Description: "The people should decide their own fate, not old emperors and kings." But for the world to have that choice action must be taken to secure the chance. The enemy has made its move. Kagero makes its countermove.
It's a long walk down to the plateau where the falls tumble out into the abyss.
A grueling slog through the wet, warm and most importantly humid riverside, the morning mists are a balmy thing today. But their journey is one that passes in relative silence, a quiet walk along the jagged path cutting through the thick underbrush.
Of course, with someone like Seishirou Ryouhara, whose only response to obstructions is to burn right through them, there is very little time lost on this particular expedition. He, in this case, clears the way for his travelling companion today, and therefore there is simply no obstacle that makes this path particularly difficult to traverse. Especially not for those like them.
The mission today is a simple one, as he put it, though --always-- a little arcane in nature. He seems to have selected her to carry the large sphere, a rolled-up ball of paper seals, molded into a perfect sphere made of haphazard placements. Of course, for someone who can simply create a thing easily capable of performing such menial tasks for him, it seems clear that Ryouhara's asked that Ayame accompany him for a little more than simple labor.
However, his reasonings, as always, are a little unclear.
They should be nearing the bottom of the river, where it empties into the basin.
Not one to ever linger too long at any one place, Ayame is ever on the move. Opportunities and associations have made the desperate aquisition of meager funds that once occupied her daily pursuits no longer the focus of her attentions. Unfortunately for many, she has set her eyes on larger goals since. But criminal plans can be set aside when the fate of the world hinges on the actions of a select few.
For months after the catastrophic events in Taizhou, that wartorn city occupied the world's attention. But memories fade fast, fear or grudges blurring with the passage of time. A new fancy bauble has risen to divert the attention of all. But beneath the sparkling, gilded surface of the renown King of Fighters 2011 tournament there lurks a fearsome beast. The clues are there, woven in history, legend, and blood, but the world turns a blind eye to the truth, focused merely on the divertissement of violent sport.
Not all are so blind.
Ayame wishes she was; wishing she didn't know as much as she does now, wishing she didn't already calculate the ramifications of taking no action and the inevitable disaster that would entail. The sphere is handled with delicate attention though the strawberry-blonde charged with its care hardly looks thrilled with it. Seishirou Ryouhara seems to be in a bit of a hurry - moving with a rush to his step and no patience for obsticales. She's never seen him like this before.
The earliness of the hour offers no respite from the sweltering heat. "It was snowing in Metro yesterday," she notes, referencing the city she had departed on such short notice to convene here. Her tone does all the implication necessary - the humidity is miserable.
The girl skips down a series of moss covered rocks that have, over the course of nature's guidance, taken on the form of haphazard stairs rounding a narrow bend in the path, the sphere jostled hardly at all. "The Yata - what will their next move be? They have pulled everyone together that they wanted, but so far that only seems to make them easy targets. Must be a next move." she observes, potentially just talking to hear her own voice.
The guide before her is, as always, whisper-thin and ghostly silent. He /should/ be, she contemplates, staring at Seishirou's back briefly. He died, after all. He shouldn't be here. Her mind has been silently processing that for some time now.
A minor set back that he seems to have recovered from. At least, in part. Something has changed.
"This better be the best swimhole the world offers, being all the way out here. Yesh." She hefts the sphere up a little, "So I assume this isn't for volleyball."
An offending tree simply vaporizes into ash, swallowed into a twisting black fire.
Seishirou's movement through the brush is like a ghost possessed--grey silks twist through the air with a soft rustle, but his footsteps never actually make much of a sound. Seemingly preoccupied in thought, he never actually looks up, never actually makes a gesture to clear the path. Because he doesn't need to. Because the herald of their passage is dimly visible up ahead.
The thing is visible in faint glimpses of darkness here and there, a dark hound, made of more black fire than red blood. It moves only with the telltale whisper and crackle of flame, its passage only noted by the sudden and violent incineration of the underbrush, black flame sucking branches out of their path until the two's path.
It's some sort of ninjutsu of his. Kagensana, he calls it.
Just one of many.
"Hmph." He scoffs only once in response to Ayame's matter-of-fact ways. The heat is a nature of the southern climate. Of course, the massive black incinerations were probably not helping. But it speeds them along, and for that lone it is enough. It's only the faintest mark of derision, as if not willing to be bothered with the idea of heat. It's something that doesn't much seem to bother him. Of course, for someone who simply /radiates/ heat with every movement, it's also normal.
It is a long time before he actually speaks up.
"There are two sides," he finally notes, stopping on the third to last step, his arms sliding out of the sleeves of his long gray haori to fold across his chest in conscience. Ayame's random thought seems to have spurred at least a moment's response from him.
"It was the way lords, kings and emperors fought in the ancient times, setting their stones on the field in turn. One defends, the other aggresses. It is only natural for the defending side to rally. Unfortunately... the best defense will, at best, achieve a stalemate."
He laughs, a brief, bitter sound.
"It would seem that my desire to see the old world return to that of the new has been fulfilled. Unfortunately, volleyball will solve none of the problems that this 'return' creates.."
An exhale blows a small figment of ash aside just before it would have found purchase on her nose - a most unpleasant experience when one's hands are occupied. The constructs of the chi engineer are always an especial interest to Ayame. It goes without saying that she has explored such precision manifestations herself but to date, success has not been hers to claim.
She grins a little at the provoked grunt from the young architect - responses alone seem to amuse her when drawn from one so reticent as Seishirou.
Someday the mystery of the Kagensana and others like it will be hers - all things can be reverse engineered with time and talent. Or so she readily convinces herself, occasionally eying the chi given form. The roar of eternally tumbling water is impossible to miss now. Brown eyes blink in rare quiet when he comes to a stop. His short, rare laughter is always a curious thing - there is almost never any mirth to be found in that sound.
He speaks of the old world and the wars fought according to rules and traditions. "Yeah... And then people decided to stop standing around in formal rows waiting to get shot." Technology evolved. "Not every bygone approach is worth a shread of nostalgia." She idly spins the sphere in her hand, eyes settling on it after taking in the environment for a moment. From here, the river mist offsets a miniscule amount of the heat.
"It's never the fun stuff that solves anything." she muses wistfully. "If what the Yata suspect is true, you might be getting a lot more of that /really/ old world than you bargained for. Seems like someone is going to have to pick up after one big ancient disaster."
The prowling wolf up ahead--the matrix formed from a seal embedded in a lens fitted over Seishirou's eye--is the kind of technique that many fledgling fighters develop as an ace in the hole-type technique, a devastating but exhausting feat of chi control. Ryouhara has at least five such jutsu he uses regularly.
Stones on the field, after all.
"We should cherish our history," Ryouhara states without pause, only turning his head slightly towards the young rogue at his back. "Because it will be our doom otherwise."
He sighs lightly.
He does hate having to repeat things, though.
Suddenly, he takes the last few steps downward, his arms falling to his sides, allowing the sleeves of his haori to drift free. "There was a method that the old shinobi used during the great wars. Though many used direct assassinations, sabotage was far more common. Identifying the weak point in an enemy's plan is the same as the enemy having no plan at all," Ryouhara notes, passive. It seems an all too brief period passes before the shinobi disappears into a curtain of mist at the edge of the falls.
It opens to a breathtaking view, but the boy acts as if he sees none of it.
He stands on the other side, ascending the small outcropping at the edge, cut through with the water. From the rushing rapids and the wind kicking his coat wide, Seishirou is difficult to hear. That black wolf is somewhere nearby as well, prowling the area as if a faithful watch.
"That is why we are going to find it. The people should decide their own fate, not old emperors and kings."
"Hrn," Ayame muses at the rebuke for her dismissal of what has come before - to so readily ignore the lessons and knowledge contained in the past is folly. It's as if she only says it because she knows he will not accept it. Getting acknowledgement from the likes of this young man is not an easy task. It's something of a game for the difficult girl.
"Reciting the past is easy - rote memorization, a child's task. It's applying it that seems to escape many, I suppose." He moves forward and she steps after, eyes on the ground to watch her step on the stones damp with ever-present mist but ears alert to the reference to the old ways of the shinobi. "Do you enjoy it?" she asks, hanging on perhaps the inflection of his voice at the mention of great wars. "Waging war, that is." It seems he has never stopped fighting one since the day she encountered him in the dark of Alcatraz. And she has never stopped asking questions.
She pauses as swirling mists, especially thick at this point, rob him from her sight. Ayame frowns a little at the paper seals rolled into the sphere she has been entrusted with. Shifting it to her right hand, her left hand extends, palm down, fingers lightly resting against the top of it, a shimmering of rose-hued energy expanding out from the tips of her fingers to form a glowing shell of chi, its surface decorated with inscriptions and runes, mathmatical equations and numbers in golden lettering. It will keep the moisture away from the paper for now.
She steps through the mists into the open. The sight is amazing - the likes of which many will explore to great lengths to discover. "Why here?" she asks. There must be a reason. There always is. Her eyes dart over the roaring water as if searching for clues therein. "What's special about this place?" Other than the spectacular view, perhaps.
He speaks of weaknesses and plans and Ayame half closes her eyes as if to contemplate that. The unraveling of tactics is not a foreign concept the rogue - anyone who has seen her fight will have observed the ease with which the trickiest of techniques are unwound in a blink. "We don't even know who the enemy is yet..."
He speaks of people and their right to chose and Ayame exhales a little, a faint smile at the corner of her mouth. That is what brings her here; to the remote reaches of the land - no one will ever be allowed to remove her power of choice for as long as she draws breath. And if finding a place in those that number themselves as only 'Kagero' helps secure that oath to herself, then so be it.
Ryouhara slides his hands into his pockets absently, pursing his lips as he regards the skyline with some derision. For the most part, he seems unperturbed about Ayame's alternating lines of questioning and objections. A strange thing, given his usual patience for that sort of thing. Since his return, his attitudes and habits have shifted subtly, though only those with this sort of proximity to him may have even noticed at all. Though driven, though dire as always, he seems more patient. The ghosts that follow him seem to have quieted.
Perhaps that is why he seems content to hold any sort of a conversation at all.
But the young man's expression darkens as Ayame asks him about war. Though she doesn't see it, Ayame can certainly intuit the raising of a lip from the sudden crushing silence from the shinobi. A question that would have at one point elicited a very different answer seems now only to give the Ryouhara ninja pause. It was, in many ways, what he has trained his whole life for. To wage war.
He doesn't see, so much as feel the chi she employs to shield the sphere from the damp atmosphere. Fitting, for something made of paper. However, he seems to be less concerned about the wellbeing of the sphere in Ayame's hands than the technique she uses to assure it. It is, for the most part, a fitting but fleeting distraction.
"....No," he finally answers, flatly.
"Do you?"
The topic seems to disappear into the expanse before them as Ryouhara addresses the rest. "The only thing special about this place," he explains simply, "is that there is nothing special about it." Shifting his shoulders, he slides his arm into a sleeve once again.. "We know enough. We know that the enemy's weakness is that they will rely on the same forces that we do. For now, that is enough."
He outstretches an arm, finally looking at Ayame, to open a hand and ask her for the basketball-sized sphere.
"A pity," comes her reply without hesitation. She's far too perceptive to be oblivious to the rocky edge the dialogue has just navigated but she doesn't seem cowed by that awareness. "Such talent for stratagem; couldn't help but wonder if it excited your mind to execute it."
The once-stray shakes her head, eyes glancing over the sphere in her hand to gaze at the basin beyond. "Me? Hm... No, too big. Wars are too big, people cease to be individuals and become instead cogs in larger forces than themselves to be driven and marched about by the whims of the most powerful. I like my stakes..."
She lifts her left hand from the sphere and the chi protecting it flickers then melts away, becoming briefly as if liquid spilling toward the ground only to drift away as falling petals in the breeze. He had pointed out years ago that she was so wasteful with chi; so showy in her precision manipulation of it. Many things have changed since then. Some haven't.
"More personal." The paper sphere is balanced on the palm of her right hand then extended to his outstretched arm.
"Nothing, hm..." The answer surprises her but that's not unusual in his company. Surprises are in no short supply from the most unscrutable individual she has ever encountered. A never-ending mystery to unravel, a living enigma. She begins to nod her head slightly, brow furrowed in thought. If the enemy is depending on similiar power then they can be thwarted by it as well. Find a weakness and find the enemy at the same time...
She takes a step closer to the edge of the outcropping. "This remote and the influence of other energy weavers will be minimal." she contemplates. Nothing special, indeed. "Unless their warpings and twistings are of significant magnitude as to be felt from even this far..."
The sphere seems to almost float into his hand.
Cradling the dense bundle of seals close to himself, Ryouhara strides ahead, to the outcropping. While Ayame's own control was admirable, Ryouhara's seems a subtlety in comparison--the air steams around the sphere, reducing the latent moisture to so much rising vapor.
He pauses there a moment, setting a single step onto an upturned rock at the very edge of the precipice. In a few hundred years, the water will wear even this away, and the spot they are standing on will not exist.
"Aa," he acknowledges, the wind from the water's passage enough to send dark strands of raven black hair haphazardly about his face as he looks back again, his expression flat as he holds the sphere thoughtfully. There was a time that he would have regarded the subject as one of simple idealism and destinies. Preference was not something he'd really ever considered to factor into it. It's unimportant for people who don't exist.
"You prefer the rigor of battle, then."
He's not asking a question, merely mulling over what he believes to be fact, turning away from Ayame. "Conflict is a convenience for some, luxury for others, and yet still more a chore. In all cases, their talent destines them to the battlefield."
Striding out onto the precipice, he extends his fingertips until they each touch one seal. A moment's glance would find those seals to be the only two seals on the sphere which are not covered by any other part of any other seal. They are release seals. Ryouhara shuts his eyes. "Eight Days Ninkou. Mandori Fuuindama - release!" And then he spreads his hands wide.
The release seals come off with his hands, each peeling away from the surface of the sphere and floating into the wind on long paper trails. The sphere itself tumbles out into the abyss in a long, lazy arc, as if thrown. But eventually, a rustle of fabric slows its descent--and, in a moment or two, reverses it, causing it to curve slowly back into the air as its edges becomes less smooth, less defined as it begins to break apart at the seams, terminating in a loud -pop- of colorful smoke, suffusing the air around it until--it's simply gone. Broken apart. And replaced by literally hundreds of paper birds, floating about and rustling into the sky, as if borne as much by their own self-beating wings.
MANDORI FUUINDAMA, he called it. A big sealed-up ball of what appears to be hundreds of origami birds, space-folded using the same bizarre technique used to fold shields into those magatama that hang from the edges of Ryouhara's haori. From the way the birds float about and disseminate through the air, one would think it some kind of a festive parade ninkou--until they spotted the energy seals on the bird's wings. A few seem to float around Seishirou and Ayame both, their wings glowing a little more brightly than the rest, before they begin to circle in the air slowly above them. It's a tracking ninkou...meant to trace the energy Ryouhara spoke of only a moment ago. He intends to find the enemy, wherever they hide. That is the strength of 'ninkougakujutsu.'
One can only guess as to how far this 'ten thousand birds' parade reaches.
Ryouhara pays the ninkou--nor the actions of the tiny birds--much mind after that. His hands disappear into his haori's sleeves as he lowers his arms. The release seals disappear as well, secreted away. "Irrespective of that," he continues his earlier thought, "history and change begin in the ideals and choices of the men who bear arms, not in the wars they wage, nor the kings who command them to do so."
"In this, history is written by men whose names history does not know."
Log created on 00:22:58 02/26/2011 by Ayame, and last modified on 04:07:05 02/27/2011.