Pretty Plants, Potent Poisons 2 [I/O]

Mission Being Done:

Kouma woke up earlier than usual, as today was the day that he wanted to go and get some more supplies for another poison that he wanted to create, meaning he would have to go over to the mission center and take the mission to go and help the pasture that grew the poisonous flower known as Hemlock, with collecting it. It seemed that they needed quite a bit of help from outside and skilled people, as it was difficult to collect the flowers without poisoning yourself if you were a normal person, but ninjas usually had better control over their bodies than that of normal civilians, so it was less likely that they would accidentally get poisoned by the flowers when they collected all of them. With this thought in mind, Kouma had suddenly made it to the administration building where he was going to accept the mission, as he had spaced out thinking about why they would be willing to hire a bunch of ninja to go and collect these things. He calmly walked up to the line that was in the administration building, and luckily he was only third in line for the woman at the counter, and it seemed to go by fairly quickly, and soon it was his turn. Kouma respectfully asked the woman behind the counter for the repeatable mission that he wanted, and so it was approved quickly, as there were a lot of people coming in here looking for the repeatable missions.

As Kouma got the go ahead to head on out towards the pasture, he took the slip that the woman gave him as proof that he was authorized to take the mission, before heading out towards the vast farming area near the city. It took him about twenty minutes of walking to get there, and he figured that he would make it there twenty minutes earlier than the normal time, simply because he thought that the line at the administration building was going to take a long time, and gave himself a buffer, as he hated being late to things. Kouma eventually made it to the large pastures in the farming section of the village, and looked for the building he had gone to once before, which was quite a ways away from all of the other buildings, as it held hazardous plants that were not quite safe in normal peoples' hands. As he got to the front door of the garden building, he walked inside to hear a crisp tinkling of a bell that was on top of the door, and a woman greeted him. Kouma simply showed her the slip about the mission he had received, knew he was early, and the woman told him to simply wait for the allotted time, and so he did. Usually there were other ninja that showed up to take the mission, as their teams did not need to be registered before hand.
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WC: 491/1000

Madrigal awoke in the early morning and began his day in his usual way, with a hot shower, and breakfast. Today he fried up some eggs and bacon, a couple of sausage links, made some gravy and put it over toast. A high calorie meal for a very high calorie profession. It actually seemed odd to the black haired man as he ate, considering how many people he saw watching calories and eating just right to ensure they stayed skinny. It made absolutely no sense to the man. After all between training and missions one burned so many calories that in order to maintain any weight at all one had to eat almost constantly. It was truly odd to consider all of the people who refused to eat well and ended up looking unhappy all of the time. Still, that wasn’t really his problem now was it? So he finished his meal, washed the dishes and then continued on with his usual routine. Which was training. What, did you think he was going to go do a mission? Silly reader, that’s later. For now he left his home and went to the training ground not too far away from his apartment and went through several taijutsu kata’s. Truth be told he had neglected to really learn any jutsu, not really minding just going in for brute close quarters combat if necessary rather than relying on any kind of refined technique. 

That would have to change if he wanted to progress as a shinobi of course. There simply wasn’t much of a choice. For now though he was content to do physical conditioning to get his body into as good of shape as he could manage while doing his normal shinobi duties. He would pick up techniques a little later. For now though, he wanted the baseline to build those techniques off of. He spent the next hour or so going through rigorous physical training, strength training, speed training, and in general any kind of physical training he could think of. He did them viciously and with ruthless enthusiasm. Eventually though he knew it was time to get up and get going. So he wound down his training before ending the session completely and returning home. After another shower, and redressing into his usual attire, he’d worn sweats earlier. He would be off toward the mission counter. The genin shinobi wore his usual attire of a black muscle shirt with black shinobi pants and black boots. His tattoo of a bird of prey was evident upon his broad back and arms, with the head of the avian resting upon his chest, the beak just over his heart. His black hair, tied into a loose tail at the nape of his neck and his amber eyes taking in all around him.

He arrived at the mission counter in short order and when he arrived he went through the line and when he reached the front simply requested an available mission. He didn’t really care which, with the simple exception of ‘No E-Ranks’. The woman behind the counter gave him a small grin before taking a random mission scroll out of the pile and tossing it to him. He took it, looked through it and nodded in acceptance before thanking the woman and leaving. Apparently it was to gather a dangerously poisonous herb from fields. Something useful in poisons. He would also be teamed up with another shinobi from the village which was a switch for him. He nodded to himself as he moved toward the farm that was twenty minutes outside of the village. He arrived with ten minutes to spare to see a teen about eight or so years his junior. He had light blue hair and was over a foot shorter than Madrigal. Appearances however could be deceiving and the tall genin had to be ready for the idea that the unassuming young man was quite a bit more powerful than himself. Especially given his lack of actual technique in terms of any shinobi art. Moving toward the young man he would give a casual wave of his hand. His short jaw beard emphasizing the grin he gave to the boy he assumed would be his mission partner. “Good Morning, I’m Madrigal, you the one I’m picking hemlock with?” He would ask politely, placing his hands casually at his sides after he waved. 

WC: 733/1,500

For what seemed like the first time in what seemed like a long time, Taichi woke up in a bed, in the inn directly across the street from the tavern that he had spent the entirety of the night before. As he awoke he could immediately smell the alcohol on his own body. Gagging for a moment he slowly lifted himself from the bed and pulled the blanket off of him so he could swing his legs over the side of the bed. He picked himself up off of the bed and tested his balance on his own two feet for a moment, still feeling a bit of a sway from the night of drinking. He slowly stumbled over to the bathroom, where he would finally shower the night off of him and get ready for the day ahead. 

Taichi stepped into the shower, and he immediately felt the ice cold water spray over his body, shocking his eyes wide awake and felt his body sharpen and become alert. He switched the water to warm so he could more easily was himself, enjoying the heat of the water for a few moments before washing. As he was in the shower, he couldn't help but to think about where his life was going. He was still spending his nights drinking his life away and bumming around the village during the day. Sure it was easier than walking the borderlands, but there was still no purpose in his life. He had seen a flyer in the missions boards that there was a particularly interesting plant growing in the outskirts of the deserts, hemlock, known for its poisonous effect that it had on people. He had thought about going out today and picking some of that plant, who knows what kind of things his mind could come up with to do with that type of plant. 

As he was finishing his shower, his mind wandered slightly to the thought of his eyes, the new enhanced form that they had gained only a small time ago. He dried himself off as he channeled his chakra into his eyes, seeing the purple fill his eyes, the lines that surround the iris and expanding out to the edges of his eyes. He wanted to know so much of just what on Earth these eyes meant or what they could do. He was determined to learn it for himself, for he wasn't sure if he could trust anyone to teach him about them, but maybe there was somebody within the village that could help him, as unlikely as that may seem. He used his fire chakra to dry off his body thoroughly and began brushing his platinum hair to ensure there were no tangles. He still had the Rinnegan activated so he could stare into his own eyes for a moment, he was entranced, he was intrigued, he wanted to pray to the gods for guidance. 

After he was clean and you could no longer smell the alcohol radiating from his pores, he decided that it was time to get dressed and head out of the village so he could gather that hemlock, and maybe meet some people on the way. He deactivated his Rinnegan before leaving his room, not wanting others to see just what it was that he was hiding within himself. When he left the inn, he began walking towards the village gates, he wanted to get an early start on the picking, to ensure that he wasn't going to have to pick the hemlock in the middle of the hottest time in the desert, he already didn't like the heat all that much, last thing he wanted was to be stuck in the middle of the desert when it is at it's hottest.

As he neared the village gates, he heard an individual ask another if they were going to be picking Hemlock together. Taichi decided that maybe it would be nice to have some company with him as he had to walk and pick the hemlock, so he introduced himself into the conversation. "Hey guys. Name is Taichi. If you guys are picking hemlock I would love to join. I was planning on doing the same thing today anyways. Good to meet you guys." Taichi would wait for their response, he would accept if they didn't want him, an outsider to join, but he figured there was no danger in asking.

WC:739

Kouma was a little bored simply sitting there in the waiting area, but it was definitely his fault for coming so early so there was really nothing he could do about his current predicament but wait. After a little while, he saw another person, an older gentleman, enter the office where he was. Kouma wondered if he was there for the mission, and almost as if he had asked that out loud, the man turned to Kouma and responded to the thought and question inside of Kouma's head.  The man waved to Kouma, and then asked him if he was the one that he was going to pick the hemlock with, and Kouma stood up from his chair and bowed lightly to the man. "Yes, I'm Yamaguchi Kouma, nice to meet you Mr. Madrigal. Now that you're here, we can start picking the poisonous stuff whenever you're ready, senior." Kouma was about to turn to the counter with the woman there ready to give them their protective gear, and as he walked up to the counter to do so, another person seemed to walk in. Kouma had yet to turn around, but the name sounded familiar, so after a quick quizzical look, Kouma saw that the person who had just walked into the front office was a person that Kouma knew from somewhere else.

"Ahh, hello again Mister Taichi!" Kouma was a bit excited, and walked over to Taichi in a hurry. He wondered if the older gentleman remembered him, but even if he did not, Kouma would just remind him and continue with their mission at hand. "I don't mind if you join us, it will make the task easier." Kouma was glad that he could see a familiar face when he was just out and about doing missions in his off time between the rounds of the chuunin exams. Kouma did very well on the first written portion of the exams, so he was greatly looking forward to the results of the second trial, which was some sort of bell exercise, or so the rumors said. "How have you been Mr. Tiachi? I've been doing really well in the chuunin exams, and I want to know if you've been up to anything since we last spoke." Kouma was interested to hear more of the stories Taichi told, as well as discuss more in depth about the transplanting idea that he had said before. Kouma had been looking forward to asking Taichi about that for more in depth reasoning and discussion. Kouma was fascinated with those types of things, because he was already really into the more medical side of being a ninja, and the puppetry skill that he had were also based on biological things, so he wanted to know more about different dna.

Before that though, they needed to start this mission, and they could talk over picking the petals of the Hemlock flowers. This was re-iterated when the woman behind the counter sort of cleared her throat, and then told them to follow her to the next room to get gloves, masks, and the bags that they had to put the petals into. They needed to be safe, and Kouma looked a little embarrassed about his outburst.
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WC:541
1032/1000

His instinct would indeed be correct when it came to whom his mission partner would seem to be. The boy introduced himself as ‘Yamaguchi Kouma’ and Madrigal felt that he was introducing himself in the more formal tone of putting the surname first. With that Madrigal would decide to call him ‘Kouma-San’. Of course then Kouma proceeded to refer to the amber eyed genin as ‘senior’ and the man would feel his eye twitch in minor annoyance. He wasn’t that old, only twenty one. Although he supposed he was six years older than Kouma. At least at a guess. So he wouldn’t comment on it. He was just a kid trying to be respectful. With his arrival however it would seem they would be able to begin the mission and start picking the hemlock, once they had protective gear of course. Madrigal would begin to move to the counter with Kouma when another individual showed up. One that the dark haired genin recognized. Taichi Uchiha was there and wanting to pick Hemlock it would seem. Madrigal remembered the man from when the restaurant he himself had been in caught fire. Taichi had been the one to put that fire out while Madrigal had gotten the people on the second floor of that restaurant evacuated.

Nodding hi shead in greeting toward the man Madrigal would greet him. “Good morning to you Taichi, I of course have no issues with you joining us to pick some Hemlock today.” He would say before turning to collect the protective gear and a basket. Gloves, face mask, and goggles. He put everything on, gloves first, then the mask and goggles before turning toward his mission partners and nodding toward the field. “Shall we?” He would ask, his head tilting to the side in curiosity. This mission was simple enough, they would just have to be careful regarding the plants themselves. They would have to gather them carefully and when everything was said and done would have to remove their protective gear carefully as well. That was all easily handled and Madrigal got to wondering why this was considered such a high ranking mission. Was it perhaps because of the potential dangers of the plants they were picking? If so then the rank of the mission was probably indicative of just how dangerous the plants were and just how careful they would have to be.

WC: 399
TWC: 1,132/1,000

The set of shinobi showed no issue with the non affiliated Taichi joining the group, which gladdened Taichi. He could use some hemlock to improve his own weapons, so he figured it would be a win win for the whole. Both individuals were people that Taichi had met with before, which was an odd feeling for Taichi, still being new to the village. One member of the pair had asked what Taichi had been up to since he had seen him in the mines shortly after his arrival within the village. Being slightly embarrassed about the truthful answer, being that he had been spending most of his time in the taverns of the village drinking his life away and dwelling over his past, he decided to answer with a half-truth. "I haven't been doing much. Just doing some light sparring and taking a contract here and there. What about you?" Taichi would listen to whatever answer he would be given, and then he would follow the rest of the group as they began heading towards the village gates to find the hemlock.

"It's good to see you also Madrigal! Under better circumstances no less. How have you been?" Taichi was happy to be having a conversation with friendly faces, and he was excited to be taking on a mission with a group of people that could one day be his own friends.

Kouma was talking with his new found mission partners, and it even seemed that the other two had met each other before this, so with this the group had a pretty good dynamic, and everyone was friendly with each other off the bat, which was pretty rare these days among the ninja. Kouma had treated the man Madrigal with a huge amount of respect because of his upbringing, and Kouma noticed the slight eye twitch when he called him senior, and it seemed that this person might have taken offense to him calling him senior, but that was simply his formal speech, but this confused Kouma, as he was unsure as to what to call the man. The word 'Sir' seemed almost exactly the same as senior, but at least it did not imply age at all, so he would probably go with that going forward.  Taichi said that he had not been doing much of anything during his stay here, and Kouma just assumed that he was sight seeing around the city, which was pretty beautiful, if somewhat stifling in terms of certain things you could or could not do regarding medical experimentation. Kouma was quite interested in genetic modification, but currently it was illegal for the layman to perform anything of that nature, and while Kouma could see the merit to preventing that sort of thing, it seemed like there enemies or friendly rivals were modifying themselves, becoming more powerful than the purists could get, in Kouma's opinion. Kouma's view was probably skewed due to his necromantic nature, as he was used to using every available part, as it were.

Kouma responded to Taichi's question about what he had been up to, and Kouma was going to tell him about his experience in the chuunin exams so far. "Ahh, I'm part of the chuunin exams, and I got first place in the first round with the written portion, so I'm really happy." Kouma was also learning the ancient abilities of his clan, but there was not really a good way to tell the people in the room that he messed with strange resurrection esque techniques, so he just went with the normal large event that was happening in his life. Kouma was still extremely excited for the following rounds in the chuunin exam. Kouma was saying this while he was starting to put on the protective gear, and he wondered if he should just get his puppet Shogunate to collect everything for him at range, but it seemed fairly strange to not pick the flowers while his partners did so. After the gear was put on, they made their way through the building out into the field where the flowers were, which was a sectioned off portion of the garden, as the workers had to have protective gear over here, so it had a bit of its own security checkpoint. Kouma would follow the staff member to where the blooming flowers waiting to be picked were, and would start doing the job.
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WC: 504

Madrigal would listen as he geared up to pick the hemlock and as he did his eyebrows would rise in curiosity as the boy who was over half a decade younger than him commented on the Chuunin Exams that he was a part of. The taller genin knew of the exams of course, you could hardly be of the rank of genin without knowing the ways to progress beyond it. Sadly though Madrigal's own promotion to genin from the Academy had come a bit late for him to prepare sufficiently for the exams so he had been unable to take part. However he was in fact working hard to progress personally and there were of course other ways to obtain the Journeyman of rank. Still it would appear that in terms of shinobi hierarchy Kouma was his senior. He was at least a much more experienced genin if he was scoring so well while Madrigal himself was still fairly fresh. He had a few missions under his belt but not much else going for him. He hadn’t learned any jutsu of particular note as of yet although that was on the short list of things to get done and soon.

Instead at the moment he was focusing on preparing his body to handle techniques. He had a penchant for getting closer to his opponents in combat and that as such would require him to have a properly trained body to handle such encounters. While he was tall, and muscular, he still lacked the physical speed and innate durability that someone with more training and experience would have in such situations and as such he still had a great deal more physical training that he needed to do in order to be ready to start progressing truly. It was however something he was looking at fixing very soon. For now though he was here to do a mission and now that his protective gear was on he could get started. Taichi would respond to him now, stating that it was good to see him under better circumstances and asking after him. To which Madrigal would nod in acknowledgement of the question. “Pretty alright, I’m still working on my own personal capabilities as a shinobi and doing missions. I didn’t get the opportunity to sign up for the exams. My graduation from the Academy was too recent and I haven’t had enough time to prepare. So I’m hoping to obtain higher rank via other means if I can.” He would say, openly stating that he had been in the academy late, of which he felt no real shame toward.

With that said, and his protective gear of goggles, gloves, and face shield on, he would jerk his head toward the door out to the large garden of poisonous plants. “I’m gonna go ahead and get started, see you inside Taichi.” He would say, drawing attention to the detail that Taichi had yet to obtain or put on his own protective gear. With that he would enter the garden and immediately be assaulted by humidity and heat. He was glad he generally wore breathable clothing as within minutes of entering the plant sanctuary he had begun to sweat. Moving toward a plant of hemlock he would pick it, placing the plant in the basket. No one part of the plant was poisonous, the entire thing was, root, stem, berries, flowers. Even touching the plant with bare skin could cause irritation. Hence the gloves. Madrigal would fall into a comfortable pace of picking the plants, careful not to cause undue mess by scattering dirt and soil. Eventually he figured Taichi and Kouma would join him, if Kouma hadn't simply entered with him. So he would idly start up a conversation with the only individual there he hadn't met yet. “So Kouma-san, what were the first round of the exams like?” He would ask, figuring that the topic would make for good conversation.

WC: 656
TWC: 1,788

Taichi was feeling at ease with the group that he found himself within, they all seemed to be friendly, and that was more than he could say for most of his relations throughout the years that he had been on the borders. The young Yamaguchi spoke of his experience in the Chuunin Exams, speaking on the fact that he had gotten first place in the written portion, something that didn’t surprise Taichi too much as the young child seemed to be quite bright. Taichi patted the young shinobi’s shoulder and bid him congratulations. 

“Congratulations my friend. You know something, that is something that I never got to do was to be more in Chuunin exams. You do seem like the type that is quite brilliant so I am not too surprised, but never the less impressed that you got top marks.” This was when the other member of their party, Madrigal had talked about his journey of self betterment and his taking on missions to continue his skills as a Shinobi. 

Taichi knew just how important missions were in the village system, and just how important contracts were out as a rogue ninja, that was why he was continuing to take on as many missions as possible, even though he wasn’t considered an affiliate ninja, at least not yet. He had been doing a lot of thinking during his drinking binges, a lot of thinking about actually calling this village his home, if only he had the opportunity to speak with the Kage of the village. 

“Missions are essential for the self betterment of all shinobi, you are wise to continue your journey. Say one of these days, we must meet in the training grounds, Madrigal. It would be great to see just what the Genin of this village are capable of.” Shortly after he said this he donned all of the protective gear needed for the job at hand and began the actual mission. This was something that Taichi would follow as that was the goal of their meeting. He put on all of the protective gear and followed Madrigal into the gardens. He would listen to wherever the conversation would go from there.

OOC: Sorry for the delay, was pretty busy the last couple of days
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Kouma had just finished about his experience with entering the chuunin exams, and both of the people he was with responded with kind words, and Madrigal seemed to not be bummed out at all at the fact that he had missed the exams, which was good. He said he was going to pursue other means of getting to a higher rank in the village, and Kouma nodded to that, he too wondering if he should go on more missions outside of the village to get more experience once and if he got the rank of chuunin, even though he was not fully aware of the responsibilities and privileges that came with the rank, and even if he could go outside of the village by himself, but that was fine. What he was really looking forward to if he got the rank of chuunin would be access to the higher level of the archives, where actual ninja techniques and such were. That was something that he was looking forward to, almost as much as the exams themselves, as Hoshi had supposedly the best wealth of knowledge that you could get in the archives of the library.

"Thank you." Kouma would say to Taichi with a little bit of bashfulness when he said that Kouma seemed like a smart kid, as Kouma was brought up to be humble, especially in front of his elders, so all he did was thank him and move on, as this was not something that he wanted to dwell on, as his constantly calling them seniors and his fairly uptight disposition that he had showed thus far seemed to kill the mood a bit with these two. Magridal then started walking towards the back door leading out into the poisonous garden, and Kouma remembered what he was actually here for, which was to do the mission, and so he hurried behind Madrigal out into the field. Kouma was familiar with poisons, as he had seen them made and even changed the properties of the one inside one of his puppets to make it more powerful, and he wondered if he should attempt to increase his poison resistance somehow. That seemed like a scary thought the more he thought about it, so he pushed it aside for now in his brain.

They then immediately started picking the flowers, the assistant showed them what a fully bloomed flower looked like, and so it was easy to identify them and pick them. As they were working, Madrigal asked him about the first round of the chuunin exams and what it was like, and so Kouma responded quickly, trying to capture what happened in a bit of detail. "Well, it seemed like a simple written test, but the questions were all about what we would do in different situations. It seemed a bit more like an ethics test than a ninja test. There was also a coded question at the end that was also some sort of riddle." Kouma recalled the strangeness surrounding that part of the test, as he was unsure if there was some sort of meaning behind asking those questions other than just a sort of ethics question. The riddle was also strange, as he wondered when they would have to be code breakers, but perhaps it was some sort of valuable skill, but Kouma was unsure.

Kouma kept picking the hemlock, as he had done this a couple of times before this, so he was fairly used to picking them. He was a bit conflicted however, as he wanted to pick the Hemlock as fast and efficiently as possible to give some respect to the people that were there and the people who wanted the mission done, but on the other hand he did not want to leave so soon, as he was enjoying speaking to these two, they were a great inspiration for Kouma, and it was also fun talking to them.
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WC: 656