All the World's a Stage - Chapter 16 (Patreon)

Inoichi was not freaking out. After all, the Hime apparently dying, while tragic, had little to no bearing on the mission. She wasn’t a client, just someone they happened to meet while on duty. That being said, oh sweet merciful spirits this woman just died out of nowhere.

Inoichi could do little more than stare. The woman was slumped over, not breathing!

The door opened and one of the elders walked in. The old woman saw the Hime sitting there, and Inoichi was suddenly worried that he’d be accused of killing her. Instead, the elder simply clicked her tongue at the sight and went on her way, picking up the Hime’s finished mask to be fired.

“Er. Er. Madam?” Inoichi began. “Why are you not concerned?”

“Oh, it’s just one of her little quirks,” the woman said with a sad smile. “The poor dear has a condition. Jiki called it something, hm. It was something that sounded like necromancy, but very much wasn't that.”

Inoichi frowned. “Narcolepsy?”

“That’s the one. The poor girl will just fall asleep at random times.”

The old woman gathered up some supplies while Inoichi thought. That… “Jiki-san told you this?”

“Oh yes. The Hime only rarely talks to us. Her voice is…” She looked to the side. “Well, it’s not as beautiful as her face. She’s terribly embarrassed about it, so she leaves the talking to Jiki-chan.”

With the woman in here, the Hime’s lack of breathing was a lot less noticeable. It had only stood out when his own heartbeat was the only sound in the room. An idea began to form, and it made Inoichi unhappy. “Madam… Have you ever seen the Hime awake when Jiki wasn’t by her side?”

“Of cou--” The old woman paused as she considered the question. “You know, I can’t say as I have. How odd.”

She left, looking puzzled, and Inoichi approached the Hime. It was incredibly inappropriate to lay hands on a woman of her apparent status, but if his horrible suspicion was true…

He grabbed her wrist to check her pulse. There wasn’t one, and her skin was cold and… hard.

“Damnit.”

There was a room off the side of the room, and the sign on it declared it to be shared between Jiki and the Hime. Inoichi wanted any sign that this was all a misunderstanding, so he stepped inside. There was only one bed (enormous and glamorous).

Inoichi was no longer freaking out. Now, his info/recon training was kicking in.

At first glance the room was exactly as you’d expect a noble woman’s room to be, or as close as you could get to it in the sticks. There was a well-worn vanity mirror and desk with jewelry adorning it--mostly pearls, but the occasional ruby and emerald too. But there wasn’t any makeup. There was something that looked like makeup, but that turned out to be a dried, powdery paint the exact color of the Hime’s blush.

There were letters in a box under the bed. They were addressed to Kusagakure’s leaders. Inoichi scanned through them, heart sinking with every word, until he heard the outside door open again. He peeked out of the room.

Jiki stomped in looking furious.

“That two-bit, half-baked loon!” She raised her hands, and Inoichi was utterly unsurprised to see the Hime stand up. In fact, now that he was looking for it, he could see the near-invisible shimmer of chakra threads coming from Jiki’s fingers. “That idiot making a mockery of shinobi puppets, stealing my adoring peasants--wait’ll he gets a load of perfection!”

Inoichi went for his brace of shuriken.

Then the Hime unfolded, and he decided to escape out the window instead.

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Ondori was not freaking out. He probably should have been; Less than a week ago he had favorable, semi-friendly encounters with Jiraiya of the Sannin and his Ame students. Now, he was undoing that happy diplomatic accident by attacking Konoha shinobi. At least he could take solace in the fact that they attacked him first.

Wait, had they? He legitimately couldn’t remember, which was concerning.

Sweetums attacked the Nara with a massive overhead swing. The enemy tried to block with his shadows, but weight and momentum overwhelmed the oddly solid lack of light. How did that work, even? Chakra was neat.

Oh, and speaking of weight and momentum, the Akimichi appeared to have run off--no, wait, he was just getting a run-up. When he came back around as a human boulder, Bokken Blue and Red were knocked aside by his sheer force. And then he kept coming. The Nara jumped to the side to give him a straight shot for Ondori, but Sweetums got between them.

“Human Bullet!”

“Pull the Lever!”

Akimichi rolled at full speed, while Sweetums swung the kanabo with as much force as Ondori could get him to muster.

By his side, Kermit held up a microphone that Ondori didn’t remember where it came from. “Now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go, and now the air is shattered by the force of Sweetums’ blow--!”

Club met cannonball. The earth shook, and what few citizens hadn’t yet run off were knocked off their feet.

It was very disappointing. Both of them stopped dead, each of them canceling all their momentum against each other at once.

It was quiet.

Then Sweetum’s arm fell off. The Nara smirked.

Then the Akimichi uncurled and groaned, knocked out from the blow to the head. The Nara stopped smirking.

Ondori blinked. “Hey, wait. Why are we fighting again?”

The Nara stared at him, annoyed. “What do you mean? You’ve been robbing people blind for months, did you think no one was going to send someone after you?!”

“I’ve only been here a few days,” Ondori said. He flexed, and Sweetums shoulder dropped onto his missing arm, shoving the ball back into the socket with a forceful shove. “Wait, I remember now. Why were you defending Jiki? She’s a missing-nin from Suna that I got sent to retrieve before she sold out our secrets to Kusa.”

Shikaku’s eye twitched. “You really are insane. That girl--”

“Is older than you. You guys are what, fourteen?”

“If that,” Kermit said.

“We’re fifteen,” Choza groaned dizzily.

“I refuse to believe that there are two insane puppeteers in Fields, and we just happened to run into both at the same time only to get them confused for each other,” Shikaku bit out.

“Shika!”

They turned to see Inoichi approaching, looking alarmed. “Jiki is a Suna nukenin who’s trying to contact Kusa to trade secrets for sanctuary! We got the wrong guy!”

Shikaku stared at him, then heaved the heaviest, most tired sigh Ondori had ever heard. “I wanna do this day over again.”

Ondori twitched, and Fozzie appeared next to him opposite Kermit. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you guys still have enough baby fat that you should still be job-shadowing! Haaaaa!”

Inoichi and Shikaku turned to stare at him.

Fozzie gulped. “Oh deer, I’m being a boar. Uh.” He looked at the recovering Choza. “Uh, butterfly, butterfly… Oh! I can still make the moth of it!”

“This is like a kind of torture,” Shikaku moaned.

“You know, I hear that a lot,” Ondori said.

“YOU!”

“Me?” Ondori looked back the way Inoichi had come, and his eyes widened.

The remaining civilians made sounds of terror and distress.

A massive, porcelain figure was approaching on many limbs. A long, ringed neck leading up to a serenely beautiful face that only made the long limbs and wicked claws all the more disturbing.

“Well,” Said Kermit, swallowing. “You don’t see that every day.”

“And thank goodness for that,” Fozzie agreed nervously.

Jiki the Porcelain Puppet Master stood atop the ceramic monster’s back, and she scowled at the muppets still talking to themselves. “We’ll see how long you can goof around against this, you wretch!”

Ondori mouths the word wretch to himself. “I feel as though there’s been a communication breakdown. Kermit, you’re good at conflict resolution.”

“I am?”

“He is?” Inoichi asked. Shikaku smacked him.

“Take me seriously, damnit!” Jiki screeched.

Okay, maybe Ondori was freaking out after all.