Over To Us.

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7

The people chose to call Thunderclash to get a sense of his mental state.

 [CONTENT WARNING:  This installment deals with a character experiencing voices other people can’t hear, and an open question about whether the voices are real.]

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“Ultra Magnus is right,” you say, trying to ignore Skids shooting you a startled - and hurt - look.  “Before we decide anything else, let’s hail the Vis Vitalis.  We should at least find out where we stand.”

You silently hope Skids will understand.  You want to help Gleeerboo, and hopefully you can - but you’re not going to be of any help if you charge in without gathering all the information first.  You still don’t know what’s happening with the planet, or with Thunderclash, or how (or even whether) they’re connected.  And if you insist on just going to the planet without even checking on Thunderclash, odds are that Ultra Magnus or Perceptor will have a lot of questions for you.

Besides, Thunderclash is your patient, and that has to take priority.

Ultra Magnus hails the ship, and you wait.  And wait.

After a much longer pause than you’d normally expect, an image finally flickers to life on the main screen… but it isn’t Thunderclash.  Instead, you recognise the softly rounded features of one of Thunderclash’s subordinates.  You seem to remember that this was the Vis Vitalis’s second lieutenant - he came aboard the Lost Light when you last encountered Thunderclash.  You recall that he was a bit quiet, but then, it was probably easy for him to get lost in the flood of adoration directed at his commander, and then the high drama of then-first officer Paddox’s betrayal.

You wince slightly, still remembering the full-body ache after Swerve swung your alt mode into Paddox so hard that he shattered into his component beings.

“This is Ultra Magnus of the Lost Light to speak to Captain -”  Magnus is cut off.

“Oh, thank you, Primus!”  The young officer peers anxiously at you all.  “Please - we need your help.”

Magnus looks less than impressed.  “State your designation.”

The officer straightens up, although his expression still betrays his worry.  “Second Lieutenant Sparker, sir.  Please, I - I formally request assistance.  Captain Thunderclash is behaving extremely strangely, and I’m afraid he may be in danger, sir.”

“We are aware of the situation.  I am accompanied by Rung, one of the Autobots’ leading psychiatrists.”  You give a solemn nod when Magnus gestures in your direction, and you school yourself not to smile in greeting; in situations like this, many people prefer a serious expert to a friendly one.  “Captain Thunderclash himself contacted us, so if you could simply connect -”

“I can’t, sir!”  Sparker bursts out.  “The captain locked himself in the shuttle bay ten minutes ago, and he won’t answer his comm!”

Turning away from the screen, Skids murmurs, “Do we think he’s planning to -”

At that moment, a siren sounds on the Vis Vitalis.  You can hear a muffled voice in the background shouting, “Unauthorised launch!”  Sparker mouths a curse, and then disappears from view.

“We do,” Perceptor answers Skids coolly, and puts the view of the Vis Vitalis in space up on a split screen with the still-open comm link to the ship’s chaotic bridge.  He zeroes in on an even tinier dot that’s moving away from the Vis Vitalis at speed.  “I surmise that this shuttle contains Captain Thunderclash, and, further, that his trajectory is towards the planet.”

“Hail the shuttle.”  Magnus turns to you.  “Rung, you may be best suited to talk to him.”

You’re prepared for the hail to go ignored, but to your surprise, Thunderclash responds.  He looks haggard, hunched over the controls of a small shuttle.  There’s a grey tint to his facial metal, and his colours seem muted - a sign of stressed systems.  His optics, though, are blindingly, worryingly bright.

“Thunderclash here,” he says.  He isn’t looking at the screen, and he sounds distracted as his fingers fly over the controls.  As you watch, Thunderclash suddenly winces and clutches his head.  A second later, he seems to shake it off.

This side adventure shows us another take on the events of the chuunin exam final/Konoha Crush arc, which is always fun. This time, it's Neji and Tenten, who are chilling in the medical wing, talking about the aftermath of Neji's bout, when they hear the attack on the village begin.

Tenten tries to cajole Neji to come back to the arena and watch the rest of the matches instead of being alone with his whirling thoughts. She tells him that hey, Guy-sensei and Lee are there - and Sasuke's match with Gaara "looks like it'll be exciting!" I mean. Sure. If by "exciting" you mean "I think we might be about to watch one of our classmates die in real time".

We find out that in the chaos of the chuunin exams, Hinata actually got kidnapped! Now, you may remember that when Hinata was tiny, she was kidnapped by ninja from the Hidden Cloud Village, kicking off the events that ultimately led to Neji's father's death. So who is it this time? The Sound Village, nabbing yet another ocular jutsu to add to the sharingan they intend to get from Sasuke? (Something that would be particularly easy for them to pull off, because Kabuto actually stops to help tend to Hinata after she passes out in the stands.) The Sand Village, taking a bit of insurance in case everything goes south? A new player, like the Grass Ninja, who've already shown themselves very willing to rough up a child to gain an advantage? ...No, actually, it's the fucking Cloud Ninja again. Damn, these guys do not give up.

... I'm going to laugh so hard if this turns out to be a consequence of Neji yelling really loudly during his bout with Naruto about how the Leaf Village tricked the Cloud Village years earlier to deliver them a useless byakugan. If a bunch of Cloud Ninja were just listening to that, and steaming, and then when everything kicked off they went you know what, you fuckers, brace yourselves for Kidnap The Hyuuga Heir 2.0.

There's something really sweet about the fact that we're getting the story of Hinata's kidnapping as told by Neji to Konohamaru and his team in the present day, and Neji clearly goes out of his way, not only to depict his comrades in a favourable light, but to make his bestie Tenten specifically as badass as humanly possible. Even during bits of the fight Neji probably couldn't have witnessed. Tenten pulls the classic "I'll hold them off and then catch up with you" move, and Neji describes her - after he and Kiba went ahead - as creating a ring of blades around herself, facing down the pack of magic ninja wolves she's fighting, and asking them, with a gleam in her eye, "How do you want to do this?" <3

Also Moegi looks starstruck during this part of the story. Nice - we need more badass female ninja inspiring future badass female ninja.

One of the kidnappers gets pissed off when Hinata wakes up and tries to fight back, and viciously suggests they really only need her head, not the rest of her. Dude's got to have the lowest annoyance threshold I've ever seen in a ninja. She really just shoved you a little and then coughed on you, my guy.

Hinata has, to put it mildly, not really entered her badass phase yet here. But there's also another element that hasn't been explicitly mentioned, but I think you could read it as underlying Neji's actions. The reason Hinata is in as bad shape as she is is that Neji fucked her up during their fight. Not only did he fully try to kill a member of the main branch of the clan - the people he was sworn from birth to protect - but he unintentionally left her even more vulnerable to the enemy. You have to wonder if there's some guilt mixed into his determination to get her back.

I do find it pretty funny that the lead Cloud Ninja was apparently listening when Genma compared Neji, after his bout with Naruto, to a bird in a cage, and the Cloud guy has held onto that in order to devastate Neji psychologically now. :D

Lord Hyuuga's here to save his daughter from the Cloud Ninja kidnappers! That has NEVER gone badly! Neji, you'd better hope your uncle doesn't kill one of them, or the Leaf Village might end up framing you for it...

I'm... actually not nuts about the ending of this episode? I'm all for Hinata and Neji reconciling, sure, but I really liked the way that happened in the original series, giving us these small glimpses of them starting to train together, implying a slow rapprochement. But here, just hours after Neji and Naruto fought and Naruto hit him with the truth about how much Hinata has also been struggling and suffering, we get Neji out here delivering a full-formed speech about the emotional turnaround he's had. In very therapy-speak terms. The fight with Naruto is originally set up as the beginning of the process of the metaphorical bird picking the lock of its cage (culminating in Neji's self-sacrifice during the Sasuke Recovery Mission), but this makes it seem like the cage was unlocked the whole time, and the bird is just out now with no lingering emotional impacts.

However - and I don't think this was the intention, but it works as an interpretation - if you consider this whole episode to be Neji's telling of the incident, not an objective account, then maybe his speech is him simplifying the arc of his emotional journey for his genin audience, and not something he literally said to Hinata at the time. (That could also explain why Kiba apologises so prettily to Neji at the end of the episode for his "behaviour", even though he... didn't really... do anything outside of a snarky comment or two. It's Neji's story. :D)

It does crack me up that Konohamaru and his team beg Neji to tell them a story about Naruto, and Neji fundamentally tells them a story about Neji himself being awesome and then leaves. :D

The next episode gives us a rather lovely glimpse at some of the more mundane work of rebuilding Konoha, as Shikamaru is leading the effort to sort through any photos recovered from the rubble and return them to their owners. Some of them have even been carefully taped back together - this is clearly being taken seriously, just like the work to get the villagers shelter and medical care.

It's cool seeing the different trappings that ghost stories have in Japanese culture, versus what a Western/Anglophone audience might be more used to. Here, Naruto accidentally removes a seal that's been attached to a mountain (which is almost Journey-to-the-West-y), in a move that the audience would recognise as dangerous, in the same way that a Hollywood ghost story might have a character accidentally disturbing a coffin or reading from a cursed book.

The dub includes a cute nod to Scooby Doo, as Naruto sees a transparent figure in his bedroom and stutters out, "G-g-g-ghost!"

... of course, within about five minutes, Naruto is making tea for the ghost and telling him not to be sad. D'awwww, Naruto.

Naruto's eternal optimism has him wandering around the village, asking if anyone recognises (what he thinks is) the ghost's name, without seeming to ever consider that a ghost who was sealed out in the hills might not be a ninja of the Leaf... or that a ghost in fairly traditional clothing could have died a long-ass time ago.

We get a glimpse of an earlier council meeting with the Fire daimyo, and the Leaf contingent comprises the Third Hokage, the two counsellors, Inoichi, and Shikaku. You know, it really does feel sometimes like the creation of the Leaf Village just replaced the powerful clans with powerful lineages of masters and students. The Third and the counsellors were a genin team trained by the First and Second Hokages, and now the Third's son is training the second generation of Ino-Shika-Cho teams (and of course, Shikamaru will shortly become a chuunin and advisor to the next hokage). It's fairer in a way - anyone, even a civilian-born ninja like Sakura, could be added to a team that's part of a powerful lineage (like Team 7), whereas clans are based on blood - but still. The nepotism is real.

Apparently, the hospital in this ninja. village. just gives out sensitive personal information on their patients - like, say, home addresses - to anyone who asks. *headdesk* Dammit, this is how you've ended up with multiple successful or near-successful assassination attempts taking place in the hospital! Well, that and the fact that you apparently do not attempt to stop people just wandering into patient rooms. Okay, the actual murderer in this episode is probably being stealthy about it, but Naruto isn't and he just walks into a comatose patient's room twice.

Playful griping aside, I actually really like the ghost episode. It's a highly enjoyable blend of Naruto hijinks, tragedy, and political intrigue (even getting subtly tied at the end into the coming Konoha Crush, when we find out the bad guy was working for Orochimaru to try and soften up the village for attack). Naruto is an utter sweetheart throughout, who turns out to still place flowers on the grave of the ghost and his late wife, even years down the line. Plus, we get a sweet Kakashi moment where he instantly believes Naruto (presumably even about the ghost thing) and rolls with Naruto's plan to trap the bad guy. It's good stuff.

It is very funny to me, though, that Kakashi raises precisely zero objections to Naruto offering to let a ghost possess him and kill the ghost's murderer. Maybe Kakashi figures that this would be on the ghost's conscience, not Naruto's, and the ghost isn't Kakashi's responsibility. :D