#shen.

    The Navori Brotherhood has found the Kinkou.

    Through his looking glass Khada Jhin watches as the conflict unfolds. Undoubtedly the Kinkou plead for bloodless passage one way or another, and inevitably still the Brotherhood offers them no purchase. It comes to blows. Some peasant-grade drama unfolds (nothing  interesting, nothing like what he would have produced given the chance, just another reason among many that the Golden Demon does not consort with Brotherhood barbarians), and by the end there is many wounded and some dying.

    Hnh. Jhin stows the looking glass, and slips down from the redleaf tree. Time to go to work.

    In truth he had been following this particular Kinkou procession for days now, his attention no doubt all eyes for the fact that his old friend Shen had come along. That struck Jhin as unusual. He had yet to see Shen travel far from the interim temple in Navori for about anything—perpetual business in the Spirit Realm, or some other. The why is hardly of any concern to him. It so happens that his benefactors kindly asked that, if Jhin found the means, to stick a pin or two into notes concerning current Kinkou operations. Typical grunt work he would have normally chafed to do, but then again, this is Shen.

    His smile fades into practiced horror.

    “I was on a caravan—up that way—heard the noise—I can help—” Breathlessly a man who sounds remarkably unlike Khada Jhin pants and collects himself at the knees, flinching away from the more graphic of Kinkou-endured injuries. “I’m a healer,” he concludes, once he manages to steal down a breath.

    I’m a healer.

    Of a sort, anyway.

    Some of them turn to each other, unsure of what to say, but this man takes silence as no turning away to instead approach the one on the ground whose leg had been bashed by a Brotherhood morningstar, twisted lengthwise. He takes another breath as he lowers himself into the dirt, propped on his knees as, leaning in, lavender-red magic emanates from his hands. He touches their skin.

    They cringe. It hurts, of course. Nothing is ever as painless as spirit shamans would have you believe, and this isn’t even that. Still, this man who is not today Khada Jhin but an individual very much concerned about the Kinkou and probably sympathetic to their cause if asked—because, war or not, culture is hard to shake and many Ionians still wish to believe in balance—reaches deeper, only as much as necessary, until it is done and his magic recedes. Their leg now properly looks like an ugly, basic unit of walking-flesh that has never been hurt before. (A necessary sacrifice.)

    “Thank you,” they say.

    He nods, but before he can stand up and move on, Shen is there.

    “Y-you must be Master Shen,” he that is not Khada Jhin stammers. If he hadn’t been already kneeling, he might’ve bowed. “I-I’m Yann. It’s a great honor to meet you.”

HE’S BACK. | ACCEPTING

“What do you mean, Kazuhiku?” Zed’s eyes beamed.

“The Kinkou are heroes! Well, we might not get into wars or whatever, but we’re still keeping balance between our world and the spirit world... without that, what do you think might happen? Some ghost claws out and eats someone!”

He showed Shen what he meant in a low growl and pointing his fingers out to stage himself as some awful monster. “Aaah!”

Then he giggled and returned to his ramen and chopsticks, but not without having offered Shen the look. Pointed mouth. Pearly teeth. Sacked together in a wide, comfortable grin.