Capítulo 14: Enter the Shark-boy and A Man’s Resolve
"Excuse me! My name is Jin Hoshigaki! I have been a genin of Kirigakure no Sato for one and a half years! I am one of nine genin apprentices recognized by the Mizukage for their kenjutsu! I carry my grandfather's longsword with pride! My favorite snack is takoyaki but my favorite meal is sushi! I do not like spicy food! My favorite color is pink! Will you please become my girlfriend?" shouted Jin Hoshigaki like his mother always told him too.
'Guys who think too much are scum. Follow your heart, and boldly tell the whole world what you want!' said Flashback Mebuki Hoshigaki to Flashback Litte Boy Jin Hoshigaki.
'I'm doing it mom!' Jin squealed internally, 'I'm livin life like a real man!'
"We're kind of in the middle of something right now…" the gorgeous pink haired girl stated uncomfortably.
In this alley in the Konohagakure 'I'm so well traveled, mom!' a pair of Suna shinobi accosted some of the local kids, holding one up my the collar of his shirt while the other two looked on in terror next to their failed orange clad rescuer.
"I'm aware that you are all getting up to some pre-exam rough housing, and while I would normally not intrude on another's good time, I knew it the moment I saw you and your beautiful pink hair. Though it may be difficult… Please, bear my child!" Jin Hoskigake took off his straw hat and bowed his head in sincerity.
"HEY, who are you, ya punk! To think you can talk to Sakura like that!" the orange clad mini genin shouted in a rage.
"So your name is Sakura?" Jin tasted it on his tongue and smiled in approval, "What a perfect name!"
"Why I oughta-" the orange boy started winding up his fist, but Sakura restrained him, truly a sign that his confession was well received.
"Don't make this bad situation worse." Sakura growled at her raging fellow.
"Bad situation?" Jin Hoshigaki suddenly lost all the good cheer in his tone and his eyes lost their luster becoming like those of a dead fish, "Sakura, are these people…" Jin's hand clasped the hilt of his sword, "Do they actually dare to bother you while I am here?"
The pair of Suna shinobi stiffened as they were hit with a mature Killing Intent, but the pair held strong. Perhaps Sunagakure knows how to make real shinobi too.
"Oh shit, Jin's about to go on a rampage!" his male team mate, Ginza, yelled in obvious excitement.
"I wonder if this place has any river sharks that need feeding." smirked the female teammate, Miri, in dark humor.
The trio wore uniformed black kimonos, conical straw hats over their headbands, and all carried swords, but Jin Hoshigake also wore a grey pinstriped haori, and from the hype, Sakura figured out quickly that he was the team leader, and not just some random weirdo.
"You think we're scared of you? You wet punks!" The black clad Suna shinobi at the heart of this 'bad situation' barked out, ironic considering his catlike hood.
The young man moved to chuck the boy in his hands away but a rock from a nearby tree bounced off his forehead protector and made him look away from the real threat in his midst.
"Don't you look away from me!" Jin roared and yanked his curved longsword out of its sheath, a long process as he performed the move for maximum drama.
Jin didn't care at all about the Konoha twink in the tree, or the third Suna nin styling on a branch above the other boy.
"You dare to inconvenience the woman who will bear my child, and have the audacity to look away from me! Who knew such balls grew out in the desert, they must be massive and made of brass to dare such against me!" Jin prepared to engage, but a wall of sand floated up between them.
"Kankuro… to think you dare make me save you." Rasped out the voice of the third Suna Shinobi.
"Save… him?" Jin suddenly laughed uproariously, "You think you've saved him from me?"
Jin began forming one handed seals, just one of the many things taught to him by Lord Fifth, the greatest teacher in the Elemental Nations. A single hour of instruction from Lord Fifth was like an entire week of study and training. His students all felt their power grow by leaps and bounds every day at his side. These punks were about to learn life's harshest lesson. Don't fuck with Lord Fifth!
"Hey, wait, you guys shouldn't fight here in the middle of the village." Sakura pleaded and suddenly Jin stilled.
"Are these people no longer bothering you, Sakura?" he asked coldly.
"Um, yeah. That third guy seems to have calmed down the other two." Sakura noted how the black clad puppeteer dropped the boy he held hostage and backed away making conciliatory gestures to the last boy to appear in this collision of three villages.
The newly arrived redhead gave Sakura the creeps big time, but he didn't seem as out and proud crazy as the big shark boy from the Hidden Mist.
Jin's face smiled once more all the way to his eyes freshly restored shine, "Okay then. You all are no longer bothering Sakura, and so get to continue living. Why am I not hearing gratitude?"
"Jin Hoshigaki…" the third boy, the team saver, rasped again, his voice apparently not used to use, "Are you strong enough… to prove my existence."
Jin chuckled in a good natured sort of way, "Little sand friend… if we fight… there won't be enough of you left to burn in hell."
"I will seek you out in the exams, Jin Hoshigaki." the sand nin growled, "Remember the name of your killer, Gaara of the Desert."
"Nice and simple. I like that." Jin grinned and waved to the small genin, "Goodbye Gaara of the Desert. Come on by when you're ready to die."
Gaara waved back then led his team away.
"Ah man, I wanted to see a rampage." pouted Ginza who crossed his arms over his chest.
"It's still early in the day." Miri comforted the let down boy, "We might still run into someone rude…"
Both Miri and Ginza turned their heads to look down at the other midget running around with a headband, the orange one with the loud mouth.
"Hey, big guy!" the late comer Konoha nin butted in causing Ginza to grin and Miri to gain pink hearts in her black eyes, "Fight me."
"Sorry twink, my lady and I are going out for a stroll." Jin dismissed the dark haired boy without a second thought.
"Um, thank you for standing up for me, that was very brave…" Sakura began pushing her index fingers together nervously, sending Jin's heart soaring, "But I can't be your girlfriend. There's someone else I love."
Jin's countenance fell as if someone dropped the Three Tails on his back.
"Someone… else…" Jin processed and plotted while the locals made thier escape, not getting out of his own head until he needed a second opinion.
"Hey Ginza… any chance… that I'm that someone else?" Jin asked in weak hope.
"Not a chance." Ginza flatly denied.
"Oh." Jin nodded, "This someone else… is going to die horribly."
Jin's vicious smile spread between the three Kiri genin who went back to exploring this foreign city sized village.
-Meanwhile in Kirigakure-
"Refund Fertility Calibration." Mei demanded as she sat behind the executive desk with the full Retinue still stationed in Kirigakure (and aware of my ownership of them) behind her. Only Haku broke ranks, obviously not standing amongst these mutineers, and remaining at home.
Shigure, Yagura, Ringo, Fuguki, Juzo and Mangetsu along with Jinen, Jinpachi, and Kushimaru returned successfully with their Swords, leaving only Samehada in the wild. They came together like any group of angry women, and worse, came at me with a planned intervention.
"Why?" I sat in a driftwood chesterfield style chair with my elbow cocked while the other arm held up my chin.
"What you did to Ringo is unacceptable." Mei informed me with a bit of smokey heat to her words.
"What I did to Ringo was consensual." I frowned.
"Not the pregnancy." Mei's eyes narrowed.
"Sex gets people pregnant." I furrowed my brow in response, "It's not a risk free activity."
"You've taken a natural risk with known and accepted countermeasures and made it both intractable and inevitable." Mei countered with facts and logic.
Good luck destroying me with those weak ass tools.
"A snake with no venom is just a belt." I responded after letting her objections roll off my shoulder.
"Your actions expose one of our top assets to increased risks, and will take her out of action for many weeks in the future." Mei bulled onward with reasonable arguments.
"Are we doing this because Ringo is pissed that growing a life will cut down on her time torturing and killing people?" I attacked the source of this intervention, "Oh no, I'll need to take four months out of my busy schedule destroying folk. This personal live milestone is the end of all that is good and fair in the world!"
"Hey, fuck you!" Ringo stood up in anger but Mei put a hand on her shoulder and Ringo sat back down.
Such authority and trust!
"If I may, Lady Momochi?" Jinin came forth, the big nosed bitch happy to have her stupid hammer and axe back, increasing her smugness palpably, "Why do you have Fertility Calibration set to one hundred percent?"
"I already said why." I growled at her for wasting my time, making some big entrance into the conversation only to ask a dumb question.
"You're a man that lets his insecurities, whether aware of them or unaware, make his choices." Jinin accused with narrowed eyes.
Fuck! Critical hit! Bitch shot me! Call the police! Call the ambulance! How dare she expose me like this? I'm the mother loving Mizukage. No respect!
"I've heard you make statements, like 'that's the manly way', or 'I feel my manly spirit rising'." Jinin continued her brutal assault, "You use masculinity as fuel to keep going under stress and hardship, but you also do many things to keep yourself feeling masculine while in reality they make you seem weak and afraid."
Forget the ambulance, call for service, I'm cooked. I can't believe Jinin of all people got me like this. Is it the giant nose? Can she sniff out weakness? Bitch is hitting me right in the feefees. It hurts.
"You set Fertility Calibration to one hundred percent because being the most potent man in the world stokes your ego, but it is neither innate to you nor especially earned, and it's a part of a shallow façade of masculinity you engage in to make yourself feel better. It's pathetic."
Naruto, take notes. This woman's Talk-no-Jutsu has me doing everything I can to not start balling like a midget just kicked my dead Haku. Fuck! I want to fire back but bro got me feeling like my throat is too thick to move air through. Rather than let the woman keep beating a dead horse, I summoned the Company Device to my hand, and returned Fertility Calibration I, allowing nature to once more take its course.
"Your words cut deep." I rasped out, this time not making the reference as a joke, "Deeper than any blade. Pull this shit again on anything petty, and I'll sell all of you. Damn the consequences."
With my final words I left the office and made my way seaside to look out over the water until life makes sense to me again.
-Meanwhile back at the office-
"Did we just win?" Ringo asked the quiet room.
"Yes we did." Mei's stated smugly.
"Don't let this go to your heads." The giant Fuguki declared as she rose up from the sofa and started slowly moving to the door, "You won because he let you win. Because he's pathetic. If I had his power, none of you slaves would ever even think to question me."
The massive woman ducked under the door then slammed it behind her.
"That bitch is fucked up." Ringo announced after the departure.
"Fuguki isn't just a sadistic psychopath like the rest of you mangy swordsmen." Yagura stated coldly, trashing the group that abandoned the village during her reign, "She's also a traitor who sold village secrets to our enemies. She's the lowest of the low, but she isn't wrong."
"So we lost?" Ringo asked the others looking around at their expressions.
"We won." Mei insisted, "Blunt instrument though she is, Jinin succeeded in making a change, which either means we found a successful avenue of persuasion, or that Zabuza has made a tactical retreat and now plots his ice cold revenge. We'll know which given enough time."
"It's probably both." Yagura replied and Jinin's countenance fell, "Zabuza seems stubbornly immune to logical and ethical arguments, likely because of his outsider knowledge and the character of the people persuading him. You'll have noticed that his girl, Haku, never assumes she knows better than him, and is a genuinely kind, supportive, and helpful person. He listens to her implicitly. One of us trying to seize the moral high ground is a venture built on a foundation of sand, though most of my sins lay at the feet of the Uchiha, and now Zabuza, as I am a puppet for them with compromised autonomy and will. The rest of you are bad people by nature and nurture."
"Must we continue as enemies, Yagura?" Mei inquired with a fake smile, "I thought we were over such things."
"Who said?" Yagura smirked, "Anyways, we can't move him with appeals to virtue, and because of what he knows from outside, and what he gained from the God of Shinobi Template, he assumes he knows best at all times."
"What the hell is a God of Shinobi Template?" Ringo asked and everyone in the room looked at her with confusion.
"Have you never used the Company Device?" Yagura's face twitched, Zabuza left it lying around regularly and also let anyone who wants to take a look at it.
No one had access to make any changes, but they could browse freely and gain information, gain power, unobstructed.
"You mean the little tablet with all the pictures of hot chicks in sexy outfits?" Ringo requested clarification.
"Yes." Yagura nodded her head.
"Then, yeah. I've seen the hot chicks, and I've seen the guys too. I can't believe you can buy Kage for like 50 Points. That's crazy." Ringo grinned, "And did you all know that I'm worth 50 Points while the rest of you losers are only worth 20?" The remaining Seven Swordsmen put hands on their weapons in an empty threat.
"You can pay 20 Points to gain access to someone else's knowledge and skills, and even gain some of their power up front." Yagura explained to the woman, rapidly losing what little respect she had for her, "Zabuza did this for himself with Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage."
"What! You mean that guy's been kicking my ass because someone handed him all that power!" Ringo screamed, her anger fully roused, "Why I oughta! He didn't earn those wins!"
"Ringo, lets just accept our win here today." Mei acted to divert a melt down, "You're free now, go to the hospital and get back to living life by your own will, as much as we can these days."
Ringo frowned and her eyes narrowed as she internally weighed Mei, then found her lacking, "Oh, I see what's happening here." Ringo suddenly jumped back and drew the Kiba blades, "The Asshole is going to be the next God of Shinobi, whether he earned it or not, which means I'm pregnant with a demigod of Shinobi, and your bony jealous ass is moving to protect your sprogs territory! I'm onto you, shitheel!"
Ringo then threw down a smoke bomb then ran out the door.
"Did that just fucking happen?" Mei chough out while she opened a window and cleared the room with a gentle use of wind release.
"That dumb bitch probably thinks Tsunade Senju is the First Hokage's daughter." Yagura sniped the overdramatic woman from across the map.
"Whatever, we can't let this alliance we have break down the moment we see some success." Mei continued, "For now, we'll wait and see how Jinin's gambit pays off. If it works, we'll pick and choose our battles for maximum effect. If not, we'll weigh the risk of getting 'Sold'."
"Feel free to risk it." Yagura broke ranks, "I'm fine being a puppet. I've been one for almost half my life. The rest of you can take a chance and hope you end up in the arms of some cuck that treats his slaves like family. I'm not taking the risk of ending up with some barbaric demon-like bastard that cares nothing for his fellow man, or worse."
With her final thoughts spoken on the matter, Yagura also left.
"Good luck, Lady Momochi, Jinin." Mangetsu stood and bowed before leaving with a smirking Jinpachi behind her.
Left with only Shigure, who came with her own strange thoughts on the matter, Juzo who made a 'yikes' expression with her red grate tattooed mouth and the silent, lanky, and creepy Kushimaru remaining, the pair who spearheaded today's charge turned to look at the unresponsive beanpole of a woman until she finally began shaking with laughter.
"I love watching you all dance on invisible strings!" Kushimaru squealed as she threw her masked head back and wiggled her fingers in glee, "It's so delightful!"
Mei finally collapse at her desk and muttered, "This is why we can't have nice things.
-Meanwhile seaside-
"Do the impossible! See the invisible!" I shouted as I breakdanced, feeling my manly spirit soaring high, "Touch the untouchable! Break the unbreakable!"
Hitting a power pose I roared, "Row! Row! Fight the power!"
Those bitches think they can break my spirit? Hah! I've got the power of God and anime on my side! I'll just rise up, harder and stronger, better than ever!
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This is my favorite chapter thus far. We finally get to see Zabuza from all the angles, from the people he treats like nameless faceless nothing burger interactions yet he profoundly impacts, to the people deep in the shit with him trying to figure out how to keep their heads above turd-level.
For those wondering why Zabuza doesn't just turn all these characters into his toys, remember back to the early chapters. Zabuza hates it when Contractors destroy the tone of their setting. He's trying to preserve the feel of the Naruto-verse even if he doesn't ascribe to the themes himself. That's why he's using Hiruzen's philosophy of the splendid shinobi for his mass mind control campaign, and allows his Retinue to largely keep their autonomy and personalities. Completely mindwashing these people is against his core motivation, but he's willing to do it for people who are crazy in a sad way like Raiga.
Anyway, that's the climax of the first character arc down. Onto the next subtle creeping train wreck.
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