Biwa-sensei had returned from his mission four days after that. I had been worried about what dire circumstances must have led to his sudden departure, but he laid my fears to rest.

"It is nothing to be concerned about," he said after I tactfully wondered if I should be gearing up for war in the immediate future. "The mission was routine. When you become a jonin, you'll find yourself occasionally conscripted into a specific duty. Even I am not exempt—in fact, I especially am not exempt." He seemed bitter over the fact.

Conscripted into a specific duty. Interesting. I was burning with curiosity, but I knew better than to press sensei. He was generally a blunt person, and if he was being vague, there was a good reason.

However, I did notice a glimmer of realization in Iwao's eye. I assumed that he must know about this duty from his father, and though Ishida Yuudai was loose lipped when it served his purposes, he wouldn't reveal anything serious to anyone, even his son.

I cocked my head at Iwao, but he shook his own. So I wasn't allowed to know, but he could. If I were to extrapolate, I would guess that it had something to do with the Red Ogres, which Iwao's father co-led. He was grooming his son to take over his position, so it stood to reason he'd share some details about its operation.

I dropped the matter entirely, and Biwa must have been telling the truth about the ease of the mission because he allowed himself only one night to sleep in his own bed and recuperate before he took us out for a mission. Not a fun, client one; this was an excavation mission. We accompanied Biwa-sensei around the western border of the Land of Earth, familiarizing ourselves with the landscape while he refurbished and reinforced existing strongholds left from the last war. Sometimes, he even made new ones.

Sensei had me make fūinjutsu defense measures, while Daigo and Iwao used them to set traps. When we were finished, we wrote a detailed manual on how to disarm or avoid the security measures. No two strongholds were the same so it was incredibly necessary that these found their way into our allies hands when it was time for them to be garrisoned.

We started near the border of Streams and worked our way down and around, taking a detour to absolutely fill the Land of Birds to the brim. Even once the war started, they probably wouldn't see much use, because Suna wouldn't be fit enough to march into the fray with everyone else, no matter how desperately they wished to. Some were of the opinion they wouldn't participate in the war at all, which I knew to be a load of shit, but luckily the Tsuchikage decided he'd rather be safe than sorry.

Despite its longstanding relationship with our country, Ishigakure, the Hidden Rock Village (not to be confused with Iwagakure, the Hidden Stone Village) was a foreign entity, and as such a degree of diplomacy was required. We were escorted by Rock jonin high in the command structure—who Biwa-sensei knew well—both to make sure we didn't do anything nefarious and to learn how the strongholds worked.

We were long-standing allies, so they knew how we operated and gave us more freedom than I was expecting. But it wasn't like they wrote us a blank check. When we finally returned to Earth country, things became far simpler. We didn't have to listen to anyone; we just got the job done as expediently and freely as we pleased.

When we finally reached the eastern end of Rain, Biwa finally allowed us to return home, though he warned us that, in the future, we'd return to finish the job. That meant Waterfall to start off with, but then we'd give Grass the same treatment we gave Birds. That would have to be even more delicate, both because our alliance was new and because they weren't familiar with our modus operandi. Biwa-sensei warned us we might face more push-back.

We wouldn't stop at our border either; even though most of them probably wouldn't see use, we'd still outfit Earth's interior as well. That was just less of a priority.

Over three months. That's how long our mission took. It wasn't boring work, per se—actually, I found it moderately entertaining. Good for my ego too, since I was probably the reason we were assigned this mission in particular. On top of that, the travel time gave me ample opportunity to work on the seal that Kazuhiro inspired me to make, which I finished but didn't yet have the means to test. Still, I was quite ready for a change of pace.

By change of pace, I mean put on bed rest for a week. Because soon after I returned to the village, it was—at long last—time for my surgery.

Let me tell you; not fun. Not fun at all. Zero out of ten stars, would not recommend. They couldn't put me under; I had to be awake to manually integrate the seal with my chakra network. Then, I had to be awake to minimize the seals onto my tongue and each of the six teeth I'd selected.

Seal minimization was an advanced fūinjutsu technique, and was strange in that it was an active process. Most of the time, the effort in using seals boiled down to two factors: the amount of time it took to write them, and the chakra cost associated with their activation. Minimization involved adding additional kanji around the main seal components and using them as focal points to constrict the ink itself, warping it without disturbing the functionality of the chakra within.

That should be impossible. Changing the shape should be akin to using a jutsu with the wrong hand seals and expecting it to work. However, when I voiced that thought, Aimi told me I was thinking too two-dimensionally. And she meant that in the most literal sense.

Anything drawn on a piece of paper is considered two dimensional by nature. However—and I should have put this together when I discovered that hand seals were actually seals that existed inside the human body—works of fūinjutsu weren't actually supposed to be flat. They were supposed to have depth, which is why, when painting seals with ink, the sequence in which you made your brush strokes mattered. If you crossed lines in the wrong order, that would fuck up the kanji and cause the seal to malfunction upon activation.

I'd tried to cut that corner in the past with my ink-siphoning technique, which was what allowed me to mass-produce exploding tags. After all, it was much easier to draw entire kanji's worth of ink through the paper at once, and no one had explained to me why it was important to do it the other way. That resulted in my greatest ink waste ever, and I learned my lesson from that.

Seal minimization condensed the ink to an incredibly significant degree, but the appearance of it warping was only an illusion. What was really happening was that the space between the lines was expanding, turning each component of the seal from an incredibly thin disk into a sphere as it shrunk. Not a thin shell either; the fūinjutsu curled into itself until there was little to no free space.

So, where did that newfound depth go? It buried itself deep into the object it was selected to merge with, becoming a solid bead. The only parts that would remain flat were the kanji focal points used to facilitate the minimization, which would cover the surface over the seal. Through them, if necessary, the seal's user (bearing the chakra signature attuned to the ink) could expand the seal once more, and as a bonus they'd disguise the seal's purpose from any of the few people with fūinjutsu literacy. If you were clever enough, you could even customize their look (I only bothered doing that with the cortex on my tongue, since I highly doubted that anyone would be looking at the backs of my teeth).

I told all this to my team during the conceptual phase, mostly because, when I felt challenged, I sometimes found it useful to talk through my issues out loud.

"So you're just going to have a solid orb of ink embedded into your tongue?" Daigo clarified, appearing to be morbidly intrigued.

"Wouldn't that be…uncomfortable?" Iwao added, nose screwed up in disgust.

"Oh, yeah. Super uncomfortable. Supposedly I'll learn to ignore it after a while, but if I mess with it, it'll definitely hurt. There isn't really a danger of it coming out, since it's integrated into my chakra network and my skin itself. But if I hit it against something while I'm eating or whatnot, it's gonna sting like a bitch. It's in the center of my tongue though, in the thickest part and not the tip or side, so I don't anticipate biting it by accident or anything. I'll probably feel it when I talk, though."

"That sounds terrible," Daigo said, bluntly. I just shrugged.

"People get tongue piercings all the time," I rationalized. "It'll be just like getting a stud."

"They do?" Iwao asked, brow furrowed, and I remembered that wasn't a custom in the Elemental Nations and changed the subject.

The beads would exist in my teeth as well, forming the "slots" of my inventory. There was a degree of concern that they would compromise the strength of the bone itself, so I reluctantly decided to use the back of my front teeth, rather than the molars. I couldn't afford any accidents, although those could be replaced with much more ease than the cortex on my tongue.

Other people couldn't do the minimization for me. My chakra was attuned to the ink, so only I could manipulate it. And I had to use ink attuned to my chakra because I wouldn't be able to use the seal otherwise, since it was way too high-class to attach a neutralization matrix to(and I wouldn't want other people to have the option of accessing my Inventory anyway).

It was an incredibly uncomfortable experience. I wasn't in any pain, exactly—though medical anesthetics were off the table because I needed to be fully lucid, I had been placed under a genjutsu that did nothing but eliminate any sense of the agony I would have surely felt otherwise. However, I could taste my blood on the cotton balls shoved over my bleeding, disconcerting empty gums, and my mouth was distractingly dry. I struggled far more under those conditions than I would have normally, and minimization was already a challenge even for me.

It took me a long time to do the six teeth. Those sucked. The cortex on the tongue, however, was worse.

Then knocked me out for the prep phase, just so they could properly orient me and draw the seal without my body instinctively resisting. When I awoke, I was on my stomach, head in a vice, mouth gaping and dry like parchment. My tongue was pulled out to its utmost, held by a clamp, and there was a surface propped under it. I couldn't so much as twitch if I tried, but I knew without looking that there were reams of fūinjutsu stretching in all directions.

It was all I could do not to panic. I never loved being constrained, but I'd never felt as physically vulnerable as I had at that moment. I nearly had an actual attack, but one of the attending nurses calmed me down.

I liked Yokoda-san very much. Even her compatriots, though they were all tested battle medics who had seen all manner of horrors in the second war, seemed slightly squeamish around what I was doing, but she never regarded the proceedings with anything other than warm compassion. She apparently knew my brother quite well, something corroborated by the fact that she knew some things about me that no one but he could have told her. Which was incredibly interesting because he'd never mentioned a cute nurse to me before. I'd have to tease him about that later.

When I had the presence of mind to actually get to work, she soothingly but not distractingly rubbed my back as the ink began to draw towards me. Then, after what I was later told was two hours, I was finished, and they mercifully knocked me out again to reattach my teeth.

When I awoke, everything was sore and inflamed. But in a normal way (considering the outrageous circumstances i subjected myself to), not a I-really-permanently-fucked-myself-up kind of way. They healed me as best they could with medical ninjutsu, but they told me in no uncertain terms that I couldn't try to use my seals (or chakra from the neck up) until they gave me the go ahead.

That took about a month. And then, once they did, it took me an additional two weeks to successfully use the seal. I would say they were the most frustrating two weeks of my life, but between the Gari situation and my shit chakra control, they had a lot of competition. Still, my temper was frayed to disintegration. If I went through all that for nothing, I was going to murder.

The issue was connecting the cortex to the ports in my teeth. The seal itself was in the middle of my tongue, but two of my canals connected it to a tenketsu at its tip. It was through that path that I had to navigate the chakra from the cortex, as I activated it, to the other seals that formed the second half of its equation. But even with the tip of my tongue pressed directly to the tooth I just couldn't reach.

Not while maintaining the degree of chakra control required to connect the two seals, at least. The contact would be fine if I was just releasing chakra, like when I surface or water walked. In those cases, it was just a matter of emanating chakra from my feet; from one side to another out of your control. It was like pushing a thread in a general direction; it didn't matter exactly where it ended up.

To keep that analogy, what I needed to do now was push that thread with utmost precision, pass it through the head of a needle and make it loop back. Without touching the other end to pull it through. If I had external chakra control, that would be easy, but without it, I was just stabbing in the dark.

I was close to going back to Atsuchi and asking to do the tooth part of the procedure over again entirely with some additions I came up with, (patch jobs like this for fūinjutsu were sloppy and dangerous, so that I was even considering it spoke volumes). However, I had a breakthrough.

To make absolutely sure that it was user error (it was a morale thing, though if the constitution of the seal was the problem it was still my fuck up), I filled my mouth with attuned fūinjutsu ink and tried to use the seal. A piece of a ration bar appeared in my mouth and I choked, spluttering as I spat it and a puddle of pitch black liquid onto a rock. My mouth was definitely stained.

"Right. So that works," I mumbled to myself, coughing. Then, I tried to use the seal again, and it worked for a second time!

It made sense, I supposed; when attuned to my chakra, ink became an extension of my canals. It acted as a pathway, in a sense, merging the seal on my tooth with my tongue. That second time, my mouth was still coated in the stuff. I thought my work around was to periodically gargle ink every time I went out on mission, which certainly wasn't ideal. It meant I could be caught unprepared, which invalidated the entire point of my Inventory, and ink was a precious commodity.

However, as the ink was slowly cleared away by saliva and food, I realized, with elation, that my ability to use the seal remained! It was like, in that brief amount of time, my body taught itself how to control my chakra.

I didn't really understand why or how it happened, but I wasn't going to question my good fortune. I had a working tattoo'd storage seal, and I was going to put it to good use. Just in time, too.

Team Tsuchibokori operated strangely, in comparison to all other jonin led squads. Generally, teams—and ninja in general—almost constantly ran missions, with only a week on average in between. However, due to extenuating circumstances (nearly all of them caused by me, I'll admit), our missions tended to be capped on both sides with multiple month-long training breaks.

With tensions escalating, that was coming to an end. Possibly because Biwa-sensei wanted to get us into a groove, or because he was facing pressure from command—he didn't say which. Either way, it didn't matter. Iwa was going to get her money's worth out of us.

That entire spiel was ominous, but even more so was the fact that the Big (little) Man himself was waiting for us at the missions desk.

"Tsuchikage-sama," Biwa-sensei greeted his father with a frown. He clearly wasn't expecting this either.

"Biwa," our leader acknowledged in turn. "Imai-chan, Ishida-kun, Hirose-kun. Good to see you again."

None of us reacted to the increased familiarity of honorifics, exchanging polite greetings instead. However, we all noticed, and I was sure that Iwao and Daigo were just as confused as I was. Why did he make that obviously intentional choice? He addressed everyone else under him with san, and though we were young enough that it wasn't improper, Iwa didn't coddle any of its shinobi. Once we so much as announced our intention to become shinobi, and especially after we donned the hitai-ate, we were treated as adults, all but peers. Calling us chan or kun was a step away from infantilizing us, and if it came from anyone else, I might have even been offended.

Maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe he had taken a genuine liking to us. Maybe there was another, entirely benign ulterior motive. Whatever the reason, I didn't think it was a bad thing.

"I have a rather unusual mission for you today," he said, and though his tone didn't reflect it, the words sounded ominous. "It'll be a protection detail assignment, with a twist."

"What twist?" Biwa-sensei asked, resignedly.

"First, your client is a group of religious missionaries," he said. "They'll be offering philanthropy to a less fortunate people."

The "and proselytizing" part was implied. Even though philanthropy was in the description, I felt a little unclean. But that was coming from a shinobi; many things I did gave me the ick, so I'd cope. This could be a lot worse.

"The twist stems from their destination," he revealed. "Sōgen no Kuni."

Even Biwa-sensei's eyebrows shot up at that. Sōgen no Kuni: the Land of Steppes. It was the Wild West on steroids—called a Nuke-Nin's paradise, it was largely lawless, with no Hidden Village and a Daimyo who was hands off to the extreme.

The reason for both of which stemmed from the nation's climate. It was so arid that vegetation was all but nonexistent; even in the few pockets where plants could take root at all, growth was incredibly slow, so residents couldn't sustain themselves on crops. This limitation resulted in most of Sōgen's residents becoming nomadic. They'd rear herds of animals, continually marching them between outposts that were known to host plant growth. The animals would eat the hardy grasses, and once they were consumed, the people would move on to the next. Those grasses would grow back, and then the next group would arrive to feast on them again. Rinse and repeat.

Because of this system, it was logistically impossible for the Daimyo to collect taxes—even if he could, his people were too poor to give him much anyway. So, he had no incentive to protect or better the well-being of those who lived in his country. That opened the door for Missing Nin to act with impunity, preying on the country's inhabitants without a care of being caught. If the landscape wasn't so punishing, it would be perfect for them.

"They really want to go to Sōgen?" Biwa clarified. "Are they insane? Do they know what they're getting into?"

"Does it matter?" the Tsuchikage countered, and Biwa-sensei pursued his lips.

As far as Iwa was concerned, it didn't. They paid us for a job, and that was the extent of our relationship. We didn't care at all what happened to them after that, unless it was likely they'd be repeat customers. These people would probably be too dead to hire us again.

Maybe I was being too harsh. Maybe our clients would be just fine. I mean, people did live in Sōgen, so it obviously couldn't be that bad.

I remember my brother, in my old life, when he was sent to tour Afghanistan. From everything he'd been told by the media, he was expecting it to be a shit hole, and was shocked to land in a normal ass place. Its infrastructure was developed in most regions (not to the extent he was used to, but far better than he expected), and there was plenty of technology. He wasn't as…open-minded as me, but even he came to the conclusion that those perceptions stemmed from racism and propaganda. It was convenient for us to be seen as saviors, liberating this backwater country from terrorists and introducing them to the wonders of capitalism.

Yeah, that went just swimmingly.

Anyway, I should just reserve judgment. For all I knew, this could be the exact same situation, and I was just playing into other peoples' ignorance.

The missing-nin situation, however; that was a fact. There were plenty of accounts to back it up. We'd have to be wary.

Speaking of—

"There is another matter," the Tsuchikage added. "Unrelated to the mission itself. Since you are already heading to that country, I have another task for you. Yamasaki Toyokazu has been spotted in the region."

Biwa-sensei suddenly grew very still.

"Is that so?" he mused, voice dangerously, threateningly soft.

I knew the name Yamasaki Toyokazu from the bingo book. He was a jonin originating from Iwagakure. Once considered one of our elite. He had formidable ninjutsu skill and great stealth capability, but he was no slouch in any other area.

Jonin missing-nin, despite what canon would lead me to believe, were pretty rare. If you got that high up in the totem pole, you had already snagged yourself a pretty cushy life. Pay was good, and so was the security. And, of course, patriotism had been beaten into your every cell—ninja usually got strong enough to attain the rank by playing within the system, so you didn't usually become one in the first place without drinking the kool-aid.

I didn't know why Toyokazu had left, but as far as anyone else was concerned, it didn't matter. A traitor was a traitor. And as I looked up at my sensei, I could plainly see. Kamizuru Biwa took his defection personally.

The Tsuchikage's next words lent credence to my suspicion.

"I thought you might appreciate the opportunity to hunt him down yourself."

"You'd be correct," he rumbled. "Thank you, Tsuchikage-sama." His lips twisted in dissatisfaction. "I could leave a clone with my team as assurance, and entrust them to complete the mission as I hunt. However, Yamasaki's a slippery bastard. Even if I scour the countryside, there's no guarantee I'll find him. I'm no specialized tracker."

I'm sure he could give most people in the village a run for their money, but unless you had some innate advantage—like a bloodline or family technique, for example—there was a skill cap. One that was far lower than the cap of a stealth specialist like Toyokazu. Even Biwa-sensei couldn;t be expected to find him in this situation without fail. Sōgen wasn't a huge country, but it was still a big place.

"I know this, of course," the Tsuchikage acknowledged. "Which is why I've decided to kill two birds with one stone. I did promise Imai-chan an audience with a sensor, after all."

Ah, a sensor. That would do it. And talk about hype! If we were traveling with a sensor, not only could I learn more about myself—if they were willing to help me, I might be able to learn how to combat other sensors as well.

Like Minato.

"Thank you, Tsuchikage-sama," I said, as Iwao cocked an eyebrow at me. He and Daigo weren't present for our conversation in his study, so they didn't know anything about him promising me a session with a sensor.

"Of course," he said, magnanimously. "I am eager to hear what you find. Now," he returned his attention to the group at large. "Your clients will meet you at the gate at noon."

Wow, that was late. None of us commented, however; it was obviously by their request.

"You will meet your final teammate there. Oh, and one final thing. With the current state of the world, I've decided to implement a new opportunity for our shinobi forces. Something that, with your current mission, you will have a unique opportunity to take advantage of."

It might have been my imagination, but his pleasant smile seemed to grow brutal.

"Heads collected from bounties can be submitted to R&D. Upon verification, you will be paid the sum of their highest price, but that's not all. You will also receive Merits based on their threat level."

I kissed my teeth, looking wide-eyed at my teammates. They seemed just as taken aback. A third way to earn Merits? That was big.

Especially when we were on route to Sōgen no Kuni.

"So you finally went and did it, huh?" Biwa-sensei rumbled, voice full of judgment and falling just short of insubordinate.

"There's nothing wrong with a little incentive, provided people don't take it too far. Which is why the next few months or so will act as a sort of test run," he said, placatingly, and I suddenly understood.

From Biwa-sensei's words, I could tell that Ōnoki had been wanting to implement this change for a while. So why hadn't he? Iwa was an autocracy, but the Tsuchikage still seemed to consider the wishes of those immediately underneath them. In this matter, he must have received a great deal of push-back, and I could see why. It incentivized people to take sometimes avoidable risks.

The weaker a person was, the more desperate for Merits they'd be. If they run across someone powerful enough to earn a bounty, they might try punching above their weight class and get cut down in the attempt. I wanted to have faith in my comrades' sense of preservation, but people were stupid. And if they already considered themselves dead men walking, with war on the horizon, the prospect of a sharp increase in power might be seen as the only means of survival later down the line.

Oof. Yeah, this might backfire spectacularly. I wouldn't be surprised if Ōnoki went back and got rid of this new system, or at least put more restrictions on it. In the meantime, however, I would be taking full advantage.

"That's all, I believe," said the Tsuchikage. "Good luck, and happy hunting."

- - - { ワナビー } - - -

Hey' y'all! Believe it or not, I actually finished this chapter on time; I just couldn't post it because I did not have internet. Spectrum has a monopoly in my area (yeah those antitrust laws sure are putting in work) and they've been twisting my balls the last few days. I'm officially moved into my new house, and am living there now. Still have a lot of work to do, though. But yeah, progress.

If you don't remember, Yokoda was the nurse who helped Kazuhiro after his surgery.

Hope you liked the addition to the Merit system. I wanted to channel the video game mechanic of beat-strong-enemies-to-get-rewards. I had a different means of doing so planned, and I'm still going to do that. But several things need to happen before I can even think about implementing it. Besides, this is totally something Ōnoki would do.

I don't usually respond to criticism (though I certainly do take it if it's constructive), but I got a comment recently that was so utterly baffling that it made my brain go through factory reset. It's not even overwhelmingly negative—the bit that tripped me up was where the commenter states they dislike my choice in making Kasaiki a boy reincarnated into a girl's body.

…What? Just…how did you get that reading? Where did I ever write anything that implied that in the slightest? Genuinely, please tell me. I'm so confused.

Not trying to put anyone on blast or shame them—I'm just so stupefied. The comment was on the last most recent chapter too, so the person read the entire fic so far under that assumption. Did anyone else think that? If so, please let me know where in the text led you to that conclusion.

I'm excited to write the next arc. We're going to be reintroduced to an old character, and I have several concurrent plot lines planned. Introducing some groups and concepts that will be important later on. It'll be a blast, but again, I'm not at a point yet where I can promise weekly updates again. Especially since these coming chapters will almost definitely be longer than usual.

I don't have a Ptrn. If you've gotten just five bucks of enjoyment out of this story, please consider buying my original work on amazon (information in my bio). Between the two sites this fic is posted on, I have over 2900 readers. If even half of you choose to support me in this fashion, I would have considerable bargaining power when it comes to getting future books published. More publishing deals means I can quit my day job, which translates into more time for fanfiction. It's a one time thing, and you even get more of my writing out of it.

Plus, you should totally check out my other fic on archive. Across the Totem-Verse, (username Poncho_o). It's a Spider-Man, Across the Spider-Verse fic. Sooooo…yeah.

Catch you later!