La Ciociara

Stating the condition of weather would be pointless. In fact, merely hinting at what was currently tickling down the silver walls of the metal forest, echoing under its barren bridges or splashing in the numerous puddles would be almost humorous, like noting how high the sky or damp the ocean was. It was the Village Hidden in the Rain, after all. If it was bathed in sunlight the name would have been an unfortunate pick. Thankfully, all of the bother that supposedly concealed this uprising power could be mitigated with a simple umbrella. Like water lilies in a pond, the streets were littered with them, waving to either side whenever another tried to pass. Residing in her own comfortable pillar of drought was a young woman, whose purple umbrella seemed to almost diffuse in the blue-and-red locks of her hair. Both her skintone and her garments betrayed her foreign ethnicity, and it was no secret people of her kind were not met eagerly within the Rain. She was aware of the shadows that tracing her steps at a subtle distance, using their knowledge of the shiny jungle so no one would have noticed them. Even if the young woman had the right qualifications to enter their iron island, that alone was not enough to erase suspicion. Void of weapons or ill intentions she had left the gates, or so the rapport had stated. Yet this woman, with no sign of which village her journey had originated, was far too peculiar a sight to be left as she was.

Her steps were firm and self-assured. Even though it was seemingly the first time she had ever set foot on these grounds, she walked through the jagged streets and turned obscure alleys as if it were her own home. Additionally, the route she chose forced her through the most heavily crowded areas at that time of the day: market stands packed with bargaining housewives, screaming vendors and crying children. Her shadows picked up the pace, forwent some of their methods to push through the sea of bodies in time for her ponytail to round another corner. But they didn't lose her, because that was their job. Trained from childhood, a regime that only the elite of the elite could handle, taught to stalk their target like a lion its prey, to never even blink for as long as they-

She was gone.

One moment, she was in the middle of her vision, the next moment she had vanished. There was no sign of ninjutsu, especially because the report they had received stated that a sample test had detected she wasn't capable of techniques advanced enough to allow her to do something like this. The shadows broke their positions, scurrying through the crowd and identifying their surroundings rapidly. But she had disappeared completely. Even to their sensors she was gone, as if she had never really been there in the first place. The shadows didn't lose their calm - they had never learned how to do that. Instead, they started to sweep the district, careful and calculated. It was only a matter of time before they would find her.

Meanwhile, at the inn where she had just required her room, Juiz was busy pouring two cups of the jasmine tea she had requested. Setting them down on the small mahogany table she was seated at in seiza, she directed her voice to the corner of the room without ever actually letting her gaze leave the furniture. "If your thirsty, you may always come out and join me, Mizu-chan"