Interlude: The Last Hours of Sunlight
The Mori Clan were not the most revered in Hidden Mist. While some clans could step across the fabric of space in an instant, leaving waves of lightning in their wake, and others could swamp their opponents with constructed giant crabs, the Mori were sometimes referred to as "human abacuses" by the ignorant, their support specialisation rendering them second-class citizens until the time came when Mist's forces could not coordinate without them.
But no matter how many fools might scorn the Mori, none could deny their jealousy at the magnificence of the Mori compound.
Most of the buildings had been designed many generations ago by Mori Genzō, a branch family member with particularly weak access to the Frozen Skein who had instead turned his attention to architecture. Finding his inspiration in nature, he drew on the patterns and dimensions of seashells, trees and the more fascinating parts of animal anatomy to create houses of mathematically perfect ratios and elegant asymmetry. Works of art from the outside, inside the rooms were proportioned so as to instill mental and emotional calm while still serving essential ninja functions of privacy and security. Any intruders would find themselves hopelessly turned around until they stumbled into a fiendish series of traps, while residents who had memorised Genzō's design principles could be blindfolded with their legs tied together, and still be able to navigate the compound as if it were a set of ordinary civilian dwellings.
No Mori since had ever approached Genzō's genius, and whenever new construction was necessary, they could only draw on the library of blueprints he had left behind – a treasure guarded as jealously as any scroll of secret clan techniques. To this day, the reward for a Mori who had done the clan a great service was a haori decorated with one of Genzō's signature fractal symbols.
None of this was a clan secret – the Mori were happy to boast of their unique architecture to anyone who asked, which was usually no one. But Mitsuhide, a regular at the Chiaroscuro Chamber, had asked, and since he was a fellow connoisseur of the arts, and one who occasionally gave her foreign sweets besides, Kei had seen it as her obligation to enlighten him.
-o-
"The rose that blooms in spring will wilt by autumn, but a rose preserved in ice will last forever," Kei read out from the scroll in front of her.
Master Saruhiko nodded. "Good. You have completed Cypher Level Eight. But you must try harder in the future – when your sister was undergoing genin training, she cracked this one in under five minutes."
How did Master Saruhiko even remember a minor detail of something that had happened a good six years ago? No, that was a foolish question. The man was only a few ranks away from being an elder. Rumours said he was able to use the Frozen Skein in combat. It would be stranger if he didn't have a perfect memory.
And that memory once again placed her within her sister's shadow. Ami was perfect. It was an incontestable, undeniable statement. She had received ninjutsu training from Uehida Minori herself. She was so strong, they let her take point in the field despite the fact that she was a Mori. If there were such a thing as a Jōnin Exam (there wasn't, and there would be consequences for anyone who suggested otherwise too loudly), she would already be about to take it. She mocked the Mori Voice, or so she claimed. She even knew how to talk to people. They laughed at her jokes and never gave her strange looks when she made sensible observations.
One day, Kei wanted to be Ami. But apparently everyone else wanted the same thing, and they wanted her to be Ami now.
It was only noon, and Kei was already starting to feel unhappy. But the day had a saving grace – Kei had the afternoon off, and the new exhibition at the Chiaroscuro Chamber was already singing its siren song.
-o-
Kei watched the hypnotic shifting of the shadows on the white walls of the Chamber, their precise dance telling a story that, she knew, every watcher would invent and interpret for themselves. To her, the rising sinuous curve was a serpent about to strike at the heavens. But a brief flicker of motion, a shadow that moved like a negative sunbeam, pierced its head, and the serpent changed its path, enlightenment guiding it back down to the earth where the depths would reshape it into a dragon. Yet in the corner, the cupped hands of the goddess wavered and spilled their blessing into the void. Should the serpent have kept rising beyond itself, beyond the spiked peaks and into a different existence, or was it right to follow the inspiration that led it deeper within its soul?
A gentle chime rang out. The lights faded. The mirrors swivelled back into the walls. The painted wooden blocks stayed where they were, but Yumi would be here in a minute to collect them. She loathed having anyone else touch her belongings.
"Well," Mitsuhide sighed, "it ends too soon, as always. Please give my compliments to your cousin on her ever-growing skills. That was a very fine ending, with the forest spirit submitting to the aspiring sage."
Kei nodded. Yumi's "art installation", as she called it, received few visitors, mostly travellers and a handful of merchants that visited Mist on a regular basis. Mitsuhide was one of these, and invariably generous with his contributions to the donation box, even if the forgetful silk trader always dropped in a variety of coins from different countries, most of them near-worthless here. Not that he was the only one – a number of visitors seemed to think that the symbolism of the gesture was more important than actually supporting Yumi's art (though in reality the Chiaroscuro Chamber was fully funded by the clan, and Kei wasn't entirely sure why the donation box was really there).
It was a rule of the Chiaroscuro Chamber that any Mori present at closing time would carry the donation box home, leaving Yumi free to stay and maintain the equipment, especially the expensive chemical lights. Yumi had not failed to impress upon the rest of the clan that the donations were an invaluable contribution to the Mori finances (which was a lie), and as such the loss of even a single coin from the box would place the deliverer in mortal peril (which probably wasn't).
Kei frowned as she picked the box up. Her intuition was tingling, telling her something was off. Something about the box? No, it was the same as always, in colour, size, shape and approximate weight. That only left one obvious possibility.
She looked at the foreign coins more closely. Four Leaf ryō. Two Frost ryō. Nine of those peculiar little coins they used in Fang. Kei quickly went through the rest of the coins. That combination… it was exactly the same as the last time Mitsuhide had left a donation in her presence (she'd been training her memory – one day it would need to be as good as Master Saruhiko's if she was going to become an elder herself). It seemed Kei had stumbled across something important.
-o-
Kei walked the familiar path to the underground treasury as her mind cycled through possibilities.
The labyrinthine corridors would confuse anybody who didn't know that they were patterned after the distinctive arrangement of veins on the leaves of the greater ravenous bloodflower (the branch family kept a few tame ones in the Garden of the Taken), and thus all one had to do was to take a step backwards and to the left or right, as appropriate, wherever a greater vein intersected with a lesser one. Needless to say, stepping in the wrong direction, where a real bloodflower would have its tiny hairs, resulted in instant death. Different segments of the leaf had different traps, to account for ninja with a variety of special abilities, and a typical intruder would end up dying to all of them – some twice – before they had a chance of finding the true exit. Someone like Kei, on the other hand, could walk from one end to the other in thirty seconds at an unhurried pace.
This time, Kei did not hurry away from the treasury and its somewhat intimidating atmosphere after handing over the box, but stayed next to Uncle Junpei, curious to see what he would do. She watched, as unobtrusively as possible, while her uncle sank deep into the Frozen Skein. Eventually, he picked the coins out of the box, one by one, stacked them according to currency and value, and then did something strange.
He took each coin, in order, and slowly ran the tip of his right finger around its ridges, before putting it down in a specific position and picking up the next.
After some time, with all the coins processed in this strange fashion, Uncle Junpei opened his eyes and withdrew from his focused state.
"What were you doing, Uncle?" Kei asked, cursing her lack of subtlety even as she opened her mouth.
"Checking for counterfeits, little Keiko," Uncle Junpei explained. "I don't mind you watching – elders willing, you'll be the one doing this job instead of me one day – but do bear in mind this is a secret Mori art, so don't go blabbing about it to everyone, OK?"
Kei gave him an insulted look, or what she hoped came across as an insulted look.
"Now, would you be a dear and go ask Elders Kazushi and Mirano to come down here?" Uncle Junpei asked, looking at the coins contemplatively. "There's something I want to talk to them about."
Unfortunately, that was as far as Kei's investigation went that day. Elder Kazushi promptly sent her on a series of trivial errands, and by the time she was done, the sun had set and it was too late for anything but dinner and bed. Nevertheless, she resolved to take the time to find out what was really going on – perhaps after she came back from her upcoming mission, she would have earned a sufficient measure of trust.
-o-
There was only one day left before the mission. Kei was simultaneously excited and scare- nervous. Very nervous. She would be working under Sumie-sensei in the logistics team, and while Sumie-sensei was no Ami, she was kind and thoughtful and almost eerily competent, qualities which comfortably placed her among Kei's top ten people.
This was the mission which would establish Kei as a ninja in her own right, with her own career and her own unique strengths. She would earn the elders' trust with her performance, make her family proud, and be inducted into the clan's advanced techniques and ancient secrets. And she wouldn't have to flail around trying and failing to earn everyone's affection, because she would already have their respect.
"Whatcha doing, runt?" a familiar voice interrupted her daydreams.
"Ami," she said. She recalled where her sister had been for the last hour. "How is Aunt Noriko?"
Her sister looked uncharacteristically grim. "Elder Ina's been working on her day and night. Says it's fifty-fifty odds. Not as bad as it could be, but still…"
Kei did a double-take. "Fifty-fifty?"
"Yeah. We've got the full story now, and apparently she didn't just go too deep. That scumsucker Ayanami wanted to show off his new Lightning technique, and he overextended and pulled the unit straight into an ambush. She had to use that, or it would've been a full wipe."
Kei blinked. Several times. "But… that doesn't mean…"
"It doesn't mean anything. Aunt Noriko's a fighter, Keiko. She's got twice the balls that Ayanami's going to once I'm done with him. She's not going to the Garden. She's going to come back, and when she does, you can tell her all about your heroics on your first big mission, how's that?"
Kei nodded uncertainly.
"Anyway, listen, I've got a going-away present for you. You'll love this: it's my lucky shuriken."
The thing she handed Kei did not look lucky. Rather, it looked like an abomination the mere touch of which would earn her a thousand-year curse.
"It's bright pink," Kei stated flatly.
"Yep."
"With flowers and rainbows painted on it."
"That's right."
"And is that… is that a sheep surrounded by shōjo sparkles?"
"It's supposed to be a kirin."
Ami saw her expression.
"Hey, I never claimed to be an artist! That's why it's got 'Chārī the Kirin of Maidenly Love' written under it, just so there's no confusion."
Kei looked up and met her sister's eyes.
"Ami," she said slowly, "if you wish me to be your second in a ceremony of honourable suicide, there are easier ways to ask."
"Nono," Ami shook her head, "you've got it all wrong. It's, like, you know that expression 'she's drawn her last shuriken'?"
"Yes," Kei nodded, "I am in fact familiar with basic idiom as learned by children from the age of five upwards."
"Great," Ami beamed. "I'd hate to see that all my years of hard work bringing you up had gone to waste.
"So when you draw your last shuriken, it means your situation is so desperate that you've finally run out of options, right? Well this is my last shuriken, and I will beat the Mizukage in an even fight before I let someone force me to draw this thing in front of them.
"And now, it's your last shuriken. You'll make your way safe and sound out of any pinch, because the alternative is to let your friends and enemies see you wielding that shuriken in battle."
Kei held her sister's gaze, feeling her eyes grow wet. Only this woman could take a piece of ridiculous, offensive tomfoolery… and turn it into an expression of deep affection.
"Make me proud out there, runt. Aunt Noriko and I will be waiting to welcome you back."
-o-
Voting closes on Saturday the 6th, 9 am Pacific Standard Time.
