A little more to my speed

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Some hours before the dawn, when the first ray of light was still touching the village's roofs, Kitsu received his next order. It was a delicate task, filled with intricate diplomacy maneuvers and ripples of a potential conflict. A prominent tea ceremony, a delegation of elders from several allied villages hosted by a local daimyō at his mansion – a symbol of unity and timelessness. A shadow of treason has been seeping beneath the facade, though. Kitsu was chosen for his skill to blend with the shadows and eyesight to see through them – he was to become the invisible guardian of the event.

His charge was simple – make sure everything goes without a hitch, meaning trouble should immediately become apparent to eyes trained to see everything the others missed. On the day of the event, Kitsu was standing a reasonable distance away from the mansion, gazing upon it as an eagle was surveying the battlefield. It was a traditional Japanese-style mansion with sliding doors and wooden walls – a single-tracked mind of the household's daimyō, preserved by his descendants. Although Kitsu saw a dozen ways inside and just as many nooks to sequester dangerous objects or men, what he mostly felt was a human brain's limited capacity to perceive the unseen. Kitsu was dressed to blend in as a staffer of the mansion. His steps were gossamer threads on the human carpet, and absolute silence surrounded him as he moved. Air was filled with expectation, with the vaporized aroma of tea and the scent of incense spreading through the rooms.

Kitsu's level of professionalism increased when the guests started arriving, with their kimonos releasing an endless cascade of vibrant colors and intricate patterns. The guardsman watched the dignitaries from the fringes, his eyes quickly scanning their faces, looking for any hint of maliciousness or disharmony. The beauty of the ceremony, the precision of the rituals involved, and the calm dignity of the participants presented a facade that hid the anxiety running like an invisible string beneath the surface. Kit-su scrutinized more than just the guests; his eyes also followed the servers and the attendants, each responsible for making the event a reality. His awareness resulted from years spent in the shadows, where the clear distinction between innocence and murderous intentions blurred.

The tea ceremony offered a symphony of movements, each gesture as meaningful as the next, each second pushing those involved closer to resolving the martial question by drinking tea. Kit-su found himself drawn into the dance of beauty and tradition, even as he struggled to focus on the task. The dignitaries conversed in laughter, politics, and alliances, manifesting themselves with well–mannered chuckles and nods of acknowledgment. However, under the veil of political harmony, he remained aware of the discord, the scent that announced the shadow's intentions. He dared not let the sight of the rest of the mansion, feeling the urge to scout the less populated rooms, the storage, the kitchen, and the garden, which could efficiently serve as a staging area for whatever villainy was to occur this gathering.

In the garden, a shift in the manner manifested itself to his consistent perfection, re-creating the natural into a peaceful beauty. For the first time, Kitsu discerned the variations and relieved the tension. There were so many hiding areas, with stones and turning pebbles, shadows within shadows offering refuge, for dangers such as those who hid in the shaded light found in the fence-protected bind of bamboo amidst the rocks. From there, the calm voice caught his ear, just over the hint of sunlight whispering straight strikes in the wind, tipping him closer to shadows, where the sunlight of branches overhead leaked through the leaves like a darker lantern. In another area, further from the activity and music, bathed in the gloom of the encasement, their darkness seemed to pulse.

The time they spent away from their equivalents and associates revealed their nature, a crux of the errand Kitsu had assumed to complete. A retreat in his mind might be made, but he shrank back into the openness when he heard the daring song lead. He temporarily tried to figure out how to take additional stride and time without disturbing the occasion. He grasped in that flash that his strength at the moment was essential, albeit more than a confrontation; it might be a struggle, a mock to see who knew better how to arrange the webs men wove more intricately than spiders, so he should take it slow and think 1st action 2nd. So Kitsu's feet were light as he danced forward.

What would emerge next would be critical, a wordless dance performed under the uninformed eyes of those who had come to participate in the rite of the cherry ceremony. Yet, as his expertise took over, Kitsu narrowed his attention to the estate, realizing that the interrupted criminal might not have been working alone. The danger did not subside, hanging like a foggy apparition on the periphery of his awareness, a possibility he had no choice but to acknowledge and to consider as high. His reconnaissance resumed, unnoticeable and cautious, a background for the outward quietness of the ceremony's excellence and experience. Kitsu stalked through the garden, as ghostly as the breeze through the branches, his eyes darting, looking, still looking for an antagonistic glint in the eyes of the assistant, a covert sign of not yet achieved rage or strife. The rite reached its pinnacle as the daimyō uttered words of thankfulness and companionship to his aspirants. In Kitsu's eyes, based on the northern end of the garden, close to the ornamental pool, the second uproar manifested. It was small and inconspicuous, merely an alteration in the night's performance, an off-key treble in a melody he now commended, and swirling as the currents, he coasted beside the source of trouble. There, obscured by the alteration of a sapling, carefully cut bush, he discovered the other challenger, a being clad in the servant's clothes still decorated with the glower of crime. The assassin had taken up a place where he could survey the daimyō and his patronized unobtrusively, his moderate nod focused solely on a lofty dignitary from an adjacent village.

Like a ghost, Kitsu's approach is revealed only after the saboteur's vulnerability has eliminated their opportunity for flight. The requisite wrestling match was a quiet battle of intent and counter-intent, at which Kitsu's expertise ensured that it went unnoticed by the audience. His movements were methodical, with minimal violence employed to dispatch the attacker and minimize the opportunity for disturbance. As the saboteur was taken off guard by his silent interference, Kitsu could swiftly incapacitate and remove them from the celebration hall, where they were hidden behind a firmly locked door to prevent any prying eyes from establishing their identity. Upon eliminating the immediate concern, Kitsu assessed the scenario to guarantee no more possible enemies were waiting in the wings.

His ever-watchful glances were a silent safeguard against the violence that might disrupt the evening's peace. When the final dignitary had withdrawn, contentment and fellowship visibly radiating from their faces, Kitsu began to retreat into the shadows. His job was done, and his ability to outsmart the paralconium, ensuring that his charges were unharmed during the celebration, gave him a feeling of accomplishment that even a hot roof and a meal could not stifle. In the silence following the final departure, when even the preparation company had slipped into the nighttime air, Kitsu contemplated his situation. The challenge was not in the battle but in the need to keep a calm event from being destroyed by a few troublemakers to balance a web of alliances. After all, as much as doubts about his reality tormented him, he knew that the most significant meaning could be obtained from an unknown existence when the situation warranted.

Kitsu lost himself from the manor, long veils of lunar light marking the road before him, taking solace in the knowledge that equilibrium had been maintained for just one night. His gentle dance across the yard, accounting for his combat ability and softening his touch, had taken place under the heavens' charming quiet, and the night's quiet would stay his inheritance.

With the burden of his duty finally lifted and the barrier of the need to return and resume his role temporarily interrupted, Kitsu directed the steps of his muscular legs toward the forest – the world that awaited him just beyond the boundary of human civilization that was the village. For all his day had contained, successful as it had been, he was starved of solitude and the touch of isolation that he associated only with nature, untainted by the mark of civilization. Kitsu sent a silent thought to Ren, a telepathic whisper through the ether. A subsonic waveless breeze — It's done, and it was a success. The forest greeted Kitsu, its web of leaves silhouetted against the darkening sky, the aural tapestry woven by countless voices of night creatures.

He had escaped the world of humankind, and it was here that he found fleeting peace. Kitsu wandered, guided by some forgotten instinct from thousands of hunts through the thick woods. More profound, he strode until he stepped into a clearing that seemed almost artificial in its emptiness. It sighed an invitation within his mind, and he crossed his legs to sit at its heart. Kitsu inhaled deeply, smelling the rich musk of the earth and wet soil, the loam and the growing things, exhaled, and imagined his spirit whispering to the spirits of these woods. He didn't believe in magic; he thought the concept silly and old-fashioned. Kitsu's worldview, solipsism, and existential, nihilistic thoughts on the inherent meaninglessness of the universe aside, he also undeniably felt a connection when he slipped inside the heads of these spirits.

The spirits of the forest were portions of the world's energy, the same as the rock, air, and water, but a much more concentrated and not inanimate accumulation of power. Kitsu sat cross-legged, and the boundary between self and everything else blurred. His mind saw the trees only as boundary encroaching, carbon-exhaling brothers and sisters. He felt both a peace and an urge to return and strike at the man who had slapped him. Both were ineffable, adding to the peace that arrested him and kept him at that moment for an eternity, which merits his inner peace. Finally, Kitsu opened his eyes. The world was silver about him, lit by the heavy, pale light of the moon. Kitsu stood, tiredness evaporated — or at least reduced to a mud — stupor – and he walked back home to his accommodations in the village – but it had never been home. At least not in the way this forest was. The undergrowth, the canopy, and the shadows all seemed to push Kitsu back longingly as he turned and returned. He felt something return with him, though he could not name it.

He had felt similar watching a pack of moose or stalking a herd of roe deer in his youth only a few weeks ago. Kitsu walked back to the village, and the forest seemed as though it wept at his passing, mewling and dancing in the gray-silver dark. Kitsu would carry that feeling, that dichotomous anger and freedom, the symbology of one's wild bones forever, but not alone. He would sleep that night under the beautiful canopy of the wood cover. He felt the very embrace of the earth's surroundings. The spirits living within the forest would all nuzzle their beautiful bodies against him, providing him with the required sleep.

As he fell into unconsciousness, he would think of the day and the mission he had completed. There was so much about the world that he truly felt was completely unnecessary, and that had nearly no value, but the feeling he got from being with the spirits was not one of them.

The very first light of dawn seeped in through the thick canopy high above, softening into a fragile, knitting glow that washed over the clearing where Kitsu, at its core, greeted the coming of the new day. The rustling words of the night and the forest's early-morning chorus were replaced by the serene stillness of dawn, a sound that signified both a start and the eternal veering cycle of day and night. Kitsu greeted the morning with his eyes shut, his posture entirely reminiscent of meditation's silent and polite calm. The air surrounding him remained chill and new, scented delicately with morning's dew-saturated soil and the minor spectrum of planets' awakening brevities. At this moment, Kitsu lengthened his senses outwards, thinking only of the forest and the forest's spirits.

This meditation was not a call to spirits with voice and volition but rather to the essence of the forest as a whole: old, silent trees, the roots that he could not see underneath the floor, and the vibrant stream of life that ran through every leaf and yarn of grass. His breaths fell into the same rhythm as the jungle as his spirit felt the delicate energies running from and to him. As the sun rose and the trees from above began to notice sunlight across the jungle floor, Kitsu remained in heavy contemplation. The uncertainties that marked his extraordinary existence, his world-weary impatience, the added weight of all his responsibilities, all of it seemed to disappear. There, in the jungle, he found a commitment, a global candidate that outstripped his world's philosophy of fact and skepticism.

It was a balm to his soul, a reminder that despite the solitary nature of his path, he was never truly alone. The forest always offered a profoundly humbling and uplifting perspective because of its permanence and uncaring beauty. It was a place where Kitsu could come and know his inner turmoil and soul and come back with a new sense of reality about the more excellent picture; even he, like the forest, was part of an endless cycle of nature and time. As the meditation ended, Kitsu gradually opened his eyes and realized that he was inundated with the new day's light in the world around him. He stood up and stretched, feeling the forest's life flow into him.

Then he nodded to the forest spirits without saying a word of gratitude, not through faith but simple respect, and it was time to face the new day filled with the newfound strength and peace he had displayed in the heart of the wood. The forest, constant in the ever-changing pattern of his life, is a sanctuary and a beacon of truth. It gave its ultimate farewell as the man made his way back to the affairs of humans, but the end was not final. Instead, it was a farewell to distance and waiting, and the forest promised to be back, a return offered in the whispered wind of endless circles in the dance of life and soul.

WC: 2501
TWC: 2501
EXIT

Claims:
+2337 towards Pureblooded Shinobi (Complete) (Previous Progress)
+164 towards Split Second (164/1125)