"You will die, foolish boy. The last five years you have lived a slave, and you intend to take your freedom and plunge it back into the grasp of your captor?" Hideyoshi sat, legs crossed in front of the fireplace as Miyamoto, Watsuji sharpened Mother's Bequest. The sound of steel sliding against the whetstone was unpleasant for most, but each time it rung out the samurai felt his ambition growing. He had not the time during his servitude to learn any new techniques, nor had he accumulated any money with which to purchase finer equipment. He had only the body he was born with, the gifts and bestowed weaponry he had been given by those who mattered most, and a heart full of rage.

The Miyamoto village in which Watsuji had called home all of his life had been abandoned by the soldiers of Kumogakure who claimed it under Hastur overnight. Something had sent them fleeing. His people were still trying to piece together what they could for a living. Mother and Father had no idea that the Ronin was readying himself for a showdown with the man who sliced the cap from a mountain. His blue hair had darkened, his body had grown tall and muscular. And that natural bright glow in the young boy's eyes had hardened into a fiery amber. Gray robes with olive accents upon the seams and detailing wrapped around his body as a straw hat sat comfortably upon his hat, obscuring his eyes.

It was the midst of the night when he slipped away toward Kumogakure. One could still see the smoke rising as the village sat upon the horizon. This irrational act was sure to come with consequences. Hideyoshi never allowed him to forget about consequences when anger overtook the younger Miyamoto. The criss cross patterns of deep lashing scars across his pale back represented one thousand unheeded warnings from the ancestor spirit. It was all too much to simply ignore though. The small, rambunctious, lighthearted boy who stood here years before was all but washed away by a need for vengeance.

The journey itself seemed to pass in an instant. His village wasn't far from his destination. The gates were ablaze, or what was left of them. A trail of destruction seemed to be carved through the village itself. He would take advantage of the chaos, keeping a steady pace as he kept one hand on Mother's bequest, heading northeast within the village, away from any chaos which might have been unfolding. What looked to be civilians rushed through the streets, direct east. It was likely that they knew of another way out. As Watsuji passed through the smoke which blew in from his flank, he would seek to enter one of the presumably empty homes for a moment to gather his thoughts and establish a base of operations. In this sort of chaos, he needed to act quickly to take advantage. He would grasp the door knob and twist.

What he found within was not an empty home, but a man, woman, and child huddled together in the corner. The man held what looked like an ornamental wakizashi out in front of himself and his family. Sweat dripped from his brow and mingled with tears as he let out a single, simple request.

"Please, don't harm my family." With his back to the outside, Watsuji stood shocked. He would never harm innocent people like them. He was ashamed about having struck fear into their hearts this way. Who was the source of the disarray that seemed to be sweeping through the village? What had stricken these people so full of fear?

"I won't. And neither will anyone else." Watsuji would say sternly as he closed the door and turned back toward the outside. A small workshop was attached to the side of the house. It was haphazardly constructed and clearly not ready to handle real projects. But it would work for a small base of operation for Watsuji. At least for now.

---

WC: 677

Chiaki landed, already winded from her journey to Kumogakure, or at least the outskirts of it, and slumped against a house. It was a small house with what seemed to be something of a workshop or something of that caliber. She had slumped against the house because she was going on about two to three hours of sleep, she couldn't tell having not invested in a watch or anything of the like, but she had slept many hours after dark, and risen before the first lights of the sun peeked over the mountains of Kumogakure. She didn't know if she was more tired, hungry, or irritated at the moment.

Chiaki knew she was going into war, and didn't know whether or not she would ever meet a kumogakure ninja, or if she had already, but she wanted to help who she could where she could. She was a medical ninja first, and a konoha ninja last. If she could help the innocents of Kumogakure, or a konoha ninja, then she would be perfectly content with her decisions up to this point. She had, for the entire day the day previous, healed the wounded on the battlefield if they had a konoha headband or if they were sans-headband.

Reaching into her pouch, she drew a bottle of water out, taking a long swig and slid all the way to the ground, resting there, her chest heaving up and down, the ashes from the gates which were blown wide were cascading down like snowfall, and the smoke hung thick about the air. She was more at home in the water, the air, than she was in an inferno of what was left of a village. Another swig later and she placed it in its compartment and stood up. Leaning heavily against the wall for support and holding one eye closed in the dense smoke, she coughed twice and tried to see around in the dense smoke screen.

The wind had picked up and blown the smoke so that it lay low to the ground, and the high altitude did her no favors, because it didn't want to ascend as much as where she was from. The air up here was already thinner, and she wanted to be inside... somewhere inside. Thus, when she leaned heavily on the door that Wastsuji had just closed, it wasn't latched and she spilled inside, rolling over whatever was in her way, whether that was furniture, people, whatever, until she found herself face up in someone else's home.

Blinking around blearily and coughing, her eyes watered from the heavy smoke in the air and she gasped great lungfuls of air down, trying to alleviate the burning in her lungs.

WC: 459