Chapter 40

"So now that you've figured it out, what do you want to do?" Chiyo asked as we both stared at the specimen in front of us. A floating mass in a vat that had bones sticking out of it. It was, all things considered, quite a disgusting sight. Just a massive lump of flesh with white bones poking out of it. But it was proof of concept. I ignored the notice that I'd gained five levels in Wet Tinkering from finally completing the project. My Wet Tinkering skill worked a bit differently than all the others. Instead of getting better on a daily, or even hourly scale as I continually practiced, it was more like the skill levelled up with completed projects. I couldn't intuitively do anything that was out of the range of my existing skills, but that also wasn't a hard cap. Not when it came to this skill. I couldn't do it intuitively, but with studying, experiments, and even by leaning on other people's skills like I did with Chiyo. This was as much her project as it was mine, even if it was only the Wet Tinkering skill that finally gave us the starting point to work things through from.

"Obviously move on to human trials." I answered, only to get a resigned sigh from the woman.

"I knew this was coming" She said as I felt her fingers move with the sand that always floated in the surrounding air.

Puppets sprung into action, moving for my body at once. I did an excellent job of pretending to be startled, in my own opinion. Eyes wide, mouth slightly ajar, and taking a few seconds to react.

Of course, when I did, it was with maximum brutality. Sand, sharpened with wind release energy, floated around me in concentric circles, slicing every puppet that dared attempt to lay a hand on me to pieces.

"Wh-what are you doing, Chiyo?" I asked, adding hesitation and shock to my voice.

"You know precisely what. You think I'll just sit by and watch you turn into Orochimaru? You think I'd let you kill dozens of children for you to accomplish your goals?"

"The fuck are you talking about?"

"The clinical trials"

I burst into laughter. Full-blown laughter. Doubled over, holding my stomach kind of laugher.

"You think I intend to experiment on children? What kind of idiot psychopath do you take me for? The wolves are at the door. Konoha is coming. Iwa is stirring, and Kumo waits patiently for a chance to strike at us. With all this to consider, do you think I would spend the majority of my time? Hours upon hours, day after day for weeks on a project that would see no return for years on end?" I asked, looking at her like she had an extra head. I saw the betrayal and attack coming, but the rationale behind it was just ridiculous.

"But how would you do it then?"

"Easily. Why do you think we've been experimenting on dead cells? We've been perfecting the process for integrating the kekkei genkai into an already existing body. All we need to do is perfect the process, so chakra rejection is not a problem, and we will have no difficulty integrating it into teenage subjects at the very least. Adults might be far off with the fact that their chakra systems are fully developed, and such things do not take kindly to change." I said, explaining to her. I could see where she was coming from, even if I was fine with making her sound stupid. To be completely honest, if I hadn't just gained seven levels to the Wet Tinkering skills, I'd actually have been forced to use infant test subjects for at least the earliest part of the project.

But seven levels up, and I could see ways to skirt around the body's refusal to be changed. I could see ways to force the kekkei genkai in. Sure, with what I had now, the best I could do was with someone whose chakra network was so terribly mutilated that it would have no power to reject the imputed kekkei Genkai. Even better, I could heal the chakra network with the kekkei genkai. Transplant Kimimaro's entire fucking chakra network along with the base genes for the Dead Bone Pulse. It was ambitious. Ambitious and slightly stupid. Just the kind of project I'd love to undertaker, and thankfully I had the perfect specimen.

XXXXX

"Is the subject prepped and ready to go?" I asked Chiyo, who was serving as my second set of hands for this surgery. Normally, there would be an entire team of medics attached to an experiment of this scale, but the truth was the team was small for a reason. I could not trust most of the village. Even those who were ostensibly on my side could be coaxed and cajoled into revealing something that they ought not to. No, no one would know what I was trying to do until I perfected it.

When I finally figured out Kekkei Genkai transplanting, things could finally begin to move. The last two months have been a tense affair on the borders. We had both Iwa and Konoha nin at their respective borders, itching and raring to go. War would come sooner or later, but while Danzo cemented his rule, he would not strike. Doubly so for whoever ended up in the Tsuchikage seat at the end of the day. Almost three months since the death of Onoki the Fence Sitter, and the best that the grumpy rock heads had been able to do was narrow down the list of potential replacements to two. A father-daughter conflict it was to be. Kurotsuchi was the one chosen by Onoki. She was the one that the Kage who had led them for decades trusted to lead them to the future. Kitsuchi, on the other hand, was the undisputed greatest ninja of Iwa who didn't have a tailed beast in his belly. He wasn't S-ranked. But he was so high among their A-ranks that the distinction might have simply been academic. I didn't have much of an idea as to his precise strength level, but what history had shown was that people could oftentimes grow into the seat. The secret techniques of the Kage who came before was a hell of a level up for any newcomer to the seat.

Kitsuchi was the easy choice. The safe choice. But still, there were those who spoke that it was not Onoki's will. And when you add Kitsch's reluctance to take up the seat himself, you had a conundrum on your hands. One candidate with no desire for the position, and another with all the desire in the world but very little in terms of support.

I was proof of concept that a young Kage could work, but the fact that I'd not just beaten her Grandfather, but also captured her and her bodyguard so thoroughly that it was only through the help of an outsider that she was able to escape, was a black mark on her record. And it was a stain that did not wash off easily. She was supposed to be the Tsuchikage's bodyguard at the end of the day. Letting him get killed was a failure on her part. I was not so blind that I did not see the similarities between her situation and mine.

"Yes he is. Sedated and prepared for the surgery. The needed damage has been inflicted. Shall we begin?" Chiyo asked me in return as we walked into the room.

I kept my eyes on the specimen on the operating table. A young man. A boy, really. He could have been no older than 16. He was a Genin from Iwagakure. When the need for test subjects became apparent, I'd sent a clone across the border to do some hunting and of all the captured ninja, he was by far the least promising. That was why he got the rare pleasure of getting to go first.

XXXXX- TEMARI

"So, what do you think?" Kankuro asked from beside her as they lay crouched with the rest of the Sand special force. She knew that she didn't belong there. Not with the greats that were assembled along here with her. From the left to the right, not a single person apart from her and her brother was below the rank of Jonin. Looking even further would give her a view of her Kage, standing at the very front, having a conversation with Granny Chiyo about one matter or the other. They were two peas in a pod. It made her a bit worried that her brother's closest friend apart from that Mebuki bitch was a woman old enough to have been his father's mother's mother. The old fart was that old, she was sure.

"About what?" She replied, resisting the urge to tell Kankuro to shut up with the ease that came with long practice. The truth of the matter was that she wasn't even sure they should be talking. None of the Jonin were talking. Gaara was, but he was the Kage. And Kage's siblings or not, she was ill at ease with getting on any nerves as they were here.

"The mission, of course" He replied almost instantly in a whisper. At least her idiot brother was beginning to understand the situation.

"I don't think anything about it. Kazekage-sama-" "Kazekage-sama?" "— has given his orders and we must obey. Yes, Kazekage-sama. We're in public, remember. Calling him by his name in this kind of setting would do him no favours. If even his siblings can't show him respect, why should anyone else?" She said, explaining to him.

"But I mean he only gave us permission to come because I asked Ebizo-sensei if we could get in on the super top secret mission they were clearly planning, and he somehow managed to convince Ga-Kazekage-sama." At least he managed to correct the slip there. But he was right at the end of the day, she thought to herself. Kankuro had indeed been the one to convince Ebizo to ask for them to get on the mission. He was also right that the mission was the worst kept secret in Suna. All the Jonin and elders meeting up for hours on end about something, and then smaller groups of Jonin having private meetings with Gaara at different points in the past three months. It was certainly a worst kept secret than whatever the fuck was happening to Shira. He said he was sick. He certainly looked sick when Temari and Kankuro had got to visit him at the hospital yesterday. But the fact that they hadn't been allowed to see him for close to a month since he had a meeting with Gaara that the rest of us had been excused from.

No, something was definitely going on there. And then there was this. They were going to be part of the first act of war. Sand was going to kick off the Fourth Great Shinobi War, at least that was what Gaara said about it. They were to be the tip of the spear. A first strike and push into Iwa to acquire priority targets and sabotage their infrastructure. The goal was to basically take them out of the fight as quickly as possible before rerouting to strengthen our borders and prepare for Konoha's own push.

That was why this mission was given priority security. Gaara was paranoid about anyone finding out the details of the mission. If they did, we'd get 'buggered in the arse from behind' as one of the Jonin, Jihei, put it. With all the strongest ninja away attacking, if any other village (namely Konoha) got it in their heads to finally attack us now, then we'd be pretty much over and done for. Gaara had announced that Chiyo was to head the Village's defences in his absence and after training under Ebizo-sensei for so long, Temari knew the old woman couldn't be a slouch when it came to fighting. After all, she'd been widely recognised as the stronger of the pair in their youth. Even the bingo books still gave her a higher bounty and threat rating than her brother, even though they both carried the gleaming red 'A rank' at the top of their entries.

"It doesn't matter why we're here. All that matters is that we do our parts. We're under Ebizo-sensei, and Kazekage-sama would not have allowed us to come with if he felt that we weren't ready for the mission or to do what was necessary." Temari replied, hushing him finally as it seemed that they were going to move out soon. Gaara had left his conversation with Chiyo and was walking back towards us. The wind blew heavily as he walked, making his red hair wave about and ruing all my efforts to get it into some semblance of order this morning.

His battle outfit, the red one - piece that he'd taken to wearing, moved little with the wind, with how closely it got to his skin. She wondered how comfortable that could have been in the desert heat. With clothing that close to his skin, any sand that managed to get under his clothes must have itched like crazy. At least it would have, if he wasn't Subaku no Gaara.

"There's no need for fancy speeches or whatnot. You know your jobs. Don't die." Gaara said once he got close enough to us, having his voice carry through the winds to every pair of ears. We were a bit outside Suna's walls already, so we only had a few hours of travel between us and the Earth Country.

Gaara lifted his hands, and with only a flex of his will, he reminded us all of why he was the Kage, Temari thought to herself in shock at the feat. The sands around us rose from the ground, carrying us with them. It was a massive platform. Bigger than anything She'd ever seen him do. Big enough to carry all thirty of them, and it wasn't even cramped. No one reacted to the sudden change, as they began to float upwards, moving towards the sky. As Gaara had explained earlier, they would be approaching Iwa from above to avoid notice for most of the journey and to preserve as much of the element of surprise as possible. 'There's no hidden village on the planet, including this one, that has a plan of what to do when enemies suddenly fall from the skies' Gaara had noted with a bright smile on his face during the planning sessions.

XXXXX- THE LAVA MISTRESS

Mei Term was a beautiful woman. Breathtaking in every respect. She knew this. She never hesitated to use it to her advantage, but oftentimes it vexed her to no end. Whenever someone would underestimate her or cast aspersions on her skill as a shinobi, it all came from people who believed that she was nothing more than what they saw her as. A pretty face on the most amazing body to walk the earth. This was one of those times, she thought to herself as she stood across from her adversary.

She cursed Ao in her mind for this idea. After Yogurt's death, the civil war had ended for the most part, but not in its entirety. There were still pockets of resistance across the country, and it was against the leader of the largest of those packets, Mangetsu Hozuki, that she now faced off.

"So, Mizukage-sama" he said the title with disdain, as if he had no respect for it now that she wielded it, Mei thought to herself as the Hozuki boy began to speak.

"What do you offer us for our allegiance?" He asked with no small amount of audacity. His brother stood by his side, the young brat looking like he worshiped the very ground his older brother walked on.

"Your lives. You became rogue ninja of Kirigakure the day you fled after losing the war. But I will choose peace now. I will reunify our people, and this will begin once you bend the knee. Yagura is dead. I am Mizukage now. You serve me." She said, not bothering to be delicate about her words. These were rogue elements and if that boy gave her that look for much longer, she doubted she'd be able to last much longer before plucking those eyeballs from his stupid head.

"Our lives? Hahaha" The brat had the audacity to laugh. To laugh in her face. She turned to Ao, only to see him shaking his head. He was advising patience. He saw a way to get what they wanted without consigning the Mist to another war that she couldn't afford. He thought these boys, Mangetsu and his crew of wannabe swordsmen, could be reasoned with. She didn't. It was admirable of him to think so, but she was the Kage because of her superior judgement. And that same judgement was telling her to peel the skin from their bones.

"I will break you all over my knees" She said, threat clear.

"Fine then." Hozuki spoke instantly, straightening up and removing all traces of mirth from his face in seconds.

"I will duel you. If you win, I bend the knee. My swords, all of them, are yours. If I win, I become Mizukage, and you serve me" he said, smiling brightly. Oh, she was so going to enjoy dealing with him. He heard news from Suna and thought himself as Kiri's own Subaku no Gaara. She'd enjoy breaking that misconception, and breaking the boy as well.

"I accept" She said, directing her ninja to give them space to fight as the Hozuki brat did the same. Ao walked over and whispered to her, "Please don't kill him. With the threats beyond our borders, Mangetsu Hozuki and his swordsmen are a vital tool for Kiri's future." She nodded. His counsel was wise, even if she found it difficult to completely agree with him.

When the space was cleared and Ao stepped up to referee, she began moulding her chakra in preparation. "This duel shall be to yield or death." He said, getting some boos from the Hozuki brat squad. Of course, the bloodthirsty fools failed to see that the option to yield was for their benefit. "On my mark, begin" He said, dropping his outstretched hand suddenly and jumping backwards.