[ayase saki]

Sato Reiji was missing. Saki had returned from her hunting trip with a deer slung across her shoulders and a nasty bite wound in her forearm to find that the keeper of the boarding house was inconsolable. She’d been hoping to ask him if there was a doctor in town she could see about getting a rabies inoculation and some antiseptic, but she wisely decided to set the matter aside, dumping her prize unceremoniously on the butcher’s block in the kitchen before settling in to hear his tale. Sato Reiji was not missing, she soon discovered, but taken, collateral claimed on an ill-advised loan. Saki kept her opinions to herself in favor of offering some small comfort to the man who had housed her these past few days, and when he bemoaned his lack of funding and the slim chance that he’d be able to hire shinobi to rescue his son, she caught the gleam of opportunity. An offer was made, a bargain struck, and after Takashi had the good manners to feed her first, Saki set right back out on the road leading out of Miraki. The trail was maybe a day old—Saki had lost some time out in the wetlands—and the passing storm had turned most of the tracks to mud, but there were only so many places that an up-and-coming gang could make their headquarters all the way out in the boonies like this. Further north, where the tracks lead, there was farmland, with nothing but crops and sodden cows for miles around. With her sword comfortably at her hip and the bandages on her forearm amateurishly re-bound, Saki slunk past barns and farmhouses, waiting for that tell-tale prickle of red awareness at the edge of her mind to indicate when she was getting warmer. Landscape with a blur of criminality: Saki was the most suspicious thing on the horizon, skulking and sodden and haggard as she was. If she tracked her targets soon, she thought, she would at least be able to get in from the rain.

Ishikawa Ren -- 345

LAIKA OF THQ

[Ishikawa Ren]

     The warm glow of the fire illuminated Ren's face - solemn, eyes closed in mock-meditation. Rake-like scars trailed down from his left eyelid. The Chuunin was sitting against the interior wall of a small barn, sword clutched in his hands, cradled against his shoulder and neck.

     Wood cracked as a chair leg fell deeper into the pile, sending up a small plume of ash. Waves of rains were smashing against the roof, increasing and decreasing every few minutes. Ren remained still, letting the warmth of his makeshift fire dry his clothes and heat his muscles.

     There was still quite some time before any of the gang's associates would be due to pass through. Going by the refuse scattered about, a few of the lower-ranking ones had taken to using the abandoned barn for their illicit recreation - about as much as those who lived on the edges of this patch of farmland had hypothesized. People often undervalued the attentiveness of countryside neighbors.

     In the meantime, there was little more Ren could do aside from preparing his body and mind. Masao's teachings were a prime topic for his thoughts of late. That, and ways to extract or replace or do away with memories.

     Perhaps these criminals would make for good test subjects. They would not be missed. Inconsequential, of little import - so long as the trafficking and loan sharking was ended, Arashi no Kuni would be better off.

     Yet Ren's thoughts were hardly on altruism. Only on what he could extract from this mission for his own interest. A twisted version of the Second's philosophy, perhaps.

ayase saki | 262 words

[ayase saki]

The trail was gone. She’d made progress, undoubtedly, but at some point between the wetlands and the farmlands the rain had fully churned dirt into mud and washed away dragging footprints. Which meant it was time to start investigating the hard way, she supposed. On the outskirts of the territory were a few abandoned plots of land; the first couple of them were well and truly drowned in rainwater, which was perhaps all the evidence she needed as to why they’d been abandoned in the first place. It seemed unlikely that these would make decent hideaways for the same reason, but she did her due diligence regardless, the memory of a murderous doll slicing into her back still fresh in her mind. Two farmhouses and a barn scouted, with little to show for it but desiccated walls and mold growing in the crevices. The second barn had been spared from flooding, it seemed; as she drew closer, the whiff of copper blood-scent and the taste of a heartbeat heavy on her tongue told her she found something promising. One life within, so not precisely what she was looking for, but something regardless. The barn was closed off, shuttered against the rain, but it was in better shape than some of the others and there was no alternate entry point that Saki could see from the exterior. In lieu of stealth and observation, she took a straightforward approach; she bundled herself more firmly in her jacket to cut a more pathetic figure seeking refuge from the rain, and slid the barn door open. Once inside, she stopped short, her eyes widening as if in surprise to see a fire, and the individual illuminated by it. "Sorry,” Saki said, shivering in her jacket. "I didn’t realize someone had already staked a claim.” Her wet fringe was plastered against her forehead; she took off her glasses to wipe them clean on whatever dry scrap of shirt-fabric she could find. She kept a healthy distance, having learned at least something of a lesson about making herself comfortable at the camp of a stranger. Glasses back on but still wet, giving the world a smeary haze at the edges. A nasty scar raked down a handsome face, sword in his arms; there was no tell-tale glint of a hitai-ate that Saki could see, so the mystery lingered. Was he working with the gang? Keeping watch while he waited for the others to arrive? "Mind if I sit for a minute?” she asked. "It’s nasty out there, I dunno how the people here stand it.”

Ishikawa Ren -- 433

LAIKA OF THQ

[Ishikawa Ren]

     Wasn't supposed to be anyone, yet. Ren's eyes cracked open at the intrusion, deep blue-grey eyes tracking her across the room; he said nothing in response to her first remark. Something about her - voice, movements - was off, but Ren also seemed off in his own way. He made no movement at all, did not move to sit up or to make sure of his grip on his sword - merely watched, silently.

     A simple nod in affirmation and a quiet "Sure," were the only indications of consent he gave. Aside from her obvious statement that told she was not from here, Ren did not recognize her accent - certainly not from Arashi no Kuni, probably not from any of the major village's nations. Minor, then. Or far west, or east.

     Had it been a few months ago, the encounter might've sent a bead of sweat down the back of his neck - instead his eyes were calm, focused on her face. He'd not been very secretive, but unless she were a truly random wanderer, her presence was off - the only ones attracted here ought to have been locals, or the gang members.

     Not local. They were either here unintentionally, or they were here for him specifically, somehow. The only ones with a bone to pick with him were Jashinists. Finally, Ren let out a small sigh and turned his head, set his katana off to the side. He watched her in his peripheral vision, testing to see her response to him seemingly letting his guard down.

     Ren looked back at her, ran a hand through one of his bangs - still wet underneath. The reflection of the fire danced in his eyes. "Here?" he asked after a moment. Ren's gaze ran over her katana, then settled on her face once more. "Doesn't rain where you're from?"

ayase saki | 291 words

[ayase saki]

Consent given, but Saki only murmured a quiet thanks and stalled. She busied herself under the pretense of wringing rainwater out of her ponytail and the hem of her jacket until she saw the man set his katana to the side. Not because she believed it was a sincere gesture towards disarming, but rather because she was confident that if push came to shove, she would be able to draw on him. How based in reality her confidence was truly was anyone’s guess, but the little tickle in the back of her mind that told her you could crack his bones and sup the marrow made her feel as secure as it did unsettled. She pulled her own weapon from her belt, setting it gently to the ground in quiet reflection and respect to his own gesture as she took a seat by the fire. Saki was not opposite to him but rather perpendicular; she kept her back to the rear of the barn and faced the door she’d slid shut behind her. She’d not had the chance to scout this particular location for murderous dolls and could live to regret putting her back to an open and unknown space, but that was a risk she was willing to take to ensure that she had direct line of sight on the only entrance. "Not like this,” she replied, stretching her fingers out towards the fire, seeking warmth for her icy-wet limbs. "It’s been nonstop since I got here. Where I’m from it rains just enough for a harvest worth reaping.” True of Hana no Kuni, though she had no idea what the weather was like in her fraudulent homeland; still the lie fell easily from her lips. "Mori no Kuni,” Saki elaborated, as if anticipating the question. She felt his eyes on her, but she watched him only out of her periphery, instead keeping her eyes trained on the fire. There was something skeletal about the shape of him, dark circles bruised into pale skin, and long spindly fingers, but he had good veins. She could hear it in the way his blood flowed. "Are you local?” she asked, gently lobbing the question back at him. "I’m looking for a guy that went missing from the town down the road, but I don’t know the area that well. Can’t think of where to pick up the trail.” If he had information she could prise, there would surely be a tell—but then again, he seemed composed enough. Nothing to do but push buttons and wait for the light to flicker on.

Ishikawa Ren -- 434

LAIKA OF THQ

[Ishikawa Ren]

     Probably a liar, he thought to himself as he half-scratched, half-traced a scar on his neck. Not too much harvesting in Mori no Kuni. But there was surely some amount of agriculture there, and his conjecture was just as much from a general tendency to distrust people than any particular knowledge.

     Entirely for show, to appear more normal, his hand came back down and clasped with the other. "Mhm." he responded. "From just over the border," he lied as he gestured to the east with a nod. "Hi no Kuni. But I've been here a while."

     It was a good thing his hitai-ate was tucked away inside a pouch. Ren eyed her over again with a tired look. The sword alone was enough to tell him she was probably a wandering-nin, at least - the odd vibes and probable lies meant it was safest to assume she was a missing-nin, too. May as well drop fake hints that he was one as well, in case.

     "Reiji, I take it." he said while staring at the fire for a moment, remembering to blink. The fact Sato's son was missing was hardly a secret - as the owner of a boarding house, word had quickly spread through Miraki. Would she assume he had merely heard tell? That he was one of the gang members? Or something else? Ren tilted his head up, forced a painfully fake slanted smile at her.

ayase saki | 236 words

[ayase saki]

Saki knew next to nothing about the political climate of the western continent, so she swallowed the lie with ease; to anyone else a Hi no Kuni native in Arashi no Kuni lands would raise some eyebrows, but Saki simply didn’t know any better, so she took the information at face value and tried to mentally map out where Hi no Kuni was from where she stood. She’d passed through it on her way here, no? Or had that been Nohara no Kuni? It was all starting to blend together; operating with a mind full of holes in a foreign land was proving to be more difficult than she’d anticipated. Still better than the alternative. Reiji, I take it, he said, and Saki looked at him with open curiosity, as if trying to probe for his secrets. If he were one of the gang who had kidnapped the guy, surely he wouldn’t be stupid enough to come out and say it—unless he was confident enough in his own competency that he wasn’t worried about any threat that Saki might pose. But his smile was so clearly fake. Everything about his movements was stilted, awkward, forced; he looked like a hand inside of a sock puppet, a creature living within a sack of meat doing its best impression of a human being. Perversely, she empathized. Mind full of holes. Something was wrong with her, and if she was sniffing the situation right, then maybe the same damn thing was wrong with him. "That’s the one,” she said. She smiled back, broad and just as fake, feeling and resisting the urge to funnel chakra into the trigger to make him smile wide, wide, wide. She was, abruptly, bored—tired of the back-and-forth, playing games. Either he was her enemy and she could kill him and be done with it, or he was a potential ally, and she wanted him on her side. "Look, I’ll be straight with you, so be straight with me,” she said. "I’m staying at his father’s boarding house, and he’s hooking me up with a month’s lodging if I bring the guy back safe. I can deal with the guys who took him, I just need to know where he is—so if you know anything, I’d appreciate the info.”

Ishikawa Ren -- 384

LAIKA OF THQ

[Ishikawa Ren]

     Ren shrugged, looked her over once more. If he told her, what would he gain? Taking on the criminals alone seemed like more of a challenge, and thus, more beneficial for his growth. Having an extra blade would only serve to make things easier, and if he wanted that, he'd just make a shadow clone - probably do more than she ever could, he arrogantly thought.

     Still, his primary objective was to test a technique on one of the bandits, before he slaughtered them all. Perhaps something she had to offer made up for the loss in efficacy of the secondary one.

     "Alright," he said. "I can show you, but you'd better pay me back." Ren slowly grabbed his katana, sat up from the wall and threw it around his shoulder. How wasn't much of a concern at the moment. Best to have her indebted to him for now, and demand whatever he ended up wanting later. He eyed her yet again, now that he stood more than half a foot taller - a fact he seemed to derive some queer satisfaction over, despite not smiling.

     When they were prepared, Ren kicked some dirt over the fire until it was extinguished - grey wisps filling the barn as the cold from outside leaked in. The sound of rain pouring resumed its' full intensity. Though he'd already mentally checked dozens of times while waiting, he looked himself over to ensure he had all his things, in an oddly mechanical ritual.

     "Up there," he pointed with a single almost-sneering hah at her expense. The building creaked as he walked up the interior wall and took a leaning position against a vertical beam amidst the rafters. "Someone 'willing' to lead us to him should be here any second." he said while unsheathing his broken katana, looking down at her to see whether she would follow or ask for help up.

     Across the fields, two members of the gang stumbled out of the tree line. The skinnier of the two clutched his head, eyes squinted shut. "Gods," he said with a pained expression. "I need a hit." The other laughed. "Yeah, that annoying bastard won't shut his mouth. Can't believe his father is too broke to-"

     The skinnier one shook his head clear, shut the other one up. "Hold up - you see smoke coming out of there? Looks like someone beat us to it, might not need to use any of our own." he said excitedly, before they started walking into the rain.

ayase saki | 415 words

[ayase saki]

The fake smile turned genuine, syrupy-slow. Transactions were easy—if this man wanted to play a zero-sum game, Saki was more than happy to oblige. Nothing financial, of course; surely he realized that she had barely more than pennies to her name, and she was sharp enough to know when someone was seeking a more ephemeral collection on a debt. What a person considered adequate payment for services rendered, Saki had found, had a tendency to reveal more than they realized. Sato had offered a month's lodging for his son's safe return, but she felt sure that she could have squeezed more from him if she'd wanted to. She just hadn't wanted to—she chose moderation instead, preferring a healthier relationship with her temporary landlord over more immediate returns on her investments. Merchants seeking a protective detail paid her in food or coin or supplies, but those kinds of direct transactions were less informative than the blank check that Saki was writing out to this stranger now. She stood when he did, only a moment behind him, and was granted a fresh perspective on his features: he stood a head taller than her and she could see deep scarring on the side of his throat, to say nothing of the damage inflicted to his face and eye. There was something in the way he looked at her in that moment, looked down at her, that she couldn't tell if it was with condescension or curiosity or some mixture of the two. If it was an effort to intimidate her, looming over her as he did, it was doomed to fail. Saki liked men larger than her; they had a higher center of gravity, and their physical arrogance made them sloppy. "We can split the reward," Saki joked as he put out the fire. "You take the left side of the bed. It's not as lumpy." He checked his gear and she mimicked the action, reminding herself of what exactly she had and what her best guess for their uses were. Little pots of flammable oil were obvious enough, but the pills were a mystery, and she’d not yet been brave enough to test their function. She watched with idle curiosity as he walked up the wall as easily as if it were the floor beneath their feet; after a moment’s hesitation she leapt up to follow him, pushing hard off the wall as a springboard to hop up into the rafters nearby. Experimentally she channeled chakra to her feet, and was delighted to find that it worked as she assumed by watching, stabilizing her footing on narrow, crumbling beams without any assistance needed. Any second, he said. Saki considered this, pressing her tongue against the roof of her mouth, waiting for the copper taste-memory to tell her when offerings were drawing near. His blood roared in her ears, her focus briefly distracted by the broken blade he drew, wondering what poor fucker lay dead in a ditch with the shattered part of that blade nestled between decaying heart and ruptured lung— "Two incoming,” she said. Her own katana was in hand, though she didn’t remember drawing it, and her weight was heavy with anticipation on the balls of her feet. "You’re well-informed.”

Ishikawa Ren -- 542

LAIKA OF THQ

[Ishikawa Ren]

     Some old muscle memory wanted to contort his mouth into asking: 'Shinobi?' but the signal never made it past its' severed cluster of neurons. Ren's mouth didn't budge - all he did was side-eye Saki, logged the fact she was a sensor-nin. "Hardly," he shrugged. Lowlifes like these have easily recognized patterns.

     "I'll take the left, then." he half-joked, though by tone it was barely recognizable as such. The doors creaked subtly as the pair outside leaned on them, preparing to burst in and scare whoever was inside as a prank, assuming it was occupied by other members of the gang.

     "Gotcha!-" the skinny one, on the left, exclaimed. "The hell? Nobody here?" the lumpier one guffawed. The duo leaned back outside and leered through the rain into the fields, saw no one. "Hello?" They asked in unison as they wandered in, squinting into the dark corners of the barn.

     The pair had wandered into the middle, and after switching sides were standing on either edge of the smoldering pit of ashes and had begun to talk when Ren dropped behind the larger one now on the left, already twisted low. His leg spun under and easily swept the unaware man off his feet, exploding the pit of cinders as he did so - bathing the barn in renewed dim orange light.

     Catching the man by the back of his shirt as he landed on him, Ren used a Taijutsu throw to launch him against the back wall with a loud bang. In a split second, the Chuunin'd placed his left hand over the sweaty flesh of the criminal's mouth and used the other to flip his shattered katana upside down.

     The old Ren's memories flashed through his mind - snippets, faded, like a decayed reel of film skipping. All of his training with Sanosuke flew past in a wild blitz, a life reviewed just before death. Anatomy. Human anatomy. The femoral artery.

     Muffled screams echoed violently as Ren's shattered katana tore through the man's thigh, an unbroken section coming to a stop between both severed ends of a prospective torrent of blood, the tip driven into the dirt beneath.

     Ten single-handed seals smoothly flowed into one another before his left was pulled away. "Your favorite memory." he stated. The man stuttered a crying 'what?' "Tell me!" Ren screamed in fake anger.

     While the man sobbed about his sister's wedding, Ren inscribed the seal upon his forehead and weaved two more seals before he closed his eyes and delved into the man's memories with a surge of chakra. 'Sister.' Snip. In what felt like stretched time, Ren snipped and snipped before the real world suddenly faded back in and he clamped his hand down once more as he spun around to see how Saki had fared.

     Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced down to see that more blood than expected had spread over the man's pants. Memories were fallable.

ayase saki | 489 words

[ayase saki]

His tone was inscrutable. Saki glanced at him sidelong, but what little she could see of his expression in the dark of the barn was just as neutral… except for that faint hint of something, the barest glimmer of personality buried beneath the scars. Saki grinned, but before she could say whatever quippy thing was brewing on her tongue she was distracted by the barn door sliding open to allow a strip of dim, murky rain-light through. For someone who agreed to help so begrudgingly, Ren leapt into action as soon as a halfway decent opportunity presented itself. Saki followed, pushing off her perch to drop down beside the guy on the right; unceremoniously she thrust her sword through the side of his chest, just centimeters off from where she could hear his heart frantically hammering against his sternum. It wouldn’t kill him. It was not his lifeblood that splattered across her face. No innocents. She’d yet to shed blood in this country, hadn’t taken a man’s life in one week four days thirteen hours twenty-six minutes, stood on the precipice of flicking her wrist and cleaving clean through the tough and well-seasoned flesh of a fearful heart. Ren held no such qualms, apparently. She could hear the wet splatter of blood cascading from a vital artery. She gripped the hilt of her katana and stepped in close, the fingers of her free hand flexing between handseals; she pressed her face up against his and whispered into his ear: "sink." Withdrew the sword with a wet schlick and flicked his blood from her blade. The man thrashed in place, struggling against imaginary chains, straining up on his tiptoes as if to keep his face clear of rising water. Saki circled around him, pressed two fingers against the hole she put through his back as she peered over his shoulder to examine Ren’s handiwork. She’d heard him yell, but distantly, as if through a thick wall of cotton. He was doing something complicated with his hands, and with the burst of cinders since faded it was hard for her to tell what it was in the dark. "Your friend will die in approximately four minutes,” she said conversationally. "He’ll pass out first if he’s lucky, but I doubt my friend will let that happen. It will be long and painful, and he will suffer before the end. Do you want that to happen to you? You can shake your head no.” He shook his head no, eyes wide, unable to speak through fear and the sensation of choking water. It was possible that the pain of the damage she’d done could snap him free of the illusion, but she was too focused on the viscous blood that slid between her fingers and the distant smear of ink that she could just barely see on the other man’s forehead to worry about potentials and hypotheticals. "You won’t die,” Saki said, as if it were a kindness. She locked eyes with Ren as he turned to check on her, his expression unreadable in the dark. "But I can make this stop, if you help me. No more pain, no more fear, no more suffering. Tell me where I can find the collateral and I can make it all stop.”

Ishikawa Ren -- 558

LAIKA OF THQ

[Ishikawa Ren]

     Genjutsu? He pondered for a moment, while watching the criminal flounder about, not having heard her whisper while engrossed in his work. Between that, tree climbing, sensory, and her combat skills, she was clearly a Shinobi of some sort.

     Yet conjecture about whether she was undercover from another village or a missing-nin was pointless at the moment - he'd not been asked to find that out, and doing so wouldn't help him. Ren glanced up at her face, hidden in the shadows, behind the 'drowning' man.

     She seemed fully capable of extracting the information by herself, so he resumed his experiment. Behind his back, the man Saki'd entrapped in an illusion was viciously nodding his head and gasping - "Yes, y-" he managed between stolen gulps of air, "yes!"

     Tilting his man's head back with a shove, Ren slowly asked "Do-you-have-any-siblings?" while looking into the glazed-over eyes. The criminal shuddered as he tried to access the sealed away memories, on the verge of a stroke. Confused, he leaned forward against Ren's hand as though he were about to pass out from blood loss, but instead drawled a long and uncertain "No?"

     The man slumped off to the side unconscious. I'll need to test more, Ren thought. Exactly how much he could seal away was an unknown factor, and he was still sloppy.

     There was no telling if Jashin's blessing would somehow interfere with memory manipulation - he doubted it - but he suspected it wouldn't be as easy as sealing away their memory of their god and implanting memories of a Ninjutsu, and somehow making them use it.

     His brow furrowed slightly. Progress with his anti-Jashinist Genjutsu was slow going, but if anyone could help him, it was Lord Second. At least Fuinjutsu of this sort could supplement that, erase his face from their memories - allow him to force disciples to serve as his eyes on the inside of the temple.

     No sense wasting an opportunity, he thought while lazily looking at the katana embedded in the man's thigh. Ren grabbed the neck of the criminal's shirt, ripped it straight down and off, then ripped that into two long strips. Balling up one of the two around his extended right middle and index fingers, he yanked the katana out.

     An arc of blood shot up into the air, splashing onto Ren's shirt and off his arm as he shoved his fingers into the wound, hooked them and began to shove cloth into the upper portion of the exposed artery. The man woke with a scream, a renewed burst of energy from the immense pain - Ren used his free hand to roughly grab the man's throat and shove him up against the wall.

     By the time the second strip of cloth was roughly lodged into the other opening, the man had passed out for the final time. Ren's stemming of the bleeding wouldn't save him unless he received immediate medical help, which he wouldn't be getting - good practice, though, he thought as he stood up and turned back around to check on Saki's progress.

     Stepping into the center of the room, Ren looked over at Saki. The wind picked up outside, briefly blew the door open long enough to illuminate him in pale light, white shirt drenched with blood, face splattered and hand still dripping. With a piece of cloth, he wiped his face off and then followed his jawline to get his neck. "Get anything good?" he asked as he tossed the bloodstained strip back onto the soon-to-be corpse.

ayase saki | 584 words

[ayase saki]

Rushing blood roared in her ears. The man in front of her wept and burbled through what he believed was thick dark brine filling his lungs; the man behind her slowly bled out, femoral artery sliced in a gratuitous display of gore. The stench of blood and fear and anticipation of the decay yet to come hung heavy in the air. "Good boy," Saki said. She circled back round to his front and released the technique; as soon as the illusory bindings were gone he collapsed to his knees, cradling his injury and heaving for oxygen with broken sobs. Saki patted him gently on the head as if he were an especially pitiful dog. She knelt down beside him, lifting his chin with her bloodied fingers to force him to look at her. "The collateral," she reminded him. Distantly she could hear Ren interrogating his victim, though through the pounding in her head she couldn't make out the words. Siblings, he said, but what else? He had his own agenda, it seemed, but she couldn't begrudge him for that. The act was no less messy for his assistance—messier, honestly—but it allowed her to focus on the task at hand. Through heavy gasps the man told her everything he knew: they were supposed to meet up with the group here, but if something went wrong then they were meant to reconvene at a safehouse a few more miles down the road, a big house further out in the wetlands that they were using as a home base for the time being. "How many?" Saki asked, and he said, "seven aside from us," and Saki asked, "are any of them chakra-trained?", and he stammered without answering, so she pushed his hand aside from where it was staunching his wound and shoved her thumb into the hole until he screamed for her to stop. "How many of them are chakra-trained?" Saki asked again, and once he told her "three," she very politely allowed him to resume staunching his wound so that he could give her directions to the safehouse. Leave no witnesses. "Thank you,” she said when he was done, "you did very well.” No innocents. But the man behind her was already dying, and these two were no innocents. The confessed participants of a crime so morally defunct as loan sharking were not innocents. "I can help you,” Saki said softly, wiping the tears from his eyes with her bloodied thumb. "Do you want it to stop?” "Yes,” he said again. Saki nodded. Little permissions. She snapped his neck; severing the spinal column would not cause instant death, but he would fall unconscious in less than ten seconds, and the body would take care of the rest from there. As painless a death as she could offer. Bring pain unto me. Her lips formed the shape of the words, her voice whisper-soft but still so loud in the ringing quiet of post-chaos calm. Her fingers were trembling; she lifted them to her mouth, breathed in deep the scent of blood. Let mine heart be cleansed. Pale light shone through the flung-open door. The brief illumination cast over Saki bathed her face in shadow, but the light glinted off the cool metal of the staples in the back of her head, the wet length of her tied-up hair doing little to conceal the rough-shaved undercut and still-tender surgical scars that had yet to fully heal. She felt Ren’s approach. Blood smeared against her chapped bottom lip as she let her hands fall back to her katana, busying herself with wiping the blade and sheathing the weapon. She turned on her knees, head craning back to look up at him: black hair stark against pale skin, crimson splattered across a crisp white shirt. He wiped the blood from his face but the stain was still there, smeared across the sharp angle of his jaw and down the side of his throat. Saki was hungry. Leave no witnesses. She swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat and got to her feet. "There’s a safehouse a few miles north from here,” she said, and was pleased to find that her voice came out steady. "I dunno what tipped them off, but it’s the go-to place if something goes wrong. Seven of them, three chakra-trained, two raiton and a suiton.” She recited the directions she’d gotten, complete with specific turns and landmarks to look out for, even the all-clear signal that they put out when everything was fine and resolved. "What did you do to him?” she asked, looking at the not-yet-dead corpse of the man Ren had dealt with. "It looked complicated.”

Ishikawa Ren -- 794

LAIKA OF THQ

[Ishikawa Ren]

     In an unpracticed mockery of chiburi, Ren shook the blood off his jagged, shattered blade. Stooping down to grab the shirt of the man with the snapped spine, he wiped the blade clean and then placed it back into its sheath before he looked over at the dying man slumped against the wall, bloody ends of cloth sticking up out of his leg in the darkness.

     "Memory manipulation," he said, a gust of wind ruffling his hair. "practicing." Ren glanced back at Saki's victim, eyes lingering on the face and neck. He wondered if he was still conscious in there - he'd read that somewhere, that someone is still aware for thirty seconds after decapitation. Was it any different in this case? The thought made him think of himself, and he looked away.

     Anticipating the answer would be lacking, and redirecting his thoughts, he continued. "Fūinjutsu - seals selected memories away. Need it polished for some future business." he said and turned back to face Saki. "Let's get going, then. I'll deal with the bodies."

     Ren pulled out a Fūinjutsu brush, painted a '石' on the chests of both men. With a few handseals, he softened the ground beneath each and laden them with hundreds of pounds of weight, causing them to sink deep. He released the handseal and kicked dirt around the room - over the blood, leaving it in dark black clumps, and the two smooth spots where they'd sunk.

     If he was going to spend any amount of time nearby, he'd rather avoid the headache of hearing about the deaths or the suspicion that might come from being a wanderer in the area. With the men sunk near a dozen feet under the barn, they'd likely never be found - likely never be missed, either, in his mind.

     "Come on." he said as he walked over to the barn door and held it open for her. Watching Saki walk out into the pouring rain, he unexpectedly found that he 'liked' her more than most he'd met since waking up. Mika, he felt he owed a measure of sincerity. So far, Saki had not pried much, and he suspected they could walk all the way to their next stop without a word and both would be content. The fact he didn't even know her name seemed to make it even better, somehow.

     Following her out into the rain, he pulled off his shirt and used the downpour to wash away the blood - both on it, and the skin it'd seeped into beneath. Beads of water rolled down his chest and back, over the brands of Jashin above his heart and etched deep into his back, and the scars that criss-crossed everything else. He didn't seem to shiver, despite the cold, or be bothered by being wet. The brief glimpse of his marred body was covered again as he slipped the shirt back on, and they headed north.

ayase saki | 490 words

[ayase saki]

Memory manipulation. Saki frowned, stepping over one corpse to get to the other, and crouched down beside the still-breathing body to examine the seal Ren had written on its forehead. She'd vainly hoped for some flash of memory to arrive, but none came; this wasn't anything that was known to her in this life. She fished around in her pouches for a blank tag and carefully copied the seal down as best she could before stepping back to let Ren do what he needed to do. Again he used seals, as well as some kind of doton technique from what she could tell, and again she copied down the seal he used. it was unfamiliar to her, but with a little practice she felt reasonably certain that she could crack the code on her own time. She’d planned on handling everything manually—this far out in the boonies it seemed unlikely that anyone would see or care as she dragged a couple of corpses out to drown in the muck of the wetlands. That Ren took the time to help was maybe not an act of kindness, exactly—wanderers were the first to take the blame when bodies started showing up, and Arashi no Kuni was neither of their homelands as far as Saki knew—but it did feel like a gesture towards solidarity. When he was finished the barn looked a little worse for wear, but there was little tangible evidence of what they'd done that remained. Leave no evidence. He held the door open for her; gentlemanly, in most contexts, but considering the deluge they were walking into, Saki wryly thought that this was less politesse and more a delay of the inevitable. It took her a few moments too long in the downpour to realize that he intended to accompany her. Their bargain, as far as she was concerned, was only for him to help her get the information she needed, and then they’d go their separate ways. Maybe he just really wanted his half of the reward. Saki craned her head over her shoulder to crack some pithy joke about it, but the words died on her lips as she saw the white shirt slip up over his head to reveal the lean muscle of his back, and the nightmarish abstract of scars that marred the canvas of his skin. Her first thought was of artistry: she knew with deep intimacy the evidence of torture, of pain without the promise of release. And the largest piece, the mark of suffering, as if it were a painter’s signature. She knew too well the brand on his back, because she bore the same on her own. She hadn’t given it a second thought when she woke up. It was as with all the rest of the things in her life, her body included: it had a history unknowable to her, an origin she didn’t care to uncover, and if there was meaning behind it then it was better off in the life she’d left behind. But here the mark was again, utterly devoid of context, and the more desperately she tried to rack her brain for the source of the image in front of her the more painful the pounding in her head grew. It wasn’t until he put his shirt back on that she snapped back to attention, her hazy focus shifting into clarity. She took off her glasses and tucked them away in a pouch, slicked all her hair up and out of her face; Ren seemed unbothered by the wet and the wind and the cold, but Saki enjoyed no such lack of discomfort, and her shivering only grew worse as the minutes slipped by. The question she wanted to ask burned on her tongue, but the truth was that she didn’t want to know the answer. Not yet, while she still had work to do, while her position in this country was still so unstable, unfunded, unhoused, insecure. All that besides, she didn’t even know his name. There was a lot she could tolerate, but she could never abide by unnecessary rudeness. She kept her questions to herself. If Ren was content to travel in silence then Saki would do the same. Her hands shoved into her jacket pockets and her hood ineffectually drawn up against the rain, the journey was miserable but not arduous, and it wouldn’t take more than an hour to follow the dead man’s directions and reach the area of the wetlands where the safehouse resided. The lingering taste of life she’d yet to take drew her to a more precise location, seven syncopated heartbeats drowning out the one beside her for the time being. The house was nice but not estate-worthy, a three-bedroom affair with a cute front porch and windchimes hanging from the exterior beams. The all-clear was positioned outside: a scarecrow with a jaunty hat atop its head, cheerfully warding off avian intruders. "D’you got a plan, or just go in swords swinging?” she asked Ren, her voice wavering in the cold. A little grin tugged at the side of her mouth. "You take the left?”

Ishikawa Ren -- 860

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