Open Hierophant

[Jintou]

The Upright Hierophant

In this vast world, across the spans of distant lands, widening city roads and steel towers mark the cusp of a new age. The mundane man scrapes the sky with filthy fingers to mar its perfection until the day the rust of oxidation clears it all away. It is the understanding found behind the old eyes that see what was, is, and will be: nothing lasts forever, but that which is built with folly falls first.

So, when a burgeoning shinobi cadet learns of an ancient marvel still standing, one so old and yet marvelous, his heart throbs with the thrill of wonder.

What was first touted as a training expedition onto the frigid steppes of the Tundra Biome, Jintou, the Third Son of House Oba, found himself venturing far from home. The journey was the machination of some Jounin Journeyman with tenure in the Ranger Division; a stone chinned, survivalist type of shinobi the academy students knew as Master Noruisu. He was the sort who never cracked under pressure, and with a steely glare, could break the resolve of a hungry ridgeback. But it was the might of Master Noruisu’s roundhouse kick— indeed, a master in taijutsu he was— could sweep a ridgeback clean of its teeth before the beast might bite down. He was like a walking advertisement for joining that brave division. So, there was Jintou, journeying on a week-long expedition into the Tundra Biome with a flock of young peers, all struggling to keep up with a skillful instructor.

The purpose of Master Noruisu’s course was to learn survival strategies in the foreign wilderness, though most of the efforts so far had focused on shelter and foraging for food. Hunting edible prey was encouraged, but the master limited his students from hunting in excess with the decree that it would negatively impact the fragile biome ecosystem. Perhaps more notably, Master Noruisi seemed to thrive on turning his pupils against one another and claimed that the dangers of the wilderness would test traveling shinobi frequently.

On the third evening of the little “field trip”, the pupils assigned to preparing the group’s meals were instructed to bake a little less bread over the campfires. Ever scheming, Master Noruisu saw to it that the young shinobi would have to employ crucial decision making to decide who could eat, and how much was their share. Wide-eyed and aghast with horror, Jintou was among the last younglings to wander back into that frigid camp empty-handed after a failed session of foraging. There was merely a morsel of bread left in the pan, and two boys to divide it between. Anger welled up in his flushed cheeks as Jintou decided that he refused to be the one to go hungry.

- Jintou has entered the thread.
- Requesting @Egawa Yuno
- wc464

 

[Shingetsu Sora]

It was cold, colder than Sora had ever imagined that the world could be, and this particular cold was the sort of cold that crawled into his bones and nearly froze him equally from the inside out as it had for the outside in. Even with a weather appropriate hoodie, a blue version with fur lining on the inside, as was his custom, he still couldn't shake the feeling this particular place was too cold to ever support proper human living conditions, or so he thought. No sooner than he had thought to voice such a concern verbally then one of his equally less informed travel mates asked what had also been on his mind and found out rather matter of factually that there were places in the world that were even far colder than this.

Shaking his head partially because he could barely believe such a fact but also because it helped to keep him warm, he continued on on the journey. He had partially only joined the "field trip" because he felt like it would help him to do something different and gain more exposure for the ever looming exams but the more that he trekked on, the more that he realized that he ought to start planning his methods of education far better than on a whim. The realization that this wasn't an ordinary trek was further emphasized when Master Noruisu effectively had them start rationing off food despite it not even being necessary. Whatever feel good moments had kept Sora engaged up till now suddenly caused a very clear and defining record scratch of a moment. True, Sora used his more prepared Genin muscles to got a scrap of bread that day, but what sort of twist would the next one bring?

 

[Jintou]

So the saying goes, survival of the fittest. In a quick jaunt from the warmth of the campfire lights, a circle of fledgling shinobi gathered in a wide berth as spectators. With the sun low on the horizon, the snowy ground hardened to icy stone. Within the ring of children, the ground was imprinted with footprints as the last two foragers circled it like two gamecocks before the bloody fray. Sounds of cheers and jeers filled the scene as a fight commenced, with little bodies blocking the show from a campfire view.

Was it like Sora to attend such a barbaric show? If not, he would have been one of the few younglings to forgo the experience and settle with a warm fire instead. Master Noruisu was notably not keeping a watchful eye over the fight; instead, he deferred his pupils to their own methods of leadership and intuition. His attention was better spent trimming a large strip of fur he harvested from some game earlier in the day.

Jintou was never the sort for bloodsports, be they sparring or even a fight for survival. Of course, it was in him to try but the arts of bludgeoning opponents simply wasn’t his strong suit. The contest was short, to say the least, as his opponent had him beat in a trifecta of height, weight, and reach advantage. When the ring broke, so full of disappointment, slanderous remarks hit the night’s air… new-age saying such as “my man folded like a lawn chair,” and that classic sexist diatribe— “he fights like a girl,” favored so highly by toxic adolescent youth. Jintou emerged from the fray on his knees, winded and gasping. Droplets of blood blessed the permafrost as Jintou trembled over them, visibly pressing his face, painfully numb with a split lip.

The boarish boy who bested Jintou stormed into the camp victoriously. His stride lessened only slightly when he returned to the sole morsel of bread awaiting him— a pathetic prize for having to sock it to an academy student fighting out of his league.

It seemed as if the harshness of Master Noruisu’s instruction had hardened many of the other pupils, so much that they neglected to see about Jintou. At one point, another young girl arose with concern but a peer grabbed her wrist with an accompanying shake of the head. It appeared that the expedition was molding many of the children into a collective pack of wolves.

As for Jintou, the split lip was genuine… moments earlier, there was no planned chain of events when the opponent seized him by his sandy blond dreadlocks. Being slung to the ground was not Jintou’s intention, nor was being mounted with a man’s full weight on his chest, or being pounded in the face by ham-shaped fists. The beatdown was as genuine as they come. But as Jintou hid his face, he too hid the cream-filled snack cake he was stuffing into it; the first of three. Plastic wrappers glistened in the moonlight in the snow on his far side, hidden from Master Noruisu’s hawk-like perception. On the first day of the expedition, the instructor believed that he confiscated all of Jintou’s snacks, but a shinobi must have backup plans. The sounds of sobbing were not the tears of defeat and embarrassment, but the tears of joy and sweet satisfaction.

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[Shingetsu Sora]

Sitting around the fire, Sora heard the commotion going on just beyond the protection of the warmth of the heat but he decided not to partake of the relatively free but still pitiful mixed martial arts fight. Being thankful of his own bit of bread, he didn't see the need to be just another gawking face and even more so, he also didn't feel any sort of kinship with those that found themselves excited about such displays of youthful vigor. In a word, the whole experience struck him as juvenile and a waste of energy in such an unforgiving environment. Eyes focused on the fire, he heard the jeers and sneers but he dared not to turn around because he knew that if he did then he would instantly care about the overall outcome of the fight. Sighing and adjusting his hoodie, he took a deep breath and exhaled as the sounds from the fight grew louder before they eventually came to an slowly drawn out end.

Sora had witnessed enough spars that had gone left to recognize the sounds of a bully taking out their frustrations on a smaller opponent and shaking his head, Sora attempted to forget one particularly bad fight that had to be stopped by a Jounin due to the sheer brutality of it. As much as the boy wanted to grow stronger and explore what gifts he had, he found it sickening just how much some loved to fight, not for the skill of things, but for the pleasure of painting a floormat with blood. Unfortunately for whoever wasn't the victor of the fight, the snow would prove to be the perfect canvas. When at last the fight seemed to be over, many began to walk back, even the victor, who happily partook of his bloody bread with pride. Like maggots to garbage, the victor's cronies circled around him and began to formulate the tale of how their brutal buddy beat up a kid half his size.

Of course with time the tale would morph to include all sorts of things that didn't happen but as telling as their attitudes were, what shocked Sora the most was that the instructor didn't immediately turn to acknowledge the kid who didn't come back to the fire. As he raised an eyebrow, Sora slowly glanced around and found that nobody dared to get up to help the kid who by now was clearly crying. One girl tried to get up, but her friend, who seemed to be enamored by one the bully's right hand man, shook her head and pulled her back down to sit. Sora was the clanless outsider and didn't expect to get a helping hand when he fell but it was shocking to see that even within what should have been a kin building exercise, that there had been clear lines in the snow drawn so early. Perhaps he was just that different. Sighing once more, Sora shook his head and stood up, drawing the eyes of nearly all but the instructor. Not making eye contact with anyone in particular, as he turned to leave he caught sight of the bully staring daggers into him.

Though a small part of him wanted to, he didn't engage and instead turned to walk towards the sobbing student that had dared to fight so far out of his league. Putting his hands in his pockets, he felt the stiff breeze of the wind slap against his cheeks as he grimaced and pressed onward. Hearing the soft crunching of snow beneath his boots, he quickly made his way to the sobbing kid and as fortune would have it, despite being worse for wear, the kid certainly wasn't going to die today. Clearing his throat, he reached out with one hand to help the guy up. "All that for an ounce of bread, huh?" He really hadn't thought of anything serious to say and anything that he could say would probably come across as disingenuous since they weren't exactly friends and he couldn't ever recall seeing the kid around either. Then too, if this expedition was going to be a wild ride then Sora also wasn't trying to show any weaknesses either so even when helping, he reserved himself to keep things light but even.

 

[Jintou]

As the sounds of crunching boots drew closer, Jintou hurriedly stuffed down the third pie from his secret stash. The sweet scent of sugary oatmeal must have seemed misplaced to Sora as he arrived, or perhaps, ignited an initial suspicion of Jintou’s roguish mastication. Unable to scoop up the plastic without a crinkling giveaway, Jintou swept snow over it in a single, sloppy push. Once the shadow of Sora crested over him in the moonlight and he spoke his subtle denouncement of the trial for bread, Jintou was caught lacking— hacking, coughing. The oatmeal pie formed a resistant knot in his esophagus before painfully going down. There were still crumbs and a smattering of filling on the corners of his lips as Jintou looked up at his present companion.

Jintou squeezed out the sound of a mistaken name, “Sefu?” In the night, subtleties in the way the moon illuminated Sora led him to faintly resemble the First Sun of House Oba, or elder brother, to whom that named Sefu belonged. Blinking hard, Jintou blamed his delirium on his wishes and the cold, knowing full well that his tribesman would have never ventured willfully into the Sunan’s manmade biomes.
“I’ve never had to fight for scraps before” countered Jintou, audibly disappointed. “Even in the worst dry seasons, the House saw to it that every mouth was fed.” Taking Sora’s hand, Jintou climbed to his feet and swept off the stray snow and the sludge of wet soil. “Master Noruisu is teaching them to be selfish and prideful… but I’ve learned better.” If only to encapsulate the vitriol in his tone, Jintou made a bloody spit towards the camp. “Before we returned to the camp, I told my partner that there would likely be a punishment for us failing to forage... “He said he would take it on the chin— little did I know that he was looking forward to a fight.“ And for their failure, not only did Jintou have to dip into his oatmeal pie rations, but he had a split lip to show for it.

Unzipping his cobalt-hued, armored jacket, he let the cold through long enough to reach inside to a hidden pocket and fish out another snack. “House Oba values community over all; the tribe is strongest when we work together like a Lion’s Pride.” Jintou tried to slip Sora the plastic-wrapped cake on the sly, and added “Take this… we cannot let him divide and conquer us. “The next four days will only get more dangerous as this rate.”
Despite only just meeting this stranger, Jintou’s instincts told him to value this fellow and seek kinship in spite of the odds set against them in Master Noruisu’s dangerous expedition course. After all, there was no such thing as a coincidence.
“Oh, and I’m Jintou” he went on to say before taking his first steps back towards the warmth of the camp, “Third Sun of House Oba.”

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[Shingetsu Sora]

Perhaps Sora's eyes had been playing tricks on him but there was a faint smell in the air that was familiar but not quite one that he could place. As his mind started to drift off towards where it could be, he spied a crumb on the kids upper and held back a chuckle. This kid was truly more of a glutton for pain than he'd taken him for. Sefu? Sora hadn't recognized the name and truly thought the kid drunk off of pain. Or maybe he was a bit drunk? With the way that the boy spoke about "the House", Sora could only assume that he was one of the fortunate ones to have a tribal or clan home. "Sounds like my sort of pla-" When the boy reached out to take his hand, the contact between the two was electrifying, or so Sora thought. With just the most simple of acknowledgements, Sora suddenly was thrust far far away from the biome that they were in and back towards the plane that he'd been transported too on so many other occasions before. This time however, he wasn't before a sea of people, but instead he was floating in a blue sea of nothingness.

Neither sea nor sky, Sora seemed to hang by the invisible force of gravity with his arms limp at his side. Blinking, he thought that he saw the faint outlines of wispy clouds above him, but as his eyes moved to the corners of his vision, he realized that through varying shades of blue around him that there was no discernable way to tell if he was face down or face up. It was a sky within a sea, an ocean amongst the stars. "Funny finding you here!" The voice from beyond seemed new but familiar, like a memory from childhood that Sora was too old to remember. Trying to turn himself to see where the voice was coming from, he found that he couldn't and as he began to strain, it seemed like the connection was broken in that instant and he was back with the kid who had gotten beat up. The slack in his arm hadn't tightened up and there he was, awkwardly hand in hand with the kid and yet he hadn't pulled him up to his feet yet. Shaking his head, he quickly pulled the kid up into a standing position. "Sorry about that." he muttered as he shook his head.

Hearing the kid go on about how they were being treated, he couldn't disagree. "Yeah, I don't agree with his methods but even still, that was some so called partner that you had. You should seem them over there carrying on." The normally quiet boy shook his head in dismay. It was at that moment that the boy took the time to forcefully slide a snack of some sort into the one of Sora's many pockets. "Hey, I uhhh...thanks." Sora didn't walk over and help him for what he could get out of it but he still accepted it none the less. By the sound of things, the boy would have been pretty offended if Sora turned the snack down. Trying to act natural, he shook his head in agreement about the next four days.

"Yeah, about that...four days is a mighty long time all things considered, especially when the resident bully has shown their hand so soon. I truly hope that you aren't going to try and eat a fist the next time you're feeling your stomach growl." Sora laughed at the last part though the boy might not have found it equally funny. "Nice to meet you Jintou Third Son of House Oba, I'm Sora...the only." Unfamiliar with the clan naming scheme, Sora was sure that he understood "Sun" as "son" and so believed Jintou to probably be the youngest of three children with a title to match. With a wail as the boy had produced, it made sense to Sora that he would be the youngest and therefor the baby of the bunch. Making sure to stuff the treat that he'd been gifted into one of his more secure pockets, Sora also began to make his way back towards the camp.

 

[Jintou]

Upon their return to the camp, little pity was shown for Jintou by his peers, and more glances were sent the way of Sora. A display of kindness was more akin to bravery in an atmosphere influenced heavily by their instructor’s divisive methods, which reinforced the ideals of self-reliance to a brutal degree. Individually, the children were just that— mostly harmless academy cadets and some well-learned genin under specialized tutelage, some of which hailed from esteemed clans or accomplished homes. But as a collective, these children were becoming an extension of their master’s will; all tethered like hounds on a leash. Sitting at the center of the camp like its nucleus, Noruisu was akin to the alpha, so engrossed in his little activity of trimming furs, but never slacking his control over the pack.

---

In the days before Jintou departed from his tribe to commence his journey as a shinobi, Jintou’s Father, Shinsou, set him aside for one of those heart to hearts only a father could give. It was one of those arid summer nights on the vast savannah of the black salt flats. The desert’s energy felt so palpably alive. In the long summers, House Oba always settled on the grounds that overlooked the auroch pastures. That was always the case for his people; close to nature. Together, the father and son scaled a plateau that oversaw their domain, and it was there that Shinsou issued vital reminders to his treasured third son. He warned Jintou about the perils of the shinobi’s indoctrinating methods, and that they would seek to make him being a shinobi come first, before being the Third Sun. “There is a danger to be found when a man removes his feet from the soil; he loses his balance.” As long as the boy remembered his family, their love, and their ancestral ways, he would always remember how to return home.

Owuo Atwedee
(The Ladder of Death)​

When the following morning came, Jintou’s premonition about increasing danger quickly proved to be an ill omen with promise. Before dawn, Master Norisu had his pack undoing their camp, and waylaying their first meals with his demand to hit the trail.

Once the squad was ready to embark, their Jounin master gathered them around and reveal his machinations for the day. “Today, you’ll be using the techniques you developed the last three days to maneuver independently— again, in pairs. “Shinobi move in pairs to ensure that information returns home, no matter the cost. “So, that being said, I won’t be assigning you randomly this time: assess your own skills, and that of potential partners... and pair up yourselves.”
Only the discipline of shinobi kept the students from instantly jumping at efforts to recruit one another, but that did not stop them from making many affirming glances at one another, and others, conflicted side-eyes. The instructor let the anxiety-inducing moment build in silence as he became distracted with several manilla envelops he fished out of his hip pocket. “Each pair will be responsible for scouting one of the locations listed on maps found in each envelop… And most of which we’ve at least skirted around since entering the biome. Your determined location will have a creature den associated with it, and your task will be to infiltrate it and recover a valuable token. “That’s right… a scavenger hunt. But choose wisely kids, some of these spots can get pretty dangerous.”
Then, without providing his pupils so much as a moment to decide, Noruisu unbanded the rubberband that kept the envelopes in a stack and tossed the envelopes to the snow at his feet. He took a ceremonious two steps back and spun away, only to say “begin” with a forced jaded timbre.

The pupils were reduced to a wild pack, suddenly divided simply into the choosers and the chosen. However, Master Noruisu gave the pupils a bit of pause when he added the rule “finders keepers” once the first of his flock scooped up envelopes. Suddenly, overly eager shinobi were left without their ideal partners if they chose simultaneously in the mad dash. Then came the initial reactions as some of the earliest to chose opened their notes and found easy, or in some cases harrowing locales.

Of course, Jintou found himself less than eager to take part in this latest quest. However, he did not let the anxiety freeze his feet. But rather than gunning for an envelop he moved through the crowd towards Sora instead. With a challenging grin broadening and a bold tone Jintou called to his timely ally. “Hey, Sora the Only? “Want to team up?”

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[Shingetsu Sora]

"Half of these kids are going to freeze to death..." Muttering under his breath, Sora carefully replayed the words and actions of the instructor in his head over and over again. Methodically turning over ever small movement and action that the instructor had made, if Sora didn't know any better then he would have figured that the instructor was the sort of teacher that took exquisite delight in watching the younger generation of shinobi cannibalize themselves until only the cream rose to the top. Certainly his actions, or lack thereof could have easily been interpreted as one promoting chaotic anarchy instead of communal connections. That or the other young upstarts present on the trip couldn't plan for a future beyond the present moment. Whichever was the case, Sora's new goal was to make it through this trip without succumbing to the sort of antics that his peers were so quickly making. Like a naïve child he believed that he could somehow keep the world from changing him before he had a chance to change the world.

“Hey, Sora the Only? “Want to team up?” If Sora's hand had been held to the fire then he would have had to have admitted that he was less than enthused when Jintou was the first kid to want to pair up with him. Jintou had neither proved to be the biggest nor the baddest and if one were calculating smarts, he was bordering on being mad. So far as Sora could see, Jintou's greatest strength was managing to take a beating with comedic wailing included. His thoughts rather interrupted, the long minded Sora realized that the boy had gotten his name wrong but he was more distracted by the fact that everybody was all paired up. There was only the two boys. For better or for worse, Sora would and Jintou would have to be partners. Not personally offended by the boys antics, it didn't take too much analyzing to realize that the two boys fates were tied in this regard. Smiling and nodding, Sora shrugged his shoulders. "Why not?"