[Today we had a very special guest: Gōketsu Kagome, one of Leaf's top sealmasters. Hagoromo-sensei asked me to write down everything he said, word for word, because he knows I have a really quick hand, and hand it in to him afterwards.]
"How many of you kids are thinking of becoming sealmasters?"
[Sumi, Gaku, and Fū raise their hands.]
"That's three too many. Sealing is dangerous. Sealing gets you killed. Sealmasters have a 100% death rate. Do you know what that means?"
[After a few seconds, Gaku raises his hand again. "It means every sealmaster dies."]
"Exactly!"
[Kagome-sensei suddenly points a finger at Gaku. Gaku likes to show off how smart he is, but he's also a wimp, so he shrinks back in his seat.]
"Every sealmaster dies. Every last one. I'd never tell somebody to be a sealmaster, at least not if they weren't pants-on-head crazy to begin with. But! If you're really interested, and you don't change your mind by graduation—and you should if you want to live—then I'm going to teach you the Three Rules of Sealing. They're the product of a lifetime of sealing research, and if you follow them religiously—like the Will of Fire, I mean, because you're not supposed to know there are other religions—then just maybe you'll live long enough to decide you want a safer job, like being a seduction specialist."
[Hagoromo-sensei leans over to whisper urgently to Gōketsu-sensei.]
"Oh. Oops. Forget I said that. I'm not supposed to talk about seduction after what happened last time."
[Shoku raises her hand. "What's seduction?"]
"Uh… you can all ask your teacher after class."
[Hagoromo-sensei's hands twitch like he wants to bring them up and strangle Gōketsu-sensei, but he sucks it up.]
"Where was I? Oh, right. You're all going to die."
[We all just kind of look at him.]
"I mean unless you follow the Three Rules of Sealing!"
[Oh.]
"Rule One: Seals Are Stupid. Repeat after me: Seals Are Stupid."
[Nobody says anything, because of course they don't.]
"I can't hear you. If you want to be a ninja, you have to follow orders in the field, and sealing is my field. Now, repeat after me: Seals Are Stupid."
[Maybe half of us go, "Seals are stupid."]
"Louder! I don't know about you, but I'm willing to spend all day here if it makes sure none of you lot get yourselves killed the first time you pick up a brush. Seals Are Stupid!"
[Hagoromo-sensei's hands are twitching again. I'm pretty sure he isn't willing to spend all day here. We aren't either, so we finally shout, "Seals are stupid!"]
"Good. Now what that means is, a seal doesn't know what you want. It does exactly, exactly what you tell it to. Suppose you're making an exploding tag. That's one of the two basic seals every sealmaster learns, even if they don't go on to do research. So you think, 'I'm going to tell my seal to blow up the Tsuchikage.' What happens?"
[Shoku puts her hand up. "The seal blows up the Tsuchikage?"]
"Nope. The seal doesn't know who the Tsuchikage is because seals are stupid. But what it does know, unless you've messed up so badly that you're just holding a pretty piece of calligraphy, is how to blow up. Right in your hands, because it doesn't know it's not supposed to blow you up. Hard to be a ninja without hands—and that's if you're lucky and don't straight up kill yourself.
"Now, if you're still alive, you think, 'I'm going to put the seal on a timer, and that way it'll only explode after I throw it at the Tsuchikage'. That's better. Except we're not allowed to blow up the Tsuchikage anymore because of the stupid peace treaty. Who are we still allowed to blow up?"
[Gōketsu-sensei starts counting off on his fingers.]
"Not the Raikage. Not the Mizukage. Not the Kazekage. Not the minors. Not even Akatsuki—what's the world coming to? Oh, I know! The Sage. He's not a citizen of any of the AMITY countries, not on paper, anyway. Right, so you're putting the seal on a timer so you can blow up the Sage of Six Paths."
[We all kind of stare. Hagoromo-sensei's mouth has dropped open.]
"So the Sage of Six Paths is running at you, because he doesn't want to get blown up. Everybody knows sealing is his only weakness. Remember that—it'll be on the test. But seals are stupid. The seal doesn't know where he is. If your timer is too long, your seal won't blow up in time, and he'll get to you and stick lupchanzen in your ears before it explodes. If it's too short, it'll blow up before it gets near him, and he'll get to you and stick lupchanzen in your ears after it explodes. So now you need your seal to be on a variable timer that you can set when you arm it, fast enough to react in combat. And that's maybe the simplest seal in the world."
[I know I'm not supposed to because I should be concentrating on writing things down, but I can't help it. I raise my hand. "What's a lupchanzen?"]
"Half-plant half-animal monster. It crawls inside your ears and takes over your brain, and then it steers around your body like a puppet and nobody can tell the difference. You never know who's been infected by lupchanzen, so whatever you do, don't let your guard down."
[I wish I hadn't asked. Looking at the other kids' faces, they do too.]
"So you see, because seals are stupid, you've got to think of everything in advance yourself. The seal will only do what you tell it to, so if you miss out one tiny bit of information, you'll get yourself killed, and maybe everybody who happens to be nearby.
"And speaking of getting everybody killed, let's move on to Rule Two: The World Is Stupid. Repeat after me: The World Is Stupid!"
[I think we got the message from last time, so we all shout, "The world is stupid!" straight away. Hagoromo-sensei scowls at Gōketsu-sensei, but Gōketsu-sensei doesn't notice.]
"The world is stupid. A seal is a device that tells the world what to do. But even if you know what the seal is supposed to do, if you make one tiny mistake in scribing it, then when the world sees those instructions, it's not going to go, 'Oh, the sealmaster wants me to make an explosion to blow up the Sage of Six Paths.' Now, if it was you or me, and we got some kind of bonkers order that sounded really dumb, we'd probably ignore it."
[Hagoromo-sensei opens his mouth, then closes it again like he doesn't even know where to start.]
"The world doesn't do that, because the world is stupid. Instead, it'll trip over and fall flat on its face trying to do the impossible. That can mean anything except what you want, and it could kill you, or you and everyone around you, or wipe out your entire village, or who knows. You've got to make sure every seal is perfect, or the world will mess it up. We call that a sealing failure, because no matter how stupid the world is, the sealmaster's the one that failed by giving it dumb orders.
"Now, I'm getting hungry, so let's move on to the final, most important rule. Rule Three: You Are Stupid."
[We know what's expected of us. Every kid in the classroom yells, "YOU ARE STUPID!"
Gōketsu-sensei just stands there like a statue. Hagoromo-sensei's trying so hard not to laugh he's practically doubled over.
Eventually, Gōketsu-sensei blinks a few times.]
"Uh. Right. What Rule Three means is that people make mistakes. Sealmasters make mistakes. If you aren't completely, utterly careful, to the point where other people call you paranoid when you know you're just being sensible, you will make a mistake. Guaranteed. You do Lucky Dance Fifteen instead of Lucky Dance Fourteen, or you get distracted preparing your ink, or you think maybe you'll skip setting up the ectoplasmic regurgitator just this once because it takes half an hour and in ten years of research you've never seen it do anything useful, and then you infuse your prototype and boom! Squish."
[Gōketsu-sensei suddenly slaps his hands in a massive clap. Hagoromo-sensei jumps like the Headmaster just yelled in his ear.]
"You are stupid. Most of your time as a sealmaster will be spent making sure that doesn't get you or anyone else killed. Because let me tell you what happened the one time I saw somebody leave the ectoplasmic regurgitator off while he was testing a prototype. First, we saw this big bulge right under his ribcage, with bits pushing out like he'd swallowed a hedgehog. Then, it started moving around
-o-
Sorry, Lord Ritsuo. That's as far as the kid got before his hands started shaking too much to write. Also, with your permission, I'd like to take tomorrow off teaching, because I know I won't be able to sleep tonight.
There comes a time in every QM's life where he's just not feeling it. Where episodes of Taskmaster have lured him with their siren song and burned up most of the productive hours in the day, where creativity is absent or insisting on being spent elsewhere. Times when a 7-year streak is in danger of being broken.
Fortunately, there are amazing people in this world who can step in. Who can say things like "Hey, I wrote this interlude thing if you want to put it in the bank for the next time you aren't feeling it."People who are amazing writers and brilliantly capable of capturing the voices of the Marked for Death characters. People like @Paperclipped.
The following was, at Paper's request, edited before being posted. Yes, I wielded the editing pen with great fervor...by which I mean that I took his excellent prose and added all the macrons, moved a few punctuation marks around, added a dozen-ish sentences to the part about the Dragons, and made a few other minor tweaks. Any issues that exist within this work are my responsibility and all the brilliant parts are Paper's. Thank you, Paperclipped!
May 19, 1070 AS (Roughly two weeks before the trip to Neck)
"Enjoying the view?"
Hazō turned away from his survey of the land below to see Ino grinning at him.
"You were right, this really is a beautiful part of Fire."
"I know. We're almost there, so you need to close your eyes."
Hazō turned away from the lookout point atop the hill. According to Ino, the rolling forested hills around this part of Fire were often covered in fog, but today, the scattered lakes amongst the hillsides almost seemed to glow an iridescent blue in the bright sunlight, and the colors of the trees seemed especially vibrant as spring hit its stride.
Hazō held out his hand and let Ino take it. "Fine, but if you let go or there's any sign of danger, I'm opening them."
Ino giggled. "Why would I want to let go, silly?"
Hazō leaned in and she gave him a peck on the cheek, then he closed his eyes.
A couple minutes later, Ino stopped walking. "You can open your eyes now."
Hazō opened them and looked down a short slope to a meadow filled with flowers. The hills around the meadow had hidden it from the rest of the world, leaving it an impression of cultivated pristineness, with flowers of white and red and purple and yellow and more arranged in intricate patterns that grabbed Hazō's eyes and refused to let go. The wind this high up was stronger, but the hills must have sheltered the meadow because when a gust passed them by, the flowers did little more than sway gently in the blazing light of the sun directly overhead.
Ino elbowed him in the side. "Don't forget to breathe, Hazō."
Hazō finally caught his breath. "It's beautiful." Almost belatedly, he noticed a small cottage tucked away to the side of the field. "Is it your clan's?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Don't worry, this garden is only the more docile species, and they're all fairly well trained."
"How did you keep it hidden?"
Ino shrugged and started down the hill, leading him by the hand. "We've had gardens like this before that other clans found. The clan's had this one for… around two hundred years? It's far enough from Leaf or any civilization that no one has any business nearby, and even if you had to pass through, there are many easier ways past the hills than through this meadow."
"Well, I'm honored that you're willing to bring me here," he said. Ino turned to face him and he stopped drinking in the sight to meet her gaze.
"I'm glad you like it. Now go and find a place to set down the blankets, but don't kill any of the flowers."
Hazō nodded, and Ino let go of his hand to walk over to the side of the abandoned-looking cottage. She kneeled in front of a row of delicate red flowers carefully separated from the rest of the field. Spider lilies, Hazō remembered Akane calling them.
Hazō faced back to the flower field and tapped his storage seals to reveal his weapons for the afternoon, a folded picnic blanket and a small basket of food. Like the shield and sword of the samurai of old, he brandished them as he entered into the maze of the Yamanaka.
o-o-o-o
"Gah!"
"Oh, there you are!"
Ino turned the corner to see Hazō angrily rubbing at his clothing.
"I didn't know they spat acid!" he said.
Ino laughed. "You should know better than to get between sunflowers and the sun! Did Akane not manage to get the sunflowers to grow? I thought I gave her the seeds."
Hazō looked down at the sash marred by acid burns, then gave up and shoved it into a seal. "She's been pretty good with the flowers. Either she didn't want to plant the seeds, or Mari or Yuno killed them while she was on a mission. Or they have a latent invisibility trait, which would explain how it snuck up on me."
"Well, they're not invisible, so you definitely need to work on your awareness, Lord Gōketsu," Ino said as she bent to help unfold the blanket. "How come Akane couldn't make it today, by the way? No offense, but she's really the one that I wanted to bring here. Not that I didn't love seeing your reaction, but she'll actually be able to appreciate all the care that went into the garden."
Hazō smiled, and reached for her hand to give it a quick squeeze. "I definitely think I have a little bit of appreciation for the beautiful things in life." Ino met his gaze and he held eye contact for several long seconds before she looked away, blushing. Damn, he probably owed Mari a drink for that one. "Anyway, Naruto invited her to a training session and she gladly took the chance to train with one of her heroes."
"Oh, Akane can keep up with Naruto?" Ino asked, surprised. "No one but Sasuke could when we were in the Academy, and I think it was about the same when they were on teams. He does spar with Lee now and again, though."
It was Hazō's turn to be surprised. "Lee can keep up with Naruto?"
Ino shrugged. "I watched once or twice, and yeah, Lee can get him on the back foot if Naruto doesn't use jutsu. It's incredibly impressive if Akane can keep up one-on-one, jutsu or not."
"I don't think she can fight evenly with him. I think it's an olive branch of sorts." He didn't know if Ino knew that Akane had Shadow Clone, so he didn't mention that Akane and Naruto weren't training one-on-one, but six-on-six. Instead, he stopped fussing with the blanket and sprawled himself over it, enjoying the comfort of Ino's presence as she delicately sat down beside him.
"So," Hazō said after a moment's pause. "It's been a long time since we had the time to catch up. Any new gossip?"
Hazō couldn't keep himself from smiling as Ino's eyes lit up.
o-o-o-o
"...then, Kei said that she'd sooner die than wear a dress like that, so then Fujisawa said – well, wrote – that she'd die if Kei wore a dress like that, but she had this little drawing thing that looked like a contented spirit rising up to heaven and as Kei was looking at it you could tell that she was suddenly kind of interested in trying it on, so Hinata threw the dress at her and she disappeared into the changing room blushing like crazy and came out a couple minutes later, redder than a carnation and said we needed to burn the shop down to exorcize it."
Hazō chuckled at Ino's tale. "How do you have such a great memory for all the details of these interactions? Unless it's something really important to me, I just don't have room in my head for more than the high level details."
Ino shrugged. "Social spec training. You learn to keep these things straight in your head so you can review what everyone thinks or what angles are most useful on them."
"Doesn't that get tiresome though?" Hazō asked. "I know Mari's mentioned more than once that she wished she could switch her training off sometimes."
Ino shrugged again, but this time Hazō noted a sense of forced casualness. "It is what it is."
"Ino, you know you can be honest with me, right?"
She looked at him for a second, then laughed. "Right, how could I forget? I remember way back when you and Kei did that weird thing in the cafe for Shika. You still talk like that sometimes, bringing every part of the conversation from subtext to text, don't you? It's kinda weird, honestly."
"I don't think it's weird," Hazō said, defensive. "It's just a clearer way of communicating with people."
"Hazō, if it's really just better, why doesn't everyone do it?"
Hazō shrugged. "It takes a lot longer to lay everything out explicitly, and that's inconvenient. It also takes attention to detail to make sure everything you want to say gets communicated."
"That's not really it," Ino said with a faint smile. "A lot of the time, you want to be intentionally vague or misunderstandable. When you're doing kata and someone comes and asks you what you're training, they're not really asking you for an explanation of the moves. They're asking you if they can join."
Hazō raised an eyebrow. "Really? If so, why don't they just ask?"
Ino shrugged. "Because then it creates a pressure on you to say yes."
"And why couldn't they just explain the possibility of pressure and ask me to ignore it?"
"Because that doesn't remove it, it just makes you think that you're removing it. And also, they may not want to feel rejected if you say no to a direct question, so they'll learn to take a no if you just say 'taijutsu practice' because that doesn't hurt, even though they're hoping you'll say 'an advanced kata from Mist's Academy, want to learn it?' Not all subtext is conveying factual knowledge, Hazō, and some of the emotional stuff can't be pulled into the light without changing it."
Hazō exhaled through the nose. "I could see it. This won't stop me from doing it in important conversations though."
Ino laughed. "I wouldn't want you to. It's part of that adorably dorky attitude you've got going on that's so weirdly charming."
Hazō smiled at her and reached for her hand, pulling her in for a cuddle. "I like the whole 'adorable' and 'charming' part, can I get more of that and less of the 'dorky' and 'weird'?"
"No," she said, sticking her tongue out at him, then squealed as he started to tickle.
o-o-o-o
"It's such a clear day today," Ino said, looking up at the sky.
"Yeah," said Hazō, lying next to her.
"Do the sunsets above the clouds look different on clear days?" she asked.
"Well, for one, there are no clouds on clear days," he said. Ino lightly slapped him on the shoulder and he laughed. "Wouldn't you rather find out for yourself?"
"Yeah. When we can get Akane again, we should really go for another night on a skytower."
o-o-o-o
"And that one is lavender, and it means that you'll be faithful and true," Ino said, pointing to a purple flower.
"Mmm," Hazō replied, trying not to fall asleep in the warm afternoon sunlight. Ino was seated in his lap and he was running his hands gently through her hair as she pointed out the flowers around them.
"And that one is verbena, and it means that you want to work together with someone," she said, pointing to yet another purple flower.
"Mmm." He noted Ino's words, but tried to get lost in the raw sensations of the moment. The silky-smooth hair like golden sunlight flowing through his fingers, the warm and supple feeling of Ino's slender neck and shoulders below it, the smell of the flowers and…
"Ino, have I told you I love your hair?"
"As you should," she said, pulling her hands back to comb it over one shoulder.
"I think about it more than I probably should admit. In my own head, I think I've called it a curtain of sunshine," he said, pushing her hands away so he could keep on running his own through the strands.
Ino turned to face him with a smile, but he continued. "I love how it feels, how it looks… but I can't quite figure out what it smells like." She watched, expression increasingly bemused as he sniffed a lock of her hair. "What perfume do you use? Apricot?"
"Close."
"Peach?"
"No, but still close," she said with a smile.
Hazō thought for a moment, then shoved Ino off his lap. She exclaimed in annoyance, but he had pulled out his seal pouch and was flicking through his storage seals.
"A sealmaster is always prepared, Ino, and I prepared this a long time ago."
She slowly raised herself to her feet. "Hazō, what do you mean?"
"I mean…"
He found the storage seal and flourished it, before opening it with a pop of smoke. Inside was a single jar, slightly chilled with faint condensation along its outside.
"Plum," he said, as she bent down to grab the jar.
She looked at it, then at him with joy on her face. "Plum jam! You remembered!"
o-o-o-o
Hazō sighed a relaxed sigh as Ino shifted slightly, then realized she had opened her bright blue eyes and fixed him with a deep stare. They were curled around one another and their faces were only a couple inches apart, and he drank in the intensity of her gaze.
"Hazō, how do you cuddle so easily?" For a silly question, she sounded so serious.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"You're giving up a lot of control. You're making yourself vulnerable and weak to someone who might be dangerous. Didn't you come from a life where doing those things would kill you?"
Hazō stopped to think about that for a moment. "As a village ninja, you think a lot about who is your friend and who is your enemy. Even if you can always tell who's who, just thinking it gives you doubts and forces you to double check, so you can never trust someone fully.
"As a missing-nin, it's simple. Your team are your friends. Everyone else is your enemy. You trust your team with your life and more every single moment of every single day. Not even Kagome-sensei could stay paranoid for that long. So when I started dating Akane, neither of us had any fear of each other. I think that's where I learned this trust, and I'm extending it to you," he said, holding Ino a little tighter. "Maybe it's dangerous, but I really do trust you."
Ino nodded and closed her eyes, but Hazō could see that she was thinking by the cutest little frown in her brow. He smiled and gave her a small kiss.
After a couple more minutes, she said, "You and Akane have so much history together that I want to understand. I'll never live through the things you did, but if we get a chance to travel, could you take me around?"
Hazō considered. "You mean you want me and Akane to show you the places in the Elemental Nations we traveled to while we were missing-nin?"
"Yeah," Ino said. "I want to understand the stories you tell. I won't have been there in Snow, but I want to get what Akane means when she jokes about Mari's time there."
"Sure, I'll ask Akane about it. Not everywhere we went had happy memories, but enough of them did that it could be nostalgic."
Ino tucked her chin down and snuggled into his chest, this time leaving Hazō to think for a few minutes.
"Ino…"
"Yes?"
"Do you…" Hazō trailed off. "Do you ever feel jealous of me and Akane?"
Ino untucked her head to smile at him. "Don't be silly." She returned to his shirt.
"Ino… that isn't an answer to my question. You can be honest with me, I promise. I want to do the best for you."
"Are you jealous of me and Akane?" she asked.
"No, and that's also not an answer."
She didn't respond. Hazō gave her space.
After a long moment, she said, "I feel great when all three of us are together. It's really wonderful and magical and something that I never thought I'd have. I love spending time with you alone, because you make me feel so cared for and important and protected, and spending time with Akane is a different kind of wonderful that I think you know as well as I do."
She grew quiet again, and he didn't push her.
"But when you and Akane go and do things alone, yes. I feel jealous."
"I understand," Hazō said. "Thank you for letting us go on that date to Tanzaku Gai. It must have been hard, and I really appreciate that."
Ino still didn't say anything and Hazō could tell she was working through something in her mind. "When you and Akane went on that date, I felt something terrible. Like a big, twisting tapeworm of jealousy in my chest, tying itself into knots at my own thoughts. I know you're not trying to make me feel left out, or unimportant, or second-best, or anything like that, but that is how I feel when you two are having your own thing. You two have this story-book, fairytale romance, and no matter how wonderful it feels to be a part of, it still makes me hurt when I'm suddenly standing outside it."
She looked up at him. "Then I tell myself that you don't mean any of that, and that I'm making it all up in my head and that makes me feel worse. Then I tell myself that Akane would never feel this way when I'm spending time with you, and that makes me feel even worse."
She shrugged again, hiding her pain with an airy demeanor even if Hazō could still feel the tension in her body. "Whatever. It's like Akane said. Jealousy is an emotion. It's a strong one, yeah, but it's just an emotion. It's another way for me to practice keeping control of my mind, like any Yamanaka should be able to. I'll get there."
Hazō wanted to say something in response, anything at all to help reassure Ino, but before he could, she sighed and snuggled into his side. The moment passed.
o-o-o-o
"...and we finally managed to track down Shimazu and bring him to Leaf, so I'm excited for that." Ino smiled. "We're not sure exactly what we'll do with the compound, but we're ready to fill in the sinkhole once Shimazu finishes the designs, so we'll finally heal that scar over."
Hazō put a finger to his chin. "Shimazu… he was the architect that designed the porcelain museum in Tankazu Gai?"
"That was his brother actually. He did the Sea and Stars Garden, if you've been?"
"I haven't, maybe we'll have to make another day trip of it," he said, giving Ino a grin. "So he's designing the new main house for the Yamanaka?"
She nodded enthusiastically, making her ponytail bounce. "Yeah! He's already shown me a few sketches and they look pretty promising. He wants to play into the bush clover theme, and has some ideas that could use the main house as the flower, the walkways as vines, and the side houses as leaves and so on. I don't think he knows about skywalkers, but we might end up having the first compound to look really beautiful from above. We've come a long way since the Warring Clans era."
"Mhm," said Hazō.
Ino raised an eyebrow. "You don't sound very enthusiastic about this project. What, not a fan of Shimazu's work?"
"No, it's not that. I've never seen it before, remember?"
"Oh, I see," Ino said, leaning in with a sly look. "Some people are nose blind, others are tone deaf, and you're building-dumb." She smiled to herself. "That explains all the big red slabs at the Gōketsu compound."
"Hey!" We were working under time pressure."
"Oh yeah? Then where's your plans to fix things up, now that you have the time?"
"We don't," Hazō grimaced. "We still need to build more housing for the refugees."
"Well, make sure to put it on your list," Ino said. "Keep an eye out for architects, or even just buildings you like. You could use it as an opportunity to bond with another clan by commissioning the same person that designed their buildings, or even just using an architect from the same school of thought."
Hazō chuckled. "I already know who I want designing the Gōketsu estate, if I ever get the chance."
"Is that so?" Ino said, eyebrows raised in interest. "Who?"
"The Arachnids. Their capital city, Sanctuary, is something truly incredible. It's built over a massive canyon that seems to go down forever, and everything is built suspended between the walls. They have multiple types of threads, though no colors as intense as the dyes we get here, so everything is this brilliant, shining white color under the sun, and every single building plays a part in the greater whole. They don't have hovels or shacks, either. Every single home is designed by one of their master architects. I remember one that was a series of interlaced spirals of coiled silk rope that spun around like the spinning seeds of the maples in the Yamanaka compound."
"Wow, that does sound like quite the sight," Ino said. "But architecture would be the wrong job for them to do for humans. It sounds like all those beautiful suspensions would be wasted when building on plain, boring flat ground."
"They're very focused on their art, so I can't just pay them to work on the Gōketsu estate. I need to get them interested somehow. Maybe Kagome-sensei will make them curious about the Human Path," Hazō mused. "But it sounds like you had an idea. If we can't get the architects to build human buildings, what job suits them instead?"
"Fashion," said Ino.
"Fashion? Like making clothes? I doubt it," said Hazō. "I've asked and they have barely any interest in spinning bolts of silk, much less in turning it into shirts and trousers."
"No, silly, not making clothes like some peasant woman sewing shirts for her eight sons. Fashion."
Hazō frowned. "What's the difference?"
"Fashion is art," she said, "and one that it sounds like the Arachnids have a good sense for. When to keep your cloth tight and taut, and when to let it drape to hint at underlying shapes. When to use your colors and textures to draw attention, and when to instead leave gaps to see the bare skin beneath."
"I suppose you're right. But I don't think they'd be interested in human fashion, and they don't wear clothes of their own."
Ino smirked. "I can change that. Get Kagome to give me an hour with one of their architects, ideally one who likes fine detail work, and we'll make styles the world has never seen before."
o-o-o-o
"Oh, did you ever read that book of poetry that I got you?" Hazo asked. The sun had dropped several degrees in the sky over the course of their long, meandering conversation. Their lazy day in the sun would come to a close eventually, but for now the young summer's warmth kept them both drifting in and out of a pleasant sleepy haze.
Ino looked guilty. "No, sorry. I've been meaning to, but dealing with the clan and the war and…"
"I understand," Hazō said. "I wanted to ask if I could have it back."
"Have it back?" Ino said, propping herself up on her elbows. "Hazō, I don't think you understand what a gift is."
"Sorry, I just want to borrow it. I've been studying the Fourth's sealing notes, which are all mixed up with his personal poetry, which is awful. Still, reading it made me realize that anyone can write poetry."
"Are you saying that the Fourth shouldn't have picked up the pen?" Ino said with a sly smile.
"No, the opposite," Hazō said. "He was so incredibly bad at conveying things in a beautiful way-" Ino giggled. "-that I realized that the things he felt – the sadness of war, his love for his wife, his pride in his village – were things worth expressing not because they're beautiful, but because they're meaningful."
"So…" Ino said, absently twirling a strand of hair around her finger. "You're going to write some poetry?"
"I already wrote some poetry. For Akane, to cheer her up after, you know. It was pretty bad. I probably shouldn't have done a full stanza on just her toenails…"
Ino's mouth hung open in a tiny 'o'. "You thought it was a good idea to write poetry about her toenails?"
"I didn't know better!" Hazō said, throwing his hands in the air. "I was working off of the Fourth's work. So when I sat down to write some poetry for you, I thought that maybe I should reference the authors you actually like rather than the work of the brilliant sealmaster and brilliant leader that was our Fourth Hokage."
"Mmm," Ino said, flopping onto her back. "I'll forgive you for what you did to Akane if I see some love poems on my desk by next weekend. And you can borrow the Tanaka book if you want."
"Thank you dear."
There was a lull in the conversation, and Hazō let his eyes flutter shut.
"So, speaking of Akane's mission…" Ino trailed off.
"Yes?"
"Inaho wants to apologize."
"To Akane?" Hazō asked, surprised.
"No, to you, you nitwit," she said, reaching a hand over and prodding him gently in the side of his head. "Yes, to Akane. I don't know exactly what happened on that mission, but you know that Akane makes friends as fast as you make seals. Inaho liked her, and she feels bad that she hurt her somehow, and it's made worse since she's seeing her Clan Head deal with the fallout."
"I see, it could maybe be good for Akane. I ought to double check with Mari or Noburi about it."
"Mhm. I can send Inaho over once you decide. I'll be honest though, I don't think she really understands what she did wrong. I don't really understand either."
Ino's words stopped, but Hazō could tell by a hint in her inflection that there was something else she wanted to say, that she wasn't quite done. He kept quiet.
"I… thought I understood what you and Akane call 'Uplift'. I thought it was about making lives better for civilians and for Leaf, about giving opportunities to people who didn't have them and protecting the weak. The mission, it was bad, but it was a mission. You don't count what happens on a mission, and you were already doing so many amazing things back home."
Ino paused again, gathering her thoughts.
"So I asked Akane about why she cared for that random city in Earth Country. Do you know what she said?"
Hazō shook his head. "No."
"She said, 'They were people too.'
"I still didn't get it. I made her tea and sat with her and showed her some new perfumes we'd made and tried to take her mind off things. It was only when I was getting ready for bed that I thought about it again, and I wondered what she meant by that.
"And I thought, what would have to happen for me to feel as much pain as Akane? What would I feel if three people died? So I imagined a world where I woke up the next day and someone whisked me away to a funeral where Shika and Chōji and Akane were dead.
"I could feel that. I never saw my dad's body, they said there wasn't enough of it left after Deidara…" Ino swallowed. "After the Collapse, when we had finally tended to all the living and I knew my mom was… dead. I insisted on seeing her. I knew they had just dragged her out of the ground and it wasn't going to be pretty but I didn't want both my parents to meet the ancestors in the cremation chamber without seeing either of them one last time. And…"
Ino paused for a long time. "It was bad." She pulled out a handkerchief to dab her eyes.
"So I could kind of imagine what it would be like if that happened three times instead and it was Shikamaru and Chōji and Akane. So I thought then, what if it was thirty people? That's all the ninja in the Yamanaka Clan. I love them all and I'm responsible for them all, but apart from Ineko and Sekie, I don't know them even a fraction as well as my closest friends. And I thought about how I would feel if I did know them all that well, and all of them had died instead.
"And then I thought, what if it was three hundred people? That's all the civilians in Yamanaka too. I don't even know if I'd be able to feel anything, looking at that many bodies at once, so I imagined walking around the Yamanaka compound and it just being empty. Dead. Quiet. The flowers overgrowing or dying, the walkways getting covered in dirt, the buildings falling into tatters. The childrens' toys laying on the floor forever, the half-worn clothes waiting on their hooks forever, the big hall just laying empty forever with no one to ever sit down and eat a meal in it ever again. What if every family that I'm responsible for died a horrible death and I was a witness to it?"
Ino's voice had grown very quiet. She seemed smaller, somehow. "And then I thought, what if things were ten times worse than that? What if every single person in that town where Akane did her mission was as precious and valuable to the world as Shika and Choji and Akane are to me…" She curled up a little, as if against a sudden chill in the bright summer afternoon. "...and I killed them. What would I do then?"
He didn't answer. He didn't have any response.
She inhaled deeply, then breathed out the tension. "I didn't think like that for very long. I don't think I'm able to hold it properly in my mind even now. But I think I saw, for just a moment, a fraction of what you and Akane see when you look at the world."
Hazō waited several long seconds for her words to echo in the space between them, letting them fade away as he made sure she had nothing else to say.
"Ino, give yourself more credit. I think you understand how she feels much more clearly than I do."
"What? Hazō, she learned it from you, didn't she? She thinks like that because of Uplift, right?"
"Ino… Yes, she learned some specifics from me, but I think she was always this kind of person. I can share ideas to show her that there's another path, but if we'd never met she would probably end up miserable at being forced to do these things. I want the world to be a better place, but that doesn't mean I feel its pain as sharply as Akane."
"Why not?" Ino asked.
"I… I don't know," Hazō said. "I've killed people with fire before, Ino. Innocent people. When my team was traveling across the Seventh Path to find the Arachnids, the Cat Clan was harassing us, so I set fire to their savannahs. Our team moved just behind the front of the fire with smoke filters and we didn't see any more trouble. It wasn't until afterwards that I thought about who would be killed by the fires. It wouldn't be the fighters that we would have killed otherwise, who would have killed us if we didn't. They're physically fit and able. They'd get out of the way. The people who actually died would be the weak ones. The elderly and the children."
Ino had raised an eyebrow. "Hazō, just to be clear, we're talking about cats, right?"
"They're people, Ino. They talk and think and feel emotions. They tell stories and have families and make mistakes and learn, just like us. They just have four legs instead of two." He fixed her with a serious look. "The summon clans are hundreds of thousands of people strong, and Cat had a very dry summer. In all the country, there must have been hundreds of mothers who couldn't carry all their children to safety and had to choose or die, and hundreds of grandparents who had to stop running so their children could go ahead faster.
"I don't feel anything about it.
"I know it's a terrible, terrible thing. When I think about that, I can see clearly that it's bad, but that doesn't make me feel it. I can sense Akane's pain and empathize when she's right in front of me, but I can't feel the same way she does. I… I don't know why."
"Are you sure you don't?" Ino asked, her voice almost a whisper.
"I… I don't know," he said, weighing options over in his mind. Eventually, he decided. "Something happened to me at the start of last year. I was hit by a powerful, psychic attack that almost killed me."
Ino gasped. "Was it while you were in Orochimaru's house?"
"Yes, but it wasn't something from his Basement. Something else. Anyway, it turned my brain inside out and I barely managed to grab all the pieces of me and pull myself back together. Ever since then, I've been feeling echoes of it. Then Orochimaru happened and the Collapse and Akatsuki and it felt like I was watching myself from a distance on a spinner's loom, getting stretched apart and waiting for the flawed thread I was made of to snap.
"There was a couple months break when I was learning to be a Summoner, then the mission I'm talking about happened. I had to go and deal with the Great Seal and the Dragon5s, and it just so happens that something about th3m h|ts exactly the same part of my braIN that was under the psychic attack. Everyyy time I eve|V think a#out them," he could feel his skin starting to peel away in long, curling strips, "I fe3l like I'm s7a.ting tO fray a.d unra#el, and wHen 7he Dr\g0ns arckk n@a&by"—he paused as the words shimmered on the edge of reality, quickly tangling his fingers into her hair and breathing slowly, eyes closed and focused on the feel of silk on fingers and dirt on toes.
When he opened his eyes it was to find Ino watching him. Her head was cocked by necessity, as he had raveled too much of her hair into his fingers and she either needed to move towards his grip or fight her way free. His eyes went wide and his fingers sprang open as he started to flinch away, but she caught his hand before he could move. She caught it, and she kissed his palm, and she pressed it to her cheek.
"It's all right," she said quietly. "I'm not fragile."
He swallowed jerkily. "Sorry."
"Again, not fragile. What happened just now?"
"There's something wrong with me, I think. Just thinking about the Dra.0ns makes my brain start to crackle. Anything more than that and the world starts to…crack." There were shimmers in the air above her head, very faint intimations of daggered teeth and vomitous claws. He breathed, and focused on the feel of her hair, and the air smoothed unreality away. "When it gets bad, it's only real|y intense physical memories like Akane's touch or your hair that let me keep my mind in one piece." As he spoke, he let his eyes fall shut and breathed slowly. Ino let him have the time.
"I killed one of them," he said eventually. "Well, the Arachnids did, using my plan and my tools. Tens of thousands of people died when its brothers took revenge, but I can't even think about it st.a!ght because my mind w0n't let me. I don't know for sure, but maybe that's why I can't feel what Akane is feeling."
"Hazō…" Ino said, "I don't think this is a huge problem. We can never feel as strongly for people far away as we can for people in front of us. That's fine. We don't need to care for people whose faces we've never seen and whose voices we've ever heard, as much as we do family. That's fine. That's what makes us fight for our family that much harder."
"Yeah, I know, it's just—" Hazō cut himself off. "I don't know. I don't know how we can help Akane. I'll check about Inaho though, okay?"
Ino hummed agreement and slowly lay back to look up at the sky once again. She stayed close to him and made sure to drape a length of her hair across his fingers.
o-o-o-o
"Ahh," Hazō groaned as he pulled himself up. Ino pouted for a moment as he left her arms, but then rose to her feet, silent and elegant as always.
"Thank you for coming out with me today, Hazō. It was really fun."
"It was my pleasure," Hazō said as he started to pack up the blankets. "Thank you for bringing me here, I'm glad I got to see it."
"Don't tell anyone about this clearing," Ino said, her voice serious. "It's still a minor clan secret. I just trust you not to burn it down with a jutsu or something."
"Yeah, I know," he said with a smile. "Though I hope you can bring Akane back here someday."
She nodded. "I hope to, but it'll have to wait a while. I'm definitely going to pay for taking a full day off."
Hazō sighed. "Tell me about it. Gaku still won't forge my signature, so I still have to spend hours on paperwork every day."
"The burden of a Clan Head never ends, does it?"
Hazō tucked the last storage seal back in his belt and straightened up. "It does not. Shall we?" he said, inclining his head back towards Leaf.
Ino laced her fingers between his and, together, they left.
Last time we spoke, you requested an overview of Yagura's rise to power—in this you already display more wisdom than your predecessor, who, like most, sought to learn from the successes of the past rather than its failures. Consider, then, this to be a foundation for further discussion, perhaps over the next batch of that excellent Hot Springs tea.
It has been my experience that ambitious shinobi can be broadly categorised into three types. The first, most common, are born ambitious, afflicted from the beginning with a nameless craving that will either propel them into greatness or destroy them (the probabilities are evident from the number of great shinobi in this world). Others gain ambition as they age, faced with temptation and discovering that their hitherto-unknown desire is almost within reach. For many, this feeling will remain, no matter how much they accomplish. Finally, a few have ambition thrust upon them, opening their eyes to a broken world and realising that no one else will do what must be done. You now know that this fate, once assigned, is inescapable.
Karatachi Noriko, it is my belief, was of the second breed. Once a trivial young woman, a minor factor in greater calculations, she faced her limits at the Chūnin Exams, and, I believe, rejected the weak self she discovered with all her heart and soul. From the day of her promotion, her natural charisma became yoked to an insatiable desire for power, becoming a war chariot that trampled all in its way. Her greatest opportunity arose when the Karatachi fell victim to a succession crisis—the heir was an intelligent man, but personally weak, which counted for more, while his younger brother was a simple-minded war hero of the sort that rush courageously into danger for the sake of their comrades, oblivious to the concept of calculated sacrifice.
Karatachi, having by then clawed her way to leadership of the branch family, pledged her support to the heir on condition of marriage. He, mindful of a growing desire among his brother's faction to achieve an expedient solution to the problem, perhaps even the next time he was out of the village, leapt at her offer. Needless to say, it was the last independent political decision he would make.
The Ninchishō Affair, of course, was never recorded in the history books, but suffice it to say that the resulting power vacuum was like a dream come true to the likes of Karatachi. I will forever respect poor Lady Rebi for her attempt to stand against the tide of darkness consuming Mist culture, but in the end, she was the wrong woman in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the kami showed her no mercy.
Naturally, Lady Rebi's fall necessitated the creation of a new jinchūriki, and also the election of a new Mizukage. It was Karatachi's stroke of genius to propose that both should be the same figure, and a display of extraordinary political skill to have the net land on her infant son. By leveraging the resentment accumulated over Lady Rebi's twilight years, she was able to persuade the other clan heads of the benefits of a figurehead child Kage, with the Three-Tails to lend him legitimacy against those who did not subscribe to her plan.
Thus was born Yagura, and at first Karatachi's regency faction enjoyed a blissful dominance. In fairness, it must be said that they were not poor leaders, merely short-sighted ones—and never more short-sighted than when they failed to observe the changes occurring in their puppet. It is a simple truism of parenting that a child obeys their parents out of a hunger for approval. Love is not necessary, and discipline is not sufficient. The saint, the sage, and the abuser will achieve the same degree of obedience so long as they grant and withhold approval to the same extent.
What happens, then, when a child ceases to require this ambrosia?
Yagura refused to be dominated. It was anathema to him already at that age, while the notion of a moral debt was as yet unknown, and as for love… well, perhaps history might have gone down another path had Karatachi been a different kind of mother. But in the event, Yagura's "advisors" failed to pay attention, failed to recognise the child demigod's growing tantrums as a warning to switch to more subtle tools, and in the end, failed to bow down. The Karatachi Clan was wiped out in a single day.
You will know far better than I, of course, but I came to believe, after many years of observation, that a key trait of the Tailed Beasts as individuals is kindness—an alien kindness, as befitting a god beyond good and evil. Yagura's passenger was not some mere power source. Rather, it heard Mist's unspoken desires and granted them, by means of its host who had channelled an impossible amount of its energies through a young spirit still attaching itself to its body. It gave us an iron fist and an iron law, defined by hatred, xenophobia, and paranoia. I cannot guess how much of what followed was Yagura the boy, and how much was the taint in Mist's soul writ large by one who would be kind.
Mist's ruler, whoever he was, was brilliant. He quickly learned his most important lesson: a child's ignorant, arbitrary rule was ineffective. His actions consistently failed to have the outcomes he expected or desired, and though his power was sufficient to impose his will, together with the fresh memory of the Karatachi's fall, he was still incapable of granting his own wishes. Thus, he sought new, humbler, advisors.
The first to answer his call were, of course, the most ambitious. I am grateful to them, for observing their colourful fates allowed me to optimise my own, more sophisticated approach. I had joined the Mori Clan partially with this scenario in mind, after all, and cultivated a reputation for expertise and lack of personal ambition accordingly. With some adjustments—the most difficult being to find a way to be interesting to a child—I wove my way into a position much resembling my current one. Then, after taking time to earn trust, I began to manoeuvre competent, like-minded comrades into place.
I will always wonder whether we could have done more in those days. Those of us who pushed too far in our efforts to moderate the excesses of Yagura's reign soon found ourselves at the Torture and Interrogation Department's tender mercies, yet the price for restraint was ever paid in the suffering of the masses. I will not enumerate our accomplishments here—suffice it to say that the mass exile that came to be celebrated as Unity Day was not Yagura's original plan for divesting Mist of potentially subversive foreigners—nor our failures, such as the law you recently repealed governing extrajudicial executions in times of unrest.
Of course, our strategy could not last forever. Eventually, Yagura decided he had learned all that Mist's most educated (the jester inside me tempts me to write "wisest") experts had to teach, and we were dismissed—with our lives, for those who had successfully walked the line between "too useful to kill" and "too clever to trust". At the time, it tasted like defeat. However, the Bloody Mist had come and gone. The village was still standing. Population numbers were within acceptable boundaries. The legal code retained some protections for the vulnerable. Yagura had done his very best to fulfil Mist's cravings, yet Mist had survived.
Perhaps, My Lord, you can now better appreciate my perspective on the new age in which we find ourselves. Yagura is gone forever, and there is no word yet of his passenger's revival. An era of cold, implacable order has been replaced by an era of chaos—the one tool I am incapable of wielding, and so have left in the hands of my wayward apprentice. You have often spoken of the need to heal the wounds of Yagura's reign. Consider that this could be the time to heal Mist's heart itself.
"This is the point at which I usually expect someone to buy me dinner," Panashe said, not looking up from where she was filing her claws with a whetstone.
"Hmph," Canvass said, sitting back on her haunches. Her droopy face made it hard for Hazō to judge her facial expressions, but he was learning that Dog body language was less about the face and more about the ears, tail, and angle of the head. Canvass's ears were neither raised nor lowered, her chin was only slightly down, and her head was completely vertical. Her tail wasn't moving. He honestly had no clue how to interpret that aside from 'probably not about to fly into a murderous rage.'
"Thank you for your forbarance, Specialist," Kei said.
"Eh." Panashe put her whetstone away and stretched, rolling her shoulders to make her back crack. "So. Why am I here getting nose-groped, Summoner?"
"Planning session," Hazō said, looking around the circle of listeners. "We've been randomly wandering around the woods, focusing on being stealthy and not getting into trouble as we look for the ninja with the Summoning Scroll. We haven't found anything and I'm done with that. It's time we stop focusing on not losing and start focusing on winning."
He paused and looked around at the faces of his audience. The reactions ranged from 'interested' (pangolin and dog) to 'nothing' (Kei, as usual), with a brief stop in 'nervously intrigued' (Snowflake and Akane) and 'disturbingly enthusiastic' (unsurprisingly, Yuno).
"I intend to find where these Squirrel ninja sleep," Hazō said. "I am not going home empty handed." He nodded to Kei. "I talked with our resident genius and we agreed that it's time to fish or cut bait."
Akane raised her hand. "Fish or cut bait?"
"Mist saying," Hazō explained. "It means stop trying to do everything at once at the expense of doing anything well. Instead, pick something and execute fully."
She nodded. "Ah. In Leaf we say 'sharpen or chop'."
"Right. Anyway, forget slinking around at night, desperately trying not to be spotted. We've been spotted, and those Banshee seals we used in the fight were probably audible across most of Neck. There's no point screwing around anymore so I want to do this as efficiently as possible. Canvass, you've been tracking these guys since we got here. Talk to us about what they might be doing to break their trail and how we can help you get around it."
Panashe's head was cocked in what Hazō had learned to recognize as a very slight smile. He prayed that Canvass wouldn't recognize that body language and take it as the criticism of her abilities that it undoubtedly was. Panashe had a truly S-rank ability to remain within all professionally-required bounds while still being utterly smug and scathing to others.
"They move around a lot in this whole area," Canvass said. "There are scent trails for dozens of humans that move at ninja speeds all through here, and it rains enough that they mush together. I come to a crossroads in two scent trails made by the same person, which one is the continuation of the one I was following? Unless one of them is much fresher than the other, it's hard to tell. Then there's the issue that they use the rivers as highways since they give clear travels, and sometimes they run in the trees. I can follow them from the ground while they're in the trees, but air-scenting is a lot harder than ground-scenting."
"Suppose we carried you?" Akane asked. "That way you could stay closer to the scent."
Canvass's ears rose. "Hm. Interesting." She looked the girl up and down. "No offense, but I'm heavier than I look..."
Akane and Kei smiled. Hazō could not suppress a small laugh.
"I'm pretty sure that the Demigoddess of Youthful Ass-Kicking will not have a problem carrying you for as long as you both want," he said. "You might be heavier than you look, but when she hugs me I have to remind her not to accidentally snap my spine."
Akane blushed and looked away, mumbling something about, "One time, and you were fine the next day." She smiled when Hazō interlaced his fingers into hers and rubbed his thumb across her palm.
"Back on topic," Kei said. "Canvass, you mentioned that the problem was scent trails crossing. Am I correct that if one of the trails was significantly newer, that would fix the problem? Or if it was somehow different like if they'd been hit by perfume or something?"
"Yah, although scents that are too strong clog up the nose. Better not to."
"Okay, fine. We'll draw them to a specific location so that you have a fresh scent, then we'll stay well back so they don't spot us as we follow them home."
"Suppose they don't go straight home?" Akane asked.
"They will," Kei said. "They will have discovered an encampment of presumably hostile ninja using chakra techniques—by way of example, Banshee seals— that are unknown to the locals. They will want to notify their superiors."
"They might split up," Yuno noted.
Snowflake shook her head. "Doubtful. They'll be facing unknown force levels with unknown capabilities. Dividing their forces is an invitation to defeat in detail for no substantive gain."
"What if they detect us while we're waiting?"
Hazō laughed. "That's the beauty of it: we'll be nowhere near the bait site."
"Ah," Panashe said. "I have, obviously, been paying complete and focused attention through this entire well-organized briefing, but I believe this is the part where I should start paying even more complete attention."
"Five points to the scaly snake-nosed badger," Hazō said. "We'll set up a very thoroughly camouflaged site here, and then the fun begins."
o-o-o-o
There were three of the Neck ninja.
They wore clothes that blended in well and they moved carefully, but it didn't really matter. Panashe had prepped the 'campsite' well; there was a fire that had been 'sloppily extinguished' after the campers (notional people who were notionally enemy ninja) had fled from what was presumably a battle. The fire had been leaking smoke throughout the area for an hour; someone with one nostril plugged up could have found the place, and the faint traces that the 'enemy ninja' had left as they 'fled' were enough to lure competent patrols in if the smoke wasn't.
The tracks were nothing so gauche as footprints, of course. A branch with a few leaves stripped due to 'rapid passage' of a ninja here, a slight chip in the bark of a tree there. No, it was all plausible. The 'trail' stretched two hundred yards into the woods, the individual signs becoming more and more spread out before 'disappearing' completely.
The ground around the campsite was torn up in a way that was not unreasonable for a ninja battle followed by a hasty cleanup followed by fleeing. There were even a few artistic splotches of blood that had been 'missed' during the imaginary cleanup. No footprints, but the ground had been swept with branches and one of the branches had a few traces of blood on it from the 'injuries' on the user's hands.
Panashe herself was hidden underground, only her nose and eyes above the surface, and those well-concealed by a carefully positioned plat of moss and a few sprigs of greenery that mimed being firmly rooted. Plus, the point of camouflage was to break up the body's outline so that the pattern-recognition part of the brain couldn't easily identify it. Starting with a non-human bodyplan made that a lot easier.
The enemy ninja paused in the trees, studying the campsite carefully and signing back and forth. It was three full minutes before the youngest of them, a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve, dropped down on silent feet and hesitantly moved around the camp to see what could be seen.
He spent four minutes investigating, then rejoined his fellows in the trees for another quick hand-talk conference. And then all three of them jumped off to the east and disappeared into the woods.
Panashe smiled slightly and twisted her chakra in the familiar pattern that broke her connection to this alien shell and returned her to the comfort of the Seventh Path.
o-o-o-o
"Do you have an ace up your sleeve?" Akane asked.
Hazō shook out his sleeves one after another, a smug smile on his face. "Go fish," he said.
Akane sighed and drew another card from the deck, then removed her left sandal and laid it atop of the pile of clothing beside her. She looked at her cards and chose one. "I will—"
"Stop," Kei said. "Panashe has unsummoned herself." She pricked her finger and squeezed a drop of blood onto the ground. "Summoning Technique: Panashe."
There was a poof! of rainbow-colored smoke and the pangolin Specialist appeared in their midst.
"They went east," Panashe said, not wasting time on pleasantries. "Three of them, one very young, the other adults but still young."
"Cool," Hazō said. He glanced at the water clock sitting on the grass to his left. "Akane's only got seven pieces of outerwear left, so we should be able to finish the game before we need to leave."
Akane closed her eyes and counted not-very-silently to ten.
o-o-o-o
"Hold up," Canvass said. "There's a crosstrail here, and they've gone back to the trees."
Everyone waited as the chakra-enhanced bloodhound snuffled around the latest random patch of forest for a dozen handfuls of seconds. Fortunately, Panashe had been released to the Seventh Path in order to conserve Kei's chakra.
I had forgotten just how much easier everything is when you're traveling with Noburi, Hazō thought. Going back to worrying about conserving chakra suuuuucks. I should get him something when we get home, as a gesture of appreciation. On the other hand, that might just be an invitation to being smugged at forever.
"Got it," Canvass said quietly. "They crossed back over a trail they made earlier in the day. Before, they were moving from that way to that way. This time, they turned left and are going over there."
Hazō nodded and gave her a thumbs up, then held up a hand for everyone's attention and pointed at his feet. He had been tapping on his thigh since they left the bait camp, the Iron Nerve twitching his fingers in the exact frequency he had once used to copy the speed of the water clock's drips. He was currently at 587, meaning it was time to swap skywalkers. The team was skywalking a few inches above the ground to ensure they left no trace for potential patrols to discover. Canvass was slung from Akane's harness, body at an angle so that the canine's nose was only inches from the ground. The bloodhound had been very suspicious about the idea to start with, but had grown quite delighted with it as time went on.
Hazō had been chary about using the skywalkers on this trip until now. Asuma's instructions had been Skywalkers are probably still secret on the eastern continent and it would be nice to keep that advantage. On the other hand, Mist has them and word will get out eventually. Keep them secret if you can, but it's not worth your lives. Hazō's line on 'if you can' had moved considerably since he decided to stop screwing around.
Everyone gave a thumbs-up as soon as their sandal inserts were swapped. Once Hazō saw a full set of thumbs up, he nodded and the group moved out.
o-o-o-o
The enemy village was not what Hazō had expected.
He wasn't quite sure what he had expected, truth to tell. Sure, expecting a massive walled metropolis such as Leaf or Mist wasn't plausible. This was a tiny nation that likely only had a few score ninja, maybe a few hundred at the most. Also, they took the 'hidden' part of 'Hidden Village' much more seriously than did those in the Elemental Nations.
Still. Two dozen treehouse tents with moss-covered suspension bridges, plus a well on the ground? It seemed...small.
Akane tapped him on the shoulder. When he looked over she flashed handtalk.
Danger. Sentries, probably. Plan? She cocked her head in query.
Hazō hesitated, thinking.
Relevant facts:
Real-life bloodhounds:
Can air-scent and ground-scent
Have followed a trail for 130 miles
Under good conditions, can track a scent that is a week or more old. In 1995, a Santa Clara County Bloodhound tracked down a man who had been missing for eight days
Canvass is a literally magic literal bloodhound. Her tracking abilities should be several cuts above what real-life dogs can do
Previously, the team was focused on being stealthy. They were spending ~10 hours a day moving slowly around the woods
We used a 15% chance per day that a patrol ran into them under those conditions, meaning that the chance should be much higher if they are making no effort to be stealthy. Let's say it's double the chance, meaning 30% over the course of 10 hours, or 3% per hour
The team is trying to draw in a Neck ninja patrol and then follow them home. This effort consists of:
Prepare excellent camouflage for the group, far away from the bait site. Everyone except Panashe stays here
Panashe moves a couple miles away, traveling underground as much as possible so as to leave no tracks, and picks a bait site. She sets up a poorly-concealed 'abandoned' campsite that includes a quickly-extinguished and therefore smoky fire. She uses various other means to make the camp noticeable but still look as though it's supposed to be hidden. Finally, she lights off another Banshee seal. (I'm assuming that she knows how to use seals at this point, since she's been Kei's summon for ages and other pangolins learned it in a few weeks.)
Panashe waits at the bait site using all her special-ops training to conceal herself
Once some ninja shows up, Panashe observes them until they leave and then returns to the Seventh Path. If she thinks she might have been discovered, she immediately returns to the Seventh Path
Kei, sensing that her summon has departed the Human Path, summons her back to the far-off human location
The team gives the enemy plenty of time to get a good start, then returns to the bait site where Canvass can pick up their trail
They follow the trail, staying well back, until they discover the enemy village or encounter a patrol
Neck can be crossed in 1 hour of ninja-speed movement. To be conservative, I'm going to say that the team can only move half their normal traveling speed while trailing, so they can cross Neck in 2 hours
Statistically, the team is not going to have to go literally from one end of Neck to the other. Let's say they are only moving for 1 hour
As described above, there is a 3% chance that they are detected while trailing
Ninja have options for breaking trail that normal people don't, but Canvass has tracking options that real bloodhounds don't. On balance, let's say she's only got an 85% chance to successfully track her targets back to their village
I find it very unlikely that they can't draw a group of enemy ninja to the bait site, but evil miracles have happened. Let's say that there's a 2% chance that the Neck ninja are so stupid and clumsy that they can't find a location with a fire and a Banshee and whatever else Panashe can come up with.
On the other hand, maybe they decide to be super cautious and they never come close enough that Panashe can detect her. Unlikely, since they'll need to come close in order to perform any kind of investigation in aid of knowing how long the camp has been 'abandoned', and pangolins operate more off smell than sight, but who knows. Let's say there's a 10% chance they manage to not be noticed by Panashe.
Dice:
2% chance that the Neck ninja do not find the bait site: 41. They failed to not find it
10% chance that they are so super-duper cautious and stay so far back that Panashe doesn't notice them: 36. She notices them
85% chance that Canvass can track them back to their base: 33. She succeeds
3% chance the team gets spotted while trailing: 31. Not spotted
20% chance mystery roll: 82. Oh my
What does Hazō think the team should do now?
Author's Notes: You checked in with home via the Seventh Path. Your questions were answered as follows:
Kagome: how are Minato's seals going? He's still working on the first one. The first one in the chain is challenging but he's grinding through it. He's irritated because he doesn't have as much time to focus on it as he would prefer
Noburi: everything going smoothly? Yup. Kagome's sealing students have had a couple of mishaps, but it's being handled
Noburi: which corpses are we obligated/expected to bring to Leaf? Unless you were explicitly sent on a capture mission, you are not required to bring enemy corpses home. If you choose to do so then people with bloodlines are useful to have. Other corpses are moderately useful but not essential. Bringing back the heads of slain shinobi is valuable in that it makes it easier to verify who is actually dead, and the heads can be used as emotional weapons against their families
XP AWARD: 2 (The plan covered about 4-5 hours.)
Brevity XP: 1
"GM had fun" XP: 0 No strong feelings.
Bonus XP: 2 Due to QM spoon shortage and intervening holiday, it took us a super long time to deal with this plan. Here's a thank-you to everyone for being so understanding and supportive.
QM note: Velorien was exhausted and Paperclipped volunteered to step up for us. This is a canon chapter, and the XP awards and footnote commentary are QM-written and therefore true.
"Let's back it up and discuss," Hazō whispered, thumbing behind him. "We can always come back here later."
He looked around the team and they gave him silent acknowledgements. They started to skywalk away.
Once they had made it a few miles away from the village, Hazō signaled a stop. "Okay, so we've located their village. Presumably, the Squirrel Scroll is somewhere in there, probably guarded by whoever their strongest ninja is."
"Isan's method of protecting their scroll was not by having their strongest ninja carry it constantly," Kei said. "They could well have made a similar attempt at keeping it in a fortified location with static defenses, ideally ones that would slow an intruder sufficiently that the clan would then have time to respond in full force."
Hazō nodded. "Point taken, but we didn't recover any seals from the bodies of those chūnin, not even a storage or explosive seal. I'm not sure if they have the capacity to make a fortification like that."
"Isan's fortifications were not solely seal-based. It does not require a sealmaster to make traversing a given path a hellishly lethal experience," Kei said. Yuno nodded in agreement.
"Even when your threat model of the person coming for the scroll is 'Jiraiya'?" Hazō asked.
"Point," said Kei.
"Right. Canvass, is there any way you could tell if the scroll is in their village?"
Canvass had gotten out of the harness and now sat on the ground. She cocked her head to one side. "What do you mean? Scrolls don't smell like anything at all."
Hazō unslung the Dog Scroll and laid it next to Canvass. "Nothing?"
Canvas bent down on her forepaws and sniffed at it. "Nope."
Hazō unrolled the scroll enough for his bloody signature to be revealed. "Does my signature smell like blood?"
Canvass sniffed closer, her droopy ears almost touching the strange paper-like material the scroll was made of. After a moment, she sat back up. "Nope. Not a hint of blood at all."
Hazō frowned. "Well, that's unexpected."
"Do you recall your ill-fated attempt to read the Pangolin Scroll that resulted in a disturbing variety of head-related trauma?" Kei asked. "You bled on the scroll during your seizure from the associated minor lacerations, but while the blood was absorbed, the scroll ejected it shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, my signature has melded perfectly into the scroll and has never smeared or flaked in all the time that it has been furled with the other surfaces of the scroll rubbing into it."
"Right," Hazō said, rubbing his forehead, "the blood is probably bonded with the scroll on some metaphysical level. Maybe it's no longer part of our plane. I think I remember Tsunade mentioning something like that once. Canvass, could you follow the chakra signature from the blood?"
"Chakra signature?" she asked.
"Yes, we bonded our chakra to the scroll when we signed it. Maybe it's still there for past summoners, or maybe it doesn't fade away until the scroll takes a new summoner. Either way, we have his blood, so could there be a residue that you could follow?"
"Maybe, maybe," Canvass said, "that's a lot of unknown. But I track dogs and animals and now humans, not chakra. I don't even know if anyone can do that."
"Okay," Hazō said, trying not to make it too obvious that he was grasping at straws. "Could you find his body, if they buried it? Like I said, we have his blood."
"Oh yah, that's easy. It's only been a couple years, right?" she said.
Hazō sighed slightly. At least they had a way in.
"How close would you need to be, to tell?" Akane asked.
Canvass scratched behind her ear. "Well, a couple years out it'd be tough to tell from a far ways away. If I could get close, I could probably come up with a few locations where it was most likely, then it's just a matter of checking 'em all."
"So, inside the village?" Akane asked.
"Oh yah, probably. If they buried him there, that is. If they buried him somewhere else, then no good."
"And if they cremated him, like we do in Leaf," Akane said, turning to Hazō.
"And like we did in Mist," he said grimacing, "then there's basically no way we can find the body. Alright, maybe figuring out something about the scroll directly is a bust. Let's watch the village some more before we go on. We can figure out a way to get you some tracking time in the village if it comes to that, Canvass. Kei, could you ask Noburi if he can stay up late to give you a chakra refill? I've got an idea."
-o-
Panashe carefully moved through the underbrush around the village. In the dead of night, she was effectively blind, but she knew that the humans would do little better at noticing her brown scales against the dirt, bark, and sodden leaves of the ground beneath them. Even if their sentries had the visual acuity to notice signs of her passage (they didn't), she had already marked their scents. None of them were watching over the portion of forest she was sneaking through, and she had long since learned that humans were effectively nose-blind.
She found another tiny depression in the forest floor and started to dig around it, bending some low hanging branches into place and uprooting some small bushes. She took her time – there was little point in making noise and getting caught, and those humans did have functional ears. After an hour or so of work, interrupted by periodically flicking out her tongue for some of the charming Human Path bugs that had so generously presented themselves to her, she looked at the small blind she'd constructed. Functionally impossible to see in from the outside thanks to the branches and leaves obscuring it, challenging to stumble across with the nearby ground altered just enough to make all the easiest paths through the area lead around it. There was no way to get in, but that was fine – she had marked its location and would simply emerge into it by tunneling. She started to move again to construct the next blind.
Irritatingly, the Dog Summoner had instructed her to wait a day before actually beginning surveillance, and her summoner had agreed. Apparently, they wished to see if her blinds would be discovered. By this point, she'd learned that there was no point in arguing. Sadly, there seemed to be no way to escape the fact that she'd be spending the next several nights camping out on the Human Path.
She sighed. I hate the night shift, she thought.
-o-
Panashe examined her claws. They were sufficiently sharp, yes, but were they shiny enough? She wasn't foolish enough to try to glow while on an infiltration mission, of course, but back on the Seventh Path, that irritating Panseya had purchased some special oils from the Porcupine Clan through the trade network and had started to oil her sharpened claws to a mirror finish. This wouldn't be bad on its own, as Panashe would simply suggest to the others how foolish it was to oil the tools they used for climbing and grasping, but even more irritatingly, it seemed to be catching on as a trend.
She glanced out of the blind, smelled for anything amiss, then returned to her claws.
She would likely be earning a minor commendation for successful completion of this mission. Plus, since she had turned fifty, she'd felt that her scales were losing some of their youthful luster. Perhaps she could purchase some of those oils and see how they looked on her claws. Though… she had also been moderately interested in some of the Monkey-constructed furniture that the summoner had brought in. They seemed like a clan almost as civilized as the Pangolins.
She glanced out of the blind, smelled for anything amiss, then returned to her claws.
She looked back out of the blind again a moment later. One of the scents hadn't moved since her last check. She made out a human figure on one of the treehouse bridges, looking out into the forest. She couldn't tell whether the human was looking at her from this distance, even with the light from the setting sun, but it was definitely in her general direction. The scent meant that this one was an adult, a female, and certainly one of their chakra-users.
The human made some gesture and said something unintelligible, then another human jumped down from the platforms in the trees and started to make its way in her general direction.
How bothersome. She started to burrow, careful not to go so quickly that it would give her away. As she disappeared under the ground, she reached her claw out to grab the Dog Summoner's silencing seal, breaking the effect as she moved it. Fascinating thing, that. She would likely ask the Lochagos to see if there was some way they could negotiate for that from the summoner. She wasn't yet sure what arguments might sway Pankurashun's old, crusted heart, but she was sure she could find a way.
From another blind, she observed as the human poked around her old hiding spot for a minute, then returned to its superior to report. The superior didn't seem to react and turned to leave for one of the other treehouses. Panashe settled back into her new surveillance spot.
Blind to the last, these humans were. It's a surprise they ever managed to build any sort of civilization at all.
-o-
Panashe stood neatly at attention as the summoner appeared in a puff of orange smoke with Pandā at her side. The human girl looked around for a moment, noting Panashe with her claws interlaced, then relaxed and turned to her.
"Report, Panashe," said her summoner, crisp and concise.
"Yes, Summoner. The enemy has a force around fifty strong. I estimate around half of them were chakra-users, as they typically descended by the tree trunks directly, rather than by taking the rope ladders. Of the non-chakra-users, a disproportionate number of them are female. They spent much of their time foraging in the forest immediately around the village. Of the chakra-users, around half of them are adults by your human accounting, though seemingly all young adults. They largely seemed deferential to one female in particular, though I did not notice any markings that indicated leadership. I did not notice any of the chakra-users that were particularly old or infirm.
"Their nighttime watch is always three humans, usually two of them young. The remainder appear to return to their village to sleep. They do not change guard during the night. During the day, they send out periodic teams of between two and four members, though never more than four teams at once. These teams take many hours to return, usually more than three. The shorter trips returned with hunted animals in tow, which were cooked that same night in a small covered firepit that concealed the smoke and most of the light. Separately, the humans also travel in a specific direction quite frequently. This is sometimes in groups and sometimes individually, and these trips rarely last longer than three hours.
"Notably, summoner, to my knowledge, they did not draw water from the well once. Rather, the humans returning from the short trips occasionally returned laden with water, which they took up into the treetops."
The summoner nodded. "Did you observe any indication of the presence of another summoner? Some possibilities might be scents or traces of members of the Squirrel Clan, a human with a scroll or a bulky container that might hide one, or something similar."
"No, Summoner," Panashe said. You're welcome, Summoner, she added mentally.
"Understood, Specialist. I anticipate that the secondary location that their ninja are going to is their training ground equivalent. Describe the paths that you observed them following with precise directions so that Hazō and Canvass can follow the trail and identify the secondary site. In the most probable case, I expect that you will need to set up additional blinds and surveil there as well."
-o-
"-and apart from the variety of Water-style ninjutsu she noted, Panashe described them using a certain ninjutsu that caused water to well up from the ground by the lakeside. They would fill buckets with this water and take them back to the village, presumably for drinking, bathing, et cetera, given that the well is apparently a decoy target for infiltrators."
Hazō groaned, leaning back dangerously on the skytower. "Oh Sage, that's not good."
"What is it, Hazō?" Akane asked.
"Mareo described these guys to me," he said. "They're the People of the Lakes, which he said were one of the bigger tribes in Neck. He said they came to Neck from Valley so they could be big fish in a small pond. The old Squirrel Summoner pissed them off too – well, the one from Mareo's time, which was centuries ago for all I know – so they were in conflict with the Squirrel tribe."
"I do not see why you find this a disappointing revelation," Kei said. "It certainly seems like valuable information to have. For instance, the near-term likelihood of death for the ninja in that village appears to have just plummeted, if I understand correctly."
Hazō nodded. "Yeah, that's the problem. They're not our target. I don't think they're going to have the Squirrel Scroll."
"They could have been the ones to get it after Jiraiya killed the last summoner," Akane said.
"Hmm, maybe, "Hazō said. "Though I don't know how we could find out. I was going to ask Panashe to snoop through their village, but unless they have it on an altar somewhere, it's not going to be visible anywhere she can see without rooting through the treehouses, and that'll wake people up no matter how skilled an infiltrator she is."
"I will note that inter-clan grudges in the Warring Clans era tended to exist on the scale of centuries, not generations. It is still possible that these so-called 'People of the Lake' are still enemies with the Squirrel tribe. What else did Mareo tell you about them?" Kei asked.
Hazō shook his head. "He didn't have much else. He traveled a fair bit but never really got involved with any of the Neck tribes. He just knew the Squirrel tribe because they had a summoner, and the People of the Lakes because they came from another country he had more experience in, and because they were the main counterbalance to the Squirrel tribe. He said they had a ninjutsu that let them make drinking water from anywhere, and that they used it to live far from rivers and water sources to make themselves harder to find."
"Well," Akane said, "if they're not from the Squirrel tribe that hates Leaf so much, maybe we could try to negotiate with them?"
"It could be hard to do that from a position of strength," Hazō said. "According to Panashe, they have twenty-five or so ninja, of whom half are adults? In the best case, that's about a dozen chūnin, and we recently learned that the local chūnin are actually quite tough. In the worst case, they may have a jōnin."
"Corresponding pre-war Leaf and Mist chūnin-to-jōnin demographic ratios would suggest that they have at least two," Kei said.
"Right. So they may think they have no need to negotiate with us, as the strongest tribe in Neck after the last Squirrel Summoner died, and we really don't want to fight them to prove them wrong," Hazō said. Akane and Kei nodded, and Yuno did after a thoughtful second. Yuno especially had not liked being cramped up on a Skytower with minimal space and privacy. While she had tolerated it while Hazō and Akane were healing, her impatience was slowly becoming clear as they waited for Panashe's scouting sessions.
"Resummon Panashe one last time tonight, Kei, and have her scout their village from the inside. I think that's all the information we can squeeze out of this stone though. We'll decide what to do when she reports tomorrow morning."
-o-
Panashe reported that the inside of the village was unimpressive, and there were no summoning scrolls waiting on ready altars, as you surmised. There were sleeping humans, but Panashe did not root through their things. She noted that their choice of base is good for staying hidden if they are not successfully followed home, but very easy to navigate for an infiltrator, with all the trees making for easy traversal.
What are the odds that the team encounters a patrol on their way out? 2d100: (4, 84)
The team makes it out fine.
They reconvene and talk it out. Panashe is assigned to scout for the next few days. They get around 6.5 Panashe-hours per day, which they can double with Noburi. Panashe doesn't want to be making Stealth checks non-stop (eventually, -12/+12 happens), so she'll set up a Stealth Block against being noticed. Every ninja in the village will roll once against this block passively.
Narratively, she's setting up some covert surveillance spots at night, then returning at various hours to keep a lookout. Sadly, her eyesight is not very good. The default time for this check is 1 hour, but with plenty of time and Kei to resummon her (with refills from Noburi, coordinated at the evening check-in), she'll take 12 hours instead. The guards will get to also make a roll against her Stealth as she's setting up the surveillance spots.
Unfortunately, nowhere near enough. Panashe has plenty of time that night to creep around in the underbrush near the village and find some good surveillance spots, as well as build tunnels between them.
Her Block, then:
Panashe (Stealth): ?? + ? (2x time ladder) + ? (invoke "Hidden Cuts Both Ways) + ? (Jutsu) + ? (Silence Mine) - 3 (dice) = ??
Panashe spends a FP to reroll!
Panashe (Stealth): ?? + ? (2x time ladder) + ? (invoke "Hidden Cuts Both Ways) + ? (Jutsu) + ? (Silence Mine) + 3 (dice) = ??
?? rolls for all the ninja in the village: [...], best: ??
Interesting, a tie… I'm ruling that the tie goes in favor of Panashe, since she's the one actively doing something, whereas the other ninja are getting a passive Alertness check to notice something off as they go in and out of the village.
Panashe spends a day surveilling them, notices that they tend to go off in one direction in particular, then return soon after (a separate pattern than the patrols). Hazō and co. follow them.
Is there a night patrol? [rolls] Nope
Can Canvass follow the frequently laid tracks between the village and its close-by training ground? Survival: ?? + 9 (dice): Yup.
They find the tribe's training ground and Panashe sets up another surveillance spot there.
What are the odds that this tribe was in Mareo's briefing? 1d100: ??, surprisingly, they were.
One last time, as Panashe sneaks into their village.
Not much, sadly. Just sleeping humans. Very easily murderable sleeping humans, but sleeping humans nonetheless.
XP: 14 + 4 (brevity)
GM-had-fun XP: 0
The plan was functionally "sit around and let Panashe do everything." This is fine when it results in you doing something, but as-is was a little boring. It was still probably a smart call though, so not penalizing base XP.
-o-
It is the morning of the next day. What do you do?
"Yeah, so, this is your section," Kakuzu said, tracing out an area on the map. "Most of it's pretty straightforward—nuts, ores, that kind of stuff. Don't miss this place here; they're kinda hard to see, tucked back in this ravine the way they are, but they've got some really good blooddrinker bushes and the pollen and leaves are super valuable. You should be able to get at least twenty pounds of the leaves and a couple ounces of the pollen."
"Lord Kakuzu," the village headman said, bowing dogeza. "Please, My Lord, forgive my impertinence, but I beg you to consider what you ask of me. The area you indicate is forty miles across. That may be only a matter of hours for a ninja as great as yourself, but we are civilians. The woods are thick and filled with threats. There are no roads, yet we will still need a cart to manage the quantity of goods you are requiring us to obtain. There—"
The man stopped talking and clutched at Kakuzu's arm. That arm was punched straight through the headman's chest, his heart gripped in Kakuzu's fist. The heart was non-functional, but the ancient ninja squeezed it repeatedly to make it look as though it were still beating.
Kakuzu shoved the still-dying corpse off his arm and turned away before it hit the ground. His eyes swept across the villagers, all of them in full dogeza in the dirt.
"Eeny, meeny, miney, moe," he counted. "Catch a bijū by the toe, if he hollers, let him go, I choose Y-O-U! You there! Stand up."
Faces looked up just long enough to figure out whom the ninja was pointing at. Those lucky enough not to have been chosen immediately put their foreheads back in the loamy soil while the unlucky one stood up.
He was in his twenties and his hairline was already receding. At some point, he had broken his left pinky and it had healed crooked. He was shaking so hard that it took him two tries to stand up.
"Me, sir?" he asked.
"Yep. What's your name, kid?"
"M-Minato, sir."
"Minato? Really? Like the Fourth?"
"Yes sir."
"Wow. Your mom had big ovaries. Did she push you as a kid? Act disappointed when it turned out that you weren't going to be a ninja?"
"No, sir. She was wonderful."
"Huh. She around?"
Minato licked his lips nervously. His eyes flickered very briefly to the side. "No, sir."
Kakuzu's arm shot out, extending impossibly far and only connected to his body by a skein of thread. It blasted straight through Minato's face, then retracted just as quickly, leaving Minato's body to collapse to its knees and then to the ground.
"Geez, kid," Kakuzu said. "If you're going to lie to me, at least have the decency not to look at your mom first. Anyway, guy next to him! No, not you. The one on his left. Stand up and tell me your name."
This man was older, probably thirty-ish. He had a slight belly but the arms and hands of someone who worked in the fields every day. The webbing between the index and middle finger on his right hand was calloused from years of pithing the rice plants and the skin of his palms was leathery from sliding up the stalk in order to strip off the kernels. His wrists and forearms were pitted and scarred from the claws of the plants.
"I am Kaito, sir," he said, bowing deeply and quickly.
"Nice to meetcha, Kaito. I'm Kakuzu, but you knew that. Anyway, congrats on becoming headman."
"Uh...thank you, sir?"
"No worries, no worries. Now, here's the map. You can't see it from over there. C'mere. That's better. Now, you'll be doing the tax collecting through this area. Like I was saying to that first guy, don't miss out on this town here, or this one. And don't worry, I won't be back until winter solstice, so you've got plenty of time. Lots more of you little podunk places to visit, you know?"
"Yes, sir."
Kakuzu laughed. "Man, if Leaf ever got off their asses and did a real census, I'd be out so. Much. Money. Honestly, it's like they can't be bothered to visit anyplace with less than a couple hundred people." He looped an arm around Kaito's shoulder and turned the man to face the two dozen houses that were the village. The village didn't have a name; no one had ever felt one was needed. They were self-contained and didn't need to travel much.
"How's it feel to be in charge of all you survey, Kaito?" Kakuzu asked, his voice affable.
"Um...good, sir?"
"Damn right it's good! Power. Best drug there is. So, since I'm being so generous and helpful by putting you in charge, I'm sure you're going to repay me by collecting all my taxes, right?"
What did one even say to that? Based on the two dead bodies on the ground, there was only one response.
"Of course, sir. How would you like them packaged?"
o-o-o-o
Kakuzu moseyed through the forests of Fire, absentmindedly killing the occasional mid-leap predator, while ticking off items on his checklist. His partner walked beside him, humming quietly.
"Grid square 1, 2, 3 all dealt with," Kakuzu muttered to himself as he studied his map. "Haven't checked on 4 in a couple years, should probably do that...hm. That village in square 12 might have budded. Let's see...that place in square 8 should be ready for pickup. What did I set them to...oh, right. Ten pounds of betel nut, two hundred pounds of highest-grade maple, twelve hundred pounds of rice. Note: talk to Itachi about whether the Crows need another rice shipment." He wrote the note on the move, the tip of his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth in concentration.
"You are a very strange man, Kakie," Hidan said.
"Don't call me that," Kakuzu said, not looking up from his lists.
"What, Kakie? C'mon, it's a term of endearment. Y'know, like Pinkies." He leaned in close. "It used to be that I called Itachi 'Pink Eyes', but that sounds a lot like Pinkies, don't you think? I figured Pinkies was easier to say."
"Call me Kakie again and I'll beat you senseless. Oh, and we need to go east a bit more. There's a village I want to check on."
"Seriously, man, when you said you wanted to 'explore off the beaten track' and 'see new places', I didn't realize that you meant check in on every tiny little village in Fire."
"Oh, don't worry, I don't intend on visiting every tiny little village in Fire."
"That's a relief. I thought—"
"We'll also be hitting up Lightning and Earth."
"C'mon, man, now you're just being mean!"
Kakuzu snickered and tucked his notes away, turned left, and moved up into a jog.
"Seriously, how do you even have all this?" Hidan asked, effortlessly keeping pace even while having his heavy triple scythe slung over his shoulder. "I'd think Leaf would have already squeezed these guys dry."
"Nah," Kakuzu said. "They don't even realize that these people exist. Seriously, their census says that there's 300,000 people in Fire. That's low by, like...I dunno, a factor of four? More?"
"Huh," Hidan said. "That sounds dumb of them. Say what you will, they ain't usually dumb."
"Eh, there's no—on your right."
Hidan was already lashing out with his scythe, bisecting the leaping snake without bothering to glance over.
"There's no real need for them to track these guys," Kakuzu said, ignoring the way Hidan was busily licking the blood off his scythe while rolling his eyes in exaggerated delight. "They're far off the beaten track and they make an effort to stay hidden. If you don't already know where they are then finding them takes a lot of work. Plus, not really worth it. The amount of money that I'm collecting is huge for one ninja but not worth the effort for a nation. Too much trouble finding each of these villages and then visiting to pick up the stuff."
"Sure, but..."
"Could you please, for once in your life, just assume that I know what I'm doing?" Kakuzu asked, exasperated.
"Okay, okay, geez. Anyway. Leaf doesn't know about them, but you do. How's that?"
Kakuzu eyed him as though it was the stupidest question to ever pass human lips. "Hidan...do you have any idea how old I am? I haven't just been taxing these villages since before you were born, I've been taxing these villages since before Hashirama was born, and long before his cute little 'Hidden Villages' idea." He shook his head. "Honestly, what a pain in the ass. Things were great back when everything was just clans fighting each other. Now they've got all these armies and patrols and census takers. So annoying.
"Anyway. I sweep through here every few years, talk to the people, and ask where the missing ones went. Sometimes they're dead, sometimes they went off and founded another village somewhere else. If so, I go find them and add them to my map." He gestured with the folded piece of fabric.
"Yeah, what's up with that map, anyway? There's no dragons on it. What kind of crap-ass map doesn't have any dragons? And Fire is too small and Lightning is too big! It's total bullshit."
Kakuzu facepalmed. "At least Itachi understood the concept of accurate scale," he grumbled.
No poet had ever been in a position to capture the majesty of dawn in the heavens, Hazō reflected, and perhaps it was his duty to be the first. Being bathed in the unobstructed first rays of the rising sun and watching the light reflect off the clouds below was an incomparable, unique experience.
He was thoroughly sick of it.
"I think it's time for us to throw in the towel," he announced.
The rest of the Team Uplift Expeditionary Force looked up from their breakfasts with a variety of expressions. Yuno, confused. Kei and Snowflake, curious. Akane... relieved?
"Don't get me wrong," Hazō said. "I'm not saying we give up on the Squirrel Scroll for good. I just think it's time we step back and admit that this mission has gone on way longer than expected, our original objective of stealthily retrieving an unowned, unguarded scroll looks like a bust, and if we're going to reliably pull this off, we need different plans, different resources, and maybe even different people."
Seeing Kei and Snowflake nod grimly, he hurried on.
"I'm not saying you guys haven't been doing a great job—all of you—because I couldn't be more proud of my team. It's just that there are things Mari, Noburi, or Kagome-sensei could bring to the table that might open up whole new approaches."
"But we're so close!" Yuno exclaimed, raising her spoon for emphasis as if it was an evil-looking black axe with special grooves for the blood. "Your tracking plan worked almost perfectly. We just need to repeat it a few times, and we'll have the enemy's location, and Panashe has proved she can do all the spying we need!"
"We don't know that for sure," Hazō said. "We don't really know anything for sure, and the way we failed this time—which could have been a lot worse if we hadn't got lucky and hit a tribe the Bear Summoner knew—is proof of that.
"Besides, we're getting near the end of our tackle in other ways. Our supplies aren't infinite. I mean, look at the stuff we're eating now." He gestured at their bowls of Kagome-sensei's Superior Revitalising Porridge, refined since the days he used it to bolster a sick Mari's strength, but still very much focused on health over flavour.
No one argued.
"Then there are the joys of skytower life, with the hygiene issues, the total lack of privacy, the drop to certain death constantly in the back of your mind (especially when you're settling down to sleep), and all the other stuff I won't even mention because ugh. Hands up if you'd spend a single second more living on a skytower if the ground below wasn't swarming with patrols."
Yuno and Akane didn't move. Kei and Snowflake put down their bowls, demonstratively walked to the edge of the platform, and stretched their hands down past the edge. They exchanged surprised, amused looks.
"The other issue," Hazō said after an obligatory eye roll at the girls' hyperbole, "and I feel a little bad about saying this, is that I'm worried about what's going on back in Leaf. I'm not saying I don't trust Noburi to hold down the fort, but he doesn't have the experience yet, and it's possible he hasn't reported something important because he's missed it, or he thinks he's got it handled but he doesn't, or he thinks he'll have it handled by the time we get back and doesn't want to make himself look like a bad regent by running to me for help the second something unexpected happens... And in the end, I'm the Gōketsu clan head. Whatever happens to the clan is my responsibility, and if things go wrong because I've foisted my role off on someone else, that's on me."
Akane cringed.
"I cannot but agree," Kei said. "While I trust Shikamaru to handle those of my functions as second-in-command which should have been his to begin with, at least to an acceptable extent and for a certain time, I am less sanguine in regard to the KEI. I do not even know if Ami is presently in Leaf, considering her new responsibilities, and while a thousand shadow clones' daily practice would not allow me to be Naruto's palest shadow as a charismatic leader, he is not one of nature's administrators, and also possesses a regrettable tendency to run with his latest exciting idea with limited consideration of its long-term pitfalls. Ordinarily, Ami and I possess veto powers he has chosen to respect—awareness of his flaws being one of his virtues, and a remarkable one given his heroic status—but Fujisawa, my own second-in-command, is a Leaf shinobi born and bred, and views him with a natural awe that is not conducive to applying the reins when needed. I recall his recent hare-brained idea of encouraging KEI unity by marketing foodstuffs associated with the coordinators, and while it is entirely his right to be represented by a ramen topping if he so desires, I refuse to countenance the production of 'Kei cakes', and even my sister found herself with mixed feelings about 'Amitsu jelly'. Fujisawa, with her distorted perceptions of all three of us, might not have displayed the same wisdom."
"I'm on board too," Akane said after a hesitant second. "This... This isn't really the mission I signed up for anymore. I was OK with finding a lost scroll that its original owners had given up on. Mostly OK. It was supposed to be their precious holy treasure, not just a tool for war like the Arachnid Scroll in Earth. But if it was going to lie buried under a stump somewhere for the rest of time otherwise, I thought it would be better where it could do some good for Uplift."
She looked down into her porridge. "Also... I know I'm a terrible person for thinking this way, but I was just a little bit jealous of all the Seventh Path adventures everybody else in my family got to go on, and this entire amazing world they got to see."
"Your feelings are misplaced," Kei said, softly enough Hazō almost didn't catch it.
She went on at normal volume. "Akane, this is and only ever was a mission of rational power maximisation. Every shinobi in the world, or at least every shinobi one can expect to survive, would react in the same fashion to a summoning scroll seemingly within arm's reach. Consider the apocalypse of which we have forewarning and an opportunity to find salvation only through Hazō's ownership of the Dog Scroll, the casualties spared Leaf by"—she spoke the words with a touch of distaste—"the Zoo Rush, derived from Noburi's use of the Toad Scroll, and indeed the great financial and other benefits we have derived from our association with the Pangolins at the low, low price of continental war and the genocide of strangers. To be a shinobi is to reach for power, whether for survival or for the sake of ambition, and if in this instance the only cost is the hurt feelings of believers of a heretical religion, then no sane shinobi would hesitate."
"I know," Akane replied. "I know. And I realise I'm in no position to lecture anyone on ethics. Only... I thought we wanted to be better than that. I thought we wanted to be better than ordinary ninja.
"As for hurt feelings, don't you remember what we did to Isan? The outcome of us wanting power and not caring about people's religion? Isn't that enough?"
"What you did to Isan was destiny," Yuno cut in. "It was Ui's will. You've got nothing to be ashamed of. You didn't do anything wrong, apart from Noburi breaking my heart, and he's trying to atone for that. Everything that happened after was the people of Isan paying for their own sins. If their faith had been pure, they wouldn't have leapt into the arms of an evil dictator. Nobody forced them to do that." Her lips twisted in disgust. "The High Priest didn't hold a kunai to their throats and make them ostracise people they didn't like—more than before, I mean. You coming to Isan was supposed to fulfil the prophecy and bring us freedom, and then they used that freedom to do evil because they are all horrible people who deserve to burn." She looked to Satsuko as if for agreement, then nodded in satisfaction.
"I believe we have long since agreed to disagree on this matter," Kei said. "Still..."
"Does there come a point when one aspiring to superior ethics should cease to reach for power?" Snowflake asked, looking vaguely into the distance. "It is not a natural thought, given the vast benefits Team Uplift has derived from it since your helpless missing-nin days, including my very existence..."
Silence reigned.
"Either way," Hazō said eventually, "that's a decision for later. For now, I think there's a consensus that going home wouldn't be the worst idea ever. But how about we swing by Honey on our way back?"
"What's in Honey?" Yuno asked.
"The Caverns of Mild Peril, according to Orochimaru's notes," Hazō explained. "Back when we traded with him, he gave us some notes of his from when he was passing through Honey. Apparently, he took shelter from the rain in a random cave, and discovered that it was actually this unique biome—that's what he called it—full of what he considered valuable plants and creatures. But he was in a hurry to get back to his lab, and apparently harvesting and transporting samples would have taken too much time and effort, so he just noted down the entrance he'd found to the cave complex, plus some field notes in cryptic Orochimaru style, and moved on."
Yuno's eyes lit up with an unhealthy glow. "You mean there will be chakra beasts? New and unique chakra beasts?"
"That would be the implication," Kei said in a much drier tone. "I wish to note at this point that 'mild peril' is presumably 'mild' by the standards of a functionally immortal demigod with unique expertise in aberrant lifeforms."
"Sure," Hazō said. "But do I need to list all the stuff we've survived, starting with the Swamp of Death and ending with Hagoromo Ritsuo's bad breath? I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful, and I'm definitely not saying we should do more on this trip than see if we can locate the entrance and maybe take a quick look at the less deadly area near it. But I promised Snowflake a Gōketsu-style adventure, and overcoming powerful threats in defiance of incredible odds is as Gōketsu as it gets."
Snowflake gave a small, sheepish smile. Was it just him, or did she smile more often these days than he was used to from Kei?
"I appreciate the thought, Hazō, but I would not wish to place the team in danger merely for my sake."
Hazō smiled back confidently. "Don't get me wrong, Snowflake. That's just one of my many motivations. Another is new sources of wealth and power for the Gōketsu—even if Orochimaru has already been back and got everything he wanted, it'll all be locked up in his lab, and I'll eat my necromancy notes if there's nobody out there with an interest in unique chakra beasts and their individual components. And another, in a way the most important one, is that there is nobody in Team Uplift who doesn't like the taste of adventure."
Kei silently raised her hand.
"And yet I notice that you came along without any complaints."
"As ever," Kei fired back, "somebody needed to be present to prevent disaster stemming from ill-considered decisions on your part. I assure you, I would much rather be at home, memorising the new tax compliance regulations."
"Which would take you all of five minutes," Hazō said. "But all right, we'll leave it at that.
"Any actual objections? No? Then let's get packing. The sooner we're done making historic discoveries no human has made before, the sooner we can get home and sleep in proper beds."
No Mist drill sergeant had ever been obeyed with such great haste.
Hazō raised a hand in general greeting as a few of the farmers on the village outskirts noticed him approaching along the overgrown road. Even with the oncoming sunset, many of the farmers had kept working their fields. They warily watched his approach.
He'd sent drawings to Noburi of the clothing he'd seen in the Honey port-town to commission a copy, but the farmers wore their chests bare, with only a simple cloth wrap around their waist. He looked very different in his high-necked shirt and overly puffy pants. He mentally adjusted his backstory.
Hazō walked to a comfortable speaking range, careful not to project his voice like a Clan Lord. "Hello all! I'm a traveler from the big town over that way," he said, gesturing vaguely to the west. "I have business around these parts and I thought I'd try to pass the night under one of your roofs. My name is Ayuma, and I've been walking since nearly sun-up."
The farmers looked between themselves and scanned him, but between the makeup on his hands and face and the bulky stuffed pockets in his clothing, they didn't recognize him as a ninja.
One of them spoke up. "Welcome, Ayuma, ahm Iyo. We ain't much fer a traveler like you, but I could find ya a dry place ta sleep, and some veggie stew to fill yer belly up. Here, follow me. My home's this way," he said, turning.
Hazō raised his hands. "Ah, sorry. I would be glad to enjoy your hospitality, Iyo, but I also want to know what the area is like. Like I said, I have business around here. Is there a town elder or a village chief that I could speak with before I turn in for the night?"
Hazō quickly touched a palm to the side of his head. "Oh, and I'm sorry for making a request without offering anything myself." He unslung his pack and opened it up. "Here, you've clearly been hard at work. These are candied meats from a smokery in town. And of course, Iyo, I can pay for the bed and food."
A few of the farmers relaxed when he unwrapped and offered them the cloth sack of candied meats. They could see no weapons inside his pack, and no tax collector would offer food to ordinary farmers. A few of them took up his offer, and Iyo offered to lead him to the village's chief.
Hazō observed the village as he followed Iyo, though he couldn't give it a ninja-quality scan in disguise. Even this far East, the farmers mainly grew rice with only a few vegetable patches, though no vegetables he recognized (notably, they seemed docile enough to keep within a dozen meters of the house with only a singly-reinforced fence). Most interesting to Hazō was the livestock, which quietly grazed in an enclosure nearly as big as the village itself. The creatures looked like giant, hairless wombats. Hazō's full height only reached the shoulder of the smallest, and the largest was four meters tall lying down on its six meaty paws.
Before long, Hazō was seated in the chief's house. The chief wore the same simple white-cloth wrap around his waist with a rich purple sash across his bare chest. Hazō saw similar hints of bright colors amidst the drabness of the clothing of the chief's wife and their half-dozen kids.
The chief's wife had been cooking a surprisingly elaborate and delicious-smelling meal when Hazō had arrived. He closed his eyes to appreciate the smell – they definitely had fewer spices than in Leaf, but he thought he could detect a new scent. Maybe he'd try to buy some of the new spice for Kagome-sensei.
"So, Ayuma," the chief said, making Hazō flick his eyes back open after waiting for a civilian's reaction time to pass, "I'm Toshi, a leader in the village. That don't mean much, just that I made good decisions in tough times and tha' people started trustin' me. I ain't gonna have a lot that can help you, I'm sorry."
"I'm sure you know lots about the area," Hazō said, "There's a big cave somewhere around these parts. My brother came out here a month ago looking for it, and I haven't heard from him since. Do you know anything about it?"
Of course, Hazō knew the chief would know. They'd found the cave only yesterday. Yuno had noticed strange animal trails after four days of painstaking searching, and Hazō had summoned Canvass (who seemed mildly irritated that they'd called off the search for the Squirrel Scroll) to track down Orochimaru's cavern. While there, they had noticed an overgrown footpath that led to this village. After brief discussion, the team had agreed that Hazō should approach the village and determine what they knew.
The chief grimaced. "Well, traveler, ain't no easy way to say it, but your brother's dead. If he went lookin' 'side the cave without knowing the proper rituals, ain't no way he came back out."
"You know where the cave is?" Hazō said. "Could you tell me about it?"
The chief shook his head. "I don't think I will, not if you're gonna follow your fool brother and get your ass killed. You seem like a proper fella, Ayuma, and I wouldn't want ta do that to ya."
One of the kids ran into Hazō mid-game – Hazō noticed in time to avoid instinctively grabbing the little boy in a joint lock. The chief grabbed his son by the arm and yanked hard, pulling the kid away from Hazō. He raised his hand to whack the boy on the head. "Don't bother the guest, idiot piglet!"
Hazō leaned forward as quickly as he thought a civilian could manage to lay a hand on the boy's shoulder, putting his arm in the way of the father's blow. "It's fine, really. I'm sorry for getting in your way." He smiled, shoving down the anger he felt.
The chief glanced over to him, then swatted the boy on the butt with his raised hand. The boy gave a light yelp and Hazō let go, gently pushing him away. "Mind your manners, boy!" the chief said as the boy went to sit with his sisters.
He turned back to Hazō. "Anyway, don't get yourself killed. The cave's bad to people who ain't know what they're doin'."
Hazō nodded. "So you can go into the cave safely?"
"Well, we do go in there sometimes," the chief said, clearly uncomfortable. "Not a bunch, you see, just into the top bit to grab some moss and leaves for our herb-witch. And not too much either, since that angers the Lady Below."
"So… what do you do to enter it safely then?" Hazō asked
The chief glared at him. "I ain't tellin' you where it is, and I'll tell no one else to tell you neither."
Hazō raised his hands. "I promise you, I have no desire to lose my life. I…" Hazō trailed off, looking into his lap for a second, then back up. "I thought my brother might be dead, since he was supposed to return after two weeks, and you know how dangerous it can be in the wilds here. Still, I traveled here because I felt, and still feel, some hope. I won't go if it'll get me or anyone else killed. I just want to know about it."
The chief scoffed. "Well, that's truth if ever I heard it. You ain't had no weapons coming into town, means any little creature in the woods could make a meal of you. If your brother was the same, I'd bet he got himself eaten too, and not by the cave."
Hazō smiled. "I may have gotten lucky, but my brother is skilled with his sword. Are you sure he didn't pass through?"
The chief shook his head. "You're the first traveler in a month."
Hazō nodded. "And there's no other village that knows about the cave?"
"None that I ever saw."
"Well," Hazō said, "I'd want to know more about the cave. I won't get myself killed. I just want to know what's in there to judge if my brother would really have been dead."
The chieftain eyed him for a long moment, then sighed. "The cave's the home of an old kami from a long, long time ago, long before the Sage came 'round. Sage stuffed the kami at the bottom and chained her up, which made her real mad. Worse, the sun don't shine deep down in the cave, meanin' nothin' much grows. That means she's really, really hungry. She'll eat near anyone or anything that goes in there."
"But you said you can go in there?"
"Yeah, well. First you gotta purify yourself, and mark yourself with the oils. We get the whole village together to pray to harden the soul of the one goin' in, since even if their body comes out fine, sometimes she eats the soul and sends a husk of a man back out. The herb-witch makes special charms, and they gotta get out before it's all burned up. No one goes more'n eighty eight paces into the cave, and we never send anyone in till half a year past the last time. Oh, and after every time someone makes it out alive, we lead one of the gorners in there as an offering."
Hazō frowned. "Are those the livestock creatures I saw coming in?"
"Yeah. And 'fore you ask, we ain't never seen a hint of bone or hide or tooth of 'em left behind. The Lady's very, very hungry."
"Ah," said Hazō. "That makes sense. That sounds very dangerous indeed. Do you know anything more about this… Lady Below?"
The chief scowled. "You're asking an awful lotta questions. Why don't you get on to sleep and head back to your town? There're some things that are too dangerous for the likes of you ta know."
How long does it take to find the town? Orochimaru did not keep highly detailed notes of the path to the cavern – only a few landmarks he remembered passing. The team takes a day and change to cross into Honey, then it takes around 4 days on the ground to find the cave.
How long does it take Hazō to make a disguise? He doesn't really need to care about anything but seeming like a ninja, and he has a little familiarity with some Honey fashions from the port town they set anchor in to copy from (and he can source clothing from Leaf through Noburi – and can probably create decent depictions of what he wants with his skill with the brush). All these factors considered, I think probably "an hour" at most – to make his hands look callused more in a laborer sense, to make his physique seem less Olympic athlete and more strong farmer, and to generally seem a little older.
He'll step up the time ladder twice to 12 hours, and approach the town at sundown the day after they find it. No point in rushing things. His disguise Block:
Hazō (Deceit): 24 + 6 (2x time ladder) + 3 = 33
Best of townsfolk (Alertness/Examination/Deceit/Empathy): ?? - 6 = ??
Can Hazō convince the town chieftain to tell him things about the cave?
Partial success. Hazō doesn't learn everything he would like to, but gets a few interesting tidbits.
-o-
"...next, we only stay in the cave for four hours. That should be around sundown, so we can follow any sunlight to get out. We'll start our retreat in three."
There was a chorus of yesses from the team, so Hazō moved on to the next point of the Caverns of Mild Peril Exploration Preparatory Checklist.
"All shadow clones are to be summoned as far ahead of time as possible, to give their Primes the most time possible to recover their chakra."
Crystal rolled her eyes and Spiral clearly resisted the urge to commit self-popping-by-facepalm.
"Hazō," Spiral said, "we have been present since nearly sundown yesterday to give Kei adequate time to recover her chakra. Over that period, you have made us sit through nearly a half-dozen of your unholy panoply of Sage-foresaken checklists. Do you really need to remind us of such trivial things?"
Hazō quickly flipped to the next item on the checklist before Spiral could get herself going. To his side, Akane, Akane, and Akane looked sympathetically at him and reached out their hands to rub his arm. After a shared moment of confusion between them, only one of them gave him a gentle pat of reassurance.
"Right. Next, our objectives are, in order: First, to ensure that all members of the Expedition Team remain free from bodily harm, prioritizing prevention of death, maiming, lasting injury, and dispelling in that order. Second, to scout, map, and establish safe lines of entry and retreat for the Caverns of Mild Peril, to allow expeditions on future days to quickly achieve greater depth and to ensure that in the event that we are overmatched by the beasts within, that we will be able to achieve the first objective. Third, to acquire a diversity of samples to return to Leaf so that we can inform potential future expeditions. Fourth, to safely harvest anything marked in Orochimaru's notes as being particularly valuable."
Another chorus of yesses, though Hazō could tell that Crystal and Spiral were a little offended at dispelling being the least important injurious outcome to prevent.
"Has everyone bathed in the river, marked themselves with those oils we stole from the town, and done preparatory meditations? From the townspeople's myths, it sounded like we're dealing with predators that hunt by scent, possibly with some sort of psychic attack."
Another chorus of yesses. "And in the event of encountering enemy ninja-"
"Which is vanishingly unlikely, given Canvass's absence of observation of any human scents but our own in the last month or so," said Crystal. "And if we do encounter hostile ninja, prioritize escape, preferably breaking line-of-sight if skywalkers are to be used. As you have already mentioned. Thrice."
Hazō winced slightly. He hadn't really spent that much time going over the various protocols, had he? After all, he'd spent hours on the Seventh Path, checking in with Cantelope to see if the Dog would be free this evening for the expedition, and going over the checklists with him. Still, this was for Snowflake's benefit, even if she had opted for her sisters to have the first run into the cavern. He could afford to tone it down.
"Okay, and we've already covered the specific protocols. Yuno," he said, looking at the pink-haired woman who was bouncing gently on the balls of her feet with Satsuko clutched close to her chest, "I'll be the tactical commander, but you have override and veto power. If your battle intuition or your understanding of the beasts says I'm making a bad call, you can decide what to do. Everyone should follow your lead."
Yuno nodded, then looked to the cavern mouth. The semicircular opening in the rocky outcropping lay at the bottom of a deep channel in the ground, surrounded by grasses and trees on either side. The grass even led into the mouth of the cave before thinning out into dirt, and any wildlife or plants beyond that point were much sparser. She looked back to him, but Hazō could tell she too was anxious to get started.
"Alright cavern, here comes Team Gouketsu. Summoning Technique: Cantelope!"
-o-
Despite the warnings of the townsfolk, the entry had been peaceful. Everyone wore Jiraiya's Daybright Lantern Seals on their waists, which lit the spaces of the cavern quite evenly. One seal alone would have left many shadowed cracks and crevices for beasts to hide out in, but with eight ninja total (only half of them made of meat), there was little risk of a close-quarters ambush.
The cavern was quite big, too – easily ten meters wide and half as tall, though it narrowed as they got deeper into the cave. A surprising variety of plants and mosses and funguses grew in the cavern's entryway – to no surprise, as Kei noted, since this area would reliably receive both sunlight and biomass washing into the cave from the forest above. Akane's shadow clone Hydrangea took the lead in sampling the cavern's flora and leaving them on a tarp by the cave entrance. Tonight, Kei would hand them off to Noburi, who would hopefully tell the expedition team which ones were worth harvesting.
The ambient life steadily diminished deeper in the cave. Cantelope had been moderately interested in the plants (none of whom put up much of a fight for Hydrangea), but focused more on the patterns and striations on the cave walls. They continued their descent until Yuno raised a hand.
"There's something up ahead. It's some kind of buzzing, and it's getting closer."
Cantelope bounded to Yuno's side, pointing his ears forward. "I can hear it too. Either some bugs are having a party up ahead, or they're coming to get us."
The buzzing suddenly crescendoed as a flying swarm of bulbous black-green bugs turned the corner into the main space of the cavern. Hazō felt his conscious thoughts stop.
Relax.
There is no need to fight.
The wordless sensation washed over him as the buzzing sound expanded. In the drone of the insect-wings, he heard chirps and bird calls and frog ribbits and human humming.
There is no you. There is no self. We are all one.
You are one with the mountain. You are no creature of flesh and blood. Lay down your body and free your soul.
Hazō shook his head. The pressure felt like a genjutsu compelling him to stop moving and sink into the stone around him. He bent low, then pushed himself to the cavern wall. He needed to take them down before the effect could mount and reduce him to a simpleminded statue.
The rest of Team Uplift clearly thought the same. Kei, Crystal, and Spiral were quick to throw explosive tags into the swarm. A few of the bugs managed to outmaneuver the explosions, but the rest of the team was able to quickly bring them down. As the last few bugs fled, the team stepped on the ground again, the air now rich with the acrid smell of the insect's blood. None of the ninja had been affected by the psychic onslaught, but…
"Cantelope," Hazō said, approaching his summon. "Cantelope! Can you hear me?"
He waved his hands in front of the Dog's face, but there was no response. He looked around at his allies, then back to Cantelope. The Dog was sitting calmly on the ground, his head resting on his forepaws with eyes half-open and dull, while his tail rested half-curled on the ground behind him. He was barely breathing. If the swarm had its way, it probably would have reduced them all to that state and eaten their still-living bodies.
Hazō made the handseal of dismissal, and Cantelope disappeared in a pop of smoke. After a moment's thought, he drew blood from his arm again and said "Summoning Technique: Cantsuru!" and Hazō kneeled down beside the fluffy sheepdog puppy to scratch his ears.
"Summoner," said Cantsuru, stepping next to Hazō and nosing his leg. "Where is this?"
"Don't worry about it, Cantsuru. It's a cave we were exploring. Cantelope was with us, but his mind got hurt by something we fought. Can you take us back to Dog so I can check in with him and Cannai?"
"Sure thing," said Cantsuru.
Hazō looked around at his team. "Camp out here for a few minutes. I'll talk with Cannai to make sure he'll be okay."
-o-
Candoru sniffed the ground. "This place sucks. It's all damp and musty and there's way too many bugs." The team kept on slowly walking down the cave branch, and after a moment, the dog bounded forward to catch up.
"You're not wrong," said Hazō. "But we're here for good reason. Noburi, the Toad Summoner, already said that many of the plants we found would be useful. We're saving lives here, in a roundabout way."
Noburi had been moderately enthusiastic about the things they'd found on their first trip two days ago, but nothing stood out as particularly valuable. Orochimaru had noted a few things of interest, but the team had yet to find anything that had once caught the Sannin's eye. Instead, since the first expedition, they'd mostly been mapping the caverns – they now knew a few more surface entrances, all much smaller than the main entrance, and had marked out many branching points.
"Then why aren't we back there, getting more of those plants?" asked Candoru.
"Because we can do that on our way out," said Hazō, as they slowed to a stop where the cave narrowed into a diagonal crevice. Hydrangea raised her Daybright Lantern seal and stepped forward to examine it. "And there's more valuable stuff deeper within. The Snake Summoner himself said so."
Candoru sniffed again. "Well, unearthing hidden treasures isn't the worst way to go."
Hazō shrugged. "You're not in danger. Cannai said Cantelope would probably recover, and most of the stuff in here will kill you the old-fashioned way, like in the iron mine."
Candoru huffed his annoyance, but didn't respond.
Hydrangea looked back at the party. "I think it opens up after a few meters," she said, thumbing at the crevice. "I'll shimmy through and make sure it's safe on the other side."
With no dissent, Hydrangea clipped the Daybright seal to her belt and turned sideways to fit herself through the crevice. She'd been taking the lead on all the dangerous things, while Zinnia, Akane's other Shadow Clone, had kept close to Hazō. Akane clearly didn't want to repeat the nearly-lethal Squirrelfolk incident. Hazō noticed Snowflake watching thoughtfully as Hydrangea worked her way deeper into the crack. They'd had quite the conversation earlier…
"...so I should be the one to test anything dangerous," Hydrangea said. She looked at Yuno. "Yes, even if you're better at killing chakra beasts. It's better that I die first and we get forewarning and some information before the rest of us have to fight… whatever it is."
Snowflake suddenly spoke. "You needn't phrase things so dramatically. Your existence will not end in any meaningful sense as a consequence of being dispelled!"
Hydrangea turned to her. "Snowflake, I know that, but-"
"You clearly have no fear of death, as evidenced by your willful volunteering to be the bait dangled at the end of the metaphorical fishing line. Your provocative phrasing disregards the experience of shadow clones that have not yet been directed by their creators to die."
Hydrangea looked at Akane, then back to Snowflake. "Snowflake, Prime didn't order me to do this. It's my idea. And yes, I'm a copy of Prime, but that just means if I– if she spent some time in a shadow clone body, thinking about how to help the team, she would come up with this."
Snowflake looked at Akane. "You would willingly sacrifice yourself to spare your teammates even mild peril?"
"More importantly," said Hydrangea, "I would gladly sacrifice myself for my teammates. I don't know what dying is like, but I think it would be scary and painful. But I'm a shadow clone. I can die for my team without worrying about leaving them alone, and the only harm I suffer is in my own head."
"You are a shadow clone! The only harm that matters is in your own head."
"Yes. And it's not a deficiency. Instead, I could sacrifice myself for the team a hundred times over and still come back. Not everyone gets the chance to throw themselves in front of an attack for their team, and even fewer people do so and survive. No one gets to do it again and again and again.
"Being a shadow clone is a privilege, not a weakness. I never thought it through before now, but I'm glad to keep my teammates a little bit safer from the mission's dangers. It's my own choice to do so."
After a minute, Hydrangea called out that it was all clear on the other side, and the rest of the team shimmied through the crack one by one.
"Perhaps I have overestimated my own chakra control, but I found chakra adhesion on the sides of that crevice surprisingly challenging," Kei said as she squeezed herself out on the other side. She straightened up, dusting off her clothing. "Did any of you observe the same?"
Hazō reached out as Kei stepped away and tried to use chakra adhesion to stick his hand to the stone. Surprisingly, it didn't work. He frowned and tried again, pressing his hand closer to the stone and focusing his chakra control. This time, he felt it take hold. He gave his hand an experimental pull – it was firmly stuck to the stone.
He released the adhesion and pulled his hand away. "Me too. That's strange."
"It was only by chance that I noticed it; had my hand not incidentally slipped on a wet patch of the stone, I would not have realized."
"It's not just the crevice," Yuno said. She flexed her leg at the knee, showing that her foot was firmly adhered to the floor. "It's the ground here too."
Hazō looked at her, then at Kei. "Is it a type of stone that resists chakra adhesion?"
Kei shook her head. "I have never heard of such a thing. Though, given the lengths we needed to go to find it, I cannot rule it out by the absence of evidence in the broader Elemental Nations."
"Huh," Hazō said. "Let's take a sample, then. I bet Kagome would have a field day if he could make parts of his trap array ninja-proof."
After chipping away a few chunks of rock, the team continued down the open cavern. The caverns had been easy to navigate. They'd mapped out all the dead ends in the main cave already, leaving only this path. Hazō had thought they'd need to watch their backs the entire time, there was very little that could sneak up on them, especially since they'd exterminated all the remaining nests of those green-black bugs.
"Hold up," said Candoru. "I smell something strong up ahead. Like the insect leavings at the other nests."
The team stopped, and Candoru gave the air a sniff. Despite caring first and foremost about his (unfortunately, not terribly impressive) ability to tear out the throats of his opponents, Hazō had found that Candoru was a surprisingly good tracker.
"Yeah, about a hundred feet down that way," Candoru said. "Maybe a hundred of 'em, I'd guess."
The team shared a look. With nowhere else to explore, they would need to check this out to get deeper.
Slowly, they approached. Candoru complained only occasionally about the worsening smell, and before long, they could all smell the dull, musky scent of decay. When the cave opened up before them, Hydrangea scouted ahead. They didn't bother covering the Daybright seals – creatures down here had no eyes at all, and without any background noise, stealth was virtually impossible.
A moment later, Hydrangea returned. "It opened up into a massive space, like an amphitheater under a giant dome. There's a bunch of spider-like molted skins but nothing living that I could see. I think they're in the ceiling. I saw a lot of holes up there, though I didn't look closely. A couple tunnels branched off from there."
Hazō nodded, thinking. "We'll need access to the rest of the caverns, and we haven't seen serious combat since we got in here two days ago. I say we go for it. Let's unseal Substitution targets in this cave in case anyone needs to flee and prepare any ninjutsu or seals we can, then spring the ambush. Akane, how big were the shed skins?"
Hydrangea held her hands shoulder width apart. "Around this big."
"Good, neither hard to take down nor hard to hit. We can handle them, and if we can't, I'll seal the hallway with a MEW so we can prepare a more detailed strategy for next time."
Everyone who wasn't a chakra construct cast Ghost Scales for durability. Akane activated her Flame Aura, which made everyone look away for a moment even with their eyes already adjusted to the Daybright seals. Hazō heard Yuno cast "Lightning Style: Thunderburst," but he saw no visible effect.
Then, cautiously, they entered the cave. The hemispherical chamber's floor was uneven, with a steep slope that combined with the strange impediment to chakra-adhesion that made it tough to walk. As Hydrangea said, meter-wide holes dotted the ceiling of the cavern, in some places scattered and in others packed in a dense hexagonal grid.
No creatures flew out to ambush them as they fully entered the room. Hazō scanned for any webs or pitfalls, but found nothing. They walked toward the center of the hemisphere and waited for a moment.
Kei frowned at him. "The kami's appreciation for irony is well known, and you would do well not to tempt them."
"Wait, I can hear them." Yuno said.
Candoru cocked his head, then stiffened, the hair on his back standing up. "Yeah, they're coming."
Hazō lowered himself into a battle-stance, looking up at the ceiling, from where a clacking, chittering sound steadily rose. Kei and her clones had palmed their kunai, and Akane and her clones stood ready on the perimeters of the group. Strangely, Yuno had her eyes closed.
With a sudden sound like crackling lightning, Yuno shot to a larger boulder, then leaped to the ceiling, grabbing the inside of one hole as an insect came crawling out of another. She swung Satsuko and bisected the creature in a spray of turquoise-green gore.
Then its brethren started dropping into the cavern, and things became very, very chaotic.
The creatures were eight-legged, pale white and segmented like millipedes. Their mandibles shined in the seal-born light, and each had a round, bulbous growth streaked with red at their rears. Most of them fell around the outskirts of the group and quickly swarmed in to tear them apart.
Akane and Hydrangea and Zinnia tried to intercept them, but there were too many to hold back. One lunged for Prism, who Substituted back to the entrance of the cave, while another broke past Zinnia to bisect Snowflake between its mandibles, only for Akane to suddenly flicker over and slam an elbow into it that cracked its chitinous head. Candoru had grappled one, rolling around to get a firm bite on any part of its carapace, to no avail.
More streamed from the holes in the ceiling, positioning themselves above the group to drop into their midst. Hazō imagined the battle playing out – these weren't weak creatures; Akane and Yuno were stronger than them individually, but not overpoweringly so. If enough attacked them, they'd all be overrun.
He dashed to Kei, grabbing one of the beasts as it lunged for her back and hurling it aside. "Plug the holes!" he called.
She reacted instantly, reaching into a pocket for a different kunai and aiming it towards the ceiling. The kunai took an insect through the midsection of its carapace. It lost its grip and fell, only for the attached Goo Bomb tag to explode mid-air. The rapidly expanding cloud of goop spread outwards and caught a number of the creatures, and plugged the ceiling holes the beasts had streamed out of.
The dozen creatures on the ground intensified their attack, but their numbers steadily decreased. Akane and her clones were pushed back by the numbers, but they dealt worse than they took. A mandible scraped Hydrangea's thigh, breaking her Pangolin armor, but she tore the mandible off and rammed it through the creature's exoskeleton, while Zinnia grabbed the rear segments of another, planted her foot, heaved, and ripped the creature fully in half.
Prism Substituted back into the group when a creature diverted to the doorway and nearly bit her head off, and Hazō ran to cover her as two of the millipede-like creatures broke away from Akane. Hazō grabbed one mid-leap and forced chakra to his feet to let him adhere. He pulled himself closer to the ground and dashed the creature against the stone in a spray of chitin and ichor. He turned in time to see Prism fail to dodge the other beast's leap. It landed on her chest and quickly swung its head down to try to impale her through the eye with its mandibles, but its claws scratching her chest were enough to dispel her.
Hazō felt a connection snap as Candoru lost his fight with the beast he'd isolated. He realized a moment too late and spun to see Kei wincing slightly with the pain of Prism's sudden dispelling. Her loss of focus lasted just long enough for another beast to tackle her to the ground and close its mandibles around her arm.
Kei screamed. Hazō flickered to her side and grabbed both mandibles in his hands. Some part of his brain noted her arm rubbing against his, but he told it to shut up until it was sure that Kei would keep her arm for more than a few seconds. The beast tried to pinch its mandibles to shatter her bone and to twist its head to tear off her arm in a bloody chunk, and Hazō pulled his hands apart, resisting the beast with brute strength. They held still for a long moment as the battle raged around them, then Hazō won. He pulled his hands apart, ripping the insectoid head in half, and kicked the body aside.
Around him, the battle had slowed. Yuno and Akane were finishing up the last few of the creatures and Kei quickly straightened up, hiding any shakiness as she and Snowflake sniped down the few beasts that had finally decided to flee. Once the room grew quiet, Kei reached her uninjured arm to her opposite shoulder, where the mandibles had torn messily through her sleeve and dug shallow gashes into her flesh.
Hazō took a step towards her, then stopped himself.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"The wound is shallow, and the likelihood of exsanguination is minimal, if that satisfies your question," Kei said, gently probing the wound.
They both jumped at an explosion, and turned to see Snowflake tagging another kunai. She looked over at them and said, "I note that there exist many more holes than creatures we fought. Even accounting for those unable to escape on the behalf of Kagome's Goo Bomb, it stands to reason that there are many more that wait inside their boreholes for some unknown purpose. I have no particular desire or curiosity to make that purpose known."
She activated the explosive and threw the kunai dead-center into another of the holes. Another explosion went off, this time accompanied by a shower of insect gore from the hole in question. Snowflake looked pointedly at Hazō, then grabbed her next kunai.
"Right," he said. "We've been down here long enough. Let's finish off these creatures to spare ourselves the trouble next time, then head back to the surface."
-o-
Conversation was subdued during their next descent. On the one hand, the team had a safe path into the deepest depths of the caverns. On the other hand, the insectoid beasts had posed the team a decent challenge. If the beasts got much stronger, the team would have to retreat with little to show for it.
They returned to the insect's dome room. Kei, Prism, and Crystal had insisted on doing another explosive sweep of all the insect nests, and, after Hazō briefly argued that they should be economical with their explosive tags (prompting a nod from Yuno, laughter from Akane, and a thinly veiled caldera threat from Kei), they did so. Once the chamber had been secured, they set up Lesser Barrier Formation tripwires to warn them if anything approached, then started exploring the side tunnels. There were a few more insect creatures there, but they died swiftly without their former numbers.
Then, the wonders started. In one chamber, a natural waterfall fed a series of small pools, each surrounded by a colorful diversity of plants and fungi. They had found the first location from Orochimaru's notes. He'd said a few of the plants were "very interesting", though he'd not bothered to mention how to harvest them. The team spent some time poking around (and exterminating some beasts in their subterranean riverside homes), taking a variety of samples for Seventh Path delivery.
In another side chamber, long, twisted growths covered the walls of a massive room like gnarled roots of an ancient tree. Among the growths were periodic green, semi-transparent capsules that looked like skull-sized beads of polished jade. Orochimaru had noted these were "rich in nature chakra" and "potentially incredibly useful for research agenda 3c." Hazō instructed the team to turn off their lights, and, just as Orochimaru's notes said, the capsules glowed a faint green in total darkness.
Curiously, Hazō noted that the stone sides of the cave, both in this chamber and in the tunnel leading to it, were streaked periodically with a faint bluish glow. The streaks were barely a centimeter wide at their widest, and the brightness waxed and waned over the course of minutes. The streaks were invisible in normal light, and chipped off pieces lost their glow. Hazō threw the chips in a sample pouch, as the stone was still tough to chakra-adhere to. Sadly, the green capsules proved very hard to harvest, and no one found a way to pull them off the wall without causing the inner light to fade. Once faded, the capsules quickly went putrid in their hands.
In the last chamber, they found the last of the items in Orochimaru's notes, a shallow lake studded by stalactites and stalagmites. Some fish swam in the lake, but the Daybright seals let the team easily evade their attacks. Apparently, the mineral deposits in the stone formations had some unknown value, and the team found a stalagmite with a severed tip, clearly by Orochimaru's previous passage. Whatever the value, storage scrolls apparently destroyed it, so the team broke off a few stalagmites and wrapped them with the other things they'd harvested for Seventh Path transport.
As they returned to the central chamber, Hazō sighed in relief. "Well, this was a complete success. We found everything that Orochimaru noted as valuable."
"He must have stopped at this same chamber, right?" Akane said, gesturing broadly at the hole-dotted hemisphere. "Everything was in the caverns that descended down from here."
Hazō nodded. "Well, everything he kept explicit notes on. Given his normal dry style, he sounded almost excited about what could lay further within, but regretted not having time to delve deeper. Regardless of whether we harvested things correctly, we know enough to attempt future missions. Even better, we have bargaining chips if we want something from Orochimaru in the future, even if that something is just to leave us alone."
"Why don't we go deeper?" asked Yuno. "We've only been down here for a couple hours today and we're all fresh. Shouldn't we find out what he could have been excited about?"
Kei grimaced. "This invites needless danger. For what purpose?"
Prism said, "Orochimaru is prideful, particularly in his immense knowledge. Providing him with samples that he knows are valuable will be enticing to him, but the promise of knowledge yet unknown to him will drive him substantially more. I have a distaste for the man as deep as your own, my sister, but this is a way to gain additional leverage."
"As we know, he is already aware of this place and the potential value within, even if it seems to have slipped his mind. No doubt, even if he were reminded, the odds that he would abandon his 'experiments' in the Basement on a whim are negligible," Crystal said with clear distaste.
"Precisely," said Prism. "This is not something he desires so desperately as to invest time or resources into acquiring it, yet the unknown nature of the potential discoveries will provide a strong incentive to him. I would not dare to say this even makes the barest step towards making him… controllable, but it would greatly improve our positioning in future negotiation, particularly as our experience in the caverns present an ongoing source of value."
Hazō nodded slowly. "That all makes sense. We'll be careful and retreat if we find a fight we can't win, but we do have a safe line of escape. No matter what, this is our last day here. I'm eager to get back to Leaf."
The team descended the last side tunnel, which dipped deeper into the ground than the other chambers. As the tunnel started to grow shallow again, the team stopped. The bottom of the tunnel was completely flooded.
"There is nowhere further to go," said Kei.
"That's not true," said Hazō, "the tunnel could curve back up again."
"I can check," said Hydrangea. "I'll swim in there with a waxed Lantern seal. If I can't surface before I run out of breath, I'll pop and you'll know you need to turn back. Otherwise, I'll come back and tell you it's safe to go ahead."
Hazō nudged Candoru. "Now that's the kind of can-do attitude I want from you."
"I'm not enthusiastic about getting myself killed running stupid errands for you," Candoru grumbled. The Dog still felt grumpy about losing his solo fight against the insectoid creature in the last delve. "Besides, if you wanted that, you should have contracted Cando."
Akane nodded her assent. Hydrangea turned towards the greenish water and started to strip. Hazō looked away for her privacy. After a few moments, he heard the distinctive sounds of wading, then a splash. He turned back towards the water, where the ripples died down and the light of Hydrangea's Lantern seal slowly faded.
All was quiet for over a minute, then Hydrangea's discarded clothes disappeared in a puff of smoke, and Akane and Zinnia gasped and looked around. Hazō was by Akane's side in an instant, putting a hand on her back for support, but she touched her chest, then pushed him away gently.
"It's fine. I'm fine. I- no, Hydrangea died. I saw a place where the cave surfaces, and it's not far. There are a lot of hidden crannies in the cave though, and a school of fish was hiding behind one of them. They swam out when I passed and speared me through the chest before I could get away."
Hazō rubbed her arm. "That complicates things. Kei and I are comfortable underwater," Hazō said, looking at Kei, who nodded, "but I don't think you or Yuno are good swimmers, right?"
Akane nodded, having caught her breath from Hydrangea's dispelling. "We did some swimming in the Academy. It was in the physical fitness routine for the first two years."
"That's… not going to be nearly enough to have any clue how to fight underwater effectively," Hazō said. Akane nodded.
"I haven't really ever swam before," said Yuno.
"Really, never?" Hazō asked.
"No, never. But I think I understand how it works. Hold your breath, push yourself along?"
"Hm. No matter how weak the cavefish are, they'll have a huge advantage in their natural terrain. We need to mitigate that."
Hazō thought for a few seconds, but before any ideas formed, he saw Crystal's face change unreadably. He watched for a second as she worked through what to say.
"In the absence of my beloved sister Snowflake, I believe it falls upon me to remind us all that explosions are remarkably effective underwater. Likewise, however regrettably, in the absence of the aforementioned slayer-of-koi, I believe the duty of piscatory butchery also falls upon me. Hazō, how many of your Activation Relay Seals are waterproofed?
-o-
Crystal slowly swam down the cave. Akane described the ambush location as best she could, but the girl was regrettably imprecise. Fortunately, Crystal didn't need to traverse the entire flooded cavern in a single journey. She passed her last checkpoint and swam three meters further, then unsealed the next Substitution target. She quickly affixed ARS and explosives to the moderately-sized boulder, then swam back to recover her breath.
The plan was fairly straightforward – bait the fish into attacking, then Substitute with a prepared target and remotely trigger the associated explosives by using ARS. With the increased efficacy of shockwaves underwater, any cavefish caught in the blast would likely be killed immediately, though there would be less collateral damage than ideal as the attenuation of the blast would be greater underwater as well, therefore necessitating the otherwise needlessly risky strategy of playing bait. She lamented that Hazō's initial avenues of approach had proven ineffective – how much labor might have been saved had the cavefish simply surfaced when they dumped out their chakra beast scraps for Crystal and Kei and Prism to pick off!
Instead, Crystal cursed that without the Frozen Skein, she too could have creative ideas. Perhaps had she not suggested this course of action, Hazō would have found a solution that did not require her to spend long minutes of her existence swimming to and fro, nearly naked, in the frigid waters of the cavern.
She passed her last checkpoint and started to swim past it when out of the corner of her eye, she saw the fish swim around a rock barrier and towards her. They were not terribly fast. Had they been on land, Crystal could easily have dodged a rush from a beast at that speed, but underwater, her mobility was severely hampered.
The cavefish were strangely shaped, long and flat and lacking in any pigment at all. They had a sharp spine at the tips of their heads akin to a swordfish, yet their bodies were rather bulbous. They clearly meant to impale her with their spiked heads, and they spread somewhat as they approached, presumably to diversify their angles of attack. She waited as long as she could afford before Substituting with the target and triggering the ARS seal. The explosive wave knocked her away and into a chunk of rock protruding from the ceiling, which barely didn't dispel her. She quickly turned and saw chunks of fish gore floating in the water where she had just been, but a pair of surviving cavefish, whether by being on this side of the explosion or merely too far to be substantially affected by the munition, had turned and started rushing at her.
Crystal closed her eyes. Regrettably, she would not have the chance to bait the cavefish down the length of the passageway, exterminating them one by one with the prepared chain of targets – they had recovered too quickly from the explosion. She gripped the explosive tag in her hand as the approaching cavefish closed the distance.
Once again, we are triggering timer-zero explosives to kill fish at the cost of our own existence, in order to provide a passing benefit to the remainder of our team. Truly, it will be a long time before we find that saner place.
She opened her eyes and triggered the explosive.
-o-
Prism winced as the memory came back to her, then sighed.
Before Kei could say anything, Prism spoke first. "It was moderately successful, but I now see an alternate strategy with greater potential efficacy. As many hostile beasts still remain, I suppose I too will need to sacrifice my fleeting existence on the altar of fish."
As she prepared her seals, she thought to Snowflake and Crystal who would soon receive her memories. One day. One day, we will no longer be required to kill fish.
-o-
Hazō emerged from the water on the far side of the cave to see Yuno drying herself off with a towel pulled from a storage seal in her waterproofed belt pouch. He quickly averted his gaze before Satsuko decided to do to him as she did to girls that might have given similar gazes to Noburi. He trusted Akane to check that she needed no more help after the suicide rush of the last few cavefish had given her a shallow graze. Unfortunately, all Yuno's skills in chakra-beast hunting were terrestrial, and for the first time, he'd seen a beast give Yuno a scratch. A tiny scratch that he wasn't sure would even bleed, but a scratch nonetheless.
He appreciated the brave sacrifices of Crystal and Prism. Two cavefish were manageable underwater, but an entire school would have wiped the team out. He remembered the Swamp of Death, where chakra beasts managed to take out jounin who were out of their element.
Once everyone had dried off and recovered their equipment, Kei said, "I dearly hope we never need to do that again. Furthermore, any retreat through the flooded section will be dramatically slowed. In the worst case that we provoke an amphibian monster and need to make a swift escape, it may trivially close any distance with us as we haplessly flounder through the underwater passage. Let us ensure that this area is well-trapped so as to slow potential pursuers."
Akane nodded and started setting Lesser Barrier seals. Unfortunately, Kei was right. In their underwater scramble, Hazō (and everyone) had found that chakra adhesion was nearly impossible in the new depths of the cave.
Candoru came up by Hazō's side and gave him a baleful gaze. The dog then shook his head and body violently, spraying Hazō's dry clothing with water. Candoru walked off smugly, and Zinnia giggled and took Hazō's hand.
"Now you want to hold my hand?" Hazō asked with a smile. "Right when I smell like wet dog?"
Zinnia smiled back. "You smell like wet dog more than you think. If you wanted to avoid it, you'd bathe more after your Seventh Path visits."
Hazō groaned and she gave him a kiss on the cheek.
-o-
Hazō took back all his misgivings. They had been right to press onwards.
The winding path out of the flooded section opened into another large cavern, this one even lusher with greenery. Mosses covered the walls, plants and ferns grew around scattered pools and streams on the ground, and vines hung in thick patches, reducing visibility more than the faint mist in the air from the various trickling water sources. A few beasts had thrown themselves at the team, but they'd been quickly slaughtered.
But the samples of the various plants and animals paled in comparison to the real find of the night – the massive crystal near the center of the room.
It looked like it had exploded from the ground, narrower at the base and spreading wider in long, clean lines until about chest height, where the straight shards ended in pointed hexagonal segments. Some of the longest shards were taller than Hazō's head.
Initially, he'd thought of money. He'd absorbed a bit about gemstones from Mari over the years. He could see the clean blue and green colors of the crystal, occasionally streaked through with purple and hints of red. The crystal was incredibly clear – no shard showed any inclusion or warping. The crystals clearly held a hexagonal shape well, and of course, there were thousands of pounds of it.
With access to the Seventh Path trade network, and with trade routes opened up by AMITY… as long as the gem didn't turn out to be something cheap like quartz, the clan would be rich beyond measure. Hazō could take on the most ambitious Uplift projects he could imagine and the coffers would barely be dented. He could actually buy small countries.
Then, he'd noticed something and asked everyone to extinguish their Daybright seals again. The walls still had faint blue streaks, but that light was almost completely drowned out by a brilliant light from within the crystal. It too had a gentle wax and wane to it that mirrored the streaks on the wall, but when they broke off a chunk of crystal (Hazō never cared much for money in its own right, but holding a ten-pound crystal-clear gemstone easily worth ten million ryo alone gave him a strange rush), the separated chunk continued to glow of its own power. The fluctuations of its light sped up initially, but eventually stabilized into a calm, even blue shine.
There was some powerful latent chakra within the crystal, and it was stable. Even with all of his ideas about uses for chakra metal, he couldn't begin to imagine what a chakra gemstone might do.
"Let's grab a few more pieces before we get out of here," Hazō said to the group. Kei was currently weighing the gemstone chunk that Yuno had cut away, and she seemed similarly bedazzled, if slightly disturbed. They'd taken their safety precautions, letting Zinnia carefully approach the crystal, touch it, stand close to it for a while, and asking Candoru do the same. They'd even tested for mind altering effects, checking that Zinnia could easily step away from the crystal and that she felt no different about it. Nothing suggested any danger, and they had eventually decided that small interactions like this were acceptable.
Yuno hefted Satsuko, but before she could swing, Akane spoke. "We should pick carefully. Try to get some of the different colors, maybe grab a piece from the bottom and from the top. Hazō, while we wait, could you use MEW to seal off the further tunnels?"
"Right," Hazō said, "let's not get interrupted. We can take them down if we ever want to go further."
He looked at the trio of tunnel exits further into the caverns and realized they were close enough that he could seal them all with a single Earthshaping technique.
"Zinnia, Candoru, could you cover me? I'll use Earthshaping to seal them all at once and save some chakra, but it'll take some extra time."
The two of them stood beside him as Hazō settled down to meditate. He formed the handseals. "Earth Release: Earthshaping." He pressed his palms to the ground.
A simple job like this, just making a crude wall to fill a passageway, would only be the work of a couple minutes. He wouldn't need any precision to do it. A couple minutes to seep his chakra into the ground, a couple minutes to block the tunnels, and a couple minutes to take his chakra back out.
Yet, for some reason, the technique wouldn't start. When he pushed his chakra into the ground, it refused to take root. He closed his eyes, letting the tension seep away. He thought back to his early days learning the Earthshaping technique and marshaled his chakra through his breathing, waiting until it was calm and steady. He slowly started to work it into the ground. There was more resistance than normal, but he pushed gently but insistently, until his chakra finally spread out and saturated the ground. He focused his willpower, not to words, but to a raw idea.
You are the heart of the world, formed into this shape by happenstance. But there are other forms you could have taken.
Yet, as he spread his chakra out, the earth did not become malleable. He did not feel the nature and strength of that earth reaching back to touch his chakra and resist his will. It did not speak to him at all.
He spread his chakra deeper into the stone.
You were once united, and you will be united again. Draw together now, and rejoin with your kin.
But the stone refused.
I am not a part of the world you know, and you are not my master.
There were no words, just a forced insistence that Hazō could not warp the stone. And, little by little, the alarms started to ring in Hazō's mind.
When Hazō had learned Earthshaping, he had contrasted Earthshaping's fine and gentle manipulation with the crudeness of chakra adhesion. Kei stepped beside him, not recognizing his focus, and he remembered Mist's Academy instructors teaching him about chakra adhesion. About how chakra-bearing creatures resisted adhesion, which was why you could easily walk on walls, but walking on trees was harder, and it was impossible to use chakra adhesion to rip the flesh off of people while taijutsu-sparring.
I am not a part of the world you know, and you are not my master.
When they'd descended, the creatures within had acted like ordinary chakra beasts at first. They'd attacked the team, but fled when the tide turned against them. But once they'd passed a certain point, the beasts had stopped retreating. The cavefish had thrown themselves against the team at the cost of their lives, and the creatures in this cavern made their best attempts too, no matter how futile it was.
I am not a part of the world you know, and you are not my master.
Hazō had noted the streaks of blue in the walls and the gentle flux of their light. Suddenly, a connection clicked in his mind, and he saw the streaks as vessels, carrying something other than blood with the wax and wane of its light as a pulse. And if the streaks throughout the entire cave system were the vessels, then this crystal had to be the heart.
I am not a part of the world you know, and you are not my master!
Hazō felt the Earthshaping connection suddenly snap and he rose to his feet clutching his head as his chakra rebounded on him. His vision swam for a moment, and by the time he got his bearings, he saw the rest of the team in combat stances, swiveling their heads as the cavern shook around them. Somehow, Hazō knew to look to the walls, where the stone warped and twisted, protruding a humanoid shape from the cavern wall. He raised an arm to point, but before he could speak, the figure was fully extruded and fell to the ground.
It rose in an instant, far, far faster than any being made of stone should have been able to. The eight foot tall figure was a crude caricature of the human form, well beyond the human limits of musculature. The entirety of its surface, its skin, was covered in streaks of blue against the greyish stone of the cavern, and its pulse was fast now, matching the accelerated pulse of the crystal heart in the center of the room. The figure held out its hands and vines and roots jumped towards it. They twisted and coiled in loops around the figure's arms and body, covering its body in patches of moss and leaves.
Hazō wasn't sure whether it was residual chakra in the ground from the Earthshaping or just a quirk of where he was standing, but he felt a rumbling around him, and looked up to see a column of stone descending from the ceiling to cut him off from the crystal.
Then Hazō heard Yuno shift her feet and turned to see a second stone figure blocking the way they came from.
A/N: Your plan must include which side Hazō wants to jump to. On the side you came from are Akane and Yuno, on the side going deeper are Kei, Zinnia, and Candoru.
All the combats in this update were rolled, but I wrote a lot and obfuscating rolls is more work. If there's interest, I'll edit them in later (but no promises, there were a lot of rolls) (EDIT: I did! See after the bullet points.).
Cannai thinks Cantelope will recover, but you haven't heard him speak yet. If he does recover his faculties of speech at some point, he may want to speak with you.
Most of what you retrieved is safely stored on the Seventh Path. The Orochimaru items are ready for 7P transport near the mouth of the caverns.
Bookkeeping:
Current CP | FP net
Hazō: 133 | +2
Kei: 261 | -1
Akane: 142 | +2
Zinnia: 21
Candoru: 105
Yuno: Probably quite high
Hazō currently has a full stress track as a result of Earthshaping breaking. He still has PCJ active.
Kei and Hazō are no longer rusty for combat.
More rolls with more extreme results the deeper in they go and the longer they explore.
Encounter rolls:
#1: Day 1, Moderate quantity, moderate strength
#2: Day 2, High quantity, moderate strength
#3: Day 3, Moderate quantity, high strength
#4: Day 3, Low quantity, ultralethal strength
Treasure rolls:
Day 2: Good
Day 3: Minor
Day 3: Legendary
Day 3: Rare
Combat prep – Hazou can sustain Cantelope for around 4 hours, after which he is dry on chakra. Assuming Kei Snowflakes up at T-20 hours and Akane SCs at T-8 hours, that gives them:
Hazou: 138 CP going into the cave
Cantelope: 162 CP
Kei: 2x Snowflakes, 264 CP (Snowflakes at 33 CP each)
Akane: 2x SCs, 138 CP (Akane SCs at 40 CP each)
One SC is Bait™, the other SC is Hazou-Sitter 9000 (maintaining a bodyguard Block to swap Hazou out of danger in the event of an ambush).
Yuno: Full, no prep needed
Alternately, Candoru offers 8 hours:
Hazou: 195
Kei: 234
Akane: 94
—
Encounter #1
A group of beasts try to psychically dominate, then consume the party. As they are insectoid, they have the Aspect "Fragile Physiology"', which means they do not have a Severe Consequence slot. They start with a sonic/psychic attack against every member of the party:
Cantelope takes 12 mental stress. He barely avoids total personality death, and instead opts to be Taken Out, removing the Severe Consequence he would otherwise have taken. If he took one more stress, he would have been forcibly Taken Out and permanently mentally crippled.
Yuno takes 1 mental stress, and is a little irritated. Everyone else is fine.
The rest of the fight: Does not really need to be rolled, as apart from their psychic ability, they're weak. The team can easily wrap them up.
Damn Gouketsu and their high Resolve.
—
Encounter #2
The swarm of (rolls) 18 spider… salamander… spidermander-things attack! As they are insectoid, they have the Aspect "Fragile Physiology"', which means they do not have a Severe Consequence slot. This is deeper in the cave, so their stats are substantially higher.
Akane + SCs
Akane saves FA for counterattacks as needed. All three PKH up, spend a Supp grabbing new Narrow-angle blast rings, then attack the uninjured ones: (#0, #15, #16)
She gets Youthful Fist on on #0, #15.
Hazou:
PKH, attack #11 which hit Kei.*(I did the rounds out of order since Hazou's initiative is so damn low I thought he was in the next round, and only noticed the error now that I'm cleaning up the rolls. I already wrote that Hazou bailed Kei out of a nasty hit, so I'm sticking with it)
Hazou (Taijutsu): 43 + 10 (PKH) + 5 (Team Uplift) + 6 (Rocket Boots) + 3 (Macerators) + 2 (Ghost Scales) - 1 (PCJ) + 3 (dice) = 71
Beast (Mandibles): ??
Hazou deals ? stress, inflicting a Moderate.
Round 2:
Yuno:
Attack #16, which seemed strong.
Yuno (Melee Weapons): ??
Beast (Mandibles): ??
It's on its last legs.
At this point, all the beasts are critically injured and there's basically no further risk of failure as almost everyone gets to go before the beasts can attack again. The cleanup is easy, and Hydrangea, Zinnia, Kei, Snowflake, Hazou, and Yuno kill one more each. Final kill counts:
This encounter happens underwater. Hazou and Kei take a ½ penalty to all physical skills (as they grew up in Mist and very comfortable with swimming), Akane and Candoru take ⅔ penalty (as they have actually swam in the past), and Yuno takes ¾ (no real water exposure). Otherwise, ABs work as normal.
They come to a dead end and see the cavern bend downwards into the water. Hydrangea is the designated bait, so removes her seals and swims in. She gets a fair distance under the water, and finds the location where the water ends and the cave continues.
The cavefish attack her once she reaches roughly the halfway point.
Okay, there are a bunch of fish down there and they're very deadly. They quickly attack anything that comes close. There's no other good way forward, so they'll need to deal with this. Explosions are a great way of killing things underwater… Crystal volunteers, if only for the irony of getting to blow up some more fish. An explosion in Melee will certainly kill the fish.
Some waterproofing of seals allows for a clever MARS thing to be used – Crystal will roll a series of Substitution targets into the underwater passageway, marking them with explosives tied to ARS. When the fish attack her, she'll Substitute out of the way and trigger the ARS-explosive to catch as many of the killer fish as she can. The number of attacks she can dodge in a row without Substituting is the number of fish that she can bait into Melee, to be insta-killed.
For this tactic to work, her reactions need to be better than any of the fish. She'll roll an Alertness check:
Crystal (Alertness): ??
Best of fish (Alertness): ??
Excellent Athletics roll on the Sprint! She gets 2 Zones away. The rest of the fish can make a Good TN 30 Resolve check to keep it together and keep on attacking Crystal… #1 and #4 somehow pass. However, they can't reach her! They'll give chase to the target.
Crystal notes she's out of chakra, so the Substitution/ARS trick won't work again. Instead, she'll opt to trigger one last explosion in her hands to take out one more fish, and force the other to make a TN40 Athletics check for stress… #1 dies, #4 takes 3 stress, which is a Mild. Crystal dies.
After careful consideration of the possibilities, Prism volunteers to do the same.
She does not manage to get as far away, so she's caught by the remaining fish and swiftly killed.
There's now only two fish left in the cave. The team waits a bit for the fish guts to settle out of the water. With the bulk of the enemy forces taken care of, they'll proceed onward in a group, hoping to spare Zinnia any further self-sacrifice.
The fish emerge from their holes, the heroes have much better initiative. But can they actually compete against underwater predators in their home environment?
"Up!" Hazō shouted, triggering his skywalkers and running towards the ceiling, all the while thanking the Sage that he had required everyone to put them back on after coming out of the water. "Avoid plants and crystal, use fire and boom!" He shouted the words even as he sprinted towards Kei; she would need his help the most.
Those too-brief words were all there was time for. There was so much more he wanted to say—lightning was an acceptable option as well as fire and explosions, stay away from the ceiling in case more golems generated in, exercise personal judgement if circumstances invalidated his orders, on and on. There just wasn't time. The team was in two groups, Akane and Yuno over by the tunnel that led to the surface and the rest of the group closer to the exits that led deeper into the cave. A golem had formed near each group and a wall of stone was growing down from the ceiling, not quite as fast as an Earth Wall jutsu could have raised it but almost.
The wall clicked into place, dividing the room in half and trapping Hazō away from his love; the wall cut off all sound, blocking any chance of communication with Akane and Yuno. And, unfortunately, trapping both of the best combatants on the team away from everyone else. Two separate reasons to be stressed.
Zinnia, Akane's shadow clone, moved so fast her hand was a blur as she dipped an explosive disk out of her pocket, primed it, and hurled it straight at the golem. She was no ranged expert like Kei, but the Gōketsu signature weapon was less about precise aim and more about 'see that guy? fuck him and everyone near him.'
Despite Zinnia's blurring speed, the golem was faster. Its right arm twitched, the vines around it unfurling and lashing out. The tip of the vine slapped Zinnia's explosive disk out of the air and bounced it behind one of the numerous stalagmites that littered the cavern. Hazō's eyes went wide and he sprinted for cover behind one of the nearer stalagtites. The others were already moving before he shifted his weight, and managed to be in the blast shadow of various stone shields before the blast hit—although Candoru only just made it, diving behind the rocky pillar so barely ahead of the explosion that a few hairs were clipped from his tail. Thankfully, it wasn't quite enough to pop the summoned dog.
Hazō was beginning to regret his orders but the middle of battle was no time to change in mid-stream. He hurled his own blast disk, aiming it off to the golem's side where hopefully it couldn't reach with its whips.
They say that the kami laugh at the plans of mortals. The golem moved casually forward, one, two, three steps that seemed slow yet somehow it was passing behind a stalagmite at the instant of explosion and didn't even have its leaves rustled. Through bad luck or intent on the part of the cave, the blast disk took a bad bounce, putting Hazō directly in the path of the blast. He dove for cover, managing to dodge all but the edge of the shockwave, yet it was still strong enough to shatter his protective Pangolin Conditioning Jutsu.
Kei's arm went back, came forward, and the precision of ten thousand hours of practice sent an explosive-tipped kunai straight through the golem's eye—
—or would have, had the golem not casually stepped away just as she loosed. The motion was so smooth that it didn't even seem like a reaction; it was as though the monster had always been moving there, the action in progress and somehow Kei's attack was simply misaimed. That, Hazō knew, was not the case. He also knew that this was a very bad sign.
Still, the metal blade might not have hit its mark, but the Gōketsu Special attached to its hilt wanted its innings. Once again, the golem 'happened' to be in the blast shadow of a stone pillar. Once again, Hazō was just a bit too slow. His ankle stung as the explosion clipped him; it wouldn't slow him down, but it was no Sunday picnic either.
The golem flicked both arms forward and the vines around them lashed out, reaching for Kei like hungry lampreys. She fired her off-hand kunai, allowing it to spin instead of lancing with pinpoint precision. The weapon tumbled through the approaching vines, knocking them off course and tangling them momentarily together and slowing them enough that she danced casually aside, her skywalker seals making it easy to glide across air and away from danger.
"Fire Release: Flame Aura!" Zinnia cried, zipping through handseals. Flames roared from her body and she pivoted, bracing herself to lunge at the enemy.
Before she could spring forth, Candoru leaped at the golem, rising up from where he had stealthily circled behind it. His jaws gaped wide, otherworldly teeth aimed straight for his enemy's head.
The golem swung a casual backhand, a motion that would have been impossible with human joints. It split Candoru in twain and sent him back to the Seventh Path with a painful jolt. Hazō's stomach plummeted.
Kei took advantage of the monster's arm being out of position to send another kunai at it, this one aimed for the right shoulder, immediately through what would have been a human clavicle.
The golem turned slightly, shifting course with inevitable precision, and the kunai flashed by it more than a handspan away.
"Retreat!" Hazō cried. "Zinnia, tell Akane to retreat! Summoning Technique: Cantered!" He stabbed his hand on the pin that stuck down from his belt for this very purpose, then slammed the bloody flesh against the side of a stalagtite and caught the summoned puppy in his arms before it could plummet to the ground.
Zinnia's head flicked towards him, her expression startled behind the wreathing flames, and then she puffed away into smoke so that her progenitor would receive the orders.
Kei, thankfully, still bore the implicit trust in her field commander that had been built up throughout their missing-nin days. She did not question orders, nor even look to him in surprise. She merely bloodied her hand, touched the ceiling, and said "Summoning Technique: Pandā!" An instant later she was gone, tearing her way across realities to safety.
The golem cocked its head in curiosity (was it startled? did it hesitate?) and then lashed out with its vines, grappling Hazō and pulling him in to be crushed between hands made from the bones of the earth.
The vines grappled nothing but smoke as Hazō and Cantered disappeared to the Seventh Path.
The battlefield:
A stone wall is dropping from the roof, dividing the room into two zones. Each zone is about 30' high and 50' across. There are stalagmites and stalactites everywhere meaning that it's possible to dodge explosives. The players voted to have Hazō jump to Kei's side of the fight, not Akane's. Therefore, you will not know the results of the Akane/Yuno/Golem fight unless Hazō survives his own and finds a way to get through the stone wall that is separating them. As mentioned above, Akane and Yuno are near the exit that leads back to the surface while the rest of the kids are near three unexplored exits that go deeper into the cavern system.
Hazō's side of the fight: Hazō, Kei, Candoru, and Zinnia (one of Akane's shadow clones) vs golem #2.
(NB: I don't remember Candoru's stats and I can't find his sheet so I'm making something up. If it turns out to be too different from what it should be, or what it is next time, then clearly the aetheric channel connecting him to the Human Path was having an unusually (high | low)-latency day. Or something. I dunno.)
Golem #2 is the one with the plants woven around it. It definitely has the Vine Whip power and it might have the ?? power as well. 1 = no, 2 = yes: 1. It does not have the second power.
I'm waffling on whether to treat the Vine Whip ability more like Water Whip or more like Pangolin's Reach. In the first case it's a Range:0 attack that uses the golem's primary attack stat. In the second case, it's a jutsu that pulls people in and keeps them from escaping so that the golem can beat their faces in with taijutsu. In the interest of being nice and not having everyone die, let's go with the second option. Also, on the zeroth round the golem didn't actually want to fight so it won't counter-attack, only dodge. On the first round it's pissed and will be fighting full force and with lethal intent.
We'll say that the Vine Whip works like this: The golem lashes out with its vines, grabbing one of his opponents and pulling them in close. The vines have range:0, meaning they can attack anyone in the zone. If they catch you then: (1) you take 1 stress, (2) you are pulled into Melee with the golem, and (3) a Block is established against you leaving Melee. You can either dodge them or counter them with Melee Weapons. Taijutsu and Ranged Weapons cannot be used as a defense.
The golems are threatening, not attacking, so the team gets to act before the fight starts. Hazō tells them to skywalk up and then rain down explosions.
FP and Aspects:
Y'all did not buy FP before the fight started, so Zinnia has 0 (she's a shadow clone), Candoru has 1d4 = 1, Kei has 3, and Hazō has a whopping 8. (I don't remember if we've been saying that summons are supposed to have FP, so let's roll with it.)
What combat-useful Aspects does everyone have?
Candoru: Badass Beast
Kei: Team Uplift
Akane (and therefore her clones): YOUTHFUL Taijutsu Star, Equals at Last, Team Uplift
Hazō: (Formerly) Marked for Death, Team Uplift.
Note: Hazō does not get to use 'Lists and Plans' as an Aspect in this fight because it requires that he be following a plan that was made in advance: "Invoke when: Hazō and his allies are moving in accordance with a plan Hazō has made in advance."
Zinnia is a shadow clone and really shouldn't have any seals since seals don't duplicate when the clone is formed, but we'll assume that she was handed a loadout.
Round 0:
Zinnia throws Weapons:4 explosives. Everyone in the zone must dodge a TN 40 attack. If they fail then they take stress based on the roll, up to a maximum of 4.
The golem slaps the explosive aside and behind a stalagmite, allowing everyone to evade damage without much effort, except for Candoru who just barely makes it and gets a few hairs clipped off his tail in the blast. (But not enough to pop him.)
Everyone dodges except Hazō, but his Pangolin Conditioning Jutsu sacrifices itself to save him.
Kei throws an explosive-equipped kunai. Her Ranged Weapons is 40, which is the same as the dodge TN for a Weapons:4 explosive, but with chakra boost she can spend 25 chakra to add 5 to her roll, meaning that she's attacking at 45 and Weapons:4. (The explosive overrides the kunai's Weapon:1.)
The golem targets (1d4 (C,H,K,Z): 3) Kei and uses Vine Whip, attempting to pull her in close. Kei has already used her only combat-relevant Aspect so she cannot invoke.
Zinnia: Activates Flame Aura.
I'm not sure how much chakra she has but it's not going to be a lot, especially since there was already some fighting in the hallways. I'll say she's got enough for the Flame Aura and one round of maximum boost.
Candoru: ?? (Teeth) + 3 (dice) = ?? (He used up his Fate Point earlier)
Golem, taijutsu: ?? + 6 (dice) = ??
Candoru is popped!
Kei, Ranged Weapons, no explosives because she doesn't want to hurt Hazō again: 40 + 5 (chakra boost) - 3 (dice) = 42. (She already used her only invokable Aspect)
Golem, dodge: ?? + 3 = ??.
Golem dodges.
Hazō: Calls the retreat, summons one of the puppies but does not depart yet.
The golem uses Vine Whip, attempting to pull someone in close. Candoru is popped and Zinnia is on fire, so he's targeting either Kei or Hazō. 1d2 (H,K): 2 = Kei. Kei has already used her only combat-relevant Aspect so she cannot invoke.
Once again, Kei is fortunate that the golem is not as good with its vines as with its fists. She twists aside once more.
In accordance with Hazō's orders, Zinnia pops herself to pass the instructions to Akane, Kei summons a pangolin and returns to the Seventh Path. Hazō waits until she is safe and then likewise retreats, praying that his orders are enough to keep Yuno and Akane alive.
Hazō stumbled slightly as he stepped down on the uneven grass of the Seventh Path, and the sensation of vines wrapping around his shoulders quickly faded. He let Cantered down out of his arms.
"Is this a tactic?" Kei asked. She had drawn a new set of tagged kunai and was holding them loosely in her off-fingers while she made the seal of return.
Hazō shook his head. "No, we were outmatched. We have to trust that Akane and Yuno can make it out on their own."
Kei pulled her hands apart and straightened up, but Hazō could tell she hadn't relaxed. "So be it. Regardless of how their capabilities measure against beasts of that caliber, we have very few points of leverage to influence their outcome any longer. I suppose you intend for us to recuperate and return as soon as possible?"
Hazō nodded. It was near nightfall on the Seventh Path, but without any sun to set, the shadows in the patches of tall grasses around the plains only grew darker rather than longer. Cantered had plopped down a few feet away with his ears pinned back in anxiety, and Pandā, standing near Kei, drummed away on his armored belly with his claws in a familiar nervous tattoo. Nearby, Cando and one of the giant pangolins started to make their way over to their wards. Impressively, the grizzled old mutt didn't even seem scared by the pangolin nearly ten times his height.
Kei took a step closer to him. "Hazō, you were injured?"
Hazō looked down to his profusely bleeding ankle where the explosion had torn away his clothing and swore. He quickly knelt down to start binding it. "Sorry, didn't feel the pain in the heat of the battle. It's fine. Not serious." He moved his foot and winced in pain. "It's painful but I still have full range of motion. There's still crutches in one of my storage seals. I'll stay off it for a day and I'll be better."
Kei nodded. "Regrettable. It will not be long before I have recovered my reserves, perhaps eight hours. Nonetheless, by that time, Akane and Yuno's fate will almost certainly have been determined. It would be best to wait for you to fully recover."
Hazō finished tending to his ankle, then tested it. It was painful but ultimately manageable. He hoped that Kei didn't realize that it was her own weapon that caused the injury.
"Kei, will Pantomaimu let you summon him to fight in the cave?"
She shook her head. "Improbable. He elected to exercise his natural showmanship in Isan out of respect for Ui's memory. Supposing the contract has not already lapsed, I anticipate he has no similar respect for myself as a summoner. That is doubled by the narrow margins of that mission's success, none of which was particularly due to my own meager efforts. He is unlikely to forfeit his hard-won retirement in the Pangolin armies for a single upstart summoner."
Hazō grimaced. "Well, will Pankurashun be available?"
Kei nodded. "He will be. Given the narrow quarters of the cavernous environments, his merely Zabuza-sized stature will be advantageous. Few of my other contracted summons would have been able to readily maneuver in such tight conditions."
"Good. Then I'll need to speak with Cannai to arrange a combat summon of my own."
o-o-o
"Summoner."
"Hello, Cannai."
Hazō stood across from the Alpha, who had arrived in his usual, nearly imperceptible way at some time in the night. Hazō and Kei had gone over their observations of the brief fight against the golem creature in the cave, but hadn't turned up anything of value. As it was conditional on Hazō's contract negotiation, prospective battle planning had been put on hold too.
Cannai very visibly let his eyes drop to Hazō's injured ankle. He met Hazō's gaze. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"As you know, I've been exploring a very distant land."
"Oh, I am aware, Summoner," Cannai said, lying down in the darkened grass of the nighttime. "I recall how you sent Cantelope back to me. He is starting to recover. While he has not spoken yet, he has started to take food and water more easily, and I am told that earlier today, he managed to relieve himself on his own."
"Cannai, I didn't expect anything like that to happen to him. I-"
"I am aware you did not intentionally lead Cantelope into danger, Summoner. Likewise, recall that I was present when you formed your contract with him, and given what I know of your world, I had expected that exotic locations would carry some inherent dangers. I regret that this happened, and were Cantelope to have been permanently injured, I anticipate I would have been angry, rational or not. However, as it is, I do not blame you. You were adequately cautious and took all reasonable precautions. You are not at fault."
Hazō swallowed. "Understood. Thank you, Cannai."
"You don't need to thank me, Summoner. This isn't any mercy from me. It is the plain truth. Regardless, I believe you were going to tell me about whatever dramatic quandary you wandered into that led to yourself and the Pangolin Summoner making an extradimensional retreat into my lands?"
Hazō nodded and explained what had happened in the Caverns of Mild Peril. Cannai found the name amusing but sobered up by the end of the exposition.
"That golem creature seems quite dangerous. By your description of its fighting tactics, it was truly joined with its environment. Despite its actions seeming lazy and casual, your attempted attacks always seemed narrowly foiled by mere luck, yet somehow in the worst way possible. That... that is dangerous."
"Agreed. We have no clue how we could kill one," Hazō said grimly. Worse, when he and Kei had discussed it, they had agreed on one thing — that it still couldn't have been even comparable to the chakra golems that Itachi had described.
"So, you wish me to select a Dog Clan warrior who may be amenable to forming a contract with you, as well as recommend that they assist you?"
"That's my goal, yes. We want to return to the Human Path as soon as possible."
Cannai inclined his head to think. "Canain, the warrior that is now leading Candoru's patrolling pack, may be suitable. Candoru would most likely have been regaling him with tales of his prowess on the Human Path, though I understand they are grossly exaggerated. As before, I would gladly help you cross Dog to meet Canain, for you would never make the journey on foot in time. Yet, if I were to take you now, it would be daybreak by the time we arrived, and there would be scant hours before nightfall once we returned here, assuming you wish to coordinate your return with the Pangolin Summoner. Perhaps you would rather sleep first?"
Hazō shook his head. "I can't delay. My teammates are still there on the Human Path, and we need to get back there as soon as possible. If they need help and they've somehow managed to shelter with seals or something, we need to break them out."
Cannai looked at him for a moment, then raised himself up to all fours and shook his head and body lightly. "Very well, Summoner. Hold on tight. I will attempt to make this quick for your packmates."
o-o-o
Canain, a brown-coated mastiff whose head actually rose a few inches above Hazō's own, eyed the young summoner skeptically.
"So, you are the master of those... rockworms that caused Candoru here so much difficulty."
Hazō glanced at Candoru, who was seated with his head down nearby. "Well, I wouldn't say 'master'. They were just living in that mine. Though I guess I did own the land..."
Canain looked over at Candoru. "So, would you say that you were the one commanding them to attack Candoru from behind and underneath?"
Hazō paused, before deciding to be honest. "No, sir."
Canain huffed at Candoru, and Candoru looked away. "Fascinating. It appears there are many features of the Human Path that I still have yet to learn. Now tell me, is it really true that there is such a thing as 'horrorfish', which live in lakes and eat those that try to walk atop them?"
Hazō nodded. "Yep, they exist. They can kill you if you've never seen them before, but their charge is pretty easy to predict if you know what to look for, and they're extremely vulnerable once they've leapt out of the water."
Canain looked at Candoru once more. "Perhaps I had dirt in my ears. Once I clean them out thoroughly, Candoru, I would like to hear your combat report from the Human Path again. In full."
Canain sighed and faced Hazō. "Let us set that aside for now. I've heard the basic details from Cannai. However, I am not particularly inclined to provide aid. In truth, I was once contracted to the previous summoner, but only near the end of his time with us. He summoned me only twice, and both times were quite brief. Each was countable in seconds, and I mainly fought other humans who threatened the summoner. These brief and violent excursions did not leave me with a particularly good impression.
"Then, Candoru tells me that another dog has already been severely mentally damaged by something within these caverns you are exploring, which means a contract could actually stand to harm me permanently. Worse still, the opponent you intend for me is made fully of stone, meaning my skill with my teeth and claws will be nearly useless and I will need to use my ninjutsu instead."
"With respect, Canain, it was Cannai's decision to suggest you to me. I won't deny that this might be another violent and brief excursion, or that there's potential risk to you, though I'll note that the golem we were fighting didn't do anything but try to physically hurt us. If I may ask, what ninjutsu do you use?"
"Plant Release and Crystal Release," Canain said.
Hazō's eyebrows rose. "I... can see why Cannai recommended you, sir."
Canain huffed lightly. "Regardless, there's another point of concern for me. Where the previous summoner was a human at the peak of his power, I'm told you are barely even an adolescent by your species' standards. Without the power and resources of a masterful summoner, I doubt you will have anything to offer me for the trouble."
Hazō smiled. "Well, the trouble is minimal. I won't be calling on you more than once, and it will be at a time you can predict. There's almost no risk to you, and you don't even need to expend your own chakra since the summoning provides it for you. As for resources, I'm sure we can find a fair compensation. Tell me, have you heard yet about the Seventh Path Trade network?"
o-o-o
"Got all your seals ready?" Hazō asked.
Kei nodded, lips tight. She'd abandoned her usual frustration at Hazō's pre-battle checklists in the face of a life-or-death fight. An array of summons were scattered around them. Pandā was somehow more anxious as a result of all the preparation, while Cannai seemed to find it somewhat amusing.
"On three, we pop back, immediately summon, and try to kill the golem. If we can, we break through the wall and escape. If we notice anything off that suggests that Akane and Yuno fled in a different direction and that they're now hiding in an Earth Dome or a Five Seal Barrier shelter somewhere, we note the location but focus on securing our normal line of escape. Once we've confirmed we have a safe exfiltration route, we double back and retrieve them, rather than prematurely exploring a new or dangerous region. All good?"
Kei nodded again and held up the belts of directional explosives looped over her shoulder. They'd had the time to prepare long MARS chains of the shaped charges, so hopefully they would be able to fix the belts to the wall and trigger the MARS to activate all the seals at once and blast open a hole to the other side.
"In that case, let's get going. Pangolin Clan Technique: Pantokrator's Hammer!"
The rush of energy hit him, and Kei followed suit a moment later. They'd both cut themselves before recasting the Pangolin Conditioning Jutsu for armor, and the blood hadn't yet fully dried. Hazō and Kei both swabbed a finger into the wound to get blood to summon with, then made the seal of return.
Hazō crossed the border between worlds, surrendering himself to the strange feeling of being stretched apart and smashed flat by an incomprehensible acceleration. The sensation was always brief and quickly faded, and Hazō focused on the plan. Summon Canain and Pankurashun immediately, clear the way for Kei to Goo Bomb the golem in place so that the summons could tear it apart, then break the wall open and escape as quickly as they could.
Hazō knew that plans rarely went as intended. He knew that something would inevitably go wrong and that he'd have to adjust. He wasn't expecting for the reverse summoning itself to malfunction.
Hazō felt a sudden searing pain across his entire body, as if burning in a fire without any of the heat. A massive pressure quickly rose in his head, threatening to crush his skull and pop his eyeballs, and if he could have screamed in the space between worlds, he would have.
A moment later, he tumbled out of the side of a cavern wall. Years of training let him reach a hand back to the wall to reorient himself, and he activated his skywalkers to land silently in a low crouch inches from the ground. He heard a strange, high-pitched grinding sound, then turned as Kei's reverse summoning shoved her out of the cavern's stone barely a foot away from where he'd returned. She got her bearings faster than Hazō had and raised her hand to summon Pankurashun, but barely stopped herself at Hazō's gesture.
Somehow, they had come out at a different location than they had reverse summoned from. Worse, as Hazō looked around, he realized the team had never explored this area. They were in a completely new and unexplored stretch of cave.
Gone was the lush room with the giant crystal at its center. Instead, they had arrived in a narrow, nearly vertical stretch of cave that had a stream running down it like a waterfall. Below, Hazō could hear the waterfall emptying into a pond of some sort. There were no signs of chakra beasts or stone golems anywhere, but Hazō could hear the sound of creatures shifting somewhere in the caverns in response to the noise of their reverse summoning. His eyes widened as he made the connection. They had returned to the Human Path at the right location, but there had been stone in the way.
The cavern had changed.
Canain costs 266 CP to summon. He has agreed to be summoned only once, and sometime in the next couple hours. In exchange, he wants some trade goods from the Trade Network at some later date, once you have access to Leaf at large.
