A Lover's Quarrel

[Sand Council]

Roku
Number 6​

Humans are innovators, we make the uninhabitable not only sustainable but comfortable. Some consider us the great adapters but in reality we are the great inventors of this world. We change the world or we change ourselves through conscious effort, not automatic adaptation. She never understood that, not like I did in any case. She was more an advocate that saw the world's potential through rose-tinted glasses. It was what I loved the most about her but it was also what drove us apart and I cannot help but find myself regretting my choices then. It was not that she was right, it was the fact that I loved her too much to prove her wrong but today would be a day of second chances.

"That will do," my grinding voice announced as I offered a handfull of silver coins into the shaking hands of a guard. Mine were larger than his, also metallic with pin-thin rivets and hinged joints. They were my masterpiece. One would expect the sound of grating metal or the clink of movement but the greased joints move unimpeded with the dexterity of a human hand, I would even argue perhaps even slightly better.

"T-thank y-you," a whispering voice stammered as the clink of the last coin could be heard hitting the pile in his hand.

"Double the agreed price, speak of this and you will share their fate," I warned. It was not an idle threat for those that knew me, I had abandoned my empathy and until recently I believed also my sense of love and regret a long time ago. I would burn the man alive in front of his family and he knew it, he had seen me do it before. I do not regret that.

The gate would open with a rattle as the guard lifted the portcullis. It rattled loudly as he did so, beyond the threshold was drylands. I took a step closer to the guard, my form was massive inc comparison to his as I loomed over him. "Tell me again what you will say?"

"T-to Sunagakure," he stammered in reply the recalled lie that unbeknownst to me at the time. I would go to Sunagakure eventually, a week late if my estimation was on mark and it always was. It looked like the guard wanted to say more, but the fear in his eyes likely paralyzed his lips. He wanted to hear the truth, he was only told the lie. The lie he would say and the lie he would likely betray. Fickle and foolish like the rest of them.

"Sunagakure," I repeated as a stepped away. The guard seemed to deflate out of the corner of my eye with each parting step, the sounds jarring with each rattling step as I ventured into the badlands.

In my hand was a letter, it was written in neat small font. It was a sentimental reminder that never left his pocket.

Roku;

When you read this letter I will be gone. I have already left the Academy with the others and we will be in Soons Haven for the wedding in a few months. There is much we must do in preparation for the final battle to come. Do not try and follow us, you are not welcome. Do not follow me, do not call me and do not contact me. I will not answer the door, I will not reply to your calls and I will act as if I do not recognize you if you meet me in the marketplace. You will be nothing more than a ghost or a shadow to me.

I understand your resentment but I cannot abide by your stance any longer and I will not allow you to recklessly endanger yourself to prove a point. You have become more machine than man and while you still possess the spirit of the man I once knew, I have come to no longer be able to recognize you. In your quest for perfection you have lost yourself and you have lost me in the process. I will always be there for you, I will always help you when you need it but I cannot love you any longer -- it hurts too much. Someday you will go too far and you will die and I am scared for you.

Perhaps when this war is finally over we will have our chance to be happy and you will let go of your resentment and hate. I think we might be going about this war wrong. I do not think that the Sunans will kill us at their first oppertunity. I have a plan for my Sennin. I know you would try to intervene or stop me, so what I plan on doing I will not say but I am going to stop this war and I am going to save you from yourself. I may be an idealist but I am not the fool you think I am.

She was scared, not of the monster I had become but that I might one day destroy myself in my "reckless quest to end the shinobi menace." She was also a foolish idealist, she did not think that the Sunans were 'bad' people, simply different. I was right, she was a fool. It was not the first time she put herself in harms way thinking that she would somehow survive, thinking that nobody had to die. She had that mentality since she was a kid. If it was not for her, I would be dead. But in the end, everyone dies.

It had been over a year since she left him that letter. Taro and Shi had already returned, even the water-weirdo reported a 'mission success' when she called on him to ensure her capture. Of course that was when I figured out her plan, it was one she had explained several times before. Lose and trust that you would survive. Learn about them from the inside. An interrogation where only she would lose blood. She was insane, they would capture her and they would hurt her then they would leave her to rot. They would never learn anything from her, she was malleable. Eventually she would die if she did not escape. I trusted in her strength, not her ambition. She could defeat some of the numbers above her if she had the desire to do so but she lacked interest.

Of course she was dead already and I did not know it. She did not think the blade would come down on her. She probably did not even flinch, thinking it was merely a scare tactic. She was wrong. She was wrong too often and this time it cost a good woman her life. Shame I did not know that then, I would have skipped the trip to Soons.

[Topic Left]

S Rank -- 30 min.

Traveling to Soon's Haven