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Coda’s eyes traced the tree line on the other side of the clearing as she waited on her perch. The world might have quieted down since the Kage Summit, but that meant her workload had only increased. There were a thousand little rats scurrying around the dark corners of the world. Her position afforded some power to delegate, but the volume meant she did not get to sit at a desk.
Unfortunately, being the head of Oinin operations in a time of village turmoil meant the most she got was small fry like this. A collaborator among the shinobi, suspected of using the broader scouting network to relay information. Though she was more than capable, this particular mission called only for tracking, and she scribbled a note down as her target arrived, leaned next to a tree and conveniently dropped the pack of cigarettes he pulled his smoke break from.
She had to give them credit. They were more clever than most. The man had lost several different types of objects since her probing revealed a leak in his unit; all a mix of small personal items and standard issue supplies, and none more than a couple times so far. The regularity would eventually set off alarm bells if he wasn’t more careful, but at the moment, without an eye on the unit itself, he would have been quite safe.
[ Oinin Mission ]
Coda’s hand ran line by line through a report from one of her Oinin, scanning through the details for any pertinent information. A hand swiftly added the information to a list next to her and the task began again. Intel was one of her primary weapons, and a large part of being Oinin Taicho was making sure she had an accurate depiction of how her subordinates needed to be deployed. The ANBU might have provided leads, but their reach did not extend particularly far from the village. All the territory beyond was hers, a vast nothingness that she dropped little points of light into like a god creating stars. Coda formed a seal and the words from the paper replicated themselves on her forearm even as she balled the paper up and her katon reduced it to ash.
[ Oinin Mission ]
The eyes of Leaf’s lone Konin peered out from small openings in the pale mask of the Oinin, watching the interrogation in the next room patiently. The village had found itself wracked with paranoia, and so she tread as lightly as possible. These sorts of tactics were necessary, if only to sate the land of fire’s leaders who had never known another tactic. Coda found them distasteful, even if physical coercion wasn’t involved, and resolved to limit their use as much as she could and oversee as many as possible. Beyond that she considered them fairly useless, brain dead applications of force for the sake of applying force that more often than not yielded false information.
This one had given them little so far, but little was not nothing even if she suspected they’d get little else. The Oinin Taicho was a single minded woman. She sought to punish the shinobi world, but she endeavored to not lose herself in the process. A simple offer and disposal of those that did not take it would have suited her just fine. Many would claim that was barbarous, but if setting clear terms and seeking swift resolution was barbarism, then what was this incremental infliction of pain and terror? At least her hands were directly clean of it.
[ Oinin Mission ]
Coda’s hand placed a sealing tag on the ground as she worked her way around the body she’d just created. These missions were the satisfying ones. The invitation to deal with murderers and violators in terms they understood. She adored violence when it was directed at those that deserved to feel the flames of its wrath - and more importantly she’d found a job where that was not only elemental, but necessity. It felt like breathing in the essence of life to watch them breathe their last. And the pyro in her that had obsessed over the flaming orchard licking her face as she fled the faded image of the tea tree farm in her memories enjoyed the cleanup just as much. Some seals and the once proud man prostrate in deathly repose before her was engulfed in flame. His mortal coil burned quick, like an over-volted filament lamp, and another set of seals snuffed the blaze and sealed what remained away.
[ Oinin Mission ]
As much as she had intended to rise to her current station, Coda did find the position rather more vexing than she thought she would. It also put her in a position to make decisions in a way that she found rather unenjoyable. She’d delegated what she could, but there were certain procedures - the type that involved handling information sealed by pain of death or maiming - that fell only to her to know. It was an influence over the agency of others she was not entirely comfortable in. That said, the Oinin corps was not full of particularly good people, herself included. A fact she tried to remind herself of on a daily basis. The vast majority here were like her, one false step away from being the people they hunted. The type that used the same powers they resisted with the sanction of the sacrosanct. Their agency, her own, was a small price to pay to bide her time in plain sight while still carrying out her work. Or so was the refrain echoing in her mind as she shuffled another paper around the desk.
[ Oinin Mission ]
The events at the Kage summit had kept the Oinin far busier than in Coda’s prior time with them. While they always ran recon missions for the village, they’d never gone so deep into uncontrolled territory with such frequency. She poured one of a half dozen scrolls, reports from the field, all equally as grasping as the next. They had nothing of substance, the Jashinists were like shadows, even to her. Peripheral suggestions of movement, lures from places out of sight, all leading to nothing. At least in the field the games of cat and mouse were punctuated by an end to the mission at hand; in the depths of the EDA headquarters it was unceasing, a constant flow of dangling threads and unimportant revelations for her to try to piece together into some kind of useful narrative. Coda much preferred when people were trying to kill her.
[ Oinin Mission ]
Unfortunately the idiot blood cultists weren’t the only thing on the Oinin Taicho’s plate. Her assistance in Arashigakure’s corruption investigation plopped a cold pile of unseasoned, boiled potatoes and the side of her work plate. Normally she’d have been fine, but Gyuki’s presence had rendered her resistance to the throws of paranoia significantly lower. Low enough, that this ridiculously ill concealed plot left her digging through the Oinin’s vast troves of intel. She had a meeting to prepare for, and this Uchiha that had been unceremoniously plopped atop the police force demanded that she find some kind of leverage to use in case he got there as part of some plot.
[ Oinin Mission ]
The events with the KPD were… troubling, to say the least, and Coda had been picking up the pieces of the brawl at the barracks for days. The Uchiha child had proven somewhat flakey, but there was an uneasy peace despite the shaky ground they had to build on. While they’d found success in defeating the combatants, they had not rooted out something more nefarious if it existed. The rats had scattered back to the catacombs for the time being. The Oinin Taicho, meanwhile, thumbed through reports as usual. If there was something more they wouldn’t be able to keep their head down for too terribly long.
[ Oinin Mission ]
Something something I’m tired.
[ Oinin Mission ]
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