1 Roses and Ruins [Invite] Fri Jul 13, 2018 6:57 pm
Haka Osada
Retired
Lurking in the shadows,
remnants of the past,
living with sorrows,
as no names were asked.
Lies a secret hidden,
of memories untold,
to harm the present, sicken,
until the sunrays unfold,
a plant that crawls slowly,
upon the forlorn stones,
frail, alone and slightly boney,
with as only company its own moans.
There, yes, over there,
despite confrontations,
humiliations and lack of clean air,
sighs a single flower in patience,
with leaves so evergreen,
protected by thorns all 'round,
a beautiful rose like you've never seen,
gently singing its own sound.
This land was a strange place to be in. The spider, familiar with the humid environment of the Land of Water, despised the warmth and found the ever shifting sand an annoyance to endure. The Siege of Inabayama raged full-on in the far background, the winds carrying the loudest screams and heaviest scents that marked the landscape. While Verdandi and Chigetsu had decided to take up arms in the defence of Kirigakure, driven by a certain loyalty to the humane Village, the spider-nin was not of a mind to wage a war in a foreign land. In fact, the more of these humans were slaughtered off by their own kin, the better she liked it. The unevolved species using their weapons to beat up each other to no avail. Not for power, nor for claims. All that because they wore a different sort of headband than the other. All that because their leaders were too meek, too weak, too pathetic to deal with the threats that opposed them. But that knowledge was nothing new to Haka. The strongest humans had time and time again proven to be shackled by the rules of their own society, forced to step down and protect the pathetic weaklings that were supposed to form the backbone of their sort. The strong were kept weak on purpose, the weak carried on the arms of the strong and hailed like gods. What a world.
Haka was not deaf to their words though. She had executed a few of their missions, and she had picked up the stories of the slums where humans were left to fend for themselves. Shinobi considered them weak but so far all Haka had seen was an unwavering sense for survival. These people moved the very walls that once formed their homes. They were few but men and women alike picked up just about anything that could serve as a weapon - stone, shard of glass, knife - the moment her monstrous aura draped over them like a passing shadow. Insecurity revealed itself by the hairs raising on their arms but in their eyes they held not fear. They held determination, vehemence, a subtle warming that the slightest of her movements performed with hostile intent would be replied with an equal opposing force. So used to the meek reactions of commoners, Haka felt like she had stepped into another of Sero's pocket dimension. A world so different one was obliged to forget what they knew and relearn what it offered. But this was not Sero's domain. This was Sunagakure's reality. It's hidden power only brought to the surface by those that had eradicated the masquerade of humanity.
Haka would have grinned in malevolence if she wasn't an apathetic monster driven by instinct.
Unfortunately, or perhaps luckily, she cared little for emotions. Instinct was all that mattered if one wanted to survive, intellect if one wanted to surpass the limits instinct could not recognise. There was but one sensation she wouldn't push away. Something new. A premonition, perhaps, that within these ruins she could come to understand an aspect of humans never revealed before. Something different than the desire for survival laid bare here. Something relating to these 'ruins'. Remnants of houses. Remnants considered lost to shinobi, given new life by the refugees hiding in shadows here. As the wind blew through her long, white hair, her torso adorned by the battle robe she wore ever since she had entered this war zone, calculative eyes attempted to figure out how exactly these broken homes served them.
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