Event A Three-Body Problem... [Event Finale]

[Cloud Seer]

Entrance to Saint Isamu’s Square
Holy See of Tenouza, Boundary of the Lateran Treaty
…0800 Hours, the day after yesterday...

Even though it was shorter than the Torre Celeste, the main spire of Saint Isamu’s Basilica, not to mention the actual super cathedral itself, was an imposing sight. Situated at the far end of the massive, travertine cobblestone-paved plaza named after the same saint, the Basilica sported four-column-deep marble colonnades that encircled the plaza in a partial ellipse, as if it were the torso of a giant, whose arms attempted to sweep all present into its embrace. In the center of the plaza, a needle-shaped obelisk of red granite stood nearly thirty meters tall, and was supported by bronze lions at its base, with a Tenouzan emblem capping its point. The obelisk was said to be perhaps the oldest man-made object on the planet, and was older than Tenouza itself by at least three thousand years if the story was to be believed.

Radiating out from the main cathedral and surrounding the plaza, innumerable other ancient buildings sprang up in the chaotic, non-planned pattern that marked the truly ancient cities. The plaza itself was at the lowest point of a natural U-shaped valley, and everything else was built up the sloping hills surrounding the basilica. The Pontifical Palace of Saint Himura was located on a hill to the west, its roof poking up above the line set by the roof of the encircling colonnades, and beyond, the lush gardens that marked the geography of most of Tenouza itself seemed to envelop the chaos of the plaza in a calming sea of green. On the valley ridge, the faint lines of aqueducts could be traced going downwards, bringing water from natural reservoirs to the city below.

Like most mornings, this morning wouldn't have stood out as one of particular note for the inhabitants of the Tenouzan Republic. In fact, the morning to most of the lay people that inhabited the land were mostly unaware of what sort of monstrous acts that were being carried out in their collective name. They were pious people, true, but like most people who blindly followed what they were told, they were left in the dark. What they couldn't have known was that at that particular hour on that particular day that their revered leaders, their most highest held officials had opted to send the final blow to their enemy, the shinobi in one defining attack that would never be forgotten. It was indeed their illustrious leader who had signed off on arguably the most defining act of his career. At 0444 hours, a cliché number more meaningful to the heretic shinobi than the devout, the anti-chakra device planted deep within the bowels of the Capital was supposed to malfunction due to critical error and take out all that was remaining of any leadership within the Shogun's line.

No doubt a known secret among the shinobi, the Tenouzan banked on the shinobi finding out about the device but without the aid of chakra, there was no way that the shinobi could come up with a quick enough counter for the device. Even if a few of royal blood made it out alive, the fact that an equally rigged device was hidden right under the shinobi in Kumogakure would prove to be a knockout punch to their entire regime. Set to go off at the same time, there would be no way for the shinobi to be in two places at once and when most lay asleep, Iano the Pope knew that with such a deafening blow, that the region would be his to rule and remake to his liking. Even as the rest of his pontiffs began to stir and begin their mornings he sat waiting, watching over Saint Isamu’s Square for signs of a messenger on the horizon. Wait as he did, no messenger came, and even as a loyal bishop entered his room, when inquired, no news was presented to him. Ready as he was to begin the day, he started to turn away from the window but not before he saw a figure that he hardly expected to see, Udo.

There, standing in the square looking right at him was a man that he had doomed to die, one of many in fact. Nobody was supposed to make it out of the Capital alive, absolutely nobody. The resulting carnage of the anti-chakra device going nuclear was supposed to make it all but impossible for even the most fortunate to make it out alive, much less make it back to the Tenouzan Capital. Udo was a wet boy, a tool, a weapon for Iano to use as he needed. Ultimately, Udo was expendable and yet there he stood, clad in his rags and very much alive. Signaling to his guard, Iano knew that if Udo was alive then the shinobi must have figured something out that he hadn't expected. Panicked for but a moment, Iano watched as Udo began to casually stroll towards the entrance of the super cathedral. Sighing, Iano stood up and motioned towards one of his bishops to come to the window and see what he saw. "It seems that even the cockroaches of the world can survive a nuclear holocaust. Alert the knights, every last one of them."

Spoiler: Two wrongs don't make a Right, but three Lefts do...

Continued from The ABC's of diplomacy . . .

Lord L's Bedchamber
The Capital Region
…0300 Hours, the day before tomorrow...

"Pssst, Umashi, wake up!" Like most men, Umashi wasn't exactly mad when a beautiful young woman crawling on all fours on his bed, woke him from his slumber in the wee hours of the morning. Like most decent men however, Umashi was more than alarmed when he, a married man, found said younger woman to be his mission assigned younger sister. Going through more than enough emotions in a matter of seconds to give even the best trained therapist psychoanalytical whiplash, Umashi pulled the covers tight against his nude body and muttered a still somewhat sleepy answer despite not being in the wrong. "I just really love the feel of this Sunan cotton on my skin, you know?" Stifling a yawn, he scratched at his stubble as he finally realized that Jae-Wol wasn't exactly smiling or looking to be in the mood for jokes. Noticing that she was fully clothed and the fact that the clock behind her read something akin to 3 o' clock in the morning, Umashi again focused on Jae-Wol and realized that even in the moonlight, that he could tell that her cheeks were tear stained.

Instead of focusing on the inappropriateness of the situation, he instead focused on the probably serious nature of the event. "What's wrong?" Even as he asked the question, he watched as a load seemed to be taken off of Jae-Wol's shoulders as she moved into a sitting position and sighed. "You're probably not going to initially believe me but I've just gotten back from watching you and everyone in the Capital die for the eleventh time in a row and ... I'm just about ready to give up." Waking fully up, Umashi deadpanned as he at first thought that he was dreaming before Jae-Wol seemingly running on automatic, reached over and pinched him. "No, you aren't dreaming, this is real." Shaking his head, Umashi took a deep breath and sighed. "You know, I really hate those plotlines in the movies. It's an excuse for lazy writing and tired tropes that need to die. Writers just use it as filler for otherwise dull plots that could be solved if people used logic instead of thinking on pure emotion alone." Much to his horror, Umashi watched as Jae-Wol matched him word for word as he spoke.

Waking fully up, Umashi leaned all the way up and banged his head back against the headboard. "Ok, this isn't the strangest thing that's happened to me. Did I ever tell you about the time that the fourth Hokage and I killed Jashin?" Looking at him, Lord R sigh and moved to light the candle on her side of the large bed. Her silence belied her annoyance. "Ok, maybe it wasn't Jashin-Jashin but it was definitely a zealot the likes of these Tenouzan wackos." Lighting the candle, the room was bathed in a somber light as she finally looked back at him. "I get that you use humor to lighten the mood and give yourself time to think of a plan in that mad head of yours but unlike you, I haven't lived long enough to see..." Trailing off, she shook her head as if shaking away a bad memory and Umashi sobered up quickly. "Okay, so, you said that you've done this whole thing eleven times making this the twelfth life..." Realizing that he was still naked, Umashi stopped talking and looked down before looking at how far away the robe at the end of the bed was from him.

Motioning with her hand for Umashi to go on, she shrugged. "Look, it stopped being weird for me around the fourth time but if you'd like, I can close my eyes. You aren't exactly the first naked male that I've seen in my life." "Still...it's weird for me so if you wouldn't mind..." Breathing in deep and shaking her head, Jae-Wol covered her eyes as Umashi jumped out of the bed and ran to get the robe and put it on. "Okay, fanfiction plotlines aside, how do we end this once and for all. I'm going to take a stab in the dark and guess that whatever keeps happening in this time loop that the Tenouza have something to do with all of this. What's the catalyst?" Crossing her arms, Jae-Wol leaned back against the headboard and closed her eyes as she began to recount all of the previous timelines that she'd experienced over the course of what was essentially a number of days for her. As she told Umashi of all of her failings and even his own, even the battle hardened Umashi softened at the way in which she explained the many ways that he and everyone else in the Capital died.

At one point he was forced to sit down at the foot of the bed in actual disbelief. "So we figure out where they're keeping the weapon and then what exactly? I'm kind of handicapped here." "I know where it's at and I'm not inhibited as you are." "Okay, there's that, but that still doesn't address the fact that every time we approach the room where they're holding it, we either die..." "I don't die though..." "Okay, I die and you have to start this rodeo all over again or we spend time fighting the knights and barely make it in the room before the whole thing goes into overdrive." Umashi paused as he scratched at his chin and noticed that an entire hour and a half had gone by. "And the whole catalyst for this is because somehow or another, my letter to the Raikage gets intercepted, which leads to her not making a proactive move against the Tenouzan but instead leads to a reactive move that causes the whole of Kumogakure and the Capital to be wiped off the face of the planet? Am I understanding that correctly?"

Shaking her head, Jae-Wol took a deep breath and stifled a yawn. "Yes, but no. In some timelines, the Raikage just gets antsy and makes a move herself without consulting you, sometimes she's too early which leaves Kumogakure open to invasion because she gets tunnel vision. Besides that, even if it was just a matter of her being here or there is pointless. We three times tried to alter her plans from afar but no matter who you send, they all get figured out by the spies and barely make it within a kilometer of Kumo before they're taken out!" Rubbing at his temple, Umashi shook his head and made a crude remark. "Why do all the problems in the world begin and end with an Uchiha doing or not doing something?"

Rolling her eyes, Jae-Wol got out of the bed and walked to the nearest window and peaked out of it before moving to stand in front of Umashi. "You know, you really ought to see a therapist for that whole thing you've got against Uchiha. It can't be healthy. Is it pent up feelings of inadequacy? Is it sexual?" "I do see a therapist, thank you very much and no...I think?" "A sketchy shop ran by an even more sketchy Uchiha and Yamanaka duo doesn't exactly constitute as a proper therapy session in the least." "They get the job done just fine, thank you very much." "Yeah...self deprecating behavior is one of the worst forms of self deprivation. You can't just escape all of your problems by losing yourself to a few rounds of genjutsu induced masochism." Holding his hands up, Umashi leaned back, nearly forgetting that he only had a robe on before straightening himself out. "Woah there, that's definitely not what we're doing there, believe me!" "Un huh, a likely story. In any event, we still have the issue of how to stop everyone from meeting their maker. Figured out any bright ideas yet?"

Shrugging his shoulders, Umashi got up and started to walk towards a nearby changing curtain in order to actual get modestly dressed. "I mean, what can I say? You said that we've literally made every logically sound decision and the outcome stays the same. About the only thing that I can think of at this point would be to just do something..." "Illogical..." Finishing Umashi's words, Jae-Wol put her hand to her forehead and muttered, "Wow, how did we not think of that before?" Coming from behind the curtain dressed more appropriately for being around people, Umashi held up a hand to calm the woman's excitement. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds nice and all but let's not get too excited, we still need to actually do something highly illogical enough to force the universe to, ahem...not autocorrect it away!"

Pondering for a moment, Jae-Wol held a finger to cheek and trumped it before making a matter of fact statement. "Well, if the biggest hiccup is you trying to help the Raikage, why don't we try to hurt the Raikage?" "Assassinating the Raikage? Now that's a discriminatory move if every I saw one!" Shaking her head no, the woman corrected her statement. "No, we're not going to actually assassinate the Raikage, we're just going to make it seem like you're trying to take out a credible threat to you assuming the actual mantle of Shogun and ruling the country in a capacity that leaves you the ruler of an entire country instead of just a simple shinobi village. The Tenouzan will eat it up, trust me." Holding a finger up to pause her, Umashi couldn't hide his smirk. "That's oddly specific and totally something that I'd think of but we still have the problem of a believable assassin. It's not like we just have one lying around." Like a lightbulb going off in both of their heads, they both realized exactly who they could use, at the same time. "The ragman!" "The ragman!"

Spoiler: The Raikage and an Assassin walk into a bar...

A speakeasy for the elite
Kumogakure
…The wee hours of the morning...

Jakku was nimble, Jakku was quick, Jakku knew when to keep his mouth closed when the Raikage showed up to his very legal establishment and ordered a very stiff drink. Late hours or early mornings, shinobi that lived a tough life often wanted a place to kick back and take the pressure off around company that understood their line of work and Jakku aimed to provide such a service. When he wasn't busting some Genin's chops over a missed hand seal, he ran the lavish basement bar that the Raikage now found herself in. Motioning to one of the staff on duty, Jakku was glad that he only employed shinobi of a like mind, because while normally the sight of the Raikage would have caused a stir, his patrons instead noted the appearance of a high ranking official and went back to their business of minding their business.

While Jakku took a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on how he treated his patrons, everybody clearly recognized the Raikage and for that, her drink was on the house. "The boss said that this one's on us, ma'am!" A happy customer was one that was well watered and with a sense of pride, Jakku went around the room making sure that the rest of his patrons were just as comfortable. It was perhaps around the Raikage's third or fourth drink that business picked up even more so. Perhaps the Raikage's personal guard had finally figured out where she'd snuck off to, or maybe shinobi on their off time wanted a story to tell about the time that they had drinks with their leader. Drinks were flowing, the chatter was buzzing and the jazz music carried a decent tune that all could appreciate. Jakku hated to break up a party but he was mere minutes from making the infamous "last call" before closing.

No sooner than he'd looked at his watch to make sure that the call was made exactly a quarter till the hour, than the well guarded, and supposedly well fortified door to the establishment was kicked in and with it, the bodies of both of the guards who guarded the place from the outside. Like a record scratch, the entire room fell silent as a figure dressed in what could only be described as rags sauntered in. Rushing from behind the bar, Jakku snapped his fingers and called for the guards stationed discreetly among the crowd, but they were far ahead of him as they rushed whoever the threat was. In the world of shinobi, one could never be too safe, and precious seconds spent studying an opponent could land a person in the hospital or worse, six feet under. Jakku had had unruly customers in the past and any sort of bar was going to have its fair share of drunks, but this particular situation was far different. This individual was an assassin on a mission.

Seemingly flickering in the light, the speed with which the figure dismantled not only the guards but the rest of the room. It was in that moment that Jakku remembered that the Raikage was in the room. Moving to jump in front of her, he put up his defenses and created a chakra barrier between him, the Raikage and assailant but it was to no avail. Wielding only a simple kunai, the assassin seemed to avoid even being touched as the attacks that should have landed, instead phased right through them. In fact, curiously enough, the assailants attacks didn't seem all that impactful either. Few shinobi were capable of a continued intangibility, much less avoiding a room full fully capable Chunnin, Jounin and ANBU but whether it was a rasengan or a chidori, the assassin seemingly avoided them all to the point that the very proud Kumo shinobi were quite literally doing more damage to the premise and themselves.

Making their way to them, Jakku braced himself for impact. "Raikage-sama, there's an emergency exit in the back office, hurry up and get out of here! We'll have this cleaned up in no ti-." Flickering out of sight momentarily, the assailant reappeared at their side, just outside of Jakku's immediate field of vision but not outside of the Raikage's. Creating her own barrier, the Raikage and Jakku under normal circumstances would have been a force to be reckoned with, but against a foe that they knew nothing about, even they were helpless to stop the ghost of an enemy as they began to phase through the barrier, ignoring it as one might a simple sheet hanging to dry. "Stop!" The words escaped Jakku's mouth as a command but much like the world often went, the assailant didn't stop and instead spun their kunai around into an offensive angle and began to swing it at the Raikage.

Dropping his barrier, Jakku held out his hand to attempt to defend the Raikage from the attack but just when the kunai would have made contact with his arm, instead, he heard a loud popping sound as his vision went white and then he heard a peculiar droning sound and then he woke up on the floor of the speakeasy with debris from the fight strewn all around him and the room practically empty and a clearly identifiable medical shinobi standing over him trying to wake him. "Sir, we're just doing some preliminary test to make sure that you're ok, but we're going to need get a statement from you about what happened here." "Okay...is the Raikage alright?" "The Raikage?"

At the mention of the leader of the village, Jakku's vision was coming back to him enough to see that a number of medical shinobi and ANBU stopped what they were doing and turned in his direction. "Yeah, she was here, uhhhh, getting a drink and then when that assassin burst in, everything went to heck. I did my best to defend her but then there was that pop and then everything went dark or, white. Yeah, it was white. Then you woke me up." Motioning to have a nearby medic-nin write something down, the med-nin helping him nodded in understand as the notepad was shown to him to which he nodded and then turned his attention back to Jakku. "While you were out, you were muttering something about rags. Was that what the person was wearing?" Jakku nodded and then finally noticed the splitting headache that he had. He winced in pain as the medic put a cooling hand to his temple and smiled at him. "Don't move too much. We'll get you patched up in no time. Thank you for your statement." Moving to get up, the medic called over a medic to watch over Jakku as the previous medic moved away from Jakku's view but right before he closed his eyes to continue resting, he heard them muttering something. "Yeah, that fits the description that Ziren mentioned in his debriefing from the Capital. We need to alert the Sennin that the Raikage is missing!"

Somewhere
???
…0700 Hours, the day after yesterday...

Waking up or rather, coming to, the Raikage would immediately notice that she wasn't in the same bar that she'd started out in, that and the fact that she wasn't alone. Around her, stirred some of the same individuals that she'd just been having drinks with after an especially pressing day. There still hadn't been word from the Capital which could mean a number of things but her War Council was expecting her to give the word first thing in the morning about what to do about the Tenouzan forces. From the intel that she'd been able to gather from the surprisingly helpful Hoshigakure forces, they were onboard with helping Kumogakure in any way that they could from afar, so long as the Capital sent them reinforcements to help their own homefront against the Tenouzan. Kitsune had a defining choice to make, one that would affect more than just herself. Would she press on and take the fight to Tenouza or seek to consolidate her allies politically by attempting to fight the Tenouzan spies in the political realm. Every choice had a consequence but some consequences would affect generations long after she had had her time in the sun. All of those decisions however, would have to wait until after the Raikage figured out just exactly where she was.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OOC: I use color for speech to clearly identify who's talking but if the colors that I choose make it hard to read the speech then please let me know. I've changed Jae-Wol's aka Lord R's speech to be a hopefully more agreeable variation of purple.

Kitsune + Some from Jakku's Speakeasy = You wake up in a strange place. Kitsune will provide the details of the area.
Those left behind at Jakku's Speakeasy + Kumogakure = You find out that the Raikage disappeared at a well known secret bar for shinobi. The only clue is that the assailant involved in the incident was just recently identified as captured at the Capital.

 

[Toraono Michino]

Broken beer bottles and shattered low-ball glass crunched beneath the combat boots of an average sized woman as she surveyed the carnage. She wore a one piece bodysuit, carpenter pants, a half-crop military style jacket, and a fierce glare at the carnage she had finally been allowed to see. Bodies were marked off, witnesses detained, and all that was left of the room was the silent movements of ANBU as they gathered what little evidence there was. Not to say there wasn’t a lot of evidence to unravel, just that so little of it pertained to the core issue at hand: the Raikage was missing. Jakku had long been detained and was undergoing questioning by the same Branch that was collecting bits of glass that “looked important” or blood samples of the small handful of witnesses that where here last night; rather or not they saw anything. So there wasn’t going to be any talking to him for awhile and good luck getting that report.

“Goddamn vampires…” the cyborg muttered to herself as the masked bastards moved around the room without a sound. They had given her hell just getting down into the bar to start her own investigations, and were it not for her war-time appointment as the Kumogakure Head General, she highly doubt the obedient dogs would have let her go any further. Rei’s new title of Sennin only carried so much weight with the ANBU, a lesson she was learning the hard way. It had only been a few days in this position and it was clear that only Main and Medical recognized the weight she had been granted. The Black Ops, clearly as she felt them sizing her up even now, did their own thing. The scientist had grown up in Kumo hearing how terrifyingly independent their undercover Branch was, but it had never stuck with her how this was so. Such a strength of independence meant an entire wing of the military could easily up and move out; given to how much strength ANBU generally carried. Surely the Raikage of any age would have rooted out this sort of thinking ages ago, and Rei had always thought that such talk of them was hearsay to counter the dark work these agents of death doled out. That was, at least, until she met the current Sennin that kept ANBU reigned in. Then it all made sense.

Kagami Miro was not the woman to mess with. Their brief introduction to each other during the all hands meeting sparked a small tension, but of course the newly appointed Sennin didn’t think much about it. It was probably that small pride that most people in their position held at their gut. That distaste for change and the introduction to a new way of things. Indubitably, she had a lot of plans to change the Main Branch and make it more functional for the village than keep on to all of its age-old traditions; perhaps that had been felt. Then, the explosion happened.
Reports were slow, but when they came, they were heavy. A black sparrow carried the message from the capital claiming the news that Rei had feared: the Shogun was dead. However, in his stead, a replacement was already being swung in, but that was were the message was fuzzy. The way the kanji had been written from there on was in code, and it took the breakers another twenty minutes to comb out the last bit of the letter that had only read: “I’ll tell you when I get home.” Shortly after that, the rolling hills of the North exploded into a fireball of such magnificent proportions that Rei could do little more than stare in awe. The destruction it had to of wrecked would be one for the books, and the amount of research the scientist could glean off of anyone that was there would be astronomical; for her, at least. Yet as an hour came and past after the initial boom there was no sound or warning that anyone had survived the ball of fiery death; until there was.

ANBU was suddenly back in force. Most people rarely recognized when they were actually out doing stuff in the village, but Rei had been around and knew enough to catch the signs. They were moving with a purpose, someone was commanding them to act, which meant that Miro had not only survived the explosion, but has also returned to Kumogakure in silence with an undisclosed amount of surviving forces. There were no reports from medical so either they all survived, or those who didn’t had anything left that could be brought home. Rei had tried from that moment forward to get a full report on the situation North but all she was given was: “They had succeeded in stopping the weapon.” Not, they got the weapon. Not, we’re hiding the weapon. Not, the knights were easily destroyed by Genjutsu. Nothing, except that ANBU had succeeded in what Kitsune had ordered them to do.
That’s when it all clicked for the Main Branch Sennin. How such a dangerous organization like Kumogakure’s ANBU was still allowed to exist. Miro controlled them, and she remained loyal to Kitsune. So long as the head continued to take orders the rest of the dogs fell in line, but the moment she decided to go against everything, Rei wondered how quickly everything would fall apart, or, if there was already a caveat for that too. As the cyborg moved lightly through the room she could tell that they did not enjoy her company either, and that the title given by the very woman that was missing was probably all that was keeping them from trying to knock her out and remove her presence.

Rei knelt down near the table where Kitsune had been sitting. Forming a single seal to activate chakra to activate another seal, the woman’s eyeball suddenly dried out, cracked in half to reveal its true metallic form, and opened up to allow a green ray to emit and douse the area in her chakra momentarily before reabsorbing it back into her skull. Like being hit by ecstasy, Rei felt her back spasm and arch her body forward as she gasped suddenly at all the information suddenly attacking her nervous system. Footprints, lingering traces of chakra from everyone around the table that had used them, the taste of the various alcohols, the sweat and smell of every man, woman, and other that had been present within a thirty foot radius collected itself into a neat little file. Clacking her prosthetic hands together once more she saved the information to be reviewed in a more convenient location, relieving the adrenaline of information rush. However, a bit of lingering information graced her subconscious for a moment, and it choked a quick sob for in the lingering information she felt a twinge of sadness that had belonged to the Raikage.

Kitsune had actually went out of her way to invite the cyborg out for a drink shortly after she returned from the Capital mission. Ninety percent of the time, she would have quickly taken up the Raikage’s offer. The tea she made was exquisite, even for the cyborg’s dulled taste-buds, but she had declined because she was still trying to wring out information out of ANBU and get a status report started for the general populace of their village once Kitsune was ready to debrief. Something tugged inside of Rei that night, telling her she should go with her friend, and like a fool she had ignored it for the duties of her post. There wasn’t a lot of people the scientist genuinely liked, and about three she called a “friend”. After losing so many of them during her tenure as a Jounin, she only kept close to the powerful and the people she felt her heart still move for; Kitsune was the rare exception of being both. The woman was like the older sibling she had wished for, the same person who had picked Rei up at her worst and literally fixed her.

With the info stashed away safely in her brain, the monster that science had wrought stood up without the cliche hydraulic sound effects and calmly walked her way past the masked parasites that were still picking up insignificant pieces of glass to ponder over. She was going to review the information burned into her memory and then use every last resource at her disposal to find and rescue the Raikage, even at the cost of her very own life if necessary; Rei owed Kitsune at least that much.

 

[Kagami Miro]

The low murmur of voices droned over the command center within the Sileo. Anbu captains stood around the rectangular table with a large map being the centerpiece. Littered across the map were X’s and O’s of encounters with the Tenouza at the beginning of the war. A noticeable mark was made a few inches, which converted into many miles, south of the village where the weapon had been destroyed. Red hues glanced over the map while pale ears took in information that was being reported by her subordinates.

The last few days were a nightmare. The weapon was destroyed beyond repair and the blast inflicted casualties amongst the few within its surroundings. And according to the reports the efforts of the Tenouza proved to be even more meticulous than the village had anticipated. The ANBU protected the flanks of the village from the droves of Tenouza, all kitted with special armor that sapped chakra to the point of combustion. The informed were quickly educated when their abilities merely deflected off their armor. Fortunately those specializing in Taijutsu proved to be worthy adversaries. Leading those squadrons to victory, it was a bright day for her kin.

To Mirō’s knowledge the Shogun Kitsune held so highly had been murdered. A manilla folder lay open on the table. Pictures of the scene were gruesome, scattered across the dossier. Adjacent to those was a picture of a rat-like figure of a man dressed in tattered rags. The world's ugliest mugshot could be awarded to this freak but Mirō had to give him some praise. To infiltrate into the Shogun’s village unnoticed and assassinate him… Hell… she’d recruit him just for the cleanliness of the kill. A sigh escaped her lips, her moments of thought interrupted by the sound of an alarm, illuminating the command centered in a strobe of red light.

​

A few hours later….

Red optics gazed around the lavish room adorned with fancy light fixtures and rugs that cost more than some of the poor villages in the outer village zones. The whole place supposedly was meant to be a hide-away for the elite of the elite shinobi. It had been so exclusive that even leaders of the village's respective branches needed to be guided to the place.

Like a ghost Mirō entered the room where the Raikage had vanished. Her ANBU had already recovered and noted important details from the scene of the crime. Shattered glass, pieces of cloth, fingerprints, the works. What they hadn’t uncovered was any traces of chakra. Her ANBU blessed with special eyes and chakra reading techniques came up empty. That pattern had been a common occurrence since the Tenouza engaged in war with Kumogakure. As the ANBU worked diligently the Raikage’s newly appointed maid rose up from her kneeling stance. At long last, Main Branch finally played their part to benefit the community other than sitting on their ass whilst ANBU completed the serious work.

The ANBU Sennin moved gracefully towards the bar. The chairs were in disarray and glass shards littered the counter and floor. The red stains of blood were a good addition to the scene that took place and from what the bartender had reported to the medical staff it could primarily have been his own blood. Mirō found herself staring at the seat where the Raikage had sat with her arms folded underneath her chest. As powerful as Kitsune had claimed to be, even with her own eternal mangekyou sharingan, she still fell prey to abduction. “Heh.” Mirō chuckled. Perhaps Junko was right about her combat prowess. Mirōs' long black tresses shook side to side in disbelief of her train of thought. From the corner of her eye Mirō spotted the Main Branch Sennin headed toward the door. Her head turned slightly towards Rei on her left, “Leaving so soon?” Mirō called out to her. “In that much of a hurry you have to have a goal in mind. Find something?” Her interests were piqued by Rei’s movements before she stood up. One of her captains bent over to whisper what the Sennin did before her arrival. “Freaky. That’s something out of a monster story.” A wicked smile emerged on her pink lips. “Since you’re adamant on finding the Raikage, shall we leave you to it?” Her head fully turned to feast her entire gaze on Rei.

The ANBU followed the village leader’s command, and with no leader it was up to the Sennin to make the calls. The ninja within the ANBU have seen many things. An array of emotions and history lie within their minds from their time served. Veterans were far and few in their line of work, those who were held respect in Mirō’s heart. Many have witnessed the Raikage’s progress and held their tongues on their opinions. Trailing in tow with the ideals of those of an old medical sennin. Mirō had taken notice of their displeasure, however she was now a woman who had been guided by the gracious hand of the Raikage. For as loyal as Mirō was, her ideals focused on protecting the village as a whole. The Raikage was the face and voice for the media while the ANBU operated independently, unless the Raikage reached out. With more encounters of old members of the ANBU including the previous Sennin, Mirō’s worldview had shifted slightly.

[Topic Entered]
[WC:890]

 

[Shinrya Kitsune]

Normally Kitsune would be in her own nightclub, drinking booze she already paid for, but tonight was different. She needed some time more or less alone to gather her thoughts in regards to the current debacle facing not just Kumogakure, but the entire country. Though it would appear that fate had other things in store for her as a short while after her second drink, the Ragman decided to crash the party and try to take her out. Jakku, the proprietor of the speakeasy, jumped in to defend her, but also to no avail, resulting in him getting knocked out cold, and well, Kitsune too while we were at it.

When Kitsune came to, she tried to get her bearings but a sudden dizzy spell came over her and she shook her head to try and make it go away. What in the seven unholy hells happened... she thought to herself as she blinked a few times to focus her vision and look around the room. It appeared as if she was in an abandoned bar of some sort, along with a handful of the other patrons from the speakeasy she had been in earlier. So far there was no sign of the Ragman, but who knows what happened during the time they were knocked out.

She got to her feet and began taking stock of the situation, helping others up and checking to see if they were alright. If they weren’t then, as the mednin Kitsune was, she’d give them a healing hand to try and get them back to “working” condition. Once that was taken care of, she’d try to figure out where the heck they were, and ideally without triggering any kind of trap or alarm. Hopefully they weren’t too far from the village so they could get back home and on with their lives.

 

[Horigome Sukejuro]

Skulking outside the periphery of the investigation site he had heard…rumors. Though he hadn’t really known the Raikage too well, and besides living in the village his whole life without…many incidents, the lone ninja skulked, and worried for the absent Raikage, Kitsune, who represented the core of the Village. Struggling with feelings of inadequacy and even questioning his own existence, it was hard for him to ignore such an event of such precedence. He could see them, he could feel them, opportunists getting fat on the scraps of glory like overly ripe pidgeons picking at the bones of whatever they could. Lurching forth like a looming specter, a graven condor trying to mesh with the ordinary sorts despite his lofty stature he tried to disguise as a mishapen hunched back.

What to do? That was the question wasn’t it, he had heard accounts spread about the assailant, of the kunai that they used, which didn’t sound very Tenouzan, now did it? If he could only get close to those implements, the assailant probably didn’t use less than two if what he’d heard was to be trusted, but they were the most solid lead he could think of if the metallurgical qualities could be observed and traced, he was certain could be used as a lead if the ANBU didn’t decide to hoard them to themselves and not act upon it for whatever selfish reasons they could muster. What was he to do?

What do do?

Echoing, these words did, endlessly through the great endless chasm of his mind through the stream of a multitude of conscious and unconscious ideas. Standing at the precipice of the site where it had all happened, he contemplated what had to be done, would he need to stage some self-sacrifice to achieve what needed to be done? Break the thhreshold? Take what he needed? Escape? Analyze what needed to be observed and pass on that information to Rei in his dying breath? Duty was all he had as he grinned at the thrill of such a self-destructive and impulsive act, even if it was likely to fail which was his only reservation for staying his hand. Chakra was a lot harder to track, but the metal, that was one of his strongest fields of study and one he felt needed to be pursued despite ANB’'s perpetual stonewalling, so when he saw his boss, he wondered if perhaps he might be able to propose something of use though it really went against his policy of being deceptive of his mental capacities.

However, he simply couldn’t play stupid if it meant the difference between finding the Raikage, alive and well, and finding her cold and long dead. Besides…he wanted to end the would be assailant, but not before vigorously extricating any information that would assist in counterattacking the likely source behind this attack and spilling even more blood. Creeping past, he found his way over to Ryuu Rei which…hrm, wasn’t what he expected. To be fair he rarely formed expectations in advance but she definitely struck him as more interesting than he had heard. Never formally meeting, which wasn’t very surprising considering his aversion to people due to his disappointment and trauma and phobias, but he learned from a young age that sometimes you needed to swallow all of it to avoid starving or worse.

“Ryuu Rei? I don’t really know how to do introductions…but I’m Horigome Sukejuro, yes? Do we have any evidence or what?” He improperly approached her, standing upright a bit more, feeling it wouldn’t be proper to try deceiving his boss. Opting to not fully stand erect as to not draw too much attention, still stood well over 7’. He offered his hand, each digit was sheathed in overlapping plates of steel but curiously each digit had over 10” long curves steel blade extending from a gauntlet, which with a formulaic gesture of his wrist and fingers, would have each blade sink back into the cumbersome gauntlet as locks were disengaged and disengaged, and inertial inner mechanisms smoothly sliding back the blades with industrial precision.

“Eheh, do we have any metal samples? Shavings? I have…facilities in Cronopolis which we might be able to discern origin or lack thereoff if that’s the case?” He offered, though it felt rather strange, was this really going to be the circumstances that he would invite a woman to his home? Obviously the intention was purely professional but still somewhere in his hectic brain was the strange idea of the strange circumstances. He kept the ANBU in his periphery as he easily wanted to criticize them but really this was probably the most ambitious move in the young adult’s life. It was difficult for him to fathom how Miro, the young student he had met once was now the Sennin of ANBU? Such a strange reality…but he had to consider if maybe he was more capable than he ever considered or if he was making a fool of himself?

Well that wasn’t exactly any different from any encounter, but it was a unused to feeling of vulnerability in the cyborg’s presence. His voice muffled with the occasional hiss beneath the laboring of an intricate dust filtration device with two hoses hanging from beneath the intricate bleached bone white of his mask. “If we can get enough steel, we can test the metal compared to the stuff our own ninja use, or other villages maybe, and figure out the metallurgical profile and origin of the weapon. Hardness, torsion, yield, etc... that sort of stuff. Then we can find the assassin and get more information, yes?”

[WC 930][Topic Entered]

 

[Toraono Michino]

“I suggest we both work on the task at hand, Miro,” the cyborg replied without emotion, “Our leader is missing from her post and unless you want me running the village for long I suggest you stir up your best detectives. Oh, and do send over all of the physical evidence to my Branch when your done with it, granted, your kind haven’t contaminated it too far.” The machine didn’t look at the fellow Sennin and ascended the staircase while ignoring the youth otherwise. The emotions of her friend were still fresh in Rei’s head, and she had work to do.

Rei wasn’t out of the building for long before one of her own came skulking up to greet her. Upon extending himself up to his full size and extending a bladed hand, that retracted the weapons for a greeting, the cyborg was reminded of why she enjoyed the Main Branch so much; diversity. Unlike the psychopaths that all followed orders to the letter in ANBU, her branch were made up of a collective of different minds, personalities, and appearances. They all had a uniqueness to them that allowed them to take on the diverse missions the Main took on. Everything from getting a cat out of a tree to eradicating the monsters that roamed the mountain forests, there was nothing Main couldn’t do. According to records she had inherited, they even had a group of assassination specialists…which she highly considered dissolving since the Black Ops were literally trained to do that one task specifically. If ANBU needed Main’s help in assassinating someone, then they were slacking heavy in her own opinion.

The giant that approached her gave a name and she quickly drew up the metaphorical file in her brain on the man. It didn’t say a lot. He was a strange one from what little they had. Left at the gate as a child with a mysterious past, he showed an attachment to the village and patriotism that some would call questionable. Most notably, to Rei, was his mercy over an opponent. Many people preferred a quick kill to end a situation and call it that, but in their line of work it often proved best to drag an opponent down when they could for questioning; knowledge was power, after all. There were a few other tid-bits in his file that marked him as a maverick, such as his conversations with plants, but they did little to interest her. She focused on his skills, even if she had to crane her neck up despite being 6’3’’ herself, than his strange traits.

The cyborg took the man’s hand with a powerful grasp. Her mechanical hand gripping and causing the leather of his glove to crinkle in distress before releasing it,
“Ryuu Rei, it’s good to meet a physical body from Main as I am afraid I only know most of you from files. It’s been a hectic week. As for evidence I collected nothing physical, sadly. Whatever physical bits inside of the bar that could be used to trace a path is being held hostage by the Black Ops Branch and it may be some time before we’re allowed to see it. I do, however, have a scan of…many things. Emotions, compounds, chakra signatures, and yes even a few metal shavings. I can break them down for you into a formula if you’re willing to go the lengths to recreate the information. Perhaps we can discover something from that?”

It was a long shot and a bit redundant when she had demanded the collective evidence be sent to her second hand, but she wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity; no doubt it’d go faster than waiting on Miro. The machine also had a few in mind to help trace the chakra signatures but, even if they were able to get a taste of whatever creature kidnapped their leader there was no guarantee that they could still sniff them out. She also needed to cross reference different style of chakras and pin them up on a board to see which of the unique signatures matched their current data. Rei felt like Kitsune knew something big and never got to tell them, and it was up to Rei to figure out what message she needed to speak in person remained. A Mystery was a-foot, and though the situation was desperate, the mechanical lady did love a good puzzle.
“I’ll defer to your location for metal making. My lab is more equipped for chemical and chakra solutions.”

 

[Seijin]

"Don't touch that!" Smacking Umashi's hand away, Jae-Wol and the ever curious Umashi made their way down a corridor leading to where the ragman was being held. As they walked in relative darkness and silence, all around them, semi-transparent versions of people from within the Capitol walked around them as if they weren't there. "Perhaps it's commonplace to you, but to me, they're the most peculiar things that I've ever seen. What would be the harm in just, jumping through one?" Taking care to avoid a spectral being that she was about to run into, Jae-Wol sighed and shook her head. "I don't know, maybe you screw around and catch a glimpse of what could have been or you mess around and create a divergent timeline which ultimately leads to the collapse of the multiverse. I don't know, pick your poison!" Utterly confounded, Umashi's face twisted up. "What's a...multiverse?"

Throwing her arms up, Jae-Wol half laughed, half sighed loudly. "What are they teaching you people in those shinobi villages?" Stopping and looking around, she made sure that they were still indeed alone and not being followed and then she continued. "So, you know how you pull turtles from a different realm by summoning them?" Umashi nodded. "Yeah?" "Ok, so realms are just pocket realities, basically, smaller dimensions, errr, pocket dimensions. They have rules like a dimension but they usually aren't as expansive. Hence why you don't hear your summoning contracts talk about geo-politics all the time. Some of them just live in a nigh finite forest that has an invisible wall stopping them from walking off the edge of their quote unquote, planet. A dimension is a much bigger realm in that it has, dimensions in the scientific sense, aka, we live in a three-dimensional dimension. Don't get me started on five dimensional imps though, they're annoying." Blinking, Umashi just simply nodded his head and allowed her to continue.

"So, we have big dimensions, right? Yes. Ok, so within a given dimension, you can have one universe, or multiple universes. We're talking purely theoretical stuff here, but in theory, we live in a singular universe within a dimension but it is possible, theoretically at least, that for every decision that has ever, is ever and will ever be made, that there are different universes to account for that. Perhaps in one universe you decided to become the Raikage when Ayumu disappeared and then annexed Bear, Marsh and Fire like a megalomaniacal despot." Raising a hand, Umashi shook his head. "Hold up, I could never...!" "But you could. Maybe in some other reality you managed to sacrifice enough Uchiha and Senju children to create a Rinnegan, I don't know, that's kinda the whole point of the mystery of a multiverse. Stuff happens. That said, time is all over the place. It doesn't run the same in all dimensions, pocket or otherwise, or universes. You basically just lick your finger and stick it out into the void to see if it withers or not." Holding her hands up, Jae-Wol demonstrated the motion by indeed licking the tip of her index finger and sticking it out into the darkness before drawing it back to her, thankfully, unscathed.

Completely confused, Umashi shrugged his shoulders and motioned with the lamplight for them to continue walking. "So basically, I shouldn't interfere with whatever these dimensional aberrations are because..." "Time... and I like to call them apparitions myself but I guess in this case that you could use either term interchangeably. Either way, those only appear when I or somebody like me is screwing with time enough for somebody to do something that they normally wouldn't have done." "Because by jumping into one of them, I could cause the past version of a maid to get a fright and she drop some expensive pillows and get fired, leading to me not getting my breakfast on time, which could cause me to be cranky enough to want to invade another shinobi state?" Having started to walk, Jae-Wol tilted her head from side to side slowly while making the same motion with her hand. "Perhaps. As high level as it sounds, it's not a science, it's an art. People like me, we usually only zip from one point in time to another, usually a matter of seconds, maybe even a few minutes. I see these time apparitions all the time but they normally just fade away within a few seconds, maybe a minute and they're always localized. We've been seeing them now for far too long and in too many places. Something is really seriously wrong."

As they began to near their destination, Umashi slowed down just outside of the door to the prisoners room. "Ok, but what's the harm in allowing them to just walk around, surely they'll just do that ghost thing right on through, right?" "Normally, yes, but for one, the fact that you can see them as somebody who hasn't traveled through time to get here means that others probably can as well, and also, look." Pointing at a nearby time apparition, Jae-Wol drew Umashi's attention to an average looking samurai guard. "We actually passed by the same guard before we stepped down into the lower levels." Unable to follow her alarm, Umashi had a simple response. "And?" "And if he was both up there and down here, then that means that there's multiple forces at work that are throwing time out of sync from multiple points in time." "I don't get it, shouldn't they just pass through each other? What's the harm?" Slapping her forehead, Jae-Wol stared at Umashi as if she was staring at a child. "They really should teach...nevermind. The issue is that if those two run into each other, nevermind the Tenouzan, reality is going to do really funky things because they can't both exist in the same space at the same time.

It's a scientific fact, energy can't be created or destroyed. When one being in our current timeline crosses paths with a time apparition, then ok, easy, the mass and energy bits do their thing, but what happens when it's a samurai from our timeline, crossing paths with a time apparition of his future and one of his past, or what about two different past. Whether it's the present, the past or the future, we all have the same chakra signature no matter where we are in time or space and chakra is..." "Energy..." "Bingo!" "Ok, so I shouldn't attempt to hack a time apparition because I could inadvertently cause some random kid somewhere to spontaneously combust." Looking at Jae-Wol in the eyes, she could tell that despite his joking tone, that Umashi was serious. Cocking her head to the side in thought, she started to object via a raised finger but stopped just short and straightened her head with a thoughtful look on her face. "Actually, shockingly you aren't wrong." Smirking, Umashi nodded at the door that they were standing just outside of. "Alright then, since I've been thoroughly educated today, how about we go use some of that education to try and convince an assassin to assassinate a Raikage, shall we?" "For science?" "For science!"

OOC: Some post will be made by my personal account so that I can actually train in all of this. @_@

 

[Cloud Seer]

Spoiler: Two wrongs don't make a Right, but three Lefts do...

The Shogun's Dungeon
The Capital Region
…0400 Hours, the day before tomorrow...

"Screw off!" The man clothed in rags did his best to act tough despite the fact that the two figures before him held all the cards. How he'd gotten here, was simply a fact of trusting the wrong people to hold up their end of the bargain. In a word, he was between a rock and a hard place. Having peculiarly knocked out the guards when they entered the lavish, but still equally daunting dungeon cell, Udo could only surmise that they'd managed to figure out just who the Tenouzan were, another point that he'd have to bring up to the Pope, least they ever meet again. For a fact, the Tenouzan were sloppy in their delivery and by being such, they'd allowed room for the shinobi and samurai to get the upper hand. "Look man, they kind of left you to dry. They're not bailing you out, they're not coming to fight for your freedom. They used you as they've used countless others in the past and will continue to do so in the future if left unchecked." As the woman spoke, she struck a chord in Udo that he couldn't help but pay attention to.

It was true, the Pope and others had abandoned him, but equally so, that was something that he'd always knew that they would. He was a weapon, a tool, an arrow in their quiver and once he was used for the job, there wasn't much use for him unless there was another job. Still wanting to remain obstinate, Udo let the two drone on about how he'd be helping in an effort bigger than himself and all of the other excuses that captors often used to turn their prey. He'd often used the same tactics himself so when they continued to try and get him to work with them, he scoffed loudly and turned his face away from them, away from the light. At first, they remained silent, and in their silence, he hoped that they would eventually just leave him to his thoughts. He didn't belong in their world and they certainly didn't belong in his. He'd take his chances with the odds of death. "Unlike the movies, talking to the bad guy to get them to change their mind doesn't work in real life. Bugger off, why don't you."

Defeated for the moment, Udo sighed and started to close his eyes, but just as slowly as his eyelids began to move downward, he caught sight of a spectral being that caused his eyes to open aghast. Trained to not show too much emotion, he couldn't help but to quickly discern the features enough of the being to recognize that it was very much a mirror image of him, only free from chains and walking around, talking to someone that he couldn't see. As his eyes tracked the movement of the specter, he watched as it walked around the room before finally coming to stop right between Udo and the door, right where the samurai and the shogun's brats stood. When their eyes locked on the fact that his head was tracing the movements of something else, it was the man who spoke up. "You see them too?" Walking closer to Udo, the smile on the mans face with the flickering of the candle was one sick with glee.

"What are you thinking?" The woman's question was definitely to the man and not Udo but as the man seemingly ignored her and approached Udo, Udo attempted to stand and then he remembered the heavy chains that were meant to keep him in a seated position. With a flick of his wrist, the man dismissed the chains holding Udo down and they made a loud sound as they collapsed to the floor. "Wait, what are you doing, he didn't agree to anything yet! Uma-, Lord L!" Not quite sure if this was a good cop versus bad cop scenario, Udo attempted braced himself for an attack and attempted to mold chakra but found that for whatever reason, his ability was oddly slow to start. It was in that moment of shock for him that the man, Lord L, rushed close to him and shoved him into the spectral clone of himself and then things when white as he and the time apparition as Lord R called them, disappeared from view.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Why did you do that? What were you thinking?" Throwing her hands up, Jae-Wol yelled her frustrations as she kicked one of the downed Tenouzan aligned knights that was lying on the ground knocked out. "What part about not messing with time and space did you not understand?" Turning around and shrugging innocently, Umashi smugly replied. "Isn't the scientific method essentially just asking questions and then testing a hypothesis for an answer? I just skipped the scientific gobbledygook that you've been spouting off." Beginning to pace, Jae-Wol rubbed her temples in a vexed manner. "You really are content to just throw caution to the wind for the sake of...what exactly?" "Science! Didn't you say that you'd tried everything the right way every time and it didn't turn out like you wanted?" Stopping and standing silently, Jae-Wol sighed audibly.

"There's a certain level of finesse that you need when messing with time and space. You shinobi think that you can just brute force everything to your will. Now I have to go find this man and pull him back before he steps on the wrong butterfly!" Smirking, Umashi sat the candle holder down and used a measure of natural energy to expand the light source. "That's half the problem milady, I think that you misunderstand the fact that I'm a pirate not a shinobi." "You're unbelievable." "Perhaps, but it's been like a whole minute since he disappeared. Do you need to go try and grab him or something?" Slapping her forehead in frustration, Jae-Wol nodded and muttered, "I'll be back." before she blinked out of view. While she was gone, Umashi looked around and began to clean up the room a bit. Notibly, he moved the downed guards from blocking the door and sat them upright against a nearby bookshelf.

The room wasn't homey but it was certainly better than any prison that he'd ever been in. While he didn't agree with the Tenouzan guards ideals, he certainly respected life enough to make sure that in their knocked out state that they wouldn't choke on their vomit. As he stood up from moving them, Jae-Wol appeared again but in a panic. Alarm written all over her face, she was breathing heavy as if she'd just ran a great distance. "I had him, he was right there and those, darn...rags!" Speaking through hurried breaths, Umashi saw that doubled over as she was, that a strip of cloth was clutched tightly in her hand. "So you saw him? Where did he go? How could he have gotten away from you?" Shaking her head, Jae-Wol finally stood and stretched out her hand, showing the piece of the ragman's clothing. "There's some sort of repelling force in them. When I reached out to grab him, it was like whatever seal was placed on him was amplified and he was able to push me away before I could pull him back here."

Not fully understanding exactly what she was implying, Umashi shook his head. "Explain it to me like I'm five. How could he stop you from pulling him back here. He's not like you is he?" Shaking her head, Jae-Wol put a hand on her hips. "No, but wherever he is...was, his repelling force was super charged and as strong as actual gravity itself. It caused a gravitational time dilation." Deadpanning, Umashi repeated his request. "Like I'm five, remember?" Breathing in deep, Jae-Wol explained herself in a more simple way. "A bowling ball when dropped on a bed, makes a dent and if there's a glass of wine on the other end of the bed, it wobbles and tips over, spilling its contents." "Ok, so despite you being able to move through time, he was heavy enough to move even you?" Pausing to think of a better way to explain it, Jae-Wol gave up.

"Something like that. The bottom line is that I don't know where or when he is anymore." Finally matching her alarm, Umashi panicked. "Ok, let's start with where was he and maybe that will tell us where he could have gone." Shrugging her shoulders, Jae-Wol couldn't provide much help. "Oddly enough, he was at a bar. I didn't have time to exactly look at a map though." Shocked by the answer, Umashi cocked his head to the side in thought. "Dude gets to travel through time and he ends up at a bar? That's odd." "You're telling me. It looked like he was about to shank some redhead too. Maybe I saved his ex-girlfriend or something." "Wait, the Raikage has red hair." "Hold up! I never saw a full face." The two however were interrupted by a strong knocking at the door followed by a gruff voice. "Guard change!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Landing, or rather, appearing, Udo found himself standing in a hallway of sorts with a door behind him and a door in front of him with what he quickly recognized to be two shinobi sporting Kumo headbands. A trained assassin, Udo wasted zero time in figuring out that wherever he was and however he got to be where he was, that not being armed wasn't going to help him get out of the situation alive. Just as shocked as he was, the two shinobi attempted to react to the sudden presence of Udo but like he'd practiced countless times, he was able to quickly get the mastery of them, and knocking them both out with ease. Kicking in the door, he hoped that it would lead to the outside but instead he found that he'd stumbled upon a posh looking establishment and a room full of eyes all trained on him. Reach down to pick up a kunai that one of the first two guards attempted to use against him, he noticed that at first his hand seemed to phase right through it but when he did a double take, he found that it was secure in his grasp.

Quickly righting himself, he motioned towards the first shinobi at attention and leaped into action. As the shinobi ran at him in a dogpiling way, try as he might, Udo found that all of the techniques that he would normally use to make light work of his opponents didn't seem to work. For whatever reason by just the barest of inches a slash here or a jab there was moved every so slightly to one side or the other or it didn't even connect at all. Like his worst nightmare it was as if he was fighting while underwater and his movements though swift, seemed just as uncontrollable as if he was fighting against an unseen tide. As he leaped from foe to foe, his only comfort was that they seemed to have an equally hard time actually making any sort of impactful hits on him. It was when he heard frantic yelling coming from the direction of the bar itself that he locked eyes with the wench that he knew to be the Raikage.

She wasn't his actual target from before, but if the shogun's children were going to try to turn him, he might as well throw a monkey wrench into their plans by cutting off the head of the shinobi leadership. Beginning to rush towards her position, it was this act that gave a second wind to the shinobi in the room but try as they might, they were unable to stop him, in no time there was only the bartender that stood between Udo and historical infamy. Mere seconds, mere footsteps and he would become the sort of terror in the night that children would hide from. Swinging the kunai in his hand around to get a better grip, swing with all of his might determined not to miss, and he didn't. It was however in that instant that his blade touched the fibers of the Raikage's garments that outstretched arms appeared through what could only be described as a tear in reality and grabbed hold of Udo.

Out of the corner of his eye, he recognized them as the arms of the woman whom he had been standing before just mere moments ago. As the world slowed to a crawl and froze, all that seemed to move were those arms and Udo's eyes tracking them. They were coming to get him, coming to drag him back to that prison, and he wanted nothing to do with their plans. In fact, he refused, and like the first swing of a pendulum, he swung back with a matching force. Welling up from deep within himself, he felt a renewed vigor like he hadn't before, and like a spark that couldn't be contained, every fiber of his being rejected the meddling witch's demands on him. When she pulled him, he pulled back, and in that space of time, he heard a pop and then he was gone, as was she, and unbeknownst to both of them, as was the Raikage.

Spoiler: The Raikage and an Assassin walk into a bar...

A speakeasy for the elite
Kumogakure
…The early hours of the morning...

Feeling the tension, other shinobi in the room stared in amazement at the Sennin. Despite all working together, certain age old grudges between the various shinobi departments wasn't one that would die so young. As taut as the air was however, a loud clanking of metal hitting the floor behind Sukejuro and Rei drew not only their attention but the attention of the nearby ANBU Sennin, Miro as well. Jumping into high alert, nearly everyone who heard the sound over the sound of voices might have jumped in anticipation of another attack but it was the eyes of those three especially that caught sight of the strange occurrence of a kunai spinning around quickly on its side on the ground.

As all of them would know, it wasn't there a moment ago and certainly it wasn't doing the kunai equivalent of breakdancing either. On high alert, any of all possibilities of someone firing off a rapid ninjutsu to defuse the kunai might have occurred, but in as just a quick time as the kunai started spinning, it suddenly stopped and righted itself on its sharp tip like a magnet had suddenly taken control of it. Even more, it floated just a hair off the ground. It would be anybody's guess concerning the who, what, when, where or why of it all, but none of them were given barely enough time to mutter much of a complete string of thought before a shinobi ran into the bar with a loud alarm behind them. "Quick, Sennin Rei, you must come!" Doubling over to cough, the smell of smoke was thick on the obviously singed shinobi. "The Academy is on fire!"

With a gust of fury, many shinobi didn't even wait for the command from either Sennin to go, they just did. It was easy for all to recognize the importance of saving the lives of children, for that, the command never needed to be uttered, it simply was. For some however, more than others, their spouses and children worked or were staying at the Academy. Within the coming days, Kumogakure was to hold a large scale Chunnin Exam, one that powers that be refused to let be affected by the likely war effort. Right before such an exam, scores of prospective Genin, Chunnin and Jounin often stayed on site to get training at all hours as was the custom. For those hard nosed higher ups, it was a matter of pride to show the Tenouzan that Kumo would not show fear in the face of opposition, and for that decision, it seemed that very likely, many lives were now at stake. A funky kunai and an academy on fire. Were they connected or simply two oddly coincidental occurrences?

Somewhere
???
…0701 Hours, the day after yesterday...

Like a true medic, Kitsune made sure that her people were healed first before finally checking on her surroundings. The space seemed to be oddly familiar and yet it strangely wasn't. Looking for an exit, Kitsune wouldn't exactly find one save for a door that seemingly refused to open no matter how much she tried to force it ajar. Continuing to inspect the space, she might ultimately come to the conclusion that the space was just ordinary, plain and that they were utterly trapped. Even the others in the room would start to mill about, finding that they were simply trapped. One particularly tilted shinobi pulled out an exploding note and suggested strapping it to the door and that was when oddly, a woman looking very much like Kitsune only with blue hair, appeared behind the bar and shook her head. "I wouldn't do that if I were you!"

To Kitsune, the mirror image of herself sounded as clear as ever but to the others, it was as if she wasn't there at all. Sighing, the woman snapped her fingers and all of the other shinobi instantly fell asleep right where they were. "I didn't want to have to do that but we couldn't risk them blowing a hole in the place. In any event, we need to talk." With a wave of her hand, the bar before the woman was filled with every notable bottle that Kitsune could think of. "I'd offer you a drink but it won't actually matter for much so if you don't mind, I'll just go through the motions because helps us to think." By now, Kitsune would be on full alert, a talking clone with the wrong color hair was anything but what she remembered of where she had been.

As if reading her mind though, the woman stopped making whatever cocktail she was working on and held up her hands in defense. "Trust me, we're on the same side. I'm you...well, a hallucination of you, you're subconsciousness, I think...you think?" Shaking her head and rolling her eyes, the woman started back making the cocktail. "Remember that rag dude? When he touched you, something happened and now where trapped in an infinite white space of some sort. That door is literally your chakra protecting all of us from maybe suffocating or something but I don't know how I feel about testing that theory." Shrugging the woman continued on. "So yeah, we're trapped, in Raiden knows where, some vagabond just tried to assassinate us and we might die because some random arm reached out and...wait, where did those arms come from?" Pausing to think, the blue haired Kitsune scrunched her face up before shaking her head again and going back to make the cocktail. Presenting it before the Raikage, she pushed the martini glass forward to the edge of the bar. "I call this, den hvide because...you know...yeah." Looking at the frothy white concoction, Kitsune might or might not be impressed but the more the woman spoke, the more that she remembered about exactly what had happened before she ended up here. "So anyway boss lady, how're you going to get us out of this?"

OOC: Sorry about the wait. I'm doing more large chunks of writing upfront so that there's not a random deus ex machina moment in the back of the event.

OOC Kitsune: Despite the world slowing down around you when Jae-Wol reached out to grab Udo, your Sharingan were able to track her attempt to pull Udo away. You are also aware of being trapped in a bright white expanse that has no definition. The bar scene that you see before you is literally a creation of your imagination based on your memories. How you chose to attempt to get out or not, is up to you. [You're affected by what happens in the Kumo side of the event.]

OOC Kumo: The kunai that Sukejuro and Rei found has a fluctuating weight to it as if there's a miniature gravity about it, throwing it in flux. In one moment it might be as light as a feather, in another, as heavy as a medium sized pet, and at others, normal weight for a kunai. If either of you can see chakra, you'd be able to note that it has a peculiar chakra field that's more akin to natural or corrupted energy. Physically, the kunai also has a fluctuating appearance, appearing to be rusty one minute and then freshly new in the next. [Decision to inspect it further elsewhere is either of the two's choice]

Roll information below for how Sukejuro and Rei found the kunai.

Spoiler

Umashi-Ret. Kage | Sora-Genin — Today at 2:37 PM
Roll for if Sukejuro or Rei spot a clue
[2:38 PM]
+1 for rolls, going with a d6 roll (just feels right). Two chances.
[2:39 PM]
t!dice 2d6

Tatsu
BOT
— Today at 2:39 PM
Rolling dice!
[2d6 : 4,5]
In the end, the result was: 9

Umashi-Ret. Kage | Sora-Genin — Today at 2:39 PM
Got it

 

[Toraono Michino]

The appearance of the kunai at the collective feet of Rei and her subordinate caused a mild stimulation of excitement in her brain; mild, because it had been altered extensively to avoid high-anxiety. The weapon was clearly altered in some way and its appearance felt immediately familiar. There was something temporal going on with the strange steel, the scientist surmised, but only because she recognized its power through one of her own weapons. The Satsujin-sha, or ‘Murderer’, was a special device she had created to take what little actual chakra she kept stored away in her core and expand it by replicating it over, and over again through temporal manipulation. She achieved this by creating a time loop inside of her own body that allowed her to pull out chakra from her ‘past self’ and inject it into her present self. In order to keep her body from spontaneously exploding, the energy she pulled from the past self was then looped back through to that self; sort of like a perpetual engine. The original intention of the device was to grant her infinite reserves of chakra to help aid the poor amounts of energy she already had transformed most of her body to make up for in order to preform Ninjutsu. What Rei created instead was a device that appeared to increased the speed of her actions by temporarily placing her existence both within and outside of time itself; allowing her to stand at two points of the stream simultaneously. In reality she was simply rewriting where her movements ended, making it nigh impossible to dodge her attacks and was used to face off against opponents that could move at supersonic speeds. The kunai on the ground reminded her of the same energy the Satsujin-sha gave off when it was activated which allowed her to deduce that temporal shenanigans were possibly afoot; meaning it was going to be a huge headache to unravel.

Before the scientist could even bend down to touch the weapon, though, another shinobi of her own branch zipped onto the scene to inform her that the Academy was extensively on fire; causing the Sennin to swear loudly and berate the man. Was this not what they had electronic communications for?! Moments after announcing that the new disaster on top of their current one, a great deal of shinobi went to move in assisting against the fire which left Rei in a conundrum. Did she stay and investigate the weapon having already a grasp on temporal science to locate the Raikage, aka, her best friend? Or did she align herself to the duty that same-said friend had given her and protect their national interests? It was no secret that a massive Chuunin Exam was being planned, as opposed to it as she was due to wanting to focus more efforts to the war. Money talked, though, and certain nobles that were keeping Kumogakure from financial collapse pushed for it to display their pride despite the raging war. Kitsune carried the village on her shoulders with how much of her own money went to keeping things afloat from her estate alone, but her fortune couldn’t keep everything running; which was one reason why they still bothered to parlay politics with the Shogun’s elite. All the power in the world meant nothing if they had no infrastructure to gain footing on.

The cyborg’s eyes closed and her hands gripped into tight fists for a moment, causing the wood they were made of to make a distressed sound before she released them with a calming sigh. Rei reopened her eyes to look up at the uncanny blacksmith and then back to the ANBU Sennin,
“This situation keeps unfolding at alarming speeds of uncouth aggravation. Miro, please, work with Sukejuro here in unfolding the mysteries of the kunai and locate our leader. He has a high, well-tuned, knowledge of metals and their origins,” she turned her head back up to the giant, “I can’t say where it came from or how, but I can say that it might have temporal properties. I know not how, just be extremely careful with it and I would recommend against trying to throw it. You might send it back in time far enough to nail yourself to a wall by accident if you do.”
“I will deal with the fire and dignitaries,” she then announced to the room before flipping open one of the tiny scrolls holsters on her belt and withdrawing a tiny roll of paper. She gripped it between her thumb and palm before spearing the wooden hand into her chest to ‘slot in’ the scroll into her mechanical heart. Before removing the hand, Rei pinched the very edge of the scroll’s paper and tore it out like a rip-cord, causing her body to crackle with a light-blue energy as the tiny motor inside the scroll was unleashed and began to fluctuate time. Her emotions were hidden well as the motor revved up, as she wasn’t sure if it was the motor or her own heart that was threatening to break as once more the shinobi chose to follow her duty instead of her friend.
“I leave this in the capable hands of this room,” the Sennin remarked one last time before her image distorted and blinked out of existence.

Rei blinked in and out of time throughout the village heading back towards the Academy where her office was and where this day started. Using the Quicksilver Step this many times in succession by stepping back on her own time-line was dangerous, and by the time she made it to the Academy there was no doubt she’d have to rip out the machine before it exploded. Rei didn’t fully control the whims of time, if it was that easy she would have traveled back in time to prevent the kidnapping all together; but warping a few times through the present should be feasible for the Satsujin-sha. The Sennin had an idea of she needed to do to get the fire under an immediate control, but worried her limited chakra reserves would hinder her ability to preform so many high-level Ninjutsu at once. Worried or not, this was Rei’s duty, and she planned to preform it to her utmost ability; no matter the backlash her mechanical body would undertake.

[MFT]

 

[Honnou]

… It was to be expected, huh. He had been gone for quite a while, so things were bound to look different once the swan returned to its nest. However, he wasn’t even able to take in the sight of his village with relief – not while being met with the sight of heavy, dark smoke bursting from where he could’ve sworn the A.E. still stood. Was the Academy on fucking fire?

It seemed as if he had much more to catch up to than he guessed. He had originally planned to meet up with Kitsune and catch up on all the monthly checks on his prosthetic arm that he missed – apologies, sincerely – but this looked like an immediate emergency, and whoever he could stumble across at the site could possibly put him back up to speed on events. What he figured out from second-hand up until now was that a war had broken out, so he also had little time to re-settle on personal matters concerning the whereabouts of his old colleagues. Hopefully, he would face them soon…

For now, he was darting towards the Academy at haste, not knowing the cause of the fire – yet assuming it to, possibly, be someone screwing up a Fire-Style or Lightning-Style Jutsu. Even worse as a hunch, though, could be that it was connected to the war that he had just heard about earlier today, but right now was the call for action bellowing through his head. Faster, Honnou!

“No, no, nobody told you to burn down like this, Aurora…!”

Upon reaching the Academy’s site, the sight of licking flames creeping up on so much of its structure left a sour, saddening taste in his mouth and throat. Still, he hadn’t hurried over here without a plan to quench some of the fires, and fearing for whoever and whatever could’ve been trapped in there – people as well as important items – he quickly flicked his hands out and went into action with a succession of hand seals.

Wind Style – Gale Force!

It was a little risky, but he attempted to choke out the flames leading to the front entrance by sucking away the oxygen with this Jutsu. While it showed results, he had to be careful with coming too close to any blades of fire at this point, for while the Jutsu choked out fires further away from his position, the air was still condensed around his contour, which could only draw fires to circulate his very skin if not treating carefully. He didn’t aim to quench all the fires – he was far from able to – but if he could make an opening to enter and rescue trapped people and possible Academy Students, then he’d be ever grateful to his skill.

Once a wide enough opening was made possible, he entered the burning Academy… and only leapt out of one of the windows with three Genins, each under his arm and one hanging onto his back. His facial expression was much more worrisome; the number of Genin and younger shinobi in the Academy was strangely high right now…

What an inconvenient time for the fire to start. The Hyuuga leapt into the building once more, but only after shaking off any embers from his suit. His heart began to tremble, an old feeling of his… he needed assistance. Immediately.

[MFT]

 

[Kagami Miro]

Mirō looked over at the new face that trotted into the scene. Ghostly white mask, strange demeanor and gargantuan height was none other than Sukejuro. She hadn’t seen him for many years, last time was with Shikyu back when she was just a genin. It had been far too long, making her wonder where he had gotten off to. Did he venture off into unknown territory or lurk in the streets of Cronopolis where she had met him before.

Before she could acknowledge him, that annoying buzz droned in her ear. The static noise that echoed from the new main branch sennin. Mirō’s fine brow rose on her forehead, bewildered by the Sennins remark. “My kind? We’re the humans here, Robot. You’re the outcast.” Mirō didn’t refrain from biting her tongue. “If you believe the Kumogakure people will blindly follow a robot who could malfunction at any time... you’re in dire need of a tune up.” Her vicious red glare glowered at Rei. The cards in her deck were in Mirō’s favor. The people of Kumo took years to accept mutated shinobi and kunoichi. High tech robotics were a whole other playing field and if she dared try to govern the way ANBU operated she would quickly find herself alone in a wolf's den. “Keep your branch in order and I’ll continue to guide mine.” At the perfect timing a metal object suddenly appeared within their field of vision.

The metal object in question was a standard kunai that danced on the floor at varying speeds like it’s life depended on it. Coming to a stop it held it’s strange angle like it was being controlled by puppet wires. If that wasn’t enough of a distraction, more shinobi burst through the room and informed the Sennin in frantic gasps of the academy halls burning. “For Raiden’s sake, another attack?” Her arm whipped out from underneath her black cloak, signalling a few of her ANBU to investigate the situation alongside the main branch mutts. Following the disruption the android continued to remain a possible threat by piercing her own innards and vanishing like a blur towards the academy. This left the ANBU Sennin and Sukejuro to their own devices.

Mirō closed the distance between her and the upright kunai on the floor. She kneeled down, her red hues spun into that famous sharingan pattern to observe the unique properties of chakra that surrounded it. While she inspected it the metals shifted into different durabilities. At a moment's notice the kunai would be near the brink of crumbling due to rust and at the very next moment glistening vibrantly like a diamond. Upon closer visual inspection Mirō noticed a peculiar aura. Subtly as the chakra moved around the kunai there followed strange distortions in reality akin to something she observed in her gravitational jutsu mastery. A strange phenomena and on top of that the chakra that surrounded it counted out the more common chakra elements seen in shinobi. “Odd.” She whispered to herself.

Cautiously a bandaged hand reached out to clasp the hilt of the kunai. Her hand froze, noticing how suspiciously light the kunai was. Rising to a stand she faced Sukejuro. Red hues looked up at the man while her arm that adorned the kunai rose to her shoulder level. It was time to run some tests. Her hand opened to let the kunai fall to the ground. Bewildered, the kunai slowly fell to the ground akin to the weight of a feather. Repeating the process again the kunai hit the ground faster than before, leaving damage within the wood flooring. Again the process was repeated only this time it hit the ground how it normally should. Her gaze returned to Sukejuro, handing him the fluctuating kunai. “You can inspect the metal. Just from that little test I can tell it’s tampered with altering states of gravity.” Her mastery in gravitational jutsu made that conclusion easy to arrive at. However, that didn’t explain how the kunai would rust and then refine itself. "Haven't seen that mask of yours in a while. Take a vacay in Cronopolis?" She chuckled to herself, returning to her work.

A finger rose to her lower lip in deep contemplation. “The strange chakra… gravitational weight that alters vastly… then a rapid change in matter…” Gears spun in her brain to the point of overclocking. Mirō wondered just how deep the depths of gravity alteration could take her. If she was liable to universe hop with her mangekyou could gravity allow her to rip holes through time?

 

[Cloud Seer]

Entrance to Saint Isamu’s Square
Holy See of Tenouza, Boundary of the Lateran Treaty
…0845 Hours, the day after yesterday...


Try as they might, the knights were no match for Udo. Weaving through their bodies like a needle to cloth, he made short work of everything that the Pope sent at him. So quick was the bloodbath that Udo managed to even remain relatively clean despite the number of bodies that he left in his wake. Unable to rationalize how he got to Tenouza, he could only imagine that the Shogun's brats had managed to drug him and turn him loose as if to incur a favor of good will from him. If that was their plan however, they'd be sorely disappointed. Udo only cared about himself and any sign of goodwill towards him was a weakness that he'd exploit in due time.

When he'd at last carved his way through the legions of knights to the cathedral, he kicked in the doors to find that the Pope was exactly where he expected him to be, smugly waiting with hundreds of knights between them to do his dirty work. "Hello Father!" His words indicating anything but a warm greeting, Iano shook his head and pointed at him from afar. "Seize him!" Iano knew that there was no talking his way out of the deal gone wrong. Udo was a loose end that needed clipping and though things would be messy, it was a job that needed to be done. Afterwards he'd explain it away as he always had done but for now, the hundreds of knights in the cathedral would be more than enough, or so he thought.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Heretic!" Ringing out like an alarm, the word had since lost its weight what with how many times Iano had hurled it at Udo in the past few minutes. There, in the crossing of the cathedral, Udo stood surrounded by more than enough knights to do more than what was needed to capture the man. For any other individual, the sheer amount of show of force that the Pope had mustered to the large room would have been considered overkill but he among many now completely understood just what sort of destruction Udo could cause if the appropriate precautions weren't taken. It was only due to the acoustics of the large room that the two men separated by hundreds of soldiers could hear each others words, and it was a fact that Iano played on as he whipped his loyal soldiers into a frenzy with a religious fervor. "You dare walk onto these hallowed grounds spitting your lies, your apostasy shall not go unpunished!"

Though the words that the Pope said were laced with conviction, his actions were anything but as he carefully backed up clear up to the alter. Walking forward slowly, Udo shook his head with vigor as he questioned both the Pope and the soldiers. "This charlatan claims to be so religious yet he relies on technology to create so-called miracles for the masses. Rules for thee and not for me, am I right?" With a gait befitting a drunkard, Udo looked around to the eyes of men who at one time would have been considered his allies or at least subordinates who would have followed his command. Now, looking around him, all that Udo would find were the eyes of those scared to question the very horrors that their eyes were witnessing.

"Ask yourself, if he would abandon even me, a loyal subject, when even our supposed enemies would show more compassion during a time of war than he... Just how expendable are you?" The question was pointed and like a dagger it cut through the tough exterior that many of the knights had. A soldier was only as strong as their personal convictions and having seen their grand leader backed into a corner, the old Pope's words ran hollow while the heretics rang true. Many of them had seen Iano act less than devout and even more had heard the rumors as to the true nature of the Tenouzan power. They're confusion even if momentary, was exactly the sort of chink in their emotional armor that Udo could use to exploit them for just as selfish a gain as the Pope had for them.

"A liars tongue is sweet with venom! We should have known better than to trust a man born to shinobi! Your trial shall be swift and your execution even more so!" With no love lost between them, Udo continued his tirade as the Pope continued to attempt to sway the masses even when he had no further cards to draw. "Is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just?" Letting the heretically philosophical question hang in the air, the sound of one soldier nearly tripping caused all heads to turn in that direction as a domino effect occurred as others tried to avoid the same mishap. Smirking, Udo held up his arms and began to clap. Strangely, despite all of the carnage that he had wrought upon the the forces that first tried to stop him from reaching the cathedral, his hands were clean from the stain of blood.

"I believe that there's a God above me..." he lied, "But this man is not worthy of such Holy affiliation. He is a false prophet and he'll drag all of us down with him to get, and keep, the power that he craves!" With all the insults hurled between the two, it was the final statement by Udo that caused the Pope to go into a frenzy. Sensing that there was dissention in the ranks of the men, the Pope finally stopped backing up and instead began to walk forward before letting out an inhuman roar and leaping forward and over the men to land right in front of Udo. Landing with a weight that didn't quite match up with his human frame, as the aged man began to march towards the assassin, the knights still frozen between their conflicting convictions began to gasp as Iano's body began to transform and morph, growing larger, less human and more something else. "I'll just have to silence you myself!"

Even Udo was forced to back away in shock and awe and as he looked for an exit, he and everyone else in the cathedral noticed that the light streaming into the building went from the light of day, to an eerie red hue like that of twilight. Even the transforming Pope paused just long enough to look up with large serpent like eyes, but the peace wasn't held for long as he bellowed with an angry cry and took a swipe at Udo. The trained assassin quickly dodged the wild attack but a number of knights weren't so fortunate, and their bodies went flying off into all directions, some reaching the walls and some flying through the cathedral stained glass windows before all falling with lifeless thuds. As his body grew larger and less and less human, between the ill aimed swipes at Udo and the large gargantuan body not being limber to avoid casualties, both knight and Udo alike began to run as the creature that the Pope was becoming cared little for protecting the Holy building from destruction so much as killing Udo.

Spoiler: The Raikage and an Assassin walk into a bar...

A speakeasy for the elite
Kumogakure
…The early hours of the morning...

The butterfly effect was such that even the smallest of changes could cause the biggest domino effects, and though she didn't mean any harm by her doing so, Rei was yet another small change that caused a big ripple in the grand scheme of things. Once, twice, a third time, though she was zipping away towards the Academy, what terror she wrought upon time and space was only magnified by the decisions of a man many times her senior, many hundreds of kilometers away. For some especially gifted beings, time and space were malleable to their whims. For such beings, the doing of such was as simple as one opening a door while closing another yet for those with no such abilities, the space-time traveler accidentally leaving the door open often proved catastrophic to say the least. Even more dangerous yet, when two opposing wavelike forces crashed into each other, those left in the wake of such wave interferences were often helpless to keep from being dragged out to sea.

Like opening and closing a box again, Rei unknowingly tested the paradox of quantum superposition by using the Quicksilver Step so many times in succession. In and out she weaved through a dimension that was still yet largely unexplored and it was only when she finally stepped back into the present that the theoretical spell that she wove was complete. Looking on at the kunai, Miro and Sukejuro both would be shocked to find that it suddenly stopped spinning as if whatever puppet strings controlling it suddenly went lax. Even with the sharingan able to process information at a speed quicker than thought, Miro would have realized that she and Sukejuro were in one moment at the speakeasy, and in the next in an undefinable white space of nothingness that seemed to stretch on forever. Yet just as quickly as Miro might have been able to make heads of tails of the situation then her and Sukejuro were suddenly in a space of seeming pure darkness.

It was only thanks to the gifts of the sharingan that Miro could mentally explain the blinking of one reality into another and even still, into another but the undefined space that they were in was peculiar in other ways. For one, just as the previous place was bathed in an unnatural white light that stretched on into infinity, this place was the same exact for a darkness darker than the blackest blacks. However, whereas the darkness was never ending, through her ability to see chakra, Miro was able to tell that her, Sukejuro and someone else were inside of what appeared to be a large four dimensional cube. She'd see no color, only be able to make out the faint outlines of chakra protecting them from the void. Sukejuro on the other hand was far less able to mentally process the darkness save for his ability to sense the blood of two others near him. Had either of them stopped breathing then there would have been no sound, no sight and hardly a feeling as they more floated than stood. However long it took either of them to utter a call out to the other or to realize that they were no longer in the speakeasy, then they would have equally figured out that they weren't alone as the unconscious bodies of the Raikage and a number of their missing comrades would be slowly but surely made out.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ever the hero, Honnou ran into the fire with a reckless abandon that under normal circumstances would have gotten him reprimanded but considering the circumstances was actually what everyone on the scene was doing. Quickly going into action, he might have noticed that his jutsu didn't seem to pack the same punch that they normally packed. That or he was having an off day. Whatever the case, it was when he jumped into the building for the second time, which coincided exactly in the moment that Rei arrived through time and space, that Honnou had what could only be described as an out-of-body experience. One moment he was fighting a very real fire and the next moment he was seemingly forced out of his body and he looked on as he stared on at an ethereal version of himself going through the motions of putting out the fire.

Looking around, his byakugan eyes would began to notice the faint but truly disturbing phenomena of everyone and everything around him with a chakra signature gaining an otherworldly overlay. In the same way that everyone had a chakra signature and a shadow, the overlay seemed to cover the people in a protective shell that they could escape, except for himself. His overlay seemed to fight a fire that didn't exist, and as Honnou slowly but surely began to disassociate what he was mentally seeing from what he was physically seeing, his byakugan finally auto corrected to what he truly needed to see. The fire wasn't real, and though he couldn't explain how a metaphysical nature of it all, what his eyes did see was that at emanating from the basement of the Academy was a large chakra signature that was anything but natural.

Appearing at the Academy, Rei might have been alarmed to find that what she witnessed didn't make the most sense. For one, the Academy was for a fact not on fire yet all around her, people carried on as if it was. Her mechanical body processed the information around her in a way that often protected her from many of the natural things that affected biological lifeforms. Whether she chose to speak up and ask a passersby what was going on or not, she would quickly see that whatever had struck the minds of those around her, was beyond her ability to cure. Continuing to investigate, it wouldn't take long for her attention to be turned back to the Academy itself as the shockwave from a large explosion shook the area and a plume of chakra exploded upward from the Academy. For a moment, in a timespan that was inconsequential to most others but was a lifetime to the Sennin, Rei went temporarily offline. With backups to the backups, the time was undiscernible to others that she had even somewhat ceased to be that precious five letter word, but for her, despite every gear in her mechanical body telling her to run the other way, she was inexplicably drawn towards a truly selfless act.

OOC: Please let me know if you have any questions, etc., etc.

OOC: Sukejuro and Miro: You have been "blipped" through time and space into whatever place Kitsune and the other missing Kumo-nin are. Kitsune and the rest are unconcious and Sukejuro can only sense them via Chigokai skills while Miro can see the chakra of them and the space via her Sharingan. The space is a four dimensional cube like space in a dark void of nothingness. Think, sensory deprivation tank levels of being.

OOC Kitsune: You don't know that you're unconscious, so things are to you as they were from the last post involving you.

OOC Honnou: You're able to see the time apparitions but you have no way of rationalizing them. To you, they're basically chakra ghost, but you are able to clearly make out that there's some sort of large chakra signature beneath you in the basement of the Academy right before it explodes. Note, the chakra explosion isn't seriously affecting physical things in the way that an explosion normally would and is more chakra/energy based. So chakra sensitive things/beings is more affected than the building for example.

OOC Rei: Congratz, you changed the trajectory of the topic, lol! Alas, the chakra explosion affects you more than others but because of it, you are able to more easily pinpoint exactly where it is. You won't be able to make out the time apparitions or explain them until you get closer to the epicenter of the chakra explosion however. Note, the chakra explosion isn't seriously affecting physical things in the way that an explosion normally would and is more chakra/energy based. So chakra sensitive things/beings is more affected than the building for example.

 

[Toraono Michino]

Rei had never once thought that she could find herself in a panic so great that she would miscalculate. Her literal brain had been tampered with and ‘fixed’ by Kitsune so that she couldn’t indulge in the self-sacrificial principals that lead her into the idea of fusing herself with machinery to stand beside the people she made weapons for. It had been all she wanted out of life; to bring pride back to her fallen Clan, and to be strong. The Eastern Ryuu Clan had very little power as far as chakra potential went, and that was on purpose for reasons she was far from being aware of. Rei’s father had always admonished her greed for strength with the warnings of their own hubris, and how the great Ryuu Clan had fell apart after their last chief went mad seeking power behind his handling. The old man always spoke of being proud of the other gifts the gods had been so kind to bestow upon her; such as her brilliance and ability to put machines together. Yet her weakness wasn’t just in chakra - it was a curse tied to the scientist’s very core.

As the youngest child of four she had been the most sickly. Her body could not withstand the cold, the thin air, or the passing seasonal illness. Once, a cold had nearly killed her when she was three. It was only because of her oldest brother and his constant research into a cure for her disease did she stand today, and it was through science that she swore her life to, in order to find a way to break past the shell of weakness that consumed her very mind. Sure, Rei could create weapons for others to use and did for many years, however the constant news of those same people dying despite her wonderful inventions dug a hollow inside of her soul. She needed to be there with them, to show them how they were supposed to be used; for surely the fault was in Human Error. Yet, no matter how hard she trained, what food she ate, or who instructed her…nothing came. In desperation she turned to self mutilation in the form of attempting to transform her body into one that could be of service to Kumogakure and the attempt nearly killed her; until Kitsune stepped in.
The Raikage was already a master of shinobi prosthetics, and with the fellow scientist feeding her ideas, the two were able to create a theory. Shortly after a few trials, they began to tinker in earnest and the cyborg became who she was today. A steel heart, limbs that felt no pain, and a brain modified to take in and process information like no other.

Now, as she stood before the Academy engulfed in a fake fire, her mind quickly put 2+2 together and knew that she had made a mistake. Was it the temporal device? Did her steps through time to get her to the situation faster turn against her? Was she outside of time itself? The questions raced through her mind as she ran into every person she could to try and convince them that there was no fire, but it was like the fading echoes of a deep cave; her words fell on deaf ears. For the first time since she was a toddler, the woman felt the fear of lowliness and helplessness creep up her spine.

Then it all went black.

A few years ago when Kitsune and Rei decided to modify her body, the two were working out exactly what inhibitors that they should place on her mind. There was a number of limits that the human brain could handle before just going into an ‘auto-shutdown’ as they called it. The first limiter, and clearly most important, was the one that would cause the rejection of her mechanical parts. Unlike most shinobi, whom’s weapons were appendages that could be attached to stumps of flesh, they were looking at fully removing and replacing whole organs. Turning off the function in the brain that ‘rejected’, however lead to a host of other problems including one which could prove to be fatal; returning from unconsciousness.
Rei rarely slept. She didn’t need to, per-say, and it was only under heavy monitoring did she ever fully rest. Doing so meant that she needed a team to make sure that she could be returned to the world of the woke in case her brain slipped into a coma-like state. This had actually happened after a series of heavy missions that caused her to collapse during debriefing in Kitsune’s office. With the Raikage’s help and a team of experts, they were able to wake the cyborg back up, and Rei pretty much swore off sleep from that point on. For when she did, there was no dreams. No hopes or what-ifs to ponder on in her sleep. Just an inky black silence of nothing that most would relate to as just…death.
Again she floated aimlessly in that same pit of darkness knowing that something had hit her systems. Something big, hard, and unrelenting. Rei reached out around her in the darkness of her mind, desperate to find something, anything, to reach back to her body and awaken once more. She tried to recall everything that happened up to being thrown back into this terrifying inky blackness…but nothing came. Only fear gnawed at her core as the cold shadows surrounding her started to creep into her limbs.

“No…NO!” the woman screamed into the void thrashing limbs to kick away the shadowy tendrils, “I have so much to do! I must save them!”
Who?
“Them!” was all she could reply. There was no definite features or memories attached to the humanoid forms that slowly began to form around her in the darkness, “They are helpless without my hand! I must guide them, I must save them!”
Who?
“The people of my home! I can’t afford to be this weak! Not anymore!” Rei cried to the void that soundlessly asked her the same question.

A deafening heartbeat broke through the silence beyond her screams. The sound was so loud it made her nauseous at first, but she fought the feeling of sickness. A strange taste then filled her mouth. A mix of copper and kumquats, a flavor she had called ‘the taste of purple’ when the scientist was but a child. Pain shot through her body and limbs in a way that shouldn’t be possible as the deafening heartbeat pounded against the back of her skull.

Then wake up, young dragon, and save them.

Light exploded back into Rei’s world of inky darkness as another mind-numbing heartbeat thumped against her senses. Slowly, everything came into focus. She was the Main Branch Sennin, the Academy was on fire but also not, she had traversed into a state of oneness by skipping through the alterations of time, or so she had theorized before blacking out. Her mind filling in the blanks of the situation made her think to look up and see the chakra plume, wondering if she was seeing this in real time or if this was a future event that had yet to unfold but was already playing out to the senses of others. Her eyes traced the plume down into the Academy and now knew where it was…and what it was; a bomb. If reality and the future were currently split into two separate lines, or at least so the cyborg thought, that meant she theoretically had time to still actually save everyone before the real thing went off. A twist in her gut brought back the nausea at the thought of even stepping forward, but that twist was tempered with an overwhelming sense of bravery that told her: She Must Save Them, Life or Limb. It didn’t matter in the grand scheme so long as the woman who could only once see the entire world from her bedroom window ensured that the other children would never suffer the curse of weakness she had so fervently fought against. As the Sennin finally found the will to move forward, she did so without ever noticing that her heartbeat continued on; a feat that should be impossible...and as she did so, her feet stepped over the metal heart with the time-skipping device still strapped to it.

Somehow, ejected from her body.

[Part 1 of The Phoenix Heartbeat - Build Change - 1300+ WC]
[MFT]

 

[Shinrya Kitsune]

It was quite strange. She both did and didn’t know that what she was unconscious and everything she was seeing was really in her own head. Including the blue variant of herself, going through the motions of making a white frothy drink, probably a White Kaminarian. Easy to learn, difficult to master. A billion thoughts zoomed through Kitsunes head, and as they bubbled up to the surface her counterpart reacted to them by shaking her head or nodding. Eventually, Kitsune came to the conclusion that what the blue variant had said was the truth. But if she was the subconscious, what the hell had actually happened to them? Conscious and subconscious weren’t supposed to mix like this.

Kitsune circled the room, deep in thought, and after a while, the both of them uttered a single curse word, as Kitsune realized that well, if she had retained the power to warp rather than focusing on manifesting a big chakra construct, there might’ve been a way out of this mess. Frankly it seemed like she’d have to wait on someone on the outside finding her, and the others at this point. Looking out at the white expanse engulfing everything beyond the dilapidated bar area made her sigh. Shit like this was why dark mode everywhere was a blessing to the eyes. Especially sharp eyes, like hers.

In other words, she was gonna sit back and ensure the safety of the shinobi inside the white expanse with her figuring that someone would show up eventually, in this four dimensional hellhole of space. Hopefully it’d be Miro showing up, as Kitsune had formulated an idea on how to get out, but it required the use of the Kamui subspace dimension to hopefully shatter the hypercube and release the people trapped within.

 

[Kagami Miro]

Mirō returned her attention back to Sukejuro, awaiting a response when suddenly… a white illuminance blinded her vision. Her hand swiftly reached behind her back, coiling her fingertips around the hilt of her dagger in anticipation. An unease gurgle rolled about in the pit of her stomach. Everything happened so fast, in one fraction of a second Mirō vanished from her reality into a sea of piercing white light then suddenly… darkness. Her sharingan adjusted rapidly to her surroundings when a violent surge of pain rang through her corneas and brain. Or so she had imagined, her body relying on her usual instincts forced a fake surge of pain. The pain felt akin to the moments when Mirō opened up alternate realities with her Mangekyou. That terribly heavy weight of chakra that swelled behind her eyes. A hand clasped her face for a moment, her eyes peered through her finger tips. They basked in the abyssal darkness of the surroundings below them. Those low breathes echoed loudly as she looked around. There was nothing except maddening darkness. The world around them is void of sound and light. The pulsing of blood in her ear drums reverb throughout her brain as if someone repeatedly hit a gong beside her. To keep her sanity in check Naibu’s silvery voice conversed with her mind.

‘What just happened? I can’t see anything.’ “We moved to a new reality… in..instantly…” Her words stuttered past her lips that were parted in awe. Through the darkness her sharingan was liable to make out the frames of chakra that dwelled within the core of chakra users. As she drifted aimlessly in the darkness she accounted for a few missing people and an aura of chakra she had recognized time and time again. “Is that… It’s Kitsune!” She shouted, her arm extended out to point over at their location. Right when Mirō lifted her leg to move closer she stopped. Those red hues turned to look over at Sukejuro whose aura of chakra was barely visible. Not due to the lack of chakra but to its nature. A hand rose from her side aiming for the center of his chest. A calloused hand slowly disintegrated into a hundred triangular shards against his chest. Those shards assembled themselves into a stick paper seal that would adhere to him and glow a bright red, like a lantern of chakra so he’d still be visible if he ventured away.

“There. C’mon. Let’s assist the Raikage.” Nodding invisibly to Sukejuro, she glided over to the Raikage’s unconscious body. “My Raikage, wake up. Just where the hell are we?” Mirō flooded her with questions as she reached out to touch Kitsune’s shoulder. At the moment of touch her body weight continued to carry her hand through the Raikage’s body. She swiped at nothing but the continual darkness that surrounded them. “What the…” Another futile attempt to shake the Raikage awake was made. Then another, and another. “Just where the hell are we!” Mirō shouted into the void. Her patience had been wearing thin and the insufferable drumming in her ear caused her to rush.

For a moment Mirō backed away from the still bodies. Fingers rubbed the bridge of her nose in contemplation. Desperately she tried to wrap her brain around her situation. In the midst of thought she began to notice her cloak pulling itself in a certain direction. In the very far distance her famous red sharingan saw the strangest phenomenon. Streaks of chakra faintly rotating around a spherical object drenched in the same empty darkness that surrounded them.

After gazing for what felt like minutes Mirō noticed there had been a gap in distance between her and the unconscious team. “We’re being… pulled?” Speaking up so Sukejuro could hear her. The beauty of chakra is the ability to manipulate it into a multitude of various ways to benefit the user. From jutsu that granted immortality, to earth shattering power and inhuman speeds there was nothing chakra manipulation couldn’t do. As Mirō delved deeper into this thought she referenced her ability to produce a small black hole she called Chibaku Tensei. It pulled matter towards it like the phenomenon in the distance. Mirō wondered what the outcome would be if two black holes with the same energy spinning against each other collided. She sucked her teeth, saving that experiment for a later time. “To hell with that. I’m getting us out of here.” A hand gripped around Sukejuro’s wrist. Her pupils spun into a more devious and intricately detailed pupil while blood pooled at the corners of her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. Before her a black zipper appeared overhead, unzipping the reality she was in the world on the other side mirrored the blinding world she had seen before.

Taking the lead, Mirō floated through her portal into the next. The reality portal left open for Sukejuro to follow through. Like a music video from a-ha the patterns and tones left on the unconscious bodies were outlined in blacks and greys. Their own bodies had resorted to this phenomenon, filling Mirō with a droplet of hope that Kitsune was actually here. Again she reached out to touch her shoulder. Thankfully they were in a timeline where they both coexisted. Any more time spent in that deafening abyss surely would’ve sent her into madness. ‘One hell of a place to send people.’ A devious thought Naibu had. It wasn't often that she would propose those. With persistence, that bandaged hand shook Kitsune’s shoulder. “Kitsune... Kitsune! Wake up! Sukejuro, help me out by awakening the others. We need them to be functional to leave this… world.” She turned to face Sukejuro with a face of urgency. In the meantime Mirō inspected Kitsune. Placing two fingers on her neck, examining her vitals.

 

[Honnou]

Thinking about it as he made his way through the openings between the licking flames… he had really grown as a shinobi. If he was just a week behind in his training, then would he have been able to maneuver around the fires this easily? Then again, given his MIA status before his return… he would’ve probably turned out more skilled if it turned out any different back then. But he was here now, and the flames weren’t waiting for him to reflect over his experience. They were slowly but visibly eating at the Academy’s walls, a situation most unwished by the local shinobi who still kept many sources to their knowledge in fundamental ways of the shinobi and the Shinobi 101 stored in there.

Also, what was with all these Genin present in there?! He still yearned for an answer to that, simply to calm his nerves down over the irregularity…

One of the Genins, a blonde-haired short boy with a green scarf around his neck, had suddenly gotten himself trapped in one of the central halls. Since the fires around him weren’t waiting for anyone, they had ultimately surrounded him and threatened with falling debris coated in dangerously high temperatures. Before the flames could claim his poor soul, however, the boy found himself rolling on the concrete floor right outside of the Academy, picked up and almost thrown across the surface a few meters by a shinobi who went back in quick enough to avoid the Genin’s wondering gaze.

The Genin was quickly joined up by two more. Despite this acceleration, Hon still felt the growing sense of futility in his heart, and it was attempting to poison his resolve. How dared it… he didn’t return just to grieve and curse his own inability to accomplish his duty! This stinging sensation in his chest, these chains of oblivion; he… damn, he started to sound like Hoshi now…

Anyway, with the way things began to escalate – what, with his constant extraction of Genin – he judged that the time had come for him to catch up to the speeding flames as rapidly as possible. He hadn’t used this technique, this Jutsu, in a while… but he had already dashed straight into the flames roaring out through the entrance-

Hakke! Yokenba!

Except this time, his dash had left not only dust in the air, but also a wave of air that pushed back and caused debris to rise a little bit.

It was taxing, but… if he focused on the Genin around as his ‘targets’, then his clan’s secret Taijutsu, the Eight Trigrams Divination Field, could bring them all out of the building in the blink of an eye. This required absolute attention at the targets, the Genin – Hon had to block out many other details in order to push his nerves the furthest. This was a Taijutsu that heightened his senses and nervous system’s reaction to the world around him, slowing down his chronoception as a result – the world was slowing down, but it was also growing greyer and muddier akin to when he still possessed the veiny, classic Byakugan.

It all went by in a flash. He found himself outside again, having gathered quite a large group by this point. His jacket was burning, but other than that, he had suffered more stamina-related reductions than any direct, physical ones. It still took a solid second to increase the perception of time back to normal, before his body began wasting chakra in this state…

“Was that… was that everyone?”

His eyes widened up, still looking at the group of young Genin but not focusing on them… no, this took him by surprise. Deep down under the Academy, somewhere in its basement… yes, he could see… g-ghosts? Wait, what were those strange, mobile clumps of chakra? He almost assumed that they were the culprits behind the burning – it’d make sense to cause such a huge fire and gather everyone’s attention if your objective was to sneak away with someone during the panic, but Hon soon figured out that he probably shouldn’t go down to them.

That was because of the ghost-like figures, clearly seen down in the basement but clearly not solid or feasible enough to resemble anything Hon recognized, suddenly releasing a massive amount of chakra pushed Hon back to shield the Genin from the upcoming wave that… did, like, little to him and nothing to the others.

The Genin were safe and merely questioned the surge in the air, but Hon’s eyes… he had to cover them for a moment. Argghh, they were constantly active – closing his eyes did nothing…!!!

WC: 771 [MFT]

 

[Seijin]

There seemed to be no end of the bodies that the Tenouzan threw at them. On their own, Umashi and Jae-Wol definitely could have taken out a number of guards without putting up much of a sweat. The problem came in when the first set of guards alerted the second set and then the third set and so on and so forth. It didn't help that by this time that the ruse was up and that the Tenouzan loyalist had proceeded to a full coup against the house of the Shogun and had either killed or restrained all of the samurai loyal to the Shogun and his family. At this point, all of the alarms were going off and the stealthy approach that the two had taken earlier was no longer an option. "It seems that we're going to actually get our hands dirty this time." Umashi joked and Jae-Wol pointed with her scepter at few guards that they had left behind them. "And what would you call that?" Glancing back, Umashi shrugged with a smirk. "A failure to communicate?" He left the statement open to interpretation but the joke didn't seem to slow any of the guards down.

The one in the front pointed at them and spoke. "These heretics have been found guilty of apostasy! They do not deserve an honorable death!" Quipping in, Umashi replied back to the man, answering a question that hadn't been posed. "Fortunately I didn't ask for one." Speaking and shrugging, he looked to Jae-Wol "So how far to the room with the bomb in it?" "Just on the other side of that aggroed mob of yours." "Great! I needed a workout." Tired of waiting, the guard raised his katana in the air and began to rush the twosome. "For the glory of Tenouza!" Fully respecting the two, the guards didn't do the normal one at a time mob fighting antic but instead swarmed Umashi and Jae-Wol like a wave. This far under the Shogun's estate, the hallways were wide enough for more than a few to completely surround them, and as Umashi and Jae-Wol focused on fighting at their front, more streamed in at their back.

When they were near enough to the storeroom that they were fighting to get, a loud eruption was heard which momentarily stopped all in their tracks a few of the Tenouzan guards were blown back from the explosion. Without further warning, a visible energy wave spread out from the room and passed right through them all. Shaking her head, Jae-Wol spoke up between catching her breath. "They did something to the bomb, that was chakra!" Looking at Jae-Wol and then at the Tenouzan guards, Umashi wasn't quite following her and so his face was twisted with confusion. "If it's just chakra though..." "It's still going to cause a large explo-" She was cut off by one of the guards who was under her foot. Coughing at first, the man began to laugh wildly. "I'll gladly die for the glory of Tenouza. Taking out the Shogun and a bunch of shinobi brats in one big boom, sign me up!" Getting into another fit of coughing, the man attempted to reach for his blade but Jae-Wol kicked it away and applied more pressure on his chest.

Blood growing cold, Umashi lost the confident look in his eyes. "They're going to blow up the academy?" It didn't take a lot of thinking to assume that by shinobi brats that the man meant the Kumo Academy. Had the Tenouza always been the sort to go kill children? Umashi wasn't sure but he knew an open threat when it presented itself. "We've got to stop them." Jae-Wol nodded her head in agreement as the Tenouza who had been startled by the explosion all seemed to be of one accord that even if they lost their lives that they would do all that they needed to to prevent anyone from spoiling their plans. "You'll do nothing of the like. Hold the door!" A senior member of the Tenouza with a large hammer for a weapon hefted it on his shoulders and took a running start before swinging it with all of his weight at Umashi's head.

Stepping back to avoid the blow, Umashi attempted to parry the attack and disarm the man but was interrupted by being tackled to the ground. Normally endless hordes of minions would have been an easy problem to fix but with the chakra bomb both armed to blow and also creating a chakra draining field surrounding such a large portion of the Capital, Umashi was at his greatest disadvantage. Thankfully, Jae-Wol wasn't. Somehow immune, she spun her scepter quickly and knocked the man off of Umashi, freeing him long enough for him to roll out of the way of another hammer strike that would have surely crushed his skull. Rolling to his feet, he grabbed a katana from a downed foe and made a swipe at the man. So used to fighting with the aid of chakra, Umashi found himself on a more even ground than there should have been. It seemed that the Tenouzan had clearly calculated just how to even the playing field versus a shinobi opponent that could kill with a mere look.

"Thanks sis, but why don't you just do that trick of yours and zip us to the room? That would save us a..." He stopped talking long enough to avoid an attack and reply in kind to his attacker by taking aim at the backside of the mans legs just barely missing before using his momentum to launch the sword at full speed at the exposed area just between the groin and thigh area. The man collapsed near instantly in pain. "I would but this close to that bomb, it's affecting even me. We're going to have to do this the hard way." Quick and nimble, she caught sight of the hammer swinging guard's next attack being wound up and she swung and stretched out her scepter just enough to trip him up, causing him to lose the hammer as it spun up wildly before falling back down and striking him in the back, sending him to the cold stone floor with a sickening thud.

 

[Cloud Seer]

Spoiler: First Contact...

A Meeting Room
Somewhere, anywhere, everywhere
…????...

A flicker of movement, a shifting of the world and a suddenly, the whole of reality seemed to stretch on into infinity. Whether it was attempting to hop from one dimension to another, fighting insurmountable odds or even saving a building full of children, for all, everything slowed to a crawl with an unnerving droning sound and then there was nothing. Neither black nor white, neither sound nor feeling, this nothingness was akin to a feeling that only came with a brush with death, this nothingness was the purest absence of being, and then they were somewhere else. Without consent and completely without warning, suddenly all were at attendance facing forward though forced to turn their heads to look towards the head of the large room where a heated debate was taking place. Looking around, all might have spotted some that they knew although the seating order was according to a system that was beyond an obvious comprehension. As shocked as they might have been, it was the audible discord of the newest attendees that got the attention of two figures that stood at the head of the room.

"What, where am I? Pope Iano, is that you?" Outing himself as a member of Tenouza, the man sought to get up from his perch and it might have been at that time when many others began to note that nearly all of them were dressed alike with the only distinction between them being that outside of their simple black garments that those from Tenouza wore red coats that those from Kumogakure wore white coats. Confused voices began to ring out with equal alarm as the jarring nature of the sudden assembly came upon many like waking from a light slumber. While at first the two individuals at the head of the room continued on, the sudden raising of alarm drowned out the meeting as many had known it. Dressed similarly like those who were assembled, one individual dressed in a golden ensemble addressed one in an equally silver one. It was the silver dressed one that turned and spoke to those who failed to keep quiet. "You'd be wise to hold your tongue and pay attention!" Though the tone was curt, the sound of the voice was sweet and the gender of the individual was indiscernible.

Nodding in agreement, the golden dressed individual who was equally ambiguous in their look smiled and continued as though all in attendance had always been there. Speaking with a far more discernably masculine voice, the man continued. "As I was saying, this machine of theirs threatens the existence of the entire realm, something that I find quite vexing indeed. I cannot allow this..." letting the words hang and making a swirling motion with one hand pointed towards a large semi-translucent globe and neighboring satellite that appeared in the middle of the meeting room. Whereas some might have quickly recognize the world to be their own, the next clear indicator was a yellow outline around the Lightning Country itself against the backdrop of the rest of the continent that it lay on. "I agree my Lord, it is simply inexcusable that they would make such a racket while you attempt to keep us all safe from our enemies. Perhaps we issue punishment? Your royal decree is one that all of your other subjects should clearly understand." Nodding, the golden royal agreed but stopped short of issuing a command. "I wish to be a benevolent ruler though, it pains me to see my people's growth stunted."

Nodding, the attendant agreed but also offered another point. "My Lord, the very fact that you allow them to eke out an existence on this backwater planet is alone a benevolent measure. However, we cannot allow them to harm the the precious [Kosmosinium] before we have procured it all. The current mining operations are running as fast as they can possibly go already. If you allow this petty squabble of theirs to continue then it will push back production and your quota will not be met. You have to show these errant children what happens when they get too close to the fire!" During this part of the conversation, it would have become abundantly clear that what was heard was not what was said because any keen shinobi would have noticed that what they heard seemed to glitch out and correct itself like a headset message with a bad signal. What was this Kosmosinium that they were speaking about and how was it that that word especially was hard to decipher? An auto translation device of some sort? The entire situation was especially strange due to the seeming forced manner of the meeting itself. Why were they here if they weren't expected to say or do anything? If any might have wondered any further then the next action quickly addressed their fears.

"Children? You would dare call our Pope a child? You'll die for your error!" Leaping to her feat, a zealous female knight went to reach for where a blade might have been on her person and found none but continued to rush towards the head of the meeting room at the two figures that were matter of factly discussing
the fates of those present. "Tenouza will not bow to your-" Rushing to strike the golden dressed being, the seeming higher stationed man casually held up a single finger and froze her in place. All present were quickly made aware of just how powerful the supposed regal looking individual was. "Now now, I will not allow disorder within my court. You will sit and you listen." His curiously fragile looking features belied the forceful nature of the voice that spoke to the woman who had dared to breech whatever decorum had been expected. Motioning with his finger, the woman was slammed to the ground forcefully, and with another twirl of his index finger, she was turned around pulled by an invisible force back to the seat that she had first started out at as invisible hands put her back into her seeming assigned seat and forcefully clamped her mouth close.

"Now where were we?" "A measurable punishment my Lord, it is the only way to show these creatures that your Law is above all else. Besides, you know that the [others] are watching as well. Now is not the time to show weakness, not while there is talk of [war]." Nodding in agreement, the golden royal looked towards the floating globe and satellite as the image zoomed out to show not only the celestial bodies but even the space beyond. "I do believe that you are correct." Sighing loudly and in an exaggerated manner, the regal being began to walk down from his head position at the room towards the middle of the space. As he did so, many finally got their best look at him. Whether he was scarily beautiful or beautifully scary was anyone's guess. Though the voice seemed to be masculine, the features were far more androgynous than the voice might have belied, and even more so, his skin was so preciously perfect that he seemed more like a perfectly sculpted doll than a living being. Certainly, if it hadn't been made clear before than it was certainly clear now, this being, this creature wasn't human or possibly even from the same planet that they called home. Looking at them as he walked, he gave a sly smile and nodded as if acknowledging their presence. When he at last got to the middle of the room, he stopped and looked up at the large map that floated above them all. "Yes, we cannot allow them to harm production. Give them their first and last warning."

His last word coming with a smile, his attendant, who had been at the head of the room materialized next to him and nodded. "So let it be." Turning to speak to all who were in attendance, the being who was of equal alien design smiled with a overly cheerful glee. "You have been tried and you have been found guilty of the crime of ignoring the royal decree of interdimensional silence and for the destruction of royal property. It is by the grace of His Magnificence that your punishment shall only be a warning. Do not scoff at this gift of mercy." Looking around the room, the silver garbed being opened his arms wide and spoke to beings beyond those who had just been punished. "Prepare their extraction and then prepare [The Fold]." No sooner had the order been issued than the sound of soldiers moving into position could be heard just beyond the walls of the room. Looking around, those sitting might have seen the shadows of creatures far more alien than what was before them. Finally, looking down at the Pope and then Kitsune, the silver attendant smirked with a glint in his eyes and issued a final warning. "Mark this day, for you should have died and yet...life will continue on due to our Lord's merciful ways." Then, as suddenly as had occurred the first time, there was a droning sound as everything seemed to stretch on like a picture that had been dragged away in slow motion and whereas all had been in a meeting room with no knowing where they were, they were all back where they had been before.

Entrance to Saint Isamu’s Square
Holy See of Tenouza, Boundary of the Lateran Treaty
…0900 Hours, the day after yesterday...

Returning the reality that they had first inhabited, the first thing that Udo did was quickly check his person to make sure that everything was as it had been, a fact that he was quickly thankful for when everything checked out. Quickly after the first check however, the second and truly more important issue before him reared its ugly head, Pope Iano was quickly filling the room in his monstrous form. Had Udo the time, he would have questioned how it was that the Pope had managed to go from the form of a monster to that of a man and quickly back to that of a monster but the inquisitive part of his brain was shut of fear fear of current life. Moving quickly to exit the crumbling building, he picked up on the peculiar sight of many if not all of the Pope's knights standing as if in a daze. Frozen as if unable to rationalize just what they were seeing, when as Udo continued to run, he saw more and more signs of some knights literally dragging their comrades with them, essentially trying to will them along.

What Udo didn't realize in that moment was that these men were experiencing a sort of post traumatic stress that was up until now unknown to many if not, anyone in the world. To have lived their lives believing in a higher power that they never expected to see was one thing that they could handle, but what they had all experienced was something else entirely. True, living in a world dominated by shinobi afforded many the ability to see talking animals and otherworldly beings akin to what they worshiped but those things, those creatures were always regarded as just a step above or below humans. A well armored knight and especially a chakra wielding shinobi could be potentially on even level with them, but this, those two beings that they had just been in the presence of were different. They weren't barbaric or wild untamed forces, they were seemingly civilized, kempt, powerful and divine in a way that was seemingly beyond the divine that the knights could imagine. The Tenouzan knights had always prayed to see their god and in the end the god that they found was so much further beyond their understanding. While even scholars had imagined what a first contact could be, few could imagine that the mere brush of it would leave civilized humanity as feeling so insignificantly small and pointless.

Running clear into Saint Isamu's Square, Udo finally slowed his running to turn around and witness the monstrous creature that the Pope had become. Letting out a bone chilling roar, the large draconic creature that was formally the Pope stretched out its white wings to the sky as it stood head and shoulders above the rest of Tenouza. Glowing with an internal blue force, the creature began to turn its head every which way as it searched for its prey before it finally looked in Udo's direction. Udo looked around and noticed that he could probably count the number of knights that had made it out with him and he knew in his gut that the Pope was cognizant enough to know that Udo was the target that he wanted. Slow and unsure of its steps in the way that a newborn might have been, the creature roared again and began to move in Udo's direction. Udo turned to run but as he did, everything turned red and the morning sky crackled with lightning despite the day being devoid of any clouds.

Not seeing the field of energy before he bumped into it, Udo was knocked to his feet as he looked to his left and his right and realized that the barrier seemed to stretch all around him, and as far as he could see, he saw semi-translucent red walls of energy that began to quarter off and block all ways out of the Square and so far as he could surmise, the city. Hearing another rumbling of lightning, he quickly got to his feet and looked up at the sky as instead of clouds creating the phenomena, the sky itself seemed to be entrapped in the crimson box just as much as the land was. Having stopped as well, the draconic Pope looked up at the sky and roared at the barrier and as Udo looked to where it was roaring at in particular, he noticed that a black hole in the sky appeared and then began to flicker as it expanded and changed from black to white, to that of a flash of color that he couldn't quite make out from his vantage point.

While he couldn't make out just what was happened in the space above the Pope, he did clearly make out that from the hole in the sky, discernable streaks of light began to rain down on the creature, at first starting like gentle rain, the Pope ignored the beams of light and shrugged them off, as it began to move towards Udo, but then the beams of light became larger and brighter and one after another began to crash down with such a force that even what buildings were left standing began to crumble under their weight. One large light in particular crashed down onto the back of the Pope and nearly caused him to stumble. Udo didn't know it now but this would be one of the last memories that he'd have of the once proud leader, a once proud leader being reduced to a wild and crazed creature of the field to be slain.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Waking up, Kitsune might have wanted to be comfy in her very fluffy bed, perhaps with a knocking at her door for questions about orders needing to be given or without a full agenda for the day. Unfortunately Kitsune was forcefully woken from her slumber in a way that was jarring at best and traumatic at worst. There was no gentle tapping on her shoulder or even the birds to greet her, there was only the scene of her talking to her subconscious and then her eyes were blinking back the brightness of the realm that Miro had dragged her in. Seeing Miro, Sukejuro and the other shinobi that had managed to be in the bar at the same time as her might have filled her with a sense of thankfulness, but Kitsune hardly had a moment of reprieve as she and all the others were suddenly pulled by an invisible force from the safe space that Miro had gotten them to, to that of a meeting room that was far more grand than any of them had seen before. It was like a dream, one that just so happened to include not only her friends but also her foes. It might have been called a nightmare of sorts had it not been for the automatically inquisitive nature of her eyes picking up far more than was let on.

Equally displaced, Miro and Sukejuro were no doubt relieved to have a living Raikage, though if a small part of Miro didn't panic at the idea of having to be made Raikage by matter of being the current longest tenured Sennin then she might have been lying to herself. Miro had done everything possible that she could to secure safety for the entire group and yet even with her command of the void, she was helpless to stop them all from literally being plucked into this new space. The eyes of the Uchiha ever observant, even if Miro did speak in protest at the seeming way that the golden and silver clad beings didn't acknowledge them, her eyes would have surely picked up on the fact that these beings were powerful in a way that defied all logic. True, between Kitsune, Miro and Sukejuro, all had seen and fought against powerful foes, but these two beings who treated them as parents might have an errant child, hardly seemed human as they were clearly flesh and bone but also equally beings of pure chakra. Or at least that's what rational thought might have tried to tell them. Truly, the beings were even beyond that, a source of energy that was more akin to what they commonly called a sage's Natural or Cursed Energy yet it was pure.

As quickly as the court case might have gone though, it was over and then they were back where Miro had transported them, the experience mostly remembered for the jarring nature of it and the unforgettable sound and experience of being stretched and pulled apart, as if the very essence of them was being pulled apart and reconstructed at an atomic level. "What just happened?" It was one of the shinobi that was originally with Kitsune that spoke up first, and then others joined them. Even with a call for order and silence had been issued, what came next was something that instantly pulled them all back to attention. Suddenly the ground beneath them began to disappear yet instead of falling, all of them found themselves standing upon a red semi-translucent glass-like material overlooking a city that a knowing shinobi of Kumo would have quickly identified as the center of Tenouza.

The questions seemed to stop for a moment before one of the shinobi, an obvious Hyuuga pointed at something just emerging from the large domed building beneath them, it was a large white and blue dragon like creature from the looks of it and it quickly began to thrash about. "What's that?" As if knowing, the view beneath them shifted slightly and expanded some more as a sound like glass starting to crack could be heard by them all. Starting from the edge of their view, the cracks began to speed up in their patchy web before one large chunk of the dimensional glass gave way and what soundproofing that came with it gave way as well. As the chunk fell and nearly hit the creature, it looked up at them and roared, and with the gaping hole just a few meters away from them, the one's nearest to the hole reached towards their ears to shield them but the roar still proved deafening. Only proving to accelerate the shattering of the viewing glass, there were precious few moments to prepare themselves before the glass-like structure gave way and they all were hurtling towards the open maw of their next fearsome foe.

Spoiler: The Raikage and an Assassin walk into a bar...

The Academy
Kumogakure
…The early hours of the morning...

All things considered, Rei and Hon were transported back into a somehow less precarious situation than the others in terms of their own personal safety. Still, the situation that they were faced with proved to be one that required a lot more finesse than punching and kicking things, or so it seemed. Reassembled, Rei unlike the others had her own sensation about the events to consider due to her mechanical nature. To have been pulled apart and then back together was one thing, but with her systems always working so long as she had a power source, her take on the interdimensional shenanigans was that of a series of starts and stops. Those of a more biological kind would have considered all of the higher dimensional atomic shenanigans as a sensation akin to dying, but Rei might have likened it more to taking a nap or going to sleep, less dreams. Her viewpoint on things thus provided her a perfect ability to recall and replay exactly what happened in the regal room. The sights, the smells, the fact that the gold and silver clad beings had managed to control matter enough to put them all into faction matching outfits despite what they might have been been wearing otherwise.

Rei would have a lot to discuss and reflect on later but for now, she was in the thick of running and screaming children. Children that despite claiming to be on fire and to be running from flames, weren't physically. Had they been poisoned or were they under a genjutsu? As Rei moved closer and into the thick of the chaos, she'd notice through shifting vision that with one half of her vision she could see that the building was on fire physically, but equally so that that wasn't with the other half of her vision. It was a strange situation to put into words but it was almost as if she was seeing a single scene play out in two different ways side by side. It would be while analyzing the phenomena that her vision would slowly coalesce into one picture that of the physical and that of the chakra like apparitions that were ever so slightly off from their physical counterparts. As she'd watch them run, they all seemed to be running from one direction in particular, that of the stairway to the lower and basement levels. She could attempt to calm the children who weren't able to make out what was happening or she could run towards the source of what seemed to be the issue, the choice was hers but either way, there could be consequences.

Reaching the basement, Hon had to fight back the urge to want to tear up, not because he was weak of will but because his eyes simply took in too much. For him, the sequence of events might have seemed like a daydream that he couldn't get out of his head. He'd seen the gold and silver beings in a way that others like the Uchiha could have appreciated, through eyes that perceived chakra on a level that was indiscernible to most and what he'd witnessed were beings that were strangely human yet not. Completely alien in their design, they both seemed to be corporeal and still incorporeal. It was an enigma for scholars to debate surely because despite looking human on the outside, on the inside, the creatures were anything but. Such ramifications truly enlightening, Hon would be dragged back to the current moment by the sound of another explosion of the large chakra signature that he just a few paces more, only this time, he'd be close enough to see a plume of chakra shoot upwards at a high velocity before angling in a southwestern direction. The sound of the bomb starting to match the ferocity of the energy that it was kicking out, Hon had the choice of running towards the danger or attempting to protect himself by back away and running towards cover. By all logical reasoning, the bomb of sorts was about to blow and whatever time he had been away being judged by higher beings had cost him precious moments to figure out the mystery that lay just in front of him.

OOC: The "First Contact" portion isn't meant to be fully understood or explained in this event topic so while it would make sense to question it ICly. OOCly, don't overly fret if it doesn't make too much sense. XD

If you have any questions, please ask away!

First Contact = Terms like [Kosmosinium], [others], [war] and [The Fold] are what those from the Lightning Country are interpreting as being said. The gold and silver dressed beings were not speaking in any known or easily recognized language but were via some means allowing for a translation of their words.

Kitsune, Miro, Sukejuro and NPCs = In the Tenouzan Capital about to do battle with a monster sized Pope. Those that can see chakra and who have seen the Pope before would recognize the similar chakra signature confirming who it is. Those aware and unaware of who the Pope is would notice a large creature with two distinctive chakra signatures.

Rei and Hon = You're starting to see the apparitions more clearly but for Hon especially, you're seeing that the "bomb" can seemingly blow at any moment. You can choose to try to shut it down or not. For Rei, you can choose to head towards the danger or help out the children running about.

 

[Honnou]

… What?

Wait, surely this wasn’t a fever dream? No, no, no, Hon didn’t get fever dreams – but why was he suddenly able to look that far? Okay, well, his Byakugan was pretty impressive and he knew of its capabilities – the ability to gaze upon material all around him at once and to see through solid matter, not to mention its binocular ability – but since when was he able to see… well, himself? He could’ve sworn that, for a brief moment, he saw… his own, moving body in front of him. His body had, somehow moved out from his eyes – or, or, wait, that sounded ridiculous! And his body, it looked way too bright and full of glowing energy, far more visible auras than what he thought his chakra would normally exert.

… Urgh, at least the blinding light was… no, it wasn’t gone! Whatever was down there, at the basement of the Academy, it kept challenging any other source of light and color from meeting the vicinity of his all-seeing eyes. There was something else that he could see, too… the Genin looked distraught, and their energies weren’t settling anytime soon. That was right… he had just saved them from the huge fire. Hopefully, his sleeves hadn’t been injured too much-

… *Gulp*

It was a source for confusion. Were his eyes betraying him? Was he caught under a Genjutsu? His sleeves – not to mention all of his clothes – didn’t show any signs of injury from the flames. His body was still away from him, too- this was definitely an affliction thrown upon him by someone! He had to cancel it!

“…”

The Tiger Seal was performed by his two hands, but… no, this wasn’t a Genjutsu. He could still see his own chakra signature, and it wasn’t influenced by someone else’s. Was he having a mental breakdown or something? At this day and hour?

He was starting to panic… but he had to snap himself out of whatever trance he was in. He could still see his own, physical body going back into the Academy to… c-could this stop, please? Now the fire was gone, too! What the hell?!?!

As if trying to talk to a separate person, while aware that it was himself who moved ahead of his own point of view, Hon tried to snap his body out of the trance and, somehow, return his field of vision back to it. He was definitely seeing things that weren’t there, so he had to focus… his eyes were pitiful to fall for these visual tricks. If it came to Ocular Prowess, then he couldn’t let himself be stranded in this state of out-of-body existing.

That was when the world zoomed out, grabbing his point of view along with it. He saw so much of the outer areas, zooming further and further and further out until only a black void was visible… and all the different chakras in Kumo. No, further than that – he could’ve sworn that he could see the lonely monks at Raiden’s Monastery. The Spine of the World. The entrance to Heaven, and… who was that guy?

!!!

The fire was gone. His field of vision had returned to normal, now covering the area around his point of view. And his body… it wasn’t out of his eyes anymore! Touching his arms and legs hastily to reassure himself, he sighed in relief and realized that he had managed to snap out of whatever trance he was caught in – and even before having been stabbed in the back by someone! Thank goodness…

And yet… the threat from the emanating chakra at the basement of the Academy could not be ignored… and that was why he made it down here.

Down at the basement, at last. He saw too much. Even when closing his eyes to comfort himself, the images kept pouring into his brain… what were these scenes? It was like a slideshow with the added width of a panorama, and almost shocking himself frozen was the appearance of humanoids. They shone in gold and silver, almost like statues for divines made of such materials, but they were far too bright to be mere statues. They moved, too… and their motion was inhuman. It was unlike anything he had seen before, and yet he associated that inhumanity to what looked like bipedal entities with characteristics of humans and, at the same time, far from the criteria of humanity. Who… were they? Were they the ones who threw him into the trance earlier? Were they attacking the Academy?!

“!!!” The loud sound emitting from another burst of chakra woke him up again, as he once more glared at the collected clump of chakra release a plume upwards. The chakra didn’t look like an actual, physical explosion, but damn was it loud… and for a brief moment, he spotted its angular trajectory. Was it about to blow up? When would it blow up? If it would, would it take down the Academy with it? It was self-explanatory that he couldn’t let that happen, but how could he stop it? He didn’t even know what exactly it was made of, other than a shit ton of chakra!

Could he… c-could he do it? Would he be able to shut it down? There was a Technique in his arsenal which dealt with neutralizing chakra, and this bomb looked as pure chakra as anything could ever be. But would it work?

Unfortunately, the loud, ringing voice of the emitting chakra caused his skin to crawl, and it was only moments away from cracking up into an actual explosion. He could feel it down to his bones, it was definitely going to cause physical damage on the next surge! He couldn’t wait, he couldn’t, he couldn’t-

…

Spoiler: Yes, I’m giving Hon a flashback, You Can’t Stop Me

(Mother Byakkou)
(Father Yanagi)

He could still remember it. His father’s unrivaled Gentle Step burned into his memory, playing on repeat in situations like these. His father never sweated. His father never fumbled in his steps. His father never broke focus, and yet his father never stressed out. His father never tightened up, but he always stood last in their spars. Hon had trained with his Papa for years, but even now as an ANBU and with several Jutsu under his mastery… when it came to the Gentle Step, he hadn’t been able to beat his father in combat.

Every. Single. Time. He found his Tenketsu sealed up, his chakra pushed to slumber and his limbs weakened beyond action before his dear father. And somehow, despite having trained in the Gentle Step for so long, he could not measure up to his father’s skill yet. On the grassy field, lifted up by Papa after a long, tiring day of training, there was always this tranquil look on Yanagi’s face… his father never lost his cool.

… Even after beginning his training with Hoshi and adapting the Bold Step into himself, Hon was confused by his father’s words and actions. He even sought the aid of his mother’s knowledge to figure out what he lacked. He could still remember that evening, with the orange sun diving into the horizon pool and hiding behind the faraway mountains.

“Mum… I don’t get Dad.”

Those were tad worrying words to come out of Hon’s mouth, causing his mother Byakkou to look down with a mild look of awe on her face. Hon had his arms crossed tightly, almost looking upset. “He said that I had to train with Hoshi now, but I haven’t even mastered the Gentle Step yet. What if I end up losing my composure? The two Steps can’t just be meshed together easy-weasy…” It was a very difficult achievement to gain, mastering both the flow of the Gentle Step and the wave of the Bold Step – the two branches of the Jyūken, what made up their clan’s esteemed Taijutsu.

“Ohh… you’re partly right. It is difficult to master both. Even your Father hasn’t achieved such a feat… not many have,” she faintly explained, creeping up a hand to stroll over Hon’s hair before softly pinching his cheek, “But why are you complaining, my boy? You kept insisting that you wanted to train with your big bro Hoshi, and here you go~. I expect no more complaints from you-“

“B-But Muuuuuum, have I even mastered the Gentle Step yet? Hmmmggg… Dad is leagues ahead of me. I know he’s older, b-but he never even sweats, and I’m trying my best to challenge him! It’s like I’m… too weak to even make him get serious…”

“That self-loathing attitude is nothing I want to see coming out of my son’s mouth… do you hear me, Honnou?” Her sharpened voice penetrated him immediately – she noticed something bad, bad, bad growing inside of him, and with a single phrase, she killed the disease in his heart and brought him back to a clean state. He looked sad.

His mother, as sharp and quick to notice bad changes in him, quickly stroked his unique hair with a softness that only a mother could exert to her young son. “Remember that you’re only Genin. You father has had a couple decades to perfect his Gentle Step… but he always takes you seriously. Haven’t you noticed?” Widened, Hon’s pale eyes glanced up at his mother’s similar eyes, surprised to hear that his father put effort in his training.

“That’s exactly why he looks so calm and relaxed. He makes sure not to exert wild force or tightness in his strikes. No stiffness in his moves, just like I trained him long ago. Even I didn’t expect him to take my lessons into heart so strongly, but… that’s part of your dad’s charm. And more than that-“

As the setting sun left the sky darker and darker by the second…

“It’s the charm of the Gentle Step. If you can move like a blade of grass, then you will be able to cut down mountains,” she told him with confidence in her voice, knowing the lessons her parents taught her, which she helped Yanagi master back when they met as young Genin. Speaking of which, the man himself was approaching them with the setting sun behind him… his very breath never shaking.

“We absolutely believe that you can master both Branches, Honnou. Don’t be frightened by your father’s talent, for yours is even greater… your Gentle Step will definitely reach his level one day. So, for your poor mother’s sake, finish your dinner, and don’t think too much about the ‘ifs’.”

“Honnou… I am a blade of grass. I shall cut down a mountain.”

…

I am a blade of grass.

Hon had entered the Gentle Step. The bomb could destroy the Academy, and it would very likely reach his position before he could escape the basement. And for the sake of those still panicking above him, he couldn’t lose his cool… what confident member of the ANBU would ever lose their cool?

Eight Trigrams- As his hands flurried forward, standing only meters away from the clump of chakra, Hon sought to neutralize the flow of chakra and bring it to a dormant state, much akin to shutting down a person’s Tenketsu points and preventing them from infusing chakra… but this was no Tenketsu point. Therefore, his flurry of strikes – as soft and blurry as they looked – appeared to build up an auric screen in front of him.

Heavenly Guard!

The net of strikes flew across the space between him and the bomb, pushing the chakra with most of his own. He had to mentally prepare himself from the explosion, praying that his screen and his Gentle Step was anywhere near his father’s level at this point in time…

He begged… with a beating heart, he’d become a blade of grass.

WC: 1971 [MFT]

 

[Toraono Michino]

There was a certain amount of chaos that could be added to each day and it be written off as the element of unknown that one cannot predict. Rei was a woman of schedule. There was almost never a stop or start to her days with the lacking need of sleep so everything had to be done in an hourly fashion as not to lose track of time; something that even normal people had problems doing. Without that set moments of time carefully cataloged and set back against a ticking clock the cyborg would of lost her mind to the whims of what everyone perceive as “time”, long ago. Today, and for the last couple of weeks in general, there had been no “normal” for Rei. What started with her stepping in to demand a teaching role in the Academy spiraled out of control into a war with a southern province that never gave her the opportunity to start a new block of fractured time. Had this taken days? Months? Years? How long ago did she start working for the Academy? Her best friend was an ageless immortal so judging by Kitsune didn’t help anything. It was all taking a toll on her limited brain functions as the Sennin rushed as fast as her legs would carry her towards the place she thought the bomb would be. Something was beating in her chest and it concerned her to no ends since there was supposed to be a mechanical ticker in there instead of a fleshy one.

What was more concerning was that she was concerned.

The limiters on her brain were placed there with surgical-grade sealing paper and heavily powerful Genjutsu energy that are only given out to a small handful of special individuals. As Rei’s new heart pumped new energy through her remaining mortal form, the tags carefully placed on her thinking wrinkles began to burn away into an ash that became a toxin her body shifted through a fake liver as if it was little more than alcohol. The illusionary chakra slipped out of the soldier’s body through sweat on her neck, and as soon as it did, her mind became both far more clear and panicked. Those little natural instincts that tells someone “no don’t do that,” were all but screaming at her as she forced her increasingly heavy legs towards that stairwell. Then her mind broke.

Space and time came to a screeching halt again before exploding into segments of squares that flipped over to reveal a different hallway all scrambled about. Like a wooden block puzzle, the scene reorganized itself into the correct order to assemble into a gigantic room. Rei’s body exploded apart mechanically, bit by bit, before reassembling itself as if she was some kind of grisly doll. The moment the last mechanical toe clicked into its socket a white robe dawned itself upon her, tied its sash, all before some kind of force picked her up. The sensation was impeccable. Quick flashbacks of memories of her playing with dolls as a child seared itself into her waking conscious before she felt that same force gently sit Rei down in a polite position. All around her other shinobi from all reaches were set down, impossibly fast, one by one. It was done in a way that was both slowly and as if someone had pressed a fast-forward button at the same time. Her stunned eyes turned to see across from her those ilk that they were currently in war with, dressed in the same robes as her own, but red. Then, as if someone flicked on a light for this puppet play, the room came to life.

Smells she had never smelled before or probably ever would again invaded her senses. The robes clad against her naked form were of a fabric that replicated a feel that could not be described. Long straight blue hair hung around her neck before she moved her hand up to her face to see actual flesh, not wood, clinging to her bones for the first time in years. She was hallucinating. Had to be. The chakra bomb went off and this was that weird pre-death hallucination that people went through before finally signing off. Or the culmination of hours upon hours of constant wake without rest was finally breaking past the sanity seals on Rei’s mind. The woman reached out and touched the carpet and it felt absolutely pleasurable. Creatures spoke up, and immediately the cyborg’s attention was drawn to them. Not because they spoke, but because when they did a power unlike anything else that she had ever come across rippled through the room with their strange language. This wasn’t real. Non of this was. It couldn’t be. Without a word the shinobi began to gather her feet beneath her to turn and dart away from the creatures. Logically, in her panicking mind, the further away from them, the closer she was to sanity. However, before the solider could even begin to show her prowess in movement a heavy clawed hand gently rested against her shoulder.
“Don’t. Just wait,” it said with a soft hiss, “This will be over soon,” and with that the claw was gone along with the memory of it happening; just a heavy suggestion in her mind to sit back down…so she did. Someone else attempted to rise against the dual creatures as they attempted to explain themselves, and as if flicking a gnat, the Tenozan was put literally back in her place by that same invisible force that assembled Rei. It was the last thing she needed to see before realizing that, dead or not, they were dealing with something far beyond humanity’s collective comprehension. Lightning was heavily founded on the basis that gods existed in their land, or at least used to, and had once roamed with the very humans they created side-by-side until it became more of a problem than was necessary to deal with. Until this very moment, Ryuu Rei had never once believed in gods or extraterrestrial beings of Space and Time. She was a woman of science and saw everything had their own start, middle, and finish. What had been considered “gods”, to her, was most likely just super powerful humans living beside weak ones. It had been this way in Lightning for as long as she had been alive and long before then too. Some people just had a greater control of Chakra, and they were rare in their lands.
In this world, that she could somehow perceive in its totality, an unknown gift was graced upon her mind; infinity. It was the only thing she could call it, as she gazed upon the Silver and Gold as they mentioned what her brain could only translate as a precious resource, and that they were getting in the way of harvesting it. Then something about a higher or equal source of creature aside from themselves, and a conflict within their own realm brewing against the back-drop of the cosmos. These creatures were disappointed with them, for a reasoning she could only imagine had to do with the bombs, and as quickly as everything was put together and explained, it was just as quickly taken back apart after a stern warning.

The world exploded into squares again that flipped back over to the burning building. Rei watched calmly as flesh was ripped away from her body and painful mechanical pieces were once again inserted back into her body. She took a firm note that parts of her body being reassembled were clearly not mechanical, and that was yet another mystery on top of everything else. The old beat up jacket, plain t-shirt, and jeans she was wearing wrapped itself back around her body in parts until it formed back into how it had been as the squares shuffled around and once again and reconnected to form the scene of her world once more. Just as confusing as before, the world was split into fire on one side, and in a state of anxious calm in the other. With a grunt of new pain the cyborg tried to throw it all away as her brain remembered what was happening, and willed her body to continue moving forward before her eyes caught a group of children running towards her. In one half of her vision some where on fire and others were running from that fire; the other half they were just running and screaming from what could have been an illusion.

Rei really wished she had thought to go-go gadget a mirror in her arm to see if she had grown a Sharingan in the left eye.

Under a normal circumstance the Cyborg of Kumogakure, freshly appointed Sennin and teacher of such children for barely a week would have done what was necessary: her duty. They were here to learn how to survive, and if they couldn’t survive such a trivial matter as an illusionary invisible future fire, then how could they expect to survive on the field? The steel of her old heart would of just said “make the logical move.” She needed to get down to the bomb, stop it, and make sure that no more harm than this came of everyone else. In the woman’s chest this time, instead, was her very own human heart that had regenerated itself during that original shutdown. A gift of power locked deep within her own genes that could only be unlocked by meeting special conditions. It leaped in fear at the thought of these precious young dying to such a horribly random twist of fate. Her wooden hands closed into fists creaked as she fought against her logical side in which way to waiver.

Rei shot past the children, turned her back towards the stairwell, and closed the eye that couldn’t see the fire before ripping her jacket off to throw it over the child on fire before crouching down to pat the fire off the kid. After a few quick pats she quickly drew her hands together to form a number of handseals that activated that limited quantity of chakra stored in her coil. She felt it rushing up her stomach, up her throat, and out of her mouth as a torrent of water that she used to clear the flames her left eye could see heading to the exit. She then lifted the child that had been on fire within her coat and did the unthinkable: run away. As she past the other children her hands reached down and grabbed them too as her heart painfully beat within her chest. Would she make it? Did she have enough time to get them to safety? Was someone else attempting to deal with the bomb? Rei wasn’t sure and for the first time in her life didn’t care. All that mattered was saving as many of these poor children as she could as her eyes tunneled visioned the exit with kids in tow under her wooden arms. She launched herself out of the exit and landed, turning on heel fast as she could to form another set of seals and slam her hands against the ground in a roar of chakra to create a barrier between everyone inside and the thing that was bound to explode any second now.

She only hoped her change of heart was for the better…

[Techniques Used: D-Rank Water Ninjutsu; Rinse Off/A-Rank Non-Elemental Ninjutsu; Nature's Guard w/o Elemental Affinity]