The Shadows of Mihara

[Valkier]

For all their success, for all their growth and their skill, a weight still lay upon the young shoulders of Iwagakure's Team Seven. Their last year had been spent in the hectic pursuit of promotion, then in excitement over news of the poetic war with Kaze no Kuni, then in fear over the threat of an invasion from Hi no Kuni which never manifested. They'd pulled through all of that, and each of them stood now stronger for it. But still something gnawed at them, an unseen itch, a blight upon their otherwise promising record. Kotori was reminded of it every time she heard the soft click of Kotetsu's metal arm, the rattle of his cold lifeless fingers a clarion call to their first, and worst, failure.

Today would be different. The three shinobi moved quickly under a late afternoon sun towards the mountain village of Mihara. Not three children in over their heads, running for their lives, cowering from a storm, but three proven Chuunin of the Hidden Rock. Older, stronger, perhaps even wiser.

"All right, come on out! Where the hell are ya?! We're ready, you wily asshole!" Hachiya Kotori was a potential exception to that last trait. She yelled at an empty sky, fists balled and eyes wide with eager energy. "You won't even touch us this time, just you wait!" Her bravado was lost to a bracing mountain wind, carrying her words away down the mountainside. She quivered with excitement, then turned to look back at her two comrades. How had they fallen so far behind?!

"Come on!" She yelled back and waved, ushering them onwards. There wasn't a minute to lose. At last, at long last, they were going to right their wrong, and save the people of Mihara. Not like last time, when they'd been sent scurrying away back to Iwagakure wrapped in shame and ragged bandages both. They were back, they had a score to settle, and the sooner they reached the village the sooner they could dig up a lead.

[Kao]

"Settle down, Kotori." The team's leader responded with a lilting tone, suggesting it wasn't given with much expectation that it would be followed. Ishiwara Setsuna followed behind the youngest member of the trio and did her best not to visibly drag her feet. Dread wasn't quite what she felt for their upcoming mission, but the sentiment wasn't far off. In the past year the chuunin had stunned herself with her own growth, and she had come into her own as the leader of the team. Still, she had her doubts and reservations, nearly all of which she kept to herself. Keeping up the appearance of being a strong, confident squad leader mattered more to the girl than being honest with them about her fears.

Her gaze drifted briefly to the third member of the group, specifically to his artificial arm. Sometimes when she looked at it she was thrust back into the past, into the moment he lost that arm. This time when the memory threatened to rear its head she shook her own, physically shooing the images away. "You'll have plenty of time to let out all that energy later when we find the thing." Despite herself Setsuna picked up her pace so that she fell into step next to Kiyori. While she did so she turned back to the last member of the trio, beckoning him with a slight jerk of her head. "She's right though. Let's pick up the pace a bit."

[Niro]

The last year felt like a blur to Kotetsu with the advent of the war with Kaze no Kuni and rising tensions with other countries. Not to mention their own promotion to chuunin after a semi-international exam where they had fought against genin of their own village and Kiri to earn the advancement. The one constant, however, was the dreams. Each night, Kotetsu was plagued with nightmares of their first visit to Mihara. How they had been completely devastated as a team and stood no chance against the antler wearing demon in the trees. How he had almost lost his life, how he had lost his arm. As they travelled across the rocky path, Kotetsu's metallic fingers curled into a fist at the thought.

This time would be different, Kotori was right.

The route from Iwa to Mihara was tedious but not very dangerous without the threat of a storm barreling down on them. Some of the areas they passed even seemed familiar, albeit tinged with the memories of darkness, rain, and lightning, as their trek continued onwards. Kotetsu responded to Kotori and Setsuna's calls to speed up with a sigh and shake of his head as he sprinted forward to keep up with them and fell into position a step behind them.

"Who knows if it's even still here," Kotetsu sighed as he looked ahead and in the distance saw the meager sign pointing them to Mihara, now broken in two and hanging in pieces. "Who knows if the village is still there." He mumbled, his words tinged with a tone of guilt, as they came upon the sign. A bad omen if Kotetsu had ever seen one. A chill ran down his spine at the thought but he clenched his teeth as both hands tightened into fists. From here, Mihara was but over the hill and as they would crest it they'd see the village even more dilapidated and ran down than they had left it last time. Previously it had looked like a typhoon had torn through the community but now it resembled a ghost town.

"...Let's hurry."

[Valkier]

And a ghost town it was. The last time the trio had trudged up the rough muddy track that passed as the town's main street they'd been confronted by wary locals, then welcomed with relief by their ailing leadership. This time? No welcome. Doorways loomed dark and vacant as they passed, and the only cries were that of the wind whistling through gaps in the ruins of a wooden lean-to shack. Where before there had been fear and desperation now lived only dust and the empty, lengthly silence of a disaster long past.

Kotori's steps grew heavier as she walked. Her eyes lost some of their bright eagerness, and she shared a worried look with her comrades. This... This was a result of their failure, wasn't it? They'd come to help these people, and instead all they'd done was become a burden, waste their time and their supplies, then left them to their miserable fate. She slowed and stopped as they reached an intersection that had previously led directly into the central courtyard of the town. Now the ground before them was rent in two; a large, jagged crack in the earth, in places up to a couple of metres wide, ran around the entire circumference of that courtyard. The ground inside was broken and disjointed, as if something colossal had reached down from the heavens and broken the heart of the village like a fist to a mirror. Kotori's mouth was open and she stared, wordless, at the carnage. What the hell could do such a thing? The split seemed natural if you only loooked at one side of it at a time, like an earthquake had passed directly through the town. But multiple splits, criss-crossing to make the courtyard into an island? No way.

She turned to ask the others what they made of it, but froze part way through the motion. A flicker of movement, a shadow within a shadow, from a nearby window. Was it a reflection of the sun in that broken pane? No. She raised a hand to signal the others silently, then pointed at the entrance to the building and fell into a crouch, scurring over to press herself against the rough cobbled walls of the structure. She closed her eyes and reached within herself, unlocking that well of power that was Nolosha. A faint aura of golden-hued chakra swirled around her and shone outwards through the town in a brief pulse. Her expression grew excited for a second, then petered out into pale-cheeked shock.

"Survivors." She mouthed to the others, and nodded to the building beside her. "At least three, moving downwards, maybe into a basement or something. I think there's some more hiding below, but I can't make out how many at this range. I think they saw us." Part of her hoped they weren't remembered from their last visit. "But... That's all. The rest of the town..." she met Setsuna's cool gaze, then Kotetsu's stoic one. "...There's no one else."

[Kao]

A frown tugged at Setsuna’s lips. Now was not the time to add more doom and gloom to the situation, but the young Iwa nin silently agreed with Kotetsu’s concerns. Instead of addressing the elephant poised above their heads, she headed into what was left of the village with her teammates. The hairs on her arms and neck stood on end as she looked left and right and assessed the area. There had always been the very real possibility that they would return to a situation that was worse than before, but she hadn’t dared imagine that the village would be decimated.

‘We’re too late.’ The pit in her stomach threatened to deepen, but Kotori’s sudden announcement stunned Setsuna into cautious optimism. “We should be careful then,” she responded while eyeing the building. “Whatever happened here probably made whoever is left more wary of strangers than before, especially shinobi.”

Her next words were shouted just loudly enough for the survivors to hear. “Hello? Is anyone there? We’ve come to provide aid.” There was no answer, but Setsuna immediately bristled from the sensation of being watched. She jerked her head to indicate to the others to follow behind her. Simultaneously the team leader held up her hand and jabbed her thumb upward, then to her left: a sign for the other two to fall into formation. They’d have to stay aware of their rear and anything going on above them.

Cautiously, Setsuna padded up to the shoddy building and pushed open the door. It was just as much of a wreck inside as it was on the exterior. It was eerily quiet, with only the sound of water dripping from a nearby pipe occasionally interrupting the silence. After taking a few tentative steps into the ruined foyer she said again, “Please come out! We’re here to help!”

[Niro]

Compared to the first half of the trek, the second half was unfamiliar to Kotetsu. The last time he had come through this bit of land he had been unconscious and strapped to the back of his team mate while clinging to life. He didn't really expect himself to remember much but a small bit of regret and guilt settled into his gut. Kotetsu may not have been the reason this village had been afflicted but it definitely looked like his situation had been the final straw that'd broken the mules back based on the absolute ghost town they encountered upon coming to the villages broken down fence and remainder of a gate.

Walking through town proved just as fruitless, the wreckage strewn about made it seem like a tornado had torn through the town. The center courtyard had been rent asunder and Kotetsu instinctively reached for his metal shoulder with his flesh hand. A pang of pain shot through it as he stared at the scar in the earth as a tingle also ran down his spine. That could've happened to him and if it had? Well, no backalley surgery would save him. There wouldn't be anything TO save. He was about to open his mouth to speak when Kotori spoke up and alerted them to the fact somebody was still alive in this hellhole.

Kotetsu followed up behind Setsuna as she called out into the dilapidated house and gently moved past her as he pushed further into the structure. Kotori had mentioned a basement but there wasn't any visible stairwell. There was a bedroom off to the side and some sort of storage room but besides the foyer, the house was tiny. His eyes narrowed as he stepped into the center of the room, atop a barely-holding together rug, and heard the hollowness beneath his boot. Kotetsu brought his finger to his lips to signal the two to be quite as he crouched and pulled the rug back to reveal a trapdoor leading downwards.

"Ladies first?

[Valkier]

Kotori's step towards the doorway faltered at Setsuna's comment; she hadn't thought of that. Even if they hadn't been the hoped-for saviours on their last visit, surely the villages wouldn't be outright hostile... And yet, they almost had been on the team's first arrival, too, before the team had announced themselves. And so she deferred to the judgement of her wiser squad leader, and fell into neat formation at the silent command. Watching her sector warily and trusting in Setsuna and Kotetsu to monitor theirs, she walked in rehearsed tandem with them into the building. The familiar formation made her body tingle with anticipation, even if the shattered ruins around them posed no immediate sign of danger.

The two women followed behind Kotetsu's on-point position, and between three sets of peeled eyes had scouted the entire small building within seconds, leaving only the trapdoor to tackle. She shared a look with Setsuna, then firmed her expression and nodded.
"I'll go first," she agreed. Better that their squad leader stayed a pace or two behind, to react faster to events and direct the team. "Just watch my back... They must be hiding from something out there, right?" The words were only a way to delay, really; it all went without saying. She took a deep breath, then crouched and hooked the latch of the trapdoor with a kunai, lifted it, and darted through.

She was met with a small and dark stone-walled cellar, lit only by the square of dim daylight from the open trap above. At first it seemed like a dead end, but a pattern of footsteps and scrape marks in the dirty and dust-strewn floor quickly drew her attention to the far wall where a hastily balanced wooden pallet covered a small hole in the wall. A handful stone blocks had been pried free and tossed nearby, creating a narrow rent in the wall of the basement that led through to a narrow, descending tunnel. She squeezed inside, barely able to fit through with her shoulders scraping the walls on either side, and pressed fowards until her eyes adjusted to the sudden gloom. There she froze, drawn up short before a shadowy figure hunched against the rocks ahead. Facing her, arms raised and clutching something with a tip that glinted steel-grey in the dim reflected light.

"We've—" she coughed, throat suddenly dry, and slowly raised her hands as best as she could to her sides. "We've come to provide aid," she repeated Setsuna's words, and wished that she sounded as confident as the other woman. The steel point aimed in her direction did not waver.

"Are you all that's left?" She dared to ask, hoping to draw the half-hidden figure into talking before shooting, ""I promise you, we can help. We're shinobi from Iwagakure. What happened here? That... thing came back?" It was hard to believe the single small spirit, as vicious as it had been, could rend such destruction. And yet the ominous feeling of dread around the village felt all too familiar. She thought she knew the answer before they even had a chance to speak.