Sunrise and the Setting Moon

Mission Info:

It starts out slowly, to the east. Just a shift in the sky, reaching up from far behind the mountains, spreading lines of a deeper blue. If he keeps sitting there, and he will, it will shift further, the blue mingling with an ever-growing haze that wavers into a softer shade of golden-green, like a transparent curtain, before it all goes tipping and spilling over into a harsh, rich crimson, flooding the valley with a blood-red dawn.

Zunair checks his footing, pulls himself up that last bit of the way so he can lean against the branches, turn his face towards the rising sun. Here, in the heart of the woods, where the trees stand almost bark to bark, boughs curling together so tightly that he could walk across the canopy like a carpet, nary a light reaches down beneath the leaves, giving the forest floor an air of perpetual gloom. He likes it that way, much prefers not to see what lies beyond, the vastness of a world that has lost its meaning. Dawn is the only time he allows himself to do so, to climb to the top of the highest tree and watch the night turn into day. To ascertain, in the manner of someone who has been asleep for too long, that everything is still in place, the Earth is still turning, and it will be another quiet day in the below.

In the moments he retained from another time, dawn was a relief, an end to the grip of primal fear that took a hold of men when they were lying in a pitch-black hole, clutching at what may well have been twigs for all the good they were going to do, listening to the staccato of their own breaths in the darkness and praying that they would remain the only ones. Dawn was something to be greeted, celebrated even, a joyous kind of collective relief sweeping through the ditch at something that should have been a matter of course, but wasn't. He remembers different dawns, long ones, gray ones, brilliantly piercing ones, and he remembers thinking them beautiful in the way an amnesiac knows that a portrait of a person used to mean something, but now...

Now they are all the same.

Shaking his head out of his stupor, he looked down at the scroll unraveled in front of him. That contents that lie within tells him the information that the Kage has already told him. Meet at the village gates to wait for his partner, then head towards the country border and patrol all around those borders. Considering the size of the country and ranking of these missions, these two missions will last for a couple days. Already set up with his arsenal and tenting gear, he simply jumped from the tree and headed towards the village gate.

On the journey he wondered who his partner is will be. Given his new rank, he figured it would be a senior officer considering the ranks of these missions. While patrol missions were not foreign to him, this would be the first time he would set outside the village. With his Byakugan and medical ninjutsu, he figured he would be the supporting and scouting person for this mission. He could only wait to see who his partner will be.

Finding himself at the entry to village, he showed the guards his mission stamps to allow him to depart the village. Seems he was the first of the duo to arrive, he thought as Zunair's eyes scanned the area. He then proceeded to lean up against the wall and cross his arms to wait for his partner. Looking down, the sunlight radiated off his silvery-white hair as the light kissed off him and his porcelain skin. While he normally would wear his black jacket with blue threading. He now wore his chuunin flak jacket with his head band loosely hanging around his neck. Black shinobi pants and sandals, he was prepared for his mission to begin.

[TWC: 670/5,750]

How was any of what just happened fair? Like, at all? Ever since the new leadership have mantled from the ashes of their predecessors, Lynn feels like her situation has only gotten worse, despite what she assumes is their best efforts. Occasional mistakes and mishaps were not normally a huge bother to the now nineteen-year old Genin, but this was the cherry on top of the five decker cake with whipped cream topping... ALL made with chocolate. Thick, decedent, very difficulty to eat chocolate. The dunces who run the mission area sure didn't know what they were doing when they mixed Lynn's submission for a very easy, low stakes D-Rank mission with a goddamn S-Rank mission to patrol the borders with another high tier ninja. There was not enough time to even get the problem done, and despite this inconsiderate amount of effort on whoever's fault this was, no one in the village offices seemed to mind the fact that they're forcing a Genin to do the job of, at the very least, a high ranking Chunin. What a hilarious joke. She was definitely laughing at this now, hahaha, so fucking funny. Oh well. If she's lucky, maybe she'll die and save everyone the trouble of worrying about her shitty lineage's special eyes. Not that she had those, she's just not enough of a prodigy, it seemed.

Though the young Uchiha was on short notice, there was not going to be a lack of preparedness when it came to her gear, at the very least... with what she can afford, that is. Her battle equipment leaves a lot to be desired, but she does bring a lot of useful items and camping accessories to try and make the life of her new partner relatively less stressful, now that they have to carry around dead weight for two days. Cooking would need to be her duty in this case, as well as serving as an extra meat shield in case anything was to hit the fan, which would most likely be her corpse in the first place. That's why she might look a little silly, when she has a rather stuffed backpack on her back that she's toting behind her when she's making her way towards the village gates, ready to undergo the journey of a lifetime... a lifetime she hoped wouldn't be short, because as easy as it would be to keel over and die, she doesn't actually WANT to. That'd be so... wasteful, even with her lack of hope these days.

When she's finally near her teammate, as well as the guards, she looks rather nervous and jittery, though maybe not as much as one should believe a low ranked shinobi really should be in this situation. They have long, luscious pine green hair that's kept neatly in a cute ponytail, which is as practical as it is adorable. Their eyes are just as forest-lined in terms of greenery, and their get-up is very simple for the benefit of being comfortable and easy for a multi-day trip like this, including a nice brown jacket and combat boots. It looks relatively mundane enough, so they won't stand out a whole lot. Her complexion is nearly as pale as the Hyuga in front of her, and choking through her own tension, she puts out her hand for a friendly shake, and does her best neutral toned voice she can. "I-I'm Lynn. I'll be your... associate, during your mission. I don't think I can call it a partnership, considering the circumstances... the office folks have made a terrible mistake, so you pretty much have some dead weight on your hands, to be frank. But, I'll make sure you're well fed and taken care of whenever we have to rest... and I'll do strictly whatever you tell me to do. I don't want to be responsible for your death. I'm sorry I couldn't get the situation settled before the mission began, though..." Their eyes look down as they say this, and they kick the ground a little, very clearly feeling disappointed in how useless they might be in this duty of theirs. A shinobi shouldn't act like this, they know, but who the fuck cares? She could die, and there's nothing she can do about it. It might as well be a suicide mission to no one's benefit.

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Frankly, the sheer amount of kindness on display from this 'Zunair' fellow is utterly shocking to the core of the meek genin. Occasionally there were instances of sickeningly sweet individuals in the world, but when it came to fulfilling what was filed as an S-Rank mission, this is not what Lynn had imagined occurring when meeting up with her higher ranked partner. No raising of hands, no veiled threats, no shouting or curses of bad luck... just a joyful greeting, and what felt like life advice almost. It's almost maddening to their clouded mind, the alarms of anxiety flaring loudly in the back of her brain. If she let himself get taken aback too much by this Hyuga's calm demeanor, she may feel the need to, dare she say, open up. That cannot happen, especially when they need to be on guard at all times. To think, all those mental calculations happened in a matter of moments for the both of them, as the young lady stared at her cooperative pal like they didn't understand nigh a word they spilled out of their mouth.

"Um... right, sure, they didn't make a mistake. Totally. The girl with literally no jutsu except the ones taught at the Academy was chosen to patrol the borders, despite the briefing classifying such a task as incredibly dangerous. This is fine... I'll stop 'talking myself down', I guess, even though I was merely speaking the truth on the matter. A-anyway... yeah, leaving now sounds wonderful." Sarcasm aside, after a brief sign and the rolling of her eyes, she begins distracting herself with the task at hand, instead of getting caught up in her jumbled mess of emotions, following close behind Zunair when they're ready to stroll out the gates. The nerves of approaching this situation are still entangled in her web of stress, but at this point she can't do a whole lot about it, so she instead takes note of whatever they're passing by on their long trip with one another. Fortunately for them both, they're so close to the borders that most of the markers have not worn away yet, and any resistance is more than likely to be squashed with relative ease. It gives her time to relax until being out in the boonies is all she can think of.

When she feels like it has been long enough, she herself actually decides to speak up, since... none of them have anything to do other than work together, and even she cannot bear the burden of keeping herself completely occupied all on her lonesome. "So much for avoiding social activity", she thought. "Uh... what do you like to do? You know, when you're not... being a ninja. I quite enjoy being around animals myself. From the adorable, the the deadly, they're all just so incredible... and they tend to lack a lot of the flaws of humans, I've found. Definitely a lot less wars among them, that's for sure." It's very clear by the end of her sentence, she's expressing her own bitterness on the folly of humanity, but she didn't mean it towards Zunair himself, from what he can tell. Her voice trailed off from there, because she didn't feel comfortable with talking their ear off, just admiring the beauty of nature the best she can.

WC:

(Mission will be continued here: https://www.narutoroleplaygame.com/t52690-the-rising-sun-and-the-setting-moon-pt-ii#397721 )