When Shinako had awakened that morning the house had smelled musty and damp, a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of her father’s long-dead breakfasts. So clearly could Shinako smell the biscuits baking, and so fiercely did it sting her heart, that she almost choked on the emotion as she remembered that her brothers had stayed the night. They had supplies to collect in the forest, and it was best done early. They had likely risen at dawn and prepared both breakfast and lunch. She had rubbed the sleep from her eyes, washed, and by the time she made it to the kitchen they had already left the house. Shinako had felt an acute desire to leave as well.

Passing through town, she had checked her mail and found the usual advertisements, assignment details, her paycheck, and a warrant for the arrest of a Chuunin she did not know. Every now and then such warrants were circulated for various crimes; this one for the illegal transfer of village secrets. He was likely an administrative grunt, just like her, though this warrant did not bring her pause as some of the others did. Every now and then, a warrant would issue for just what she was about to do; as simple an act of self-determination as leaving the village without permission. She had crumpled the warrant and discarded it before heading toward the outskirts.

~~~~~~~~~~

Slipping past the ANBU patrols that particular day had required more risk than Shinako was used to taking. However, the prospect of remaining in town had seemed somehow less bearable than being caught. She had rehearsed the patterns and timing the patrols used on different days, and had even gotten used to predicting their changes. Luckily they were limited to three dimensions and what appeared to be a classified sensory technique to which they adhered without deviation. This close to the village, though, it could hardly be said that they were particularly vigilant. Still, her transparent escape technique often proved invaluable. She hadn’t used it that day, but had risked the passing of far more patrols than she normally would as she analyzed their pattern.

Dressed in a brown and yellow qipao and black leggings, Shinako discarded her sandals as she reached a tree standing a safe distance between patrols. She stopped and listened before climbing, and was fairly certain that the interior guards had not picked up on her. She had often thought of what she would say if caught out here, and always came back to the determination that she would probably tell the truth. As she reached the middle branches of the tree and looked out across the land of fire, it struck her as odd that she had never come up with something more complex or devious. Maybe, out there, all of her questions could be answered, if she wanted; but once she learned those answers, she could not unlearn them. Perhaps telling the truth was just the start.

500/500

It had been a few days now, a few days that she had been back into the land of her origin. She was so close to the village hidden in the leaf that it was hard to not go inside through the regular patrols without at least visiting some places significant to her in the past.

The former Anbu captain had been alone during her travels, alone the entire time as she tried to find each and every Black Anbu hideout, cleaning up the mess left behind by the lack of leadership for the organization. Eevery time she found such a place, it reminded her of her uncle, of the one man who helped her through every bad moment and of her own life before everything went south.

There was only Uraeus, her massive white snake, to keep her company during the entire time she had travelled through the lands. Not bad, given the fact she truly loved her snake and appreciated his company, but a snake was but a snake, not a human being comprised of emotions and opinions. That difference between Uraeus and a human made her feel alone despite the snake's company, yet on the other hand she did get used to the idea of travelling and acting all on her own, without anyone overseeing her actions or telling her what she could or could not do.

Lamya let out a sigh as she unwrapped a riceball from her backpack, leaning against the rocky wall of a ridge where she had decided to set up camp, having the luxury of having a good view on the forest from her position without being easily visible herself. While taking a bite from her flavorless riceball wrapped with seaweed leaves, she almost choked on the rice when she noticed someone running through the forest.

At first she thought that Konoha might've dicovered her presence and had send someone, but the more she truly started to think about it, the more she knew that that couldn't have been the case. No matter who they send to get her, they would not send someone all on their own, not for a former anbu captain.

Just to be sure though, she quickly stuffed the rest of the riceball in her mouth and opened a can filled with water and started drinking said water to rinse away the stale taste of the rice from within her mouth. When that was done, she sighed a bit, wondering if it wouldn't have been better to just go into the village and buy her some supplies, only to realize that probably might've made things worse.

Placing her mask on her face and putting on her armor, Lamya ventured outside of the campsite she had made, looking for the person which she had noticed moments earlier, simply out of curiosity towards who it was and what they were doing outside of the village. However, before any of those answers were to be given to sate her curiosity, the former anbu captain could feel twigs and leaves fall upon her and as she looked up, she could see a kunoichi standing upon the highest branches of a tree looking in the direction of what Lamya thought to be the village.

"So... do you have a great view from there?" She'd raise her voice a bit so the kunoichi'd be able to hear her, not sure if it wouldn't spook her though.

580/580

Maybe Shinako was not so prepared to tell the truth after all. As the voice sounded below her, a cold trickle of fear pierced her. It dawned on her just then that all of her preparations had been theoretical at best. Like a child with delusions of invincibility, she had never truly come to terms with what it might mean to be caught out here. Still, she couldn’t afford the paralysis she felt creeping up through her limbs.

Shinako dropped to her right knee, whirling around neatly to place her right hand against the trunk of the tree to steady herself as she visually located the source of the disturbance, confirming her worst fears. Looking up at her through the branches, cold and level, was the porcelain gaze of an ANBU mask. She could feel her muscles begin to shake, and had to consciously settle them. Her senses were sharp those days, but she doubted she would be able to anticipate ANBU Shinobi closing in for an attack. Carelessness had brought her this far, and now there was no action she could think of sufficient to get her out of this precarious position. There was no way but forward.

“The view isn’t bad.”

The first phrase was a success. By keeping her response short and polite, Shinako had been able to maintain control of her voice, at least. It seemed like her words were always the last thing to fail her, even after good judgement had fled the scene. Her ears and nose still strained for any hint of further movement around her, locating a few small animals, but nothing more. The relative silence only made her more paranoid. Her eyes stayed focused on the figure below, though she softened her suspicious look of apprehension into a slight smile of greeting. She raised her left hand slowly to show that she was unarmed, giving the pretense of a downward wave. Silently, her shadow gathered into a neat column on the branch to her left.

Shinako had never been in trouble with the authorities before, but she knew that it was best to keep consensual interactions to a minimum. Volunteering information without an advocate present should be avoided. Then again, that was assuming the mask below intended to arrest her instead of killing her outright.

“Are you….looking for something?”

The question followed rather naturally from the discussion of the view. She knew that her position was suspect, and figured it was best to simply ask the stranger’s intentions, albeit indirectly. There was little hope of regaining control of the situation, but a more active role allowed her to at least feel more comfortable. There was a sense of dignity in standing her ground instead of running. The latter option would only ensure that she would die tired, chased down like a dog. Shinako had never been a brave person, but she felt she owed herself that. If some hidden knife was to slay her, it could take her back, she wouldn’t turn it.

500/1,000

“The view isn’t bad.”

It seemed like an honest response to a rather honest question, but what at the same time made Lamya slightly wary as well as somehow perplexed, was how the stranger seemed to be so on guard, almost as if the former Anbu captain's attire made the girl flinch for some reason. When she thought about it, the kunoichi realised that perhaps the young woman was doing something she shouldn't be doing, like for instance getting through the barriers outside of konoha without having filed an official report to leave the village.

It was quite surprising for Lamya to see someone who'd apparently managed to do exactly that without being caught by the Anbu for said transgression. The very thought of someone actually being able to bypass both the barriers and the security patrol conducted by the Anbu, made the former Anbu captain chuckle, as she pitied her former comrades that there was such a clever woman in the village.

"I reckon the mask might be a bit off-putting," Lamya removed the mask, letting the fingers of her free hand slide through her long black hair, while hanging the mask onto the belt of her armor with her other hand. Instantly, she looked at the young woman up the tree with her golden, snake-like eyes and her pale skin probably not doing much good compared to the mask. "Oh no, I'm simply camping nearby and your climbing up a tree so nearby made me wonder for a bit. It's not always that you see someone who's not an Anbu climb up a tree here in the forest."

As she looked up, Lamya was checking out the path the girl had taken to get into the tree, noting that it was actually quite a good way to climb the tree. The girl was experienced with Climbing in trees, that was fairly Obvious now, so she probably didn't do this for the first time, which made her obviously someone who was much more than a genin. After all, while Shinako seemed on guard because of Lamya's initial appearance as an Anbu, she herself was wary of Shinako due to the simple fact that she had managed to climb that high in a tree and only shinobi would truly be able to do so without breaking a sweat.

Starting to jump upwards, grabbing the lowest branch and making her way through the foliage, Lamya eventually managed to reach the branch upon which Shinako was standing, smiling softly at the sneaky woman. It was Always interesting to see people who had talents in more than just brute force or dojutsu, stuff that mainly mattered for shinobi, because in the end, those were simply tools for killing other people and quite boring in the long run of life. "So...let me guess, not quite fond of the Anbu?"

For a moment, Lamya smiled and looked around, to truly take in the view which they now shared from atop the tree. "I'm not looking for anything in particular you know. Though I can say that you don't need to be affraid, I'm not going to be ratting you out."

540/1120

Shinako’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as the other woman removed her mask. It was a direct circumvention of ANBU protocol to do so. The stranger’s features were unsettling, cold and reptilian like the villains in old stories. Shinako began drawing conclusions from the limited evidence available to her. Too many things were out of kilter here, and the situation was not quite what it seemed. If this woman was an agent of the Hidden Leaf, she was unlike any Shinako had ever previously met. Then the moment of analysis was broken by sudden motion.

As the woman ascended, Shinako reasoned that it was likely not for an attack, at least not immediately. To spring an offensive from such a disadvantageous position was poor strategy, especially for someone wearing the vestments of a Black Ops Shinobi. Some sort of distraction, perhaps? A challenge? Shinobi did not lightly get close to one another. Shinako’s shadow retreated to its natural position, no longer an inky line along the branch, but camouflaged in the patter of leaves and sunlight filtering downward. It was best left out of sight. As the woman arrived on the same branch, Shinako stood to her full height and freed her hand from the trunk, in case she needed to defend herself. The newcomer was well armed and armored, and Shinako felt cornered now.

Keeping her body language as relaxed as she could, Shinako raised her left hand to waist height, indicating her desire that the other woman come no closer. To temper the gesture, she gave a self-deprecating smile, as though to say ‘you understand, of course.’

“I appreciate your discretion.”

Shinako’s tone was still a bit apprehensive. Being arrested was certainly not part of the plan today, but to say so would be an implicit admission that she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing. In fact, she had already said too much. It was difficult to approach the situation without knowing more about what she was truly dealing with. The armored woman’s eyes were even more unsettling up close, but Shinako scarcely had time to think about that. There was a lot of conflicting information at hand that needed sifting through. The other woman had mentioned a camp.

“I’m Shinako. What can I call you? You mentioned that you’re camped around here?”

The last detail was incredibly odd. This close to the village, there were no forward posts for the scouts. Someone familiar with the forest could make it back to the village in under an hour at a decent pace.

425/1,425

"You look like you've seen a ghost," The former Anbu captain chuckled and stopped moving when the woman in front of her noted that she'd rather have some space between them, something which Lamya could understand given the strange place they'd meet and now talk, not to mention the outfit she was wearing. The one thing that perhaps had never changed in her entire life, even now, was the fact she was wearing her trademark lavender perfume and her purple colored jade magatama earrings, which showed that she either was nobility or used to be at least.

"Discretion belongs to the total package of my...former job," Again Lamya chuckled, though not as brightly as before, looking down at the place where her camp was and noticing that Uraeus had also come out of hiding and had apparently found himself some prey. She truly hoped her companion wouldn't slither up the tree, because he would most like scare the heebee jeebees out of the woman who she had just met. "Hmm, my name?"

This was tricky, she wondered what would be better, handing Shinako her old codename and the name she had eventually become more known by or her real name?

It was a hard choice, but then again, because of her appearance peopleof especially konoha should've known which clan she belonged to, not to mention those few big names that were part of said clan in recent and the far away history. It was something she truly had to think about, had to contemplate and without a doubt that pauze between her question and eventual answer would make things even more awkward. "You can call me Risu, just Risu...nice to meet you."

Looking down again, she noticed that Uraeus sadly had gotten not only her scent, but also that of Shinako and had without a doubt gotten the idea that his mistress may have been in distress, so Lamya smiled at Shinako, hoping she wouldn't panic if the snake would eventually make his way up the tree, yet somehow the snake had managed to be distracted by a pair of birds in another tree, most likely overjoyed by the fact that it might mean another meal was inbound for the snake. "A camp...yes, my camp. It's down there at that ridge, just a fire and a backpack with some stuff, nothing much. So Shinako, are you a shinobi or just someone who likes to climb and look at konoha from afar?"

421/1541

“Me? I’m nobody.”

The situation became stranger and stranger. Following Risu’s gaze, Shinako quickly located what appeared to be a massive serpent of some sort in the area, as pale and sinewy as the arm of death. She had never seen such a creature in these woods, and suspected that the two puzzles before her came together. Then, adding to the surreal nature of the circumstances, was the name offered by the other woman.

Shinako had heard the name Risu before. In fact, she had recently been called that mistakenly, though such a fact had not consciously registered at the time, nor did it manifest as a fully formed thought now. Thinking back for her lessons in Konoha’s heraldry, she could not be so sure she was not, in fact, seeing a ghost. The white snake and the reptilian features of the young woman before her brought the name of a minor, but respected clan to mind. Not too long ago, Orochi Risu had been anointed as the head of the Ouroboros families. She had disappeared, and they had spent a small fortune in the attempt to recover her. Shinako’s cousins had swept the Nara forest lands for her body.

Mention of her “former job” began to shed some light on what might have become of Orochi Risu. Then again, when one thing was revealed, more questions arose. Shinako tried not to let her confusion show on her face. Was this another test, or was she being paranoid again?

“Most of my looking these days is away from the village, actually. It’s nice, sometimes, to come out here and be alone; away from all the….”

Shinako didn’t finish her sentence. In truth, she couldn’t even say why she had started it. Perhaps she was fishing for more information. Her ears attuned to the sound the large serpent made as its scales slid over the bark of the surrounding trees, and gooseflesh broke out across her arms and back. She shook her head, at a loss for words, not knowing what to think.

“….if you’re her….”

She didn’t quite know what to say, or even to whom she was saying it. However, the idea of a person living outside of the walled in village was too curious to avoid further interrogation.

“They looked for you. Your uncle, I think, or some such relation. A man named Enaka. They still look for you.”

A hint of compassion entered the smooth, low tone of Shinako’s voice. She could scarcely imagine publicly grieving a person, only to find that they were alive and well somewhere. What joy or heartache would that bring? If she were to leave, to simply turn her back on the village that very day, how long would her family look before settling into the knowledge that they might never find her? Shinako’s brow furrowed with worry. She could not remember the last time she had been this genuinely perplexed. It felt as though she had stumbled over something important.

500/1,925

"No one is no one, everyone is somebody in the end... or is it some body?" Lamya did ponder about that for half a second, though she hoped it to be a nice respond to Shinako's remark, she only realized after that half second of thought that that old Anbu adagio would seriously creep out someone who wasn't privy to the Anbu corps' rather dark humor. "Eh... nevermind that, very wrong saying at a very wrong time. My apologies, I did not mean to spook you."

The young woman simply closed her eyes, leaned against the tree itself and listened calmly to what Shinako was saying, explaining how she seemed to enjoy coming out sometimes, removed from the village and all, but she didn't finish her sentence, as if she was hiding something, leaving something out for some reason beyond Lamya's own understanding. However, when the next set of words passed Shinako's lips, the former Anbu captain cringed for a moment, realizing that perhaps revealing her given name alone was probably not so smart and in most cases, she'd be forced to silence whomever knew that name, but on the other hand... it would've been bad to kill someone just for that reason, certainly when they apparently knew nothing more, which became apparent when it appeared the girl was mixing up some information.

It seemed that Enaka's imprisonment had been handled quite under the wraps as well and given the fact that besides her own name and Enaka's his was possibly the most known due to his exploits in the field of medicin and as an former advisor to both the hokages and the daimyo. It was funny though to hear someone say he was looking for her, which would've been funny given his stay in the detaintment facility not far away on the other edge of town. "I think you're a bit wrong, my uncle...Enaka, he's in prison, where I last left him. It's perhaps not known to the people what he's done, but lets just say that he was a very bad man and deserved what he had done."

Letting out a sigh, the young woman once known as Orochi Risu looked at Shinako and showed a rather sad looking smile. "Have you ever loved someone so much, you'd think you'd die if they weren't there anymore?"

The former Anbu captain sighed again and again showed that smile, that very same smile she once showed to a certain Uchiha who had stood by her side when she was at the hospital after she was being controlled by Hataro, her uncle's most powerful and most devious henchman, the man who had cursed her with a seal which would effectively turn her into a mindless living puppet, to be controlled at the whim of her uncle Enaka. "I know I had that love, but I discarded it. I had to throw it all away for the sake of my job, my mission. I grew up too fast in too short a time, now all I have left is said mission, a mission will end soon and for better or for worse will change my life yet again."

Snapping out of the seeming trance which had gotten a hold of her as she was reminiscing on the past, Lamya smiled at Shinako. Not a fake or faint smile, but a bright smile, a smile which showed that even if people would initially be disturbed by her snakelike eyes and alabaster skin, could still realize that she was actually rather beautiful and even with her having obvious signs of long nights without sleeping, like the bags under her eyes, Lamya's age was still without a doubt that of a late teen, even if she was more adult in many ways than any other of her age. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound so depressive. So... how's life in the village for you?"

672/2213

“No, no….that’s okay. I’d imagine it’s how it is for a lot of people….”

Shinako quoted from something she had been reading recently.

“You can spend your life walled in there doing no more than preparing for life and thinking, ‘is this all there is?’”

She left the answer to the question of whether she had ever had a great love on the table. She couldn’t imagine defining herself in that way; as so intersectional to another that they bent and broke in the same places. It was a romantic notion of which Shinako had always been afraid, beautiful and unfathomable; never to be touched. She found that she relaxed a little bit as Risu relaxed, her heart no longer threatening to break through her ribs. If this was a trap, it was a pleasant one at least. Risu’s youthful charm came through in her smile. There were more difficult ways to drink poison.

Shinako wondered when the last time was that she herself looked like that: Young, assured, and infinite. It took the sound of scraping of scales in the distance, and the muffled squawk of a successful hunt to bring Shinako back to the unfortunate reality of it all. She was doing a lot of projecting, and knew next to nothing about the young woman in front of her. However, she did know a few things for certain from the circumstances which had manifested.

It would not do to forget that she was looking at a weapon. Shinako had been hounded by shadowy village recruiters over the past couple of months, for reasons that were still obscure to her. Every ounce of her screamed out in resistance against them, and looking at Orochi Risu confirmed her worst fears. Shinako spent her days surrounded by child soldiers, some of them physically maimed, most of them emotionally scarred; all in the furtherance of the ‘mission.’ The village pushed, and pushed until the mission was all that was left, and the people underneath had been burned away. ‘Is this all there is?’

Shinako didn’t attempt to disguise the sadness in her eyes. She was exhausted by the idea of doing so. Were she in Risu’s position, she would run as fast and as far as she could, and never look back, love and mission be damned. In that moment, Shinako got the impression that Risu had returned to the village to enact some act of violence. As a Shinobi of the Leaf, it was Shinako’s duty to attempt to stop her, or at least to alert the authorities. She knew that she would do neither, and that people might die; perhaps innocent people. Her mind flashed to an image of Kyohei, Kunai in hand, spouting fire, while she retreated into the shadows forever. She wondered if the Hidden Leaf would always feel like an amputee’s phantom limb. Maybe that was why people kept returning.

“Your mission….will people have to die to see it completed?”

What kind of power would it take to infiltrate the village?

505/2,430

“You can spend your life walled in there doing no more than preparing for life and thinking, ‘is this all there is?’”

Lamya truly thought about that self-reflective question posed by Shinako, not because she disagreed, on the contrary even. The rethorical question needed no answer, for there was only one possible one: no. It was true that the village in many cases ended up having a stifening effect on the mental state and natural progression of a shinobi, which also proved the point that venturing outside of the borders was basically the same as thinking out of the box, to spread one's wings and explore that which had not been explored before to the betterment of body and spirit.

"There are those trapped in a cage made by others and those trapped by their own delusions,"The former Anbu captain let out a sigh and pointed upwards to the sky. "There is your true limit, if you only have the audacity to search that far, you'll reach heights you've never thought possible."

Again she sighed, not because she was bored or because she disliked the rather intimite and despite all odds quite friendly conversation the two were having. Alas, the question posed at the end was one to which Lamya would only reluctantly garnt Shinako an answer to, for this was where the former Anbu captain's mission had brought her.

She had changed, her view had changed. The deeper she had wrought into the shadows of Konoha, the further she had strayed from the shining jewel which was presented to its villagers, the more Lamya started to unravel the truth of the darkness behind all the light. After all, a very large light would cast an even greater shadow and Konoha was no exception to this rule. In the many passing years, the village had duly grown decadent, unaware of the progress other villages had made, retaining its old systems and blisfully unaware of the looming threats on the horizon.

Konoha's shadows had root into ages far beyond the current or even the previous hokage and the further down the rabbit hole Lamya went, the more questions she had, the more wary she became of how the world worked and the more she started to see the big picture in a similar way to her uncle. A change was needed and when one wanted to spark a revolution, they had to be ready to break some eggs to make an omelette, to sacrifice their own soul for the world if necessary. Despite his rather diabolical tactics that had left Lamya permanently scarred, the former Anbu captain had now finally seen the truest of shadows, the deepest of darkness' and had realized that rather than a threat, her uncle would be the catalyst for the world's final salvation and for that goal, that mission, she was prepared to throw away her very soul, to throw away the fake peace that existed and to throw the world in an era of cleansing war, restructuring efforts and most importantly: world wide revolution.

"It is not like I'd like to kill those standing in my way, yet I see death as a mercy compared to what those would endure at the hands of any that do not have the decency to grant all shinobi a honorable end," The former Anbu captain did not hide the meaning behind those words, obviously referring to the countless ways of torture any wh would stand in her way would receive if she had reached her goal and Konoha would need answers. "The concept of granting mercy through death is perhaps not something I enjoy, but there are far worse things than death, Shinako. It's something you'd learn when you'd be more wary of how the village truly works."

642/2855

Shinako shook her head, taking her eyes off of Risu and once again scanning the countryside. She wasn’t sure whether she was incapable of understanding or simple unwilling. In the end, she supposed, the distinction was not necessarily important. She agreed that there were worse things than death, but could not fathom why Risu would come back to stand so close to it. It was difficult to imagine returning to this place to sew violence once she had felt the continents in her palms. The dark-eyed woman stayed silent for a long while.

Deep down, she was still aware of an abiding fear of Risu, especially now that she was aware of what the stranger might do. On the surface, she analyzed the possible rationale behind such thinking. Fanatics always came back to a threat, hidden just behind the veil, within reach, but just beyond sight; generations of killings perpetuating each other for some cryptic ‘need.’ In the stories, the killers always promised that others would understand if only they could see more. Shinako didn’t believe a word of it.

“There’s a children’s story I remember, from when I was a girl….”

Shinako missed those simpler times. Looking back was difficult, because she tended to color even her happy memories with the troubles she faced as an adult and as a Shinobi.

“….about a wise man who advises the Daimyo that the summers will soon grow too hot to sustain the water sources, and suggests that the Daimyo begin mining ice and snow for the summer months.”

The Nara often spoke and taught allegorically. It was part of their ethos, and the other clans didn’t always follow their reasoning, but that was alright. The stories were simple enough that their points were generally learned in time.

“Of course, the Daimyo didn’t listen. So, as the summers grew hotter, and drought began to touch the land, the wise man ascended to the mountains, where he built a magnificent city in the ice and snow. When the heatwave really hit, the villagers left the Daimyo’s blighted kingdom for the mountains.”

Shinako peeled a long, thin strand of bark from the tree absentmindedly, looking back at Risu as she finished the story.

“They lived happily in the ice, for a while, before realizing that they could grow nothing in such cold, just as they could not survive in the Daimyo’s heat-baked wasteland. So the villagers left the city in the ice as well.”

The story was about the dangers of polarized thinking and extremism, and was often told to teach Nara children to compromise. Here, it seemed appropriate. Risu seemed like the wise man who avenged himself by building his city in the snow. How, with pipes of winter lining her cognition, could she bring herself to something as delicate as Spring planting, or harvest season.

“Hearing that story, it always seemed to me that the wise man should have stopped to ask himself, not only if he could be more than the Daimyo’s vassal, but more than his own, self-imposed limitations.”

510/2,940

Lamya looked at Shinako, her golden eyes shimmering in the light that shone brightly upon them, her pupils narrowing into slits as thin as a hair's width. Her tongue licked her lips as she listened intently and with trepedition to the story the woman in front of her was about to tell her. She noticed that Shinako had yet to lower her guard and if anything, it seemed that the kunoichi had actually become more careful in regards to her position and her apparent strengths and weaknesses. In a sense it made the former Anbu captain think that this woman was actually quite smart, planning everything in that particular situation and leaving hardly any room for error or any opening at all.

As Shinako told her story, Lamya did not budge, did not move a millimeter from her position. Her muscles did not tense, her eyes simply watched and her ears simply listened. The tale spoke about a past daimyo and his interaction with some wise man and as Shinako explained, the Daimyo dismissed the wise man's prophecy and counsel, yet the wise man in his own bitterness made an equally rash and absolute decision, which ended up with the both of them not accomplishing anything in the end. Even if it looked like a simple tale told by one person to another, the former Anbu captain knew from the very moment she understood the moral of the story, that Shinako was trying to prove a point, that Lamya's view of the world was most likely twisted and corrupted by the darkness she had waded through and that her own judgment as such had become just as clouded and wrong as the very rules she tried to fight against.

Alas, for one who had seen the true nature of the shinobi world and for one who had seen the reality that the darkness resided in each and every person, a simple tale would not lead them easily astray from their mission and their goals.

"It's a lovely tale, Shinako," The former Anbu captain stood up again and leaned against the tree while she pointed towards Konoha, the village gleaming in the sun's radiant light. "What you see is the mirror placed in front of your eyes, a vision you want to see is presented to you, but the vision which is hidden from you is equally truthful if not more so than the mirage we're now looking at."

For a moment she remained silent, her golden eyes absorbing the image in front of her, while her thoughts showed something much different, as she had already been given the visions of what would happen if she'd let everything stay as it were. In her mind, she could see Konoha being burned down, it's streets lifeless and running red with the lives of men, women and children. "I've seen to what the corruption and decadence of the current world leads, though my sins will never be forgiven, I do not desire to see us go down the path that we are walking now. The ways of the hokages of old have proven to be failures and if one has to steer and guide this world to a future in which our continued existence is made possible, is that not a better outcome than the world falling back to its old ways of warring states and clans?"

573/3428

It seemed to Shinako that Risu only saw the world in absolutes. Perhaps it was a product of the things the other woman had seen; either she would complete her mission, or some grave future would come to pass. The likelihood that the world would keep spinning just fine without her brand of justice was so negligible as to warrant no consideration at all. It was a mindset Shinako had often encountered in the Hidden Leaf. For all the imagining that the people of the Leaf were connected by an intricate root system, Shinako often found that their thinking was static, and narrow. If it didn’t happen to them, it didn’t happen at all. Most could use the word ‘discrete’ and mean nothing more than the rooms just out of sight. There were ideological consequences to building a civilization on the backs of dead children. In the moment, Shinako wondered just how the poison of the Hidden Leaf was influencing her own thinking and judgement.

She knew she had to escape. Risu was beautiful, free, and dangerous. Shinako’s mind began to play through the implications of this conversation, and the chances that Risu would simply let her leave. A grudge like that did not die easily, if at all, and took great sacrifices to maintain, as the other woman had mentioned before. It seemed, to Shinako, that she had already spent too much of her life as a sacrifice to the ends of others. She thought back to the fierce desire to live that she had been feeling recently.

“I think you’re wrong, and that you'll harm people, but I also don’t think that I can stop you….”

The sadness had left the woman’s voice, and it was all finely honed steel wrapped in silk. Everything from Risu’s demeanor to the insanity of her plan betrayed that she was likely head and shoulders more powerful than Shinako in terms of Shinobi techniques. Raw power alone would not overcome the veiled threat at hand. As always, Shinako continued to place her faith in language.

“So where do we go from here?”

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“I think you’re wrong, and that you'll harm people, but I also don’t think that I can stop you….”

The golden snake like eyes of the former Anbu captain seemed to glimmer for a moment, the golden orbs locked straight into Shinako's own eyes. However, Lamya's lips suddenly curled into a smile, while she started to chuckle softly. It wasn't at all sinister sounding, nor did it sound as if she was mocking the konoha kunoichi. It was more like the once simple girl that had been lead astray due to the machinations of her uncle and his associates had resurfaced for just a single moment, her chuckles turning into genuine laughter as tears started to well up in the corners of her eyes.

"You truly are funny and amusing, Shinako-san," For a moment, she continued to laugh, wiping away the tears that showed her amusement. As she calmed down again, the woman tapped the mask hanging from her belt with her index finger. "It would be a greater sin if I were to hurt someone such as yourself, plus I reckon for now... I'd rather have the knowledge that someone might be out there, someone capable of finding another solution than myself."

Slowly reaching for her mask, Lamya placed it back upon her face, again covering whatever identity she had as Orochi Risu and taking on her role as Lamya once more, fully embracing her mission and the consequences, yet as she continued to look at Shinako, from behind her mask, her now distorted voice could be heard yet again, while her presence seemed to slowly fade away as she activated her outfit's special properties.

“So where do we go from here?”

"Should the time come in which you'd be forced to stand up for what you believe is right, do not step aside, no matter the strength of your opponent," Almost vanishing into the shadows, only Lamya's eyes remained visible for a few moments, until she jumped off of the tree, removing herself completely from view and any other senses completely, though her voice could still be heard like whispers in the leaves. "What will you turn into when just like me, you've seen the shadows of this world? Find your answers, Shinako...just like I have found mine."

With that, she had completely vanished. There was no more sign of either the former Anbu captain who had called herself Risu, nor was her large snake around anymore. Shinako was alone to herself again...

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EXIT THREAD

Just like that, Orochi Risu was gone. The genuine laugh that preceded the young woman’s departure had gone a long way toward dispelling some of Shinako’s apprehension, though she stayed still for several long moments, sensing the silence and stillness left in Risu’s wake. The serpent was gone as well, confirming Shinako’s original hypothesis that the two were linked somehow. She couldn’t help but feel that she and Risu were linked now as well. She whispered into the forest as the sound of birds returned.

“I’ll find you again, Risu.”

It was a meaningless promise, given only to herself, yet it felt important in the moment. The usual sensations of danger which overtook Shinako in anticipation of a fight were slowly fading. She guessed that if she were to search for Risu’s camp she would find nothing; an ANBU trained Shinobi would move on quickly, and Shinako doubted she would be capable of tracking such quarry. She didn’t really have any desire to do so. Slumping against the tree, Shinako let out a long sigh, allowing the tension in her muscles to dissipate slightly, forehead resting against the smooth patch where she had peeled away the bark.

She was tired. Coming face to face with possible death in the morning was exhausting. Out of a sense of preservation, she knew that she should at least attempt to make it back to the village quickly. However, the thought of evading the patrols, or worse, reporting what had happened to a passing patrol, seemed impossible. Shinako lowered herself gently to her knees, looking back toward the village. She had always felt like a person had to be important in order to have enemies, and yet here she was, afraid of assassins on all sides.

It was like something an old veteran from the hospital had described in a startling account of a battle with a Suiton user in the Land of Waves. He had found himself submerged in water, surrounded by the ghostly outlines of sharks on all sides. His only option at the time had been to swim for his life as the predators closed in. One of his squad-mates had saved him at the last possible moment by interrupting the foreign Shinobi’s technique, but the veteran had described the sensation of screaming underwater; taking it into his lungs as he began the first stages of drowning. Shinako had been no more than a young girl at the time the story was recounted, and had been scared of the water ever since.

Hours passed before Shinako moved, and she would later have trouble remembering what exactly she did or thought about during that time. She didn’t feel fear, exactly, but a heightened sense that she was not in a place that was meant for her. The short trip back into the village required her full ability and attention, and felt like waking up from a dream; perhaps a nightmare. She fell asleep that night with prescription drugs in her tea, and thoughts of snakes in her mind. her dreams would be forgotten by morning.

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