[Lonely] All Evils Must Come Home to Roost

[Kanade]

Kanade scrubbed the tables of her restaurant, which she had named, ‘the herbal remedy’ because of the particular blends of herbs that she put in her dishes which most doctors attributed medicinal qualities to. Not all medicine had to taste awful, like those bitter pills that were rolled by ladies out of the powdered remains of what once were potent plants, or the tinctures that were put under the tongue that caused a gagging coughing reflex when the taste hit the palate. The inn was dark, and the sounds of children playing two streets over echoed throughout the empty serving room. The well polished windowsills reflected the light back into the streets rather than bringing more light into the darkened room.

Kanade worked her hands over a rough spot in the table, the words that she was rubbing out with the sandpaper were still legible, even in the darkness of the room. “Thief” it said in crude, large, bold letters, and it had been scratched by a knife into the table while she worked on a meal for them in her restaurant. The word was hidden under a napkin until the four boys were gone.

It wasn’t clear that they were Enkouten, as it wasn’t clear who had written the message in the first place between the four. They all were respectful, minded their p’s and q’s and left a 10% gratuity upon leaving, which was unneeded as her menus had said. They had also taken ink to the menus, changing the letters of her dishes so that they sounded like rude body parts, or like they were made of refuse. She had to toss the menus, which wasn’t a bother, as she had enough printed up to last her for months on end if she tossed them out each time someone sat down at a table.

What hurt most was in the same handwriting, on the back of the menu were the words scrawled, “For Thabisa.” Those words were burned into the back of her mind as she rubbed out the word, “Thief” from the table in slow, methodic movements. The only sound in the restaurant was her short, slow strokes over the wood, with the grain, trying to rub out the word and the words that were decidedly ashes by now, which no one would see again, but that would haunt her thoughts at least for a good week or so.

A half hour later, she hefted a brick of resin, a lighter, and some alcohol onto the table and sighed. Pulling out one of the ‘bad bowls’ which meant that it wasn’t used to mix the salads that went with her dishes she lit the resin and let a small quantity of it drip, hot, into the bowl before adding the red wine, a merlot, to the mixture and stirred it, adding more resin and more spirits until it matched the color of the wood beneath the ceramic bowl perfectly. She poured the mixture out, and the liquid seeped into the buffed place in the table, becoming level with the original height of the wood that surrounded it and blending in so as to make the mark all but invisible to the untrained eye.

She hauled the bowl off to the back and poured the mixture into a canning jar, capped it with a tin lid and wrote in large letters upon a piece of paper, stuck to the front of the jar with wax, “Spirit Varnish.” She could have gone to the store, bought some spirit varnish and redone the whole table, but that little kid would have taken up the better part of the day, rather than the better part of two hours with his vandalism. She sighed and looked up into the mid-afternoon sky through the open slats above her smithy in the back of her house.

Kanade’s eyes looked into the blue as if they could quench the inner fire that caused the irises to burn a dull orange. Her shoulders slumped backward as she stared up into the sky with a half-slack gaze, her head buzzing with silence.

A short while later, Kanade was making the dough for tomorrow’s bread, rolling it out, making starters, and placing it in the cabinet so that it could double in size overnight. She made her own sourdough bread, and added some fennel to some of the loaves to add a bit of spice to them. All of her flour was the kind that could be bought in the open market. The closed market was still closed to her, as a new arrival, and so she bought her goods with the tourists, the outcasts, and the general public, rather than from the farmers, the spice-collectors, and the prospectors. Most of the things that she had bought for her dishes were sub-par. Bruised fruits, vegetables that had been half-eaten by insects before being sold, things that weren’t meant to last but to be sold and consumed on the spot.

Even the title of Jonin afforded her little in the way of lenience on things such as being allowed to public functions, normally open to the citizens of Iwagakure. She was technically allowed into these, but the stares, murmurs, and avoidance measures as if she was the bearer of some disease made her avoid gatherings like those. She was turned away from art galleries, wasn’t shown the well-crafted goods when she visited local merchants, and mothers snatched kids out of the way when she made her way down the street. News travels fast when you have an open trial, especially when people have a tendency to misconstrue the facts of said trial.

She had heard everything from “she’s a demon.” to “She’s a kami, living in the body of Thabisa.” she had saved the lives of her host-family, yes, but Cherisa and Tandala had their house vandalized one too many times for that to be a blessing, and soon enough Kanade moved out of the house and set up a permanent residence in the room above the restaurant. It was originally meant to be an attic, and Kanade had to go about hunched over or with her spine bent at all times that she was up there, but the little futon that she had, made every night and put away during the day in a large wooden chest, was enough for the bedroom. She didn’t want to read books in the attic, as the light was terrible through the slats of the attic vent that had been installed. Some of the nights got bitter cold, and some of the days were blisteringly hot in the attic, but at least she didn’t have to pay two rents, and she could keep a closer eye on her restaurant.

Kanade saw a couple coming up from one of the corner windows as she worked on the dough in the light that streamed through the window, close to dusk as the sun was setting. She had crystals that she had picked up and polished, worked with her hands at the diamond dust belt sander in the back, and they shone like the small butterflies that flitted to and fro around the restaurant, restless and wanting to be out and in the city.

The couple looked up at the sign that hung above her front window and the young man stopped, pointed up to the sign and they crossed the road so that they didn’t have to walk past her restaurant. Situated in the low income residential area of town, it used to be a bar and brothel, until the bar got shut down for serving alcohol to minors, apparently serving children of the age of ten or so, and the brothel got resituated next door to allow for more space. The rooms that the girls used to entertain their guests in had burned down when the building had gone up for sale, and only the front room, which was a bar converted to small restaurant, survived. The restaurant itself was made of stone, and had all of the furniture burnt out, but with an inspection by someone that she had enlisted from the library, she went to work on repairs to make it structurally sound again, had given it a new coat of paint, and had installed hard wood floors. She had the tables brought in, cheap ones from another restaurant that had ordered new ones, and had made the chairs herself out of a blackened steel and cushions for comfort. The unburnt supports that were left from the fire and the small things that Kanade could salvage from the wreckage had slowly become her smithy, with a small out building where she could store all of her tools and works that she was making for the few clients that didn’t listen to rumors or didn’t care where their tools came from.

If Kirari could see her now, she would probably laugh, or cry, or try to find that little boy that had carved in the word and bring him back to apologize to her. Kanade, with rounded shoulders that bore the unseen weight of trepidation, abuse, and prejudiced fear, however just went on kneading the dough and making the starters for the sourdough that would be on tomorrow’s breakfast menu. She sighed and watched the sun start to set through the window, the last golden rays illuminating the brothel across the street as the girls started to go out and hang red lanterns in front of the business. The noises sometimes were too much for Kanade to bear and she had to close the slats of the attic to block out the incessant giggling and low moaning speech patterns of the girls luring in customers to play with and extort money from.

There was a reason that Kanade only was open three days of the week, her sous chef had nowhere else to go, having been fired for being late to the job more than he was punctual, and no one else would hire him. She had one serving girl that was working toward being a chuunin, and needed the extra money between her missions in order to make up for the rent. Kanade opened this with her own money, but also worked the weekend shift at the hospital and came and went at odd hours to sleep in the attic of the small building.

She had, in the past week, burned out her old apartment when Shinjiro had come to visit, and had almost instantly regretted it. It had been in a more safe part of town, but also didn’t afford the luxury of being able to wake up to the smell of dough rising and the yeast in the mornings. She had Shinjiro, she supposed, to talk with once in a while, but even he was busy with his life away from her in Kirigakure no Sato. Kanade strode over to the window and unrolled the shutters as she closed up the restaurant and pulled out a candle. She held her hair to the wick as it guttered to life in the tri-candle candelabra, and lit the other candles on it purposefully.

The red glow that burned behind the thin roll-up blinds cast eerie shadows in the restaurant as she brought out a manual on how to perform what was called a ‘hot swap’ of modifications on existing weapons in battle. She already knew enough to make weapons on the fly in the midst of battle, able to conjure up earthen weapons on the fly, or even make armor out of metal that would adhere to a person like a second skin. She still needed to perfect that, as she had been bested by a genin for using the chain-mail type armor to defend against a blood user. The child was a genin, but had attacked her with such ferocity that she doubted that she would ever underestimate a sparring session again with anyone as long as she lived.

Having lived through the traumatic experience of sparring with Shinjiro as well, she had decided that unless she set very clear rules and expectations on a sparring match and there was a third party waiting to pick up the literal or figurative pieces of both sparring partners, she wouldn’t be sparring anyone in the near to distant future. Kanade flipped through the manual for the third time, her eyes scanning over the letters, written in a legible hand, but comprehending none of these as her thoughts turned back to the past once again. Her eyes continued to scan the page for a while before closing, the burning orange orbs having the curtains of her black eyelids drawn over them. She could still see the red of the lanterns, or was it the candles in the candelabra in front of her that she saw.

“Thief.” A harsh and loud whisper in her right ear made her bolt up, the metal chair clattering to the floor. She found the guttered candles in the dark candelabra on the table in front of her, the wax had run out onto the table and had partially covered the pages resting on the smooth and polished surface. The shadows of the girls that walked in front of the lanterns across the street painted dark shadows on the rolled shades, still drawn. The figures of men, fat and short, tall and slim, tall and fat, and some disfigured walked in front of the red lanterns as she tried to listen for whoever had woken her as her heart beat pounded, sending blood rushing against her eardrums in a rhythmic noise akin to the bellows of her forge.

“Traitor!” the whisper, again, too sibilant and high pitched to identify as a woman’s or a man’s exploded in her ears that strained in the dark. She lashed out with a hand, trying to wrap her hands around the person that was playing the trick on her and clutched nothing. She was breathing hard, the perspiration that beaded on her brow ran into her eyes as the hair atop her head started to glow a bright orange, illuminating the room around her, but also blinding her to the room’s contents. The brighter her eyes and hair shone, the more blind she was to her surroundings.

She was breathing heavily, her heartbeat sent wave after wave of drumbeats against her eardrums, every fiber of her being told her to run. She noticed, then, that the butterflies weren’t anywhere near her. They had all gone away, leaving her abandoned. Kanade rushed toward the window determined to pull up the shade, exposing whoever was in the restaurant. She felt a hand grab her ankle and slammed to the floor. She clutched at the nearest thing, a chair and swung it wildly at the thing, bringing it around and connecting with the face of her mother.

Kanade woke up, finding the candles guttered out and the wax had run off onto the floor, some of it covered the pages and the red lights of the brothel bled through the window in a gory display of marketed sex. She groaned and rubbed her eyelids with her fingertips until the multicolored spots played havoc with her vision. What a nightmare to have.

She picked up the manual carefully unsticking it from the tabletop where it had adhered due to the wax running off and onto it, pooling below, and decided to deal with the candelabra and wax in the morning when she felt more rested. She went to the closet and put the manual away, before closing the cabinet and resting her head against the wood. She breathed in a couple of deep, grounding breaths before the whisper came to her, louder than the previous two times, “Murderess!” The whisper was accompanied by a guttural croaking growl that came from behind her. Kanade whipped around to find that her hand passed through a half-formed humanoid shadow with glaring orange-red eyes and long, blade like claws.

She ducked as the claws raked across the cabinet, leaving deep gouges in the wood and sending slivers shivering across the floor, scattered around her bare feet. She attempted to tackle it, but found her shoulder and arm passed through as she slammed into the newel post, cracking that instead and sending pain racing down her arm from her collarbone. She couldn’t tell whether the crack had actually been from the newel post or her own collarbone.

“I am no murderess!” She screamed at it as her butterflies whirled around it, angrily darting to and fro inside of the black mass, barely humanoid shaped now as the tendrils of its energy latched on momentarily like mist to the wings before coalescing into the semi-solid shape. She took a chair and hurled it at the thing, breaking the cabinet in the process and sending the cookbooks, crockery, and pans clattering and crashing across the floor.

“Liar!” The creature hissed in in a hoarse whisper that roared like a kettle to a breaking high pitch and swiped at her. She slid backward across the floor, kicking hard against the smooth surface as its claws dug into the railing of the stairs leading to the attic and broke two of the posts, stopping on the third and leaving four deep rends. “Thabisa is dead because of you, sower of chaos, whore of calamity!” The creature breathed in and grew so much that its shoulders touched the ceiling and it’s great leering face loomed over Kanade who readied a jutsu to get her out of the situation.

The front door of her establishment caved inward, in the wrong direction, breaking the sidelight and the jamb where the deadbolt had been, as a burly man rushed into the restaurant. He had a sword held at the ready, pointing it in Kanade’s direction. She screamed “Help!” and finished her hand seals to find that the creature was gone, and she was about to unleash a jutsu on thin air, and her butterflies. He rushed them, roaring in challenge, but they flitted and dodged his wild swings as he ordered her to get back. Finally they all flew swiftly up to the attic and out into the night, having been given the order from Kanade.

[3047/???? NANOWRIMO]

[Kanade]

“Miss?” The man offered a hand, which she took. He was considerably darker than she was and she looked up to find red eyes and a shock of orange hair atop his head. He was an Enkouten like she was. He still had his sword in his main hand. He spoke again, his voice was like honeyed leather, “I don’t think that those butterflies will be attacking you anymore tonight miss, but they must be a shinobi’s swarm. I’ll report them. Did he not see the monster that was looming in the shadows before he burst the door, blowing out the glass sidelight in the process? She shook her head and smiled, as he raised her to a standing position. Her collarbone ached, but she could move her arm, so she knew it wasn’t broken, “No, that is my swarm.” She looked decidedly guilty.

“Why would your swarm attack you? Looks like they did a lot of damage to your stairs and your cabinet,” He looked at the wreckage in the corner near the stairs and sighed, stowing his sword in a leather sheathe at his side. She wondered what he was doing there that night.

A gaggle of girls came in the front door of her restaurant at that moment, most of them holding some sort of makeshift weapon and looked around for the source of the commotion. They saw that there was nothing there besides the two in the corner and all of them heaved a collective sigh of relief. Apparently their bravery brought them to the door and wasn’t much use afterwards. Most of the women were clad in garb that showed off their curves in one way or another. Most of them wore kimonos, which would have been terrible to fight in. Kanade bowed to the girls and smiled, “Thank you for your concern but it’s over.” She smiled up at the Enkouten who still looked perplexed, “Let me offer you all a drink for helping.” Kanade started to go behind the counter to find a bottle of something for her guests.

A rather large, muscular woman strode through the girls, holding a battle ax in her right hand. She scanned the restaurant and one of the girls whispered something in her ear and pointed to the man who had saved her. He stood there, awkwardly, waiting to see what he should do next as the woman smiled and laughed, “Well, Kaito, since you saved my neighbor tonight is on the house.” Kanade made a mental note that the man was going to the brothel when he had heard the commotion, so she was about to serve a lecher and a bunch of concubines liquor. Still, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth is what her mother used to say, even if it was sway-backed and bow-legged.

“The girls have to get back to work.” The woman who had strode in behind the others looked pointedly at them, “Those customers aren’t going to relax themselves. If they did, we wouldn’t be here.” She looked at Kanade and then to the door, “Need help cleaning up? It’s my night off, I can get a carpenter in the morning, but I think we have some spare boards in the meantime so that your restaurant isn’t robbed.

“Ah, thanks, that would be good.” Kanade looked at the ruined door as the girls finally walked off of it. More than a few looked dejected at not getting a free drink. She would have to thank them when they weren’t on the clock. She took out three bottles and set them on the counter, “take your pick, you can have the whole bottle, but I can pour you out some tonight if you’d like.” She had a selection of beer as well, on tap, but these were the more expensive liquors that were on her top shelf.

“I’ll just have a water, if you don’t mind.” The man pulled up a chair to a table which had been overturned and righted it, waiting for his order, “And an explanation if you have it for what happened.”

“I’ll take the one in the green bottle, looks interesting.” The woman said, pulling up another metal chair beside the man and smiling at him. Kanade poured the drinks, a large brandy for herself, and put the other bottles away.

“I think that someone sent a spirit to attack me.” Kanade started off, which sounded ridiculous to start, but she motioned to the claw-marks and shrugged, “Vaguely humanoid and made of some sort of black mist. It had glowing orangish eyes and my hands passed through it, but it seemed rather more than capable of hurting me. My butterflies were attacking it when you showed up.” She tipped her glass to the man who had broken down her door. “Next thing I knew, it was gone and you were chasing them off, apparently having thought they were the things attacking me.”

“Well the girls that were walking the street in front of my establishment, “Pink Velvet”, said that they heard a crashing of crockery and glass, and then they heard some wood crunching. Thinking you were being robbed they pointed to your establishment and then Kaito here burst down your door. I was in the back when all the girls in the front room started to rush your building, makeshift weapons in hand and I thought there must be some sort of gang attacking you.” The woman relayed her story, drawing two long swigs from the bottle and smiling, “Then I grabbed my axe and found that there was no one here but you two, and my relieved girls.”

Kaito nodded, “When I broke down your door, you were cowering from your butterflies. I didn’t see the yokai that you speak of. I’ve heard that the catacombs are becoming more and more restless. Maybe you angered one of the spirits, or that entrance that’s just a couple of blocks over has let loose a spirit.” He shook his head and sipped at his water.

Kanade nodded and opened her mouth, only to have the woman talk over her, “Well you’re not going to get any sleep here tonight, I know that kind of scare does that to a woman, so you’ll probably want to stay with us girls. Don’t worry, we have rooms that are sound-proof and have sturdy locks on them. You won’t be bothered by the noises in the other rooms.” The woman winked at her and took another long draught of the liquor inside the green bottle.

Kanade looked at her restaurant and sighed, she probably wasn’t going to be open tomorrow like she had hoped, and if she was then she would have to tell the story. Best to wait until the repairs were done and then move on with it. She wondered whether or not this had to do with the cult that had recently been brought up in her talk with the Tsuchikage, and whether or not she should be worried about an information leak. She had thought, when he had put up that barrier of his, that he had made the room sound proof, but perhaps he hadn’t and it was just the illusion of safety that kept prying ears and eyes out of the conversations in the kage’s suite.

Kanade nodded to the woman, finally and agreed, “Yes, that’s probably the best thing for this situation isn’t it. I wouldn’t want to have to sleep in this mess, without a front door.” She went to the back door and locked it. The shed was already locked and climbed the stairs, returning a moment later with her pillow, and a stuffed bear she had found in the market that was adorable. She had taken an instant liking to it and now she slept cuddled up to it, since she didn’t have a cat or a dog of her own. She couldn’t take care of it, and she was sure that if she went on a mission, it would become feral. No such a problem with stuffed animal.

WC:1350/??? NANOWRIMO

[Kanade]

“I’ll let one of the girls take you to the room when you get over there, I have a business to run, I am sure you understand. Just make sure to tell heather at the front desk who you are and ask her to get one of the bouncer boys to put up a board in front of the door for you before you come inside. That should keep any would-be robbers out of your establishment,” Said the mistress of the brothel before she swept herself out of the doorway. Kanade watched as she left, illuminated by the red lanterns so that her shadow loomed large and menacing on the rolling shades. Best to leave before she had any ideations of paranoia break out again. She took a deep breath and bundled all of her things out of the door.

Kanade made her way into the street, and was greeted by a hot gust of wet air that had blown in from over the nearby lake. The warm moisture made her instantly too warm carrying the futon and blanket. She set them down beside the doorway and sighed, making some hand seals she erected a wall of stone which would last indefinitely in the shape and strength that she made it. Normal doors seemed to only require about a fifth of her power, and since there were windows which were much more brittle and frail, she might as well only make it as solid as a door. She nodded to the other girls that were walking the street. They all gave her a look of one kind or another a couple here and there had sympathy, a few gave her a frightened look, she pushed past to get inside and found that the red lights of the lanterns gave way to an antechamber which was bathed in a bright yellow light. It was clean and there were comfy and expensive furnishings that were arranged throughout the room to accentuate the lavish display of decadence and elegance. A host of girls were lounging on the furniture in various stages of undress, but all were covering the most important bits. She supposed that the bouncer that was outside of the door was supposed to be the one keeping people who weren’t supposed to come in from seeing the girls in this provocative display. Hugging her futon to her chest she rang the bell.

A girl with blonde curled hair, dressed in a blue and pink corset and garter set strolled out, her knee-high high heeled boots clicked against the marble floors. Her white stockings tucked into the black boots, attached to what she thought were very plainly not underwear but rather a gathering of lace over her lady bits brought the whole ensemble together. The girl had put on a fair amount of foundation and had a bright and vibrant lipstick which was accentuated by a heavy use of eyeshadow and a cat-eye which drifted over fake eyelashes. It was all over the top, but then again, so was the rest of the place. She came out with a half-lidded look and a predatory smile on her face, obviously practiced to get their clientele into the back rooms and put them into the correct mood for a house of ill repute. Kanade was impressed, but also tired, and she assumed that her bedraggled state brought on the look of wide eyed sympathy that followed. She tried not to roll her eyes.

“Are you okay hun? I heard about the commotion over there and was told to give you one of our rooms, number six. It hasn’t been used in a couple nights but the sheets were cleaned and it would have been used tonight if you hadn’t come in. You won’t need your futon if you don’t want.” She noted the teddy bear and smiled at it, as if it were an inside joke between just the two of them. Maybe sleeping here was a bad idea after all.

Kanade nodded and took the key from the girl, offering her exhausted thanks and then climbed the stairs, looking down at the decadence as she did, her futon thumping behind her, bound by the ropes she kept it rolled up with. The extravagance was no joke. The madame of the house kept a tight ship and everything was in place to offer an assault on the senses as a client entered the house. It seemed like they got both women and men and catered to both, which meant that if Kanade had shown up in any other way than she had, she would have been treated no differently. How progressive.

She reached the second floor, looking for number six, and then opened the room to find the decadence of the main hall apparently had also infected the room. She couldn’t tell exactly what was real or fake in the dim light that bled in from the hall, but as soon as she lit the lantern and started poking around, she found a candelabra, a full sized chandelier, a rather high ceiling for a bedroom, a four-poster bed with transparent acrylic pink curtains, everything screamed that this was a room to be used for pleasure and comfort. She eyed the massage oils on the bed-side table and wondered if they gave massages as well.

Yawning, she stretched and shook her head to rid herself of the aftershocks of her encounter before closing the door. The faint music that she had heard coming from a back room that wafted over the scene below stopped abruptly and she was left with her own sound. She cleared her throat and said, “Come on out if you’re still around, I am not a murderess.” She waited with a shaking breath and tried to imagine what would happen in a noise-proof room full of such expensive things as this, “I am all alone and you needen’t worry about us being interrupted.” She looked around the room, the steady flame from teh lantern cast long shadows throughout, and she suspected each and every one of them to start moving on its own.

Perhaps she had just imagined it, had sent her butterflies after an imagined threat. She remembered the sound of rending wood and the red eyes that accused her. If it was an inner demon, then it was more real than any that she had heard about with the psychiatric patients that had been admitted to the hospital with obvious self-harm wounds.

She sighed and lit a couple more of the lanterns, determined to pay the madame back for her hospitality and use of the room and set her futon up so that the closet of the room was blocked by it. There were two windows that looked out into the sleeping street below, and as she opened the window the light of the moon spilled in, rather than the blood red that had disturbed her sleep for a while now that she had been living in her restaurant. She yawned and stretched, the muscles in her back finally loosening from the stress that she had accumulated. When all was said and done, perhaps she would order a massage from here, or go to a proper chiropractor.

She suspected, from the evidence given, that the culprit had something to do with the Enkouten. She thought about all of the people that were angry with her for what they saw was the theft of Thabisa’s body and funeral. She had heard that they did have a funeral, the same funeral that the Enkouten had for someone who was lost in combat, or eaten, or where the body couldn’t be recovered because of other circumstances. They had added her brand band to the others and had given a small service to try to set her spirit to rest.

Perhaps it was a manifestation of Thabisa that haunted Kanade now. She patted her cheeks roughly and shook her head to loosen the cobwebs. Think, Kanade, could it be the family? Could it be one of the family members of Hotaru who she had met a short while ago? Could it be someone who knew Thabisa in life and loved her? That certainly narrowed it down, she thought with the bite of sarcasm.

“Whatever it is.” She said aloud to herself, affirming, “It can wait till I get some sleep.” She was weary of having to sleep, to eat, to generally take care of herself when before she didn’t even have to breathe. She had, of course, breathed out of habit, but the air from the world didn’t nourish her silicone body as it did now. The autonomic response was ingrained into the body, so she didn’t have to think about breathing now, but she ‘did’ have to think about not breathing.

What a strange thing, to be human, to transfer consciousness into a body that was far from human, and then to be human again. It felt so surreal that her head whirled making the room spin. Or perhaps that was the fatigue from only receiving four hours of sleep for the past week. A small sacrifice, she thought, for being able to do what she wanted to do.

Retiring to the bed, she slipped beneath the covers and let the warm night air drift over her like a second blanket, muddling her dreams into maudlin self reflection that cascaded into a dream where she was facing herself, stabbed herself through the heart, and the self in the dream didn’t react.

--

Kanade awoke with a start to find the bed soaked with sweat from the dreams she had that night. She flung off the covers and groaned at the lack of a second set of clothing. She was going to have to go back over to her establishment and change, hopefully without anyone seeing her. The bright rays of mid-morning cascaded in through the window and Kanade yawned and stretched, hearing her shoulders and upper back crack from the strain. She was too young for this type of stress, and if her hair wasn’t magma she would have worried about grey hairs.

The monster from the previous night seemed more and more like a bad dream, though the evidence that there was a commotion in her restaurant last night was there. She was, after all, in her pajamas in a strange place that fit the description of the room that she had been given by the madame last night. The room looked less sexually charged this morning and more like what every woman pictured a princess’s bedroom must look like. She certainly thought that this level of extravagance was left to the upper classes, and the gaudy details all worked, mainly because they seemed untouched by the outside world.

Closing the windows, she bundled her teddy bear into the futon and opened the door to the brothel’s main room. The room where last night women were draped or hanging off of furniture in what she supposed was a relaxed manner, was completely bare. The lack of windows into the front room made for an unnaturally dark scene below. The lamps had all been put out and it left the room feeling rather more grey and sinister than it had been last night. The golds were now dark and the whites were a mottled grey in the dark.

“Hello?” Kanade called out to the darkness, wondering if there was someone that could turn on a light or something. She took the lamp from her room and grumbled things about being afraid fo the dark and chided herself for being a child about it. There was less in the dark than one expected, but with the events of last night she didn’t want to leave it to chance.

She grumbled as she descended the stairs and found the madame in the other room doing paperwork, the same room that the girl had come out of to give her the key.

“I wanted to give you the key and payment for the room last night.” Kanade smiled and called out to the woman. She pointed to the chair without a word and smiled at Kanade. Kanade sat down across from the madame and folded her hands in her lap, “I wanted to thank you for your hospitality last night and giving me a room where I could sleep.” She watched as the woman kept writing in what appeared to be a ledger, looking at a stack of papers to her right and writing down some things in the margins, general book keeping. The madame nodded slowly and continued writing.

“So I wanted to give you this in thanks for your generosity last night.” She reached down to grab at her ryo purse, but when she clutched at it, she found only bare skin. A strange feeling, seeing as she had been dressed when she came back down. The chill of the room’s air came over her, giving her goose bumps, or it should have. She felt the cold too soft texture of silicone beneath her fingertips. Kanade looked down to find the self-same scar running across her nude pale body, the one she had before, and looked back up at the madame. She tried to apologize for being nude in her company, feeling bashful for the first time of being nude in front of, well, anyone and found her voice was gone.

“Chiaki, we know you’re hiding in there.” The madame said, the words were clear, but they were spoken by multiple different voices, the voices of children, men, and women. It had the undertone of a beast’s growl and the woman set down the pen she had been writing with, folding her hands and looking across the table. “You’re not dead, we knew where to find you. You’ve broken your oaths, and for that you will pay the ultimate price.” The face started to shift, the bones of the woman’s face cracked and pushed against the skin like they were trying to escape, her right eye closed as the woman grit her teeth and they broke under the strain, revealing fangs were starting to push their way through the gums in a bloody transformation.

Kanade in Chiaki’s body, pushed her chair back until it hit a wall. Tendrils wrapped around her torso as she struggled to get free.

“Your butterflies abandoned you, they knew you were false.” The thing said, the mouth moving over a new set of impressive teeth as one of the madame’s eyes popped out of its socket, leaving a wet visceral hole in her head, a soft red glow burning behind the eye started to become more and more intense. “Your vows are worthless, your friends have abandoned you, you’re going to pay for your transgressions, and only when your body has been divided between those you have wronged will your soul be left to wander the wastes of this world. We have a special place for you, we won’t break your animus, we’ll bring it back to the spirit’s nest and let you roam there for a thousand years, feeding off of the very people you swore to protect.”

Kanade clawed at the tendrils, trying to find purchase but found them slippery, as slick as the mucus that Shinjiro exuded, “We’ve learned, never let you channel, never let you make seals, never let you slip away. You are ours now.” The thing’s elbows cracked, turned outward, the forearms cracked, turned inwards, the fingers elongated, splitting the skin of the madame’s skin the thing had been wearing, revealing sharp, dark claws, though from blood or from being a dark black Kanade didn’t know.

The thing reached up and put its hands to the madame’s lips, horrifyingly stretched and started to rip at the skin, the noise akin to someone tearing a large swath of cloth echoed throughout the room as it loomed overhead, exploding out of the hole it had made. It stepped out of the skin, a dark figure, bathed in blood and shadow and sneered at her, close enough to smell its sulfuric breath, blood, gore, and offal covering it.

“Wake up.” It jeered.

Kanade was too terrified to be confused, but the confusion finally sank in as it repeated, “Wake up.” and she was being shaken by it. It roared, “Wake up!” and opened its mouth to eat her, showing a face at the back of its throat, too similar to that of Thabisa for comfort.

Shaken awake, Kanade sat bold upright looking into the Madame’s face that had just been torn asunder. Kanade shrieked and pushed against the woman, clawing at the bed to get away from her and there was a scuffling noise as the Madame tripped and fell on the floor.

Kanade shook herself and found that she had not just dreamed of the sweat, but had indeed soaked herself through, her muscles ached from the strain of the bad dreams and she peered over the bed, tenuously, not trusting this wasn’t a dream too.

“We wanted to know if you were alright, but after a push like that I would say you are fine.” The madame got up and held a hand for the girl that rushed to her to stop, “We are going to be making breakfast and we wanted to know what you would like, on the house of course. Man you pack quite a wallop when you want to don’t you?” She laughed and cracked her neck twice, “either that or I’m getting old.” She got up and patted herself off. She was wearing a comfortable linen dress now, and all of the trappings from the night before were gone. The other girl was still trussed up like a street walker and looked at Kanade with a hint of fear, but more judgment than anything.

“I’m sorry Madame-” She stopped and wondered if she had actually heard the woman’s name before.

“Watanabe.” The madame supplied her last name, “Come on down to breakfast with the girls that didn’t have overnight clients and introduce yourself. We’re glad that you’re alright. We wanted to know if you had breakfast plans and seeing you thrashing about like that, I was thinking you were liable to hurt yourself.”

The madame left after Kanade apologized profusely and left her a change of clothes, they were comfortable, wearable, and actually fit quite well. She supposed that in this line of work she could probably eye someone up and down twice and size them up rather well.

Making her way down to breakfast, she ordered a full continental and sat down across from the blonde that had worked the front desk last night who gave her a bright smile, genuine this time, and looked better with only a small bit of makeup rather than the over the top slathering she had on the night before.


[WC: 3148/????? NANOWRIMO]

[Kanade]

“How do the clothes fit?” the receptionist asked, smiling across the table at Kanade as she pulled out a chair, the wood squealing against wood which elicited a jump from frayed nerves.

“They’re great, your mistress knows her trade.” Kanade chuckled, and pulled at a bit of loose fabric, they fit better than her own clothes, truth be told. Those she had bundled and put onto the small desk in the room. Madame Watanabe came out with the cook a minute later, the scent of sweet bread and sugar following them in a more sensual scent than Kanade had smelled last night and as they sat down to tuck in, they exchanged small stories and plans for the day. Kanade even laughed a couple of times throughout the meal.

During the lulls in conversation where the others paid more attention to their food than the light conversation around what their plans were, Kanade couldn’t shake the memories from her mind, the flashes of tendrils and claws, the feeling of helplessness and a sense of foreboding that casta pall on the breakfast in front of her, rendering her tongue numb to the deliciousness of the sweet bread and honeyed jam that the madame had been so gracious as to provide.

As the meal was coming to a close the blonde girl across from her reached across the table and patted her hand, “You’ve been distant, not that we are close, but I could tell in your eyes that you’re still bothered by what happened last night, do you want to talk about it?”

Kanade shook her head and sighed, “I just don’t know what happened last night. I can’t really explain any of it. I’ve seen spirits like that one before but they were all-” She searched for a word and waved her hand in circles trying to elicit the correct word.

“Tangible?” Madame Watanabe offered, raising an eyebrow while listening to the conversation.

Kanade snapped her fingers and nodded, “Yes, that’s the one, Tangible. I never thought that I would meet a spirit that I couldn’t touch, or that was like that. It scared me.”

“I didn’t ever see it, and you said that it was able to attack you in your dreams?” Watanabe raised a skeptical eyebrow and disguised the beginnings of a doubtful chuckle in a cough.

“Maybe it was my butterflies, they were trying to help.” She shook her head.

“Listen, you can stay in that room again tonight, hell, you can stay in it all week for all I care.” Watanabe offered, “the girls here can take care of themselves, we even get some kunoichi who are looking for a bit of extra cash on the side. You get yourself sorted today, and we’ll get your clothes and bedlinens washed and dried.” She looked to the blonde who nodded.

“Alright.” Kanade reluctantly agreed before taking a ryo pouch out of a fuuinjutsu seal.

“No, honey, you keep it, you can repay us with food and liquor when you’re open.” Watanabe grinned, “Sounds like a good deal to us.”


“When you get the restaurant back open that is.” the blonde offered.

“Say I didn’t catch your name.” Kanade frowned, realizing that she had a whole conversation with the girl without learning her name.

“Hana.” the girl shrugged, “I work here full time, so you will see a lot of me around. There are a couple of other girls that work here part time, but we get room and board if we need it for just a bit of cut out of our wages. Certainly better than some of the other establishments around town. And you make way more here than any other job, even waiting tables in the ritzy parts of town.” Hana frontloaded nervously, as if the offering of her name had been reason enough to explain why she was there.

Kanade held up a hand, “The shrine I used to-” She shook her head, “Philosophically, it’s your road to walk.” She interrupted herself and shortened what would have had to be a longer anecdote.

“Alright Hana-chan.” Watanabe leveled a look at the blonde, “you do the wash, we’ll take care of the cleaning before tonight. What’s the headcount for tonight.”

Kanade had stood, stretching and snuck out as Hana explained they would have a full house and Watanabe started to talk about which girls would be where, doing what that night.

Stepping into the large front room, she hurried over to the door, blinding herself with the late morning light which slapped her in the face as sure as a jilted lover. Blinking against the sudden light to adjust her eyes, she closed the door behind her and stretched, almost knocking into someone wandering down the street. There were a half dozen people pondering the large stone slab which stood where the door to her restaurant was before. Kanade decided to take off before anyone asked any questions about what happened, as lookey loos were the least desirable things that she could think of right now.

Kanade walked down the street toward the marketplace, less out of a want to shop or do what others called ‘retail therapy’ and more to push the events of last night out of her mind. She could still hear the splintering wood as claws raked against it. She shuddered as she rounded a corner and was assailed by the sounds, scents, and smells of the huddled masses of Iwagakure’s shopping district.

Blending in was never one of her strong suits, but with her general appearance, she didn’t stand out nearly as much as she had with red hair and fair skin. Kanade moved through the streets, browsing the shops, never buying anything, and avoiding the overly active shopkeepers or shops that weren’t swarmed with people, trying to keep herself from having to engage in any sort of conversation. There was a certain calm in the anonymity of a crowd, and she could truly be by herself with the thoughts of the night before without worrying about looking like too much of a recluse.

As the sun reached its zenith, her stomach reminded her that she had better at least take a look at the stalls that were serving foodstuffs. The Huushuur, or small half-mood shaped fried pastries filled with sheep or beef smelled heavenly, and was paired with a healthy portion of potatoes, carrots, chopped cucumbers and came with a to-go container of soy sauce, and smelled heavenly as she walked past it, so she decided to stand in line for the dish, even though the walking was doing wonders for her thoughts.

Asking herself whether she was feeling more like the tangy sheep or the more satisfying but sweet meat of beef, she was too preoccupied to notice an old man that walked about with a sign in his gnarled hands, eyes permanently squinted by the sun, with wrinkles that were as permanent and deep as if they had been there his entire life. He was as skinny as a rail, and when he knocked into Kanade, she barely felt a thing, given her kunoichi training. Evidently he had been looking left and right for someone to sell whatever it was he was peddling to, and had not noticed Kanade step forward to replace the person in line who had walked up a couple steps ahead of her.

“I’m so sorry!” Kanade helped him gather what looked to be small majong tiles with weird characters on them, cards with emblazoned figures, sometimes holding cups, sometimes holding swords, and sometimes just a figure with a name on it.

“Oh, no, no need to apologize.” The old man laughed, smacking his dry lips and bending down on the hard cobbles on his knobbly knees, “I was the one who ran into you anyhow.” He thanked her for the tiles and the cards, putting them back into a pouch that was centered below a small round belly. His arms were as thin as rails and his eyebrows stuck out past a fairly long nose. He had a balding head that had been beaten by the sun so much that his liver spots were more numerous than the other people his age, and he looked to be about eighty.

All of this Kanade took in as she looked at his weight and overall figure, he had arthritis in his left shoulder, she noticed, and probably both knees, which would have been exacerbated by the lack of food that was evident from his physique. He used the sign he had been holding to stand up and then hoisted it over his shoulder, extending a hand.

“Batu, at your service.” He smiled and jutted the thumb back to his sign as she shook his hand, all bone, sinew, and skin, “I’m the most accurate fortune teller of Iwagakure.” Kanade raised an eyebrow and offered an apologetic smile, as she didn’t really believe that there was anyone who could accurately tell the future. It was written, she knew, in the books that only the Kami of this world could access, but fate rarely opened her arms and welcomed in a mortal, if ever, and more often than not these things were scams. They would use what you threw at them and fishing questions to make assumptions.

“I know that look, no one better. You think I’m a fraud don’t you?” He accused, his sun-worn wrinkles deepening in a mask of displeasure, the bushy brows almost knitting tight enough to become a single white unibrow.

“No, I don’t, I just-” She smiled apologetically, but was interrupted by the man who stamped his foot on the ground, making a loud slapping noise as his worn sandal slapped against the cobbles.

“Listen here, Kanade, if that is your real name.” His frown deepened, “You’re going to need my advice, come the end.”

This made Kanade stop with her mouth open, ready to protest his help. Snapping it shut, it was her turn to give him a look of displeasure and suspicion, “You know me?”

“No, I told you, I am Batu, the most accurate fortune teller in all of Iwagakure.” He placed the sign in front of him and leaned forward on it, rolling his left shoulder as a woman overheard walking past with a look of displeasure and doubt on her face. It was probably for this, that he was in the condition he was in. Welcome a stranger to your table, and you are bound to learn something you didn’t know, as her mother used to say.

“Alright,” Kanade held up her finger, “I’ll buy you lunch and listen to you over the meal.” She crossed her arms and smiled, raising an eyebrow in challenge, “But if you don’t convince me by the end of the meal, you go your way, and I go mine.”

“I’ll need half that time.” He nodded and sidled up to her, running his eyes up and down her form, “Do you know how long it’s been since a pretty lady such as yourself took this old bag of bones on a date?”

“Not a date.” She quickly corrected him before she ordered food for herself and the old man ordered seven helpings of the same as she had.

He blinked at her as she stared at him, incredulity and anger turning her obsidian hair into magmatic red, her eyes, if they could have killed, would have struck the man dead. She slammed the ryo onto the food stand of the man with the Huushuur, and glared at the man as he led the way through the crowd, saying, “You know, the only place to eat this sort of thing is sitting down, luckily I have a little place off the beaten path.” He led her down an alley, which twisted to the left, dropped down with a steep staircase, and at the bottom of this, there was a sign that had a symbol of a hand, palm out, with astrological signs on it. There were six kids playing in front of the store, and the man waved them off with a hand before opening the door, going to a table that had a crystal ball in the middle of it.

“Won’t be needing this, you don’t want to know what you already know.” He placed the food on the table and put the crystal ball into a box made of onyx. The place smelled strongly of sweat and incense. “Welcome to the shop. Go grab one of those urchins and tell them to bring in the stools from outside. They belong to the neighborhood.” It was hard to tell whether or not he was talking about the children or the stools, but Kanade did as she was told, feeling the hot creeping sensation of shame making its way from the base of her neck up to her cheeks, and settling around her ears for how she acted earlier at the Huushuur merchant.

She and Batu broke bread with the kids, they gave thanks first, and Kanade followed their motions of bowing their heads and folding their hands in their laps, a mouthful of Hushuur already in her mouth as she did so. They thanked the Kami of orphans for their luck in meeting Batu, for the huushuur merchant and his pregnant wife, and for the animals whose lives went into the food. Kanade had eaten so many times, had seen so many people eat without thanking anything or anyone for the food that she had fallen out of the habit. The children ravenously tucked into their food in front of them, leaving Kanade to stare blankly at the food in front of her in her ever increasing shame.

Batu talked the entire time with a lot of the children, who listened to his tales and watched him eat with the remaining teeth that he did have left, avoiding the hard carrots and soaking his Huusuur thoroughly before working it between the teeth worn down by the years. Kanade was enamored by the interactions and the story as much if not more than the children, and as the shame fell away she felt it replaced by fascination for the man who would share what he had with the children, no hesitation, even though he had a shop to run, and in a part of town almost as undesirable as Kanade’s own restaurant. No, probably more, since it was in the residential part of town.

She silently wondered whether or not she would be doing nearly as well given the location as he was doing. He smiled at her and the children ran out of the shop, stopping in the doorway the eldest girl tugged at one of the younger boys. She stood, proud, lean, wiry, as the streets had made her. Her gaunt eyes darkened as she looked at Kanade, but a sliver, a flicker of gratitude lay deep in them. She bowed from the waist deeply to Kanade, the others followed suit and each one thanked her for the meal. The wiry girl then looked to the other kids, her features softening as she nudged them gently back onto the street before closing the door, leaving the soft chuckle of Batu.

“I promised you something before the end of lunch, and you have yet to take more than two bites of yours.” He pointed to the parcel which she had received her lunch in, “So it’s about time that I made good on my promise.” He cleared his throat and pulled out what looked to be a deerskin, which he patted fondly, “Alright, old friend, it’s time to tell Kanade here something she doesn’t already know.”

He unfurled the skin slowly, gently placing the fur side down, the coarse bristles of the hair scraping softly against the wood as if the animal was sighing in relaxation. He patted the soft and supple leather and took what looked to be a quarter of the femur, a cork attached to it, uncorked it and upended the contents into his hands with the clatter of… dice?

Kanade found herself leaning forward, her attention on the display in front of her. Batu hardly took notice as he gave the skin and bones a fond smile that one gives a dearly departed family member or pet. “Kami, you who sees the strands of time and fate, grace us with your wisdom. Show me the present, show us the future.” He cast the bones and looked into Kanade’s eyes as she watched them clatter softly across the deer hide. As the bones met the hide, symbols appeared not only on the skin, but also on the bones, flashing in her eyes as she watched them tumble and finally come to rest.

He studied Kanade’s features for a good long moment before he looked down at the fur and frowned, “You are a long way from your home, the shrine of your ancestry.” His voice gained a timbre that it didn’t have before, his commanding words droned on, almost like a thick honey over the rest of the reading, “You were housed in a place that revered spirits, and a spirit took you from that home. The very same spirit spirited your heart away from the land of your birth, and brought you to this land, through fire, earth, water, and death. Surrounded by friends, you chose to cast them aside for power and found yourself instead ringed by enemies. Fleeing fear, you have ended up in loneliness' lap. You have put on many faces, but the true mask is the lie you tell yourself. You feigned death, to escape death, but find it waiting at the foot of your bed. In running from your fears, you have run from everything that made you happy.” He sighed, looking to the bones and the symbols on the skin and bones in front of him, “Trying to save life, you find yourself linked with death, bearing his child rather than the woman’s you loved. Trying to be civilized you find yourself entangled with a beast. Trying to save your mother, you brought her death. You wear a cloak of healing and maternal love, but beneath its soft embrace you hide savagery, pain, chaos, and a lust for power. In clawing at your loved ones for the attention you so desperately crave, you have rent them with the claws that you have made from jealousy and self pity. The debt that you have taken against the family you wish to be a part of, the friends that you spurned for your current station, and the world that you swore to protect has been called.”

He looked up and she looked into his eyes, when did they burn with an inner green fire? “You, Kanade, will bring about your own death, and are speeding toward it. Your recklessness will drive not only you, but everyone you love into the ground, unless you heed the words of the eaten one. Your shadow has grown, Kanade, and it will devour not only you but the world if you let it. If you keep running, you'll find yourself alone at the edge of the world, with only your guilt and pain behind you.” Batu closed his mouth, his eyes burning a bright yellow color, his mouth was closed, he looked like he was a puppet made of rough wood. A voice that belonged to her mother whispered in her left ear, “Right your wrongs, before it’s too late.” With a sigh he looked back down at the bones. They were blank. The skin was unmarked like it had been before. When had it grown so dark?

Kanade put a hand to her face, and found it wet with tears, she wiped them away and Batu stood, leaned over, and carefully replaced the bones, the cork, and rolled it back into the skin. He placed it back up on a shelf of his. He let the silence linger between them, the only noises were his bones, and Kanade’s silent sobs as she covered her eyes with her hands.

[wc: 3264/???? Nanowrimo]

[Kanade]

Batu brought over a cup of tea for Kanade and patted her gingerly on the back with his boney hand, “The bones never lie,” He said, troubled at what he had read in her past and her future, she could see it written plainly in the lines on his face. He had lit candles in the time that it took her to compose herself. The wounds of her past were ripped wide open and the ones she had thought she had healed from had poured open in front of him like a tap that he had turned on.

“What if I don’t believe it.” Kanade cleared her throat, her eyes hurt from the tears, and her whole body felt sore from the sobs.


“You believe it, or you wouldn’t have reacted like that.” Batu said sternly, his high raspy voice having returned from the reading. He sat down and poured himself a cup of tea, looking to the uneaten food in front of Kanade, “One thing that I have learned is that everything seems worse on an empty stomach. Could be a bit of wisdom from an old man who has skipped too many meals.”

“What was that bit-” Kanade shoved a bit of the food into her mouth, chewing it slowly at Batu’s glower. It barely had any taste, was cold and now soggy. It felt like mashed old meat pie. Like everything else, when she came back to it, it was cold and empty of joy. “What was that bit about the edge of the world.”

“I haven’t thrown the bones for anyone in a long time. The last time I did, someone disregarded them.” Batu sighed, a deep and weary sigh. Tears formed at the edges of his eyes, running down the wrinkles in his face like water down an irrigation canal. “I promised myself I wouldn’t use them again, but they called to me. When I ran into you, they meaning the bones called to me, and the last person they called to ended up dead inside a week.” He sighed, letting the tears drip down his jawline.

Kanade ate the rest of her food, thanked Batu for his hospitality, and stepped out into the night. The sudden dry cold met her lips, almost instantly chapping them, and now, more than in the previous past months, she was acutely grateful for Thabisa’s hair.

She turned the phrases over and over in her mind, climbing the stairs, she found them slick with the condensed moisture in the air. A thin sheet of ice made for treacherous walking. The children had all hunkered down somewhere else for the night, so Kanade took the way back that she had followed to get to the man’s shop.

Walking slowly, she turned the story over and over in her head. How else could he have known about her past. He didn’t accuse her of being a kumogakure no sato ninja, or a spy, or a traitor. He didn’t suspect that she was indeed, Kyoukan, Chiaki, given a second chance by fate and Thabisa’s sacrifice. She kicked a single stone into the river and growled at the cold, pulling her arms in close to her body and rubbing them to keep warm. She walked on, the shadows starting to get closer together and deeper as she walked out of the streetlights toward the familiar red glow of the district with her restaurant in it. The red light flickered and drew longer and deeper shadows than the normal lamplight of the other oil lamps and as she walked on, she could feel something following along behind her.

Whipping around, she wondered whether she could catch the one that was looking at her red handed, but as she whipped around she wished that she hadn’t turned around at all. There, in the shadows two streets down was the hulking shadow from before. It didn’t move, just stared at her, with two eyes made of the same light as the rest of the reddish glow that surrounded her, but the body was an inky black like the darkness that drifted down into pitch black in the alleyways. It was too abrupt, and as she screamed, the thing reared its head and laughed.

Then it let out a sound like metal grating on stone mixed with a deep gutteral growl as it charged her. Kanade took off, whipping down the streets as fast as she could go, using lamp posts as leverage for making the tight turns that were required to get out into the open of the brothel. She knew that at least a couple shinobi frequented the place, including the man who had helped her the previous night.

She stopped when she heard a scream, a child’s scream. The fear that she had before rushed past bravery and into rage. She caught the next lamp post, swung around like it was a gymnastic pole and whipped back toward where the thing was. If jutsu wasn’t going to work, at least it could tear her apart and not the child.

She raced back toward where the scream came from and ran past the thing in her haste, only catching sight of it out of the corner of her eye before it reached out, even faster than she was, and grabbed her by the neck, crushing any chance she had of screaming and lifted her by it.

It opened its mouth and laughed, a high pitched and manic laugh of a lunatic as she struggled, spots starting to cloud the corners of her vision. She kicked at its arm, but it went right through. She started to channel chakra, blue light surrounding her and the thing leaned in, its mouth opened and let out an ear-piercing scream, mimicking the first one that had made her turn around, then gave her a wicked, satisfied smile before slamming her into the cobbles. She coughed and was truly afraid of her situation as her fuuinjutsu didn’t activate, it raised her head up enough to see someone coming for her, she could see the hand-held lantern light coming closer becoming brighter. The thing slammed her head back into the cobbles again, the world twisted and everything went black.

She woke up, surrounded by dead bodies, some of them were people she vaguely recognized, Shuichi, Shinjiro, Tatsuo, Natsumi. She opened her mouth to scream, but found her windpipe blocked and coughed instead, struggling to stand. It was like moving through molasses. Kanade held out a hand to stop the spirit from attacking her and it cackled, turning around, its whole half-lupine, half humanesque features bathed in blood and viscerae from another person she recognized. Cherisa.

She tried to run toward the beast, but found the ground rushing up to meet her, and ended up falling hard on her shoulder. The beast loomed over her, she blinked and found its face pressed almost against hers, “You can’t run forever, body-snatcher. You’ll be devoured by me like so many others before you. First, I’ll kill everyone you know and love though. You brought this upon them.” It plunged its hand into her chest, right where her animus was.

Kanade woke with a start, coughing, feeling the swelling of her left eye and ear acutely. She groaned after the coughing fit, and laid back onto the plush pink pillow of the bed in the brothel. She was back there again. They had changed her clothing and had put her in a nighty.

A girl rushed into the room, “Thank the gods your alive.” She sighed in relief, “The doctor that came by before said that he hadn’t ever seen a genjutsu as strong as the one you were in, he even tried to release you from it himself but found it beyond his power. They were going to go get a Genjutsu expert to awaken you, but you’re alive, and safe!” The girl Kanade recognized as Hana and smiled, her split lip throbbing with the pain.

“Yeah, I am alive, a bit worse for the wear though, evidently.” She sighed. This was the first true injury she had sustained since she got this body, besides the poison. Everything hurt, and her head wouldn’t stop throbbing long enough for her to gather the chakra to make it stop hurting.

“Why didn’t the doc give me one of those soldier pills?” Kanade asked, holding onto her head and looking at Hana.

“He said that your wounds, externally, were superficial, but the Genjutsu could have been strong enough to drive you mad. He said that he couldn’t tell what kind it was, but that it was a very bad one.” Hana explained.

It was then that the madame, Watanabe, decided to poke her head around the corner, “You’re lucky that the men heard the commotion again. It looks like you were attacked by some sort of Shinobi. They’re still trying to figure out who could have done what they did to you.” She gave a relaxed and relieved smile, “You gave us all a scare there. We were thinking we would have to live without your cooking.”

That elicited a chuckle from Kanade, who had, decidedly, a couple of broken ribs and a broken humorous, which she didn’t find funny in the slightest.

“The doctor recognized you from the hospital and said that you could patch yourself up if you wanted to when you woke up, but that you would be the best judge of how much energy you want to use up to do that.” Watanabe shrugged, “And here I thought that you were just some smith and cook that opened their own restaurant across the street from me. You seem to wear many hats, Kanade-san.”

Kanade nodded, “One too many it seems.” She wondered if she had ever felt this tired, this beat up in all her life. Usually she got off a good jutsu or two before she got pummeled like this, and she scolded herself silently for being out of practice of putting up a jutsu before rushing into battle like she used to be. Relying, instead, on her fuuinjutsu to keep her out of harms way.

She looked up at Watanabe, “Can you get me a mirror? It’s easier to heal myself if I have a mirror that I can look at my injuries in.” She didn’t mention that sitting up was probably going to make her grit her teeth and cry since they were most likely completely fractured.

Wantanabe nodded and sent Hana off to get a mirror, pulling up the chair that was sitting in the cubby of the dry sink / vanity in the room and leaned back in it, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it with the tip of her finger.

“Surprised?” Watanabe asked, taking a long drag from the cigarette, smiling at Kanade and exhaling through the tobacco-yellowed smile and her nose, “Not all retired Kunoichi go into the academy, or into the other branches of the military. Not all of us are able to open up restaurants.” She shrugged, “But this keeps these girls safe, pays them well, and they don’t have to live on the streets. I pay them well, and they reward me with loyalty.”

Kanade cleared her throat and hadn’t really thought about what she would do if she retired from being a kunoichi. She never really thought that she would live that long, until she was an elemental body, and then she spent so much time trying to have a child in that body that she had gone numb to the idea of being alone, in the solemnity of forever.

Now that she had a mortal body once more, she could grow old, do things that she couldn’t have dreamed of before, and die. Just the promise of death put new meaning into her life. That and the secret trist she had with Shinjiro.

She would have to examine herself and see whether there were the telltale signs of internal damage from the spirit. She wondered what kind of trauma would make her body reject all of Shinjiro’s careful, but rushed, ministrations the last time that he visited.

Hana returned with a mirror and Kanade thanked her for it, not really answering Watanabe about what she thought or felt about her being a former Kunoichi. Instead, she was left alone with her thoughts, healing the deeper wounds that she couldn’t afford to leave alone, such as the broken bones. By the time she was done, she was ready to sleep again. The shutters were open but the windows were closed, so the light from the mid-morning sun shone in, illuminating everything in a pinkish light.

She slept, a thankfully dreamless sleep before arising again the next day, and finding herself in the same clothes. She quickly made the bed and looked out the window into the street behind the brothel. There were people bustling about, going about their daily lives, and the bright day and routine helped her muster the courage to put on her clothes, neatly folded and placed on the vanity, then step out into the hall.

She was greeted with an entirely silent brothel, no sounds of rustling or even the wind moving through the building. All was still and silent.

“Watanabe?” She called, not hearing her voice, but having it fall away into dead space without any sort of reverberation made her uncomfortable. It felt as if she were holding her hands over her ears. She was finding it harder to breathe as she looked around. The darkness of the house was starting to get to her, “Hana, Watanabe?” She called out their names again, and pressed a hand to her chest, wondering when it had gotten so hard to breathe. “We’re here.” Watanabe’s voice came from behind her, where her room was supposed to be. She wheeled around and saw a shadow it put its hand over her mouth, its red eyes boring into hers, the same shadow as the night that she got attacked. “Shhh, don’t want to wake the baby.”

Kanade’s head was roughly turned to the left where she was staring down a hallway at her own body, Kanade’s body, holding a baby, bouncing it up and down in a maternal way as she walked around a kitchen. She saw Shinjiro sitting at the table, tucking into a meal, reading a scroll and grunting at a couple of passages on it. Kanade, the one with the baby, walked over while Kanade watched herself bend over and give Shinjiro a kiss.

She watched herself, look down the hallway and then the Kanade in the kitchen’s eyes glowed the same red as the shadow, and the shadow holding her head laughed, “Do it.” It whispered. The Kanade with the child smiled, the smile growing wider and wider as her eyes, a deep red color started to have their irises bleed into the red color until all that was left was that red. Kanade watched herself, the Kanade in the kitchen take the baby’s head and twist the neck backward in a powerful and swift movement. Letting the small body fall to the floor.

Kanade felt hot tears on her face as she watched, in horror and third person as the other Kanade walked over to Shinjiro, who hadn’t noticed the babe fall, picked him up by the collar and kissed him deeply, passionately, all the while growing hotter and hotter, his skin started to boil, started to pop and hiss and crack with the heat and then he caught fire as the Kanade still kissed his charring flesh. She discarded Shinjiro and then ran toward Kanade, grabbing her by the face, staring into her eyes as the monster had, her eyes all red like its were, “I will take your body once you are dead, and your family will suffer, as I have suffered Body Snatcher.”

Kanade couldn’t breathe, felt her body burning up.

She awoke again, the same room, the same light filtering through the windows and let out a slow low moan. Was this reality, or a genjutsu?

[nanowrimo 2684/?????]

[Kanade]

A light knock came on the door which elicited a jump a good half meter above the bed from Kanade who pulled the covers up to her nose and stared at the door. She had reverted to the same girl that had the dreams from all those years ago, when she was still a miko at the Kyoukan shirine. She shivered and her breathing slowed to a bare whisper through the fabric of the sheets. If this was a genjutsu, or a nightmare, better to stay in the room which was in the light so that she could see her foe better.

Watanabe opened the door a crack and then smiled at Kanade, who let the covers drop in relief at the woman holding a tray of food, sandwiches piled four stacks high and a clear glass of water. “Sandwiches for healing, the doctor said that you would need more rest, as the genjutsu that you were under had taken a toll on you, but you look paler than before.” She set the tray down on the wardrobe and came over to the bed, hiking her dress up so that she could sit on the edge of it before placing her forehead against Kanade’s own.

The woman smelled of saffron and mahogany, with a hint of lemon. “Hmm, still have a fever.” She sighed, “Though it’s hard to tell with that hair of yours.” she pointed to Kanade’s hair and her hand instinctively went up to run her fingers through it.

“Don’t know how you Enkouten can stand the heat as well as you do, but I suppose if I had fire for hair, I’d run a temperature constantly too.” Watanabe placed an arm behind her, getting comfortable on the bed. “It’s been a while since you went back to sleep, you must need your rest.”

“How long?” Kanade asked, looking between the woman and the tray, her stomach protesting, loudly, that the food was so far away.

“Almost a week. Doctor came in a couple of times to check up on you, put an I.V. in once to give you fluids but was worried about transferring you to the hospital. He diagnosed you with severe chakra exhaustion and told me to let you rest and wake up in your own time. The second time he came back, you were breathing shallow, and we were afraid we might lose you.”

Kanade nodded, her face turned toward the bedcovers and away from Watanabe burning hot with shame. It seemed like she had been nothing but a nuisance for the madame and her girls since she had taken up there.

“I am just glad that you’re doing alright, but maybe there is something your clan can do?” Watanabe raised her eyebrows, her tone one of concern, rather than annoyance like Kanade had thought would be the case.

Kanade opened her mouth, smacking her lips a couple of times dryly before speaking, “What do I owe you for your hospitality? This goes far beyond a couple of meals.” She pulled the covers away and kicked her legs out from under them, being careful not to knock off Watanabe who was still sitting on the edge of the bed.

Kanade’s legs had atrophied a small amount and her head felt light and the world shifted uncomfortably to the left as she steadied herself. Watanabe patted her shoulder, “If anything, you owe that doctor.” She nodded, “Said that keeping your window open would be a help to you, so that’s what we did. He didn’t want you to develop something from lack of fresh air, and it seemed like the sunlight helped every once in a while. You slept better during the day than the night time.”

Kanade nodded, getting up from the bed unsteadily, walked over and took the glass and two triangular halves of sandwiches before returning to sit on the edge of the bed, “What doctor was it?” Kanade asked, chewing the bite of the soft white breaded turkey sandwich.

“It was Hayashi-sama.” Watanabe said, “One of the girls was lucky enough to bump into him on his way into the hospital.” Kanade hadn’t heard of Hayashi, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t an actual doctor. The fact that she hadn’t heard of him meant that he might have been an adjunct or part of the Shinobi forces that was just volunteering. Perhaps that meant that she would be able to look him up on the Shinobi roster for Iwagakure. Being a Jounin had certain advantages for investigating who had treated her.

Now she lamented the fact that they hadn’t taken her to the hospital. She wasn’t envious of the bill at the end of the stay, but was more concerned about what had happened to her the last couple of days. The windows being open when she had obviously been under attack from a genjutsu just made her that much more suspicious of this doctor that had been treating her. That and the intravenous therapy could have been used to keep her under.

True, if a patient of hers had come in and was severely dehydrated she would have prescribed the same treatment, but seeing someone in their home was something that Kanade was loathe to do. Hospitals kept meticulous records that were checked by the nursing staff, and other doctors. It was how mistakes were caught, especially by exhausted doctors. That and it was how they caught malpractice.

Watanabe snapped her fingers in front of Kanade’s face and she realized she had been caught in reverie again, “Still tired?” Watanabe asked.

“Weak, but not tired.” Kanade nodded, “I have a lot of research ahead of me it seems.”

“Research?” Watanabe tilted her head to the side, obviously wanting an explanation.

“Yeah, I want to know what this doctor prescribed to me, and what he found for my general state of health. You said that his name was Hayashi-sama?” She got up, scribbled it on a scrap bit of paper, folded it carefully and placed it on the wardrobe.

“Yes.” Watanabe got up and patted out the creases in her dress, “Well, don’t let me keep you from your research then.” She smiled and made toward the door, “But I would eat the rest of those sandwiches first. There’s more to drink down in the dining room if you’d like. We usually set out a side-table of refreshments for our guests that are staying longer than just the hour that they’re allotted.” She chuckled, “But most of the time we just eat them ourselves throughout the next day so that they don’t go stale.”

“Been meaning to ask where you get your food from.” Kanade started to take off the nighty, but hesitated as she had caught Watanabe in the middle of opening the door.

“Yeah, it’s Toshi-san down in the market. He usually runs around and gathers our supplies, talks to bakers and cooks and brings it to us already made. He has the most connections of the general food distributors down there in the market-place.” She paused, the door ajar enough for a cat to slip through, “Did you want me to introduce you sometime?”

“Yes please.” Kanade nodded and smiled as Watanabe said her goodbyes and assured Kanade that she would introduce them as soon as was convenient for both of them. Kanade dressed quickly, not wanting to leave her shinobi tools behind this time and took off out the window, jumping easily across the busy intersection to the rooftop across the street from the brothel. Most onlookers weren’t used to shinobi taking off or coming back from the brothel, so it elicited more than a few open mouthed points in her direction.

She landed and looked around for even one of her butterflies, feeling quite naked without them. Not a whisper of their presence in sight. She frowned and sped off toward the registrar first. Going with that hunch over any other one, thinking that this man called Hayashi was probably behind the recent events. She would be able to glean what information she could out of him and end this swiftly, if that were the case.

After arriving and waiting her turn in line, since she didn’t have an appointment, she flashed her papers signifying she was a Jounin and asked whether the registrar had anyone by the name of Hayashi in the registry. There were six different Hayashi’s and Kanade ruled out the two that were female as Wartanabe called the person a ‘him’. It was a bit presumptive to do so, but she didn’t have much time today to investigate these people. She asked if any were medical shinobi. That narrowed it down to two candidates.

The registrar asked the copier to take the two scrolls with the information on the two suspects to be copied, retaining the original copies for themselves. Kanade was taking a bit of a risk, moving against shinobi of the village for this, but Tatsuo had all but written her a blank check to investigate particularly suspicious occurrences and people because of the cultist scare. She had only enlisted the best and brightest for the missions that she had handed out, and people that could either be trusted from the get-go or that were on the list of trusted individuals from Tatsuo.

These two shinobi weren’t on either of those lists, which meant that if a cultist had caught wind of her mission given to her by Tatsuo, that they could be targeting her to ‘cut the head off the snake’ as it were. She sped across the rooftops, seeing many of her fellow shinobi doing the same thing. It was noon, after all, and some of them were on missions of their own.

Kanade spotted a man by the same description as one of the Hayashis, he was moving at a tremendous pace, compared to the rest of the shinobi, looking more akin to a grasshopper or frog for his movements. In this instance she would have just used her butterflies to stop him, but being without them, a useful tool in her arsenal, she was forced to call out.

“Hayashi-san, a moment of your time!” He was a chuunin, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t be respectful of him.

“Yes?” He stopped on a rooftop, one away from the one she was on. Not wanting to shout, Kanade moved to be on top of the same rooftop, balancing on the roof ridge, fully wide enough for her to stand with one foot in front of the other rather comfortably.

“I am Kanade.” She flashed her Iwagakure headband around her waist, “Jounin.” She stopped when she was a couple meters away from him, “I was wondering if you recognized me.” She stared at him and he shook his head.

“No Kanade-sama, I can’t say that I do.” He bowed deeply in respect for her status in the village and ran a hand through his red hair, “What can I do for you? I was on my way to another mission, but I assume that you might be here to tell me that you need me to do something else?”

“I just had a few questions to ask you.” She shrugged, then took out a notebook, unfolding the scroll with his description and name at the top, “You started with Iwagakure about four years ago, as a genin, graduating from the academy at the age of twelve.”

“Yes, that’s right.” The young man nodded.

“And you are Hayashi-san that was given the role of Medical Chuunin?” She looked up and tried to read whether he was lying or not. She didn’t have as good a time as Shinjiro, and cursed herself for not asking him to train her on the ways and subtleties of not only lying, but also seeing through others’ deceit.

“Yes, I am.” The young man agreed again.

“One final question.” She wrote down next to his name, ‘most likely not the suspect.’ and looked up at him, “How would you treat a patient that had been asleep for the past two days?”

“I’d try to release them from genjutsu first, I suspect.” He thought for a minute then nodded, “Then I’d check to see if their pulse was steady, and their breathing, and then I would probably take them to the hospital if I didn’t see any obvious wounds.” He shrugged and smiled apologetically.

“Thank you for your time.” Kanade said dismissively, and put ‘definitely not.’ on the paper before snapping the notebook shut and replacing it.

“Do you mind if I ask, are you just quizzing all of the chuunin and genin that are medical shinobi?” He asked his voice rising at the end in hope.

“Yes.” Kanade nodded, and put it at the back of her mind that she should probably go and ask for a roster of active duty medical shinobi from the registrar after this conversation.

“How’d I do?” He raised his eyebrows in question.

“If you hadn’t done well, I wouldn’t have dismissed you.” Kanade’s irritation at his delay leaked into her tone.

“Right, apologies Kanade-sama.” He bowed in farewell and took off, giving her one more look over his shoulder, obvious worry on his face. She suspected that it was because of his status as a medical shinobi, and that she had probably placed a bit of strain on him by asking him all of these questions. She sighed and headed back to the registrar before departing, this time with an entire listing of medical shinobi, ranks Genin to Jounin.

She stopped a couple of people along the way, asking them the same three questions, and received the same answer, with a little bit of variation, depending on how used to human anatomy they were, or their experience in the medical field. As the sun touched the walls surrounding Iwagakure, Kanade finally veered toward the residence of the other Hayashi, expecting him to be there since he was not on active duty or assigned a mission.

Alighting on his doorstep, she knocked three times before straightening her outfit and waiting expectantly for him to open it. A small child, only about seven years of age or so opened the door. She looked up at Kanade’s hair and smiled the wide opened awe-struck innocent smile of unimpeded innocence. “Your hair is super pretty!”

“Well thank you, yours is too.” She said to the little girl, who moved a hand instinctively to her hair, pushing some of the black trusses back, “Yours is so sleek and pretty.” Kanade reassured the girl as she pursed her lips, obviously doubting Kanade.

“What can I do for you miss-lady?” She asked, blinking rapidly in confusion and keeping the door only ajar enough to peek through.

“Aiya, who’s at the door?” A woman’s voice came from deeper inside the abode.

“I dunno mom!” She looked expectantly at Kanade.

“I’m Kanade.” The girl relayed it back to her mother in the shrill shriek of a child, trying to communicate to someone inside that was too busy to be bothered with inviting guests in.

The telephone game lasted a couple of brief exchanges, what was Kanade doing there, who did she want to see, no Hayashi, the girls father, wasn’t home right now. He had gone to the market to pick up some fresh lettuce and fish. Kanade smiled and gave the girl two ryo, “Thank you for being the message bearer.”

“You’re welcome lady!” she smiled and shut the door in Kanade’s face, forgetting her manners and Kanade heard the squeal as she ran back to show her mother the money that Kanade had handed her.

Kanade took off, going back toward the market as the last rays of the sun cascaded across the rooftops, making her shadow seem long and menacing, bringing to mind the shadow that was chasing her, probably even now.

Heading across the rooftops at a walking pace was a man with the same hair, cropped short, as the child. He had a lean dancer’s build and stark blue eyes. Holding a plastic bag over his shoulder, he hadn’t seen Kanade yet, as his gaze was fixed on the tiles in front of him.

“Hayashi-san?” Kanade called out to him, as she had with the previous Hayashi. He looked up, tilting his head at Kanade as she approached him at a jog across the rooftops.

“Yes, how can I help you?” Hayashi blinked twice, no recognition in his eyes as Kanade sighed. This man probably wasn’t who she was after either.

“Are you Hayashi-san of the medical branch here?” Kanade flashed her band and introduced herself as a Jounin.

“Yes, I am.” He smiled with confusion on his face and in his eyes, “Sorry, but do you mind if we walk and talk? My wife is waiting at home for me for the fish and Lettuce, and if I am not back here soon, then I am probably going to be on the menu rather than this halibut.”

“Sure.” Kanade walked alongside him, asking him the same questions as she had the others. When she got to the question as to what he would do, he gave the standard textbook answer, though he said that he would probably make sure that the patient hadn’t sustained a concussive wound beforehand, as it was unsafe to move a victim of that particular kind of wound.

Kanade nodded along and sighed. Tonight wasn’t her night, she thought as the first couple of stars started to light up the purpling sky.

“I won’t take up any more of your time.” She said as they got to the roof before his house and he paused looking down at his front door.

“Do you want to come in for some food? I am sure that the wife wouldn’t mind making up another plate.” He offered, swinging the bag in front of her. She was a fan of halibut, but it was best to distance herself from him.

“Nah, I gotta report back to the registrar, tell him that the examinations are over.” Kanade nodded along with him as he started to nod knowingly.

“Yeah, I get that. It seems like the missions are coming faster and faster these days with the Wind Country seizure over.” He shrugged, “Well, this is me. If you want to, stop by any time you like.” He smiled warmly at her and dipped his head. Kanade returned the motion and watched as he hopped down, being greeted by his gremlin of a daughter that clawed her way up his leg and waist to wrap her arms around his neck. He kissed her nose and walked in, announcing he was home and closed his front door with a snap.

“Well shit.” Kanade cursed, looking up at the sky once more, then repeated the curse three more times before heading back to the registrar’s office. It would be closing any time now, and without a time piece, it was hard to tell when that would be.

She arrived to one of the copiers locking up for the night. Kanade asked whether or not she could leave a message that she had returned here and if the registrar needed any more information he could reach out to her. The copier blinked bleary eyes at her and nodded, scribbling a crude note on a scrap bit of paper he tore off of a larger sheaf and then stuck it in the ‘incoming’ slot. He pointed to it and said that if she had anything else between now and when they opened in the morning, just put it in this slot and that it would be addressed when they opened in the morning, before opening his mouth in a jaw-cracking yawn and waving farewell to Kanade.

As she took again to the rooftops, she steered herself toward the growing red light of the brothel in the night sky, wrapped up in self-doubt, confusion, and most of all frustration at arriving at a dead-end.