Chapter 49: Lovers in Spite
It was good to run through the canopy again. He had stopped speed training with Kakashi and his mother months ago simply because he was as fast as he was going to get under them. It was a waste of their time to work on that with him, but that didn't stop him from the missing those high adrenaline tag-like sessions where he had either been made to evade his instructor at the time or to attempt to catch him. Missions were the only times he got to really stretch his legs now. This one was especially good since the watchtower was almost halfway to the northern Fire Country border, which meant they had to trek south a bit, and Konoha was quite a ways west of the coast. The day promised to be full of running. It almost made him grin.
Sakura picked up momentum beside him, pushing off a thick bough and correcting her course so she was leaping level with him. Missions always brought back the harmony that had existed before Naruto had left, though there was a noticeable gap that the three remaining had to stretch a bit to fill. Naruto's attitude and stamina were hard to replace. He had been their centre point and the most comfortable bugging Kakashi into explaining things for them. Sasuke and Sakura didn't quite mesh. She had been a fangirl; of course, they weren't going to mesh. She was better now, but still…
"Only eight more hours," said Haku from behind them. The pretty-boy was serving as the rear-guard simply because his senses were on level with Kakashi's after living as a hunted creature for years.
"Yeah," said Sakura, sparing a smile over her shoulder for Haku. "I hope the weather stays nice."
Haku brightened at her friendliness after the silence that had endured since they had shot out the gates yesterday morning.
"It doesn't matter," said Sasuke, almost angry for some reason he didn't want to analyse. "The weather won't change what we have to do." Something unclenched inside him when Sakura frowned at him.
"You don't have to be such a bastard about it," she said, and he almost grinned. This was better.
Instead, he smirked and gathered some momentum by ricocheting off a series of branches and trunks, his eyes scanning his side of the path, using exaggerated motions to remind Sakura of her similar duty. She grumbled something rude under her breath and complied before ticking him off again by chatting with Haku about how his time in Konoha had been since they had last run into each other.
Zabuza glanced back at him as Sasuke closed the distance between himself and the two jounin. "What's got you in such a snit?"
Sasuke's scowl etched deeper lines in his pale face.
"Ah," explained his sensei apologetically with his usual touch of embarrassment, "he's always like this. Naruto always described him as having a stick up his ass. While rather graphic, Naruto does know him best."
Sasuke's formerly charitable thoughts about his absent best friend dissolved at this reminder. He tried to burn a hole in his sensei's head with the force of his glare, but Kakashi's skull proved unfortunately resistant. The jounin was definitely going to pay for that jab during their next lesson. Electrocution would have to be enough after the mission was safely over. "What is known about the situation?"
"Supposedly, a trio of Kiri-nin are wreaking havoc on one of the Daimyo's outposts," said Kakashi. "Intel claims that the ninja are high chuunin level at least considering the destruction they have wrought upon the tower and its supplies. No citizens have been killed as of yet, but Hokage-sama assumes that it is only a matter of time. What wasn't said was why this attack was happening. Scouts didn't find any concrete evidence of motivation.
"The mission scroll cites the defection of Zabuza and Haku to Konoha as the most likely reason, but even that assumption doesn't explain everything." Kakashi eye-smiled at him over his shoulder, signalling that that was all the information he was going to hand out for free.
Sakura stifled a grin when the sea air finally hit her nose. They were close! The smell of the brine filled her with a sort of glee despite the winter cold. Despite all of the different missions she had taken on since becoming a chuunin, the one that stuck with her the most was the one in Wave Country. She had loved standing on the bridge in the mornings and watching the rising sun burn the mist away. The cries of the gulls and mournful howl of the sea wind had resonated within her during those moments when even Naruto hadn't reached out to her.
Being the only girl on her team was lonely. She knew that Ino could relate to an extent, but Ino could handle anything. Sakura envied Hinata for having Kurenai-sensei.
When they finally leaped out of the canopy and ran off their impact with the ground, Sakura allowed her grin to flourish. This was what she had been missing!
The coastline was beautiful in its desolation. The cliffs she could trace north and south formed a rugged bastion against the advance of the stormy grey sea that clawed at it with icy, frothy, white fingers, trying to breech this last defence of the land against the salt and sand. Various boulders that had fallen in this last resistance caused the watery enemy to ripple and burble with a strange sort of rage. That vague, crushing cry of the ocean sang in her ears, rushing like a muffled echo of the blood flowing through her veins so quickly because her long run. The winter sun looked down upon this bleak scene uninterestedly, its weak rays barely creating the gleam she was so used to seeing on the streams around Konoha on the ceaselessly moving sea.
This, she loved this. She didn't quite know why: it lacked the lush greenery of Konoha. The vegetation on these barren cliffs was sparse and windblown. Everything seemed even bleaker than normal since winter had turned the grasses brown and stripped the brambles of their leaves, but she hardly cared. It was like coming home.
"Pay attention," said Sasuke from beside her.
She was surprised that he had lingered. If Naruto had been with them, Sasuke would have wandered about halfway ahead, leaving Naruto to cajole her out of her trance. Yet again, she saw how they had changed to fill the gap he had left. She shoved some wayward strands of hair back under her bandana as she gathered the energy to follow him.
She struggled to suppress her weary shout of triumph when signs of habitation finally appeared. The tower startled her. It would have to be condemned: there was no way it would stay standing in the furious winter storms that were so common to this region, not with the cliff shorn off right before its doorstep.
She could see the bones of the stone that had once been part of that mighty rock face in the sea at its foot, giving the sea more reason to froth, spray, and throw the detritus it carried at the precipice base. Tsunade-shishou could have done this, yes, but not easily. A huge chunk of the cliff had fallen away, shorn with incredible precision so that its absence threatened the watchtower without actually damaging it. The entire thing must have taken careful planning. It was easy for ninja to decimate the landscape, but it was extremely difficult to do so with such artistic accuracy.
Fear made her fumble the next stride, though she could easily pass it off as weariness if Sasuke asked. His dark grey gaze told her that he knew though, and she might have said he agreed.
When they stopped at the watchtower door, it was difficult to resist the urge to brace her hands on her knees and pant for breath. It was beyond her to suppress the need to gasp in great lungfuls of air, though she did try to force her inhalations and exhalations into a quieter pattern to salvage her dignity. She wasn't very successful. She could feel her pulse pounding through the roof of her mouth; it was a very odd feeling that meant she had pushed her limits a little farther than she should have. Shishou was going to make her run lots of laps if she heard about this.
As Kaka-sensei set about convincing the guards that they were from Konoha and that, yes, they had been sent to help figure this mess out, Sakura gazed down at the grey sea, which had darkened to a blue-grey colour now that evening was well on its way to becoming night. Mist was ghosting above the murky surface as the cold winter night began reversing the evaporation the light of the winter sun had allowed. Clouds had turned the sky a blue-grey, though its shade was much less ominous than the sea's.
She crouched down and plucked a couple blades to crumple in her fingers as the regular soldier fiddled with his serge uniform. Poor lout looked cream-coloured despite the way the harsh weather had browned his skin. He was all but quaking in his boots and his eyes flickered faster than Sasuke-kun could flash around with Shunshin. She couldn't blame him. His post was an accident just waiting to happen, and it was likely he or his comrades would be the next to fall.
She wandered just a little closer to the edge of the precipice and watched the white gulls soar just above the swells searching in vain for dinner. They should have gone a little farther south; they would have better luck there. The only reason they were probably still around was because they were raiding the tower's garbage heap.
Sasuke's elbow brought her back to herself.
She glared at him and rubbed her ribs. "What?"
"We've secured accommodations on the ground floor of the tower. One room only, but it will large enough to hold all of us. Kakashi wants us to go up to the room where they keep the beacon. He wants maps again." He was always so curt now, so impatient. She wished Naruto were around to lighten the mood.
Sakura nodded, following Sasuke-kun through the door warily. Her alertness seemed to make the troops hanging around cringe, though a couple of them laughed and whistled mockingly. She clenched her fist. These bastards must have been deprived of female company for a long time for them to be stupid enough to consider even approaching a fourteen-year-old kunoichi.
Something about her expression must have frightened them because they paled and backed off, though she wasn't quite sure why whispers "red and black" and "unnatural" followed her and Sasuke into their room, which was dark, dank, and cramped. The candles they had been provided barely cast enough light to see. In short, it was just what she had expected from what looked like a medieval fortress in miniature. It was a good thing that not all of them would be sleeping in here at a time.
She shrugged off her concern and set down her light pack, equipping herself with the extra weaponry she had brought along and shoving a couple bandage rolls into her shuriken pouch before pulling out her small sextant, notepad, compass, ruler, and pencil. She leaned against the clammy stone and watched Kakashi and Zabuza discuss watches during the night while Haku inspected each of his senbon before slipping them away into secret caches in his clothes.
"Are you ready?" asked Sasuke, standing in the door with that same pinched, impatient look on his face that he always seemed to wear around her now. It always made her feel as though she was some deadweight he was dragging around out of duty. She hated it.
She was trying so hard, but it never seemed to be enough for him. She was always the inferior one, always the one that had to be poked, prodded, and pushed along like some sort of spoiled brat. She wanted to shake his teeth out and scream at him sometimes, especially right now. She was the one that had been waiting for him. Clenching her teeth on her indignant shouts, she nodded as she brushed past him on her way out the door. She could sense three pairs of eyes watching them, observing their disharmony. Let them see just how much Sasuke annoyed her instead of the other way around!
She glanced up, up, up at the crude spiral staircase that ran up the tower. Fortunately, there was a narrow, unblocked shaft in the very centre of this stairway. Placing herself at the middle of this free space, she crouched a bit and gathered as much chakra as she needed to the balls of her feet before giving a mighty push and launching herself as far up as she could before bouncing off the stone rails the rest of the way.
This tower had be really old; she hadn't seen stonework like this even in those old abandoned metropolises she had passed through on her way to other mission locations. This masonry had to predate even those ghost cities.
She landed on the platform where the main components of the lighthouse function of this outpost were stored just as she had started: in a crouch. Sasuke flashed into existence by her side a moment later, scaring out whatever urine had been leftover in the soldier watching over the bonfire and the mirror after her precipitous arrival. She would have smirked at the man's petrified expression, but there were rules about this sort of thing.
Donning a sheepish grin, she approached the young man with her hands extended in an unthreatening manner. "Sorry about that, we didn't mean to scare you so badly."
She kept her eyes away from the dark patch on the man's pants to keep from giggling. It was hard enough to keep a grin off her face with Sasuke undermining her words by smirking cruelly behind her. He didn't have a very good way of dealing with civilians, though technically this man didn't count as one. He was a regular military man.
"Ah," the soldier managed to get out after a long pause.
It was hard to keep from giggling. "We'll take over for a bit. You can go change while we keep things from falling apart up here." It was amusing to watch him flee, red with embarrassment, down the steps as fast as he could go. Maybe she could have handled that a bit better… Once he was out of range, she rounded on Sasuke. "You could have been more sensitive. You didn't need to scare him like that."
"Hn," he grunted as he stepped onto the low sill and headed for the roof above the flare.
She scowled and pushed the mirror through one pass, directing the beam of light out in a slow sweep through the fog before following him up. It was so easy for her to affix herself to the wall with chakra now. She had never had trouble with it, but it was almost automatic now. She had alarmed her parents on more than one occasion by affixing herself to the wall or to the ceiling to do chores more easily. They were getting used to it, but it was still so easy to startle them that way.
It made her sort of sad that they regarded her almost as an oddity for being able to do such things. Her definition of normal had shifted and her parents weren't shifting with it fast enough. There was a rift growing between them; she could feel it widening every day. The gulf always seemed so vast just after she came home from a mission pumped up with renewed determination to advance. It almost took two days to settle back in with her parents now, and it hurt. She envied Sasuke and Ino, who had families that did exactly the same sorts of things they did. They didn't have to worry about freaking out their parents because of kunai being left to dry on the dish rack or because clothes torn in so many places from enemy projectiles were soaking off bloodstains in the bathroom sink.
"I call north," she said as she pulled out her compass and checked her bearings. Usually, they called east and west, but that wouldn't work in this case. East was ocean and that was only too easy to map.
Naruto leaned back against the base of the tree, taking shelter from the gentle winter rains that might have been snow if it had been fifteen degrees colder. Ero-Sennin was dozing by the fire. Naruto was preparing to send his next note to Ni'i-san. He had some fuzzy ideas about having Gamakichi stick that one in her shower or something. He didn't even know if she had a shower now that he thought about it. What if she lived in a dorm or something?
He must have said the last part out loud because Ero-Sennin gleefully muttered something about communal showers before starting to scribble more of his book. Naruto cringed. Ye gods, he was giving the pervert ideas! It was bad enough that Jiraiya would ask him to use Orioke no Jutsu every once in a while. Naruto was going to kill Kaka-sensei for telling this super-pervert about it. Naruto hadn't liked getting a taste of his own medicine when Jiraiya had started badgering him about using the jutsu on a daily basis while they had been staying in the desert. He had refused even when various techniques (but not Hiraishin) were offered as bribes. There was no way he was going to make that mistake twice. The one time he had given in and transformed, he had felt as though someone had dunked him in a vat of sewage. How did women stand Ero-Sennin looking at them like that?
He put the horrible thought aside and selected the next piece of the note to send. He could only hope that the Nibi container hadn't ripped the first one to shreds. If she had, she was going to have a hell of a time deciphering his message. Maybe he would have Gamakichi drop some water balloons on her if she had. Cats were supposed to hate water.
"She's got this really empty flat," the toad said when Naruto summoned him. "It's really hard to get inside, but I managed by going through the ventilation ducts. If I'd been a bit bigger, I would have gotten stuck. As it was, getting the grills off was hard enough. Those Kumo people must have a rat problem or something. There's no way they'd need that many wire meshes at every intersection otherwise. What a pain in the ass. You owe me big."
It seemed she was more paranoid that Kaka-sensei. It was a good thing he hadn't tried to send her a note straight out; she might have gutted him. He shivered as he remembered one of the corpses he had seen with that very problem during his stint on burial detail after the Oto-Suna invasion. He really hadn't needed to know what his intestines looked like, especially not how they would look after being slashed up by kunai. It was hard to push that thought away and focus of what Gamakichi was saying.
"Anyway, now that I've been inside, I should be able to get in again without as many problems. The entire flat smells like cat piss even though there aren't any signs of cats living in it. That building had a big 'no pets' policy too."
That was a little surprising. What smelled like cat piss that wasn't actually cat piss that could have gotten into an apartment as heavily guarded as Yugito's sounded without leaving any traces of its presence? He would have to ask her about it if Gamakichi couldn't figure it out.
"That's awesome," he crowed instead of asking the young toad to keep an eye peeled for the reason. There was no point: he obviously was just as curious as Naruto was, though in a slightly more cynical manner. "Are you up for delivering another one?"
"Why not?" said Gamakichi, handing over the now complete seal that Naruto had given him last time. "Got anywhere in particular that you want me to put this one?"
Naruto redid a couple lines and imbued chakra into the pattern. "Has she got a kitchen sink?"
"Yup, it's full of dishes, or it was when I was there last."
"Stick it in the drying rack then."
Kakashi sighed as he shot up the chute in the centre of the stairs, heading for the roof. The soldier that had just come off duty in the lighthouse tower claimed that they had been up above his head the whole time. Kakashi had noted that his pants were far too clean before investigating. He slipped past the current mirror attendant and crouched on the edge of the roof eighty metres above the cliff and about three hundred metres above the surface of the ocean. It was a good thing he was immune to heights. This roof was very old and was pretty slick from the fog. What were those brats still doing up here? Haku had been out patrolling for the last two hours without incident, but it would be Sakura's turn next. She would need some time to nap if she was going to be any use at all in the fog.
When his pupils finished adjusting to the sudden lack of light after the bonfire in the tower, he desperately wished he had a camera. Naruto would hate that he had missed this. They had both obviously been wearier than they would admit to from running for almost two days straight. He had expected this from Sakura—stamina really wasn't her thing—but Sasuke had apparently overdone it as well. Kakashi suspected it was because the Uchiha had relied heavily on his eyes for creating his portion of the map. They were propped up against each other, back to back, both dead to the world since neither of them responded when he manipulated some chakra to stay on the slippery roof as he picked his way over the fragmented shingles to their side.
At least they hadn't let their maps blow away. He plucked the notepads from their slackening fingers, making a mental note to do some awareness training with them later, and looked over their sketches. Sasuke's was more detailed, but he had expected that from his perfectionist student. The boy had been obsessive about acquiring this skill since Sakura had proven to be superior at it.
Kakashi was almost fiendishly glad that the Uchiha was developing a minor rivalry with his Haruno teammate. With Naruto gone, Sasuke's main competition had fallen away, leaving Sasuke without any real drive except the compulsion to absolutely crush his older brother. Revenge was empowering to be sure, but not quite the sort of drive Kakashi wanted to see in his most obsessive student. He doubted Sakura would really appreciate this, but her progress in her chosen field was making Sasuke feel threatened.
He considered pushing both his students off the roof. They would have woken up and saved themselves from a very painful landing… probably. He tilted his head to the side, weighing the consequences, but Haku's arrival at his side prevented him from carrying out this dastardly plan. Oh well, they would learn eventually, though hopefully not the hard way with a kunai to the throat. He couldn't afford to shelter them as much as he had when they had been genin: they were heading into too much danger to be allowed to retain bad habits. Bad habits could get them killed or worse. He was somewhat mollified when Sasuke snapped awake at Haku's single misstep. It did his poor ego good to know that his jounin training had kept him from the detection of chuunin.
It was amusing to watch Sasuke figure out what had happened, but the expression on Haku's normally serene face told him that not everything was right. He could only watch the horror and muffled embarrassment grow on his student's face out of the corner of his eye while Haku pulled out a senbon almost nervously and twirled it around his finger in a manner so similar to the way Genma had that it made something in his chest ache with guilt. "There are presences that don't belong."
Kakashi nodded, encouraging Haku to continue as Sasuke shook Sakura awake. At least the girl came to awareness without making much noise. She hadn't had that ability as a genin. That was the reason he had always given her first watch before: waking her up in the middle of the night was bound to result in everyone else being woken as well.
"What's going on?" she whispered, but Sasuke silenced her with a glare. Sakura didn't respond negatively, but Kakashi wasn't blind, not by a long shot. He suppressed the urge to shake his head dolefully. Kakashi had been really dreading this. Sakura's temper was only getting worse as time went on. Even Sasuke's immunity seemed to be wearing out. The boy would find this out within the next two months; Kakashi would put money on it. He really hoped he would be around to watch.
"I cannot see anything, but there have been noises just under the sound of the water that make me believe that we are not as alone as we would like."
For three tense minutes, they all strained their ears to the limit. Kakashi didn't hear anything definite, but he wasn't surprised. No doubt Haku had been detected as well.
"Sakura," he said, "go alert Zabuza about the situation. Sasuke, Haku, fan out along the cliff and see what you come up with. Stay in touch with radios on channel one seven three. Sakura, you will join up with Haku. Send Zabuza to Sasuke."
He shot down towards the flying surf and stood on the boulders that had once been part of the cliff. He perched just above the spray of the waves, breathing deeply and searching through the various layers of scent for something that didn't belong. Even as he did this, he summoned Pakkun and Akino.
"Now what?" The dun mutt almost lost his shades as he sneezed at the spray. "This had better be good. I hate swimming. Your last mission sucked."
Kakashi ignored Akino's grumbling as Pakkun hopped onto his shoulder to get a better view.
"Not a very nice location," the pug said. "My paws are going to get chapped."
Kakashi resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Maybe his nin-dogs were worse than teenagers. Sakura had stopped complaining about her nails after the first three weeks. Pakkun had been grousing about damaging his soft paws for six years now.
"What scent are we supposed to be sniffing out?" Akino asked, getting down to business and testing the temperature of the water with a tentative paw.
"Kiri-nin," Kakashi said.
"Ah," said Pakkun as Akino jumped onto another boulder, searching for a better position to catch the wind before he was forced to walk on the icy waves among the mist. Why did Kiri always have to use mist and fog? It was like unintentional advertising. "This isn't the best place to be doing it."
Kakashi's silence said, "No kidding" just as well as any words would have. Pakkun hopped off his shoulder and trotted out onto the roiling surface of the water daintily. It was too tempting to snort with amusement at the pug's antics. He had the feeling that this would take a while.
Sasuke ran along the edge of the cliff. "No sign yet," he said into the microphone, hoping his estimation of the distance between himself and Haku was correct.
These radios could only cover about three kilometres, cheap pieces of junk that they were. They were the best on the market though. Technology had been hit hard in the years since those old, technologically advanced cities had been left to rot, like the one where one of the Uchiha storehouses was. Seiji had escorted him to one only four months ago as part of the last stages of his Uchiha education, which Seiji was ill-equipped to oversee. The cats there hadn't been respectful when dealing with him, though Sasuke hadn't had any problems. Seiji wasn't what one would call a model Uchiha though.
"It is the same here," murmured Haku. "The weather is to their advantage. It is as natural for a Kiri-nin to hide in the mist as it is for a Konoha-nin to take shelter in the trees."
Sasuke didn't spare a reply. Haku would know, considering his background. Maybe that was why the former Kiri-nin had been split up and assigned to work with Sakura and himself, though Kakashi also could have done it to ensure that both former nukenin were under constant observation.
"Haku, what's your position?" asked Sakura.
"A kilometre north of the tower. I'll wait for you."
"Sasuke," grunted Zabuza over the radio, "stay put. Give me thirty seconds. Where's the mongrel?"
"On the water," said Sasuke, locating a tree he could wait in and quickly scaling it despite the needles it wore and the sap trailing in great gobs down its sides. "Haku, Sakura, any farther and we're going to be out of range."
"Understood," said his teammate, her anxiety obvious.
"Don't worry," Haku reassured them through the line. "We shall be fine. She is with me now. Zabuza-san will take care of you."
Sasuke narrowed his eyes. He glared down at Zabuza's smirk, which was hidden beneath layers of linen bandages.
"Come on, Poky," the old jounin cajoled him mockingly from the base of the tree. "We've got cliffs to cover, or is that stick rubbing your ass raw?"
Zabuza was going to get murdered if he kept this up, especially since the last thing he heard from Haku and Sakura were stifled sniggers before they moved out of range
Sakura tried to catch her second wind as Haku imitated a startled deer and glanced around. Whatever had alerted her partner was too quiet to be heard over the sound of her heart labouring to push the blood required by every bit of her body. She quieted her breathing as much as possible when Haku set a warning hand on her shoulder and hand-signed that they find cover.
Sakura slipped away and pulled on her gloves with a bit of dread. Was she ready to take on a very powerful jounin?
There was no warning for her other than the slight whisper of air behind her. The scream didn't even have time to rise in her throat.
Tsunade glanced worriedly down at the document, not quite believing her eyes. This was horrible. She closed her eyes and shook her head a couple times before reading over the text again.
"Dear participant,
Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that your name has been drawn for the grand prize of—"
She stopped reading and set the letter back down on her desk.
"Shizune! Get Kurenai in here!" She had a very bad feeling about this. She hadn't gotten lucky like this since just before Dan had died.
Kakashi winced and wished that his nose were perhaps just a little less keen as the horrible breath of the Kiri-nin hit him. He continued straining against the man's brute strength though since disengaging to grab some fresh air was likely to get him killed. Kunai scraped harshly against ninjatou as both ninja sought to prove themselves the more powerful. He couldn't even squint in response to the gag-worthy smell since doing so would blind him to the hints the man's muscles gave him as to where the next strike would come from. This was why he hated close-range fighting.
Akino latched onto the man's leg with a snarl that made something lurch faintly inside Kakashi, perhaps some primal fear or perhaps the schism shifting ominously. He battened down on his emotions and refocused as Pakkun went for the Achilles tendon.
The enemy jounin kicked the pug away, but puncture wounds bled sluggishly into the roiling ocean beneath their feet. Blood and water reminded him of one of his old missions in Water Country. There were sharks out there. He really hoped there weren't any this close to shore.
Pakkun darted back into the fray out of the fog, this time managing to avoid the impact of the heel and latching onto the calf muscle. The man's cheek muscle twitched in response to the pain as Kakashi took advantage of the fact that both of the jounin's legs were incapacitated to some extent and delivered a gut wound before disengaging from their pushing war and sidestepping to allow the man's force to slide uselessly forward. The other jounin had obviously expected this because he recovered quickly and slashed at Akino's neck with his ninjatou.
Kakashi launched several shuriken as he worked his way around to the side to attempt to stave off the blow that looked like it would be fatal, but he was a little too late. Akino flung himself into the water to get away from the blade even as Pakkun snarled around his mouthful of calf and bandages. Cold fury threatened to overwhelm reason when Akino didn't immediately reappear. Kakashi pushed up his forehead protector and almost sighed as the chakra drain hit him even as his vision improved and his depth perception returned. He set his features in the stone mask of a killer he had worn so many times that it didn't bother him any longer.
