Just Another Night

“Hold up.”

A tense body was a dead body. True power can only come from the relaxed and supple body of those capable to grow. Rigidity will bring hardness, and hardness brings frailty, and frailty brings defeat. Malleability brings flexibility and elasticity, durability and growth. Out of the shadows, crimson locks of hair caught the light as the man walked out of the shadows. Otherwise garbed in dark clothes, a sleeveless shirt tucked into black loose pants, with bandages covering his hands up to the knuckles and the middle of his forearms, as well as bandages covering from the middle of his feet up to above his ankles. On his belt, a wakizashi, and hanging next to it his trusty Jagged Claw, the serrated blade meant to add as much cruelty into a confrontation as possible. His weapon pouches, though skim in kunai and explosive tags, still held shuriken. His kumogakure headband hid the widow’s peak and tattooed forehead, although his shoulders and arms would still show tattoos. The black eye of Volt Uchiha stared at the person before him, absorbing the photons that reflected from the figure and the world around them and transforming it into information that the red headed Noboru Kaito could comprehend. The other eye of his former student, Ghost SynnSage Hyuuga, hid carefully under a black strap eyepatch.

Violently relaxed, he crept out of the left side of the gate, and kept himself facing sideways towards the elder before him, his left side most visible while his right side stayed out of sight. As the person before him put his arms up and requested entrance under the request of a place to stay, Kaito stared coldly at the figure. “Sorry, old man. Our retirement house is closed.”

As he spoke, veins progressively crept along the right side of his orbital bone and the temple of Kaito’s head, and his chakra gradually awoke his byakugan, investigating the man before him with an analytical capacity beyond most ninja’s capacities. Most everything about the man seemed fine… except for a tiny seal behind their ear. His relaxed violence intensified, as he had been ready to murder this man the moment he had heard him approach; any action not in line with his expectation would be met with extreme prejudice.

“You got two options: tell me the truth of your presence here, or die. And don’t try to test me. Not in the mood.”

[wc: 405]
-5AP for Byakugan

As Noboru waited for the old man to talk, the age assumption being based on the coloration of his hair and easy connotation made via stereotyping, his body remained energized and vitalized, awaiting the one thing that would make him snap. Guard duty was, for the most part, boring, however, he had been waiting for a caravan for a few hours now, and they had not arrived. The presence of this man agitated him, for some reason, even though now his Byakugan was able to see the caravan in the distance, with a short person riding the top of the foremost caraan as though a scout, which would explain the shortbow on their thigh. As he spoke, Kaito almost wished to enable his Sharingan, so as to try and perceive small details on his mannerisms that would let the redhead to read his body language better. However, his base knowledge of the human psyche should allow him to read in between lines… and he did want specific information. Namely, he wanted to know why an old man would be carrying several seals in his body.

Half an year past, he had watched as a youth placed a seal on the Young Conqueror of Kumogakure to seal an entire Bijuu within the man. The way he saw it, if a bijuu could be contained within a seal, any large amount of chakra and energy could be sealed within a person, meant it could also be released, and Kaito would be damned if he was going to allow someone with three of the things, a detail he took in thanks to the byakugan’s prowess, waltz into his village to unleash absolute hell within it.

Yet, before the man could go too far into his little speech, the short statured scout started shouting at Kaito to leave the man be, and this triggered Kaito to switch his attention towards the new presence, verifying what it could be the matter with this pigmy. One. Two. Three. Two of the seals in this new presence matched two of the seals this man had. As a watermill met by a rushing river, Kaito’s paranoia sprung violently into action, and his body followed suit to his new state of mind.

Without skipping a beat and while his white eye kept him informed of all that happened within one hundred meters, Kaito’s black eye became crimson, and in a burst of inspired haste he drew two shuriken from his weapon pouch as fast as if they were in his hand all along, hurling them at the old man, one under the shadow of the other; just as he threw the bladed disks of death, he rushed forwards in a chakra fed burst of speed, performing handseals along the way, expanding his chakra outwards to catch the elder in a field of paralysis. The Sharingan tracked the dull and slow motions of the old man before him, and in the blink of an eye, distance was closed, and with the assisted movement prediction capacities of the red eye, fingers straightened to create a makeshift blade, aiming at piercing where the old man’s heart was or would be and prevent him from unleashing whatever madness his seals could hide all the while avoiding his own shuriken that would reach the mark before he did. The likelihood of success was high; Kaito’s speed eclipsed the old man’s, a feat worthy of the Young Conqueror, who when he arrived in these very same fields before the gates, moved so fast that Kaito caught only a glimpse of his motions with his dull senses. This time, history would repeat itself, and the old man would likely find himself with a Nukite Spearhand occupying and spreading his heart into his chest, killing him instantly. It would have finished as fast as it started.

If successful, he would take his hand off the man’s chest, slick with blood, and shout out to the caravan “HOLD YOUR MARCH!” He brushed his hand harshly against his leg so as to clean as much blood off of it as possible, good thing his pants were black and wouldn’t show the blood unless seen in the light. If no interruptions took place, he would add “Any further action on your part will result in retaliation with extreme prejudice.” He would need backup to stabilize the situation here. If these people wanted to blow up the Kumogakure, Kaito would give them hell before he allowed them to do anything. Even though he had not heard the small pygmy asking where he got his byakugan, his intent observation of the pygmy with the byakugan showed him their helmet had no holes to assist in their sight, so they were either really good at hearing shit, or they had at least one byakugan underneath it, much like Kaito had his byakugan underneath his eyepatch.


wc: 812
twc: 1217

AP and Calcs:

As Kaito moved, Ghost’s Byakugan kept track of the events unfolding around him, while the Sharingan tracked his immediate field of vision. Two clones were formed at seemingly lightning fast speed, who wasted no time in taking decisive action. A jump, kunais drawn, one heart turned to mush and blood gushing everywhere inside the man’s body and along Kaito’s arm. The deed was done.

As Kaito noticed the actions taking place, he spoke not, and considering the caravan stopped on its own due to the actions of the pygmy, Kaito instead performed a couple of handseals before the 1st clone got to the top of the wall, slapping the ground and allowing it to shake. Around him, the earth shook violently, but he was strong enough to avoid falling prey to his own technique, engulfing the body of Ban Uchiha and devouring it; Kaito was careful enough and controlled his chakra to avoid the technique from crushing the body, just embracing it into the darkness. If it were to explode violently, it was better that it did so underground, so the violence of the explosion obliterated only the gates instead of the entire area adjacent to them.

However, the little pygmy and the two oompa loompas were taking aggressive action, and it could not stand. “Your actions are an act of aggression against Kumogakure and her people. Drop your weapons and dispel your clones, NOW.” Then, the main pygmy, atop the massive carriage, cried out why, why did Kaito do such a thing. One pygmy, two oompa loompas. Kaito was sick and tired of clones, always making his life more difficult than it needed to be. He hated them so much he decided he would learn the technique himself just so he could start evening the odds against these insecure fuckers who always replicated themselves. He lowered his center of gravity, holding his arms aloft to his sides, the relaxed stance allowing him to spring into action at a moment’s notice, the Byakugan keeping track of any move that could be borne of the trio, his Sharingan trying its best to predict the motion of everything almost to the point of making him dizzy, before replying to the tiny shrill voiced creature. “Fuck around, and find out.”

wc: 377
AP: 940
-5 Byakugan
-10 Sharingan
New AP: 925

As the pygmy made way down the caravan train, the two others observed; much like Kaito observed them while he spoke uninterrupted. As the main pygmy went beyond the range of the byakugan, the two others listened, and would relay back the information to the main one once they poofed off existence. Kaito was unimpressed by the display, but it served its purposes: one more ninja out there who knew the Kumogakure would not have its sovereignty defied without retribution.

He retrieved a corpse storage scroll and clapped his hand together, before slowly sinking through the floor, the rock around his skin becoming fine sand as he pushed deeper into the ground, then coming upon the body of Ban Uchiha. He sealed the corpse, and moved back to the surface. As his shift finished and a team of shinobi moved in to provide a late backup, they relieved him of his duty as they took care of the caravan. Kaito walked back into the village, just another day in the gakure.

wc: 171
twc: 1765
Exit
Claiming Ban Uchiha's body
Claiming 34 AP
Claiming 1500 towards Shadow Clone
Claiming 265 words towards Counterstrike, bringing it to a new total of 1330.