by 
“Yes,” confirmed the young Mist warrior he was speaking with. “We know he left Mountain several days ago. We also know he separated from Mountain’s Toshii not long after that.”
“That’s when we lost him,” Des muttered, nodding his understanding. “He used his control over wind to speed his escape from the spies we had following him. Toshii’s location is unknown, now?”
The woman nodded. “They were told to follow Q, not the girl.”
“Obedient to a fault,” Des groaned. “Train them to think a little on their own, Keya.”
Keya smiked and was about to respond, but was interrupted by a knock at the door of the large room. A young Mist warrior, fresh out of training, slipped in, trying to remain unnoticed. “A Shadow messenger has arrived,” he said in a quavering voice. He bowed low and waited for further instruction.
“Well, show them in! We’ve been waiting for them all day.”
The frightened Mist left quickly. Almost immediately a young Shadow warrior stepped into the room. “Greetings from the Kurokage,” she said. She gave a sweeping, exaggerated bow.
“Yeah, greetings,” Des said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Well?”
The messenger clucked her tongue. “You’re very impolite. No wonder the other Kages don’t like you.”
Des grunted. “Get on with it, Shadow.”
“See? You don’t even know my name and you expect me to give you crucial information!”
Des growled in impatience.
“My name is Azarni Rin, by the way,” she concluded, a smirk on her face. “The small groups from Shadow and Mist have met up and are going to retrieve Glacier’s Key today. The Key should arrive here in two days.”
“Excellent,” Des said, rubbing his hands together. “Nearly all the Keys are within my grasp.”
He proceded to monologue about how he would soon become the greatest warrior of all time. Keya rolled her eyes and Rin shook her head. Both knew that Death was truly the one who was calling the shots. Des had come up with the original idea to activate the Keys, but it had been Death who had come up with the plans and set them in motion. Des seemed to be the only one unaware that he was being used. Most of Mist was involved simply for the fun of fighting; they had also been promised protection by Death.
“By the way,” Des said suddenly, snapping the women out of their private thoughts. “Perhaps you will know the answer to a question I’ve had for some time. Raz, was it?”
“Rin,” she corrected, though she knew there was no point. “What question is that?”
“One of my warriors was in Shadow to deliver a message. She sent back a note saying she was returning home. We were not surprised to receive the message before she arrived, however,” Des paused and looked hard at Rin. “She has not arrived, even though she should have. Do you know what happened to her?”
Rin shrugged. “I was not in the Village when she was there. I know nothing of her time in Shadow or of her trip to or from our Village.”
“Of course,” Des yawned, apparently bored with the topic. “Well, unless you have something else to tell me, we’re done here, Ritz.”
Rin dipped her head and turned to leave. She cast a sideways glance at Keya before going back through the large doors. Keya made a move to follow to lead her out, but Des stopped her.
“Quality for quantity,” was all he said.
Keya shook her head. “You don’t know that. Besides, we don’t want to start a blood feud with your only ally.”
Des shrugged. “Later, perhaps.”
“Yeah, perhaps,” Keya said as she left, rolling her eyes.
* * * *
“For the last time, we are not ‘Dark Raptor’s Raptoids’,” Yoyo said, waving her arms in the air for emphasis. “We’re also not the ‘Infernerators’ or the ‘Fire Dinos’.”“B-but,” Dark Raptor began.
“No.” Yoyo turned on Bano. “Stop giggling like a little schoolgirl. You’re the one that suggested he give our group a name.”
Bano shrugged, not bothering to try to hide the smile on his face. “I couldn’t care less what we’re called. It was just an idea to keep him occupied. I didn’t think you’d take it so seriously.”
Yoyo snorted. “You rigged that hat or something. You planned on us three being together just to have the chance to use him to drive me mad. I know it!”
Bano shook his head and put a finger to his lips. He then pointed at Dark Raptor with his head. “Quit talking about him like he’s not here.”
Both looked to where Dark Raptor was walking. Bano chuckled; Yoyo let out a single squeak of amusement and clapped her hand over her mouth. Though he kept his distance, he was animatedly offering name suggestions to Bano’s dragons. The dragons seemed genuinely entertained by this because they reacted positively and, more often, negatively to his options.
“I don’t know what to think about that,” Bano said after a moment.
“I’m choosing to not think about it,” Yoyo said, shaking her head.
“Got it!” DR declared, leaping between Bano and Yoyo and linking arms with them. “We have the perfect name. Picture it.” He stopped, dragging the other two to a halt beside him. “‘Team Awesome’. Perfect, right?”
Bano looked at Yoyo and smiled. She could only shrug. “Perfect.”
* * * *
“This is beautiful,” Darkflame said, marveling over a small collection of glass animals sitting on a desk. “If you could find the missing animals, this would be the most amazing and valuable thing around. Wouldn’t you agree, Thicup?” He trailed off awkwardly, muttering something about forgetting again.“I don’t know about you, but the most beautiful and valuable thing in here would have to be this,” Thicup said, pulling her hand out of the fireplace. The strange trio had managed to find the Storm Village. Sabaku, the Raikage, had indeed been expecting the two guests; Pein had been on patrol for two week and had not been informed of their arrival.
“We all have our own form of value,” Sabaku chuckled, setting a tray of hot tea on the desk at which Darkflame was sitting.
Darkflame shrugged and poured tea for the three of them. “I hope you don’t mind if we just jump into matters. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Sabaku smiled innocently. “The sooner we have you out of here the better. So, what do we need to do?”
Darkflame calmly handed Thicup and Sabaku the small brass cups of tea he had poured for them, then began to pace. “We need to go in and make sure that your Key is still where it’s supposed to be. For that, you will need to prepare a squad to go there. It would also be appreciated if you would tell that squad to let us go with them.”
Sabaku nodded, a look of great concentration on her face, but did not respond.
Darkflame nodded and continued. “First, however, we need to determine what kind of skill sets we are going to need. To decide this, we must know where the Key is located and what kind of traps have been set up inside.” Silence greeted the man’s unspoken question. Darkflame cleared his throat. “Where is the Key located?”
“In the Storm Key Area. We call it the SKA.” Sabaku smiled, oblivious to Darkflame’s sigh of annoyance.
“And where is the,” he paused. “‘SKA’?”
Saba’s eyes flicked between her two guests before responding. “Are we supposed to?”
Thicup pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead and sighed. Darkflame sat heavily in a chair. Neither was very surprised, but that did not diminish their disappointment. They had held hope, albeit very slight hope, that a miracle would occur here. Storm was notorious for their ability to lose literally anything and for their innocent, absent-minded natures.
“You have records somewhere, I suppose, of its location?” Darkflame sighed.
“Maybe,” was the simple reply.
The Mountain warrior grunted. “And you have absolutely no idea where the, er, SKA would be?” A shrug was all he received in response. DF groaned and turned his attention to Thicup. “I suppose we have a challenge ahead of us, Thicup. I’ll take a team out into Storm and try to find it the old-fashioned way. While I do that, you go through Storm’s files and see if you can find a reference to where–”
Darkflame choked slightly when he looked at Thicup. Her green eyes peeked out at him from behind her long hair, a cold and withering glare. He had just made the mistake he had been avoiding since they had set out together.
“Right, you can't, er, eyes,” he stuttered, embarrassed. “Switch that. I do the paperwork, you do the field work. Raikage, if you would be so kind as to get a team put together to help each of us, that would be tremendously helpful.”
“Of course,” Sabaku said with a grin. “It’ll be an adventure!”
“Or something,” Thicup muttered with a roll of her eyes.
* * * *
SSS stared forlornly at her pack. Their group was making excellent time and would probably reach the Glacier Village by the next night. However, as she stared at her bag, she grew concerned. She had run out of snacks and was nearly two days away from getting any more. She sighed and put her bag back on her back.The team was in Glacier country now. In the distance behind them, the large icy river that separated Glacier from the rest of the Villages could be heard. They had gotten lucky and quickly found one of the few bridges that spanned the river. The temperature north of this river dropped drastically, so all three warriors were wrapping in thick robes. SSS had been right; they were very thankful that Clair’s fire elephant was there to warm the immediate area.
SSS looked ahead to where Clair and Zergio were walking. Clair was going to start teaching him how to find the natural fire in the earth and release it. She had already explained that their techniques would be different, but they theory would be the same. When she had used the technique against Ama, she had explained, she had found the fire beneath her and used her AMP to force the fire up through the earth, splitting the ground. She then gradually increased the distance of the fire she controlled until she had the fire in the location she wanted. She released some, then closed off the path it had traveled when she had enough.
“You would just have to locate the fire, move the earth with your AMP to release it, then close up the path,” Clair was saying. “The only difficult part would be finding the fire, I think.”
Zergio nodded, concentration etched on his face. SSS had never seen the two get along as well as they were now. It was evident that he truly wanted to learn this technique. “So how will I do that?”
Clair smiled. “That depends on your abilities as a warrior of Mountain. Let’s call it a day and build camp. The sun is getting too low to do much more traveling today.”
Despite Zergio’s complaints about wanting to be told how to find the fire, they stopped to make camp. They built a small campfire to cook their food and laid their bedrolls out around Zo. They ate their meal and were prepared to settle down for sleep when Clair brought Zergio’s training back up.
“The way Inferno warriors find the fire probably won’t work for you. We can control fire and know where it is when it’s around somewhere. You can’t feel the fire itself, but maybe you can still tell where it is.” Clair pointed at a line of stones she had laid out earlier in the night. Each was about the size of a fist and touching the next in line. “Let’s start the first test. Without looking, how many rocks are there?”
Zergio looked insulted as he stopped on the nearest rock, his back to the line. “Thirteen,” he said confidently. “Most Mountain warriors can do this.”
Clair nodded but did not reply. She took one stone away near the end of the line. “How many now?” Zergio answered correctly. Clair continued this process of replacing and removing rocks until Zergio began to regret requesting this training. Finally, Clair did something different.
Zergio stammered a moment before training a confused look at SSS, who had been watching quietly from the other side of the camp. “One of the rocks, it changed. It got,” he paused, trying to find the correct words. “Hot.”
“Which one?”
“The seventh,” he responded, turning around. “What did you do?”
Clair simply smiled and held out her hand. She held a small glowing flame in her palm. “The real training can now begin.”
* * * *
Toshii made her way through the forest, hacking away the leaves and vines in her way with the machete she carried with her. Q’s giant scorpion Doku followed a few paces behind her, remaining surprisingly quiet. Q had commanded that she remain in the clearing until he came back, but she was feeling restless. She was also having nightmares about the clearing he had left her in, dreams full of death and bloodshed. She hoped that a change of scenery would give her peace of mind. Night fell quickly in the land of Mist. The tree were much thinner, but the perpetual mist that rose off the large lake in the center of the area was so thick in places that it blotted out the sun. It took one glance around for Toshi to realize that the sun had long abandoned its place in the sky and that she was now in Mist territory. The thought of being in enemy territory alone did not particularly frighten her, but she was still uncomfortable with the idea. Her eyesight was severely hindered by the heavy fog and darkness and the amount of water in the air had long seeped into her body. She decided, finally, that it was time to make camp. After a brief debate with herself, she decided to risk being found and build a fire.
“Better a fight than cold and sick,” she muttered as she gathered the driest wood she could find. The humidity was so great that everything was soggy. She could only hope that the wood would catch and keep her warm through the night. She dug in one of her bags and retrieved flint and a knife. She struck the knife against the piece of stone and fell back in surprise. The wet wood not only caught immediately, but it also erupted into a large blaze for an instant.
“That was quite the flame,” a voice said in Toshii’s ear. Thoroughly panicked, Toshii squeaked and stabbed at the newcomer with her knife. They caught her wrist mid-swing, their growing smile reflecting wickedly in the firelight. “You’ve already tried that kind of thing once. It won’t work.”
Toshii’s mouth moved a moment before sound finally came out. When she finally gained control of her voice, she sighed. “Q, you scared me.”
“I see that,” he muttered, not letting go of her wrist. He examined the knife in her hand. “Naraka.”
“Who what-a?” Toshii question, gently pulling against Q in an attempt to release her wrist from his firm grip.
“Naraka. That’s the name of this knife that you used to start a fire.”
“Sorry,” Toshii said, gazing at the weapon in her hand. The firelight reflected off it in a way that created an almost eerie glow. “I thought I’d grabbed a different knife.”
Q grunted and released her wrist, still staring at the knife he had given Toshii. “Be more careful with it.” The two fell into an uncomfortable silence, both staring at the knife in Toshii’s hands. Finally Q broke the silence, though it did not help matters any. “I told you to stay in the clearing.”
“Sorry, I–” Toshii began, but stopped when Q raised his hand.
“You could have gotten hurt, you know. There are a lot of enemies out here and even the best wouldn’t want to be caught alone in enemy territory, especially Mist territory. We stay together until the Keys are where they belong.” Before waiting for a reply, Q stood and walked away from the fire. “I’ll take first watch. Go to sleep.”
Toshii nodded and quietly wrapped Naraka in a cloth and replaced it in her bag. Something was bothering the Kazekage, that much she could tell. His clothing seemed thicker now, as though he were preparing to enter somewhere cold like Glacier country. He was also much more serious than he usually was. She did not want to risk upsetting him again by asking. She simply shrugged it off as being in Mist and lay down to try to get some sleep. Her dragons descended from their perches in the trees above them, positioning themselves protectively around her. The gold, Kimu, hissed angrily into the surrounding fog where Q and Doku were located before settling down for the night.
Last edited by Yoyo on Wed Dec 01 2010, 04:06; edited 1 time in total
