- Location
- Yes.
[x][faflec] screaming
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
- Location
- Yes.
WE'RE ALL GONNA DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Akane Quest: Eyed for Treason
- Location
- Yes.
Slated for Execution: A Screaming in Kagome Quest
Chapter 565: Moving Quickly
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
October 11, 1070 AS
"Good morning, sir," Hazō said, standing in the doorway. "You called?"
Asuma looked up with a gratitude that Hazō had become long familiar with from the other side—there was no source of delight quite so strong as being provided a release from paperwork. "Hazō, you're here! Come in, come in. How's your morning?" He gestured to the chair opposite him, then pulled a full tea tray from behind his desk.
Hazō settled into the chair with a polite nod and took one of the offered cups. "Going well, sir. How may I help?"
"I have good news," Asuma said. "Those adoption tickets that you've been having trouble with? I dropped a quiet word to the relevant people and they'll be on your desk by noon today. All four of them."
"Thank you, sir," Hazō said, lighting up with relief. "That's been weighing on me."
"Glad to help. And, in the vein of helping, I found you a new compound inside the village." He pulled out a map of the city with a section circled and turned it around so that Hazō could see it. He pushed it forward, pointing at the marked area and smiling widely.
Hazō looked at the map and at Asuma's pointing finger. He paused, then looked back at the Hokage.
"Sir, that's the Meiori compound."
"It is, yes. It's a large, rich area with some excellent land under it and already-built housing. They haven't been there that long, so they were willing to sell it back to the Tower. It's—"
"Sir, it's next to the Hyūga estate." Not only would Kagome-sensei flip his absolute shit at having the 'cheating eyeball stinkers' living next door but there would be no way to hide that the family—well, most of them—were all training with massive numbers of Shadow Clones. The secret of WHOOSH would escape in seconds.
"Well, yes," Asuma said, "but the buffer zone is quite wide. Wider than any Hyūga's range. It won't be an issue so long as you don't build against the wall on the western side."
Hazō took a breath and forced his voice to stay calm. "Sir, I am very grateful that you want to increase the Gōketsu's safety and security, and that you are helping us find new grounds, but this site makes me very uncomfortable. I must ask: are you, in your role as Hokage and with the full weight of the Hokage's office behind your words, giving me a direct order to live on this ground? If so, I will do as ordered and make the best of it. If not, I would like to discuss alternative options."
He was quite proud of that last sentence. So much more polite than "there is no fucking way I'm putting my people there even if it means going missing again." See? Politics wasn't so hard!
Asuma frowned in confusion. "No...it wasn't an order. Hazō, this is a large, luxurious, and extremely valuable walled and gated property that you are going to acquire at little to no cost. It's got a hot spring. It's got an ornamental garden. It's got housing that should suffice for everyone in your clan, including the civilians. It's at the crossroads of Namikaze Way and Namizake Street, making it easy to receive deliveries either from the Sunset Gate or the North gate, since visiting merchants can drive straight to get to you. It's barely a hop to the best markets in the city, as well as the theater district. Granted, the Hyūga are adjacent to it, but the width of the yard inside the wall is sufficient."
"I acknowledge that these are positive traits of the land," Hazō said. "I am grateful that you put so much thought into finding us a location. Despite that, I would prefer to look for something else."
Asuma studied him for a moment, then tossed down the inkstone he'd been fiddling with. He shook his head ruefully and leaned back. "All right, not going to live next to the Hyūga unless I chain you there. Message received. Let's find you somewhere you'll like better."
o-o-o-o
October 12, 1070 AS
"...and, last but by no means least, allow me to present to you your newest clan brother: Gōōōketsu Yūdai!" Hazō said, turning to face the curtains at the side of the stage and gesturing.
Gōketsu (né Jinno) Yūdai, formerly a clanless genin with a string of girlfriends and a bones-deep certainty that he was going to be dead in a couple years so why not seize life in both hands, emerged from behind the curtain and made a tumbler's pass across the stage. Handspring into no-hands cartwheel into ceiling jump into backflip, stick the landing and bow before straightening up with a brilliant smile.
The crowd went nuts.
The adoption of new ninja into any clan was a major occasion, and adoption into a clan as new and with as few ninja as the Gōketsu was worthy of a full-on carnival. After all, a clan's strength was in its ninja, and the more ninja Gōketsu had the safer the civilian Gōketsu were. Or, said differently, ninja from your clan were protectors and outclan ninja were potential threats. Converting the latter into the former was a cause for celebration.
The evening had been building to a crescendo with the three earlier adoptions: Haruki, the medically-retired chūnin with palsy and progressive dementia who had been living on the estate since the Collapse, followed by Fuyuki Kazushi, the clanless genin who had asked to study sealing under Kagome-sensei, and Sugiyama Shinji, one of the clanless genin with whom Hazō had bonded on the way back from the Chūnin Exams and who Kagome-sensei had since taken on as a sealing student. Jinno Yūdai, now Gōketsu Yūdai, had been another of the clanless bonding group from that trip, specifically the one who had enabled Hazō to burn his mouth on honey-soaked apple slices. He was a bright young man who had been studying sealmastery with Kagome-sensei for months and had endeared himself to many on the estate by being smart enough to pick up on the simple chain of logic that went:
- I want Hazō to adopt me
- Hazō cares about the well-being and opinions of his clan members, even the civilians
- The more I contribute to the well-being of Hazō's clan members, the more they will like me
- The more they like me, the more likely they are to urge Hazō to adopt me
- Therefore, I should be nice to, and contribute to the well-being of, the Gōketsu clan members, civilian and ninja alike
- Also, I should do that anyway because I'm not a complete asshole
"Gō-ke-tsu, Gō-ke-tsu, Gō-ke-tsu!" someone shouted, others taking up the chant until the enormous Gōketsu meeting hall was rocking.
Hazō, sweet summer child that he was, had envisioned this ceremony as an enjoyable party. It had instead started off as an excited shindig and, as the sake and beer flowed, grown into an enthusiastic hootenanny. People were stamping their feet and pounding on the tables with their mugs, in some cases strongly enough to make the cutlery and glasses bounce. Hazō was starting to get worried enough that he had made a note to have Gaku look into bulk prices for replacement tables and chairs.
"No skills, no papers!" one of the older ninja called from the back of the room, her voice filled with friendly jeers.
"No skills, no papers! No skills, no papers!" other Gōketsu ninja started chanting, pounding their mugs on the tables of the Gōketsu Clan's meeting hall. The tables were set up in rows, chairs on the ends and the north side so that no one was facing away from the stage.
"They've already got their papers!" Hazō attempted to say, but his subordinates were too happy and too tipsy to pay attention.
"Skills! Skills! Skills!"
"All right, all right!" said Jinno. (No! Hazō thought. He's Yūdai now. My clanmate deserves first names.) "What shall I show? Perhaps some of my world-famous taijutsu?" He twirled around and then fell into a swaying hunch, hands in loose fists and index fingers extended. "The terrifying Chicken Style! I peck you!" He lurched forward, jabbing at the air with his fingers.
"Booooo!" someone shouted, laughter in the words.
"Ah, you fear the Chicken! Very well, then how about the mighty Mass Invisibility Technique! Behold!" He flicked out a Tiger and Boar seal, then clapped one hand over his eyes. "You are all invisible! I can't see you!"
"Re-bound, re-bound, re-bound!" came the chant, first one voice and then many. The ninja started it, the civilians joined in despite having no clue what it meant.
Hazō frowned. He had no clue what it meant either.
Jinno—Yūdai, damnit—took his hand away from his eyes and grinned. "Rebound you say? Rebound you shall have! Wapah!" He shifted into a cat stance, hands raised in front of himself, palms down. "Bring it on, starting with...you!" He pointed off into the audience.
A knife flew across the room at Yūdai's head. His hand snapped up and plucked the weapon from the air, hurling it back. Granted, it was a butter knife instead of a battle knife and it was thrown with slothful speed and no spin. Still, Hazō nearly had a heart attack watching the cutlery fly into the moderately drunk crowd comprised mostly of civilians.
"Not into the crowd!" he hissed to Yūdai, doing his best to keep his voice down but still project it across the ten feet between them.
The newest Gōketsu nodded tightly, not losing his smile or looking away from the audience. The second incoming 'weapon', a three-tined fork, was caught and tossed casually backwards to bounce off the wall.
"That all you got?" Yūdai mocked. "My old granny throws better than that!"
That was not, in fact, all that the crowd had. A shower of chopsticks, cutlery, dishes, and (weirdly) shoes washed across the stage. Yūdai leaped and spun and surged back and forth, snatching as many of the 'throwing weapons' from the air as possible. Some of the throws were bad enough that Yūdai had to work to reach them, and some were so far from their purported target that the Yellow Flash himself couldn't have stopped them. Hazō had to twist aside from an errant soup spoon.
"Aha!" Yūdai said, fingers darting forth to snatch something from the air too quickly for the audience to see that there had not actually been anything there. Hazō, from his angle behind and to the side, could see the moment that Yūdai produced the object that he'd been palming all this time. To wit: a pair of frilly feminine panties.
"Ah, my love! So bold! So daring!" Yūdai called to the audience, eyes wide in simulated surprise as he held up the clothing for display. "So very delightful that you throw your favor at me from the very seats!"
All eyes turned to Mikiko, Yūdai's well-known Gōketsu lady friend. Where Hazō would have expected a blush there was only a wicked grin. "Don't forget to bring those with you tonight!" she called up to the stage. Cheers and laughter erupted around her.
Hazō smiled and faded back from the stage. His part in the ceremony was over and the revelry was only just getting started.
o-o-o-o
October 16, 1070 AS
Mari had her head on a swivel as they walked through the clan's new land. She was dressed in layers of silk kimonos that satisfied the strictest standards of Leaf's fashion while, in the aggregate, also being suitable for the weather. Her hair was brushed, her makeup perfect, her jewelry tasteful yet expensive, and for some reason this was the appearance she had chosen despite knowing that they were going for a site walk across undeveloped ground when rain had been falling not two hours earlier. Hazō was struggling to maintain a straight face. The situation was funny enough to distract from the slight headache he was carrying after the party last night. Weirdly, it wasn't a hangover; he'd drunk in great moderation, not interested in getting tipsy. No, the problem was that the party had gone on long enough that he hadn't gotten enough sleep and his body was taking its revenge. Was this what it was like to get old? Not even able to manage a late night without a mild headache? What would it be like when he reached the rickety age of twenty?
"What's with that?" Mari asked, pointing at a pile of wreckage off to the right and thankfully breaking Hazō out of his semi-amused and semi-appalled ponderings on aging and mortality.
Hazō grimaced. "Demolished civilian housing. Asuma and I spent two hours finding a spot that both of us were happy with the Gōketsu estate sitting on. I wanted a certain amount of land, far from the Hyūga, and a few other things. He wanted..." He waved the topic away. "Whatever. It was a long, boring, and very frustrating meeting. The solution we finally came to is that we get Senju Ken Park, plus some of the adjacent area. It includes a hot spring, a bunch of undeveloped green space, and two large water features so we can have the koi in one and use the other for drinking and bathing. Problem is, in order to make it work he had to throw in some land that had civilian apartments on it. He's had the Tower acquire the land, relocate the civilians, and demolish the structures."
"Demolish them? Why not let our people use them?"
"I wouldn't have put our dogs in those places," he said. "They were slums." He grimaced. "The part that bothers me is that we can't simply adopt the people who were living there, at least not right away. Bad optics for us to buy the land and, apparently, the people living on it. For now, they're all being housed at Tower expense and in greater comfort than what they had."
"How many of them?"
"A few hundred. It was a small but very dense neighborhood. And no, there really wasn't a better option once all the factors were weighed. Once we've got the compound squared away for our own people I'll go see what I can do to help those we displaced. In the meantime, I'd like you to work with the Merchant Council to make sure they're taken care of. We can hire some till'n'fill missions to build housing for those people if the Council will let us." Because, obviously, improving the lives of Leaf's citizens was something you should have to say pretty please about instead of just going and doing it. Especially in the city that prided itself on the Will of Fire being about protecting each other and working together.
"Can do. I haven't visited Kiyomoto in a while. It'll be good for both of us."
Hazō very intentionally forbore to ask about Mari's cat-with-cream expression. Whatever it was about, and he had his suspicions, he didn't want to know.
"Anyway, I'm figuring we use MARI to put walls up around the area," he said instead. "Then we do the same thing we did with the current compound—MEW up some housing, set up the necessary outbuildings, then I can use Earthshaping to beautify the place. The good news is that we aren't in a rush this time. Asuma hasn't given us a firm deadline for when we have to move, but I'm getting the sense that he's going to start dropping some increasingly pointed hints if we aren't in here by this time next week."
Mari laughed. "What does it say about our lives when we think that a week is plenty of time to create an elegant clan compound for hundreds of people?"
"That we are apparently the only ninja in the world who aren't stupid?" Hazō suggested. "We actually recognize that jutsu are good for things other than punching people."
She rolled her eyes. "Other people recognize it too, they simply don't advertise that fact to the degree we do. Anyway, how many gates are you planning to put up? The way the jutsu works it's more efficient to do long stretches. Every opening means you need a new casting and the startup cost makes it much more expensive in terms of chakra."
"Actually, I've got an idea about that," Hazō said. "MARI generates a wall three yards high as measured from ground level. That means it follows the contours of the land."
"Yup. It's part of why the NOBURI roads have been so challenging—clearing the land with Force Wall saws is easy and stumping the remains is manageable, but the crews have to do at least some leveling if they want the roads to be usable for civilian carts."
"I didn't know you were following the NOBURI project," he said, eyebrows shooting up in surprise.
"I'm your spymistress, Hazō. I follow lots of things," Mari said, smiling. She blinked, releasing the genjutsu that he hadn't realized he was trapped in, and ruffled his hair before he could jerk back out of reach.
"You realize I'm your Clan Lord now, right?" he grumbled, pulling away so that he could push his hair back into some trace of order. "Would it kill you to show a little respect?"
"Possibly. Besides, I've been slacking off on your anti-genjutsu training and felt the need to start it up again."
"Delightful. Anyway, we figure out where we want the walls and the gates. Where we want the gates, we dig a trench five yards deep. The walls are five yards high on either side of the trench and ground level in the trench."
Mari frowned. "Does that work? Doesn't the wall need to be contiguous?"
"Eh, so we dig it not quite five yards deep. Leave it sticking up enough that the top of the lower segment is in contact with the rest of it. We'll fill over it so it'll be just a slight hump as you go in. Or maybe the jutsu will handle it regardless, running down the side of the trench or something."
"Hazō...are you sure it's a good idea to be poking at jutsu in order to find out what they do in edge cases?"
That brought Hazō up short.
"Hm," he said. "I think—"
Does Hazō want to try this idea? This vote closes at the same time as the main vote. Once it's defined I'll edit this update based on the result of the vote. It will likely only be a couple extra paragraphs; this is an experiment to see how this mid-update voting works for our community, and also to try out the 'tasks' segment of the tally bot.
Please use the square-bracketed '[Gates]' tag so that the tally bot can separate these votes into their own section. It would be best if you copy/pasted.
[][Gates] Experiment, very carefully, with Hazō's gate-building idea about digging a trench
[][Gates] Do not try Hazō's gate-building idea about digging a trench
If you vote to try the experiment then Hazō will do it will full Kagome-level precautions and advice from appropriate experts.
This vote is separate from the main vote and therefore does not count against word count. Write-ins are not being accepted.
Please use the square-bracketed '[Gates]' tag so that the tally bot can separate these votes into their own section. It would be best if you copy/pasted.
[][Gates] Experiment, very carefully, with Hazō's gate-building idea about digging a trench
[][Gates] Do not try Hazō's gate-building idea about digging a trench
If you vote to try the experiment then Hazō will do it will full Kagome-level precautions and advice from appropriate experts.
This vote is separate from the main vote and therefore does not count against word count. Write-ins are not being accepted.
"That aside," he said, "I'm thinking that I want to make this estate beautiful. I want it be a home, not a jumped-up refugee camp like our current one, even if we're starting to get that one into proper shape." He stamped hard on the sudden flash of anger concerning his clan being forced out of their home, and forced himself to continue in a normal tone. "I want it to be the kind of place that other clans look to with admiration. A place we can bring people in order to impress them. Not just because our people deserve to live in such a place, but because it will give us political influence. Thoughts?"
Mari raised an eyebrow in approval. "I like it. I especially like the fact that you're thinking about the political implications of your choices."
"Clan Lord," he reminded her. "I've finally recognized the lesson."
"Oh? What lesson is that?"
"That just because you live in the same village doesn't mean you're friends. That clans don't have friends, they have allies, enemies, and the Hokage. That 'Clan Lord' actually means 'warleader', not 'administrator' or 'dispenser of justice' or anything like that."
Mari smiled, a bit sad and a bit amused. "Kei been teaching you etymology?"
"She has, yes. Apparently she got a book on it recently and she's been gobbling it down. Also, congratulations on calling her Kei instead of Keiko. I don't think I said that before."
"Thank you, I think?" She shrugged. "I decided that I'm tired of being angry with her, and I realized that calling her 'Keiko' was a petty way of expressing my anger. So, fine. I'll call her 'Kei' if she prefers that."
"I'm impressed." He carefully did not say 'I am proud of you'. Being proud of someone's choice implied that you had a hand in that choice. Hazō could be proud of Mari for embodying the concepts of Uplift that he had introduced her to, or for protecting the Gōketsu clan of which he was a member, but for this bit of growth he could only admire her. She had done this one entirely on her own.
"Thanks," she said. "You mentioned that this place has a hot spring?"
"Right this way," he said, gesturing and leading her in the appropriate direction. "After we check it out, I want to get your thoughts on a different section. First one: whichever gate we decide is the main gate, I was thinking of putting a statue of Jiraiya there. Something impressive—fists on his hips, gazing heroically into the distance, that kind of thing."
She burst into laughter, so much of it that she had to clutch her stomach. "Make it big!" she gasped. "Astride the gate, so you have to walk between his legs to come onto our land."
The image caught Hazō just as he was inhaling and the laugh turned into a coughing fit. It took a few seconds, but eventually the two of them had regained their composure.
"That is absolutely going to happen," he said, nodding and continuing on towards the hot spring. "Sage's boon, Jiraiya will love that." He raised a preemptive finger. "We are not making the statue anatomically correct."
She raised an eyebrow. "'Will' love that?"
"Yes, will. Back on topic, I'm thinking a couple of training halls, enclosed to protect from the weather and long enough for ranged weapons practice." Or, said differently, a training hall for the majority of Gōketsu ninja and a separate place where Team Uplift could continue to WHOOSH in secret. If any non-Gōketsu Leaf ninja saw them training with half a dozen simultaneous Shadow Clones it would have been immediately obvious that something strange was happening. Only Naruto could survive having more than a handful of clones running at the same time; for anyone else, the psychic shock of that many clones popping after multiple hours of practice would be fatal. The fact that resistance to clone shock could be trained was Hazō's greatest discovery. By having the family devote all their training to managing clone shock it enabled them to have more clones out and thereby do more training on resistance to clone shock. They'd been doing that for a year or so now and they were all capable of having half a dozen clones training simultaneously, for multiple hours at a time. When the clones popped, all of that training was merged back into Prime's world line as though they themselves had done it.
The Gōketsu were finally getting to the point where Hazō was letting them use their clones to train actual ninja skills, and the speed of advancement was enormous. It was so fast that he had taken to referring to it in his head as 'WHOOSH', the sound that a diving bloodhawk made as it zoomed by your ear if you managed to dodge in time.
Of course, the insight was fragile, easily discovered, and Hazō didn't think that it would fit under the umbrella of clan secrets. The Shadow Clone was a secret of Leaf, not of the Gōketsu, and WHOOSH was a simple insight on how to use it effectively. If another clan learned the secret then they might be able to outpace the Gōketsu, powering up their own ninja faster than Team Uplift could empower themselves. Hazō couldn't have that. He intended, within a few years, to have a clan of multiple S-rank ninja.
Why? Because it had become clear that the way you got things done in Leaf was to have overwhelming physical power on your side. That you could do what you want so long as you could punch through walls. That you could basically ignore inconvenient rules, and that the Hokage would not trouble you overmuch so long as he knew you could kill him.
The next time Asuma decided to kick the clan off their land, or to potentially murder Akane for knowing something sensitive—shoot, the next time something happened as simple as Hazō's morality and desire for world improvement coming into harsh contact with Asuma's paranoia and overbearing nature...well, that conflict was going to go a little differently, and there wasn't going to be any killbox involved.
Not for Hazō, at least.
o-o-o-o
October 15, 1070 AS
"Good news and bad news," Haru said. His eye twitched at the repetitive metallic clicking sound Mari was making on the couch. She'd taken off her big loopy earrings and now idly swung them around her fingers while listening to Haru's report, repeatedly bouncing them off of each other so they reversed direction.
"Understood," Hazō said. "Let's start with the good news."
"Right," said Haru. "First, whoever's been slandering us has decided to stand down after the Motoyoshi and Kyoshō got in a feud. There were a couple bar fights, a trade war started to escalate between them, and the Hokage came down on them like a hammer. Everyone involved reprimanded, clan heads chastised, and lots of reparations exchanged by both sides. Whoever our enemy is got the message—Asuma is going to be riding the clans hard to focus on rebuilding and not on internal conflict—so they've stopped funding their theater troupes.
"Of course, the plays were on the decline anyway. There's only so many ways to slander you and still keep an audience's attention, and our counter-bribes were convincing most of the troupes to find better material. It looks pretty natural, like they just decided to move on, so we shouldn't have to worry about the Hokage noticing it and getting us caught in the area-of-effect."
Hazō sighed. "Let me guess the bad news. The ramp-down was so natural that we have no way of telling who it was, in the end?"
"Right," Haru said, his face grim. "Still, Mari and I are ninety-nine percent sure it was the Hagoromo. They've been taking far too much joy in twisting the knife in any Gōketsu ninja they meet, talking about how our Clan Lord is a coward and a weakling without actually saying anything so blatant that it would permit a response on our part. You're right that we don't know for sure who it was, but no, that's not the bad news. The bad news is that the plays basically worked."
"What do you mean?" Hazō asked.
"Well," Haru said, ticking off items on his fingers, "the Amori have backed out of contract negotiations and are icing us out, the Akimichi have decided to seek investment from the Hyūga for their latest ventures rather than us, and the Kurusu have backed out on a trade venture we were discussing for marketing silk to their longstanding trade partners in Lightning. Looks like the conservative clans saw our tainted reputation and decided they'd rather wait to see if we fix it rather than let themselves get dirtied by association."
"I see," Hazō said. "Well, you did what you could and things seem to have come out much better than they could have. Mari, please tell Gaku to give me an update on the clan finances sometime? I'm only vaguely aware of the numbers, but we might need to tighten our belts a bit this winter."
Mari put the earrings back in her ears. "Haru, thank you for reporting. If that's all, could you give us the room for a moment?"
"I'll be in my office," Haru said, nodding stiffly before leaving.
Hazō sighed. "He still doesn't like me, does he?"
Mari shrugged as she pulled herself to her feet and moved forward so she could lean over the chair in front of Hazō's desk. Deeply ingrained reflexes from years of Mari exposure let Hazō look away from her cleavage almost instantly, but the distraction was sufficient to let Mari give his hair a quick ruffle.
"Nope," she said, laughing at Hazō's frustrated attempt to get his hair back in order. "I'd say he's coming around, but things are pretty much stable on his end. He respects your ideals and the good things you do with the Gōketsu, and he doesn't like you personally. That's not ideal, but it's not a problem. Clans have survived abrasive clan heads for generations. You're far from the worst that's ever ended up in the big chair."
"I'd like to not be an abrasive clan head that my people merely tolerate," Hazō said. "I'll think about if there's anything I can do with Haru. What exactly did you want to talk about, Mari?"
Mari smiled and leaned forward a little deeper. "Oh, just some things I've seen around the estate that I thought you ought to know about. Say, the occasional ninja track in out-of-the-way places."
Hazō frowned. "Is someone surveilling us?"
"Of course not! I mean, sure, the tracks and their timings line up just right with ANBU's patrol guidelines and shift changes, but it's preposterous to think that ANBU would be actively surveilling a Leaf clan in good standing. Besides, ANBU agents are very skilled at what they do. I'm sure there's no way even the village's top jōnin could notice that they'd been around."
Hazō's frown deepened. "Mari, that would be a serious problem. What did you see?" He carefully did not ask 'and how do you know the details of ANBU patrol guidelines and shift changes?' That was a conversation to be had never.
"Nothing of any importance, that's for sure. Nothing suggestive that would make me start thinking about anything. Sure, these tracks seem to be centered around Akane, but I'm sure that's a coincidence, as is the fact that they only started appearing after that chakra beast extermination mission she was specifically assigned to instead of it being posted on the board for anyone who wanted it. I'm also very sure these tracks have nothing to do with the sealing failure you caused last week. The one that created that massive storm which was very clearly a seal failure and not anything else."
Hazō suppressed a shudder. Asuma had told him to keep the secret and he'd tried his best. Asuma couldn't blame Hazō if Asuma's ANBU agents were the ones that gave away the Elemental Mastery secret to Mari, right? Better play it safe. "I don't know what to take from that."
Mari, the woman who had all but taught Hazō how to lie, smiled wider. "Well, I just wanted to point something out: the Hokage knew about the plays the whole time, I'm sure. Haru seems to think that only important things reach the Hokage's attention, but in reality, Asuma not only gets briefed by the ANBU and also by Sarutobi Clan agents, but also generally keeps an eye on the pulse of the village. He might not have investigated it himself to know the source, but... If he, say, suddenly got a reason to want to make our clan happy, he might have sent discreet messages to a bunch of the clans that could plausibly have wanted to slander us, telling them to knock it off."
"Okay," Hazō said. "I suppose that's a possibility."
"Of course, I just wanted to raise it to your attention. And of course, this possibility depends on the Hokage suddenly paying a lot more attention to our clan for some reason. A less humble woman than me might wonder who in particular he's paying attention to and why, but luckily, I'm not terribly humble and therefore I'm sure that I am the center of his attention due to my beauty, wit, and charm. I am very confident in this and have no desire to speculate on alternative explanations, due only to my complete lack of curiosity and not to the fact that ANBU doesn't like it when people's idle speculations turn out correct."
Hazō sighed. "I understand. Thank you for the...entertaining hypothetical, Mari."
Mari stepped back from the chair and made a sweeping bow. "I aim to please, milord. Now, if there's nothing else...?" She waited for his headshake, then tossed him a casual salute and sauntered out.
The moment she was out of sight, she leaned back in. "Incidentally, were I to continue that line of hypothetical storytelling, I might suggest that it would be a good idea for Akane to avoid using any especially secret clan techniques for a few months. Oh, in life or death battle, fine. Probably best to avoid training any of them, though. Or training with them. Otherwise they might go whooshing right out the door and into the public awareness."
"Ah," Hazō said. "Yes. Interesting point. Thank you, Mari."
She winked at him and pulled her head back around the corner. He could hear her humming a jaunty tune as she walked away. He even recognized the tune; she had hummed it all the time during their missing-nin days, when she was a sadistic jōnin sensei running training exercises for her exhausted then-genin. She called it her 'enjoying the fact that this is not my problem' song, sometimes also known as the 'taking joy in the suffering of others' song.
Alone in his office, Hazō chewed on the end of his brush, his stomach roiling in a snake's nest of various fears since this was very much his problem.
o-o-o-o
October 18, 1070 AS
The canteen was crowded and Yūma was starting to feel the pressure.
He had been chatting amiably with Lady Akane for the last ten minutes. Or, rather, chatting at her, since she barely responded. He wasn't sure what exactly must have happened to put the estate's radiant, gorgeous, sunny-dispositioned Lady-apparent (was that how inheritance worked or would Lady Mari keep running the show after the inevitable wedding?) so deep down in the dumps. Still, Yūma was the kind of man to see a bad situation and find opportunities to do good. He would raise her spirits or die trying!
"—but you know, I can't exactly tell you," he said. He paused, letting the tension build for just a moment before delivering the punchline. "After all, you're not a monk."
No laugh, not even a giggle. He'd even settle for a snicker at the joke's delivery, with the over-the-top voices and the accents and the gestures and everything.
This was bad. He'd worked through all his A-list material, all his B-list material, and now he was scraping the bottom of his C-list. He was already burning his reputation doing this in the canteen where everyone could see his failure to get a laugh from his chosen target—and wasn't that against the laws of nature or something? Gōketsu Yūma never failed to get a laugh. Well, at least the kids were laughing at his jokes, even if they tried to pretend they weren't listening. Still, the fact that he was surrounded by civilian families meant that he couldn't pull out the bawdy jokes, even if he had thought that Lady Akane were the type to like that humor, which he wasn't sure about. No, he needed a real zinger, and he needed it fast.
"Okay, how 'bout this one! So, there's these three priests walking down the road, and they—"
Yūma paused as a buzzing sound crescendoed, rising to his feet as Lady Akane did the same. He leaped away as she shot forward with a snap kick at the center of the table, where one of the storage seals they'd grabbed lunch from was making the strange noise. Food flew everywhere and the plank of wood broke free and made it halfway to the wall before something happened and its middle section disappeared. It hit the wall in two pieces.
Pop, pop, popopop.
Screams split the mess. Yūma spun and scanned the hall, ninja instincts kicking in almost immediately to stifle his reactions and keep him calm.
A young girl screamed and pawed at the spot below her shoulder where blood sprayed out. A man stared blankly as the corpse that used to be his wife crumpled, the front half of her skull neatly severed in a gruesome display of viscera. A pair of legs, barely attached by a section of hip, collapsed to the ground.
"MOM!" yelled Akane. In a burst of speed, she was suddenly behind the counter where the attendants had been handing out food. She knelt next to a middle-aged woman (her mother?) who had fallen with her arm severed below the elbow. Akane lit her hands with pale-green medical chakra (since when did Lady Akane know medical ninjutsu?), then paused, shook her head, dispelled the effect, and cast her Flame Aura.
She snapped her head over to Yūma. "Noburi!" she screamed. "Now!"
Yūma nodded and started to run as Akane started to cauterize her mother's wounds.
o-o-o-o
"—at which point, Prism made a feeble appeal to our consanguineous origins, apparently beseeching me to overlook our shared creation that morning," Snowflake said, surprisingly animated. Apparently, the Kittensphere's last board game night had ended well for the Gōketsu representatives. "I refused her my forbearance and proceeded to—"
She broke off midword as reality cracked open across the lunch counter they had departed not two minutes earlier, with full bellies and a desire for the warmth of the living room hearth.
Missing-nin reflexes kicked in, sending Hazō rolling off his chair and behind one of the cubes of polished and Earthshaped granite that made for both convenient end tables and discreet blast shields in case of attack. Snowflake had technically not existed during Team Uplift's missing-nin days, but she had inherited those reflexes in full measure from her progenitor; she made it to cover an instant before Hazō did, weapons springing to hand.
A moment later, a background buzzing sound crescendoed with a pop, and air rushed towards the counter where they'd been eating, like an implosion seal's aftermath.
Snowflake looked over to where Hazō crouched, one eyebrow raised interrogatively.
Hazō met her eyes and flickered handtalk. Cover me. Three...two...one.
He burst up from behind the granite, chakra surging into his veins as he charged to the side, leaping up and flipping to run across the ceiling so as to confuse the eye of any potential attacker. Snowflake came up on one knee so that the table continued to shield most of her body while she readied her attacks.
Hazō slowed to a stop and flipped back to the ground. "All clear," he said, his voice distracted. "Come look at this."
Snowflake joined him, weapons still in her hands.
Two hemispheres of stone had been carved cleanly from the lunch counter, as if scooped away by a massive melon baller. The spheres were centered right on where the seals containing the detritus of Hazō and Snowflake's lunches had been sitting.
"Hazō—" Snowflake began. She was cut off by a Banshee seal activating outside. One long pulse, two short. Major sealing failure. And by the sound of it, centered on the Gōketsu estate, not in Leaf proper.
Hazō wasted no time, vaulting over the ravaged countertop and making for the door. "Go find Noburi," he called over his shoulder. "Tell him to meet me where the smoke is. We'll need chakra and maybe toads. You decide if we should handle this in-house or if we need Kei and the Nara. I'll find Kagome-sensei."
"Understood," she said, jogging alongside him. "If I decide Prime is needed then I shall dispel myself and have her re-summon me back on the Nara estate. It will be faster than running there."
He nodded his thanks and yanked the front door open, slipping out into the cold October air.
o-o-o-o
It was a surprisingly busy day in the Gōketsu Storage Seal Bank's main branch. The bank was a one-storey squat building of (as expected for the Gōketsu estate) red granite. Hazō hadn't had time to Earthshape it into something more attractive than a big block of rock, but various estate dwellers had painted it white and even added murals. It was the second bank built (the first being in the city proper) but it was now considered the main bank with the city-based version merely a branch office. Despite that, it was built at the southern end of the estate, in the shadow of the towering walls of Leaf proper and right next to the Gōketsu estate's gate where people coming onto the estate could use it easily. It offered lower prices than the branch office, as a way of encouraging mixing between Leaf's public and the Gōketsu on their otherwise isolated land.
With that strange storm and the unseasonable cold, a fair few people, both Gōketsu and civilians from inside Leaf, had opted to exercise common sense and get some food in storage for the future. If the Hokage had to ration the food stores again this winter, at least they would have something to fall back on. It was just about the anniversary of the collapse of the Gōketsu scrip, and it certainly said something positive about the Gōketsu's recovering public trust that the usage of the storage seal bank in Leaf had nearly returned to its level prior to the bank run and civilians were making the trek out of Leaf's gates, along the wall, and onto the Gōketsu land in order to use the main office.
None of the civilian tellers caught the buzzing sound in time. Haruki did, but the sound was so unfamiliar that it didn't immediately trigger his battle reflexes. Only when he noticed that it was coming from the seal racks did the fear flood through him.
"Move!" he screamed at the civilians, even as he himself surged to his feet. "Outside, everyone!" He grabbed the collar of the teller sitting next to him and heaved the man over the desk and towards the door, chakra-boosted strength getting him a good ten feet of air before he hit the floor. Before he touched down Haruki had already flickered to the next of the civilian tellers and heaved him after the first, then moved to the third. Gōketsu Kaito, the third teller, was younger and had good reflexes for a civilian; he was already halfway to his feet when Haruki grabbed him around the bicep and hauled him over the desk like a sack of potatoes, dragging him along while racing for the door. The other two tellers and the civilian customers were moving under their own power.
Behind them, the floor-to-ceiling rack of seals exploded, sending chunks of wood and broken seals and outerdimensional nightmares splattering in all directions. Spheres of pure destruction blinked in and out of existence, taking massive chunks of bodies and building with them. Haruki and his human cargo didn't even have a chance.
Outside the bank, the area was busy with passersby on their way to and from Leaf work, or running errands on the estate itself. They screamed in horror as the bank collapsed in on itself, dust and rock and debris scattering in all directions.
Gōketsu Gaku, chancellor and secretary to the Lord of his clan, had been six steps from the threshold of the bank when the building collapsed. He took a blast of dust straight in the eyes and slowly backed away from the demolished building, coughing and dropping the bag of fresh persimmons he'd been snacking on while he came to check on how things were going at the bank.
The debris lurched, mounded up, and sloughed away as mountainous shards of crystal-clear ice expanded out to nearly the size of the Hokage Tower. The explosive growth paused, but Gaku saw it continuing to change, expanding in fractals tracing through the air.
Gaku decided it would be wiser to back away quickly, rather than slowly.
Black beads, each the size of a grape, started to stream out from the building, rolling out to cover the ground. Within the ruins of the building, Gaku thought he saw clusters of the black grapes agglomerating on the corpses within. A chunk of flesh fell off a corpse without anything to sever it. In an instant, the chunk balled up and turned black.
Gaku revised his earlier decision and decided to run instead.
o-o-o-o
Jin heaved aside a section of stonework. "Apologies, sir, but do try to keep still," he said as he scooped up the man that had been trapped under the masonry and started to pick his way back outside where he'd left the rest of the inhabitants of the collapsed cottage. It was one of the detached units that had started springing up lately as a few people decided to move out of the apartment complexes.
He set the man down and rose to attention when he noticed who was standing there. "Lord Hazō," he said.
Hazō nodded quickly. "Jin. Do you know where Mari or Yuno are?"
"I assume they're with their genin teams, sir," Jin said.
Hazō sighed. "Okay, I've sent a messenger to them, but hopefully they see the commotion and return. We need all hands on deck." He gestured at the various injured people that Jin had been pulling from collapsed buildings. "Take these people into the meeting hall. It's warm and it luckily wasn't hit. Noburi's set up a triage station. Keep working the collapses, I need to go see to the secondary sealing failures." He waited for Jin's acknowledgement, then turned and strode off, scratching his hand against the pin on his belt as he went. "Summoning Technique!"
Jin eyed his Clan Lord, then turned to the civilians scattered around. Who was most in need of medical care? Most likely—
He felt a wind breeze by his shoulder and turned to see Yuno, staring at him.
"What is happening?" she said, slightly breathless.
Jin pointed. "Lord Noburi is that way," he said, knowing what she would consider the pertinent fact right now.
Yuno smiled and gave Jin a pat on the shoulder. "Thanks," she said, before darting away.
o-o-o-o
"Fall back!" Kagome said as he hurled another blast disk into the tidal wave of black beads that swept across the estate. The wave parted around the explosion and continued to flow forward, threatening to consume the sealmaster. A second explosion blasted away the wave's leading edge, but the momentum of the beads could not be stopped, and the wave surged forward again. Fortunately, the momentary delay had cost it its targets, and it flowed harmlessly over two of the logs that the Gōketsu kept scattered around as handy Substitution targets.
Gōketsu Kagome and the newly-named Gōketsu (née Fuyuki) Kazushi appeared in twin puffs of smoke on a nearby rooftop, one of the civilian housing units that was deeper onto the estate than Kagome would have preferred. "Sensei?" Kazushi asked, out of breath. This was the fourth sealing failure worthy of the name that he had seen during his training (minor bits of weirdness like puffs of smoke or trilling discordances didn't count), but it was by far the worst. Worse that his nightmares, which was disturbing since it suggested that his nightmares were going to recalibrate themselves.
"It's the transdimensional elasticity coefficients," Kagome muttered as he rifled through his pockets to slip more blast disks between his fingers. "Jinno—Yūdai—wanted to use the Imagawa converter as a medium to have heat energy trigger the storage seals, but the Imagawa converter doesn't account for transdimensional elasticity unless you add a left twist to the third chord. I think he bobbled the twist."
Kazushi nodded along until Kagome began hurling blast disks down at the black beads that had started to crawl up the side of their building. The explosions made it hard to hear. Instead, Kazushi added his explosives to his sensei's barrage. Within seconds, they leapt to the next rooftop as their position was consumed.
"What was that last part, sensei?" Kazushi asked through his ringing ears.
Kagome studied the oncoming wave of beads, his mouth compressed into a tight line. He had tried explosives and they did nothing more than push the beads back briefly. He didn't want to try an implosion bomb because if it didn't destroy the beads then it would scatter them far more widely. Youthenizer seals were moderately effective but he wasn't carrying as many of them as he should have been, and he had already expended what he had. Hence why there were only a million or so beads wiggling towards them instead of five million. He tried to remember where the nearest available source of youthenizers might be.
"Sensei?" Kazushi asked again. "What happened to cause this?"
"Hm?" Kagome asked. "Oh, yeah. The seals were split transdimensionally."
"What does that mean?"
"Any seal that was bisected by the sealing failure also failed. We need fire, and lots of it. Are you carrying any more youthenizers?"
"No, sensei. Sorry."
"Don't be sorry for things that aren't your fault. I should have added them to the loadout." He rubbed his jaw, looking from the beads to his student. "I need you to verify that this unit is empty. Go in here"—he pointed one hand down and triggered a blast ring three times, the directional explosive blasting a hole through the foot-thick granite—"and search from top to bottom. Make sure everyone's out, then move on to the next unit and clear that one. Tell people to head for the far end of the estate and keep moving. Got it?"
"What are you going to do, Sensei?"
"I'm going to get down to ground level and crater the ground, try to make some sumps that catch the beads and keep them from advancing too much farther. You've got your skywalkers on, right?"
"Yes, Sensei."
"Good, then let's move!"
Kazushi dropped through the hole and Kagome jumped over the side of the building, running down the wall and leaping outwards. He didn't use the skywalkers, wanting to conserve their charge as long as possible, and settled for rolling out of the fall. His knees were getting stiff as the cold weather came in and he didn't fancy trying to simply soak the impact the way Hazō and the other young 'uns would have.
He glanced left and right to verify the situation. He had thirty, maybe forty seconds before the wave of beads arrived. There was no one else moving in this immediate area (small favors), so he didn't have to worry about rescue operations.
He sprinted to the left, emptying all but one charge of his blast rings into the ground, tearing it up into a long, shallow trench that stretched between this civilian housing unit and the next one over. He ran back along the trench, dropping in foxhole charges as he went. They went off in a continuous series behind him, each one blasting out a crater suitable for hiding in, or for providing a sump to kick mis-fused explosives into. Or, in this case, to create a low moat that hopefully the beads could not flow into but not out of.
He finished just in time; a waist-high wall of beads arrived at the far edge of his trench just as the last blast went off. Kagome backed away quickly as the beads poured in. They filled the moat and washed across, leaving many of their number in the torn-up ground but the remainder continuing on.
He grunted in frustration and turned to run, only to find that he was surrounded. Tendrils of the beads had been coming in from the sides, out of his line of sight, and he now stood in an open area sixty feet across with a steadily-widening black moat around it.
Kagome stepped up onto his skywalkers and gained thirty feet, then stopped and surveyed the area to see where he could best help. Off to his left, the roof of one of the housing units was full of Gōketsu civilians seeing refuge on high ground. The beads were wriggling slowly up the sides of the building.
Horror clutched at Kagome's throat as he raced forward, his brain frantically trying to figure out how he was going to get forty people out of there given only the materials he had on his person.
"Lord Kagome!" one of them cried. Her name was Gōketsu Ageha, she was sixty-three years old, one of the cooks. Her singing voice was still pleasant albeit raspier than it had been forty years before; her son, Hiyori, was too young to pronounce 'Kagome', so he always reached fat little hands out to 'Unca Ome!' whenever Kagome came to the kitchen in order to get a sneak peek at tonight's dessert options.
"You three, put these on," Kagome said, handing out the only three rescue harnesses he was carrying to the three largest and strongest-looking men in the crowd.
"Sir...?"
"Do it!" Kagome snapped. "You're going to be carrying the ones too infirm to save themselves. You two, help me with this." He pulled the pieces of a skytower frame out of his seals and assembled them with frantic haste. It was a fifth-generation frame, intended to be usable with only one person and relatively quickly, but that 'relatively' was doing a lot of heavy lifting. He didn't bother glancing over to where the beads were approaching. Either he would make it or he wouldn't and looking away from his task was a waste of time.
He got the top and bottom frames assembled and ready. He stepped into the cut-out circle at the center, hoisted the top frame onto his shoulders and slipped the harness on, then kicked his feet into the slots in the bottom frame and made sure they were fixed.
"It's coming!" someone said from the edge of the roof.
"Here's how this works," Kagome said, his voice as calm as only a forty-year-old sealmaster can be in the midst of a disaster such as this. "I raise the top frame up and pin it in place like this." He suited actions to words, triggering the seals that would lock the frame immovably in midair. "Now I pull the bottom part up." He crunched, hanging in the harness as he pulled his knees to his chest in order to raise the bottom frame up far enough that he could reach down with one hand and activate the seals to freeze it in place.
"It's coming!" Panicky Guy shrieked, pointing over the side.
"Now I raise the top frame again," Kagome said, ignoring the alarmism. He unlocked the top frame and straightened, thereby lifting the top frame three feet higher. He locked it in place. "Everyone step up onto the bottom frame."
A few people did, crawling in between the two grids, but the rest were too distracted by looking fearfully over towards where the threat was apparently coming from.
"Hey!" Kagome snapped. "You want to live? I'm the SSO, the Senior Sealmaster Onsite, and that means I'm in charge! Plus, I'm your clan lord...teacher guy...something. Whatever, just do it! Get on the bottom frame and press together so there's room for everyone. Hold onto the top frame for balance!"
Forty people on the roof and a skytower that was twelve feet in diameter. This was going to be fun.
"Now, everyone is going to support themselves on the top frame while I lift the bottom frame," he said calmly. "Come on, come on, climb up. Good. I lift the bottom frame, then I freeze it. You let go of the top frame so that I can raise it up again. We keep doing that, right? It's easy, that's all."
Despite his calm, reassuring words, Kagome could feel his heart sinking. This wasn't going to work. With a team of ninja, all of them accustomed to working together in times of danger, all of them fit enough to hang from a grid of wooden slats for a few seconds at a time, as well as coordinating when they had their weight on which frame? That would have been doable. With a bunch of panicky civilians? No. They had maybe two minutes until the beads came over the—
From behind him, a deep voice called, "Toad Oil Wave!"
Two massive toads, each of them easily twice Kagome's height and equally as wide, came soaring up into view and landed nimbly on the edge of the roof. Each of them had been shooting a torrent of grey oily liquid from their mouths as they jumped, playing it back and forth across the ground below.
Noburi rode the toad on the left, Kazushi rode the one on the right.
"Now!" Noburi shouted. "Light it!"
The two boys flicked out youthenizer seals. Boys and toads scrambled backwards, retreating towards the center of the roof as the world went up in flames.
o-o-o-o
"Take a letter," Hazō said, collapsing into the chair with a sigh. There was still soot on his face from seven hours worth of rescue work.
"Ready sir," Gaku said, brush poised. "No need for the salutations and formalities, sir. I shall add the blah blah blah for you."
Hazō grunted a laugh. "You're a good man, Gaku." He sighed and took a moment to organize his thoughts. "Lord Hokage from Lord Gōketsu blah blah blah. At around half past today's noon bell, Gōketsu Yūdai experienced a major sealing infusion failure while working on a storage seal derivative. Every infused storage seal he had ever made immediately self-annihilated, along with all matter within a radius of between two inches and six feet. The effect was instantaneous with no lingering effects. Seals that were fully consumed seemed to disappear harmlessly, seals that were partially bisected immediately failed in turn.
"To the best of our knowledge, Yūdai died painlessly and instantly. Most of the casualties were from direct trauma, though more were injured or killed in resulting collapses or fires. Seven of the Gōketsu civilian apartments were destroyed. Two servants in the main building's east wing were killed when that wing collapsed. Cause of death was most likely seal-based traps misfiring as the wing collapsed. The immediate event saw around sixty dead, forty maimed, and forty more injured in a recoverable way. Eighteen, seven, and three of those, respectively, were non-Gōketsu civilians who were on the estate for various reasons.
"The secondary failure effect produced a mass of black, oily beads that disassembled anyone they touched and converted them into more beads. We estimate thirty or forty more deaths in the southern third of the estate. The beads moved in non-aquatic fashion, although it's unclear if there was actual purpose to it. So far as we can tell, they are immune to kinetic force. Fire causes them to turn grey and become dormant. We have used MARI and Multiple Earth Wall jutsu to wall the beads off into a confined area. Kagome-sensei's recommendation is to leave them there for a few decades, although it would be wise to check every year or so and make sure they haven't tunneled out. The area was too large to create a granite floor under them, but they showed no evidence of digging ability.
"In Leaf proper, a few of Yūdai's seals were in use at the Gōketsu storage seal bank's secondary branch. When these seals failed they caused the building to collapse. Fortunately, there were no secondary failures.
"Within the bank, the seal failures appear to have caused a mixture of injuries and fatalities to Gōketsu Haruki, the two civilian tellers, and five clients present, but the collapse of the building killed those who survived the seal failures. The collapse scattered debris in a wide radius, causing two fatalities among non-Gōketsu Leaf civilians and also killing a merchant from Lightning. There were four other non-fatal civilian injuries, three of them Leaf civilians and the fourth the bodyguard for the Lightning merchant. Those people are currently at Leaf General being treated."
He stopped talking, rubbing his face as he cudgeled his tired brain to cough up more facts that needed to be included.
"Shall I thank Lord Hokage for the reinforcements, sir?" Gaku asked.
"Right. Yes, that. In this report, include a specific point of thanking the Hyūga—their help was essential in tracking down some of the more esoteric failure effects from the bank. Send them a specific letter of gratitude under separate cover."
"Yes, my lord. Is that all?"
"Yeah," said Hazō, pulling himself back to his feet with a groan. "I need to go and thank the clan for their work. Thank you for handling this, Gaku. Tomorrow, could you get me a list of the dead and maimed? We'll need to start making preparations for how we'll recover from this."
"And the move to the new estate, sir?"
"Priority on it has officially been moved up. Don't worry, I'll take care of it."
"Certainly, my lord. Please do get some rest."
Hazō met Gaku's gaze with a tired look. "Maybe one day."
Author's Note: Hazō made progress on Minato's jinchūriki seal chain, completing the first seal in the progression. The exact roll was:
Hazō (Calligraphy): 30 + 3 (IN) + 0 = 33
Hazō (Sealing): 47 + 22 (SSA) - 9 = 69
He also spent 4 days on prep for his next attempt. He can (profitably) spend another 3 days on it for maximum safety or he could attempt the roll now. He feels like it would be reasonably safe as long as he is careful. (Doylist: He's got 3 Fate Points.)
Chronologically, this update went as follows (some of these events were offscreen):
- October 11:
- Talk to Asuma about where the new Gōketsu estate will be inside Leaf
- Successful infusion attempt on Minato first seal
- Train Harumitsu
- October 12:
- Adoption ceremony for the new Gōketsu
- Recovery from SSA headache
- Asuma starts acquiring the necessary land for the Gōketsu compound
- Reo starts his Technique Hacking apprenticeship
- No Harumitsu training; SSA headache meant Hazō needed to stay away from sealing for the day
- October 13:
- Recovery from SSA headache
- Asuma contines acquiring the necessary land for the Gōketsu compound
- No Harumitsu training; his Clan Lord had him out of town in Otafuku Gai for a cocktail party
- October 14:
- Prep for Minato's second seal
- Asuma contines acquiring the necessary land for the Gōketsu compound
- Train Harumitsu
- October 15:
- Conversation with Mari and Haru
- Prep for Minato's second seal
- Asuma finishes acquiring the necessary land for the Gōketsu compound
- Train Harumitsu
- October 16:
- Walk the new land
- Prep for Minato's second seal
- Train Harumitsu
- October 17:
- Prep for Minato's second seal
- Train Harumitsu
- October 18: Yūdai (newly Gōketsu, formerly Jinno Yūdai) has a seal failure and dies
FP AWARD: 1
XP AWARD: 24
Brevity XP: 8
"GM had fun" XP: 1 The seal failure has been waiting in the wings for several real-life months. We figured out the odds for seal failures based on various factors, then rolled to see if it would happen, to whom, and when; the answers came up 'yes, Jinno, sometime in October'. I'm sorry to lose Jinno because he was tons of fun to write, but the scene was super exciting to execute.
Finally, I would like to give many thanks to the inimitable @Paperclipped, who wrote initial drafts of the seal failure scene and also the scene with Mari figuring out most of the EM disaster and then telling Hazō to have Akane stop FOOMing for a few months. I've done some editing and alterations, so anything imperfect in those scenes is my fault and everything good is either shared credit or entirely his.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, .
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Yuno and her beloved Satsuko
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wow. Time for yet more completely amazing fanart, commissioned by Randomx2 and created by Morechand.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wow. Time for yet more completely amazing fanart.
Long lost cousins
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Okay for Akane FOOM for this chapter I'm going to have her stop when Mari told us to be aware of OPSEC. Feel free to yell at me if you want to do it regardless
Hazou SC XP: (3(base)*1.5 *6) +(3(base)*1.4(minor)*2) =35.4XP
Akane SC XP: 3*2.1*4 = 25.2XP
Kei SC XP: 3*1.7 *8= 40.8XP
Hazou SC XP: (3(base)*1.5 *6) +(3(base)*1.4(minor)*2) =35.4XP
Akane SC XP: 3*2.1*4 = 25.2XP
Kei SC XP: 3*1.7 *8= 40.8XP
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Akane's got to stop FOOMing for a few months... oh well, that's not too bad. And she can still use a Shadow Clone for recreation (like gardening) to help her mental health. Just at an artificially reduced amount of time, for opsec.
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- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Kagome's safety protocols are basically a meme in and of itself. And doing research in a Kagome-approved facility allows an Aspect to be tagged for it.
Honestly, the fact that we've had as few sealing failures as we've had is impressive. Modifying seals is Hella dangerous, and very few sealmasters bother.
We could Mandate even more safety precautions, but I have a feeling that trying to tack anything on to Kagome's Paranoid Rules would subtract more than it would add.
Sealing is dangerous, and there's a reason why Jinno was convinced he would die young.
Unfortunately sealing failures effecting every seal a sealmaster has previously created are relatively common.
To mitigate the effects of such failures, we could use fewer seals, I don't think there's much else we could do.
We probably should put sealmasters that are uninterested in research on storage seal duty.
[X] training plan Hazou: None
- Location
- London
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
Yūdai? More like YOU DIE.
This is very sad, I enjoyed reading him, and he seemed quite promising.
This is very sad, I enjoyed reading him, and he seemed quite promising.
- Location
- Liverpool
Holy Jashin there's so much to unpack here. This is not a reaction post (don't worry, when I finally write one it will be at least 20,000 words). We lost at least two clan members. Akane's mom may or may not have had died (more like Mai died, amirite? (I am right, but also a dick)).
Makes sense that eventually something would fail, but a chain that sets off every previous seal he had made? We were dang lucky no party member has a storage seal of his on us. If that had been Hazou, we would have lost the entire Goketsu.
The fact that we also lost large chunks of our compound right before having to move anyway is a heck of a coincidence. The losses are mostly ours, but dang that sucks.
This also hurts our clan so much. Not only were we just building back confidence in this service, but other clans were already icing us out for being sketchy. This, I don't think is going to help.
Turns out that
Akane not being able to FOOM for a few months hurts, though at least in universe they were seeing success from the detour. I certainly am shifting my support of the jutsu XP towards Akane now.
So in summary: the Kei are going to get a busted up compound now; we lost comrades just after adopting them, Akane might spiral even harder now, we have to do a ton to make up for this happening, Akane can't accelerate to keep herself safe, and Kagome actually ran out of explosives (which I'm sure will lead to an existential crisis). Oof.
All that said, it was an amazing chapter to read. Lots of quality character interactions, interesting develops (side story or otherwise), good character autonomy, high stakes, and growth moments. Halberdier the reader is very entertained. Halberdier the quest participant and Akane fan is freaking out.
Makes sense that eventually something would fail, but a chain that sets off every previous seal he had made? We were dang lucky no party member has a storage seal of his on us. If that had been Hazou, we would have lost the entire Goketsu.
The fact that we also lost large chunks of our compound right before having to move anyway is a heck of a coincidence. The losses are mostly ours, but dang that sucks.
This also hurts our clan so much. Not only were we just building back confidence in this service, but other clans were already icing us out for being sketchy. This, I don't think is going to help.
Turns out that
Akane not being able to FOOM for a few months hurts, though at least in universe they were seeing success from the detour. I certainly am shifting my support of the jutsu XP towards Akane now.
So in summary: the Kei are going to get a busted up compound now; we lost comrades just after adopting them, Akane might spiral even harder now, we have to do a ton to make up for this happening, Akane can't accelerate to keep herself safe, and Kagome actually ran out of explosives (which I'm sure will lead to an existential crisis). Oof.
All that said, it was an amazing chapter to read. Lots of quality character interactions, interesting develops (side story or otherwise), good character autonomy, high stakes, and growth moments. Halberdier the reader is very entertained. Halberdier the quest participant and Akane fan is freaking out.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
He was trained by Kagome. Of course he was prepared for everything, including situations that call for frilly panties. No, no, what's surprising with this affair is that it worked.
[X] Make the statue anatomically correct
Looks like treason's back on the menu! I'm starving!
Ah, darn it. I was afraid of that.
It always surprises me that the Akimichi are part of the conservative bloc. Not that it doesn't make sense, I just consistently forget it. Might be because we never talk to them and the Ino and Shika parts are much more open to change and reactive - rather than reactionary. But it's consistent with a clan that's mostly designed around ninjutsu prowess and warring proficiency, to be proud of their glorious past, to hold on to tried and tested values,
If you know what she's doing and she's shown that she can do it regardless, the proper power move reply is to keep staring.
Simply adore this part of the dialogue, and especially this line. Simultaneous messaging to us that she knows, to potential ANBU (the ninja of ninja) that she knows but plays by the rules and that they should be more stealthy, a reminder of the Mist implications of having ANBU around you and how little difference it makes that it's in Leaf, and also a message to us about what it means to have ANBU around us. Play by the same rules dhe just demonstrated, don't be stupid, show loyalty, act normal.
Right. Yeah. [so, logically,] Training Plan Akane: None?
Do we get a bonus to rolls because of Mari's conditioning? Invoking Marked for Death for free or something? I don't actually know how the rules work, I simply know they don't work like that. Wait, there's a better way to phrase this - Mari's incredible teaching prowess and flawless characterisation would surely help us navigate the quest in the coming days, wouldn't it? (No? It wouldn't? Well, worth a try.)
Made me laugh. How dare.
Oh shit.
OH SHIT.
We've known she does since the last time she experienced a seal failure, right? Hoping it doesn't turn into a trigger for her.
In two places? That's no "mere" failure, but an attack, right? That's gotta be an attack.
What is going on? Seal failures in a chain in a compound filled with seals? I'm getting SCP-1730 (Site 13) vibes. No one likes getting SCP-1730 vibes. Not even Emerson. Not anymore.
Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit
The mood whiplash from the monk joke was so harsh that my neck is stuck now
That's pretty, though.
Smart man. Wouldn't do to get your eyes fished out of your skull and your smart brain picked apart by horrors from the shadows and puppeted for a hundred years where no one can hear what you say and you lead them to the site to replace real people
I like that he's Just That Good, that he can (1) quickly diagnose the problem (2) explain it succinctly (3) make the important parts known (4) make the non-specific parts accessible to non-specialists. And that you're, also, Just That Good that this can be conveyed in your writing.
(aka across several axes?
)Quickly check his ears!
That's... reassuring, in a way. It's not an attack. Still, gotta be one of the weirdest failures from storage seals ever. Jiraiya iirc said the more esoteric failures happened with more complex seals, and storage seals are relatively simple. To affect every, dimensional seal, was it? that had his chakra in it... that's scary. Doesn't the Tower have storage seals from every licensed sealmaster who can make them?
Housewarming gift for Shimura.
Oof, big same.
Isn't that nice. The boy deserved it.
Ah, so for the last few months, he'd been decided to pass on. He was destined to the choir invisible. He'd been selected for disappearance. His life's end, elected. One might say he'd even been Marked f-
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
[X] training plan Hazou: calligraphy
I made a copy of Akane's character sheet and edited her Resolve down to 30, a reasonable amount for a non-FOOM Akane, and the resulting SC multiplier is x0.7. This is probably within the bounds of what Leaf Jounin experience from their own Shadow Clone training and, if anything, would be less suspicious than Akane refusing to do any Shadow Clone training at all despite that being one of the most valuable parts of the technique.
Alternatively, she does an amount of Shadow Clone training appropriate for a hypothetical Akane who didn't FOOM and has a reasonable amount of Resolve.
I made a copy of Akane's character sheet and edited her Resolve down to 30, a reasonable amount for a non-FOOM Akane, and the resulting SC multiplier is x0.7. This is probably within the bounds of what Leaf Jounin experience from their own Shadow Clone training and, if anything, would be less suspicious than Akane refusing to do any Shadow Clone training at all despite that being one of the most valuable parts of the technique.
- Location
- Texas
Everything continues to be awful. Zero-G could have been this, and then every main character is dead.
- Location
- Yes.
[X] Poll (New Character): Kurosawa Hanzo
- Location
- Bronx
[JK] Stare at your second-mom's breasts to show dominance