Chapter 365: Showing Koitesy
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
July 27, 1069 AS
"Ugh." Hazō shook his hand out to get rid of the cramps from signing form after form. "Gaku, have I told you how grateful I am to have you?"
"Thank you, sir. This is the last of the funding authorizations, if you'll sign here?"
Hazō skimmed through the form and then dashed his signature at the bottom. "Hark, do mine eyes deceive me? Is that actually the bottom of the stack?"
Gaku's thin lips twitched. "Yes sir. We're done. The paperwork has been defeated for today."
"Good news, good news." With a tired sigh he leaned his chair back, balancing effortlessly on the rear two legs as he rubbed his face. "Oh, I checked in with the skyslider team."
"Yes?"
"Yeah. They were good boys and girls while I was there but I think there's still some resentment getting in the way. Have Kimmi keep an eye on them, okay?"
"Of course, sir. Was it an enjoyable visit otherwise?"
"Actually, yes. They talked my ear off about wings and tails and feather designs and a lot of other stuff that went in one ear and out the other. Still, they seemed to enjoy having me there and I did some ego-stroking. Told them their job was the future of Leaf and everyone was counting on them, etcetera etcetera. Took them out for dinner to the Jaybird."
"I shall keep an eye out for the receipts, sir. No further cases of food poisoning, I trust?"
"Not that I saw. They seemed to enjoy it well enough."
"I'm glad to hear that, sir."
"Yeah, me too. Anyway, any further news on the telescope merchant? Or glass makers in general?"
"No further news on the telescope fellow, I fear. We have located a family of glassblowers in Tanzaku Gai. The father makes housewares—plates, pitchers, cups, things of that sort. His daughter is branching out into selling small knickknacks for rich men to put on their shelves."
"Cool. Figure out what it will take to convince them to move here and make it happen. Give them whatever they need for research. I want to be able to make telescopes."
"Yes sir."
"Is Mari back from her spa trip?" He forced himself to not put any emphasis on 'spa trip'. Mari's note saying that she was off to Hot Springs had been elegantly written, perfectly phrased, accompanied by an entirely plausible itinerary, and complete nonsense. Gōketsu Mari did not go off on vacation when there was politics and skulduggery to be had at home.
"Yes sir. Came in late last night." The last words were muddled by a jaw-cracking yawn.
"Sorry for making you get up so early," Hazō said, abashed. "I'm hitting the books with Kagome-sensei today and I wanted to clear the decks beforehand."
"No"—yawn—"trouble at all, sir. It's what I'm here for."
"Well, I still appreciate it. Anyway, I'd like to get with the two of you to talk about our chocolate monopoly and the fact that we're about to lose it because of this new harvest from the field that didn't get flooded. I'd appreciate it if the two of you would put together a plan—should we buy the land? Burn the crop? Do we buy up the chocolate first or not worry about it? The two of you put a proposal together and let's talk the day after tomorrow, first thing in the morning before I need to get to research."
Gaku gave no appearance of being anything other than sanguine about more 5AM meetings. "Of course, sir."
"Oh, and if the plan is destructive make sure no farmers are left destitute afterwards."
"Of course, sir."
"In general, tell her to make sure the whole thing is in line with Uplift. She'll understand the details of what I mean by that."
"Of course, sir."
"Thanks, Gaku."
"It's what I'm here for, sir. In other news, late last night Miss Keiko replied to your invitation. She is delighted to accompany you in clearing out the mine, but she is unable to leave for the next three days."
"That's actually good, since I want to do some more research on this chakra-sensing seal. I'm close. I can feel it."
"If I may make a request, sir?"
"Sure, what?"
"Please do not destroy the world. It's where I keep my books."
"Well, since you ask so nicely..."
o-o-o-o
July 31, 1069 AS, post-action review of seal infusion attempt
"No, no, no!" Kagome-sensei shouted, grabbing the chalk and using it to draw overly dramatic arrows indicating relevant parts of Hazō's proposed seal design. "It failed because this is a hexalink and it needs to be a heptalink, because a hexalink won't be stable in this configuration! It needs—"
"A hexalink will be fine!" Hazō snapped back. "Plus it reduces cthonostatic tension all through this arc." He gestured at the southwest quadrant.
"A hexalink will not be fine!"
"Yes, it will! The..." Hazō trailed off, groping for the right words. The subtle arts of sealing had become so much clearer to him since his experience with the Summoning Scroll. The interaction between his bloodline and the ancient artifact had divorced him from his body and left him drifting through the ultimate reality that undergirded the layer of paint that was what he thought of as the 'real' world. When Hazō had returned from his spiritual venture he had brought back fuzzy impressions of how the two realities interacted, and they had been tremendously helpful in knowing why seals did what they did. Unfortunately, although his new intuitions were usually reliable, they did not come with convenient labels that would allow them to be easily communicated.
"Hah! See! You can't describe it, so it's wrong!"
"That is not how logic works!"
"Logic?! Logic?! We're sealmasters! We both recognize—and it better be both of us!—that a skew-join trinary linking will convert to a quaternary when it's infused under a three-quarters waxing moon and will invert itself if infused under a three-quarters waning moon! Since when is logic even remotely relevant?!"
"Logic is absolutely relevant! How can you possibly think that logic is not relevant?! That's insane! How else are we supposed to—"
Hazō cut himself off at the sound of a very tentative knock on the door. Both sealmasters looked to see what the interruption was, only to find that it appeared to consist of a single eye and a sliver of a nine-year-old boy's head, the rest concealed behind the doorjamb.
"What's up, Masato?" Hazō asked, forcing himself to smile and speak gently.
The boy leaned out so that more of him was visible, then stepped into view when he saw that the crazy senior ninja were temporarily done being loud and scary. Scarier.
"Please, M'Lord, we're being attacked! Captain Atomu said to run and tell you that there were Mist ninja at the gates and I don't want to get eaten! Please don't let them eat me, M'Lord!"
Instinctively, Hazō grabbed Kagome-sensei's arm. He wasn't exactly sure why, but it seemed like the thing to do.
"Masato, it's okay. We're not going to let anyone do anything bad to you, okay?"
Giant wide-eyed nod.
"Can you tell me exactly what Atomu said?"
"Yes, M'Lord. I was training with Kimmi near the west gate. She's been working on Goddess Plucks the Rose, which I think is a stupid form because—"
"Skip ahead, please. What did Atomu say?"
"Sorry sir. He said to run and get you and tell you that there were foreign ninja from Mist at the gate and may he please kill them all? They've got a bunch of really big carts that they won't let him look inside and he's afraid they might be explosives."
Hazō exchanged nervous glances with Kagome-sensei before both of them vanished into the blur of top ninja speed.
o-o-o-o
"And I don't care if you're the second coming of the First Fucking Hokage, if you fish fuckers take one step closer to my gate then my men and I will blast you to dust!" Atomu bellowed as Hazō and Kagome-sensei arrived.
"Listen, you ignorant little troll," shouted the blue-clad man below, "I don't know who you are, but my Lord is doing your Lord an unbelievable favor. Keeping us standing out here where it's at risk of disclosure to the whole world, or—"
"What seems to be the problem?" Hazō asked, jumping up to the wall and then down on the other side of the closed gate. From the corner of his eye he saw Kagome-sensei stop at the top of the wall and pull throwing disks into each hand.
The Gōketsu estate's wall was moderately impressive—originally a six-foot high mass of granite ten inches thick, daily applications of the Multiple Earth Wall jutsu had enlarged it to be twenty feet high and a full three feet thick, stretching in an unbroken red-granite wave around the entire many-acre expanse of the estate. Despite those increases, it was still dwarfed by the massive towering escarpment that was the Wall of Leaf. The Wall originally raised by the First Hokage, that towered and loomed and left its imprimatur on history. And also left the vegetable garden in the shade too much of the day, so which numbskull had chosen to plant here of all places? No, think about that later.
"Ah, Lord Gōketsu, finally. I am Wakahisa Wataru."
Wakahisa was a squat, stubby man shaped much like the barrel that he wore on his back. His silk robes were a pale blue, the folds perfectly crisp; he must have donned them no more than minutes before approaching the Gōketsu gate, as there was no way such finery remained so clean on the road. The dandyish clothing did an excellent job hiding the shape and size of his body, including concealing his hands inside overly long sleeves. They did not, however, conceal the fact that Wakahisa's neck was a solid block of muscle with no visible fat.
Behind him stood a bizarre sight: Six massive covered wagons, each one essentially a mobile fortress. The wagons were pulled by two brace of oxen apiece, with a driver and a guard sitting on the buckboard. The guards wore Mist ninja headbands while the drivers were bare-headed and presumably civilians. Two dozen other civilians in homespun accompanied the group on foot, looking tired and travel-stained.
"Your Lordship, would you please tell your man here that I am expected and he can stop with his ridiculous threats?"
Hazō studied the wagons for a moment longer, still baffled by the size of them. No civilian trade caravan he'd ever seen used anything nearly that big. They would mire at the slightly touch of rain and even with four oxen they had to be slow as molasses. In fact, they could only conceivably be used for travel if the caravan were accompanied by a large number of ninja to defend it, and the ninja brought with them a large number of storage scrolls full of fodder to feed the oxen. Under the circumstances, it was inconceivable that they could be profitable.
"My Lord?" Wakahisa said tentatively. "You were expecting me, yes? Lady Sadaharu and her escort were sent ahead a month ago."
"I'm sorry," Hazō said, shaking his head. "I don't know who that is. We haven't had any visitors from Mist."
"Oh." For a moment, Wakahisa seemed utterly confounded. "Well...perhaps I could come in and we could sort it out?"
"Why exactl—oh." Hazō nodded thoughtfully. "Are you bringing me the Wakahisa half of the deal I made with Yasuji?"
Wakahisa nodded. "I am indeed, sir. Although we may have a problem if Lady Sadaharu never arrived. She was supposed to do the preliminary setup for the receiving facilities. I am a junior piscitist; I'm comfortable with doing simple maintenance tasks on the road but managing your entire facility is beyond me." He glanced over his shoulder at the wagons. "I would be grateful if we could move this conversation inside? I've dragged these things across two hundred miles of ocean and then some ungodly number of miles of dense forest and I would hate to lose them now. Also, there's some time pressure. You will need to use my cargo within the next week, two at the absolute most."
"Right. Open the gate! Wakahisa, we'll be taking your wagons up to the north end of the estate. There's a stream there and we're going to want the koi isolated from everything else. Atomu, send someone to find Noburi and tell him to meet us there on the double. Then find Gaku. Tell him he needs to organize a logistical effort on the level of constructing one of our apartment complexes and he needs to get it done in forty-eight hours. After he finishes freaking out, help him pack up whatever he needs and then bring him to the stream at ninja speed. Go."
"Gōketsu!" Atomu slapped his fist to his chest in salute and Substituted away.
"Wakahisa, welcome to the Gōketsu estate," Hazō said, gesturing invitation as the massive gate slowly creaked open.
o-o-o-o
"I'm here, sir!" Gaku said, stumbling a bit as he slid off of Atomu's back. "Thank you, Captain. That was terrifying."
Atomu chuckled. "My daughter likes it."
"With the greatest respect, Captain: I have no idea how old your daughter is, but I suspect that I am a bit older and creakier."
"Thank you, Atomu," Hazō said. "Another set of details for you: I need three ninja messengers dispatched.
"The first messenger goes to the Tower. I want two dozen chakra-battery missions and two construction missions for ninja with Multiple Earth Wall. Post the missions at top rate and then wait around; if one of the MEW ninja shows up and sees the mission but the rate is too low, just pay them what they want.
"The other two messengers go into the city. Find candidates for the missions and send them to the board to sign up. We're not waiting for people to happen by. Start the chakra-battery search with the KEI—the organization, not the clan. Gaku, check your records on the MEW specialists we worked with before. I remember there were a couple that were good but I don't remember their names."
"Yes, My Lord." / "Gōketsu!"
Atomu and Gaku moved a few steps away; Atomu started unsealing most of Gaku's office, including his chair and a small desk. Gaku immediately began riffling through papers.
Hazō turned back to Wakahisa. "All right, now—"
"I can't find him, My Lord!" Shōta shouted, waving his skinny seven-year-old arms frantically as he ran up. "He's not in his quarters or the dining hall or on the training field or anywhere! He's gone!"
"Shōta!" Atomu snapped. "We do not interrupt His Lordship like that!"
Hazō blinked, taking a moment to remember that Shōta had been sent to look for Noburi. "Thank you, Shōta. He's probably in the city. Atomu, please have one of the older ninja find him."
"Gōketsu!"
That was starting to get a little old. Atomu had always been grateful to be allowed to live on the estate and serve, despite not being adopted. When it was explained to him that the clan only had so many adoption tickets and he would be adopted as soon as one became available, he had become a bit too eager to prove himself worthy of being moved up the adoption queue. Technically, it was probably either illegal or rude for him to be using the clan name as an acknowledgement of orders—illegal if it were viewed as invoking his connection to the shared spirit that was a clan bond, rude if it were considered that he was simply shouting Hazō's surname at him. Either way, Hazō wasn't going to make a big deal out of it.
Come to think of it, he should probably do something about the other clanless ninja who had been living on the estate ever since the Collapse. They had to be feeling uncertain about their place now that things had calmed down. Still, that was a problem for another day.
"Excuse me for the distractions," Hazō said, turning back to Wakahisa. "I want to make sure that we have everything we need. Honestly, I have no idea how you pulled this off."
The caravan had creaked its way through the gates with great effort. The ground inside the gate was loamy and the massive wagons would have sunk themselves immovably if the carvan's porters had not put boards under the wheels, moving each board to the front again as the wagon moved off of it.
There must be a simpler way, Hazō thought to himself. Some kind of big oval board that went around all the wheels, maybe? No, that wouldn't work. He shook the thought away.
Once they had arrived at the spot that would be the future Gōketsu Chakra Koi pond the wagons had been halted, the oxen unhitched and led away, and the wagons partially disassembled.
As it happened, they were not actually 'wagons' in the conventional sense. They were essentially immense wooden crates wrapped around six only slightly less immense tubs of water, each one more than large enough for six people to soak in at once. In each tank swam one pair of koi.
"I count twelve fish," Hazō said calmly. "We bargained on twenty-five."
"My apologies, My Lord. We—"
"'Sir' is fine."
"Thank you, sir. We tried but it simply wasn't feasible. The fish require enormous amounts of food, and the quantities required increase very quickly as the size of the school increases. Furthermore, each fish requires a large amount of water to live in. If they are put in too small a space they become aggressive and even cannibalistic, but large tanks of water are heavy and hard to move overland. These tanks"—he waved at the soaking-tub sized things behind him—"are actually smaller than they should be. It's been an effort to manage the fish on the way.
"In any case, the solution was to ship six breeding pairs and a senior piscitist—that would be Lady Sadaharu—to manage the breeding and ensure maximum fertility. Lord Wakahisa has sent his formal apology and also authorization for you to have forty koi instead of twenty-five. He hopes this will suffice to maintain good relations between our clans."
"Hmm." Hazō pursed his lips in thought as he studied the two-foot fish that swam languidly around the tanks. "How long do they take to breed? How many offspring will we typically get?"
"Ordinarily, breeding season would already be upon us, but I have been delaying it while we were on the road by restricting the amount of food I give them, and also through use of some additives in their water. We can only do that for another week at the very most and then the fish must be allowed to breed or they will sicken.
"Once their season begins, the fish will mate repeatedly, but they will not be fertile unless conditions are correct—the amount of available space, an assured food supply, proper temperature and water flavorings, and various other factors that are secret to my arts. Assuming a productive match, each female will spawn up to a thousand eggs, of which perhaps half will actually bear fruit. The firstborn young will emerge ravenous and will preferentially eat the other eggs unless they are immediately transferred to a separate nursery. Even under optimal conditions, most of the young will die within a few days or a week. Any fishling that makes it for a month will probably make it to adulthood."
"And therefore we should expect...?"
"Oh! Yes, sorry sir. Under the care of a master piscitist it would be reasonable to expect perhaps twenty fishlings from each pair to make it to one month. If they live that long then the amount of care required drops tremendously and they will generally make it to adulthood unless something goes greatly wrong."
"How long do they live?"
"There are koi in the Wakahisa ponds that are older than I am, sir."
"Interesting. All right, how soon before they can generate chakra?"
Wakahisa hesitated. "Well, it depends..."
"Let me clarify the question," Hazō said quickly, eager to head off the string of caveats and equivocations that he saw looming. "I want to hear a specific number of months after birth that you would feel comfortable draining chakra from a koi for your own use assuming that you wanted to do so in a sustainable way that would not hurt the fish."
"Um...well... An adult koi—that is, a one-year-old—can have chakra drained from it every day without suffering any damage. Unfortunately, having their chakra levels fluctuate too much will delay or eliminate the fish's breeding cycle for the year, so we typically divide the fish by purpose—one set of pools for the breeders and one for the suppliers."
Hazō sighed. "Right. Okay, so we're going to need multiple different ponds. Lovely."
Wakahisa bent and dipped his hand into the flowing stream that cut through the north end of the Gōketsu estate. "This water is far too cold, sir. To be comfortable, koi want a temperature approximately that of a cool summer day. It needs to be slightly warmer for them to breed, so there will need to be a graduated series of pools." He shook his head in disbelief. "Lady Sadaharu truly never arrived?"
"She did not. I've already sent a search mission out to see if we can figure out what happened to her. In the meantime, you're the one who knows what you're doing and we need these fish functional and breeding this season. Tell us what you need to make that happen."
Wakahisa paled.
Author's Note: Hazō did seal research and made significant progress. Your plan did not specify whether or not to use FP so I decided to spend 2 ("Promising Sealing Student" and "Kagome Checked My Design"). Kagome consulted with you (and therefore supplied an Aspect for you to invoke) but did not have time to actually participate in the research proper since he's still doing the decoding and any scrap of time he's not decoding he is teaching his three students. (Based on the nature of his grumbling he is very pleased at their progress.)
At this point, Hazō pretty much has the seal nailed down and needs only to finalize the last couple of pieces, check for edge cases, and write up the report. He spent 4 days on it in this update and probably needs 4-7 more.
The situation with the koi doesn't require much input from Hazō—essentially the only thing he can do is authorize expenditures, and that doesn't require the hivemind's attention. You can be involved if there's something unusual you want to do, but it's fine to say "Enable the koi pond" and call it a day. Wakahisa will do his best to put something together for you, but he's feeling very out of his depth and he can't promise the outcome. He very much wants you to send someone back to Mist to fetch a more experienced piscivist, but that will take at least a week round trip and there isn't time so he's doing what he can.
A comment on the chocolate scene from the plan: I'm glad you're engaging with this plotline, and I salute you for having good ideas and doing the right things, but this part of the plan was pretty much "have Mari (i.e. the QMs) figure it out." An alternate way to do it would be to write "Check if she has a plan and if so do it. Otherwise, have her check this plan: [details] Assuming she has no objections, do it."
Finally, thank you guys for engaging with the 'dangerous iron mine' plot line and giving me the chance to write both punching and Dogs. I didn't have the juice to do that justice and it was about time for the caravan to show up so I figured I'd do the koi instead. The mine is probably going to be a big enough thing that it would be worth making it the only entry in a plan. The Watsonian part is easy but the Doylist part requires showing at least a tiny bit of prequel ("Where are we going and why"), then scene setting ("What do we see when we get there?"), character interaction ("You do X, I'll do Y") and then the actual combat. That would likely end up being a moderately long update all to itself.
XP AWARD: 16
Brevity XP: 4
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, August 19, 2020, at 12pm London time.
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