Nothing threatening had happened during the third day of the journey, no dark cloud on the horizon. The atmosphere in the party had been light at first, with only another day to reach their destination. The guards quietly joked with each other, the labourers sung as they took to their work, even the animals seemed contented, having finally settled into the start-stop pace made necessary by the poor quality of the road.
Spirits fell somewhat as they neared midday. The terrain had been slowly changing over the course of the morning. The clearing they had passed the day before turned out to be merely the first of many, and as they travelled the open spaces sank lower into the ground, taking on standing water.
The vegetation changed. The light undergrowth that surrounded Konoha for miles became a sickly lurid green grass, dotted with rice lilies and cottongrass, and reeds sprang out from the deeper water. Flies began to become a problem for the group, with roaming bands of mosquitoes descending occasionally on the party, and clouds of buzzing blue-backs, which would land and swarm on the shirts of the guards and labourers alike, hanging from between the shoulder blades in pendulous clusters where they weren't easily brushed off. Ami found the early afternoon miserable, having long since tired of smacking at mosquito bites and trying to keep the flies from crawling on her.
Ami was starting to reach the end of her patience, but paradoxically, the deeper they travelled into the wetlands, the less of the problem the flies became, thinning out until they were barely above the level seen around Konoha. When Ami mentioned the fact, Tsuzumi explained about ecosystems, how the fish, frogs, and other predators living in the swamps fed on the flies, and grew in number until they reached an equilibrium. Ami digested the information with every other scrap of knowledge let slip by those around her, and her complaints grew fewer as the incessant insects diminished.
Eventually the sun began to sink below the level of the trees, and though it was hours until it would be truly dark, the captain held up a hand and called a halt to the caravan.
"We should make camp here," he called across the gathered group. "It's just four hours to the Numa-Ku. We'll set off at dawn, and make the town by business hours."
The caravan broke into a dry area beside the road, and the workers and traders moved automatically into the routine of making fires and setting tents. The mud and humidity hung on them all so heavily that Ami didn't even ask her sensei for training, though she did make a brief attempt at using the Drip Redirection technique to sap the clinging sweat from her skin, only to fail for reasons she didn't have the energy to ask about.
o o o
The sentries had been set, and the shinobi guards were hours into their sleep rotation when Ami woke up, shocked awake by a nightmare. There was something indescribable in the air. A sickening pressure, both like and unlike the humidity. Ami's stomach knotted in a sensation that recalled some of her worst, earliest memories, and for a moment she thought she heard a woman's panicked screaming. The imaginary sound soon gave way to real yells of alarm from outside.
"-something in the trees," an unfamiliar voice cried.
"Defensive positions!" captain Bekko shouted.
Ami stood, stumbling out of her tent as she strapped her equipment pouch around her waist. She stood in the middle of the camp site, surrounded by figures running around and lighting lanterns. Captain Bekko was standing on top of one of the carts, using the high ground to look above the tall grass and reeds into the surrounding darkness, holding a burning stick like a torch behind and above him.
Two of the ninjutsu team members had scaled trees, and she could see them hanging from the bark, looking outwards for sight of danger in the darkness. The atmosphere was oppressive, a weighty sensation of dread and despair crushing down on her, as heavy as a waterfall. There was no sign of her sensei or the other guards in the darkness, and Ami had to assume they were away scouting the forest, or hidden beyond her ability to detect.
All of the guards seemed focused on the surrounding woodlands, on watch for approaching enemies. Only Ami saw the arm. Descending silently out of the darkness above, a giant hand the size of one of the cart oxen came drifting down like clawed smoke.
It took a choked moment before Ami could even scream, and by then it was too late. The enormous fingers wrapped around the captain from behind, completely engulfing him before he'd sensed more than a slight shift in the air. Ami thought she heard a sickening crack over the sound of her scream, and the arm withdrew upwards, taking the body of the captain with it.
The captain's torch, sticking upwards out of the closed hand like a plucked daisy, illuminated its owner. There, high in the canopy, was an enormous pale figure, naked and sexless. Its skin as white as a corpse, but bruised and blemished in random spots, and a head of long, tangled black hair masked any face the thing might have had. Six long, bony arms dangled down from its sides, each ending a hand of swollen knuckles and cracked yellow fingernails.
The figure had no visible legs, only thighs that narrowed and twisted to blackened points before the knee, and it dangled impossibly from a length of knotted pink flesh, which found its source in a six-foot gash across the figure's stomach. Ami couldn't stop screaming. She covered her eyes with her hands and crouched to the ground.
After the crest of her sick terror had passed, washed away by a cresting wave of adrenaline, Ami began trying to get control of herself. She could feel her pulse beating through her body like fingers on a table, and her breaths came quick and uncontrolled. She pulled her hands away from her face to take a glance around at her surroundings, and darted beneath one of the carts, hoping for the protection a solid roof would give her from the hanging horror. From her hiding place, Ami saw two of the duty chunin appear, throwing blades and shuriken up at the creature, before darting away from slow, grasping hands.
Roused by the disturbance, Ami saw labourers stumbling from their own tents and looking around dumbly in the darkness. She tried to shout a warning to them when she saw white fingers seeking downwards, stretching for the head of one of the taller workers, but he seemed oblivious to the threat, unused to looking upwards for potential danger, and Ami steeled herself before running out.
She sprinted at the man and a second later rammed into his hips, her shoulder ploughing into his stomach. She knocked the wind out of him, but also knocked him to the ground, out of the monster's grasp. She rolled onto her back in time to see probing fingers waving through the air mere feet above her. She gave a choked yell, and a moment later she saw a pair of fireballs fly from the surrounding trees at the hanging arm.
The arm vanished.
There was no cloud of chakra smoke, or flicker of movement. The figure simply faded to nothing, as if it had never been there. A moment later, the captain's body fell to earth with a wet thump, and Ami was left with the sound of her own heartbeat and ragged breathing.
"-perimeter!"
"-civilians under the carts!"
"Where the hell-"
On some level, Ami knew she was hyperventilating. She struggled to control her breathing, but the next few minutes were a blur of motion and panic. She found herself stuffed under one of the carts, surrounded by tense workers and one of the traders who was accompanying the goods. The caravan beasts were frantic, stamping the ground, their breath steaming, but they seemed securely tied.
Ami rose to a crouch and staggered out from under the cart, approaching Okei, who was standing guard nearby.
"Sensei! Where's sensei!" Ami shouted, frantic.
Okei didn't even spare her a glance, his vision roaming between trees and canopy, where lanterns now dangled from the branches to remove any dark hiding places above.
"He's heading back to Konoha. He's going to bring a jonin to sort this fucked up mess out," Okei said flatly, finally glancing down at her. "Good work back there."
Ami grimaced. She felt like she was going to be sick. The only sound circling her mind was the wet smacking noise the captain had made when he fell.
"Where did it go?" Ami asked, shakily.
"Somewhere, nowhere," Okei said absently. "We don't even know it was here to begin with, damn genjutsu."
"But, it ki-, it kill-" Ami whined.
"We don't know anything," Okei snapped. "We'll just wait 'til a jonin gets here. Hey, Ami, there's a keg of... special medicine in that cart. Bring it to the civilians eh? Check they're all okay."
Ami nodded. Despite the chunin's coddling, she knew what alcohol was, and the workers seemed grateful as she rolled the keg beneath the cart, where they indulged in the oldest, simplest treatment for shock they knew. The merchants were clearly disturbed, shaking and barely able to speak, but the labour teams seemed to be dealing with the danger more capably, and nobody among them was physically hurt. Ami returned to her spot beneath of the cart to wait out the night, a useless kunai held in each hand, and it was dawn before Tsuzumi returned with reinforcements.
Ami's sensei flickered into camp just as the sun's first light began to filter through the trees. The lanterns and torches had long since spluttered out. The civilian crew had achieved some fitful sleep beneath the carts, helped by sips of strong liquor and the communal murmur of their breathing, but Ami had barely even closed her eyes to blink for the entire duration, and the other ninja guards had also remained alert as well.
Behind Tsuzumi was an unfamiliar middle-aged man, wearing a Konoha flak-jacket. A tight pony-tail ascended from the back of his dark hair, its ends styled into points, or horns. A slim patch of hair masqueraded as a beard on his chin, and he wore a stern expression on his narrow face. He carried a large scroll on a strap across his shoulders, as well as a pair of equipment pouches at his belt.
The short water specialist, Yajirobee, leapt down to greet them. In the absence of Captain Bekko, Yajirobee seemed to have stepped in to take command of the mission as a whole.
"Parrot, goldfish, sunrise," he said, his posture tense.
"Apple, tiger lilly, ah- canary. It's fine, it's fine, it's me," Tsuzumi said, giving Yajirobee an appeasing wave, then gestured to the dark haired man behind him. "This is Nara Suzaku."
The newcomer stepped forward, looking around at the mess of the camp.
Yajirobee stepped forward. "Nara-san. Thank you for coming. Please take command of the mission."
"It's no trouble," Suzaku said, easily. The man's expression was more severe than his words, and he performed a quick assessment of the situation before he began rattling off orders in a voice that conveyed quiet confidence. "Tsuzumi, do a head count of the civilians. Iwana, bleed tests - your unit, then the duty unit, then the civilians. Why is a child here?"
"Ah- she's my student. She came as a training exercise," Tsuzumi said, moving towards the gathered group of workers and traders.
"Who first saw the apparition?" Suzaku asked finally, looking around as the fire-ninjutsu specialist, Iwana, began moving between the chunin, making small cuts on their forearms with a kunai.
"I heard a scream, and when I turned it was there," Yajirobee began explaining. "That was the first any of us knew about it."
"Who screamed?" Suzaku asked.
Ami swallowed heavily.
"It must've been one of the civvies-" Daikoku, the heavy earth specialist began, but was interrupted.
Ami raised her hand. She tried to speak, but felt something choke her throat and had to cough before continuing. "I screamed, Nara-san." Her voice was very small.
The jonin approached her, one eyebrow raised. "Tell me what you saw."
Ami took a deep breath to try and free the butterflies trapped in her stomach before speaking. "I saw... a giant arm, creeping down-" she mimed the movement with her own arm, twitching and jerking her fingers in the unnatural motion she'd seen in the creature. "He squeezed captain-san, and lifted him up, and I saw it above - the monster."
"Describe it."
"Uh- six arms man, no legs, hanging- hanging from-" Ami felt like she must be turning green. She swallowed heavily and breathed deeply to settle her nausea.
"Hanging from its guts, wrapped around a branch," Daikoku finished for her. "No way it could take the weight if it were real. We threw kunai at it, nothing, it only vanished when Iwana spat a fireball its way."
"To save me," Ami added quietly.
"How did it dispel?" Suzaku asked.
"No smoke, it just faded away, like a genjutsu," Daikoku said.
Suzaku seemed to think for a minute, pacing around in a slow circle, during which time Tsuzumi returned to tell him that all of the civilians were accounted for. Tsuzumi moved behind Ami and rested a hand on the top of her head, which she tried to brush away. Iwana, the fire-jutsu specialist returned half a minute later, facing Suzaku to report.
"Everyone's taking wounds normally," Iwana said.
"Huh?" Ami grunted, looking at the Iwana, who was wiping blood from his kunai.
"No clones, no henges," Tsuzumi said quietly, leaning down to whisper into the girl's ear. Her mouth snapped shut with realisation. Few clones of any variety would bleed convincingly from a cut, and the skill to sustain a henge through an injury was beyond many shinobi.
"Fine. Show me the body," Suzaku said.
Yajirobee led the jonin to where the body of Captain Bekko had been moved, and Ami turned away as Suzaku uncovered the corpse and began to examine it. It took several minutes before Suzaku was satisfied, but eventually he returned to the camp, pacing as he thought.
"So, ah-ha, what attacked us? Was it a genjutsu, after all?" Tsuzumi asked, wearing the weakest attempt at a smile Ami had ever seen on him.
Suzaku only paced for several seconds in silence, considering. "No. The injuries on Bekko's body are entirely consistent with your descriptions. Given that it attacked in a physical way, we can rule out an immaterial clone variant. Given that it ignored thrown weapons and vanished so completely, we can rule out a physical clone variant. Given that it vanished without smoke, we can rule out a traditional summons. It seems that it might be a type of demonic creature."
"A demon?" Daikoku asked.
Suzaku looked around the camp, gauging the distance of the civilians from where he stood before continuing, his face a stern mask. "Everything that has happened here, and everything I'm about to tell you is to be considered a B-rank secret. Yajirobee, you'll brief the civilians about the restrictions and penalties before we reach Numa-Ku."
Tsuzumi leaned down to whisper an explanation into Ami's ear while Yajirobee asked a question Ami didn't catch. "Telling a B-rank will get you fined and locked up Ami. This is serious."
"I know, sensei!" Ami hissed back.
When Ami turned her attention back to the group, Yajirobee was nodding.
"To answer, there a type of creature called a doki. They're demons, used by certain people to fight in battles, or perform assassinations," Suzaku said darkly.
"Like, the nine-" a long-haired chunin began, before being interrupted by Suzaku. Ami remembered him as the one who'd helped fire the clay bridge the previous day.
"No. Not like that. Much weaker, and less dangerous," Suzaku snapped. "This is the most monstrous one I've heard of, but Konoha-nin have encountered them before, in battles against enemies who used them as summons. We have no information on their source, and none have been seen free, but the substance of their chakra feels different to that of a certain other demon, so they may have a different origin."
"How can they be fought effectively?" Yajirobee asked.
"Our records show they can be fought in the same way as any summoned ally, by treating them as unusually large and problematic close-quarters fighters. Though from your report, this one seems different. You already know the only attack which is sure to work."
"So someone out there's got a summoning contract with a damned demon pack!?" Daikoku asked.
"The old man!" a duty chunin with wide, flat black hair said, suddenly.
"Nah, he didn't have a scroll," Daikoku shot back.
"He wasn't really there, idiot!" Flat-black replied.
"What's this old man?" Suzaku asked, frowning at Tsuzumi.
"The day prior to yesterday, we encountered an old man sitting by the road," Yajirobee began to explain, even as Tsuzumi fidgeted uncomfortably. "Tsuzumi-san engaged him in conversation, but on closer inspection, the man appeared to be nothing more than a straw-dummy. It was suspicious, but nothing threatening happened, and the captain decided to proceed."
"That's... that would have been relevant information, Tsuzumi!" Suzaku said, closing his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"Ah-ha, sorry, Suzaku-san, ah-ha," Tsuzumi said, laughing awkwardly, but offering no real excuse.
"No, no. It's no trouble," Suzaku said finally, releasing the grip on the bridge of his nose and opening his eyes. "What did you talk about?"
Tsuzumi relayed the conversation he'd had with the straw figure in full, adding a commentary of his own interpretations, and what he sensed from the man and the surroundings. He even included details that Ami had missed when she'd witnessed the conversation, such as the eight-spoke wheel symbol Tsuzumi had seen sewn into the dummy's robe above the heart. Suzaku listened to the entire report, patiently and intently.
"I agree with your former captain's decision. That situation wasn't alarming enough to risk the mission. It's only with hindsight that it seems dangerous," Suzaku said when Tsuzumi had finished. He looked around, seeming to come to a decision. "We're closer to Numa-Ku than Konoha. It will be better to take respite in the town, even if that is the home of our opponent. Have the civilians prepare to leave. Once we've secured ourselves in town, we'll request new orders from Konoha."
"Do you think we're facing a missing-nin?" Yajirobee asked as the Nara walked with him towards the crowd of civilians.
"Hm. Numa-Ku doesn't have any shinobi of its own, and a foreign nin would be insane to take a mission just a few hours from Konoha, so that seems like the best explanation," Suzaku muttered, almost to himself. "But this technique is strange. Almost any purpose would have been served better with traditional ninjutsu, by setting a trap, or by infiltration. It may be Konoha has seen its first wild doki. But then why here, so close to a city?"
Suzaku's questions had no easy answers.
It took almost an hour to pack up the camp and calm the beasts enough for them to be hitched to the carts. The captain's body was sealed into the large scroll which Suzaku carried, in which Ami took a silent, disquieted interest, and when the wheels finally started rolling, everyone was keen to move on.
As they caravan drew closer to Numa-Ku, the road began to improve in quality, even as the surrounding terrain fell away into deeper and more interconnected pools, dominated by lily pads, algae, and lotus flowers. The sound of frogs and insects became ubiquitous, a bizarre dawn chorus of croaks and chirps, different to Konoha's morning birdsong, but surprisingly beautiful in its own way.
The increasingly well-kept road wove through the wetlands like the spine ridge of an enormous creature, and there was almost no work left for the labour team to do, which given their state of exhaustion was just as well. The tragedy in the night had left the entire party tense and subdued.
After an hour of travel they began to pass farms, of a sort. Meandering lines of thick wooden stakes hammered into the ground where water pooled, describing watery enclosures in which fish could be seen swimming thickly, snapping at occasional flies and fallen leaves. There were rice farms as well; areas where the trees had been felled for dozens of meters around, the water dredged, and tall rice grass planted. Ami saw eel traps lurking in the surrounding water, half covered in algae.
Eventually the daylight, and the occasional sightings of local farm workers began to hedge out the nightmare of the previous night's events, and Ami turned to Tsuzumi with a question.
"Um. Sensei, what was a doki?" she asked, keeping her voice low. The labour teams and merchants were all ahead of the caravan, unlikely to hear her over the noise of the carts and animals, but she didn't want to take her first B-rank secret lightly.
"Hm. It's like Suzaku-san said. They're summons used by certain people," Tsuzumi said, matching the level of his voice with hers.
"But what're summons anyway?"
Tsuzumi thought for a moment before replying. "Sometimes ninja sign contracts with animal clans, and the clans allow them to summon their members for help."
"Oh. Do you have a summon?" she asked.
"Ah-ha, no. They're quite rare. Sometimes there are personal summons, but... ah- I don't know about how that works."
"Can people be summons?" Ami asked.
"Ah-ha, I think sometimes. There was one-"
"Your student asks vexing questions," Suzaku interrupted, revealing that he'd overheard the entire exchange.
"Ah-ha, she has a searching mind, my cute student," Tsuzumi said.
Suzaku seemed stern and unimpressed. "Remember that in our world, not every innocent question has an innocent answer, and we are not free to give them out just because someone is curious."
Tsuzumi didn't seem to know how to respond, just looking back at Suzaku uncertainly.
"This is why they use jonin. You career chunin swap jutsu and knowledge like trading cards, and never mind what's classified," Suzaku muttered. "Learn to give those secrets you overhear proper weight. Just because nobody instructed you to keep something to yourself, doesn't mean there's no penalty for sharing it."
Tsuzumi paled and turned away, but Ami rounded on the jonin.
"Why can't my sensei teach me!" she said, more a challenge than a question. Tsuzumi caught her shoulder, and tried to whisper for her to keep quiet, but he was interrupted again.
"No, it's no trouble. The answer is also a question," Suzaku said, stopping to look down at Ami with wide eyes. "How many secrets can you keep while being tortured, Ami-chan?"
Ami pressed her lips together in a shocked frown and kept silent.
"Hm. When you know the number, that will be the number of secrets you're allowed to know. Jutsu, knowledge about techniques, and enemies, and geography, and history. All of these can be valuable secrets to Konoha. The information we teach to our genin must be in line with their skills, and their discretion."
Suzaku resumed walking, letting the little girl fall behind him.
Half an hour later, they'd reached what passed for the gates of Numa-Ku.