Chapter 10
Previously: It is near the end of the "timeskip", shortly before Naruto Part 2 begins. As the last step of her training under Tsunade, Sakura learned a super-secret reincarnation jutsu and remembered her previous life as someone named "Saotome Ranma." But while retraining to use Ranma's skills she learned that ki is not chakra. The two energies seem to interfere with one another – violently. Also, perhaps frustrated by her own love-life problems with Sasuke, she attempted to solve other problems by connecting up Naruto and Hinata. That resulted in the Hyuga clan elders sending an assassination squad to kill her in her bed. So she's letting things cool down with a mission away from Konoha.
The Fire Daimyo receives super-secret briefing scrolls from the Hokage. Someone has been copying these and stealing them, which is a major threat to all Konoha ninja. Sakura, Hinata, and Anko are on their way to the capital of Fire Country, where they must find and eliminate this leak.
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The capital was astonishing. I had memories of Tokyo, and I traveled enough of old Earth so see cities that were nearly as big – Beijing, Hong Kong, Pittsburgh. Yurihonjo wasn't as big, but it seemed even more active, with towering skyscrapers, bustling crowds, lights, noise, and chaos everywhere. Overhead were oh-so-tempting balconies, flagpoles, even telephone wires. The lure for any ninja was nearly irresistible. One leap and we'd be high above this smelly, shoving crowd, able to see far and speed to any destination. Of course, we'd also completely blow our cover.
We'd passed through the gigantic walls that marked the boundary of Inner Yurihonjo – walls even taller and thicker than those that surrounded Konoha. Just goes to show you, I suppose. Politicians will spend a good deal on national defense, but they'll spend even more when it comes to their own protection.
As if to emphasize that, the inner city was filled with towering buildings and skyscrapers. The largest was perhaps twenty stories tall. Not much by Tokyo standards, but huge in the scale of this world. Even so, the skyscrapers were overshadowed by Yuzuki Castle, which was twice as tall as the largest skyscraper. The unbelievable castle was an Edo-period castle, writ large. Writ huge. Writ Godzilla-sized.
The outer walls were at least a dozen meters thick, garnished liberally with ballista and other modern weaponry. I spotted armored balconies specifically designed for chakra-casters. There were ports for hot oil, and the gentle curve at the base of each wall would deflect boulders and channel the flaming oil. Even chakra-using wall walkers would need to climb four stories to get access to the openings, and by then they'd be butchered. The weapons stations were also at a perfect height to counter larger threats, like a boss summons or an Akimichi at full size.
This was a castle designed to fight off an attack by Manda, Gamabunta, and Katsuyu working in concert. I briefly flirted with the idea of the castle standing up to a kyubi attack, but even the toughest castle would fall to a monster that can trigger earthquakes.
The huge castle was even more imposing, because we'd come in to the north city district, built in the castle's shadow. The business signs and lights seemed to be extra garish, as if to make up for the missing sunlight.
"Well, great," Anko said, hollering so that we could hear her above the din. "What now?"
"You're in charge of this expedition!" I accused. "Aren't you supposed to have some idea?"
"Yeah, but we're trying to find a needle in a haystack!"
"Excuse me…"
"If Naruto were here," I decided, "we'd send out a couple hundred orange clones. That would fix things!"
"Excuse me…"
"Yeah?" Anko hollered back. "Well he's not here, is he? So deal with it!"
"EXCUSE ME!"
"Sorry, Hinata," I said. "I didn't hear you."
"If you want to find something in this mess," she told us both, rather grumpily, "you might try asking the person who can actually see."
"Oh yeah." "Forgot about that."
"And to anticipate your next question," she said, with a touch of ice, "the reason it's so darned crowded here is because of the fight on the next block over."
Anko and I both perked up at that.
"Fight?" "Let's go!"
Between subtle uses of my strength and Anko's special taijutsu (elbows of the shopping bitch) we were able to make our way forward to the edge of the fight. The crowd had pulled back, forming a circle there in the intersection. It was an arena ten meters wide, and two men circled each other. One was a merchant, looking fearful and desperate, with sweat pouring off him. The other was a dandy, but a well-built one, with wide shoulders and excellent muscle tone. The dandy wore an expensive western suite, with ruffled lace as his shirt cuffs that poked from a golden brown jacket, which in turn matched his wavy golden-brown hair. At his neck, the man wore a cravat, of all things. I hadn't seen a lot of western fashions here, and had to wonder whether this world was plagued by a "west" as old Japan had been.
The westerner (as I now thought of him), brushed his pencil-thin mustache and spoke in a tenor that carried all around the circle.
"You know the rules. Pay by the end of the night, or pay with your life. I find your line of credit distressingly over-drawn."
"Please – I just need time to get the money together! The cards – I had a straight flush! I took a chance, but I had a straight flush!"
"You know the rules."
The crowd featured a mix of people from every class, nobility, commoners, criminals – all pressed together to see the spectacle.
"I have assets – my estate, my art, I just need time…"
The westerner gave a cruel smile. "I believe you put the deed and ownership papers into the final pot. You have nothing. Would you sell your wife, your children into slavery? We'd have to smuggle them up to Lightning Country."
"Yes! Yes, that's what I'll do! And then I'll buy them back once I've recovered—"
The westerner fanned a deck of cards and plucked one out. As fast as any ninja, he flung his card at the pleading merchant. The man turned to run, but the spinning card sliced into his thigh, dropping him to the cobblestones.
"Aieeee!"
"You disgust me! You would trade in human flesh? You would sell your own family to make up for your personal failures? Pathetic."
"Medic! Call the guard! Call anyone! I'm bleeding!"
The westerner had extracted another card. He cocked his arm back.
"Medic!"
I couldn't help myself. I was a trained medic. I couldn't let this man be butchered in front of me, could I? I pushed forward into that empty circle, reaching for the weeping and bloody merchant. But I held myself to normal speed.
A card flashed forward, this time slicing across the man's neck. A bright splash of red gushed out as the man's carotid artery was severed. He spun and arched forward in agony. I reached him just in time to catch the victim as he fell to the ground, his face slamming into me. It took another few seconds to fumble with the healing jutsu – I was still having trouble with my chakra, and I dared not mess up at this stage.
I applied my glowing green hands to his neck, pulling the artery back together, fusing cells. It takes concentration, particularly when you need to perform such complex jutsu in the middle of a city street.
But just as I was making progress, the man's body lost all tension. I felt his heart stop.
"What—?"
I let the corpse slide to the ground, barely noticing how my clever and flirtatious outfit was utterly ruined by sticky red mess that now coated me. There, protruding from the base of the man's skull, was another card. I'd been concentrating on healing, and hadn't even seen it being thrown.
Angrily I plucked it out – but halted in shock.
"If you don't mind, I'll take that back now."
The card was deftly plucked from my fingers and I didn't try to resist. It was suddenly very important not to break cover.
"Now that they've been so well baptized, I think I'll have to call this my lucky deck! Well, lucky for me." The dandy raised his voice, displaying the newly re-assembled deck of cards. "Any of you who feel lucky, remember, there's only one spot to find me! The highest stakes, without a doubt. You've all seen that here in a most dramatic fashion. The most beautiful girls. And of course, always the very finest food and entertainment."
He bowed to the gathered crowd, and suddenly the sharp edge of the circle began to evaporate as the tightly organized crowd disintegrated into random chaos. One moment it was just the three of us in a tight-edged circle: the dandy, the dead merchant, and me. The next instant, the crowd surged, and the city returned to its normal traffic. But in the instant before that happened, the murderous card-sharp spoke one final phrase, loud enough to be heard by everyone around. It was a phrase that utterly stunned me:
"Tsukino Usagi!"
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The crowd swallowed me, but Anko and Hinata found me fairly quickly. It was probably due to covert use of Hinata's byakugan.
"Ho ho! Plenty good fun, hey girl?" Anko chortled. "I see it's not so great for the wardrobe, though. We'd better find a place to stay, so you can get cleaned up. The shops and restaurants tend to disapprove when you walk in, covered in freshly spilled blood."
"Sailor Moon…?" I whispered.
"What?" Hinata wondered.
"A memory… from a previous life. But those were just stories…"
Back as Ranma, I'd never revealed to anyone that I was a closet Sailor Moon fan. The fighting was silly, the monsters absurd, the situations uniformly juvenile. And yet… The manga and animé had something special. Despite the silly trappings, the stories had been about friendship and love, and those two issues had always surrounded me. I'd been deathly afraid to admit it, but I'd always been a closet romantic. It had been one of my many curses that I had been forever unable to reveal the fact (not since the age of seven, when my father caught me reading a Harlequin Romance, and beat the snot out of me). But Sailor Moon – they were always fighting for the cause of good, always standing up for love. I know it's silly, but in the comic no one ever seemed to mind that the girls caused major property damage – the girls fought for what they believed in, and were always seen as heroes – as royalty.
Well, it was an appealing fantasy.
My deepest, darkest secret (even worse than the neko-ken) had been the secret "Sailor Sol" outfit I made up for myself. I would splash myself with water, then go out in the middle of the night, practicing my poses and speeches, pretending that people were actually grateful as I saved them.
Looking back at it now, it's a little embarrassing how pathetic I was.
Still, that begged the question of how Tsukino Usagi – the civilian identity of the fictional Sailor Moon, had gotten to this world. Was it just coincidence, like TVs and samurai and how everyone seemed to speak Japanese? A disturbingly large number of ideas and images from my past life had echoed into my new life. Was that all this was, an echo? Or was something else going on?
While I pondered all this, Anko dragged us to a mid-quality hotel.
Hinata moved so that the receptionist never saw me, and we were quickly settled into two rooms.
"One for me," Anko explained, "and you two can share the other."
"Pardon me," Hinata said, "but why do you get a room to yourself, when we have to share?"
Anko was almost disdainful. "We need a room free in case I need to do any…interrogation or anything. I might need to use some kunoichi skills to gather information." She seemed to like the sound of that explanation. "Yeah! Kunoichi skills!"
I peeled out of my blood-soaked clothes. "I saw the toilet down the hall. Do they have a furo?"
"First floor," Hinata answered. "It's a full bathhouse." She opened a closet. "Hey, they have hotel robes and slippers!"
"Told you this was a class joint!" Anko called, as she headed over to her own room. "I love an expense account! Meet you there!"
Anko's assessment was accurate. I took about three times as long, washing up, making sure that I didn't have any blood in my hair or anything. Later, I joined the girls as we relaxed in the soaking area.
"You know," I admitted, "I've always loved these professional bath houses. The landscaping, the little waterfalls, all the plants and flowers…"
Hinata giggled. "You sound like Ino, talking about the flowers."
"Well, maybe." I looked over at our overly-endowed captain. "Having problems relaxing, Anko?"
She sunk down in the water a little. "Just thinking about the mission. No clues, no leads, just a needle in a haystack."
"Oh!" I was suddenly feeling very dumb. "I forgot!"
Someday, I'm going to have Anko teach me her tricks. Even nude, even slumped down relaxing in the warm bath, she was able to project that "scary crazy lady" vibe.
"Eep!" I responded, professionally.
"You had a clue, and you didn't tell us?"
"Well… I was covered in blood? And the crowd was right there? I, uh, needed Hinata to check that no one was listening!"
Hinata clasped her hands (so it seemed) and whispered what might have been either a small prayer or a mumbled "byakugan." The genjutsu over her eyes blurred, but didn't break.
"We're safe." Then she let it drop again.
I inhaled and let my breath out slowly. "Okay girls, gather 'round. The reason that Tsunade-sama took me on as apprentice is because of my excellent chakra control. And while I'm a bit messed up at the moment, I can still feel and recognize a lot more than most nins."
"Get on with it!" Anko pleaded.
"Okay. The killer cards? I plucked one out of that dead guy. And while I was holding it, I realized that it had some very complex chakra patterns imprinted on it. I could tell by their intricacy that the process had been done by someone with control that was just as good as mine. As good as any medic-nin. And after thinking for a moment, I realized that I recognized the feel of that chakra."
The other two looked blank. I decided to prod Hinata a bit.
"One clue: the chunin exams."
She frowned for a moment with her weird completely-normal eyes. "Oh! Cards, chakra, and he turned out to be a medic nin, didn't he?"
"Dammit, WHO?"
"Kabuto," I said, very quietly.
For once, Anko was caught without an arrogant smirk. Her face was blank. "Orochimaru's number two…"
I nodded confirmation. "During the chunin exams, back before we knew he was a traitor, Kabuto showed us a deck of cards. He could trigger them with his chakra and display hidden information. And the card I pulled from the dead merchant had been similarly encoded, I'm sure of it. By Kabuto."
Anko's eyes gleamed. "Kabuto? Oh, I'd just love some time alone with him! I'm not a medic, but I'd love to practice some transplant surgery!" She giggled in a way that was most disturbing. "This is fabulous! Were there any other clues? Anything you noticed about the guy throwing the cards? Anything else with the cards themselves?"
"Now that I think of it," I realized, "the back of the card had a strange design. A dark blue field, with white specks, like stars on a night sky. In white there was a huge arc, like a crescent moon. And leaping in front of it, the silhouette of a girl. A girl with two long streamers trailing behind her head, like long rabbit ears." Or like very long pigtails, exactly like the manga character. But I didn't say that aloud.
"He said something," Hinata mentioned, "just as the crowd was closing in."
"Yes, I heard," I confirmed. "Tsukino Usagi."
We sat there a while longer, soaking, thinking, and discussing our options. Finally, when we were baked through to our bones, Anko rose to leave.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Every good shinobi develops a sixth sense for danger, for detecting hostile attention. More than just feeling killing intent, it's that creepy feeling that you're being followed or studied. My unease wasn't helped by Anko's stupid giggling. I rose to reach for her arm.
"Look, Anko, I know you're happy with the opportunity we might have, but stop that stupid giggling! There's someone watching us!"
"What are you talking about? I'm not giggling."
As one, the three of us slowly turned to the back wall, constructed of sturdy wooden planking. A knothole had fallen out of one of the planks, and visible through the round hole was the white orb and black pupil of a human eye!
By this point, Hinata had also stood up. The three of us stood there, frozen, for a moment. Then, with a simultaneous reaction, all three of us screamed and dropped back into the water.
"AAAAAAA!" "Peeper! There's a peeper watching us!"
Before I quite realized it, I had grabbed one of the huge rocks used for landscaping and hefted it up over my head. If I had things to do over, I'd do it differently. Not that I really regret the damage to the landscaping. Or the wall. Or to the foundation, which eventually led to some extensive repairs for the inn. And I especially don't regret hurting that semi-anonymous peeper.
No, my regrets come from the field of weightlifting. Anyone involved in professional weightlifting knows that it's necessary to adopt a certain wide-legged stance, in order to brace the torso, as you lift an object above your head. An object such as Olympic weights, or large landscaping boulders. And that stance is…less than modest.
In my mind I can still hear the perverse giggling that issued forth, as I heaved that boulder up over my head. My only balm for this malady is to remember the was the giggles turned to fright, and then a quick scream of terror as I hurled it at him.
Anko stared at the hole, and crater beyond in shock. "I don't know about you, but I don't want to be here when the management sees this. Or when homicide shows up."
Hinata rushed forward toward the hole. "Oh my god, I think you killed—" she waved her hand, fanning away the cloud "—a log? And ninja smoke?"
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It seemed like a good idea to be anywhere else than at the inn. Dressed in completely ordinary kimono, we checked the local area.
"You know," Anko speculated, "we could make that into a real sporting event. I'll bet people would pay to see that."
"What?" Hinata asked. "The naked boulder throw?"
"Naw. I was thinking track and field. The hundred meter dash in bathrobe."
While the two of them chortled and I tried to hide my blush (the intense kind that you can feel on the inside), I pondered the enigma that was Hinata. With Anko and just the three of us, Hinata's sense of humor was actually a touch raunchy at times. And yet, bring out a boy, and she'd clam up faster than a diplomat at a spy convention.
Was this a chameleon trait? Admittedly, that's useful for a ninja, especially a kunoichi. The old "shy girl" model no longer fit as well as it once had. Maybe Hinata just needed to warm up to people. Maybe she was a very different girl than we'd thought.
"Oh, man, I love this place! We gotta go in!" Anko urged.
We'd been casually strolling down the streets of the northern district, getting a feel for the territory. I looked up to see a business ahead of us, and a gaudy sign proclaimed, "Shadow World House of Horror: Wax Figures and Ninja Museum!"
"Uh…I'm not so sure…" I mumbled.
"Okay, here's three arguments," Anko told us, her voice low. "First: expense account. Basically, it's free. I'll even fill out the paperwork. Second: this is exactly the kind of tourist trap our cover identities would go for. We can't not go in. And you can drop it into conversation, if people ask what you've been doing. And third: I've been in there before. The place is hilarious!"
"I… I don't know." Hinata was back to her demure mode. "The wax figures aren't very good, are they? I mean, under the clothes, they're just sticks and wire."
Anko sighed. "Hinata… Try to look at the surface only, okay?"
I'd never heard this place mentioned in Konoha. But inside, various plaques and descriptions made it clear that this was an "actual, true, and lifelike" depiction of the famous ninja of the Country of Fire, who lived in a hidden village somewhere deep within the impenetrable forests that filled the center of our great nation.
I have to say, their depictions of the first two hokage seemed pretty accurate. Of course, any Konoha nin grow up seeing the monument over our city every day, so we're more than a little familiar with what our former leaders looked like. And now that I thought about it, I realized that a lot of our biggest battles were public knowledge – at least in Konoha. It wasn't that surprising that artists and storytellers from the capital had traveled to our little village to learn the tale and collect images.
Still, it was a little shocking to see the attack of the kyubi, redone as a wax museum horror scene. And I was definitely taken back by the next display, garishly labeled, "The Uchiha Massacre!"
It didn't help that Anko was snickering.
"They got the blood completely wrong! It so does not pool that way. And believe me, I was there for the cleanup. Itachi was brutal, but neat. Splashing the walls? As if. A quick stab and go, that was him. He got most of them in their beds, not out on the street like that."
I was more taken by the small boy, scrambling away in terror. The plaque prominently identified him as "Uchiha Sasuke – sole survivor."
"You know," I casually mentioned, "they'd better hope that Sasuke never actually visits this place. Considering all the wax, and his proficiency with excessively large fireballs."
"Hey!" Hinata called, "the Chunin Exam!"
Naturally they had a scene of the Third fighting Orochimaru. It was an extremely snake-like Orochimaru, that I thought had probably been recycled from another exhibit. Likewise, the undead versions of the First and Second looked less like resurrected corpses, and more like dusty rejects from a recycled exhibit.
Hinata pointed to the center of the arena. "Hey, is that supposed to be Gaara?"
I peered closely. "I think so. Why does he look so…heroic?"
Anko shrugged. "He's Kazekage now. The capital gets a lot of visitors from Wind."
We left the "House of Horror" and I had a lingering feeling of unease. The great sacrifices of the hidden village had been reduced to silly and inaccurate scenes. It was rather disturbing, when you thought of it. But I began to see Anko's point. I had more than a little medical knowledge, and experience with fresh wounds. The cuts, the wounds, and the blood were completely wrong!
I looked at Anko. "I hate to say it, but you were right. It was pretty funny!"
"Let's go again tomorrow!" Hinata squealed.
Laughing, the three of us turned the corner and there it was.
In front was a sign with their logo: a deep blue starry night with an exaggerated white crescent moon. Atop all that was the silhouette of a girl with a figure far better than Sailor Moon had ever had. And beneath the logo was the name of the business: Not Tsukino Usagi, but Tsuki no Usagi – the Rabbit In The Moon.
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We were soon inside, visiting the private and screened-off coat room on the first floor. An attractive woman in a kimono greeted us, saying, "I'm sorry, the club isn't open for business until after sunset. And I'm afraid it's for members only. Are you members?"
From the looks on their faces, Hinata and Anko were thinking as quickly and furiously as I was: Gambling den, private club, evening hours. We'd hit the jackpot!
"Actually," Anko said easily, believably, "we're here looking for jobs."
"Oh! Wonderful! We always have openings for new girls on the staff. Do any of you have experience?"
I volunteered, "I did a lot of waitressing during school." Of course, it was high school, and on a different planet, but no big deal. If I could handle ramen from the Old Ghoul, I could handle anything these losers could come up with.
"I've done some bartending," Anko revealed. I thought she was guessing, but from the look of the receptionist, she was on the mark. "Also, I have a little experience dealing blackjack."
And that was the question. The clues said that this was some sort of gambling joint. Anko's guess might confirm that. We waited tensely for the response.
"Excellent! Oh, I'm sure all of you will work out." Her gaze dropped to Anko's chest. "You certainly seem qualified. So just follow me through here and we'll take you back for a fitting, and pick your colors."
I blinked at that. Colors?
"You can start this evening? Good. You'll come in through the employee's entrance; I'll show that to you in a moment. Then you'll head for the girl's dressing room. I'll meet you at six, and we'll go through orientation before any of the members show up."
Saying that, she opened the last door and led us in.
I had been so wrong.
I'd suspected odd echoes and snatches of the familiar carried over from Ranma's life. That was so true. Based on my own secret addiction to the Sailor Moon series, I had engaged in irresponsible speculation. The Rabbit In The Moon had nothing to do Sailor Moon. It had everything to do with the night, nocturnal activity, and bunnies.
I had just signed up to work at the Playboy Club.
END OF CHAPTER 10
Author's notes:
A bit of a short chapter, but that's where the punch line came.
Deep apologies: last episode I used the "traveling ten." This is, of course, a direct steal from Perfect Lionheart's Chunin Exam Day – an utterly brilliant work (like all of PL's stories). Hmmm, better go add a note to the end of that chapter. Anyway, the idea was swiped and expanded without anything like requesting permission. Hopefully PL (you don't mind if I call you "PL" do you?) won't send assassins after me.
Pointless explanation of Japanese Culture: Where westerners see a "man in the moon", Japanese see a "rabbit in the moon." He's sitting back on his hind legs, swinging a mallet overhead, into a big cask/bucket of rice, pounding it into mochi (sweet sweet mochi – what a treat!) Yes, the names of virtually every Sailor Moon character is a horrendous pun.
Those of you who are hyperventilating can relax. Aside from misleading references derived from Ranma's memories, I promise that there will be no crossover with Sailor Moon. You're safe.
