Chapter 39

Tanigakure
Ryoma, Jonin

The Mk2 was something of a personal disappointment to Ryoma. Sure it was, objectively, a far more potent puppet than the Mk1 had ever been, and included a great deal of his planned upgrades, but it was both downscaled from his initial designs due to the realities of physics and not nearly powerful enough to matter against the opponents to come in only a few more years.

“Toyoko, Tsubame! Long range support from this position! Hotaru- set up a defensive perimeter and keep them protected!” He ordered as his hands jumped through additional seals. A sand-clone rose out of the scattered particulate around him, and Ryoma slapped its hand with his bleeding palm before jumping up and crawling into the hatch in the back of the Mk2.

“Ryoma, fall back! We aren’t prepared to fight!” Tsubame yelled at him, lagging on the hill behind him.

The Mk2 was filled with what he could only describe as ‘teething issues’, a compounding series of smaller flaws and inefficiencies that added up to significantly damage its intended performance. Ryoma had been expecting the Mk1 to be a shitty boondoggle when he started planning it, so he hadn’t run into this same kind of disappointment. His mistake here was getting his expectations up about his own competence in mechanical engineering and design.

Ryoma would likely appease her if he said something like ‘we can’t abandon our allies’ or something like that, but knowing the full context of this event made it hard to lie like that. The sand-clone Ryoma, Cloma, instead barked out. “Initiative!”

“D-damnit Ryoma! You’re still injured!” Toyoko yelled up, a bit behind Tsubame on the hill and doing her best to catch up. “Summoning the Mark-Two is- you idiot!

Whatever she was about to say next was cut off by the hiss-roar of the immense, rampaging serpent down in their allied village. It attempted to chase the massive Heron briefly, before stopping at the edge of the mountain-valley and twisting back to crush more buildings under its scaled bulk.

Ryoma took a steadying breath as he connected his chakra-strings to the Mk2. Twelve from his actual body, five from the clone outside. Behind his head in the piloting chamber, a large wooden wheel slowly slid clockwise.

One hundred and eighty degrees of rotation and eight clicks later, and it locked into place. The circuit-seal was completed, and the artificial chakra network of the Mk2 came to life. A vibrant green glow traced its way through lines of black ink all around the piloting chamber and from there into the rest of the massive puppet.

Chakra Storage Seals had a number of fiddly quirks associated with them- the most immediately relevant one being the ‘plateaus of stability’. Each seal had a limited amount of chakra it could store, depending on the quality of the seal, so to increase the storage capacity one merely needed to link multiple such seals into the same network. However, this introduced instability into the system, and if you didn’t do it carefully, the entire seal would fall apart in an improvised bomb.

Certain quantities of storage seals were more stable than other quantities- the exact science behind why this was, he didn’t know. One, two, four, eight. Ryoma theorized that the next ‘plateau of stability was at sixteen, thirty two, and sixty four, but none of his designs in Suna were stable enough to stack that many seals together for extended durations.

With eight seals and six motes per seal, the Mk2 could store forty-eight motes of chakra at a time. A little bit more than his own reserves. Ryoma’s reserves were not all that big.

Ponderously, the Mk2 rose from its kneel, eyes beginning to burn a vibrant green and the same light spilling out from the gaps in its toothy grin. Cloma hopped up, hooking fingers around the forearm to toss himself all the way up to its shoulder. One hand held in a half-seal.

The giant snake made a sudden twist, smashing another building as it avoided the Heron’s scarred beak and then twisting into a devastating tail-lash that sent the immense bird stumbling back. From what he could estimate, the snake was large enough to swallow the Mk2 whole.

The Great Dragoon made one massive step forwards, immense springs in its legs groaning as it began to move. Ryoma kept his eyes on the sensor-shiki in the cockpit- a hexagram that could sense chakra signatures and ratios of Yin and Yang out to three kilometers in all directions.

The massive fire breathing snake was probably the largest glowing dot, and the high Yin ratio indicated that it was probably female.

A Yin-heavy signature moved onto his position. Tsubame landed next to his clone on the Mk2’s shoulder.

“Thought I told you to provide ranged support.” Cloma pointed out with an irritated tone, the Mk2 making another massive stomp forwards, picking up speed with the flexing of its springs.

“This is not a mission. You have no present authority to command me.” She shot back, a small puff of smoke coming off her as she began to withdraw her own weapons.

Two signatures, one heavy-yang and the other heavy-yin, approached from behind, Cloma glanced to see the Tani-ninja similarly jumping up to him. They landed on his other shoulder a few moments later. “Suna! Are you resolved to aid us?” The male asked sharply, kneeling slightly unsteadily, rocked about by the massive steps of the Mk2.

“We’re allies, aren’t we?” Cloma responded tensely, staring dead ahead at the immense, writhing snake. It smashed into another building, teeth sparking as it swerved around a wave of sharpened river water, and another handful of chakra-signatures vanished from his ‘screen’. The Great Dragoon raised a hand, pointing its arm at the rampaging snake.

The male nodded sharply. “We need to drive it out of the village center- battling it there is causing entirely too much destruction!”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Cloma nodded, changing his half-handseal into another. “Scatter when we reach the buildings- I can’t fight properly if I have to worry about people on my puppet.”

They nodded, bouncing off a few moments later and landing on rooftops on the outskirts of the village. Tsubame didn’t move.

“That includes you, Tsubame.” Cloma continued. “I can’t fight effectively if I’m having to worry about turning you into a red smear the whole time.” Emphasizing his point, the Mk2 brushed against a building and noisily shattered its clay tiles in the process. “Staying on my shoulder is going to get me killed against this thing.”

“Chunin Gentai was correct to label you an idiot.” Tsubame declared, bursting off his shoulder and onto the rooftops, quickly moving away forwards and to the left. He had been about to say something else, but she was already gone.

He sighed inside the cockpit, and made a note to buy her something afterwards. Maybe some expensive snacks or something. The speaker lowered itself in the cockpit and clicked on- the fuzzy sound of a microphone turning on followed.

The serpent twisted around an arcing artillery-salvo of disgusting, bubbling acid, jaws clicking and teeth sparking as it readied to fire another stream of liquid-fire at its attackers.

A pair of three-foot missiles smashed into the side of its face, and a wooden giant roared from the other side of the central river with a booming, faintly mechanical timbre.

“HEY DICKASS!”

The world seemed to shake with the force of the explosion that followed, and the serpent briefly disappeared behind a wave of heat, light, and force.

The serpent staggered, bulk smashing into the building behind it, scattering dust, bricks, and tiles with the impact. Missiles weren’t a massive improvement over his explosive kunai- not at ninja scales at least. The vast majority of ninja battles took place at ten meters or less, after all, and all a missile did was be a somewhat faster, longer-ranged version of his explosive kunai.

They weren’t incredibly advanced missiles either- more like fireworks than anything else, so if he needed a bigger boom he could just put more boom on a kunai and fire that. Of course, ‘slightly faster and longer ranged’ wasn’t too important for human-scales, but it was very important for the scales that his Mk2 operated at.

He was already going all in on the pricing- there wasn’t much point in skimping out on the ammo after. Each of these missiles had four explosive seals wrapped around their body at full, six-mote charge. The equivalent to about twenty four of his explosive kunai, each.

Not even half a Bolter. Eight missiles remaining.

“Continue the attack!” A distant voice roared, a half-dozen ninjutsu coming from rooftops and smashing into the staggered form of the serpent. Water rose from the river in killing-shapes, and earth shattered into spikes and brambles around it. All converged onto a single point, making the immense beast disappear behind the resulting dust and rubble.

It wasn’t dead. Ryoma could see its chakra-signature on the hexagram. The dot moved rapidly towards him, but he couldn’t see the snake anywhere- it was underground. Cloma leapt off and onto the nearby rooftops, raising both hands and connecting a full set of strings to the Great Dragoon.

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“Hold ninjutsu!” the same voice from earlier called out.

“Did we get it?” A feminine voice yelled out a question of her own.

The signature was on his position. Cloma ripped its hands to the side as Ryoma took a step, turned the heavy torso of the Mk2, and pulled its arms back.

The Mk2 smashed into the side of a building, barely avoiding the immense serpentine head as it exploded from the street below him- sand scattering around them as it burst forth. From this close, Ryoma could confirm that it was large enough to swallow the Mk2. In slow-motion, Ryoma could faintly see its slitted eye turn to lock onto him.