Tough Pills to Swallow [IO]

A mission.

Fair. Kazushi had officially returned to active duty for a while now, yet had made no effort on his part to be an active ninja, and it seemed the Administration was tired of waiting for him to make the first move. They had respected him enough to not push him, but as with all things, good will runs out. A request to assist the local alchemist. Hm. Might be a decent way of starting off. He was skin and bones, these days, the clothes he wore before his trip to the hospital were now all baggy, even though he was supposedly going through puberty and should be on the verge of a growth spurge.

“Clinical depression… a spell of inactivity… both highly dangerous for a teenage boy. You need to get back out there. Become active. Find your own way. I understand you think things are bleak now… but they’ll be much worse in the future.”

Fine. I’ll do the mission.

Clad in ill fitting clothes, with a face bandaged that revealed the indent on his gaunt cheeks and wiry neck, blue coat billowing with the wind and long dark hair kept away from his piercing blue eyes, Kazushi found himself among the peers he was to take the mission with. The book thrown by the fidgety officer thumped against the hard wood of the table, before disappearing to tend to the shivering man in the other room. Kazushi caught a glimpse of the creature; meek, curled in blankets, afraid of the world. The ghost of the future.

Depressed, inactive, and not growing like a normal boy ought to. The blood of the Old Kiri, lava and steam, and a thousand generations of warriors, meant to die a meek, old man. Kazushi approached the table while two of the others talked. They shared a bond, apparently. Kazushi had known what familiarity was. His blood brother was somewhere out there. He may meet him again.

“I studied the letters and numbers, but I’m not very chemically inclined.” As he approached, he politely exhaled an “excuse me” before approaching the book, turning pages in hopes of finding something that would spark his attention.

The black haired teen read through the manual’s index, where it seemed the alchemist (if he had even been the one to write it) had gathered a plethora of information regarding the ore they sought after and the process of extracting the material from it, with close to half of the book being about the sole history and earliest applications of the elusive material. A blue skinned lad, seemingly about his own age, approached him and asked for his name. Kazushi’s blue eyes met the dark sclera and golden irises of the Hoshigaki. “Kazushi”, he said, “Terumi”, he added. It was not every day one got to meet the old blood of the Kirigakure, even though just as soon as they got the introduction out of the way the Hoshigaki lad moved away. It wasn’t too hard to tell what he was; not many blue skinned people walked around with gills on their cheeks. Kazushi may be ignorant on many things, but he took remarkable pride in his heritage and the heritage of his motherland. What good was to be the Blood of the Old Kirigakure if he couldn’t even tell when he met it?

Just as Kazushi came upon the instruction for extracting the mercury from the ore, the door banged open and flew through the room, taking Murata down with it. Kazushi had been startled, a minor and hopefully imperceptible jolt causing him to hop on his spot, as he turned around hard to see the three figures leaning their way into the room through the door hole. Kato, the massive redhead who had been assigned to the mission with the kids, took his stance between the rest of the group and the newcomers, and in spite the size difference, it would seem a much brighter fire roared within him in comparison with the thugs. Something about his amble told Kazushi he was not someone he wanted to come to blows with. Mayhaps if he had been stronger he might’ve held himself with the same confidence, yet, as a recovery shamble and shade of a real person, the umbral haired kid felt more of an inconvenience than an actual boon to his team.

If Gonk had told him his name, he would call out to him, if not, he would just call him by his clan name, before saying “please help the lass up. We got work to do. Mister Redhead, if you would escort our guests out of the door…”

He would continue shortly after, reading from the pages.

“We need to take the ore and heat it up.” He pointed to the crates with ore. “It needs to be heated up, and from that heat, the condensation will produce the mercury we seek.” He looked over to the heating apparatus; kilns of sorts where the heating would take place, and a cold glass above to allow the evaporated mercury to slowly drip onto containers.