Re: OOO~

[Artemis]

Toya would NEVER understand the more intricate workings of the female mind. He had just risked his own safety to disarm the two passionate girls from possibly mortally wounding each other and summarized his team’s entire journey up until now. And now as if none of this had ever even happened, the two girls were talking about their bodies, cake, and other stuff that he didn’t even bother listening to. What. The. Hell?!

Well, forget them. The rest of the ‘normal” baking girls had quietly returned to their work, understanding that they were the only ones remaining who could actually make the cakes that would be required for the Saihoushi festival. Toya gripped the knife tightly in his left hand and glanced over at the large doors. It wouldn’t be easy, but if he played his cards right, he might be able to find his teammates and get as far away from this place as possible before anyone caught on.

But as all of his previous plans seemed to have been destined for complete and irreversible failure, this one was no different. Before he took a single step, the torrent of sand burst through the doors, engulfing the poor genin and lifting him high up into the air, helpless to fight back in any way. Great, so NOW that Izanami girl decided to show up? Perfect timing…

"What a fascinating story, Toya Nanaya. I'm sure the Kazekage will find it fascinating as well."

Toya sighed and would have raised his arms in surrender if they hadn’t been completely incapacitated by the sand’s pressure. It seemed that another encounter with the former Kazekage was inevitable.

“Yeah, I’m sure she will…”


Several minutes later, Toya found himself standing side-by-side with his teammates, apparently in one of the former Kazekage’s private offices. Izanami had exited without another word, and any other guards or assistants seemed to be MIA as well. Not that any of the three genin could hope to defeat the powerful Suna shinobi, but it still seemed a little odd. The cool air flowing through the room felt incredibly refreshing, but all Toya could think about was food and water. He never even got a chance to try some cake back in the bakery, and the glass of water the team had received earlier was all he had consumed in the last few days.

Hana seemed to be watching the real prodigies through the office’s window, and the finally conscious Ryou had started blabbering about something nonsensical. Toya really didn’t have the strength to even pretend to listen to him, even when he shouted their names and started to accuse him and Kei of getting them into this predicament.

"Sort of like, say, accepting the identities of some convenient people when a ditzy ex-Kazekage flies by, right?"

So they really were in trouble now, but somehow Toya didn’t feel the level of intimidation that Hana was probably conveying through her tone and her words. He was already well accustomed to receiving reprimands like this, whether they were from his father a few years ago during his incessant training sessions, or from Hisui and Kohaku when he tried to skip out on his work. Besides, there really was nothing he could say to defend himself at this point. They had stolen the identity of three people and had done nothing to clear up the misunderstanding. They probably deserved whatever would be coming to them.

"Well, fortunate for us, two of you cracked. My festival is safe, and, so is Suna."

"See! Now look at what you guys have done. We could've gotten away with it if you two morons hadn't made a mess of yourselves. Argh, what kinda teammates are you?! And I nearly got a chick to-!"

Snap…

“Are you kidding me, Ryou? I don’t know what kind of nice and simple situation you got thrown into, but it was completely impossible for me to keep up this stupid deception! Kei probably had just as much trouble as I got put in! Now just get over yourself for a minute and shut up! We all would have been caught and put into this same situation eventually no matter what any of us did.”

"So, I have to ask. Yuki? Seems a bit of a ways from here, don't you think? Are you on an official mission, or just sight-seeing?"

"Well if we were just sight seeing then why on earth would we need to disguise ourselves? We're more like freaking stranded because someone -" Ryou’s angry gaze was clearly directed at their female teammate. "-Couldn't read a bloody map properly!"

”We’ve had this same conversation like three times already, Ryou! Kei made a mistake, we ended up in the wrong place, and we need to forget about it and do our best to get home. So stop throwing the blame around all the time and try being productive for once!”

Toya took a deep breath and tried to get his now racing heartbeat to calm down. This day had already been way too stressful, and this was only agitating him further. He turned away from Ryou and faced the former Sunagakure leader, trying to give her a more direct answer than the idiotic complaints that Ryou had thrown at her.

”Izanami-san should have already told you, but we were captured during an official mission and were sent to a foreign land. We are only here, because we are attempting to return back to Yuki. Being mistaken for these three prodigies was definitely not part of our plan. We just needed money to buy some supplies, and things got out of hand…”

[Artemis]

"You...but...and...I...didn't...and....then you...but if...I can't..."

Apparently, it was now Moxie's turn to be hopelessly confused. Kei shared the sentiment, though; why had the other girl suddenly released her? And what was she so confused about, anyways? Why did she seem genuinely surprised to learn that Kei wasn't Hayari...?

Okay, so it turned out she'd been right about Suna after all. There was no way a normal person like Kei could survive here for long; this place was crazy.

Probably came from eating all that sand.

Under different circumstances, Kei probably would've tried to find some way to get back at Moxie, but... it didn't seem like the other girl could handle much more confusion. Kei herself was feeling lost as well. Maybe if she just went along with it, she'd get answers.

And that was how, a few moments later, Kei found herself standing with her teammates in the office of Clipboard Woman, who, it turned out, used to be the Kazekage. Somehow, now that Kei knew that about her, the woman seemed much more intimidating. Or maybe it was the way she was glaring at them... Either way, Kei didn't want to think about it too much. The Kazekage wasn't the only one who seemed annoyed, however. Kei had waved cheerfully to her teammates as soon as she entered the room, but to her disappointment, she hadn't gotten much of a reaction out of them. Ryou seemed to be too busy glaring at anything and everything in the room, while Toya's face had taken on that sort of constipated expression it sometimes got when he was trying really hard not to pay attention to something ('something' usually being Kei). Apparently she wasn't the only one who'd had a stressful experience back there.

"...seems like cheating a bit, don't you think?"

"Sort of like, say, accepting the identities of some convenient people when a ditzy ex-Kazekage flies by, right? Well, fortunate for us, two of you cracked. My festival is safe, and, so is Suna."

Kei gulped.

She was in trouble.

She wasn't sure why, but she was in trouble.

There was only one thing she could do here: deny all responsibility.

"It wasn't me," Kei announced, wide-eyed and trying her best to look innocent. "Whatever it was, it was all Ryou's idea."

"See! Now look at what you guys have done. We could've gotten away with it if you two morons hadn't made a mess of yourselves. Argh, what kinda teammates are you?! And I nearly got a chick to-!"

"...See! I told you."

Toya went off into instant rant-mode at Ryou again, but the former Kazekage wasn't that easily distracted. She still had questions for the three Yuki genin.

"So, I have to ask. Yuki? Seems a bit of a ways from here, don't you think? Are you on an official mission, or just sight-seeing?"

"Well if we were just sight seeing then why on earth would we need to disguise ourselves? We're more like freaking stranded because someone -" Somehow, Kei got the feeling he was looking at her now, "-Couldn't read a bloody map properly!"

Kei had long ago stopped wondering why exactly Ryou felt the urge to complain or insult someone every single time he opened his mouth. It was useless; there was just no explanation for someone like him, and Kei wasn't going to waste her time thinking about it.

...That didn't mean she'd ever stop getting annoyed with him, though.

This particular instance was no different.

"Couldn't read a map?! Couldn't read a map!?!? Maybe that's because the map BLEW INTO THE OCEAN," Kei fumed, turning on Ryou. "I'm sorry I don't have laser vision--once things are thousands of feet underwater, they get a liiiittle bit hard to read, you know? JUST A LITTLE BIT. Besides, it's not like you did any better. If it were up to you, we'd STILL be out there stranded in the middle of the ocean." She paused, then added as an afterthought. "...maybe that way we could've at least fed you to the sharks or something though."

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately in Ryou's case, Toya interrupted before Kei could take her rant any further.

”We’ve had this same conversation like three times already, Ryou! Kei made a mistake, we ended up in the wrong place, and we need to forget about it and do our best to get home. So stop throwing the blame around all the time and try being productive for once!” He paused, and then went on to finally give the Kazekage the answer she'd been waiting for. ”Izanami-san should have already told you, but we were captured during an official mission and were sent to a foreign land. We are only here, because we are attempting to return back to Yuki. Being mistaken for these three prodigies was definitely not part of our plan. We just needed money to buy some supplies, and things got out of hand…”

Kei still wasn't sure what all of this meant for her. There were so many questions spinning about in her mind...Were they going to be thrown in jail and forced to eat sand as punishment? What was the Kazekage and Moxie and everyone else so angry about, anyways? Weren't they the ones who'd started referring to the team as prodigies in the first place?? Would they ever get back to Yuki? What had Ryou meant by 'getting a chick'? Did that mean there were penguins in Suna after all...?

For Kei though, there was only one question of importance.

"...Does this mean we don't get any cake?"

[Artemis]

Hana blinked.
No wonder Moxie had seemed sort of...out of it.

"Sit down!" She ordered with all the authority she could command, which after sixteen years of being Kazekage, was quite a lot. To her surprise, the three silenced immediately and fell to the floor, cross-legged like a trio of obedient pre-schoolers.

Hana remembered when her kids were that obedient. A simpler time.

In the silence, she considered the three. One was adorable, one was feisty, and one was reasonable. The glue. It was hard to ignore the comparisons between them and her own children; at least to who they had been before all of the chaos in their lives. The silver-haired one causing the ruckus was sort of like Pantsu. The cute girl reminded her of Kohana. And the middle one, the fake-baker, was like Moxie. Old Moxie before...before...

"All right, listen." Hana softened immediately, her aura moving from authoritative to motherly in a single exhale. "I don't want to punish you. Truth is, save for being here without paperwork you haven't really done anything wrong. You've been...annoying, maybe, but that was mostly my fault. I get so caught up in these things and it's hard to keep your head on straight."

Hana sat herself down in their little circle, crossing her elegant legs and smiling brightly, as if she were about to teach them a camp song or how to start a fire with two sticks. "But I have a hard time believing you three are a team of anything. Did you see yourselves? You're stuck in a village surrounded by potential enemies and what's the first thing you do? Argue with yourselves! That's the most backwards thing I've ever seen. Shouldn't you be banding together, lying for each other with every breath you take, hoping to keep the unit safe?"

A chakra thread lanced out and caught a spool of thread standing quietly on the desk. It soared over to her open hand and Hana began to weave with the thread using her chakra. "I don't know what they do in Yuki, but here in Suna, the village is our family. As you probably saw firsthand, living in the desert is hard enough, we can't afford to fight amongst each other. The world already wants to kill us out here, why make it easier for them? If you three are really lost and are on your way back home, you only have each other to rely on don't you? There's no one to help you, no one to save you."

Hana finished whatever it was she was working on with the thread and slipped the results into her pocket. She stood up abruptly and moved over to a closet, pulling three large packs. They were standard Suna gear, loaded with mostly canteens, but also contained Sandstorm tents, a change of clothes (a simple Suna uniform with the hourglass markings removed) and most importantly; weapons. The clunk of metal against metal of kunai and shuriken was audible as she set the packs in front of each of them, the ruffle of explosive notes and equipment scrolls shifting behind the clinks. A sword also rested in each pack, a simple ninjato which could be used for a variety of tools in the wilderness.
"Truth of the matter is, I could have you escorted back. Heck, I could have you ridden back, your feet wouldn't even touch the ground until you got back to Yuki. But if I did that, you wouldn't learn anything. This journey you're on is going to be the biggest defining thing of your lives, I can feel it. This is where you find out who you are, deep down beyond what everyone else has told you are. You will find out your true strength, the strength that comes out only when you are surrounded by despair and difficulty, a strength that is stubborn and unstoppable and beautiful."

At 'beautiful', Hana bent down and tucked a lock of Kei's hair behind her ear, smiling kindly at her before returning to her seat. Hana now had three bands of cloth, each a deep blue. She spread them in front of her, smoothing them out gently.

"In those packs is everything you'll need. Remember the rule of the desert: without water you die. Bring as much as you can bear to carry, because unlike in Yuki, you can't just drink a snowball if you feel parched. And be careful of Sandworms. They're not impossible, but they can be nasty. Use the sun to navigate because the desert dunes shift in the wind, so you can't use them as landmarks. Travel at night if you can." Hana reached into her pocket again and pressed the thread against the three bands.

"I know it's not quite right, but we don't keep a big supply of foreign forehead protectors. It'll do for now, I hope. You should wear them at all times, just as a reminder that you're on the same team." Hana's fingers danced, chakra threads lashing to and fro as she lifted the headbands into the air and into the awaiting hands of the three Yuki genin. The band now had a big, elegant snowflake embroidered into the center, a sort of makeshift forehead protector.
"Now I'm only doing all of this because I know you're going to be great shinobi. So if you take this, you're making me a promise that you'll come back and see me someday and show me how strong you've become, okay?"

Hana couldn't take it anymore. She rushed over to the grumpy one first, hugging him with all of his might. Then the fake-baker, squeezing him with overwhelming waves of motherly affection. Then the girl. She held the girl extra-long, stroking her hair, making slight adjustments to her clothes, moving things just so. Satisfied that the three were hugged enough, she stood back up, hands on hips, looking at them.

"Okay, well. You three should enjoy the festival a bit before you go. Of course you can't just go as you are given the...situation. So I got you something."

Hana ran over to a drawer and set three new folded garments in front of the Genin.

They were brightly colored ghost sheets. One with a penguin. One with cake. And one with a ghost.

"Moxie brought them. Said you might want to bring them with you, Kei-chan. But you can use them while you're in the village. No one will recognize you then. "

Hana winked. A little bit of payback for the mayhem the three had caused.

Little did Hana know that when the three Genin waltzed out of her office, loaded with equipment and covered in colored ghost sheets, that she had just set off an unstoppable fashion force. Within a month, the entire Saihoushi village would be wearing ghost sheets of various colors and designs, though cake and penguins would definitely be the most fashionable designs throughout the fad. Ghost sheets would appear on Fashion-hime.

And Hana herself would find Kohana cutting out a sheet from her bedroom.

And so the mysterious team from Yuki spent the evening watching fashion models and stuffing their faces with cake, spending the purse of money tucked away in the pack on clothes and shoes and who knew what else. It was their best night in a long, long time.

Little did Hana know that this would not be the last she saw of Toya, Ryou, and Kei.

[End Thread <3]

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