Nin-To-Five : Chapter 67

On route to the Wind Capital

Ryoma, Jonin of Sunagakure, Vice-Captain of the Puppetry Corps

The run to Wind Capital was harder than he remembered it being, when he last visited a couple years back. The air was hotter, the winds were stronger, and his body was heavier.

Directly heavier, because he was currently carrying about eight hundred pounds of weights divided into four two-hundred pound sections across his four limbs. A series of iron bars on hemp rolls attached underneath the outermost plates of his new puppetarmor. An annoying, burdensome level strain on his body for the sake of constantly improving his strength and speed for future battles.

The fact that he could carry around nearly a thousand pounds of additional weight was something he was slightly giddy about. It was a level of quietly superhuman that he found great satisfaction in being- and it wasn’t his maximum either. It was just enough weight to keep him constantly strained. Weight that required a series of weight-increasing jutsu shiki to even fit under the plates of his armor.

Chakra was one hell of a drug. 

“As you all know, I am Basuku. Jonin.” Their Field Commander spoke ahead of the group, maintaining a hard jogging pace through the sandy dunes, ignoring the roads to move directly towards the capital. Field Commander was specific language on the Kazekage’s part, because Basuku wasn’t going to just be their squad leader, he was in charge of the entire Nagi vanguard. 

Which was, from what was planned in the war councils, going to involve ten full squads exclusively composed of Jonin and Special Jonin. Included in this force were all ten vice captains of the various corps of Sunagakure. A substantial portion of Suna’s entire elite ninja population, dedicated to a single front. 

“I am proficient in all traditional ninja arts, as well as Jujutsu.” Basuku continued, leaping across the pit of a massive antlion. The rest of the team followed the arc of his leap. The enormous insect burst out of the sand as they jumped overhead, briefly lunging, jaws clamping down around nothing, and then retreating back into its home shortly after.

“Jujutsu? Cursed Techniques?” Ryoma asked, tilting his head as they slid down the side of a dune. 

“Correct. It’s something of a… personal interest of mine.” Basuku explained, turning his head back to look at him from the corner of his narrow eyes. “My jujutsu requires a portion of the target’s body, such as blood or hair, to take effect. It will have limited uses in an active battle.”

Basuku turned forwards again. “Besides that- I have little ability with lightning or water release ninjutsu. All of my weaponry is poisoned, be aware of that.”

He fell silent, which meant that it was time for someone else to speak up and explain their abilities to their teammates. Ryoma was about to start talking, only for the green-orange haired woman to start first.

“Pakura. Jonin. My specialty is my scorch release, though I’m equally good at conventional fire release.” She raised a hand to brush whipping locks of hair back and redo her hair ties, bringing them out of her eyes. “I’m not half bad with weapons or genjutsu, but I’d really prefer to be at range using ninjutsu. I don’t keep my weapons poisoned.”

Their other teammate immediately jumped in to introduce himself. The man with orange, slitted eyes and a big duffle bag full of supplies began in a strong, almost insistent voice. “Yusuke. Jonin. I’m skilled at close and long ranges, with a preference for wind and fire ninjutsu. My doujutsu allows me to see the world in shades of heat as well as normal light, so most stealth and illusions fail against me.”

The orange-eyed man tilted his head and nodded at Ryoma. “You taught my sister, Yu, briefly. Thank you for that.”

Did he? He supposed she must have been in that remedial class. Ryoma nodded. “It wasn’t a burden. Most of them were pretty good students.”

“Regardless.” 

There wasn’t any follow up to that statement, which meant it was Ryoma’s turn to describe his abilities. “Ryoma. Jonin. I’m a durable close ranged puppeteer with moderate mid ranged abilities and limited long ranged capacity. I am capable of wind, water, fire, and earth ninjutsu- preferences for wind, fire, and earth. The majority of my weaponry is explosive or poisoned. I can negate incoming fire or wind ninjutsu.”

He tilted his head. “I have a sensor-array built into my armor, but its clarity is limited. I should be able to detect any approaching ninja if they don’t care to hide their chakra, but it’s difficult to pinpoint them beyond general direction and distance.”

“Sensor array?” Basuku asked, using a bandaged hand to flip over a bladed rock formation. Ryoma followed with a powerful kick off the sand, leaving a wake of dust behind them. 

He reached up to point a thumb back at the trio of wooden canisters on his back. One contained his sensor array, one contained the chakra storage of his armor, and the last just contained water. “Its just a hexagram sensor seal and a puppet eye in a box. I can keep it running more or less constantly, with a range of about a kilometer.”

“I see. Useful.” Basuku nodded and turned forwards again. “Inform me if anything suspicious approaches.”

“You used puppetry to turn yourself into a sensor?” Pakura asked, nodding in an appreciative fashion. “I see why they call you the genius of the puppetry corps.”

“They call me that?” Ryoma asked with a dry and bemused tone in his voice. He really didn’t feel like he qualified for that, considering all the nonsense the geniuses of this world accomplished on a regular basis.

“Nagare does, at least.” Pakura shrugged, rolling into a series of lazy cartwheels down a hard-packed dune, showing off her entirely exposed, well-toned back in the process. 

“Nagare is a flatterer, that’s for certain.” Ryoma huffed, provoking a chuckle from the flipping woman. “Getting back to the point- I’ve been brushing up my skills in genjutsu recently, but it remains the weakest of my core skills.”

“Do you have any issues with taking point after we reach the client, Ryoma?” Basuku growled out, reaching up to snatch his sunglasses out of the air after a strong breeze blew them off. 

“I’d prefer it, in fact. I’m significantly more durable than any of you.” Ryoma's lips twitched beneath his helmet. 

“Durable sure, but are you sure of your agility? That armor looks bulky.” Yusuke asked skeptically, tilting his head back and raising a brow. “One good ninjutsu will blow right through it.”

“This armor is yet another puppet. I’m probably faster than you are in it.” Ryoma waggled a finger.

“I doubt that.” Yusuke scoffed, then turned to Basuku, keeping his eyes challengingly locked onto Ryoma’s helmet. “Field Commander. Permission to race Ryoma the rest of the way to the Wind Capital.”

It wasn’t very mature to engage in a pointless contest. Despite that…

“Will this affect your performance in the field?” Basuku replied with an almost bored rumble.

“No.” Yusuke declared, clenching a fist

“You’re encouraging this Field Commander? This is completely pointless.” Pakura asked dryly, looking towards the aged man in sunglasses. .

He could just say ‘yes’ and cut this off here, but- “No.” There was no reason to lie here. Whether or not he ran as fast as he could, or maintained a gentle pace, he’d be completely refreshed within the day. That was just how efficient moving with his puppetarmor was. 

Basuku slammed his feet into the ground, kicking up a wave of sand as he slid across the desert surface to bleed off speed. The rest of them followed suit, causing a trail of dust to fly up behind them. A few seconds of sliding followed before their momentum was gone, and Basuku snapped his fingers.

An invisible blade of cutting wind scored a harsh line in the sand.

“Take positions behind the line.” Basuku ordered, nodding at him and pulling out a kunai. “When my kunai hits the ground, the race begins. The Wind Capital is roughly two hundred miles from this position, the winner is whoever reaches the outermost walls first.”

Ryoma took three steps over to the line, his armored boots extending a pair of metal claws as he asserted active control over his armor. Immediately the weight on his limbs ceased to impede him, and a pair of winglike extensions mounted on his wooden backpack assembly unfolded. 

The wings actually held the shiki necessary for a chakra shield to protect his back, but unfolding them here looked cool and made it seem like they’d help his speed. 

Next to him, Yusuke took a running pose and held perfectly still, like a coiled spring. 

“I forget, sometimes, how randomly competitive you men are.” Pakura provided a running commentary, planting her hands on her hips.

“Sexism!” Ryoma scolded with a light, humored tone, crouching into a running posture of his own. 

“Is it sexism if it's true?” 

No one replied to her, because the kunai had been tossed, landed, and both of them had burst into a furious sprint forwards by the time she finished her sentence. 

—

It took about four and a half hours of running to reach the walls of the Wind Capital. As a sort of unspoken gentleman's agreement, neither of them were using ninjutsu to bolster their speed beyond basic chakra cycling and his puppetarmor. At least, nothing that Ryoma could detect from his opponent. 

The race ended up pretty much how he was expecting it to. Yusuke was slightly slower in a footrace than he was, a difference of perhaps ten miles per hour, and his endurance simply wasn’t comparable. Ryoma could also leap over larger obstacles than his opponent, and by the hour mark it was clear that he was just going to outright win. Yusuke disappeared from his sensor and that was more or less the end of it.

He didn’t let himself get complacent, however, no way was he going to take a nap or something and then let his metaphorical tortoise get ahead. He only slowed his pace when the walls of Wind got within sight, and settled into a walking pace towards the gates of the city. His sensor let him know of a high yang chakra source somewhere along the walls. A samurai officer, probably.

There were still guards around the opulent gates, along with a broad column of merchants and common folk moving into and out of the city in a constant stream of traffic. Noisy, bustling, economically healthy traffic. 

There was a distinct wariness in the air as he approached, even as he twitched to make his clawed boots retract and his ‘wings’ fold down again. He moved to the side of the main traffic flow. A small child stared at him with wide, slightly scared eyes from the side of a cart.

He tilted his head and gave a little, merry wave. The child gave a wave back and then disappeared beyond the gate. 

“Ninja- what’s your business in the Capital!?” One of the guards asked, nervously approaching with a spear clutched in one of his hands. Two other guards backed him up, both of them looking uneasy.

Ryoma nodded, turning around and pointing in the direction he came. His lungs burned, but he tried to avoid letting that get into his voice. “Well… one of my teammates challenged me to a footrace, so I had to win.” He nodded to emphasize the point.

“A race? That’s it?” The first guard asked incredulously. His buddies glanced at each other, then back at him.

“Well my team is here to escort Mr. Arisaki on business to Nagi Island, but the race is why I’m not with them. My opponent will be here in a few more hours, and the other two will be here within a day or two I believe.” He reached up to tap on his mask in a thoughtful gesture. “So I’ll be waiting awhile, thinking about it.”

“Well we can’t just leave you without an escort. You’re a ninja!” The guard complained, gesturing towards him with the butt of his spear. 

“No no, I understand.” Ryoma raised his hands in apology. “I’ll wait out here by the gates where you can see me.”

“...Alright.” The guard nodded suspiciously, slightly appeased. “No sneaky business, you understand?”

“I understand. You don’t mind if I cook, do you? I haven’t eaten in hours.”

“...Cook?”

—

“And now she’s mad at me because her sister is mad at me and I still don’t know what the hell I did to make her mad.” The brown-haired guard sighed in frustration, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his head hung low. 

“I suppose ‘just ask’ is unhelpful advice here, isn’t it?” Ryoma asked, using a pair of chopsticks to manipulate slices of meat frying atop a small, portable grill. The grill included a number of useful attachments for cooking, but was mostly just a heat source atop a pair of fold-out legs. The heat source in question being a shiki of Wastefire powered manually. 

“I already tried that, yeah.” The guard shook his head mournfully.

“I’m telling you, those Usai women are just crazy, man.” The red-haired guard groused, eating from a bowl of rice, beef slices, and soy sauce. “You don’t listen to me.”

Ryoma made sure the beef slices were done, then loaded them into a bowl of rice and handed it off to the teal-haired guard, who nodded gratefully and immediately got to eating. “Do you want a bowl?” He asked the brown-haired guard, who shook his head.

“Nah, I’m not hungry right now. Thanks though.” The guard with girl troubles waved the offer off. “What about you, ninja? You got a gal?”

Ryoma nodded. “I do. We’ve been dating for a bit less than six months now. She generally tells me directly if I do anything to upset her though, so I haven’t had that kind of problem.”

“Lucky!” Brown-haired complained, tilting his head back to rest against the stone wall. 

“Ninja date? I thought you guys just abducted kids to replace losses.” The red-haired man joked with a half-mocking grin.

“Not untrue. I was peachboy myself.” Ryoma shrugged. “But she’s from a ninja family.”

“A peachboy?” He asked, then shook his head. “Ah- I was just being an ass there, I knew that you guys had families too.”

“A peachboy is the term for an orphan found in the field and brought back to the village. I can’t tell you how many of us there are in Suna, but it's not uncommon or anything.” 

“Mhm.” The white-haired man spoke up, gesturing with his chopsticks. “My parents knew a family who couldn’t afford to feed three kids, so they gave two of them away to ninja.” He shook his head. “Dad stopped talking to them after that.” 

“Wait so-” The red-haired man chewed and swallowed before continuing. “A peachboy. So you might’ve been sold by your real family and given to ninja or something?!”

“Maybe? The ninja who found me died shortly after, so no one really knows where I came from.” Ryoma shook his head, flipping the meat over to the other side. It sizzled happily on the pan. “It doesn’t really matter to me, in any case. As far as I’m concerned I came from Suna.”

“Maannn.” The red haired man leaned back. “I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it- if I were you. That’d keep me up at night.” 

“Imagine you’re some big shot- the son of some daimyo stolen away in the night! You’d stumble across your long lost relative and get out of the drudgework, all the way to the top!” The white-haired man declared in a wistful, aspirational manner. “A secret prince- an heir to some ancient clan!”

“I think you’ve been reading too many novels, man.” The brown-haired guard laughed. 

“I wouldn’t want to be a noble anyways.” Ryoma shook his head. “I like being a ninja.”

“Really? You’d turn down all that luxury? Think about it!” The red-haired man bombastically shouted, leaning forwards and pointing. “All the money in the world! A feast every night! A dozen maids waiting on you hand and foot! Never work again a day in your life!”

Ryoma merely smiled and shrugged, not that they could see his expression beneath his veil. “I’d probably get bored without the occasional life or death fight.”

They stared at him like he had grown a second head, then glanced at each other and simultaneously declared. “Ninja.”

Ryoma chuckled, pulling the meat from the grill and loading up his own bowl, setting the pan aside and pouring soy sauce from a little bottle on top. “It’s what my entire life is built around. It’d be a little odd if I didn’t find some sort of satisfaction in it, you know?”

“You ninja live in a totally different world.” The red-haired man shook his head and chopsticks, stuffing his mouth with another bite of rice. “Its been more than sixty years since the Five Great Nations have been at war, an era of peace, and you ninja are still murdering each other like there’s no tomorrow.”

“We murder each other so that you guys don’t have to.” Ryoma pointed out, taking a bite of his own meal.

They considered that for a moment.

The white haired man nodded. “Thanks for that, by the way.” The other two men gave grumbling nods and agreements to the sentiment. 

Ryoma nodded placidly. “No worries, is what we’re here for.”

The sensor array detected a yang-heavy signature towards the north. He paused, looking in the direction between bites of his meal. A wave of sand was being kicked up, coming in this direction.

His opponent. He smirked and set the pan back on the heat source, using his chopsticks to set out another few slices of meat. 

“Going for seconds?” The brown-haired guard asked, leaning forwards from the wall slightly.

“My teammate will be here in a few minutes. You can see him to the north if you squint.”