Private Sanity as a Down Payment... [Requesting Tama]

The first mistake people made when thinking about the Tarterian Specus is that it was some well hidden secret. It was not, Kumogakure never hid its prison. It sat within the city proper, no more ominous at a glance than any other civic structure. It had clean lines, reinforced walls, and administrative banners which hung neatly along its outer tiers. From the outside, it looked like a typical bureaucratic architecture. It was sterile, dull, and easily forgettable... but that was the point.

Spectacles created fear, but true control went unnoticed in the normalcy of everyday life.

Nozomi crouched on the edge of a slick maintenance spire three levels above street traffic, watching the prison breathe as rain fell in heavy drops all around. Below her, the city pulsed with electric life. Lines with an ancient power hummed via chakra fed currents and walkways glowed faintly beneath translucent stone. Patrols drifted around the streets like lazy insects, their eyes sweeping in predictable arcs. The Specus sat at the heart of it all, wrapped within the infrastructure, fed by the same power grid that lit hospitals and academies. It was a prison that did not need walls because the city itself was the wall. A magnificent choice.

She exhaled slowly, steadying the quiet vibration in her bones. The pain was present, as it always was now, but at least it was currently muted. A sense of pressure that served as a constant reminder of what true pain felt like, but at least she had finally reached a point of functional equilibrium. Now, Nozomi simply viewed it as the cost of remaining whole.

Patience would be key and she would not rush in this moment, rushing is how people got caught. Anticipation grew and beneath black gloves, her hands twitched. The mouths embedded along her palms flexed in nervousness as teeth grinded softly against the material. Living bone rested just beneath her skin, coiled, grinding, excited, but waiting.

She watched the patrol cycle complete thrice and counted the average time for sweeps down to the second. The prison was alive with systems designed to notice anomalies, and so she would not be an anomaly. Instead, she would be a mistake so small it passed as noise. Nozomi dropped silently from the spire, flattening herself against a narrow lip of a data conduit that ran along the prison's exterior. She slid sideways, ribs compressing as her spine reshaped itself instantaneously. The bone beneath her skin did not crack. Rather, it flowed in a malleable clay-like response. Her body reshaped itself under her will as she thinned herself to fit the space.

There was a moment where a motion camera may have snapped to attention and noticed her, but Nozomi did not freeze. A hand dug into her pouch and bit down on a pellet of clay. Her tongue shaped chakra instinctively into a small and silent bird whose wings unfurled before she spat it gently into the air. The bird darted upward, deliberately sloppy in its direction so that it would trigger the camera’s attention for half a second. In that time, Nozomi continued her grand entrance.

She slid downward, then kicked off the conduit and vanished into a shadowed gap between two structural supports. Her bones softened further, shoulders folding inward as she squeezed through a maintenance aperture no wider than a drainpipe. Metal scraped against bone and she welcomed the sensation as it felt like scratching an itch that could never be reached.

The corridor she emerged into was not dramatic. There were no iron bars or screaming prisoners. Just smooth walls that looked to be made of some kind of alloy that contained embedded chakra seals glowing faintly with restrained power. This is where shinobi were kept and their power neutralized. Without being told, she knew these seals controlled the collars that suppressed even the thought of possible escape.

She moved along the ceiling of this place with bone extending silently from her feet and hands to anchor her weight despite being upside-down. Her joints rotated past natural limits, allowing her to crawl inverted with the ease of something that no longer respected human anatomy. She remained deathly silent as guards below walked their predictable routes. She let one pass before dropping behind them and into a shadowed alcove where she could finally let bone retract into flesh in an unsettling manner.

Thankfully, she did not need to go to the Underprison as she had gained intel that the Ryuu captive was housed higher. A portion of the Specus where they kept prisoners of value in relative comfort. Nozomi followed a preplanned path and utilized clay spiders or rats to distract guards when it was required. Eventually, she reached the level where Tama was being kept, and she had a hunch which door was his. It was the only portion of the containment wing with no signage, and a reinforced panel with layered seals so complex that it would take even a Kage hours to undo.

She would try an alternate approach. Nozomi's forearm elongated, bone flowing outward and flattening thin like clay. Her body seeped into the gaps, binding bone and earth into a nearly solid amalgamation that bent without breaking. Slowly, she pressed the malformed limb into the seam of the door and allowed it to melt into the tiny cracks between seal and frame.

The seals resisted, and so she did not push... yet. She waited for the prison’s system to cycle power and in that moment, she flexed. The seal accepted her and allowed her entry.

The door was heavy and opened with a creak, the single presence within might even be startled at the sudden change in pressure inside. What she saw before her was not what she expected. It was a laboratory of sorts rather then a true prison cell. It was lined with equipment and was relatively bright. There were books stacked beside a workbench and a cot that was kept clean against the far wall. This was... lavish, at least by prison standards.

At the center of it all stood the man she came to see, Tama.

Nozomi moved a few inches into the room with both gloved hands held up as a sign of peace and pressed the door mostly closed with the bottom of her foot. She attempted to study him in a simple glance, the way Rei had taught her to study a battlefield. She took note of his posture and rhythm. Quickly taking in the fact that he was not restrained and allowed to work within these walls.

Her arms came down slowly over the top of the hood which covered her face. Her fingers curled around the material and peeled it back slowly. Cloth was pulled away to reveal white strands that slip free as if Winter had been allowed into the lab. She spoke simple words, and awaited a response as her heart pounded defiantly in her chest.

“I’m not here as a representative of Kumo. I am a Ryuu, and I am cursed."

She stood her ground to be both careful and respectful while her eyes did not leave his.

"They say you're a cure... or the disease. Maybe both can be true." She would pause for a moment...

"Honestly, I don't care which it is. I'm here to better understand what I'm becoming, and if what has been done to me so far will be enough."

... And for the first time since she entered the prison, Nozomi allowed herself to stand still.

Prison life in Kumogakure was…well, it was a thing. The very last time he had been hauled into jail it involved a cold cell that he had to keep his knees bent in due to his abnormal height. A chakra collar had been affixed to him, nothing different there, but the one Sunagakure used worked with an entirely different material. Every living person in their world ran off chakra - it was their lifeforce, their energy. Only people who were physically capable could access it though, with the more time put into physically honing themselves allowing more use of it. Suna understood that, and used a type of mineral found in the Wind Country that would sap chakra; always tuned so that it didn’t outright kill a man.

Kumogakure, on the other hand, were equal parts kinder, but somehow more draconian. The collar affixed to Tama didn’t sap chakra so much as it threatened to shove needles into his neck and dose him with a lethal push of neurotoxin. It was a death sentence, literally, to use chakra above a certain point of strength. Even trying to mold would make the little device chirp threatening bird sounds. However, this was completely discounted for the giant scientist - for, his chakra levels were currently below that of even a Student. Even he wanted to, he could not produce enough chakra to activate the collar; and to add to it, he highly doubted they had a poison that could kill him. Hinder, for sure, but kill? Not after the decades spend honing his perfected form; though he couldn’t ignore newly made homebrews. Even those, though, would at least need a base poison unknown to their lands to affect him.

Then, there was the life itself. In Suna, all you got was a short cell that made your legs/back hurt. Here? He was treated nearly like a prince. Save the closed room, and staunch guards exclusively pulled from the Ryuu Clan that heralded him like some kind of apocalyptic beast…he was rather comfortable. Decent twin-sized bed with a length extension, a toilet with a privacy curtain, and a fairly well set-up laboratory. The cell itself was the size of a large studio apartment with an entire wall dedicated to books he was allowed to read; most of them pertaining to the miracle of electricity derived from man-made energy factories instead of rocks. Before even a week of his sentence had been served, Tama had mapped out basic electrical wiring and was well into advance studies.

Kumogakure’s communication devices were incredibly wonderful. Small screens that produced little images, held stored data and numbers that, back home, he had to memorize; and the phone lines! Everything was based on radio waves in most countries, but here there was dedicated lines for both public, and private, communication! It boggled his mind entirely when he was introduced to television. Large screens displaying things? Suna had that. Cable networks containing stage-play dramas acted out for an adoring public that needn’t leave their couch to witness? Witchcraft. Yet as fascinating as learning everything had been, and grateful as he was to even be alive…boredom was settling in; and Tama always did dangerously stupid things when he was bored.

At first he just threw himself into the given lab. There was a number of things he wanted to play around with but, those things became invented rather quickly despite his attempts at faux-workings. He wasn’t trying to invent a better celluar device but, be dammed if he didn’t do just that; and of course received punishment in some of his toys being taken away. Yet even with parts of his lab now missing, Tama mused it he could still create device after device with just the things left to him. Not wanting to lose anything else, though, kept him from doing just that. Not that he didn’t have another project to distract him while Kumogakure decided what to do with his ass.

A couple of days after his self-built phone was taken, the scientist requested books on chakra. Anything Kumo was willing to give him. Tama wanted to know how the shinobi of the mountains trained their soldiers, and how it was their difference in power always remained about the same as any other major nation; despite the fact that for many years they had half of a normal army size. The research from that had been actually more intriguing than technological study. Chakra bombs that took decades to prime, Tenouza, the names of the heroes from the past holy war…it was all fascinating. The recent explosion of capable people also turned the country on its head, with a rebellion following the Chakra Wake and the consequences of it. He had only been imprisoned for little over half a year, but already the mad man had all but caught up with the happenings of Kumogakure and how their military more-or-less functioned…and also who Ryuu Rei was, and her importance to keeping him alive.

That was were worry met fears. Tama had been unsuccessful in creating a permanent cure for the Madness that plagued his cousins. A temporary one existed, and it could even be whipped up on the fly. The size of his lab was not an impediment to this at all. What the cloud city had wanted from him though, was a cure that released their strongest from the clutches of his father and, her entire clan. After the initial high of consuming metric-tons of knowledge had worn off, it became the focus of his existence as, well, it might as well be. Kitsune would have no need of someone as smart and powerful as Tama could become, constantly being a potential thorn in their side as he had been for Suna without some kind of promise for being worth it.

Basically, if he couldn’t cure the Ryuu he was a dead-man walking.

Yet as the nights had grown longer and longer in that regard, the multiple walls that his cousin Rei had already hit revealed themselves as Tama traced the same paths hoping she had missed something his extended life would have caught, but it didn’t. This Rei-person knew her stuff, and there was not a single stone left unturned. Chemical, Ninjutsu, Genjutsu, hell, even attempting to throw the problem at a Weapon…all of it came up short. Now the only theory that he had used to get out of a death sentence was becoming more and more the likely choice…rip his father out of the prison he was sealed in, and force his soul to undo the curse. Problem was, the man’s soul was far stronger than anyone here realized, and he wasn’t sure if even multiple sages of the dark arts would be able to tame his spirit. Rei was certifiably talented, and easily proved to be on a path of mastering the dark arts that even Tama had failed to fully grasp; hell, she even looked to eclipse Akkuma by his projections. Yet, even Akkuma would be brought to sweat in taming Tengokagi; if he could at all.

Thus, every day when he awoke from the three-hour power naps that sustained his body, Tama would throw himself into the current project for hours before considering sustenance. Which, in itself had become weird to actually require food and water to live once more. It had taken the first three months of nearly dying of starvation before realizing he needed actual food to continue, you know, staying alive.

Today he had just settled down into his breakfast of coffee and bran muffins when he saw the flicker of something unusual. He had dressed in his usual attire - slacks, a mostly open button-down shirt, and a labcoat slung over his shoulders. His long golden hair was now twice the length it normally was and had started to become a nuisance, but no one dared allowed his something sharp to cut it with yet. The scientist focused now on that small ball of chakra moved around the door to his cell as his bites on breakfast became smaller. Spider, or perhaps rat sized? Yet in all his years of living in a country full of monsters, never had he seen one carrying chakra that distinctly tasted human. He heard the guards outside his door swear loudly, ask his partner something about being bitten on the neck by a spider. Their footsteps quickly receded towards the medical bay of the prison, and for the first time in six months Tama’s prison cell was unguarded.

Realizing he would very soon have a guest, his appetite waned. Pushing the half-eaten muffin away, the scientist picked up a small red pack of cigarettes before tapping on the top to force one out. His lips gently wrapped around the end, pulling it free from the others before standing up and walking to his lab where a small gas flame was always burning. Brushing his long blond bangs out of the way, he crouched down to touch the cigarette’s tip to flame and puffed twice before ensuring it was lit; the third draw he inhaled.

The nicotine raced through his bloodstream and played with the nervous system of his brain to calm his heart down. Anyone could be on the other side of that door. An assassin. Someone from Suna come to “save him.” A member of the Ryuu Clan seeking his end, which was actually different from a straight-up assassin; at least, in his eyes it was. Either way, the procedure was out of the norm so this meeting would also be the same. His large, eight and a half foot tall, body flopped back into his wooden chair. He kicked a leg over the arm and pushed off the floor to tilt the chair onto the back two feet to balance as he continued to draw on his cigarette like it was his last.

Finally, the door opened without thrill. No giant ball of fire, no exceedingly large force of chakra, just a well timed burst that could be likened to a small explosive used to break simple locks. The genius in how the person disable the lock already caught his mis-matching eyes as he waited to see who would walk in…and his heart dropped at the sight.

A girl. Of course it was a girl. The entire military save the Main Branch was ran by women, and by all means this country should be his antithesis. The opposite gender tended to have an effect on the giant male, and it wasn’t a good one. They struck fear into his very soul in a way not even the darkest of Old Gods could even dream of doing, but, he had become very practiced at hiding this fear; or at least he told himself as he lit another cigarette off the embers of his first.

Yet, despite the fears, her presence intrigued him the moment she walked in with palms up in surrender; as if Tama could do little more than yell “help.” He knew the rotations, and considering she had mentioned not being a representative of the military…so did she. They had a full ten minutes, at the very least, to discuss…whatever it was she went out of her way to talk to him about. It was the moment she mentioned being cursed that everything fell into place; and how he chided himself immediately for ignoring her white hair.

“A walking corpse, that’s what,” he replied coldly with a level of disinterest that made her master look like walking sunshine. His voice was, despite the reception, was surprisingly warm and noble if not a little nasally as he seemed to speak down to Nozomi. Yet his eyes held a curiosity in them that discounted his tone clearly being used as a prop to give him a leg up on their conversation. The girl was a threat to him just due to her gender alone, never mind what she was actually capable of or, what the curse had strengthened. She had come all this way, fought through a prison undetected, and stepped up to meet the literal, bogeyman of the Ryuu clan.
“…and yet,” he sighed before slinging his leg back down to stand his towering form up before moving towards his lab, “You are perhaps the bravest Ryuu to ever exist currently, because you are the first to actually say something other than mundane mutterings of death. I know not what it is you expect of me, but I can guess based on the lacking pigmentation atop your head. If it is a cure you seek, I can synthesize you something temporary but - it is only just that. If it is answers you seek, I can only try. That is all I have to offer in the short ten minutes you have afforded yourself.”
His hands were already busying themselves as the lit cigarette hung from his lips, trying to keep his composure by starting the process of the temporary cure. It was something he could make in less than five minutes, after all.

“Tick-tock, girl…”

[Topic Entered as NPC - Ryuu Tama]

Nozomi did not move.

Stillness was no longer rest, it now required discipline. Motion sometimes distracted from the pain, and blurred the edges just enough to pretend it wasn’t there. Standing still forced her to acknowledge it in full. Her bones hummed beneath her skin as a constant vibration, similar to a large bell refusing to quiet after being struck. Natural energy pressed outward from her marrow in uneven pulses while the Ryuu curse clawed inward with equal persistence. The two forces colliding somewhere deep inside her where nerves had learned to reinterpret agony as a constant state of being.

Pain was not the problem anymore, it had simply become background noise. She had learned to live inside it, to think through it, and to let it sharpen her instead of consuming her. Instability was the true danger. She still had moments where power surged without permission and intent lagged half a second behind impulse. Those moments were what had destroyed others long before her and those moments were exactly why she was here.

The laboratory around her breathed with a sort of quiet mechanical rhythm. Cooling fans whispered and the electrical systems cycled in regulated intervals. Power flowed through the walls with the steady confidence of a city that believed it could control everything it built. That hum mirrored her own internal cadence, bone grinding softly against bone softened only by chakra compressed tight against it in the form of clay. The natural energy from within fighting the curse from taking over the blood stream and it pressed outward constantly like a tide.

She let the silence stretch.

She had learned long ago that madness was not chaos. Madness was pattern without restraint. It was cognition outrunning permission and ideas colliding faster than emotion could regulate them. When she could manage to focus, truly focus, her thoughts aligned with frightening clarity. Every experience she had survived slotted together like pieces of a tapestry finally revealing a full image. A painting that described the life of an exile, the Ryuu adoption that was both salvation and conscription, as well as the curse that hollowed her from the inside out while sharpening her mind to the finest edge imaginable.

It was not simple curiosity that brought her this far, it was a thing of inevitability.

She studied the man before her without hurry, cataloging posture, rhythm, and habits. He had filled the room with motion the way storms filled valleys. That was no easy feat and clearly a thing done with practice over many years. His hands stayed busy, always reaching for glassware or notes or reagents or his cigarette. He gave off the impression that stillness itself might accuse him of something. The man spoke in solutions with contingencies and how the only option was a measure designed to postpone rather than resolve. It was the instinct of someone who had stared at the edge of catastrophe for too long and learned to live in deferral.

She waited until the silence may have grown a bit uncomfortable. To be precise, it was three seconds past the two minute mark after she had entered the room.

“I believe what has been done to me will already delay plenty.”

Her voice sounded steadier than she felt, Rei would have approved. She had been taught that tone mattered more than volume, that conviction spoken quietly was far more dangerous than shouting. She stepped further into the room, her boots whispering softly against the polished floor. She did not approach directly, because in a fight the angles mattered and so did proximity. Rei had taught her to never face an opponent head on when you can strike them from the side, where it hurts.

“I want to understand the order of failure that has led to this point. So that I may see it undone in proper measure.”

She watched closely as she said it, tracking the smallest shifts as even the slightest hesitation would be enough. She would note it and store it away. Studying not just his face alone, but on everything he was trying to hide with it. She knew even a breath taken a fraction too shallow or a shift of weight that suggested calculation rather than comfort. The way attention snapped briefly toward a particular object on the bench and then returned as if nothing happened. People believed deception was in what you said but Rei had taught her it lived in what your body did, and Nozomi paid attention to everything.

She did not fill the space with more words right away. She let her question exist as a weight and watched whether the room buckled beneath it. She then shifted her stance just slightly so that her profile angled toward the bench and not directly toward him. It was intended to make her less confrontational. Like she was less of a challenge. It also served purpose if she needed to move quickly by keeping her center of gravity balanced.

'This is not a conversation,' Rei’s voice whispered in her mind, 'It is a battlefield.'

That stretched out silence was nearly Tama’s entire undoing. He could feel pressure building up in the back of his head and a panicky film of sweat apply itself beneath his clothing. Eventually, it even betrayed the lack of cool he fully had in front of Nozomi as the beads of desperation began to show themselves on his face. His mismatched eyes flicked back and forth between his idle work and the girl that had blatantly barged into his room. He noticed her gentle movements, and how she continued to keep his breakfast table between them. Full of stealth and purpose but with a lean of disquiet uninterest; a faux face belying her intentions simply by standing there. No one wanted to see, Tama, horror of the Ryuu Clan, terrorist of the sands; so then why was this cursed child there, then? What questions could she possibly have?

The idea of an assassin returned to his mind, and her movements brought back terrible memories a woman cut from that cloth terrorizing him for a good decade. The palled hair youth before him assuredly fit the bill, and the way she held herself was so similar to Uzu, the scientist briefly wondered if he had sired another child in secret. The white hair, the golden eyes, the way her body seemed relaxed, but beneath the muscles were coiled and ready to spring to a point…of…

“…pain…” he muttered to himself in a soft whisper. Then her mention of something having already been done to hold back the ravages of the curse added to the equation. Nearly two-hundred years of life rolled around in his old noggin, the giant of a man gave a deeper consideration beyond the means of a clan, of the curse, or for anything beyond pride; waiting down there was a pang of familiar. She wanted to understand the order of failure leading to a point. The one in which she was at, standing in the prison cell of Kumogakure’s most wanted while breaking dozens of laws; she broke nearly ten just walking in to the facility uninvited. Then there was the way she held herself just like a certain man he had taken a deep love for. Toushin said his body was painfully trained to be like that so that his reflexes were always on edge. A single false movement could mean his blade took a life; sometimes by sheer accident...but the pain in her movement seemed like something ignored instead....

Like a lightbulb, he solved for X. She had no idea why she was here either.

“You want me to find a solution but, you haven’t even brought a question to be answered. All I have is the assumption of why you would go so far…and the answer is you don’t know.”

The scientist turned with a dramatic flare, his coat and hair flaring out with his spin; a measure of drama he took despite the risks. The look of anxiety was gone though the edges were still there. He stalked forward with a gentle grace and cocky smirk. He didn’t know how well versed in the battlefield of minds this child was, but Tama was a man far lived beyond the means of mortals. For the moment, if only a second, the madman had a foothold that allowed him to stand above the young Ryuu.
“You’ve come seeking…what? Why did you break so many laws, risk your career as a shinobi, to be held in a view of contempt if caught? What could be so important to see me that throwing all that away would be preferable just to bask in my presence for a mere ten-minutes?
“It’s the pain, isn’t it?” he answered for her, “Not the physical, oh no you’re far stronger than that…” he stalked forward some more, gently bending at the waist to lean down and place his hands against the edge of the table. Slowly, deliberately. In a test of strength the shinobi before him outweighed anything he had save wisdom; but the vast scores of that sole hard-earned talent was an ocean’s worth for Tama. His foot scooted to touched the edge of the second chair as he moved slightly opposite direction Nozomi was moving, acting as if he was facing down a tiger.

Which, he might as well be.

“It’s the pain in your mind. How far will you go before you do something really regrettable? Breaking into a prison, shaming yourself, all paltry compared to murdering those you love - an inevitability for the curse. You say it’s being held back? I see you. The way your chakra moves in subtle grinds, the spark lingering at the end of a fuse hoping to finally catch the end. Physically, you remain intact. Mentally you fray. I know not of your clan, your mentor, or how much you’ve already sacrifice to get to this moment, but I can say that what is done is already been stamped in your book of life. There is no going back, girl. Every member of the Ryuu clan suffers beneath the yoke of my father’s curse, and even if it is to be removed you will always be haunted by the might-be’s, and the could have been’s.
“All, that I can offer you is a path to less strife. Knowledge on things beyond the Ryuu and their curse, or what amounts to acetaminophen for an amputation. I’m only going to ask once more - what do you want?”

He was ready to spring. Tama couldn’t hide the contortions of his muscles or the fear in his face that Nozomi was causing. His cocky facade slowly faded as he waited for another answer knowing that a moment to escape was a window the size of a single millimeter He could, calculate well over a hundred steps of battle ahead and have a general idea of what the girl’s reactions would be to a thrown chair, a flipped table, and a quick spit of his cigarette towards the chemicals to his right. An explosion, and an escape. The scientist had no means or plans to leave Kumogakure or even get far from his cell; he only needed find the guards.

It would depend entirely on the girl’s whim.

Nozomi watched him move and it felt like watching a storm remember that it could still be a man. The shift from sweat slicked anxiety to practiced arrogance was not a transformation so much as a rotation. He pivoted from one face to another with the same economy he used to handle glassware, as if both personas were stored neatly on mental shelves and he’d simply chosen which to wear. The coat flare, the smirk, the prowling steps toward the table... She noted each flourish and quietly filed them away as calculated performance.

He spoke and dissected her motives as if he could rearrange them into something that fit comfortably into his hand. The words rolled over her like water over glass. The content mattered, but the structure mattered more. He spoke in assertions rather than questions. He framed assumptions as truths and then built his argument on top of them. She did not interrupt him for that would be a concession. Instead, she let him finish the entire spiral, from the curse in her blood to the inevitability of murdering those she loved. How she was physically intact but mentally fraying. Her bones vibrated faintly when he spoke the word inevitability. The curse seemed to love the very thought of it, inevitability, as if it fed on it. Yet, it was a thing she quietly refused every time she woke up.

He was ready to spring by the time he reached the end. She could see it in the way his weight rested just slightly on the balls of his feet rather than his heels or in the subtle angle of his shoulders toward the nearest chemical tray. He had plotted a line of escape with the same precision she used to plan demolition patterns, and still, she did not react to it. Instead, Nozomi shifted her weight in the smallest redistribution of balance, just enough to let her bones settle more comfortably under her skin. The mouths in her palms pressed their teeth against the inside of her gloves, restless, wanting something to shape. She denied them that, too.

He finished, and the room rang with the echo of his last words.

The question hung between them like a waiting noose, sharp and suspended.

Nozomi did not answer immediately.

She let one heartbeat pass... a second... then a third.

Just long enough for the sharpness to dull at the edges and when she finally spoke, her voice was calm. Each syllable placed with surgical care.

“You’re wrong about one thing... My mind is a territory I control completely.”

She said it as if sharing a mundane fact; like her height, or the color of her hair. Then she would watch for a flinch, or a raised eyebrow. She would turn slightly, giving him her profile again, allowing her eyes to drift over the nearest bench as if examining the instruments there. A lie of posture, as her every sense remained on him as she continued to speak.

"You're not wrong. Tarterian access violation, bypassing external security, tampering with seals, interference with guard rotations, and if you want to be really dramatic... Treason."

Her shoulders rose in a faint and almost careless shrug. Her next words would find careful pause between them.

“I did not miscalculate any cost. I weighed it. I am here illegally, no one sanctioned this, and no-one knows I'm here. I came anyway because information is rationed to children and it's not worth asking questions of people who have never stood where you did when this began. There is too much superstition around this topic and they tell it like myth.”

She took a step closer to the table, not enough to threaten, but enough to show she was not impressed by how he was attempting to control the distance. She let her fingers rest lightly on the table’s surface, close to... but not touching any of his work. She placed gloves against the wood and commanded stillness of the teeth which yearned to be set free.

"You asked what I want... I want to strip away the myth. I don't believe in inevitability that creates itself. There was a miscalculation, compromise or some misstep that lend down this path. I'm here... to ask about that moment."

Nozomi let the words hang then exhaled slowly, letting the stale chemical air whisper past her lips and her shoulders set almost imperceptibly. The bone-deep vibration in her body surged once more, sharp and insistent, then settled. The pain once again becoming a constant hum beneath a sharper, colder focus. She had laid down her pieces, not all of them, but hopefully enough to keep him interested. Now... she waited.

There were in fact, security cameras that were aimed at Tama's cell. Yuna had gotten word from her operatives that were in charge of overall prison surveillance. Not someone breaking out. But rather someone breaking in. Her thoughts rushed as she made her way to the surveillance center. Her first thoughts were of Nara Kazeno, the leader of the Revolutionists that had attacked Cloud ninja. Or even sand ninja whom may have infiltrated right under her nose and are going to free Tama.

It was neither. Well... Tama was involved but not in the way that she thought. Behind her blank mask her eyes narrowed. "Call and inform Ryuu Rei that someone from her clan has broken into the prison and that she is needed here. Direct her to Ryuu Tama's cell."

She would then leave and then make her own way there with haste. Tama would first sense her presence before he seen her. Mainly because he would feel the powers of the Chigokai disturbing his blood but not outright using it against him. Not yet at least. It would feel more like a warning. She still was wary of him, it is her job to be. She understood that Rei needed time to get back on her feet before facing Tama but today is not something Yuna can overlook and it is something that as well needs to be brought to Rei's attention as well.

"I trust that you aren't planning to do anything too rash without thinking on the consequences, Ryuu Nozomi." Yuna finally made her presence known to the girl. "Do not try anything or else I will put you under a bind in an instant." The words were cold and stern as her eyes flicked to Tama for a mere second. She doesn't know what he's planning on inside that head of his but he won't be getting out anytime soon.

She had heard through the security footage more or less about the conversation before she left. The Ryuu Curse. "Tell me Ryuu Tama. Have you made any headway on your research into getting rid of the curse?" She knows the gist of it, of what he had told Hon and Kitsune. It was actually his father that had cursed the clan and that his soul was sealed in the fragments of a weapon called the Ashura's blade. And he would only entrust the weapon to either the clan leader or the clan council of elders.

Either way, Rei should be on the way here soon, given the information that would be told to her of why she needs to be here. Yuna would turn her attention to Nozomi. "Consider yourself lucky for right now"