In one of the few remaining sordid avenues of Kumogakure...
Kaiden’s footsteps echoed through the damp alley, the flickering glow of broken hanging lights illuminating a desolate row of boarded-up homes. The slums had changed over the years. Some districts rose up with new development, and most of the city was vibrant and gentrified, but the indentured policeman's daily beat never quite improved. Broken glass and bits of rubbish crunched under his heavy boots, reminders of the quiet desperation that lingered here. The man himself was no better. Kaiden's brawny and bedraggled appearance reflected his surroundings, his long disheveled hair tied in a loose ponytail, his officer's outfit askew enough to look sloppy, and the faint scent of strong liquor mingling with his sweat. He exhaled a weary breath. This place, these people… they all deserved better help than one shackled policeman on his last frayed nerve. And yet, week after week, Kaiden was assigned to the worst parts of town. The little pockets of Kumogakure that the renovation and gentrification forgot or hasn't gotten to yet. Places where petty crimes and hopelessness thrived. Where no other officer wanted to go. Usually, it was tragic stuff: a family evicted, a drunk stumbling into a fight, or a hungry thief stealing scraps. Nothing he could truly fix.
But tonight was different.
A young girl, barely five years old, had gone missing almost two days prior from one of the cramped tenements at the end of this very street. Her father, gaunt and trembling, had pleaded for help. His rasped words still echoed in Kaiden’s mind: “Please… she’s all I have.” The city’s authorities almost wrote it off as another domestic tragedy, until rumors spread that the abductor somehow kept evading the civilian police. That was enough to raise eyebrows. But still not enough to send a team of shinobi. Instead, they sent him. Kaiden paused at a dimly lit intersection, the wind strong enough to still provide some bite through the thick cloth of his uniform. A tingle skittered down the towering man's spine, but he shook it off. Kaiden had felt uneasy since stepping into the neighborhood. He wanted to help—genuinely help—and the drive to protect a child sparked a hint of purpose he barely recognized in himself anymore. Even so, his heart thumped with a heavier burden, one that he felt in every one of those fleeting moments that he saw that cerulean shape hovering just out of sight. “Daddy, it’s so dark here…” Came that soft, familiar voice. Kaiden reflexively tensed. Even now, after years of grieving, the sound of his daughter speaking caught him off guard like a chill breeze on bare skin. It was a reminder of what he's lost, a testament to his insanity, and a balm on his cracked and broken soul all at once. Runa’s spirit drifted at the edge of his vision, her small spectral form giving no real light to the alley. "Not now," he begged silently, hoping his daughter’s spirit, his biggest source of torment and his only comfort outside a bottle, wouldn’t appear at the worst time. He didn’t have the energy to face her grief-stricken smile when his mind needed to stay sharp. "I can’t... I have a job to do." Somewhere in this dark sprawl of forgotten alleys and broken lives, a child was missing, and time was running out. With a resigned breath, the unwitting Ghostwalker continued on.
However, Kaiden's usually-bubbly daughter wouldn't be silenced by a mere thought. “I’m scared, Daddy,” Runa’s spectral voice pressed on, a tinge of sorrow lacing her sweet tone, “But not for me. For you.” Her words, like a blade to Kaiden’s conscience, cut deeper than the cold air around him. He wanted to tell her he’d be fine, but the words refused to form on his tongue. "I can’t. No, I won’t lose another kid," he told himself in silence. With a firm grip on the worn spear he carries, Kaiden turned the corner. The cramped apartment complex he’d been searching for loomed ahead, windows shattered and doors crudely boarded.
He clenched his jaw. "No more empty regrets."
Kaiden’s breath fogged in the cold air as he stepped through a sagging doorway into the dilapidated apartment building. Years of neglect had left its corridors in shambles: peeling paint, shattered light fixtures, and a stale reek of mildew. Each hollow footstep drummed against the crumbling floor, and despite his imposing frame, Kaiden felt more like a trespasser than an enforcer of the law. “Daddy,” came a whisper to his right. Runa’s faint voice was like that of a child sheepishly wanting to ask a question. "Stay focused, stay focused," he told himself. Sometimes he responded to her out loud, and sometimes it helped… but not here, not now. They'd just received reports matching the abductor's description, and the missing child could be close. Trying to calm his racing heart, he reminded himself of the father’s trembling voice when he'd first questioned him. “They took her from our home… please, sir, you’ve got to help me find my little girl.” The man’s eyes had been rimmed with the same despair Kaiden saw in the mirror for years after losing Runa. That memory fueled his resolve, even while dread coiled in his chest. The father’s final frantic pleas still echoed in Kaiden’s memory, “She’s all I have…” The devastation in his expression had reminded Kaiden of himself, kneeling in the wreckage of a war camp, holding his wife and child for the last time.
A sudden noise, like a muffled thump, echoed from deeper down the corridor. Kaiden pressed himself against the wall, spear in hand. “Police,” he called out, low but firm. “If anyone’s there, come out with your hands raised.” The Ghostwalker's voice sounded stronger than he felt. He waited, the silence broken only by the drip of water through the broken ceiling. No response. Runa appeared to drift closer, as though drawn by the tension. Kaiden risked a glance her way, and instantly regretted it. She looked terrified, little glowing blue hands raised to her face. He bit down the wave of grief that threatened to surface. "Get it together," he chided himself. Stepping forward, he crouched near a series of toppled crates. Shards of pottery and scraps of cloth littered the floor—signs of a struggle, or someone searching for something. He gently pushed a wooden crate aside, scanning the gloom. “Hey, if you’re hurt or lost…” Kaiden’s voice called out, deep, reassuring, and strong despite his racing heart. “I’m here to help.”
Nothing. Just silence. Damn. He eased forward again. Maybe the kidnapper had taken the child into one of the vacant apartments on the upper floors. The musty staircase at the far end of the corridor seemed the only route left. “Daddy,” Runa’s voice quivered with concern, “it’s a trap.” He heard her words so clearly that it made his stomach flip, but he couldn’t be certain it wasn’t his own frantic thoughts. “Trap or not,” he muttered under his breath, “If that child’s in danger, I can’t walk away.” He rose to his full height, spear held tight, boots crunching over debris as he approached the first step. A faint noise, maybe a child’s muffled cry, floated down from above. Kaiden's pulse thundered in his ears. "I’m coming..."
“Hold on,” he said, louder this time, hoping the frightened little girl could hear him. His voice echoed through the dilapidated flat, carrying the sincerity of a man who’d lost everything once before. “I promise, I’m not leaving without you.” That was when he felt it: a subtle pressure in the air, like static before a storm, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Chakra. He might’ve been no shinobi, but he knew that faint, electric tingle all too well. It was burned into his memory the night his life fell apart. Kaiden froze at the landing, uncertain if he was about to face an onslaught of ninjutsu or just paranoia run wild. Whatever lay beyond that dark second floor, it wasn’t something he was equipped to handle alone. After all, anything involving chakra use was out of the Civilian Police's jurisdiction. Still, the ex-mercenary and ex-father couldn’t turn back. Not when someone’s child, someone’s Runa, needed saving. Casting one lingering look at the anxious shade of his daughter, Kaiden swallowed hard and started up the stairs.
As the Ghostwalker reached the top of the stairs, shreds of moonlight peeked through a gap in the rotted ceiling, casting jagged shadows across the corridor. A shift of movement, the rustling of cloth, came from behind some stacked crates, shadowed and barely visible in an unlit section of the dark attic. “Who's there?" he called out, stepping into the gloom. The indentured officer's voice echoed with unexpected resonance in the narrow corridor. “Police. Show yourself." Kaiden approached, slowly and cautiously, one hand gripping his spear tightly. No response.
Then, once again, the former father thought he heard a child’s muffled cry, a short squeak that was so brief he couldn’t be sure it was real. Kaiden’s breath caught in his throat. “I’m coming to get you,” he shouted, forcing authority into his tone. Spear in hand, he pushed deeper, ignoring Runa’s frantic tug on his sleeve. He heard another scrape, then a sudden clatter of metal from behind. A shape bolted down the stairs, a blur in his vision as it knocked down some of the debris scattered around the messy attic. Whoever they were, they were too quick, too silent. “Stop!” he roared, dashing down the stairs and out into the dark alleyway. At that moment, he caught a glimpse, just for a fraction of a second, of what looked like swirling shadows around the fleeing figure, as though the darkness itself clung to them. Kaiden blinked, shaken. I’m losing it, he thought grimly, and yet he couldn’t abandon the chase. There was a child at stake.
He gripped his spear tighter, adrenaline surging. This was one of those precious moments where he could do something right, not just shuffle the broken pieces of other people’s tragedies. Despite all the ghosts and guilt weighing on his soul, Kaiden braced himself for the chase, for the fight—whatever it took to bring that little girl home. He could almost feel Runa’s small ethereal hand on his wrist, her voice trembling, “Daddy, be careful…” Maybe it was her presence, real or imagined, that fueled the spark inside him. He took off at a sprint, boots falling heavy on the city street, eyes locked on the figure vanishing into the shadows ahead, the walls of the alleyway seeming to extend unnaturally as he fled. He ignored the strange sensation, pushing his body as hard as he could as he chased the unknown figure through the dark alleys of the places that Kumogakure forgot.
"Just this once," Kaiden told himself, ignoring every doubt and fear and warning from Runa that screamed at him to stop. "Just this once, do something right."
[MFT .|. 1827 Words]
Last edited:
