Chapter 12

Tea Capital
Ryoma, Recently Promoted Ninja

The chief samurai-guard of the Tea Daimyo’s estate was nice enough to take them in for the night, and by ‘them’, the nobles and other samurai. The ninja were allowed to stay in the outer courtyard under watch by the various guards walking around the perimeter walls.

Honestly not a bad call, trusting ninja in your palace was probably a bad idea. As the nobles were fairly insistent on getting a good night’s rest, and the ninja still needed to have a talk about what was going on, it was easier just to let this happen. Ryoma was pretty sure almost everyone present had at least one way to monitor their client while they were inside.

He had his sand clone from earlier subject to a transformation, disguising itself as various things until it had snuck its way into her room and stationed itself as a bit of furniture. Sand clones had only a limited ability to act, but ‘stand still and watch the client’ was within their ability. He’d keep an eye on it and move to direct command if need be.

He wouldn’t be surprised if literally everyone here did something similar. The Konoha team was allowed to send Chairomaru with Gozen, being a dog was more trustworthy than being a ninja apparently, for example.

That left a good sixteen ninja in a courtyard, all glaring at each other suspiciously as the night dragged on. It looked like there was one or two ninja from every notable ninja village save… Kumo, by the looks of it. Tensions were high from the recent war they had just gotten out of, and the recent attack that just occured, so unless someone started talking it was likely everyone would just start killing each other.

He sighed, raising a hand to rub the back of his neck before stepping forwards into the rough ‘circle’ that had formed between the gathered ninja. “Anyone have a big rock?” He called out, casting his gaze wide. “Need some earth to make sand- we’ll need a map to discuss details.”

There was a period of suspicious looks and grumbles before the Iwa-nin, blond and chewing on a toothpick, stepped forwards while pulling out a storage scroll. “Yeah I got one, step back sandass.”

Ryoma took a dutiful step back as the Iwa-nin unleashed the contents of his scroll, which turned out to be a particularly large boulder. Ryoma sniffed appreciatively, briefly checking to see if his illusion-mask was still on or not, before the Iwa-nin stood up and stepped back again. “That big enough, sandass?”

“Yeah, it should be good. Thank ya, Rockass.” He nodded, raising his hands to perform the basic ‘hiding like a mole’ seals and wreathing his body in sand-manufacturing chakra.

Then, he jumped up and landed on top of the rock, feet first. Gradually, the rock was ground down into fine particulate, lowering him as it was, until finally he was standing in a fresh bed of sand. Stepping out and ending the technique, he summoned a handful of chakra-strings and started to push the pile of sand flat.

He called out loudly, letting his voice carry across the courtyard as he worked. “Earliest my team noticed the attack was oh-three hundred-twenty one, with the noise of the gas canisters in the vents. Does anyone else have an earlier estimate?”

“Canisters on the west side of the apartments triggered earlier, at oh-three hundred-twenty.” The Ame-nin stepped forwards with a grumble, accompanied by another Ame-nin, both of them wearing gas-masks and bits of bulky metal mechanisms. “Gave me time to identify them before the ambient gasses forced us to evacuate the client.”

In the corner of the sand-layer, Ryoma raised a finger to write that information down. 0320, attack begins. Poison gas canisters in vents. Angel Dust and Laughing Gas admixture. The other ninja gradually crept a little closer by this point, around the edges of the sand in little semi-friendly groups.

Ninja tended to be pretty hungry for information, and offering bits of it in turn was cheap for getting more back. Especially as it related to an attack that wasn’t classified to anyone present. Ryoma continued herding the cats, making another declaration. “Poison was a nonlethal blend designed to sedate targets- clear hiss with known ninja presence implies that it was present merely to separate trained professionals from the unguarded or less-skilled. Any alternative theories?”

“Incompetence.” Growled the red-haired ninja from Kiri, thick arms crossed over his chest. He was accompanied by another, much smaller Kiri-nin, a twitchy woman with wide eyes.

Dutifully, Ryoma recorded the two potential reasons for the gas-attack being the way that it was and moved along. “Upon exiting the apartments, the gathered ninja and samurai emerged into a cloud of fine, highly-flammable particulate. Skipping ahead a bit- the presence of the summoned moth implies that these were moth scales shed as part of a wide-scale, high damage but low impact firebomb. Designed to take out units and not structures. Do we have a tally of how many died in that attack?”

“Three, two ninja and one client.” The frazzled looking Kiri-nin declared with a jumpy sort of tone in her voice. “Others that disappeared after the attack ran off.” Potential sensor or just good spatial awareness, either was possible.

Ryoma added that to the growing list. “Afterwards, the enemy revealed himself with a moth-lightshow and a large number of animated corpses under transformation techniques, my team’s estimation was around one-hundred, do we have a more precise count than that?”

“One hundred and two in total, including the summon and true enemy.” The frazzled Kiri-nin continued, to which he gave a little appreciative nod and recorded the information.

“The corpse-clones seemed to be no more durable than a standard clone, save the addition of a corpse afterwards. All corpses seem to have been killed via slit neck. Do we have any ID on the corpses themselves?”

“I saw a few in fancy clothes, potential nobles.” Gaku chimed in at that, a little growl in his own voice. “With that and the declared bounty on noble heads that Laughing Smoke put out, I suppose this is what he’s been doing with the bodies.”

“Wait- he did that?” A ninja from Kusa, a woman with a tiny yukata and large straw hat, spoke with an astonished note. “That’s- is he trying to get Hunter-Nin after him?”

“Where did you hear that, Konoha-nin?” The Tani-nin with the mask and mesh, now accompanied by another Tani-nin wearing concealing robes and holding a long pole, asked.

Gaku nodded his head towards him, and Ryoma nodded in turn. “Our clients happened to be friends, leading to a joint escort as they traveled together towards the festival. On the way we were attacked by a man calling himself ‘Katsubachi’ and Kuchisei Kei, a B-rank ninja from Iwa.” He nodded towards the Iwa-nin, who had a deeply sour expression on his face. “They were looking to be cashing in on the bounty with the heads of our clients- and both escaped after a brief battle. We suspect them to either be investigating Laughing Smoke or outright missing-nin, but there’s not enough information to say for certain either way.”

He shrugged before moving on. “According to Katsubachi, Laughing Smoke has put out a five-million per head bounty on captured nobles. His reasoning for this is unknown.”

There were a few low whistles at that, and a few other dismissive scoffs.

“Five-fucking-million.” The red-haired Kiri-nin whistled.

“There’s no way he’s actually paying them.” The Iwa-nin’s face twisted up in a glare and scowl as he scoffed. “No fucking way. There was a handful in this bunch- but there’s not a chance he actually paid up to whatever suckers took that bait.”

“Might be where the other corpses are from.” One of the Yuga-nin mused, reaching up to rub his chin.

“They had seals on their foreheads. Do we know what they are?” The Ame-nin called out with a scowl.

“I didn’t notice. What did they look like?” Ryoma asked, tilting his head. The Ame-nin held up a slip of paper, before casualling tossing it over. Ryoma caught it by a string and held it up close enough for inspection but far enough to get away in case it exploded.

Filter, two-part storage, floodgate, long-tick release, a squiggly mess of Jutsu-Shiki that he couldn’t begin to understand.

“It’s chakra-storage, probably to fuel the animation of those corpse-clones if I were to guess.” Ryoma sniffed, turning it around and investigating the other side of the paper for anything else. “Implies that he probably filled these up over time and had them activated before the mission- This implies he has relatively average or at least reasonable chakra reserves.”