Masao stared at the parchment, and the long-dried blood of his wife stared back at him. Santaru Rin’s body had been found in her office shortly after his sentencing in the heart of the Serene Kingdom of Bear, and he had been informed of her death exactly four hours after he had arrived, half-dead, back in Kumogakure. Saeko and Enjeru had been the ones to deliver the news to him. Of the two, only Enjeru seemed to show anything resembling sadness.
Rin, the source of storm in his life, had died and gone away, and had left him not with depression as he had expected, but rather, with a sense of emptiness. He was again incomplete, and could not find it within himself to cry, or rage, or really feel much of anything. Only his overriding duty to kill the traitor Enishi remained, tethering him to this world. His sworn enemy was now the man he needed most in the world to keep living. As Hayata Shin would say, “interesting.”
He gently placed the bloody parchment, the last testament of his wife, back into the hermetically-sealed container in which it was kept, in the most secure storage of the Torre Celeste. Much had changed and grown in the time elapsed since that fateful day. He was now one of the last remnants of Aion’s era, and when he died, only Kitsune would remain.
His last dealings with his old classmate had reopened fresh wounds, and he now needed to forget those. He needed to sort the past out with someone who wasn’t such an ever-present danger, someone who he had nevertheless been close with. He pulled out a map of Lightning County, poring over it thoughtfully. His fingertip rode the printed paper, and stopped over a particular city to the north: Okaya, the capital of the Kagoshiman Republic.
Ready to depart the gates soon after, he presented his paperwork to whoever would care to go through the rigmarole of processing him, and waited to leave.
[Exit requested]
