Chapter 167: Preparation​

Keiko closed the scroll and leaned back against the wall at the head of her bunk, tapping the document slowly on her leg in thought. "Interesting."

"That is bonkers," Noburi said. "We're actually going to be fighting in the city itself?"

"The penalties for collateral damage are sufficiently severe that it should be relatively safe," Keiko said. "No one is going to risk the disqualification of every single one of the contestants from their village, and even minor property damage costs you more points than most people earned in the first event. Everyone will be extremely careful."

"Still...." Noburi trailed off and shook his head. "More of a risk than I would take, but I guess they weren't asking me. Okay, so, fake escort mission means there's two parts to the exam: keeping our fake merchant safe and making sure he makes a ton of money so we get lots of points. We can take advantage of the collateral damage rules for the first part—keep him surrounded by barriers at all times. Maybe move him around in a palanquin? No one could hit him without damaging the palanquin."

"Some teams might be willing to accept a small amount of collateral damage in the interest of eliminating us from the event," Keiko noted. "The lowest-scoring teams might even choose to sacrifice their own chances in the Exam in order to eliminate high-scoring teams from other villages, thereby enhancing the chances of the other ninja from their own village."

"Umph," Hazō muttered. "Hadn't thought of that one. Okay, the palanquin idea is a good one, but we'll need to extend it. How about we have two palanquins? Or we send the palanquin out as a decoy, carried by clones, and actually move the client separately?"

"That would require a lot of clones," Noburi pointed out. "Chakra management is going to be important. It'll be hard for me to recharge during this event. I can siphon from you guys in the evening, but the two of you together don't have enough chakra to completely refill me, and you're not going to be full yourselves. Well, except you, Hazō—you're always full of it." He grinned at his own witticism; his adoptive brother replied with a withering glare.

"I suspect we could pay some of the Leaf jōnin to let you drain chakra from them at night," Keiko said, studiously ignoring the banter. "Based on your ability to keep multiple people full, your capacity is significantly higher than a normal—that is, than a non-Wakahisa ninja. As such, we will need to arrange a deal with multiple jōnin. I can see about extracting some or all of our next month's stipend from the Pangolin clan, especially if Hazō is willing to make some of the next month's seals early."

"Of course," Hazō said, nodding. "Having a lot of money on hand sounds like a good plan regardless. If we can find a way to feed some of it to the client it'll be to the good."

"We aren't allowed to give money to the client," Noburi pointed out. "Side note: The 'no questions' part of the rules is a problem. It's probably another way to avoid loophole abuse—if we don't know all the details of the rules then we have to play conservatively and only do things that are definitely safe."

Keiko nodded. "Indeed. Giving the money to a merchant to pass on to our client might be a breach of the rules, so we should avoid that. We can, however, use the money to gather information and locate opportunities which we then steer the client to. Ideally ones that would appeal to other clients in the event, thereby cutting them out of particularly lucrative deals."

"Speaking of other clients," Hazō said, "what do we tell the other Leaf teams? We agreed that we would all share the start time and location of events but we don't have to give them anything beyond that. We could trade the information, though."

Keiko nodded thoughtfully. "Either for direct assistance or at least a non-interference pact."

"I was thinking maybe we link up with one of the other teams," Hazō said. "With six people available we can keep four back to cover the two clients while we send two of us out hunting other teams. Assassinating someone's client would probably wipe out whatever gains they made in the first event and leave them in the hole. Gives us a real leg up."

"The plan is predicated on the clients being willing to stick together," Keiko pointed out. "I find this unlikely. It would make it too difficult for them to make deals, unless they were willing to split profits, which they will not be."

"Yeah, about that," Hazō said. "How do you think the trade works? Are they actually going to be making deals, or is it all a sham?"

Keiko raised an eyebrow. "A sham?"

"You know...they walk into a shop, sit around for fifteen or twenty minutes to simulate the time that a negotiation would take, then the merchant hands over a specified amount of money and the client leaves."

She shook her head. "I doubt it. The Mizukage would need to supply the money for that or risk damaging the economy, or at least angering the merchants. Although the merchants lack direct power it is still inefficient to have them angry. Supplying the money would greatly increase the cost of the Exams and it would either render the scoring of the event pointless—if the amounts were all the same—or it would be too open to accusations of favoritism if the amounts were variable. Much more likely is that the clients will actually be negotiating for real."

"What incentive do they have?" Noburi asked. "If our client just sits around the alehouse for five days then we're pretty much screwed on points. Plus, he'd be a static target, much easier for assassins."

Silence fell as the team pondered that.

"That would definitely be cause for protest," Keiko said at last. "Most likely the clients have all been ordered to at least make a good-faith effort. To do otherwise would shame Mist."

"Going back to what we tell the other teams," Noburi said. "Cooperating with all of them in the last event made everything a lot safer but kinda screwed us on points. I'd like to get a non-interference pact but otherwise steer clear of them so we can really shine on our own."

"Might be nice to get some sort of alliance with Team Asuma," Hazō said. "Their abilities make them absolutely brutal assassins, especially with these collateral-damage rules in play. At the very least I want a non-interference pact with them." He paused to think. "Actually, we might go one step beyond non-interference with all the Leaf teams: arrange to bunk our clients in the same place so we can form a mutual defense society at night. Arranging lodging is a thing that bodyguards do, right?"

"Yeah. Also, choosing movement schedules and plans within the client's general requirements."

Hazō frowned. "What does that mean, exactly? And how do you know about this?"

Noburi shrugged. "One of my older cousins was a great storyteller and whenever he babysat for the youngers he would tell us about various missions he and his team had done. Some of those stories were about escort and bodyguard work. Not exactly a font of information—he was pretty long on how awesome he was and short on specific details, but a few things came through. The client specifies where he needs to be and generally what time he needs to be there. Nori's team would choose the route and vary their departure times slightly in order to keep the client safe. He did say that some clients were difficult to work with and refused to cooperate."

Hazō winced. "Let's hope ours isn't like that."

"Your lips to the Sage's ear. Anyway, Keiko, you should go get the money. Then the three of us should find some safe places to stay and get reservations made."

"We're done with hunting for word-halves, right?"

"Absolutely. / Hell yeah."

"Okay, where does that leave us?"

Keiko ticked points off on her fingers. "Get money from the pangolins. Exchange it for spendable local currency. Find lodgings, ideally at several different places and then we randomly select which one to use immediately beforehand. Locate and rent or purchase two separate palanquins. Parenthetically, it would be a good idea to rent one with an extremely high replacement cost as a further disincentive for other teams to attack us. Scout mercantile opportunities, although that will be difficult given that we don't know what sort of business our client will be looking for. Talk to the other Leaf teams over dinner tonight and try to work out a non-aggression treaty. Be at the mission room before dawn so that we can get started as early as possible."

"We should talk to Jiraiya, too," Hazō said. "We'll be out of touch for five days."

"We can still communicate through the Seventh Path," Keiko noted. "Given the most minimal precautions on our part, I defy Mist to prove that we did any such thing."

"Point," Hazō said, nodding thoughtfully. "That's handy. Among other things, I could draw seal blanks and send them to him for infusion.

"Speaking of points," he said, a thought occurring to him, "how many do you think we could reasonably get? I'm assuming that they'll want the events to be worth about the same, so maybe eighty to a hundred?"

"First, I doubt that they have actually put a limit on it," Keiko said. "Second, making later events worth more would be a reasonable strategy in that it would allow teams who did poorly in one event to catch up." She shrugged. "Of course, it would also be reasonable to make all events worth the same, as you suggested—that way the early events are not overshadowed. Still, this particular event seems like an open-ended opportunity. I suspect that, if our client manages to legitimately earn a million ryō, the proctors will be perfectly willing to let us have a thousand points."

"...Interesting," Hazō said, gazing into the middle distance as he thought. "That gives me an idea."

Noburi glanced at Keiko. "Did you just feel a shudder down your spine? Because I felt a shudder down my spine."

"I did not." Pause. "It was more of a looming sense of doom."

"Very funny, you two. Look, here's what I'm thinking...."

o-o-o-o​

The woman who walked into the bar was in her mid-thirties, dressed in the simple clothes of a lower-class person—perhaps a seamstress, given how expertly the small hole in the right sleeve had been patched. She wore a yellow hat and an attractive leather purse as minor concessions to fashion and carried a copy of Icha Icha: Paradise of the Heart clutched in one hand.

She settled at the end of the bar and eyed the bartender politely until he finished serving the half-drunk boozer halfway down and came over to her.

"Can I get you something, ma'am?" he asked politely.

Her mouth smiled but it didn't reach her eyes. "Tea, please. And if you could pass on a message for me."

The bartender raised an eyebrow. "A message, ma'am? To whom?"

"My respected eldest uncle," she said. "Could you please give him this"—from her purse she produced a small package bound in waterproofed oilskin and slid it across the bar to him—"and tell him that my friends and I deeply regret that we will not be able to have dinner with him this week? We were very much looking forward to trying his sea turtle soup, but we will be working with an extremely demanding merchant and it is critical to my family's future that this client have a successful commercial venture here in Mist. We therefore cannot afford any distraction, even one so desirable as visiting my most excellent eldest uncle. I do hope he will understand but, as I said, the success of this merchant's venture is critical to my family. We would like to discuss business next week, if he is willing."

The bartender's eyes widened. "Oh! Yes, ma'am, I can pass that on. Tell your eldest uncle that you wanted to try his sea turtle soup but won't be able to this week since you'll be working with a merchant and you can't afford distractions. You want to discuss business next week."

"We cannot afford distractions because the success of this merchant is criticial to my family's future," the woman said, locking eyes with him in a way that made the older and larger bartender pale.

"Y-yes, ma'am. You wanted to try his sea turtle soup but can't this week because you're working with a merchant whose success is critical to your family's future and so you can't afford distractions. You want to discuss business next week. The package is for him." He gestured clumsily towards the oilskin.

The woman released his gaze and smiled like a china doll. "Thank you so much. Now, about that tea? I'm afraid I can't stay long, but I would like one cup."

"Of course, ma'am. Right away, ma'am."

o-o-o-o​

The members of SuperTeam Leaf, plus Hinata's team, had gathered for dinner in the Ino/Shika/Chō rooms, since those were centrally located on the hall that Leaf had claimed as their own. The dorms were designed for six ninja to bunk together; it was a tight squeeze to fit everyone in the room at all and people were perched on every free surface and the floor with plates balanced on their laps. Even the floorspace was sufficiently limited that Lee was sitting on the wall, the soles of his feet anchored to the surface with chakra adhesion. Hazō waited for a lull in the dinnertime chatter before dropping his explosive tag. "We found out about the next event," he said quietly.

There were immediately a dozen interested gazes locked on him. Shikamaru was nodding and making a rolling gesture with one hand that Hazō recalled meant well, yes, obviously, now skip ahead.

"How? / Where? / What is it? / When does it st—"

"It's tomorrow at dawn," Keiko said, cutting through the chatter. "It starts at the mission office in Mizukage Tower and it runs for five days, ending at dawn on November 7."

"Where did you get that?" Yamanaka demanded, flicking her hair over her shoulder.

"Some people I knew from when I was a kid," Hazō said vaguely. "We got more than the when and where, though. We have what looks to be full details on the event, and we're willing to trade them for a non-interference pact. Anyone who wants to deal agrees that they won't do anything to decrease our score in the event so long as we don't do anything to decrease your score."

"We should state up front that we have not yet found a way to verify the information," Keiko added. "Nonetheless, we believe it to be accurate. Should we turn out to be wrong we will notify everyone of that fact as soon as we are able and any non-inteference pacts will be null and void."

Glances were exchanged.

"We also obtained information about the event," Hinata said quietly. "Our information could act as a check for yours."

"Same here," Sakura said.

"How did you guys get it?" Noburi asked.

"I read it off some papers that one of the proctors was carrying," Hinata said. "They were in his jacket at the time, but Shino and Kiba kept him talking long enough for me to make it out."

"I hit Kiba with a genjutsu in the bath," Sakura said. "Made him think I was Shino."

"What?! No you didn't!"

She gave him a pitying look. "'What are your thoughts on the event, Kiba? For my own part, I have yet to come up with satisfactory tactics on how to optimize our chances for success.'"

Kiba's mouth was sagging open. "You raging bitch."

The pink-haired girl shrugged and leaned over to serve herself some dango from one of the communal take-out boxes. "Ninja. Saw you guys chatting up that proctor while Hinata hung back with her eyes going, figured she was reading something off the proctor, decided to take a chance." She glanced up at Kiba, offering him a mocking grin. "You shouldn't have left Akamaru back in your room to guard your stuff. He's obviously the brains of the pair. As well as the bigger boy." She wiggled her little finger at him; Kiba's shock transformed into horror, than anger. He started to leap up but Aburame caught his shoulder and pressed him back down.

"Be calm, Kiba," the bug user said. "She is trying to rile you. Why? Because it allows her to score social points." He turned to Akane. "I assume this is why you intercepted me in the hall—to provide a distraction while Sakura interrogated Kiba? I congratulate you. Your queries about my allies' intelligence-gathering capabilities and offer to share information made an excellent cover."

"So, about that information," Hazō said, desperately attempting to divert the soon-to-be volcanic eruption that was Inuzuka Kiba. "Who wants to deal?"

"A non-interference pact sounds good," Akane said. "It would be very unyouthful to fight allies. I know we will need to do so at some point, but I am not looking forward to it."

"I have no objection to a non-interference agreement," Hinata said, looking at her teammates. Shino shrugged and nodded. Kiba glared pointedly at Sakura for several long seconds, but the pinkette simply grinned smugly at him. Finally the dog-clan member nodded a grudging acceptance.

"How youthful! For a second time our entire group shall mingle our most youthful essence!"

"Lee! / Argh! / Lee! / Shut up, Lee!"

The green-clad genin cheerfully ignored the outburst of protests at his language in favor of munching on his kimchi.

"Right," Hazō said. "Okay, we got a scroll that lays it all out. It's an escort / bodyguard mission. We're going to be assigned a proctor as a client, he'll be traveling around the city doing deals and we need to keep him safe. If he gets touched by a hostile contestant or hit with a weapon or whatever else would injure or kill a civilian then he's dead and your team is disqualified. There's some really harsh penalties for collateral damage, including...." He laid out the details in a few quick sentences, Keiko filling in a few bits that he'd forgotten. Afterwards, the original Team Uplift looked around the table at the other teams that had claimed to have the information.

"That mostly matches what I saw," Hinata said. "Although I suspect the documents I was reading were a later draft than yours. For one thing, it specified that the client is responsible for room, board, and all other expenses for themselves and the team. For another, instead of saying 'anything that would injure or kill a civilian' would be considered a kill, it made things more concrete: the proctor will be wearing a henge at all times. If the henge pops then the client is considered killed."

"That...sounds problematic," Hazō said. "The proctor could just deliberately bump into a wall, pop their own henge, and thereby disqualify the team assigned to them."

"Yeah, good point," Yamanaka said, nodding in a fashion that was so serious it was sarcastic. "Boy, I sure wouldn't want to be a team that everyone in Mist had reason to hate. That would suck."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "Ino."

"Aww, come on, Shika. You can't even let me wind them up for a second?"

"Ino."

"Fine, fine. Don't worry, the proctors aren't going to be putzing around...or, at least, the one that I mind-dived isn't going to."

"You mind-dived a proctor?"

Shrug. "Ninja. Yamanaka, even. Anyway, it's being left up to the individual proctors whether they communicate this to their team or not, but the 'clients' have a major incentive not to screw around: they get to keep the money."

Frowns went around the table, except for Keiko, who was nodding in comprehension. "Of course. Presumably with an audit process."

"Yep. They're given a persona to play and they need to stay within that persona. As long as they don't use ninja abilities and don't break character, they get to keep whatever money they can make during the event."

"What does breaking character look like?" Hazō asked.

Ino shrugged. "That's a little more detailed than I was able to get in the time I had, but I'd assume it basically means don't do anything that a merchant who is a civilian and a foreigner wouldn't do. Follow the law, don't take advantage of contacts that you have that your character wouldn't have, that kind of thing."

"Interesting..." Hazō muttered. "Okay, we can work with this. If the proctors are taking it seriously then we'll all be able to make points from their earnings. That leaves the other side of the coin: eliminating other teams' clients so as to wreck those teams' scores. I had some ideas that I want to bounce off you guys...."

The remainder of this plan will be handled by the inimitable @Velorien. He will take care of awarding XP and/or FP. There will be no voting until after his update.

It's up to Velorien how much of the remaining scenes from the plan he shows on camera, but the parts that remain are:

The end of the dinner with the other SuperTeam Leaf. This would be mostly social but could include some of the discussion in the following bullet point: (From section '2. Go Back to Leaf Barracks') Talk with Ino/Shika/Chō re taking out the Lightning team. Most of the rest of this section has been invalidated by scheduling, although they could still try to mess with the bandanas if everyone thought that was a good idea. Conversation with Jiraiya in the evening, after dinner, if he's available. Flashback to the afternoon: cf the 'Businesses/Bandanas' section of the plan Arriving at the Tower at dawn and meeting the 'client'. Madness and wacky hijinks ensue as mercantile shenanigans begin.

Author's Notes:

The oilskin package that Keiko gave to the Yakuza bartender contained 90 full-power explosive tags. These have been deducted from Hazō, Noburi, and Keiko's supply. The point of that scene is that Keiko was sending a message to the Oyabun saying "I'm not going to say anything that would imply I'm giving you money to pass on to our client, but it would be in your interest to steer business to our client during this event."

Regarding the plan: There were some chronological issues that I had trouble working around. In chapter 166.2 you went to the Yakuza in the morning and got the details of the event. The plan for this chapter (167) had you first talk to Keiko and Noburi, then talk to Team Asuma. Problem: Team Asuma and all the other Leaf teams were out in the city trying to find out where the next event will be. There's no plausible way I could think of for you to locate them in a city the size of Mist, so you were stuck waiting until they come back to the barracks for dinner. You had a billion different things you wanted to do in the city, but the main one (dealing with the bandanas) was predicated on having talked to Team Asuma first and gotten their help.

Final resolution:

Keiko went to the 7th Path and did a quick deal. Next month you owe the pangolins an extra 20 seals but they are giving you half the payment now. Keiko got a pound of gold (all they were able to put their claws on immediately) and more will become available over the next couple days. You traded the gold to a goldsmith and got ryō for it. The other QMs aren't around now so we don't have an exact number, but you're pretty flush. You ran all over the city sussing out the local businesses, choosing ambush locations, and putting some travel routes into the "good/safe" bucket and others into the "bad/avoid" bucket. You made reservations for yourselves + 1 at two different boarding houses (one middle-class, one high-class) in widely separated parts of Mist. Keiko suggests that, if the client can be persuaded, you (by which she means anyone other than Hazō) roll a die to decide which one you actually stay at. Given the rules about the client covering expenses it may turn out that this money was wasted but it was a sensible thing to do given the information you had at the time. You managed to find and purchase an enclosed palanquin, as well as hire a pair of bearers. The bearers will be sleeping at their own homes and will show up in the morning wherever you tell them to be, work through the day, and leave in the evening. They expect to be provided with lunch as part of their payment. In the plan you had an idea to convince rickshaw drivers / palanquin bearers / etc to leave their vehicles at Mizukage Tower overnight in order to be there early in the morning. Hazō was then going to set simulated traps in each of these things that would 'kill' any client who got in the vehicle. This seemed very impractical to me—no rickshaw driver is going to leave his vehicle unattended overnight, the vehicles aren't really big enough to conceal a trap, and if there is anywhere in the city that is going to have guards watching the area and thereby making it hard to sneak into parked vehicles, it would be Mizukage Tower. As such, that didn't happen. You've done lots of planning and set up lots of codes. You left a message with Jiraiya giving him the thumbnail sketch of what's going on for the next five days. @Velorien will decide if he's available or not. There was no opportunity to do anything on the Yamamoto Haru project, although Velorien might choose to have something after dinner. Before dinner, Hazō made 10 macerators and loaded them with perfume. They are listed on his character sheet which should be released soon.