Wrong Conclusions Are Dangerous
Chapter 23: Wrong Conclusions Are Dangerous
Keiko rejoiced at the coming last match of the Third Round Preliminaries. Apparently Konoha thinks that people who travel - in some cases thousands of kilometers - to come see a live combat tournament in their massive city of a village can only stomach a very limited number of bouts. It sounds completely stupid, but Lord Fifth predicted this outcome before they left Kirigakure, even down to the 'random' selection being blatantly deterministic to the point that Lord Fifth passed along a letter to the Third Hokage informing the man of who he was to not pit against each other on Kiri-Kiri match ups and implicitly sacrificing the rest as the Hokage desired.
Only nine non-Kiri genin made it through the Forest of Death, and over half of them matched 'randomly' against the weakest of the Hidden Mist's applicants. The exceptions in the form the Uchiha boy who got the only bye for the 45 man single elimination preliminary fights, and Rock Lee and Gaara of the Desert, matched against each other as a thin mask on the 'random' selection process. The Hyuga boy, his shuriken chucker kunoichi teammate, the Nine Tails Jinchuuriki, the Sakura, the Suna fan girl, and her puppeteer brother all went head to head against the certified shuriken chuckers of Kirigakure's teams… and only the Hyuga boy and fangirl actually won their matches.
To be fair to them, they didn't face the bottom of Kiri's barrel, all these genin still trained under the enlightening teachings of Lord Fifth, a god-like teacher and assured to be the next God of Shinobi. Even their weakest applicants possessed an incredibly well rounded and developed skill set for a genin, the best came to Lord Fifth already advanced along the ninja way through their own talents and efforts.
In the Forest of Death the green jumpsuit wearing Konoha genin proved he could hang with the very best of Kirigakure due to his incredible talent in taijutsu and suspected use of the infamous and feared kinjutsu known as the Eight Gates, a legendary and suicidal technique from history that briefly and brilliantly reared its head once again during the Third Shinobi World War were the modern patriarch of the technique, a genin named Might Duy, used the pinnacle of the Eight Gates to shatter the combined might of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, killing four of the members, one for each of his sacrificed limbs before the strain of the Kinjutsu left him crippled and dying.
Keiko heard Jin twisting the metal railing of the catwalks in the tower arena as he too noticed Rock Lee tap into the Fourth Gate, the sand wielding jinchuuriki of Sunagakure forcing the boy to reveal more of his power than Jin had during their fist fight in the forest.
"I am a lowly worm." Jin moaned, "Unworthy of my claimed rival. I am nothing but dust in the wind."
"Oh shut up." Keiko hissed at the mopey shark man, "You only lost to him because you fought using your fists and your thick skull. You're a swordsman and water ninjutsu specialist, you mouth breathing moron. Fighting him in taijustu was literally just your ego making your choices."
"Oh yeah!" Jin perked up, "I forgot!"
"Don't get too happy, your beloved rival is done for." Keiko observed as the boy failed to finish the fight before his technique faded away, leaving him completely exhausted and moderately injured across his entire muscular skeletal system.
The opponent, the runt of the Suna siblings and the most dangerous of them lay sprawled out on a cushion of his sand, heaving and shaking in pain from the taijutsu smackdown that left his personal protective layer of 'Sand Armor' cracked like a fallen vase. Despite his position on his back and Lee on his hands and knees, Gaara of the Desert now held an absolute advantage in this fight, as he only needed to extend his hand and the massive amount of sand he carried with him leapt eagerly across the distance to carry out his will. He crushed the Konoha boy's arm and leg before Might Guy, Rock Lee's sensei and life model, and suspected father or brother, leapt into the arena to save him, ending the match by disqualification.
As Gaara rasped out a demand for explanation, Jin Hoshigaki made a vow, his bellowing roar shocking everyone gathered, "I will avenge this murderous insult to love! Gaara of the Desert! Prepare to die when we face each other in combat!"
Jin shaked and heaved as he hunched over the railing, harder than the young men who just battled down below.
"The algebra of love is very hard to follow." A nearby Kiri genin commented and Jin Hoshigaki rounded on him in a fury.
"Do you think matters of the heart are some laughing matter?" the shark boy bellowed just centimeters away from the other boy's face, looming over him like an oni, "Rock Lee was never supposed to lose! Not after beating me for Sakura's heart! Now this little redhead asshole has shit all over their love just after its beautiful climactic victory! Obviously her tender care during this shadowy valley of their lives will make their love even more blinding, brilliant, and enduring, but goddammit this is too soon! As the vanquished rival, it is my sacred duty to rise up as the avenger, to slay the beast that threatens their pure love, and move on, bitter still in heart, but joyful for providing one final loving act!"
"Holy hell, Sakura!" the orange clad jinchuuriki filled the silence of the arena after Jin's diatribe finished, "Your love story with Rock Lee is amazing! Why can't you feel that way about me?"
The pink haired girl took in a large breath and raised her head, revealing a brutal glare at Jin Hoshigaki, "I don't love Rock Lee!"
Her banshee scream cut across the arena even more clearly than Jin's rant, and thank goodness Rock Lee was already unconscious, because a heavy blow of emotional damage like that just now might have been enough to finish him off entirely.
Woodenly, Jin turned his head to face Sakura across the arena.
"She doesn't love Rock Lee?" his words sounded hollow, completely devoid of the good cheer and menace typical of his tone, "She… doesn't love Rock Lee?"
"Lesbian! Called it!" Keiko smirked nearby, piling on the pain and confusion bearing down on the young shark man.
"But if… she doesn't love Rock Lee… then… what even is my life?" Jin droned on in mounting existential horror, "Do I… even know what love is? I, a man who lived his life for love, can't know love by sight?" Suddenly, Jin tightened his fists and straightened his back looking up in a sudden moment of enlightenment, "I guess I live for hate now!"
Jin threw his head back and laughed maniacally while wiggling his fingers, honestly not that different to the ear than his usual laughter.
"What a stunning reversal." Haruto mused, once again completely engrossed in fathoming the depths of the other genin's insanity.
He wondered if it was even possible to cure Jin Hoshigaki's unwell mind, but tossed those thoughts aside, for the world would be a less fanciful place after.
"Ginza! Miri! I'm sorry!" Jin motioned with a hand to his nonplussed teammates, "The Jin Hoshigaki - your precious teammate who you have come to know and love - is dead, and in his place has come… Evil Jin Hoshigaki!"
"Does Evil Jin Hoshigaki go on rampages more than Good Jin Hoshigaki?" Ginza asked in a calm and reasonable tone.
"I believe he does!" Jin responded, "Possibly by an increase of fifty percent!"
"All hail, Evil Jin!" Ginza threw up his hands and began the chant.
"All hail, Evil Jin!" the other Kirigakure genin joined him.
Across the way, Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke all looked on the assembled black uniformed Kirigakure genin with deep dark frowns on their faces.
"I can't believe those idiots held us prisoner for days." Naruto grumbled with a far off look in his eyes.
"I can't believe what my life has become since that big stupid shark boy showed up." Grumbled Sakura as she pulled on her long pink hair.
"Hnnn…. He… is an avenger…" Sasuke declared with a nod.
Kakashi looked at his genin and knew in his heart, that he'd put them into this Chunin Exam for his ego, and that was a terrible, terrible mistake.
-Later in the Hokage's Office-
Kakashi leaned against the wall of during this gathering of the most influential shinobi currently in Konoha including himself and a handful of his fellow elite jonin such as Might Guy and Asuma Sarutobi, the three village elders, the Jonin Commander, and the last active student of the Third Hokage, Jiraiya the Toad Sage.
The tall, wild haired man presented his findings from his most recent ventures as Konoha's spy master, specifically providing details from his stealth infiltration of Kirigakure.
"It's bad…" Jiraiya tsked, "Security in Kirigakure has gotten tighter than a crab's butt, and they've picked up all the infiltrators we've tried to slip in." the man crossed his arms as he frowned, "I spent days slowly penetrating their security by stealth, and even then it felt touch and go despite controlling my chakra so tightly I could hardly use it myself." Jiraiya made an exaggerated stretch of his back in remembrance of the often cramped conditions of the infiltration, "I used everything in my bag of tricks, and even then, I didn't see everything, but I saw a lot and more than enough to know that what's going on in the Land of Water is big, and very bad."
"We've seen some of it here." Hiruzen stated then took a drag on his pipe, letting out a ring of smoke that his old teammate Danzo Shimura swatted away from his face with his one functioning arm.
"I'm willing to bet money that whatever you've seen here isn't even the tip of the iceberg." Jiraiya continued his report to the room, "There's so much screwed up going on in the Mist it's hard to even tell where to begin… might as well start with the root, eh, Shimura?"
Danzo didn't bother to react to the Sanin's needling, far less bothered than Hiruzen occasionally blowing smoke in his face, the austere man refusing to break under their childish bullying.
Noting his missed attempt, Jiraiya resumed, "It's fairly easy to track the Fifth Mizukage's movements day to day as he's seemingly a creature of habit, and that habit is training, all day every day. Himself and others. Zabuza starts each day flooding the village with his clones, something that makes infiltration by anyone below my level a nigh impossibility. He sends out a hundred clones a day who spread throughout the village training people based on a schedule that I found in the Mizukage's office, and let me tell you I almost had a heart attack during that stop on my stay. Zabuza and his new wife, Mei, the former Terumi leader of the rebel forces, barged in after hours and gave me enough material to write my next best seller. The things done in that office disrespect the institution of Kage and were hot as hell!"
Jiraiya's round blank pervy gaze and leaking drool let everyone know the man was hundreds of leagues away reliving the past until he shook his head and got back to work, his colleagues unable to lose any more respect for his conduct after many years working together. After shaking it off he continued, "The quality of the education I saw him handing out was shocking. I observed him covertly for several days and honestly felt like I got many a refresher on subjects we went over back during my days training under Lord Third. Zabuza Momochi seems to have a mastery of the Shinobi Arts endlessly wide and disturbingly deep. From genin to jonin he seemed able to lecture unceasingly about any topic, and I can't recall him repeating himself within the same lecture. All of it good information at each level. I actually made a breakthrough with my Lighting Release after one he did with some jonin."
"Isn't he just twenty six?" Koharu, an elderly woman with her grey hair held in a bun by a golden needle ornament and a former teammate of the Third, asked.
"He's twenty seven today." Hizuren grimaced, "Only a handful of Shinobi across my whole lifetime match that description, and I can't think of anyone else in their generation."
The closest stood in the room with them, but Kakashi's potential remained hamstrung by his long list of unhealed mental trauma. That he made it to his level despite his Spiritual Energy holding him back so extremely spoke volumes of the kind of monster Kakashi Hatake could have become, though perhaps his very inability to move on from grief stems from his raw genius. Regardless, the quality of his Spiritual Energy remains some of the lowest Hiruzen ever felt from a shinobi his age, and if the man could just confront his demons and overcome them, his might could one day shape the geopolitical strategy of every nation. At least, in absence of the man described by Jiraiya so far. Anyone with a wide enough and deep enough understanding of the shinobi arts could rise to the top in this world, even without the innate power of bloodlines. Mastery trumps all.
"His own training makes my feet hurt just watching him." Jiraiya continued, "Somehow, Zabuza found a woman so fast she might be able to give the Raikage a good race, and she trains him till he drops every day, twice a day. His own speed grew during my period of observation. He's closing the gap between them rapidly, and even though that woman seems to not hit as hard as her speed might suggest… he does. Zabuza was a bull of a man before he went through what looks like a second puberty. Now he looks like someone put a bulls muscle on an ox and this woman, Sonic, put wings on that freaky bull-ox."
"Finally, a worthy opponent!" interrupted Might Guy, looking extra pumped in his green jumpsuit, his open flack jacket straining to constrain his steely chest and shoulders.
"Be careful there, Guy, Zabuza also trains his bukijutsu under two previously unknown masters, foreigners possibly, like Sonic, Lester and Shigure. Seeing both of them in action… made my skin crawl. I'd never seen anything like them before. Their skills defied belief, and Zabuza seemed to rapidly learn all the man Lester had to teach, a man who never missed with a weapon no matter the difficulty of the throw, nor the unconventionality of the missile. I saw him putting a random handful of gravel he picked up through moving wooden targets at fifty meters, and then I saw Zabuza copy the feat, though not quite as fast as his mentor, and what Lester is to throwing weapons, Shigure is to melee. I saw her cut through steel practice weapons with a wooden spoon. A gods damned spoon."
"You've painted the image of a disturbing enemy to have." Hiruzen admitted, himself a nigh force of nature with bukijutsu.
"If Zabuza is spending so much time in training, who runs Kirigakure?" Danzo moved the meeting on from the Land of Water's risen star, a threat to Konoha's supremacy the battle scarred old man prepared to do anything to eliminate.
"His wife Mei, another kage level shinobi in her own right with two potent kekkei genkai and the chakra to control battlefields with them." Jiraiya answered, "Zabuza seems to only handle Kiri's strategy and the highest level of diplomacy. Everything else runs through Mei. She's the one seated at the Mizukage's desk… and taken atop it… and beside it … and under it… over and over again… his hips just wouldn't stop… I'm going to make so much money!"
"Jiraiya!" Hiruzen barked, getting his horndog student back on track.
"Apologies." Jiraiya fake apologized and everyone knew it, "Mei runs the domestic administration with the help of Zabuza's apprentices, Gozu, Meizu, and Haku, and her own aides, Ao and Chojuro."
"And external matters?" Danzo questioned, "Sensitive matters."
"That's where things start getting very suspicious, and mysterious." Jiraiya's tone chilled the room without even revealing his observations yet, "Old names, dead names, Gengetsu Hozuki and Yagura Karatachi. I managed to get eyes on both, and can confirm that Yagura is a woman who looks like the Fourth Mizukage and Gengetsu looks like a female version of paintings of the Second Mizukage."
"What do you know about these women? Why did Zabuza use the names of former Mizukage as aliases for them." Danzo continued the questioning, everyone seemingly fine with his direction.
"Yagura was building fortifications around Kirigakure when I observed her, using Coral Release, the kekkei genkai the Fourth Mizukage gained from his mastery of his bijuu, the Three Tails." Jiraiya explained, further souring the mood within the meeting.
"So Yagura isn't dead." Hiruzen mused, calmly hiding his distress, "I don't understand the motivation behind faking his death then appearing so soon after with such a thin disguise. No matter the politics, that's three Kage running Kirigakure, and I have a bad suspicion about this specter of the Second."
"Yeah, this Gengetsu is no pale imitation. I've seen her operating beyond Kiri's walls, putting entire islands full of pirates and cave systems full of bandits to sleep with massive mist assisted genjutsu. All the people she captures are hauled back to Kirigakure and put into a massive underwater facility built using Yagura's coral. I couldn't get inside to see what's going on, security was just too tight around the very limited access point, but I got to see the fruit of that facility in the capital, and what is going on there is also disturbing."
"What did you see at the capital?" Danzo inquired blandly, seeming unphased by all they discussed.
"Kirigakure, with the stamp of approval and even funding from the Daimyo, has completely captured what they refer to as the 'undesirables', and shipped them to Kirigakure, and Yagura's prison called, 'The Pit'." Jiraiya delivered, his obvious disgust in his tone, "All the known and suspected criminals, the homeless, orphans, even political pariahs. All captured by Kirigakure shinobi and taken to The Pit. The Land of Water's Capital feels like a ghost town after dark, everyone stays inside and quiet, only going out during the daylight hours for their business. People are terrified that they might be next, but also, a growing number of people are happy about someone finally doing something about 'the undesirables', saying that the Capital finally feels like a safe city for working people. What's more, I got to see the first batch of those who disappeared returned to the capital. They are going through what has to be the world's most effective re-education program. Hundreds of fresh and unformed guardsmen and women now patrol the streets with the symbol Hidden Mist branded on their foreheads, like a mockery of the headband system. I captured one and found out that the mark is a cursed mark, set to go off if the bearer falls under genjutsu. Instant kill switch. Sound familiar to you, Shimura?"
"Classic black ops opsec." Shimura let the accusation roll right off his back, like water off a duck.
"He fought like hell against my genjutsu, which I chose to use when I knew he wasn't going to break otherwise. The programming was deep and absolute. No amount of pain and cutting caused him to falter." Jiraiya spoke aloud the dark side of intel work, "And when I finally broke through, his cursed seal activated. Lights out, permanently. What goes on in The Pit remains a mystery."
After a brief pause in the meeting, Danzo continued his questioning, "Is there aught else to report during this emergency session?"
"The worst is yet to come." Jiraiya smirked with no mirth in his eyes, "Zabuza digging dead names and putting them on oddly fitting females isn't limited to Yagura and Gengetsu, it's damn near endemic. He has matches for seven prior members of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist, and the one for Ameyuri Ringo was an identical match for the psychotic prodigy who died during the Third World War. Stronger than that girl too, by a lot from a spar I observed. She fought a horde of Zabuza's clones using the Kiba Blades and what looked like the Raikage's Lightning Cloak."
"That's… not good at all." Hiruzen muttered as he wracked his brains for a possible answer, and not liking where his mind took him."
"I have seen the likely answer to what is going on." Jiraiya lowered his gaze to the floor, "And unless Zabuza had found me out and was feeding me false info… its… world shaking."
Jiraiya hesitated to speak until Hiruzen goaded him, "Everyone here is trusted with the future of Konoha."
"One night, I followed the real Zabuza." Jiraiya began, "He entered the sub levels of the Mizukage palace, the vaults that their ANBU keep secured tighter than the Mizukage's office, and he came out with an Edo Tensai corpse." Hiruzen's hiss of disgust and shock interrupted Jiraiya briefly then he continued, "Pakura of the Scorch release. He took her on… a beautiful date where they essentially traded barbs back and forth like really sassy friends. It was honestly some of the most wholesome stuff I saw during my time in Kiri, only surpassed by Zabuza's incredibly loving relationship with his apprentice, Haku. Lots of missionary with deep eye contact, and cowgirl, also deep eye contact. Never doggy, but occasionally they spiced things up with the mating press, and they are definitely having a baby together. Their love was so pure that I honestly feel bad about all the money I'm going to make writing wholesome girlporn about them."
"Get back to the Edo Tensai Pakura." Danzo growled.
"Yeah, yeah. Sorry for shining a soft warm light during this dark and depressing meeting." Jiraiya scoffed, "Anyway, it was mostly a super weird necrophilia date, but at the end Zabaza asked her if she was finally going to swear loyalty to him and get revived completely."
"What?" Hiruzen barked as he coughed on his smoke.
"Pakura told him that she wasn't ready to live a life as his slave and Zabuza ended the Edo Tensai." Jiraiya finished and shook his head, "I'll leave you to your own conclusions, but to me, it looked like Zabuza Momochi has created a new level of Edo Tensai, that full revives and enslaves the victim, but only if they accept it."
"Meaning… he has possibly resurrected Kirigakure's strongest shinobi and kunoichi as his loyal servants." Kakashi Hatake softly spoke up for the first time in the meeting.
"I want to believe that I got sloppy and they fed me a crazy performance to bring back…" Jiraiya frowned heavily, "But that… just feels like wishful thinking."
Hiruzen brought out a hefty binder and flipped through it, confirm an oddity that stuck out to his when he received it.
"This… is the security documents submitted by Kirigakure." Hiruzen spoke out, "Along with the Daiymo, a large number of the Land of Water's notables are on their way here now for the Chunin Exam Finals. They've all hired Kirigakure Shinobi for their protection details. Three companies of chunin, along with the thirty six jonin sensei that arrived with the genin applicants… and the Daimyo has hired seven jonin for his own protection… Ringo Ameyuri, Jinen Akebino, Mangetsu Hozuki, Kushimaru Kuriarare, Jinpachi Munashi, Fuguki Suikazan, and Juzo Biwa. Seven Swordsmen of the Mist."
After taking a long hit on his pipe, Hiruzen unleashed a beastly stream of smoke towards the ceiling and sighed, "It is obvious… that Zabuza Momochi… and Orochimaru… are more than working together."
"What?" Jiraiya pulled a confused face, "How? All the intel says he's the man behind the Sound village, and that he's been courting Sand."
"An elaborate smokescreen for his real plans to take over Kirigakure." Hiruzen nodded, "He invested just enough to make us believe that the threat was coming from Sand and Sound, so we wouldn't see the Mist kill shot coming. Meanwhile his real resources are building up across the sea. Truly an Orochimaru plan. The mass kidnappings, the underground facilities, the obsession with the dead coming back to life. It's so obvious, Zabuza Momochi is not the Mizukage, it is Orochimaru, wearing Zabuza's face!" the old man stood up, "We will have to be very careful in our preparation to not alert them to our seeing through their plan, otherwise Orochimaru will plan around our plans that we planned around his plan. This will be the greatest test of our capacity as shinobi, against the most deadly foe our village has faced since Madara Uchiha, but Konoha will endure, and Konoha will rise up in victory again! If my former student thinks he can show up wearing some beefy guy's face and get the drop on me, he has another thing coming! Death to Orochimaru, and death to Kirigakure!"
He raised up his fist and cried out "Death!"
Those gathered felt swept up in the old man's enthusiasm, also raising their fists and shouting, "Death!"
-meanwhile on a yacht on route to the Land of Fire-
"Sushi! Dango! My friend's boat! We won't go down because my dick can float!" I sang while my homie Hirohito threw his head back in raucous laughter.
My twenty seventh birthday party hosted on the Daimyo's personal pleasure yacht raged hard. I had my boy's Gozu and Meizu, and Hiro brought his younger brother Sanzui, a master sailor in charge of his brother's navy. We united like five lone wolves who had found their wolf pack, aided by a plethora of strippers and cocaine.
We partied hard in celebration of everything going right in the world.
-meanwhile observing the meeting in Konoha-
Orochimaru trembled as he held his hand over his mouth. Never had he ever cherished the holes Danzo built into Konoha's security more than right now. He needed to get the evil old man something nice for enabling him to witness this incredibly stupid turn of events, and also clueing him in on another possible path to defeating death. Stay safe Zabuza Momochi, for Orochimaru is coming for you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can support me and my family at
ko-fi.com/jmanm