Chapter 589: In Which Hazō Has Measured and Prosocial Interactions
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ice water coursed down the inside of Hazō's spine, around his pelvis, and back up into his belly. The world seemed to freeze around him for an instant as implications and probabilities spun, the Paint fr*cturing very sl!ghtly and RealitY whispering in his ear as one of his anchors to the physical tore free and slid towards the edge. It stopped, balancing on the cliff of madness.
"Could you repeat that, please?" he asked, a small and very calm smile creeping across his face.
Hagoromo's lip curled in disgust at Hazō's expression. The still-unnamed male ninja leaned back in obvious alarm.
"Uh...Lord Gōketsu?" he said. "Sir?"
"Repeat your information, please."
"She...was sent on a mission to the Wakare Woods. Herself and her three genin. The Woods are maybe half a day's travel west from Leaf and she's a week overdue. She's...uh...it's very likely that she's no longer with us, My Lord."
Hazō nodded. The world was far away, on the other side of thick glass. Somewhere in the back of his mind a volcano rumbled. Or perhaps it was an animal? Unclear. What was the best way of representing one's internal desire to commit genocide?
"Shadow Clone Technique," Hazō said, forming a cross with his fingers. Four instances of himself poofed into existence and promptly left the room at a sprint.
Hazō Prime looked steadily at the Hagoromo-shaped target.
"Hagoromo Ruka," he said. "Am I correct that one of your duties is to track all outstanding missions, track the expected return date of all Leaf ninja on said missions, and notify the relevant parties when one of those ninja is overdue?"
Her eyes narrowed as she saw the trap. "You are not in my chain of command, Gōketsu. I have no obligation to answer your questions."
Hazō's eyes turned to the other ninja, the one who didn't have a bullseye superimposed on his face. "Your name?"
"Uh...Katsushi, M'Lord."
"KEI ninja?"
"Yes, M'Lord."
"Very good. Am I correct that the things I named are among Ruka's duties?"
"Don't you call me—!"
"Yes, M'Lord. Hers and mine both." He paused and then hastened to add, "We divide the missions between us. Your girlfriend's mission was in her stack."
Hazō nodded. "As I thought. Would it be safe—"
"Gōketsu, you need to leave," the bullseye said firmly. "We have important work to do and you are delaying it. Out." She pointed decisively at the door.
"—to assume," Hazō said, refusing to be interrupted or d!stracted by the cr4cks he cold freel in spine his, "that her Clan Lord is among the people you would notify regarding an overdue ninja?"
"Yes, M'Lord." Katsushi's weight was on his back foot, his eyes a little bit wide.
Hazō turned back to the bullse`/e. "Hagoromo Ruka. Allow me to explain the situation you have created. You are aware that the Gōketsu began a quiet little clan war against your herd after Ritsuo insulted my sister?"
"I don't need to—"
"Are. You. Aware?"
"Yes! Obviously. Everyone in Leaf is aware."
"The war ended because the Hokage gave explicit orders, to both myself and your herd diRector, that all conflict was to stop for the good of Leaf. I now find that you have been derelict in your duties in a way that has likely c#ntributed to the death of my girlfriend. So far as I am concerned, the Hagoromo have defied the Hokage's orders in order to launch an unprovoked assault on a Gōketsu n1nja and we are completely justified in defending ourselves in whatever way I see fit. If I was willing to purify tHe world of you vermin when your herd director spoke unkindly of my family, what do you think I'm prepared to do when one of his spawn collaborates to kill my beloved?"
"Lord Gōketsu," Katsushi said carefully. "Sir, I think tempers are running a bit high right now. Would it perhaps be wise to—"
Hazō's palm slapped down on the desk so hard that the heavy oak furniture bounced.
"You will go to Ritsuo," Hazō said, jabbing his longest right-side phalange at the center of the bullseye and stopping half an inch from its surface. "You will go to him now, you will explain what you have done, and you will tell him these words: he can still get out of this. This does not have to come down to destruction between us. There is a Leaf ninja whose life has been gravely endangered by the actions of a Hagoromo in defiance of the Hokage's orders. If Ritsuo turns out the resources of the Hagoromo to aid in the search, if he makes a sincere and convincing effort, then I will ask only that you be disciplined and I will thank him for his aid. The Gōketsu will consider the Hagoromo friends unless and until one of you acts to change that status.
"If, on the other hand, he chooses not to live to the standard the Will of Fire requires, I will explain all this to the Hokage and I will demand your head on a platter as weregild. Literally. Your head, chopped off with a dull axe and served to me on a polished silver platter. Anything less than that and the Hagoromo will discover what it truly means to have the Gōketsu as an enemy." He flicked two fingers, producing the paper that had been folded in his palm and bouncing it off the center of the bullseye to fall on the desk.
The bullseye's eyes tracked down to the 'weapon'; it picked up the paper and unfolded it to reveal an explosive note.
Hazō was already gone.
o-o-o-o
"Welcome, Lord Gōketsu," said Yamanaka Yamato. "Are you looking for Lady Ino? I'm very sorry, but she is in a meeting right now. Would you care to wait, or may I take a message?"
"Hello, Yamato," said HazōInoGet. "I'm afraid I can't wait. Please get her out of that meeting."
Yamato shifted uncomfortably. "Sir, the meeting is with—"
Hazō put his hand on the older civilian man's shoulder and met his eyes.
"Yamato," he said, "you're an excellent steward, and Ino is lucky to have you. I respect the world out of you and I don't want you to think otherwise. That said, get Ino out of that meeting or I'm going to carve a path through the walls of this house until I get to her. This is not a joke, this is not figurative." He glanced to his left, pursed his lips in thought for a moment, and then pointed. "I'll start right there. I'm fairly sure that one isn't load-bearing."
Yamato studied him for a moment, then bowed and quickly withdrew.
HazōInoGet folded his hands behind his back and paced, struggling to keep his demeanor calm.
Two minutes later, Ino came through the door, fury sparking off of her every step.
"Hazō, don't you ever—"
"Akane is a week overdue."
She froze. "What was the mission?"
"Animal extermination mission in the Wakare Woods. It's about half a day west of here. Her and her three genin. They're a week overdue."
She stared at him in horror for several seconds and then her face melted and she went to wrap him in a hug.
He stopped her with an upraised hand. "I'm a shadow clone and I can't risk too tight a hug. Prime made four of us. We're pulling in you, the Nara, the KEI, and the Tower. He stayed at the mission desk to ream out the Hagoromo who ignored her being overdue. We're going to organize a search party and I need you to come to the estate right now to help figure out how. Can you do that?"
"I..." She glanced towards the out of sight room where she had been having her meeting and bit her lip. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Hazō," she said, "and yes, I know you aren't my Hazō. That doesn't matter. If she's a week late then it really doesn't matter if the search party leaves now or tomorrow." She eyed his recalcitrant face for a moment. "Have you...have you never lost anyone before? I know you had a handful of branch family die during the war, but is Akane the first one that you were close to? People die on missions, Hazō. It happens, and you need to be ready for it."
"We don't know that she's dead," HazōInoGet insisted. "Right now we only know that she's overdue. We're going to find her."
"...Okay," Ino said, as comfortingly as she could. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly in support. "But I want you to brace yourself for the fact that we're almost certainly not going to find her alive." She glanced at the wall that stood between her and the meeting room she had been dragged away from, then back at HazōInoGet. "Give me ten minutes, okay? It took me three weeks to set this meeting up and I can't afford to just walk out. I'll go put it on ice until tomorrow and then we can go."
o-o-o-o
"So, what's so important that you needed to get in here right now?" Naruto demanded.
The temporary Hokage was in Asuma's office, perched at the desk that had served every Hokage since the beginning of the Village Era. He was also at nine different smaller desks that had been scattered around the room, and all of him were staring at paperwork with varied expressions of despair. As HazōTowerExplainer walked in they had looked up with the expression of a prisoner seeing salvation.
"First off, I'm a shadow clone," HazōTowerExplainer said. "Just in case that matters. I'm here to inform the Tower that Gōketsu Akane is a week overdue and I am going to organize a search party for her. I want to make sure you're in the loop and have no objections to anything we plan. Another of us is getting Ino because she's Akane's sort-of-girlfriend and Shikamaru and Kei as advisors in their role of Akane's sister and brother in law, and also because Kei is one of the Coordinators of the KEI. Akane's three genin were KEI members. I understand that you're busy but I wanted to offer you the opportunity to have one or more of you join our war council at the Gōketsu estate. Both because you're a KEI Coordinator and the Hokage."
HazōTowerExplainer had tried to organize his thoughts and prepare that speech before arrival, but the world was too scattered around him. The only significant preparation he had managed was remembering to say 'Akane is overdue' instead of 'Akane is missing'. No need to remind Naruto of the team's shady past.
Naruto Prime (presumably, or at least the one behind the desk) blinked. "A week overdue? What in the Sage's name was her mission, a mapping trip to Bear?"
"Animal extermination in the Wakare Woods, half a day west of here."
Sympathy crept over Naruto's face. "Hazō—sorry, what's your name?"
"HazōTowerExplainer." Unsurprising that the foremost user of the Shadow Clone technique would remember to acknowledge the separation of identity among clones.
"HazōTowerExplainer, you're talking about a 'search party', as though we're going to find her and save her. If Akane is a week overdue then I'm afraid she's dead and this is a body recovery mission."
"We don't know that," HazōTowerExplainer said stubbornly. "All we know is that she's missing—overdue, rather." He could feel his face trying to break open and spill forth the tears. He wished desperately for the Iron Nerve and its ability to maintain a polite and concealing mask regardless of inner turmoil.
Naruto studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Okay," he said. He made a cross with his fingers. "Shadow Clone Technique."
Three Narutos poofed into existence. Two of them nodded politely to HazōTowerExplainer and hustled out. The third met his progenitor's eyes and nodded. "On it, boss." He looked back to HazōTowerExplainer. "C'mon, buddy. Those two are going to go check with the Hyūga and Inuzuka to see about their availability for a recovery mission. Meanwhile, let's you and me go see what we can do to get you some closure."
o-o-o-o
"Good morning, Hazō," Kei said, gesturing him to a seat on the patio. The air was scented with flowers and she and Shikamaru each had a plate of breakfast eggs in front of themselves. A pot of tea steamed on a trivet, completing the surprisingly domestic scene. Perhaps more surprising, Kei even gave him a slight smile in the process. "It is nice to see you. I had thought to come..." She trailed off, studying him closely as a frown slid over her face. "Are you a shadow clone?"
Huh.
"I am," said HazōScarySisApproacher. "How could you tell?"
"I am uncertain. There is no specific item, merely an overall suspicion. Perhaps your gait, or your expression?"
Shikamaru looked at his wife in surprise. "Your perceptiveness and analytic abilities are superior even to what I had thought, wife."
"I am grateful for your compliment," Kei said. "It was appropriate to the situation and it felt sincere. Also, it related to my skills, which are earned, rather than my appearance or other factors that are mere happenstance. However, the appending of the term 'wife', while undoubtedly intended as moderate endearment and a reminder of our connection, has a connotation of property that I disprefer. In future it would be more effective to use my name, or omit the referent entirely."
Shikamaru nodded in thought. "I see. 'Wife' places your identity in a category defined by your relationship to me instead of yourself as a unique entity. I shall remember this in future and I thank you for the information."
"Akane is a week overdue," HazōScarySisApproacher said impatiently. "I want you both at the Gōketsu estate for a planning session."
Kei was on her feet immediately, tea and breakfast forgotten. Shikamaru stopped her with an upraised hand.
"What is your cognomen?" he asked their visitor.
HazōScarySisApproacher hesitated. "Please, feel free to refer to me simply as 'Hazō'," he said after a moment.
"Very well. What was the nature and location of Akane's mission?"
"Animal extermination. Wakare Woods, half a day west of here."
"In this case, I am very sorry but you will need to accept that she is dead. I am, and I believe it to be clear that Kei is, happy to go with you and help you plan a recovery mission in order to avert any potentially problematic elements of such a plan, but I wish it to be clear that we are at best going to recover her body, not rescue her. Even that much is unlikely."
Kei looked at her husband with a frozen expression. The air chilled around them. "Husband..." She shook her head and let out a slow breath, allowing the patio to once more warm. "Come or stay, it is of no importance to me."
Shikamaru stood, wiped his mouth, and dropped his napkin on the table. "Of course I will come, Kei. However, I wish to ensure that no one has false hope. Hazō's demeanor is of fear and urgency. There is no place for those things in this context and harboring them will lead only to bad decisions and later consequences. As a salient example: the fact that Hazō sent a shadow clone here strongly suggests that he has sent multiple clones to other places. Based on this Hazō's presentation I suspect that all instances of Hazō are making their approaches with a bluntness that may harm the Gōketsu relationship to other clans going forward." He looked to HazōScarySisApproacher and his words were gentle. "The forests of Leaf are large and finding something as small as a person is a tremendous challenge. After a week it is unlikely that we can even locate her body. It will have reentered the cycle of the wilds."
"You mean that animals will have eaten her," HazōScarySisApproacher said through gritted teeth.
Shikamaru nodded. "Just so. I am very sorry, Hazō. Akane was a wonderful person and she will be greatly missed. The Nara clan will hold a remembrance ceremony for her and, with your permission, will place a memorial in our Garden of Memories."
"We don't know she's dead," HazōScarySisApproacher said, his voice made of knives of sharpened ice. "Until we know for certain, we're operating on the assumption that she isn't."
Shikamaru tipped his head in an 'I will humor you' way. "As you say."
"Kei, would you mind giving me a moment with your husband?" HazōScarySisApproacher asked.
She raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "Very well. I shall see you at the house." She looked down at Shikamaru. "I was untruthful in my earlier statement. I would appreciate your attendance." Miraculously, the words were merely informative and not loaded with extortionate implications.
Shikamaru gave her a tiny smile. "Of course. I shall be there presently."
Kei nodded and left at a jog, going straight up the side of the house and over the roof instead of wasting time with hallways.
"I suspect that your question relates to my awareness of, and analysis of implications related to, Akane's unusual utility as a member of the Leaf military," Shikamaru said, skirting very widely around the words 'the fact that she is capable of destroying entire cities on a whim.'
"Yes, that," HazōScarySisApproacher said. "You're being brought in as a primary strategic advisor to this mission. I'm assuming you'll leverage appropriate resources?"
Shikamaru nodded. "In turn, I assume that an instance of you has spoken to the Tower?"
HazōScarySisApproacher nodded. "Yes. HazōTowerExplainer got done a couple minutes ago. A Naruto will be at the meeting and he's approaching the Hyūga and the Inuzuka for us."
"This will help," Shikamaru said. "Shall we?" He moved towards the door.
"Prime will see you there," HazōScarySisApproacher said. "Thank you."
Mission accomplished, he poofed out of existence.
o-o-o-o
Memories flooded in as the last of his clones dissolved into the aether and their worldlines returned to Hazō. Moments later, he had reverse-summoned to the Conclave and was pushing through the crowd to the nearest pangolin, a kitchen staffer with his claws occupied by a tray of breads and cheeses that he was delivering to the buffet.
"Where is Lord Enma?" Hazō demanded.
"Sir?" the staffer asked. "Um...I'm not sure. The last I heard, he was in the main auditorium with some of the other ambassadors. That was an hour ago, though."
"Good enough. Thank you," Hazō said. He turned and disappeared at full chakra-boosted speed, blurring through the hallways and around the occasional slow-moving obstacle.
He rounded a corner and found a trio of pangolins and a turtle blocking the hall; instead of slowing down to get through them he ran up the wall and across the ceiling, supporting himself on hands and feet so he didn't clonk heads. All four of them whirled at his approach, clawed hands rising, but he passed by too fast for them to react.
"Hey!" shouted one of the pangolins. "Get back—"
Hazō was around the corner and moving out of earshot already.
He reached the auditorium and burst through the double doors. Sure enough, Enma was at the bottom of the well, striding back and forth and declaiming to an audience of a dozen people from various clans.
"Enma!" Hazō called, moving down the steps at the fastest speed that likely wouldn't be interpreted as an attack.
The Monkey Lord's head jerked up and he stopped pacing. "Hazō? What's going on?"
"I need you to get a message to Asuma," Hazō said, a little out of breath. "Here." He held out the folded note that he had hastily scribbled out upon reaching the estate. "You know he's at the Chūnin Exams with some of the Leaf Summoners, right?"
"Sure," Enma said, taking the note. "You want me to give this to whichever of them shows up next?"
Hazō nodded gratefully. "Exactly."
"I say," the giant pangolin in the room said, her deep voice disapproving, "what is this interruption? Gōketsu, we were having an important meeting here. You can't just barge—"
"And yet, I just did," Hazō said, glancing over at her for a moment before turning back to Enma. "It's in the note, but just in case: Akane is a week overdue on a mission only half a day west of Leaf. We're organizing a search party to find her."
Enma's simian face dropped. "I'm sorry, kid," he said.
"We don't know for sure that she's dead yet," Hazō insisted. "For now, she's only overdue."
The pangolin who had previously spoken snorted. "Isn't he supposed to be a Clan Lord?" she murmured to the otter sitting next to her. "How can he be so naïve?"
"Human 'clans' are different," the otter whispered back.
"You have something to say to me?" Hazō demanded, rounding on the pangolin. "Say it to my face, beakface."
The pangolin's tiny eyes went wide and she stood to her full fifteen-foot height. "How dare you call me that! I am no puling condor!"
"Sounds like it fits to me," Hazō snarled. "Your pointy little face looks like a beak and you sound about as stupid as your kind claim the condors are. You got a problem with—" He broke off and shook his head. "I don't have time for this. Enma, deliver the message, yeah?"
"Will do, kid," Enma said, tossing him a casual salute. "Good hunting."
o-o-o-o
The meeting was happening outdoors on the Gōketsu estate and there were no chairs. Hazō didn't want people comfortable, he wanted them looking to get moving as quickly as possible. It was a sizable group: Hazō, Noburi, Kei, Mari, Shikamaru, Ino, a Naruto, Inuzuka Yamato and his ninken partner, Tenten, Neji, Rock Lee, and Canvass the bloodhound.
The arrival of Team Gai and the Inuzuka jōnin had been a pleasant surprise. Naruto had been unwilling to simply assign them to go, but he had rushed the drafting and posting of a mission and strongly suggested they take it. The Gōketsu were on the hook for the cost but it was a pittance compared to what Hazō was willing to spend.
"Yuno, you're the best hunter in the clan so you're in charge," Hazō said. "You have the full resources of the clan behind you. Your mission is to recover Team Akane, whatever condition they might be in right now." He couldn't bring himself to use the words 'or their remains'. "Keep in mind that it's possible this isn't a random animal attack."
"You are suggesting that it might be an attack from Rock?" Shikamaru said. "Although I grant it as a possibility, it seems improbable. They have no more interest in violating the AMITY accords than we do."
"It could be a 'wrong place, wrong time' situation," Mari said. "You're right that it's unlikely a capture team was dispatched to bring in Akane specifically, but no one is pretending that espionage has stopped. It's possible that someone had scouts in Fire on a standard intelligence-gathering mission and Akane's team stumbled over them."
A surge of gratitude went through Hazō when Mari carefully chose the phrase 'capture team' instead of 'assassination mission'. Nonetheless, the implication hung in the air.
"It could also be that someone is attempting to bait me out," Hazō said grimly. "I'm the Dog Summoner, a Clan Head, and a sealmaster. After the Chūnin Exams I've got a very high profile even internationally, and that definitely includes the fact that Akane and I have a relationship. It wouldn't require a genius to guess that if they took her then I'd be close behind."
Inuzuka Yamato snorted in grim amusement. "If so then I can almost pity them...they must have expected you much sooner and they've been sitting around wondering what's taking so long."
Every Gōketsu eye turned gimlet stares on the dog clan member who raised his hands in surrender. "It's a joke. If they're out there then we'll find them and come down on them with utter destruction."
"In any case," Hazō said, "we need to get this mission moving. A few ideas to run by everyone."
Noburi groaned quietly.
"Me and Noburi," Hazō said, ignoring his brother. "Should we go? Noburi provides combat ability, medical support, chakra for travel endurance, and powerful summons. I also provide combat support and summons, as well as seal production if necessary. I have tracker dogs that are probably better than the Inuzuka—"
"Hey!" / "Woof!" objected the Inuzuka man and dog.
Hazō glared down the man and his canine partner. "I want your help and I'm happy to pay your rates. That said, you're a small clan who was hit hard in the Collapse and the war. The Dog Clan is tens of thousands; they have a much wider pool of talent to draw from and Canvass was recommended to me by the Alpha Dog as one of the their best trackers." He let one hand fall to the dog's head where she sat beside him.
"We'll see about that," Inuzuka grumbled. His canine partner huffed agreement. Canvass looked smugly amused.
"Enough," Hazō said. "Noburi, you'd be an asset on this mission. On the other hand, we could do a miniature Zoo Rush. You and I summon a bunch of allies and send them on the mission while you and I stay here where you can draw chakra from Leaf genin and keep us topped up so that we can maintain our allies on this Path for longer. If we did it that way then maybe you could even summon and maintain the two Toad Sages, which would pretty much guarantee the physical safety of the mission. Plus, they might have sensory jutsu."
Noburi looked as though he'd bitten a lemon. "Are you seriously expecting me to..." He shook his head, forcing himself to face the truth. "Yeah, okay. I don't like the idea of sitting home where it's safe instead of going out to recover her—"
"Rescue her," Hazō insisted.
"...Find out what happened," Noburi said. "Still, I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. That said, I don't know that the Sages would be willing to be summoned."
"I think we're safe enough," Yuno said, gesturing at the group that was definitely going: herself; Mari; Team Gai, three of the most dangerous senior chūnin in Leaf; the irritated Inuzuka and the ninken who sat next to him. The dog was an enormous mastiff, his shoulders coming up to his human partner's hip.
"Hazō, Noburi, you should come with us," Mari said. "For a variety of reasons."
"Thank the ancestors," Noburi said. "Gah, I did not want to hang back here."
"Me neither," Hazō said, relief in his voice. "I'm trying to learn to be more considered, but I would have torn my hair out waiting."
"Naruto," Mari said, "do we have your permission as acting Hokage to use skywalkers and skytowers?"
Naruto nodded. "You do, yeah. Maintain OPSEC, use them appropriately, blah blah blah. Still, recovering the remains of four Leaf ninja is a highly valid reason." He snorted. "Plus, I'm not even sure why we're still trying to keep a lid on them anymore, but that's Asuma's policy and I'm not overruling him in the general case."
"Yuno, Shikamaru, Kei, Ino, any comments or suggestions?" Hazō asked.
"I believe it should be emphasized that this is a recovery mission, not a retaliatory strike," Shikamaru said. "No matter who or what is found to be responsible, the team should not cross any of Fire's borders and should avoid combat. The emphasis must be on gathering intelligence and ensuring that it reaches Leaf so that the village can organize an effective response. In addition, in the unlikely event that you intersect with ninja from an enemy nation, it is critically important that Hazō not be captured. His own summation from earlier should make clear why. Aside from that, I believe that we have covered all relevant details. Kei?"
The Pangolin Summoner shook her head, not speaking.
"It all seems fine to me," Yuno said. "Shall we?"
"Indeed!" Rock Lee shouted. "And if we cannot find their bodies before sundown, I will run to the Land of Tea and back on my hands twenty times as a punishment!"
"Shut the fuck up, Lee," Hazō said. "I don't have the patience for your usual bullshit right now."
The green-clad ninja jolted back as though he'd been slapped.
Shikamaru turned to his wife. "Be safe. Your skills are important to the Nara and your well-being is a matter of some concern to me."
"Thank you," Kei said. "There is a correlation between your well-being and my level of happiness on most days. Although empathy is not my greatest skill, your words make it seem that you have similar experience and therefore I should not like to inflict disaccomodation upon you."
Naruto gaped at the exchange. Noburi facepalmed. Inuzuka snorted.
"You two are amazing," Inuzuka said. "That was the worst 'I love you' ever exchanged."
Shikamaru and Kei both bristled and closed ranks, but Hazō cut them off before either could speak.
"We're leaving," he said firmly. "Canvass, lead on."
"Akaryōken, go," Inuzuka said, offense in his voice at the idea that another dog might lead.
The massive ninken loped off, Canvass lolloping beside him with a smug grin on her face.
o-o-o-o
They left through the Sunset Gate, following the path that Akane and her team had taken a week earlier. Hazō had included the canine tracker solely as an afterthought, assuming that it would be impossible to track someone by scent across a busy road a week after they had gone by. As it proved out, it wasn't an issue. Canvass sat beside the road, watching in amusement as Akaryōken cast about immediately outside the gate, looking for the relevant scent.
"Ahem," she said after a couple minutes. "Over here." She turned and jogged off into the woods and the rest of the party scrambled after her.
They followed in the wake of Akane's party, forced to retrace their entire route since there was no way to know where they had ended up. The genin and their sensei had cast back and forth, pausing here and there as they drove animals out of their burrows or out of cover in order to kill them. Fortunately, Akane had felt no need to involve evasion training in the mission. Not only were there frequent and undisguised places where the ground was torn up by explosives, but the ninja had all been traveling on the ground, crossing rivers instead of running along them. They had been moving slowly in order to be certain they didn't miss any threats and as a result there was plenty of scent and sign to be found.
"That dog is bullshit," Inuzuka grumbled, glaring at Canvass. A week had passed since Akane and her team had been through this area; Akaryōken the ninken was able to catch only occasional whiffs. Canvass the Dog Clan bloodhound, on the other hand, had been asking her Summoner why she even needed to be here; with a trail this obvious, surely the humans could follow it on their own? Mari had quietly remarked to the fulminating Inuzuka ninja that there was no shame in having different specialties; Inuzuka dogs were bred for intelligence first, combat second, and tracking third; were the group to be ambushed, Akaryōken would be far more of an asset than Canvass, and therefore he should be willing to let her shine in her own area. Both man and dog had seemed mollified.
"They paused for lunch here," Canvass said, ignoring the humans' quiet conversation. She sniffed at a tree bole whose roots grew into something appropriate for sitting on. "Hm. Akane had pastrami, one of the others sat next to her and ate rice and fish." She sniffed again and made a face. "Ugh, flounder. And it was going off." She snuffled around a bit, then raised her head. "They went this way."
o-o-o-o
They had been jogging for six hours, swinging in a wide arc towards the Woods, when Canvass jolted to a stop.
"What's wrong?" Hazō demanded.
Canvass snuffled around the ground, then up the trunk of a large tree, bracing her paws against it to gain some height.
"I'm getting other humans," she said. "Three of them. Lots of greenery overlaid in their scent, but not of any type in this immediate area. I think they probably had it attached to their clothes to help with camouflage. Also, their base scent is unlike the people in your Leaf. I suspect they aren't from the area and their food has a very different seasonings profile."
Team Uplift exchanged grim looks.
o-o-o-o
"Akane's trail ends here," Canvass said. She had been sniffing around the perimeter of the clearing for three minutes, the longest by far that she had needed to search for the trail. "Also, I smell blood. A lot of it, but faint. Pretty sure it's just the kids', not Akane's. The other thing I smell is a whole lot of burned flesh. Absolutely charred so I can't tell whose it was, but it's there."
"Neji, find me something," Hazō said.
The white-eyed chūnin raised an eyebrow at the curt command, but he activated his bloodline and stood still, concentrating. A moment later he grunted in surprise.
"There are a trio of damaged trees buried here," he said. "Localized burns on them, the kind of thing you would see from a jutsu."
"The ground is softer than it should be," Inuzuka said, studying the earth. "It's been turned over in a big area. Someone tried to tamp it down afterwards, and they did a good job of putting fresh leaf litter over it, but you can see the marks." He pointed.
Hazō studied the indicated area; he could see the signs now that they had been pointed out, but would have missed them on his own. "Canvass, if the blood had soaked into the dirt and then the dirt was buried, would that match what you're smelling?"
"Probably," the droopy-eared dog said. "It's kinda weird."
"There are faint impressions over there that match those 'portacabins' Motokazu mentioned," Neji said, pointing.
"I smell woodsmoke along with more of that slightly spoiled fish," Canvass said. "I think the team had made camp." She snuffled around the eastern side of the clearing, moving deeper into the woods for a minute as the humans trailed along. "Yep. Two of the outlanders waited here, the third one went forward and spied on the clearing, then he came back and joined up with the other two and all three of them went forward again, this time into the clearing."
No one spoke. Everyone looked ready to kill.
Canvass traversed the clearing once more, nose down in the leaves. She moved back into the woods, spiraling farther and farther out as the humans trailed along behind doing their best to stay out of her way. Fully half a mile from the campsite, she stopped spiraling and started searching a local area. After yet another ten minutes, she sat down and looked at the humans. "The three foreigners were at the campsite for a bit, then they moved off this way, continuing on to the northwest," she said. "There's no scent in between the campsite and here, so they're doing something to break their trail. About thirty yards over there"—she nosed back where they had been walking—"they started leaving scent again, but they're hopping from tree to tree in order to break trail, which makes it a lot harder to follow the scent. Foreoffpaw, now they stink of blood and charred meat, which makes it easier. Also, there's faint hints of Akane and her team. It's faint, probably not enough for bodies, living or dead. More likely that the bad guys touched their bodies or are carrying their clothes. It's getting late; are we following them or making camp?"
"Following," Hazō said in a tone that brooked no argument. Yuno, the putative mission commander, raised an eyebrow and smiled slightly but said nothing.
They tracked the three unknown ninja to the northwest, moving by the light of Jiraiya's Awesome Daybright Lantern seals. The seals threw crazy shadows everywhere, making the footing perilous, but no one complained.
Multiple times, Canvass lost the trail and everyone waited as she snuffled in an expanding spiral, sampling each tree until she found another trace. The gaps were long, half a mile or more, so their progress was made in fits and starts, a bit of steady progress followed by long minutes of waiting while Canvass searched for the next segment. No one begrudged the dog the difficulty.
Finally, Canvass sat down and shook her head. "They're gone. There's no further trace to be had."
"Where are we?" Hazō asked.
Tenten had been carrying the map and compass, tracking their progress across the day. Wordlessly, she held up the paper and pointed.
Everyone crowded close except for Kei, who could not stand the proximity, and Neji, who simply activated his Byakugan and observed without taking up space in the scrum.
"Well, this sucks," Noburi said, staring at their indicated position.
"True words," Inuzuka agreed.
"I could throw a rock into Waterfall, Iron, or Rice," Mari said, her eyes soft as she focused on the implications. "If they're from Iron then they're missing-nin, or they are passing through in order to look like missing-nin before turning for wherever home might be."
"Waterfall has a tight enough border that it's unlikely anyone aside from one of their people could pass through there without being caught," Inuzuka said. "But they're a nominal ally."
"Rice is a possibility," Kei said. "They are Leaf's primary competition as food supplier for the continent. Espionage against us would make sense."
"No," Hazō said. "Spies want to pass without notice. These people trailed Akane and her team for miles, scouted their camp, and then attacked. The team was still moving away from Leaf when they were hit, and they had been moving at the same pace all day. They didn't stumble over a foreign spy team and escape only for the bad guys to catch up. This was an unprovoked attack."
"Canvass, there's no chance that the bad guys were carrying anyone, right?" Noburi asked. "Like, for example, a captured Leaf ninja being taken in for interrogation as part of an especially aggressive espionage effort?"
The dog shrugged. "Like I said, there's faint hints of them but I doubt it's bodies. Probably the bad guys touched their bodies or are carrying their clothes."
"The bodies weren't at the attack site either," Neji noted.
"Clearly, their most youthful bodies were placed into storage seals," Rock Lee said. "But for what reason?"
"Most likely just to reduce the traces," Mari said before Hazō could bristle at the reference to 'bodies'. "A torn up patch of ground in the middle of nowhere? No one is going to find that unless they have a supernaturally good tracker to lead them there. Even if a Leaf patrol did happen to stumble across it there wouldn't be anything to learn from it without the bodies being there."
Silence fell across the group as everyone digested the implications of ninja from a foreign nation stalking and murdering Leaf ninja so soon after the end of the latest World War.
"Now what?" Canvass asked.
Author's Note: A snippet of conversation from the QM chat yesterday:
QM1: Huh. Google is telling me that real-life bloodhounds can find a scent trail up to 300 hours after it was made and follow it for up to 130 miles. Canvass is an intelligent and magical bloodhound, so I assume her nose is at least that good if not better.
QM2: Bloodhounds OP, plz nerf.
While everyone was still gathering at the estate, you took Mari aside and quietly mentioned Hagoromo Ruka's malfeasance, as well as saying that it was important to preserve evidence. Mari said that there was unlikely to be any physical evidence of wrongdoing, and also that it was basically impossible that Ritsuo had ever said, "In defiance of the Hokage's orders, I would like you to do everything in your power to harm the Gōketsu." If he was involved in this at all then it would have been completely deniable and any accusations are going to be almost impossible to prove.
Kagome was not on the estate when you returned and the plan said to leave within the hour so Hazō didn't have time to be traipsing around looking for him. You left a message with Gaku telling him that Akane is overdue, you're out looking for her, and that he is not to cause trouble until you return.
XP AWARD: 5
Brevity XP: 1
"GM had fun" XP: 3 On the one hand, the occasion for this update is sad. On the other hand, I got to write "No F*cks to Give" Hazō at his finest.
It is now about 8pm. It's pitch black out and you're about 60 miles from Leaf.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, .
EDIT: Here's a compilation of extra information based on questions the players asked:
In the interest of not wasting time in the next update: Canvass is correct. Feel free to do whatever tests you like, but there are no traces to be found regardless of what you do.
There were four portacabins, and four loose collections of portacabin-ish splinters underground that Neji identified.
Yes, she can tell the difference. She's smelling blood from all three genin, as well as slight traces of Akane's.
Yes, she can. This is either extended physical contact or the bad guys are carrying something with a lot of the team's scent on it -- probably clothing.
The burned smell appears to be residual, not one of the retreating ninja.
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