FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
I'd long considered Naruto ninjas to be chi mages rather then ninja for a reason. While they can be stealthy, they typically don't even attempt it once they leave the academy.
Tome of the Orange Sky (Naruto/MGLN)
- Thread starter CmptrWz
- Start date
- Crossover
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- Tags
- mgln naruto naruto uzumaki complete
- Location
- Georgia
On the other hand, we're also seeing why it a narrative so rarely written. There's a reason Cmptrwz gets people complaining in every one of their stories about the lack of action. This story isn't exciting. It's enjoyable to read, but not exciting.
My main gripe with the author's stories isn't the lack of conflict, but how what conflict there is plays out. I've seen arcs setting up a major conflict over the course of a dozen updates just fizzle into nothingness when it all comes together, and that lost potential irks me, though clearly not so much that I stop reading their stories.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
There are ways to make proper ninjary interesting to read about\watch, but it is indeed much harder than having them be magic fight-mages.
If more people wrote stories like this I imagine I would be much less interested, but as it is such depictions of conflict resolution are quite rare and so CmptrWz's stories remain a nice break from the usual 'maximum drama' style of conflict resolution.
I actually kind of enjoy it, because that is often how things work out in reality and its a nice change from everything always being a gargantuan deal.
If more people wrote stories like this I imagine I would be much less interested, but as it is such depictions of conflict resolution are quite rare and so CmptrWz's stories remain a nice break from the usual 'maximum drama' style of conflict resolution.
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I agree, and there's usually a couple components to this that make the anti-climax rather nice.
First, for antagonist interrupts, there's often prior views from their perspective and they just don't know how their plan will not work, so we get some nice dramatic irony out of it. Related, I really hate it when stories have sudden, dramatic shifts as a result of unforeshadowed antagonist interrupts, and even foreshadowed ones can be unpleasant. It's delightful in Cmptrwz stories that those sorts of things just fizzle out.
Second, a lot of planning often goes into events that are over relatively quickly, and these stories reflect that. The protagonist (or the antagonists) spends weeks planning an outing that lasts an hour and goes smoothly from her perspective (or derails immediately for the antagonists). There's not actually a lot of content to cover in that case, as opposed to the planning and such ahead of time.
Third, these stories are less "Dramatic retelling of events in the life" and more "How do the systems as presented in this world interact in ways that make sense, and what else is around here to explore" type stories, so the drama takes a back foot. It's not gone, as it's lots of fun to explore from specific perspectives, but it's definitely not the focus.
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- Location
- Earth, Sol System, Virgo Supercluster, Earth-1218
CmptrWz follows the opposite of Unspoken Plan Guarantee, showing all the planning up to the event means showing the event itself is a slower build up, but you end up with a lot less ass pulls like "I prepared for you with this device" "I prepared for your device with this device to neutralize it" "ah-ha! I prepared for that device too!"
Sometimes he uses an Unfolding Plan Montage, but those are harder to pull off in text and CmptrWz usually just references something already established.
- Location
- Michigan
Honestly I prefer the fact that most fights I have read in CmptrWz's stories that I have read so far are fairly short events for two reasons, the first is that it is accurate to real fights which rarely last more than a few minutes, especially outside of combat sports like Boxing where a mix of protective gear and regulations against the most effective tactics drag things out, the second reason is that action scenes just tend to require a visual medium to portray will and translating that to text format tends to get shit results in multiple possible ways.
Chapter 49 - Cleaning up the Land of Snow
They'd departed the port village as the knocked-out local shinobi were starting to recover from the drugs, though keeping them knocked out that long had required a very careful second dosing and at least one medical intervention. The other two medical interventions might not have been necessary, but they'd been done anyway. Clones left behind to monitor the waking shinobi had found their panic over being dressed as civilians with none of their normal equipment to be somewhat amusing. Unfortunately, a flying messenger had negated the communication-denying benefit of removing the armor from the two local 'messengers', the messenger coming in from a train that had also arrived that morning. That messenger had rushed back with information.
Incredibly misleading information, admittedly, but key points were accurate enough to expect an attack when they made it to the far end of the collapsed tunnel the next day. Preparations were made to disguise the train in a way that would allow a group of automatic kunai launchers to obliterate the group if needed, Doto not even caring if Koyuki survived so long as he got the key from her.
Sabotaging both the kunai launchers and the balloon-like airship found on the train hadn't been difficult. The latter had been the easier one, simply ensuring that the connection between the balloon and the cabin that would hang from it looked good without any pressure behind the sealing compound that was there to prevent leaks. Five hundred pokes with senbon looked like it had been plenty to ensure that the seam would tear open violently upon attempting to fill the balloon. That left the kunai launchers, which were much more complex and harder to get into in a useful fashion.
After two hours of deliberation they'd decided on a dual-action plan to hopefully use the power of confusion on their enemy. Hinata's clones collected some of the ice bombs they'd gotten from both Yukigakure and the port village and planted them inside of the launchers. If she did things right then they'd go off in the launchers when the cranks were turned, hopefully destroying them. While she was doing that, Naruto's clones used the information on Yukigakure's own explosive tags to place 'ice' explosive seals on each launcher. Similar explosive seals were placed elsewhere on the train, but were unlikely to be as effective, especially as they'd determined that if they could keep an engine and a couple of cars in one piece they could possibly use it for themselves to get back to one of the major transit hubs.
"Good morning," Kakashi greeted Koyuki, Reiko, and Riko as everyone was getting moving for the day. Sandayu and the director were just arriving to join them, and looked curious about the jounin's good mood. "How would you like to include a subplot in your film about loyal Yukigakure shinobi helping to oppose your uncle?"
"...they're loyal to him," Koyuki pointed out. "That's how he was able to arrange to kill my father."
"How sure of that are they? Because I'm told that there's likely to be a good show of dissent in the ranks when we're attacked later today."
Sandayu scowled. "Why is 'attacked later today' being presented as an afterthought?"
"Oh. Did I forget to mention that before now? Must've slipped my mind after we were able to ensure that they had to wait for us to get this far before they could get us in position for their more dangerous weapons. Admittedly, after their initial attempts fail they'll still have half a dozen chakra armor equipped shinobi, plus Doto himself in his personal variant. I'm personally impressed with his security, as we weren't actually able to mess with his food today."
"You were able to arrange for apparent dissent in the ranks, but not poison him?"
"Indeed. Trust me when I say that having that level of security on his personal meals is incredibly impressive. We even took notes on the security measures for later analysis and potential adaptation. The rest of the contingent might be having problems by the time it's time to attack us though, assuming timing estimates are correct, as their food was stored far less securely."
This was greeted with a look of 'there is no way you are telling the truth' from Sandayu, but no attempt to call them out on it was made. Instead, they got ready for the day and departed.
Nothing immediately happened when the group came around the bend to where the train was fairly well hidden. Instead, the decision had apparently been made to wait until the entire caravan was in sight and likely unable to retreat before the order to attack was given. Either that or the lookouts hadn't noticed until that point because they were suffering from severe gastrointestinal distress. Possibly both.
Either way, the covering on the train was cast aside, the sides of the cars opened up, and the still-capable shinobi started trying to crank the kunai launchers. Every last one of them had an ice bomb go off inside of them, ruining the launchers and generally injuring the operators. Then clones triggered the ice explosive seals along the train, resulting in a wonderful show of nothing successfully happening as far as attacks went.
Doto seemed to decide that this meant that there were traitors in the ranks, because he immediately activated the deployment system for the airship. The top of that car blew off, the airship started to inflate, and then the entire balloon section tore free of the cabin with what sounded like a particularly loud farting noise. A minute later the man took to the air in his black armor, firing a technique into the engine of the train to destroy it before using a wind technique to get going at a good clip away from them.
"Now I feel cheated," Kakashi commented. "They couldn't even manage to send a single kunai our way?"
"Should we help those left behind?" Sandayu asked, looking at two shinobi that had fallen off the train. One was throwing up and the other was bleeding heavily.
"Only if we want to finish them off more quickly than the poison will. I'm just annoyed that Doto was intelligent enough to destroy the engine of the train, denying us the ability to use it to move more quickly through the country."
"He's never been stupid," Koyuki commented. "But I think I would like to end this group's suffering before we get moving."
That ended up turning into a movie scene with Yoko performing ceremonial rites as they took care of the bodies, to show that they were respectful of the dead even when the dead were the enemy.
Unnoticed by Doto, clones had followed him back to his fortress that he seemed to be trying to convert into a proper castle. They'd made it into the building, but barely, as he'd only shut down the security for a couple of hours. Not enough time to do much of immediate importance, like sabotage the two airships present. Worse, he personally did the pre-departure checks while waiting for four loyal shinobi to arrive from a nearby base. They'd departed almost immediately after those four had shown up, and the security system had locked the fortress down again afterwards.
Him being paranoid was just helping Naruto and Hinata though. The guards were stationed outside of the fortress when Doto wasn't around, and the security systems protected the outside of the building and all ways in or out. Granted, even the air vents were heavily secured, but if you were already inside or could be summoned in then there was very little to slow you down. By the end of the day the place was emptied of everything but the other airship, which proved to be difficult to remove.
Overnight and into the next day the clones continued to work, eventually figuring out a way to wrap the airship in chakra chains to anchor it well enough for a reverse summon to one of the stones in the foxes' realm to bring it along. The clone popped when doing so, but the airship was successfully moved that way. That had been mid-afternoon, and by then the rest of the building was no longer merely 'emptied'. Now it was gutted, a shell of its former self only held up by critical support columns and with the only remaining intact areas being the portions needed to keep the security system running.
"We should set up camp for a bit," Kakashi said as they came to a reasonably defensible position a couple of days after the disappointment of a train. The location wasn't perfect, but they'd need to head significantly away from the road to manage better. A little bit of work with earth manipulation would provide plenty of cover without impeding their own sight-lines up the mountain, at least.
"Why?" Sandayu asked.
"Doto's going to reach us in an airship in the next two hours and we aren't going to reach any more defensible position before he shows up. The open shots up the mountain that they're likely to come down while attacking should be good for the filming side of things too, I suppose, but I prefer the lack of cover it gives our enemy."
"...you're not going to explain how you know this, are you?"
"Now why would I ruin the mystery by explaining how the trick is done?"
Getting everything set up, including having cameras ready to start rolling when the airship came into view, had been easy enough. Earth and stone walls set up between them and the mountainside, clones secretly hiding in the sparse trees to either side of the wide-open area to help with any tricks they wanted to pull and two specially-prepared clones getting ready further out. Koyuki and Yoko were standing with Reiko and Riko protecting them, nobody in the crew likely realizing that Yoko was actually helping to guard Koyuki, while Kakashi was in position to visibly serve as the primary defender. If anyone in the group noticed that the three 'cooks' had come out and were spread out behind the lines as extra security then they hadn't said anything about it.
"With five opponents we may need to step in," Riko commented.
"Especially as three of the five appear to be flight-capable," Reiko added.
"...how do you know that?" Koyuki asked.
"If Kakashi-san does not wish to reveal our sources then it isn't our place to do so ourselves."
Riko nodded. "We just ask that you not be too surprised should we need to take action."
Kakashi signaled a warning about the airship arriving a minute later, the cameras were started up, and then the airship came over the mountaintop. Four individuals in silver armor leapt from the airship, two lighter kunoichi staying in the air while the two heavier shinobi dropped to the ground. One of the latter had a snowboard, allowing him to rapidly approach while the other started running down the mountain. Doto visibly stayed behind on the airship, observing.
"Very unfair odds," Kakashi said, sounding like he was commenting on the weather despite using a technique to amplify his voice significantly. "Only four of you against us. Where's the rest of your army?"
In response to that, the running shinobi performed a series of hand seals and called out a technique, though it was impossible to hear properly at the distance he was at. The result was the snow on the mountain around him shifting, starting an avalanche that quickly formed into wolves. Those barreled past the snowboard-riding shinobi, but Kakashi created two shadow clones and the three formed a net of lightning chakra. As the snow wolves hit the net they fell apart, and thanks to Knight Armor the snow itself barely hindered Kakashi or his clones.
The two kunoichi in the air made it into position to start launching projectiles a moment later, sending kunai with ice bombs attached to them at Kakashi. Reiko and Riko stepped forward in front of Koyuki and Yoko, using senbon to draw blood from their own palms before running through the standard summoning hand seals. That was a ruse, as they put no chakra into the technique, and instead used the fox-style chakra summoning to pull their prepared clones to them. Reiko's in the form of a white tiger man, clad in armor and with large white wings, and Riko's in the form of a white bear man, clad more in leather than armor but with its own wings. Both 'summons' took to the air, to the obvious shock of the enemy and film crew alike.
First to recover appeared to be the snowboarding shinobi, who fired a claw on a cable out to try to grab Koyuki. Riko moved further forward and under the claw, striking it with her palm to send it high, before Reiko grabbed the cable and channeled lightning chakra into it. That flowed down the cable and caused the launcher to malfunction and start to retract, pulling the shinobi right off of his snowboard. Riko spotted this fortuitous event in time to form a stone wall around the cable, and the shinobi slammed into it hard enough to break his back and take him out of the fight.
In the air, the two kunoichi weren't expecting to suddenly have their own flying enemies to deal with. The 'summons' stuck to physically attacking, each having claws to attack with, and Knight Armor protections kept them from being dispelled. The protection of the chakra armor made it a lot more difficult to take the kunoichi out of the air though, so it was currently a more protracted battle while weaknesses were probed for.
The remaining armor-wearing shinobi on the ground reached Kakashi as the snowboard was sliding past, lashing out with a couple more techniques that pulled on the existing ice and snow. Unlike the wolves, these seemed less susceptible to lightning disrupting them and were proving to be potential threats to the civilians if they slipped by the line. Kakashi let his clones handle those and moved in to attack directly, using the sudden taijutsu battle to distract his opponent and allow the launched snow and ice based attacks to be more easily countered. The chakra armor absorbed a lot of the damage, but Kakashi's Knight Armor was doing the same in the other direction.
"Excuse me," Reiko said as she moved forward and figured out how to detach the cable from the unconscious shinobi's arm. Once she'd done that she moved back to the guarding position and Riko moved forward to reshape the wall he'd slammed into, forming a large hand that picked the shinobi up. A warning was sent to Kakashi, and then the stone hand threw the shinobi. Kakashi timed things well, getting under and kicking his opponent into the air before pulling a dome of earth over himself. The two armor-clad shinobi struck each other in mid-air, and the power crystals for their armor overloaded.
The explosion was impressive, and caused enough of a distraction for the two 'summons' to grab and throw their own opponents at each other. Unlike on the ground, the two kunoichi obviously realized what was being attempted and tried to course-correct to merely pass each other in the air. With another half-second to react they'd have succeeded, but their flight packs hooked on each other and shorted out. That caused them to drop like rocks from the air, though they only suffered the detonation of their armors after they slammed into the ground.
For the first time, Doto was starting to have doubts that he could take on the big five countries, with or without the superweapon that his niece had been given the key to. Kakashi Hatake wasn't supposed to be that durable, but had taken hits as though he was wearing chakra armor of his own. The two 'movie kunoichi' protecting Koyuki were also far more dangerous than originally believed, with completely unheard of summons that could fly on their own and that the chakra armor merely helped against instead of rendered useless.
Coupled with the unfortunately obvious existence of traitors in the Yukigakure ranks, both in sabotage and revealing the biggest weakness of the chakra armors to outsiders? There would be difficulties in arranging to take over the other nations, and that was assuming that the superweapon was usable at a distance and they didn't have to construct more of them to maintain control.
On the other hand, this entire situation was an insult to him and his power. If he ran away now then he might as well give up on ruling the country as it was, at least without obtaining the key. His armor was also significantly more powerful than the others, and there weren't any other armors in the area to be used against him like had just happened to his subordinates. Mentally nodding, he hit the navigation lockdown button and took to the air, trusting that the automatic system could keep the airship from moving away while nobody remained on board.
His primary objective was grabbing his niece, but he'd at least have to fake going after Hatake and the two kunoichi as a distraction before he'd be able to break off. Once they were committed to a defense he could use that distraction to grab Koyuki, and then they'd not dare attack him. The unknown kunoichi were a potential problem there, but an unexpected blitz should be enough to get past them long enough and he didn't think their reaction times were good enough to stop him.
Reinforcing the protections between the caravan and Doto had been the focus on the ground, at least at first. In the air, the two 'summons' had moved to the sides, to be less obvious targets to the armor-clad tyrant. When he took to the air they followed his path to either side of him, waiting for the right moment to strike. He, in turn, ignored them, dropping low as he did hand seals and pulled on his chakra. Snow and ice flowed from the ground and formed into a black dragon heading straight for Kakashi, then Doto moved to dart around to the side.
Unfortunately for him, he'd very obviously forgotten about the two 'summons', and one of them intercepted him with a punch and engaged him in mid-air taijutsu. The other came up behind him, latching onto the armor from behind. It seemed that this was definitely a sturdier model, as Doto was able to force himself free after a few seconds. But the distraction had been enough to negate the threat of his black ice dragon technique, Kakashi having sliced through it with a lightning cutter.
"Well," Kakashi said as he watched the struggle between Doto and the two 'summons'. "This could be a problem. I don't see Doto landing, or those two being able to finish him off right now. Hmmm."
"I can take care of it," Yoko said, stepping forward past Reiko and Riko.
"Oh?"
"He is obviously unworthy of his position. Proving that will ensure the safety of the country far better than watching the fight."
"You're still down here, and they're moving further into the air as they struggle."
Yoko just smiled sadly, pretending that she regretted this more than she really did, before a pair of glowing orange feathered wings appeared behind her. A moment later she was in the air, heading straight for Doto, a swirling medical chakra-scalpel Rasengan forming in her hand as she moved. The two 'summons' positioned Doto so that he wouldn't see the attack coming, allowing her to strike his back with it. His shielding apparently completely ignored medical chakra, the orb passing right through it and the armor. Doto noticed as soon as it started to reach his skin, but didn't live long enough to react to it.
A moment later his corpse was falling as though a puppet with its strings cut, the two 'summons' escorting Yoko back down to the ground.
Landing back near Koyuki a moment later, Yoko dismissed the wings and bowed to the princess. "Your uncle was unworthy, and is no longer a threat to you."
For her part, the princess seemed to be in a state of mild shock, even as the 'summons' headed for the airship to bring it down to the ground as well.
"Okay you five," Kakashi said that evening, after securing an area for a quick meeting 'out of character' for the disguised Team Yurei. Yoko was off doing shrine maiden tasks, not that she needed to be present in addition to Naruto. "Several of our primary objectives are taken care of, but we still need to eliminate the threat of Yukigakure loyalists deciding to kill Koyuki even though Doto is out of the picture."
Hinata smirked and gestured at the three chunin. "They're doing so right now, or at least their clones are. Looting all the outposts to the ground and taking out the shinobi, mostly with poisons and in their sleep."
"Not that the three weren't busy before now," Naruto pointed out. "They've done a decent job preparing things for us, like the poisons we put into the food on the train, and you know that they stopped several attempts at sabotaging our supplies."
Kakashi nodded as the three chunin grinned a bit at the praise. "Yeah, the Yukigakure infiltrators were horrible even by 'minor village' standards. Or maybe I'm just used to particularly talented minor villages headed by former major village shinobi? Hard to say."
"Are we going to be going along to activate whatever it is that Koyuki has the key to?" Ino asked after a moment of silence.
"Most likely not, if only because Sandayu is probably going to want to keep some secrets from us after seeing how effective we were. There's a near-guarantee of an alliance with the Land of Fire, of course, but it's probably a good thing that we were outright asked to dismantle the shinobi of the country. Koyuki doesn't need the specter of loyalist shinobi coming back to assassinate her when we're gone, and we don't even need to make excuses for how we got all the information."
That was a nice perk, even if the expectation was that Konoha was going to send more teams to do the dismantling later. Sandayu and Koyuki were probably going to be surprised when informed that the dismantling part of the mission was already completed.
Ensuring that the people knew that Doto was dead and Koyuki was now the rightful ruler had taken less time than expected. Watching the group 'breaking into' Doto's fortress in an attempt to find anything useful in it had been amusing though, especially the discovery that there wasn't a floor past the front door after six hours of carefully ensuring that the security system wasn't going to harm anyone. Koyuki had looked at Kakashi and asked if he knew about the inside of the fortress being 'a bit too gutted', and he'd merely replied that the team had wanted to ensure that they found anything and everything of importance in the building.
Reiko, Riko, and Yoko were needed for the final scenes of the film, which was itself a little annoying. This included the requested work on the shrine, to get it back up to a usable standard. Kiba had suggested rebuilding the shrine in secret before bringing Hoshi in to help put up an illusion that the shrine was still in horrible shape, dispelling it in a wave as Yoko entered the honden with the representation of Suijin taken from Konoha in order to make it look like the place was literally being restored by divine powers. The director hadn't been expecting that, but he and everyone else watching who hadn't been told it was going to happen ate it up. Triply so when, as the doors to the honden sealed behind Yoko on her way out, water started flowing from it and the 'restoration' followed the water away from the honden.
"Thank you," Kakashi said after the mission paperwork had been signed.
"No," Koyuki said, looking over the group. "Thank all of you. This wouldn't have gone nearly as smoothly without you." She looked at Yoko, bowing slightly to her. "I especially didn't expect you to end him, proving that he was unworthy in a manner none of us expected."
"Sometimes deaths are inevitable," Yoko stated. "No matter that we might wish otherwise."
"I understand. Mostly, I wish I had a better way to contact most of you."
"Unfortunately," Riko said, half-bowing. "We don't exist."
"You've said that repeatedly as you've rejected any offers to relocate to the Land of Snow, and yet you're still here in front of me."
In lieu of a verbal response, everyone other than Kakashi and Yoko vanished in a puff of smoke, summoned back to Konoha.
"But...how?" Sandayu asked, looking around the supposedly-sealed room. Not that he was able to see the group of disguised clones left behind to watch the reactions or those preparing to summon other clones carrying storage tags.
"Did you think they were fibbing when they said they didn't exist?" Kakashi asked as he pocketed the confirmed-complete paperwork. "They existed only for the duration of the mission. The mission is over, and now they're gone. All that's left is for me to escort Yoko back to Konoha. Are you sure that you want to let us take the last airship?"
Koyuki nodded. "It's chakra-powered, and by my own request we no longer have anyone who can keep it working. Better that someone gets use of it, and the extra food supplies it represents as I work to get the country self-sufficient again are well worth it. How long do you think it will take to get the supplies here?"
"How soon would you like them?"
"As soon as possible, of course."
"I see." Kakashi checked his watch as fifteen crates full of storage scrolls were brought in through summoning at the far end of the room, clones appearing on the far side of a silencing effect just long enough to unseal a couple of crates each. Once all fifteen crates were there they dropped the silencing effect, and Kakashi nodded. "Would fourteen-thirty work?"
"Fourteen-thirty tomorrow?" Sandayu asked, checking his own watch.
"No, today."
"...that was a few minutes ago, unless my watch is wrong."
Kakashi gestured across the room. "Yes, it was a few minutes ago. The supplies are over there. Since Koyuki can operate storage seals we delivered them in sealing scrolls as they're easier to label and cheaper to produce in bulk."
Koyuki and Sandayu turned to look at the stack of crates, both of their faces showing significant shock. She recovered first, turning back to Kakashi. "How do you keep doing these things? We couldn't put half of what your team seems to be able to manage in a movie without being called out on it being entirely unrealistic!"
"Properly equipped and prepared shinobi can trivially make movie magic look downright mundane. We just rarely get a chance to show off and need to make the most of it when we do."
Coming in for a landing at Konoha was done at the new airship station behind the Hokage Rock. The other two airships they'd ended up with, the intact large one and the now-repaired smaller one, were already in their docking slots. Lessons on operating the things were being worked on, and Kakashi was likely to end up being a primary teacher as the only one with 'obvious experience'.
This had annoyed him for over a day after he realized it, because Yoko was a shrine maiden and not an airship pilot. Nobody was going to believe that she had taught him.
Naruto had been waiting and took care of lashing the airship down once it had landed. No luggage existed to unload thanks to seal tags, but there was quite the crowd watching.
"How long have we had an airship station?" Kakashi asked, as if he didn't know given that he'd asked for it to be 'mysterious'. But him knowing any of this would imply that he had something to do with it.
"Two days," Naruto answered. "It appeared overnight, along with the two fully-functional airships. The Anbu weren't happy about a sudden structure within the security perimeter either."
"Of course it did, and of course they weren't. Someone is having fun, I guess. Oh well. I have a pile of mission paperwork to turn in, and likely a long debriefing session."
Naruto was also going to be attending that debriefing session, of course. It had been put off until Kakashi was officially back with Yoko, but most of the village wouldn't know that anyone other than those two had been involved in the mission.
Koyuki frowned as she looked around after using the real key to turn on the generator her father had been working on. She'd been embarrassed and thankful that very few people were watching when she'd forgotten about the fake and used it first.
"It's...getting warmer?" she noted, watching the snow and ice start to melt around her. This was nothing like the descriptions they'd found that described a gathering of rainbow energy in the generator before it was released in a wave.
"The notes we were able to recover from the workshop downstairs referred to three different functions," Sandayu noted. "The heat generator, extraction of some kind of fantastic energy from that dead bush, and use of the extracted energy to distribute the heat and 'revitalize' the land. Presumably the bush being dead means that we're only getting the heat."
"He had pictures of the entire area suddenly being a springtime paradise."
"And before he started working with the bush he was able to keep the mountain warm at best. Which would at least give us some farmable land, but this was the only place found that was suitable for the geothermal tap used. Building stepped farming areas won't be a major problem and will definitely help with our food situation. We could probably hire Konoha to make it even easier, given what their earth manipulation techniques can do, assuming we want to let them know about the mountain at all. In the meantime we can see about testing other plants to see if they work in place of the dead bush and put out feelers to see if any more of those bushes exist. Perhaps even find a team that can revive the dead one?"
Koyuki had hoped to be able to build on her father's much more impressive later work, but supposed that they had to make do with anything they could to get the country back to no longer relying on outside supplies for basic survival. "I doubt anything can be recovered from the ashes and goop we found where it was supposed to be, but trying and failing is better than assuming it can't be done. Maybe something in the roots survived?"
Incredibly misleading information, admittedly, but key points were accurate enough to expect an attack when they made it to the far end of the collapsed tunnel the next day. Preparations were made to disguise the train in a way that would allow a group of automatic kunai launchers to obliterate the group if needed, Doto not even caring if Koyuki survived so long as he got the key from her.
Sabotaging both the kunai launchers and the balloon-like airship found on the train hadn't been difficult. The latter had been the easier one, simply ensuring that the connection between the balloon and the cabin that would hang from it looked good without any pressure behind the sealing compound that was there to prevent leaks. Five hundred pokes with senbon looked like it had been plenty to ensure that the seam would tear open violently upon attempting to fill the balloon. That left the kunai launchers, which were much more complex and harder to get into in a useful fashion.
After two hours of deliberation they'd decided on a dual-action plan to hopefully use the power of confusion on their enemy. Hinata's clones collected some of the ice bombs they'd gotten from both Yukigakure and the port village and planted them inside of the launchers. If she did things right then they'd go off in the launchers when the cranks were turned, hopefully destroying them. While she was doing that, Naruto's clones used the information on Yukigakure's own explosive tags to place 'ice' explosive seals on each launcher. Similar explosive seals were placed elsewhere on the train, but were unlikely to be as effective, especially as they'd determined that if they could keep an engine and a couple of cars in one piece they could possibly use it for themselves to get back to one of the major transit hubs.
"Good morning," Kakashi greeted Koyuki, Reiko, and Riko as everyone was getting moving for the day. Sandayu and the director were just arriving to join them, and looked curious about the jounin's good mood. "How would you like to include a subplot in your film about loyal Yukigakure shinobi helping to oppose your uncle?"
"...they're loyal to him," Koyuki pointed out. "That's how he was able to arrange to kill my father."
"How sure of that are they? Because I'm told that there's likely to be a good show of dissent in the ranks when we're attacked later today."
Sandayu scowled. "Why is 'attacked later today' being presented as an afterthought?"
"Oh. Did I forget to mention that before now? Must've slipped my mind after we were able to ensure that they had to wait for us to get this far before they could get us in position for their more dangerous weapons. Admittedly, after their initial attempts fail they'll still have half a dozen chakra armor equipped shinobi, plus Doto himself in his personal variant. I'm personally impressed with his security, as we weren't actually able to mess with his food today."
"You were able to arrange for apparent dissent in the ranks, but not poison him?"
"Indeed. Trust me when I say that having that level of security on his personal meals is incredibly impressive. We even took notes on the security measures for later analysis and potential adaptation. The rest of the contingent might be having problems by the time it's time to attack us though, assuming timing estimates are correct, as their food was stored far less securely."
This was greeted with a look of 'there is no way you are telling the truth' from Sandayu, but no attempt to call them out on it was made. Instead, they got ready for the day and departed.
Nothing immediately happened when the group came around the bend to where the train was fairly well hidden. Instead, the decision had apparently been made to wait until the entire caravan was in sight and likely unable to retreat before the order to attack was given. Either that or the lookouts hadn't noticed until that point because they were suffering from severe gastrointestinal distress. Possibly both.
Either way, the covering on the train was cast aside, the sides of the cars opened up, and the still-capable shinobi started trying to crank the kunai launchers. Every last one of them had an ice bomb go off inside of them, ruining the launchers and generally injuring the operators. Then clones triggered the ice explosive seals along the train, resulting in a wonderful show of nothing successfully happening as far as attacks went.
Doto seemed to decide that this meant that there were traitors in the ranks, because he immediately activated the deployment system for the airship. The top of that car blew off, the airship started to inflate, and then the entire balloon section tore free of the cabin with what sounded like a particularly loud farting noise. A minute later the man took to the air in his black armor, firing a technique into the engine of the train to destroy it before using a wind technique to get going at a good clip away from them.
"Now I feel cheated," Kakashi commented. "They couldn't even manage to send a single kunai our way?"
"Should we help those left behind?" Sandayu asked, looking at two shinobi that had fallen off the train. One was throwing up and the other was bleeding heavily.
"Only if we want to finish them off more quickly than the poison will. I'm just annoyed that Doto was intelligent enough to destroy the engine of the train, denying us the ability to use it to move more quickly through the country."
"He's never been stupid," Koyuki commented. "But I think I would like to end this group's suffering before we get moving."
That ended up turning into a movie scene with Yoko performing ceremonial rites as they took care of the bodies, to show that they were respectful of the dead even when the dead were the enemy.
Unnoticed by Doto, clones had followed him back to his fortress that he seemed to be trying to convert into a proper castle. They'd made it into the building, but barely, as he'd only shut down the security for a couple of hours. Not enough time to do much of immediate importance, like sabotage the two airships present. Worse, he personally did the pre-departure checks while waiting for four loyal shinobi to arrive from a nearby base. They'd departed almost immediately after those four had shown up, and the security system had locked the fortress down again afterwards.
Him being paranoid was just helping Naruto and Hinata though. The guards were stationed outside of the fortress when Doto wasn't around, and the security systems protected the outside of the building and all ways in or out. Granted, even the air vents were heavily secured, but if you were already inside or could be summoned in then there was very little to slow you down. By the end of the day the place was emptied of everything but the other airship, which proved to be difficult to remove.
Overnight and into the next day the clones continued to work, eventually figuring out a way to wrap the airship in chakra chains to anchor it well enough for a reverse summon to one of the stones in the foxes' realm to bring it along. The clone popped when doing so, but the airship was successfully moved that way. That had been mid-afternoon, and by then the rest of the building was no longer merely 'emptied'. Now it was gutted, a shell of its former self only held up by critical support columns and with the only remaining intact areas being the portions needed to keep the security system running.
"We should set up camp for a bit," Kakashi said as they came to a reasonably defensible position a couple of days after the disappointment of a train. The location wasn't perfect, but they'd need to head significantly away from the road to manage better. A little bit of work with earth manipulation would provide plenty of cover without impeding their own sight-lines up the mountain, at least.
"Why?" Sandayu asked.
"Doto's going to reach us in an airship in the next two hours and we aren't going to reach any more defensible position before he shows up. The open shots up the mountain that they're likely to come down while attacking should be good for the filming side of things too, I suppose, but I prefer the lack of cover it gives our enemy."
"...you're not going to explain how you know this, are you?"
"Now why would I ruin the mystery by explaining how the trick is done?"
Getting everything set up, including having cameras ready to start rolling when the airship came into view, had been easy enough. Earth and stone walls set up between them and the mountainside, clones secretly hiding in the sparse trees to either side of the wide-open area to help with any tricks they wanted to pull and two specially-prepared clones getting ready further out. Koyuki and Yoko were standing with Reiko and Riko protecting them, nobody in the crew likely realizing that Yoko was actually helping to guard Koyuki, while Kakashi was in position to visibly serve as the primary defender. If anyone in the group noticed that the three 'cooks' had come out and were spread out behind the lines as extra security then they hadn't said anything about it.
"With five opponents we may need to step in," Riko commented.
"Especially as three of the five appear to be flight-capable," Reiko added.
"...how do you know that?" Koyuki asked.
"If Kakashi-san does not wish to reveal our sources then it isn't our place to do so ourselves."
Riko nodded. "We just ask that you not be too surprised should we need to take action."
Kakashi signaled a warning about the airship arriving a minute later, the cameras were started up, and then the airship came over the mountaintop. Four individuals in silver armor leapt from the airship, two lighter kunoichi staying in the air while the two heavier shinobi dropped to the ground. One of the latter had a snowboard, allowing him to rapidly approach while the other started running down the mountain. Doto visibly stayed behind on the airship, observing.
"Very unfair odds," Kakashi said, sounding like he was commenting on the weather despite using a technique to amplify his voice significantly. "Only four of you against us. Where's the rest of your army?"
In response to that, the running shinobi performed a series of hand seals and called out a technique, though it was impossible to hear properly at the distance he was at. The result was the snow on the mountain around him shifting, starting an avalanche that quickly formed into wolves. Those barreled past the snowboard-riding shinobi, but Kakashi created two shadow clones and the three formed a net of lightning chakra. As the snow wolves hit the net they fell apart, and thanks to Knight Armor the snow itself barely hindered Kakashi or his clones.
The two kunoichi in the air made it into position to start launching projectiles a moment later, sending kunai with ice bombs attached to them at Kakashi. Reiko and Riko stepped forward in front of Koyuki and Yoko, using senbon to draw blood from their own palms before running through the standard summoning hand seals. That was a ruse, as they put no chakra into the technique, and instead used the fox-style chakra summoning to pull their prepared clones to them. Reiko's in the form of a white tiger man, clad in armor and with large white wings, and Riko's in the form of a white bear man, clad more in leather than armor but with its own wings. Both 'summons' took to the air, to the obvious shock of the enemy and film crew alike.
First to recover appeared to be the snowboarding shinobi, who fired a claw on a cable out to try to grab Koyuki. Riko moved further forward and under the claw, striking it with her palm to send it high, before Reiko grabbed the cable and channeled lightning chakra into it. That flowed down the cable and caused the launcher to malfunction and start to retract, pulling the shinobi right off of his snowboard. Riko spotted this fortuitous event in time to form a stone wall around the cable, and the shinobi slammed into it hard enough to break his back and take him out of the fight.
In the air, the two kunoichi weren't expecting to suddenly have their own flying enemies to deal with. The 'summons' stuck to physically attacking, each having claws to attack with, and Knight Armor protections kept them from being dispelled. The protection of the chakra armor made it a lot more difficult to take the kunoichi out of the air though, so it was currently a more protracted battle while weaknesses were probed for.
The remaining armor-wearing shinobi on the ground reached Kakashi as the snowboard was sliding past, lashing out with a couple more techniques that pulled on the existing ice and snow. Unlike the wolves, these seemed less susceptible to lightning disrupting them and were proving to be potential threats to the civilians if they slipped by the line. Kakashi let his clones handle those and moved in to attack directly, using the sudden taijutsu battle to distract his opponent and allow the launched snow and ice based attacks to be more easily countered. The chakra armor absorbed a lot of the damage, but Kakashi's Knight Armor was doing the same in the other direction.
"Excuse me," Reiko said as she moved forward and figured out how to detach the cable from the unconscious shinobi's arm. Once she'd done that she moved back to the guarding position and Riko moved forward to reshape the wall he'd slammed into, forming a large hand that picked the shinobi up. A warning was sent to Kakashi, and then the stone hand threw the shinobi. Kakashi timed things well, getting under and kicking his opponent into the air before pulling a dome of earth over himself. The two armor-clad shinobi struck each other in mid-air, and the power crystals for their armor overloaded.
The explosion was impressive, and caused enough of a distraction for the two 'summons' to grab and throw their own opponents at each other. Unlike on the ground, the two kunoichi obviously realized what was being attempted and tried to course-correct to merely pass each other in the air. With another half-second to react they'd have succeeded, but their flight packs hooked on each other and shorted out. That caused them to drop like rocks from the air, though they only suffered the detonation of their armors after they slammed into the ground.
For the first time, Doto was starting to have doubts that he could take on the big five countries, with or without the superweapon that his niece had been given the key to. Kakashi Hatake wasn't supposed to be that durable, but had taken hits as though he was wearing chakra armor of his own. The two 'movie kunoichi' protecting Koyuki were also far more dangerous than originally believed, with completely unheard of summons that could fly on their own and that the chakra armor merely helped against instead of rendered useless.
Coupled with the unfortunately obvious existence of traitors in the Yukigakure ranks, both in sabotage and revealing the biggest weakness of the chakra armors to outsiders? There would be difficulties in arranging to take over the other nations, and that was assuming that the superweapon was usable at a distance and they didn't have to construct more of them to maintain control.
On the other hand, this entire situation was an insult to him and his power. If he ran away now then he might as well give up on ruling the country as it was, at least without obtaining the key. His armor was also significantly more powerful than the others, and there weren't any other armors in the area to be used against him like had just happened to his subordinates. Mentally nodding, he hit the navigation lockdown button and took to the air, trusting that the automatic system could keep the airship from moving away while nobody remained on board.
His primary objective was grabbing his niece, but he'd at least have to fake going after Hatake and the two kunoichi as a distraction before he'd be able to break off. Once they were committed to a defense he could use that distraction to grab Koyuki, and then they'd not dare attack him. The unknown kunoichi were a potential problem there, but an unexpected blitz should be enough to get past them long enough and he didn't think their reaction times were good enough to stop him.
Reinforcing the protections between the caravan and Doto had been the focus on the ground, at least at first. In the air, the two 'summons' had moved to the sides, to be less obvious targets to the armor-clad tyrant. When he took to the air they followed his path to either side of him, waiting for the right moment to strike. He, in turn, ignored them, dropping low as he did hand seals and pulled on his chakra. Snow and ice flowed from the ground and formed into a black dragon heading straight for Kakashi, then Doto moved to dart around to the side.
Unfortunately for him, he'd very obviously forgotten about the two 'summons', and one of them intercepted him with a punch and engaged him in mid-air taijutsu. The other came up behind him, latching onto the armor from behind. It seemed that this was definitely a sturdier model, as Doto was able to force himself free after a few seconds. But the distraction had been enough to negate the threat of his black ice dragon technique, Kakashi having sliced through it with a lightning cutter.
"Well," Kakashi said as he watched the struggle between Doto and the two 'summons'. "This could be a problem. I don't see Doto landing, or those two being able to finish him off right now. Hmmm."
"I can take care of it," Yoko said, stepping forward past Reiko and Riko.
"Oh?"
"He is obviously unworthy of his position. Proving that will ensure the safety of the country far better than watching the fight."
"You're still down here, and they're moving further into the air as they struggle."
Yoko just smiled sadly, pretending that she regretted this more than she really did, before a pair of glowing orange feathered wings appeared behind her. A moment later she was in the air, heading straight for Doto, a swirling medical chakra-scalpel Rasengan forming in her hand as she moved. The two 'summons' positioned Doto so that he wouldn't see the attack coming, allowing her to strike his back with it. His shielding apparently completely ignored medical chakra, the orb passing right through it and the armor. Doto noticed as soon as it started to reach his skin, but didn't live long enough to react to it.
A moment later his corpse was falling as though a puppet with its strings cut, the two 'summons' escorting Yoko back down to the ground.
Landing back near Koyuki a moment later, Yoko dismissed the wings and bowed to the princess. "Your uncle was unworthy, and is no longer a threat to you."
For her part, the princess seemed to be in a state of mild shock, even as the 'summons' headed for the airship to bring it down to the ground as well.
"Okay you five," Kakashi said that evening, after securing an area for a quick meeting 'out of character' for the disguised Team Yurei. Yoko was off doing shrine maiden tasks, not that she needed to be present in addition to Naruto. "Several of our primary objectives are taken care of, but we still need to eliminate the threat of Yukigakure loyalists deciding to kill Koyuki even though Doto is out of the picture."
Hinata smirked and gestured at the three chunin. "They're doing so right now, or at least their clones are. Looting all the outposts to the ground and taking out the shinobi, mostly with poisons and in their sleep."
"Not that the three weren't busy before now," Naruto pointed out. "They've done a decent job preparing things for us, like the poisons we put into the food on the train, and you know that they stopped several attempts at sabotaging our supplies."
Kakashi nodded as the three chunin grinned a bit at the praise. "Yeah, the Yukigakure infiltrators were horrible even by 'minor village' standards. Or maybe I'm just used to particularly talented minor villages headed by former major village shinobi? Hard to say."
"Are we going to be going along to activate whatever it is that Koyuki has the key to?" Ino asked after a moment of silence.
"Most likely not, if only because Sandayu is probably going to want to keep some secrets from us after seeing how effective we were. There's a near-guarantee of an alliance with the Land of Fire, of course, but it's probably a good thing that we were outright asked to dismantle the shinobi of the country. Koyuki doesn't need the specter of loyalist shinobi coming back to assassinate her when we're gone, and we don't even need to make excuses for how we got all the information."
That was a nice perk, even if the expectation was that Konoha was going to send more teams to do the dismantling later. Sandayu and Koyuki were probably going to be surprised when informed that the dismantling part of the mission was already completed.
Ensuring that the people knew that Doto was dead and Koyuki was now the rightful ruler had taken less time than expected. Watching the group 'breaking into' Doto's fortress in an attempt to find anything useful in it had been amusing though, especially the discovery that there wasn't a floor past the front door after six hours of carefully ensuring that the security system wasn't going to harm anyone. Koyuki had looked at Kakashi and asked if he knew about the inside of the fortress being 'a bit too gutted', and he'd merely replied that the team had wanted to ensure that they found anything and everything of importance in the building.
Reiko, Riko, and Yoko were needed for the final scenes of the film, which was itself a little annoying. This included the requested work on the shrine, to get it back up to a usable standard. Kiba had suggested rebuilding the shrine in secret before bringing Hoshi in to help put up an illusion that the shrine was still in horrible shape, dispelling it in a wave as Yoko entered the honden with the representation of Suijin taken from Konoha in order to make it look like the place was literally being restored by divine powers. The director hadn't been expecting that, but he and everyone else watching who hadn't been told it was going to happen ate it up. Triply so when, as the doors to the honden sealed behind Yoko on her way out, water started flowing from it and the 'restoration' followed the water away from the honden.
"Thank you," Kakashi said after the mission paperwork had been signed.
"No," Koyuki said, looking over the group. "Thank all of you. This wouldn't have gone nearly as smoothly without you." She looked at Yoko, bowing slightly to her. "I especially didn't expect you to end him, proving that he was unworthy in a manner none of us expected."
"Sometimes deaths are inevitable," Yoko stated. "No matter that we might wish otherwise."
"I understand. Mostly, I wish I had a better way to contact most of you."
"Unfortunately," Riko said, half-bowing. "We don't exist."
"You've said that repeatedly as you've rejected any offers to relocate to the Land of Snow, and yet you're still here in front of me."
In lieu of a verbal response, everyone other than Kakashi and Yoko vanished in a puff of smoke, summoned back to Konoha.
"But...how?" Sandayu asked, looking around the supposedly-sealed room. Not that he was able to see the group of disguised clones left behind to watch the reactions or those preparing to summon other clones carrying storage tags.
"Did you think they were fibbing when they said they didn't exist?" Kakashi asked as he pocketed the confirmed-complete paperwork. "They existed only for the duration of the mission. The mission is over, and now they're gone. All that's left is for me to escort Yoko back to Konoha. Are you sure that you want to let us take the last airship?"
Koyuki nodded. "It's chakra-powered, and by my own request we no longer have anyone who can keep it working. Better that someone gets use of it, and the extra food supplies it represents as I work to get the country self-sufficient again are well worth it. How long do you think it will take to get the supplies here?"
"How soon would you like them?"
"As soon as possible, of course."
"I see." Kakashi checked his watch as fifteen crates full of storage scrolls were brought in through summoning at the far end of the room, clones appearing on the far side of a silencing effect just long enough to unseal a couple of crates each. Once all fifteen crates were there they dropped the silencing effect, and Kakashi nodded. "Would fourteen-thirty work?"
"Fourteen-thirty tomorrow?" Sandayu asked, checking his own watch.
"No, today."
"...that was a few minutes ago, unless my watch is wrong."
Kakashi gestured across the room. "Yes, it was a few minutes ago. The supplies are over there. Since Koyuki can operate storage seals we delivered them in sealing scrolls as they're easier to label and cheaper to produce in bulk."
Koyuki and Sandayu turned to look at the stack of crates, both of their faces showing significant shock. She recovered first, turning back to Kakashi. "How do you keep doing these things? We couldn't put half of what your team seems to be able to manage in a movie without being called out on it being entirely unrealistic!"
"Properly equipped and prepared shinobi can trivially make movie magic look downright mundane. We just rarely get a chance to show off and need to make the most of it when we do."
Coming in for a landing at Konoha was done at the new airship station behind the Hokage Rock. The other two airships they'd ended up with, the intact large one and the now-repaired smaller one, were already in their docking slots. Lessons on operating the things were being worked on, and Kakashi was likely to end up being a primary teacher as the only one with 'obvious experience'.
This had annoyed him for over a day after he realized it, because Yoko was a shrine maiden and not an airship pilot. Nobody was going to believe that she had taught him.
Naruto had been waiting and took care of lashing the airship down once it had landed. No luggage existed to unload thanks to seal tags, but there was quite the crowd watching.
"How long have we had an airship station?" Kakashi asked, as if he didn't know given that he'd asked for it to be 'mysterious'. But him knowing any of this would imply that he had something to do with it.
"Two days," Naruto answered. "It appeared overnight, along with the two fully-functional airships. The Anbu weren't happy about a sudden structure within the security perimeter either."
"Of course it did, and of course they weren't. Someone is having fun, I guess. Oh well. I have a pile of mission paperwork to turn in, and likely a long debriefing session."
Naruto was also going to be attending that debriefing session, of course. It had been put off until Kakashi was officially back with Yoko, but most of the village wouldn't know that anyone other than those two had been involved in the mission.
Koyuki frowned as she looked around after using the real key to turn on the generator her father had been working on. She'd been embarrassed and thankful that very few people were watching when she'd forgotten about the fake and used it first.
"It's...getting warmer?" she noted, watching the snow and ice start to melt around her. This was nothing like the descriptions they'd found that described a gathering of rainbow energy in the generator before it was released in a wave.
"The notes we were able to recover from the workshop downstairs referred to three different functions," Sandayu noted. "The heat generator, extraction of some kind of fantastic energy from that dead bush, and use of the extracted energy to distribute the heat and 'revitalize' the land. Presumably the bush being dead means that we're only getting the heat."
"He had pictures of the entire area suddenly being a springtime paradise."
"And before he started working with the bush he was able to keep the mountain warm at best. Which would at least give us some farmable land, but this was the only place found that was suitable for the geothermal tap used. Building stepped farming areas won't be a major problem and will definitely help with our food situation. We could probably hire Konoha to make it even easier, given what their earth manipulation techniques can do, assuming we want to let them know about the mountain at all. In the meantime we can see about testing other plants to see if they work in place of the dead bush and put out feelers to see if any more of those bushes exist. Perhaps even find a team that can revive the dead one?"
Koyuki had hoped to be able to build on her father's much more impressive later work, but supposed that they had to make do with anything they could to get the country back to no longer relying on outside supplies for basic survival. "I doubt anything can be recovered from the ashes and goop we found where it was supposed to be, but trying and failing is better than assuming it can't be done. Maybe something in the roots survived?"
If it did, then you better burn it with enough flames to scorch the sun!! Then salt the ashes just to be sure....
- Location
- United States
Hmm, a now dead bush that had magic powers. It must be related to to the god tree.
So, someone finally not only manages to come up with security measures that Naruto notices and acknowledges as being such, but they are actually sufficient to keep him out? That's probably more impressive than the chakra armour or climate control!
O.k. they really needed Kakashi to play narrative straight man explaining stuff to clients. He is downplaying it all as anything normal ninja can do. Which the civilians can't really refute.
When news of all this spreads or gets out on film, the snow ninja are going to be an utter laughingstock among ninja. Then again, I wonder how many other ninja will figure out how it was all done. Will they think Konoha is even more badass for doing it or think lowly of the Snow Ninja?
When news of all this spreads or gets out on film, the snow ninja are going to be an utter laughingstock among ninja. Then again, I wonder how many other ninja will figure out how it was all done. Will they think Konoha is even more badass for doing it or think lowly of the Snow Ninja?
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Ah, but there's a simple way around that little problem; poison the utensils, not the food. In The Belgariad series by the late great David Eddings, a certain recurring villain is eliminated by one of the heroes, a poison expert, who slipped into the dining area an hour before dinner and anointed the villain's spoon with "a little something that makes a man's throat swell shut."
Probably a mix of the two where there were probably Shadow clones involved in pulling off some the sabotage probably figuring that Reiko and Riko are actual shinobi going by different names possibly also the Cooking crew probably not sure on the specifics of who but could probably understand the reasoning given they are also competent at this sort of thing but they probably figure there was a whole hell of a lot of legwork on the part of the Konoha shinobi going on to pull all that off with Yukigakure indeed being a minor village with their main advantages getting cut short before they could actually leverage them and the Major village shinobi being straight better at espionage in this given encounter
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It's cute, but it's easier to counter than with food in several ways.
(Also it likely doesn't work at all without magic poisons, but in current context that's not a valid objection.)
bobnik
Memetic Warfare Specialist.
[ShamelessPedantry]
That happened in the Mallorean, the sequel series. In the fifth book, Seeress of Kell.
[/ShamelessPedantry]
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Yes, but only if they think to look for it. Since the vast majority of poisoning attempts are directed at the food, very few think to look at the utensils.
- Location
- Scotland
The utensil poisoning idea only works if a) the target always sits in the same place every time, b) the utensils are laid out in place well beforehand and c) the utensils aren't checked for some kind of poison. Doto seems paranoid enough that he would ensure that his utensils are randomly picked from a box just as he's sitting down to eat and that someone else would test them before he used them. Now it might still work is he has certain food preferences that you could use as a component in a Binary (or Trinary) poison since he's arrogant enough that he'll want special foods but since his paranoia likely means he's getting his personal food from a personal chef in a personal kitchen that's secured to be difficult for Naruto to get into (at least with limited time available) it's unlikely he has a set enough menu for that to work.
True, but if the food security was impressive enough that Naruto noticed it, much less was stopped by it, then counters to utensil poisoning were guaranteed to be in place, since that's part of the food supply line.
That's a kind of clever that usually looks very bad if you think about it too much: a wide open gap that apparently exists only because the hero is the first person to ever be allowed to come up with it.
With Naruto, your utensil security needs to be good enough to stop Naruto from replacing your utensils with a disguised clone.
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It could have been as simple as Doto having all his food prepared and stored in a personal storage scroll that's always on him. Everyone else got fresh food made by the cooks. That could actually be poisoned. It's not that others couldn't have eaten from storage scrolls, but they saw no need. They weren't out in the field. They were in secured locations that enemies should have no possible way into.
I'm confused about why they were all given mild food poisoning. O.k. those folks seemed to be killed. Why were they killed, but the first group were left? They were going around killing folks loyal to Doto. I can understand it if they were around for longer, but given less than a day or two being there? How the heck could they determine that this guy was loyal to Doto while that guy was only a Snow Nin and would happily be loyal to the land of Snow?
Then again, it seemed that they were given the o.k. for a mass purge of the Snow Nin. Why was the first group left alive? Was it just because they didn't want the civilians to be spooked at how deadly the ninja were?
one of these days naruto is just going to straight up steal a building and replace it with a clone/s if only for the various reactions that could come of it. I wouldn't even be surprised at one point if naruto creates a full blown potemkin village to sell a ruse.
That would probably work here because the poisoners are operating on a very restrictive timeline. In general, it wouldn't help at all, the poisoners would just be targeting the preparation before the food gets sealed.
