Tea, and the Hopeful Future <Private|Koga Akane>

[Toraono Michino]

Fingers gently gripped the tone arm of the record player and placed the needle against the vinyl disc already spinning on the turntable. A gentle crackling of static filled the vacant room before the sounds of brass horns began to lift into the air as the pretense for a compilation of jazz music. The muscular woman who put the music on was dressed in her “office work” attire: white button up shirt/jacket combo with a tie, skirt, thigh socks and…sports shoes. Rei never saw the need for heels and, despite being a trained martial artist, shinobi, and inventor of mechanical engineering far beyond her time…she surprisingly had no balance wearing them. That, and despite the aforementioned talents, heels were killer on her feet. It was ironic in the sense that, Rei could take a bullet and keep pushing on like a flea bit her; but heels? Screw that. She kept to the prized pair of running shoes that supported what her feet needed supported and little else.

Moving around the room with a careful quickness, the Sennin prepared the conference room to meet up with one of her branch members for a little chat. Well, technically the girl wasn’t fully decided on a Branch of choice to be honest. Instead the female in question, a one Akane, was kinda shoehorned into Main Branch because her graduation from the Academy was shortly before the Hubris War. From the files gathered, the girl was a Tenouzan refugee before the war had even begun, and showed talent with weapons that only a handful of other shinobi had. Rei’s goal was simple: Get Akane on her side fully before Miro could sink her claws into another killer talent. The Main Branch Sennin was already flustered enough at the overwhelming new talent that were constantly getting snapped up into ANBU. Even more frustrating was that same said talent was staying there too, meaning Miro had that special touch a good boss had in keeping employment. Not one to stay on the ropes and let another person have the better job record, Rei started investigating deeply into the schools to see if anything fresh was poppin in the Academy…only to find jack squat. Oh, there was plenty of new chakra users from all over in various age ranges, but they were all mediocre at best. The prime talent that the Academy housed due to the limited selection pool they once had was just…gone. So, the Sennin began looking into the backlog for anyone that her rival hadn’t snatched up yet and found a weapon master half-heartedly enlisted in the Main Branch.

Rei was going to fix that half-heart into a full on patriotic beat for Kumogakure.

The only issue was the girl’s origins. The Tenouzans act of war ended almost as violently fast as it had begun and they were a stubborn people as most theocracy bred were. Rei was aware of a few pockets of resistance throughout the country in the following years but none of them were large enough to warrant anything but monitoring and that…once again…fell into Miro’s lap. So, Rei was going to flip the script on the whole Tenouzan thing and bring into her branch a refugee to help bolster the diversity and, hopefully, spark inspiration in talent that had been hiding because of their roots.

The Sennin rolled over a table with a hotplate built into it, placed a teapot with fresh water directly on it and turned the knob over to high. It was a hotplate, so, it would take a second to really heat up but hopefully it would be whistling right as Akane walked in. She did send out an invitation that was hard to refuse; a small basket of delicious smoked meats from the Fire Country and some of the prized cheese of their country that was really hard to get a hold of since the war’s end. Folded neatly in there on a piece of paper was a simple invite with the Rei’s personalized wax seal made to let them know that it wasn’t the Main Branch, but the very leader herself, asking for a conference to discuss the growing talent’s future….and hopefully a chance to rub success in Miro’s face. There was the rumor that one of the AiT’s under her rival’s care was a bit…mental. Rumors were a dime-a-million with shinobi, and double that inside of a city comprised mostly of them; but if she could land a decent pupil, ah, the gloat.

A smile of mischievousness curled up the left side of Rei’s face as she sat down in the large cushioned chair opposite of the door and waited.

[MFT]

 

[Koga Akane]

A long sigh exhaled past the lips of a young teen who sat lazily across a park bench. With her phone in her hand she looked at the texts her once loving mother had sent her. Her eyes ran over the words again and again, continuing to drain her of her good spirits. Akane wondered what came of her mother. Before they moved she was loving and always on her side to protect her from the onslaught of demeaning rhetoric her sister and father dished out. Nowadays she turned against her. “Tch. My life before the war was promising. Then those shitja had to get in the way.” Akane remained spiteful toward these schmucks that continued to act tough once they had ‘won’ the war. That paired well with the fact that she hadn’t encountered a single shitja worthy of such worship. She lied to herself. There was one woman… monster… giant… lady-thing that did show her the true power of a skilled ninja. Where did she end up now? Akane tossed her hands up in a shrug.

The sound of a melodic chime broke the silence. In her hand vibrated her phone with the sound of a new email notification. “Who could this be?” Akane rolled her eyes. She figured it was another message from her mother riddled with orders and insults. To her surprise it was something strange and out of the blue. The email had been an official summons to meet with the head of the Main Branch she supposedly was forced to join when she became a genin. Even with the official stamp of the Main Branch, the official email and signature of the message and the cordial invite, Akane knew a blatant trap when she saw one. It was clear that either that secret killer branch… ‘ABZU…?’ Akane tried to recall, or the Main Branch had slowly begun to figure out her true identity. Not that it mattered much to her personally anymore. At the pit of her country she even distanced herself from her Tenouza faith altogether. As much as she’d like to be free from the shackles of religious zealots and popes that controlled her life there were a pair of individuals that surely would track her down if she went awol. The shitja of Kumogakure weren’t included in that scenario.

Akane pictured her families faces in her mind. The image of her mother turning from a kind and caring one to one with flames and shadows behind her. Her sister was no different and her father… Her father made her shiver with uncertainty and anxiety. The beatings and insults she endured, the painful tiring training she went through all just to win his favor but still falling short to her sister. “I’m going to be sick.” Her word stumbled past her lips as she grew more nauseous at the thought. Her mind circled back to the email on her phone. “To face the consequences and meet my demise in front of a Kumo-council or to actually die at the hands of my family…” Akanes lips turned into an expressive frown. “THIS SHIT SUCKS WHO ELSE HAS TO DEAL WITH THIS!!” Akane jumped on the park bench as she screamed at the top of her lungs. Passersby turned to look at the whacko having a crisis on the park bench before returning to their dull lives.

Akane clutched her chin with one hand and her elbow with another, deep in thought again. Unfortunately for her, thinking was her strong point and another factor weighed heavier than anything else in the world. ‘Grrrruuuuughhhh’ The audible gurgle of her stomach broke through the thin veil of deep thought. “Yeah I’m not going to that. They’re just going to interrogate me.” She nodded in agreement with herself. “Besides, I can’t make good decisions on an empty stomach.” She licked her lips. A hand grabbed her spear that was propped neatly at her side against the bench.

In what felt like seconds Akane found herself at a busy fancy restaurant with bar seating. “Hey! A round of those circle things with the cheese and sliced meat on them. What are they called? Patty…? Pfizer? No… Pita? No… Pe…ter? What am I thinking about… It’s got the cheese and dough! Pee…za? Peeza! Yeah one of those! And a bev!” She gave a big cheesy smile at the waiter before she returned to her phone. Her eyes fell onto the e-mail once more. “What are they going to do?” She let out a boisterous guffaw. She fanned away her laughter, soon after she deleted the message. “Ryuu Rei. Don’t you have better things to do?” Akane pondered, she aimed her new drink to her lips before sucking down the soda through her straw.

[WC:793]
[mtf]​

 

[Toraono Michino]

And thus, did Rei wait….and wait. Then she waited some more, drank a cup of tea just assuming Akane was running late. Then a second, third…fourth, cup. Eventually she could no longer hold back and had to rush to the bathroom before returning once more to find an empty room and the soft clicking of the vinyl having finished its tracks.

She had been stood up.

Now, under normal romantic circumstances, this would probably just be another notch in the ol’ black book for the Sennin. Being stood up wasn’t unusual for her actually, but when it happened before it was with romantic interests that sadly never went anywhere. Which was nothing out of the norm there as she was quite the eccentric back when she was dating and, honestly, probably even more so now. This, however, was far from the realm of romantic; in fact, it was business. Ignoring an order from the Sennin as an enlisted soldier in the Kumogakure army was literally illegal. The only person in the entire country that could ignore a Sennin was civilians and the Raikage; and in that former league, if the ANBU Sennin was calling, yah best just come.
She wasn’t exactly mad, though; just disappointed. The Sennin had this entire meeting set up in a nice room with tea, smooth jazz, and had someone standing by in case either of them got hungry to go fetch some food if the need called. The delivery service in a shinobi village was top notch after all. Yet apparently either Akane was clueless, didn’t understand the importance of the call, or just flat out didn’t care. Pushing in a panel on the table before her, Rei revealed a small tv screen that blipped on to life to show outgoing and incoming messages. She scrolled down the list with her thumb, using a little wheel built into the side of the monitor which caused a programed audible click as it went past each message until it landed on the one sent to Akane. Beside it, was a little star meaning she had indeed opened it up and read it.

Well, old fashioned way it was then.

A tower window, one of three for the conference room, exploded outwards as a gigantic blur of a women darted out from it and towards the nearby roofs. Despite her explosive exit and size, Rei landed without a sound or shake and reached up to her ear while humming a little song to calmly insert a small two way radio and double-tap it. Static filled her left ear for a second before a friendly voice responded,
“Yes mam?”
“Last known location of a one Koga Akane.”
“Two minutes,” the voice replied before responding again after exactly 120 seconds, “Cameras last have her seen in the Susukino District entering a pizza parlor.”
“Pizza? She has a craving for pizza? After the assortment of chee-, you know what never mind. Thank you. That’s all.”
“Disconnecting.”
Pizza. Rei quickly assumed that Akane had either not seen the basket with assorted prized cheeses or flat ignored that too. There was no way she ate any of that cheese and then went out for more cheese. A shinobi’s tract was a spectacle to behold but even they couldn’t fully resist the clogging power of processed dairy. Oh well. Thankfully pizza wasn’t something that was super prevalent in Kumogakure itself and more of a civilian treat from the Western parts of Lightning that had finally broke some ground in Kumogakure after the war. There was only a handful of places you could get it and since the operator hadn’t mentioned it was in the Food Court, it had to be the good pizza place. Chakra quickly built up underneath Rei’s feet before her large image flickered out of view, marked only by bits of roof quietly flying away with each step towards Susukino.

It took her around less than a minute of travel to get there, and when she did the Sennin landed in the alley behind the restaurant and walked in through the back door. Immediately the owner saw her and began to yell obscenities until Rei shot the man a single glare that metaphorically froze the entire kitchen. To make sure no one would freak out and call the cops, Rei flipped open the inner part of her nice suit to show the badge of her office, and probably just a little too much breast, before flipping it back to walk past the rather flabbergasted owner. She picked up a large pizza that had just been pulled out of the oven, bare handed, and sauntered on out of the kitchen and back into the dining room. She quickly ran her trained eyes until they fell on a red-head playing with a phone looking rather destitute that matched the old profile picture the Main Branch had in their files. Rei crossed the room and dropped the pizza right in front of Akane before flopping down in the seat opposite of her, causing the table to shake slightly and her chair to creak under the pressure. Sitting across from the girl, the Sennin appeared gigantic, but not entirely due to her size and build. Midori easily had her on overall size and weight, and yet, there would be that completely unmistakable feeling of being seated across the table from a bear. However, despite that appearance, her vibe and aura was soft; dare say, friendly even.

“You know, if you wanted to meet for pizza instead, you could have just simply sent a reply. It’s actually quite illegal to ignore a Sennin’s summons, you know, and you should be terribly happy it wasn’t the ANBU Sennin you ignored. Pretty sure you’d be hanging by your toes somewhere in a black site, deep, deep underground by now if you did.”

Rei reached out and flicked her hand across the pie causing it to be sliced near perfectly but also caused a crack on the table beneath it,
“Oops!” she said with a smile before removing a slice and taking a bite, “Mmm…actually, you know, this might have been a better idea! I haven’t gotten a chance to eat here yet to be honest,” Rei said with half a mouth full of food.

[MFT]

 

[Koga Akane]

Akane had not a care in the world. Her thumb flicked upward on her phone, scouring the local media Kumogakure had to offer. Of course, cellular technology had not made progressive strides as she’d like. Most forms of communications still relied heavily on live messengers when communicating across borders for the common man. That said, her feed had been dreadfully stale. With a roll of her eyes Akane continued to suck down her drink and from her peripherals she noticed a rather big server arriving with her peeza.

“Finally! I’m starving. Just set it down-AH!” Akane jumped as the muscular woman sat down with a ground shaking thud. Immediately Akane backed up in her seat. A million questions flooded her mind, “H-hey what gives? I didn’t ask for company.” Akane quipped, she glared at the woman who she still had to look up to even those they were both sat down. Akane had a mind to give this woman an earful until she had mentioned her summons.

Akane’s eyes widened in panic, slouching in her booth. The Sennin found her already? How did they know where she was? Akane looked back reminding herself that her movement and actions weren’t as graceful and incognito as her mother would like. The young teen nearly began to sweat as the beast of a woman sliced through that cheesy goodness with ease and only her finger. Akane forcibly swallowed the remnants of her drink. The apparent sennin stood well over the teen and then some. What were they feeding the citizens of Kumogakure? First the tall pale lady who could pick her up like she was a kitten. Then there’s this Sennin. Her muscles were the size of her own neck and well-endowed enough to confirm that this village had put chemicals in the water to turn the frickin’ ninja big!

Akane had to think fast. With no intel on the Sennin Akane thought the worst. Thankfully it was not the ANBU Sennin who apparently murders anyone late or tardy. However, Sennin's tone of voice remained more friendly and approachable than what she had expected. However the teens' own training reminded her that friendly faces have ulterior motives. Akane cleared her throat in an attempt to remain cool and collected. “I never got your message.” She lied, digging herself a deeper hole in hopes of a cave system to escape into. “How did you find me? I conceal my chakra 24/7.” Akane awaited and answer. To incite commotion she spoke up, “Are you spying on citizens of Kumogakure! How did you find me! Do you have cameras everywhere! Disrespecting the privacy of your citizens!” Akane talked loudly in hopes the other patrons were turn their attention to them. The tension within the booth began to escalate. Subtle fingers coiled around her spear while her eyes darted in every direction looking for an escape. Akane needed to get out, it was only a matter of time before she was questioned about her origins.

[mft]
[wc:498]​

 

[Toraono Michino]

“Oh, you didn’t did you? Please, check your phone again,” Rei said between mouthfuls of pizza, “Did you know when you check a message through our system, it puts a little star next to it to let you know it’s been read?”

The Sennin was continuing to be completely casual herself, but it didn’t take a master of reading people to know that Akane was incredibly uncomfortable. Rei might have chalked it up to the sudden appearance after ignoring her summons, but the girl seemed to be out right tense. Why was she really so worried about? Her history? The awkward fact of being one of the last Tenouzans in existence, living within the very halls of her people’s enemy? She guessed it could be that, actually. Akane was brought in maybe a year before the war erupted, probably less actually. She had excelled in the Academy and went through the rare advanced programs to railroaded a student right into service when they showed a certain kind of promise. From there on, though, she fell right off the map. The paperwork didn’t even show her having done much in the way of official work either.
Yet, the Sennin was perfectly willing to let it go and open up her arms to accept the girl’s strength in full. Akane had those marks she wanted to see more of in her branch, and knew that this person would be a valuable asset; if she’d quit acting like a spy cornered, that was.

The tension in the room doubled from Akane's accusations.

“Everywhere…no?” the Sennin replied trying to disarm some of the building apprehension in the parlor. “We’ve had cameras up that watch the corners of the busiest streets in Kumogakure for, well hell, since I was a teenager. Probably even before that. You can hide your chakra all you want, only a handful of shinobi in any of our Branches can actually track it. You’re the one, however, who ignored an official summons and then took the most public routes to a restaurant.” Akane was right on the money, though. Each Branch was allowed to put up as much surveillance as they wanted within the walls of Kumo so long as it stayed inside the walls. Rei had cameras both large and small dotted throughout most of the public areas that were both known and unknown. The MB Sennin didn’t have any recording devices in any private homes/places, but streetview? The entire city was practically under Hyuuga Watch. It was still something she rather keep underwraps, though, as with the changes Kitsune brought it things were a little more heavy handed in making sure the citizens of Lighting retained a certain amount of respect. Hell, since the public court opened, there had already been at least five cases of military abuse from her Branch alone that had to be dealt with publicly she still didn’t like to think about. It was hard for a lot of the older shinobi to go from being absolute gods wherever they went to trained soldiers under strict law.

Rei saw that Akane continued to be uncomfortable though, and knew that her response was probably going to stir the pot more than it was going to settle the boil. The girl was looking for a chance to escape and, despite the complex issues of their meeting already, thought it was best to let her do so. If Akane got far enough out of public to keep a scene from happening it would make things a lot easier. She had no problem giving her a slap on the wrist and letting her go, but the way she was acting gave off red flags; and her history wasn’t making those flags any less vibrant. So, Rei gave the Genin a chance for escape. A quick twist of her torso to yell back into the kitchen,
“Hey! Can I get a beer with this pizza? Rice lager if you have it! I'm not too picky about the brand, but if you got Storm Hops, that's my go-to!”

 

[Koga Akane]

Akane remained baffled at the Sennin’s ability to be nonchalant and call her out on the message. The teen quickly pulled out her phone to look at the message to see if there was truly a star. Only to remember she deleted the email anyway. Her mannerisms told a story of poorly conjured lies to remain as far from the email as possible and her Tenouzan ethnicity. Akane’s eyes focused on Rei, riddled with suspicion. She began to conclude that the woman in front of her had seen her profile and the forged documents of her origins. Because of this she surmised that the information in regards to anything prior that she was still in the clear. Her ties with the Tenouzan military and her family had not been. Perhaps Rei hadn’t made that correlation yet.

With cameras tracking her obvious footsteps from the park to the restaurant there really was no place she could hide. The stereotypical ninja practices, silent footsteps, camouflage, tight clothes and face masks were not something she took seriously. If she had to deal with her morals and actions, they’d be faced head on without the guise of stealth and anonymity. This threw a wrench in her next plan to kick open the village doors and leave by force. Akane had been informed of the ninja who jumped the gates illegally. The ninja in question weren’t push overs either. It was why Kumogakure’s track record with catches had been in the dumps.

Akanes brown hues continued to read the Sennin, and the other woman at the compound. The leaders and ninja of Kumogakure were still decades ahead of her in terms of ability and combat experience. For someone with little care for the stereotypical ninja performance she would easily be caught and punished, however Kumogakure dulled out their punishments to people abandoning their village. The Tenouzan punishments sent a shiver down her spine, Kumogakure was no different in that case.

The teen weighed her options over her head. She imagined a scale with a few weights that favored an outcome that took considerably longer than what she and her family had intended. Akane sucked her teeth. ‘They’ll have to understand. The freaking 2nd in command is right staring at me.’

That’s when the boisterous woman turned her back to call the waiter for another beverage. As much as her instincts told her to kick over the pizza and book it, her track record with flashy escapes ALWAYS resulted in her downfall. Last time she tried that she woke up in a construction site barely alive. And the jerk that did her in was some lousy musician. The thought of what one of the leaders would do to her paralyzed her legs. Instead, Akane piped up. “So.. I might’ve seen your message pop up on my notifications, but I didn’t see a time or anything.” Her gaze looked everywhere except on the Sennin. “I actually was going to visit the kiosk at the Empirea before sundown! I wanted my passport stamped for approval to travel but didn’t know how to do it, then I got lost and found myself at the park where I fell asleep then woke up by a phone call then my stomach grumbled so I decided to come here and eat!” Her eyes cut back to Rei every now and again before finally telling the truth at the end.

The waiter the white-haired woman called on moved from the bar to Rei with a tall glass of beer with an aesthetically pleasing bubbly foam cresting the top of the glass. With ease it was placed on the table while Akane’s glass got filled with water again. “Maybe you shouldn’t drink. Heard that stuff makes your head grow big.” Akane looked directly at Rei’s forehead then down to her revealing bust before looking away. ‘What? No shame?’ She shrugged. “Among other things too.” She prodded, wondering what chemicals Kumo put in their water to make the women so well-endowed. The water in her glasses made her squint with even greater suspicion than before.

[wc:678]​

 

[Toraono Michino]

The man who brought the beer and water out was a muscular type, well built, and had a serious look as if ready to try and stop Rei if she pulled any other crap in their restaurant. It wasn’t the owner, but maybe the owner’s son? He was, no doubt, send out because the rest of the staff was way too terrified of the Sennin to bring out the beer without spilling it. The woman eyed the waiter up and down and silently wondered if the pizza parlor did deliveries…something she was going to have to check into later.
The beer itself was lifted and drained to half glass by the time Akane finished explaining herself. Just from her actions on checking the deleted email alone told her she was fidgeting for something else all together that was clearly suspicious on its own. She wouldn’t look Rei in the eyes either, which said a lot to her as most shinobi couldn’t get enough of her face, (or at least, so she vainly thought.) Akane was clearly hiding a problem and being in front of the Second of the Kumogakure Military had ants in the girl’s pants. Honestly, as much as the Genin was going out of her way to make excuses, the Sennin had every right under even their current laws to force her into custody and actually interrogate her. No one in the military should have that level of paranoia from being in front of a leader, as being a shinobi granted a lot of privileges to keep from worrying about anything that wasn’t straight illegal.

However, digging into the girl’s reasons for worry wasn’t why she was here.

“Look,” Rei said after slamming the glass mug down with a hearty sigh, “We’re clearly getting off on the wrong foot here so let me level with you. I wanted to talk to you about a promotion. The scores we have on file from the Academy had you put through the Specialist Class which expedited the speed in which you were given a license. You were placed in the military as a plain ol’ Genin, though, and I think that’s a crying shame. I want to offer you more for your skills. I want to give you personal missions to bolster your portfolio and see you rise up in the ranks as fast as you graduated. I believe, quite firmly, that you have a latent talent that is just being wasted in your current position.
“To sum it up, I want you to work for me. Personally. I want to hone your skills into a weapon as sharp as possible and then, once you reach Chunnin, you can have the freedom to do whatever you want. Lead a team of your own, give back by teaching in the Academy, go traveling as a Scout to keep an eye on our outside territories…the world will be your oyster and no one will question anything you do. All you have to do is accept my offer.”

The Sennin reached to the middle of the table and grabbed another slice of the ‘za, chowing down on the delicious blends of cheese and tomato sauce as she watched for Akane’s reaction. She had just offered the Genin the chance of a lifetime that would be nearly impossible for any actual military personal to actually refuse. She was giving the girl the chance to raise her rank within a scant year in trade for learning the secret techniques and powers of the Second in Command. Whatever problems was causing the girl to shift around so nervously would, hopefully, dissipate at the given opportunity. Rei was more desperate in getting Akane under her wing before Miro swooped in and snatched up the budding prowess the woman so desperately wanted in the Main Branch.

 

[Koga Akane]

The Sennin looked through the nervous act that Akane donned without a thought. Moves were being made hastily while she remained stagnant in open water. Her paranoia to become a meat bag that dolled out more information about her Tenouzan heritage bounced around in her chest with no end in sight. Her hands clasped her face. Fingers pressed hard against her forehead eventually they moved to her temples. A moment of reflection needed to be had. What happened at her village with a magnificent blue dragon and her.. supposed guardian angel had her heart twisted and turned. At that very moment her religious beliefs were severed from the Tenouza but what really bothered her were her family ties.

That childhood of hers was filled with love, even though the hardships she endured were out of love too. The beatings, the long hours of teaching, the blatant favoritism from her father. Yet that soft smile and radiant warmth that her mother gave her during those times wiped all that sadness away from her soul. ‘Tch.’ Unfortunately, even that changed too.

Soft hands fell back to the table once Akane’s mind had cleared, if only briefly. The large vixen offered her a proposal, one that granted her… freedom? The ability to grow stronger, sharpen her skills and eventually travel to distant lands she could never even dream of. However, it would all be in the name of “Kumogakure…” Lost in thought her mind became vocal. To abandon her one true family was a sin so great within the Tenouzan faith it condemned the soul to a hellscape of fire and fury. But maybe, she didn’t have to. Her hands balled into tight fists, “GrrrrAAH Damn it!” Akane roared out, “That deal is too good to turn down! Now Mom is going to worry even more!” Her hands went up in aggravation, crossing them shortly after.

A heavy sigh billowed out from the teen. “It’s a deal. I’ll have to dodge my mother’s questioning even more now.” The teen rolled her eyes, “She’s against her daughters becoming shitja– Ninja. ‘Nothing good comes from them except blood and death!’ she spouts. All day every day and I have to listen to it and lie!” Akane closed her eyes momentarily, her sad act needed to work for the moment at least. “But under one condition! I want to leave the village, very badly. Being cooped up here makes me want to see what's on the other side of the mountains. So.. badly…” Her elbow planted itself on the table, using her hand to rest her head comfortable on it while soft hues gazed out the window towards the crowded horizon.

The days ahead were going to be filled with intensive training, discipline and more ninja shit than Akane actually wanted to get into. The supply drop had been a bust and her family departed to Marsh country. However, with the Main Branch Sennin claiming Akane there was nothing she could do, legally, to get her away. ‘Another year here…’ Another sigh rolled from her lips. “So, now what do we do, Sensei?”​

 

[Toraono Michino]

Akane’s reaction was not at all what Rei was expecting. The offer of being trained by the leader of the Main Branch was an opportunity that would have most shinobi, with perhaps the sole exception of ANBU Branch, leaping out of their current jobs to chomp at the position the moment it was offered. It was akin to, say, someone offering you a million yen without any catches. Who says no to a million yen? Yet, the girl looked completely torn by the choice as if deciding between which factions of two fighting armies she was going to side with. When the red-head blurted out something about a helicopter mom, Rei relaxed a little but still held her suspicions. This one was really interesting.

“Wunderbar, as Midori-san would say!” Rei knew when it was best to just take the win and not push it. Clearly Akane had problems with the Kumogakure system and was feeling cooped up inside the village. She guessed that it was probably due to her refugee status, and was no doubt used to being part of the country instead of stuck high up in the mountains. Though, of course, it wasn’t like Kumogakure was small, and there was always something new to be explored in the new blending of social statuses that were a direct cause of removing most of nobility from their power. They still existed, of course, but compared to the power they had when the Shogun still ran the country, they were but neutered dogs now. Now the people flourished and there was all kinds coming in and out of Kumogakure so she had to wonder; what was beyond those mountains that Akane wanted to see so bad?

“Next? Depends on you. Your condition is getting beyond those mountains and we can fulfill that anytime you want. I can begin your basic training as early as tomorrow, or, we can go traveling. My master lives in those mountains and its been a couple of years since I’ve seen him. If he’s feeling welcoming enough, he might even be willing to spare you a few techniques too. So I’m not against going through them, if you’re up for the task. Though, they take no prisoners. The climate alone is enough to kill just about everything and yet, there are still things that live up there that even I wouldn’t want to trifle with.
“Or, starting on my schedule, you meet me in my office on time at 0500 sharp tomorrow. I’ll show you the side of the Main Branch only select members get to see and then it’s right to training. Depending on how fast you learn is how fast you advance, I don’t do regulations unless the Raikage specifically asks me to.”

Rei lifted up the beer and finished it, a little flush coming to her cheeks as the small buzz in her head elated her just a little. In the back of her mind she was worried that she was taking on a problem child just like her rival had, but at the same time, a louder trumpeting of victory echoed in her head that she had snagged such a promising youth fully into the Main Branch from Miro’s jaws. She was going to make this girl the next big thing, and everyone was going to know it, unlike the unfortunate secrecy that had to follow their village hero.
Rei lifted herself up from the table and stretch, catching the looks of a couple of men who were just waiting for her to burst out of that tight jacket; which never happened. She then held down a powerful hand for Akane to shake,
“Either way, it’s a deal. I look forward to the future with you, Akane. Great things are coming!”

[Topic Left Unless Stopped]

 

[Koga Akane]

The teen’s brown hues widened at the sound of traveling over the mountains. Her hand balled into a tight fist with excitement. She had heard stories of a place with water as far as the eye could see. In her literature she had only been shown places that could provide immediate benefit for agriculture and animal farming. The wonders that laid behind the mountains filled her heart with an intense hope. One so intense she nearly missed the time constraint Booba-Sama gave to her. “0500? How about 1000 flat?” Akane prayed for a change in schedule but the woman didn’t budge. It’d would’ve taken 20 bulls to knock her over regardless.

A defeated sigh escaped her parted lips. With the time and apprenticeship set in stone the deal had been completed. Her own hand reached out to shake Rei’s and was met with such raw power it nearly stunned the young teen. ‘Lord above—... If I get as strong as her…’ A wicked smile crept up on her lips, ‘My sister will stand no chance.’ After a firm handshake Akane watched her Senpai turn and leave the restaurant. Another sigh had let loose as she slumped back in her booth seat. One of the waiters came by and handed her a check. Her jaw nearly hit the floor. “Uhh.. Oh! Put this bill on the account named… Ryuu Rei. She’s that big woman. Head of the Main Ninja branch. She’ll cover everything.” Akane gave the waiter a thumbs up before he shrugged and marked down her information. For the first time in her life, Akane was able to safely say she was excited for the future.​

[Topic left.]
[WC:276]