Winter has come to Iron, which means that snow drifts measured in feet have dropped on the mountains like a freezing blanket trying to smother everything. Not that we can tell from inside the capitol. The seal shield that covers the city keeps everything nice and warm, like a perpetual spring day.
Sort of.
The shield does nothing to clear the overcast sky, but it does keep snow off the ground. So even at this time of year the Royal Gardens are one of the nicest places to spend your time. Assuming that one has the time. And permission to visit.
And I've found myself with increasing amounts of free time. It's quickly gotten to the point that the only reason I haven't become a full samurai yet, is that my academic abilities aren't as extreme as my physical learning abilities. Even there, though, I'm progressing at a remarkably quick pace. Not the supernatural speed with which I've absorbed the physical lessons, but the academics do feel easier than they did the last time I did basic schooling. Facts feel like they stick in my head more easily, and conclusions come faster and more easily. Not impossibly so, not even at the extreme end of the human bell curve, but it feels faster and easier than it did.
The difference is small enough that I could be imagining it.
I don't think I am, though.
My theory is that either I got lucky and the new body I've been born into is just smarter than my last one, or having done this twice before, it's easier the third time. Even if the subject matter isn't exactly the same.
The point, though, is that as samurai training proceeds, the physical aspects are emphasized over the academics. And the academics are all I still need to learn to graduate. So my instructors don't really see any point in making me attend classes that I don't need, and since I've demonstrated my willingness to self study from the Library, they're content to leave me to my own devices.
So free time.
Which I'm spending in the royal gardens with Miku and Cloud, keeping busy.
I'm leaning sideways on a low table. Miku occupies the other side, attempting something with flower arranging that I'm not even going to pretend to understand. She seems to be having trouble though, as she keeps pulling all the flowers out of the vase and starting over. I seriously don't know what the problem is, all the previous ones looked good to me.
I even told her so.
My thanks was a glare so dark that I've decided to keep any other opinions I may or may not have to myself.
Miku went back to her flower arranging, muttering words that a girl of our age probably shouldn't know. Of course she learned most of them from me, so...
Saki wasn't pleased when she found out, which is at least a third of the reason I did it.
Cloud and I are playing Go. The board is laid out on the ground in front of me and on the other side of it is Cloud, laying on her side. She plays by taking a stick in her mouth to tap where she wants a piece placed on the board.
Cloud and I have very different playing styles. I play quickly, it only takes me a minute or two at most to decide where to play. Most of the time I know where I'm going to play the moment that Cloud places her piece. On the other... hoof, Cloud likes to take her time. She studies the board, running through each possible move she could make, then every move I could make in response, and so on as far forward as she can. For all our different styles of play, we're rather evenly matched. I'm ahead in wins by two at the moment, but I have no faith that my lead will last. This particular game is already not going my way. I could still pull out a win, but the tide of play is against me at the moment.
With all the time that Cloud takes to think through her moves, and how little time I take, I'm left with a lot of downtime in our games. Which is why I've also got a low table set up on the lawn in the garden we've temporarily taken over. Normally I'd have whatever book I've borrowed from the library laid out on it, along with my notes. Or maybe whatever Script I'm working on at the moment.
However, my bag of holding finally finished pulling itself back together recently, so instead I've got Ku's technique book open on the table. Reading through it I'm once again reminded that Ku is a genius to a degree that I doubt I'll ever see matched. The book is full of techniques and tricks for the sword, unarmed fighting, and knife fighting. The sheer breadth of different techniques and places that are represented in this book are staggering.
There's a technique he picked up in South America that was used by Aztec Jaguar Knights for removing the heart of your opponent with your bare hand. Like something straight out of Indiana Jones, just at speed and without the chanting. A Chinese technique that allows one to strike ghosts and other incorporeal foes by striking at their life instead of their body. A grappling technique from Brazilian Jujitsu, that if executed properly, would result in a spiral fracture of the victim's spine.
The really impressive part is that most every technique that I've read about so far either works for sages back in DxD without any other source of power, so will likely work for me wherever I go, or work by base physics.
The technique that has my attention right now is one of the few exceptions. It originates in Egypt, and is a method of short range combat teleportation, and functions off of the Egyptian model of the soul.
In my studies on the human soul back in DxD, I discovered that there are a lot of different models for how it's put together, what its function is, how it does that, and how it interacts with the body. The really weird part is that all of them seem to be right. Even the ones that seem mutually exclusive.
It feels a little like working with particle/wave duality in physics. If you approach it one way you get one result, if you approach it a different way you get a different result.
It makes figuring out anything concrete about the soul really hard. In fact, after my many years of study the only thing I can say for sure is that nobody, and I mean nobody, really knows the totality of what's going on with the soul.
My trait theft technique works off the model of each soul being composed of a physical soul, and a core soul. The physical soul is what you are. It's the metaphysical blueprint to your body, and the part of the soul that I steal traits from and add them to in myself. The core soul is who you are. Your personality is stored here, when you die this is the part that moves on to whatever comes next, and when somebody accesses past life memories, in the normal course of things, this is where they're finding them.
I'm pretty sure that my own situation is a little different, though I'm a little fuzzier on exactly how...
The Egyptian model of the soul holds that the soul has nine parts. The Khet, the physical body. The Sah, the spiritual body. The Ib, or one's heart. The Ka, one's vital essence. The Ba, personality. Shut, the shadow. Sekhem, the form. Ren, one's name. And the Akh, the intellect. All these pieces are sort of squished together to form a functional person, and when that person dies most of the pieces are scattered or recycled in various different places.
The teleportation technique, which is called Leaping as close as I can translate, functions off this odd duality of the soul being many separate pieces and yet still all being a part of the whole. When one Leaps, one separates out one of these soul parts and casts it to the desired arrival location. Then, through some process I'm still working through, the rest of the soul, including the body, are dragged to this separated piece while only sort of interacting with the intervening space.
Once the basic teleportation technique is mastered there are all sorts of extras that it allows, like teleporting a limb to a new position. Apparently, if you can pull this off just right and teleport the limb through another physical object, you can create a clean cut through the object using nothing but your bare hand.
Of course, it's easier said than done. Ku notes that he's never successfully taught anybody else to actually perform the technique. Granted, he stopped trying after the third time he tried, but he did so because the three previous students had either died or nearly died in the attempt. Apparently the act of merging the cast out bit of soul with the rest of the body has to be managed very carefully. If it's not, the missed merged spot will experience a sort of dissonance that results in copious bleeding, for no real physical reason. The blood just sort of... oozes out of everywhere. This is needless to say, not good.
Before I can get started on this one, though, I want to actually master Ripple the Still Pond. And now that I actually have instructions again, I can hopefully make some progress. I haven't really been practicing it in my new life, mostly because by the time I was old enough to make trying it even a possibility, my memory was fuzzy enough about how exactly it worked that I didn't want to try for fear of practicing it wrong.
With the instructions in Ku's book to jog my memory and point me in the right direction, my days slapping barrels of water will soon return.
My thoughts are interrupted by Cloud snorting loudly. I look up from Ku's book to see where she wants a piece put, only to find that she's not looking at the board. Instead she's looking in the direction of the palace. Glancing in that direction, I see a servant of the Shouji family headed in our direction.
"Cadet Rhostana," the servant calls as they approach. Most of the servants have long since gotten used to my difficult name, something I make sure they know I appreciate. "A letter has come for you," Miku perks up and puts down her flowers to pay attention, "from Konoha."
Miku lets out an excited squee, clapping her hands. Which I respond to with a good natured sigh. I never should have explained the concept of 'Shipping' to Miku. Or I shouldn't have told her about my new friend in ninja village. Or I shouldn't have explained the concept of homosexuality to her using myself as an example. Any one of these would have spared me what I have to deal with now.
Volunteering to guard every caravan to Konoha that I can has only made her more convinced of whatever theory she's come up with recently.
"What's it say, what's it say?" Miku asks, abandoning her flowers to try and look over my shoulder. I hunch over my letter to keep it away from her.
"I haven't even opened it yet! Don't you have something you should be doing?" I ask pointedly.
She huffs, which looks adorable from an eight year old, "The flowers aren't cooperating," What does that even mean? "I need a break, so tell me what the leaf girl says!" she whines.
I glance over at Cloud, only to find my faithful steed is looking at me with ears perked and has dropped her Go stick. "You're more interested in my letter than the game too, aren't you?" Cloud nods, and I sigh, "Fine. Go back to your seat, Miku, and I'll tell you what it says." I'm not about to let Miku read the letter herself, friend or not. Kushina occasionally talks to me about personal things in these letters. Like our conversation about boys in the clothing shop.
Miku pouts at me for a moment, but my unchanging expression convinces her that I'm not going to give in. So she returns to her seat on the other side of the table, somehow pouting even harder.
Finally opening the letter, I read it quickly. It's nothing unusual for Kushina, she talks about what she's learning from Mito and how much she enjoys it. In canon there was an impression that Kushina... wasn't smart? At least not book smart? I think it comes from how much people say that Naruto was like his mother.
That impression couldn't be more wrong, though. You can't be as good as the Uzumaki are at seals without being very smart, or some sort of idiot savant. Seals are an art that grow in power the more you know in general. The more you know about how the world works, the more ways you have to accomplish something, and as a ninja that can be very important. So a decent amount of what Kushina is learning is a lot like what I learned in science classes back on earth at the same age.
Reading about what she's learning, I'm beginning to think that the Uzumaki were a lot more advanced, at least in pure knowledge, than anybody knew.
After telling me about her classes with Mito, Kushina goes on to talk about the people she deals with at the Ninja Academy. Mostly, she's complaining. In canon, a remarkably large number of clan heirs were all in the same year, which seemed odd, but the kind of thing you write off because it's a TV show. It's the same way in Kushina's class though, it makes me wonder if all the clans in the village try to have kids at about the same time so that they can all be raised together.
So she complains about various clan heirs making each sparring practice all about clan pride and which one of them will win, even though it's usually her or Minato that win the most. Then she complains about Minato and how frustrating, girly, and flaky she finds him. Also how frustrating she finds her inability to beat him every time they spar. I'm not quite sure what she means when she calls him 'girly', but she says it a lot. The one time I tried to ask I got five pages of nigh incoherent ranting, that I could barely read thanks to how bad her handwriting became within the first few lines.
And that's saying something given how determined Kushina is to be the absolute best at everything, but especially her clan art of sealing. Which requires precision handwriting.
So I have no idea what that's about, but I've decided it'll be better for everybody if I don't ask.
After that bout of childish frustration, she goes on to talk about the Senju clan since she's living with them. Mostly she's talking about baby Nawaki, Tsunade's little brother who's been born recently, and how much Tsunade turns to mush when around the baby. What's really amusing is that Orochimaru does the same when he thinks nobody's looking.
Makes me wonder what the hell Danzo did to that man.
Finally, Kushina asks a bevy of questions about what I'm up to, and what I'm doing, and how Cloud and Miku are. It's pretty cute, as much as a letter can be cute. Her actually writing out her verbal tic just makes it cuter.
Nothing is really sensitive in the letter, so I clear my throat and try to imitate Kushina's voice and way of speaking as I read the letter to Miku and Cloud. I'm getting pretty good at imitating at least Kushina's voice since I started trying after the fourth or fifth letter.
I'm most of the way through when I pause at feeling a mass of agitated mana heading our way. I turn to look just in time to catch a runner attached to the samurai rushing towards us across the grass.
The runner skids to a halt, and bows almost before he's stopped moving. "Ladies," he addresses both of us before focusing on me, "Cadet Rh-Ro-Cadet, you are called to action." I stiffen. I'd sort of been expecting this. As far as combat is concerned I may as well be a full samurai, better than most any recent graduate to boot. They were only going to leave me with nothing but class and training to do for so long before putting me to work.
I start packing up my bag of holding quickly, Kushina's letter, Ku's book are quickly stuffed inside before I pull the bag back into my soul. The bag dissolves into mist which is quickly drawn into my body. Cloud climbs to her feet as I do, since if I'm going out, she is too.
"What's happened?" I ask.
"A group of missing nin have penetrated the border and fled towards the interior of the country," the runner explains quickly.
No wonder they're calling me up for this. I'm not much of a tracker, but with my mana senses I am a sensor and a pretty good one. With some focus I should be able to spot any ninja in my range, even if they're suppressing their chakra to hide.
"Get the servants to collect the Go board," I tell the runner, "Miku, I'll catch up with you when I get back."
Before I can start for the palace Miku grabs me around the middle, hugging me hard, "Be careful."
I give the girl my best confident smirk and pat her on the head, "I'll be fine! I haven't had any troubles yet, have I?"
"No. But these aren't bandits, they're ninja," Miku fires back, looking up at me with an adorably grumpy look on her face.
"Won't make a difference," I tell her, then bump her with my forehead, "Now I've got to go."
She releases me reluctantly, and Cloud and I leave at a sprint. Me towards my quarters so I can get my armor and sword. Cloud to the stables, where somebody will be on hand to saddle her for me.
I manage to suppress the skip in my step and the grin on my face until I'm out of sight of Miku. I'm not what I would call a battle junkie, but one can only spend so much time studying something without acquiring the need to actually use what's been learned.
Ninja make wonderful test dummies according to the senior samurai.
###
The world outside the capital is drowned in snow. There's a clear space maintained along the wall and around the gate, but that just makes it clear that the snow drifts are feet deep. On Earth... hell in any other of the Elemental nations, this much snow on the ground would mean that horses wouldn't be able to go anywhere.
This is Iron though, and our horses use chakra, and walk on walls and water. The snow isn't a problem. We leave the gates at a fast trot, crossing the clear space in moments and then up on to the top of the snow without breaking stride.
"An unknown number of missing nin have broken through the border, killing the soldiers stationed at the guard post," the captain explains after we've been riding for a short amount of time. "Our job is to find them and, if we can, take one or two in for questioning. If taking them alive seems inconvenient, kill them all." I glance around at the six samurai, including myself, that have been sent on this mission. With an unknown number of ninja, I just hope that we're not too outnumbered. Given the way that the other samurai tense up at the captain's words I'm not the only one thinking this. "We're proceeding to the crossing point, and tracking them from there."
Nobody says anything, and for a while we ride in silence, every one of us consumed with our own thoughts. I can feel the ratcheting tension in everybody's mana though. None of us are senior samurai, we're just who's available at the moment. Even our captain, who is somewhat more experienced, but not so much that I wouldn't believe that this is his first command.
We're all to some extent wondering if we're good enough to be given this job, or if this is going to be a disaster because command had no choice but to send who they had. With my bag of holding back, I have access to the music library that my friends had sent with me when I left.
So after thinking about what might be appropriate for the moment, I start to sing.
My fellow samurai look at me a little oddly at first, though they quickly start to enjoy the music. It's not until I hit the chorus that understanding hits them, "If you can't do good, better do bad well."
The improving mood tells me they at least appreciate the effort.
###
Iron borders three countries, the Land of Waterfalls, the Land of Rice, which I feel like I should recognise for some reason beyond its geographical location, and for a very tiny stretch of border, the Land of Fire. This accounts for half of the border, the rest is surrounded by water.
Of course, in the Elemental Nations, the primary military forces for most of the known world are special operations groups that can walk on water. Which makes Iron border forts sort of odd things. There aren't enough samurai to station an effective garrison of us at every fort. So we don't. The forts are manned by more mundane soldiers, but this also means that they can't be expected to actually stop even a single ninja, much less a squad of them.
So instead of any sort of preventative measure, the forts serve as an early warning system. They're positioned and built to be able to observe the entire border as thoroughly as possible, so as to make it as difficult as we can manage to sneak into the country.
The forts themselves are more like bunkers than forts. Hardened and sealed to the point where even powerful ninja would have trouble breaking in. Not that they can't, no wall is foolproof, but it shouldn't be worth the effort of doing so. Not for a few dozen soldiers who wouldn't be able to threaten them anyway.
So as we arrive at one of the coastal forts facing the Land of Earth across the water, we're all struck dumb by the sight of the jagged pillar of stone that has cracked the fort in half. We all stop and stare for a moment, this not really being what any of us were expecting.
Then the wind shifts in our direction and I wrinkle my nose. "Captain," I call softly, causing several other samurai to startle slightly. The Captain turns in his saddle to look at me, "there's a lot of dead things in there."