[Plotboard] [Graded] First Contact

[Niro]

Tatsuo grunted as his phasmashiin caught the beast’s flesh before it erupted into a full on yell. The jounin stumbled over and out of the beast as the torrent of blood erupted from the hole in the middle of the worm’s chest before collapsing to his knees and staying on all fours while taking heavy breaths. Tatsuo took a quick inventory of himself; his body was covered in burns from the stomach acid and he was bruised, bleeding, and had several broken bones. Looking up at the worm, Tatsuo had looked at just the correct time to see the worm topple over on its side and flail before it finished moving and bled out on the floor.

Tatsuo grinned to himself in the small lake of blood before lifting his head to Kotaru and giving him a weak smile before toppling over, passed out in the blood.

The brutal, bloody scene continued to play out in Tatsuo's unconscious mind as lay where he lie. It continued to cycle throughout, permeating his subconscious before the boy's eyes snapped open and he sat up in a flash and deep, erratic breaths wracking his lungs and pressing them against his injured ribs. Pain radiated throughout his body immediately after he had sat up. Whatever wounds he had collected in his fight with the leviathan worm began to throb; the burns covering his body ached in pain along with the broken ribs flaring up in extreme pain due to his breathing. Tatsuo grunted in pain as his head swiveled around in an attempt to figure out just what was going on and failing before he looked down at himself.

The jounin was on a makeshift bed made out of rock and some skinned animal with his arms and body wrapped in heavy layers of gauze. Bringing his left hand to his cheek, Tatsuo was able to confirm his face was at least free of the bandages. "Where the hell am I?" Tatsuo mumbled to himself, his voice hoarse from having been unused, as he once again looked up and realized the space was actually lit with some sort of glowing blue-green lantern hanging in the middle of the room. Taking a look around the room, it had the lantern hanging from the roof which was around fifteen feet above him with the room having a circumference of twenty or so feet and an exit leading to who knew where.

Clack, clack

The sound of footsteps reverberated throughout the air and Tatsuo's ears perked up as he heard it. They continued and grew louder before a black and red figure emerged from the exit way of the room. Standing within the frame of the exit, a black and orange figure stood and it wasn't human. Tatsuo's eyes immediately narrowed and he rolled from the bed, ignoring the pain roaring across his body, onto his feet and into a battle ready stance. The figure's overall body shape was humanoid but it was made out of what seemed to be obsidian stone with glowing orange lines of lava across its body. Both its knees and shoulders were capped with thick protrusions while its hands and face shared the same orange glow that the lines across its body were made of. Atop its head was an obsidian helmet with eye holes cut out so its fiery orange eyes were visible as they stared at Tatsuo.

"Oh, you're awake. Good." The creature spoke, its voice gravelly and deep as it stood still within the entrance, not wanting to spook Tatsuo even more.

"Who the hell are you? Where the hell am I? Where are my friends?!" Tatsuo went on, a look of anger taking its place upon his face as he tried to remember just how the hell he even got here.

"First off, relax. I'm not your enemy. I am one of many and we are even farther within the earth than where you fought the Beast. Your friends are alive but similar to you, the suffered a range of injuries from chakra exhaustion to more serious injuries our healers have to continuously care for." The creature spoke, raising its hands and splaying them out in a non-threatening manner in an attempt to calm down the boy.

Tatsuo kept his stance for several moments as he stared down the creature, trying to feel out what it had said and if it was truth or a trap. 'If it was a trap I wouldn't have been bandaged and in a bed...shit.' Tatsuo thought to himself before dropping his stance and dropping down to one knee with a grunt as pain exploded across his body once again.

The creature walked forward towards Tatsuo, stopping in front of him and extending its hand out to help him up. Tatsuo warily looked at the appendage for a moment before gripping it with his right hand and pulling himself to his feet with the creature's help. Once standing again, the creature turned and began to walk out of the exit. "Follow me, we shall go to your comrades." It spoke before resuming its movement and beginning to walk out of the room. Tatsuo followed closely behind it as they exited the room into a hall lit with multiple blue-green lanterns. The hall was continued for several minutes before the creature turned right and into another room, this one larger than his own, where several other creatures where along with Kotaru and Mitsuo within two beds. The two beds were similar to his own, made of stone and covered with some layer of animal skin. His friends were covered in bandages and unconscious but breathing and alive. Looming over them were two creatures made up of some green crystal who were touching their chests and channeling the familiar green chakra of iijutsu into them.

Tatsuo rushed over to the two placed in side-by-side beds and began to laugh in relief as he slid down and took a seat on the ground, the relief too much for him to handle in combination with his wounds.

[Kao]

Kotaru was still unconscious. Though he didn't know it at the time, the last encounter with the worm had exhausted him. The parts of his body that had been exposed to the leviathan's acid were already bandaged up, as those were his most serious physical wounds. The spirits had removed his jacket and shirt to tend to his shoulder, which had a large gash from falling rocks. The bleeding had stopped, and the crystal spirit was working on stitching the wound back together. Meanwhile, tiny blue-white orbs hovered over his face and where his shiin organs were, their lights pulsing rhythmically each time they brushed against him. The boy's face was still twisted from fear, from pain and distress, but as the spirits worked on his injuries his expression would slowly became more tranquil.

The crystal spirit tending to Kotaru turned toward Tatsuo as he fell to his knees. It began to hum at him, and initially it would sound like simple noises and musical tones. But as Tatsuo listened it would slowly become intelligible and sound like words in his head. "...should not be moving," it began, indirectly chastising the obsidian spirit that had led the eldest Akari there. "Your injuries are bad. You must rest." At that moment, a few of the small orbs rose from Kotaru and flashed at the crystal spirit. "This one has the least serious wounds of the three of you. He may be awakened, if you wish." The green light of the crystal spirit's iijutsu intensified and then faded. For a moment nothing happened, but soon Kotaru began to stir.

The young Akari moaned and struggled to open his eyes. Like Tatsuo, when he finally woke up he had no idea where he was and it took a moment for him to get his bearings. The crystal spirit came into view first, and his eyes widened and he more frantically looked around the room. When Kotaru saw Tatsuo it seemed to him that the older Akari was collapsed on the floor, and beyond him he could see the top of Mitsuo's head. Suddenly the memories of what happened came rushing back to him. The floating orbs around him looked awfully like what had stopped him from getting to his cousin, and like the things that had carried him away. Without warning he shot upright in the bed and smacked at the orb spirits still attached to him and then clenched his fist, slamming it into the crystal spirit.

"AHHH FUCK!!!" The move only succeeded in breaking bones in his hand but he was undeterred, and he raised his opposite hand to do the same thing. Three of the orb spirits caught his hand, stopping it in midair. "MOVE!! TATS!! TATS YOU'RE--" The boy thrashed and his melashiin manifested, wildly smacking at everything within reach as he tried to get up and get to his cousin. Tatsuo was alive, and Mitsuo was also there though he was mostly out of view. He'd be damned if he let these things separate them again, or worse. The crystal spirit seemed unfazed, and as Kotaru flailed and screamed it hummed once, and the orb spirits attached themselves to his head and chest. Almost immediately, Kotaru stopped struggling and the tiny spirits guided him back onto the bed.

He was still conscious but barely so, unable to move or even talk until the spirits could calm his breathing and heart rate, which had skyrocketed as soon as he laid eyes on Tatsuo. "This one is fiery," the crystal spirit commented as it began to heal his newly broken hand. The spirits' anesthesia left him groggy, but awake, and he stared at Tatsuo with heavily lidded eyes brimming with relieved tears.

[Yura]

Mitsuo found himself surrounded by darkness, nothing visible but himself. He was viewing himself in some sort of third person view only further displaying his isolation. Is this death? He asked himself as he looked around. If it was, he was disappointed. If there was an afterlife, he had hoped that he might at least be able to see Tats. If he had to spend the rest of eternity alone in the darkness, it was going to be a miserable experience.

Mitsuo suddenly felt himself coming out of his distorted dreamlike state as a feeling of consciousness suddenly overcame him and he started to open his eyes. With Kota's outburst, the crystal-like spirits had abandoned their work on Mitsuo temporarily, allowing the boy to come out of the coma-like state that they had kept him in while they worked. The feeling surprised him; he had truly thought that he was dead. And when he saw the lava-like soldier towering over him, he felt himself begin to panic. It's attention wasn't on him though, and when he painfully turned his head to see what it was starring at, he felt his eyes begin to well up as his eyes fell on Tatsuo kneeling on the floor next to his "bed". "You-'re alive..." He muttered, his face turning into a relieved smile. His throat was so dry that his voice was barely a whisper. "Kota too..." he added, seeing the boy laying back on a bed across from him. The fool must have ignored his orders like Mitsuo figured he would, but at least he was alive. He didn't know where he was, nor did he know exactly what the strange creatures around him were, but both of his teammates were alive when they all should have been dead. He had questions, but he was too relieved to ask them.

When he tried to lift himself up, however, the room began to spin and he slumped back onto the bed as one of the glowing crystal-like spirits zoomed over to his bed and hovered just above his chest. "You came closest to death. You must rest." it buzzed at him. Mitsuo mentally began scanning down his body and realized that in addition to the overwhelming sense of exhaustion that he felt, his entire body was sore with varying degrees of pain depending on the area. He was sure that he had a few broken ribs and he remembered that his arms had been burned by the parasite's acid attacks, a fact that the bandages on his arms confirmed. Suddenly the crystal spirit began to glow, a familiar green hue emanating from its body as a feeling of numbness and relaxation began to overtake him.

"Please, I don't want to sleep." Mitsuo muttered, trying to resist the overwhelming urge to close his eyes.

"You are injured. You must." It replied, the glowing intensifying.

"Please...I won't move, I promise." He pleaded, his voice barely a whisper. After a few moments, the creature's glow dimmed and the feeling of drowsiness began to dissipate.

"Fine." It buzzed flatly, "You move, you sleep." It then continued to glow as several other of its kind joined it over Mitsuo's body and began to glow as well. Mitsuo could feel their chakra working its way around his body as the pain from his injuries began to dull.

"And Masaru?" He asked as he turned his head back towards Tatsuo. The man's absence did not bode well for his fate.

[Niro]

Tatsuo's laughter trailed off into a cough as Kotaru woke up and caused a scene. The poor boy only caused his wounds to worsen with a broken hand added to the list of injuries. Tatsuo could already feel his body starting to piece itself together, the burns fading away as his strong chakra once again became active throughout his body. The bones of his rib cage mending the fractures within them even though it still hurt to take too deep a breath for the eldest Akari.

"Yeah, Kota. I'm alive. We're okay, they're non-hostile." Tatsuo coughed out as he got up and moved between the two beds and sat on the ground, ignoring the crystal spirits words that he was injured. "I'll be...alright with a little more rest and some iijutsu." Tatsuo affirmed to the spirit, nodding in thanks at its worry. The young jounin placed his hand on Kotaru's head, running fingers through the scared boy's hair like Tatsuo's mother used to when he was afraid as a child. Mitsuo had also awoken at this point, joining the land of the conscious. "Yeah, bud. I'm alive. Thing thought it could eat me? Heh, getting eaten from the inside out sure is one ironic way for that...thing to die." Tatsuo went on, raising his other hand up and placing it on Mitsuo's bicep where he gave it a tight squeeze. "Look at you, and here I thought I was the one about to die. Yeesh..." He trailed off, shaking his head before focusing his gaze on the obsidian spirit.

"There was a fourth with us. A man named Masaru and his notes. Did he make it?" He asked the spirit but he already knew the answer. Masaru hadn't been in his room or theirs.

"We found no fourth body. You three were all we were able to recover but we did found a bound book of notes. One moment." The obsidian spirit turned on his heel and out of the room, the click of his feet echoing for a couple seconds before it faded away.

Tatsuo kept his one hand moving throughout Kotaru's hair and his other still held onto Mitsuo as he grimaced. "Y'know, had it been the previous team who had fought this beast rather than running? They'd be dead. Glad it was us, in the end." He explained before the clicking of the obsidian spirits feet once again pierced the air. The sound grew louder as the spirit reentered the room with Masaru's notebook in hand. He moved to Tatsuo where he opened it and placed it lightly in his lap for the young man to see.

Tatsuo's eyes ran over the book in its entirety. It was banged up and dirty but intact with all of the notes. Masaru's sacrifice hadn't been in vain. "I'm...torn. I'm sad he's gone but at the same time glad we have the notes." Tatsuo sighed before looking up at the obsidian spirit. "For starters, what was that thing? All we know was that it was some sort of guard to some fuuinjutsu." He asked, hoping the spirit to have answers.

"You're correct in your observation. It was a guard but in more way than one. Whoever...whatever pulled us into this plane released it from its own realm shortly before pulling us into this world. It prowled and roamed these depths, preventing us from moving upwards. Any attempts were thwarted and we were forced to retreat." The spirit explained, crossing its arms across its chest.

"We? How many spirits are down here?" Tatsuo asked as he digested the information. Not only had that beast been an issue for Iwagakure, but for these spirits as well. Hopefully him slaying it would go a long way.

"There are...I shall show you. Once he is healed up enough to be moved." The obsidian spirit looked at the crystal spirits working on Mitsuo. "When possible, we shall move him to a mobile bed so we may show you just who and what we are."

[Kao]

Even after Tatsuo ensured him that the spirits were friendly, and even as they healed his newly broken hand, Kotaru wasn't convinced. They had dealt with too much that day - if it was even the same day, it was hard to tell - and it was hard for the boy to not see an enemy at every turn. He eyed the floating orb spirits, lazily following their movements as they seemed to caress his skin. The look normally would have been one of fury had he not been sedated, and on top of that the orbs were influencing his emotions by forcing him to be docile. It was a foreign sensation, but it allowed the boy to truly appreciate that Tatsuo was here, and despite his injuries he was alive and well. He blinked, the tears in his eyes spilling over, and he turned his head slightly so no one would see.

Somehow it wasn't surprising that Masaru didn't make it, but hearing it confirmed sent a small jolt through his gut. He'd tried to get the fuuinjutsu master out of harm's way, but the man didn't stand a chance in the chaos that had followed. Truthfully Kotaru wasn't too hung up about Masaru's death, but he wondered how that would affect the three of them once they reported the mission results. "Have you calmed?" The spirit tore him from his thoughts and he looked back toward it, then down to his now healed hand. The young jounin couldn't speak, but the spirit seemed to take that as a yes. It ceased its iijutsu technique that kept him unmoving, and Kotaru slowly regained feeling in his body. The floating orbs wouldn't leave him alone though, and he resigned himself to letting them tumble over the surface of his skin.

When he sat up and saw Mitsuo, he finally saw the extent of the Enkouten's wounds. He cursed inwardly, but he was relieved that his efforts to save Mitsuo had paid off. With a grunt he shifted to the edge of his bed, ignoring the disproving hums from the crystal spirit. He was sore, but he couldn't complain with his friends in the states that they were. He flexed his hand as Tatsuo and the weird obsidian spirit guy spoke.

"Mitsuo is half dead," Kotaru said while glowering at the spirits in the room. "Can't you just tell us here what's going on? What do you mean it was a guard in more ways than one? Why are you trying to move up? You should all stay down here."

[Yura]

Mitsuo's heart sank at the revelation of Masaru's fate. He hadn't know him long, but Mitsuo had liked the man. Sure he was a bit nervous and complained a lot, but it was clear from their first conversation and then from watching the older man investigate the seals that he had been an extremely intelligent scholar of a shinobi. Shinobi like Mits or Tats or even Kota, shinobi that were extremely combat oriented, were the ones that always got talked about, but it was only because of shinobi like Masaru that he village was able to advance the way that it did. Shinobi like him never really got the recognition they deserved and there was now one less of them in the village. He did his job, but we couldn't do ours. Mitsuo thought to himself as he stared at Masaru's notebook in Tatsuo's hands. They were supposed to protect him down here and they hadn't. It was a fact that they were all going to have to live with.

Mitsuo soon turned his attention back to the orbs that were floating over various parts of his body, lightly glowing as they worked to heal him. He had to admit, while he was still sore all over, he did feel somewhat better than he had when he first woke up. "It's alright, Kota. Whether or not I can move was never a question." Mitsuo quipped back as he lifted his arm into the air, internalizing a groan. "The real question is whether or not these guys are going to let me move." He pointed to the orbs as he spoke. "Whatever it is you want to show us, I'd like to see."

[Niro]

Tatsuo stared at Kotaru as the boy opened his mouth and decided to be rude of all things. He was a jounin, yes, but sometimes he wondered if Kotaru realized the responsibilities that came with the position. His hand and arm raised up before coming down upon the back of Kotaru's head with the sternest stare, mixed with some anger, Tatsuo had even mustered painted on his face.

"Kotaru, seriously?" Tatsuo asked the boy, his tone suggesting it was rhetorical. His eyes shifted between the spirits around them before he sighed and began to explain. "We're...who knows where, surrounded by spirits, one of us is on death's doorstep and the other other is still wounded to a point he doesn't think he could fight his way out right now. Do you really think being rude and endangering not only your life but the rest of your squad is smart?" Tatsuo got up, grunting as he pushed off the bed and stood up straight. Tatsuo shifted his gaze to the obsidian spirit before bowing his head. "I'm sorry for his tone and my own words; I hope you'll forgive us."

"Do not worry about it. Do you believe we could move him?" The spirit spoke to its crystal brethren.

The spirit hummed for a moment before it channeled chakra and a levitating bed of stone formed from the ground. The small orbs circled around Mitsuo before they began to levitate him as well and moved him over to the bed, gently setting him down on the floating slab.

"Follow me. I shall explain." The spirit went on, turning and exiting the room. Tatsuo followed behind him, each step sending a radiating pain up each of his legs and into his hips. The crystal spirits hovered around the levitating bed, keeping their iijutsu active as they moved. The group traveled in silence for several minutes before an illuminated doorway signified the end of darkened hallway. Stepping through it, the group would find themselves on the side of a cliff, a good twenty feet in the air. Ledges filled with more hallways were above and below them, ten feet separating each layer. The cavern in front of them was huge, larger than anything they'd seen before in the Catacombs. Dotted throughout the cavern were torches, on the walls and on the stone structures. Small buildings made of stone and rock filled with cavern with spirits bustling about on the ground floor.

"Whoever released the seal and brought us here has trapped us here. The Leviathan was a guard dog to prevent the seal from being activated and us ripped from our realms. It's secondary purpose served to prevent us from moving upwards; each attempt was thwarted. In regards to moving upwards, we have no idea where we are. We just wanted to know where. After the beast was slain, our scouts moved upwards and found your village's base camp. Upon realizing we were beneath a shinobi faction, we've decided our best course of action is to stay down here and work with the village to help us get home. Be warned, however. Released along with us non-hostile spirits were many hostile ones who have traveled and settled in various parts of these caverns. Do these answers satisfy you?" The spirit finished, sweeping an arm out as he explained their predicament.

Tatsuo blinked after the explanation and swept his gaze over the colony of spirits forced to live in a realm that was not home. "Yeah...I guess so. For me at least. You guys?" Tatsuo asked, not removing his gaze from the well lit floor of the cavern as he tried to identify how many different types and elements the spirits possessed.

[Kao]

Kotaru had long ago lost count of how many times Tatsuo knocked him upside the head. Each and every time he deserved it, and each and every time the boy still didn't expect the blow. He groaned, an almost pathetic "Owww!!" escaping his lips as his hands shot up to cradle his head. He started to fiercely argue back, but the small spirit orbs quickly gathered around him and tumbled and rolled over his head. The pain quickly subsided, and so did the boy's irritation at being struck so harshly. He managed to utter, "You said they were friendly, so why not be honest?" before Tatsuo apologized, and after that the orb spirits had done their job in easing both his pain and his bad attitude.

Kotaru walked behind Mitsuo's floating bed, keeping an eye on his injured friend. No matter what Tatsuo said he still didn't trust the spirits, though he and the tiny orbs had taken a liking to one another. They floated around him, brushing against him and rolling along the surface of his skin, and he absentmindedly juggled a couple of them from one hand to the next.

When they finally got to where the spirits were residing, Kotaru balked. There had to be hundreds and hundreds of the things in such an enormous area, and from the looks of the spirits he could see bustling about, there were nearly as many different types of spirits. "Satisfy?" he echoed, momentarily at a loss for words. "How can we be satisfied when we don't know who or what did this?"

The young jounin turned to his friends, his expression concerned and grim. "I don't like this. There's gonna be trouble from both sides as long as these guys are down here. Hostile spirits...if they're anything like that giant worm then the village is in danger. People might panic and overreact, and I guarantee you there's some people above ground that will want to take advantage of that in one way or another. None of us know how to deal with spirits other than by using brute force, and clearly that won't always go well. We could barely handle that one worm. Both of you almost died, and you're two of the strongest shinobi we have in terms of physical strength. We...we don't have the resources or manpower to deal with this."

[Yura]

Though elated at being allowed to accompany the rest of the group on the tour of the area, Mitsuo stared at the hard stone slab that they created beside him and cringed at the thought of having to lay upon it. Sure, he was currently laying on a solid slab of stone, but it too was not all that comfortable. He didn't have much time to think about it, however, as he was unexpectedly lifted off of his current slap by the floating green orbs and carried over to newly the created one before being gently placed on it.

As the slab started to move, Mitsuo laid there quietly as the spirit spoke to the group and explained where they were and how it and the other spirits came to exist in this world. When the small caravan stopped, Mitsuo heard the subtle sharp intake of breath from one of his teammates and painfully lifted himself up onto his elbows so that he too could see what had caught their breath and what he saw left his mouth agap. From left to right, as far as the eye could see in the dim light, what he could only assume were other spirits littered the cavern, taking up any and all available space. His mind push him through a range of emotions from complete disbelief that these spirits even existed to amazement at how many there were to fear of what this meant for them and the village above.

He was brought out of his thoughts as Kota began to speak. While Tatsuo hadn't seemed to vocalize any questions or concerns, it seemed that Kota couldn't help himself in a way Mitsuo had wished that the boy hadn't said anything. All of Kota's questions and statements were valid, in fact many of them were ones that Mitsuo himself had as he continued to marvel at the canyon around him, but despite being saved by these spirits none of them knew whether or not they could trust these creatures. If they knew that the three of them were some of the strongest shinobi that Iwa had to offer, what was to stop them from eliminating the trio while they were in a weakened state and then ambushing an unexpected village?

"I think what my friend means is that this is all just a bit overwhelming. I don't think any of us expected to find even a single spirit when we set out to explore the cave so to find this many is...a lot." Mitsuo managed to croak out, "I think we need a moment to gather our thoughts. Would it be possible to find somewhere private?"

[Niro]

“Yes, we shall leave you alone for a bit.” The obsidian spirit bowed its head at the trio before looking at the crystal spirits and nodding. The crystal spirit controlling Mitsuo’s levitating bed lowered the bed to the floor and made its way down the hall with the other crystal spirits following behind it and the obsidian spirit bringing up the very rear of the group of spirits. Once the group had gone and their footsteps had stopped clicking along the hallway, Tatsuo turned and looked at Kotaru with a dead pan face.

“We really need to work on your information handling. In what world do you think talking in public about us being important assets, when you don’t trust or have completely vetted a foreign entity, is a good idea?” Tatsuo shook his head as he considered thumping Kotaru upside the head again. It would probably be a record, two thumps in under 10 minutes. He decided against it, however. The last thing they needed right now was division amongst them so Tatsuo decided it’d be best to just drop it for now.

“What’re you thinking, Mits?” Tatsuo asked. His most trusted friend had been the quietest so far about everything but that wasn’t surprising. “This is going to be a headache once we write our damn reports…if we even make it out of here.” Tatsuo lamented as he gazed back over the cavern.

[Kao]

Kotaru turned toward his cousin, his expression first confused regarding why he was being scolded, then changing to a sheepish grimace. For a moment he forgot the spirits were hovering and listening. He instead had worried about the revelation that there was a giant spirit colony miles below Iwagakure and what it could mean for the village. But Tatsuo was right; Kotaru tended to speak without thinking of the consequences and it often got him into more trouble than it was worth. At that moment he relented only because it was Tatsuo doing the criticizing, and he gave a partially contrite, "Yeah, sure," and turned his head away and fell silent.

He listened to Tatsuo ask Mitsuo his thoughts, and while he waited for the injured Enkouten to respond, he shooed away the small orb spirits that were still hovering around him. At first they seemed to hesitate to leave, flashing at him gently even as he swatted them away. One orb lagged behind and brushed against his forehead, and for a brief moment Kotaru felt a twinge of loneliness as he watched the spirit float away and out of sight. For the time being, Kotaru shrugged it off and turned his attention toward Mitsuo, but every so often his gaze would flit toward the dark hall.

[Yura]

Greatful for the privacy granted by the humanoid spirit and it green orbed friends, Mitsuo became so lost in his thoughts that he mostly tuned out Tatsuo's scolding of Kota. The scolding of the younger by the older was fairly common anyways so he was sure he didn't miss much. "I'm thinking that the reports are the least of our problems." Mitsuo finally said, "We just stumbled upon a seemingly fully functioning society of interspecied spiritual beings who've made a home in the caverns below our village. A massive society that we didn't even know existed, and the only thing that was keeping them from coming to the surface was that massive worm that kept eating them which is now dead thanks to the three of us." He paused for a moment to catch his breath, his stamina still not fully recovered, "Well, i suppose that was mostly Tats, but that's beside the point. The point is that there's now a horde of spiritual beings living right below our village, where our friends, our families and our people live, and now there's nothing preventing them from coming to the surface." Mitsuo paused once again to give the words time to sink in. He was starting to rant a little at this point, the thoughts that had been welling up in his head now flowing out with little to any filter.

"It's honestly a terrifying thought. Iwagakure is in no way prepared to handle something like this. There are strong shinobi, sure, but I think it's safe to say that the three of us are among the strongest that the village has at its disposal and if anything even remotely as strong as that worm attacks the village, especially amongst a horde...." He trailed off as he imagined the result. Parts of the village would be leveled, if not the entire thing. There would be mass casualties, both civilian and shinobi, and there was no guarantee that they could win. Iwa's walls may be near impenetrable, but with the opening to the catacombs being within the village, there was nothing that the walls would be able to do. "The good news is, we might be able to get the jump on this. We found out about this before anything bad has happened. That means we can prepare. That means we can create a specialized force designed to handle this specific threat. And maybe we can make an alliance with some of them to promote an amiable relationship between us all. We just need to get out of here and back to the village."

[Niro]

Tatsuo nodded in regards to Mitsuo’s worries and kept silent in thought until the clicking of the obsidian spirits feet once again rung through the air. His ears perked up in response and he turned to face the spirit before looking around. “This is…a lot to take in. I, we, can see that this colony is not hostile, but we do have our worries about the rogue spirits you mentioned. Would you be averse to us eventually hunting down and subjugating them?” He asked, the answer to his question would either bring salvation or ruin to the colony.

“They are a threat to us and you. Do with them as you please.” The spirit replied with a bow of its head as the crystal spirits soon also made themselves known and began to heal Mitsuo once again.

“Is it possible for you to bring us back up to a reasonable spot within the Catacombs for us to get back to our village? Also, what are you plans knowing you are below a very major installment of shinobi?” Tatsuo asked, another major question for the spirit.

“We come from a realm of caves and volcanoes, this is nothing new to us. This is actually quite similar to our home realm and we are comfortable to carve out a colony here for ourselves.” The spirit replied, a shrug of its shoulders serving as a finality. “Once your companion is ready to be moved, we shall escort you as close to your encampment as what is safe for us. Is that acceptable?”

Tatsuo looked at Mitsuo’s condition before looking back to the spirit and nodding. The crystal spirits began to levitate the bed again and move back into the hall and room to continue healing him. Kotaru and Tatsuo followed the group of spirits, waiting with bated breath. Eventually the spirits had finished healing Mitsuo and the group was ready to go back. Upon his treatment being finished, the obsidian spirit once again entered the room for the group to follow him on their trek back to the surface.

The walk back to the camp was mostly in silence, only small bits and pieces of conversation occurring between the group of four. Finally they passed the graveyard of giant bones and afterwards came upon the cliff side with small blips of light from the torches at the top of the cliff signaling the base camp was still there. Tatsuo turned to thank the obsidian spirit but the spirit was not there. It had vanished back to its colony to await their next contact. He shrugged before turning to his team and shrugged and began the climb back to the top.