Ch 16: Hidden in the Sound
---
Mercenary ninja Kurosuki.
Raiga looked out on the shores of Wave as they passed. The ship he road on chugged and belched white steam from her stacks, which would easily be spun into mist if the ship was attacked. Beside him, propped up against the railing, Haruki sat curled up around his bag. The kid had fallen asleep -- and even though it was required of ninja to stay awake for long periods, Raiga let him rest.
Spirits, did Raiga need a rest too.
Footsteps to his left drew his attention away from Wave's mangrove swamp-ridden shore. A giant of a man stood there, Fuguki Suikazan. Dressed in the dark shirt and pants of the Seven Swordsmen with striped arm warmers and a sleeveless jacket, his most notable features were his tattooed face, long red-orange hair, and the sword on his back. Samehada -- with her woven hilt, skull-pummel, and heavily bandaged blade. Fuguki had mostly recovered from his short coma, and narrowed his eyes at Raiga's student when Fuguki noticed him.
"The boy is a man by the reckoning of the Hidden Mist," Fuguki muttered, his shark-like teeth on display. "He should be awake to see this country he'll have to help tame."
"He's my student," Raiga said back. Despite his exhausted eyes, his hands drifted down to his swords. "And I say he can rest."
Fuguki looked at Raiga, glanced at the younger man's hands on his swords and smirked. "You think highly of yourself. Think you can best me, when you struggled so much against our 'comrades'?"
"I think I'm dangerously close to no longer caring whether or not I win if I fight you, Fuguki."
Fuguki's smirk slowly faded away. Fighting an enemy that didn't care if they won was dangerous, as he'd found out on the front lines. Many of Kousuke's troops were fueled by hatred of Kiri -- they wanted the ninja to hurt, and didn't care what it cost them. "Then let's not let it come to that." Fuguki put on the airs of a more relaxed scene than that which his presence created, and looked at the shore as Raiga had done. "Have we heard anything about where we're supposed to go?"
"Jinin said the most likely spot was a spot in the sound where there are three islands which could be settled." Raiga didn't let his guard down and didn't move his hands away from his swords. But he did move to watch the mangroves drift by as the ship began to turn. "But… I don't think so. My gut tells me that's not where Noburu would advise Kousuke to begin construction."
"Your student, the jinchuuriki?" Fuguki huffed. "We'll have to make sure his loyalty is strong -- being falsely made a missing-nin probably shook his trust."
"Loyalty to what Fuguki?" Raiga rolled his eyes. "Kiri never had a unifying philosophy. Those Leaf dumbasses scream about their will of fire -- but what did we have? The Mizukage ruled through naked force, and nothing else."
"To you if nothing else." Fuguki looked at him with almost a plaintive expression. It rang hollow considering how the taller Swordsman had started the conversation. "Juzo didn't see reason. And now Kousuke is undoubtedly going to be in charge of whatever settlement happens here. We need someone to advocate for our people, their welfare, and their interests. Your student is a shinobi and a jinchuuriki. He could be that voice for us."
"He literally has no reason to say a kind word about us." Raiga looked at Fuguki, and remembered that the man who spoke to him like an equal was eyes caste. And that he was hand caste. "We conscripted him. We made him kill his best friend to live. I certainly didn't make his time as my student fun. And then we put an experimental seal on him. That we aren't being told to go fuck ourselves to death is likely as far as his charity goes."
"...Shit." Fuguki sighed.
"Yeah."
The sound they had been directed to had a narrow opening to the ocean -- a small peninsula covered in mangrove trees almost at the water line jutted out and left an opening a little under a kilometer wide for ships to enter and exit. Raiga watched as their ship and other, smaller ships passed into the sound in a sort of queue. Misty mangrove forests lined the shores, haunting and beautiful. Scraps of light drifted from between the trees -- either wandering spirits, or a trick of the afternoon sun, Raiga couldn't tell. The ships sailed into the sound then sharply turned back toward the shore -- they'd hooked around another peninsula inside the sound, where crude docks were set up. Despite the docks being primitive, even large ships were able to find berths there.
What made Raiga take notice was when the anchor for their ship ran the length of its chain without hitting the soundbed when they tried to drop it offshore. It made Fuguki take notice too, who formed hand signs and looked over the side of the ship. "Ninja art: Sonar jutsu." He lept down to the water and slapped his hand to the water's surface and waited.
And waited.
He did the jutsu again, and lept back to the ship with a pale face. "The water is deep here," he said as if it explained his odd actions. "Very deep. And there is something big down there."
Raiga looked down and considered whether or not Kousuke had the ability to summon. "How big?"
"I would need to dive down to get a better look at it -- for all I know it could be a rock. But it's about the size of one of Kirigakure's districts."
Raiga pondered what that could mean, when Haruki stirred and looked around. "We're here," the Swordsman told his students. "We're going to disembark soon. How are you feeling?"
Haruki stretched and stood, unaware of how Raiga glared at Fuguki in response to the 'soft' response to his student. "I thought I felt Noburu's chakra -- which woke me up. But it's gone now -- and it was below us for some reason."
Well, Raiga considered while he examined the shore and saw only a tent cluster as a sign of civilization, that's more than a little ominous.
--
Mercenary-nin Ruan.
Suzume spent her time since she arrived at the camp ensuring proper distribution of potable water and food to her fellow Kirigakure residents. Every morning, Kousuke, Noburu, and a few monks from the Water Temple would bring them fresh fish and water from the rivers which fed into the sound, then leave.
Once the Hoshigaki and Hozuki clan members arrived, they were asked to help with the work -- both gathering supplies and whatever task took the group away. She was not involved in that.
However, that changed when Kousuke approached her one night after the work for the day was done. Noburu was with him, and neither looked entirely enthused to be where they were. "You are the foremost medical nin among Kirigakure's remnants," the monk said to her and inclined his head. He had some respect for that, it seemed. The monk gestured down to Noburu. "This young man would like to learn to be a medical ninja. I would ask you to take him under your wing in that regard. If it doesn't impose too much upon you?"
Suzume adjusted her glasses and looked Noburu over. His hair had started to grow back, and he had taken to wearing glasses of his own -- still pretty chubby, but he hadn't gotten fatter. "Well," she said, hesitant, "if he has the chakra control for it… we can start him on simple tasks like basic anatomy -- "
"I've been reading up on anatomy already," Noburu commented. "Before… the missing-ninja thing I wanted to be my squad's medic, so I read up on as much as I could -- but I couldn't find any medical jutsu, just chakra control exercises."
Kousuke rested his hand on his fellow jinchuuriki's shoulder. "Noburu has been working hard helping us all day, so his chakra is a little depleted right now." The monk looked up at Suzume. "That will make it easier to control, yes?"
"A bit. And while books can teach a lot about anatomy -- we'd really rather you serve a stint practicing and identifying injuries in patients before we give you any medical ninjutsu." Suzume felt confident enough to be firm on the subject -- Kousuke had sought her out for help, after all. "This is a process to learning medical-nin skills which its best is followed and practiced in the laid out sequence. Medicine is something where we cannot afford to cut corners, because the patients can't."
The boy sighed, then nodded. "I understand."
Kousuke smiled, and walked away. The most feared man in the camp was confident enough to just walk away from her -- if she was a field shinobi, she'd be insulted.
Suzume started Noburu on how to spot chakra exhaustion in himself, given Kousuke's words. She wanted to make sure he didn't end up in bed for days which might hamper whatever plan Kousuke had in mind.
They had many veterans from the rebellion in the camp who needed their injuries tended to, and Suzume made sure to run Noburu through a few so he could try and identify their injuries. She noticed some bulging veins around his eyes every so often, and wondered if his blood pressure was being affected by the seal. She made a test of it -- she would take his vitals and compare them to the patients, then to her own under the pretense that she wanted to show Noburu how to do so. In the end, it turned out to be a necessary lesson -- when it was Noburu's turn to take vitals he consistently struggled to determine blood pressure and heart rate.
After she determined that the boy had neared his limit for the day, she had him go with her down to the beach to clean bloody washcloths for the night shift.
"If…. Could I ask what you have been doing during the day to get yourself chakra exhausted?" Suzume didn't slow down her cleaning, to make it seem an idle curiosity. But the thought of 'where were they building the village' had eaten at her for days.
"Hmm? Oh sure." Noburu pointed to a section of the shore, where the ground dropped off visibly into the depths of the Sound. "Kousuke and I have been collecting shipwrecks from the ocean floor, bringing them into the sound, and we're using them to help build the village. So long as they're totally submerged, the wood's still good. Metal ships are harder to salvage -- but we've found some in good enough shape to use." He returned to the task of bloody cloths and bandages.
"...How?" Her mind boggled at the idea of it. Entire wrecks moved entirely underwater.
"Kousuke bubbles them, and the two of us use partial bijuu transformation to move them where they're needed. I'm a better hauler than he is, but he can stay transformed longer." Noburu shrugged. "The Hoshigaki and Hozuki clans then help us take them apart to build stuff for the village, and either Kousuke bubbles it or I coat it in coral."
"Oh." Suzume struggled to imagine what the village would look like once it was done. "Huh. So, there won't be windows? It'll be entirely… underwater?"
"Kousuke and Saiken have bubbles strong enough to survive a jinchuuriki bijuudama," Noburu sighed, frustrated, "which he's going to use to give us bubble-windows. So really, it's my contribution which is the weak point. Coral, as it turns out, isn't very strong. I'm working on strengthening it -- but we might have to redo all my work with actual earth release jutsu."
"I… don't know what a bijuudama is -- but it sounds… meaningful." Suzume looked down at her hands while she cleaned the blood off the bandages. However the blood never seemed to leave her hands. "I know how it feels, like you're the weak link in the chain." She put the washed cloths back in their basket to be dried later, and scrubbed her hands in the sound's water. "But getting frustrated that what you can do doesn't match what you want to do won't help solve the problem."
"Well, if I can't make my coral work then I can't contribute to the solution beyond hauling, you see." Noburu made a pouty face. "I'm a water release person -- and I'm not experienced enough to learn a second element."
"...Is that why you wanted to start learning medic-nin skills before we even have reliable shelter?" Suzume looked at the boy with an arched brow. "You don't have to be useful, you know. It's enough for you to help us as you have."
"What?" Noburu chuckled. "No, I want to learn medical ninja skills partly because it's a cool skill set, and partly because people tend to forgive you calling their mothers cheap hookers if you can re-attach their fingers in an emergency."
She couldn't help it, she laughed when she heard that. "Yeah… it's amazing what people can forgive if you know how to keep them alive." How she wished that wasn't true.
--
Mercenary-nin Fujimoto.
He couldn't find Sayaka anywhere. He couldn't find Noburu. Raiga-sensei had been asked to meet with the other jounin, and that left Haruki alone to wander the camp. It was full of hand and foot caste -- who could tell from Haruki's clothes that he had been eyes caste. It was inevitable that they would come to pick a fight with him -- and while he'd never learned the taijutsu applications of boil release, he knew enough ninjutsu to defend himself.
If he needed rescuing, his teammates would think of a worse nickname for him than 'Princess', he was sure.
Haruki was confident he could at least fight back against anyone who crossed his path, until he crossed path with the Bubble Monk himself -- Kousuke. The monk stepped out from behind some tents and blocked his path by way of the sheer pants-wetting terror he induced from his presence.
From the sounds of running feet, he'd figured he'd been followed and Kousuke's arrival had sent them packing, but that didn't help his surprised-goat condition, what with the monk in arm's reach.
"You're the Fujimoto boy, yes?" Kousuke asked, his voice warm and his face in a welcoming smile. "Noburu has told me about you."
Haruki opened his mouth and a high-pitched squeak came out.
"Oh yes," the monk nodded. "He told me your clan possesses a nature transformation -- boil release?"
Haruki, frozen in place in front of the man who had defeated Kiri, squeaked again.
"I see." Kousuke stroked his chin. "I know that your clan primarily used boil release for its taijutsu applications, but you're a ninjutsu specialist? We have recovered several boilers from sunken ships -- and we're going to be building more as we get metal. Your boil release would go a long way to helping the village have electricity and heat -- both desperately needed in winter."
For the third time in a row, Haruki squeaked.
"I know I'm asking a lot -- but Noburu thinks you're up to it. Would you be willing to help the village get off its feet?"
Haruki was finally able to make a non-squeak sound, though it sounded like a cat in pain.
"Good lad." Kousuke patted him on the shoulder. "Noburu was right about you. Eager to prove your worth. We'll get you started as soon as we have enough set up to benefit from your efforts."
And like that, the monk departed. Haruki stood still for a few minutes, then began to relax. He hadn't been kicked off into the horizon like the stories said Kousuke could do. And… Noburu had talked to Kousuke -- the Kousuke -- about Haruki's skills and how they could benefit the village.
On one hand, he was proud that his… friend was a strong word. His teammate. He was proud that his teammates thought highly enough of his skills to recommend him. On the other hand, it really drove home what could have been. The Fujimotos could have earned a lot of respect right away just from doing what they did best.
"Oh, just one more thing." Kousuke's voice called out from around the corner as he appeared once more.
Haruki immediately went back to the pose he'd held, frozen, when Kousuke had last seen him.
"Akami Jiang, Noburu's mother, opened her home to you… when her home is constructed anyway. She's offered to be your guardian, in light of your family not arriving with you." Kousuke pointed toward the north. "You'll find her and Noburu's tent that way -- look for the banner with the turtle." After that, he was gone again.
It took longer for Haruki to emerge from his state of frozen fear, but when he did he started off in the direction the monk had advised. He saw lines of people with bowls in their hands as he got to the northern side of the camp -- all going toward a pavilion tent marked with the banner of a turtle. Tables were laid out in front of the tent, with a black cauldron over a fire in between them. A tall, large woman in a hairnet and a chef's coat directed workers at the tables to chop vegetables and meat, then either apply them to smaller grills or throw them in the pot. If there was any doubt that the woman in charge was Noburu's mother, then it vanished when Haruki heard her cuss at a worker who'd almost put raw meat next to cooked meat on one of the tables.
They both had such colorful vocabularies. Perhaps it was a family thing.
She glanced at Haruki, and shook one of the workers by the shoulder. "You're in charge for ten minutes," she told the guy with a tone that brokered no argument. "Expedite, get this food ready and out to our hungry customers. No mistakes -- we don't have the luxury of wasting food." With that, she left the chef's area and approached him briskly. She was so tall, she took long steps and reached Haruki quickly.
"Um, hi," the eyes caste boy greeted the foot caste woman. "Um. I'm Haruki -- Noburu's teammate."
"I know." There was no pity in the woman's eyes, only recognition. "I'm sorry you had to leave your family behind."
Haruki swallowed the lump that developed in his throat as he heard that and wanted to scream they weren't dead yet. But, realistically, they were. They'd just delayed it with their choice to defy the daimyo's banishment. "Thank you. I… realize that me being eyes caste will put you and Noburu at risk if I'm under your roof, and -- " He was about to argue for her to retract her offer, when she shook her head.
"There aren't any castes anymore." She looked at him, her eyes narrowed for a second. "Yes, people will hate those who used to belong to the eyes caste. For good reason. And you'll have to work hard to make them see you as something other than a monster for the rest of your life." She smiled, sad. "Like my son will, too. Right now, I don't see an eyes caste -- I see a young man with no family left, so I'd like to offer you a place in mine. Noburu won't take it any easier on you, but you won't be alone."
"Ah… yes, thank you. That would be nice." He hadn't expected her to give him the option to say no. It was refreshing. "I'd like to stay with you, for a while at least. Also because Noburu's probably behind on training."
Noburu's mother -- Akami, Haruki vaguely remembered Kousuke mention -- nodded, and pointed at the tent. "Put your stuff in there, get out of those fancy clothes, and put on an apron then. If you're going to stay with me, I'm going to teach you how to cook. Do you know how to peel potatoes?"
"Um… no."
"Then I hope you're as good with knives as you are with fashion."
While Haruki followed instructions and changed into something more suitable for work -- he wondered if he'd see Sayaka in the line of people coming to get food. She'd never let him live it down if she caught him in an apron.
---
So -- Noburu's plan for power generation in Otogakure. Boil seawater into steam to turn turbines, use the water vapour produced to have a reliable source of potable water, and keep the equipment salt-free by having someone run chakra through it. We know from the first movie that if you run chakra through metals, it can get rid of growths on it.
Also if you're curious -- the object Fuguki saw down in the sound was two thousand two hundred and sixty-four feet below the surface. The sound gets pretty fucking deep, but in a reverse mountain sort of way. The super-depth gravitates towards 'peaks'.
