Ch 43
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Ch 43: Punch Rocks
---
Jounin Uchiha
Fugaku had been in a daze for hours after he'd received the Hokage's orders. He, an Uchiha, was first in line to become the Fourth Hokage. Did he spread that like wildfire? Or trust the Hokage to make an announcement? In his stupor, he remained silent while he went to the personnel office.
When he finally shook himself free of the stunning confidence his Hokage had in him, Fugaku found himself at a desk in the personnel office, with a notebook near his writing hand with several names already therein, and several soft-cover personnel records open in front of him. He'd been creating a team while on autopilot, he realized. So for several minutes, he went over the list of names on the list to try and determine what his thought process had been.
At least he hadn't come out of autopilot with a knife in someone's neck, or in his own neck. Again. The last war hadn't been a pleasant time.
"Uh huh… uh huh, alright -- all these people have skills useful to cutting supply lines," he realized as he muttered to himself. "Infiltration, assassination, summoning… we stop them from being able to supply the Kusa occupation, then hit them with… with what?" Kusa was hard to attack directly because of the forests which surrounded it. Though not as large as Fire Country pines, the trees there were still large and resilient to flames -- making a direct assault difficult.
"No, we don't directly assault the walls." Fugaku told himself as he flipped through personnel records and added names to his list. Transformation specialists. Hunter/trackers. Genjutsu masters. Poisoners. "We do this my way." The sneaky way. They would take Kusa back so quietly that even Death would be startled.
When he was done, every Iwagakure survivor of his efforts would regain their childhood fear of the dark.
Naturally, there were some members of his clan on the list -- they were some of the best genjutsu users on the continent, along with the Kurama Clan who was also on the list. But his list of fifteen jounin and over two hundred chunin was composed of far more clanless people than clan members. After the clanless, the most statistically present group were the Inuzuka and Akamichi -- for they had useful civilian talents which would be great for deep cover operations.
Fugaku looked over his list of names twice to make sure he hadn't forgotten anyone, and began to return the personnel records to their appropriate shelves. Next stop would be the financial office -- to requisition funds and supplies for his newly formed company. The process would, unfortunately, take days to see fully completed.
By the afternoon of the day after his assignment, covered in bruises and scratch marks, Fugaku had completed his fight with the financial office about the necessity of his requests and the Hokage's authorization thereof. The accountants of Konoha were so in love with money that they would literally fight to spend next to nothing. Fugaku left the Hokage Tower, armed with letters of credit, approved requisitions, and less blood than he had entered it with.
His first order of business after hitting the streets was to acquire one of those Oto-inspired food items from a street vendor, the strange 'burrito'. His wife had spoken highly of the 'bean, beef, and cheese', which he found palatable but extremely strange. He suspected the food item had come up from the southern continent, for theirs was the way of enclosing food so that it could be eaten with bare hands.
The southern continent seemed like a silly place.
His second order of business was to go to the two hundred plus ninja about to become part of his company and issue them their marching orders personally. He wanted to ingrain in himself that these were people with lives to come back to -- and that he had a responsibility to ensure they came marching home.
Hunting down two hundred plus people took time. When he started, the standard reaction was an expression of exasperation and glum acceptance. But he began to notice something as the hours ticked by. A narrowed eye from one person, a 'bitch please' look from another, and so on.
Something was afoot, so Fugaku went to the one person on his list he was sure would know -- his old teammate, Sakumo Hatake. Konoha's White Fang wasn't going to be part of Fugaku's efforts, but he suspected his legendary teammate to have heard the latest gossip.
When he approached Sakumo's apartment complex, he saw his old friend's son run off with some local children. Kakashi, Fugaku remembered his name being. Up the stairs to the apartment he went, until he caught the White Fang at his door with an elderly neighbor of his.
"Yoshirou," the white, spikey-haired jounin said with a 'desperately trying to be polite' face, "I really appreciate the offer but I'm still in mourning."
"Four years later?" The old man, hunched over from age, waved his cane at Sakumo. "I won't tell you how long to wait -- but you need someone who you trust to look after Kakashi when you go off to war."
"Yoshirou, we've been at peace for years…."
The old man scoffed. "Then we're overdue. Besides which, look," he pointed at Fugaku, coming up the stairs. "There's an omen and three quarters, I'll bet my teeth on it." He hobbled off and waved his hand. "My daughter will be here when you make up your mind, Sakumo. Enjoy the war, if you can!"
Sakumo's kind eyes became steel as he looked at Fugaku. "If you're hoping to recruit me for the mission in the north, I hate to tell you but I've been snagged by the southern forces already."
"I'm not here to recruit you, Sakumo," Fugaku said with a sigh. "I'm here to talk, and to hear gossip like old times."
"Oh." Sakumo's eyes softened visibly, like he was touched. "Well, if you come in for tea -- I've heard some things about you, and some juicy bits about the Inuzuka clan." He stood aside to let Fugaku come into his apartment.
"What's the one about me? Or does it need tea for the telling?" As if they hadn't been kept apart by work for years, Fugaku stepped inside and felt at ease.
"Well, considering it involves you, genjutsu, and the words 'villainous machinations', I think tea would be required." Sakumo was all cheer and smiles as he closed the door and scurried off for tea. "Heheheh, I think I still have some of that blue tea you like."
Fugaku knew the way to Sakumo's 'gossip table', so he stepped over Kakashi's toys and sleeping pug puppy on the way there. "I thought they made that stuff illegal because of the dyes?"
"They did! I've had it in storage!" Sakumo leaned out of the kitchen to show off the box with the electric blue raspberries on it, then returned to his tea brewing. Minutes later, Sakumo came to the gossip table with two cups of blue raspberry tea. "So, you won't believe the rumors I've heard about this Fugaku Uchiha guy."
Fugaku took his cup and decided to play along. "Alright. I've heard his name and already I don't like him."
"Wait, it gets worse." Sakumo sat down and sipped his tea. He shook his head and looked at Fugaku with a smirk. "That man put a genjutsu on the Hokage."
Fugaku feigned a shocked gasp.
"He did! Put a genjutsu on the Hokage to get himself a promotion. None of the jounin believe a word of it." He shook his head and sipped his tea.
"Which jounin did you hear that from?" Fugaku took a sip of his tea and winced at how aggressively sweet it was. Sakumo seemed addicted to sugar.
"Oh, I haven't heard it from any jounin -- but the chunin are all talking about it. They don't want any jounin getting in trouble, so they don't talk about it to just anyone." Sakumo rested his free hand on his chest and fluttered his eyelids. "But you know how I am with getting people to trust me."
"That's just the truth." Fugaku sipped his tea once more, and dropped the genial charade. "So who told the chunin about… this genjutsu?"
"Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answer?" Sakumo looked at Fugaku like he was stupid. "Everybody jounin and above knows Danzo's trying to start something -- but no one jounin and above is stupid enough to believe him now that Lord Hokage has stopped fellating the man in public at every opportunity."
Fugaku squeezed his eyes shut and covered them with his free hand. "The mental image. Seared into my brain. Why, Sakumo?"
"Fuck you for not visiting for four years, that's why."
--
Arun Otsutsuki
The plan was simple. He would acquire reinforcement marionettes from the moon, and place them along the Fire Country border of Mount Koyru so that Tenmu and their earthly allies could drive their prey toward him.
Then he would kill the main family wretch before Tenmu could dishonor his father further. The ninja would have to make due with his excuses. Discipline could come later, when they were away from strangers. All around Arun, marionette birds larger than men waited in the trees with the long-armed soldier marionettes which would ride them. It wasn't impossible for the jinchuuriki to release the power of his bijuu as a means to escape. The three-tails' death spin could cover a lot of ground in a short span of time. Which was why he'd asked for bird marionettes.
He felt the air move with the arrival of a jinchuuriki, but not the one he expected to see or from the direction he'd expected. The mutual connection of all things told him that which approached was not the deep and unfathomable three-tails, but the foppish and artistic six-tails and the burning hatred of the nine-tails.
Chakra threads formed from Arun's fingertips as he flicked his arms at their would-be ambushers. The fact that he was also a would-be ambusher was lost on him. His chakra threads latched onto tiny beetles that flew about with a human's chakra in their bellies. Once he'd ensnared them all -- he smashed them together.
"I know you're there, ninja," the pompous monk declared. "This is not your affair."
From the trees, a figure in white, with a staff and a straw hat appeared. He landed on a branch of a nearby tree and seemed unconcerned with the risk attached. "I'm afraid I have to disagree." The monk bowed. "See, people keep thinking you're a monk too… and I can't have you going around, damaging our reputation." He rose, and tilted his head back. "Also, I rather like the young man you're intending to murder."
"Kousuke the Rebel, how dare you?" Arun would have glared, had he the eyes for it. "My family suffered under his for hundreds of years -- until we could do nothing else but fight for our lives. You should see the rightness of our cause."
"I heard something like that from Hizashi." The jinchuuriki monk tilted his head back the way he came. "But here's the big difference. I didn't go after my enemy root and stem. My goal was never to butcher each and every person who had ever been born on the other side. It looks like yours was." Kousuke turned his head, presumably to the Konoha ninja he had travelled with, and jerked his head toward the mountain. "So we're going to use some good old fashioned violence to stop this before you hurt anyone else."
Arun arched his brow, disbelievingly. "Kill them," he told the marionettes without hesitation. His marionettes moved as one -- they took to the air and to the trees, toward where Arun sensed their chakra.
A puff of chakra and smoke filled the trees, followed shortly by a line of steaming water that cut through the forest and two bird marionettes.
"Ninjas are such funny things." Kousuke spread his arms, as if to say 'what can you do?' "Some are perfectly reasonable and are willing to run for hours to get somewhere. Others stay crammed in a scroll so they can join the fight fresh." He calmly ducked under a stream of boiling pressurized water that took the top off the tree he rested on.
"Bring three genin, or three hundred. It doesn't really matter." Arun collected his senses and strung chakra through the air to capture debris and put that to use on attacking the monk.
Kousuke tilted his head and walked around the side of the branch, as if gravity was relative to where he had his feet, and dodged easily. His staff cut through Arun's chakra threads like they were smoke. "You're… not as good a fighter as I thought you'd be. Did you get lucky last time?"
The main family wretch's teammates crossed their battlefield in their own struggles. The Kaguya witch had her hand through the eyes of a bird marionette which flew around in a maddened state to dislodge her. Humanform marionettes launched projectiles of chakra which kept the trap master from setting up her killzone. Their dense chakra made it hard for the Aburame insects to devour, and they simply moved too fast for Hizashi to go on the offensive. The steam ninja's only contribution was eliminating a large amount of the tree cover with his wide area ninjutsu.
Arun became aware of Kushina's existence again just as he became aware of her intent to attack him. Chakra strings bound themselves to a tree trunk, which he lifted into the path of her attack chains. He tugged on them enough to convince her to pull back, then released the tree trunk so she brought it to her.
"My luck, or lack thereof, doesn't matter. Soon these poor genin will be dead, and you won't outlive them long." Why wasn't the monk attacking -- why did he only dodge when Arun attacked?
"Ninja are pretty inventive. Don't count them out just yet." Kousuke smiled at Arun. "They might surprise you."
Arun was suspicious enough to realize what game Kosuke played, and immediately turned with chakra strings streaming from his fingers. The kunai with an explosive tag that would have caught him in the back was sent away by Arun's will before it exploded. Then the next, and the next. A stream of weapons -- from the trees. Arun diverted a bird marionette to bombard the area, while he kept the weapons away.
"Yin-Yang release: Everything is nothing."
Arun had only a moment to process a blur of color that approached him faster than he could react before he was struck repeatedly in a span of seconds -- and his perception of the world turned to nothing. Darkness.
"Yin-Yang release: Part the Sea."
He couldn't use his chakra. His strings wouldn't form, he couldn't connect to the world through ninshu, and he couldn't feel the connection with the marionettes.
"Yang release: … Kousuke was directly in front of him, though Arun couldn't see him. "Buddha's Palm."
A palm-strike landed directly on Arun's face accompanied by a burning sensation. A shockwave propelled Arun through the branch he'd stood on, through the tree behind him, and the one behind that, all in a downwards diagonal path. It continued long enough for Arun to dare hope it would end when he struck the ground.
It didn't.
--
Tenmu Otsutsuki
Ishidate was still out of commission when morning came. Noburu's bijuu-powered medical ninjutsu wasn't sufficient to fix all the problems that the 'soldier soup' would cause -- it came from lack of nutrients and water. Tenmu, who could go prolonged periods without, hadn't brought any with him, so they had to hope there was something useful in the Tatsushiro's labyrinth.
"Are you able to use your byakugan to see, or do you need me to lead the way?" Tenmu asked as they turned a corner into a massive room with collapsed pillars and what once had been an extensive wall-mounted mosaic.
"I can see with a little light just fine," Noburu said as he adjusted Ishidate on his back. "Aki's got that covered."
"I am moderately concerned," the ninja mouse said as he held the lightning orb which apparently provided the light they needed, "that I might drop it because it's pretty slick."
"It's durable, don't worry." They kept walking, avoiding debris, and seeing wrecks of what had once been a mountainside temple. "Turn left up there." Noburu said and sped up walking.
"Why?" Tenmu arched an eyebrow at the ninja. "Do you know your way through this place?"
"No, but I don't have shoes. The ground is hotter this way -- probably means the dragon's nearby." He kept speeding up periodically, but remained silent until they got to a dead end. The hall had collapsed at some point, with the debris making further advancement impossible. "Alright -- take Ishidate for a minute." Noburu went down on one knee for better stability while he waited for Tenmu to take his boyfriend. "Hurry up, my knee's burning."
"Oh, right, sorry." Tenmu scurried over and threw Ishidate over his shoulder. Akimitsu scrambled around on the unconscious chunin to keep providing light. "You have a way to get through?"
"Yep. And it's pretty stupid but my feet are on fire, I don't care anymore." As he got up, the teen clapped his hands together, and golden chakra flicked across his body. "Isobu's chakra's more stable -- so here we go." Noburu had gathered the golden chakra into his hands, which he formed into fists. "One of you guys offer a prayer that this doesn't cause a cave-in, m'kay? I'll be busy."
"Wait, what are you going to -- " Tenmu didn't have long to wait before he found out.
Noburu had begun to punch the rocks. With his fists. Because that was somehow expected to work. To Tenmu's frustration, it did. Each punch of Noburu's left a deep crater in the rubble pile which he began to beat back by inches. To top it all off -- no cave in.
"How is he doing that?"
"I can tell you're saying something," Noburu half-shouted. "But I kinda got smashing rocks to do and my heart pumping really loud -- it's distracting. Aki! Field questions!" He continued his relentless assault on the stonework. "Take that, rocks! I'll show you! I'll show you all!"
The mouse summon cleared his throat to get Tenmu's attention. "He's using a chakra control technique employed by Lady Tsunade to grant incredible physical strength." The mouse looked quite proud of his summoner. That pride wilted as he came to the obvious caveat. "But… he's using Lord Isobu's chakra. Which is more stable here… but it's still not as stable as it would be in normal conditions. He's likely breaking his hands doing this, and just repairing the damage he suffers as he keeps it up."
"You think you're so smart, stone?! Have one of these!" Noburu rapid-fire punched a random section of stone to deepen it until he couldn't fit his arms in any further before he started on evening out the rock.
"Why's he talking to himself?" Tenmu asked the mouse, afraid that the younger teen had gone a little crazy.
"Probably to distract himself. Or to motivate himself to keep going. Or because he actually can hear us, but he wants us confused." The mouse shrugged. "I play it by ear most of the time."
"Pain… is weakness! Leaving the body!" Noburu's punching had slowed visibly, and he panted for breath more often. "C'mon! Imagine it's your manager's face, Noburu! That prick who wouldn't get off the phone while you got crushed!" Noburu regained his earlier energy for a moment after that. "I hope they gave you the electric chair, Dave! What kinda idiot stores fence panels standing up?!"
Tenmu's sweating became more pronounced as he watched, not just because of the heat. "A couple days ago, I was sitting in a cave playing marbles," he said to Akimitsu. "Now I'm in a volcano while a madman has a fight with rocks and wins."
"At least you haven't turned to drugs to have it make sense." The mouse paused noticeably. "Yet."
---
Dave didn't end up getting the electric chair. He wasn't ever convicted for his negligence, and in fact ran for public office later that year. He remained in office until he died from shrapnel caused by a jackhammer, used for one of his political ads, exploding.
...Diligent readers might remember the Buddha's Palm being the technique Kousuke used to put Fuguki in a coma before the fic started. It does a lot of damage at point blank range.
---
Jounin Uchiha
Fugaku had been in a daze for hours after he'd received the Hokage's orders. He, an Uchiha, was first in line to become the Fourth Hokage. Did he spread that like wildfire? Or trust the Hokage to make an announcement? In his stupor, he remained silent while he went to the personnel office.
When he finally shook himself free of the stunning confidence his Hokage had in him, Fugaku found himself at a desk in the personnel office, with a notebook near his writing hand with several names already therein, and several soft-cover personnel records open in front of him. He'd been creating a team while on autopilot, he realized. So for several minutes, he went over the list of names on the list to try and determine what his thought process had been.
At least he hadn't come out of autopilot with a knife in someone's neck, or in his own neck. Again. The last war hadn't been a pleasant time.
"Uh huh… uh huh, alright -- all these people have skills useful to cutting supply lines," he realized as he muttered to himself. "Infiltration, assassination, summoning… we stop them from being able to supply the Kusa occupation, then hit them with… with what?" Kusa was hard to attack directly because of the forests which surrounded it. Though not as large as Fire Country pines, the trees there were still large and resilient to flames -- making a direct assault difficult.
"No, we don't directly assault the walls." Fugaku told himself as he flipped through personnel records and added names to his list. Transformation specialists. Hunter/trackers. Genjutsu masters. Poisoners. "We do this my way." The sneaky way. They would take Kusa back so quietly that even Death would be startled.
When he was done, every Iwagakure survivor of his efforts would regain their childhood fear of the dark.
Naturally, there were some members of his clan on the list -- they were some of the best genjutsu users on the continent, along with the Kurama Clan who was also on the list. But his list of fifteen jounin and over two hundred chunin was composed of far more clanless people than clan members. After the clanless, the most statistically present group were the Inuzuka and Akamichi -- for they had useful civilian talents which would be great for deep cover operations.
Fugaku looked over his list of names twice to make sure he hadn't forgotten anyone, and began to return the personnel records to their appropriate shelves. Next stop would be the financial office -- to requisition funds and supplies for his newly formed company. The process would, unfortunately, take days to see fully completed.
By the afternoon of the day after his assignment, covered in bruises and scratch marks, Fugaku had completed his fight with the financial office about the necessity of his requests and the Hokage's authorization thereof. The accountants of Konoha were so in love with money that they would literally fight to spend next to nothing. Fugaku left the Hokage Tower, armed with letters of credit, approved requisitions, and less blood than he had entered it with.
His first order of business after hitting the streets was to acquire one of those Oto-inspired food items from a street vendor, the strange 'burrito'. His wife had spoken highly of the 'bean, beef, and cheese', which he found palatable but extremely strange. He suspected the food item had come up from the southern continent, for theirs was the way of enclosing food so that it could be eaten with bare hands.
The southern continent seemed like a silly place.
His second order of business was to go to the two hundred plus ninja about to become part of his company and issue them their marching orders personally. He wanted to ingrain in himself that these were people with lives to come back to -- and that he had a responsibility to ensure they came marching home.
Hunting down two hundred plus people took time. When he started, the standard reaction was an expression of exasperation and glum acceptance. But he began to notice something as the hours ticked by. A narrowed eye from one person, a 'bitch please' look from another, and so on.
Something was afoot, so Fugaku went to the one person on his list he was sure would know -- his old teammate, Sakumo Hatake. Konoha's White Fang wasn't going to be part of Fugaku's efforts, but he suspected his legendary teammate to have heard the latest gossip.
When he approached Sakumo's apartment complex, he saw his old friend's son run off with some local children. Kakashi, Fugaku remembered his name being. Up the stairs to the apartment he went, until he caught the White Fang at his door with an elderly neighbor of his.
"Yoshirou," the white, spikey-haired jounin said with a 'desperately trying to be polite' face, "I really appreciate the offer but I'm still in mourning."
"Four years later?" The old man, hunched over from age, waved his cane at Sakumo. "I won't tell you how long to wait -- but you need someone who you trust to look after Kakashi when you go off to war."
"Yoshirou, we've been at peace for years…."
The old man scoffed. "Then we're overdue. Besides which, look," he pointed at Fugaku, coming up the stairs. "There's an omen and three quarters, I'll bet my teeth on it." He hobbled off and waved his hand. "My daughter will be here when you make up your mind, Sakumo. Enjoy the war, if you can!"
Sakumo's kind eyes became steel as he looked at Fugaku. "If you're hoping to recruit me for the mission in the north, I hate to tell you but I've been snagged by the southern forces already."
"I'm not here to recruit you, Sakumo," Fugaku said with a sigh. "I'm here to talk, and to hear gossip like old times."
"Oh." Sakumo's eyes softened visibly, like he was touched. "Well, if you come in for tea -- I've heard some things about you, and some juicy bits about the Inuzuka clan." He stood aside to let Fugaku come into his apartment.
"What's the one about me? Or does it need tea for the telling?" As if they hadn't been kept apart by work for years, Fugaku stepped inside and felt at ease.
"Well, considering it involves you, genjutsu, and the words 'villainous machinations', I think tea would be required." Sakumo was all cheer and smiles as he closed the door and scurried off for tea. "Heheheh, I think I still have some of that blue tea you like."
Fugaku knew the way to Sakumo's 'gossip table', so he stepped over Kakashi's toys and sleeping pug puppy on the way there. "I thought they made that stuff illegal because of the dyes?"
"They did! I've had it in storage!" Sakumo leaned out of the kitchen to show off the box with the electric blue raspberries on it, then returned to his tea brewing. Minutes later, Sakumo came to the gossip table with two cups of blue raspberry tea. "So, you won't believe the rumors I've heard about this Fugaku Uchiha guy."
Fugaku took his cup and decided to play along. "Alright. I've heard his name and already I don't like him."
"Wait, it gets worse." Sakumo sat down and sipped his tea. He shook his head and looked at Fugaku with a smirk. "That man put a genjutsu on the Hokage."
Fugaku feigned a shocked gasp.
"He did! Put a genjutsu on the Hokage to get himself a promotion. None of the jounin believe a word of it." He shook his head and sipped his tea.
"Which jounin did you hear that from?" Fugaku took a sip of his tea and winced at how aggressively sweet it was. Sakumo seemed addicted to sugar.
"Oh, I haven't heard it from any jounin -- but the chunin are all talking about it. They don't want any jounin getting in trouble, so they don't talk about it to just anyone." Sakumo rested his free hand on his chest and fluttered his eyelids. "But you know how I am with getting people to trust me."
"That's just the truth." Fugaku sipped his tea once more, and dropped the genial charade. "So who told the chunin about… this genjutsu?"
"Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answer?" Sakumo looked at Fugaku like he was stupid. "Everybody jounin and above knows Danzo's trying to start something -- but no one jounin and above is stupid enough to believe him now that Lord Hokage has stopped fellating the man in public at every opportunity."
Fugaku squeezed his eyes shut and covered them with his free hand. "The mental image. Seared into my brain. Why, Sakumo?"
"Fuck you for not visiting for four years, that's why."
--
Arun Otsutsuki
The plan was simple. He would acquire reinforcement marionettes from the moon, and place them along the Fire Country border of Mount Koyru so that Tenmu and their earthly allies could drive their prey toward him.
Then he would kill the main family wretch before Tenmu could dishonor his father further. The ninja would have to make due with his excuses. Discipline could come later, when they were away from strangers. All around Arun, marionette birds larger than men waited in the trees with the long-armed soldier marionettes which would ride them. It wasn't impossible for the jinchuuriki to release the power of his bijuu as a means to escape. The three-tails' death spin could cover a lot of ground in a short span of time. Which was why he'd asked for bird marionettes.
He felt the air move with the arrival of a jinchuuriki, but not the one he expected to see or from the direction he'd expected. The mutual connection of all things told him that which approached was not the deep and unfathomable three-tails, but the foppish and artistic six-tails and the burning hatred of the nine-tails.
Chakra threads formed from Arun's fingertips as he flicked his arms at their would-be ambushers. The fact that he was also a would-be ambusher was lost on him. His chakra threads latched onto tiny beetles that flew about with a human's chakra in their bellies. Once he'd ensnared them all -- he smashed them together.
"I know you're there, ninja," the pompous monk declared. "This is not your affair."
From the trees, a figure in white, with a staff and a straw hat appeared. He landed on a branch of a nearby tree and seemed unconcerned with the risk attached. "I'm afraid I have to disagree." The monk bowed. "See, people keep thinking you're a monk too… and I can't have you going around, damaging our reputation." He rose, and tilted his head back. "Also, I rather like the young man you're intending to murder."
"Kousuke the Rebel, how dare you?" Arun would have glared, had he the eyes for it. "My family suffered under his for hundreds of years -- until we could do nothing else but fight for our lives. You should see the rightness of our cause."
"I heard something like that from Hizashi." The jinchuuriki monk tilted his head back the way he came. "But here's the big difference. I didn't go after my enemy root and stem. My goal was never to butcher each and every person who had ever been born on the other side. It looks like yours was." Kousuke turned his head, presumably to the Konoha ninja he had travelled with, and jerked his head toward the mountain. "So we're going to use some good old fashioned violence to stop this before you hurt anyone else."
Arun arched his brow, disbelievingly. "Kill them," he told the marionettes without hesitation. His marionettes moved as one -- they took to the air and to the trees, toward where Arun sensed their chakra.
A puff of chakra and smoke filled the trees, followed shortly by a line of steaming water that cut through the forest and two bird marionettes.
"Ninjas are such funny things." Kousuke spread his arms, as if to say 'what can you do?' "Some are perfectly reasonable and are willing to run for hours to get somewhere. Others stay crammed in a scroll so they can join the fight fresh." He calmly ducked under a stream of boiling pressurized water that took the top off the tree he rested on.
"Bring three genin, or three hundred. It doesn't really matter." Arun collected his senses and strung chakra through the air to capture debris and put that to use on attacking the monk.
Kousuke tilted his head and walked around the side of the branch, as if gravity was relative to where he had his feet, and dodged easily. His staff cut through Arun's chakra threads like they were smoke. "You're… not as good a fighter as I thought you'd be. Did you get lucky last time?"
The main family wretch's teammates crossed their battlefield in their own struggles. The Kaguya witch had her hand through the eyes of a bird marionette which flew around in a maddened state to dislodge her. Humanform marionettes launched projectiles of chakra which kept the trap master from setting up her killzone. Their dense chakra made it hard for the Aburame insects to devour, and they simply moved too fast for Hizashi to go on the offensive. The steam ninja's only contribution was eliminating a large amount of the tree cover with his wide area ninjutsu.
Arun became aware of Kushina's existence again just as he became aware of her intent to attack him. Chakra strings bound themselves to a tree trunk, which he lifted into the path of her attack chains. He tugged on them enough to convince her to pull back, then released the tree trunk so she brought it to her.
"My luck, or lack thereof, doesn't matter. Soon these poor genin will be dead, and you won't outlive them long." Why wasn't the monk attacking -- why did he only dodge when Arun attacked?
"Ninja are pretty inventive. Don't count them out just yet." Kousuke smiled at Arun. "They might surprise you."
Arun was suspicious enough to realize what game Kosuke played, and immediately turned with chakra strings streaming from his fingers. The kunai with an explosive tag that would have caught him in the back was sent away by Arun's will before it exploded. Then the next, and the next. A stream of weapons -- from the trees. Arun diverted a bird marionette to bombard the area, while he kept the weapons away.
"Yin-Yang release: Everything is nothing."
Arun had only a moment to process a blur of color that approached him faster than he could react before he was struck repeatedly in a span of seconds -- and his perception of the world turned to nothing. Darkness.
"Yin-Yang release: Part the Sea."
He couldn't use his chakra. His strings wouldn't form, he couldn't connect to the world through ninshu, and he couldn't feel the connection with the marionettes.
"Yang release: … Kousuke was directly in front of him, though Arun couldn't see him. "Buddha's Palm."
A palm-strike landed directly on Arun's face accompanied by a burning sensation. A shockwave propelled Arun through the branch he'd stood on, through the tree behind him, and the one behind that, all in a downwards diagonal path. It continued long enough for Arun to dare hope it would end when he struck the ground.
It didn't.
--
Tenmu Otsutsuki
Ishidate was still out of commission when morning came. Noburu's bijuu-powered medical ninjutsu wasn't sufficient to fix all the problems that the 'soldier soup' would cause -- it came from lack of nutrients and water. Tenmu, who could go prolonged periods without, hadn't brought any with him, so they had to hope there was something useful in the Tatsushiro's labyrinth.
"Are you able to use your byakugan to see, or do you need me to lead the way?" Tenmu asked as they turned a corner into a massive room with collapsed pillars and what once had been an extensive wall-mounted mosaic.
"I can see with a little light just fine," Noburu said as he adjusted Ishidate on his back. "Aki's got that covered."
"I am moderately concerned," the ninja mouse said as he held the lightning orb which apparently provided the light they needed, "that I might drop it because it's pretty slick."
"It's durable, don't worry." They kept walking, avoiding debris, and seeing wrecks of what had once been a mountainside temple. "Turn left up there." Noburu said and sped up walking.
"Why?" Tenmu arched an eyebrow at the ninja. "Do you know your way through this place?"
"No, but I don't have shoes. The ground is hotter this way -- probably means the dragon's nearby." He kept speeding up periodically, but remained silent until they got to a dead end. The hall had collapsed at some point, with the debris making further advancement impossible. "Alright -- take Ishidate for a minute." Noburu went down on one knee for better stability while he waited for Tenmu to take his boyfriend. "Hurry up, my knee's burning."
"Oh, right, sorry." Tenmu scurried over and threw Ishidate over his shoulder. Akimitsu scrambled around on the unconscious chunin to keep providing light. "You have a way to get through?"
"Yep. And it's pretty stupid but my feet are on fire, I don't care anymore." As he got up, the teen clapped his hands together, and golden chakra flicked across his body. "Isobu's chakra's more stable -- so here we go." Noburu had gathered the golden chakra into his hands, which he formed into fists. "One of you guys offer a prayer that this doesn't cause a cave-in, m'kay? I'll be busy."
"Wait, what are you going to -- " Tenmu didn't have long to wait before he found out.
Noburu had begun to punch the rocks. With his fists. Because that was somehow expected to work. To Tenmu's frustration, it did. Each punch of Noburu's left a deep crater in the rubble pile which he began to beat back by inches. To top it all off -- no cave in.
"How is he doing that?"
"I can tell you're saying something," Noburu half-shouted. "But I kinda got smashing rocks to do and my heart pumping really loud -- it's distracting. Aki! Field questions!" He continued his relentless assault on the stonework. "Take that, rocks! I'll show you! I'll show you all!"
The mouse summon cleared his throat to get Tenmu's attention. "He's using a chakra control technique employed by Lady Tsunade to grant incredible physical strength." The mouse looked quite proud of his summoner. That pride wilted as he came to the obvious caveat. "But… he's using Lord Isobu's chakra. Which is more stable here… but it's still not as stable as it would be in normal conditions. He's likely breaking his hands doing this, and just repairing the damage he suffers as he keeps it up."
"You think you're so smart, stone?! Have one of these!" Noburu rapid-fire punched a random section of stone to deepen it until he couldn't fit his arms in any further before he started on evening out the rock.
"Why's he talking to himself?" Tenmu asked the mouse, afraid that the younger teen had gone a little crazy.
"Probably to distract himself. Or to motivate himself to keep going. Or because he actually can hear us, but he wants us confused." The mouse shrugged. "I play it by ear most of the time."
"Pain… is weakness! Leaving the body!" Noburu's punching had slowed visibly, and he panted for breath more often. "C'mon! Imagine it's your manager's face, Noburu! That prick who wouldn't get off the phone while you got crushed!" Noburu regained his earlier energy for a moment after that. "I hope they gave you the electric chair, Dave! What kinda idiot stores fence panels standing up?!"
Tenmu's sweating became more pronounced as he watched, not just because of the heat. "A couple days ago, I was sitting in a cave playing marbles," he said to Akimitsu. "Now I'm in a volcano while a madman has a fight with rocks and wins."
"At least you haven't turned to drugs to have it make sense." The mouse paused noticeably. "Yet."
---
Dave didn't end up getting the electric chair. He wasn't ever convicted for his negligence, and in fact ran for public office later that year. He remained in office until he died from shrapnel caused by a jackhammer, used for one of his political ads, exploding.
...Diligent readers might remember the Buddha's Palm being the technique Kousuke used to put Fuguki in a coma before the fic started. It does a lot of damage at point blank range.
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