Legacy of Ruin: Centipede and Spider

A dull, rust-colored sun drifts towards the horizon. It casts long shadows across the dusty ruins of an ancient city. The once-numerous sky scrapers stand scattered and desolate. Most of the structures rest askew in their sandy foundations, or else having collapsed entirely, are steadily being subsumed by the shifting sand dunes.

Sitting in the shade of a broken arch, Kisei shakes the last drop of water from his depressingly empty canteen, before casting it aside with a sigh of resignation. He'd sent the invitation to duel Akagi well over a month ago. He never received a reply and had simple assumed the other puppet master would arrive in a punctual manner at dawn. Kisei had spent the entire day on edge, waiting for the rival shinobi to appear. For a time he'd amused himself by playing in the sand, or reading, but the heat alone was exhausting. For the tenth time, Kisei mused over why he was here.

He never met Akagi in person. Kisei had left Suna behind long before the child really began to prove himself. It wasn't until he'd received notice of Akagi's appointment to head of the puppet brigade, that he really started paying attention to the Centipede's exploits. Most of it was very good, the kind of propaganda you'd expect any village to spread about a promising cadet... but here and there, Kisei began to hear rumors about a dark side of Akagi. Violence, deception, human puppet experimentation... murder. That last one had caught him by surprise. Apparently Akagi had been cowing the other members of the brigade for years- threatening them with execution or exile if they exposed his methods. A few had met with gruesome ends at the human puppeteer's hands- and now sported threads of their own. A few had been his friends.

When he became a missing nin, the puppet brigade of Suna took him in- trained him, supported him. He became a son to them, and to him they became his adoptive family. He'd become estranged from them in the years that followed- but the warmth and kindness they had shown to him was never forgotten. He fondly remembers the time he would carefully craft puppets under the careful tutelage of Kankuro, of his first play.

But that's all in the past., Kisei muses. After taking over the brigade, Akagi had turned it into a military institution. Gone were the plays and artistic performances. Gone was the heart and soul of puppetry- it had been replaced by the soulless weapons of war.

Kisei isn't sure whether he's here for vengeance, or for closure. He isn't sure what the destiny of puppetry is, or whether he has the write to choose one. The feelings he tangles with are as myriad as the shadows entrapping the ruins of Roran... and as the sun shifts begins drifing beneath the horizon, they grow ever longer and darker.