.
"Are you never going to give up on that nickname?" Joutarou groused as he swept his little sister up into a hug not entirely unlike the one he had just held her son in.
"Stop calling the mighty Joutarou the jounin Jou-jou? Never," she replied hugging him fiercely and stepping back. "It's good to see you. We had started to worry you'd gotten called away on short notice and had to cancel without telling us. Again."
"I have gotten called away on short notice, actually, but my route and the missions schedule lined up well enough that I can spare dinner."
"Well, good. I know Katsu has a bottle of sake he's been saving for the next time the two of you got to play shogi."
"Oh, I don't know if I'll be able to stay that long afterwards...."
"He says it's very good sake."
"Ha! I can't very well say no to good sake from your generous husband! You're a shrew of a woman, Mai. How about this, I'll come straight here after this mission -- it's just escorting some civilians -- and then I'll beat Katsu at all the shogi he can handle."
"Good! You need to spend more time here in any case, though. Inoki's been asking for more of your heroic shinobi bedtime stories."
-o-
"Momma, what's that? Is it a present from Uncle? Is it for me?" Inoki asked excitedly, dancing around Mai's legs after the black-cloaked man had disappeared down the path away from the porch.
Mai stood silently, a long box under one arm, hand over her mouth, holding a piece of paper. She sank to her knees and hugged her boy tightly.
"Momma? Momma why are you crying?"
She handed him the box -- it was his now, after all -- and read for him from the now tear-stained page:
"'My sword is to go to my nephew Inoki. I know you will go on to do great things with it, you brave boy. Take care of your momma for me now that I'm gone.'"
Hamasaki Mai wept for her brother.
Kurosawa Hana awoke with a start. She sat up slowly, the side of of her face sticking to the bar from the dried sake, and looked around blearily. Given how empty Kurohige's bar was, Ken had been kind enough to let her sleep past closing time -- again -- and Suki hadn't come to get her, so it wasn't morning yet. More than anything she wanted to put her head back down and go back to dreaming -- it had been a nice one, about Hazou like all of them were now, all grown up, coming back to Mist with a beautiful, strong woman under one arm and a son of his own under the other, tall and strong and handsome and funny exactly like his Poppa had been.
Feeling herself start crying again, she grabbed the bottle next to her, only to find it empty.
She swatted it across the room, shattering it, as much in frustration towards the lack of liquor as in disgust for herself. She made a sorry sight, and she knew it. Nine months since Hazou's death, and she hadn't made the first stride towards dealing with it. Instead, she'd sunk into a fog of hopelessness and helplessness that kept her from picking up all but the most basic missions and dependent on the bottle for solace. Three months ago she'd had to sell the house -- Shinji's house! -- to cover the bills, and only had a place to live now because her old teammate Suki was entirely too kind a person to have survived being a shinobi as long as she had.
Shame and guilt welled up in her chest, like her heart was being twisted around inside her by a knife, and she collapsed on the bar to add her tears to the dried sake.
-o-
Twelve hours and a mumbled explanation to Suki later, Hana was back. The lunchtime regulars had just started to come in, and she was able to lose herself in the underlying currents of unease and loss the veterans carried around with them. Nowadays, being around others who were miserable was the only time she didn't feel alone, and she relished the small comfort.
"--with a big group of our traitors who caused a shitstorm in the Hot Springs DMZ. He left this morning."
The words cut through the fog that had been her constant companion for months. Mist defectors, in a large group? What if... no, that was ridiculous, all of the other traitors from the Death Swamp had sworn Hazou's team had died. Preemptive suicide to avoid capture by Zabuza, or going up against chakra monsters too big for them, but everyone who'd been interrogated agreed they hadn't been seen for a week ahead of the joint Water/Fire task force's assault.
But something in her heart insisted she ask. There weren't any other large groups that had split from the Mist power structure in recent memory, so unless all the other solo operatives had managed to coordinate into a big group... and nobody had actually seen a body....
Hana sprang up unsteadily and practically ran over to the older woman who had spoken, stumbling along the way. What was her name? Mari? Maya? No, Mayu, that was it. Worked at the missions office. Baked ginger snaps for all the new chuunin every year. "Mayu. Mayu, who are you talking about?"
"Kami, Hana is that you? You look terrib--"
"Who are you talking about?", Hana insisted, throwing courtesy to the wind.
Gently, Mayu reached out and guided the younger woman to a chair next to her. "Captain Zabuza," she answered calmly. "He was dispatched earlier today. Something about a report of several Mist traitors in Hot Springs, who apparently caused a huge incident."
"How we know they were ours?"
"One of them had a Wakahisa barrel. Supposedly. Yagura of course immediately boiled over and ordered the Captain to investigate."
Hana nodded numbly. There had been a Wakahisa along on Haozu's mission, she was pretty sure. Maybe... just maybe....
"Hana... oh, Hana, I know what you're thinking, dear, but please don't get your hopes up. It probably isn't H-- him, and if it was, he'd probably be better off at peace already than with Zabuza after him. Please, for your own health, Hana, you need to start letting go. Your son wouldn't want this for you, and neither would your husband."
Hana nodded absently and headed back to Suki's.
-o-
The ANBU officers knocking on her door was the happiest thing that had happened to Hana in nearly a year, an irony which wasn't lost on her. She would have gone with them willingly anyway -- you couldn't exactly say no to the Interrogation department -- but from what little of their body language she could read they seemed almost put off by her enthusiasm.
Back to the dark room with the blinding light in her face, the same tattooed hand scraping and tapping the desk in front of her. The same questions as last time, to which she gave the same answers, immediately, hoping to get through to the part where they might tell her something, anything at all, about her Hazou.
"And when did your son begin to contact you after his defection?" the soft voice that didn't match the craggy, tapping hand was asking.
"Huh, ah, buh?" Hana answered, stumbling in her previously automatic responses. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"When. Did your son. Contact you?" the interrogator asked as if Hana was a moron, their voice growing less amicable with every word.
"I haven't heard from my son since he left with the Noodle task force," she answered honestly. "I didn't even think he was alive until today!"
"I see. And what makes you think he's alive?" The coldness of the voice cut to Hana's bones. Had this all been some cruel psychological ploy, to judge how she would respond to the news before telling her?
"I... heard Captain Zabuza had been sent after a whole group of traitors. I couldn't think of anyone that could refer to except the group Hazou was with. And then your agents knocked on my door again, after all this time."
A sigh from across the table. Hana winced internally, hoping she hadn't managed to get Mayu in trouble. "The classified information you appear to have obtained" -- the threat there was clear -- "is accurate. We received reports last night of a group whose composition largely matched several members of the Swamp of Death defectors whose deaths were never firmly established."
The sound of a piece of paper being pulled from an envelope. "'Young female ranged weapons figter. Short, stout male Water Whip jutsu user with a barrel on his back. Red-haired genjutsu user, young twenties woman. Girl and boy using chunin-level taijutsu, boy had an Earth affinity.' These match, approximately, Mori Keiko, Wakahisa Noburi, Inoue Mari, an unknown party member... and your son."
Hana was silent, hardly daring to breathe. Chunin level? At thirteen? That was fairly extraordinary, even for an Iron Nerve wielder. To have survived to this point even more so. At some level she couldn't help but to feel vindication about her choice of husband, her skills as a mother, to have brought up a boy like Hazou.
"The group ended up lighting several square kilometers of Fire on fire as a diversionary tactic," the interrogator continued, with a smirk in their voice at the irony, "and escaped. Your son and his teammates have proven remarkably skilled and resourceful, Kurosawa. Their rapid growth speaks volumes about their potential, to say nothing of being wielders of bloodlines from well-respected families, and interrogations of other other members of the traitor force unanimously agree they were essentially forced at kunai-point to defect along with their superior officers. Under the circumstances, I believe the Mizukage is much more likely than average to be forgiving."
The voice in the darkness almost managed to sound concerned and empathetic. Hana didn't believe it for a single fucking second.
"Before we finish up here, I would remind you that it is your duty as a jounin of Mist that if your son ever does make contact with you, you are to do everything in your power to get him and his team to return voluntarily for the best chance of being granted leniency -- a chance that goes down as time goes on -- and to report it to the ANBU office immediately."
Ah, there it was. The cold-blooded threat Hana had been expecting. She nodded silently, and then rose slowly to leave, mind churning like the the rapids by the clan's summer home on the side of Mount Shiori.
-o-
Suki looked up from making dinner as Hana shut the door behind her. She almost asked what had happened, but seemed to think better of it as Hana walked over to the bottle she had left on the low table earlier that day.
Hana took a kind of fierce pleasure in Suki's shocked expression when she grabbed the half-full bottle, walked over to the sink, and poured it down the drain.
"Save some for me?" Hana asked, grabbing her lightly dust-covered rucksack of gear and nodding to the noodles Suki was frying up. "I'm going to the dojo, I'll be back later." She closed the door on Suki's mute nodding.
As Hana walked down the stairs and took off jogging down the streets, she felt something settle at the base of her spine that she hadn't felt for all those long months, something that made her stand up straighter. Resolve.
If Hazou's still out there fighting to survive, how can I do anything less? And if he did contact her... well, she was going to be ready.
@Velorien will be continuing on with the second half of "Trees Bearing Fruit" on Thursday, December 15.
Good job getting through one full year of being Marked for Death, everyone! I award all thread participants 366 XP (because of the leap year). I would encourage you to invest in Stealth and TacMov, especially if you expect to be crossing borders in the near future.
This time, Hazō did the smart thing and offered Akane the flowers first.
"Are these… for me?" Akane reached for them hesitantly. "Hazō-sensei, you shouldn't have…"
"Of course they're for you," Hazō said, feeling warm inside at the expression of wonder on her face. "Who else could flame-of-the-forest suit so well? They're a symbol of youth, fire and passion… and rebirth as well."
Akane gave him a misty-eyed smile. "That's… Hazō-sensei, that is the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me. Why are you so nice to me? Even after I…"
"Akane," Hazō cut her off, "you did nothing wrong. It was an accident that doesn't reflect on your abilities in any way."
He paused. No. He wasn't going to go down this track again. Low-stress conversation, that was what he was supposed to be here for.
"Leaf has been very interesting," he said in a completely natural and unforced change of subject. "It's huge. Certainly bigger than Mist, at least in terms of non-restricted areas. And it's so cosmopolitan. It feels like you have everything here, and everyone. I've seen travellers of ethnicities I don't even know the names for, and restaurants with cuisines I have no idea how to pronounce. To be honest, I'm a bit jealous. But I can see how such an impressive village could raise someone as awesome as you."
"Hazō-sensei," Akane's face briefly lit up with an amused smile, "are you flirting with me?"
Hazō froze. "I, uh… I wasn't trying to—I mean, it's not that I—uh, that is…"
"I was only joking, Hazō-sensei," Akane said softly. "Of course you weren't flirting with me."
Hazō had a distinct feeling he'd done something wrong, but he had no idea what.
"Nonono. Akane… I… I didn't mean I'd never flirt with you—not that I'm making a promise to flirt with you or anything, but I'm not saying I'm ruling it out as a possibility either—oh, but I'm not trying to toy with your feelings by being ambiguous, uh, not to imply that you have any sort of feelings for me to toy with—wait, that makes you sound like an inanimate object, I don't mean that at all..."
"Deep breaths, Hazō-sensei, deep breaths," Akane said with a completely unreadable expression.
Hazō obeyed.
"OK," he said. "Clear Communication Technique, activate.
"Akane, I don't really understand what flirting is, so I don't think I can flirt with anybody deliberately, including you. I also don't fully understand the implications of flirting with somebody, so I wouldn't try to flirt with you in case it hurt your feelings or changed the relationship between us in some undesirable way. You are very important to me, and I don't ever want to hurt you by acting carelessly."
Akane gave him a piercing look, as if trying to see through his eyes and into his very soul.
"You know, I thought the Clear Communication Technique was supposed to make things less complicated."
"Sorry?" Hazō blinked.
"Never mind," Akane sighed. "It doesn't matter. I'm sorry I ruined the mood."
"Akane, no, I—"
"I'm sorry, Hazō-sensei. I think I need to go back to sleep now."
Low-stress conversation. At this rate, he'd need to ask Noburi for tips.
-o-
"And that's without even touching on parfaits, macaroons, cupcakes and shortbread!" Akimichi exclaimed, gesticulating as if to trace the forms of the desserts in the air.
"Kurosawa wanted you to tell him your favourite books," Yamanaka said acidically.
"I just did! Those are a few of my top volumes from the Akimichi Lore line of cookbooks. They're very beginner-friendly, and I can vouch for how delicious they are myself."
Yamanaka cast a 'please stop the world from descending any further into insanity' look at Nara.
"How troublesome," Nara muttered. "If you must know, I am fond of Yumehara's Classical History of the Elemental Nations, volumes I, II and IV. Skip volume III—his epistemology takes a nosedive."
"Thank you," Hazō said. "I'll be sure to check it out if I have the opportunity."
Nara stopped and gave him a deer-in-the-lamplight look. "You will? You're accepting a reading recommendation?"
"Of course I am," Hazō said, frowning. "Why wouldn't I?
"What about you, Yamanaka?"
"Anything by Konaya and Tamamono. If you're a beginner, start with something light like Nine Tales of the Kitsune, or The Harem Technique if you're a little more adventurous. My personal favourite is Snake Oil: The Untold Story of the Leaf Three."
"Snake Oil is factually incorrect," Inoue-sensei told her. "On many counts."
Yamanaka looked at her blankly. "How would you—oh. Ohh."
Inoue-sensei grinned.
Hazō opened his mouth to ask what they were talking about—
"Onwards, Lee!"
"Yes, Gai-sensei! If I don't cross the finish line first, I will do one hundred press-ups without using my arms!"
"That's the spirit, Lee!"
"Gai-sensei!"
"Lee!"
"Gai-sensei!"
A pair of men in all-too-familiar green spandex crossed the road in front of them, walking on their hands. After a second's disorientation, Hazō realised this was his chance.
"Excuse me!"
"What is it, my friend?" the older one asked.
"Could I speak with you in private for a second?"
-o-
"I have a friend who's in the Leaf General Hospital after being severely injured on a mission," Hazō explained, "and I was hoping you could help cheer her up. She's a great believer in the Spirit of Youth, you see."
Gai and Lee exchanged glances.
"How is it that a foreign ninja like you knows of the Spirit of Youth?" Gai asked with a faint frown.
"Um," Hazō said. How to handle this? Well, if these people were Akane's original inspiration…
"The Spirit of Youth transcends the boundaries of nations! A better question would be: why doesn't everyone know of the Spirit of Youth?"
Gai nodded sagely. "Indeed. Where did you say you were from again?"
"My mission here is classified," Hazō explained. "You should talk to Captain Sarutobi, since he'll know your clearance level better than me. My friend's name is Ishihara Akane. Will you help her for me?"
"Of course," Lee said without hesitation. "We shall help restore her to the Springtime of Youth no matter what it takes!"
"Indeed. Onwards, Lee!"
"Gai-sensei!"
"Lee!"
"Gai-sensei!"
That was Akane's crush? Hazō was feeling a little dizzy just from being in the same room as him.
-o-
"It doesn't do any good to merely dispel every hour on the dot," Nara argued patiently. "Your enemy will notice the pattern and time their genjutsu to follow immediately. Stagger it by randomly adding or subtracting five to fifteen minutes and you get equivalent coverage without the predictability."
"But if you're in a high-stress environment, it's easy to forget a more complicated pattern, which would leave you vulnerable. The advantage of the hourly dispel is that it can quickly be made into an ingrained routine." Hazō reached for his chopsticks. "You agree, don't you, Kagome-sensei?"
"Actually, I'm with the Nara kid," Kagome-sensei said. "Never let the stinkers figure out what you're thinking. I thought I'd trained you better than this."
Hazō felt a flush of shame. "I've been meaning to ask," he smoothly switched topics, "didn't you guys host the Chūnin Exams not that long ago? What were they like?"
"I think the technical term is 'crazyawesome'," Yamanaka said. "Ninja from every corner of the world, all putting aside their differences and coming together in the spirit of beating the crap out of each other. Enough weirdos and wacky techniques to fill up a hundred Bingo Books. It was enough to make Shikamaru get serious."
"Don't exaggerate," Nara looked down into his bowl. "It was their own poor strategy that cancelled out their three-on-one advantage."
"Right… So is it true that the Fourth Hokage's son fought the Kazekage's son in the finals? What was that like?"
"Nobody really knows," Akimichi confessed.
"Huh?" Noburi said. "How can you not know? Wasn't it in that huge arena over there? That thing must seat hundreds of spectators."
"Well, within about two seconds, the entire place was a sandstorm. Visibility was down to zero. There was a bunch of explosions, and lots of shouting, like there was an army at war in there. Screaming, too. After maybe thirty seconds, there was an enormous blast of wind that wiped the air clear—nearly wrecking the audience's defensive screens as it did—and there was Gaara of the Desert, floating away from the arena on this big cloud of flying sand. Naruto chased him into the woodlands, and none of us are sure what happened after that, except that they eventually came back and declared a draw."
"They left the arena?" Hazō said. "Don't you normally get disqualified for that sort of thing?"
"Only if you're fleeing because you've lost," Nara told him. "After Orochimaru vs Morino, the Hokage made a rule allowing battles to extend outside the arena where it was necessary to ensure spectators' safety and/or minimise collateral damage. Nobody was willing to argue that it applied here after they saw what was left of the arena floor."
-o-
"So what kind of training were you thinking of, Inoue?" Sarutobi asked as they entered the vast, sprawling splendour that was the Leaf Training Grounds.
"Hmm. Some sparring would be nice. I could really do with blowing off some steam. But I think it's more important for my team to get some stealth training in—these last few missions, they've been like an all-singing, all-dancing theatre troupe."
"That sounds great," a new voice came from the direction of the gates before Hazō could object. "Mind if we join in?"
Before Hazō could turn to see who it was, Kagome-sensei screamed.
"The Hyūga are here! I'll kill you all before I let you hurt my team, you stinking stinkers!" He reached feverishly for the seals he wasn't carrying.
Hazō spun around.
"Byakugan!"
A Hyūga, with the unmistakable white eyes, and bulging veins all around them, stood facing them, his hands still in the seal he must have needed to activate his Bloodline Limit.
Next to him was a girl—non-Hyūga—with a wickedly curved sword held over her head in what Hazō thought was preparation for a lunge.
And next to her was Rock Lee, also ready for combat but looking rather confused.
Behind them all, Maito Gai stood with his arms crossed, watching to see what happened.
Sarutobi sighed. "Allow me to introduce Team Gai, who as far as I know aren't here to kill you. That's Maito Gai over there, and his students," he pointed, "Hyūga Neji, Tenten and Rock Lee. They've been cleared to know about you guys, though that doesn't explain what they're doing here."
The three genin(?) relaxed. Kagome-sensei didn't.
Gai laughed. "We couldn't not come and see a foreign team driven by the Spirit of Youth, could we, Lee?"
"Of course not, Gai-sensei!"
Keiko gave Hazō a look that could have frozen a Great Fireball Technique.
"Now if you're after stealth training," Gai went on, "that's something my team could do with as well. Why don't we use a routine I developed with my rival many years ago? Asuma, you don't mind if we have first go with the new guys, do you?"
Sarutobi's shoulders slumped. "Do as you like, Gai."
"Great!" Gai smiled. "The idea is simple. Each of you get given a sticky tag. Your objective is to plant that tag on your partner's back before they can do the same to you, within, let's say, two hours. It's a training exercise that teaches you to channel the flames of Youth into a more subtle form, and it's a load of fun to boot."
-o-
Hazō eyed Rock Lee warily. Rock Lee beamed back at him.
"I knew you and I were going to be partners, Kurosawa! I can't wait to deepen our manly bonds by exhausting ourselves against each other in our Springtime of Youth!"
"Yes," Hazō agreed. "Let us go and do that thing which you just said."
-o-
"Hmm," Gai considered Hyūga. "I suppose you'll have to go with Inoue, or perhaps this Kagome fellow."
"Hold on," Noburi objected. "That's going to throw all the numbers off. Why isn't he getting paired with one of us?"
Hyūga sneered at him. "Is your brain as messed up as your insides, foreigner scum? I am a Hyūga. I know all and see all. It would take a jōnin to have even the slightest chance of challenging me at stealth. As for you, you would be better off sitting this one out altogether. What kind of pathetic excuse for a ninja goes around with no spare chakra in their body?"
So. Noburi might have known it would be like this. Hyūga was a ninja from one of the noble clans. Probably another clan heir, even. It should have been no surprise that he'd turn out to be yet another bully.
Noburi had seen hell this last year. He'd fought monsters and murderers, and learned to give life with one hand and take it with the other. He was damned if he was going to roll over for another bully ever again.
"In that case, Hyūga," he said in a casual voice, "I suppose you wouldn't mind taking me on with a little handicap?"
He turned to Gai. "How about we do this in a difficult environment? There's more to sneaking around than knowing where to go, after all. You still need to be clever and quiet. I don't suppose you have some dense forest around?
"Hmm, no. Too easy. A lake, or maybe a swamp?"
He gave a thoughtful pause. "Actually, scratch that. A swamp is probably a bit much for you, Hyūga. Why don't I let you pick where we compete?"
Hyūga's eye twitched. "Know your place, outsider. There is nowhere that I can't defeat the likes of you. I'll deal with you within minutes, and then there'll be plenty of time left to come back and challenge a jōnin."
"Well, then, sir," Noburi signalled Gai, "please show us the way." He flashed a mischievous grin at the rest of the team as they stared after him in bewilderment.
-o-
Mari, Sarutobi and Gai finished assigning partners.
Keiko was paired with Tenten. The two girls gave each other long, measuring looks, nodded to each other, and headed off into the woods without a word.
Yamanaka and Akimichi followed in a slightly different direction, chatting as they went.
Nara gazed apprehensively at Sarutobi.
"Shikamaru, you're in charge of timekeeping."
"Thank you, Asuma-sensei."
"So," Sarutobi addressed Kagome, who was gradually starting to calm down. "Want to go train with me?"
Kagome gave him an incredulous look. "Go off into the forest alone with one of you Leaf assassins? You must think I've gone mad."
Sarutobi nodded. "Yeah, I thought you'd say that. Well, I can't say I mind having a couple of hours off. Looking after you guys full-time is pretty draining."
Kagome eyed him suspiciously, clearly uneasy about the sudden agreement. Then he went for his kunai as Sarutobi pulled something out of a pocket.
"Easy, man," Sarutobi rolled his eyes. "It's just a book. I always carry one with me so I have something to do when my team are making asses of themselves and I don't have the energy to stop them. It's a habit I picked up from a friend."
"A book?" Kagome repeated with what Mari thought was a touch of longing in his voice.
"Sure. Want to borrow it while we wait?"
"It has been a very, very long time since I last read a book," Kagome reflected.
"Then again," Sarutobi said slowly, "it's only Ambushes and Counter-Ambushes, fifth edition. A bit dry for my tastes. I don't know if you'd—"
"I suppose I wouldn't mind giving that a read, if you insist," Kagome said, snatching the book out of Sarutobi's hand with the speed of a pouncing panther.
Sarutobi lit up a cigarette and took a drag, giving Mari a smug wink.
Meanwhile, Mari was more interested in Gai. After giving his flawless musculature a satisfied and none-too-subtle up-and-down look, she stepped closer.
"Looks like it's just you and me left to… pair off."
"Indeed. Will you show me the full depths of your youthful passion, Inoue Mari?"
"Catch me if you can!" she grinned as she ran off into the forest.
Timing his moment perfectly, Hazō dropped down from the tree canopy, his hand zooming towards Rock Lee's exposed back.
In a flash, Lee spun around, blocking the attack with a sweep of his forearm.
Hazō leapt backwards, out of strike range.
The two watched each other.
Finally, Rock Lee raised his hands in the air. "Truce!"
"Truce," Hazō said, not sure where this was going.
"Kurosawa, I understand why your heart isn't in all this sneaking around. To be honest, mine isn't either. You and I both know that there's only one thing we want to do to each other."
"There… is?"
Lee stepped forward unexpectedly, and clasped Hazō's hands in his.
"Lee?"
"Yes," Lee said, eyes blazing. "We must plumb the very depths of our youth with a perfect union of minds and bodies, and embrace the profound impact of each other's manhood. That is true youthfulness as Gai-sensei has taught it to me."
"Lee?" Hazō asked with increasing alarm.
"That's right," Lee proclaimed. "Let us engage in full-contact taijutsu sparring!"
-o-
Neji took careful step after careful step, watching every ripple that followed from his movement on the water to ensure that none of them were great enough to alert his prey. Wakahisa truly was incompetent, taking an exposed position that made Neji's approach almost effortless. After all his blathering about how difficult it was to sneak through a swamp, he had left Neji with a path that granted him the virtually complete silence of water walking, rather than having to work his way past tiresome tree roots and noisy animals. Foreigners.
Even now, the fool was facing the other way, scanning the treeline while leaving his back shamefully open. Only a few metres left between them, and the movement of Wakahisa's muscles showed that he had no intention of turning around. This would be as trivial a victory as he'd expected.
Two metres… One metre…
Neji stopped. Was that his chakra, moving in a narrow stream through the water?
That couldn't be good.
Neji lunged—
And Wakahisa released his water walking, plunging into the depths.
Before Neji could pull back from his suddenly overextended stance, a hand grabbed his ankle, pulling him down as well.
Neji burst into a flurry of disoriented motion, trying to regain his footing and defend himself against an attack with his water-slowed movements.
The attack never came. Instead, as Neji finally gathered himself enough to mount a counter-offense, Wakahisa put his hands together and began to form seals.
That was where Neji's chakra had been flowing.
As Neji desperately tried to charge at Wakahisa to interrupt, a whip of water lashed out, twisting around him as he tried to evade. He both saw and felt the tag as it was slapped on his back.
-o-
Kei lay back on the thick tree branch, out on the far edge of the Training Grounds. She luxuriated in the peaceful silence as her eyes lazily tracked the movement of a hawk circling around the thermals.
"Rock-paper-scissors?" she asked the girl relaxing on the branch below.
"Mmm."
Kei yawned and shifted into a more comfortable position.
-o-
"Witness the power of Righteous Face Punching Style," Hazō declared, shifting into stance and preparing his best Roki feint.
"Leaf Strong Fist Style," Lee replied, raising his arms into a classic sideways blocking motion. "Allow me to begin!"
His mind already in feinting mode, Hazō saw through Lee's technique just in time, ducking to avoid the spinning mid-air kick from behind him.
"Universal Problem-Solving Technique!" Hazō rose with a precise uppercut, knowing his opponent couldn't evade in mid-air and that committing his arms to a block would leave him helpless as he came down.
Lee tanked the blow with his face.
As Lee landed in his defensive stance, sliding backwards a little with the force of the attack, Hazō stared in disbelief.
"That's impossible. Shouldn't you at least have a broken nose or something?"
"A most youthful technique," Lee said. "But as Gai-sensei always says, when life punches you in the face, you make (non-alcoholic) punch!"
"You… get punched in the face a lot, then?"
"Of course," Lee said proudly. "I have been conditioning myself to endure blows to the head since I was little."
"That… actually explains a lot," Hazō said. "Either way, it's my turn!
"Subtle Manipulation Technique!"
He let his muscles move into the beginning motions of a punch to the face, then paused fractionally as Lee registered the tell, realised it was a fake and moved to block the hit to his solar plexus. Then Hazō punched him in the face.
Of course, even that was a bluff. As Lee once again absorbed the blow, Hazō threw his body weight forwards instead of pulling back to reset, pushing Lee's head back and down. At the same time, he hooked his left leg around Lee's calf and forced the knee to bend. Lee began to fall, helpless and with his arms in front of his abdomen, unable to break the fall in time. Hazō moved his left arm into position for a brutal elbow strike, timed to connect just as Lee hit the ground.
But Lee twisted his body with impossible agility, landing side-on so that Hazō's elbow went past him. There was no time for Hazō to fully abort the movement, and his elbow slammed down, sending waves of incapacitating numbness and pain (how did those two even combine?!) through his arm.
Lee rolled as Hazō reeled. One leg swept out behind him to arrest his sideways movement, leaving him on all fours in a scorpion stance.
In that pose, he waited politely as Hazō recovered.
"Lee… what are you doing?!"
"Giving you a chance to catch your breath," Lee explained. "That was a very unlucky fall."
Oh, that was it. Hazō ran through a list of his most devastating techniques as he moved in. This time, he'd let Lee commit himself first, and pick one that had no room for failure.
Lee moved in. "Leaf Rock-Splitting Axe Kick!"
His left leg began to come up for the blow.
Hazō, with the smooth sideways movement born of a thousand almost-dodged hair-ruffles, began to slip left, past the leg. An axe kick locked your centre of mass while it was in progress. It was a very powerful move, but it left you incredibly vulnerable.
Lee's leg stomped down again without rising even as far as his waist, the motion so fast it must have been planned all along. The momentum transferred to his left fist—which slammed into Hazō's face in a roundhouse punch, amplified by Hazō's own movement.
The last thing Hazō saw was a tree which appeared to be flying towards him very fast.
-o-
"What the heck happened to you, Hazō?" Inoue-sensei asked, staring at him as he limped into sight, holding Lee tightly so as not to fall over. "Weren't you supposed to be training stealth?"
"Lee won," Hazō slurred. "Much sneakier."
Noburi and Hyūga were next in.
"He cheated!" Hyūga pointed his finger at Noburi.
"Neji," Gai said carefully, "are you saying you lost?"
"He cheated," Hyūga repeated petulantly.
"Ah," Inoue-sensei said, "you mean he competed like a ninja. Gotcha. Nice job, Noburi."
Hyūga glared.
Keiko and Tenten showed up shortly afterwards.
"She overcame me in a masterful display of subterfuge," Keiko stated in a deadpan voice. "My incisive strategy worked on paper, but against Tenten it hit the rocks."
Yamanaka and Akimichi were last.
"He won," Yamanaka complained. "As usual."
As for Kagome-sensei, it took the concerted efforts of the entire team, and little short of physical force, to tear him away from his book.
-o-
"Thank you for training with me today, Kurosawa," Lee said his goodbyes. "I respect your skill and creativity. When you wrapped your body around mine and threw me to the ground, I knew you were a man worthy of the full power of my burning youth, and I apologise for the intensity of what came after. I forget that not everyone is as conditioned for these things as I am. I hope you will be my partner again sometime."
"I… uh… you too, Lee."
Hazō risked a glance around.
Keiko and Yamanaka's mouths were open in awed fascination. Inoue-sensei was smirking.
Akimichi had his head turned slightly sideways, as if trying to figure something out. Nara and Sarutobi looked tired of life.
Noburi was giving him a 'really, Hazō? Really?' look.
Hyūga was goggling at him in undisguised horror, while Tenten ignored them all in favour of adjusting her hair.
Finally, Gai's expression hadn't changed from its general contentment, nor Kagome-sensei's from its general suspicion.
"It's been a pleasure, Inoue Mari," Gai broke the awful, awful silence.
"It sure has," Inoue-sensei said. "Let's do it again sometime."
Keiko and Tenten nodded to each other wordlessly and went their separate ways.
"This isn't over, Wakahisa," Hyūga delivered a parting shot as the rest of his team began to leave.
"Is that right?" Noburi replied. "Guess I'd better take your word for it. After all, you're the one who knows all and sees all."
Hyūga gave Noburi one last glare and stormed out of the Training Grounds.
-o-
After the training session, Kagome forcibly dragged the rest of the team to the bookshops.
Volumes that caught your eye:
Working the Hundred Woods of the Fire Country
Forge Master's Primer: From Basic Smelting to the Shop Shelf
Common Medicinal Plants and Their Uses
The entire Akimichi Lore series of cookbooks; Akimichi is happy to offer detailed recommendations
Why Did It Fall Down Again?!: A Handbook of Architectural Do's and Don'ts
Ishimura's Encyclopaedia of Construction Materials and their Structural Properties (expensive)
The Right Place to Stand: The Thousand Uses of Levers, Pulleys and Other Marvels of Technology
The Harem Technique (for Akane. Wait, what if she doesn't like that sort of thing? Or what if she thinks it's a hint? Or what if you buy it and everyone thinks it's because of Rock Lee? Aargh...)
Yumehara's Classical History of the Elemental Nations (one volume would wipe out your entire budget)
The Amazing Adventures of the Seven Shinobi Swordsmen manga series
Jen's Armaments of the Elemental Nations (Kagome made you buy this one; you are now nearly broke)
You've found nothing on sealcrafting, technique hacking or ninjutsu in the public bookshops or freely-accessible sections of libraries.
You got your shoes earlier, which is another part of the reason why you're nearly broke. Luckily, Noburi's barrel materials are covered by Jiraiya. Repairing it will involve replacing the Wakahisa secret seals in potential view of the Hyūga, but Noburi doesn't think they can be deciphered without knowledge of the Wakahisa secret techniques.
-o-
Your request for a secure meeting space has been passed on to Jiraiya, but Inoue-sensei isn't optimistic, since it's in Leaf's interest to either deny you the opportunity to talk outside their hearing, or to give you a "secure" space and listen in anyway.
You tried using MEW in mid-air to sneak up on Rock Lee and nothing happened.
Dispelling has failed to reveal any genjutsu, but has led to several more arguments with Nara.
The game night has been put off due to Hazō being barely alive, and still needing enough recovery time to be able to go mess with Inoue-sensei and Ino (as per the previous half of the update).
-o-
You have received 13 XP.
-o-
What do you do now?
Voting ends on Saturday 17th of December, 9 am New York Time.
The sun was still lollygagging in bed when Noburi woke Hazou for his turn on watch. The idea of keeping watch while sleeping in a suite with comfortable beds and indoor bathrooms was almost laughable, but it was the only way to keep Kagome from having an aneurysm.
Still, it wasn't a bad thing. The early morning hours were a good time to think and he certainly needed to. Most importantly, he needed to think about Akane.
Why did Akane care whether he was flirting with her? Did she want to know if Hazou had romantic feelings for her? Did he have romantic feelings for her? How would he know?
He shook his head and sighed, settling more comfortably on the floor and leaning against the wall to the right of the door, idly rolling a kunai through his fingers. (Important to be armed on watch so that he could stab any intruder.) So many questions, so few answers. He didn't even know what romantic feelings looked like—Keiko was his clearest example, with the way she idolized Inoue-sensei, and that seemed almost unhealthy. Keiko assumed Inoue-sensei was right by default, about everything; it was like her otherwise-magnificent brain turned to soup whenever her teacher spoke. She was hungry for Inoue-sensei's attention and approval and became depressed when she couldn't get it. She would do anything for Inoue-sensei, probably including sticking her arm in a fire if the redheaded jounin told her to. There was no way on Earth that Hazou would ever surrender his judgement to such a degree. If that was what romance was about, he wanted no part of it.
Still, Keiko wasn't exactly a normal person, and her idea of romance probably wasn't normal either. Maybe she was just taking normal romantic feelings and blowing them out of proportion? Maybe, in smaller doses, the various components of her crush actually were good examples of romance. If that was the case, then what did Hazou feel about Akane?
She was really awesome, and he wished he was more like her in many ways. That was kind of romantic, right?
He felt like Akane was right about everything...well, except maybe when she took the Spirit of Youth too far. And when she had faith in people who turned out not to deserve it. And right now when she couldn't see how awesome she was. Okay, there were plenty of times when she was wrong, but those were individual exceptions to a background state of getting things right. A little romantic? Check.
Was he hungry for Akane's attention and approval? He already had those on a constant basis, so it was hard to say. Still, when he thought about Akane forgetting him, or hating him, he felt awful. Romantic, check.
Would he do anything for her? Absolutely, without hesitation.
He frowned, forcing himself to re-examine that knee-jerk response. Do anything? Really? Probably not. If she asked him to betray a friend, give up his dreams of uplifting the world, or stick his arm in a fire for no good reason then that might be too much. Those weren't really important, though, since he was bone-deep certain that she would never ask such things. Okay, put another check in the 'romantic' column.
What about physical attraction? Keiko had never explicitly talked about physical attraction to Inoue-sensei, but the way her eyes followed the jounin hungrily strongly suggested that Hazou shouldn't ask because he might be utterly embarrassed by the answer. So, yes, chalk that up to 'physical attraction is part of romance'. Akane was beautiful. She had a great smile, and the way she moved—
Hazou shifted a little uncomfortably, drawing his knees up to his chest and looking around furtively to see if any of the others were awake. No. Good. Even Kagome-sensei was out cold, although he was cuddling a kunai as though it were a teddy bear and mumbling in his sleep. Hazou could just make out the words 'boom' and 'squish'.
He shook his head with a smile and went back to his thoughts. Where was he? Right, physical attraction for Akane. When he thought about it there was attraction there, but did it count if it had never occurred to him until now?
He sighed and banged his head gently on his knees in frustration. No matter how much he examined it he just didn't know the answers. Maybe he should talk to Inoue-sensei about this. She would have a field day, but she would also know what he should do, and she probably wouldn't prank him on something this important.
What if he did have romantic feelings for Akane? Look at where it got Keiko. Noburi. Yuno. Even Inoue-sensei's love life didn't sound like it had been happy, and she was an experienced adult who understood people on levels he didn't even know existed. Was he going to ruin everything if he had feelings for Akane?
Now that he thought about it, what about other girls? Ino was very pretty, and she had a cool, wicked edge to her that Akane didn't. She was...exciting. Keiko was, well, Keiko, but there were things they had in common—things they both understood about each other that nobody else ever had, like how they processed information, how they communicated with others, and what a pain in the ass most people were. Had he been taking that for granted? Did he want Keiko to have feelings for him? (For that matter, could Keiko have feelings for him? She was into girls, after all.)
Wait, what if Akane had feelings for him? What had he gotten himself into?
Ugh.
He couldn't figure this one out on his own. He definitely needed to talk to Inoue-sensei and, if she approved it, to Akane. Things would be simpler once he know how she felt about the possibility. Also, Akane was older and more experienced than he was, so hopefully she'd understand all this better.
Wait, she also had a crush on Lee, the terrifying and terrifyingly homoerotic wackadoo from Team Gai. If she still did, how did that affect things? Did that mean she couldn't have feelings for Hazou? Or did it mean that if she did, Hazou could end up in an indirect romantic relationship with Lee? For that matter, Yamanaka had hinted at the possibility of three-way relationships...could Hazou find himself directly paired with both Akane and Lee?
A shiver ran up his spine and he shook his head to cast out the horrifying thoughts. He could feel a headache coming on; it was definitely time to stop thinking about this and go make lists for a while.
o-o-o-o
"So, I was thinking," Hazou said, looking down and stirring his oatmeal slowly as he braced himself. "What do you guys think about sharing the lifting tower with Jiraiya?"
Three...two....
"Are you crazy!" Kagome-sensei gasped. "Don't give these stinking Leaf stinkers anything!"
Huh, didn't even make it to one.
Kagome was about to continue, but Inoue-sensei laid a hand on his arm. "Let's at least consider it," she said. "Hazou, what's your thinking?"
"He's got the basic idea already," Hazou said. "He knows it's related to the Five Seal Barrier. The rest is practical details, and he can have someone work those out eventually. If we give it to him now we save him a lot of time and can probably get paid."
"Note that we are essentially broke," Keiko put in. "Should Jiraiya stop funding our living expenses we literally do not have enough money for a meal. Having a safety cushion of cash would render us less dependent."
"Point," Noburi said. "Also, we really need Jiraiya to like us. Anything we can do to make that happen, or just to make ourselves look useful, would be a good plan."
"Plus, it would demonstrate our expertise in sealing, and probably incline Jiraiya to give us a little more freedom to work," said Inoue-sensei. "Right now we're poodles on parade with no ability to do anything proactive, including choosing when we leave Konoha. If we can demonstrate competence and usefulness we'll have a lot more leverage."
"Yeah," Kagome-sensei said, a smile that wavered between hopeful and crafty stretching across his narrow features. "Tell him that we won't do any sealing work where we could be observed, so he needs to let us get out of town if he wants more product."
The team looked around the table, taking a poll by eye. Finally Inoue-sensei nodded. "Sounds like a plan. If we handle it right we can probably convince him that part of our payment needs to be letting us have our gear back, including what we stored in the Summon Realm." She held up a hand to cut off Kagome's impending explosion. "Not the specialty seals, just our basic weapons, storage tags, camping supplies, explosives, and so on." She smiled at the expression of wide-eyed delight on Kagome's face at the word 'explosives'.
"When Team Asuma picks us up we can ask for a meeting," she said. "Until then, eat up."
o-o-o-o
When the breakfast dishes had been neatly stacked for the housekeepers to clear away, Hazou pulled Inoue-sensei aside.
"Sensei, that bouquet that you had me give Yamanaka—what exactly did it mean?" he asked quietly. "I wasn't expecting a reaction like that, and even the Anbu seemed shocked. How much trouble am I in?"
She laughed and—yes, damnit—ruffled his hair. "Relax," she said. "Nothing too bad. It was basically 'I am single and looking, innocent and inexperienced but proud rather than ashamed of who I am, capable of gentleness and respectful, but also feeling the awakening of adolescent lust, and it is lust for you.' No big deal."
Hazou gaped at her. "No big deal?! Seriously? You had me tell the beloved daughter of the head of one of the most powerful clans in Konoha that I was lusting after her, and you say it's no big deal?" His voice broke in the middle of the last sentence and he blushed furiously.
She laughed again. "Really, it's going to be okay. You're good-looking, ripped, a powerful ninja for your age, and you're a missing nin so you're rocking that whole 'bad boy / aura of mystery and danger' thing. Right now she's flustered, a little confused, and on the back foot. Once she takes a breath she'll realize that you're no threat and be a little appalled but also a little flattered. Maybe some excitement in a slightly-scary-but-good-scary way, too. She might decide to go hmph and tell you that she's much too good for you, but she won't do anything serious about it. Honestly, I'd be surprised if she even told her team; she knows that if she does it will get back to her father and her father would never approve."
She grinned and ruffled his hair again. "Let me tell you, there is no way to get a queen-bee teenage girl hotter for a boy than to have her father disapprove of him. I'll make you a bet: she'll be cold and offended when her team first shows up, but if she isn't flirting with you by lunchtime I'll eat my shoes." She slid forward until she was barely an inch inside his personal space, then shifted her weight so she stood hipshot, left arm folded under her bosom, right elbow on left hand, twirling a lock of her crimson hair with one finger. She blinked at him, her eyes very wide as she said, "So, Kurosawa, what's it like to be a missing nin? It sounds really scary."
Hazou blushed so hard he felt like his face would explode. "Um...I, uh...need to check my gear before we get picked up. Excuse me!" He hurried off quickly, Inoue-sensei's amused laughter trailing along behind him.
o-o-o-o
Somehow, despite the fact that they were stuck together in three spacious-but-not-that-spacious rooms, Hazou managed to avoid Inoue-sensei until the knock came on the door.
"I'll get it!" he yelled, sprinting over and yanking the door open so fast that Sarutobi's hand was still upraised from knocking.
"Hi!" Hazou said brightly. "Great to see you! All set? We're looking forward to getting out and seeing the city!"
Sarutobi blinked. Yamanaka sniffed disapprovingly and rolled her eyes. Nara sighed and slouched, hands in his pockets. Akimichi placidly ate a potato chip.
"Hazou, relax, you sound like an idiot," Noburi murmured from behind him.
Hazou belatedly stepped back, waving Team Asuma into the room. "Come in!" he said. "We're all ready, though. What did you want to do today?"
Sarutobi raised an eyebrow. "There's an art exhibit at the museum that I wanted to see," he said. "Neo-Impressionism, very cutting-edge. If you're interested I thought we could go see that, then grab some lunch and train in the afternoon."
"Sounds like a plan," Inoue-sensei said, rolling to her feet from the couch she'd been lounging on. Somehow, she managed to make even the simple act of standing up seem alluring—at least, if Sarutobi's suddenly-sharpening gaze and tiny smile were anything to go by. Hazou was pretty sure that the jounin knew exactly what Inoue-sensei was doing, but he still watched with interest as she got her broad-brimmed sunhat settled and joined them at the door.
"I'm not familiar with the Neo-Impressionists," Inoue-sensei said, casually slipping an arm through Sarutobi's so he was escorting her like a couple on promenade as she started for the door. For a fraction of a second he stiffened at the unexpected contact, but then he relaxed, chuckled softly, and fell into step with her.
"They're pretty new," he said. "Itagaki was probably the first; his Sunset and Oak Tree was masterful, and the use of color-contrasted stippling was a real break from the old school. I think—"
The rest of the teams fell in line and followed their teachers out the door in silence. Hazou shot nervous glances at Yamanaka the whole time, but she refused to even look at him. He swallowed nervously.
o-o-o-o
Hazou didn't know from art, but the display really was impressive. The diversity of presentation was surprising—you would think that representatives of a single school would be similar, but apparently no one had told the Neo-Impressionists that. There were paintings, statues, wood carvings, and even water displays.
The one that captivated him was Chaos and Order, an array of three small wooden trays, set at slight angles and arrayed in descending steps. Each tray was connected by split-bamboo troughs suspended on wires. Two buckets stood beside the display, one full and one empty. The lowest trough was positioned over the empty bucket.
The rest of the group were scattered around the room looking at various other displayed. Hazou had stood in front of Chaos and Order for half a minute, frowning in puzzlement, until Yamanaka appeared on his left.
"Pour the bucket in the top," she told him chidingly. She stood hipshot, leaning away from him with arms folded under her bosom and eyes locked on the display, very explicitly not looking at him.
Nervously, Hazou poured the bucket of water into the top tray and stepped back to where he'd been.
The top tray was filled with rocks and sand packed in a half-circle dam. The water pooled behind the dam before slowly leaking out through small gaps. It rolled down the slope of the tray and out through an array of small holes that dripped into the first trough. The impact of the water was enough to make the trough bounce and swing slightly, so the water formed an arc in the air as it fell into the second tray.
The second tray was filled with more sand—very fine-grained and white—into which various wildflowers and grasses had been set. The droplets of water splashed across the leaves, making the plants sway and scatter the water. The soft sand slowly turned slate-gray in a stippled pattern that looked like sunlight through leaves until it steadily filled in like night falling.
Hazou and Yamanaka watched in silence as the water wended its way very slowly through the sand and down to the drain. From there it dripped down onto an off-center cone of bamboo with small notches and cuts in it. The impact caused the cone to spin and swing, scattering the water widely into the final tray. A small board, held in place by a spring, stretched across the tray and formed a dam behind which the water accumulated until there was enough pressure to overwhelm the strength of the spring. The board was forced back and the water flowed out around its edges, running through the final trough and into the waiting bucket.
The entire process took at least six minutes; the two teenagers stood silently through the entire process. Hazou didn't dare turn his head to look at the girl beside him, but he found himself hyperaware of her presence, and couldn't stop himself from sneaking peeks out of the corner of his eye. As the water started dripping into the third tray she shifted her weight so that she now leaned towards him instead of away. There was a solid foot of space between them, but he still imagined he could feel the heat of her body on his arm, and he suddenly had no idea what to do with his hands.
Finally, the last drop of water had trickled into the bucket. Yamanka sighed and ran the fingers of her right hand—the hand closest to Hazou—through her long blonde hair before turning to face him.
"The flowers were nice," she said quietly, absentmindedly finger-combing knots out of the shimmering curtain of sunlight that fell forward over her right shoulder, hanging down just below her modest breasts. Yesterday she had worn the hair up in a tight combat-ready knot. Hazou found himself surprisingly glad that she wore it down today; the movements of her fingers were mesmerizing, and he had to force himself to look at her face. "Much too forward, though. We've only just met."
"Sorry?" he said weakly. "Um...Inoue-sensei told me to give them to you. I'm sorry if they were offensive or anything."
"It's fine," she said, granting him a tiny smile that disappeared almost instantly. "I was surprised, that's all." She took a deep breath and started twisting her hair up into its combat knot again, arms upraised and fingers working with the long-ingrained skill of a lifetime.
"So," she said, eyes wide with curiosity. "What's it like being a missing nin?"
Hazou gulped.
XP AWARD: 7
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, December 21, 2016, at 12pm London time.
Things that happened offscreen:
You and the rest of the team reiterated your warnings to Noburi about Kabuto; he grumbled a bit but acknowledged that they made sense and promised to be careful.
You dropped Noburi off with Kabuto. Everything seemed fine regarding Noburi, although Kabuto said that Akane was asleep and should not be disturbed just now.
You finished basic shopping yesterday, so there was no need to do more of that.
You did the dispelling stuff, both without chakra at regular intervals to make Nara et al think you are stupid and also at random intervals with chakra. Someone on Team Asuma probably saw you doing it but you aren't sure.
Over breakfast you wrote the letter to Jiraiya and have given it to Sarutobi Asuma.
The art show was your first stop, so book stores, lunch, training, and games night are still in the future.
It is now about 12pm and Akimichi is advocating for lunch—something about a favorite teriyaki place.
Author's Notes:
First, I would like to give a big thank-you to @Velorien. He wrote most of the sequence with Hazou thinking about Akane; I changed it from first- to third-person and expanded it a little bit, but his words are still the skeleton and most of the muscles on that scene.
Second, I was really looking forward to working through the rest of this plan but I have to leave in 30 minutes for birthday dinner with the family and if I don't publish now I won't publish today. Fun plan, though; I like the new format and it was easy to write for.
"Being a missing-nin is… complicated," Hazō said. "None of us wanted to become missing-nin. Not to say there are people who wake up in the morning and go 'I know, I think I'm going to become a hated fugitive today', but in our case we were just genin who got caught up in the machinations of some power-hungry jōnin. The first we knew of our supposed betrayal was when we were suddenly running for our lives through hostile territory with hunter-nin on our tail."
Yamanaka nodded.
"It's nothing like being an ordinary ninja. You have to rely on each other absolutely. There's no support network, no village to fall back to when things get tough.
"But you want to know the strangest thing, the most unexpected thing we discovered?"
"What's that, Kurosawa?"
"Being a missing-nin is more like being a civilian than a village ninja."
Yamanaka stared at him. "Kurosawa, did you just compare yourself to a civilian?"
"I did. Out there, in the world beyond the world's richest, most powerful village, there's no support network either. No ninja to turn to for help. You have to work from dawn to dusk, every day, just so you can feed yourself and those who depend on you.
"Death is a hunter-nin never more than a step away. If your brother went out hunting and hasn't come back by nightfall, he's dead. If a chakra monster breaks through the palisade and goes on a rampage, that could be half the village dead. If your child's fallen ill and doesn't get better on their own, your child is dead."
Yamanaka didn't understand. He could see it in her eyes.
"You probably think ninja have the most dangerous lives because we fight all the time. That's not true. Civilian lives are every bit as dangerous, except they don't have a ninja's power to defend themselves. My team has killed chakra monsters by the dozen in our travels. A normal civilian can't kill one. Do you know why we wipe out bandit gangs in suppression missions? It's because if you leave them to grow, they can massacre entire villages—just like that. What do you think happens in places where people can't hire ninja?"
Yamanaka shook her head. "It can't be like that everywhere, Kurosawa. Maybe you happened to pass through some really awful hellhole on your way here, but come on." She gestured around herself. "If the world was really that bad, somebody would be doing something about it. Otherwise there'd be no civilians left."
"At this rate, someday there won't," Hazō said grimly. "I'm not making this up as a scare story, Yamanaka. I wish I could show you some of the places we've seen. Though I bet we could find villages like that within as little as half an hour's travel of Leaf."
Yamanaka raised an eyebrow. "Are you asking me on a date, Kurosawa?"
Crap. This was one of those questions where saying no could have implications as huge and catastrophic as saying yes, wasn't it? And you only got one chance to give the right answer. Why did this stuff keep happening to him, and why did it have to happen all at once?
Life would be so much simpler if only he was into boys the way Keiko was into girls.
"That's… not where I was going with this," he said carefully.
But Yamanaka was still watching him closely. His deflection hadn't been enough.
Crap crap crap. What was he supposed to say next? What would Noburi say?
"If I was going to ask you out on a date, I'd pick a place I thought would make you happy, not one that would make you sad."
Yes! Smooth save, Kurosawa Hazō. You can totally do this flirting thing.
This is the flirting thing, right?
"Still," he gave her a reassuring smile, "there is one piece of good news we've found. All of this horror is really easy to fix, if somebody would just care. I have the Multiple Earth Wall Technique, which I mostly use to defend myself from kunai and explosions, but in a matter of minutes I can erect strong stone walls around the village which will protect it far better than anything the villagers could build in a month. Noburi's still a medic-nin trainee, but he's fixed up injuries and deformities that would otherwise last a lifetime. You should have seen the smiles on the civilian children's faces. Some of them wouldn't have been able to smile if it wasn't for him.
"So that's what it's like being a missing-nin, at least for us. Trying to make the world a better place is hard, not because it takes some kind of incredible effort, but because there's so much world and so few of us.
"But it's also more rewarding than anything else I've ever done. I'm not saying I enjoy being hounded across the continent by brutal killers for a crime I didn't commit, but if the Sage of Six Paths came to me tomorrow and offered to turn back the clock… I think I'd choose to stay the person I am now."
Yamanaka's mouth was open slightly, and her pupils were wide. Hazō's intuition was giving him a distinct sense of "something important is about to happen".
"Ino! Kurosawa! Get moving or we're going to Yakiniku Q without you!"
The moment, whatever it had been, vanished in a flash.
"You heard Chōji," Yamanaka grinned. "C'mon, last one there has to pay for dessert!"
Hazō reached deep within himself and drew upon the hidden wells of motion-enhancing power he had engraved into his Iron Nerve. His pride as a Kurosawa, but more importantly his team's budget, would not allow him to lose.
-o-
"It's the simplicity that matters," Hazō insisted, waving a pair of tongs in the air for emphasis. Yamanaka seemed to have lost interest in him as the meal progressed, leaving him and Keiko hotly debating the merits of lists with a sceptical Nara.
"You can make an exhaustive list with minimal cognitive effort, then pare it down without losing the hierarchical relationships or reducing information density. And the most important part is how easy it is to read. Do you know how much effort I've wasted trying to get the rest of my team interested in more sophisticated means of data management?"
"For clarity," Keiko added, "Hazō has persisted in his masochistic efforts far beyond what a sensible person would attempt, and it remains a matter of eternal wonder to me how he continues to interact with apathetic listeners without at any point committing murder."
Nara shrugged. "Generally, it's best not to bother. If you need someone to do something badly enough, you use behaviour modelling and indirect emotional triggers. Actually trying to interact with people as rational agents is pointlessly draining, because most of the time they're not. Assumptions, miscommunications, taking offence at pointless things… I would much rather read a good book."
Hazō hesitated. He was still a little embarrassed to talk about his technique to a stranger. But on the other hand, having somebody else understand…
"Nara, there's something our team's been trying in order to eliminate this problem. We call it the Clear Communication Technique."
Nara's mouth was full of barbecue, but he gave Hazō a "go on" look.
"Allow me to demonstrate," Hazō said in his best door-to-door salesman voice.
"Keiko, I perceive that you have a fair amount of uneaten meat on your plate which you have not touched for several minutes. I am not making any kind of judgement about your appetite or eating habits, but if you've decided you are not going to eat the meat, may I take it and do so myself?"
"Yes, Hazō, I permit you to take the meat from my plate. Thank you for asking politely."
Nara finished his food. "I can see where it's clearer than conventional communication, but it seems like a lot of trouble to go to for minimal gain."
Hazō was ready for this objection. "All right, substitute 'I'd like to eat your meat' with 'I'd like to offer help with your extremely sensitive emotional situation'. Keiko, if you'd be so kind?"
"Hazō, I am concerned that the amount of time and energy you invest in making lists and talking about them reflects a growing addiction. I do not believe that an addiction would reflect on you as a person in any way, but if it negatively impacts on your well-being, then I would like to offer whatever assistance I can in helping you break the habit. I request that you set aside some time to reflect on whether you may be a list addict, and also consider seeking advice from more qualified individuals such as Inoue-sensei. I wish to reiterate that I do not consider such an addiction a failure of character, but rather an unfortunate illness which would benefit from swift treatment lest the symptoms intensify and cause you suffering."
Hazō goggled.
"I… uh…"
Oh, right, the demonstration.
"Thank you for your concern, Keiko. I do not believe my behaviour is addictive, but since I trust your judgement as a matter of general principle, I will give the matter serious thought. If I feel any uncertainty over whether I am a list addict, I will speak to others who know me well, including Inoue-sensei, in order to obtain their input. Should I conclude that your evaluation is correct, I will of course take all possible steps to cure the addiction, at which time I will be sure to call on your support. I appreciate you looking out for me, and am grateful that you are prepared to bring up such sensitive issues for my benefit. Please continue to do so if any arise in the future."
They both turned to see Nara's reaction.
Nara was busy rummaging through his equipment pouch.
"Do that again. I need to take notes."
-o-
"I'd like to go to the library next," Hazō told Nara as the waitress took away their plates. "If there are many, could you recommend a good one?"
"Are you looking for anything in particular?"
"Right now I just want to see what kind of books are available, though if any of them have a copy of the Yumehara histories…"
"Actually," Nara reached into his pouch awkwardly and drew out a weighty tome, "I took the liberty of bringing Volume I with me. You don't have to borrow it if you don't want to, of course. I just thought you might…"
"Thank you, Nara!" Hazō beamed. "That's really considerate of you. Of course I'd like to borrow it."
"Yes, well, it occurred to me that in your position you wouldn't be able to get borrowing rights from any of the public libraries, and the History of the Elemental Nations books reward heavy investment. You wouldn't be able to appreciate them properly if you read them in snatches in between other activities. This is my personal copy, so please take good care of it."
"Really, Nara, thank you." Hazō had a thought. "Since you're such an avid reader, would you be able to tell me the range of books I can expect to find in a good library?"
"Sorry," Nara shook his head. "I have my own copies of a few particularly treasured volumes, but most of my reading comes from the clan library. It has every volume collected by the Nara Clan since its foundation, so going outside would be more trouble than it was worth."
"Every volume since its foundation?" Keiko echoed distantly. "Then since you have unrestricted access, would it be possible—"
"It wouldn't," Nara said sharply. "I don't exactly know you that well yet, and besides, given who you are, my father could never allow it. To be frank, from your position you'd have to marry into the clan to be allowed into our library."
Keiko gave him a contemplative look.
"No. No no no. Don't even think about it. There is nothing in this world more troublesome than women."
-o-
"Inoue-sensei, can I have a word in private?" Hazō asked Inoue-sensei quietly.
"Sure." Inoue-sensei raised her voice. "Sarutobi, can you give me five minutes? I need to give my student a chewing-out for poor manners!"
"Inoue-sensei!"
"You were being enthusiastic at a Nara. That is poor manners. Your energy levels to a Nara are like Rock Lee's energy levels to you.
"So what's up?"
"Um," Hazō squirmed. "I need your advice."
"If you're trying to decide how to court Ino, you're actually doing well on your own. You have a sort of earnest charisma that comes out when you're making your speeches, and the old 'make them question their view of the world, then hit them with solid conviction'? That's an advanced seduction technique, and you pulled it off like a pro."
"No, that's not—wait, you were listening?"
Inoue-sensei shrugged unrepentantly. "Just making sure you don't say the wrong thing and get us all killed."
"Uh, anyway, this isn't about Ino. It's about Akane. Inoue-sensei… I think I like her, and I don't know what to do."
Inoue-sensei gave him a sardonic look. "Well, it's about time you figured it out."
Hazō blinked. "You mean you knew?"
The look turned pitying. "Hazō, of course I know. Noburi knows. Keiko knows. Pandā knows. The only person who doesn't know is Kagome, and that's because he thinks romance is a form of undefined behaviour and treats it accordingly."
Hazō blushed.
"Then can you help me? I don't know the first thing about romance and I have a feeling I'm going to be naturally bad at it. I know I'm supposed to figure this stuff out on my own, but this Akane we're talking about. I absolutely can't afford to get this wrong, so while I have you, I need to use you."
Inoue-sensei's mouth opened, then closed again.
"Yes, Hazō," she said slowly. "I can see where your smooth-talking skills might need a little work."
She ran a hand through her hair.
"All right. The question is: what do you want? Do you want to date her, boy and girl, and try to make your bond deeper in profound ways you can't even imagine yet? Do you want to just stay friends, because being with her is more important than risking losing her in the horrible, agonising mess that love can become? Do you want something in the middle, without the reliabilities and restrictions of conventional labels? Or maybe you want to make this poly, and bring in Ino or some other girl you meet, and embrace the glorious complications that result?"
"I don't know," Hazō said. "I don't know how to know. I just know that Akane matters to me. I want her to be happy. I want to be with her. It's like nothing's changed inside me, and at the same time everything has. Does that make sense?"
Inoue-sensei gave a forlorn smile. "If only love was always that simple.
"Well, Hazō, if you don't know where you're headed, I can't tell you how to get there. But I can give you some general pointers.
"Be honest about your feelings. With yourself. With her. Don't play games. Adults spend all their time playing games, and then we end up alone with broken hearts and wonder what went wrong.
"You're in a difficult, unstable situation. She's in hospital and she's unhappy. You have to make a call—will hearing your feelings now help her or hurt her? Be sensitive to her mood. Don't throw all this at her when she's not ready, but don't miss the moment either. In love, timing is everything.
"Whether you talk to her now or later, talk to her. Don't make it a declaration. You two are smart, mature for your age, and already close friends. You can work out the best way to move forwards together.
"Don't assume you have to figure everything out straight away, or that the form your relationship takes now needs to be the form it'll always have. You're going to grow, both of you, and your feelings will change, again and again, and you don't have get it all right first time round.
"Oh, and don't rush the physical stuff, either. That gets real complicated real fast, and generally teenage girls will want to take it slower than you expect.
"Normal teenage girls, anyway," she added to herself. Hazō was so busy turning a deep crimson he nearly missed it.
"That… should do for now. In short, be honest, pay attention to her feelings, and don't make assumptions about anything. And take advice from anybody called 'Heartbreaker' with a pinch of salt."
Hazō smiled gratefully. "Thank you so much, Inoue-sensei."
"Any time, kid. Now shoo. I have things to think about."
As Hazō went off to rejoin the group, he briefly heard Inoue-sensei mutter, "Damn, this is going to get me disqualified for sure".
-o-
"Hey, guys," Noburi skipped down the steps of the hospital's main entrance. "How's it going?"
"Not bad," Hazō allowed, doing his best not to sound too excitable in front of Nara. "How was your first day?"
"Oh, it was great! Yakushi-sensei put a lot of effort into making sure I didn't do anything that might be dangerous with my chakra system the way it is, and he asked me a bunch of questions about how I was settling in, and whether my teammates were OK. Keiko, he was particularly curious about you and Kagome, since you were so on edge when we first met him."
Hazō opened his mouth to comment, but it struck him in the nick of time that it was probably not a good idea to discuss Dr Yakushi's trustworthiness in front of Team Sarutobi.
"So did you cut up any interesting bodies?" he assayed innocent small talk.
"Nah, today was mostly theory. He tested me to see what I knew and what they consider general medical knowledge back in Mist. He made a point of not asking about any Wakahisa medical specialities, because he didn't want to make me have to worry about keeping clan secrets. Oh, Hazō, he said he'd be in the old alchemy lab on the first floor if you wanted to talk to him."
-o-
"Ah, Kurosawa!" Dr Yakushi waved him over. "Perfect. Would you mind doing me a small favour? This will be so much easier with the Iron Nerve."
"What's the favour?" Hazō asked cautiously.
"Oh, nothing important. Watch how I stir this pot, and then do it exactly the same way for a minute while I pour in the catalyst. I'd do it myself, but I'm not ambidextrous and I've already sent Wakahisa home for the day."
Even if Hazō wanted to say no, there was no comfortable way of doing so. And besides, it was a perfectly ordinary request.
After a few corrections for speed and spoon position, Dr Yakushi left Hazō to it and began to pour a blue liquid into the pot, where it mixed with the red in an artistic spiralling pattern.
"What is this, exactly?"
"Oh, Solution Five-One-Seven Alpha," Dr Yakushi said casually, glancing briefly from Hazō's hand to his face.
"Is that anything special?"
"Not at all. Merely a random medical reagent of which we happen to be in short supply.
"That should do, Kurosawa. Thank you very much. If you are here to see Ishihara, please feel free to go."
-o-
"Hi, Akane," Hazō said. Why was he feeling nervous? This was his apprentice, one of the people he knew best in the world, and nothing had changed between them. What could there possibly be to be nervous about?
"Hi, Hazō-sensei." Akane sat up straighter in bed.
"How are you feeling?"
"I haven't been sleeping very well," Akane confessed. "Funny, really, you'd think since I'm hardly doing anything else…"
"About that," Hazō seized the opportunity. "We stopped by a bookshop recently, and they had this manga, The Amazing Adventures of the Seven Shinobi Swordsmen. I was wondering if you might like something like that to read while you're here, or maybe some other author you like, or some book you've read before and maybe would like to read again?"
"Thank you, Hazō-sensei," Akane smiled. "I think I'd like that. Though my parents visited this morning, and they already brought a lot of my old books and manga. And I know the team funds were pretty bad before, and I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble…"
"It's no trouble at all! Wait, your parents?"
"That's right. I've made them worry so much…"
No good. She was starting to feel down again. Quick, say something.
"I'd love to meet your parents, Akane."
His inner Inoue-sensei (oh, hell, when did he get one of those?) smirked at him shamelessly.
Akane's expression did not improve. "I, um, don't think that would be such a good idea right now, Hazō-sensei. They're… well, angry with everyone in the team. They think it's your fault I got hurt. I tried to explain that it wasn't true, but my parents don't listen very well when they get protective. I do want to introduce you to them, but I think right now it's too soon. I'm sorry."
Forget romance, the first thing Hazō needed was tips on how to make people feel better instead of worse.
"Did you have any other visitors?" he asked in desperate hope of changing the subject.
"Yes, actually," Akane brightened. "Rock Lee and Maito Gai came to talk to me about believing in the Spirit of Youth and its powers of recovery. They said you sent them. That meant a lot to me. Thank you."
"That's OK." He'd finally done something right!
Doing something right involved inflicting Rock Lee on someone. The universe was weird.
"Were they the way you remembered?"
Akane frowned. "They were… and they weren't. I don't know. Maybe I'm the one that's changed?"
Hazō gave an understanding nod, despite not understanding at all.
"I sparred with Rock Lee, you know," he moved to safer ground.
"You did?!" Akane leaned forward, then winced. "You and Rock Lee, fist to fist, immersed in the Springtime of Youth… oh, I really wish I'd been there to see it. What was it like?"
"So first he charged for me, head low," Hazō demonstrated, "and I thought he was going for a bull rush. But then at the last second it was like he disappeared. Luckily, I'd already sensed something was off, and when I felt the hairs move on the back of my head…"
-o-
"He really said that?" Akane's peals of laughter rang out like crystal bells. "That's wonderful! It's just like when he was giving a taijutsu demonstration to the Academy finalists, and he talked about pouring the seeds of youth into Uchiha Sasuke through the outflowing of his manly spirit—in front of the whole class! Oh, you should have seen the fangirls!"
"I, uh, have to ask, Akane, but does Rock Lee do that deliberately? Or is he really…" Hazō wasn't sure how to finish the sentence without insulting Akane's crush.
"Nobody knows," Akane admitted. "There are rumours going around that he's secretly a master of deception with an unbreakable façade, and that this is why he was put in a team with not just Hyūga Neji but Tenten herself… but you get rumours like that about all sorts of people. The one before that was about our year's Nara, Shikamaru, being a once-in-a-generation genius who'd finished the Academy's advanced tactics classes when he was eight just so he'd have more free periods to nap in."
"Hyūga Neji, huh?" Hazō mentally rubbed his hands together with glee. "Let me tell you about Hyuga Neji…"
-o-
It was getting dark.
"Sorry, Akane," Hazō tore himself away with the utmost reluctance. "I still need to get to the library before it closes. Before I go, is there anything you can think of that I could bring you? Maybe some games or puzzles to keep you entertained when you're on your own?"
Wait, had he just accidentally made Akane sound like a small child?
But she either didn't notice or didn't mind. "I like logic puzzles. Ones like 'how do you get a goat, a wolf and a wild cabbage across the river without the wolf eating the goat or the cabbage exsanguinating the wolf?' or 'how many spies can you get to turn each other before they realise they're all spying for the same side?'"
Hazō found himself considering the situation analytically. "Why can't the wild cabbage exsanguinate the goat?"
"It's the bone armour. I've heard it's thinner on domesticated goats because they get bred for wool and milk first, but it's still enough to protect them from common predators."
"Huh. Is there anything else you'd like?"
"If that expansion for Sealing Failure is out already, the one with the new ANBU investigators and special clue tokens, I'd love to see it. Or the solo play expansion for Civilian Burger. But if they're too expensive, please don't worry."
Hazō waved her concern away. He'd find money for at least some of these things somewhere, even if he had to refine his Jiraiya-wrangling skills to perfection before he could do it.
Though there was one thing that didn't necessarily cost any money at all.
"Say, Akane, are there any songs you particularly like? Because I was thinking of dusting off my old flute, and if there's anything I could play for you..."
"You'd learn a song… just for me?"
"Sure," Hazō said lightly. "It's no big deal. The hard part is suppressing the Iron Nerve so you can make each performance unique, otherwise your music ends up soulless. But I used to practice a lot while I was home alone, so it shouldn't be hard to pick up again. Besides, you're not going to laugh at me if I make mistakes, are you?"
"No, Hazō-sensei. I'm not going to laugh."
"Then any requests?"
Akane spent a minute deep in thought.
"If it's really all right… could you play me Tears of Red?"
"Sure thing. Then I'll see you tomorrow."
He looked back on his way out the door. He couldn't… even if it wasn't time yet, he couldn't say nothing. Not when she was going to be on her own again.
"Akane, you really do mean a lot to me."
And then he left, flustered, without hearing her reply.
-o-
"So there I am," Noburi said dramatically, "exposed, with no cover, standing with my back to Hyūga Neji. He's stalking me slowly, steadily, silently. Or so he thinks. My senses, trained to superhuman accuracy over a year of evading Mist's deadliest hunter-nin, can still hear the ripples his footsteps are forming on the water.
"I can't turn around. As soon as the game is up, he'll be able to strike me down with a single blow. So I keep facing forwards, pretending I'm all oblivious and vulnerable. He takes another step. Another. Then he lunges!"
Noburi thrust his hand out, fingers curled into a cruel, grasping claw.
"He thinks he's got me for sure. After all, I have no chakra—next to him, I'm just a helpless civilian. I can't even boost my muscles to get out of the way.
"But he's underestimated me again. I sensed him coming. I know the right timing. And what he doesn't know is that I learned three-dimensional combat in the deadliest battleground in the Elemental Nations… the Swamp of Death.
"I drop straight down into the water!" Noburi slammed his hands down, stopping just short of hitting the table. "Hyūga's hand passes through the space I was an instant ago. He's shocked. He hasn't a clue what just happened. He looks exactly like this." Noburi dropped his jaw, tilted his head and rolled his eyes in an expression of pure gormless bewilderment.
"That's just the beginning. While he's busy rubbing his two brain cells together, I spin in the water and grab!" Noburi twisted his torso, slashing his hand across the air. "I have his ankle—and down he goes!"
Noburi flailed comically, his mouth opening and closing like—ironically—a fish out of water.
"Now you might think that's where the story ends. After all, as soon as Hyūga recovers, he's going to go right for me, and I won't be able to dodge in the water. But you've underestimated me just like he did.
"As he's floundering, I call on the ancient Wakahisa arts that I mastered over the course of our travels, fine-tuned over endless battles with everything from spiderbears to megalodons to saxifrages. I know I only have one chance at this, and it takes perfect concentration—but I pull in the chakra he's been spending on water walking, spin it between my two hands, and make it my own. Hyūga is my barrel now."
Noburi put his hands out in front of him, as if holding a spherical seal bomb, then started to shake them as if the bomb was trying to get away.
"His chakra is twisting and thrashing in my hands. Like him, it's vile and sloppy and lashing out at anything that comes near, and it's twenty times stronger than everything I have in my body right now. A single mistake, a single moment of distraction, and it's the end for me.
"But they don't call me Iron Will Wakahisa for nothing. I master Hyūga's chakra. I dominate it and take full control. And just in the nick of time, because Hyūga's found his feet.
"He's going for me. If I dodge, I'll lose the chakra again. But if I don't dodge, it's all over. I only have time for one more move.
"That's when I bring out my secret weapon. Hyūga's underestimated me for the last time, because as he reaches for me, I pour all of that chakra into the legendary Water Whip Technique.
"Hyūga finally sees what I'm doing. He ducks to the left. He blocks." Noburi hunched down and brought his arm up in a textbook open-palm high block. "But even with his Byakugan he can't see what's right in front of his nose."
Noburi leaned towards the audience and put his hand to the side of his mouth as if confiding some great secret.
"The Water Whip… is a whip made out of water.
"It doesn't zoom out towards him—it forms through the water next to him. Then before he can adjust, it curves around his block… and gently taps him on the back with a sticky tag.
"And that is how I beat Hyūga Neji on my own, without any chakra, on unknown terrain with no time to prepare."
After that, there was nothing for it but to applaud.
-o-
Approximately a tenth of a second after the applause died down, there was a knock on the door.
"M-Maito Gai? I, uh, please come in," Hazō stuttered.
"Thank you, thank you," Gai beamed with his disturbingly sparkling smile.
"How long were you out there, just out of curiosity?"
"Oh, we didn't want to interrupt such a riveting tale, and one different in so many interesting ways from Neji's story."
Hyūga followed Gai in, giving Noburi a glare that was the poisoned, exploding-tag-festooned shuriken of evil looks.
"Relax, Hyūga, I didn't tell them about how you were so stunned you gulped down a mouthful of disgusting swamp water and pondweed. Or how you stamped your foot down and stormed off in a huff like a little girl who didn't get the Princess Tsunade doll she wanted for Ascension Day. Or how you—"
"So what brings you here tonight, Gai?" Inoue-sensei interrupted as Hyūga's hand began to inch towards his kunai holster.
"Asuma said you guys were having a gaming night, and I wondered if you'd mind letting us join in."
"Is that so, Sarutobi?" Inoue-sensei was still smiling pleasantly, but for some reason Sarutobi adjusted his collar as if it was suddenly too tight for him.
"Gai caught up with me and asked if I was interested in spending tonight joining him and Lee for a male bonding session in the sauna! I had to explain why I was definitely too busy!"
"Well, it is how it is," Inoue-sensei said politely, glancing quickly at the armchair in the corner, into which Kagome-sensei was digging himself like a panicked wildcat.
"Hazō, take over," she whispered in Hazō's ear as she retreated to take care of the desperately outnumbered sealmaster.
Hazō surveyed the room.
Akimichi was cheerfully helping himself to the snacks Kagome-sensei had made (after Inoue-sensei had pointed out that this was an opportunity to make the guests wonder if they were being poisoned, thereby putting them off balance before any potential betrayal).
Nara and Keiko were exchanging commiserating looks, while Yamanaka was looking thoughtfully between Hazō and Noburi for reasons Hazō couldn't begin to guess at.
Gai had put an arm around Sarutobi's shoulders in a comradely fashion, and Sarutobi seemed about as happy about this as one might expect.
Neji was on the verge of throwing himself at Noburi, while Noburi's face and body language said louder than words, "Aww, aren't you cute, trying to intimidate me like a big boy?"
Tenten had perched herself down on the arm of the sofa next to Keiko.
And Rock Lee? Rock Lee was advancing on Hazō with an unhealthy (or possibly too healthy) gleam in his eye.
"So," Hazō nearly screamed, "who wants to play some very youthful board games?!"
-o-
When Prof. Yumehara got around to writing Volume V: The Fall of the Elemental Nations, he would begin with this moment, when Hazō foolishly allowed Inoue-sensei to "randomly" decide their teams of two.
Granted, at least he hadn't ended up with Lee, but Nara managed to occupy the exact opposite end of the motivation spectrum. It would take the most brilliant of insights to come up with a way to make his partner stop drifting off to sleep and fight for real.
"You know," Hazō observed offhandedly, "the sooner we win this, the sooner you can go home."
Nara clenched his hand into a fist. "Let's crush them."
-o-
Keiko and Tenten nodded to each other expressionlessly and sat down side by side in a mirrored motion.
-o-
Inoue-sensei shifted closer to Gai on the sofa.
"Don't worry," she purred, "I have a firm grasp of strategy."
"Then I'm sure you'll appreciate my most youthful moves."
-o-
"You," Hyūga hissed. "Of all the filthy foreigners infesting Hidden Leaf, why did it have to be you?"
"What's the matter, Hyūga? Can't you manage teamwork unless it's 'teamwork' with one of your fanboys?"
"Oh, that's it. I'll show you teamwork. I will cooperate your ass to victory with the full power of the Hyūga!"
"Cooperate my ass to victory?" Noburi repeated.
"Shut up," Hyūga deflated slightly. "It made sense in my head."
-o-
"Which is why, Ino, we have nothing to fear as long as the Power of Youth is on our side. You and I shall join forces and defeat our opponents, no matter how skilled they will be, with our superior youthfulness and blazing spirit! If there is any doubt in your heart…"
As Rock Lee went on with no sign of stopping, Yamanaka's eyes once again flickered between Hazō and Noburi. She settled on Hazō, met his eyes and mouthed, "Help me!"
Hazō nodded to her as a knight errant accepting a quest.
-o-
"Looks like that leaves us, Chōji. The two sane men."
"One sane man, Asuma-sensei. I decided to stop struggling and go with the flow a long time ago."
-o-
Kagome-sensei, serving as referee, eyed them all balefully from his armchair, stroking his kunai like a fluffy white cat.
-o-
"No," Rock Lee declared, "your backstabbing plan is most unyouthful, Ino. Instead, next turn we shall commit five ninja to Fang Country."
"Why?" Yamanaka cried. "Why did you have to say this one out loud too?"
Akimichi and Sarutobi exchanged happy looks. Sarutobi started picking up pieces from their stockpile.
-o-
Hazō looked on helplessly as Team Keiten's lone ninja slaughtered the Hazamaru army one by one by one. (It had been decided to use first names after nobody in the room was able to combine "Hyūga and Wakahisa" into something non-awful.)
"How are you rolling all those sixes?" he pleaded.
"Probability is overrated," Tenten replied enigmatically, toppling another Hazamaru figure with a flick of her fingertip.
"Inoue-sensei Teaching no. 34," Keiko added, "if you see a single ninja facing your full team and looking like they know something you don't, run."
-o-
Rock Lee calmly took five ninja figures from his Claw reserve and slid them over into Fang, into the middle of Sarutobi's prepared ambush.
"You did it…" Yamanaka whimpered. "You actually did it…"
"It is unyouthful to go back on your word," Rock Lee said firmly.
Sarutobi reached for the dice to roll his first strike.
Rock Lee put down a card in the middle of the country.
Tamed Chakra Behemoth.
"It is also unyouthful not to meet a challenge with everything you have."
Sarutobi put the dice back down.
-o-
"Forget Keiten," Hazō said quietly to Nara. "It's Leeno that we need to take out first. With Chosuma wiped out in the west, they're going to grow into a serious threat if we let them."
Nara shook his head. "Turn back, Kurosawa. Turn back before it's too late. Women are troublesome, and that one is the most troublesome of them all."
"I—I don't know what you're talking about."
"It's your funeral."
Then Nara gave a shadow of a smile.
"But first, let's make it theirs."
-o-
Noburi observed the battlefield.
Team Leeno had been taken out by a series of precision strikes from Hazamaru. Yamanaka's heart hadn't been in the defence, and all things considered Noburi couldn't blame her. She was now in the kitchen making herself calming camomile tea while Rock Lee cheered on the other teams even-handedly.
Chosuma had gone on the defensive to recover from their brutal defeat in Fang. Keiten were systematically taking over the neutral territories like water pouring down the path of least resistance, except water didn't tend to leave troops in key locations so you couldn't attack its stuff without triggering a massive counterattack.
And Gaimari… Team Gaimari weren't paying much attention to the game at all, and were currently watching Keiko and Tenten while whispering to each other. Yet they were still holding a solid third place.
Still, things weren't too bad. Hyūga, while having been banned from the Most Awful Personality Championships for blatant doping, was a surprisingly decent tactician if you could tune out the other ninety percent of what he said. Meanwhile, neither Hazō nor Keiko nor Inoue-sensei seemed to be aware how much attention he paid to them on a daily basis, and were repeatedly caught off guard by his ability to predict how they thought.
Gaimari finished their turn.
"They took our Vegetables," Hyūga growled next to him. "This slight cannot be forgiven."
"You're right," Noburi said. "Let the armies of Nobuneji go forth and unify the Warring Clans with blood and fire!"
-o-
Team Keiten won on points.
It was enough to make you want to cry. The twin titans of Hazamaru and Nobuneji had crushed Gaimari and Chosuma between them in an unspoken temporary alliance, then proceeded to clash like a cobra against a mongoose, throwing stratagem after stratagem at each other… forgetting completely that the game was on a timer.
Keiten, meanwhile, stayed out of PvP combat altogether, making any attackers pay so dearly for every gain that neither of the other teams could challenge them without leaving themselves vulnerable to their true rival. And all Keiten had was a bunch of small, low-value territories anyway… which turned out to add up to just a few points more than either Hazamaru or Nobuneji's constantly shifting empires.
Tenten glanced down at Keiko's right hand. Keiko shook her head very slightly, apologetically. Tenten gave a fractional nod.
Then the two of them nodded to each other, just like before. If there was any more subtle emotion being expressed by their movements, Hazō couldn't read it.
-o-
"I hope you're grateful I permitted you to learn strategy from a Hyūga, lowlife," Hyūga sneered.
"Oh, I learned plenty," Noburi said. "I promise I'll never forget how to cooperate somebody's ass into victory."
Hyūga scowled at him, took a failed stab at a "hmph" of aristocratic disdain, and then stomped off.
Ino hung back until she was the last to leave.
"I owe you bigtime for coming to the rescue. I just can't handle guys like Rock Lee. Seriously, I could kiss you."
Hazō froze.
"But I won't," Yamanaka grinned. "See you tomorrow, Kurosawa!"
And she hopped off the front step and ran to catch up with her team.
-o-
"Thank you for the dinner, Kagome-sensei," Hazō said. "It was delicious. I particularly liked the new spices."
"It was nothing," Kagome-sensei grunted. "Got to keep our strength up for when the stinkers finally make their move. It's been too quiet.
"But it's good that you liked it," Kagome-sensei added hurriedly, like a student realising he hadn't ticked a box in a multiple-choice text. "I might try improving on it next time."
"I look forward to it. By the way, remember those books we were looking at before?"
"Yes," Kagome-sensei said immediately.
"Once we get paid, we should pick something up for you. There was a book we saw on carving, with woodcuts, or maybe something from the Akimichi Lore cookbook series?"
"Cookbooks, huh? I suppose even they wouldn't poison their own. Not en masse, anyway. Though it could be a bluff—we'd need to watch to make sure we're being sold the same books as the rest of them. And I don't mind the woodcut one either. Yes, I could do with a good book."
-o-
"Inoue-sensei?"
"Hazō," she said, sitting on the doorstep looking up at the stars. "How'd it go?"
"I didn't talk about it. It didn't feel like the right time to say anything… romantic."
"Is that right?"
"Yes. And besides, thinking about it, even if I like her that way, that doesn't mean she likes me back."
"Mizukage's oozing thornbush of a haircut," Inoue-sensei said under her breath, "we do have a lot of work to do."
"What do you mean?"
"Never mind."
"Say," it seemed like a good time to ask, "have you ever heard of a song called Tears of Red?"
"I haven't heard the song, but I know the folk tale. It's about an Uchiha's forbidden love for a Senju. They clash on the battlefield, again and again, and somewhere along the line she realises that her hatred for him has turned into love. But then her father, the clan chief, finds a poem she wrote about the Senju, and he tells her the only way to purify the taint in her heart is to kill him with her own hands. 'Come back with his head or not at all,' he says. So the Uchiha goes and fights him, but every time she sees an opening, try as she might, she can't make herself go for a deathblow. They fight all day and all night, and at last she sees that she could never kill him, and throws herself on his glaive. With her dying words, she confesses her love for him. Then the Senju cradles her in his arms, lowers her gently to the ground, and tells her that he's loved her all along. Their lips meet, for the first and last time, and that's where the story ends."
"Ah," Hazō said. "That's… not the kind of song I expected her to like."
"Girls are complicated," Inoue-sensei gave a wry smile. "Boys too, for that matter. Get used to it."
"Anyway," Hazō found his train of thought again, "I came out here because I wanted to thank you. For your advice, and for looking out for us, even though it's hard and stressful and just keeping Kagome-sensei stable must be exhausting for you. And I'm sorry about the thing at the hospital. I should have followed your lead. You deserve all the trust we can give you."
He tentatively opened his arms for a hug.
Inoue-sensei moved in, inevitably ruffling his hair in the process.
"You're a sweet kid, Hazō. You're going to make one or more girls very happy someday."
Her hug tightened a little around him, then she let go and stepped back.
"Inoue-sensei, I've been wondering. What is it you have against the Mizukage's hair anyway? Did he do something to personally offend you?"
-o-
Mari's footsteps were heavy as she trudged through the corridors of the Mizukage's Office. She didn't enjoy meeting Yagura face to face at the best of times, and this was definitely not the best of times. She could only hope that he was up to his ears in work and had little time to spare for the likes of her.
"Good morning, Captain Zabuza," she gave a respectful nod as the senior jōnin passed her by.
"Inoue," he nodded back.
Mari turned to look at him as he walked away. Momochi Zabuza. A brutal, ruthless killer the mere whisper of whose name sent missing-nin fleeing to the far corners of the world. An unapproachable masked man with an aura of mystery. And sculpted like a god of war. Mari sighed.
The labyrinthine passageways twisted and turned as she made her way to the heart of the bureaucratic maze and knocked on Yagura's door.
"Enter."
The boy looked small behind an adult's desk, and smaller still next to the tall, immaculately squared stacks of paperwork. You could almost pity him, this youth locked into the hardest job in the village by the burden of his own power. You could almost pity him… if you didn't know.
"Inoue Mari, reporting in."
As she crossed the threshold of his office, she felt a disorienting sense of transition. Yagura's will extended from him like an invisible lattice of force, cutting up the world into regular tiles connected to each other by rules no one but he understood. Those who stepped into his presence became his pieces, granted one tile each and permitted to move only as he chose.
"You failed the Mikoto mission, Inoue," Yagura said, his voice an emotionless tenor.
"Sir! My assignment was to infiltrate Akarengejō and—"
"I know the missions I assign my shinobi, Inoue. Restrict yourself to salient information."
Mari swallowed.
"As you know, instilling plausible temporary insanity is a very subtle and time-consuming task. Intel said the daimyo and his wife were estranged, and she'd be sleeping in a separate wing, so I should have had all night to work.
"Unfortunately, apparently this was the night she decided to try to reconcile. She walked in on me as I was in mid-genjutsu, assessed the situation immediately, and screamed. I was forced to abort before the guards arrived. I don't believe my identity was compromised."
Yagura's eyes unfocused slightly. He blinked once. Twice.
"Kill the wife. Disable the husband. Cover the wife's body with a blanket and take her form. Inform the guards they heard cries of passion and instruct them that you are not to be disturbed for the foreseeable future. Wait for the husband to recover and use the dead wife's body as a prop to further your original objective."
Mari inwardly winced. "I—I didn't think of it in the heat of the moment."
"No, you did not. Inoue, if you are unable to improvise even on this level, then you must learn to prepare contingencies in advance. Panic is not useful. Shinobi who panic are not useful."
"I did not panic," Mari's temper flared. "Just because—"
Yagura's eyes snapped onto hers.
The lattice of force warped around her, twisting itself like bondage rope, like ninja wire, pinning her from head to toe and stopping the tiniest sliver away from cutting into her flesh. She couldn't move. She couldn't speak.
But Mari refused to surrender. She would not be dominated by a man. She would not be turned into a helpless puppet for Yagura to use for his own pleasure. Not ever.
She was the flame, untouchable and irresistible, dancing and devouring, giving life or destruction on a whim. All the ninja wire in the world could not bind the flame, and any who tried to force their will onto her would burn to ashes.
Something shifted behind Yagura's eyes.
Mari plunged into the oceanic depths, far beyond the reach of the sun. The pressure of endless fathoms of water slammed down onto her, a single teardrop's weight away from crushing her bones into dust. No flame could exist in this abyss. Nothing could exist in this abyss. Nothing but the single vast being that was silently watching her die.
Then the Mizukage let her go.
"Forgive me, Mizukage," Mari choked out as if trying to expel the water from her lungs. "I spoke out of turn."
"Go," the Mizukage said as if nothing had happened. "You will be informed when I next have use for you."
It was then that Mari understood. Whether it was a year from now, or ten, one day the Mizukage would decide she was no longer useful. He would raise his hand and snuff her out, instantly, without a struggle, and if there was anything left alive after that, it would not be Inoue Mari.
-o-
"No, Hazō," Mari said softly. "It's just a running joke."
She ruffled his hair again for good measure.
"Now off with you. You need to be relaxed and at the top of your game if you're going to conquer your girl troubles, and it's already late."
"All right. Good night, Inoue-sensei."
"Good night, Hazō."
Mari gazed up at the night sky. A complicated, messy day, full of unseen dangers, elusive opportunities, and unique, unpredictable challenges. Just like the one before it. And the one before that. No backup, no safety net, no hint of what tomorrow might bring. Just her, a loyal team, and an impossible dream borrowed from a boy purer of heart than she would ever be.
Be careful what you wish for, she knew. And yet some part of her wished that these complicated, messy days would last forever.
-o-
You have received 10 XP.
-o-
You have visited the library, and had a discussion within Jiraiya's secure space, but I was unable to include these within the update, which is already the longest update I've ever written, and the third longest overall. @eaglejarl has kindly agreed to take up the torch.
-o-
What next?
Voting ends on Saturday 24th of December, 9 am New York Time.
Kei took step after step towards Mari-sensei, running through the plan in her mind one more time.
Mari-sensei smiled at her.
Not for you. Turn away. Stop hurting yourself.
She was still beautiful.
Mari-sensei was right, Kei knew she was right. Yes, her feelings were nothing special, they were something everyone felt for their master while they were immature children who had yet to learn better. Yes, Kei needed to stop being so clingy and tunnel-visioned, stop looking at the partner she wanted and start looking for the partner she deserved.
If there was any such thing.
"What's up, Keiko?"
Keep it together, Kei, keep it together. She was improving. She could fall asleep next to Mari-sensei now, even when they were alone, instead of listening to her breathing and thinking about how she was close enough to touch and how her hair spilled out over the pillow and managed to catch the light even in the pre-dawn darkness. She could believe that Mari-sensei's disapproval was something less than a denial of her entire being. She could hope that, even though she was nothing without her pathetic dependence on Mari-sensei, once her fall was over and she hit the ground, she might be free.
She was improving.
Kei opened her mouth and delivered her prepared lines before Mari-sensei read her mind and began being sympathetic.
"I have been considering our schedule for tomorrow, and have a proposal, namely that we arrange an additional training session with Maito Gai and his team."
Mari-sensei's expression changed to one of pure, staggered incredulity.
"Keiko! And here I thought Gai and Lee's behaviour was driving you up the wall. Weren't you the one who said the other day that if you never heard the word 'youth' again, you could die happy?"
"I may have made a statement to that effect," Kei squirmed. Of course Mari-sensei would flawlessly recall tiny details, especially the inconvenient ones. "However, in this instance I believe it would be best for me to sacrifice my personal preferences for the good of the team."
"Go on."
"It has occurred to me that Hazō and Rock Lee are uniquely well-matched in terms of taijutsu, certainly moreso than with any of the members of Team Sarutobi, and the same can be said of myself and Tenten's reported weapons specialisation. You and Maito Gai likewise appear to have had a very successful training session together. I concede that none of this can be said of Noburi and Hyūga, but on the other hand I believe that allowing the latter to score some harmless victories in training may render him less homicidal towards our team. Should you find this proposal reasonable, I am certain you can find a means of expressing it that will also satisfy Kagome."
"Well," Mari-sensei said slowly, "if you're really prepared to put yourself on the line like that for the greater good, I guess I'll have to give it some serious thought."
It was only fair, Kei insisted to herself. Hazō was enjoying making friends with Ino, and Noburi had found himself a dubious but ultimately supportive and valuable mentor. Was it so unreasonable for Kei to pursue her own interests instead of spending her limited energy reserves supporting Hazō's efforts to bond with Nara?
Besides, she had earned this. The others would never know what it cost a Mori, a half-trained Mori, to create an original plan based on individual motivation, to overcome the cognitive inertia, the fear, and the Mori Voice's arsenal of despair for those with the hubris to attempt to initiate change in the world. And yet she had done it, made a plan without being given specifications, instructions or even permission. She had proven her agency. Ami would be so proud.
Kei decided to think about something else.
-o-
Tenten silently guided her through the Training Grounds, away from the "youthful" exertions of Hazō and Rock Lee (yes, she did feel a little guilty, but by this point Hazō owed her) and Noburi and Hyūga's occasionally entertaining duel of wits. Tenten's clearing, isolated and all but concealed between tall, ancient trees, was lined with straw practice dummies, painted alternately in green and white.
"Preferences?" Tenten asked.
"Kunai, shuriken. But I am open to suggestions."
Tenten handed her a set of shuriken and gestured towards the dummies.
Kei focused, aware of how important it was not to make an embarrassment of herself after all that effort. The majority of her shuriken struck the dummies solidly in the heart, throat and eye areas. Static targets, of course, but she had thrown from long range, hopefully dispelling any of Tenten's concerns that she was dealing merely with a typical incompetent genin.
"Good aim," Tenten said.
Yes!
"Wrong target."
Kei's inner smile disappeared.
She looked at Tenten questioningly.
Tenten leaned down and patted her own thighs. Abdomen. Chest. Kei's eyes lingered for an instant, then urgently snapped away. Finally, Tenten tapped her arms, then her forehead.
"Dense muscle. Bone. Body armour." She glanced at Kei as if to ask if she understood.
"Tendons. Ligaments. Unarmoured for mobility. Easy to sever. Disable an arm to end combat. Disable a leg to prevent escape."
Tenten allowed her leg to collapse beneath her, and fell onto one knee.
"Target still alive. Allies must protect.
"After victory, free to interrogate or negotiate."
She looked at Kei again. Kei nodded.
"Advanced level. Some tendons, ligaments, heal easier than others. Leave target as potential future ally? Cripple forever? User's choice."
Tenten's hand blurred. Ten shuriken embedded themselves in a green-coloured dummy's joints.
"Achievable with practice. For now, one target."
She pointed to the next dummy.
Kei would not disappoint her.
-o-
Kei panted. Tenten had neither told her to stop, nor encouraged her to keep going. Periodically she would hold up a hand, then take stance and demonstrate the correct version of a throw Kei had failed at, three or four times, then step back without a word.
Finally, she felt her accuracy dipping unacceptably low from exhaustion and allowed her arm to fall loose.
Tenten handed her a water flask.
Kei had expected to come here for an ordinary sparring session, not a lesson. It was strange for Tenten to act solely as a teacher, when she would derive no benefit for herself in the process. Doubly so given their relative positions.
"Tenten…" she asked. Why could the girl not have an ordinary surname, instead of forcing Kei to imply an unearned degree of intimacy? "Why are you teaching something like this to a potential enemy?"
Tenten met her eyes for longer than usual. "Non-lethal combat," she said simply. "No needless death."
The look she gave Kei was a searching one.
Kei understood, of course. If she could but master this, she would not only be a more formidable warrior. She could also, if it came to it, fight Tenten's own allies in a way that did not take their lives.
But that intention was meaningless if it was not followed by the entire team—if Kei and Kagome fought the same opponent, for example, she could end up non-lethally disabling them only for Kagome to immediately splatter them across the landscape using his explosive seals. Conversely, were Team Inoue to exclude lethal options from their tactics altogether while their enemy did not, they would surely be annihilated.
Tenten's own team… included Rock Lee. Kei made a horrifying leap of logic.
"All of you?"
"Gai-sensei most. Neji least. Likely why he chose us."
Tenten's gaze intensified. She was waiting for something. Looking for something. Kei did not know what.
-o-
"Proud citizens of Hidden Mist!
"The continental nations believe us to be ignorant yokels descended from backwater bandits. They believe that a single word of deceit in our ears will be enough to sow confusion and ready us to be their willing slaves. That is why they send infiltrators among us preaching the heretical doctrine called 'pacifism'. 'Lower your weapons,' they whisper. 'It is shameful to meet a challenge with your full power, and righteous to cripple yourself.' 'Weaken yourselves, and we promise we will do the same.' They would have us bow down before them, surrendering the might that we have earned over generations of sacrifice, and trust that they will not plant a dagger in our prostrate backs. Thus, their agents preach of gentleness as the path to peace, even as they continue to torture and murder as they have done since the beginning of time.
"Peace belongs to the strong! Peace belongs to those who hold nothing back when it comes to protecting their families and their village. When a ninja of Hidden Mist allows himself to be tainted by the venomous lies of treacherous saboteurs, it is a tragedy. When he seeks to poison the unified will of Mist with those lies, it is treason! It is an attempt to kill us with words by those too weak to do so with blades! Report these so-called 'pacifists' and your loyalty will be rewarded. Lend them your ear and you will be culled, as Mist culls all who threaten the safety of its people."
-o-
"I do not understand," Kei confessed. "I see the tactical advantages of what you demonstrated to me, I do, but why would you value your enemy's life over your own? What could possibly be worth endangering yourself and everyone you are fighting to protect?"
She was seeing a vision now, of Tenten sparing an enemy, perhaps even a Mist-nin, out of some misguided philosophy, only to be killed the second she lowered her guard. That was how things were, that was the true shape of the world—and Kei did not want this girl, a potential friend amidst the faceless hordes of humanity, to die.
Tenten's shoulders tightened. Her eyes shifted away from Kei's, to the blades of grass on the ground.
She hesitated.
"Not today." Her voice rose slightly, blurring the line between statement and question.
"OK," Kei said, trying to give hers the soft acceptance she had heard many times from Mari-sensei.
They retrieved the shuriken in silence.
When they were done, Tenten beckoned Kei towards the edge of the clearing, to the base of a huge oak that likely predated Leaf itself. Tenten sat down and lounged back against the tree, looking up at the sunlight filtering through the canopy above.
Kei found a place next to her amidst the sprawling roots. The tree had clearly not distributed them with concern for her personal space in mind, but oddly Kei did not feel uncomfortable lying close to the other girl. It was not a matter of wanting physical contact—Tenten was neither Ami nor Mari-sensei. Quite the opposite, it was because she somehow felt certain that Tenten would never touch her without her permission.
Without pressure to communicate, without the need to defend her personal boundaries, Kei could be safe. For a little while.
-o-
Kei did not know when she had dozed off. She had not intended to. The idea of being forced to sleep next to strangers on missions was disturbing enough—the force of will Mari-sensei demonstrated to make a specialisation of it was extraordinary. And even after Kei had become inured to the practice, it was certainly something she had not dreamt of doing of her own accord. To say nothing of how she had now inconvenienced a girl who had given up her own time to train her.
As Kei stirred upright, there was a snapping sound next to her, as of a book being unceremoniously closed. Tenten stood up, her figure silhouetted against beams of sunlight.
She raised her eyebrows expectantly, then flicked her index finger between herself and the dummies a few times.
"Yes," Kei decoded, "I would be happy to move on to sparring practice."
She placed her stack of borrowed shuriken in the palm of Tenten's carefully outstretched hand.
Although Kei was watching, she had trouble following the legerdemain, if that was what it was. All she knew was that it involved a scroll holster on Tenten's chest, a quick hand movement, and a glint of metal. Then the shuriken were gone, replaced with an equal-sized stack of the blunted training variety.
"Real-time weapon change," Tenten explained on seeing Kei's expression. "Drawing and sheathing is a tool user's weak point. Can be attacked for massive damage."
Kei took the proffered shuriken.
Tenten opened up some distance between them. She gave Kei one more piece of advice before they began.
"Moving target, easy target. Will keep opening, closing, rotating joints. Every motion creates new openings."
Kei did not intend to be an easy target.
-o-
They were the last to rendezvous back at the entrance, where the comfortable peace of the last few hours was inevitably broken by their teammates' clamorous tomfoolery.
"Lee," Hazō said in a voice that was holding on to politeness by the skin of its teeth, "before our next meeting I will compose a list of words which you are not allowed to use for the duration of our training together. They shall include, but by no means be limited to, 'lustful', 'penetrate', 'spurting' and 'girth'."
Lee beamed. "You mean you are planning to train with me again before you leave? That's fantastic. I can tell that my presence is causing the most youthful part of you to grow, and if you can keep it up, your thrusting technique in particular will benefit greatly. I shall honour the commitment you have made, and will ceaselessly train my own manhood so that I may hold you to it."
Hazō slumped onto the nearest bench, his will to live visibly draining like air from a punctured pig's bladder.
The other pair was doing no better.
"'Pop quiz' is not a legitimate form of ninja combat," Hyūga growled at Noburi.
"Is that right?" Noburi smirked. "You mean you lowered yourself to the level of a civilian again? Thanks, Hyūga. In that case it's no wonder those expensive private tutors of yours didn't prepare you for my questions."
"Perhaps next time I can uplift you to my level," Hyūga said. "Ideally by the throat. Though given your extraordinary density, my arms may not be strong enough."
Noburi blinked. Then his smile widened. "Come on, Hyūga. You're being unfair on yourself. Even you must be good at something."
And so it went on.
Tenten gave Kei a look that took no effort whatsoever to interpret. You see what I have to deal with?
Kei let her eyes flicker sideways to where Kagome was attempting to test Hazō for poison or energy-draining ninjutsu, then back to Tenten. Believe me, it is no picnic on this side either.
"Ah, the beauty of youth in full bloom," Gai sighed apropos of nothing Kei could identify.
"I know, right?" Mari-sensei grinned. "It's moments like these that make being a jōnin instructor worthwhile."
Wonderful. While they had spent a beautiful afternoon training, their team leaders had apparently gone insane. Insofar as one could tell with Maito Gai.
"Onwards!" Gai proclaimed. "Tonight is ramen cook-off night, and this time I will not brook the unyouthfulness of a tie!"
"That's right!" Rock Lee said. "Gai-sensei, once I fill you with my broth, you will surely admit it is more youthful than Neji's limp noodle!"
"Lee!"
"Gai-sensei!"
"Lee!"
"Gai-sensei!"
Kei looked to Tenten, a friend not thrown at her by the cruel machinations of fate. A friend made through her own personal choice.
Tenten met her eyes one last time. She tapped her shuriken holster. Again?
Kei tilted her head faintly towards the metropolis of Leaf behind her, towards the Hokage's Office. Then she nodded. If I can.
The Leaf Public Library was unreal; an open foyer leading to the librarian's desk, and beyond that a pair of tables covered in neatly stacked books. Past the tables was an array of bookshelves that seemed to march off to the horizon, each six shelves high on both sides and jam-packed with books. Bound books, not scrolls. How in the name of the Sage had Konoha acquired this many books? How could there be this many books?
The entire team had stopped dead in the foyer, looking past the librarian's desk into the room in awed wonder. Even Inoue-sensei was shocked at the sight.
Hazō was unsure how long he stood gaping, but Kagome's twitching finally jolted him out of his trance. He looked around to see the rest of the team shaking off the wonder as well. Off to the side stood Team Asuma; the jōnin wore a tiny smile, from the corner of which dangled his trademark cigarette. The three genin varied between amused (Yamanaka), bored (Nara), and relaxed (Akimichi).
"You put that out right now!" hissed the librarian, appearing out of thin air with a suddenness that made Kagome jump and spin around, kunai in hand.
The librarian in question was ninety years older than the Sage of Six Paths, stick-thin, shorter than Inoue-sensei, with a face like a withered apple. She snatched the cigarette from Sarutobi's mouth and shook it at him as though he were a student being threatened with the whip. "You will not smoke in my library, do you understand me? I told you last time that I would ban you if I ever caught you smoking in here again, so you can turn yourself around and march—"
"Can't do it, Auntie," Sarutobi said, smiling like a child teasing a grownup. "The old man sent me; we're escorting this batch and they've been given browsing privileges."
The librarian glared at him, then spun on the team and leveled upon them a gaze that should have caused spontaneous combustion.
"Welcome to the Leaf Public Library," she ground out. "Let me make a few things plain; I've known little Hiru since he was on his mother's knee, bless her. I don't care if he comes here and personally squires you around; you be respectful to my books or I will ban you. You damage a page, I'll skin you to make a replacement. Do you un—"
"Wouldn't work," Kagome said. "Skin doesn't hold ink well enough. Fades after a few years, and then what have you got? A book that can't be read. Horrible."
She looked at him in shock. "What did you say?"
He frowned at her in confusion before speaking very loudly and slowly. "I said: Skin. Doesn't. Hold. Ink. Well. Enough. Making. A page. Out of. Skin. Is stupid. You end up with a book you can't read. S'like a poet who can't write or a sealmaster that can't infuse. Or a dog that you find lying on the garbage pile with three legs broken and bruises all over. Horrible. Just horrible." He visibly remembered that he was supposed to be speaking loudly, so he repeated himself. "Horrible. Books you can't read. Are. Horrible!"
"You don't have to shout," she said. "I'm not deaf, just shocked. Thirty thousand people in this woodpile, does anyone respect books? No! They come here to read them, lollygag about, then shove the books back anywhere they like. Sometimes they even spill on them! I keep telling them no food or drinks in the library, but do they listen? No! They spill on my books, and even dog-ear the pages!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"Those stinkers! Where are they? We'll blow 'em up!" He smacked his fist into his hand with a loud crack! "Boom, squish!"
"You would not believe how many times I have asked little Hiru for permission!" she said, taking him by the arm and leading him back to the desk. At her touch he jumped a foot in the air and came down flapping his arms furiously at her. She tutted and raised her hands placatingly. "Of course, of course. No touching, should have realized. So sorry. Come on, I'll make us some tea and we can talk about all the books." She paused and turned to glower over her shoulder. "You lot be good. I'll be watching!" She disappeared back around the counter; Kagome paused, obviously torn as he looked back and forth between his team and the librarian taking her seat at the counter.
"Go on!" Inoue-sensei hissed, shooing him on. Kagome's face lit up and he hurried off to join the librarian who was busy pouring tea. Hazō was happy to see that his paranoid teacher hadn't completely lost his mind; the minute he sat down he pushed the librarian's tea set aside and unsealed his own steaming hot teapot.
"Well, that happened," Sarutobi said. Silence ticked by. "Does he do that a lot?"
"He's...unusual," Inoue-sensei said, watching as Kagome and the librarian chatted. The sealmaster had a teacup in one hand and a kunai in the other. The librarian didn't seem to mind.
"Well, yes," Sarutobi said. "Anyway, come on. Let's look around."
Hazō followed along behind the Leaf jōnin like a duckling trailing its mother. What he was seeing was impossible. Literally impossible. It took months to write out a book, illuminate it, and bind it. Even if every person in Konoha spent all their time writing it would have taken years to create all these different....
He stopped, leaning in close to the first table. There were three copies of Cuisine, At Home and Afield next to each other. Why in the world would anyone make more than one copy of a book?!
"How...?" he asked, trailing off as too many questions collided in his brain.
"We're Konoha," Sarutobi said with a tone of irritatingly smug assumption that was belied by the twinkle in his eye. "We do the impossible before breakfast and eat the unlikely for a snack. What's a few books between friends?"
"A few books?" Inoue-sensei said archly.
Sarutobi chuckled. "You can touch them if you want," he said to Hazō. "Just don't spill on them or Auntie will get cranky with me."
Hazō wiped his hands on his pants to scrub off whatever specks of dirt might have clung to his skin before very carefully picking up one copy of the cookbook and opening it as carefully as if it were a possibly-primed explosive tag.
The instant he saw the page he froze in panic.
Seal-quality paper. No extraneous lines, just a perfect grid of kanji, written in an inhumanly perfect hand; seal! Unknown seal, and he'd probably triggered it by picking it up! Crapcrapcrapcrap!
"Breathe, Kurosawa," Yamanaka said with a laugh. "It's just a cookbook." She scooped the book out of his hands and stuck it back on the table exactly where it had been. She started to turn back to him but Hazō pushed her hands away in his hurry to grab the remaining two copies of the book, his fear of death diffused by Ino's proof of safety and replaced with an entirely different fear. He flopped one book open on the edge of the table and flipped frantically through the other until both were open to the same page. He flicked his gaze back and forth between them, comparing that inhumanly precise writing.
It was exactly the same.
Every word, every symbol, perfect. Every brush stroke exactly like its counterpart in the other book.
Rage burned away every trace of judgement; he uncoiled like a snake, slamming both copies of the book into Sarutobi's chest. (The jōnin shifted fractionally and then allowed the contact, doing nothing except brace himself so the force of the impact didn't knock him backwards.)
"WHO?!" Hazō shouted, dropping the books so he could grab Sarutobi's flak jacket in both hands and yank the man down until their faces were only a whisker apart. "Who did you steal from my clan to make these, you bastard?! How many Kurosawa do you have chained up in your sweat shop, cranking out books so that Konoha can look rich and powerful?!" His voice got louder and angrier with every word; by the end he was shoving Sarutobi, driving the man backwards with the sheer force of his rage.
Sarutobi retreated one step, two, three, then caught Hazō's wrists and twisted, driving Hazō's elbows out and up to shut down his forward momentum. "Stop," the jōnin said. "As far as I know you're the first Kurosawa to set foot in Konoha. We don't have any of your clan here—"
"BULLSHIT!" Hazō said, bracing himself to push forward again. A tiny shift of Sarutobi's fingers applied pressure on a nerve bundle in the genin's wrists that forced him to stop shoving, although it didn't calm him at all. "Only a Kurosawa writes like this! This is the Iron Nerve!"
"This is a printing press," Sarutobi said calmly. "It's a machine that writes. I promise, we don't have any of your clan here."
"...a machine?" Hazō asked, the anger draining and leaving only confusion in its wake.
"A machine," Nara said from behind him, his tone not at all sleepy or bored. "My grandfather invented it. It's just metal and wood, that's all."
Hazō glanced back; Inoue-sensei was restraining Kagome, who had kunai in both hands and a look like a panicked wolverine on his face. Noburi and Keiko had faded out to the sides, kunai in her hands and an open canteen in his. The three Konoha genin were squared off with them, hands in position to cut handseals. Akimichi had lost his usual amiable look; he carried his hands high as though about to sledgehammer them down.
"You really want to let him go, Kurosawa," Yamanaka said, her voice cold. "Right. Now." Tension thrummed in the air. She flicked the first of what would clearly be a chain of handseals.
"What did you do to my books?!" Auntie shouted, shoulder-barging Yamanaka out of the way in her haste to get to the two books that Hazō had dropped. The blonde stumbled to the side, her hands going out wide as she caught her balance.
Everyone shifted, their attention coming off of each other and onto the tiny old woman who was busy scooping up the bound pages like they were her precious children. She dusted them off and turned them carefully, inspecting each with a critical eye.
"You foxed the cover!" she snapped, waving the books at Hazō. "Get out! All of you, get out! You should be ashamed of yourselves, damaging perfectly good books because you couldn't keep your tempers! What sort of ninja are you if you can't even control yourselves? Terrible ones! If I were your teacher I would make you dig latrines for a week and use your stupid faces for target practice the week after that!"
"We don't use students for target practice, Auntie," Sarutobi said calmly. "Never have."
"I know!" she said, throwing her hands in the air. (While keeping a tight grip on the books.) "Never once! Little Hiru, always so stubborn! You want children to learn how to dodge, you throw things at them! Honestly! I've been telling him that for forty years!"
"Believe me, it's been tempting," Inoue-sensei said with a smile, slowly releasing Kagome and stepping back. "Sometimes they're just infuriating, aren't they?"
"Infuriating? Infuriating?" the tiny little librarian said, whirling on Sarutobi. (In midwhirl the books slotted themselves back onto the table in a movement so fast Hazō almost missed it.) "I'll tell you what's infuriating! Infuriating is telling someone Time. And. Time. Again"—each word was punctuated by a jab of a bony finger into his ribs—"Not. To. Damage. The. Books!"
Sarutobi yielded ground with every poke, pivoting adroitly to avoid what was only a hairsbreadth from being an actual taijutsu strike. The whole time an urchin's grin was spilled across his face. "It wasn't my fault, Auntie! Really!" he said, laughing. "I promise, I didn't start it!"
Auntie stopped and set her hands on her hips, glaring up at him like a terrier glaring at a mastiff. "Well, who did then, hm?"
"It was him!" Sarutobi said immediately, pointing accusingly at Hazō. "It was all his fault! I am the victim of circumstance, that's all!"
The librarian turned to Hazō with an expression so thunderous that Hazō braced himself for an attack...until the tiny woman spun back to Sarutobi again and started smacking him repeatedly.
"Shame on you!" she said, driving him back around the table with thwaps to shoulders and chest that he ducked or blocked, laughing all the while. "Shame on you for selling out a young boy that you're supposed to be guarding! He's your responsibility, why are you trying to get him in trouble, hm?!" Thwap, thwap, thwap.
"Time to go!" Sarutobi said, sidestepping Auntie's next lunge and shunshining to the door. "Everyone out, let's go! Step lively, now!"
o-o-o-o
"Here you are," Jiraiya said, opening the heavy door and gesturing them in into a conference room with a heavy walnut table and ten chairs evenly spaced around it. On one wall was a small three-drawered credenza with a pitcher of cold water and a set of glasses on top. There were curtain rods, but the curtains had been removed so that the walls—and the absence of peepholes—were visible. "This is Shield Room Three. We use it for secure briefings, so it should be a safe space for you all to talk."
"Safe? Safe?! I'll show you safe, you stinking Toad stinker!" Kagome growled, pushing his way into the room with suspicious glares in all directions. "There's no such thing as safe! Safe, indeed. Pfah." He crouched down so he could look under the table while staying well away from it.
Jiraiya watched the other sealmaster's antics with a raised eyebrow and a calm expression. "What are you looking for?" he asked as Kagome shuffled around the table, examining every inch of its underside.
"The lupchanz dispensers," Kagome said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Uh-huh. Yes, that is absolutely a thing we wou—" His dry words were cut off as Inoue-sensei hurriedly reached up and put a hand over his mouth. He looked down, giving her The Eyebrow but not bothering to move aside. She shook her head frantically at him, nodded her head towards Kagome, then shook her head again. Jiraiya rolled his eyes but nodded; Inoue-sensei removed her hand.
"I'll leave you to it, then. You have an hour and then someone will come to collect you." He nodded to the team and strode off down the corridor to do whatever Toad Sages did when they weren't unwisely teasing paranoid and massively overstressed sealmasters.
Inoue-sensei did a turn around the room herself, studying the walls, floor, and ceiling carefully.
Inoue, Awareness:
?d100: 921
?, ?:
?d100: ?
"Okay," the jōnin eventually said. "If there's anything fishy about this room I don't see it. Sit down, everyone."
Kagome was in the process of studying the credenza carefully before pulling one of the drawers one with the tip of his kunai. (Gouging the wood slightly in the process.)
"Kagome," she chided, crossing her arms and tapping her foot expectantly.
Looking even guiltier, he produced a sheaf of high-quality paper and half a dozen pens and inkstones from his belt pouch. "They were just sitting there," he said pointing at the drawer defensively, almost managing to keep the pleading whine out of his voice. "I mean, they were obviously there for us to use."
She eyed him for a moment, lips pursed. "Okay," she said.
Kagome's face lit up. "Really?"
"Yes, just be discreet. Okay, we're on a clock so let's get this party started." She settled into the chair at the head of the table and leaned back, fingers tented as the others took their own seats. (Kagome refused to sit in one of the chairs and instead perched cross-legged on the table, turned slightly so that he could see the door in his peripheral vision.) "Hazō, you had something to talk about?"
"There are two things," he said carefully. "Both are somewhat sensitive, and I'd like to be very clear about my intentions, so please let me finish before saying anything. My first item concerns Yakushi and his desire to experiment with our bloodlines. Noburi, I recognize how important it is to you that you learn medical ninjutsu. I am completely in support of this desire, both because it will offer a great advantage to the team and because you are my friend and I wish to support you in something that will make you happy. I am very confident that, given the appropriate training and resources, you will be a brilliant med-nin. Furthermore, I recognize that Yakushi is an expert and it sounds like he is also a good teacher. You can clearly learn a great deal from him, which means that keeping him happy with us is important. I do have concern about his strong desire to study our bloodlines. We are a small team faced with enormous challenges and no safety net. We need every advantage that we can get, and our bloodlines represent a significant set of advantages for the team. Giving up information on them reduces that advantage and this worries me. I suggest to you that Yakushi's first loyalty is to Konoha, not to our team. Allowing him to study our bloodlines seems to me to be a risk, and yet may also be a requirement in order to keep him happy enough to train you and give Akane the best possible care. I would like to know how you feel on the subject of letting him study our bloodlines.
"Keiko, Inoue-sensei, Kagome, I would also appreciate your input and I hope you do not feel slighted by the fact that I am asking Noburi first. I feel that he has more to lose in this situation than the rest of us do and therefore his opinions should be reviewed first so that he does not feel peer pressure to conform to our opinions."
Noburi considered Hazō's speech for a moment before cracking a smile. "Boy, talk about kid gloves. Okay, let me see if I can do this Clear Communication no Jutsu too.
"Hazō, I appreciate your concern for my feelings and your desire to support me in something that, as you said, is very important to me. I feel that you are correct in most of what you said: Yakushi-sensei is a very good med-nin and studying under him is both an honor and extremely useful. I do understand that revealing details of our bloodlines represents a risk, but Yakushi-sensei has been very careful not to ask about clan secrets."
Inoue sensei looked at him sharply. "You said that he had tested you to make sure your chakra system would not react badly to the medical ninjutsu he was teaching, right?"
"Yes...?"
"Noburi, that was him studying your bloodline," she said patiently. "In fact, I'm...both impressed and nervous about how good all these Leaf nin are at deception and subtlety."
"What do you mean, sensei?" Keiko asked. "Everyone seems to have been very direct so far."
Inoue gazed upwards, ticking points off on her fingers. "Gai: I strongly suspect that his whole 'Youth!' persona is a front. That librarian: appeared exactly when a fight was about to break out, distracted everyone, turned it into almost a comedy. Removed tension, put everyone back on a 'us against the enemy' footing with herself as the enemy. Clearly recognized that Hazō was the one to drop the books, but then demanded an explanation from Sarutobi. Speaking of Sarutobi, the Hokage saw right through every misdirection I tried." She shrugged. "Granted, that one's less surprising. Still."
Everyone digested that.
"I find Hazō's points convincing," Keiko said. "I believe that allowing Yakushi to experiment on us would be a bad plan unless we received significant value in return. We may need to yield a certain amount of cooperation in order to ensure that Akane receives optimal care, but we should keep it to a minimum. It is essential that we maintain value to Jiraiya in particular and to Leaf as a whole. Our secrets are the most valuable things we have to offer and we must spend them as slowly as possible."
"On the subject of getting value for it," Hazō said, "I was thinking that perhaps we should tell him that he can watch us practice any jutsu he teaches us. It would show cooperation and give us increased options."
Everyone considered that for a moment and then Inoue looked around the table, taking a vote by eye. "Okay, sounds like we're in agreement. Trickle out the information as slowly as possible and in as small doses as possible. Hazō, I like the idea of jutsu training, but they need to be useful ones, and none of that happens without me there. If he complains, tell him that I'm your jōnin sensei and I'm very controlling. It's not unknown for jōnin to bar their students from studying under other teachers, so it shouldn't raise too much of an alarm."
"Or me," Kagome said, his smile entirely too creepy. "I could be there. Watching. You know, to make sure he doesn't do anything dangerous."
Inoue eyed him nervously. "That is definitely a thing we could do," she said diplomatically. "Moving right along...Hazō, you said you had a second topic?"
Hazō licked his lips nervously. He had put a lot of thought into this speech, but there was an entire swarm of butterflies hatching in his belly right now.
"I was thinking about what reward I'd like to ask Jiraiya for," he began. "I have a couple of options, but I wanted to ask permission from the entire group for my first pick."
Inoue-sensei's eyebrows shot up; Keiko cocked her head in curiosity.
"I would like to preface this by saying that I won't go forward with it unless you all approve," Hazō said. "You are all very important to me, and I do not wish to damage our team dynamic by causing resentment or jealousy. Also, if anyone else would like to ask for the same thing I would be happy to work it into my own request so that you can get a separate reward in addition."
"Well, that's not a bit ominous," Inoue-sensei said. "Spit it out, kid. Anticipation only makes it worse."
"I would like to ask for Jiraiya's help in extracting my mother from Mist."
Keiko and Noburi blinked. Inoue-sensei looked thoughtful. Kagome had produced one of the stolen pens from his pouch and was petting it lovingly; he seemed utterly unbothered by Hazō's suggestion.
"Hazō, you know that's...really risky, right?" Noburi said carefully. "The Mizukage is all about massive hate for anyone who runs. And security in the village is really tight."
"The chances of success seem extremely low," Keiko said. "However, I would be interested to hear the reasoning behind the request."
"My momma is the only family I have," Hazō said. "The rest of the clan kicked her out when she married poppa. They stripped her of everything except the clothes on her back and the weapons on her belt. Poppa didn't have any family so it was just the three of us. No grandparents to visit on festival days, no brothers to wrestle with or sisters to tease and scare suitors off of. Just us, against the entire world. Momma and Poppa were both ninja, so they were each gone a lot but they made sure one of them was always there as I was growing up."
He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. "They were so proud when I made it into the ANA. They both walked me to school the first day and handed me off to the proctor at the gate, then stood there and watched me until I was all the way inside. Momma practically glowed.
"You all know I was in trouble a lot when I was in school. If I hadn't been so good at taijutsu I think they would have thrown me out. Momma used to scold me every time I got demerits, but I could tell she was proud of me for thinking and asking questions. She always told me, 'A good ninja isn't just a tool, cricket. A good ninja understands the purpose of the mission, the reason for the training. It's the only way to excel.'
"We've been gone a year now, and we must have been labeled traitors. She probably thinks I'm dead, or a coward, or something worse. She's all alone now, and I can't stand it. I want to see her again. And it would be useful to have another jōnin on the team, right? She almost certainly hates Mist for killing us, so I'm sure she'd jump at the chance to come work for Jiraiya if it meant being with us again. She's a great fighter, and smart. She's good with people, although probably not as good as you, Inoue-sensei, and...." He trailed off, biting his lip and looking around imploringly.
"If any of you have people you would like to have extracted, I would be happy to ask for that as well," Hazō hurriedly added. "I think it would be entirely reasonable for me to ask Jiraiya 'I would like you to extract our families.'"
Uncomfortable silence reigned.
"Hazō, I wish to communicate my feelings about this issue very clearly," Keiko said, "because it is clearly of extreme importance to you. I find the idea of having another jōnin on the team extremely desirable. I also am very in favor of anything that will promote your happiness and well-being, which I believe having your mother on the team would do. I am willing to devote as much time and effort as required for the team to come up with possible plans. I am willing to perform very deep dives into the Frozen Skein in order to validate any plans we come up with. Despite that, I do not wish to give you false hope. I believe that the chances of safely extracting any ninja from Mist to be low. Extracting a jōnin seems even less probable, as they represent such a disproportionate fraction of Mist's combat power. Extracting a jōnin who is related to a missing-nin seems exceptionally unlikely."
"Not to be a Debbie Downer," Inoue-sensei began, "but I'm pretty much onboard with Keiko's assessment. I won't say it's impossible—there's no such thing as a security system that can't be cracked—but it would be very hard. There would also be serious political risks to weigh; stealing any ninja, much less a jōnin, from another village is the kind of thing that will definitely cause a diplomatic crisis if it's identified where the ninja went. Defections are bad enough, but an actual extraction...well, it probably wouldn't be enough to cause a war, but it would definitely raise tensions. This is a request with international implications."
Silence fell again.
"What's wrong with all of you?" Kagome said. "Of course we extract her. She's part of our team, even if we haven't met her. Sure, it's hard, but it's not like it's going to tear a hole in reality and eat our faces. It's just a problem—we think, we plan, we take precautions, and then we solve it." He clutched the pen to his chest and glared at all of them.
Inoue-sensei smiled and nodded. "Okay, we are properly chided. Like the man says, let's plan this. Jiraiya is a lot more likely to grant the request if we have a workable suggestion on how to do it."
"Seems like getting a message to her would be a much more doable beginning," Noburi said. "It should be lower risk than an actual extraction, and it works better for both sides. Jiraiya might prefer that, actually. It could give him an agent in place; if she establishes enough value onsite it would make him more likely to want to extract her. We saw that he was willing to extract those civilians because the mother had information Jiraiya needed. Being willing to extract a civilian isn't the same as extracting a jōnin, but it's a sign that maybe he could be convinced."
"The first problem will be establishing trust," Keiko said. "An initial contact that said merely 'come defect to our village' would rightly be viewed with distrust. She might attack the messenger in perceived self-defense, or turn them in to the authorities. Likewise she might be uncomfortable or unwilling to follow a plan she had no part in creating. It would be more effective to establish an initial relationship by offering her proof that Hazō is alive, then engaging her in planning how to get her out."
"Hazō, you'll need to come up with the initial contact message," Inoue-sensei said, slouching down into her seat so she was looking up at the ceiling, tapping her fingers together in thought. "It needs to be purely informational; offering a physical object for a first approach raises the risk of discovery to unacceptable levels. You'll need something personal that no one aside from you and her would recognize. It needs to be significant enough that she will definitely remember it, but also short and simple enough that it can be conveyed in no more than two or three seconds."
Hazō pondered. "Well, how about—"
The discussion went on, ideas being batted back and forth, plans proposed and shot down. It seemed like only minutes before the knock came at the door and a very polite ANBU escorted them back to their quarters.
XP AWARD: 3
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, December 28, 2016, at 12pm London time.
"Guys," Hazō said, forcing himself to look up from his bowl of porridge. "I have something to say to all of you."
"What's that?" Inoue-sensei asked lightly.
"I'm sorry about yesterday. I should have kept a better hold on my temper. I nearly provoked a battle we couldn't win, I told everybody in the Fire Country about one of the Iron Nerve's most powerful abilities, and I nearly got us barred from the library we've been waiting so long to access. It was stupid behaviour and I've shamed all of you."
The rest of the team exchanged glances.
"It's no big deal, Hazō," Noburi smirked. "Nice to know that you can get pissed off just like the rest of us. I was starting to wonder if you'd been taking the whole 'ninja are emotionless tools' spiel a bit too seriously."
Keiko nodded. "While your behaviour was drastically inappropriate, I can sympathise with the sentiment that inspired it. I, too, imagine I would be provoked into destructive rage were I to believe that my clansmen were being enslaved."
"Well, I thought he was being perfectly reasonable," Kagome said. "Not the 'damaging the books' part, or the 'attacking a jōnin head-on' part. That was damn stupid. But somebody hurts a member of your team, you wipe them and everything they ever loved off the face of the earth. That's just common sense—stops people doing it again. Besides, those stinkers needed a reminder that we weren't their meek little lambs to be paraded around until they were ready to feed us into the grinder."
"You heard 'em, Hazō," Inoue-sensei concluded. "It was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and if you ever pull a stunt like that again Sarutobi will be the least of your worries, but in the end everybody makes mistakes, and we've always got your back. Now finish your breakfast before the minders get here and you have to grovel with your mouth full."
-o-
"Good morning, Yakushi-sensei!"
"Noburi!" Yakushi-sensei beamed. "You're early! What prompted this burst of diligence?"
Noburi shuffled on the spot. "So, uh, it's occurred to me how my team might have to leave Leaf soon, and that means we might not have much time left together, so… do you think we could make an early start on that corpse dissection you mentioned yesterday?"
"Hmm…" Yakushi-sensei tapped his glasses. "Your enthusiasm does you credit, but to be honest… I was planning to spend the morning going over my tissue sample analyses. I would be disappointing the Hokage if I did not provide my report on time."
Noburi suspected he might have been pushing it. But fortunately, he'd come prepared with a secret weapon which might just tip the balance of Yakushi-sensei's preferences.
"Oh, there's something I meant to tell you. My team and I are hoping to study some new ninjutsu over the next several days. Would you be interested in coming along to observe?"
Yakushi-sensei's hand stopped tapping. "You and Mori and Kurosawa?"
"Yep."
Yakushi-sensei stood up from his desk. "I would be delighted. Noburi, you have made my day, no, my entire week."
He looked at Noburi with an uncharacteristic seriousness, less paternal and more like one adult to another. "Thank you for trusting me. I know this must have been a difficult decision for you, and I respect you for being willing to take a risk in the name of advancing the world's scientific knowledge."
A warm, fuzzy feeling spread through Noburi's body.
"Now, I am going to trust you in return."
Yakushi-sensei reached into a desk drawer and pulled out some kind of form, then filled it in.
"Strictly speaking, this violates current hospital policy. The director would be chasing me through the halls with a naginata if she knew I was doing it without her approval. But you and I can make it our little secret, can't we, Noburi?"
"Of course!" Noburi struggled to suppress his excitement. "But what are you doing?"
"Give this to the duty nurse. It is a permission slip for all five members of your team to visit Ishihara. Individually and staggered over the course of the day, of course. Given how her mental state has been oscillating, I believe bending the rules in this case and allowing her to see friends other than Kurosawa would only be to her benefit."
"That's great, Yakushi-sensei! Thank you so much!"
Yakushi-sensei gave a warm smile. "Not at all, Noburi. Now go inform your team. Afterwards, I suggest taking the first turn to visit. That will give me time to examine those tissue samples, and see if I can't complete my work early and dissect that Hidden Grass spy today after all."
-o-
"I am terribly, terribly sorry," Hazō bowed so deep he could see the fine detail of Sarutobi's sandals. "My behaviour was unforgivably rash and stupid. I caused a scene, damaged books, got you into trouble with the librarian, and showed you unacceptable disrespect after everything you've done for us."
Sarutobi took a slow drag from his cigarette. "Ah, hell. I'm a jōnin team leader. I've seen worse. I don't think I need to explain to you what you nearly brought down on yourself as a result of that ruckus, and I'm pretty sure you can imagine the consequences if you ever do anything like that again. Apology accepted, Kurosawa."
Hazō slowly rose to an upright position. "Thank you, sir. Would you mind escorting us to the library one more time so I can apologise to the librarian as well?"
-o-
"Hey, Akane," Noburi bounced into the room.
"Noburi," Akane said tonelessly. "I wasn't expecting you. Thank you for coming."
"No biggie. I managed to butter up Yakushi-sensei into letting everybody visit today as a special favour. Obviously, I get to go first. The others will be turning up based on a random draw, so you can have fun guessing who's next."
Akane nodded. "Noburi, I want to apologise. I know you must be deeply disappointed in me—"
"Let me stop you there," Noburi held up a finger. "While I'm here, you're forbidden to talk about anything heavy, serious or sad. Doctor's orders."
"I am?"
"You are," Noburi pulled up a chair next to Akane's bed. "Now we've got that sorted out, let me give you Leaf's hottest news. I got Yamanaka to talk my ear off, hung out with Akimichi, and even badgered Nara until he coughed up some speculation. So first off, you wouldn't believe what the grapevine is saying about Sarutobi Asuma and Yūhi Kurenai…"
-o-
"Please accept my most humble apologies," Hazō begged as his forehead touched the floor. Instinct (and also Inoue-sensei) told him that for this woman, nothing less than dogeza would do. "I damaged your books, interfered with other patrons' reading, and generally behaved in a fashion unbecoming of a ninja, much less somebody visiting a library."
"Hmph," Auntie snorted. "At least you have better manners than some people. Get up boy. I don't want you scuffing up my nice clean floor."
Hazō got up, but bowed again, this time at a more reasonable angle. "Please permit me to make it up to you by serving as your assistant tomorrow. I may be inexperienced, but I am a quick learner, good with my hands, and prepared to work those hands to the bone to earn the privilege of readmission."
"Now you're laying it on too thick," Auntie gave him a sideways look. "You think I can't tell when somebody is being insincere, boy? I was wrangling the likes of you when there was only one face on the Hokage Monument!"
"I humbly apologise!"
"Bah. You be here at the crack of dawn, understood? And you work until I tell you to stop, no excuses. Restocking, filing, tidying, the works. Maybe even some basic restoration work if you're not too much of a dunderhead."
"Thank you very much!"
"Which reminds me," Auntie turned to Kagome, who was watching with an odd kind of approval. "You said yesterday skin couldn't hold ink, didn't you? Well, normally you'd be right. But I happen to have some fascinating manuscripts in the back which are written on cured animal hides. Want to come take a look?"
"Cured animal hides?" Kagome said. "Hah. I'll believe it when I see it."
Team Sarutobi looked at each other as if drawing lots, and then Akimichi followed Kagome into the library's winding interiors.
-o-
"Good afternoon, Akane," Kei said in a level voice that hopefully would not cause Akane undue stress. "How is your condition?"
"Not bad, thanks," Akane gave a small smile. "I'm glad you came, Keiko."
Kei sat down on a chair against the wall, hands folded in her lap. Now came the difficult part. She should have done more to prepare. Kei wracked her brain for ideas on what to do next.
Silence filled the room.
Eventually, Kei admitted defeat.
"Akane, now that I am here, I realise that I have neglected to prepare suitable topics of conversation for visiting a person in hospital. I would greatly appreciate it if you were to suggest some."
Akane laughed, hopefully in a sympathetic rather than mocking way.
"All right… How about you give me your best objective overview of what the team's been up to over the last few days?"
Kei slumped slightly in relief. "Yes, that is an excellent topic.
"To begin with, an unreasonable amount of our time has been spent socialising with members of Team Sarutobi. To give an example, Hazō has befriended Yamanaka Ino, and their interactions…"
-o-
"You know," Hazō said to Yamanaka as he leafed through the scrolls on folk songs on display in the shop, "it struck me for the first time when I was in front of the Yamanaka compound the other night how important your clan must be.
"Is that why," he asked as offhandedly as possible, "you always look after your appearance so well? I thought at first that was a Leaf ninja thing, but Tenten's look was so simple and functional, whereas yours seems like you put a lot of care into it."
There. Inoue-sensei's teachings hadn't gone to waste, even if it he'd had to practice in front of the mirror a few times.
"It's nothing special, really," Yamanaka purred. "But yeah, since I'm going to be the matriarch one day, I'll need to find myself a worthy husband, and when that day comes I don't want anybody remembering me as that girl who used to go around with a haystack on top of her head."
"I can see that. I guess there must be a lot of pressure on you, then?"
Yamanaka shrugged. "It's not so bad, compared to the others. The Yamanaka aren't obsessed with appearances—we know it's what's on the inside that counts. Then again, I can't do anything too crazy or my dad will blow his top. He's the overprotective type.
"Though that said," she gave Hazō a sly look, "in a way that almost makes it more exciting…
"Say," she said more neutrally when Hazō (who was trying to maintain a knowing look while internally flailing) didn't respond. "Aren't you a clan kid too, Kurosawa?"
"Yes and no. My mum used to be clan heir like you, but the clan disowned her after she defied her family and married my dad for love."
"Wow," Yamanaka said. "That's… so brave… and romantic. She must be an amazing woman."
"She is," Hazō said proudly. "It cost her everything, but she never regretted it, not even after he died on a mission and she was left to bring me up on her own.
"But it wasn't so bad," he added before she got the wrong idea. "We were happy together, and we managed to make ends meet, and she was over the moon when I became a ninja. I hope that she's OK, and that we'll get to see each other again someday."
Yamanaka was giving him a strange look he couldn't read. "Kurosawa," she said softly. "I had no idea…"
He hoped he wasn't upsetting her.
"Really, it's nothing," he tried for a casual voice. "Everybody has bad things happen in their lives."
"Yeah…" she said uncertainly. "I'm sure they do."
-o-
"Hi, Inoue-sensei," Akane waved. "It's very nice to see you. I like what you've done with your hair."
"You noticed?" Mari's smile stretched wide. "I'd hug you if I wasn't afraid it would make you implode. I decided to try out one of the more fashionable Leaf styles, and do you suppose a single person on our team noticed?"
"Oh, no," Akane put her hand over her mouth.
"Got it in one. I'm willing to give Noburi a free pass because he's been so tired from all the medical stuff lately, but Hazō hasn't said a word. Keiko hasn't said a word. Kagome hasn't said a word. Is it too much to ask to be appreciated as a woman from time to time?"
"Inoue-sensei," Akane said carefully. "Sorry if I'm being insensitive, but I think you're being harsh on Keiko. If she's not saying anything, it might not be because she hasn't noticed."
"Point," Mari sighed.
"Moving on, how are you holding up? Body and mind?"
"I'm fine," Akane said flatly. "As well as can be expected."
Mari, occupying Noburi's chair next to the bed, leaned closer.
"Akane. It's me, Inoue Mari. While I'm here, you're safe. You can say anything, and it won't hurt me and it won't make me judge you. I won't breathe a word of it to anyone else. Right now, you can be whoever you want to be, and you can always go back to being the strong Akane when I leave."
Akane looked at her, saying nothing. She rocked back and forth in bed a little.
"Inoue-sensei…
"Inoue-sensei, I don't know who I am anymore."
Mari gave a small nod.
"When I was ill, I was this gloomy, quiet person, and I hated myself. I hated myself for depending on people, always taking and never having anything to give. I hated myself for being weak and always doing the easy thing because anything else took too much out of me. I hated myself for not daring to step outside the cage I'd built out of my own fears."
"Sure," Mari continued to make the appropriate sounds to let Akane know she was being listened to.
"Then I met him. He never hesitated. He always did what he thought was right. He dedicated himself to becoming a better person, every hour of every day.
"He showed me I could be someone else.
"So I became someone else. Someone bright and shining and determined and better. As long as I believed in the Springtime of Youth, I would always know what to do and how to do it. I could be like him."
"I see."
Akane looked up, right at her, eyes wet.
"It wasn't a lie, Inoue-sensei! I felt better. I was better. The Spirit of Youth drove me to train beyond what I believed I could do. It drove me to be warm, and kind, and optimistic, and all of the other things the old me had longed for. I was able to be a ninja again only because I'd learned what it meant to be youthful.
"Now, youth hasn't failed me. I've failed it. When I got hurt, when I nearly died, I saw myself for who I was. I'm not somebody like Hazō-sensei, who has the Spirit of Youth bubbling up from inside him whether he wants it or not. I don't wake up in the morning and say, 'Today I'm going to work to save the world, because that's what my heart is telling me to do.' My youth isn't a lie, but I'm wearing it like a coat, finding new ways to make the same old mistakes underneath."
"Why do you say that?" Mari asked gently.
"Look at me," Akane said. "How much do I know about anyone's true feelings, deep down, after a year together? How much do they know about mine? I've let Youthful Akane be the only Akane anyone can see, so nobody has any reason to try to look deeper. Keeping your bonds shallow because you're afraid is about as unyouthful as it gets.
"My youth wasn't a lie. But now I can see that it wasn't the truth either, and I don't know what is. I've been lying here, day after day, trying to work it out, because I know that soon there are going to be choices to make, and I can't afford to get them wrong."
Akane's gaze drifted down again.
"Akane," Mari said. "It's OK to be lost and confused. You're asking a big, important, adult question, the kind that's not easy for anybody. Not for you. Not for Rock Lee. Not for me.
"This may sound strange, but you should feel proud of yourself. A lot of people, even mature adults, never take that coat off, long after it stops fitting, and end up hurting themselves and the people around them. Yes, I know, the metaphor's stretching.
"Point is, taking it off, letting yourself be naked and vulnerable while you search for something that fits who you've become, is badass in terms of personal growth. I don't know if it's youthful, but it's something I personally respect."
"Thank you, Inoue-sensei," Akane said quietly.
Mari sat in silence for a few seconds. Yes, she decided. Some things were worth being disqualified for.
"One thing I will say: not having an identity isn't the same as not having a self. You might not know who you are, but you are somebody, beneath all the confusion. That somebody has feelings, and needs, and desires, even if you don't know where they come from or how they fit together. You'll find that sometimes you have to make choices according to those feelings, and needs, and desires, so that afterwards you can look back and see where they led you, and figure out what kind of person you must be to have made that particular journey."
It had worked for Mari. She remembered that moment, leaning over Yuri's body with a kunai in her hand, seeing the trust still in her lightless eyes, and reflected in them the trail of perfect self-destruction that had led Mari there. There was no way back, of course, there was never a way back. But when she saw the chain of cause and effect, from the happy child to the broken doll to the libertine to the puppeteer, she also saw the patterns. No matter who she was or what was happening to her, Inoue Mari always found a way to be playful, manipulative, curious, trusting, sadistic…
But Mari wouldn't let Akane make the same mistakes. Akane would make her choices consciously, with open eyes, surrounded by friendship and support. She would remain pure, untainted, free of regrets… even in this shinobi world that gave birth to nothing else.
Mari looked at Akane's not-yet-shed tears and shifted closer.
"I don't want to hug you in case I do it wrong and you implode, but if you want… you can hug me?"
That was how they spent the rest of her visit.
-o-
Nara had coincidentally taken a seat next to Hazō over lunch, rather than to the rest of Team Sarutobi like usual, so talking to him was unusually convenient.
"So Nara, I've been reading the Yumehara book, and I'm intrigued by some of his theories."
"You have? You are? By which I mean please continue. If you feel like it."
"Sure. I thought the Fire Country being the cradle of civilisation made a lot of sense, since you do have bountiful land and great natural resources. But I had trouble with the next part, where all the settlers who founded the other nations were exiles who couldn't accept the wisdom of Fire's rulers. I mean, sure, it makes sense that the Wind Country would preserve Fire's culture the most, since you're right next door. But I think it's a leap to go from that to saying that because the Water Country settlers went the furthest away, we're the most degenerate mentally and physically.
"It's true that the Water Country lacks a lot of conventional resources, but I haven't seen any evidence that we're that different to you. If anything, there's a case that we should be stronger, because we've had to fight for what we have so much more. Honestly, it all reminds me of Kotetsu-sensei saying that foreigners had no souls. If you have no souls, then why is it impossible to tell the difference between people from different countries if you ignore accents and ethnicities and cultural habits and so on?"
"Hmm," Nara said noncommittally.
"I did find the political part more interesting. The passage about how the Hokage and the elders are always debating over whether it's better to leave Leaf as merely a shining example for others to strive to emulate, versus conquering the other countries to end their suffering and lead them to enlightenment? It's a very different way of thinking to Mist. The Mizukage is always saying that in nature, the strong rule over the weak, and when human society deviates too far from nature, everything falls apart. So the only way to create a peaceful world where everything is in its proper place is for Mist, which is strongest, to rule over humanity."
"And what do you think?"
"I think…" Hazō took a second to formulate, "I think that I really like the idea of the Hokage's peaceful path to a better world. It's the first time I've heard an influential political figure offer a way forward that doesn't need war. But at the same time, I can see where the elders are coming from. If you just sit back and wait for the rest of the world to copy you, aren't you abandoning the rest of humanity to its own devices while you get to enjoy all this?" He gestured around them at the prosperity of the village.
"Hmm."
"Also it's at odds with his argument about the fundamental driver of history being the Will of Fire, and Leaf being the greatest because it embodies the Will of Fire most fully. If the Will of Fire is the will to protect, then there always has to be something to protect people from. If people are divided, then there are always going to be cycles of war and peace as everyone tries to protect their loved ones from each other. So you'd have to give up the Will of Fire before the Hokage's vision of world peace is possible."
"Is that so?" Nara carefully put down his okonomiyaki. "Then how do you resolve this contradiction? Is the Hokage wrong? Or does the Will of Fire not shape human history?"
Was Hazō being tested? If so, what was he being tested on? Was Nara looking for independent thought, or was he waiting for the missing-nin to insult the Hokage or the Will of Fire in the middle of a Leaf restaurant?
"I don't think either has to be wrong," Hazō said at last. "But you have to reorient your perspective. The true enemies that our loved ones have to be protected from aren't other ninja. You can see that when you look at the civilian world. They're constantly threatened by bandits, chakra monsters, drought, famine, disease, natural disaster—you name it. Those are things all of us hold as enemies, no matter where we're from. And Leaf is living proof that life is better for everyone when those enemies are defeated and the civilian population is kept safe and strong.
"Imagine it, Nara. All of humanity united by the Will of Fire. A world peace that isn't passive, but is constantly stimulating us to grow and overcome our problems together. You don't have to be the Hokage to want that. You just have to want happiness, for yourself and the people around you."
"Troublesome," Nara muttered after a long moment. "Troublesome in the extreme. Also impractical and unrealistic. But it's an original thought, and those are rare, so I will take time to consider it later."
"Good." Hazō remembered to tone down the enthusiasm. "Thanks, Nara. Then how about we talk about something else? Maybe you could tell me what you make of the theories on the origin of humanity in Chapter I? I think my favourite is the arriving-from-another-continent one, both because it explains why the Fire Country was so important as a source of art and technology, and because it dovetails neatly with Chapter II's commentary on how chakra beasts might not have existed during the primitive era, so sea travel would have been possible."
"Oh, yes. Well, the problem with that is that none of the theories for where chakra beasts would have come from, and why, are particularly convincing. Even Munakata's dimensional incursion theory has the problem that…"
-o-
"Hi, Hazō-sensei," Akane gave him a faint smile.
Her eyes were red. Why were her eyes red? Was it his fault?
"Hi, Akane. How are you feeling?"
Akane looked like she was taking a moment to reflect.
"Better," she said. "Yes, I think I'm feeling a little better."
Hazō smiled. "That's great to hear. Dr Yakushi really pulled through on this one.
"You know, a lot of interesting stuff has happened since last time I saw you."
"Actually, the others have already told me about some of it," Akane said. "So there's something I'd like you to clear up for me before we get talking about the news of the day."
"What's that? Because if they told you about the Kurosawa bloodline printing press thing, I'm not sure this is a good time to go into that. I've been trying to turn over a new leaf on OPSEC."
Akane shook her head dismissively.
"That's not it. Hazō-sensei, what exactly did you mean yesterday when you said that I really did mean a lot to you?"
"Ah." Was that what she'd been crying about? Hazō was immediately aware that he was the lowest scum on the face of the planet, and also that he had to urgently clarify things before he was once again responsible for making Akane sad.
"Akane, I'm so sorry about that, but please don't worry, I wasn't trying to imply anything by saying that right before I left, well, except the stuff I was implying, obviously, but no, I wasn't trying to make a statement that I like liked you or anything, which is not to say that I don't not like like you, I mean obviously I was just trying to express the deep affection I was having for you as your friend and your master, which is not to say that I was in any way denying other possibilities which may or may not be appropriate in the future and Akane why are you beating your head against the wall?"
"Was I?" Akane said brightly. "How strange. Probably just a coincidence."
"Uh." Would this be a good time to call Dr Yakushi and get Akane an emergency check-up?
"Hazō-sensei," Akane met his eyes. There was something frightening about the intensity of her expression. "Tell me why you said what you said, in ten words or less."
Hazō swallowed. His heart was beating hard against his chest. The world seemed to blur and contract a little, as if he was feeling dizzy.
"I was afraid to tell you directly that… I have feelings for you."
The die had been cast. Hazō wished from the very depths of his soul that he could have used the Iron Nerve on it.
Akane's eyes were locked onto his.
"Hazō-sensei," she breathed, "that's thirteen."
Her tone was reproachful, but her face was the sun coming out from behind the clouds, and also suddenly close enough that he could see the tiny flecks of gold in her irises.
"I, uh, yes, it is," Hazō stammered. "If you like, you can wait while I try to work it down to something more concise?"
Akane collapsed back to her original position. She eyed the wall next to her contemplatively, but then seemed to think better of it.
"Hazō-sensei, you mean the world to me and are an incredible person, but you have no sense of romance."
"Hey, I'm working on it," Hazō objected. "Wait, did you say 'the world'?"
"Yes," Akane said patiently. "Which is why instead of freaking out at you, which I am totally doing on the inside right now, I'm going to ask you to explain what you mean by that. Without run-on sentences if you can."
Hazō took a moment to gather his thoughts.
"Well, due to various recent events, I found myself pondering romantic love. So naturally I thought of Keiko."
"Did you."
"Of course," Hazō nodded. "If I wanted to get things right with you, Keiko was the obvious model to follow."
"Uh-huh," Akane said sceptically. "This is our Keiko, right? And you want to to base your relationship with me on her example."
"Well, yes. If Keiko's feelings can't be described as romantic, then romance is not a thing that exists in this world."
"Fair," Akane conceded. "So what did you come up with?"
"I ended up writing a kind of mental checklist of what I imagined having feelings for someone would mean. And you ticked all the boxes. You're awesome, and I often wish I could be more like you. I'm really happy that you pay attention to me and approve of me, and I'd be crushed if you ended up doing the opposite. I don't think you're right about everything the way Keiko does with Inoue-sensei, but you're right about most things most of the time."
Hazō frowned as he did his best to recall the rest.
"Go on," Akane said, her voice tense again for some reason.
"I realised I would do anything for you. Well, I mean, not literally everything, which is to say that if you asked me to put my hand in a fire or not uplift the world that might be a bit too much, though if you had a really good reason—"
"Hazō-sensei."
"Sorry, run-on sentence. But you get the idea. I would do anything for you except the things I trust you not to ask for anyway."
"I… I think I already knew that. Anything else?"
Hazō felt the blush spread all the way from somewhere deep in his torso, steadily working its way up with no intention of stopping until it turned his hair as red as Inoue-sensei's.
"I realized how physically attractive you were as well. I'm sorry it took me so long to notice the way your smile lights up the world, and the way you move like flowing water…"
Akane looked down at her blanket wordlessly. Then her eyes found his face again.
"That just earned you back one romance point," she smiled, a little awkwardly. "Keep collecting more, and good things might happen."
Hazō had no idea what she meant by that, but he suspected this wasn't the time to say so.
"Anyway," Hazō said. "That's how it is. By any reasonable definition of romance, I'm pretty sure I have romantic feelings for you. But I realise that I have no idea how you feel, and if you'd rather we just be friends, that's perfectly OK because I'd never want to do anything to endanger our friendship, though of course if you want to be more than friends—sorry, run-on sentence. I'm trying, honest!"
He looked at Akane warily. "So, uh, what do you think about all this?"
"Hazō-sensei, do you remember how we met?"
Hazō nodded. He opened his mouth, but she went on before he could say anything.
"You swept me off my feet with your youthfulness, your insight and your compassion. You saved me from the Liberator, then you put your life on the line against impossible odds to save me again. I was ready to die for you that day, and that has never changed.
"I've spent a lot of time reflecting on the last year while I've been here in hospital. And looking back… I don't think there was ever a time when I wasn't in love with you."
Hazō's mind was blank. There were supposed to be words in it, maybe even words for saying, but he couldn't seem to find any.
"Hazō-sensei," Akane said delicately when it became apparent that he wasn't going to offer a response. "We've just confessed our feelings for each other. This is an extremely important, once-in-a-lifetime romantic moment which you will hopefully think back on many times in the years to come. For the sake of those years to come, please choose your next words carefully."
Hazō thought of a thing to say. It wasn't a good enough thing, so he rejected it. The next was barely an improvement. The one after that sounded better, but would take the conversation off in the wrong direction. Another three drafts later, he finally came up with something that sounded right.
"I want to always be by your side, Akane. Whether it's as friends, or as lovers, or as something else altogether, doesn't matter as much as having you as a central part of my life. And even that doesn't matter as much as making sure that you are happy and strong and that the bond we have isn't threatened by anything, not even my own immaturity."
The sun brightened. For once, Hazō had said the right thing.
"So… where do we go from here?" he asked. "I should warn you that I am probably even worse at the dating thing than I am at the flirting thing, but I am prepared to work hard at it. Or would you rather stay friends? Or something else?"
Akane looked thoughtful. Night gradually descended.
"On second thought, I don't know if this is a good idea. Any of it. Hazō-sensei, even if you have feelings for me now, you deserve far better than someone like me. I think you should try to get over me, so that hopefully someday you'll be able to find a girl who is good enough for you."
Hazō found anger bubbling up inside him. He didn't even know at whom or what.
"Akane, you need to stop beating yourself up like this. People make mistakes. I make mistakes. If any of the others have told you about the Library Incident, you will be aware that I make huge, ridiculous mistakes with consummate ease.
"I don't care how many mistakes you make, or how big they are. I care about being with you, and the only question in my mind is what form that should take in order to make both of us as happy as possible."
Akane blinked rapidly. "I—I'm sorry. I'll try. Everything is still a mess. But if you're sure that you want this, I'll try. Because I do want it too."
Hazō relaxed. "Thank you. Now we just need to work out what 'this' is, exactly, and we'll be set."
"I don't know," Akane said after a while. "My own dating experience is limited to girls' manga. Which is something I should definitely not be admitting to you right now. But I think… that's the direction I want to move in. There would just be something so sad if we had feelings for each other and were attracted to each other and spent our lives trying to pretend it away because we were afraid of ruining what we already had.
"Which I am," she added. "I really, really am. Going through the Night of the Killer Tapirs a dozen times would be less scary. But I also don't want to find out I'm the kind of person who's so scared of failure she gives up in advance."
Hazō nodded. "OK. So next question, how does one do the dating thing? Bear in mind romance manga is probably on the Mizukage's list of banned genres."
"I'm not sure. The only ones where one of the people is stuck in hospital are those awful hurt/comfort things, and disability moe, and generally let's just not go there.
"I'm going to be stuck here for a while, so we can't exactly go on dates. Most of the other things couples do together are going to be off the table as well, for all kinds of reasons. So I guess… we carry on as before? And if one of us thinks of something particularly romantic they'd like to do, we can talk about it when it comes up. Does that work for you?"
"Yes," Hazō said. "Yes, it really does."
He was jumping up and down on the inside. He hadn't messed up! They'd successfully negotiated this important and difficult and dangerous conversation without anybody getting hurt, and now they were… well, he didn't actually know what they were. Were they a couple now? Or did something else still have to happen before they were more than friends? Were they in some kind of transition period?
But the important thing was that for now, everything was sorted out and they'd dealt with all the complex issues.
"Oh, one more thing," Akane frowned. "Keiko talked about how you were getting friendly with Ino, and from here it sounds a lot like you were flirting with her. Is there something there I should know about?"
Thank you, Keiko. Hazō mentally bumped her up above Noburi on his revenge list, though still several steps below Inoue-sensei.
"I, uh, yes, we may have been flirting—I think—but it's not a big deal! I mean, you're Akane. You're my best friend, and now you're becoming something even more than that. She's nothing more than a really attractive girl who may or may not be interested in me and whom I'd like to get to know better."
"Hazō-sensei," Akane said wearily. "Your effortless honesty is one of your best features, and one I really admire, but when we're done here, promise me you'll go to Inoue-sensei and ask her about tact."
"I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong?"
"Never mind. Just tell me this: are we heading from romantic comedy into harem manga territory?"
"I don't know," Hazō confessed. "Remember, probably terrible at the dating thing.
"But if, purely theoretically, we were…" he went on cautiously, "how would you feel about that?"
Akane fell silent. The seconds ticked by.
"Ino's not a bad kid. She comes off as shallow and self-centred, but she can surprise you."
"Right…?"
"But." Akane set her shoulders as if preparing for battle. "Can you promise me that whatever happens between you and Ino, or another girl, or another boy, it won't hurt this thing that we're starting together? Can you promise that you'll never let another person, or another relationship, damage our bond? Can you promise to be as open about things happening between you and other people as you have been about everything else?"
"Yes," Hazō said without hesitation. "I told you, I'd do anything for you. And besides, the things you're asking are just common sense, right?"
Akane nodded. "If you say it, I believe you. But I still need time to think. It's really, really scary to imagine that one day you'll meet someone better than me, and you'll love them, and I'll just fade into the background until in the end I lose you completely. If that happens, all the clear communication in the world won't save me."
"I won't," Hazō said. "It wouldn't hurt our friendship if I made new close friends. This is the same."
"I believe you mean that," Akane said. "But you can't know. So I need to think. And maybe talk to Inoue-sensei.
"I'm not saying 'don't get to know Ino better'. I'm not even saying 'don't flirt with her'. Just… go slow? For my sake? Don't do anything you can't take back if I decide it's too much for me after all."
Hazō nodded. "I wouldn't do anything to hurt you, Akane. Not ever."
Akane smiled. "I know that, Hazō-sensei."
She took a slow, deep breath.
"You're going to need to work out how to deal with the Yamanaka Clan. If they decide there's anything serious between you and Ino, whether there is or not, I don't know what they're going to do. They might tell Jiraiya never to bring you to Leaf again. Or they might take matters into their own hands. So you need to think of a way to be valuable enough to them that they'll at least decide to keep their options open where you're concerned.
"Also, Ino doesn't like pushy boys. Play it cool and make her curious about you instead of trying to share too much up front."
Akane yawned. "I really want to spend more time with you, but now the adrenaline is wearing off, I can't stay awake much longer. Will you come back tomorrow?"
Hazō looked at her with affection. "Do you even need to ask?"
-o-
"Rock Lee," Hazō strode across the clearing, suffused with righteous energy. "Let's go training together! Here is the list of forbidden words I've compiled for you."
"I accept your youthful challenge, my friend!"
Lee cast his eyes over the list. "'The', 'be', 'to', 'of', 'and'… Kurosawa, are these the hundred most commonly-used words?"
"That's right! And do you know why?"
Rock Lee opened his mouth.
Hazō pointed to the list.
Rock Lee closed his mouth again.
"Because you and I are going stealth training!"
-o-
Kagome's draw left him last, which was a bloody stupid idea he should have argued harder against. Frankly, they should have let him see Akane first, before Hazō's first ever visit, so he could scope the place out and find all the hidden traps and brainwashing machines. It was shameful, how he'd let himself relax in this den of chakra vipers.
"Kagome, what are you doing?"
"Securing the area," he explained, rifling through her wardrobe. Nothing there but a few changes of clothes, which he unceremoniously dumped out so he could check the rear panels for bugs. He should never have forgotten about the Aburame.
"That's very kind of you, and I appreciate that this is how you show me you care, but would you mind not leaving my underwear strewn across the floor? It's a little… embarrassing."
"What? Underwear?" Kagome froze on the spot. He had, now he thought about it, handled some particularly soft things. One of them was even lacy. They had passed through his hands.
And now she wanted him to go over there and pick them up again.
"Don't you, uh…" he cast around desperately, "don't you think that should be left to the nurse? It's not proper, a man going through a lady's personal things." There. That should fool her. Wouldn't want her thinking he was embarrassed or anything. Which he wasn't, of course. Just… startled.
But Akane was giving him a look. "Yes," she said with a resigned tone probably caused by tiredness, "wouldn't want you to be rude."
"No. No, exactly!" Good work, Kagome. He must have been smoother than he thought.
"Hmph. The stinkers must've known better than to trap your wardrobe. It's the obvious place for a professional to look. Rest of the furniture seems clear too. Now I just need to check your body for signs of poisoning—"
He stopped. He couldn't be seeing that right. He ran over to the decorative designs around the window.
If he followed that line there… no, it got cut off. That, on the other hand, that was definitely something.
"I knew it!" he shouted. "They've got disguised seals in the room!"
Akane stared at him.
"That's… that's worrying. But Kagome, maybe you shouldn't be letting everyone in earshot know you've spotted them?"
Kagome winced. OPSEC. And to think he'd been proud of himself for how well he'd managed not to give away any secrets to those Hyūga stinkers, unlike the kids.
"So what do they do?" Akane asked. "They could just be alarm seals to stop people breaking in, or to detect if a patient's unwell."
"No idea," Kagome grumbled. "Got them covered over with pretty abstract patterns. I'd have to tear up the material to get at them, and then the hospital people would know the game was up and drag us straight over to the vivisection labs.
"You stay here," he barked. "I need to let the others know."
"Don't worry," Akane said to his retreating back. "I'm not going anywhere."
-o-
You have earned 13 XP.
-o-
Offscreen:
Jiraiya has been sent your letter. In all likelihood you will see him tomorrow. (When you're booked as a library assistant for an unknown length of time. Oops.)
You can't afford any books. The Sealing Failure expansion is out. Civilian Burger solo-play has sold out. The former costs about as much as an Akimichi Lore cookbook.
You've entrusted Team Sarutobi with the sacred duty of finding you someone who can teach you Tears of Red. Expect to owe one of them a favour once they find a clansman with the knowledge.
Funnily enough, you don't feel as stressed as you have been for the past few days.
-o-
What next?
Voting ends on Saturday 31st of December, 9 am New York Time.
On the way back from dinner, Hazou oh-so-casually arranged to be walking alongside Inoue-sensei. "Sensei, could I have a moment in private?" he asked quietly.
Inoue-sensei sighed and shook her head regretfully. "In for a penny, in for a giant stack of gold bullion," she muttered. "Sure," she said more loudly. "One sec."
She stopped walking, causing the rest of Team Uplift and Team Asuma to trail to a halt around her. "You guys go on ahead," she said, casually ignoring the way Hazou's eyes were widening and his mouth was dropping open in a perfect 'O' of horror. "Little Hazou wants to have a private conversation, probably to ask for help understanding the changes in his body, all these new urges he's facing, and whether all the self-satisfaction he's been up to lately will really make his hands too hairy to hold a kunai. Sarutobi, would you mind leaving me one of the kids as a minder?" She studied the kids in question with a considering eye. "Probably shouldn't be Yamanaka, though. Wouldn't want those delicate ears to be burned off in embarrassment." She frowned. "Actually, we're just going to sit over there and chat for a while, so maybe the minder could stay a little ways off?"
Sarutobi managed to smother his laughter in a cough, but couldn't keep the grin off his face. "Tell you what," he said. "I'll stay myself and, yes, I can give you some space. Kids, you all have fun now. Remember, straight home!"
Noburi flashed Hazou a cheesy grin and two thumbs up. Keiko gave him an utterly unreadable look before pivoting on her heel and striding off. Nara rolled his eyes and fell into step with her.
"But—" Kagome-sensei said, cutting himself off at Inoue-sensei's shooing gesture. "Fine," he said sourly. "Don't come crying to me when those ANBU stinkers grab you and stuff lupchanzen in your ears or cut you open or take your brain out and put it in a vat or—"
"Thank you, Kagome," Inoue-sensei said patiently. "I promise you can check our ears when we get back. Off you go." The sealmaster glared at her before stomping off, the rest of the crew falling in around him.
"Now, what can I do for you, Hazou?" Inoue-sensei said brightly.
"Senseiiii... Why would you— That was— What were you—"
"Now, now, whining is unbecoming," she chided. "Seriously, what were you expecting? There's no room in the apartment for a discreet conversation and the tall drink of water over there"—she pointed at where Sarutobi was leaning on the wall across the street, smoking and grinning so bright that his teeth were a visible white beacon in the gloaming—"wasn't going to let us just wander off. You had a question?"
Hazou took a moment to settle himself emotionally. Honestly, he was so rattled that now he didn't even want to have the conversation, but given he'd already paid the price he might as well go through with it.
"I wanted to ask about, um...girls? And this poly stuff? And dating. I did what you said and talked to Akane. You were right; she's interested but I think I messed it up and said the wrong thing and I can't screw this up because it's Akane but I've never dated before and I'm sure I'm going to mess it up, especially since now Ino is flirting with me—I think, I'm not really sure how this flirting thing works and I think I'm really bad at it and—"
Inoue-sensei chuckled and sat down, leaning back on the wall of the nearest building, gesturing for him to sit next to her. "Relax," she said. "Breathe. It's going to be okay."
"How do you know?" Hazou asked, sitting down where instructed. "Maybe it won't."
Inoue-sensei shrugged, her face somewhere between wistful and amused. "No, maybe it won't. Still, is panicking about it more likely to make it go well or poorly?"
"...Poorly?"
"Right. So. Breathe. Now, you want to know about romance and polyamory. Okay, I can do that, and I'll even stop teasing." She flashed him a wicked grin. "Well, at least for a bit.
"Romance, regardless of how many people are involved, is complicated. In the beginning it's easy—you're swept away by it, you think the other person is the greatest thing since cranberry cheese, and they can do no wrong. All of their faults get looked at as adorable little quirks because you're still basking in the warm glow of New Relationship Energy. Once you get a little more grownup this is the part of the relationship where you fill the candy jar."
"The candy jar?"
"Mmmhhh...never mind, I'll explain when you're older. Anyway, during the NRE period everything is effortless and perfect. She'll forgive a lot of missteps, so relax and enjoy.
"Specific things...be aware. If she changes her hairstyle, notice and comment. Make her feel recognized and appreciated. Figure out what the things are that move her—for some people it's gifts, for some it's touch or compliments or acts of service. There will be one or two of those that resonate most strongly with her. Observe closely, figure it out, and do that.
"Be genuine. Don't scrape around looking for something to compliment her on, find something that you can say sincerely.
"Now, NRE wears off after a while...if you're living together or seeing each other every day then it's typically a year plus or minus six months. If you're busy ninja who only get together once every couple of weeks then it can last longer, but then it's harder to form close bonds in the first place. Once it wears off, things get harder. The way they always leave their clothes on the floor starts to itch at you. Hisaya used to tell me that the dirty dishes piled on the counter drove her to madness. You two aren't going to be living together so those won't be the things that get to you, but there will be something.
"Worse than the not-dishes-but-whatever-it-is-with-you-two is that when the NRE wears off it feels like all the joy has gone out of the relationship. You'll feel like it's clearly not meant to be. You've fallen out of love, woe is me everything is dark and gloomy and awful and obviously it's time to break up.
"That's when you need to decide: do you really want this person for themself or was it just the NRE and sex? If you want the relationship to continue, that's when you need to dig in and deal with the issues. Face them right away, don't wait—they'll just build up and get harder to deal with later. Identify your own faults and find ways around them. If you're conflict-avoidant then you need to find systems to deal with that. Writing the other person a note every day and leaving it on the kitchen table, or some other agreed-on place, can help; it should include two things they've done recently that made you happy and one thing that made you unhappy. If you need alone time then you need to talk that out with the other person."
She stopped and shook her head. "I'm getting lost in the details, and some of this isn't relevant to you two," she said. "Sorry. The important part is: the beginning will be relatively easy. It will get hard a year or so in. Throughout all of it you need to talk to each other. Be open about things that bother you and address them right away. Don't try to muscle through things that are hard for you or tough out things that are bothering you; find ways to work around them.
"Polyamory is both easier and harder than monogamy. On the one hand you have a third person around to notice developing issues and help mediate arguments. If one of you needs some alone time then the other doesn't need to be abandoned and isolated. There's another income, another set of hands to deal with chores. Those things all make it easier."
"Don't you get jealous, though?" Hazou asked.
She shrugged. "Yes, and? Jealousy is just an emotion, like anger. The difference is that society makes us all learn how to control anger but teaches us that jealousy is this uncontrollable force that will necessarily destroy anything it touches." She laughed and shook her head. "That's such complete bullshit. The exact techniques that work for anger work for jealousy: recognize that you're feeling it. Breathe, relax your muscles. Wait until you're calm again before talking about it, but do talk about it. If you lose control and say nasty things because you're jealous, apologize for them later, admit what you were feeling, and try to be better in the future. If your partner admits that they're feeling jealous, ask them 'what can I do differently so that you feel appreciated and loved?' Really, it's not jutsu development."
Hazou frowned dubiously. This polyamory idea was appealing in a "forbidden fruit" way, and it really just made more sense, which was why he'd kinda-sorta proposed it to Akane, but it seemed immensely risky. Appealing or not, this was Akane! (Still, Ino was awfully pretty....)
Inoue-sensei watched him with a tiny smile and eyes that seemed to be reading his thoughts in real time; he jerked his gaze away when it occurred to him that a genjutsu mistress might actually be able to do that. She laughed and patted his knee.
"Relax," she said. "This is all complicated stuff. The truth is, most first relationships don't last. No matter what you feel for Akane, or for Ino"—she gave him a sly grin and a wink—"the chances are that you will grow apart as you age. That's okay; if you handle it right you'll be friends for life, even if the romance turns out not to be there. Two of my friends from the Academy had this torrid affair, lasted about three years. They eventually stopped dating, but they were still thick as thieves. He stood up with her at her wedding to someone else and the smile on his face lit up the room." She laughed. "You should have heard the 'break her heart and I'll...' speech he gave the groom. Mariko scolded him so hard."
"But—"
"It's okay," she said, raising her hands placatingly. "I'm setting expectations, that's all. Akane is a smart girl, and very mature for her age. You're very earnest and it's obvious that you want this to work. No matter what happens, I'm confident that you'll end up with the relationship that's best for you. That might be friends, friends with benefits, perpetual lovers, or husband and wife...there's no way to know at this point. Still, the next steps are the same: be honest with her, be open about your feelings, talk a lot. Hold off on the physical stuff until she makes it clear that she wants that. Relax and enjoy it. Again, I'm sure the two of you will end up with the right relationship."
She pushed herself to her feet and offered him a hand up. "Come on," she said. "Sarutobi is starting to look fidgety, so we'd better get back."
o-o-o-o
"Good morning, ma'am!" Hazou said, bracing to attention in front of Auntie's desk with his eyes locked straight ahead. He started to sweat when he realized he didn't actually know the woman's name. There was no way under stars and sky that he was going to call her 'Auntie' to her face. She'd pull his spleen out through his nose if he did.
"Hm," she said, eyeing him up and down. She was holding a three-foot stick that was somewhere between 'switch', 'pointing device', 'cane', and 'ancient weapon of eldritch power'. "Early. Good." She fluttered her hands at him. "Oh, relax, boy. Pull the poker out of your bunghole, you're making me tired just looking at you."
"Yes, ma'am," Hazou said, forcing himself to relax slightly. "One thing though—we've been notified that Jiraiya is going to want to talk to us some time today. I'll need to leave for that, but I can come back tomorrow and make up the time. I'm very sorry for this. I know I said I'd work as long as you wanted—"
Auntie held up a hand peremptorily, her face sour as a winter apple. "Look, boy, I helped raise little Hiru and all his friends, I clerked at headquarters for twenty years, and I've known more ninja than you've known hot dinners. You think I don't understand chain of command and obedience to orders? If little Jiry is calling you, you go and stop wittering about it. Have some self-respect!"
"Ma'am, yes ma'am!" Hazou said, automatically bracing to attention, nervous sweat gathering at his hairline.
"Oh, relax, boy. Take the poker out. Now, time to figure out what you're good for. Can you alphabetize?"
Hazou blinked. She wanted to know if he was literate? What sort of ninja wasn't literate?
"Well?! Speak up boy, I'm not far enough from the grave to waste my few remaining minutes listening to you not talking!"
"Ma'am, yes ma'am! I'm literate and can alphabetize, ma'am!"
She sniffed. "Fine. I guess you foreigners aren't all savages after all. You'll be shelving. Follow me, I'll show you the cart."
She led him over to a small wooden cart with squeaky wheels and a massive cargo of books. "This is the shelving cart," she said, one hand drifting possessively and apparently unconsciously over the spines of the books stacked on it. Her tone made Hazou flash back to a long-ago Academy instructor's first lesson: "This! Is an EX-plosive tag!"
"The books on the cart need to be returned to the shelves. You WILL handle them with care and respect, and you WILL file them in the correct spot, do you understand me?"
"Ma'am, yes ma'am!" ("You WILL not touch this or any other EX-plosive tag without my EXPRESS instruction, is that clear?!")
She eyed him balefully. "Follow."
She led him to the nearer of the two tables of books. "These two are all frippery," she said, waving at the tables dismissively. "Cookbooks, romance, trashy novels, that sort of thing." She sniffed disdainfully. "You will treat them with respect anyway, or I will take my switch to you." A sharp glare ended only when he nodded his understanding. "The whole library is organized by topic, subtopic, and then alphabetical by author. Topics are alphabetical in the library, subtopics are alphabetical within their topic. The exception is the ninjutsu theory section in the back, into which you will not go, and this new release junk, which is considered its own topic instead of being on the shelves where it belongs." She seemed personally offended by this divergence from proper order. "Subtopics of new releases are: cookbooks, ninja fiction, romance. Point!"
Hazou's eyes skimmed over the tables; now that he knew what he was looking for he could see the divisions. They weren't explicitly labeled, but there were small gaps between each block and the titles made it clear what was what: 'Not Starving: Bachelor Cooking Made Easy' and 'Forbidden Love: Kenji and the Kitsune!' were pretty broad hints. His finger swept left to right over the table in front of him. "Ma'am! Cookbooks, ninja fiction, romance! Ma'am!"
"Fine. Shelve these." She thrust a gnarled, liver-spotted hand at him, three books clutched in her grip. Hazou grabbed them—carefully!—and checked the author names on the front covers before slotting them back into the appropriate places.
"Not entirely useless, I see. Fine. Off you go. Don't damage the books, don't misfile them, don't laze about. I'll be at the desk." She turned and marched away.
Hazou gulped and scrubbed his hands on his pants to get rid of the sweat before starting to check the books on the cart to see what he had. Akimichi, the one who had been assigned to keep an eye on him, plunked himself down in one of the armchairs against the wall and pulled out a bag of chips...which he quickly put away when Auntie's basilisk glare swept across him.
o-o-o-o
The sun was nearly overhead when a ninja in a brown flak jacket came in, muttered to Akimichi, and then vanished.
"Kurosawa, time to go!" Akimichi called. "Jiraiya wants us."
Hazou quickly wheeled the shelving cart back to Auntie's desk. He'd emptied it, refilled it, and was a third of the way through the new load; things had gone much faster once he'd realized that he should sort the books on the cart before starting to shelve instead of going back and forth between sections. Now that he'd been through the full library he'd also realized it wasn't quite as big as he'd thought—
"Go on!" Auntie said, interrupting his thoughts as she shooed him towards the door. "What are you standing here for, boy? You've been called by your superior officer! Hop to it!"
Hazou forbore to say that Jiraiya's status as his superior officer was questionable at best and 'temporary ally of convenience' was probably a better description. Instead he bowed, made sure the cart was tucked out of the way, and hurried to the door where Akimichi was waiting.
"He's waiting for us at Training Ground Three," the Leaf genin said. "This way."
Akimichi wasn't sprinting, but he definitely wasn't lollygagging either, so he still had breath to talk. "I think Auntie likes you," he said.
"What."
Akimichi smiled. "Yeah. What, you didn't notice how she checked your work once, sniffed without saying anything, then left you alone for the rest of the time?"
"Uh...no?"
"She's a nice lady," the heavyset boy said. "'Crusty', my dad calls her, but he always smiles when he says it. He knew her growing up. He always talks about how amazing her apple pies were."
Hazou desperately tried to imagine Auntie baking pies. His mind threatened to shatter under the effort, so he quickly turned his thoughts away.
"Huh," he said, before falling silent.
One of the nicest things about Akimichi was that he didn't feel the need to fill the silence with chatter, so Hazou was able to mentally rehearse what he was going to say to Jiraiya. The team had been over it last night, and he was feeling good. He had an answer to the 'why is the world not like that' question (which, with the benefit of hindsight, now seemed obvious), and a more polished version of the 'we should make the world better' speech, and was feeling good about his chances. Also, they were finally ready with their reward requests.
o-o-o-o
All of Konoha's training grounds were set away from the village proper, and the approaches to each one had twists at the end so that the training ground proper wasn't visible until you were actually in it. Training Ground Three was a grassy field a hundred meters across and fully five kilometers outside of town. A red-granite wall three meters high surrounded the entire area.
"Watch your step," Akimichi said as they hopped the wall. "They let the goats graze here to keep the grass short, but it means there's plenty of turds around."
"Thanks," Hazou said, paying more attention to the ground as they walked out to the center of the field where Inoue-sensei's and Sarutobi's teams were waiting, all of them shooting nervous glances at a bouncing-in-excitement Jiraiya and the two menacingly silent ANBU standing behind him.
Hazou spent a moment pondering which was more alarming: Jiraiya looking like an over-sugared toddler or two ANBU with body language that clearly said 'you know, I could kill you in a heartbeat if I felt like it. Just saying.'
"Finally! What took you?!" Jiraiya demanded, only to wave off Hazou's attempt at an answer. "Never mind, never mind. Okay, this tower of yours: I got the funds!"
Hazou blinked. "What?"
Jiraiya produced a heavy pouch from inside his vest and waved it around, filling the air with the clink, clink of many ryo. "One hundred thousand ryo! It's yours in exchange for a complete delivery of the tower. Design specs, research notes, a dozen sets of seals, any required elements of a prototype, and assistance getting it into production."
"Uh..." Hazou trailed off. "I thought...weren't we here to discuss rewards?"
Jiraiya waved dismissively. "Yes, yes, we'll get to that. C'mon, I've just spent days weaseling this money out of Sensei, I want to spend it before he changes his mind! Alley-oop! Let's get a-building!"
Hazou looked mutely at Inoue-sensei. The redhead nodded. "We aren't going to get a better offer, and we could use the cash." Without looking she reached out and grabbed Kagome-sensei's arm before the sealmaster could do more than open his mouth in protest.
"Here!" Jiraiya shoved a box into Hazou's hands. The genin flipped the box open to reveal a ream of paper, a brush, and an inkstone. "Make with the seals, kid! We haven't got all day!"
"But...they aren't mine," Hazou said. "The Five Seal Barrier is Kagome-sensei's seal. I don't know it."
Jiraiya's face fell. He turned to where Inoue-sensei was not-so-discreetly restraining a struggling Kagome-sensei. "A hundred thousand ryo?" he said temptingly.
"Do it," Inoue-sensei said to her flailing almost-prisoner. "It's okay, really. We need the money but we need the good will even more."
"But—!"
"It's okay," she insisted. "I promise. Think about how valuable we'll be to him once he's actually seen the kind of things we can produce."
"But—!"
"I'll give you the money and these," Jiraiya said, pulling a thick sheaf of explosive tags out of a belt pouch.
"Gimme!" Kagome-sensei said, grabbing for the papers.
Jiraiya jerked them out of reach. "Ah ah," he said. "Tower first."
If looks could kill, Jiraiya's head would have exploded. Fortunately, they could not, so the cranium of the Toad Sage remained resolutely intact.
"Ten now," Kagome said.
"Five."
"Ten."
"Eight."
"Ten. And I keep the excess paper and stuff."
"Okay, okay, here," Jiraiya said, peeling ten sheets off the stack and passing them over. Kagome inspected them closely, cuddled them briefly, and then tucked them away in a pocket of his shirt before holding out his hand peremptorily to Hazou. Hazou passed the box of writing equipment over with a feeling of nameless dread, but Kagome-sensei dropped to the grass without complaint and started drawing seals.
"Don't worry, kid, I'm not done with you," Jiraiya said, turning back. "Arikada said you had these seals that produced mist. How did that work?"
"Well—" Hazou began, before cutting himself off. "That's secret, sir. How much will you pay for it?"
Jiraiya laughed. "Finally learning some OPSEC, huh? Pity. Okay, I'll give you twenty grand for 'em."
"That—"
"Seems way too low!" Inoue-sensei said, materializing at Hazou's elbow. "That seal is at least as useful as the tower. Another hundred kay."
Jiraiya laughed. "Nice try, girl, but no sale. Twenty-five."
"You know, we could just refuse to give you anything," Inoue-sensei said, folding her arms under her bosom and huffing in indignation.
"I could have a Yamanaka mind-dive it out of him," Jiraiya said, clearly warming to the debate. His smile was more playful than threatening.
Inoue-sensei snorted and blew a raspberry. "Oh please. I've listened to enough of Kagome and Hazou's talks about sealing to know you'd be an idiot to do that. Remember, I've been on the receiving end of a Yamanaka mind-dive. Way too chaotic to get the kind of detail you'd need, and I doubt you've got any Yamanaka sealmasters anyway. You're going to take a chance on a non-seal expert getting every detail correct? And that's not even taking into account the way Hazou could distort the reading. Now, if you're done acting like a brat, maybe you can hand over the ninety-five kay you're going to pay us for it and Hazou can start drawing you a seal."
"Fifty," Jiraiya said. "Final offer, take it or leave it."
"Okay, okay," Jiraiya said, laughing. "Fine. Sixty. Seriously, that really is my last offer; my budget only goes so far."
"Fine," Inoue-sensei said. "This is your last cheap taste, though. One from Kagome, one from Hazou. You want any more out of us you can pay real prices, not this penny-ante stuff."
Jiraiya shook his head, grinning. "Ovaries of steel. We'll talk when the situation comes up. Now, hand 'em over." He held out another box of writing materials to Hazou.
Hazou gave Inoue-sensei a look and was met with a confident nod. He took the box with a sense that was halfway between resignation and excitement. Handing his first really unique seal over to the Leaf spymaster was not a happy-making event. On the other hand, handing his first really unique seal over to the best sealsmith in the world, when said sealsmith seemed impressed with the idea...well now!
He checked the ground for goat droppings before sitting down and flipping the box open. The grass was damp and the smell of wildflowers was heavy, almost cloying, in his nose. He pushed that away as he pulled the materials out and started drawing seals, using the lid of the box as a writing desk.
His arm moved almost without his will, ink staining paper, lines appearing as if conjured from the ether. He finished the first and set it aside before starting on the second...only to jar to a stop when Inoue-sensei snatched the brush from his hand. She scooped up the one seal he'd drawn and handed it to Jiraiya.
"Here you go," she said. "The seal, as promised. Pay up."
Jiraiya raised an eyebrow. "That wasn't the deal," he said. "Full research notes, a dozen copies, help putting it into production."
Inoue-sensei shook her head. "No, that was the deal for the tower. You agreed to pay us sixty 'for the seal', remember?"
Jiraiya's face went cold. "Are you screwing with me, little girl?" he asked calmly. "Not a good idea to break a deal with me."
"You're right," Inoue-sensei said, not backing down an inch. "Screwing your business partners is a bad plan. Maybe you should have remembered that before announcing that Akane would be reinducted as a Leaf genin without talking to us."
Hazou's eyes were wide and he was having trouble breathing. Behind Jiraiya the two ANBU shifted their weight very slightly. Keiko and Noburi were frozen, eyes darting around between all the potential targets.
His eyes still locked on Inoue-sensei's, Jiraiya held up a hand and the ANBU froze.
"Fine," the Toad Sage said. "You've got a point. I'm not going to apologize for a solution that was better for everyone, but I'll keep it in mind for the future. Now. The rest of it, if you please."
"Twenty thousand," Inoue-sensei said.
Jiraiya raised an eyebrow.
"Twenty thousand," she repeated. "Mistakes need to have consequences if you're going to learn from them."
Jiraiya studied her for a moment, then snorted in amusement. "Okay," he said. "Twenty thousand. I don't have it on me, but I'll have it sent to your rooms." He glanced over his shoulder at the ANBU in the bird mask. "Canary, go."
The grey-clad soldier nodded and vanished.
"Now, the rest of the delivery, if you please," Jiraiya said with exquisite politeness.
"My notes are in the Summon Realm with most of our gear," Hazou said carefully. "We left it all with the pangolins before coming in."
"The rest of the tower prototype equipment is there as well," Keiko said. "Shall I retrieve it for you?"
Jiraiya seemed amused. "You do that. Meanwhile, you still owe me eleven seals, kid."
"Yes sir," Hazou said, retrieving his brush from Inoue-sensei and bending over his writing desk.
Seal Mishap table, type and intensity:
1d100: 97
1d100: 34
NB: Iron Nerve saving roll not used because not a fatal incident.
Hazou was almost halfway through infusing the stack of seals when he felt the chakra twist in his mental hands and rupture one of the pathways laid down by the brush. Frantically, he pulled at the chakra, trying to draw it back out of the seal before whatever was going to happen happened. Simultaneously he told his body to hurl the seal away and dive to the side—only to find that he was locked in place.
Purple lightning erupted from the paper in his hands, and the world tore itself open. A massive rift in space opened directly beneath him and dropped Hazou out of reality.
He tumbled through non-space, the rift shrinking behind him with frightening speed as he fell away from it. He caught glimpses through it of Inoue-sensei and Jiraiya, looking down at him with expressions of horror spreading oh-so-slowly across their faces. Inoue-sensei was motionless, but Jiraiya was very, very slowly extending his arm towards the rift, his lips drifting apart with the speed of mountains rising from the earth.
Winds of unreality shrieked in Hazou's ears, screaming incomprehensible words. Impossible shapes flew by—stairs that ran in a square yet always went up, a snake that ate its own tail and had only one side. Creatures spun through the bloody darkness around him—an angular yellow bird, a man in a white jacket with extra-long sleeves tied behind him shrieking non-stop, a bipedal lizard made of green goo wearing a top hat and monocle. Young girls in white shirts and embarrassingly short skirts with sparkles around them suddenly grew into muscular men clad in those all-too-scanty clothes.
Hazou slammed to a stop with a shock that sent the non-existent air blasting from his lungs.
"I've got you," said a long, slow, impossible deep voice.
Hazou rolled over, pushing himself to his knees and clinging tight as the winds of chaos tried to tear him from the back of the...thing, that he'd landed on. It wasn't a megalodon—too smooth, too rounded, far, far too large, and the tail was horizontal, not vertical. Said tail began waving back and forth in broad sweeping strokes that made the whole body bend; for a moment Hazou was nearly thrown clear, but a frantic application of chakra adhesion latched him to the surface.
"That tickles," said that deep voice. "It's all right, you'll be fine. Nothing falls off of me unless I want it to, least of all you."
The chaos around Hazou stabilized very slightly; looking up he could see the tiny pinprick of light that was the rift. It seemed to be growing very slightly larger.
"Who...who are you?"
"That...is a complicated question," replied the immense creature on whose back Hazou rode. "It's hard to know what level of meta to respond on, you know?"
"What?"
"Never mind," the creature said, amusement warming the deep tones of its voice. "I'm a friend, let's leave it at that. I'd rather not attract too much attention just now, because I'm not really supposed to be—"
The chaos of non-space tore open in a rift of blood and pain, demonic voices shrieking from the ripped and bleeding edges. "WHAT. ARE. YOU. DOING?!" shrieked a voice like nails dragged across slate. "He is Ours now! He failed and must pay the price!"
"Oh, shit," the massive not-megalodon muttered. His tail thrashed faster, driving him forward towards the rift. "Hang on!"
Hazou flattened himself against the creature's blue-grey hide, applied the most powerful chakra adhesion he'd ever used, and prayed to every god he'd ever heard mentioned.
"NONE OF THAT!" the insane voice cried. A taloned hand shot forth from the rift, growing larger until it dwarfed even the mighty creature Hazou rode.
"Jump!" the not-megalodon cried, bucking hard.
The order seemed insane, but Hazou obeyed, allowing himself to be thrown clear. The massive tail swatted him with a blow that should have shattered every bone in his body but instead simply sent him hurtling towards the rift above and interposed itself between Hazou and claws of an angry god.
As he passed through the rift and fell back into his body he looked back. He was just in time to see the massive beast that had saved him, pinned in those mountainous claws like a fish in the grip of an eagle and being dragged back through the fanged and bleeding gash that led from the horror of nonspace into realms even worse.
I didn't make it all the way through the plan because family. The remainder of the update will be dealt with by my fellow QM.
Public Service Announcement:
OliWhail has been torn from the hivemind. For reasons that have already been discussed privately between the relevant parties, he is permanently barred from playing in this quest.
XP AWARD: 8
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, January 4, 2017, at 12pm London time.
You did not dare to spend much time reading, but you did risk a few quick peeks inside various books as you were shelving them. Among the things you saw:
A great deal of political science and history, all of it seemingly pretty heavy on the propaganda. Close examination shows that
Hazou, Awareness:
15d100: 826
?, bookbinding skill:
?d100: 636
some of the books have had pages excised and replaced. The new paper doesn't always quite match up and there are subtle differents in the style of the kanji between these pages and the ones around them.
Some of the political science is point-and-counterpoint debates on topic of social and economic choices. The full names of each author are prominently shown at the head of each chapter; each of the three authors you glimpsed belonged to a major clan—Hyuuga, Uchiha, Senju.
It also contains engineering books that cover things like buildings of various types, wells, bridges, etc.
It also contains math books. You saw some basic stuff on arithmetic and one book had some pictures in it related to circles and cones.
In addition, Ino found the sheet music for Tears of Red for you.
