Amegakure.
The lead-gray clouds always hung low, pressing the sky down, lower and lower. Fine threads of rain kept falling from the clouds, striking the uneven steel buildings with an endless rustling sound, then gathering along the eaves into curtains of water that poured into the drainage channels on both sides of the streets.
This village, shrouded in rain, seemed to live forever in gloom.
The highest tower in Amegakure.
This tower was the highest point in the entire village, overlooking all of it, and it had once been Hanzo the Salamander's lair.
Deva Path Pain was sitting on the windowsill of the top floor, his black cloak patterned with red clouds and his short orange hair swaying slightly in the rain.
Rain struck his face and slid down his cheeks, but he only looked quietly out the window, at the gray, hazy village below.
Those purple Rinnegan, ring after ring of ripples, were like bottomless whirlpools.
From the height where he sat, all of Amegakure lay in full view.
The dense buildings were like iron mushrooms growing out of the ground. Thin white smoke rose from chimneys, mingling with rain and mist, while the distant mountain ridges appeared and vanished behind the curtain of rain, like fading brushstrokes in an ink painting.
He sat there like that, completely still.
Like a statue.
Like a godly statue watching over this land!
Footsteps came from the end of the corridor, drawing nearer and nearer, ringing crisply against the floor.
Pain did not turn around.
He knew who it was.
The footsteps stopped at the doorway, and then a gentle female voice sounded. "Pain, Amado is here."
Pain slowly turned his head. Two people stood inside the room.
At the front was Konan, with her short, pale blue-purple hair. A breeze blew