Honouring Ancestors (IO)

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"I shall give you my congratulations when that day comes then, sir. I would hate to do so prematurely." Toneri said with a smile and turned on his heels towards Anastasia. She would be the one to get them to their destination. Ever the woman in charge, Toneri's homoerotic joke that involved Anastasia and his sister had gone over her head. Toneri would have doubled down on that if valor didn't matter more to him than a woman's charm.

“I’m his brother, but you’d never realize with how he treated me.” Thought Toneri, who even though he respected his brother's decision with Taichi, never shared Ayato’s excitement for acts of altruism. The eldest of Hibari’s living children could keep living his Naruto Uzumaki fantasy and looked up to by his peers, so long as it was sunny in Hoshigakure. “When the sky gets cloudy, and the rain starts falling in sheets, I wonder how many of them will remain by his side.”

“You know how this dance goes, Anastasia.” Natsuki's voice brought Toneri back from his labyrinth of thought. She pulled a kunai and pressed the tip gently on the thumb of her opposite hand. Blood trickled down the mud-caked earth. “Her summon jutsu, again.” Toneri recognized. A red spark flew through the air and landed with a mighty roar shaking the ground. From within, the familiar figure of a red, eight-meter-tall armadillo made its appearance.

"Lady Natsuki, you’re always a sight for sore eyes." The creature said with a smirk, showing them a multitude of sharp white teeth. Natsuki had always been a skilled summoner and regularly relied on them for help. Well, that thing could do the heavy lifting for all Toneri cared.

“And we require your assistance today, friend. There is a bridge that needs to be fixed and shrines to be cleaned. ” The sun moved on the sky, and before long, they arrived at the stone bridge; the old grey thing looked like a storm hit it. And perhaps it did, but a different kind of storm, that of jutsu. Amidst the rubble, there was a pale stranger, a slender young aspen tree with a trunk as white as a cloistered maid.

“The last of the Queensguard died on this bridge during the Fourth’s failed coup; you should know.” Toneri finally let out to the group. “But they were on the wrong side of it. If you hear old Harold tell it, he slew both of them when he caught them with the relics of the palace they had sworn to protect on their hands. ”

The bearded Northern Warrior, regularly donning a brown woolen cloak patterned with white sunbursts, was a ferocious fighter bound by honor and loyalty. And when he found Otto Hightower and Arthur Dwayne -Queensguard who had failed to report for duty- with palace loot, honor demanded to confront them. The duo tried to attack him, only for Harold to cut them down…and the bridge in the process.

“All had started wh the false Kage Valen Akari showed up at the gates, attempting to recruit traitors and threatening the royal staff. The one that had misled Hoshigakure before abandoning us in the middle of the night came to put his old home at swordpoint and demand his old shinobi to join him and the ragdoll down in their den of outlaws. A hypocrite and an idiot. A hard life, for the both of them to be sure.” 

Toneri regretted not being there to see, but he heard the story a hundred times. He was still a fresh Genin then, just recently assigned to a team, trying to transform his knightly skills into the shinobi world, fostered at Lord Crayford’s Castle near the Suna border. There he had siblings in all but name. However, in Hoshi, during Valen’s coup, his blood brother rose from another kid with the Hyuuga as the last name to Ayato. The Ice Prince of Hoshi, the Lord Commander of the Nova Corps, and later The Seventh Hogokage.

“A few loyal men and women, who had been in service in Hoshigakure since its founding, stepped up during the village’s darkest hour to lead the city out of the darkness against the traitors. Taiji Heiji, Yasaki Uchiha, Akabayashi Terumi, Shina, and our older brother. Men and women of different backgrounds, beliefs, and ancestry but all answered the summons nonetheless. "

To uphold the ideals and fight in the name of a woman that was no longer there. They had found life in Hoshi thanks to Akihana, and if we were to lose it fighting against those who wished to ruin everything she worked for, then so be it. Their presence had hoped to dissuade most of those who had initially fallen with the former Kage. And well, that's exactly what it did.

“Valen and the turncloaks scattered in the wind, and strugglers that remained behind put to the sword. Valen Akari is dead, but not by Hoshi’s hand. His demise came further down in Sunagakure when the boy decided to play a man in war." Some other Hoshi traitors escaped justice too. They made for the border of Haven and the swamps close to the shadow country. Some were joining with the Jaws of Grima or getting eaten by them. That depended on the innkeeper who tells the story. 

"Once the dust had settled, everything returned to normal. Hoshigakure enjoyed prosperity and once again became a place that those who had nowhere else to go could call home." As the three Hyuuga siblings had all these years ago. Even though the filth to be cleaned today from the shrines was a different form of filth from that of Hoshi's false icons. And their posy, today’s group, had the same duty to keep the village clean as the previous generation of shinobi had.

[EXIT]

WC:978
TWC: 1715
Combined WC for mission completion: 5761/5500

Claims and rewards for Toneri and Natsuki (1 E-rank, 1 C-rank, 1 B-rank)
9,000 ryo & 55 AP
250 x 3 = 750 ryo (Chuunin Bonus)

With 25% Max stat discount
For Natsuki
350 to D-rank Iryo Amplifier 
1125 to Yin Injury Dismantling 

For Toneri
240 to Rosalin [240/1875]

Approved

The group had all been introduced, but there was one member of the group that he hadn't even noticed before. The woman stood beside Toneri, she had pale white hair much like his own, to that end she also had blue eyes like he had. As the group began to leave their meeting point, he mentioned to the woman that was once forgotten. "Great to see you, I apologize for not saying something to you before. As you can tell I am quite nervous about my first meeting with you young ones. If I remember your name is Natsuki. Great to meet you." 

The group had left their meeting point and was headed to their first destination. The snow haired shinobi would follow behind the group, and he would listen intently to the words that would be exchanged between the  members of the group, trying to understand not just these very children that he was tasked with assessing, but also understanding just how the students of this village were raised and how well they knew their own history. The pale haired woman would perform a summoning technique, bringing forth a creature that the older Uchiha had never seen so large, "An armadillo, eh? Interesting choice for a summoning race, I'm sure there is a good reason and story as to how they all met." He thought to himself as Natsuki and Toneri spoke to the Armadillo about the jobs needed to be done.

As they arrived at the bridge that was needed to be fixed, the two began to speak on the history of the Queen's guard, and what had happened during a failed coup in the midst of their fourth Hogokage's time at the helm of the village. This was all information that seemed to be quite important to remember. The older Uchiha figured that if he was going to be a member of the village's higher guard, then he was going to need to see just what this village's history was.

One of the names that were listed in the "Few loyal men and women" that had been listed was familiar to the older Uchiha. The name that he had recognized was that of Akabayashi Terumi. He was the man that he had worked with in the mine when he had first entered into the village. There was a lot to the story that he hadn't a clue what it was that the young Genin was speaking on, but it didn't take too much intelligence to understand that there was a man that tried to destroy a village, but the village's finest decided to take a stand, and that stand turned out be to successful.

As the work was seeming to be completed by the Genin and the soon to be Nova Corps member, Natsuki and Toneri decided to take their leave and headed back into the village. While he wasn't sure just how much he was able to assess from the little that he had seen in this mission, he did have a better idea as to what he was looking at in the Genin of the village. He was quite impressed with the knowledge that the young one who had told the story seemed to have, and he was also interested in the power of these very Genin. He was hopeful that he was going to get a chance to observe them once again in the near future, and hopefully next time he would be able to see what they could do not only amongst themselves, but in true combat. 

After Toneri and Natsuki made their exit, the older Uchiha jotted down a heaping handful of notes into a notebook that he pulled from his pocket, and then he bid farewell to the other members of the party before heading back to the inn that he was staying in, knowing that he was going to have to put together a report on what he had found out and just what he thought of the Genin that he got to work with.

EXIT

WC: 675
TWC: 2237

Claims: WIP

Anastasia would watch as Natsuki summoned her armadillo companion again. To be fair, he was incredibly useful to have around if only because of how strong he was. He made for a good helper with manual labour. They made short work of the repair work to the bridge with his assistance, and the rest of the maintenance work went by fairly quickly due to the sheer number of people that had been assigned to this mission. While they worked, Toneri felt like it would be a good time to regale them with a story of the bridge’s history; of how it was damaged some time ago during the rebellion that had started as a result of a previous Hogokage going rogue: Valen Akari. The fact that they shared a bloodline even if there’s no actual blood relation caused her no small amount of shame; the fact that an Akari would see fit to try and lay waste to this village was abhorrent to her, and something she would ensure would never happen in the future.

She shook her head briefly to get those thoughts to dissipate, that was a problem for another day. For now it was best to just focus on the task at hand, which would be the cleaning and maintaining of the bridge and surrounding shrines and places of worship. It wasn’t long before they’d successfully completed the work that was assigned to them, which was fine by Anastasia, it meant she could spend more time in quiet contemplation. As soon as the work had been completed, Toneri left with his sister in tow. Anastasia would wave to her friend as she left, they would need to spend some time together doing something fun, preferably not with her brother around. The next to leave was the mission leader, Taichi Uchiha. Likely to go write up a mission report since there was no other reason to keep him here. He said his goodbyes and left. That left her and Cole still here. She hadn’t really seen him doing anything outside of the basic help, so he was most likely not entirely interested in these types of locations. Not that there was anything wrong with that; The Akari Genin wasn’t particularly religious herself, but she found that these places of worship were ideal locations for meditation and self reflection. With the rest of the team splitting off, Anastasia would bid farewell to Cole and make her way back over to the Water Gardens, over to a nice secluded area that few people wandered into. It gave her a chance to reflect on the events of today and learn from them. She could spend hours simply sitting there in peaceful solitude, enjoying the tranquility of it all. Eventually though, she would get up and make her way home for the night. She would need to get proper rest just in case she was assigned a mission the next day.

[EXIT]

WC: 489
TWC: 1700

Claims:
9000 Ryo (1x B-Rank, 1x C-Rank, 1x E-Rank Mission)
300 Ryo (3x Genin Bonus Ryo)
55 AP

17 Stats
600 WC towards Chakra Infusion (2000/2000, Progress here)
1000 WC towards Flying Swallow (1000/1000)
100 WC towards Sacred Spear (100/2500)

Approved.