At one point, what had felt like a lifetime ago, Rokumaru looked at glass with fondness and admiration. Without even mentioning it's mundane uses, the sheer smoothness of high-quality glass was a sight to admire when it was free of impurities. His own brother had made a living creating the substance, treating his craft like an art to be perfected, using their shared affinity for the endless dunes of sand that surrounded the village to shape the melting grains into intricate spirals and shapes that an ordinary glassblower could only marvel at. The glass trade was a small but robust staple of Sunagakure's economy and many buildings incorporated glass into their architecture, making the brittle but valuable material a vital aspect of Sunagakure's identity.

Now it was Sunagakure's only identity. Where once artisans would labor to create more of the material, there was a disgusting abundance that lurked in every corner of what was left of the village's streets. It crunched beneath Rokumaru's thick boots with every step, several meters thick in the most affected areas, leaving so little of the grainy material it was birthed from. Every morning since the day he had watched his village burn helplessly was spent in the constant presence of glass. And every morning, crawling from the small mound of sharp and bulky sand he had carved in what remained of his clan's compound courtyard, Rokumaru spent the day removing the offensive material from his family's resting place.

It was a guarantee that there had been Sabaku outside of the Land of Wind at the time of the attack, and just as likely that there were those who had evacuated in time, but those who occupied the compound were not fortunate in the slightest. When he had begun eroding the cracked and refracted glass from the melted mound of what had once been a sandstone compound, there was only more of the insulting matter beneath. He had spent days attacking the glass with his Sand Erosion, draining his chakra from the effort on two separate occasions, wishing he could have stopped it from happening in the first place. Slowly the shapeless mound of glass was carved away, revealing small traces of the buildings and rooms that had once been there. It was the only boost to his morale Rokumaru had since that day, when everyone left. He would remove it all, not accepting even a single shard of glass to dwell on this hallowed ground.

Then he began to reach the bodies. Calling them 'bodies' at all was a generous term, as respectful as he could be, as the fire consumed so much before they could be preserved in glass. They were nearly unnoticeable among the endless impurities that formed from his people's possessions and livelihoods melting with the sand, but finding singed hitai-ate's beneath the surface he carved made it more clear of what to look for to find them. Humans are a walking container for various fluids and bones that left distinct impressions on the glass they were melted with, various spots being more brown or orange than the surrounding area, but on occasion he could find a corpse that was nearly untouched by the flames before being smothered by the embrace of the glass. One in particular had been preserved with near-perfection, beginning to decompose only when unearthed by Rokumaru's efforts.

The destruction of the village had been an unexpected tragedy that destroyed his very life, depriving him of the only master he had ever wished to serve and the only community he had been proud to be a part of. But it had never been personal. Only a fool could deny that Sunagakure was a shadow of a shadow of what it had once been, that there had been many who used it for their own benefit, and that he was only one of thousands that had paid for the sins of others. But it had never been personal. His entire clan and hundreds of years of history had been transformed into an ugly glass graveyard, but so had the other clan compounds. It wasn't supposed to be personal.

Finding signs of very personal, very violent actions taken against his family had been the one thing that nearly shattered the person Rokumaru was. The fires nearly incinerated what was left of a nursery's occupants, piled together in a heap that implied the attacker was rushing to finish everyone, and only by being at the center of that heap was one small mop of red hair attached to a bloody body, handprints bruised into his pale skin, able to survive the inferno that had glassed their home. He thought he was hallucinating when eroding through an ugly mass of brown glass revealed those crimson locks, and Rokumaru thought he would unearth himself from that glass and have an existential, cathartic episode. The reality only served to torture his soul even further.

Everyone who went through the Academy was trained to identify wounds to a small degree, and Rokumaru had always been a studious person, so he was well aware of how effortlessly and swiftly someone had ended the child's life. The flames had come after the killing, rather than being the source of his clan's death. He imagined that was the shared fate of all who had been here at the time of the attack, and would have been his fate had he been with his family. His family, his real one, was still somewhere beneath this infuriating mound of once molten sand, his brothers and sisters and mother and father melted into the very structure itself. He wanted to break every single shard that had been his compound and his clan into microscopic pieces and return their bodies to the desert, to give them some form of closure and goodbye, but it was all too much. His younger brother was supposed to be graduating from the Academy, finally learning that the life of a shinobi was boring at best and agonizing at worst, not just another blemish in that humiliating chunk of glass.

That was the last day the redhead had spent in his clan's compound, using all the sand he had worn away up to that point to bury what he had unearthed. Knowing he was sleeping on the site of a massacre gave way to too many bad dreams, reminders of his failure to stand up to the attackers, to use his power in any way to save his family. They forced him to watch as his home was incinerated, the phantom pain of the arm Hayo had dislocated throbbing long after he had woken up despite it having healed weeks ago. That was if he was lucky; when he wasn't, he wished it was the sight of burning buildings instead of the faces of his family. Before this had all happened Rokumaru was uncomfortable even with people he knew and loved, preferring his own company to the large and connected Sabaku family that simply accepted his distant behavior and included him when he needed their presence. Now that presence was something he would kill for. His mother's stern but amused face and soft, luxurious crimson hair was a mirage that he let himself accept when his tear-sore eyes would finally shut and sleep would grant him sanctuary from the hell of the real world, always trying to force an embrace from the ghost his subconscious mind dragged up to punish him for his failures. It made him feel like a child, something he had not been since he had hung that Suna headband around his neck, but he wanted his mother like he had wanted nothing else in his life. If he had found her corpse in the same state that he had found that infant, it would have driven him past the point of sanity. Roku wondered why he still retained any form of sanity after such a traumatic experience.

He had been aware that the Jackal had become more or less the man in charge after the death or exodus of the village's elite, making efforts to build some form of civilization, but was a little hesitant about approaching him for information. Rokumaru needed to know who had wrought destruction on the village and ruined his life, but was not willing to aid their efforts in rebuilding the slums. The former Chuunin had no intention of withering in this desert, scratching out some pathetic life among the ruins while lamenting about what had once been. The actions taken against his clan specifically demanded that he pursue justice for them all, vengeance against the devils who had perpetrated the massacre of the Sabaku and the destruction of the village; the only issue was finding out who those devils were exactly. Luckily enough, at least one of them had identified themselves to the people they were killing.

He had spoken briefly with Hayo before the man followed the stream of refugees out of the country with his family, and the older Chuunin had been briefed about the main attack from shinobi abandoning their comrades to the flames. Before eviscerating everyone within a stone's thrown distance, one had very specifically identified himself as the Sword Saint himself. The former Hokage, Sarutobi Mitsuo. The man had the nerve to declare himself a saint in the face of the hundreds of innocents whose life he was snuffing out, his swords likely having aided him greatly in slaughtering every defenseless Sabaku child that cowered behind their elders. Thinking about that man made his skin hot and red, made his head ache with rage and self-loathing, and he had declared to Hayo that he would kill the man or die trying. Hayo had simply reset Rokumaru's dislocated arm, embraced the boy and muttered quiet words to take care of himself, then ushered his family along with the procession of refugees as he left a livid Rokumaru behind, standing on a dune, alone. But Roku knew nothing about that shadowy figure that had torn his life apart beyond his name and titles, as well as his penchant for fire and steel blades, and would need to learn more of who the man was before he could plan his demise.

Those same fleeing shinobi spoke of a woman who seemed to be in league with the Sword Saint, though she did not declare her own name loud enough to be heard over the death of a village. Fortunately her appearance was remarkable enough to be noticed; slim and pale with black hair and light-colored eyes, crazy enough to revel in the suffering that surrounded her. Rokumaru decided that was enough of a description, certain that he could identify this woman by those traits and that she had left an impression on those she had met. Scum drifted towards scum: he was certain she could be found along the trail to the Sarutobi's corpse.

But what was most troubling was the vague mention of a traitor from Hayo, a third perpetrator that aided the foreigners in entering the village and destroying all that was contained in it's walls. The thought was not one that lead to any productive or healthy emotions in Rokumaru and so he had forced that figure from his mind entirely. Again, that turncloak would be found along the path ahead, and the rat will regret his actions if he somehow did not already do so.

These were the immediate thoughts of someone who felt like the world had personally wronged him and had fueled him through his excavation of the Sabaku compound, but as the nights slipped by and his rage turned to grief his thoughts became more rational. No one who could destroy a village would face any form of threat from someone who was only barely C-Ranked, and the roaches would band together in order to fend off the consequences of their actions. Their time would come, but only when Rokumaru was strong enough to defeat all three with his Sabaton could his soul find closure. Rushing off to battle would only lead to his death, one less Sabaku in the world and one more smug grin on that bastard's face. Rokumaru had spent his years as a shinobi poorly and regretted every moment that was not spent absorbing the knowledge and power his village had to offer. Now that village was gone, a wasteland of glass. He would need to look elsewhere for guidance.

He knew he should have left with the larger groups of refugees to the other nations, although the truth about what had happened to his clan was something he wasn't comfortable being ignorant about. Those same nations that created the people who had destroyed his own held the knowledge and power he needed to have his revenge; all he needed to do was make connections with foreigners. The thought was enough to make him shudder and twist his gut, the idea of trusting anyone out there being an unlikely one, but there was no one here he could look to for help. The Jackal always had his own agenda and that was never discovered by Roku, and the redhead could only imagine what the lowlife was up to in the absence of any supervision whatsoever. He could not afford to get caught up with Myugen's schemes, at least for the moment. That the man had stayed in the village to rebuild when so many had turned their backs on Suna was striking enough to leave Roku respecting the shady guy even more, and when his quest was over he hoped to turn his attention to what remained of Suna.

And so Rokumaru spent a day watching the rebuilt slums bustle with the only activity for dozens of miles in any direction, contemplating which nation he should travel to first. Kaze no Kuni was bordered by the nations that contained Iwa and Konoha, and so he would likely have to travel through one of those villages to reach the lands beyond. Though his distaste for Iwa had always been something he forced on himself it was a genuine sentiment nonetheless, and he really did not want those cave dwellers to see him in such a state of helplessness. Going to Konoha was risky itself as that was the birthplace of the Sword Saint and could have been his current place of residence, and asking questions about the former Hokage by a displaced Suna-nin would easily raise suspicion. He had no better plan, however, and his safety was really not as much of a concern as it had been a short time ago. One month and several days after the Fall of Sunagakure, Rokumaru made his decision to leave his ruined home behind. For now.

This newfound purpose breathed new life into Rokumaru, enough to contain his grief into a small enough space to compartmentalize at the back of his mind to be dealt with later. Returning to his clan's compound he retrieved his possessions that had been stashed there for safe keeping. His hitai-ate was polished with the last glob of oil he had, the pockets of his flak jacket filled with as much sand as they could contain, and the two scrolls containing his puppet and gourd were stuffed into his satchel beneath a spare outfit and his ryo purse. In the reflection of a shard of glass he had rubbed into a mirror Rokumaru carefully braided his hair into two short strands that hung down on each side of his chin, the exact way his mother liked to braid her otherwise wild and wavy red hair. He had spent far too much time moping and grieving in the ruins of his home for this to bring any tears to his eyes, though his heart ached to look at the braids. It was time to close this chapter of his life and begin the next. Those people would pay for their sins and he would show the world just how transparent the lies that his village was guilty are. The souls of the dead demanded vengeance. He just needed the power to take it.

---

WC:2726

Training:

Exit Thread