Chương 12: Chapter 9

Tea Country Ryoma, Recently Promoted Ninja Gaku woke up by the end of the second day, recovering from the one-two punch of having two limbs broken, many more fractured, and his entire body covered over in ugly purple bruising. So not really a one-two punch and more like… many consecutive punches. The metaphor was falling apart the more he thought about it. Now, if he was a civilian, a broken arm would take a good… two months to be not-broken anymore, and potentially up to a year to recover its full strength.

Chakra, the helpful stuff that it was, would naturally bolster recovery simply by being present in the body. Not usually to the point of battlefield-relevant regeneration, but an injury that would take a civilian one month to heal might take a ninja a week.

A ninja usually didn't have to worry about bleeding out unless the injury was exceptionally traumatic, infection was usually only a worry with particularly filthy wounds, and many of the most common poisons and diseases were something most ninja could push through without too much trouble. Poisons that worked at all against ninja either specifically targeted chakra networks, or were so hilariously lethal that it didn't matter anyways.

Broken limbs would usually heal back correctly even without putting them in braces, and much of the wear of age took substantially longer to set it. Having a stronger, healthier body produced more chakra. Chakra in-turn naturally facilitated health and strength in an organism in all kinds of little ways. It was pretty nice that way. People who didn't actively use chakra, such as the massed levy-armies of samurai and daimyos, might just die from getting a minor cut and infection setting in.

A Samurai could usually laugh off a severed arm and beat you to death with it. Of course, none of this applied if you were suffering from chakra exhaustion and had thrown your internals out of whack. This is why the first thing most nin-medics did after stabilizing a patient was to simply refill their chakra reserves back up to stable levels so it could start circulating and facilitating the recovery of the body on its own. All of this to say, Ryoma expected the man to be combat-worthy in a week.

He'd have to come to a decision soon about whether or not he wanted to pass along some info. Typically something rather frowned upon in ninja-society, but the information Ryoma had in mind wasn't treasonous. Certainly it's something that would only help Sunagakure in another… fifteen years or so, maybe. Of course, if he shared it, that would be drawing a lot of heat down on him that he'd really prefer to not have… He'd figure it out eventually, in the meanwhile he'd finish up Mari's replacement arm.

Carving it during his shifts on nightwatch and keeping everything sealed up until it was ready. He wasn't sure if she could produce chakra strings or not, but pushing chakra into something that was directly attached to you was much easier, so it probably wouldn't be hard for her to figure out. The frame would be carved out and everything linked up via ball-joints soon enough, he really just had finishing touches left to do.

From there he'd hand off the scroll and some instructions about using it and if she decided to reveal the thing in front of the Konoha team, it would be on her head instead of his. Yup, nothing to do with him, he'd be blameless. This way the Kazekage would be mad at someone else and he'd be free to skip off back home. He considered putting a weapon in it, but that could probably wait for an actual commission or something.

Gaku had woken up and was in the middle of talking to his genin team, something Ryoma would politely stay away from in case they were exchanging sensitive information and didn't want Suna hearing.

"Uhm…" Came a call from the side, Ryoma turned his head towards the source of the voice. Lady Ikeda, clad in her travel-dress and half-leaning on the side of the noble cart, looked over to him. They had stopped for lunch, and he was in the middle of eating a delicious portion of rice, canned meat, and baked sweet potato. She had lost a fair bit of weight since the journey started, the only real evidence of her once-chubby state being the roundish face.

He took another bite, a transformation applied over his form maintaining the illusion of the face-mask. In actuality, the face-mask had been untied and lowered around his neck. Lady Ikeda briefly pulled back at the sight of him eating through a mask, before shaking her head.

"Yesh?" He asked through a mouthful. She stared for a few moments more, before shaking her head and returning to some prior point.

"I uhm, I wanted to ask you about something…" He continued to chew, nodding briefly to indicate he was listening but not verbally replying. She twiddled her fingers for a few moments, looking around before eventually deciding to keep her gaze on the ground.

"The- uhm- b-bodies of those bandits…"

"Hm!" He hummed in response, chewing and swallowing the bite as he did.

"I suppose you're wondering why I took them?"

"Ah- yes." Lady Ikeda confirmed, glancing up at him and then back down again. She was all nervous, he supposed it was a bit distasteful to talk about corpses.

"Well… there's a number of reasons, but the biggest one.." Ryoma nodded his head back and forth, thinking about it for a moment before coming to an answer.

"Well, someone has to bury them." She blinked at him, tilting her head with a little look of concentration.

"You took them to bury…?"

"Mhn." He nodded.

"It's not exactly a clever answer, but if we simply passed them by, the bodies would just rot away until someone else comes by and gets rid of them. Maybe they throw them into the river, maybe feed them to pigs, maybe something else. But the bodies are there because I had a fight, and leaving messes around for other people to clean up is something I try to avoid." He reached up to scratch at his ear, tilting his head and closing his eyes as he did.

"I don't have the time to get them buried at the moment, I'm currently protecting you as per our contract, but I have the storage capacity for the bodies and Suna has a corpse-processing division. I'll bring them back and hand them over for them to handle. They'll probably use the bodies for medical practice, then hold a little funeral and light a candle for them."

"It's not exactly the best end, but it's better than rotting out here. It doesn't take much effort on my part to facilitate all that, so there's no real reason for me not to." Ryoma shook his head.

"There's a few other, smaller reasons too, but that's the big one. Someone has to make sure they get buried, it might as well be me. Especially since I'm the one who killed them."

"... You are very kind, aren't you?" Lady Ikeda asked quietly, staring at him with some expression he couldn't parse. Ryoma responded with a rolling snort, amused by the statement.

"It's the barest courtesy I could show- not enough to call myself 'kind' by it at least. I'm just trying to avoid being an Inconsiderate Horseman."

"Inconsiderate Horseman?"

"Mhm. The Inconsiderate Horseman does not take the time to go around the field, driving his horse straight through and trampling the crops under its hooves simply because he is in a hurry and has the power to do so." Ryoma relayed the little parable, taking another bite of his food after and finishing through a mouthful.

"He is neglectful and short-sighted, and causes a great many problems for himself when he returns from war and finds a famine."

"Ah- that sounds like a saying from the Buddhas, though not one I'm familiar with." Lady Ikeda admitted, leaning back and letting her legs dangle off the edge of the cart.

"It would be very strange for you to be familiar with it." Ryoma nodded with a grin in his voice.

"I just made it up." As per the custom, the bubbly noblewoman collapsed into another fit of giggles at his antics. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. —"Took you a bit to wake." Ryoma said quietly, greeting the cart-ridden Konoha Jonin late into the night.

"I figured I'd give you some time to talk to your team privately before I came over for a briefing." Gaku Inuzuka, face covered in field-bandages and skin still a bit pale from flushing out whatever that toxin he had been hit with was, gave a tiny nod in greeting.

"I appreciate the courtesy, Braggart. I've already been caught up on the situation from my team, but I suppose you'd need info on the woman, wouldn't you?" Ryoma nodded, sitting down on the side of the cart and leaning against one of the posts that held up the roof.

"I'd appreciate whatever you know, in case we come across her again."

"Well I figured out who she was about halfway through the fight." Gaku grunted, leaning up in a slightly annoyed fashion.

"Ogress Omatsu is an alias- her real name is Kuchisei Kei, B-rank ninja of Iwa, last seen running away from Battle of Bald Field." Ryoma hummed at that.

"That was the final major battle of the war, wasn't it? The battle that prompted the Iwakage to declare a full withdrawal."

"It was." Gaku nodded, flinching briefly at the pain of moving something wrongly in his neck.

"The fact that she's all the way down here? I didn't see a headband on her, so she's probably here on an undercover mission. If she's here trying to collect nobles for that bounty… There's a lot of potential reasons for that."

"It's hard to determine much more than that- from our current intelligence." Ryoma mused, reaching up to rub at his chin.

"B-rank you said? That sounds about right from what your ninken partner told me, it's not that she's all that strong on her own, it's just that she had the tools to handle you in specific."

"It's the poison that's hardest to deal with." Gaku grumbled, leaning back.

"By the time I figured it out, I was already weakened enough that she could handle me. If I were to fight her again right now, I'd win." Ryoma raised his brows.

"You're that confident huh? You're still pretty badly injured, you know."

"I have two closed breaks and a handful of hairline fractures. That's not nearly enough to slow me down." Gaku rolled his eyes.

"No- the only issue against her is that poison, like I said. She needed a sample of my blood in order to tailor it to my biology, otherwise she'd poison herself with the gas. My team could probably take her down now that we know that. Hell- I bet Asuma alone could."

"Well, don't get too confident, that's how we ninja get killed." Gaku made a huffing sound at that, but didn't disagree.

"A week till we reach the capital then? I should be up and moving by then."

"About that much time." Ryoma nodded.

"Your team has already filled you in on naked boom man, right?"

"Keh-heh." Gaku laughed softly, restraining a flinch at the pain of laughter.

"Yeah, they told me. From how they described him, he's a shoo-in for Iwa's Explosion Corps, more evidence that this is an undercover mission and not a missing-nin situation."

"Or they went missing-nin at the same time." Ryoma pointed out.

"Or that." He acknowledged easily.

"I don't expect the difference to really matter either way, in this case. Any qualms over who gets the bounty for her?" Ryoma shrugged.

"Whoever ends up turning in the body I suppose. No real reason to quibble over it." Gaku considered that for a moment, sending a brief glance over at the still-unconscious form of Mari.

"Well… If Konoha ends up cashing in the bounty, I'd like to send it over to Suna and your partner here. It's my fault she ended up losing that arm."

"Your fault?" Ryoma raised his brows.

"From what I heard, it was Ogress who bit it off."

"That's right to some degree, at least." Gaku shook his head.

"Kei had me grappled and was doing her best to rip me apart- Fangirl here doesn't have a discriminate wind-jutsu, so moved into taijutsu range to break me loose. Keeping that big iron fan of hers held back to avoid hitting me- next thing I know Kei's torso opens up a mouth from hell and takes a bite out of her." He growled softly, closing his eyes and leaning back.

"It was good enough for me to flail and get free, which means I owe her for the missing arm. I don't like to leave debts around, it's bad karma." Ryoma took that in, nodding slowly in response.

"Well… I'm sure she'll be glad for the courtesy then. Nice of you, Longclaws."

"Grhm. Don't talk about it. I've got a reputation to keep, you know?" Gaku grumbled, shaking his head before cracking open an eye.

"What I'm more concerned with is this bounty- five million per head isn't something just anyone can afford."

"Or it's a scam and Laughing Smoke doesn't intend to pay up." Ryoma pointed out.

"Or that." Gaku acknowledged.

"Still, putting aside the matter of payment, I don't know what he's trying to achieve with an open bounty like this. At best he manages to get a handful of nobles killed before someone gets mad enough to put in a specific mission-order to hunt him down. Probably to Konoha considering the proximity. Pulling down this much attention on himself, it's like he's just trying to pump up his bounty as high as it can go and he's already increased it with the theft of the Fire Lotus."

"Fire Lotus?" Gaku waved a little hand at that, slowly so as to not hurt himself.

"It's one of those 'legendary super herbs' that people say gives you great powers if you eat it. No actual evidence of this, but the Tea Daimyo makes a special tea from it whenever the flower starts blooming and hands it out as a gift."

"Ah- and Laughing Smoke stole it?"

"Recently yes, this whole Tea Festival we're escorting the ladies to is suppose to celebrate the bloom of the Fire Lotus, and the theft of the plant has gotten the Tea Daimyo riled up."

"Wait-" Ryoma began, sitting up a little bit at that and brows furrowing in thought.

"So… taking advantage of the increased number of nobles in the country, seeking to attend this lotus-festival, this Laughing Smoke has put an open bounty on all of them. But then why steal the lotus if you're just trying to get more nobles killed?"

"I'm not sure." Gaku grumbled, reaching up to scratch his beard.

"Laughing Smoke has never been the most lethal type- his typical wheelhouse is general theft. It's where he got his name, the only thing most people see is the smokecloud and his laughter inside as he carries out the robbery, but he usually doesn't kill while doing it."

"Hm. Anything else?"

"Nothing substantive, only rumors and exaggerations." Gaku shook his head.

"I don't think we have enough information to draw any firm conclusions yet." Ryoma sighed, shrugging in a carefree manner.

"Ah well, if it matters we'll probably learn about it later. That's typically how these big flashy plotlines go."

"What, do you think we're in a movie right now?" Gaku laughed.

"Maybe we'll tell Makino-Sensei about our valiant struggles here- inspire another big-budget production." He was referencing a somewhat famous film director, known for his high-budget action-adventure stories.

"You can't tell, he's over there filming us right now. You should wave hello." Ryoma grinned, pointing over at nothing.

"Oh there he is!" Gaku huffed, playing along with the joke with a little wave at nothing.

"Can't believe I hadn't noticed him until right now."

"I can't believe this." Ryoma shook his head sadly.

"That you never noticed our hard-working director just over to the side- didn't you see the cameras watching you fight the mouthy lady?"

"I suppose not." Gaku leaned back with a smile, closing his eyes.

"Right. I'm gonna get back to laying back and doing nothing, unless there's something else you need to bring up?"

"Hm. You want to borrow one of my books?" Ryoma asked with a raised brow.

"Oh? Yeah sure, it's something to pass the time." Gaku cracked open an eye and smirked at him. Ryoma smirked back, pulling out his scroll and pressing a thumb on one of the seals inside. Out came one of his Icha-Icha books, to which Gaku laughed, holding his ribs as he winced and chuckled. There was another seal inside the book, written boldly in the middle of the pages and containing a slip of paper. That slip of paper had a brief message written upon it, intended for the Fourth Hokage back in Konoha.

Ryoma handed the book over, Gaku grinned as he took it and flopped it around at him.

"So you're into Jiraiya-sensei's writings too, huh?"

"I picked it up recently." Ryoma shrugged with a grin, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. It was out of his hands now, both figuratively and literally. Sure the extra attention this might bring down on him was potentially troublesome- but snipping potential issues in the bud was worth the small effort on his part.

"Over in the Land of Rivers."

"Yeah yeah, sure." Gaku laughed, setting the book down in his lap.

"Welp, I'll leave you alone with your new smut." Ryoma chuckled, brushing himself off and stepping off the cart.

"Call me over when Mari wakes up- will you?"

"Can do, Braggart." And with this- the future is suddenly very uncertain. But that was the future, and Ryoma had more relevant things to worry about. Like putting the finishing touches on Mari's replacement arm. He'd let those bigger fish worry about the bigger issues.