All the World's a Stage - Chapter 10 (Patreon)

Ozu returned to Suna with a broad grin and a sketchpad in his pocket. Helping Ondori with his puppet shows had been surprisingly fun, and the practicalities of chakra threads had proven themselves on his latest mission; so many tripped up shinobi, so many weapons pulled from hands. Why didn’t more ninja learn about it?

The Land of Bears had been a strange place, doing its best to distract him from his imagination, and a particular encounter had inspired him. Ozu hadn’t actually believed Ondori at first when he said he made Wilkins to make fun of Jiraiya, but he got it now.

Even better, Sawa had had some kind of breakthrough with his seal work on the mission, and had scarcely stopped drawing seals while they traveled.

Ozu turned his report in at the mission desk and then made his way to Ondori’s place; hopefully he’d be back from his own mission.

He knocked on the door as a courtesy, then let himself in. “Hey, Rooster! You need to get yourself a proper lock! Maybe Sawa can make you one, he’s been having lots of ideas recently.”

He didn’t get a response. Ozu ventured further inside and found the puppeteers slumped against his worktable, surrounded by felt and stuffing.

Seated in front of him was a puppet, looking for all the world like it was just lounging. The frog was a more vibrant green than Wilkins ever was, with flatter eyes and more distinctive pupils. He wore a strange collar that was a lighter green than the rest of his felt. Ozu had accepted Wilkins as a frog because it was the only thing he could really qualify for; this new one had a much froggier vibe to him. He didn’t wear a headband of any variety.

Ozu chuckled. Him. Ondori was getting in his head, it seemed. He clapped the puppeteer on the back, waking him with a snort. “Hey, director, what’s up? Making Wilkins 2.0?”

Ondori blinked stupidly at him, then turned to the frog. “No, this is Kermit. Wilkins is dead.”

Ozu blinked. “What?”

“What time is it?” Ondori asked, stretching.

Ozu looked out the nearest window. “I think it’s an hour before noon?”

“Right.” Ondori shook himself. “Did I ever get my kanabo back from Jiraiya? I think I did.”

“What?”

Ondori yawned. “I had an interesting mission.”

“Ondori, did you meet Jiraiya again?” He gestured to Kermit. “Is that why you made another frog?”

“No. The show needs a frog.”

Ozu’s eye twitched. He took a breath and centered himself. “Are you doing okay?”

Ondori looked at him. “I will be. I was doing pretty bad yesterday, but I worked it out last night.” He gestured to Kermit to demonstrate. “Kami, I made a fool of myself to the Kazekage yesterday.”

Ozu winced. “Man, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“What time did you say again?”

“Hour to noon, or close to it.”

Ondori scowled. “Dang. I’ve got to report to his office again.” He sniffed his clothing. “And I need to change.”

“I didn’t want to say, but yeah.”

“Hush.” He ventured into his bedroom, leaving Ozu alone with the puppets. “What about you, how did your mission go?” he called from inside. “It was something about bandits, right?”

“Oh man, get this. As expected, the leader of the bandits was a missing-nin,” Ozu began. “But it turned out to be a missing-nin from Hoshigakure.”

“...Isn’t that the hidden village in Bears? What idiot goes rogue and then doesn’t leave the country?”

“I know, right? The man was a complete lunatic. Apparently he went rogue because he wasn’t being respected enough.”

Ondori stepped out of his room, having traded his whites for blacks and his sandals for a set of comfortable boots. He’d said he worked it out, but he still felt the need to mourn. “Was he worth respecting? Where’s your apprentice, by the way?”

“Sawa’s visiting his parents. Anyway, no, the guy was an idiot. He had some impressive techniques, like this one where threw around a big spiky ball, but he couldn’t aim it properly and kept letting me trick him into hitting himself. The Star-nin who paid the bounty was really embarrassed by him. But, he was so ridiculous that I felt compelled.”

Ozu stuffed the sketchpad into Ondori’s face, forcing him to take a step back before he could register what was drawn on it.

Ondori took the sketch. He looked more interested as he recognized what was on it. “Hm.”

“Yeah yeah.” Ozu said happily. “I went to the Land of Bears and beat up a Star ninja--”

“--So now you want a bear that wants to be a star?” Ondori guessed, smirking. “I like it.”

“I thought you would.”

Ozu watched, first with pride and then confusion, as Ondori walked over to Rowlf and showed the dog puppet the sketch. “What do you think?”

Rowlf shifted as Ondori made him ‘look.’ “...Hm, looks kinda scruffy. Say, what’s this guy’s name, anyway?” the dog asked Ozu.

Ozu looked at Ondori, brow furrowed, but decided to roll with it. “I call him, uh, Fozzie.”

“Fozzie, huh?” Rowlf scratched his chin. “Well, we’ll see what he’s made of.”

“Thanks, Ondori. He’s gonna be a real character, just you watch.”

“Looking forward to it,” the puppeteer said, slipping his apron back on. “Now, I’ve got a meeting to get to. I’ll get to work on Fozzie soon enough. Lock the door on your way out, would you?”

“Sure, for all the good that’ll do,” Ozu snorted, waving his friend goodbye. Mostly to himself, he said, “Hey, maybe Sawa would like being involved in the show. I bet he could do some cool effects with those seals… Huh?”

Ondori’s work table was empty.

“Wait, when did he do that? I never saw him go near the frog…”

---------------------------------

“Do do do dooo do-do do… do dodododo do-dodo…”

---------------------------------

Sawa’s tongue stuck out the side of his mouth as he carefully slid the brush across the page.

Someone sat down opposite him. “What are you doing?”

Sawa didn’t respond until the current line was complete. Once it was, he carefully set the brush aside and looked up. “Hello. Sasori, right? I don’t think we’ve really spoken.”

“We have mutual acquaintances,” the young puppeteer said. “You are Sotchoku Ozu’s apprentice, yes?”

“That’s right.”

Sasori stared at him, eyes focused on a point a few inches behind the back of Sawa’s head. “What brings you to the puppet workshop?”

“Well. I needed a place to work, and this was as good as any.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” Sasori tilted his head. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Oh, sorry.” Sawa turned the paper around to show him. “This one is just a variant storage seal. It’s supposed to function like a normal storage seal if you push chakra from this direction,” here he pointed to one side of the seal, where a triangle was oriented pointy side out, “But if you push from this direction,” the other side, where another triangle was oriented flat side out, “then you can make an item switch places with what’s already inside it.”

Sasori hummed. “Interesting.” He could already see some uses for it. It could be used to easily and quickly switch weapons if applied to a glove. He could see it being used to retrieve a broken puppet while deploying a fresh one with the same action, saving valuable time and chakra.

When he voiced this, Sawa laughed. “That’s true, but I was actually thinking it could let Ondori-san’s puppets pretend to use a henge.”

Sasori blinked, then let out a surprised laugh of his own. “I suppose it could!”

Around them, puppet engineers working away rolled their eyes and grumbled at the mention of Ondori and his mock puppets, but Sasori paid them no mind. A few of them considered the mock puppets an insult, but not all. Some only pretended to; Sasori knew Yaji and Chosho in particular had great fun with it, if only to make fun of it.

“Who is your sealing teacher?” Sasori asked.

“Uh, no one?”

“Pardon?”

Sawa rubbed her neck. “Ozu-sensei doesn’t know how to do anything but a weak chakra-smoke seal. He found me a few sealing how-to guides, but I’ve mostly had to figure everything out on my own so far.”

Sasori tapped a finger against the table. “...Dangerous. If you’d like, I can introduce you to another sealing student, Shinema-san. She is a student of my grandmother.”

Sawa’s eyes lit up. “Would you really? That would be amazing!”

“It is no problem.”

-----------------------------

Satoshi of the Iron Sand studied the man in front of him. Ondori was still scruffy-looking but seemed in much better straits than yesterday. He was focused, albeit nervously, upon the Kazekage as he waited patiently for him to speak.

A frog puppet was sitting on his shoulder.

On either side of Satoshi were the Honorable Siblings, present at his request both for their wisdom and their inexplicable relationship with the younger shinobi. Ebizo stood completely at ease, though Chiyo seemed disconcerted.

“Ondori,” he began.

The puppeteer was already standing at attention, but he endeavored to straighten even further. “Sir.”

“Do you remember why I wanted to speak with you?”

“You wished to talk about the muppets, sir.”

The Kazekage raised an eyebrow. “Muppets?”

“Er. Mock puppets. Muppets.”

Satoshi acknowledged the name and continued. “I was vaguely aware of your puppets shows from the moment they began drawing crowds, but I was told, shortly after you left on your mission, that you had named one… Dekukage.” Satoshi steepled his fingers in front of himself. “Do you have anything to say about that?”

“No sir,” Ondori said frankly. “It was just my normal assault puppet in makeshift Kage robes. It was just playing a character. Sir,” he added hastily after too long a pause.

Satoshi stared at him. “And do you still have this character?”

Ondori blinked, unsure where this was going. “I do have the puppet, yes. I’m calling him Sweetums now, probably going to refurbish him. He took a beating in my last battle and could do with some upgrades anyway. Probably need a new puppet altogether honestly, the all-melee model didn’t perform as well as I’d hoped. Though I didn’t get a chance to use it how I wanted, it was supposed to work alongside the ranged puppet as a tag-team, but there were too many enemies and I couldn’t focus both of them on a single target--”

Chiyo coughed, cutting off his nervous rambling. “You were fighting two opponents with two puppets at once?”

“Yes, Lady Chiyo. For a little bit. I had to blow the ranged one up to take out its opponent, so.” He trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence, and settled for just making a vague gesture.

Chiyo and Ebizo shared a look, to his confusion.

“Moving on,” the Kazekage said. “Chiyo-sama has expressed to me that she sees potential in you--”

“She did?”

“--in spite of and because of your puppet shows.”

“Muppet shows. I’ve decided that, now--” Ondori cut off as the Kazekage’s eyes flashed in anger.

“Do not interrupt me again.”

“Yes sir, sorry sir.”

Satoshi’s face returned to its default neutral expression. “Chiyo insists there is merit to your performances. I, personally, have little patience for theatre, but I am willing to defer to Chiyo’s advice.”

“Oh. Okay,” Ondori said, relaxing slightly. He’d almost been afraid that he’d be ordered to stop.

“In two weeks time, you will be sent on a mission to the Land of Fields. One of our missing-nin has been reported attempting to ally with Kusagakure,” the Kazekage said instead. “Her name is Jiki, a puppeteer who, like yourself, experimented with unusual materials for her puppets. You are to retrieve her by any means necessary.”

Ondori frowned in thought. “I think I’ve heard of her… the porcelain doll girl?”

“The very same,” Ebizo confirmed. “She’s been in hiding until very recently, presumed to be gathering clay in the Land of Rivers.”

“Jiki was talented, but very singular in her focus,” Chiyo expanded. “The only thing she has to offer in gaining an alliance is her puppetry knowledge. We have no intention of letting another village know our secrets.”

“Are we sure she hasn’t already?” Ondori asked.

“Jiki was a prideful girl, and highly secretive,” Chiyo said, looking to the ceiling as she reached through her memory. “She refused to tell anyone how her work with ceramics actually worked out of fear of being copied. She won’t share her knowledge until she thinks she has no choice, but she also wouldn’t be trying to rejoin a village unless she was desperate.”

“You may need to infiltrate Kusa in order to retrieve any information she has already shared,” the Kazekage said, “Which is why you in particular are being approached for this mission.”

“I was wondering about that,” he admitted.

“If necessary, you can pass as a civilian puppeteer performing children’s shows.”

Ondori tilted his head. “Are you sure? Not to doubt you, Kazekage-sama, sir, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea to bring my muppets on another mission. I’m not sure I should be taking them with me all the time.”

Satoshi stared at him. “...Ondori, are you aware that a ‘muppet’ is sitting on your shoulder right now?”

Judging by the look of surprise on his face as he looked at the frog, he hadn’t. “Huh.” Rather than dwell on that, Ondori shook his head. “Am I leaving immediately? As I mentioned, I do need to repair and rebuild.”

“You have three days to prepare,” the Kazekage said. “No more.”

“Aye, sir.”