Snapping Turtle [Naruto SI]
- Thread starter Chairtastic
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Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Polyamory is legal in Oto, ya know. But since no Kaguya/Fujimoto marriages have happened in the past they don't know how their kekkei genkai blend, or if they do at all. He's one of only two people with his kekkei genkai left -- he has to take steps to make sure it gets passed on, cause he doesn't have the jutsu his clan had before the kekkei genkai manifested.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING.
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
I'm surprised that lobster would be a prestige item. Particularly on a coastal nation like Hot Water: Traditionally lobster was considered a food of desperation, being so plentiful that it rightly could be considered the-cockroach-of-the-sea, and people outright used their corpses to fertilize garden plots. It was really goddamn weird when they became popular in our timeline.
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
They are plentiful -- around Wave. Because other places have fished their lobster populations almost to exhaustion. Wave and Whirlpool are the places with big lobster populations primarily because of the Kaizoku krakens which can and will attack ships when they mistake them for whales. Lobster populations will recover eventually -- folks will just have to make due with crabs most of the time, or crayfish.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
For some reason people didn't realize you're supposed to boil it whole until a century or two back, iirc.
- Location
- Canada
Well that's one way to keep Tsunade from racking up huge debts whilst in the wild and to further the economy in Oto.
All we need now is a Konoha interlude 3 years later, with things like seeing how Orochimaru's team are doing and looking into how the administration is handling things
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING.
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
Their population must be goddamn huge then. We depopulated them in our oceans but it took throwing billions of us at them, fully industrialized and with near seamless global transport. The Naruto setting always seems fairly sparsely populated, a few actual cities and then mostly half-undeveloped towns and then a million miles of something close to wilderness.
I suppose the audience just isn't seeing most of it.
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Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
I'd guess that they only really have access to coast and river fishing considering the general tech level and actual ocean monsters.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING.
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
He keeps reincarnating. He's probably been a woman, a member of some species that does not have sexes we'd recognize as male or female, entities without sex drives or more sexual attraction for tidepools than for direct copulation, and many stranger things. Such words as 'homosexuality' mean little when the context doesn't stay in place.
We just know he likes the masculine form right now. *shrug*
The coasts are going to be the main place you can commercially harvest lobsters anyway.
I'd posit an alternate explanation: The ecology of Wave is top heavy, focused around its megafauna (like krakens but not only krakens) that bring in an annual influx of carrion in the form of half eaten whales or whatnot. Meanwhile the area is an absolute deathtrap for mid-to-low level predators like cod that would actually bother the carrion eating lobster. That level of predation might be hyperactive elsewhere.
Humans might very nearly be the only creatures eating lobster in a meaningful number near Wave at all.
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Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
lobsters keep growing until they die, so the megafauna probably eats the biggest boat-sized lobsters too. That said, significant numbers probably just grow until they grow unsustainably large and die mid-molt, leaving nothing but a soil enriching-corpse.
But humans are probably the only thing eating the ones smaller than that, yes. Long term, that may shrink the local population of kraken a bit since there's less super-lobsters to snack on.
But humans are probably the only thing eating the ones smaller than that, yes. Long term, that may shrink the local population of kraken a bit since there's less super-lobsters to snack on.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING.
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
It would probably make things slightly hard on juvenile kraken specifically. Full size kraken would be way out of the predation range of even the largest lobsters, barring the odd kaiju lobster which might actually exist in this weird as fuck setting, but baby kraken are probably dinky little things.
Even real world giant squid come from eggs only around a millimeter in diameter, released in masses about five kilograms total, and just grow freakishly quickly. They would be eaten by lobsters for the first month or two of their lives and, subsequently, be eating a lot of lobsters for a couple months afterward. After that they would stop noticing that lobsters actually exist.
Reducing the number of lobsters, or reducing the numbers of mega-lobsters, might cause a little bit of a bottleneck for growing kraken. A lot more reach the lobster-eating size but then find themselves overpopulated and hungry. I'd expect a fair bit of cannibalism and more aggressive behavior in general as taking riskier hunting actions, against less desirable prey, becomes the winning strategy. In the meantime fully adult kraken don't even recognize that any of this is happening.
...
Does it say anything that we are stopping a fanfic to discuss the details of both lobster and kaiju ecologies? I'm enjoying it but it seems like something most people would find weird and maybe a little concerning.
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Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Kaiju lobster did exist! Akami mentions them, and how overfishing by the nobility drove them extinct in their shinobi continent and sub-continental ranges. They might exist in other waters around the globe though.
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
Giant Crustacean
This giant crustacean is a summon of Nagato. Though resembling a normal crustacean, this summon has a number of chakra receivers one being stuck through the top left side of its back and another in the lower right side of its back also, implying it is being controlled by Pain. Around its mouth...
naruto.fandom.com
Giant Corpse Crab
The Giant Corpse Crab (躯大蟹, Mukuro Ōkani) was a giant crustacean that inhabited the waters somewhere between the Land of Fire and the Land of Lightning. The Giant Corpse Crab once attacked and destroyed a ship, killing the whole crew, including a young sailor named Hishaku. The Giant Corpse Crab...
naruto.fandom.com
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
My working theory is that all the summons from the animal path of Pein are dead summons which he has reanimated by way of Rinnegan fuckery. The giant corpse crab is its own thing. Island lobsters were a whole different ecological niche. And whaddya know -- the moment there was no one to bijuudama anyone fishing them too much, they started being overfished. Funny how that works.
Ch 32
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
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- He / Him / It
Ch 32: Prelude to War
---
Genin Kaguya
Nuibari sang in high-pitched tones as Junko introduced her to Sayaka's ninjato repeatedly. Nuibari had about a foot in length on Sayaka's sword, so Junko could used the extra reach to keep Sayaka on the defensive. However Nuibari's cutting power was negligible -- she was a stabbing sword. Sayaka's ninjato could parry Junko's slashes and overcome the reach imbalance for a few moments.
But then Junko's second sword came into play. Made from her humerus, the shortsword was ideal for slashes. However splitting her strength with a sword in each hand made it harder to guard when Junko was pushed onto the defense. Such was the case when Sayaka deflected Nuibari off the metal backing on her glove to get in close. Junko had to step backward rapidly and tried to get Nuibari in a position to stab.
However, when the time came, Sayaka dodged to the side and stuck Junko right in the forehead protector with the hilt of her ninjato. It stunned her for a moment, but it was enough for Sayaka to get her leg hooked behind Junko's knee and trip her. Junko fell backwards two feet and landed on the mat.
"Ring out!" The referee shouted as she signaled for the fighters to part. All around them the audience clapped at the performance of the two. "Sayaka Kanzaki wins!"
Their swordsmatch had taken place on a balancing beam on a mat, where Junko lay after her defeat. Around them, the gym returned to normal. Younger genin worked on their wall-walking or physical exercises, while the kenjutsu class returned to their classroom.
Sayaka hopped off the balancing beam and offered Junko a hand up. Given she had a sword in each hand, Sayaka had to grab her by the wrist. "Thanks for the practice," Sayaka said and sheathed her ninjato. "Though… the dual-wielding might not work too well with Nuibari."
"I just need more practice with it is all!" Junko defended herself, and let the legendary sword wrap herself in bandages and returned her to Junko's hip. She pouted. "It's not fair that I can't hack off a man's arm like the other swordsmen can."
Sayaka patted her on the shoulder. "But your sword is way better at penetration." She tapped herself on the chest. "She fits right between the ribs, and can keep going. Punctures a lung, incapacitates the target, and then you can do your fly-zapper thing."
Junko nodded, then gestured with her humerus sword. "But with this… I can take off a man's head, his arms, his legs… maybe all in two swings if I get really lucky." Her pouting became even more pronounced. "I love using Nuibari, but she can only do really shallow cuts."
Sayaka nodded, and offered an understanding smile. "Maybe you could develop a jutsu to help with that? Something like using chakra to create a cutting edge?"
"Ooh." Junko's pouting vanished as she imagined the possibilities. "I could make it like a saw blade, maybe! Lots of small hooks that cut as they're dragged across the target."
"That's the spirit!"
They continued to talk shop about sword until Haruki arrived at the gym to join them in their kenjutsu practice with a guest to observe: Shibi Aburame. Shibi had adopted a long earth-tone coat with a high collar and fancy-looking sunglasses since his last visit to Oto. Haruki had bought into the latest Konoha fashion -- wearing mesh under his normal clothes. It was more obvious because his outfit was asymmetrical -- lacking one sleeve, and the opposite side pants leg stopping at his knee.
"Hello," Shibi greeted with a bow. He'd at least warmed up enough to move on from 'greetings', which made Junko happy. He waved back to her when she waved enthusiastically. "Orochimaru-sensei had to quickly return to Konoha to deliver the news about the warmed foreign relations with Hot Water, so he left our team behind in Lady Tsunade's care."
"Oh cool! You get to spend time in the casino!" Junko gave Shibi a thumb's up as she casually blocked Haruki's sword attacks. Until he got in the zone, he was pretty predictable and his strikes were weaker than hers anyway. "You can be a hazard for the academy students practicing their transformation jutsus!"
Shibi seemed oddly uncomfortable with that. "I… don't think that's a good way to teach your students how to properly use that jutsu."
"Well, we're not at war -- we can't have them sneak into the enemy camps like we used to." Junko shrugged. "We make do with what we've got."
Shibi didn't respond with words, but he started to sweat more visibly.
Junko decided to move on. "So! How did the match-maker meeting go?"
Haruki made a face and tried to feint with an overhead swing into a pommel strike. "It didn't. Something came up."
Shibi flinched.
Sayaka used a training sword to correct Haruki's stance and raised her eyebrow. "Well, how did Noburu's date go?"
"It didn't. Something came up." Haruki, in a rare display, actually tried to overpower Junko's block on his next attack. It shocked her enough to where it almost worked. He ended up knocked on his ass by her pushback.
Shibi flinched again.
Junko looked at Haruki, Shibi, and then Sayaka with a confused look. "But what could have come up that made the two of you miss those things? You were talking about that since before the mission to Panko Port."
Shibi flinched again. "Um." His voice was soft, almost like he didn't want to be heard. "Orochimaru-sensei made a sudden request during the talks…."
--
Medical Director Ruan
It was so… odd. A relic of a barbaric time turned to beneficial use. Suzume watched as Noburu and another medical ninja applied the bagua seal of the lake she had developed onto a man's arm, while she traced a chakra path from the seal to the lumbar region of the spine. A second seal of the earth had already been placed on the man's abdomen with a chakra path to the same spot.
The man, a villager from Wave, watched them with visible fear in his eyes until the three of them backed off.
Suzume formed hand signs and activated the two seals. They flared with red light for a moment before they followed the chakra path and dimmed. Once that was done, she brushed the man's leg with her rubber-gloved hand.
"...I can feel that! I can feel it!" The man's fear melted as he rejoiced at the returned sensation. "I can wiggle my toes!"
Suzume nodded. "It will be some time before you're able to walk again -- we'll send someone out to your home every day to conduct physical therapy. But with a few months of this, you will be able to walk again. It is my hope that you will reconsider our regeneration treatment to repair your spine -- but this workaround should suffice for now."
The patient didn't seem to care, he was busy touching his legs and rejoiced at the sensation. Before they left, Suzume made sure to adjust the patient's chart for the nurses. Once they were out, the three of them removed the medical goggles, gloves, masks, and scrub caps which they had covered themselves with. When the seals interacting could have had messy consequences, going in fully scrubbed up was necessary.
"Kin," Suzume started once they were away from the patient's room. "That was very good application on the earth seal. Noburu, I noticed some shaking in your hand on the lake seal, but I'm glad you took the extra time to get it right."
Oto's main hospital in Tower Four was still new -- they didn't have a whole lot of operating theatres, they weren't fully staffed, and while they had the space for a lot of patients they did not yet have the medical equipment. The materials to make advanced medical equipment predominately came from Hot Water, Frost, and Lightning countries. Up until recently, none of them had been interested in selling to companies hoping to fill Oto's orders. But the parts of the hospital which were operational were brightly colored -- with cultural stories painted on the walls.
"Thank you, Director," Kin said and bowed her head. "My calligraphy courses paid off!"
"Hmm." Noburu responded, morose. "I hope next time is better."
Suzume didn't let Noburu's sullen attitude dim her cheer. The bagua seals she had developed as punitive measures had positive applications! "You just need more practice," she told him. "You'll get the hang of calm and precise strokes as time goes on."
"Hmm."
Suzume dismissed the junior medical ninja and retired to her office. Her shift was almost done, and she would be able to go to the casino to drink and chat with Tsunade. She seemed to be doing that more and more.
Suzume's office was covered in bubble windows -- and surrounded by elkhorn corals. It gave her the feeling of being in the middle of a forest -- except for the fish. The fish dispelled her forest-feelings. But thankfully, elkhorn coral was quite sharp and many bigger fish didn't want to deal with it.
She started to note down the results of the treatment as soon as she got to her desk. The lake seal's control over the nervous system combined with the earth seal's control of the muscular system together allowed them to bypass a severed spinal column -- though she hoped the patient would agree to regeneration later on.
But she could understand why he wouldn't want it. The idea of taking bijuu chakra and putting it into other people for medicinal purposes was a hard sell. Even Tsunade told her it was flat-out impossible to do ethically -- bijuu chakra was outside of the medic's complete control and that posed an unacceptable level of risk to the patient.
Maybe if they could isolate the bijuu chakra, and removed the remote control properties the bijuu had over it which caused the lack of total control. She jotted the idea down in her notepad next to the patient file.
"Excuse me, ma'am," a smooth voice spoke and drew Suzume's attention. She looked over and saw a rat on his hind legs, dressed in a small version of an Oto flak jacket and forehead protector with a kunai pouch around his tail. One of the ninja rats she and Noburu had contracts with. The rat saluted her and stood straighter.
"Keigo," she greeted him with a smile and wave. "What's the problem?"
The rat broke his salute. "I come with a message from Noburu. He would like to know if he could skip his lunch break and leave an hour early?" The rat looked a bit awkward to have such a mundane message. "I get the feeling he and Ishidate didn't… have fun last night?"
"Ishidate?" Suzume had to struggle to remember who Keigo referred to -- then it clicked. The Uemon clan head's oldest son -- she had done his checkup when he entered the ninja ranks as a genin. A brunette with a beauty mark and a pink-red wig, a ninja-artisan. Suzume suddenly slumped in her chair and rubbed her temples. "Oh right. They're dating." Or rather, the likely 'were' dating, since if they had a plan for the night prior -- then Orochimaru's idea had squashed that flat. She sighed, and turned to the ninja rat. "Tell him to complete whatever he's doing now and to just go home. I don't need an emotional teen in the infectious disease lab releasing the airborne rabies virus."
If anyone ever asked her about that, she would tell them they had developed it purely for the vaccine research. It wasn't even a viable bioweapon. Yet.
Keigo nodded and scurried away.
"Sheesh, no wonder he's been such a drag all day," Suzume muttered. "Being dumped sucks." She looked up, intent on reminiscing about her days dating Isshin and all their ups and downs. However, she instead saw a grouper above her office through a window. A grouper had no business being so still or being so close to the sharp elkhorn coral.
Worse still, the grouper seemed to notice how obviously Suzume noticed it and then promptly swam away. It moved with too much grace too close to the corals for Suzume to call anything but bullshit on the situation. She calmly reached under her desk and pressed a button which would ring a silent 'intruder alarm' in the office of the Sotaicho and other village leaders.
--
Third Hokage
Hiruzen had offered to take the village council out for lunch. A short window where the four of them could put aside their duties and be as friends again. All four of them were smiles and laughs when they returned to the Hokage tower. That saw them through a couple of drawn-out transcripts of courtly intrigue before they were growing grouchy again.
"Hmmm the daimyo is miffed, it looks like." Homura muttered and rubbed his forehead. He threw a sheet of paper onto the table between them and let them look at it. "He wants to sell the valleys south of River to the River daimyo to settle his debts and create a buffer zone. But your student's mining operations in the area are listed as an S-class priority."
Hiruzen read the transcript and passed it off to Danzo. "This unique mineral Orochimaru has found is worth keeping the surrounding lands. We don't know how deep it goes, yet."
"We should have gotten our hooks into Tanigakure first," Danzo scolded him when he passed the transcript to Kotaru. "With them as Suna's puppet, we have too little influence in the region to keep such a wide stretch of land secure."
"If they're given this land, however, their wealth will increase exponentially from agriculture and access to the sea," Kotaru responded after she'd looked over the transcript. "We could loosen Suna's hooks by way of Tani's sudden wealth combined with their pride. Perhaps they would trade hooks for a leash?"
Homura was about to speak again when the whole of the Hokage Tower shook suddenly. A sudden terrible killing intent pierced through the building and made Hiruzen have to shake himself free of it.
"Orochimaru?" He questioned as the killing intent seemed familiar?
"Where is he?!" Orochimaru's voice pierced the air from far below in a roar. Hiruzen had never heard his student so enraged. He'd only ever heard Tsunade reach that degree of anger.
Everyone in the room turned to look at Danzo.
"What?" He asked and spread his arms in an exaggerated shrug. "I didn't do anything."
"Where is he?! Tell me where he is -- I'm going to kill him!"
All three of the other council member's eyebrows rose at the same time. "Come now Danzo, we can help smooth this over -- if you're honest about what happened," Hiruzen said, understanding.
"I haven't done anything!" Danzo seemed genuinely annoyed, though it persuaded his peers not.
A second wave of killing intent rolled through the room as the door opened. Orochimaru looked significantly out of sorts -- heavy sweating, frazzled hair, one of his legs appeared to drag behind him. Hiruzen stopped to consider the possibility that Orochimaru and his team had been ambushed on their way to Oto, then turned to glare at Danzo.
"It wasn't me!" He defended himself.
"Where… is Jiraiya?" Orochimaru growled, his eyes locked on Hiruzen.
"See? I didn't do this!"
Hiruzen waved Danzo off, and focused on his irate student. "What did Jiraiya do? I won't tell you where he is until you tell me." His stern mask melted as Orochimaru relayed the information he'd requested. The older man slumped in his chair and slid down as if to hide his shame by proxy. "I can't believe he'd do that." He dragged his hand down his face until it passed his eyes. "What am I saying -- of course I can."
Homura cleared his throat. "As… irritating as the possibility is, it's impossible that Jiraiya has done as you say." Hiruzen's teammate adjusted his glasses. "Jiraiya hasn't been sent to Oto since the last seal check-in a year ago."
Kotaru pinched her chin in consideration. "Hmm. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Jiraiya went there on his own time. He's been making greater use of his time off than he has in past years."
Danzo scoffed. "Even if it were true, there's no reason to have returned to Konoha with such haste -- you've clearly pushed your body so hard that you'll need to recover before you can be sent back to Oto to finish those talks with Hot Water."
Orochimaru's enraged gaze snapped to Danzo and the Sannin suddenly advanced on him with his arms extended. It took Hiruzen and Homura to physically keep Orochimaru away from strangling Danzo -- the Sannin wouldn't respond to orders.
"Really, the most unbelievable thing about this whole situation," Kotaru said with a dismissive wave of her hand, "is Jiraiya giving away a complete set of Icha-Icha. There are no Icha-Icha sets to give away -- and he certainly wouldn't allow his publishers to package one when his new book will be available for purchase in summer."
The menfolk all stopped and looked at her in shock. Even enraged Orochimaru.
"What?" She shrugged. "I'm in a book club. We read them on occasion."
"So the question then becomes," Danzo said as he stroked his scarred chin, "which of our enemies have disguises which can fool a Byakugan? And what have they smuggled into Oto in the disguise of Jiraiya's novels?"
That had been a tangled mess to deal with. The Hyuga had done a test and couldn't find substantial relations with Orochimaru or Noburu. They were obviously related somehow -- but the two families had branched so long ago that the Byakugan was all they shared. However, the Hyuga were hopefully not involved in the current mess.
Hiruzen didn't like the short list of answers to either of Danzo's questions which he immediately came up with. He locked eyes with his student -- who appeared to finally emerge from the state of blind rage he'd been in. "Orochimaru -- get to a medic to make sure you're good to go, then get back to Oto. Someone's going to start something there -- and for once, it might not be Danzo's doing."
Danzo made a displeased grunt, but didn't refute the point.
---
You have no idea how hard I had to fight myself not to have Noburu teach Junko the fcking Chidori over the timeskip. If it happens, it'll be referenced on-screen, damnit!
---
Genin Kaguya
Nuibari sang in high-pitched tones as Junko introduced her to Sayaka's ninjato repeatedly. Nuibari had about a foot in length on Sayaka's sword, so Junko could used the extra reach to keep Sayaka on the defensive. However Nuibari's cutting power was negligible -- she was a stabbing sword. Sayaka's ninjato could parry Junko's slashes and overcome the reach imbalance for a few moments.
But then Junko's second sword came into play. Made from her humerus, the shortsword was ideal for slashes. However splitting her strength with a sword in each hand made it harder to guard when Junko was pushed onto the defense. Such was the case when Sayaka deflected Nuibari off the metal backing on her glove to get in close. Junko had to step backward rapidly and tried to get Nuibari in a position to stab.
However, when the time came, Sayaka dodged to the side and stuck Junko right in the forehead protector with the hilt of her ninjato. It stunned her for a moment, but it was enough for Sayaka to get her leg hooked behind Junko's knee and trip her. Junko fell backwards two feet and landed on the mat.
"Ring out!" The referee shouted as she signaled for the fighters to part. All around them the audience clapped at the performance of the two. "Sayaka Kanzaki wins!"
Their swordsmatch had taken place on a balancing beam on a mat, where Junko lay after her defeat. Around them, the gym returned to normal. Younger genin worked on their wall-walking or physical exercises, while the kenjutsu class returned to their classroom.
Sayaka hopped off the balancing beam and offered Junko a hand up. Given she had a sword in each hand, Sayaka had to grab her by the wrist. "Thanks for the practice," Sayaka said and sheathed her ninjato. "Though… the dual-wielding might not work too well with Nuibari."
"I just need more practice with it is all!" Junko defended herself, and let the legendary sword wrap herself in bandages and returned her to Junko's hip. She pouted. "It's not fair that I can't hack off a man's arm like the other swordsmen can."
Sayaka patted her on the shoulder. "But your sword is way better at penetration." She tapped herself on the chest. "She fits right between the ribs, and can keep going. Punctures a lung, incapacitates the target, and then you can do your fly-zapper thing."
Junko nodded, then gestured with her humerus sword. "But with this… I can take off a man's head, his arms, his legs… maybe all in two swings if I get really lucky." Her pouting became even more pronounced. "I love using Nuibari, but she can only do really shallow cuts."
Sayaka nodded, and offered an understanding smile. "Maybe you could develop a jutsu to help with that? Something like using chakra to create a cutting edge?"
"Ooh." Junko's pouting vanished as she imagined the possibilities. "I could make it like a saw blade, maybe! Lots of small hooks that cut as they're dragged across the target."
"That's the spirit!"
They continued to talk shop about sword until Haruki arrived at the gym to join them in their kenjutsu practice with a guest to observe: Shibi Aburame. Shibi had adopted a long earth-tone coat with a high collar and fancy-looking sunglasses since his last visit to Oto. Haruki had bought into the latest Konoha fashion -- wearing mesh under his normal clothes. It was more obvious because his outfit was asymmetrical -- lacking one sleeve, and the opposite side pants leg stopping at his knee.
"Hello," Shibi greeted with a bow. He'd at least warmed up enough to move on from 'greetings', which made Junko happy. He waved back to her when she waved enthusiastically. "Orochimaru-sensei had to quickly return to Konoha to deliver the news about the warmed foreign relations with Hot Water, so he left our team behind in Lady Tsunade's care."
"Oh cool! You get to spend time in the casino!" Junko gave Shibi a thumb's up as she casually blocked Haruki's sword attacks. Until he got in the zone, he was pretty predictable and his strikes were weaker than hers anyway. "You can be a hazard for the academy students practicing their transformation jutsus!"
Shibi seemed oddly uncomfortable with that. "I… don't think that's a good way to teach your students how to properly use that jutsu."
"Well, we're not at war -- we can't have them sneak into the enemy camps like we used to." Junko shrugged. "We make do with what we've got."
Shibi didn't respond with words, but he started to sweat more visibly.
Junko decided to move on. "So! How did the match-maker meeting go?"
Haruki made a face and tried to feint with an overhead swing into a pommel strike. "It didn't. Something came up."
Shibi flinched.
Sayaka used a training sword to correct Haruki's stance and raised her eyebrow. "Well, how did Noburu's date go?"
"It didn't. Something came up." Haruki, in a rare display, actually tried to overpower Junko's block on his next attack. It shocked her enough to where it almost worked. He ended up knocked on his ass by her pushback.
Shibi flinched again.
Junko looked at Haruki, Shibi, and then Sayaka with a confused look. "But what could have come up that made the two of you miss those things? You were talking about that since before the mission to Panko Port."
Shibi flinched again. "Um." His voice was soft, almost like he didn't want to be heard. "Orochimaru-sensei made a sudden request during the talks…."
--
Medical Director Ruan
It was so… odd. A relic of a barbaric time turned to beneficial use. Suzume watched as Noburu and another medical ninja applied the bagua seal of the lake she had developed onto a man's arm, while she traced a chakra path from the seal to the lumbar region of the spine. A second seal of the earth had already been placed on the man's abdomen with a chakra path to the same spot.
The man, a villager from Wave, watched them with visible fear in his eyes until the three of them backed off.
Suzume formed hand signs and activated the two seals. They flared with red light for a moment before they followed the chakra path and dimmed. Once that was done, she brushed the man's leg with her rubber-gloved hand.
"...I can feel that! I can feel it!" The man's fear melted as he rejoiced at the returned sensation. "I can wiggle my toes!"
Suzume nodded. "It will be some time before you're able to walk again -- we'll send someone out to your home every day to conduct physical therapy. But with a few months of this, you will be able to walk again. It is my hope that you will reconsider our regeneration treatment to repair your spine -- but this workaround should suffice for now."
The patient didn't seem to care, he was busy touching his legs and rejoiced at the sensation. Before they left, Suzume made sure to adjust the patient's chart for the nurses. Once they were out, the three of them removed the medical goggles, gloves, masks, and scrub caps which they had covered themselves with. When the seals interacting could have had messy consequences, going in fully scrubbed up was necessary.
"Kin," Suzume started once they were away from the patient's room. "That was very good application on the earth seal. Noburu, I noticed some shaking in your hand on the lake seal, but I'm glad you took the extra time to get it right."
Oto's main hospital in Tower Four was still new -- they didn't have a whole lot of operating theatres, they weren't fully staffed, and while they had the space for a lot of patients they did not yet have the medical equipment. The materials to make advanced medical equipment predominately came from Hot Water, Frost, and Lightning countries. Up until recently, none of them had been interested in selling to companies hoping to fill Oto's orders. But the parts of the hospital which were operational were brightly colored -- with cultural stories painted on the walls.
"Thank you, Director," Kin said and bowed her head. "My calligraphy courses paid off!"
"Hmm." Noburu responded, morose. "I hope next time is better."
Suzume didn't let Noburu's sullen attitude dim her cheer. The bagua seals she had developed as punitive measures had positive applications! "You just need more practice," she told him. "You'll get the hang of calm and precise strokes as time goes on."
"Hmm."
Suzume dismissed the junior medical ninja and retired to her office. Her shift was almost done, and she would be able to go to the casino to drink and chat with Tsunade. She seemed to be doing that more and more.
Suzume's office was covered in bubble windows -- and surrounded by elkhorn corals. It gave her the feeling of being in the middle of a forest -- except for the fish. The fish dispelled her forest-feelings. But thankfully, elkhorn coral was quite sharp and many bigger fish didn't want to deal with it.
She started to note down the results of the treatment as soon as she got to her desk. The lake seal's control over the nervous system combined with the earth seal's control of the muscular system together allowed them to bypass a severed spinal column -- though she hoped the patient would agree to regeneration later on.
But she could understand why he wouldn't want it. The idea of taking bijuu chakra and putting it into other people for medicinal purposes was a hard sell. Even Tsunade told her it was flat-out impossible to do ethically -- bijuu chakra was outside of the medic's complete control and that posed an unacceptable level of risk to the patient.
Maybe if they could isolate the bijuu chakra, and removed the remote control properties the bijuu had over it which caused the lack of total control. She jotted the idea down in her notepad next to the patient file.
"Excuse me, ma'am," a smooth voice spoke and drew Suzume's attention. She looked over and saw a rat on his hind legs, dressed in a small version of an Oto flak jacket and forehead protector with a kunai pouch around his tail. One of the ninja rats she and Noburu had contracts with. The rat saluted her and stood straighter.
"Keigo," she greeted him with a smile and wave. "What's the problem?"
The rat broke his salute. "I come with a message from Noburu. He would like to know if he could skip his lunch break and leave an hour early?" The rat looked a bit awkward to have such a mundane message. "I get the feeling he and Ishidate didn't… have fun last night?"
"Ishidate?" Suzume had to struggle to remember who Keigo referred to -- then it clicked. The Uemon clan head's oldest son -- she had done his checkup when he entered the ninja ranks as a genin. A brunette with a beauty mark and a pink-red wig, a ninja-artisan. Suzume suddenly slumped in her chair and rubbed her temples. "Oh right. They're dating." Or rather, the likely 'were' dating, since if they had a plan for the night prior -- then Orochimaru's idea had squashed that flat. She sighed, and turned to the ninja rat. "Tell him to complete whatever he's doing now and to just go home. I don't need an emotional teen in the infectious disease lab releasing the airborne rabies virus."
If anyone ever asked her about that, she would tell them they had developed it purely for the vaccine research. It wasn't even a viable bioweapon. Yet.
Keigo nodded and scurried away.
"Sheesh, no wonder he's been such a drag all day," Suzume muttered. "Being dumped sucks." She looked up, intent on reminiscing about her days dating Isshin and all their ups and downs. However, she instead saw a grouper above her office through a window. A grouper had no business being so still or being so close to the sharp elkhorn coral.
Worse still, the grouper seemed to notice how obviously Suzume noticed it and then promptly swam away. It moved with too much grace too close to the corals for Suzume to call anything but bullshit on the situation. She calmly reached under her desk and pressed a button which would ring a silent 'intruder alarm' in the office of the Sotaicho and other village leaders.
--
Third Hokage
Hiruzen had offered to take the village council out for lunch. A short window where the four of them could put aside their duties and be as friends again. All four of them were smiles and laughs when they returned to the Hokage tower. That saw them through a couple of drawn-out transcripts of courtly intrigue before they were growing grouchy again.
"Hmmm the daimyo is miffed, it looks like." Homura muttered and rubbed his forehead. He threw a sheet of paper onto the table between them and let them look at it. "He wants to sell the valleys south of River to the River daimyo to settle his debts and create a buffer zone. But your student's mining operations in the area are listed as an S-class priority."
Hiruzen read the transcript and passed it off to Danzo. "This unique mineral Orochimaru has found is worth keeping the surrounding lands. We don't know how deep it goes, yet."
"We should have gotten our hooks into Tanigakure first," Danzo scolded him when he passed the transcript to Kotaru. "With them as Suna's puppet, we have too little influence in the region to keep such a wide stretch of land secure."
"If they're given this land, however, their wealth will increase exponentially from agriculture and access to the sea," Kotaru responded after she'd looked over the transcript. "We could loosen Suna's hooks by way of Tani's sudden wealth combined with their pride. Perhaps they would trade hooks for a leash?"
Homura was about to speak again when the whole of the Hokage Tower shook suddenly. A sudden terrible killing intent pierced through the building and made Hiruzen have to shake himself free of it.
"Orochimaru?" He questioned as the killing intent seemed familiar?
"Where is he?!" Orochimaru's voice pierced the air from far below in a roar. Hiruzen had never heard his student so enraged. He'd only ever heard Tsunade reach that degree of anger.
Everyone in the room turned to look at Danzo.
"What?" He asked and spread his arms in an exaggerated shrug. "I didn't do anything."
"Where is he?! Tell me where he is -- I'm going to kill him!"
All three of the other council member's eyebrows rose at the same time. "Come now Danzo, we can help smooth this over -- if you're honest about what happened," Hiruzen said, understanding.
"I haven't done anything!" Danzo seemed genuinely annoyed, though it persuaded his peers not.
A second wave of killing intent rolled through the room as the door opened. Orochimaru looked significantly out of sorts -- heavy sweating, frazzled hair, one of his legs appeared to drag behind him. Hiruzen stopped to consider the possibility that Orochimaru and his team had been ambushed on their way to Oto, then turned to glare at Danzo.
"It wasn't me!" He defended himself.
"Where… is Jiraiya?" Orochimaru growled, his eyes locked on Hiruzen.
"See? I didn't do this!"
Hiruzen waved Danzo off, and focused on his irate student. "What did Jiraiya do? I won't tell you where he is until you tell me." His stern mask melted as Orochimaru relayed the information he'd requested. The older man slumped in his chair and slid down as if to hide his shame by proxy. "I can't believe he'd do that." He dragged his hand down his face until it passed his eyes. "What am I saying -- of course I can."
Homura cleared his throat. "As… irritating as the possibility is, it's impossible that Jiraiya has done as you say." Hiruzen's teammate adjusted his glasses. "Jiraiya hasn't been sent to Oto since the last seal check-in a year ago."
Kotaru pinched her chin in consideration. "Hmm. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Jiraiya went there on his own time. He's been making greater use of his time off than he has in past years."
Danzo scoffed. "Even if it were true, there's no reason to have returned to Konoha with such haste -- you've clearly pushed your body so hard that you'll need to recover before you can be sent back to Oto to finish those talks with Hot Water."
Orochimaru's enraged gaze snapped to Danzo and the Sannin suddenly advanced on him with his arms extended. It took Hiruzen and Homura to physically keep Orochimaru away from strangling Danzo -- the Sannin wouldn't respond to orders.
"Really, the most unbelievable thing about this whole situation," Kotaru said with a dismissive wave of her hand, "is Jiraiya giving away a complete set of Icha-Icha. There are no Icha-Icha sets to give away -- and he certainly wouldn't allow his publishers to package one when his new book will be available for purchase in summer."
The menfolk all stopped and looked at her in shock. Even enraged Orochimaru.
"What?" She shrugged. "I'm in a book club. We read them on occasion."
"So the question then becomes," Danzo said as he stroked his scarred chin, "which of our enemies have disguises which can fool a Byakugan? And what have they smuggled into Oto in the disguise of Jiraiya's novels?"
That had been a tangled mess to deal with. The Hyuga had done a test and couldn't find substantial relations with Orochimaru or Noburu. They were obviously related somehow -- but the two families had branched so long ago that the Byakugan was all they shared. However, the Hyuga were hopefully not involved in the current mess.
Hiruzen didn't like the short list of answers to either of Danzo's questions which he immediately came up with. He locked eyes with his student -- who appeared to finally emerge from the state of blind rage he'd been in. "Orochimaru -- get to a medic to make sure you're good to go, then get back to Oto. Someone's going to start something there -- and for once, it might not be Danzo's doing."
Danzo made a displeased grunt, but didn't refute the point.
---
You have no idea how hard I had to fight myself not to have Noburu teach Junko the fcking Chidori over the timeskip. If it happens, it'll be referenced on-screen, damnit!
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
Nice!
poor Shibi....wonder how long his stint at being a fashion disaster will last?
and i think Wind/Lightning Chakra can make things cut....
Nice work with the seals, rather useful application...
Unless of course, the Biju in question IS the medic....then their chakra would technically be under a medics complete control..
only issue is getting a Medics uniform big enough...although Henge might help?
Also have Isobu and Noburu trained in partial transformations yet?
Isobu might have issues walking around the Villiage at his normal size, but just puppeting a shadow clone is likely to get him mistaken for Noburu...
a non chakra cloak transformation visually similar to the V2 cloak might be useful.
poor Shibi....wonder how long his stint at being a fashion disaster will last?
and i think Wind/Lightning Chakra can make things cut....
Nice work with the seals, rather useful application...
Unless of course, the Biju in question IS the medic....then their chakra would technically be under a medics complete control..
only issue is getting a Medics uniform big enough...although Henge might help?
Also have Isobu and Noburu trained in partial transformations yet?
Isobu might have issues walking around the Villiage at his normal size, but just puppeting a shadow clone is likely to get him mistaken for Noburu...
a non chakra cloak transformation visually similar to the V2 cloak might be useful.
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- Location
- In My Parlour like a Good Arachne
- Pronouns
- She, her
Chances are that it was something Danzo's 'deconmissioned' organization did on his suggestion.
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Shibi's pretty fashionable for a ninja. Haruki deliberately trying to be fashionable... not so much.
Danzo was always a cloak-and-dagger guy. He's a vintage ninja -- all stealth, ambushes, covert ops, and fights which last literal seconds. They've been dealing with this for decades now -- it's just that Hiruzen has a reason to call him out on his behavior now.
Danzo joins Ryukotsusei, the Water daimyo, Fuguki, and others in the 'getting consequences-of-my-own-actions'd hard in the face' club.
Is it sus to conduct gas exchange via vacuum manipulation? Nine out of ten fish say yes.
They need to keep those guys off the twitter machine.
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Ch 32
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Ch 33: Inciting Incident
---
Arun Otsutsuki
In the dark of the depths, uninvited guests walked the incomplete halls of Otogakure and mapped out everything they could. Two groups allied together, for mutual benefit. Four ninja, and two seemingly harmless 'monks' from the 'Moon Temple'. Arun, the more senior of the two Moon folk, calmly sat in meditation as he used ninshu to sense his surroundings without the need of his eyes. Sometimes he would stroke his mustache to keep the ambient static electricity from puffing it up. His subordinate was much more exuberant. Tenmu, a boy on the precipice of being a man, was quite different than Arun. Where Arun was quiet and patient, Tenmu was loud and eager. Their appearances even differed -- Arun was tanned from his time in the fields, and had dark hair with a pronounced mustache; Tenmu was pale and had ghostly white hair, while being clean-shaven. Both were dressed as the Otsutsuki clan demanded -- black trousers and pants under a layer of white with a wide green sash around their bodies that tied at the shoulder.
Their ninja allies had disguised themselves to fool the Otogakure residents. Each had hidden their gear and weapons so that there was less of a possibility of being caught. Their mastery of disguise was impressive -- he never would take them for ninja of Kumogakure if he hadn't known prior.
Arun and Tenmu sat in the hideout with the leader of the Kumo ninja -- L. He went by 'Ling' to the locals, and posed as a merchant who sold metal ingots to the smiths. A weasley-looking man with oiled hair and a grin too large to be comfortable. He wore a katana's tsuba over his right eye as an eyepatch, and wore a kimono that had visible patches and repairs done. It was all to sell his disguise. Without any marks to fool, he wore a more serious expression and wrote down information to be sent off to Kumo.
Tenmu had been occupying himself by rolling glass balls in such a way to strike other balls and cause them to leave a ring he had carved in the stone. Suddenly, he stopped and looked up, his eyebrows raised. "Someone is coming," he whispered.
The older men tensed, and positioned themselves to slip away into the shadows.
Guiying Tang, the transformation specialist of the mission, returned from her information gathering run hours ahead of schedule. She'd come into the hideout gasping for air as if she'd run from the airlock straight there. "I was spotted," she said as she fell to her knees for want of air.
Arun used fine chakra threads to grab the kunoichi's clothes and a towel -- he laid the former next to her and placed the latter around her shoulders without ever needing to move.
"The medical director saw me," Guiying said and quickly dried herself off. "There's no way she hasn't tripped the silent alarms." The transformation specialist dressed as soon as she was dry -- Arun smacked Tenmu for using his senses to oogle the woman's form and her many intricate tattoos.
What was with the clan's youths and perversion? It seemed all the young folk were unable to control their urges anymore.
L sighed and looked at Arun. "They're going to scramble, and send rats and ants into every nook and cranny. Think we can lay low long enough to wait it out?"
Arun stroked his mustache and spread his senses far and wide. A subtle note of alarm spread through the people in the surrounding towers -- and he could feel more and more tiny notes of summons scurrying through the tiny spaces. It would not be long before they were found, if they did nothing. "No. The time is now." Arun met L's gaze with his permanently closed eyes. "Tell your agents to grab your prize. Tenmu and I will secure ours."
L nodded, his eyes narrowed. "I graciously offer to help you secure your jinchuuriki." He looked over at Guiying. "Guiying -- go help Honda and Ryou."
The kunoichi nodded, and vanished via the shunshin jutsu.
Arun frowned at the man. "We agreed -- the nine-tails jinchuuriki for you, and the three-tails for us."
"And we'll honor that agreement. But we also agreed you would allow us to get a Byakugan of our own." L frowned. "So I help you grab him -- we stop at Kumo to secure our Byakugan -- we take the heat and leave your names out of it. Everyone assumes this is a Kumo op, and no one goes looking for you."
Arun held out his hand to stop Tenmu from foolishly breaking their agreements. "Fine. But we will not allow you to transplant his eyes." Kumo could believe all they wished that the 'monks' of the Moon wanted a set of Byakugan for their own purposes. Arun would see the last eyes of the main family locked away in the Tenseigan, and be content.
L nodded in agreement, and the three vanished.
--
Ninja Rat Keigo
Keigo brushed his whiskers as he checked over the boss' apartment for the fifth time. The boss had fashioned a labyrinth of tiny tunnels and doors for ants, rats, and mice to all use to get around without having to ask for help. Noburu had said that having to ask others for help for every single task could lead to resentment, so he had placed furniture and irregularities in the walls to let them navigate from the floor-level passages to the roof-level beams from which lights hung.
Keigo was one of Noburu's two personal summons -- the other being the much smaller ninja mouse Akimitsu, a white mouse with bright red eyes and the Oto note on the back of a vest. While Keigo was a great administrator and infiltration specialist, Akimitsu was skilled at assassination and sabotage. More than one pirate crew had met their end after being softened up by their antics.
With the intruder alarms tripped, the two of them should have been getting Noburu informed and ready to report for orders -- his Byakugan would be vital. However, the boss was not cooperative.
"Boss!" Akimitsu squeaked as he followed after Noburu while the teen went back to the kitchen. "Come on!" The ninja mouse dragged Noburu's trousers behind him -- in an effort to get the young man to dress and get ready for deployment. "There's an intruder!"
"I'm not really feeling up to it, Aki." Noburu pulled open the fridge and grabbed an entire bunch of bananas. "Teenage hormones tell me 'you got dumped, you'll never be happy again, start stress eating so you won't starve to death'. And because some people refuse to let me jailbreak my brain to stop shit like that happening -- I have to let these hormones process until I can think clear-headed again."
"But boss!" The mouse pleaded and climbed up to the counter to try and stop the eventual peanut butter and banana smoothie to be produced. "The intruder! People could get hurt!"
"Fine," the teen sighed. "If I send out shadow clones to help, will that satisfy you -- nagging mouse?"
"Yes, please!"
Keigo was so very proud of his teammate -- who had found a way to use his baby-of-the-family whining to solve the problem.
Noburu promptly made a shadow clone, then glanced. He dispelled the clone, put on the trousers Akimitsu had dragged in with him, and made a new clone. Satisfied that the new clones would be fully dressed, he made two more. "Alright guys -- go use your Byakugan to help the search for the blah blah blah, I don't care anymore. I want my smoothie." Noburu's willpower visibly wilted until he had to lay his head on the counter while he made the smoothie.
The clones, irritated and bitter, grumbled amongst themselves as they left the apartment. Once they were gone, Noburu paused in his smoothie making to toss the trousers again. This time he threw them where Akimitsu couldn't easily fetch them again.
Keigo threw a thumb's-up at Akimitsu from his spot on the beams, and started off on his sixth sweep when the mouse threw one his way. He scurried along the beams just below the roof and passed through to the bathroom for his sixth sweep. Things were good until he passed through Noburu's room just as the boss' closet emitted light from within. His fur puffed up when he saw the door slide open and an unknown head stepped out.
Keigo did as he was trained to do. He back out of the boss' room, reached into his pouch, and produced a whistle. Seconds later and ear-piercing shriek filled the air which would let the boss and Akimitsu -- as well as any nearby rats -- know he'd found the intruder. A moment later, when a hand grabbed him, he knew that the intruder had found him too. Before he could be captured, he dispelled the summoning and hoped the boss and Akimitsu could handle it.
--
Sotaicho Kurosuki
Raiga had been in the midst of organizing the search for the intruder in the subterranean section of the village when the alarms sounded. First, a messenger mouse had come to the operations room in Tower One to inform him that the intruder-sighted alarm had been raised in Tower Three. Moments later there had been an alarm from the diplomat suite that Kushina Uzumaki had gone missing.
The timing was too convenient. Raiga instructed the search parties to instead focus on the missing Kushina, and decided to go after the intruder in Tower Three directly. Most of his team was in the gym, so they linked up on the way.
Imagine his surprise when he found the apartment Noburu, Akami, and Haruki shared in the Turtle House to be a mess. There were signs of a struggle -- one of the window frames was leaking, which had to be fixed right away. The only evidence they could find that Noburu had been there was a pair of trousers thrown onto a standing lamp. The same pair that Noburu's clones had been seen wearing as they helped the search.
Which naturally meant that in one swoop, two jinchuuriki had been stolen from Oto in one night. An event which had to be dealt with -- before it became public knowledge.
Raiga made the decision to go to the one person who could probably figure out where they had gone because of jinchuuriki magic or some nonsense -- Kousuke. He and his team went to the elevators to the surface with that goal in mind -- though they passed by someone who clearly wanted their attention.
Ishidate Uemon -- a sixteen-year-old chunin of Oto, and up until recently Noburu's romantic interest.
"Have you anything to report?" Raiga asked as he and his team walked.
"No, sir," the wig-wearing chunin said as he walked behind them.
"Then why are you here? I don't remember assigning you to guard the elevators today."
"I want to help the search and retrieval effort."
Raiga stopped and looked at the chunin with narrowed eyes. He knew he hadn't told anyone outside his team that there was need for a search and retrieval effort. "What makes you think there is one?"
"Noburu told me." Ishidate struggled to meet the Sotaicho's sharp gaze, or the narrowed look Haruki gave him. "I… was talking with his clones, when it said that Noburu needed help. Then they all dispelled to give Noburu back his chakra. He was doing that 'glowy eyes of serious business' thing." The teenager stuck his lower jaw out to mime the three-tails, known to speak through Noburu's clones.
"Why would you want to help?" Haruki snarled with his arms crossed. "You threw every mean word you could at him when the two of you talked."
Raiga, having recently been a teenager, knew immediately what the situation was even as Ishidate explained it. The two of them had been looking forward to that one night for months -- it was likely never going to live up to their thoughts for it. But then it got yanked away, and the teenagers had gotten angry about it.
Haruki didn't look convinced, but Raiga nodded. "Knowing him the way I do -- he's going to be absolutely irate to have been kidnapped again." Raiga rolled his eyes. "With how often it happens with pirates, you'd think he'd be used to it."
"He's probably mad because Haruki didn't get caught too," Junko added and giggled. "Now he can't blame Princess on them getting caught."
Haruki pointed his finger at her, a warning, then lowered it slowly. "You're right. This time he has no one to blame but himself. Ha!" The ninjutsu specialist grinned evilly. "I'm going to get so much mileage out of this."
"The point being," Raiga said and cuffed Haruki to get his attention. "Is that having you there might calm him down so that he doesn't cannibalize everyone before we can question them."
"Again," Sayaka added, annoyed.
"Again," Raiga readily agreed.
"Look -- sometimes you just have to feel the flesh and bone breaking between your teeth," Junko valiantly defended her teammate's honor. "Feel the blood dribble down your chin and get under your nails -- embrace their soul as it melts in your stomach, relish in their teammate's dismay. It's natural."
"For Kaguyas," Sayaka added, annoyed.
"For Kaguyas," Junko readily agreed.
Raiga snapped to get their attention again, and pointed at Ishidate. "Alright, follow us -- don't disperse any poison you don't know one-hundred-percent we're immunized against, and don't petrify anyone to completion." The Sotaicho started the march to the elevators back up.
"I won't let you down, sir," Ishidate said, and bowed. The bowing customs of the sub-continent were strange. They didn't just bend the torso, they lowered themselves by bending their knees, brought one leg back, and inclined their head while they spread their arms. It was like an invitation to decapitate them. Sometimes they'd even flick their hands in circles while they bowed. Bizarre, but nonetheless a bow. "Should… we bring Kushina's teammates, so they can keep her calm too?"
Raiga suddenly stopped walking and turned to look at Ishidate. "I forgot that the Aburame can track people with their bugs -- and it's likely Shibi has one on Kushina."
"...So we should double back and get them, then pretend as if that was our plan from the beginning?" Sayaka said, and played it cool as if she had not forgotten as well.
"Yes. Exactly that."
--
Genin Uzumaki
One moment, Kushina had been hanging out with Shizune and talking shop about beauty products while they were buried in hot sand as part of a spa day. The next moment, Kushina woke up distinctly not covered in hot sand, but instead tied up and slung over the shoulder of someone she didn't recognize. There was a gag in her mouth, and a mesh bag over her head.
She decided in that moment that violence was the only solution and that she was going to savage each and every one of them with a shoe horn. She didn't know what a shoe horn was -- but she'd heard Noburu threaten people with it, and it seemed intimidating. Maybe it was another word for spur? Instead of a rotating wheel on the heel, it was just a spike? She'd find out when she was free when she had to visit such a shoe-horned fate upon her kidnappers. Her hands were restricted, and she felt something burn around her stomach -- like her seal was disrupted. She attempted to call on the nine-tails' chakra, but found that it wouldn't come. Then she tried to wriggle her way out, and found that her hands and legs were bound -- and her chakra control was suddenly too poor to use the rope escape technique.
The mesh bag didn't totally restrict her vision -- it kept her from seeing fine details, or knowing exactly where they were. What she could unfortunately make out was that she wasn't alone in being kidnapped. There was someone slung over the shoulder of the person who shunshined behind Kushina's captor, in a similar state to Kushina.
Except they had no trousers. Either they'd been taken while sleeping, or getting dressed -- Kushina didn't want to think of other situations which could lead to people in the 'shirt and underpants' fashion style. She could, however, see lots of patches of white on the person carrying the other captive. Bandages, most likely, and at least one mass of gauze tied to their arm.
As Kushina watched, she watched the captive behind her flex their foot, and then suddenly she went flying. There was a crack of wood on metal, and Kushina landed in the boughs of a tree.
"Sonuva -- !" Someone, presumably her captor, shouted as she rubbed her nose. Kushina couldn't make out much about her except for the familiar flak jacket of Kumo, and a large amount of tattoos on her limbs. Her captor swiped her arm at the one who held the other captive. "I thought you had his chakra control disrupted!"
"I thought so too!" The captor for the male captive said, dismayed. "But he just keeps making chakra strings!"
"Well then drug him, or something! That's the third time he's made me fall because of those things!" Gloved hands grabbed Kushina and hauled her onto the kunoichi's shoulder. "And now this one's awake too. We gotta keep up the pace, or they'll catch us!"
"We cannot afford delays like this," another voice, which Kushina couldn't see, spoke up. "Dose the jinchuuriki with more of the opium, that will render him too insensate to slow us down."
Kushina, a trained kunoichi, realized she was in danger and had to think of a way to save herself because there was the chance that rescue would not arrive in time. But she also realized from the use of words like 'jinchuuriki' and 'his' exactly who was on the shoulder of the other Kumo ninja. She wanted to wash her eyes out -- but that could wait until later.
She closed her eyes as another Kumo ninja stabbed Noburu in the leg with a needle -- presumably the opium -- and tried to be a good little prisoner. Noburu had bought them time, and given her more information, but if both of them were dosed up on opium then they were SOL. She had to keep her thoughts clear, they were the only tool she had at the moment.
Kushina hoped that, whatever disrupted their ability to draw on their bijuu's powers, it didn't interfere with the bijuu's ability to look through their eyes and speak to one another. Perhaps Kousuke would appear and save the day.
Or maybe Orochimaru-sensei. That would be nice.
---
Dudes… have you ever gotten so mad that you allow a spirit turtle to partially possess you and straight up eat a crew of pirates? Asking for a friend.
---
Arun Otsutsuki
In the dark of the depths, uninvited guests walked the incomplete halls of Otogakure and mapped out everything they could. Two groups allied together, for mutual benefit. Four ninja, and two seemingly harmless 'monks' from the 'Moon Temple'. Arun, the more senior of the two Moon folk, calmly sat in meditation as he used ninshu to sense his surroundings without the need of his eyes. Sometimes he would stroke his mustache to keep the ambient static electricity from puffing it up. His subordinate was much more exuberant. Tenmu, a boy on the precipice of being a man, was quite different than Arun. Where Arun was quiet and patient, Tenmu was loud and eager. Their appearances even differed -- Arun was tanned from his time in the fields, and had dark hair with a pronounced mustache; Tenmu was pale and had ghostly white hair, while being clean-shaven. Both were dressed as the Otsutsuki clan demanded -- black trousers and pants under a layer of white with a wide green sash around their bodies that tied at the shoulder.
Their ninja allies had disguised themselves to fool the Otogakure residents. Each had hidden their gear and weapons so that there was less of a possibility of being caught. Their mastery of disguise was impressive -- he never would take them for ninja of Kumogakure if he hadn't known prior.
Arun and Tenmu sat in the hideout with the leader of the Kumo ninja -- L. He went by 'Ling' to the locals, and posed as a merchant who sold metal ingots to the smiths. A weasley-looking man with oiled hair and a grin too large to be comfortable. He wore a katana's tsuba over his right eye as an eyepatch, and wore a kimono that had visible patches and repairs done. It was all to sell his disguise. Without any marks to fool, he wore a more serious expression and wrote down information to be sent off to Kumo.
Tenmu had been occupying himself by rolling glass balls in such a way to strike other balls and cause them to leave a ring he had carved in the stone. Suddenly, he stopped and looked up, his eyebrows raised. "Someone is coming," he whispered.
The older men tensed, and positioned themselves to slip away into the shadows.
Guiying Tang, the transformation specialist of the mission, returned from her information gathering run hours ahead of schedule. She'd come into the hideout gasping for air as if she'd run from the airlock straight there. "I was spotted," she said as she fell to her knees for want of air.
Arun used fine chakra threads to grab the kunoichi's clothes and a towel -- he laid the former next to her and placed the latter around her shoulders without ever needing to move.
"The medical director saw me," Guiying said and quickly dried herself off. "There's no way she hasn't tripped the silent alarms." The transformation specialist dressed as soon as she was dry -- Arun smacked Tenmu for using his senses to oogle the woman's form and her many intricate tattoos.
What was with the clan's youths and perversion? It seemed all the young folk were unable to control their urges anymore.
L sighed and looked at Arun. "They're going to scramble, and send rats and ants into every nook and cranny. Think we can lay low long enough to wait it out?"
Arun stroked his mustache and spread his senses far and wide. A subtle note of alarm spread through the people in the surrounding towers -- and he could feel more and more tiny notes of summons scurrying through the tiny spaces. It would not be long before they were found, if they did nothing. "No. The time is now." Arun met L's gaze with his permanently closed eyes. "Tell your agents to grab your prize. Tenmu and I will secure ours."
L nodded, his eyes narrowed. "I graciously offer to help you secure your jinchuuriki." He looked over at Guiying. "Guiying -- go help Honda and Ryou."
The kunoichi nodded, and vanished via the shunshin jutsu.
Arun frowned at the man. "We agreed -- the nine-tails jinchuuriki for you, and the three-tails for us."
"And we'll honor that agreement. But we also agreed you would allow us to get a Byakugan of our own." L frowned. "So I help you grab him -- we stop at Kumo to secure our Byakugan -- we take the heat and leave your names out of it. Everyone assumes this is a Kumo op, and no one goes looking for you."
Arun held out his hand to stop Tenmu from foolishly breaking their agreements. "Fine. But we will not allow you to transplant his eyes." Kumo could believe all they wished that the 'monks' of the Moon wanted a set of Byakugan for their own purposes. Arun would see the last eyes of the main family locked away in the Tenseigan, and be content.
L nodded in agreement, and the three vanished.
--
Ninja Rat Keigo
Keigo brushed his whiskers as he checked over the boss' apartment for the fifth time. The boss had fashioned a labyrinth of tiny tunnels and doors for ants, rats, and mice to all use to get around without having to ask for help. Noburu had said that having to ask others for help for every single task could lead to resentment, so he had placed furniture and irregularities in the walls to let them navigate from the floor-level passages to the roof-level beams from which lights hung.
Keigo was one of Noburu's two personal summons -- the other being the much smaller ninja mouse Akimitsu, a white mouse with bright red eyes and the Oto note on the back of a vest. While Keigo was a great administrator and infiltration specialist, Akimitsu was skilled at assassination and sabotage. More than one pirate crew had met their end after being softened up by their antics.
With the intruder alarms tripped, the two of them should have been getting Noburu informed and ready to report for orders -- his Byakugan would be vital. However, the boss was not cooperative.
"Boss!" Akimitsu squeaked as he followed after Noburu while the teen went back to the kitchen. "Come on!" The ninja mouse dragged Noburu's trousers behind him -- in an effort to get the young man to dress and get ready for deployment. "There's an intruder!"
"I'm not really feeling up to it, Aki." Noburu pulled open the fridge and grabbed an entire bunch of bananas. "Teenage hormones tell me 'you got dumped, you'll never be happy again, start stress eating so you won't starve to death'. And because some people refuse to let me jailbreak my brain to stop shit like that happening -- I have to let these hormones process until I can think clear-headed again."
"But boss!" The mouse pleaded and climbed up to the counter to try and stop the eventual peanut butter and banana smoothie to be produced. "The intruder! People could get hurt!"
"Fine," the teen sighed. "If I send out shadow clones to help, will that satisfy you -- nagging mouse?"
"Yes, please!"
Keigo was so very proud of his teammate -- who had found a way to use his baby-of-the-family whining to solve the problem.
Noburu promptly made a shadow clone, then glanced. He dispelled the clone, put on the trousers Akimitsu had dragged in with him, and made a new clone. Satisfied that the new clones would be fully dressed, he made two more. "Alright guys -- go use your Byakugan to help the search for the blah blah blah, I don't care anymore. I want my smoothie." Noburu's willpower visibly wilted until he had to lay his head on the counter while he made the smoothie.
The clones, irritated and bitter, grumbled amongst themselves as they left the apartment. Once they were gone, Noburu paused in his smoothie making to toss the trousers again. This time he threw them where Akimitsu couldn't easily fetch them again.
Keigo threw a thumb's-up at Akimitsu from his spot on the beams, and started off on his sixth sweep when the mouse threw one his way. He scurried along the beams just below the roof and passed through to the bathroom for his sixth sweep. Things were good until he passed through Noburu's room just as the boss' closet emitted light from within. His fur puffed up when he saw the door slide open and an unknown head stepped out.
Keigo did as he was trained to do. He back out of the boss' room, reached into his pouch, and produced a whistle. Seconds later and ear-piercing shriek filled the air which would let the boss and Akimitsu -- as well as any nearby rats -- know he'd found the intruder. A moment later, when a hand grabbed him, he knew that the intruder had found him too. Before he could be captured, he dispelled the summoning and hoped the boss and Akimitsu could handle it.
--
Sotaicho Kurosuki
Raiga had been in the midst of organizing the search for the intruder in the subterranean section of the village when the alarms sounded. First, a messenger mouse had come to the operations room in Tower One to inform him that the intruder-sighted alarm had been raised in Tower Three. Moments later there had been an alarm from the diplomat suite that Kushina Uzumaki had gone missing.
The timing was too convenient. Raiga instructed the search parties to instead focus on the missing Kushina, and decided to go after the intruder in Tower Three directly. Most of his team was in the gym, so they linked up on the way.
Imagine his surprise when he found the apartment Noburu, Akami, and Haruki shared in the Turtle House to be a mess. There were signs of a struggle -- one of the window frames was leaking, which had to be fixed right away. The only evidence they could find that Noburu had been there was a pair of trousers thrown onto a standing lamp. The same pair that Noburu's clones had been seen wearing as they helped the search.
Which naturally meant that in one swoop, two jinchuuriki had been stolen from Oto in one night. An event which had to be dealt with -- before it became public knowledge.
Raiga made the decision to go to the one person who could probably figure out where they had gone because of jinchuuriki magic or some nonsense -- Kousuke. He and his team went to the elevators to the surface with that goal in mind -- though they passed by someone who clearly wanted their attention.
Ishidate Uemon -- a sixteen-year-old chunin of Oto, and up until recently Noburu's romantic interest.
"Have you anything to report?" Raiga asked as he and his team walked.
"No, sir," the wig-wearing chunin said as he walked behind them.
"Then why are you here? I don't remember assigning you to guard the elevators today."
"I want to help the search and retrieval effort."
Raiga stopped and looked at the chunin with narrowed eyes. He knew he hadn't told anyone outside his team that there was need for a search and retrieval effort. "What makes you think there is one?"
"Noburu told me." Ishidate struggled to meet the Sotaicho's sharp gaze, or the narrowed look Haruki gave him. "I… was talking with his clones, when it said that Noburu needed help. Then they all dispelled to give Noburu back his chakra. He was doing that 'glowy eyes of serious business' thing." The teenager stuck his lower jaw out to mime the three-tails, known to speak through Noburu's clones.
"Why would you want to help?" Haruki snarled with his arms crossed. "You threw every mean word you could at him when the two of you talked."
Raiga, having recently been a teenager, knew immediately what the situation was even as Ishidate explained it. The two of them had been looking forward to that one night for months -- it was likely never going to live up to their thoughts for it. But then it got yanked away, and the teenagers had gotten angry about it.
Haruki didn't look convinced, but Raiga nodded. "Knowing him the way I do -- he's going to be absolutely irate to have been kidnapped again." Raiga rolled his eyes. "With how often it happens with pirates, you'd think he'd be used to it."
"He's probably mad because Haruki didn't get caught too," Junko added and giggled. "Now he can't blame Princess on them getting caught."
Haruki pointed his finger at her, a warning, then lowered it slowly. "You're right. This time he has no one to blame but himself. Ha!" The ninjutsu specialist grinned evilly. "I'm going to get so much mileage out of this."
"The point being," Raiga said and cuffed Haruki to get his attention. "Is that having you there might calm him down so that he doesn't cannibalize everyone before we can question them."
"Again," Sayaka added, annoyed.
"Again," Raiga readily agreed.
"Look -- sometimes you just have to feel the flesh and bone breaking between your teeth," Junko valiantly defended her teammate's honor. "Feel the blood dribble down your chin and get under your nails -- embrace their soul as it melts in your stomach, relish in their teammate's dismay. It's natural."
"For Kaguyas," Sayaka added, annoyed.
"For Kaguyas," Junko readily agreed.
Raiga snapped to get their attention again, and pointed at Ishidate. "Alright, follow us -- don't disperse any poison you don't know one-hundred-percent we're immunized against, and don't petrify anyone to completion." The Sotaicho started the march to the elevators back up.
"I won't let you down, sir," Ishidate said, and bowed. The bowing customs of the sub-continent were strange. They didn't just bend the torso, they lowered themselves by bending their knees, brought one leg back, and inclined their head while they spread their arms. It was like an invitation to decapitate them. Sometimes they'd even flick their hands in circles while they bowed. Bizarre, but nonetheless a bow. "Should… we bring Kushina's teammates, so they can keep her calm too?"
Raiga suddenly stopped walking and turned to look at Ishidate. "I forgot that the Aburame can track people with their bugs -- and it's likely Shibi has one on Kushina."
"...So we should double back and get them, then pretend as if that was our plan from the beginning?" Sayaka said, and played it cool as if she had not forgotten as well.
"Yes. Exactly that."
--
Genin Uzumaki
One moment, Kushina had been hanging out with Shizune and talking shop about beauty products while they were buried in hot sand as part of a spa day. The next moment, Kushina woke up distinctly not covered in hot sand, but instead tied up and slung over the shoulder of someone she didn't recognize. There was a gag in her mouth, and a mesh bag over her head.
She decided in that moment that violence was the only solution and that she was going to savage each and every one of them with a shoe horn. She didn't know what a shoe horn was -- but she'd heard Noburu threaten people with it, and it seemed intimidating. Maybe it was another word for spur? Instead of a rotating wheel on the heel, it was just a spike? She'd find out when she was free when she had to visit such a shoe-horned fate upon her kidnappers. Her hands were restricted, and she felt something burn around her stomach -- like her seal was disrupted. She attempted to call on the nine-tails' chakra, but found that it wouldn't come. Then she tried to wriggle her way out, and found that her hands and legs were bound -- and her chakra control was suddenly too poor to use the rope escape technique.
The mesh bag didn't totally restrict her vision -- it kept her from seeing fine details, or knowing exactly where they were. What she could unfortunately make out was that she wasn't alone in being kidnapped. There was someone slung over the shoulder of the person who shunshined behind Kushina's captor, in a similar state to Kushina.
Except they had no trousers. Either they'd been taken while sleeping, or getting dressed -- Kushina didn't want to think of other situations which could lead to people in the 'shirt and underpants' fashion style. She could, however, see lots of patches of white on the person carrying the other captive. Bandages, most likely, and at least one mass of gauze tied to their arm.
As Kushina watched, she watched the captive behind her flex their foot, and then suddenly she went flying. There was a crack of wood on metal, and Kushina landed in the boughs of a tree.
"Sonuva -- !" Someone, presumably her captor, shouted as she rubbed her nose. Kushina couldn't make out much about her except for the familiar flak jacket of Kumo, and a large amount of tattoos on her limbs. Her captor swiped her arm at the one who held the other captive. "I thought you had his chakra control disrupted!"
"I thought so too!" The captor for the male captive said, dismayed. "But he just keeps making chakra strings!"
"Well then drug him, or something! That's the third time he's made me fall because of those things!" Gloved hands grabbed Kushina and hauled her onto the kunoichi's shoulder. "And now this one's awake too. We gotta keep up the pace, or they'll catch us!"
"We cannot afford delays like this," another voice, which Kushina couldn't see, spoke up. "Dose the jinchuuriki with more of the opium, that will render him too insensate to slow us down."
Kushina, a trained kunoichi, realized she was in danger and had to think of a way to save herself because there was the chance that rescue would not arrive in time. But she also realized from the use of words like 'jinchuuriki' and 'his' exactly who was on the shoulder of the other Kumo ninja. She wanted to wash her eyes out -- but that could wait until later.
She closed her eyes as another Kumo ninja stabbed Noburu in the leg with a needle -- presumably the opium -- and tried to be a good little prisoner. Noburu had bought them time, and given her more information, but if both of them were dosed up on opium then they were SOL. She had to keep her thoughts clear, they were the only tool she had at the moment.
Kushina hoped that, whatever disrupted their ability to draw on their bijuu's powers, it didn't interfere with the bijuu's ability to look through their eyes and speak to one another. Perhaps Kousuke would appear and save the day.
Or maybe Orochimaru-sensei. That would be nice.
---
Dudes… have you ever gotten so mad that you allow a spirit turtle to partially possess you and straight up eat a crew of pirates? Asking for a friend.
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- Location
- U.S.
Before or after they touch my coffee supply?