And so it begins!
>:3

Chapter One:​

Marching Orders Received.​

Spring's oppressive heat pressed down on Ryoko as she limped towards the hamlet of Niri, the humidity clogging the air. Her ankle throbbed in complaint, and for every breath she took, it felt like Ryoko only got half the air that her body needed.

Mercifully, the shade of Leaf's dense forest canopy stretched overhead, shielding Ryoko from the brunt of the sun's harsh gaze.

Small blessings, that. Still, she'd take them where she could. After an unseasonably harsh winter that lingered for far too long, it felt like the world had suddenly remembered what Spring was, and hurried to make up for lost time.

Ryoko approached the hamlet's telltale granite walls –even here, days away from Leaf, the Goketsu Clan had left their mark –with a nervous energy. Most of her weapons were sealed away –two strapped against her forearms, and hidden by the long sleeves of her shirt, others in the bandolier over her chest –and that made Ryoko feel… vulnerable.

She forced her limp into a regal march, and allowed her hand to drift to her sword's handle, drawing comfort from her father's old sword. It had long-since become a familiar weight at her side, and having it in-hand eased the energy she felt bubbling underneath her calm facade.

Niri's civilian gate guards parted at the sight of Ryoko's headband, tied around her arm, and she continued through the gate without slowing down, heading straight for the inn.

Niri had been built on one of the many roads leading to Leaf, and made most of their ryo through Leaf ninja who were returning home after a mission. By Leaf standards, their inn was a small building, possessing only the bare necessities to call itself an inn, but for a hamlet the size of Niri, it was a major luxury –doubly so for tired eyes of a ninja who had spent days completing their mission, and still had days to travel back to Leaf.

"Room for the night, ma'am," the innkeeper asked as bowed low, his long, white beard brushing the spotless wooden floor.

"A room, a bath, and however much food the rest will cover," Ryoko stiffly handed over a fistfull of ryo, posture perfect, throbbing ankle be damned. Stupid porcubears and their stupid quills. She still needed to clean the blood out of her axe's grooves.

The innkeeper smiled warmly, eyes crinkling. "Yes ma'am, I'll send grandsons on it, right away. With the heat being what it is, I can't imagine Fire's forests beat back the spring all too much."

Fire's forests beat back… A passphrase, given to Lord Jiraiya's operatives. Third-ordered variation, too.

But, maybe it was nothing? Ryoko hadn't been tagged to do a mission by the late Hokage's network in years. Probably just an innocent turn of phrase by an unknowing civilian. Besides, it's not like the Sannin had kept to his side of their bargain, right?

A memory flashed in front of Ryoko's eyes.

Scrolls of cheap parchment littered the small room, overlapping with nonsensical graphs and complex equations. An ever-distant, ever-frantic figure at a desk, utterly consumed by their work, unresponsive to Ryoko's prompting. A tall, white-haired man gently reaching down to pick her up from a pool of blood. An empty house and a bloodstained carpet that she can never find the time to replace. An unopened letter with feminine handwriting.

"It does the job well enough. The rest is up to us." Duty to the dead compelled her to reply. "Well, that, and the bath I'm paying for."

The innkeeper sighed at Ryoko's answer, shoulders sagging in relief. With one hand placed firmly on the counter, and a deliberate slowness, the old man presented Ryoko with a sealed letter. A subtle fuuinjutsu script bordered the edges of the thick paper, disguised as artistic calligraphy.

"A nice gentleman caller left this for you," the innkeeper lied easily, his voice carefully pitched to carry the tone of an amused elder, dragged into playing messenger for two distant lovers. "Your room is on the second floor, third room to the right."

Ryoko sighed in not-entirely faked resignation, and took the letter. It would take the innkeeper a while to arrange the bath, anyway.

She walked to her room, and locked the door.

The room itself was small, containing little more than a mattress, a desk, and a chair. Still, it was a corner room with two windows for easy egress and a thick door that, while not enough to stop an intruder, would splinter loudly enough to wake even the heaviest sleeper.

The letter banished whatever goodwill the door might have earned, though.

Ryoko slung her pack into a corner, took off her bandoliers, her hand-sewn belt whose pockets contained darts, kunai, and senbon, stripped off the daggers at her thighs, and removed the fallback knife from the small of her back. She kept the sword strapped, though, and her leather forearm-bracers that held her main seals.

Sitting down, she pricked her thumb and allowed a drop of blood to fall onto the letter's sealing script. It glowed a ponderous blue, before vanishing. Good. If the old man –or one of his grandkids, maybe –had gotten any ideas, it would have exploded like a sealing tag, and vaporized the contents.


Ryoko reread the letter four more times, committing each word to memory, before moving to do the same thing with the map.

All the while, Ryoko felt a sinking feeling in her gut.

Why didn't this feel like it was going to be as easy as breaking ice on a frozen road, or killing a couple of chakra beasts?

---

I've updated the Information Page with Ryoko's character sheet and I've updated the Informational google doc to contain the relevant stunts

Voting will be open for ~12 hours.

Where does Ryoko meet her teammates?
[] First Hamlet that went silent
[] Second Hamlet that went silent
[] Third Hamlet that went silent

Voting is closed: the most recent hamlet it is >:3