[juryoku yusei]

The two of them made their trek south. The mission report sounded all the more intriguing after his trip to the countryside with Takato-senpai. The one he yapped about to Shosuke-san. If even the wildlife could kill you, who's to say what went on outside the village proper?

In either case, the trail leading out was little more than a dirt road, a thousand footprints parting the grass of the countryside. The sun was hanging on, on the verge of setting. The soil turned drier and drier as they drew closer.

An arch with faded lettering stood over the village proper, whose buildings were short but numerous. Wood-paneled, with tiled roofs. Townspeople went about their days as usual, though there was a shakiness to some of their steps.

If it were a matter of a plague, Yusei was wholly unsuited to this sort of thing, but the report talked about waves of cold rolling over and missing persons. All they had to do really, was lie in wait and stop whatever was responsible in its tracks.

Yusei looked to Shosuke, as he often did, with a placid stare. He seemed to approach it softer and gentler than before, eyes wide.

"...You know you can put your feet up and relax while you're in town, right?"

He didn't mean to come across as rude, but. Shosuke came all this way to be here. In either case, Yusei went about their hike in his usual navy-blue compressionwear.

"--How did your date with Ichi-sama go by the way... if you don't mind me asking?"

Yamamoto Shosuke , 274

And I'm so sedated that I sleep through the night

[Yamamoto Shosuke]

"Everybody in our line of work should be scared of themselves. [...] The thing is? You can't let that rule your actions, or make your decisions for you. It has to be a factor, not the sole consideration."

Shosuke's words from their previous training session echoed in his head as the two wandered through the countryside, the quietude of the Land of Grass something Sho had come to appreciate during his original travels to Hirata. Of course, it seemed like he only ever came here when he was having to learn something important or risk his life on some mission, there was never a chance to just hang out and spend time with people that he cared about.

Though, now that he thought about it, wasn't that the case everywhere he went, not just Kusa? He had actually been ordered to take some downtime during the exams, and yet somehow he had wound up pitching in as a medic and even handling some additional missions as the young sage's stand-in mentor. No amount of good will was enough to avoid the call to action it seemed, though he couldn't actually quite bring himself to complain. Keeping busy kept him from dwelling on things, after all.

Especially not when it came to handling jobs like this.

Unlike the rest of Kusa, the quiet that infested this place seemed far more unpleasant and artificial. People had gone missing, taken in the night, and they were here to try and work out what this was about. This was no plague, Shosuke knew that much for sure - he had witnessed plagues before, they were loud, messy and discordant. Here, the world was quiet, and not in a good way. Even the natural background noises like birdsong seemed to be muted, as if someone had turned the volume down on the world itself.

Something Yusuke seemed unwilling to sit with, immediately asking a rather improper question.

"... Now? You wanna know such things now?" Sho asked, his head turning in Yusei's direction, a rather bemused look on the face of the young Doctor as Yusei asked about how his meeting with Ichi went. Maybe it was his fault, he had been the one to describe it as a date, though more to see if he could get Atagi to react than anything else. That it would come back to bite him was not something he had considered.

"Well, if you must know? It wasn't a date. Lord Ichi and I aren't... we're not like that. It just so happens we both share Wood Release, and I wanted to learn from someone else who had my abilities. For it to be a date, I'm pretty sure there'd have to be some spark there. I can assure you, there wasn't."

Not that Ichi was unattractive, Sho mused - The man was tall, dark and handsome. Its just that he was excessively tall, unrelentingly dark, and handsome in the same way one might look at a statue. There was something about him that made it hard to even consider him as something that COULD be attractive or ugly, he was more of a businessman. The man was about as sexless as a ken doll, all things considered.

"As for putting my feet up, you really think I could sit back and watch as this kind of stuff is happening under our noses? People going missing, no signs of struggle, no signs of... well, anything at all, really. Almost as if people are popping out of existence like soap bubbles disappearing on the wind. I'd assume this was some sort of violent campaign if there was even so much as a dram of blood, but... well, you've seen the village.

So, any ideas?"

621 words | juryoku yusei

SPOILER: Click to show

B-rank Mission: 2/20
Jutsus Used: None