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It was well-known around Otogakure that to disturb the Sound Five during their training sessions was to court death. Nobody knew quite what deadly jutsu they were conjuring up in Training Room Eight – or at least nobody had had a good look and lived to tell the tale.
There were rumours, of course. A table covered with a cloth that might hold corpses for dissecting, sealed filing cabinets stuffed with hardcover tomes and loose sheets of paper, holding who knew what secrets, special chests made up of dozens of small compartments, each of which might contain a drug or a weapon or even a prosthetic. Once when the room was being cleaned, the chests were moved to another storage area, and the ninja who’d carried them claimed she heard metallic rattling.
“I’m gonna kill you tonight, you know that, right?” Kimimaro told Sakon in passing.
Threats of that kind were commonplace in Otogakure, and usually led to fear or at least anger. Sakon, though, just laughed. “You’ll need to find me first!”
“Kidoumaru will help, after what happened last week,” Kimimaro added. One perfect eyebrow was arched. “You made a lot of enemies with your antics.”
“Do your worst,” Sakon said. “I’ve got a dozen clowns where that one came from, and Udon has even more.”
Clowns were involved somehow, or so the rumour network claimed from that day onward, and the rank-and-file were even more confused than before.
Peering behind the forbidding door of Training Room Eight was not an option, though. Whatever horrors lurked there were best left undisturbed.
“You better have brought snacks, shit-for-brains, or I’m skinning you alive,” Tayuya barked.
Jirobo held out a sack stuffed with chips, candy and soda like a peace offering. “I did, and you’re welcome to them, but mind your language.”
“The day I stop swearing is the day hell freezes over,” Tayuya said, but there was a noticeable lack of cursing. She grabbed a fistful of miscellaneous treats and tossed them on the end of the table.
“Taking all the cookies, Tayuya? Really?” Kidoumaru asked from the door. He’d stopped his hushed conversation with Kimimaro to complain.
Tayuya shrugged around a mouthful of sugar. “It’s perks, innit. Unless you wanna swap jobs.”
“Not this again,” Jirobo groaned. “We need to stick with the same leader or we’ll never make any progress. I don’t want to start from scratch for the fifth time.”
“Yeah,” Sakon agreed. “I finally got some fifth level spell slots. Tayuya can stay DM until my bard dies, at least.”
“Did everyone remember their dice?” Jirobo checked. There was a round of nods. “Good. Then let’s get the character sheets out and get started. I’ve gotta leave on a mission tomorrow so it can’t be a late one.”
There was a round of grumbles at that, but they were all used to it. It was rare indeed for the whole group to have two days free in a row, so they made do with whatever scraps of time they could find.
“Alright, where were we? The intrepid Musicians of Death slew the Goblin Lord and ransacked his fortress, finding a pile of goblin treasure, which Sakon – sorry, Sanok the jester – has in his Bag of Holding.”
“Why did you want to keep all that junk?” Jirobo interrupted. “It’s just worms and dead leaves and things. Goblin treasure rather than anything useful.”
“We could use it to bribe any goblins we come across,” Kimimaro pointed out. “And stop interrupting.”
“That was in character. Jiboro was talking to Sanok,” Jirobo defended himself.
Kidoumaru was fidgeting with his dice, always eager to get to the next fight. Still, he loved to stir the pot. “You’ve gotta pick less stupid names next time, alright? Take my Anaxaranas, for example. He sounds like a mighty ranger, and it’s not just Kidouramu or something dumb.”
“That definitely wasn’t in fucking character,” Tayuya said. She pounded the table to cut off the rising chatter. “Next person to break character gets Hawaiian pizza instead of the good stuff. Any takers?”
In the silence that followed, she settled down again, eager to get back on track. She wanted to take the group through a dwarven mine today, after all.