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edenfallingFor jjunter, for the Fic DVD Commentary Meme (which is still open, fyi!)
The Guardian in Spite of Herself: Ayakawa Yukiko retired from being a ninja, and she's come to terms with that. Then the Third Hokage summons her for an assignment that will change her life. AU story, set six years pre-manga. (72,000 words)
Chapter 16: Chapter the Sixteenth, in which Naga and Suisen demonstrate how not to dance with a partner, Yukiko and Seichi discuss assassination and dead relatives, and, to the author's relief, Kakashi's interrogation skills end up irrelevant to the plot. (4,450 words)
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As reading your latest DVD commentary (chapter 11 of the Way of the Apartment Manager) led me to reread the whole series again (with pleasure!), I'd love a commentary on chapter 16 of the Guardian in Spite of Herself.
In the former fic, it's basically all from Yukiko's POV; in the latter, you've got multiple POVs you switch between, and in the latter chapters you're often switching between them 2-3 times within any given chapter. What are some of the challenges and opportunities having so many POVs and subgroups of people in various locations to keep moving simultaneously? Describing it like this sounds like it shouldn't work, but the effect as a reader is this sense of escalating tension, wondering if every group including a POV character will ultimately end up in the same location (and if yes, what will happen next).
To answer quickly: the main challenge is timing/pacing. I want to use each POV at least every other chapter, so they don't feel like they've fallen out of the story (this is slightly less urgent for Yukiko and Sasuke, since they're currently in the same place and thus appear in each other's POV sections), but I also don't want to drag the story out. That means I have to make sure stuff happens in every POV thread, because I can't just drop one of them for extended periods while someone else has exciting adventures.
This is why Iruka is not a POV character, incidentally, though my first tentative outline -- created way back when this story was three tiny scenelets and a vague idea -- did include a plot thread about him and a Yamanaka OC investigating the Uchiha massacre back in the village. I still think that could have interesting thematic resonance with the current plot threads, but he wound up spending a lot of time sitting and waiting (or reading archives) which was not conducive to maintaining momentum. So I cut him, though I still kind of want to write a sidefic about what he's up to during the main story.
Anyway, the advantage to multiple POVs is that I can show more events and therefore create a more intricate story, and also show different perspectives on the same events and issues -- because even though Sasuke and Yukiko are currently sharing a plot strand, the things they notice and care about are radically different, and their emotional arcs are likewise dissimilar. This is also useful for creating thematic resonance. The main theme of "Guardian" is the cost in lives and in other factors (political, economic, psychological, ethical, etc.) that the hidden village/ninja clan system imposes on the people of the Elemental Countries, as seen by both civilians and shinobi, so the more perspectives I can bring to bear, the more rounded the picture.
(The other advantage to multiple POVs, of course, is that it's easier to do cliffhangers. *wry*)
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The others vanished before Naga had finished her warning -- Kohaku underground, Suisen in a flash of light, and Kakashi and Kafunnokaze simply gone. And not a moment too soon. A rain of kunai pierced the layer of pine needles that carpeted the sandy forest soil, half of them sizzling on contact as if the blades themselves were on fire.
That phrasing -- [thing A], [thing B], simply gone -- is a verbal tic of mine which I first noticed a couple years ago. It appears in both positive form (all three examples are actual vanishments) and negative form (two ways a thing didn't vanish and one way it did), and it has begun to irritate me whenever I run across it in my work.
Also this chapter resolves the cliffhanger at the end of chapter 15, which is where I'd left the story hanging for about three years. *sheepish*
"You are trespassing on the lands of Gouzen-sama, the rightful daimyo of Volcano Country!" a high tenor voice said, echoing and reechoing from the trees with no clear point of origin. "All enemies and spies will be executed! Surrender and state your business and you may survive."
Yeah right.
"We are in lawful pursuit of an S-class missing-nin, under the authority of the Sandaime Hokage and the Master of Hidden Grass. Stand down and let us pass," Kakashi said. His voice echoed in an eerie mimic of whatever jutsu the ambushers had used.
I like to show Kakashi living up to his reputation and freaking his opponents out via applied psychology.
A branch high in a nearby pine tree twitched. Naga grinned. Score one for the Copy Nin. Mirroring always freaked people out. Twitchy enemies got sloppy.
She drew a kunai from her thigh holster, careful not to disturb the pine needles that screened her from view. They prickled through the fabric of her clothes, teetering on the line between itch and pain, but Kafunnokaze's gloves and a bit of chakra let her keep a secure grip on the branch. She was a Leaf-nin. No way would she ever get caught because of a tree.
Naga is delightfully snarky sometimes. It's one of my favorite things about her. :) Also this picks up a little scenery-description item from the previous chapter, about sharp needles making the pine trees annoying to climb.
"Your masters have no authority over our country or clan," the Volcano-nin said after a long pause. "If your pursuit were lawful, we should have received a request for passage."
"Pursuit of an S-class criminal is covered under the treaties that ended the Third War. Special notice is not required. We entered Volcano Country legally at Aoitourou. Stand down and let us pass, or I will consider you guilty of aiding and abetting our target," Kakashi said.
He sounded almost bored. Bad move, if he really wanted to get out of this without a fight. On the other hand, if the fight was going to happen anyway, better for the other side to be worked up and wrong-footed.
Naga was glad it wasn't her job to weigh those options.
Occasionally Naga regrets making chuunin, because the flip-side of getting to be your own boss on missions is that you have to be your own boss on missions.
"Aoitourou is in rebellion against Gouzen-sama's authority. Their paperwork is illegal and invalid," the Volcano-nin snapped. "Surrender and submit to search and interrogation or we will kill you where you stand."
Volcano Country is a non-canon name I have applied to the westernmost of the countries lining the southern shore of the northern bay/gulf/whatever. Its internal politics are likewise completely non-canon. This is an artefact of the time when I started writing the story (2005), at which point Kishimoto had not yet revealed vast swathes of information about his world.
I still like most of my worldbuilding better than his, honestly.
Anyway, Volcano Country doesn't have a hidden village, nor a stable central government. What it has are three big ninja clans (plus their smaller allies) who support three separate candidates for Volcano Lord. At the moment, this particular clan's lord is out of power and they are officially rebels. Functionally the country is three hostile sections with an occasional pretense at federalism between lapses into outright civil war.
"Hidden Leaf and Hidden Grass are neutral with regard to Volcano Country's internal politics," Kakashi said. "I can't guarantee that my team will strike to incapacitate rather than kill."
"Neutrality is enmity and your scruples are weakness. You have until the count of three to surrender, or die," the Volcano-nin said. "One."
The Volcano-nin are really jumping the gun here. Normally they'd prefer not to start unnecessary trouble, but you will later learn why they're on high alert and feeling uncharitable toward Leaf-nin in particular.
Naga eased along the branch toward the hidden Volcano-nin she'd spotted earlier.
"Two."
She braced her feet.
"Three."
Naga leapt.
The Volcano-nin dropped three seconds later, gurgling around a bruised throat and shattered collarbones. Naga dropped after her target, landed in a light, controlled crouch, and took in as much of the impromptu battlefield as she could.
In case you hadn't noticed, Naga is pretty damn good at physical violence. *pets her*
Seven figures had melted out of hiding, standing in a loose arc around the clearing. Kakashi slouched to her right, deceptively relaxed. To her left, Suisen and Kafunnokaze stood back-to-back, both nursing bloody gashes along their arms in payment for the burns and the coughing fit afflicting two of the Volcano-nin. Kohaku was nowhere to be seen.
Kohaku's whole shtick is that you don't see him until he drags you under. Of course he's not revealing himself.
"Are you sure we can't talk this out?" Kakashi asked.
The Volcano-nin at the center of the arc -- a tall, thin man with a dark gray tactical vest and a loose, ash-colored scarf wrapped around his neck -- sawed his arm angrily through the air. "Stop mocking us! We found your spies four days ago. Your denials are useless! Gouzen-sama's honor demands that--"
You may note I never describe the Volcano-nins' forehead protector symbol. This is because I never decided on one -- actually, given their lack of a national hidden village, I am not entirely sure they have one. They may just put clan crests on their clothes or avoid such things altogether for greater ease of infiltration/confusion of outsiders.
High tenor voice, no patience, definitely thought he was in charge. Naga tabbed him as Kakashi's problem, tuned out his rant, and studied the others instead. Five genin, two on either side of the hothead. Two about her age, presumably with a chance at making chuunin and some potential tricks up their sleeves. Three more at least a decade older, long past any chance of promotion but with a lot of experience to balance their lack of special skills. Two teams, then, which meant Hothead had at least a high-level chuunin as backup. Maybe even another jounin.
By process of elimination, the Volcano-nin she just took out was also young and potentially on the promotion track.
Also potentially of note: I did not bother to gender any of the six genin except the briefly named Hisao, who later drags his injured companion away. That is because their genders are completely irrelevant to the story. I suspect most readers probably assumed they're all male. Using my Word of God authority, I will now tell you that that assumption is false: three of them are female. No, I'm not telling you which ones.
(This is another place where visual media are different from text-only media. It would be much easier to clearly gender the genin via a picture -- though even in visual media, one wouldn't need to gender them.)
The high-level shinobi in question anchored the far left end of the arc: a short, heavyset woman in that same gray tactical vest, only instead of a scarf she wore thick, ash-colored wraps along her arms and legs, from her shoulders and hips all the way down to her fingers and toes. Judging by the shiny burn marks, the fabric was fire-resistant. And the burns themselves were strange, all precise, narrow lines instead of irregular blotches. What fighting style needed that much insulation?
"Excuse me," Kakashi said when Hothead finally paused for breath. "I think you're working from mistaken assumptions. What spies are you talking about?"
Blatant lies. Kakashi obviously knows Konoha had two spies in the area; that's why Itachi came this way. But why admit that when it would remove your pretense at the moral high ground, and continued denial is clearly working to drive your opponent into an unthinking rage?
The tall Volcano-nin snarled and lunged, a corona of flickering shadows springing to life around his outspread fingers. Kakashi countered with a gout of flame and a rapid dodge halfway up a tree, and Naga shunted their fight to her peripheral attention because she had more important problems.
"Mine!" Kafunnokaze shouted as a wall of dust-choked wind snapped up around four of the genin. He stepped through and vanished, leaving Suisen and Naga to face the last Volcano-nin and her mysterious skills.
I didn't want to coordinate three simultaneous fight scenes. So I cheated and made sure I wouldn't have to. ;)
As Suisen pulled leaf-attenuated sunlight into her mirrors, the Volcano-nin drew a pair of short metal sticks from a thigh holster. Naga tensed, but instead of throwing them the Volcano-nin flicked her left hand through a rapid chain of seals, then settled the sticks solidly into each hand. Thin streams of sandy earth poured upward and latched onto their rounded ends as if magnetized.
Naga didn't wait to see the end result of the jutsu. Strike fast and hard and it wouldn't matter; a fist to the jaw disrupted anybody's focus. But the Volcano-nin dodged her attack -- tucked and rolled and came up still holding those sticks and their trails of sand -- and Naga lost a precious second avoiding Suisen and catching her balance with a ricochet off a handy tree.
In any violent confrontation, there's a tension between striking first to keep your opponent off-balance (and hopefully ending the fight right then and there), and waiting to see if they have tricks up their sleeve to counter a fast first strike. In this particular case, both Suisen and Anei need a few seconds to get their signature jutsu going. Naga does not, and after waiting a moment to check for obvious traps, she tries to take advantage of that.
Unfortunately for her, Anei knows she's at a disadvantage for those crucial few seconds, and has trained extensively in dodging while continuing to charge her molten glass whips. Also unfortunately, Naga and Suisen have not practiced fighting together; they don't have the automatic coordination Suisen would have with Kafunnokaze and Kohaku, and which Naga was developing with Tsukihime.
The sand glowed red-hot, then flashed into nearly transparent whips of molten glass. Naga felt the heat on her face and arms from a good three body-lengths away.
Ah. That explained the insulation.
It did not explain how the fuck Naga and Suisen were supposed to take the woman down. Her clothes would protect against Suisen's signature attack, and while Naga was fine taking a slice or two from a normal whip in order to immobilize and strike its wielder, she didn't have any fancy eyes to help her find a safe path around whips that could probably burn through bone.
I did a little research on whip fighting and whip tricks for this scene (there are some very cool YouTube video demonstrations!), and it turns out they're not hugely effective as weapons. What whips are good at is invoking fear. The noise, and the knowledge of just how fast the tip is traveling, tend to make opponents flinch and get stupid. But the majority of a whip's length is not going to hurt all that much if it hits you, and they're awkward to maneuver.
Of course, the above applies to whips made of leather and cord. If someone is swinging a metal chain at you, get the hell out of their way and find something to tangle the chain for a crucial second or two. And if someone is swinging molten glass, well, sucks to be you.
...
I invented Anei's jutsu because I wanted A) something related to volcanoes (ash, suffocation via poisonous gasses, molten stone, etc.), B) something visually and conceptually cool, and C) something that would be a legit challenge for Naga and Suisen to fight. I think I succeeded. (Of course, then I had to figure out a non deus ex machina way for Naga and Suisen to win, which was a headache and a half. *wry*)
Start with the easy part: take out the support. Naga faded behind Suisen, angling toward the final Volcano genin who was pulling his wounded and unconscious comrade toward the clearing's edge.
"Hisao, protocol six-black-water," the Volcano-nin called over the roar of Kafunnokaze's whirlwind and the thumps and scuffles of Kakashi's duel with Hothead.
"Yes, Anei-sensei!" the genin said, and swapped himself and his teammate out of sight just as Naga's foot slammed through empty air where his sternum had been.
Anei is a good jounin-sensei, FYI. She is especially good at drilling teamwork into her genin.
Naga rolled with the fall and leapt back to her feet. "Fuck."
The Volcano-nin -- Anei -- smiled, thin and sharp. "Nice try." Then she attacked.
The glass whips writhed like living snakes, their paths and lengths set as much by chakra as physics. Years of fallen pine needles flickered and smoked in their wake, and the air itself clapped and cracked in protest at the speed and heat of Anei's strikes -- not as fast as leather or cord, but more than fast enough. Naga hurled herself into a mad dance, weaving around the lashing strands with no space for retaliation and barely time for breath.
The glass whips are slower than leather/cord whips because if they went faster, the acceleration stresses would outweigh the force of Anei's chakra holding the whips together. I am sure Anei uses that as an offensive weapon sometimes -- flicking a curved spray of molten glass into someone's face will ruin their whole day -- but here she's aiming for capture rather than elimination (and also doesn't want to start a forest fire), so she's keeping things lower key.
A trailing drop of glass snapped off the end of one whip and fell onto the edge of her sandal. The sole promptly caught fire. Naga lost a precious second grinding the embers out and only escaped the next strike by a finger's breadth.
Molten glass: not something to casually mess around with.
"Tangle her!" Suisen hissed as she dove past in her own evasive maneuver.
Yes. If they could get Anei to cross her whips--
Naga fumbled a trio of shuriken out of her thigh holster and hurled them in a flat arc toward the Volcano-nin. Suisen mirrored her from the other side.
Anei's smile widened. She flicked her whips out to intercept the blades -- the metal warped and melted on contact -- and brought them back around through each other. The glass merged and separated smooth as water, scattering a handful of white-hot droplets. Small fires hissed and crackled to life among the fallen pine needles, licking outward in a ring from the bare ground at Anei's feet.
Rule of cool! And also that is the most obvious counter to a whip fighter -- tangle the whips on each other or on some convenient object -- so naturally Anei has a way to counter it.
"Fuck," Naga said, and arched up and over the next strike, curving her spine well past the limits of human flexibility. Somewhere to her left, Suisen yelped as she miscalculated a dodge.
"Surrender and I'll keep Sukkiro from killing you," Anei said. "We'll even let you go after the interrogation."
I like to put in little reminders that Naga's taijutsu style makes frequent use of her bloodline limit. I suspect it can be unsettling to watch.
It probably unsettled Anei, who was NOT expecting Naga to dodge that particular whip-strike. That may be why she makes the 'surrender and we'll spare you' offer: she's covering up her surprise and trying to distract Naga from thinking about any ways to work around her whips.
"Sorry, can't do that!" Suisen called back. She sounded out of breath.
Suisen's more of a sniper than a brawler, despite her relatively gymnastic style. This affects her endurance.
Naga raked her brain for options. She was fast and had an advantage when it came to contortions, and Suisen's style was built around acrobatics, but they'd probably miss a dodge before Anei ran out of chakra. Suisen needed precious seconds of stable footing to gather enough light for an attack. Even if she got that chance, there was no way something as relatively mild as concentrated sunburn would throw someone armored to withstand molten glass.
Wait.
Sunburn from sunlight.
The sun had more tricks up its sleeve than heat.
"Glow!" Naga shouted at Suisen. "As bright as you can! And keep moving!"
"But--"
Naga dropped flat to evade a strike, then rolled frantically sideways under the return stroke. Even a near-miss was almost too hot to bear. "Glow!"
Yeah, it wasn't the best idea. Anything bright enough to blind Anei would blind Naga just as well, and probably Kafunnokaze, Kakashi, and Hothead (Sukkiro?) to boot. But it was what she had, so she'd use it.
For the record, Kakashi and Sukkiro noticed nothing, because Sukkiro's own ninjutsu swallowed Suisen's the way it swallows all ambient light. Kafunnokaze and his opponents did get a nasty shock, but he recovered and compensated faster than they did, since he has a lot of practice working with Suisen.
What else did she have? Trees, pine needles, dirt, two fights at her back, one enemy vanished, one ally doing who the fuck even knew what, no useful jutsu, and not enough shuriken to gamble that one might get through Anei's defense.
Naga dislikes planning. But it's a necessary skill for chuunin, so she's been practicing.
Something tickled at the back of Naga's mind, pieces of a plan trying to fit together.
As Suisen's reflected glare hit the threshold of 'ow shit I'm blind,' Naga grabbed a handful of sand and pine needles and hurled it toward Anei. The Volcano-nin dodged. Not blocked! Dodged. And came up swinging wildly. She'd lost track of Naga's position and couldn't check everywhere because of Suisen's ever-shifting light.
Naga ran straight up the nearest tree.
On the ground, Anei retracted her left-hand whip, reshaping the glass into something more like a thick kodachi. She spun on her heel, snapped the remaining whip in quick, probing strikes, tilted her head to listen through the rush of Kafunnokaze's wind-wall (still up, what was taking him so long to deal with?) and the thumps and shouts that marked Kakashi and Sukkiro's fight inside a bubble of ashy darkness.
The reason Naga can see this while Anei is still effectively blinded, btw, is that Suisen can aim her light, and she's aiming it mostly outward on a straight line, not upward. Remember, she can't self-generate light yet (she mentioned in a previous chapter that that's her clan's master jutsu, which she is still learning), so her technique depends on ambient light -- in this case sunlight -- and reflecting back toward the source is wasteful and pointless.
This seemed implicitly obvious to me, but on reflection I'm not sure how much of that comes across in the text.
Naga squinted past Suisen's glare and inched out along a wide, heavy limb that stuck into the clearing like a massive, prickly fan. Then she waited for Anei and Suisen to move within range.
One breath. Two. Five. Ten. And... now.
Naga chopped the bulk of the branch free with a reinforced knife-hand strike and rode it down. Pine sap flashed into flame as Anei raised her whip and sword to counter, but the net of branches and needles was broad enough to clip the Volcano-nin despite her evasion, and pin her weapons down for a precious second.
"And a second's all you need," Naga muttered to herself as she rolled away from the burning branch and shook out her aching knuckles. Then she nudged Anei with her foot to check that the Volcano-nin was really unconscious -- she'd played dead too often herself not to be suspicious -- before gingerly dragging the woman out of the fire.
Naga quoting Yukiko is one of my favorite little character moments in the story so far. :) As is her suspicion of people playing dead, which is a callback to the way she beat Kohaku in the chuunin exam tournament back in "Apartment Manager".
Suisen, scorched and sweaty, bent over beside Naga to catch her breath. "I cannot believe you hit her with a tree," she said after a moment. "I know you're a Leaf-nin, but that's taking word association a little too seriously."
Naga shrugged. "Worked, didn't it? Where's Kohaku?"
"Hunting down the genin this one sent to grab reinforcements," Suisen said. "Standard protocol: Kaze-kun and I are the first response. Haku-kun runs perimeter, deals with unexpected whatever, and provides backup if necessary. We didn't need backup because we're awesome, but he can come secure our prisoner any time now." She knocked the heel of her foot into the ground in a rapid syncopated pattern.
Wrapping up loose ends, reminding people that Kohaku exists and was actually doing useful things this whole time, and giving a little more detail about the Grass-nin team and how they work together. I had Suisen refer to Kohaku as Haku-kun to mirror her previously established nickname for Kafunnokaze. (That nickname I established both because his given name is annoyingly long, and because I think I had vague ideas of Suisen feeling she needs to defend Kafunnokaze's virtue by making sure Naga is really good enough for him, and one of her go-to methods is attempting to induce jealousy and watching how Naga reacts. Suisen is more of a frontline fighter than a classic kunoichi, but she still uses a lot of seduction/social manipulation techniques.)
As the soil rippled in response, Suisen adjusted her mirrors and added, "While he's taking care of that, let's give the boys a hand. You go check on Kaze-kun and I'll shine a light into whatever your sensei is doing with that skinny weirdo."
It amuses me that both Naga and Suisen make snap negative judgments of Sukkiro -- particularly since I think they both have a very positive opinion of Anei (aside from the whole temporary opponent thing).
She dashed off into the chakra-fueled shadows without waiting for a response.
Annnnnnnnd cut scene, because I didn't want to write the rest of the fight. (It was also narratively irrelevant, but even so.)
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The caravan left Aoukouchou around noon, after a profitable morning of trade and haggling. Yukiko had introduced Seichi to a factor in the cloth trade with whom she did occasional business on her cousin's behalf, but Ryouma-san had nothing currently in stock that Yuichiro wanted, and vice versa, so they came away with nothing but gossip and the aftertaste of good tea.
Even if you're not actively buying anything, it's important to maintain relationships! Besides, this is how Yukiko does half of her intelligence work: she is in a position to gather gossip that more obvious ninja would not hear.
"It keeps surprising me how little actual business is involved in business," Seichi remarked as he swung up onto a communal wagon's front seat beside Yukiko. He attempted to drop his arm across her shoulders. She ducked out from under the gesture. "You break my heart, Yuki-chan!" he said, then added in a lower tone, "Your contact seemed overly interested in news from Konoha."
"Mmm. He didn't know anything specific, judging by how vague his questions were, but I don't think Intelligence can keep word of the massacre clamped down for much longer," Yukiko agreed. "It's obvious that something went down, at least if you pay attention to schedules and personnel patterns. And people in Fire Country do pay attention to Konoha. It isn't safe not to."
"So long as they don't pay too much attention," Seichi said. "Otherwise Anbu might start paying attention back."
Look, a theme! (The costs of the hidden village system: let me show you them.)
Also, trivia point: my first attempt at this scene had Seichi being surprised that civilians would pay attention to ninja affairs, and Yukiko explaining why anything that might disrupt travel would obviously be of interest to people involved in trade. But that killed the scene's momentum, not to mention that Seichi is perfectly capable of figuring that out for himself, so I jumped straight to the ominous Anbu posturing instead.
"Pointed attention, I assume," Yukiko said. She glanced around. Nobody was walking on either side of the wagon, but she wrapped the reins around her wrist and set up a distraction veil just in case. When she turned back to Seichi, his eyes had gone cold and he had a quartet of playing cards fanned between his fingers like kunai.
Seichi is not usually on quite that much of a hair trigger, but everyone on this mission is a little bit stressed right now -- partly because of the uncertainty caused by the Uchiha massacre, partly because the mission is the kind that really should have had another week or two of planning and a more solid structure, and partly because of Naruto and Sasuke's unexpected presence and their inability to send the kids safely home.
Also a distraction veil is an area-effect genjutsu, just a quiet suggestion that nothing of interest is happening in whatever area the caster wants to conceal.
"There's no danger! I just wanted to talk about the mission for a few minutes," Yukiko said. "I'm not worried about gathering information or keeping our covers. I've been doing that since I was a genin. But I'd like a better idea of how the assassination part will go. Obviously we can't make specific plans until we know what we're facing, but what should I expect in general terms? And how can I be most helpful to you and Kurenai?"
Again, Yukiko has never done assassination missions. In previous chapters this has manifested as moral misgivings, but here she's subsuming those under practical questions.
Seichi didn't precisely relax, but the tension in his posture and chakra shifted subtly: a predator idly watching a game trail rather than one actively stalking prey. "Generally speaking, we want to create one of two scenarios," he said as he shuffled the four cards into the rest of his suddenly visible deck. "Either I get a minute alone with the target, or I get a clear shot in a public location where a sudden death will create enough ambient chaos to divert suspicion away from our team. In both cases your job is to act as distraction."
Yukiko frowned. "That seems reasonable enough. But won't the assassination itself be obvious enough for Amane's guards to lock the immediate area down? How will you get away?"
Seichi's smile glinted like sun on ice. He collapsed his deck into a single pile, then held up one card: the king of spades. "The only assassin you know is Hatake Kakashi. Right?"
Yukiko nodded.
"He gets assigned when Konoha needs to make a statement." Seichi flipped the card around; instead of the patterned back Yukiko expected, the two of hearts now faced forward. After a second, Seichi fanned the two of spades, diamonds, and clubs out from behind it. "I get assigned when plausible deniability is more important. I can't set up something completely undetectable within our likely timeframe, but I know how to maintain a cover persona and how to avoid both obvious wounds and chakra residue. Combine that with a distraction, and I should be able to buy just enough time to give myself an alibi for the apparent time of death."
Sometimes there's symbolism to Seichi's cards. Other times, not so much. Even when he does use symbolism, it's often highly personal, something that speaks to him but may not communicate much of anything to others. In this case, the king of spades (standing for Kakashi) is a powerful card from a suite associated with swords and death; that's pretty straightforward. The two of hearts is less a symbol of Seichi himself (though it does work that way, a bit, in that he is a man with 'two hearts' [the assassin and the person who created the assassin]) and more a symbol of his general inconspicuousness, which is reinforced when he fans out the two of clubs, diamonds, and spades: he is a low card (unimportant) and could be from any suite (interchangeable).
Also this is just a little reminder that Chidori is a terrible assassination technique... assuming your goal is a subtle death. If your goal is shock and awe, on the other hand? Yeah, a dramatic, flashy, noisy, nearly impossible to avoid overkill strike sounds like just the ticket.
Yukiko frowned again. "Okay. I'll bite. How do you kill someone in under a minute without leaving evidence?"
"Ah." Seichi's smile vanished, leaving nothing but cold. "Push your illusion out to both sides for a few seconds," he said.
Puzzled, Yukiko closed her eyes and expanded the little bubble of illusion until it brushed the trees on either side of the road. When she opened them, Seichi collapsed his fan of cards back to a singleton and flipped it around again, this time revealing the ace of spades. Then he flicked it over his shoulder in an apparently idle motion.
It should have fluttered down to be crushed under the wagon's wheels.
Instead, a massive tree branch crashed to the ground twenty meters away, sliced free with surgical precision.
Nobody else noticed.
"It's easier when the paper itself has some structure, but I can do that with any scrap," Seichi said. "It's a partial reconstruction of a battle technique developed in Hidden Rain. The original is much more versatile, but my version requires only minimal chakra use and is therefore better suited for assassination. Furthermore, because that chakra isn't structured into a formal jutsu, it dissipates without leaving a recognizable signature. Up close and personal I can make a cut small and fine enough that it will hardly bleed on the outside regardless of what happens inside the target's body. In the open, the apparent lack of a weapon causes confusion in and of itself, and I can make a kill shot from almost any distance so long as I have line-of-sight."
I think I've mentioned before that Seichi started out as a (very loose) Gambit expy, yeah? Well, anyway, that is the reason behind his fighting technique and his choice of cover persona. I had those in place all the way back in 2005.
Of course, by the time I was in a position to explain what he can do with cards and other paper items, Konan had been introduced in canon and he would have looked like a rip-off of her. So I invisibly retconned his technique so it's explicitly based on hers. :)
Huh. "Ame could do that," Yukiko said absently, most of her attention focused on pulling her genjutsu back in without accidentally dispelling it altogether. "Not the paper thing, I've never heard of that before. But the improbable aim. She said it was a clan thing."
Seichi shrugged and answered the implied question. "It's not a bloodline limit yet, but give it a few generations and we'll see. Fuuma tend to have wind affinities that manifest in similar knacks, and we train extensively to enhance them."
Trivia point: when I invented and named Fuuma Ame, I don't think the Fuuma clan had yet been introduced in the manga. So it is a complete coincidence that she was clan-born rather than from a civilian family, and that she fought with various-sized shuriken, all the way up to the canonical Fuuma clan's signature giant shuriken.
When this was pointed out to me many years later, of course I ran with it. *wry*
"That doesn't sound like Ame -- not the training part," Yukiko said. "She was always trying to get me and Kasumi to ditch practice sessions with Hoshi-sensei and do silly things instead." Seichi made an inquiring noise, so she continued: "We hated that about her at first. Kasumi and I were both civilian-born and felt we had to be better than the best in order to get half as far, and it seemed like Ame didn't understand that being shinobi-born gave her a huge advantage over us."
She twitched the reins, redirecting the left-hand mule's attention back to the road and its job. "But after a while, we realized she stopped us from training constantly because she knew we had to work harder than she did. She wanted to make sure we didn't burn out. And every time she dragged us around town, she introduced us to at least one useful person -- supplier, mission control agent, whatever -- who'd treat us better once they knew we were connected to your clan. I still go to the same smith she did when I need to restock my kunai, and he still tells me to remind Ame she was running late with her bill payments whenever I stop by the memorial stone."
"That does sound like my cousin," Seichi said. "She was always late with gifts, too. We used to joke about it -- say things like, 'Oh, Uncle Toushirou, I see that something important happened three months ago!' if we saw someone holding a package with her calligraphy on the label."
The warmth in his voice didn't match the slightly numb tiredness she'd started to associate with Seichi being himself, but it was an even worse fit for the assassin or the aggressive sociability he put on as Tsukene. Surprised, Yukiko turned toward him -- but if his expression had ever changed, the evidence was gone. Only chill and impersonal assessment remained behind his eyes: the assassin face up once more.
I originally intended to do more with Ame as a point of connection between Yukiko and Seichi, but I never really found a good place for that in previous chapters. But here it is at last! I always enjoy getting to reveal little bits of Yukiko's past (and make her dead teammates seem like real people rather than guilt-inducing ciphers), and this also highlights some of the internal problems the shinobi-vs-civilian divide creates in the hidden villages.
While I wrote this chapter, I simultaneously revised the previous fifteen chapters in preparation for posting them to AO3. Most of the changes were fairly minor, but one in particular was to Seichi -- specifically, making sure he always seems tired and numb when he's not putting on a face. I am pretty sure he's suffering some form of depression and PTSD, though at the moment he's still able to clamp a lid on that for missions. But he is going to crash and burn badly within a year or two if he doesn't get a break.
Anyway, that makes his fleeting warmth here more noticeable, by way of contrast.
"My cousin's quirks, entertaining though they were, aren't relevant to our mission," he said. "Did you have any other questions?"
Yukiko glanced forward to where Naruto and Sasuke were walking in the weeds at the side of the road, one gesticulating wildly and the other doing his best to pretend he was alone. She bit her lip, and carefully didn't look back toward Seichi.
Brief reminder that the boys exist, even though Sasuke gets no POV section in this chapter!
"Mostly how I'm going to be an effective distraction when I also have to keep an eye on the kids and make sure they don't get in the way," she said. "But we can work that out once we're in Tengai and know what our covers will be. For now, we might as well enjoy the sunshine." She dropped the distraction jutsu as she spoke.
"An idea after my own heart, Yuki-chan!" Seichi said, sliding smoothly back into his cover persona, and once again attempted to sling an arm around her shoulder.
This was going to be a long trip.
Yukiko intensely dislikes Seichi's cover persona, especially since she A) has to pretend to get along with Tsukene as part of her own cover and B) is actually starting to kind of like/feel sorry for the man underneath.
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"So," Kakashi said lightly, as he crouched over the prone body of the skinny, hotheaded Volcano jounin. "You said you found some spies four days ago. Tell me about them."
Sukkiro glared upward and, to Naga's amazement, managed not to say anything.
For five seconds. Then he began another rant about Gouzen-sama's honor.
Sukkiro amuses me possibly more than he really ought to. (Also, his ranting is not as dumb as it looks. He really is that rabidly partisan, but he's also aware of how he comes off and is fully capable of weaponizing that impression.)
"This isn't getting us anywhere," Kafunnokaze grumbled from across the row of unconscious prisoners. His hands shook slightly from exhaustion and blood loss as he wrapped bandages around Suisen's burns. Kohaku sprawled on Suisen's other side, uninjured but apparently drained from staying underground so long. Suisen combed the fingers of her free hand through his hair.
Aww, team!feels. ♥
Naga's genin team had never been close like that. She and Tsukihime hadn't been either, but she thought they'd been getting there. Now they never would.
It hurt to think about that, so she didn't.
Lies. Well, and compartmentalization. But still, lies. You can tell because Tsukihime keeps popping up in Naga's thoughts every chapter or two.
"Knock him out and move on to someone else," Kafunnokaze continued over Sukkiro's interminable spiel, "or pull out that genjutsu your eye's supposed to help with and see if he's more cooperative when he thinks bugs are crawling out from under his fingernails."
There is probably a story behind that suggested illusion, but I have no idea what it is.
"An oddly specific threat," Kakashi said. "But no, I think a simple gag will be enough to save our ears. Two concussions in short order creates too much risk of accidental death or permanent brain injury, as does genjutsu strong enough to smash mental defenses without the benefit of surprise or an extensive interrogation period. Breaking Sukkiro-san, however annoying he is, would guarantee retaliation, and I'd prefer to leave Volcano Country without a hunting party on our trail. Wouldn't you agree, Anei-san?"
This story (and canon itself) leans heavily toward fantasy-type violence, where you can knock people out relatively safely, but I wanted to include a nod toward reality here. Concussions are serious business, and knocking someone out means you are causing them traumatic brain injury through one method or another. Don't do that twice in a row!
Since genjutsu involves messing around with chakra flows (and probably nerve impulses) within the target's brain, it is likewise a bad idea to layer that over a pre-existing traumatic brain injury -- assuming, of course, that you want your target to survive.
Naga jerked around to stare at the other Volcano jounin, who'd apparently awakened without attracting anyone's attention. Damn. She should've been keeping better watch, not getting distracted by Kakashi's lackadaisical interrogation tactics and might-have-beens.
Like I said, Sukkiro knows how to weaponize his ranting. *wry*
His fighting style relies on darkness and misdirection while Anei's is flashy and obvious, but when they're not actively in battle, he's usually the loud distraction while she gets stuff done in the shadows. They complement each other well and are assigned together fairly often. (Both with and without Anei's genin. Sukkiro is not currently teaching anyone, so his squads are all ad hoc groups.) The problem is that they trade overall command back and forth from mission to mission, and this was not the best mission for Sukkiro to be in charge.
Anei moved her fingers away from her now faintly singed bonds and sighed. "Sukkiro's a twit. But yes. We'd hunt you for that; honor demands as much. Honor is, however, less specific about a trade of information."
Anei does legitimately think Sukkiro's a twit. She also thinks he's a skilled and reliable partner. The two are not mutually exclusive.
"Mmm," Kakashi said, finally turning to face her. "Here's a thought! I tell you what we need to know, you tell me what you need to know, and we'll bargain from there."
Anei looked at her own bonds, then at the drugged and trussed-up bodies of her students and Sukkiro's squad, then back at Kakashi with pointedly raised eyebrows. "Bargain. Sure."
The thing is, while the Leaf-nin and Grass-nin physically have the upper hand here, they need Anei's information and don't have a fast and reliable way to get it. (Torture is not remotely reliable. And I don't care that it would have played into the 'ethical costs' theme; there's a level of darkness I don't want to cross in this story, since the AU as a whole is still about positive change.) So the power dynamics are less unbalanced than they initially appear, and Kakashi is showing that he knows that and is willing to cut a deal. Anei is mostly protesting for form's sake.
Kakashi shrugged and crinkled his one visible eye into a smile. "I've survived worse negotiating positions. I'm sure you'll do fine. But I'll go first, which gives you the advantage when aiming your own questions. So. Where were these alleged spies found? Were they alive then, and if so, are they still alive now? Why do you think we're connected to them? Was there any sign of another person involved in the situation?"
"An interesting set of questions," Anei said.
"I will have you brought up before the elders as a traitor if you--" Sukkiro began.
Kohaku leaned forward and calmly stuffed the man's own scarf into his mouth, muffling the rest of his objection. Then he slumped back against Suisen's side and began examining his kunai for nicks.
Anei sighed again. "You know what? I don't have the patience to do the whole tremors and ash spouts game today. Let's cut straight to the eruption. We know Hidden Leaf was spying on us because the spies in question were wearing your symbol and carried characteristic traits from two of your major clans. But I won't condemn you for doing to us what we do right back when we can spare the resources. You said you're in pursuit of an S-class missing-nin?"
Given that all the Elemental Countries speak and write a single mutually intelligible language, I sometimes try to make token gestures toward separate cultures via idioms.
"I did say that," Kakashi agreed.
"I haven't personally seen any such person, but someone with at least jounin-level skills passed through this region four days ago," Anei said. "He killed your spies, and all three of the Inuzuka's dogs. Then he moved them to one of our outlying traps, which he set off, and ambushed our first response team. He took advantage of our subsequent mobilization to enter Kokuyougan fortress where Gouzen-sama was staying, at which point he stole a messenger hawk and sent it to an unknown location.
Please recall the trouble that one jounin and four chuunin have just had dealing with two Volcano jounin and six Volcano genin. Itachi is S-class for a reason. (This is true regardless of your opinion on his sanity and relative levels of villainy and tragic woobieness.)
Note also how little information Anei actually provides in this summary. Where did any of these events take place? Somewhere in "this region". What is the status of the first response team after their ambush? She's not telling. Did anyone get hurt when Itachi infiltrated the fortress? Who knows!
The enemy of her enemy may be her temporary ally, but that doesn't mean she'll give away anything more than she needs to.
"He made fools of us and our lord, and I want him dead. I'll count his execution as fair payment for this information," she finished, and smiled. "Sukkiro, now!"
Ashy darkness swept over the clearing.
When sunlight began to filter through the leaves again, all eight Volcano-nin were gone.
Like I said, Anei and Sukkiro make a good team. I like writing people who are competent at their jobs. :)
And now Naga & Co. will continue heading east, toward the last reported location of Uchiha Akaro and his team... but that is a scene for another chapter -- probably chapter 18, unless my timeline gets screwed up again. Chapter 17 will pick up the Amane family again, since they sat this chapter out entirely, and both Yukiko and Sasuke will get POV scenes, which are technically one long scene but broken up because of Reasons. (For those who may be curious: the chapter is half written and fully outlined. I just got bogged down by logistics in Yukiko's scene. *sigh*)
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End of Chapter Sixteen
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Further Note: I'm fudging a little with the sand-to-glass trick -- the melting point of pure silica/sand is about 1700°C, which is extremely improbable for anyone to create even with handwavey magic powers -- but hey. Rule of Cool. *grin*
Also let's pretend conduction, convection, and radiation are only selectively active, because again, Rule of Cool. *wry*
As for the heat convection issue... I went to a glass-blowing demonstration at the Corning Museum of Glass a few years back. It is perfectly possible to hold and maneuver a lump of molten glass at one end of a stick and not burn yourself, even without handwavey magic protection. And that stuff gets hot -- not nearly as bad as pure silica, but the melting point of soda lime glass is still about 500-600°C, which means it's incredibly dangerous even after it solidifies. The demo guy made a bowl, knocked it off the pipe, and dropped a crumpled sheet of paper inside. The paper went up in brilliant flames in barely a second.
You really, really, really do not want molten glass to touch your skin or clothes.
But if you ever get a chance to watch a glass-blowing demo? TAKE IT. You will thank me afterward!
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And that is that. :)
jjunter, for the Fic DVD Commentary Meme (which is still open, fyi!)The Guardian in Spite of Herself: Ayakawa Yukiko retired from being a ninja, and she's come to terms with that. Then the Third Hokage summons her for an assignment that will change her life. AU story, set six years pre-manga. (72,000 words)
Chapter 16: Chapter the Sixteenth, in which Naga and Suisen demonstrate how not to dance with a partner, Yukiko and Seichi discuss assassination and dead relatives, and, to the author's relief, Kakashi's interrogation skills end up irrelevant to the plot. (4,450 words)
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As reading your latest DVD commentary (chapter 11 of the Way of the Apartment Manager) led me to reread the whole series again (with pleasure!), I'd love a commentary on chapter 16 of the Guardian in Spite of Herself.
In the former fic, it's basically all from Yukiko's POV; in the latter, you've got multiple POVs you switch between, and in the latter chapters you're often switching between them 2-3 times within any given chapter. What are some of the challenges and opportunities having so many POVs and subgroups of people in various locations to keep moving simultaneously? Describing it like this sounds like it shouldn't work, but the effect as a reader is this sense of escalating tension, wondering if every group including a POV character will ultimately end up in the same location (and if yes, what will happen next).
To answer quickly: the main challenge is timing/pacing. I want to use each POV at least every other chapter, so they don't feel like they've fallen out of the story (this is slightly less urgent for Yukiko and Sasuke, since they're currently in the same place and thus appear in each other's POV sections), but I also don't want to drag the story out. That means I have to make sure stuff happens in every POV thread, because I can't just drop one of them for extended periods while someone else has exciting adventures.
This is why Iruka is not a POV character, incidentally, though my first tentative outline -- created way back when this story was three tiny scenelets and a vague idea -- did include a plot thread about him and a Yamanaka OC investigating the Uchiha massacre back in the village. I still think that could have interesting thematic resonance with the current plot threads, but he wound up spending a lot of time sitting and waiting (or reading archives) which was not conducive to maintaining momentum. So I cut him, though I still kind of want to write a sidefic about what he's up to during the main story.
Anyway, the advantage to multiple POVs is that I can show more events and therefore create a more intricate story, and also show different perspectives on the same events and issues -- because even though Sasuke and Yukiko are currently sharing a plot strand, the things they notice and care about are radically different, and their emotional arcs are likewise dissimilar. This is also useful for creating thematic resonance. The main theme of "Guardian" is the cost in lives and in other factors (political, economic, psychological, ethical, etc.) that the hidden village/ninja clan system imposes on the people of the Elemental Countries, as seen by both civilians and shinobi, so the more perspectives I can bring to bear, the more rounded the picture.
(The other advantage to multiple POVs, of course, is that it's easier to do cliffhangers. *wry*)
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The others vanished before Naga had finished her warning -- Kohaku underground, Suisen in a flash of light, and Kakashi and Kafunnokaze simply gone. And not a moment too soon. A rain of kunai pierced the layer of pine needles that carpeted the sandy forest soil, half of them sizzling on contact as if the blades themselves were on fire.
That phrasing -- [thing A], [thing B], simply gone -- is a verbal tic of mine which I first noticed a couple years ago. It appears in both positive form (all three examples are actual vanishments) and negative form (two ways a thing didn't vanish and one way it did), and it has begun to irritate me whenever I run across it in my work.
Also this chapter resolves the cliffhanger at the end of chapter 15, which is where I'd left the story hanging for about three years. *sheepish*
"You are trespassing on the lands of Gouzen-sama, the rightful daimyo of Volcano Country!" a high tenor voice said, echoing and reechoing from the trees with no clear point of origin. "All enemies and spies will be executed! Surrender and state your business and you may survive."
Yeah right.
"We are in lawful pursuit of an S-class missing-nin, under the authority of the Sandaime Hokage and the Master of Hidden Grass. Stand down and let us pass," Kakashi said. His voice echoed in an eerie mimic of whatever jutsu the ambushers had used.
I like to show Kakashi living up to his reputation and freaking his opponents out via applied psychology.
A branch high in a nearby pine tree twitched. Naga grinned. Score one for the Copy Nin. Mirroring always freaked people out. Twitchy enemies got sloppy.
She drew a kunai from her thigh holster, careful not to disturb the pine needles that screened her from view. They prickled through the fabric of her clothes, teetering on the line between itch and pain, but Kafunnokaze's gloves and a bit of chakra let her keep a secure grip on the branch. She was a Leaf-nin. No way would she ever get caught because of a tree.
Naga is delightfully snarky sometimes. It's one of my favorite things about her. :) Also this picks up a little scenery-description item from the previous chapter, about sharp needles making the pine trees annoying to climb.
"Your masters have no authority over our country or clan," the Volcano-nin said after a long pause. "If your pursuit were lawful, we should have received a request for passage."
"Pursuit of an S-class criminal is covered under the treaties that ended the Third War. Special notice is not required. We entered Volcano Country legally at Aoitourou. Stand down and let us pass, or I will consider you guilty of aiding and abetting our target," Kakashi said.
He sounded almost bored. Bad move, if he really wanted to get out of this without a fight. On the other hand, if the fight was going to happen anyway, better for the other side to be worked up and wrong-footed.
Naga was glad it wasn't her job to weigh those options.
Occasionally Naga regrets making chuunin, because the flip-side of getting to be your own boss on missions is that you have to be your own boss on missions.
"Aoitourou is in rebellion against Gouzen-sama's authority. Their paperwork is illegal and invalid," the Volcano-nin snapped. "Surrender and submit to search and interrogation or we will kill you where you stand."
Volcano Country is a non-canon name I have applied to the westernmost of the countries lining the southern shore of the northern bay/gulf/whatever. Its internal politics are likewise completely non-canon. This is an artefact of the time when I started writing the story (2005), at which point Kishimoto had not yet revealed vast swathes of information about his world.
I still like most of my worldbuilding better than his, honestly.
Anyway, Volcano Country doesn't have a hidden village, nor a stable central government. What it has are three big ninja clans (plus their smaller allies) who support three separate candidates for Volcano Lord. At the moment, this particular clan's lord is out of power and they are officially rebels. Functionally the country is three hostile sections with an occasional pretense at federalism between lapses into outright civil war.
"Hidden Leaf and Hidden Grass are neutral with regard to Volcano Country's internal politics," Kakashi said. "I can't guarantee that my team will strike to incapacitate rather than kill."
"Neutrality is enmity and your scruples are weakness. You have until the count of three to surrender, or die," the Volcano-nin said. "One."
The Volcano-nin are really jumping the gun here. Normally they'd prefer not to start unnecessary trouble, but you will later learn why they're on high alert and feeling uncharitable toward Leaf-nin in particular.
Naga eased along the branch toward the hidden Volcano-nin she'd spotted earlier.
"Two."
She braced her feet.
"Three."
Naga leapt.
The Volcano-nin dropped three seconds later, gurgling around a bruised throat and shattered collarbones. Naga dropped after her target, landed in a light, controlled crouch, and took in as much of the impromptu battlefield as she could.
In case you hadn't noticed, Naga is pretty damn good at physical violence. *pets her*
Seven figures had melted out of hiding, standing in a loose arc around the clearing. Kakashi slouched to her right, deceptively relaxed. To her left, Suisen and Kafunnokaze stood back-to-back, both nursing bloody gashes along their arms in payment for the burns and the coughing fit afflicting two of the Volcano-nin. Kohaku was nowhere to be seen.
Kohaku's whole shtick is that you don't see him until he drags you under. Of course he's not revealing himself.
"Are you sure we can't talk this out?" Kakashi asked.
The Volcano-nin at the center of the arc -- a tall, thin man with a dark gray tactical vest and a loose, ash-colored scarf wrapped around his neck -- sawed his arm angrily through the air. "Stop mocking us! We found your spies four days ago. Your denials are useless! Gouzen-sama's honor demands that--"
You may note I never describe the Volcano-nins' forehead protector symbol. This is because I never decided on one -- actually, given their lack of a national hidden village, I am not entirely sure they have one. They may just put clan crests on their clothes or avoid such things altogether for greater ease of infiltration/confusion of outsiders.
High tenor voice, no patience, definitely thought he was in charge. Naga tabbed him as Kakashi's problem, tuned out his rant, and studied the others instead. Five genin, two on either side of the hothead. Two about her age, presumably with a chance at making chuunin and some potential tricks up their sleeves. Three more at least a decade older, long past any chance of promotion but with a lot of experience to balance their lack of special skills. Two teams, then, which meant Hothead had at least a high-level chuunin as backup. Maybe even another jounin.
By process of elimination, the Volcano-nin she just took out was also young and potentially on the promotion track.
Also potentially of note: I did not bother to gender any of the six genin except the briefly named Hisao, who later drags his injured companion away. That is because their genders are completely irrelevant to the story. I suspect most readers probably assumed they're all male. Using my Word of God authority, I will now tell you that that assumption is false: three of them are female. No, I'm not telling you which ones.
(This is another place where visual media are different from text-only media. It would be much easier to clearly gender the genin via a picture -- though even in visual media, one wouldn't need to gender them.)
The high-level shinobi in question anchored the far left end of the arc: a short, heavyset woman in that same gray tactical vest, only instead of a scarf she wore thick, ash-colored wraps along her arms and legs, from her shoulders and hips all the way down to her fingers and toes. Judging by the shiny burn marks, the fabric was fire-resistant. And the burns themselves were strange, all precise, narrow lines instead of irregular blotches. What fighting style needed that much insulation?
"Excuse me," Kakashi said when Hothead finally paused for breath. "I think you're working from mistaken assumptions. What spies are you talking about?"
Blatant lies. Kakashi obviously knows Konoha had two spies in the area; that's why Itachi came this way. But why admit that when it would remove your pretense at the moral high ground, and continued denial is clearly working to drive your opponent into an unthinking rage?
The tall Volcano-nin snarled and lunged, a corona of flickering shadows springing to life around his outspread fingers. Kakashi countered with a gout of flame and a rapid dodge halfway up a tree, and Naga shunted their fight to her peripheral attention because she had more important problems.
"Mine!" Kafunnokaze shouted as a wall of dust-choked wind snapped up around four of the genin. He stepped through and vanished, leaving Suisen and Naga to face the last Volcano-nin and her mysterious skills.
I didn't want to coordinate three simultaneous fight scenes. So I cheated and made sure I wouldn't have to. ;)
As Suisen pulled leaf-attenuated sunlight into her mirrors, the Volcano-nin drew a pair of short metal sticks from a thigh holster. Naga tensed, but instead of throwing them the Volcano-nin flicked her left hand through a rapid chain of seals, then settled the sticks solidly into each hand. Thin streams of sandy earth poured upward and latched onto their rounded ends as if magnetized.
Naga didn't wait to see the end result of the jutsu. Strike fast and hard and it wouldn't matter; a fist to the jaw disrupted anybody's focus. But the Volcano-nin dodged her attack -- tucked and rolled and came up still holding those sticks and their trails of sand -- and Naga lost a precious second avoiding Suisen and catching her balance with a ricochet off a handy tree.
In any violent confrontation, there's a tension between striking first to keep your opponent off-balance (and hopefully ending the fight right then and there), and waiting to see if they have tricks up their sleeve to counter a fast first strike. In this particular case, both Suisen and Anei need a few seconds to get their signature jutsu going. Naga does not, and after waiting a moment to check for obvious traps, she tries to take advantage of that.
Unfortunately for her, Anei knows she's at a disadvantage for those crucial few seconds, and has trained extensively in dodging while continuing to charge her molten glass whips. Also unfortunately, Naga and Suisen have not practiced fighting together; they don't have the automatic coordination Suisen would have with Kafunnokaze and Kohaku, and which Naga was developing with Tsukihime.
The sand glowed red-hot, then flashed into nearly transparent whips of molten glass. Naga felt the heat on her face and arms from a good three body-lengths away.
Ah. That explained the insulation.
It did not explain how the fuck Naga and Suisen were supposed to take the woman down. Her clothes would protect against Suisen's signature attack, and while Naga was fine taking a slice or two from a normal whip in order to immobilize and strike its wielder, she didn't have any fancy eyes to help her find a safe path around whips that could probably burn through bone.
I did a little research on whip fighting and whip tricks for this scene (there are some very cool YouTube video demonstrations!), and it turns out they're not hugely effective as weapons. What whips are good at is invoking fear. The noise, and the knowledge of just how fast the tip is traveling, tend to make opponents flinch and get stupid. But the majority of a whip's length is not going to hurt all that much if it hits you, and they're awkward to maneuver.
Of course, the above applies to whips made of leather and cord. If someone is swinging a metal chain at you, get the hell out of their way and find something to tangle the chain for a crucial second or two. And if someone is swinging molten glass, well, sucks to be you.
...
I invented Anei's jutsu because I wanted A) something related to volcanoes (ash, suffocation via poisonous gasses, molten stone, etc.), B) something visually and conceptually cool, and C) something that would be a legit challenge for Naga and Suisen to fight. I think I succeeded. (Of course, then I had to figure out a non deus ex machina way for Naga and Suisen to win, which was a headache and a half. *wry*)
Start with the easy part: take out the support. Naga faded behind Suisen, angling toward the final Volcano genin who was pulling his wounded and unconscious comrade toward the clearing's edge.
"Hisao, protocol six-black-water," the Volcano-nin called over the roar of Kafunnokaze's whirlwind and the thumps and scuffles of Kakashi's duel with Hothead.
"Yes, Anei-sensei!" the genin said, and swapped himself and his teammate out of sight just as Naga's foot slammed through empty air where his sternum had been.
Anei is a good jounin-sensei, FYI. She is especially good at drilling teamwork into her genin.
Naga rolled with the fall and leapt back to her feet. "Fuck."
The Volcano-nin -- Anei -- smiled, thin and sharp. "Nice try." Then she attacked.
The glass whips writhed like living snakes, their paths and lengths set as much by chakra as physics. Years of fallen pine needles flickered and smoked in their wake, and the air itself clapped and cracked in protest at the speed and heat of Anei's strikes -- not as fast as leather or cord, but more than fast enough. Naga hurled herself into a mad dance, weaving around the lashing strands with no space for retaliation and barely time for breath.
The glass whips are slower than leather/cord whips because if they went faster, the acceleration stresses would outweigh the force of Anei's chakra holding the whips together. I am sure Anei uses that as an offensive weapon sometimes -- flicking a curved spray of molten glass into someone's face will ruin their whole day -- but here she's aiming for capture rather than elimination (and also doesn't want to start a forest fire), so she's keeping things lower key.
A trailing drop of glass snapped off the end of one whip and fell onto the edge of her sandal. The sole promptly caught fire. Naga lost a precious second grinding the embers out and only escaped the next strike by a finger's breadth.
Molten glass: not something to casually mess around with.
"Tangle her!" Suisen hissed as she dove past in her own evasive maneuver.
Yes. If they could get Anei to cross her whips--
Naga fumbled a trio of shuriken out of her thigh holster and hurled them in a flat arc toward the Volcano-nin. Suisen mirrored her from the other side.
Anei's smile widened. She flicked her whips out to intercept the blades -- the metal warped and melted on contact -- and brought them back around through each other. The glass merged and separated smooth as water, scattering a handful of white-hot droplets. Small fires hissed and crackled to life among the fallen pine needles, licking outward in a ring from the bare ground at Anei's feet.
Rule of cool! And also that is the most obvious counter to a whip fighter -- tangle the whips on each other or on some convenient object -- so naturally Anei has a way to counter it.
"Fuck," Naga said, and arched up and over the next strike, curving her spine well past the limits of human flexibility. Somewhere to her left, Suisen yelped as she miscalculated a dodge.
"Surrender and I'll keep Sukkiro from killing you," Anei said. "We'll even let you go after the interrogation."
I like to put in little reminders that Naga's taijutsu style makes frequent use of her bloodline limit. I suspect it can be unsettling to watch.
It probably unsettled Anei, who was NOT expecting Naga to dodge that particular whip-strike. That may be why she makes the 'surrender and we'll spare you' offer: she's covering up her surprise and trying to distract Naga from thinking about any ways to work around her whips.
"Sorry, can't do that!" Suisen called back. She sounded out of breath.
Suisen's more of a sniper than a brawler, despite her relatively gymnastic style. This affects her endurance.
Naga raked her brain for options. She was fast and had an advantage when it came to contortions, and Suisen's style was built around acrobatics, but they'd probably miss a dodge before Anei ran out of chakra. Suisen needed precious seconds of stable footing to gather enough light for an attack. Even if she got that chance, there was no way something as relatively mild as concentrated sunburn would throw someone armored to withstand molten glass.
Wait.
Sunburn from sunlight.
The sun had more tricks up its sleeve than heat.
"Glow!" Naga shouted at Suisen. "As bright as you can! And keep moving!"
"But--"
Naga dropped flat to evade a strike, then rolled frantically sideways under the return stroke. Even a near-miss was almost too hot to bear. "Glow!"
Yeah, it wasn't the best idea. Anything bright enough to blind Anei would blind Naga just as well, and probably Kafunnokaze, Kakashi, and Hothead (Sukkiro?) to boot. But it was what she had, so she'd use it.
For the record, Kakashi and Sukkiro noticed nothing, because Sukkiro's own ninjutsu swallowed Suisen's the way it swallows all ambient light. Kafunnokaze and his opponents did get a nasty shock, but he recovered and compensated faster than they did, since he has a lot of practice working with Suisen.
What else did she have? Trees, pine needles, dirt, two fights at her back, one enemy vanished, one ally doing who the fuck even knew what, no useful jutsu, and not enough shuriken to gamble that one might get through Anei's defense.
Naga dislikes planning. But it's a necessary skill for chuunin, so she's been practicing.
Something tickled at the back of Naga's mind, pieces of a plan trying to fit together.
As Suisen's reflected glare hit the threshold of 'ow shit I'm blind,' Naga grabbed a handful of sand and pine needles and hurled it toward Anei. The Volcano-nin dodged. Not blocked! Dodged. And came up swinging wildly. She'd lost track of Naga's position and couldn't check everywhere because of Suisen's ever-shifting light.
Naga ran straight up the nearest tree.
On the ground, Anei retracted her left-hand whip, reshaping the glass into something more like a thick kodachi. She spun on her heel, snapped the remaining whip in quick, probing strikes, tilted her head to listen through the rush of Kafunnokaze's wind-wall (still up, what was taking him so long to deal with?) and the thumps and shouts that marked Kakashi and Sukkiro's fight inside a bubble of ashy darkness.
The reason Naga can see this while Anei is still effectively blinded, btw, is that Suisen can aim her light, and she's aiming it mostly outward on a straight line, not upward. Remember, she can't self-generate light yet (she mentioned in a previous chapter that that's her clan's master jutsu, which she is still learning), so her technique depends on ambient light -- in this case sunlight -- and reflecting back toward the source is wasteful and pointless.
This seemed implicitly obvious to me, but on reflection I'm not sure how much of that comes across in the text.
Naga squinted past Suisen's glare and inched out along a wide, heavy limb that stuck into the clearing like a massive, prickly fan. Then she waited for Anei and Suisen to move within range.
One breath. Two. Five. Ten. And... now.
Naga chopped the bulk of the branch free with a reinforced knife-hand strike and rode it down. Pine sap flashed into flame as Anei raised her whip and sword to counter, but the net of branches and needles was broad enough to clip the Volcano-nin despite her evasion, and pin her weapons down for a precious second.
"And a second's all you need," Naga muttered to herself as she rolled away from the burning branch and shook out her aching knuckles. Then she nudged Anei with her foot to check that the Volcano-nin was really unconscious -- she'd played dead too often herself not to be suspicious -- before gingerly dragging the woman out of the fire.
Naga quoting Yukiko is one of my favorite little character moments in the story so far. :) As is her suspicion of people playing dead, which is a callback to the way she beat Kohaku in the chuunin exam tournament back in "Apartment Manager".
Suisen, scorched and sweaty, bent over beside Naga to catch her breath. "I cannot believe you hit her with a tree," she said after a moment. "I know you're a Leaf-nin, but that's taking word association a little too seriously."
Naga shrugged. "Worked, didn't it? Where's Kohaku?"
"Hunting down the genin this one sent to grab reinforcements," Suisen said. "Standard protocol: Kaze-kun and I are the first response. Haku-kun runs perimeter, deals with unexpected whatever, and provides backup if necessary. We didn't need backup because we're awesome, but he can come secure our prisoner any time now." She knocked the heel of her foot into the ground in a rapid syncopated pattern.
Wrapping up loose ends, reminding people that Kohaku exists and was actually doing useful things this whole time, and giving a little more detail about the Grass-nin team and how they work together. I had Suisen refer to Kohaku as Haku-kun to mirror her previously established nickname for Kafunnokaze. (That nickname I established both because his given name is annoyingly long, and because I think I had vague ideas of Suisen feeling she needs to defend Kafunnokaze's virtue by making sure Naga is really good enough for him, and one of her go-to methods is attempting to induce jealousy and watching how Naga reacts. Suisen is more of a frontline fighter than a classic kunoichi, but she still uses a lot of seduction/social manipulation techniques.)
As the soil rippled in response, Suisen adjusted her mirrors and added, "While he's taking care of that, let's give the boys a hand. You go check on Kaze-kun and I'll shine a light into whatever your sensei is doing with that skinny weirdo."
It amuses me that both Naga and Suisen make snap negative judgments of Sukkiro -- particularly since I think they both have a very positive opinion of Anei (aside from the whole temporary opponent thing).
She dashed off into the chakra-fueled shadows without waiting for a response.
Annnnnnnnd cut scene, because I didn't want to write the rest of the fight. (It was also narratively irrelevant, but even so.)
---------------
The caravan left Aoukouchou around noon, after a profitable morning of trade and haggling. Yukiko had introduced Seichi to a factor in the cloth trade with whom she did occasional business on her cousin's behalf, but Ryouma-san had nothing currently in stock that Yuichiro wanted, and vice versa, so they came away with nothing but gossip and the aftertaste of good tea.
Even if you're not actively buying anything, it's important to maintain relationships! Besides, this is how Yukiko does half of her intelligence work: she is in a position to gather gossip that more obvious ninja would not hear.
"It keeps surprising me how little actual business is involved in business," Seichi remarked as he swung up onto a communal wagon's front seat beside Yukiko. He attempted to drop his arm across her shoulders. She ducked out from under the gesture. "You break my heart, Yuki-chan!" he said, then added in a lower tone, "Your contact seemed overly interested in news from Konoha."
"Mmm. He didn't know anything specific, judging by how vague his questions were, but I don't think Intelligence can keep word of the massacre clamped down for much longer," Yukiko agreed. "It's obvious that something went down, at least if you pay attention to schedules and personnel patterns. And people in Fire Country do pay attention to Konoha. It isn't safe not to."
"So long as they don't pay too much attention," Seichi said. "Otherwise Anbu might start paying attention back."
Look, a theme! (The costs of the hidden village system: let me show you them.)
Also, trivia point: my first attempt at this scene had Seichi being surprised that civilians would pay attention to ninja affairs, and Yukiko explaining why anything that might disrupt travel would obviously be of interest to people involved in trade. But that killed the scene's momentum, not to mention that Seichi is perfectly capable of figuring that out for himself, so I jumped straight to the ominous Anbu posturing instead.
"Pointed attention, I assume," Yukiko said. She glanced around. Nobody was walking on either side of the wagon, but she wrapped the reins around her wrist and set up a distraction veil just in case. When she turned back to Seichi, his eyes had gone cold and he had a quartet of playing cards fanned between his fingers like kunai.
Seichi is not usually on quite that much of a hair trigger, but everyone on this mission is a little bit stressed right now -- partly because of the uncertainty caused by the Uchiha massacre, partly because the mission is the kind that really should have had another week or two of planning and a more solid structure, and partly because of Naruto and Sasuke's unexpected presence and their inability to send the kids safely home.
Also a distraction veil is an area-effect genjutsu, just a quiet suggestion that nothing of interest is happening in whatever area the caster wants to conceal.
"There's no danger! I just wanted to talk about the mission for a few minutes," Yukiko said. "I'm not worried about gathering information or keeping our covers. I've been doing that since I was a genin. But I'd like a better idea of how the assassination part will go. Obviously we can't make specific plans until we know what we're facing, but what should I expect in general terms? And how can I be most helpful to you and Kurenai?"
Again, Yukiko has never done assassination missions. In previous chapters this has manifested as moral misgivings, but here she's subsuming those under practical questions.
Seichi didn't precisely relax, but the tension in his posture and chakra shifted subtly: a predator idly watching a game trail rather than one actively stalking prey. "Generally speaking, we want to create one of two scenarios," he said as he shuffled the four cards into the rest of his suddenly visible deck. "Either I get a minute alone with the target, or I get a clear shot in a public location where a sudden death will create enough ambient chaos to divert suspicion away from our team. In both cases your job is to act as distraction."
Yukiko frowned. "That seems reasonable enough. But won't the assassination itself be obvious enough for Amane's guards to lock the immediate area down? How will you get away?"
Seichi's smile glinted like sun on ice. He collapsed his deck into a single pile, then held up one card: the king of spades. "The only assassin you know is Hatake Kakashi. Right?"
Yukiko nodded.
"He gets assigned when Konoha needs to make a statement." Seichi flipped the card around; instead of the patterned back Yukiko expected, the two of hearts now faced forward. After a second, Seichi fanned the two of spades, diamonds, and clubs out from behind it. "I get assigned when plausible deniability is more important. I can't set up something completely undetectable within our likely timeframe, but I know how to maintain a cover persona and how to avoid both obvious wounds and chakra residue. Combine that with a distraction, and I should be able to buy just enough time to give myself an alibi for the apparent time of death."
Sometimes there's symbolism to Seichi's cards. Other times, not so much. Even when he does use symbolism, it's often highly personal, something that speaks to him but may not communicate much of anything to others. In this case, the king of spades (standing for Kakashi) is a powerful card from a suite associated with swords and death; that's pretty straightforward. The two of hearts is less a symbol of Seichi himself (though it does work that way, a bit, in that he is a man with 'two hearts' [the assassin and the person who created the assassin]) and more a symbol of his general inconspicuousness, which is reinforced when he fans out the two of clubs, diamonds, and spades: he is a low card (unimportant) and could be from any suite (interchangeable).
Also this is just a little reminder that Chidori is a terrible assassination technique... assuming your goal is a subtle death. If your goal is shock and awe, on the other hand? Yeah, a dramatic, flashy, noisy, nearly impossible to avoid overkill strike sounds like just the ticket.
Yukiko frowned again. "Okay. I'll bite. How do you kill someone in under a minute without leaving evidence?"
"Ah." Seichi's smile vanished, leaving nothing but cold. "Push your illusion out to both sides for a few seconds," he said.
Puzzled, Yukiko closed her eyes and expanded the little bubble of illusion until it brushed the trees on either side of the road. When she opened them, Seichi collapsed his fan of cards back to a singleton and flipped it around again, this time revealing the ace of spades. Then he flicked it over his shoulder in an apparently idle motion.
It should have fluttered down to be crushed under the wagon's wheels.
Instead, a massive tree branch crashed to the ground twenty meters away, sliced free with surgical precision.
Nobody else noticed.
"It's easier when the paper itself has some structure, but I can do that with any scrap," Seichi said. "It's a partial reconstruction of a battle technique developed in Hidden Rain. The original is much more versatile, but my version requires only minimal chakra use and is therefore better suited for assassination. Furthermore, because that chakra isn't structured into a formal jutsu, it dissipates without leaving a recognizable signature. Up close and personal I can make a cut small and fine enough that it will hardly bleed on the outside regardless of what happens inside the target's body. In the open, the apparent lack of a weapon causes confusion in and of itself, and I can make a kill shot from almost any distance so long as I have line-of-sight."
I think I've mentioned before that Seichi started out as a (very loose) Gambit expy, yeah? Well, anyway, that is the reason behind his fighting technique and his choice of cover persona. I had those in place all the way back in 2005.
Of course, by the time I was in a position to explain what he can do with cards and other paper items, Konan had been introduced in canon and he would have looked like a rip-off of her. So I invisibly retconned his technique so it's explicitly based on hers. :)
Huh. "Ame could do that," Yukiko said absently, most of her attention focused on pulling her genjutsu back in without accidentally dispelling it altogether. "Not the paper thing, I've never heard of that before. But the improbable aim. She said it was a clan thing."
Seichi shrugged and answered the implied question. "It's not a bloodline limit yet, but give it a few generations and we'll see. Fuuma tend to have wind affinities that manifest in similar knacks, and we train extensively to enhance them."
Trivia point: when I invented and named Fuuma Ame, I don't think the Fuuma clan had yet been introduced in the manga. So it is a complete coincidence that she was clan-born rather than from a civilian family, and that she fought with various-sized shuriken, all the way up to the canonical Fuuma clan's signature giant shuriken.
When this was pointed out to me many years later, of course I ran with it. *wry*
"That doesn't sound like Ame -- not the training part," Yukiko said. "She was always trying to get me and Kasumi to ditch practice sessions with Hoshi-sensei and do silly things instead." Seichi made an inquiring noise, so she continued: "We hated that about her at first. Kasumi and I were both civilian-born and felt we had to be better than the best in order to get half as far, and it seemed like Ame didn't understand that being shinobi-born gave her a huge advantage over us."
She twitched the reins, redirecting the left-hand mule's attention back to the road and its job. "But after a while, we realized she stopped us from training constantly because she knew we had to work harder than she did. She wanted to make sure we didn't burn out. And every time she dragged us around town, she introduced us to at least one useful person -- supplier, mission control agent, whatever -- who'd treat us better once they knew we were connected to your clan. I still go to the same smith she did when I need to restock my kunai, and he still tells me to remind Ame she was running late with her bill payments whenever I stop by the memorial stone."
"That does sound like my cousin," Seichi said. "She was always late with gifts, too. We used to joke about it -- say things like, 'Oh, Uncle Toushirou, I see that something important happened three months ago!' if we saw someone holding a package with her calligraphy on the label."
The warmth in his voice didn't match the slightly numb tiredness she'd started to associate with Seichi being himself, but it was an even worse fit for the assassin or the aggressive sociability he put on as Tsukene. Surprised, Yukiko turned toward him -- but if his expression had ever changed, the evidence was gone. Only chill and impersonal assessment remained behind his eyes: the assassin face up once more.
I originally intended to do more with Ame as a point of connection between Yukiko and Seichi, but I never really found a good place for that in previous chapters. But here it is at last! I always enjoy getting to reveal little bits of Yukiko's past (and make her dead teammates seem like real people rather than guilt-inducing ciphers), and this also highlights some of the internal problems the shinobi-vs-civilian divide creates in the hidden villages.
While I wrote this chapter, I simultaneously revised the previous fifteen chapters in preparation for posting them to AO3. Most of the changes were fairly minor, but one in particular was to Seichi -- specifically, making sure he always seems tired and numb when he's not putting on a face. I am pretty sure he's suffering some form of depression and PTSD, though at the moment he's still able to clamp a lid on that for missions. But he is going to crash and burn badly within a year or two if he doesn't get a break.
Anyway, that makes his fleeting warmth here more noticeable, by way of contrast.
"My cousin's quirks, entertaining though they were, aren't relevant to our mission," he said. "Did you have any other questions?"
Yukiko glanced forward to where Naruto and Sasuke were walking in the weeds at the side of the road, one gesticulating wildly and the other doing his best to pretend he was alone. She bit her lip, and carefully didn't look back toward Seichi.
Brief reminder that the boys exist, even though Sasuke gets no POV section in this chapter!
"Mostly how I'm going to be an effective distraction when I also have to keep an eye on the kids and make sure they don't get in the way," she said. "But we can work that out once we're in Tengai and know what our covers will be. For now, we might as well enjoy the sunshine." She dropped the distraction jutsu as she spoke.
"An idea after my own heart, Yuki-chan!" Seichi said, sliding smoothly back into his cover persona, and once again attempted to sling an arm around her shoulder.
This was going to be a long trip.
Yukiko intensely dislikes Seichi's cover persona, especially since she A) has to pretend to get along with Tsukene as part of her own cover and B) is actually starting to kind of like/feel sorry for the man underneath.
---------------
"So," Kakashi said lightly, as he crouched over the prone body of the skinny, hotheaded Volcano jounin. "You said you found some spies four days ago. Tell me about them."
Sukkiro glared upward and, to Naga's amazement, managed not to say anything.
For five seconds. Then he began another rant about Gouzen-sama's honor.
Sukkiro amuses me possibly more than he really ought to. (Also, his ranting is not as dumb as it looks. He really is that rabidly partisan, but he's also aware of how he comes off and is fully capable of weaponizing that impression.)
"This isn't getting us anywhere," Kafunnokaze grumbled from across the row of unconscious prisoners. His hands shook slightly from exhaustion and blood loss as he wrapped bandages around Suisen's burns. Kohaku sprawled on Suisen's other side, uninjured but apparently drained from staying underground so long. Suisen combed the fingers of her free hand through his hair.
Aww, team!feels. ♥
Naga's genin team had never been close like that. She and Tsukihime hadn't been either, but she thought they'd been getting there. Now they never would.
It hurt to think about that, so she didn't.
Lies. Well, and compartmentalization. But still, lies. You can tell because Tsukihime keeps popping up in Naga's thoughts every chapter or two.
"Knock him out and move on to someone else," Kafunnokaze continued over Sukkiro's interminable spiel, "or pull out that genjutsu your eye's supposed to help with and see if he's more cooperative when he thinks bugs are crawling out from under his fingernails."
There is probably a story behind that suggested illusion, but I have no idea what it is.
"An oddly specific threat," Kakashi said. "But no, I think a simple gag will be enough to save our ears. Two concussions in short order creates too much risk of accidental death or permanent brain injury, as does genjutsu strong enough to smash mental defenses without the benefit of surprise or an extensive interrogation period. Breaking Sukkiro-san, however annoying he is, would guarantee retaliation, and I'd prefer to leave Volcano Country without a hunting party on our trail. Wouldn't you agree, Anei-san?"
This story (and canon itself) leans heavily toward fantasy-type violence, where you can knock people out relatively safely, but I wanted to include a nod toward reality here. Concussions are serious business, and knocking someone out means you are causing them traumatic brain injury through one method or another. Don't do that twice in a row!
Since genjutsu involves messing around with chakra flows (and probably nerve impulses) within the target's brain, it is likewise a bad idea to layer that over a pre-existing traumatic brain injury -- assuming, of course, that you want your target to survive.
Naga jerked around to stare at the other Volcano jounin, who'd apparently awakened without attracting anyone's attention. Damn. She should've been keeping better watch, not getting distracted by Kakashi's lackadaisical interrogation tactics and might-have-beens.
Like I said, Sukkiro knows how to weaponize his ranting. *wry*
His fighting style relies on darkness and misdirection while Anei's is flashy and obvious, but when they're not actively in battle, he's usually the loud distraction while she gets stuff done in the shadows. They complement each other well and are assigned together fairly often. (Both with and without Anei's genin. Sukkiro is not currently teaching anyone, so his squads are all ad hoc groups.) The problem is that they trade overall command back and forth from mission to mission, and this was not the best mission for Sukkiro to be in charge.
Anei moved her fingers away from her now faintly singed bonds and sighed. "Sukkiro's a twit. But yes. We'd hunt you for that; honor demands as much. Honor is, however, less specific about a trade of information."
Anei does legitimately think Sukkiro's a twit. She also thinks he's a skilled and reliable partner. The two are not mutually exclusive.
"Mmm," Kakashi said, finally turning to face her. "Here's a thought! I tell you what we need to know, you tell me what you need to know, and we'll bargain from there."
Anei looked at her own bonds, then at the drugged and trussed-up bodies of her students and Sukkiro's squad, then back at Kakashi with pointedly raised eyebrows. "Bargain. Sure."
The thing is, while the Leaf-nin and Grass-nin physically have the upper hand here, they need Anei's information and don't have a fast and reliable way to get it. (Torture is not remotely reliable. And I don't care that it would have played into the 'ethical costs' theme; there's a level of darkness I don't want to cross in this story, since the AU as a whole is still about positive change.) So the power dynamics are less unbalanced than they initially appear, and Kakashi is showing that he knows that and is willing to cut a deal. Anei is mostly protesting for form's sake.
Kakashi shrugged and crinkled his one visible eye into a smile. "I've survived worse negotiating positions. I'm sure you'll do fine. But I'll go first, which gives you the advantage when aiming your own questions. So. Where were these alleged spies found? Were they alive then, and if so, are they still alive now? Why do you think we're connected to them? Was there any sign of another person involved in the situation?"
"An interesting set of questions," Anei said.
"I will have you brought up before the elders as a traitor if you--" Sukkiro began.
Kohaku leaned forward and calmly stuffed the man's own scarf into his mouth, muffling the rest of his objection. Then he slumped back against Suisen's side and began examining his kunai for nicks.
Anei sighed again. "You know what? I don't have the patience to do the whole tremors and ash spouts game today. Let's cut straight to the eruption. We know Hidden Leaf was spying on us because the spies in question were wearing your symbol and carried characteristic traits from two of your major clans. But I won't condemn you for doing to us what we do right back when we can spare the resources. You said you're in pursuit of an S-class missing-nin?"
Given that all the Elemental Countries speak and write a single mutually intelligible language, I sometimes try to make token gestures toward separate cultures via idioms.
"I did say that," Kakashi agreed.
"I haven't personally seen any such person, but someone with at least jounin-level skills passed through this region four days ago," Anei said. "He killed your spies, and all three of the Inuzuka's dogs. Then he moved them to one of our outlying traps, which he set off, and ambushed our first response team. He took advantage of our subsequent mobilization to enter Kokuyougan fortress where Gouzen-sama was staying, at which point he stole a messenger hawk and sent it to an unknown location.
Please recall the trouble that one jounin and four chuunin have just had dealing with two Volcano jounin and six Volcano genin. Itachi is S-class for a reason. (This is true regardless of your opinion on his sanity and relative levels of villainy and tragic woobieness.)
Note also how little information Anei actually provides in this summary. Where did any of these events take place? Somewhere in "this region". What is the status of the first response team after their ambush? She's not telling. Did anyone get hurt when Itachi infiltrated the fortress? Who knows!
The enemy of her enemy may be her temporary ally, but that doesn't mean she'll give away anything more than she needs to.
"He made fools of us and our lord, and I want him dead. I'll count his execution as fair payment for this information," she finished, and smiled. "Sukkiro, now!"
Ashy darkness swept over the clearing.
When sunlight began to filter through the leaves again, all eight Volcano-nin were gone.
Like I said, Anei and Sukkiro make a good team. I like writing people who are competent at their jobs. :)
And now Naga & Co. will continue heading east, toward the last reported location of Uchiha Akaro and his team... but that is a scene for another chapter -- probably chapter 18, unless my timeline gets screwed up again. Chapter 17 will pick up the Amane family again, since they sat this chapter out entirely, and both Yukiko and Sasuke will get POV scenes, which are technically one long scene but broken up because of Reasons. (For those who may be curious: the chapter is half written and fully outlined. I just got bogged down by logistics in Yukiko's scene. *sigh*)
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End of Chapter Sixteen
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Further Note: I'm fudging a little with the sand-to-glass trick -- the melting point of pure silica/sand is about 1700°C, which is extremely improbable for anyone to create even with handwavey magic powers -- but hey. Rule of Cool. *grin*
Also let's pretend conduction, convection, and radiation are only selectively active, because again, Rule of Cool. *wry*
As for the heat convection issue... I went to a glass-blowing demonstration at the Corning Museum of Glass a few years back. It is perfectly possible to hold and maneuver a lump of molten glass at one end of a stick and not burn yourself, even without handwavey magic protection. And that stuff gets hot -- not nearly as bad as pure silica, but the melting point of soda lime glass is still about 500-600°C, which means it's incredibly dangerous even after it solidifies. The demo guy made a bowl, knocked it off the pipe, and dropped a crumpled sheet of paper inside. The paper went up in brilliant flames in barely a second.
You really, really, really do not want molten glass to touch your skin or clothes.
But if you ever get a chance to watch a glass-blowing demo? TAKE IT. You will thank me afterward!
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And that is that. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-11 11:48 am (UTC)Anyway, I have to stop here for now and go get started with my workday, but I hope to come back latter. Thanks again! This is really neat, and I'm excited for chapter 17 whenever you get around to it.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-17 05:22 am (UTC)Honestly, the best resource I have personally found with regard to writing tight 3rd-person POV is Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint, though as with all writing advice I'm sure it's not one-size-fits-all. (Card's descent into homophobia and right-wing paranoia does not retroactively render his writing advice useless, though it does mean I feel kind of weird still loving a number of his earlier books. *makes face*) Ursula Le Guin's essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" (in her collection The Language of the Night) is also useful, though in a narrower way -- it's focused entirely on matching one's language register to one's characters and story type.