Chương 56: Chapter 38

Sunagakure Ryoma, Jonin"Can't this wait till you're recovered?" His friendly former supervisor asked with a grouchy tone and glaring face, a bag slung over her shoulders and glaring up at him. Ryoma glanced down from his current perch atop the Great Bolter, chakra strings stretching from one hand and loading supplies into the interior of the big wood and steel box. This was the third unit of Great Bolter- the most recently built and designed using all of the lessons learned from the previous two.

Iterative improvements, mostly, not any substantial overhaul of the actual design, not enough to call it a proper 'mark' upgrade to the previous. Ryoma kept the other two around for spare parts, slowly dismantling them when he needed to repair this one.

"Do you have any idea what I can do with Senju Wood?" Ryoma drawled, handing another set of bags to Tsubame on the other side of the hatch. The immediately-usable stuff would go in bags, and if that wasn't enough, he could always just summon the Bulk-Storage Seal mk2 over and get most anything he needed out.

"No- but I don't think you need to risk your health by rushing to get it either." Toyoko sassed up at him, hands on her hips.

"Well I don't know either." He replied, ignoring the second half of her sentence.

"But I do know it doesn't go up for sale that often- and that I'm going to personally thank Tanigakure with a million Ryo for the delivery."

"Paying. You're paying them a million."

"And I'm going to be very grateful when I hand the scroll over." Ryoma corrected with a waggled finger.

"Now load your stuff up, Sassy-chan. We'll be rolling out as soon as Hotaru is done showering and actually gets down here."

"Tch." She uttered with a scowl and shake of her head, walking forwards and then up the side of the Great Bolter, hands flashing down to cover her thighs as she did. Ryoma handed another bag to Tsubame, who was staring up at him in a very unimpressed fashion.

"Nice thighs, shorty."

"You weren't even looking, liar!" Toyoko growled at him as she stepped over to the hatch and politely handed her bag over to Tsubame.

"I was watching your eyes!" He could've looked with the puppet-eyes mounted all the way around the Great Bolter, but that seemed like a lot of effort for a really mild amount of thrill.

"Hotaru!" Ryoma called out flatly towards the building they were in the shadows of, hand raised to his mouth.

"Get a move on!" Somewhere in the Inn, he heard a distant 'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!', muffled by the stone walls and coming from somewhere on the second floor. He reached up to scratch the side of his head, lips tugging down beneath his veil.

"Not the quickest, huh?" He muttered, before rolling his neck and doing his best to stretch under the medical bindings.

"Why did you ask for us on this mission anyways, huh? Three ladies all to yourself in a box?!" Toyoko growled in a very cute manner at him.

"What are you up to?"

"Getting three people versed in puppetry with no outstanding current responsibilities to help me bounce ideas around about what I could do with the expensive wood I'm about to buy." Ryoma replied flatly, turning his gaze down to her again.

"I asked Tsuyumaru first, and he said he'd be busy. I can't ask the Captain or Vice-Captain to come along on a shopping trip with me- so that just leaves you three." She furrowed her brows at him, arms crossed and a finger tapping against the crook of her arm.

"In other words- you're my second-place choice, congratulations on winning by default." He gave a thumbs up and smile as her face twisted up into a silently irritable look. Like a rabbit deeply offended to be offered an unsatisfactory type of carrot. He maintained the gaze for a second, before giving an amused scoff and leaning down slightly.

"Oh, my bad- I meant actually yes- I'm luring you away from the village so I can do all manner of nefarious and lewd things to you, definitely."

"Kyah." Tsubame interjected emotionlessly.

"My body is in danger. Oh no." Toyoko let out a frustrated sigh.

"He doesn't need your help to mock me, Jonin Tsubame."

"The opportunity was too convenient." Tsubame explained blankly. At about that moment, the door to the inn was flung open and Hotaru stumbled out, laden with a large box strapped to her back and a pair of bags. Her hair was still thoroughly soaked, and she smelled faintly of some fruity nonsense.

"I'm sorry!" She wailed, stumbling forwards.

"I didn't mean to be late!"

"You're not late, we haven't left yet." Ryoma shrugged, stepping over to the hatch and gently lowering himself inside- pausing briefly as Tsubame caught his feet like a human stepladder. He raised a brow before ducking to go lower, slipping inside and moving over to the piloting seat.

"Get in and get comfortable, we're in for a long ride." Tsubame stepped back, letting Toyoko poke her head through and then drop in, little boots clacking against the floorplate as she inspected the interior.

"Revised again?" She asked with a snooty little raised nose.

"Third unit, yeah." Ryoma explained briefly, leaning back and resting his head on the newly-installed extra cushioning. He raised a hand, letting the strings connect to the frame and 'waking up' the eyes. It always took a moment or two to get used to omnidirectional vision again, blurry all around except in certain cones where he had layered multiple eyes together to focus- namely the front and the turret. The Puppet-Eye technique wasn't affected by material quality at all, as far as anyone could tell.

Wood, glass, stone, everything had roughly the same level of vision quality. The only exception was actual, biological eyes, which were much clearer but that meant he'd have to replace them constantly or deal with the smell of formaldehyde all the time. So instead he just put multiple eyes in the same direction. The quality increase still wasn't as good as his actual eyes, but it was a noticeable improvement from before.

He could actually read large lettering through a quintet of linked eyes pointed at the same thing. He was pretty sure this is what Sasori laughed at him about all those years ago- he had already figured this out, and it was a pretty obvious answer in hindsight. Why else would all his secondary puppets like Crow, Black Ant, and Salamander all have three eyes instead of one or two?

'More eyes help you see better', woah, what an amazingly esoteric answer. Ryoma was still slightly annoyed at himself about it. Hotaru dropped through the hatch hesitantly, glancing around nervously.

"He-hey! Hi! Sorry!"

"What are you apologizing for?" Ryoma titled his head back to give her a confused look. He shook his head and faced forwards again.

"Close the hatch behind you- we don't want sand getting inside the cabin."

"Right!" She exclaimed, bouncing in place slightly and reaching up to fumble with the lid.

"Right…"

"Pull down and twist clockwise." Toyoko grunted, plopping down in one of the chairs in the back, looking at the little mirror-slots that showed the outside indirectly. Ryoma had been thinking about buying and installing live-feed cameras to put in for the passengers instead, but they were too big, too bulky, and drew entirely too much power for him to consider it. Instead, the back contained two systems for other people to monitor the outside world.

A slot in the roof that lets you physically peer through, and a pair of angled mirrors to peer through indirectly, and that's about it. Again- he needed to figure out one of those sensor-jutsu so he could install a proper monitor, but that project kept getting delayed again and again. Tsubame glared through the upper hatch like it was trying to sneak up on her, and Hotaru hesitated as she looked for a place to sit.

Eventually she just settled down on the floor where she was standing, hair soaking her shoulders and staring at nothing in particular. The Great Bolter shook slightly, limbs pulling together under its main bulk before rising into the air. The legs twisted, the wheels extended, and Ryoma slowly pulled up to speed leading away from the Inn.

The frame bucked and shook as he moved over dunes, then towards the 'main road', which was less of a road and more of a stretch of particularly hard and therefore mostly flat sand. This stretch of sand would continue for quite a ways, then they'd go over another few dunes, then finally hit the old packed-stone road that led along the coast from the Wind Capital up to the Land of Rivers. Was it stealthy? Absolutely not, which was the point of him going through there and being very obvious with his movements.

Both so other people could verify that he had indeed been in that location, and because if he was doing something sneaky, he wouldn't be so obvious about it. The attack was in six days, eleven hours. —"So uhm… What are we… going… to get?" Hotaru asked suddenly, hair dry and rear end rooted to the center of the cabin. No one replied for a moment, as the rest of them processed the breech in the comfortable quiet of the road.

"Were you not listening when I explained it earlier?" Ryoma asked with a raised brow.

"... No." Hotaru responded after a moment, ducking her head shamedly.

"Tanigakure recently seized a shipment of smuggled wood from a Senju Tree, and offered to sell it to us if anyone wanted it." Ryoma explained, stretching his legs out as they rumbled over another dune.

"Meaning- sell it to someone from the Puppet Corps, because no one else would care about luxury wood."

"Senju Wood is- the trees grown by the First Hokage and his Wood Release, right?" Hotaru asked with increasing confidence, leaning forwards slightly.

"Yeah, one of those trees." Ryoma rolled a hand.

"Konoha occasionally cuts one down and processes the wood for things like super-expensive furniture." This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"It's the strongest wood in the world, according to legend. Strong enough to bind even the greatest of the Tailed Demons." Toyoko exposited, arms crossed and nodding in an official manner.

"Tani says they have a desk-sized block on hand- and Captain Gentai offered me dibs on buying it, which was nice of him." Ryoma pointed a thumb back at his head.

"I think I'm going to use it to make a new set of puppet-armor, replace the damaged components of the old mk3 here first and then see what I can do with the rest."

"Do not make a Bolter with it." Toyoko growled at him.

"I wasn't going to waste super-durable wood on something designed to explode." Ryoma rolled his eyes.

"I'm rolling my eyes at you, in case you couldn't tell."

"I could."

"Although it would be really funny…" Ryoma muttered with a musing tone.

"Ryoma!" He chuckled and adjusted the legs to smoothly glide over a bump in the road.

"More seriously- I want ideas here. I think I'm going to use it to iterate on my armor- but I'm not sure what I'd do with the rest of it after."

"Are you going to densify the material?" Toyoko asked with a curious air and a thoughtful tone.

"I'm not sure- densification is pretty wasteful in terms of raw material to finished product." Ryoma pressed his lips together, considering the idea.

"If I do that- I might not have enough material to make a complete set of puppet-armor out of it. I'm definitely going to collect the sawdust, use it to create the usually-shaped components with some resin or epoxy."

"Make sure you test your process on a standard block of equivalent size first." Toyoko continued with a helpful sort of nagging.

"Lest you waste any of it."

"... It's expensive, right?" Hotaru asked for clarification.

"Otherwise- we'd be using it more, if it's better than normal wood…"

"I'm paying for a rectangular block about the size of an office desk." Ryoma began to explain in a casual sort of manner.

"My starting offer is going to be one million Ryo- and I'm prepared to go up to ten million for it." There was some sputtered coughing behind him at the price mentioned. Toyoko sighed.

"Can you even afford this?" No, but the Kazekage had given him a scroll full of golden bars for the occasion. They had to make sure his cover story was more or less airtight here. That meant weird favors and additional funding to cover the costs of a convenient deal with Tani. Just plausible enough that no one would blink at the circumstances of his little trip over to the Land of Rivers.

Slightly more durable puppets was already a thing achievable with densified wood or metal- the benefits of Senju Wood specifically didn't really outweigh the costs of getting ahold of some, and so most puppeteers wouldn't even bother. Ryoma wasn't really sure how much more protection he was going to get out of the material, considering his body under the armor was just as squishy and padded as before, but there wasn't much else to use it for.

Bolters would be a waste, and there wasn't enough to make anything else- so armor it was.

"... You can't, can you?" Toyoko asked with a long-suffering sigh.

"I can cover it." Ryoma replied, returning to the moment.

"I got distracted thinking about how cute you are."

"You're a damn liar, is what you are." Toyoko growled.

"He is." Tsubame supported like a stealthy sledgehammer- unexpected and blunt.

"And you're clingy." Ryoma shot back.

"I am not clingy. I maintain an appropriate amount of distance from you at all times."

"I tried to piss before we left and you tried to get in the bathroom with me."

"She what?!" Toyoko shot up, slapping a palm against the side of the wall and clenching a fist. Hotaru coughed, falling back and pushing up against the side-wall, getting out of the way of Toyoko's sudden, flaring anger.

"The restroom is the most vulnerable period for the human animal- It would be trivial for an assassin to-""I'm a grown-ass ninja- I think I can handle a bathroom bandit on my own!" Ryoma growled, chopping a hand towards her. Toyoko marched towards the front of the Great Bolter, away from the perverse puppetlimbed woman and sitting next to him, glaring back suspiciously. Tsubame pulled her gaze from the forward-hatch and met gazes with the short woman in uniform. Tsubame's eyes narrowed.

"The last time you assured me of your safety, you battled one of the Sannin."

"He what?!" This time, Toyoko growled at him instead.

"Is- is that what those injuries are from?!" Ryoma sighed in no small amount of frustration.

"You idiot- why were you fighting one of the Sannin?!" It was going to be a long trip, huh? — Six days later, they were stomping along the river-road leading towards Tanigakure. Stomping, because the road had gotten a bit too small and bumpy for the wheels to be of good use, and this was still pretty fast. His wrappings were still on- but his arm was out of the sling and his head felt much better. Days of rest and driving, while tiring, were still less strenuous than actually walking here on foot.

He slowed his stomps at the foot of a bridge, the turret swiveling around and eyes sweeping across his immediate surroundings. This looked like a great spot for an ambush. He stretched mightily, before pushing up and back to the hatch.

"What are you doing?" Tsubame asked quickly, stepping forwards with narrowed eyes.

"Saying hello." He replied, opening the hatch and pulling himself up and out, sitting on the rim. He raised his hands to his mouth and called out.

"Yo! Tani!" He gave this a fifty percent chance of working. After a few seconds, a figure crawled out from underneath the bridge. A mostly nude male with outrageous musculature barely covered by a combination of swimwear, fishnets, and a flak jacket. The distinctive 'V' shape of Tanigakure boldly displayed on his headband.

"Urrrooooaah!" The Tani-ninja greeted with a massive and slightly provocative stretch, followed by a crack of something in his spine and a relaxed slump.

"Yo, Suna." He said, raising a hand and leaning against the side of the bridge.

"What brings you around in that big boat-on-legs, Mister Sailor""Heard you guys were selling some special wood- I'm here for the pickup and payment." Ryoma ignored the sudden sputtering from Hotaru below him. She did that a lot.

"I got myself, and three others inside- a full team."

"Hm?" Tani-nin replied with a raised brow.

"Getting some wood, huh? Sounds like a party- I'm not sure if your big ol' thing there will fit through this poor mud road though." Ryoma nodded, sliding his legs up and patting the top of the Great Bolter.

"You heard the guy- everyone up and out, and bring your stuff too. We're going the rest of the way on foot." They were unusually quiet as they rose up out of the hatch and slid off the Great Bolter, tossing bags out as they went. Ryoma hefted his own bag- a small one slung over his shoulder, and stared at the Great Bolter for a few moments. He turned a glance back at the Tani-Nin.

"Do you have somewhere I can store this thing? It's too big to seal." The male blinked at him, before frowning at the giant puppet.

"Uhh…"

"I can watch it." A female voice came from under the bridge. Another scantily-dressed Tani-nin almost slipped her way up, black hair hanging over her face and legs hanging over the edge.

"If you want, dani." Ryoma nodded, opening his mouth to thank her. He was cut off by an ear-shattering, bone-rumbling noise. A hiss that was too loud and low-pitched to be a hiss. A roar that was too long and sharp to be a roar. Exactly the sound he imagined a giant snake would make- coming from just over the hill. Exactly on schedule.

"What was that?!"

"It came from the village!"

"Let's go!" Ryoma declared authoritatively, thumb twitching as he did. The Tani-nin glanced towards him, before nodding sharply and leaping away. Ryoma followed before Tsubame could protest. Rapid leaps brought him up along the muddy roar- each leap interspersed by another roar-hiss and human screams made faint with distance. One, two, five, ten… Thirty powerful leaps before he finally crested the edge of the hill, some secondary entrance into the village, and looked out across the Village Hidden in the Valleys.

And the massive red and gold snake that writhed within, screaming vitriol as elemental ninjutsu bounced off its scaled hide and its jaws ripped through houses.

"SCALELESS THINGS. WRETCHED SCALELESS THINGS. LESS THAN DRAGONS, LESS THAN SNAKES, LESS THAN WORMS. KNOW THE HONOR OF DYING BY MY TEETH." It's tail flicked- smashing through a walkway and sending its fragments out like immense shrapnel. Its jaws clicked once- sparks flaring in its teeth, then a spray of fluid flame washed over a district before it. Hundreds of feet of wooden and brick building set alight in an instant as its maw dragged through the air.

The Tani-ninja he was beside stumbled at the sight, gasping in horror at the destruction unfolding. A great burst of smoke billowed out on the far side of the village, a massive white bird bursting forth and smashing a clawed foot into the side of the snake's head. A heron of some variety- about half the size of the snake itself. The snake twisted, a bare bleeding scratch forming on the side of its head. The Heron looked distinctly disturbed and worried at that as it fluttered back to avoid a retaliatory strike.

Showtime. Ryoma's bleeding palm slammed into the ground.

"SUMMONING! GREAT DRAGOON!" He was engulfed in smoke, and the earth shook as a five meter, fifteen-thousand pound giant of wood and steel arrived on the battlefield.