Chapter 38

Sunagakure
Ryoma, Jonin

“Can’t this wait till you’re recovered?” His friendly former supervisor asked with a grouchy tone and glaring face, a bag slung over her shoulders and glaring up at him. Ryoma glanced down from his current perch atop the Great Bolter, chakra strings stretching from one hand and loading supplies into the interior of the big wood and steel box.

This was the third unit of Great Bolter- the most recently built and designed using all of the lessons learned from the previous two. Iterative improvements, mostly, not any substantial overhaul of the actual design, not enough to call it a proper ‘mark’ upgrade to the previous. Ryoma kept the other two around for spare parts, slowly dismantling them when he needed to repair this one.

“Do you have any idea what I can do with Senju Wood?” Ryoma drawled, handing another set of bags to Tsubame on the other side of the hatch. The immediately-usable stuff would go in bags, and if that wasn’t enough, he could always just summon the Bulk-Storage Seal mk2 over and get most anything he needed out.

“No- but I don’t think you need to risk your health by rushing to get it either.” Toyoko sassed up at him, hands on her hips.

“Well I don’t know either.” He replied, ignoring the second half of her sentence. “But I do know it doesn’t go up for sale that often- and that I’m going to personally thank Tanigakure with a million Ryo for the delivery.”

“Paying. You’re paying them a million.”

“And I’m going to be very grateful when I hand the scroll over.” Ryoma corrected with a waggled finger. “Now load your stuff up, Sassy-chan. We’ll be rolling out as soon as Hotaru is done showering and actually gets down here.”

“Tch.” She uttered with a scowl and shake of her head, walking forwards and then up the side of the Great Bolter, hands flashing down to cover her thighs as she did. Ryoma handed another bag to Tsubame, who was staring up at him in a very unimpressed fashion.

“Nice thighs, shorty.”

“You weren’t even looking, liar!” Toyoko growled at him as she stepped over to the hatch and politely handed her bag over to Tsubame. “I was watching your eyes!”

He could’ve looked with the puppet-eyes mounted all the way around the Great Bolter, but that seemed like a lot of effort for a really mild amount of thrill. “Hotaru!” Ryoma called out flatly towards the building they were in the shadows of, hand raised to his mouth. “Get a move on!”

Somewhere in the Inn, he heard a distant ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’, muffled by the stone walls and coming from somewhere on the second floor. He reached up to scratch the side of his head, lips tugging down beneath his veil.

“Not the quickest, huh?” He muttered, before rolling his neck and doing his best to stretch under the medical bindings.

“Why did you ask for us on this mission anyways, huh? Three ladies all to yourself in a box?!” Toyoko growled in a very cute manner at him. “What are you up to?”

“Getting three people versed in puppetry with no outstanding current responsibilities to help me bounce ideas around about what I could do with the expensive wood I’m about to buy.” Ryoma replied flatly, turning his gaze down to her again. “I asked Tsuyumaru first, and he said he’d be busy. I can’t ask the Captain or Vice-Captain to come along on a shopping trip with me- so that just leaves you three.”

She furrowed her brows at him, arms crossed and a finger tapping against the crook of her arm.

“In other words- you’re my second-place choice, congratulations on winning by default.” He gave a thumbs up and smile as her face twisted up into a silently irritable look. Like a rabbit deeply offended to be offered an unsatisfactory type of carrot. He maintained the gaze for a second, before giving an amused scoff and leaning down slightly. “Oh, my bad- I meant actually yes- I’m luring you away from the village so I can do all manner of nefarious and lewd things to you, definitely.”

“Kyah.” Tsubame interjected emotionlessly. “My body is in danger. Oh no.”

Toyoko let out a frustrated sigh. “He doesn’t need your help to mock me, Jonin Tsubame.”

“The opportunity was too convenient.” Tsubame explained blankly. At about that moment, the door to the inn was flung open and Hotaru stumbled out, laden with a large box strapped to her back and a pair of bags. Her hair was still thoroughly soaked, and she smelled faintly of some fruity nonsense.

“I’m sorry!” She wailed, stumbling forwards. “I didn’t mean to be late!”

“You’re not late, we haven’t left yet.” Ryoma shrugged, stepping over to the hatch and gently lowering himself inside- pausing briefly as Tsubame caught his feet like a human stepladder. He raised a brow before ducking to go lower, slipping inside and moving over to the piloting seat. “Get in and get comfortable, we’re in for a long ride.”

Tsubame stepped back, letting Toyoko poke her head through and then drop in, little boots clacking against the floorplate as she inspected the interior. “Revised again?” She asked with a snooty little raised nose.

“Third unit, yeah.” Ryoma explained briefly, leaning back and resting his head on the newly-installed extra cushioning. He raised a hand, letting the strings connect to the frame and ‘waking up’ the eyes. It always took a moment or two to get used to omnidirectional vision again, blurry all around except in certain cones where he had layered multiple eyes together to focus- namely the front and the turret.

The Puppet-Eye technique wasn’t affected by material quality at all, as far as anyone could tell. Wood, glass, stone, everything had roughly the same level of vision quality. The only exception was actual, biological eyes, which were much clearer but that meant he’d have to replace them constantly or deal with the smell of formaldehyde all the time.

So instead he just put multiple eyes in the same direction. The quality increase still wasn’t as good as his actual eyes, but it was a noticeable improvement from before. He could actually read large lettering through a quintet of linked eyes pointed at the same thing.

He was pretty sure this is what Sasori laughed at him about all those years ago- he had already figured this out, and it was a pretty obvious answer in hindsight. Why else would all his secondary puppets like Crow, Black Ant, and Salamander all have three eyes instead of one or two?

‘More eyes help you see better’, woah, what an amazingly esoteric answer. Ryoma was still slightly annoyed at himself about it.

Hotaru dropped through the hatch hesitantly, glancing around nervously. “He-hey! Hi! Sorry!”

“What are you apologizing for?” Ryoma titled his head back to give her a confused look. He shook his head and faced forwards again. “Close the hatch behind you- we don’t want sand getting inside the cabin.”

“Right!” She exclaimed, bouncing in place slightly and reaching up to fumble with the lid. “Right…”

“Pull down and twist clockwise.” Toyoko grunted, plopping down in one of the chairs in the back, looking at the little mirror-slots that showed the outside indirectly. Ryoma had been thinking about buying and installing live-feed cameras to put in for the passengers instead, but they were too big, too bulky, and drew entirely too much power for him to consider it.

Instead, the back contained two systems for other people to monitor the outside world. A slot in the roof that lets you physically peer through, and a pair of angled mirrors to peer through indirectly, and that’s about it.

Again- he needed to figure out one of those sensor-jutsu so he could install a proper monitor, but that project kept getting delayed again and again.

Tsubame glared through the upper hatch like it was trying to sneak up on her, and Hotaru hesitated as she looked for a place to sit. Eventually she just settled down on the floor where she was standing, hair soaking her shoulders and staring at nothing in particular.

The Great Bolter shook slightly, limbs pulling together under its main bulk before rising into the air. The legs twisted, the wheels extended, and Ryoma slowly pulled up to speed leading away from the Inn. The frame bucked and shook as he moved over dunes, then towards the ‘main road’, which was less of a road and more of a stretch of particularly hard and therefore mostly flat sand.

This stretch of sand would continue for quite a ways, then they’d go over another few dunes, then finally hit the old packed-stone road that led along the coast from the Wind Capital up to the Land of Rivers. Was it stealthy? Absolutely not, which was the point of him going through there and being very obvious with his movements.

Both so other people could verify that he had indeed been in that location, and because if he was doing something sneaky, he wouldn’t be so obvious about it.

The attack was in six days, eleven hours.

—

“So uhm… What are we… going… to get?” Hotaru asked suddenly, hair dry and rear end rooted to the center of the cabin. No one replied for a moment, as the rest of them processed the breech in the comfortable quiet of the road.

“Were you not listening when I explained it earlier?” Ryoma asked with a raised brow.

“…No.” Hotaru responded after a moment, ducking her head shamedly.

“Tanigakure recently seized a shipment of smuggled wood from a Senju Tree, and offered to sell it to us if anyone wanted it.” Ryoma explained, stretching his legs out as they rumbled over another dune. “Meaning- sell it to someone from the Puppet Corps, because no one else would care about luxury wood.”

“Senju Wood is- the trees grown by the First Hokage and his Wood Release, right?” Hotaru asked with increasing confidence, leaning forwards slightly.

“Yeah, one of those trees.” Ryoma rolled a hand. “Konoha occasionally cuts one down and processes the wood for things like super-expensive furniture.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“It’s the strongest wood in the world, according to legend. Strong enough to bind even the greatest of the Tailed Demons.” Toyoko exposited, arms crossed and nodding in an official manner.

“Tani says they have a desk-sized block on hand- and Captain Gentai offered me dibs on buying it, which was nice of him.” Ryoma pointed a thumb back at his head. “I think I’m going to use it to make a new set of puppet-armor, replace the damaged components of the old mk3 here first and then see what I can do with the rest.”

“Do not make a Bolter with it.” Toyoko growled at him.

“I wasn’t going to waste super-durable wood on something designed to explode.” Ryoma rolled his eyes. “I’m rolling my eyes at you, in case you couldn’t tell.”

“I could.”

“Although it would be really funny…” Ryoma muttered with a musing tone.

“Ryoma!”

He chuckled and adjusted the legs to smoothly glide over a bump in the road. “More seriously- I want ideas here. I think I’m going to use it to iterate on my armor- but I’m not sure what I’d do with the rest of it after.”

“Are you going to densify the material?” Toyoko asked with a curious air and a thoughtful tone.

“I’m not sure- densification is pretty wasteful in terms of raw material to finished product.” Ryoma pressed his lips together, considering the idea. “If I do that- I might not have enough material to make a complete set of puppet-armor out of it. I’m definitely going to collect the sawdust, use it to create the usually-shaped components with some resin or epoxy.”

“Make sure you test your process on a standard block of equivalent size first.” Toyoko continued with a helpful sort of nagging. “Lest you waste any of it.”