Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 547: Playing at Truth​

The team was barely through the gates of Leaf, ten minutes from home and the bath and food that they all desperately needed after the long run back from Honey. They had been up at dawn and run all day, the rhythm of the road pounding in their feet, the flow of muscles and steady thump of hearts washing away the world and letting them move in a silent state of zen. The first words of the day were thus even more shocking than they otherwise would have been.

"You were wrong, Kei," Hazō said.

Kei turned to look at her brother, one eyebrow raised in incipient offense. "Oh?"

"Yes," Hazō said. He pointed with his chin. "No adventure is complete until the heroes return home and see how things have changed in their absence. This is the very definition of a Gōketsu adventure."

The target of his gesture was a troupe of players busking at the edge of the Uzumaki Square market, atop a collection of wooden pallets that served as a rude stage. The barker and one other stood on the stage proper while two others stood behind it, holding up a bedsheet between them to serve as a curtain. From this angle, Hazō could see several people kneeling behind the curtain.

"Gather, one and all!" cried the barker. "Gather, for the tale of The Mighty Jiraiya's Mighty Torch and the clan that sprang forth from it! Gather ye, gather ye!"

The barker was a boy, perhaps eleven or twelve, whose voice hadn't broken yet. He was animated, bouncing around the stage with wide gestures. Shoppers and passersby were caught up in his excitement and began to drift over.

At the back of the stage, waiting solemnly, stood 'the Mighty Jiraiya', eyes front and staring into the infinite distance as though his mind flew far beyond the mortal world. The player in question was probably the troupe's leader, a man in his thirties, but with the makeup that stage tradition used to suggest age—a dusting of flour in the hair and a few streaks of brown makeup across the forehead that sufficient imagination could perceive as wrinkles. The man's natural hair color was a mediocre brown and his hair was short, nothing like the enormous white mane that Jiraiya had cultivated. He had at least managed to find a haori that looked something like what Jiraiya wore most of the time, and he had streaked red paint across his cheeks the way Jiraiya had. A rolled-up blanket was strapped to his back, simulating the Toad Summoning Scroll. It was actually an excellent costume for a street player; many of them simply hung a sign around their necks that gave the name of their character.

'The Mighty Jiraiya' was holding a torch and holding it suggestively, one end clamped between his thighs and one hand holding it out at an angle so that he looked like he had a three-foot dong the end of which was on fire.

A sufficient crowd had gathered, so the barker commenced.

"The Mighty Jiraiya! Hero of the age! Protector of the Leaf! Imbued with the Will of Fire!"

The Mighty Jiraiya's player hopped forward, throwing a 'taijutsu' kick that would have driven Academy instructors to drink, then plucking the torch forth from its resting place and smiting an imaginary foe over the head with a loud HYYAAAA before tucking it back and waggling his hips slightly.

"For decades, The Mighty Jiraiya slew like a storm, crushing every foe that dared raise hand or eye to Leaf! The Will of Fire draped his body in power, granting him strength and virility beyond normal men!"

'Jiraiya' went into a series of furious spins and 'taijutsu' attacks. The torch shifted from place to place, being held close to the body during a spin so as to suggest a cloak of flame, smiting down on imaginary foes, and then resuming its suggestive placement.

"At last, after decades of glorious service, The Mighty Jiraiya met his true love!"

A teenage boy came running up onto the stage. He wore a linen shirt tucked into a hakama belted tight around his waist. A pair of rolled-up blankets were shoved into the shirt to simulate enormous breasts. A poor-quality wig trailed red strings down to his ankles. His face was painted white with ruby-red lips.

"The only woman fit for Leaf's hero! The Shadowed Death, the Mind Blade, the Kindly One...Lady Firehair!"

The crowd went wild as 'Mari' threw a high kick, spun, kicked over into a handspring, and then twirled into a modified Tree Pose with one hand above 'her' head and the other curved gracefully in front of her. Hazō had no idea what this was supposed to be...a taijutsu guard stance? An implication of seduction? The crowd was woo- and aiayai-ing so clearly it worked for them.

"Born to foreigners, yet still Lady Firehair burned with the Will of Fire!"

'Mari' spun in place, taking a torch from one of the stage hands and returning to her modified Tree Pose, except now her left hand held the torch in front of her. It was a few inches shorter than the one that 'Jiraiya' carried, but still looked oversized on the actor's shorter body.

"So empowered by the Will of Fire was she that she threw off the yoke of the foreign oppressors and hastened to Leaf!"

'Mari' surged, arching her back and expanding her shoulders as though throwing off a weight. She 'raced' around the tiny stage with the mincing steps of a stage performer trying to suggest distance traveled...and then she halted when her eyes met those of the ersatz Jiraiya.

'Jiraiya' had been allowing his Will of Fire to descend until it was straight out in front of him. At the sight of 'Mari' his eyes went wide. He turned his head to face the audience and dropped his jaw, then wiggled his eyebrows furiously as he raised the Will of Fire back up to a sharp angle.

"And thus the two came together!"

'Mari' and 'Jiraiya' raced towards one another, spinning around in what was actually a reasonably good series of mirrored irimi/tenkan pairs. They closed the distance, free hands tightening in each other's jackets so that they could stick together as they spun, faster and faster, the torches on opposite sides so that they were encircled in a pretended trail of fire. They spun for two seconds, then halted, 'Mari' arched backwards and 'Jiraiya bent over her.

"Lady Firehair and Lord Jiraiya fought and loved—"

Both players turned towards the audience and smiled suggestively, nodding until the audience cracked up.

"—until at last it was time to seek an heir!"

The two players moved apart and a pair of stagehands dressed in the black clothes that meant 'I am not here' stepped up behind them and raised a sheet, blocking off the view. They shook it for a moment, then dropped it to the stage.

Thus revealed was another teenage player. He was unimpressive; a weak chin, no proper musculature, a rumpled jacket, and messy hair.

"Mother, Father!" he said, his voice shrill.

"My...son!" 'Jiraiya' said, starting off uncertain and then forcing heartiness into his voice. He cheated out so as to keep the torch away from his fellow players and their probably-flammable costumes. He clapped his free hand on Son's shoulder and squeezed. Son winced and then plastered a pained smile on his face.

"Son," 'Jiraiya' said, "someday, I will be gone." He turned, looping his left arm around Son's shoulders and gesturing with the torch in his right to direct the eye to the horizon. "I will be gone and you will have to take my place."

"Of course, Father! I'm very anxious to rule the clan!"

"I'm sure you are, Son, I'm sure you are." 'Jiraiya' clapped Son on the shoulder again. "Now, it's a tremendous responsibility, running one of the Great Clans!"

"I know, Father!" Son reached towards the torch that 'Jiraiya' held in his free hand, only to miss when 'Jiraiya' gestured with it.

"All right then. Now, I am one of the greatest heroes Leaf has ever produced, so you're going to have to work hard to measure up to me."

"I know, Father!" Son piped in his barely-less-than-falsetto voice. "I will! I'll work so very hard to make you proud, Father! I'll learn ninja-ing and, um, books, and, um..."

"Don't you worry, Son," 'Jiraiya' said, patting him on the head. Son reached for Jiraiya's torch again, only to miss when 'Jiraiya' reached forward to tap 'Mari' gently on the forehead with it. "Your mother is brilliant, and skilled at everything. She is a mistress of every art a ruler could need. She will support you. With her at your side, you will have no trouble. Just listen to what she says and you'll do fine."

"I will, Father!"

Son started to stealthily reach for Jiraiya's torch again, but then all three players froze in place.

The barker stepped forward, his young voice now somber. "And then came tragedy. Against all odds, the Mighty Jiraiya fell in battle."

'Jiraiya' whirled suddenly into furious action, shouting and kicking, spinning and thrusting his torch to and fro, smashing aside imagined enemies...and then jerking as something struck him in the back. He stutter-stepped once, caught his balance, spun and swung his torch to demolish whatever invisible enemy had struck him. He beat it to the ground with several hard strikes, then crushed it with one stamp of his heel, then slowly collapsed in on himself as he crumpled to a knee. He froze there for long seconds, then stood, shifting back to a neutral stance, with his torch still at his feet. He turned to the audience and surveyed them with a weighty gaze. What he saw seemed to please him because he smiled very slightly, and then he turned and walked slowly off the stage. One of the black-clad stage hands retrieved the torch from where it lay and trailed it along in 'Jiraiya's wake as though the Will of Fire were escorting him off to the Pure Lands. Actor, stage hand, and torch disappeared behind the curtain.

Moments later, 'Mari' and Son left the stage, moving calmly off to stage left and right respectively before curving back around to hide behind the curtain.

"And thus began a new chapter in the life of The Mighty Jiraiya's family," the barker said, a smile breaking out on his face.

Son entered from stage right, a stack of papers in one hand. "Mommm!" he shouted.

'Mari' entered from stage left. "Yes, Son?"

"These are the new sales figures from my board games!" Son said, waving the papers. "Take a look."

Mari took them from him and studied them for a moment without turning them around. She flipped a page over, skimmed down, then tidied the stack, turned it around, and handed it back to Son.

"Those are indeed the sales figures from your board game idea," she said. "It was a very clever one too."

Son preened. Both of them froze and Son turned his head to the audience, smugged, then turned back. "It was, wasn't it? The civilians really like them!"

"They sure do, Son. And that food bank that you thought up, the one with the seals? That's valuable too!"

"I know, right? The civilians are eating way better."

"They sure are, Son. Speaking of good ideas, have you been working on your ninja skills?"

"Oh, uh, yeah. Yeah! Absolutely. You know me, mom. I train super hard, just like every ninja."

'Mari' smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "You certainly do, Son. You certainly do. So, on a completely different topic, how are things with Lady Yamanaka? My beloved Jiraiya went to a lot of trouble to get Lady Yamanaka's father to pledge you two."

Another player stepped up at stage left, another teenage boy dressed as a woman, this one with a long blonde wig on. In 'her' hand was a torch, slightly smaller than the ones that 'Jiraiya' and 'Mari' had carried. At stage right came another 'girl', this one dressed in all green with short brown hair.

"Is that supposed to be—" Akane began.

"Yes," Hazō said. "Pretty sure."

"But—"

Without looking away from the stage, he reached out and stroked her hair. "Welcome to public life," he murmured.

Up on stage, the action had proceeded. 'Mari' had exited and Son and 'Lady Yamanaka' were speaking.

"I am pleased to become your fiancée," 'Lady Yamanaka' said with a demure bow of her head and dip of the knees that would never, ever, ever be performed by Yamanaka Ino, not even as a birthday present for her boyfriend. "My clan is honored to unite with the blood of The Mighty Jiraiya, and our union will be a great thing for your clan. It will provide the connections to Leaf that your clan, so new in Leaf's service, are still developing." 'She' inched up closer, swaying in a teenage boy's best attempt at female seductiveness. "I hope it will also be great in other ways."

"Yeah," Son said, giving 'Lady Yamanaka' a thorough up-and-down look. "Yeah, very great." He embraced her and leaned in for a kiss; 'Lady Yamanaka' arched back, eyes closed and lips overly pursed in stage-style kissing pose.

Two inches from completing the kiss, Son suddenly looked up and caught sight of the 'girl' in the green outfit, who was currently training in a form of hard-style taijutsu that had been created by a blind person who had never had hard-style taijutsu described to them. He froze, staring in fascination, completely forgetting about the 'woman' in his arms.

The pose held for a slow count of five. The first titter escaped the audience at three. At four, several people started laughing. At five, 'Lady Yamanaka' opened one eye, cleared her throat loudly, and closed it again. The audience broke up.

"Huh? Oh, right!" Son said. He dipped forward, miming a flurry of kisses across his betrothed's face with a noisy "mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah!" The audience continued to laugh.

Son stepped back from 'Lady Yamanaka', who seemed a bit flustered as she fixed her hair. Behind her, the girl in green stepped off the stage and continued performing her wince-inducing 'kata' as she moved away and towards the curtain.

"This was great," Son said to his supposed betrothed. "Definitely great. Let's totally do it again tomorrow, okay?"

'Lady Yamanaka' blinked several times. "Yes. Of course. That will be lovely. I shall look forward to it, my betrothed."

"Cooool," Son said, flashing her two thumbs up. "See you then!"

He turned away and waved towards the girl in green just as she vanished behind the curtain. "Hey! Hey, you! What's your name?!" he shouted as he ran (minced) across the stage, exiting stage left as 'Lady Yamanaka' fled to stage right and looped back around behind the curtain.

The audience was already applauding when the stage hands dropped the curtain and the players came back onstage to take their bows while the barker went around with upturned hat, into which showered one- and five- and even a few ten-ryō pieces.

"I agree with you, Hazō," Kei said. "No proper Gōketsu adventure is complete without mind-shattering events awaiting us immediately upon, or at least very shortly after, entering the city gates."

Akane snorted. "We are going home now," she announced. "We are going to say hello to everyone, then bathe, then eat. And then, Hazō, you and I are going over to Ino's estate and tell her all about this travesty so that the three of us can laugh hysterically."

---

Author's Note: You spoke with Mari about things.

• Appointing Yuno as Clan Warleader: Yuno has little to no experience of fighting as part of a team but she has excellent tactical instincts. Mari will work with her on integrating other people into her actions and work up from there. She says it's a good idea to have someone in the role and helping Yuno figure it out sounds like fun
• (EDIT: You were unable to speak to Mai.) You suggest to Mai that she should learn a new element with the aid of Jiraiya's notes. She says 'yes sir' and goes off to check the notes
• Gaku has several assistants already and is in good shape
• You ask Mari and Gaku to look around for someone in the clan who is willing to learn technique hacking. They'll get back to you
• Not sure what's up with adoptions but Hazō does the sensible things to progress it if possible

XP AWARD: 15 It took you 4 days to get home. I'm not sure if you ran like the wind or crawled like a dawdling tortoise, but that's how long you took.

Brevity XP: 4

"GM had fun" XP: 4 I watched the play in my head and then tried to capture it on the page. Not sure I managed, but the version I saw was hilarious.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Oct 12, 2022 at 7:00 AM .

 

[Paperclipped]

Interlude: Adoption Interviews – Murai Misa​

April 23, 1070

Procrastination, Noburi thought, was definitely something he should try to avoid. He knew that his laid-back attitude lent him much of his natural charm, but he really needed to keep it within limits when it came to fulfilling his clan responsibilities. He even remembered his dad yelling at him to "fish or cut bait" when he was procrastinating on his chores as a kid, nevermind that Wakahisa, if ever they went fishing, certainly didn't need any kind of bait.

Unfortunately, his procrastination had finally come back to bite him. He'd meant to get around to wrapping up the interviews at some point or another, even if he never really had a time in mind for it. Sure, maybe he'd delayed the interviews with the Murai twins a little extra because they were attractive young girls of the exact sort that tended to invite axe-born retribution. But still…

"Gōketsu Noburi, step forward."

Noburi followed the instruction of the Hagoromo priest and grabbed a pinch of powdered incense. He marked his forehead with it, then leaned forward and cast the rest over the body of Gōketsu Misa, where she lay within her open coffin on the unlit funeral pyre.

Noburi stepped to the side and found his place to wait as Akane stepped up to do the same. He resisted taking a glance at Mio, Misa's twin. While her eyes were reddened, she didn't cry. Her face looked blank and expressionless, not the carefully controlled mask of a woman hiding a storm of emotions within, but the look of someone so utterly destroyed that she couldn't bear to feel anything at all.

He closed his eyes for a second, then reopened them, looking forward. One by one, the rest of the clan was coming up to pay their respects for the two fallen ninja.

Two fallen ninja. All things considered, Clan Gōketsu had done quite well through the war. Of the dozen or so ninja they had, only ten had been deployed on missions. Misa had died in one of the war's larger battles, the Battle at Akaitani Pass. Rock had caught an infiltration team in the area, both sides signaled for their reinforcements, and all the local ninja converged to a bloodbath. Leaf won the battle, thanks in part to Misa's sacrifice, taking down two Rock ninja for every Leaf ninja felled, and managed to take control of one of the Land of Earth's most fertile farmlands (which, given the rest of the barren country, had forced Rock to split their forces even further).

Mai, on the other hand, had been mostly kept in Leaf with the other partially crippled ninja. Only at the very tail end of the war, when Leaf was strapped for chūnin-power, had she been deployed. It was a mission that suited her limited capabilities, a quick and dirty flushout to get rid of a Rock border post that a scouting team had found. From the reports, she and her support team had emptied out the fortified cave with Gōketsu-standard levels of ordinance, then Mai had sniped down the fleeing genin before returning to Fire. A total success… until Rock's tracker squad caught up with them just past the border. From the survivors of Mai's team, it sounded like she realized she wouldn't get away with her limited mobility, and decided to stay back and stall the trackers so that her allies could escape. By the time Leaf reinforcements arrived, all that was left of her was scattered gore and a blood-splattered forehead protector.

Noburi shook his head slightly, prompting Akane to look over at him. He made a small gesture to say "I'm fine," then turned back to the proceedings. It would take a while before everyone would be done with the incense. Misa and Mai had both been on the estate since it was first founded, and Gōketsu, being who they were, didn't restrict civilians from paying their respects to the fallen ninja. From the looks of it, they had touched many, many people's lives.

Misa in particular had been an adoption target because of that, Noburi thought. She'd done more till-and-fill missions than any of the other ninja in Clan Gōketsu. When Noburi went around to the Tower to get more official records, he'd found something even more impressive – of all the ninja in Hidden Leaf, fifteen hundred to Clan Gōketsu's dozen, Murai Misa had done the most till-and-fill missions of everyone. Now, he'd never get the chance to ask her why.

He played through the adoption interview in his head. He knew enough to fit the pieces together.

What's your name? Murai Misa.

And what is your element? Fire, sir.

She was shy, so she'd probably not talk too excessively. He'd have to bring her out of her shell.

Do you know any Fire-style ninjutsu? Just what the KEI has taught me, sir. Some signal flares and a few basic offensive jutsu.

So you're a ninjutsu specialist? No, Lord Noburi, I use shuriken and kunai mainly, like he didn't already have enough young attractive female ranged weapons users with strong and similarly attractive overprotective older sisters in his life (if he had a ryō for every time that happened, he'd have two ryō, which was not a lot but it was still strange that it happened twice). The explosive tags that your clan provides have been very useful.

So, any hobbies? Nothing worth noting, sir. She'd probably not want to reveal too much about herself and keep it professional.

Are you sure? In Gōketsu, we all have our various little interests. Well, you don't have to share now. How come you're the only ninja in Hidden Leaf with over three hundred completed till-and-fill missions?

Well, sir, I wanted to show my worth to the Gōketsu so that you would adopt me and protect me like you would your own, but you clearly didn't do that, did you?

To be fair, he had given her the best chance he could have. When he realized he was delaying the twins' interviews, he asked Hazō to adopt them first and sort out the issues later (given their mission records, Noburi didn't anticipate any real issues). Misa had been given access to the clan's seals and techniques. They just hadn't been enough.

The last of the mourners cast their pinch of incense over the corpse and joined the rest of the clan at the right side of the pyre, now representing the rising sun. The priest, a young man named Hagoromo Uta, turned away from the audience to face the bodies. Unlike the mourners, dressed in the brilliant white that symbolized purity so as to not weigh down the spirits of the dead, the priest wore only blue. He had an elaborate headdress and layers upon layers of clothing, tied together by dozens of knots and beaded strings and ribbons, each of which probably had a symbolic meaning that Noburi had never bothered to learn.

"Rikudō Sennin iwaku, ninshū ni sugureru mono nomi…" The priest started to speak a prayer for the deceased in that ancient, incomprehensible scholar's tongue. Fortunately, the Hagoromo had the right idea when it came to ninja funerals – in the event that the body couldn't be recovered, the forehead protector carried the full spiritual weight of a ninja's presence. Hopefully, this would be enough to see Misa and Mai both safely to the afterlife.

Noburi took a quick glance at Hazō, who had been second after Mio to greet Misa's body. Noburi could tell that Hazō was using his bloodline to look calm and composed, but his Clan Lord was watching Hagoromo like a hawk. Noburi considered the merits of telling Hazō to knock it off, but decided to let it go. For all that the Hagoromo could be self-righteous pricks at times, and for all they had a general dislike for Hazō and the Gōketsu, this was bigger than a petty feud. In Leaf, the Will of Fire reigned supreme, and the honor and respect due to those that died in its service could not be denied.

Perhaps Noburi should have been glad that Hazō even let the Hagoromo onto the estate. He'd been prepared to argue with his brother to make it happen, as the rest of the Leaf-born ninja would have nearly revolted otherwise. Hazō (and Noburi (and Kei (and Mari (and Yuno (and definitely Kagome))))) might not have cared much for the Hagoromo's traditions, but for the rest of the clan, knowing that their soul would find peace in the afterlife was of existential importance. The expected ninja lifespan, even as a clan ninja, ensured that.

The priest finished the prayer abruptly, cutting himself off at the point of beseeching the spirits of the ancestors for mercy. Given Clan Gōketsu's eclectic and very recent origins, that wouldn't be necessary. He brought his hands together to form slow hand seals and cast a technique. On a nearby table, four dozen candles, each made of a black wax hand-carved into the shape of a lotus bud, flickered alight.

Mio stepped forward at Hagoromo's instruction. She took a candle and raised it above her head.

"To my sister," she said. "May you find the peace you were always searching for."

She knelt by the pyre and placed the candle at its base. As she placed it, the flame of the candle suddenly grew in size and started to sway as if moved by a gentle breeze.

Hazō stepped forward, taking two candles. He raised one, then the other.

"To Mai. May your next life treat you better than this one. To Misa. May your spirit be lightened by the lives of those you saved."

He set down his candles by Mio's, forming the start of a circle around the pyre, and they too flared to life. One by one, the clan's ninja proceeded, taking a candle or two, and saying a brief message for the deceased. Everyone offered a candle for Mai, but few offered one for Misa. She had been a shy girl, and the cultural prejudice against twins hadn't helped her much. Hazō got away with his offering as the Clan Lord, and Akane somehow knew the girl, but no one else knew her well enough to light a candle for her.

Well, it didn't matter how many other ninja they knew now that they were dead. As Mari had grimly joked this morning, they would be in good company. Once their urns had been prepared (only Misa's filled with actual ashes, of course), they would become the first (and with luck, the last for a long time) to join Jiraiya of the Legendary Three in the Gōketsu shrine.

Another thing he should be grateful for, Noburi thought, was that Hazō hadn't mentioned his intent to somehow bring them all back to life. Though on the other hand, Hazō had built the Gōketsu shrine in his standard style as a solid, rectangular brick of granite, so his merits and misdeeds balanced out and Noburi wouldn't have to thank him afterwards.

Jin, the last of the ninja to light a candle, stepped away from the pyre. Now, the clan's ninja ringed around the pyre, just like the candles they had placed. With every candle, the flames had grown brighter and taller, and now they danced wildly.

Hagoromo Uta approached the pyre. Out of the corner of his eye, Noburi saw Akane slipping away as gracefully as she could. Given her recent mission, he didn't blame her for not wanting to witness this part of the funeral. He certainly wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere near a Mist traditional send-off after the Sunset Racer.

"The Will of Fire burns in all of us. It is dimmest in those that reject it, and turn away from its warmth. It is brighter in the people of the Land of Fire, who accept it and cherish its protection. And it is the brightest in those that fight to protect it, the ninja of Hidden Leaf.

"Yet, the candle that burns the brightest burns the fastest. Those who love their country and their people the most, those that have most fully accepted the Will of Fire, they are the first to pass out of the Human Path. The Will of Fire is the will to protect those you love. The Will of Fire is the light which brightens your trail. The Will of Fire is the light which gives guidance to your family and strength to your comrades and warmth to your soul.

"Gōketsu Misa, Gōketsu Mai. In life, you served the Will of Fire. In death, you are shown to embody it. Your last actions were to fight for your Village and for the lives of your comrades, and the flames of their souls only continue to burn today because you were brave enough to shield them. You have brought death to your enemies and life to your comrades. There is no truer service to the Will of Fire than this.

"So, let it be known! The souls of these two are tired and weary. They have given all they had to give for the Will of Fire. Let their sins be cleansed! Let their burdens fall away! Let their spirits rise away from the world of mortals and join with the Flames themselves, so that they will guide us forever more!"

With Hagoromo's words, the candle flames jumped higher and higher, and at his final pronouncement, they twisted and formed into a ring surrounding the funeral pyre. Suddenly, the pyre started to burn from within, a powerful blaze erupting with a belch of smoke.

The funeral was silent, but for the crackle of flames as they spread outwards. As the fire reached the forehead protector and the coffin, Noburi braced himself for the scent of burning flesh, but it never came. Instead, Hagoromo reached out and threw a handful of powder that made the fire around the coffin burn pure white for an instant.

With the spirits purified, Hagoromo sank to his knees and bowed his forehead to the ground before the fire. Around Noburi, the rest of the procession did the same. After a moment, he followed them, bending his head to the ground and shutting his eyes tight, trying desperately to forget the melting face of Gōketsu Misa, a sister he never met.

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 548: Experimentation​

The amount of paperwork that had piled up during Hazō's time away was extraordinary, almost as if he'd left leadership of a steadily-growing clan to a sixteen-year-old medic who had never so much as led his own mission. It would have been nice to take a day to unwind after the gruelling as-the-crow-flies journey back (maybe infiltration wasn't the only reason for a ninja to travel by ship after all), but when Hazō saw the date on the top of the first unprocessed form…

"Hazō, you look like a man fresh off a nap on a field of vampire grass."

"I feel like one too, Snowflake," Hazō confessed. "I have already scheduled five meetings for tomorrow, sent two letters of apology, humbly requested to renegotiate a contract—which the Janai Cooperative will almost certainly refuse—and called Jin to my office for disciplinary measures Noburi didn't think were necessary but I do. All of this, of course, with incredible care so I don't make Noburi feel like he failed at the job or undermine his authority in front of anyone or make things more difficult for him next time he needs to act as regent. If I don't get a mug of hot chocolate inside me within the next five minutes, Noburi will have to face the consequences of his actions and inactions alone because I will be dead."

"That would be a problem," Snowflake agreed. "Would you like some cookies with your hot chocolate?"

"Cookies?"

She proffered a tray covered with perfectly circular brown objects that put him in mind of nothing so much as Kagome-sensei's blast discs.

"Where did these come from?" he asked, tired enough that he only afterwards registered that the cookies were on a tray.

"I baked them myself," Snowflake said with an edge of pride. "Baking is domestic hobby experiment no. 8, following the failure of knitting due to self-inflicted dispelling and embroidery due to boredom."

Home-made cookies were, in fact, exactly what Hazō needed to revitalise him. Hazō reached out…

…and his missing-nin danger senses flared in warning.

"Say, Snowflake," he asked carefully, "where did you get the recipe?"

"Kei recalled it from Ami's most recent attempt," Snowflake said, explaining everything. "However, these cookies are intended to surprise the Snow Globe—which is why I am baking them here rather than at the Nara compound with its optimised facilities—and not as a weapon of mass destruction, and so I have taken care to reverse her instructions in every way possible."

Logically, then, Hazō should expect to be filled with unimaginable bliss the second his tongue touched them. That sounded good right now. Also, it wasn't like he could refuse on principle to take a bite of something Snowflake had made.

He picked up one of the perfect discs and bit into it with a resolve that would hopefully cancel out any insult from his initial hesitation.

He had never tasted anything like it before. Nutty, bitter, squelchy yet solid, oddly fishy, sweet and salty, and intensely rich yet somehow also hollow… it was a true feast for the senses, the kind where the paranoid host murdered all his guests at the end.

Snowflake stared at him with keen expectation, waiting for his judgement.

Spoiler: dice

Hazō: Empathy 21 - 3 = 18 vs TN 20 (Fair)
Hazō fails.

As far as he knew, this was Snowflake's first cooking attempt of any sort. If he told her the truth—that one taste of these would be enough to get her hired by the Yabai Café—it might be a blow to her eternally fragile self-esteem from which she would never recover.

"Delicious," he forced out. "I can't believe you've never done this before."

Now all that was left was to figure out a way to save the others.

Snowflake relaxed. "That is exceedingly reassuring. To me, they tasted utterly vile— I was offering them to you for their nutritional value, given that you had immediate access to hot chocolate to overwrite the flavour. However, if it is my sense of taste that is the aberration…"

Hazō weighed several factors in the balance, including his long-term credibility and the Nara Clan's short-term survival.

"Sorry," he said awkwardly. "They're actually terrible. What did you put in them?"

"Kokuto, bark flour, gull eggs, and pig milk. I did not deviate from the standard array of cookie ingredients in any way, and yet…"

Snowflake sighed.

"Also, Hazō, I am disappointed in you for nearly sabotaging a vital experiment with dishonesty. You of all people should be aware that I am not only accepting of criticism, but expect it as the default response to my activities."

"Sorry," Hazō said again.

He cast around for a way to change the subject.

"So did your first Gōketsu-style adventure live up to your expectations? I know our plans more or less got ruined by the intelligence controlling the caverns—Mild Peril my foot—but in a way that's representative as well. I direct you to the Cold Stone Killers incident."

Snowflake nodded as she tipped the remaining cookies into a reinforced storage box, closed it securely, and put it in a storage seal (to Hazō's alarm). She looked down at the granite floor, her gaze slowly tracing its imperfections.

"You were all in mortal danger," she said quietly, "and I was completely unable to protect you. I could not fulfil my purpose of standing between danger and my loved ones. Neither my training nor my combat skills applied. You seized survival with your own strength, myself a mere passenger, and had you fallen after expending it to its limits, I would not even have known my fate, much less chosen how to face it. It was a reminder of the degree to which I am unreal next to any of you, and that is an experience I doubt any Gōketsu adventure has previously featured."

Silently, Hazō tried to take this in. He didn't move to make himself hot chocolate.

Something about Snowflake really did look ephemeral in that moment, like the slightest wind might blow her away. It made Hazō want to reach out and hold her in place, but of course he couldn't.

Hazō had felt helpless countless times throughout his life. His mind flashed to the killbox, the crystallised expression of being forced to wait while somebody else decided your fate. He'd never been absent for his near-death, though. It had always come at the hands of an overpowered chakra beast, or a furious S-ranker, or an enemy ninja in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time… Always something he could fight, even if in vain, or something he could face with dignity. Though it didn't exactly apply to him, Mist religion taught that those who repented on their deathbed would be spared the traitor's afterlife, so long as they expressed their repentance by offering up their fellow traitors' names and active plans, and doubtless there were other religions with similar provisions.

What was it like to know in advance that when you died, it would have nothing to do with you, as if some kami rolled the dice and took you off the board when it wasn't your turn? Many people, Hazō thought, would actually welcome such a death. Dying in the shinobi world tended to be violent, painful, and filled with the despair of a mission failed or loved ones unwillingly abandoned. Nobody died with their dreams fulfilled. Compared to all of that, maybe it would be better to just… disappear.

But not for Snowflake, and not for him. Hazō had every intention of defying death to the final moment. Hazō had every intention of defying it beyond. Even without that, after everything Hazō had survived against all the odds, every reprieve he had won and yes, every time he'd clung on long enough to be saved by someone else, if there was one thing he refused to be killed by, it was giving up hope.

Snowflake did not have that option. Whether Snowflake was present for one of Kei's battles at all was determined by decisions about chakra efficiency and by events earlier in the day. If she was present, then in the ideal scenario she would disappear before anyone else, taking a hit that would otherwise go to flesh and blood.

Hazō had no idea what it was like to see the world from that perspective. He couldn't. He had no consolation to offer that wouldn't come from the bizarre yet undeniable heights of mortality privilege.

"I'm sorry," Hazō said.

"On the contrary," Snowflake said. "You sought to fulfil my wish. It is not your fault that I did not know what I was wishing for.

"If it is of any help," she added as if she was supposed to be the one consoling him, "I did enjoy the preceding parts. For all the complexities of my existence, there is satisfaction in protecting and supporting you in a way even Kei cannot. Nor do I regret accumulating new experiences unlike any I have known so far, and in all probability unlike any ever experienced by a human being before."

Hazō noted that in Snowflake's mind, Orochimaru didn't seem to qualify as a human being. Fair enough.

Now he thought of it, this wasn't the first time she'd consoled him when she was herself in need. He'd been in no state of mind to remember to thank her that time, never mind to consider her own pain—he'd been the one to give the order, sure, but in Snowflake's mind, she and Kei were the reason there'd been an order to give.

"Speaking of new experiences," he said with an attempt at levity which he didn't feel he pulled off, "I wanted to thank you for putting your hand on my shoulder after the execution on the skytower. I know it must've meant reaching outside your comfort zone, but you did it for me, and it was comfort exactly when I needed it. Without you and Kei, I might have been trapped in that spiral of self-loathing for a lot longer."

"I… I have no idea what you are referring to," Snowflake stammered.

Hazō just smiled.

After a few seconds of looking anywhere but at Hazō, Snowflake's shoulders slumped.

"Even I am aware of how unconvincing that was. Enjoy my excruciating embarrassment while you can, Hazō."

Fortunately for Snowflake, Hazō was the very soul of mercy, and besides, no matter how cute she was when she squirmed, it was bad form to tease somebody when you were in the middle of thanking them for something meaningful.

"You know," he said instead, "I seem to remember you planning some kind of experiment back when we were in Neck that you needed my help for. Are you ready to tell me what it was now? You know I'll help however I can."

He'd expected this to lead to less squirming, not more.

Finally, Snowflake took a deep breath and straightened up.

"Very well, Hazō. But are you certain? There is an acceptable but nevertheless noteworthy risk of grievous bodily harm, and the resulting data will be of significant value to Kei and myself, but not at all to you."

"How much risk of grievous bodily harm?" Hazō asked warily.

Snowflake walked over to the counter, outside Hazō's reach, and put down the emergency self-defence pouch without which no ninja ever left their home. Hazō was aware that they were well past that stage, but the unthinking gesture of trust was pleasant nonetheless.

"Less now," she said. "If you wish to reduce it further, then please hold still, arms down by your sides."

"Snowflake, what kind of experiment is this?"

"Do not make me say it," Snowflake said. "Also, it is optional but preferable that you close your eyes."

Hazō owed Snowflake, he reminded himself. There were things she'd done for him, and things he'd failed to even notice he needed to do for her. Also, Snowflake was not Kei, and her record of attempted Hazō murder… actually, now he thought about it, Snowflake didn't have a record of attempted Hazō murder. Wow.

He closed his eyes.

For some time, nothing happened, or at least nothing Hazō could hear.

Then there were footsteps, slowly moving around, finally stopping directly in front of him.

"Remember… arms down by your sides."

He needed the reminder, because the very next thing he felt were her arms around him. They were tentative at first, closing in jerky, hesitant steps over the course of seconds until they finally overlapped behind his back.

He heard the hiss of an indrawn breath.

Her body pressed against him. The edge of her ribbon brushed against his neck. It was only a light touch, but it was enough for him to freeze completely as a panicked series of "What do I do?"s ran through his mind. He was suddenly, intensely aware that he was being hugged by Snowflake, that he had no idea what to do when being hugged by Snowflake, and that he had no idea what was running through her mind either. Also, there was no way this didn't qualify for a Kei death penalty somehow.

…

She was warm.

Idiot, of course she was warm. She was a shadow clone, not a statue.

Did that mean Kei was warm as well?

Should he be… doing something right now?

No, wait. Arms by sides.

He could feel her shifting slightly as she breathed in and out.

At last, she pulled away sharply.

"Y-You may open your eyes now."

He opened her eyes, seeing her now at the other end of the kitchen, well away from him.

"Thank you for participating in this experiment," Snowflake told him at approximately half again her normal speed. "Eight seconds is the second best result so far. Please expect Kei to conduct her own measurements when she next sees you. I must go and record this immediately. Goodbye, Hazō."

She paused only long enough to grab her pouch.

"Wait, Snowflake! You forgot your cookies!"

After a few seconds to stare after her helplessly, Hazō shook his head and went to make himself some hot chocolate. Nobody in the clan was going to believe what just happened even if he told them.

-o-​

Feedback from Mari:

Calling her spy network a spy network would be generous, but she's doing what she can with what she's got, which is a lot more than anybody else could do with what she's got. Her main headache at the moment is some kind of play-based reputational warfare against the Gōketsu, origins unknown but probably with metal threads in their beard. In addition to the kind of play you've seen, there are performances exalting the sacrifices of the various clans in the war, which leave a very obvious and emphatic gap for the Gōketsu, and also notably dwell on the valour of the Condor Summoner who was given a summoning scroll by Leaf so she could go and fight for the village.

Mari reiterates that Atomu would make a terrible diplomat because the clans simply wouldn't respect him. No, nobody would outright refuse to meet with him, because senior ninja know the difference between disrespecting the Gōketsu and insulting the Gōketsu, but it would be free slander for your political opponents, and it would alienate clans like the Akimichi that have yet to make up their mind. Besides, you may know that crippled ninja aren't worthless, but he might well feel differently if his disability leads to the Gōketsu being outcasts. (Also, his experience managing a bunch of homeless civilians and a handful of genin and academy students is not in any way the same as juggling the political interests of a dozen affiliate clans.)

Mari has no problem with Akane or Yuno's candidacies. Akane is in need of something that'll help rebuild her self-esteem, and she's as qualified as anyone in the clan. Yuno lacks leadership experience and has questionable social skills, but she's the clan's second best fighter and an inspiring if intimidating figure on the battlefield. Mari's trying to slowly bring her around so she's more willing to work with her and take lessons, but it's hard to keep momentum going when certain people send her on lengthy away missions at delicate stages in the process. Both have agreed to take the roles, and you may consider the appointments to have gone ahead.

Mari is perplexed by the mention of Fuyuki, whom only Kagome, that expert in clan management, can vouch for and whom nobody else really knows. Mathematical skills are certainly a prerequisite for the treasurer job, but Mari considers them the least important part, since they can be taught and indeed the Gōketsu have a whole institution for teaching them. Trustworthiness and reliability count for far more in her mind, and she thinks you should think carefully before buying an exorbitantly expensive adoption slot for Fuyuki, much less handing him the keys to the Gōketsu vault.

Feedback from Noburi:

Everybody in the clan is prepared to try their hand at learning basic medicine, even Atomu (who can at least learn the traditional medicine components, even if he understands that his dream of using medical ninjutsu is unlikely to ever be more than a dream). This would annoy Asuma by pulling a bunch of ninja off the mission roster, but there's not much he can do about it unless he wants Tsunade kicking down the door to his office.

Noburi will train them if that's what you want, but he doesn't seem excited about it, insofar as it's a full-time job that keeps him away from his personal objectives.

Feedback from Kagome:

Putting medical knowledge in the GED curriculum is possible, and of obvious benefit, but it's not realistic to get anyone to "useful in a clinic" level with it. If Noburi has to develop a full (e.g. L20) traditional medicine course for the Gōketsu ninja, you could use incentives to get people to join that, but otherwise it doesn't seem like money well spent.

Feedback from Atomu:

Atomu would be delighted to be in charge of the salterns if that's what Lord Hazō wants, though you'll have to explain exactly what that entails (since without MEW, he can't make any, and presumably you don't want him running around northern Iron collecting salt from the ones you've got).

Feedback from Hazō:

If today is going into clan management/Snowflake management, you can't also pursue the all-day activity of sealing.

Feedback from Gamabunta:

Spoiler: dice

Noburi (Rapport): 24 + 3 (Invoke "Zone of Friendship") + 3 (Invoke "The Hokage was My New Dad") - 3 dice = 27
Noburi spends a FP to reroll!
Noburi (Rapport): 24 + 3 (Invoke "Zone of Friendship") + 3 (Invoke "The Hokage was My New Dad") + 3 dice = 33

Begrudgingly, Gamabunta has agreed to send a Toad diplomat to Dog. Noburi had to negotiate quickly to avoid irritating the Toad Boss, meaning the terms of the deal are not very favourable. First, Noburi needs to offer a substantial amount of trade goods to Gamabunta for free as tribute. Second, the Toad "diplomat", an irritating young Toad named Gamakadan that Gamabunta wants to discipline for some unknown crime, can only stay there for 1 month. Third, Noburi is on the hook for personally escorting the toad there and back, through allied Pangolin and enemy Hyena territory (unless Noburi wants to find another route), and it's his skin on the line if Gamakadan gets hurt. (Cannai has already agreed to keep the Toad diplomat with the Pangolin envoy near the border with Hyena.)

-o-​

You have received 4 + 1 (Brevity) + 1 (Fun-to-write) = 6 XP. Noburi has spent 3 FP and gained 1 FP for winning a conflict with meaningful consequences.

-o-​

What do you do?

Voting closes on Oct 15, 2022 at 1:00 PM

 

[Paperclipped]

Chapter 549: The Fourth's Enigma​

"Okay sensei," Hazō said, rubbing his forehead lightly. "I don't think I followed that. Let's start over."

"I don't see what you're not getting, it's not hard," said Kagome. "Look, this part here-"

"The Motoyoshi Toggle?"

"Yes, the Motoyoshi Toggle! What other root component is there in this part of the seal?"

"Sensei, the seal has four different components that independently intake chakra," Hazō said, pointing one by one at the different parts of the seal. "Any of them could be a root component. I'm not even sure how you infuse it without getting the power ratios hopelessly out of balance."

"It's- look-," Kagome blabbered before biting his lip and starting again. "Okay. So the Motoyoshi Toggle feeds energy through this pathway here, right?" he pointed. "And then this twist here increases the chirality of that energy, and it feeds into itself until the chakra is sufficiently spinny that it can go through the resonant transducer here."

"Sensei, there's no stabilizing elements around the twist. There'll be both positive and negative spin going into the transducer. Won't that cause higher order dimensional effects?"

"Which dimensions?" Kagome asked, looking smug.

Hazō examined the seal, producing a piece of paper to take notes with. After a moment, he frowned. Then he looked closer. The frown got deeper.

"Sensei. This would inject unstable chakra into the ninth dimension. This would cause a full resonance failure cascade, wouldn't it? Fifth through thirteenth dimensions."

Kagome shook his head. "Looks like that, doesn't it? But when you're infusing it, there's not much power at first, so the unstable effects don't kick in until the seal is at full power. And the Yanagihara Transformer here reverses the step-down energy chirality and feeds it back into the resonant transducer, so it cancels the higher order instabilities."

Hazō slapped the table. "How can it cancel the higher order instabilities? You're basically feeding in two, no, four highly volatile chakra feeds into an ephemeral dimension! There's no way that it doesn't just explode!"

Kagome nodded sagely. "I thought it'd go boom at first too. But it's really not like that. Not only does the ninth order effect cancel out fully, with this subgraph here it collapses the higher dimensions and reduces the chakra construct to only three spatial dimensions. That's how the construct deranges itself from phase space and into the real world."

Hazō shook his head. "There's no way that the chakra feeds cancel each other exactly. It would be like throwing a rock into a pond, then throwing a second rock in in a way that cancels the ripples. It's just not possible."

Kagome looked at him, then put his hand to the blank with a focused look. After a moment, he pulled his hand away and Hazō felt the Iron Nerve's familiar pressure in his head as he looked at the infused seal. He copied the seal into his mind and briefly inspected it – exactly the same as the blank Kagome had been explaining to him.

Hazō sighed and rested his forehead in his hand. "The Fourth was insane. I don't get how this didn't cause a sealing failure."

"It's really not that hard," Kagome said. "I hated it at first but it all clicked after a bit. You should learn it! We can even start now. Here, we can use the Tamai equations to expand this component…"

"Sorry, Kagome-sensei," Hazō said, raising his hands apologetically. "I can't get into the seal workshop yet. I still have a lot of clan work to catch up on before I can afford to take a few days off."

Kagome scowled. "Make Gaku do it. The two seals I've done so far have already taught me so much. You can't miss out."

"I'll get around to it, sensei," Hazō said. "Could you show me the other seal you learned?"

One even more dizzyingly complex explanation later, Hazō sighed. "Fine. I'm throwing in the towel. I know it seems easy to you, but you worked on this for two months. I don't think I'm going to get it until I spend that long myself. Anyway, my biggest question is the same. Is this useful for opening the Rift?"

"I dunno, maybe?" Kagome said. "On the one hand, if we could somehow make the chakra construct form on the other side, or somehow push it through the transshift canal, then we could try to design a chakra construct that could be paired across both sides and inflate the rift the way we thought of on O'uzu. On the other hand, the stuff I've seen so far won't work for that. The symmetries that make these chakra constructs stable depend on the construct being centered on the seal. They can't be moved otherwise… well, it would be a big boom, at least."

Hazō sighed. "But maybe other seals in the series will give us an idea of how to translate the chakra construct?"

"Probably not. All the ones we have are seal-centered. I think I have enough to design a paired seal that would open the rift. Hold it up on one side to make a chakra construct, hold it up on the other to make another, then use chakra-sensing mechanisms from your chakdar or something to link them up and inflate the transshift canal. Not easy, but I could do it. Maybe."

"Sure, but if we had a way of getting to the other side, the problem would be solved," Hazō said, rubbing his chin. "While I was walking around the estate, I heard Kenta talking about anchor screws, which you can push through a wall to wedge a hole open. Is that a helpful sort of thing to have? We could bring him in and get his advice on how to design a seal that does that."

Kagome shook his head. "No. I mean yes, that would be good, but that's not the hard part of the problem. Easy enough to design a thing that opens the Rift if we could even get anything to the other side, but the transshift canal is smaller than a pinhole. We can't push a big chakra construct through it without getting it open wider first."

"I see… so we need a certain type of chakra construct to open the portal, but it would be too big to push through, and we have no way to cause it to form naturally on the other side, is that right?" Hazō asked, and Kagome nodded. After a moment, Hazō spoke again, "I've been thinking, the issue is basically that the storage space blew itself out, right? So if we push energy into it like a normal storage seal, it would just fly out the back end. What if we just tried to push a ton of energy in? If we did enough, is it possible that it would inflate, just a little? We could come up with a chakra source like the koi or those weird chakra-gems we found."

"Should blow those stinking rocks up and scatter 'em in the woods, that's what," Kagome muttered. He had been horrified at the team's reckless delving into a cave filled with exotic chakra beasts, and even more horrified that they'd brought stuff back out. Hazō had managed to convince him not to burn all their findings. Now that he thought about that conversation, Kagome-sensei had acted weirdly when Hazō described infiltrating the town. It had been nice to use his disguise kit after so long. He pushed the thought out of his mind. Not the time.

"If we can push enough chakra through from this side that it opens a little, then we can push whatever chakra construct we need through on the back of the other big chakra flow. So, would that be possible?" he asked.

Kagome shrugged. "Maybe pushing way too much energy in opens it, yeah. Or maybe it dislocates the transshift canal some more and when it opens up, gaki pour out and they suck our guts out through our faces. Or maybe the storage matrix disintegrates and the Rift disappears forever. Or maybe there's other punctures in the storage matrix that tear open new portals and the damnbeats decide they're gonna turn us inside out and send us back to Leaf to incubate their babies. Or maybe the chakra flux tears apart the high-energy chakra construct that we're sending through and the explosion kills all of us. Or maybe the chakra construct doesn't anchor on the other side and floats off into the afterlife until one of the umbral devourers comes around, eats it, and decides it likes the taste of our chakra and wants to eat the rest of us. Or not. I dunno."

"Okay, so we have no clue and we should basically treat it as a sealing failure. Got it."

Kagome shrugged. "We're working with a sealing failure and pretending it's predictable. We're gonna die no matter what, and it'll probably suck. Sure, we'll probably get our faces melted if we try it, but maybe it just works and we don't get our faces melted. Or maybe it works and our faces melt anyway because sealing failures can just melt your face anyway and there's nothing you can do about it."

"Sure. Well, at least we have something. At some point, we should try to research that rift-opening seal, even if we can't use it yet. Maybe once we have a start, we'll be able to find another way forward. Anyway, how have things been with the Arachnids been? Any progress on the Great Seal?"

Kagome scowled. "I've been waiting for you, dummy! Kumokōgō doesn't want to provoke the Dragons any more, and apparently they haven't been leaving the Great Seal much. She's not sure if they're scared because you killed one or if they're up to some shenanigans there, but apparently she doesn't want to bait them away if it makes them go kill more Arachnids. Don't you have the tunnel there? We should go that way!"

Hazō nodded. "Yeah, okay. We can try to sneak under the butte sometime. Still, the last few times I was there, it was with the help of a bait team. We definitely wouldn't get a chance to look straight at the Great Seal if there were Dragons around, but I could probably show you some of the underground parts."

"Sure. Better than your crappy replica, anyway."

Hazō put his hand to his chest. "That took me a whole day to make!"

"Waste of a day," Kagome said with a snort, "There's a reason why the other Leaf stinkers moved on, and not just because the big stinker made them all go into the sweatshops to make skywalkers for his war. Looks like crap. Bits and pieces kinda look like seal components here and there but not really."

Hazō sighed. "I've been meaning to work on the Earthshaping technique to make a better replica. I'll have to do that at some point. Anyway, before Mari comes and makes me look over her proposed plans for the roads initiative, tell me about Harumitsu. Was he okay when you were teaching him?"

"Oh, the kid? He wasn't bad. Better than you, really. Not half as reckless. Maybe not even a quarter. But still, we were working on storage seals, and he ended up mixing up two equations, and…"

o-o-o​

Hazō knocked on the door. Inside, there was the sound of rapid footsteps, then clanging metal and furniture being knocked over, along with the soft pops of shadow clones dispelling. After a moment longer, the door swung open and Naruto leaned casually against the doorframe.

"Ah, you're early."

Hazō smiled, and glanced at Mari, who nodded. "Were we interrupting something? We can come back in a few minutes, if that would be easier."

Naruto shrugged. "It's no biggie." He paused for a moment, then opened the door wide. "Actually, it's fine. Why don't you come in?"

Hazō and Mari climbed the pair of steps leading up to Naruto's house and followed Naruto to the sitting room. Hazō couldn't help but sniff at the air. The furniture was in perfect order, clean and in its correct places, yet there was a slight, sweet scent in the air. As he looked around, he saw another Naruto coming in through a side door, and in the stairway, he saw yet another Naruto racing up the stairs with a mop soaked in… chocolate sauce?

Naruto closed the door behind him and sat down. Hazō and Mari sat opposite him on a lumpy and uncomfortable couch. Hazō tried briefly to settle down into a more comfortable position, but decided to just bear it, since wiggling probably looked undignified.

"So. Today's the day, huh?" Naruto asked.

"That's right," said Mari. "Kagome has made some progress on the jinchūriki seals, and Hazō will be looking over his work in detail sometime soon."

Naruto glanced at Hazō, then back at Mari. A little bit of worry seeped out of Hazō. He'd been afraid that Naruto would still be furious at him, but the boy instead had a look of forced neutrality. It wasn't amazing, but still better than the Naruto who didn't care to hide his hostility a few months ago.

"Okay. So what do I need to do? You said lying down on a table and poking around, right? I assume you're not gonna make me lie on a gurney like Snakedude's operating tables, so we could use a bed in a guest rooms for that."

"Sure, that'll work?" she said, inquisitively, looking at Hazō. Hazō nodded, and she continued. "Yes, that's fine. We did have some questions we wanted to ask, first."

Naruto leaned back in his chair. "Well, I can't talk too much about my capabilities, you know. And I don't know shit about sealing, so I won't be much use to you there. Is there anything that I can actually answer?"

Mari shrugged. "Well, what's being a jinchūriki like? Yagura never talked about what it was like with the Three Tails, but it clearly affected his mind somehow. Did you ever experience anything like that?"

And that was why they couldn't bring Kagome along. He thought the Fox would just murder them all if they told it that they knew it was possessing Naruto. On reflection, Hazō had decided to go through with it anyway.

Naruto looked up at the ceiling. "Nothing like that at all, no. The inside of my head's always been pretty normal, aside from the shadow clone stuff. No weird voices telling me to kill everyone and burn the village to the ground, if that's what you mean. Just a whole lot of chakra."

Mari laughed. "Well, I don't think the voice in Yagura's head made him want to burn the village to the ground either. Maybe it was the reason he was as cruel as he was, though in fairness, I have known some awful kids. Either way, you clearly don't have that going on.

"We spoke with the Monkey King, Enma, a while back. He mentioned that there was a jinchūriki in Whirlpool who got corrupted by her Tailed Beast. Apparently something about its chakra drove her crazy. Do you think that your dad's seal is protecting you from that?"

Naruto shrugged. "I dunno. I mean, my situation is definitely different than the other jinchūriki, right? I wasn't crazy powerful like Yagura or Gaara from a super young age, and I'm also not nuttier than a triple-stack pecan pie with extra pecan. I guess I'd chalk it up to my dad's seal, except my mom also wasn't crazy. So maybe it's a Nine Tails thing instead of a seal thing."

"Speaking of which," Hazō said, "you mentioned the name Kurama, rather than just the 'Nine Tails'. Are you able to speak with it at all? If so, we have some important questions we want to ask it, like about the Dragons. They're giant monsters on the Seventh Path made to fight the Tenfold Abomination."

Naruto shook his head. "Never heard of Dragons before you showed up, and nope, I can't talk with it at all. And I'm not eager to try, since I think that means that it would be released from its seal, and apart from the fact that you would all die, who knows what would happen to me."

"So where did you hear the name?" Hazō asked.

Naruto shrugged. "Not sure. I've always known what it was called, even when I was a kid. Figure Jiraiya or the Third Hokage told me at some point. No clue how they knew, but they were both knee deep in ancient and forgotten lore or something like that."

Mari bowed her head. "We lost a lot of wisdom when they passed."

Naruto pursed his lips for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah."

"There's another mystery about the jinchūriki that you could maybe help with," Mari said. "In Jiraiya's will, it was mentioned that he wanted to leave the Toad Scroll to you, but couldn't since you weren't eligible to be a summoner, presumably because you're a jinchūriki. Do you know why that was?"

Naruo laughed. "Hah, I remember that. Yeah, it was because I'm a jinchūriki. I bugged him about it for a bit when I realized he wasn't going to teach me summoning and he said that I'd have no problem learning the technique, but I couldn't actually go to the Seventh Path. Something about Tailed Beasts not belonging there. He said I could talk to Ma and Pa if I wanted to find out more, but I forgot to ask in the end," he said, scratching the back of his head.

"Huh," said Hazō. "Alright, that's all we had. If you're ready, can we do the inspection now?"

Naruto nodded and disappeared in a cloud of smoke. A moment later, the side door opened again and two Narutos entered, one carrying a tray with tea and biscuits. He said, "TreasonFoiler here can escort Hazō to where Prime is, and I brought some snacks for us while we wait for him to finish up with his freaky sealmaster bullshit."

Mari laughed lightly at Naruto's nickname, and Hazō smiled uncomfortably. He left the room, trying not to feel uncomfortable separating himself from Mari with a maybe-hostile jinchūriki right by his side. Naruto TreasonFoiler gave him a glare, then started leading him down the hall.

"I would say this goes without saying, but everyone I've talked to about you says that I really need to say all the things that go without saying. So, you're going to leave all your seals outside the room before you go in there, and if you do anything even remotely threatening towards Prime, you'll be eating three Rasengans before you can blink."

Hazō nodded. Yet another reason to not bring Kagome along. Completely separate from the whole treason thing (or the other treason thing), Naruto hadn't liked Kagome after the sealmaster blew up a few of the jinchūriki's clones in the Basement. Hazō could empathize. He definitely didn't want to find out what Kagome's directional explosives felt like point-blank.

"Understood. I do have a couple seals that I'll need to use to collect diagnostic data, but I can show them to you now, or you can even have a clone operate it if you'd prefer."

Naruto TreasonFoiler nodded and after a brief inspection of the chakrascope and chakdar, Hazō left the rest of his seals behind and entered the bedroom.

Naruto was sitting on the bed, and gestured at Hazō. "Ah, you're here. Took you long enough. What do we gotta do here?"

Naruto TreasonFoiler closed the door and crossed his arms by it, trapping Hazō in the triangle of clones. Naruto Prime smiled at him from on the bed.

Hazō took a seat right next to the bed. "Just the basics. I'll be checking against the Fourth's notes to see if there's anything in particular to look out for, but first I'll just draw out a copy of your seal to reference against."

Naruto's grin widened. "You're gonna draw a copy? Might have some problems with that. But hey, let's get on with it."

He pulled his shirt off and lay down on the bed. Hazō stood and closed his eyes for a moment, strengthening his resolve and remembering for a moment the feeling of Akane's hand in his and of Ino's lips against his cheek. He didn't know what was about to happen, but given his experiences with the Summoning Scroll and the Great Seal, he didn't want to take chances. He walked towards Naruto slowly. He readied his brush and drawing pad, then stopped as he saw the black seal strokes on the jinchūriki's stomach.

They moved.

Spoiler: rolls

Can Hazō tell what's going on with Naruto's seal? This is unlike any of the sealing that he knows of, so Sealing won't be of any use. He just needs to piece things together from the visible details, so it's Examination.

Hazō (Examination): 5 + 6 = 11

Very nope.

Hazō stared at it in bewilderment for a moment. In a circle on Naruto's stomach that stretched from just under his ribs to below his waistline, black marks shifted and twisted around across his skin. There was no visible pattern that he could see. Some of the marks twisted back and forth like writhing worms, and in other places spirals emerged from a single point and wrapped around themselves before unrolling into nonexistence. Ink dots appeared and disappeared on his skin like twinkling stars, and other blobs of ink raced around in loops and zig-zags. No seal Hazō had seen had ever done anything like this – it shouldn't even have been possible! Even the tiniest of mistakes in scribing a seal would lead to a sealing failure, and among other reasons, the instability of skin as a surface was part of why biosealing was so dangerous. A seal that changed shape should have been impossible.

Then Hazō realized the other confusing part of Naruto's seal. He was looking straight at it, fully taking it in, yet the Iron Nerve didn't recognize it as a seal. He hadn't copied anything new at all and he didn't feel that pressure in his mind that meant he was looking at an infused seal.

Naruto kept a straight face for a few moments, soaking in Hazō's bewilderment, then burst out laughing, causing the slowly shifting patterns on his stomach to suddenly dance in mirth. "Hah! You sealmasters all have the same face when you look at it. The same furrowed brow, mouth hanging open, 'what the fuck is this' face. Is that something you have to learn in order to get the license?"

Hazō shook his head. He couldn't get caught up on this. He had already seen one strictly impossible seal before in the Great Seal. He turned to the clones. "Do you have a seal like this as well?"

They looked to Naruto, who gestured at one of the yet-unnamed clones to show Hazō. The clone raised his shirt, and Hazō saw the seal again. This one was unmoving.

Hazō raised an eyebrow. "And how about you?"

The other clone glanced at Naruto and then raised his shirt as well, showing a copy of the seal on the first clone.
"Do all your clones have the same seal on them?" Hazō asked.

"Nope," said Naruto. "The ones made at the same time do, but at different times they get different seals. I'm pretty sure it's just a copy of whatever's on my skin when I cast the technique."

Hazō sighed. "Well, I'm not going to be able to copy out your seal like this. Let me take some readings with the chakrascopes, then I'll draw it off one of the clones."

"Great, thanks for letting me skip the boring bits. Maybe I'll go catch up with Mari while I wait."

Hazō breathed deeply, ignoring the shifting pattern of the seal on Naruto's stomach, then started pulling out his diagnostic seals to see if he could figure out anything more.

---

Hazō collected a bunch of chakra readings. This may or may not provide a relevant Aspect in the future. He also has copies of a few snapshots of the jinchūriki seal. Unfortunately, those copied out snapshots are not particularly legible to a sealmaster. While there are a few brushstrokes that look like they might be sealing components, most of it just seems like randomly placed ink that doesn't even all connect together. This is not particularly helpful to Hazō or Kagome. As per usual, the Fourth's higher-level notes are incomprehensible, and Hazō could parse nothing useful there.

Asuma is unwilling to send Noburi on the extended mission of chakra-beast extermination that would let him get enough combat experience to remove his rustiness. Your options right now are sadly limited to Leaf and the entire Seventh Path.

Additionally, Noburi has told Hazō that at some point during the Neck mission, Orochimaru came by to purchase the Dragon parts permanently. After Noburi said that he wanted to check with Hazō, Orochimaru "politely" asked to keep the last set of scales that he was lent while Noburi waited for Hazō to get back, and for Hazō to come see him to negotiate the sale. After confirming that the extended duration of possession of the last set of scales would be compensated for retroactively, Noburi said yes (with only a little bit of killing intent applied). You may want to do that soon.

When Hazō tries casting Earthshaping on Earth Clones, the Earthshaping technique is hard to cast at first, as it is challenging to push chakra into the Earth Clone. After enough effort, the Earthshaping technique takes hold. At that point, the clone disintegrates and the Earthshaping only affects the mud it was once made of. Earthshaping has no effect on the Earth Clone if it was made as a chakra construct.

Hazō is nearly finished catching up on Clan Head duties. He will be free for longer affairs like sealing research in a couple days.

XP Award: 10 + 2 (brevity) XP
GM-fun Award: 2 XP (sealing stuff is always great)

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Oct 19, 2022 at 7:00 AM

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 550, Part 1: One Dragon, Used, For Parts Only​

Hazō didn't run, because that would have been unbecoming of a clan head, even if being late was utterly unacceptable. No, he walked to Orochimaru's compound at a dignified, stately pace, and if Noburi was having trouble keeping up, that just suggested that his brother had been slacking off on his exercise while acting as regent.

"Slow down, Hazō! I know I said we were cutting it too close, but that doesn't mean I want to see him pissed off because we got there half an hour too early!"

Hazō slowed down fractionally—very fractionally, the kind of fraction that was so tiny Kagome-sensei didn't think Honoka was ready to learn about them. Noburi was right, of course. Hazō had spent so much time optimizing for this meeting with Mari and then Kei (whom he'd caught muttering to herself about calderas after he described his ability to stay calm and cordial in front of the man who'd tried to kidnap and vivisect them mere months ago). He couldn't afford to slip up now.

He thought back to the research notes. The odds of Orochimaru caring enough to ask whether Hazō had read them were miniscule, but if he did, then Hazō failing to answer would send his stock plummeting faster than a diving Dragon. The most interesting point to him, and one he felt he could discuss if called upon, was Orochimaru's analysis of the disintegration effect. Orochimaru claimed that it was not a special Dragon power. Instead, after about an hour of arguing with Noburi over the probable meaning of terminology neither of them had ever heard before, followed by ten minutes of supercilious correction by Kei (who didn't know what it meant either, but was capable of providing a detailed list of what it couldn't mean), they concluded that he thought it was a consequence of what the Dragons were, not a natural property. Orochimaru seemed to take it for granted that the foundational laws of matter were somehow local, and speculated that wherever it was the Dragons had originally come from, it was different enough from the Human Path that not all of the same laws applied. Then, when Dragon matter came into contact with Human Path matter, they did not mesh together nicely, and strange things happened at the interface. From Hazō's combined summoner/sealmaster perspective, it sounded a lot like Dragon and normal matter were having a fight over which was more real, and Dragon matter was consistently winning.

-o-​

Orochimaru lounged on one side of the coffee table in the parlour of what was once more his compound. Hazō and Noburi sat with spines ramrod-straight on the other. Orochimaru had not offered refreshments, which was just as well since Hazō had no intention of consuming any substance the mad researcher had prepared except at kunai-point.

"Thank you for making time to see us, Lord Orochimaru," Hazō said. "I promise we won't waste any more of it than necessary."

Orochimaru nodded with no particular emotion. Behind him, a labcoat hung off a coat stand, the glint of finely polished metal shining off the tops of several pockets. The fact that it was perfectly clean somehow only made it seem more sinister, as if it were a blank canvas waiting to be painted with Orochimaru's arts.

"You have come for back payment for the Dragon parts," he stated.

"Actually," Hazō said, "that was just a side detail. But you're right, we should take care of that now, before we move on to the main topic."

Orochimaru rose abruptly. Hazō, with the Iron Nerve holding him together, managed not to flinch. Noburi wasn't so lucky.

Orochimaru either didn't notice or didn't care. Instead, he walked over to a cabinet up against the wall, pulled a drawer out seemingly at random, and took out a file. He turned back to them, then paused.

"Kabuto tells me you were able to follow the saline purification theory I used to cure the bulgerat fever epidemic."

"Me?" Noburi asked, reeling back slightly in surprise. "I mean, yes, I did. I… I was very impressed with the way you modified the ritual prayer to moderate the effect of the purgative decoctions."

Orochimaru looked at him for a second, then put the file back and took out a different, thicker one. He tossed it on the table between them.

"Will this suffice?"

Noburi reached over and gingerly picked up the file, then began to leaf through it. After an initial frown of confusion, his eyes slowly lit up. It was as if he'd just been given a favourite author's latest book, and it had miraculously lived up to the hype.

He nodded firmly at Hazō, then reluctantly closed the file.

Orochimaru took his seat again. He looked at Hazō expectantly.

"If I may, then," Hazō said. "Lord Orochimaru, I would like to offer the Gōketsu stock of Dragon parts to you for permanent sale."

The sensation of Orochimaru flashing into alertness nearly made Hazō jump. The man hadn't done anything, merely shifted from lounging back to leaning forward, but to Hazō's subconscious it was like seeing a predator appear out of the bushes—this despite the fact that in this case, the predator had already been in full view.

"Done," Orochimaru said.

"Uh… good," Hazō said, not exactly shocked by Orochimaru's decisiveness (he wouldn't have made the offer if he didn't expect Orochimaru to be interested), but more than a little unnerved. There were other decisions Orochimaru could make in the future, ones a lot less healthy for Hazō or the Gōketsu, and if he made them with the same speed and lack of hesitation…

"There are some things we'd like in return," he went on. "First, could you station a snake in Arachnid territory? I think that if you could see the Great Seal and the Dragons first-hand, it would give you a lot of useful information, and it might make it easier for us to cooperate in dealing with them."

Orochimaru considered.

It was unnerving how long he could go without blinking.

"I will require your full data on the surviving Dragons. You will be responsible for providing any maps required by the Snake side and making any arrangements required on the Arachnid side."

"Of course," Hazō said. "And any insight you have to offer regarding those surviving Dragons would be greatly appreciated. Obviously, when we kill them, we will divide the remains up fairly, and we'll be open to negotiation regarding any that you weren't involved in killing."

Hazō took a moment (but only a moment) to study his interlocutor. Orochimaru wasn't exactly easy to read, but so far his expression was relaxed and he didn't seem to be bored, irritated, or homicidal. Hazō pressed on.

"Next, I'd like to request half an hour of your time."

"Pleasingly specific," Orochimaru noted. "Why?"

Because Orochimaru valued his time more than he valued stacks of research notes capable of revolutionising entire fields or bank accounts bursting with ryō. Mari was certain of it.

"I have some questions for you," Hazō explained. "One of the Gōketsu's biggest weaknesses is access to lore—notably on Dragons and the Great Seal, of course, but we also seek information on the Sage of Six Paths in general, the Akatsuki ritual, and the afterlife, among other interests. We'd like to know what you know on these subjects, but there are probably days' worth of conversation in there, and we respect your time."

"Half an hour…" Orochimaru mused. "Very well. Kabuto did request leave for an errand. However, handing secret lore to dabblers is like handing live explosive tags to an infant, save that infants do not harbour visions of universal revolution. I will decide which subjects are acceptable, and I will dismiss you early if you try my patience or waste my time."

"…understood." It wasn't much of an offer, but frankly, Hazō had spent so long beating his head against the wall of forbidden lore that right now he'd take any solid information from a reliable source that wouldn't care enough to lie. "If you have any notes or writings you're prepared to lend me, that would also be excellent."

Orochimaru raised an eyebrow. "You intend to spend your time on the kind of lore that can be committed to writing?"

Just what kind of information did Orochimaru have access to?

"I'm still finalising the list of questions," Hazō hedged. "The next thing—"

"There's more?" Orochimaru interrupted.

Hazō swallowed. Was it time to back off? But he hadn't actually bartered for much at all yet, and there was no guarantee that Orochimaru wouldn't end up vetoing all the questions Hazō really cared about.

He weighed his desire to get his money's worth for unique, precious research objects bought with the blood (or whatever Hornets had instead of blood) of countless warriors versus his desire not to offend Orochimaru (who would at best turn down the deal, and there wasn't actually anyone else who wanted the Dragon parts).

"Just one more specific request," Hazō said, "and everything else is at your discretion. The trade goods you used before—research notes, money, land, any useful ninjutsu or seals—will all be fine. But I was wondering… do you know any ninjutsu that can reduce the need for sleep? The days are too short, and there's always so much to do, even with shadow clones."

Orochimaru nodded. It might almost have been a gesture of understanding, but Hazō didn't know whether Orochimaru was still capable of such a thing, or whether he'd excised it along with whatever other core elements of humanity he considered to take up too much space.

"There is no ninjutsu with that specific function," Orochimaru said, "and the system is poorly-adapted for subtle body modifications to begin with. I do not…"

He paused, thinking. His eyes briefly ran up and down Hazō's body in a way that would have been embarrassing and alluring coming from an attractive woman, horribly creepy from anyone else, and in this instance made Hazō reflect on how easily a person could be disassembled with the right tools, which was not the kind of thought he ever wanted in his head.

"I do have a bioseal," Orochimaru decided. "It would require invasive surgery, and for you, it would have side effects if misused."

Reduced sleep was actually possible? It wasn't just another dream? He could get the paperwork out of the way at night and actually have time for a life during the day?

Hazō eagerly opened his mouth—

"What kind of side effects?" Noburi asked.

"Various disruptions to the mind, notably influencing cognitive and emotional function, vulnerability to disease spirits of various breeds, and impaired reflexes and coordination, among others," Orochimaru listed. "Naturally, these do not occur if the seal is used correctly."

"We'll get back to you," Noburi said firmly before Hazō could say anything.

"Have your decision ready at the sixth bell tonight," Orochimaru said.

"Why sixth?" Hazō asked.

"It is when you will receive your half hour. I will expect you to have a satisfactory knowledge of basic medical tools and terminology."

"May I ask why?" Hazō asked.

"I should think that would be obvious," Orochimaru told him.

Don't provoke the man capable of showering you with riches or shattering your mind at a whim, Gōketsu Hazō. Just nod and move on.

"So you want me to be here at six?" Hazō asked just in case.

"That is what I said."

"I understand," Hazō lied. "For the rest…"

"Yes, yes," Orochimaru said impatiently. He fished a handful of scrolls out of one of his robe's voluminous sleeves and tossed them carelessly on the table.

"Those will be perfect," Hazō said after a quick scan followed by a decision not to try his luck a second time by asking for more. "It's a pleasure doing business with you, Lord Orochimaru."

"I disdain insincerity," Orochimaru told him without any particular feeling. "Have the parts delivered by the end of the day."

Hazō hoped that was a reference only to the Dragon parts, and not to his own coming at six.

-o-​

Part 2 coming this weekend. Contents of the scrolls TBC, but they will be sufficiently valuable to make this more than a fair trade. You may assume that Orochimaru is not going to give you anything that's actionable for the Sunday update, and begin planning now. Your plan should include your response regarding the sleep reduction bioseal.

Edit: Voting is open, and closes on Oct 23, 2022 at 4:00 AM . Note that this is later than the usual deadline.

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 550, Part 2: Thirty Minutes to Live​

"A is for Aura Disperser… B is for Bonesaw…"

After an afternoon of desperate medical training that made last-minute Academy exam cramming look like a day spent lounging in bed, Hazō was finally out of time. He'd been let into the compound by a harried-looking Kabuto, who'd paused only long enough on his way out to direct Hazō to Specimen Storage B in the Basement and mutter something he probably meant to be reassuring about the first time being the worst. Hazō could only hope that Orochimaru's intentions for him were on the innocent side, like being forced to hold down a psychotic octocat while Orochimaru trimmed its claws.

The Basement was different now. When Hazō had come here as part of the investigation team with Naruto, it had been filled with the ominous, oppressive air of impending doom—amorphous, nameless, dormant but never dead. Not anymore. The omens had come true. The doom was no longer impending. There were no octocats prowling the corridors, but the death they once carried on the tips of their tentacles was now soaked into the walls. If Hazō so much as reached out to steady himself against one, the accumulated despair that had painted itself into the grey stone would surely pour down his arm and into his soul, and then his body might eventually leave, but he never would.

With its master returned, the Basement had regained its true form.

"Why are you wearing your normal clothes?"

Orochimaru himself, of course, wasn't remotely affected by the Basement's soulcrushing aura. Lack of soul might have had something to do with that. As Hazō gingerly entered the room, the architect of it all stared at him in innocent puzzlement, himself clad not in a labcoat, but in a wide leather apron of indeterminate colour which had probably once been brown and now was best left unexamined.

"Well," Orochimaru decided, "it is no concern of mine. The world will only benefit from one less of Jiraiya's garish ensembles."

He returned his attention to the objects in front of him: three gurneys of a pale wood that Hazō hadn't seen in Fire, each bearing a figure covered with a grey sheet from the neck down.

Hazō had a very bad feeling about what it was Orochimaru had called him here to assist with.

The boy on the left was roughly Hazō's age, with short, carrot-top hair and milky white eyes that stared unseeing at the ceiling. The bald man in the middle, lying with eyes closed, didn't have anything wrong with him at first sight, but any ninja that age was either a jōnin or long since off the roster. The woman on the right…

Hazō's heart stopped. What was she doing here? It made no sense for her to be here. Why hadn't he heard? Why hadn't he been given a chance to do something?

Orochimaru traced Hazō's gaze, locked helplessly on the victim in front of him.

"Hmm? Subject 1374? Why not, I suppose. The process should have run its course by now. Take it and follow me to the anthropotomy chamber."

Hazō couldn't move. She was still alive. She could still be saved. Wasn't there anything, anything he could do?

"All my subjects are lawfully sourced and here by consent," Orochimaru said impatiently. "If you do not have the stomach, leave. Better no assistant than one I cannot rely on."

Hazō was frozen in place. He needed answers, answers only Orochimaru might be willing to give him. Worse, if he left now, Orochimaru would lose whatever little respect he might have for him, and that threatened their future cooperation against the Dragons. He wanted to go, to be anywhere but in this space soaked in the aura of cold death. But he had a responsibility.

Still, some things were too cruel.

Lord Orochimaru, would you mind choosing someone else instead?

But that wasn't something Hazō was allowed to say. It was one thing for Orochimaru, to whom all three must have willingly given themselves, to decide their fates. Hazō didn't get to condemn a stranger to a torturous death just to spare himself some suffering.

Hazō shook his head, not trusting himself to speak, and walked over, measured step by measured step, to the head end of the gurney. He placed his hands on the handles.

There was no sign of recognition in Noda Kaiyo's eyes as she looked up at him.

Step after step. Mechanical. Regular. Reliable. The Iron Nerve had no feelings that could be shaken, no morality to challenge Hazō's own. It simply obeyed.

Just like Hazō simply obeyed.

If only he'd adopted her. And left a different body to lie under the sheet? If only he'd made the Final Gift Programme not exist. And found a different way to placate Orochimaru forever? If only he'd been able to destroy Orochimaru instead of just blackmailing him into "good behaviour". Do not even think the thought here. Orochimaru has other gurneys.

The horror came only with a dual blade of hypocrisy. What right did Hazō have to feel anything when he had not felt those things for Orochimaru's other victims, month after month after month, playing board games and going on dates while this was going on under his nose?

And go on it would. Hazō didn't have the power to stop Orochimaru. He didn't even have the will, not for as long as Orochimaru was necessary to save the world. Not for as long as this was the lesser evil.

They were set up and ready to operate before Hazō realised it.

"Remove the sheet and place it in the combustibles box in the corner."

At least one question was answered as Hazō did. Noda's left leg was missing, removed at the thigh with a crisp diagonal cut, likely from ninjutsu rather than a blade. There must have been a Fire user on the scene, or she'd have bled out in seconds.

Hazō suddenly realised where he was looking on a naked adult woman and hastily turned away. It was too late to talk about Noda being afforded dignity, but he intended to salvage whatever of his principles he could.

There were three flashes of light behind him—red, yellow, green—and a series of chords like a dirge being played by a string instrument. Orochimaru gave a satisfied "hmm".

"Cleansing pomander," he said.

Pomander, pomander… What in blazes was a pomander?

Oh, right.

After altogether too many seconds, Hazō found the fist-sized silver sphere on a nearby tray and offered it to Orochimaru by the attached chain.

"Lit, you fool."

Hazō scrabbled for a tinderbox, and after several attempts (the Iron Nerve wouldn't calm his trembling hands here—the tinderbox was longer and narrower than any he'd used before), he lit the pomander and closed it up again. A faint smell of incense began to permeate the room.

Orochimaru flipped one of several hourglasses on a counter next to him as he began waving the pomander over Noda's body in a deliberate pattern. Her eyes moved to follow it.

"You may ask your questions."

Right. Questions. The thing he was here for. His mind wasn't at its clearest now, but the questions were a list. Hazō, even at his worst, was a master of lists.

"Could you tell me about Akatsuki, Lord Orochimaru? What was their true goal?"

Orochimaru's lips twisted in disgust. "A violation of free will on an untold scale, fuelled by the extraordinary delusion that mutual understanding begets peace, and a slavish faith in the Sage of Six Paths despite knowing more about his failures than any in history."

"Could you be more specific?" Hazō asked. "What was the purpose of the ritual?"

"That need not concern you," Orochimaru said. "It will not be possible to replicate it for another millennium."

Orochimaru turned back to Noda sharply. Hazō still wasn't looking in her direction where possible, but he heard a series of retching sounds, and a "tsk" from Orochimaru.

After a moment, Orochimaru handed him something that looked like an oversized white slug in a pool of clear liquid.

"The scrolls on the third shelf are for secure storage. Place the chakralyte in the metal box, close it securely, and reseal. Quickly, now."

Hazō hurriedly reached out for a storage scroll with his non-slug hand—

Spoiler: dice

Hazō: Alertness 33 - 4 = 29 vs TN ??
Hazō notices the warning signs in time.
Hazō: Athletics 40 - 3 = 37 vs TN ??
Hazō fails to get out of the way.
Hazō: Physique 29 - 9 = 20 vs TN ??
Hazō shrugs off the effect.

Feeling the slug suddenly expand in his hand, he nearly did the stupidest thing imaginable and threw it away from himself (and towards Orochimaru, Noda, or shelves full of alchemical reagents), but fortunately he was too slow.

The blast covered his haori and his undershirt in vile-smelling yellow paste, far more than the slug should have contained.

Orochimaru gave another "tsk".

"Remove the affected clothing and place it in the box. Quickly, before it soaks into your skin."

Hazō had never undressed faster in his life.

A second later, his clothes were safely inside an armoured container oddly reminiscent of Jūchi Yosamu's and the container was safely in another dimension until such time as Orochimaru saw fit to retrieve it and examine the horrors within. The skin on Hazō's chest tingled uncomfortably, but the feeling disappeared over the next few minutes.

"What about the Five?" Hazō asked. "Could you tell me about them?"

Orochimaru looked at him as if he was an idiot.

"You have Mori as your stepsister and your fiancée, and you are asking me about the Five?"

Duly noted. Wait, what?

Hazō suspected "They're refusing to share their secrets, so you please tell me instead" would not be a good follow-up.

"OK… What about Pain? How did he get his Sage-like powers?"

Orochimaru abruptly turned to face him full-on.

"Look into my eyes, nephew."

Oh, hell.

Hazō had suspected that if he asked the wrong enough thing, there could be a price higher than simply annoying Orochimaru. He just hadn't imagined it would be that easy.

There was nowhere to run. Orochimaru didn't need eye contact to destroy Hazō in any number of ways.

Hazō simply obeyed.

Orochimaru's eyes were yellow. Serpentine. In the bright seallight of the anthropotomy chamber, the pupils were vertical and narrow. There was no warmth in them, no recognition of shared humanity, nor even any real interest. The Hazō reflected in them was a stunted, pitiful creature, scrabbling for shiny pebbles in the dirt while self-made chains of morality, responsibility, and above all lack of imagination made sure he'd never look higher than his feet.

"Do you see the Rinnegan?"

"No… I don't."

Orochimaru turned back to Noda, who suddenly began to struggle against the bonds on her wrists and ankle.

"Hypnodisc extract, brown bottle, second shelf."

Hazō tried to hand him the bottle, but Orochimaru didn't take it.

"One drop into the mouth every five seconds for thirty seconds."

Hazō, still unable to believe he was doing this, was about to ask how he was supposed to get Noda to open her mouth (and why wasn't she saying anything? Surely nobody could be silent at this), but Orochimaru looked into her eyes, and whatever she saw there, it made her open it at once.

Hazō moved to stand over her head. He began to count in his head.

"What was the thing Pain summoned to resurrect the other Akatsuki?" he asked.

"The so-called King of Hell?" Orochimaru clarified without looking away from the seals he was placing on Noda's abdomen. "A dramatised misnomer. Even the Sage was not so foolish as to attempt to summon the King of Hell bodily to the Human Path, much less to save a handful of minions. It would be like inviting Tsunade into my home just to… No, in fact it would be like inviting Tsunade into my home. No elaboration is necessary."

Hazō could have laughed, if it had been possible to laugh as Noda's struggles grew weaker with every drop.

"So what was it?" Hazō pressed.

"No. 5 bonesaw."

"What? Oh."

5 was one of the smaller ones, right? Or was it counted from the other end?

Orochimaru accepted the small, fine-toothed saw without comment.

"A marketplace, I suspect, or perhaps a disposal chute. Pain was ever circumspect about the nature of his powers."

Hazō looked away as Orochimaru leaned over Noda's chest and began to saw, pausing periodically to glance at the pulsating glow of the seals.

"Do you know what Pain's bird summon was?"

"To call that creature a summon is to disgrace the profession of summoner," Orochimaru snapped. "I can only assume that it was for some twisted kind of completionism that the Sage, creator of the Summon Realm, should have seen fit to so debase himself."

The topic was annoying Orochimaru. Time to back off.

"Rosewood wand, crown-tipped."

Noda whimpered.

Hazō passed Orochimaru the wand.

"Wh-What about the three Tailed Beasts Pain had time to… process?" Hazō asked. "Are they dead? Perma-dead? Or have they already reformed and we just don't know where?"

"It was not Pain's intent that mankind ever see the Tailed Beasts again," Orochimaru muttered as whatever he was doing to Noda's chest made a horrible wet sound. "With the ritual interrupted, it is impossible to say whether that intent will be fulfilled, but he was not a man to give up until the final moment."

"I see," Hazō said.

Noda gave another whimper. Hazō felt a flicker of anger at the universe to add to the horror. All of this was happening because Noda had succeeded—because the lonely, self-isolating woman had broken free of the trap of alcoholism and trauma, at least enough to find someone she believed was worth dying for. If she'd only stayed the way she was before, there would have been no need for her to sign up to the FGP, and then… and then…

"Tweezers."

Hazō passed Orochimaru the tweezers.

"Could you tell me about the other Paths?" Something completely unrelated to this. "How many are there? How are they connected? What is known about them?"

Orochimaru didn't look up. "Ask something else."

…Right, then.

"Is the Great Library real?"

Orochimaru looked up this time. "Nephew, you have met the summon clans. Are you under any illusion that several of them could work together for an extended period of time when spurred by any concern lesser than total annihilation?"

In Hazō's mind, the glacial pace of the Conclave brought into question whether even that was enough.

"Point taken," he said. "What about Ninshu?"

"Ninshu?" Orochimaru asked. "Where did you even hear that word?"

"I…" Where did Hazō hear that word? He'd definitely put it on the list of things to ask about, but amidst all the unexpected stress of the afternoon, he could no longer remember why.

"I have no idea."

Orochimaru straightened. He put the bonesaw aside. "Are you mocking me, boy?"

Hazō felt a terrible cold chill, not helped by being able to see what Orochimaru had been in the middle of doing to Noda. How could any human being still be alive in the middle of that?

"No, Lord Orochimaru! I misspoke! Please forgive my impertinence!"

There was still sand in the hourglass, but Hazō could feel that he was running out of time. He had to get through at least the important stuff before Orochimaru's patience ran out.

"Jōnin auras!" Hazō exclaimed. "You're probably the world's greatest expert on chakra and biology now—do you know what jōnin auras are and how they work?"

This conversation had better never get back to Tsunade.

"Jōnin auras?" Orochimaru repeated. "Oh, you must be referring to the conscious aetheric stimulation of the oracular node for temporary harmonic alignment of the full tertiary chakra network, combined with a forced resonance effect. I thought you were here for ancient lore, not to waste my time on something so simple."

"Right," Hazō agreed. With enough research, he'd surely be able to figure out what at least half of those words meant without having to push his luck further with Orochimaru. "What I really want to know is about the tenfold abomination. Do you know what it was?"

Orochimaru frowned. "How can you possibly know about the Five, yet not about the tenfold abomination?"

"Are they connected?"

"The tenfold abomination," Orochimaru said with the air of one despairing at the stupidity of all around him, "was a primordial being variously said to be the incarnation of malice, the soul of magic, and the kami's final punishment for mankind's hubris. It was the nemesis of the Sage of Six Paths, and he and his companions devoted most of their lives to its defeat. This much is common knowledge to any scholar of the arcane."

"The Sage created the Dragons to battle against it, didn't he?" Hazō asked. "Can you tell me anything about them?"

"Me?" Orochimaru asked. "Tell you about Dragons?"

"Um."

"Nephew, I am rapidly losing patience. Make your remaining questions brief."

Hazō hastened to obey.

"Are the Watchers real?"

"I believe so."

"What happened to Whirlpool?"

"The same thing that happens to all naïve fools who believe that learning is the key to mankind's salvation."

"Specifically?"

"They discovered that mankind did not wish to be saved, and left to seek a place where they could simply study in peace."

"Have you ever heard of Hidden Depths?"

"Is this a jest?"

"I mean the ninja village."

"No."

"What's up with Bear?"

"Do not go to Bear."

"What are summoning scrolls?"

"I have nothing to add to what you should already know as a summoner."

"What are chakra golems?"

"I have not heard the term before."

"Do you know of any chakra-dense locations like the Swamp of Death?"

"Several. Of those relatively accessible, there are the Crags of Doom in Mountain, the Caverns of Mild Peril in Honey, the Forbidden Dungeon on Crimson State Island, Mount Certain Death to Any Fool Who Dares Approach in Snow, and the Travelling Island in the Nanmen Ocean."

"Do you believe that the Sage and his brother used technique hacking and medical ninjutsu to create Bloodline Limits?"

"If I did, I would not have invested so much time in biosealing."

"Does 'the Nameless Fear' sound familiar?"

"Yes."

There was a low, mournful tone from one of Orochimaru's seals. Noda twitched.

"You may leave now. You would only be underfoot for the next part."

If Hazō could ask just one last question…

"Is Jashin real?"

"You already asked about that," Orochimaru said. "Now leave."

"One more thing!" Hazō remembered. "Lord Orochimaru, thank you very much for your kind offer, but I've decided I would prefer not to have a bioseal."

"Cowardice and ambition are incompatible, nephew," Orochimaru told him, then put down the tweezers and began to reach inside Noda's exposed chest cavity with his bare hand.

Even though Hazō was the one who got to leave that room alive, he felt as if it was his heart, not hers, being squeezed with a merciless, icy hand.

-o-​

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-o-​

Voting is closed until @Paperclipped's upcoming update.

 

[Paperclipped]

Chapter 551: Wrongful Gifts​

Hazō sat at his desk with his eyes open, staring into the distance.

He felt empty. Noda… hadn't died, yet, but probably wished she had. And he'd been a part of her final torture.

He closed his palms, ten fingers rubbing against the solid wooden surface of his desk. Should he feel soiled, defiled? He had pushed her into the operating room, and he had provided Orochimaru with the tools he needed to do whatever he was doing.

Yet, he didn't feel dirty. He simply felt like a failure. Every moment, his mind was drawn back to what he could have done differently.

For Noda, the answers were clear. He could have made it clear she was welcome on the estate, he could have asked the KEI to advertise that the Gōketsu were glad to provide for injured ninja and their families, he could have assigned someone to check on the recently crippled ninja to ensure they would manage their lives well.

But Noda wasn't the problem. He could have saved Noda, but Orochimaru needed bodies to work on. If it wasn't her, the pressure and the price would have risen until someone else gave themselves to the Basement. The hydra could not be slain by cutting off its heads. Was there a way Hazō could have stopped the Final Gift Program from ever happening?

Ideas, half-formed and ill-considered flitted through his head, only to be slapped down by the cold hammer of reality. Could he have arranged teams to capture enemy ninja at Orochimaru's behest? No, that would have provoked war sooner and made peace and AMITY impossible. Could he have destroyed Orochimaru's Basement while the Gōketsu still owned the house? No, Orochimaru would simply rebuild, and would need to experiment twice as much if knowledge had been lost, and Hazō would have ended up on an operating table as the subject of his ire. Could he have killed Orochimaru?

Hazō knew there was no solution. The monster needed to be fed till it was satiated, for it could not be destroyed.

Yet, he couldn't stop thinking. Even if he couldn't stop Orochimaru altogether, could he have found a solution that was even marginally better? Could he have saved just one person, one Noda, from that torture?

Someone knocked at the door of Hazō's study. It was Gaku, by the cadence.

"Enter," Hazō called.

"My lord," Gaku said with a bow as he entered. "I am aware you are stressed at the moment. Would you rather I return at a later time? Perhaps tomorrow?"

"No." Hazō shook his head back and forth like a dog, trying to shoo the thoughts away. "No, I think it's better for me to be doing something right now. Is there anything urgent for me to do?"

"No, my lord," Gaku said, entering the study and gently closing the door behind him. "There are no clan affairs that require your immediate attention. You have now addressed everything which I'd thought particularly urgent."

Hazō sighed. "Good. I'm going to take a few days off and do some sealwork with Kagome. Something to clear my mind."

"Is that related to the reason you returned to the estate last night rather… underdressed?"

"Yes. Also, could you send a messenger to the Yamanaka? I'd like to see Ino tonight."

"It shall be arranged, my lord."

Hazō looked at Gaku, who was clearly waiting for instruction. Hazō pulled himself up to his full seated height. "Fine. It's not urgent, but it's clan business isn't it?" Gaku nodded. "Let's get this over with."

"As expeditiously as I can, my lord. First, Lady Mari has sent several notes on the investigation into the plays featuring yourself, apparently aimed to degrade you in the public eye. She notes this has been ineffective at swaying the civilian population's goodwill towards you. Furthermore, while she continues to suspect the involvement of the Hagoromo for clear motives, she concedes that this is far more subtle than their clan lord is capable of. She suspects the Hagoromo are opening their purse strings to theater troupes solely on another's advice. She has no evidence of this, but is coordinating with Lord Haru to investigate further. She is unsure if there is any counter-action required from you at this juncture, but invites you to consider your options."

"Got it," Hazō said. "Not the Hags directly, but they may be involved, and there's definitely someone else out there trying to slander us. And that faction doesn't quite get how pointless it is to try to turn the civilians against the Gōketsu after all we've done for them, especially while the other clans left them in squalor." Hazō put his head in his hands and rubbed his forehead. "Why are we under attack at every corner? Why can't these people just let me help without attacking me for doing the right thing?"

"Politics, my lord. Next, Lady Yuno requests leave to return to the mission rotation. Lord Yuma saw some unusually strong chakra beasts in southern Fire, and Lady Yuno wishes to, ah, investigate this." Gaku extended a scroll. "She has already arranged the extermination contract with the Tower, and requests to take Lord Yuma and Lady Mio along with her."

"Granted," Hazō said, examining the mission statement and handing it back over. "The more dead chakra beasts, the better."

"I concur. While you were gone, the Wakahisa piscist pronounced the koi pond ready to draw chakra from."

"Oh, is that so?" Hazō asked. "That's good news. We'll save a lot of money purchasing chakra. Has there been any progress on expanding the koi pond further?"

Gaku shook his head. "Lord Noburi said that he spent time speaking with the piscist. Apparently, the school is already quite large, and consequently rowdy. It may be dangerous to expand further. He says that this corroborates his experience at the Wakahisa compound, that they did not have schools of hundreds of koi, but rather several ponds of dozens of koi. We would need to construct additional ponds."

"Right," Hazō said, "do that."

"Certainly sir. I've already gone over the expense sheets and placed orders for the same materials the piscists requested we reimburse during the initial construction of the pond. I trust you will arrange negotiations with the Wakahisa for the additional koi eggs?"

Hazō waved a hand. "I'll figure it out. Next?"

"Of course, my lord. I'm uncertain if he told you, but Lord Kagome was invited to give a lecture at the Leaf Central Academy. Regrettably, the fallout of the event means it is relatively unlikely to be invited for further guest lectures."

Hazō paled. "How many injured or dead?"

Gaku quickly held up his hands. "Oh, my apologies. None at all. Or at least, no physical injuries, though apparently, the psychic trauma may have been lasting" Gaku shook his head. "He merely disturbed the academy students with his lectures. Apparently, he was telling stories about the various sealing failures he'd seen."

Hazō shuddered. "Okay, I can see how that would scare the academy students. That's fine, as long as it doesn't get in the way of him tutoring whoever he wants one-on-one."

"I understand he's still regularly tutoring Miss Honoka. Moving on, you requested that I ask around the clan to see who may be interested in learning ninjutsu creation."

Hazō winced. He had been thinking of reaching out to Noda to see if she was willing to tutor someone in the clan.

Gaku noticed Hazō's hesitation and paused. After taking a moment, Hazō said, "Apologies. Continue."

"Yes, sir. Lord Reo was the only one to answer in the affirmative. Apparently, after his injury, he sought a teacher but couldn't find one as a clanless ninja. It appears he thinks this could be a very effective way to show his worth. He requested that I draw your attention to his skill in various ninjutsu, to his large chakra reserves, and to the fact that he has mastered multiple elements with access only to the barest of resources."

"I'm glad he's willing to try. He knows the dangers, correct?"

"They were presented part and parcel with the question."

Good. Can you arrange a tutor for him?"

"With respect, my lord, that may be an easier thing for you to do than I. To my understanding, many clans have experts in ninjutsu creation, and you have close access to the KEI as well. You would be better equipped to find the people you would need to negotiate, I believe."

Hazō nodded. "Sure. I set up a contract with a clan to strengthen relations, or maybe just ask Kei to find someone. Also, Mari contracted a hacker to make the wall technique. Maybe they would be willing?"

"You would know better than I, sir. Lord Atomu is still unaware of what exactly you want from him on the saltern project, would you care to clarify for him?"

"I'll sort that out eventually," Hazō said, scribbling a note. "It's not urgent. For now he can keep doing more of the same."

"Understood. Kenta wishes to speak with you about some construction on the estate. Shall I handle that for you?"

"Please do."

"Very well. Similarly, a few civilian graduates of the Gōketsu Education Department have requested loans to start businesses. Would you like me to summarize their proposals?"

Hazō shrugged. "You've already looked through them, right? For any proposals that seem reasonable, make the loan. Make the terms as generous as possible, we don't need to be predatory of our own people."

"Very well, my lord. I will note we need to find time to go over the clan's budgets and taxes at some point. Our wealth has recently risen thanks to the conclusion of the silk trades in the latter half of AMITY, but our expenses are rising as well. I wish to consult you on where we may find more income or cut expenses."

Hazō sighed. "I get that it's important, but not today, please. We're above water for now?"

"Yes, sir. We sold off many assets to dissolve our debts with the Hagoromo and Kurusu, but we have dissolved them. Our core expenses are small."

"Then it's not urgent. Anything else?"

"No, sir. I believe you missed many council votes. Lord Noburi will provide you with a summary, but I do not believe there was anything relevant to our interests."

"Good. Then, I have one thing for you, Gaku."

Gaku raised his brows. "Yes, my lord?"

"I've asked Asuma a couple of times to see the registry of seals that the Tower is selling. Did he ever send over that list?"

Gaku raised his hand to his chin in thought. "I recall sending several missives to the Tower with this request of yours, my lord. To my recollection, they haven't responded. Perhaps my contacts in the Tower are not highly placed enough to interact with the people that handle high-level ninja sealcrafting. I shall ask Lady Mari to check on this."

Hazō smiled. "Good idea, Gaku. Mari knows how to get things done."

"If that is all, my lord…?"

Hazō nodded. Gaku bowed and made his exit.

Hazō sat there for a moment longer, then pushed himself to his feet. He couldn't sit here forever with his thoughts spinning in circles. He needed to go find someone, maybe Akane, to talk about all this and see what, if anything, he could do about it.

o-o-o​

Ten days later…

Hazō looked up from his armchair and mug of hot chocolate to see Mari slipping quietly into his study.

"Mari, hello! I haven't seen much of you around recently. How are things going?"

Mari smiled at him. "Hello Hazō. Just fine, thanks."

As she spoke, she walked around the room, activating various privacy seals, finishing with placing down one of their extremely limited supply of anti-Byakugan seals on the desk at the center of the room. With the privacy seals set, she crossed the room and gently relaxed into the armchair across from Hazō.

"Is this related to the investigation? Found something to pin it on the Hyūga?" Hazō asked.

Mari shook her head. "Frankly, I've left Haru in charge of that. It'll be a learning experience for him, but it is the first big intelligence operation that I'm leaving to him, so you should expect some rough edges. We've already talked with a few of the actor groups, but our opponent isn't an idiot that would hire their patsies while wearing a clan crest. The groups were hired by what seemed like a wealthy daimyo who offered them a generous payout for putting on a few performances of a script apparently drafted by a different playwright under the daimyo's patronage."

Mari sighed. "There were a few good months after the disguise kit shortage where these trails were much easier to follow. Now, it seems like everyone's gotten used to using the new style of kit."

"Okay," Hazō said, "so you don't think it's going to be a big deal?"

Mari shrugged. "I didn't say that. The civilians still love you, and the clanless ninja's opinion isn't really going to shift too much, so I figure this is aimed at the clans. Sure, they're not the people that are actually watching the street plays, but every clan has low-level intelligence gathering in the village to make sure they're not caught unaware by new happenings. Their people hear about the plays and report it up the chain to the ninja. For example, there was another play going around about the exploits of various summoners during the war, which left a notable gap for you. Civilians might not notice, but every ninja in Leaf was there when Asuma announced the Will of Fire Contest, and they'll remember that you were awarded the Dog Scroll in order to do missions for Leaf."

Hazō frowned. "It sounds like they have some pretty powerful dirt on us."

"Yeah. And they're wielding it subtly and through many layers of indirection, only bringing true-if-misleading facts to people in power through their own intelligence agents. It's a legitimately well-executed plot, if I'm being honest."

"Then why aren't you working on it?" Hazō asked.

"Well," Mari said, ticking off on her fingers. "One, there's only so much Haru can learn from working on little baby problems I make up for him. Thinking about and modeling other agents in a clan-critical environment will be way better for training him up than years of coddling lessons. Two, I'm not really a spymaster. Sure, I'm doing my best, which is still damn good by the way, but I was always the agent that retrieved the intel, not the person that took information from a dozen disagreeing sources and found the patterns that tied them together. And three, I spend most of my effort on counterespionage these days."

"Counterespionage? What big secrets are we trying to keep?" Hazō asked.

Mari raised an eyebrow. Hazō blushed slightly. "Ah," he said.

Hazō looked back at the anti-Byakugan seal. "Is someone trying to find out about… WHOOSH?" he asked, making the same gesture of a bird taking off, rising slowly at first then quickly. Of the clan, he, Akane, Kei, and Mari were using Shadow Clone with Hazō's method to improve their rate of power growth. Apart from Mari, who didn't share her training with anyone, everyone was approaching their innate limits of mental endurance. Hazō suspected that by now, all of them could handle more clone-hours than even seasoned jounin.

Mari shook her head. "No one is investigating us specifically, but that's partly because I'm putting so much effort into keeping us under the radar. You've noticed that we're still buying chakra even with the koi pond active, right? I've been arranging to keep the rate of construction on the estate steady and for Noburi to practice 'discreetly' with his big flashy Water Dragon ninjutsu, and I didn't want to cut off all the purchasing on the same day that the piscist took a vacation. Of course, if you want, we can taper off the purchasing over time or find another place to spend the chakra.

"Anyway, that's just one example. I'm doing that all over Hidden Leaf. Hundreds of little nudges to keep the idea out of people's minds, to gently redirect their inquiries that might find dangerous answers, and to give them alternate explanations for the truth right in front of them."

"Got it," Hazō said. "No complaints here, that does seem pretty important to get right."

Mari grimaced. "Even so, we're on a timer as long as Noburi is refueling jounin for their training. If Asuma hands Shadow Clone to a clanless jounin that knows about our chakra-refueling services and actually has the money to pay for it, it won't take long for them to figure the whole thing out. Clanless, of course, because clan ninja wouldn't stoop to admit that our services could help them train. I've been jacking up Noburi's price little by little to make that less likely, but that just increases the time it'll take for it to happen.

"By the way, that's another reason to just let the plays be. Sure, it alienates us from the other clans, but Asuma himself understands why you weren't fighting in the war and doesn't hold you ill will over it. The plays are far from an existential threat, and keeping the clans at a distance keeps any of their Shadow Clone users from stumbling across our secret in a way that I can't possibly prevent."

Hazō nodded slowly. "Well, if I have any ideas on how to keep the secret better, I'll let you know. Is that what you needed me for?"

Mari shrugged. "It's a thing I wanted to mention to you. I'm really here because you wanted to buy seals from the Tower."

"Yes," Hazō said. "During the Neck mission, MARS proved invaluable for mass use of seals in combat. If anything, we didn't have enough seals. The other Leaf sealmasters definitely have combat seals we could use. Adding them to the MARS chains could multiply our combat strength. Gaku mentioned that the Tower officials stonewalled him. Did you have any success?"

"Sort of. I managed to speak with Sarutobi Fumi, the senior Sarutobi sealmaster."

"Yes, I'm familiar," Hazō said. "She was one of the more… moderating influences when we were trying to decipher the Great Seal replica."

"Sure," Mari said, turning her finger in a circle to move on. "Well, she does the Tower's seal stuff. Apparently, Asuma thinks you're slacking on skywalkers. She's happy to send the list of seals for sale if you learn skywalkers, demonstrate you can make them, and start paying the tax of a hundred per month. I think they really want to replenish their strategic reserve after the war burned through it."

Hazō grimaced. "That's a lot of time commitment. I like letting Kagome's students handle the explosive-storage-alarm tax." Hazō thought for a moment. "I could ask Kagome to do my skywalker tax, but his time is pretty valuable too. Ugh."

"Well," Mari said, "I'll leave it up to you. Though Asuma may find another way to pressure you if this isn't enough."

"Got it. Well, see if you can find a way to get a peek at the lists. There aren't that many sealmasters in Leaf that make seals that aren't explosives or storage seals, and probably even fewer that will sell those seals to the Tower with the risk of someone else reverse engineering them. If there's nothing too good on the lists, we can skip it for now."

"Sure, I'll try when I get a chance," Mari said, shrugging. "No promises, though."

"Thank you, Mari."

Hazō and Mari sat in silence for a moment. Hazō sipped his hot chocolate as a vague intuition slowly formed in his mind, telling him that Mari was waiting to say something.

Hazō glanced at her and smiled, but kept sipping his drink. Mari's own coaching guided him: be friendly and courteous, give them space to arrange their thoughts, and let them speak on their own time. Sure, Mari could read him like a book and definitely knew his full intentions, but he figured it was the thought that counted.

"By the way, Hazō," she said lightly, "I've had a bit of a… conundrum, lately. It's no big deal, and I'm sure I'll figure out something for it, but I know you sometimes have creative solutions to things, so…"

"Sure, glad to help," Hazō said, leaning forward in his chair. "What's the problem?"

Mari shifted uncomfortably in her chair for a moment, then met Hazō's eyes. "I…" she cut herself off. "Do you feel better now, since your trip to the Basement?"

Hazō nodded. "Yeah. Spent a while with Akane and Ino, made some progress on the jinchūriki seals, and started sorting through the notes Orochimaru gave me. It feels like he just scraped a stack of disorganized documents off the top of his desk and shoved it in a storage seal."

"Do you feel mentally ready to talk about a hard topic?" Mari asked.

"Sure," Hazō said. "I can handle it."

Mari nodded and exhaled through her nose. Finally, she said, "It's been a long time, but I want to start making genjutsu again."

"That's good," he said, then he frowned. "Wait, is this going to be a big problem? Sealing failures are awful and I've heard horror stories about technique hacking failures. What are genjutsu failures like? Do you make heads explode? Do you leave people as mindbroken catatonic husks? Does it do those things to you?"

Mari laughed. "No, Hazō. If miscasting a genjutsu could make people's heads blow up or shatter their mind and send them into a coma, it wouldn't be called miscasting. Genjutsu users would all just do that, and it would save us a lot of trouble. No, genjutsu design is not innately dangerous to the people you test on. They experience the genjutsu, I alter the details, they experience it again, and I repeat until I have a ready-to-go package of experiences."

"So, you need me to arrange testers?" Hazō asked. "That doesn't sound so bad. Do they need to be ninja?"

Mari shook her head. "No, civilians work fine. But Hazō, the process of testing genjutsu is not innately dangerous. That said, the genjutsu themselves… those can be dangerous."

Hazō frowned. "Like the Hell Viewing Technique and your other combat genjutsu?"

Mari nodded. "That's right. They won't kill you, but combat genjutsu are usually just torture genjutsu. They're tools meant to overwhelm and break an opponent's mind as fast as possible so you can get out of the vulnerable state you're in while channeling a domination genjutsu and kill them while they're too mentally broken to fight back.

"Even designing a torture genjutsu is uncomfortable. You need to remember all the physical experiences you're going to inflict on them, and fully feel the powerlessness that you're going to pound into the target's psyche – and that's awful even when you're doing it voluntarily. I repeatedly exposed those people I tested on to what I was trying very, very hard to make the worst experience of their lives.

"Now, in Mist, finding test targets was easy enough. Yagura was glad to provide a steady supply of dissidents to the few of us that actually made new genjutsu, and he didn't particularly care what state they were in once we were done. Some of my genjutsu were honestly half motivated by not wanting to torture people on a given day. The Sunny Day genjutsu, apart from being incredibly useful in the field, and by field I mean bed, is also probably the nicest possible experience a genjutsu practice dummy has ever had.

"The dissidents we practiced on… some of the other ninja enjoyed torturing them for violating Yagura's rule. They would keep them around for weeks or months, long past the point they had mentally given in and it was no longer useful to practice genjutsu on them. I never did that though. I always put them out of their misery when I was done with them."

Hazō kept quiet for several long moments. He couldn't find a way to respond. "Mari… Why do you need to design torture genjutsu?"

Mari laughed again, but this time it felt oddly colder. "Hazō, illusions are useful in a fight for misleading and confusing the enemy, but they don't compare with the complete control of your target's senses that a total mind control offers. It's incredibly powerful, but it leaves you vulnerable while you're doing it. You need to incapacitate them as fast as possible. How do you mentally incapacitate someone so that they don't just kill you while you're recovering from the genjutsu trance when you drop it? You give them an experience so strong, so intensely awful that it worms its way into their mind. Even freed from the genjutsu, they can't escape the torture.

She read the thoughts off of Hazō's face. "Yes, you're right that a seduction genjutsu would be mentally compelling too. But in practice, when a ninja escapes a seduction genjutsu, they remember that they're fighting for their lives, that their heart is beating a million times a minute, and that the person across from them just cast a genjutsu on them. It's disorienting, but not incapacitating.

"Trust me. With the degree of control I have in a total domination genjutsu, I've created levels of pain and suffering that left even hardened jounin crying in the mud until I slit their throats."

Hazō realized Mari's intention and felt a pressure start to rise in his chest. He took a deep breath, noting the faint raggedness in it. His throat wasn't closing up, even if it felt like it.

"Mari," he said, "couldn't you practice on me? I'm fairly sure my mental resilience is stronger than most jounin, and I've experienced painful things, things from outside this reality. Hells, you've even practiced on me before. I can handle your genjutsu."

Mari shook her head, sadly. "I've experienced a lot of… bad things in my life, Hazō. When I designed my Special Hell technique, I took all those bad things I'd had happen to me and compressed it into a single perfect mindspike. You can handle pain, sure. You might even be able to walk away from the Special Hell technique, though I doubt it. Could you handle it for hours? For days? And then, I might need to design more than one combat ninjutsu."

Mari pointed at herself. "I can stand under the burden of the suffering in my life because it didn't happen all at once. I don't know if I would have survived otherwise. Do you really think you could withstand the entire weight of all the pain I've ever felt without even the slightest crack? Because if you give even a little, you will break."

"No," Hazō said. "Mari, we can't-"

Mari raised her hand. "I get it. I absolutely, totally, one hundred percent get it. We will not start up our own version of the Final Gift Program, taking elderly and crippled civilians for genjutsu design. After everything I've been through, I would rather die than go back to… that."

Hazō nodded and let the tension in his chest relax.

They sat for several long minutes, sitting in their chairs and gazing into the distance. Hazō's hot chocolate had long since cooled.

"Mari," Hazō said. "What are you going to do?"

Mari shrugged, pasting on a smile that Hazō knew was fake even if he couldn't see its seams. "I dunno. I'll figure it out, I always do. Just let me know if you have any bright ideas, alright?"

Hazō nodded and Mari glided to her feet. She deactivated the anti-Byakugan seal and the remainder of the privacy seals, then gave Hazō a nod.

"Thank you, Hazō."

"I didn't do anything, Mari."

Mari smiled again, but this one seemed sad. "Sometimes, there's nothing you can do. When there's no other choice… isn't that enough?"

She left the room in a swirl of elegant robes, leaving Hazō with only his thoughts.

---

Kumokōgō had no complaints about you bringing in another powerful summoner and sealmaster to help with the Great Seal. In fact, she is anxious for progress on the sealing side – while you have killed a Dragon and taken steps to slow the degradation of the Great Seal, there has as-yet been nothing done to actually repair it.

Sealing Research:

Spoiler: rolls

TNs:
Calligraphy: ??
Sealing: ?? (reduced by Kagome's active assistance, who has already learned the seal)

Hazō (Calligraphy): 32 + 12 (6x prep days) + 3 = 47
Hazō (Sealing): 51 + 12 (6x prep days) + 6 (invoke "Promising Sealing Student") + ? (Kagome spends a FP) - 9 = 60 + ?
Hazō spends a Fate Point to reroll.
Hazō (Sealing): 51 + 12 (6x prep days) + 6 (invoke "Promising Sealing Student") + ? (Kagome spends a FP) + 9 = 78 + ?

Hazō has made substantial progress on the first of Minato's seals. The chakra construct created by the seal is very different from anything Hazō has done before, but he's beginning to wrap his head around it. He thinks he's perhaps a quarter of the way done, and he thinks that future seals in the chain, once he's really understood this first one, will take less time to learn (even if they're more challenging).

When Hazō asked Ino for a telescope, she asked "What's a telescope?" Hazō explained and she said she'd look into it at some point.

Hazō has spent several days combing through Orochimaru's notes. While the previous files he gave you were neatly organized, the contents of his new storage seals are not. Orochimaru seems to be using Hazō as a convenient way to do some spring cleaning of his old documents. While being used as a trash bin is insulting, the contents of Orochimaru's trash bin are quite valuable in themselves.

Link to information about Orochimaru's payment.

Timeline for this update:

• Day 1: Unwinding from the Orochimaru experience, meeting with Ino, Kumokōgō, etc.
• Days 2-7: prep for infusion
• Day 8: infusion
• Day 9-10: unable to do much useful with the SSA headache, Hazō organizes Orochimaru's notes.

XP Award: 23 + 10 (brevity) XP
GM-fun Award: 2 XP (The plan was not particularly good. It was largely offscreenable, hence the low base XP. However, I did enjoy writing the Mari scene.)

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Oct 26, 2022 at 7:00 AM

 

[Velorien]

Chapter 552: Sharing the Horror​

Hazō had discovered one of Central Fire's little secrets a couple of months ago, stumbling into it by sheer blind luck as he fled from a gleeful Kei (whose eyes had lit up with the fires of Naraka itself when he asked her for projectile evasion training). Not far from Leaf's walls, there lay a grassy knoll concealed by an array of maple trees that were too perfectly spread to possibly have grown there naturally, their expansive branches and dense layers of leaves offering privacy from prying eyes while at the same time granting a unique panorama of the village to those prepared to stand or sit in just the right place (and you could probably see all sorts of interesting things if you brought a telescope; it was a shame no such thing existed). According to Ino, in Leaf tree language the maple represented stability, balance, and serenity, making it an ideal place to spend time with Ami.

This afternoon, it had taken a little time to escape Gaku, who was developing a ninja-like sensitivity to when his lord was attempting to flee the compound while there was still important work to do. It had left Hazō fashionably late, and it turned out that there was significance to him being fashionably late, because otherwise he'd never have witnessed this.

Ami was dancing. Clad in a billowing blue and white sundress, complete with a straw hat, she was spinning around barefoot on the grass in a fashion that was either strikingly innocent, perfectly calculated to be strikingly innocent, or one of those veteran I&S things where you could be both at the same time because your body had forgotten how to move without deliberate effect. If it was the latter, an Iron Nerve wielder was hardly in a position to criticise.

Just standing there and watching her dance, while oddly tempting in its own way, seemed like it would be weird, and also guaranteed to get him teased afterwards, so he decided to come over and get her attention (noting, in the process, a white blanket and picnic basket sitting on standby).

This was arguably a mistake.

"Hazō! Join me!"

Spoiler: dice

Hazō: Alertness 33 + 3 = 36
Ami: Alertness ?? + ? = ??
Ami wins.

Surprise round!

Ami tags "Hazō Should Have Seen Something Like This Coming, But Fortunately Didn't"
Ami: Athletics ?? + ? + ? = ??
Hazō: Athletics 40 - 3 = 37
Ami wins.

Before Hazō could politely refuse, Ami snatched his hands and pulled him into a spin (naturally, he stayed on his feet even when surprised and off-balance because he was a skilled ninja who could rapidly adapt to any situation).

Step. Step. Spin. Step. Twist.

For a moment, Hazō wondered whether the best move was to disengage from this tomfoolery (she wasn't holding him that tight) and avoid setting the precedent that clan heads were to be randomly grabbed whenever Ami felt like it.

Then he got over himself. Gōketsu Hazō was not a man of ego. No, he would show her he could match her step for step, because he was about 30% a taijutsu specialist and had thus honed control over his body to a fine art.

Step. Twist. Release. Mirror. Step. Step. Spin. Reach out. Reengage.

Ami was laughing. Caught up in the moment, he grinned back.

Gradually, the randomness of the dance began to resolve itself into something regular. Hazō hadn't been able to put words around it the one time he'd tried to explain it to Kei, and honestly, he still couldn't, but there was something that happened to him that he thought was an Iron Nerve thing because he'd never heard anyone else mention it. When he found himself repeating the same movements without aiming to, when passive Iron Nerve recording layered over itself again and again in quick succession, it was… like feeling air currents with his fingertips. No, like standing in pulsating ocean waves. No, like reaching out to grasp déjà vu. No, like…

It was no good. He still couldn't do it. But the point was that it triggered something inside him that other things didn't, and it was being triggered now. Ami wasn't just messing around. Or rather, she was, but she was also drawing an elaborate pattern on the ground, something Hazō couldn't visualise while he was still in mid-dance.

Then she finally let go for real, and instead of stumbling as the leftover momentum carried him away, Gōketsu Hazō set his feet like this and this, and swept into an elegant Isanese bow (which he'd picked up from Noburi purely because it looked cool).

Ami curtsied.

"Milord is very light on his feet, it would seem."

"And milady continues to be an ambush predator."

She beckoned him towards the blanket.

"I spent the last week being rained on in Cloud," she said, "followed by being rained on some more on my journey back, so if I get to Leaf to find that it's perfect picnic weather, then by Byakuren's hefty mast, I'm going to have a picnic. Unless you have a better idea?"

"A picnic is fine with me," Hazō said.

"You want to know the irony of it all?" Ami asked, reaching for the picnic basket. "I was only in Cloud when the thunderstorms hit because I managed to talk my way out of having to visit Rain."

"Rain?"

"Yeah," Ami said. "You know how Akatsuki sort of split up into small groups after Nagi Island, and mostly kept to themselves with only the occasional massacre? I guess I ended that. Oops."

"Oops?" Hazō repeated, as if Ami hadn't just confessed to recreating the most powerful destructive force known to man.

"I guess I could upgrade it to a 'yikes'," Ami said. "But there's a sense in which it's a good thing. Pain's vision of peace was what kept them together in the first place—somehow—so if they've reunited, that suggests they're taking my attempt at world peace seriously. We need that, or AMITY risks falling apart the first time somebody defects, which they will because people. But on lighter topics!"

"Oh, I've got one," Hazō said as she began to unpack mysterious sandwiches. "How do you feel about Gōketsu-style shaved ice?"

"I would love some," Ami said. "What's Gōketsu-style shaved ice?"

Hazō brought out the storage seal.

"The ice is all water from the air of the Gōketsu compound, made by Noburi using his Condense Water cantrip for just such an occasion." Albeit yesterday rather than last winter, thanks to Elemental Mastery. "Kei researched the recipe, and Akane shaved the ice. The syrup is a Yuno special, though we had to swap out a couple of ingredients for Fire ones, and I made this magnificent quartz bowl and spoon myself."

Ami sat very still and just stared at the dessert.

"It's yours if you want it, Ami," Hazō said gently. "Just reach out and take it."

There was silence, and Hazō could hear the maple leaves rustling in the summer breeze.

Slowly, Ami reached out and took the bowl and spoon.

She took a bite, and Hazō let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.

"Mmm. My compliments to the chefs," Ami said in the voice of an Ami being perfectly casual and laid-back. "If you ever feel like getting away from all this madness, I bet Frost Country will welcome you with open arms."

"You realise that soliciting a Leaf ninja to go missing is unquestionably treason, right?"

"Peer pressure's a terrible thing," Ami said with a grin. "It's appalling what some people will do to fit in."

Hazō rolled his eyes. "I did have something else for you, but I'm already starting to wonder if I'm going to need it more than you do."

"Do tell."

Hazō pulled out the flask. "Willowbark tea. You said you got headaches sometimes."

"I have my own, thanks," Ami said. "Besides, I plan for them in advance. But I do appreciate the gesture. It's really sweet of you—much like the shaved ice. I would ask Yuno for the recipe, but I don't think I have any assassination missions coming up.

"So how was your trip to the eastern continent? Noburi said he couldn't tell me what it was, but he didn't direct me to the Tower, so I assume it was a clan thing? Summoning scroll, forbidden lore, hobnobbing with more Akatsuki? No, scratch that last one, Hidan's on the mainland."

Hazō was vaguely aware that he was on a Hidan timer: one of these days, his self-proclaimed religious superior would turn up to see him, and he didn't care if Hazō was outed as a Jashin worshipper in front of the entirety of Leaf.

(Was Hazō a Jashin worshipper? Or, perhaps more importantly, did Jashin consider him one?)

"No comment," Hazō said. The odds of Ami sending somebody after the Squirrel Scroll, or going after it herself, were pretty low, and the odds of her succeeding where he'd failed were lower still. He still wasn't going to bet against her if he could possibly avoid it.

"We did have quite an adventure on the way back, though," Hazō said. "So back when I was lending Orochimaru the Dragon parts for research, one of the things he paid me with—"

"Hold the ravenous chakra sheep," Ami interrupted. "You've been doing what to the what now?"

"Lending Orochimaru the Dragon parts for research," Hazō said. "We need countermeasures, and he's the only person in Leaf with a decent chance of using the parts to figure something out. Also, they're incredibly valuable to him and pretty much nobody else, and we've been getting great deals out of it."

Ami put down the sandwich she'd been in the middle of eating. "Hazō, Orochimaru's research is how he made himself an unkillable, terrifying monster. At least with the FGP, he'd have kidnapped somebody anyway. Now you're giving him access to levels of power that make summon bosses run and hide?"

Hazō was forced to admit that wasn't an angle he'd considered—though, thinking about it, he wasn't sure if it would have stopped him. An invincible Orochimaru in the future was still better than unstoppable Dragons now.

"It's a moot point now anyway," he said. "I decided to sell him the parts, and I doubt he'd give them back if I asked."

"Welp," Ami said, "I guess that's a new apocalypse scenario to add to my collection. Anything else you want to get off your chest while I ponder how to convince Kei to flee to another continent with me?"

"Actually, yeah," Hazō said. "Since we're on the subject of Orochimaru… I've seen the Final Gift Programme with my own eyes now. One of the things I bargained for the parts was answers to some questions, and he made me assist with a vivisection while we talked."

Ami winced. "No wonder there's a shadow hanging over you. The first one's always the worst."

"Wait, what?"

"Every kink under the sun."

Hazō reeled as his imagination fired up things he absolutely did not want it to fire up, and asked questions to which he would pay not to know the answers. Dressing dripped out of the half-eaten sandwich in his hand and he didn't even notice until a few seconds later.

"Just kidding," Ami said with a wink. "No, there was this biosealer I had to seduce when I was around your age. He was plotting against Yagura—thought he could disrupt the jinchūriki seal and leave him powerless long enough for a dagger in the back—and we needed to know who was backing him, but Mist policy is not to take biosealers into T&I if you can avoid it; they have a nasty habit of implanting themselves with explosive suicide seals and other fun surprises. Buuut the guy was a crazy hermit, like a lot of biosealers, so I couldn't just get him drunk in a bar. I had to weasel my way into getting hired as an assistant. Long story short, he gave me education in anatomy that most people would pay a mint to get. Or maybe pay a mint not to get, depending on how you look at it."

Hazō shuddered.

"Were you at all tempted to just let him do his thing? Yagura getting assassinated seems like it would have been a dream come true."

Ami shrugged. "I won't pretend I didn't think about it. But there were all sorts of reasons why it would've been a bad idea, and the big one was that he turned out to be backed by Leaf, which would've rolled in and conquered us the second Yagura went down.

"The story has a happy ending, though. You know creativity isn't a Mori speciality, but once I asked myself 'What would Mari-sensei do?', the answer came practically by itself. He had a bunch of civilian kids in a cellar, because apparently creating artificial ninja is a philosopher's stone of biosealing. I just tied him to his own operating table, laid the tools out in front of the kids, told them to go wild, and walked away. Yagura was pissed with me for not staying to make sure he was dead, but he also thought egregious cruelty in executing a traitor showed I was ideologically sound. He went light on the punishment—for Yagura, anyway—and in the long run it probably contributed to my jōnin promotion."

"Wait," Hazō said. "Wasn't the whole point of not torturing him that he might have had an explosive suicide seal?"

"Those kids weren't going to live long anyway after what he did to them," Ami said. "Worst-case scenario, at least they'd die smiling.

"But enough of my trip down memory lane. You're the one with fresh trauma to talk through."

"…yeah." Hazō fell silent for a second as the images bubbled up, followed closely by the sounds. Noda's missing leg. Her blank eyes. Her helpless, ever quieter whimpers.

"Did you know Noda Kaiyo?" he asked.

Ami shook her head. "She was KEI, so I'd have been a failure as a Mori if I didn't have her dossier memorised, but no, not personally. She didn't come to KEI meetings or sign up for the Network or make voluntary contributions or anything like that. She just lived her life, until I guess she didn't. I knew her fiancé, if that helps."

"She had a fiancé?!"

"Mmm," Ami said. "Troubled kid, with circumstances, but nice. They got engaged not long before the war. I thought they were rushing it, personally, but then again, they never got to marry, so maybe they weren't rushing enough. I guess she signed up to the FGP for his sake while I was away."

"I tried to help her once," Hazō said quietly. "She was on the adoption shortlist, but she refused. She caught my attention as a ninjutsu developer, because it's a rare skill and the Gōketsu don't have it, but after meeting her, I also thought we could be a found family for her. I could see her rejecting connections with other people, and I thought this might be her second chance. Maybe that's arrogant, but I just saw somebody in front of me and wanted to help her. I should have tried harder."

"You can't help somebody who doesn't want to be helped, Hazō," Ami said. "It's one of the most basic truths. If you offered her a found family, and she didn't want one, or she was on the edge but didn't dare take the step, or she couldn't even admit that the step was there, that wasn't something you had the power to change. You can't save somebody who denies that they need saving, Hazō. All you can do is choose either to watch or to walk away."

And Hazō had walked away.

"I know I can't save everyone," Hazō said. "I'm not omnipotent. My hands only reach so far. But I hoped… I hoped she'd at least meet a better end than that. She deserved a better end than that. She survived the Great Collapse. She survived the war. Apparently she even found love. Somebody like that deserves better than to just waltz into Orochimaru's lair to be tortured to death. With my help."

"I don't think the world runs off 'deserve'," Ami said. "Nobody rewards the virtuous. Nobody punishes the sinful. It's a sweet delusion to believe that there's a balance waiting to be restored. It also implies that there's somebody out there who does deserve to be tortured to death by Orochimaru. I don't think you believe that, no matter what you might think in moments of rage."

Hazō wondered about that. He thought about Lord Hagoromo, who was willing to ruin the lives of dozens of innocents just so he could feel good about his own moral purity. He thought about Yagura, who trampled the spirits of an entire village in his personal quest for a cold perfection. He thought about Hidan, who laughed as he butchered human beings just like himself on a geographical scale.

But then he saw Noda, immobilised, vomiting up monstrosities while her gaze was filled with a despair so distilled you could barely tell it apart from emptiness.

Hazō did not want to be the one judging who did and didn't deserve that fate. That was a burden too heavy for anybody with a soul.

Once it floated up, the image didn't go away. The slug thing… somehow that was the worst. Even Orochimaru cutting into Noda with a scalpel didn't have the same sense of violation of her human dignity, like she was less than a person, less than an animal, just... a substrate.

He hadn't talked to the others about what he'd experienced, not in any detail. They couldn't turn back time. They couldn't make it right. It would only hurt them. He didn't want them to feel even a shadow of what he'd felt at the time. For Noburi and Akane, and in a way even Kagome-sensei, who could be both grimly cynical and eerily innocent by turns, it was a darkness they should never touch if they didn't have to. For Mari and Yuno, it was a darkness they shouldn't be reminded of while they were still turning towards the light. For Kei… he would never tell Kei what had so nearly been done to her.

But Ami… Ami knew.

"It was the inhumanity." His voice came out low, like he both wanted and didn't want her to hear. "She was just lying there, not saying anything, not fighting back. Just a few whimpers. There was some kind of creature inside her, and she vomited it up, and nothing. He cut into her, and nothing. I handed him a bonesaw, for sawing through bone. Did he do something to her, before? Had she just given up? If she'd just screamed, it would've made sense. It would've been a horror that made sense. But she looked at me and didn't know who I was. She just let it happen. I saw her scared of him, it wasn't like she was unconscious, but he treated her like a body and she acted like a body. I know she signed up for it, but she should've fought. Fighting is instinct. You have to fight. But she just whimpered, and then she stopped because I made her. Why didn't she fight back when he was cutting her apart like meat at the butcher's?"

Ami listened silently.

"I saw her, and I felt sick, and at the same time I was this cold person who asked Orochimaru questions because they needed to be asked, and let him stand there and violate her because he was Orochimaru and I was just the child snatching scraps from his table, and every other minute I was scared because I thought he was going to hurt me, but I was never scared for her because I'd just accepted that she was dead. I accepted it, and there is still that part of me that knows it's hopeless and I can't fight him, and I should go about my daily business while he gets the next Noda prepped for surgery, and I should be in pain but I'm not!"

At some point, Ami had shifted over to sit next to him.

"I hate it!" he spat. "I hate that I am in this world where it's the right thing to do. I hate that all I can do is make plans and move pieces around a shogi board and whenever I'm faced with real evil I bow down just because it's strong and I'm weak! I hate that my strength is my intellect and I can't even come up with anything that trumps the Final Gift Programme that does this! I hate that we need Orochimaru, and we need his strength, when just knowing he exists is poison, and letting him exist is poison, and every minute I do it, it's like he's inside my veins. I'm just like Noda, lying there and not fighting back while he sinks his fangs in me, only I'm supposed to have a choice!"

"Yeah," Ami said softly. "I know."

Hazō hadn't even noticed that his hands were gripping the sheet in front of him.

Ami put an arm around his shoulder as he looked down at those hands and that sheet.

"It was the same with Nashi. I felt so powerless, standing there and doing everything I could to help him because the mission came first, and I needed him to be satisfied so he'd let down his guard. I screamed at the kids in my head. Part of me hated them, for not fighting back, for letting themselves get caught, for being the reason I was doing this. Even though I knew how absurd that was. I should have been hating him, and only him, but it was like… it was like he was an animal. No matter how monstrous he was, I was the one with free will. I was the one choosing to enable him. And even as I stood there, I knew I'd keep doing it, because it was what the mission demanded. I'd serve him faithfully, and then I'd sleep with him and hope this was the night he slipped up and gave me what I needed. And every morning, I'd know that if I'd only been better at seduction, today would have been the last day.

"After a while, the horror is just… more horror. I can promise you that much. The Ami before that mission probably couldn't have made the Final Gift Programme—and then she'd have been devoured, and everyone else would be living in the world Orochimaru created instead of a compromise that makes some things better.

"The first time is the hardest. And slowly, you learn to contextualise the things you have to do, and you learn to make peace with the part of yourself that knows it's necessary to do them. You never want the pain to go down to zero, because once you lose your humanity there's no way to get it back, but you can learn to put things in the right boxes without having to drown in them or throw them away.

"It probably won't work for you the way it worked for me, because that would require you to be insane in the exact same way I'm insane, but I know you of all people can do it. Besides, you have one enormous advantage I didn't."

Hazō looked up at her questioningly.

"Me."

Hazō's first thought was that of course Ami had had Ami, by definition, but on reflection, he wasn't so sure.

Ami lifted her arm off his shoulders and moved around to face him.

"The other thing is… Orochimaru tried to kill Kei. I hate him more for that than a normal person is capable of hating anybody. I will smile and nod at him for as long as I have to, but one day I will kill him with the power you promised me, with your help if you'll give it, and on that day the Final Gift Programme will be ash."

There was no jōnin aura. No ice. Hazō didn't know what to make of it.

While Hazō was still processing this, she moved back and gave a traditional Ami smirk. "Look at me, being all treasonous. It's lucky ANBU's been left so understaffed and I am—depressingly—one of Leaf's more experienced jōnin. So treason away, Hazō! You're safe from everyone but me while I'm around."

"I think," Hazō said, "if the Hokage actually considered people wanting to kill Orochimaru to be treason, Leaf would have run out of killboxes by now.

"But thank you, Ami. That… helps."

"Any time," Ami said. "Except in front of other people, because that would be embarrassing."

"Yes, Ami," Hazō said. "You are so well-known for being easily embarrassed."

"I'm a regular shrinking violet," Ami agreed. "Why, just being in the presence of a boy is making me want to run away and hide."

"Oh, yeah," Hazō remembered. "Orochimaru seemed to think we were engaged. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

Ami gave him a look of the purest innocence, which might even have worked if she wasn't Ami. (Hazō wasn't sure how that worked, given that Ami's exceptional social skills were one of her primary features.)

"You mean other than that we're engaged?"

Hazō slowly and demonstratively brought the flask of willowbark tea out and took a swig.

"Ami, we are not engaged. That would have required somebody to propose, and I am confident that hasn't happened."

"Are you sure?" Ami asked. "Because you did—"

Hazō held up his hand. "Ami, if I were to propose to you, it would be a mindblowing, unforgettable experience that would sweep you completely off your feet and leave you daydreaming about me and our upcoming wedding every spare minute of the day. I am confident that I haven't done anything like that. Ergo, we are not engaged."

"Mmm," Ami said thoughtfully. "Now I feel shortchanged by your actual proposal."

"What actual proposal?"

"A funny thing happened shortly after the end of the war," Ami said. "I was visiting the temporary barracks where the Isan ninja were being stationed, and I had my hair in that lovely braid you taught me…"

Ah, crap.

"And wouldn't you know, it turns out that's a triple double Isanese braid. They were so freaked out. And then one of them kindly explained to me that it means 'I am an unmarried woman between 18 and 26 who was born under the star of chaos, and will give myself only to a man who can overwhelm me in a duel of wits', which is amazingly specific for a hairstyle. And I kindly explained to him that you gave me this braid and then immediately overwhelmed me in a duel of wits. Or whelmed me to a draw, anyway.

"Given that Kabuto visited the Isanese contingent a whole bunch of times before they left—them having no medical ninjutsu and him wanting to secretly check them for Bloodline Limits—I'm really not surprised it got as far as it did.

"So, lover boy, when's the wedding?"

All right. Apparently this one was entirely on him.

"Ami," he began, "me braiding your hair like that was a prank, and it was in no way meant to constitute a proposal."

"Ah, I get it," Ami said. "You picked the specific phrasing because you want me to give myself to you without marriage, leaving the position free for Akane or Ino or whoever's next on the list. That certainly would explain this hidden spot away from both Leaf and your compound. As ways to acquire a mistress without tipping off any of your legitimate lovers go, full points for creativity. Zero points for effectiveness, though—I wonder how far the rumour's spread in the time we've both been away."

"No, Ami, that wasn't—"

Then Hazō had what was either a brilliant or a terrible idea. No, it was almost certainly a terrible idea. But, sealmaster that he was, now that he'd thought of it, it was impossible for him not to try it.

"Yes, Ami," he declared, "that was in fact a proposal of marriage."

"Oh?"

"However," Hazō went on, emboldened by the fact that the world hadn't ended with those words, "it was conditional on my victory in the duel of wits. But I did not win, so it is impossible for you to have accepted my proposal."

"Mmm?"

"Nor did I lose, so it is impossible for you to have rejected it."

"Ah."

"In fact," Hazō concluded, "because of the draw, we now exist in a perfect suspended state of demi-proposal, and for as long as it is unresolved, it is physically impossible for anything I say or do to count as me proposing to you."

"Bravo, Hazō." Ami actually clapped. "Now that's the kind of intellectual tour de force I expect from my demi-fiancé."

"Thank you, thank you," Hazō said. "I trust there are no further complaints?"

"None at all," Ami said. "I can honestly say you've beaten me this time. In fact, one might say you've overwhelmed me in a duel of wits."

"Ah, crap."

-o-​

You have received 4 + 1 (Brevity) + 1 (Fun-to-write) = 6 XP.

-o-​

You have successfully completed research on the skywalker seal. You have not had time to start a new project.

-o-​

What do you do?

Voting closes on Oct 29, 2022 at 1:00 PM

 

[eaglejarl]

Chapter 553: Exploratory Preparation​

"To the Dog Summoner I give greetings," Kumoairashī said. The Empress's Herald, a title that had been created as the result of two solid hours of cultural exchange between Hazō and the Empress since humanity lacked a word corresponding directly to Kumoairashī's job, was one of the least disturbing members of the Arachnid Clan. She was small, about the size of a terrier. Instead of the bristly hair so common on other spiders, she had something closer to fur that shimmered in blues and greens. And, to literally put the bow on it, Kumoairashī insisted on wearing a yellow ribbon in a bow around her pedicel. It was large enough that the tails of the bow dragged on the ground unless Kumoairashī took care to stand up nice and tall.

"Greetings to you as well, Kumoairashī," Hazō said, yanking hard on the reins of his thoughts in order to stop them from bouncing off the walls of his skull. He had a sealing headache that was splitting his skull, he had just come from two hours of paperwork, and Ino had come by just as he was about to leave for the Seventh Path.

o-o-o-o​

"Gaku, I'm ready for you!" Hazō called, not looking up from the stack of papers that he was whipping through. He was just about at the bottom and then would be able to leave for the Seventh Path with a clear conscience.

"Hey there, sexy."

Hazō looked up in surprise, because that was very much not the way Gaku usually responded to a summons.

Obviously, it was not Gaku leaning insouciantly on the doorjamb. His brain caught up and helpfully notified him that the voice had been Ino's, not Gaku's, and that was why he should not be surprised to see his blonde ladyfriend.

His blonde ladyfriend, who was wearing an asymmetrical dress comprised of layer upon layer of sheer silk, each of a slightly different shade on the blue/green spectrum, plus a few in yellows and reds to give accent, and some with sparkles embedded in the dye. It was perfectly modest, with more than enough layers to render it opaque, yet it allowed faint hints of light through such that Ino's smooth-muscled limbs and torso were haloed shadows. The cowl-neck bodice gave just a glimpse of womanly curves while showing only three fingerwidths below the points of her collarbones. The dress came to mid-thigh on the right and mid-calf on the left; Ino's dainty feet were wrapped in dressy slippers that could only be worn outdoors without being ruined if the wearer could use chakra repulsion to not quite touch the ground.

It took Hazō a solid two seconds to raise his eyes to Ino's face and notice the artfully messy waterfall of platinum hair tumbling over her right shoulder.

"Wow." The word escaped without his intent. He continued staring while looking for a better one.

She grinned. "That's what I was going for. Nice to know I haven't lost my touch."

Hazō blinked twice, then managed to get his brain working again. "Wow," he said again. "You look amazing. What's the occasion?"

One delicate eyebrow curved upwards. "Does it need to be an occasion when I come see my boyfriend?"

Hazō considered that one carefully. "I'm pretty sure the right answer is 'no'," he said after a moment. "Yet, somehow, the way you phrased that makes me feel like maybe it's a trick question."

"Excellent," she said, laughing. "Once again, nice to know I haven't lost my touch."

He stood up with a smile and moved to the door so he could take her in his arms and kiss her. She accepted the kiss gladly, looping her arms around his waist for balance as she pressed herself against him. When it finally ended she purred in contentment and leaned her head on his chest.

Hazō tipped his head so he could lay his cheek on top of her head. He stroked her hair and kept light pressure at the small of her back, enjoying the heat of her through the slippery layers of silk. The shattering, pounding pain of his sealing headache diminished slightly as he let his eyes fall closed and simply breathed in her scent. Peaches, as always, except with faint floral hints?

"Did you change your hair rinse?" he asked quietly, not opening his eyes.

She nodded, drawing a laugh from him as his head wobbled on hers. "I started adding rose petals. Do you like it?"

"I always like the way you smell," he said honestly.

She tutted her tongue and pushed herself back so she could make eye contact. "Tsk, tsk," she said, wagging a finger at him. "Hazō, you never tell a girl she smells. Girls are dainty, feminine creatures. We don't have a smell, we have a scent."

He rolled his eyes and pulled her gently back into the hug. "Fine," he murmured. "I always like the way you scent."

She laughed. "Also, just to head off future issues: girls also do not sweat. Horses and oxen sweat. Stinky boys perspire, dainty ladies such as myself and Akane glow."

"Huh," Hazō said, still not opening his eyes. "I guess that's why it was so bright on the training field the last time we sparred. I could barely open my eyes you were glowing so hard."

She thumped him lightly on the shoulder in pretend indignation, but her shaking shoulders gave the lie. "Beast. There's no reason to insult me just because I've never felt the need to pursue that stinky and glow-inducing punching that you're so fond of."

"You were picking it up fast," he said truthfully. "Have you sparred with Chōji?"

"Not really," she said. She pushed herself free of him with a sigh, laced her fingers in his and tugged him over to the sofa that he'd installed after she started semi-frequently surprising him at his office. She settled at the end and patted her lap. He obediently lay down, head in her lap, and let his eyes drift closed as she ran delicate fingertips over his face and then massaged circles on his temples.

"Sealing headache?" she asked quietly.

He nodded, keeping the motion small so as not to dislodge her soothing touch or make the pain in his head flare.

"Those worry me," she said, dragging her fingers back through his hair with firm pressure. He felt knots that he hadn't even been aware of unraveling in his shoulders and cheeks. "Kagome doesn't get those, does he? It's not a normal thing."

"No," Hazō said. "I've had some experiences...not exactly seal failures, but not exactly not seal failures either. When I make myself relive those experiences it lets me disassociate, gets me into a state where it's easier to visualize what the chakra is doing in the seal and what the most likely effects of a change will be. It hurts like anything for a couple days but it's worth it. Makes research a lot faster and a lot safer." That was so far removed from an accurate description that it was almost a lie, but it was the closest he could come to describing it to a non-sealmaster. Even most sealmasters would have had trouble understanding what it was like to have your mind and soul torn free of your body and forced through cracks in space and time until you could see the universe from behind and realize that it was nothing but a layer of paint on a truth so vastly larger that there were literally no words to capture the difference.

"You were saying that you don't spar with Chōji," he said, trying to distract her onto safer topics. "Why not?"

She bopped him lightly on the nose to show that she hadn't missed the deflection, but didn't object. "It's not time efficient," she said, shifting slightly so that she could get her hands under his neck to rub out the knots. Hazō groaned in relief.

"We are the Ino-Shika-Chō," she continued. "Each clan is formidable, and together we make something greater than the sum of our parts, but that requires that we each play our role on the team. I'm a Yamanaka; I fight with my mind and my soul, not with my fists. I'm never going to be a good enough physical combatant to beat a ninja who has focused on that. Working with you on taijutsu is more about getting some exercise and sharing a thing that you care a lot about." She chuckled slightly. "You get this look when you're doing kata, do you know that? Like the world has gone completely away and you're floating. It's beautiful."

He smiled in pleased embarrassment. "Thanks. You looked...determined."

"Hah. Yeah, that's probably about right. I enjoyed it, but it's never going to be a main focus of my training. I hope that's okay? I don't want you to feel..." She trailed off, groping for words.

He reached back and captured her wrist, bringing her hand up so that he could kiss her fingertips. He opened his eyes and smiled up at her. "It's fine, love. We each have our path. I don't expect you to walk mine."

She bent forward, lithe and limber as only a teenage ninja can be, and gave him a tiny kiss on the nose before straightening. "Good," she said, smiling. "Anyway, Chōji is the physical combatant on our team. Shika does tactical command, capture, and control. I do intelligence gathering and conversion combat."

"Conversion combat?"

"Yeah. If we're fighting multiple enemies then I take one of them over and either make him attack his teammates from behind or kill himself so I can move on to the next."

Hazō tensed for just a moment at the calm way she said that, then allowed himself to relax again as she went back to rubbing his neck. Her hands moved down to his shoulders and he groaned in relief.

"Doesn't your jutsu leave you helpless?" he asked, looking up so that he could watch her face. Her pale eyes never failed to rivet his attention; they weren't uniform, having tiny flecks of green and gold mixed into the pale blue.

"Yes," she admitted. "We have solutions for that. Sometimes Shika will use his shadow jutsu to puppet my body while I'm out of it, keep it away from attackers."

That was substantially more specific tactical information than he would have expected her to share. Sweethearts they might be, but volunteering important details of your team's combat plans? That was serious.

He reached back and trailed his hand down her arm. "I love you. You know that, right?"

"Yup. Now hush, I'm trying to get this knot out."

He laughed and then grunted as she dug her fingers into the knot in his shoulder. He breathed through the momentary pain and then moaned in pleasure as the tension melted away.

Best. Girlfriend. Ever.

o-o-o-o​

"Later expected than you are," Kumoairashī said. "Well all is?" She turned and skipped towards the Orbularium.

"All is well, yes," Hazō said, following after with Cantelabra trotting at his side. "I had some work to finish before I could come."

"And you saw Ino!" Cantelabra volunteered. The pup had provided Hazō's ride to the Seventh Path and was now following along, curious to see whatever had brought Hazō across the worlds. Also, 'pup' was no longer quite the right term. The young dog was growing fast and he was already well taller than Hazō's knee, and solid enough that carrying him any distance would have gotten tiring quickly. It was also requiring more chakra to summon him, which was a concern. The entire point of bonding all the puppies was that they were cheap to summon.

"Her scent is all over you," Cantelabra volunteered. "You must have rolled on each other!"

Hazō closed his eyes for a moment and breathed. "We did not roll on each other, Cantelabra," he said. "And among humans it's rude to suggest that we did."

"Oh." Cantelabra looked up, ears drooping. "I'm sorry."

Without breaking stride, Hazō leaned down to scritch the dog's ear. "S'okay, buddy. We hugged and she gave me a neck massage. I've got a really bad headache. But the original reason I was running late really was the paperwork."

"Kagome Summoner paperwork is doing with the Empress!" Kumoairashī volunteered. "He is doing the papers that explode."

"He's making explosive tags with the Empress?" Hazō asked, concerned.

Kumoairashī nodded, a body language element that she had picked up from the humans and that was a bit awkward for her since it involved moving her entire cephalothorax. "Drawing but not inpuffing, since Grandfather forbade creation of paper magic. But he has many that are already made and is exploding them! Extremely neat is it! Boom! Pshow!" She made little explodey gestures with her front two legs while maintaining her pace on the other six.

"That's...nice," Hazō said.

"It really is!" Cantelabra said. "They smell neat! Each one is a little bit different, and they sound a little different too."

Huh. Hazō had never particularly noticed a scent around explosive tags. The sounds were a little different, yes, but only very slightly. The precise timbre and pitch were artifacts of the infusion process and Kagome-sensei's infusions were so smooth and reliable that the sound of each explosion barely varied.

"I'm glad you like them," he said.

"Here are we!" Kumoairashī said brightly as they arrived in the Orbularium. "Empress! Kagome Summoner! I bring the Summoner of Doggies!"

"The what now?" Hazō muttered.

"Doggies?" Cantelabra said, cocking his head at the spider. He looked up at Hazō. "Am I a doggy, Uncle Hazō? I thought I was a dog."

"It's a word from the Human Path," Hazō said, debating how to thread the needle on this one. "It's complicated, but it's sort of like a term of endearment for dogs." He didn't particularly want to get into the complex cultural implications around the word 'doggy', but he also didn't want to walk himself straight into a trope from poorly-written comedy plays in which he would paper over something awkward and it would be discovered later in a way that caused 'amusing' drama.

"It's mostly used by children," he added, hoping to strangle the drama in its crib.

"You not the Summoner of Doggies are?" Kumoairashī asked, spinning in a circle so that she could make eye contact with Hazō while continuing to move in the same direction.

"I'm the Dog Summoner," Hazō said. "Summoner of Doggies isn't wrong, exactly, but it's probably not the term I would use."

"Oh. Pity that is. Kagome Summoner very nice makes doggies sound." She looked at Cantelabra. "Kagome Summoner says very important it is to not pet a doggy without offering your hand first so that they can smell you. Smell me so pet you I can!" With great enthusiasm, she stuck a leg under Cantelabra's nose.

The gesture wasn't aimed anywhere near Hazō, but the suddenness of it still made him tense up. Cantelabra took it in stride, snuffling up and down the leg.

"You smell weird!" Cantelabra said, once the olfactory exploration was complete. "Not bad, just weird. Spicy, like a cross between how Uncle Kagome's chili smells as long as you're halfway across the room and that brown dirt that he puts in his tea sometimes."

"That's not dirt, it's a spice called cinnamon," Hazō said, amused at the fact that Kumoairashī was now rubbing one of her legs down Cantelabra's back and using a different one to scritch behind the young dog's ear.

Cantelabra was leaning into the petting, eyes closed and making blep face.

"Greetings, Hazō," the Empress called from where she and Kagome-sensei were seated in the center of the Orbularium's enormous floor web. "Join us, please you should."

"Greetings, Empress," Hazō called back. "Cantelabra, Kumoairashī, why don't you guys head off? This is probably going to be boring."

"Okay!" / "Assenting!"

The two youngsters (or, at least, one youngster and one arachnid of indeterminate age but rather child-like persona) scrambled out of the room, already engaged in an impromptu game of tag.

Hazō smiled after them, then moved to join his wife and his teacher.

"You're late," Kagome-sensei grumbled. He leaned in close, snuffling through his beaky nose. "Oh, good, you were with Ino."

"First of all, seriously?" Hazō said. "You can't possibly—" He broke off and twisted his head so he could smell his own shoulder. "Yeah, you can't possibly smell her on me. Cantelabra, okay, fine, but I refuse to believe a human can. Secondly, I thought you were freaked out about me dating her?"

"Not dating her," Kagome-sensei said, fixing his eyes determinedly on the explosive tag blank that he was drawing. "Kids," he muttered under his breath. "Always growing up and getting all girl- and boy-crazy and then what happens? Distracted while sealing! Nose demons rip everything apart and put it all back together backwards and upside down! Hah!"

Hazō chuckled. "Thank you for the concern, sensei," he said. "I think I'm managing."

"Yeah, yeah," Kagome-sensei grumbled. "Anyway, it's good that you were with her because you're always more relaxed after. Makes your head less likely to explode."

"Is likely his head to explode?" Kumokōgō asked, concerned. "Bad seems this. Hazō's head unexploded I wish to remain."

"I'm fine," Hazō reassured the massive arachnid. "It's something of a joke between the two of us." He gestured back and forth between himself and his teacher. "It's not actually going to explode. And, speaking of terrible segues, I had some questions for you if you wouldn't mind?"

"Provided unlikely your head truly is to explode, ask you may."

"Cool, thank you," he said, rolling right past the bizarre syntax. "I was thinking about the Archaeopteryx Clan, and it occurred to me that if you were willing to permit it then it might be useful for me and maybe Kagome-sensei to skywalk over there and see if any of them have survived. Would that be a problem?"

"Not for me a problem it is," Kumokōgō said. "A long way, though. Far past the butte of the Great Seal the ocean is, and then three days paddling from there. Once you reach it, uncertain I am of your welcome. Angry might the survivors be. Perhaps attack on sight."

"It should be safe for us," Hazō said. "We can use skywalkers to dodge, and we can always unsummon ourselves if we have to. Kagome-sensei, what do you think? On the one hand, it would be good to have you along. On the other hand, I know that you've got a lot going on back on the Human Path, what with teaching and research and such. Can you spare the time and are you interested in going?"

Kagome-sensei chewed on the end of his brush for a moment. "Yeah," he said. "It sounds neat. Not sure how far 'three days paddling' is, but probably more skywalkers than we want to burn. We should get a boat."

"Boats provided can be," Kumokōgō said. "A guide and paddlers I can send."

"Thank you," Hazō said. "I'll need to talk to Asuma to make sure he's okay with it, but I wanted to check with both of you first. Empress, can you tell me more about the general geography of this area? Who are your neighbors, are there any major land features it would be good to know about, anything between here and the Archaeopteryx Clan, that kind of thing?"

"Nothing between the coast and the Archaeopteryx, no," Kumokōgō said. "If miss their island you do, starve you will before other land seeing." She waved a leg, dismissing the issue. "Regarding the land, Arachnid very large is. Essentially westmost fifth of continent." She shifted slightly, finding a more comfortable position and folding her two forward legs together. "Main body of the continent is an arc, with major inlet almost cutting it in two at the westernmost fifth. Area west of the inlet is Arachnid, except for very small Raccoon on the southwest coast and modest-sized Kangaroo on the southeast. Eastern part of Kangaroo is a land bridge that to the main continent part connects us. Other half of the land bridge is Squirrel, with Cat wrapped around it. I know Raptor east from there is somewhere, on the coast, but uncertain what else is there."

Hazō's fingers twitched as he sketched in the air, drawing the image that the massive spider was describing. "Do Raccoon and Kangaroo touch?"

"No. Two hundred, three hundred miles between them? Something that like. Neither Squirrel and Raptor. Unsure of the separation amount, but there is it."

"And it's Cat that spills down between them?"

"Like the smelly fat-bearers they are," Kumokōgō said. "Bloop, bleh, flop. Stinkers."

Kagome-sensei laughed and held up a fist. The Empress of the Arachnid Clan, unbelievably, rapped it with a pedipalp in the closest to a proper fist-bump that a spider could manage.

"What about the Sharks?" Hazō asked. "Will we need to deal with them if we want to cross to the Archaeopteryx island?"

The Empress flipped one pedipalp in the equivalent of a human's dismissive shrug. "Mostly not care they do about boats, plus the various shivers move around much often, making negotiations difficult and agreements soon irrelevant. If approach they do, unlikely they are to attack the boat. Remain in it, be polite if they seek to speak. Conflict is rare unless provoked."

Kagome-sensei held up an explosive tag and considered it lovingly, a creepy smile on his face. "Did you know that explosives work better underwater?" he asked of no one in particular.

"Right," Hazō said, ignoring his teacher's implications of shatteringly violent explosion-based murder with the ease of long practice. "Well, it'll be too late to clear it with Asuma by the time we get back, but I'll talk to him tomorrow. Assuming he's okay with it, I'd like to get some work done on my current seal project and then we can head out."

"Your current seal project related to the Dragons is?"

Hazō rubbed his neck. "Sort of? Not directly. This one is aimed at making me more survivable in a fight. On the other hand, it's going to help me explore detection of environmental chakra effects, which is something we're going to need for estimating the rate of deterioration on the Great Seal." He looked over to his teacher. "Sensei, I was thinking: after I finish the next version of chakdar, maybe we could combine it with your chakrascope seals to get something with a longer range. What do you think?"

Kagome-sensei considered that one. "It's going to be tricky," he said. "Chakra diffusion problem is going to keep you from extending the range very far at all, and the entire point of the chakrascope is to be very sensitive to even small fluctuations. If we extended the detection radius then there would be more of those fluctuations in the detection radius and it would muddy the readings. It's why I made them short-ranged in the first place." He eyed Hazō for a moment, then narrowed his eyes. "Hang on, did you think my chakrascope seals had a short range because I couldn't do any better?"

That was in fact precisely what Hazō had thought.

"Of course not," he said smoothly.

Spoiler: dice

Hazō, Deceit + 3 (dice): 27
Kagome, Deceit + 9 (dice) : 10

"Oh, good," Kagome-sensei said, relieved.

"Hazō," Kumokōgō said, "your explosion seals different than his, Kagome tells me. Show me?"

"Of course," Hazō said, grateful to the Empress for changing the topic so that Kagome-sensei did not continue the interrogation. (Had that been deliberate?) He fished a stack of his own explosive seals from a pouch and held them out. "See, my feathering is more angular than Kagome-sensei's, and my stroke ordering is different on this area, because..."

The Spider Empress leaned close as he pointed at the various elements of the seal, listening intently as he went off on a long explanation of the differences between two sealmasters styles.

o-o-o-o​

Mari slumped into the kitchen with a yawn and gratefully accepted the mug of strong-brewed tea that Hazō extended to her. She had apparently slept poorly because she was rumpled and wearing a slouchy robe with the slippers that Kagome-sensei had re-fleeced and resoled for her.

"Morning," she mumbled. "You're up early."

Hazō smiled. "Actually, you're up late. I met with Kumokōgō yesterday, got home in time for dinner, slept like a log, and even had time to talk to Asuma this morning. He signed off on letting me explore the Seventh Path and make contact with another Clan."

"Bah." She waved a hand dismissively and took a hard pull on her tea. "Too complicated. Tell later."

He laughed. "Okay, fair enough. In that case, does this look like anything to you?" Hazō asked, offering a sheet of paper with ink blotches.

She took it from him and studied it, then turned it over and looked at it the other way. She knocked back the rest of her tea and poured herself another mug from the pot. "Not offhand, although there's something vaguely familiar about it. What is it?"

"It's the steps of this dance that Ami pulled me into," he explained. "She led me through it multiple times and there was something weird about it so I've tried to sketch it out."

Mari shrugged. "Dunno. Let me get some food, a bath, and some proper clothes and then you can replay it for me. Maybe it'll make sense when I can see the full version."

"Cool, thanks." He took a sip of his tea. "How are things going in general?" He wasn't going to push for details about Haru's current project. She had told him to release on it. Yup. No pushing. Really. Still, he could hint, right?

"They're fine," she said, yawning. "Oh, there's a new art exhibit in town. Beautiful stuff; you should take Ino and Akane."

"What's it like?"

"It's mixed media, sculpture and painting arranged in a three-sided box so it's like looking into a house. I think the artist was trying for a commentary on living conditions, because..."

He settled back and sipped his tea, enjoying the sound of her voice washing over him with comfortable, homey topics that had nothing to do with clan or seals or anything else.

---

Author's Note: This update covered 11 days, mostly because you have committed seal research. Specifically:

• You waited 2 days recovering from the Sealing Scroll Acolyte headache derived from your previous sealing roll, using the time for the scenes shown herein
• You then did 6 days of prep work for a bonus of +12 on the roll
• You spent a day doing actual infusion work. Kagome checked your notes before you did it but was not around full-time so you get to use him as an Aspect but not an assistant
• You spent 2 days recovering from the SSA headache caused by this research roll

Results of seal research: 51 (Sealing) + 12 (prep) + 6 (invoke "Kagome-approved Research Facility") + 6 (invoke "Kagome Checked My Work") - 3 (dice) = 72

I'm not sure what the TN on this seal is so we'll have to get back to you on the exact outcome.

XP AWARD: 35

Brevity XP: 10

"GM had fun" XP: 1

• +1 for scene: Ino

It is now about 10am.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Nov 2, 2022 at 8:00 AM .

 

[Velorien]

Interlude: For Whom the Wedding Bell Tolls​

There were some things in life, Hazō knew, that he would invariably regret putting off. Urgent meetings with the Hokage. Sealing safety preparations. Nipping Kei drama in the bud. In fact, there were many such things (which said a lot about his life), and he really couldn't be blamed if, every now and again, one slipped his mind. Unfortunately, the universe being an uncooperative and unfair place, lack of blame did not mean lack of consequences.

"What do you mean, you're engaged to Ami?"

Akane stared at Hazō across the kitchen table, where he'd happened to come across her during a much-needed break from reviewing budget changes to be made in accordance with the new tax compliance regulations (which Kei would have been on top of if he hadn't whisked her away to Honey—but on the other hand, they would probably also all be dead, so he was willing to take the hit). While Hazō was prepared to grant that "Oh, by the way" might not have been the best start to this particular conversation, he did feel Akane's look of exasperation was a little excessive.

"It was an accident," Hazō insisted. "I don't actually intend to marry her."

"I know," Akane said. "So what did she do this time?"

"Actually," Hazō said, "it's not exactly that she did something. It's more that I did a thing that could be interpreted as a marriage proposal by somebody in a certain frame of mind, and Ami found out, and then I had a great idea for how to prevent this issue from ever coming up again, which required doubling down on it being a real proposal, and then the part after the doubling down didn't work and now I have technically proposed marriage to her and caused her to accept without any action on her part."

"But you don't actually intend to marry her," Akane said.

"I don't. And I'm pretty sure she doesn't intend to marry me either."

"Has she said that?" Akane asked.

"No," Hazō admitted, "but I know Ami. Control is one of her big three things—four if you count Kei—and if she married me, she'd become a Gōketsu and come under my absolute authority. I don't think she'd go for that even if she was madly in love with me." He paused. "Byakuren's fishy breath, I hope she's not madly in love with me."

"Ah," Akane said. "In that case, I have bad news for you, and possibly for me as well."

"Go on."

"Ami is a clan head, like Naruto. She told me back when I was congratulating her on her adoption."

"She's a what."

"The way she explained it," Akane said, "was that she obviously couldn't still be a member of a Mist clan, but there were also enough reasons not to de-clan her—no massive deal-breakers, just a dozen different diplomatic and legal headaches which could be completely avoided by taking her deal and making her the sole member of the Leaf Mori Clan. She did make the concession of not being able to adopt without the Hokage's permission, because if I can imagine Ami using her KEI authority to adopt every KEI ninja in Leaf for 1 ryō each, then so can he."

"Does she need clan head status? She's one of the most powerful individuals in Leaf."

"It keeps the Frozen Skein as a clan secret," Akane said. "Both Mist and the Nara want that, and if the Hokage just turned her into a KEI ninja with special rights, it would be a precedent for other KEI ninja.

"More importantly, it means she can marry you without becoming a Gōketsu, just like Ino would."

Hazō gave her a questioning look.

"I'm not making a judgement of whether that's a thing that should happen or when, Hazō," Akane said impatiently. "It's just that somebody has to keep an eye on the practicalities.

"Now we have an extra practicality," she went on, "which is that you no longer know whether Ami wants to marry you. You don't want to marry her, so we don't have to have that conversation, so does that mean you can just do the simple thing and cancel the engagement unilaterally?"

"You have a conversation ready for that?" Hazō asked uneasily.

"Yes," Akane said. "It's long and complicated, and at one point I was honestly tempted to turn it into a flowchart like you and Kei do. I rehearse it occasionally, because Ami being Ami and you being you, I won't be confident that you won't end up marrying her until you marry someone else—and then only until plural marriage becomes legal, because between us and Kei, that's only a matter of time."

"I don't want to marry Ami," Hazō repeated. That would require him to a) be insane (or rather, a particular kind of insane which he didn't think he was), b) be in love with Ami (which he definitely wasn't, ambiguous generic attraction notwithstanding), and c) have a solid bond of trust with Ami (which was a work in progress at best and might turn out to be impossible at worst).

"That said," he went on, "I have a feeling that she sees the whole engagement thing as a game (assuming she's not serious this time, which would be blood-chilling). She'd respect me getting out of it in a clever way, as I almost did, but if she thinks I'm the one leading her on, only to declare that I'm taking my toys and going home because I can't think of a good move... actually, I don't know what would happen, but none of the options I can think of are good.

"Don't worry, Akane. I'm Gōketsu Hazō. I will think of something, and it will be something so amazing that it will completely blow her away and make this engagement the tiniest of footnotes in the illustrious Gōketsu history."

Akane nodded. "And that will definitely make her less interested in you and less inclined to marry you."

"What do you want from me, woman?" Hazō demanded in his best aggrieved Jiraiya tones.

Akane sighed. "Never mind. I think in this case, the crime is its own punishment."