Mei would dare to say she’d gotten comfortable in Amegakure. For all its dreary and the fact that it was another shinobi village— albeit a minor one— the Rain continued to be extremely hospitable to her and Daiki the longer they lived behind its rainy radius.

As the months went by Mei went from stranger to young, new house-wife and then to friendly new house-wife who could do well with your thoughts. In the markets, she’d made good friends of the house-wives that often came buying and selling and many had taken interest in the beauty who’d just moved in to raise a family.

Mei noticed a trend in reactions whenever she spoke about Daiki and the potential family they were building; a downturned mood forcefully turned perky was what each and every woman and even man had expressed as they encouraged her to try certain foods and buy certain fruits to enjoy her husband more.

Not one to let a mystery lie unturned, Mei prodded and pouted until someone broke and let the cat out of the bag. As it turns out, Amegakure was a great place for building a family…with the caveat that children were expected to complete a tour of service to the state and god.

The denizens didn’t particularly dislike the tour of service, it made sense to them and many were already in rotation around their borders, ensuring Amegakure’s security against the greater nations. With no Daimyo to back them, Amegakure only had its god and themselves to protect them, however, it was a topic of contention with foreigners and many often fled the village after finding out.

Mei didn’t reassure her contacts of her permanence in Amegakure for she knew she’d be gone someday, plus, they didn’t really matter as much as this god and his angel.

In the many months she stayed a denizen, Mei has only glimpsed the presence of the Angel once, through the clamour of a man gasping at her the shadow of her wings soaring above. It was this singular proof Mei had to her existence. She worried for a time after that that the Angel was after her, she was worshiped as a fair adjudicator of the Rain’s god’s justice but she was no mere market thief or drunk.

At the time, Mei and Daiki had just discovered that they were being watched not only by the state out of suspicion in the earlier months but by the previous governments vestiges. Hanzo the Salamander’s loyalists were a persistent bunch and the truest jackpot of information Mei had come across in the course of her mission, sitting down with them, even if for a few minutes was a granted.

Their leader was a gruff of a man, had she seen him on the street, Mei would have clutched her purse and likely crossed over to the other side. Whether it was a function of his disguise or an effect of the casting down of the old regime, Mei wasn’t sure but the man held his ground as a competent shinobi, easily tokubetsu Jounin by her standards.

He deduced they were shinobi of one of the great five, which was a lesser feat than it seemed in hindsight, after all, who else would have an interest? What ended up mattering in the end was that he warned against the so-called god of the rain, Pein, giving the man behind the curtains a name for her to hang onto, more than she’d gotten from the populace.

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She pressed for more but the man shook his head, demanding that if her village wanted to know about Amegakure they would do so with his backing or not at all. She relayed this back to home, Daiki predicted accurately what the response would be but it was even more shocking when it came.

A withdrawal order. The mission was over once she got that. It was both a relief and a shame, she missed home dearly and wanted to see what becoming Mizukage had made of Yagura and his influence on the village. But at the same time, it felt as though her work was barely just starting, the full picture on who or what this Pein was. Discovering the extent of their capabilities and how they compare to Hanzo as well as other great village leaders was important work!

And in that thinking, Mei wasn’t alone.

In preparation to leave Amegakure she began dropping hints and buying less and less goods over the one week she and Daiki planned to stay before leaving. It would be unnatural and suspicious if they just up and left without any of the friends and acquaintances they’ve made having an inkling, it didn’t match with their civvie personas and until the mission was done, they’d follow procedure.

Said procedure didn’t account for outside perspectives like Hanzo’s remnants though. After their initial meeting Mei hadn’t bothered giving a response to their demand, silence was an answer most shinobi were familiar with. But they also had a flair for the dramatic.

“What do we do with the body?” Daiki asked, his face strewn with disgust and annoyance as he searched the pockets and hidden compartments.

Mei breathed in and calmed herself, had this happened on any other day she would be panicking, no, she should be panicking still. There, splayed against their broken living room table and bleeding all over their rug and couch was none other than the gruff leader of Hanzo’s remnants.

“He’s still fresh, whoever did this to him must be close,” Mei bit her lip at the thought— Amegakure was actively snuffing out all vestiges and from her last conversation with the now dead man, he confessed that the Angel was little more than a glorified enforcer. If it was her that did this then… “We have to leave, now.”

Daiki nodded and shifted out a note from the man’s sleeve, “Right, you should probably read this first.”

The sight of the crumpled note gave her pause, she snatched it from Daiki and read it while he prepared. They’d be leaving in a hurry so they only needed the fundamental things.

His handwriting was poor, though Mei granted some leeway as he was at the tail end of his life being hunted by a supposed god or angel. She deciphered the contents sentence by sentence until it made sense or a fraction of it.

A pantheon of six gods? Ruling over single parts of godhood and…sharing one purpose. Mei wasn’t sure if she understood the man’s meaning, it forwent anything that could help against the angel that must have been after this man but spoke in detail about the rain god and his divine pantheon. Push and pull. Nullification and…summoning.

It was the last the man bothered to write, three of the six domains of this ‘god’ were known. She didn’t understand what the first two meant but the last was obviously some kind of summoning contract. She clutched the note and stuffed it in her pouch, it was suddenly the final day of her mission here and she’d found something worthwhile to return with. This is good enough.

Daiki returned from the inner rooms with two bags, most of their shinobi gear was sorted into it and they’d change once they fled past Amegakure’s borders, for now, civilian clothing and mental preparedness would serve more than the armour of their ANBU tier gear.