by Ryuko Wed Jun 02, 2021 10:58 pm
Shortly after being caught up Ryuko paid a quick visit to the Royal vault. When she was taken away she had been forced to leave her possessions behind since they weren’t compatible with the other dimension. Now that she was back she fought herself feeling almost naked without them even if it wasn’t literal.
She couldn’t quite say she was surprised to see that her stuff was gone. She had left her gear to the village in her will after all and it was only natural that they had assumed her dead after a few months of unexplained absence. The only real question was how hard it would be to get her belongings returned to her.
Unexpectedly though none of her actual fortune had been touched. The only thing related to money that was missing were her Darhk Industries stocks which she had earmarked for Tamwyn which meant she would have to simply give up on getting back. It would have been in poor taste to ask even if her favorite student hadn’t taken them to his grave.
At the thought of him the queen bitterly gripped her right fist so tightly that her nails drew blood. She’d had such high hopes for Tamwyn, hoping that in time he would be able to take over the role of Raikage from her. The shares were meant to be her gift to him when that happened so he’d be able to fund his personal expenses while running the village. Now that future would never come to pass because she had been away during his time of need.
The fact that she had failed him weighed on her heavily. She would have gladly given every ryo she had in her possession to bring him back if such a thing was possible even though she knew from experience that it was not. The futile search for a way to resurrect her crucial business partner Damian after he had perished during the destruction of Moonspire was still fresh in her mind. Her memories of her time away had been reduced to nothing more than a fuzzy dream leaving her feeling like the attack had only just happened the other day.
With Tamwyn deceased, Mort retired and Eli in a coma that meant that all of her students had left her with the possible exception of Seid who by technicality she’d taught for all of a hot minute.
It wasn’t just her students either. In the relatively short time since she’d become a shinobi and raised to power just how many other people that she had cared about had she lost in some form or another along the way?
Her first sensai Akashi
Her lazy rival Sora
The good doctor Mori
Her crazy colleague Lei
Her Kohana acquaintance Masuyo
The Thundercats wingman Sakata
The fellow artisan Niko
Her sister in all but blood Natsuru
And her mentor Nariko the 3rd Raikage
And those were just the ones she could remember off the top of her head, the one’s she knew personally. It was hard to say how many of her citizens had been lost due to the war itself. Their absence was more abstract to her and as horrible as it sounded while she still felt sad for them, it simply didn’t feel the same on a personal level.
That left precious few that she could say she was truely close to. Those that if they had been lost would render lost any meaning of her returning. Just the Twins Yui and Yua, her sister Shimiko and maybe, just maybe her potential girlfriend Nozomi.
After the horrible experiences that the Queen had recently, meeting up with the leader of the society had moved up to near the very top of her priority list though dealing with getting herself re-equipped would have to come first for obvious reasons. Someone of as lofty statue as herself simply couldn’t go wandering the world without protection.
Thank Hakkin that it wouldn’t be hard to track down where her things had gotten to. It was simply a matter of checking the Vault’s logs since few people even knew that this place existed let alone had access to it. Sure enough one glance at them told her everything she needed to.
“You didn’t waste any time, did you Shi-chan?” muttered Ryuko. Her sister had taken custody of her equipment almost immediately after she’d vanished. Shimiko wasn’t in town right now to talk it over but as close as the two where the Queen knew exactly where they were being kept.
“I feel a sense of deja vu” Ryuko thought back to the time she’d had to collect her belongings after waking up from a coma. Turning from the vault and being careful to lock it behind her, the Queen made her way to the tallest building in the capital city, Shimiko tower.
[exit]
