Seeing more of herself

It was a cooling night for the streets of kirigakure. Yuri is not surprised at the sight of endless horizon since the land does not span as wide as the other countries did since Yuri is in one of the island anyway. It didn't take her long to hear rowdy noises below her.

She saw a group of thugs terrorizing the civilians , disrupting the peaceful nightlife giving a halt to the niceties exchanged across the streets. Yuri looked at them carefully and asked herself for why did these gangsters think that in a well guarded ninja village like this, they could get away with crimes? Did they believe the crimes they committed were too small to be attended too? Well, not that Yuri cared about that anyway. These hooligans would be delivered justice, and kicked out of this village, they could always come back again to amuse her. If only she had the resources alone to fight outnumbered.

Yuri hasn't expended all her energy to the previous fight, she felt that she could go at it again if she wanted to. But charging in head-on is not her style. She'll have to wait for the correct moment. She required the thugs to be more spread out trying to send fear to the civilians. Besides that not, she also wondered how likes of those got into the village. This is something the guards can handle, unless there were no guards which would contradict her impression of the village being well guarded. The night certainly helps as the winds brushes her, regaining her mood and energy without getting sapped of them just by standing around. The thugs were busy getting themselves worked as commands were exchanged in a loose manner.

Not the best day to be fighting such a force but necessary, Yuri looked out for the leader amongst. As everyone wore different outfits, it was hard to tell and using height for such a purpose had been history. Sadly, her red outfit was holding her back since it made contrast with darkness even though its not the brightest colour in the night. There is no way she could go for a change at this moment since the civilians need her. So, she looked for the weakest area of thugs instead, deducing that a systematic takeout would be more effective. She had to close in to her prey.

She started off with the thugs furthest behind from those shouting at the front. There were four of them, the first in her mind did not have the chance to react as Yuri kicked his head at the back and he flew to a stall's front unconscious, she made for cover again before she was seen. The others only saw him lying on the ground and started shouting at Yuri as they found a new enemy. Using their composure to her advantage for the moment when everyone was in the process of locking their vision onto her, Yuri raced herself to give herself some visual clones. Performing the snake one after the ram handseal, a few clones appeared in front of her. You will deal with me Diverting their attention as they charged for her clones, Yuri made for the second guy from his back after the attention was dispersed again as one of them went to help their fallen member. Yuri flanked him with a short wooden pole at his left eye with another flicker and headed for cover again. The hit was enough to get her target on his fours clueless of what just happened. Her clones had served their purposed for her to deliver the subduing blow for the other two. This time, Yuri could tell their purpose when she overheard their purpose at the streets. The main target is nowhere around and is waiting for a diversion of forces to happen.

She now knows where their masterminds was hiding out. They chose the slums of Kirigakure, which was left untouched for quite some time. From her calculations, she was about 20 minutes from crossing from the good to the bad. Yuri was amazed at how the slums even managed to exist, even if it was such a small part of the village. Plus, she always remembered that specific part being bad. Why didn't she thought about it before taking out 2 thugs? Gritting her teeth, she knew she would have to do something about that. This part of Kiri had to change.

Entering the slums, no one actually bothered her at all. It was entirely possible, although they weren't shinobi, that they could still tell the difference in agenda if Yuri did not make a disguise. While she didn't actually plan on killing anyone unless they attacked, it served as a tactic to ward them off necessary conflict, and it would probably work on the gangsters unless one of them saw right through Yuri. Five minutes later, she kicked down what she could identify as the door where the masterminds are hiding, walking in as if it were her own house.

All six of them were chilling in the living at the time, and were surprised, and a little annoyed that Yuri barged in in such a way. Just as they prepared to try and beat her up by standing up. As though being familiar with the technique, she used 2 handseals to make a few clones for diversion again. Using the confusion, Yuri took the first guy out by breaking the table in front of her with a head on her hand, not wanting to be outnumbered, she took the chair nearest to her and through it at another guy's head. He was quick to dodge but knocked out when he ducked with his head onto Yuri's knees. Another man charged at her with a swing of his blade, Yuri kicked the man on her knees to block the attack while she went for the other guy going for his weapon sending him crashing into what Yuri believed to be the closet of weapons. She quickly drew a metal pole from the weapon that flew out from the closet due to the impact. Sensing an attack already set in motion to her direction, Yuri swapped places with one of the chair and ended the fight by striking the head. Throwing the metal pole out, a window broke in the process. A method for the thugs out there to stop what they are doing and withdraw. The clones have dissipated long ago serving their purpose. The fight got Yuri reminiscing for a while.

It was strange, the Land of the Lightning. The land was full of inclines and declines. There were mountains everywhere. It wasn’t really a mountain range either; for mountain ranges tend to follow a relatively straight line. But these mountains peppered all of the Country. One could see lush forests and snow in the same picture from when the altitude of the mountains got so high that trees were no longer able to survive and it was so cold that snow capped off the mountain. There were rivers and streams running all throughout the mountains; between them, down their sides, and even through them in some cases.

Yuri had never seen sights like these before. She had spent most of her life in the training camp, where everything was set for her training and the only thing she was interest was her makeshift bed because she could sleep. Nothing this colorful and vibrant. Able to set out on a mission seemed to be a luxury. The Land of Lightning definitely had the most gorgeous landscape she ever saw once in a while. She marveled at what looked like the teeth of the universe and wondered if it was like this in other places too. That gave her the strange urge to travel more via missions.

But she didn’t have too long to marvel at the landscape, as she begun smelling smoke. Her head whipped in the direction that it seemed to be coming from and she surveyed the land for one moment. Between her and whatever it was, was a giant rock wall. Determining that there was no way to establish a sightline with whatever was burning, Yuri made her way to the source, wondering exactly what it was; probably a forest fire. Focusing chakra into her feet, she scaled the wall, but was she ever so wrong.

Houses burned. A small collection, far outside a city and probably outside any aid from a ninja; which meant Yuri had to help. But it didn’t take long for Yuri to realize that it wasn’t at all a natural or accidental fire, as there were people lined up outside their houses with men in masks holding them at knifepoint. She wasn’t sure if any would be hurt, or if any already were. It seemed the men in masks wanted the people out of their houses so they’d be free to search the homes for… what? Valuables? The village seemed so small and poor… there was no way there was anything valuable inside.

Hidden behind a bush, She tried to root out the man giving out orders. However, all of them were yelling at all the other men, at least, and they seemed to be listening. Yuri could not make out the leader behind them. However, with her confident speed, she took out 3 of the men by her appearance. 2 of them were wounded while holding onto their weapon while the 3rd one got sent to burn. The other men rushed at her. She evaded them in order to get those closest to danger to safety. Where a villager was close to getting grabbed for threaten, she ran at the villager. In the heat of getting the villager from danger, she forgot to use the tiger handseal but yet the Yuri switched places with her and handled the aggressor. Chaos started and all the villagers ran in different directions, Yuri pinned down another attacker and stabbed the arm with the weapon. There is no time for warning as she evaded a club swing and stabbed both arms of the attacker in no time. Next, she had to dodge a few shuriken coming at her. She was right about her gut feeling and she had to leave him for her mission partner; The plan utilised her as the decoy since she could not find the leader.

Fighting stopped at a point of time when the attackers gotten themselves a hostage. Yuri could tell the ninja within their ranks now, it was the leader at the same time as well. Checkmate She muttered to herself. As a large rock came flying towards the ninja from the back. As the ninja decides to take the hostage together with him, his katana was matched by Yuri kunai barely saving the hostage from dying by the throat. Sliding the kunai along the blade, Yuri successfully disarms the ninja and kicked him to get the hostage away from him. He fell into quicksand, the others fled. Both of them could only hope that the villagers had made it to safety. Their purpose was to get here and retrieve a hidden stash of items. Looking at the situation now, it would seems that they had to search it for themselves.

Where there was a time to be fighting side by side with others, there are times where one had to do it alone. She thought of her forgetting the handseal back then and remembered something worth noting. At this moment Yuri suddenly saw her usage of clone technique was incomplete though the clones were made successfully. Thinking about it now, the clone technique uses three handseals instead of two. Yuri now ask herself how was she able to pull it off with even less time given. Now that things have calmed down she decides to try the technique again. Using the snake handseal after the ram one, she realized that she could feel something in both of the arms doing the work as she activated the technique. She caught hold of the feel now and smiled. It was something left by her heritage for her.

WC: 2012
Claiming 10 stats
Claiming Speed Seal Representation
[Exit]