Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

[Velorien]

Interlude: In Memoriam​

It was not until this moment that Hazō realised how well-loved Minami Nikkō had been.

Dozens of people had turned up to see her name inscribed on the Leaf Memorial Stone. Family members stood off to the left, a few giving him cold looks but none yet approaching. To the right, a handful of Nara watched the ceremony, hands down at their sides. Behind them, scattered in the crowd Hazō could recognise the unreadable eyes of the Yamanaka, and a few Inuzuka with silent, perfectly-behaved dogs at their sides. Behind him, a towering giant of a man who could only be an Akimichi covered his eyes with a voluminous sleeve.

It was Mari-sensei who'd told him to come here. The Minami would probably treat his presence here as an insult, given that they held him partially responsible for their clanswoman's death, but by the same token they would probably treat his absence as an insult as well. In Hazō's opinion, out of the two people who had witnessed Minami's death, Noburi was infinitely more suited to subtle social interaction. Unfortunately, Mari-sensei considered this an excellent practice opportunity since, in her words, "Jiraiya could reveal that he'd secretly been Captain Zabuza all along and it couldn't make our relations worse, so I doubt you'll manage it". Hazō had tried to argue for a different candidate, but Noburi was busy with medic-nin stuff, Keiko had some kind of training that Mari-sensei was unwilling to interrupt, Akane didn't count as a clan representative and Kagome-sensei was Kagome-sensei.

The celebrant carved the final stroke of "shine" into the Memorial Stone, completing Minami's full name.

"With this, let the heroic spirit of Minami Nikkō ascend and become one with the Will of Fire, to watch over the Village Hidden in the Leaves forevermore. Through her sacrifice, that eternal flame will burn more brightly in each of us until it is time for us, too, to give our lives for the sake of the village."

It was a strange mirror image to the rituals of Mist, which had committed his father to the endless depths, from there to watch over the village together with the other ancestral spirits. Even now, they pacified the natural world and the horrors that lurked within, allowing their descendants free passage and safe hunting, while dragging Mist's foes into the dark abyss from which there was no return. Though the practice long predated the village's foundation, the Mizukage had elaborated upon it, teaching that loyal shinobi could look forward to an eternity of guardianship among the honoured dead, while traitors damned themselves to becoming hungry ghosts, forever tearing each other apart in insatiable greed.

With the ritual over, the people began to gradually disperse. One of the Nara reached over and placed a sheet of parchment at the foot of the stone as an offering, and a few seconds later a gust of wind snatched it away. He gave an ironic smile, then walked away with a clansman's arm around his shoulders. The Akimichi giant's sleeve never left his face, even as he gave the stone one final bow. An Inuzuka whispered something softly to his dog, which let out a mournful whine. And the Minami…

One of the Minami went straight over to Hazō.

Be sensitive. Say less rather than more. We don't know what relations were like between Minami and her clan, but sometimes, when a close relative dies, you can hate them from the bottom of your heart and still feel empty and abandoned after they're gone.

The woman was in her thirties, with narrow eyes and a face that held no trace of tears. "Gōketsu," she said. "Why are you here?"

"I wanted to pay my respects." The perfect neutral response. That much he'd been able to work out without tutoring.

"You let my daughter die," the woman responded, the cadence of her voice unnervingly even for those words. "You failed to protect her. Do you think you have any right to be here?"

Don't argue with the bereaved. It's like trying to smother a fire with a cotton cloth. But at the same time, if you aren't looking for an opportunity to change the narrative to your advantage, then you might as well not go at all.

"That's the reason I'm here, ma'am. The least I can do after what happened is see it through to the end."

It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the truth either. Rationally, Hazō knew there was nothing he could have done. Rationally, Hazō knew that Minami was little more than a stranger, that they hadn't had even a single full mission together and that the Cold Stone Killers business was a wall between them that they might never have been able to overcome. But still, remembering Minami Nikkō hurt, and on his own he wouldn't have chosen to come here and reopen the wound.

"Why?" Minami's mother read the rational half of his mind. "She can't mean anything to you. You never met her before the mission, and then you let her die while you and the other miss—the other foreigners came home without a scratch on you."

Hazō had met her before the mission, but that wasn't relevant, and so came under "Say less". Reluctantly, he let Minami's mother in on the half of his mind she'd failed to read.

"It's true that I didn't really know her, ma'am. It's true that she couldn't matter as much to me as my old comrades did. But we deserved the chance to become friends." This was what it came down to, and this part was no lie at all. "We deserved the chance to close the gap, and now we'll never get it. I know that's a very different kind of loss to losing family, but it's still real, and it's still worth mourning."

"Is that so," the woman said with no inflection.

"You were present during her final moments, weren't you, Gōketsu Hazō?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Come with me," she said abruptly. "This is no place to speak truth about the dead."

Hazō followed her and the Minami crowd, most of whom treated him as a stranger more than an enemy, likely unaware that he was part of Minami's last mission. Some of them were doubtless curious about why the Hokage's son was following them home from a politically insignificant chūnin's ascension ceremony, but he suspected that on the whole they'd rather be left alone with their thoughts, or perhaps some hard alcohol.

The Minami compound was silent as the grave—again, testament to the captain's popularity, given that losing loved ones was a familiar part of daily life to most ninja. Obviously, nobody could be happy on such a day, at least unless the deceased had some truly bitter enemies, but even so Hazō expected at least a murmur of activity rather than the lifeless, mechanical dispersal that occurred when Minami's relatives reached their home.

One might have expected Minami's mother, if no one else, to be approached by people trying to console her, but something about her frozen aura meant nobody even tried. She led Hazō wordlessly to a side building and up a set of stairs. He followed her to a living room, where before long she set a pair of tea cups between them like an impenetrable barrier.

"Speak, Gōketsu. Tell me of her final mission. Tell me how she lived and how she died, and why you are alive when she isn't."

Hazō tentatively took one of the cups. She took the other. The barrier did not diminish.

"I actually met Minami for the first time before the mission, when we still needed an escort in Leaf. We were heading to see the Nara…"

She bounced. She smiled. She radiated aliveness. When she spoke of the Nara, she opened her heart to a pair of perfect strangers without a second thought. She was excited about the bright future ahead of her now that she was serving Jiraiya himself. The irony dripped from Hazō's lips like venom.

He spoke of their briefing. Of how a basic description of his and his teammates' capabilities turned into showing off, intensifying in the face of her disbelief without ever leaving the bounds of truth. He wondered, in retrospect, if she might have felt bullied, as they outnumbered her and systematically told her that all her knowledge and experience were worth nothing next to theirs. He included that detail, remembering Mari-sensei's teachings about the bonding value of harmless confessions.

He spoke of Minami's transformation from teammate to captain, of how she raised that wall and then experimented with reaching past it. Of how Hazō accidentally told her about great and terrible mistakes made during the team's time in the wilderness (omitting details, because even he sometimes learned from his OPSEC blunders). Of how she recoiled in horror, and made him fear that he'd pushed her away forever. Of how they gradually earned back her trust over the weeks spent fighting side by side, rebuilding what his carelessness had lost.

He spoke of the yakuza mission (again, as far as he was permitted), and of the tragic decision that had been forced upon their captain. Of how hard she'd fought to find a way to spare the civilians, and the resolve she'd shown when she realised there was none to be found. Of the moment, he believed, that had made her truly grow into a leader.

He spoke of the price of that decision for them all, something he'd barely talked about even with the rest of the team. Having come this far, and not prepared to relive this story ever again, he wanted to give it to Minami's mother as complete as he could.

And finally, he spoke of the journey east. The house of heavy wooden logs. Static water. Flowing blood. Frozen air. The assassin's lullaby. A second's step between life and death, and how Minami had filled that second without hesitation so that in the next they would be already safe.

Was Minami a courageous hero, to engage the enemy at once while trusting her team to know what to do? Was she a clever tactician, to realise that giving the enemy time for more ninjutsu would spell disaster? Or was she a hopeless fool, to rush into the unknown without a plan? Hazō offered no opinion. What would be the point anymore?

The story ended. Hazō finished his tea, which had long since gone cold. Minami's mother had not interrupted even once, nor shown one hint of emotion on her face.

Hazō couldn't let it end here. He sensed that she was about to dismiss him, and then he'd never find out her reaction to his story, nor get another opportunity to influence her. He gathered his courage.

"What was she like?"

Minami's mother stared at him blankly.

"Minami Nikkō. Your daughter. The… the friend I never made. Is there anything you can tell me about her?"

It was a gamble. Arguably a dangerous one. But the worst that could happen was that Minami's mother took offence and kicked him out, and that would only mean resuming the previous status quo.

And beyond the teachings of Gōketsu Mari, maybe the answer to this question would give Hazō himself the closure he needed. Maybe if he found out what he'd lost, he would no longer have to wonder.

"I suppose I did just ask the same question of you," Minami's mother said distantly. "I wonder, though, how much there is I can tell you. Nikkō and I wasted the last of the time we had together. She defied me and started dating that Nara boy, and after that we never spoke. You knew her better than I did, at the end—or did you think I invited you here merely to apportion blame?"

"Please," Hazō said, pushing the boundaries with his insistence, less for the clan now and more for himself. The thing he wanted was so close, and this was the only chance he'd ever get. "You're her mother."

"I was," the woman corrected, but without feeling. She stared past Hazō, at something unreachably far away.

"If your account is to be believed, she never changed from her birth until her dying day. What kind of child smiles instead of crying after the trauma of being born? We had been planning to name her Minori, in accordance with tradition, but my dear husband took one look at her and said this little ray of sunshine had to be named 'Nikkō'. Grandmother refused to see me for months.

"She learned to walk very early. She would run around the compound with a stick clutched in her hands, and my dear husband and I would take bets on whether she'd become a swordswoman or a seduction expert. He won the way he won every bet between us, though he never had a chance to collect his winnings.

"I remember one afternoon, when she was four years old, she came home with a black eye and a split lip from playing with some of the branch family children. I was all set to seal the exits and burn their house to the ground—but when I got there, all three boys were in bed covered with bruises from her stick, and they begged me to tell Nikkō that they'd never make fun of her nose again.

"The four of them were inseparable after that. We used to tease her, ask her which one she wanted to marry, and her answer would change every week.

"There was this one time when my dear husband came home from a mission, and she took his hand, and… and she…"

Minami's mother stopped.

After a few seconds, she met Hazō's eyes.

"Gōketsu, please wait outside."

As he left, Hazō heard her draw a ragged breath.

After about fifteen minutes of sitting downstairs in the common area, a Minami clansman came downstairs to see him.

"Karen has asked me to tell you that you may go home for the day. If you are still amenable, she is prepared to have afternoon tea with you again on another occasion."

The man leaned down, closer to Hazō's ear.

"Whatever it is you did to my cousin… thank you."

 

[Velorien]

Interlude: Existential Risks​

The morning had been well-spent, Shikaku decided, since obtaining valuable information from his contact while raising the profile of the Urushi Café which served excellent cake his wife did not need to know about and whose location allowed him to watch the flow of early-morning pedestrian traffic for interesting trends was always satisfying.

Matters were improved further still when he heard Gōketsu Kagome's voice from inside a nearby bookshop.

"Charge this to Jiraya-sti—I mean, the Hokage."

(A foreigner would not personally draw on and a Leaf citizen would use the proper channels to access the funds of the Hokage who was a separate financial entity from Jiraiya to whose resources only the Gōketsu who were both foreign and Leaf and thus capable of confusing the two had access and of whom Gōketsu Kagome was the only one whose voice Shikaku did not recognise.)

It was a valuable opportunity as Shikaku's best agents had drawn a blank on the background of a man adopted as a cousin by Jiraiya despite his erratic behaviour that potentially made him a liability to the clan and about whom Shikaku was curious as well as burdened with non-urgent but necessary paperwork waiting for him in his office.

"Pardon me," he caught Gōketsu as the man was leaving the bookshop with a copy of the latest edition of Jen's Armaments of the Elemental Nations. "May I speak with you?"

"You're Nara Shikaku, aren't you?" Gōketsu's eyes narrowed. "Why? What's your game?"

"I would like to learn more about you, Gōketsu," Shikaku said simply. "My clan and yours are determined to build a strong alliance. I already have a certain limited degree of familiarity with Hazō, Noburi and of course Keiko, and through my wife I am not wholly ignorant about Mari. But you and I have never interacted in any way. Also, I gather you have some very… original theories."

"Hmph," Gōketsu grunted. "She did have this idea of getting me to talk to you so you could go through the things I know and tell me which ones Leaf is ready to admit to. She trusts you enough for that, so I guess I'll do it if it makes her happy. But! There's going to be a price for getting me to share my knowledge."

Shikaku found this reassuring as Gōketsu who could not be a charlatan ready to take payment and flee before his fabrications could be verified was thus demonstrating genuine confidence in his information by assigning material value to it.

"What price is that?"

"Cake," Gōketsu said firmly. "And I'll be the one choosing the shop and the cake, and you'll be the one taking the first bite."

Morning cake twice?

Shikaku didn't know whether to be glad of the excuse or fearful of the consequences if Yoshino ever learned of the event.

-o-​

Shikaku leaned back in his chair and pondered the wild nay outrageous idea of lupchanzen which it would nevertheless display a lack of intellectual sincerity to dismiss without consideration when it came from a man to whom Jiraiya had extended the highest possible trust.

Chakra parasites capable of controlling human hosts were rare as civilian hosts had too little chakra to sustain them and ninja were naturally resistant to interference with brain chakra as reflected by the complexity of genjutsu but they were not non-existent such that civilian villages where a majority of the population showed chakra abnormalities were burned to the ground though the chakra cordyceps which had been rendered extinct at terrible cost had been the last credible large-scale threat.

Natural chakra parasites at most subverted their host's motivations so as to make them use their intelligence to further the parasite's reproductive cycle meaning that a chakra parasite capable of the sophisticated coordinated planning Gōketsu described imposed an additional burden of probability as the potentially highly elaborate application of said intelligence depending on the host's ability and the parasite's specific reproductive requirements would still not extend so far.

But a parasite engineered with a goal other than pure reproduction was another matter given that while Nara had discarded the idea a long time ago due to the high extinction risks of an error in homogeneous mass mind control a fool confident in their ability to eliminate said risks might still attempt it.

A chakra brain parasite with its limited structural complexity could not adequately comprehend, replace and imitate the human host's functioning but only inject its own influence into the existing mental substrate meaning it was impossible for the host to be aware of the infection including the Hyūga who would either have to all be infected and their perceptions filtered or be unable to flag lupchanzen signs as abnormal because everyone they had ever met had been infected.

In either scenario Leaf had no means of lupchanzen detection.

It was necessary to assume that if lupchanzen existed Shikaku himself who had the best hope of inventing countermeasures would be a priority target for infection which would most obviously manifest as a strong inclination to dismiss the idea of their existence which Shikaku indeed felt and was thus rationally compelled to suppress that instinct until he could fully investigate the matter and come to a firm conclusion which if the head of the Nara Clan was unable to reach meant that either they did not exist or he was powerless to stop them and in either case he could only set the matter aside and return to his normal life.

With that in mind Shikaku invited Gōketsu to share his next horrifying belief.

-o-​

"It's basic economics," Gōketsu explained to the head of the Nara Clan. "The villages don't want their rivals to have financial prosperity, because that means more money and more civilians to give birth to ninja, so they secretly send scorch squads to burn civilian settlements to the ground and cull each other's populations. You can't stop small squads from getting through your borders, not all the time, and you can't afford to have ninja stationed everywhere to guard the civilians. After the attack, you can't prove anything because little villages fall to chakra beast attacks all the time, and it's not like you can identify which of your rivals was responsible anyway."

Shikaku nodded thoughtfully. "How many ninja were in your squad? What were their roles, and was this representative of Mist scorch squads? Do you know how many others Mist had?"

"My squad?" Gōketsu stared at him with surprisingly convincing incomprehension. "What are you talking about, Nara?"

Denial on Gōketsu's part would not serve Shikaku's purposes here so while Shikaku disliked breaking down his thought processes as it felt like wading through mud when there was a paved road next to him and his destination was already in sight on this occasion it was impractical to avoid it.

"You yourself have stated that scorch squads are secret to the point that their existence has been successfully concealed from the public for decades. Of necessity, they must contain only the most discreet and fanatically loyal shinobi. Thus, it is impossible for you to have learned of them from a scorch squad member. Nor does the evidence available to me suggest that you were a prominent enough member of Mist's government to have overall top secret clearance.

"Since you describe scorch squads as highly stealthy and targeting solely settlements with no ninja presence, and an ordinary sealmaster would spend a limited amount of time outside the village, it is highly implausible that you would witness them at work by accident. Thus, you must have been a scorch squad member yourself, likely selected for your proficiency at large-scale destruction.

"The psychological trauma of regularly massacring innocents is a highly plausible reason to abandon even a village so determined to hunt down missing-nin. A deep sense of guilt would account for why you abandoned a long-term reclusive lifestyle to join with Hazō, whose ideals centre around aiding and protecting the civilian population. If you fled Mist with knowledge of vital state secrets that made you a priority target, this also would explain your… extreme wariness of others.

"Finally, if your testimony has value as a diplomatic trump card against Mist, this would provide additional incentive for Jiraiya to directly adopt you as his cousin despite your limited acquaintance and somewhat incompatible personalities."

Gōketsu whose secret Shikaku now suspected he'd been the first to deduce gazed at him in an ominous silence that suggested that Shikaku had perhaps been unwise in provoking an emotionally unstable explosives expert.

What would Yoshino do?

"Your secret is safe with me, Gōketsu. I have nothing to gain from undermining your acceptance in Leaf society, nor would I risk interfering with Jiraiya's plans for you. We continue to be allied in the cause of protecting Leaf and foiling its enemies, and should you choose to provide me with the tactical data I've requested, it could be of great use in curtailing the activities of the Mist scorch squads you've described."

Gōketsu rose from his seat. "I have never been in a damn scorch squad, you… you… you… urgh!" Gōketsu threw up his hands in wordless fury and stomped away without giving Shikaku a chance to reply.

Shikaku was left sitting alone pondering how to test for the presence of a parasite that could potentially control his thinking and perception and had evaded every existing means of detection thus far.

Never let it be said that the Gōketsu didn't make his life interesting.

 

[eaglejarl]

Interlude: War Stories​

"What seals have I seen, huh?" Jiraiya asked, leaning back on one elbow and idly poking at the fire with a stick. The poking made a log collapse to one side and roll out from the center of the fire, where it proceeded to throw up a puff of smoke that set Keiko coughing. The girl suppressed a glare at her Hokage and simply put the log back in the fire before shifting her seat slightly.

It was their second night out from Leaf on the way to the Chūnin Exams, and Jiraiya had been in a pensive mood since they stopped. Hazō had decided to take the chance to ask about his adoptive f—his clan leader's great passion. Probably the worst that would happen was that Jiraiya would snap at him to buzz off, but hopefully it would jolt him into a better mood. They would need Jiraiya in top form tomorrow when they arrived at Mist.

Jiraiya's smile was complicated, half sadness and half wry amusement. "Lots of them, and, aside from in the research lab, I mostly see them when things are in the middle of going straight into the crapper."

He stirred the fire a moment longer, then chuckled. The smile shifted, the amusement replaced by nostalgia. "There was this one time, a little before we fought Hanzō and became the Three, when...."

o-o-o-o​

"I look stupid," Orochimaru growled, glaring at Jiraiya. The apprentice medic-nin tugged at the folds of his robes that Jiraiya had just spent five minutes carefully arranging for him.

Jiraiya slapped his hands away. "You look fine," he said. "Handsome, even." It was a lie; Orochimaru had always been sickly and vaguely jaundiced, and he was far too stubborn to use a minor henge to look better. The very expensive clothes and makeup that Jiraiya had bought and applied had been able to move him from 'freakishly pale and vaguely inhuman' to 'rake-thin and shifty-looking' which left Jiraiya feeling quite accomplished indeed.

"I don't see why I have to do this, anyway," Orochimaru complained. "It's a complete waste of time and I have better things to do."

"You lost the bet," Jiraiya said smugly.

"You cheated," his teammate grumbled.

"Nah, you just suck at Rock, Paper, Scissors," Tsunade said from where she was lounging on the bed, reading a medical textbook and occassionally glancing over to watch her teammates get ready. "You've got, like, six different tells. It's embarrassing."

"I do not!"

"Do too."

"Do not!"

"Children," Jiraiya said sternly, "perhaps we could table this until later? Oro, we need to leave now if we don't want to be late."

"I changed my mind," Orochimaru said sulkily. "I'm not going." He plopped down at his desk and ostentatiously turned his back.

"Come on, Oro," Jiraiya chided. "You lost fair and square. No welching."

"No," Orochimaru pouted. "It's stupid."

Jiraiya sighed and checked the waterclock on the mantel. They really did need to get going.

"I'll make you that sleep-inducing seal you wanted," he tempted.

Orochimaru whipped around. "Really?" he asked hopefully. "It would be nice to not have to tie the specimens down while I'm cutting them open for my experiments."

"No problem, buddy," Jiraiya said, patting him on the shoulder with a smile. "You know I'm always here for you."

Orochimaru nodded, the unhappiness slipping away from his long face for just a moment. "I know. Thank you, Jiraiya. You're a good friend."

"Better get moving," Tsunade said from the corner, not looking up from her book. "Not nice to keep a lady waiting."

"Ugh," Orochimaru said, making a moue of distaste. "Girls. What a waste of time."

"Hey!" Jiraiya said. "Okada is a beautiful young woman and you should be glad to have the chance to go out with her. Junko went to a lot of trouble to set the two of you up, so the least you can do is try to look happy. Now come on." He grabbed his teammate's arm and started pulling him towards the door.

Orochimaru glanced back at the pile of papers on his desk, a look of longing on his face. "Can't I just stay here and read?" he asked plaintively, although he grudgingly followed along with his more worldly-wise teammate. "You know I'm no good with people, especially girls. They're scary. And my research conclusively proves that they have cooties."

Jiraiya laughed and shook his head, opening the door and hustling them both out. "They do not," he said. "Now come on. Think of it as infiltration training, if that helps. Someday you might need to talk a woman out of information or something. Practice will help."

"Why would I have to be the one to do that?" Orochimaru grumbled. "You're the smooth one. You've never failed to charm a woman." He pulled free of Jiraiya's grip so that he could clasp both hands under his chin and flutter his eyelashes dramatically. "Ooooh, Jiraiya," he said in a mocking falsetto. "You're so big and strong and handsome. Would you like to know where the secret passage is? You can have my virginity too, if you want!"

Jiraiya thwapped Orochimaru lightly on the back of the head. "Stop that!" he said, smiling despite himself. "You make it sound like I'm some sort of evil lech. Woman like me because I respect them, which is something you'd do well to try. You're"—he hesitated briefly, searching for a diplomatic phrase—"exotic-looking and a decent ninja. All you need to do is be nice to them and listen and I'm sure you'll find a woman who loves you and will complete you."

Orochimaru dropped the mocking pose and shoved his hands in his pockets, kicking dejectedly at the inoffensive floor. "Fine," he said. "I guess you'd know. Come on, let's get this over with."

o-o-o-o​

Jiraiya fell silent, lost in thought, and Hazō waited impatiently for him to continue. "How did the date go?" he finally asked.

"Total disaster," Jiraiya said. "Oro couldn't dance to save his life. Looked like a spastic hopperbeast, and he kept stepping on her toes. She really made an effort though; smiled, chatted, very charming. Unfortunately, just as dinner was being served she asked him what he was interested in before I could wave her off. Oro got all excited and started going on about the joys of cutting things open and poking around in their squishy bits, then asked her if she'd like to come back to his lab and play doctor. She left in a huff and Junko went with her. Wouldn't talk to me for weeks."

"That sucks," Noburi said. "You and Junko were dating?"

"Yeah, that was our third date. Okada had just had a bad breakup and Junko insisted that we double. In retrospect I should have asked someone else—maybe Akihito. He was always smooth." He frowned, then shook his head. "No, he was dead by then. Bunch of blood moths got him, if I recall right." He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, I'm sure I could have found someone." The sadness was back on his face.

"So, sleep-inducing seal," Hazō said desperately. "That sounds cool. Any others that particularly stand out?"

"Yeah, actually. A couple months after we got our team name, we were on this scouting mission up in Lightning...."

o-o-o-o​

Jiraiya leapt over the first stream that they'd passed for three hours, a corner of his mind furious that they didn't have time to stop for water. His throat was parched after all the Grand Fireballs he'd been throwing around during their escape. He dove clear of one blast of lightning, and pushed his companion out of the way of another. "'Just one little peek', you said! 'What could it hurt', you said!"

"Sorry, Jiraiya!" Orochimaru said, spinning and hurling a trio of shuriken at the Lightning border patrol that was chasing them. He really should have stuck with snakes, because his weapons skills had always been pathetic; the first two shuriken missed completely and the leading Cloud ninja batted the third aside with contemptuous ease before firing back with a much better-aimed volley that Orochimaru barely avoided as they fled.

A boulder zipped over their heads from where Tsunade had taken overwatch in the next pile of rocks. Jiraiya didn't look back, trusting in his teammate to keep the pursuers suppressed while he and Orochimaru leapfrogged past her.

"Thunder Net, go!" cried the leader of the patrol. The entire patrol—three squads worth, and what was Lightning doing spending three full squads of chūnin to cover one dinky little outpost in the middle of nowhere which, granted, had turned out to be nothing but a disguise for the very non-dinky seal research lab underneath and wasn't that just peachy?—pulled out kunai and hurled them. They weren't aiming for the team, they were dropping the weapons in a rough circle around the small rockpile that Tsunade was hiding atop and Jiraiya and Orochimaru were just passing. The tags tied to the kunai trailed crackling ropes of lightning behind them, more lightning leaping left and right to link the seals to their neighbors. A rolling crash of ear-shattering thunder hit like one of Tsunade's slaps, knocking Jiraiya and Orochimaru to the ground.

Jiraiya rolled instantly to his feet, nose bleeding and unable to hear. His balance was shot and he staggered as he yanked Orochimaru up. The net was thickening as the kunai descended, more and more threads leaping out to link the main strands together. The kunai were embedded in the ground all around them and the net was drifting slowly lower. The team needed to be out from under the net before it reached them.

Orochimaru grabbed the canteen off his belt and uncorked it, pouring out the contents with a few quick shakes. "Water—" His jutsu was interrupted by a coughing fit from where he'd swallowed dirt when he fell. "Water Element: Cutting Geyser!"

"No!" Jiraiya shouted, reaching out to stop his teammate. He was a moment too slow; a massive column of water leaped from the ground up to the net.

Against a regular net, the Cutting Geyser was perfect; it would slice effortlessly through the strands of the net and throw the fragments aside. Against a lightning technique? Not so much.

Jiraiya grabbed his pale brother-in-arms and leaped, pulling him up into the air a split second before a massive blast of lightning energy charred the ground where they'd been standing. A few brilliant-yellow tendrils forked off to the sides and Tsunade screamed from her perch atop the boulders.

"Thunder Wave, go!" shouted the patrol leader. Still in midair, Jiraiya glanced back over his shoulder and saw the Lightning team with more kunai in hand, fastening seals to the handles with reckless speed.

Internally, he cursed. His team had snuck into the research facility, gotten the general lay of the land, and been on their way out when Orochimaru insisted on having 'just a peek' into one of the labs. Of course the alarm had gone off and guards had come swarming from everywhere. He and the other two had fought their way out through way more ninja than should have been there and been in the middle of a running battle for the three hours since. He was low on chakra and covered in small wounds that were bleeding his strength away. Still, he couldn't let the others die.

He reached deep inside himself, gathering up all his remaining chakra and then forcing himself to find more. And more. And more. His head was buzzing, his skin was burning, and his vision was starting to tunnel down as he skated on the edge of chakra exhaustion. Only the Will of Fire and the desperate need to get the message back to Konoha kept him going; Sensei needed to know about the experiments that Lightning was doing. It could turn the course of the war. He could not allow these puny Lightning punks to stop him, or to hurt his friends!

He cut the handseals with frantic haste, finishing the last one just as he and Orochimaru touched ground at the end of their leap. The Lightning jerks cocked their arms back to throw.

"Water Element: Tidal Wave!" Jiraiya shouted, clenching his fists and pulling with everything he had.

Wisdom is situational. Shooting a jet of water from your feet up into the lightning net that was slowly falling towards you? Not wise. Pulling a fifty-foot high wall of water out of the stream and aiming it directly at yourself and the aforementioned lightning net? Not wise...usually.

The wave moved faster than a ninja could sprint, hitting the Lightning ninja from behind before they knew what was happening. It lifted them on its curl like bits of thistledown in a storm and tossed them through the lightning net. They didn't even have time to scream before they were sliced fine enough to be used for stir fry.

An instant after the ninja were slain the main body of the wave reached the line of kunai in the ground that was the anchor for the net. The tags were soaked and shredded instantly; the net vanished a few scant feet before it would have reached Tsunade atop the hill.

Jiraiya noticed this out of the corner of his eye but couldn't spend the time to think about it. He was too busy dancing across the chaotic surface of the tidal wave, struggling to keep his footing as the water bucked and spun beneath his feet. His chakra was a guttering flame within him; for the first time since the Academy waterwalking was difficult, plus he still held Orochimaru under one arm and the other man's feeble struggles were interfering with Jiraiya's balance. Still, he persevered for the few seconds that were needed.

The wave passed by, leaving Jiraiya standing in a field of mud. His vision was still tunneled and gray around the edges but with sheer willpower he forced himself to run to the rockpile where Tsunade had fallen. He barely remembered to let go of Orochimaru in the process.

"Uuugh," Tsunade groaned, sitting up and rubbing her head. "Sage's cowlick, what hit me?"

"Um—" Orochimaru said nervously.

"Some kind of ranged Lightning jutsu," Jiraiya said quickly. "Those bastards were throwing them everywhere. We barely got clear."

Orochimaru caught Jiraiya's eye. Thank you, he mouthed gratefully. Jiraiya shrugged and gave him a What are friends for? wink. He held a hand out to Tsunade to help her up.

The blonde grabbed his hand and came to her feet, wrapping her buxom self around him in a surprise hug. "Thank you," she said. "You saved us again. I really thought I was going to die there." A shudder went through her at the thought.

Jiraiya chuckled and stroked her back gently, taking care not to become too absorbed in the subtle play of her taut musculature as he did. "It's okay," he murmured. "You're fine. Everything is fine."

She clung to him for a moment longer, her sun-blonde head tucked under his chin like a kitten seeking protection; the pressure of her full breasts on his chest was very distracting and he forced himself not to react. She had made it very clear that advances would be welcome, but he refused. Dating within the team was always a bad idea, regardless of how beautiful and vivacious and buxom and—

He coughed to distact himself and pushed her to arms length, pressing a chaste kiss to her forehead. "You're okay," he said, smiling reassuringly. "Everything's going to be fine. Now, come on. We need to get home."

She nodded, taking a deep breath to center herself. "Right." She looked around for a moment, checking that Orochimaru was fine where he stood a few feet away, his fingers twisting nervously together. "Okay," she said, her voice firming up. "Let's do this. Sensei needs to hear about what those bastards are doing down there before they manage to get it into deployment."

The Legendary Three turned and leaped away, leaving the burned shreds of their enemies far behind as they raced home with news that would change the course of the Second Shinobi World War.

 

[Velorien]

Interlude: Up Close Yet Far Away​

It was Jibura Tobikomi's motto that he'd sell his wares at a price that suited both parties or he'd jump in a chakra beast's maw himself. Today was the first time he'd nearly taken the latter option.

Tobi (as he was to his friends, which included all potential customers, and thus everyone) had only needed a few minutes of market research to conclude that chakra gators made poor customers for his wares. They didn't haggle, their body language was unreadable even to a trader of his skill, and after an unsuccessful round of negotiations he'd been forced to leave one of his product samples wedging open the gator's mouth as he urgently made his escape. Somehow he doubted he'd be getting that one back intact after the trial period was over.

"Head southwest from here, and your journey will meet with a swift end indeed." The old crone's description of the local area had been perfectly clear. But while this landscape, a hideous mockery of the natural order filled with nothing but murderous beasts, did resemble the descriptions of Hidden Leaf he'd gathered on his way through Mist, he couldn't imagine a place like this being the home of the infamous Will of Fire. And right now, with his clothes having soaked up half the water in the swamp as he fled, and the chill beginning to settle into his bones, he'd accept even the Idle Contemplation of Fire as a blessing from on high.

If there was one stroke of luck, it was the shelter built out of fallen trees. Seemingly abandoned long ago, it offered perfect protection from the elements and the eyes of insolvent predators both. Just then, Tobi was so busy counting his lucky stars that he would probably have given one of his precious telescopes away for free to the first person who came along. But of course, there would be no people in this terrible swamp of death. Once, he thought he heard some children's voices in the distance, but he couldn't imagine anyone bringing a child here of their own free will. It was probably another of those siren birds.

Tobi dried out his clothes as best he could and consulted his map. By his best guess, Leaf ought to be due north.
​

-o-
​

Tobi suspected he'd overshot Leaf a little, but at this moment in time he didn't mind so much. Not when he was being given the opportunity to indulge in honeyed nuts, his biggest vice, while watching an afternoon's entertainment at the makeshift arena. He wondered what incredible ninja magic the Liberator must have at his disposal to allow bees to thrive in this severe climate. Maybe he'd ask tomorrow during his audience with the man.

Next to him, a northerner built like a bear, with calloused hands that reminded Tobi of Grandfather's, passionately argued about ironsand purity with a ninja wearing knife bandoleers, while on his other side, a young woman in simple peasant dress was getting a little too enthusiastic about the fight. Her impassioned cheering was cute in a way, but he wished she wouldn't keep unconsciously grabbing his nuts.

The Liberator really had worked miracles to get ninja and common people united behind a single cause. The commoners built, crafted and farmed while the ninja scouted, hunted and defended, but they did so side by side, supporting each other in their assigned roles rather than one existing purely to serve the other. The commoners didn't fear the ninja, and the ninja didn't look down on the commoners, at least nowhere near as much as in the hidden villages he'd been to. If the Liberator's war was done soon, he might even suggest moving Jibura Glassworks here—with ninja-built defences keeping chakra beasts and bandits away, this was the safest settlement outside an actual hidden village, and once those ninja were done fighting, he was sure some of them would see the potential in working with craftsmen and traders to turn their magical powers into money. Money which there was only one obvious way to spend. Truly, the age of the telescope was just around the corner.
​

"Righteous Face Punching Style: Universal Problem-Solving Technique!"

His neighbour thrust her hands up in the air as she cheered, the motion obliterating what remained of Tobi's nuts. In retrospect, he should have seen that coming from a mile off.

-o-
​

He'd overshot Leaf again.

He didn't think he could be blamed this time, though. It could all have been averted if the Liberator had just bought telescopes for his guards, allowing them to spot the incoming ninja force before it was practically on top of them. But no, he'd been too busy dealing with the fallout of that assassination to have time for a travelling merchant. And in the aftermath, Tobi had had no choice but to flee, without even the time to buy a better map.

Still, Kobana wasn't a bad place. The Hydra Foundation hadn't been interested in his wares, but on the other hand they had asked some probing questions about the lens structures, and whether it would be possible to create a focused telescope for better vision of things that were very close by, rather than those far away. They already had a variety of prototypes, they'd told him, but nothing they could test without proper lenses made by a professional.

Unfortunately, while Tobi was perfectly happy to help a prospective customer, he was having a devil of a time finding ninja willing to transport the prototypes home to Wave for Grandfather to look at. At this rate, he might have to give up and move on. Maybe this time he'd reach Leaf without incident.
​

-o-
​

Success! Truly, the stars smiled on the persistent. While he'd missed Leaf once again, Tobi had finally found a prospective customer. The man was rich enough to not only stay at Mizutani Hot Springs but to have his own retinue, and most importantly of all, his unspecified work apparently involved frequent scouting for danger which would be greatly helped by a quality telescope. This time, Tobi would make the sale, or he'd jump in a chakra beast's maw himself.

Tobi had worried, at first, whether he could afford the investment of visiting a fancy hot springs resort to scout out the local market, but the gamble had paid off. And he already had his eye on a few other Mizutani guests who should be able to afford his goods, either as a status symbol or as a professional tool.

Tomorrow, tomorrow his downstairs neighbour would finalise the sale, the first on Tobi's so-far-disastrous trip. From there, success beckoned like sunlight glinting off piles of distant gold. His spirits lifted by hope for the future, Tobi had just stepped out of his room for a spot of stargazing when—
​

-o-
​

Sarubetsu was a more colourful place than Tobi had expected, given its backwater location. No, that wasn't fair. He should be counting his lucky stars that he'd managed to get out of Hot Springs before they closed the borders at all. After all, with his potential clientele fleeing as if the resort was coming down about their ears (which was only partly the case), being trapped in the country would have been a disaster.

Unfortunately, nobody here seemed interested in telescopes, not even at what he considered a reasonable discount price. Locals mistakenly thought they had no use for them, while travellers invested all their money in the local "produce" instead. Wasn't there a single travelling ninja here who wanted a telescope?
​

"You want me to cut your throat, Hinago bitch?!"

A few seats down, a ninja had just leapt up onto a table, knife in hand, apparently ready to start a fight.

Tobi really needed to get out of Sarubetsu.
​

-o-
​

Tobi had to admit that he was apprehensive. After those unfortunate detours through Iron and Snow, he'd finally made it to Leaf, only to learn from his preliminary research that its last telescope salesman (Leaf was rich enough to have its own telescope salesman!) had recently gone out of business. This did not bode well for his sales figures.

However, his research had also revealed to him that there was a new and powerful clan on the rise, one with all the wealth of a legendary hero turned Hokage. And while the existing clans had probably already bought all the telescopes they were going to, the Gōketsu represented untapped potential for his business. Tonight, he would head straight to the compound and offer them his services. For a special first-time-customer price, even.
​

-o-​

It happened the instant Tobi stepped within sight of the Gōketsu Compound.

"Hold it right there, Hyūga stinker!"

The pale, lanky man had appeared out of nowhere with ninja-like speed.

"Think you can just walk up to my home and start spying on my family, do you?" The man stabbed his finger in the direction of the sample telescope Tobi had been carrying in his right hand, a very fine Jibura Super Extender Max Plus 1000 model with a smooth grip and custom brass finish.

"I-I'm not a spy," Tobi stammered in surprise. "I'm just a travelling telescope salesman."

"Oldest excuse in the book," the man growled.

"How could I even be a Hyūga?" Tobi insisted. "They're the least likely clan in the world to need telescopes!"

"Not for getting around privacy seals they're not," the man said. "This is just the kind of underhanded trickery I'd expect from you stinkers." He reached for a pouch at his waist, then tensed as if restraining himself through a great deal of effort.

"If you get off this property within ten seconds, I won't blow you into bits too small even for the Byakugan to locate."

"But I only wanted to—"

"One," the man counted, pulling out a piece of paper with a design on it from the pouch.

"But I don't have Hyūga eyes!"

"If I were a Hyūga, a way of disguising my eyes would be the first thing I'd invent. Four. Five." The man now had five pieces of paper.

Never mind. Right now, Tobi needed some way to take control of the negotiations as a proper trader.

"Six. Seven." The man pulled out more pieces of paper, one by one.

Wait. He'd said "blow you into bits", hadn't he? Tobi suddenly had a theory about what this man's ninja powers were, and what that many pieces of paper would mean.

"Eight."

Discretion was the better part of salesmanship. Lots of discretion. Immediately.

"Thank you for your time, valued customeeeeeer!"
​

-o-
​

Tobi's second attempt went better. Watching the compound from a safe distance using the Jibura Super Extender Max Plus 1000 (in a completely ethical and un-spy-like way), he waited until the uncooperative customer left, and then walked up to the compound gates, this time carefully keeping all his telescopes in his pack.

"E-Excuse me!"

After a few seconds, a redheaded woman appeared at the gate. She looked unarmed, which admittedly said nothing given she was probably a ninja, but still made Tobi relax a little.

"Welcome to the home of the Gōketsu Clan," she said with a warm smile that instantly knocked ten percent off the opening offer. "I am Gōketsu Mari. How can I help you?"

"J-Jibura Tobi, m-ma'am. Would your clan be in n-need of the continent's finest telescopes?"

"Telescopes, you say?" Lady Gōketsu said thoughtfully. "I suppose my… son did mention having a mild interest in telescopes. How much are they?"

Tobi was steadily regaining his self-control. "For you, Lady Gōketsu, a mere three hundred thousand ryō."

That gave her pause.

"That seems like a little too much for a rare toy. But I suppose if it's a present for my family, I might consider fifty thousand."

There was a twinkle in her eye that stirred Tobi's very blood as a proud telescope salesman. He could feel the spirit of the Jibura surge through his veins.

"A toy, my lady? This is the most advanced piece of technology on the continent and beyond. Wars are won or lost by inventions such as these! The telescope is the most powerful of magic wands. It makes chakra eagles flap away in shame. It turns watchtowers into invincible guardians of the peace. It makes spycraft trivial, and mocks even your most perceptive foes. If the telescope had existed when the Sage of Six Paths was alive, he might never have needed to invent ninja! In truth, five hundred thousand would be a fraction of its true worth, and I stand amazed at myself for being prepared to sell it to you for half that price."

Lady Gōketsu considered.

"Is that so? In that case perhaps I shouldn't buy one after all. It would only be an encouragement for him to go out into danger, and there is so much good he can do here in the village."

It had to be a haggling trick. Tobi was convinced of it. But the shift in her body language made him think twice. It was as if she'd lost all interest in him all of a sudden, and he could already see her moving to dismiss him.

"I'm sure your husband, the Hokage, would find it interesting!" he exclaimed. "It has countless applications in warfare. Who knows what ideas he might get from studying it? Can you deny that the possibility of greatly increasing Leaf's military power is worth a pitiful two hundred thousand?"

"My husband's predecessor was the legendary Professor," Lady Gōketsu reminded him. "If these telescopes are so worthy of study, I'm sure there must be stacks of them in the Hokage's Office. Or if there aren't, that would mean the Third Hokage had examined them and found them beneath his interest."

The last telescope salesman in Leaf had gone out of business. Tobi should have seen this coming from a mile off.

"But," she said mercifully, "It might be something for Jiraiya to play around with in his private time. Of course, he doesn't have much of that as Hokage, and it would mean he'd be spending less time with his family… I suppose I might be able to stretch to seventy-five, but only because it would make him happy."

Tobi tried hard not to choke. Her idea of a first counter-offer was to go up by twenty-five thousand?

"Impossible," he shook his head. "My lady, you gravely underestimate the popularity of the telescopes among the elite. Why, if I were to sell it to you for a measly two hundred thousand, I would have all the other clans beating down my door tomorrow morning demanding the same unimaginably low price, and these marvels are in very limited supply. For you, and only for you, would I even consider risking my business like this."

"Oh?" she said curiously, looking right into his eyes. "And how many have you sold so far?"

Tobi couldn't lie to a customer, especially not a lie she was in a position to verify. Especially not when she was the wife of the Hokage, who could have him publically flogged (or worse, stripped of the right to trade on Leaf territory) with the wave of a hand.

"I-I have some very promising prospects lined up," he said, "even if no final agreements have been made."

"Mmm," Lady Gōketsu responded. "It seems to me that if the other clans haven't bought any yet, they must surely have their reasons. I can't have them looking askance at my husband for bucking the trend. No, it would have to be a trivial enough purchase to be unworthy of their consideration. Fifty thousand after all."

Tobi blanched.

"Then again," she went on, "maybe I'm wrong, in which case the Hokage himself buying a telescope for his personal use might stir interest in it among the clans and the general population alike. There are many merchants who would consider fifty thousand ryō a cheap price to pay for that kind of advantage."

Tobi had changed his mind. This woman was a devil. A devil from the darkest depths of the abyss where the starlight could not reach.

"One hundred thousand, and that's me jumping in a chakra beast's maw myself."

"Seventy-five thousand," she countered, "and you may refer to yourself as official supplier to the Hokage."

"Sole supplier."

"If Jiraiya is satisfied with the product and your workshop can meet his future telescope needs at the same price."

Tobi suddenly had terrifying visions of being forced to supply the entire Leaf army for seventy-five thousand ryō apiece, and what Grandfather would do to him when he found out.

"For personal use only," he said quickly.

"Personal and clan use."

The Hokage's clan only numbered six people, right? Grandfather would still kill him, but… sole supplier to the Hokage. There was a lot you could build on a foundation like that. Even if it cost him now, generations down the line his descendants would remember Jibura Tobikomi as the man who'd moved Jibura Glassworks out of total obscurity and into the big leagues.

"Done."

Lady Gōketsu gave him a radiant smile. "Of course," she said, "only Jiraiya can sign a deal which makes you sole supplier to the Hokage, and I'm afraid he left for Mist yesterday morning. So any agreement made here is completely non-binding."

Wait. Non-binding. He'd just spent this entire negotiation…

He looked in her eyes. Saw that twinkle there. The realisation hit him like a chakra alligator to the face.

"You never wanted a telescope at all, did you?"

She gave him a "You've got me" smile.

"We have other financial priorities right now, and I'm not going to spend that kind of money without the intended owner's consent. If you like, you can wait for Jiraiya to return and speak to him then."

"How long?" he asked, feeling the strength drain out of his limbs.

"However long negotiations take. Weeks, I imagine. Or, if you want a quick decision, you could head after him. He's only just set out, so he should still be in Mist by the time you get there."

Weeks of waiting in the same place would not only cost Tobi a great deal of potential profit and clash badly with his wanderlust. It would also, quite simply, drive him insane with the uncertainty. Sole supplier to the Hokage. It wasn't the kind of thing he could let hang in the air.

"Thank you, Lady Gōketsu. I will leave for Hidden Mist straight away."

Mist was northeast of here, he vaguely remembered, on the other side of the Kaizoku Sea. If he hurried, he should make it in plenty of time. And besides, even if he missed the Hokage, how hard could it be to find Leaf again?​

 

[eaglejarl]

Doing something a little different today. This chapter was written by both myself (@eaglejarl) and @Velorien in collaboration. Enjoy!​

---

Campfire Stories, Sealmaster Style​

It should have been a dark and stormy night. The clouds should have been crackling with ominous thunder. The darkness should have been pressing in like an animate, oppressive force. The sounds of animals moving around should have been taking on an eerie, sinister edge, and Hazō should have been feeling an inexplicable desire to speak in no more than a hushed whisper lest he draw the attention of something terrible.

"Who wants another squirrel on a stick?" asked Jiraiya.

"Ooh, ooh, me!" Noburi said, doing the next best thing to snatching the stick from Jiraiya's hand before dunking it in the Akimichi teriyaki sauce that Kagome had grumpily authorized eating, solely because he'd provided the ingredients and then watched the cooks prepare it. (The Akimichi had started off amused and happy to satisfy the request of their Hokage. They hadn't ended that way.)

It was that kind of night and Noburi was hogging the squirrels. This was not what Hazō had signed up for. (Not that he'd signed up for anything, as that would imply Mari-sensei giving any of them a choice.)

Keiko sighed. "Far be it from me to reject the joy of partaking in incinerated rodent, but I do believe we had a purpose in coming here."

"Yes!" Hazō exclaimed. "Mari-sensei, you promised us, and I quote, 'an unforgettable family bonding experience through shared horror over what half of us do with our spare time'." With a move memorised to perfection over the course of the evening, he grabbed the next squirrel before Noburi could react. "And not that the things this teriyaki sauce is doing to my tongue aren't horrifying, but I did assume you were referring to the tales of sealing failures Jiraiya's been hinting at all this time."

"Sealing failures, huh?" Jiraiya said thoughtfully. "Seems a little dark. It's a nice night, can't we just enjoy each other's company?"

"Hmph," Kagome said. "Like you've got any stories about sealing failures, Mr. 'Oh-I'm-the-Greatest-Sealmaster-Ever-and-So-I-Don't-Need-Precautions'."

"Kagome," Jiraiya said patiently. "How do you think I became the world's greatest sealmaster? Everyone starts off ignorant, I just survived long enough and learned enough to be the best." He preened a bit. "Of course, being incredibly gifted helped a bit."

"Hmph."

Jiraiya rolled his eyes. "Fine," he said, "let me tell you about the kind of people I worked with back when I was studying in Leaf's sealcrafting facilities—the world's best, mind you, staffed with the elite of the elite. Our janitors knew more about sealcrafting than some of the experts in the other villages." Kagome gave another "hmph", but Jiraiya ignored him.

"The elite of the elite," he repeated. "And if you wanted to live long enough to get promoted, you had to pay attention to every tiniest detail of what they told you. For example..."

Jiraiya shifted into a more comfortable sitting position.

"When I was a new recruit still getting my feet wet," he began, "I was taken on the standard tour of the Hall of Candles. They showed us each sealmaster's candle and the inscription underneath it—their name, their date of death, what they'd done wrong and what happened to them as a result. Your typical apprentice couldn't sleep for a week straight after that, longer if they had a good imagination. Put you in the right frame of mind.

"But there was one candle which only had a name: Ishimura Junior. He was in the Hall of Candles, but he wasn't dead.

"I recognised the name, of course—the Ishimura Junior reports are required reading when you're inducted, because the man has a ton to say about protective barriers and layered defences. So I asked.

"What they said is this: Nobody knows when Ishimura Junior died. Nobody knows if Ishimura Junior died. Nobody knows if he ever lived. The people who would have been his colleagues don't remember ever meeting him. His signature on those dozen reports is all there is.

"And you know how the last of his reports ends? 'My next safety feature should make sure nobody ever suffers the same fate as', and the rest of the line is blank."

Hazō shuddered. "Did they ever figure out what the safety feature was supposed to be?"

"No idea," Jiraiya said. "We don't even know what it was meant to prevent, not really, or how common that thing is. Think about it: everyone knows about Ishimura Junior because, if he ever existed, he was really good at what he did, and his reports get used in training every year. How many other reports might there be filed away that nobody ever sees? How many of them have signatures nobody would recognise? How many don't?

"This is the thing some sealmasters"—Jiraiya eyed Kagome briefly but meaningfully—"can't get their heads around. The worst sealing failures aren't the ones where people get flayed alive and then their skin put back on inside out. It's the ones where you don't know what happened—or how to stop it happening again."

"Are you implying that specific types of sealing failure are preventable?" Keiko frowned.

Jiraiya shook his head. "Not the failures. But sometimes, knowing exactly what happened during a sealing failure is the only way to save yourself from its consequences.

"There was this one time when I was on a diplomatic mission to Hidden Rock for Sensei. They wanted to show how powerful they were and what good allies they could be, so they took me through their sealing labs...."

o-o-o-o​

The door swung open on well-oiled hinges. Somehow, Jiraiya could almost hear the creeeeeeak that should have been there.

"And this is Room 112," said Imai Kenzō proudly.

Jiraiya looked inside without moving any closer to the door. The room was tiny, barely the size of a large closet, and completely empty except for a chair that faced the door, a desk in front of the chair, and a trio of inkstones placed haphazardly across the desk's surface.

"It's empty...?"

"Yes," Imai said, nodding sagely. "I check at least once a fortnight, more often after we lose someone."

Jiraiya waited, but the Hidden Rock sealmaster just stood there. "Why?" the Sannin finally asked, knowing full well that it was a straight line.

"To make sure there's always someone alive who remembers that Room 112 is empty." He smiled. "Preferably someone who doesn't live here in Hidden Rock."

o-o-o-o​

"Pfffft!" Kagome pffted. "That's the best you've got? Let me tell you what a real sealing failure looks like....

o-o-o-o​

The other students laughed at Kagome when he came to class in a smock, balaclava, and gloves that overlapped his long sleeves. The first time a proctor, Sugawara Dan, exploded and soaked them all in blood and brain matter they glared at his smug expression but continued to wear their normal attire. The second time it happened everyone took turns quietly asking him for recommendations on which fabrics were the most bloodproof.

The third proctor, Murata Chōei, didn't explode. He shredded. Half of his body mass vanished...not half of his body, half of his mass. Strips of flesh and bone from random locations simply winked out of existence, leaving him a screaming, oozing mass of agony on the floor.

Murata didn't die. The blood flow stopped in less than a minute as some of the strips reappeared. They didn't reappear in exactly the same places, leaving small cracks in the skin and upthrust ridges where the flesh now overlapped. Over the course of a week the cracks filled in with teeth and eyes. No one seemed to notice and they certainly didn't believe Kagome when he pointed it out.

o-o-o-o​

"Ouch," Jiraiya said. "Yeah, I always hated the Type 7-G incidents. Of course, sometimes you get something simpler, like that one time that Noguchi's digestive system got reversed. A liquid diet proved to be best after that, since it tasted least bad on the way out. Poor guy lived six months like that."

"Yeah, well, we had someone live for a year after being turned inside out," Kagome said immediately. "It was gross. You could see his brain beating, and he left bloody footprints everywhere."

Noburi frowned. "Brains don't beat, Kagome," he said. "Hearts beat."

"Were you there, Mr.-I'm-So-Stinking-Clever? No, you weren't, so you just shut up."

Noburi shrugged and chewed thoughtfully on his squirrel. "That would actually be really cool," he said after a moment. "Do you remember what the blood system looked like? Dr. Yakushi has been speculating on whether it's a set of loops or a static pool."

Kagome glared at him and masticated a defenseless squirrel-kebab to death.

"Tsunade believes it's a single closed loop," Jiraiya offered. "She's generally right about that sort of thing since, y'know, world's best medic-nin." He smiled. "Just like I'm the best sealmaster. Because Legendary Three."

"What about Orochimaru, Jiraiya?" Mari-sensei asked. "What was he best at? You mentioned once that he liked to cut things open and that you were making seals for him—did anything ever come of that?"

Jiraiya shuddered. "Nope. Nothing."

She raised an eyebrow. "Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"And they say I'm a bad liar," Kagome grumbled. "Reminds me of this one time...."

o-o-o-o​

"You are an idiot who should not be allowed near an inkbrush, much less a testing lab," Kubo said. "Also, I'm very embarrassed about saying that and I hope I don't get in trouble for it. Secondarily, you are smoking hot and I want you to drag me to bed by my hair so that you can tie me down and make me lick every inch of your body."

"What?!" Otsuka shrieked, leaping to her feet.

Kagome started shoveling his food down so he could get away before things really went south. These conversations never went well, since people didn't like it when you were honest with them. Worse, Kubo's conversations frequently devolved into violence that involved collateral damage to everyone else in the lunchroom.

"Now I'm really embarrassed," Kubo said, blushing furiously. "I hate saying those things to you, but I really don't want the broccoli getting into my eye."

It wasn't actually broccoli, of course, but the growths did look remarkably broccoli-esque. New ones sprouted every time Kubo kept a thought bottled up, and they seemed to be evolving. The one on his nose had grown claws last week and was ever-so-slowly growing towards his left eye, the claws clacking furiously as it grew. Worse, the clacking was starting to sound like words.

o-o-o-o​

"Semi-sapient growths on the face, huh?" Jiraiya said. "Yeah, that's bad. Could be worse, though.

"I remember when Murabe, one of the other guys in my division, called me over to help him set up for a trial. Luckily for me, I was late because I got stuck in an argument between Yuri and Mikako over who got to jump my bones—this was while I was still young and stupid, you understand, and didn't realise it was a false dilemma. By the time I got to Murabe, it was all over.

"The best way to describe what happened to Murabe was... 'out of phase'. He wasn't all there—not mentally, but physically. You could sort of see through him if you squinted hard enough, and while he was all right while he was concentrating, the second he got distracted he started moving through things. Trouble was, things started moving through him too. He got real sick real fast, and it took us time to figure out that this was because the air was getting past his skin and rubbing against his insides. He wasn't completely out of phase, you see, just a bit. He got prescribed complete bed rest, because he was mostly fine as long as he didn't move at all and was indoors where there was no wind.

"But what happened to him was nothing. Here's the really weird thing. He hadn't been testing a seal.

"Murabe was a smart guy, one of the best I'd ever worked with, and he knew better than to forge ahead with a risky experiment just because his helper wasn't there. He was still in the process of double-checking his calculations when whatever happened... happened.

"Now the idea of getting hit by somebody else's sealing failure out of nowhere is scary enough. But it gets worse. Murabe was an early riser, and he was the first to set up for an experiment that day. There was nothing in the facility that could have triggered at that time. In other words, he got messed up by a sealing failure when no seal had failed.

"And then it's a month later. To the day, actually. I remember because Yuri made a big deal out of the anniversary. Mensiversary. Whatever. There I am, in the testing area where Murabe had his accident, minding my own business with a Banshee Slayer prototype, when suddenly the man himself staggers in. Bear in mind, he's not suicidal. He's been starting to fade back into phase, meaning there's hope for a complete recovery—as long as he doesn't do what he's doing right now.

He looks terrible. He's panting, and his eyes are bloodshot. You can sort of see inside him, only instead of organs or what have you, it's all red with blood, like he was tearing himself apart against the air in order to get here.

"He walks up to me, grunting with every step. 'Jiraiya,' he says, 'where's my prototype sonic catalyser seal?"

"I tell him I'm damned if I know. It's the early hours of the morning and I'm barely awake. I'm not going to remember where his stuff from a month ago got stowed after the medic-nin were done with him.

"He looks me in the eye, and he's got the look of a desperate man. 'Jiraiya, if you don't get that seal here in one hour, I think the world will end.' And then he falls to his knees, struggling to breathe.

"Well, what was I going to do? Murabe wasn't one for drama, and he was wrangling seals while I was still beating up bullies at the Academy. I run for the storerooms like all our lives depend on it.

"Fifteen minutes later, I get back with the seal, and he's in bad shape. Coming out here cost him big-time. He's leaning against the wall like it's the only thing keeping him up, and I wouldn't be surprised if he keeled over any minute. So I hand him the seal that he never got to infuse the first time round. 'What's the deal, Murabe?' I finally ask.

"'I have to make sure this seal fails,' Murabe wheezes. 'By the Sage of Six Paths and all his disciples, it has to fail.'

"And before I can lift a hand to stop him, he infuses the seal. I dive for cover—

"And nothing happens, except he collapses to the ground again. It didn't take a medic-nin to tell that the stress had been too much for him. He'd given his life to fail an infusion, but the failure didn't do anything."

"Bird poop!" Kagome said. "No such thing as a sealing failure that doesn't eat your face in horrible, horrible ways. Or make broccoli grow out of it."

"I was confused too. At first, I thought he must have infused the seal successfully after all. Which is crazy. How do you fail to fail an infusion? And then I realised... it had done something after all. It just hadn't done it now."

Silence fell as the family digested that.

"I had no idea sealing failures were so dangerous," Mari-sensei said. "I've watched these two for a year now. I've seen explosions, portals that create blade monsters, chakra constructs that look like talking porcupines, and all kinds of crazy stuff. I've never seen the kinds of things you're talking about."

Jiraiya shrugged and took a pull on the canteen of sake at his feet. "From what I can tell, Hazō has mostly been working on variations of storage seals, which are the second best-understood seal in existence. They're an extremely stable design that's very hard to get wrong, which is why they get taught to novices.

"Kagome," he said, turning to his colleague, "I may not agree that all of your precautions are necessary, but the fact is that you're good at what you do. Adding a chakra adhesion trigger to the air domes was a clever bit of jiggery-pokery, and the implosion seals are a cool variant on storage."

He looked back to Mari-sensei. "Point is, Hazō has been dealing with stuff that's hard to screw up, so it's not surprising that most of the screw-ups have been fairly tame. Once you start getting into more esoteric research that isn't the case anymore."

He paused, staring meditatively into the fire and sipping on his canteen. When he spoke again his voice was quiet, his thoughts clearly far away.

"There were two prodigy twins at one of our facilities: Ikaruga Yūji and Ikaruga Yūhei. They always worked together. Co-authored all their papers, collaborated on every project. Rumour had it that they were even dating a pair of sisters. And one day, while doing some extremely esoteric and very classified research, they got hit by the same sealing failure.

"At first it seemed like nothing was wrong. For a second, they just stood there. But then Yūhei clutched his head as if it was about to burst apart, screamed to the heavens and collapsed on the spot. And Yūji just gave this creepy little smile and said, 'Well, that's never happened before'.

"Yūhei didn't wake up after that. He was in a coma. They left him in the sealmasters' dormitory to keep an eye on him in case there were more effects, and made sure Yūji stuck around until he got a clean bill of health from the medic-nin. Yūji seemed fine, though. He walked around, talked to people, studied sealcrafting notes and reports like any normal sealmaster—only he never stopped wearing that creepy little smile.

"All normal, until the day he deliberately triggered a sealing failure. By the time they were done with the evacuation, he'd disappeared, and nobody ever saw him again. Everyone assumed he'd decided to turn missing-nin, though there was no clue why.

"Two days later, Yūhei woke up. His colleagues were all relieved to find him in good health... until he opened his mouth. Nothing he said made sense, and eventually everyone gave up on listening to him and just treated him as another traumatized sealmaster."

"What kind of things did he say?" Hazō asked.

"Oh, a whole bunch of crazy stuff. I can still remember a little of it.

'There isn't enough blood in the children.'

'It's so cold here, inside the others.'

'They will obey. Once they've looked into the sun, they will obey.'

'Too many hands. Why are there always too many hands?'

'I have run out of right angles. I must start again.'

"A week later, the news came in that the hunter-nin had tracked down Ikaruga Yūji. They wouldn't talk about how they found him or what they'd seen, but they reported that when they got there he'd already taken his own life. The same day, Yūhei spontaneously snapped out of his madness, and as far as anyone could tell it had no lasting effects... except that every now and again, people would see him smiling this creepy little smile."

 

[Velorien]

Interlude: Marked for Dragons​

Arnold of the Black Ridge was an awe-inspiring titan of a man, with bulging muscles, a lantern jaw, and a smile that made women swoon. Despite being stuck as a cleric, he was the natural leader of the adventuring party, and walked at the front as he chatted to his second-in-command.

"How did you get full plate mail this early, anyway? That stuff's expensive. And I'm pretty sure there are laws against that shade of green."

"It is an ancient family heirloom," Lady Rubia the paladin said proudly. "It was first made for my ancestor Guy de la Puissance two hundred years ago. Guy was born as a humble miller's son, and at the age of—"

"Backstory bonus, gotcha," Arnold waved the explanation away, instead glancing back at the rest of the group. Whateley the warlock was still reading that seal-encrusted tome of his while periodically cackling with glee, while Kali FrozenSoul (but a humble traveller unworthy of special attention, and those skeletons marching obediently behind her were purely decorative) remained an enigma beneath the cowl of her black robe with the bloody snowflake patterns.

"Is it me," he leaned over to Lady Rubia, "or is half of our party blatantly, irredeemably evil? Were they even on the same page as us during chargen?"

"Fear not," Lady Rubia replied with what was probably a radiant smile behind her helmet's visor. "Nobody is irredeemable before the Spirit of Faith. Whateley just needs to ask his Hive Mind patron to stop whispering sanity-eroding arcane secrets to him in his sleep, and Kali needs—"

There was a meaningful cough from behind her.

"—Kali FrozenSoul needs to learn to make friends who aren't undead abominations enslaved to her will by infernal sorcery."

Even Arnold could feel the death glare being directed at Lady Rubia through the thick fabric of Kali's cowl. As the party leader, it was probably his role to find a way to placate her—

Ahhahahaha! You forgot to scout ahead, suckers! As you enter the valley, a dozen goblins spot you from the other end and charge at you, screaming and waving clubs and axes. What do you do?

Lady Rubia reacted instantly. "I'm going to find a chokepoint and pin the goblins in place. Arnold, start blessing. Whateley, you pick out their leader and hit him with your best spell, and Kali—"

"Don't worry," Whateley interrupted, "I've got this."

The party stared in horror at Whateley as he completely ignored the second-in-command's instructions and walked to the front, staring down the incoming horde with an expression of excitement that made Arnold shiver.

Whateley brandished his tome.

"Darkness."

A huge hemisphere of pure black coalesced from thin air, encasing the charging goblins. There was a cacophony of dismayed screeching and the sounds of goblins tripping over and running into things.

"Devil's Sight."

A third eye, drawn in the pulsating blue light of the Hive Mind's power, appeared on Whateley's brow as if it had always been there.

"Eldritch Blast! Eldritch Blast! Eldritch Blast! Eldritch Blast!"

Lances of pure magical power sped from Whateley's hand, striking his targets with unerring precision as if the impenetrable darkness wasn't there. By the time the hemisphere faded away, all that was left was a dozen small corpses.

What the…?! Let me see that rulebook!

Huh.

"It's an underpowered class," Kali's voice mercilessly quoted. "Only two spell slots before he has to rest, and the rest of the time he's stuck with cantrips."

"There, there," Lady Rubia patted Arnold on the shoulder with a gauntleted hand, nearly knocking him flat. Unfortunately, his finely sculpted appearance was mostly the product of a stratospheric Charisma stat. Somebody had to be the party face, and Lady Rubia already had to invest in Strength, Constitution and Wisdom, Whateley's candidacy had been unanimously vetoed, and Kali had been too smart not to take Charisma as her dump stat.

Arnold made a mental note for future battles: "Run out of healing right before you get to Whateley".

-o-​

Kali FrozenSoul, elven princess in exile, suffered through the tomfoolery of her imbecilic mortal minions in silence as she studied the goblin bodies with an expert's eye. Doubtless, the others thought her a common necromancer, a mortal graverobber with some meagre gift for the exalted arts. They could not know that she, the pinnacle of elven magical talent, had achieved such heights of mastery of the dead that her own people had cast her out in superstitious fear. Since then, she had spent centuries perfecting her craft, a martyr to her inferiors' fear of the unknown, the truth of her soul understood by none but the silent dead she raised to be her companions.

Soon, however, her torment and alienation at the hands of a cruel world would matter no more. She had a plan, a master plan developed with the aid of the most diabolical of allies, a mistress of manipulation who offered Kali FrozenSoul everything she needed and asked only for entertainment in return. The paladin and his cleric lieutenant were too blind to perceive the true depths of the darkness within her, and the warlock, while useful, was too focused on his art to realise what was to come.

"Kali?"

How could the pitiful mortals ever hope to understand her true self when they could not even remember to address her by her full name? She was no mere slip of a girl to be beckoned with one or two syllables. She was Kali FrozenSoul, last of the great necromancers of old, doomed to wander the land without hope of solace or reprieve, and if her heart was too cold to accept another's love, she would at least demand the respect she was due.

"Kali FrozenSoul?" the cleric called her, and his eyeroll earned his spirit another century of torment once the master plan was complete.

"What?" she snapped.

"Can you go over and help Whateley figure out the mechanism for that door? We're pretty sure it's magical, and I'm not proficient in Arcana."

Begrudgingly accepting the recognition of her talent, Kali FrozenSoul glided over to the warlock as he hunched over some clockwork engraved with intertwining runes.

"Have you considered my offer, mortal?" she asked in a deathly whisper.

"What?" Whateley muttered distractedly. "Oh, the betrayal? Yeah, sure, just as long as I get the Orb of Unsealing and the key to the Black Library."

Kali FrozenSoul nodded, then recalled that he couldn't see her head move beneath her cowl and also that he was facing the other way. "Of course. And I will finally possess the Sceptre of Unholy Command."

A thought occurred to her. "Leave the paladin intact if you can. With that enchanted armour, she would make an excellent death knight, and it would please me to see the self-righteous smirk on her face be twisted into a murderer's grimace."

"No promises. I don't know yet if I'm allowed to multiclass without downtime, and right now my DPR is going to have trouble with her AC and save proficiencies. My main obstacle will be avoiding MAD…"

As far as Kali FrozenSoul was concerned, that ship had long since sailed.

"Anyway, let's get back to the mechanism." Whateley turned away from her again and reached into what he called his Bag of Circumstantial Modifiers, pulling out a magnifying glass and a primer on dwarven runes.

"Now I'm ready to roll. Let me know when you've started helping."

The things Kali FrozenSoul did for absolute dominion over life and death…

-o-​

The dragon's corpse was still smouldering in the middle of the cavern. Arnold, buried beneath it, showed no signs of life, and never would. The survivors were scarcely in better shape.

Rubia drew deep, ragged breaths, clinging onto her claymore mostly by force of will. Whateley was beating the last of the flames out of his robe with his eldritch tome. Kali stared mournfully at the remains of her undead vanguard. The two casters stood side by side, as if by some arrangement, while Rubia was where she'd finished the battle, next to the fallen dragon's head.

"You have done well," Kali said in a cool, mocking voice. "It would not be unfair to say that we wouldn't have made it this far without you. Now, surrender and I promise I will grant you a swift and painless death. You cannot hope to fight two magicians in your current state."

"What?" Rubia demanded. "How can this be? Are you truly turning on me after all the battles we've fought together? All the shared conversations over mugs of bitter ale (and one glass of absinthe)? The bonds we have forged through thick and thin?"

Rubia clenched her sword more firmly. "Even so. If you thought you could slay me so easily, you would have already done so. You're injured and low on spells, while I am the one with the powers of healing. Perhaps it is you who should surrender. I promise you will receive a fair trial."

Kali considered her. A twisted smile found its way onto her face.

"No, paladin, I think you will be the one on trial."

Then she drew a dagger and plunged it into Whateley's back. There was a flash as whatever spell had been placed on it went off, and Whateley, his eyes impossibly wide with shock, collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

"Surrender, and I will allow you to heal him. Refuse, and I will deal him the final blow before I raise him once more to be my champion against you. Will the Spirit of Faith allow you to stand by and watch a friend die, I wonder?"

Rubia said nothing. Of course, Kali was right. 'To stand by and do nothing' was as antithetical to her oaths as it could get. It would betray a lineage centuries old. You couldn't be a paladin of the Spirit of Faith and let an ally die in order to save yourself, especially given that Whateley hadn't actually had a chance to betray her. He might not even have had the thought were it not for a certain corrupting influence in his life. At least this way, perhaps Kali would let him live now that he was too close to death to be any threat.

"I surrender," she said through gritted teeth.

"Swear that you will not attempt to harm me," Kali said in a voice as sweet as poisoned honey.

Rubia hesitated. She wanted to try to persuade Kali, to look for another way, but every second she wasted, Whateley drew closer to bleeding out.

"I do so swear."

Kali gave a smile as lifeless as anything she had ever created. "Good. Throw away your sword and take off your enchanted armour."

Over a period of several minutes, Rubia silently obeyed.

"Now hold up your end of the bargain," she growled.

"What bargain?" Kali asked. "My oaths are to the dead, not the living."

She stepped over Whateley's body, then raised her hands for what must have been the deadliest spell in her arsenal.

"Eldritch Blast!"

Five lances of scintillating magical energy pierced Kali's torso and limbs from behind, briefly holding her aloft before her mangled body tumbled roughly to the ground.

Whateley smirked. "A servant of the Hive Mind always has another plan."

Before he could rise from the ground, Rubia kicked him in the head, the damage sending him into unconsciousness.

"A servant of the Spirit of Faith," she replied, "only ever needs the one."

-o-​

"I kept count of your hit points!" Keiko screeched. "How could you still be alive?!"

"Death Ward," Hazō beamed. "Leaves you on one hit point when an attack would otherwise kill you."

"Death Ward is a cleric and paladin spell! You don't even have a holy symbol!"

"I took some bard levels earlier after Kagome-sensei allowed 'eerie chanting' as a form of music. College of Lore bards can learn a couple of spells from any class, plus illusions to fake high-level warlock abilities whenever you were watching."

Keiko glared. "That still makes no sense. If you had a Death Ward up at any point, it would have gone off when the dragon incapacitated you."

"I took some levels of Sorcerer too. Subtle Spell lets you cast a spell without verbal or somatic components. I used it right before you stabbed me in the back."

"You…" Keiko goggled. "You took three different caster classes? Are you insane?"

"I saw you talking to Mari-sensei before character generation," Akane explained. "There's no way she'd miss an opportunity to mess with us. And then you went for an evil character, and that sealed it. I decided to give Hazō an optimisation challenge so that by the time he started to suspect you, he had all the aces up his sleeve… just in case."

"And then after she betrayed us, you betrayed me," Hazō commented.

"Of course," Akane said. "Lady Rubia could never turn on a companion unprompted, however evil he might be. But now that Whateley is a murderer, he has to be captured and imprisoned so he can stand trial."

Keiko raised an eyebrow.

"Just obeying the laws of the land," Akane said innocently.

"You know," Noburi observed, "if you knew she was going to betray us, you could have warned me, and then I wouldn't have died when Keiko's magical support suddenly disappeared."

"That would have been metagaming," Akane said seriously. "Lady Rubia is a pure and innocent soul, and she could never have suspected that one of her comrades would turn on the group."

There was a sudden burst of applause.

"In short," Mari-sensei grinned, strolling in from where she'd been listening in the shadow of the doorway, "Whateley betrayed Kali by working with Rubia behind her back. Kali betrayed Arnold by deliberately letting him die, then betrayed Whateley by trying to kill him. Finally, Rubia betrayed Whateley by knocking him out.

"Now that's entertainment."

"So let me get this straight…" Noburi said. "Akane just subverted Mari-sensei's plan, wiped out the entire rest of the party and got sole claim to the dragon's hoard—all without rolling a single die or violating her paladin oaths."

"Yup."

Kagome got up silently from behind the GM screen. One by one, he fixed the members of the team with a meaningful gaze.

"I think we've all seen today," he said gravely, "what happens when you go around trusting people."

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 160 v2: Opening with a Bang​

A few hours before the beginning of Panashe's mission…

"Gōketsu," Nara said slowly. "These are designs for some manner of static fortification. A static fortification, furthermore, of a style practiced by neither Leaf nor Mist, for very good reasons in each case."

"Yes," Hazō agreed with more confidence than he felt. "That is exactly what they are." The fort was a masterpiece if he said so himself, and the designs had—in their seventh iteration—received Keiko's stamp of approval. But none of that meant a thing if he couldn't convince the other teams to take up residence within its triangular walls instead of going out to hunt their enemies as they would ordinarily do.

Nara considered the designs some more.

"You have a seal you can mass-produce that fits the proctors' requirements," he concluded, "and you want a secure location in which to engage in said mass production."

He paused.

"No. Your sister signed off on this plan, and she would know better than to build herself a tomb as a means of protection. You have some secondary purpose in mind that justifies the construction of this monument to inefficient resource allocation."

Hazō nodded, choosing to ignore Nara's choice of words. "It's a challenge. It seems likely that somebody out there is going to hold a grudge against Leaf generally and the Gōketsu specifically, and they're going to come for us sooner or later. They might even try to kill us and make it look like an accident. This way, instead of letting them prepare an ambush against us wherever, we've putting up a nice big sign saying 'We're staying here and you're free to attack our poorly-thought-out defences whenever is most convenient for you'.

"The catch is that my team has Kagome certificates in trap arrays, battleground preparation, and the general art of securing a perimeter until the Sage of Six Paths himself would rather take the long way round. We once held off an elite assault force several times our number with nothing but traps and explosives. Unless the genin trying to kill us are experienced at dealing with defensive emplacements—which I doubt because, as you say, nobody uses them in the field anymore—they're not going to know what hit them."

"For a trap," Nara said, "it has one distinct weakness. Notably, this royal road leading straight to the entrance."

"That's for trading, which is the fort's other purpose. Some of the seals I make are going to be traded to other teams in exchange for their Night Lights. My version doesn't drain your chakra or have a defined time limit, so it's strictly superior."

Nara went still for a few seconds.

"It all finally falls into place," he said as he relaxed. "You will flood the market, so to speak, with seals of your own design until the proctors are unable to reject them, should they so desire, without upsetting the grading for the entire event. In that case," he swept his finger in a circle a few centimetres outside the edge of the drawing, "you will only want to clear the area up to here. Some cover needs to be preserved to facilitate the Ring of Death."

"Ring of Death?" Hazō repeated uncertainly.

"That is what we called an analogous effect in the Forest of Death in Leaf," Nara said as if it explained everything.

Sometimes it could be very annoying dealing with the Nara Clan.

"What analogous effect?" Hazō asked.

Nara looked at him as if re-evaluating him. Hazō reminded himself to stay patient with his possible future brother-in-law whose approval was an absolute precondition to the fort plan's acceptance.

"Teams with fewer seals for potential trading," Nara said, "will be waiting outside the fort's area of influence in order to ambush those returning from successful trades. With the only path of retreat being obstructed by your field of traps, such ambushes will have a particularly high rate of success. Conversely, the fact that the defending ninja are cornered will cause them to fight more desperately, increasing the level of injury on both sides.

"As the event proceeds, the amount of trade will increase, both due to word of mouth and due to chakra depletion from combat and the resulting motivation to obtain your superior seals. At the same time, the total number of teams will decrease, as some are robbed and incapacitated and others choose to leave the event early in order to avoid same. With the fort now the most reliable source of new seals, the area around it will increasingly fill with ambushers, who will prefer to fight single teams on their own prepared ground rather than assault the fort and fight multiple teams on somebody else's. Thus, the fort will be surrounded by a ring of death that steadily eliminates team after team with no violent action required on our part."

"Yes," Hazō agreed. "That is exactly what I was planning." He made a note not to mention the spirit of cooperation or ending cycles of hatred around Nara for a while.

"Of course," Nara said mildly, "this is all a purely intellectual exercise, since I doubt the other Leaf teams will consent to sacrifice any semblance of mobility or stealth in favour of remaining within this deathtrap for the entire event. Out of curiosity, however… how many seals would you be able to make?"

-o-
​

Last day of the event, morning...​

"I still think this is a preposterous idea," Hyūga Neji hissed. "I find it utterly plausible that the Mist Academy would fail to teach you basic military doctrine, but the rest of our so-called comrades have no excuse."

Noburi smiled as he watched a water clone weave through one of the twelve intertwined and ridiculously complicated safe routes Shikamaru had plotted through the trap array.

"If you were any saltier, Hyūga, we'd send you to kiss the enemy kunoichi to make them die of instant dehydration."

He waited for Hyūga to open his mouth.

"Actually, no, stupid thought," Noburi interrupted the interruption. "That would require the existence of girls willing to kiss you.

"The fact is: Hazō's fort idea has worked. We've got a regular stream of trades going on, nobody's tried to take on our badass defences, and Hazō's cranking out Party Trick seals like he's been told to create a festive atmosphere for Jiraiya and the Mizukage's wedding celebration."

"And I suppose you think the proctors will look at this insanity and decide that a pack of foreign genin who don't even understand the fundamentals of shinobi warfare are worthy of chūnin promotion purely because they've found a single rules exploit? I can see where the concept might be alien to the likes of you, Wakahisa, but a ninja does need to have some skills other than cheating. If anyone had actually listened to me..."

Noburi rolled his eyes. "Just suck it up and admit that you lost fair and square. Shikamaru got on board once we accepted all his revisions, and that won us Yamanaka and Akimichi straight away, which was already half the group. Then Akane persuaded Lee that trying out new strategies was most youthful, and Tenten joined us for reasons she obviously didn't explain, and that was a three-quarters majority. The people have spoken, and—"

"Wakahisa, I was there. Some of us have sufficient brainpower to remember an event that took place the previous day without needing to rehearse it as though it were oral tradition."

"That's good to hear. I'm sure you and your fanboys already have enough of an oral tradition—hold that thought, we've got another trade."

He turned away from a fuming Hyūga, and towards the water clone, which had navigated Route Seven with a clone's single-minded precision and now stood still with a handful of seals for trade in its right hand.

Noburi reached out, collected the bunch, and began to flick through them with a practised motion.

"Active Night Light, active Night Light, expired Night Light, expired Night Light, expired Night Light…"

Noburi's hand stopped as if of its own accord. He was so familiar with Night Lights by now that he could probably draw one in his sleep (if he wanted to be lynched by a pair of furious sealmasters in the morning). But the next seal he saw was more familiar still.

It was an explosive tag.

He was holding an explosive tag.

He was holding an armed explosive tag.

He was holding an unknown number of armed explosive tags.

Behind him, Hyūga's scream of warning came too late.

-o-​

"Explosive!"

Hazō wasn't Kagome-sensei's apprentice for nothing. By the time his brain had processed anything beyond the "ex", he was already diving for cover behind the thick log that served as his sealcrafting seat.

…

…

The expected blast didn't come. Slowly, carefully, Hazō lifted himself to peek over the top of the log.

"False alarm?" he called out tentatively as the rest of the Leaf contingent began to emerge from behind the various logs, stumps and general wooden debris that they'd carried in for this exact eventuality. All except Noburi, standing upright by the entrance with his arm extended as if giving a fist-bump to the empty air.

"False alarm nothing," Noburi said, an expression of utter exhilaration slowly fading from his face. He opened his hand, and a sodden clump of paper fell to the ground.

Nara reacted instantly. "Neji!"

"Byakugan!"

After a few seconds, Hyūga shook his head. "Nothing. The perimeter is still clear. Whoever that was, they're not pressing the attack."

"What happened?" Yamanaka demanded, brushing twigs out of her hair with an offended scowl.

"Somebody mixed a bunch of explosive tags into their trade goods," Noburi said. "I didn't exactly have a lot of options when the things could have gone off any second, so I took the lot and rammed them right into my water clone's chest. If there's one thing I've learned from two years of pranking Hazō, it's that seals and water do not get on."

He gave a roguish grin.

Hazō suddenly had a revelation regarding a number of mysterious incidents involving his sealing work, but since Noburi had quite possibly just saved all of their lives, he decided to let it go for now.

Hyūga, who must have been standing next to Noburi in order to notice the trap himself, was giving Noburi a disbelieving look.

"That was practically… inspired. Who are you and what have you done with the lackadaisical imbecile we have come to know and restrain ourselves from murdering out of political considerations?"

"Aww, Hyūga," Noburi's grin widened, "are you finally ready to stop flirting and confess your true feelings?"

Keiko cleared her throat pointedly. "If I may interrupt your ever-scintillating repartee…"

"What is it, Keiko?"

"We are not out of the woods yet," she said grimly. "Consider why our unknown assailant would launch such a vicious offensive, yet not follow through."

"Perhaps they suddenly awakened to the extreme unyouthfulness of their strategy and changed their minds?" Lee asked.

Keiko didn't dignify this with a response, much like anything else Rock Lee had said since the previous night.

"The event ends in three hours," Shikamaru explained. "Our enemies know that before long, we will have to leave the fort in order to head for the rendezvous point. This attack was intended either to kill us or to weaken us before a coming confrontation, taking advantage of the effectiveness of explosives within a confined space. If we assume that there will be a coming confrontation, then it is still waiting for us, somewhere beyond our prepared ground.

"Gōketsu's original plan envisioned using traps and fortifications to fend off whichever teams were bold enough to attack us, leaving the rest with a clear message on the inadvisability of doing so. This has not happened, perhaps due to an excessive intimidation factor, though more ominous explanations are possible. As such, the Ring of Death around us may now be filled with surviving teams waiting to relieve us of the seals we have been crafting over the course of the event. Now, it is likely that we will break through the Ring of Death, leaving all our defences behind and potentially taking injuries or expending chakra in the process, only to be set upon as we emerge."

"But why did they attack now?" Sakura asked. "The logical thing to do would be to leave it as late as possible, so we'd have minimal time to treat our injuries before we had to go."

Hazō thought about it. Sakura was right, of course. There was no point injuring somebody if you were just going to give them time to recover afterwards. By the same token, now that they were aware of the enemy's plans, they had time to plan countermeasures, which they wouldn't have had if the attack had taken place at the last minute. The only circumstance under which it was acceptable to give the enemy time to prepare was…

"They think that if they have three hours, they can set up an ambush so good that our extra recovery time won't make a difference."

"We have found ourselves quite the troublesome opponent," Nara said grimly. "The earlier we leave the fort, the less time Gōketsu has to make seals, and the more densely-populated the Ring of Death we must cross. But the later we leave, the more preparation time we allow our would-be assassins, and the greater the risk of being delayed enough to miss the event deadline.

"Let us begin planning. Every minute counts."

Spoiler: dice

Noburi invokes Amateur Design on the trap for free.
Noburi (Alertness): 30 + 3 + 4= 37
Enemy (Trapbuilding): ? + ? = 31
Noburi recognises the trap before its timer runs out and it detonates.
Noburi (Taijutsu): 4 - 9 = -5
Noburi spends 1 FP to reroll.
Noburi (Taijutsu): 4 + 6 = 10
The water clone chooses not to evade and automatically takes 4 shifts of stress. It is destroyed.

-o-​

You have received 7 XP.

You have received 1 FP. Noburi receives an additional 1 FP for a team-saving act of genius.

-o-​

What do you do?

Voting ends on Saturday 3rd​ of February, 9 am New York Time.

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 161v2: Breakout​

"Keiko, Noburi," Hazō said quietly, beckoning them over as he left off making seals in order to step to the designated latrine area. His pseudo-siblings followed him without comment.

"Yes?" Keiko asked as Hazō turned away and attended to natural affairs.

"OPSEC discussion," Hazō said. "I want to make plans with the others and I don't want to say anything I shouldn't. Noburi, I'm not going to say a word about your bloodline unless you raise it. Keiko, same for you about your bloodline, but I wanted to ask you about the pangolins. Anything there that you want to keep secret?"

"Everyone knows that I am the Pangolin Summoner," Keiko said. "During this event I have called upon, and thereby revealed the existence of, Paneru, Panashe, and Panjandrum. It's public knowledge that Paneru is an engineer, Panashe is a scout, and Panjandrum is a melee combatant. I would prefer to keep all other aspects of my summoning abilities private, as well as not going into detail on what those three are capable of."

"Done," Hazō said, nodding. "We'll want to keep some of the seals secret as well. We've shown Air and Earth Dome, as well as Five Seal Barrier, Lesser Barrier Formation, and of course explosives. Let's keep the rest of it secret, unless we really need to fight. Especially the one Noburi used against Hyūga."

Keiko nodded. Noburi frowned in thought. "The one I used...oh, not Neji, the girl. Agreed."

"Great," Hazō said. "In that case, I've got a plan—"

"Duh," Noburi muttered under his breath. Hazō manfully ignored him.

"—and I want to check it with you guys before we run it by the rest of the group. I'm thinking...."

o-o-o-o​

"...and then we leave through the tunnel and head straight to the rally point. Any comments?" Hazō asked.

The Leaf genin exchanged glances. Those glances were complicated and Hazō couldn't entirely read them. Suspicion from Neji, but that was to be expected. The others seemed to have a strange mix of confusion, surprise, and uncertainty. It was clear that these teams weren't used to working together in such close alliance—not unusual, since genin teams typically were sent on lower-risk missions and by definition lower-risk missions didn't require more than a three-genin cell plus their chūnin- or jōnin-sensei. Still, he felt pretty confident; Keiko and Noburi had already checked the plan over and it was unlikely that anyone here would find issues, with the possible exception of—

"Your plan is to cower in this death trap of a fortress, and then tunnel out of the swamp so that we don't have to fight?" Neji said in disbelief. "How do you expect the judges to react to running away like that? That's no way to get promoted!"

"The event is about points, not combat," Hazō asserted. "The fact that we found a way to achieve the mission with no risk to ourselves should make us more likely to get promoted, not less. Being a good ninja isn't about winning fights, it's about completing your assigned missions quickly and efficiently so that you can go on the next one as soon as possible."

"The plan seems generally sound," Nara said, triggering a betrayed look from Neji and a notable degree of relaxation from the rest of the audience. Hazō found himself mildly envious, and wondered how long it would be before the other Leaf ninja had such trust in his intelligence and insight.

"The tunnels will offer a good place to hide the bodies," Nara continued. "My team and Neji should be in a central position, with the rest of you spread out along the perimeter—"

"Hang on," Hazō said. "What bodies? The whole point of the plan is to avoid combat."

"And won't that look good on our evaluations," Neji said under his breath.

Keiko ignored him and nodded as though suddenly realizing something. "Of course," she said to Nara. "We don't have enough seals, do we? Not nearly."

"Indeed," Nara said. "It would be best if Leaf could not simply lead the event but utterly crush it. It would be far too troublesome to have to come back next year."

"You can say that again," Haruno muttered.

"Plus, my mother would undoubtedly hound me to train harder if my performance does not satisfy her."

"I can make more seals," Hazō offered.

"Based on your rate of production thus far, you will not be able to make enough to matter. You have thus far made four hundred and thirty-two seals, plus contributed twenty-four more that your team and Ishihara were already carrying. We then traded away fifty-one of those—"

"Stupid," Neji muttered.

Nara turned to him with a raised eyebrow. "Stupid?" he asked.

"Yes, stupid. He's been trading glowing seals for dead ones! We're being graded on the number of glowing seals we turn in, so why give them away? Especially since you're saying that we don't have enough."

Nara sighed. "Allow me to clarify. The rules of the event are that we are in the swamp for forty-eight hours and that we can obtain glowing Night Light seals from the proctors—by 'proctor' I am, of course, referring to the Mist ninja who are referees and judges for the event. At the end—"

"I know what a proctor is!" Neji growled.

"Of course you do. As I was saying, when the event ends we will each receive one point quote 'for every glowing seal' endquote that we turn in to the judges at the rally point outside the swamp. Gōketsu Hazō has created or contributed a final total of four hundred and five seals to our group as well as disseminating fifty-one to contestants from five other villages. Therefore—"

"I was there for all of this," Neji growled. "You don't need to repeat every detail of the last two days."

"Apparently he does," Noburi said helpfully. "It's okay, though. If you listen reeeeally closely to the smart guy, maybe some of it will rub off on you! Wouldn't it be great to be able to tie your own shoes?"

"Listen—"

"The exact rules," Nara cut in, "were that we would receive one point for each glowing seal that we turn in, but that was clearly intended to mean the Night Light seals that the proctors have been distributing. Those seals, as you yourself found when you went to the proctors before joining us here, have two important characteristics: their light has a distinctive appearance and, unlike most seals, they require a large amount of chakra to activate. The Party Trick seals that Gōketsu has made require a negligible amount of chakra to activate, but they are visibly not the same as the Night Light seals, so Mist would be within their rights to disqualify them. However! Due to the trading there are now three major and two minor villages whose contestants are carrying the Party Trick seals. The Kage from those villages would object most strenuously were Mist to attempt such a thing and thereby disadvantage the students from those five villages. The trading was an insightful and effective strategy that significantly reduced the risk of this exam while giving us a notable advantage over the other contestants."

Neji blushed. "You said yourself that we don't have enough," he grumbled. "Not nearly."

"Yes," Nara said patiently. "Gōketsu has graciously agreed to divide his supply among us evenly. That means each of us will receive thirty-three seals with nine left over, since four hundred and five divided by twelve is slightly over thirty-three. The extra nine seals should be divided among Ishihara and the Gōketsu—I would suggest two each with Gōketsu Hazō receiving three since he scribed the vast majority of them."

"I was actually going to suggest we divide them evenly," Hazō said uncomfortably. "I can make a few more so the numbers come out."

"That would be good," Nara said, nodding thanks. "However, if there are any leftovers they should go to you and yours since you are the ones who supplied them. Regardless, this is a side issue. Based on Gōketsu Keiko's estimates of the number of proctors in the swamp and the number of seals that Neji said the proctor was carrying, there are on the order of four thousand seals available. They require a comparatively large amount of chakra to activate and all contestants will need to keep a a supermajority of their chakra available for combat or escape. I would estimate that most candidates will acquire between ten and fifteen seals from the proctors; there are approximately three hundred candidates in the Exams, so the entire pool of seals is likely to be in play."

"Ten or fifteen? We've got more than that," Akimichi said, speaking around the brick of cheese he was nibbling.

"Seals will not be distributed evenly," Keiko replied. "Teams will have been taken out and looted by stronger teams. Some of those teams will in turn have been taken out by yet-stronger teams. It is reasonable to believe that the top three to five teams have acquired on the order of fifty percent of the available pool. That is two thousand seals divided among twelve to fifteen people, or approximately one hundred and seventy seals each. It is likely that at least half of those will have been acquired on the first day, before anyone knew that they would expire. In that case they are now expended, reducing the likely total per person to only eighty or ninety each, or perhaps even as low as seventy. Regardless, we need to do some looting of our own."

"Troublesome," Nara grumbled.

"Okay," Hazō said reluctantly. "So, first trick is going to be finding people to loot. Yesterday Nara said that there's a 'Ring of Death' around us, with other teams waiting to loot us or anyone who comes to trade with us. We could go stomp some of them." His stomach felt like he'd swallowed curdled milk; he had been so sure that he'd found a different path through the exam, that he would be able to win without having to hurt anyone. But no, the world of ninja was never so kind. It would always find a way to make everything horrible...was he going to have to literally beat the idea of peace and cooperation into everyone's heads?! Some days it seemed like it.

Spoiler: Award

Ping! +1 Fate Point: "Creative Idealist". New total: 5

"I believe your original strategy to be superior," Nara said. "We exit through a tunnel and go to the rally point. The proctors would likely object to us fighting at the rally point, but we can set an ambush a short distance away and attack those who take a straight-line path." He turned to Neji. "The ones who take a straight-line path are either the most foolish, who don't think of the possibility of ambush, or the most powerful, who do not fear one and view it as an opportunity to acquire yet more seals. The former are no risk and the latter will have the most seals."

"Yes, thank you," Neji said.

"I nominate Nara as group commander," Hazō said. "We need someone in charge to coordinate among the teams."

"Seconded," Haruno said.

"Now, wait—" Nara began.

"Thirded!" Yamanaka said firmly. "Suck it up, Shika."

"Gōketsu would be a better choice," Nara said desperately, gesturing towards Hazō. "He identified the exploit in the rules and found the way to ensure that Mist would need to go along with it."

For just a moment, Hazō wavered. It would be satisfying to command the group and, assuming things went well, it would be a good way to cement their respect and trust. If he was going to achieve his goals of imposing peace on the world he would need respect, trust, and authority from important people such as clan heirs, friends of the jinchūriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox, and ninja skilled enough to have been assigned jōnin as their squad leaders.

"Thank you, Nara," he said at last. "It's a generous offer and I would like to say—"

---

What does Hazō want to say?

Vote time! What to do now? Options include:

1. Accept the leadership. Pro: You get to plan the plan for the next update and if you do well your status among your peers goes up. Con: If things go badly you could end up destroying the relationships you've been working so hard to build.
2. Refuse the leadership. Pro: Low risk. No matter how things go with the ambush, you're not going to be blamed. Con: Low reward. Your relations with the other Leaf genin will improve slightly when they see your practicality and lack of ego, but you'd gain a lot more by taking the lead and succeeding.

If you choose to take the leadership you'll want to come up with a battle plan that allows you to locate and defeat at least four and possibly as many as eight other three-man ninja teams with unknown abilities—that's Keiko's assessment of the minimum number you'll need to take down in order to ensure your teams come out ahead in the event. Your resources are:

• Hazō, Noburi, Keiko
• Ishihara Akane, Haruno Sakura, Yamamoto Haru
• Nara Shikamaru, Yamanaka Ino, Akimichi Chōji
• Hyūga Neji, Tenten, Rock Lee

(Leader of each team listed first, although Akane's team hasn't quite nailed down whether Akane or Sakura are in charge.)


Based on what you saw as you circled the Swamp of Moderate Inconvenience two days ago, there are three places between here and the rally point that would make decent ambush sites:

1. The very edge of the Swamp where you will emerge if you take a straight-line path from your fort to the rally site. It leads into a moderately forested area about half a mile wide.
   • Pro: There are some reeds and bramble bushes that you could hide in, as well as the trees.
   • Pro: You could jump people just as they were getting to the edge of the land, meaning they were still water-walking and vulnerable to chakra drain.
   • Con: You can't usefully employ Syrup Trap or Goo Bombs on a liquid surface.
   • Con: The water table is just beneath the surface so you won't be able to hide in a hole without drowning.
2. Midway through the forest.
   • Pro: There's a small creek that would provide a water source for jutsu and, again, a potential option for chakra drain if you could force enemies to stay in it.
   • Pro: The land slopes up from the edge of the Swamp so you would have more options for digging.
   • Con: The forest is relatively open and it's winter, so there's no leaves on the trees. Concealment will be more difficult.
3. On the open meadow between the forest and the rally point. It's grassy and open. Very few of the plants will try to eat you.
   • Pro: Long sightlines so you'll see people coming.
   • Pro: Concealment is possible although not trivial. The grass isn't more than knee high at the highest, plus it's dried out and brown. Moving through it will leave a trail unless you move very slowly and carefully.
   • Pro: There's a small hill at the edge of the meadow; the rally point is about fifty yards on the other side. The hill will serve as a good backstop to ensure no misaimed shots landing on the proctors.
   • Con: Long sightlines so people will see you coming.
   • Con: Some of the plants will try to eat you.
   • Con: I had one more but have forgotten it. It wasn't more severe than the others listed above and I'll add it back if I think of it.

Voting ends on Wednesday, February 7, 2018, at 12pm London time.

---

Author's Note: Keiko vetoed the idea of disabling the traps around the fort, since she couldn't see any safe way to do it that wouldn't either alert the lurkers or put you all at risk. Also, I would like to say that I admired your plan; finding a peaceful and cooperative solution was a brilliant application of Hazō's principles and values. I was perfectly happy to let it go through, but when I sat down to math out how many points everyone was going to get I realized it wasn't going to work. The question then became whether anyone on the teams would figure it out; after discussion with the other QMs we came up with this.

 

[OliWhail]

Chapter 162.1: Hunt Like Raptors​

"...thank you for showing such faith in me. I have a rough plan worked out, and I would be willing to take point, but not over the objections of other members of the group. For the most part you guys haven't known me for long, so I understand if there are reservations, and I don't have any interest in brushing those off. This is going to be a pretty high-trust operation, after all," Hazou concluded.

Everyone was silent a moment or two before Hyuuga spoke up. "Fine, I'll say it if none of you will. Nara should lead. Gōketsu Hazou is occasionally clever and occasionally an idiot. Nara is consistently a genius. I would be much more comfortable taking orders from him."

"Neji!" Lee exclaimed from right behind Hyuuga, making the other boy jump. "Your lack of faith is most unyouthful!"

"Yes!" Akane chimed in. "Besides, Hazou is only very rarely an idiot, and almost never if he gets to talk through things first!"

"I am forced to agree with Hyuuga," Yamamoto said softly. "We don't need a plan from nowhere so crazy that it just might actually work, we need something that's as close to a guarantee as possible, and we have the time to really think through things."

"I'm sticking to my guns here," Yamanaka said. "Sorry, Gōketsu. It's not that I don't trust you, but it's not every day I can get Shika to actually do... well, anything at all, really."

Haruno nodded in agreement before appearing to catch herself and then glaring at Yamanaka. Idly, Hazou wondered what that was about.

Nara had by now begun massaging his temples. "Troublesome..." he muttered. "Fine. Six hours," he stated emphatically, pointing at Hazou.

"Six-- ah. Deal." Hazou couldn't see any way that being hooked into the Nara's internal economy could go poorly. Nope, none at all.

"Superb." Nara stood up. "My first order of business as your new commanding officer is to begin calling that time in. Tell everyone the plan, if you would. I'm going to go make tea."

Yamanaka made a choking sound before practically yelling, "You lazy bastard!"

-o-​

"Hazou, Panashe reported back. We're go for evac," Noburi called into the sealing mouse-hole. Hazou stood up, rolled his shoulders for a moment, and grabbed the last of the Party Trick seals to distribute.

It may have been his imagination, but Hazou thought the dripping earth of the tunnel walls was starting to sag inward even as he brought up the rear. Their group raced forward, the tunnel filled with squelching footfalls, heavy breathing, and the warm light of one of the nightlights they'd been traded, its shimmering patterns slowing down as it neared the end of its life.

Eventually the ground firmed up, and the party began trudging up the incline Panashe had previously dug before stopping at a signal from the pangolin. "A moment, Summoner," she said. "If your party could keep still, that would be immensely helpful. Pantokrator's Ears Technique!"

Taking his cue, Neji formed his bloodline's single handseal. "Byakugan!" Then, after a moment, he reported, "We're clear."

"Clear confirmed," Panashe said. "Breaching in 3, 2, 1...." She ran at the end of the tunnel and dug her claws into the soil, practically shoving it open like two sides of some earthen gate.

The group emerged into a wide meadow. The sun had peeked over the horizon, illuminating the cliffs on which the team was meant to be rallying soon.

"Right then. Gōketsu Keiko, please look over enemies' likely trajectories. Gōketsu Hazou and Noburi, distribute camouflage supplies. Everyone else, grab a suit and familiarize yourself with spots for cover and Silence Mine placement," Nara ordered. "Specialist Panashe, if you could possibly assist your Summoner and identify a good spot to secure defeated enemy combatants?"

"Certainly," the pangolin answered, scampering off after Keiko.

...​

Hazou wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or pleased that the first team to approach the meadow was fleeing. On the one hand, it meant the enemy figured they would lose, which meant the Leaf nin would probably win. On the other hand, it meant their cover probably wasn't good enough.

Hazou and Yamamoto were already almost on the trio, Yamamoto's face set grimly as he accelerated in a jagged, predatory sprint toward the slowest enemy.

"Yue, duck!" one of the other fleeing nin yelled, leaping over a bush and spinning in midair to fling a pair of shuriken at Yamamoto. She completed her spin and continued sprinting as Yamamoto casually dodged the attack and leapt at the aforementioned Yue, driving an elbow strike into the back of her head to attempt a quick knock-out. She managed to duck just enough that it merely clipped her, then tried to turn that momentum into a spinning kick, which Yamamoto grabbed and used to lever her into a vicious throw, slamming her into the ground on her back.

Hazou wasn't going to pass up a chance like that, and aimed a kick at Yue's head as he passed by, doing his best to keep up with the enemies. He recognized the sign on Yue's forehead protector as her head snapped to the side - Hot Springs. He felt an icy lance of guilt run through his gut, but he forced it down before he could be dragged into visions of collapsing inns and forests of fire.

The third enemy, a boy, glanced over his shoulder to see Hazou and Yamamoto advancing over Yue's limp form and spun on his heel. "You bastards!" he shouted, cutting handseals. "Flame Spears Technique!" Sparks flew from his fingers, engulfing his hands and forearms before flowing forward as he performed something like a a two-fisted punch toward the Leaf nin.

Hazou dove to one side, and Yamamoto to the other, but the other boy wasn't quite quick enough to avoid getting singed - Hazou could see (and smell) that parts of his camo suit had been burned away. Suddenly there was a flash of light and heat - Hazou pulled his eyes away from his comrade to see the enemy grinning at him wickedly, a bright orb of fiery light speeding upward. "Fuck your ambush!" the Hot Spring nin spat.

"Kyo! Stand down!" shouted the girl who'd thrown the shuriken earlier. By now Akane, Lee, and Hyuuga had caught up to the group, with Tenten and Noburi providing ranged cover. "We surrender! We'll hand you our glowing seals, let us take our teammate for medical assistance."

"We'll need all your other seals and word-halves as well," Yamamoto stated flatly. "And our Wakahisa comrade will be taking your chakra."

Hazou cursed inwardly. He'd suggested that part of the plan, sure, but that had been under the assumption that they enemy wouldn't surrender! Why couldn't they just let this end peacefully?

He watched as, inevitably, the Hot Springs ninja shifted back into combat stances. A kunai flew over his shoulder from behind, trailing a tag that erupted into a mass of atrociously sticky glue. Both enemies reacted faster than he was expecting, but it wasn't nearly enough. They were covered instantly.

Almost as quickly as the kunai, Hyuuga moved forward to hook around behind the enemy, water-walking along the sticky pool that now surrounded the pair and delivering a series of pinpoint strikes to the girl who seemed to be in charge, catching her head as she fell to the ground and turning it so that her mouth and nose didn't fall into the goop. Yamamoto and Hazou charged Kyo, who utterly failed to defend against either the crushing knee strike to his gut or the fist that met his temple.

Spoiler: Dice

How long does it take the enemy to show up? <number>
Where are they from? <more numbers>
How strong are they? <one more number>

Weak HS team, minute 2/30

(Enemy, Alertness) vs (Team Leaf, Stealth + Tag: "Grassland Camo" + Silence Mines): Enemy by 3 Shifts
(Enemy, Athletics) vs (Team Leaf, Athletics): Leaf by 3 Shifts

Round 1:
Enemy 1

• Supplemental: Move
• Standard: Ranged Weapons vs Yamamoto, Athletics: Yamamoto, 5 shifts

Yamamoto

• Standard: Taijutsu vs Enemy 2, Athletics + FP to reroll: Yamamoto, 2 shifts
  • Yue takes 2 stress (2/3)

Enemy 2 - 'Yue'

• Standard: Taijutsu vs Yamamoto, Taijutsu + Invoke <?>: Yamamoto, 1 shift
  • Yue takes 1 stress (3/3)

Hazou

• Standard: Taijutsu + Roki vs Yue, Taijutsu: Hazou by 15 shifts
  • Yue is thoroughly taken out
• Self-Control roll: Resolve + Thousand Yard Stare (24) vs TN: 20 ("Fair"): Pass w/ 3 shifts

Enemy 3 - 'Kyo'

• Standard:
  • Flame Spears + Chakra Boost + Invoke "Big Brother is Watching" vs Hazou, Athletics: Hazou, 2 shifts
  • Flame Spears + Chakra Boost + Invoke "Big Brother is Watching" vs Yamamoto, Athletics + FP to reroll (same result, yikes): Kyo, 4 shifts
    • Yamamoto has 4 stress incoming, converting 2 to the mild consequence "Lightly Toasted"
• Supplemental: Katon Cantrip

Round 2:
(Other teammates catch up, talking ensues briefly)

Round 3:
Neji

• Hold turn until after Tenten

Tenten

• Supplemental: Prime Goo Bomb
• Standard:
  • Ranged Weapons vs Enemy 1, Athletics: Tenten, 7 shifts
  • Ranged Weapons vs Kyo, Athletics: Tenten, 8 shifts
  • Both Enemy 1 and Kyo are hit with the Aspect "Stuck In Place", and lose 18 points from any Athletics rolls

Neji

• Tenten passes tag as a free action
• Standard: Taijutsu + Gentle Fist + Tag: "Stuck in Place" vs Enemy 1, Taijutsu: Neji, 12 shifts
  • Enemy 1 taken out

Enemy 1

• Unconscious

Yamamoto:

• Tenten passes tag as a free action
• Standard: Taijutsu + Tag: "Stuck in Place" vs Kyo, Taijutsu: Yamamoto, 5 shifts
  • Kyo translates 2 into the Mild Consequence "Bruised Up" and 3 to the Moderate Consequence "That Crunching Sound Was Totally Normal"

Hazou

• Standard: Taijutsu + Roki vs Kyo, Taijutsu - CM: Mild Consequence - CM: Moderate Consequence: Hazou, holy shit all the shifts ever
  • Kyo taken out

"Noburi!" Hazou called out as Kyo finally collapsed.

"Way ahead of you bro!" Noburi said, already kneeling next to the unconscious Yue, running a hand of medical chakra over her even as he stuck her finger in a canteen to begin draining her. Beside him, Tenten began rapidly relieving the patient of her possessions.

"Fifty-two seals between these two," Neji reported after a few moments.

"Seventy-eight total, then?" Hazou surmised. "Damn. We might have a lot more of this ahead of us today."

---

AN: The first results of your ambush plan. More to be written tomorrow. Enjoy the early half-update!

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 163v2: The Gathering​

The basic clone was widely accepted as useless. A mere visual illusion that cast no shadow, made no sound, had no substance, had short range, and required focused concentration to control, it was used as a chakra control exercise by Academy students and then generally forgotten for the rest of a ninja's career in favor of Elemental Clones and similar techniques.

Nara's clone was hiding inside a tree at the edge of the meadow, completely out of sight. Hazō had been staring at that spot for ten minutes before the clone's hands appeared from inside the tree and started making handsigns.

<Incoming. That direction. Yards. Nine. Lightning nin. Three. Wounded. Seal. Ninety-three.>

Hazō sighed with relief, being careful to keep it below the threshold that the Silence Mine next to his head would conceal. It had been five minutes since the last team went through and he was starting to get antsy. What he had affectionately termed 'SuperTeam Leaf' needed to be at the rally point in fifteen minutes and so far they had only gathered one hundred and nineteen seals—seventy-eight from the first team to go through, forty-one from the second. Split between the twelve members of SuperTeam Leaf and added to their original totals that was only forty-three apiece. Nowhere near what they estimated was needed in order to be at the top of the rankings. If they didn't get some bigger targets through in the next ten minutes they were going to have a problem.

The worst part, of course, was the uncertainty. How many teams had been eliminated over the past two days? What was the cutoff for making it to the next event? Exactly how much time was left before they had to be at the rally point? After all, clocks were notoriously inaccurate things.

The team faded out of the woods with admirable caution; if Hazō hadn't known exactly where to look he wouldn't have seen them. They paused at the treeline, taking a knee and surveying the meadow carefully before stepping foot inside it.

From the corner of his eye, Hazō saw a Chōji-sized clump of grass shifting. The Lightning team caught it and were on their feet instantly, pivoting to flee.

"Go go go!" Hazō shouted, leaping to his feet and charging. Half a dozen other ninja were on their feet and charging. A pair of kunai went past his ear, exploding into sticky goo that coated the enemy ninja as they attempted to flee.

"We surrender!" shouted the leader of the foreign team, struggling and failing to pull her feet out of the taffy-like chakra construct.

"What?" / "WHAT?!" Her teammates stared at her in shock.

"Stand down, guys," said the leader. A tall blonde with a scar on her cheek, she was perhaps a year or two older than Hazō and, bizarrely, there was a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

"Stand down, Leaf," Nara called, rising from where he and Hyūga had been crouching behind the bush at the center of the clearing.

Hazō slowed to a halt, eyeing the Lightning team distrustfully.

"Nice ambush," the blonde said, chuckling ruefully. "Should have known Leaf would try ganging up."

"You seem surprisingly unconcerned at the idea of being outnumbered and immobilized," Nara said, closing the distance with un-Nara-like speed and a frown.

"Yeah, well, my sensei used to say that prior planning prevents piss-poor performance." The blonde held up a reassuring hand and reached slowly into the satchel she wore at her hip, bringing out two separate bundles of glowing seals, each tied together with twine. She held them up and turned them slightly, tapping her finger on the explosive tag tied to the back of each one in a completely unnecessary effort to call attention to it.

"These are low-power explosive training tags," she said. "Not strong enough to hurt, but more than enough to destroy all sixty-six of these lovely points I'm holding. You get us out of this muck and let us go, you can have half the seals. Or, alternatively, you can try to take them from me before I can set the explosive off." Her grin became fierce. "What do you say? Want to play 'whose reflexes are faster' with a Lightning nin, or do you want to take thirty-three seals with no risk?" She waggled the bundle of tags in her left hand temptingly.

"You have a total of ninety-three tags," Nara said calmly. "Because you attempted to deceive us, you will hand over fifty of them. At that point we will let you go."

"They should give us their word halves and their chakra, too," Yamamoto said.

"No fucking way," snarled the Lightning ninja on the right, a stocky boy with brown hair and a snarl on his face.

"Don't do it, Hikari," said the Lightning ninja on the left. "Blow them all. Don't give the bastards anything. We'll make it up in the next event."

"Try it and I'll break your legs," Yamamoto said calmly.

Akane rounded on her teammate in surprise. "Yamamoto! That is most unyouthful!"

Yamamoto shrugged. "This isn't hopscotch in the playground," he said calmly. "This is the Chūnin Exams. And we're burning daylight right now. Another team could come along any minute and we're out of position."

"Stop," Nara said, raising a hand. "If we attempt to take their word halves they have no incentive to cooperate and every incentive to detonate the seals." He turned back to the Lightning ninja. "Despite that, he makes a good point. Eliminating three opponents from the Exams would likely be worth losing fifty seals."

Hikari's smile slipped. "Uh...."

Nara tapped his finger on his chin in thought for a moment. "On balance, I think we need the points. You will give us the sixty-six seals you claimed to have. In return we will not take your chakra or your word halves. This deal is on the table for another five seconds."

"Done!" Hikari said gratefully. "Sage, I thought you Leaf types were the nice ones."

"We are," Hyūga said flatly, the lack of intonation and the all-white eyes of his active bloodline rendering him momentarily inhuman. "We're letting you bargain instead of cutting your throats and throwing the bodies in a storage seal." He paused. "Point of information: There's no proctors close enough to hear you scream."

o-o-o-o​

There were three proctors at the rally point. They had set up a small awning to keep the sun off and were lounging on folding camp stools in its shade, sipping on iced drinks as a line of contestants shuffled by to turn in their seals. The Leaf ninja were among the last to arrive and they found themselves facing a very long line indeed. There had been something like three hundred genin in the group that had been dropped off in the swamp two days ago. It was hard to get an accurate count, but the number seemed to be down to around two hundred, although it was probably higher since ninja were leaving as soon as they handed in their seals and some would have been gone by the time SuperTeam Leaf arrived. It didn't take long to process each team, but the proctors kept taking breaks and making everyone stand around while they ate snacks and chatted among themselves for ten or fifteen minutes before getting back to 'work'.

This wasn't such a big deal for SuperTeam Leaf; they had spent the entire time getting plenty of sleep while camped out in a comfortable fort and they were rolling with Team Uplift, who had a couple dozen storage scrolls full of hot food, cold water, and camp stools nicer than the ones the proctors were using.

The contestants who had not been holed up in the Uplifting Fortress of Doom were sleep-deprived and covered in bug bites, as well as being either wounded, on the edge of chakra exhaustion, or both.

Other Leaf teams drifted over to join the party and were welcomed with food and drink in turn. There weren't enough stools to go around, but there were plenty of blankets and it quickly turned into an impromptu picnic. The other Leaf ninja were amused, and somewhat annoyed, to hear that SuperTeam Leaf had sealsmithed, traded, and bargained their way through the exam while only engaging in two actual fights. There was general amusement at the story of the negotiation with the Lightning ninja.

"I wanted to thank you, Yamamoto," Nara said, turning to the worthy in question. "You handled your part of the negotiations excellently."

Yamamoto shrugged. "No worries. Next time you need somebody to play 'hard interrogator', let me know." He went back to spooning up the second bowl of chicken ramen that Hazō had handed him.

"That was a trick?" Akane asked in surprise.

Yamamoto nodded. "Yeah. They were stalling us, so I gave Nara a hard man to play off against."

"It worked well," Nara said. "Neji, your threat at the end provided a certain...piquancy."

Hyūga shrugged. "Lord Hyūga frequently talks about how Leaf's reputation is a two-edged blade. Being known for decency and honor is useful so long as it is not confused with weakness. Given how generous our bargain was, I felt it important to provide the counterpoint so they wouldn't think us weak."

"Looks like the line's clearing out," Haruno said, glancing over to the proctors' area. She tucked her half-eaten sandwich back into a storage scroll and stood up, brushing her hands off on her trousers. "Let's go find out how we did."

o-o-o-o​

'Clearing out' wasn't the same as 'empty'. It took ten minutes before Hazō finally got to the head of the line, Noburi and Keiko at his back to keep an eye on the other ninja in the area. It was very unlikely that anyone would try to jump them right in front of the proctors, but it also wasn't worth taking the chance.

The proctor who was taking the seals was probably in his early thirties, with scars on his face and neck. There was no hair sticking out from under the bandana he wore on his head, hinting at either premature baldness or unsightly combat damage. He sat on his camp stool with a cane on the ground to his right and a bag full of softly-glowing seals to his left. A folding table in front of him held a notepad and a charcoal stick.

"Name and village?" he grunted, not bothering to look up as he flipped to a new page in the notepad.

"Gōketsu Hazō, Leaf. My teammates are Gōketsu Noburi and Gōketsu Keiko."

The proctor finally looked up, eyebrows raised. "You're that Kurosawa traitor, aren't you?"

Hazō grit his teeth. "My name is Gōketsu Hazō," he said firmly, refusing to be baited. "I am the adoptive son of Jiraiya, Lord Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. I am also the natural-born nephew of the Mizukage. I have fifty seals. Noburi and Keiko each have forty-nine."

"Let's see 'em," the proctor grunted, holding out a blunt-fingered hand. Hazō wordlessly gave him the seals and watched carefully as the man counted them, twice, before jotting something down in the notebook.

"Fine," the proctor grunted, seeming irritated. "Your scores are recorded, get lost."

"Did we make the cut-off?" Hazō asked.

"What?"

"Did we make the cut-off?" he repeated. "How did we do compared to the other contestants?" He doubted the man would answer, but it was worth asking.

"You'll find out before the last event," one of the proctors in the back grunted. "Your individual score is a running total through the first four events. Top sixteen contestants go on to the tournament on the last day."

"Ah," Hazō said. "Good. Thank you."

"We would like a receipt," Keiko said calmly.

"A what?!" growled the proctor who had taken their seals. "Who the hell do you think you are, you treasonous little—"

"I think I am the daughter of Lord Jiraiya of the Legendary Three far more than I ever was the daughter of the Mori," Keiko cut him off. "I think I am a ninja who has already been betrayed by Mist once and is unwilling to be betrayed a second time. I think I am a Chūnin Exam candidate who is making an entirely reasonable request of a proctor and that refusing such a request would suggest intent to interfere with the scoring."

The proctor's eyes narrowed. "Are you suggesting that I would cheat? Listen, girl, accusing a proctor—"

"The Leaf archives contain eighteen separate registered complaints of interference with Chūnin Exam scoring by Mist proctors in the past," Keiko said, cutting him off again. "Statistically, Mist proctors are an untrustworthy group when it comes to managing the scoring in a fair and objective manner. You in particular felt the need to refer to myself and Hazō as traitors, suggesting that you are less trustworthy than most. Hence my need for a receipt."

The proctor glared at her for a moment longer, then tore a sheet out of the notepad, scribbled their scores on it and signed across the bottom. "Here," he said, shoving it into her hands. "The next event isn't for at least thirty-six hours. Now get lost."

"Thank you," Keiko said, bowing politely. "Your exceptional courtesy and professionalism have been noted." She turned on her heel and walked off, Hazō and Noburi following close behind and struggling to suppress their grins.

---

XP AWARD: 6

FP AWARD: 2

FP totals: Hazō, 6. Noburi, 6. Keiko, 5.

Your battle plan was good enough that I decided not to bother running the fights. Presumably everyone took a few stress which then healed.

Vote time! What to do now? Options include:

• Go find Jiraiya and report
• Talk to Shikamaru et al about what the next event might be and how to discover when/where it is.
• Talk to the other Leaf genin (including the ~30 who were not part of SuperTeam Leaf) and find out how they scored and what they encountered
• Something else?

Voting ends on Wednesday, February 14, 2018, at 12pm London time.

Spoiler: Notes and Rolls

Number of teams through the ambush, 1d4: 2
Number of total seals gained from group #1, ?: 41
Number of total seals gained from group #2, ?: 66

Ambush of Lightning Team
Lightning Team, highest Alertness: ? + 4dF: 42
SuperTeam Leaf, lowest Stealth: ? + tag 'Lay of the Land' + tag 'Thoroughly Prepared Ambush' + tag 'Camoflage Assisted by More Stealth-Competent People' + tag 'Stealth Gear' + 3 (Silence Mine): ? + 4dF: 19

Social Not-Combat with the Lightning Team
I'm not running this as a combat because the outcome is not in doubt. The Lightning team is too outnumbered and outclassed.

Social Combat with the Proctor
In this corner, weighing in at a stocky hundred and eighty-two pounds in just his skivvies, the proctor for the Chūnin Exams, the survivor of over a decade of constant service before being medicaled out, the senior chūnin, Oooochiro Daaaaaiiiiichi!

And in this corner, fourteen years old and weighing in at maybe a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet, the Queen of Brittle Ice herself, the Pangolin Summoner, the Girl with the 3.4 Mile Stare, the big, the bad, Gōōōōketsu Keeeiiiiiikooooooo!

Fight!
Keiko, Intimidation(20) + Thousand Yard Stare(6) + tag "My Dad's More Badass Than You'll Ever Be": 29. Note: Just before combat started Hazō did something that was either invoking that Aspect or making a Maneuver to create it. Given those circumstances, it's a judgement call as to whether Keiko should get to tag that or have to invoke it. I'm currently cooking a turkey as part of Thanksgiving-in-February-because-I'm-a-grownup-and-I-get-to-do-that-if-I-want-to and it smells amazing, so I'm going to let it be a tag.
Ochiro, Resolve(20) + 4dF: 23

Ochiro takes 2 stress on his 3-box Mental stress track!
Ochiro, Presence(23) + tag "I'm the Proctor, Damnit!" + 4dF: 29
Keiko, Resolve(20) + Thousand Yard Stare(6) + burn 1 FP to invoke "Brittle Queen of Ice": 32. Again, something of a judgement call whether or not TYS boosts Resolve on social defense. Turkey still smells amazing so here you go. Might not work this way next time, though.

Ochiro takes 2 stress on his Mental track! He chooses not to take Consequences and instead yields the fight.

Hazō started the fight with 5 FP and everyone else started with 4. As per the plan, Hazō burned a Fate Point to say that you had a storage scroll full of stealth gear. Keiko burned one during her social combat.

Team Uplift contributed a total of 12 Silence Mine seals to the various ambushes. These have been deducted from everyone's sheets, leaving Team Uplift with 2 SM seals apiece.

Keiko used 2 of Kagome's Goo Bomb seals. Tenten used 2 more. These have been deducted from the count, leaving each member of Team Uplift at 9.