Chapter 100
Months after Hibiki hit the monumental two-zero, as the war passed the wrong end of its fourth year, he and Minato, alongside the remaining portions of Minato and Dai's squads, were presiding over the latest of Gai's insanity-fueled challenges for him and the young man who claimed to despise his endless pursuits and yet never refused when one was posed to him. Of everyone present, the only one who found the proceedings entertaining was Obito, who was cheering, hooting, hollering, and laughing at every ridiculous development. Rin was beside herself with worry, as she usually was, because as time went on, Gai's challenges became ever more ridiculous and complex, and more than once had resulted in blood being drawn before a fist was ever thrown, so whatever entertainment she drew from it was vastly overshadowed by her rampant worry over the boisterous Genin and the stoic Chunin who had long since learned that the best way to shut Gai up was to indulge him. Ibiki Morino, a surly interrogation-specialist well on his way to getting his Chunin field promotion, as well as Sado Nil, a quiet, fair-haired decryption analyst-slash-sensor-nin, weren't typically entertained to begin with, having spent many years alongside Gai and this having become a fact of life for the two, but today especially they weren't amused, and their reasons were same ones that had Hibiki and Minato, who usually were right alongside Obito in encouraging all of this, quietly discussing back and forth.
"He doesn't even look it!" Minato said, hands dug into, and arms hanging from, the neck of his his flak jacket and blonde head tilted to the side, trying to look at Gai every way he could, while he and Kakashi were digging holes in the training field with their left hands, juggling tree saplings with their right, removing the trees damaged or destroyed by shinobi training with their feet, and planting the saplings with their teeth.
"Looks can be deceiving, Minato... Especially with that mad bastard." Hibiki chuckled, "he can hold it in pretty well, but Dai?" He sucked in breath through his teeth and shook his head, a mildly concerned expression on his face. "Once something finally gets past her Kikaichu she's down for the fuckin' count. I've seen it, even a cold takes her down. Could hardly get out of bed this morning, she was so out of it. Had to force her to stay home and stay in bed, told her I'd take over the team for the day." Fortunately, her kids were largely self sufficient by this point, and after reaching their daily quota of D-ranks, they had retired to this training ground, where they happened upon Team Minato, and the fight between Gai and Kakashi had resulted in the damages they were currently fixing right now.
"I'll have to have Kakashi get looked at once we're done..." Minato grimaced. "How can that kid think allergies did that to his sensei?"
"Beats the fuck outta me, apparently he did pretty well in Shizune's class." He said, before nodding to the side, "all things considered."
Minato chuckled, turning away from the carnage in front of them and looking up to the sky.
"He was at the border a week ago... Maybe he got spiked by something?" Hibiki mentioned, not noticing the silence coming from the Namikaze. "Ah... No. Kusa's not one known for poison... Though with how dirty some of those outposts are, that's probably where he caught it." And somehow he was just lucky to be mostly asymptomatic, or his willpower was just that good. "I've got Tsunade coming in later today to take a look at her, though... She'll figure out."
"What... The... Fuck?"
Hibiki blinked, and turned to Minato, as did his squad, all of whom for the same reason, "holy shit, Minato! I think that's the first time you've cursed!"
"Hibiki!" Minato, a flabbergasted expression on his face, "look!" He pointed up to the sky.
The Senju head turned around and looked up, and then he blinked.
Oh... Well I guess it's time. He thought, beholding a gigantic zeppelin lazily flying in from the south, its sides bearing the marks of Iron, Snow, and Rain countries.
"Well if they wanted attention they fuckin' got it." Hibiki grunted, a frown on his face as he watched a fireball from below the zeppelin trail up into the sky after it, hitting its surface but appearing to do no damage. "Gai! Kakashi!" He barked, causing the two to briefly pause in their competition, and then stop entirely when they saw what was getting everyone on their feet. "Training's over!"
"Rin, get them healed up and report to the academy!" Minato knelt down to his Genin and gave her a stern look, and only stood back up when she nodded and ran over to the two stunned shinobi.
"Hibiki-sama?" Ibiki grunted, his rough face painted by absolute consternation. "What is that?"
"Nothing good..." Hibiki gritted his teeth, his Sharingan catching a volley of kunai being thrown at it from below, but with the distance involved, the kunai bled off too much of their speed from air resistance to do anything but bounce off of the airship. "Once he's up to snuff, go to my apartment. Keep an eye on Dai."
A second later an Anbu in a bear's mask appeared at the edge of their training grounds. He made eye contact with Hibiki and Minato, and tersely called out, "Hokage's office! Now!"
They didn't waste any time, one vanishing in a ripple of light, the other in a yellow flash, both appearing instantly in front of the academy and rushing in, through the slowly growing throng of rookies and Genin and up to the stairwell that led to the Hokage's office. Minato shouldered the door open, and inside were several other Jonin, the heads of every clan, the Jonin and Chunin commanders, and Noboru and Suboro, all packed into the office and all appearing to be arguing and hotly debating with each other over how to take it down, or if they even should.
"It's got foreign insignias on it! We have to destroy it!" The Jonin Commander argued.
"And how?" Shikaku responded, with a lazy roll of his eyes. "It's far enough away that even long-range ninjutsu can't do much to it."
"Then where the hell are -"
"Hibiki, Minato." Noboru's deep voice cut through the arguing, and attracted all eyes to the new arrivals.
"Good!" The Jonin commander grunted, "you two have summons, right?"
"Hold on!" Now the head of the Kaguya clan cut in, "they haven't attacked yet, not even in retaliation!"
"They're hovering over our village in a giant metal monster, that makes their intentions pretty clear!" Fugaku argued.
"Have we tried talking to them?" Minato spoke up, as Hibiki pushed to the front of the crowd and, when he made it to Dante's desk, gave the Hokage a curious look, but the aging Uchiha was simply staring down at his desk, chin resting on his folded hands.
"Oh, sure! We'll just shout really loud!" He heard Tsume bark, "no wonder you smell like the bitch!"
"Wait, what?"
"Everybody quiet." Dante spoke, but his words went unheard.
"Senju, you summon eagles! And you fly to begin with! Talk or attack, you have the best chance at getting us up there!"
"Everybody quiet." Dante sounded bored.
"Wouldn't going up there, uninvited, on the back of a giant bird of prey give off the wrong idea?"
A gunshot rang out, silencing everyone, and causing more than a few to leap away, weapons drawn, until they realized it was Hibiki, his pistol pointed to the roof.
"Thank you, Hibiki." Dante hummed, "you're fixing that." When Hibiki shrugged, Dante straightened up. "This is what we know. Iron, Snow, and Rain have thus far not been a part of this war. Up until today, all of our intelligence has suggested that while, yes, they have formed a military and economic alliance, they have been focused on internal development to the exclusion of the outside world, becoming almost as isolationist as the Samurai typically are." He nodded to the shuttered window behind him, "whatever that is, be it an animal, a ninjutsu, or something else entirely, it hasn't even retaliated to the few ill-advised an un-ordered attacks thrown at it. It appears to only be here to gain attention, which it has. Until such a time as it launches an attack, we are not going to give it any further reason to." He then sat down, "Fugaku-san." The Uchiha head straightened up, "put the Military Police on high alert. I want the streets under control and the civilians safe. We don't need to evacuate them to the tunnels yet, but get them inside their houses. Work with Hiashi-san's clan to track down anyone and everyone that is either unaccounted for, or otherwise is not in their homes, shinobi are excluded.
"Akos-san." He turned to the Kaguya head, who nodded, as Fugaku left the room. "Gather your clan and get them ready. If that thing attacks, I want them ready to retaliate immediately to contain the damage. Work with Shikaku-san on methods to reach it and bring the fight to it." The Kaguya bowed, and he and the Naara hastily made their retreat. "Sito-san, Kor-san." The Jonin and Chunin commanders stepped forward, "spread my orders to the Jonin and Chunin corps, and tell the Genin Corps that theirs will be protecting the students, then send a messenger to Shikaku and Akos to let them know how to get in touch with you with their findings.
"The rest of you, save my squad and Minato-san, spread out. Find tactical positions, wait, and observe. Do not attack unless you are attacked, otherwise wait for orders."
When the room cleared, only Team Dante and Minato remained, and they remained respectfully silent as Dante groaned and rubbed his face, before he pulled open a drawer on his desk, and retrieved a scroll.
"Suffice to say, I know what that is." Dante said, surprising three of the four men in the room.
"Sensei?" Noboru clarified.
"How?!" Suboro barked.
"What is it?" Minato blinked.
Hibiki, however, took the scroll from the Hokage when it was offered, and looked over it, leaning against the desk as he did so.
"It's a... Machine." Dante said, slowly. "Something capable of flight, originating from the Land of Snow... Like a merchant ship, but in the air, and armed."
"Armed?" Noboru frowned, Byakugan bulging, "with what? I can see a lot of people inside... Some of them are wearing Yuki and Ame headbands, some are wearing Samurai armor, but not all of them."
"I don't know everything about it, I just know that I got reports from spies in Grass country, that Ame has one as well, and when Kusa-nin attempted to use Rain country to springboard an attack into ours, the only survivors that returned said that was responsible for the demise of so many of their shinobi."
"Huh..." Hibiki grunted, "it's... A messenger." He said, attracting a lot of confused glances.
Dante nodded, "one month ago, I received that scroll from a civilian who admitted to hail from Ame." He said, as Hibiki passed the scroll to Minato, who read it, with Suboro over his shoulder. "It explains that Ame, Tetsu, and Yuki are a part of a military alliance, independent from the one forged by Katsuo the Monster, and they're calling for a ceasefire."
Noboru grunted, head still raised in the direction of the zeppelin, "I would ask if they had the power to back that demand... But it seems as though they do." He grunted, folding his arms in his sleeves.
"Wait, they want fighters?" Minato blinked at the scroll. "This is almost reading like a -"
"An invitation." Dante confirmed, "they claim to want to finish the work of Hashirama Senju, and end the cycles of warfare that have only gotten bigger, and worse, since the formation of the villages, and intend to use Ame as a neutral meeting grounds to do so." He explained, leaning back in his chair, "they want the Hidden Villages to send three of their greatest fighters to participate in a tournament, under the reasoning that the people who are sent there will be the deciding factors of the war regardless of if they fight here, or elsewhere. In their eyes, better to fight there, in Ame, on equal grounds, and get it all out, declare the last man standing as the victor and end the war then, as opposed to letting it continue to drag out, letting our people continue to go out, fight, and die."
Hibiki snorted, "oh, a tournament!" He chuckled, "oh yeah, uh-huh! Perfect way to end a world war!" He raised his thumb, "smartest solution possible!"
"I thought the same." Dante deadpanned, "and I thought them arrogant when they threatened to enter the war and fight anyone who refused to heed their summons." That even attracted Noboru's eyes, his dojutsu fading away in shock and amusement.
"And if no one answers?" Suboro asked, "they'd just fight everyone?"
"It seems so... For that reason I discarded it as garbage and had the messenger imprisoned... But then, T&I returned with a report on him, and produced this." He said, pulling out a storage scroll, and with a pulse of chakra, revealed an object that made Hibiki and Minato's shoulders tense. Dante looked up to Hibiki, "your thunder techniques are in the wild again."
"Bullshit, the Earth Daimyo burned all of his after me and Minato sacked his capitol!" Hibiki argued. "I even went back last year after the Taki scare, found the ones in private hands and got rid of those ones." Fifteen shadow clones and a lot of Swift chakra could get a deceptively massive amount of work done when your Kage was worried enough.
"Some survived... And it seems Ame was wise enough to know that you and Minato are unique. They acquired what the Earth Daimyo did not destroy, likely before you went back to destroy what was left, and used Snow's industry to produce more."
"Kami..." Noboru breathed, eyes wide and looking up again in the direction of the airship, but either forgetting, or not even trying, to activate his bloodline.
"So if they enter this war, they won't just have two minor shinobi villages and the Samurai fighting for them. They'll have those things -" He waved at the shuttered window behind him, "and an army of civilians from all three countries, armed with Hibiki's thunder techniques, and that is a force capable of following through on their threats."
Hibiki leaned back, "fuck me..." He breathed, "our gate guards and sensors are trained to find shinobi... This alliance sends civilians in, they wouldn't trip any alarms, they could bring these thunder techniques in, piecemeal like, over time.
Suboro gasped, "they could do the same thing Katsuo did to us, after the Suna Chunin Exams!"
Minato blinked, "and if we shut our borders, stop letting people in, they could siege us!"
"Or worse." Noboru frowned, "work their way through Fire Country, conquer the minor villages, and either usurp and kill the Fire Daimyo, or force him to capitulate."
"My thoughts exactly." Dante said, cutting through their worst-case scenarios. "Now that that... Air... Ship... Is here, I know they're not lying about their capabilities, and our only choice is to destroy it, and distribute Hibiki's thunder techniques to our own people -" He raised his hand when he saw Hibiki prepare to speak up, "or answer their call."
Hibiki sat back, examining his squadmates and friend as they digested the Hokage's words.
Suboro was the first one to speak up, "they only asked for three fighters." He pointed out, "so why are there four of us?"
"Because if we decide to participate in this 'World Tournament' they're calling for, I want one of my heaviest hitters to remain here in case it ends up being a trap." Dante responded, "if we choose to go... You, Suboro, will be the one to remain."
"Sensei, you getting in on that 'Suboro doesn't fight' action?" Hibiki grinned, finding a chair to collapse into.
Suboro rolled his eyes, and Minato, after rolling up the scroll and returning it to Dante, asked, "Suboro, and not me?"
"Suboro is uniquely capable from a defensive standpoint." Dante responded, "his bloodline is extremely useful for crowd control. He alone could bottleneck any invading forces and take immense amounts of pressure off of our defenders."
"To play devil's advocate, I can't?" Hibiki asked, "or even Minato, with the Hiraishin?"
"You, even with your thunder techniques, cause considerable collateral damage whenever you fight." Dante responded, "and as good as Minato is, as strong as he has grown, if we were to face the numbers I fear, even he will come up short. Suboro would be our best option."
"I noticed... Sensei... You said 'we' in regards to the decision to accept their summons." Noboru mentioned. "Is it not your decision?"
To which, the once Unclean Jonin shook his head, "if you three are to go there, you would be transported, by the enemy, in that... Airship... To an enemy village, surrounded by enemy forces, who have the home advantage. This could be an elaborate trap to take out each village's best and brightest... So I will only allow you to volunteer."
Hibiki shrugged, "fuck it, I'm game." He grunted, "when do we -" One of the Anbu melted out of the shadows, killing the conversation.
"Hokage-sama." Said the Anbu in the Ghost mask, "they have dropped ropes. Men are descending them, waving peace flags."
Dante nodded, taking a deep breath that appeared to be masking a yawn, "it appears that is what they will be coming to discuss." Dante said, "return to me tomorrow with your decisions, I will have more information for you then."
Returning to his apartment, Hibiki found Dai's team standing in front of his door like a pack of bouncers, not budging despite the pleas of an exasperated Chunin.
"C'mon, guys... It's Hokage's orders!" The Chunin, barely older than Ibiki, pleaded.
"Our sensei is in there, and she is sick." Said Ibiki, and on cue, Gai sneezed, which prompted the surly Genin to give Gai a smack on the back of the head, "because of this one. We will not leave until -"
"Contact." Sado informed, turning her head to the stairwell as Hibiki stepped up.
"Okay kiddies, I appreciate the show of loyalty, but you really don't want to be charged with insubordination. I'm not a role model in this scenario." He chuckled, "follow your overworked Chunin, I've got it from here." He said, placing his hand on the railing and nodding to the stairs, a thin grin on his features.
Ibiki's eyebrows twitched, and his eyes went to Hibiki's hand on the railing, before he nodded, "fine." He said, gathering up his team and following the Chunin down to the ground floor - making sure to pass his hand over the same spot on the same railing, and picking up the transformed message Hibiki had left for them.
She taught you kids well. Hibiki snorted, and after fiddling with the keyhole, pushed his way into his apartment.
The sounds of Dai Senju being sick, unpleasant and mostly alien as they were, was what greeted him. As he'd said to Minato earlier in the morning, it wasn't that shinobi never got sick, but rather that he and Dai, specifically, never had - or, at least, according to Dai, was incredibly rare. Hibiki had an immune system of steel, thanks to his Uzumaki and Kaguya blood, among others, proving more than a match for anything nature could throw at it, resulting in him not remembering ever being sick in the twenty years he'd been walking the Earth again. Dai, however, had a different thing going for her - her kikaichu were apparently very good at removing toxins and viruses from her body, and she, like all with the bloodline, resultantly never got sick.
But when something finally got through, as had happened this week, it put her down hard.
Hibiki walked down the hall and gave a light tap on the bathroom door, before he let it swing open. Dai was there, half dressed, groaning over a toilet, one of Hibiki's Terran books right next to her.
"What, did you camp out here?" Hibiki asked, circling around her and sitting down on the edge of their bathtub, placing his hand on her sweaty, bare back and rubbing up and down.
"Anything that goes in goes right back out." Dai responded, leaning into Hibiki's hand, her movements stiff and lethargic. He saw the muscles in her back contract and tense, and with his free hand, pulled her hair out of the literal splash zone as she leaned back in and pushed out whatever she had let in.
"It's just allergies, sensei!" Dai retched into the toilet. "It's nothing to - hurk!" She dipped forward, a light stream of bile travelling the wrong direction and landing in the toilet. "- worry about!" She groaned.
"Just say the word, love. They won't find his body if it's on Neptune." He grinned morosely, watching her convulse as she retched again.
"We'll call that plan 'B'..." She whispered, resting her head on one of her sweaty, porous arms.
"What the hell's plan 'A'?" Hibiki grinned, "you know as well as I do it's damn near impossible to mess with him."
"Siccing Tsunade on him, forcing him to stay in bed." Dai groaned, reaching up and depressing the plunger, briefly filling the room with the sound of the toilet flushing.
Hibiki blinked, then nodded to the side. "Well, that'd work." There was one person in this village who had successfully never taken any of Gai's shit, and it was the woman who had prevented permanent muscle damage when he tried uprooting a full-grown tree with nothing but palm strikes and muscle - no chakra. Gai had been stoned for a week with how many sedatives she'd pumped into him, and ever since then she remained the only person he was scared of - even the one time he'd convinced Hibiki to go all-out against him in a sparring match hadn't put as much fear of God into him as the former Senju head. "I gave her a ring, she's comin' later today and you don't get a say in it."
Dai groaned, going limp. "Hibiki, I don't want to waste a medic's time over this. I'll be over it by the end of the week."
Smiling with an equal mix of innocence and smugness, Hibiki patted her on the back, "that's why I called Tsunade." He'd tried to give her a look himself, but she'd caught on and nearly skinned his hands with her rinkaichu. "She won't give you a choice... 'Cause if it wasn't him, then you got an infection somewhere. Kami forbid you ruptured your appendix, or have a kidney stone, or something, and you're just letting it sit. She'd kill the both of us if I let you go septic."
The green-faced Senju matron rolled her amber eyes, "what were my students doing outside?"
"Oh, nothing much. Just protecting you from the folks invading the village."
Dai hummed and, taking her cues from how cavalier Hibiki's own reaction to the situation was, continued with a dull, "and how did that go?"
"Pretty well, so far. They just flew a zeppelin over us and scared the bajeezus out of everyone." Hibiki remembered reading once how a someone running for office had, in the late fifties, or the early sixties, flown a helicopter over farmers in their fields and asked them to vote for him, either unaware or uncaring of the fact that none of them had ever seen a helicopter in their entire lives. Hibiki figured the reaction of the leaf village to a giant zeppelin coming to a halt a kilometer or two over their heads must have been something similar, and felt sorry for Fugaku, who, as the head of the Military Police, was in charge of restoring order after that.
"Oh." Dai grunted, pushing herself up and then leaning into Hibiki, resting her head on his lap. "So that's happening, now?" She asked, "are you sure it's time?" She asked in their shared language.
"Me, I'm not sure of anything. I don't know what's going on." Hibiki grinned, brushing Dai's bangs out of her discolored face. "But Teague, well - he's sure. Once Kusa tried striking Ame and got their shit kicked in by an airship, he waited for the word about it to spread, so folks would start asking questions, and then he sent his summons." He explained. "Way he figured, after Konoha's shock-trooper team pushed back Taki and their Jinchuriki, and their Jonin and Chunin corps pushed back Kumo and their Jinchuriki, in the same week, folks were probably the right amount of sick of this war, and the right amount of desperate to end it." He reveled in these moments, clandestine as they were, because they let him hear his now fluently-English speaking wife talk in his native tongue, and the way her voice made it sound was beautiful to him.
Dai's amber eyes thinned, "Hibiki... I don't remember you telling me you got into a fight with Jinchuriki that day." She said, warningly.
Hibiki flicked her on the nose, "that's because someone was busy on the other side of that battle with her own team, keeping her little shits alive!" He grinned, innocently, even as the beetle she always kept on him made its presence known and ensured he'd have a nice little welt on his scalp for a while.
"Fine, I've grown fond of them, are you happy, my dear?" She asked, switching back just as easily and looking up at him with a snide expression.
"Nope, I won't be happy until I'm not sharing you anymore."
Dai rolled her eyes, "if you're threatened by a bunch of -" But she was cut off by another round of rumbles from her stomach, and she had to lurch forward to ensure she didn't spray her husband.
"What's that?" Hibiki asked, again keeping her dark hair out of the way. "I couldn't hear you over the sound of your kid being an idiot!"
"I'm going to kill you, Hibiki." Dai said, after spitting out what remained. "You will not see it coming." She groaned, "when are you leaving?"
"Provided the Captain of that ship does what he was told to... And Minato and Noboru react the way I expect... Tonight."
"Poor Suboro." Dai deadpanned, "why tonight?"
"Power play. Teague's entering the measuring contest, so he's got to ensure they think he's plenty big."
Dai wiped the sweat from her forehead, and then took a small sip of water. "How long will you be gone?"
Hibiki shrugged, "week or two? Not sure."
Dai hummed, "and -" But she cut herself off, turning to the door to the bathroom just as Hibiki heard their visitor.
A second later, an Anbu in a Wolf's mask melted out of the shadows, and Hibiki tilted his head. This one was thinner than the one he was used to, had the old Wolf retired?
"Confirm yourself."
"A pack of one." Said Wolf, before adding, "my predecessor retired. He passed his mask on to me."
Hibiki nodded to the side, the guy had answered the question. "What does he want?"
"The situation has changed. If you intend to answer the summons, pack your things and return to the office immediately." He said, before vanishing in a plume of smoke.
"Why did he smell like a dog? I never thought an Inuzuka would make it into Anbu..." Dai murmured, as Hibiki got to his feet.
"He probably isn't one, his ninken would have an aneurysm every time he left." Hibiki shrugged, "you need anything?"
Dai shook her head, "please stay safe."
Hibiki grinned, "lady, only place safer than there would probably be here, or NORAD. I'll be fine."
Returning to the Hokage's office for the second time that day, alongside Minato and Noboru, both of whom were dressed for war, they entered Dante's office and found a man wearing a heavy jacket, upon which the symbol of the Village Hidden in the Rain was printed.
They gave the man a polite nod, before turning to their Kage, who cleared his throat.
"This is Anil, he is the Captain of the ship above our village, and simultaneously is Ame's representative while he's here." Dante nodded, "he told me that due to its limitations, they are going to have to return for Ame before the day is out, or it may fail on them and crash back to the earth." He sounded like he didn't believe the Captain, but wasn't going to outright say it. "I'm sorry for pushing this on you, but I will need your answers now."
None of them objected, and not long after, were following the Captain out. When they left the tower, the Captain was flanked by a Samurai and an Ame shinobi, while they themselves were shadowed by two Anbu each. They exited the tower and walked to the area where the ship had dropped the ropes, from which the Captain and his guards had descended.
"I trust you three strong shinobi can climb that high?" The Captain asked, a smug grin on his face as he grabbed the rope, Hibiki only now noticing how jacked the guy was, the arms of his jacket drawn so tight against the skin and muscle beneath that Hibiki wondered if he hadn't deliberately picked a size or two too small.
"We will manage." Noboru responded, with a bowed head. "After you."
The Captain grunted in amusement, and without further ado, started climbing. Compared to his two guards, and the three Konoha Jonin, the Captain was as slow as a snail, but Hibiki was still impressed at the guy - able to climb from ground-level all the way up to the zeppelin, on a rope without any knots to help him. There were probably some special forces Back Home that couldn't have done that and this guy had done it like it was no problem, though he couldn't hide the sweat he'd run or the heavy breathing once he made it up to the landing platform.
Hibiki, Minato, and Noboru were surrounded by Samurai and Shinobi, all of whom had their eyes locked onto the Konoha Jonin.
"Alright, you three are guests, here!" The Captain called out, "Teague-sama said there's only one rule, and it's simple: Don't start anything, and there won't be any repercussions." He shouted over the sounds of the propellers keeping the zeppelin afloat. "And you'll be watched while you're here -" He nodded to a particular trio of shinobi, who showed no skin whatsoever, leading Hibiki and his allies to conclude they must be Ame's equivalent to Anbu. "- if they say you can't go somewhere, you can't go there. Otherwise, you're good." He clapped his hands, "now, find a jacket, because it'll get cold once we start getting higher... We've got a long trip ahead of us. Should be there by tomorrow."
Noboru, being the only one among the three of them that had never been exposed to anything even close to the zeppelin, and similarly the only one among them to whom crossing an entire country in less than a day wasn't a daily occurrence, spoke up, "this thing can travel the entire Land of Fire in a day?" He shouted, his own voice almost drowned out by the propellers and engines.
The Captain just grinned, "oh it can do a lot more than that, son!" He gloated, before he turned to talk to one of the crewmen who was trying to get his attention.
"Who's Teague-sama?" Minato called out, as he and the other two were handed a heavy leather jacket by one of the crew.
As Noboru accepted the jacket and Hibiki refused, the Captain gave a brief look to one of the Ame shinobi present who, though most of his face was covered by a strange-looking gas mask/rebreather combo, still managed to give him a look of, 'why are you asking me? You're the Captain!', which prompted a wicked grin on Hibiki's face, glad as ever to know the chain of command still existed in this day and age.
So, the Captain shrugged, briefly turned back to them and said, "he's a lot of things, Konoha-san! But to you, he's our Kage, though he'd prefer to fashion himself our 'Captain General.'..." He turned, and while Hibiki saw his lips moving, no-doubt muttering something under his breath, the engines of the zeppelin were too loud to hear it.
It wasn't long until the three were largely left to their own devices, sans only their pseudo-Anbu guides and the crew that had to navigate around them in the tight corridors and thin walkways.
The three Konoha shinobi eventually made their way to a common area inside the ship, and the first thing said between them came from Minato, who looked agog at the walls of the ship, "Hibiki!" He said, the noise of the outside almost completely muffled, "Hibiki, look at those seals!" He nodded to the walls.
The Senju Head and the Hyuga Noble both looked in the direction Minato indicated, both of their dojutsu flaring to life, though of the two of them, only Hibiki could appreciate what he saw. There were fuinjutsu seals painting the walls, incredibly complex and interlinked between themselves, forming a web of seals that, at first glance, Hibiki surmised were designed to dampen sound and absorb vibrations, resulting in the commons area that was almost as quiet as the teahouse in Konoha.
"Why let it be bare?" Noboru asked, "I would think they would want to add some sort of covering to them..." He frowned at the seals, Hibiki sensing the slightest twang of jealousy, though if it were because he couldn't understand what he was seeing, or because he himself wanted the skill, Hibiki wasn't sure.
Hibiki shrugged, "that's some complicated sealswork, Noboru..." He said, turning back forward and leaning back in his wireframe chair. "I've seen one seal before that was able to fix itself, kind of." Emi Miu's seal was less 'fix itself' and more 'keep ruining it worse if someone tries to fix it,' but it still got the idea across that seals could be self-maintaining. "And fuinjutsu isn't the most common of arts, they're probably bragging."
"Yeah, but - Hibiki, can't you see?" Minato asked, shifting uncomfortably in the leather his chest was wreathed in, "look closer!" He said, jaw slack, eyes wide. "It looks like Kushina's work!"
This caused the Senju to frown, and then turn around again to examine them closer, and sure enough, while they obviously weren't Kushina's, they had the same kind of patterns she had in her work. The same flares to their words, the same flow to chakra, the same verbiage, even the same custom words, in some places.
"Do..." He hummed, "did they loot Uzu?" Hibiki asked, causing Minato to blink.
"Oh... Oh no." Minato looked much less enthusiatic now. "Oh I hope not." He groaned, now looking worried.
"They couldn't have." Noboru insisted, assuaging the two of them. "That would require said looters traversing the entire Land of Fire twice, and then infiltrating and exfiltrating the Whirlpool village. Not to mention the traps no-doubt left behind, and the arcane scripture they would have had to navigate."
The three trailed off, Noboru and Minato to try and tease a solution out of the desperate few details they'd been given, Hibiki to look like he was doing so, because he was unique in that he knew the answer to these questions. It was all a part of the plan, all a component in the performance he'd been preparing ever since his first and last attempt at making peace with Katsuo.
Hibiki let this silence last for a few minutes, before his head twitched, and then he turned to the others. "So. You two are flying now." He grinned, "like it?"
Minato rolled his eyes, and Noboru actually looked pensive, before nodding to the side. "I would rather not be entombed in a metal cage surrounded by enemy shinobi threatening the world with an even more violent war..." He began, before grinning, "but it is a fascinating prospect..."
Minato laughed, "Hibiki you were there when I tried throwing the kunai into the sky to see how high I could go, this isn't my first time... But man, I'm honestly just happy to be side-seating this." He said, "getting to cross the whole country without having to put any effort into it." He made a show of crossing his arms behind his spiky-haired head and leaning back, "ah, I could get used to this!"
Hibiki kicked him in the knee, "don't go soft on me, Yellow Flash." He said, "and don't let Ma, Ri, and Oh see you with your guard down." He nodded to the three Anbu analogues, watching them from their perch in the corner of the room.
True to the Captain's word, as the day and the airship climbed on, the air thinned out and the temperature started to drop. Hibiki ended up using one of his bloodlines to be an oasis of warmth for his allies, who soon stripped the jackets they were given, and thus prompted many a strange and wary look from the shinobi, samurai, and crew that had no idea what they were looking at but a bunch of tree-dwellers appearing immune to the cold.
With Noboru at their side, exploring the vessel became a non-issue, as he was able to look over the entire thing and explain to them what it was he saw. The three Anbu seemed a little wary at that, but after a brief, silent conversation between them, they seemed to be willing to allow it, and it was likely due to the fact that there was very little the Konoha shinobi could really do with the information they dragged out of the ship by its internal structure and appearance alone. Noboru couldn't understand how the ship stayed in the air, Minato couldn't understand where the fuinjutsu was getting its chakra, with them so high up, and Hibiki was content to just puzzle over the airship's armor, how it added to its weight, and how they managed to lift it so high into the air despite that.
After eighteen hours, with the sun vanished from the sky and the moon taking its place, a runner came into the commons area to spread the word - they were going in for a landing.
This, the Konoha shinobi watched personally. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as interesting as they would have hoped. Gone were the days of gigantic airships filled with lighter-than-air gases, mooring masts, and the like, here to stay were the days of chakra and fuinjutsu powering electronics, literally defying gravity, and landing being as simple as lowering the vessel into a pre-cut dock on the outside of Ame. The entire process took less than ten minutes, and was itself almost completely obscured by the land's ever-present rainfall, and the darkness of the early morning - though that, at least, was cut through by bright spotlights from the ground and the ship itself.
The whole process, difficult as it was to make out, put a nostalgic smile on Hibiki's face. This was the bleeding edge, save a few things in the Land of Snow that had no use here or in Iron, this was the absolute closest this world currently was to the way things used to be. Industry, science, engineering, it was amazing to feel again.
When the ship finally lurched to a halt, its massive weight finally obeying gravity and its entire frame shifting as it settled into its dock on the ground, the three Ame Anbu materialized behind the Konoha trio, appearing like specters as the lights of the dock danced over their dark armor and cast them in sharp, conflicting shadows.
"Follow us." Said the Anbu at the head of the pack, "you must be searched by our gate guards before being allowed inside."
Hibiki snorted, "is that why we landed outside the village and not in it?" He teased, flanked by Minato and Noboru as they followed the shinobi.
"Yes." The leader of the dark trio responded.
With his Sharingan active, once they left the ship, Hibiki was able to cut through the darkness and rainfall. There were dock workers, crew, and maintenance staff running about frantically, some carrying boxes, some carrying tools, all in rain-resistant ponchos and all converging on the airship they'd landed in. Around them were great platforms made of concrete and steel, three more docks just like the one they had landed upon, and of them, it appeared only one was expecting traffic imminently.
Considering the distance, time... Hibiki hummed, turning back forward, wonder if that's going to be Suna?
The three Anbu analogues brought them to Ame's equivalent to the gate guards. While the village lacked any giant walls like Konoha, it made up for this with a huge lake that surrounded the entire place, acting not unlike a moat, and allowing for the same funneling of traffic into specific entrances, be they natural land-bridges, or man-made. Hibiki and his squad were taken to what appeared to be Ame's main gate, allowing Hibiki only a fleeting glance of the village beyond, not even enough to paint a picture.
The security checks they went through were many, and were thorough. Ame had always had a reputation for how isolationist it had been, how not-necessarily-friendly it was to visitors, and even with the change in management in the recent years, that hadn't changed, and as a result, Hibiki and Co. were kept under someone's eye long enough for the sun to come up, before they were finally released. Noboru was the first, with him being the only one that actually carried supplies on his person - Minato and Hibiki both were kept behind for longer as the shinobi called in their sealsmasters to inspect Hibiki's tattoos, Minato's hiraishin kunai, his bullets, and both of their equipment scrolls. Once they were each individually cleared by a duo covered in thick clothes, thicker ponchos, and their faces obscured by goggles and rebreathers, they were finally let out to prune under the gray sky and slightly lessened rainfall.
Outside were a few kinder Gate Guards, clearly the kinder ones that were meant to talk to visitors after they went through the whole inspection process. The Good Cop to the shinobi's Bad Cops. They had folded ponchos in their hands, documents sealed in plastic bags on top of them, smiles on their faces, and guns on their hips. Minato patted Hibiki on the chest with the back of his hand, but Hibiki didn't say anything, just nodding and approaching the two.
"You two our nannies?" Hibiki asked, even though he still felt the False Anbu's eyes on his back.
With faces that appeared far too supple, far too soft, to be shinobi, one smiled a little wider, as if in apology, and nodded to the side. "More like your greeters." She said, handing Hibiki his pile of rain clothes and documents, as her partner handed Minato and Noboru theirs. "Teague-sama said to treat you as visitors, so those are maps of the village... You're free to roam, but we have to tell you that you will be watched."
Her partner picked up, "if you break the law, if you start a fight among yourselves or with Ame or foreign shinobi, you forfeit your village's position in the Tournament and will be treated as though you never came to begin with." He informed them, "marked on the maps is where you'll be staying, and where the tournament will be held. It will begin tomorrow, at first light, where Teague-sama himself will greet you to explain the rules."
The woman finished with, "if you have any questions, just flag down one of the Civilian Guard, or get the attention of your Shadow Guard." She said, nodding up to the roof of the inspections office.
When the three had nothing to ask, they were allowed to throw on their ponchos and enter the village.
They made it two steps out into the light morning rain before everything happened in about the time it took Hibiki to blink.
First, he heard, a loud, raspy voice gleefully declare from behind him, "Hibiki!"
Then, "hey - hey! Wait! Stop!"
Then there was the sound of a lot of people moving at the same time, weapons being drawn, and Noboru, while his Byakugan flared to life, turned his head over his shoulder.
And when Noboru saw who it was, Hibiki, just now turning, saw the pale-eyed Jonin's eyes go wide, and he dropped down low, muscles tensing as he twisted around and fell into a defensive stance. "Hibiki, behind us!" He yelled, in time with Minato making his turn and he too saw who it was.
"Hibiki!" Minato gasped, as now Hibiki, the first spikes of adrenaline beginning to soar through his system, turned around himself.
In the second half of that second, Hibiki saw Noboru next to him, in his Gentle Fist stance, Minato dropping into a defensive stance of his own, while in front of them, he saw three Ame shinobi, characterized by the rebreathers on their faces and the ponchos over their shoulders, the three Ame Shadow Guard who had been following them, and nine of what the woman had referred to as the 'Civilian Guard', all rushing to surround a giant who had jogged right past them, appearing for all intents and purposes to be rushing inside the village and skipping security - thus making him a threat.
This giant stood at over six feet, with thick, leathery skin, deep surgical scars all over his body, horribly unkempt, wild gray hair rolling down his back, a longcoat that looked like it had been bleached from exposure to the sun, ragged pants, and a pair of golden eyes. The spitting image of Katsuo the Monster had the shadows of a wide, jubilous smile on his face, a smile that was being replaced by the fear and shock of suddenly being surrounded by almost twenty trained killers, and with two more ahead of him preparing to fight, all of their ire, all of their skill, all focused on him.
The one thing that Hibiki did not see, however, was the soul seal.
The world sped back up once the heartbeat passed, and suddenly the giant was surrounded, with weapons drawn on him. He stopped on a dime, lurching forward and raising his hands, fear entering his eyes as he tried to make himself appear as no threat. Hibiki rushed forward, waving his own hands.
"Whoa - whoa, WHOA!" Hibiki screamed, "WHOA!" He put a sliver of chakra into his throat to make the last wail attract all of the attention, and his gambit worked - eyes now turned to him, and even Noboru and Minato, who didn't see the fire in Hibiki's eyes, or tension in his muscles, that would belie him readying for a fight, paused.
With all eyes on him and he appearing to actually know what was happening here, Hibiki stopped just before the assembled group of Shinobi and Civilians, breathing heavily, as he slowly, and with deliberate exaggeration, turned to the golden-eyed, disheveled giant, his own spinning red eyes meeting his gold.
Raising his voice to keep attention, and the situation, in his hands, he called out, "hey Tarzan!" His glib tone a stark contrast to the great tension filling the rainy air. "How's it going?"
Tarzan, surrounded by more living people than he'd ever seen in his life, and scared out of his mind, gulped, and called out, "uh - hey... Hibiki!" In a deep, raspy voice, "I seem..." He said, nervously, "to have made a mistake." He gritted his teeth like a person scared of every word they spoke.
"Hibiki, what's happening?" Hibiki heard Noboru beckon, but all he got was a raised finger from the Senju, who kept both of his hands raised, placatively.
"Yeah, I'll say." Hibiki let out a deep breath, glad that this was who he thought it was, and slowly straightening his stance, "alright, Ame Shinobi... He's here to talk to me, he's a friend." He urged, "speaking for my village... I promise he's not a threat, and I will bear the responsibility for anything he does." He cleared his throat, eyeing the first shinobi who turned to look at him, "if I speak to him out here, keep him out of the village, will everyone calm, the fuck, down?" Tarzan's appearance was a wildcard of the highest order, but Hibiki had all of the confidence in his words - the Franksteinian man couldn't hurt a fly.
"Hibiki?" He heard Minato ask, but both a smack on the flak jacket from Noboru, and a frantic wave of the hand from Hibiki shut him up.
The shinobi Hibiki had eyed, turned his mostly masked gaze to the Shadow Guard. They each exchanged glances, and after a few tense seconds, let the tension wash from their muscles as they straightened up, and let their weapons vanish underneath their thick ponchos.
One turned to Hibiki, as the Shinobi and Civilian Guard similarly eased their feet off the gas.
"You will be watched." He called out, voice filtered through the mask on his face. "If you or he break the rules, your village's position is forfeit." He looked over Hibiki's shoulders, "your allies remain inside. Under guard, until you return." He looked back to Hibiki, and then nodded to the inspections office. "You will speak in there."
Hibiki nodded, finally lowering his own hands as he accepted the man's terms, and a few seconds later, after a concerned Noboru and Minato were now escorted inside the village under guard, Hibiki and Tarzan were themselves allowed a room in the Inspections Office to speak.
Once they were alone, and out of the rain, Tarzan practically collapsed to the wall, a huge, muscular hand going to his barely covered chest, as he gasped. "My word..." He gasped in a dead language, voice shaking. "I... I saw..." Hibiki gave him a pat on the rain-soaked shoulder, eyes trailing over the longcoat he'd given the man so long ago, wondering how the hell Tarzan had managed to turn a jet black coat gray, and even white in some spots. "Oh my... That was terrifying." He gasped, for all his muscular, tough, mountain-man appearance, simultaneously managed to look like a skinny highschooler accidentally entering a room full of UFC fighters when next to Hibiki. His shoulders were slumped, muscles limp, back not straight, neck lowered, this giant appeared meek compared to his speaking companion, and only friend.
"Talk Common, Tarzan." Hibiki instructed, as gently as he could. "They're... Properly paranoid, here. They hear us talking a language they don't, they'll get worried."
Tarzan, still breathing heavily, nodded, "I... Okay." He grunted, trusting the Senju. "I did not mean to start trouble!" He added, looking to Hibiki with earnesty.
Hibiki nodded, giving a brief look at the two-way mirror, where likely the Shadow Guard were, watching and writing down every word. "You're not the trouble, man. You didn't know." He turned back to the wild man, "so... What brings you back this-a-way? I honestly didn't think I'd see you again in my life." When he'd left the wild man, he'd left him with some seeds, a book on farming, and adventure in his heart. Tarzan was on his own quest, to determine if he had a soul, and to learn the story of Earth and the Terrans. Even if somehow he managed to make it through every one of the continental United States in five years, there was still the ruins of Canada, of Mexico, of all of South America, and then Asia, Europe, and Africa as well. Even accounting for the few decades he'd had before he met Hibiki, there was no way he'd been through all of them, so when Hibiki had parted ways with him, he'd genuinely thought that if he ever again met him, it probably wouldn't be until Hibiki was old and gray.
"Oh..." Tarzan gulped. "I, ah... I was on my way to your village, but I sensed you in that zeppelin... And I followed you here." He said, "the... Time we spent together, however brief, it taught me things." He began, "I sensed how your... Chakra, you called it." He briefly hesitated, trying to search for words he'd only ever heard once or twice before. "How it flowed, how it allowed you to do the things you did."
Hibiki blinked, eyes widening and an incredulous, albeit impressed, expression gracing his features. Was this guy about to tell him he'd managed to ape the Shadow Clone technique? That he'd used it to search entire cities - entire states - in days?
"And I tried it myself..." He pinched his fingers together. "Just a little... To see what I could do."
Sounds about right, actually... Hibiki remembered that Hagoromo had shown him a future in which Tarzan and Katsuo had battled each other - Tarzan couldn't in any way have lasted for the hour he had unless he had some kind of conscious mastery, or even just control, over his own power. "Yeah?" He prodded.
"I learned how to order myself... To better order the world's energies." He explained, "I no longer need to individually find skeletons, to read their history."
No shadow clones... But next best thing for the same effect. All Tarzan had to do was just walk into a city, sit down, and do his thing, and he'd just absorb the information of every single corpse that had been left behind by the old world.
Archaeologists would've hated him, though Historians, conversely, probably would have loved him.
Hibiki arced an eyebrow, "okay, out of curiosity, does that also include the folks that died before?" He asked, "the ones that were buried and gone before everything ended?"
Tarzan blinked, shoulders slumping, "I... Have not tried." He said, his raspy voice holding a note of shock, as though he couldn't believe he'd never thought of it.
Such a revelation actually surprised Hibiki, but he supposed it was excusable - in their last encounter, Tarzan was only really concerned with learning the narrative of Earth's fall, not its history. There was also the very real possibility that, due to him 'ordering' the natural energies that Katsuo said recycled themselves too much, all he was doing was reading the history of the Earth for as far back as Chakra had existed on it, sort of like a strange inversion of the Ryumyaku. Or, also valid, was that since he was reading the 'data' of the humans who had been alive back then, and they had been infected by Kaguya's consumption of the fruit of the god tree, only humans who were alive and had been touched by chakra, were the ones he could read. He hadn't tried to unearth someone's grave because the idea never occurred to him, because he'd never been able to read them, because anyone who died before the god tree didn't have even the tiniest legacy of chakra left behind.
Or, considering this guy didn't want to grave rob a dead world, he genuinely just never considered the thought of exhuming corpses. Hibiki shrugged, "it was just something I'm curious about... So now, what, you can go into the ruins and just read the whole thing? Like you're a signal antenna?"
Tarzan blinked, and then recovered, "yes, yes." He said, nodding, "I was able to read much more, and much faster, than I ever had been before... I finished the nation, just last year."
Hibiki leaned his head back, nodding, impressed. "Damn." He applauded.
Tarzan smiled bashfully at the comment, before he took a quick, steadying breath, "I returned to you today because I decided I am ready." He straightened up, and puffed out his chest, almost like a child declaring they were a grownup. "I want to see NORAD."
Hibiki tilted his head, "what, nothing you found pointed you in the right direction?" He asked, "And what about the rest of the world?" He wondered if he'd found Hamura's corpse, or Hamura's necklace, even.
"No, I -" Tarzan shook his head, "no, I know where it is... But it is not mine to explore. It is the only thing from back then that is still alive... And you found it first. You claimed it, so it is yours." He said, "I wanted your permission."
Hibiki held back a chuckle, "you traveled half a planet, almost picked a fight with a village, just to ask my permission to look at a vault under a mountain, so you could then turn right back around and go do that." He deadpanned.
"Yes." Tarzan didn't appear to see the ridiculousness of it.
Hibiki shrugged, letting out a sigh. "Sure, man, go ahead." He snorted, and ran his hand through his hair. "Once you're done you'll... What, hit the other continents?"
Tarzan nodded, "I wish to visit old places, and new, with these new skills... I would like to learn the stories of everyone who lived those days... To be a living monument to their lives."
Now this, is a good man. Hibiki patted Tarzan on the shoulder, "well, I hope you find what you're looking for, Tarzan. Good luck."
"And to you, as well." Tarzan nodded his dirty head, "again, I apologize for the trouble."
Hibiki waved him off, as the two now left the office, "don't worry about it." He said, "just uh, do me a favor?" He gave Tarzan a sly look, "take a friggin' bath before you go in, yeah?"
Tarzan laughed nervously, and nodded his head, before the two shook hands and he walked back out into the rain.
Hibiki watched him walk, hands in his pockets, until the King of the Wild, until Frankenstein's Monster, reached the distance and slowly faded from view.
I hope you aren't an omen. He sighed, turning back to the village and moving inside.