Eru’s eye widened in surprise as Moro’s hands grasped hers, which compared to his burned and leathery mitts were positively tiny and relatively unblemished, despite having their own calluses and scars as any ANBU’s did. But what truly surprised her was her own reaction to the warmth of his skin, the quickening of her heartbeat and the rapidly-spreading blush that turned her cheeks a light shade of pink.
“Onii-chan...” she began, but faltered, looking away embarrassedly. Moro was a decent-looking shinobi himself, even in a village full of bishounen and bishoujo, and there had been plenty of others she had retrospectively understood had tried to “hit on” her, but none had actually had the assertiveness to physically contact her like he had. Whether this was because most attractive young men in the village were utterly clueless about the opposite sex or because any touching was considered weirdly taboo in the social mores of Lightning Country, no one knew. But as she now discovered, as shocking as it had been, she had liked it.
Masao’s continued answering of his original question now brought relief from her flustered state as the attention shifted to Haruka and away from her. As Moro now essentially asked her for a date in the future (going to the range together was the equivalent of a date in the warrior culture of the Kumo ANBU – all of the loading of each others’ magazines and touching the same weapons and comparing each others’ groups on paper was essentially the indirect equivalent of a long makeout session), Eru could not help but feel slightly...annoyed.
“Actually, Agent Tagiushi, I just want to skip directly to doin’ it,” said Haruka, her expression completely serious and deadpan. She held it for a second, just enough to crack a slight grin. “With her, that is,” she said, gesturing to Gin. “Put a 1-yen-sized group of five in the X-ring at 200 meters with a .30 cal and I’ll consider playing with your lightning rod, mmkay? It took me about a year, by the way,” she said, answering his question with a flip of her bob.
“Alright, it seems you both want the longer version,” now interjected Masao. “Please keep in mind that this is still highly classified information, no matter how much our Raikage likes to talk about it in public. ‘An empty mind is like unto a freshly-turned sod; if not sown with the seeds of duty and honor, the insidious weeds of heresy will take root, and yadda yadda yadda,’” he said, irreverently quoting one of the many apocryphal sidebars of the Codex Ansatsu. “So, where to begin... You might all want to take a seat for this. And a pillow, too.
“Let’s start at the very beginning. Most of you were probably academy students or genin when this happened, but the Fifth Raikage, Santaru Ryuuto, and my former Taichou, let one of his operatives, a mempo and member of the giri-bannin named Raika, get herself captured by agents of the MUSHA Corporation. Yes, the same corporation that makes your tactical sporks. Its CEO at the time was the Crown Prince of Lightning at the time, a nasty guy named Shiro Amakusa Tokisada zi Kaminari - fucking royalty names, they’re so confusing – who was actually the head of a pretty widespread cult worshiping a demon lord called the ‘Hitokage’. Now, you know that there are plenty of these little jashinist circles among the nobility, and they’re usually just silly things full of scented candles, hooded robes, and idiotic sex rituals that the rich dally in because they don’t really work for a living, but this one was actually quite serious. In any case, I wasn’t there directly with them, but the Raikage as well as some others who shall not be named confronted the Crown Prince about this and essentially they had a fight. The Crown Prince got fragged, the Hitokage got mad, and lo and behold, you get the Demon Invasion, which we all know about, but few people know WHY this happened.
“Back to the political situation, however. The Shogun was still alive during this time, but the late Crown Prince had spent the last few years before all this murdering his other family members, that is, anyone else above him in line to take the throne. See, his plan was to become Shogun and essentially rule the lands on the Hitokage’s behalf. If it had worked and Ryuuto had been killed or something, that would have been the equivalent of some Serbian asshole hacking the very fabric of the world we live in and downing the entirety of Ninpocho Chronicles,” he said, taking the moment to sip out of a flask.
“In any case, after the Crown Prince takes a dirt nap, the Shogun is left without any real heirs except for a single infant son by his fifth and final wife, the Princess Miyu. This kid is named Yuuto, and he’s a total Grade A asshole, by the way. Chancellor Tachibana Ami is entrusted with the regency of the country, and Yuuto is expected to take his father’s place eventually. Sadly for them, one of our very own famous fuckups, the Sennin Sude Sairasu, goes to the Capitol and abducts the 8-year-old and reportedly kills him because that’s what he does when he’s bored.
"Regardless, around this time, the country enters a long period of decline as noble X kills noble Y everywhere because hey, the pool of eligibility to the throne just opened to all of the kids, not just the white kids. Get it, Shiro? Meaning white? Hahaha...sorry. Anyway, the real competition is currently pretty fierce and like usual, most of the serious players are actual Daimyo of the Council of Eleven Moons themselves. There’s the current Chancellor of the Bakufuu, Tachibana Ami, who would probably be the Shogun right now except for the fact that she lacks the appropriate chromosome, the Marshal General of the Imperial Army, Nobunaga Kouhei, who pretty much decided that the national military of our country was actually HIS military, the Grand Admiral of the Navy, Kato Takumi, who alternates between pirate and savior when it comes to small independent nation states, and finally probably the biggest player on the field, Daimyo Amakusa Ryuu ro Kaminari. Don’t ask me how the hell they determine what two letters come before ‘Kaminari’ because I just don’t know. He was the 87th in line to the throne before Sairasu decided to troll everyone for lulz. Now he’s actually number 1 in line by the genealogy books. He did this by killing everyone else in front of him, which is pretty impressive to me. Due mainly to Lady Ami’s influence, however, the Council of Nobles still did not back Lord Ryuu as the legitimate successor, so he’s been frustrated for a long time, and threw all of his money into accumulating a private mercenary army larger than the actual Imperial Army.
"A few months ago, the Chancellor sees that conditions are ripe for war. She realizes that the only way to keep the balance of power out of Lord Ryuu’s hands is to team up with the Marshal General if she can, and hopefully either ally with or knock out the Grand Admiral. She hires some of our main branchers to escort a peace offering to General Kouhei, and they succeed, but are attacked by Lord Ryuu’s forces. At this time, Admiral Takumi decides to raid the Kagoshiman Republic to the north, and we are again hired to repulse them, which we do. As he limps off somewhere, tensions ratchet up between all of the factions. The powder keg is filling rapidly, as you see.
"Back to Kumo now. From what I’ve been able to piece together, our Raikage has an uncle named Makoro, who Shin never actually knew about until recently. For unclear reasons, Makoro went missing a few decades ago and he must have been extremely skilled, because all records of this happening, and all records of his existence prior to now are nonexistent. No other missing nin in history has been able to pull this feat off. And between you and me, if you manage to do that, then you deserve your freedom as long as you don’t go sticking your nose back in Kumo. Sorry, that was kind of heretical of me,” he grunted. “Unfortunately, Makoro for some damned reason resurfaced about two years ago. We didn’t know it back then, but he and another missing nin approached the village gates and caused a fight that took two of our trainees’ lives. But their goal wasn’t to just kill some of us, it was to get Makoro into the village. And he did so by pretending to be an injured shinobi, getting himself a free ride to the hospital in a total breach of security protocol. Even more ridiculously, he was actually treated and discharged, at which point he disappeared. We believe that somewhere around this time he assumed the identity of a mednin with the alias ‘Hayabusa Gin’ and took control of the hospital’s overlooked charity department.
"A few months ago, Makoro, or ‘Hayabusa,’ finally makes his big move. He contracts some of our students – essentially people who won’t question orders – to deliver large crates of supposedly medical supplies to the Bakufuu Hospitals of nearly all our major cities, including to the Tenouzans down south. To sweeten the deal and really make sure they do their jobs, he grants them genin-ship as a reward. The kids are thankfully unharmed. Then the shit hits the fan: The packages are actually well-disguised bombs designed to disperse a custom-made lethal nerve agent similar to Tabun or VX, and they not only take out most of the hospitals they’re delivered to, but large chunks of the cities and most of the nobility and rich who’d gathered around to pilfer the supplies first. The only place that actually doesn’t get completely fucked is Tenouza, for unclear reasons. Something to do with ‘The Tears of Senna’ or some religious hokum. Personally I think it’s just because they didn’t gather everyone important in the city around the box to get first dibs on ransacking the narcotics. In any case, the explosions serve to essentially shock up and soften the cities’ defense forces, and at this time, Ryuu decides to roll his war machine in, occupying all of the cities in a pretty well-orchestrated attack. That’s how we ended up in actual civil war.
"We know what we know about Makoro, by the way, because we cooperated with the Imperial Army to retake Port Cirrus, and in the process, took Makoro’s chief bomb-maker prisoner. He’s the one who made the explosives, and Makoro’s the one who disguised them with genjutsu. He also told us that essentially Makoro is collaborating with Ryuu for unclear reasons.
"Now, the circle fully comes around. You guys asleep yet? In any case, remember I told you that Sude Sairasu had killed the Crown Prince Yuuto? Well, he actually didn’t. ANBU Sennin Koumyou actually took the kid before Sairasu could sodomize him too badly and had him raised by a local family here, and he eventually grew to become a mednin, whose name is Shiranai. The Chancellor is a smart woman – she knew immediately who she was dealing with, and basically forced him out of hiding. Shiranai, by the way, is a complete Grade A Asshole, which I told you already. I nearly took his head off a month ago. In any case, he’s accepted his heritage again and is ready to assume the role of hereditary Shogun.
"You might ask, ‘why give Shiranai the position and not just let Lord Ryuu take it?’ That’s what I often ask myself, but there are reasons for this. In any case, the current plan hatched by the Chancellor is to bring Shiranai and all the rest of the faction heads to the Capitol of Raiden’s Eye and have him instituted as Shogun. From what I can surmise, the Council of Nobles, and more importantly, the Marshal General and Grand Admiral, are more likely to accept a direct child of the late Shogun as their leader, and Lord Ryuu cannot really contest this. Also, if he’s coronated, Ryuu’s war becomes illegal and he’s obligated to stop hostilities lest he incur the combined wrath of the Imperial Army, the Imperial Navy, and Kumogakure.
"Basically, that’s the plan. The main issue right now is that Makoro is still out there, and probably plotting to bring the peace process down. We’ve weakened him by taking his bomb maker and compromising his organization, which is called the ‘Inner Circle,’ by the way. But make no mistake, he’s more than just your average Sennin-level missing nin. He’s a guy who managed to pull off the impossible, to go missing without leaving a trace, and yet he blows ALL of that hard work just to help some minor noble with a land grab? It doesn’t make sense, and there’s probably a reason behind it all. We have to find out why this is happening. Unfortunately, I have no idea. Shinbatsu, I’m thirsty.”
“Nee-nee...” mumbled a dozing Eru, whose head had flopped into Gin’s lap.
“That was too long, sorry guys,” said Masao, scratching his head. “In any case, I’m not going to keep you further. We’re actually on backup this week, so you’re free to exit the place. Remember to keep your pager and headset on your person at all times. You’re all dismissed.”
Haruka stretched her arms and yawned.
"He talks too much sometimes," she whispered to Gin. "Well, see you in a few days. By the way, the mempo quarters are pretty spare and the beds are too small. I have a queen-sized, though, for when you want to nap," she said. "Later!" she said, cheerfully, waving to both the new additions.
"Mmph, later..." said Eru, following Haruka out of the readyroom. "See you, nii-chan," she said to Moro, giving him a slight smile before blushing again.
