A time-skipping accident strands Barry Allen and his nemesis Eobard Thawne in the past; specifically 15th Century Japan, which is rife with chaos and warring clans. Barry is saved from outlaws by an early metahuman named Mineko Kaze, a disciple of a...
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Shadows danced across the paper door separating Barry and Mineko. They had looked around Kanto for longer than planned, but once exhaustion started warring on them, they had no choice but to find a place to rest. Mineko had lead him to a small wooden hut, inside of which was largely left empty. There was a Tatami mat placed at the entrance and candles scattered around most of the furniture but they were the only things worth noting.
They had distanced themselves from each other the moment they entered that house. Flash had stored his suit away and changed into something more casual, well, for his era at least. Mineko had done the same, but instead of pacing back and forth like Barry did afterwards, she sat on the thin straw mattress and meditated.
The monks at Mineko's old monastery use to say that the more a person knows the less they talk. So, she endeavoured to take a few minutes each day to cease speaking and to instil a large band of silence inside herself, in order to forge a deeper and closer relationship with her own strengths. Only when she attained absolute quietude did she understand the supreme virtue of humanity and understand the meaning of both life and death. Only when she achieved absolute stillness could she come to a perfect realisation of the meaning of existence innate in all things.
A relieved sigh shivered passed her lips when her body finally started relaxing. Mineko was under the naive impression that she'd get a few brief moments of peace... but the man in the room next to her was so loud that even his footsteps sounded like a scream to her. The paper door was slid open and her expression scrunched up in mild annoyance. Her eyes opened and glared like dark daggers in Barry's direction.
"Hey, so... is this your place?" Barry asked, completely unfazed by the annoyance written all over Mineko's face.
"It belongs to no one." She replied simply, eyes trailing over the man and narrowing at his clothing. If anything he was even more noticeable like that...
"Oh, great. We're just in some random house then?" Barry groaned. "Are we even allowed in here?"
"The monastery built it. Whomever needs it may use it."
The man's expression turned to one of intrigue. "You belonged to a monastery?"
The woman sighed and unfolded her legs, finally coming to terms with the fact that Barry wasn't going to stop bothering her. "There is no 'belonged'. Past tense does not apply to the ones that studied there. You either are a part of their ranks or you are not."
Barry stared at her in bewilderment. She was like one of those old, wise men in the action movies he watched as a kid... only she was a woman, and she wasn't exactly old either. Overall, what he was trying to say, was that she seemed overly disciplined. Like she had been trained for one specific purpose and she didn't exist outside of that mission. It was kind of sad, really, to know that she had no desires of her own.
