Hazō climbed into bed with a sigh. It had been a long week, and it wasn't over yet. Still, that long week had been productive.
Skyslider research group? Working well together. They had built a prototype (which fell apart when lifted off the ground), and another prototype (plummeted when tested), and another prototype (flipped over,
then plummeted), and were halfway through building the Mark IV. Kunihiko had taken the tentative encouragement of his Clan Head and run with it; he was generating reams of (thus far useless) data about every possible aspect of everything that flew, building little model birds on sticks and sliding them around, and generally trying to smash the problem of flight open through application of sheer teenage energy. The rest of the team had willingly followed Hazō's suggestion and moved from flapping-wing propelled designs to fixed-wing gliding designs, theorizing that a ninja could use skywalkers to gain the necessary initial altitude.
Research group to build an aqueduct into Leaf? Established. The Collapse had dried up several of the city's wells, leaving large sections of the population having to walk farther and wait in line longer to get water. The Senju River was only a mile or two away from Leaf (except every year or two when it decided to flood its banks, in which case it was closer), so it seemed perfectly sensible to bring the water into the city. Set up a Tanaka Screw to lift the water up high enough, build a stone trough to carry it into the city, done. Well, done as soon as a five-person team finished planning the site for the Screw, the design of the aqueduct itself, the route it would take from the river to the city walls, how it would cross the wall without compromising the city's defenses, what path it would take through the city, what approvals would be necessary from the Tower, etc etc etc.
Also established: Research group to design a latrine with flowing water so that the night soil didn't need to be carried out of the house each day. Hazō's first thought had been a latrine over water flowing through an open-topped half pipe. Mari had pointed out that it would still stink, so he had proposed instead having a U-bend in a water-filled pipe, thereby keeping the disease-causing stink away but allowing the night soil to be carried off by water, not by human hands. The civilians he had tasked to figure it out clearly thought he was crazy, but he was the Clan Head so they were working on it.
Still, those were research projects and they all seemed (to people who lacked Hazō's visionary genius mwahaha) to be either eccentric or pointless. He had been glad that the Summoning Scroll Initiative was thus far meeting with success, as it gave him some much-needed credibility with the family.
Since getting the locations and histories of the five potentially-available Summoning Scrolls, Hazō had had people scouring the city for anything that might help narrow it down. Maps of the regions the Scrolls were speculated to be in. Contacts from and customs of those areas. Most of them didn't have as much information available as he would have preferred.
River was an ally of Leaf so there was no issue there. Names of friendly merchants were available, as were ninja who were positively disposed towards relations with Leaf, and even very sketchy details on factional politics. (Assuming you were willing to dignify 'a few names and scribbled notes' with the grandiose standing of 'very sketchy', but better than nothing.) Of course, there was nothing on the Kangaroo Summoner or his Scroll, so all that River data wasn't terribly useful.
The Squirrel Scroll was a lost cause; the sum total of what Hazō had been able to find was "Neck is about
here on this not-to-scale and poorly-detailed map."
The Porcupine Scroll wasn't the one that Hazō wanted, but it was looking like maybe his best shot. The Todoroki Shrine on O'uzo Island wasn't far away and was publicly accessible. Even better, there was reasonable information available; the name of the Chief Abbot was public knowledge, and Jiraiya's notes included recognition codes for two agents embedded in the place: A chambermaid and a mid-ranked monk. (The monk had been a junior acolyte when Jiraiya first recruited him; it really drove home the sheer scale of the notes that Kagome-sensei was working so hard to decode when you realized that there was information there from before Hazō's
mother was born.)
The Kraken Scroll was also a good option. Jiraiya's notes included contact information for several mid-level Yakuza throughout the Land of Lightning, as well as an assortment of farmers, charcoalers, tanners, and other ruralites who would give shelter, a meal, and a bit of gossip to the occasional passing traveler. Not agents per se, but they provided an easy way to get from point A to point B discreetly and gather some minimal intel on the way. There was also a map and the Gōketsu were satisfied that they'd identified the village wherein the previous Kraken Summoner had lived.
The real prize, of course, was the Otter Scroll. That one was going to be problematic, as Hazō had learned after talking with the one retired ANBU agent who knew anything about the area:
"Fang and Mountain? Sure, I've been there. Been all over this whole fuckin' world. Shithole places, both of 'em. People in those countries will fuckin' kill you as quick as look at you, twice as fast if you've got water and they don't—not that there's too many people in the area, because most people aren't that fuckin' stupid. Fang is flat, most of Mountain is hilly but not too bad; you can generally get a wagon through either one if you're trying to travel undercover. 'Course, everything looks the fuckin' same out there. If you aren't careful 'bout staying a straight course you'll end up wandering in circles until you fuckin' dry out and fuckin' die. Nasty shit lives around there, too. Scuttly things the size of a fuckin' dog, still give me nightmares. Coyotes. Rockworms. Have to be fuckin' insane to want to go there. What? You're thinking about goin' there? Huh. Well, good fuckin' luck. You'll need it."
Not the most promising response, but it was something.
All in all, it had been a good week. Gaku was turning out to be an incredible asset; he'd kept Hazō's TODO list organized, arranged all his meetings, offered reminders and briefing for each meeting, and found himself an assistant when it became clear he would need one. (Hazō made a note to tell Gaku to get a second or third assistant, as he was still obviously running himself ragged.) With his secretary's help, Hazō had successfully navigated all the duties of a Clan Head for the past week...with one glaring exception.
In all the madness of Orochimaru's return, the Collapse, and setting up the new Gōketsu estate, Hazō had lost track of his earliest experiment at improving life within Leaf: Paying Ebisu a small fortune to train a half dozen clanless ninja. He'd completely forgotten about it.
The experiment was apparently over, because this afternoon three of the clanless trainees in question had showed up at the estate and dropped off a message saying that Ebisu wanted to talk to Hazō tomorrow at noon. They had run off without waiting for a reply.
Granted 'run' off was a stretch, since they had been moving almost entirely via Substitution or other jutsu. Also, three other ninja had been attacking them in a running mock-battle the intensity of which only barely allowed for the 'mock-' qualifier.
Hazō sighed. He turned off the Jiraiya's Awesome Daybright Lantern seal glued to his headboard and pulled the blanket up over his head. It was late, he was tired, and he just wanted his brain to shut up about Ebisu and the implications of the clanless trainees and their battle. It was time to sleep.
NB: The 'Tanaka Screw' is obviously the Elemental Nations name for the
Archimedes' Screw.
XP AWARD: 18
Brevity XP: 1
Ami-style training XP: 0 The top option was "Teach Lee basic social skills". You tried, it had no effect.
This update took 7 days. Yes, it earned well below average XP. Quick review of what I see in
the plan so that y'all have necessary context:
- The first two sections are the supermajority of the wordcount and are entirely passive:
- The Summoning Scrolls section is 'have someone else talk to some unnamed NPCs while Hazō stays in the library'.
- The Engineering section is 'create some teams and tell them to do a thing'
- The Noda section was interesting, although I didn't see that at first. In my original summary I had her simply say "Fuck off", because my first response was "Why would she want to talk to them? She thinks they evicted her." Then I waffled a bit, since there was time for her to get over it and you had a good approach. Finally I realized that the fact I was waffling meant there was good material here. After thinking a bit I flipped a coin for what her final reaction would be. It ended up sticking with "Fuck off" so that makes things easy. Still, it could have gone the other way; well done on that. (NB: In future, probably a good idea to add a phrase like "Give her time to cool down"; I'm used to writing 1-day plans and running after her immediately upon the close of the prior update would not have gone well, as she was still mad.)
- Ami-style training is a thing that you pretty much need to include due to the incentive structures we've set up, so no criticism there. It's basically never actually interesting to write unless I happen to be in the mood for comedy relief, but oh well.
- The conversation with Ebisu is a good reminder for a plot thread that I found interesting but had forgotten about; thanks for bringing it up again.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Saturday, February 15, 2020, at 9am New York time.
