Prelude - Ikari, Kayo, Satoshi

Satoshi frowns at the missive on the folded paper before refolding it and returning it to the nook. As he contemplates the message and how it might be related to the bloody fog barrier that had followed them from the ojizo, he overhears the voices of his companions from the inn somewhere in the small village.

He follows the voices toward the building where the two bakuto and the guardsman are. "Psst!" he calls out as he approaches. Realizing that he probably looks like a ghost with his blood stained skin, he slowly steps into the light from Ikari's lantern with his palms open wide. "I followed you from the inn. A tainted fog has enclosed the village." His face and voice are familiar but the blood red skin is new. "We are in danger," he mutters to himself.

While his current team comprised of agents operating independently, as befitted their current mission, Satoshi was aware of the identities of the others by given name. The signature te in Kanji would have been from Terada, another shinobi using this same drop. This meant that Terada must have also operated from roughly this same region. Did his sphere of duty also cover this village? Such a request would have been directed at their jounin, who had yet to see this note. Nor did their superior leave either Terada or Satoshi any new instructions in the drop.

Satoshi understood the term karakurenai to simply mean red, or more speciically a vivid vermillion imported from the Middle Kingdom. Perhaps someone more familiar with colours and dyes and such trade might know more. The reference to red was surely not a coincidence, although the colour of Satoshi's stains were not at all vivid, more a dull maroon, almost black in the night. He had no idea what the twins referred to.

"We aren't searching," Kayo corrected smoothly Sawada with a soft smile, the newly acquired hyoshigi swinging gently from her delicate neck. "Merely investigating." Before any retort could form, a figure emerged from the darkness, bloodied and clad in black. Had he been the source of the earlier carnage, she wondered with a chill creeping up her spine.

"Danger?" Kayo questioned, her voice laced with a sudden unease. "How... and why are you covered in blood? You haven't harmed anyone, have you?"

So we're trapped here. Sawada is right we need to tell someone and maybe gather the village before people get swallowed in the fog one by one.