“Training today.” She said shortly, and then moved toward her wardrobe, donning her makeshift armor, she found that the straps had come loose on the hauberk and one of her pauldrons, which meant that she wouldn’t be doing any training with the armor today, at least. She sighed and picked up her sack of ninja tools, strapping some to her inner thigh and some to her upper arm she tightened the headband around her forehead just under her horns and looked in the mirror. She smiled, showing off her sharpened teeth, not human teeth.
Frowning and shrugging she opened the window and left a note, “Gone training.” for her mother just in case she came up before Atusko was back. She took the hard way down, using the technique for water walking to walk casually down the side of the building, jumping when she was three feet off the ground and landing hard, jarring her left ankle. She grumbled before looking around. The umbrella that a woman was carrying as she walked through the pattering rain. Atsuko nodded to the umbrella, and the woman nodded back, not knowing that the umbrella was only 2 years away from becoming a Kasa-obake. The spirits in the air, high above her in the clouds danced about making the thunder storm rumble with their movements. She blinked and walked on, the rain not bothering her as she walked behind the woman with the would-be Kasa-obake.
The lady turned down a street and Atsuko looked longingly toward where she was headed, the Enkouten Compound. She and her mother were outcasts. She had been told by Kanade that she was to acknowledge one of the Enkouten as a husband when she grew, and Kanade had slept with many Enkouten, not knowing which one was her father. Because the men from the compound sometimes frequented the brothel across the street from Kanade’s residence and would come afterward for food, Kanade would take one to bed. It was why Atsuko had her own room, from even a very young age.
Atsuko walked past the stalls, each utensil that the peddlers were advertising was more mundane than the last. She rolled her eyes. Finding the shortest way to go underground to the training grounds, Atsuko almost missed a glint of something in her vision. Turning, a spirit was wrestling around inside a piece of linen, which was billowing too much for the small breeze that was blowing through the stalls.
An old man was sitting in a chair, smoking an opium pipe and looking dreamily out at the passers by and it took Atsuko a moment to catch his attention, “What can I do for you young-” he looked at her horns pointedly and promptly forgot what he was going to finish the sentence with.
Atsuko pointed at the cloth, “How much for that?” She asked.
The shopkeep looked at the cloth dumbly and shook his head, “That’s been in my family for generations, was my grandmother’s blanket, now it just keeps the wind out from my shop. It’s not for sale.”
She saw his eyes go hungrily to her sack of ryo at her hip and then took out four fresh bolts of cloth. Atsuko could see where this was going, he opened his mouth to start to negotiate and she held up her hand to silence him, “Whatever you’re going to say about how these cloths are nicer than that blanket, don’t. I don’t want them. I’ll pay double what all of them are worth for that blanket.”
The tattered bit of cloth writhed and seethed on the line that it was pinned up on, “You can use the money to hang one of all of those cloths to keep the wind out.”
The man looked from her, to her ryo pouch, which she promptly untied and dropped onto the counter with a solid thump, to the blanket, and then to the cloths there. “I told a lie, that actually belonged to my wife’s Grandmother.”
“Does she know how you treat it?” Atsuko asked, leveling a cold stare at him, one that could make lesser men wilt. He shrank from it and stammered out, “I uh, I told her that I needed another canvas to cover the hole in the tent.”
“Go ask her what she wants for the blanket.” Atsuko took the pouch off the table and patted it, “I’ll watch the stall.”
“How do I know that you’ll keep your end of the bargain and not just run off with all my stuff?” The old man groused, sliding his tongue over a set of yellowed teeth.
“My mother is Enkouten, Kanade, I live three blocks down at the “Herbal Remedy” with her. You can find me there if you need to see me.” She took out a hand-burnt and tooled piece of leather and handed it to him, a calling card of hers. “I’ll be here when you get back. I am Enkouten, Atsuko. Genin. If no one else can find me, at least the registrars know who I am.”
The man grumbled, took the leather and then walked over to the other shopkeeper, he pointed to Atsuko and spoke in low tones. Atsuko watched as the woman nodded and then promptly kept a rather watchful eye on Atsuko as Atsuko herself settled into the chair. The man had left his opium pipe still going and she, not enjoying the smell, tamped it with a nearby silver tamper.
The people passing to and fro carried nothing that her sight picked up on, perhaps because she was in the upper part of the city, where the people were poorer, and couldn’t purchase finer wares. The older something was, and the better taken care of it was, the more likely it was to either attract a spirit to live in, or ‘grow’ a spirit of its own. Atsuko didn’t know exactly how spirits came to be, but didn’t really question it, since it only took humans a fraction of the time to grow spirits and houses for those spirits than it did for something to house a spirit in what was called a Tsukumogami. Atsuko was learning how to communicate with the spirits in them, but it was more akin to watching a cat and learning their body language than it was to speaking with a person who spoke a different tongue.
Looking about, she wondered what else the day would bring.
mission detailsShow
Mission 2: A jar has been found by a lady with a seal on it and the room has mysteriously locked itself so that she cannot get in, investigate this room and jar and bring it back to headquarters for further study and cataloguing.
