Bad Artists Copy. Good Artists Steal.

Love had gotten bored waiting around for the exam fights. Wandering around the village she found herself standing in front of the suna mission board. Their kage was kind enough to allow the visiting leaf ninja to do missions during their stay. Love reached out and pulled down one of the few missions that she was eligible for that didn't require a team. "This should be quick and easy." She said to herself as she turned to leave and begin her mission.

WC:82

Mission:

Ayame had passed the mission board on the way to town and ran back to check it after getting set up in her hotel room. As she came back to it, she noticed a girl, one of the entrants, taking the flyer for the mission she was going to take.

She approached the girl. "Ah, you got the art one," she said after a moment. "Would you like some help with it? I was gonna grab it, but I was carrying too much" Ayame chuckled after that. "I mean if not, I'm sure there's another here, but still"

WC: 100

Love heard a voice speaking in her direction, she looked to see a girl around her age. The red head glanced over the girl before responding. "Sure you can tag along." Love had decided that it would be easier to gather a description of the crook from the victims if she had someone else also talking to them. "You got a piece of paper? I'm gonna talk to the victims, you can talk to half to speed things up." She told the girl and would then wait for her response before showing her the paper. Hopefully she'd be able to keep up when it came to chasing down the perp, the girl didn't seem like the fighting type but then again a leaf ninja in suna had to mean she was also in the exam.

WC:135

"Uh, sure," Ayame said pulling some scrap paper out of the weapon's pouch that only housed a book and some scraps of paper as well as a pencil.

"Alright, I'll take Camela, and Sandra," Ayame said noting the two names on the bottom of the sheet and writing down the information that she needed. "Uh meet back here in an hour?" she asked not anticipating the interviews to take very long.

Aya met the red head's beautiful eyes and smiled calmly, awaiting an answer.

WC: 87
TWC: 187

Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Nanaki woke up in the little broom closet of an apartment that he called home. Cheap, affordable, uncomfortable... but still home. Either way, he remembered that a few hours ago, some kind of art mission had been posted up on the board. He needed a bit of cash to start on some random childish enterprise, but that aside, he needed to start getting involved in the ninja life more.

Getting dressed, he walked down to the mission board, only to find two girls there examining the very mission that he had intended to take. More importantly, shoot, girls! What was he going to do? His face pale with fear, he stepped up and spoke to them.

"Uh.... ehr... um.... mission... uh..."

Not too articulate, was he? He had no clue how to communicate, that was for damn sure.

[153]

Love watched the girl write down the information for two of the victims. "It shouldn't take that long but sure." She then looked past the girl's smile to see a sheepish boy looking at them. "I guess you want to do this mission too." She said as she looked over the unkempt boy. "You can come with me." With a brief smile of her own Love disappeared into a puff of smoke. It wasn't that she was a mean person, just when it was mission time her serious side was in full effect. Even though she was doing this mission to pass time she wasn't about to spend the whole day on it. So once she was gone Love began scouting the neighborhoods before going to the houses in case the owners weren't at home. After talking to one of the victims Love decided to engage her shadow, "Hey I never got your name. You may address me as Ai-sama."

WC:160

Ayame smiled at the disheveled boy who was only three inches shorter than her. To be quite honest he was so adorable she just wanted to hug him until he would pop, but she refrained from doing so because it would be weird and slightly inappropriate. Love offered for him to go with her, to which Ayame responded, "You could come with me too, it doesn't matter either way." Ayame then extended her hound out to the boy. "I'm Ayame" Aya then extended the same hand to the girl as well. "It's nice to meet both of you" she would state providing they would take her hand and shake it, and then introduce themselves in turn."

When love would poof, Ayame would look at the boy and await his decision. Aya would use the more conventional method of walking, keeping her pace slower as she enjoyed the change of scenery.

When she got to the address camela had listed, she stopped promptly at the door and knocked a few times. She easily took statements from her about the missing art from her house. The woman was so young and beautiful, it was almost as if she would work in a library entranced by the books.

Ayame nodded and thanked the woman before leaving and heading to the address that was listed for Sandra. When nobody came, Ayame became confused. As the girl paced she looked to Nanaki, should he have gone with her, and if not she would simply be speaking to herself.

"Hmmm... She must not be home." Ayame would say and spend a few minutes waiting before the pieces clicked in her head. The art Gallery in Suna was showing an exhibition on an artist named Sandra, the same surname too, so she could be there. If Nana had followed she would state her revelation of Sandra's location with the boy. If not, the girl would keep it to herself.

Ayame took down this woman's statement as well. The art she had painted had been stolen as well. This woman had such thick long and wavy black hair and sipped on red wine as she was interviewed in a beautiful short red dress, her lips a brighter red than her wine.

Ayame would return to the spot where she was to meet love, and nana too if he had gone with Love.

"Alright, so what I've established is that both women look somewhat similar, which could be a coincidence. The subject matter of the stolen paintings seemed to have to do with lust. Camela had a picture entitled "Siren's Kiss" stolen which depicted two topless The red-headed siren was kissing a drunken sailor as the waves licked his boots, and the blonde was laying her head on his clothed stomach and staring at the lightly clouded blue sky." Ayame described from her notes.

"Sandra is missing two paintings, both painted by herself. The first is more risque of a naked lady, with her parts covered by a tiger. She is laying on the ground, the Tiger's head on her chest and his front paws hanging over her left thigh, covering most of her bottom half as he lays on her, guarding her body. The woman has a look of seduction on her face as she stares at the audience, whereas the tiger is snarling as if announcing that the woman is his... this piece is entitled Chatouille" Ayame paused flipping the page in her notebook, "The second piece is a brunette short-haired clean shaven man with a dying rose. The half furthest from him is dead and wilted. He is kissing the rose's petals while holding the flower in cupped hands as blood seemingly drips from them. the side he is kissing looks like it being regenerated a little."

Ayame cleared her throat. "Both women have reported nothing unusual other than a note thanking them for a good time upon them noticing their art was gone, but no signs of assault had been made present, so I feel more certain that the thief was trying to manipulate fear into them."

"My original first thought is that this is more personal as the notes mentioned the women by name, however, it is possible because Sandra has a big exhibition that the thief could have only known one of them personally. "

Ayame then continued on, "If I were going solely off of what I had gathered, I would say we are looking for a man, around 30-40 who is disillusioned into thinking he has a relationship with the women in the paintings, or possibly even their owners, using the paintings to manifest his feelings, keeping them at a place he holds dear and admiring them up close while he admires their owners from afar, however, my theory is subject to change based on your findings." Ayame would state to the girl she was working on the mission with.

Ayame was excited to see if her profiling would also match that. It was possible that they were dealing with multiple thieves here that just happened to strike at the same time.

WC: 860
TWC: 1047

C-crap! This Ai-sensei was so much faster than he was! Even at his top running speed, Nanaki could barely keep up. Inwardly, he cursed himself for his unfitness. He wasn't fat, he was just really weak and useless. He knew that these were his fellow classmates and colleagues, but they were just so much better than he was. As he silently tried to keep up with Ai, his muscles crying out for respite, he wondered whether he really had been ready for missions. In the end, they'd probably end up doing all the work and blaming him for being a lazy freeloader who was unable to carry his own weight.

"Ehr... I'm Nanaki." He was disgusted himself. He couldn't even bear to make contact with her, his eyes staring abjectly at an odd pebble on the floor. Why was he even here? He was just slowing them down... Naturally, they were conducting some kind of investigation, and he was too slow and stupid to do anything helpful.

Well, he would have to rely on the intuition of others, then. If a person wasn't suited to be a leader, then he would, of course, become a follower. Such was the way of things.

"What do you need me to do? I don't want to get in your way..."

[TWC 370, sorry for the wait.]

Love tilted her head slightly when the boy didn't make eye contact, he was only one inch shorter so it had to be a confidence thing. Weird. "Nice to meet you." She noticed him staring at a rock on the ground, too bad she didn't have any jutsu that could make use of it to impress the kid. "Don't worry this is a learning experience. If you were in the way I would've let you go with the other girl." Love looked around she didn't see the person she was looking for and there was still a bit of time before they were to met back up with that girl. "You're gonna get the next victims statement." She told the boy and then proceeded to teach him how to question the person. She told him things like always make eye contact, speak in a clear audible voice, paraphrase when taking notes. Just a quick reminder of the simple basics that should've been taught in the academy. "Now you lead the way." Love said holding her hand out in front of herself, waiting for him to start walking so she could follow behind him. After a short walk the pair would arrive at the house of the last victim, Love would stand behind Nanaki and let him do all the talking. While taking notes of her own and giving the suna ninja a boost of confidence any time he would look back at her.

It wasn't the best questioning but it was good enough and the more he did it the better he would get at it. "That was good." She told him with a smile. Looking up at the sky she could see that they needed to get back. "Let's go back so we can catch these crooks." Once that was said Love traveled back to the mission board at the boy's speed. The two listened to Ayame's report, if Nanaki didn't feel confident Love would tell the girl about the other victims' missing sculptures and vases. And then go on to say, "Based on what we were told, the perp doesn't know them personally but he is a fan. The descriptions we got match up so we can start searching for him."

WC:373

Ayame nodded showing good non-verbals/ body language as Love spoke.

"The only oddity or anomaly we have here is that he only stole paintings from the Women I interviewed, but contrarily only took Three-dimensional art from the people you interviewed. It's quite peculiar but could very well just be a coincidence"

Aya turned to the boy. "You know Suna better than we do" she stated kindly with a sincere smile while pointing to the leaf symbol on her headband. "Do you know of any places we can look for people matching the profile I hypothesized about?" Ayame asked.

After the boy would answer, Ayame would then suggest that Nanaki would take point due to it being familiar turf. It was one thing finding houses in a residential area, but scanning through different businesses and meeting places in the busier districts? That was a whole nother beast to tame.

WC: 151
TWC: 1198