Heedless of the budding shit-storm that was brewing inside of the office, there was a timid knock on the door that brought them all crashing back to the reality of the present, or in other words, Cassie was forced by years of training to set aside her petty bullshit to act her rank. If it wasn't the General making rounds to keep her men on their toes - or worse coming to collect a dissertation that was currently incomplete - it could have been visiting dignitaries. It could be Ko'atal, Cassie thought in spite of herself. Regardless, it could have been an important guest, and that warranted them all to be on their best behavior. At least there was one upside to assembling this rag-tag team of wannabe Avengers with various backgrounds, and that was all of the strict-ass discipline the team had endured before they could even dream of kicking their first ass.

Well aware that it was that much more of a challenge for Takeda to use his telepathy when he couldn't clearly see his target due to environmental obstacles, Cassie still gave him a nod, silently ordering the shinobi to reach out and probe the mind of whomever was on the outside of that plain oak portal. Statistically speaking, there was a very great chance that he would be attempting to read the "wrong" person, but Cassie would be damned if she and her men were caught with their pants around their ankles on home turf.

Understanding his task, the ninja raised his index and middle fingers to his dark umber temple and was almost immediately rebuffed by a non-human barrier, having time enough to glimpse a lone image of a bedridden woman with ghastly pale flesh and a halo of wanning silver-gold locks fanned across the low tatami bed, spilling along the wood floor. Was that...? It might have just been the flash of a picture, yet Takeda was positive that he knew that room, and more importantly he was throughly convinced that he knew the identity of the woman, although that should have been impossible...

Not fully human but not fully something else either, whoever was dwelling on that troubling visual was possibly just using it as a means to shield themselves from his powers, although for what ends he could not guess, not yet. Shaking his head in the short interval it took for the stranger to enter the office, the Shirai Ryu was forced to admit to the others that he had missed his window to discern their guest's identity, although he was more than prepared to try again once he could get a proper look at the guy. Something about this mind seemed to ring a bell, recalling one person in his past in particular, however there was also something different about it as well, something colder, deader.

"Hello?"

Soft as the wings of a dove in a muted wood, the telepath knew that voice even before he saw the person to whom it belonged. Given everything he ought to have known right away that it was her, yet time had done more than he previously thought to erase memories he thought would stay vivid and fresh; the feel of her mind when she had allowed him in for the first time, the scent of her coffee-stained hair as she whispered into his ear... No, he thought to himself as he cast a weary eye on his girlfriend, now isn't the time for looking back.

"Pardon me, but I'm afraid that I'm lost..." trailing off as her explanation of shoddy geographic skills was lost to the winds, the kunoichi suddenly espied her peer in the secret and lethal arts and whatever landmark she had been seeking was swallowed by the black mask that covered half her face, all of her arms, and a small part of her chest. Roughly in their age group, the strange female was clad in yellow and black the same as the Shirai Ryu favored, her hair tied back in two loose half pigtails just below the crown line. "Takeda? Takeda Takahashi, is that you?!"

Several years ago, in the Himalayas...

Lapping gently against the beaten heather rocks, the silver mirror that was the pool seemed a dim slate chip opposite the shimmering silhouette that stood in the center of the languid ripples, the argent waves cresting parallel to half-submerged shoulders. After a tough day of training with the Grandmaster, it was not unheard of for some of the more advanced pupils to visit the nearby grotto - with Hanzo's leave of course - although they were always sojourns taken alone. Until tonight.

"Oh!" Stumbling with stealth along through the thick shrubbery that obscured a large portion of the scant visible sections, Takeda had come to the antre thinking that he would be the only one aside from his mind, yet very clearly one of his brethren had already occupied the space. That was all well and fine as the boy didn't mind waiting his turn to stew, however the issue wasn't anywhere near as cut and dry as that: not simply one of the others, the moonlight bather was one of the few females in the clan, and yet that still wasn't the worst part. Hitomi was not only his usual sparring partner (because it wasn't hard at all for him to spend hours on end pressed against the form of a girl he found attractive), she was a very good friend.

True the whipper-snapper had only glimpsed her back and just enough of her face to discern who it was, but in his mind it remained that he had now technically seen her naked. As a teenager with raging hormones he had often dreamed of this moment, but now that Mr. Manners was actually peeking behind the veil of fantasy, a part of him was shamed that he continued to ogle and peep, even after giving himself away.

Jerking her head around for a better look at her surroundings, the kunoichi quickly covered her chest at the gasp and peered about nervously for signs of the Grandmaster. Apparently - and very unsurprisingly for her - Hitomi was there without obtaining the Scorpion's consent. "Grandmaster?" When there was no reply, the girl was emboldened enough to challenge whomever dared to ruin her rumination, "And which pervert is this? Yuusuke? Keilon? Whoever you are, you had best show yourself before trouble brews!"

Scratching the back his head nervously with an apologetic smile (as if that would make everything alright), Takeda revealed himself before his companion, eyes open just enough to keep himself from tripping. "Yo."

"Takeda?!" Sputtering over her tongue and babbling incoherently in her shock, it was instantly clear that the young lady was at a loss for what to say; half relieved that it was only her friend, another part of her was blushing all the way to the moon above, embarrassed that she had actually just been thinking of him. Innocent in the cradle and growing ever less so as they developed and matured, Hitomi's thoughts shifted into full-blown fairy-tales that were less about indigenous folklores and more about tail. It seemed to her that with each passing day they became stronger and hit more frequently, especially when they had to spar together in the dojo...

Always surprisingly good at talking to the opposite sex considering that he lived most of life among men and boys, the teen tried to laugh the situation off like the accident it was, "I guess this is why the Grandmaster is so strict on insisting that we should clear it with him before we head out. And here I thought he was just trying to hide something." Catching a moment too late what a poor choice of words that could have been construed as, the adolescent was quick to amend that mistake, not realizing all of the forks that were suddenly appearing in the middle of his life path. "Not you, just something. Some kind of surprise for Evren-san, possibly."

Suppressing that shudder while mentally standing stock-still on the rickety precipice of making a choice that very well could have altered the course of her future, she watched him cautiously for a moment, aware that there would likely never be a better chance than now to make fiction a reality. Oh how she longed to know what it would feel like to have his arms all over her while hands roamed, yet on that same token, if she did make her move, how would he react? So many things could have gone wrong, and if it got back to the Grandmaster... No, she probably shouldn't.

And yet Hitomi could hear herself speaking with a certain kind of daring that she'd never experienced before, her arm slowly falling away as she stood up in the water, the water cold as it beaded down her skin in winding rivulets. "Let him have his secrets."

A/N:

I'm back! Lol, no I just actually had the first few chapters already typed up before posting the story. Anyways, not really much to say this go around (see?). And for future reference, the disclaimer stands for the entire story, not just chapter-by-chapter.