"Sensei, may I speak to you?" Kei asked, forcing herself to stand straight. The worry was twisting in her gut, and it had brought with it self-contempt at her inability to manage her own feelings. Still, no matter how much it hurt to admit her weakness, it was important to do so before her infantile lack of self-discipline could damage the functioning of the team.
Mari-sensei looked up from her little orange book and smiled. "Grab a seat," she said, gesturing to the chair beside her as she dog-eared the page and closed the book. She saw the direction of Kei's gaze and waved the book casually. "I'm reading some of Jiraiya's work, trying to get a handle on him for the next time we meet. What can I do for you?"
"Is that not...pornography?" Kei asked.
"Yep," Mari-sensei said with no trace of shame. "The writing's a little uneven, but he's got a good balance of humor and smut. The visuals are well-designed to appeal to heterosexual men, and the characters and dialogue are going to draw in hetero women. The letters section in the back is a also a nice touch—it humanizes the work and the author, creates a sense of community with other readers, and makes the reader want to engage by writing their own letter in hopes of being recognized in public by the Mighty Author. It's quite well done, actually. Says a lot about his understanding of psychology. I just wish I knew if he'd done the art himself." She shrugged. "Anyway, what can I do for you?"
Kei swallowed nervously. "I...find myself unable to stop thinking about Kagome's discussion of the scorch squads," she said, grimacing. Her stomach was knotting tighter at admitting this to Mari-sensei than it had over the thought of tens of thousands of people being killed. What did that say about her?
Inoue sighed. "Yeah," she said. "That was...pretty awful. Are you all right?"
"I am..." Kei began, stopping when her throat closed off before allowing the admission to come forth. "I am concerned that I am emotionally compromised," she said, retreating to the stilted formality of mission reports.
Mari-sensei smiled sadly. "It's okay, Keiko," she said. "It's all right to be upset about something horrible. To be honest, I'm rattled by it myself. I've never heard anything about this, which leaves me wondering—was I really that far out of the loop?" She shook her head, looking at her hands thoughtfully. "I've done some fairly sensitive and classified missions, but was I never trusted? I was always a field ninja, and I never did a turn in Intelligence the way Kagome apparently did, so maybe it was just need-to-know and compartmentalized. Still, jōnin talk to each other. We're pretty good about keeping secrets, but little things leak, and I would have thought I'd have gotten some hint if people were doing things this bad. I like to think I'm good at reading people, so how could I have missed something like this?" She shrugged uncomfortably. "Then again, some of the Mist nin were stone-cold psychos and I always tried to stay far away from those types. It wouldn't surprise me if those were the ones doing it."
"It seems...unwise," Kei said tentatively. The fact that Mari-sensei was also bothered by the idea of scorch squads meant that knot in Kei's stomach was loosening very slightly. She no longer felt like vomiting, at least. "Ninja depend on civilians for food, and most clans insist on at least one exogamous marriage per generation, simply to prevent inbreeding."
"No argument from me," said Mari-sensei. "Still, it makes a cold sort of sense. Very low-risk way to slowly whittle down an enemy's ability to wage war." She shook her head. "I never bought into the idea that civilians are somehow inferior. I'm civilian-born, and my family weren't stupid, or immoral—well, except for my uncle. Anyway, point is that they're just people, not animals like those clan ninja like to claim." Her lip curled in disgust. "Stupid stuck-up bastards."
"Is it possible that Kagome was lying?" Kei asked hopefully.
Mari-sensei shook her head. "I doubt it very much," she said. "The man has zero capacity for deception, and I can't imagine what motive he would have. It's possible he was wrong, though." She sighed. "I'd like to believe that, anyway. Still...it would be an efficient way to fight, and Yagura is a cold-blooded bastard." An impish smile flashed across her face and she winked at Kei. "Not that I would ever have said that while we were still with Mist, of course. Still, what's he going to do—send ninja to hunt us down and kill us?"
The moment Harada saw the two travellers entering his inn, he said goodbye to his plans for a peaceful afternoon restocking the inventory.
The woman was unremarkable in every way, dressed in ordinary farmer's clothes with her hair tied up in a simple but practical ponytail. He wouldn't have given her a second glance were she not a customer. The man, on the other hand…
The pot belly Harada could accept (and even sympathise with). The hooked nose was unfortunate, but people couldn't help the way they were made. But the clothes… The man looked like he'd heard how human beings dressed from rumours and hearsay, and then tried to imitate them by robbing one of those travelling entertainer troupes.
Harada looked him over from top to bottom. A rice farmer's broad-brimmed hat. Shoulder straps leading to a tanner's apron. Mercenary boiled leathers beneath the straps. The whole ensemble partially covered by a short-cut jacket that Harada thought might have been fashionable in his grandfather's time. Oversized blacksmith's gloves. Kabuki actor clogs.
Harada's examination was interrupted as the man raised a hand imperiously and pointed his index finger right at Harada's nose.
"Lowly peasant, I command thee—"
"Ahem!" the woman cut in quickly. "What my lor- err, my mast- err, my friend means to say is that he would like to ask you a few questions about the nearby hot springs. Unfortunately," she gave the man a pointed look, "he is recovering from an illness of the throat, and so I will have to speak on his behalf."
Harada nodded carefully. "Of course. What would your… friend… like to know?"
"Well," the woman began, "to begin with, can you recommend us a good resort?"
"Of course, madam. My cousin works at the Imomura Hot Springs, and I can tell you with confidence that it is the very—"
"Absolutely not," the man interrupted in a high-pitched, whiny voice. "Lord Kamachi patronises the Imomura Hot Springs. I refuse to—"
"Are there any other hot springs you can suggest?" the woman asked loudly.
Harada quickly went down the list.
"Mizuchi Hot Springs?"
"Lord Ijiwara."
"Mishima Hot Springs?"
"Lord Kimura."
"Mizutani Hot Springs?"
After a quick glance at the man, the woman gave him a happy smile. "Please, tell us more."
Harada considered. "Mizutani has a reputation for safety and security. It's where important people go to rest and re… resomething. Recuperate, that's it!
"They have real ninja guarding the place," he added, "and fierce guard dogs to keep out thieves and peeping toms."
"My," the woman put a hand to her mouth. "How dangerous. Real ninja, you say?"
Harada nodded. "Oh, yes. They've got a full team of three Sannin there right now."
The man and the woman blinked simultaneously. "Sannin?"
"Oh, oops. I mean sennin."
The man and the woman looked at each other. "Three sennin?"
Harada frowned. "Does that not sound right?
"Oh, wait, genin. That's what they're called."
The woman gave him an unreadable look.
"That sounds terribly impressive," she said after a second's pause. "So, purely hypothetically, a place like that must be appropriate for travelling noblemen, then?"
"I'd say so," Harada agreed. "They get all sorts. Dignitaries, wealthy merchants, even the occasional injured ninja."
"Ninja guests?" the woman asked in surprise. "But isn't it terribly dangerous for injured ninja to be out in public? I thought they all went around killing each other all the time."
Harada couldn't help laughing. "You're really not from around here, are you? The Land of Hot Springs is an official de-somethinged zone, by treaty. Any ninja trying to ply their craft here is going to have Hidden Springs come down on them like a ton of bricks, and the other villages are supposed to help."
"So the ninja here don't go around getting in everyone's business the way they do back home?" the woman asked.
"They're pretty laid-back," Harada said. "They get the megalodon's share of the taxes here, and since Hot Springs gets so many wealthy visitors, far more than those wannabes in the Country of the Wave, not to mention having a wonderful climate for growing fruit, our ninja don't have to work as hard as, say, those butchers from Hidden Mist."
The woman raised her eyebrows.
"Everyone knows Mist wants to conquer Hot Springs and take away our freedom," Harada explained in a matter-of-fact voice (since he was stating the bleeding obvious). "If we weren't on such good terms with Hidden Leaf, who knows what might become of us, treaty or no treaty."
The woman, still listening attentively, reached back and tugged at her ponytail, adjusting the ribbon it was tied back with.
Suddenly, the man leaned back. "No, wait. Mizutani! That's where Lord Sagara goes for his old sports injury!"
The woman sighed. "Could you please tell us about some other hot springs, sir?"
-o-
"…and then we swapped roles over in the next town, and Kagome practised gathering information while I drew attention off him whenever he was having trouble," Inoue-sensei went on, luxuriating in a soft armchair after a day on her feet apparently pretending to be a variety of dubious individuals. It was long past dark, and by mutual agreement the team had decided not to say a word about their work until they'd been suitably filled with hot soup.
"'Oh, is it true that the hot springs are full of beautiful young women, frolicking about without a shred of clothing?'" Inoue-sensei asked in her best lecherous voice. Hazō and Keiko shivered involuntarily at the aura of naked lust that briefly surrounded her, while Noburi's face took on a dreamy expression for a second before he caught himself.
"What about you, kids?" she asked with a smug grin.
Hazō went first. "The Mizutani Hot Springs are surrounded by a wooden palisade fence about ten feet tall. At the south end, there is a large gate which sees regular traffic, with stables and an entry building. Behind the entry building is a large two-floor inn, probably with the actual hot spring baths further back. Outside, there are regular patrols – I counted four groups of three civilian guards armed with clubs and spears, and each group had a dog. There's also at least one ninja, on an irregular patrol schedule I couldn't work out."
"There are more than four groups of guards," Keiko added, "but only four are on duty at any given time. Two groups are replaced every hour. The dogs are Shiba dogs, and I speculate that the breed was chosen for its friendly appearance which appeals to visitors, combined with keen hunting instincts and its notorious ability to scream loudly when provoked.
"My second cousin had several Shiba dogs," she added thoughtfully. "They behaved in a reserved fashion towards me, but were never hostile the way other breeds have been in the past."
Noburi took over. "The inn does business with two main suppliers: Wakamoto and Sons, based out of Ijima, for food, and Imagawa, whose location I don't know yet, for sundries like linens and stuff. Wakamoto's delivers carts of fresh food at around 9 am every morning, and a bigger delivery every Saturday. Imagawa delivers every Sunday, plus various mid-week orders as necessary.
"Wakamoto's has done business with them for at least thirty years, but Imagawa got a contract only recently, after the previous supplier tried to cheat a ninja and it ended badly."
Everyone looked at Noburi. "Wow," Hazō said. "How did you manage to get all that?"
Noburi shrugged. "I followed a couple of servants out on errands, waited for the right opportunity, then talked to them while they picked things up in town. They also told me that the proprietress's daughter is pregnant, father unknown, there are two nobles fighting over the attention of a female ninja with a hurt leg, and there's a creepy guy with hollow eyes and a big curved sword staying on the second floor. Oh, and someone really important is coming soon, but they don't know who."
"Huh," Hazō said. "What about you, Akane?"
"I mostly ran interference," Akane said cheerfully. "Somebody had to keep the boys busy while Noburi chatted up the girls."
All eyes turned to Noburi again.
"It wasn't like that!" he insisted after a brief glance at Keiko and her sceptical expression. "I was only buying them lunch so they'd open up to me! Stop looking at me like that!"
"They grow up so fast," Inoue-sensei sighed, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye as Kagome looked on in bemusement.
-o-
You have earned 3 XP.
-o-
Noburi reports that walls are not relevant to Vampiric Dew's sensory powers.
Research on the Macerator is complete, with only a couple of close brushes with Hazō's mortality.
What next?
Voting closes on Saturday the 23rd, 9 am New York Time. Note the changed time.
Last edited:
Interlude: Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough
"Hazou-sensei, would you come spar with me?" Akane said. "I have been working on some new ideas and I feel that they are most youthful."
"Sure," Hazou said, setting aside the kunai he'd been sharpening and rising smoothly to his feet.
The two of them walked a few yards away from the camp and squared off. "Ready, fight!" Hazou said, leaping forward. He stuck with standard Academy style taijutsu, supplemented by what Inoue-sensei had taught them all. This spar was about letting Akane test out her new techniques against the kind of opponent she was likely to meet. His deception-based personal style (which he called Roki out loud but privately thought of as Teeth of the Trickster God—a name he would never ever admit to) would defeat the purpose.
She had improved over the months that they'd been training together. She was now his equal, and he was working hard to keep up. He dodged what he could, slipped most of the blows, and let one punch hit his shoulder in what seemed like a good exchange for kicking her in the—
He flew backwards and hit the ground hard, rolling up to his feet and holding up a hand to stop the spar while he struggled to breathe.
"What in the hells was that?" he asked, once his lungs were cooperating again.
Akane beamed. "Did you like it? I was thinking how best to use the training jutsu that Pankurashun-sensei taught me, and I came up with this. I call it the Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough. What do you think?"
Hazou probed his shoulder carefully. Yes, it was working, but it felt like he'd been kicked by a mule. Hopefully Noburi could fix it for him, because otherwise he was going to be hard-pressed to use it for a couple of days.
"Yeah, I like it," he said grudgingly. "Now, round two!"
With no further warning he leaped forward, his body dropping smoothly into the patterns of Teeth of the Trickster God. Let's see how her Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough enjoyed fighting a God!
Behold, your apprentice has created a new taijutsu style based around the gifts of the mighty Pangolin Clan! (Sadly, it is not teachable to anyone who lacks the jutsu.)
Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough
If Akane hits in combat (i.e. if her Taijutsu beats the opponent's combat skill) then she gets to roll Strength d100 (capped at skill level) and add 1/2 of the result to her taijutsu roll before determining success level.
If Akane is hit in combat (i.e. if her opponent's combat skill beats her Taijutsu) then she gets to roll Stamina d100 (capped at skill level) and subtract 1/2 of the result from her opponent's roll before determining success level. If she reduces it to 0 she takes no damage, although her henge and/or protective pangolin jutsu will still be disrupted.
In both cases, the number of dice she rolls is capped by her YFotMBTiRSaT level.
As with all new rules, these are subject to change if they turn out to be massively broken.
"I said no, I am not going to focus my training efforts on stealth," she said, vibrating in place as she pushed chakra through her muscles for no purpose other than to use it up. Empty your coils, then let them refill; the nausea and muscle aches made the training miserable, but it was the only way to stretch your coils enough to increase capacity quickly.
"Ohkaayy," Hazō said. "Why not? We're about to go on a stealth-focused mission."
"Our opponents on this mission are civilians and genin," she said. "I am skilled enough at stealth for that. Going forward, I need more chakra for summoning. I was only able to summon Pankurashun because I was able to use Noburi's chakra water to overcharge my capacity. I cannot rely on that in an emergency and it has harmful long-term effects if used regularly. Right now I have a mere two contracts; Pandā is a non-combatant and Pankurashun is not willing to be summoned. I need to gain more contracts and I need to have the capacity to summon them. The summoning contract is my primary contribution to this team—"
"No it isn't!" Hazō said. "Why would you think that? Keiko, you're an incredible fighter and a brilliant tactician. Even before you got the contract you were an amazing asset to this team."
"Thank you for the support," Keiko said politely. "If you'll excuse me, I need to focus."
o-o-o-o
"Here," Kagome said, his tone darkly satisfied. "This will work. Keep an eye out." He knelt down to unseal a bundle of poles and started digging two of them into the ground so that they just barely poked up through the clump of bushes he and his partner knelt behind. Akane nodded and stretched up tall so she could see in all directions. She carefully said nothing; this was not the best time to talk to Kagome.
To say that the sealmaster was not thrilled about being here would be an understatement. He was onboard with the "conquer the world and turn the stinking stinkers into a lovely red mist against the wall before blowing up the wall and then doing a victory dance on the rubble" plan, but it didn't mean he enjoyed leaving their safe and comfortable lair in the woods. For the first time in years he'd actually been enjoying doing seal research—indeed, he'd managed to remember the thing that had been his single pleasure through most of his adult life. The fact that he needed to abandon that idyllic life in order to conquer the world so he could do his victory dance on the aforementioned bloody-mist-soaked wall had him feeling generally grumpy and twitchy.
Should the team need to come out of the resort hot, whoever was pursuing them was going to discover just how grumpy Kagome was feeling.
o-o-o-o
"Not bad," Mari said, studying Akane's expression. "Relax your forehead a little more. Yes, like that. Let's try it again. Remember, correct yourself on a minor detail."
"Hello," Akane said, smiling brightly and bowing to her sensei. "My name is Arakida Kanna. My father and I are bakers and we just arrived from Wave on Thursday—well, Wednesday night—and we're looking for new customers. Would you be interested in a regular delivery contract?"
"Not bad," Mari said, her tone indicating that 'not bad' was the accurate phrase. "Still needs some work, though. Okay, let's practice microexpressions again. What did I just show?"
"Happiness, sensei," Akane said immediately. "The corners of your eyes crinkled and your cheeks were raised."
"Good!" Mari said, clapping the genin on the shoulder. "Excellent. We'll make a spy out of you yet." She suddenly laughed. "And you, young lady, just showed me a microexpression of unhappiness. Don't worry, I promise I'll be gentle."
o-o-o-o
"Ahhh," Hazō said, leaning back in the hot water with unfeigned satisfaction. Say what you would about the safety and relative comfort of their hidden forest cave, relaxing in a hot mineral spring was amazing. As was having a proper toilet nearby instead of a latrine two miles away.
"Not bad, eh?" said one of his fellow bathers, a red-faced and fleshy man in his fifties with a bald spot that was still painfully obvious no matter how much hair he swirled around it. He lazily waved one hand in the air to indicate the entire facility. "I should have come here ages ago. Much better than that Mizuchi place." He snorted. "Do you know, they don't even have guards there? Random commoners were wandering in all the time. I had to share a bath with a dockworker. Ugh."
Hazō, Deception:
12d100: 757You just used up all the luck on your next ten rolls. I'll get you next time, my pretty!
Lord Kuwabara:
?d100: 472 Way to bomb your roll, dude.
Hazō made a sympathetic noise. "Ugh. How horrible—you're right, this is much better." He offered a casual nod that was the relaxing-in-a-hot-spring equivalent of a bow. "I'm Lord Oisha Dai, pleasure to meet you." He laughed self-deprecatingly. "And before you ask, yes, just a hill daimyo. Tiny little place on the border of Earth, but it's been in the family twenty generations, so that's something."
The other man smiled and nodded. "Lord Kuwabara Seiji. No shame in being born to a small holding, Dai," he said magnanimously. "Pity this isn't the good old days, right? Used to be you could train up a group of samurai, hire some ninja for backup, and claim all the land you liked." He took a pull from his sake cup and shook his head sadly. "Glorious times, those. A man could really be a man back then." He tossed back the rest of his sake and refilled it from the bottle on the ledge beside him before waving the bottle in Hazō's general direction. The genin took it with a grateful smile, poured some into the cup that the man handed him, and took a polite sip.
"You ever fight?" Kuwabara asked slyly. "Nothing gets the blood going faster. Sometimes I think about starting a mercenary company, eh? Could be great fun, riding around having adventures. Kill the odd chakra beast here, carve up a few bandits. If things heat up any more between Fire and Mist there might even be work there, securing borders and what not. Keep the peasants in line while the ninja are fighting. Great fun!"
Hazō, Deception (conceal the fact that you wants to punch the head right off this bragging twit who wouldn't even know which end of a kunai to hold and certainly has never seen anyone die yet still feels the need to yammer on about the 'glory' of killing people as though his opinion on the subject were worth a single drop of squirrel pee):
12d100 - 3d100 (Thousand Yard Stare)
15,61,89,44,89,31,53,83,97 => 562
Lord Kuwabara, Deception (notice that Hazō wants to punch your head off for being a bragging twit whose opinion isn't worth a drop of squirrel pee):
?d100=> 641
Images blinked through Hazō's mind in a series of lightning flashes: the town near Hidden Swamp with the fierce women guards and the fisherfolk and weavers from the lake town in Iron—people carving a life from a harsh world through sheer grit. The merchants in Yuni, running caravans that were the lifesblood of a hundred tiny villages. The civilians in the Liberator's camp, their spirits soaring at the simple opportunity to build lives for themselves.
Hazō nodded politely to Kuwabara and forced his mouth into the closest approximation of a smile he could manage.
Kuwabara took one look at Hazō and went sheet white. He fumbled his cup back onto the ledge, not even noticing that he'd knocked it over in his haste to scramble out.
"Just remembered," he babbled, wrapped his robe around him with shaking fingers. "Have a massage I need to get to. Terribly sorry, lovely to meet you. Enjoy your soak. Yes. Right. Goodbye!" He rushed away.
Hazō watched him go with a feeling of resignation. He wasn't sure if Inoue-sensei would laugh at him or scold him about this, but she was definitely going to give him a furious hair-ruffling.
Mari, Taijutsu (Inoue Taijutsu-Style: Hair Ruffle no Jutsu!):
?d100: 886Geez, Mari, the dice have a permanent hate on for you. Why do you always roll low??
He'd known exactly what was coming, he knew when it was going to happen, and he'd planned carefully. He was across the table from Inoue and he actually started dodging before he even spoke the words. Somehow, she still got him, although only barely. He sighed and sat back down, combing his hair and swearing to himself that some day, some day, she would miss.
"So, Hazō pooched it in the baths," Inoue said. "How about the rest of you. What did you get?"
Noburi and Keiko exchanged looks. "Go ahead," Noburi said. "You were the one who found it."
"We found a significant point of attack," Keiko said. "Poisoning or drugging the food supplies for the dogs would be straightforward. Doing the same for human supplies is feasible, but it would be difficult to make it useful.
"Wakamoto, the company that provides the food for the resort, supplies the dog food as well. The dogs are fed a mash of meat, lard, and vegetables. Wakamoto makes up a fresh batch every week and delivers it the following day. He uses a vat with an automatic stirring apparatus powered by a water wheel; the vat is frequently unattended and if drugs or poison were dropped in they would be thoroughly mixed into the mash without anyone noticing. The next batch will be made tomorrow and shipped in the following morning."
"Nice one," Inoue said. "Really nice. Getting the dogs out of the way would make things a lot easier. You mentioned that drugging the humans would be harder. Why is that?"
"Wakamoto's cold room is in the back of his shop, and his shop is his living quarters," Noburi said. "Because they live there they don't actively guard the place. It wouldn't be too much trouble for us to get in at night, but civilians aren't going to pull it off. We could put whatever we want in the food, but there's no way to predict who would get what or when. Once the food gets to the resort it's kept in the icehouse—dog food and human food both. The resort's icehouse is actually pretty well guarded; they've had trouble with staff pilfering the tasty stuff in the past. There's always two guards, and the patrols check in on an irregular schedule but at least once every two hours. Also, they've got the strictest inventory system I've ever seen outside of the Academy. The manager, Sekine Shou, is a fussy little guy." (A hint of approval flickered across Keiko's face.)
"Okay," Inoue said. "That gives us a way to clear out the dogs, which is good. I managed to get up close to the owner's daughter and have some girl talk. Her name is Honami, she's twenty-three, doesn't get out much these days. She's having a tough pregnancy—lots of pain and swelling, nausea, the works. They've had herbalists and even a med-nin in; it helps, but not much. Fortunately the baby is due in six weeks so it's almost over."
Inoue leaned back, smiling. "Bright girl," she said. "Reads, writes, and can do basic math. She's actually pretty well read, all things considered. She's got the entire staff wrapped around her little finger, and was cadging lessons from them since about a minute after she learned to make puppy-dog eyes. Her dad's furious about it—thinks that it's inappropriate for a girl to be educated. There's a lot of resentment there, actually. Her father's been trying to marry her off for years, and I have a feeling she got pregnant just to keep that from happening. Still, Dad's hung the moon about having a grandson, so he's willing to forgive his daughter 'for being a strumpet.'"
"What if the child is female?" Keiko asked.
"That could be bad," Inoue said. "He's rich, powerful in a merchant sort of way and used to getting what he wants. Doesn't deal well with rejection, apparently, and what he wants is a grandson. He wanted a grandson from wedlock, but I think he'll take what he can get. If it's a girl, I'm not sure what he'll do. Give it to the orphanage would be my guess."
"What about the ninja?" Kagome asked. "There was supposed to be a ninja living there. And those twerps on the walls, of course." He sniffed dismissively.
"Ah, yes," Inoue said. "Royama Mariko. Lovely woman. She's from Earth, got hurt in a fierce battle with a chakra dragon that attacked Iwagakure."
Hazō's eyebrows shot up. "Really?"
"No," Inoue said, laughing. "She was embarrassed to admit it, but I eventually weaseled it out of her: she's a jonin and her baby brother recently got promoted to chunin. They were having the celebration here, she got drunk at the party, and she fell off a table while sword-dancing. Her brother and his friends had to report back to Iwa for duty, but she's on medical leave while her leg heals."
"Wait, what?" Noburi asked. "She fell off a table?"
"I told you she was embarrassed about it," Inoue said, grinning. "The funny part is that I think she really did—she's a taijutsu type, and if she were going to self-injure just so she could skive off then she wouldn't have chosen something that would reduce her mobility. Also, the woman can't lie for beans." She winked at Akane. "I don't suppose you have any family in Iwa, do you kid?"
Akane blushed furiously but laughed.
"Anyway, she's healing up nicely," Inoue continued. "I think she's actually ready for duty now but she's milking it for all the time she can get. I sure would."
She sighed. "So. We've got all this wonderful intel. Anyone notice the one piece of information we have not managed to get?"
"Where our target is?" Noburi asked. "I haven't seen a single person with red and green on them."
"And the prize goes to the water master," Inoue said. "Gotta say, I hate missions like this. I don't mind ones that take a few months to set up, but I don't like it when the location of the objective isn't known. Too many ways for things to go wrong when you might not even be operating in the right area."
No one had anything to say to that.
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Inoue glanced at the water clock on the mantel. "Come on, it's getting late," she said. "Everyone hit the sack, I want to be out early tomorrow. According to Honami that big important guest is supposed to be arriving in the morning. His name is Joutano, he's some lord she's never heard of, and he demanded their very best suite for himself and his friends."
o-o-o-o
The next day Inoue and Hazō were at the resort—she was sunbathing on a deck lounger, lying on her belly with her top down and her head shaded by a wide straw hat as she sipped on a cold drink and read, in a very lazy fashion, through a poorly-written romance novel that she'd borrowed from the resort's library. He was a few dozen yards away, participating in an abstract painting class alongside a group of civilians who were mostly thirty years older than Hazō's henged twenty-something appearance.
All activities screeched to a halt at the arrival of Lord Joutaro and entourage.
"Who do I have to bribe to get some service here?!" the barrel-chested giant bellowed, the very moment that his foot touched the ground inside the resort's fence. "HO! Manager! Get some people out here to take our bags!" He strode towards the reception house, the ponytail of long white hair bobbing behind him serving only to emphasize the oversized tachi he wore across his back, angled for a left-hand draw.
Joutaro had taken hardly two steps when a pack of bellhops descended on the tired-looking woman and the clearly embarrassed teenage boy that were trailing along in his wake. They snatched the bags out of the hands of both woman and boy and hustled off with a hasty volley of bows, asking if the most honored guests would please deign to follow them to this humble resort's best quarters which they dearly hoped would be adequate for the honored and mighty guests.
Inoue groaned and pulled the hat all the way down over her head. Of course Joutaro was wearing the red-and-green scarf. Of course.
XP AWARD: 16
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, July 27, 2016, at 12pm London time.
A few other things:
Hazō tried to talk to the scary guy with the sword. That worthy stared at him without saying a word, stroking his sword lovingly the whole time. Hazō couldn't find a good reason why his civilian persona would have pursued contact with the guy so he left him alone after that.
You set up a variety of passwords, duress passwords, variations on same, etc. Keiko was involved, so assume it was pretty thorough. Hopefully everyone will remember all the variations.
Kagome was unwilling to talk about his seal ideas until you are in a completely secure area (i.e., way to hell and gone out in the wilderness), and shushed you every time you even started to say the word 'seal'.
"Greetings, Miss Honami," Inoue-sensei began in her best wheedling voice. "This", she indicated Hazō in his ridiculously over-the-top Transformation Technique robes, "is High Priestess Fūka, seventeenth generation oracle of the Kannagi line. The Kannagi specialise in the futures of young lovers, newlyweds and pregnant women, and so after we heard of your condition High Priestess Fūka decided to come straight here in order to offer her fortune-telling services to you."
Hazō tried to give Inoue-sensei a subtle death glare for the name she'd given him, but unfortunately, his elaborate headdress narrowed his line of sight too much to make eye contact.
"Verily, my child," he instead intoned in his best mystical voice, "if thou dost seek the best future for the life within thee, then for but a modest fee I shall consult the wisdom of the spirits on thy behalf."
Honami, a tall, very pregnant girl with wavy shoulder-length blonde hair and a daisy-pattern kimono, studied them for a second, then nodded and closed the door of her room behind them.
"Please be seated, Lady Priestess," she gestured to one of the room's two chairs. "I don't normally talk to priests and the like, but I feel you should try anything once."
"Thou hast my gratitude," Hazō said. "Now, before I call upon the spirits, I must ask thee some questions about thy life here at the Mizutani Hot Springs, the better to focus on thy mystical energies."
"As long as you understand there are some things I'd rather keep private," Honami said. "I've just brewed some tea. Would you like a cup?"
"'twould please me greatly," Hazō replied. One of Inoue-sensei's teachings was that placing oneself in a guest-host relationship with the target established a feeling of trust, and of familiar circumstances which caused people to naturally relax.
Honami reached over with the kettle. But as the spout went over the cup, her hand slipped, splashing the hot liquid over Hazō's hand. Hazō felt a surge of pain – followed by horror as his disguise disappeared.
Honami backed away, her eyes wide but oddly unsurprised.
Fast as lightning, Hazō crossed the room, and clapped his hand across her mouth at the very last moment.
"We're not here to hurt you," he hissed. "We just want to talk."
In response, she bit his hand. The same hand.
The extra dose of pain was too much, and he involuntarily let go. Honami made a break for the door, her mouth opening once again.
Just as she placed her hand on the handle, she froze, her eyes glazing over and her mouth falling closed. Hazō looked over to see Inoue-sensei's hands together, forming an unfamiliar seal.
As per their drills, Hazō got out some rope and cloth, and securely tied and gagged Honami, taking care to avoid putting pressure on her abdomen.
He turned to Inoue-sensei. "I don't suppose you can…?"
Inoue-sensei released the genjutsu and shook her head sadly. "I told you, kiddo. I can't. Not anymore.
"I'm going to stand watch outside. You do the talking."
As Inoue-sensei left the room, Hazō came up to Honami. With his disguise now broken, he faced her as his ninja-geared thirteen-year-old self.
"Miss Honami, I promise we're just here to talk."
Honami stared at him. He could see tears beginning to form in the corners of her eyes.
"Now, if I take off that gag, will you promise to hear me out without trying to raise an alarm?"
After a couple of seconds, Honami finally gave a reluctant nod.
As soon as Hazō removed the gag, she burst out in tears. "Please, please don't hurt the baby. I swear I'll do anything you say. She's no threat to you, and she's only a half-blood and she probably won't inherit Kiyoshi's bloodline anyway. I'll do anything, just don't take her away from me!"
"Please, Miss Honami," Hazō said as gently as he could. "We're not here about the baby. We don't even know who Kiyoshi is."
Honami sniffed, the tears slowly stopping. "You… mean that? You're not from his clan?"
Hazō shook his head.
"And you're not a Hot Springs ninja here to take my baby?"
Hazō shook his head again. "We're ninja from far away who have been assigned on a mission here. If you give us a chance, I'm sure we can find some way to help each other."
Honami visibly calmed down as she thought about this. "You could be lying to me. They say ninja always think ten steps ahead. Maybe you're just trying to manipulate me into not resisting while you do… whatever it is you want to do to me. Maybe that lady isn't really outside, and I'm still in that illusion spell she cast on me, and you're trying to twist my mind so I do what you want. Maybe you're just buying time for some kind of ninja magic or secret drug to take effect so I'll be completely in your power."
That took Hazō by surprise. Honami didn't look like the perceptive type, but apparently appearances really could be deceiving, even if you weren't a ninja. Still, he didn't have a good answer to that observation. Certainly, Inoue-sensei would have been happy to do any and all of those things if the objective demanded it, and had in fact suggested something much along the same lines. It was Hazō's insistence on the potential for uncoerced long-term cooperation that had them negotiating the way they were.
As such, it wasn't going to be easy for Hazō to allay her suspicions. Any line of argument could be perceived as manipulation, and if Honami decided to treat them as enemies, they'd be in the disastrous position of having to either silence her (which would mean killing an innocent and would probably wreck the mission when her disappearance drew attention) or use tools such as blackmail which had a risk of failure and would still cost them a potential ally.
A sudden insight gave him pause. Maybe… maybe this was a time for a leap of faith.
"Miss Honami," he said. "There's nothing I can do to prove our good intentions to you right now. There's no trust between us. But if you don't trust me, at least trust yourself. What does your intuition say about us? Are we friend or foe?"
Honami looked him in the eyes. There was something deep behind her gaze, something that momentarily made his breath catch.
After what felt like a lifetime, she drew herself up authoritatively (at least as authoritatively as she could while still tied up).
"I have a duty to the people at Mizutani," she said in a firm voice that almost didn't waver. "You must swear to me that you won't hurt anybody I'm responsible for – not the staff here, and not the customers who rely on us to protect them. Swear it on your mother's life."
Hazō went still. His mother's life? He didn't even know if she was still alive. But if she was… could he do something like this? Did he have the right to make an oath that affected her future? Hazō was agnostic at best when it came to religion, and there were a lot of superstitions you didn't subscribe to when you had the power to reshape the material world with your mind alone. But some things were sacred, even to ninja, even in Hidden Mist, and few more so than family bonds. A ninja who had no one to fight for was nothing more than a killer.
He chose his words very carefully. "I swear on my mother's life that my team and I did not come here to injure or kill anyone, and that we do not intend to do so except in self-defence and avoiding collateral damage as much as possible."
Honami frowned, visibly running the sentence back and forth through her head. "And you don't expect those intentions to change in the future. And all of this goes for torturing people as well, mentally or physically."
Hazō inwardly winced. Somehow, he felt the balance of the negotiation shifting away from him, even though he was still a ninja and Honami was still a tied-up civilian. But she had him and she knew it – once he had committed to letting her go, she had the advantage, because all she had to do to ruin the mission was to expose his presence.
"I also swear that we did not come here to torture anyone mentally or physically, and that I don't expect those intentions to change in the future."
At least she hadn't asked him to directly swear that he wasn't going to hurt anyone. Hazō suspected that she'd taken care to judge how far she could push him, given that most ninja missions involved some form of harm to the target, and trying to force an oath that directly prevented him from accomplishing his mission would not end well for her here and now.
"And you won't damage the inn itself…" Honami said, then hesitated.
"Except in self-defence and then as little as possible," she conceded. "As before."
"And I swear that we do not intend to damage the inn itself, except in self-defence and then as little as possible, and that I don't expect those intentions to change in the future."
Honami slumped in relief, her shoulders sagging as she fell back against the wall. "You… you can untie me now."
Hazō did, but made sure to stay between her and the door.
"So what do you want from me?" she asked eventually. "You put on that ridiculous getup for a reason, didn't you?"
"I think we can help each other," Hazō said, relieved that the conversation was getting back onto a familiar track. "You said that you think someone is after your baby, didn't you?"
Honami's hands unconsciously went to her stomach. "Kiyoshi was a Hot Springs ninja who came to our resort about seven months ago. We fell in love straight away. But he left the day after we… you know…" she blushed, "and I haven't heard from him since. I'm afraid that his clan found out about me, and now they're keeping him prisoner – or worse. I know that ninja would never let a normal person have a baby with one of their special bloodline powers. Any day now, they'll come to take her away from me. Or maybe they'll just kill us both. I know an ordinary life like mine doesn't mean anything to a ninja."
Hazō flinched.
Then his mind honed in on an important statement. "You said your baby would have a special bloodline power?"
Honami nodded. "When we first met, Kiyoshi was boasting about what a powerful ninja he was, and how he came from a powerful clan and had a… a limited bloodline. It was a little over the top, but I thought there was something charming about how he was trying so hard. I don't know what the bloodline was, though, and he never actually told me the name of his clan.
"I'm sure it was just to protect me," she said with just a little too much force, "until he came back from his journey and married me."
"And you need someone to protect you in case people from his clan turn up," Hazō concluded.
"Me and my child."
In the short term – while they were at the resort – Hazō didn't think it would be a problem, at least as long as everything went smoothly and they didn't get identified and forced to exfiltrate in a hurry. Bodyguard duty was a staple of ninja work. But what would happen afterwards, when they had to leave? They couldn't stick around forever, even if they decided to make the resort a base of operations.
Then an idea struck him.
"This is one of the most popular resorts in the Country of Hot Springs, isn't it?"
Honami gave a proud smile. "That's right. This year, we've had more customers even than Imomura. We're making so much money that Mother is talking about hiring a second genin team."
Her face fell. "Of course, it's not like the first one was able to keep you out. All that wealth, and I still can't feel safe."
To his surprise, Hazō understood. As a missing-nin, it had been such a long time since he'd felt truly safe, even with people he could trust watching his back.
"So," he returned to the point, "you must be paying a lot of taxes to the Village Hidden in the Hot Springs."
Honami nodded.
"In other words, your resort is responsible for a significant proportion of their income."
Honami nodded again, her smile a thing of both satisfaction and bitterness.
"And if you happened to be the proprietress of Mizutani Hot Springs," Hazō concluded triumphantly, "then the ninja wouldn't be able to touch you without cutting their own throat."
Honami's eyes glittered with new possibilities. "You know, I'd never thought of that before. It would get Father off my back too. Owning a hot spring is as high as a low-born person can rise in this country, and then nobody short of a noble or a ninja can tell you what to do."
She grinned as she followed the line of thought. "I heard that a few years ago the yakuza tried to move in on Izumo, and they had two daimyo's guard squads and three angry ninja knocking on their front door the very next day. Nobody wants anything to happen to the person who's been taking care of them during their holidays."
"That's right," Hazō said. "Now, how would you feel about a team of ninja helping you ensure a smooth and early succession – once we're done with our current mission?"
"Just tell me what you need," Honami purred.
-o-
You have received 15 XP.
You have received an additional 1 XP for omake excellence.
-o-
Noburi's research report:
Noburi can't sense chakra through mist, and is kind of confused that Hazō would think that, especially since they haven't been in any mist for a while. He admits that this is an advanced Wakahisa technique, but not one he knows or has so far reverse-engineered.
He has practised sensing chakra through water a lot over the past months. He can identify chakra sources within long range (5 x Vampiric Dew level in metres) in terms of distance, direction and rough size. He can drain them within medium range (Vampiric Dew level in metres), and do so selectively.
While draining someone, he can now sense their chakra pool in enough detail to estimate their current size relative to ones he's sensed before ("a bit bigger than Hazō's", for example). He is inordinately proud of this achievement. If he can touch someone and concentrate for a second or two while in water (i.e. more than a brief tap during combat), he can also identify one or more elements that the target uses frequently (the more frequently, the less time needed to identify it).
In addition, he has learned to drain water-walking ninja, their limited area of contact with water made up for by the fact that they are emitting chakra directly into it.
Noburi made sure that Keiko was in hearing range when he explained all this. Her expression made it impossible to tell whether she was impressed.
-o-
What will you do now?
Voting closes on Saturday the 30th, 9 am New York Time. Note the changed time.
"So, how can we help you, Miss Honami?" Hazou asked politely, pouring the tea and setting a cup in Honami's hands.
He was sitting seiza with the pregnant girl in her rooms. Inoue-sensei knelt beside him, henged as a vaguely attractive girl in her mid-teens with brown hair dyed streaky green. So far she'd been content to have him do the talking; Hazou found the implications of that a little disturbing.
"I don't know," Honami said, blowing on the tea to cool it. The nausea and weakness of her pregnancy made her hands tremble, making tiny rings dance across the surface of the tea, although she did her best to control it. "I don't know what ninja can do...civilians hear all sorts of rumors, but we never know if they're true. Can you really outrun the wind and dance on the clouds? Or snap your fingers and conjure gods and demons?"
Hazou glanced at Inoue-sensei, but got only an eye-smile in return. She really wasn't going to help.
"There's a lot of variation in what ninja can do," Hazou said carefully. "For obvious reasons I'd rather not reveal exactly what my group is capable of, but I suspect there's a lot we could do for you. As to the particular examples you gave...no. As far as I'm aware, no one can do those things. Ninja can travel very fast, but we can't outrun the wind." He smiled. "Well, except on a very calm day. Dancing on clouds is right out, though."
"Hm," Honami said thoughtfully. "Is it true that you have scrolls that can make things vanish and then reappear?"
"More or less," Hazou said. "You can use a scroll to put something into storage outside the world. It doesn't age while it's there so it's a good way to transport food and other perishables. There's limits on the weight and volume, though. And it doesn't handle fragile things very well." He paused, thinking, then decided to go for it. "As it happens, my group has quite a few storage scrolls."
"That could be very valuable," Honami said. "There's a lot of resorts around here, and we're all competing for customers. Every time someone comes up with a new innovation we all have to have it or we lose business. We're all constantly reaching out to merchants, asking them to bring in exotic spices and goods from far away so that we can differentiate ourselves. Those things are really expensive, though, and the caravans travel slowly. It takes months or years to get anything really special, and it's generally too expensive to get much of it. If you can bring lots of something and do it quickly we could outcompete all the other resorts."
"What did you have in mind?" Hazou asked, sipping his tea.
"Ice," Honami said.
Hazou raised an eyebrow. "Ice? I'd been expecting spices, chocolate, something like that."
Honami shook her head. "We all have standing orders for those things, and they aren't terribly visible, so they only give a marginal advantage. Ice, on the other hand—" She cocked her head, frowning, as a thought hit her. "Um...I'm sorry if this is rude, but I don't know where you're from or how much experience you would have had with this." She bowed deeply. "Please excuse me if this seems obvious, but how familiar are you with ice houses here in Hot Springs?"
Hazou shrugged. "I assume it's like anywhere else, right? You collect ice in the winter, put a lot of it in the ice house and cover it in sawdust or dirt so that it doesn't melt, and then you can use it to keep food cold through the summer."
She nodded. "Yes, exactly. But there's no mountains in Hot Springs to get the ice from, and the volcanic activity that generates the springs keeps our country warmer than most of the surrounding areas. There's only so many lakes that actually freeze in the winter, so there's only so much ice to be had. When we have a warm winter there sometimes isn't enough ice to go around. Many of the ice cutters actually run commercial ice houses."
Hazou nodded thoughtfully. "Ice is valuable, and it's not something that can be transported long distances by civilians. You pretty much have to get it locally, but we could bring it in year-round, and that would significantly reduce your operating expenses. Let you shift money to other things."
"More than that," Honami said. "In years when ice is really cheap, the richest resorts will buy extra. We'll hire a sculptor to carve the ice into flowers, animals, or other beautiful decorations, and put them out by the gates. Very eye-catching and a sign of tremendous wealth. It always attracts a lot of new business. We also shave it, add crushed fruit and a little alcohol, and serve it as a treat. Guests will pay to the skies for those things. In the hottest months we charge the moon and the stars for a glass of ice water. We've only been able to spare the ice two years in the last ten, but we made a lot more in those years than average—eighty-seven percent and one hundred and thirteen percent more, respectively."
Hazou whistled. "That is a lot," he said. "The Land of Frost isn't too far away, though. Don't they have ice all the time? Can't you hire Hot Springs ninja to go there and bring it back?"
She shrugged. "In theory," she said. "But missions that require going outside the country are incredibly expensive. It ends up not being worth it."
"Hm," Hazou said, nodding. "Whereas, as m—ninja from outside the country, we aren't limited that way. Interesting." He thought about it some more, then nodded. "Yes, we could do that. Crossing borders is risky, though. What could you give us in exchange?"
"We're a second-tier resort, but we're at the top of that tier," she said. "We already get mid-level nobles, rich merchants, scribes, ninja—all sorts of important and influential people. If we had a regular ice contract we could become first-tier within a year. Then we'd be getting daimyos and people at that level." She smiled. "People come here to relax. Relaxed people talk a lot, and are more open to deals. Guess what you hear from some noble or merchant as he's lying back in the lounge with a hostess cuddled up to him, a masseuse working on his feet, and three or four peach brandy icies inside him?"
"I don't know," Hazou said. "What do you hear?"
She ticked points off on her fingers. "In the last three weeks I've learned that one particular noble is sleeping with another's wife, that the rice fields in the north have been devastated by chakra mites, and that a caravan loaded with chocolate was going to be arriving the following week. Usually a caravan has to come in, take rooms, rent a stall in the market, get the word out that they've arrived, sell their product in order to generate the money they need to resupply, then haggle for the goods that they'll take on the next leg of their trip. All that time they're staying in inns and buying food here, where the prices are inflated by all the local resorts."
She gave a predatory smile. "I convinced one of the factors to go out and meet the caravan two days from town. He found out what they wanted for their next leg and what prices they would accept, then he and his guards ran back to town. By the time the caravan's slow-moving wagons arrived our people were waiting at the gate with everything they needed and swapped it for their entire supply of chocolate. It gave them a much better net profit and meant that until the next chocolate caravan comes in, we have chocolate and our competitors don't."
Hazou looked at Inoue-sensei, impressed. She gave him a miniscule nod as though to say 'keep going'.
"How did your father feel about that?" Hazou asked.
Honami's smile transformed into tight-lipped frustration. "He wouldn't have thought of it," she said angrily. "Of course, I can't just suggest things to him. It's not appropriate for a woman to engage in business, you know. I always need to trick him into thinking it's his idea."
"Mm-hm," Hazou said. "Interesting. Would it be useful to you if your father weren't...in the picture anymore?"
"What are you saying?" Honami asked suspiciously. "That you're going to kill him?"
Hazou shrugged. "I'm just exploring options," he said. "He sounds like he's making your life pretty hard. I was wondering if there was some way we could help."
She laughed bitterly. "Not unless you can give him a new personality," she said. "And no, I don't want you to kill him. As angry as he makes me, he's a good father."
"Oh?" Inoue-sensei asked, one eyebrow going up. "How so?"
Suddenly Honami seemed much less confident "Well..." she said. "He never beats me."
Inoue-sensei snorted. "By that definition, I'm a good father," she said. "Try again. What makes him a good father?"
"He takes care of me," she said. "I've never wanted for anything."
"Mm-hm," Inoue-sensei said doubtfully.
"I haven't!" Honami said.
"Okay," Inoue-sensei said, raising her hands placatingly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you angry. That was rude of me, and I apologize. I'll shut up now." She gave an embarrassed shrug and mimed pinching her mouth closed.
"You know," Hazou said carefully, "we might be able to help you, actually. We can't literally give him a new personality, but there are some medicines that would help him relax, make him happier. If he were happier he'd probably be willing to be more reasonable with you. You're clearly good for the resort, he should be letting you help."
Honami opened her mouth to object, then paused. "What kind of medicine?" she asked uncertaintly.
Hazou shrugged. "I'm not a doctor myself, but I know one," he said. "We could talk to her about what a good option would be. Something non-harmful, that you could give him discreetly—maybe in a glass of sake at dinner?"
"That...doesn't sound right," Honami said. "I shouldn't be drugging my father."
"No, no, not drugs," Hazou said. "Nothing harmful. Just something to help him relax and enjoy his life more. He sounds like an insecure man, someone who's nervous and angry a lot. I don't know a lot about medicine, but I do know that stress causes people to make worse decisions, and even reduces lifespan. You'd be doing him a tremendous favor by helping him with his problem."
"He is angry an awful lot," Honami said. "But...I shouldn't."
Hazou glanced at Inoue-sensei and got a micrometric headshake.
He looked back at Honami and gave a perfectly casual shrug. "Well, I'll ask my friend for a recommendation anyway," he said. "Can't hurt. For now, we should probably head out soon so that we can get together with our team and figure out how to make the ice deliveries work. Before we go, let's nail down some basics. How much ice would you need and how often?"
"How much can you supply?" Honami shot back.
Hazou waved the question aside. "From the other side, please. I don't know where we'll need to go or how easy it will be to get. I need numbers so that we can figure out if it's practical."
"Well..." Honami said. "A one-meter cube weighs a ton. Can you transport that?"
"Um," Hazou said, thinking about it. "Not if you need it in one piece. Our storage scrolls won't take more than a hundred kilos. We might be able to find some bigger ones, though." He was careful to say 'find' instead of 'make'. Granted, it would need some research, but it shouldn't be hard to make higher-capacity scrolls.
"All right," Honami said. "That's fine. A cube the size of my fist"—she held out a dainty, adorably non-combat-ready fist—"is enough to make three or four icies. I'd need to be able to supply at least six before I could reasonably make the offer to anyone, and ten would be better. Each person will typically want two or three per day, and sometimes more. Not being able to provide them is worse than not offering them at all."
Hazou nodded. "Okay. So, let's call it four fist-sized blocks of ice. Yeah, we could transport that much. I'll talk to the team about if we want to do it and how. I'll want your help in exchange, though."
"With what?" Honami asked suspiciously.
"We were sent here to retrieve a scroll from one of your guests," Hazou said. "Joutarou. He should have it on him."
"You want to steal from a guest?" Honami said doubtfully.
Hazou, Diplomacy:
8d100: 393
Honami, Diplomacy:
?d100: 308
"That's the deal," Hazou said. "We're ninja. We steal things and spy on people. You help us do that, we'll help you turn this into the richest resort in Hot Springs."
He watched her struggle for a moment. "If it helps," he said. "If someone pays us to show up at your door, you probably did something to bring us there."
"You're not going to kill him?" Honami asked.
"Not unless he makes us," Hazou said. "Our mission is to get the scroll, and there's a bonus if no one knows it's been taken. We'll steal it and replace it with a fake. As long as Joutarou doesn't walk in on us at the wrong moment and attack us, there won't be any fighting."
Honami thought about that. "All right," she said unhappily. "I can help you with that, if you bring me the ice first."
"Getting the ice will take time and means crossing the border with Frost," Hazou said. "That's risky. It would be a lot easier for us to do the mission first."
Honami shook her head. "No. How do I know that you'd come back? Once you have your scroll, you could just leave."
Hazou sighed. "Look, there needs to be some trust in order for any relationship to get started," he said. "We don't actually need any help to do this mission, so there's two ways it could go down. You can stand clear, we do the mission, we leave and you never see us again. Or you could help us, we do the ice retrieval for you, and we have the basis for a future that's good for both of us."
Honami thought about that. She had a good poker face, but Hazou was sure that she was thinking through the branches on the conversational tree.
Possible Future Honami: I could alert the Hot Springs ninja forces and they would stop you.
Possible Future Hazou: Are you sure you want to threaten us, a team of highly skilled magical kung fu battle wizards?
Possible Future Honami: Oh. Um, no. No, I do not want that.
Or, along a different branch...
Possible Future Honami: I refuse to cooperate in anything that harms my customers! I won't interfere, but I won't help you either.
Possible Future Hazou: Okay. Say goodbye to your dreams of fabulous wealth and influence in the world. Also, I might go tell the Hot Springs ninja about your maybe-has-a-bloodline baby.
Possible Future Honami: No, please! I'll steal the scroll for you! You won't have to do a thing!
Possible Future Hazou: Mwahaha! Dance, little civilian puppet!
"All right," Honami said. "I'll help. You said it was a scroll, and it's important, so he'll probably have it with him. He won't be able to take it into the baths, though, so he would have to leave it in his room or in the clothes cupboard. Rei is responsible for watching the customers' clothes, but she'll let me check them if I tell her that I think Joutarou might have stolen something. For his room, I can get the spare key and let you in."
"Just tell us where the keys are and we'll get them ourselves," Hazou said. "Then you aren't at risk."
Honami smiled. "But then you don't need me," she pointed out. "The more useful I am, the more likely I am to get my ice."
Hazou blinked in surprise; Inoue-sensei laughed.
"Fine," Hazou said, smiling. "You get the key and let us in. What about the dogs? We can get past them, but we'd prefer not to take chances. Can you get them out of the way?"
Honami thought about that. "Not without being obvious about it," she said at last. "I can introduce you to them, though. If you go down there with me, feed them, pet them a little, then they'll think you're safe and they won't bark at you."
"Okay," Hazou said. "That sounds good." He hesitated. "There's one more thing," he said slowly. "I'd like to get a friend of mine into the same water as Joutarou, but not in the same pool. Is there a way?"
Honami frowned. "What? Why would you want that?"
"Is there a way?" Hazou asked, ignoring the question.
"...Maybe," Honami said, thinking it through. "The springs come up from the side of the hill and run down into the soaking pools. The pools drain downhill through a sluice gate. If your friend gets into the runoff channel he'll be in the same water. Will that work?"
Hazou nodded gratefully. "Yes, that should be fine," he said. "Thank you. Can we—"
Inoue, Awareness:
?d100: 735*hurls cursed dice out window*
Hazou, Awareness:
12d100: 610See? See?! That's what average rolls look like, you stupid dice!
Approaching footsteps:
?d100: 601
Hazou cut himself off in midword just as Inoue-sensei's head turned in response to the footsteps at the end of the hall. Honami caught their motions; a moment later she heard the sounds as well.
"Go!" she said. "That's Mother, coming to check on me!"
The two ninja were out the window before Honami finished her sentence, dropping casually into the bushes two stories below and vanishing.
o-o-o-o
"Not bad, Mr. Mew," Noburi said as Hazou finished his report.
Without looking, Hazou flung a balled-up scrap of paper at him from across the room. Noburi caught it, laughing.
"I'm worried about breaking into Joutarou's room," Hazou said. "The way he moves, he looks like a fighter. If it turns out that he's a ninja he might have put traps in the room. Keiko, with your pangolins...when a summons is hurt it goes back to its own realm, right? It doesn't really die?"
Keiko shook her head. "No. When a creature from the Summon Realm is brought here, it is not the actual creature that arrives. The summoning ritual constructs a chakra envelope into which the summoned animal's mind is projected. If the body is disrupted before the being is dismissed then the mind is flung back without time to prepare. It's quite painful and debilitating, but does not actually cause real injury. The summon does have all the memories of what happened to it while it was here, though. That can be traumatic—for example, imagine what it would feel like to remember yourself being stabbed in the heart, even if it didn't happen to your real body. The other problem is that when a summon's body is disrupted it destabilizes the aetheric channel through which the ritual operates. The pangolin that is connected to that channel can't be called again, and can't reverse-summon me, until the channel stabilizes. That can be anywhere from hours to weeks, and the exact duration is nearly impossible to predict. Stronger summons lead 'larger' channels, though, and those tend to take longer to restabilize."
Hazou nodded slowly. "Okay," he said. "So, hypothetically, if you summoned Pandaa and asked him to search Joutarou's room he wouldn't really be at risk from any seals or traps? The worst that would happen is that he'd be sent back and you wouldn't be able to summon him for a while?"
"Yes," Keiko said, her voice cold enough to make a thousand icies. "Do you think it is a good idea to ask my summon to sacrifice himself for no reason?"
"It's not no reason, Keiko," Inoue said firmly. "It's to keep you safe. That is exactly what summons are for, is to aid and protect their summoners. Pandaa is a great kid, but I would much rather that he experience some temporary discomfort than that you die from a poison needle."
"Yes, sensei," Keiko said, abashed.
"Do you think it likely that there will be poison needle traps, sensei?" Akane asked.
Inoue, Deception:
?d100: 1,044Okay, maybe this is selection bias on my part. I'm going to start keeping track. Low:2, High:0
Joutaro, Deception:
?d100: 843
Inoue nodded. "Yep. The way Joutarou moves, I'm pretty sure he's a ninja. I'd be amazed if there aren't traps in his room."
"You don't think..." Hazou began before pausing. They were going to laugh at him, he was sure of it. Still, better to be embarrassed than right about this. He took a deep breath and gathered his courage.
"There's no chance that Joutarou is Jiraiya, is there?" he asked, immediately flinging himself backwards, kicking his chair towards Inoue-sensei in order to give himself an extra moment to escape the ruthless hair-ruffling that—
Hazou eyed her warily as he picked up his chair and sat down. "I'm fine," he said. "Is it possible?"
"Well," Inoue said, before flinging herself out of her chair at him, hands in hair-ruffling position.
Inoue, Hair-Ruffle no Jutsu:
?d100: 806Low:3, High: 0
Hazou, dodge Hair-Ruffle no Jutsu:
15d100: 652
Eventually Inoue stood up and took her seat again, snickering all the while. Hazou climbed to his feet with a sigh and pulled a brush out of his pocket. As thorough as she'd been, nothing less was going to get the job done.
"No, I don't think Jiraiya is Joutarou," Inoue said. "I chatted him up at the buffet yesterday, tried one of the code words that he gave us back before the Liberator mission. He didn't react at all." She shrugged. "Or, alternatively, he gets so many women talking to him about lingerie shopping that he didn't realize it was a code word. Still, I don't think it's him."
"But he is a ninja?" Noburi said. "Who do you think the woman and the kid are?"
Inoue shrugged. "Part of his cover, maybe? Or a pair of civilians that he's escorting? They've both been staying out of sight. I haven't managed to get a good look at either of them. We'll know more once Noburi manages to check his chakra levels."
"Easier to just squish him," Kagome muttered. "Boom. Done."
"Kagome," Inoue said reprovingly. "We promised not to hurt any of the guests or blow the inn up."
"I didn't promise anything," Kagome said grumpily. "Boom. So much easier."
"Kagome," Inoue said.
"Fine."
o-o-o-o
Noburi dipped a hand into the hot water that was sluicing over the rocks beside him. For a moment his fingers felt like they were being parboiled, but once he adjusted to the heat it was nice.
From the particular set of soaking pools that Honami had carefully steered Joutarou to, the water spilled down a rocky slope and into a small creek. Noburi had spent three hours in a hot and stuffy ghillie suit, carefully creeping across the rocks until he was close enough to drain the residents of the pool. He couldn't see up to where the pool itself was, but that was fine; if he couldn't see them then they shouldn't be able to see him.
He pushed his bloodline out from his fingertips, traces of his chakra spreading through the water. There were miniscule flickers of chakra from the mosses and lichens on the rocks, but nothing significant. His awareness reached farther up, creeping into the pool itself, only to find—
He yanked his hand out of the water as though he'd been burned and forced himself not to run.
Oh yeah, Joutaro was a ninja.
XP AWARD: 13
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, August 3, 2016, at 12pm London time.
Note: Honami took you into the dog kennels late last night. The dogs are acclimated to Inoue, Hazou, Noburi, and Akane; they probably won't bark at those four. Keiko they were a little standoffish with, and you aren't sure how they'll react to her out on the grounds. Kagome's nervousness set them off and you had to retreat quickly. They will almost certainly raise the alarm if they see or smell him. Kagome muttered darkly about "stinking fuzzballs" and the unfairness of it all, but he apparently is a big softy where dogs are concerned, because he didn't suggest blowing them up even once.
You've got a map of the terrain and the inside of the resort.
You have a protocol for making contact with Honami in the future.
Since she was willing to introduce you to the dogs you decided not to drug their food.
Honami checked Joutarou's clothes while he was soaking; there was nothing surprising in them. You have not checked his rooms yet.
You have three days left in your mission window before you need to return to your client. No one has approached Joutarou yet.
For reference, here's the details of your mission again:
Your mission, received from a nondescript man in a perfectly ordinary room in a typical inn, is to retrieve cyphered information in physical form (likely but not guaranteed to be a scroll) from an individual staying at the Mizutani Hot Springs within a certain time window. The target will be identifiable by a piece of red and green cloth, which they will be wearing somewhere on their head or neck at all times.
You will receive a bonus if the information is obtained without alerting anyone, but the client does not object to torturing the information out of the target should it prove necessary.
And, also for the record, the codewords you have with Jiraiya are, as mentioned in Chapter 24: Meeting the Liberator and collected by our fearless Appalachian-trail-hiking companion, Radvic:
A keyword identifier for (hopeful) amnesty in case the camp gets roflstomped by the allied nations while we are infiltrating it. - "dango"
A sentence that we can bring up in casual conversion to (optionally) reveal ourselves to fellow infiltrators. - any mention of Princess Genchi
An emergency word that we can blurt out in case we find ourselves in ninja combat with someone who might also be infiltrators. - "boudoir"
A word to identify us to our Friend again. - "lingerie"
Another word in case we want to send someone else to our Friend who is friendly. "panty-shot"
Another word in case we want to send an enemy to our Friend. (If we get tortured, or if there is someone we want to get killed, but we can't do it for some because they are too strong or it would be too suspicious) - "bubble-bath"
Interlude: The Last Hours of Sunlight
by @Velorien
The Mori Clan were not the most revered in Hidden Mist. While some clans could step across the fabric of space in an instant, leaving waves of lightning in their wake, and others could swamp their opponents with constructed giant crabs, the Mori were sometimes referred to as "human abacuses" by the ignorant, their support specialisation rendering them second-class citizens until the time came when Mist's forces could not coordinate without them.
But no matter how many fools might scorn the Mori, none could deny their jealousy at the magnificence of the Mori compound.
Most of the buildings had been designed many generations ago by Mori Genzō, a branch family member with particularly weak access to the Frozen Skein who had instead turned his attention to architecture. Finding his inspiration in nature, he drew on the patterns and dimensions of seashells, trees and the more fascinating parts of animal anatomy to create houses of mathematically perfect ratios and elegant asymmetry. Works of art from the outside, inside the rooms were proportioned so as to instill mental and emotional calm while still serving essential ninja functions of privacy and security. Any intruders would find themselves hopelessly turned around until they stumbled into a fiendish series of traps, while residents who had memorised Genzō's design principles could be blindfolded with their legs tied together, and still be able to navigate the compound as if it were a set of ordinary civilian dwellings.
No Mori since had ever approached Genzō's genius, and whenever new construction was necessary, they could only draw on the library of blueprints he had left behind – a treasure guarded as jealously as any scroll of secret clan techniques. To this day, the reward for a Mori who had done the clan a great service was a haori decorated with one of Genzō's signature fractal symbols.
None of this was a clan secret – the Mori were happy to boast of their unique architecture to anyone who asked, which was usually no one. But Mitsuhide, a regular at the Chiaroscuro Chamber, had asked, and since he was a fellow connoisseur of the arts, and one who occasionally gave her foreign sweets besides, Kei had seen it as her obligation to enlighten him.
-o-
"The rose that blooms in spring will wilt by autumn, but a rose preserved in ice will last forever," Kei read out from the scroll in front of her.
Master Saruhiko nodded. "Good. You have completed Cypher Level Eight. But you must try harder in the future – when your sister was undergoing genin training, she cracked this one in under five minutes."
How did Master Saruhiko even remember a minor detail of something that had happened a good six years ago? No, that was a foolish question. The man was only a few ranks away from being an elder. Rumours said he was able to use the Frozen Skein in combat. It would be stranger if he didn't have a perfect memory.
And that memory once again placed her within her sister's shadow. Ami was perfect. It was an incontestable, undeniable statement. She had received ninjutsu training from Uehida Minori herself. She was so strong, they let her take point in the field despite the fact that she was a Mori. If there were such a thing as a Jōnin Exam (there wasn't, and there would be consequences for anyone who suggested otherwise too loudly), she would already be about to take it. She mocked the Mori Voice, or so she claimed. She even knew how to talk to people. They laughed at her jokes and never gave her strange looks when she made sensible observations.
One day, Kei wanted to be Ami. But apparently everyone else wanted the same thing, and they wanted her to be Ami now.
It was only noon, and Kei was already starting to feel unhappy. But the day had a saving grace – Kei had the afternoon off, and the new exhibition at the Chiaroscuro Chamber was already singing its siren song.
-o-
Kei watched the hypnotic shifting of the shadows on the white walls of the Chamber, their precise dance telling a story that, she knew, every watcher would invent and interpret for themselves. To her, the rising sinuous curve was a serpent about to strike at the heavens. But a brief flicker of motion, a shadow that moved like a negative sunbeam, pierced its head, and the serpent changed its path, enlightenment guiding it back down to the earth where the depths would reshape it into a dragon. Yet in the corner, the cupped hands of the goddess wavered and spilled their blessing into the void. Should the serpent have kept rising beyond itself, beyond the spiked peaks and into a different existence, or was it right to follow the inspiration that led it deeper within its soul?
A gentle chime rang out. The lights faded. The mirrors swivelled back into the walls. The painted wooden blocks stayed where they were, but Yumi would be here in a minute to collect them. She loathed having anyone else touch her belongings.
"Well," Mitsuhide sighed, "it ends too soon, as always. Please give my compliments to your cousin on her ever-growing skills. That was a very fine ending, with the forest spirit submitting to the aspiring sage."
Kei nodded. Yumi's "art installation", as she called it, received few visitors, mostly travellers and a handful of merchants that visited Mist on a regular basis. Mitsuhide was one of these, and invariably generous with his contributions to the donation box, even if the forgetful silk trader always dropped in a variety of coins from different countries, most of them near-worthless here. Not that he was the only one – a number of visitors seemed to think that the symbolism of the gesture was more important than actually supporting Yumi's art (though in reality the Chiaroscuro Chamber was fully funded by the clan, and Kei wasn't entirely sure why the donation box was really there).
It was a rule of the Chiaroscuro Chamber that any Mori present at closing time would carry the donation box home, leaving Yumi free to stay and maintain the equipment, especially the expensive chemical lights. Yumi had not failed to impress upon the rest of the clan that the donations were an invaluable contribution to the Mori finances (which was a lie), and as such the loss of even a single coin from the box would place the deliverer in mortal peril (which probably wasn't).
Kei frowned as she picked the box up. Her intuition was tingling, telling her something was off. Something about the box? No, it was the same as always, in colour, size, shape and approximate weight. That only left one obvious possibility.
She looked at the foreign coins more closely. Four Leaf ryō. Two Frost ryō. Nine of those peculiar little coins they used in Fang. Kei quickly went through the rest of the coins. That combination… it was exactly the same as the last time Mitsuhide had left a donation in her presence (she'd been training her memory – one day it would need to be as good as Master Saruhiko's if she was going to become an elder herself). It seemed Kei had stumbled across something important.
-o-
Kei walked the familiar path to the underground treasury as her mind cycled through possibilities.
The labyrinthine corridors would confuse anybody who didn't know that they were patterned after the distinctive arrangement of veins on the leaves of the greater ravenous bloodflower (the branch family kept a few tame ones in the Garden of the Taken), and thus all one had to do was to take a step backwards and to the left or right, as appropriate, wherever a greater vein intersected with a lesser one. Needless to say, stepping in the wrong direction, where a real bloodflower would have its tiny hairs, resulted in instant death. Different segments of the leaf had different traps, to account for ninja with a variety of special abilities, and a typical intruder would end up dying to all of them – some twice – before they had a chance of finding the true exit. Someone like Kei, on the other hand, could walk from one end to the other in thirty seconds at an unhurried pace.
This time, Kei did not hurry away from the treasury and its somewhat intimidating atmosphere after handing over the box, but stayed next to Uncle Junpei, curious to see what he would do. She watched, as unobtrusively as possible, while her uncle sank deep into the Frozen Skein. Eventually, he picked the coins out of the box, one by one, stacked them according to currency and value, and then did something strange.
He took each coin, in order, and slowly ran the tip of his right finger around its ridges, before putting it down in a specific position and picking up the next.
After some time, with all the coins processed in this strange fashion, Uncle Junpei opened his eyes and withdrew from his focused state.
"What were you doing, Uncle?" Kei asked, cursing her lack of subtlety even as she opened her mouth.
"Checking for counterfeits, little Keiko," Uncle Junpei explained. "I don't mind you watching – elders willing, you'll be the one doing this job instead of me one day – but do bear in mind this is a secret Mori art, so don't go blabbing about it to everyone, OK?"
Kei gave him an insulted look, or what she hoped came across as an insulted look.
"Now, would you be a dear and go ask Elders Kazushi and Mirano to come down here?" Uncle Junpei asked, looking at the coins contemplatively. "There's something I want to talk to them about."
Unfortunately, that was as far as Kei's investigation went that day. Elder Kazushi promptly sent her on a series of trivial errands, and by the time she was done, the sun had set and it was too late for anything but dinner and bed. Nevertheless, she resolved to take the time to find out what was really going on – perhaps after she came back from her upcoming mission, she would have earned a sufficient measure of trust.
-o-
There was only one day left before the mission. Kei was simultaneously excited and scare- nervous. Very nervous. She would be working under Sumie-sensei in the logistics team, and while Sumie-sensei was no Ami, she was kind and thoughtful and almost eerily competent, qualities which comfortably placed her among Kei's top ten people.
This was the mission which would establish Kei as a ninja in her own right, with her own career and her own unique strengths. She would earn the elders' trust with her performance, make her family proud, and be inducted into the clan's advanced techniques and ancient secrets. And she wouldn't have to flail around trying and failing to earn everyone's affection, because she would already have their respect.
"Whatcha doing, runt?" a familiar voice interrupted her daydreams.
"Ami," she said. She recalled where her sister had been for the last hour. "How is Aunt Noriko?"
Her sister looked uncharacteristically grim. "Elder Ina's been working on her day and night. Says it's fifty-fifty odds. Not as bad as it could be, but still…"
Kei did a double-take. "Fifty-fifty?"
"Yeah. We've got the full story now, and apparently she didn't just go too deep. That scumsucker Ayanami wanted to show off his new Lightning technique, and he overextended and pulled the unit straight into an ambush. She had to use that, or it would've been a full wipe."
Kei blinked. Several times. "But… that doesn't mean…"
"It doesn't mean anything. Aunt Noriko's a fighter, Keiko. She's got twice the balls that Ayanami's going to once I'm done with him. She's not going to the Garden. She's going to come back, and when she does, you can tell her all about your heroics on your first big mission, how's that?"
Kei nodded uncertainly.
"Anyway, listen, I've got a going-away present for you. You'll love this: it's my lucky shuriken."
The thing she handed Kei did not look lucky. Rather, it looked like an abomination the mere touch of which would earn her a thousand-year curse.
"It's bright pink," Kei stated flatly.
"Yep."
"With flowers and rainbows painted on it."
"That's right."
"And is that… is that a sheep surrounded by shōjo sparkles?"
"It's supposed to be a kirin."
Ami saw her expression.
"Hey, I never claimed to be an artist! That's why it's got 'Chārī the Kirin of Maidenly Love' written under it, just so there's no confusion."
Kei looked up and met her sister's eyes.
"Ami," she said slowly, "if you wish me to be your second in a ceremony of honourable suicide, there are easier ways to ask."
"Nono," Ami shook her head, "you've got it all wrong. It's, like, you know that expression 'she's drawn her last shuriken'?"
"Yes," Kei nodded, "I am in fact familiar with basic idiom as learned by children from the age of five upwards."
"Great," Ami beamed. "I'd hate to see that all my years of hard work bringing you up had gone to waste.
"So when you draw your last shuriken, it means your situation is so desperate that you've finally run out of options, right? Well this is my last shuriken, and I will beat the Mizukage in an even fight before I let someone force me to draw this thing in front of them.
"And now, it's your last shuriken. You'll make your way safe and sound out of any pinch, because the alternative is to let your friends and enemies see you wielding that shuriken in battle."
Kei held her sister's gaze, feeling her eyes grow wet. Only this woman could take a piece of ridiculous, offensive tomfoolery… and turn it into an expression of deep affection.
"Make me proud out there, runt. Aunt Noriko and I will be waiting to welcome you back."
-o-
Voting closes on Saturday the 6th, 9 am Pacific Standard Time.
Mari had chosen her outfit with care; a one-piece sea-foam-green swimsuit with a low back, a pair of cheap wooden wedge-heeled sandals, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. The suit was attractive but not alluring and the green was much less eye-catching than her red one. The sandals clicked noisily when she walked and the soles were high and slightly uneven, making her both just a bit unsteady when she walked. She had plenty of experience with walking like a fit civilian instead of gliding like a trained ninja, but part of that experience was to use equipment that made the disguise easier. Also, the shoes were loose enough that they could be kicked off instantly if she needed to fight. Kicked off into an opponent's head, even.
The hat, of course, was the most important part. The ultra-wide brim cast shadows across her face and made it hard to tell which direction she was looking. She appeared to be facing straight ahead, absorbed in her book. In actuality, her eyes were locked on Joutarou and the quiet conversation he was having at the other end of the veranda.
Joutarou wasn't really her type—the brash, noisy ones usually weren't nearly as good in the sack as they thought and had too much ego to be educated—but his conversation partner...mmmmmm. Yum.
On the short side for a man, he was only six or seven inches taller than she was. Perfect. She could wear heels and still be shorter, but they were close enough not to be awkward in bed. He was lean and fit, although fit like a civilian and not a ninja. Also good; ninja were suspicious of everyone, even their lovers, and usually a giant ball of traumatic stress issues and unexpected triggers.
Long fingers and expressive hands, silky chestnut hair that tumbled just past his collar and was gathered into a loose pony tail. She had to drag herself back from thoughts of what it would feel like to run her fingers through it, make a fist in it and pull him in close, feeling the heat of those soft hands on her skin....
She forced herself to drag her eyes over to the much less appealing Joutarou before she started unconscious griding her hips on the lounger. Besides, Mr. Yummy had his back to her and she still hadn't managed to see his face. Joutarou, on the other hand, she could see in three-quarter profile. He was well out of hearing range, but plenty close enough for lipreading. It was one more piece of evidence in the 'combat asset, not professional intelligence operative' bucket.
—say you could have hurried a little more, Joutarou said. Those two are a complete pain in the ass. He's nervouser than a mouse at a cat party and she's more defensive than a...a very defensive person.
Mr. Yummy must have said something because Joutarou glowered.
Fine, he said. Whatever, at least you're finally here. Just—he scratched his cheek, blocking her view of his mouth for a moment—another mission and you've made me late as it is.
Mr. Yummy's hands moved, and presumably so did what she imagined would prove to be a pair of full, deliciously nibblable lips.
No, she hasn't given me the key, Joutarou said. She thought I'd ditch them if she gave it up.
Mr. Yummy nodded, one hand making a throwing-away gesture. He turned, Joutarou falling in beside him as the two made their way back to the main building and Joutarou's room. Mari finally got a good look at him.
On the one hand, disappointing: not quite what she'd hoped. The lips that she'd been daydreaming about were a little thin and the nose was wider than she preferred. No scars, skin that was neither good nor bad, dark nor light. Nothing eye-catching or memorable about that face at all. Very forgettable.
On the other hand, wow. That face was so incredibly forgettable it almost screamed 'SPY!' It made him even yummier; spies were tons of fun to talk to because they generally had the same sort of training she did. Emotional awareness, active listening, empathetic projection, mirroring, identification of primary drives...all the things that made someone fun to be around and easy to talk to. Better yet, most spies weren't as good at it as she was.
Best yet was that all those skills made them very attentive and enthusiastic lovers.
Her lips quirked in a tiny smile. She really, really needed to get laid. For almost a year now she'd been riding herd on three hormonal balls of teenage angst. Oh, and don't forget the adorable Golden Retriever in human form, and the poster child for paranoia and PTSD. (Well, more like a Border Collie—Goldens were dumb as a box of hammers, and despite her status as an evangelical Power of Youth preacher, Akane was pretty bright. And Kagome wasn't actually the poster child for paranoia; he was far too paranoid to have ever allowed his picture to be taken for a poster. If anyone had made a poster of him, Kagome had no doubt blown it up.)
Joutarou and Mr. Yummy were leaving the veranda, headed back into the building and out of sight. Mari pondered her next move; there wasn't really a plausible reason for her to follow them inside. Her room wasn't on their wing, or even on the same floor—she was on the first floor in the north wing and Joutarou's group was on the second floor of the east wing.
It would depend on what they did next; it was two o'clock already, which was a little late in the day to start traveling. From what Joutarou had said it was clear that he was passing the woman and the boy—and, presumably, the scroll (or whatever it was)—off to Mr. Yummy. It wasn't entirely clear if Joutarou would be leaving on his own or escorting the three from here; if he went along then the team would need to figure something out. If he left on his own then they could pretty much do what they wanted with the three civilians.
She chuckled quietly. 'Do what they wanted with the civilians', huh? She knew what she wanted! She'd never force Mr. Yummy, or anyone else, but in her experience it usually wasn't hard to convince a heterosexual man to want the same things she wanted. A woman had needs, you know? Almost a year and she'd had her ashes hauled exactly once. Granted, it had been by Jiraiya who was holyohmygods good at it. It had taken twenty minutes for her toes to uncurl. And, now that she thought about it, it was really more like seven or eight times. (Apparently advanced ninjutsu expertise could really increase a guy's stamina, rowr!)
Anyway, back on the actual subject...the civilians might leave today, if their destination was close enough. If it wasn't, they'd probably leave in the morning. Joutarou could travel at ninja speeds so his travel circle was a lot bigger. He'd said he had another mission to do, so if he wasn't going to stick with the group he'd almost certainly leave today.
She glanced across the veranda to her opposite number. Whoever he was, he was good. Well-trained, definitely belonging to some intelligence service. She wasn't even sure if he was a ninja or not; if he was using a henge she couldn't spot it, and he moved like the mid-forties civilian he appeared to be. When the team first arrived it had taken her a full four hours to notice him; she'd only twigged because she caught him following Joutarou's movements a little too closely.
None of the kids had noticed him as more than another guest, despite Hazou walking within arm's length of him on at least two occasions. She was pretty sure Joutarou hadn't noticed him either. She'd be interested to see how Mr. Spy Guy reacted to Joutarou's contact arriving.
She wondered again if she should point him out to the kids. At this point, probably. She'd been waiting to see if they would notice him, but it was time to give them the information so they could factor it into the plans.
'So they could factor it into the plans.' Wasn't that just all kinds of adorable? Thirteen-year-olds, doing the planning for what was essentially a small strike group? Doing it pretty well, too. She'd never tell them, of course, but she was actually impressed. Hazou was coming along nicely as a future leader; he had Noburi's ego issues mostly sorted out and had slotted the other boy into a beta role almost without Noburi realizing it. Noburi, in turn, was steadying down. He'd lost most—well, some—of his insecurity and was in the process of turning into a strong young man. Keiko was...improving. Long way left to go, though.
Even Kagome was getting better. His flashbacks were much less frequent and seemed to be less intense. He was starting to sleep more than three or four hours at a stretch, and it had been almost a week since the last time he came up swinging when she woke him up. It was going to be a long time before she let any of the kids wake him, though.
She sighed. Dealing with Kagome was exhausting. Enough flirting and playfulness to keep him focused on positive things and engaged with the group, not so much that he actually developed a crush. Carefully measured voice modulation and display of gestural emblems signifying authority so that he followed the lead of the tiny little redhead instead of going off half-cocked. Constantly watching him for microexpressions of fear and, whenever she saw them, staying between him and the kids in case one of them accidentally triggered him. All without letting any of them notice what she was doing. It was just lucky that he had more tells than roomful of first-time poker players; if he'd had any sort of ability to hide his feelings it would have been ten times worse.
She shook off the negativity and forced herself to breathe. Puppies and fuzzy little kittens! Rainbows, chocolate cake, and Auntie Machiko's apple cobbler!
She settled back into the lounger, taking an extra-deep breath and wriggling just a little so that she could watch the eyes pop out of the head of the middle-aged guy two recliners over, who was desperately trying not to look and clearly hoping that his wife wouldn't notice that he had. She'd read a bit longer while waiting to see what Mr. Spy Guy did. If he didn't react before she finished her current chapter she'd go find the others and signal them to pull in for a briefing. She had a feeling the next couple of days were going to be exciting.
XP AWARD: 1
XP BONUS: +1 because I'm feeling nice after my earlier pseudo-update. XP BONUS: +1 in thanks to @faflec for the suggestion that inspired this chapter when I was frankly stuck for ideas. XP BONUS: +2 for @OliWhail's omake that left me all verklempt, damnit.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, August 10, 2016, at 12pm London time.
"Here," Mari passed the girl a couple of coins, "why don't you hand me that tray, and then go see if Honami won't give you a couple of hours off? At full pay, of course. She'll understand."
After checking for observers, Mari smoothly took on the waitress's appearance. Honami's cooperation was opening countless doors for the team, in some cases literally. Hazō's call to work with her had paid off a hundredfold. The kid had the makings of an excellent infiltrator, Mari decided, just as soon as he got better at lying. And disguises. And observation. And persuasion.
And seduction. Mari counted herself very lucky that he was still a few years away from having to be taught seduction in earnest. After all, she was the only available teacher, and wouldn't that do interesting things to the team dynamic. It wasn't a problem ninja normally had – when she herself had been learning from Usami-sensei and Shiratori-sensei, she'd already had years of desensitising Mist conditioning, and immersion in an environment in which seduction training was considered as standard and impersonal as taijutsu training. Whereas teaching the arts to somebody who was more like your infinitely-teasable little brother…
Then again, the odds of Hazō actually asking her for seduction training were roughly the same as the odds of Kagome asking her to marry him. Come to think of it, Mari reflected, the master and the apprentice had a lot of things in common.
Keiko, on the other hand… Mari's blood ran cold at just the thought of thinking about that idea and all of its implications. Clearly, it was time to focus on the mission.
The tray held a single cup of tea. The temperature had to be gauged carefully – while Mari was happy to reuse the old classic Honami had used on Hazō, actually popping Mr Spy's disguise would attract all sorts of unwelcome attention. On the other hand, a waitress carrying cold tea would just make him suspicious.
As luck would have it, Mr Spy was facing her as she entered the veranda. He glanced up at her with a blank expression as she came into his field of view, then immediately returned to his book, a manual on the theory of civil administration that made Mari's eyes glaze over just to look at.
The man must have had some serious financial support to be able to use something like that as a mere prop. Unlike Jiraiya's books, such a specialised volume would have a very limited print run, which tended to mean a staggering price. After all, the beauty of a monopoly was that if you wanted to, you could make the customer bleed, and they'd still keep on coming back.
Mari's analysis ended the second she was in range. As she began to move past Mr Spy, she tripped over, squealing and sending a cup of lukewarm, very dark tea flying in a carefully calculated arc over the book and onto the man's chest. He reflexively tried to get out of the way, but at civilian speed he might as well have been trying to evade a thunderbolt. The tea went everywhere (though he did manage to save the book) and a large brown spot began to spread over his kimono. The surrounding customers and staff alike stared at him, some with amusement and others with sympathy.
Mr Spy's eyes snapped up to look at her. His voice was rich, cultured, a stark contrast to his unprepossessing appearance. It was also filled with excoriating contempt.
"Wonderful," he told her. "Now I'm the centre of everybody's attention. Honestly, I was expecting better of you given your work so far. You can be sure of a pay cut once your employer hears of this.
"Well?" he added. "Why are you just standing there? Don't you have a job to do?"
Mari couldn't help but catch the subtle emphasis on that one word, combined with the way he met her eyes as he said it. Oh, shit.
Their employer was running more than one game here, and apparently whatever Mr Spy was up to, it was important enough for him to be aware of their presence but not vice versa. This was why Mari, along with every non-Command ninja ever, hated the concept of a need-to-know basis.
As she retreated in a hurry, Mari heard Mr Spy hail another waitress.
"You there, girl. Have one of the men bring me another kimono from my suite. The beige one will do. I'll be in the baths."
-o-
"Which is why our client is an information-withholding sack of slimedrizzler balls. Now, let's move on. Forget our man of mystery, we need to move fast if we want to get Jōtarō and Mr Yu– the secondary target. They could leave as early as tomorrow morning."
Hazō nodded. "Are we still going with the original plan, Inoue-sensei?"
"That's right. Jōtarō's booking expires tomorrow morning, which means the bedroom window of opportunity will only be open tonight. As long as we're quick and careful, we won't be leaving time for the spy to make any moves."
-o-
Akane slowly walked up to the window. This was it. Finally her time to shine, to show Hazō-sensei that not only was she maturing as a fighter under his tutelage, but that she was an adult in her own right – or would be soon enough – with her own specialisation every bit as valuable as his sealing skills or Keiko's summoning. With all eyes on her, it was time for the practice to pay off.
As challenges for a ninja went, opening the window was a piece of cake, given the simple deadbolt and her experience with the neighbouring room earlier. A little sliver of metal, some youthful controlled breathing to make her hands perfectly still…
Akane was on fire tonight. It helped that the ninja who'd set these up was an amateur – putting all those wires so close together might have felt like it was making the trap harder to bypass, but in reality it only made it easier to spot, after which point there was no amount of cunning that could save this kind of trap from rapid disassembly.
She carefully wrapped each bell in a piece of cloth, then lowered them to the grass. The bells were well-made, and she could already see the clever new traps she could come up with using the extra materials. Yes, Hazō-sensei would be impressed.
Akane softly moved the curtains apart. She could only see the outlines of two bodies on the floor, which suggested that the other man was in Jōtarō's room after all. For a second, her mind flashed back to Inoue-sensei's waggling of eyebrows when she covered this possibility during the planning meeting. There'd be no living with her after this.
Akane stepped back, allowing Inoue-sensei through. The window would only admit one person at a time, and Inoue-sensei was the best point woman, with her sharp senses and quick genjutsu.
Inoue-sensei froze as she came halfway through the window, her foot dangling in mid-air. Beneath her, the enemy ninja lay on the floor outside the window's line of sight, his hands already reaching up to grab her.
With desperate speed, the ninja lunged for her mid-air foot, trying to throw her off-balance for an immediate finishing blow. As his body rose, his hands began to close around her ankle…
But Inoue-sensei was faster. Even as she was stepping down, she had her hands going through a quick series of seals. The ninja's hands slipped down.
The rest of the team were quick to follow Inoue-sensei in, each casting a worried glance at the open door of the room. The smallest noise might be enough to carry to Jōtaro's room, and if he was awake, they could get in a lot of trouble very quickly. At a nod from Hazō, Keiko very quietly closed it.
Akane and Hazō-sensei quickly immobilised the ninja. When they'd been assigning roles, Hazō-sensei had volunteered himself for this part, prompting a snide comment from Keiko on his inexplicable fondness for tying people up. Her master had gone straight into defensive stammering mode, while Inoue-sensei grinned and Noburi looked uncomfortable. Akane herself still thought the whole thing was funny.
With the target at his mercy, Noburi began to drain him of chakra. This naturally disrupted the genjutsu, leaving the man to bolt awake to find himself, in the words of Inoue-sensei's plan, "roughly bound, gagged and being molested by Noburi's slimy tentacle". (This had not made Noburi any less uncomfortable.)
But after some struggling and very muffled pleas for help, the ninja finally sagged to the floor. Noburi knocked out the civilians, and at his signal, the team split up to search the room. The pace was glacially slow, with every movement having to avoid treading on a caltrop in the dark, or touching one of the pieces of crumpled up paper dotted everywhere, or otherwise making even the tiniest noise.
"Oh, shit," Inoue-sensei hissed several thousand years later.
Everyone immediately turned to look at her. She pointed down at the boy. In the faint moonlight, they could just about see the pattern of ink on his back. The spidery symbols could not be mistaken for anything other than a cypher. This… was going to be a lot harder to handle than a scroll.
As the team stared in silence at the writing, each trying to think how to proceed, the sound of footsteps came from the next room.
"Yami?" Jōtarō's booming voice demanded. "Why'd you close the door?"
-o-
You have received 17 XP.
What do you do now?
Voting ends on Saturday, August 13, 2016, at 12pm Pacific Standard Time.
NB: A reminder that you cannot control others' actions – any suggestions must be communicated to them, potentially in Jōtarō's full hearing.
"Yami?" Joutarou's booming voice demanded. "Why'd you close the door?"
For half an eternity, Hazou and every other member of the team froze. His brain stuttered with panic for a long second before he forced it back into gear. Distract, evade, fight...yes!
"Sensei, make sexy noises!" Hazou whispered. "Keiko, PMYF out the window! Noburi—"
"We're ninja, but we're not looking for a fight," Inoue-sensei called, pitching her voice to carry and filling it with calm as she moved to stand in the middle of the room, slightly offset from the door. She slid her feet slowly and carefully as she went so as not to step on the caltrops that were strewn thickly around. In the frozen silence they made faint scritch and tink noises as she pushed them aside.
Once she was on her mark, Inoue-sensei took a combat stance and then glanced at Akane, hands dancing in exaggerated battlesign that was just barely visible in the trace of moonlight that came through the small window: get light. "Your people are safe and unhurt," she said aloud, keeping her voice calm and confident. "We have no intention of hurting them as long as things stay calm."
Inoue-sensei, Diplomacy; convince Joutarou not to kick things off right now:
?d100 - ?d100 (circumstance penalty: two seconds from deathmatch) => 1055
Joutarou, Diplomacy:
?d100: 758
"If I hear anyone moving or any techniques, I'll kill you," Joutarou said through the door.
Inoue-sensei laughed softly. "Don't you think that would put a damper on what could be a promising relationship?" she asked, a trace of throaty purr slipping into her voice. "One of my team is getting a light but otherwise we're not doing anything."
Joutarou, Stealth:
?d100 + ?d100 (circumstance bonus: thick door between himself and team) => 656
Inoue, Awareness:
?d100: 869
Hazou, Awareness:
12d100: 804
Keiko, Awareness:
12d100: 753
Noburi, Awareness:
9d100: 399
Akane, Awareness:
9d100: 474
From Joutarou's room came the sound of a door whispering open. Hazou saw Inoue-sensei notice it; she paused, then grimaced and shook her head slightly.
"So, what happens next?" she asked. "This room's pretty small; if we go at it the people that you're supposed to be guarding are going to end up dead." She waited a moment, listening; when no response was forthcoming she continued. "You are guarding them, right? You seem like a great fighter, but I don't get a 'spy' vibe off you."
Light blossomed as Akane unsealed a lit oil lamp. Hazou blinked in the sudden light, raising a hand to shade his eyes while they adjusted. Akane set the lamp on the ground by the wall; it dimmed the light and meant there were shadows everywhere, but it also put the flame out of the way and left her hands free.
The moment there was light to see, Inoue-sensei pointed at Noburi and then at the window with a not kidding expression. Noburi hesitated, looking displeased at the idea of abandoning his team. A raised eyebrow from Inoue-sensei got him moving and he cat-footed across the floor, stepping carefully around the caltrops now that he had light to see them.
"I'm opening the door slightly so I can hear better," Joutarou said. "Stay calm."
Inoue-sensei held up a hand and Noburi froze.
Moving with the speed of a man stepping up to the gallows, the door creaked open a handspan.
Inoue-sensei made a moue of irritation but didn't say anything. Her head turned a fraction of an inch so she could flick her eyes around the room, gauging the exact positions of the civilians and the team.
"If you need the door open, I need a little more security," she said. "Whiskers, cover the boy. Don't hurt him unless there's a problem. Fish, join him."
Hazou rolled his eyes at the callsign—it sounded silly and only got worse when you knew that it owed its origin to the hated 'Mr. Mew' nickname. Still, he said nothing as he and Noburi quickly moved to the window where the boy and his mother lay unconscious. He peeled the boy's shirt back and began gliding his finger over the characters of the tattooed cypher. Noburi walked up the wall to where he could get both feet out the window without making noise.
"Nobody leaves," Joutarou said. "Close the window and latch it."
Hazou glanced up just in time to see a mirror being withdrawn back to Joutarou's side of the door. Noburi looked at Inoue-sensei; at her nod he climbed back in and pulled the shutter closed, clicking the latch into place.
"Five on one," Inoue-sensei said, her voice relaxed even though her expression said she really wanted to growl the words. "We aren't being paid to kill and we'd rather not cause an international incident. Let's just walk away, okay?"
"If you thought you could take me, you would have," Joutarou said. "Personally, I'm betting I can carve two of you before the rest can react, then work my through the others. You might get some hits in, but you'll still be dead."
Inoue-sensei snorted. "Pull the other one. The DMZ is the only thing keeping us from ripping your head off and spitting in your neck."
"You think so?" Joutarou said. "Tell me, how are you going to rip my head off after I fill that room with fire?"
"You'd kill the civilians too," Inoue-sensei said. "You'd fail your mission."
"Looks like I'm pretty close to failing my mission right now," Joutarou said. "My orders are to ensure that those two don't fall into enemy hands first, get them to safety second."
Inoue-sensei sighed. "You know, I really hate that about our lives," she said sadly. "Doesn't it bother you sometimes? I mean, the boy is...what, thirteen? Fourteen? He's not a fighter, he didn't choose this life. We should protect children, not kill them in the interest of politics."
There was a pause. "What are you talking about?" Joutarou asked, confused. "He's a nobody. A civilian."
"He's still a kid," Inoue-sensei said. "Do you have kids? Or nephews, nieces, younger cousins, that kind of thing?"
The pause was longer this time. "Yeah," he said. "My sister's boy. Turned eight a month before I went on this mission."
"Imagine that this boy was your nephew," Inoue-sensei said. "And some other group of ninja was standing over him with blades in hand. Is that the kind of world you want to live in?" She hurried to add, "We don't have orders to kill him and we don't want to. The only way he ends up hurt is if you start a fight."
Hazou glanced up for an instant to check if anyone was signaling him. Noburi was standing over him, hands twitching with the suppressed desire to summon his Water Whip, but he clearly didn't dare to call the technique for fear Joutarou would hear. He caught Hazou's gaze for an instant and took a deep breath before nodding in reassurance.
Akane was standing to the left of the bed, watching the door as intently as a cat at a mousehole. Keiko was opposite her, the drawers of the dresser half-open after her hurried search. Her eyes were shifting around intently as she used the Zephyr's Reach to move caltrops one at a time from their positions on the floor up onto the bed where they would be out of the way. Inoue-sensei worked alongside her, and between the two of them the floor was being cleared up with impressive speed.
His teacher caught him looking, scowled, and pointed with her chin to say get back to it! Hazou nodded and returned to tracing cypher characters.
"I'm still waiting for a reason I shouldn't kill you all," Joutarou said.
"Like I said, we don't have to fight," Inoue-sensei said. "I'm thinking there's a way for all of us to win."
"Oh?" Joutarou said. "Do tell."
"Your mission is the kid and his mom, right? We're here for the spy. You take yours, we take ours, we're good to go."
"I've got a counteroffer," Joutarou said. "You surrender now and I don't kill you."
"That isn't quite the deal I was looking for," said Inoue-sensei. She glanced over at Hazou to see how far along he was. She grimaced when she saw he was only a third of the way down the boy's back, then took a deep breath and looked back to the door.
"You realize that this is a no-win for you, right?" she said. "You come in here and start something, you're not walking away. A couple of explosive tags and everyone in here dies for sure. If we win, you're dead and your mission fails. If it looks like we're going to lose, we'll take you with us. And I know you sent your clone for backup, but the genin here aren't going to make a—"
There was the sound of running footsteps as someone entered Joutarou's room at ninja speed.
"What's going on here?!" said the female jounin who, based on the speed she'd entered with, had clearly been malingering when she said her leg was injured.
Mari swore. "Collie, exit! Tsunami!"
Tsunami was one of the simpler battle plans the team had evolved. It meant hit hard, once, and then run—just like a real tidal wave. In a group that included Kagome, 'hit hard' meant 'blow everything sky high.'
Okay, let's get this party started. Can Akane kill the enemy with her explosive alpha strike?
Akane, Taijutsu-delivered explosion (blow up the enemy jounin with a shaped charge):
15d100 - ?d100 (must use narrow-focus blast so as not to hit team, but doesn't know exactly where the enemy are): 576
Joutarou, TacMov (dodge having the door blown into his face after hearing what is clearly an attack order):
?d100: 1029
Komori, the not-realy-injured jounin from Iwa, TacMov (dodge having the door etc):
?d100: 1134
Nope, Akane didn't one-shot them.
Joutarou, TacMov (get into the room and attack before anyone can react);
?d100: 1373
Mari, Special Hell Genjutsu (+10 points; one-time boost from in-thread events. NB: Preempts Joutarou's TacMov because this is exactly what Mari was prepared for)
?d100: 1237
Joutarou, Awareness (don't be sent to the Special Hell reserved for child molesters, people who talk at the theatre, and those who annoy Mari):
?d100: 932 FAIL!
Ooooh, snap! Mari just took Joutarou out of the fight! Hey, Komori, guess what? No multi-combatant bonuses for you! (Granted, the team loses Mari's MC bonus and Mari is stuck standing there like a lemon, giving all team members malus as they try to protect her.) On the one hand I'm happy because it means this might not be a TPK. On the other, I just spent ten minutes sorting out what everyone's totals would be after MC, Roki, and chakra boost before realizing that this should be Mari's move, and now that time is wasted. Oh well. From here on, all chakra boost, Roki, and MC bonuses are figured in whenever they apply.
Komori, TacMov (get into the room and kill Mari before anyone can react);
?d100: 1011
Hazou, TacMov (stop Komori from killing a defenseless Mari):
15d100: 695 FAIL!
Noburi, TacMov (stop Komori from killing a defenseless Mari):
15d100: 625 FAIL!
Akane, TacMov (stop Komori from killing a defenseless Mari):
15d100: 994 FAIL!
Keiko, Weapons (interrupt Komori's charge at Mari by throwing a large piece of furniture through her path; preempts Komori's TM by virtue of prepared action. She gets +2d100 for using "Mori Clan Technique: Frankly, A Terrible Idea" to fix Mari's self-sacrifice plan):
18d100 + 2d100: 1055 Win! Those +2 from the Mori bloodline save the day! Mari doesn't get killed before the team can get to her!
Hazou, Deception [Roki]:
12d100: 643
Komori, Deception [vs Roki]:
?d100: 520 Fail!
Komori, Taijutsu:
?d100: 1591
Akane, Taijutsu:
23d100 (pangolin jutsu dropped): 1370 Fail!
0.5 * 6d100 (Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast That is Really Strong and Tough damage resistance): rolled 224 => 112 removed from Komori's roll before damage assessed. Result: minor wound (-1 die on all physical skills). Pangolin jutsu was deactivated to provide extra speed, so the wound is not averted.
Noburi, Water Whip:
22d100: 1188 Lose! Minor wound sustained.
Keiko, Weapons:
26d100: 1352 Lose! Not in range; no damage.
Hazou, Taijutsu (with Roki):
29d100: 1440 Lose! Minor wound sustained.
Hazou, TacMov (less flying, more plummeting):
15d100 - ?d100 (helping Mari): 490 Fail. Mari A-level injured (-1 die), Hazou B-level injured (-3 dice) due to prior injury
Keiko, TacMov (less flying, more plummeting):
15d100: 865
Noburi, TacMov (less flying, more plummeting):
15d100: 670
Akane, TacMov (less flying, more plummeting):
15d100: 792
Komori, TacMov (less flying, more plummeting, but plummeting with style):
?d100 - ?d100 [surprise]: 1094
Across the room, Keiko ignored her assigned role—hurling explosive-tagged kunai—and instead pivoted to the left, reaching for the dresser.
Akane's hands came up, left palm towards the window and right towards the door. Hazou's eyes widened; he threw himself down and covered his ears as Akane's shaped charges went off in a double thunderclap, blasting a hole a meter wide through the wall above him and to his right. Noburi leaped back into the corner to avoid having his arm taken off as Akane created an escape route for the team.
Before Hazou or Noburi could use that escape route, Joutarou came through the half-demolished wall of the sitting room. His sword whirled around him in a gleaming steel net and he moved so fast that his form blurred.
"Genjutsu: Special Hell," Inoue-sensei whispered, her fingers flicking towards Joutarou like an adder striking. The massive jounin collapsed to his knees, clutching his head and screaming in horror, unable to look away from the tiny redhead's gaze. His sword went flying across the room and under the bed.
Komori, the not-actually-injured blonde jounin from Iwagakure, burst into the room and charged at Inoue-sensei with an Earth Country battlecry on her lips. Hazou saw what was about to happen, but he couldn't make his traitorous body move fast enough to throw himself between his teacher and the enemy jounin.
Inoue-sensei didn't look away from Joutarou, but she obviously saw Komori coming. The redhead smiled and a long-hidden burden seemed to fall from her shoulders. She took a calm breath and didn't move as Komori's fist blasted forward at her head—
Komori leaped back as a hundred-kilo wooden dresser went flying through where she'd just been, hurled by a tiny girl with strength powered by chakra, love, and terror. The Iwa jounin landed off-balance and stumbled, giving the team just enough time to dive forward and throw themselves between their teacher and her almost-killer.
Hazou came in fast, overamped muscles screaming as he pushed them to their limits and beyond with every scrap of chakra he could manage. Komori was a taijutsu specialist; he needed to end this fast while she was off balance or they were all dead. Noburi's Water Whip cracked over his shoulder in a combination they'd practiced a thousand times; Komori would have to twist to the side to avoid it and that would put her exactly in position for Hazou's smashing front kick to the hip, which would actually be a feint covering a punch to the throat—
Komori grabbed the Whip and yanked, hard.
Noburi flew forward and smashed into Hazou's back. The impact flung Hazou forward into a straight punch from Komori that would have gone in through his sternum and out through his spine if he hadn't managed to deflect it. It still got a piece of his shoulder and sent him spinning to the floor, agony shrieking through the dislocated joint. He landed hard on Noburi; both of them grunted at the impact, but neither one paused before rolling away in opposite directions. No matter how much it hurt, you didn't stop moving in a ninja fight unless you were tired of living.
Komori absently kicked Noburi's ribs in and launched herself at Hazou to finish him while his arm was disabled. A storm of kunai came in from her right, forcing her to pause long enough to slap the weapons away before finishing her attack. Hazou hurled himself back, desperately throwing out defensive strikes to hold the stronger woman off as he backpedaled.
"By the power of YOUTH!"
Akane came in from Komori's eight o'clock with a legsweep that Komori cartwheeled over, kicking the world's most wonderful apprentice in the head as she went by. Akane tanked the kick with nothing more than a grunt and fired back with an elbow smash that would have broken Komori's neck if she hadn't leaped aside.
The delay had given Hazou just enough time to pop his shoulder back into place. He flexed his fingers to be sure—yes, it felt like someone had stabbed a sword through it, but the limb was functional again.
His eyes flicked around, desperately looking for options. He and his team were good, but Komori was better. They'd been fighting for only a few seconds and she'd already disabled Noburi and injured both Hazou and Akane. Even worse, she'd done it with contemptuous ease. Hazou didn't stand a chance against her at anything less than maximum boost, and he'd burned almost half his reserves on that one pass. He had enough for only one more try, so it would need to count.
Escape through the hole in the outside wall? No. Komori was between Keiko and the exit. Besides, Komori could outrun them.
Escape through the door into the sitting room, then into the hallway? No. Too far, Komori was still blocking Keiko's way, and Noburi wouldn't be able to move fast enough with the broken ribs.
Fight? No. They'd lose. Maybe if Inoue-sensei were fighting with them, but she was busy holding...Joutarou...wait.
"Spearfisher, target the big one!" Hazou shouted, pointing to Joutarou. Keiko didn't ask questions, she just fired a brace of kunai at Joutarou's defenseless head.
As Hazou had hoped, Komori sprang back to Joutarou's side, intercepting the weapons and swatting them away before they could reach their target. It put her exactly where he needed her.
Sorry, Honami, Hazou thought. He ran through a series of handseals and emptied his chakra coils into the most powerful Multiple Earth Wall jutsu he could manage. The instant it was complete he grabbed Inoue-sensei and flung them both backwards towards the bed.
The granite wall surged up out of the floor at Hazou's feet, rising at an angle that took the kneeling and immobile Joutarou in the chest and rammed him up into Komori. She danced back in surprise, easily avoiding the attack but failing to stop the wall from slamming Joutarou into and through the ceiling.
When used on a wooden floor, the Multiple Earth Wall creates a chakra construct that is, temporarily, identical to normal granite. Granite, as it happens, is heavy. Really heavy. Hazou had created a lot of it, and the fight was happening on the second floor of the inn.
The floor collapsed under them and all seven ninja—well, six and a red smear—plummeted to the ground below. Inoue-sensei was still coming out of her genjutsu trance and wasn't moving on her own; her dead weight pulled Hazou off balance and kept him from landing smoothly. Something in his ankle shrieked as he hit; he let go of Inoue-sensei so that he could roll to absorb the impact. She hit the ground hard, her head bouncing off a broken piece of oak flooring. Blood splashed everywhere, but it was just a cut. She pushed herself to her feet, yanked Hazou upright, and looked around to assess the situation.
Hazou had created the wall in a line that split the room in half, trapping Komori on one side and the team on the other. In the process of falling the wall had ripped through the front of the building, leaving a wide-open route of escape.
"Go, go, go!" Inoue yelled, pulling Noburi up into a fireman's carry and waving the others towards the exit. The stout genin screamed as her shoulder dug into his broken ribs but she ignored it. Hazou, Keiko, and Akane fled past her, racing for the edge of the resort and the carefully-prepared slips that awaited them. Inoue-sensei was almost stepping on their heels as they went, urging them to greater speed.
o-o-o-o
"What were you thinking, sensei?" Keiko said, her voice wobbling halfway between rage and misery. Distantly, she felt like she should probably be bothered by the audible lack of control. She really wasn't. She'd held it together through the frantic race through Kagome's traps. She'd been silent as they spent two hours doubling back and water-walking to ensure they weren't being followed. She'd said nothing when they reached the safety of camp, and cleaned their wounds, and made a fire. That entire time the terror / horror had been clawing at her throat like a wild animal trying to rip its way out. She had earned a moment of uncontrol!
Mari-sensei forced a very unconvincing laugh. "Aw, what's the problem? I knew you guys had it. I figured I'd just get the big guy out of the way and—"
"No," Keiko said. "That is not what you thought. You expected to die."
Mari-sensei-sensei looked away.
"Yeah, I did," she said finally. "I couldn't see any way to get everyone out of that. We couldn't all get out the window before Joutarou came through—despite Mr. Mew's very good suggestion about the PMYF, we didn't all have sightlines for it." She turned to Hazou with a teasing smile. "Also, 'make sexy noises'? I mean, I know you're growing up fast, but maybe that wasn't the best time to ask for a show, right? And, anyway, I really don't think of you in that way, so maybe we should find you a girl your own—"
"Sensei," Keiko said warningly.
Mari-sensei sighed. "Yeah, okay. I thought I could stall him long enough for us to slip out one by one. Then he shut that down and I had to fall back on Plan Z."
"What's Plan Z?" Noburi asked, shifting carefully as he looked for a position that didn't bother his ribs too much.
Mari-sensei laughed. "Talk fast, buy time, try not to die until you can run away," she said. "Always worked for me before, and it came through again, right?"
"We could have just blown the wall right away instead of waiting," Hazou said quietly.
Mari-sensei nodded. "I know," she said. "But it was still under control. I was confident that Joutarou wasn't going to try to take the five of us on simultaneously without knowing what we were capable of. I heard him send his clone out for reinforcements, but I thought he was going for the genin who guard this place. They wouldn't have mattered much, and it would actually have been useful to have them in a known location so we didn't run into them on the way out. Sure, the clone could probably have gone on to collect some Hot Springs ninja, but that would have taken long enough it didn't matter. I just didn't think of Komori."
"You could have died, sensei," Keiko said. "You tried to die."
Her teacher smiled softly. "Keiko," she said, "we all die. I'm not looking to meet the Reaper, but I've made my peace with it. We couldn't have handled both Joutarou and Komori together; they would have carved us all up like a festival goose. I knew that if I could catch Joutarou in my genjutsu I could hurt him badly enough that he'd be useless for a long time. Way longer than you would have needed for you lot to escape. If I hadn't taken him out we were all going down anyway, because I made a bad call. I got greedy—I thought we could get the cypher and get out without damaging anything or anyone so that we could keep the relationship with Honami intact. We could have, too, if Komori hadn't mixed in. I screwed up, and I was the only one who could fix it."
"But not by dying!" Keiko wailed. "Sensei, I can't lose you! Please, you're all that I have left! I've lost Ami, I've lost my parents, I've lost everything! There's nothing left, you're the only thing I still lo—"
Keiko slapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes going wide in horror as she realized what she'd just said.
XP AWARD: 17
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Voting ends on Wednesday, August 17, 2016, at 12pm London time.
