Chương 19: Chapter 14

Tea Capital Ryoma, Recently Promoted Ninja"That's the lighthouse then?" Ryoma asked aloud, standing on a little rowboat with four other ninja. A large scroll was carried on his back, part of his preparations from earlier. The island was as the scouting team had initially reported, perhaps three miles at the widest, lightly forested, covered primarily in hardy grass and rocky outcrops.

There was a winding path leading up from a beach facing their direction, that visibly wound its way up along the island until finishing in a large wooden tower with tiered roofs. As the only 'distraction' unit, he was the only one on the boat that wasn't currently under the effect of a transformation. The others were doing their best impression of barrels at the moment. The only other 'person' on the rowboat, the Amenin, was disguised as a regular fisherman.

"Yeah… that's the one." The barrel on his left whispered in the Kirinin's growling voice. Ryoma made a small sound of understanding, stepping back on the boat to reach down and grab the 'barrel'. By the feel of it, he had taken hold of the shoulder and under the knee. He hefted the barrel up, then tossed it over the side and allowed it to sink under the water. Somewhere beneath the shady waves, the Kirinin would shed the Transformation and make his way to the island under the water.

Stealth insertions were always like this. He stepped over to the second barrel, the Iwanin, and did the same. Hefting the foreign shinobi up and tossing him overboard, letting the second barrel sink into the water. The Iwanin had been twitching murderously the entire time he had been handled, which was amusing. He didn't even blink as the third barrel moaned, only rolling his eyes as he hefted the disguised Taninin and tossed her overboard as well. A big splash later and the 'barrel' began to sink.

He was familiar enough with the female body to know that nothing he grabbed was an erogenous zone, she was just trying to fuck with him some more. Ah scantily clad ninja woman, a shame you were a potential assassin. Also a shame that he was probably a bit too young for carnal relations, maybe in a few years or something. The Amenin continued to row, bringing them ever-closer to the mostly-rotten docks of the mostly-abandoned island.

The sand here was of rougher particulate than desert sand, more water-fragmentation than wind-smoothed grain. His sand techniques would be somewhat less efficient than normal with it, probably not enough to actually matter though. If your Jutsu involves moving sand around, having smoother grains made it easier to move, it was as simple as that. Less Friction. It was probably close enough to the island that he could water-walk over to it. If he knew how to water-walk, that was.

A somewhat more advanced chakra control and mobility technique compared to the relatively simple wall-walking, people who mastered it could walk on water. There wasn't much water in Suna to practice, so Ryoma hadn't gotten around to learning it yet. He was, therefore, just going to be quiet and patient as the Amenin rowed up to the shore close enough for him to jump out. If they abandoned him here, he was just gonna have to learn water-walking really damn quick.

He clipped the earpiece radio on as they finished their approach, the rowboat gently tapping against the side of the rotten wood frame.

"Thanks for the ride." He waved at the disguised Amenin.

"I don't know what you want with this place- and I don't care for it." Amenin shook his head, pretending to be a fisherman.

"I'll be hanging off the coast for you to finish your business, but I'm gone by sundown, you hear?"

"I hear." Ryoma pushed the boat away with his foot, standing carefully on the rotten dock before making his way to the actual shore. While he walked, he recounted the tactical considerations of the upcoming battle. Unknown territory, little information on target, inherently untrustworthy allies, assigned to the diversionary force, hidden techniques already revealed to the enemy, chakra reserves full, sufficiently fed and hydrated. Total hours of sleep over the past three days? Nine.

He stepped onto the shore, swinging the 'scroll' off his back and planting it on the ground. He then pulled out the red scroll on his belt, throwing it open and letting a cloud of smoke engulf them. A second, smaller puff of smoke occurred within the cloud, as the scroll dispelled the illusion to reveal that it was himself, quickly climbing into the cramped interior frame of the Wood Dragoon before the smoke dissipated.

The sand clone, earpiece on and outside of the shoddy wooden mini-mech, raised its fingers and sent five strings out to connect. The other hand raised in a one-handed seal. This one handed seal was a complete bluff. It wasn't doing anything. He gave his clone a standing order to follow behind him, maintaining the strings and the handseal in case he suddenly needed either. A puppeteer couldn't lift 'themselves' with their chakra strings.

They could lift a puppet around willy-nilly, up to a point, but you couldn't stand on a plate and then levitate by pulling that plate up. That was one of the biggest reasons that operating the Wood Dragoon was so clunky, because it had to stay grounded while he operated it, only leaping and moving under its own physical motions. With the 'anchor point' of a sand clone to stay grounded for him, the Wood Dragoon was significantly more mobile.

It could jump around like a more normal puppet, at the cost of leaving a clone exposed and vulnerable to attack. He still needed to control the sand clone, of course, so it wasn't a perfect solution. It was, however, much better than not having that additional 'anchor' point. It was one of those limits that didn't have an easy work-around. If he was inside the puppet, it was going to be less agile. If he was outside the puppet, it would be more agile.

The best compromise was having a disposable clone on the outside of the puppet to occasionally pull himself around with. Inside the Wood Dragoon, he went through the handseals required to perform Sand Transformation again. The beach-sand flowing up to cover the Wood Dragoon's surface in a thin but condensed layer, which then shifted into a dull grey hue. Twenty Six.

Another set of handseals and the current picked up around his frame, a bubble of cycling air that both cooled and gently repelled anything from outside the bubble. Twenty Four. Defenses online, optic links online, anchor point online. He used to recite that stuff out loud when he was younger- it was really cool to pilot his own mech! Nowadays he was significantly more restrained and only muttered them under his breath as he got the Wood Dragoon in full working order and the smoke around them dissipated.

"Suna ready to go loud." Cloma spoke quietly through the earpiece. A few moments passed.

"... Rest of the team isn't in position yet. Hold your position." Nonplussed, Cloma lowered his hand and resumed his handseal, expression somewhere between exasperation and acceptance. He probably should've been expecting that, he didn't really need to move as far as everyone else did, so it was only natural that he'd be ready to move out long before the others. Feeling somewhat funny, his clone and the Wood Dragoon turned to look at each other, shrugs exchanged over the topic at hand.

The unspoken majority of all missions, the waiting for things to happen. A minute or two passed with him standing on the beach, patiently waiting for the others to get into position. A massive puff of smoke along the side of the slope leading forwards brought his attention snapping towards it. Cloma's eyes widened as a bullet-train sized larvae barreled out of the smoke, sliding down the hill directly towards him. Far faster than any grub of that scale had any right moving.

He jerked his hand to the side, across his torso, and flipped upwards. The massive, speeding larvae angled its mandibles towards him, even as he ascended. Pulled by chakra-strings both external and internal, the Wood Dragoon's thousand-pound haymaker smashed into the side of the titanic grub like a car smashing into the side of a semi-truck, but significantly more effective than that would normally imply.

The titanic grub made a noise somewhere between a scream and a dial-up internet connection as its tremendous head jerked to the side, the rest of its long wormlike body bunching up behind it and carving great grooves in the earth.

"I'm being engaged by a summon." Cloma called out through the radio, landing briefly on the grub and tugging his hand again. Up then forwards. The Wood Dragoon did an entirely-too-acrobatic flip for a frame of its weight, ending in a double-foot dropkick in the recovering grub-face. This sent the grub reeling again, giving time for Cloma to jerk his hand back, pulling the Wood Dragoon back before leaping off the grub to follow. Taller arc for the Wood Dragoon, to delay its landing until after Cloma landed.

Movement at the landing site. Ryoma twitched his fingers, rotating the torso of the Wood Dragoon around, facing entirely backwards in the air, and arms raised. Another twitch of the fingers and the kunai launchers engaged. Kethunkkethunkkethunkkethunkkethunkkethunk- Six explosions cleared the landing zone of movement. Puffs of smoke followed. Random corpses littered the field. Cloma landed with a roll, catching the Wood Dragoon before it landed on its own and potentially shattered its knees in the process.

A much gentler landing had it skid along the sand for a few meters, kicking up waves of dust in the process. Ryoma pulled his fingers from the Wood Dragoon and immediately started a set of handseals. The mouth of the tin-plated mask opened wide. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"Wind Release: Wind Cutter!" Cloma roared out, doing his best to draw attention. He shifted his fake handseal while doing so, to emphasize the bluff. Twenty One. A massive vertical arc of cutting wind burst out of the Wood Dragoon's mouth, tearing a line in the beach, then the rocks and grass of the shore, then all the way up to the barely-recovered giant grub.

Another scream of shrill cacophony and something akin to biological static as the massive grub had a massive gash torn in its side, spraying putrid looking bug-blood and making the entire thing stagger back. A moment later, the titanic grub disappeared in a puff of smoke, retreating to wherever it had been summoned from. He was way more reliant on chakra for heavy-hitting attacks than he'd really like to be, something to be solved in the mk2 Dragoon.

Ryoma's fingers reconnected with the Wood Dragoon, the mask sliding shut and a three-directional view returning to him.

"Summon banished. Attackers defeated, Six corpse-clones. Is everyone in position?" Cloma asked over the radio, eyes peeled for another unexpected attacker. Nothing immediately obvious, but that meant nothing for dealing with ninja.

"... Affirmative, engage at leisure." Marvelous.

"It's just like I thought." A voice called out from a distance. A nearby hill suddenly shifted color and texture to be fluffy and white instead of rocky and green as massive wings lifted. A massive moth, this one blending into the surface of the hill with some sort of camouflage technique, revealing the form of Laughing Smoke in the shadow of its wings. He was significantly more composed this time around, not a single hint of chuckling or humor on his face.

Only the bottom half could be seen, the top half of his face concealed by wild, wavy bangs of ethereal white.

"You're a cut above the rest, ninja of Sunagakure..." Oh, it looked like they've reached his favorite part of the fight. The banter.

"I wouldn't say that." Cloma called back, fingers twitching as the Wood Dragoon stomped forwards to stand nearby, hunched over defensibly.

"Honestly speaking, I'm pretty average as far as ninja go." Fucking Rinnegan.

"Humble doesn't suit you, ninja of Suna." Laughing Smoke refuted with a tilt of his head. The immense moth behind him flapped its wings once, scattering white fluffy particles all around. If it was a particle-based toxin or genjutsu, it wouldn't affect the sand clone and it wouldn't reach him behind the air convection bubble.

"That puppet of yours, that's no common weapon. Anyone who wields it so deftly is no common warrior."

"The Wood Dragoon?" Cloma smirked, amused, tilting his head over to the immense wooden frame standing next to him.

"It's a ramshackle mess, sloppy and inefficient, full of design compromises and objective flaws. It's mostly just a gimmick, anyone competent could tear it apart. My Bolters though- now that's a design worth talking about." Laughing Smoke wasn't laughing.

"Gamaru was defeated in two blows. Gako, three. A small army of my doppelgangers? One." Who the fuck was Gamaru and Gako? The summons maybe? Cloma shrugged.

"It's more likely that you're just not as strong as you think you are, if an average guy like me is giving you so much trouble." Laughing Smoke's face was completely blank, but Ryoma could tell exactly what he was thinking. It was almost enough to make him giggle. Cloma threw the Wood Dragoon forwards the moment Laughing Smoke began to fly through handseals.

"Light Release: Brillant Field of Scales!" He roared as Cloma jumped after the Wood Dragoon, getting into the air in time for the thousands of tiny scales scattered about earlier to glitter and shine. Then, all at once, they released an immense and sustained flash of light. The heat on Cloma's skin told him that it would probably be enough to permanently blind most people, and at least temporarily blind most ninja.

Apparently Laughing Smoke didn't know that you couldn't blind puppet-eyes, not with something like a flashbang. The giant fluffy moth gave one of those half-machine, half-organic screams as the Wood Dragoon tackled it, Cloma landing in time to flip his hand up, the Wood Dragoon flipping over and going high into the air as its hands remained latched on. After a moment, the cords connecting the hands to the arms went taut, and Cloma threw a hand down.

His eyes were still closed, unable to see through the flashbang from earlier, but not needing to either. The Wood Dragoon's eyes were still working just fine. Another thousand-pound dropkick cratered the delicate bug's face, enough to make it disappear in another burst of smoke.

"You should really stop trying summons against the Wood Dragoon, not unless you're going to be pulling out something much bigger." Cloma called out, blindly ducking under a katana and spinning into a kick against Laughing Smoke's chest. The thief doubled over and rolled back, flipping up just in time to avoid two kunai- which promptly exploded. Laughing Smoke flew out of the smoke with tattered robes, landing on the side of the hill and rolling again.

The Wooden Dragoon landed with a heavy thump, shaking the ground near Cloma. He raised it back up with a smooth motion, letting the immense puppet stand behind him in a menacing manner.

"Y-you…" Laughing Smoke tried to say through coughs, little bits of blood speckling the grass before him as he pushed himself up again.

"All of that and a sensor too…?"

"Something like that." Cloma huffed in an amused fashion.

"To be more specific, I don't need my eyes to read your moves. Against you? Being blind or not is irrelevant." Laughing Smoke was completely still for several long seconds at that, before suddenly raising his fist and slamming it into the earth. The ground beneath his fist cratered, telling Ryoma that he should probably avoid being hit at any point in this fight.

"I'll take note of this, ninja of Suna. Being gracious in victory is wasted on someone like you." Laughing Smoke growled as he rose to his feet, sword clutched in one hand and eyes still shadowed over.

"A shallow grave is too good for you, I'll leave your corpse to the vermin."

"Quite confident for someone who hasn't landed a blow yet." Cloma mused. An explosion rocked the island, catching their attention.

"Ghn. Some of your allies, ninja?!" Laughing Smoke snarled waving a hand at him. Cloma grinned, changing the one-handed seal to another.

"Puppets are fantastic things, wouldn't you agree?" Throwing out bullshit was a great way to psych someone out, and the moment you won in their heads, you won the battle too. Laughing Smoke stilled, before he took a step back, arms shaking ever so slightly.

"T-that handseal… You've maintained it since-""-Since I got on the beach." Cloma confirmed, vision slowly starting to return to him, sporadic and shadowy.

"I wonder what I'm doing with it?" He mused rhetorically. His grin could be heard through the sand-veil. Laughing Smoke stared for a few moments more, before his head hung. Sporadic at first, but slowly increasing in both volume and frequency, he started to laugh.

"Heh… heheh…. hehehahahAHAHAHAH!" Cloma politely laughed along, letting the thief get it out of his system.

"Hahahhehe… hehheh… heh… Your name, if you would, ninja of Sunagakure. I want to remember it while I complete my plan." Laughing Smoke held out an amicable hand, palm up and delighted smile on his face.

"I don't think I've met anyone so similar to myself before."

"Ryoma, if you insist. Though I'm a bit curious- what exactly is this grand plan of yours?" Cloma tilted his head, figuring that he was now 'close enough' to the enemy to receive a semi-honest answer. Ninja were funny about this sort of thing.

"I can't imagine it's just to get a higher bounty, killing nobles and whatnot. I'm frankly stumped by what you tried to achieve with that attack earlier."

"Heh. It's quite simple, really. The Tea Daimyo knew not it's true power, but the Fire Lotus is a magnificent blossom." Laughing Smoke waved a casual hand.

"There are two stages to it's bloom, dim and radiant. Once the Fire Blossom has entered it's 'dim' bloom, it requires a certain kind of nutrition to reach its 'radiant' bloom. Those who consume the radiant Fire Blossom will be blessed with an affinity for fire greater than any other, and all of the power of the blossom itself."

"Reasonable thus far- but I have a feeling the 'nutrition' isn't going to be as simple as mulch and sunlight."

"Chakra, of course." Laughing Smoke smiled.

"Preferably found in living individuals. Body fluids are abundant in the chakra that it needs to achieve radiance."

"Thus- the noble-hunt." Cloma frowned.

'I suppose it's one of those things that's time sensitive too, otherwise you could simply patiently water it with acceptable targets."

"Precisely. When I arrive at the capital, when I water the Fire Blossom with the remaining blood that it needs, I'll be thinking of you and how much trouble you could've caused me." Cloma narrowed his eyes.

"Do you think you're getting off this island?" Laughing Smoke grinned.

"I never explained my attack earlier, did I? That was to provoke a response just like this one, to scatter the many troublesome ninja-guards. It's easier to defeat an enemy piecemeal, after all." Laughing Smoke brought the katana up to his neck, holding it delicately in place.

"You can't even defeat me." Cloma countered, the Wood Dragoon's hands spinning ominously.

"No, but I don't have to-" The katana pressed deeper, drawing a faint line of blood.

"-I left as soon as you arrived." A hard cut, severing the head from the shoulders. A burst of smoke, and the form of Laughing Smoke was replaced by a corpse, which promptly collapsed. Motherfucker, that was just annoying.