Chapter One: Allegro
Cardinal had not made much of a good living since her retreat from Konohagakure. Although allied in name, the disasterous events of the last Chunin exam had put a bitter taste in the mouth of the Suna ninja. The political juggernaut that had been Fire Country had refused to release any real details - they had termed it as an "elimination event turned tragically lethal". Every genin team involved had perished, and although Konoha claimed to have suffered losses as well, the amount of D-Rank missions they had taken up until the village's silence had dipped not a bit. To anyone who cared to look, it was an obvious lie.
And then Konohagakure had vanished.
It was a mystery of the highest order, and Cardinal had been interrogated multiple times by the Suna authorities before being released to make her own way as a refugee. Freely submitting to truth serums and answering questions without hesitation had seen her through those weeks relatively without harm. But even with the nest eggs she had saved up since her induction in Konoha ANBU, the price of living in a hostile country was quickly vaporizing whatever funds she managed to dig up. Room and board was half again what it should have cost, groceries twice the market price, weapons out of the question unless she submitted to the Suna-nin's ridiculous demands of enlisting probationarily.
So it was with great reluctance that she pushed open the door to the Kazekage's tower and faced the secretary's dry-witted eyebrow with iron self-control. Asking for the enlistment form elicited a snort from the retired nin behind the desk; his withered fingers thrust the multiple sheets of paper at her with palpable disdain and wordless disdain, and Cardinal turned on her heel and left, the bureaucratic chains crumpling in her left hand. She already knew the Suna-nin would jump at the opportunity - a nin from any other village carried the jutsus and training techniques out with them, and only willing teachers could teach them effectively to their new hosts.
This wasn't coercion - the price gouging came by way of malicious civilians, not by government action - but the silent satisfaction of the secretary proved that yes, they had been aware that Cardinal would have to come to them sooner or later. It was utterly infuriating, moreso because there was nothing she could do. Konohagakure had no other allies for her to call on.
She climbed the rickety staircase that spiraled at the corner of her apartment building to the fourth floor, stepped out to Room 408, and inserted her key into the lock, little shrieks of metal coming from where grains of sand had worked their way into the mechanical device. The key turned. The door opened. Cardinal blinked heavily as her eyelight adjusted to the sudden dark after the blinding daylight of the desert sun.
Her head throbbed.
Cardinal took two pain pills with a lone swallow of water, tossed off her desert cloak, and curled up on the lone chair standing in the center of the room, where it faced the savaged remains of what had once been her bed. Feathers brown with dirt and dust still cluttered the floor beneath it, beside a shattered broom.
She clenched a kunai in her good left hand and waited. She stared at the bed.
Time passed.
~*~
Later that night she heard it again: the sound of wings beating in her dreams, the fall and twirl of feathers; cruel beaks and avian eyes like melting, runny amber. She choked awake and threw the kunai with her good left hand, and heard it thunk into a feather - heard the feather's tinny shriek as it was pinned, the fibrous edge legged as a centipede, attempting to skitter away under the bed. She dashed over and stomped on it, feeling a thick, sticky liquid gush out beneath her booted foot. Then, extracting the kunai from the broken feather, she hauled up the mattress, straining with the effort of lifting it with her right.
She stared wordlessly at the mass of crumpled, spiny feathers that skittered over and around each other on spindly legs, by the far wall. A furrow nearly an inch deep was etched into the floor there, where one massive pinion mindlessly dug its shaft into the sandstone and scraped away at it.
Two more inches and it would have dug its way right through the stone floor.
Strangling the need to shudder, Cardinal formed six handseals and incinerated the entire spectacle, charring the bottom of her bed badly enough to catch fire as well. She swatted it out while the featherpedes shrieked and scuttled all over the floor, burning down to ash. The pinion was the last to go, sinking its heavy shaft one last time into the trench, leaving the blackened shaft upright as it crumbled down the stem.
Lowering the mattress finally, she glanced around at all the ash on the floor of the room, the ruined bed, the scrapes and heedless sigils notched into the wall by the writhing sussurus of living, insectile feathers.
Silent, she hauled the mattress out onto the narrow walkway beyond her door, tossed it over the side, and hit it with another fire jutsu. It burned just as easily. From a distance, the sound was more like birdcalls, more tolerable. Endurable.
She trudged back to her chair and slumped down to sleep.
~*~
In the morning she rose and didn't bother putting on a new uniform. She only had one spare change and wash water was precious in the desert. Instead, she swallowed another pain pill, had a glass of water for breakfast, grimaced as her stomach growled, and then stepped outside and shut the door. She locked it.
Cardinal turned around, glanced over the edge of the railing, and stared. Her fire jutsu had burnt through the mattress and into the sand, crystallizing it into glass that glimmered like dark sunlight in the grey predawn of the Suna morning.
At the bottom corner, where the grays and blacks warped nearly unrecognizably, Cardinal saw the resemblance of part of a face, and a little hand.
It waved at her.
When she blinked it was gone.
~*~