A Disgruntled few

Spoiler:

Transported again to the Land of Iron, Kizmaru had fallen out of the air about six feet onto a pile of snow. Wearing his dark red armor, he picked himself up and made sure everything was where it belonged. He couldn't get used to this method of travel as manipulating space and time to where he wished was frowned upon by him. Still, its not like he could control these random jumps as a mysterious voice continues to guide his movement and actions during this type of year. Once again, the voice had spoken to him. Tt finally revealed to him he was a being known as a HollyKage and he was in dire need of their help. When Kizmaru heard the word 'their' he had assumed this meant that there was somebody else with him. He didn't even need to look around anymore as he was certain it was Keita the voice was referencing and continued to listen to the voice inside of his head. The Hollykage, as it liked to call itself, was in a bit of a predicament. He explained to both of them he had put his laboring team into overdrive and made them work a lot more than they normally would and eventually it has gotten them to the point where they were fed up with the constant demands they were being given. 

One evening, they had gotten up at the dead of night and decided enough was enough, they pilfered as much magically wood as they could get their hands on, loaded it up into a sled and began to take off in whatever destination they were headed in. According to the Hollykage, he had transported the duo near an icy hold the two of them needed to infiltrate. Their objective was to deal with the runaway workers in any way they saw fit. if they had succeeded, he would reward the two of them generously. With that, the mission briefing was over and it was up to both Kizmaru and Keita to get started on that mission. Double checking his gear before he stormed a stronghold of possibly armed workers, he was wearing his dark red steam armor, over his normal attire of a yellow button down shirt and navy blue pants. He wasn't wearing any shoes as his full body armor encompassed his entire body except his eyes. He had two weapon pouches on his hips for easy retrieval when needed and a Katana holstered on the left side of his waist. He was ready for action if push came to shove. looking at Keita, he hoped he was ready to do the say as he began to walk towards the icy stronghold that was a few meters in front of them.

W.C: 460

Keita felt the familiar sense of disorientation that he usually felt when some sort of space and time shenanigans were taking place, and before he knew it, he was in a large pile of snow out in the middle of nowhere. It seemed that mysterious entity that kept giving them tasks for strange but powerful payment was at it again, and this time Keita had been dropped right in the middle of what appeared to be a vast tundra filled with ice and snow. He noticed that the now fully armored visage of his friend Kizmaru was once again beside him, and Keita felt a little relieved to say the least, as he disliked the idea of just randomly popping up somewhere alone, where he was essentially kidnapped. He supposed that he could choose not to perform the tasks that this weird entity calling himself the Hollykage wanted, but then how would he get home? Someone with that much power that could simply teleport him to wherever he wished was not someone that Keita wanted to anger, at least not yet, as he was not powerful enough to go against something like this. Still, Keita looked around, and although it was pretty cold, Keita could endure, as this was the best way he could think of in doing the mission. Apparently some sort of workers of this Hollykage were overworked, and they fled while stealing a bunch of valuable wood and other such things from their work place, and it was up to the two of them to get the stuff back and punish the workers. Keita had a bit of a mixed reaction upon hearing this. While it was true that one should have undying loyalty to one's country and the leader, the leader was fairly incompetent if they chose to overwork someone even with the knowledge. He assumed someone with that much power would have plenty of resources available, considering the amount of rewards he was giving out, so Keita could not understand how one would mismanage resources like that, as people were resources as well.

Keita felt slightly bad, but betraying their leader and nation, if you could call whatever or wherever the Hollykage ruled over that, was nothing short of something that could be punishable by death, although he was going to look to Kizmaru at that time to see what sort of punishment he wanted to give out, as he had mentioned before that people needed utmost loyalty, and so Keita was not going to do anything that his kage did not want him to do or did not authorize, although Keita simply wanted to give these deserters a swift death to show others that one could not go completely against their own people and leader. Still, Keita would be completely fine with just beating them up and bringing them back, but there was still something off putting about that. After confirming with Kizmaru where they were going to go, they both decided to walk towards a large structure in the middle of a frozen field, which seemed like an old war fortress that had been nearly frozen over by the icy cold winds and buried by snow. Although it was partially submerge in the snow, one could barely make out the remnants of a trail led by a sled of some kind, and it was obvious to see that this Hollykage, or what have you, put the two friends right where they needed to be to start their assault and capture or kill the deserters and retrieve the goods, and Keita appreciated that somewhat, it was no use to trying to go through all of the trouble to track these people down if the Hollykage would simply make it easy for them.

WC: 628

Continuing to approach the stronghold, he noticed it was rather large and partially sunken into the snow. He didn't bother him too much but he figured it would take a lot more time to complete this task than he initially thought. Giving a large sigh, he turned his head to Keita in which he said, "Alright, this might sound a little crazy but i know we can handle it. Before we go any further, we should split up to cover more ground. Hopefully we can get this over with and go back in order to warm up. I don't mind the cold weather but this is too frequent for my liking. Best of luck."  He nodded to Keita before approaching the entrance to the stronghold. It was a large, slightly iced over double door. Pressing his hand against one of the doors, he melted the ice from the heat of his armor before pushing the left door slowly. He wasn't sure if they were aware the duo was coming in but honestly, he didn't care. Stepping in with Keita, they had entered what seemed like a screen passage leading to three different doors. He wasn't sure what was behind them but he figured he'd go through the one that looks the most grandiose.

Another set of double doors which rivaled the entrance in size of said stronghold except with a lot more décor than the previous set blocked his path. Pushing them open, he saw what resembled a Great hall. The large rectangular room was ten meters wide and three times as long as it was wide. Looking up at the ceiling, the distance from the ground to the ceiling was roughly around fifteen meters. It was entered through the short screen passage from where the two had gone through, and had windows on one of the long sides, often including a large bay window. Inside the hall, it had a central hearth, with the smoke rising through the hall to a vent in the roof as if it were recently used. The hearth seems as if it was used for heating and also for some of the cooking as the smell of something edible was being made here recently, although for larger structures a medieval kitchen would customarily lie on a lower level for the bulk of the cooking. Observing the room further, he also noticed three long rectangular tables with built in benches that were in irreparable condition due to the ice and degradation. Though it couldn't be repaired, it seems as if the workers were crafty enough to have found substitute ways of being able to use them in different methods for seating. 

W.C: 448

Shaking off his admiration for the crafty minds of the people he was suppose to administer punishment to, Kizmaru continued further into the hall he was in, treading lightly as to make no sound, not even the faintest sound of crunched snow escaped. As he walked, he figured it'd be a good idea to turn on his Sharingan in order to locate the escaped workers that used to be the Holly Kage's subordinates. As he walked through the great hall, he traced his hands along the the broken tables and and benches if it didn't go out of his way. He could tell this used to be a keep of some kind for some kind of royalty. Maybe this was where they would come to ,seek refuge from the external affairs of what was to come. It was pretty extravagant, or would be, if it wasn't in the shape it was currently in. Shifting his eyes from left to right, Kizmaru scanned the area he was in for unknown chakra signatures he might have missed the first time around when he let his mind wander. It was quite amusing that he hadn't found anybody yet but that's probably a good thing, or should be.

Walking to the other end of the room, he had spotted an elevated platform that wasn't visible to him at first. It seems to be raised a step above the rest of the room. On this, the master of the household or assembly would normally have dined with his senior associates and friends at the high table, while the other guests occupied the lower area of the room. In these halls, there was generally a deep recessed bay window at one or both ends of the dais, which provided retirement or greater privacy than the open hall. The dais area often had its own doorway for admission from the master's chambers, whereas most of the guests entered through a doorway leading into the main area of the hall. Looking to the left of the room, Kizmaru had spotted another door near the dias and he figured that would lead to a room serving as whoever the lord of the keep's room was. He figured he just go and double check any for the sake of doing a through job just in cause he could potentially miss some clues of some kind. he had hoped Keita was having better luck as he couldn't really see any more obvious signs other than the great hall had been used fairly recently.

W.C: 428

Keita had warned the Hollykage factory workers that if they did not comply, they would be killed, and although some of them seemed shaken, the threat was not quite enough to shake all of them into instantly surrendering. It seemed that there was a spark of defiance in most of these people, and going back was worse than death for them, so they chose to fight it out. Unfortunately, Keita was someone that actually went through with the things that he promised, so he was going to send these workers that originally worked for the Hollykage back in body bags, or in his case, whatever he could find on the premises. he decided that he was not going to waste the near infinite storage space he had in his cloak for people that did not even care whether they lived or died, and although Keita slightly respected them for the fire in their eyes, that would not change the fact that he immediately rushed them while performing hand seals. He immediately spawned his chakra chains when he was done with the hand seals, and seven thick chains sprouted from his back, and they started to rush through the workers that were hiding behind the make shift barricade. 

These tables and chairs that were roughly and hastily piled around them were nothing but a piece of tissue paper against Keita's chakra chains, which immediately grabbed three of the workers and started to strangle them to death. The other ones ran, scattered, and started rolling to the side before firing the crossbows at Keita, which simply got deflected off of his cloak that he was wearing and fell to the floor. Keita looked at  them through the silk mesh over his face, before a sickening crack rang out, three one after the other, as the bodies that were grabbed by his chain went completely limp, and then he dropped them to the floor. This was when a couple of the workers in this room fell to the floor and started begging for their lives, while the others seemed to grab whatever they could from their surrounding that looked anything dangerous, like a broken table leg and a wooden shard, and immediately rushed Keita, thinking that melee would do the trick. Unfortunately, all of the workers in the area were silenced, before Keita grabbed all of them by both of their legs with his chains, before heading back to the point where he and Kiz were to meet. After dumping the bodies, Keita started to head towards the third door that he had seen, wondering what was behind it.

WC: 436

Stepping closer to the dias, he spotted a rundown, throne that was made of gold and red material he was unfamiliar with. Though it had been some time since somebody sat in it, Kizmaru thought it was still in fairly good condition for something that hasn't been kept up in what he assumed was centuries. Staving off his admiration, Kizmaru looked around near the dias to see if there was a door of some kind nearby. Normally when important people had a throne such as this, their personal chambers weren't too far away from the dias for ease of access. There, to the left of the seat in front of him was an icy run down door. A large piece of it was missing as it seemed the door was made off some kind of mixture of steel, gold and wood. Apparently, somebody had picked it open and forced their way in without ever trying to find a way to cover it back up not, not that it might have mattered to them. Approaching the said door, Kizmaru pushed it with a pen with a bit more strength than he normally would as it was kind of stuck and giving resistance to his advance. Finally getting it completely open, Kizmaru stepped in in order to take a look around. The first thing he had picked up was, he wasn't alone. 

Somebody or some people were in here with him and that put him on edge as he didn't recognize any of these signatures since they did not belong to Keita. Keeping his guard up, Kizmaru looked around the room to spot a group of three people all filing something out of a sack. Upon further inspection, he found it was the Senju wood the workers had stolen. Well, this was easier than he thought it would have been initially. Now he could round up these idiots and get paid for doing so. Raising both of his hands, he balled them into fists as he began to approach them. They could obviously see him advancing towards them as the door wasn't exactly silent when he pushed it open. It was barred by a piece of steel lodged into the hinges. Either way, he found the culprits so he would go and apprehend them. They were also prepared for fight as they began to draw makeshift weapons from the surrounding area. Before he rushed in to make the first move, he had remembered to give his obligatory, "Drop your weapons and surrender" but it seems they were long past that step either way as the workers began to inch towards their would be intruder. This only made a sneer appear on his face as he didn't want to skip this part either.

W.C: 460

Keita looked at the large door that was the third door in the series. He had not heard his partner Kiz make a massive amount of noise or anything, so he wondered if he was even fighting at the moment or if the workers were not in the room that he went in and so he was still looking around for them so that he could capture or defeat them. Still, Keita also figured that this large place would either echo or hide the noise depending on the acoustics and the state of the furniture and some such, so it could simply be that Kiz was fighting but he could not hear it. Keita had quite a degree of confidence in his friend and leader, so he decided that he would not try to find him in these dank and dirty halls, and simply continue on to the side room hat was beyond the third door. He figured that the middle door would lead to the main chamber of this so called fortress and have a lot more passageways and small rooms off to the side that he would continue exploring. Keita would attempt to take care of the side rooms that did not connect to the main room, and therefore they would cover the entire fortress in a little amount of time. 

Keita rapidly threw open the door off of its hinges with the help of his chakra chains and stepped into the room. It seemed to be a large room that was meant for bathing, as there were steles and mostly crumbled and broken animal heads, or the heads of gargoyles that Keita did not recognize, at regular intervals on the wall, and there was also a trench that was covered in stone across the east and west walls that led to holes in the center of the room on opposite sides, so he assumed that was where the water ran off through, but this also made Keita wonder where the run off was, and it was undoubtedly frozen most of the year, so how did this simple attempt at plumbing work? Keita shook off his curiosity as he looked through the wide open room, and eventually came to a small offshoot room that looked like it used to be a sauna, the brazier old and dilapidated but still recognizable as one. Inside the room, there were a couple of he workers that were cowering in fear, and unfortunately for them, Keita was no patron saint, and immediately grabbed them by the neck and started walking around the rest of the area to see if he missed anyone. 

WC: 440

The workers had drawn closer to Kizmaru with their simple weapons in an attempt to defend their home from the intruder that was Kizmaru. Though he had viewed them as weapons, they may well as well be nothing more than children's toys as one of them had made it close enough to strike his steam armor, breaking the weapon instead. Kizmaru wasn't kind enough to over look the fact he was indeed being attacked, even if they were causing him no harm. After the worker had attempted to strike him, Kizmaru balled his right hand into a fist, thrusting it into the worker's face within range. His armor's Overdrive function would function as normal as he would increase the force of his punch, sending the worker flying backwards ten meters into the wall of the rom. He wasn't quite sure if he was unconscious or dead but he knew that he'd be taken out of the equation altogether. The two in front of them had witnessed the events that transpire which made them turn their head to look at their fallen comrade. This made them hesitate for a bit before turn back towards Kizmaru. A wide grin under his veil and metal mask had surfaced as this was a good time to show them how outclassed they truly are at the moment.

Stepping lightly making sure he made no sound, Kizmaru's aura of chakra began to flare up as he walked towards the remaining two. A turquoise colored aura began to emanate from his person as it took the shape of a sea serpent with yellow eyes behind him. This made the workers tremble with fear and prevent them from advancing towards him for the time being. It didn't really stop Kizmaru from approaching them as he knew they wouldn't approach him out of their own fear of him so he'd do it for them. He wasn't sure where this new found sadistic side came from but he figured he'd enjoy the moment while he was in the mood to do so. As he got in striking range of them, one attempted to strike Kizmaru with a long piece of iron pipe. Maybe he thought since it was harder than the previous worker's makeshift weapon but all it served to do was get bent, literally. Once again, Kizmaru decided it was his turn again and performed the same action as he previously did by punch this worker in the face, sending him soaring across the room into the last worker that attempted to strike him. Now there's was one more of the workers in the room with him.

W.C: 438

After walking around the area once or twice, Keita had figured out that there was no where else to go inside, and so he figured that he would do a once over outside, just so that he could make sure that no one was hiding in the trees or some such in the surrounding area. Taking a cursory glance around the room where they had agreed to meet, which was towards the entrance of the fortress that Keita was heading towards now, he noticed that Kiz was not there at the moment, and seemed to be more busy that he was. Keita figured that he was busy because of the area he chose to inspect, which was the largest of the areas in the fortress, and so there were probably a lot more workers there. Since Kiz was not here at the moment, Keita walked towards the door that led them into the fortress in the first place, and soon the door was opened, the harsh winds buffeting his face and sending a chill down his spine as he walked out. He started to hone his senses, as these workers did not have any way to hide their chakra signatures that he could see, and the wood and precious materials that they stole did not have these properties either, so he was sure that they would not escape the basic chakra sensory technique. 

Keita wandered around the outskirts of the fortress, and because of the intense cold and winds that were rushing around the area, any person that walked out of here without some sort of plan or way to make some heat were going to be dead in only a matter of minutes. Luckily Keita's armor was made from an almost magical silk that kept out energy for the most part, he was relatively safe, although he was quite a bit cold. Keita spent a couple of minutes walking around the outskirts before confirming that there was no one else here, as any fires that were needed to be started to not freeze to death would emit smoke, which he would be able to see from a very far off distance, and there was none. Keita went back to the meeting area, and he assumed that Kiz would be done and there, and in which case, he would nod to him before telling him what he had done, including the subdual of all of the workers in the two side rooms as well as going outside and checking around the area to make sure they had gotten them all;. He had confidence in his friend Kiz, so he was certain that there were no workers at that time, and Keita would be teleported out with the help of the Hollykage.

Exit 
Total WC: 2660/2500
Claiming 52 ap from max stats
Claiming Senju Wood and A rank jutsu ticket from mission
Claiming Water Shark Bullet with 1500 words
Putting 1100 words towards Suiton: Soap Bubble Ninjutsu, claiming the C ranked version
Claiming 500 ryo for Jounin