Shikatsuko Training and Lonelies

[Checkmate]

Table of contents

[Checkmate]

Chapter 1: Meeting An Old Friend

In which Shikatsuko, known as The Raven to her war contacts, finally learns the location of a hidden city she's been searching for since the end of the war.

Arc: Meeting Shade
WC: 1,572

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Shikatsuko leaned against the second floor balcony of her home, a warm cup of tea snuggly nestled between her hands. The day had been chilly. The night would be cold. She breathed out through her mouth, squinting to see if her breath would mist. She could just barely make out hints of frost in the air. She pulled her arms closer to herself, pulling her robe tighter around herself and she watched the sun, now half consumed by the horizon. It was almost time. She took another sip of her tea and looked across the street to a park where she could see couples walking, children playing, and various pets prancing about. A wistful smile tugged at her lips. Family. She had given up so much in the war. Most of the it could be healed or regained. But not family. Her counselor training told her she needed to get back out there, to foster relationships. But there was always an excuse not to. Tonight would be no different. Draining the last of her tea, Shikatsuko stepped back inside, sliding the door closed behind her. She stepped over to her closet and grabbed her uniform. She would be working tonight. The solitary light source in the house winked out, and the house fell still. To all apearances, there was no movement. No one left by any visible door or window. But though anyone who had looked even moments before would have seen that someone had certainly been home, no one would come to the door should they approach. Shikatsuko was gone. The Raven had taken flight.

***

The CartographerShow

On the other side of town, a wisened man hovered over a large table covered in scrolls and parchment containing maps and scrawlings. Many of the maps were covered in notes and markings. Some of them had clearly been adjusted several times over the course of The Great War. The sound of a bird pecking at the window stirred him from his study and he removed his glasses to squint at the dark window, seeing nothing but a shadow. He huffed, amused at the theatrics, and approached the door, bypassing the window without so much as looking to see what the noise was. He opened the door, an eyebrow raised in expectation as he looked into a night darker than it should be. "Really?" He asked the night. Only silence answered. "I'm not doing the thing. If you wanna play around on your own time that's fine, but my house, my rules. If you want the map, get in here before I change my mind." He said, stepping aside as if to let someone in. Still no one appeared. The balding man shrugged. "Oh well." He said, closing the door and turning around to return to his work, beginning to wonder if it really had been a bird at the window. But as he turned around, he leaped in fright. "Raven!" He cried, one hand flying to his chest. "You scared me half to death." He complained, shuffling back across the room to his study, where a cloaked figure was straightening up from his maps, just as he had moments before. The figure was dressed in a black cloak, only the tips of her fingers exposed. Those fingers rose up and pulled back the enshrouding hood of the cloak to reveal a beautiful young woman and her cheshire grin. "Gotcha" She said, stepping back from the table to make way for the man as he returned, his head shaking in complaint. "Stupid kids. No respect." He grumbled. "I oughta send you home with nothing. I said no games!" "No, Art, you said you didn't want to do abide by identity confirmation protocol and that I should get in here if I wanted to see the map." She spread her arms wide, gesturing to her presence in the room. "And look how accommodating I'm being!" "I also said you can play games on your own time. And don't call me Art." He griped. "You're the one that's so into protocol. I call you Raven, you call me-" "I'm not calling you Cartographer." "Then I'm not calling you Raven." "You don't even know my name." "Of course I know your name." She raised an eyebrow in challenge. The man met her gaze with determination but she was unflinching, and finally the man looked away and pouted. "I just choose not to use it out of some misplaced sense of respect." "Uhuh. Well, your work is as much art as it is cartography, so why can't Art be a term of respect?" The man grumbled. "Ugh. I was too old for this when the war started. I don't know why I don't just retire." "Because you don't trust anyone else to do the work." She replied, her grin more reserved but still doing nothing to hide her enjoyment of the moment. "If they would do a better job, it wouldn't be a problem!" He said, raising a fist in protest. "If you'd take an apprentice, maybe they'd know how to meet your standards." She said, her tone playful. "Why would I let some young idiot come in here and ruin what I've worked so hard for?" He retorted. "And we come back to the beginning. It's a loop and you're the only one who can break it. Either you step down and trust the next generation to handle it without you or train someone to do it like you do. Or you can refuse to retire and keep complaining about it." She finished, a twinkle in her eye. "Yeah, yeah, so you've said before. Gods, you're infuriating, you know that?" He shook his head again, grabbing a map case that was leaning against the wall. "Oh, you know you love me." She said, giving him a look that said, 'go ahead and try to deny it.' "Yeah, yeah. You're almost as pretty as a well made map, I'll give you that. I wouldn't put up with you if you were ugly, that's for sure." At this, Raven punched him good-naturedly on the arm, to which he recoiled in mock hurt and they both laughed. The old man sighed. "It's good to see you, kid. You should stop by for a social call sometime. I can introduce you to my grandnephew. He's about your age." The man's mouth turned up in a grin. "And he's single!" He wiggled his eyebrows up and down and got another punch in the shoulder for his antics, though the woman couldn't hold back another smile. "Work first, Art. What do you have for me?" She approached the bench as he delicately pushed maps and notes to the side to make room for another map, smaller in size. The man's whole posture changed as he laid out the map, a spark excitement in his movements. "Well! So as you know, this is the map you brought me." He said, pointing to the map in the center. Raven nodded. "It doesn't depict any part of the continent I've seen before, which was why I was so interested in deciphering it. But as you pointed out when you brought it to me, it's written in code. I believe this to be one of at least two pieces of a puzzle, and sadly you didn't bring me any other pieces." He looked up at her over his spectacles. Her shoulders slumped slightly, but she looked at him with suspicion. "And that's why you're so excited? Because you couldn't figure it out?" "Not at all!" He raised a finger in triumph. "It turns out, the code is the same one used in a few other documents in the possession of the information department. And by comparing what you brought me with what they had, I was able to start pulling back the veil. Because that's exactly what was hiding it! You see, this is the code of The Order Of The Reaper, a group of political assassins who haven't been heard from in decades. But I believe they left behind a secret city, and this is a map of that city. The problem is, if you compare all of that with what we know of the current geographical landscape, there's a giant lake where this city should be." Raven furrowed her brows in confusion. "So the city was destroyed?" She asked. The Cartographer's excitement rose. "No, that's the exciting thing! We can predict when this map was made, and we have maps of that lake being there that pre-date this map you gave me! So either an order of elite political assassins decided to create and encode a map of a city long destroyed, or..." He trailed off, waiting for the woman to finish the thought. "Or the city and the lake coexist!" She looked at the man, her excitement beginning to match his. "Exactly!" He confirmed. "I have a few theories, but I can't be sure without somehow decoding more of these notes. It could be a city underwater, somehow protected from the water. Either an air dome enchanted to preserve what it contains and continuously cycle air. It could also be somehow hidden by a continuous illusion. The third option... well, let's hope it's not the third." "Which means it's probably the third. What is it?" "The third option... is that the city is somehow in another dimension."