A young member of the Nara clan was returning from an assassination mission in the land of grass. It was the rainy season, and his trip was slowed by mud. His camping was miserable, and he had not been warmed by a fire in many days when he came to the Naka River. Due to the rain, the Naka surged at almost three times her normal height, threatening to break free of her banks and flood. It was impossible for the young Nara to cross, and the sight of the river perplexed him.
In his frustration, he caught sight of Master Shikamatsu on the far bank of the river, peering into it thoughtfully. Yelling to his master, the young man asked Shikamatsu how he could cross to the other side. The Master surveyed the water and looked over it to the bank beneath his student's feet. "But my young friend....," said Master, "....you are on the other side."

As she did every morning, Shinako had awakened before dawn, bathed, dressed, and equipped herself. In keeping with custom, she then embarked on her morning run. Even her path through the still sleepy village had been unchanged. All of her daily nods, waves, and smiles occurred, more or less, in their designated places and at their expected times. The streets still smelled like freshly baked bread, and the Genin still darted from home to home, delivering the day's newspaper. On her face, Konohagakure never changed.

What made this morning different, was that, as Shinako came to the normal bend in the road at the end of her circuit which would take her back through the village gates, she did not turn. Instead, she broke from tradition and ran off the road, headed north into the forest. Not once did she look over her shoulder, back to the village. Nobody seemed to take notice of the young woman breaking through the underbrush. If they had, perhaps they would have thought her a mad girl, escaping from reality for a while. Perhaps they would have thought that something inside her had cracked. They would not have been particularly far off.

In truth, Shinako had not made up her mind until just that moment. As she ran, her appointments for the next few days rushed through her racing thoughts, begging for a justification of her act of abandonment. She could find none. Her body moved on its own, in defiance of everything strict and ordered in her. The rational, in that moment, separated completely from her motivation, and she had to slow her pace and catch her breath. Soon, as the moment threatened to overwhelm her, she stopped beneath the trees, panting heavily. Her body and mind both threatened to betray her...to strike her down for this last act of hope. A few dizzy moments, stemming from the emotional and physical exertion of it all, pinned Shinako in place, just as her shadow could steal the motion from a living thing.

After a long while under the shade of the trees, she began to run once again.

515/515

Lord Yang, hungry for competition with his counterpart, interrupted Lady Yin's meditation and engaged her in a game of transformation:

“Lord Yang: I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler.

Lady Yin: I am a pitfall, open-mouthed, wolf-trapping.

Lord Yang: I am a horsefly, light-winged sting, pit-mocking.

Lady Yin: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged.

Lord Yang: I am a toad, spider-devouring, posion-skinned.

Lady Yin: I am a horse, toad-crushing, heavy-footed.

Lord Yang: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying.

Lady Yin: I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing.

Lord Yang: I am a nova, all-exploding... planet-cremating.

Lady Yin: I am the Universe -- all things encompassing, all life embracing.

Lord Yang: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... of everything! And what will you be then, Lady of Dreams?

Lady Yin: I am hope.”

There had been several moments, in a dark pub, with a stranger, in which Shinako had felt like she was playing a game of chess against some phantom foe. She had learned, in her relatively short time as a Shinobi, that there were things in this profession that threatened to tear you down; that pulled with everything they had, and that would drown you if you let them. She shuddered at the thought of drowning, yet she knew that her life was likely to collide with the murky world beneath the surface very soon.

She had in mind a very simple, but deeply emotional objective. Somewhere, along the river that she now traveled, lay the body of an unfortunate Chunin boy for whom Shinako felt deeply responsible. She would find his body, no matter how long it took, and return him to the Hidden Sound village. By now, after almost two weeks of exposure, she was not sure what condition she would find him in, and the visions which inhabited her dreams (nightmares?) deeply troubled her. The water was warm this time of year, and would not preserve the body. All manner of wildlife would be delighted at the opportunity to feast on a corpse.

Choking down the bile in her throat, Shinako kept running. She formed the sign of the ram momentarily for strength. The young Kunoichi could not afford to think of the Sound Shinobi as a dead body. It was only the thoughts of him as a son, or brother that kept her going. She had not flung herself out into the woods to collect dead flesh. Out here, in the wilderness, lying under a tree, or a clinging faithfully to a rock, or reclining on a sandy shore, was hope. She would bring back to the Sound Village something pure, and sweet. The memories of the young boy were worth more than silver or gold. It was all of his promise, all of his hopes and dreams, and every tear that had fallen for him that she would ultimately be returning. Knowledge of that was enough.

517/1,032

Darkness, to the Nara Shinobi, was usually a kind visitor. "Shadow merges with shadow," Shinako's father used to say. As planners and plotters, the strategists of the Nara clan seldom had to navigate by the light of day once their plans had been carefully laid. However, Shinako now felt her lack of planning and its effects distinctly. The darkness, tonight at least, was a bitter foe. At every turn it sought to hide the way from her, stealing away the cues she generally used to orient herself during the day. This would not have been a problem if she had known exactly what it was she was looking for.

As things stood now, the young Kunoichi had no way of knowing if she were drawing closer to her target or if she had passed it. Her mental map of the area from her previous mission here was shaky at best. She had fled so quickly from the Sound Shinobi that she had had precious little time to get her bearings, let alone get a firm grasp of the terrain. Perhaps a Jounin would have been more careful, and such an oversight left Shinako cursing her inexperience and foolishness. Even in the academy she would have been reprimanded for so rudimentary a mistake.

But still, with only her own ragged breath and shadow as a companions, she picked her way slowly through the dark, keeping her eyes wide and her ears attuned to her surroundings. The forest hummed with night-life, though the thought of it chilled her. Creatures of the night were predators and scavengers. Things with life, and vigor, and splendid form often failed to make it through the night. In short, the centipedes, wild dogs, and rodents were her enemy, and they were over a week ahead of her in pursuit of a common goal.

Having employed her usual method of dark, cool mud to keep the stinging insects off, Shinako kept close to the banks of the river. It had been a day and a half since she had embarked upon this mission, and in her heart she knew she must. Be getting close. A wall of rotten stench confirmed her suspicion. The wave of death hit her senses of smell and taste like a thick blanket, and it was all she could do to keep from retching. Her eyes watered with the unpleasantness of it all. She recognized the smell, and was immediately taken back to a place and time on the Nara lands years and years ago. Through the sands of time, and in that sick way that nostalgia often has, Shinako was transported into the body of a young girl standing over a desiccated, fetid deer carcass.

She had not thought to use her nose to seek out death, though the idea was now so apparent to her that she felt foolish. She made a mental note that she had to become more adept at utilizing all of her tools if she was ever to get anywhere as a Shinobi. For now, her quarry was close enough, and she was ready to face whatever she would find in the darkness.

525/1,557

Shinako wished that she had brought a cloak. In her customary work-out clothing, a shortened qipao dress, black leggings, and combat sandals, she was normally unbothered by the elements during the course of the day. The streets of Konoha were sunny, and she could always duck into a bath-house or a restaurant to get warm on colder days. Now, soaked to the bone, she began to regret everything. The clammy water clung to her body up to her chest, and even an hour after her submersion her skin broke out in prickly goose-flesh whenever an air current caught her.

In the course of investigating the odor of death she had detected, Shinako had discovered that the river bank was dotted with eddies that bored cavities into the sandy rock, collecting vegetation and flotsam. She had followed the wretched stench to such an alcove, only to discover the rotting corpse of a raccoon being eaten by ugly brown fish that had been drawn to the taste of its blood in the water. To get a glimpse inside, she had had to forgo her foothold atop the glassy surface of the water and sink down to the level of the burrow, a decision which she had come to regret.

As Shinako had drawn close, a massive pike escaped from the darkness of the hole, rushing past her and finning her, opening a laceration in her right thigh with one of its spiny protrusions. This had drawn the notice of the ugly brown fish, and they had abandoned the raccoon for a fresher meal. The Kunoichi had had to quickly climb to the shore, with the gross, slimy monsters nipping at her heels. They embodied everything she hated about the water. In fact, she had hated it since the times, as a young girl, when her brothers would push and dunk her beneath the surface of this very same water as it ran through the Nara lands.

Soon, Shinako decided she would need to stop and build a fire. Even this close to the Hidden Sound, the territory within the Land of Fire was relatively secure, and she doubted that it would draw much trouble. Besides, she had long exhausted the effectiveness of relying on her chakra reserves to keep herself warm. Without shelter, heat, and rest, she would become even more ineffective than she was already becoming, and might even get herself into quite a bit of trouble.

Finding a suitable site, a clearing amidst a thicket of trees, Shinako went about gathering kindling, dry wood, leaves, and vines. First she built a make-shift tent out of branches and leaves, forming a cushion from the soft fuzz that lay just beneath the bark of the trees in this part of the forest. This way, by laying the cushion on a pallet of logs, she could keep herself off of the ground and away from the insects. Once her dwelling was erected, she dug a rectangular pit and started a fire. She was instantly thankful for its warmth, and soon fell asleep, dreaming of the snapping jaws of scaly brown fish that patrolled the river.

525/2,082

Shinako did not stir immediately as she awakened. Some sense of instinct told her not to. It was not quite dawn yet, and the chill still stuck in the air. Her clothing, where she had hung it to dry, moved in a slight, crisp breeze. The fire in her pit had burned down considerably, but its warmth still caressed her skin. Her face and back felt slightly burned, having spent hours exposed to the heat with nothing but her undergarments as protection. A further assessment of her physical state revealed just how tired she truly was. As a Kunoichi, she was not a stranger to exertion, but this was nothing like the dull ache after expending a large amount of chakra, or a long, tough session of Jujitsu.

Subtle twitching and flexing of her calfs, thighs, shoulders, and biceps produced sharp pangs and then a lasting burning sensation. If she had to guess, she would say that her muscles had experienced minor tears from her labors in the past thirty-six hours. However, it was not the pain that kept her rooted to her pallet, but a heightened sense of things. Out in the waning dark, Shinako could hear heavy, rhythmic breathing and the scrape of a boot in the underbrush.

Whoever it was that had unwittingly awakened her from her slumber seemed to be circling, and from that determination Shinako could assume that he or she had already discovered her camp-site. Her tool belt, having been soaked in the water, lay unpacked on the other side of her fire pit, inaccessible in the event of a sudden attack, as they were just out of reach. In her stillness, Shinako strained to discern whether she might be dealing with more than one stranger. After a few more moments in silence, she could locate only the first person she had identified. She guessed, from the undisciplined nature of stranger’s stealth skills, that she was dealing with, at best, a Chuunin.

The young Kunoichi shifted, rolling gently from her side to her back, locating her shadow and merging it with that of her lean-to. As the breathing circled, so too did the inky shape of the shadow, tracking the movement and remaining between the masters of the sound and the shadow. Now Shinako’s heart raced. With her back rooted against the ground, the thumping muscle seemed to jump from the earth to her rib-cage with increasing fervor. The cool wind that blew found her skin, evoking goose-bumps. She had never been more aware of her own vulnerability. Her excitement stirred a wetness between her legs, a dilation of her pupils, and a churning feeling in her stomach. She recognized the perverse arousal of approaching combat.

Soon after, the breathing became more muted, and the motion more precise. There was a certain sense of calm before every storm. Shinako estimated that the stranger (enemy?) was now scarcely five meters away, shielded from view by the canopy of leaves and branches she had erected last night. From all of her experience in the Shinobi world, she knew that, lying prone and naked, she had lost the advantage of surprise. The other did not have that advantage either, but at least they were standing and equipped. Her instinct told her that she had to strike first.

Gathering her chakra, Shinako formed the Dog and Tiger seals in sequence, molding and releasing one of her most reliable distraction techniques. An identical image of Shinako, wide-eyed and startled, dove from the mouth of her make-shift tend, lunging for her tools. Four meters out, hidden in the tree-line, three more clones appeared. As the first doppelgänger lunged, several Kunai knives sailed harmlessly through its back, their trajectory revealing her attackers’ exact location….and exact intent.
Rolling to her knees, Shinako drove her hands down into the pool of shadow inside the lean-to. Like a black blanket, snapped against the air to shake off dust, it responded to her touch, flung up into the space between her and her attacker as a solid wall. The wilderness shelter was battered aside, and her opponent’s gasp was audible as more kunai struck solid shadow and were knocked harmlessly to the ground. In the same moment, the reserve clones rushed from the trees and converged upon the attacker’s position.

Hearing the foe shift, Shinako took advantage of his distraction and dropped the wall, finally catching sight of the enemy combatant. Somehow, she was still surprised to see a boy of barely teenaged years. He held a Kunai in his hand, and a wild, frightened look in his eye. A kunai slash against the phantom flesh of Shinako’s haze clone threw him off-balance while the clones continued to circle and dart in dazzling but harmless attack formations. Now was her chance.

The young Kunoichi leaned forward as her own shadow lurched at the sound shinobi. With a dedicated speed and precision, the penumbral specter of her yin chakra darted for and caught the shadow at the tip of her opponent’s toe. She felt it latch on and pull taut, locking her body and his into place. As she did this, the clones disappeared, leaving only her and the frightened assailant standing in the early hours of the morning. With a determined look on her face, she formed the sign of the rat for concentration.

For several long moments of silence, she kept her gaze leveled at the young man, feeling his muscles desperately twitching and struggling against her shadow’s paralytic grasp. The feeling was almost intoxicatingly powerful, but Shinako pushed those feelings to the back of her mind while she scanned her surroundings for any remaining threats. Finding none, she focused her attention on the task at hand.

Much to the horror of the boy she had pinned in place, a long tendril of shadow rose from her impossibly dark silhouette, curling up into the air and snaking behind Shinako and back into the camp site. With dedicated precision, the shadow gathered her tools and clothing, beginning the slightly awkward process of dressing and equipping her. As her shadow gathering technique worked, Shinako spoke.

“Did you know that I would be out here?”

The boy seemed surprised that she was conversing with him rather than continuing to attack. He swallowed hard, seeming to take in the situation with new eyes. The realization seemed to dawn on him for the first time, as the shadow pulled her qipao dress over her head and zipped it at the back, that his opponent had been in a state of undress. He blinked as though clearing his eyes, and Shinako thought she saw the fear there only intensify, though his muscled finally relaxed, tired of struggling.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Just tell me what your mission was.”

The young woman knew that she was close to the Hidden Sound, but not close enough to encounter any of their regular patrols. Her thoughts momentarily fixed on the shrouded face of the boy she had ventured out into the wilderness to find. She almost felt her shadow slip as her concentration was split between tasks, but she managed to refocus, forming the sign of the rat once again as she fastened her tool-belt around her leg and waist. She tied her sash expertly, and tied her leggings around her waist as well, unable to lift her legs to don them. She finished with a touch she did not normally employ, tying her forehead protector across her furrowed brow. It signified her full status as a Shinobi of the Leaf, and that felt important in that particular moment.

“I…I…You’re her, aren’t you? The woman who killed Gantetsu?”

The accusation struck Shinako like a slap in the face, but she didn’t let her discomfort show. She guessed that Gantetsu was name of the boy that the river had taken (that she had given to the river?). It felt strange and almost comforting to know his name. Later, in the comfort of her own home back in Konoha, she would whisper it into the darkness and weep; perhaps the same way a sister would whisper it.

“Did you find him?”

A look of confusion spread once more over the Sound Shinobi’s face. Everything about the Leaf Ninja in front of him was deeply and utterly perplexing. She felt his muscles tense again, in a futile attempt to escape.

“Did you find him?!?”

Shinako leaned forward, struggling against her own shadow to move closer to him. She remained rooted as the boy began to panic. Perhaps his were the expressions of a child who believe he was about to perish. Shinako’s voice was frantic as well. She would not remember later what questions she asked, or what comforts she attempted to offer as the boy began to cry and call out for his teammates. She would not recall catching their sound or their scent, but she would remember how the creatures of the morning went silent and still in all of the noise.

Mostly she would remember the silence that came from the boy as her shadow’s cold, dark hands slithered upward from the ground, overtaking the boy’s legs; now his chest; now his throat. She could feel their pressure as they encircled his throat in a vice-grip, and almost choked on the moment herself. She held him until he was completely still, and no longer. As her shadow released, the boy went limp, and she rushed to make sure he was not injured in the fall to the earth.

From a preliminary and rushed analysis, his breath was erratic and his heartbeat was unsteady. She had choked the bloodflow to his brain, and he was at risk. However, if his teammates arrived presently they would know how to save him with rudimentary revival techniques. For now, she had to run. In her exhausted state, there was no way she would be able to face a squad of Sound Shinobi.

Laying the young man’s head gently on the ground, Shinako said a short prayer to whatever powers might be watching for his safety. She had never really done that before. Then she fled, heading back towards the river and following it south. Hopefully the young man’s peril would distract his team for long enough to allow her to put some meaningful distance between the hunters and their prey. Hoping was all she could do.

She felt foolish for having done any of this. In the end, she would be unable to determine the fate of Gantetsu’s body. The sun finally broke over the horizon, ushering in the dawn. The birds began to sing again, and a touch of warmth took to the air. The water of the river took on a rosy hue. Shinako would remember that it looked almost like blood.

1,800/3,882

Chakra 140/200:

Training: