The Nest
"Oh wow it's so much warmer here." Shirokumo happily says the second he lands on his legs. All eight of them.
"So how is our Summoner?" Arachne greets him warmly. "I haven't seen him in a while."
"He's close." Shirokumo says to the much larger spider. "He's very, very close."
"Close to what?" Arachne blinks all eight of her eyes.
"Passing the Trials. He only has one left."
"Do you think he will pass them?" Arachne eagerly asks. "Having a Sage is so much fun, plus we can lord it over all the other Summon creatures. Ha ha we've got a Sage and you don't!"
"The Toads have a Sage." Shirokumo bluntly points out.
"Pfft he's half a Sage at best. Never finished the training." Arachne easily dismisses Jiraiya. "We will make sure he's a true Sage, a perfect Sage."
"If he passes."
"Yes, if he passes." Arachne agrees. "There's only one left though. He could pass quicker than we expected."
"He's already blown through them. It takes other's decades to pass one yet he only has one left."
"True." Arachne clasps her front two legs together. "It's all so exciting!"
"Yeah. Exciting. Let's go with that."
...
Back in the Land of Snow
RIght now most of the shinobi are gathered in this one room. Anko is continuing to teach - or torment not really sure which one it is - Ino something. She's slowly making Ino stretch backwards farther and farther. It's actually very impressive, Ino's flexibility is outstanding. She can almost bend all the way down backwards to touch her toes. The only reason why I say it might be tormenting and not teaching is because Ino is blushing the entire time.
That might be because Anko forced her back into just the purple coat for now since we're inside. And… well… a coat that doesn't close and bending over backwards don't mix well.
Kakashi, on the other hand, is being his usual self. He's lounging in a chair and doing exactly what I expected. He's reading his books. Although he's swapped out the green one I just gave him for a bright yellow one, no idea why. Maybe he wanted a change? Meh it's not important.
Naruto is the only one missing, he's on Koyuki watch right now. On top of that he's got around ten-ish shadow clones acting as scouts around the abandoned town we've made camp in just incase Doto and his idiotic hat defiling shinobi decide to come back.
That leaves Shikamaru and me. We're sitting next to each other, doing our own things. He's practically asleep and I'm idly staring off into space while pondering how to start talking to him.
Well, here goes nothing.
"So…" I semi awkwardly attempt to open up conversation with Shikamaru. "How's things?"
"You want the truth?" He asks without bothering to look at me.
"Yes?" Honestly I probably don't. He's going to say something bad, I can feel it.
"Shitty. This entire mission has been one giant problem after the next." He finally looks at me with an accusatory glare.
"Okay, totally my fault. I admit it." I called it, I knew he'd say something like that. "But I'm here to help now. Willingly this time."
"Doesn't make up for all the shit you've done recently." Shikamaru sighs. "But it is a start."
Yes! It's a start, that means I'm doing something right for once! WOOT WOOT!
"So Shikamaru, since you're the team leader and all, is there any specific role you want me to take? I know before I was pretty adamant about only protecting Koyuki but I can do more if you want me to."
"Keeping everyone alive is your greatest priority." Shikamaru instantly decides, I bet he already thought about it. "As much as it pains me to admit, you're probably the next strongest here after Kakashi. He's running offense so you'll be running defense with Anko. Naruto, me and Ino are all bouncing between the two as needed."
"Cool. Simple enough. But I'm still going after Doto if he shows up, I do need that armor."
"Whatever, by the time he decides to fight we'll have taken down most of his lackeys so we can divert more manpower to defense."
"EVERYONE COME QUICK!" Naruto shouts at the top of his lungs as he bursts into the room. "There's - there's - oh just get outside! I don't know what the hell it is!"
The relaxed mood of everyone is instantly replaced with one of alertness. We've all drawn the same conclusion based off of Naruto's actions, something is wrong. Really wrong.
So like a bunch of highly trained killers that have been taught to react to threats at the drop of a hat we all move like a well oiled machine to get outside and assess the threat that has Naruto so worked up.
"I don't see anything." Anko says as she scans the horizon for threats.
"Me either." Ino is scanning a different section of the horizon than Anko.
"Naruto." Shikamaru crassly says to the freaking out genin. "If this is a prank-"
"Over there! Look! In the sky!" Naruto points due east towards the sky, sure enough there's something there. The only reason no one noticed it before was because it used various mountains and the sunrise to hide itself, the glaring brightness of the sun drowned out whatever this is while the towering peaks blocked it completely from our vision. "What the hell is that!?"
We're not the only people to be outside, there's a large part of both the group that assaulted the train and the movie crew outside too. We're not the only ones to notice the object flying towards us.
"It's Doto's warship!" One of the men that attempted to assault the train shouts. "He's found us and brought out his warship to exterminate us! We have to run!"
"Are you fucking kidding me?" I say in exasperation. "That's not a warship, it's a fucking blimp. Doto has a blimp. One of his shinobi has a snowboard. Another has wings. The last one has a narwhal jutsu. What the hell is going on with this country?"
"You know what that is?" Shikamaru asks me with his entire intellect devoted to figuring out how to take it down. "How do we stop it?"
"Well it depends on what gas was used to provide it with lift." I begin to explain. "How blimps work is there's a giant balloon, for lack of a better term, attached to the thing that is supposed to fly.
The balloon is filled with a gas that's lighter than what the atmosphere is made up of to give it a kind of buoyancy, like a boat in water. Instead it's that giant thing in the air. The two most likely gasses to be used to provide the blimp with it's 'lift' are hydrogen and helium. Hydrogen is the better gas to pick if you're basing it solely off of lift power since it's lighter than helium but hydrogen has a nasty side effect of being horrendously flammable.
Just one spark and boom, no more blimp.Helium, on the other hand, is not flammable but provides less lift power.
So if Doto filled up his blimp with hydrogen we're going to make a massive fireball the likes of which this world has never seen before - which is the one I'm hoping for because that shit would be awesome - but if it's helium then we have to do it the old fashioned way, use a fuckton of explosive tags or really impressive jutsu to blast it out of the sky. Or we could just board it and kick everyone else off of it. Preferably while still in the air."
The only response I get is silence and slack jawed observers.
"What?" I quickly rub my face. "Was there something on my face? Did I get it off?"
"That… was incredibly specific." Kakashi is the first to recover. "How do you know all of that?"
Shit. Time to lie my ass off and hope no one catches me. It's not like I can say I was bored one day and Googled it. Oh what's Google you ask, this magical thing on the internet from my previous life. Yeah, that would go over well.
"Uh hello? I've been living and training under Orochimaru, sure he's a shinobi first but he's a scientist second. He likes to know how things work and I've picked up a bit of this and that from him."
"Okay." Naruto pulls himself together. "Alvarcus is actually incredibly smart. Never would have guessed that."
"What the hell? Did you think I was a moron or something?" I accuse Naruto.
"A little?" Naruto admits shamefully.
"You do the weirdest stuff ever." Ino blandly points out. "If I haven't been inside your head and seen just a glimpse of what your thought process is like I'd consider you a massive idiot too."
"Yeah you don't exactly scream intelligent. Nor do you look the part." Anko agrees with the other two shinobi.
...
A/N:
If we hit 500 Power Stones by the end of this week, I'll drop an extra chapter as a thank-you!
Thanks for the support! ;)
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