The Stars and the Moon (Naruto AU Quest)

[Death and Faxes]

The Stars and the Moon​

Once, a long time ago, he had been Great.

He was feared and respected; had commanded the elements and legions of men alike. He had offspring, a clan, inheritors of his power, who revered and adored him in turns. He had a brother, a kindred spirit who fought and learned and grew alongside him. But they were drawn, eventually, into a great war against some barely-remembered Adversary, and although that Adversary was vanquished in the end, he himself was laid low. In defeat, he was sealed away, bound into stone, and cast into the cold vastness of space, and there he remained for a thousand years.

No bonds are eternal, though, and when his prison fell back to earth, so too did he. A millennium of oblivion had been unkind to him: when he awoke he was alone, nameless, bodyless, and nothing more than chakra bound to rock. But he was fortunate in the location of his arrival, if nothing else. Before long, the crater that marked his landing had drawn the attention of passers-by, ninja and civilians both. He reached out and spoke to them in their thoughts and in their dreams, and though they did not know of his existence, they nonetheless were influenced by his suggestions, and many among them took up residence around the blasted clearing of his resting place.

For the civilians, he provided prosperity: the guarantee of a harvest, bountiful game, and relative safety from the endless wars that raged beyond. The handful of huts became a small but prospering village protected by a natural canyon, and as the village grew he carved that canyon ever-so-deeper into a more complete defense.

For the ninja, he provided power: the secret knowledge of techniques whispered in dreams, and the visible refinement and purification of their chakra. They named these techniques after their own fancy, thinking them original creations or the product of "radiation" from the meteorite in which he was still bound. But he did not mind this, caring only that this promise of power was enough to ensure their continued stay.

And truth be told, these boons were not for their gain alone. He sought a host to hold him, a body that matched his soul. None of these first ninja were sufficient to the task, and so he shaped their flesh and improved them, ever-so-subtly. Through that influence, each generation was brought a little closer than the last: slightly more able to use his techniques, slightly more compatible with his chakra, manifesting stronger and stronger traces of the various kekkei genkai which naturally descended from his own.

A hundred and fifty years after his return, peace finally descended upon the land with the great Truce between Senju and Uchiha and the formation of Konohagakure, the first of the Ninja Villages. Soon, the rest of the world began to follow suit, and the little village by the meteorite was no exception. Although they were hardly a match for the Ninja Villages of the Five Great Nations, still they proudly declared their name to the world.

Thus was formed Hoshigakure no Sato, the Village Hidden Among the Stars.

Sixty years—three generations—have passed since then. Hoshigakure has, if not prospered, then at least endured. Its ninja have made a name for themselves, and, although it is but another minor village in a backwater land, they have accrued a great deal of local fame for their prowess in battle.

He is close now, very close to being ready. His breeding program is finally bearing fruit: in another generation, one of these families will produce a body pure enough for his direct use. In ten, fifteen more years, he could potentially engineer the birth of a vessel for his taking, unmarred with its own soul, ready for his rebirth into this world.

But he does not have another generation's worth of time. Something is stirring in the world, something old and terribly familiar that portends death and untold destruction. Its timing is unfortunate, but it leaves him with no choice: the time to act is either now or never.

The decision is a difficult one. There are no ninja yet here whose bodies are fully suited to him, and certainly no unoccupied vessels free for his use. But he cannot act, cannot fight, from his stone prison, and so a compromise must be made. He does not have the power or the willingness to forcefully expel souls from bodies, so to transfer to a body is to lose himself; to fold his experiences, power, and the remaining shreds of his memories into another being. It would mean, effectively, his own death.

Although all he remembers of life is two hundred years inside a rock and a blind eternity of darkness, he is rather attached to living. But if he does not act, he will die regardless, in the fiery wake of the Adversary's return. It is unfortunate and suboptimal—but he has considered every possibility, double- and triple-checked every resource available, and as far as he knows, this is the best that he can do.

So he chooses the best candidate he can, and sets in motion the last plans he will ever make…

---

Welcome to The Stars and the Moon, a Naruto AU quest kinda-sorta based on everyone's favorite filler arc! The story will follow the life and times of a single ninja from "promising minor village brat" to "meaningful canon endgame contributor", assuming we don't end up dying in some ditch before then. There will be action, and talking, and probably more action after that. This quest combines my strange soft spot for the Star Guard filler arc with my vague dissatisfaction at the entire last quarter of the canon story, and will be a reasonably divergent AU (see "Canonicity" below for details).

Be advised that the Hoshigakure depicted here is only thematically inspired by, and not the same, as the one from filler (e.g. the Seiton is obviously based on the Mysterious Peacock Method, etc).

Spoiler: Character Sheet

<name pending>
Age: 8(.5)

Nature Affinities

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Wind -0, Earth -0, Fire ???, Water ???, Lightning ???

Attributes

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Strength 10
Agility 10
Constitution 10
Intelligence 10
Perception 10
Chakra Capacity 10

Skills

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Taijutsu 12
Ninjutsu 12
Genjutsu 12
Throwing Weapons 12
Chakra Control 12
Stealth 12

Techniques

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None yet

Traits

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None yet

Your name is:

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[] Mitsui Kana
[] write-in

You are a ninja of Hoshigakure, a small ninja village sandwiched between Iwa in the Land of Earth to the north, and Suna in the Land of Wind to the south. Your father is both head of his clan as well as sitting Third Hoshikage, and has been for as long as you have been alive. While the Hoshikage is not technically recognized as a true Kage, the position is nonetheless one of great honor in the village. As his only daughter and heir, this is a fact whose significance you understand better every day.

You are eight (and a half!) years old, and last year you became Hoshi's youngest-ever Genin. Considering the village's small size and lack of a real academy system, this is a less impressive achievement than it might have been in a larger village like Suna or Konoha, but it's still something you're proud of. Between your phenomenal physical abilities and your incredible talent, you're definitely on track to becoming the greatest kunoichi—no, the greatest ninja ever to come out of Hoshi.

Spoiler: Abilities

Technically Still a Kid
As an eight-year-old, your physical development is still a work in progress. You're generally still a great deal weaker and slower than a similarly-trained adult. (-2 to base strength, agility, constitution, and chakra capacity)

Perfect Vessel
You appear to have won the genetic lottery: you have an almost unbelievable level of natural physical ability! Your strength, agility, and stamina are all noticeably better than your peers'. There will certainly be no downsides to this. (+4 to base strength, agility, constitution, and chakra capacity, -25% XP to improve these attributes via conditioning.)

Prodigy
You pick up new techniques and concepts with preternatural ease. (+2 base intelligence, -25% XP to gain new skill ranks.)

Technique - Body Replacement Technique (self; E-rank)
The user swaps positions with a nearby object of similar mass. This technique may be done reflexively without hand-seals; however, the target of the replacement must be chosen beforehand.

Technique - Clone Technique (self; E-rank)
The user produces a number of intangible illusionary clones. The clones cannot attack, but can provide useful distraction in a fight.

Technique - Transformation Technique (self; E-rank)
The user assumes the appearance of another person, animal, or inanimate object of roughly the same size. This requires constant emission of chakra to maintain and can therefore not be used in combat, and can be easily detected by most ninja.

Technique - Fuuton: Air Bullet (long; D-rank)
The user fires a single ball of compressed air, which lands with enough force to heavily injure an unprotected opponent.

Technique - Doton: Shuriken (long; D-rank)
Fire a small earthen projectile, either from available earth or created by the user's own chakra. Comparable to a kunai in size and effect, and remains after it hits or misses its target.

Despite your natural ability, you've made sure not to slack off in the conditioning department. You've focused mostly on:

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[] strength (+3 strength)
[] speed (+3 agility)

and, secondarily:

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(top 2 get +2)
[] strength
[] agility
[] intelligence
[] constitution
[] perception
[] chakra capacity

In the last few years, you've also made incredibly quick progress in most of the foundational skills required to be a skilled ninja. You'd say that you're probably becoming a(n):

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[] taijutsu specialist (+4 taijutsu skill, +1 to everything else)
[] ninjutsu specialist (+4 ninjutsu skill, +1 to everything else)
[] genjutsu specialist (+4 genjutsu skill, +1 to everything else)
[] adaptable generalist (+3 to all)

Your clan is known for its distinctive kekkei genkai, the seiton (Star Release), and it was no surprise that you, too, manifested this ability at a young age. You've managed to master its more basic exercises, although you've only just started on the more advanced stuff.

Spoiler: Bloodline abilities

Kekkei genkai: Seiton
Your clan is known for their distinctive kekkei genkai, granting the ability to use "star-natured" chakra, which can be used to produce semi-solid chakra constructs. These range in complexity from a simple chakra cloak, to hand-held weapons, extremely durable ropes and bindings, and ranged energy attacks. (provides access to Seiton jutsu)

Technique - Seiton: Cloak (self; D-rank)
The most basic of Seiton techniques. The user coats themselves in a chakra cloak composed of star chakra, conferring very minor protection from incoming attacks, and a very minor boost to their physical attacks.

Technique - Seiton: Needle (long; D-rank)
The user fires a single needle of compressed chakra, comparable to a kunai in size and effect. This technique can be performed reflexively, and does not require hand seals.

Finally, in your training to become a real, outside-mission-ready shinobi, you've picked up a number of jutsu. Hoshi's ninja mostly specialize in Wind and Earth jutsu, due to its geographical location, but there are a few jutsu of other elements mixed in as well.

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Jutsu will have an indicated range (self, short, mid, long), as well as a rank. Most jutsu may be used at all ranges equal to or shorter than that indicated.

Remember: voting is approval, so you may select any number of choices. The options with the most votes will be selected, tie-broken by QM preference.

Four of these:

[] Seiton: Chains (mid; C-rank) - The user shapes chakra into a thin coil, which can then be used to trap and entangle an opponent. These chains immediately dissipate if focus is lost. This technique can be performed reflexively, and does not require hand seals.
[] Seiton: Impact (self; C-rank) - By controlling the composition and density of their chakra cloak, the user can emit localized explosions upon physical contact, including from any weapons they might be holding. This technique can be performed reflexively, and does not require hand seals.
[] Fuuton: Great Breakthrough (mid; C-rank) - A simple technique that creates a powerful gust of wind. It has the power to blow over trees, and can be combined with projectile weapons for an even deadlier assault.
[] Fuuton: Wind Explosion (short; C-rank) - With correct application of chakra, you can cause an explosion of air at your position. This can be used to disperse incoming projectiles, as well as disorient or even injure nearby opponents.
[] Doton: Earthen Rising Spears (mid; C-rank) - Spears of stone rise from the ground to skewer the target.
[] Doton: Hiding Like a Mole Technique (self; C-rank) - Allows the user to hide underground. Like a... gopher, or prairie dog, or something.
[] Katon: Dragon Fire (mid; C-rank) - The user breathes a stream of fire from their mouth. Prolonged exposure can melt rock.
[] Suiton: Water Whip (mid; C-rank) - The user shapes water into a controllable whip, which can be used to entangle, bludgeon, or drown opponents. It also notably conducts any lightning-based jutsu. The whip retains its shape for some time after focus is lost, making this technique difficult to interrupt.
[] Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique (short; D-rank) - A simple visual genjutsu that can alter or hinder the visual perception of the target. The specific image shown is often chosen to be shocking or disorienting.
[] Demonic Illusion: False Surroundings Technique (location; C-rank) - A genjutsu that can be used to disguise a location as another. The technique is attached to a location rather than a specific opponent, and affects any who enter that location. It can last without upkeep for hours to days depending on the caster's skill. This technique must be prepared ahead of time.

And one of these:
[] Doton: Earth-Style Wall (self/short; B-rank) - The user creates a solid wall of earth, either using the natural earth present at the location, or by generating earth whole cloth out of chakra. The earth generated is laced with chakra, and therefore considerably tougher than normal mud or dirt. This is generally useful as a defensive technique, but can be adapted to other uses with sufficient creativity.
[] Fuuton: Vacuum Wave (long; B-rank) - The user expels a single blade of wind, sharp enough to remove limbs and fell small trees. Its size is controllable: it can hit either a single target, or multiple targets in a substantial area around the user, although its power diminishes with both range and size.
[] Seiton: Plasma Armor (self; B-rank) - By compressing the standard chakra cloak into a denser and harder form, the user gains a much better (although not impenetrable) defense against physical and chakra-based attacks, an increase to the destructive power of their own physical attacks, and a slight increase to speed and strength. This technique can be performed reflexively, and does not require hand seals.

All selected jutsu will have 4 ranks worth of training.

 

[Death and Faxes]

General Rules

1. Don't be an asshole
2. Vote on stuff I guess
3. Discussion is cool

Voting

This quest will utilize Approval Voting. Everyone can vote for any number of options, up to and including "all of them". The option with the most total votes wins, although the closeness of the vote may impact how the action is carried out: whenever it makes sense, I'll try to weight the actual course of action by the votes provided. If this isn't possible, then ties will be broken by QM preference.

Votes for plans will generally be resolved on a per-line basis, e.g. votes for A, B, C and A, B, D will result in two votes for A and B, and one each for C and D. There may be exceptions.

Mechanics

Most encounters in this quest will be resolved narratively, using character sheet as a guideline. For a rough idea of what things on character sheets mean, see here.

Canonicity

As this is an AU, certain things will not be true to canon (you can probably guess one of the bigger ones from the title crawl above). In general, canonicity for this quest will follow these guidelines:

• Part I (minus filler) is canon, specifically excepting the effects of Edo Tensei. Edo Tensei has been nerfed.
• Part II, up through the Five Kage Summit, is canon.
• Part II, after the Five Kage Summit, is partly canon. As in, some but not all of the backstory/side plots revealed may be used here, but you shouldn't 100% count on it.
• The movie "The Last" will be partly canon, as above.
• Part I filler is not canon unless specifically stated otherwise.
• Movies other than "The Last" are not canon unless specifically stated otherwise. Mostly because I haven't seen them.
• Anything I haven't mentioned is not canon, unless specifically stated otherwise.
• Kinjutsu/kekkei genkai/what-have-you that are pulled from non-canon sources will generally (but not always!) conform to the abilities and effects they display in said source.

 

[Death and Faxes]

People You Know

For a description of what things on the character sheets mean, see here.

Mitsui Kana - You.

Spoiler: Mitsui Kana

Mitsui Kana
Age: 9

Unused XP: 0

Nature Affinities

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wind 0, earth 0

Attributes

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Strength 12 (D)
Agility 15 (C)
Constitution 12 (D)
Chakra Capacity 14 (C-)
Perception 13 (D+)
Intelligence 12 (D)

Skills

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Taijutsu 15 (C+)
Ninjutsu 16 (B-)
Genjutsu 15 (C+)
Ranged Weapons 15 (C+)
Stealth 15 (C+)
Chakra Control 16 (B-)

Techniques

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Seiton: Needle Storm 9 (poor)
(medium; b-rank) The user rapidly generates an enormous volley of Needles—dense and numerous enough to make dodging difficult if not impossible—and releases them in a single massed attack. The spread of the technique can be controlled, allowing everything from a tight focused cone to a uniform burst in all directions.

Seiton: Plasma Armor 9 (poor)
(self; b-rank) By compressing the standard chakra cloak into a denser and harder form, the user gains a much better (although not impenetrable) defense against physical and chakra-based attacks, an increase to the destructive power of their own physical attacks, and a slight increase to speed and strength. This technique can be performed reflexively, and does not require hand seals.

Doton: Hiding Like a Mole Technique 12 (acceptable)
(self; c-rank) Allows the user to hide underground. Like a... gopher, or prairie dog, or something.

Seiton: Chains 12 (acceptable)
(mid; c-rank) The user shapes chakra into a thin coil, which can then be used to trap and entangle an opponent. These chains immediately dissipate if focus is lost. This technique can be performed reflexively, and does not require hand seals.

Seiton: Impact 13 (acceptable)
(self; c-rank) By controlling the composition and density of their chakra cloak, the user can emit localized explosions upon physical contact, including from any weapons they might be holding. This technique can be performed reflexively, and does not require hand seals.

• Breaking Blow
  By better controlling the shape of Impact's initial chakra release, you can push more of the technique's energy into your intended target rather than simply toward it. Your hits with Impact now partially bypass most kinds of armor and defensive jutsu that rely on physical buffers.

Doton: Trembling Earth 16 (instinctive)
(medium; d-rank) The user channels chakra through the earth, agitating it and making it difficult to find footing in a small area.

Fuuton: Air Bullet 16 (instinctive)
(long; d-rank) The user fires a single ball of compressed air, which lands with enough force to heavily injure an unprotected opponent.

Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique 15 (practiced)
(short; d-rank) A simple visual genjutsu that can alter or hinder the visual perception of the target. The specific image shown is often chosen to be shocking or disorienting.

Seiton: Cloak 16 (instinctive)
(self; d-rank) The most basic of Seiton techniques. The user coats themselves in a chakra cloak composed of star chakra, conferring very minor protection from incoming attacks, and a very minor boost to their physical attacks.

Seiton: Needle 17 (instinctive)
(long; d-rank) The user fires a single needle of compressed chakra, comparable to a kunai in size and effect. This technique can be performed reflexively, and does not require hand seals.

• Second Nature
  Hours and hours of training have reduced the motions of Needle to pure reflex; it now no longer demands any conscious focus. You can use Needle even when actively dodging, in melee, or otherwise engaged in activity that demands your full attention.

Body Replacement Technique 16 (instinctive)
(self; e-rank) The user swaps positions with a nearby object of similar mass. This technique may be done reflexively without hand-seals; however, the target of the replacement must be chosen beforehand.

Clone Technique 16 (instinctive)
(self; e-rank) The user produces a number of intangible illusionary clones. The clones cannot attack, but can provide useful distraction in a fight.

Transformation Technique 16 (instinctive)
(self; e-rank) The user assumes the appearance of another person, animal, or inanimate object of roughly the same size. This requires constant emission of chakra to maintain and can therefore not be used in combat, and can be easily detected by most ninja.

Traits

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Technically Still a Kid
As an eight-year-old, your physical development is still a work in progress. You're generally still a great deal weaker and slower than a similarly-trained adult. (-2 to base strength, agility, constitution, and chakra capacity)

Perfect Vessel
You appear to have won the genetic lottery: you have an almost unbelievable level of natural physical ability! Your strength, agility, and stamina are all noticeably better than your peers'. There will certainly be no downsides to this. (+4 to base strength, agility, constitution, and chakra capacity)

Prodigy
You pick up new techniques and concepts with preternatural ease. (+2 base intelligence, new skills and techniques are gained at +2)

Kekkei genkai: Seiton
Your clan is known for their distinctive kekkei genkai, granting the ability to use "star-natured" chakra, which can be used to produce semi-solid chakra constructs. These range in complexity from a simple chakra cloak, to hand-held weapons, extremely durable ropes and bindings, and ranged energy attacks. (provides access to Seiton jutsu)

Gift of the Star [1/3]
In your vision, you received a gift from a strange pale man. Ever since, you've noticed that you see just a little bit more clearly, and are just a little bit more aware of nearby chakra signatures. (+1 perception)

Azuma Ikki - fellow Genin and current team-mate. Although only the second son of a branch family in his clan, Ikki is a talented ninja in his own right, whose rising star was tragically overshadowed by yours. Despite (or maybe because of) this, he's unwaveringly cheerful and rather happy-go-lucky. Has a burgeoning talent for battlefield tactics, and is rather shrewd despite his carefreeness.

Spoiler: Azuma Ikki

Azuma Ikki
Age: 10

Nature Affinities

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wind 0, fire -2, earth -2

Attributes

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Strength 8 (E-)
Agility 11 (D-)
Constitution 7 (E-)
Chakra Capacity 9 (E)
Perception 13 (D+)
Intelligence 14 (C-)

Skills

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Taijutsu 11 (D+)
Ninjutsu 15 (C+)
Genjutsu 11 (D+)
Ranged Weapons 15 (C+)
Stealth 11 (D+)
Chakra Control 11 (D+)

Techniques

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Fuuton: Great Breakthrough 12 (acceptable)
(mid; c-rank) A simple technique that creates a powerful gust of wind. It has the power to blow over trees, and can be combined with projectile weapons for an even deadlier assault.

Fuuton: Air Bullet 16 (instinctive)
(long; d-rank) The user fires a single ball of compressed air, which lands with enough force to heavily injure an unprotected opponent.

Doton: Trembling Earth 16 (instinctive)
(medium; d-rank) The user channels chakra through the earth, agitating it and making it difficult to find footing in a small area.

Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique 12 (acceptable)
(short; d-rank) A simple visual genjutsu that can alter or hinder the visual perception of the target. The specific image shown is often chosen to be shocking or disorienting.

Body Replacement Technique 16 (instinctive)
(self; e-rank) The user swaps positions with a nearby object of similar mass. This technique may be done reflexively without hand-seals; however, the target of the replacement must be chosen beforehand.

Clone Technique 16 (instinctive)
(self; e-rank) The user produces a number of intangible illusionary clones. The clones cannot attack, but can provide useful distraction in a fight.

Transformation Technique 16 (instinctive)
(self; e-rank) The user assumes the appearance of another person, animal, or inanimate object of roughly the same size. This requires constant emission of chakra to maintain and can therefore not be used in combat, and can be easily detected by most ninja.

Traits

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Child
(-2 to base strength, agility, constitution, and chakra capacity)

Pretty Talented I Guess
Ikki might have been hailed as the prodigy of his generation in a world where you didn't exist. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) for him, you do. (+1 base intelligence, new skills and techniques are gained at +1)

Smarter than the Average Clan
The Azuma are known for their shrewdness and intellect both on the battlefield and off. Whether this is a case of nature or nurture has yet to be seen. (+1 base intelligence)

Koizumi Keizo - fellow Genin and current team-mate. A quiet boy, well into his growth spurt, who seems nervous whenever you're around. Gets along fine with Ikki though.

Spoiler: Koizumi Keizo

Koizumi Keizo
Age: 12

Nature Affinities

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earth 0, water -2

Attributes

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Strength 14 (C-)
Agility 11 (D-)
Constitution 13 (D+)
Chakra Capacity 10 (E+)
Perception 8 (E-)
Intelligence 9 (E)

Skills

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Taijutsu 14 (C)
Ninjutsu 10 (D)
Genjutsu 9 (D)
Ranged Weapons 11 (D+)
Stealth 11 (D+)
Chakra Control 10 (D)

Techniques

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Doton: Shuriken 11 (unreliable)
(long; d-rank) Fire a small earthen projectile, either from available earth or created by the user's own chakra. Comparable to a kunai in size and effect, and remains after it hits or misses its target.

Body Replacement Technique 11 (unreliable)
(self; e-rank) The user swaps positions with a nearby object of similar mass. This technique may be done reflexively without hand-seals; however, the target of the replacement must be chosen beforehand.

Clone Technique 11 (unreliable)
(self; e-rank) The user produces a number of intangible illusionary clones. The clones cannot attack, but can provide useful distraction in a fight.

Transformation Technique 11 (unreliable)
(self; e-rank) The user assumes the appearance of another person, animal, or inanimate object of roughly the same size. This requires constant emission of chakra to maintain and can therefore not be used in combat, and can be easily detected by most ninja.

Traits

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Still Growing
Although he's obviously started his growth spurt, Keizo is not yet an adult, and is correspondingly still physically weaker. (-1 to base strength, agility, constitution, and chakra capacity)

Rude Health
The Koizumi are a hardier and more robust folk than most. (+1 base strength and constitution)

Mitsui Hotarubi - your former Jounin-sensei and, now that you're leading a team, a sometime consultant on matters of team training. A kind, fatherly man, who's actually not your father but rather your uncle or something.

---

Clans of Hoshigakure

Hoshi's political scene is dominated by three main clans. These are:

• Mitsui. The Mitsui are the least numerous of the three clans but produce the greatest number of exceptional ninja, in no small part due to their unique kekkei genkai, the Seiton. The current Hoshikage is Mitsui Koutei.
• Azuma. The Azuma are known as merchants rather than ninja, although those who choose the warrior's life are known for their intellect and shrewdness.
• Koizumi. The Koizumi are renowned for their great strength and hardiness, and many possess a degree of accelerated healing that might reasonably be considered a kekkei genkai of its own. The Koizumi are the most populous clan in Hoshi, accounting for nearly half its total strength in ninja.

---

Notable Figures

Mitsui Koutei - Current head of the Mitsui clan, and sitting Third Hoshikage. Also your dad. Has been Hoshikage for over a decade, and commands a great deal of respect in the village as its leader and one of its foremost ninja. Is generally quiet and soft-spoken.
Azuma Hiroki - Current head of the Azuma clan. Notably does not serve in a professional capacity as a ninja, choosing instead to spend his time dealing with mercantile matters. A deft politician and diplomat, but generally refrains from participating in ninja politics unless it would affect the steadily growing stream of trade that now flows through Hoshi.
Koizumi Yoshiro - Current head of the Koizumi clan. A burly giant of a man who distinguished himself as a jounin and commander in the Second War. A little hot-headed and lacking in political subtlety.
Akahoshi - Advisor and jounin of Hoshigakure. Member of the Mitsui clan, and cousin to your dad, which technically makes him your second uncle. You're not sure where the name "Akahoshi" came from, since it's not his given name, but everybody calls him that, and apparently has since the Second War. He doesn't like you very much.
Mitsui Takeo - Akahoshi's son, and your second cousin. He doesn't like you very much, either.

 

[Death and Faxes]

FYI, I've posted and threadmarked some "updated" character sheets above, as well as a brief description of notable individuals and clans in Hoshi.

Also, for anyone keeping track: I realized I severely overloaded us on "long-range single-target bullet" jutsu, so I've replaced Doton: Shuriken in Kana's repertoire with Doton: Trembling Earth, a medium-range jutsu that causes minor quaking in a region of your choice, sufficient to cause unwary opponents to lose their footing. I'll be posting a list of known jutsu and their descriptions/properties in the next few updates.

---

Part 1: Endings and Beginnings​

"So, why are we all the way out here?" you ask. You'd followed Ikki at his brisk pace through the forest for almost ten minutes to get here, and the two of you have gotten fairly far out of the way.

"I wanted to test something out," he replies.

"I thought you wanted a spar."

"Yep," he says, "that's kind of the thing I want to test out."

You sigh."We have training fields for that, you know."

"Well... this is maybe a thing that won't work on the training field?"

Azuma Ikki is your genin teammate, and your only one at that. While it might be the rule in larger villages to deploy genin in teams of three, Hoshi is home to five hundred rather than a hundred thousand, so the number of qualified genin your age is not all that high, and the benefits of a rigid system are greatly diminished. There are about a dozen ninja, give or take, in yours and Ikki's group. You and he are the two youngest—Ikki is only 10, two years older than you but still two years ahead of the curve, and would probably have been the prodigy of his generation were it not for you. You wonder sometimes if he holds it against you, but he's such a generally cheerful guy that you can't really imagine that he does.

Regardless, him asking you for a spar in a remote location—that's suspicious. It's almost as if he—wait a minute...

"Ikki-kun, are you asking me to spar out here because you've prepared the battlefield beforehand?"

"Ah well, um, not technically," he says, rather sheepishly.

You raise an eyebrow at this. "But?"

"Well, to be honest, you're better than me at all the fundamentals, Kana-chan. Your taijutsu and ninjutsu are both better than mine, and you have better reserves than I do. You beat me in any direct contest."

That's... surprisingly earnest of him, actually. He's not wrong, either—except a few cases where he's managed to completely blindside you with a new technique or strategy, you've wiped the floor with him in basically every match you've had.

"My best chance to win against someone like you is to pick a battlefield with as many external factors as possible. The training field is designed to be as predictable as possible because it's supposed to make us work on fundamentals, but out here we have to plan, and improvise, and deal with other variables."

"Hm, just like in the real world. Makes a lot of sense."

Ikki nods and grins. "Just like in the real world. So how about it, Kana-chan? You ready to get your butt kicked?"

"Save that attitude for after you win."

The spar routine is almost rote by now. You move to positions a couple dozen feet from each other, settle into stances. You take a breath, center yourself, and let the dribbling warmth of your chakra flow through your body.

The forest is quiet; the normal chorus of birds has given way to only the slow rustle of wind in leaves. There is only the two of you. For a few long seconds, you stare at each other across the gap, each waiting for the other to make a first move; leaves swirl and branches sway, but everything is still. The contemplative silence before the storm.

You move first. You're faster and stronger, and you both know it. Ikki isn't so careless as to throw himself at you here, and so it falls to you to set the rhythm of engagement. In the blink of an eye you've closed the gap, your fist aimed straight at his gut.

It's a little bit surprising when he manages to dodge it by a healthy margin, easily spinning out of the way of your attack. Ikki's not a slouch, and he's not completely incompetent at taijutsu, but he's... just not that fast. Even with all the extra training you know he's been doing, he shouldn't have been able to do that. Unless—

You twitch your chakra, and a violet needle of it lances out from your fingertip, passing straight through Ikki with no resistance and biting into the tree behind him. He made a clone! Somehow he managed to replace himself with it earlier, and the swaying shade of the trees made it hard to see the telltale signs. Clever.

In the time you've spent fighting his clone, the real Ikki has gone to ground somewhere. You're not surprised: he's always specialized in longer-range engagements, and he's never liked to fight head-on (with you, at least). Unfortunately, you don't have access to any techniques that affect a big enough area, so flushing him out of cover isn't an option. You'll have to either look for him or wait for him.

You decide on the latter, relaxing your stance a little bit to draw him out. It'll make it harder to dodge anything he might try to throw at you, but Ikki isn't good enough at ninjutsu to use it stealthily, so you're sure he's going to try something with weapons, and those you can block.

It's not long before you see the movement out of the corner of your eye. You turn, drawing a kunai to parry, and realize there's nothing there. Was that genjutsu? Another clone? You experience a brief moment of embarrassment—you've been tricked, yet again—before it occurs to you that you should turn around, since that's almost certainly where the next attack is going to come from.

You're rewarded for your prescience by the sight of a pair of kunai flying through the air towards you, and—

"Fuuton: Great Breakthrough!"

—a wind jutsu you didn't even know Ikki knew, laced with a half-dozen shuriken.

It's a difficult position. You could block the kunai, but the jutsu would probably knock you off your feet and leave you vulnerable to the embedded shuriken. Alternatively, you could try to dodge it all, but you still haven't completely regained your footing, and the two leading kunai would probably take a bite out of you before you could throw yourself out of their way. Both of them are losing scenarios. It's clever, and just the kind of thing you'd expect from Ikki.

So you decide to take the third option, instead. You form a single hand seal, push chakra out of your pores, and a violet blaze from your body. Now for the kunai—you parry one and narrowly avoid the other. Back to the technique: you shape and condense the chakra now radiating from your skin into a solid layer, bracing for the incoming gale, and at the moment of impact you kick off directly into it, absorbing the brunt of the impact with your chakra. Two of the shuriken nick you on your way through, but they're light enough that they, too, deflect off your chakra cloak, and you burst through the other side of Ikki's wind-blast in a blazing streak of purple fire.

You're halfway to Ikki before he's fully processed what's going on. He's a little out of breath—it's obvious that the rapid-fire illusions and ninjutsu have been draining for him, and you're pretty sure he didn't expect you to come out of that completely unscathed. He barely has time to raise his arms in defense as you draw near, but it doesn't do him any good.

"Oh, rats," he says, as you close the distance.

"Yep," you reply, and bury your fist in his gut.

===

The rest of the bout is pretty much a foregone conclusion. You're fast enough that he can't actually get away from you once you're in fistfight range, so even if he had anything else up his sleeve, he never got the chance to use it. Before long he's a ragged heap on the ground with your kunai at his throat.

"Yield," he says. Despite the light bruises he's sustained—you've always been gentle with your beatdowns—he's positively beaming. "That was really close, wasn't it? I almost had you."

"Almost only counts in—" wait, how did that go again?"Almost doesn't count, Ikki-kun."

"Hey, don't ruin my fun here. You're just unfair."

"You picked the time and the place. You obviously planned for it. If anything it was unfair for me," you respond, as you help him to his feet.

"No, no, not the match. Just you. You're unfair." He dusts himself off, still grinning.

A pleasant little silence hangs in the air for a moment.

"That was really close, though, I'll give you that," you finally say, and Ikki laughs.

===

You take your time making your way back to the village proper, and the two of you soon fall back to the same conversational routine as always. Ikki talks endlessly about birds, or the weather, or a cool rock he found, or the latest book he's read, and you respond occasionally with monosyllabic affirmatives of various sorts. You'll admit that when you first met him, this gab annoyed you to no end, but as the years wore on you grew used to it, and now it has the pleasant familiarity of routine. These days, you actually enjoy talking to Ikki. He always has something interesting to say about everything. It makes conversations with him easy.

Today's technically one of your off days from training, but Hotarubi-sensei, the jounin in charge of your not-quite-a-full-genin-team—and also, technically, your uncle—has asked the two of you to meet with him. It's a little bit unexpected, not to mention mysterious, but it also seems like the good kind of unexpected mysterious meeting rather than the bad kind, so you're both pretty hopeful.

You find Hotarubi-sensei in the usual location, doing his paperwork (or whatever it was that adults did) in the shade next to the clearing of Hoshigakure's one and only training ground.

"Ah! Ikki-kun, Kana-chan! How was your spar?"

"Closer than she expected, Hotarubi-sensei," Ikki says.

"But Ikki still lost," you finish.

Hotarubi-sensei laughs and ruffles your hair. "Well, that sounds like a familiar story," he says. "Don't worry, Ikki-kun. It's not about winning, it's about getting better."

Ikki snorts.

"You're probably wondering why I asked you to come meet with me on your off day of all days. Well... I've decided that the two of you are far enough along that you should start getting some real mission experience."

You raise an eyebrow. The two of you have been chomping at the bit for this for months, and you honestly didn't expect Hotarubi-sensei to give in so soon.

Ikki, as expected, is beside himself with joy. "Did you hear that, Kana-chan? We're going on a real mission!"

"Of course I heard, dummy. I'm standing right next to you."

Ikki looks like he's about to respond, but Hotarubi-sensei clears his throat and Ikki immediately snaps to attention.

"I've found us a good C-rank to get started with. You'll be getting the actual briefing in two days; I wanted to give you two a little advance warning so you can make any preparations you need." Hotarubi-sensei looks meaningfully between the two of you.

"Oh, speaking of which—I put in some orders for basic supplies and weapons already, so make sure you pick those up. You don't want to be going into your first real mission without rations." He hands you a sheaf of receipts from various shops in the area. "I'll be coming along, but I don't think I can pack enough food to feed both of you."

It seems like you'll be going on a mission soon! What kind of mission is it going to be?

Article:

[] escort. A local merchant is delivering his wares to the Land of Earth. Bandit activity has been unusually high lately, so he understandably wants to have protection for his caravan during the trip.
[] patrol. The forests around Hoshi are crossed by several important thoroughfares, and it's in the village's best interest to keep them clear of any undesirables. Ninja are often deployed to various guardposts around the area to form a sort of early-warning network against any intrusion.
[] delivery. An important personage has submitted an important package to be delivered to a presumably important destination in the Land of Wind, as quickly and as safely as possible.

The rest of your day is still free; it's currently only early afternoon. Your rather... accelerated progression means that you haven't made a lot of friends among your peers, but you could spend some quality social time with Ikki, or with your family. You've also recently managed to finagle a scroll of ninjutsu off your father, although you've yet to crack it open to read it—now would be as good of a time as any. Finally, since you're going to be going around to shops anyways, it would be a good time to buy anything else you think you might need. What will you do for the rest of today?

Article:

[] study the scroll
[] go shopping
-[] anything in particular?
[] socialize
-[] with Ikki
-[] with your father
-[] with Hotarubi-sensei

Tomorrow you'll be back to your standard training routine, continuing the work you've been doing all week on your:

Article:

(+1xp to)
[] physical conditioning
-[] strength
-[] agility
-[] constitution
-[] chakra capacity
[] foundational skills
-[] taijutsu
-[] ninjutsu
-[] genjutsu
-[] chakra control
-[] stealth
[] specific technique
-[] which one?

 

[Death and Faxes]

Sorry about the delay on this one, some stuff happened at work and a bunch of deadlines got moved up from "next week" to "this week" and everything was kind of a shitshow for a few days. But better late than never, I guess??

Also thanks to @keios for looking at a draft of this.

---

(1.2)
​

The rest of the day goes by quickly. You and Ikki dutifully stop by the corner store, then the blacksmith's, then an apparel shop, to pick up the requisite parcels. You're not particularly enthused about the fact that the field rations seem to be hard and oddly square. Ikki points out that they're probably just dried to keep longer, which makes sense, but still isn't very appetizing.

It only takes an hour to get all the stuff you need and drop it off in a safe location. Ikki suggests dinner, but—

"It's four o' clock."

"Yeah! We'll be beating the crowd. Also I kind of skipped lunch."

A well-timed growl from your stomach reminds you that you also kind of skipped lunch.

"Fine. But no curry."

"Awww, what's even the point then?"

"We got curry the last, what, four times?"

You end at a new kebab restaurant you've been meaning to try, despite Ikki's complaints that it's "just meat on a stick" and that "anyone could make that themselves". The place is tiny, but lively enough, with a half-open kitchen that you can see into manned by a jovial-looking man who belts out a loud greeting as you enter. You're quickly ushered to a table by a serving-girl who seems like she can't be more than a teenager herself. You're pretty sure she's the chef's daughter or at least related: the both of them a have particular accent and sharpness to their features that suggests they came from the land of Earth.

"My father and I are from Iwa, actually," she tells you while she pours out tea. "We moved here not that long ago. I think Dad just got antsy about staying in one place for too long, but he doesn't like talking about it."

You nod sagely at this; you, too, are familiar with dads and their curious avoidance of certain topics.

Food arrives quickly, and the kebabs end up being really quite good. Even Ikki has to admit that they did a damn fine job of cooking meat on a stick.

"I don't get it," he says, briefly pausing from cramming his mouth as full of food as possible. "What do they add to this?"

You pause briefly to swallow before responding. "They're called 'spices', Ikki-kun."

"That isn't what I'm talking about and you know it."

You snort in response. "It's good though, right?" you ask through a mouthful of food, and he nods. "This is why you should try new things sometimes."

Ikki taps out full first, and watches you polish off the last skewers with a combination of amusement and disgust.

"I forgot that you eat so much, Kana-chan," he says innocently, and you shoot him a glare. You have to consciously fight the urge to clock him where he sits.

Ikki lives about a block from you and usually walks most of the way with you, but "the way" more often than not becomes a meandering detour through the streets of Hoshi and beyond. Today is no exception, and you soon find yourselves at a regular spot—a little rocky outcropping a little ways outside of the town, although well within the ring the rather convenient gorge that surrounds the area.

Ikki looks a little bit more pensive than normal as you watch the sun shrink behind the horizon.

"So, ever since we heard about this mission, I've been thinking—"

"We just heard about this mission two hours ago," you shoot back.

"Well, okay, I've been thinking about this for a while. I guess this is just… good timing to bring it up." It's a little unusual that he doesn't respond to your snark. Should you be worried?

"What's wrong?"

"No no, nothing's wrong. It's just… we've got pretty different styles, right? We fight and plan differently, and we don't really approach problems from the same direction. I know we do those teamwork exercises with sensei from time to time, but…"

"But you're worried we won't work well together on the field."

It's a good point—you're turning into a pretty adept but very direct close-in heavy-hitter, and if your last little match with him is any indication, Ikki is actually quite good at a certain style of… battlefield improvisation. The two of you would probably pick completely conflicting strategies in a real fight with less-than-textbook conditions.

"Yeah. It's not all bad, though. I think we actually line up pretty well, skills-wise. You're good at the things I'm bad at, and, well, I guess you're good at the things I'm good at too, but..." He trails off a little before continuing. "Well, you know what I mean. I think if we worked on it a little more we could have some pretty good teamwork going, right?"

"Yeah, that… doesn't sound bad, Ikki. Although a lot of people think the only way to really build up teamwork is to throw teams into real fights and let them sort it out themselves."

"A lot of people like… your father, right?" Ikki asks, a grin flitting momentarily across his face. "Those people grew up and trained during world wars. We don't. Won't."

"I sure hope we won't," you say. "But well, I guess we'll find out just how bad our teamwork is soon."

"Yeah, I guess so," Ikki sighs. "I'm actually a little worried about the mission."

"I thought you were excited to finally have a real one."

"I was—am, but… well, we might have to kill people. We might die." His eyes are worried, and his lips are a thin line.

"Ah, don't worry Ikki-kun, I'll protect you," you say. He snorts, and you continue. "We'll probably be fine. Ninja don't die on missions that often."

"I guess. And if we do die, I guess we can't say that nobody warned us about it," says Ikki.

It's pretty late by the time you get home. Your dad's not there, of course. He's never really been… accessible, but he's been traveling more and working even later these last few months. You've heard the rumors: hostilities are stirring between Konoha and Iwa, and presumably it falls to your father as Hoshikage to prepare for the worst should war break out again. It worries you a little bit, but this kind of thing has always been part of your life.

The scroll you got from him is still there on the table, untouched—it looks like nobody's been in the house since you left this morning. You'd been meaning to start reading through it today, so you roll it open, sit yourself down, and start doing just that. It opens with some deceptively simple chakra shaping exercises that you can't quite wrap your head around, and only gets more complex from there. By the time it actually gets to the first real jutsu, you find that you're too exhausted to follow it any longer. Eventually you just roll the thing back up in defeat, putting it back where you found it.

(advanced chakra control exercises: 50% progress)

The rest is routine: you brush your teeth, shower, look in the mirror, sigh. People often say that you look like your mother. While you don't remember much about her—you were three when the Second War ended, after all—you think they're probably right, if only because everybody in your clan looks kind of the same. You have the same dark hair, the same off-lilac eyes, the same thin features and pale skin as your father and uncles and cousins and everyone else you're even vaguely related to, including, probably, your mother.

You sigh again, turn out the lights, and lay yourself down to bed. Sleep comes quickly.

The next day is routine: boring but comfortable. You're up at the crack of dawn, wolfing down a quick breakfast, and then you're off to the training grounds. Technically you're not expected to be there until ten, but you like the quiet solace of the early morning hours, and it lets you fit a bit of warm-up and some less demanding routines in before your real session with Ikki and Hotarubi-sensei. As always, you'll do some warm-up laps, some chakra control exercises, and maybe some kata or target practice.

Well, today's a little bit different. Today's the day before your first real mission, after all, and you legitimately can't keep your mind off of it. You barely even know what your mission is supposed to be yet, but a million maybes and what-ifs race through your thoughts on your way down to the training field—what if you mess up? What if you really do have to kill someone? What if one of you really does get hurt and die? In the face of the unknown, anything is possible, and this has never been more worrying.

You wave hello to the same people you pass by every morning—the elderly man who stops by the corner store every morning to pick up his medicine, a Koizumi chuunin whose name you can never remember, a pretty civilian girl who works at a clothing shop down the block—but your thoughts are elsewhere and your heart isn't really in it.

When you finally get to the training grounds, though, you center yourself and clear your mind—as much as you're able—and prepare to apply yourself completely to what you're about to do. Practice is a matter of quality as much as quantity, and quality requires your complete and total attention. You take a few deep, slow, breaths, and let all your worries ebb away. For the next few hours, all that matters is the here and now. The unknown potential of the future will still be there when you're done.

It's a pleasant surprise that you actually manage to get to everything you wanted to work on before Hotarubi-sensei arrives, as always, at ten o'clock sharp. Ikki, of course, isn't here yet; you used to be surprised that Hotarubi-sensei didn't seem to care, but now you're just surprised he even bothers coming on time. You don't mind, though, since it gets you an extra little bit of one-on-one time with him; he gives you a few helpful pointers on chakra shaping today, which you're very appreciative of.

Ikki finally gets here a half-hour later, and, after the standard team warmup and conditioning routine, Hotarubi-sensei commences the festivities. Up until now you've only worked on a couple of isolated, individual exercises like chakra suppression and various techniques to muffle sound and reduce visual profile, but—

"Today," he says, "we'll be going over some practical exercises."

As it turns out, practical exercises are exactly like theoretical ones, except you have to do them all at the same time. Suppressing your chakra requires a great deal of intense focus even on its own, and it's incredible how much more difficult it becomes when you're also trying to muffle your steps with it while on the move and minding your step. You're unbelievably tired by the time you get home for the evening.

(+1 XP to stealth)

Your father is still at his office burning the midnight oil by the time you get back, but you suppose he's had a lot to worry about lately, so you don't really hold it against him. You barely manage to get your teeth brushed before you collapse into bed and let unconsciousness take you.

===

You're actually calmer than you thought you'd be on the morning of the big day. You get all your things together and then make your way to the mission office to meet Ikki and Hotarubi-sensei. Claiming the mission and the associated briefing are more or less a formality at this point: you'll be escorting a merchant by the name of Fukui Jun, a peddler of earthenwares and glasswares who makes the trip between Iwa and Suna seasonally. The chuunin manning the mission desk informs you that Jun—or Fukui-san, you suppose—wished to head out this very morning, and you quickly rush over to where he's finishing loading up.

Fukui-san is an old man with graying hair, a potbelly, and thick arms that suggested a long life spent picking up heavy things and putting them down again. His operation consists of a single covered cart and a pair of draft horses, and he's just now fastening the tarp over his wares.

You, rather surprisingly, find him making small talk with your father, who waves the three of you over as soon as he sees you.

"Are these my companions-to-be?" asks the old merchant.

"They are. May I introduce jounin Mitsui Hotarubi—"

"Pleasure to meet you." Hotarubi-sensei nods and gives Fukui-san a firm handshake.

"—genin Azuma Ikki—"

Ikki almost preens at this.

"—and genin Mitsui Kana." Your father gives you a meaningful nod.

The old merchant gives you a once-over. "Your daughter, right? She's younger than I thought she would be."

"Ah, she is very talented, Fukui-san."

Fukui-san laughs at this, a deep full-on guffaw from the belly, like it's the most hilarious thing in the world.

"Very good! I'm honored that you're sending your own flesh and blood, Hoshikage-sama!"

===

Fukui-san, as it turns out, is just as talkative as Ikki, and his stories have a certain earnestness to them that throws off any skepticism you might have had. He's lived through two world wars, broken bread with daimyos and kages, and has traveled all across the five great nations and beyond, and he regales you with tales of things he's seen: the great black spires of Ame, the endless deserts of the land of Wind, great auroras in the sky off the land of Lightning.

It's a week-long journey to Iwa at the relatively leisurely pace that you're taking, and the first few days pass by relatively uneventfully. You stop at roadside inns and the occasional town during the night, and travel from sunrise until sunset.

By the fourth day, Fukui-san has, incredibly, not run out of stories yet, and he's engrossing enough that you almost miss the signs of a rather clumsy tail—disturbed birds set to flight, the noise of brushing leaves and snapping twigs. You look over at Hotarubi-sensei, who flashes you some signs.

Me. Reserve. Engage at will.

It seems like you're being tasked with handling the situation. You think you count a half-dozen individuals, presumably hostile, most of them either untrained or at least very bad at stealth. The three of you are obviously and recognizably ninja, though, and so you assume that either some of them have disproportionate combat skills, or that they have a ninja or two of their own in reserve.

It seems Hotarubi-sensei has ascertained the threat level of these enemies and deemed them "safe" for you to face. Ikki looks like he's already wised up to the situation and is shooting you occasional furtive glances in a not-very-subtle way.

On your persons you possess standard weaponry—shurikens and kunai, primarily—as well as a small number of explosive tags.

Article:

Your plan? (feel free to write in details as sub-votes)
[] engage immediately. If you counter-attack now, you might be able to catch them off-balance before they're fully prepared for a fight.
[] ambush them. They're following at a fair distance, and you think you can probably set something up without them being any the wiser, although it depends a little on your ability to do so stealthily.
[] wait and scout for information. You should see what their plan and abilities are before committing to anything.
[] other (write-in)

 

[Death and Faxes]

An update! This one didn't even take a whole week to write.

Thanks to @keios for edits.
​

---

(1.3)
​

A few more quickly-exchanged hand signals and you've got a plan set up with Ikki. He begins going through the motions of a familiar technique while you discreetly split off from the main group, circling around to the outside of where you know your pursuers to be. You find a vantage point nestled in a fork atop a large tree, covered by enough leaves to make you hard to see as long as you stay still. Just to be safe, you push your chakra signature down—just like you'd been practicing—and then you wait.

It's not very long before the entire group comes tromping through the underbrush with the complete lack of grace usually reserved for beached sea creatures.True to your estimation, there are half a dozen of them, and you're interested and a little apprehensive to note that they wear an unfamiliar-looking forehead protector—Kumo? Definitely not a nearby village—with the distinctive scratch mark that announces their status as missing-nin. That those who abandon their villages still readily display that village's symbol has always seemed a strange tradition to you—to desert one's village, after all is to be a hunted fugitive, and advertising such a thing seems a terrible idea at best.

With the competence they've displayed so far in their tailing, though, you can't imagine they are anything more than fresh genin. It's… a little bit worse than you were hoping for, but a whole lot better than what you're prepared to handle, and you watch their passing with an unexpected calm, counting down the paces until the last of them enters your little ambush zone.

In the distance, a bird of prey shrills out its hunting call.

Your targets trudge through the forest single file at a matching pace, snapping twigs underfoot. Impressive as their lack of skill at woodcraft is, though, this is unsurprising if they really are from Kumo. A single ninja has taken to the trees as a scout. You follow his movement out of the corner of your eye as he flits from branch to branch, but he is so focused on his quarry that he never gives your hiding spot so much as a passing glance. A stroke of luck for you. You'll to take him out first—his vantage point makes him dangerous should you get bogged down in a melee.

The air is heavy with anticipation, clear and cloying, so thick you can feel it like a cool mist against your skin. It tingles.

It's a textbook plan: a trap to disorient. A crushing assault with extreme prejudice. No plan truly survives contact with the enemy, but this one will come close enough.

Around you, the trees rustle in the stiff afternoon breeze.

The first ninja crosses the line; the second follows.

They're older than you, but not by much—none of them are more than teenagers. Their lives were probably not so different from yours, not too long ago. What brought them here? What made them choose this life? Alas, these are idle thoughts, and you banish them from your mind.

You're ready, more ready than you've ever been: tense, coiled, ready to pounce, but timing is everything—

The third ninja crosses the line, then the fourth. The fifth and last pauses; glancing around nervously—as if he were suddenly aware of some danger. For a moment your heart catches in your throat—will he see you? But then his companion calls out to him and he turns back once more—

You breathe in, breathe out, and your awareness washes out over the forest around you. You can sense every little thing—every stray branch, every swirling leaf, every blade of grass, every loose pebble. For a moment, all the world is frozen in crystal perfection: perfect clarity, perfect silence, the calm before the storm—

The last ninja crosses the line.

You can feel the subtle twist of chakra in the air as Ikki's genjutsu activates, and suddenly all half dozen of the ninja before you are goggling about in a blank stupor.

The genjutsu is a weak one, easily dispelled, but you know from your long training that the difference between life and death, between victory and defeat, can sometimes come down to mere fractions of a second. There are six of them, two of you; you need as much of an advantage as you can muster.

You flare out your chakra into the basic cloak, and launch yourself at the enemy ninja in the branches. Your first strike connects with his stomach, sending him flying a short distance with a visible burst of chakra. He lands a short distance away in a heap of limbs and doesn't get back up.

The rest of the group has yet to notice, trapped in an illusion as they are. You drop down behind them just as a barrage of wind blasts from Ikki knocks one to the ground. Time is of the essence, and efficiency is paramount: a kick to the head, a punch to the gut, each laced with more blasts of chakra, and two more collapse to the floor. Only two left.

You catch a flicker of movement behind you and duck just barely in time to avoid a thrown kunai from one of the remaining ninja—looks like he's broken the illusion. He's wild-eyed, his expression caught between surprise and anger, and he makes a frenzied lunge at you with surprising speed. Despite his terrible stealth skills, he's fast and his kunai work isn't bad at all. You barely manage to avoid the first strike, but the second you answer with your own blade in a ringing clash of sparks.

"You're actually ninja? What the hell!" he grunts out as he turns aside your counterattack.

"We're wearing forehead protectors, idiot," you reply, laying in with another quick swipe of your weapon. "They literally have our village symbol on them!"

"Your village symbol is stupid!" he shouts back, and then he's on the offensive again, forcing you back with another flurry of attacks.

His style is unfamiliar, hard and linear, filled with sharp cuts, piercing thrusts, and quick efficient parries. You slip around his attacks when you can, looking for an opening in his defense, but he has almost a head of height on you and presses that reach advantage mercilessly. You're on the back foot before too long, even as you note the last ninja—still caught in the genjutsu—go down to another carefully placed wind bullet.

You're surprised, then, to hear Ikki announce yet another jutsu:

"Fuuton: Great Breakthrough!"

But you know this one. In fact, you stared this one down just the other day. You know how this works, you just have to make sure it counts.

You parry the next strike particularly hard, almost knocking your opponent's weapon to the ground, and take advantage of the resulting opening. It's not enough to get him, but it's enough for you to disengage, jump back out of knife range, and—

"Doton: Trembling Earth!"

The torrent of your chakra floods the earth around you, and the dirt comes alive like an ocean in storm. To your dismay, the missing-nin manages to keep his footing, just barely. But that was never the point. His eyes widen a bit in surprise as he's blindsided by a wall of compressed air that knocks him off his feet with a whumpf, and he goes down as a pair of kunai embed themselves in his chest and thigh.

And just like that, it's over.

===

A few minutes later you're a little relieved to learn that none of the half-dozen ninja you ambushed are dead, although a few of them are in pretty bad shape and probably won't be fighting again anytime soon and almost all of them are currently unconscious. Just to be sure, though, you secure them with some lengths of rope.

"They let us past them," muses Hotarubi-sensei, "and followed—closely—for quite a while. Why do you think they did that, Kana-chan?"

You feel a little blush of embarrassment at this—you were the last person to notice them, not until they'd been on your tail for probably minutes. Whatever happened after, this was a failure on your part, and not a small one, either—it's one that might have cost you your lives against a more prepared enemy.

Nonetheless, you search for an answer. You were traveling on a well-known road with few branches, so tailing you was pointless in and of itself—this path only, realistically, went to one place. If they were simply going to ambush you, they would have done so at the moment you passed them, rather than choosing to wait and follow. No, wait. Think outside the box, Kana—

"A two-pronged ambush," you finally reply. "They wanted to surround us, trap us."

"Which means?"

"There's more ahead," you say. Something isn't quite right, though. A surround is a strange tactic to deploy against a merchant wagon—generally it's used to head off the escape of a lesser opponent of equal or greater speed. Fukui-san's horses and wagons can hardly match the pace of a ninja, though, and those would be the targets of any robber, not the hired help that protected it. Unless—

"That guy said he didn't think we were ninja, didn't he?" interjects Ikki, who's just finished another circuit of the area.

"...that means they probably didn't think we'd be able to put up a fight—" you begin.

"—so they probably thought they could just scare us with their numbers and headbands—"

"—so surrounding us was just part of their scare tactic," you finish. "Would have been. Whatever."

Hotarubi-sensei nods in approval. "So, what do you think we should do?" he asks, a little twinkle in his eye.

As you see it, there are two things you need to deal with. The first is the half-dozen missing-nin in varying states of unconsciousness that you have tied up here. On one hand, you could just leave them here; as ninja, they should be able to free themselves eventually without too much trouble. There's always the chance that they'll try to set up their ambush all the same, but considering their method is more robbery through intimidation than force and you've just soundly beaten them, it seems unlikely that they'll try. On the other hand, missing-nin, even genin, tend to have bounties on their heads, and it may be worth trying to ransom these ones at an upcoming bounty station. If you're truly paranoid, though, you could incapacitate or even kill them, which would certainly lay the matter to rest in a… final… way.

The other issue is the ambush that you know is coming. The options here are a bit simpler—you can fight your way through, or you can talk your way through. You think that the personnel assigned to the ambush would probably be better combatants than the ones assigned to flank, as they'd be the ones in the open and most liable to actual fighting. On the other hand, the flankers were clearly not the cream of the crop, so you think it could really go either way. Alternatively, you could attempt to bluff or cajole your way through. This could go a lot more smoothly if you had some bargaining chips of your own—perhaps captives to ransom?

Article:

Note: not all combinations of these votes are applicable, so in the case that two incompatible votes win, we'll take the most popular compatible combination of votes instead.

How to handle the ninja? (write-in details if applicable)
[] leave them.
[] take them for bounties.
[] take them to bargain with the ambushers.
[] kill them.
[] other (write-in)

The waiting ambush? (write-in details if applicable)
[] fight your way through, via
-[] frontal assault.
-[] something sneaky.
[] talk your way through, via
-[] ransoming your captives.
-[] intimidation.
[] other (write-in)

 

[Death and Faxes]

Lol did I say "this weekend" I obviously meant "next weekend".

Thanks to @keios and @Blazinghand for looking at drafts of this.

---

(1.4)​

The plan is simple, then. You have on-hand a collection of captives from an enemy you're sure is looking to actually avoid fights, whose motivation is most likely just the capture of valuables from lightly-defended merchants. They're also young, and if you had to guess you'd say that they took to this life purely out of necessity rather than any particular enjoyment of looting and pillaging. You're pretty sure, then, that they'd be willing to trade the lives of their teammates for the opportunity to not fight you to the death.

First comes the captives. Despite taking quite a few hits, most of them are in relatively good condition minus some bruises and (probably) a broken bone. Most of them are still unconscious, so you unceremoniously pile them on the tarp covering Fukui-san's goods. The single remaining conscious missing-nin looks like he wants to say something, but he immediately catches himself when you shoot him a glare. You direct him to sit on the wagon beside his teammates.

The captives accounted for, you press on. Less than half a mile later, you find yourselves face to face with another strung-out group of a half-dozen missing-nin with matching forehead protectors.

Though they're a bit older than the ones you encountered in the forest, they're still nervous and none of them are bothering to hide it. You can see their hands straying to weapons, hovering over blades and pouches, ready to let loose at a moment's notice. Between you and Ikki and Hotarubi-sensei, you're pretty sure you can take them, but you'd really prefer not to fight here if you can avoid it. After all, you're in the open with no surprise on your side this time: a fair fight, in other words, and therefore precisely the kind of fight you'd like to avoid.

Their leader steps forward, hands up and palms out in a universal gesture of parley. He's sandy-haired and thin and has the floppy gangliness of somebody who still hasn't quite settled into their last growth spurt, but his posture and his gaze bear a surprising seriousness. There's a fresh-looking scar running across the bridge of his nose, and his eyes are a distinctly striking shade of purple—a doujutsu? Then again, not all strange eyes are such, and your very own clan is a prime example.

"We just want to talk," he says, eyeing your group warily.

You notice you've been staring, and briskly avert your gaze.

Hotarubi-sensei handles the talking. The terms you've prepared are simple and straightforward: allow you to pass, unmolested, and abandon banditry in this area in the future. Of course, they'll probably just pick up and move elsewhere, but you're here to guarantee the safety of your client, and what happens on other roads is hardly relevant.

The missing-nin leader's name is Chinoike Yosuke, you learn, and he speaks it with a slight fleeting measure of pride not unlike what you've witnessed from your own cousins—a clan, then, and an important one—and also the merest hint of wistful sadness. Perhaps an exile? He's well-mannered but nervous, his posture a little stooped and his voice a little uneven, but he nods along through Hotarubi-sensei's proposition.

"I—we accept," he says. "As long as our friends are unharmed."

"They've only received superficial harm," Hotarubi-sensei replies. "We've done nothing to them except the minimum required for subdual."

He nods at you and Ikki and you cut loose your temporary prisoners. You can see the tension visibly drain from Yosuke's posture as you alternately frog-march and drag them forwards before depositing them in a heap at his feet. The missing-nin give you a healthy berth, but they rush forward to aid their teammates in getting off the road as soon as you've dropped the last one.

Yosuke alone remains facing you.

"Thank you for your generosity, shinobi-san," he says, with a stiff little formal bow that speaks to years of etiquette lessons. "We'll be gone before tonight, I promise it."

===

The rest of the trip goes relatively smoothly. Fukui-san is surprisingly unruffled by the attack, although you suppose he's probably seen worse in his travels. It doesn't even break the rhythm of his stories. You arrive in Iwa just before nightfall on the eighth day, a great deal more tired than when you left but otherwise no worse for wear.

Iwagakure is a village—a city, even—of spires carved from the very mountains themselves, a jagged synthesis of human artifice and living stone. Its buildings are connected not by streets but by hanging causeways and great bridges, all radiating out from a great brooding central tower adorned with the village's name. You're normally pretty good with directions, but you've never tried to traverse a space with so much verticality before, and were you alone you probably would have become instantly lost.

There isn't much opportunity to explore, though. Fukui-san is subjected to a surprise inspection at the city gates, and the duties of your station obligate you to wait with him. In return, you're treated to a sweeping view of Iwa's skyline coming ablaze in the night: a sea of spires jutting above the mountain fog, dotted with bright windows and connected by a million strings of lights, like a sandcastle draped in luminous filigree. It is perhaps the strangest and most wondrous thing you have ever seen.

It's quite late by the time he finally gets through and you part ways with the old merchant.

"Thanks for the cover," he says. "Guess paying for you lot was the better deal after all!"

He lets loose a hearty guffaw at this.

"Thank you for your business, as always," replies Hotarubi-sensei cordially.

===

Without a horse-drawn wagon to keep pace with, the trip back takes less than half the time, and even traveling at a leisurely pace the three of you manage to make it back by the third day.

It's also positively silent in comparison; even Ikki is a little bit more reticent than usual, and hardly volunteers half the conversation you've known him to. You're not sure if he has something on his mind, or if he's just a little bit tired of talking so much after your travels with Fukui-san.

The silence provides you the opportunity to reflect a little on the mission. It's undoubtedly a success, even if it's one attributable as much to your enemies' incompetence as your own skill. This is a little disappointing, but you suppose that it's probably for the better that you weren't subjected to a real fight for your life on your first mission. As much as you want the opportunity to prove yourself, you also recognize the very real fact that any such opportunity comes with it a commensurate risk of injury or death.

Your father agrees with this assessment wholeheartedly in the short debriefing you have with him, and then, one set of paperwork later, it's done. Your first mission is over.

Ikki suggests curry, and you think it's only fair to indulge him this time around.

===

A few days later, though, you once again find yourself in the waiting room for your father's office. You wonder why he insists on calling you to his office instead of simply telling you at home. Then again, there's something to be said about the formality of the office setting, and the need to head off any possible accusations of nepotism. Or something.

That, and you're pretty sure he hasn't actually come home to sleep for weeks.

You arrive at what seems to be the end of another meeting—you can hear voices through the door. Whoever's in there with your father is definitely not happy. He's not shouting, but he's speaking loudly enough that you can hear snatches of it through the thick door.

"—my son—"

"—no precedent—"

"—Takeo should be—"

That last name is familiar to you. Mitsui Takeo is a surly boy, technically your cousin and three years your elder. He's always been pretty rude to you and you've never been able to figure out why, so at some point you gave him up as a lost cause; these days you just avoid him.

Regardless, if this man is talking about that Takeo as his son, then he can only be one person—

At that moment, the door slams open, and a thin, gaunt man storms out, pausing only to give you a baleful glare. You recognize him as your uncle: Mitsui Shoda, styled Akahoshi— Red Star—for his exploits in the Second War. You know that he and your father are not on good terms, but you were never really clear on why.

"Do not be too concerned with Akahoshi. He is simply passionate about matters of family," your father says, as he motions you in.

His office isn't dusty, quite—it's used far too often for that, and he is nothing if not diligent—but it has an air of bookish negligence about it, strewn about with neat little piles of half-read books and half-written letters.

"What did you require of me, Father?" you ask.

He sweeps aside some of the scrolls littering his desk to rest his clasped hands upon it, and fixes you with his gaze.

"I think you are ready," your father says, "to see the star."

You nod. One of the privileges of your clan is training with the meteor that the village was founded around. Many rumors exist of its benefits—some even believe that the seiton was not truly a kekkei genkai at all, but just a consequence of the fallen star's radiation—but the details are largely kept secret, even from you.

"You will be training personally with me, until such time as your mastery is sufficient to handle the process alone."

"I understand," you reply.

"We will begin tomorrow, and do so weekly on that same day. Is that acceptable with your training schedule?"

"It should be no problem," you say.

"Good. There is one more thing." He leans forward and steeples his fingers in that way he does when he's about to say something Important.

"Someday, Kana, you will be head of this clan," he says. "Regardless of what some might say." He gives you a meaningful look.

"It is not an easy position, nor will it be a welcoming one. You must be prepared for it, as much as you can be. Therefore, you will be attending council meetings from now on as my guest."

"What will my duties be?"

"Initially, none; you will attend in a purely observational capacity. There are some that would object to another voice for the Mitsui, after all. But I hope it gives you an impression of what might be expected of you in the future."

"I understand, Father. Thank you for the opportunity."

"That's all, Kana. You did well on your first mission." He pauses, and for the first time you can remember he seems unsure of what his next words should be. For a second, the two of you sit in silence.

"I am proud of you," he says, finally.

"Thank you, Father," you say, and you mean it.

===

As is customary in peacetime, you're provided with a few weeks of leave from long-term missions after your most recent one. Therefore, your next month is almost completely free for training, as well as any other activities you have in mind.

You will be spending one day per week training with your father, as well as attending one clan meeting. You will also spend some time completing your study of your father's scroll. Otherwise, both your training regimen and leisure activities are up to your discretion.

You chose to spend your time training your:

Article:

[] write-in. You have 8xp to distribute among any items on your character sheet. XP costs to next level are displayed.

You spend time and interact with many people during this month. However, you feel like you spent the most time with:

Article:

[] Ikki
[] your father
[] Hotarubi-sensei
[] someone else (write-in)

You're a little bit worried about the brief exchange you dropped into between Akahoshi and your father. You feel like you should:

Article:

[] do nothing. You trust that your father has it handled.
[] ask your father. You're pretty sure it's something to do with you, and you'd like to know what it is, if only to avoid awkward situations in the future.
[] confront Takeo. You're related by blood, after all, even if he seems to hate you for no good reason. Whatever the problem is, you're sure you can talk it out.
[] confront Akahoshi. While the man is kind of creepy and definitely doesn't like you, he's also your uncle, and you deserve an explanation from him.

 

[Death and Faxes]

Update schedule? What's an update schedule?

(Thanks to @keios and @bidoof for reading drafts of this.)
​

---

(1.5)​

The fallen star in the forest is a sacred treasure of the village and of the Mitsui clan; a great relic that empowers the ninja of Hoshi; subject of a hundred whispered stories and wild rumors. Some believe it possesses the power to double a ninja's chakra reserve, or allow him to learn techniques normally far beyond his ken. Some say it has even the power to grant abilities normally restricted only to those with bloodlines.

But in person it's small, grey, and stony. It has a few holes in it, like a blob of particularly spongy firm tofu. It's a rock, and you can't really tell what all the fuss is about.

The only mildly impressive part about the whole thing is the terrain—the meteorite sits at the base of a shallow gorge covered in thin stubbly grass, a little clearing bare of trees and free from the tangling mat of undergrowth that otherwise blankets the area. Unusual, certainly, but hardly worthy of being the subject of generations worth of myths and legends.

Nonetheless, appearances can be deceiving, and if your father believes in the value of training with this small and kind of boring rock, then, well, he's the expert, and you're not going to complain. Even if you really want to.

You have to double down on this decision when it turns out that most of the "star training" involves just… sitting still, and clearing your mind, focusing on your breathing, and trying to feel the chakra of the star. Meditation, in other words. You're not Ikki so you're actually capable of sitting still for more than a few seconds at a time, but you were certainly hoping for something more exciting.

You sit, making yourself as comfortable as a lotus position allows, and your father gives you a solemn nod. It's a signal to start, you suppose, and you start going through the motions.

Breathe in, breathe out. Take the energy inside of you and push it, feel it flow and spread from your core out to the tips of your toes.

Something bothers you about this. It shouldn't bother you, because you should be clearing your mind and meditating, but you can't help it.

Focus on the now, let the air fill your lungs and settle your diaphragm. Take that energy and pull it back, let it swirl back into your core.

Then it hits you. Why is your father here? If all this is is meditation, then how could you not be ready? You've done exercises like this since you were two, probably. What you're doing now is essentially a very elementary chakra-control and sensing exercise, a prerequisite for the leaf concentration exercise, of all things. It's not dangerous and it shouldn't need supervision, most certainly not for you.

Push the breath out, not from the chest but from the stomach. Pull a new one in, fresh, brisk and tingling in the morning air. Let your chakra circulate through your body, rippling and clear. Turn your senses out, feel the pulse and the rhythm of the world around you—

You feel something. It's the barest flicker of activity but you know it's there, a little wispy flare of foreign chakra-nature that you can't quite identify. It's gone as soon as you notice it, but you're looking for it now, senses sharp and alert, searching and waiting.

A moment passes, an eternity of concentration and momentous silence.

In, out, in, out.

And suddenly the air is thick with a swirling storm of blinding energy, a roiling cloud of sound and light and feeling that drowns out the world. You're caught up in it, swept along the current of its course. You gasp and your eyes snap open, but around you is only blind darkness and an impossibly crushing weight of chakra, roaring around you and through you like an avalanche, sweeping away your thoughts and knowledge and memories, baring your soul to the howling mercy of the star.

For a moment there is everything, and then there is nothing, so much nothing, an endless pure-black void of it. But you know something is missing, something you don't quite get. It's a test, you realize suddenly. There is something to learn here, if only you knew how to grasp it. Something behind the veil, beneath the yawning emptiness that engulfs you and reaches as far as your eyes can see. But what?

Then you feel it; a little thread tugging at the corner of your soul. Part of you always knew what to do, you suppose, since the day you came into this world. A familiar understanding unfolds inside you. This is what you were born to do.

Your eyes have been open this whole time, but that was never the problem. Now you open your soul, your mind, your spirit, and you See.

===

The stars twinkle above you, a million blazing jewels piercing the darkness, more vivid and brilliant than you have ever seen—you, who have lived and grown in a village named for its starscape.

A pale man stands before you. He has your eyes.

"Watch," he says, his voice a deep, mellifluous whisper. "See what came before. See what follows."

Now you stand no longer on an empty plain, but a battlefield. Ninjutsu blooms around you in gouts of elemental fury, water smashing rock and lightning parting fire. You are surrounded by the clangor of clashing blades, the agony of the wounded, the brutal din of war. It smells of burnt flesh and desperation and death…

And in the distance an impossible thing moves, huge and silhouetted against a crimson moon, the unholy union of a lamprey and an alien shellfish. It rears back on too-human limbs, gaping maw addressing the sky, and its roar echoes across the battlefield around you, shattering the earth and all the things upon it, drowning the world in flame.

In the wake of that roar is only silence and emptiness.

===

It's over as suddenly as it began: you find yourself lying on your back in the clearing, a ringing in your ears, your vision swimming with stars, sucking in air in wheezing ragged gulps. Your father is hunched over you, a hand on your pulse.

He looks concerned.

He says something—is it your name? You can't tell—and you can feel his arms around your waist as he hoists you up.

"I'm fine," you want to say between gasps, but you can't quite get your muscles to cooperate. Everything is bleary and sticky and slow. It feels like drowning in a sea of fuzzy grey. You only manage to keep it together for a few more seconds before everything blurs away into oblivion.

===

"Is it… normal? To have that happen?" you ask. It's not clear you're asking the right question, but the wrong answer is better than no answer… probably.

Your father is in the kitchen with you, cutting vegetables. Today is the first time he's been home for months. It's also the first time you've seen him doing something so domestic since… well, you're not even sure.

"It is not. Your reaction is the strongest that I have seen." He pauses, and you can see the faintest inkling of a smile pass over his face. "But normalcy is hardly the greatest of virtues. The star grants knowledge and power commensurate to the depth of one's connection with it."

A pause; he sweeps the bits of carrot into a waiting bowl, to start on a new one.

"The first time that connection is made is always the worst. That yours was as bad as it was… it is telling of the heights you might one day reach."

You hold his gaze for a few seconds before he turns back to his kitchen-work.

"I have a question, Father," you say, after a pause.

"And perhaps I will have an answer," he returns. The air is filled with the dull tattoo of his knife against the chopping board.

"When Akahoshi left your office, he seemed unhappy."

"That isn't a question, Kana-chan," he says. "But, hmm, why do you think he was unhappy?"

You've considered this at length. You're vaguely aware Akahoshi dislikes you and your father, but he's always been subtle about it, and you've never seen him so… openly express his distaste for you or anyone else. Something significant must have happened recently to set him off like that. And considering its obvious relevance to Takeo, the list of possibilities was very narrow indeed.

"I think Akahoshi wanted his son to receive the same opportunity to council meetings that I was presented," you say, a little bit more stiffly than you'd intended.

"Ah. And why would he want that?"

"Conferring that privilege is a signal for the intended heir. Having experience with council meetings is a big advantage for a prospective clan head, so this signals your intention as to who you wish to see as your successor. Akahoshi wishes his own son to succeed you as head of the clan rather than me." You pause in thought. "But that doesn't quite explain it."

"Oh? Elaborate," says your father, arching an eyebrow.

"Were it not for me, his son would be heir to your position. That's a good reason for him to dislike me, but it's not a very good reason for him to do so openly. He's not a fool; he wouldn't be so obvious unless he thought he could act on it."

Your father looks surprised and amused in equal measure. "Indeed he isn't."

There's a missing link here, something you're not quite grasping. You fumble for it for a moment, but nothing comes to you. "The leadership of the clan passes by blood. This has been established for generations. He has no case unless he plans on leading a coup."

"Well, I hardly believe he would go quite so far," says your father, chuckling a little. "Whatever else kind of man he may be, Akahoshi's loyalty to the village and the clan have never been in question."

"Then what does he want?"

Your father scrapes the contents of the cutting-board into the bowl again before dumping the whole thing into a pot.

"That's the question, isn't it?" He pauses briefly, stirring the contents of the pot on the stove, making a thoughtful humming noise. "Your analysis was very good, Kana-chan. But you missed one thing."

"One thing?"

"Yes. In short, you are the first clan heir to be both an only child and a daughter. The precedent on this matter is… lacking."

Oh. You hadn't even considered that.

"But isn't there plenty of precedent on the heir being descended from the previous clan head?"

"Some believe that male children have stronger claims than female ones. That the previous instances only demonstrate the succession of sons."

That's got to be one of the sillier things you've heard, and you're an eight-year-old who spends most of her time with a ten-year-old.

"You shouldn't concern yourself too much over it, Kana-chan," says your father. "Some believe it, but most do not. Akahoshi's position is weaker than he believes. And even if you and Takeo had equal grounds for succession… you are exceptional, and he is not."

"Thank you, Father," you say.

===

"You're really a growing girl, aren't you, Kana-chan?" asks Hotarubi-sensei, completely earnestly.

His timing with regards to your chewing is excellent. All you manage around the mouthful of food is an irritated "Mmf".

"He's saying you eat a lot," says Ikki, helpfully.

You consider giving him a rude gesture, but you're pretty sure Hotarubi-sensei would disapprove, so you settle for punching him in the shoulder instead.

Ikki is undeterred. "How are you so hungry anyways? What did you even do today?"

You finally manage to swallow.

"I was training, Ikki."

"Yes, Kana-chan's meditation was very exhausting today," says Hotarubi-sensei, sipping from a cup of tea.

"Meditation?" asks Ikki, with a little bit of surprise. "You mean, sitting-down-and-thinking-about-breathing meditation? Doesn't-really-involve-any-physical-activity-at-all meditation? That kind of meditation?"

"Chakra shaping is hard work, okay? It's not just sitting there doing nothing," you huff.

"It sure looks like it though," says Ikki. You punch him again, a little harder this time, and manage to draw a little yelp, before helping yourself to another bowl of curry and rice.

"Well, before anyone gets hurt, I should admit that there's an ulterior motive for me treating you two tonight," says Hotarubi-sensei.

Well, that much should have been obvious. He clearly wanted to talk about something.

"First of all, congratulations to both of you on a successful mission. Your performance was exemplary."

Hm. Is this about something serious? You pause your eating for a bit.

"I think, as far as away missions go, this one went about as well as anybody could have wanted. A lot better than my first, at any rate."

It's a good point. There was technically fighting, yes, but you were able to talk your way through a lot more than you'd expected, and nobody had really gotten hurt.

"But," he continues. "Good mission or no, I want to make sure both of you know that if you ever need anything, ever need to talk about anything, that's why I'm here."

You and Ikki nod.

"So what was your first mission like?" asks Ikki, after a long pause.

"It was… different. It was the Second War, then, and I think many of the villages were hurting for manpower. Hoshi wasn't… as invested as others, but we sent our share out to die."

He looks up, fixated on some faraway point behind you. You're indoors so you know there's nothing there.

"Natsuhi and I were set to patrol duties on the Ame front with two teams from Suna. It was supposed to be a relatively safe mission, separated from where the action was. Safe is pretty relative when you're fighting a war, though."

"You got attacked."

"We got attacked. Just a scouting cell, really. A few squads, mostly chuunin, older than us but not by much. We were told to let nobody through, so we didn't."

He sighs, swills his tea in the cup.

"We got through it with no casualties."

"Did you… kill someone?" asks Ikki.

"I did."

"Was it hard?"

"I didn't regret it. Still don't. It was me or him. My life or his. And when it comes down to it, I'm a pretty selfish person." He gives a wry little smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "I'd rather his village grieve than mine. I'd rather have a future for my family than his."

"I thought you couldn't have children," says Ikki.

"Ikki-kun, now is not an appropriate time to bring that up," you say, more than a little harshly.

Hotarubi-sensei looks like he wants to laugh but manages to keep it under control. "No, it's quite fine. I accepted a long time ago that Natsuhi and I will never be parents."

A pause, again, with more swilling of tea.

"But being out there teaches you is that family isn't just blood," he says. "It's who you're close to, who you trust, who you can depend on. It's your team."

Hotarubi-sensei is actually technically related to you too, but, you know, it's the idea that counts.

"Thank you for the confidence," you say.

"I already have a dad," says Ikki, at the same time.

You roll your eyes. Some things don't change.

===

Different people describe chakra in different ways. For some, it flows, a cool liquid flow that rushes through their veins. For others, it's the bubbling warmth of sunlight, or the smoldering heat of embers, or the crackling surge of lightning.

For you, it's the weight of substance. Your chakra is solid, firm but pliant, shaping with equal ease the unpredictable caprice of wind and the reliable heaviness of earth. But while you've always been good at shaping and controlling your chakra, what you're trying now is something entirely different, entirely new, and entirely too difficult.

But some would say that difficult things are the only things worth doing.

You shove chakra through your system again, emulating seals to the best of your ability. Hand seals existed primarily as a way to assist in chakra mixing and shaping: by percolating chakra through the pathways in one's hands, arms, and fingers, a ninja could force the production of certain patterns that could be combined to greatly ease the execution of any single ninjutsu.

In theory, then, to use a ninjutsu without the hand seals is simple enough. Tiger first, a heavy upwelling, gradually rising in intensity. Hare next, a flighty series of blips terminated by a pause. Then boar: a single big spike—whoops.

You lose it again, and your chakra dissipates pointlessly back into your coils.

Hotarubi-sensei is nothing but patient. You're very thankful of this.

"No, no, draw it out," he says. "You're spiking your chakra too hard, the boar seal forces a pulse."

You nod, start over again. A pulse, not a spike. Right. Back through the motions. Tiger—a crescendo. Hare—a staccato. Boar—a… tenuto? Is that what it's called? And, shi— ...shoot, there it goes again.

"You need to hold it a little longer than that. Steadiness is important, so try not to fluctuate the intensity so much."

Okay, try again, from the start. Tiger and hare, easy. Now boar again, do it slow, do it steady… and... there! You did it! And, wait, what was the last seal again?

You flush a little in embarrassment as the collected chakra for the technique once again bleeds away uselessly.

"The last seal is Dog," says Hotarubi-sensei helpfully.

(+7xp to ninjutsu. Ninjutsu is now rank 16!)

===

The council meeting takes place around a big round table in a high-ceilinged conference room by the Hoshikage's office. It's a surprisingly small affair—besides the two representatives of each clan there's only a stenographer and a few aides. You're unsurprised to see all three clan heads among the representatives. You are a little surprised to see Akahoshi here, though, although you suppose it would be strange if he weren't. He's an important and well-known figure in the clan, after all. To your relief, he makes no acknowledgment of your presence.

As an observer to the proceedings, you're sat down in a chair against the wall. Your role is purely non-participatory, and you suppose the physical separation is to cut down on the temptation to blurt out things in the heat of the moment.

Which, for what it's worth, is a temptation you've managed to fully, 100%, completely and totally quash, despite how heated these last few moments have gotten. The council meeting had opened with a few relatively uncontroversial trade and civil matters, but it seems like the central attraction and hot-button issue is now on the table.

The head of the Azuma clan, Azuma Hiroki, is speaking at the moment. He's a slender, well-dressed, almost effeminate man, who punctuates his flowery words with flowery gestures.

"With all due respect, Yoshiro-san: committing to military action would starve our economy. Commerce is the lifeblood of our village. No merchant will want to travel through the region if we turn it into a warzone. This plan will be disastrous for all of us."

This argument doesn't surprise you. The Azuma are merchants, after all; Hiroki's priorities have always been gold and prosperity.

"You would have us stay silent? Simply ignore our allies in need?" roars the burly giant across from him. Koizumi Yoshiro is Hiroki's polar opposite: heavy-set and bearded, a combatant par excellence, but loud, brusque, and unsubtle in spades.

"Suna does not yet require our aid. And we already benefit them greatly through trade."

"We made an alliance, not a trade agreement!"

"Yoshiro-san is right, of course. What we have with Suna is an alliance. But need I remind the members of this council that it is an alliance that has not yet been invoked?" He casts his gaze around the council chamber. "And it may never be. Trade through Hoshi is rather valuable for Suna; perhaps more so than opening another front in the war."

"Yoshiro-san, Hiroki-san, I believe the matter is hardly as urgent as you are making it out to be." Surprisingly, Akahoshi is the one who speaks for the Mitsui, and not your father. "There is no war, as of yet. There are no fronts. This plan is based on hypotheticals that may never come to pass."

"You of all people are advocating for more waiting? I never thought I'd see the day!" Yoshiro says.

"Please don't misunderstand my intentions, Yoshiro-san," says Hiroki. "I support the defense of our village and our honor as much as any man. I oppose only our escalation. We should seek not to be the aggressors, both for the sake of our reputation and our prosperity."

Yoshiro looks like he has some choice words, but manages to fight it down. "Well," he says, glancing from side to side for support. "Very well, then."

"If the deliberation has concluded on this topic, shall we record that the council advises discretion on this matter?" your father finally says, and everyone murmurs their agreement.

"Very good. The next matter for deliberation: the Azuma clan's proposal of reduced merchant fees on iron and steel. Hiroki-san, you have the floor."

"Again," muttered Yoshiro, loudly enough for you to hear.

Hiroki speaks, another deliberation, and the meeting drones on.

===

Between all the other commitments and goals you've set for yourself, it's almost the end of the month before you manage to finally make sense of the scroll your father's left you. The chakra exercises contained within are difficult to grasp, but they're… transformative, you finally understand the principle behind them.

What have you learned?

Article:

[] advanced shape control techniques, allowing you to more quickly collect and form the chakra needed for advanced ninjutsu. Gain +1 chakra control.
[] high-level body reinforcement exercises, providing you more effective ways to instinctively augment your strength and speed with chakra. Gain +1 taijutsu.
[] exotic chakra suppression techniques, allowing you to evade detection by chakra sense. Gain +1 stealth.

When you finally demonstrate what you've learned to your father, it's with a sense of great accomplishment and vague pleasant satisfaction at having conquered a milestone you know to have been difficult. You know on some level that it's simply what's expected of you, but sometimes the small victories are the important ones.

The remaining few days of the month pass in a seeming blink of the eye, and before you know it you're standing in the mission office.

It's time for another mission. It's:

Article:

[] Corporate Espionage: A glassmaker in Iwa believes one of his competitors has been paying bandits to raid his caravans and warehouses. He wishes you to break into said competitor's offices, and find proof of this malfeasance, preferably undetected.
[] Bump in the Night: Someone (or something) has been murdering the livestock of a nearby village during the night-time, and the citizens are understandably afraid. They've put in a request for someone to handle the situation.
[] Another Routine Patrol. Somebody's gotta do it. The roads and forests aren't gonna watch themselves.

 

[Death and Faxes]

It's not next year yet so this one was on schedule!

Thanks to @keios, @bidoof, @Oh I am slain!, and @Blazinghand for reading drafts of this.
​

---

(1.6)
​

Getting ready for your second mission is a lot less interesting than getting ready for your first was. Part of it is the nerves, or rather, lack thereof: the first time you had no idea what you were getting into. You still don't, but you got through it the first time, so how bad could it be?

Still, it's not horribly uninteresting, even if you're just going back to the same place you went to last time. Iwa is a pretty place, and you don't mind seeing it again; you might even get to spend a few days there this time around.

It only takes two days instead of seven now that you're traveling at a ninja's pace rather than a merchant's, and since Iwa is technically an allied village, crossing the border into the Land of Earth and then into Iwa proper is easy and painless without a wagon full of possible contraband in your party.

"I don't get it," says Ikki, on the last bend of the road before the relatively straight descent into Iwa proper. "Why don't they just hire Iwa-nin to handle this problem? They live a lot closer."

"That's actually exactly why," says Hotarubi-sensei. "If you had to rob the nice lady at the grocery store, how would you feel the next time you had to shop there?"

"Oooh. Right." You can almost see the light bulb go off in Ikki's head.

The hotel you arrive at is nearly at the edge of Iwagakure itself, and has a pretty good view of the surrounding area—as much as the rather jaggy mountains of the area allow, anyways.

It's too late at night for you to really make meaningful mission progress so Hotarubi-sensei gives you the night off. You thought you'd have wanted to explore the city or something, but you're surprisingly exhausted from the trip and fall almost straight asleep.

===

The next morning you and Ikki stumble blearily out of bed directly into Hotarubi-sensei's extended briefing for the mission. You feel that it's way too early for this kind of thing, but apparently both your alarm clock and mission protocol disagree with you, which is a shame. You've overcome worse hardships before, though, so you're optimistic about making it through this one.

Like all briefings, it's mostly logistics and some high-level information. Interestingly, it turns out the complex you're infiltrating isn't actually in the city proper, but rather in one of the outlying villages that sprung up in the area as Iwa outgrew its walls. It makes sense, though; the city itself is constant host to ninja patrols and it would be a lot to ask from a genin team to keep under the radar in those circumstances. It's otherwise a pretty standard briefing, although Hotarubi-sensei ends with a slightly surprising declaration: "I'll be hands-off on this one. Planning will be entirely up to you," he says, handing the pair of you a stack of maps.

You suspect this might be a test of some sort.

Upon some thought, you decide you're completely fine with this. Being tested is a little bit nerve-wracking, but it's also an opportunity. It means eyes are on you—your success or your failure will matter that much more, and you certainly don't plan on failing.

First things first: planning. You need to memorize the floorplans and get a handle on the basic level and timing of security. It's pretty straightforward stuff, but you've only dealt with this kind of thing in theory and controlled exercises until now, though. This will be the first time you've taken a real mission of this kind.

The floorplans Hotarubi-sensei has managed to secure are pretty detailed, thankfully, and you begin poring through them and various notes.

"Nervous?" Ikki's been pacing back and forth non-stop in the little open part of the room for the better part of fifteen minutes, so it's a somewhat ironic question for him to be asking, but you humor him.

"No," you say, lying through your teeth.

"Yep, me neither," he replies, perhaps a little too quickly, and flashes you a stupid grin.

"Shouldn't you be looking at these? You need to know your way around, too."

"Well, you're already studying them. I can just follow you around."

You throw half the pile of floorplans and notes at him, and they catch Ikki directly in the face as he turns back around towards you. He sputters a little bit but actually manages to catch the notes before they go all over the floor.

"What was that for?" he protests.

"Stop messing around. This is serious."

===

Later that night you go with Ikki to scope out the site more closely, taking care not to draw too much attention.

Despite looking at the floorplans, you're still a little surprised at how big this operation is. When you first heard "glassmaker" you pictured an old man like Fukui-san poking at a furnace, maybe with his son helping with the heavy labor. Instead, it's a sprawling walled compound with gates, attached warehouses, and on-site living quarters for employees. Thankfully, there aren't a lot of places available for storing the kinds of financial records you're after; they're important enough that they wouldn't be left in just any old office, and above-ground enough that nobody would bother tossing them in the undocumented hidden crawlspace. At least, that's what Hotarubi-sensei told you—you've only familiarized yourself with what these documents look like, not what they're actually for, and corporate accounting was sadly not an offering at the Hoshi academies.

Of course that's not why you're going (yet). Since you're targeting an unsuspecting civilian target, you thought it would be good to get a finger on the guard patrols and other safeguards they might have. They're far enough out from Iwa that there's unlikely to be any ninja nearby except the occasional passing patrol, but retired genin are rather popular as private security, and even well-trained civilian guards could seriously throw off your plans. They don't need to beat you in a fight, after all—even detection will threaten your mission objectives.

The transit is less comfortable than you would've liked—there's a piercing gale that blows through the canyons around Iwa. It's surprisingly cold for this time of year, too, and not the still, wintry kind you're used to from home; the wind carries a brisk, biting thing that numbs your fingers and hurts your ears.

Part of it is your own fault, of course, because you're keeping to the peaks rather than the roads below, which are rather narrow and somehow still host to a fair amount of traffic at this hour. The upsides are, unfortunately, worth it—staying high up affords you a degree of both privacy and speed you couldn't easily get threading through the thin, winding path below.

It takes only half an hour bounding between the tall granite crags at ninja speed, although towards the end your face has been frozen numb and your feet hurt a little from the hard and occasionally sharp stone. The little village shows up with comically abrupt suddenness—one minute you're just just jumping between some rocks, wondering where that slight glow is coming from, and the next it all falls away to reveal a totally flat clearing carved into the forest of stone pillars, dimly lit by the lamps still on at this late hour.

The village doesn't just contain a corporate complex; it more or less is a corporate complex, with only a few small bungalows outside the walls. You're not sure why they bother with walls at all, either—they push all the way up against the crag; you could probably jump from here directly into the courtyard, even if you weren't a trained ninja capable of leaping several dozen feet in a single bound.

That aside, nothing really out of the ordinary jumps out at you as you peer down at the complex. There are guards, but not that many, and they're mostly ground patrols. A few are stationed on the various roofs, but not enough to be worrisome with this level of lighting. There are a few dogs about with the guards, too, which will make this a little bit touchier, but probably nothing you can't handle. You note the building that seems to be their kennel—seems like that was newly built, and not in the plan—since dogs are basically as good as sensors for simple guard postings like this one, and you'd prefer not to get your cover blown by wandering nearby where all of them are.

===

Back at your hotel room, you and Ikki hash out your plans. It's all very straightforward stuff, but—

"About the dogs," says Ikki.

"Yes?" You were in the middle of explaining your plan of attack, and this is kind of an uncharacteristic interruption by him.

"Could we knock them out before? Or do something to make them less effective?"

"Only if it's not obvious or traceable. I mean, we're supposed to be stealthy." You punctuate the last word by wiggling your fingers.

He gives you the barest courtesy of a pause before he cuts in again. "Well, we could put something in their food. Maybe something sleep or drowsiness inducing? They have feeding bowls right outside, by the kennels."

Hm, you didn't actually notice this. It could be useful.

"I'm not sure that's helpful, though. Wouldn't we have to sneak into the kennels to do it?"

"Well, you would. I, on the other hand, can actually aim." Professional protocol prevents him from sticking his tongue out at you, but you can definitely hear the sentiment in his voice.

You give him a disapproving glare.

Still, it's not a bad idea, and Ikki seems unusually excited about the prospect. A pre-mission of this sort is risky in its own way. Ikki could be detected, for one—although the guards would have no way of knowing what he was after, so it wouldn't necessarily harm your real mission—which would put the compound on a higher level of alert. Secondarily, someone could notice that you drugged the dogs and raise the alarm on that, although in that case at least the dogs would be a non-factor.

Go through with Ikki's plan for the dogs?

Article:

[] Yes. It's a relatively easy detour for making your job much easier down the road.
-[] He can handle it on his own. The more of you there are, the more likely you are to be detected, after all.
-[] Go with him. He'll need backup if he gets found out.
[] No. Too much risk, not enough benefit. You're fairly certain you can handle the existing guards-and-dogs setup, anyways, so there really isn't any point.

As for the mission itself—apparently, the Lantern Festival begins at the end of the week here. That might be a good opportunity to sneak in, if you're not super confident in your ability to infiltrate undetected.

On the other hand, you could go tomorrow and get in and out as fast as you can, before any possible news of your presence in town can leak (assuming somebody's watching). Some clients also appreciate a job done quickly.

Article:

[] Wait for the festival. In the meantime, you:
-[] Explore the town. Iwa is an intriguing city, and even though this is the second time you've come this year, you've barely seen any of it outside of hotels and customs offices.
-[] Prepare. There's always more details you could be learning, practicing, memorizing, and it only takes one slip-up to ruin the whole mission.
[] Go tomorrow. The sooner you get this done, the better.

 

[Death and Faxes]

...and here it is. Hoping to get into a more regular update schedule for the next few months, as things will be moving faster from here on out.

Thanks to @keios for edits.

---

(1.7)​

The week leading up to your heist is a whirlwind of activity, but a controlled, consistent one. You take a few more trips out to the compound, noting the patrol patterns and schedule of the guards. There are three total groups of them, rotating in and out such that two groups are on shift at any given time.

Well, any given time except when they rotate. Their organization is passable—even good, considering they're a civilian organization—but not exemplary, and the groups don't seem to coordinate starting and ending shifts. Sometimes there's a whole twenty-to-thirty second gap when half the guards are below-deck, and even when their timing matches up, the exiting group clearly stops paying attention to their surroundings the instant their shift is over. Another little detail that might be useful.

Besides that, there's a lot to look into. Ikki, for his part, seems to be busy trying to figure out exactly how many and what kinds of herbs to mash together to do the job. He ends up dragging you to a nearby flower shop to buy some innocuous-looking flowers which Ikki assures you induce minor drowsiness and loss of fine motor control in most canine species, according to a book he just read.

Then it's back to the maps and the drawing board. You have a few days to come up with a detailed plan, contingencies for the plan, contingencies for the contingencies for the plan, and so on. Ikki whines about it, of course, but you know he's pretty good at finding the weak points in your ideas and coming up with weird outside-the-box approaches, so it's good to keep him around.

You don't get too much of the city the whole week—only a few quick trips to local eateries, all of them fast and cheap, none of them curry, and one brief rooftop excursion with Ikki that ends as soon as you realize you're attracting the attention of local ninja patrols—and you think it's kind of a shame. Ikki must, too, since you can see him stealing longing glances out the windows when he's supposed to be memorizing patrol patterns. Work takes precedence over play, though, so there's nothing for it.

Eventually the night of the festival comes around. Ikki heads out first, in the early afternoon, a couple of satchels tied to his belt.

"Wish me luck," he says, shooting you his trademark goofy grin.

"Hope you won't need it," you say back.

It's already well under way by the time dusk falls and you suit up—the streets and overpasses are thronged with people, served by entertainers and food stalls that you're sure weren't there yesterday, and the already-bright city lights have been joined by braces of brightly flickering paper lanterns. It's… so much more than the festivals you have at home. You suppose more people in one place means more more stuff, though, and this is just the logical extent of that.

This is probably your seventh or eighth trip out to the glassmaker's complex, you reflect on the way. The route is almost familiar by now, but tonight it all feels fresh again. Maybe it's the festivities and its accompanying mood lighting turning the sky into a bright haze. Maybe it's the knowledge that this will probably be the last time you make this trip.

Maybe you're just nervous.

Nerves or no, it takes no longer to arrive than it did before. You meet up with Ikki at the rim of the compound. As you'd hoped, the guards are fewer today than normal. Even with that, though, you're not completely certain you can make it across the whole compound without being seen. That's not to say you think you'll be seen; you're just not completely certain.

Fifteen minutes later, the first shift changes, just as expected. Perfect.

You drop down between a large warehouse and the walls, using the building as cover as you edge around to a side path.

Said path is normally watched by a guard in a tower as well as regularly frequented by two-man patrols, but the tower is empty right now, and you know the route of the patrol that normally covers it. You count down four seconds in your head, waiting for the patrol to pass behind another building, and then you dart out, down the path and to a little maintenance shack, Ikki following in your shadow.

Rather frustratingly, the central tower is well-isolated from the surrounding buildings by a lot of flat, open space. From an architectural perspective, it's sensible: lawns and greenery do wonders for quality of life. Examining it these past few weeks, though, you've couldn't help but think there was some non-landscaping intent there—the only paths to the main building lead through a ring of flat greenery, like a grassy moat surrounding a castle keep. Four patrols usually cross the clearing at some point in their route, and guards perched on the main building itself keep constant vigilance.

Your preparation has, of course, taken this into account, although it's by far the trickiest part of the plan.

One of the patrol groups approaches the warehouse you're hiding behind, single file, only half on alert. They have a rather uncoordinated-looking dog following on a leash, looking like it might totter over at any moment; as it passes near you it stumbles briefly in your direction, letting out a low whine. The guards hardly seem to notice, though—some of them seem a little inebriated themselves, slurring their words loudly into the night air—and one of them absent-mindedly pulls the leash onwards while finishing the loud and rather crude joke he's currently telling.

These guards are as much in a festival mood as anyone else, you think; they're seemingly intent on joining in on the revelry, or at least drinking, as much as they can, holiday shift be damned. One lingers a little as the patrol passes by, wobbling slightly as another guard begins to drag him away by the arm.

Good enough.

You dash out behind them, crossing the path and onto the lawn in the space of a second, the chakra of a mostly-formed jutsu flickering through your coils. Right before the next patrol makes their last turn into the clearing, you activate said jutsu and fall straight into the suddenly-soft earth.

Then it's just a waiting game, hiding under the loose earth and pinging your chakra off the outside world. You're not completely immobile, although your control of the technique isn't actually good enough to tunnel at the earth at anything faster than a snail's pace. This in itself isn't a big deal, as you've become pretty sure that none of the guards here can sense chakra, and so your speed is irrelevant. However, Iwa's mountainous terrain is rocky and the bedrock unusually shallow; both significant complicating factors.

Interestingly, though, whoever put in these lawns were careful to plant them over a thick bed of actual soil, soil loose enough for you to tunnel through without giving yourself away. You shift your way through the earth a little bit to find a good position, wincing a little bit at the strange muddy sliminess of chakra-infused soil, and then start collecting chakra for another technique.

You let it loose the instant you feel the patrol pass by, snaring them in a genjutsu. The men stumble slightly as your illusion settles on them, and Ikki takes this chance to make his.

From there, all you have to do is pop back out, gently easing off the illusion as you do so, vault up some sheds, and then it's just a short, chakra-enabled climb up the side of the building to the top floor. There are no less than six guards watching the roof, so you won't be going up there. The roof access is locked, anyways, and stealthily picking the lock is a rather unpromising strategy with that number of guards. Instead, you jimmy open one of the top floor windows—you know none of them have locks—and then you're in.

You're surprised at how well everything worked out, actually. You were worried that some of them might have been trained to recognize genjutsu. You did have a plan in place for that, of course, but the best-case outcome for contingencies is always never having to use them.

Your point of entry to the building is an abandoned storage closet without a lock, and you slowly push the door open. It creaks, a harsh rusty squealing noise that really seemed disproportionate for a door that size, but nobody comes running. The top floor is completely empty, after all.

Stepping into the hallway, you take a few moments to absorb the surroundings. Even shrouded in shadow, the hallway feels strangely sterile—the walls are smooth and white, the floor is tile, and the whole space is broken up only by occasional and completely identical potted plants. Combined with the total empty stillness, and the whole thing is rather unsettling.

Still, the way is clear—straight down this hall, take a right there, fourth room on the right, pick the lock—and then you're standing amidst a half-dozen shelves full of binders and scrolls.

"Wow," says Ikki.

You elbow him and make a zip your lips motion. Banter is not appropriate for stealth missions.

The specific record you're looking for is, rather obnoxiously, hidden in the very last shelf you check, and you harumph quietly to yourself as you pull it down from its resting place. It's a thick packet—a parcel, almost—marked with a year, a serial number, and a village symbol. It's not Iwa's symbol either, but Konoha's, which is interesting to say the least. Konoha and Iwa haven't historically been on good terms, and especially now with all the squabbling over Kusa. That would certainly explain why somebody wanted this specific information, then.

You hand the packet from Ikki and start the journey back out. You leave the way you came, bypassing the patrols the same way without incident. As you crest the first of the big stone crags ringing the compound, Ikki tugs your sleeve.

"Look over there," he says, pointing off towards the city.

You're about to shush him again—you're still on a mission, after all—but then you see it. A glimmering cloud of lights rises up from the city center, flickering and swaying gently in the stiff breeze. It's the lanterns, you realize: a thousand candles borne on canvas sleeves, floating up and away into the night sky. Just tonight, cloth stars light the sky.

"It's beautiful," you say. Ikki nods.

===

You and Ikki are both grinning when you arrive back at the hotel room, handing the little package to Hotarubi-sensei.

"Knew you could do it," he says, ruffling your hair. "Let's get this back home. Wouldn't do to keep a client waiting for too long."

===

There's a trio of guards stationed at the lone bridge that leads to your village, which is unusual; usually Hoshi doesn't bother with stationing guards past the bounds of the village itself.

Neither of them stops to question you or anything like that—Hoshi has few enough ninja that most of them at least recognize Hotarubi-sensei—but one of them steps forward to head you off as you approach.

"The Hoshikage requires your presence," says the man, a little apologetically.

Hotarubi-sensei nods at the man. "We will debrief with him immediately."

He turns to nod at you, his lips drawn into a thin hard line, and then continues wordlessly across the bridge. You and Ikki follow.

Your father's office is disorganized, in a way that you've never seen before. It's not a mess, but some of the normally neat little stacks of paperwork are strewn about in rough piles now, and the number of half-written letters on his desk seems to have multiplied many times over. Still, he is ever the picture of dignity as he shuffles the paperwork he's been going through and turns to acknowledge you.

"It is good that you are here," he says. "I imagine that you performed admirably on this mission."

You nod. "Everything went well. We'll drop the package off at the mission office as soon as we can."

"That is good. I am pleased." He favors you with a brief smile, before turning to Hotarubi-sensei. "The jounin council must convene on a matter."

We were waiting for your return, he doesn't say, although the implication is obvious.

Hotarubi-sensei dips his head in acknowledgement, the same stern mask on his face as before. "I understand, Hoshikage-sama." He turns back to you. "Go sign off on the mission at the mission office and take the rest of the day off."

"Wait, but don't we need you to sign—" Ikki begins, but you grab him by the arm and drag him off before he can finish.

===

The mission office, as it turns out, is unusually accommodating with the report, and you have it signed off and your stolen parcel collected in record time. Then… there really isn't anything to do, now, so the two of you decide to take a slightly early dinner.

It's a little tense—it's just you and Ikki and some yakisoba, and neither of you are particularly hungry—but you dutifully pick at your noodles as Ikki rather obviously struggles to keep a lid on his curiosity.

"What's happening?" he finally says, although it comes out flat, almost more a statement than a question.

It's a good question. Hotarubi-sensei was needed for a meeting of the jounin council, you recall, but that body generally doesn't need all of its members present to make decisions—as far as you know almost all of their meetings are about patrol logistics and trade routes. The list of things that would require Hotarubi-sensei's presence—in spite of his assignment to a long-term mission, even—is very short. There's really only one thing you know of, actually.

"We're going to fight a war," you half-whisper.

===

What will you do?

Article:

[] As your father's presumptive heir, this is specifically the kind of thing that you need to learn about. Find your father and ask to be looped in.
[] It seems like everything's pretty hectic right now, and you don't want to distract your father from his duties, but you're still curious. Ask Hotarubi-sensei for more information the next time you see him.
[] It's high-level strategery stuff, and it doesn't really concern you because you're not even nine yet. You should be training instead, anyways.

Your training will, of course, not go neglected now that Hoshi is on war footing; rather the opposite. What do you focus on?

Article:

[] write-in. You have 8+1=9xp to distribute among any items on your character sheet. XP costs to next level are displayed.