[Private] The Box and The Mark

[Tagiushi Moro]

Moro made his way quickly and quietly along the rarely freqented corridors of the second level of the Sileo Tempestas, a particularly strange and expensive looking gilded music box under one arm. Truth be told, getting rid of the thing finally would be a relief. Ever since obtaining it, the operative had incredibly strange and disturbing dreams, awaking every night either on the floor of his quarters, in a cold sweat gasping for breath, or both.

Heavy renforced blast doors granted him acess to his destination, the Reagent Commander's office. "Reagent Commander-sama, Tagiushi Moro reporting." He bowed deeply past his waist and would wait to be acknowledged.

"I want to start off by saying that everything in this mission was wrong. Not that the intel was bad or that I didn't complete my objective, but where we were in that Raiden forsaken hospital, the area itself didn't seem to be governed by the laws of the universe that we call our day to day. I was only able to obtain one of the two items. Also, the trainee who accompanied me on this assignment disobeyed orders and fell unconscious in the Red Room. Luckily I was able to retrieve his body while I was escaping. Here is the box." With permission, he would place the object on Rin's desk.

"Please don't turn the crank. From my experience it causes everyone within earshot immense pain and mental shock." He cleared his throat before continuing, glancing away from Rin's eye contact. "When the old woman turned it fast enough, it brought me back, physically, to the night of the October Rebellion. I wasn't able to change the course of my memories in any fashion, but I felt everything I felt that night. It was very real. I'm sorry that I was unable to obtain the mark. I failed." He scratched his throat absentmindedly before consciously stopping himself. Where the old woman had poked his throat with her spear, even though it was a small wound, it had quickly festered and itched uncontrollably at times. The resident mednin of the Sileo had been stumped, but since it was so small all of them had eventually brushed it off. Moro then held his hand out to Rin, in the customary gesture for exchanging Snapshot jutsu.

 

[Santaru Rin]

Good grief I'd lost track of this. My b!

Moro burst in to her office for the belated debriefing in something of a state. He looked unkempt, had a bit of a smell about him, and more than that, dark circles Rin lifted an eyebrow and leaned forward over her desk, steepling her fingers as she listened to the story. He had something on his throat that his hand kept covering--a rash, maybe, or a bruise or stain--she couldn't tell. Did Gin give him a hickey? she wondered, but that wasn't really the important part. So the Jinkotsu kid was insubordinate, or simply made a mistake. Deciphering the difference could wait a moment while Moro ran himself out.

"...Here is the box," he said, pausing. She nodded and he presented the thing, a trinket, and settled it on her desk.

The mention of that fall now decades ago made Rin's blood go cold. We washed these halls in blood... He confessed to failing the second requirement; retrieving the mark. Rin held back a sigh and shook her head, trying to cast out those evil memories like so many nagging phantoms.

"I expect you did as well as you could under the circumstances. We were originally seeking Genin to do the mission out of some suspicions... Well." She reached out to accept the snapshot before hesitating as she looked at the glimmer of memory. "I've already reached my limit, actually. You should..." Her gaze trailed up to his throat.

"Ah. Perhaps you will take comfort in this, Tagiushi. You did recover the mark in the end. I didn't expect it to take quite that form. You will have to bear that burden for now. Meanwhile, please turn the snapshot over to the Vice Commander if you don't care to hold on to it. Now, tell me of the trainee. What was his performance like? Then you can tell me of this old woman."

 

[Tagiushi Moro]

He followed her eyes up to the raised welt at his throat, the rusted gears finally clicking and starting to move. Kumogakure ANBU, we don't half-ass anything... "As you command, Regent Commander-sama."

She surprised him with the genin tidbit and also by asking him the details of the trainee's performance, apparently gleaning all she needed from his snapshot. "Permission to speak freely, Commander?" He relaxed from attention to ease.

"Well, putting it mildly would be saying that the concept of subterfuge eludes him, but one doujutsu'd receptionist later we reached the Red Room. Although I don't think his error was malicious. From the looks of things, when I retrieved him he was next to one of the open books that Takayama-taicho specifically told us to avoid. It is altogether possible that he assumed whatever was stored in those tomes would be of import to the corps and attempted to record it. Probably not the brightest crayon, but was willing to do whatever it took to get the job done." The merit in that would be for Rin to decide.

"The woman was...well, i'm not sure how to begin. She didn't appear crazed and was even responsive to conversation. She mentioned something about the 'music of the spheres' when she began to turn the crank of the box. The...weapon she marked me with I believe was wrought from her own legs, that is, they were missing from her body and instead crafted into a spear. The oddest part of the whole thing honestly was after she had marked me, she cursed me, or more specifically, my blood, and forced me to flee. Do you think my-our heritage was what she was referring to?"

Shit. He silently berated himself for the blunder. In passing conversation it might have been overlooked, but not here, and certainly not by Rin. He had shown his hand, cracked out of turn. Now she knew, at the very least, that he could no longer feel Raiden's grace in her presence. He might be able to play it off as though he suspected she had mastered concealing her presence, but as Moro's powers grew, the connection they had once shared should have grown stronger, not dimmer, and certainly not vanished completely. He strongly doubted he could fool her, but either way he would remain quiet for now and finish the briefing. The fact that it was a mission originally intended for genin also nagged at him, but if it had been an important detail he assumed she would've explained.

 

[Santaru Rin]

"In other words, very poor judgment," Rin sighed. "The last thing we need more of. Disappointing. Well, he'll have another chance to prove otherwise. Are you willing to watch him again?"

The description of the supposedly aged woman was interesting enough on its own... But by the end, it was all Rin could do not to cringe. Of course. Tagiushi would notice. If he hadn't noticed, he would be a poor excuse for an ANBU. She met his eyes regardless, her expression flinty and brittle.

"She's not human," the older Santaru replied. "It's hard to say if she meant one thing or another without going back to speak to her again... Which I would say is a bad idea, even if it's possible. I doubt that--I doubt that it is possible. She was imprisoned because she would not die, just like so many of her kind refused to die or retreat, as I am starting to discover. They are the progenitors of the demons we hate, and they hate us because they believe we have stolen what belongs to them... Like rodents infesting a grand mansion. What the link with us would be remains unclear. I hesitate to speculate."

Regardless of the honor you've given me by setting this challenge, Raijin, in my weakness, I hate you. I hate you with all the power in these two fists, and all the darkness of the abyss. Does in this lie yet another lesson, bitter Lord?

 

[Tagiushi Moro]

Moro didn't necessarily see the trainee's judgement as poor. He had, after all, gotten the receptionist to take them to the Red Room after one of his transformations had failed. He had left out, however, that the failure of the good cop/bad cop had been due to a sledgehammer being used where a rubber mallet was needed. He might not want the trainee with him on an infiltration and assassination mission, but Raijin be damned if he could say he didn't want Akkuma next to him on a battlefield, granted he could tell friend from foe.

"Of course, Commander. That is, if you wouldn't rather have a second opinion, a different, non-baised point of view..." She had fixed him with a uniquely Rinesque glare, no doubt due to his slip of the tongue. Apparently they would both choose to play it off. For now.

"She's not human," So I'd gathered. "Returning there is something I would consider an absolute last resort. Not only did she have complete and utter dominance and control of her environment, stepping into her...'realm'-for lack of a better term-I can say with confidence was one of the most dangerous things I've ever done. Not a second passed where I thought she couldn't end me at a moment of her choosing." A demon-and an immortal one at that. Fuck. "I have no clear hypotheses on the matter myself." He had been baffled when she had started shouting at him, but he most certainly was happy as a clam to bounce from that filthy cushion filled hellhole. The thought that he had seen a demon and lived, held something of an almost storybook quality for Moro. He had studied the Demon Invasion at length, heard the stories, seen remnants of the destruction, but all of it had happened before he had even entered the academy. This gave the war and demons themselves a sort of, eerie, distant quality, and truth be told he had never suspected or planned on encountering the extra-planar denizens himself.

They both supplicated a moment of quiet introspection. Raiden, what have you done to her? Hasn't she been through enough? He would be the one to break the silence.

"Pardon my asking, Commander, but-what now? Our only lead has as much of a chance of feasting on our livers as fielding any questions. Its a loose thread, but I'm considering hitting the Conscientiae to research 'the music of the spheres'. Perhaps some clues about the box can be found there, but in regards to the mark-I just don't know. It feels...wrong on my skin. I want it off. Desperately so.

 

[Santaru Rin]

Tagiushi indelicately side-stepped the loaded question about Akkuma. This makes me uneasy. We will have to have some facetime of our own, Akkuma and I. The Jinkotsu had been screened by another, and had not involved himself much yet in the operations of the Sileo. Such inconspicuousness--or worse, absence--generally had negative consequences for trainees. One such had already been removed for failure to show for classes and missions. She did not want to disqualify another candidate for such inactivity, but an ANBU needed to have the appetite for work that many others lacked.

Rin nodded as Tagiushi spoke. That matches the material. Another confirmation that the information is good, at least to the extent I can translate it.

"You should seek treatment at the hospital. I would prefer you didn't have the mark excised, but if you do, I want the tissue," she replied, without missing a beat despite the morbidity of the order. "The older staff are familiar with demonic influences. If you wish to do some independent research, by all means. If you make some discoveries, there might be a bonus. I would look into creation mythology rather than astrology, were I you." Astronomy, though, was something else altogether. The section on heavenly bodies was the most difficult she had encountered so far, and all the more so because she knew blessed little about the science, and anyone she could entrust who was more familiar was incapable of translating the ancient script.

"You will probably need to study the eldest-of-old tongues to make sense of the correct materials... Those are in the restricted archives. If you ask the Raikage for access, you may have my recommendation. I plan on re-instating the use of the vulgar anyway. Is there anything else, Tagiushi?"

 

[Tagiushi Moro]

"I don't think they will need to CUT on me, Raiden forbid," he tapped the Regent Commander's desk twice with two knuckles from force of habit, seeking wood, but the odd material clunked metallically. Not heavily so like one might expect either. He had heard rumors of a similar material falling from the sky in the West recently, the small chunk of rock or metal causing immense damage to the area where it landed from sheer force of impact.

"Upon returning from the mission, the medics checked it out and although they were stumped at why it wasn't healing properly, as we can now guess, they did not seem overly concerned. If its all the same to you Commander, I'm going to wait on the Aesculapium for now, they'll pick up a scalpel before they even strap me to a table." He chucklegrunted.

Speaking of pounds of flesh, he took a few additional moments to confirm in his mind that now was now the time to broach the subject of bloodlines, before nodding his head subserviently. "I assume Raikage-dono will take your word for it if I tell him I'm doing this research under your discretion?" He met her gaze, steel on steel. He would also use the library to find out how, or why, Raiden had abandoned her. Then and only then if he couldn't find answers would he ask her directly. "That is all for now, Commander-sama."

[tlus]

 

[Santaru Rin]

"If Hayata-sama questions it, I will certainly speak with him," Rin reassured him. "I don't expect permission to be withheld. You are on stand-by for further assignment--no security detail for now. Dismissed." She had had the sense that he was going to press more, but discretion must have appeared to be the better part of valor. Just as well. She didn't wish to have that conversation soon, if ever.

She turned her attention back to the box sitting on her desk. Now to find out what secrets this holds. Nightmares were nothing new to her, not even the waking kind. She laid her hand on the cold, pierced lid.

[Exit]