Chapter 16: Chiyo's Art

Hayate, proctor of the third exam, knew what was happening the instant the Leviathan poked its first head out from beneath the arena floor. His girlfriend was ANBU, and things trickled down to him. Things like disquiet in Suna and a sudden lack of intelligence on Orochimaru. In an instant he was running, knowing that the alarm had been raised, and looking for a defensible place.

He found it in the apartment he shared with Yūgao, with one side built flat against the stone of the Hokage Monument and the other facing outwards. He found her there already, setting traps on the walkway leading inside. His sweetheart gave a perfunctory greeting, but they worked in unbroken silence as Hayate picked up some tools and started installing the generic-looking tripwire holders the ANBU were so fond of.

Yūgao's head perked up at a sound Hayate couldn't quite hear.

"What is it?"

"They have someone using the Hiraishin technique," she said softly. "ANBU was taken out in about six minutes. Whoever it is, they're coming this way."

Hayate's blood ran cold. "Why were all of the assassins in the village?" he asked, coughing.

"The Hokage recalled most of us before the exam. Something about providing security." Yūgao snorted. "We were toast. Too many of us were traitors. I barely escaped with my life."

Hayate coughed again, sagging against the wall as his vision grew faint. Yūgao, concerned, picked him up and carried him inside. Glancing around the apartment, she grabbed a bottle of painkillers that Hayate had a prescription for and a length of rope.

"Wha–" cough "What're y-you do–" cough "–doing?" Hayate wheezed, looking alarmed at the prospect of being left out of the coming battle.

"You're too sick to fight, dear," Yūgao informed him. "I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to sit this one out."

"Wh– No!" he cried, trying to wiggle out of her grasp. Almost playfully, Yūgao bound his legs together and tied his wrists behind his back. Then, she dumped him in the closet.

"Here's the medicine if you need it," she said, balancing the lidless bottle on his chest. "I'll come back for you as soon as we take out the ninja using the Hiraishin."

She shut the door and left. Hayate seethed in the dark, his brooding only punctuated by the rattling coughs that knocked the pill bottle from his chest.

.:.

Kabuto left the day after Orochimaru's address. He moved in the general direction of Tanzaku Quarters, the gambling capital of Fire Country, and travelled underground for three days. It was pathetically easy to track Tsunade's progress around the city, after recruiting a few locals with generous donations of ryō. Their search parameters were 'legendary sucker'.

Less than twelve hours later, he was walking into a casino at the far edge of town, where the lights were brightest in the fading daylight. As he entered, he almost immediately ran into a dark-haired woman jogging through the crowd. She bounced off him and looked away, flustered.

"My, you're in a hurry," he said.

"I should have watched where I was going," she apologized. "Have you seen a pig running around here?"

Kabuto's smile grew. "A pig? One just passed by me a moment ago."

"Can you take me to him?"

Kabuto led her from the entrance to the salad bar, where a tiny porcine figure was unsuccessfully attempting to jump up to the food.

"Tonton!" the woman exclaimed, scooping the errant pig into her arms. She turned back to him, smiling gratefully.

"Thanks, mister..."

"Yakushi. Kabuto Yakushi." He didn't feel the need to use a pseudonym. He was there on official business, best to make a good impression.

"Shizune Katō," she introduced herself. Then she was gone, moving with true shinobi speed back to her master's side. Kabuto followed, sticking to the shadows in the brightly-coloured casino. As it happened, getting close to Tsunade was next to impossible for the average man because the Legendary Sucker was practically free money. As she drifted from roulette to dice to poker, a crowd followed in the hopes of playing with her. Now it was blackjack.

"Hit me," Tsunade said, glancing at her cards. A four, a two and a ten. The dealer flipped over an eight, pushing her total to twenty-two. Growling, she threw her hand on the table and stalked off, leaving her money behind.

The crowd thinned enough for him to get at her when she chanced upon a slot machine. Shizune sat on a nearby chair and watched tiredly as Tsunade fed the one-armed bandit coin after coin. Kabuto waited until she was between spins before approaching.

"Your former teammate sends his regards," he told her. Tsunade stiffened.

"You're one of Jiraiya's spies?" She snorted. "Or maybe you're one of his bastards. Same hair colour, right?"

"Not that teammate," he said lightly.

Tsunade watched the rolling wheels as they slid past a payout, leaving her with nothing. "What does Orochimaru want with me?" she asked quietly.

"Your services as a medic," Kabuto answered smoothly. "There is a man in our organization who is dying of a disease I cannot identify or treat, and as troubling as that is we feel that gaps in my study should be circumvented at our earliest convenience. That is, we need you to serve as a physician to Kimimaro."

"Kimimaro," Tsunade said, rolling the name around in her mouth. "Funny... I've never heard of him. Is he one of those insufferable shinobi branded with your master's juinjutsu?"

Kabuto suppressed a laugh. Oh, if she could see Konoha now...

"That he is, my lady," he said politely. "And I assure you that we will compensate you well for your work."

"What can you offer her?" Shizune said frostily. "Master has power, wealth and indefinite leave from the Third Hokage."

"Well, the Third Hokage is dead," Kabuto said casually. "In any case, you'll have to come back to get that license renewed, although Lord Aburame may not be as sympathetic to your argument as your old sensei. But even beyond that, Lord Orochimaru is generous. He can give you... this."

Kabuto held up two things in his left hand: a severed finger and a vial of blood. The severed finger had been pried from a battlefield long ago, and the blood wiped from a kunai by Orochimaru himself almost a lifetime before, both in preparation for this day. Tsunade had no way of identifying either of them, but recognition flared in her amber eyes.

"Are... are those what I think they are?" she said haltingly, not daring to believe what Orochimaru offered her.

"They are," the other medic confirmed. "Heal Kimimaro Kaguya, and Lord Orochimaru will give you back what you once had. All we need is your healing expertise and these are yours."

"Lady Tsunade?" Shizune demanded, her hand latching onto Tsunade's collar. "What is he saying? What are... You can't seriously be considering this, can you?"

"Tell me one thing, Yakushi," Tsunade said dangerously. "How did Sarutobi die?"

"Kusanagi's edge," Kabuto answered shamelessly. "Is that a yes?"

In response, Tsunade kicked him in the chest. Kabuto smashed backwards through two craps tables and another row of slot machines, sliding to a stop by a wall. He stood up, green chakra billowing around the point of impact as he worked to repair his ribs. Despite the pain crashing through his body, Kabuto was pleased. Tsunade Senju was notoriously touchy, but the carrot the snake sannin dangled in front of her was too much for her to resist.

She stood up, grass-coloured haori emblazoned with 'Gamble' billowing behind her. Civilians were edging away from the potential fight nervously, though the lure of the casino was too powerful for them to flee entirely.

"Shizune!" Tsunade barked. Her apprentice jumped to attention, following behind Tsunade with Tonton squalling in her arms.

She stopped next to Kabuto and forcefully pulled him to his feet, putting some of her famed strength into the grip.

"Let's go," she muttered.

Success.

.:.

Naruto was beginning to miss sunlight. It was borderline painful to wake up to the half-light of the workshop's lamps, and Chiyo's frequent absences were dull. He filled the boredom by tinkering with the available puppets, trying out new creations. A short lesson on reticulated joints led to his creation of a snake puppet. It moved somewhat like a real snake, though his whimsical colour scheme of bright orange with pink highlights was a tad hard on the eye.

He eyed the selection of blades Chiyo availed herself of, wondering if he could give it fangs. There were easily hundreds of knives, swords, daggers, kunai and more lying around the workshop, all without hilts. Puppeteers needed to make their toys dangerous, and that meant things that were often impractical or impossible for humans to use. Blades that jutted out of the wrist, fire-proof metal that was too brittle for anything but novel anti-ninjutsu defence, poison so deadly it could kill if inhaled, all of these were at Naruto's disposal.

It was a shame he couldn't use his new snake puppet. That required chakra threads, which meant chakra, something he didn't have much of right then. So he opened a few drawers on the tables until he came to one marked 'Karambit'. The small knives inside looked like they were meant to be held in a closed fist, but the tips were wickedly sharp, and all of them fang-shaped. Gleefully, Naruto snatched two of them and began the slow process of filing them down to about half their original size.

He wondered what kind of poison to use, and whether the fangs should be added in such a way that they broke off in a target's skin. The answer to the first question, as it turned out, was curare, and the answer to the second was yes.

Chiyo shuffled into the workshop, rubbing her eyes as she worked up the nerve to deal with Naruto. Perhaps she could have delegated the task of occupying him to someone else, but only she commanded the respect needed for the task.

"Hey, granny," Naruto called. He was hunched over that cobbled-together piece of wood he called a puppet, working arduously to give it... fangs?

"My word, I've never had a use for those!" Chiyo chuckled. "A man much older than I gave them to me and my brother when we were young, and I've simply kept them out of nostalgia. You never cease to surprise me, Naruto."

"This is Shūtai," Naruto said, flipping the snake over on its back. The belly now sported the kanji for 'Abomination' in pink ink.

'Abomination indeed,' Chiyo thought, cringing inwardly at the choice of colour.

"Naruto, this puppet won't work," she explained. "You've made it well, but it won't work in the hands of a puppeteer. The angles of movement are too restricted."

"Oh yeah?" Naruto challenged. He picked up the snake and thrust it at her. Chiyo stared at it, and then accepted his challenge. She wrapped five chakra threads around the puppet's length, trapping and controlling its six-foot-long body. She tried to make it move along the ground, but Shūtai's gears ground painfully every time she moved her hand. With a little effort she lifted the puppet from the ground and tried again, but it still stubbornly refused to function.

"No, no, no!" Naruto groaned, "you're doing it wrong. You need to make it... snake-like. It's a snake thingie, you gotta move it in a snake... snake way. Grrr, just lemme do it!"

Naruto's frustration reminded her of another puppeteer, one whose first creations were odder than she'd expected. Frustrated by her luck in choosing apprentices, Chiyo motioned him forwards and seized his wrist.

"I can release some of the pressure the seal puts on your chakra system," she explained, inspecting the swirl printed there. "You should have enough chakra for the usual ten threads, but that might be too much. Stop if you start feeling dizzy, I don't want to have to pick you up."

She picked up a sponge and wiped a speck of ink from the seal. Chiyo briefly instructed Naruto in the basics of creating chakra threads, which he was grateful didn't require any great degree of chakra control. Slowly, beads of sweat popping up on his forehead, Naruto forced the glowing blue substance through the tenketsu on his fingertips. Slowly, they wrapped around Shūtai's body and reached into the joints.

"See, you gotta move it like this!"

Amazingly, it moved. The snake coiled around itself and raised its head, baring metal fangs dripping with clear liquid. Chiyo decided to put a lock on her poison cabinet. Naruto maneuvred the orange-and-pink puppet across the floor, then to himself, and then up his leg. Rather than straight motions, the snake's body jerked back and forth, using friction to propel itself forward instead of the puppeteer's strength.

Well, she could see why he did it. She'd neglected to mention that aspect of puppeteering, so it was logical that he'd find an alternative.

Naruto found the snake around his own torso and smiled.

"See?" he said.

Chiyo nodded thoughtfully. "I think you're ready to use Daughter-In-Law," she said. "You improvise well, but now that you understand the tool, it's time to learn how to use it. The Art of the Puppet Master is ancient, almost as old as ninjutsu itself. In recent times, it became popular as a fighting technique throughout Suna. I can teach you how to fight by proxy, how to strike from the shadows and wade through war unharmed. With enough skill, a puppet master can fight with the strength of ten."

She sighed. "I suppose I should warn you that this path holds risks. Puppeteers tend to neglect taijutsu and other aspects of the ninja lifestyle. It takes a keen eye and sparks of brilliance to avoid the traps a typical ninja uses to kill a puppeteer opponent. Your weapons are complicated and easier to break than a kunai or a shuriken, and much less replaceable."

Clearly he was set on learning puppetry: Naruto was more attentive than she'd ever seen him before. Chiyo wondered if anyone had ever offered to teach him voluntarily. Probably not.

"The last puppeteer I taught was a traitor and a murderous sociopath," Chiyo told him sternly. "Use this skill as you would any other: in service to the Hokage."

She felt horrible for lying to him, but it was more important that he have the moral compass necessary for a ninja so that, if and when he became a free agent, he didn't turn out like her grandson.

"I promise," Naruto said solemnly.

Son levitated away from the table and assumed a figting stance in front of Naruto.

"Good..." Chiyo said. "Now defend yourself!"

Naruto lunged for Daughter-In-Law, Son pulled a length of spiked chain from his sleeve, and the battle was on.

Now he learns puppetry. Tsunade's reward is precisely what you'd expect it to be, and yes, she does believe Orochimaru can do it. She remembers him as a mad genius, after all.