Chapter 2: The 'Package'
Chiyo excused herself from the bi-weekly bridge tournament with Ebizō and the other elders in a rage. She placated Gaara with a judicious dose of sedative, and then stormed out into the desert. The ramifications of what she'd heard were enormous, and she needed time to sort them out.
Suna had faced off against Konoha in the Second Great Ninja War, the war in which she'd come to fame. The Second War held a place in history as the most bloody, violent conflict perpetrated in human memory, the Third being tame in comparison. All five villages had been out for themselves, and alliances were short-lived and treacherous at best. This was the war in which Hanzō had defeated Hiruzen Sarutobi's genin team and dubbed them the Three Legendary Ninja, and the war in which Sakumo Hatake had come to be known as the White Fang. Very few still remembered it, as the fourth generation of Kage had been very young at the time, but Chiyo remembered perfectly. So too did Orochimaru, and why the man seemed intent on plunging the world into turmoil again was beyond her. The political climate was perfect for such an event, what with Konoha's declining strength, the growing boldness of Kumo and Kiri's recent 'policy changes'. Perhaps the rumours were true, and the snake sannin had gone mad, but she doubted this was the whim of a madman.
The Fourth Kazekage was a fool, then. Whatever Orochimaru had promised him, it couldn't be worth sacrificing hundreds of Suna ninja in a fruitless assault against the much more powerful Konoha. The motives for the plan were simple enough: conquest and spoils. What Chiyo didn't understand was how they intended to surmount superior forces and being outnumbered roughly six to one. Was Orochimaru leading Suna to its doom? Could he justify this to himself, somehow?
Or did he actually stand a chance against the might of Konohagakure?
Whatever the case, this insanity could not be allowed to come to fruition. Whether she needed to stop it by alerting the population of Suna, warning Konoha or outright enacting a coup to usurp the uncaring, oblivious Kazekage, she would do it.
Chiyo crested another sand dune at a run, allowing the pleasant brown swell of Suna to fade On the horizon. Already, she calculated the potential strengths of the two sides in the fight. Konoha's shinobi were six times more numerous than their own, befitting the village's size, and many of them were, on average, better than the Suna ninja of equivalent rank. Konoha had Hiruzen Sarutobi and Danzō Shimura, both of whom were an army unto themselves if you included Root. Jiraiya, too, was aeons ahead of any Sand jōnin. That is, if he was even in Konoha at the time of the invasion. The same went for Tsunade, who was usually on the road in southeastern Fire Country.
The gears in the puppeteer's head were spinning now. Two of Konoha's S-ranked ninja were unlikely to come to the aid of their village, and as much as she hated to admit it, Sarutobi was unlikely to best Orochimaru in a fight, especially if Orochimaru had the element of surprise. Chiyo knew little of the jinchūriki successor to Kushina, but whoever it was, they kept a low profile. That meant one of two things: the boy (or girl) was a classified state secret, or they had no control over the Kyūbi at all. Either way, Gaara and the Kazekage would likely overwhelm them, though the second was especially troubling.
This was very, very bad. Orochimaru might not've been rational, but he was no fool. He probably had his own military to bring to the fight, along with spies on the inside and the benefit of being a tactical genius in his own right. If Konoha was truly caught unawares, their chances of fending off an invasion were close to nonexistent.
She knew what she had to do, then. Sighing, Chiyo turned around to go back to Suna. She would buy some rations, pack up her collection of Chikamatsu puppets and warn the Leaf of the impending invasion. If Sakumo were still alive, he'd probably laugh himself to death at the irony.
Well, at least the Slug Girl was out of the village, drinking herself to death and squandering her family fortune. Otherwise, she'd never let her live it down, even if Chiyo ended up saving her village and preventing a fourth war.
"Excuse me, madam, but are you Chiyo?"
Surprised as she was, Chiyo forced herself not to turn around at the sound of the voice in the middle of nowhere. "That's a common name here in Wind Country," she answered vaguely.
"Let me rephrase that: are you Chiyo, the founder of the Puppet Brigade and heir to Monzaemon Chikamatsu?"
"Do I know you?" she said blithely, her voice crackling with age.
"Turn around, Honoured Elder," said the voice, which had gained a suave quality. Despite recognizing it as a genjutsu for making the listener more compliant, Chiyo nevertheless turned around to face the bold ninja who dared to confront her.
He was young, almost absurdly so, with dark hair and black eyes. He wore a black cloak studded with red clouds, one sleeve empty as he rested his arm in the crook of his robe. Chiyo stared at him for a moment, real fear burgeoning in her chest.
"You know," said Itachi Uchiha. His voice was bland again, and the statement was both simple and a terrifyingly accurate summation of her situation. "What will you do, Elder?"
"I fail to see how that is your concern," Chiyo responded crisply. "Have you any legitimate business with me, traitor?"
"My partner is currently... indisposed," Itachi said in his careful monotone. "This is not Akatsuki business, however, it is personal, and so I do not need him for this encounter. Return to your village, and forget what you've heard. Do not report my presence to the Kazekage. If you attempt to warn Konoha, it will end badly. Above all, do not interfere. Orochimaru must succeed."
"You cannot expect me to do that," Chiyo raged, covertly reaching into her robes for a sealing scroll.
Itachi sighed, as if he'd genuinely expected her to simply ignore the catastrophe about to happen. "One last chance, Elder Chiyo. Please, be reasonable."
Chiyo's response was a well-timed barrage of senbon. As Itachi fell back, deflecting the hail of needles with a fūton jutsu, she unsealed the puppets. The Mother and Father duo, created by her grandson in a moment of weakness, were more than sentimental relics to her. She'd put all of her considerable skill into making them weapons of destruction, and they nearly rivalled the power of the White Secret collection.
Itachi was not unprepared, and with blinding speed he summoned a crow to his shoulder. The bird cawed uneasily at the tension, while Chiyo arranged Mother and Father in front of her. Funny, shouldn't they be Son and Daughter-In-Law? She shook her head, averting her eyes from Itachi's.
"It seems I cannot entrap you that way," Itachi commented, his tone still flat. "I had heard that you have... experience... in killing Uchiha. As it happens, I do as well."
Was that a joke? Chiyo stared dumbly at the prodigy, and then Itachi struck. He lashed out with a barrage of shuriken, the channeled chakra in the ninja stars easily destroying her chakra threads and severing her connection to Son and Daughter-In-Law. The crow flew from his shoulder, but Chiyo ignored it in favour of defending herself from Itachi's long-range attacks.
That was her mistake.
The crow flicked its head to the other side, and when Chiyo looked at it, the red of a sharingan stared back at her. Paralyzed, she stopped trying to regain control of her puppets. The last thing she heard was Itachi's voice, seemingly from far away.
"Kotoamatsukami."
.:.
The ocean was bright, sparkling with the diffused light of the sun. Kabuto looked out over the water from the dock, and concluded that death by drowning was a sufficiently painful method to execute Danzō with. The dying sailors had provided a delightful alternative to screaming, a sort of pained gurgling complete with the hand movements and tortured expressions. There wasn't any blood splatter, though all the splashing made up for it. Smiling sunnily, Kabuto turned away from the massacre he'd just perpetrated and walked further down the deserted dock.
This was an empty port city on the southern shore of Hot Spring Country. It was mostly abandoned, having been born to do trade with the bustling island of Uzu. Now the Whirlpool was destroyed, and the harbour had dried up. Kabuto spared a moment to admire the city of Uzushiogakure, parts of which were still visible on the coast of the island. Although they gleamed in the sunlight, the truth was that beyond the treeline, Uzu was a burnt husk of a village. Only ashes and rubbled remained of the long-lived Uzumaki.
There was a different island here, other than Wave Country. Kabuto had chartered the boat to the Land of Hot Springs from that very island, paying for the boat up front in solid gold. On the way north, unfortunately, he completely forgot which island he was looking for, and so he simply had them pull ashore at the first abandoned seaside locale. Now, the gold weighed heavy in his pocket, and he wished he'd asked the men to pull up to Uzu. There were some graves up there he wanted to spit on, and possibly dig up for traces of DNA.
At his feet, the water lapped against the wooden poles holding the pier out of the water. Kabuto sighed and sat down, waiting for the last of the sailors to succumb to the water in their lungs and his guests to arrive.
It didn't take long. A few minutes later, a dark shape swam into Kabuto's line of sight, coming to a stop just in front of the dock. With a torrential splash, a green figure burst from the sea, splashing down on dry ground right next to him. As soon as the water washed away, Kabuto was pleased to see that his contact had arrived. Short in stature, wearing a blue swimsuit and covered entirely in reptilian scales, Isaribi was an intimidating sea demon. That is, until she transformed back into a regular girl. Somehow, a girl with admittedly genin level ninja skills didn't quite inspire the fear that Amachi's greatest creation did.
"Yakushi," the girl said absently, pulling a roll of bandages out of a pocket on her swimsuit. "The moon is full tonight."
"I enjoyed the dawn, though," Kabuto said, finishing the code phrase that Orochimaru's underlings used to identify themselves. "It's a wonderful day to stare at the wreckage of a society, don't you think?"
Isaribi glanced morosely over at Uzushio and scowled. "It's not all that pretty. The refugees took everything of value, and me and Kidōmaru went there a while back to scavenge the rest. It's actually quite ugly. All those scorch marks..." The fish girl wound the bandages tightly over her face as she spoke, covering the lingering traces of her
"We're not here for that," Kabuto said pleasantly. "Where's the package?"
In response, the kaima girl took out another scroll. This one was a product of Orochimaru's personal experimentation. Based off the scrolls used to transport corpses, it was designed to hold living beings in stasis for up to two weeks, halting their metabolism and cutting off their senses, much like an extradimensional isolation tank. Oto used them to transport prisoners and people who needed to travel... incognito. Kabuto was almost certain that Kin Tsuchi had her teammates take her to Fire Country every month or so to get her hair done, or whatever it was that insipid kunoichi did whenever Orochimaru wasn't working them to death.
"Here," she said sullenly, handing it to Kabuto. He examined the seal, extending his chakra sense to confirm that it contained who he thought it did.
"Excellent!" the medic chirped. "With this kind of service, Orochimaru will restore you to your normal body any time now!"
"I won't fall for that bullshit again," Isaribi protested weakly. "Amachi was—"
"Someone who you obeyed explicitly, killing hundreds of innocent sailors and intercepting critical intelligence in the process," Kabuto drawled. "You sullied your hands for him, and you'll do it for us. Won't you?"
She glared at the silver-haired irritant. "I am coming with you to Oto, right Yakushi?" she asked. "I don't think I'm needed in that place anymore. All the experiments are... dead..."
She shuddered, thinking of the poor, twisted people that she'd help capture and transform. Just like her. It was so ironic, she wanted to cry.
Kabuto smiled nastily. "Ah, I suppose you can come. We have quite the walk back, now that I've sunken that ship. Oh, just think of all those ignorant, innocent men just lying at the bottom of the ocean! What a shame, that they're all dead! Don't you think so, hypocrite?"
Isaribi stoically ignored Kabuto's attempt to rile her by pushing past him. All the way up the town, the man just went on and on.
"Just think, we'll get to go through Yugakure! I hear they're having a festival in a week or so. What a sight, all those dripping, bleeding sacrifices to Jashin! It'll be wonderful!"