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Cosmos Quest (Naruto/Lupin III)
- Thread starter FurikoMaru
- Start date
FurikoMaru
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Aw. No one wants to find out Sukaha's deal 'cept nuff and Guile, I guess...
FurikoMaru
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[X] This war is formed in vengeance
You are Scáthach n Uanaind, She Who Strikes Fear, the Victorious Shadow, Teacher of Cu Chulainn, Battle Mistress of the Isle of Skye.
And apparently you can't even take a weekend off and visit the story down the road to see your two godchildren get married without a sorry pack of medium-talent villains crashing the party.
This is the sloppiest climax I have ever participated in, you comment to the GM, kicking an assailant in the chest so hard that every one of his ribs stabs out of his back. He goes flying, a bloody sack of shattered bones and ruptured organs, to slam into the press of invaders behind him with the force of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler; a hundred men now lie on the ground in various states of injury. Amused, you note the little Yamanaka girl throwing them under her illusions one by one as they try to get to their feet.
I promise I'll do better next time. Please don't kill me.
You make a noise of disgust, pulling a vicious-looking spear out of thin air and casually stabbing the two men behind you before shaking them off into the presently-broken arms of five more attackers. Don't insult me any more than you have already, girl. You really think I'd kill a bard?
._.; You have a very particular glare, ma'am.
"Asuka," you call, cutting through a dozen attackers as though sweeping a garden path, "leave him to Nabiki. It's her fight."
"I thought you 'weren't my teacher'," the snotty little thing retorts from the roof, ramming a knife into the leader's bodyguard's carotid.
"That's exactly right." Oh, for fuck's sake, these two can't even look at you without babbling in tongues and shaking like children; did Midorikawa Yaiba just hire whoever he met pissing behind a strip club? Wherever they came from, they're dead now. "Which is why if you make me repeat myself I won't even feel bad about making you lose that eye all over again."
In a huff, she hops down. "Fine! I'll go rescue the Three Stooges; see if I can't teach them some gratitude."
It is only because you aren't her teacher that you don't remark, "And maybe for an encore you can teach loyalty to a dog."
You can hear Hisui's thoughts, and Nabiki's, as they battle. Despite being among the most skilled practitioners of their art in the country, even as their energy blasts tear through plaster and tiles and human flesh, their thoughts are the same as most of the other children - the eternal prayer: "Please oh please oh please oh please..."
Vaulting into the air and swinging your spear, the second wave of invaders scaling the wall fall before you like spiders swatted with a newspaper. Poor bastards; you can hear them, too, most of them: "Please oh please oh please oh please...
It's the godly equivalent of spam mail; wishes without form or direction, so primal even atheists give off the signal from time to time. Ordinarily such 'prayers' go unanswered, out of a combination of their frequency and their usual anonymity, both of the sender and the intended recipient, if any.
But... heh. This is the day of my (god)daughter's wedding.
Your skin glows a hellish red as you bare your teeth at the oncoming swarm.
And I am victory made flesh.
~tsuzuku~
You are Scáthach n Uanaind, She Who Strikes Fear, the Victorious Shadow, Teacher of Cu Chulainn, Battle Mistress of the Isle of Skye.
And apparently you can't even take a weekend off and visit the story down the road to see your two godchildren get married without a sorry pack of medium-talent villains crashing the party.
This is the sloppiest climax I have ever participated in, you comment to the GM, kicking an assailant in the chest so hard that every one of his ribs stabs out of his back. He goes flying, a bloody sack of shattered bones and ruptured organs, to slam into the press of invaders behind him with the force of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler; a hundred men now lie on the ground in various states of injury. Amused, you note the little Yamanaka girl throwing them under her illusions one by one as they try to get to their feet.
I promise I'll do better next time. Please don't kill me.
You make a noise of disgust, pulling a vicious-looking spear out of thin air and casually stabbing the two men behind you before shaking them off into the presently-broken arms of five more attackers. Don't insult me any more than you have already, girl. You really think I'd kill a bard?
._.; You have a very particular glare, ma'am.
"Asuka," you call, cutting through a dozen attackers as though sweeping a garden path, "leave him to Nabiki. It's her fight."
"I thought you 'weren't my teacher'," the snotty little thing retorts from the roof, ramming a knife into the leader's bodyguard's carotid.
"That's exactly right." Oh, for fuck's sake, these two can't even look at you without babbling in tongues and shaking like children; did Midorikawa Yaiba just hire whoever he met pissing behind a strip club? Wherever they came from, they're dead now. "Which is why if you make me repeat myself I won't even feel bad about making you lose that eye all over again."
In a huff, she hops down. "Fine! I'll go rescue the Three Stooges; see if I can't teach them some gratitude."
It is only because you aren't her teacher that you don't remark, "And maybe for an encore you can teach loyalty to a dog."
You can hear Hisui's thoughts, and Nabiki's, as they battle. Despite being among the most skilled practitioners of their art in the country, even as their energy blasts tear through plaster and tiles and human flesh, their thoughts are the same as most of the other children - the eternal prayer: "Please oh please oh please oh please..."
Vaulting into the air and swinging your spear, the second wave of invaders scaling the wall fall before you like spiders swatted with a newspaper. Poor bastards; you can hear them, too, most of them: "Please oh please oh please oh please...
It's the godly equivalent of spam mail; wishes without form or direction, so primal even atheists give off the signal from time to time. Ordinarily such 'prayers' go unanswered, out of a combination of their frequency and their usual anonymity, both of the sender and the intended recipient, if any.
But... heh. This is the day of my (god)daughter's wedding.
Your skin glows a hellish red as you bare your teeth at the oncoming swarm.
And I am victory made flesh.
~tsuzuku~
Last edited:
Hymn of Ragnarok
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Scathach?
Niiiiiiiiiiice. Much more badass than I was expecting Suhaka to be.
And oh boy, seeing everyone's reaction to this will hopefully be entertaining. I'll get popcorn.
Niiiiiiiiiiice. Much more badass than I was expecting Suhaka to be.
And oh boy, seeing everyone's reaction to this will hopefully be entertaining. I'll get popcorn.
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FurikoMaru
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Scáthach doesn't teach women. Old Irish proto-psychology; it was believed that girls learn better from men and boys learn better from women, because there isn't usually going to be any stupid dick-waving or catty girl bullshit in a mixed-gender mentor/student pairing. She only took Asuka on because the Second Child is the stubbornest bitch in anime history. They have a sort of deal where Scáthach trains her male students, and then the ones who're specifically training to be teachers teach Asuka.Vindictus said:
Also, if I may vent for a moment, it should not be this fuckin' hard to find pictures of fully-clothed badass redheads with spears on the internet. -_-
Vindictus
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FurikoMaru said:
I KNOW, RIGHT?
[Is reminded of looking for SFW pics of Naga for tribal quest 2.0]
It's like nobody ever considered that sometimes, you want a picture of something that doesn't range from cheesecake to pornographic.
FurikoMaru
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There are a good number of historical reenactment photos of redheads and rusty-brunettes dressed as Celtic warriors, but for obvious reasons I couldn't use those. Before that one above I was almost going to have to use either a crappy deviantart watercolour piece or that famous artist's rendition of Boudicca.Vindictus said:
iamnuff
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so i was right then.
this quest is meta as fuck.
Vindictus said:
decided to google "Naga" just to see how hard it was.
this one looks pretty cool.
admittedly, i don't know if you needed a picture that matched a specific physical description(hair colour, less than four arms, ect), but hey, found a clothed naga in 10 seconds.
not bad.
also, what the fuck is up with asuka.
did this become a multicross without me noticing?
FurikoMaru
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FurikoMaru
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The whole event is a blur in your mind; shouted orders blending together; smokebombs; Kiba and Akamaru running off with Jou and Mirioni; slapping a Hell Viewing on anyone who looked too tired to shake it off; meeting Ami once before she cut down a woman behind you, and then again when she almost took a swing at Menka before she got a good look at him; taking a full minute to gawk at Asuma, a tornado of steel death sending heads and limbs flying; the periodic near-blinding flashes of from above, like lightning without the thunder...
It's only once you're collecting the bodies in the streets for disposal that it fully strikes you that this fight should have taken a lot longer than it did, even with the stellar assistance. When you scanned the neighbourhood from the rooftop in the aftermath and did some quick calculations, you realized the enemy must have outnumbered you about fifteen to one. Yet the fight was over in minutes, with only a few casualties on your side.
The light show Sukaha and the teachers put on probably had something to do with it.
"Ki attacks," Momiji says.
"Yeah, what the hell are those, by the way?" you ask, pulling your rickshaw loaded with corpses alongside his and trying to suppress your sense of smell. "You guys say you don't use chakra, and some of you don't even know what it is, but those attacks are definitely coming from somewhere, so what are they made of?"
"What's chakra made of?" Momiji asks mildly.
"... we don't know for sure," you admit sheepishly, seeing the point he's trying to make. "It's 'a mixture of physical and spiritual energy', but if you want a real answer you'd have to ask a researcher or a medic-nin. Most ninja get told that it works and that's all we need to know."
"Hm." The tall boy stops to take a pair of bodies off the hands of a yakuza enforcer, and thanks the man for his assistance.
Tanzaku Gai's thriving organized crime community reacted to an unannounced invasion of Kurioka's territory (on the way to Hisui's territory) about as well as you might expect; most of the gangsters didn't even need to be ordered to join the fray. They just ran out of their back gardens and places of business en masse and threw down, whether out of loyalty to the oyabun or to help the rising star of their preferred leader, along with their own. There are still roving bands of yakuza patrolling the streets, helping with the cleanup and hunting down stragglers door-to-door.
By the time you get your rickshaw back up the street to the mansion your hands, arms, back and legs are killing you. Handing the cart off to another student, you take a seat on the edge of one of the walkways and rest for a moment or two. Momiji follows suit. Menka, back in his usual form, is about to join you when you give him a Look.
He may not be much of a sensor, but even he can figure that one out, and he trots off to look for mice or whateverthehell.
"He's a fine bodyguard," Momiji comments.
"He likes to think so," you say. In the wake of Sukaha beating down half the army and Nabiki taking out the guy who organized it with a massive wave of blue energy, there are rumours floating around about all sorts of supposedly supernatural helpers popping up during the fight - including a 'ghost' shaped like a white-haired swordsman in a cloak and a mask. You think it's probably a good thing you'll be on the road by the end of the day; no matter what suspicions Momiji may have, no one around here knows for sure about Menka yet and that's the way you intend to keep it.
You stretch. "Manage to get any good shots of the battle? I think the historical postcard business around here is in need of some revitalization."
"No such luck. The first explosion took out the plates in my camera."
"Aw, what a shame."
Nabiki glides by, deep in conversation with her new husband and Kurioka. Her uchikake seems to have been left completely untouched by the day's events.
I guess red really is a lucky colour for weddings.
"You aren't what I would have expected of a shinobi student," Momiji says suddenly.
Surprised, you cock your head to the side, and smile. "Is that a fact? How do you mean?"
"You asked Sukaha-sensei about Shinyuu instead of about our taijutsu," he says. "Older shinobi have tortured graduates of this school to get that information."
"... I guess I'm just not really a taijutsu kind of girl," you say neutrally.
"You didn't observe Shinyuu from a distance, either," he continues. "You sized him up right there in class. And you apologized to Jou for your teammate's rudeness."
"Yes I did," you say, eyeing him with a small smile on your face.
Momiji leans forward, his expression mirroring yours. "You are really a very dangerous woman, aren't you?"
You grin delightedly.
"You jump around pretty nice for someone who can't fight," Asuka calls, limping out of the nearby infirmary.
"Thanks," you reply, stifling your disappointment. "You fight pretty nice for someone who can't dodge. You've never met a fist you didn't like, have you?"
"What, this?" She waves away her slashed arm and black eye with her 'undamaged' (read: bruised but still operational) right hand. "I've had worse."
"I never have," you cheerfully gloat. "Major injuries are reserved for my enemies, that's my motto."
Momiji's eyes flick over to a wheelbarrow full of disembowelled bodies going by. "... I noticed."
"Hey, don't try to pin them on me, those're Ami's!" You nod at a group of sullen-looking hostages being led to the holding cells. "Those are the ones I got."
"You didn't kill anyone?" Asuka asks scornfully. "So much for the ruthlessness of shinobi."
"Asuka-chan..." Momiji says quietly.
"I killed a couple guys," you say defensively.
Menka was too far away to get them. Two shinobi. Dad'll be proud, even if they were just scrubs from unaffiliated clans.
It was harder than you thought it'd be. Afterward, not during. Last night with Sorato it would have been the easiest thing in the world, but today was different. Being surrounded by other people who had your back, who were swift and experienced, made you feel as though adding to the carnage was unnecessary, somehow. Like you could walk through the whole battle as purely support, throwing Demonic Illusions at bandits and deflecting or dodging shuriken and arrows like they were nothing; like bringing people to their deaths was something you had people to do for you.
Up until the second it wasn't, and you killed two men before you even thought about it.
One of them looked confused when you got him in the heart. He actually blurted out, "What was that for?" before he fell, like you'd pinched him or something. The question shocked you almost as much as the actual killing, so much that you let out a startled laugh at its ridiculousness.
He wasn't much older than you.
"But those are the rich kids," you continue. "You can tell by their boots. It's in everyone's interest to keep them alive."
"Devious," Asuka says, equal parts impressed and disappointed - probably that she didn't think of it first.
You shrug. "Someone has to pay for the damages. Might as well be them."
And now, I have officially given Nabiki the best wedding gift. Everyone else can go home, I win.
"Ino!" Ami calls, running over. "Kiba found that boy he was looking for!"
You're on your feet in an instant. "Lead the way."
=
Mirioni's already there when you, Ami, Asuka and Momiji get to Jou's bedside. With the guests taking up the infirmary he's been allowed to return to his dorm room to rest. Asuka grumbles about being dragged along, but you see right through it and so does Jou.
"Missed you too, vinegar-chan," he says, smirking past a broken nose. You feel a twinge of envy; sometimes you wish you had someone like an older brother.
"That arm gonna be all right?" you ask. You've seen worse today, but not on living people. At the very least it doesn't smell bad.
"They don't know yet," he says. "I'm not supposed to move it until they tell me. I guess I'll just have to wait and see." He sounds remarkably optimistic.
Kiba doesn't say anything.
"What the hell stupid stunt did you pull to end up like that, anyway?" Asuka scolds.
"Something that needed doing," he says simply.
She snorts. "The Boy Wonder, ladies and gentlemen."
Kiba doesn't say anything.
"We're leaving in fifteen minutes," Asuma says from the doorway. "Say your goodbyes and meet me at the gate in ten."
[X] Say goodbye to everyone here and then head to the gate.
[X] Say goodbye to everyone here, and Sukaha.
[X] Say goodbye to everyone here, and Nabiki.
[X] Say goodbye to everyone here, along with the other two ladies if you can find them (which of them takes priority?)
-----
If Robb Stark had been less stupid, he would have invited the Lady Paramount Beyond-the-Wall and her students to his uncle's wedding. But he didn't, 'cause he's a Stark and aside from Bran and Sansa they've all got rocks in their heads.
It's only once you're collecting the bodies in the streets for disposal that it fully strikes you that this fight should have taken a lot longer than it did, even with the stellar assistance. When you scanned the neighbourhood from the rooftop in the aftermath and did some quick calculations, you realized the enemy must have outnumbered you about fifteen to one. Yet the fight was over in minutes, with only a few casualties on your side.
The light show Sukaha and the teachers put on probably had something to do with it.
"Ki attacks," Momiji says.
"Yeah, what the hell are those, by the way?" you ask, pulling your rickshaw loaded with corpses alongside his and trying to suppress your sense of smell. "You guys say you don't use chakra, and some of you don't even know what it is, but those attacks are definitely coming from somewhere, so what are they made of?"
"What's chakra made of?" Momiji asks mildly.
"... we don't know for sure," you admit sheepishly, seeing the point he's trying to make. "It's 'a mixture of physical and spiritual energy', but if you want a real answer you'd have to ask a researcher or a medic-nin. Most ninja get told that it works and that's all we need to know."
"Hm." The tall boy stops to take a pair of bodies off the hands of a yakuza enforcer, and thanks the man for his assistance.
Tanzaku Gai's thriving organized crime community reacted to an unannounced invasion of Kurioka's territory (on the way to Hisui's territory) about as well as you might expect; most of the gangsters didn't even need to be ordered to join the fray. They just ran out of their back gardens and places of business en masse and threw down, whether out of loyalty to the oyabun or to help the rising star of their preferred leader, along with their own. There are still roving bands of yakuza patrolling the streets, helping with the cleanup and hunting down stragglers door-to-door.
By the time you get your rickshaw back up the street to the mansion your hands, arms, back and legs are killing you. Handing the cart off to another student, you take a seat on the edge of one of the walkways and rest for a moment or two. Momiji follows suit. Menka, back in his usual form, is about to join you when you give him a Look.
He may not be much of a sensor, but even he can figure that one out, and he trots off to look for mice or whateverthehell.
"He's a fine bodyguard," Momiji comments.
"He likes to think so," you say. In the wake of Sukaha beating down half the army and Nabiki taking out the guy who organized it with a massive wave of blue energy, there are rumours floating around about all sorts of supposedly supernatural helpers popping up during the fight - including a 'ghost' shaped like a white-haired swordsman in a cloak and a mask. You think it's probably a good thing you'll be on the road by the end of the day; no matter what suspicions Momiji may have, no one around here knows for sure about Menka yet and that's the way you intend to keep it.
You stretch. "Manage to get any good shots of the battle? I think the historical postcard business around here is in need of some revitalization."
"No such luck. The first explosion took out the plates in my camera."
"Aw, what a shame."
Nabiki glides by, deep in conversation with her new husband and Kurioka. Her uchikake seems to have been left completely untouched by the day's events.
I guess red really is a lucky colour for weddings.
"You aren't what I would have expected of a shinobi student," Momiji says suddenly.
Surprised, you cock your head to the side, and smile. "Is that a fact? How do you mean?"
"You asked Sukaha-sensei about Shinyuu instead of about our taijutsu," he says. "Older shinobi have tortured graduates of this school to get that information."
"... I guess I'm just not really a taijutsu kind of girl," you say neutrally.
"You didn't observe Shinyuu from a distance, either," he continues. "You sized him up right there in class. And you apologized to Jou for your teammate's rudeness."
"Yes I did," you say, eyeing him with a small smile on your face.
Momiji leans forward, his expression mirroring yours. "You are really a very dangerous woman, aren't you?"
You grin delightedly.
"You jump around pretty nice for someone who can't fight," Asuka calls, limping out of the nearby infirmary.
"Thanks," you reply, stifling your disappointment. "You fight pretty nice for someone who can't dodge. You've never met a fist you didn't like, have you?"
"What, this?" She waves away her slashed arm and black eye with her 'undamaged' (read: bruised but still operational) right hand. "I've had worse."
"I never have," you cheerfully gloat. "Major injuries are reserved for my enemies, that's my motto."
Momiji's eyes flick over to a wheelbarrow full of disembowelled bodies going by. "... I noticed."
"Hey, don't try to pin them on me, those're Ami's!" You nod at a group of sullen-looking hostages being led to the holding cells. "Those are the ones I got."
"You didn't kill anyone?" Asuka asks scornfully. "So much for the ruthlessness of shinobi."
"Asuka-chan..." Momiji says quietly.
"I killed a couple guys," you say defensively.
Menka was too far away to get them. Two shinobi. Dad'll be proud, even if they were just scrubs from unaffiliated clans.
It was harder than you thought it'd be. Afterward, not during. Last night with Sorato it would have been the easiest thing in the world, but today was different. Being surrounded by other people who had your back, who were swift and experienced, made you feel as though adding to the carnage was unnecessary, somehow. Like you could walk through the whole battle as purely support, throwing Demonic Illusions at bandits and deflecting or dodging shuriken and arrows like they were nothing; like bringing people to their deaths was something you had people to do for you.
Up until the second it wasn't, and you killed two men before you even thought about it.
One of them looked confused when you got him in the heart. He actually blurted out, "What was that for?" before he fell, like you'd pinched him or something. The question shocked you almost as much as the actual killing, so much that you let out a startled laugh at its ridiculousness.
He wasn't much older than you.
"But those are the rich kids," you continue. "You can tell by their boots. It's in everyone's interest to keep them alive."
"Devious," Asuka says, equal parts impressed and disappointed - probably that she didn't think of it first.
You shrug. "Someone has to pay for the damages. Might as well be them."
And now, I have officially given Nabiki the best wedding gift. Everyone else can go home, I win.
"Ino!" Ami calls, running over. "Kiba found that boy he was looking for!"
You're on your feet in an instant. "Lead the way."
=
Mirioni's already there when you, Ami, Asuka and Momiji get to Jou's bedside. With the guests taking up the infirmary he's been allowed to return to his dorm room to rest. Asuka grumbles about being dragged along, but you see right through it and so does Jou.
"Missed you too, vinegar-chan," he says, smirking past a broken nose. You feel a twinge of envy; sometimes you wish you had someone like an older brother.
"That arm gonna be all right?" you ask. You've seen worse today, but not on living people. At the very least it doesn't smell bad.
"They don't know yet," he says. "I'm not supposed to move it until they tell me. I guess I'll just have to wait and see." He sounds remarkably optimistic.
Kiba doesn't say anything.
"What the hell stupid stunt did you pull to end up like that, anyway?" Asuka scolds.
"Something that needed doing," he says simply.
She snorts. "The Boy Wonder, ladies and gentlemen."
Kiba doesn't say anything.
"We're leaving in fifteen minutes," Asuma says from the doorway. "Say your goodbyes and meet me at the gate in ten."
[X] Say goodbye to everyone here and then head to the gate.
[X] Say goodbye to everyone here, and Sukaha.
[X] Say goodbye to everyone here, and Nabiki.
[X] Say goodbye to everyone here, along with the other two ladies if you can find them (which of them takes priority?)
-----
If Robb Stark had been less stupid, he would have invited the Lady Paramount Beyond-the-Wall and her students to his uncle's wedding. But he didn't, 'cause he's a Stark and aside from Bran and Sansa they've all got rocks in their heads.
iamnuff
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"Kiba doesn't say anything."
hmm. so he's not just being silent, he's being silent enough for it to warrant two lines about how he isn't saying anything
think Jou got hurt protecting Kiba? or akamaru?
also
[X] Say goodbye to everyone here, along with the other two ladies if you can find them (Nabiki takes priority)
hmm. so he's not just being silent, he's being silent enough for it to warrant two lines about how he isn't saying anything
think Jou got hurt protecting Kiba? or akamaru?
also
[X] Say goodbye to everyone here, along with the other two ladies if you can find them (Nabiki takes priority)
Guile
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Yeah, let's just leave that lie for a while.iamnuff said:
Don't wanna injure Kiba's manly pride.
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FurikoMaru
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[X] Tabibito-tachi ga utau
You are Inuzuka Kiba, and your departure cannot come soon enough for your tastes.
"Guess we're heading out," Ino says, and slaps the hulking prettyboy next to her on the back. "When you get your camera fixed, send me a postcard."
"Will do," he replies with a nod.
"Will-" Mirioni blurts out, hesitating for a moment before plowing through: "Will you come back?"
Ino laughs in surprise. "Sure, if you'll have me. I wouldn't think you'd want to have a friend who trails invasions and attempted-robbery in her wake."
"You don't know these insects very well," the redhead says, snorting, and for just a moment she looks an awful lot like Ami. She nods at your teammate. "You take care of yourself, kid. Try not to die before we meet again; I think I'd like to fight you sometime."
"It'd be an honour to face such a fine specimen of the genus tsundere."
"TSUNDERE?!"
The tall boy sighs and catches hold of the back of the redhead's kimono before she can lunge at Ino.
"You!" the tiny blonde says in a mock stern tone, pointing at Jou. "You get that arm healed up as quick as you can so you can write to tell me all the filthy gossip that gets passed around about Nabiki-chan's insatiable appetites, you hear me?"
Jounouchi turns beet red. "Y-you shouldn't talk about stuff like that to an invalid!"
"Here's my address. Don't be a stranger~!" And she's out the door.
"... I swear," Ami says in disbelief, "you could tie her to an anvil and throw her in the ocean, and she'd make friends with an octopus in time for it to untie her and help her swim to safety."
The wind picks up the smoke and stench and smacks you dead in the nose with it, so hard that you stumble and retch. You have time to think No, not now, before you're flat on your ass, vomiting and cursing.
You're getting to your feet when it happens. You don't see it go down, but your ears tell the story just fine; your arm moves in a wild arc to intercept the blow, and it's only at the moment of impact that you realize you were too slow.
For a fraction of a second, you're relieved that you only heard the impact; that it happened to someone else, some poor jackass who got in the-
"You okay kid?!" Jounouchi demands, headbutting the assailant. Oh, god, his arm, his arm, it's like it's falling out of his skin-!
"... yeah," is all you can think of to say, but by the time you say it, another group of bandits is on you. When you and Akamaru finally cut through them, Jounouchi and the guy who went after you are both gone.
Team Asuma rendez-vous at the appointed spot when the battle has begun winding down, but as relieved as you are that your teammates are all right...
"Permission to attempt a retrieval operation, sir?"
You find him under two bodies, and for a heart-stopping moment you think he's dead. Then he coughs when you lift the first guy off of him, and blinks his eyes open.
"Why?"
He coughs. "... have to start somewhere."
That hand is not looking good. Veterinary training isn't the same as human medical training, but you know what a wound that severe means even if Ino doesn't. Jounouchi isn't looking at a month and a half in a cast and some stiffness afterward, he's looking at amputation.
You want to say something, anything, to him. But really, you should have said it before. Everyone's here now, it's just stupid. You're stupid. This whole thing is completely stupid.
With a grunt, you get up and walk to the door. You expect to hear Ami sigh and 'apologize' while wasting no time putting you down, but all she does is bow to everyone and say it was lovely to meet them. She gives you a look you don't recognize as she passes you on the way out of the room. After a moment, you identify it, to your surprise, as one of concern.
You stop in the hall. You don't turn around, but you know you can't leave without saying it.
"... thank you."
"You're welcome," Jou says, like it's the most natural thing in the world.
There's still something wrong, but you'll be damned if you know what. You clench your fists at your sides. Akamaru licks your hair comfortingly.
Eventually you just stomp down the stairs, face burning in shame.
"Asuma-sensei," you say when you reach the gate, not caring that Ami's right there, "I've thought about your proposal, and I've decided you can respectfully shove it up your respectful ass. With respect."
Your teacher raises an eyebrow. "Can I, now?"
You nod sharply. "I'm not backing out. You can reassign me to the auxiliaries or whatever crappy field office you want, but what you won't get me to do is quit." Your nails dig into the palms of your hands. "Just because there are things I don't understand, or people I don't understand... if I don't understand them, then I'll keep talking and asking and fighting until I do understand!" You glare defiantly up at him. "I'll give trust until I gain trust. That's the kind of shinobi I'll become."
Asuma smiles.
=
"So we're getting paid for a B rank?" Ami beams excitedly, and Kiba looks impressed.
"What a rip!" you grumble. "This was an A-rank easy."
Ami stares at you in disbelief. "And how, exactly, do you figure that?"
You glance at Asuma, but he shakes his head.
You sigh.
Well. Suppose it isn't really covert ops if you go around telling people about it.
At first, when you opened the chest and saw all those scrolls, you thought it was something simple. You thought Holy crap, Nabiki-chan has way more jewellery than I thought! And she has a sealmaster on the payroll!
But when you looked at them, saw their contents, you realized this was much bigger. The 'treasure' was nothing but technique scrolls and history texts, every one of them affixed with a label.
'For the Maebara', said the one you'd seen her put in the box after that run-in with the bandits.
'For the Urameshi' read another.
They weren't her dowry. They were wedding favours.
A hundred or more antique scrolls, rescued from god knows where (one of them had a huge soy sauce stain down its right side), brought together for a gathering of martial artists and clans to witness the union of the two most prominent masters of their style.
And the Hokage's son along for the ride.
After dinner that night, you set up the game board as usual, but you almost drop your pieces when Asuma holds out a cigarette for you.
"Now you have something to smoke about," he says dryly. "It isn't every day a genin helps one of our allies become the most powerful civilian force in the country, after all."
"It can't be that simple," you say, snatching the coffin nail from between his fingers. "They've only won one battle."
"In the middle of a tourist hotspot with no civilian casualties," Asuma says. "Do you know how rare that is? That you captured most of the Main House Midorikawa kids alive is just icing on the cake."
"Did they just... not know what they were getting into?" you ask. "I mean, I get that they thought they could overwhelm them with numbers - there was no way to know that Sukaha-san could do what she did," you shiver at the memory, "but most of the students I met were at least of high-genin level, and any decent intelligence network would have been able to pick up on that. Why would these Midorikawa guys hire bandits and independents instead of Suna, or gone the other way and invested in one or two high-level nuke-nin?"
"Powerful nuke-nin don't stay powerful by taking two-bit jobs that call attention to themselves," Asuma says. "You'd be surprised what the most infamous of them can charge. As for why the didn't hire Suna, none of the Five Kages will deal with the Midorikawa clan; they're on the blacklist."
You blink. "What for?"
Asuma lights up. "About ten years ago they hired a Konoha career genin stationed in the capital for a B-rank assassination mission, in exchange for forgiving his gambling debts. This was all done under the table, and the target was a child, so that got him and the Midorikawa in hot water with the Hokage as soon as he heard."
Ice pours down your back.
"The mission itself turned out to be a complete failure; the wrong child was killed, and the real target saw the Konoha hitai-ate the genin was wearing. To cover their own asses, the Midorikawa bribed the investigators to say it was an Iwa nin in disguise, which pissed off Iwa for obvious reasons. This coincided with the signing of a Suna-Iwa nonaggression treaty, so in a show of good faith, Suna also put them on their own blacklist. Kumo and presumably Kiri followed suit out of pure self-interest."
"... may I have a light?" you ask, as calmly as you can.
Cigarettes, it turns out, are simultaneously everything you wanted and absolutely terrible.
"It's a different kind of breathing," Asuma says as you sputter. "I'll show you how, if you want. But if you have any sense you'll quit right now."
"What exactly about the past week has led you to believe I have sense?" you ask, taking a slightly less ambitious drag.
=
You are Inuzuka Kiba, and your departure cannot come soon enough for your tastes.
"Guess we're heading out," Ino says, and slaps the hulking prettyboy next to her on the back. "When you get your camera fixed, send me a postcard."
"Will do," he replies with a nod.
"Will-" Mirioni blurts out, hesitating for a moment before plowing through: "Will you come back?"
Ino laughs in surprise. "Sure, if you'll have me. I wouldn't think you'd want to have a friend who trails invasions and attempted-robbery in her wake."
"You don't know these insects very well," the redhead says, snorting, and for just a moment she looks an awful lot like Ami. She nods at your teammate. "You take care of yourself, kid. Try not to die before we meet again; I think I'd like to fight you sometime."
"It'd be an honour to face such a fine specimen of the genus tsundere."
"TSUNDERE?!"
The tall boy sighs and catches hold of the back of the redhead's kimono before she can lunge at Ino.
"You!" the tiny blonde says in a mock stern tone, pointing at Jou. "You get that arm healed up as quick as you can so you can write to tell me all the filthy gossip that gets passed around about Nabiki-chan's insatiable appetites, you hear me?"
Jounouchi turns beet red. "Y-you shouldn't talk about stuff like that to an invalid!"
"Here's my address. Don't be a stranger~!" And she's out the door.
"... I swear," Ami says in disbelief, "you could tie her to an anvil and throw her in the ocean, and she'd make friends with an octopus in time for it to untie her and help her swim to safety."
The wind picks up the smoke and stench and smacks you dead in the nose with it, so hard that you stumble and retch. You have time to think No, not now, before you're flat on your ass, vomiting and cursing.
You're getting to your feet when it happens. You don't see it go down, but your ears tell the story just fine; your arm moves in a wild arc to intercept the blow, and it's only at the moment of impact that you realize you were too slow.
For a fraction of a second, you're relieved that you only heard the impact; that it happened to someone else, some poor jackass who got in the-
"You okay kid?!" Jounouchi demands, headbutting the assailant. Oh, god, his arm, his arm, it's like it's falling out of his skin-!
"... yeah," is all you can think of to say, but by the time you say it, another group of bandits is on you. When you and Akamaru finally cut through them, Jounouchi and the guy who went after you are both gone.
Team Asuma rendez-vous at the appointed spot when the battle has begun winding down, but as relieved as you are that your teammates are all right...
"Permission to attempt a retrieval operation, sir?"
You find him under two bodies, and for a heart-stopping moment you think he's dead. Then he coughs when you lift the first guy off of him, and blinks his eyes open.
"Why?"
He coughs. "... have to start somewhere."
That hand is not looking good. Veterinary training isn't the same as human medical training, but you know what a wound that severe means even if Ino doesn't. Jounouchi isn't looking at a month and a half in a cast and some stiffness afterward, he's looking at amputation.
You want to say something, anything, to him. But really, you should have said it before. Everyone's here now, it's just stupid. You're stupid. This whole thing is completely stupid.
With a grunt, you get up and walk to the door. You expect to hear Ami sigh and 'apologize' while wasting no time putting you down, but all she does is bow to everyone and say it was lovely to meet them. She gives you a look you don't recognize as she passes you on the way out of the room. After a moment, you identify it, to your surprise, as one of concern.
You stop in the hall. You don't turn around, but you know you can't leave without saying it.
"... thank you."
"You're welcome," Jou says, like it's the most natural thing in the world.
There's still something wrong, but you'll be damned if you know what. You clench your fists at your sides. Akamaru licks your hair comfortingly.
Eventually you just stomp down the stairs, face burning in shame.
"Asuma-sensei," you say when you reach the gate, not caring that Ami's right there, "I've thought about your proposal, and I've decided you can respectfully shove it up your respectful ass. With respect."
Your teacher raises an eyebrow. "Can I, now?"
You nod sharply. "I'm not backing out. You can reassign me to the auxiliaries or whatever crappy field office you want, but what you won't get me to do is quit." Your nails dig into the palms of your hands. "Just because there are things I don't understand, or people I don't understand... if I don't understand them, then I'll keep talking and asking and fighting until I do understand!" You glare defiantly up at him. "I'll give trust until I gain trust. That's the kind of shinobi I'll become."
Asuma smiles.
=
"So we're getting paid for a B rank?" Ami beams excitedly, and Kiba looks impressed.
"What a rip!" you grumble. "This was an A-rank easy."
Ami stares at you in disbelief. "And how, exactly, do you figure that?"
You glance at Asuma, but he shakes his head.
You sigh.
Well. Suppose it isn't really covert ops if you go around telling people about it.
At first, when you opened the chest and saw all those scrolls, you thought it was something simple. You thought Holy crap, Nabiki-chan has way more jewellery than I thought! And she has a sealmaster on the payroll!
But when you looked at them, saw their contents, you realized this was much bigger. The 'treasure' was nothing but technique scrolls and history texts, every one of them affixed with a label.
'For the Maebara', said the one you'd seen her put in the box after that run-in with the bandits.
'For the Urameshi' read another.
They weren't her dowry. They were wedding favours.
A hundred or more antique scrolls, rescued from god knows where (one of them had a huge soy sauce stain down its right side), brought together for a gathering of martial artists and clans to witness the union of the two most prominent masters of their style.
And the Hokage's son along for the ride.
After dinner that night, you set up the game board as usual, but you almost drop your pieces when Asuma holds out a cigarette for you.
"Now you have something to smoke about," he says dryly. "It isn't every day a genin helps one of our allies become the most powerful civilian force in the country, after all."
"It can't be that simple," you say, snatching the coffin nail from between his fingers. "They've only won one battle."
"In the middle of a tourist hotspot with no civilian casualties," Asuma says. "Do you know how rare that is? That you captured most of the Main House Midorikawa kids alive is just icing on the cake."
"Did they just... not know what they were getting into?" you ask. "I mean, I get that they thought they could overwhelm them with numbers - there was no way to know that Sukaha-san could do what she did," you shiver at the memory, "but most of the students I met were at least of high-genin level, and any decent intelligence network would have been able to pick up on that. Why would these Midorikawa guys hire bandits and independents instead of Suna, or gone the other way and invested in one or two high-level nuke-nin?"
"Powerful nuke-nin don't stay powerful by taking two-bit jobs that call attention to themselves," Asuma says. "You'd be surprised what the most infamous of them can charge. As for why the didn't hire Suna, none of the Five Kages will deal with the Midorikawa clan; they're on the blacklist."
You blink. "What for?"
Asuma lights up. "About ten years ago they hired a Konoha career genin stationed in the capital for a B-rank assassination mission, in exchange for forgiving his gambling debts. This was all done under the table, and the target was a child, so that got him and the Midorikawa in hot water with the Hokage as soon as he heard."
Ice pours down your back.
"The mission itself turned out to be a complete failure; the wrong child was killed, and the real target saw the Konoha hitai-ate the genin was wearing. To cover their own asses, the Midorikawa bribed the investigators to say it was an Iwa nin in disguise, which pissed off Iwa for obvious reasons. This coincided with the signing of a Suna-Iwa nonaggression treaty, so in a show of good faith, Suna also put them on their own blacklist. Kumo and presumably Kiri followed suit out of pure self-interest."
"... may I have a light?" you ask, as calmly as you can.
Cigarettes, it turns out, are simultaneously everything you wanted and absolutely terrible.
"It's a different kind of breathing," Asuma says as you sputter. "I'll show you how, if you want. But if you have any sense you'll quit right now."
"What exactly about the past week has led you to believe I have sense?" you ask, taking a slightly less ambitious drag.
=
Cosmos Quest the Movie: The Bridal War
The End
Featuring
Dr Bra Briefs (D.Des., D.F.A. [Theatre]) as Rouga Nabiki
Fujibayashi Ryou as Kikka Mei
Jonouchi Katsuya as himself
Lisa Lisa Joestar as Naoru Meiyaku
Asuka Sohryu-Langley as Naoru Asuka
Nijimura Okuyasu as Miyamoto Mirioni
Tsurugi Momotaro as Tsurugi Momiji
And introducing Hiiragi Tsukasa as Sei Not-Appearing-In-This-Film
Special Thanks to Scáthach of the Shadowfort and the Edajima Clan
The City of Fumizawa and the Borough of Tanzaku
The Tanzaku Gai Historical Society, and
Dr Briefs' father, for not disembowelling the writer, producer, director, or any of the cast and crew
The makers and distributors of this motion picture shall neither confirm nor deny that the character of Shinyuu Sorato may be inspired by any particular Naruto fanfiction character, OC or 'canon', recently-updated or deadfic.
Dr Bra Briefs (D.Des., D.F.A. [Theatre]) as Rouga Nabiki
Fujibayashi Ryou as Kikka Mei
Jonouchi Katsuya as himself
Lisa Lisa Joestar as Naoru Meiyaku
Asuka Sohryu-Langley as Naoru Asuka
Nijimura Okuyasu as Miyamoto Mirioni
Tsurugi Momotaro as Tsurugi Momiji
And introducing Hiiragi Tsukasa as Sei Not-Appearing-In-This-Film
Special Thanks to Scáthach of the Shadowfort and the Edajima Clan
The City of Fumizawa and the Borough of Tanzaku
The Tanzaku Gai Historical Society, and
Dr Briefs' father, for not disembowelling the writer, producer, director, or any of the cast and crew
The makers and distributors of this motion picture shall neither confirm nor deny that the character of Shinyuu Sorato may be inspired by any particular Naruto fanfiction character, OC or 'canon', recently-updated or deadfic.
Last edited by a moderator:
Selias
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I think that I missed something. What proposal was she telling Asuma to shove up his ass?
FurikoMaru
Versed in the lewd.
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He. And it's just what it sounds like. Asuma's little chat with Kiba when he sent you and Ami off to do your stuff was about whether or not Kiba should drop out of active service.Selias said:
Selias
Well worn.
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Ohhhhh. Yeah, it makes a LOT more sense that it's Kiba. I was wonder what the hell was going on.FurikoMaru said:
FurikoMaru
Versed in the lewd.
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I'm a little sad no one was surprised to find out Nabiki's cousin was killed by a Konoha shinobi rather than an Iwa one. And that everyone's given up on figuring out what Sorato and the Takazonos' respective deals are. Should I not bother to put as much work into these things as I do? Or do I just make everything too obvious?
Scia
Not too sore, are you?
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Well it is a Ninja/Martial arts/Yakuza Drama. It would have been surprising if it was not a Konoha nin.FurikoMaru said:
And in regards to those 3 I had the idea about him being someone that came from a world where those thought where based on a different interpretation of war but I also had the feeling that those 3 where based on chars that I did not know. Asuka and some of the others for example where more easily to grasp and recognise for me.
iamnuff
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some of it was obvious, other parts were completely fucking opaque.
also, honestly, i totally forgot about nabiki's cousin,
that chapter was a long time ago.
if I read it all at once, that would probably have been obvious, but at it stands? didn't click until you mentioned it.
also, honestly, i totally forgot about nabiki's cousin,
that chapter was a long time ago.
if I read it all at once, that would probably have been obvious, but at it stands? didn't click until you mentioned it.