Chapter 26: The Shadow over Insumasu
Part 3: A really awesome bridge.
(((Hanabi)))
Hanabi began to think that maybe she shouldn't have open her mouth and let Hotaru being an actual ninja for once.
To be fair, the only time she saw Hotaru being serious and not joking around was when she was getting branded, and Hotaru nearly died trying and failing to stop it. When she saw Hotaru become serious once again…
The feeling of that day just came back. Fear and dread.
But now, Hotaru had gone back full retard and somehow that make their travel safer.
On the second day of their travel, Hotaru got tired of hopping across trees, so he just go to a rather large river, cut down a log. And proceed to have them ride the log as a boat.
…..
……
………
Somehow they float along the river safely! And it's filled with big crocodiles all over the river!
Hanabi is in the theory camp that when Hotaru decide to do dumb shit, the universe cooperates with him. It's the only explanation that make sense. No one is supposed to survive doing all those dumbass life decisions Hotaru did but somehow he always pulled it off!
[Not Family Friendly noises echoes]
Hanabi groans on her bed. To save money, and for some reason according to Hotaru, for safety, they kept renting shady seedy inns instead of a proper one. She is starting to think rather than tactical concerns, Hotaru was doing this just to mess with her.
Because why else would he sleeps in the same bed as she did?
Oh no, a proper gentleman would offer to sleep on the floor to protect the ladies dignity but noooo~ Hotaru is the furthest thing from gentleman. He just go straight up and say if she don't want to share the bed with him so much, she can just sleep on the floor.
He's totally taking advantage of her and Hanabi's is confused as for why she is letting him. Which is why Hotaru kept doing so, because if she really didn't want to, he would have backed off a long time ago. Despite all the ragging of him being stupid, she knows that Hotaru is actually a sharp-minded person.
Otherwise there's no way he could have pulled off the Outstupid Maneuvers. Hotaru is very quick-witted. He will run circles around you the smarter you are.
Once, she asked why does Hotaru is so good at dealing with geniuses.
-Because I can always count on them to make the best logical moves with highest probability for success. That makes them hilariously predictable.-
Hanabi sighed. Originally, she graduated early so that she can enter the Hyuuga Guard proper, but instead she got reassigned to replace the allegedly dead Team 7 member. She had never went out of Konoha, but she read the records. The Walls of Konoha isn't really there to protect them from invading ninja's armies. In fact, everyone know where Konoha is, rendering the term Hidden Village rather useless actually. The Walls was to protect them by containing the dense chakra that leaked out of every citizen of Konoha, preventing the superpredators from sensing them.
The Forest of Death's actual name was Training Ground 44 precisely because it is actually a training ground to prepare for the real deal. The Forest of Death actual ranking was C in danger scale. Any decent Chuunin can safely live there with not much trouble.
So when she had to travel out, she was scared. And for some reason her only escort was Hotaru, not even having a Chuunin was provided to accompany them. What was the Hokage thinking?
Hotaru, for all his skills, had never actually fight anyone. He wasn't really battle tested. Officially, he's just the city janitor.
"Stupid Hotaru."
Hanabi decide to focus to sleep. Which is counterproductive to get yourself to sleep.
(((Hotaru)))
I stare at the sign that states the name of the bridge to Wave Country.
I fucking give up on making sense of this Fanon. Man, I did not see this coming.
The Great Gato Bridge
Well no shit. Why would Gato stops Tazuna from building a bridge? Just supply him with mats and then take it for yourself! The bridge actually has more benefit to Gato than Tazuna realized! Why would Gato waste a perfectly useful bridge? That just save him some fuel money and transport speed for goods between the island.
Hell! He even charged toll for us to pass through. What a madman!
Why do I feel like I had somekind of dealings with Gato before?
Eh, if I don't remember it, its probably not important.
The bridge is 23km long. Wave Country is to be exact, is an archipelago of what used to be the Whirlpool Country. After the Fall of Uzushio, the country fell into ruin and become what we now called as Wave Country. The Uzushio island is far up north of the archipelago, while Insumasu island, the southern and biggest island of the archipelago is the setting of the Wave arc. To give the gist of the size of it, its roughly the size of England.
Insumasu, I have a bad feeling about that name.
With ninja running speed, it didn't take long for us to run across the bridge to reach the island.
Well shit, this is not the Wave I remember.
The OG Wave Country was an island of nondescript size where the only notable settings was the bridge, the village and Tazuna's house.
What we find ourselves to arrive to was instead, a big ass fucking city!
Welcome to Gato City
The sign greet us. Oh for fucks sake!
What's next? We're actually working for Gato?
)))))))))
We are actually working for Gato.
Ladies and gentlemen. We are the bad guys now. Lol.
"Yay! Hotaru is our team member now!", Naruto celebrated.
"Actually your new teammate is Hanabi here.", I clarified.
"awwww. I thought we're going to have fun.", Naruto dissapointingly slacked down.
"Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence.", Hanabi wit.
We're in a café which was set as the meeting point for me to transfer Hanabi to. My mission is now over, actually.
"Where's Kakashi anyway?"
"Well about that…", Sasuke then began to summarize the sequence of event that lead them to this clusterfuck.
-Just Kakashi and the boys having a good field trip to Wave.
-Fight bandits. Getting his kids their first kill. Ya know, ninja parenting stuff. Kakashi so proud of his murder gremlins.
-Arrived at bridge
-Was stopped by a horse and an ox Youkai, Gozu and Mezu
-Then-!
"Wait wait wait, hold up. What did you mean youkai?", I asked. What the flying fuck, I read Wave arc enuff times to remember that two tutorial villain's names get basically getting seared to my brain, but I was pretty sure they weren't Ox face horse head nor in anyway flipping youkais.
"Oh yea, you skipped a grade. Well, to be exact, they are Mist Ninjas! Mist Ninjas consist of only Youkais and they regularly eat humans.", Naruto helpfully explain to me the lore of this fanfic.
I raise my cup of coffee and take a sip.
Fuck me.
Oi, Writer-sama. Isn't this too much? At this point this fanfic is so AU you may as well just use OG names and post it on Webnovel as your original work. You can't just keep overhauling Narutoverse like this just because you find rehashing canon world to be boring. We're gonna getting flamed here. Our canon cast is hardly in-character for fucks sake!!
Breathe, Hotaru. Breathe.
"Continue, Sasuke."
-Then, we kicked their asses. Turn out they were posers, not like the actual Ox-Head (Gozu) and Horse-Face (Mezu) like in myths.
-Then we crossed the bridge
-We meet our employer, Gato of the Gato Enterprise, the world biggest company.
-We're to investigate the Insumasu town for suspicious behavior.
-But, when we nearly reach there, we were stopped by a Kiri rogue ninja team. The Zabuza's Angels.
- -!
"Who the flying fuck is Zabuza's Angels?!!",
"Its an all-girls ninja team under the tutelage of Zabuza, the Black Oni of Bloody Mist. About a year ago, Zabuza went rogue over his disagreement of Kiri's human-hunting practice. Apparently, Zabuza is a human's right activist.", Sasuke helpfully informs me of the new change of The Plot.
Zabuza is an actual demon and is apparently vegan. What the fuck does this world came to now. This Plot is absolutely fucked.
"They were hired by Tazuna, the mayor of Insumasu Town as they are doing public protest over Gato's Gato Construction Company's gentrification of Insumasu island. The Insumasu Town had declared independence from Wave Country and is now enacting isolationist policy. The issue in Insumasu island is a deep and complex web of political intrigue.", Sasuke finished his analysis. Politics had always been Sasuke's greatest enemy, so he has trained himself in the art of Political Science so that he too can politics. For everyone's sake, don't give this man Twitter and YouTube account. He's going to Ben Shapiroed everyone else with facts and logic.
Also, Zabuza is team Tazuna now. What a twist.
"Continue, Sasuke"
-Now, we have epic battles.
-Kakashi reveal he has Sharingan and show he is actually really OP and cast like 500 different jutsus. Truly he is the man who has copied 1000 techniques
-But Zabuza is also pretty OP too. His big ass sword is even more OP than in canon and doesn't just get fixed with blood. It had stored the blood of everyone it ever killed and Zabuza can use it to slash out this blood getsuga tensho and stuff. He said that that's just the power of his Shikai. Just wait when he reveal his Bankai.
-Meanwhile, we're getting our ass kicked by Zabuza's Angels. There's this Yuki-Onna girl, Yuki Haku. Then there's this Kitsune, Kojima Konami. Then…
"Hold up! Did you just say, Kitsune?"
"Err, yes?", Sasuke confirmed?
"Go on."
-Then the third member. Kama Itachi. Not to be confused with Uchiha Itachi. However she do looks like Itachi. But a girl. With boobs. But without Sharingan. But's still a genius. I was pretty sure there's somekind of joke in there but I just don't see it.
-Anyway, we're getting our ass kicked, especially by Kama Itachi. So Sakura made the ultimate sacrifice and let us run away while she's holding them off.
-We run away with zero hesitation because while Sakura is totally Awesome now, we don't really care about her anyway.
-And then we found Kakashi just reading Icha Icha doujin at this coffee shop this whole time and he just sent a clone to accompany us this whole time. What a deadbeat.
"and that concludes my report.", Sasuke ends his Powerpoint Presentation and turn off the projector. Everyone in the coffee shop give him a humble round of applause.
"Hmm. I see. So that's what happened. Okay. My job is done and now I should return to Konoha."
"Wait, I thought you're sent here as backup?", Naruto was shocked and appalled.
"Oh no, I'm just here to escort Hanabi here. Now that my job is done, I should get home."
Sasuke intercepts me as I tried to walk out the café. "No, we actually need you, Hotaru. We need you expertise in order to unravel the complicated web of political intrigue in Insumasu. Skillset that we just don't have "
Sasuke hold me by the shoulders. "Hotaru, we need the Power of Stupidity to blast through all this red tapes we're facing. Only you have the power to help Gato Enterprise to save the Wave Country from economic recession! Hotaru, we need to defeat Tazuna and his forces of anarchy!"
I sighed. Guys, we really are the bad guys now. The Wave arc is supposed to be about a simple arc of fighting against some rando fat businessman. How the hell this fucking arc turn into a political drama? I'm pretty sure the Writer has no idea what the hell he is doing once again and just making up bullshit at this point.
Gentrification, local independence, saving the economy. And I was pretty sure Insumasu is just a really shitty engrish of Innsmouth.
I swear if fucking cthulu appears in this fanfic, I'm going to eat potatoes. Coz that's the only thing I can do at that point.
Eat potatoes.
"By the way, Hotaru, the fox girl is an artic fox hottie!", Naruto helpfully added.
"You son of a bitch, I'm in!"
"huh????", Hanabi is confused.