Akaneya listened somewhat intently as Zhi seemed to recall her own exams. Memories of blood-soaked floors and walls came to her mind, pitiful scraps of food served to the survivors. In a sense, perhaps she was already a Chunin by Otogakure's count, though Konoha seemed all too happy to keep telling her, year after year, not to participate in the exams. Hearing Zhi's tale of finding friendship and love, she found it impossible to sympathize; she'd been offered no such opportunities, and knew that the chance would've only made her weaker. Still, though, she couldn't help but give a mental 'good for you' to the whole story.

It was about that time that more questions came forth, asking in a much more genuine tone than any time before what her plans for the future were. Akaneya, as always, proved herself to be a bastion of directness and honestly. "I don't know. They keep telling me not to take the Exams, but it is unlikely I will stay a genin forever. Maybe I will, it is of no consequence in the end. I exist to make myself useful, as L-" she stumbled on her own words, and tried again, "As I have been taught, as has been revealed to me. If they deem that I must remain a genin to be of best use, then so be it. I shall not sacrifice the Greater for any idiotic notions of pride or arrogance. I heard the stories in Otogakure of those who failed their missions and never returned home because they didn't know when to stop, when to shut up, and when to press. They were killed for their arrogance: it is not bravery, but stupidity, to keep fighting a losing battle."

She sighed, "I will not make a martyr of myself. Dying is simply wasteful. For that, I suppose I shall serve my purpose in this world, whatever it may be, until I no longer can. I-"

She was cut off when the bowl of noodles was placed in front of her. Dragging out the vowel, she looked down at it with an expression mixing shock, disgust, and curiosity. Frantically searching the counter for a spoon, and finding none, she almost seemed to reel back at it. It would become rather immediately clear that the girl had never seen ramen before, and was perhaps offended by its seemingly impossible nature.

"I-I've never seen...anything like this before." The bowl of weird noodle soup was, in a sense, fascinating, but was impossible to comprehend. How was one even meant to consume such a thing? Who would mix their solids and their liquids in such a manner, that one could enjoy neither without the other getting in the way? Truly, no matter how long she spent in Konohagakure, she was ever the foreigner to this mystical land of oddities and contradictions.

The drink spilled, and Akaneya's attention was drawn immediately to her companion. Zhi whispered in harsh tones about the ANBU sitting nearby, something Akaneya was familiar with to some extent. She leaned down alongside 'Zhi' and whispered, "I told you that they watch me," before speaking more clearly and loudly, "Let me help you with that." With this, she flicked her head to look down in a carefully planned maneuver, crouching low-to-the-ground to pick up pieces of the shattered bottle. Her messy hair having been tossed aside just enough, the black edges of her cursed seal would be visible on the meeting point of her shoulder and her neck.

She was careful picking up each piece, trying to give Zhi some time to understand, to connect the dots. Still, the mark was not too easily visible. Having gathered a handful of broken glass, she sat back up and placed it on the counter. Pulling her hair outward, she revealed for the briefest moment the mark in a much fuller state before letting the mass drop back down her back naturally. "You should be more careful," she stated in her same blank monotone, the sheer intensity of her eyes scarce matching her apathetic voice. She hoped, then, that this companion of hers would understand the true meaning of her statement.

Following this up, she took off her now-wet gloves and placed them on the counter, splitting a couple of chopsticks and swirling the ramen in a circle. She still had no idea how to actually eat the damn thing.

Following the example as best she could, she placed the chopsticks just-so. Clicking them together for a little bit of practice, it seemed intuitive enough. She followed up by carefully tilting the bowl in her direction, trying to grab the noodles with the sticks. With a bit of success, she began to feed them into her mouth. The first thing that came to her mind was how slimy, but silky, the texture of the meal was. A truly fascinating thing, that. Her cheeks turned a little red at the spice added in with the noodles, but she could handle a minuscule amount of pain. If she couldn't, she'd not have even survived her introduction to Otogakure.

As she tried to slurp them down, however, she dropped the bowl back on the counter and began to cough. Pounding her chest a couple of times, she regained her breath. She had learned her first lessons in eating ramen, and had already choked on the stuff. Good progress, so she tried again. This time, it came a little bit better. She still found the texture to be very alien, the taste perhaps a bit overwhelming, but this had become something of a personal quest. It was too late to back down, and so she took it slowly and steadily until the first patch of noodles had finally been consumed.

Breathing out a sigh of both heat and relief, she eyed the bowl in a new way entirely. It was a look no longer confused, but determined. She tried, before going in with the rest of the noodles, plucking a few of the chunks floating within, the stuff adding the flavor, and tasting those. They were slightly easier to eat, and she thinned them accordingly. Without emptying the bowl of these chunks, she returned to the noodles and tried again. It took very little time before she was finished, left with a bowl of soup and small flavorful chunks floating therein. She looked at it, then her chopsticks, and then picked up the bowl to sip from.

Now that she knew how to handle the problem, the speed at which she ate was revealed. Akaneya tried to be expedient in all things, without too much regard for social graces. Too much time spent eating meant too much less time spent being productive, after all.

Before she knew it, Akaneya was swept off her feet and taken as a damsel to a dark alleyway, and given a question. As she had perhaps suspected, this Zhi of the Mist was not being entirely truthful the whole time. If she had been willing to lie for the sake of courtesy, why not to conceal something more important? She supposed that she hadn't really thought much about Zhi, preferring not to prod as had been done to her. If she had been paying attention, though, if she had been actually thinking or prodding, she suspected she might've come across something like this sooner or later.

The question, though, was what was really striking about the whole situation. This Zhi claimed to know somebody particular, somebody capable of crafting cursed marks and who might decipher her own. The phrasing was melodramatic, talking about truth or passive acceptance, about choosing one's own path in life. Some old emotion stirred in Akaneya, and she was compelled at last to speak up:

"Fine. You want to know the truth? My life has never been part of my choosing. He gave me this seal, promised it would make me stronger, but it didn't work. Maybe he was angry, maybe he was disappointed. I proved myself fighting the others, and I did as told. I broke myself taking those first steps outside the Land of Rice, I struggled with each one and pushed myself harder than I ever had before. I don't know why I did it, but I'll be damned if you dare tell me that I didn't make that choice."

She glared into Zhi's eyes with rage, having not sufficiently answered her question one way or another. "How would your...your 'friend' know what it means? How could he know what it is supposed to do, if when that...that Snake, when the Snake put it here, he couldn't even get it to work?!"

A look into her eyes no longer seemed raged, but frustrated. She was not harboring any anger towards Zhi at the moment, but perhaps toward herself, having felt as if a failure to her mission and her purpose. This frustration clearly ran deep, despite the years that she'd been away from Otogakure and her newfound allegiances. Akaneya had failed to find closure for so many things in her life, that one might even suppose it was simply inevitable.

Calming herself down, Akaneya had a great deal to consider. She could be examined for a price, or turn down the offer at this very moment. This was what she took from it, considering the rest to be filler. That is, until Zhi stated her mission: to know all there is to know. It reminded her of a certain someone from a certain hidden village who just-so-happened to be her original master. It stirred a memory, one she hadn't thought of in quite some time. Akaneya's eyes seemed to go dull, pupils dilating, as she lost herself for a moment.

The memory was as crisp as if it had happened that very day. A shadowy figure with striking eyes spoke in his soothing voice, resting his hand on a younger Akaneya's shoulder. The girl, a bit confused and a bit frightened, and most certainly longing for home, stood facing a blank wall of cold stone in a dark room. The silken voice of the Snake beside her, he explained his goal in life:

"I have a mission in my life: I want to learn all there is to know. Just as the painter mixes yellow and blue to make green, I want to search the depths of the world for the old and to make it new. A stale, stagnant world is so boring, after all. I like to see things in motion, to cause great change in this world, and in order to do that I need to collect just a little bit of everything first. I want to make my own green, or maybe an orange or a purple. Just as there is no end to the colors in the world, there is no end to the things I could do once I finish my...collection. All the things I could change. People can change, or they can die. It's that simple, my dear."

He laughed his almost choking laugh, "I wanted, a long time ago, to forge a new world by my hand. Now, I am content to watch it change itself because of me instead. You are part of my collection, Akaneya. You are my agent in this world, you and the others you will meet here. It is through you I will see my mission accomplished, and through you I will keep this world interesting. To do that, you need to understand strength. True strength."

"Real strength is forged in the fires of the heart. We fan the flames with loss and anger and hatred, and it grows into such an intense blaze that we never could've even dreamed of. This will fuel itself in due time. Oh, it may hurt my dear, but the best medicines taste the most bitter. When the darkness clears in the brightness of your fire, only then will you know who you truly are - your name, your home, your clan, these mean nothing, they're all incidental to your true self. When we're finished here, maybe then you'll find your purpose like I have mine. Now, let's see if you can start that flame inside of you."

She intended to ask what he meant, but soon felt a sharp pain dig into her. She collapsed to her knees as the pain radiated, making her very blood feel as acid. Only the sound of the chamber door closing, followed by the clank of a heavy lock, came from her master as she fell to her side and began to scream. The pulsing pain and burning blood filled her every waking moment until she lost all track of time and space.

Snapping back to reality, blinking once or twice, Akaneya spoke softly - "Yes, I shall do it, Lord O-" but was cut off by the arrival of the ANBU to the scene.

Anything? Anything at all? That might prove more troublesome than anything else this night, for despite Zhi's insistence, Akaneya felt herself more than hesitant to openly discuss any particularly secretive matters in public. There was always a risk involved there that she wasn't exactly willing to take, especially not after having just encountered two suspicious ANBU who might do whatever was in their power to pay attention. At least for the moment, she needed to throw off suspicion, to wait it out a bit longer before discussing things more properly. She would have to scrounge the corners of her mind to think up something, anything, to talk about, and it was almost assured to be an uncomfortable conversation.

Eyeing her companion up and down for a second, she took the other's arm as was intended and began walking to the nearest inn. "I..." she dragged the vowel, looking at her again, "like your outfit?" she finished, with a very noticeable question mark. That would make no difference to anyone reading lips or only simply passing by, in both cases intonation was more often ignored. "Where did you get it?" she queried on, blatantly trying her best to come up with perhaps the most typical, trite thing to discuss while they were in public view.

Of course, Akaneya didn't think too much about clothing in general. She had a few outfits of her own, but her day-to-day attire was fairly consistent and, perhaps to a degree some might find slightly unnerving, it was not too distinct from the uniform she'd worn as something of an officer in Otogakure. One thing she did notice, however, was how bare her hands had been for the past few minutes, remembering her sake-soaked gloves back at the store. She whispered, "you owe me a new pair," to her walking-partner, gesturing to her hands.

"Do people really dress like that in Kirigakure? After all, you did say you travel quite a lot," she finished once more, her eyes darting around to check if there were any more people trying to nose in. It would be clear by now that these instincts of hers were driving this relatively thoughtless question, but she hoped Zhi would pick up on the hidden meaning within her last question: seemingly innocuous to anyone passing by, but it contained a point, almost an accusation, therein.

After what'd just happened, could she be blamed for her suspicion?

Despite her having just tried to fill the gap with idle chatter, Akaneya did give genuine attention to her companion's response. She had, perhaps, been hasty in her judgement - this Zhi of the Mist actually was from the Mist it would seem, or at least the story was held up as such. The other woman then promised to take her shopping tomorrow and to try to do literally anything about her mass of unkempt hair, promising it would be fun - a word that Akaneya did not know well. Usually, when she heard it, the word was referencing things she either did not care for, or was generally excluded from. For this simple reason, she thought the offer a bit suspicious; it was not that she distrusted Zhi particularly, but moreso that she did not believe she would actually enjoy the process.

It was then that she was asked a question of her own - what she did for fun, what did she do exactly? The flute, in particular, caught Zhi's eye. Akaneya thought for a moment before answering, speaking up with a sure, steady, but slow pace: "I don't really get 'fun', so to speak. It is inefficient. Such lethargy was taken out of me years ago, though I do sometimes worry I've fallen into decadence here in the Leaf. I guess you could say that I do use my flute for something like it, though. If I feel physically tired, I will dedicate my effort to meditation instead. I will find a nice, quiet place, and simply be surrounded with the quiet - sometimes testing my clan's technique there, but often I will play my flute in some garden or forest scene, playing the old songs of the Land of Rice in my solitude. I suppose that's what you'd say I do for 'fun' around here."

It took Akaneya a moment to realize that she had been somewhat abruptly stopped, herself jerking backwards slightly by the stationary Zhi when she unknowingly continued trying to walk. She offered to buy the new gloves right at that moment, stating that since it was already a little late, there was no reason to try to rush to some random inn anyway. She then unleashed a question or two more in Akaneya's path, to which she tried to answer accordingly: "Well, while one might think gloves hinder dexterity, a proper unlined pair will give several benefits. The first is that, for lack of lining, they will be as flexible as a hand. The second is that, when it is cold outside, my hands are somewhat warmed and more able to keep still and focused, but the bigger benefit is that my hands will not come into direct contact with the cold silver of the flute. The third is that the extra material helps to plug the holes on my flute better than my bare hand would, although on a properly-fit pair this effect would be marginal. But-" she got pulled toward the market, "But...that's not why I wear them. I can't explain it. They just feel comfortable, maybe even a little familiar, even though I only started to wear them when I got to Konohagakure. I base much of my clothing on what I used to wear in Otogakure for that same sense of...familiarity. Perhaps one day, I can show you how I used to dress. I still have the full outfit, and it still fits as well as it did back then.

She was then told to not be shy, to actually take a moment and get more than just the replacement gloves. Zhi started telling a story about her childhood, and how she missed her mother and her shitty little slum-shack. It was a touching story, surely, and Akaneya could relate on some level. While digging around for a pair of unlined gloves with the right fit, she told Zhi - "I understand how you feel. My father was crippled when I last saw him seven or eight years ago. The Snake promised us both a better life if I came with him, and I never saw my village or my father ever again. I don't know what became of him, but for my service I could only hope he was treated accordingly." She soon found a nice pair, dark brown and made of quite soft leather, the length reaching to a couple of inches past her wrist, and fitting like a glove.

Taking a moment, this would perhaps be the first time that her companion would see Akaneya thinking deeply about any particular think, instead of at most taking a moment to collect her thoughts. She took a few steps in a random direction and then looked down to her shoes, low sandals with her shins wrapped up tightly. Would some boots be a better fit for her? Would it feel right, would they be flexible enough? Having a spare pair couldn't hurt, could it? Akaneya quickly found herself going for a pair, and then following this by picking up a nice black-leather jacket at the same place. Taking off a glove to feel the material, running a sleeve between her fingers before re-gloving, she tried it on. It was a close fit, but not uncomfortable - simply slim-fitting while seemingly of the proper size. It lacked any particular adornment, but it was something new that she hadn't really known in her past, and she couldn't help but notice that, unlike in the Land of Rice, it actually helped stave off the cold. Such an impossible thing now discovered, she had her heart set on it.

Thanking Zhi for the effort spared on her behalf, and more importantly the ryo, Akaneya was now ready to leave. She simply stated to summarize the entire thing: "You didn't have to do that. But you did. Thank you." Even in such a moment of profoundness, her voice seemed to fail to bear much emotion. Still, it was a blatantly genuine statement all the same. Turning to face the direction of the inn, but not moving, she then spoke once more: "So, what's this about a Mist Ninja?"

Exit: