Mission Info:

I laid on my bed, holding up the one piece of paper that had brought me to this village.  A brief letter from a dead woman, a ninja of this village, that told of why she had chose her life and died for her village.  It was this parchment that I had left my samurai village, my home, and sought out this place in hopes of discovering the amazing village that this woman had written so fondly of.  Sadly, what was written and what I personally discovered were two different things.  One would have thought I had come to the wrong village.  Had it not been for its name being specifically stated on the letter, I would have believed that thought myself, yet it was not so.

What had she seen that had made her be so dedicated?  Certainly not the order that ruled this village.  The Mizukage, though nice in person, had been the root cause of the Seven Bells.  I knew this because it was on everyone’s lips, everyone’s tongues.  The whispers of it filled the air, clung to the wet molecules of mist that clung at people’s shirts and scarves.  Why had she written this letter at all?  I had found it on her dead person anyhow which meant that she had known her time was coming to an end.  Did she feel that someone would come across it and be as inspired as I was?  The letter posed more questions than answers as to why its words were so misleading.

I turned over the letter over and over, my mind going over its words several times trying to make sense of it when suddenly my hands stopped.  My mind seemed to freeze its obsessive focus of the contents in the letter and my eyes just stared at what was before me.  Written faintly on the back, slightly worn away by the time and weather it had suffered while laying exposed in the dead woman’s hand, was a name.

Eruruu.

I had read this letter over a hundred times to keep me motivated as I trained and traveled, then read it a hundred times more when I tried comparing its words to Kirigakure no Sato.  How had I not noticed the name on the back of the letter before now?  Taking it upon myself, I decided to head off and see if anyone knew this woman at all.

Now armed with new knowledge of the dead woman’s identity, surely I could use it to find out who within the village might know of her!  I quickly left my hotel and began going from house to house asking anyone if they might know someone named Eruruu.  I traveled throughout the entire Residential District but every time was turned away either out of annoyance or because they truly did not know who I was asking about.  Whenever a shinobi of the village passed me by I stopped and showed them the letter and the name.  Still there was no luck.

I moved on to the Market District, then the Hospital to see if any of the doctors knew of her.  The more I asked, the more I noticed that some of the faces were struck with odd expressions.  Some had fear when they turned me away and had made a few glances around.  Others wouldn’t listen to me once I had spoken her name, telling me to be quiet and to leave them alone.  At first I hadn’t paid any attention to it, but after it continued to happen again and again I grew suspicious.  Why were they turning me away?  Some of these people seemed to know enough about the name to not talk about it.  She was so devoted in her writing, I didn’t understand why the villagers and shinobi didn’t dare speak the name.

After several hours of this, I grew frustrated and tired, but mainly was confused at the response my questions triggered.  I sat down on a street bench somewhere deep within the village’s catacombs of roads and raised buildings.  Looking at the letter for the last time, I decided it was no use.  There was no one in Kirigakure no Sato that would speak to me now.  Word had spread farther through the city of my questions than I could even hope to cover in one day.  The distraught and hopeless feeling within my gut was too much and I couldn’t bear to hold on to this letter any longer.  All I knew was that it was full of lies.  I tossed it into the air, letting the breeze take it away from me.

Though the letter was no longer in my possession, my body was still as tense as ever from all of the walking, thinking, and mulling about over it.  That stupid letter had caused me more trouble and pain than any sort of training ever had.  If only the burdens the letter had created had flown off with it, then maybe I would be able to rest easy knowing I would be troubled no more.

Yet trouble seemed to be too fond of me to let me go that easily.  As I sat on the bench, rubbing my hands against my aching temples, a man called out to me.  Turning my eyes slowly to look upon the person who called me out, I saw a crippled man down the road, his clothes dark from being wet and dirty, the edges of his shirt ripped to tatters, and his pants tied up at the stubs that were his thighs.  I approached the man, getting a clearer picture of what he was waving at me.  The letter.  It had blown down to him it seemed and now was calling me back to it.

”Thank you, but you can keep it.” I called back to him.

“No!  Come here!” He yelled even louder.  Several people walking by turning their heads to the commotion.

Reluctantly I walked up to him, slightly embarrassed that a homeless cripple was yelling at me.  ”What do you want old man?” I muttered through gritted teeth, trying to hush the old cripple.

“I’ve seen you with this--seen you about, asking around.  Sticking your nose where it shouldn’t!”

I nodded ”Yes, yes, I got that.  I’m done with that, you can keep it.”

“I don’t want it,” he held it out to me, his hands treating it like it was diseased.  “I don’t want to ever see her name again if Fate ever grants me that peace.”

My eyes lit up at this.  ”Wait, you know her?  You know Eruruu?”

“Shhhh, don’t say her name so loudly girl!  You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into here.”  The man pulled me close, his hands grabbing hold of the collar of my hood.  His eyes darted wildly side to side, making sure no one else was giving heed to what he was to say next.  “She was once a ninja here, top of the line.  Until one day she betrayed us all.  Lost both my legs trying to hunt that traitorous bitch down!”

”What?  But her letter!  She wrote how she would die for Kiri, that--”

“Hah!  ‘Die for Kiri’.  She certainly would have died had she not gotten the better of me.  Didn’t even have the decency to kill me.  You know what she said?  Said she couldn’t do it, didn’t have the heart.  Oh, how I would’ve made sure she didn’t have that heart!”

The cripple let go of me, wringing his hands at the heavens in anger.  He spat at the ground and waved me off.  I tried to get more out of him but he wouldn’t talk.  Instead he began creating a fuss and yelled out to villagers passing by that I was disturbing and pestering him.  Quickly the villagers responded and shooed me away.  I left, looking over my shoulder at the cripple as I returned to my little hotel room, the letter once again in my possession.  I had found answers, but they had only created more questions.

1369/600 MISSION COMPLETE
769 Leftovers