An Unexpected Journey [Private|Michino]

[Chiyo]

Before Sunagakure’s new artificial sun flooded their little world with daylight, a nondescript young man would stroll through the Toraono dojo with a satchel of newspapers hanging from his shoulders. He deposited a newspaper in nearly every mailbox or slot he passed. Some would be getting their news from other sources, some didn’t take any news at all, but someone here took a very specific kind of news. As the man passed the home Chiyo shared with Michino, another man was coming back up the sidewalk with his own, nearly empty, satchel. Lucky punk, the former man thought as they passed, wishing his own route was that close to over. Mind returning to his task, he didn’t notice the other man disappear a few paces behind him.

Sitting in the kitchen, golden eyes flicked toward the door at the small thud the paper made as it hit the floor. Setting her coffee cup on the table in front of her, the petite woman stood and padded over with bare feet to retrieve her reports from the floor. As she returned to her heavily doctored coffee, Chiyo flipped her long hair over one shoulder to keep it out of the way of her reading and took a sip of the sweet drink with a long exhale, trying to calm her racing heart. Shortly after their village had taken to its new normal, the Uzumoreru had sent the majority of her forces down into the mostly collapsed underground to recover anything they could. Outwardly this was a humanitarian effort, a vast majority of the people working for her had still called the caves home and had belongings that were now all but lost.

Beneath the philanthropic exterior, however, Chiyo had instructed her men to keep a keen eye out for any signs that might point to the work of Ryuu Tama. The scientist may have disappeared with hardly a trace, but damned if his research would be lost in the same way. As much as she hated to admit it, the giant jerk had still saved her life and she couldn’t forget that no matter how hard she tried. Unfortunately, none of them had managed to find anything as of yet, but still she persevered. At least they had been able to recover quite a lot of belongings and keepsakes in the rubble, and she took heart in that.

Today, however, Chiyo had a feeling that would all change. An unshakable tension had plagued her half the night and pulled her from sleep. Even snuggling up to the warm body of her lover hadn’t rid her of the anxiety she was feeling. Unable to return to her dreams, even after what felt like an eternity of laying awake, she had reluctantly freed herself from Michino’s embrace and headed for the kitchen to wait.

Finally, the courier had come to relieve her suffering. Now there was just the matter of finding out what exactly had her feeling this level of anxiety. Setting her coffee down once again, she opened the newspaper and scanned through the pages. At first glance, the document would read like a whole lot of fluff with a healthy smattering of errors and typos. To the ex-assassin, however, it was an intricate code to keep their findings safe from prying eyes. The first several pages held no real updates, just more of the same reports that they had been able to clean up more of the underground. A couple of bodies had been found and their next of kin notified. The surveillance experts she still had watching some of the old blood that hadn’t fled the village had nothing of note to report.

Then she reached what appeared to be the classifieds. There, in the center of the page, was a long rectangular section that appeared to be an ad for a clothing store, but reported a scout having found what seemed to be one of Tama’s safe houses. They hadn’t found any research, but what they had found, was a letter addressed to one Suchiru Amejisuto. Freezing with her eyes locked on the name, Chiyo’s small hands tightened on the paper, crumpling the sides in her fists until only that one section was visible. The letters blurring slightly as her eyes filled with unshed tears, she continued to read. The woman who had found the letter had read it, not knowing the significance, and had passed on its contents. It was from Ame’s father, who had remained in Suna when she left with Uzu, and detailed the location of an heirloom sword.

Blinking the tears away, she laid the paper on the table and frantically smoothed it out. Following the set of numbers beneath the text to a page near the end of the periodical, she found a tiny scroll carefully tied into the fold. With shaking hands, she reached out to touch the scroll, sending a small jolt of chakra into the item. The tiny scroll returned to normal size and for a long moment the normally unshakable woman simply stared at the aged parchment. This was the real letter Ame’s father had sent, rather than the forgery that had sent her to her death. Remembering this was what her mother had died in pursuit of lit the fire in Chiyo’s heart once again and she took the scroll in her right hand, peeled the wax seal away with the thumbnail of her left, and unrolled it carefully.

Inside was a letter that held all of the love the old blacksmith had clearly held for his only daughter. Having never had the chance to read the forgery Tengokai had sent in its stead, Chiyo only hoped he had kept this part of the letter untouched. It was breaking her heart all over again knowing Ame may never have gotten to read these words in her final days. Within the reassurances and remembrance, were the true instructions pointing to the legendary weapon her mother had set out to recover on her father’s behalf. As she finished the letter, she rolled it back up and clutched it gently in one hand. The strategic mind Toushin had cultivated within her had already started to turn. There was no question that the weapon needed to be retrieved, if it was even still there after the 30 years that had passed since this letter was written. The only questions were when she would leave and how much of a fight Michino would put up to keep her from going.

[MFT]

 

[Toraono Michino]

Beaded sweat flung from the Toraono’s lord’s fists as he punched the air. Quickly his fists rolled against the speed bag, the left first and then the right with about ten reps a piece before swapping between them. With a final strong right that pushed the back back up into the metal contraption it hung from, the plate pulled back into near plain wall. A rectangle cut itself out from the same stone and opened to reveal a punching bag that slowly exited out. A few feet from the wall, it stopped and hung there for scant seconds before Michino’s fists and feet were striking it; each blow sounded like a gunshot.

His training equipment was build exclusively for him. Nearly anyone else would have broken their hands on the hard leather made from the local predators, or the iron sand he had them packed with. For him, though, it was necessary to progress even an inch further than he already had.
Muscle was finally starting to appear on his frame again in bulk. His hard-wirey tuned core was replaced by legit power once more. No longer muscles fueled by chakra, his choice to step down from Kazekage allowed the man more time to actually train his body for impending problems their rouge village might have. Creatures unknown to man that had resided in the old sandworm tunnels were nothing to scoff at, and held just as much death in their claw as anything else in the Wind Country. To ensure the rails continued to be built without stopping their movement for long, he personally had seen to overseeing and helping with the construction. The result was the return of a triangular upper body, and the need to buy a stronger framed bed after he had accidentally broke the first with his weight alone.

After the 1000th punch, and kick, a beep sounded and the bag slowly receded back into its housing before the stone wall slid back into place to hide it once more. Michino breathed a little heavy, relaxing his muscles through various stretches within his own home. Training between Chiyo and himself had become something she insisted they started to do more in secret, and he supposed it made sense. So the third unused room, more or less a basement within their housing inside the clan’s dojo, had been converted into a gym. Originally it was for children, as all of these larger apartments had been created, but they weren’t able to have their own children and held no desire to raise any; so a training room it was transformed into. Taki-matted, chalked arena rings, a subtle brown stone with golden trim, and training equipment hidden into the walls all around the large room; they made great use of it.

There was still cardio to do though, and Michino preferred doing that in the Dojo’s track. It allowed him to cut loose, as though the space of his own gym was rather large it wasn’t anything he could actually run in. As he ascended the stairs he heard Chiyoko’s gasp and sensed that uneasy feeling. Normally around this time she’d be reading her spy’s well coded messages so, he could only assumed something had come up. Dread filled his stomach - was it the village? Her father? Something nefarious found in the old ANBU crèche she had her agents picking through? One of Tama’s labs holding something unethical and terrifying? There was a huge, list of things that gasp could be about, but as he ascended the stairs to witness his fiancée reading an old letter, he could have never guessed what it was about.

Despite his size, Michino was incredibly silent and though it was exceedingly rare - he did occasionally get to sneak up on the prima assassin that was his future wife. This, was one of those times. He had arrived at the top of the stairs when she unrolled the scroll. With a blink, his purple eyes turned red, reflecting in them the magatama of the Sharingan that could catch every single letter from the distance he was viewing it at. His heart sank a little, knowing how rough it had to be to come across that letter. Chiyoko’s mothers, either of them, were a taboo subject he was not allowed to bring up. They were emotional scars left by parents of a different time in a world that was far more dangerous than the one they lived in now. She had never known Kitani, or even where she vanished when she had grown old enough to look for her. Ame, on the other hand, she had been raised by to a certain point and only had fond memories of leading up to her death. He knew that moment there would be no stopping her, or even trying to slow her down. Chiyo, for the first time in decades, finally had a connection to one of her mothers; of course she was going to hunt it down.

At the very least, he didn’t have to worry about Tengokai. Tama was another matter all together but, he had been proven innocent in the whole debacle surrounding Ame; he doubt the giant would get in their way. All that was really left was for them to submit a term of absence to the military and…well, take a trip. Michino blinked again, his eyes returning to normal with something of a blur now compared to the sharp contrast of rotating chakra through them. He walked heavily on purpose, his feet padding up behind Chiyo before putting his heavy hand on her shoulder as lightly as he could. Michi’s fingers curled a little, gripping them just as gently.

“Guess we’ll need to take a break from work then,” he said without needing her to explain anything. “I’ll get the paperwork together and done. Hardest part is going to be finding a substitute for my classes in the Dojo, but I have a few in mind already. Does it say where the sword is?” He hadn’t read the entire thing, some of it was being covered by his lover’s body, but the assumption was not in their own country.