The rundown entrance to ‘Misakicho’s Sailor Rehab and Resort’ didn’t inspire much confidence in its few clientele. On that day, much like any other given day, the overgrown lawn and green swimming pool looked more depressing than therapeutic, and the warby radio playing the same tropical tune on loop drove most to stay in their rooms. A few of the staff sauntered between the many wooden buildings on the compound, most not quite following the appropriate dress code for a facility that billed itself as ‘medical’ in nature. Piles of uncollected cigarette butts basked in the summer heat underneath the window sills of the patients lucky enough to have such a luxury, but at least the beer cans weren’t there anymore. That was entirely because the groundskeeper who smuggled the booze in for patients had gotten fired the week prior.
“Perfect. I love it.” Nemoha Maya, the tenth Mizukage of Kirigakure, tossed her cigar out the window and onto a pile as she turned back towards the trashy office. “Let’s see the MLEA try to track down their fugitive when even the employees don’t care enough to learn the names of their patients.”
“Yes, but the facilities here...ugh...” A gray-haired older man rubbed his temple as he stared down at the documents on the desk he was borrowing. Komon Yamanouchi, the Chief of Staff for Kirigakure’s medical departments, visibly grimaced as Maya lit up another cigar. “The MLEA are crawling all over the main hospital back in the village, and we have all our best agents there too if anything happens. Gushiken Ren’s body double should be perfectly safe but-”
“-but you’re worried because we’re not defending this place as much. Yeah, don’t sweat it.” Maya puffed away as she returned to the desk and picked up a small metal cylinder laying on it. “We’re here specifically because of that. If the Water Lord chooses to send his goons after us, I’ll lose less sleep at night knowing he blew up a rehab house full of rum addicts than one of our precious medical campuses.”
“...Gushiken Ren won’t be able to make a full recovery unless we release him to a better medical facility, though.” Yamanouchi sighed and scooped up the documents, placing them in a folder. “He’s still not in great shape. We only did the necessary procedures to make him functional, but we kept him...suitably ill prepared to retaliate in case things go south.”
“It’s better that way.” Maya shook the cylinder as if doing so would get it to reveal its secrets. “I don’t want Endo sniffing out where Gushiken Ren is either.”
“You don’t trust him? Your own Chief of Engineering?”
“The man won’t shut up about wanting to crack open Ren’s skull to read his brains.” Maya snorted and plopped the cylinder back on the table with a thud. “That medical jutsu is useful, but only if the person reading the memories is honest. We can’t be too careful here.”
Yamanouchi slid his papers into a briefcase, then picked up the strange metal cylinder just as Maya had. “Endo claimed this was a detonator, but I couldn’t find any clue as to how this is supposed to operate. This would normally be a job for the Engineering department, but seeing how you don’t trust them...”
“As long as it stays with me, it doesn’t matter how it functions.” Maya finished her second cigar and then flicked the lights off. “The Water Lord’s plan to hold the village hostage won’t work as long as that weird-ass device stays in our possession. If you think the mailman who got it to us is ready, I want to talk to him while he still has an arm I can twist.”
Elsewhere on the compound, nearer the edge where fewer patients might wander to try and sneak a sip of booze, Ren began to wake. The ceiling fan squeaked with each lazy rotation, its wooden blades sagging down and throwing the motor off balance. It bumped gently side to side, the dangling pull cord chains rhythmically clicking. Ren found focusing on that steady rhythm was better than listening to his slow heartbeat, each pump of his heart sending a course of dull, far-away pain through his body. He was sure they had him drugged up, maybe with the banned stuff, because he could recognize the hazy, sluggish way his brain was moving. The pillow under his head smelt like his own sweat and stale water, a moist rag rolled up on his forehead dripping down his temples. Each little bead of water felt tantalizingly blissful, so much so that it hurt when it fell down to the pillow. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh at still being alive, or sob because he was in so much pain, or complain that no one turned off that damn soothing fan so he could brood in peace.
“Mm’high as hell,” he managed to half-snore out to nobody.
His right shoulder and arm were bound close to his chest, wrapped up and itchy with the fabric of a cast. He was vaguely aware that his face was heavily bandaged. Someone had tucked him in tight into the bed so that he wouldn’t roll over or twist about in his drugged sleep. His left arm felt distant, like it was on some sort of lag, but he managed to bring it up to the exposed skin on his face. When he touched his cheek it felt foreign, like someone else has touching him. He slid his palm into his cheek and felt the numbness tingle away in waves. Then slowly he rolled his hand over to his right eye and felt the bandages and sticky tape and gauze. A shock of pain trickled through his skull where it had been fused back together. He could feel stitches and the rough texture of dried blood. Panic jumped into his chest, his heart screaming, but he let out the tension with a long, drawn out sigh.
His eye was gone. His hair was gone, shaved away. His nose felt swollen and twisted. Only a small section of his lips were exposed to the air for a tube to go into his mouth. He could feel it twisting around in his throat. Tears stung his eye as he grabbed the tube and pulled on it. The sensation was hot and itchy and felt like he was vomiting, but it slid out feeling like he was yanking off a meter-long scab. Desperately, he snatched at the bandages on his face and turned to the side, retching out what looked like nothing more than water and foam.
Something in the room started to beep, a soft repeated tone like a comm unit going off. He heard the door open and someone say -
“Not again...”
- and then a presence next to his blind side. The soft tinkle of equipment being moved, and then darkness swallowed him up once again.
When the pair entered, only Yamanouchi was in disguise. He didn’t need one- his position was relatively unknown even in his own Department, and Kirigakure was filled with graying old grumpy men. Even the ward they now visited had a few just like him in the beds!
“Out, out, everyone out.” Yamanouchi waved his clipboard around at the smoking staff, who did not need any additional urging to take a free break. “Good lord, what kind of ‘private’ room is this- I said out!.”
Maya, transformed into a body that Yamanouchi had promised that Ren would find compelling to talk to, tapped the prone man’s rib cage. “Fix this first, we can let him talk now.”
After the staff were hurried out of the room, the agitated Yamanouchi returned to the bedside, opposite of Maya. He formed a few hand seals and then pressed his glowing palms against Ren’s neck and chest. “I should have known. Amateurs.” Yamanouchi grumbled and then glanced at Ren’s chart, then fiddled with the IV solution hanging next to him. “Can’t properly diagnose a patient so just pump him full of painkillers- at a rehab facility of all places!”
“Oy. Jellyboy. Wake up.” Maya considered lighting up another cigar but decided against it, instead placing it on the shaky nightstand next to the bed. Though her voice and appearance were no longer that of the Mizukage she wasn’t making any attempts to adjust her personality to match. “I see his eyes fluttering, is he faking?”
“He should be conscious now but if there’s any nerve damage-”
“Good enough. I’m going to read him his charges.” Maya coughed, then looked up at the ceiling as she pulled the crimes from her memory. “I have...theft of Kirigakure property, destruction of Kirigakure property, criminal damages for the sinking of the Explorer, assaulting a superior officer, seven counts of murdering active MLEA agents, second degree murder for everyone on that ship that sunk...”
She inhaled, then started rattling off crimes at a much more rapid pace. “Twenty-four counts of murder in that Kanotoshi warehouse incident. Five counts of reckless endangerment for detonating high level ninjutsu in a crowded residential area. This one is tricky- several pending counts of treason, engaging in international affairs without Kirigakure consent, pissing off the Nishimura criminal syndicate so that now they’re busting our asses every hour for why we blew up their...baby toy factory, or something.” She exhaled as if she had been smoking and the look of disappointment on her face was palpable. “If you did that one, great job torching every single piece of evidence in that warehouse. We don’t have a clue what the hell was going on in there.”
“Probably more crimes too, but those are the big ones.” With a sharp breath through the nose Maya leaned forward, her gaze locked on the one eye of Ren’s she could locate. “You might be tempted to stay quiet, but Kakatsyuki Endo is on the other side of that door there, and he’s real eager to slurp up your brain and learn first hand what you’re guilty of. I’m inclined to let him. Got anything to share with the class?”
"Maya-chan," Ren's languid exposed eye rolled in its socket, as the rest of his head didn't seem to want to move. Her raw energy was a foot taller than her henged form. "You saved me, haha..."
He raised up his free hand and pawed at the air loosely. He whispered conspiratorially, like he was sharing a dirty secret. "Hey, I think Endo was tryna get me killed. Said something about a detonator. Tried to blow me up. Oh...an' sometimes I use the Gallant to smuggle for the Keisei. Just a li'l bit. When we're slow."
The color around his exposed eye flushed and he raised his hairless brow. "Oops. What's in that IV?"
“Don’t answer his questions.” Maya pointedly cut out any possible response from Yamanouchi, who more than obliged. “I don’t like his tone. He sounds too drugged up, I can’t trust what he’s saying. Fix it.”
“I could remove the drug since it’s basically a poison, but doing so might make the patient uncomfortable- yeah, no, I didn’t think you’d care.” Yamanouchi flashed through some more hand signs, then pressed his hands much more firmly on Ren’s body. This time it wasn’t to make the technique more effective- he was getting ready to restrain the man should the sudden absence of drugs in his system make him uncooperative.
“I’ll tell you what we already know, so there’s no reason to lie to us. We just need to confirm it.” Not waiting to see what effect the removal of the mind-numbing substances would have on Ren, Maya charged forward. “The Water Lord used the blockade to install some new type of explosive on the seabed around Kirigakure. He was going to use it to threaten us, like a giant bomb collar around the whole village’s neck. That device you stole was the detonator.”
“Finding and disarming the bombs might take months, we would have to scour the whole sea floor and put every warm body we could find on the task, which we just don’t have the capacity to do right now. Tampering with the detonator might trigger it as well, so we’re not too hot on that approach. So, to ensure the entire village doesn’t get destroyed, we need to know how to prevent the detonator from functioning.”
“Endo says you blew up the site where the detonator was recovered, and there's not a scrap of evidence left there we can use. He also said you intended to betray Kirigakure to the Water Lord and are working with his Swordsmen.” Maya leaned back and grabbed her smoldering cigar. She began to twirl it expertly in her fingers. “I’ve read your reports, I know you’re...not very detail oriented. But trust me, right now, you need to start recalling some details.” She snapped the cigarette in half with both her fingers. “If I leave this room and don’t know how the Water Lord planned to finish his scheme, then I’ll have no choice but to turn your brain over to someone else, comprende?”
Fire erupted through his veins. As the morphine was forcefully neutralized in his bloodstream, pain came back like needles poking through every fiber of every muscle in his body. He could feel, in perfect detail, the empty gap where his eye used to be. Instead of screaming out in pain, he clenched his shark teeth together and hissed out a sound that almost sounded -
- pleasurable?
“Oooooh, yeah, there we go.” He cursed a few times and tilted his head back. Pain so real there was no question that he was alive, and he had survived. Joy danced around in his chest, right next to his spiking heart rate. He felt his consciousness start to check out – shock – but he jerked his head around. He sucked in air through his nose and let out a long moan of pain.
“Don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no Water Lord scheme. I killed those MLEA on Endo’s fukken….orders!” He was gasping, jerking each word out, but the joy in his tone couldn’t be suppressed. “Oh, c’mon, uh...fucking! The Flame showed up and I challenged him to an honor duel. He kicked my ass and then...”
Konkaji jutsu.
It slipped through his brain like a whisper. How would he know that? What even WAS that? Konkaji? His wrists suddenly felt like they were being dragged down by thick iron cuffs. Something, like a memory - -
“Flame does somethin’ with weights. Think he made the ship so heavy it sank.”
He could remember the stabbing in his gut. Then Endo had...saved him? No, Endo just used him, like a corpse. And -
“Endo gave me the tool! He told me to run with it. Right?” His eye rolled around, like he was trying to focus on something not in the room. His body was convulsing against Yamanouchi’s restraint. “Anyway, I ain’t no traitor. Had so many chances to jump ship. I ain’t my dad and I ain’t a liar. Mostly.”
Another peal of pain. He was feeling more lucid now. He could smell blood and rot and cigarette smoke. He wanted to vomit again. “Fuck, Maya. I hate the Water Lord. Turning your back on your ninja way to do what? Play politics? Turn ninja into fuckin’ cops? Fuck.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
He rested his head back into the pillow and stared up at the slowly turning fan. Somehow, he managed to look petulant despite a majority of his face being obscured. “I’m gonna bring the title Swordsman home. Unless you sell me out to that fuckin’ creep.”
The sober version of Ren seemed even more unhinged than the drugged up version, but it was just the response the Mizukage wanted. “The Flame? The Konkaji?” Maya’s eyes narrowed while Yamanouchi’s widened. She tore her attention from Ren to glare at her subordinate. “Endo didn’t mention that.”
“Gushiken could be lying-”
Gears began to tick inside Maya’s head. Ideally, a team of engineering experts could have been called in to discuss the implications. Diagrams could have been drawn up, ideas brainstormed, tests compiled...a sharp sound of air whistling through Maya’s teeth filled the room and she stood up, disgusted.
“No, it makes sense. Endo's story didn't line up and I see why now. The detonator must have something to do with their Soul Forge, it's too weird. We don’t have much information about the Konkaji except they somehow link objects to living beings. I can’t believe- god damn it, Endo deliberately obscured that- of all the contacts we need to get hold of- if that bloody Iwagakure had just dealt with their missing-nin appropriately-” her seething came to an abrupt end, and she made a chopping motion with her hand. “Drug him up again.” She pointed a finger down at the, for the moment, intelligible Gushiken Ren.
“You’re holding secrets we can’t have getting out now, and I ought to either drug you into a coma for the next six months or kill you. But you’re the only person to have fought the Flame and survived- apart from Endo, and that makes you valuable. You.” She snapped her fingers and raised her hand up to Yamanouchi. “Fix him. Tomorrow we’re moving him to the main hospital and getting him back in fighting shape. If he can’t walk by then, I’ll be getting Gushiken Ren a replacement eyeball from your skull.”
Seemingly unaffected by the threat, Yamanouchi nodded and began moving through a more complicated series of hand seals. Maya turned towards the door and cracked her knuckles. “I’ve got to pay a visit to our Engineering Department and conduct some...emergency exit interviews.”
Ren's eye fluttered as the morphine came back and his brain was able to step back from all the pain his body was in. As Maya's disguised form left, he watched the fan above as Yamanouchi set to work. He didn't recognize the man at all, but if Maya trusted him he figured it wasn't anything to worry about.
After all, if she wanted him dead, she would have just slit his throat.
Soul Forge. Konkaji. Secrets.
He wanted to protest that he never gave up any secrets, but he felt like maybe that wasn't true. Had he said something about the Keisei runs? Surely not. His eyelid suddenly got heavy. He did his best to keep it open, focus on Yamanouchi.
"Where's my sword...?" He managed. "Real big. Can't miss it."
But if the man answered, Ren didn't hear it. As soon as the pain came off, exhaustion hit him like
he was being dragged down under the waves.
-
As night fell the frenzied activity in Kirigakure only dampened slightly. Most kept their radios tuned to the news in anticipation of some juicy new bit of info dropping. Many were disappointed.
“The fugitive Gushiken Ren captured alive and is now safely in custody, huh.” One of the night shift attendants chomped through a candy bar as he fiddled with the dial on the break room radio. “Think they cut off his hands?”
“Nah man, nah.” Another attendant, engaged in a lazy game of ping-pong with a dazed and drugged looking patient, chimed in. “You should have seen how lit up the hospital was this evening. You don't do that for someone who'll be dead soon anyway. Shinobi on every corner closing down all the roads! I bet he got turned into a red paste and they’re just saying he’s alive to trick the MLEA into doing something stupid. Hey. Hey! I saw that, pal. No cheating!”
Behind them a buzzing light clicked on, which was ignored for about ten minutes. “Oh, damn it, not that guy again.” The night shift attendant rubbed his face and sighed. “He won’t shut up about his sword. He should be happy with what we gave him!”
“Hey man, be cool.” With a vicious smack the other attendant sent the ping pong ball straight into the face of the patient, who didn’t even seem to register it hitting him. “That guy was part of the crew that captured Ren. They only moved him here because the hospital is on lockdown.”
“Yeah, well, he gives me the creeps.” Peeling open another candy bar the attendant began to noisily eat again. “Thank god we’re this far out of the village. I’d hate to be involved with all that drama. It’s bad for business!”
Consciousness returned to Ren, as usual, at the worst possible time. At least at the last place they had the good graces to keep him stoned out of his gourd. The non-opioid, non-habit forming stew they pumped in his veins now did little for the actual pain. The edges were blunted, maybe, but he felt like ants were crawling inside his bandages. Several times he had been told that was actually the rapid-healing of medical ninjutsu in conjunction with modern medicine, but all Ren felt was the constant, incessant itch. It kept him up long past the sunset, and knowing himself well, Ren doubted he’d get any sleep until sunrise.
He thumbed the button that was supposed to give him another dose again and again and again, jaw set as he counted down each half-second between doses. Only seven and a half more minutes. A radio set beside him gently played a low quality version of an old sailor love ballad, stripped of any vocals. Ren’s bloodshot eye glared at it as he tried to will it off by virtue of his brain alone. Several times he wondered if he’d of been better off dying against Dazai.
Worse than all of that was how naked he felt without his weapon. A rather nice – if a bit plain – looking nodachi rested against the window. It still had a pricing tag on it, meaning it wasn’t a properly crafted sword...it was sold stock, a blacksmith apprentices’ product. A training sword, nothing you’d want to bet your life on in war. Apparently it was something gifted to another patient, but then when that patient died nobody came to collect the belongings, so they just had it sitting around the office. One of the nurses assured him he was nowhere in danger, nowhere near the war front. They were all treating him like he had PTSD, or dementia. They kept calling him Yamada Taro. Taro, Taro. Like a dog. He grunted and thumbed the switch again. He could see the little red light turn on, alerting the nurses station, and then flicker out as they overrode his request. He vaguely thought about what Esumi had told him the day before. Can’t just regrow your bits and slap you on your ass.
But couldn’t they offer just a bit of the good stuff? It had to be cheaper than whatever they were spending to keep him lucid and irritable.
What few outdoor lights existed on the compound flickered slightly, occasionally going off entirely for seconds at a time without warning. Though the evening was young most of the few patients spending the night at the facility were already in bed. There just wasn’t anything to do, as even the magazines stocked in each waiting room were all severely out of date, and all the good pages had been ripped out long ago.
However if there was one thing that could drag someone out of an early rest, even if injured, it was being ignored. ”Hey! HEY! HELLO?” Someone in a room far down from Ren’s stuck his head out the window and started shouting at whoever would listen. ”I’ve been asking for water for like half an hour! You can’t just leave my light on and pretend you can’t see it! HELLO!”
Someone left from the attendant building, causing the man’s voice to lower. “Finally, goodness gracious. The service here is so bad- HEY! Come help me or I’ll keep everyone on this block up!” The man from the attendant's office sauntered over, not in any particular rush, until he was close enough for the angry patient to see his tattoos. “I have a gland problem, okay, and I need water every hour- are you listening to me? I’ll bring this up with your supervisor if you don’t-”
The patient was brought to hushed silence by the man, who emerged very briefly from the night’s darkness to step closer to the window. A pleasant quiet peace settled back over the evening's atmosphere. Most of the few people trying to sleep in surrounding rooms were thankful for the sudden resolution of the conflict and thought nothing more of it.
Konkaji Senmitsu cleaned his blade, then briefly checked the room number on a torn sheet of paper he held on his bloody hands. He squinted at the sign on the door, then shrugged and continued down the hall, checking the number on every door he came across. He walked with an almost unnoticeable stagger- there was a stitched up wound on one side of his back that made his breathing slightly irregular. Nothing in his stance suggested he was in any hurry. Finding his target, and double checking with the number on his note, Senmitsu discarded the paper and placed his hand back on his sword. He silently glided into Ren’s room just like a ghost might.
Moments later he returned. The door closed noiselessly behind Senmitsu as he left the empty room. He rubbed his fingers together under his nostrils and inhaled. The slight tobacco residue stung his nose, and he squinted up at the night sky. It was rare to see stars in Kirigakure, given the constant plague of mist. Even in his flawed home country, one could at least take comfort that the beauty of nature would not be marred by something as pedestrian as water vapor.
Senmitsu lowered his hand and let it rest on the sword at his belt. Another inhale, another exhale. The entire compound smelled of cigarettes and it wasn’t any surprise that even at this hour, the telltale stench of secondhand smoke could be detected. His head slowly rotated. Briefly his eyes lingered on the highest point of the compound, barely visible against the blue-black sky. Something in him stirred.
Trying to keep a shinobi bed-bound was about as effective as the shinobi’s desire to sleep. Once the hospital turned down for the night, Ren had vacated his bed almost immediately and carefully made his way out of his room. Even with his injuries, he was stealthy enough to glide through the hallways like a mummy until he made his way up to the staircase. Once he had broken onto the rooftop, into the salty night air, he felt he could truly relax.
Which mostly meant letting out a series of swears at his injuries. Was there anything more cliché than a sailor with an eye patch? He wasn’t sure his ear had survived either, and wasn’t too keen to look under the bandages to find out. He had garbed himself in his long coat, which had been cleaned and steam pressed while he was unconscious. Not for any generous reason, rather it was a standard shinobi procedure to sanitize clothing lest you drag in a tracking device or leave any incriminating evidence on your sleeves. Ren’s body felt warm, but the cool breeze on his exposed skin felt nice. He chipped away at the bandages near his lips and stuffed Maya’s discarded narrow-gauge cigar in his mouth and rummaged around in his pockets until he found his lighter. To his credit Ren tried many times to quit cigarettes, drinking, and all sorts of other drugs. Turn over a new leaf seemed like a luxury for ninja who expected to have a long lifespan, though. He was starting to come around to the idea he might not fit in that category.
Ren took a long drag and felt a sudden bit of calm. His lungs screamed for that sweet hit of nicotine for so long taht he felt like he was yanking out a rotten tooth. Relief at any cost. He took another drag and leaned against the railing. Far off ship bells were gently ringing in the wind, and below the hospital he could see the lights of night crews working the docks. Only a few days had passed since the blockade had been lifted and those who depended on the ships for their livelihood were working 24/7 to play catch-up. He eyed down the little cherry-light on the end of the cigar and wondered if Maya, in her own way, was showing some kindness by leaving it with him. After all, it had remained on his bedside with his other effects when he was transferred.
He couldn’t really understand the Mizukage, more so than most shinobi. He knew he fancied her, as he did any woman with a strong attitude, but she was a bigger picture person. All Ren was worried about was the present moment and maybe some far off dreams of glory. He inhaled again and ashed. The wind changed and blew from the island’s mountains instead, robbing him of any salty air to stir up those pleasant memories of the time he served directly under the woman who ended up becoming the Mizukage.
“Lucky to be alive,” he croaked to himself mostly to distract from his idle thoughts.
Up here, on the roof, in the darkness, he couldn’t see much about his limbs, and definitely didn’t have to think about what his reflection looked like. Ren began to feel trapped in his mortal body. It was a rude thing, to remind someone so cleanly of their mortality long before they had made peace with it. Razorfin Dazai, the madman...had he survived? Did he die? The Flame...was he injured? Too injured for their destined showdown? Ren shook his head, frustrated he had become the type of person to try and piece things together. It wasn’t right, changing a man’s heart. Life was easier when all you had to do was swing a sword and show up to work mostly sober.
The pain in his shoulders was the worst of it, and unless he hunched them up it was too painful to stand up straight. He wagered most of that was the way he had been packaged together. His right shoulder felt like it might pop out if he put any weight on it, and the way the attendants had it bound up had something to do with how his meat was still attached to his bones. He flexed his fingers in his right hand and felt them move. With just the smallest amount of chakra, he excited it around his limbs and started flexing his muscles, ever so slightly unlocking his bindings.
If he was going to be a stereotype sailor with an eye patch, he might as well be a stereotype shinobi who can’t stick to bed rest. Just a bit of P.T., a little hike around town, then he could slip back into his bed before morning and sleep through the pain and the day. Get his muscles awake again. The wind shifted as if agreeing with him. Well, why wouldn’t it? Ren was a force of nature too, right? Of course he had camaraderie with-
Something about being so drugged up had dulled his senses, but left his exposed left ear sensitive. Nature wasn’t whispering any secrets to him, the anointed chosen one. The world didn’t give any more shits about Ren than it did any random seagull. That’s why he heard it. Something solid cutting through the air with a sudden drop. That wasn’t the wind.
It sounded like a heavy sword striking a soft target down. Like a boat being sunk to the bottom of the sea.
Ren’s chest seized and he started to choke on the cigar smoke. He backed away from the rail and clutched at his chest as his heart suddenly felt like it was going to run away on him. He knelt down to the ground and clutched his eyes shut and tried to focus on the smell of the cigar, the sound of the tobacco leaf burning, the pain in his joints…
The Flame. He could feel him. Aching in his wrists, like manacles binding them together, their souls intertwined.
“Relax, Ren...” He commanded himself. “It’s just battle shock. Relax...”
A soft yipping bark broke Senmitsu’s concentration.
“Shhh! Shhh! Come on, Mr. Cheesepuff, don’t be like that, people are trying to sleep.” A girl’s voice, a young girl’s voice, barely rose up over the sound of the sea breeze shaking the nearby palm trees. Senmitsu’s dull eyes snapped to attention.
Out in the broad courtyard, easily visible to all and seemingly without a trace of worry, a young girl was struggling to hold a puppy while she scaled up the hillside. Senmitsu allowed himself to be seen.
“Oh. Hey, mister!” The girl’s face lit up even as she continued to wrestle with the yipping dog. “Do you know where the ice machine is? I’m taking care of my grandpa and he’s got a fever, but nobody was -cut it out you doofus!- nobody was in the big building. The lights are all off and the attendant who is usually there was I guess taking a long bathroom break. Have you seen...”
Now Senmitsu was close enough that the girl could see his expression. Both the man’s eyes looked vacant and distant, as if his mind was somewhere else entirely. There was just enough fuzzy yellow light from a flicking porch lamp she could see his dark-stained hands resting on the hilt of his weapon. Even the puppy switched from tiny barks to a subdued whimper.
“I’m looking.” Senmitsu’s tone matched his detached expression. “For a man. Very tall. Bandaged face. One eye. He wasn’t in his room.”
“Are...” The girl’s voice trailed off. She seemed uncertain what to say. “Are you, like, security?”
“You must have seen something.” Senmitsu was closer now somehow even though the girl didn’t see him move. When he spoke it was directly past her, as if she wasn’t there. Whenever the dog made even a slight noise, the veins in his arms popped as though he was restraining himself from permanently silencing it. “I didn’t pass you when I walked up. You definitely saw him.”
Perhaps realizing her mistake, the girl squeezed her dog hard enough that it began to struggle. “D-don’t talk to me like that, mister. My grandpa is a really strong ninja, he’ll-”
“What room number is he in? Your grandpa.” Senmitsu’s finger flicked at his blade, drawing it a few inches out of its sheath. His unfocused pupils dilated and finally he stared down at the child, his full attention emerging from the dregs of his mind. When he didn’t get an immediate response, the Flame took another step forward. “I want to talk to him next.”
The girl remained quiet, and even the dog seemed unable to whimper. Senmitsu’s voice grew louder by a miniscule degree.
”What room?”