"What are you rearing your teeth for, punk?" Temari hissed like a pit viper in reaction to the final burglar still stuck playing Weiner with her, grinning in front of her while his crew surrounded the broad man from behind. Likewise, both the Stars and Kakashi had Temari's back, standing from behind her as everyone who had exited the game by that point stood up and left the table, leaving the two to play it out.
"This is the last stretch of the game. The duel that will decide who gets the Golden Locket of Sotatsu. I've got no idea what you guys need it for, but clearly, you need it enough to put everything on the line. I'm just reveling in the sight of you squirming for your dreamed prize from your side of the table." The burglar leaned back, comfortably pressing his index and middle fingers to the cards he held in his hands.
"You might wanna bring it way down," Temari said. "Didn't you guys go on and on about how much more fun this game is when played in groups, anyway? Let's just play our cards already."
"You still don't get it, do you? This is where the fun all comes in full circle–this entire game we've been transferring cards across the table, moving the entire available deck, shuffling, and dealing it to players not by chance but through strategy. Now is when we show off that strategy, the hands that we've accumulated throughout the game. Now is when all the planning comes to pass." The heavyweight burglar slammed his fist onto the table and scooped up Damisan's ace together with the trio of nines.
"Huh? You're picking up all the nines?" Temari scratched her head.
"The minimum amount of cards you have to scoop, when you do scoop, is three cards. Since he's taking a pair of nines anyway, he might as well take the third because nines are easy to get rid of." Kakashi explained. "Stay focused and keep playing the best you can. Your hand is solid."
Weiner, when played in a duel setting, was one of those games where telling another person what one had in their hand was pointless because the hand of the other player could have easily been determined by the hand that the other saw before their eyes. With a clear conscience, Temari dumped her ten of spades, leaving her hand in a grand condition, all things considered.
The burglar scooped up the ten. He was an excellent player. Normally, when one had all the worst cards in plentiful sets in one's hand, they'd get nervous, surrender or try to make desperate plays to rid themselves of those cards one at a time. With this play, the burglar now held the full sets of nines and tens in his hand, which meant that he could get rid of all those undesirable cards with a single play as opposed to three or four if he tried to get rid of them individually.
It was tough to tell just how aware Temari was of this as she played her jack of spades as if nothing had changed, playing the textbook game of Weiner with no unorthodox plays or strategies. Just bread and butter moves to get rid of one's cards, the lowest ones being first. The burglar nuked the stack of cards with an ace of hearts. At this point, both players had a pair of aces, and how they handled those cards of mass importance would undoubtedly decide the game.
"That play was outright sadistic." Damisan scratched the side of his mask with his prosthetic fingers, letting out a rubbery squeak as they contacted the steel framework of his mask. "Now Temari's forced to either scoop the jack back up and open the field for her opponent to dump their trash from their hand or to answer with an ace of her own and surrender most of the control over cards being played by giving her opponent three aces."
"No, this was a hasty play." Mana shook her head. "Temari-san's opponent should have let the board develop a bit more before hitting it with an ace. Now he's sacrificed it for not too much gain."
"You heard that? You jumped the gun…" Temari cackled with a sheepish grin as she scooped up the jack and the ace.
"Have I? Aces may be the strongest and most influential cards in the game, but you still have to dump them one at a time, unless you have a full set." The burglar shrugged. There was a potential to lock the field down and put the game onto a perpetual loop at this point. Mana couldn't help but wonder how would they have to interpret the game from this point if that was to happen. If Temari answered with an ace and her opponent scooped everything and opened the field back up–they'd be back on square one, with Temari playing the jack and her opponent playing the ace.
Then again, maybe her opponent wanted this. Perhaps this was his way of realizing he had made a hasty play and rewinding the field by playing his cards in a specific way? If that indeed had been the case, Temari was playing someone far surpassing her in skill as her opponent would have rewound the field and put it into a perpetual loop that could only be broken by one player making a disadvantageous play in just a few moves.
"Hey, hey, you rascal!" Temari ground her teeth. "I ain't playin' into your loops. Don't slow the game down, you rat-bastard."
With a plastic smack, the king of diamonds landed on the stack from Temari's hands. The ridges above the eyes of the hefty bandit lifted lightly, as he hadn't expected Temari to move up the ladder and begin dumping kings from her hand instead. Despite the quick show of surprise in his face, the player quickly answered with a king of spades of his own.
"Is that so? Let's see you go balls out to this play," Temari winked and flicked the king of clubs from her hand, falling gently onto the table and landing on top of the stack with a corner of the card. "You have no more kings to play, gonna give me the final ace or will you scoop then?"
"Now Temari is playing some Weiner." Shige-H nodded in approval. "She's realized that handing your opponent powerful cards doesn't matter as long as you hand it to them in threes. With three kings, as powerful as the king is as a card, her opponent will still take three turns to dump them."
"Hmm…" the heavyweight bandit let out a barely audible, grungy hum as he dragged the three kings off the stack and back into his hand.
"Got you now, fatso." Temari shined her pearly whites as she slipped her jack of spades like a knife under her opponent's ribs. "The game's as good as over."
"I've still got cards to play and traps to set, ponytails." The burglar grumbled, placing the ace of spades onto the stack.
"Should've thought about those cards before you handed me three aces, jackass. Now I've got the luxury to waste cards." Temari replied by playing her ace of clubs. The burglar had no answer against that, for his hand was now ace-less.
"Scat." The gambler leader of the burglar gang flicked his hat and pocketed his hands. "The game is as good as over. The belle trapped you with a handful of triplets of everything, Parmes."
After seeing her opponent scoop, Temari placed a jack of hearts, moving further on to the inevitable wipe of her hand. With a hand of a king of hearts and two aces, Temari would have had a tough time losing even if she wanted to. Her opponent struggled until the end, playing an ace of clubs, but Temari answered with an ace of her own. The ace of diamonds.
Having few potential plays and none of them showing any promise of salvaging the game, the burglar played an ace of spades for Temari to scoop the three aces and prolong the game one more turn. The chubby tried ridding his hand of a king of diamonds, but Temari placed her last non-ace card in the king of hands, sealing the game for good. Her opponent played the king of spades only for Temari to perform the coup de grâce by styling on the gambling burglar, with the set of four aces slammed on top.
The Stars and Konoha ninja had won the game of Weiner.
"Well, well…" the leader of the burglar pack lowered the beak of his hat to obscure his ashamed eyes. "I guess the locket's yours and we're gonna have to pull this job for you."
The sound of steel rubbing against wood and lacquer filled the air, alerting the entire bar about a murderous brawl being in the brewing. Endo pressed his body against that of the gambling thief's and placed the edge of a katana by his throat to where a mere twitch of his hands would have showered the bar with arterial red.
"Don't even think about double-crossing us, punk." Endo hissed in a threatening tone. Mana felt herself obliged to interfere, placing her hand softly on Endo's shoulder and pulling him straight back, without even a single twitch sideways that could have as much as scratched the throat of the leader of their new associates.
"They've got no reason to betray us or to go back on our deal, Endo. We're not ruining their job, remember? They are hitting that estate for the paintings, paintings we have no interest in. They will get everything they wanted and so will we if all goes well and everyone plays their part." Mana eased the swordsman's agitated mind, and she saw Endo soften before her own eyes as he closed his spiteful eyes and took a few stumbling steps back before sheathing his sword and opening his cold eyes with a bitter and judgmental stare stabbing at their new acquaintances instead.
"We'll see. You're far too trusting of their slithering kind. Snakes don't bite because it's beneficial to them or because they have something to gain from it. Sinful scum step out of line because it's their nature. As long as they know I will be there to cut them down when they show their natures, I will tolerate their presence and let them play their role." Endo said.
"Now why would we fuck with the Kazekage's own sister? I mean… Literally, maybe… Figuratively–that's just bad for the business. It'd bring all sorts of awful heat on us and not the type of heat we like." The boss of the burglar gang gave Temari, still in her transformed state, a light wink.
"How does he keep doing that?" Damisan scratched the back of his head.
"It's your fault, dumbass," Skaven mumbled. "You identified her by name and then Mana played along too."
"Oh… Right…" Damisan pushed his prosthetic finger underneath one eyehole in his mask to correct its position and to roll some of his mask over his embarrassed eyes.
"No hard feelings, we're honored to work for the fine village of Sunagakure. Who knows, maybe we can even go legitimate and work for you full time after this if the pay is right…" the lead burglar teased the Konoha and Allied crew before turning around and snapping his fingers for his crew to follow him.
"It'd be for the better if you guys stay back at least a few blocks from the estate." The red-haired female burglar warned the disguised ninja. "When we hit it, we'll reach out to you. Even if you're worried that we'll get away, from a good vantage point you'll be able to see us making our getaway."
"We shouldn't have trusted a bunch of dirtbags like that." Endo seethed, seated in a meditative position even though he was in a state radically opposed to the tranquility of nirvana. "They'll steal their damned paintings and just get away and we'll have jack squat!"
"Don't worry, they know better than that." Kakashi eased Endo's simmering since having a hothead involved in a scouting scenario didn't help anyone. "Every single member of our crew is much faster and stronger than them. Plus, we have a chakra sensor amongst us."
"Their chakra signatures were higher than those of normal civilians. They're likely capable of some method of chakra manipulation, though it was a far cry from the focus and intensity of a trained shinobi. Either of us could handle all of them at once with little difficulty if we needed to hunt them down." Mana sprinkled her woodchips into the fire. Endo seemed to revel in that thought, so he stood down from his suggestions that they slay the bandits immediately from that point on.
A gust of desert wind picked up, carrying handfuls of sand and smacking it across any living beings and sandstone alike with enough force to polish stone and rend flesh. This gale, however, carried something inside it. Mana pinched her gloved hand before her eyes, catching a steel-tipped card as the gale brought a full deck of them twirling like autumnal leaves and settling in a circle from which a coat of leather took rise surrounded by a cloud of smoke and gravel. With an unimpressed expression, Mana handed the card back to the lead burglar for him to shuffle it into the deck that laid scattered around him while his crew joined in dashing from all around the field around the opening where the classical oriental-style estate stood tall.
"Sorry to disappoint you, street magician. Your locket ain't there." The gambler offered his compatriots a few worried looks. After realizing that each fostered one or far more paintings atop their backs, the leader of the pack focused his full attention on the ninja that beat him in a card game for his services.
"We're going to need a little more than that." Skaven crossed his arms. "You're not looking too hot on our books so we might just bring you guys in if we realize you've half-assed your part of the deal."
"I know, I know… We've scoured the place through. You weren't entirely wrong." The leader of the burglars raised his hands with torn and dirty, fingerless gloves to defuse the rising tension. "Our golden boy has had the sights on the Golden Locket of Sotatsu. He fancies himself somewhat of a collector for sure, but…"
"You didn't strike me like the strong silent type. Spill it," Temari took a bold step forward, reaching for a little handheld fan under the belt, tying her dress together.
"Right… Well… Our golden goose sort of abandoned all hope of retrieving the locket. It somehow got itself stuck onto the Colossus of the Covenant. Based on what intelligence exists within that estate, your locket is within the body of the Colossus, though, because the Colossus roams the Land of Wind, we can't give you an exact location." The burglar relayed the information the best he could, fully expecting some violent backlash from the side of the ninja.
"I see… Well, it's not like we can't spot a thirty-five-kilometer-tall walking statue walking around." Kakashi sighed.
"Shit! It just had to be the Colossus of the Covenant…" Temari placed her hands over her waist, cursing and thrashing about, kicking sand and swinging her delicate fists around, striking thin air.
"You guys can go. Our deal is done." Shige-H nodded, excusing the burglars who hurried along before the ninja changed their minds. Even if, judging by Temari's reaction, their job didn't get that much easier–at least they had a more concrete clue about the location of the locket.
"I don't think we have a Colossus of the Covenant in our universe. What is it, exactly?" Mana turned to Kakashi for an explanation. The silver-haired veteran ninja looked more subdued and in a better condition to explain it right to them and do so accurately.
"Well, I'm sure that in your universe, just as like it was in ours, Iwagakure had gone through plenty of conflicts with Sunagakure because of their proximity to one another and constant butting of heads in political and territorial disputes. Thing is that with the end of the Fourth Great Ninja War, those conflicts sort of fizzled out as the Kazekage and the Tsuchikage became fonder of each other." Kakashi pointed out.
"Gaara and the old man were tighter than that. Old geezer Onoki saw Gaara as a youthful reflection of himself, brimming with hope, love, and potential to not make a single mistake that Onoki himself made throughout his service to his people. Gaara saw the old geezer as a fatherly figure sometimes too." Temari elaborated, collapsing onto her bottom on the top of the dune as she sulked in misery about the task they would need to undertake to claim the locket.
"Right," Kakashi nodded. "Most Great Ninja Villages have a signature monument they are most proud of. Sunagakure has an impressive Aviary, but no signature monument, and thus the Third Tsuchikage gifted to Sunagakure a monument they could be proud of, one just as grand as their own Stone Monument or Konoha's Hokage Mountain. That monument was a sky-scraping statue called The Colossus of the Covenant. The Colossus was nigh indestructible and invulnerable to the elements or passaging time. The idea being that the Colossus marked the beginning of Iwagakure's covenant with the Sunagakure to never wage war and shed each blood ever again as long as the Colossus stood tall and watched over Sunagakure."
"That was before some group of salty terrorist scumbags sealed a Hidden Iwagakure ninjutsu technique that made the Colossus come to life. It took the combined efforts of both villages to fend that walking mountain off and no living ninja could ever put a dent in it. Heck, even Naruto and Sasuke pitched in to help Sunagakure stop it and they couldn't do too much either. The thing was too massive and too tough to chip a pebble off of. The best that our combined efforts did was that we've killed the people controlling the Colossus, hoping that would do the trick of stopping it. Turns out, it only turned off its malicious intent of wiping Sunagakure off the surface of the planet and the big guy just walked off into the distance. From what we know, the big rock's still walking around aimlessly doing absolutely nothing." Temari finished the story for Kakashi.
"The problem being that nobody ever dared approach or agitate the Colossus. In terms of destructive capabilities, it's right up there with the Tailed Beasts. A single punch of that thing can crack the entire planet in two and wipe its surface clean of life. Not even other renegade gangs approach it. Everyone just let it do its thing and hope it walks away and that they can't see it over the horizon the next morning." Kakashi explained why confronting this task would be so troublesome. "Will this impede your mission?"
"By no means." Mana shook her head. "We've come too far to stop. Who knows, no one's ever asked the Colossus to just give us something it has. For all we know, it just might work."
"Even if I don't share Mana's enthusiasm and naivete, I'm afraid I have to second it that we don't have the luxury of turning around and going home. You two, however… I cannot ask that you keep risking your lives against such a walking disaster." Shige-H turned to Kakashi and Temari.
"I'm an old-fashioned type of ninja. I've got a mission and I won't walk away from it." Kakashi shrugged. "I know that neither of my students would do something like that, so as their mentor I have no right to walk away either."
"Tsk, this is the best chance Sunagakure has ever had to get rid of that walking scourge!" Temari clenched a fist. "I've missed out on the last time that someone's tried wrecking that bothersome scorn to the eye. I'll help you guys take it out even if I have to blow it off into space myself."
And thus the party set out to locate the Colossus of the Covenant and retrieve the Golden Locket of Sotatsu stuck somewhere in its body so that they could tap into the Sands of Time and travel back through time to find a portal to the moon and then travel back to their own universe to face the Sky Clan of moon-people that had kidnapped a bunch of builders and engineers signed up to work for the Allied Ninja.
Author's Notes: Hi, I guess some of you may have noticed that the pace of me updating both of my active stories has slowed down somewhat over the last few weeks with me only updating once daily as opposed to twice. I am terribly sorry for that. It has been a deliberate change on my part that came as a result of some personal crisis that I'm going through. The bad news is that it's going to last for at least a couple of months. The good news is that it is temporary and that it's not related to any sort of writer's block or any creativity issues on my part. I still very much love working on both my stories and I have so many ideas planned ahead for the future, it's just that for a few more months I'll have to only update them once each week while I work through my own things. I'll understand and accept if anyone hates this temporary shift in pacing. I hate it too but at this time it just can't be helped. In any case, I'm not going away entirely and I'll still do my best to deliver with weekly updates on both stories and there aren't any reasons why that shouldn't happen on my end.