Chapter 169: Layers

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“Out! Out, vile harridan! Go back and tell your corrupt masters that Usui Saruhiko is a law-abiding citizen who will not fall for your gross blandishments!”

As the client moved to flee the shop, cackling and holding a money pouch in her right hand (she’d had the common sense to finish selling her ordinary goods before introducing the apothecary to anything else), Keiko quickly stepped ahead of her to check the outside for traps. As she reached the exit, she skidded to a dead halt and thrust an arm out sideways in warning.

“Tripwire,” she hissed.

The team shifted into formation. Keiko stepped outside, ready to defend against an attack. Noburi knelt down to disarm the trap lest by unlucky chance it catch the “decrepit and poorly-coordinated” client or indeed the apothecary. Hazō simultaneously covered him and kept the client from stepping outside (or being clobbered by the apothecary, who seemed torn between his righteous rage and the moral commandment not to inflict violence on frail old women).

“Aargh, my fingers!” Noburi cursed. “Who the hell puts this much effort into a damn tripwire?”

“Leave it for now, then,” Hazō said. “We can deal with it once the area is secure.”

Noburi glanced back at the client and the apothecary, who were watching him with expressions of entertainment at his expense and simmering anger respectively.

“It’s fine,” he snapped. “I’m almost there.”

Hazō sighed. “Keiko?”

“Nothing,” Keiko replied after a few seconds. “But then, the enemy’s stealth was sufficient to prepare the trap in such close proximity to us unnoticed. Stay alert—they may still be in the area.”

She paused.

“Madam, please remain indoors until I have finished checking the palanquin for traps.”

Behind her, Noburi was still struggling with the tripwire.

“When I get my hands on whoever set this thing…”

The next few minutes were uneventful, as Hazō continued to cover a frustrated Noburi from ranged attacks while trying not to be distracted by the apothecary (who had switched from imminent violence to demanding reparations for obstruction of business). The client, meanwhile, just watched the proceedings with clear amusement.

“There was a bomb,” Keiko called out from the palanquin. “Minimal-strength training tag with a long time delay under the seating cushion. I doused it with water from a canteen. I believe we were intended to lower our guard after successfully forestalling an ambush and allow the client into the palanquin, shortly after which the tag would detonate with minimal damage to everything but the client. I will continue my search in case it was a decoy.”

“You do that,” Hazō said. “Noburi, are you seriously not done with that—“

The eternal little voice of paranoia at the back of Hazō’s mind, already at a constant low-volume screech due to the nature of the event, as well as the client’s periodic attempts to grope him, rose to a scream. They’ve finally come for me!

He whirled around to the window of the inn opposite. The last second of his memory instantly replayed itself, as if he’d been caught spacing out in the middle of a conversation. He saw a glint of light, so subtle that he wouldn’t have noticed it through conscious attention alone.

Clink! Clink! Clink!

The enemy’s aim was perfect, but somehow the needles were a little slower than Hazō expected, and he intercepted every last one with a hastily-drawn kunai before they could reach the client and doom them all.

Through the inn’s window, he could see someone moving away, towards the back of the taproom.

“Do not engage!” he barked as Noburi and Keiko belatedly sprang up. “It could be another diversion.”

His teammates reassembled by the apothecary’s front door, weapons out.

“I concur,” Keiko said. “The assailant likely confirmed that the inn had a rear exit before engaging, since otherwise we could easily intercept them as they escaped.”

She glanced at the apothecary floor.

“Soft-tipped needles, angled low so as to strike the target’s legs. Aerodynamically inferior, but virtually no risk of ricochet. Concealment in a busy location where ambient noise would drown out the sound of their movement, combined with a window position that would prevent the risk of collateral damage to patrons from them while inhibiting return fire from us.

“A difficult-to-disarm tripwire to distract one team member, followed by a seal-based trap to do the same for the other, leaving only one defender capable of deflecting the real attack. It seems we are being targeted by an opponent who relies on a functioning brain rather than raw firepower. I admit I find the experience refreshing.”

As Keiko returned to checking for secondary traps, Hazō found himself once more accosted by the apothecary.

“This is an outrage!” the man spat, emerging from behind the counter where he’d taken cover. “You are driving away customers with all this clamour. Rest assured, I will be lodging a formal complaint with the Mizukage’s Office!”

The client gave Hazō a gleeful “you’re on your own” look.

“Sir,” Hazō said in his most honeyed voice, “I humbly apologise for any inconvenience caused. Your attackers’ actions were in flagrant violation of the Chūnin Exam rules, and rest assured that as soon as we are able to identify them, we will report them to the Mizukage’s Office directly on your behalf. I’m sure that the relevant officials will be much quicker to address your claim if it is delivered by a ninja rather than a member of the civilian population.”

Usui considered this for a second, then relaxed.

“Yes,” he said, “that would be most acceptable. I apologise for my earlier outburst, esteemed ninja. Still, I must insist that you escort Miss Gisō out of my establishment and never bring her here again. I am a law-abiding man, and have no interest in the… items she peddles.”

Hazō bowed, and escorted the completely unrepentant client out as soon as Noburi was finally done with the tripwire and ready to back him up.

“All clear?” he asked Keiko.

“A few minutes more,” Keiko replied. “Given the calibre of the opponent we appear to be dealing with, I wish to leave no metaphorical stone unturned.”

Hazō and Noburi waited uneasily outside while Keiko performed a yet more thorough sweep.

“I found one more trap, this one much better concealed,” she eventually reported. “A weight had been attached to the roof of the palanquin with weak adhesive, such that the palanquin's natural swaying during transport would eventually unhinge it and drop it on the client’s head. I imagine that we were expected to assume that the first two traps were distractions to render us vulnerable to the needle attack, thereby failing to realise that the needle attack itself was a distraction from the real trap.”

She gave a shadow of a smile. “This is much closer to the Chūnin Exam I was hoping for. It is almost a pity that we will have to comprehensively crush this team and their plans into a fine, fine dust.”

The look in her eyes made Hazō shudder in spite of himself.

-o-​

Buoyed by an inexplicable and frankly unnerving good mood, Keiko took the lead in the security arrangements for the group’s lunch break. The table she’d chosen gave clear lines of sight to the café’s door and windows, while at the same time putting enough bodies between them and the team that even a Kage would hesitate to try a projectile attack. For the first time that day, Hazō permitted himself something vaguely resembling relaxation.

This was it, he decided. The timing couldn’t be better. They were all in the same place at the same time, the location was relatively secure, and the client had gone off to powder her nose, which given her anatomy could take upwards of half an hour. He leaned in to indicate a sensitive subject.

“I’ve had an idea.”

Noburi promptly raised his hand. “Check, please!”

“Very funny. Do I need to remind you who thought of trading for information with the yakuza?”

Noburi shrugged. “Yeah, there’s no way making deals with the underworld could possibly come back to haunt us. But all right, since it hasn’t yet, I’m all ears.”

Hazō opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, an anxious-looking waiter materialised at Noburi’s side.

“Honoured shinobi,” the man said in an urgent voice, “I most humbly apologise for not having your order ready yet. If you’ll just give me a minute, I’ll speak with the chef, and we’ll make sure—“

“No,” Noburi waved him away, “it’s my bad. Didn’t mean to catch you in the crossfire. I’ll wait for my meal like everyone else.”

The waiter bowed. “Thank you for your patience, honoured shinobi.” He hurried away.

“Ouch,” Noburi said. “After all our time in Leaf, I kind of forgot how big the ninja-civilian divide was over here.”

“I know,” Hazō said. “It feels weird, doesn’t it? Anyway, here is what I’ve been thinking. Right now, all the shady people our client wants to trade with are going to be hesitant because they don’t know if the goods are going to be declared illegal tomorrow. It’s not so much a matter of which side the Mizukage comes down on, because some of them will be fine with trading in illegal goods as long as they make a decent profit out of it, but either way they’re not going to make any big investments without knowing what the market is going to look like.”

“Logical,” Keiko agreed. “Doubtless this major obstacle is one of the reasons why we’ve been assigned this particular client, together with the dangers inherent in black market trade, whether real or simulated, and the potential for unintentionally earning the enmity of the yakuza in one way or another.”

Hazō smiled. “But for once we’re ahead of the game.”

“Indeed. I look forward to hearing your plan for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

“Thank you, Keiko,” Hazō gave her a pointed look. “In any case, my idea is this: we force the Mizukage’s hand.”

The silence lasted for a full five seconds.

“Pardon me,” Keiko said slowly. “For a moment, it sounded as if you were proposing to manipulate the head of a sovereign state into making far-reaching changes to village law in order to grant a genin team an advantage in an annual examination.”

“By secretly drugging and/or planting drugs on a person of influence, and then making sure they are discovered in a compromising position,” Hazō added.

Keiko opened her mouth, doubtless to deliver a deadpan summary of why she had never heard anything more preposterous in her entire life. Noburi got there first.

“That is the most ninja thing I have ever heard," he said with awe.

“Noburi!” Keiko said in a tone of mixed disbelief and outrage, staring at him as if he’d invited her to join the Momochi Zabuza Fan Club.

“C’mon, Keiko,” Noburi grinned. “Think of all the stories. Hanamura Uzume, who brought down a kingdom by implicating a daimyo with his general’s wife. Ayame the Thrice-Lecherous, who nobody can prove started the Fang-Claw conflict. Kondo Mamoru, whose name is still cursed in seven countries two hundred years later. All of them became legends by doing things like this.”

“Yes,” Keiko said. “That is why they are second-rate shinobi.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Shinobi are beings of shadow,” Keiko explained slowly, as if to a small child. “A perfect assassination is when the target appears to have died of natural causes. A perfect theft is when the target is convinced that they misplaced the item themselves. A perfect seduction is when the target believes that they were the seducer. Do you perceive the trend?”

Noburi gave this some thought.

“What about the fireballs?”

“The fireballs,” Keiko said coldly, “are inefficient. They are the product of a completely unnecessary arms race which has consumed the majority of the shinobi world’s resources since time immemorial. In the right hands, the Transformation Technique is sufficient to cast down empires, yet a jōnin’s power is measured by the size of the crater they leave behind when destroying their foes. If there are gods in the heavens above, how they must laugh.”

“It’s not that I don’t enjoy scathing critiques of the shinobi world’s status quo,” Hazō said after a few seconds of existentially-troubled silence, “but I do want to know what you two think of my idea.”

“Very well,” Keiko said. She closed her eyes.

Hazō and Noburi waited patiently. There was still no sign of the client. (They’d briefly sent Keiko in to sweep the ladies’ room for potential threats, so Hazō wasn’t particularly worried.)

A few minutes later, she opened them again.

“Viable,” she decided. “The main point in its favour is that, insofar as the legal status of narcotics is in limbo, so are the legal implications of planting them on an individual without their consent. However, concerns remain. It would be difficult to plant the drugs in a container that can be guaranteed to be opened before the Mizukage, or in a similarly conspicuous location, and if it is, we still cannot guarantee that the owner will not find some way of concealing them again before their nature can be identified. On the other hand, if we were to introduce the drugs directly into someone’s system, that person’s reduced self-control may lead to injury, which would be considered collateral damage under the rules of the event.”

“On that topic…” Noburi gave a disturbingly diabolical grin. “I was thinking while you were using your Bloodline Limit, and I may just have an idea of my own.”

“Yes?” Keiko asked warily.

“Well, if we want a target who’ll still be able to take care of themselves when drugged, obviously we need to target a ninja.”

Hazō and Keiko nodded.

“Then we need somebody who’s important enough that them taking drugs is a big deal, but not so powerful that they can get crush us like a bug, literally or politically, if things go south.”

Hazō and Keiko nodded again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Old Lizardbreath, Headmaster of the Mist Academy of the Ninja Arts.”

The perfection of it took Hazō’s breath away.

-o-​

You have earned 3 XP. Hazō has spent 1 FP and earned 2 FP. Noburi has earned 2 FP. Keiko has earned 1 FP.

-o-​

You have done your best to treat the client courteously. She has insisted on the Granny Karina appellation, which you have acceded to (but at least refused to use inside your head because it feels creepy). You have been unable to bring yourself to be flirtatious with her, but have achieved the middle ground of largely hiding how uncomfortable she makes you. You’re not sure to what extent she sees through your bluff, but you are at least acting politely. You did remind her of professional standards for client-bodyguard interaction, to which she responded that in her day, when a ninja committed to fulfilling a client’s needs for the duration of the mission, they committed to fulfilling all of a client’s needs. It’s hard to call her on this because “her day” may well predate recorded history. Worse, she acts as if she’s convinced that you are on the verge of reciprocating, and are only holding back out of youthful bashfulness. This woman, if woman she be under that disguise, is good.

As an escortee, she follows instructions willingly and more or less to the letter, but does not take the initiative in securing her own well-being, instead “trusting you strapping young lads to get her out of any trouble she might get into”.

She has no fixed appointments that she’s told you about, but a sizeable list of persons and establishments she intends to visit, and she intends to solicit additional contact information from cooperative “dealers”. She has no special dinner plans, but she has listed very specific dietary requirements caused by a combination of her advanced knowledge of the human body and her advanced age, such as refusing to eat meals containing certain common cooking herbs (which her expertise claims to be unhealthy), disliking certain kinds of meat and so on. You may have a challenging time satisfying her.

-o-​

Tactical information based on your team’s pooled recollections:

Headmaster Ichigaya Yasuzaemon, known out of earshot as Old Lizardbreath, is a short, fat man in his mid-fifties who wears gold-rimmed glasses even though he doesn’t need them. He is a chūnin, and rumours claim him to be a T&I dropout. He was awarded his post as a reward for unspecified “services to the state” around thirty years ago, a mixed blessing since on the one hand it is a cushy, well-paid job away from the front lines, and on the other hand, he hates children. There is not one child in the Academy who does not hate him back. Each of the three of you has suffered repeatedly at his hands, being forced to endure endless litanies concerning your inferior abilities, your poor behaviour, your selfishness, your inability to integrate with the rest of the group, the many ways in which you are a disappointment to your parents, this Academy and the village, and… you get the idea. He also does not hesitate to play favourites in order to try and ingratiate himself with the village clans.

Ichigaya is a competent administrator when he’s not offloading his work onto other people, and is skilled at corporal punishment. His abilities as a ninja are not known to you since he never displays any, but may include traps insofar as more or less everyone knows that he has a secret stash of alcohol in his office, and countless schoolchildren have tried and failed to steal it as a dare. He is arrogant, short-tempered and sadistic, with an ego the size of a Tailed Beast. He frequently patrols the Academy corridors in lieu of doing paperwork, dropping in on detentions in order to “show them how it’s done” and making unreasonable demands of students in the middle of practical classes (he loves making people do sit-ups).

His daily routine is well-known to you. Around 7 am, he enters the Old Schoolhouse building of the Academy, having walked from his home in the northwest, and proceeds to his office, where he drinks from his hidden alcohol stash to fortify himself for the day (as you infer based on his breath if encountered in the morning). He is typically in his office until around 10 am, after which he often walks around the grounds until lunchtime. At 12, he leaves the Academy to have lunch at one of a number of nearby cafes, and returns by 2 pm. He remains in his office until at least 4 pm. He leaves the Academy at 6 pm after taking another drink from his stash (as you found out after one particularly long detention), while many other staff members, including his secretary, are still hard at work. You do not know what he does afterwards.

In addition to the hidden alcohol stash, the office contains a variety of useful documents which you have seen him consult before or after loudly upbraiding you, and it seems likely that his weekly schedule will be among them. The office has two windows and one door, which leads to his secretary’s room. She is an overworked young woman who frequently snaps at the children, but always seems vaguely guilty about it afterwards.

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Ignore the measurements; I couldn't figure out how to get rid of them.

-o-​

It is now the early afternoon. You have visited the first two places on the client’s itinerary, mostly successfully, and are now having lunch at a cheap and cheerful café (the client has taken mercy on you and chosen her first dining location for herself). The client is taking her time in the bathroom, so you have plenty of opportunity to discuss further plans before she returns.

What do you do?

Voting closes on Saturday 24th of March, 9 am New York time.