Sileo Briefing: Fools Despise Wisdom & Instruction

[Santaru Rin]

Mission Rank: B-Rank
Battle: Possible/RP
Details: A once-a-year celestial event looms, and with it, the chance to see the mythical "garden of light." Within is supposedly a font of sacred knowledge. Seek your fortune within and share the knowledge you find with your village. A detailed briefing will be provided to the recipient of this mission.

Members Needed: Tagiushi Moro
Modded by: Rin

The two of them were overdue for a little Q&A, in Rin's opinion. With her personal investigation into the cabal, the civil war, and Hayata's hostage situation, the branch had gotten a little out of hand. She had captains failing missions and trainees washing out for failure to report. The bowels of the Sileo had seen new colonies of feral cats spreading terror, likely thanks to Anatori, and her own husband could be heard trolling the halls with the warcry of "BROWWWWW? PBBBT PBBBT PBBBT PBBBT PBBT!"

Moro seemed to have gone increasingly feral himself as well. Now, when she was about to send Moro out on a related assignment, seemed as good a time as any to get some facetime to estimate the flux in his personality profile.

 

[Tagiushi Moro]

As bad as the box had been, Moro could say with confidence that the mark was the bane of his existence.

The once small, itchy prick had grown into a veritable goiter. The medics, completely unable to assist him, had recommended he talk directly to the Sennin at the Aesculapium, but the operative already knew that he would have as much luck trying make an appointment with Shinbatsu. They had tried pumping him full of several types of antibiotics, to little or no avail. He had lanced the thing several times himself, heating up a senbon with electrical chakra, leather belt betwixt his teeth, the thing draining more pus than seemed physically possible.

It wasn't just the infection that troubled the mednin, however. It was the dark, branching varicose veins that steadily wormed ever closer to his Carotid arteries, and the experts were sure of only one thing: If it reached them, bad things would happen.

Tired and irritable didn't begin to describe his symptoms. He hardly ate recently, and his night terrors had reached fever dream proportions. Most nights it was all he could do to make it to the toilet before spilling his stomach contents. Whether from the actual substance of the dream or simple malaise depended on the given night. He knew he was running out of time, and it was his guess that Rin had shared the sentiments.

"Regent Commander-sama," He croaked, bowing as low as he was comfortable in this state. His uniform creased, shirt partially hanging out of his belt, hair greasy, and stubble even stubblier than normal. He didn't know how long he could hold attention before his eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out, but he was about to find out.

 

[Santaru Rin]

"So," she inspected Tagiushi's condition with detachment, "It has worsened; you're a mess. I expect that you'll bear with it a while longer, mempo. But if you would care for an experiment while we proceed, I might be able to lighten the load... So to speak. The medics have already had their ways with you, but sometimes an old woman's medicine is much better." Her smile was unpleasantly self-deprecating.

Regardless of his response on that matter, she carried on.

"The ancients described something called the music of the spheres--the mathematics described by the stations of celestial bodies. Let us say that a time of even greater harmonies approaches and, briefly, will allow someone to see something... Heavenly. Or so it is written. Tonight, after midnight, certain of those celestial bodies will be aligned in such a way that a garden of light will bloom. Within is a "fountain of knowledge." Whether this describes a literal fountain or something more like a library, I do not know. I have, sadly, very few specifics. So I am using you for this assignment, with your mark, which should help you be where you must in order for us to take advantage of this opportunity to learn about our enemies. I hope that what you learn holds the key to their defeat. But we shall see.

"The location is, fortunately, within the village. Supposedly a thunder god died in the forest, which seems... Foolish, given what you and I and everyone else down here knows," she rolled her eyes. "So, the place is, or is not, cursed or blessed based on your perspective. Personally, I think we ought to send a bevy of lumberjacks in and perhaps some pyromaniacs as well. But my personal opinion sadly counts for little. I have a map here," she rolled it out across her desk. "This area I've outlined is my best effort at triangulating, based on some certain signs, where the garden will be found. Once you are within that zone, your mark should help. I have my suspicions, but voicing them might unduly prejudice your search."

 

[Tagiushi Moro]

She surveyed him, coldly. "I apologize for my appearance, Commander. It is disgraceful I know." He would make no excuses and embrace any qualms, and would have prostrated himself, head bowed, if he thought he had any chance of standing back up without assistance.

He didn't know if Rin was referring to herself, or if it was a poor attempt at humor regarding the demon, but either way he was a little creeped out by her unnecessarily toothy grin. But at the offer of help, the prospect, or even the hint of relief almost brought tears to his eyes, "Yes! Please-anything." He had to consciously stop himself from lurching onto her desk.

The briefing was startlingly similar to his last with Takayama-taicho, most of the actual information appeared to be buried in cryptic metaphor or otherwise pulled from archaic passages of a book of religious nature. It wasn't much to go on, unless taken literally, which appeared to be his only option. The thought of walking into a situation like the last filled him with dread. Taking into account that he almost assuredly wouldn't be operating at 100%, Moro had to gamble on the fact that whatever Rin had offered to cook up would breathe a second wind into his body, even if it turned out to be temporary.

At the mention of the "Raijin", and Rin's subsequent eye-roll and suggestion, he couldn't help but smirk and sigh through his nose in amusement. Rin has become...Surprisingly human in her old age. I could get used to this. His confidence began to build, and he knew the time to ask her some exceedingly important questions-some of which had been on his mind for a nearly a decade-was finally drawing near.

Moro glanced at the map, and the indicated area. It was huge-much larger than he had expected. Rin was right, there was nobody else for this job. Without the assistance of the mark-in itself not guaranteed-even several search squads couldn't possibly hope to find an exact location with such a short timetable. Based on what Rin was saying, this was a lot of responsibility, probably more than he had ever been assigned. Moro couldn't help but wonder if the Torre situation had something to do with this assignment being delegated to him, or if it was the simple and unavoidable fact of the mark. He knew asking was pointless, Rin had never coddled him and she wouldn't start now. "I'd like to hear it. I have my doubts about the mark, and so I would like to gather all of the information I can. I will find that fountain, Commander. For my sake as well as everyone elses. He knew the fountain was his only shot at actually finding a way to get rid of the mark, as well as what Rin had assigned him. It seemed likely that a wealth of celestial or demonic knowledge could provide the answers he needed, as well as the ones that the Regent Commander required.

 

[Santaru Rin]

Tagiushi relaxed, or at least as much as a man virtually infested with some form of demonic pest could relax. Whether she could actually render any aid or not, that was certainly at least a step forward. The wrong mindset, incorrect thought, would probably only accelerate whatever taint the mark carried.

"You might remember that I claimed an abandoned property in the forest, years ago. That place is gone now, but there are others like it. The forest has been allowed to grow over even certain parts of the village which were relatively recently constructed. Older settlements were long ago swallowed entire. Now, there are two such properties that I know of..." She marked them with daubs of red. "And also a notable graveyard." She marked that with black. "There are, of course, graves all over that wood. But that one is larger, and has old mixed with new. More of an ossuary, really."

She eyed Tagiushi and stood, gesturing to her chair. "You should sit for this," cousin. "Despondent, sleepless, irritable?" she asked, apropro of nothing.

A distinctly bitter, melancholic chakra rose around her and radiated in chilling waves. The scent of loam permeated the huge room, overwhelming the cold stone and bubbling aquifer. She caught his gaze and something in her eyes shifted. Of old, she might have commanded him with the doujutsu of the Santaru, but with her power revoked, the art was lost, and perhaps forever. Now the light in her eyes glowed with the choler of banked coals, and her words had the power of clamps in the hands of a skilled torturer.

 

[Tagiushi Moro]

"You might remember that I claimed an abandoned property in the forest, years ago."

How could he not, He still had the scar on his sternum from when he had begged her to take him into the corps. He nodded silently, searing the locations of the two derelict properties and also the large graveyard in his mind. Regardless of his research findings he would almost assuredly check these three places first.

"You should sit for this," He collapsed gratefully into a chair at the foot of her desk. "Despondent, sleepless, irritable?" Clearly rhetorical, yet he nodded like a marionette, betraying his almost unconscious enthusiasm. An ominous, unfamiliar chakra radiated out from Rin in waves, her eyes pierced him like smoldering embers. Instinctively he wanted to flee, but he resisted the urge, and as he had so many times previously, he trusted his life to her hands. She approached him, her or her shadow or both looming over him, he looked up at her terrifying visage and smirked.

 

[Santaru Rin]

Moro's smirk stoked the ever-burning fire in her belly, the lust for destruction for its own sake which over the years had become the serpent gnawing at the roots of her self. Rin smothered the rage with the same ruthlessness which she had quashed the rest of her personal life since returning to active duty.

"Let us say, then, that this is thyroiditis, inflammation of the thyroid." Her cold, dry hands settled on the inflamed flesh of his neck.

"Typically the humoralist approach would be, say, an overabundance of yellow bile--choler. I would guess that either the influence of the mark or the implement used to make it is toxic... Or anathema to your substance. The influence of the ancients is chthonic, melancholic. Of course, the four temperaments approach to medicine has been discarded in the last century or so... And I am no med-nin. What I have is a certain sympathy." Her gaze hypnotized him and sealed his third eye to her will for the matter of moments her experiment would take.

She knew she would have to wrestle that anger for the rest of her life. No leech, no amount of bleeding, no fasting and prayer, no sessions at the Aesculapium would ever diminish it or free her from it. That fire had smothered the spark in her, and in turn struggled to stay lit in the void Raijin had left behind.

Telluric power coursed through her hands, mixed with the same corruption which infested the man who had been her apprentice. The ultimate responsibility was hers. The alien energy roiled.

"Kanzeon," she intoned, invoking the watchful goddess of mercy, the iron goddess who heard all the cries of the world. Rin's fingers curled, piercing swollen flesh and locked him with terrific strength in that chair. As though intrigued, the lesser corruption of Moro's flesh surged forth and through the punctures, meeting her own chakra and dissipating in the essence of carbonizing fire and corrosive water. Oxidized dust was all that remained of the reaction.

"Like to like," Rin muttered. The swelling would retreat; the gangrene-esque taint had already faded. Still, her technique was only a stop-gap measure. Perhaps if she had been a priestess or nun, she might have been more effective at combating a spiritual disease, but as it was, she herself was not only infected with the same but had embraced it as a means of closing the distance between herself and the other. The process had taken but two seconds; nothing permanent could be done in such short time. Already her enslavement of Moro's will had ended.

 

[Tagiushi Moro]

"Let us say, then, that this is thyroiditis, inflammation of the thyroid."

His smirk vanished, his face flatter than piss on a plate, Rin's hands settled around his neck in a grip that would alarm anyone, trust complicit or not. Something inside his wound moved, it felt as if the mark was physically recoiling from her touch. His skin seemed to almost sizzle, painlessly. Rin continued, Moro only able to follow the first few words before her voice dropped in pitch and volume gradually until it was replaced with the telltale high-pitched ring of nerve death.

His ears popped, "...What I have is a certain sympathy." Paralyzed, but fully aware, her fingers pierced him. The demon in the form of a haggard, legless woman screamed directly between his ears in rage. "You forget yourself, child of children! Insect among insects! Your blood is no longer your own!" His body jerked in the chair, synapses firing from the strain of being a telluric conduit.

She released him sooner than he could've dared hope. His brain finally registering the smell of vaporized blood, pus, and something unrecognizable. He crashed to the floor, veritably flopping out of the chair, and scuttled across the tiles, subsequently vacated his stomach contents in one of the open drawers of her desk, weakly turning his head the opposite direction from Rin as his only show of deference. He coughed, sputtered, slid along the tiles until his back contacted the wall, pressing against it he regained his feet; wiped his mouth with a sleeve, gasping between words, "What-in-all--the hells...was THAT? You are Santaru in name only, aren't you? AREN'T YOU?" He set his jaw and balled his fists, moisture threatened to seep from the corners of his eyes.

The tension went out of his muscles as he killed his shock and fear and slumped back against the wall. He gave voice to the thought that had run through his mind countless times over the last decade. "What happened to you...Sensei."

 

[Santaru Rin]

"Santaru in name only?" Rin murmured, casually wiping blood and black bile from her nails to a handkerchief. "What clan head wants to hear that from a boy who spews over a bit of pain?" A mote of madness almost overcame her. She bit her tongue, tasting blood along with the bitter urge to say the unwise.

"I'd tell you what our lord says I am, but after..." I'd have to kill you.

Her smile was edged with grief and insanity.

"Didn't I stop being 'sensei' to you the day I first resigned? I paid the cost of my sword hand to be shed of this." She waved her right hand, showing the truncated remains of her little finger. "What a foolish thing to do. There is no escape," she muttered to herself.

"'I walk forth in the wilderness.' 'I am that I am.' That dark emanation from which all light is born has been revealed to me. Get out before you have cause to rue too many questions. Time is short."

 

[Tagiushi Moro]

Moro listened to her, mutely, intently, fearing some sort of eminent retribution that never came. He wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed. Another possibility occurred to him, however remote: perhaps this meant they were finally moving beyond a Santaru child and his Sensei. Closure was a naive expectation, childish and selfish. This sort of matter-of-fact passe became Rin, and was wholly ANBU at its core. Stricken with fear of the unknown more than not knowing or trusting the woman before him, The last guiding light of his bloodline, he for once knew what he had to do.

"Fine. Wave your hand at me and treat it as if it actually offers some sort of explanation. Spout your self-truths and pretend they are not some sort of cop out. You think I so easily forget? The fact is, you owe me nothing. That much I know. That doesn't make any of this any easier."

He closed the distance between them, and continued a step past her, voice low.

"I get it. Its a secret to everybody. That doesn't mean you have to shoulder whatever this is alone. I will ask you no more questions, but you will tell me no more half-truths." He strode to the doorway and resumed characteristic gravely timbre. "When this is over, I invite you, as a previous clan head, to instruct me in Raiden's secrets. You will not refuse, as I refuse to be a content malcontent." There was no veiled threat in his words, only forlorn hope. The blast doors whispered the only farewell.

[TLUS]

 

[Santaru Rin]

She watched the door close. "There are no half-truths," she answered sadly. "All truths are incomplete." A wave of indigo fire incinerated the bilious vomit in her desk and on the floor. The poison dust she swept into a paper envelope and deposited in a concealed vault.

Perhaps Kushin could be enticed into a little investigation.

 

[Tagiushi Moro]

Smelling of wet dog, and even still a bit damp after the many hour hike, Moro strode, shoulders slumped, into the office of the ANBU Sennin.

"Regent Commander-sama--permission to sit." Slumping into one of the hard-backed chairs at the foot of the oddly metallic-looking stone behemoth, its indicative mountains of paperwork somehow never growing or shrinking. As gingerly as could be managed, Moro cleared an avenue between stacks just large enough for his head. Without a moment to waste, there it flopped. Blindingly reaching out his right hand, he held it up for Rin to take.

 

[Santaru Rin]

Nearly twenty-four hours later, Tagiushi Moro made his way back to her office, looking both better and worse for the wear. He made a pitiable sight with his head nestled between piles of files. For a Santaru, perhaps the effects of the cool, meteorite desk would be somewhat restorative. Rin wished she could tell.

"Tagiushi-san," she said, leery of taking his hand, "Do you intend to report? I am up to the gills in snapshots at this point. If you're going to nap in my office, I hate to inform you, but I'm going out into the country to scare up a trail today. Make it quick and then go to your quarters to rest up for your exam."

Ungentle, yes, but what was worse than having a broken down looking man glued to your desktop? Nothing, except maybe a man crying. If things came to tears... Her skin crawled at the idea. Still, she didn't rebuke him for not sitting up straight, or for not waiting for permission before collapsing. Rin tried to imagine herself in his position, in front of Ryuuto's desk.

No. It would have never happened. Revealing that much vulnerability to her captain, Sennin, Clan Elder and Raikage would have led to death. Such an act would have been requesting a betrayal which subsequently would have been framed as an act "for the greater good." No Santaru, no ANBU was permitted to ever show weakness, doubt, or hesitation then. What had that gained for Kumo? Nothing but bitterness.

She lightly touched his outstretched hand.

 

[Tagiushi Moro]

"Commander-sama..." Moro rotated his head just enough to make eye contact with Rin, but did not remove his head from the desk completely. "I...Well...Umm...I don't think there is any possible way for me to explain what happened with words, but I will try.

"I reached the objective that was closest to the village without incident, where I had expected an abandoned ruin, there was a house complete with signs of it being inhabited, but I couldn't actually sense anyone living there, so I went inside. There were three...girls...there, and one of them mentioned in passing that they were going 'stargazing' later, so I stayed for dinner to try and invite myself along, seeing as my research in the restricted section turned up nothing of use in regards to astronomy.

"During the meal...This is where things become difficult to explain I'm afraid. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but one way or another I was drugged, and then attacked. These girls sprouted extra limbs of a whole host of horrific shapes, so I killed them, assuming they were demons. Afterwards, they spoke to me, saying I murdered them in cold blood, and..."<i></i>

There was a long pause, now that Rin wasn't interested in his snapshot jutsu, for better or worse he would leave out what he had seen in the Void.

"The fountain was there. I suppose the girls were its guardians of some sort. When I drank from its waters, something grabbed me and pulled me in, and whispered to me. The words themselves were garbled nonsense, but I was filled with an overwhelming sense of knowledge...I couldn't tell you exactly how or why, but Santaru-sama, I...think I know how to end this."<i></i>

Clearly broken, the fractured bits of his psyche laid bare behind his eyes, he looked up at Rin and smiled. Not one of his characteristic half-smiles out of the corner of his mouth, but a true, genuine grin. He hadn't died, and of course had completed his mission. Nothing short of perfection in the eyes of the ANBU could have been expected of him, and so he was filled with an immense sense of pride, it swelled his chest. What he had done today could very well be the turning point in what was starting to seem to be the next Demon War.

 

[Santaru Rin]

"A tactic? A weakness? A technique?" she asked, but no assent to any of these options seemed forthcoming from the beatifically smiling madman sprawling on her desk. "So you have a solution you can't describe," she said awkwardly after a few moments passed silently between them. In a way, Rin understood. Her lord Raijin had a way of imparting unspeakable knowledge through terrible violence against the spirit... He was a merciless god.

"I suppose we won't be running this through the intel wringer. Do us all a favor and keep it to yourself that you might have murdered some paradoxically innocent demon girls in our han. That is a headache the Corps doesn't need right now."

She withdrew her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. Goddammit, how am I supposed to use this? Just deploy him in the field when things heat up and hope for the best? She released a long, strained hiss.

"Dismissed. Rest up, you're going to need it."