The Day of Thunder

[Shiba Kumori]

She found a place to sit nearby and placed her pack on the ground in front of her feet. She didn’t answer his question right away.

“The people appear to be setting up for a festival of some type. Not too sure what it is and why…”

She paused and let out a breath slowly through the side of her mouth.

“I am here… because I got an invite from… let’s call him a trusted source… That something of rather large significance is in the works here.” She continued to look around the village and the people moving around.

“I’m really bad at judging character so… I asked if you were interested after that thing with the thieves…”

She looked over at him, “Why’d you follow some fox all the way up here?”

[Bayushi Norikage]

He could hear the ruckus of villagers in the early morning, it was indeed full of the sort of energy that usually surrounded a festival. Propping a leg up on the rock, he rested his elbow on his knee and watched the fog a bit more.

"Something of significance," he mused on the words for a few beats, then tried his luck again with the pipe. This time he was able to get a spark and took a long pull to be certain it would stay lit.

Blowing smoke, he regarded his companion again.

"I could say I came along because I've seen enough bad things lately and I have a strange feeling it's all coming to a head, that something terrible is going to happen and I needed to get out into this baby Empire of ours and do what I can to help...and maybe that's part of it, but why am I following you?" He chuckled. "You haven't figured that out yet, huh?" with his mask pulled down to smoke, his shit eating grin was highly visible.

[Shiba Kumori]

“I could make a number of guesses… But you could also just say things. Anything wrong with speaking straight?” She replied with a look over in his direction.

[Bayushi Norikage]

He leaned over at her more intently, not quite close enough to be considered uncouth rudeness, but certainly dancing on the line.

"I'm supposed to talk straight to someone in a mask using an assumed name?" His eyebrow arched and he blew more smoke. Leaning back away from her he chuckled slightly. "What should I say? That you shine like Lady Sun's own rays and burn so brightly in the hearts of those you meet that I simply cannot let you go?"

He smirked.

"I suppose I could, but I lack the talent for poetry."

[Shiba Kumori]

“Oh noes. Whatever shall I do if you don’t fall madly in love with my radiance?” She replied without any emotion in her voice.

She shook her head in mild consternation, “I would hope you’d be perceptive enough to realize I have no interest in anything like that. You bloviate in a way that makes me think you’re covering something up but you ‘mask’ it up real nice.”

She waved her hand towards him up and around his general vicinity, “I don’t know what is going on in there with whatever feelings it is you are capable of… But if it is not some kind of positive feelings towards me… and it doesn’t make any sense for the Scorpion to be sending someone to spy on someone like me half a world away… Then you probably have some other mission up here that you’ve been sent to do.”

She shrugged, “Glad to have escorted you safely here I guess…”

[Bayushi Norikage]

"It's been my pleasure to be so diligently guarded by a professional", he replied with a slight nod of acknowledgment. "Though, really, thinking you are interesting shouldn't be enough, but so far it has been." He shrugged and puffed his pipe again. "I'll tell you what is enough though...people are scared, and seeing someone who wants to help is nice. We all might end up screaming mad and forgetting our manners, might as well help out until it happens and I felt that took some courage."

[Shiba Kumori]

She nodded in silent affirmation.

There was part of her that knew it was much more likely there were at least a couple of different reasons for the man’s appearance in her path… one more mythical and the other much more practical, but a substantial part that did seek for some kind of respect… in return for her own towards him.

“Not everyone is willing to tag along for do-gooding… especially not cynical assholes.” Her mask had never hidden her smirks and neither did it now.

“But yeah… You know. Thanks.”

[Bayushi Norikage]

"I didn't do anything but complain", Norikage reminded her. "But if you want to thank me for running my mouth and making rude comments, I'll contend that you're more fun than I thought you were."

[Shiba Kumori]

“Don’t cut yourself short.” She replied.

“You did also stand there menacingly from time to time.”

She chuckled a bit before adopting a half smile, “I used to be more fun. Back when the world was more fun.”

[Bayushi Norikage]

"What, like when you were a kid?" he clucked his tongue.

[Shiba Kumori]

“Most of us were kids once… yes. Did your mother birth a curmudgeon right out of the womb?” She asked.

“But I don’t need to go that far back… It’s only recently that things got so much more serious.”

[Bayushi Norikage]

"Hard for me to agree."

It was always shit and I never knew my mother.

"So what went wrong for you that you put on a mask and go dashing about the countryside helping the needy?"

That something fucked has to happen to push someone into it is probably the biggest crime.

Norikage smoked his pipe.

[Shiba Kumori]

She looked down at the pack at her feet for a second, formulating a response.

“Always been the wandering type… Never did the ‘join a clan’ thing. I had a real controlling mom at home and whatnot… So tried to get out as much as I could as a kid. Got to see a lot of the empire actually. My family is from the middle part of the empire and I’d catch this caravan or that one as a kid.” She replied.

“Came to like it all quite a bit. Then… I had a cousin… have a bit of a run in with some… problems early on when all this shit started. Then rumors keep goin’ round and round of worse and worse stuff. Didn’t just want to sit around and do nothin’.”

She shrugged, “I put on the mask because… I don’t need the attention. I grew up on stories of all the big names, ya know. People who walked into hell and back. All that stuff… I remember thinking of them as like these special beings… somehow different than the rest of us. But as I walked around more and more and saw more people… I realized they’re not all that different. If I do something cool, I don’t want someone to make me out to be a hero… I want everyone to think they can be heroic too. That they could be the masked fox lady… Because I’m no different than the rest of the people walking around… Just another random person. Not playing into some weird story of good people having to be gods in human form.”

She looked over to him.

“What about you? You don’t appear to have had it too easy… That can make people the wrong type of cynical…”

[Bayushi Norikage]

"Oh, you had it right the first time. I was born this way. My mom used to tell me all the time that I was a crotchety old man in a kid's body."

He offered nothing further than yet another careless shrug.

"Though, not everyone has training, or carries a sword", he countered her earlier comments. "If you stand up to a demon, you get their claws without mercy. So, heroes are special, not always because they were born that way, but because they succeeded, that's rare...and why they get the recognition. Everyone else...they might try, sure, but they most end up in an early grave."

[Shiba Kumori]

She nodded, “You’re right… But there’s more than one way to be a hero.”

She offered a shrug in return, “And I think we’re at a stage where we need more courage than less… Whatever way that courage shows itself.”

[Bayushi Norikage]

He blew the last puff of smoke into the foggy morning, then tapped the pipe out on the rock he sat on.

"Sure, do what you can...is this what you were made for though?" he asked and stood up, placing the pipe back into his sleeve. "Some of us are idiots who had swordplay beaten into our bones, I wouldn't be good for much else even if I was given an opportunity."

[Shiba Kumori]

“Made for?” She tilted her head.

“I’m not a big follower of destiny with a capital ‘D’… nor am I really one who is in the habit of letting others tell me who I am and what I should be. I’ve seen people get real twisted up in knots trying to be what they think others want them to be…”

She leaned down and picked up a pebble on the ground and rolled it over in her hand.

“I get that not everyone gets the same chance… But we all get our own choices to make. And gotta live with the results of it.”

[Bayushi Norikage]

"Oh, you get not everyone has the same chances?" he smirked and stretched a little, popping his neck once. "It's easy to have compassion for those who are less fortunate, especially when you're at the top. Even I can feel some pity for people who've been dealt a shit hand, I was raised as a samurai after all. Yet, just because training was rough mean I really get it when a commoner explains they live in fear of me because I carry swords."

[Shiba Kumori]

Easy to be compassionate when you’re at the top…

She sat quiet for a moment before responding, “I’m not sure it’s ‘easy’ to be compassionate ever… I’ve seen both rich and poor… powerful and weak be total asses. Living a cushy life leads to its own bad paths I take it.”

She looked over to him.

“It seems like you don’t much care for the hand you were dealt. If you were the dealer…what would you have wanted to be?”

[Bayushi Norikage]

He thought for a very long time, desperately resisting the urge to shit all over her question with snark. Desperately.

"I could say the hand I've been dealt was bad, but I'm a samurai", he said. "That's just whining, and the worst kind." He folded his arms and breathed out a puff of hot air, then pulled his mask up again. "Wishing things could be different is pointless to me anyway. I'd much rather change the result of the game than the hand I was dealt."