Opening 12 - Love Deterrence by Nana Mizuki
X
Shimo was one of the smallest ninja villages; its funding had always been scarce and it saw worryingly few missions due to its proximity to the far more prestigious Kumo. But for eighty years, it had survived in spite of that.
It had no chance of surviving the Fourth Shinobi World War, and its people knew this well. They'd taken everything when they evacuated, stripped every wall and floor bare.
The first storms of winter swept in only hours after the Shimo-nin left, and with no one to clear the streets the snow had simply drifted wherever the wind pushed it. As that wind died and the snowfall grew even heavier, the village would be swallowed entirely. Perhaps the height of summer would melt it free again, but only if there was anything left of it by the end of the war.
Seemingly alone, a kunoichi wrapped in a long white and lavender coat stood in the middle of a slightly wider road. The wind had swept up the powdery snow and piled it against the north and west walls of any standing buildings, leaving this particular road mostly bare. There was no trail of footprints behind her.
The wind picked up in a strong southward gust, tugging at her coat and the locks of bluish-black hair not quite tucked under her hood. A few tiny wisps of what appeared to be thick white fog was carried off with the wind as well, and it very nearly blended in with the powdery snow.
But the shinobi watching her noticed it still, and regarded her as a greater threat despite having no idea what the mist truly was. His eyes narrowed slightly and he confirmed that her Byakugan was active before he revealed himself, appearing on the road before her. She'd already slowed to a stop at the usual distance a shinobi would prefer for throwing fireballs and such.
"I was told to be especially careful around you," said Hanzou the Black Salamander, his voice filtered and muffled through his mask. "But I wasn't exactly told what to look out for. It's actually a bit uncomfortable how little they told me."
"That's odd," she commented lightly. "I take it Kabuto must have an impressive army of Edo Tensei by now, if he can't even take the time to brief each of you."
Without warning he flicked his wrist and a scythe appeared in his hand with a flourish of white smoke; Hinata mirrored the action in a heartbeat with a short stave of dark wood and bright metal. Neither of them quite moved to attack. "Excellent reaction time... I've seen Uchihas who moved slower than that."
"...You're testing me," she commented with her tone of surprise a bit too pronounced.
He took just one step back, his eyes still flitting over her and looking for any sign of an imminent attack. "And you're trying to fail my test. Trying to look like less of a threat than you really are. It isn't working." she frowned at that, and Hanzou took another step backward. "I'm not a sensor, but a chakra signature as huge and powerful as a Jinchuuriki's would still catch my attention. I'm not sensing one... and that's strange, since I was told you and the Nine-Tails fight as a team almost constantly."
She shrugged. "He has a cold. He wasn't feeling up to this one."
"...A lie that obvious can only be intentional." Hanzou took a second step back. "Both of us are fishing for information, and we're getting nowhere. Let's just get started already."
Most of Hanzou's body remained motionless, but his arm and the scythe it wielded both shot forward with speed comparable to a movement jutsu. It was only thanks to her years of training with Naruto that Hinata moved her stave to catch his attack in time. He pulled back on the chain connected to his weapon and it flew back to his hand, the curved blade tugging on Hinata's stave but not disarming her.
"You're fast," he remarked.
"Likewise."
"Hm..." She certainly is a Kage-level threat, even though she's trying to downplay it. It won't do to underestimate her. "The fast ones are always tricky."
Hinata saw the pulse of murky purple chakra spread out from the soles of Hanzou's feet and light up the ground under them both; she knew she had to react quickly but something was already brushing up her left ankle. She didn't need to glance down thanks to the Byakugan; she could already see that the frost and dirt had been transmuted into explosive tags slithering halfway up her calves.
Contrary to Hanzou's expectations, she didn't struggle or use a jutsu to try to escape the tags before they went off. Instead she pulsed a trace of chakra into the stave in her right hand, extended a concealed blade from each end of the weapon, switched her grip and threw it overhand as a javelin into Hanzou's face. Then the tags exploded and filled the street with a fireball.
He felt something pulling on his entire body; it wasn't a sensation he recognized but he could at least see it was a threat. He flashed backward and left only a gust of wind to hold the spear aloft; it fell to earth after just a split second and he reappeared much farther down the road.
A fuinjutsu, he guessed. Probably designed specifically to capture Edo Tensei. I'll have to be careful around that weapon...
The fireball towering above where Hinata had stood faded out, with nothing to burn but air. Close to the ground a few embers continued to glow, but they wouldn't last long either. Hanzou had designed his explosive tags not to give off much smoke; a cloud of it from a massed attack could hide the movements of any survivors.
At the center of the explosion lay Hinata's long and heavy coat, shredded and alight with flame below the waist. The kunoichi herself was now standing farther back from Hanzou with an orb of blue-white light in her right hand. He took the oppurtunity to size up his opponent more carefully now, first noting the aura of soft white mist wrapped around her entire body.
I'd guessed it was some kind of offensive jutsu, maybe a wind attack or nitrogen fumes from an ice-based fighting style. But it's definitely some kind of defense... ah... now it makes sense. It's a countermeasure against my poison gas.
He also noted the absence of a kunai holster or hip pouch among Hinata's gear, as well as the unusual design of her outfit itself. It was a simple bodysuit of dark blue spandex accented with light violet swirls over the arms and legs. She wasn't wearing a flak jacket or even any mesh armor; the outfit appeared to provide no defense whatsoever.
She fights exclusively at a distance then. How odd, to see a Hyuuga choose to master ninjutsu in favor of close combat... but it seems to fit. She even uses a weapon to deter close-range attackers, just like that boy Orochimaru. If I'm right, their tactics as a whole shouldn't be too different.
But something's not quite right... she dodged my explosive tags with some kind of movement jutsu but left her coat behind. Why? And why is the bottom of it torn and burned, as if she'd been standing in it when the explosion hit?
...She does want me to underestimate her, after all...
Hanzou blurred forward and cut the distance between them in half; he spun up and let fly the blunt weight dangling from the end of his kusarigama. Hinata stepped aside and let the taut chain shoot by her. She saw his chakra flow out along the chain well past her, and frowned.
"Fire Release: Molten Shackle!"
Each link of the chain burst into flame one after another, from just past Hanzou's grip to the far end of the chain past Hinata. He swung the sickle itself and the short length of chain that wasn't burning, and the entire taut beam of flame followed the same arc.
Hinata jumped straight up over the chain, raised a half-Ram seal to her lips and shot forth a volley of small Water Bullets each aimed squarely at the chain in flight. Her attacks sizzled and turned to plumes of steam on impact while Hanzou's flames kept burning unhindered. She threw the Rasengan in her other hand at Hanzou, but he stepped aside and yanked the extended weapon back to his hand.
The orb of light exploded on contact with the ground behind him and sent him flying forward. He landed face-first on the ground and skidded a short distance, but before he even took a moment to stand up he sent out a pulse of chakra into the ground.
Hinata flickered back with an Empty Wind; this time she clearly escaped before the explosives went off. She jumped a bit in surprise when Hanzou appeared just ahead of her with his scythe raised; he let off four quick swipes but she swayed back and to the sides away from each. The blade never touched her.
Again she raised a half-Ram seal and breathed out a water jutsu, but this time it was a flock of five Water Dragon Bullets that forced Hanzou to flee back with a Body Flicker from the point-blank attack. That hand seal is almost certainly just a distraction; she can cast these jutsu without seals and she's trying to make me think otherwise.
Hanzou flicked his left hand behind his back and drew out a handful of simple shuriken, each with an explosive tag dangling from it by a red thread. He threw them at Hinata who jumped to the left, and the tags exploded in the space where she'd been standing. Roughly half of them were proper explosives; the other half were smoke bombs separated from the lethal ones by a simple thin wall in his pouch.
Rather than harming Hinata, the tags simply scattered the neon green smoke in all directions including up. A signal!? Hanzou appeared in front of her with another movement jutsu, this time with his mask hanging from a strap around his neck. She backpedaled away from his scythe and spun up a Rasengan to counterattack. He opened his mouth and breathed out a dense, narrow plume of violet gas that struck and washed over Hinata, unmistakably his signature paralytic gas.
At the same time a team of Zetsu clones arrived outside the smoke cloud, standing atop an assortment of nearby rooftops. They had carefully practiced this strategy under Hanzou's guidance, and as one they raised their hands into a short seal sequence. Vines and roots exploded up from the surfaces under their feet, shot forward and meshed together around the outer edges of the smoke. They took care to leave no openings large enough for a shinobi to escape.
Hinata pushed back against the stream of poison mist, aimed her Rasengan directly into the center of it and pushed in a bit of extra chakra to make it swell a few inches broader. Then she let go and rode the explosion of her own attack backward. Both of them were thrown back into the walls of the Wood Release cage.
The Zetsu clones saw the green smoke churn and expand outward with the explosion of Hinata's jutsu, but they realized only too late that Hanzou's poison had spread out and mingled with it. It only took a few seconds for the toxin to fully take effect and bring them down.
When Hanzou's face reassembled over his head, the first thing he saw was Hinata slumped against the far wall of the wooden cage. She was conscious and trying to stand, but the poison seemed to have done its job properly. She continued to squirm while Hanzou stood with minimal effort, replaced his mask and raised his kusarigama. He threw the weapon for a finishing blow, and for good measure it lit up with flame as it soared toward Hinata.
Her hand shot out and snatched the razor-sharp blade from the air; she crushed the edge inward to make it harmless and then pulled with all her strength to haul Hanzou through the air by the chain. Rather than let himself fly along where Hinata pulled him, he let go of the chain and set its entirety on fire as he did. The round weight on his end thumped into Hinata's forehead hard enough to shatter a normal person's skull, but in her case it bounced off and she only slightly flinched.
She sighed. "And now my element of surprise is gone. Great." She stood and wrapped both hands around the length of the kusarigama, and bent it until it snapped in two.
Hanzou frowned under his mask and a second scythe appeared in his hand from a seal on the palm of his glove. This isn't good... she has enhanced strength and speed, her ninjutsu pack a punch and she can take a hit from most of mine. My poison doesn't affect her at all through that fog and my kusarigama can't cut her. That doesn't leave me with many options...
The ground lit up with his chakra again, turning the frosted floor of the cage into a carpet of explosive tags with the exception of a small circle around Hanzou himself. Hinata glanced around for a way out; the attack certainly wouldn't be lethal but it would hurt. After a moment of thought, she flickered out of harm's way leaving in her place the burnt coat she'd discarded earlier.
She went to retrieve her fallen spear, snatched it up and turned back to face the Wood Release cage only to see that Hanzou's explosives hadn't gone off. Instead he'd disarmed them and switched tactics the moment she Substituted away, using the few moments he'd bought to weave a set of hand seals and clap his palms to the ground.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
The wooden cage creaked as it was battered from within by the expanding plume of chakra smoke, but Hanzou's summon itself wasn't quite massive enough to tear the cage apart with its arrival. With naturally poor eyesight and a cloud of white blocking her view, Ibuse didn't see Hanzou standing before her, but she felt his presence through the array of unique cells in her skin that let her see the world through sound and touch.
"Y-You...!"
"We have to move quickly," Hanzou interrupted. "We're up against a Kage-level threat."
"But how-!?"
"Rasenyari!"
Hinata's attack tore through the Wood Release cage like paper, struck Ibuse and exploded, sending her and Hanzou flying through the other side of the cage and obliterating it entirely. Hanzou's Edo Tensei body collapsed into scraps of singed paper on impact with Ibuse, but he began to reassemble once the giant salamander came to a stop in the wreckage of an unremarkable, empty building.
Ibuse narrowed her beady eyes and rolled back onto her legs. "...Alright then," she grumbled. "You're back from the dead and we get to relive the good old days. I guess that's all I really need to know, isn't it?"
"You should also know that she's immune to my poison," Hanzou answered once his head grew back. "Along with everything else I've thrown at her."
"Duly noted... and I should probably mention that I've been retired since you died; no one else has my contract. I'm a little rusty." The salamander emerged from the wreckage of the building carefully, so as not to crush Hanzou by knocking down what remained of the structure. She focused and felt Hinata's approach from down the road, armed once more with her double-bladed spear and a Rasengan in her off hand.
Ibuse charged with unexpected speed and shot her right forefoot into Hinata, aiming for her face. The girl brought up the orb of light without hesitation instead of trying to dodge. The smaller, lighter kunoichi stayed upright but was shoved back by Ibuse's tremendous weight; her feet scraped shallow trails in the frozen dirt as she went.
The Rasengan exploded and turned the tables for a moment, bounced Ibuse's paw back a solid distance. But then the salamander swept her left foreleg ahead shortly followed by the right, a one-two punch that completely sent Hinata flying. "Ouch," she commented lightly. "That jutsu actually stung a bit."
Hanzou appeared in a crouch on Ibuse's head with his scythe in his right hand and a furled scroll in his left. "I should be able to hurt her with this if you can keep her from dodging it."
"No problem."
But Hinata was already there, standing at arm's length in front of Hanzou, with her double-ended spear aimed to stab through his heart. He knew he would be too slow to dodge even if he tried a Body Flicker, but fortunately for him Ibuse was aware of the threat as well. Wisps of vivid purple smoke wafted up from the top of Ibuse's head between Hinata and Hanzou, and for a moment nothing more happened.
But the smoke exploded just as Hinata pushed forward with her attack; it became a thick wall of mist that pushed Hinata back a short distance and completely blocked off Hanzou's line of sight to her. She could still see him thanks to the Byakugan however, and she at least made an effort to dodge the flying kick Hanzou aimed through the curtain of poison smoke.
It was close, especially since Hanzou was only aiming vaguely at where he'd last seen her. But he was infamous for a reason and he had strength and speed one would expect from a Kage; his kick landed squarely on Hinata's center of mass and sent her sailing back over the edge of Ibuse's head.
Without missing a beat he tapped the scroll and the shaft of his kusarigama together, bound them as one with a simple modification of tree-walking chakra, and threw the weapon after Hinata even as she fell through the air. It shot past her rather than striking her directly and the chain lit up with flame so Hanzou could twist its path as it flew. The chain spun and wrapped around Hinata several times until the shaft of the scythe came to a stop across her chest with the blade tucked against her left elbow.
Then the hundreds of freshly-written explosive seals filling the scroll went off at once, all focused on a single point on Hinata's chest just below her sternum. The explosion was shockingly bright and intense instead of huge, leaving Ibuse and Hanzou safe past its reach. "Hah!" she spat. "Gotcha bitch!"
"That probably won't kill her," Hanzou replied. "But it should at least hurt. We aren't done yet."
"You said she's immune to your poison, huh?" Again Ibuse's skin lit up with a haze of violet smoke, but this time it was over her entire body. "It probably has something to do with that mist around her. Maybe your explosion blew it away!"
"Wind Release," she announced with no need for hand seals. A current of strong but firmly controlled wind ran up from the tip of her tail to the open air before her face, collecting all the poison mist she'd produced into a single ball. "Hollow Point!"
The seals that Hinata had been struck with were written hastily; they weren't lacking in power but they produced a black cloud of smoke that Hanzou disdained and did everything he could to avoid. Even so, Ibuse's aim was true and the orb of condensed poison mist hit Hinata directly. It ruptured and exploded into a violet plume of comparable size to the black one it sent flying apart in all directions, but it only hung in the air for a few seconds before dissolving.
Hanzou just slightly opened his mouth to voice his approval before the first ANBU emerged from a Body Flicker atop a nearby rooftop, crouching over a paralyzed and helpless Zetsu clone with a kunai drawn and poised to stab. Dozens more appeared in rapid succession, each wearing the same style of bodysuit as Hinata but in a white-grey camouflage pattern. Many assigned themselves to a clone of their own, but there were plenty more who arrived standing upright and facing Hanzou; they soundly outnumbered the Zetsus.
Each clone burst into a puff of smoke as it was stabbed in the back; a short-lived little white cloud that left behind empty air when it vanished. The ANBU turned en masse to face Hanzou and Ibuse, their only remaining targets.
"...Well." Ibuse shifted backward slightly. "Shit."
"I was hoping for a reaction like that!" Hanzou spun to face the new voice with alarm; she was to his right and behind him well past the edge of his vision. Ibuse didn't need to since she didn't navigate by sight, but she was surprised as well. "Hinata! Are you okay down there!?"
"I-I'm fine," she called back. "Beat up and a little dizzy, but otherwise I'm fine." she picked herself up off the ground and brushed some soot and snow from her clothes.
"Great."
The new arrival was clad head to toe in a sleek suit of armor painted red, with a clear glass mask shielding her face. Her arms were crossed over her chest and whatever weapons she was carrying were nowhere in sight. Hanzou blinked; for a split second her eyes seemed to flash orange as though reflecting light from somewhere.
"I've got like two dozen ANBU here; that should be all the backup I'll need. If you went to deal with that other mission now, we'd save time overall," she suggested.
"...Tenten, why are you even here? I was supposed to let him chase me into your ambush, remember?"
Hanzou froze. She was... still holding back...?
"I would've waited," said Tenten, "but we could hear the bombs going off and see all the smoke in the air. You were mostly staying in one place; it made more sense for us to come to you. So do you wanna stick around, or...?"
Hinata thought for a moment. "No, I'm sure you can handle them. I'll go deal with the other target."
"Thanks." Tenten turned her attention back to Hanzou and Ibuse. "Well! Let's get to it then!" She stepped forward off the edge of the rooftop and fell only a few inches before the four pieces of Sasuhonou unsealed, assembled and allowed her to land on its feet instead of her own. She and Ibuse charged toward each other and the last thing Hinata saw before flitting away was Tenten punching the giant salamander in the face.
An instant later she was alone in the middle of a street far across the village, atop a seven-foot snowdrift. With her Byakugan active she didn't need to move to glance around the street and find what she was looking for, a circular steel panel set into the road and weathered to much the same shade of dark brown with time. She stepped over to it lightly on her feet; leaving no footprints in either the snow or the frozen earth thanks to a trick of chakra control.
To a civilian the manhole cover would be extremely heavy, but it wouldn't have been difficult for a kunoichi to lift even without Sage Mode. She hauled it up quickly and with no trouble but set it down slowly, carefully to leave as subtle a mark as possible in the dirt, frozen solid as it was. She paused for a moment, peered down into the tunnel below to gauge its size, then jumped in.
She landed on her feet without sending so much as a ripple through the surface of the murky water; her chakra control was the source of much of her strength and she'd truly perfected it over the years. The load on the sewer system wasn't enough to justify an eight-foot ceiling and brick walkways to either side of the water flow, so the tunnel was designed instead to allow a tall man to comfortably walk upright through the water itself.
Remaining firmly above the surface with chakra control, Hinata had to noticeably bend down to make her way through but at least the pipe was manageable. Her mist cloak filtered the air as with Hanzou's poison and also filled the sewer with a faint white glow, making it doubly useful in this situation.
She touched a fingertip to the damp brick wall and a fuinjutsu spread out from the point of contact. She kept walking and idly noted that the air in the pipe was warmer than that above ground, which meant the sewers were heated to keep from freezing. "...This isn't so bad," she murmured and touched the wall again, this time over her head. This time she used chakra to sweep the water away from the brick she reached for so it was dry when she touched it.
She shuffled further down the pipelineand laid three more seals after one another, spaced so that the Seal Summoning rooms didn't overlap inside each other once all of them were teleported into the sewer. Then she lowered her hand and walked in silence.
There. If the enemy checks the sewers for traps, seals, bombs, whatever, they'll look under the manhole covers first. They'll find these five seals, but after that they'll only look so deep into the system. It's not like Madara or Obito will come through here and check every inch of every wall for chakra light from a seal, especially since a properly paranoid opponent would expect us to set traps for anyone looking... so they'll only look so far before they decide they've found everything.
I just need to find a spot deep enough into the pipes and too far away from any entrances... she expanded her Byakugan's field of vision hundreds of times over and scanned over the entirety of Shimo from a bird's-eye view. It can't be near any of these manholes or storm drains... the problem is, they're all too evenly spaced over the whole village. Come on, there has to be a spot somewhere...
An irked frown crossed her face and she began to feel a bit of discomfort in her eyes and temples. She'd maintained this field of vision for much longer to find her way to Hanzou without meeting any Zetsu clones first; it had taken time to do it without tipping Hanzou off that she'd been beelining into a fight with him.
"Maybe there...?" she focused on a long section of a pipe across the village that had collapsed, the fallen bricks diverting most of the water to a comparatively new sewer branching off to replace the destroyed one. Beyond that makeshift dam the pipeline was coated in frost and filled with roughly a foot of smooth but murky ice. The entrances to the shaft had been similarly forgotten, storm drains cast over with concrete and manhole covers rusted firmly shut over the decades. It's definitely the most isolated spot I can see... I guess it'll do.
Using the Empty Wind while crouching down inside a cramped sewer pipe wasn't easy and she could barely manage half of the jutsu's usual speed, but she still saved herself the time it would take to walk across Shimo. She arrived in front of the collapsed stretch of sewer pipe only to frown again; her first thought had been to pull a shuriken from the hip pouch she'd long since stopped carrying.
Instead she improvised and called up a thin stream of water with a wave of her hand, shaped it into a ball and pushed it through the pile of rubble. It trickled out the other side and she froze it solid there. The ice was translucent but stained brown with earth, eroded brick, rust and less pleasant things Hinata was pointedly not thinking about.
Instead of just dropping the ball, she set it down gently on the other side of the destroyed pipeline so it didn't shatter, then Substituted into its place. Yeah, this should work. She deactivated her Byakugan to cure the mild but slowly building headache, then started walking parallel to the brick wall to her right, tapping it every few yards with her fingertip until there were eleven evenly spaced Seal Summoning Markers there.
Now all that's left is to test it and make sure everything's working. She took a few steps back then summoned a Seal Summoning platform, specifically redesigned to fit as easily as possible into Shimo's underground infrastructure. It was now merely a flat square panel of wood that would stay afloat even while carrying its maximum capacity of nine people.
She stepped onto the platform and dismissed the summon, sending it back to a different seal on the network with her aboard. She arrived in front of the first seal she'd placed in the sewer; the raft hit the water and bobbed slightly. From there it was only a short hop over to the ladder out of the manhole, and then she was comfortably above ground again.
"Done already?"
Hinata yelped and jumped several feet into the air thanks to her enhanced strength. Hyuuga with their Byakugan deactivated were often more prone to a jumpscare than the usual shinobi, and tended toward extreme reactions to them. She knew Tenten's voice well and she didn't register it as a threat, an instinct reinforced by her Sage Mode assuring her that there were no enemies targeting her. Those two factors together spared Tenten from a senjutsu-powered kick that would've sent her flying through at least two houses.
"G-Gah! Don't scare me like that!" she blinked and her startled expression settled into a confused frown. "Wait. If you're here, that means Hanzou is already..."
"Yeah. He wasn't as tough as I expected, honestly." she shrugged. "All he really had was bukijutsu, poison gas and a few Fire Release tricks. The giant summon hit me pretty hard, but I built this armor to take hits from Madara Uchiha."
"...It doesn't add up. Hanzou was a legend in his time; he took on the Legendary Sannin and beat them easily. He gave them that name and called them 'legendary' just because they survived fighting him... Do you think maybe the Edo Tensei is weakened for some reason?"
Tenten thought for a moment, then shook her head. "No, I doubt it. My theory is that something stopped the Sannin from using their Summoning Jutsu that day. Even one of them could've taken on that salamander in a fair fight; the complete Three-Way Deadlock would've been overkill. Maybe their boss summons were injured earlier in the fight, or Hanzou's side set up some kind of jutsu that blocked summons."
"The Sannin weren't at full power, then?"
"There's no way they were. All three of them today are way stronger than they were during the Second War... Jiraiya-sama has Sage Mode, Tsunade-sama has her White Strength Seal, and Orochimaru has like a thousand different kinjutsu built into his body or something. So even if they had their summons in that fight, it's not like Hanzou fought the Sannin we know at 'full power...' anyway, you're finished setting up the seals, right?"
Hinata nodded. "We got lucky; there's a stretch of unused pipeline down there that's cut off from the rest by a cave-in. It looks like it's happened decades ago and all the entrances to the pipe are sealed; if Akatsuki goes looking down there all they'll see is a pile of rubble that's been sitting there untouched for ages. I got in with a Substitution and laid a whole bunch of summoning seals."
"Nice. I like our chances with that one." Tenten grinned and tapped her finger to the frame of her glass mask. "ANBU, regroup on me. We're heading back!"
X
One after another in rapid succession, three square Seal Summoning platforms arrived in a war room across the Land of Frost. There were slots in the floor of dull brown rock to accomodate them, dozens of them aligned with the back wall to allow an entire army to deploy from or report to the room with no trouble. Hinata, Tenten and their escort of twenty-five ANBU knelt together before the Five Kage immediately and in time with each other.
"Yo, Hina-chan, Tenten-chan!" Naruto grinned and turned to face them. "How'd your mission go?" The other four Kage turned to look as well, but Oonoki in particular huffed in annoyance. The so-called Hokage was undignified beyond belief and seemed to enjoy drawing attention to it.
"There was only one Edo Tensei and a team of Zetsus in the village," Hinata answered. "It was Hanzou the Black Salamander."
"I sealed him inside one of Sasuhonou's weapons," Tenten added. "We didn't get a chance to test a sealing kunai on him, but now we've captured one Edo Tensei. We can test different seals on him in a controlled environment, see which ones work and which ones could get our forces killed. On the other hand, the Zetsus we got were paralyzed with poison gas so we might want unseal them, cure the poison and reseal them."
"It does sound like the only way to be sure..." Naruto frowned and looked over his shoulder. "Nagato, what do you think?"
All eyes in the room turned toward the Uzumaki in the corner, leaning on a cane just in case he tripped over his own feet after so many years not using them. The Inu-Shika-Chou trio didn't bother hiding their suspicious glares, nor did Temari at Shikamaru's side. The Five Kage and Yagura looked calmer at first glance, but they too were watching him carefully, warily.
Nagato thought for a few seconds, then weighed each word in his reply. "Start with one Zetsu clone and move it somewhere it can't properly use its Wood Release; keep it away from any earth it could grow trees from. Then unseal it and make sure the medic-nin neutralizing the poison has a sealing kunai in hand, so they can stab and reseal them instantly. Also make sure that medic has an active barrier armor the whole time, and a squad of seasoned ANBU surrounding the operation from all sides."
"Assuming the Zetsu clones survived their stab wounds... which is likely since they don't bleed and don't have many vital organs... then we're dealing with Jounnin-level bukijutsu specialists who have the Wood Release tacked onto their natural abilities. We really can't take any chances here."
"And what about Hanzou?" the Raikage asked. "How do we deal with him?"
"...There's no poison in his system so there's no need to put him in a room large enough to accomodate a medic-nin, or even give him enough room to move. Putting him in a thick steel box with proportions closely matching his body should be enough to stop him from using most of his abilities. Hand seals, his weapon, his salamander summon most of all."
"The only real threat left is his poison breath and we can neutralize that too. Have the sealing kunai thrown into the steel box along a chute, automatically by a mechanism instead of a shinobi. Then the only person who has to be within range of his breath, assuming he manages to use it, is Tenten. She's immune to it anyway with that mask of hers. But it's still Hanzou and we definitely don't want to take chances with him, so I'd say we should have at least one more Kage-level fighter on watch then, ideally another one who could shrug off his poison. Hinata comes to mind."
A few seconds of silence followed, then Naruto turned to Shikamaru next. "Was there anything suspicious in there?"
"...No," he sighed. "If he's still plotting against us, it means he's had prior contact with Hanzou and all of the Zetsu clones that were in Shimo, expected for them to be captured, told them how he would suggest we experiment on them, and then supplied them with some way to get out of our controlled environments... wait. There is one thing he could be planning."
Nagato blinked. "There is?"
"Hanzou was an expert with explosive tags, and the Second Hokage developed a jutsu that would allow Edo Tensei to convert their body mass into them. If that were the case, this could be a ploy to kill Tenten and possibly Hinata with an explosion of that size. On the other hand, Nagato couldn't teach the jutsu to Hanzou if he doesn't know it himself, and I don't think a shinobi's weight in explosive tags would be anywhere near enough to kill Hinata and Tenten."
Nagato sighed, shifted his weight on his cane and spoke up again. "The most obvious answer I can give you is that I've already sworn through ninshuu that I'm on your side. The second most obvious is that if I were plotting against you, I'd use a plan that didn't require so many things to happen exactly as I predict and I wouldn't target Hinata and Tenten. They're valuable of course, and killing them would utterly break Naruto and Gaara. But the real endgame for Akatsuki is the Ten-Tails. If I had a plan against you, it would be focused on Kumo."
"He has a point," Temari observed. "Multiple points, really."
"Alright then," Gaara spoke up. "ANBU, you'll turn in your used sealing kunai and get them replaced with fresh ones. Tenten, we'll prepare a safe environment for you to unseal Hanzou by this afternoon. Make sure Sasuhonou is out to protect you just in case he does decide to explode. Now what about the Seal Summoning markers?"
"I deployed sixteen seals in the sewers under the village," Hinata commented. "I set up the first five just under the manhole cover I used to get in; Akatsuki will probably find those but they're just a decoy anyway. The other eleven are cut off from the rest of the sewers by a cave-in, all the way across Shimo. I don't think Akatsuki will find them; if they go down into the sewers and head that way all they'll see is a pile of old rubble with no way past it."
Naruto nodded to Nagato again. "...I... wouldn't get my hopes up," he admitted. "If they look around in the sewers and see that cave-in, it's possible they'll blow up the rubble and check behind it just in case. On the other hand they might decide that's too dangerous; using ninjutsu underground like that could cause another collapse and kill the caster. So it could go either way."
"...Meh," Naruto shrugged. "It's better than nothing. One more question, you guys... did any of you notice anything weird while you were out there? Any sign of Zetsu?"
"Nothing," Hinata shook her head. "I scanned the whole village twice with the Byakugan; there's no sign that he ever set foot in Shimo. We didn't see him on the way there either."
"It's not impossible that you passed him by," Konan spoke up next to Nagato. "Zetsu has always been a stealth specialist."
"Yeah," Naruto nodded in agreement. "But he has to show up eventually, right? He has the Rinnegan, but he still needs a mixture of all three chakras which means he'll probably be coming after me later. When he does show his face, we'll be ready... everyone, head back to your quarters and get some rest while you can. It probably won't be too long before the enemy gets here, a few days at most."
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