Chapter 13

Tea Capital
Ryoma, Recently Promoted Ninja

“That’s the lighthouse then?” Ryoma asked aloud, standing on a little rowboat with four other ninja. A large scroll was carried on his back, part of his preparations from earlier.

The island was as the scouting team had initially reported, perhaps three miles at the widest, lightly forested, covered primarily in hardy grass and rocky outcrops. There was a winding path leading up from a beach facing their direction, that visibly wound its way up along the island until finishing in a large wooden tower with tiered roofs.

As the only ‘distraction’ unit, he was the only one on the boat that wasn’t currently under the effect of a transformation. The others were doing their best impression of barrels at the moment. The only other ‘person’ on the rowboat, the Amenin, was disguised as a regular fisherman.

“Yeah… that’s the one.” The barrel on his left whispered in the Kirinin’s growling voice.

Ryoma made a small sound of understanding, stepping back on the boat to reach down and grab the ‘barrel’. By the feel of it, he had taken hold of the shoulder and under the knee. He hefted the barrel up, then tossed it over the side and allowed it to sink under the water. Somewhere beneath the shady waves, the Kirinin would shed the Transformation and make his way to the island under the water.

Stealth insertions were always like this. He stepped over to the second barrel, the Iwanin, and did the same. Hefting the foreign shinobi up and tossing him overboard, letting the second barrel sink into the water. The Iwanin had been twitching murderously the entire time he had been handled, which was amusing.

He didn’t even blink as the third barrel moaned, only rolling his eyes as he hefted the disguised Taninin and tossed her overboard as well. A big splash later and the ‘barrel’ began to sink. He was familiar enough with the female body to know that nothing he grabbed was an erogenous zone, she was just trying to fuck with him some more.

Ah scantily clad ninja woman, a shame you were a potential assassin. Also a shame that he was probably a bit too young for carnal relations, maybe in a few years or something.

The Amenin continued to row, bringing them ever-closer to the mostly-rotten docks of the mostly-abandoned island. The sand here was of rougher particulate than desert sand, more water-fragmentation than wind-smoothed grain. His sand techniques would be somewhat less efficient than normal with it, probably not enough to actually matter though.

If your Jutsu involves moving sand around, having smoother grains made it easier to move, it was as simple as that. Less Friction.

It was probably close enough to the island that he could water-walk over to it. If he knew how to water-walk, that was. A somewhat more advanced chakra control and mobility technique compared to the relatively simple wall-walking, people who mastered it could walk on water.

There wasn’t much water in Suna to practice, so Ryoma hadn’t gotten around to learning it yet. He was, therefore, just going to be quiet and patient as the Amenin rowed up to the shore close enough for him to jump out. If they abandoned him here, he was just gonna have to learn water-walking really damn quick.

He clipped the earpiece radio on as they finished their approach, the rowboat gently tapping against the side of the rotten wood frame. “Thanks for the ride.” He waved at the disguised Amenin.

“I don’t know what you want with this place- and I don’t care for it.” Amenin shook his head, pretending to be a fisherman. “I’ll be hanging off the coast for you to finish your business, but I’m gone by sundown, you hear?”

“I hear.” Ryoma pushed the boat away with his foot, standing carefully on the rotten dock before making his way to the actual shore. While he walked, he recounted the tactical considerations of the upcoming battle. Unknown territory, little information on target, inherently untrustworthy allies, assigned to the diversionary force, hidden techniques already revealed to the enemy, chakra reserves full, sufficiently fed and hydrated.

Total hours of sleep over the past three days? Nine.

He stepped onto the shore, swinging the ‘scroll’ off his back and planting it on the ground. He then pulled out the red scroll on his belt, throwing it open and letting a cloud of smoke engulf them. A second, smaller puff of smoke occurred within the cloud, as the scroll dispelled the illusion to reveal that it was himself, quickly climbing into the cramped interior frame of the Wood Dragoon before the smoke dissipated.

The sand clone, earpiece on and outside of the shoddy wooden mini-mech, raised its fingers and sent five strings out to connect. The other hand raised in a one-handed seal. This one handed seal was a complete bluff. It wasn’t doing anything. He gave his clone a standing order to follow behind him, maintaining the strings and the handseal in case he suddenly needed either.

A puppeteer couldn’t lift ‘themselves’ with their chakra strings. They could lift a puppet around willy-nilly, up to a point, but you couldn’t stand on a plate and then levitate by pulling that plate up. That was one of the biggest reasons that operating the Wood Dragoon was so clunky, because it had to stay grounded while he operated it, only leaping and moving under its own physical motions.

With the ‘anchor point’ of a sand clone to stay grounded for him, the Wood Dragoon was significantly more mobile. It could jump around like a more normal puppet, at the cost of leaving a clone exposed and vulnerable to attack. He still needed to control the sand clone, of course, so it wasn’t a perfect solution. It was, however, much better than not having that additional ‘anchor’ point.

It was one of those limits that didn’t have an easy work-around. If he was inside the puppet, it was going to be less agile. If he was outside the puppet, it would be more agile. The best compromise was having a disposable clone on the outside of the puppet to occasionally pull himself around with.

Inside the Wood Dragoon, he went through the handseals required to perform Sand Transformation again. The beach-sand flowing up to cover the Wood Dragoon’s surface in a thin but condensed layer, which then shifted into a dull grey hue. Twenty Six.

Another set of handseals and the current picked up around his frame, a bubble of cycling air that both cooled and gently repelled anything from outside the bubble. Twenty Four.

Defenses online, optic links online, anchor point online.

He used to recite that stuff out loud when he was younger- it was really cool to pilot his own mech! Nowadays he was significantly more restrained and only muttered them under his breath as he got the Wood Dragoon in full working order and the smoke around them dissipated.

“Suna ready to go loud.” Cloma spoke quietly through the earpiece.

A few moments passed. “…Rest of the team isn’t in position yet. Hold your position.”

Nonplussed, Cloma lowered his hand and resumed his handseal, expression somewhere between exasperation and acceptance. He probably should’ve been expecting that, he didn’t really need to move as far as everyone else did, so it was only natural that he’d be ready to move out long before the others.

Feeling somewhat funny, his clone and the Wood Dragoon turned to look at each other, shrugs exchanged over the topic at hand. The unspoken majority of all missions, the waiting for things to happen.

A minute or two passed with him standing on the beach, patiently waiting for the others to get into position.

A massive puff of smoke along the side of the slope leading forwards brought his attention snapping towards it. Cloma’s eyes widened as a bullet-train sized larvae barreled out of the smoke, sliding down the hill directly towards him. Far faster than any grub of that scale had any right moving.

He jerked his hand to the side, across his torso, and flipped upwards.

The massive, speeding larvae angled its mandibles towards him, even as he ascended.

Pulled by chakra-strings both external and internal, the Wood Dragoon’s thousand-pound haymaker smashed into the side of the titanic grub like a car smashing into the side of a semi-truck, but significantly more effective than that would normally imply.

The titanic grub made a noise somewhere between a scream and a dial-up internet connection as its tremendous head jerked to the side, the rest of its long wormlike body bunching up behind it and carving great grooves in the earth.

“I’m being engaged by a summon.” Cloma called out through the radio, landing briefly on the grub and tugging his hand again. Up then forwards.

The Wood Dragoon did an entirely-too-acrobatic flip for a frame of its weight, ending in a double-foot dropkick in the recovering grub-face. This sent the grub reeling again, giving time for Cloma to jerk his hand back, pulling the Wood Dragoon back before leaping off the grub to follow. Taller arc for the Wood Dragoon, to delay its landing until after Cloma landed.

Movement at the landing site. Ryoma twitched his fingers, rotating the torso of the Wood Dragoon around, facing entirely backwards in the air, and arms raised. Another twitch of the fingers and the kunai launchers engaged.

Kethunkkethunkkethunkkethunkkethunkkethunk-

Six explosions cleared the landing zone of movement. Puffs of smoke followed. Random corpses littered the field.

Cloma landed with a roll, catching the Wood Dragoon before it landed on its own and potentially shattered its knees in the process. A much gentler landing had it skid along the sand for a few meters, kicking up waves of dust in the process.

Ryoma pulled his fingers from the Wood Dragoon and immediately started a set of handseals. The mouth of the tin-plated mask opened wide.

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“Wind Release : Wind Cutter!” Cloma roared out, doing his best to draw attention. He shifted his fake handseal while doing so, to emphasize the bluff. Twenty One.

A massive vertical arc of cutting wind burst out of the Wood Dragoon’s mouth, tearing a line in the beach, then the rocks and grass of the shore, then all the way up to the barely-recovered giant grub.

Another scream of shrill cacophony and something akin to biological static as the massive grub had a massive gash torn in its side, spraying putrid looking bug-blood and making the entire thing stagger back. A moment later, the titanic grub disappeared in a puff of smoke, retreating to wherever it had been summoned from.

He was way more reliant on chakra for heavy-hitting attacks than he’d really like to be, something to be solved in the mk2 Dragoon.

Ryoma’s fingers reconnected with the Wood Dragoon, the mask sliding shut and a three-directional view returning to him. “Summon banished. Attackers defeated, Six corpse-clones. Is everyone in position?” Cloma asked over the radio, eyes peeled for another unexpected attacker. Nothing immediately obvious, but that meant nothing for dealing with ninja.

“…Affirmative, engage at leisure.”