Snakes on this here plane

C-rank mission: Beast Clean-Up

The sun had begun to rise over the mountain peak that stood up the hill from Ryuzaki's house, the house that stuck out of the hillside like a pine coloured thorn, it was a modest home considering the land that accompanied it. The home that used to belong to Yamamoto had a large living quarter in the middle, two rooms, a kitchen, bathroom and a dojo (that was twice the size of the rest). The house was made of simple wood and Yamamoto had painstakingly built it entirely himself. Ryuzaki rose from his simple bed and began to prepare for the day, he had taken a rare day off training yesterday, and he had partaken on no missions in the last few days. However, it was time to get back to work, as he left to take off into the village Ryuzaki stopped by Taco who was laying in an outcropping under the house in the shade, he spent a few minutes petting the dog and playing fetch, ever since his masters demise the dog had taken to sleeping in the outcropping, it was a sudden change in behaviour, Ryuzaki had taken note that the outcropping sat directly below the personal room of Yamamoto, was he waiting for him to come back? was he depressed knowing his master was not coming back? Ryuzaki was unsure of which but he had his own issues to deal with his master's death and could give his long time friend and partner no answers.

Ryuzaki took his usual route into the village, by now the sun had fully risen and it was mid-morning, as he travelled he saw an unusual amount of people on the road, they were pushing carts, but, they did not appear to be trade goods or raw materials, more entire worldly possessions, there were also what appeared to be entire families instead of just men and women, so they did not appear to be travelling salesmen or distribution workers. After a thirty-minute walk, Ryuzaki had arrived at the village gates where he was met with more of the same, there appeared to be some sort of refugee line attempting to enter the village gates, more families with carts of possessions and what looked like various injuries. Were they attacked? why were they fleeing to the village? normally people would only try to hide in the village in the event of a war. Ryuzaki pushed the thought from his mind and headed on into the village, after stopping for a quick breakfast consisting of a balanced meal he made his way to the admin building where he would receive his missions. Entering the building he had his usual uncomfortable social interaction with the clerk and received his mission scroll, he retreated from the building and took up onto the rooftops, the streets had started to swell with people, more than usual, the refugees and other displaced country folk were starting to take over, the standing populace of the village was quite low at this time.

Ryuzaki read the contents of the scroll, he was tasked with some beast clean up, apparently, a large horde of massive snakes had appeared all over the land and was terrorizing the local populace, destroying their homes and forcing them off, it was thought that this was for them to make nests, as the locations off al the attacks were near the mountains and the villages on the plains had been left entirely alone. There had been reports of over fifty of these snakes, and teams were sent out to destroy these creatures, but there had also been reports of smaller attacks of lone snakes, they were using low-level ninja, like Ryu to take on these single entity enemies. Ryu had a lot of training against enemies and recently had acquired quite a bit of battle experience, but all of this was against human opponents, he had never fought anything like what he was about to b up against. Firstly he would have to track and then trap the enemy, something he was not proficient in, but due to its size he thought he would be able to manage the tracking, he was going to start by going to the last reported sighting of his target.

Ryu left the village hidden in the clouds and headed for one of the outlying country villages, it lay in the shadow of a mountain and was known for its production of raw materials, mainly ore. Ryuzaki started to wonder why someone of higher importance had not been placed on this mission as the village was very important to the nation, perhaps there was no one they could send, or maybe they had not put a high price on the materials from this place. After an hour of travelling, Ryuzaki arrived at the village, once again passing uprooted families on the roads. As he arrived the first thing he noticed was the pure destruction here, there were no buildings left intact and many bodies lay about the village, he had not realised that the death toll had been this high. Ryuzaki ducked into one of the destroyed buildings and started to prepare his equipment, he was going to have to take this mission more seriously than he had thought, it would be much harder than the first C-rank mission he was given to arrest those street fighters.
Ryuzaki decided since the target was supposedly massive he would have used for his explosive tags, so he preemptively wrapped his four explosive tags around the handles of four kunai, he placed them in his leg holster so he could separate them from the other kunai and shuriken he had in his back weapon pouch.

WC: 952

Ryuzaki began investigating the village, as the bodies started to pile up he was reminded of his recent master's demise, watching as his body turned black and crumbled to ash. Ryuzaki hoped he could get rid of the danger soon so people could return and give these bodies the proper care, if it took too long enough then the villages might not return at all, although there were always going to be jobs and trade here, the infrastructure was all but gone. Ryuzaki began to find massive tracks in the ground, they were around a foot deep and seven-foot wide, the snake was certainly the one to cause this damage, not that there had been many questions to that in Ryuzaki's mind.

Using a kunai Ryuzaki began to dig out the smaller grooves that laid within the track and how the earth moved up at the edges of the track, putting both these things together he identified which way the creature was slithering, a better tracker could probably have done so with one look. Ryuzaki started to follow the tracks, after looping around the village a few times, coming in and out of buildings, he managed to follow it out of the village and towards the mountain climb. After a few more minutes of following the trail upwards he reached the mine that the village maintained "Of course", Ryuzaki said out loud, almost annoyed at himself. Ryuzaki entered the mine shaft and began to descend down into the roots of the mountain. Ryuzaki found himself starting to starve for light, he managed to grab himself a torch and lint if off one of the walls in the cave, he imagined the torches were normally maintained and kept burning regularly, but it had been days since the village was abandoned.

Ryuzaki continued until the shafts opened up into a wider pit, peering down Ryuzaki saw the outline of a snake-like creature, his hand shot to his holster to draw a kunai, but he stopped himself as he realised it was a moulted skin, not the actual snake itself. Ryuzaki dropped down and started to run his hand along with the snake, he had worked out the width of the snake by the track but he could not work out the rest of its dimensions just by this skin, he did, however, he realised that there was still some residue and slime on the skin, and it had not yet hardened, he assumed this meant that this skin had been mounted recently, and the snake was probably still here. Ryuzaki pressed on into the tunnel, as he went he started to hear strange noises, ones that he could not quite place. The pit had widened considerably and now appeared to be more natural, there were less and fewer signs of human engineering, mainly the torches and the support beams. Ryuzaki began to wonder whether they found this hole instead of making it, had they delved too deep and made their way into somethings lair.

The weird sounds started to get closer, Ryuzaki's torch began to flicker unnaturally, then he recognised the sound, it was slithering and hizzing. Ryuzaki turned on the dime and started to run, he was going to be unable to battle the giant snake here, it was too confined and he would have many disadvantages. Ryuzaki held the torch in front of him, he ran at his fastest, keeping the torch low to avoid it being blown out completely, after a full minute of running he made it back to the drop point, where he turned to risk a glance backwards and all he was met with was glowing eyes, he hurled the torch at the target, it flipped end over end until it collided with the snake's nose, embers burst all over its face and Ryuzaki got a good look at his enemy for the first time. Ryuzaki saw big red eyes hovering above two slits for a nose and a big jaw filled with shark fangs, a huge forked tongue shot out of the mouth and made the hissing sound he was hearing earlier. Ryuzaki turned and ran up the side of the hole and out into the more familiar man-made tunnels above, without breaking stride he would then sprint for the exit, the snake appeared to be interesting enough in him to follow, it appeared it was not just territorial, perhaps it wanted to eat him, although he was not sure since there were still so many bodies outside, 

Ryuzaki exited the mineshaft and as he did so planted a kunai with an explosive tag on either wall of the mine, perhaps he could trap the monster as it exited. After a few more seconds the beat started to exit and Ryuzaki made a handseal and sent his chakra through the tags, causing them to explode, as he had hoped the tunnel began to collapse and crush the snake's body, he did not know how much of the snake there was still to come out, but it was about four metres long that poked out of the entrance. Ryuzaki began to make handseals "Ram > Ox" an arrow appeared next to him made out of lightning, he then made the handseals again "Ram > Ox" and a second arrow appeared on his other side. Ryuzaki grabbed a lightning arrow in each hand and charged at the snake, it could not move but it still tried to bite at Ryu, he managed to push himself off the ground and avoid the snapping jaw of the snake. Ryu landed on the head of the snake and plunged an arrow down into the eye of the snake, it then began to thrash more, he pushed upwards and used the downward force to drop back down and drive the second arrow through the snake's skull and into its brain. The snake went limp and dropped to the floor, it convulsed one more time before completely stopped moving. Ryuzaki now began to head back to the village, he would report what he had found and also that the mine would need some renovation if it was to be reopened, Ryu thought if they wanted him to cause less destruction they should mention it in the scroll, but they probably cared more about the information he had gathered.

WC: 1054
TWC: 2000
Claiming +2000 Ryo, +5 Ap, +20 Speed, 1500 / 1500 for Shadow Clone, 500 into Eight Inner Gates 600 / 2500

Approved