Ryuko sighed as she marched briskly down a hallway filled with flickering lights as she made her way to the conference room. Of all the ways she could have spent her day having to deal with a giant Kaiju hadn’t been one of them. Like many she had come to attend the festival at the floating city meant to celebrate the end of the war, but unlike most she hadn’t come to enjoy the revelry. With everything that had been happening with her nakama lately she was hardly in the mood for such frivalry.
Her primary reason for coming had been to clandestinely search the marketplace here for anything that might help her preparations for her trial to unlock the full power of Rafaela. The simple truth was that while she had already spent years preparing at this point she was well aware that despite her best intentions there was still lingering potential for something to go wrong. She was in essence double and triple checking her preparations to make especially sure she left no stone unturned. Anything she could do to increase her odds of victory even by a tiny fraction was in her eyes time well spent.
This wasn’t the time for distractions. She was so close to achieving the power that she needed to save her family, the strength necessary to oppose the Society and their insane plan. As far as she was concerned the ghosts of the long dead like the sage’s disciples were better left in the past where they belonged. However it seemed the Society wasn’t content to wait for her and the rest of the Village’s to be ready, if the Queen was to hazard a guess they were the likely culprits responsible for the attack of this giant mechanical and flesh hybrid abomination.
As the Priestess to a god of war Ryuko well understood the desire to create a weapon of mass destruction like this. What better tool was there to crush an enemy? The difference between them and her was that while she could imagine several such technologies she had never been foolish enough to actually pursue them. She knew that because humans were such fallible beings that some things were simply too dangerous to be allowed to exist. A doomsday device was all well and good until it was inevitably turned against you.
Clenching her fist hard she resisted the growing urge to ditch the meeting she was scheduled to attend and run outside to help attempt to defeat the creature. Her heart wanted to help as soon as possible but her head told her that was an unwise idea. Strong as she was, she was still only one woman, she couldn't hope to defeat the hordes of puppets and Xenobeasts pouring out of the Kaiju on her own.
There were lots of ninja aboard the Emporium but most of them weren’t strong enough to do much other than help evacuate civilians. The fact was that with only the forces at hand the odds of overcoming this without taking severe casualties were slim. Even if they managed to overcome the beast she found such an outcome unacceptable. Everyone had already lost more than enough during the war. Now that it was finally over she wasn’t about to sit around and allow the tragedy to continue. Already she had heard reports of Great men dying in an attempt to stave off destruction. Someone had to stand up and say “enough.”
As a member of SHIRA she had received word of an offer of assistance. The details behind the offer were fuzzy but the person who had brought her the letter assured her that it was from a credible source. They had been willing to go far enough to swear on their life that the offer was legitimate. If they were willing to go that far Ryuko saw little reason to doubt them.
Frankly the offer was for the most part a welcome one outside of the sheer price tag attached. 15 million ryo was an almost unthinkable sum. They say you couldn’t put a price tag on life but it was high enough that it even gave someone who had considerable private wealth like Ryuko pause.
If it was just her own money involved she wouldn’t have hesitated but even she couldn’t afford to fit such a large bill on her own. She could spend every ryo she had and she’d still come up far short of the goal.
Spending over half her national treasury at once was a tall order. This was the people’s tax money she was talking about which meant she had to use it wisely. This wasn’t a task she could leave to just anyone else since not just anyone could authorize an expenditure of this magnitude.
On one hand it might just be what they needed to save the day and tip the scales in their favor but on the other hand it could leave her kingdom vulnerable should the other village’s decide her kingdom was vulnerable after breaking the bank and resume the war.
Sometimes she cursed how paranoid she had become. As a Ruler and a Kage it was her job to think of all the angles but that didn’t make her heart hurt any less. She wanted to believe that the current Hokage and Princess Triumvirate were good people. They had called for an end to the war and were so unlike their predecessors who had started it.
Still how much did they trust her who had been unable to attend the peace conference? If she unilaterally paid for this aid would that backfire and give them yet more reason to be weary of her? With peace between them still so fresh, a nation with deep pockets and money to burn was a scary thing.
Politics as always were complicated. There were times like this that Ryuko cursed ever getting involved with them. Compared to dealing with this meeting, facing the Kaiju was a refreshingly straightforward matter. If she boiled things down all she had to do was hit it fast, hit it hard and keep hitting until it didn’t move anymore.
It was simple really, she wondered when was the last time she had been able to cut loose against something she didn’t have to feel bad about hitting afterwards? In a way this was a chance for her to vent all of her frustrations at the world. The sooner she could get this meeting out of the way and get to the fighting the better.
As she finally approved the door to the room she felt a rush of anticipation mixed with apprehension. This was her first time meeting with another sitting kage and she felt a bit nervous wondering what they were like and if she’d be able to live up to their expectations of her. Her formal dress had already been exchanged for her full set of armor and equipment and as such she was armed to the teeth for battle. Normally that would be seen as a breach in educate but seeing as this was an emergency she hoped they’d be willing to overlook the matter. In her eyes her only foe that mattered this day was the Indaina Kujira itself.
[1]
Her primary reason for coming had been to clandestinely search the marketplace here for anything that might help her preparations for her trial to unlock the full power of Rafaela. The simple truth was that while she had already spent years preparing at this point she was well aware that despite her best intentions there was still lingering potential for something to go wrong. She was in essence double and triple checking her preparations to make especially sure she left no stone unturned. Anything she could do to increase her odds of victory even by a tiny fraction was in her eyes time well spent.
This wasn’t the time for distractions. She was so close to achieving the power that she needed to save her family, the strength necessary to oppose the Society and their insane plan. As far as she was concerned the ghosts of the long dead like the sage’s disciples were better left in the past where they belonged. However it seemed the Society wasn’t content to wait for her and the rest of the Village’s to be ready, if the Queen was to hazard a guess they were the likely culprits responsible for the attack of this giant mechanical and flesh hybrid abomination.
As the Priestess to a god of war Ryuko well understood the desire to create a weapon of mass destruction like this. What better tool was there to crush an enemy? The difference between them and her was that while she could imagine several such technologies she had never been foolish enough to actually pursue them. She knew that because humans were such fallible beings that some things were simply too dangerous to be allowed to exist. A doomsday device was all well and good until it was inevitably turned against you.
Clenching her fist hard she resisted the growing urge to ditch the meeting she was scheduled to attend and run outside to help attempt to defeat the creature. Her heart wanted to help as soon as possible but her head told her that was an unwise idea. Strong as she was, she was still only one woman, she couldn't hope to defeat the hordes of puppets and Xenobeasts pouring out of the Kaiju on her own.
There were lots of ninja aboard the Emporium but most of them weren’t strong enough to do much other than help evacuate civilians. The fact was that with only the forces at hand the odds of overcoming this without taking severe casualties were slim. Even if they managed to overcome the beast she found such an outcome unacceptable. Everyone had already lost more than enough during the war. Now that it was finally over she wasn’t about to sit around and allow the tragedy to continue. Already she had heard reports of Great men dying in an attempt to stave off destruction. Someone had to stand up and say “enough.”
As a member of SHIRA she had received word of an offer of assistance. The details behind the offer were fuzzy but the person who had brought her the letter assured her that it was from a credible source. They had been willing to go far enough to swear on their life that the offer was legitimate. If they were willing to go that far Ryuko saw little reason to doubt them.
Frankly the offer was for the most part a welcome one outside of the sheer price tag attached. 15 million ryo was an almost unthinkable sum. They say you couldn’t put a price tag on life but it was high enough that it even gave someone who had considerable private wealth like Ryuko pause.
If it was just her own money involved she wouldn’t have hesitated but even she couldn’t afford to fit such a large bill on her own. She could spend every ryo she had and she’d still come up far short of the goal.
Spending over half her national treasury at once was a tall order. This was the people’s tax money she was talking about which meant she had to use it wisely. This wasn’t a task she could leave to just anyone else since not just anyone could authorize an expenditure of this magnitude.
On one hand it might just be what they needed to save the day and tip the scales in their favor but on the other hand it could leave her kingdom vulnerable should the other village’s decide her kingdom was vulnerable after breaking the bank and resume the war.
Sometimes she cursed how paranoid she had become. As a Ruler and a Kage it was her job to think of all the angles but that didn’t make her heart hurt any less. She wanted to believe that the current Hokage and Princess Triumvirate were good people. They had called for an end to the war and were so unlike their predecessors who had started it.
Still how much did they trust her who had been unable to attend the peace conference? If she unilaterally paid for this aid would that backfire and give them yet more reason to be weary of her? With peace between them still so fresh, a nation with deep pockets and money to burn was a scary thing.
Politics as always were complicated. There were times like this that Ryuko cursed ever getting involved with them. Compared to dealing with this meeting, facing the Kaiju was a refreshingly straightforward matter. If she boiled things down all she had to do was hit it fast, hit it hard and keep hitting until it didn’t move anymore.
It was simple really, she wondered when was the last time she had been able to cut loose against something she didn’t have to feel bad about hitting afterwards? In a way this was a chance for her to vent all of her frustrations at the world. The sooner she could get this meeting out of the way and get to the fighting the better.
As she finally approved the door to the room she felt a rush of anticipation mixed with apprehension. This was her first time meeting with another sitting kage and she felt a bit nervous wondering what they were like and if she’d be able to live up to their expectations of her. Her formal dress had already been exchanged for her full set of armor and equipment and as such she was armed to the teeth for battle. Normally that would be seen as a breach in educate but seeing as this was an emergency she hoped they’d be willing to overlook the matter. In her eyes her only foe that mattered this day was the Indaina Kujira itself.
[1]
