Vaalintine
Wild Wondorous Wolfalope
Seems they're forgetting the fact that the six and three tails are currently (partially) voluntarily bound and like their hosts.
Snapping Turtle [Naruto SI]
- Thread starter Chairtastic
- Start date
Ch 49
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Chapter 49: Pressure
---
Director Ruan
The Winding Roads seal was three days into its prep -- it involved lots of map-checking because the winding roads referenced in the seal's design were the safe routes through Swamp Country's various ninja clan territories. The seal and the maps had been provided by the Uemons, probably because of Noburu's relationship with the clan heir.
While Suzume carefully painted the paths onto a massive novelty tea kettle, Uemon elders sat on cushions in a ring around her. They burned incense and rattled ropes of bells while they prayed -- to lend the seal an unusually high amount of spiritual energy.
Suzume kept her hands steady, like she was in surgery again, and painted the elaborate map and the sub-continent characters she didn't recognize in the gaps between them. Every few minutes, she would stop to consult the open scroll laid out on the floor at her side -- where the template was laid out.
Orochimaru waited outside the ring of chanting elders, to tag in once Suzume's shift was done.
They were in a darkened chamber at the base of Tower Four, where coral columns helped support the structure above and provided some shielding in case there was an earthquake or earth-release jutsu attack. Between the floor and the roof there was sixteen meters of stale air, only freshened and illuminated by an open hatch in the hospital floor.
The air shifted with movement, which the ninja clan elders, Orochimaru, and Suzume all sensed and abruptly stopped their ritual. From the shadows, Kin emerged and approached Orochimaru carefully. So that he didn't muscle-memory stab her for surprising him.
Suzume could hear what she said to him once he leaned down to her, due to how quiet it was. "Ninja from Konoha have arrived with orders for you." Quickly, she finished the line she had started, and capped the brush. She quickly stood and followed after Orochimaru and Kin. If they were lucky, then Konoha had brought some form of seal they could use.
"Thank you for your time -- we need to talk to these Konoha ninja first, but we might be able to resume at another time." Suzume told the Uemon elders with a bow. "Please take a rest, get some food, or enjoy some leisure time at your preference."
The elders mumbled among themselves about the disturbance, but rose from their seats as Suzume caught up to Orochimaru and Kin.
She had to accompany Orochimaru because, despite his ties with Noburu, he was still a foreign ninja. He wasn't allowed to be anywhere except designated private spaces without being watched. And he certainly wasn't allowed to know the Witch's Bubble jutsu Oto nin used to get between towers.
"How're you holding up?" She asked him while they floated through the sound in such a Witch's Bubble, bound for Tower One.
Orochimaru glanced at her then directed his eyes forward. "I'm fine." His response was too monotone to be genuine. His eyes were just a bit too glassy.
Suzume pursed her lips and scratched the back of her head. "You… know it's okay to not be fine, right?"
Orochimaru fully turned his head to look at her with an arched brow. "There is work that needs to be done. There is always work that needs to be done." His eyes narrowed and his lip curled just a bit as he emphasized that one word. "Sarutobi-sensei needs me to be fine. My nephew needs me to be fine. So I am."
Suzume stopped the bubble's transit with a gesture and turned to give him her full attention. "I'm hearing what other people need from you. What do you need from yourself?"
Orochimaru's snake-like pupils narrowed into thin slits. "Right now? I need you to continue moving us."
"As a medical professional, as your nephew's direct superior, and as a friend of Tsunade's -- I need you to know that you don't have to swoop in and save the day. But between us, Tsunade and I can sort this out. You can rest, a little."
The Sannin blinked, then sighed out his nose. "This is about the stress disorder, isn't it?"
"It won't get better if you keep piling more work on." She had personal insight into the subject, but she refrained from sharing that. Orochimaru seemed to respond best to purely professional responses from her, personal responses were often only accepted from people in his circle of friends/family. "If it would help… I could write up a doctor's order? For R&R?"
Orochimaru arched his eyebrow at her. "A doctor's order for R&R… as a war is ramping up? That would be a hard sell."
"I had to issue several during the civil war." Suzume shrugged. She left out how the Mizukage had dismissed the orders. "Mental fatigue hits in peace and war. This one just had unfortunate timing."
"...An official order would be, certainly, appreciated." Orochimaru visibly relaxed "After we get this present situation sorted."
"Alright." With another gesture, the Witch's Bubble resumed its motion toward Tower One.
--
Soutaicho Kurosuki
Noburu had given them many warnings in the past three years. Warnings about the future, about dangerous techniques, and about his past lives on occasion. But one particular warning came to mind as he sat in a stately lounge with Konoha ninja seated across from him.
"Beware the Konoha ninja who wield tantos."
All three of the Konoha ninja who sat across from him, dressed like Anbu except for their armament. Short tantos were strapped to their back, rather than the standard ninjato. Tantos were best used as weapons of last resort, or for assassination. No doubt, Raiga sat across from the Root division, or at least part of it.
Konoha was always loose with designations that had an actual military strength equivalent.
"I hope you're enjoying the scenery," Raiga said with a neutral voice as he appeared to relax into the couch. It was an assassination trick -- appearing to be at ease. A useful trick for most general ninja activities, too. "We aim to impress with our village." He gestured to the window, where a school of brightly-colored fish flitted by. There were no light bubbles directly nearby, so the building's internal lighting cast more light on the fish, and created a scintilating pattern from their colors.
"It's practicality is… debatable," the white-cloaked leader of the three-strong Root group said with political politeness. "However, the artistry is of high quality. It's amazing what Mist ninja can achieve when they aren't thinking solely of their next kill."
Raiga's mouth twitched a little at the dig. Kiri's bloodstains would take generations to wash away, he told himself, if it ever did. "We all have to have hobbies. Something to keep us from becoming rabid."
Thankfully, Orochimaru and Suzume arrived moments later, and the Anbu stood to greet them.
When the Sannin entered, he approached the Anbu and received a scroll with his orders inside from their captain. No words were exchanged between the two Konoha ninja while Orochimaru read the contents. Through body language, Raiga could tell that the Anbu were at least a little unnerved by Orochimaru -- small tremors in the fingertips, sweat on the small patches of visible skin, a minute stiffness in the joints when they moved in Orochimaru's direction.
The temperature in the room seemed to plummet as a wave of killing intent sapped the warmth from Raiga's very bones. Suzume naturally stepped away from the source, Orochimaru, and moved closer to Raiga.
Orochimaru's face gave no indication of the killing intent that flowed from him like a broken water main. He looked polite, calm, serene even as the overwhelming urge to murder seeped into the minds of everyone and everything around him. "I'm sorry, I must be reading these words incorrectly," he said, sweet as honey, like he was only mildly befuddled by what he'd read. "Because it looks to me like…." In a blink, Orochimaru had moved to stand beside the Anbu captain who had handed him the scroll with an arm thrown over his shoulders. "The Hokage wants me to 'drop what I'm doing and return ASAP.' But that can't be correct, can it?"
Raiga knew, instinctively, that he couldn't beat Orochimaru in a fight if it came to it, but he had to do something about the overwhelming killing intent that made his hands shake if left alone. "Orochimaru, perhaps some tea?"
"No." Orochimaru snapped his gaze to Raiga's, and focused all that terrifying killing intent onto him. The dark slits of the Sannin's eyes may as well have been daggers aimed right at Raiga, for how pointed Orochimaru's expression was. His voice was stern, like he had just reprimanded a defiant dog. "Sit down. Let him answer the question."
Raiga sat down, with the feeling that if he had disobeyed Orochimaru would have devoured him whole. As he'd seen Noburu do multiple times. Suzume soon joined him on the couch.
The killing intent became more generalized again as the snake Sannin shook the Anbu captain by the shoulders. "Well? I'm waiting."
"I… I am not able to give you Lord Hokage's motivations," the Anbu captain replied with choked gasps, as if he were being strangled by some unseen force. As he moved his head, Raiga caught a glimpse of red-violet scales coiled around the man's throat -- thin enough to pass for a necklace, but far too tight. "But… the words say what they say. I'm sorry."
"'Drop what I'm doing and return ASAP'. When my family is in crisis." Orochimaru smiled, just a bit too wide and bared a bit too much teeth. The scales around the Anbu captain's throat tightened and wrenched another choked gasp from him. "Is this some test? Choose between my family and the village?"
"Please, Lord Orochimaru -- that is not what's happening here!" The choking Anbu gasped his words, whispered from want of air. Raiga could tell from his trembling hands that he wanted to pull at the snake around his throat, but the killing intent kept him paralyzed. "The other scroll! The other… scroll…." The Anbu captain's words became a high-pitched squeal as the last of his air was spent on them.
With a dismissive flick of his wrist, the snake uncoiled from the Anbu captain's neck and slid into Orochimaru's sleeve before Raiga could get a good look at it. He turned to face the other two Anbu. He watched them in silence as the captain fell to the floor with desperate breaths and choking coughs. "Well?" The Sannin's voice was a whisper. "Where is it?"
The two subordinate Anbu looked up at Orochimaru stiffly, like their muscles worked against them. "It… it's an offer meant to be extended to the leadership of Otogakure…," one Root Anbu said and was swiftly cut off by a snake around their throat once Orochimaru pointed at them. The animal coiled down from Orochimaru's shoulder and jumped at the Anbu like a loosed arrow.
'The sad part of all this is,' Raiga thought to himself, 'I can't tell if he's just absolutely pissed off, or if this is the start of his rampancy.'
Orochimaru looked at the last remaining Anbu, who desperately worked their hands toward her waist -- she was the one with the scroll. He tilted his head and the snake he'd launched at the other Anbu unwound from the unconscious man's neck, then slithered into the woman's cloak. Moments later, it returned with a scroll in its mouth.
"There is another," it hissed once Orochimaru took it. It ducked back into the woman's cloak and returned with a heavier scroll, bound in ropes and paper charms in the style of the Warring States period.
"A seal key?" Orochimaru let his killing intent lessen enough for everyone in the room to breathe easily again. He set the sealing scroll down on the table between the couches, and opened the less assuming scroll. "By the gracious will of the Third Hokage of Konohagakure, an heirloom seal of the First Hokage is made available to you for the purposes of solving your current jinchuuriki problems." Orochimaru glanced at it, and at Raiga. "Let Suzume take a look at that, would you?"
Raiga picked up the scroll with both hands and passed it along to his medical director. She opened the seal quickly, and unrolled it. Raiga wasn't skilled enough at seals to understand the symbols and arrays -- all he could understand was a series of diagrams with handsigns towards the middle.
"This heirloom is made available to you pending your cooperation," Orochimaru continued to read from the first scroll. "We require greater certainty that your jinchuuriki is secured. One of two options are presented to you -- shackle your jinchuuriki with the seal of the caged bird, as the Hyuuga do, or send them to us as our guest." Orochimaru rolled up the scroll as his killing intent began to grow in severity again, beyond where it had been in the first place. "This offer, and the orders issued to me paint a very clear picture of Lord Hokage's intent."
Raiga could feel the killing intent fill the room, to the point where his heart felt like it was beating a thousand times a minute. Even Suzume looked like she would be physically ill at any moment. He was the leader of the village, and he had to do something before Orochimaru's legendary killing intent developed an actual body count. His mind scrambled for any way out.
"Konoha's chunin exams are happening soon, right?" Raiga forced the words out like he was being crushed himself. "Noburu could go with his team… participate in that to help… Lord Hokage be convinced about our security."
The killing intent from Orochimaru ratcheted up as the Sannin turned to face him. "What?"
"Oto doesn't have a chunin exam set up yet," Raiga gasped out. "We could… just send my team with Sayaka, and solve both problems. At once."
Orochimaru's eyes slid over to Suzume, and the sealing scroll.
"I… think I can make it work," she admitted as she looked over the seal again. "The seal can contain the bijuu in the scroll, then we can reseal it once Noburu's stabilized." As she spoke, the killing intent in the room began to clear, like smoke in a breeze. "With Tsunade and myself there -- the risk of lasting injury would be one in a thousand."
"...Fine." Orochimaru had lost his smile, his voice came out as a hoarse whisper. "Just keep him alive." The snake summon vanished in smoke, and Orochimaru languidly moved to the door. "I need to go and get my students. Bye."
Once the Sannin had left, Raiga stood and made sure Orochimaru hadn't actually killed any of the Anbu. Aside from one of them being totally unconscious, and another having had an accident in their trousers, all was well.
"Well, you know what you have to do." Raiga spoke over his shoulder to Suzume. "I have to deal with… this." He gestured to the freaked out at best Anbu squad. He also had to call a meeting of the living Seven Swordsmen -- for reasons.
--
Tokubetsu Jounin Kanzaki
The team was gathered in the hospital tower when she got the summons. She had to trust Haruki and Junko to think of something funny to do when Noburu got out of surgery. It wasn't every day that a turtle the size of the village itself was taken out of someone then put back in. While she rode the Witch's Bubble to Tower Eleven, she ardently hoped they didn't let her down.
Tower Eleven was decorated with lavender banners that swayed in the air conditioning wind, and the pillars which she passed as she walked through it were decorated with carvings of yarrow flowers. Gyms and training arenas were the main feature of the tower, for it was the main military garrison. Soldiers and supplies would be bursting from within once the village became more heavily populated. As it was, Sayaka's footsteps echoed through empty rooms and halls.
At the top of the tower was the administrative offices. It was a very long walk, and a long elevator ride, so Sayaka was more than a little annoyed when she finally arrived.
She stepped into a dark room covered in tatami mats, with the only light being indirect -- cast from light bubbles far away from the window.
Opposite the door were the three living Seven Swordsmen. Her teacher, Raiga, and his colleagues Jinin and Fuguki. Sayaka sighed and removed her sandals, to set them beside the menfolk's.
"Why are you sitting in the dark, sensei?" She asked as she stepped closer and sat down in front of the three of them. Her coat ballooned out around her, and looked like a rounded tent from how the internal armor held its shape.
"We hadn't intended to," Raiga admitted. "The lights went out -- a wiring issue we have a technician working on right now." Though his face was in heavy shadows, Sayaka could hear the tiredness in his voice. "Though the lighting from outside lends a certain ominous atmosphere, yeah?"
"I'm rather fond of this," the tall, even when sitting, Fuguki said with a shrug. "Perhaps we can conduct all business of this sort in this way."
"Speak for yourself," Jinin snapped and turned toward the window. "My eyes aren't what they used to be -- I can't see so well in the dark."
"Regardless," Raiga captured Sayaka's attention again. "We have called you here for a purpose." Raiga stood from his seated position and moved deeper into the shadows. Jinin and Fuguki stood and followed after him. "Come along."
Sayaka took a deep breath and made herself calm as she hauled herself to her feet after only a few minutes of rest. She was physically the strongest on the team -- that didn't mean she liked hauling hundreds of kiloss of equipment up stairs without rest. Her knees weren't invulnerable. Sayaka walked into the dark and found a gap in the wall where she knew a narrow wooden panel would have been.
"I found the candles!" Jinin's voice called from the darkness as Sayaka walked in the direction of noise, unable to see what was in the room.
"How did the half-blind man find the candles first? Whatever." Fuguki groused and struck a match to light the candles. Jar candles didn't provide much light, but four of them together gave them enough to see by.
It let Sayaka see what was in the room with them. Three rectangular coffins, each with a purple haori draped over them like the Seven Swordsmen wore. Like what Junko would wear when she became a jounin.
"When I became your sensei, you were already a chunin by merit," Raiga said as he walked with his candle to stand beside Sayaka. "I've taught you as best I can -- and I think you're ready to stand as a pillar of this village." He gestured with his jar candle to the coffins. "Here, interred, are the three masterless swords of the Seven. Hiramekarei the twinsword. Shibuki the blastsword. And Kubikiribocho seversword." He rested his hand on Sayaka's shoulder and smiled. "You may choose. You've earned the right."
Sayaka couldn't properly fathom what was on offer. To be one of the Seven -- it had been every hands caste's dream, deemed impossible until Raiga had achieved it. She shook her head to clear the surprise from her mind. "But… what about Junko?"
"Junko still has to ascend the ranks. She hasn't even seen the front line of a war, like you have." Raiga's smile remained. "And… because I'm needed here -- once you choose, and Noburu's able to travel, you will lead the team on a mission. As a full jounin of Otogakure." He shrugged. "Which… frankly, you've been doing since you became a toku-jou, so."
"Yeah, yeah, just pawn off more of your work onto me." Sayaka didn't mind the pressure of being team leader when Raiga wasn't around. But being a full jounin… it took her a moment to realize Raiga-sensei had been her age when he first started teaching them. That seemed so long ago. And he'd been one of the Seven long before that. It felt like an extra hundred kilos had been added to her all of a sudden. A vice-like pressure developed around her chest as she realized she would be one of the leaders of her village as one of the Seven. Still, she had to choose. "Everyone thought that the other Swordsmen had left… gone off to become mercs."
"And they were wrong. You will see, inside."
Sayaka nodded and stepped away from Raiga, toward the coffins. She glanced at Jinin and Fuguki, who bowed their heads to her in respect Sayaka didn't feel she'd properly earned. It was like the setup to some sick joke. Briefly, she considered the three weapons interred in their coffins. The twinsword required an enormous amount of chakra to use regularly, second only to Samehada. The blastsword wouldn't see effective use -- she was too often in the back, or hiding. An explosion would reveal her position.
By process of elimination, Sayaka set down her jar candle and donned the haori which bore the word 'Kubikiribocho' in the diamond on its back. Then she slid the lid off the seversword's coffin.
Two meters long without the handle, and shaped like a butcher's knife. Kubikiribocho rested atop a blood-red cushion which stretched the length of the coffin. At half a meter from the bladed side to the blunt back, the sword would see her arm muscles worked out good and proper. She reached for the handle, and saw two skeletal hands there already. Scraps of fabric clung to the bones, which included the wrists and part of the forearms. Enough remained for her to recognize them as black detached sleeves -- and she recognized scorch marks along the cuts in the radii and ulnas.
"Juzo didn't believe in Otogakure," Raiga explained without needing a question. "And he didn't want to relinquish his sword. So I made the choice for him." There was no regret in Raiga's words -- only steel.
"...I understand." Sayaka carefully removed the skeletal hands from Kubikiribocho's handle and left them in the coffin as she lifted the seversword. Physically, the weight was considerable -- she only kept from tipping over due to her coat's weight. "I will wield this severing sword until my time is spent, or there is greater need for it in another's hands."
"Good, now let's go before they get the lights working again and blind -- augh, my eyes!"
---
Raiga and Suzume were both on the business end of Ryukotsusei's killing intent at least once. Orochimaru's killing intent is significantly worse. Orochimaru's is enough to potentially induce cardiac arrest.
So, we're starting the next arc. Chunin exams while the grown-ups prep for war. Also potentially strangling Danzo to death. But let's not get our hopes up.
---
Director Ruan
The Winding Roads seal was three days into its prep -- it involved lots of map-checking because the winding roads referenced in the seal's design were the safe routes through Swamp Country's various ninja clan territories. The seal and the maps had been provided by the Uemons, probably because of Noburu's relationship with the clan heir.
While Suzume carefully painted the paths onto a massive novelty tea kettle, Uemon elders sat on cushions in a ring around her. They burned incense and rattled ropes of bells while they prayed -- to lend the seal an unusually high amount of spiritual energy.
Suzume kept her hands steady, like she was in surgery again, and painted the elaborate map and the sub-continent characters she didn't recognize in the gaps between them. Every few minutes, she would stop to consult the open scroll laid out on the floor at her side -- where the template was laid out.
Orochimaru waited outside the ring of chanting elders, to tag in once Suzume's shift was done.
They were in a darkened chamber at the base of Tower Four, where coral columns helped support the structure above and provided some shielding in case there was an earthquake or earth-release jutsu attack. Between the floor and the roof there was sixteen meters of stale air, only freshened and illuminated by an open hatch in the hospital floor.
The air shifted with movement, which the ninja clan elders, Orochimaru, and Suzume all sensed and abruptly stopped their ritual. From the shadows, Kin emerged and approached Orochimaru carefully. So that he didn't muscle-memory stab her for surprising him.
Suzume could hear what she said to him once he leaned down to her, due to how quiet it was. "Ninja from Konoha have arrived with orders for you." Quickly, she finished the line she had started, and capped the brush. She quickly stood and followed after Orochimaru and Kin. If they were lucky, then Konoha had brought some form of seal they could use.
"Thank you for your time -- we need to talk to these Konoha ninja first, but we might be able to resume at another time." Suzume told the Uemon elders with a bow. "Please take a rest, get some food, or enjoy some leisure time at your preference."
The elders mumbled among themselves about the disturbance, but rose from their seats as Suzume caught up to Orochimaru and Kin.
She had to accompany Orochimaru because, despite his ties with Noburu, he was still a foreign ninja. He wasn't allowed to be anywhere except designated private spaces without being watched. And he certainly wasn't allowed to know the Witch's Bubble jutsu Oto nin used to get between towers.
"How're you holding up?" She asked him while they floated through the sound in such a Witch's Bubble, bound for Tower One.
Orochimaru glanced at her then directed his eyes forward. "I'm fine." His response was too monotone to be genuine. His eyes were just a bit too glassy.
Suzume pursed her lips and scratched the back of her head. "You… know it's okay to not be fine, right?"
Orochimaru fully turned his head to look at her with an arched brow. "There is work that needs to be done. There is always work that needs to be done." His eyes narrowed and his lip curled just a bit as he emphasized that one word. "Sarutobi-sensei needs me to be fine. My nephew needs me to be fine. So I am."
Suzume stopped the bubble's transit with a gesture and turned to give him her full attention. "I'm hearing what other people need from you. What do you need from yourself?"
Orochimaru's snake-like pupils narrowed into thin slits. "Right now? I need you to continue moving us."
"As a medical professional, as your nephew's direct superior, and as a friend of Tsunade's -- I need you to know that you don't have to swoop in and save the day. But between us, Tsunade and I can sort this out. You can rest, a little."
The Sannin blinked, then sighed out his nose. "This is about the stress disorder, isn't it?"
"It won't get better if you keep piling more work on." She had personal insight into the subject, but she refrained from sharing that. Orochimaru seemed to respond best to purely professional responses from her, personal responses were often only accepted from people in his circle of friends/family. "If it would help… I could write up a doctor's order? For R&R?"
Orochimaru arched his eyebrow at her. "A doctor's order for R&R… as a war is ramping up? That would be a hard sell."
"I had to issue several during the civil war." Suzume shrugged. She left out how the Mizukage had dismissed the orders. "Mental fatigue hits in peace and war. This one just had unfortunate timing."
"...An official order would be, certainly, appreciated." Orochimaru visibly relaxed "After we get this present situation sorted."
"Alright." With another gesture, the Witch's Bubble resumed its motion toward Tower One.
--
Soutaicho Kurosuki
Noburu had given them many warnings in the past three years. Warnings about the future, about dangerous techniques, and about his past lives on occasion. But one particular warning came to mind as he sat in a stately lounge with Konoha ninja seated across from him.
"Beware the Konoha ninja who wield tantos."
All three of the Konoha ninja who sat across from him, dressed like Anbu except for their armament. Short tantos were strapped to their back, rather than the standard ninjato. Tantos were best used as weapons of last resort, or for assassination. No doubt, Raiga sat across from the Root division, or at least part of it.
Konoha was always loose with designations that had an actual military strength equivalent.
"I hope you're enjoying the scenery," Raiga said with a neutral voice as he appeared to relax into the couch. It was an assassination trick -- appearing to be at ease. A useful trick for most general ninja activities, too. "We aim to impress with our village." He gestured to the window, where a school of brightly-colored fish flitted by. There were no light bubbles directly nearby, so the building's internal lighting cast more light on the fish, and created a scintilating pattern from their colors.
"It's practicality is… debatable," the white-cloaked leader of the three-strong Root group said with political politeness. "However, the artistry is of high quality. It's amazing what Mist ninja can achieve when they aren't thinking solely of their next kill."
Raiga's mouth twitched a little at the dig. Kiri's bloodstains would take generations to wash away, he told himself, if it ever did. "We all have to have hobbies. Something to keep us from becoming rabid."
Thankfully, Orochimaru and Suzume arrived moments later, and the Anbu stood to greet them.
When the Sannin entered, he approached the Anbu and received a scroll with his orders inside from their captain. No words were exchanged between the two Konoha ninja while Orochimaru read the contents. Through body language, Raiga could tell that the Anbu were at least a little unnerved by Orochimaru -- small tremors in the fingertips, sweat on the small patches of visible skin, a minute stiffness in the joints when they moved in Orochimaru's direction.
The temperature in the room seemed to plummet as a wave of killing intent sapped the warmth from Raiga's very bones. Suzume naturally stepped away from the source, Orochimaru, and moved closer to Raiga.
Orochimaru's face gave no indication of the killing intent that flowed from him like a broken water main. He looked polite, calm, serene even as the overwhelming urge to murder seeped into the minds of everyone and everything around him. "I'm sorry, I must be reading these words incorrectly," he said, sweet as honey, like he was only mildly befuddled by what he'd read. "Because it looks to me like…." In a blink, Orochimaru had moved to stand beside the Anbu captain who had handed him the scroll with an arm thrown over his shoulders. "The Hokage wants me to 'drop what I'm doing and return ASAP.' But that can't be correct, can it?"
Raiga knew, instinctively, that he couldn't beat Orochimaru in a fight if it came to it, but he had to do something about the overwhelming killing intent that made his hands shake if left alone. "Orochimaru, perhaps some tea?"
"No." Orochimaru snapped his gaze to Raiga's, and focused all that terrifying killing intent onto him. The dark slits of the Sannin's eyes may as well have been daggers aimed right at Raiga, for how pointed Orochimaru's expression was. His voice was stern, like he had just reprimanded a defiant dog. "Sit down. Let him answer the question."
Raiga sat down, with the feeling that if he had disobeyed Orochimaru would have devoured him whole. As he'd seen Noburu do multiple times. Suzume soon joined him on the couch.
The killing intent became more generalized again as the snake Sannin shook the Anbu captain by the shoulders. "Well? I'm waiting."
"I… I am not able to give you Lord Hokage's motivations," the Anbu captain replied with choked gasps, as if he were being strangled by some unseen force. As he moved his head, Raiga caught a glimpse of red-violet scales coiled around the man's throat -- thin enough to pass for a necklace, but far too tight. "But… the words say what they say. I'm sorry."
"'Drop what I'm doing and return ASAP'. When my family is in crisis." Orochimaru smiled, just a bit too wide and bared a bit too much teeth. The scales around the Anbu captain's throat tightened and wrenched another choked gasp from him. "Is this some test? Choose between my family and the village?"
"Please, Lord Orochimaru -- that is not what's happening here!" The choking Anbu gasped his words, whispered from want of air. Raiga could tell from his trembling hands that he wanted to pull at the snake around his throat, but the killing intent kept him paralyzed. "The other scroll! The other… scroll…." The Anbu captain's words became a high-pitched squeal as the last of his air was spent on them.
With a dismissive flick of his wrist, the snake uncoiled from the Anbu captain's neck and slid into Orochimaru's sleeve before Raiga could get a good look at it. He turned to face the other two Anbu. He watched them in silence as the captain fell to the floor with desperate breaths and choking coughs. "Well?" The Sannin's voice was a whisper. "Where is it?"
The two subordinate Anbu looked up at Orochimaru stiffly, like their muscles worked against them. "It… it's an offer meant to be extended to the leadership of Otogakure…," one Root Anbu said and was swiftly cut off by a snake around their throat once Orochimaru pointed at them. The animal coiled down from Orochimaru's shoulder and jumped at the Anbu like a loosed arrow.
'The sad part of all this is,' Raiga thought to himself, 'I can't tell if he's just absolutely pissed off, or if this is the start of his rampancy.'
Orochimaru looked at the last remaining Anbu, who desperately worked their hands toward her waist -- she was the one with the scroll. He tilted his head and the snake he'd launched at the other Anbu unwound from the unconscious man's neck, then slithered into the woman's cloak. Moments later, it returned with a scroll in its mouth.
"There is another," it hissed once Orochimaru took it. It ducked back into the woman's cloak and returned with a heavier scroll, bound in ropes and paper charms in the style of the Warring States period.
"A seal key?" Orochimaru let his killing intent lessen enough for everyone in the room to breathe easily again. He set the sealing scroll down on the table between the couches, and opened the less assuming scroll. "By the gracious will of the Third Hokage of Konohagakure, an heirloom seal of the First Hokage is made available to you for the purposes of solving your current jinchuuriki problems." Orochimaru glanced at it, and at Raiga. "Let Suzume take a look at that, would you?"
Raiga picked up the scroll with both hands and passed it along to his medical director. She opened the seal quickly, and unrolled it. Raiga wasn't skilled enough at seals to understand the symbols and arrays -- all he could understand was a series of diagrams with handsigns towards the middle.
"This heirloom is made available to you pending your cooperation," Orochimaru continued to read from the first scroll. "We require greater certainty that your jinchuuriki is secured. One of two options are presented to you -- shackle your jinchuuriki with the seal of the caged bird, as the Hyuuga do, or send them to us as our guest." Orochimaru rolled up the scroll as his killing intent began to grow in severity again, beyond where it had been in the first place. "This offer, and the orders issued to me paint a very clear picture of Lord Hokage's intent."
Raiga could feel the killing intent fill the room, to the point where his heart felt like it was beating a thousand times a minute. Even Suzume looked like she would be physically ill at any moment. He was the leader of the village, and he had to do something before Orochimaru's legendary killing intent developed an actual body count. His mind scrambled for any way out.
"Konoha's chunin exams are happening soon, right?" Raiga forced the words out like he was being crushed himself. "Noburu could go with his team… participate in that to help… Lord Hokage be convinced about our security."
The killing intent from Orochimaru ratcheted up as the Sannin turned to face him. "What?"
"Oto doesn't have a chunin exam set up yet," Raiga gasped out. "We could… just send my team with Sayaka, and solve both problems. At once."
Orochimaru's eyes slid over to Suzume, and the sealing scroll.
"I… think I can make it work," she admitted as she looked over the seal again. "The seal can contain the bijuu in the scroll, then we can reseal it once Noburu's stabilized." As she spoke, the killing intent in the room began to clear, like smoke in a breeze. "With Tsunade and myself there -- the risk of lasting injury would be one in a thousand."
"...Fine." Orochimaru had lost his smile, his voice came out as a hoarse whisper. "Just keep him alive." The snake summon vanished in smoke, and Orochimaru languidly moved to the door. "I need to go and get my students. Bye."
Once the Sannin had left, Raiga stood and made sure Orochimaru hadn't actually killed any of the Anbu. Aside from one of them being totally unconscious, and another having had an accident in their trousers, all was well.
"Well, you know what you have to do." Raiga spoke over his shoulder to Suzume. "I have to deal with… this." He gestured to the freaked out at best Anbu squad. He also had to call a meeting of the living Seven Swordsmen -- for reasons.
--
Tokubetsu Jounin Kanzaki
The team was gathered in the hospital tower when she got the summons. She had to trust Haruki and Junko to think of something funny to do when Noburu got out of surgery. It wasn't every day that a turtle the size of the village itself was taken out of someone then put back in. While she rode the Witch's Bubble to Tower Eleven, she ardently hoped they didn't let her down.
Tower Eleven was decorated with lavender banners that swayed in the air conditioning wind, and the pillars which she passed as she walked through it were decorated with carvings of yarrow flowers. Gyms and training arenas were the main feature of the tower, for it was the main military garrison. Soldiers and supplies would be bursting from within once the village became more heavily populated. As it was, Sayaka's footsteps echoed through empty rooms and halls.
At the top of the tower was the administrative offices. It was a very long walk, and a long elevator ride, so Sayaka was more than a little annoyed when she finally arrived.
She stepped into a dark room covered in tatami mats, with the only light being indirect -- cast from light bubbles far away from the window.
Opposite the door were the three living Seven Swordsmen. Her teacher, Raiga, and his colleagues Jinin and Fuguki. Sayaka sighed and removed her sandals, to set them beside the menfolk's.
"Why are you sitting in the dark, sensei?" She asked as she stepped closer and sat down in front of the three of them. Her coat ballooned out around her, and looked like a rounded tent from how the internal armor held its shape.
"We hadn't intended to," Raiga admitted. "The lights went out -- a wiring issue we have a technician working on right now." Though his face was in heavy shadows, Sayaka could hear the tiredness in his voice. "Though the lighting from outside lends a certain ominous atmosphere, yeah?"
"I'm rather fond of this," the tall, even when sitting, Fuguki said with a shrug. "Perhaps we can conduct all business of this sort in this way."
"Speak for yourself," Jinin snapped and turned toward the window. "My eyes aren't what they used to be -- I can't see so well in the dark."
"Regardless," Raiga captured Sayaka's attention again. "We have called you here for a purpose." Raiga stood from his seated position and moved deeper into the shadows. Jinin and Fuguki stood and followed after him. "Come along."
Sayaka took a deep breath and made herself calm as she hauled herself to her feet after only a few minutes of rest. She was physically the strongest on the team -- that didn't mean she liked hauling hundreds of kiloss of equipment up stairs without rest. Her knees weren't invulnerable. Sayaka walked into the dark and found a gap in the wall where she knew a narrow wooden panel would have been.
"I found the candles!" Jinin's voice called from the darkness as Sayaka walked in the direction of noise, unable to see what was in the room.
"How did the half-blind man find the candles first? Whatever." Fuguki groused and struck a match to light the candles. Jar candles didn't provide much light, but four of them together gave them enough to see by.
It let Sayaka see what was in the room with them. Three rectangular coffins, each with a purple haori draped over them like the Seven Swordsmen wore. Like what Junko would wear when she became a jounin.
"When I became your sensei, you were already a chunin by merit," Raiga said as he walked with his candle to stand beside Sayaka. "I've taught you as best I can -- and I think you're ready to stand as a pillar of this village." He gestured with his jar candle to the coffins. "Here, interred, are the three masterless swords of the Seven. Hiramekarei the twinsword. Shibuki the blastsword. And Kubikiribocho seversword." He rested his hand on Sayaka's shoulder and smiled. "You may choose. You've earned the right."
Sayaka couldn't properly fathom what was on offer. To be one of the Seven -- it had been every hands caste's dream, deemed impossible until Raiga had achieved it. She shook her head to clear the surprise from her mind. "But… what about Junko?"
"Junko still has to ascend the ranks. She hasn't even seen the front line of a war, like you have." Raiga's smile remained. "And… because I'm needed here -- once you choose, and Noburu's able to travel, you will lead the team on a mission. As a full jounin of Otogakure." He shrugged. "Which… frankly, you've been doing since you became a toku-jou, so."
"Yeah, yeah, just pawn off more of your work onto me." Sayaka didn't mind the pressure of being team leader when Raiga wasn't around. But being a full jounin… it took her a moment to realize Raiga-sensei had been her age when he first started teaching them. That seemed so long ago. And he'd been one of the Seven long before that. It felt like an extra hundred kilos had been added to her all of a sudden. A vice-like pressure developed around her chest as she realized she would be one of the leaders of her village as one of the Seven. Still, she had to choose. "Everyone thought that the other Swordsmen had left… gone off to become mercs."
"And they were wrong. You will see, inside."
Sayaka nodded and stepped away from Raiga, toward the coffins. She glanced at Jinin and Fuguki, who bowed their heads to her in respect Sayaka didn't feel she'd properly earned. It was like the setup to some sick joke. Briefly, she considered the three weapons interred in their coffins. The twinsword required an enormous amount of chakra to use regularly, second only to Samehada. The blastsword wouldn't see effective use -- she was too often in the back, or hiding. An explosion would reveal her position.
By process of elimination, Sayaka set down her jar candle and donned the haori which bore the word 'Kubikiribocho' in the diamond on its back. Then she slid the lid off the seversword's coffin.
Two meters long without the handle, and shaped like a butcher's knife. Kubikiribocho rested atop a blood-red cushion which stretched the length of the coffin. At half a meter from the bladed side to the blunt back, the sword would see her arm muscles worked out good and proper. She reached for the handle, and saw two skeletal hands there already. Scraps of fabric clung to the bones, which included the wrists and part of the forearms. Enough remained for her to recognize them as black detached sleeves -- and she recognized scorch marks along the cuts in the radii and ulnas.
"Juzo didn't believe in Otogakure," Raiga explained without needing a question. "And he didn't want to relinquish his sword. So I made the choice for him." There was no regret in Raiga's words -- only steel.
"...I understand." Sayaka carefully removed the skeletal hands from Kubikiribocho's handle and left them in the coffin as she lifted the seversword. Physically, the weight was considerable -- she only kept from tipping over due to her coat's weight. "I will wield this severing sword until my time is spent, or there is greater need for it in another's hands."
"Good, now let's go before they get the lights working again and blind -- augh, my eyes!"
---
Raiga and Suzume were both on the business end of Ryukotsusei's killing intent at least once. Orochimaru's killing intent is significantly worse. Orochimaru's is enough to potentially induce cardiac arrest.
So, we're starting the next arc. Chunin exams while the grown-ups prep for war. Also potentially strangling Danzo to death. But let's not get our hopes up.
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- Location
- Canada
Malicious Compliance is the best compliance.
Ch 50
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Ch 50: Isolated
---
Mother Jiang
Noburu wasn't in a good place. The seal had destabilized so that the three-tails' chakra leaked into his at uncontrollable times and in unpredictable volumes. Even being drugged wouldn't stop it. For a majority of the past three days, Akami had been in the hospital at her son's bedside, while Kousuke meditated nearby. Any time coral began to grow on Noburu's body wildly out of control, Kousuke would bubble it until it stopped and then smash it.
The bits and pieces of coral were frequently collected -- since broken coral would rapidly grow once placed in water. In a few years time, the reefs created by the horrible period would be visible in the shallows. The thought of sharing that potential happy memory kept her going as days passed, and it seemed a solution would be harder to find than the ninja had anticipated.
Once it became clear that Noburu being unconscious did nothing, they stopped keeping him under. Most of their time was spent in silence, but she did get him to talk sometimes.
"So. Baby brother, huh."
Akami wished that the topic hadn't come up when he was in such a state. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Yes. Jirou… your father, he -- "
"Ditched us to have another family, I know." Noburu nodded, as if he didn't care about that detail. "Back to baby bro, he got a name? Doing okay?"
Akami blinked and opened her mouth as she processed how Noburu had shrugged off what Jirou had done. "He… his name is Kuroma. And he's doing better, now that he's in the hospital."
"Good, good. Are they staying with us, going with Orochimaru, what?" Noburu looked at her, and arched his eyebrow when he didn't get a prompt response. "You two not get along or something?"
"N-no, me and Beniko are… okay, given the circumstances." Akami patted her son's hand, as her mouth turned down at the ends and her eyebrows pinched together. "Are… you okay with them living with us? If they want to?"
Noburu narrowed his eyes and twisted his mouth. "What kind of question is that? We have room in the apartment, and other empty apartments besides."
"I meant… after what Jirou did…."
"Again… what kind of question is that?" Noburu shook his head. "Whether he ditched us to kill himself, or to have another family -- it doesn't change my stance on him. He's been a deadbeat for years -- he's just living up to the name a bit stronger now."
Akami remembered the one photo she had of all three of them together. Noburu squished between her and Jirou. It felt like decades ago -- yet it was not even half that. Three years prior, she'd heard terrible bitterness from Noburu about his father. And presently, she looked into his eyes and found confusion. Her son was baffled as to why she thought he'd feel anything about Jirou.
Kousuke cleared his throat, and stood from his meditation. "Noburu," he said in a warning tone. "You need to talk to her about… the thing we discussed."
"Oh right." Noburu sighed, and looked at the ceiling. "Uh. So that other guy who came back with us? He's my cousin, did I tell you that?"
Akami, shaken by the past week's events and her own realizations, couldn't recall. She leaned forward, and rested her head in her hand. "You might have mentioned it before, I'm not sure. Why?"
"Well -- he's the head of whatever clan me, Orochimaru, and I guess Kuroma descend from. Kinda trying to deprogram him from his 'bwa ha ha, rip eyes out of people yes good' upbringing." The teenager showed a lot of energy when he mocked whatever culture their clan had. He made a terrifying expression and spread his arms wide. Then like a switch, when he was done talking, he flopped back into his usual lethargy. "Would you mind helping me with that? I'm hoping that he can get the rest of the clan to leave us alone."
"Wait -- he wanted to rip your eyes out -- ?" Akami rose from her head-holding to look at Kousuke and Noburu in confusion. Had they told her about that? She felt like she would have remembered -- but there was so much going on, she couldn't be sure.
"Yeah yeah, that's old news. Depending on how good he ends up being, I might give him mine." Noburu flicked his hand. "Gonna need Isobu stabilized, and probably one of those rocks Orochimaru's been mining, but hey. Eye factory Noburu. Has a ring to it, huh?"
"...You two are making fun of me," Akami decided after a moment's thought. She rolled her eyes and stood up. "I'm going to get lunch, and when I get back -- you better be in a more serious mood, young man." Without much hesitation, she started toward the door in a huff.
"I'm actually not, that's the weird pa -- "
Akami whirled around and silenced her boy with a pointed finger and warning look. She turned, touched the doorknob, then whirled back to point one more time just as Noburu opened his mouth. She left the room and sighed as she walked down the hall. It was all too much.
Her quest for the elevators stopped when she saw a familiar silhouette down a connecting hallway. Orochimaru, signing papers with a nurse. His students were further down the hall, packed and ready to go. There was something… wrong about him, the shadows on his face and arms seemed to resist the lights in the hall. She caught his eye as he looked up, and memories came rushing back. For a moment she was in the streets of Kirigakure again, in the market as the snow fell, looking through a crowd to see her friend Arata with his eyes dead and glassy. Something had happened. Maybe there was a delay in the sealing, maybe Konoha had been attacked -- Akami didn't know or care.
Akami moved before she was aware of it, and had her brother-in-law in a hug seconds later. It hurt a little, given there was a clipboard smushed between them.
"...Akami," Orochimaru muttered in a raspy voice. "I'm busy."
"I know," she said as she hugged him tighter. "But it looks like you have to leave. So I have to let you know how thankful I am, and how much me and Noburu love you." 'Love' had slipped out. But she felt how tense Orochimaru got from that, and saw how his students raised their eyebrows with expressions in the happy-ish range. "You've been a fantastic uncle, and all I could ask for in a brother-in-law. If you're going back, I wanted you to know that. We love you. I love you. You always have a home here."
For a moment, Akami was distracted by the shadows she and Orochimaru cast on the wall. They seemed unusually dark for a second. But she was drawn back when Orochimaru returned the hug with his one free arm.
"Thank you." Orochimaru's raspy voice made it hard to tell his emotional state, and when she pulled away she saw that he still had a glassy look to his eyes. The one change was that he smiled a little. Without missing a beat, he returned to paperwork and passed the clipboard off to the nurse who had stood there awkwardly as they hugged.
Akami returned the smile and started back toward the hallway. Again, she noticed the shadows darken in the hall for a moment, but as she glanced toward her son's hospital room they seemed to return to normal. "This is why we should drink more water, Akami," she muttered to herself as she resumed her quest for the elevators.
--
Isobu
With every breath he or Noburu took, the seal eroded. The sea had boiled away to nothing, and left a howling nothing in its place. All that remained of the seal was the sandy seafloor Isobu rested upon, and the shattered hook which Noburu sat. They lost the seafloor by inches, the nothing ate at it slowly but surely.
Out of the water for the first time in years, Isobu was burdened with his own weight. His movements were lethargic, his tails remained down for lifting them took considerable effort. They only had each other in the seal now -- for it was too unsafe for Kousuke or Saiken to visit, and projecting either of them to the other's seal would risk brain death.
"...They have a new seal," Noburu said, at last, as he kicked his feet in the air. He'd had to move closer to the neck of the hook, for there was not much left to sit on. "You'll be extracted soon, and then they'll seal you back into me. We should be apart for… an hour, maybe." He shrugged and raised his eyebrows. "Letting you know -- if a ball of iron and nails are involved, I'll be busting you out."
Isobu moved his titanic arms and dragged himself forward in the sand, closer to the hook. So little of it remained that even if he laid flat on the sand his head would be taller, so he loomed over Noburu instead. "The new seal may not permit us to speak. Gyuki has been subject to such seals."
"I don't know about you, but I know sign language," Noburu began to move his hands in tune with his words, though they continued a bit after he'd finished. "And maybe that ninshu stuff will work through the seal."
The turtle spirit shook his head. "You still don't get it. The horror that drove Kurama to their pervasive hate. That made the gods flee or fall into deep slumber." He leaned down, sand poured from his joints, and the air was displaced as wind by his mass. "Some sealing jutsu are capable of blocking ninshu. Blocking the sublime connection to the world. Not all, and I lack the knowledge to know what causes it -- but it's quite possible this new seal will contain such an effect." It had hurt, to be cut off from his brothers. From the sea. It was like losing a limb, one moment all was normal and then nothing.
"...Can't imagine anyone would have a good reaction to that." Noburu shrugged. "But! I'll be sure to read some information about sealing to provide you with the raw data on the subject." The teen shook his head a little. "Probably not going to be a sealing master myself, though."
"That would be fine. Even if the seal between us is ironclad, we can work toward perfect co-existence as Saiken and Kousuke have." The great turtle lifted his hand instinctively and reached toward his jinchuuriki before he stopped it. Isobu's hands were far too big for him to safely touch Noburu. "But we might not speak for many years."
"Aww, you'd miss me!" Noburu grinned wide. "I've got ya emotions."
"Perhaps not speaking for years would be preferable to this," Isobu muttered and averted his eye.
"Nuh! I've got your emotions, and I'm keepin' 'em!" The teen nodded, like such a thing was perfectly sensible. "Going to put them in my hoard."
"You know, eventually someone's going to find that treasure horde you're making." Isobu jumped at the chance to change the subject from his own emotions.
"Yeah, and they'll find out real quick if they've got the reaction time to enjoy it." Noburu stuck his tongue out at the enormous turtle. His expression became more sombre after a moment. "I'll keep the agreements made with you, even if I don't believe they'll work. Fighting Madara tends to go poorly, but who knows." He shrugged. "Maybe I can take out an eye, keep him from giving it to some random Rain Country kid in a decade or two."
Isobu blinked, ponderously slow. "What."
"The man has a face for a nipple, his motivations are screwy at best." Noburu looked to the side, where the sandy seafloor was about to shrink to the point where Isobu wouldn't be supported any longer. "It's gonna happen soon."
The turtle spirit nodded. In moments, the seal would begin its death spiral. "We will see each other again. One way or another."
"I'll be sure to cause as much mischief as I possibly can to keep you entertained if we can't talk." Noburu watched as the sand gave way to nothing, and Isobu started to sink into the void. "Be seeing you."
All at once, the hook and the sand shattered like glass, and the two of them were left in the void.
--
Rebellious Monk Kousuke
Something slid under the door into the room, which woke Kousuke from his meditation. A dark creature, thin as shadows, moved in the gaps where light wasn't cast -- as if Kousuke could not see it. With an arched brow, the monk opened his mouth and blew out a bubble that filled with pale liquid. The marble-sized bubble lit up with the intensity of a powerful bulb once he tapped it with his finger.
The shadows in the room suddenly shifted, and the dark creature didn't keep up. It remained on the floor, in the shadow it had just occupied before Kousuke took action.
"Little demon," the monk said with a chiding tone -- as if it were a child he spoke to. "Find your prey elsewhere."
The living shadow inched away from Noburu, back toward the door, and slipped back under it as easily as it entered.
'Not going to destroy it?' Saiken asked as he looked through Kousuke's eyes.
"Demons have to eat too," Kousuke responded as he broke the bubble of light. "Now it knows it cannot sneak past me, so it will go off in search of easier prey." Kousuke returned to his meditation, and contemplated the cosmos.
Distance is an illusion, Noburu had said. The space between two atoms is always zero, because the big bang had never really happened. Kousuke meditated upon the meaning behind those words -- to understand the world better, and so himself. When he next opened his eyes, there were nurses and Tsunade in the room barking orders while Noburu convulsed. He closed his eyes again as they began to wheel him out of the room.
Kousuke imagined an orb that was everything. All that existed, and ever would. The conventional wisdom was that such an orb had once existed, and exploded outward to create the physical universe. But Noburu told him it had never really happened. What could that mean?
He opened his eyes again, and Noburu was once again in the room -- hooked up to a machine that beeped in tune with his heart, and something that looked to be taking the blood from his body then putting back in after a some shaking. A filter, perhaps? He closed his eyes again to meditate more.
Kousuke imagined -- perhaps the universe was inside the orb still? That the orb was the boundary of the universe, and at its heart they would find an orb which contained another universe. Universal layers ifinitely deep and wide. Perhaps when one universe ended, it popped as if it were a bubble and the next universe continued to exist.
He opened his eyes again, and found that someone had placed a colorful hat on his head. Or rather, it was an ordinary fig-shaped hat that had colorful tassels all along the rim that made it rather difficult to see. Kousuke moved his head and produced a series of cracks, which became a theme as he began to stand up.
Once he was stood up, he removed his new hat and looked around the room. He saw Noburu's friends, with eyes on him filled with horror. Except the young pale-haired girl. She had her usual cheer in abundance.
"What?" Kousuke shrugged and filled the air with more cracking noises. "Something in my teeth?"
"You haven't moved in almost a week," the young man, Haruki said with a disturbed expression. "We thought you were dead."
"You know," Noburu's voice wheezed from the bed. "That doesn't paint a good look on you guys. Being comfortable with leaving a corpse in someone's hospital room."
Kousuke ignored the confused looks and approached Noburu's bed, looming over Haruki to get a look. Noburu was still alive, but pale. The blood-machine had gone, and was replaced with a large patch of bandages on Noburu's side in two spots. Presumably where the tubes for blood removal and return had been. "Well, you're not dead," Kousuke said with a flippant tone and an arched eyebrow. "Though you look pretty damn close."
"Yeah, this new seal's really throttled Isobu's chakra flow into me. Kinda harder to heal any injuries. Still getting used to it." Noburu grint his teeth in an attempt to smile.
"Need a loan?" Kousuke held up his hand and covered it with the cyan fire that was Saiken's chakra.
"That would be great, thanks."
Kousuke couldn't easily reach over to touch Noburu's upper body, so he grabbed the teen's ankle and forced Saiken's chakra into his body that way. As the bijuu's energy flooded Noburu's system and was immediately put to use, the teen's normal-ish coloration quickly returned.
The large-coated girl, Sayaka Kousuke remembered her name to be, pointed between them with a confused look. "So this… this is something you guys can just do? When were you going to tell someone?"
"We weren't," Kousuke and Noburu answered as one. "Ninja knowing more about how jinchuuriki function is actively harmful to the world at large," Kousuke added as he kept the flow going. "There we go, one tail's equivalent should be enough." He released Noburu's ankle and stepped away from the teen's bed. "Have I missed anything important?"
"We're going to the Konoha chunin exams!" The perky pale-haired girl cried with glee in her voice. She did a little dance that involved thrusting her arms into the air repeatedly. "We get to fight Konoha ninja and see how their training compares to ours. Oh, I bet they'll be really strong! Eeee!"
"I got… promoted," Sayaka offered, still a little disturbed by the jinchuuriki sharing chakra. "Is he going to develop sluggy traits, or anything?"
"Joke's on you, I've had sluggy traits this whole time." Noburu's voice was stronger than it had been prior, thanks to the chakra loan. He pointed at her with narrowed eyes and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. "And so have you."
Haruki quickly placed himself in Sayaka's path so she couldn't murder his brother, which freed Kousuke up to get a closer look. While the young people either advocated forgiveness or brutal murder, Kousuke looked around his fellow jinchuuriki to look for the new seal.
"It's on my back now." Noburu explained once he realized what Kosuuke was looking for. The boy had already put Saiken's chakra to work on regrowing his hair. "It's pretty big. But it has a huge buffer between our chakra networks now. I guess so he can't flood me and make me pop like a balloon."
"Is it going to make fighting more of a challenge?" Kosuke arched his brow as Noburu's disregard made Sayaka even angrier. Haruki still put up a good fight to keep her away from his adopted brother.
"For now, yeah?" Noburu shrugged. "It's… like an empty riverbed with deep pits which used to be lakes. Isobu's chakra flows down it, and has to fill up a lake before it can continue flowing. At the end of the river is me."
"What about talking? Can you still do that with Isobu?"
Noburu shook his head. "I think once he reconnects with me we'll be able to talk -- but right now he's still busy filling metaphorical lakes. So far, we're up to nineteen of 'em."
Whatever commentary on the seal Kousuke would have offered was cut off by Sayaka getting around Haruki to deliver a charlie-horse to Noburu's thigh. "I'm your sensei now! You don't bring up my sluggy traits anymore!"
"Exactly what a sluggy woman would say -- augh!" Noburu couldn't not hit a hornet's nest, and earned himself another charlie-horse.
"Try and fill up some of those 'lakes' with the Saiken chakra I loaned you," Kousuke said and put on his decorative new hat again. "And if you're going to Konoha, see if Kurama will loan you some as well. I hope it doesn't take that long, though." Kousuke had intended to leave the hospital room then, but instead walked right into the wall next to it due to the tassels on his new hat. Thankfully, it didn't look like anyone had caught it, so he could feel out the doorknob and leave without difficulty.
Though, as he left, a shadow in the hallway darkened.
---
Introducing, an heirloom of the First Hokage, the Seal of Thirty-Six Wells! An even-numbered seal, it boasts a prodigious buffer between the bijuu and jinchuuriki to assure maximum containment. The seal was ultimately retired since it took active participation from the bijuu to create a chakra-network connection to the jinchuuriki. This meant that the bijuu could effectively isolate itself, and the jinchuuriki would be useless as a weapon.
---
Mother Jiang
Noburu wasn't in a good place. The seal had destabilized so that the three-tails' chakra leaked into his at uncontrollable times and in unpredictable volumes. Even being drugged wouldn't stop it. For a majority of the past three days, Akami had been in the hospital at her son's bedside, while Kousuke meditated nearby. Any time coral began to grow on Noburu's body wildly out of control, Kousuke would bubble it until it stopped and then smash it.
The bits and pieces of coral were frequently collected -- since broken coral would rapidly grow once placed in water. In a few years time, the reefs created by the horrible period would be visible in the shallows. The thought of sharing that potential happy memory kept her going as days passed, and it seemed a solution would be harder to find than the ninja had anticipated.
Once it became clear that Noburu being unconscious did nothing, they stopped keeping him under. Most of their time was spent in silence, but she did get him to talk sometimes.
"So. Baby brother, huh."
Akami wished that the topic hadn't come up when he was in such a state. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Yes. Jirou… your father, he -- "
"Ditched us to have another family, I know." Noburu nodded, as if he didn't care about that detail. "Back to baby bro, he got a name? Doing okay?"
Akami blinked and opened her mouth as she processed how Noburu had shrugged off what Jirou had done. "He… his name is Kuroma. And he's doing better, now that he's in the hospital."
"Good, good. Are they staying with us, going with Orochimaru, what?" Noburu looked at her, and arched his eyebrow when he didn't get a prompt response. "You two not get along or something?"
"N-no, me and Beniko are… okay, given the circumstances." Akami patted her son's hand, as her mouth turned down at the ends and her eyebrows pinched together. "Are… you okay with them living with us? If they want to?"
Noburu narrowed his eyes and twisted his mouth. "What kind of question is that? We have room in the apartment, and other empty apartments besides."
"I meant… after what Jirou did…."
"Again… what kind of question is that?" Noburu shook his head. "Whether he ditched us to kill himself, or to have another family -- it doesn't change my stance on him. He's been a deadbeat for years -- he's just living up to the name a bit stronger now."
Akami remembered the one photo she had of all three of them together. Noburu squished between her and Jirou. It felt like decades ago -- yet it was not even half that. Three years prior, she'd heard terrible bitterness from Noburu about his father. And presently, she looked into his eyes and found confusion. Her son was baffled as to why she thought he'd feel anything about Jirou.
Kousuke cleared his throat, and stood from his meditation. "Noburu," he said in a warning tone. "You need to talk to her about… the thing we discussed."
"Oh right." Noburu sighed, and looked at the ceiling. "Uh. So that other guy who came back with us? He's my cousin, did I tell you that?"
Akami, shaken by the past week's events and her own realizations, couldn't recall. She leaned forward, and rested her head in her hand. "You might have mentioned it before, I'm not sure. Why?"
"Well -- he's the head of whatever clan me, Orochimaru, and I guess Kuroma descend from. Kinda trying to deprogram him from his 'bwa ha ha, rip eyes out of people yes good' upbringing." The teenager showed a lot of energy when he mocked whatever culture their clan had. He made a terrifying expression and spread his arms wide. Then like a switch, when he was done talking, he flopped back into his usual lethargy. "Would you mind helping me with that? I'm hoping that he can get the rest of the clan to leave us alone."
"Wait -- he wanted to rip your eyes out -- ?" Akami rose from her head-holding to look at Kousuke and Noburu in confusion. Had they told her about that? She felt like she would have remembered -- but there was so much going on, she couldn't be sure.
"Yeah yeah, that's old news. Depending on how good he ends up being, I might give him mine." Noburu flicked his hand. "Gonna need Isobu stabilized, and probably one of those rocks Orochimaru's been mining, but hey. Eye factory Noburu. Has a ring to it, huh?"
"...You two are making fun of me," Akami decided after a moment's thought. She rolled her eyes and stood up. "I'm going to get lunch, and when I get back -- you better be in a more serious mood, young man." Without much hesitation, she started toward the door in a huff.
"I'm actually not, that's the weird pa -- "
Akami whirled around and silenced her boy with a pointed finger and warning look. She turned, touched the doorknob, then whirled back to point one more time just as Noburu opened his mouth. She left the room and sighed as she walked down the hall. It was all too much.
Her quest for the elevators stopped when she saw a familiar silhouette down a connecting hallway. Orochimaru, signing papers with a nurse. His students were further down the hall, packed and ready to go. There was something… wrong about him, the shadows on his face and arms seemed to resist the lights in the hall. She caught his eye as he looked up, and memories came rushing back. For a moment she was in the streets of Kirigakure again, in the market as the snow fell, looking through a crowd to see her friend Arata with his eyes dead and glassy. Something had happened. Maybe there was a delay in the sealing, maybe Konoha had been attacked -- Akami didn't know or care.
Akami moved before she was aware of it, and had her brother-in-law in a hug seconds later. It hurt a little, given there was a clipboard smushed between them.
"...Akami," Orochimaru muttered in a raspy voice. "I'm busy."
"I know," she said as she hugged him tighter. "But it looks like you have to leave. So I have to let you know how thankful I am, and how much me and Noburu love you." 'Love' had slipped out. But she felt how tense Orochimaru got from that, and saw how his students raised their eyebrows with expressions in the happy-ish range. "You've been a fantastic uncle, and all I could ask for in a brother-in-law. If you're going back, I wanted you to know that. We love you. I love you. You always have a home here."
For a moment, Akami was distracted by the shadows she and Orochimaru cast on the wall. They seemed unusually dark for a second. But she was drawn back when Orochimaru returned the hug with his one free arm.
"Thank you." Orochimaru's raspy voice made it hard to tell his emotional state, and when she pulled away she saw that he still had a glassy look to his eyes. The one change was that he smiled a little. Without missing a beat, he returned to paperwork and passed the clipboard off to the nurse who had stood there awkwardly as they hugged.
Akami returned the smile and started back toward the hallway. Again, she noticed the shadows darken in the hall for a moment, but as she glanced toward her son's hospital room they seemed to return to normal. "This is why we should drink more water, Akami," she muttered to herself as she resumed her quest for the elevators.
--
Isobu
With every breath he or Noburu took, the seal eroded. The sea had boiled away to nothing, and left a howling nothing in its place. All that remained of the seal was the sandy seafloor Isobu rested upon, and the shattered hook which Noburu sat. They lost the seafloor by inches, the nothing ate at it slowly but surely.
Out of the water for the first time in years, Isobu was burdened with his own weight. His movements were lethargic, his tails remained down for lifting them took considerable effort. They only had each other in the seal now -- for it was too unsafe for Kousuke or Saiken to visit, and projecting either of them to the other's seal would risk brain death.
"...They have a new seal," Noburu said, at last, as he kicked his feet in the air. He'd had to move closer to the neck of the hook, for there was not much left to sit on. "You'll be extracted soon, and then they'll seal you back into me. We should be apart for… an hour, maybe." He shrugged and raised his eyebrows. "Letting you know -- if a ball of iron and nails are involved, I'll be busting you out."
Isobu moved his titanic arms and dragged himself forward in the sand, closer to the hook. So little of it remained that even if he laid flat on the sand his head would be taller, so he loomed over Noburu instead. "The new seal may not permit us to speak. Gyuki has been subject to such seals."
"I don't know about you, but I know sign language," Noburu began to move his hands in tune with his words, though they continued a bit after he'd finished. "And maybe that ninshu stuff will work through the seal."
The turtle spirit shook his head. "You still don't get it. The horror that drove Kurama to their pervasive hate. That made the gods flee or fall into deep slumber." He leaned down, sand poured from his joints, and the air was displaced as wind by his mass. "Some sealing jutsu are capable of blocking ninshu. Blocking the sublime connection to the world. Not all, and I lack the knowledge to know what causes it -- but it's quite possible this new seal will contain such an effect." It had hurt, to be cut off from his brothers. From the sea. It was like losing a limb, one moment all was normal and then nothing.
"...Can't imagine anyone would have a good reaction to that." Noburu shrugged. "But! I'll be sure to read some information about sealing to provide you with the raw data on the subject." The teen shook his head a little. "Probably not going to be a sealing master myself, though."
"That would be fine. Even if the seal between us is ironclad, we can work toward perfect co-existence as Saiken and Kousuke have." The great turtle lifted his hand instinctively and reached toward his jinchuuriki before he stopped it. Isobu's hands were far too big for him to safely touch Noburu. "But we might not speak for many years."
"Aww, you'd miss me!" Noburu grinned wide. "I've got ya emotions."
"Perhaps not speaking for years would be preferable to this," Isobu muttered and averted his eye.
"Nuh! I've got your emotions, and I'm keepin' 'em!" The teen nodded, like such a thing was perfectly sensible. "Going to put them in my hoard."
"You know, eventually someone's going to find that treasure horde you're making." Isobu jumped at the chance to change the subject from his own emotions.
"Yeah, and they'll find out real quick if they've got the reaction time to enjoy it." Noburu stuck his tongue out at the enormous turtle. His expression became more sombre after a moment. "I'll keep the agreements made with you, even if I don't believe they'll work. Fighting Madara tends to go poorly, but who knows." He shrugged. "Maybe I can take out an eye, keep him from giving it to some random Rain Country kid in a decade or two."
Isobu blinked, ponderously slow. "What."
"The man has a face for a nipple, his motivations are screwy at best." Noburu looked to the side, where the sandy seafloor was about to shrink to the point where Isobu wouldn't be supported any longer. "It's gonna happen soon."
The turtle spirit nodded. In moments, the seal would begin its death spiral. "We will see each other again. One way or another."
"I'll be sure to cause as much mischief as I possibly can to keep you entertained if we can't talk." Noburu watched as the sand gave way to nothing, and Isobu started to sink into the void. "Be seeing you."
All at once, the hook and the sand shattered like glass, and the two of them were left in the void.
--
Rebellious Monk Kousuke
Something slid under the door into the room, which woke Kousuke from his meditation. A dark creature, thin as shadows, moved in the gaps where light wasn't cast -- as if Kousuke could not see it. With an arched brow, the monk opened his mouth and blew out a bubble that filled with pale liquid. The marble-sized bubble lit up with the intensity of a powerful bulb once he tapped it with his finger.
The shadows in the room suddenly shifted, and the dark creature didn't keep up. It remained on the floor, in the shadow it had just occupied before Kousuke took action.
"Little demon," the monk said with a chiding tone -- as if it were a child he spoke to. "Find your prey elsewhere."
The living shadow inched away from Noburu, back toward the door, and slipped back under it as easily as it entered.
'Not going to destroy it?' Saiken asked as he looked through Kousuke's eyes.
"Demons have to eat too," Kousuke responded as he broke the bubble of light. "Now it knows it cannot sneak past me, so it will go off in search of easier prey." Kousuke returned to his meditation, and contemplated the cosmos.
Distance is an illusion, Noburu had said. The space between two atoms is always zero, because the big bang had never really happened. Kousuke meditated upon the meaning behind those words -- to understand the world better, and so himself. When he next opened his eyes, there were nurses and Tsunade in the room barking orders while Noburu convulsed. He closed his eyes again as they began to wheel him out of the room.
Kousuke imagined an orb that was everything. All that existed, and ever would. The conventional wisdom was that such an orb had once existed, and exploded outward to create the physical universe. But Noburu told him it had never really happened. What could that mean?
He opened his eyes again, and Noburu was once again in the room -- hooked up to a machine that beeped in tune with his heart, and something that looked to be taking the blood from his body then putting back in after a some shaking. A filter, perhaps? He closed his eyes again to meditate more.
Kousuke imagined -- perhaps the universe was inside the orb still? That the orb was the boundary of the universe, and at its heart they would find an orb which contained another universe. Universal layers ifinitely deep and wide. Perhaps when one universe ended, it popped as if it were a bubble and the next universe continued to exist.
He opened his eyes again, and found that someone had placed a colorful hat on his head. Or rather, it was an ordinary fig-shaped hat that had colorful tassels all along the rim that made it rather difficult to see. Kousuke moved his head and produced a series of cracks, which became a theme as he began to stand up.
Once he was stood up, he removed his new hat and looked around the room. He saw Noburu's friends, with eyes on him filled with horror. Except the young pale-haired girl. She had her usual cheer in abundance.
"What?" Kousuke shrugged and filled the air with more cracking noises. "Something in my teeth?"
"You haven't moved in almost a week," the young man, Haruki said with a disturbed expression. "We thought you were dead."
"You know," Noburu's voice wheezed from the bed. "That doesn't paint a good look on you guys. Being comfortable with leaving a corpse in someone's hospital room."
Kousuke ignored the confused looks and approached Noburu's bed, looming over Haruki to get a look. Noburu was still alive, but pale. The blood-machine had gone, and was replaced with a large patch of bandages on Noburu's side in two spots. Presumably where the tubes for blood removal and return had been. "Well, you're not dead," Kousuke said with a flippant tone and an arched eyebrow. "Though you look pretty damn close."
"Yeah, this new seal's really throttled Isobu's chakra flow into me. Kinda harder to heal any injuries. Still getting used to it." Noburu grint his teeth in an attempt to smile.
"Need a loan?" Kousuke held up his hand and covered it with the cyan fire that was Saiken's chakra.
"That would be great, thanks."
Kousuke couldn't easily reach over to touch Noburu's upper body, so he grabbed the teen's ankle and forced Saiken's chakra into his body that way. As the bijuu's energy flooded Noburu's system and was immediately put to use, the teen's normal-ish coloration quickly returned.
The large-coated girl, Sayaka Kousuke remembered her name to be, pointed between them with a confused look. "So this… this is something you guys can just do? When were you going to tell someone?"
"We weren't," Kousuke and Noburu answered as one. "Ninja knowing more about how jinchuuriki function is actively harmful to the world at large," Kousuke added as he kept the flow going. "There we go, one tail's equivalent should be enough." He released Noburu's ankle and stepped away from the teen's bed. "Have I missed anything important?"
"We're going to the Konoha chunin exams!" The perky pale-haired girl cried with glee in her voice. She did a little dance that involved thrusting her arms into the air repeatedly. "We get to fight Konoha ninja and see how their training compares to ours. Oh, I bet they'll be really strong! Eeee!"
"I got… promoted," Sayaka offered, still a little disturbed by the jinchuuriki sharing chakra. "Is he going to develop sluggy traits, or anything?"
"Joke's on you, I've had sluggy traits this whole time." Noburu's voice was stronger than it had been prior, thanks to the chakra loan. He pointed at her with narrowed eyes and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. "And so have you."
Haruki quickly placed himself in Sayaka's path so she couldn't murder his brother, which freed Kousuke up to get a closer look. While the young people either advocated forgiveness or brutal murder, Kousuke looked around his fellow jinchuuriki to look for the new seal.
"It's on my back now." Noburu explained once he realized what Kosuuke was looking for. The boy had already put Saiken's chakra to work on regrowing his hair. "It's pretty big. But it has a huge buffer between our chakra networks now. I guess so he can't flood me and make me pop like a balloon."
"Is it going to make fighting more of a challenge?" Kosuke arched his brow as Noburu's disregard made Sayaka even angrier. Haruki still put up a good fight to keep her away from his adopted brother.
"For now, yeah?" Noburu shrugged. "It's… like an empty riverbed with deep pits which used to be lakes. Isobu's chakra flows down it, and has to fill up a lake before it can continue flowing. At the end of the river is me."
"What about talking? Can you still do that with Isobu?"
Noburu shook his head. "I think once he reconnects with me we'll be able to talk -- but right now he's still busy filling metaphorical lakes. So far, we're up to nineteen of 'em."
Whatever commentary on the seal Kousuke would have offered was cut off by Sayaka getting around Haruki to deliver a charlie-horse to Noburu's thigh. "I'm your sensei now! You don't bring up my sluggy traits anymore!"
"Exactly what a sluggy woman would say -- augh!" Noburu couldn't not hit a hornet's nest, and earned himself another charlie-horse.
"Try and fill up some of those 'lakes' with the Saiken chakra I loaned you," Kousuke said and put on his decorative new hat again. "And if you're going to Konoha, see if Kurama will loan you some as well. I hope it doesn't take that long, though." Kousuke had intended to leave the hospital room then, but instead walked right into the wall next to it due to the tassels on his new hat. Thankfully, it didn't look like anyone had caught it, so he could feel out the doorknob and leave without difficulty.
Though, as he left, a shadow in the hallway darkened.
---
Introducing, an heirloom of the First Hokage, the Seal of Thirty-Six Wells! An even-numbered seal, it boasts a prodigious buffer between the bijuu and jinchuuriki to assure maximum containment. The seal was ultimately retired since it took active participation from the bijuu to create a chakra-network connection to the jinchuuriki. This meant that the bijuu could effectively isolate itself, and the jinchuuriki would be useless as a weapon.
Vaalintine
Wild Wondorous Wolfalope
Also means the bijou could prevent its own use if the host was captured. Also the seal being on his back seems very appropriate.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Madara's Hashirama chest was added by Kabuto.
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
See -- it's such an in-character thing for Madara to do, though, that everyone assumes it's true even though Noburu doesn't remember if it really was Kabuto or not. People who knew Madara are all like, 'yes, that is a thing he would do', and people who've heard Madara's story agree. So, it's treated as if it did happen, when it very well might not have. Madara has become a victim of his own bad publicity.
It's a holdover from the era of seals which were meant to contain actual demons from literal hell. The goal in that time was to isolate the chakra networks from each other. Friendly reminder, demon chakra causes human chakra to produce a sound exactly like tortured screams on contact. The Thirty-Six Wells was made in a transitional period, and has a lot of redundancy along with built-in stability as a result of the earlier period's isolation emphasis. Modern seals are optimized for containment that doesn't preclude utilization of the bijuu chakra, which allows for techniques like the taiied beast cloak.
Isobu, sealed in the Thirty-Six Wells, cannot flood Noburu's chakra network enough to produce a tailed beast cloak -- it is not possible for him to do. So he's gone from having no buffer to having a thick and cumbersome buffer.
Ch 51
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Chapter 51: Oh no 2
---
Jounin Kanzaki
"So, of course you know, when we get to Konoha the gloves come off?"
Sayaka joined her teammates in stopping what they were doing and looking at Noburu with arched brows. They had gathered in the Turtle House apartments to help set up Sayaka's old room for the new Jiangs moving in. Sayaka's and Junko had been moving in a bed frame while Haruki had been steam-cleaning the floors. Noburu continued to use his chakra strings to move brooms and brushes around to scrub every surface of dust.
"...You going to elaborate on that, or…?" Haruki narrowed his eyes to accompany his snark.
"You guys remember how I was when I first joined the team?" Noburu turned his head enough to grin malevolently at them, the effect worsened with his active byakugan. "That was me being a perfect gentlemen compared to what Konoha's going to get."
"They're our allies," Sayaka said, long-suffering as she got a glimpse of what Raiga-sensei had to deal with. With a nudge, she got Junko to keep moving and set the bed frame down. In hindsight, they wouldn't have needed to work so hard if they had taken it apart before moving it out of storage. "We have to be nice."
"Konoha is our ally. Hiruzen Sarutobi and Danzo Shimura are active threats to that relationship and to Konoha's continued existence." Noburu's voice turned vicious as he spoke. Even when he let the bijuu devour entire crews of pirates, he hadn't been so aggressively mean when he spoke. "They brought this on themselves."
Junko ran into the hall and came back with the mattress. "Ooh, we're seeing Noburu turn nasty." She grinned wide, showing too many teeth. "My cousins have been asking about what your mean streak looks like."
Noburu brandished a broom at her. "Hey, I'm in a relationship. Stop tempting your family with what they can't have."
"But it's fun!"
Sayaka rolled her eyes while she brought in a brand new baby bed. It was one of those newfangled ones, with raised edges so that the baby couldn't roll out. If it resulted in fewer 'dropped on your head' style idiots, Sayaka would sing their praise. It had been a pain to assemble -- thankfully it was less trouble to bring it into the room put together.
Haruki began to steam up the walls of the room, so the posters Sayaka had put up could be pulled down. Her shuriken practice poster. Her diagram of explosive note assembly. Her short-lived favorite band phase -- those southern singers and their 'polka' had been in fashion for a while. All would be rolled up and put into storage.
"You're just going to make the Konoha ninja you're competing against all the more vindictive, you know," she said with her voice lowered by a surge of melancholy. She had been happy when she lived with Akami and Noburu -- and while she was still their neighbor, it made her feel like losing her home again to see her room absent her influence. "They'll just go out of their way to get you."
"Eh, they were going to do that anyway." Noburu moved the cleaning implements to scrub at the edges of where the posters had been. "We're an entire team of battlefield control types, all have kekkei genkai, and we're all strangers invading their home because of politics. Every punk with a chip on their shoulder will come at us, might as well piss them off to come at us stupid."
"They always get that cute surprised look on their faces when they realize they're in too deep." Junko giggled and hid her mouth behind her voluminous sleeves. "Ooh, do you suppose they'll put us in their 'forest of death'?"
"Nah, giant tigers are nothing compared to maneater boars." Haruki crossed his arms, at ease since he'd finished his work. "And they know we could ruin their entire forest if we wanted to."
"Aww, but I wanted to hear their screams echo…." Junko pouted, all her energy gone for a second. "Oh well! I'll have to savor them the first time I hear them, then!"
"I'm so glad you all are on-board with this." Sayaka's mood fouled a bit as her words didn't have their desired reaction. "Just… try not to start a war." She paused. "Wait."
"Was gonna say, it's a bit late for that." Noburu finished up with his cleaning and bundled the brooms and washcloths together with the mop and bucket. "Alright, looks good to me."
"Can you give us an idea of how bad you taking the gloves off will be?" She led the team out of what had been her room, and felt a pang of that loss-of-home despondancy again when she closed the door finally. At least this room hadn't been burned down like Kiri. Once done, she threw herself into her 'sensei mode'.
"I'm going to be using these eyes," Noburu briefly activated his byakugan, "to find all kinds of secrets out. Stuff on top of what I already know. Rumors are going to be started, plots are going to be exposed, and the pranks." He smiled, full of venom and cruelty. "When I'm done, they'll think Naruto is my second coming."
Sayaka and the others arched their eyebrows at him, but couldn't get any details about who 'Naruto' was. Noburu flat out refused to talk about them, whoever they were. Which, given how freely he talked about Madara Uchiha and his face-nipple, was concerning to Sayaka. Who was Naruto that Noburu wouldn't even talk about them?
Later that evening, they were gathered with their families as a sort of going-away party. It was a common thing in Oto, when people were leaving the village -- a small gathering so the people leaving would remember they were wanted. They had someone who cared they exist, and would want them to come back. It wasn't so for everyone in the village, but by commandment of Raiga it was required for jounin senseis and team leaders to organize such festivities.
It led to a lot of prostitutes being hired, Sayaka heard from the rumor mill. She wouldn't make use of them for years at least -- but if they worked for others, she wouldn't judge.
Her first organization of such a party more or less aped what Raiga had done for them. A couple of tables at a barbecue restaurant, and plenty of pork to go around. When she and her team arrived, Ishidate and his family, along with Junko's mother and her many younger brothers were chatting away with Akami, Beniko, and the new baby. Off to the side, she saw Tenmu -- escorted by Raiga-sensei -- both sitting like statues amongst the baby-obsessed group.
Little Kuroma slept through everyone commenting about him, which was probably for the best.
"Junko," the Kaguya princess' mother exclaimed as soon as they arrive. "Come see Kuroma's little horns!"
Junko skipped her way through the restaurant to see. "Ooh! Are they going to grow big enough for him to gore people?!"
Beniko looked uncomfortable at the question, but Akami reassured her with a hand on her shoulder. "Um. W-well my father had… a pretty impressive rack, I'd say. Maybe not goring people, but he could definitely headbutt them?"
Sayaka rolled her eyes as a group of Junko's younger brothers announced a victory dance for 'team blunt force trauma'. She watched Noburu and Haruki join the table, and tried to burn it into her head -- she was their sensei, she had to provide for them, teach them, and watch over for them once they got to Konoha. Being their friend would have to come after being their teacher.
Her feelings of losing her home? She had to push that aside. Her feelings of loneliness as she realized she wasn't 'one of the gang' anymore? She had to push that side. Sayaka was in charge -- and the first rule of being in charge was that everything would be her fault.
She did eventually join them at the barbecue table -- she was paying, of course she would get some meat -- but she wasn't as carefree as the others were. When she did sit, it was with Raiga-sensei, and with a stoic bearing as he had.
The pork was good, but it tasted of responsibility. That is to say, she'd cooked it a bit too long and it grew tough.
--
Legendary Sannin Orochimaru
Three days on the road, going the slow way as if they were escorting a civilian had given Orochimaru time to plan. His home wasn't very large -- but he could maybe keep Noburu's team in-house. Maybe he could rent a house, on a short lease. He had some money saved up, not much but some -- he'd fallen into the habit of 'forgetting' to collect his pay at the end of his missions due to constrained village funds.
And in his breast pocket, he had the doctor's order from Suzume with a second add-on by Tsunade. His former teammate hadn't needed much convincing from anyone to order some R&R.
When he arrived at Konoha, he told his team to rest up and prepare for the chunin exams as they saw fit, and turned in that note to the Hokage's Tower secretary. Then he left. He didn't meet with Sarutobi-sensei, he didn't speak to any of the other jounin. All he did, work-wise, was to go by the hospital and remedy Jiraiya's remaining student.
He knew, in his mind, that he probably should give Jiraiya some condolence for the loss of two students. He knew, in his mind, that he should at least seek him out. But Orochimaru had to stop, and rest for what felt like the first time in years.
Orochimaru returned to his home, and he went to sleep in his bed. It felt like, the moment he laid down he was gone. When he woke up, the sky was in twilight outside his window -- it took him a moment to realize that the sun was setting, from how the shadows lengthened. And he wasn't alone in his apartment.
Jiraiya sat at Orochimaru's table, bags under his eyes, and stared at one of Orochimaru's four mugs -- the one themed after toads. Inside was a dark liquid, which Orochimaru guessed was very old coffee. Fortunately, the toad mug was red so it would not show the stains from sitting for so long easily. "You've been out for seven days," Jiraiya told him once Orochimaru brushed his shoulder. "I put some water down your throat so you wouldn't dehydrate."
"...Thank you." Orochimaru went to his closet to pull out a second chair for his table. His abode was mostly bare -- unadorned walls, cold floors, with everything but what he needed every day in storage or otherwise hidden. His apartment was three rooms -- bathroom, closet, and everything else. It had a balcony, though. That was nice. "I'm sorry about your students."
"You fixed Minato up before you went into that semi-coma." Jiraiya shrugged and never took his eyes off the coffee. "I'm sorry you had to do that when you were so badly… when you were that close to the brink." He blinked, slow, as if he operated on slowed time. "Tsunade sent a slug messenger, said we were to keep you off the battlefield at all costs or you'd go totally berserk. Danzo threw a fit."
The mere mention of that man's name caused Orochimaru to tense so hard he slammed the chair onto the ground before he sat in it. "Is the situation that dire?"
Jiraiya nodded. He hadn't reacted when Orochimaru slammed the chair -- as if it hadn't happened at all. "Sensei says he'll have to go to the contested lands south of River, since he was going to send you."
"...I half expected him not to give the doctor's order any weight in the decision." Orochimaru found his eyes lock on the cold coffee as well. "I thought I'd have to fight for rest." For being asleep for days, he didn't feel bad. The scream-crying in his head was far away, yet still present. He felt tense, but not as tense as before.
"For a while, it looked like you might. Then the Hyuga got involved." Jiraiya gestured at his teammate without looking away from the coffee. "They're making a play on you, finally. Took them long enough. They threatened to have all their actively serving clan members resign immediately if Sarutobi-sensei tried to deploy you again."
Orochimaru looked at Jiraiya's reflection in the coffee, as Jiraiya's eyes moved to watch Orochimaru's reflection as well. "Such a threat, on the eve of war? Aggressive."
"Yeah. But, you and that kid Noburu." Jiraiya shrugged. "The Hyuga think you're distant relations of theirs -- especially with those new developments in Wave." He took his eyes off the coffee at last, and moved his head. Jiraiya's neck cracked from how stiff he must have been. "Suddenly, they're not as special as they thought they were. My gut says they'll try to suck you and the kid in, get you involved in their clan business."
The blood test results between Orochimaru and Hizashi hadn't revealed strong relations -- if they were related, they were truly distant. Yet Noburu had the kekkei genkai, and Orochimaru didn't. At least, not yet. He hadn't seriously done testing to see if he had the capacity for it -- with how busy he'd been in recent years. The quest for immortality and teaching students had taken much of his free time.
"Things are going to be ugly for a while." Jiraiya sighed. "But you get your rest. I'll look after your students while they train for the chunin exams." He managed to crack a smile. "Hey, maybe with Noburu coming to town -- you'll finally move back to your old place?"
"My what?" Orochimaru narrowed his eyes, suspicious.
"Your house. The one you and your folks lived in." Jiraiya arched an eyebrow. "You didn't sell it, did you?"
Oh right. That house. Which he had totally abandoned for at least a decade. Had he sold it? Orochimaru couldn't remember. "Um. Hmm. I feel like I didn't, but. Hmm." Orochimaru slowly turned his head away from Jiraiya. "I… may have forgotten that… it existed." There had been a war, some death, more death, and so much training to do.
Jiraiya's expression, when Orochimaru turned to face him again, was stretched thin with his eyes almost closed from how narrow they'd gotten. "On the one hand, what the hell? On the other, I kind of envy that -- you have no idea how weird it was the first forty-five times of bringing ladies back to my place after my folks passed."
Orochimaru pinched the bridge of his nose. Of course the pervert would find some way to turn things dirty. "Jiraiya, no -- "
"And on their bed too -- "
"I said no."
--
Third Hokage
What a mess.
Orochimaru was out of action for at least six months, per Doctor Ruan and Tsunade's recommendation. That would put all their efforts to end the conflict quickly to an end -- because Jiraiya's deployment to Tea Country to ward off Nadeshiko's advances couldn't go ahead. Sarutobi would have to go west and see to the defense of the contested lands, and Jiraiya would have to remain in Konoha.
If the Anbu sent to deliver his orders hadn't been viciously attacked by Orochimaru, even with Tsunade's recommendation Sarutobi would likely have deployed him. Orochimaru had very nearly tortured them, which was a much worse sign of his mental health than simple murder.
Sarutobi understood that he likely was somewhat to blame for Orochimaru's level of stress. But much more likely, the situation had been outside anyone's control. He told Danzo such, but his old friend refused to believe him.
Lonely since both his students and his teammates kept their distance, Sarutobi called up his would-be successor to socialize and work at the same time. Fugaku Uchiha sat across from him while Sarutobi served tea, many piles of paperwork stacked nearby.
"I see you're going to infiltrate Kusagakure, and use espionage tactics predominately." The Third Hokage said while he passed Fugaku his tea. While he poured his own, he recalled the brutal fighting in that part of the continent from the last war. "I wish you luck. Iwagakure is more cunning than they let on."
"Our enemies have outmaneuvered us on multiple fronts," Fugaku replied before he sipped from his cup. "We have to remind them that we're cunning too. I will see to it that Iwagakure will not see their defeat coming. Leaving them in utter confusion is my goal."
Sarutobi couldn't help but smile. Orochimaru used similar tactics on his infiltration missions -- it would confuse Iwagakure into thinking his student had taken the field. Their own assumptions would spell their doom.
"Lord Hokage," Fugaku set his tea down on its saucer. "I understand you said I would only succeed you if you fell in battle, but -- "
"Are you concerned that Orochimaru may see you as competition?" Sarutobi raised one eyebrow as he leaned back in his seat.
"No. There have been rumors spread that I have used underhanded means to secure my present assignment." Fugaku met Sarutobi's eyes without fear or anxiety -- his concern was professional. "There is a chance certain parties might use this to delegitimize me in the event of my ascension becoming necessary." He didn't say a name. He didn't even glance around. But Fugaku clearly knew exactly who it was.
And so did Sarutobi. The harshness of how Noburu had said Danzo would slaughter the entire Uchiha clan and escape repercussions because Sarutobi wouldn't give any -- it stung. "On that note… there are certain things I need to read you into, given you might be Hokage as early as a year from now." Without his pipe, Sarutobi took to sipping his tea to buy time to think. "You know much about Orochimaru's nephew, Noburu."
"I do." Fugaku cast his eyes downward, as if in shame. "We know of Madara's deception because of him."
"I'm afraid there is more too it than that." He took a breath, to steel his will to speak about an uncomfortable topic. "He has seen the future, and challenged me to change it. Events such as the massacre of the Uchiha clan." Sarutobi noticed how Fugaku bristled visibly at that announcement. "Madara's intent to revive the ten-tails. The war your children's generation will have to fight, because of him. And more… disturbing things."
Fugaku met Sarutobi's eyes again, his will as steel to Sarutobi's clay. "More disturbing than the slaughter of my clan? What could possibly be so terrible?"
Sarutobi took a deep breath, and told him.
"...He stitched the First Hokage's face onto his what?!"
---
I'm too used to writing horror. I need to get back into comedy. But I live! This story lives! And Madara lives without shame despite his facenipple. We should all embrace our kinks so passionately.
---
Jounin Kanzaki
"So, of course you know, when we get to Konoha the gloves come off?"
Sayaka joined her teammates in stopping what they were doing and looking at Noburu with arched brows. They had gathered in the Turtle House apartments to help set up Sayaka's old room for the new Jiangs moving in. Sayaka's and Junko had been moving in a bed frame while Haruki had been steam-cleaning the floors. Noburu continued to use his chakra strings to move brooms and brushes around to scrub every surface of dust.
"...You going to elaborate on that, or…?" Haruki narrowed his eyes to accompany his snark.
"You guys remember how I was when I first joined the team?" Noburu turned his head enough to grin malevolently at them, the effect worsened with his active byakugan. "That was me being a perfect gentlemen compared to what Konoha's going to get."
"They're our allies," Sayaka said, long-suffering as she got a glimpse of what Raiga-sensei had to deal with. With a nudge, she got Junko to keep moving and set the bed frame down. In hindsight, they wouldn't have needed to work so hard if they had taken it apart before moving it out of storage. "We have to be nice."
"Konoha is our ally. Hiruzen Sarutobi and Danzo Shimura are active threats to that relationship and to Konoha's continued existence." Noburu's voice turned vicious as he spoke. Even when he let the bijuu devour entire crews of pirates, he hadn't been so aggressively mean when he spoke. "They brought this on themselves."
Junko ran into the hall and came back with the mattress. "Ooh, we're seeing Noburu turn nasty." She grinned wide, showing too many teeth. "My cousins have been asking about what your mean streak looks like."
Noburu brandished a broom at her. "Hey, I'm in a relationship. Stop tempting your family with what they can't have."
"But it's fun!"
Sayaka rolled her eyes while she brought in a brand new baby bed. It was one of those newfangled ones, with raised edges so that the baby couldn't roll out. If it resulted in fewer 'dropped on your head' style idiots, Sayaka would sing their praise. It had been a pain to assemble -- thankfully it was less trouble to bring it into the room put together.
Haruki began to steam up the walls of the room, so the posters Sayaka had put up could be pulled down. Her shuriken practice poster. Her diagram of explosive note assembly. Her short-lived favorite band phase -- those southern singers and their 'polka' had been in fashion for a while. All would be rolled up and put into storage.
"You're just going to make the Konoha ninja you're competing against all the more vindictive, you know," she said with her voice lowered by a surge of melancholy. She had been happy when she lived with Akami and Noburu -- and while she was still their neighbor, it made her feel like losing her home again to see her room absent her influence. "They'll just go out of their way to get you."
"Eh, they were going to do that anyway." Noburu moved the cleaning implements to scrub at the edges of where the posters had been. "We're an entire team of battlefield control types, all have kekkei genkai, and we're all strangers invading their home because of politics. Every punk with a chip on their shoulder will come at us, might as well piss them off to come at us stupid."
"They always get that cute surprised look on their faces when they realize they're in too deep." Junko giggled and hid her mouth behind her voluminous sleeves. "Ooh, do you suppose they'll put us in their 'forest of death'?"
"Nah, giant tigers are nothing compared to maneater boars." Haruki crossed his arms, at ease since he'd finished his work. "And they know we could ruin their entire forest if we wanted to."
"Aww, but I wanted to hear their screams echo…." Junko pouted, all her energy gone for a second. "Oh well! I'll have to savor them the first time I hear them, then!"
"I'm so glad you all are on-board with this." Sayaka's mood fouled a bit as her words didn't have their desired reaction. "Just… try not to start a war." She paused. "Wait."
"Was gonna say, it's a bit late for that." Noburu finished up with his cleaning and bundled the brooms and washcloths together with the mop and bucket. "Alright, looks good to me."
"Can you give us an idea of how bad you taking the gloves off will be?" She led the team out of what had been her room, and felt a pang of that loss-of-home despondancy again when she closed the door finally. At least this room hadn't been burned down like Kiri. Once done, she threw herself into her 'sensei mode'.
"I'm going to be using these eyes," Noburu briefly activated his byakugan, "to find all kinds of secrets out. Stuff on top of what I already know. Rumors are going to be started, plots are going to be exposed, and the pranks." He smiled, full of venom and cruelty. "When I'm done, they'll think Naruto is my second coming."
Sayaka and the others arched their eyebrows at him, but couldn't get any details about who 'Naruto' was. Noburu flat out refused to talk about them, whoever they were. Which, given how freely he talked about Madara Uchiha and his face-nipple, was concerning to Sayaka. Who was Naruto that Noburu wouldn't even talk about them?
Later that evening, they were gathered with their families as a sort of going-away party. It was a common thing in Oto, when people were leaving the village -- a small gathering so the people leaving would remember they were wanted. They had someone who cared they exist, and would want them to come back. It wasn't so for everyone in the village, but by commandment of Raiga it was required for jounin senseis and team leaders to organize such festivities.
It led to a lot of prostitutes being hired, Sayaka heard from the rumor mill. She wouldn't make use of them for years at least -- but if they worked for others, she wouldn't judge.
Her first organization of such a party more or less aped what Raiga had done for them. A couple of tables at a barbecue restaurant, and plenty of pork to go around. When she and her team arrived, Ishidate and his family, along with Junko's mother and her many younger brothers were chatting away with Akami, Beniko, and the new baby. Off to the side, she saw Tenmu -- escorted by Raiga-sensei -- both sitting like statues amongst the baby-obsessed group.
Little Kuroma slept through everyone commenting about him, which was probably for the best.
"Junko," the Kaguya princess' mother exclaimed as soon as they arrive. "Come see Kuroma's little horns!"
Junko skipped her way through the restaurant to see. "Ooh! Are they going to grow big enough for him to gore people?!"
Beniko looked uncomfortable at the question, but Akami reassured her with a hand on her shoulder. "Um. W-well my father had… a pretty impressive rack, I'd say. Maybe not goring people, but he could definitely headbutt them?"
Sayaka rolled her eyes as a group of Junko's younger brothers announced a victory dance for 'team blunt force trauma'. She watched Noburu and Haruki join the table, and tried to burn it into her head -- she was their sensei, she had to provide for them, teach them, and watch over for them once they got to Konoha. Being their friend would have to come after being their teacher.
Her feelings of losing her home? She had to push that aside. Her feelings of loneliness as she realized she wasn't 'one of the gang' anymore? She had to push that side. Sayaka was in charge -- and the first rule of being in charge was that everything would be her fault.
She did eventually join them at the barbecue table -- she was paying, of course she would get some meat -- but she wasn't as carefree as the others were. When she did sit, it was with Raiga-sensei, and with a stoic bearing as he had.
The pork was good, but it tasted of responsibility. That is to say, she'd cooked it a bit too long and it grew tough.
--
Legendary Sannin Orochimaru
Three days on the road, going the slow way as if they were escorting a civilian had given Orochimaru time to plan. His home wasn't very large -- but he could maybe keep Noburu's team in-house. Maybe he could rent a house, on a short lease. He had some money saved up, not much but some -- he'd fallen into the habit of 'forgetting' to collect his pay at the end of his missions due to constrained village funds.
And in his breast pocket, he had the doctor's order from Suzume with a second add-on by Tsunade. His former teammate hadn't needed much convincing from anyone to order some R&R.
When he arrived at Konoha, he told his team to rest up and prepare for the chunin exams as they saw fit, and turned in that note to the Hokage's Tower secretary. Then he left. He didn't meet with Sarutobi-sensei, he didn't speak to any of the other jounin. All he did, work-wise, was to go by the hospital and remedy Jiraiya's remaining student.
He knew, in his mind, that he probably should give Jiraiya some condolence for the loss of two students. He knew, in his mind, that he should at least seek him out. But Orochimaru had to stop, and rest for what felt like the first time in years.
Orochimaru returned to his home, and he went to sleep in his bed. It felt like, the moment he laid down he was gone. When he woke up, the sky was in twilight outside his window -- it took him a moment to realize that the sun was setting, from how the shadows lengthened. And he wasn't alone in his apartment.
Jiraiya sat at Orochimaru's table, bags under his eyes, and stared at one of Orochimaru's four mugs -- the one themed after toads. Inside was a dark liquid, which Orochimaru guessed was very old coffee. Fortunately, the toad mug was red so it would not show the stains from sitting for so long easily. "You've been out for seven days," Jiraiya told him once Orochimaru brushed his shoulder. "I put some water down your throat so you wouldn't dehydrate."
"...Thank you." Orochimaru went to his closet to pull out a second chair for his table. His abode was mostly bare -- unadorned walls, cold floors, with everything but what he needed every day in storage or otherwise hidden. His apartment was three rooms -- bathroom, closet, and everything else. It had a balcony, though. That was nice. "I'm sorry about your students."
"You fixed Minato up before you went into that semi-coma." Jiraiya shrugged and never took his eyes off the coffee. "I'm sorry you had to do that when you were so badly… when you were that close to the brink." He blinked, slow, as if he operated on slowed time. "Tsunade sent a slug messenger, said we were to keep you off the battlefield at all costs or you'd go totally berserk. Danzo threw a fit."
The mere mention of that man's name caused Orochimaru to tense so hard he slammed the chair onto the ground before he sat in it. "Is the situation that dire?"
Jiraiya nodded. He hadn't reacted when Orochimaru slammed the chair -- as if it hadn't happened at all. "Sensei says he'll have to go to the contested lands south of River, since he was going to send you."
"...I half expected him not to give the doctor's order any weight in the decision." Orochimaru found his eyes lock on the cold coffee as well. "I thought I'd have to fight for rest." For being asleep for days, he didn't feel bad. The scream-crying in his head was far away, yet still present. He felt tense, but not as tense as before.
"For a while, it looked like you might. Then the Hyuga got involved." Jiraiya gestured at his teammate without looking away from the coffee. "They're making a play on you, finally. Took them long enough. They threatened to have all their actively serving clan members resign immediately if Sarutobi-sensei tried to deploy you again."
Orochimaru looked at Jiraiya's reflection in the coffee, as Jiraiya's eyes moved to watch Orochimaru's reflection as well. "Such a threat, on the eve of war? Aggressive."
"Yeah. But, you and that kid Noburu." Jiraiya shrugged. "The Hyuga think you're distant relations of theirs -- especially with those new developments in Wave." He took his eyes off the coffee at last, and moved his head. Jiraiya's neck cracked from how stiff he must have been. "Suddenly, they're not as special as they thought they were. My gut says they'll try to suck you and the kid in, get you involved in their clan business."
The blood test results between Orochimaru and Hizashi hadn't revealed strong relations -- if they were related, they were truly distant. Yet Noburu had the kekkei genkai, and Orochimaru didn't. At least, not yet. He hadn't seriously done testing to see if he had the capacity for it -- with how busy he'd been in recent years. The quest for immortality and teaching students had taken much of his free time.
"Things are going to be ugly for a while." Jiraiya sighed. "But you get your rest. I'll look after your students while they train for the chunin exams." He managed to crack a smile. "Hey, maybe with Noburu coming to town -- you'll finally move back to your old place?"
"My what?" Orochimaru narrowed his eyes, suspicious.
"Your house. The one you and your folks lived in." Jiraiya arched an eyebrow. "You didn't sell it, did you?"
Oh right. That house. Which he had totally abandoned for at least a decade. Had he sold it? Orochimaru couldn't remember. "Um. Hmm. I feel like I didn't, but. Hmm." Orochimaru slowly turned his head away from Jiraiya. "I… may have forgotten that… it existed." There had been a war, some death, more death, and so much training to do.
Jiraiya's expression, when Orochimaru turned to face him again, was stretched thin with his eyes almost closed from how narrow they'd gotten. "On the one hand, what the hell? On the other, I kind of envy that -- you have no idea how weird it was the first forty-five times of bringing ladies back to my place after my folks passed."
Orochimaru pinched the bridge of his nose. Of course the pervert would find some way to turn things dirty. "Jiraiya, no -- "
"And on their bed too -- "
"I said no."
--
Third Hokage
What a mess.
Orochimaru was out of action for at least six months, per Doctor Ruan and Tsunade's recommendation. That would put all their efforts to end the conflict quickly to an end -- because Jiraiya's deployment to Tea Country to ward off Nadeshiko's advances couldn't go ahead. Sarutobi would have to go west and see to the defense of the contested lands, and Jiraiya would have to remain in Konoha.
If the Anbu sent to deliver his orders hadn't been viciously attacked by Orochimaru, even with Tsunade's recommendation Sarutobi would likely have deployed him. Orochimaru had very nearly tortured them, which was a much worse sign of his mental health than simple murder.
Sarutobi understood that he likely was somewhat to blame for Orochimaru's level of stress. But much more likely, the situation had been outside anyone's control. He told Danzo such, but his old friend refused to believe him.
Lonely since both his students and his teammates kept their distance, Sarutobi called up his would-be successor to socialize and work at the same time. Fugaku Uchiha sat across from him while Sarutobi served tea, many piles of paperwork stacked nearby.
"I see you're going to infiltrate Kusagakure, and use espionage tactics predominately." The Third Hokage said while he passed Fugaku his tea. While he poured his own, he recalled the brutal fighting in that part of the continent from the last war. "I wish you luck. Iwagakure is more cunning than they let on."
"Our enemies have outmaneuvered us on multiple fronts," Fugaku replied before he sipped from his cup. "We have to remind them that we're cunning too. I will see to it that Iwagakure will not see their defeat coming. Leaving them in utter confusion is my goal."
Sarutobi couldn't help but smile. Orochimaru used similar tactics on his infiltration missions -- it would confuse Iwagakure into thinking his student had taken the field. Their own assumptions would spell their doom.
"Lord Hokage," Fugaku set his tea down on its saucer. "I understand you said I would only succeed you if you fell in battle, but -- "
"Are you concerned that Orochimaru may see you as competition?" Sarutobi raised one eyebrow as he leaned back in his seat.
"No. There have been rumors spread that I have used underhanded means to secure my present assignment." Fugaku met Sarutobi's eyes without fear or anxiety -- his concern was professional. "There is a chance certain parties might use this to delegitimize me in the event of my ascension becoming necessary." He didn't say a name. He didn't even glance around. But Fugaku clearly knew exactly who it was.
And so did Sarutobi. The harshness of how Noburu had said Danzo would slaughter the entire Uchiha clan and escape repercussions because Sarutobi wouldn't give any -- it stung. "On that note… there are certain things I need to read you into, given you might be Hokage as early as a year from now." Without his pipe, Sarutobi took to sipping his tea to buy time to think. "You know much about Orochimaru's nephew, Noburu."
"I do." Fugaku cast his eyes downward, as if in shame. "We know of Madara's deception because of him."
"I'm afraid there is more too it than that." He took a breath, to steel his will to speak about an uncomfortable topic. "He has seen the future, and challenged me to change it. Events such as the massacre of the Uchiha clan." Sarutobi noticed how Fugaku bristled visibly at that announcement. "Madara's intent to revive the ten-tails. The war your children's generation will have to fight, because of him. And more… disturbing things."
Fugaku met Sarutobi's eyes again, his will as steel to Sarutobi's clay. "More disturbing than the slaughter of my clan? What could possibly be so terrible?"
Sarutobi took a deep breath, and told him.
"...He stitched the First Hokage's face onto his what?!"
---
I'm too used to writing horror. I need to get back into comedy. But I live! This story lives! And Madara lives without shame despite his facenipple. We should all embrace our kinks so passionately.
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The fact that Fugaku was probably expecting something on the level of "destruction of Konoha" and got Madara's nipple face yet reacted so incredulously to it says a lot about Madara's mental health. That is to say, he no longer has any.
Vaalintine
Wild Wondorous Wolfalope
Good to see more of this! I did have to take a while to think back on things to remember what was going on though.
PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You have no idea how much I am looking forward to seeing Noburu unleashed.
Although one question: earlier in the story you mention his father made a typo when writing down his name on his birth certificate, and it should have been "Noboru". Could you explain, because all I'm getting is the lemma form of the verb "to ascend".
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Yep, the name Noboru means rise/ascend. Given his anti-enlightenment stance and his previous experience with being a buddha, I thought it would fit the theme to take the 'ascend' name and skew it. It was either that or 'Mara', and I'm going to be using that for a different story.
Ch 52
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Chapter 52: Gloves? Off.
---
Sotaicho Kurosuki
Konoha had not yet sent demands for Otogakure to dedicate forces to them, but Raiga knew that with Kumo taking such hostile actions and how Konoha had been all but blindsided on all fronts -- it was a matter of time.
Three years had been enough time to train some conscripted genin into proper ninja, but the majority of what they had were the veterans of Water Country's civil war. The ones who had fought Kosuke's troops and lived for better or for worse.
Leftover cracks from Kirigakure had revealed themselves as he issued orders to more and more jounin to prepare for possible deployment -- both the ninja in the village and out on missions. One such crack revealed itself when the village guards reported an uptick in civilian organization. Meetings of unusual size, mostly.
His time in the Kirigakure Home Guard told him civil unrest was going to result -- he had to stifle as much as he could before the fighting really broke out. So he sat in a dark room in Tower One while technicians set up a microphone for a village-wide radio broadcast. Raiga remained stoic as the technicians adjusted its position relative to him, then to the desk Raiga sat on, then its height and pitch. Such technology was relatively new -- a novelty from the southern continent brought to their shores by trade.
Raiga was twenty years old, and preparing for his third war. He was twenty years old, and he felt like he was two hundred -- as the days of blood and mud mixing together, going without food do to supply shortages, and entire squads being wiped out drew nearer again. The civil war had only been three years ago. And the second World War only a few years before that. Perhaps the Warring Statess period hadn't ended, it just slowed down.
"Alright, sir." One of the foreign technicians said with his lilting accent. "Once we leave the room, you'll be live."
"Excellent," Raiga said and bowed his head. "Thank you for making this work on short notice." He watched them go, and waited a few seconds more. The microphone burst to life with a harsh buzz that died down quickly -- every radio in Oto, from household music players to tactical communications, was tuned suddenly to his words.
"Attention all residents." Raiga spoke with authority, clarity, like the people he spoke to were right in front of him. "I am Sotaicho Raiga Kurosuki, and I have news that involves everyone." He paused, and remembered the script his publicity team had put together. "Some days ago, Kumogakure attempted to steal from us and Konohagakure in a bold raid on this village. Just recently, Konoha and its allies had been attacked by other ninja villages. It seems like war is on the horizon once again." Raiga clasped his hands, as if in prayer for the ninja who would die in the battles to come. "This will not be like the civil war we endured in Kirigakure. There will be no conscription, we will not have our distant daimyo's whims to placate."
Alone in the room, Raiga had no distraction from the speech he had to give, though he wished there was. Anything so he could stop imagining horrified faces as civilians listened to war news.
"Lightning Country is unlikely to deign to issue an official declaration of war. What is likely to happen is they, or their allies, will simply send forces at us to block any supplies we give to Konoha or to try and steal from us directly again. Otogakure is miles below the surface -- and we have the sea's bounty within arm's reach." And a Kaizoku kraken at our front door, if they're foolish enough to try a naval blockade, Raiga thought with a grim smile.
His smile faded as he forced himself to give the topic the gravity it deserved. "And furthermore, we have an advantage they do not." He took a deep breath, and launched into it. There was no avoiding the topic now. "Many of you have asked about the strange creatures that have appeared around the village -- in the waters of our sound, and in the power plant. They are dragons, yes, but more than that. They are gods."
Raiga remembered temples in the Water capital for the previous daimyo's funeral. Where he had heard organ music for the first time. Elaborate statues and long tapestries for the gods of old, long silent.
"The monks in the Wave Temple commune with them to understand how they came to be here -- but our village enjoys two gods' strength directly. Three more guard the island of Wave itself, in the volcano, in the skies, and in the soil itself. With divine assistance, the war will not be as costly or as terrible as the last. I promise this."
If the gods were good, honorable beings -- they would not make him a liar.
"That is all. Have a pleasant evening."
--
Genin Hyuga
Hizashi and Shibi had taken to hanging out at the southern gate, the most likely approach that Noburu and his team would take. With Orochimaru-sensei down for days, and Lord Jiraiya too busy to train them much, there was little else to do.
They had to wait for Noburu to arrive and prove them right.
"He will confirm what you told Hiashi, and your father." Shibi said, without prompting as the two of them sat on the battlements. "You're family."
"Very distant family," Hizashi clarified and didn't take his eyes off the road that parted the forest all the way to the horizon. "And… I don't know the facts as well as he does. Orochimaru-sensei's rampancy might not… what if it was ten years from now?"
"You saw how Orochimaru-sensei was when we were ordered to leave." Shibi, ever stoic, cut through the anxiety and doubt Hizashi radiated with cold logic. "You heard how he talked to us. He almost killed those Anbu the Hokage sent."
He'd bragged about it, Hizashi wanted to clarify. Orochimaru-sensei had gone all sickeningly sweet and gushed about how close he'd come to murder that day. As motivation for them to pack faster. The implications had been clear, that he was in the headspace to do it to them too.
"He… might be angry that I overstepped my bounds. That telling Hiashi -- "
"Would make me angry?" The familiar, smooth, and ever-so-slightly coy tone of their sensei said from behind them as if he'd always been there.
Instinct had both ninja jump and assume a stance -- ready to fight. When they turned to see their sensei, Hizashi was both happy and confused. Happy, because after a week his sensei had woken up! Confused because his sensei stood in front of him not dressed as a ninja, but in a yellow yukata with a thick purple sash and simple straw sandals. Slightly behind him, also in civilian clothes, was Kushina -- with a wide, foxy grin.
"Boys, who you tell is not nearly as important as what." Orochimaru-sensei smiled and stiffly moved to lean on the same battlements his students had sat on moments prior.
"I understand how Orochimaru-sensei snuck up on us," Hizashi said, then pointed Kushina's way. "But how did you manage it?"
"Straw sandals." She stuck her tongue out at them. "You guys hear straw sandals, you assume civilian, and you assume civilians aren't a threat. That's how we snuck up on you."
Hizashi disliked how right she was. He was quicker to sit back down than Shibi -- so he noticed the intense stare Orochimaru gave the horizon to the south. The Sannin said nothing, and for a while neither did Hizashi. The silence dragged on, as Hizashi's fear of Orochimaru-sensei's anger kept him silent.
Kushina groaned and pulled on her face so hard it stretched her lower eyeballs. "Oh dragon gods -- you guys are taking this too far." She walked up and casually slapped Hizashi in the back. "Go on, tell him!"
Once he'd pushed her away, Hizashi glanced Shibi's way. The Aburame heir gave him a silent thumb's up in support.
"I told Hiashi about the… rampancy thing." Hizashi confessed, his chest tightened with every word. The tension only increased as he spoke, rather than offer relief. "He… backed me up to the clan head, that something had to be done. Which is why he…."
"Why he threatened to have every Hyuga ninja immediately resign right before a war. It paid off, for now at least." Orochimaru-sensei answered without turning his eyes off the horizon. "Did you tell them about the Moon?"
"No. I didn't… I didn't know how to say that without sounding insane."
"That's good. Because I haven't told Lord Hokage either." Orochimaru-sensei rested his head in his hand, like he was bored. "None of you included it in your reports?"
When Kushina and Shibi answered in the affirmative, Hizashi realized: They were the only ones in the village who knew that literal Moon-people had been involved in starting the fighting which would lead to war. And that any attempt to change that would likely see them decommissioned immediately.
"Not a word of it to anyone else, understood? Good." Orochimaru looked over at Hizashi with a raised eyebrow. "So, any sign of them?"
Hizashi snapped to attention and activated his byakugan to look as far down the road as he could. "No," he sighed. "All I see are merchants from the coast -- part of a group. There's some weapons merchants, spices with the Sea Country seal, and what looks to be a troupe of entertainers."
"And… you've been checking the southern gate every day?"
"Yes, sensei. We'll keep at it until we see them arrive."
"Hmm." Orochimaru then turned Shibi's way. "And nothing on your end, either?"
"The southern gate is the most likely route for them to take," Shibi answered and focused his gaze down the road. "It would add many days of travel to travel to any of the other roads."
Orochimaru looked at the two of them, then pinched the bridge of his nose. "Boys. You know the jutsu Otogakure uses to get between their towers, yes?"
Hizashi nodded. "Yes. The Witch's Bubble jutsu. But what does that -- ?"
"It's called the Witch's Bubble jutsu," Orochimaru interrupted Hizashi abruptly, "because it can move in whatever direction the user dictates assuming it's not popped." He then casually pointed skyward. "Any direction, including up."
Hizashi looked up and spotted something in the sky above them. A dot, it looked like, until he focused his byakugan on it. Details began to form as he realized what he saw was an extremely distant orb with blobs inside it.
"...I… what?" Hizashi hadn't expected ninja who lived underwater to have discovered how to fly. His brain seemed to stall as he struggled to parse what he looked at. "But… but… that's not…." He pointed up and looked at Orochimaru-sensei. "That's not fair!"
"Now you know why they keep that jutsu such a secret, hmm?" Orochimaru glanced upward. "Kushina, does Noburu know when they'll land?"
"Am I to assume that they're somehow flying here?" Shibi asked with both his eyebrows above his sunglasses. "In a bubble?"
"Noburu says it'll be a while, they have to gradually come down." Kushina had gone quiet and glassy-eyed for a split second before she talked -- perhaps an Uzu long-distance communication jutsu? "And that they're landing at Hokage Tower -- so we have the bulk of an hour."
Orochimaru nodded, and stood up. "Alright -- so." He clapped his hands and smiled wide, a bit forced but closer to the nice sensei they'd had for years by that point. "Jiraiya has agreed to tutor you all while I'm out of commission. He recently lost two of his students so, bear with him if he gets emotional."
Hizashi experienced then what others had described as 'mood whiplash'. First he'd been anxious, then outraged, and suddenly he was feeling sympathy -- all in the span of maybe five minutes. He had to stop feeling things, he decided, because emotions were exhausting and he didn't have time for them.
"Be gentle with Minato -- he's going to be in recovery for at least a month, and he's going to miss the exams. I'm not allowed to tell you anything about what they're doing this year." He crossed his arms. "If you need help -- I'll be there. I'm still your sensei, and I will continue to be available for training and teaching jutsu. Don't think you have to achieve chunin rank in these exams for my sake. There will be plenty of time to try again if it doesn't work."
"What are you going to be doing with your time off," Hizashi asked, in an attempt to forcibly center himself after the unfairness. People living underwater discovered how to fly, it was like moles learning how to eat lava -- unnatural!
"Oh you know, just civilian things. Going to fix up my parent's house, maybe try karaoke, plot bloody vengeance, enter a mahjong tournament." Their sensei smiled as he talked outside of one instance when his eyes narrowed to slits and it looked like he momentarily grew fangs. "I haven't had time off before -- so I'm still new to the experience."
"Are… are we allowed to help with any of that?" Hizashi hadn't engaged in bloody vengeance before -- but it seemed wrong not to at least offer.
"Oh no no, I don't want to distract from your training." Orochimaru-sensei waved him off, and started to walk toward the stairs. "I'll see you all at the Hokage Tower in an hour or so. As Noburu says: chow!"
"So they are flying here in a bubble?" Shibi picked up his usual question once Orochimaru-sensei had left as if they hadn't just heard him utter the words 'bloody vengeance'. When Hizashi and Kushina nodded, Shibi crossed his arms. "I'd say we need to steal that jutsu, but none of us can use water release techniques." He raised one finger without looking at either of them. "Yet."
"I don't understand why you guys are so hung up on that," Kushina muttered with a flat expression. "I mean, Soragakure had an entire flying village -- bubbles just aren't that cool in comparison."
Which in turn sparked a whole separate period of outrage because: What was Soragakure and they had an entire flying what?!
--
Genin Fujimoto
Haruki had reservations about the wisdom of just flying to Konoha -- it was the fastest way, but it showcased the Witch's Bubble to everyone with eyes. When Sora had made their air superiority impossible to ignore, they were destroyed. Haruki didn't want that for Oto, even if the Witch's Bubble was not in the same league as Sora's flyers.
But Sayaka had made the decision -- she wanted to tweak Konoha's nose a bit at being forced to relocate. Showcasing how they could just leave at any moment was sufficient tweaking, in her view.
Once they arrived at Konoha, they had to take close to an hour to descend. The most optimal way to fly via bubble to the continent was to go high and ride the prevailing winds. It also meant that coming back down took a while. Noburu had some ideas for how to speed it up, however.
"No, we're not trusting you using shadow clones and transforming them into parachutes," was Sayaka's verdict. "Not after last time."
Junko objected: "But last time was fun!" She pouted and crossed her arms.
"The client was in a full body cast for six months." Sayaka shook her head, resolute. "No. No trusting Mr. I-can-and-will-drop-you Jiang when we're falling from great heights."
Noburu, laid out on the bottom of the bubble with his summons comparing notes, held up one finger as he spoke. "He may have been paying us to save him from assassins. But he didn't pay us to save him from gravity after saying stupid shit like 'I'll bribe your country's leaders to make me daimyo'." Noburu had adjusted his outfit for the cooler climate of the continent, to include a hoodie with the cow-print arm warmers pattern some Oto ninja still sported on the arms and hood and his usual shutter-shades.
"Less dredging up the past," Haruki said, cross-legged in the bubble as they began to drift amongst Konoha's tallest buildings. "We're landing in a few minutes." He was the strongest Water Release ninjutsu user in the group, so it was his bubble they used for long-distance travel. He'd been cajoled into wearing a kosode with two sleeves, in the traditional Fujimoto colors -- though the vendor hadn't had any peacock designs that could be sewn on.
Maybe Konoha tailors could finish the job.
Noburu's summons, the assassin mouse and the sabotage rat, both scurried into Noburu's hoodie as he sat up. "Right. Time to rip Hiruzen Sarutobi a new ass."
"Noburu…." Sayaka warned with a narrow-eyed expression. She had her new weapon, the legendary seversword, hidden somewhere in her armored tent of a coat. Somehow, in a mobile armory that was Sayaka's armored coat, she found room to hide the legendarily huge sword. That, or she held it in a sealing scroll.
"He's getting on in years, he might appreciate having a second ass." Noburu didn't back down at all. "Fine, I'll let you rip him a new ass. He's a pervert who likes to peep on women at the hot springs. Make of that what you will."
The temperature in the bubble dropped immensely as both Junko and Sayaka's faces were cast in shadow by a passing apartment building. Haruki feared, for just a moment, that Junko's father's kekkei genkai had somehow manifested in her -- and that the bubble would freeze solid.
They said nothing more as they drifted through the, frankly, rustic village. The streets were dirt, the buildings were mostly white with colored roof tiles. There were few statues, there were even fewer temples, and the ones which he saw looked weathered. Old, uncared for. Was it humility, or being behind the times?
In Otogakure, everything had been remade with an artist's bend due to ninja training intensity meeting artistic expression for the first time in their lives. Art had been a civilian's trade, but Kousuke had mandated every ninja take up a hobby of some sort.
Perhaps Konoha ought to do the same, he wondered. As he looked over the village, he saw brief glimpses of figures moving along the rooftops -- no doubt Anbu afraid that they had come to attack the village.
The bubble deformed slightly when three kunai stabbed through it's side, before it bounced back as bubbles were wont to do. Had they been under water, or high in the air, that would have been devastating -- the pressure differential from inside the bubble to outside as the cause.
Junko tapped the kunai with her finger, and frowned. She continued to tap their points for a solid minute before one managed to actually draw blood. "They don't sharpen their weapons very well here," she muttered and rolled her eyes. Then she suddenly perked up. "Wait! They haven't had a war in so long, they might have forgot! We can teach them." She stood, and began to enthusiastically mutter about the training regimens she'd share with them. Such as 'scrape the femur' or 'notches on ribs'.
Three more kunai punched through the side of the bubble, near Sayaka. She barely reacted, as they hung by their ring pommels in the membrane. A simple roll of her eyes, was all.
The bubble moved directly over the rail-lined roof of the Hokage Tower, where ninja gathered en mass with weapons drawn. Haruki and Noburu stood up as the bubble touched down on the roof, and burst with Haruki's release gesture.
Flak vests on most of the Konoha ninja told Haruki that they looked at jou and chunin. They all looked ready to fight, with more than one kunai attached to an explosive tag in the crowd.
"As demanded," Sayaka spoke with a tone that clearly tried to mimic Raiga-sensei's deeper voice and grandiose language. "Your Hokage bade us come to his village with great speed, here we are."
"Drop your weapons, and get on your knees!" Haruki couldn't make out who in the crowd had shouted the demand, but it was likely a jounin to speak with such authority.
"None of us are your mother last night," Noburu snapped back before Haruki or Sayaka could stop him.
Haruki was literal seconds away from strangling his adoptive brother -- he had the garrote in his pocket ready for it -- when a man in white-and-red robes with a matching hat walked through the crowd.
"You know, the roads work just fine," the forty-something man with slash-like tattoos near his eyes muttered while he waved his hands at the shinobi all around them. The crowd gradually lowered their weapons, and started to vanish in shunshin blurs. "Something wrong with your legs?"
"Our mode of travel shaved days off our trip, you demanded we be here post-haste to participate in your chunin exams -- here we are." Sayaka kept her Raiga-sensei impersonation going as she swept her arm. "I am Sayaka Kanzaki, jounin of Otogakure, sensei of these genin."
Haruki realized that the robes the man wore were a white and red version of the Mizukage robes. They had to be addressing the Hokage himself. The hat even had the kanji for 'fire' on it, as the Mizukage's hat had 'water'. Was there a uniform system? Had the five villages all agreed to the same outfit? Had Kirigakure just stole Konoha's fashion?
"A poor first impression for your team on my forces," the Hokage sighed, and folded his hands behind his back. "You've likely made your stay less pleasant, as a result."
"We were told to arrive as fast as possible, we have done so." Sayaka shook her head. "We've heard rumors about the mad dog you have skulking about in your alleyways -- Danzo Shimura. Stopping at the gate for him to waylay us or attempt active harm was deemed too much of a risk."
Noburu had spent literal years telling them and Raiga-sensei all the utter nonsense the Hokage let his mad dog get away with. Dead Anbu following attempts to murder the Hokage directly, repeated undermining and disregarding orders, and worse.
The Hokage hid his face behind his hat's brim. "Ah. I… I see. This display was born out of… distrust. I'll relay that to as many commanders as I can before I depart for the front." He cleared his throat and gestured toward the stairs behind him. "Shall we go inside? Talk living arrangements?"
"Can we talk about how your ninja aren't sharpening their kunai? At all?" Junko picked up one of the kunai that had fallen when the Witch's Bubble burst and stabbed it into her own forearm repeatedly. "See? They're blunt. They don't get deep into flesh, let alone anything stiffer. Your ninja… they're getting a little bit lazy."
Haruki stared as Junko continued to stab her arm, heedless of the blood that seeped out of the wounds, onto her clothes, and the ground. The Hokage stared at her, his lips pressed into a line. Sayaka pinched the bridge of her nose so hard Haruki thought she might break it.
Noburu, on the other hand…
"In my professional medical opinion, they're also ugly."
---
Before anyone gives me shit about the bubble -- the jutsu is canon. The name isn't. Because it was developed close to twenty years earlier in the timeline. Don't any of you nerds at me over this.
...Noburu's bedside manner is usually much better, I swear. He's just had a rough month is all. And also this was before Konoha's bishounen population really hit their stride.
---
Sotaicho Kurosuki
Konoha had not yet sent demands for Otogakure to dedicate forces to them, but Raiga knew that with Kumo taking such hostile actions and how Konoha had been all but blindsided on all fronts -- it was a matter of time.
Three years had been enough time to train some conscripted genin into proper ninja, but the majority of what they had were the veterans of Water Country's civil war. The ones who had fought Kosuke's troops and lived for better or for worse.
Leftover cracks from Kirigakure had revealed themselves as he issued orders to more and more jounin to prepare for possible deployment -- both the ninja in the village and out on missions. One such crack revealed itself when the village guards reported an uptick in civilian organization. Meetings of unusual size, mostly.
His time in the Kirigakure Home Guard told him civil unrest was going to result -- he had to stifle as much as he could before the fighting really broke out. So he sat in a dark room in Tower One while technicians set up a microphone for a village-wide radio broadcast. Raiga remained stoic as the technicians adjusted its position relative to him, then to the desk Raiga sat on, then its height and pitch. Such technology was relatively new -- a novelty from the southern continent brought to their shores by trade.
Raiga was twenty years old, and preparing for his third war. He was twenty years old, and he felt like he was two hundred -- as the days of blood and mud mixing together, going without food do to supply shortages, and entire squads being wiped out drew nearer again. The civil war had only been three years ago. And the second World War only a few years before that. Perhaps the Warring Statess period hadn't ended, it just slowed down.
"Alright, sir." One of the foreign technicians said with his lilting accent. "Once we leave the room, you'll be live."
"Excellent," Raiga said and bowed his head. "Thank you for making this work on short notice." He watched them go, and waited a few seconds more. The microphone burst to life with a harsh buzz that died down quickly -- every radio in Oto, from household music players to tactical communications, was tuned suddenly to his words.
"Attention all residents." Raiga spoke with authority, clarity, like the people he spoke to were right in front of him. "I am Sotaicho Raiga Kurosuki, and I have news that involves everyone." He paused, and remembered the script his publicity team had put together. "Some days ago, Kumogakure attempted to steal from us and Konohagakure in a bold raid on this village. Just recently, Konoha and its allies had been attacked by other ninja villages. It seems like war is on the horizon once again." Raiga clasped his hands, as if in prayer for the ninja who would die in the battles to come. "This will not be like the civil war we endured in Kirigakure. There will be no conscription, we will not have our distant daimyo's whims to placate."
Alone in the room, Raiga had no distraction from the speech he had to give, though he wished there was. Anything so he could stop imagining horrified faces as civilians listened to war news.
"Lightning Country is unlikely to deign to issue an official declaration of war. What is likely to happen is they, or their allies, will simply send forces at us to block any supplies we give to Konoha or to try and steal from us directly again. Otogakure is miles below the surface -- and we have the sea's bounty within arm's reach." And a Kaizoku kraken at our front door, if they're foolish enough to try a naval blockade, Raiga thought with a grim smile.
His smile faded as he forced himself to give the topic the gravity it deserved. "And furthermore, we have an advantage they do not." He took a deep breath, and launched into it. There was no avoiding the topic now. "Many of you have asked about the strange creatures that have appeared around the village -- in the waters of our sound, and in the power plant. They are dragons, yes, but more than that. They are gods."
Raiga remembered temples in the Water capital for the previous daimyo's funeral. Where he had heard organ music for the first time. Elaborate statues and long tapestries for the gods of old, long silent.
"The monks in the Wave Temple commune with them to understand how they came to be here -- but our village enjoys two gods' strength directly. Three more guard the island of Wave itself, in the volcano, in the skies, and in the soil itself. With divine assistance, the war will not be as costly or as terrible as the last. I promise this."
If the gods were good, honorable beings -- they would not make him a liar.
"That is all. Have a pleasant evening."
--
Genin Hyuga
Hizashi and Shibi had taken to hanging out at the southern gate, the most likely approach that Noburu and his team would take. With Orochimaru-sensei down for days, and Lord Jiraiya too busy to train them much, there was little else to do.
They had to wait for Noburu to arrive and prove them right.
"He will confirm what you told Hiashi, and your father." Shibi said, without prompting as the two of them sat on the battlements. "You're family."
"Very distant family," Hizashi clarified and didn't take his eyes off the road that parted the forest all the way to the horizon. "And… I don't know the facts as well as he does. Orochimaru-sensei's rampancy might not… what if it was ten years from now?"
"You saw how Orochimaru-sensei was when we were ordered to leave." Shibi, ever stoic, cut through the anxiety and doubt Hizashi radiated with cold logic. "You heard how he talked to us. He almost killed those Anbu the Hokage sent."
He'd bragged about it, Hizashi wanted to clarify. Orochimaru-sensei had gone all sickeningly sweet and gushed about how close he'd come to murder that day. As motivation for them to pack faster. The implications had been clear, that he was in the headspace to do it to them too.
"He… might be angry that I overstepped my bounds. That telling Hiashi -- "
"Would make me angry?" The familiar, smooth, and ever-so-slightly coy tone of their sensei said from behind them as if he'd always been there.
Instinct had both ninja jump and assume a stance -- ready to fight. When they turned to see their sensei, Hizashi was both happy and confused. Happy, because after a week his sensei had woken up! Confused because his sensei stood in front of him not dressed as a ninja, but in a yellow yukata with a thick purple sash and simple straw sandals. Slightly behind him, also in civilian clothes, was Kushina -- with a wide, foxy grin.
"Boys, who you tell is not nearly as important as what." Orochimaru-sensei smiled and stiffly moved to lean on the same battlements his students had sat on moments prior.
"I understand how Orochimaru-sensei snuck up on us," Hizashi said, then pointed Kushina's way. "But how did you manage it?"
"Straw sandals." She stuck her tongue out at them. "You guys hear straw sandals, you assume civilian, and you assume civilians aren't a threat. That's how we snuck up on you."
Hizashi disliked how right she was. He was quicker to sit back down than Shibi -- so he noticed the intense stare Orochimaru gave the horizon to the south. The Sannin said nothing, and for a while neither did Hizashi. The silence dragged on, as Hizashi's fear of Orochimaru-sensei's anger kept him silent.
Kushina groaned and pulled on her face so hard it stretched her lower eyeballs. "Oh dragon gods -- you guys are taking this too far." She walked up and casually slapped Hizashi in the back. "Go on, tell him!"
Once he'd pushed her away, Hizashi glanced Shibi's way. The Aburame heir gave him a silent thumb's up in support.
"I told Hiashi about the… rampancy thing." Hizashi confessed, his chest tightened with every word. The tension only increased as he spoke, rather than offer relief. "He… backed me up to the clan head, that something had to be done. Which is why he…."
"Why he threatened to have every Hyuga ninja immediately resign right before a war. It paid off, for now at least." Orochimaru-sensei answered without turning his eyes off the horizon. "Did you tell them about the Moon?"
"No. I didn't… I didn't know how to say that without sounding insane."
"That's good. Because I haven't told Lord Hokage either." Orochimaru-sensei rested his head in his hand, like he was bored. "None of you included it in your reports?"
When Kushina and Shibi answered in the affirmative, Hizashi realized: They were the only ones in the village who knew that literal Moon-people had been involved in starting the fighting which would lead to war. And that any attempt to change that would likely see them decommissioned immediately.
"Not a word of it to anyone else, understood? Good." Orochimaru looked over at Hizashi with a raised eyebrow. "So, any sign of them?"
Hizashi snapped to attention and activated his byakugan to look as far down the road as he could. "No," he sighed. "All I see are merchants from the coast -- part of a group. There's some weapons merchants, spices with the Sea Country seal, and what looks to be a troupe of entertainers."
"And… you've been checking the southern gate every day?"
"Yes, sensei. We'll keep at it until we see them arrive."
"Hmm." Orochimaru then turned Shibi's way. "And nothing on your end, either?"
"The southern gate is the most likely route for them to take," Shibi answered and focused his gaze down the road. "It would add many days of travel to travel to any of the other roads."
Orochimaru looked at the two of them, then pinched the bridge of his nose. "Boys. You know the jutsu Otogakure uses to get between their towers, yes?"
Hizashi nodded. "Yes. The Witch's Bubble jutsu. But what does that -- ?"
"It's called the Witch's Bubble jutsu," Orochimaru interrupted Hizashi abruptly, "because it can move in whatever direction the user dictates assuming it's not popped." He then casually pointed skyward. "Any direction, including up."
Hizashi looked up and spotted something in the sky above them. A dot, it looked like, until he focused his byakugan on it. Details began to form as he realized what he saw was an extremely distant orb with blobs inside it.
"...I… what?" Hizashi hadn't expected ninja who lived underwater to have discovered how to fly. His brain seemed to stall as he struggled to parse what he looked at. "But… but… that's not…." He pointed up and looked at Orochimaru-sensei. "That's not fair!"
"Now you know why they keep that jutsu such a secret, hmm?" Orochimaru glanced upward. "Kushina, does Noburu know when they'll land?"
"Am I to assume that they're somehow flying here?" Shibi asked with both his eyebrows above his sunglasses. "In a bubble?"
"Noburu says it'll be a while, they have to gradually come down." Kushina had gone quiet and glassy-eyed for a split second before she talked -- perhaps an Uzu long-distance communication jutsu? "And that they're landing at Hokage Tower -- so we have the bulk of an hour."
Orochimaru nodded, and stood up. "Alright -- so." He clapped his hands and smiled wide, a bit forced but closer to the nice sensei they'd had for years by that point. "Jiraiya has agreed to tutor you all while I'm out of commission. He recently lost two of his students so, bear with him if he gets emotional."
Hizashi experienced then what others had described as 'mood whiplash'. First he'd been anxious, then outraged, and suddenly he was feeling sympathy -- all in the span of maybe five minutes. He had to stop feeling things, he decided, because emotions were exhausting and he didn't have time for them.
"Be gentle with Minato -- he's going to be in recovery for at least a month, and he's going to miss the exams. I'm not allowed to tell you anything about what they're doing this year." He crossed his arms. "If you need help -- I'll be there. I'm still your sensei, and I will continue to be available for training and teaching jutsu. Don't think you have to achieve chunin rank in these exams for my sake. There will be plenty of time to try again if it doesn't work."
"What are you going to be doing with your time off," Hizashi asked, in an attempt to forcibly center himself after the unfairness. People living underwater discovered how to fly, it was like moles learning how to eat lava -- unnatural!
"Oh you know, just civilian things. Going to fix up my parent's house, maybe try karaoke, plot bloody vengeance, enter a mahjong tournament." Their sensei smiled as he talked outside of one instance when his eyes narrowed to slits and it looked like he momentarily grew fangs. "I haven't had time off before -- so I'm still new to the experience."
"Are… are we allowed to help with any of that?" Hizashi hadn't engaged in bloody vengeance before -- but it seemed wrong not to at least offer.
"Oh no no, I don't want to distract from your training." Orochimaru-sensei waved him off, and started to walk toward the stairs. "I'll see you all at the Hokage Tower in an hour or so. As Noburu says: chow!"
"So they are flying here in a bubble?" Shibi picked up his usual question once Orochimaru-sensei had left as if they hadn't just heard him utter the words 'bloody vengeance'. When Hizashi and Kushina nodded, Shibi crossed his arms. "I'd say we need to steal that jutsu, but none of us can use water release techniques." He raised one finger without looking at either of them. "Yet."
"I don't understand why you guys are so hung up on that," Kushina muttered with a flat expression. "I mean, Soragakure had an entire flying village -- bubbles just aren't that cool in comparison."
Which in turn sparked a whole separate period of outrage because: What was Soragakure and they had an entire flying what?!
--
Genin Fujimoto
Haruki had reservations about the wisdom of just flying to Konoha -- it was the fastest way, but it showcased the Witch's Bubble to everyone with eyes. When Sora had made their air superiority impossible to ignore, they were destroyed. Haruki didn't want that for Oto, even if the Witch's Bubble was not in the same league as Sora's flyers.
But Sayaka had made the decision -- she wanted to tweak Konoha's nose a bit at being forced to relocate. Showcasing how they could just leave at any moment was sufficient tweaking, in her view.
Once they arrived at Konoha, they had to take close to an hour to descend. The most optimal way to fly via bubble to the continent was to go high and ride the prevailing winds. It also meant that coming back down took a while. Noburu had some ideas for how to speed it up, however.
"No, we're not trusting you using shadow clones and transforming them into parachutes," was Sayaka's verdict. "Not after last time."
Junko objected: "But last time was fun!" She pouted and crossed her arms.
"The client was in a full body cast for six months." Sayaka shook her head, resolute. "No. No trusting Mr. I-can-and-will-drop-you Jiang when we're falling from great heights."
Noburu, laid out on the bottom of the bubble with his summons comparing notes, held up one finger as he spoke. "He may have been paying us to save him from assassins. But he didn't pay us to save him from gravity after saying stupid shit like 'I'll bribe your country's leaders to make me daimyo'." Noburu had adjusted his outfit for the cooler climate of the continent, to include a hoodie with the cow-print arm warmers pattern some Oto ninja still sported on the arms and hood and his usual shutter-shades.
"Less dredging up the past," Haruki said, cross-legged in the bubble as they began to drift amongst Konoha's tallest buildings. "We're landing in a few minutes." He was the strongest Water Release ninjutsu user in the group, so it was his bubble they used for long-distance travel. He'd been cajoled into wearing a kosode with two sleeves, in the traditional Fujimoto colors -- though the vendor hadn't had any peacock designs that could be sewn on.
Maybe Konoha tailors could finish the job.
Noburu's summons, the assassin mouse and the sabotage rat, both scurried into Noburu's hoodie as he sat up. "Right. Time to rip Hiruzen Sarutobi a new ass."
"Noburu…." Sayaka warned with a narrow-eyed expression. She had her new weapon, the legendary seversword, hidden somewhere in her armored tent of a coat. Somehow, in a mobile armory that was Sayaka's armored coat, she found room to hide the legendarily huge sword. That, or she held it in a sealing scroll.
"He's getting on in years, he might appreciate having a second ass." Noburu didn't back down at all. "Fine, I'll let you rip him a new ass. He's a pervert who likes to peep on women at the hot springs. Make of that what you will."
The temperature in the bubble dropped immensely as both Junko and Sayaka's faces were cast in shadow by a passing apartment building. Haruki feared, for just a moment, that Junko's father's kekkei genkai had somehow manifested in her -- and that the bubble would freeze solid.
They said nothing more as they drifted through the, frankly, rustic village. The streets were dirt, the buildings were mostly white with colored roof tiles. There were few statues, there were even fewer temples, and the ones which he saw looked weathered. Old, uncared for. Was it humility, or being behind the times?
In Otogakure, everything had been remade with an artist's bend due to ninja training intensity meeting artistic expression for the first time in their lives. Art had been a civilian's trade, but Kousuke had mandated every ninja take up a hobby of some sort.
Perhaps Konoha ought to do the same, he wondered. As he looked over the village, he saw brief glimpses of figures moving along the rooftops -- no doubt Anbu afraid that they had come to attack the village.
The bubble deformed slightly when three kunai stabbed through it's side, before it bounced back as bubbles were wont to do. Had they been under water, or high in the air, that would have been devastating -- the pressure differential from inside the bubble to outside as the cause.
Junko tapped the kunai with her finger, and frowned. She continued to tap their points for a solid minute before one managed to actually draw blood. "They don't sharpen their weapons very well here," she muttered and rolled her eyes. Then she suddenly perked up. "Wait! They haven't had a war in so long, they might have forgot! We can teach them." She stood, and began to enthusiastically mutter about the training regimens she'd share with them. Such as 'scrape the femur' or 'notches on ribs'.
Three more kunai punched through the side of the bubble, near Sayaka. She barely reacted, as they hung by their ring pommels in the membrane. A simple roll of her eyes, was all.
The bubble moved directly over the rail-lined roof of the Hokage Tower, where ninja gathered en mass with weapons drawn. Haruki and Noburu stood up as the bubble touched down on the roof, and burst with Haruki's release gesture.
Flak vests on most of the Konoha ninja told Haruki that they looked at jou and chunin. They all looked ready to fight, with more than one kunai attached to an explosive tag in the crowd.
"As demanded," Sayaka spoke with a tone that clearly tried to mimic Raiga-sensei's deeper voice and grandiose language. "Your Hokage bade us come to his village with great speed, here we are."
"Drop your weapons, and get on your knees!" Haruki couldn't make out who in the crowd had shouted the demand, but it was likely a jounin to speak with such authority.
"None of us are your mother last night," Noburu snapped back before Haruki or Sayaka could stop him.
Haruki was literal seconds away from strangling his adoptive brother -- he had the garrote in his pocket ready for it -- when a man in white-and-red robes with a matching hat walked through the crowd.
"You know, the roads work just fine," the forty-something man with slash-like tattoos near his eyes muttered while he waved his hands at the shinobi all around them. The crowd gradually lowered their weapons, and started to vanish in shunshin blurs. "Something wrong with your legs?"
"Our mode of travel shaved days off our trip, you demanded we be here post-haste to participate in your chunin exams -- here we are." Sayaka kept her Raiga-sensei impersonation going as she swept her arm. "I am Sayaka Kanzaki, jounin of Otogakure, sensei of these genin."
Haruki realized that the robes the man wore were a white and red version of the Mizukage robes. They had to be addressing the Hokage himself. The hat even had the kanji for 'fire' on it, as the Mizukage's hat had 'water'. Was there a uniform system? Had the five villages all agreed to the same outfit? Had Kirigakure just stole Konoha's fashion?
"A poor first impression for your team on my forces," the Hokage sighed, and folded his hands behind his back. "You've likely made your stay less pleasant, as a result."
"We were told to arrive as fast as possible, we have done so." Sayaka shook her head. "We've heard rumors about the mad dog you have skulking about in your alleyways -- Danzo Shimura. Stopping at the gate for him to waylay us or attempt active harm was deemed too much of a risk."
Noburu had spent literal years telling them and Raiga-sensei all the utter nonsense the Hokage let his mad dog get away with. Dead Anbu following attempts to murder the Hokage directly, repeated undermining and disregarding orders, and worse.
The Hokage hid his face behind his hat's brim. "Ah. I… I see. This display was born out of… distrust. I'll relay that to as many commanders as I can before I depart for the front." He cleared his throat and gestured toward the stairs behind him. "Shall we go inside? Talk living arrangements?"
"Can we talk about how your ninja aren't sharpening their kunai? At all?" Junko picked up one of the kunai that had fallen when the Witch's Bubble burst and stabbed it into her own forearm repeatedly. "See? They're blunt. They don't get deep into flesh, let alone anything stiffer. Your ninja… they're getting a little bit lazy."
Haruki stared as Junko continued to stab her arm, heedless of the blood that seeped out of the wounds, onto her clothes, and the ground. The Hokage stared at her, his lips pressed into a line. Sayaka pinched the bridge of her nose so hard Haruki thought she might break it.
Noburu, on the other hand…
"In my professional medical opinion, they're also ugly."
---
Before anyone gives me shit about the bubble -- the jutsu is canon. The name isn't. Because it was developed close to twenty years earlier in the timeline. Don't any of you nerds at me over this.
...Noburu's bedside manner is usually much better, I swear. He's just had a rough month is all. And also this was before Konoha's bishounen population really hit their stride.
Euclaid Galieane
Addicted to Words
- Location
- Inside a Book
Hmmm. If the bubble is that strong, then what's stopping them from forming one around an enemy group? Portable prison, assuming they can't Kawarimi out of it. Or, alternatively, make it fly as high as possible and then dispel it.
PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I too have been diagnosed with this terminal disease #RIP 😩🙏🙏🙏
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Yep. I'm fairly certain that's why Ukataka was so hard to fight. Bubble 'em, and away they go up into the wild blue yonder. Let the bubble freeze, and then drop back down. Splat.
Key thing, though. To make the bubble that strong you need to use special syrups when making the actual bubble, not just your chakra+water. Chakra+water results in delicate bubbles that can't go up very high or tank any sharp force trauma. The strongest syrups come directly from Saiken's mucus. So while others can steal the Witch's Bubble jutsu, they can't make it practical or effective without stealing the syrup recipes or the bijuu directly.
Important Things to Remember 4
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Important Things to Remember 4: Remember to Spay and Neuter
- Ishidate, Noburu, and Tenmu stop and talk like civilized people. They come to a mutually beneficial understanding as a result.
- Mount Koryu's five dragon gods are found to be in various stages of despair, due to the loss of their worshippers/children.
- It is heavily implied that soldiers from Hot Water Country were responsible for the massacre of the Tatsushiro clan.
- Gods and other immortal creatures cannot discharge negative emotions on their own, they require mortal assistance.
- Each of the gods are approached and helped out of their grief, in return they offer trinkets of power along with patronage of Wave Country.
- Sayaka led Team Raiga and Team Orochimaru to the Mountain to attempt to help rescue Noburu and Ishidate.
- Fugaku assembles a stealth/infiltration task force for his recapture of Kusagakure.
- He learns from Sakumo Hatake that Danzo has spread rumors among the chunin that Fugaku put a genjutsu on the Hokage to gain his position.
- The gelel mines are attacked by a combined force of Suna and Tani ninja. Jiraiya destroys as much as he can to keep them from being able to make process.
- Two of his students die to horrific quick-acting poisons, with only Minato Namikaze living long enough to make it to Konoha.
- Arun Otsutsuki is captured by Team Raiga and Team Orochimaru, with the intent to take him to Konoha as a prisoner.
- Kumo sends ninja reinforcements after Ishidate, Noburu, and Tenmu forcing them to speedrun dragon therapy.
- The five dragon gods are revealed to be:
- Kongo, of the hardened rock: God of Earth and Justice.
- Rekka of the raging wildfire: God of Fire and Benevolence.
- Korin of light's halo: God of Lightning and Grace.
- Suiko of water's torrent: God of Water and Trust.
- Tenku of heaven's strata: God of Wind and Wisdom.
- This pantheon is made up of non-combat gods, as they focus on civilization and the manipulation of elements instead of warfare.
- Continental gods can be either humanoid or animal-shaped, contrasting the sub-continental gods who are either humanoid or formless.
- Jirou is revealed to have not killed himself, but gone to Mount Koryu to start a new family. He dies of bloodloss shortly after this.
- Orochimaru very nearly goes rampant at this discovery.
- Jirou's second wife is named Beniko, and the son they had together is Kuroma.
- The party plus Beniko and Kuroma return to Oto as the Seal of Hooks starts to break down.
- Isobu attempts to ask Mito Uzumaki for help on repairing the seal, but Kurama refuses to allow it.
- They claim that Mito is their prisoner, after having spent decades as her prisoner.
- With all the nonsense going on, Danzo is able to convince Hiruzen to strong-arm Noburu into relocating to Konoha with the offer of a ready-to-go seal.
- This includes a 'drop what you're doing' order for Orochimaru. He does not take it well.
- The seal they use is called the Seal of Thirty-Six Wells, an heirloom from the time of the First Hokage.
- Tsunade overhears Akami and Beniko getting along, and Akami offering to let Beniko stay with her.
- The dragon gods take up residence on Wave. Suiko in the sound around Oto, Korin in the powerplant of the village, Rekka in the volcano, Tenku in the sky above, and Kongo somewhere underground.
- An odd shadow lingers in Otogakure.
- Per Noburu, the big bang never actually occurred. Distance is an illusion.
- Kousuke meditates on this for a week without issue, implying some proto-senjutsu chicanery going on.
- Sayaka Kanzaki is promoted to full jounin of Otogakure, and granted a place among the Seven Swordsmen.
- It is revealed that Fuguki, Jinin, and Raiga killed the other four members of the Seven when they would not join Oto.
- Sayaka is given the seversword Kubikiribochou and made the new jounin sensei of Team Raiga as they go to Konoha officially to attend their chunin exams.
- Noburu promises retribution on Konoha for their bullshit.
- Orochimaru promises retribution on someone for their bullshit.
- Fugaku joins the Kinkshame Madara Club.
- Orochimaru's deployment to the gelel mines is called off after a combination of Suzume, Tsunade, and the Hyuga clan apply pressure to Hiruzen to be sensible.
- Hizashi instigated the Hyuga clan's involvement with help from his brother Hiashi.
- Team Sayaka arrive in Konoha via their Witch's Bubble jutsu, and cause havoc right away.
- Location
- Canada
And we would expect nothing less from them
Ch 53
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Chapter 53: Make It Stop
---
Legendary Sannin Jiraiya
In front of Jiraiya sat his teammate, who technically should not be reading the scroll Jiraiya had left unrolled on the table while they waited. They sat in the Hokage's office while Sarutobi-sensei went to meet their new 'guests' and bring them down.
"I'd love to tell you what we learned from the eyeless monk," Jiraiya croaked, weary from recent emotional talks. He'd had to tell Minato the fate of his teammates, and deal with the fallout there. He had to explain to an angry kid why he couldn't even get out of bed to attend their funerals. Not. Fun. "But the council and Sarutobi-sensei decided that while you're off-duty, you shouldn't be read into all new intel. Might stress you out, you see."
Orochimaru's eyes briefly met Jiraiya's, then darted back to the scroll. After a few moments, he nodded, and leaned back in his seat. "I understand. I can't imagine that details of extensive torture and interrogation would benefit my recovery."
Jiraiya rolled up the scroll and tucked it away in his kosode. "Yeah. Thanks for not making a fuss."
Danzo's goons were definitely listening in -- but they likely didn't have any direct eyes on them. All his attempts to acquire a Hyuga for his collection were harshly rebuffed by the clan. Harshly enough to involve implied death threats on both sides of the discussion. So they had to make it sound like they weren't going to tell Orochimaru.
The man was utterly insane, anyway. Believing himself to be from the Moon -- a distant relation of the Hyuga to boot. And that Orochimaru and Noburu were all descendants of the 'main' family or whatever. Jiraiya had thought they stopped making that kind of crazy when Madara left the village.
"By the way Jiraiya, I don't know if a report I sent was delivered -- so I made a copy." Orochimaru took a dainty little scroll from his sleeve and offered it to him. "Just a bit of redundancy, since you'll be in charge while Sarutobi-sensei is away." He was all smiles, almost like how he used to be before the present mess.
Jiraiya took it and unwound it. "Really? Your snake summons are pretty good… about…." He read it and as he did found it harder to keep his jaw from going slack. The report, dated as a couple days after Kumo's raid on Oto, included information from the Six-Tails directly. It largely confirmed what the crazy old man had said. Every bit. Jiraiya glanced at Orochimaru, whose eyes had taken to glance toward the Hokage's desk. "The date reminds me of something -- let me check real quick."
Sarutobi-sensei tended to keep high-priority reports locked in the desk with layers of jutsu protection before they were old enough to be safely kept in the records department. Technically speaking, only the Hokage, the Jounin Commander, and Hokage's designated inheritor would have access to the files. All members of the Sannin had it as they could be called to serve as Hokage if required.
Jiraiya glanced around for any signs of being watched as he flicked through files in a drawer to the associated date. Orochimaru's original report was indeed there. Danzo hadn't been able to get his hands on it yet.
"Nah, the original's here don't worry." Jiraiya put on the airs of a weary bureaucrat as he closed the drawer. With a puff of fire chakra, he had the scroll Orochimaru gave him rendered into ash. "Thanks for double-checking though."
"I didn't want to have anyone interrupting my rest for paperwork, is all." Orochimaru waved him off. "Oop, I think I hear them."
Jiraiya had started his day convinced that insanity was responsible for the raid on Oto. Now he had to continue it with the knowledge that the world had no obligation to make sense. Moon people. Moon people as the ancestors of the Hyuga. Spirits, gods, demons -- whoever made decisions for the world needed to stop. Just for a bit, so that Jiraiya could parse all this nonsense.
He stopped, in the midst of sitting, as horrifying clarity reached down from heaven and punched him in the brain.
"...Why are you looking at me like that?" Orochimaru was too smooth to visibly sweat, but he looked displeased with the look Jiraiya had for him.
"This is how you've been feeling all the time for years," Jiraiya said, his voice soft with the sublime enlightenment he'd acquired.
"...Half sitting down with a look like I've remembered something terrible?" He shrugged. "I mean… that's not inaccurate."
--
Legendary Sannin Orochimaru
Danzo was going to die. That had been his nephew's one caveat that kept him from visiting Konoha -- or indeed setting foot in Fire Country proper -- for years. His nephew, armed with future knowledge, utterly refused to be in the same country as Danzo while the man was alive. How that alone wasn't grounds to have Danzo put to death Orochimaru would never understand.
Sarutobi-sensei was… nonsensical at times.
But! Danzo's death would solve that minor issue. Orochimaru just needed to figure out how to do it. Before he'd been assigned a genin team, his plan was to infiltrate Root and find a pretext to murder Danzo. Quick, professional, untraceable.
It took all his willpower not to just scream 'fuck it' and do it brazenly. Danzo was once the stealth expert of Konoha -- he'd literally written their instruction books on ambush tactics; in short, the man was paranoid, and catching him by surprise would be too difficult.
Orochimaru contemplated these things while he walked with his nephew's team through Konoha's dusty streets toward one of the more wooded districts. It was from the first settlement wave, when the village was sparsely populated.
"The house isn't… in terrible condition," Orochimaru said as he led them down a dusty, overgrown trail. "I'm going to ask a contractor about fixing it up."
"I'm looking at it right now," Noburu said as he pointed through the wildly out of control bamboo shoots. "And it's got some issues."
They pushed through the bamboo that had grown over the path in places, and there was the house. To Orochimaru it seemed smaller than he remembered -- one floor, built in what he understood to be the Wave style. Simple wooden construction, a gabled roof, and a strongly fortified cellar in the event of storms.
Orochimaru felt his mouth twitch as he, his genin, and his nephew's team looked over the abandoned house from the outside. The bamboo that had started to grow through the floorboards, visible through the windows, the caved in sections of roof, the long-abandoned beehive attached to the wall -- all of it clearly indicated how readily the house had been left empty.
'If Noburu hadn't been born… would I have ever come back?' Orochimaru thought to himself as he looked over the damage. 'If I go rampant… will I forget about them?' Like ghosts at midnight, Orochimaru could almost see his parents in the house, through the windows. Father, with his vitiligo skin like Noburu, and Mother with her serene grace. They were always so busy when he came back from the academy.
And then they were gone.
"It's in a state of disrepair, but it can be fixed." Sayaka said and moved to stand at Orochimaru's flank. "It's not livable as-is, though. We can camp for a bit, fix it up around training -- "
"Human remains in the cellar -- looks like some shelves fell on them and they were trapped." Noburu cut her off as he continued to look through the house with his byakugan. "Also, Hizashi's dad is coming up behind us." As Noburu approached the house, he threw his hand up and pointed backward with his thumb. "I'll go do last rites, settle any ghosts still in the building. Junko, you in?"
While Orochimaru processed those words, Junko ran after Noburu into the cellar followed shortly by Kushina. He had a corpse in his house, perhaps a robber, and a guest. He sensed Hizashi go tense with anxiety at the thought of his father's mere proximity, and patted his student on the shoulder. An encouraging smile, and Orochimaru mentally committed to being on Hizashi's camp in the talks that would come up.
"Anyway," Sayaka continued. "We've got construction experience, we helped build our village up from nothing. We'll have it as it was in a day, maybe less."
Orochimaru considered that, he considered the few fond memories he had of the home. He considered how it reflected on him -- neglected and rotting. On Mount Koryu -- the earth dragon had praised him on accepting change and becoming something new. "No," Orochimaru said as he looked over the house. "I think… it might be best to start fresh. To build something new."
"Oh." Sayaka rubbed the back of her neck. "Hmm. Well -- we were going to have to do that anyway, since your place seems… small. But, if that's what you want…." She pulled her arm into her massive coat and rummaged around inside. A moment later, she had a large scroll in her hand. "Then we can just get started right now. Haruki -- start clearing that bamboo!" She swept her arm across the eastern side of the thick.
"Hizashi?" Orochimaru patted his student on the shoulder again. "If you want to avoid talking to your clan head…." He didn't even finish the sentence before the taijutsu expert of his team scurried away. "Shibi? If you could help Sayaka, I'll talk to -- "
"With respect, sensei," Shibi adjusted his glasses enough to reveal a sliver of his true eyes. "I would like to help clear the bamboo. It will help me practice taijutsu." He was quiet for a moment, before he glanced at the house. "And if I'm seen practicing… perhaps Junko won't insist on training me." He hurried off to help with the bamboo, with many fearful glances toward the Kaguya's location.
Orochimaru watched him go with a slightly weaker smile. "I… don't think that's a healthy way to train. But my experiences are a little biased…."
"It is what it is." Sayaka shrugged. She threw the scroll so that it unrolled along the ground, and revealed several complex seals along the interior. She bit her thumb, and walked down the side, while drops of blood dripped onto each seal. With a massive cloud of smoke, building materials were revealed. Timber, specifically mangrove wood, nails, shingles, pipes, and more. "We'll get started with this once Noburu's back from the human remains thi -- "
At that moment, on the other side of the house, there was a strong updraft which created an almost ethereal noise with the wind currents. Orochimaru could amost hear a voice in the wind, but no details.
"Ahahaha! Yes!" Noburu's voice called, victorious. "You fuckers enjoy having your Hokage Tower haunted! Hope your raggedy-ass Fire Monks know how to do an exorcism!"
All work on clearing the bamboo stopped, Sayaka's unsealing stopped, and Orochimaru stared impassively at the house as Noburu's wicked laughter continued.
"...If now's a bad time," said a man's voice from behind him -- obviously Hizashi's father, the Hyuga clan head, "I can come back tomorrow?"
--
Legendary Sannin Tsunade
Life in Oto carried on mostly as normal -- ninja still had to go guard Fire Country's ports, and other missions were still sent in. The casino still saw business, Suzume still came by to drink with her and gamble, and Akami still went to work every day at her restaurant. Tsunade checked in on both women often, given how stressful the last few weeks had been.
While on her break from back-of-house business, she had been playing some rounds of roulette. Around her, genin and academy students in transformation ninjutsu competed with each other to cheat and catch cheaters respectively. In the ceiling panels, their teachers watched to make sure any successful cheats or cheat-catchers were validated.
They had so much fun learning, treating it as a game. Despite it being a solo exercise, Tsunade saw both sides naturally start to work together. If a cheater was suspected, multiple cheat-catchers would encircle them to prevent escape. And in those situations, other cheaters might try to make a scene, to create an escape route.
Tsunade took no part, she was part of the scene -- not a player or an obstacle. Though she wondered how the students would operate in a professional setting when they were taught in such light-hearted ways. Would they be better, worse, or just different? When she'd been their age, she'd been in life threatening situations on missions regularly. No one she knew studied how young ninjas developed once they graduated, to test if their teaching methods were truly the best.
She bemoaned the state of ninja academia while she drank the queer new drink from Alcohol Country. It was a mixture of a several alcohols arranged for optimal taste -- with the side effect that all the hard drinks combined made one, as Noburu had called it, 'white girl wasted'. Tsunade hated how that was so extremely accurate. She put the casino's money down on a random number on black while she drank, then almost spat it out when she ended up winning. There was a moment of cheer from her that faded right as she won the next spin. And the next one.
And the next one.
After that, Tsunade stumbled her way through the casino with her expensive drink in it's wide-brimmed glass the only thing stable about her as she did. Her bad luck was legendary -- and good luck for her meant something terrible was about to happen. She called Suzume and Raiga when she got to a phone -- but Akami wouldn't answer at the restaurant.
Drunk, anxious, and properly motivated, Tsuande embraced old ninja traditions to get from point A to B fastest -- chakra-enhanced feats of athleticism. She didn't even fall down once as she jumped from one floor to another in the cliffside pseudo-mall from the base level to the food court.
Akami's restaurant was a simple diner that focused on foreign food. She took recipes from the subcontinent, from far-flung reaches of the continent, and beyond and introduced them to the villagers at a reasonable price. A small crowd had gathered around the restaurant, with shouting being heard ss Tsunade approached.
"Traitor," someone, a man, screamed from inside the restaurant. "You're foot caste, same as us, but the minute you could -- you adopted an eyes caste so you could pretend to be one!"
Tsunade pushed through the crowd, gently given they were civilians, and saw the restaurant in an absolute state. Smashed glass on the floor -- the turtle-themed sign in the window torn down, staff cowering behind Akami who stood behind the bar as a group of people brandished weapons in her face.
The ringleader, a tan man with heavily scarred hands occupied with a spear, seemed to have knowledge of Akami -- the hate and killing intent he gave off felt personal.
Akami didn't seem bothered by the spear aimed at her face, or the weapons in the hands of the group. "This is Oto, Arata," she said with a weary tone to her voice. "There are no castes anymore."
"Bullshit!" The man, Arata, spat on Akami after he refuted her words. "All the eyes and the hand caste got to live in the high towers! All the eyes and the hand caste got to keep their trades!"
While the man screamed, Tsunade moved around the group to get in prime position to take them out with minimal effort.
"Every foot caste lost someone to the last war! Everyone but you! You let them put a demon in your son, so you could be one of them! You adopted an eyes caste brat when you should have let them die, the way they let our children die!" Arata seemed to speak for his fellows, as they nodded and brandished their weapons. "You got to live in the top of a tower! You didn't have to learn how to be a blacksmith, or electricity, or kill giant pigs for a living!"
Akami narrowed her eyes at Arata. But she said nothing.
"And now your demon shit son is bringing a new war on us?! No, none of that." Arata's spear drew closer to her face, which was the last straw.
In a blur, Tsunade had made her attack. By the count of two, every single armed man in the restaurant was unconscious or in too much pain to think straight from Tsunade's touch. Immediately Akami's staff started to thank her for rescuing them, while Tsunade tied them up with whatever she could find for bindings. Akami had only moved to wipe the spit off her chef's coat by the time Tsunade was done.
"Thank you for not killing them," she said, soft. "Though I think Raiga will make it irrelevant after he hears about this."
"How did these louts even get here?" Tsunade slurred her words as she leaned on the bar. She was sober enough to knock out civilians, but still drunk. Adrenalin had given her a few seconds of clarity was all. "Where were the guards?"
"I honestly don't know." Akami sighed and looked over her restaurant. Smashed glass, torn down turtle decorations, upended tables with food all over the floor. "I'm sorry, but we have to temporarily close while we clean this up." She spoke up so the crowd outside would hear her. "Now, excuse me -- I need to call Raiga and have him send someone over to pick… Arata and his friends up. Thank you for the rescue, Tsunade." Akami patted Tsunade's hand while her eyes went glassy. "Your tab's paid for. I'll make you some chicken and bring it over to you."
Tsunade watched her walk away, lumbering like she'd aged two decades and every step was exhausting. Confused by the whole situation, she leaned on the bar as she left the restaurant. Her eyes scanned the gawkers and the walkways for any Oto ninja. She'd expected to see no one, given the ruckus she'd broken up should have been dealt with by them.
She instead saw three chunin talking to each other on a rafter connecting two columns nearby. They hung upside down with wall-walking; as if they hadn't ignored their duties far too long. In a blur, Tsunade was across the gap, up the column, and with two hands on two collars and a snarl on her face.
"What the hell were you all doing?! There wered armed lunatics in there, and you were out here chatting?!"
"Hey, hey," a long-haired woman, the one chunin to escape Tsunade's grip, crossed her arms and frowned. "You're not from Kiri, you don't know how it is." She shrugged. "Guard duty gets boring, watching the foot caste kill each other is the only interesting stuff to happen some days."
Her friends in Tsunade's grip seemed similarly annoyed. Both men gave her lip about 'breaking up' a 'perfectly good bloodbath'. A quick shift of Tsunade's grip, their heads bonked into each other, and her ears were no longer bombarded by idiocy.
"You three are on guard duty, that means you guard people from things like armed lunatics pointing spears at them! Or worse!"
The chunin woman rolled her eyes. "We guard people, not foot caste." She flicked her hand over at Akami's restaurant. "That's a foot caste restaurant. All the people who work there are either foreign, or foot caste. She's only got a good location because her son's a demon." The chunin talked like how Tsunade would talk to difficult clients. Like she thought Tsunade too stupid to see the obvious.
Tsunade of the Senju clan did not care for being called stupid while sober. While drunk? Even less so. She expressed this sentiment in the most Konoha way she could think of.
Headbutt.
It was extremely effective.
---
Bet you guys thought we were done with all that caste and anti-jinchuuriki sentiment, huh? Well joke's on you! Ha! Ha ha!
Also, Hokage Tower's haunted now. Hope Sarutobi has fun with that.
---
Legendary Sannin Jiraiya
In front of Jiraiya sat his teammate, who technically should not be reading the scroll Jiraiya had left unrolled on the table while they waited. They sat in the Hokage's office while Sarutobi-sensei went to meet their new 'guests' and bring them down.
"I'd love to tell you what we learned from the eyeless monk," Jiraiya croaked, weary from recent emotional talks. He'd had to tell Minato the fate of his teammates, and deal with the fallout there. He had to explain to an angry kid why he couldn't even get out of bed to attend their funerals. Not. Fun. "But the council and Sarutobi-sensei decided that while you're off-duty, you shouldn't be read into all new intel. Might stress you out, you see."
Orochimaru's eyes briefly met Jiraiya's, then darted back to the scroll. After a few moments, he nodded, and leaned back in his seat. "I understand. I can't imagine that details of extensive torture and interrogation would benefit my recovery."
Jiraiya rolled up the scroll and tucked it away in his kosode. "Yeah. Thanks for not making a fuss."
Danzo's goons were definitely listening in -- but they likely didn't have any direct eyes on them. All his attempts to acquire a Hyuga for his collection were harshly rebuffed by the clan. Harshly enough to involve implied death threats on both sides of the discussion. So they had to make it sound like they weren't going to tell Orochimaru.
The man was utterly insane, anyway. Believing himself to be from the Moon -- a distant relation of the Hyuga to boot. And that Orochimaru and Noburu were all descendants of the 'main' family or whatever. Jiraiya had thought they stopped making that kind of crazy when Madara left the village.
"By the way Jiraiya, I don't know if a report I sent was delivered -- so I made a copy." Orochimaru took a dainty little scroll from his sleeve and offered it to him. "Just a bit of redundancy, since you'll be in charge while Sarutobi-sensei is away." He was all smiles, almost like how he used to be before the present mess.
Jiraiya took it and unwound it. "Really? Your snake summons are pretty good… about…." He read it and as he did found it harder to keep his jaw from going slack. The report, dated as a couple days after Kumo's raid on Oto, included information from the Six-Tails directly. It largely confirmed what the crazy old man had said. Every bit. Jiraiya glanced at Orochimaru, whose eyes had taken to glance toward the Hokage's desk. "The date reminds me of something -- let me check real quick."
Sarutobi-sensei tended to keep high-priority reports locked in the desk with layers of jutsu protection before they were old enough to be safely kept in the records department. Technically speaking, only the Hokage, the Jounin Commander, and Hokage's designated inheritor would have access to the files. All members of the Sannin had it as they could be called to serve as Hokage if required.
Jiraiya glanced around for any signs of being watched as he flicked through files in a drawer to the associated date. Orochimaru's original report was indeed there. Danzo hadn't been able to get his hands on it yet.
"Nah, the original's here don't worry." Jiraiya put on the airs of a weary bureaucrat as he closed the drawer. With a puff of fire chakra, he had the scroll Orochimaru gave him rendered into ash. "Thanks for double-checking though."
"I didn't want to have anyone interrupting my rest for paperwork, is all." Orochimaru waved him off. "Oop, I think I hear them."
Jiraiya had started his day convinced that insanity was responsible for the raid on Oto. Now he had to continue it with the knowledge that the world had no obligation to make sense. Moon people. Moon people as the ancestors of the Hyuga. Spirits, gods, demons -- whoever made decisions for the world needed to stop. Just for a bit, so that Jiraiya could parse all this nonsense.
He stopped, in the midst of sitting, as horrifying clarity reached down from heaven and punched him in the brain.
"...Why are you looking at me like that?" Orochimaru was too smooth to visibly sweat, but he looked displeased with the look Jiraiya had for him.
"This is how you've been feeling all the time for years," Jiraiya said, his voice soft with the sublime enlightenment he'd acquired.
"...Half sitting down with a look like I've remembered something terrible?" He shrugged. "I mean… that's not inaccurate."
--
Legendary Sannin Orochimaru
Danzo was going to die. That had been his nephew's one caveat that kept him from visiting Konoha -- or indeed setting foot in Fire Country proper -- for years. His nephew, armed with future knowledge, utterly refused to be in the same country as Danzo while the man was alive. How that alone wasn't grounds to have Danzo put to death Orochimaru would never understand.
Sarutobi-sensei was… nonsensical at times.
But! Danzo's death would solve that minor issue. Orochimaru just needed to figure out how to do it. Before he'd been assigned a genin team, his plan was to infiltrate Root and find a pretext to murder Danzo. Quick, professional, untraceable.
It took all his willpower not to just scream 'fuck it' and do it brazenly. Danzo was once the stealth expert of Konoha -- he'd literally written their instruction books on ambush tactics; in short, the man was paranoid, and catching him by surprise would be too difficult.
Orochimaru contemplated these things while he walked with his nephew's team through Konoha's dusty streets toward one of the more wooded districts. It was from the first settlement wave, when the village was sparsely populated.
"The house isn't… in terrible condition," Orochimaru said as he led them down a dusty, overgrown trail. "I'm going to ask a contractor about fixing it up."
"I'm looking at it right now," Noburu said as he pointed through the wildly out of control bamboo shoots. "And it's got some issues."
They pushed through the bamboo that had grown over the path in places, and there was the house. To Orochimaru it seemed smaller than he remembered -- one floor, built in what he understood to be the Wave style. Simple wooden construction, a gabled roof, and a strongly fortified cellar in the event of storms.
Orochimaru felt his mouth twitch as he, his genin, and his nephew's team looked over the abandoned house from the outside. The bamboo that had started to grow through the floorboards, visible through the windows, the caved in sections of roof, the long-abandoned beehive attached to the wall -- all of it clearly indicated how readily the house had been left empty.
'If Noburu hadn't been born… would I have ever come back?' Orochimaru thought to himself as he looked over the damage. 'If I go rampant… will I forget about them?' Like ghosts at midnight, Orochimaru could almost see his parents in the house, through the windows. Father, with his vitiligo skin like Noburu, and Mother with her serene grace. They were always so busy when he came back from the academy.
And then they were gone.
"It's in a state of disrepair, but it can be fixed." Sayaka said and moved to stand at Orochimaru's flank. "It's not livable as-is, though. We can camp for a bit, fix it up around training -- "
"Human remains in the cellar -- looks like some shelves fell on them and they were trapped." Noburu cut her off as he continued to look through the house with his byakugan. "Also, Hizashi's dad is coming up behind us." As Noburu approached the house, he threw his hand up and pointed backward with his thumb. "I'll go do last rites, settle any ghosts still in the building. Junko, you in?"
While Orochimaru processed those words, Junko ran after Noburu into the cellar followed shortly by Kushina. He had a corpse in his house, perhaps a robber, and a guest. He sensed Hizashi go tense with anxiety at the thought of his father's mere proximity, and patted his student on the shoulder. An encouraging smile, and Orochimaru mentally committed to being on Hizashi's camp in the talks that would come up.
"Anyway," Sayaka continued. "We've got construction experience, we helped build our village up from nothing. We'll have it as it was in a day, maybe less."
Orochimaru considered that, he considered the few fond memories he had of the home. He considered how it reflected on him -- neglected and rotting. On Mount Koryu -- the earth dragon had praised him on accepting change and becoming something new. "No," Orochimaru said as he looked over the house. "I think… it might be best to start fresh. To build something new."
"Oh." Sayaka rubbed the back of her neck. "Hmm. Well -- we were going to have to do that anyway, since your place seems… small. But, if that's what you want…." She pulled her arm into her massive coat and rummaged around inside. A moment later, she had a large scroll in her hand. "Then we can just get started right now. Haruki -- start clearing that bamboo!" She swept her arm across the eastern side of the thick.
"Hizashi?" Orochimaru patted his student on the shoulder again. "If you want to avoid talking to your clan head…." He didn't even finish the sentence before the taijutsu expert of his team scurried away. "Shibi? If you could help Sayaka, I'll talk to -- "
"With respect, sensei," Shibi adjusted his glasses enough to reveal a sliver of his true eyes. "I would like to help clear the bamboo. It will help me practice taijutsu." He was quiet for a moment, before he glanced at the house. "And if I'm seen practicing… perhaps Junko won't insist on training me." He hurried off to help with the bamboo, with many fearful glances toward the Kaguya's location.
Orochimaru watched him go with a slightly weaker smile. "I… don't think that's a healthy way to train. But my experiences are a little biased…."
"It is what it is." Sayaka shrugged. She threw the scroll so that it unrolled along the ground, and revealed several complex seals along the interior. She bit her thumb, and walked down the side, while drops of blood dripped onto each seal. With a massive cloud of smoke, building materials were revealed. Timber, specifically mangrove wood, nails, shingles, pipes, and more. "We'll get started with this once Noburu's back from the human remains thi -- "
At that moment, on the other side of the house, there was a strong updraft which created an almost ethereal noise with the wind currents. Orochimaru could amost hear a voice in the wind, but no details.
"Ahahaha! Yes!" Noburu's voice called, victorious. "You fuckers enjoy having your Hokage Tower haunted! Hope your raggedy-ass Fire Monks know how to do an exorcism!"
All work on clearing the bamboo stopped, Sayaka's unsealing stopped, and Orochimaru stared impassively at the house as Noburu's wicked laughter continued.
"...If now's a bad time," said a man's voice from behind him -- obviously Hizashi's father, the Hyuga clan head, "I can come back tomorrow?"
--
Legendary Sannin Tsunade
Life in Oto carried on mostly as normal -- ninja still had to go guard Fire Country's ports, and other missions were still sent in. The casino still saw business, Suzume still came by to drink with her and gamble, and Akami still went to work every day at her restaurant. Tsunade checked in on both women often, given how stressful the last few weeks had been.
While on her break from back-of-house business, she had been playing some rounds of roulette. Around her, genin and academy students in transformation ninjutsu competed with each other to cheat and catch cheaters respectively. In the ceiling panels, their teachers watched to make sure any successful cheats or cheat-catchers were validated.
They had so much fun learning, treating it as a game. Despite it being a solo exercise, Tsunade saw both sides naturally start to work together. If a cheater was suspected, multiple cheat-catchers would encircle them to prevent escape. And in those situations, other cheaters might try to make a scene, to create an escape route.
Tsunade took no part, she was part of the scene -- not a player or an obstacle. Though she wondered how the students would operate in a professional setting when they were taught in such light-hearted ways. Would they be better, worse, or just different? When she'd been their age, she'd been in life threatening situations on missions regularly. No one she knew studied how young ninjas developed once they graduated, to test if their teaching methods were truly the best.
She bemoaned the state of ninja academia while she drank the queer new drink from Alcohol Country. It was a mixture of a several alcohols arranged for optimal taste -- with the side effect that all the hard drinks combined made one, as Noburu had called it, 'white girl wasted'. Tsunade hated how that was so extremely accurate. She put the casino's money down on a random number on black while she drank, then almost spat it out when she ended up winning. There was a moment of cheer from her that faded right as she won the next spin. And the next one.
And the next one.
After that, Tsunade stumbled her way through the casino with her expensive drink in it's wide-brimmed glass the only thing stable about her as she did. Her bad luck was legendary -- and good luck for her meant something terrible was about to happen. She called Suzume and Raiga when she got to a phone -- but Akami wouldn't answer at the restaurant.
Drunk, anxious, and properly motivated, Tsuande embraced old ninja traditions to get from point A to B fastest -- chakra-enhanced feats of athleticism. She didn't even fall down once as she jumped from one floor to another in the cliffside pseudo-mall from the base level to the food court.
Akami's restaurant was a simple diner that focused on foreign food. She took recipes from the subcontinent, from far-flung reaches of the continent, and beyond and introduced them to the villagers at a reasonable price. A small crowd had gathered around the restaurant, with shouting being heard ss Tsunade approached.
"Traitor," someone, a man, screamed from inside the restaurant. "You're foot caste, same as us, but the minute you could -- you adopted an eyes caste so you could pretend to be one!"
Tsunade pushed through the crowd, gently given they were civilians, and saw the restaurant in an absolute state. Smashed glass on the floor -- the turtle-themed sign in the window torn down, staff cowering behind Akami who stood behind the bar as a group of people brandished weapons in her face.
The ringleader, a tan man with heavily scarred hands occupied with a spear, seemed to have knowledge of Akami -- the hate and killing intent he gave off felt personal.
Akami didn't seem bothered by the spear aimed at her face, or the weapons in the hands of the group. "This is Oto, Arata," she said with a weary tone to her voice. "There are no castes anymore."
"Bullshit!" The man, Arata, spat on Akami after he refuted her words. "All the eyes and the hand caste got to live in the high towers! All the eyes and the hand caste got to keep their trades!"
While the man screamed, Tsunade moved around the group to get in prime position to take them out with minimal effort.
"Every foot caste lost someone to the last war! Everyone but you! You let them put a demon in your son, so you could be one of them! You adopted an eyes caste brat when you should have let them die, the way they let our children die!" Arata seemed to speak for his fellows, as they nodded and brandished their weapons. "You got to live in the top of a tower! You didn't have to learn how to be a blacksmith, or electricity, or kill giant pigs for a living!"
Akami narrowed her eyes at Arata. But she said nothing.
"And now your demon shit son is bringing a new war on us?! No, none of that." Arata's spear drew closer to her face, which was the last straw.
In a blur, Tsunade had made her attack. By the count of two, every single armed man in the restaurant was unconscious or in too much pain to think straight from Tsunade's touch. Immediately Akami's staff started to thank her for rescuing them, while Tsunade tied them up with whatever she could find for bindings. Akami had only moved to wipe the spit off her chef's coat by the time Tsunade was done.
"Thank you for not killing them," she said, soft. "Though I think Raiga will make it irrelevant after he hears about this."
"How did these louts even get here?" Tsunade slurred her words as she leaned on the bar. She was sober enough to knock out civilians, but still drunk. Adrenalin had given her a few seconds of clarity was all. "Where were the guards?"
"I honestly don't know." Akami sighed and looked over her restaurant. Smashed glass, torn down turtle decorations, upended tables with food all over the floor. "I'm sorry, but we have to temporarily close while we clean this up." She spoke up so the crowd outside would hear her. "Now, excuse me -- I need to call Raiga and have him send someone over to pick… Arata and his friends up. Thank you for the rescue, Tsunade." Akami patted Tsunade's hand while her eyes went glassy. "Your tab's paid for. I'll make you some chicken and bring it over to you."
Tsunade watched her walk away, lumbering like she'd aged two decades and every step was exhausting. Confused by the whole situation, she leaned on the bar as she left the restaurant. Her eyes scanned the gawkers and the walkways for any Oto ninja. She'd expected to see no one, given the ruckus she'd broken up should have been dealt with by them.
She instead saw three chunin talking to each other on a rafter connecting two columns nearby. They hung upside down with wall-walking; as if they hadn't ignored their duties far too long. In a blur, Tsunade was across the gap, up the column, and with two hands on two collars and a snarl on her face.
"What the hell were you all doing?! There wered armed lunatics in there, and you were out here chatting?!"
"Hey, hey," a long-haired woman, the one chunin to escape Tsunade's grip, crossed her arms and frowned. "You're not from Kiri, you don't know how it is." She shrugged. "Guard duty gets boring, watching the foot caste kill each other is the only interesting stuff to happen some days."
Her friends in Tsunade's grip seemed similarly annoyed. Both men gave her lip about 'breaking up' a 'perfectly good bloodbath'. A quick shift of Tsunade's grip, their heads bonked into each other, and her ears were no longer bombarded by idiocy.
"You three are on guard duty, that means you guard people from things like armed lunatics pointing spears at them! Or worse!"
The chunin woman rolled her eyes. "We guard people, not foot caste." She flicked her hand over at Akami's restaurant. "That's a foot caste restaurant. All the people who work there are either foreign, or foot caste. She's only got a good location because her son's a demon." The chunin talked like how Tsunade would talk to difficult clients. Like she thought Tsunade too stupid to see the obvious.
Tsunade of the Senju clan did not care for being called stupid while sober. While drunk? Even less so. She expressed this sentiment in the most Konoha way she could think of.
Headbutt.
It was extremely effective.
---
Bet you guys thought we were done with all that caste and anti-jinchuuriki sentiment, huh? Well joke's on you! Ha! Ha ha!
Also, Hokage Tower's haunted now. Hope Sarutobi has fun with that.
Huh. Those ninja are kinda... extremely stupid? Like I'd expect it still at Kiri, or even in Oto in the less noticeable corners. But the mother of one of the major rising figures in Oto? The same restaurant that is frequented by the Sotaicho and foreign diplomats? Including the Sannin? Hell, just the fact that Noburo is Orochimaru's nephew? Any one of those facts should have a sane Kiri nin running to keep them safe, or running to the hills if they screw up, because the old consequences were extremely painful and messy death (and maybe not so old as far as Orochimaru is concerned).