There be monsters [Mission, P]

Spoiler:

Keita seemed to always walk around the village, especially when he was idle, as doing so would calm his mind and allow him to steady himself for training. A calm mind is a strong mind, and his was like an iron fortress, and it was because he would find the time to relax and calm his mind that he was able to keep up this state of mind so frequently. He did not like the idea of constantly thinking about how to get stronger, and how to prepare for war, although he was forced to do it. He had a different way of training that most other people, and to always keep calm and relaxed was a facet of this training method. With a calm and serene mind, he once again made his rounds around the village, saying hello to the civilians and the shinobi that resided therein, and they greeted him back with warmth, well most of the people, anyways. There were quite a few ninja that had eccentric personalities, so there was no use expecting them to be warm and fuzzy like the majority of the village, but Keita accepted that easily, as he was an eccentric, in his own way. For the past few weeks, the village was abuzz with a couple of rumors about some sort of monster or monsters, that seemed to sink the merchant vessels of the surrounding area, and eventually this became such a big problem, that the village had posted a high priority, high reward mission for it. Keita did not like the atmosphere that such a terrible rumor made around the village so this time he decided to take matters into his own hands, and accept the mission himself. On the way to the mission board, it started to sprinkle, and it seemed like the clouds were darker than that, so there was definitely going to be a storm on the horizon, and Keita was siply going to enjoy the rapidly ramping up of the weather, as he had always loved the weather of the mist village, especially when the weather was going to become a storm. Keita got to the mission board, slightly wet, although his armor blocked quite a lot of the water since it was made of the highest quality materials that seemed to be nearly waterproof, there was still some dampness felt through his bones. 

Keita greeted the woman at the front desk casually, before talking about the mission and the rumors. Apparently no one had actually seen any of these so called monsters, but there was definitely something out there making the ship disappear, as they were having something happen to them at a frequency which made it disconcerting, and there were even companies and people preventing their ships from going at for the moment, as they did not want the profit from the sh9ips to suddenly disappear to the unknown. Keita wondered if he would actually see such a monster, and if there was such a monster, if they had tamed it or something of the sort, what would sort of profits or benefits would this bring to the village. Keita started to wonder that as he officially accepted the mission, and the girl behind the counter had stamped a mission booklet that he kept in his coat pocket that signified that he was a jounin and that he had the rights to accept any mission even if he was solo. Keita thanked the woman, and talk3ed for a couple of more minutes about pleasantries, before carefully explaining to the woman that he was not going to take her out on a date, and then simply left. She seemed a bit sad, but understanding, as Keita did not know if he was going to die the very next day or not, he even had a sudden realization that he could die today, to whatever sort of strange monster was going around sinking ships, but he was unafraid. HJe lived with the threat of death almost every single day, and this was even more so for the trip to the sand village that he had just gotten back from recently, as some of the most powerful people in the shinobi world, at least to the concern of the public, were all against them and in a single room, so there was a possibility that a lethal fight broke out in the room, and he was not likely to survive such a conflict at such short notice, he had yet to increase his strength to a degree that he felt comfortable, and so he was not optimistic about his chance. 

This mission, however, was something that he had full confidence in doing, as a beast was limited by the amount of cunning and intelligence it could have, unless it was one of those beasts that were so intelligent that they could be used to form summoning contracts with, but if there was a beast like that, he did not think that it would go around sinking the ship of the ninja village, as this would only invoke their anger and have it die faster. He did not think that a beast or monster that intelligent would go against a ninja village, as even a lot of the bijuu would not think to go directly against a major ninja village, let alone a village that was as strong as the mist village. Keita mused these things as he casually walked towards the docks of the village, as the area just outside of the village was where this mission would take place, and the location where all of the ships had been going down recently. He would charter a boat to get him fairly close to the location, but not close enough to be considered threatening to the boat and the fishermen on it, before he would hop off and explore the ocean surrounding it on his own. He would be faster than an average fishing boat anyways, so he might as well go and explore by himself and not involve anyone else in what seemed like it would be some sort of dangerous. As he made it to the dock, he was deep in his thoughts, and did not really notice the people greeting him, saying things like, oh, hello Mr. jounin, how are you, and other pleasantries, as he was still racking his brain about what it could be. He snapped out of it before asking around the docks about the incidents, as they were more likely to have better detailed information regarding the missing boats, and soon Keita started to piece things together about what might have happened. There were always no survivors of these boats, they had disappeared suddenly and without warning, and there were never any signs of battle.

This was strange to Keita, as if there were never signs of battle, and never any debris or bodies, or even piecews of people, washing up ashore in various places, where did the rumor start about it being a monster. This did not seem like any monster, as this was far to thorough to be some sort of beast that was sinking ships to get its lunch, as there should be some sort of debris washing ashore, or even increased shark activity in the area, but when Keita inquired about that by asking around, there was also no increased shark activity, meaning that the waters around the area did not have an extra amount of blood. This led Keita to believe that this was something man made, and could just be a rumor, although he would still need to investigate it himself, although he had to be far more careful about it this time. Instead of chartering a ship, he would simply wander around, before pretending to go out onto the ocean with a fishing vessel, before using the transformation technique to take the appearance of a random dock worker. Keita could blend in fairly well, as he had often been around all areas of the village and asked them about their profession, and he was well learned in all manner of things, and so he fit in just fine, not attracting any unwanted attention. This would give him the chance to look around and essentially spy on the people in the area, and see if there was anything shady going on that the people here did not want a shinobi of the village to know. Keita had very good eyes, not as good as the sharingan that seemed to be everywhere these days, but really good eyes at least, and he knew how to blend in, and so after a while, a couple of hours of working in fact, Keita overheard someone say that they were going to take their boat out to the waters that were forbidden currently. The waters were not actually forbidden, but it was more of a term that described that they were going to die if they went out there, but this person did not seem afraid at aal, and simply started heading towards his boat. Keita noticed which boat it was, and stealthily made his way towards it. 

Keita easily walked into the storage area on the boat by disguising himself as a stone before hand, and then snuck into the cargo bay of the boat. There, he simply used the transformation technique again to become a bit of rigging, before setting himself up on one of the walls. He was going to simply wait and observe if anything happened to the boat when he was out at sea. After a while of the swaying of the boat, Keita had seen quite a few people enter the cargo hold and start organizing their cargo into various crates and barrels, and Keita wondered what they were up to. This ship should have unloaded all of its goods back at the village, and yet there were plenty of goods here, and suddenly Keita thought that his earlier hypothesis was correct, and that there was definitely something man made happening here. Keita was sure now that there was something going on that involved the random dock workers, and that they were probably not disappearing through some strange act of monster or weather phenomenon, they were disappearing by themselves, and somehow making a profit from selling goods that belonged to the village, which meant that Keita was probably going to be the cause of this boat sinking this time. Keita was more than a bit aggravated by the villagers not knowing what was good for them, and thinking that they could pull one over on the shinobi of the villages, but they were gravely mistaken. Keita was waiting, and it seemed that no one had come to the storage area in a while, and Keita wondered what exactly they were doing, perhaps they were done with the organizing of the goods, and there seemed to be something happening on the bow of the ship that had everyone's attention. Keita ended his transformation before silently heading up the stairs to the deck, and started looking. It seemed like the villagers were meeting with some other people and they were discussing something, and Keita saw in the distance that they were currently docked at some small island or cove somewhere in the ocean. As Keita was looking about, it seemed that they were striking some sort of deal, and after that they would most likely come for the cargo in the depths of the ship, and so Keita made sure to hide back down in there. He was going to make himself look a little different this time, as the transformation technique was so versatile that it did not require much planning, as the ninja could simply hide as anything and be safe from inspection, unless the other person was some sort of investigator or a shinobi themselves, other than that, the disguise was very good.

Keita decided almost at once to transform into a bit of the goods that they were selling to whoever they were working with, which was some of the currency the village used, which was ryo. The small bits of metal that the ryo was composed of proved no difficulty for Keita to transform into, so he became one of them, and put himself in the box with the ryo. The crate's lid was slightly ajar when Keita had slipped in, but that should not be a problem, as the money was most likely counted already, and if it was recounted, a single extra ryo token would not cause any suspicion, the people that they were trading with would probably liken it to a good surprise that they had to do no extra work for. As Keita suspected, the open lid of the crate that he was in was quickly shut again, and he only heard a couple of things as he was carried over to a new spot and put down. He was unsure exactly where he was, but he memorized the amount of turns and the sounds that were made, knowing that he went straight for a while, over some sort of bridge, and through two doors, turning left and then right, respectively, to get to his destination. This took a little over four minutes to do so at a normal pace, so he suspected that he was not very far from his initial location near the harbor. Keita waited around ten minutes after he heard some noises, and it was completely silent, before deciding that now was the time that he would come out of the crate and inspect his surroundings. Keita stopped the current transformation technique he was using, before hopping out of the crate, although the lid was forced off during him returning to his original size, and he caught the crate lid with relative ease and finesse, before landing silently on the ground. The mist ninja were known for one of the most deadly things that he could think of, and that was the silent killing technique that Keita was practiced in and using right now. Not making any noise or even vibrations with his body, he would leave no tracks for them to use against him as well, and all of his actions were silent.

Keita placed the lid back on the crate, before having a look around. It seemed that he was in a hastily made warehouse type area, as there were no wooden walls, and it seemed like this was simply the back end of a cave inside of a large mountain jutting out of the ocean. There were quite a few shelving areas that stored all manner of goods, from weapons and armor to salted meat and fish, to travel supplies such as tents and the likes. It seemed like this place was a meeting area or storage area for some sort of military troops, but Keita wondered where exactly this was, as the information reports that came in every once in a while did not detail a place like this that existed, and it seemed that they were farther than he thought initially. The ship they were on must have been able to et a strong head wind during travel, or they would not have been able to go as far as they did with just that fishing boat, but no matter. Keita continued to look around himself, and it seemed that there was quite a bit of money here, a rough counting of it showed nearly ten thousand ryo, which was quite a substantial amount for a small force such as this one. Keita was unsure though, exactly how many people were involved in this operation, and wondered what they were up to, as something like this had been brewing just outside the mist village for quite some time now, as Keita remembered he started to hear the rumors about three months ago, but they were small and few and far between in the frequency at which they were told around the village. This of course needed to be quashed, but Keita was unsure of how to deal with it at first glance. Killing them all was a very easy solution, but Keita thought about it and wondered if these people were all independent, or if there was some sort of master mind behind the whole thing, and killing them all would most likely spook whoever was behind this into hiding, and potentially doing all of this again, but with greater caution. Keita wondered that as he wandered around the area with his armor down, masking his face, not that it mattered if they saw his face or not.

Keita just considered himself a cautious and patient man, so he would have his face covering on at all time when combat might be happening, and it was definitely going to happen if he was spotted, which was fairly unlikely, but Keita would take no chances. He was very confident in his armor to take everything that these people had to throw at it, so the only way they could pull one over on him is if they had something that hit him in the face while his covering was not on, so he made sure to do that first, before making the rounds around this base. It was the inside of a cave that seemed to be naturally hollowed out of the mountain, and it he was in the very back of this large cave. He saw that the walls of the cave were all rough mountain, so there was no reason to put wooden walls around everything, so there were large sections of the cave that connected into each other. The room he was in was about thirty or so meters in diameter, making it a sizeable treasure room, although there was only about half of the room worth of good in here, it was quite a bit. Keita must have got to them when they were in the middle of preparing for something, and he was going to get to the bottom of this one way or another. Keita continued his journey, before he saw that there were a couple of people walking towards him, and he immediately used the surface walking technique to get onto the room of the cave and stay there silently, watching what the people were doing that were walking in his direction. 

"Hey, when are we going to start the raid on the local merchant boats? We already made them think it's some sort of monster that's sinking the ships, we should be getting paid already." One of the people said, who was a fairly short, fat, and middle aged man that was starting to get a bit of grey specks in his hair and short beard. This man looked to another man, who was average height and build, but with a fairly unremarkable face. It seemed that they were both wearing the outfit of the fishermen themselves, so Keita wondered if they defected or if they were simply doing so as a disguise so that they could infiltrate the mist village before this, but before he could fully inspect and think about this, the man started to respond to the short man. "It takes time, we need the ninjas of the village to launch an investigation and find nothing first, and then keep going. Right now, other than the boats of the people that are already with us, the other merchant boats are refusing to leave the harbor until the investigation is complete. Have some patience." The average man said, before walking towards the place that Keita was at moments ago, and looking around. "We have quite the armor and weapons stockpiled for when that happens though, so it should be easy to suddenly take the fishermen by surprise, it should be any day now, I heard a rumor about a jounin poking around the docks that went out to check out the situation a day or so ago, although he will find nothing." The average man joked, and Keita resisted the slight urge to take them down and interrogate them right then and there, as patience was key. He simply kept sticking to the ceiling and listen to them walk around and chat, all the while they were writing something down on a clipboard with some paper, Keita assumed that it was some sort of list of things in the stockpile zone, doing something like keeping inventory, making sure that everything was accounted for. That gave Keita a brilliant idea, and he quickly and silently made his way towards the back of the stockpile area, which the two people had failed to reach yet.

Keita hopped down, before taking a couple of small piles of ryo from each crate and sealing them into his armor, before placing the lid back to where he found it. If they were doing stock, then they would definitely count the amount of money and find that some of it was missing, which would sow turmoil which is what Keita was going to use to make sure that he got to the leader of this place. there was definitely something fishy going on, and Keita was sure he had pieced over eighty percent of what was going on together, but he needed that final bit, because he could not for the life of him figure out how these people would hide the boats, and how they thought they were a match for the shinobi of the village. there must be some sort of trump card that was in their hands, or they would not try to do something as foolish as this, for any amount of money. He also needed to know if these people were actually originally from the mist village, or if they were some sort of spies sent there to become fishermen a long time ago, and just now started to enact their plan. Keita hid in one of the darker corners of the room, being silent and hidden as he watched the two people tally up and count the number of things that were in the storage areas, one by one. Soon, they inched forward a bit more and finally got to the place where all of the crates filled with money were, and they started to take the lids off of all of the ryo boxes before counting them. One by one, the boxes were poured out on a large table off to the side as they counted it. Then, they noticed something was wrong, and recounted the box, finding that the amount of money that was supposed to be there was not, and some of it was missing. They immediately ruled out a thief getting in and stealing it, because why would they not steal all of it. They stole just enough to where they thought the guards would not notice, but they were thorough, and noticed the discrepancy right away, before jotting it down and hastily checking the other money crates.

After checking all of the crates, they realized that a little bit was taken from each of them from someone, and they had not the foggiest idea about who would take them, as they were essentially pirates, and would kill the person who did so in public to show that this was not to be tolerated. The two counters looked at each other, obvious fear in their faces, because they were unsure if the people would believe that it was not them that stole the money, and that it was someone else, b7ut regardless of what they hoped would happen, they would have to report this to their leaders, and so they immediately walked out of the stock pile area with their clipboard swiftly, trying to make it to their leader as quickly as possible to report what was going on. Keita had decided that he was going to follow them, and moved through the cliff, about ten meters away from them at all times. there were plenty of pieces of furniture and shelves that he could use to hide against or behind, so there was very little chance they would notice they were being followed, even from the short distance, especially because they were so panicked. They seemed to be walking by other people that were doing some sort of job, polishing or grinding weapons, repairing armor or ropes, things of that nature, but they completely ignored them, as they did not want the thief to know that they were going to report him right now, and so he would have less time to escape or find an alibi. This made the two that he was following slow down their steps considerably, as they were trying their best to act nonchalant as they passed by the other people, but this made it seem like they needed to go to the bathroom very badly, or that they had some sort of stomach problem, which was partially true. The anxiety that they were feeling probably made them have stomach issues, as they got closer and closer to the small area that actually had walls put up, where the leaders stayed in a makeshift hotel or inn. 

Keita saw this building, but stopped following them off to the side because he was too deep in the enemy territory, and there were plenty of guards around here, and Keita looked around. since this was a sea cave, Keita saw a bit of wildlife around, anemones, barnacles everywhere, and the occasional crab. Keita decided to use the transformation technique once again, so that he would be able to turn into a crab, and make his way towards the make shift office that they had set up for the leaders of this base. Keita sauntered over sideways, knowing full wall that is how a crab moves, and got very close. It took him a little while to get over there in his new small, slow form, but that did not bother him much. He went off to the side, as the building which was fairly large, around fifty meters across that he could see from the front, had a couple of windows even off to the side of the rooms, which would allow the leaders to have their fare share of breeze and less stuffy inner environment for when they slept here. It seemed pretty nice, if you could handle all of the salt that would cake everything you own all the time. Keita could not see into the window near the front, but he could hear what the people were saying, and it seemed he had gotten right into the middle of a fairly heated conversation.

"...you better find the thieves, hell call over the couple of ninja on our side and have them find the thieves, they should be good at that. People who steal from me will get what's comin' to em' I guarantee that." A fairly large man with a bald, scarred head said. He had a mist ninja headband around his waist with a slash through it, indicating that he was a missing ninja from the village, or perhaps he had killed a ninja from their village and scratched that himself. This was not the first time that Keita had heard stories of normal people besting ninjas, as ruthlessness and physical skill counted just as much in real life battles as ninja techniques, which often led to overconfident genin thinking that they could easily defeat any person that was not a ninja. As Keita listened, he obviously could not see the bald man with the scarred head, but he went to a small pool of water off to the side and undid his transformation, becoming himself once again. He could hold his breath for quite a while, and then he even had a seal on his person that he could use to prevent suffocation, so there was nothing he would need to worry about for a long while during the time that he was sitting there in the water. The people all started to scramble, and a couple of ninja were conscripted to help deal with the 'thief'. Sadly for them, Keita had seen all he needed to see. Three or so missing ninja orchestrated this just so they could raid the merchant vessels every once in a while under the guise of a monster, and Keita was going to silence all of them now. It was actually quite fitting end for these people, as they worked against their village to trick people into thinking a monster was real, and they would be ended by a monster just the same. The cave that they were in barely made it one hundred meters deep into the mountain, and so he had a perfect jutsu for them, which was the epitome of the work 'monster'. Keita decided to stop hiding, and hopped out of the water before using the body flicker technique to get in from of the cave. 

A large number of people saw him and were slightly shocked for a moment, as he had suddenly appeared there in a rush of mist, as the mist dispersed around his body, as he started to form hand signs. The hand signs were done quickly, and the people there started to react, and all brandished some sort of weapons, while the two people that appeared to be missing ninjas rushed him, and the large man with the scarred head came out of his residence at the sound of all the commotion. "Goodbye everyone, it seems that the monster found you all." Keita said, before he used the numerous small pools that dotted the cave to form a gigantic, thirty by thirty meter radius shark that swiftly tore itself through the cave. The missing ninjas that rushed him did not even have time to regret before they were shredded to giblets by the crushing force of the giant water shark bullet, and it did not even pause as the giant water shark continued, swallowing and crushing everyone in its path. The buildings, if you could call them that, were ripped up from the shoddy foundations before being minced into wood pulp, and the surrounding people all got swallowed by the shark as it decimated their encampment. It flew all the way into the cave, before it impacted the cave wall behind, which caused a huge shockwave, the water spewing out of the cave mixed with limbs, weapons, armor, and ryo before the entire area was almost silent. There were only a few people alive out of the couple of dozen, as they were not in the direct path of the shark bullet, but they were still shell shocked and slightly injured from the impact and collateral damage. Keita looked at them, and immediately thought of something that could be considered pity. "Pack up all of the things that were stolen from the village, and you live." Keita said in a nonchalant voice, his smile under his mask changing his eyes into a more sinister visage. This mission was over, as the people wet themselves, but started to get to work. It would not be long until Keita got everything from the village back to where it belonged. After a great deal of time, Keita had worked the remaining three people that were left alive to the bone, as they were forced to walk around their comrades gore and body parts to find and grab all of the things that they had stolen from the mist village before putting it back onto one of the boats, which Keita would have someone else come and grab later. Then he captured them and placed them on a small lifeboat before heading back to the mist village proper.

EXIT
WC 5305
Claiming 5500 ryo from mission reward and jounin rank
Claiming Hiding in the Water B rank with 1500 words(2000 words 25% discount)
Claiming V7 Water Wall with 1,125 words (1500 25% discount)
Claiming B rank Suiton: Soap Bubble Ninjutsu with 375 words (already have C rank version so 500 words  25% discount)
Claiming B rank Water Release: Water Whip with 1,125 words(1500 with discount)
Claiming B rank Thunderclap Arrow with 1,125 words(1500 with discount)
Total WC used - 5250

Approved.