Mission name: Scouting Ahead
Mission rank: C
Objective: Scout the outside of Kumogakure
Location: The Wilderness of Kumogakure
Reward: 150 Ryo
Mission description: We have been getting reports of odd activity by nearby smaller villages. They have hired us to scout the area out for anything unusual
Mission details: Simple mission, just go walking around outside of Kumogakure. During the scouting you will run across smoke in the distance and follow it to the location. Upon arrival you will see a burning village with everyone dead and no culprit to be found. Upon which you will return after discovery. (1000 WC)

Ren Sabaku.

That was her name. It was the name of someone who had been reformed. It was the name of someone who wanted to make up for the sins she had committed, but it was also the name of someone who couldn’t get enough of what she did. And what she did was not always legal. And it was the name of someone who knew that what she did was not always legal in the full sense of the word and the conventional understanding of the word, but it was also the name of someone who didn’t care, knowing that it was for the best that she acted this way so other people would be wiser to their surroundings and the current state of affairs in the world.

And if she should make a gain out of it, well that was only all too appropriate.

Ren knew that this was the thinking that many criminals went through justifying their illegal actions which hurt others to benefit herself, but Ren knew that her actions, bending the law by understanding every facet of it, didn’t really come to harm anyone, not in the long run. Yeah, they felt slightly disheartened and bad that they had been tricked, but ultimately it was a lesson that she believed was best learned in a mediocre setting, where little was risked, rather than have the big storm hit them and take away everything they loved.

Ren was good like that.

It was why she was currently heading off to scout out some of the smaller villages around Kumogakure. On the surface, this looked like a simple scouting mission that any other ninja could have had, but Ren knew better. She was currently heading to the smaller villages not just to scout them out for Kumogakure, but also to understand what the state of affairs there were, and to understand their laws, customs, and traditions. While they were all in the Land of Lightning, differences in customs and traditions, and even laws, still existed, as this was very prominent in the Land of Water when she had escaped it all those years ago.

She bounded along the treetops, taking in the scenery around her but ultimately focusing more on her task than the beauty of nature itself, as well as the cool temperatures around her which were associated with the Land of Lightning and the Land of Frost, a stark difference compared to the temperate climates in the Land of Fire, or even the deserts of the Land of Wind. She ignored all these even if they signalled the perfect day to lay down and rest, because she wanted to be able to see the villages as soon as she could. She wanted to learn about them, and she wanted to use this knowledge for her benefit in the future. Some would say she was a crook who only wanted to take and give nothing, but she was giving something: lessons. She wasn’t hurting them too badly, and they would always be wiser as to how they could be hurt with the authorities doing nothing to help them. No, the ones who understood what she was doing would call her a ninja, albeit one whose methods were outdated by the centuries. She was working in the shadows, truly, hiding her intentions from even the Raikage and the village itself, just appearing to be a little refugee who wanted to make up for her sins.

And so she bounded along the treetops, unstopping.

Word count: 590

Sourai had no clue what he was looking at. A village on fire. Burnt corpses everywhere. Most stacked in the village square and set on fire, with the flames still going, even if they were dying down. Charred skin flaked off their bodies from the simple blow of the wind. Smell of urine reached his nose, though most of it was dried from the heat of the flames that pervaded the entire village, taking everything, living or not, with it. He currently stood in the village square, just in front of the gigantic pile of bodies that he knew would be plaguing his nightmares for the next few nights to come.

Sourai had always loved to play around. He loved to fool around in and out of the village, sometimes both in and out of the village at the same time. He loved to make his Jonin-sensei chase after him, both around the village, and outside the village borders, since that was what they did for their sensei-student bonding sessions. His sensei would chase him around and admonish him for something wrong that he did (and this was regarding something really wrong, like taking stuff he really shouldn’t, instead of what mistake he did) before Sourai would get a lecture on how to better do wrong what he did wrong, as well as get away with it. He still had a long way to go before he would be able to trick his Jonin-sensei into thinking anything was right, though. Something about his body language giving too much away and him having too little discipline to control his runaway mouth.

But right now, Sourai’s runaway mouth had stopped dead in his tracks. He wasn’t even sure that his brain was working any further. He had never seen such carnage in his life before. Such destruction everywhere. All the wooden villages and their straw roofs burned to the ground, leaving but the charred skeletal remains that once used to make up their framework. Bodies everywhere… it was like a scene from a horror movie, only Sourai was very sure that this was happening, and that this was happening now, in front of him. Or, more accurately, he was looking at something that had happened long ago, completely powerless to stop it.

Maybe he wouldn’t have been able to stop it either. He went to the village gates, preparing to report back to the village, but stopped for awhile and sat outside the village fence to compose his thoughts, trying to ignore the stench of death and rotting flesh that hit the air. It was so terrible. Just so terrible.

He had come here feeling bright. He had come here fully spirited. He had not expected to see this. When the village had asked him to check up on one of their smaller villages out in the outskirts of the Land of Lightning, he had happily done it thinking that they just wanted him to get the mayor of the small village to send an update back to the village. He hadn’t expected to come across a burning village, with dying citizens from who knows how long ago. He would have to just report back and have them send some specialists to determine what the f*ck exactly happened here in this village, and who the hell was responsible for all this carnage.

But before that, he needed to catch his breath.

Words: 578

Nonsense.

It was absolute nonsense was what it was.

He was supposed to be training, getting stronger, finding allies to help him take down his grandfather, someone who had gone against the very ways of the Raiu and struck down one of his own, but no, he had been assigned to something as ridiculous as a scouting mission that had absolutely no significance in the long term. Who would worry about what befell an out-of-the-way village? Why did it even matter if an out-of-the-way village was being targeted? Who would even target an out-of-the-way village in the first place?

There were so many questions that Denkou had, and no one was willing to give him an answer. The idiots at the mission desk had simply summoned him and told him to go on this mission, tailing after two others who had been sent before him, to ensure not only that they met with no complexities during the course of the mission, but also that the mission itself was completed to a satisfying level.

He didn’t know why he had been sent to trail the two of them, but he didn’t like it one bit. It was demeaning to him, and it was demeaning to the goal that he had set for himself. The village didn’t care for their ninja as much as they cared for the village, and all the nonsense that they preached about the whole being more important than the sum of its parts was absolute garbage if they didn’t even try to tend to each of the parts.

If the whole was supposed to be greater than the sum of its parts, yet its parts were ignored so blatantly, wouldn’t the whole merely be more than nothing?

Denkou let such thoughts invade his mind, fury evident on his face even as he jumped past trees to get to his destination. He didn’t know anything about the mission, but the fact that not one, not two, but three people had been sent on a scouting mission told him that something was wrong with this mission, and that he should take it with more responsibility than he was currently even bothering to give it. On any other occasion, Denkou may have second guessed the doubt he was having, but right now, with the lack of information and the lack of trust that was being placed in him, he felt it justifiable that he get angry at the village.

As he hopped from tree to tree, augmenting his speed with chakra and zipping through the tree lines much quicker than any normal ninja should even bother to on a simple scouting mission, he kept his eyes out for any oddities.

Almost three quarters to his destination, he saw something in front of him, and pulled up right beside the person. “Are you one of the people who’re supposed to take this recon mission?” he asked, no amount of camaraderie in his voice as much as there was the stern commands of a leader.

“What’s your name?” he would ask. Even if he didn’t like this mission, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to take note of his allies. And, on the off chance that they proved to be strong in combat, he may even find true allies in them in his ultimate goal of bringing his grandfather to justice.

After hearing her name, assuming she gave it, he would speed ahead, only signaling for her to speed up alongside him with a quick look behind his shoulder, before arriving at the village in question.

Or, it was supposed to be the village in question. What Denkou had even had him speechless, forgetting all about the revenge that he held so closely to his heart as the image that he was looking at was far from anything he had expected to. What he had expected from the mission reports were to have bumped into a village sprawling with activity with only a few odd sightings here and there which were to be reported to the village to increase the patrols through the village.

What he was instead met with was the sight of a village burnt to the ground, with only the skeletal features of houses that used to stand in what was now a razed area giving any signs that a village once stood on this barren ground. In the center of the area, he spotted a large pile of… something that could only be a pile of bodies, likely those of the villages, while his sharp eyes scanning the area picked up on a lone figure at one entrance of the village.

Not really caring if the woman was behind him or not, he hurried to the ninja’s position. Regardless of whether he was the person assigned to this mission alongside the two of them, he had to have some idea of what had happened in this area, and so Denkou rushed over to inquire.

“What happened here?” he would ask, masking the worry in his voice that an entire village could be so easily burned down.

Ren had been mostly planning on taking her time, when suddenly someone pulled up beside her.

He had striking blonde hair, almost the colour of deep yellow and almost painfully bright to look at, but what really stood out to her was the stern look on his face, made even scarier by the lightning bolt that went through one of his eyes - a scar from some previous battle, likely.

“Are you one of the people who’re supposed to take this recon mission?” he asked.

Ren was surprised. So surprised, in fact, that she almost remained oblivious to the subconscious nod that she sent his way. It was already weird enough that there were two people sent on a simple scouting mission that was no more than C-rank and with almost no suspected hostiles along the way. Now, a third person was coming along with them? Something was surely up, and Ren had no clue how to feel about that. She had been planning on goofing off at their destination, but the presence of not one but two other Kumo ninja along with her indicated that her fun would have to be postponed until this mission ended, unless something even more complex than she could fathom had come up in the village.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Uh, Ren. Ren Sabaku,” she answered, still stunned by his presence.

He gave no indication that he had heard her, instead using another burst of speed to move ahead of her, likely how he had caught up to her in the first place. Nevertheless, the look that he threw over his shoulder, directed at her with that stern gaze of his, indicated that he wanted to move faster, and she obliged almost immediately, having never had someone that strict even command her before, on a mission or otherwise.

In a sense, it felt good to have someone to tell her what to do and to know that she wouldn’t be blamed for whatever happened on this mission, but on the other hand she really hated having to listen to someone when she had absolutely no clue who he was.The only indication that he was even from Kumo was the fact that he knew she was on a mission, and that he was on a similar, if not exactly the same, mission.

Nevertheless, she heeded his unspoken command and sped up, the two of them reaching the village in record time.

Or, it could only have been called a village. What remained was barely habitable for fauna, much less people, and she was sure that the lack of people she saw wasn’t attributed to its inhospitability, but rather because everyone had been burned in the middle of the village. She remained on one tree outside the village, still trying to wrap her head around the destruction that could have occurred, before dropping onto one knee and vomiting the contents of her breakfast onto the branch.

She had never seen such carnage in her life. Even in her youth she had only been stealing, thieving and preying on those who weren’t careful with their belongings. She had never witnessed… this. This was… this was too much.

Ren only had enough strength to realise that the man who had accompanied her here, or more accurately with the bursts of speed that he had put on, led her here, was no longer around, and it took her awhile to realise that he was at one entrance to the village, talking to the only other person in the area.

She remained on her branch a little longer, feeling woozy and dizzy from the sight and stench that invaded her senses, and in no way fine. She vomited a second time before she got her bearings, leaning against the tree trunk and gently lowering herself down in a small hop onto the ground, using several branches along the way as intermediates, before carefully making her way to the duo, aware that not only was she physically still ill from the sight, but also that she wanted to mentally brace herself for knowing what happened here.

Word count: 1282

The stench took over again, causing Sourai to wretch once more, vomiting out the contents of his stomach of which he had believed he had none already, from how many times he had upended his breakfast that day.

He would never get used to the sight of dead people, he was sure of it. Ninja or not, there was just something wrong about rotting corpses that set even a ninja like him on edge, and there was just something about being in the area and knowing that, had he been minutes quicker he may have been able to do something or discover something - anything - that made the queasiness all the harder to bear, causing him to vomit once more, now nothing more than spit coming out of his mouth, but that only made the taste and texture in his mouth worse, bringing about another bout of vomiting.

That was... that was unbelievable what he saw. He had seen the village reports. He had seen pictures of the village, of children playing happily in the streets with their plastic rubber balls, of wives hanging up wet clothes to dry in the sun in a village as exposed to the weather as this, of men leaving for work on the weekdays in the nearby coal mines and then them on the way home, hugging their children tightly who congratulated them on a job well done.

He crawled somewhere else, somewhere he could escape from the stench of his vomit and the stench of corpses, but as he crawled away, he saw a pair of feet in front of him. Bringing his head to look up, he saw a man with a stern facial expression plastered on his face, the scar going down his left eye making him seem all the more menacing to the boy whose fighting spirit had already been broken, and whose body was in no condition to fight with all the wretching it was doing.

"What happened here?" the man asked, not sparing a thought even for himself.

Figures. The man he was supposed to rendezvous with would be someone who would leave him here for dead. With what he had witnessed, a part of him actually wanted to be killed. He didn't think he would ever forget the faces of those corpses, who even in death seemed so much in agony, nor the way they were piled up unceremoniously in a pile in the center of the village...

How was a man supposed to forget all that!?

"People... burned... dead... I didn't see... much of it..." he wheezed after he had settled himself against a building for support, his chest heaving in and out in search of uncontaminated air.

It was awhile before he saw another pair of feet approach them, and he looked up to see that it was a girl with blue hair tied up in two ponytails, looking down at him as well. He would take a breath or two to stabilise himself, forcing the images out of his head, before reaching out with his right hand hoping one of them would help him up. If neither did, he would stand up on his own, before insisting, "We... We need to report this to Kumo," wiping off some spit from the corners of his mouth as he did so.

Words: 1140

He could see it in the man's eyes. The fear, the pain, the horror, it was all visible through the man's own eyes.

It was said that the eyes were the door to one's soul, but Denkou didn't believe any of that stupid superstition. No, he knew that only those who were strong enough to do so were able to tell the tale of someone's experiences by simply looking at their eyes, without an exchange of words taking place, and as complacent as this sounded, he knew that he was one of those strong people, for when he looked down at this boy, he didn't just see weakness or a desire to hide, he also understood the boy's fears and terrors at having been exposed to such a thing.

Maybe it was narcissism.

Nevertheless, he let the boy rest while he took his time to collect his breath, waiting suspiciously patiently even for someone like him. Perhaps there was a more humane side to his personality that had for so long eluded his grasp, but he shoved that thought into the back of his head. Contemplating on his personality and reflecting on his growth could come later when they were safely back in the confines of Kumogakure's walls, and they weren't out in the open like waiting ducks for whatever enemies had done this to this poor, unsuspecting village. 

"People... burned... dead... I didn't see... much of it..."

"Well, no shit," he muttered, having gotten almost nothing out of his supposed teammate. This person wasn't strong. He wouldn't make a good teammate of his in a squad set out to kill his grandfather. 

No, he would need someone else.

The girl, however, seemed to exude a strength that he respected, even if she did hide it almost better than the boy did. How typical that when he searched for strength, the most traditional way of seeking it in men failed him, while it shone albeit dully in the female gender. Perhaps he was a bit backwards in thinking as such, but he would never lie when he said that he was seeking power, and it was one way to go seeking it by following what one thought worked, and in his case, being part of a clan well-versed in tradition, it was by following the traditional ideals that men were physically more likely to be superior than their female counterparts.

He would see the boy reach out a hand, but he wouldn't go to reach for it, believing that the boy needed to learn to stand on his own two feet even after seeing such a horrifying display. Otherwise, he would not even have the right to stand on his own two feet after they had helped him up.

Perhaps karma would get back at him some day, falling him and having the few people he trusted to get him back on his feet refuse to do even that, instead just giving him the damned moral support that people preached were able to get you past your limits, though Denkou never believed in that sort of thing, believing instead in the strength of his own will that came from within, not from without. 

"We... We need to report this to Kumo," he said.

"Very well. I agree. Are you sure you can walk?" he asked.

However, without waiting for an actual answer, Denkou would nod at both the boy and the girl, before taking to the trees. He would wait on the first branch until they followed, before he would take off at relatively slow speed to ensure that the weakest member of their team, shocked from his experiences, would still be able to catch up with them, as his experience was most likely the most important of the three of them.

What was supposed to be a simple meet and greet with the mayor had just turned much more serious. 

The look of the boy was scary.

Ren didn't like scary.

He seemed as if he had just seen a ghost, with how pale he was and how he was constantly vomiting, but Ren didn't blame him. After what she had just seen in those few seconds she was also ready to hurl, and it was a combination of willpower and a lack of having not been there for so long that helped her keep her lunch in check. She couldn't say the same for the boy who had clearly been here longer.

If anyone could tell them what had happened here, it was likely going to be this boy, Ren thought

Or, that was what Ren had thought, until the boy had actually begun speaking. "People... burned... dead... I didn't see... much of it..."

Ren frowned in disappointment. There wasn't much information there. Ren wouldn't be able to work with any of that information, since she only knew they were burned, and she could see that from the charred ashes of the corpses that lay surrounding the massive pile of rotting bodies in the center. Ren needed more information.

She had been serious when she said that she wanted to do good. A little mischief here and there but ultimately she wanted to do good.

She hadn't wanted to see... any of this.

She saw the boy reach out a hand, and she stared at Denkou, who showed no sign of moving to help the boy up. Hesitating at the hesitance of her leader, she brushed it off and extended her own hand, pulling the boy up to his feet but not acknowledging his thanks or subsequent greeting, only preferring to remain quiet, mostly due to her innate nature but also out of shock at what she had just seen. Ren would need time to process the sight that had met her eyes.

"We... We need to report this to Kumo," the boy had said, struggling to even do so as he wiped some spit away from his mouth, still lingering from his earlier hurl.

Ren looked at him, before directing her attention to their makeshift leader. Out of all of them, he definitely had the most appropriate personality to be considered one, given how he was unforgiving even to the boy for failing to stand up on his own, and while Ren was disapproving of that, she still respected the strength that he otherwise exuded by simply being in the area. This man, Ren knew, was going to be a powerful shinobi.

"Very well, I agree. Are you sure you can walk?" the man would ask.

However, without waiting for an answer, he took to the trees, waiting for them there as if his question had served as encouragement instead of an actual question of whether he could move. Ren, hesitating again, jumped up to the branches as well, but would wait until the boy had already begun moving before she too leapt from tree branch to tree branch, taking up the rear of their formation while their makeshift leader took the front.

Word count: 1804

He heaved heavily even as the blue-haired girl helped him to his feet by pulling firmly on his hand. Even as he stood, though his eyes tilted downward, with him almost letting out another bout of vomit when he had done so. It seemed that he was still dizzy, and the ground looked far, far too unstable from his perspective, what with the slight wave of nausea having still remained in his head, to be stepped on and stayed on. However, holding onto the girl to center himself and to stand upright, he shook his head to eliminate the sense of sickness from his head, as well as to force himself to forget about the invasive stench that still lingered in his nostrils at least until they were safe.

The man with the yellow hair and the scar down his left eye had already taken off to the trees with one massive leap, something that while Sourai was not unfamiliar with was also not completely grateful for due to his state. Once he was fine, the girl too emulated his actions, hopping off onto the same tree. Sourai let his eyes follow her to the trees, and he realised with a start that she was the only one he saw at that level. A further scan of their surroundings proved that the two of them were the only ones in the area, meaning that the yellow-haired man who was acting as their impromptu leader was nowhere to be seen, like because he had already taken off long ago, and the girl was only being held back to make sure that he didn’t trip on his feet.

He didn’t blame the man. With his nausea and sickness, he had probably been standing at that one exact spot a little too long for anyone to be comfortable with the awkward silence, especially with the sight of carnage like they had never experienced before and had hoped to never experience in their careers just mere meters away from them. It was also possible that the man had tried to encourage him to move from his spot by leaving the area first, and only moving to the edge of his senses so that Sourai would be persuaded to speed up as well.

However, the girl had not done the same. Instead, she had stayed behind, if her position on the branch that she had leapt to was any indication that she was waiting for him and not taking off after their supposed leader. With some chakra to his feet, he sprung up to the same level as she was on the trees, shooting her a nod of thanks before hurrying off in the direction of Kumogakure after the man who had sped off. At least, he presumed that his leader had shot off in that direction, especially after he had agreed that they should report the matter to the Kumogakure mission’s desk as soon as possible and then suddenly taken off without a word.

When he looked back, however, he realised that the girl was not speeding up as well. Instead, what she was doing was staying a certain distance behind him, making the yellow-haired man the vanguard of their team, while she was the rear guard, and him taking up the role of middle guard. With a start, he realised that this unscripted formation was mostly to ensure that he remained safe and on his feet. While not the traditional role for the vanguard and middle guard and rear guard, by adopting this formation, the yellow-haired man was able to look out for any signs of their enemy and clear the ground for his teammates, while the girl would ensure that he remained safe and on his feet while they made their way to Kumogakure. He, being the person who had stayed around for the longest, had investigated the area slightly before the carnage beat him down, and so was more than likely the source of information from their team.

In his heart, he expressed gratitude to her. This was done in silence, not wishing to break the formation and rhythm that they had fallen into, especially when he caught a glimpse of the yellow-haired man in front of him before he once again sped out of sight between all the trees and foliage. He promised himself that he would thank her properly when he finally made it to Kumogakure and they were all safe, for while it was unlikely that they were to be attacked now that they were this close to their village, being out of the walls still instilled him with a sense of dread from what he had just witnessed not an hour ago.

Besides, he had to get this information to them as soon as he could! Kumo’s administration had to know that someone was out to get them! No one did something of this scale, like taking out an entire village this close to Kumo, if they weren’t asking for a war!

Their trip home was almost uneventful, but that didn’t make him drop his guard for fear of being attacked by the same perpetrators that had taken out the village behind them in such gruesome and violent fashion. They had no way of knowing if it was low-levelled or high-levelled ninja who had committed the act, nor were the ninja who had done so unaligned with any one faction, or if they actually belonged to another village, in which case he was sure would complicate the matter heavily due to politics, especially if their hot-headed Kage, Sanosuke, decided to point fingers at them in accusation instead of settling it behind closed doors where their lack of poise would not be noted.

As much as he felt for the village, he didn’t want to be at the receiving end of whatever these perpetrators had planned, and instead he sped up through the gates of Kumogakure and made sure that his teammates did the same before he allowed himself to feel relief. Even that did not do anything to lighten his mood until he was completely debriefed, so he immediately went to the mission reception, where he was greeted by the person who had distributed the mission to him. Seeing his serious face, especially when he was normally happy-go-lucky, made them realise that something serious had happened, and Sourai alone was pulled in to debrief, while the others were to submit their mission reports.

Assuming that his allies stayed, he would thank them for helping him before waving them goodbye, hoping to get some time alone to clear his head, and possibly visit the spa to get his mind off of the recent events even if only for the moment, for he knew that with that thought plaguing his head, he would get nothing done.

[Exit thread]

WC: 1154 + 1140 = 2294

Spoiler:

Denkou had sped up ahead of his teammates, but while his actions may have seemed somewhat uncaring for the well-being of his teammates, it was actually in their best interests.

In his short time of knowing the blue-haired girl, he had deduced that she was meek and likely to help others, as seen when she had extended her hand to grasp the other blond's when he himself had refused to do so. As such, he knew that she would make sure that he would be able to make it back to Kumogakure in one piece, leaving him with the task of ensuring that her already full hands weren't overloaded if they were suddenly ambushed or flanked.

Denkou was a very sharp shinobi, and his senses were able to keep them safe so long as they remained in close distance of each other, though still a significant distance apart so that if anything happened to him, his friends would be able to run if the need called for it.

Wait... friends?

He meant squadmates, surely. It was impossible for anyone to bond over something so simple as a mission in such a short time... only perhaps it wasn't just a simple mission. Obviously there was something behind this mission, some force that was acting in the backgrounds, and they were all victims to it simply because they had witnessed the carnage it had left behind, the sheer violence that it had enacted upon the poor villagers of that village.

Denkou shook his head, forcing himself to focus on the task of making sure that there were no hostiles in the area so that they would have a clear path back home, unaware where all these sentimental thoughts were coming from. He was a man of power, a man who sought power, and a man who respected power. There was no way he was going to do something like soften up, especially not in the middle of a potential warzone, which was what he believed this to nearly sum up to.

Regardless, they were somehow able to make it back to Kumogakure without any incident, and Denkou would admit that he was slightly relieved by that, but not as relieved as his teammate, for relief could be seen clearly on his face when the three of them had entered the village, though the gate guards were confused what trouble three Genin could have gotten themselves into. Skipping their interrogation, however, the makeshift team hurried to the mission desk where they had individually received their missions, and the other blonde was whisked away into a room, likely for a more indepth debriefing session.

Denkou decided to wait, curious as well as to what would happen. When the boy finally came out, he would thank them before going on his way, but Denkou would call out that they would have to meet once more, before he too stalked off.

He was curious as to his teammates' abilities. And perhaps they could be more than just a team.

Ren had remained behind her less-than-capable teammate for the entirety of the journey home, jumping from tree to tree as the three of them proceeded in what was a linear formation that they had spontaneously adopted on the way back, mostly worried that he would collapse in on himself. When they arrived at Kumogakure, she could see that he was visibly relieved that they were safe from danger. She didn't blame him. She too was very relieved that they weren't out there where they could be caught by whatever was out there, knowing that this nightmare would stay with her for a few weeks. Whether her third teammate noticed this or not, she didn't know, but the three of them as a whole proceeded to the missions reception center, where their queasy teammate had been taken aside for questioning and personal debriefing before he had been released. When he did come out, he had thanked them courteously for helping him back, and her third teammate had then suggested that the three of them head out some time for a meal. Ren believed that this was mostly to recap their current situation and so had no problems following through with it, stating that she was okay with the idea of having a meal together before she, too, left the venue.

[Exit thread]

Word count: 2028
Strength to D-0 and Speed to E-2.