Thread #6374368
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In this world, you are a rare case.
You were born and raised in a village whose residents all hailed from the same clan, one which possessed a power and a ferocity which made it feared by those living outside. Everyone in this village, from the elders to the clan leader right down to the children, was a natural-born killer – in that sense, you aren’t so special.
“Ryō-kun,” the leader told you just yesterday with a wide grin, “all you have to do out there tomorrow is follow your instincts… don’t think, just kill!”
Well, when the village settled on picking a fight with one of the five great powers of this world your instincts told you that it was a stupid idea. That little voice inside your head was screaming that invading Kirigakure was a stupid idea that was going to get you all killed, so that was the feeling you went with even if it made a lot of your clansmen pretty mad.
But you stood your ground.
They were so confident in their raw power and ferocity that they never questioned the wisdom of the plan… to the degree there was one. Your own parents even promised to come home and “deal with you” later, which of course was a threat born of complete delusion. And even if you doubt that they’ll ever make good on their threat, you have no doubt that once Kirigakure manages to get over the shock of the attack they’ll be calling on your village soon.
Your hair and the markings on your forehead are easy enough to get rid of. Even if you cut those things away to disguise your bloodline hair and flesh grow back. But after scraping together what little money exists in your village and packing away some dried food and water, you decide not to burn the village itself. Wiser maybe to ignore that first instinct and not leave any obvious signs that anyone was left behind to survive.
…
Thankfully you were able to sneak aboard a boat under the cover of night. You’re able to hide yourself away deep below the decks, in a cold and dark corner behind some barrels that don’t look like they’ve been moved for months. You may not know where the boat is going, but anywhere is better than where you’re running from.
… probably.
At some point there’s a storm, or at least you assume there is based on the violent rolling and the groaning and creaking of the timbers. Seasickness is an experience which quickly loses its novelty value, though it does drive home the point that even if your body is incredibly tough you’re far from invincible.
But all storms pass eventually, and this one is no different. You have no way to know how long you were at sea, but the stillness of the water and the bustle above your hiding place tells you when you finally reach land. Voices call to haul out cargo, and after very nearly being caught a couple of times you manage to slip out in the rush of activity.
>1/2
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>>6374368
Once ashore you find yourself in a busy port town, its streets lined by wooden buildings with windowed facades and tiled rooftops. Many have wooden signs hanging out over the streets above their doors, some with little illustrations that tell you what the business probably is. You pick one and walk inside like you belong there.
Inside you find a long wooden table with a glossy top, with a line of cushy seats in front of it perched atop brass posts. Behind the table are bottles, the number of which is higher than you’ve ever had to count, all containing liquids of various tones and colors. You walk past this long table to find what you understand to be bathrooms down a short hallway. Stopping at the sink you remove your stained bandages, and look into the mirror...
>1d2
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>>6374371
You see a familiar face staring back at you, green eyes and fair skin once framed by silvery-white hair. Underneath the bandages your forehead has already healed as though you hadn’t taken the skin off it in one big slice – a side effect of the bloodline expressed by some members of your clan, including its now-former leader, your cousin, and yourself. There’s still some dried blood there to take care of however.
Once you get yourself cleaned and dried, you head back out to find a middle aged-man you guess is the owner watching you from behind the long table with a look of confusion on his face.
It feels a little strange, but this is probably normal. If anything it’s your clan’s default state of gleeful bloodlust that’s probably strange.
“Are you… okay?”
You nod. “Yes, thank you.”
He seems unconvinced. “A bar is no place for a little lady all by herself.”
“This is a bar?”
“The sign outside says so.”
“I can’t read kanji.”
“I see,” he nods. “That would explain why you walked into the men’s room with such confidence.”
“That could have been awkward,” you muse. “Can I eat here?”
“Where are your parents?”
“Dead. I only arrived here a short time ago.”
You put a little bit of money on the table. “Is this enough for a snack and some water?”
“Water is free,” the man tells you, his expression troubled, thumbing through the coins before taking a few and handing you back the balance. “And we’re actually not open for another half hour.”
“Will that be a problem?”
He shakes his head, gesturing for you to sit at one of the smaller round tables in the back corner. “I can fix you something, kid. Don’t sweat it too much.”
>1/2
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>>6374381
As the man sets about cooking… something or another… there’s a commotion from the front door. Three men come in, two in front dressed in black clothes with sleek lines and the third in tan, the latter of which sits at another round table elsewhere in the room while the two black-clothed men walk up to the long table.
“Hey old man,” one of the newcomers greets him loudly. “Whiskey, best stuff you’ve got.”
“And get a steak going for the boss,” the other adds.
Rude.
“Sorry, fellas,” the owner replies with a smile. “We’re not open just yet. But if you don’t mind waiting…”
“Waiting?” the first of the men in black demands loudly, slamming his hands on the table. “You got any idea who’s sitting here?”
“I do,” the owner answers, the facade slipping a little to reveal some nervousness. “But the cook’s not here and the kitchen’s not open.”
“Ain’tcha cookin’ now?”
“I suppose if you count making a sandwich as 'cooking', then yes?”
>Speak up. No matter who they are, waiting for a few minutes won’t kill them.
>Ask the bartender if he needs you to deal with these troublemakers for him.
>Show off a little. See if you can scare these jerks off without any more trouble.
>Other?
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>>6374383
After all the trouble you’ve gone through the last thing you want to do is give away what clan you hail from, least of all over some loud weaklings like these two. So at first, you choose silence.
“Don’t be a smartass,” one of the men in black tells the bartender.
The bartender’s concern is momentarily overwhelmed by his growing annoyance. “Look, friend. I can pour a couple of glasses and make your boss a sandwich if you want…”
“You think the Boss wants one of your stinkin’ sandwiches!?” the other man in black shouts, leaning in over the glossy bar table.
Meanwhile, his boss sits in silence, a little smirk playing across his face.
“I mean I’m already making one,” the bartender answers, raising his own voice a little. “Won’t take but a minute or so longer to make two.”
Finally, one of the men in black seems to notice you. “Oh, so you’re gonna feed a brat first, is that it!?”
The bartender seems to realize his mistake even as the man in black starts stomping his way over to you. “Now you leave her out of this!”
You raise your hand to the bartender, silently insisting that this development won’t be a problem.
“I ordered first,” you tell the man in black calmly.
“That so, brat? And what’s that suppposedta mean?”
“Well, if I ordered first it’s fair that I eat first,” you clarify, looking past the man in black to glare at his boss. “Or you can say the strong should eat first, in which case I still eat first.”
The man in black reaches down to grab you by the collar, only to find your thumb digging into his wrist and his palm facing in a direction that the human wrist doesn’t usually allow. There’s a moment before the pain registers, before he’s on his knees next to your table. All the while, you never take your eyes off the boss.
The second man in black is focused on you now, but he’s hesitating. He spares the man in tan a glance, looking for orders. That man however is holding your gaze… not yet panicking, but clearly understanding that he’ll have to make a decision.
>Release the man in black. It shows you don’t want to fight… but that you’re confident you can win.
>Ask the man in tan who the heck he even is, but don’t release the man you’ve grabbed just yet.
>If the man in tan is that hungry he can have half your sandwich, if you can have half his steak later.
>Other?
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>>6374413
“If you’re that hungry,” you offer, giving your captive’s wrist an extra little twist to punish him for thinking he could wriggle free, “you could have some of my sandwich if I can have some of your steak later.”
There’s a pause, both of the black-clothed men looking frantically to their boss then back at you. But after that moment passes, the man in tan laughs and it feels like the tension immediately goes out of the room.
“That sounds like a good deal to me,” he replies, pushing at chair opposite his out from the table with the toe of his shoe. “Sorry about all that, Katoki-san, these guys are a little new.”
The bartender lets out a little sigh of relief. “You had me wondering for a minute there, Saitō-dono.”
“Go ahead and put it on two plates,” the man in tan insists as you cautiously release your grip on his subordinate’s wrist. The man takes a few quick steps to get away from you before trying to regain something like composure. It doesn’t quite work.
You walk over to the man who the bartender called ‘Saitō’ and warily take the seat he offered. “I’m a bit confused.”
“I’m Fujihara Saitō,” he introduces himself, gesturing for the second man in black to put a glass of amber liquid on the table in front of him. It smells like alcohol. “I run all the gambling in this town.”
“Ah,” you reply… it’s a little hard to feel all that surprised by something when you know you walked in knowing absolutely nothing. It would only have been surprising if it hadn’t been surprising. “I’m new around here.”
“I could tell,” Saitō nods. “Not too often you meet a kid with a body count.”
“Whaddya mean, boss?” the man whose wrist you nearly twisted half-off asks. “This kid?”
Saitō’s expression darkens a little. “Yeah, this kid. I may be rusty, but I was a chūnin once, remember?”
The bartender arrives a few moments later with two plates, setting one down in front of each of you. You gesture to yours, and Saitō nods, so you start eating. You don’t speak until you’re finished.
“Where am I?” you ask abruptly.
“Tonika town,” Saitō replies. “In the Land of Hot Springs in case you were wondering.”
“I was,” you admit.
“Well, that’s none of my business,” Saitō shrugs. “Kids like you just turn up in places, happens somewhere every day.”
>I’d like to work, if there’s anyplace that would have me.
>You were a shinobi? How is it that you aren’t anymore?
>I need a place to stay. I have a little bit more money.
>Other?
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>>6374450
“So you should already know,” you reply.
He thinks about that for a moment. “More or less.”
“I’d like to work, if I can,” you clarify. “Ideally out of public view.”
“I think I have something for you,” Saitō eventually tells you. “Above board of course. I need someone to throw bones for some high-rollers tonight.”
That wording has you a bit on edge.
“… throw bones?”
Katoki-san is quick to clarify. “He means dice. For people with a lot of money to waste.”
That makes more sense.
“Boss?” one of his black-clothed guys asks in confusion. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“No way a kid like this is gonna be a cheat,” Saitō answers, before turning back to you. “My last guy was throwing for a side job, got himself caught with loaded dice. Made a pretty big stink in town. Little bald girl nobody knows though?”
“I’m not usually bald.”
“Fine,” Saitō raises his hands, “fair point. But either way, nobody’s gonna have any reason to doubt you. One night throwing dice should be enough for a cheap hotel room until you find something better, and if it’s not you can throw again next week.”
Katoki-san places the long-awaited steak on your table – a little pink inside, with some vegetables on the side. Two plates.
“So, what do you say kid?”
>Deal.
>I’ll pass, thanks.
>Other?
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>>6374484
>Deal.
That's fine by us. We can meet new people, earn some money to survive, and get a grasp of the surrounding area. Most importantly, we can adjust our instincts to kill everything through exposure to normal situations. Not to remove, but to build a subconscious on-off switch for it.
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>>6374484
After weighing it in your mind for a moment longer, you cut into the steak in front of you and take a small bite. A moment later, you nod.
“Where and when do you need me to be?”
…
The game is to be held at ten that evening, upstairs from the bar Katoki-san owns – as it turns out, Saitō-san was only there so early because Katoki-san also owns the space upstairs and Saitō-san wanted to confirm the food service for what are apparently supposed to be some big names. You don’t recognize any of them as they file in, some with obvious entourages.
Three stand out.
A middle-aged man with profound eyebags and slicked brown hair turns up fairly early with a couple of young women clinging to his arms, looking ready to throw around some money to impress them. Then there’s an older woman in fancy tailored pink clothes, with pigtails and thick red lipstick. She’s accompanied by two well-built guys with tantō tucked into their waistbands, but the kindest thing you can call the woman they’re guarding is ‘well-fed’. The weirdest trio though is, by far, the last to show up and apparently a trio who everyone else in the building recognizes on site.
This trio is composed of a blonde woman dressed all in shades of green with a diamond marking on her forehead, her younger dark-haired attendant who seems a bit nervous with the whole situation, and of all things, a small pig wearing a collar.
“I see you changed your roller, Fujihara-san,” the well-fed woman muses in a voice a little too loud to be appropriate for the situation. “So the rumors were true?”
“Unfortunately,” Saitō confirms, motioning for you to sit – now dressed in striped yamabakama tied below your knees. A nice pattern of olive, grey, and blue, high enough quality that rich patrons won’t immediately think of you as a homeless child that quite literally wandered in off the street this morning. A black haori sits across your shoulders, apparently a part of the ‘uniform’ for a tough-looking dice-thrower. “This girl may not look like much, but I can guarantee that she has a clean history.”
That’s easy. When it comes to dice you have exactly zero history, clean or otherwise.
The dice are passed around so that each of the players, who total eight including the three who stood out on their arrival, can confirm that they all believe them to be fair. Then the smooth cubes of polished bone are passed into your hands, and you’re given a deep ceramic cup.
>1d100 please
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>>6374516
“Han!” you call out.
The blonde woman’s dark-haired companion and the pig are really starting to celebrate now, since their mistress is on one heck of a run of good luck. The well-fed woman stepped out a few minutes ago to try and stem the proverbial bleeding, and the man with the eyebags is now more concerned trying to keep his girls interested as he’s discovered that losing money is far less attractive than making it.
Far from being happy about how things have gone, the woman in green watches with a concerned frown. She’s even stopped drinking, which at first you got the impression she enjoys more than the gambling most nights.
“Ten thousand on han,” she declares, immediately putting up the money.
You glance at Saitō-san to confirm that the money is good, and he nods. Several of the other gamblers bow out gracelessly, but eyebags-san makes one last valiant effort to impress the girls and matches the bet.
So you toss the dice into the cup with a slight flourish, shake, and clap the cup down onto the table in front of you. Then you lift the cup.
“Han!” you call out.
Eyebags-san is obviously done for the night, and so with the agreement of the other gamblers Saitō-san calls an end to the engagement and thanks his guests. Most file out and down the stairs with their money-purses substantially lighter, before Saitō-san opens a small purse and spreads out some coins in front of you.
“Five thousand,” he informs you with a grin, “the going rate.”
Then he passes you some extra coin. “And here’s another two, I’ve never seen the ‘Legendary Sucker’ hit a hot streak like that!”
“I promise it was all luck,” you shrug.
“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Saitō-san assures you. “But somethin’ was goin’ on there, whether it was just luck or the stars lining up or somethin’ I can’t say. But it was a damn good show, kid.”
..
Saitō-san is still chuckling to himself as he walks away down the street, while you head into the bar to get some water and maybe a light snack before heading for the hotel Saitō arranged for you to stay at tonight – paying for the first night out of pocket.
The green woman, her attendant, and her pig just so happen to be there. The dark-haired woman is drinking with a goofy grin on her face, and the pig seems to be napping contentedly, but the green woman locks eyes on you the second you step through the door.
She moves her finger in the universal gesture for ‘come here’.
>1/2
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>>6374520
“Ma’am,” you nod, having dutifully taken a seat.
“Who are you, really?”
“I don’t follow.”
The woman sighs, setting aside her cup. Her dark-haired attendant’s surprise is obvious, though surprise at what is hard for you to guess, and even the pig has lifted its head.
“I don’t win at gambling,” she insists curtly. “I lose money hand over fist, every time. Every gambler in every town from the Land of Lightning to the Land of Wind knows that.”
You still don’t follow. “That… seems unlikely.”
“Is that so?”
“If it’s luck you have to win at some point,” you point out.
“You’d think that,” she answers, still frowning. “But I never do. Or at least, it’s very, VERY rare, and it never lasts long.”
“So it’s a special occasion, then,” you shrug. “Congratulations, ma’am. You won tonight, a lot.”
“I agree,” she tells you, folding her hands in front of her and resting her chin on them. “It’s always a special occasion… an omen of some sorts. Usually bad.”
“I’m… still lost,” you admit. “Are you happy or mad that you won?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she replies. “My name is Tsunade. I wander, I drink, and I gamble. Some days I still save people’s lives.”
Her attendant watches her, surprise now bordering on shock, as she works her way back to the initial question.
“A little girl with no hair shows up in a town with no family and no plan, doesn’t even tell anyone her name, and ends up throwing dice in a high-stakes gambling night,” she reviews. “A gambling night where I hit the first genuine hot streak I’ve hand in five years.”
“So I ask you again – who are you, really?”
>Give her your full name. She may know what it means.
>Give her your given name, explain that you’re a refugee.
>Just tell her you’re a refugee. She should understand.
>Other?
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>>6374531
“My name is Ryōko,” you reply. “I’m a refugee.”
She watches you carefully for a few seconds, before she sighs. “I have suspicions of course, but for now I’ll neither pry nor share my thoughts with anyone not at this table.”
… if word has spread about the destruction of your clan, it’s possible that she may have already put two and two together (four) and guessed that a refugee showing up here around the time you did may well have fled from the Land of Water. Or maybe she guessed based on the fact that you made it a point to cut away the distinctive haircut every single member of your clan wore for generations. Maybe she actually has no idea.
But you also get the impression that she’s not lying about keeping your secret, at least for the time being, secret. She has after all been nothing if not blunt about her own gambling and drinking habits, and what she claims to be her usual bad luck.
You nod. “I appreciate that.”
“That having been said,” Tsunade continues, sipping from her cup, “you’ll need to be honest with the people around you sooner or later. It’s hard to train properly if you’re more concerned with keeping secrets.”
“Anyway, we’ll be heading out early tomorrow morning.”
The dark-haired woman finally breaks her silence. “Tsunade-sama, you can’t mean…”
Tsunade responds with a curt little sound, almost like a laugh. “I’m not taking a student, Shizune. Just… taking an interest.”
“… heading out?” you repeat.
“If you’re game, I’d like to take you to Yugakure,” Tsunade replies. “It’s safe, the quality of life is good. And knowing where you’ll be makes it easier to come back from time to time. I’ll even vouch for you to get into their academy.”
“It’s the least I can do to spread some of that good fortune I’ve been hogging all night.”
>Thank you.
>No thank you.
>Other?
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>>6374571
wut
I'm not saying that Tsunade wouldn't act according to her character. I'm saying us knowing that in real life and acting on that meta knowledge probably doesn't make sense for our own character, given that she doesn't know what we know about Tsunade and would rightfully be cautious about giving out her full name. Y'know, because of the whole 'our clan has a strong bloodline technique and is crazy, and attacked a great power for the lulz, and thus are bound for extermination' thing. There's likely to be a bounty on the head of any survivors.
>>6374574
>Thank you.
Moving up in the world and getting away from danger and poverty. While being a criminal would be interesting, we wouldn't last long without proper training.
>>6374578
Thanks for running.
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>>6374607
Yes, I know. I confused the "we as players" with the "we as the little girl". I don't self insert so she's "she" for me.
Still, OP gave us that option so I thought he might also give us a justification for her taking that choice.
But I understand your logic.
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>>6374574
“Thank you, Tsunade-san,” you reply, and after taking a moment to remember to do so, you bow politely.
…
The next morning comes early, but it’s not like you have anything to really pack so that’s not a problem. You hand your keys over at the front desk to find Tsunade-san, Shizune-san, and the pig waiting for your outside. The mist hasn’t quite burned off yet.
“It’s a bit of a walk to get to Yugakure,” Shizune-san informs you as you set out. “Did you bring any supplies?”
You nod. “I also have money.”
“That’s good, then we’ll stop for lunch,” Tsunade-san decides, before she settles into a brisk pace.
…
“I’m going to assume you already know what chakra is,” she tells you as you follow close behind, now heading out of the town on a well-kept gravel road under a thin canopy of leaves. “And I’ll also assume you can gather it, at least a little.”
“I can,” you confirm.
“Good. But that’s only a starting point – as a shinobi, the degree to which you can gather and control your chakra determines what techniques you can learn, and how well you can use them. Do you know any ninjutsu right now?”
You shake your head, before remembering that she’s not looking back at you right now. “No, ma’am.”
“Not surprising,” she replies. “Especially for smaller clans and villages taijutsu is a more efficient place to start. Hone students’ general skills before making them into specialists.”
Now she glances over her shoulder. “Sending you to academy to learn such things would be a waste.”
Eventually you find yourselves deep in the forest, surrounded by mossy trees and ferns which choke out much of the sky. The trail which you have been following along the side of a river now passes through a narrow valley where water and mist cascade down a rock face, and the trail itself becomes a wooden footbridge held above the rushing river by piers sunk into its bed. In some places only one person may walk each way, and the boards running along the side are sealed in some sort of bright reddish-orange coating against the water.
>1/2
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>>6374765
At a fork in the bridge-way, there stands a tall tree rooted among a pile of boulders and sediments in the middle of the river.
“Instead of wasting your time,” Tsunade-san muses, pointing over her shoulder at the tree behind her, “I’m going to start you on a more practical lesson. Use your chakra to climb this tree without using your hands. When I’m satisfied with your progress, you can break for lunch.”
You regard the tree with caution. “The academy would teach this?”
“No academy can teach everything,” Tsunade-san explains while Shizune-san dutifully unpacks two boxed lunches from the bag she’s been carrying all morning. “Sometimes a shinobi has to train on their own. If you learn the basics now, you can choose to work on anything you think you have to later, even when I’m not around.”
“This is how Tsunade-sama taught me too,” Shizune-san explains. “If you teach someone to fish, then they can feed themselves. If you teach someone to control their chakra, they can teach themselves.”
“Well then,” you reply, “I guess I should get busy.”
>1d20
>best of three
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>>6374775
The first time you try it you take a running start, and only succeed in sliding off the tree-trunk and hitting your head against the railing on the way back down. When you get your bearings again, you see Shizune-san looking down at you with a concerned look.
“Are you alright?”
You get up without help, and stare back at the tree. “I’m fine.”
“That sort of fall would at least slow most kids your age down,” Shizune explains, accounting for her apparent concern for you. “How old are you, exactly?”
“Not sure,” you admit. “In my home village it could be hard to tell when seasons changed.”
“Well, I suppose when we get to Yugakure we’ll just have to give them our best guess,” she muses. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I have a hard head.”
This time you don’t start by running, because you’ve already learned that climbing a tree this way isn’t as instinctive as using your clan’s specialty technique. You can’t just make this up as you go. But the second time isn’t much better, even though you’re taking it slower.
“Try this,” Shizune-san offers.
You tilt your chin so that you can watch from your back, as an upside-down Shizune-san holds her hands together in front of her in a specific way. “How much do you know about hand signs?”
“Very little,” you admit.
“They help a shinobi concentrate their chakra,” Shizune-san explains. “Just try holding your hands this way while you focus on how your chakra’s moving inside your body.”
Tsunade-san takes a sip of sake from a small cup as she watches you imitate Shizune-san’s gesture, then put your feet against the lowest plank of the wooden guard rail. You close your eyes and focus… a similar sensation to what you feel when you activate your clan’s technique filling your legs and concentrating at your feet. Then you take a ‘step’, and a second, and a third.
You rise up off the pathway… before falling flat on your back.
“You had it there for a moment!” Shizune-san cheers you on.
…
After about an hour, and falls beyond your ability to count, Tsunade-san hands you a rice ball from your own small pack – umeboshi. “Believe it or not, you did well. Remember when you’re training on your own that it’s important to take breaks, and feed yourself. Chakra takes both mental and physical energy, so if you’re exhausted in either sense it shows in terms of your performance.”
>1/2
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>>6374789
“Sleep well, eat well, understood,” you answer, before making quick work of your lunch.
The Land of Hot Water seems to mostly be forested, and humid at that. In some places the pathway is tangled by old roots, in others it’s forced to cross old bridges that look like they haven’t been kept up in years. For a while it even merges with a larger road that consists entirely of uneven wooden planks were it has to cross a muddy swamp. Foot and cart traffic on the main road is actually pretty busy considering how far out from the last town you are… maybe there are more settlements scattered all through the forest?
“Coming up soon, you should see something interesting,” Tsunade-san informs you.
Sure enough, when the road (now a more modest pathway suitable for two or three small carts to pass each other) takes another turn you see a small village up ahead. Two rows of buildings face onto a river that flows through a stone channel, with walkways on either side and bridges that arc across it. The walkways are lined with weeping willow-trees and bright flowers.
“This is Yuzusaki village,” Tsunade-san tells you. “It’s a pretty popular onsen town.”
“The entire town?” you wonder aloud.
“It’s a resort,” Shizune-san clarifies, and the pig makes a sound that over the course of the last couple of days you understand to be agreement. “People come to the Land of Hot Water from as far as the Land of Earth for the onsen.”
“We only had one hot spring near our village,” you recall. “And we had to fight over it some days.”
Tsunade chuckles. “Well, I guess the closest you get here is the reservation list some times of the year. In Yuzusaki they add yuzu fruits to some of the baths during the harvest season, which is when it gets busy.”
…
The town isn’t busy at the moment, but it does feel lively. The people living here all seem at ease, though of course there’s no illusion that they don’t each have their own personal challenges to face. They just don’t face those challenges by stabbing them with knives made from their own arms.
“Do you mind indulging me for a moment?” Tsunade-san asks, having stopped at the front gate to what must logically be an onsen building. “This is a good opportunity for me and for Shizune.”
Shizune-san seems as perplexed as you are, but doesn’t seem ready for a debate.
>I don’t have anywhere else to be, so I may as well enjoy being where I am.
>Do you mind if I practice for myself for a little while to keep busy?
>What kind of opportunity? I still know very little about either of you.
>Other?
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>>6374798
“I don’t have anywhere else to be,” you admit, “so I may as well try to enjoy being where I am, I guess.”
Tsunade laughs at that. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right about that!”
…
Inside you part ways with Tsunade-san, Shizune-san, and their pig for a short while. You pay the lady at the front counter a hundred and fifty ryō, then with a little direction from her you find your way into the women’s locker room where you leave everything you can’t take with you in a basket before washing.
The bathing area is remarkable – a room with smooth, dark wooden floors and walls lit by lanterns that glitter through the steam, a large rectangular pool laid out at your feet with several women of various ages already relaxing. The water is pale and cloudy, and at the far end of the room the walls give way to an open-air section screened off by bamboo walls. Water-worn boulders mark the edges of the bath here, and many colorful flowers grow under the shade of a leafy tree.
Contact with the water seems to melt away stress and aches you didn’t even realize you were carrying. You see a young woman cup her hands under a bamboo spigot in the open-air area and take a drink of the water flowing from it, and so you eventually do the same… waiting just long enough not to seem like you’re copying her.
The taste reminds you a little of a citrus you were tricked into eating, years ago.
“Excuse me,” Shizune-san speaks up, snapping you out of the memory. You step aside and let her capture some of the falling water in a small glass container, which she then caps.
You don’t quite understand what she’s doing, and so you ask.
“Getting a water sample,” she answers. “To make it simple, lots of onsen are supposed to have therapeutic value.”
“Meaning…”
“Meaning the water helps treat people,” Shizune-san explains. “You felt it when you stepped in, right? The hot water helps your blood vessels to expand and your muscles to relax… the acidity, what gives it that sour taste, can also help certain ailments. Same thing with the dissolved minerals that make it cloudy.”
You have to concede that feeling the effects of the water firsthand gives you a pretty good idea of what Shizune-san is trying to accomplish here, even though the details go well beyond what you can understand right now. But instead of getting any deeper into that subject, you go back to getting as much out of this experience as possible.
>1/2
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>>6374946
After a while of course you’re back on the road heading out of Yuzusaki village and into the forest. At one point in the afternoon Shizune-san hands you an umbrella, since it had already started raining and you could hear distant thunder. But the worst of it holds off until after nightfall, and by then you’ve reached the next town. There are little souvenir shops along the main street, which you have to walk past to get to your hotel. In one shop window you see a number of necklaces, each with a pendant at the end of shaped bone.
Tsunade-san catches you looking in the window. “The river near here is famous as a fishing spot. Those are designed to look like ancient fishing hooks, which used to be made of bone… plenty of genuinely ancient ones have been found along the banks.”
“Dice… and fishhooks…” you muse.
“People have been using bones for tools for thousands of years,” Shizune-san adds as you continue to walk.
…
The hotel you check in at also has an onsen, but evidently Shizune-san doesn’t feel a need to collect a sample. “Calcium at this one,” she tells you.
“What is that good for?” you ask curiously.
“A number of things,” Tsunade-san answers. “Mostly, it’s found in the hydroxylapatite that gives your bones and teeth their strength.”
“High epoxy appetite?” you repeat.
“It’s a crystal. Calcium is one of the things that forms it.”
>You’re trying to get me to say it, aren’t you?
>Can you teach me more about bones?
>So… are you a shinobi of some sort?
>Other?
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>>6375032
“You’re still trying to get me to say it, aren’t you?” you observe.
Even if it’s a mild one it’s still an accusation, but Tsunade-san seems unbothered. “I’m giving you opportunities, but I guess I’ll go first. Come up to my room later and I’ll lay my cards on the table, in private. Then you can decide if you want to do the same.”
…
After you settle in, you head up to the second floor and knock at the room where the others are staying. Shizune-san answers, and she quietly ushers you in where you find Tsunade-san seated on the tatami looking very much like you’d imagine a mob boss waiting on an underling might. She even has a rather large glass bottle of sake to her side, sitting on a wooden coaster.
“Ryōko-kun,” she greets you, gesturing for you to sit. Once you do, she continues. “I am Tsunade, last of the Senju clan, granddaughter of the First Hokage.”
“I know some of those names,” you admit. “In my village we didn’t respect our enemies’ names.”
“That… tracks,” she muses. “Nevertheless, I figured I might have you at a disadvantage there. May I ask your name? Your full name?”
After a moment’s hesitation, you reply. “Ryōko, of the Kaguya clan.”
Shizune-san’s head whips towards her elder. “Tsunade-sama, you knew this girl was one of that clan?”
Tsunade-san nods once, her expression stern. “The rumors weren’t entirely accurate then… neither of the clan’s complete destruction nor of what they were like before then.”
“Still,” you offer, “they were mostly true.”
“… may I see it?”
So she does know about it… the shikotsumyaku. This is – was – your clan’s major claim to fame next to their ferocity, the ability to shape and harden your own bones to fight. You really weren’t hiding anything from this woman from the start. Just how perceptive is she?
You raise your arm, and concentrate chakra between your wrist and your elbow. When it starts you can feel it, the flesh parting to allow bone to slide through past your little finger, a turn of your wrist placing your fingers around the emerging weapon as it takes shape. When it’s done you’re holding something about the size of a small tantō, sharp on two edges until it reaches a wider spot that functions as a hilt.
>1/2
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>>6375284
“Shikotsumyaku, first dance – Tsubaki-no-mai,” you explain, noting that Shizune-san has risen up onto one knee in alarm at seeing it for the first time. You pass the bone blade into your left hand, letting it lie across your fingers as you pass it to her. After a moment, Shizune-san takes it from you carefully and hands it to Tsunade-san.
Tsunade-san accepts the blade with equal caution and formality. She subtly tests its weight and calculates its balance, and she flicks her fingernail against the side of the blade and listens as it rings faintly like steel. You figure that’s to test its hardness. Then, with a swift and smooth movement, she swipes it at the sake bottle.
A moment later, the cork slides cleanly away along with the top of the bottle itself.
Finally she passes the blade back to Shizune-san, who passes it back to you. “You weren’t carrying one when we first met.”
You shake your head before tapping one finger to the hilt, flesh rolled back to expose bone. “It’s not exactly subtle.”
The bone begins to dissolve away under the influence of your chakra, until nothing is left.
Tsunade-san is silent for a few moments before she speaks again. “When you do that, does it hurt?”
“It pinches a bit.”
“And the skin closes on its own?”
“Yes.”
“No scarring?”
“My clan doesn’t scar.”
“Other wounds heal that fast?”
“Usually.”
The question she doesn’t ask is the one to which she probably already has an answer. Of course someone with the shikotsumyaku can still die from a long list of things – internal wounds, poisoning, strangulation, drowning, sickness. That much was proven just a few days ago.
Tsunade-san goes back to thinking for quite a while, and so you, Shizune-san, and the pig all sit in silence.
“Why do you believe your clan lost?” Tsunade-san eventually asks you.
>Because they were outnumbered, with no plan to make up for it.
>They could never imagine themselves losing. Only I could.
>They didn’t want to ‘win’, they wanted to kill until they all died.
>Other?
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>>6375285
>They could never imagine themselves losing. Only I could.
>They didn’t want to ‘win’, they wanted to kill until they all died.
Mix of these two. They couldn't imagine that they would ever lose and in that bloodlust any losses they took were disregarded as weaklings getting weeded out.
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>>6375285
You consider your answer for a moment. “For all the killing they – we – did, they couldn’t imagine dying.”
Tsunade-san seems somewhat taken aback by your answer. “I would have accepted a lot of answers, but that one was blunter than I expected.”
“Just instructing you in my own skills would be a waste,” she decides. “Your kekkei genkai already gives you a pathway to offensive power and survivability, and it’s one where all I can offer are a few pointers. But it also raises one more question, which I hope you can answer.”
“Another question?” you ask. “I thought you’d covered the essentials well.”
“I promise this is the last one,” she assures you, “and with what I know and what I’ve seen, I think it’s the most important to you.”
You nod quietly.
“When you were still with your clan, did anyone else who used your kekkei genkai ever seem… older than they should be?”
>1d20 please, best of three
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>>6375322
“… do you mean, wrinkly?” you ask. “Thinning hair, getting sick easily, getting weaker?”
“Or anything that might be unique to your clan,” Tsunade-san adds. “Perhaps their bones began to break more easily than they should?”
You try to recall anything like what Tsunade-san is talking about. “Maybe half of us had it, and of those most never got past the basics.”
“They would still be wounded while fighting,” Tsunade-san presses.
“Often,” you confirm. “I can’t think of any of them looking different from anyone about their age without shikotsumyaku.”
There’s another brief silence as Tsunade-san contemplates what you’ve told her.
“Tsunade-sama,” Shizune-san eventually breaks that silence. “Could that mean…”
Tsunade-san shakes her head. “Mean what?”
“Mitotic immortality!” Shizune-san continues, her voice lowered but the urgency in it raised.
“Even if that’s the case,” Tsunade-san answers, “her body is different than other people’s, by definition. So even then, what would that mean?”
Then she looks back to you, ready to explain as best she can. “Think of your body as being like your clothes – the threads woven together are like the cells in your body. They’re the tiny units that fit together to make a bone, or your muscles or skin. If you want to lengthen your hakama you need to add fabric, made from threads. When you want to grow your bones or close your wounds, your cells divide. It’s not a perfect comparison, but that’s basically how you can think of it.”
“Are you still following?”
“These ‘cells’ make up the fabric of my body,” you answer. “So far.”
“Every time your cells divide, the end result isn’t perfect. Basically it wears your body out, just a little at a time, like the weave of the fabric getting thinner or the thread getting more fragile. So what do you think happens if you have to heal your own body too many times over too short a span?”
“Your body would get more fragile?” you guess, before you get her point. “You’d visibly age at some point.”
“That’s right,” Tsunade-san confirms. “And eventually, your body can’t heal anymore. Things that should still be working start failing, and after that you die. I’ve had to heal myself a lot over the years… so I know that risk better than anyone.”
“Are you…” you frown, “telling me that my kekkei genkai could kill me?”
>1/2
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>>6375342
“There’s precedent for kekkei genkai being double-edged swords,” Tsunade-san admits, “though sometimes the body of its possessor is adapted to counteract the logical drawbacks. And cells having an infinite ability to divide themselves isn’t unheard-of. Cancer cells and undifferentiated cells have that property, it’s normally just our healthy body cells that have a limit.”
Some of that makes sense. “I wish there’d been more old people in my clan for me to remember. But if our enemies and rivals didn’t make that a rarity, the infighting definitely would.”
“It sounds like you had a rough childhood,” Shizune-san offers, her tone somewhat awkward.
“It probably was,” you agree. “I have nothing to compare it to though.”
“To tell you for certain I would need specialized equipment,” Tsunade-san declares, pouring herself a drink from the clean-cut bottle. “And to get that equipment under the current circumstances I’d need to make it myself. But there’s another option.”
…
The next morning you set out early again, Tsunade-san having given you your assignment not just for today but for the rest of the trip. She had you remove another piece of bone from your arm, this time shaping it to mimic the souvenir fishhook she bought you before leaving town on a somewhat rougher road. It has a sort of a stem where you understand the line would normally be wrapped, a curved hook, and interestingly a point at the bottom of that hook that Shizune-san explains to you helps keep the hook oriented the right way in a current.
Tsunade-san’s first instruction was to harden it the same way you would with a sword, which you do. She carefully tests its strength and, when satisfied, instructs you to spend all day lengthening and shortening it without pause and without adding any additional material to it from your own bones.
After thinking about it for some time, you feel like you see the reasoning – if shaping it like this requires you to cause the ‘cells’ that make up the bone to divide over and over again, and it’s separated from your body so that you can’t infuse fresh cells into it, the bone should eventually become brittle. Or at least, if your bones had the same limits as ordinary humans it would. But if your bones did not have those limits, it would never lose its strength.
“I would never have thought of this,” you admit during your lunch break. “Tsunade-san, you must be incredibly smart.”
“She’s a genius,” Shizune-san insists immediately, but Tsunade-san laughs a little.
“And sometimes, I even act like I am. But not all the time.”
>1d100, best of three
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>>6375349
At the end of the first day of repeating this process, you’ve completely lost track of how many times you’ve lengthened the hook to the size of a small blade and retracted it again – it’s a slower process and requires more concentration to change the size of something once it’s separated from your body, and you have to pay attention to where you’re walking too. On more than one occasion, only your newly-acquired ability to cling to surfaces using your chakra keeps you from falling into a ditch, or slipping off an awkwardly-placed boulder in your way.
“How many, Shizune?” Tsunade-san asks.
“Seventy-eight,” she replies.
“Seventy-eight,” Tsunade-san muses. “It would be like healing the same wound to the same tissues seventy-eight times. There should certainly be some loss of strength from that.”
You hand Tsunade-san the hook, which is currently in the ‘long’ phase of the repeated cycle you’ve subjected it to, and she tests it in her hands. She raps a knuckle against it, and it makes a similar enough ringing sound to what it ‘should’ make that you can’t tell whether there’s any difference. Then she uses it to slice the trunk of a nearby tree whose branches overhang the path, and the tree falls away to the side.
Then she hands it back to you. “Do it again tomorrow.”
…
By noon you’ve reached an overlook, from which you can see another town – larger than either of the previous stops, situated on either side of a steep-sided ravine into which a river flows via waterfall. The forest thins around this settlement, at least on the side nearest you, where there are worked fields for growing some sort of vegetables. Behind the village, from your perspective, there is more forest. Everywhere there’s a scent of flowers carried on a steam-laden breeze.
“That is Yugakure,” Tsunade-san tells you. “The village hidden in hot water. May I see your fishhook?”
You hand the tool to her, again in its long form, and she tests it a second time. “How many, Shizune?”
“Fifty-two.”
“You’ve gotten a bit faster,” Tsunade-san muses. “One hundred and thirty times, when the normal limit before I’d expect to see side effects is around sixty. I can’t tell you the mechanism, but it seems like your body won’t experience the usual consequences of what your kekkei genkai does.”
“Thank you,” you bow politely. “You’ve eased a concern I didn’t even realize I should have had.”
“Well, it balances out anyway,” Tsunade-san shrugs. “Hang on to that fishhook for a little while longer.”
>1/2
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>>6375364
The entrance to the village is past a large, ornate gate standing in the middle of a wide street. In its details you feel like Yugakure village is a lot like Yuzusaki village was, except here and there you see people in uniforms wearing headbands, all with the same symbol of three parallel lines, at a slight angle off vertical.
Your group is stopped by two of these near the gate, each armed with a short wooden staff that when they rest one the ground it comes up to about the height of their chest.
“Hold on for a moment,” one of the ninja frowns. “Tsuande of the Sannin?”
“That’s right,” Tsunade-san answers curtly. “I’d like to speak to someone on your jōnin council, if anyone’s available.”
“Well… yeah, of course, ma’am,” the man replies nervously. “Like… you mean, right now?”
“Now works,” Tsunade-san agrees.
… what kind of high-roller have you fallen in with exactly?
…
In the village of Yugakure there is a building, near the center of town. It stands three stories, and has clear lines of sight in almost every direction. The rooftop is flat, with railings as though it’s often used as an open-air meeting place. On the top floor however is an office, and in that office there is a man with a protective armored jacket and a Yugakure-marked headband. He seems surprised when your group is led into his office, and not entirely in a pleased sort of sense.
“Please,” he offers to Tsunade-san, “sit.”
Tsunade-san however puts a hand on your shoulder, and nudges you towards the only chair in the room not currently occupied. The pig, whose name you’ve now heard to be Tonton, makes an indignant noise.
“I’d like to talk to you about enrolling this girl in your village’s academy,” Tsunade-san gets straight to the point, “and placing her with a local family.”
“That’s… highly irregular,” the man replies nervously. “I mean, I don’t even know who this girl is.”
>Give him your name. That and Tsunade-san’s backing will probably be enough.
>If he doubts your loyalty, he should know that you have nowhere to go back to.
>Place the bladed ‘fishhook’ on his desk and tell him you grew it from your arm.
>Other?
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>>6375373
“My name is Kaguya Ryōko,” you inform the man. The name gives him a moment’s pause.
“And I can guarantee at this point she’ll make a fine shinobi,” Tsunade-san adds. “Though she’ll need some remedials on reading, writing, and math to get there.”
… whose side is she on?
After a moment, the jōnin opens a drawer in his desk and takes out a few pieces of paper with a pen. “I’ll see what I can do, then. But just so you know, the whole council may not like this.”
…
Several hours later you’re sitting in seiza across from a man and a woman who look… remarkably ordinary. They are Eiso Fujio and his wife Hiyori, and from the brief introduction before you were sent to their home on the edge of town you know that they’re potato farmers. Fujio-san’s hands are calloused and slightly crooked from years of hard work, which you noticed when he handed you your tea and a little snack, while Hiyori-san’s movements in making said tea and preparing said snack were quick, clever, and precise.
“We… learned a while ago that we can’t have a child,” Hiyori-san informs you. “But to take care of a child who has no home of her own… that would be a joy, I think.”
“It may not be an interesting home,” Fujio-san admits, correctly, “but I can promise you all it will always be a welcoming one.”
It’s a reasonably large home with a good amount of land that goes with it, thus its position at the edge of town, and inside it’s reasonably if plainly decorated. The cushions are comfortable, the tatami are well cared-for, and despite their humble occupations the couple are well-dressed and impeccably clean. These are people who make a good impression not because they’re trying to, but because they conduct themselves in a way that speaks for them before they open their mouths.
You only recognize this because you grew up with its opposite.
Glancing at Tsunade-san, you offer her a slight nod. Then you speak your mind.
“Fujio-san, Hiyori-san,” you greet the couple, bowing politely. “I’ll… be in your care?”
You nearly fumbled it at the end there, but they seem to take your meaning.
…
After a short time, the day finally arrives when Tsunade-san, Shizune-san, and Tonton-kun feel confident enough in your situation to depart. And that’s okay. People always go their separate ways, at least for a time, but often they come back too. That’s precisely what Tsunade-san has promised you, though she admits she can make no promises about how often.
>1/2
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>>6375385
“I’ll leave you with this, for now,” Tsunade-san tells you, before handing you a book. You flip it open, and inside you find something that you quickly recognize – detailed drawings of the human body, and not just the skeleton but the muscles and organs, laid out systematically. Ranges of motion, critical functions, and even very small features all labeled in both formal kanji and informal kana. “Read through it in addition to your other studies, familiarize yourself with its contents.”
You close the book, silently noting that every page was drawn and written by hand. “Thank you. I’ll prepare thoroughly.”
…
As it turns out, potato farming is actually a kind of training itself. It’s hard work, but it keeps the Eiso family putting food on its table and so you lend yourself to that hard work. And even after just a few weeks, you can feel it building up your muscles and your endurance, at least a little bit.
“Thank you,” you tell Hiyori-san as she hands you your lunch. “I’m going out.”
“Eat well, study well,” she replies with a smile. “And stay safe!”
“I will.”
The walk to the academy building takes some time, but it’s not exactly difficult. The road is well-paved and the surroundings are comfortable, following a shallow canal with river water flowing through it down to the fields. The school building is in town, close to the same building where the jōnin council meets, and today is your first official day of classes – the school has been on break until this morning.
Inside you find your classroom, and sit down. An instructor walks in not too long afterwards.
“Good morning everyone,” he greets the class. “Today we have a new student who just moved here, her name is Kaguya Ryōko. Please treat her kindly.”
Then he continues on immediately to his lesson. “Today will be our first official day working with ninjutsu, starting with the clone technique and the transformation.”
“Why?” one of the boys in the class asks loudly, a question many seem to share. “Wouldn’t it be more useful to teach us how to shoot fireballs or electrocute people?”
>Say nothing. Just listen for now, see how your teacher handles it.
>Challenge him. If it’s so beneath him, let’s see him use either one.
>Those techniques train chakra control, which he’ll need for fireballs.
>Other?
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>>6375434
>Say nothing. Just listen for now, see how your teacher handles it.
New student shouldn't make a scene or anything, just stay put and see where things are going. We can assert dominance later when the time calls it.
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>>6375434
You decide to just let this situation play out, since you’re what Shizune-san warned you about – the ‘new kid’.
“It is true, to be promoted to jōnin a shinobi must either be able to use a nature transformation and genjutsu, or else two nature transformations,” the instructor – whose name is Yara-san, you were told yesterday – replies. “But I was also made a chūnin instructor without using any nature transformations at all. Do you know why?”
“Because you’re smart?” the boy answers.
Yara-san shakes his head, which much like yours was a few weeks ago is shaved. “Observe.”
He then proceeds to form two hand seals, which you identify as boar followed by ram, before sinking into the floor. “This is the shinobi art known as Mengakure-no-jutsu.”
His voice seems to come from somewhere nearby, though it’s impossible to tell from exactly where. And so he’s entirely invisible until he re-emerges from the floor to press the two fingertips on his right hand against the back of the boy’s head.
“The first thing a shinobi needs to understand is how to conceal themselves,” Yara-san tells the class as he walks back to the front of the room. “How to gather information, which if you were wondering does involve the ability to read and comprehend. The ability to evade detection and to detect those who may be evading you. Those skills with a little taijutsu will complete far more missions than the ability to breathe fire will.”
“Now if you’re finished asking silly questions, Tenson-kun, let’s open our text books to chapter two, lesson seventeen. The topic today will be the clone technique.”
>1d20, best of three
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>>6375470
You read through the textbook… and the mechanics honestly feel pretty simple to you. There’s an element of chakra control, a series of hand seals to weave, a mental image, and so on. The textbook mentions that the ‘clone’ technique creates nothing more than an illusion, the moving image that copies you to deceive an enemy, but also mentions that there are common variations that add various nature transformations like water or earth. There’s also a version created in Konohagakure during the warring states era that creates a clone that can actually make attacks, which the basic version cannot.
In other words, the clone technique is a basic building block that teaches skills necessary for a shinobi to succeed – skills which your clan once shunned as unnecessary.
The thought occurs to you that if you were really good at this, you could probably even create a clone made from your own bones at some point in the future. But first you’d have to get good at this. Baby steps, Ryōko. Baby steps.
After reading the book and having Yara-sensei lecture at you with chalk drawings, you and the other students get up near the end of the day and try your hand at the technique.
“Bunshin-no-jutsu!” Tenson-kun shouts, easily louder than the rest, only to produce a ‘clone’ that collapses in a clearly non-functional heap.
As disappointed as he seems, at least he got the technique to do something – which puts him easily ahead of most of your peers.
You form the hand seals yourself. “Ram… snake… tiger…”
And just like that, a near-perfect image of yourself splits away from your real body. Some of the details just don’t quite feel ‘real’ enough to pass against a skilled opponent.
Yara-sensei looks at you, clearly impressed. “Very well done, Kaguya-kun. And Tenson-kun… for someone who seemed so disappointed not to be learning the fireball technique, you did well for your first time too.”
“Please, keep practicing on your own while I help some of the other students.”
On your second attempt you’re satisfied with the duplicate, and on your third you produce two clones. Meanwhile, Tenson-kun improves… but doesn’t quite get results that satisfy him. Eventually he comes over to watch your fourth attempt, where you try to speed the process up a little.
After a moment, you dispel your own technique. “Yes?”
“Can you watch me try next?” he asks with a frown. “I can’t get it right still.”
You nod, and he performs the technique in front of you one more time. The result isn’t quite as good as your first attempt, but it’s actually a significant improvement.
>1/2
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>>6375493
“You’re close,” you offer, before showing him how you form your tiger hand seal. “But your hand seals are a bit sloppy.”
“Sloppy how?” he asks.
You call his attention to your palms, separating them slightly below your little fingers. “This is what you’re doing. I was doing it too at first.”
“Try it again.”
This time, he manages to create one proper clone, one that if he got clever with the setup and the timing might even fool you as you are now.
“You improved quickly,” you muse, before returning momentarily to your desk to pull out the medical textbook. “In a way, it’s as impressive as getting it right the first time. Just for different reasons.”
“You really think so?”
“I really think so.”
A moment later, you look up to see he’s offered a handshake. “I’m Akiji.”
You return the gesture. “Ryōko.”
“What are you reading, Ryō-kun?” he asks, peering at your book.
The use of that nickname makes you frown. “Please do not call me that. Ryōko-kun.”
“Sorry,” he apologizes. “Ryōko-kun.”
“You couldn’t have known,” you assure him, before showing the book’s contents.
“Bones?” he asks curiously.
“A gift,” you answer simply. “Maybe some day we’ll know each other well enough that I’ll explain it to you.”
The final bell is coming up, when Yara-sensei asks if there are any questions.
>Ask him how you can learn about nature affinities - Akiji's enthusiasm has you curious.
>Ask about the other basic techniques you’ll be learning.
>Ask about information gathering – the ninjutsu book barely mentions it.
>Other?
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>>6375512
>Ask about the other basic techniques you’ll be learning.
>Ask about taijutsu lessons. When do they start?
Being an outsider and knowing taijutsu seems like a believable combination, especially with our family background being sketchy.
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>>6375512
“When do we learn taijutsu, sensei?”
“Ah,” Yara-sensei muses. “The class has been learning the basics of taijutsu all year, mostly emphasizing conditioning which is useful for everyone. The degree to which you wish to engage with the forms we teach here is up to you, but my understanding is that you would find most of them boring until at least next year.”
“Which should,” he continues, “let you focus on your literacy remedials.”
… oh. Yeah, that.
“And, the other ninjutsu we need to learn?”
“I almost forgot that you do not know the curriculum,” Yara-sensei realizes. “My apologies. This year we will be working on the only three techniques required for graduation – the clone technique, the substitution technique, and the transformation technique. We will also have you start working towards water-walking, since this is a skill required for many genin missions in the Land of Hot Water.”
“Many students will need to work on those skills next year as well alongside intelligence gathering, however students who master them early enough will have the option to pursue other basic skills under instructor supervision. Typically I recommend basic genjutsu for those with the talent, or otherwise some manner of camouflaging ninjutsu.”
“How do you recommend what we should be working on?” Akiji-kun asks, just before the final bell rings. “I mean, assuming we get there?”
Yara-sensei looks at him for a moment, then turns his gaze to you for a moment. He also seems to notice that despite the bell having rung, the class hasn’t moved to leave yet – the same interest is on everyone’s minds. So with a resigned sigh he produces two pieces of paper from a drawer under his desk. “I had not planned on this, but perhaps this will make for a good bonus lesson.”
“Take this,” he instructs, handing one little square to you and then to Akiji-kun, “and let a little bit of your chakra flow into it. I will explain the results.”
>1d5 please, I will take the first result for you and the second for Akiji
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>>6375551
You follow his instructions, and after a moment you watch as the little piece of paper splits cleanly down the middle. Yara-sensei nods approvingly.
“Kaguya-kun, your chakra nature is wind,” he announces. “Which means that of the five elemental natures that in theory anyone can use – fire, water, earth, lightning, and wind – you are predisposed towards skill with wind.”
After a few more moments, the paper slip in Akiji-kun’s hand starts to crumble, eventually falling to the floor like sand.
“And your nature, Tenson-kun, is earth,” he explains.
Akiji-kun seems slightly disappointed. “Earth? You mean, not fire?”
“This does not mean that neither of you can learn to utilize fire release,” he explains carefully, “only that you have no natural advantage in doing so. While elements do have certain advantages and disadvantages against each other, none are inherently better or worse. Earth-based techniques can be quite effective in a variety of situations.”
“That is, if you have the chakra to make use of it. That is the danger for genin in trying to learn elemental ninjutsu… running out of chakra can cause your body harm. It can even kill you. So remember that, and be cautious in your own training.”
>That’s it for now
>I need to grab some sleep, may be able to update again late tomorrow evening
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>>6375574
Wind will boost our speed and with natural taijustu talent we are gonna be a nightmare to deal with. Who knows what kind of abomination we can become with sufficient understanding of medical ninjutsu which given Tsunade has taken a personal interest in us, is only a matter of time before she picks us up after we finish 'basic' and learn enough to understand her teachings. Our only real weakness is gonna be genjutsu, which is gonna buttfuck us.
>>6375612
Speed and agility. Bones give us innate armor and weaponry to fortify taijutsu. Most of our chi reserves are gonna get spent on that and our medical ninjutsu. Our fatal weakness will be genjutsu.
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>>6375612
You have to get creative with it, just like Naruto turning wind into a Kienzan.
I can see Ryoko shooting high pressurized wind chakra through bone cannons. Maybe she can give it a musical theme to make it funnier.
Sound, wind and bones are quite related.
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>>6375574
“How was your first day of classes?” Fujio-san asked you.
“I worked on kanji,” you muse. “And learned my chakra nature.”
“Is that so?”
You continue working on the potato noodles that Hiyori-san has been teaching you to make. “Wind. I also managed a clone technique on my first try.”
Fujio-san is dicing vegetables, also at Hiyori-san’s direction. “I don’t know much about shinobi, but I think that’s pretty uncommon.”
“So I’m told.”
“It sounds like you have a natural talent for this.”
You see that he has a point, however you don’t feel like that’s all there is to it. “There’s a lot for me to work on.”
“Well,” Fujio-san muses, tipping the vegetables into a pot. “No need to rush, Ryōko-kun… I don’t know what your life was like before, but Yugakure can be a chance for you to be a kid, you know?”
That sounds… nice.
…
After dinner you find yourself sitting on the wooden patio, looking out at the fireflies flickering out over the fields with a bone knife in one hand and a copy of one of your finger bones in the other. Tiny movements leave fine traces on the hollowed finger, which you’re told is called a phalanx, one little etching at a time.
You’re not sure how long Hiyori-san was watching you. “What are you doing, Ryōko-kun?”
“Here,” you reply, leaving the blade to stand and hand her the bone. “I’d like to wear these in my bangs when I have hair again.”
She examines the pattern carefully, turning the ornament in her hand. “These patterns… did they mean something where you come from?”
Then she looks a little closer. “No, wait…”
“They’re hanayu,” you confirm. “I had to find pictures in a text book since I’ve never seen them myself, but they’re something I associate with this place.”
“You grow them out back too, right?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “I think it’s lovely. Would you be able to make one for me some time?”
>1/2
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>>6375892
You nod quietly. “Since you wear your hair in a ponytail I would need to use a cross-section of my humerus, but it would be no trouble.”
“Does that hurt?”
You shake your head. “It pinches a little, but that’s all. You would wear jewelry made from my bones?”
“Well,” she muses, “it certainly would be… unconventional. But you’re making pretty things, and they remind you of our home. So yes, I would wear one if you made one for me.”
It’s strange. Your face feels… different, somehow. “Then I’d be happy to make one for you too.”
…
And she does wear it.
A few weeks pass, harvest season activities ramping up at the Eiso household with a few young genin taking it in turns to help with the harvest itself. Your hair has come back in enough to cover your head and you’ve carefully shaped your eyebrows the way you usually like.
You’ve begun water-walking training too, taking it in turns with training to further refine your shikotsumyaku. In particular, you’ve been trying to create a blade grown out of your ulna in a shape something like the ancient bone fishhooks, except elongated in a way that creates a blade which would extend past your closed fist about the same length as your fist to your elbow. The open space of the ‘hook’ allows you, when you do it right, to weave hand seals while still maintaining a guarded stance with a weapon on your strong side.
This technique, which you simply think of as ‘Tsuribari’, fits neatly into the existing techniques for your kekkei genkai alongside the ‘Teshi Sendan’. The latter uses your distal phalanges as high-speed bullets.
On one of your free-study days, Akiji-kun approaches you along with another boy from your classes, Hiroshi-kun. Akiji-kun has apparently just has his hair cut into a close brown crop, and he has an excited look in his eye. Hiroshi-kun’s black hair, as smooth and straight as ever, frames a nervous expression.
“So Hiroshi-kun here’s done his chakra nature test too,” Akiji-kun tells you. “Water.”
“Good afternoon, Ryōko-kun,” Hiroshi-kun greets you awkwardly.
“Good afternoon, Hiroshi-kun, Akiji-kun,” you reply. “And… so… what?”
“Sensei let you read a textbook on nature transformation yesterday, didn’t he?” Akiji-kun asks. Ah. So that’s what this is about.
>I’m not going to help you try anything silly, Akiji-kun.
>Okay, I see where this is going. There’s a BASIC exercise the book suggested. VERY basic.
>If you want to study something, we have a library in town.
>Other?
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>>6375897
“Okay I see where this is going,” you reply curtly. “There is a basic training trick the book mentioned – painfully basic – and it’s something the three of us can probably do. But I’m not just going to take your word on it that you’ll ‘be safe’, Akiji-kun.”
“Then what?” Akiji-kun asks, crossing his arms. “What’s it gonna take?”
“I want to know why,” you insist curtly.
“What the heck does that mean?” Akiji-kun demands.
“Even training as a shinobi can be dangerous if you do it wrong,” you counter. “So before I help you on that path I want to know why you want this so badly.”
It takes Akiji-kun a few moments to figure out how to answer that demand. “My dad is on the jōnin council. I keep asking him why the village insists on cutting class sizes if that just means bringing in more foreign ninja to solve our problems for us.”
“I didn’t know class sizes had been cut,” you admit.
“They have, by like half in the last few years,” Akiji-kun tells you. “But my old man just says I wouldn’t get it, because I’m not a ‘real ninja’. So… I want to become a ninja that he’ll recognize, so he’ll start talking to me like I’m worth his time.”
A few contemplative moments later, you nod and turn to Hiroshi-kun. “And you?”
“My family tend to have strong senses of smell and hearing,” Hiroshi-kun explains. “So I want to join the border guards… I thought it would be the best way to use something I was born with that… well, doesn’t really have any other good use.”
While you can’t say you share their feelings, you can at very least acknowledge that they’re genuine and that their reasoning is sound enough that you can’t immediately deny either of them. And so you reluctantly come to a decision about how much to tell them.
“The training method that book suggested is to use chakra to move a small amount of your natural affinity,” you explain, “if needed, in a way that would be easy to move. For earth, Akiji-kun can use sand. For water, Hiroshi-kun can move water in a cup.”
There’s a brief pause before Akiji-kun asks the reasonable question. “So what, for fire you’d have to just burn yourself?”
“The book admits that one’s a bit trickier,” you recall. “There were some suggestions involving candles and indirect heat sources.”
“Well, for the three of us that seems easy enough,” Hiroshi-kun muses.
The book’s author also observes that children frequently underestimate how hard it is to actually figure this out, and that it’s easy for them to become discouraged by repeated failure.
>1d20, best of three
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>>6376371
And as it turns out, the author was completely correct. Trying to learn how to deliberately manipulate air by moving it around with your chakra proves to be an absolutely infuriating experience. You wave your hands back and forth, you try turning around in circles. You even go so far as you shadow-box. Not a single set of movements you try seems to help you understand the flow of the air, and how your chakra can be used to control it.
There’s basically no progress for your classmates either. Akiji-kun eventually sets aside his bowl of sand and glares at it like he’s trying to kill it with his eyes, while Hiroshi-kun fishes out a teabag and makes his cup of water into a cup of room-temperature tea.
“Well, at least I got something out of stirring this water,” Hiroshi-kun muses. “And Ryōko-kun got some cardio.”
“The book also said it would probably go like this,” you admit. “Let’s just agree to work on this privately for a while.”
…
When you get home, the Eiso family seems to pick up on your somewhat soured mood.
“I tried to get a feel for wind release,” you admit, “and it didn’t really work.”
“You were having trouble?” Hiyori-san asks you calmly. “Why do you think that is?”
You consider your answer. “Something about using my hands, maybe.”
Hiyori-san thinks about this for a few moments, before heading back in off the patio and upstairs for a few minutes. She returns with a small object. It turns out to be a folding fan, the pieces of which are…
“Fancy old fans like this are sometimes made from bone,” Hiyori-san explains. “Go on, try. I hardly have the occasion to use something this fancy.”
You repeat some of the forms you know from the Kaguya clan’s repertoire, only this time focusing on how these movements affect the air around you as you complete them. This time you feel some resistance as you move, the opened fan pushing air out of the way then forming a chaotic trailing wake. A swing of your arm slices through the air, a flap of the fan creates a sudden gust. It’s not a chakra transformation, but you begin to get a feel for how air can move much more quickly and easily than you think you could without the fan.
After several minutes, which could have either been seconds or hours from your view, you close the fan with a satisfying snap. You find that Hiyori-san has been watching you with a smile.
“You can keep it,” she tells you calmly.
“… thank you.”
>1/2
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>>6376790
Eventually you have a break from school, after having basically finished learning the transformation technique and worked on speed training in preparation for learning the shunshin and the substitution. It’s during this week that Tsunade-san and Shizune-san return for a few days with a task.
After getting them caught up on your progress, including your basic training to prepare to learn wind transformations, Tsunade-san gives you a somewhat surprising assignment – she hands you a photo of a snake.
“This is the lowland habu,” she explains, pointing out the greenish scales and the pattern of lightly yellow-colored diamonds along its back with little circles at the centers. “They grow to four or five feet, and they strike quickly with a long reach. They tend to like rocky areas and the transition between fields and forest.”
You absorb this information, nodding along. “What would you have me to do with this information, Tsunade-san?”
“Their poison is very potent,” Tsunade-san explains, “and causes a variety of nasty side effects, yet the fatality rate is less than one percent for envenomations – so not many shinobi use it as a poison in battle. An antidote is available to the general public, so with prompt medical treatment prognosis is usually good.”
“I want you to track one of these down, catch it alive, and bring it back to the academy,” she tells you. “We’ll progress from there once you’ve returned.”
Then Shizune-san passes you a small glass tube with a relatively large cap. “This is a dose of the antivenin. Please try not to need it?”
>Start your search by walking the edge of the Eiso family fields.
>There must be some rocky outcrops in the nearby forests to search.
>Surely you can construct a trap for one of these nasty nope ropes.
>Other?
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>>6376815
“Are there ever vipers on the edge of our fields?”
Fujio-san looks at you with an expression of mild surprise. “Sometimes, yes… why do you ask?”
“Tsunade-san tasked me with catching one,” you tell him. “I think she intends to use its venom to teach me about poisons.”
“Tsunade-’san’, eh?” he muses on your use of the less formal ‘san’… though honestly given your childhood the use of any honorifics should surprise him. “Well, if she thinks it’s a good idea then I won’t argue. That having been said, there’s a trick to getting snakes out of the field. If you want I can show you?”
“I have a vial of antivenin,” you reply, “but if I can not use it, that would be better.”
“You’ll hear no arguments here,” Fujio-san agrees. “I know they don’t kill too many people, but getting bit’s no fun. And I’ve seen some pretty bad complications… my old man walked with a limp after getting bit in the leg. Never quite healed right, you see. Left a big lump on his bone.”
…
With Fujio-san’s help, it doesn’t take more than an hour or two to spot a lowland habu, slithering in the tall grass right on the edge of the family fields. According to him this is how people most often run into snakes around here – rats like to raid the fields, and the snakes come to feed on the rats, so when farmers can avoid killing the snakes they prefer to. That’s why apparently most farmers, Fujio-san included, know how to catch a poisonous snake safely.
“It’s easier to use a net,” he tells you, “but old-timers around here use their hands… cause you don’t have a net on you all day every day, so you need to know how to do it like this anyway. There’s two ways to do it – either use a stick to distract it and grab the tail, then lift its head with the stick, or pin the head with the stick then grab right behind the jaws. Use a little more force than you think you should otherwise it’ll wriggle loose, that’s the mistake most people make the first time.”
>1d20 best of three
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>>6376859
“… to be fair, Ryōko-kun,” Fujio-san muses, rubbing the back of his head, “I did tell you to grab it harder than you thought you should… you’re actually pretty strong for a kid your size, aren’t you?”
The snake… didn’t make it. “It didn’t deserve to die.”
“No,” Fujio-san agrees, “no it didn’t. But children make mistakes, and they learn. From now on you’ll be more aware of situations where you need to hold back, and you’ll only get better and better at controlling the strength you’ve been given.”
You never did enjoy it the same way your birth parents did. The whole rest of your clan it seemed, those with your kekkei genkai and those without it, to relish in the feeling of taking life. But while you have to admit to yourself that you feel an indescribable rush of emotion when fighting which you don’t hate, the act of killing never produced that feeling. Three human lives have ended on the end of your blade, none of whom were innocent in the situation, and you take no pride or joy in that. If the need for them to die had been questionable at all you might even feel badly about it.
“We farmers are always at war with rats,” Fujio-san observes. “We do it because they eat the food we try to grow. They’re are constant enemy. We don’t hate our enemy, we don’t take any pleasure in killing them, but sometimes conflict is unavoidable.”
That having been said, Fujio-san produces a shovel for you to bury the habu on the spot before searching for another. With this one, you’re more careful.
…
“I’m glad to see you’re still healthy,” Shizune-san tells you when you try to hand her the vial of antivenin, which she presses back into your hand. “Hang on to that for a while.”
Tsunade-san taps the glass of the container you put the habu-viper into, and the snake near-instantly strikes the glass. It doesn’t seem to seriously hurt itself at all, but it does then coil up on itself. “You caught an aggressive one.”
With Shizune-san to provide a distraction, Tsunade-san grabs the snake behind its jaws and forces its opened mouth over the top of a little glass vial topped with some kind of soft material. When the snake ‘bites’ a clear, slightly yellowish fluid drips into the vial.
“Poisons can have a wide variety of methods of action,” she tells you. “Snake venoms contain many hundreds of proteins, some of which have medicinal value if harnessed correctly. Many of these are enzymes which facilitate interaction between the toxin components and the body tissues, or which accelerate digestion.”
“These toxins vary widely – neurotoxins act against the nervous system in one of several ways, hemotoxins break down blood cells, and several other types can cause convulsions, heart damage, muscle cell death, or even lung damage.”
“And what does the lowland habu’s venom contain?” you ask.
>1/2
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>>6376961
“Predominantly cytotoxins and hemorrhagins,” Tsunade-san explains. “They break down cells, block clotting, and lead to reduced blood pressure. That is why victims typically experience nausea, dizziness, disorientation, and difficulty breathing.”
>It sounds like a comparatively ‘safe’ poison to learn about poisons with.
>So if this is not often used by shinobi, what do shinobi more typically use?
>Out of curiosity, how do you and Shizune-san apply this knowledge?
>Other?
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>>6376962
“It sounds like a safe enough poison to train with,” you realize. “But I’d like to know, how do you and Shizune-san use that kind of information?”
“Poison is a common part of the shinobi toolkit,” Shizune-san replies. “Biologically-based toxins can be produced with medical ninjutsu, and if it’s done carefully, medical ninjutsu can also be used to gain an immunity to certain toxins.”
“Pick a few specific toxins,” Tsunade-san adds, “and immunity to those provides a strong resistance to any related toxin you may encounter. Observing similarities in pathway and effect will also help a medic-nin address novel poisons in the field, in essence by making educated guesses to buy time until a more specific antidote can be designed.”
“And poison being so common is one area where my kekkei genkai would not protect me as well,” you muse.
“However, you do have a natural ability to heal yourself,” Tsunade-san observes. “So you have a way to mitigate that possible threat… or even turn it into a strength.”
“This is going to be hard,” Shizune-san admits. “I hope you’re prepared, Ryōko-kun.”
>1d20, best of three
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>>6377193
To turn a weakness into a strength…
“… hang on…”
So by having you introduce a few select snake venoms into your bloodstream in small doses, starting with the lowland habu, Tsunade-san intends for you to build up a few specific immunities and broad resistance to any poison similar to pit viper venom. Potentially, to more types of poison as well with time. But not only can you build up an immunity to certain specific poisons, based on what Shizune-san has said, you will eventually be able to re-create a pit viper venom using a jutsu. And if you can do that while altering your bones with the shikotsumyaku…
“… yes?” Tsunade-san prompts you, having patiently waited while you gamed out the scenario a little.
“That would be a new dance,” you conclude.
Tsunade-san laughs a little. “You’re a little short for that, so I assume you mean a technique of some kind?”
“New uses of the shikotsumyaku were always called ‘dances’,” you clarify. “You have seen Tsubaki-no-mai, and I created Tsurubari based on it. I also know of Yanagi-no-mai, the next dance, and Teshi Sendan which is based on that. There used to be other dances, but these are the only two whose names I learned.”
“Lacing my bones with poison as they emerge would be a new dance. The first in my clan’s history for generations, to my knowledge.”
Tsunade-san and Shizune-san exchange glances, before Tsunade-san speaks. “I do know that the mountain habu, which is much rarer, uses special glands behind its jaws to store toxins from toads that it eats… it’s called kleptotoxicism. If those glands were purged and implanted into your body, say behind your scapulae, then yes… assuming you gained the necessary skill to perform all the required operations yourself you could produce a poison in them you’re immune to, which could then envenom your bones through shikotsumyaku.”
“Even if you know where you’re going,” she warns you next, “you’re not actually there yet, nowhere close. You’re going to have to learn kanji – for now Shizune and I can do some transcriptions into kana – and you’ll use that to learn protein chemistry in addition to the basics of medical ninjutsu. If you have some real talent at this, you may have your dance in two years or so with our help.”
“You can’t be more than about eleven, maybe twelve at the oldest. Can a little kid like you really dedicate themselves to my training?”
>You have a deal. I’ll take your training and apply it in ways you can’t.
>You have a point. I’m not sure I’m ready for that sort of training.
>Other?
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>>6377331
“Bet,” you answer her, without hesitation. “I’ll learn all this and apply it in ways only I can.”
“Then get to work,” Tsunade-san insists curtly, but with the traces of a smile on her face.
…
Even the basics of what Tsunade-san and Shizune-san have to teach you takes the rest of the school year and even into your next and final year. They’re not in Yugakure for that entire time of course, and sometimes only Shizune-san returns to check in on your progress and update the study materials they leave you with.
The harvest seasons for various crops grown by the Eiso family come and pass, with temporary workers coming and going to help you get the work done. You even start to get a handle on wind nature.
“So, what’s the plan today?” Hiyori-san asks as you get ready to head out. “It’s pretty early for a weekend, don’t you think?”
“I’ll be heading to the Horie hills,” you inform her. “Looking for a mountain habu.”
“Well, please be careful,” she answers, handing you a bento neatly wrapped in a cloth. “This should keep until evening.”
“Thank you,” you reply, taking the box carefully in both hands. “It’s about a three hour trip each way, so I may be back late.”
“Even if you don’t find what you’re looking for?” Fujio-san asks you over his own breakfast.
You nod. “If I can’t find one I’ll set traps and go back tomorrow.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Fujio-san replies. “Well, I’ll say it too… please take care.”
“I will.”
…
The Horie hills are one of the more rugged areas around Yugakure, which means that tourists never come out here. Which isn’t to say they’re ‘trackless’, since locals do sometimes come out here to gather herbs, but the tracks are often poorly marked and not often used or maintained. The rainy forests give way to high meadows, with bare rock emerging from the soil in areas. Some of these outcrops thrust high above the surrounding grasses, and it’s one of these where you focus your initial efforts.
Chakra manipulation helps you climb and search the rockiest areas, which you quickly write off as likely spots to find the elusive viper. That’s when you start to focus on the lower outcrops and the grasses immediately surrounding them, which is similar to how you found its lowland cousin.
>1/2
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>>6377458
After many hours, having slowed down after taking a break for lunch, you actually do spot it – a snake with the head shape of a viper. It’s lurking around one of the outcrops where some trees and grasses have taken root amid the gravel and stones, its camouflage patterning equally at home in dead leaf litter and rock. Using the technique Fujio-san, who you’ve begun to think of as like an adoptive father, taught you, it’s much easier to snag the mountain habu and place it in a container which can hang from your backpack.
Securing that container, you begin the long trek back to the Eiso farm. After about an hour you find yourself back on a somewhat more traveled road, and as the sun is setting a traveler approaches you going the other direction.
“It’s getting dark,” you muse to the young man, who wears a dark jacket and a Yugakure headband around his slicked-back silver hair. On his back he carries a large weapon, with three scythe-like blades. “Please be careful to stay on the right path.”
He glances at you as you pass. “I’ll do that.”
And then you both continue along your respective ways. You think nothing else of it.
>1d20, best of three
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>>6377467
You don’t remember any of it happening.
Instead you become aware of your surroundings in the drawing room, the Eiso home already busy with officers from the Yugakure police. A blanket is over your shoulders, and a senior-looking officer sits next to you patiently.
“… who was he?”
The officer seems surprised when you speak, as though you’ve been sitting here silently for some time.
“You’re with us again?” he asks, seemingly wanting to confirm that you’ve recovered your senses. “Your name is Kaguya Ryōko?”
You nod.
“You’re aware of what’s happened?”
You nod again.
“May I ask where you were when… when this all took place?”
“I was in the hills, looking for a rare snake,” you explain, not looking at the man directly. “She made me lunch. They told me to be safe.”
There’s a pause before the officer speaks again, his tone strained. “When we arrived they had been taken down, covered over with blankets. You did that?”
“They deserved at least that much,” you insist, before glaring at the man, your eyes stinging. “Who was he?”
The officer, an older gentleman with a kindly face who you immediately regret raising your voice to, flinches at the confrontation. It takes a second for him to reply. “Hidan. One of our own shinobi. He even killed the whole jōnin council at their Saturday meeting.”
>If there’s anything you can do to help here, offer to do it.
>Akiji-kun’s father was on the council. He’ll need a shoulder.
>You know which direction he was going. Who can take your statement?
>Other?
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>>6377486
>You know which direction he was going. Who can take your statement?
>Akiji-kun’s father was on the council. He’ll need a shoulder.
Yeah give out the statement and if you can go and see Akiji if he needs the shoulder.
Motherfucking Hidan, fucking hell.
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>>6377486
“If the jōnin council is gone,” you demand, “then who is in charge now?”
“The chief of police was on the council,” the officer replies. “I guess that leaves me.”
“This ‘Hidan’ person… silver hair? Carries a three-bladed scythe?”
“… yes,” the officer confirms after taking a second to collect himself. “You know him?”
“Better,” you tell him. “I know which way he went.”
…
Akiji-kun is doing just as badly as you imagined he would be. While his father was a high-ranking shinobi in Yugakure, one of a very limited number of jōnin, his mother is not a shinobi. She has not been killed, and so at very least Akiji-kun is not alone. But while Akiji-kun is free to grieve, and may actually be incapable of not doing so, his mother isn’t free to. She still, for now at least, has to present something approaching strength.
While your classmate doesn’t seem like he wants anything to do with you right now, you end up passing the night helping out his mother with regular tasks… cleaning dishes, sweeping the floors, dusting. You don’t explain. She doesn’t ask.
When you wake up, you wander to the academy building and let yourself in and head upstairs to the classroom where you’ve been allowed to store your research materials and the lowland habu you caught last year. Into a second terrarium you had prepared a few days ago you dump the highland habu, closing it up and walking over to the lowland. You tap on the glass to see if the occupant responds, which he does… a lazy little guy, by this point somewhat used to your interruptions of his life here.
The Eiso home – your home since arriving here more than a year ago – is probably still being treated as a crime scene, and you’re not sure how you would handle being there again so soon. Better to let the police handle things. You’re sure that they’ll show Fujio-san and Hiyumi-san the appropriate respect. They were both well-liked members of the community.
You’re not sure how long you’re in that classroom. You do know that you feed the snakes, since doing so at the same time puts them on the same feeding schedule. But other than that, it’s hard to say really. Basically, you study and work until you start feeling hungry, which in retrospect wasn’t a good thing for you to decide to wait for. To feel hungry, first you’d have to be in a mental state to feel… anything.
“This isn’t healthy, Ryōko-kun,” Shizune-san eventually interrupts your studies.
You glance up, and see that it’s dark outside. “How long?”
“The incident was the day before yesterday.”
So you were in here for at least thirty-six hours. “You came here when you heard?”
“We did.”
We.
>1/2
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>>6377612
Shizune-san leads you to a hotel in town, where a meeting room has been blocked off for Tsunade-san’s use. The desk in front of her is covered in papers, and she waves off a well-dressed man with glasses and a briefcase. The man pauses before passing you by, and bows his head slightly. You return the polite gesture before he sees himself out.
“Please,” Tsunade-san gestures to a seat near her, which you take. “How are you holding up?”
“Better than my classmate,” you suggest. “But maybe… maybe just differently.”
Tsunade-san nods quietly. “I know a little about how you must feel, so I know this may not be a good time for this. But I had suspicions about Fujio-san and Hiyumi-san’s wishes, which proved to be correct. I checked with the bank they worked with to make sure.”
She passes you a few papers. “Officially within the village you were considered a ‘foster’ child. However, the couple went out of their way to modify their will.”
… what is she saying?
“The house and fields were meant to go to either surviving spouse, but the modification they insisted on was to add a clause that were both of them to pass you would inherit their property and their land.”
Tsunade-san pats a rather large envelope. “Within this envelope, which will be retained by the bank, are the original will, the deed to their home, and the title to the land on which they planted their fields.”
Then she hands you another envelope. “And here are copies, for your own use. Hiyumi-san was an only child, however Fujio-san has an older sister who may not be pleased to find your name on the will.”
“I see,” you frown. “So there are people like that in every community…”
“I’m afraid so.”
“May I ask you something, Ryōko-kun?” Shizune-san asks.
You nod.
“Do you… have any thoughts what to do next?”
>Complete the harvest, then sell the land and the house. I don’t think I can live there.
>Probably continue living in their home, at least until I graduate. Keep up the harvest.
>Fujio-san relied on several trustworthy guys, who together could buy the place. Turn it into a cooperative.
>Other?
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>>6377615
>Probably continue living in their home, at least until I graduate. Keep up the harvest.
If we abandon the past, we'll lose ourselves to revenge. We left our clan because we aren't like them. The best thing to do here is to keep living, and let the routine be the foundation for our growth. Maybe once we've reached a shinobi's skill we can give it to Fujio-san's older sister, maybe not.
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>>6377615
>Fujio-san relied on several trustworthy guys, who together could buy the place. Turn it into a cooperative.
There's little for us here, save a couple friends. I say complete our training, then wander like the wind. Time heals all wounds.
While there is something to the idea of looking after the home we were 'raised' in, the harvest could interfere with our training if we participate in the labour. Becoming an absentee landlord/owner who lives off the rents of tenant farmers or work of day labourers is wasteful. Let the land go to someone who will actually care for and develop it.
Though I will say, depend on our next chakra nature, creating jutsu with dual uses in farming and battle would be pretty cool. Even if we don't get earth or water natures, bonemeal can be pretty useful as a fertilizer.
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Rolled 2 (1d2)
>>6377615
> 1 = Complete the harvest, then sell the land and the house. I don’t think I can live there.
>2 = Fujio-san relied on several trustworthy guys, who together could buy the place. Turn it into a cooperative.
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>>6377615
>Probably continue living in their home, at least until I graduate. Keep up the harvest.
>Turn it into a cooperative.
Keep the place, rent the fields to the workers. That is how the place will be kept in a good shape if/when we are gone.
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>>6377615
You consider it for a moment. On the one hand it’s undeniable that one girl, still an academy student, can’t be expected to run a farm which took two adults working full-time just to coordinate and which took many hired hands for the actual harvests. The next harvest should actually begin in a few days. On the other hand, keeping the place up until you finish at the academy at least will preserve options. Once you start going on genin missions it may not be a feasible arrangement.
“I think I won’t make a big decision or a big change right now.”
That having been said, you’ll need to make that decision eventually. There are a few capable hands who you have overheard talking about wanting to settle down, and you know how the Eiso family’s land was always arranged – two very large sections for staple crops, which help feed the village, and several smaller plots which could be used for small houses. These, like the Eiso family home itself, would have enough land surrounding them to grow a mix of vegetables and high-value, low-space crops – Fuijo-san and Hiyori-san often grew spices, cherry tomatoes, and peppers.
“When the time comes, it seems right to sell some of the land to the people who helped work it,” you muse. “It wouldn’t impact yield in the main fields.”
Tsunade-san nods. “That sounds like something they would appreciate. Until you can move back, we have a room for you here.”
“… thanks.”
…
After a few days you’re allowed to move back into the Eiso family home, which is now quiet in the most unpleasant way. Eating your meals seated in the drawing room, looking out into the garden, becomes your habit. The dining room, despite the wall having been repaired after that night, remains open but unused.
Days pass into weeks, weeks pass into months, and eventually the day of your graduation comes. Only nine students are promoted to genin this year based on their test scores and their competency in ninjutsu, including Akiji-kun and Hiroshi-kun.
But even after officially graduating from the academy, you find yourself in a different classroom with Shizune-san.
“This is going to be your last test,” she tells you. “I’ll be administering it. Are you prepared?”
You nod silently.
“Then the test is simple,” Shizune-san tells you, placing two jars with both the habu vipers you’ve caught inside. “Secure the venom, prepare it for use, and use it as the first injection towards eventual inoculation towards both species. There is no antivenin available. You have fifteen minutes.”
“Please begin.”
>1d20, best of three
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>>6377814
The idea that you could do this in just fifteen minutes is ridiculous for one very simple reason – that the venom of the two species of habu, the rare one and the common one, is largely similar. So if your instructions are to prepare a single injection that would work for both simultaneously, which would certainly make things much quicker in the long run than doing them sequentially, you have to remove the duplicate toxins from one sample or the other before combining them into a single ‘cocktail’. Otherwise you’d accidentally be doubling the amount of each duplicate toxin, which could be a fatal mistake.
From there you have two options – the first is to quickly adjust the amounts so that the most dangerous of the toxins is ‘sub-clinical’, or in other words to a small enough amount that it won’t present serious symptoms while your body processes it. Cutting all of the toxins by the same percentage would be fastest, and you could probably only just make it in the fifteen minute time limit. But the alternative is to individually adjust the amounts of the key toxins so that the cocktail will be equally effective at inoculating you against all of the components. That would certainly produce a much better ‘tool’ for you to use, but would also take longer than fifteen minutes.
>Take the fast option, try to finish the procedure in the fifteen minutes you were explicitly given.
>This is a medical procedure. Since the time limit is arbitrary, you’d rather do it ‘right’ than ‘fast’.
>Other?
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>>6377830
It takes twice as long as Shizune-san gave you, but you end up with a treatment you’re satisfied with after one final check on the dosage, comparing each key toxin against its Ld-50 figure. Then you cut the venom with a saline solution and tap yourself for an intravenous drip – a much slower method, but more effective.
“You took much longer than I gave you,” Shizune-san muses.
“You never told me to stop,” you counter as the IV fluid works its way into you. “This may sound self-serving, but shouldn’t quality of outcome also count?”
“The rules of triage do mean that, especially in the field, a medical ninja may need to make difficult choices regarding treatment,” Shizune-san tells you. “A treatment that may take too long might be put off by simply stabilizing the patient first. A patient whose wounds are too severe may even be allowed to die in order to save others if time is a major constraint. There are always alternatives to rushing and potentially botching a difficult treatment.”
Shizune-san shakes her head. “However, there may be times when someone, even a superior, demands that you behave in a way that runs counter to your professional obligations – as a medic, or as a shinobi. You may be ordered to take unnecessary risks, or to prioritize certain patients over others for non-medical reasons.”
“You identified my parameters as unreasonable, and chose to follow a professional standard instead,” she concludes, with a smile. “That was the true test, and you passed with flying colors.”
After the treatment is completed, Shizune-san gives you your official Yugakure headband and leads you into town.
>1/2
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>>6377901
“Where are we going?” you ask curiously.
“Shopping,” Shizune-san explains cheerfully. “As a graduation present, I’d like to help you pick out an outfit. You don’t wanna be one of those genin who only ever wear the same thing every single day, do you?”
You shake your head.
“Then I’ll give you some advice on how to stick to a theme,” she tells you. “Have a little bit of variety without ever seeming like you’re being showy. It’s a real balancing act, you know.”
The plentiful shops in town give Shizune-san a lot to work with. She keeps the color palette similar, with yama-bakama in stripes of greens, greys, and blues, and a series of kaku-obi options. Identical tops with tall, strongly-constructed necks allow for the sleeves and backs to be tailor-removed, with fairly plain blue haori of light weights tied with outer sashes in muted earthtones. This configuration will let you shrug off the haori when you need to use shikotsumyaku, so you won’t need to buy replacements all the time.
And finally you have the bone hair-tubes, engraved in a pattern of interlocking yuzu-flowers.
“Very pretty,” Shizune-san muses, “traditional-leaning, but functional. I think it’s a good look.”
You tend to agree, and it’s well in-line with the fairly traditional, high-quality clothing favored by well-off residents of the Land of Hot Water. “Thank you, Shizune-san. I appreciate the advice.”
“Of course,” Shizune-san smiles. “We can’t have Tsunade-san’s first student in years not know how to dress herself.”
>please roll me a 1d6, I will be taking the first roll only
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>>6377907
forgot to add my reference pic
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>>6377907
It isn’t much of a surprise that your teammates end up being Akiji-kun and Hiroshi-kun… which is one of two ways you could see this going. If the teams were meant to be balanced it would see you teamed with the weakest two genin to graduate from your class, and Akiji-kun and Hiroshi-kun each seeing similar teammates which would balance out their comparative strength. But instead, the three clear strongest genin were placed onto the same team.
So that means, at least you would assume, that a decision has been made to acknowledge that there are very different trajectories among this year’s graduates. If this were to be considered a form of ‘triage’, the other two teams of three have been written off as being unlikely to ever attain high ranks as shinobi.
What is a surprise is that your teacher Yuru-sensei is the one who eventually joins you in the otherwise empty classroom. The look on his face tells you that the situation is severe.
“What’s wrong, sensei?” Akiji-kun is the first to ask.
Yuru-sensei sighs, settling in behind the lectern. “What I’m about to tell you is not to leave this room. It’s the groundwork to your first mission, which is ranked S. If you can’t keep your mouths shut you can leave right now, no consequences.”
“If it’s that serious,” you counter, “then I don’t think any of us would leave.”
Akiji-kun and Hiroshi-kun don’t say anything to agree, but they’re both visibly onboard with your statement.
“Well then, I’m glad to see you so enthusiastic,” Yuru-sensei nods. “I will begin by informing you that as of this moment, you will not be receiving orders from the jōnin council… because there are no full jōnin left in this village.”
You knew the council were killed when Hidan left the village, but you had no idea that there were so few jōnin in Yugakure that they couldn’t re-staff the council with those who survived…
“What’s worse,” Yuru-sensei grumbles, “even our tokujō were killed. I only survived because I took the weekend off, and so as of right now I am the only tokujō remaining.”
“… so it’s that bad?” you mutter.
“It is,” Yuru-sensei agrees. “So most genin teams will need to be observed by chūnin in the field. Missions will need to be assigned by a small committee of chūnin, and promotions will be assessed by a committee of chūnin. All of this, for now, falls to me to officiate.”
>1/2
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>>6378034
“That… is bad,” you muse.
“It means that our village currently cannot take any mission requests ranked above B,” Yuru-sensei adds. “Our village’s funding for the shinobi program will be diminished, and with fewer high-profile missions and shinobi to our name our reputation will also be diminished, which will further diminish our funding.”
“Unless something is done, Hidan’s treachery will have effectively doomed Yugakure as a shinobi village.”
“So you plan to give us an S-rank mission?” Hiroshi-kun asks. “What is the mission? And as genin, how does it make sense to give it to us?”
“The three of you are the three students right now who I can see eventually being promoted to tokujō or jōnin,” Yuru-sensei explains. “Akiji-kun, you’ve been working on your earth release in secret and your abilities show promise in taijutsu and genjutsu as well. You have the potential to become a jōnin one day.”
Then he turns his attention to Hiroshi-kun. “And you have started teaching yourself water release, on top of your sensory abilities… those alone could carry you to the tokujō ranking with practice and experience.”
“And you, Ryōko-kun,” he concludes, turning his attention to you. “You have potential I struggle to even comprehend. Potential so great you’ve attracted the attention of one of the Sannin… Tsunade-sama.”
“Tsunade? Of the Sannin?” Akiji-kun repeats in disbelief.
“That’s right,” Yuru-sensei nods, eyes still locked on you. “The ‘strongest kunoichi’ herself.”
>That’s neat to know, but what’s this about a mission?
>So our S-rank mission is to… fix the village? Somehow?
>So why can’t you just promote people to the council?
>Other?
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>>6378089
>So our S-rank mission is to… fix the village? Somehow?
>Other?
Trying to force advanced missions with suicidal won't magically fix our critical manpower shortage. In truth, we have two strategies that can work. One become a middleman contractor for merc and rogue shinobi as an intermediary. If we have the diplomacy, we could even try to recruit some to plug the holes.
2 reform our Ninja Academy. As a small village we do not have the bloodlines, jutsu archives, or strong bloodline ki reserves to make traditional shinobi who are worth a damn and not cannon fodder of cannon fodder. However, Taijutsu doesn't have this problem. Your bloodline or ki reserves frankly do not matter. It enables normal shinobi to compete with and threaten even the strongest.
For recruiting 'lost' shinobi, you already have a strong precedent set via us. Becoming a sanctuary to forsaken shinobi will alleviate many manpower problems.
Also throwing us into a suicide mission is gonna piss off Tsunade. Trying to use us like that to gain her support is the exact OPPOSITE of what you should be doing. Tsunade is a typical burnt out shinobi. So much so, she doesn't even trust her own village anymore to be trusted with her student. Trying to lure her out like that and gain her support will enrage her. After all, she picked this village because she could easily bully and control them to get her way. While at the same time they were not bloodthirsty and violent as other villages which she appreciated. Even with the Jonin dead, so long as we are here, she won't turn a blind eye.
If you want to save this village, you have two options. Reform or Sanctuary. As for money problems, becoming a middleman. Even sending what few shinobi you have on suicide missions to desperately acquire funds or appear strong isn't gonna work. However people WILL pay a fee for middleman services. Especially one as official as a Village.The Chunin here are fucking retards. You already know about black market middleman, but underestimating Taijutsu is understandable at least. Much less what our presence signifies here.
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In terms of Tsunade we are not dealing with the Tsunade from the manga/anime and instead one just post war who has burnt out from the fighting but she hasn't given up yet on saving her family. Otherwise, she wouldn't be so interested in the MC. Immortality is quite closely related to bringing the dead back to life. We just happened to volunteer to be her guinea pig.snake boy Sannin is gonna be SO extremely jelly as fuck.Of course, ICC, we don't know that yet. Tsunade already has leads to reclaiming their souls from the shinigami via certain forbidden Jutsu. What she doesn't have are old resurrection leads until now, when she became inspired thanks to us.
So far, our clan enemies haven't shown up yet due to fearing Tsunade. I can only imagine how fucking pissed the Fire Village is gonna be when they find out about us. Snake boy is bound to show up eventually, but won't dare to push us too far for fear of inciting Tsunade to wreck his shit. However I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to negotiate with Tsunade about shared research depending on her desperation. Tsunade has a lead on the one piece of the puzzle she was previously missing. Now no longer feel a reason to give up. I can only imagine how dangerous her mindset currently is despite the burnout. Has now she has HOPE.
>>6378102
btw do NOT bring up the research directive Tsunade has in mind for us. The village has neither the funds or strength to withstand that kind of heat if any word gets on what Tsunade is secretly up to. In character, we know Tsunade is willing to bet big and somehow get the funds/resources for it, but not the real reason why. Even her current activities is no doubt meant to be a provide a front while secretly getting what she needs. That is Tsunade's problem but apparently she doesn't intend to keep us completely secret.
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>>6378089
I'll support >>6378102 with the caveat that we bring this up with the appropriate degree of modesty. It is just a couple of ideas, we haven't actually heard the guy out as to what the mission is and if they have a concrete plan to get the village out of this rut or not. These ideas could be good alternatives or complementary ideas to get the village back on its feet, or if the mission is stupid or we fail.
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>>6378089
“So our ‘S-rank’ mission is to… fix the village somehow?” you ask with a frown. None of this is making much sense right now.
Yuru-sensei nods. “Make no mistake, the mission ranking system is not purely designed to reflect danger, difficulty, and payout. In the case of an S-rank mission, political sensitivity and significance can also play a part in the rank assessment. Typically this would mean assigning such missions to jōnin, however in this case, the daimyō has ordered a mission requiring genin.”
“He has ordered Yugakure to break the downward spiral in confidence by sending the strongest rookie team available to participate in the chūnin exams in Konohagakure, later this year. And you three... without a doubt, you're our strongest rookies.”
“Konohagakure?” Akiji-san repeats. “Why in the world would we go there?”
“The exams held by Konohagakure are open to other villages,” Yuru-sensei clarifies. “If a small village sends a strong team that represents them well, it can lead to an increase in clients seeking the village’s services. Yugakure has not been sending teams recently, since on the opposite side of the coin sending teams with mediocre performance can create the opposite impression.”
“So you want to show us off,” you reason. “Prove to the world that 'Yugakure' village hasn’t gone cold?”
“Not just the rest of the world,” Yuru-sensei corrects you. “To our own nation as well. Our survival as a village hinges on our own fellow citizens and the daimyō knowing that they can count on us, even if it’s just keeping the roads safe and the borders secure.”
“We’re definitely not ready,” Hiroshi-kun observes. “We haven’t even been on a mission yet.”
“That much can be addressed,” Yuru-sensei tells you with a nod. “I plan to work the nine of you who graduated hard – the six of your classmates on the other teams will be highly visible to the public while doing their missions. But the three of you, I intend to assign missions that will help hone your skills and prepare you to compete against other genin, instead of the usual rookie jobs like chopping firewood and harvesting potatoes.”
“Which,” he adds, sparing you a glance, “I know at least one of you is proficient in already.”
He gestures for your newly-formed team to stand, and rolls out a scroll in front of you. “I’ll even let you pick your first real assignment. All of them are C-rank – no real danger anticipated, but more of a test of your skills than chasing down a lost cat. Which is an actual D-rank request I gave some of your former classmates earlier.”
>There’s a mission to help rebuild a road which crosses a swamp. That could be good warmup.
>There’s supposedly a package delivery that went missing in an isolated canyon to the north.
>There was a suspicious house fire in a small village to the south. The locals suspect arson.
>Other?
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>>6378134
Oh hell no, it's a fucking trap. There is not a chance in hell Konoha is gonna let us slip by. Worst part is now we have to somehow breach the topic of Tsunade's interest in us which I was really hoping to brush off.
>>6378134
>>Other?
Repeat of >>6378102 other option.
Only how to explain Tsunade and how it is trap meant for us specifically. There is no way Konoha doesn't know and hasn't set up a trap just for us.
>>6378113
That is what I'm afraid of.
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>>6378147
We are a child soldier in a world specializing in superhumans wrecking the place and woe to you if your a pleb or a weaker ninja. Also Spirit of Fire is BS on account of the whole endless wars, ninjas are bloodthirsty mercenaries, and shinobi never realizing there are other uses for ki than killing people. I appreciate not being another stupid pawn and cannon fodder as well as the ninjas who get how fucked the whole setup truly is.
Especially if you're from a small village. Poor bastards.
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>>6378159
Anyway at the very least we can call out the Chuunins on their bullshit/stupidity and warn our teammates that we are walking into a trap because of us. It's not like they can do anything about us thanks to Tsunade and the distinct possibility that we are stronger than all of them solo. Despite us trying to chill out and hit the books.
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>>6378134
>There’s supposedly a package delivery that went missing in an isolated canyon to the north.
If we're practicing for the chunin exams, better choose assignments that test our brains and especially our combat skills first and foremost. Not sure rebuilding a road qualifies. I guess water and earth release would be good for a road through a swamp, but that depends on how far along our teammates are. Not to mention it is a damn road, you'd have to be at least jonin if you wanted to spam jutsu to create kilometers of elevated/drained land. At least the others test our investigation skills or may get us in a fight.
>>6378139
I do like your write in, but not every village and high tier ninja is gonna be specifically aware of us in particular. Tsunade figured it out easily, but we were also a suspiciously bald refugee right at the time of our clans demise, and she had specific anatomical knowledge that relates to our abilities and is an experienced ninja in general. Random ANBU intel collectors are not gonna know who we are unless the QM really puts their thumb on the plot scale.
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>>6378134
>There’s supposedly a package delivery that went missing in an isolated canyon to the north.
This sounds most doable of the missions for us.
>>6378102
This is good analysis, but way beyond our paygrade to deal with or ability. I could easily see Ryoko being really sceptical of any of this and being really careful with each of her steps. I mean she lost her village to a bloodlust and now she is being thrown into more dangerous than baseline missions with heavy political implications. She would understand that.
Also if we are going to Shadowrun, I would Shadowrun the hell out of hiding our bloodline abilities. The moment people realise what we are capable of doing, Snakeman and Danzo are going to try to groom us so hard it is not even funny. Now Ryoko might not know about them, but she should know about how special her speciality is. At minimum fast forward to a local ANBU team fast.
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>>6378192
Snakeman and Danzo have to get passed Tsunade, who has now started giving a fuck again. Mix in the desperation, and even snake boy won't dare cross her. Especially because their goals overlap. On the contrary snake boy will try to be friendly(probably fail in a creepy manner) in the hope of collaborating and sharing research. Given Tsunade's desperation, she will likely accept despite her misgivings but she'll still protect us at least. The biggest problem is Danzo. Among the Leaf he is definitely gonna be the #1 most pissed off about 'losing' a Sannin apprentice and will cause a ruckus. Lucky for us snake boy is gonna figure it out first and won't be hostile due to overlapping goals.
Now IC, we do not know the specifics. We DO know that chances are the Leaf isn't gonna be happy about losing a Sannin apprentice for obvious reasons. We just don't know who is gonna be the most pissed off about it, but we can safely assume somebody is gonna stir shit up over it. We also have our own clan enemies but recently Tsunade went around and threatened them over it, so it's unlikely they'll stir shit up until Danzo goes around trying to antagonize them into it but that shouldn't be a short term problem. Worryingly, given the current actions of this village, they most likely are not aware of Tsunade's arrangement with this village and our...unusual status. It would appear that only the Jonin knew about it and kept their lips sealed.
As for hiding our bloodline ability as much as I would love the idea...that is the whole reason Tsunade changed her mind. Specifically, it was how potent our bloodline was and how it wouldn't degenerate like the others that inspired her. Good news is we are her #1 key for research, bad news is we aren't gonna be able to hide our bloodline ability. It's not much of a secret that we are training to be a medicnin. The big secret is the actual goal behind it. Snake boy knows enough to figure it out quickly when he hears about it but he shouldn't show up too quickly, fearing Tsunade and desiring to make a deal with her.
Biggest risk short term IMO is the village accidentally enraging Tsunade and Danzo shenanigans. The snakeman will be cautious and try to be friendly due to overlapping goals, he definitely will refuse to risk, given his obsession. Tsunade is now hopeful and desperate. A very dangerous combo. When Donzo inevitably takes a shot is gonna have an extremely enraged Tsunade breathing down his neck and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if snakeman decides to join in the fun.
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>>6378134
“I suspect the missing package presents a good opportunity,” you muse, glancing at each of your teammates in turn. “What techniques have you worked on with your natures?”
“I’ve got the Moguragakure pretty much down,” Akiji-kun volunteers. “I can also use the same basic technique to sling sand around as a distraction, but that’s about it right now. I’ve been working on an actual offensive technique, but I’m not confident with it yet.”
Hiroshi-kun’s answer is similar. “I’m confident in my Kirigakure technique, though I struggle to produce any mist myself. Archerfish too, though that really isn’t a very useful technique if we have to fight.”
“I’ve never had occasion to use Kūkigakure,” you admit candidly, “and it can be unstable if I try to move too fast. My Reppūshō is really only enough to deflect projectiles.”
If you had a bit more skill, the Reppūshō could be enough to push enemies off balance or even blow them away entirely. More water could become a proper Suidan, a water bullet, or some similar technique. While it’s not a typical earth-type attack, using sand at a little more scale could be useful… though you’re also interested in this ‘offensive technique’ Akiji-kun mentioned.
But in your head, you also tick the boxes – a rocky canyon, with a thermal river that provides steam and mist, along with air of course. This will be a mission suited to trialing all of your techniques in the real world, which makes it perfect for honing skills which may be useful in confronting other genin.
“The client has provided all requested details,” Yuru-sensei informs you, “including the name of the courier, the contents and origin of the package, and its intended delivery date.”
He opens a small file and shows your team the details he has – the client is a brewer hoping to start up operations in Yuzusaki, and the package is a special koji mold starter sourced from the Land of Rice Fields. The courier was from a company based in the Land of Fire whose network of services extends into all nations bordering that land, including yours. The trip from the Land of Rice Fields to Yuzusaki village was supposed to pass through Yugakure village by way of a fairly uncommon route through a river canyon, which provides a fast but somewhat more challenging route, but the courier never arrived here and has been overdue for two days.
The hope is that the courier may simply have gotten lost or hurt somewhere, and so finding the package in time to salvage the mold starter will also mean helping out the courier if he’s in trouble.
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>>6378529
The river canyon looks like many other throughout the north of the Land of Hot Water, steep in some places but more sloped in others depending on how the river below twists and turns. A low mist clings to the terrain, which is something you were counting on.
“So the courier likely went missing somewhere along this stretch of canyon,” you recall.
>Split up for a while, using stealth ninjutsu, and regroup at a pre-specified point upriver.
>Stick to the trail for a while, see if you can spot anything from that perspective.
>If he got into trouble he may not be on the trail. Head down towards the river.
>Other?
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>>6378559
>One of us will follow trail, observing for skid marks indicating the courier fell/slid, or places where they could have climbed. Another will go down and follow the river. Both will move openly and focus on observation. The third will try and be in between the other two, keeping at least one person within eyesight or earshot, moving slower and more stealthily through the more sloped parts of the terrain and acting as a relay between the other two teammates. This way they can rapidly join someone to help them with the element of surprise, or alert the another teammate if someone is attacked or needs help investigating/healing or moving the courier, etc. We'll all meet up at a rally point upriver, whereupon we'll choose a new focus.
The person moving through the misty slopes is probably best suited to Hiroshi due to his sensory abilities, though I could also see the case for him taking the riverside.
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