"Thanks for meeting me on such short notice," Hazō said, sliding into his chair after holding Ino's.
"Of course," she said, casually perfecting the alignment of her napkin and chopsticks to the edge of the table. "I assume this is about Shikamaru's little project? He said that Keiko was going to approach you."
"Yup. Would you be willing to support it?" He studied her faintly-smiling 'I have a secret' face for a moment, then hurried on. "Look, it's terrible that someone like Keiko has to jump through big flaming legal hoops just to have her relationships legally recognized in the most miniscule fashion, right? I'm not holding out hope that things will change overnight and everything will be sunshine and rainbows for people whose romantic interests aren't the norms, but it will be a step in the right direction. And love is love, right?" There we go; Ino was a girl and she read lots of
Icha Icha and other romance novels. She would go for that.
She shook her head. "I don't know, Hazō. Girls being with girls? It's not really the way of things, you know?"
What?! No! She read romance novels! She had to be into the idea of forbidden love!
"But...I mean...isn't the important part that they love each other?"
"Well, I suppose." She flipped one hand to both grant the point and also dismiss it. "Still, she's married to Shika. How is it going to affect him if his wife is off cuckolding him with another girl? Not just in private, either—this
will come out, because neither Keiko or Tenten has any hope of keeping it secret. What are people going to think when they see his wife going behind his back? It could weaken him politically at a time when we desperately need the Ino-Shika-Chō to be seen to be just as strong as ever."
"What are people going to think?" He scrambled mentally, trying to figure out how to follow that involuntary sentence. What
were people going to think? What was the right tone here? Maybe something funny? Make the whole thing seem like a joke? "I'll tell you what people are going to think: Oooh, two girls. Hot."
She laughed and thwapped his arm. "Gross! Bad Hazō."
His smile slipped. "'Gross'?" The word came out cold.
"You know what I mean," she said lightly, serving herself a honeyed rice cake off the dessert dish. Half her actual meal was still on her plate but she didn't seem to have much respect for the standard rules of food priority.
"No, Ino. I do not. Are you suggesting that my sister is gross because she loves another woman?"
Ino rolled her eyes and focused on her food. "Yeah, don't try that 'me Hazō, me big and scary' stuff on me, buster. I was talking about your crass 'joke', which wasn't nearly as funny as you thought. As to Keiko, I think she and Tenten are sweet together and if they make each other happy, fine."
"So you'll vote for it?"
"Of course I'll—" She took a nibble of the honeyed rice cake and her voice suddenly hitched. She set the cake down so that she could wipe her napkin across her mouth to remove imaginary foodstains, looking down and blinking furiously as she did it. She cleared her throat and then looked up, smiling. "Of course I'll do it," she said, discreetly pushing the cake aside and taking a bite of her pickled catmeat kebab. "Shika will owe me one and the two cuties can have their forbidden love." She gave him a flirtacious wink. "It's so easy to yank your chain, I almost feel bad about it." She nibbled another morsel, not breaking eye contact as she did. "Almost."
"So!" Hazō said, blushing for reasons he couldn't understand. "Speaking of less embarrassing topics, I wanted to thank you for loaning us Choki. It meant a lot to me, and we were able to get things sorted out."
She smiled. "Yeah, I heard." Her voice dropped into the deepest, growliest, most over-testosteroned voice that a teenage girl could manage. "I am Hazō, Lord of Clan Gōketsu, the clan of Uplift. We are the Will of Fire embodied, unlike all those other clans out there who have been embodying it since the Village was founded. We protect the weak! We make the world better with our awesome awesomeness! We are not the clan of child rapists! Hyyyyyyaaaaa!" She mimed smashing something with her fist.
"I do not sound like that!"
Ino snorted. "When you get into one of your dramatic speeches, you totally do. Well, except not as cool. Still, straight out of an
Icha Icha." She cocked her head studying him carefully. "Soooo...I'm a little surprised that you're the one coming to me on this concubine thing. I would have thought it would be Shika."
"Keiko asked me to," Hazō said with a shrug.
"Mm-hm. You sure you don't have some...
interest in the subject?" Her smile had become knowing.
Hazō blushed and busied himself with the pit-roasted octoparrot. The style of cooking was a little off, if you asked him; they dug a pit, made a bonfire in it and let it die down to embers. Then they tied the octoparrot's wings together and wrapped it in wet leaves, buried it in the pit, and dug it up an hour later. It did a good job at locking in the juices and supposedly the piquancy of the dish was due to the energetic thrashing of the octoparrot as it was buried. He still couldn't help but minutely inspect each bite to ensure there was no dirt in it.
"I don't know what you mean," he said, keeping his eyes locked on his plate and desperately hoping that she would drop it.
"Sage's love, Hazō," Ino said. "How much of an oblivious idiot are you?"
"I have no idea what you mean," he mumbled.
She sighed. "Look. Shika is putting this law out there for Keiko and Tenten, but it's going to affect all of us, not just them. What are you going to do with that?"
"I...wasn't planning on doing anything?"
She rubbed her head for a moment. "Are you seriously this thick or just being difficult?"
Hazō cleared his throat. "My situation is...complicated."
One carefully-shaped eyebrow rose. "A teenage Clan Head with a difficult romantic situation? Please, won't you explain that to me? It is completely outside my experience and I have no idea what you might mean by it."
Hazō deliberately forbore to comment on the tone. "Akane was my student. Then she was my girlfriend. Then she was my sister. Now she is my subordinate and I am her Clan Lord."
"...Okay, fair. That's complicated. Still, there's other girls in the world."
"I don't know that I would
want another girl if I weren't with Akane. She's always going to..." He hesitated, trying to find words that would encompass his feelings without stripping him utterly bare and ripe for the teasing that would no doubt rain down upon him. There were no such words, so he plunged ahead. "She's always going to have a piece of my heart and she's always going to be there. What would it be like for another woman to know that I wasn't completely hers? What would it be like for Akane to see me with another woman?"
Ino studied him, idly toying with her teacup, for a very uncomfortably long time.
"You know," she said at last, "it's important to remember that you're a ninja, and a Clan Lord."
"I mean...yes? It's not like I'm going to forget."
"I'm not sure about that." She studied him for another moment, then set the cup down and leaned forward. Her face was disturbingly serious. "Hazō, social rules apply only lightly to ninja. We are too rare, too important to the survival of Leaf, and ninja of a Great Clan are especially resistant. The Hokage—
any Hokage—can't afford to care too much about our little quirks. Gai could shout about youth, Captain Kakashi could be late and read his porn in public. Jiraiya could peep on women in the baths. Anko can bone a boy ninja torturer and a civilian girl waitress. Sure, tongues are wagged and fingers are shaken, but nothing really gets done about it unless we actually kill someone or shout lies about the Hokage's parentage in the middle of Tower Square. Well, or commit treason by contacting superpowered terrorist enemies. You know what I mean—nothing gets done about anything that doesn't interact with mission readiness, the good of Leaf, or geopolitics.
"And, because I know that you care a lot about civilians and their opinions—they mostly don't give a darn either. In part because we are their heroes and protectors. In part because we are better than them and they know it—we
set the rules and the civilians follow.
"Sure, things get complicated once clanship gets involved. Outclan marriages must happen to keep the blood from getting weak, but secrets must be kept and conflicts of interest must be navigated. It's why cross-clan marriages are rarer than elevating the best of the clanless.
"This law is about legalities, not approval. Clan Heads have been taking a piece on the side since there have been clans and everyone winks at it. Do you have any idea how many bastard children Lord Third has across Fire?"
The idea of the sixty-eight-year-old having sex made Hazō wince.
"Not like that!" Ino said, bapping him on the arm again. "When he was younger!"
"Oh. I hadn't really thought about it."
"Well, it's a lot. When he first took the hat there was a landrush to adopt anyone he had ever sired, ninja or not. Then it became obvious that he was too even-handed to play favorites just because you had one of his by-blows in the clan and things tapered off a little—sure, any of his kids with even a hint of ninja talent got adopted but the civilians are mostly still out there. There's not really much point—it's been shown that their mothers' blood was too weak to sire ninja children, even with a ninja as mighty as the Third for a father, so why bother?
"No one will care much if you date Akane, or even if you marry her. It might raise a few eyebrows, but probably not more than that. Likewise, if you marry someone of station and have a relationship with Akane on the side that's going to be fine too. Once this law passes there will be a legal framework that grants her certain rights and protections, but no one would have shunned you from polite society before this.
"So, that brings us back to my initial question...
do you have a stake in this law?" Her cat-with-cream smile and the throaty purr in her voice were setting off alarm bells in Hazō's head.
Hazō swallowed nervously, unable to look away from Ino's pale blue eyes. They reminded him of the waters on the southern isle where the team had hidden after their first long skywalker journey. He could almost smell the salty breeze and he could definitely feel heat in his cheeks.
"I...won't say I
don't have a stake in it."
Her smile got wider and she chuckled. "Well, well, well. Aren't you cute?" She tapped him lightly on the back of his hand with two fingers. "Let me know whenever you decide to act on this stake of yours. I can at least help you dress properly and tell you what to do to impress her...whoever she might be."
"Oh!" Hazō said, grateful to escape what had been feeling more and more like a trap. "That reminds me. Akane wanted to go shopping with you sometime soon—all expenses covered by the Gōketsu, of course."
"All expenses covered, hm? My, my, my."
A chill went down Hazō's spine.
"Um, yeah. And, speaking of logical connections that I can't come up with right now, I was wondering..." He paused, wondering if this was really a path he wanted to go down. It opened up so many possibilities for torment visited upon his own person, and his clan's pocketbook. Well, nothing for it.
"I was wondering if there was anything we can help you out with? You said your senior ninja were busy on unspecified ninja stuff...is there anything there we can do? Any cunning Ino Plots you might need some assistance with? What mighty quests might you have that we can take up to lighten your burden, O Illustrious Lady Yamanaka?"
Hazō was glad to see that Ino's bell-like laugh sounded unforced.
"Smooth," she said after a moment. "Very smooth." She paused, thinking. "Yeah, maybe. I need to talk to some people, but I'll get back to you."
Hazō waited to see if there would be more, but there wasn't.
"So," Ino said, nibbling on her octoparrot kebab. "Tell me more about you and Akane."
Hazō swallowed nervously.
o-o-o-o
"How'd it go?" Noburi asked.
Hazō sighed as he stripped off his headband, tossed it on the table, and flopped down into his chair with a groan.
"That bad, huh?"
"She's exhausting." He let his head fall back and his eyes close. Just a few minutes of quiet, was that too much to ask for?
"Well, better you than me," said Hazō's traitorous and unfeeling brother with a cruel chuckle.
"Sure, whatever." Hazō opened his eyes and looked over. "Hey, I meant to ask. Any word back from the Otters?"
"Yes, actually. Apparently, whathisname...their Summoner at the time, whatever his name was, left a bearing and was doing nightly check-ins. He was on a mission for them—they were a little vague about what—but I checked the archives to see if I could figure out where his home village was, since that's presumably where he left from. If it's what I think then it was almost exactly a hundred and fifty miles due west from the current Hidden Sand Village, on the west side of a mountain, and he was heading north-northwest. He was reported to be traveling slowly and had been for six nights, checking in each night. He missed his seventh check-in and that's the last they ever heard of him."
"Huh. That's actually pretty helpful."
"Yup. Now all we need to do is get Asuma's permission to go into a highly weakened and therefore touchy allied nation during a geopolitically charged time then start heading towards several nations that are neutral to Leaf
at best while trying not to die of thirst in a desert that is doubtless filled with a gazillion-billion monsters we've never heard of."
"Well, when you put it like
that..."
Noburi laughed. "I know, right? In other news, despite the fact that I told you the idea of a chakra farm on the Seventh Path did not sound like a good idea and that it probably wasn't feasible, I have thrown up my hands and given in to your constant badgering."
"I haven't badgered you once!"
"Oh,
really? 'Try taking things to the Seventh Path, Noburi. Just to check, Noburi. What can it hurt, Noburi.'" He rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I tried taking some small animals. Didn't work. Can't bring living things with me. Worse, it wasn't consistent—sometimes the animal went with me and arrived dead, sometimes it got left behind unharmed, sometimes it was damaged even though it didn't go with me, and one time I wasn't able to reverse-summon at all. Also, I have not the slightest idea why you were telling me to try draining chakra rice, but I did it. And, exactly as I told you would be the case, there are no plants that have enough chakra to be worth draining."
"Damn," Hazō said, letting his head flop back again. "I was really hoping that would work. It's easy to grow a lot of it and it isn't mobile or dangerous. If it had meaningful chakra reserves then it would have made a perfect—and amusingly literal—chakra farm."
"Heh. Well, no such luck. In better news, the koi should be arriving in a couple of months. That'll go a long way."
"Oh? We heard back?"
"Yeah, messenger came yesterday but I didn't have a chance to catch you."
"That's great. Really great." He trailed off, nodding vaguely. His thoughts were feeling like mud at the moment.
"Anyway," he said after gathering himself for a moment. "Keep working on something else that would work well for the chakra farm. The koi are a good start but I want more. I want you to be as massively overpowered as possible, both in terms of available chakra and in more general terms. Figure out whatever will work and we'll make it happen."
"...Thank you, Hazō."
Hazō opened one eye to look at his brother. "You sound surprised, dingus."
"Well..."
"Oh, for fuck's sake. Noburi, you are arguably the single most important ninja in Leaf. Your ability to transfer chakra is insanely overpowered in a village with multiple Summoners and Shadow-Clone users, but let's leave that aside. You've been focusing on Summoning and medical training for a while now and you haven't had the time to keep up your fundamentals, so you've fallen behind a bit—"
"Hey now!"
"You have, and you know it. Now that you're done with the Summoning work you'll be able to get back on combat skills. Given your skills, chakra levels, and jutsu you're going to be ridiculously powerful. You've got good defense, good offense, and that Water Dragon Bullet is going to be nuts once you get a little smoother with it. Give it a few years and you're going to be an elite jōnin at the least."
Noburi blinked.
"On that subject," Hazō said, looking around carefully. "Are you aware of any way to increase your internal chakra reserves? Anything in the new jutsu library, maybe?"
"Nothing definitive, at least nothing I've found yet," Noburi said, shaking his head. "The Akimichi contributed a set of exercises for more efficiently training your chakra reserves but it's all long-term stuff and it's not clear how it would work with my bloodline."
"Well, keep looking and let me know when you find something. I intend for every ninja in the Gōketsu—well, at least in Team Uplift—to be an S-rank badass by the end of the decade. I'm tired of always punching up."
Noburi laughed. "Yeah, I get that. God, when have we
not been punching up?"
"The Chūnin Exams. Yeah, the social event gave us a problem but when it came time to fight we stomped everyone into the damn mud."
"I seem to recall pulling you out of a muddy tunnel into which someone had stomped you, Mr. Bravado."
"Bah," Hazō said, waving one hand. "I got ambushed by three ninja, one of whom had your ridiculously overpowered bloodline. Name another time. And no, my fight against Keiko doesn't count—she's one of us. When were we overmatched by
non-Uplift people?"
Noburi shook his head in concession. "We weren't. Man, remember when we got up on that table and went all badass scary on them? That was freaking amazing."
"I know, right? Gah, I wish all problems could be solved by punching them. It would make life so much easier."
"Oh, boo-hoo. 'Poor me, I'm a Clan Head of a major clan. My life is so hard, boo-hoo.' Man up, bro."
"Hey, do
you want to do my job for a few days? I sure wouldn't mind a vacation."
"Nah, I'm good. Having way too much fun mocking you about it to lose my favorite chewtoy."
"Bah! Fetch me some tea."
"Yeah, that'll happen."
"Fetch me some tea, person who is my subordinate in this clan."
"Hmmm...still nope."
Hazō gave a long, drawn-out sigh. "Fine. Fetch me some tea, person who is my subordinate in this clan...please. I'm tired after dealing with Ino."
Noburi audibly weighed up the choices with a long,
long 'hmmmmmmmmmmmm'.
"Fetch me some tea and I'll set you up on a date with Ino."
"You know, I'm not entirely sure—"
"Fetch me some tea
or I'll set you up on a date with Ino." He opened his eyes. "Seriously, I'm beat and Gaku still has about forty pounds of paperwork for me to deal with."
"Okay, okay!" Noburi laughed. "Black or green?"
"As black as the tiny blackened heart of the thankfully deceased Hyūga Hiashi. With cream and three sugars, please."
XP AWARD: 4
Brevity XP: 0 (382 words)
Creative training XP: 0
"GM had fun" XP:
- +1 for scene: Ino convo
- +1 for scene: Noburi convo. (It was in @Oneiros's plan, not this one, but I'll give it to you anyway.)
It is now about 6pm.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, August 5, 2020, at 12pm London time.
