Heart of Fire ~ prologue 1 ~ 'Ain't no rest for the Wicked...'

[Wee Yong]

The Konoha marketplace never truly slept.

Even as the sun dipped below the rooftops, lanterns flickered along the wooden stalls and the scent of spices and fresh bread lingered in the air. Merchants called out their wares, children darted between legs, and the occasional shinobi moved silently among the crowd. Life carried on in its habitual rhythm, unremarkable and steady.

That was when the procession began.

Foxes, weasels, wolves, and other predatory spirits entered the streets with measured steps. Their fur was dull in the lantern light. Eyes lowered, heads bowed, each one holding a small paper lantern that swayed with every slow movement. A single drum sounded from somewhere unseen, its deep, resonant thump marking each footfall. The procession was deliberate, somber, and utterly silent aside from the drum.

They moved between stalls and through the crowd as though the humans were not there. Not one person could see them, yet the air shifted, heavy and almost sacred.

At the end of the line came the fox mother.

She moved awkwardly on her hind legs, her mourning kimono swaying over frail limbs. A small hand cart trailed behind her, carrying a peaceful-looking young fox wrapped in white cloth. Its eyes were closed as though in deep sleep. She paused briefly, head bowed, her breath soft and ragged.

As the procession passed, the crowd began to change. Confusion crept over faces. Merchants lost track of their wares. Children forgot where their parents stood. Lovers could not find one another. An inexplicable melancholy seeped into hearts like water into dry earth. People slowed, whispered, and glanced around, sensing that something was profoundly wrong but unable to speak it aloud.

The drumbeat continued, steady and unyielding.

When the fox mother reached the center of the marketplace, the ground beneath her shifted. Lines of faintly glowing geometry spiraled outward, forming a vast alchemical circle that encompassed the entire square. The air felt dense, charged with something old and deliberate, wrapping every soul in its invisible embrace.

The humans’ confusion deepened, now softened into quiet sorrow. They dropped to their knees, hugged themselves, and wept in silence. No shouting, no chaos, only a pervasive sadness that hung over the marketplace like a low-hanging fog.

The fox mother lowered her cart gently, placing the young fox in the circle’s center. She knelt beside it, awkward on her hind legs, and began to cry. Her sobs were soft but echoed through the hearts of all around.

The other predatory spirits took positions at the edges of the market, perching on stalls, fences, rooftops, and carts. They watched with solemn attention, unwavering and still. Their heads were bowed, their lanterns held low. No one could see them, yet their presence pressed upon the living with undeniable weight.

The sorrow lingered, thick and heavy. The market had become a place of mourning, a quiet cathedral formed in streets of stone and wood. The fox mother’s tears fell slowly, and the air held them as if the world itself had paused to grieve.

And still, the procession remained, patient and unwavering, leaving the marketplace suspended between the living and the unseen.


[Ooc: This is for a mini event being run by Nao and I, please feel free to join and interact. Do whatever you like in the scene, feel free to discover the animals however you please, jutsu, magic, past trauma opening a third eye to the spirit realm, whatever! (Tip From Nao if you don't know anything like that: NE Jutsu Crystal eye)

The people all feel sad.

Please do not hurt the spirit animals or have them say anything. If you wish to fight them (which you definitely can) end your rp at the moment before conflict.

Most of all... Have Fun!!!

And remember this truth, every action has an equal and opposite reaction...

There is definitely more to come!!!]

 

[Kaguya Mitsuha]

Her own mind had slipped. Her own careful planning to try and remember her own painful past as a way to not turn into an emotionless puppet weapon. She had focused too much on her own work and it had taken her. Mitsuha's eyes went from blue to red, an indication that she is now in an emotionless state. Her now puppet mind looked at the things in front of her to compute what she needs. Materials. She needs materials for a project. Getting up and walking out of her empty home, she would make her way to the Oak district, and more so, the market.

The puppet would go into a shop and grab the necessary components that would get her closer to her goal of.... She cocked her head to the side, trying to remember what it is that she needs these components for. Most of these are for the living, breathing human beings, not machines like her. Nevertheless, the human puppet would go to the store clerk and buy the items. It was when she turned away from him that he seemed to be effected by something, though she hadn't noticed.

Once she walked out of the store, she stopped dead in her tracks as she was registering what was happening here. The human puppet would scan around to see the general population in the market behaving strangely. Crying and hugging one another. It was peculiar to see such a thing and she would guess that it would be the cause of some outside force. But upon looking around,

nothing seemed wrong, at least, nothing physical. Mitsuha would set down her materials and form handseals and a crystal eye would form above the marketplace to look at things. Such a jutsu has a better chance of seeing things better than the naked eye.

She would also summon one of her puppets and fuse into it, "Rika." She would merely say. This puppet would help her with close combat situations. Not that it should be a problem as any close combat situations she can use any and all puppet weaponry at close range with deadly accuracy.

She would look around, with the help of her Crystal eye, and then see it. A procession made up of animals that seem ethereal. When she seen them, she felt a headache, her eyes would shift from red, to blue, then back to red again. Regaining her composure, she would approach the seemingly spirit animals. "You are the ones causing emotional dissonance for the human population here." She said it as if she was stating a fact. "Why?" Depending on what their answer is, the puppet would summon a rapier that was in a hidden compartment within the right sleeve of this puppet. Would these spirits be able to talk? Mitsuha has come to the assumption that they should be able to if she is right about assuming that they are behind what is happening right now.

 

[Senju Akio]

Akio came into the marketplace from the direction of the Sakurako compound. Nao had collapsed, harder than Akio wanted to admit even now, and leaving him behind in Yong's care had been necessary in the same way amputation sometimes was. You hated it. But you did it anyway. Thirty days since they had left to the shoreline. His month away from the village had taken its toll. It changed Konoha, like the five years he experienced had changed him. Akio carried that difference with him in the way he moved.

The square felt... wrong. Not under attack, at least not in the usual sense. But it was quieter than it should have been, and that silence pressed in on itself, folding around the people gathered there like a held breath. Lanterns still swayed, stalls still stood, but the grief spreading through the people there was out in the open, heavy and unhidden. A woman knelt with her child clutched to her chest, rocking without sound. A man stared at the ground like he was waiting for it to open. It wasn't blood and fire and chaos like he'd faced in crater city, but it was equally unnerving. Akio slowed without thinking, his attention sliding into that familiar clinical focus he'd learned under Nao's direction, working in wards and sickrooms, and that was now further tempered by the restraint that he'd been gifted by Yong. If this had been an attack, there would be bodies already. This was something else.

The strange weather didn't help. The wind shifted in short, restless bursts, tugging at cloth and hair with no rhythm to it, the sky holding clouds in odd patterns like it hadn't decided what came next. Akio had felt that all day, the sense that the Leaf itself was out of step, that patterns were fraying in ways that didn't announce themselves unless you were in tune with nature the way that Akio was as a Senju, or until you started paying close attention. Then he heard her voice. "Mitsuha?" He didn't recognize the body at first. The figure near the center of the market moved with a precision that felt just slightly wrong, posture too controlled, weight not quite matching motion. "A puppet," his mind supplied, neutral and immediate. But when he noticed the puppet's chakra signature and that same familiar voice spoke again, the suspicion settled into certainty.

Akio didn't say her name right away. He watched instead. Watched the way her attention stayed fixed on something the civilians couldn't see. Watched the tension coiled in her stance, the readiness that said she was already deciding how to end this. The old version of him would have been right there with her, rushing to aid those people and greet his old friend, blade half drawn, heart already convinced that people needed an immediate reaction to anything causing this much pain. That version of him still existed somewhere. He just didn't let that emotional former self sit in the driver's seat anymore.

Akio stepped closer, his hands remaining loose, his breathing staying slow. He was ready to react, but this new version of Akio let his senses reach before his emotions did. As a sage, and especially as a Senju, Akio was more in touch with the flow of chakra than the average, even changed as he was. And he let that settle, using his ability to see through the senses of the very trees and grass and leaf give him a larger perspective on the market. And he saw the feminine fox, crying for a cause he didn't yet comprehend. "What is she?" The Senju asked quietly, voice pitched low, meant for Mitsuha and no one else. Only then did he glance toward the puppet, not scrutinizing her shell so much as acknowledging the person inside it. "You look different, Mitsuha..." he said simply, undercutting the fact that the sunny and smiling Senju she'd known just a month prior was now impossibly aged by five years. Akio had changed more than any person should in that short a time, both in the appearance of his physical body and in the way he carried himself. Gone was the brash and overemotional boy she'd known. That boy was replaced with a man who'd learned, after years spent under Yong's tutelage, to survive in the heaviest and darkest of places.

His gaze drifted over the civilians again, lingering on the children without conscious choice. No injuries. No panic. Fear, yes, but the kids were intact, and more importantly, alive. His jaw tightened as memory layered itself over observation. Rain, a fishing village, Yong telling stories to children while Akio fought monsters in the dark. How angry that had made him. How right it had been. "I don't think this spirit is hunting..." Akio murmured, his choice of words revealing the way he saw the world; in nature-bound terms. "And I don't think she's evil. If she was, we'd probably already be too late." After all, Akio had learned that evil is perspective. Most in Leaf would have seen Yong as evil. He was a missing-nin, marked for death on sight. But his mentor had proven himself something else entirely; wise in a way that Akio only hoped had rubbed off on himself. That truth sat heavy in his chest, but it didn't shake him anymore. It grounded him.

Akio reached up and tapped the communicator at his ear, eyes never leaving the square. "Yong," he said softly, keeping his tone even. "I'm at the market. Civilians here are affected. They don't have physical injuries... but..." He realized he didn't know how to describe what was happening to the market-goers, so he continued instead. "There's a fox spirit here. I think it's what's causing this. Something's wrong with her. She's crying." A pause. "Gonna find out more." He lowered his hand, exhaled once, slow, and then he turned to Mitsuha again. "Whatever's here wants something," he said. "Doesn't mean we should give it what it wants. But we should understand it before we decide how to stop this."

The Senju took a step towards the weeping fox mother and extended his hand. This technique required touch, but it had to be willing, and it was one that Mitsuha had seen before. After all, she'd experienced it herself. "Spirit... What's wrong? Let me understand." He said with authenticity. All throughout his life, Akio had loved nature. He made friends with animals, he tended to trees and gardens, he connected with the natural world and nurtured life in a way that most shinobi barely scratch the surface of. In fact, when he was young, alongside Grandpa Itsuki, he'd come upon a kit fox that had just lost its mother to the venom of a spider bite. He'd brought that fox milk, gave it sustenance, watched it grow until it could hunt and live on its own. So when he reached out, he reached out like he would if he did towards that scared little kit, and pleaded, "Connect with me. Please~." If allowed to, he would use the True Empathy that he'd learned to listen to, hoping to understand what this mother needed here.

[NOTE] True Empathy is a CRPJ. A link to my profile is in my signature, and the CRPJ is listed there in its own section.