Chapter 47

Land of Rivers

Ryoma, Jonin of Sunagakure

He was feeling rather concerned at the moment, as field commander Sho unsealed the evidence they had collected during the investigation in the middle of the courtyard. It was the morning after the battle, and men were hard at work around them cleaning up the gore and fragments.

A very tense and annoyed looking Takeda was standing before them, face glowering down at the corpses and fragments that were being laid before him. An honor-guard of samurai were flanking him, as well as standing along the damaged walls, and the well-perturbed local lord was wringing his hands nervously.

Ryoma wasn't feeling concerned about any of those things, however. His concern was on the distinctive coat that the only intact corpse was wearing.

Black, concealing, and with red cloud patterns covering its surface.

"This is all that was recovered in the wake of Jonin Tsubame's attack, Lord Takeda." Sho declared, making a sharp bow towards the client.

"Tch- so this is the assassin? Wretched thing- Make sure his remains are scattered to the wolves." Takeda waved a furious hand. "He lost his right to a proper burial by attacking the home of my father's subordinate."

"He wears the headband of the ninja…" Okade the giant horned samurai muttered, leaning forwards and looking down at the collection of body parts. "Is he known to you- Ninja?"

There was one corpse that was partially shredded, left half turned into ribbons of loose flesh, with short blond hair and tanned skin. His clothes were similarly mangled, leaving him with a mostly intact right side and a red shag carpet for a left.

There was part of a left arm present as well, an elbow and a bit of the forearm and bicep, but the skin on that arm was a half-shade lighter than the skin of the corpse. There was also a very small finger, a pinky by the looks of it, which had a painted nail.

Just from the look of it, all three body parts were from different people. The remaining hand on the corpse didn't have painted nails.

"I recognize him, unfortunately…" Sho began with a frown, crouching down and tapping at the headband on the corpse's chest. A clear Iwa headband with a notable groove torn through the middle. "It just raises more questions than it answers."

"How so?" Takeda demanded with a frown.

"Haruyo the Ballistic. He's a low-ranking missing-ninja from Iwagakure." Nagare began to explain with a slight frown. "His bounty is fifty-thousand ryo. Information released about his abilities included his proficiency in close-ranged combat and the use of earth ninjutsu."

Takeda's brows furrowed, glancing down at the corpse and then up at the ninja again. "...So- he wasn't the archer? That means there was at least two attackers then."

"At least four." Sugimoto interrupted with a frown, similarly kneeling next to the bodies and starting to prod them. "The archer, and three others."

More than Ryoma's own minimum estimate there, he was thinking of at least three. He wasn't sure where Sugimoto was getting implications of a fourth from.

"How can you tell?" Masahiro, the old samurai with a bushy mustache, asked with a frown and intense gaze.

"Haruyo has a lighter shade of skin than this arm-fragment, and all the nails of his remaining hand are unpainted…" Sugimoto began, using a gloved hand to touch and hold up the parts in question as he spoke. "The arm-fragment is a left arm, but the pinky is a right-handed pinky. This means that all of them came from different people."

"That's only three then, where's the fourth?" A younger samurai- the one with blond hair that Ryoma didn't know the name of, asked with a sharp nod of his head.

"None of these limbs have the right callouses or muscles for developed bow-use." Sugimoto explained with a shake of his head, flipping the pinky around for them to see. Sure enough, it was soft at the end and calloused in the middle of the digit. "The finger is calloused for sword or polearm use, the arm doesn't have a warped bone structure, and the last corpse has neither the correct callouses or bone warping."

Sugimoto set the finger down and stood up again, frowning down at the bodies. "None of these bodies were the ones to wield the bow against us last night."

"Meaning that this wasn't a lone assassin or random attack, Lord Takeda." Sho said with a grim tone. "This was a coordinated attack involving at least four individuals- one of which was a renegade from Iwagakure, and the others unknown in affiliation."

"The fact that they're associating with a missing-ninja at least implies that they aren't ninja from any of the Five Great Ninja Villages." Nagare spoke up right after, making a little nod. "At least, it is unlikely for them to be. We maintain a strong bias against working with renegades."

"At least you ninja do that right." The blond-haired samurai muttered with a scowl and shake of his head.

"Attacks by a large group… I suppose one of the rebellious Takeda-Giri must have hired rogue ninja to assassinate me then…" Takeda muttered softly, a worried undercurrent in his voice.

"Could they afford to hire a large group of ninja? Ninja are hardly a trivial expense for such matters as assassinations and attacks on enemy fortifications." The local lord, Yagi, asked with wringing hands and a skittish posture. "Even for simple escorts… I know my peers- their coffers are not so bountiful as to commission such a force as a small matter."

"Well…" Ryoma began, bringing attention to him. "If they were all missing-ninja, then they can't afford to be picky about jobs. They were probably hired at much lower prices than industry standard…"

Yagi stared at him for a few seconds, before tilting his head. "Ah- I apologize mister ninja, I didn't catch that through your mask."

Ryoma sighed, reaching up to remove his helmet. His pinky finger reached out with a short chakra string into the loose cloth around his neck, pulling his white veil up as he removed the helmet in one seamless motion.

He held the helmet in the crook of his arm and repeated his earlier statement, voice now carrying out loud and clear. "If they were all missing-ninja, then they can't afford to be picky about jobs. They were probably hired at much lower prices than industry standard. That's what I said."

The samurai and VIP regarded the partial reveal of his face with various degrees of surprise and interest. The local lord bowed his head slightly in an apologetic fashion. "I heard you this time, thank you mister ninja."

"There's an industry-standard for assassinations?" Tsubasa asked quietly behind him, face scrunched up.

"Based on expected levels of resistance and political ramifications, yes." Ryoma turned back to nod in her direction. Her cheeks flushed red and she jolted, looking off to the side and downwards away from his gaze.

"S-sorry."

"Why are you apologizing?" He asked rhetorically, before shaking his head and turning forwards again. "In any case- it's not impossible for them to have been hired with something other than money. Favors or promises."

"Or hired by some external rival, Lord Takeda." Okade rumbled, scowling. "The movements of your army were hardly subtle, and the attackers could have been stationed in wait for us well in advance."

"We were delayed by no more than a day at the Fuyan bridge- and there was no way of knowing that we'd travel into Yagi lands at the previous road-crossing." Takeda raised his index finger to point at the towering samurai. "Unless they've stationed assassins along all routes leading from our previous campground, it would hardly be feasible for them to have been preparing for any great length of time!"

"Which is entirely possible, Lord Takeda." Okade raised his hand, palm to the sky.

"Unless you were not their target, Lord Takeda." Ryoma stated, again bringing attention back to himself. "We have no real reason to suspect that their target was you and your men- we have no evidence to tell of their target at all, really."

"Of course they were after Lord Takeda- what else would they be here for?" The young samurai asked with a bewildered expression.

"That's the issue, we have no idea. Corpses only tell us so much." Ryoma glanced down at the body again. He really didn't have any subtle way to steer the conversation in this direction- but it was important to keep his allies informed. "What I'm concerned by is his coat."

"His coat?" Takeda asked, pulling back a bit and raising a brow.

"A black coat with red clouds- that's the symbol of the Akatsuki." Ryoma declared grimly. "I'm not sure what it means for the Akatsuki to be operating here, but I can't imagine it's anything good."

"The Akatsuki…" Nagare muttered thoughtfully. "I do not know who they are."

"A group that promotes peaceful resolutions to conflict stationed primarily in the Land of Rain." Tsubame answered, giving him a searching and slightly lost glance. "I am unsure of why Lord Ryoma connected the style of coat to that group, however."

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"Hm…" Ryoma closed his eyes, trying to come up with a way to explain any of this without being asked for evidence that he simply couldn't provide. Eventually, he simply had to settle on a temporary resolution to move the conversation along. "Well… it could be that I'm just jumping to conclusions here." He shook his head. "Don't worry about it for now- if it comes up I'll explain more then."

That didn't stop any of the hard stares his fellow jonin were giving him, but they all slowly nodded in acknowledgement. Every ninja had the occasional moment of too-much-paranoia, after all.

"It's just like such groups- claiming to promote peace while profiting from war- hypocrites, the lot of them!" Masahiro spat, mustache bristling.

"Their hypothetical allegiance matters little, ultimately." Sho declared. "We will need to be prepared for the possibility of future attackers."

"Capture the next one alive, ninja." Takeda commanded with crossed arms. "I'll have questions and words for it."

"Yes, Lord Takeda." Sho nodded.

Added complication. It wasn't like it was an unreasonable request either, so Ryoma wasn't going to get worked up about it, but it did limit many of his options in a fight.

Lucky that's what he had teammates for.

"In the meanwhile- Yagi! I'll have need of your spearmen- as many as you can spare!" Takeda snapped his fingers at the beleaguered local lord. "I'll need the forces for our march to the Chikae!"

"Yes Lord Takeda." Mister Yagi sounded very, very reluctant to agree to that. Unfortunately, his boss' heir had the immediate support of nearly two dozen superhumans and Yagi did not.

He didn't exactly have the option of refusing.

—

Tsubame's special arrows were highly technical, annoying, fiddly things to put together. What they were at their core wasn't that complicated- long spiral-groove arrows designed to release a set amount of a particular jutsu over time. The jutsu-shiki came from the shiki corps, of course, and it wasn't anything more than a sustained variant of the C-rank wind ninjutsu 'Air Cutter'.

Tsubame stored chakra in a storage seal in the back of the bolt, which was then fed through channels into the various shiki-spots along the shaft, ending at the tip with an all-round release 'valve' that had to be angled back as to not slow the arrow in the middle of the air. Pointing the release valve back like that actually meant that it picked up speed as it flew and released more of its payload, kinda like a missile.

It was a very fancy way to make an incredibly expensive missile that wasn't as generally useful or precise as a normal missile. The Great Dragon didn't use them because it didn't lack for wide-range area of effect attacks already, and thus the more precise and cheaper 'basic missiles' were slightly more useful to him.

Tsubame, who was a small squishy ninja who couldn't do normal ninjutsu anymore, needed a wide scale area of effect attack much more than the Mk2 did, hence these arrows.

Tsubame could handle most parts of making the arrow on her own- a lot of it was just carving wood, painting the appropriate shiki on, and then filling it with chakra. What she had trouble with was the chakra-storage seals themselves.

To have an appreciable 'burn time', you needed four chakra seals in an array. Tsubame could manage to balance two fine but some nebulous quality of control or experience had thus far hampered her ability to link a full four together without something self-destructing disastrously in the process of filling it up.

She still made the two-seal arrows on her own, of course, but the long-range four-seal arrows was something she needed him to finish off.

He double-checked his work, rotating the cuboid back end of the arrow a few times and making sure all the lines were in the appropriately balanced and cosmically-mandated places. He carefully poured a single mote into the seal, letting it hold for a few moments. Then he made a one handed seal and released the upper seal, but not the lower, allowing the single mote to flow up the arrow and into the shiki.

The entire arrow burst into gentle cutting winds, whipping around in spiraling gusts and trying to tug itself out of his hands. Wind Cutter took a minimum of three motes from him to do anything, and this was one mote spread across three Wind Cutters designed for sustained release. The breeze was just a sudden, strong breeze that felt a little abrasive, and that was it.

He checked the storage-array again. Still holding, still balanced, no signs of material fragmentation…

He handed it over to the waiting bodyguard-maid. "Should be good."

"Thank you, Lord Ryoma." Tsubame nodded gratefully, taking the arrow and immediately pouring chakra in. He wasn't able to tell exactly how much, but she told him once that she preferred to charge the seals at a one-per-hour rate in case of an ambush. That was about seven motes from him these days.

"What's with the 'Lord' business?" He asked, raising a brow and leaning back in his seat. They were positioned atop the Great Bolter early into the night. It had been a day since they had departed from the Yagi fortress, three hundred additional spearmen in tow, and were now well on their way to Chikae territory.

The Great Bolter lounged on the side of the mountain, now shrouded in its shadows, and overlooked the wide farming-valley now to their south. The ninja of Suna rested atop its back and readied for night-watches, and the songs of cicadas surrounded them utterly.

"Does it irritate you, Lord Ryoma?" She asked, storing the arrow away with the application of the 'seal' shiki on her right glove.

"Irritate is probably too-strong of a word for it." Ryoma mused, absentmindedly picking at his teeth with his crystal necklace. "It's certainly noticeable. I'm a little bit bugged by it."

"Good, you should be irritated more often." She declared, making him send an unimpressed glance over to her. Her eyes twinkled in humor. "You dismiss it less often than praise."

"I don't dismiss praise, I just know the actual limitations of what I make." Ryoma waved his hand in denial.

"Every time you achieve something you set your standards further ahead. It's a wonder your feet haven't gotten up and left you with how little you regard them."

"That's actually entirely false." Ryoma raised his index finger in a lecturing manner. "I haven't actually changed my standards ever, you just don't know where they are."

Tsubame stared at him for a few quiet moments, before nodding slowly. "Does Chunin Yuki meet your standards, or are you merely humoring her affections?"

Ryoma exhaled in a humored huff. "I didn't realize she had any deeper affections for me. Not like this, at least."

"I believe she's had affections for you from the moment you met." Tsubame scowled mildly. "I- I am not the best judge of such things, however. You would need to seek a specialist."

What kind of 'specialist' would that even be? A love-guru? Moreover…

"How would you know? I met Toyoko before I met you." Ryoma raised a brow at the ninja who lived in his closet.

"We have had a few conversations before. One such conversation involved her first meeting with you." Tsubame inclined her head. "She entered your home without taking her boots off, accidentally accused you of impersonating a member of the ANBU, and went home unable to stop thinking about you and your delinquent teasing."

"You're making it sound a lot more flirty than I remember it being." Ryoma huffed. "I was sure she hated me for a good few weeks there, I just didn't really care either."

"And you failed to notice her growing affections in the years since?"

"Well I-" He cut himself off, pressing his lips together. "I suppose I wasn't really surprised by it either… I just didn't have any expectations of a relationship."

He leaned back all the way, staring up at the sky.

"I keep getting surprised that people want to be around me, is all it is." The statement hung in the air for a few moments before he continued.

"I don't go to parties, I don't drink, I'm not a foodie… I don't really have any hobbies beyond my work with puppets, and I don't go out to interact with others except for work related reasons." He shook his head. "I'm a pretty boring guy, I think. I don't really get why she'd decide to try a relationship with me."

He stared at the moon for a few moments, and the image of a pale goddess flashed in his mind. His frown deepened.

"I suppose I don't know her very well."

"...You're just humoring her then?" Tsubame asked with a slight frown.

Ryoma thought it over, lips quirking. "...Well, I can't say that I'd dislike the idea of being with her. She's attractive and enjoyable to be around. But I…" He paused, then nodded. "I don't know her as well as I should, if I'm going to be dating her. I should probably fix that when we get back."

"I don't really get why she likes me, but I like her well enough to try and find out."

"That's a very decisive answer."

"You can refrain from sassing me, you know?"

"I know, Lord Ryoma."