D-Rank said:
Rin sat still and quiet, a cold presence in the halls of stone and earth which housed the heatless light of knowledge. Thus filled with melodrama, she contemplated her findings thus far. In the welter of summer, she had walked into the depths of Kumogakure no Sato's cradle; it was, to be certain, the grave of some accomplished civilization which had preceded them. Therein she had found not only one of her lord's companions, but also a casket of forbidden knowledge which she sought to study how best to defend Cloud and Lightning from the coming storm she perceived just beyond the horizon. With understanding gained through sanctioned study of the Classical tongue, she was able to puzzle out enough of the scrolls to identify weapons key to the future struggle.
These weapons were not all typical tools of war, but strange items which, together, had capacities beyond modern chakracraft and separate from current technology.
She had at her fingertips a sample of those items. Asazaki Enma, a trainee, had recovered a mysterious codex that took the form of a rose. The boy had ventured into a strange complex buried in the mountains, avoiding immense danger. Likewise, Himura Shiro had recovered an unspeakable tome which explicated the occult properties of these tools, but was only truly decodable with the acquisition of the codex. Ushiromayu Kein and two Genin had recovered the oddities of an ever-fresh apple and an unmelting snow flake. Kichida Kazuhiko had retrieved a black orchid which had bloomed from blood shed by Shinbatsu during battle against the forces of the underworld. These items were easy to locate, but hard to retrieve; the locations of other items had been a mystery...
With great hope, Rin had sent out a team of Chuunin and Genin to the capital to retrieve jewels stashed in the basement, and yet they failed. One had evidently nearly gone rogue while there, promising justice in the form of six flaming swords. Fortunately the quick thinking of the squad's leader prevented him from massacring civilians, but the team's cover was blown and they had little choice but to retreat and lie low. Another fruitless assignment saw the Oinin Butai return to the village empty-handed after a hunt for a rare thunderbird's pinion. Rin held out hope, however, and as a task for promotion directed a student to retrieve a set of weighted dice from the village's underworld, to surprising success despite a case of arson.
It was around this time that Rin came to understand that Cloud's youngest generations had a proclivity for lighting themselves on fire. In lieu of sending out more Genin, she sent her husband to Port Cirrus on the trail of a sword of hellish provenance. He retrieved it and freed a whore, proving that hearts of gold didn't belong only to prostitutes.
After the results of much poor winter weather, she had found the opportunity to seize another piece of the puzzle, dispatching Shindou to the aid of local researchers to do a bit of acrobatic archaeology. He returned with the constellation map, among other artifacts, which provided yet more knowledge on the locations of further weapons and hints as to their powers. Simultaneously, Suzaku Keiji, a fresh medical trainee, located the lamp in the sealed zone of the academy.
She dispatched Tagiushi Moro and, after the Genin originally assigned failed to show, trainee Akkuma to the hospital to retrieve a music box and some manner of mark; they survived a surprisingly harrowing journey. Akkuma was rendered insensate after viewing forbidden texts, and Moro was infected with daemonic taint by an elder force. The mark was anathema to his mortal being and unresponsive to responsible medicine. During the debriefing, Moro had requested to learn more about what Seeing an opportunity to put a hypothesis to practice, Rin exercised her knowledge of temperaments and elemental theory to purge some of the toxin from him before sending him out to face death in the ancient forest. This time he sought forbidden knowledge and freedom from certain death.
The second expedition to the capital went better, though it resulted in a suspicious riot and an un-findable Bakufuu guard. He suspected as an agent provocateur by talking heads at the capitol, but in truth had been one of the Main Branch shinobi. Two of his cohort had liberated the jewels and left a knocked out guard to take the eventual blame when some future count of assets was taken.
Now she sat in silence among all but the mark. The rose rested in a crystal bell jar, held up by a golden wire. The book and map were outside of their lead-lined box, spread for her perusal. Alien script swam nauseatingly, enticingly, over the pages. Illustrations of unutterable blasphemies repulsed and intrigued her. Was this what her lord was made of? Were these the forces which had elevated her ancestors? This was what the priests worshiped in the empty temples?
She doubted, and yet...
From her readings and the extensive notes collected during various debriefings she was able to cobble together limited data on the functions of some of the tools.
The lamp illuminated the truth behind underworld illusions, dispelling the flesh and aura to reveal the bone. With it in hand, one stood a chance of finding the true path to victory.
The sword cut through illusion, 'revealing all as mundane.' The last part she wasn't so certain of. However, she was certain that it was among the most powerful weapons, yet the least offensive... It was the sword of peace, once wielded by the thousand-armed god, and yet it had never shed a drop of blood. The sword was also a symbol of wisdom, in that it cut through the trappings of rank and privilege and showed that all blood flowed red.
The eye she had ordered found ages ago had long been removed from the shinobi's head and now rested in a jar of preservative fluid. The shield she still kept to hand, a memento of a lost child... A shield against memory, a shield of faith. It would preserve someone from malicious manipulation of old pains.
The music box revived memory and displayed the truth, painful as it was. It allowed one to know one's self, and to see into the souls of others who heard it. She did not dare turn the crank. Illusions had value, sometimes.
The orchid held a virtue in common with the trinket Hikari had recovered in Raiden no Me. Both were used to neutralize poison or venom specific to the underworld; a poison of numbness, a venom which rotted the victim from within...
The jewel beads held a very different purpose. One was a sovereign remedy versus disease; the pearl, however, permitted one to understand and speak the tongues of kami and lesser spirits. Yet the pearl did not permit the user to lie... Likewise, the snowflake translated the divine speech, yet it permitted lies. It could only be used once, and then was forever destroyed.
The apple did something to do with age. It was also called the nectar of the gods, or perhaps was used to make it; it was said to make the consumer ageless or immortal, but it was meant for spirits, not men, and so she was uncertain of its effects on humans. Thus she had no intent of using it, as immortality was too much to put into the hands of men; what she had seen in Cloud only underlined that point.
The mark was odd. She had not expected it to take the form it had. From the debriefing with Moro, perhaps the demons did not expect that, either. Its foulness was linked with other artifacts, and perhaps only they could purge it given her experience with Moro. That was the sole reason she sent him out into the wood in his condition... And it would be on her head if he did not return.
The anklets Zaku had retrieved from the Motomori vault promised unearthly speed for the wearer, but at the price of a span of the user's life. The longer the distance one used them for, the longer the span of life deducted from the user's earthly allotment.
The dice did as expected: rigged chance in the roller's favor. How that worked was a mystery. Rin assumed that trying to understand would lead to madness, and was satisfied that, should she deploy them to the field, their one shot would lead to success.
Yet more artifacts remained, and beyond those on her list, she knew that at least a hundred more had to remain at large. They were far beyond her ability to gain, even using her contacts to the limit. The demons had the breadth and depth of the world and more means to traverse it than she. They were old and cunning and hated.
But they were not truly demons... And that, she had learned like a dagger to the heart, was the worst of it. The crux. They were all abandoned by their creators. The world had turned on them, and they had turned on themselves. The First People had been heroes. They had been like gods to lowly mankind. They had winnowed humanity and taken up the task of building civilization, yet they were all but forgotten, reduced to shadow plays and weekly sermons, the subject of myth and rarely thought of. Their children were twisted, ugly, and fallen, devoid of the divine spark which made the First People hang on in the memory of man, and their inheritance had been denied them. Was it unreasonable to hate your usurpers and wish them dead? Was it unreasonable to evict trespassers from your lands? What right-minded Kaminarijin would defer taking justice out of the flesh of someone who defiled a holy site? Who could blame the spawn of the First People for doing likewise?