A Day of Work

Shinji started to nod faster and faster as the man I front of him laid out the plan, it was a good one and worked, but Shinji was getting impatient. As he finished telling Shinji his role his hand shot up to his head in an awkward salute "YESSIR" he said in a decibel certainly too high for the situation. Shinji then whipped around and started heading into the guardhouse, at this point Travin was still talking to their other teammates. In Shinji's mind, he was going to go into the guardhouse and be stamping approval for people to enter the village at a breakneck pace, he imagined himself like a printing press, just stamping constantly and people entering the village to go about their day, having fun, trading or going home to relax. However, the reality was far from it, Shinji stood behind the desk of the guardhouse the approval stamper in his hand, it was raised up in the air ready to be slammed down on paper, the rejection stamper not even in his consideration. However, there was no one entering the guardhouse, no one had entered the village in around 15 minutes. Shinji was growing impatient again, for him and his personality this was almost akin to torture, standing still inside staring at a door, it was worse than the academy, at least there he learned new information while having to be seated indoors.

Shinji stared with a controlled rage at the door, he was ready to do his job, but there was nothing to be done "Come, come, come, come" he was starting to say, each time his voice got slightly louder. "Come, come, come, come" he started to get to the level of shouting, and the door swung open, finally a task. Shinji certainly wanted to admit everyone into the village, but he was still going to do the job properly. "Paperwork please," he said in an energetic tone. The man seeking entrance into the village was an older man who was coming ni to do some trading, Shinji took the paperwork from him and raised it so that it was only a few inches away from his face, he began to read, his eyes darting from side to side, his tongue slowly creeping out of the corner of his mouth as it had a penchant to do when he concentrated. "Approved," he said loudly as he put the paperwork down and slammed the stamper down on the paperwork "Please keep it with you at all times". Now after the first trader, the traffic flow began to pick up and Shinji worked fast, reading the paperwork in its entirety and then approving them for entrance, he had no reason to reject anyone at this point. This continued for several hours until it was almost time for them to leave, as the time for them to switch with the next shift approached Shinji exited the guardhouse, the traffic flow almost coming to a complete stop, the four of them had done good work, quick and efficiently letting people into the village. Shinji saw a final person approaching the gate, however, this one was trying to exit.

[Exit for this thread, into the next one]
WC: 530
TWC: 1026
Claiming 2100 ryo, +5 AP, +10 Chakra, 1000/1000 for Earth Pillar Spears C.

Travin's plan was solid, and Kita had no objections. The boy fell perfectly comfortably into a leadership role of the group, and Kita respected that. There was only one question on his mind as he began setting out to perform Travin's plan. "What even is a Seigan?" The ninja quickly got into their positions and waited for the first visitors to begin coming through the gate. Shinji acted a bit stranger than Kita expected, spooking him slightly, but other than that there were no hitches. Kita calmly waited in place for the wagons to begin filing into a queue for Kita to review. He brought his fingers together into the signature cross sign, and two shadow clones popped into existence on either side of Kita (Shadow Clone). Immediately they turned to their master with curious eyes. "What can we do for you today boss?" Kita smirked. He could swear that they knew what Kita wanted when they were summoned, but he'll humor them anyway. "It's a simple task today boys. All I need you to do is help me check the incoming and outgoing caravans to the city. Make sure they don't have any contraband, and they're not smuggling any illicit visitors in or out. Sound good?" The clones nodded in agreement as the first cart rode up. Kita's job begins now.

The first of Kita's carts was driven by an older man. He reported that he was here to do some trading, and Kita directed him to the check-in station that Shinji was located in as the Kita's inspected the cart. Kita double checked that the cart was empty, finding an older woman and a young man inside claiming to be the man's wife and son. Kita nodded, motioning for them to get out of the cart so that he could inspect it. Overall it was as the man said, he was simply coming in to do a little trading. There was nobody hiding in his cart, and all of his trading goods checked out as legal. The only thing that gave Kita pause was a single vial of poison within his cart. It was tiny, only enough for one dose, but it was still something that had to be registered with the city before being allowed in. Kita turned to the duo, slightly shaking the vial in his hand. "This yours?" The woman nodded, pointing to the check-in station. "My husband has the paperwork." Kita shrugged. "We'll see once he gets back out here. If he can show the proper paperwork, I'll let you all through." Sure enough, the man came back with the paperwork in hand, dismissing Kita's fears that something nefarious might have been going on. The clones turned and grinned at each other, both mirroring the same thumbs up. "We made some good time! This should all be a piece of cake." Kita smiled. There was still more to do, but he would let the copies have their tiny celebration.

The day passed by slowly, with the group of four continuing on for several hours on end. There were only a couple of minor incidents throughout the day, requiring that the group turn some of the travelers away, but other than that it was mostly uneventful. After the last cart went through, Kita dismissed his clones. The memories of their day filled his head, practically tripling the boredom that Kita had felt throughout the day. However, there was one thing of note that Kita saw in the mind of his clones. A young, dirty, bone-thin boy who didn't even have a winter coat had been walking towards the gate, apparently muttering that he would be leaving the village. As the original Kita turned to his right to observe him, the last glimpse that he saw of the young boy was him entering into Shinji's Checkpoint.

Word Count - 640 Words

Total Word Count - 1618 Words

Jutsu Used:

mission



Everyone took off with their orders, and it was at this point that Travin realized that he had taken the leadership role of their makeshift team without even thinking about it. Making his way up to the platform to keep an eye on everything he thought about what that may mean to his future. Was he destined to be a leader of the village or just for a team or maybe even higher such as anbu team leader. He didn’t really know and he wanted to know but only time would be able to tell him. Once he was up on the platform and could clearly see everyone and everything coming and going in and out of the village. Travin activated his Seigan letting his eyes glow blue as he scanned every wagon and person coming into the village. 


After several hours Travin's eyes started to hurt and sting from long hours of use of his doujutsu. He started to turn them off and back on to let his eyes rest and learn an important lesson for the future. It was but a few minutes till their shift changed when Travin noticed a boy walking to the gate. Through his Seigan he could tell the boy didn’t have very mature chakra and would probably put him at a lower rank than his team. Travin motioned for Kita or one of his clones to check out the boy. About the time that Kita had dispersed his clones, and letting travin know that he had motioned to a clone that probably hadn’t seen him. With this information Travin jumped down and made his way to the gate it wasn’t very far from where he was standing and walked outside the gate. He would stand nearby the side of the gate so that he could overhear what the boy told Shinji.


(WC-308 TWC-1348)
AP=367
-25 Seigan LV.1
=342

The day continued, Ban and the crew kept working hard at the gates. There was plenty of excitement for the crew to keep busy. Travelers went to Shinji to get their papers approved to enter the village. Kita inspected their carts with his clone, as was suggested by Travin. There were a couple of points where the gate crew would have to turn away some travelers as their paperwork wasn't good enough to enter the tight security village. However, there weren't any huge difficulties. Ban stood with her arms crossed most of the time, being the intimating and the brute of the group so travelers wouldn't get any bad ideas. 

It was starting to get lighter traffic at the gates; lines were shorter and more manageable. Ban was starting to get very bored with her position, so she started to do a small perimeter around the gate area. She didn't travel any more than 10 meters away from the gate. As she was about to return to her position before the end of their shift, she noticed a young genin about to exit the village without addressing Shinji. He looked pathetic; tired, thin, and malnourished without much protection from the cold. The boy noticed the eyes of the guardsmen and panicked. Apparently, there was something that bothered the boy and he was going to try to escape. Before Kita could approach him, he lept past the gate lines and sprinted towards the open exit where he could finally be free. However, in his quick judgments and not at all slick escape, he ran straight into Ban. He wasn't strong enough to knock her over, so he fell back on the ground, leaving him to the mercy of Ban. Ban slowly pulled out her katana and pointed it at the genin, making him whimper. "Where do you think you're going?" Her voice was deep and menacing. He gulped and took frightened shallow breaths. "D-don't kill me..." He whimpered, scooting further from the point of Ban's blade. "Let's talk then." She didn't sound very friendly. 

Ban took the frightened boy to the shelter Shinji was doing the paperwork so they had a private place to chat. She sat him down in a chair in the corner of the shelter. When Ban resheathed the blade, the boy seemed to relax just a little bit. "What the hell were you thinking? Leaving Kirigakure is a huge offense, punishable by death. You're lucky you ran into me on a good day." As she was intimidating the boy, she could hear the rumbling of his stomach. It was deafening. He didn't give her a response at the moment due to his immense fear. Ban grunted and left to get her bag. Inside the bag, she pulled out a bun she brought to work for lunch. She tossed him the bread. "Eat it, you're going to need your strength to explain yourself." Ban turned away for a moment to fast her teammates. "Someone find me some information about this kid. I wanna know his name." She used the same voice as her intimidation voice on her teammates. This also left an opening for any of the other members to question the boy while he lightly snacked on the bread he graciously was given.

WC: 546
TWC: 1198

The day droned on as the crew each took on their own part of checking people in and out of the village. As the sun started to fade from the sky there were actual cases of people getting rejected, this was not for a nefarious reason but because the paperwork had a missing signature or had a date that was not lined up with the current date. As he was dealing with a final customer Shinji caught out of the corner of his eye that Ban was dealing with something, he could not hear what was going on but he could see a weapon drawn. Ban then brought the boy into the shack and sat him down, Shinji let them get on with whatever they were doing, this type of situation not falling anywhere within his skillset. Shinji moved to the door when the final customer had been seen too and started watching down the road into the village, he saw their relief walking up the road, this would work well as they could swap out with the new shift and allow them to start guarding the gate and talking over the responsibilities as the village turned from day to night. Shinji stood outside of the door and leaned up against the wall directly next to the door, allowing his teammates and the new shift to take up the room within the shack, it was not the biggest room and was starting to get crowded.

WC: 245
TWC: 1271

There wasn't anybody else coming to the gates at the moment, and it was only a little while before the next group came to take over their shift, so Kita didn't think that there could be any harm in checking the scene out. As he walked over, he entered earshot just in time to hear the voice of their companion Ban, demanding that the group question the child. Kita felt his eyebrows furrow. "Find information on the kid? What on earth did he do?" Kita picked up the pace just slightly and quickly closed the rest of the distance between himself and the checkpoint.

Ban stood in the corner of the building, and Shinji leaned against the wall alongside the doorway, allowing his companions in and out. To the side of the building, closer to the gate was Travin, who also seemed interested in what the commotion was about. As Kita was about to enter inside the building, he noticed that Shinji's gaze was pointed elsewhere down the road. Kita looked off into the distance, and noticed that their new shift was on the way. They were still a bit of a distance off from the group, so they had a little bit more time before their shift was taken. Kita made his way into the warm shelter of the guardhouse, and made his way back towards the area where Ban and the child were.

"What's going on here Ban?" His eyes shifted between her and the child, curious as to why exactly the kid had been deemed important enough for Ban to abandon her post. The kid held a piece of bread between his dirty, boney fingers, and he ate with a strange duality between timidness and ravenous hunger. Ban had demanded information from the kid, so Kita supposed that he would throw his hat in the ring. He crouched down next to him to be closer to his level. As he did, Kita noticed the headband that he had affixed to his arm. Kita gestured towards it. "Shinobi, huh? Just like us." Kita gave a small smile to him. The kid was even younger than Kita, no older than ten years at most. Kita guessed that he hadn't been out of the academy for long. Kita wondered if he had even mastered his first chakra element yet. "What's your name kid?" His eyes wouldn't meet Kita's. Kita followed his gaze, seeing that they were still focused on Ban. "It's okay. I know she's scary, but she won't hurt you. What's your name?" The kid took another bite of bread and swallowed. "Yokota." Kita smiled once again. "It's nice to meet you Yokota. Can you tell me why Ban has you here?" The kid nodded once. "It's cause I tried to escape the village. I don't like living here. There isn't enough food, being a shinobi doesn't give me enough money, and I don't want people telling me what to do anymore." Kita's face paled. Deserting the village was a crime, and even in normal villages that usually meant death. In Kirigakure, it was borderline suicide. Then another thought came to Kita's mind. His head whipped back around to look back up the road. The next shift would be there in about five minutes. If they couldn't handle this kid on their own now, then the next shift would, and it could be his demise.

Word Count - 566

Total Word Count - 2184

Travin listened as Ban and Kita took charge of the boy. He stood off to the side and watched as Shinji got out of the small building standing on the other side and waited for the guards to come and replace them. They could all see the guard coming this way and they all knew that they had to settle this one way or another. Personally Travin thought that they should turn him in and let the court deal with it. He knew that the boy would be killed for desertion but it was his choice and he would have to live with it. However, over the past several missions that he had done with Kita he had started to consider the man his friend, and he could tell just by how he was acting that he didn't want to do that and kill the boy. Kita had made headway with the boy finding out his name and giving him some food, but they was running out of time to deal with this.

Travin looked in through the window and made a few hand signs “Yokota you think it will be better outside of these walls. I will show you what awaits you out there '' he said as the boy turned and saw Travin pointing at him. The genjutsu would only last a second for the others but for Travin and the Boy that second would fill in a lifetime. Inside of the genjutsu the boy saw himself leaving the village Travin didn’t bother making the genjutsu believable since the boy wouldn’t be able to break out if he wanted to. He made it more of a movie where the boy got to see the consequences of his actions today if they hadn’t stopped him.

First he would have escaped but got killed by wild animals, but what if had been saved and the vision would rewind to before he died and a man saved him. Took Yokota under his wings and used him as a tool while training him. Making him a missing nin who ran around taking orders and going hungry a lot. Then the vision would rewind again and instead of training Yokota he sold him into slavery where he was beaten and forced to work like a dog for the rest of his life.

Travin would break the genjutsu at this point, and Yokota would have a tear in his eye. “You can choose a different path and if needed I'll help you get some work in the village for food. My family always needs people that can help around the estate, but in order to do that I need to know if someone told you to do this or if you just came up with it on your own.

The boy would pause for a moment and think about what was going on. He had met a scary lady, a guy with some scary powers, some dude that didn’t want anything to do with it and a nice guy who gave him bread. Yokota would eventually speak up and tell them that a guy who worked with the underground said that they could use someone like him outside of the village to help bring things into the village. However all he knew was the guy name Detten.

Travin would look around to everyone else with a look saying that they needed to find this guy Detten and put a stop to what he was doing. It looked like this was going to be an interesting day Travin thought to himself as he waited to see what everyone else thought.

(WC-604 TWC-1952)
AP=342
-40 Ephemeral
=302

The group seemed confused about what was going on. Kita asked Ban what was happening. "This little twerp was trying to leave the village." She was infuriated that the boy was disrespecting the code of being a shinobi. "Does this kid not understand the severity of this crime? Village desertion is a high-level crime, worthy of death by the Mizukage." Kita took this time to get the information by talking to his level. That was something Ban didn't have to temperament for. She snored at the comments that she wouldn't hurt the boy and left the shed for Kita to continue with more space. Little brat doesn't understand who he fights for. Wealth and money sure, but more for honor and service. He should've known this by the time he graduated from the academy. Ban was never the best at being empathic due to her thick skin from having to only take care of herself. 

Yokota was the kid's name. He explained to Kita that he couldn't be a shinobi anymore because he couldn't afford food and he didn't want to be bossed around anymore. Ban shook her head in disappointment. In her mind, she found that the best solution for those is to get stronger. You weren't going to get things handed to you, you had to work hard for them. Even if that means dying on the frontlines and leaving your daughter alone in the village. Ban was projecting her own past on this kid without realizing it. 

Travin went in after Kita and took him outside. Ban peered at the two to check up on the boy. Travin would perform a genjutsu after weaving hand signs. Using Ephemeral, Travin looked inside the mind of the boy but to Ban it just looked like he was performing something on the boy. After a moment, the boy would be in tears as it seemed the jutsu was done. Ban was curious about what just happened. Travin explained that they needed to find someone named "Detten." "Hold on, what did you do to the boy?" Ban asked Travin, still not knowing about the genjutsu. 

WC:354
TWC: 1552

Shinji continued to look down the road as the rest of the team entered the building to deal with the delinquent. As the new shift were still on their way towards the building a last-minute entree to the village came upon the gates. Since the guardhouse was now occupied Shinji deiced he would deal with the entree outside of the gatehouse, he walked up to the man who had a massive pack on his back full of metal pans. Shinji stopped the man and took his paperwork, he thoroughly read through it and then searched the man's pack, all had checked out, he asked him to stay put while he entered the guardhouse to get the stamp after all paperwork must be stamped, and Shinji could not deviate from these conditions of his duty. Shinji quietly slipped back into the guardhouse and tried to not distract from what was happening inside, the other three were questioning the boy, he grabbed the stamp from the desk, stamped it in the ink tray, and then exited the guardhouse. Shinji quickly made his way back over to the metal pan trader and stamped his paperwork before the ink dried. The new squad who was here to take over the gate had now arrived and Shinji explained to them that the guardhouse was being used for a sensitive situation that had cropped up, they took their positions outside of the guardhouse so they could carry on with their task but also not disturbed the other three inside.

WC: 253
TWC: 1524

Kita watched as Travin began to weave the hand seals to an unknown jutsu, and for a moment was ready to protest. However, they didn't exactly have much of a choice at the time. It was either scare the kid into staying in the village or hand him over to the authorities, and Kita didn't exactly feel good about the kids chances with the latter. After a single moment it was done, with Yokota standing there with a single tear in his eye. "I wonder what it is that Travin showed him? He was only under the effects of that jutsu for a second, there's no way that he actually had any time to relay meaningful information. Did he?" Ban seemingly had a similar thought. She too was curious about whatever it was that Travin just did. Seemingly more curious than concerned about the child's wellbeing, which seemed particularly odd to Kita. "Why is she trying to act like she doesn't care? She was the first person to see the kid, and she even gave him her lunch. That sort of personality doesn't exactly match up to the actions that she just took." Kita shook his head. Travin's mystery jutsu, Ban's psychology, and whoever this Detten guy is would have to wait. The kid had to go, now.

Kita turned to look outside to see how much time they had left, and saw that they were out. The second group of guards had taken up residence just outside the guardhouse, and were performing their duties while they waited for the current group to get out. How much they knew about the situation was beyond Kita, and he simply had to hope that whatever lie he could craft up would be sufficient enough to get the kid past the guards. Kita turned to Yokota and squatted down to be eye level with him. "Yokota, I need you to march out of this office as confidently as possible. Hopefully the guards won't ask you about anything that happened in here, but if they do, just tell them that you were pulling pranks at the gates alright? It's nothing major, they'll let you off with a slap on the wrist at worst. And, never, and I mean NEVER, try to escape again. Next time, you might not get someone nice enough to give you a warning. Ban here was nice enough to catch you and bring you back. Some shinobi would've tried to kill you on sight. You understand?" He nodded once with a shaky head and tear filled eyes as Kita motioned for him to get out of the guardhouse. He scurried off and Kita turned back to his companions, motioning to the door for the new guards to come in as he did. Time to find out who this Detten is.

Word Count - 470

Total Word Count - 2654