Myrnal watched Somnia's antics with the onsen attendant open-mouthed. When Somnia ducked away behind Myrnal, the ninja had to bring her hand forward, catching the counter to keep from losing her balance. She turned toward Somnia with an indignant--and rather profane--word half out of her mouth, but the look on Somnia's face caught her up short.

She looked like she really was upset. Not an expert in dealing with feelings or emotions or people or life in general, Myrnal found herself momentarily at a loss.

"I really...really don't like strange people."

She blinked. "Well... I'm a strange person. That ever occur to you?" Myrnal asked as she turned toward the hall. "Look. Let's just go.... relax or something."

Good start. Um... can I... Maybe this will work.

Distracted from her previous anxiety over her own self-restraint, Myrnal decided to make her best clumsy effort at getting Somnia to chill out a little. "Look, uh... yeah. Let's just... go check out the onsen and um. Yeah. Look. Everything is fine. If nothing else I'm still armed and nobody will bother you. I'm not in the mood to deal with people right now anyway."

Does that work? I don't know if-- Of course that won't work. Uh. Damn it. She's crazy. It's like dealing with a child. This is so damn confusing.

"So yeah. It's that way." Myrnal pointed toward the women's onsen. "We can... deal with people as they come. If the attendant creeps up behind us with sinister offers of towels or candles or something... I'm sure we'll think of something."

She waited for Somnia to get herself together again, since this was basically her trip and Myrnal didn't feel like gimping her way down the hall at a snail's pace just because her companion was in the middle of a panic attack over the towel girl.

As Somnia helped her down the hall, Myrnal found herself momentarily distracted by the paper lanterns. They seemed to float in the air, surrounded by thin clouds of steam that picked up the light from the lanterns. The steam brought a nebulous glow to the onsen that Myrnal found slightly mesmerizing. She could have sat and stared at them for hours, not thinking, not worrying, not existing except through her eyes.

They hit the changing room, and Myrnal tensed. Oh, crap. I knew it, she thought. They were in a large open room, separated from the men's changing area by a wall just high enough to keep anyone from catching an illicit glance at the other sex. She nudged herself away from Somnia to get a little space. She put her hand on the wall and dug her toes into the tatami mats to keep her balance.

There were several tables and chairs, some of which looked out over a tiny koi pond. Myrnal idly wondered if the mens' side had such cosmetic touches. Anywhere else she wouldn't have bet on it, but in Nijon it was entirely possible. She waved Somnia off to change on her own, hopefully out of Myrnal's direct view. She could handle some casual and brief nudity if everyone was a stranger, but... this was entirely different. She knew Somnia, had spoken with her and presumably would continue to do so once the girl was out of her clothes.

Myrnal opened a little wooden cabinet where she was apparently intended to keep her belongings. At least, that's what other women were doing. Seemed sensible enough, though the fact that it wasn't locked made her a little nervous. Not one to trust in the decorum and integrity of total strangers, she wondered what sort of a place Nijon could be if a woman could just... leave her clothes lying around unsupervised.

She pulled a towel from a stack on the table and hung it on the door to the cabinet she'd chosen. She took a deep breath. She was actually going to do this. She looked over her shoulder and quickly whipped back around again. Somnia was clearly more comfortable with this whole procedure. Best not to... not to look. At all.

Myrnal slid her trousers down to her ankles, letting the black fabric pool on the floor around her feet. She stood up again, not trusting herself to bend over to pick the silly thing up. With one hand on the cabinet door to balance herself, she grabbed the waist between her toes and pulled it up to her hand so she could stuff them in the locker.

She caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror. The view was only from the hips up, but she didn't need to see the skin of her legs to know what they looked like. They looked just like every other part of her: tanned with thin blade scars tracing senseless patterns over her body. From her wrists to her shoulders and her neck they carved upward, and even from the black band of her panties to the bottom hem of her black camisole, she could see half-forgotten remnants of battles long past slashing across her skin. Unwilling to see any more of herself, she turned toward the wall to pull the shirt over her head.

It wasn't that she minded the scars. Minding wouldn't change them, and it wouldn't change the fact that everyone had to leave a mark somewhere. Many people just chose to leave theirs... on her.

She wrapped the towel around herself before slipping her panties down to be tossed into the cabinet along with everything else. Myrnal noted with a sigh that everything in there was black. How many times had her grandmother bought her some flattering little evening dress "to show off her figure" in the hopes of setting her up with some charming rising businessman only to have Myrnal run off after the party to get herself wounded, betrayed, poisoned, potentially killed?

Someday they'd learn. It didn't matter how she could look. If she wanted to survive to see them again after each mission, she was nothing but her job and the uniform that concealed her. With that thought, Myrnal folded her fingers over the handle to the barbed stiletto she'd brought with her. Slipping it down between the front layers of her towel, she steeled herself to head away from the comfort and security of her own clothing.

Myrnal closed the cabinet door and turned back to find that Somnia hadn't taken nearly as long as she had to pare down to the single towel everyone else was wearing. Somnia had a few advantages. She wasn't tired, poisoned, wounded, or apparently given to long bouts of intrusive introspection. Unfortunately, these were only the beginning of Myrnal's list of excuses to be reclusive and withdrawn at the moment.

"Ready to go. I can make it myself at this point, thanks," Myrnal said. They didn't need to be climbing all over each other in their current state of undress.

It just plain wouldn't be fair. Myrnal could not be expected to deal with that.

Holding the front of her towel with one hand, Myrnal slid her fingers along the wall with her other to keep her balance. Somehow the tatami mats helped, gave her something to anchor her toes into. Didn't matter. Perhaps this wasn't such a bad idea after all and eventually she'd be able to relax a little. Couldn't hurt. Could it?

They passed through the bathing room, receiving a few suspicious glances as they did so. It was clear they were expected to wash here, but Somnia had just been in the bath and Myrnal's thick, curly hair still hadn't dried totally from her brief bath earlier. The other bathers quickly recovered their deeply-ingrained sense of courtesy and dropped their eyes back to their own business. Myrnal took a deep breath and kept her eyes on the far edge where the baths themselves could be found.

When they reached the tubs that they were apparently intended to be enjoying, they found that this particular area of the onsen was not quite so heavily occupied as some of the others. Good. I can be a near-naked gaijin in relative isolation thank you very much and so could Somnia this whole time with no real nudity hopefully. She sighed, the tiny exhalation lost in the steam. Crap. This isn't going to work at all.

She put her foot down into the water and slowly lowered herself in. She winced, her whole body tensing, when the water covered her wounded side. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to uncurl a little, hoping that the pain would eventually die down. After a few seconds it started to fade a bit, and with any luck she'd just get used to it.

Myrnal slipped her dagger under a tatami mat to keep it out of sight but within reach and kept her eyes on the edge of the tub, waiting in as respectful and chivalrous a manner as she could for her companion to achieve whatever level of undress was sure to be coming.

Every cloud has a silver lining and even a lifetime of suffering can bear unexpected fruit upon its branches.

I am the shadow, soft leather whispers across stone slates as a figure sprints like lightning across the rooftops. I am the wind, a well oiled sheathe releases its prize into the hands of its owner. I am the raging river and the tranquil stream, a blade flows smoothly through the air, elegantly altering course in the blink of an eye like water charting an unseen course.

Amidst the laughter of the festivities a stranger trained. A gaijin who served no cause, who knew no sin, and as a firework soared majestically through the night sky and exploded, a dark figure was illuminated by thousands of sparkling stars. Apparently B’esctra had leapt out of the window the moment he had returned to his room and decided to use the urban labyrinth men called 'Rodokumiai' to hone his fighting skills. Switching reflexively from one style to the next, if anyone were to glance up and notice him silhouetted against the skyline, they would see a true artist at work.

The assassin’s movements were so nimble and his reactions so swift that to the untrained eye he would have looked like a dancer, flipping between one building and the next and then twirling like a ballerina of death. They could not have known of course that each thrust was fatal, each flick of his blade a killing stroke disguised among a myriad of patterns. It was in this way that the Drow threw his foes off balance so that they never expected the real attack that followed the hypnotic arcs of his weapons.

Unique and extremely unpredictable, the style that B’esctra employed had been specifically tailored to fit his agile body and the more that he practiced its manoeuvres, the less it resembled the techniques that had inspired its creation. Tonight however, the assassin sensed a change in his reactions, for they did not normally come this fast and, to his amazement, he discovered that his mind was actually anticipating the next step and preparing his body so that the transition was almost seamless.

Unfortunately though, the Drow became so preoccupied with his new-found talent that he underestimated the distance between one rooftop and the next. Narrowly missing the parapet that he had been aiming for, the assassin lashed out repeatedly as he tried to secure a hand-hold with his talons but the walls were still slick with rain and therefore repelled his attempts just as quickly as he made them. Images of his impending disaster flashed before his eyes as he silently cursed his luck and, for one fleeting second, envisioned the exhilaration he would have felt, had he actually landed where he'd intended to.

The ground came rushing towards him like a hungry beast, unrelenting in its pursuit to end his life and when his body was within six feet of the cold cobblestones, his world faded to black and his limbs went limp.

SPLAT, several small tiles clattered noisily against the cobblestones and caused a nearby woman to drop her lantern in surprise as she heard the sound and then peered nervously down the alleyway to search for the culprit. The scene that met her eyes made her raise her hands to her mouth, though not because a grizzly sight awaited them, no the woman raised her hands and gasped in astonishment as the alley was deserted, save for a few dislodged tiles. Shrugging her shoulders in confusion the woman assumed that a bird had simply knocked the tiles loose and then decided to return to the celebration, but what of our hero’s fate? What had become of the ruthless assassin?

If someone could have stopped time during the Drow’s descent then the truth would have been revealed for, the split-second before he struck the unforgiving street, his entire body vanished in a flash of light too quick for the human eye to notice. When the feeling came back to B’esctra’s limbs once more, he opened his eyes and found, to his surprise, that he had mysteriously appeared on the rooftop he had imagined just before he landed.

Pricking himself with the point of a talon, just to ensure he wasn’t dreaming, the assassin played the situation over in his mind several times before a distant memory, which had only surfaced with Minshara’s nightmare, rose to the forefront of his brain and reminded him of an ancient experiment. When he had been an unwilling slave to the Illithids, around a century ago, one of the tests they had forced him to perform was something they called ‘Psychoportation’, the ability to focus on a place and teleport to it using sheer thought alone.

Considering the possibilities for a few minutes, he eventually came to the conclusion that when he had been faced with imminent death, his instincts had taken over and activated one of the abilities he possessed in his youth. The novelty of this revelation didn’t last long however because whilst most people would have spent time marvelling at how something like this could happen, B’esctra immediately started trying to harness this ability into a potent weapon.

The first few attempts that he made were vague and inaccurate ‘jumps’ that almost killed him on more than one occasion but he was a persistent and, some would say crazy, student so continued to practice for the remainder of the evening. By the time the sun had begun to rise, and the townspeople had dragged themselves out of bed, B’esctra had grown quite adept at channelling his thoughts so that he could ‘blink’ from one end of the city to the other almost instantly.

When he was satisfied with his new power however, he decided to teleport back to the inn and give his mind a rest from the strain that it created, opting for a few hours of peace and quiet before his other companions awoke and decided what they would do, now they had finally got their bearings in the empire of jade.
 

Myrnal heard a desperate cry for attention. She turned to look and immediately wished she hadn't. In a flash of skin Somnia had passed and Myrnal saw... things. Things that stayed in her vision even when she closed her eyes.

The beginnings of a curse formed in her mind ready to form on her lips when the girl flew headlong into the tub and sprayed her with water.

The ninja closed her eyes and blew water out of her mouth. She pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes and waited for the annoyance to pass. What the hell had the girl been trying to do?

Myrnal waited for some part of her companion to surface, and to her dismay it wasn't her face. With another aggravated sigh she looked off to the side and away from the unsettling degree of nudity being paraded around in front of her.

If she thinks that naked acrobatics are the way to impress m-- f@#$. What the hell IS she trying to do?

"Are... are you all right? The f@#$ was that? You could have hurt yourself! The hell?"

Wait, what was she doing? The hell did she care whether Somnia-- well, she didn't. She just... If Somnia had hurt herself she didn't... want to get kicked out for bringing in Suicide Princess.

That's perfectly reasonable, Myrnal told herself. The only necessary reason at all.

Big dark eyes stared at Myrnal across the surface of the water. Somnia looked all right, but she seemed, well... embarassed. Which was understandable. Perhaps if she had the presence of mind to feel embarassed when she acted unconscionably ridiculous she'd... maybe stop doing it.

Other patrons were finding their way into the onsen and taking their places in other tubs. Myrnal took a look behind her to see who else was there, but the irritated glances in return signalled that the other customers would likely rather she minded her own business.

Fine, then. Damn, she thought.

She turned her attention once again to Somnia. "Look, it's fine. Just... breathe. You're fine, for the gods' sake."

Myrnal sat back against her edge of the tub and squeezed some water out of her hair. Most of it had been from Somnia's little swandive into the tub, and it was already going to take forever to dry. At least her injury had stopped bothering her so much. Must have gotten used to the water, which was certainly a relief. When Myrnal looked down she was also pleased to note that she wasn't bleeding into the tub. They'd probably charge her extra for that unless the next patron to come along wanted to relax in the blood of strangers.

Weirder things had happened, though. She made another furtive attempt to glance around to room, trying to figure out if they'd have access to drinks while they were in the water. Minshara would probably pitch a fit if she found out Myrnal was trying to add alcohol to the list of toxic substances floating around inside her, but Myrnal was disinclined to give any of her opinions much weight at this point.

Myrnal heard another patron behind her and put her arm up on the tatami mat to hide her dagger. No sense in alarming other customers just looking to grab a towel from the stack. The woman behind Myrnal dropped to one knee and Myrnal bent forward to stay out of her way only to feel a stranger's fingers knotted in her hair, yanking her head back.

She didn't even have time to curse before she felt cold metal against the skin beneath her jaw.

F#@$! What now?

From her vantage point, Somnia could see a nijonese woman of about thirty wearing the plain pink kimono and red apron that marked her as an onsen employee. Or would have if not for the potential impending violence. She was crouched on one knee behind Myrnal with the ninja's hair in one fist and a short tanto in the other pressed into Myrnal's skin.

"Where is the drow?" the woman whispered.

"Don't know him," Myrnal said slowly. "Could be anywh--" The stranger gave another hard yank on Myrnal's hair to keep her head back.

"You lie. You," she said to Somnia.

Myrnal clenched her jaw in frustration. She may have distrusted the drow, and under more civil circumstances might have overcome her ethical objections to selling out teammates.

This, though, she decided. This isn't cool.

"Tell me," the woman continued. "Or she dies."

As Somnia's eyes teared up and her voice broke with what seemed an earnest enough sentiment, the woman in pink just looked a little confused, and then a little annoyed. Wasn't she dealing with servants of the dark lord Maedhros?

But then, she thought. Perhaps they really don't kno--

Her concentration broke and cut her thought off prematurely as a wet naked girl leapt toward her and grabbed her with both hands. As she got her wits about her again she realized that, no, the girl had also grabbed her blade. Her neck strained as she tried to pull back from Somnia's grip without losing hold of her knife, and quickly found herself fighting both Somnia and Myrnal to keep it there.

Myrnal, finding her enemy distracted, put a hand under the attacker's arm to help Somnia pull the blade away from her throat. After a few seconds, the stranger realized she couldn't pull away from Somnia and keep her hostage, so with one burst of effort she lurched backward away from her nude assailant.

By now the conflict had reached the point that it was quite simply impossible to overlook. Other patrons were standing and fleeing to avoid becoming casualties in someone else's fight, and the sound was sure to rouse some more official enforcement.

As the woman fell backward, Myrnal pulled herself sideways away from the blade. As the blade was yanked backward, Myrnal felt the edge of it sliding in under her skin and she had a brief moment of sheer panic when she leaned away to see blood falling between her fingers onto the tatami mat. She'd obviously never really had her throat cut, though she'd done it enough herself. More times than she could count on two hands she'd left her enemies in this same position, watching their blood escape past their fingertips.

Was this what it felt like? Did they know they were dying? Would she know? If it were going to kill her she would know by... yes. A second or two later she was certain of it and the fear subsided. She looked back to Somnia and her opponent, still grappling over on the far edge of the tub. She shook the cobwebs and lingering fear out of her head and slipped her hand under the tatami mat to grab her stiletto.

She was still too weak to do much good in a fight tonight... but it was always possible Somnia would have better luck. By now Myrnal was fairly certain the girl could be trusted, and there were few options available. Myrnal was... willing to resort to a contingency plan she generally found completely unacceptable.

Somnia needed her blade.

She'd better be careful with this. It was a f@#$ing gift.

Heaving herself up out of the tub, water from her hair and the sopping wet towel cascaded over her skin and flowed over the floor. The sudden effort brought a rushing sound to her ears and for a moment she couldn't see, couldn't feel the floor. The dizziness passed and with a flick of her wrist, Myrnal flung the knife toward her friend. The blade embedded itself in the wooden floor behind Somnia's heel, hopefully far enough away from her enemy that Somnia could get to it first.

"Somnia. Kill her or find out who sent her. Someone will be here soon and we'll lose our chance."

Myrnal stood next to the tub and knelt with one hand still on her towel to retrieve her knife. Poor little thing was covered in water. It would need to be dried, polished, and maybe sharpened for good measure. Standing again, she looked down to see thin trails of blood from her neck mixing with the water on her skin and soaking into the top edge of her towel.

Wonder if they'll charge me for this, she thought.

She looked up to see Somnia checking for clean tubs to wash blood from her naked-- crap. Crap, she was naked, wasn't she?

"Yeah, uh," Myrnal said. "I don't, uh... don't generally appreciate those kinds of strangers, either. Look, we should get out of here. You need clothes and... and bandages or something for that arm and if we're going to be arrested for killing some woman in here, I would really rather do it wearing pants."

From the hallway the sound of rapid, agitated conversation in Nijonese approached. Myrnal sighed and waited for them to get into the room. An older woman in the same onsen uniform as the assassin had brought with her a large gentleman who was presumably there to protect her from whatever uncouth behavior was going on in her bathhouse. What they saw clearly shocked them. Three women, all bloody, one naked and one dead.

The onsen owner spoke first. "What has happened?"

Myrnal ran her fingertips over her collarbone and they came away wet with blood and onsen-water. "Some woman wearing one of your uniforms put a knife to my throat. My friend took care of her, everyone else ran off. That's all I know."

The older woman remained near the door with one hand over her mouth, staring on in horror. Her guardian moved forward to check the body, keeping a suspicious eye on Myrnal, who had kept her knife in hand. When he pulled the body up by the collar to identify it, he turned back to his companion and shook his head. She asked him a question in Nijonese, and with another shake of his head he made it clear that these two didn't know the assassin. She wasn't one of theirs.

He picked up the body and slung it over a shoulder, nodding to Somnia and Myrnal. The older woman waited for him to leave before she came to Somnia with a towel. "I am very sorry," she said. "You are hurt. Both of you. very sorry," she finished, shaking her head.

"Look, it's...it's fine. Dai-uh... daijoubu. I think that's right," Myrnal said. "Somnia, we need to go. Now." She gave a deep bow to the older lady to reassure her, and made her way back to her clothes as quickly as she could. Myrnal did not have time to stand and calm the panicky, apologetic woman. That was someone else's job. She hastily dressed herself, too preoccupied to dwell on whether anyone around saw her nude.

I need to tell the others. They probably don't know anything weird is going on.


It was a nice bathhouse. It was warm, it was quiet, and hopefully it would be an escape from the chaos that had recently torn Aishigara's life open again.

As he was taking off his shoes, several towel-clad customers rushed past him. He watched with a smirk as one man dropped his towel, paused as if to retrieve it, and then decided his panicked retreat was more important and fled around the corner without it.

Kicking off the second shoe, he headed inside and laid his hand on his weapon, creeping along the wall in the rapidly-emptying onsen. It was coming from the women's onsen. He scowled. Couldn't people just relax anymore? He found his way to the seat overlooking the men's and women's sections to get an idea of what might be wrong.

A grin flickered across his face when he caught a glimpse of a soaking wet naked woman tackling her enemy. It disappeared when his eyes found Myrnal.

Oh, Minaru-chan, he thought. Making enemies at every turn, I see. He left his perch to find his way back outside. He didn't see any need to help this time around. She should have finished you off. You can't get this lucky forever.

Outside he caught a glimpse of a man lingering outside the onsen, pacing and cursing impatiently under his breath.

In fact, I think that I'm the one having a good day today.

He fell into step next to the man. "Good evening," he said. The man started and glared at him. "My name is Aishigara Kikuchi. You wouldn't happen to know anything about the attack in that bathhouse, would you?" He asked with a smile.

The man tensed in preparation to bolt. "My wife is in there," he said. "That is all I know." No wonder he hadn't been sent inside. He was a terrible liar.

"You're not acting like you're worried. You're freaking out over something else, aren't you?" He grinned. "Call me Kikuchi. I think we have a common enemy."

"...what?"

"Why are you after my little Minaru-chan?"

He turned his head and examined Aishigara out of the corner of his eye. The eager grin on Aishigara's face must have been enough. "The woman? She's nothing. We're looking for her drow companion. It is our sworn duty to protect our people from the servants of the Fallen One."

Aishigara laughed. He couldn't believe his luck! He toned the laugh down into a derisive chuckle. "And you think that he's worth dealing with, eh?" He shook his head as if this were the silliest notion he'd ever heard. "He's the one who's nothing."

"What do you mean?" the stranger demanded.

"I'm saying that he's not worth it. Somebody that conspicuous? Please." At least, Aishigara assumed he was conspicuous. He must have been to attract this much attention. "The real brains behind the operation..." He could barely keep in a hysterical laugh. "...is that woman your partner just failed to eliminate."

"What? How would you know?"

"Oh, I know the woman. She's a manipulative and cunning woman, and your partner wouldn't be the first to fall for her act. Her name is Myrnal Shalienza," he said, sure to pronounce her name carefully so the zealot would remember. "Myrnal Shalienza."

Myrnal stopped in the doorway to wait for Somnia. "Just calm the f@#$ down. We're fine. We're leaving. Everything will be fine if you just shut the hell up for a second."

She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her temples. Some part of her understood that she was taking out her frustration on Somnia and that it wasn't completely fair, but she just needed some quiet and a screaming whining girl wasn't helping.

"Okay. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to leave a note for that f@#$ing drow and hope he gets it so that... I don't know. So that I'll know I did it and I won't have to feel guilty later. Then we're... I don't know. Warn Minshara or something. Gods, I don't want to do that."

She took a deep breath and gritted her teeth. "I'm... going to head back to my room. If you need to get something done, do it. Otherwise I could use a hand getting back."


Aishigara walked away from his conversation with a new spring in his step. Things were going well, and with any luck he could wash his hands of this whole affair very soon. He'd always known that his luck had a tendency to turn at a moment's notice but this... this was really something special.

He didn't consider himself a spiteful man, but he could not deny he was very very satisfied with the results of what had originally only been a trip to the onsen. It had been a whim, but if a man couldn't trust his instincts, what could he trust?

The sounds of flutes brought a further smile to his face. If there was any deity Aishigara could claim to respect, it was Daidlin. There was seldom any doubt what Daidlin's motivations were, and there was seldom any doubt that mortals were still expected to see to their own needs, their own amusements and trials. Perhaps this was all some sort of divine judgment... some blessing intended to let him know he was on the right track.

I'd certainly like to think so. At least somebody out there gets it. Who knows. Maybe I'm getting a little help after all.

He threw a friendly salute to the eye of Daidlin on the arch and slipped onto the temple grounds. Musicians, artists, laughing men and smiling women.

This could be a lovely night indeed.