Number of collab posts for reference
Kei and Rumiko: 2
Everyone else: 1
[fieldbox=Pretty Much Everyone, #FFFFFF, solid]
[ Month of Harvest, Haschou Village / Market Outskirts]
(and Cirika...)
"Information...? That's a weird way of putting it, but I suppose..." Kiri's thought was cutoff by Cirika, and then Eimi, ultimately requesting the foreigners leave.
"I wasn't planning on keeping them..." she murmured back to the two,
"but I'm sure this was all just a cultural misunderstanding.... whatever they did." She smiled and gave the one who'd just whispered to her a little pat on the head to show he was friendly.
"Ninja stuff...? I mostly do earth... stuff..." she whispered back from the corner of her mouth.
"Well... you don't have to come on my little tour, but if you'd like to... we'll start... hmm... this way!" Picking an arbitrary direction, Kiri started off down the street, listing off a giant, and mostly
unnecessary, list of laws and rules.
"So in Haschou, you aren't allowed to steal other people's things without their permission. Murder's pretty bad too, so don't do that. Hm... maybe these are a little too obvious? Oh, the Maplegrounds...! Over that way there's a bunch of maples. Maple trees are pretty respected around Haschou, especially for their delicious sap, so don't go hitting them or anything..."
Kiri continued on with her list, mentioning everything from major felonies to minor rules.
Mostly...
"Oh, and nicknames! it's illegal to call a noble the same name as a tree. Very illegal. You'd probably get your heads chopped off... so definitely avoid that."
"I'd sooner be eaten by wolves, Saburo." Kei's response was about as much politeness that they were going to get. Kei held one wrist, as if trying to both hug himself and remind himself that the chains were no longer there.
"But I have no choice in the matter. You all think that this snake is a sheep. Thus, you will accept her help and I will follow along."
Frankly, he didn't have the energy to keep dealing with much right now anyway. How they all did was a mystery to him. They had all died mere moments ago, but now they were accepting a tour? They should root out the wolves before the blasted things settled into the farm house. Set up their own ambush. Return the favor. Get revenge on that One-Eye. Make him feel as helpless as Kei -and the others, he supposed- did.
Yet, they all were having the rules listed out to them by a traitor as they took a scenic tour of the town they were trapped in. They were all just ghost's memories. They weren't even real, in the end. Everyone who had even looked remotely at the tragedy of this place knew whose fault it was. It was practically the title of at least three books and five folk tales. Kei wondered how much longer they were going to stand there as she listed felonies before she finished.
"So, you have any wolf problems, Maple Girl? Their pelts can be pretty warm, and seeing how we're not getting out of here anytime soon, might as well kill two birds with one stone. Literally."
"So your an earth ninja. I s-see..."
Nodding his head in affirmation, Saburo followed Kiri down the road as she started her impromptu tour.
The crowd and nobles would have to watch the merchants follow the ninja. A odd sight, certaintly.
The land sneak began to spiel about the rules and such. Pointing out random things. Saburo got the slight idea that she hadn't exactly planned this.
She even pointed out the maple trees, with an interesting tidbit.
Saburo looked at Kiri with worry.
"C-cutting hands off for that?" fidgeting with his hands nervously, Saburo was having troubling thoughts about this place.
"Is this place perhaps run by a evil overlord with a iron fist?" Saburo asked almost innocently. It would be the only reason to explain that servere of a punishment for such a simple thing. That's one thing that wasn't in the fairytale books for sure.
It was at this point that Kei brought up wolves. Saburo was pretty certain what Kei meant by this.
"Uhm." His focus on where he was stepping. Saburo tried to speak up.
"W-wouldn't that be more like er, ten wolves with...not enough for those ten wolves?" Letting out a nervous chuckle. Saburo began to fiddle with his silken sleeves.
"S-surely bringing up murderous animals is a bit...fast and active? Cert...certiantly there would be other things for us to do. Right?"
"If you want the truth, which that hard headed Cirika won't believe, I'll tell it to you, mostly as I firmly believe you will not act upon it, remember it, or believe it in the slightest."
Looking at the others, Rumiko shrugs, lies and politics did not suit her very well.
"We aren't the dead ones, or so I hope.. You all are, you are the ancestral ghost, though not by many years.. We were mauled to death by those wolves, and forced to come back here, to repeat this time line. You see...some of you here in the not so distant future are responsible for some pretty significant things..bad things. So bad in fact our nation is lost and some of you are buried on Shang Land.. We all were fighters from a Shang tournament that promised the winners any wish within reason. I planned to build a village for our people to reclaim home, to rebuild my religious order."
Continuing on with the story she reaches up to the point of the graveyard, the chase and how they defeated the specter only to have Cirika drag them all off into the void.
"She's unresponsive and until now all of you were faceless spirits anchored here. I asked about your spiritual sites as I want to look for signs of the curse placed upon you all, to break it."
Shrugging with a sigh the Miko continues.
"I can answer things about your father whom I never should have met, and I can tell you of where so and so beasts go. What I can't answer if now, thanks to Cirika is if we all are dead or just five minutes have passed, we even killed a guy who was trapped here, maybe by helping Cirika we can close this book and escape, maybe it opens a paradox and we fix this world..
Or just maybe, we need to grind that sword of hers into dust.. Well there's the story, now I wonder if you'll default on an answer like everything else in this curse."
Rumiko didn't bother to add in the likely reason for this curse was Cirika's failure, be it from herself or from others, a sort of never ending hell of punishment.
"So basically, I want to kill the wolves before they become a problem or at least search for any seals that may be hidden, I need more information to judge what this curse is."
Not expecting the actual ghost to respond or acknowledge it, Rumiko laid bare the brutal truth and fully expected to be called crazy for it, provided the world didn't just cancel out what she said.
Kiri's drowsy eyes locked into Rumiko's, lapping up her stories like a hungry puppy.
"Wait... I'm a ghost? When did we become ghosts? I don't feel like a ghost... but it all makes sense..."
...maybe Kiri was just one of those people that believed everything she was told.
"Father will probably be furious once he figures out I've become a ghost. Oh...! But if he's also a ghost, he probabl— wait a minute, what do you mean 'close this book?'" Her face creased with concern.
"I'd rather you go with the 'fix this world' idea instead. I don't mind being a ghost, but I'd rather not be 'closed'..."
Returning to a more neutral expression, Kiri continued,
"You said some people here did something awful... and you're trying to stop them? I assume you mean the Pilgrimage coming up soon? What happened? We could just go and arrest them right now... after finding some evidence of course."
Was this some grand scheme in order to insult Cirika for defeating them, or something along those lines? First these people come into town, start causing trouble for people, disregard warnings.... and for all of that they were now resorting to this far fetched story? It was absolutely disgraceful.
These were interesting people, most certainly. But the thing that concerned her the most was what exactly their intentions were. The animated man with purple hair... the harsh sounding young man.
This Miko certainly could come up with quite a yarn on the smart. It was a really fantastic yarn, something that some sort of traveling minstrel or the like would come up with, and if the muscled woman had been singing it Cirika might've even been impressed.
But, she seemed entirely serious. A departure from the attempted smile earlier. That was a little concerning to her.
"They come from the 'morrow? What sort of Force Manipulation be that?"
"Lady Cirika Must've clonked them around too hard, poor dears."
Cirika Shook her head.
"The musclebound minstrel certainly has some interesting yarns. If you don't like me then so be it. But, start bothering the townspeople again and we will have a problem with each other."
Cirika's tone sounded most certainly not amused by some of the arguably inflammatory things the Miko had said. But there was a whole many set of unknowns. The woman and her party were all over the place. One moment scheming, one moment trying to make amends. But, trying to decipher the musings of this bunch was not of her responsibility. There were others meant for that task.
Kiri seemed to be rather entertained with the Miko's story. Oh well, the watch was on guard, so there wasn't a need to keep a close eye. But, there was one last thing that had to be relayed to the travelers, just as a matter of formality.
"Lady Moriya, feel free to entertain your guests as you like. Just mind you keep them from causing trouble - and, it should go without saying but your guests are banned from selling at the market."
"Lady Kiri's guests then? They getting food and bed now?"
"Oh don't be silly. They're probably Lady Moriya's pets for the day. Must be mighty amused with them."
Seeing Lady Cirika depart, many of the villagers gathered around found the show to be over. The dispersed, and some went on to clean up some of the mess that had been made from the fight earlier.
"Saburo... are you forgetting my entire reasoning for beating up said murderous animals? Besides, they're going to hurt people if we leave them be anyway. If they're going to be here, then we can at least make a few die off for our benefit."
He also wasn't totally upset at those darn wolves, either. Yup. Unrelated.
"And... something like that I guess. Though..." Kei trailed off just in time for Rumiko to break the bad news.
Kiri was an idiot. And... Kei couldn't exactly explain who killed Cirika. That would be... well awkward. And speaking of awkward... Cirika finally chimed in. She was being so quiet that Kei and no doubt the others had forgotten that she was there. That girl sure could vanish into the background if she wanted to. Which Kei immediately added to the growing list of dislikes. If they ever got back he was smashing her rotted skull in, curses be damned. Even six feet under she was still pretending she stood above everyone else.
"Well are we banned from at least browsing the goods? Maybe buying something? Or did the whole tale from our lovely priestess strike a nerve there? Maybe you're just afraid of something. Surely you know that something is wrong. But if you want to play make-believe that everything is the same as ever, go ahead."
Kei waved her off.
"We've not interested in making any more trouble we've learned our lesson and so on and so forth..." He waved his hands at her like shooing an animal.
"Surely you think we're in good hands with Lady Moriya? Or do you not trust anyone close to you? Are they just pawns? If you think we won't cause more trouble under her watch then go do.... whatever it is you do. Yell at some sad farmers. Don't care, I'm not interested, just go away."
Rumiko stared at the swords woman with a narrowed look to her eyes that seemed to say;
Bitch, why are you here?
Turning her attention back to the noble the Miko sighs and shrugs, there was just no reasoning with this Cirika, though Kei's history with this woman was curious..what did he know that the rest did not? The Miko herself wasn't overly concerned with how the swords woman was acting, they seen it several times now, but the sooner they could break this, the better.
"You'll need to explain a few things to us later on Kei.. either way regardless if I'm the best story teller in the lands or not, Kiri you have Wolves coming down from the mountain and woods..I have an idea of why, but nothing you can do will confirm it, or change it even if so."
"Oh, Cirika... you were still following us...?"
Kiri stood back as Cirika and the sharp-tongued guy said their piece, feeling the tense aura between the two even from that distance. Thankfully, it ended with Cirika leaving, and one less fight than she'd expected. She released her tension with a sigh.
"You do realize she could have had you killed by now, right...?" It was a simple warning Kiri was offering.
"She is still an Ilkikari. A very patient one, but: you might want to be more careful what you say. The fuss isn't worth it."
Kiri's eyes met the Miko's again as she told of the oncoming wolf threat.
"So you need to take care of the wolves to change the future, and last time you got eaten?" Ideas of entangled timelines and cascading futures swirled around in Kiri's sleepy mind. From the blank stare, it was clear she was having trouble processing it all.
"Well if that's all, then I suppose I could... well..." she hesitated, arguing with herself,
"wolves are painful... and smelly... and fighting is exhausting. Hm... but I need to practice for the pilgrimage anyway, and they need me to save the future...! Kiri Moriya - savior of the future! It sounds like a hero from one of those stories."
Kiri stared into each of the strange, time-travellers' eyes, one by one, mulling the idea over. Finally, she nodded her head.
"Okay. I don't really understand any of this, but if you really are trying to save the future, then I'll help however I can."
Following the sleepy noble, Runara just idly listened to the conversation. Swinging her tail left and right following her steps. Considering they're on bad terms with Cirika in this timeline it would be better if they get close with this noble in order to survive.
And it seems like Rumiko had a tale going with the groups are actually time travellers... And this sleepyhead bought into the tale.
"
Umm... If I may... I still don't get what we did wrong earlier to be honest..." She asked her question from way earlier. "
I mean...Do we even look like merchants to you?" She asked Kiri. "
I mean, Saburo would look like one but yeah... I mean I'm just a humble dancer..."
Tsubaki merely observed the conversation between the party and the infamous Moriya noble, while paying no heed at the heated exchange between Cirika and Kei. A sigh escaped from her mouth as Kiri seemingly believed what Rumiko said. As for Runara, she decided to ask what the party has done to anger them, again...
From Cirika to Kiri, the party does not have a choice, is it? Or risk getting kicked out, getting further and further from escaping the realm of the dead. If it was not for that little 'chat' and Runara, Tsubaki might throw in the towel. Feeling that the conversation is going weak, the noble turned to Kiri.
"... If you decide to believe what Mitsurugi-san has to say, then I shall add this."
Tsubaki sifted away her bangs covering her forehead, revealing the mark that has been casted on them after defeating Vladis.
"We have been cursed, while trying to protect Cirika from a man named Vladis. I don't know what the curse does, but apparently it did made us to do some unsightly things that we have no recollection of. That's why this Doven here was trying to find out what we did just now."
She pointed at Runara afterwards.[/fieldbox]
