Truth Part 2[P]

Halloween Event 2021 - Doing Truth Part 2

Zaibatsu had officially gotten into the building, and after a long path that led deep underground, he had actually gotten to the first room that he could see the cultists using. The room was a fairly large room that looked almost like a ballroom, but the grey lifeless walls and lack of decorations were the only things that made Zaibatsu think that there was not an actual ball going on here. The people seemed to be quietly socializing and drinking wine, or at least it looked like wine. Zaibatsu was not aware of this, but the wine that was being drunk by these people was something that was only consumed by the people here, which was blood. A lot of the people in this room were vampires, and they enjoyed the blood a little too much. It seemed that the other people that were not drinking wine were not vampires at all, and were rather simply cultists that followed them. Zaibatsu noticed that the people that were not drinking wine were doing some small things for the people that were drinking the wine, and this caused Zaibatsu to worry. He did not know about the actual vampires or anything, so he was trying to figure out why the wine made the people seem to be of a higher social caste than the ones who did not drink it, and he wondered if the person hat he was pretending to be right now with his transformation technique was one of the ones that were meant to be drinking the wine or not. This was weighing a great deal on his wine, but he would have to shelve this thought about this for a moment, as one of the people in this room started walking over to him, and the person had a glass of wine in their hand. It almost seemed like everyone was trying to be nice and quiet and hushed, as they waited until they were very near to him before he started speaking. The person seemed a bit pale, much paler than other humans now that Zaibatsu could see their skin up close, as everyone was wearing the cultist robes with a bit of a hood over their cloak. After the person got right up to the side of Zaibatsu, Zaibatsu wondered if he was going to have to start ripping people apart with his bare hands, but the person simply started talking to him as if he knew Zaibatsu.

“Hey, go and grab me a bit more of this, would you?” the man said, with a touch of nobility to his words. It seemed like he gave off the airs of someone in a position of power, and believed that he was better than everyone else, and Zaibatsu had to really fight himself and his urge to tear this guy apart so that he did not blow his cover. He had already observed that the people that were not drinking the wine-like substance were in subservience, at least partially, to the people that were drinking the wine, and so Zaibatsu decided to play along. He simply nodded, before walking away towards the other side of the room, looking around. There were three other doors that people were walking in and out of, and Zaibatsu was worried, wondering which one to pick. If he had to fight, he would, but he did not want to fail the mission so easily, as he still had to do his best and wanted to complete it. He was still waiting on the person that was supposed to be his contact to actually find him and tell him what he was supposed to do next, but it seemed that this room was not the room that the man or woman had their eyes on, so the small symbol that he had placed on the wall would go unnoticed it seemed. As Zaibatsu was heading towards the center of the room, he luckily noticed a person coming out of the east door, and when he looked at that person, he noticed that he had a fresh drink in his hand, and walked over to give it to another person, who began sipping it intently. Zaibatsu then started to slowly turn towards that location as he was walking, making his way to the door, slowly, because he was simply matching the pace that everyone else was moving. It was pretty strange, as everyone here seemed to be going very slowly, in all things. They sipped their drinks slowly, they walked around slowly, they were speaking fairly quietly and slowly, and it was starting to weird Zaibatsu out, because obviously these people were cultists, and cultists acted strangely, but there was no reason to be this slow and quiet that he could think of. If these were the tenets the cult was somehow founded on, it was really stupid, and Zaibatsu could not think of anything that would benefit them by doing it, but it was obviously important.

Zaibatsu simply kept thinking about how he would love nothing more than to simply start ripping people apart, and there was also a desire to act like he wanted to while still trying to pretend to be a cultist. He really wanted to just ram through everyone and just walk normally,   which would undoubtedly destroy everyone around him, because he hated being slow, and he also hated being so reserved in all of his actions. These people were lucky that he was a good ninja that seemed to be actually trained to infiltrate places, but that did not mean he liked it. Zaibatsu walked through that doorway and down a hallway, and made sure to go slowly and not bump into anyone else that was walking down the hallway. He saw that there was a steady but slow trickling stream of people, and this was probably due to the fact that the people outside in the main lobby were slowly sipping their wine. This was also when Zaibatsu started to wonder why there were not any people wandering around with wine bottles, simply ready to hand people some more wine. There had to be something special about it, but Zaibatsu had no idea what that could potentially be, and all that he could do was to keep going and do whatever he needed to to go and get the wine. The hallway was pretty long, which Zaibatsu did not like at all, and wondered why this building was made to have people walk so far, especially when everyone walked so slowly. Was it supposed to be some sort of test, or trial or something? He thought that other people were going to be maddened by the slowness of everything and the long stretching hallways. Zaibatsu had no wonder why the person that told him to go and get the wine was asking him when the wine glass was still about a third of the way filled. The time it would take him to walk to the kitchen, get the wine, and then come back was enough to finish off the bit of wine he had, especially when they were sipping things so slowly. Zaibatsu made his way to the back of the long tunnel finally, and he had been hating how impatient he was getting. This was a good mission to temper his personality a bit, as he was more concerned with completing the mission as best as he could, more than he was impatient. Hopefully in a little while he would be able to completely get rid of his impatient streak, just like some of the stronger members of his clan.

They were stoic and powerful people that would speak softly but carry a big stick. The older members of his clan that seemed to master their impatience and rage were people that no one would want to mess with, which gave their clan a bit of an intimidation factor against the other clans of the area. Zaibatsu was finally able to get past all of the damned hallway tunnel system, and finally saw what he thought was going to be a kitchen or some sort of wine cellar. What he saw shocked him, but he was able to stop himself from showing how shocked he was on his face in time, as the people were sitting down and getting their blood drained. The drained blood was fresh, and they simply put it into the cups, slightly watered down with actual wine, before people would bring it back out of the tunnel to give to the people. Zaibatsu had heard of vampires before, but they were simply fairy tales. He could not come up with a much better explanation than that thought, as he remembered that the person that had asked him to go and get the wine was a pale person that had an air of nobility about him. It really was vampires, and he was unsure about why they would be here and what they were doing. They seemed to be calling the shots among the normal people, but there also seemed to be something that they were waiting for, some sort of event that had yet to happen. Zaibatsu also assumed that they did not come into this deep and dark hole that seemed to be pretty crappy just to have some sort of hushed get together, as the people seemed to be enough of a pompous arse that they would probably demand some sort of better entertainment or some sort of decorations in the least. The people that were normal were offered some simple biscuits that had some sugar on them, which Zaibatsu remembered could help you stay energized after donating blood, which was pretty considerate of them. It seemed that the lesser cultists were not just some bags of blood there for the vampires, and it was a more of a mutual partnership of some kind. As Zaibatsu was looking around the kitchen, one of the helpers, denoted as a woman in a white version of the cultist gown that they all wore, motioned him over to a table. Zaibatsu did not really care about his own blood being taken and drank, but he did not like the idea of these weird cultists having his blood. He had no idea what they could potentially do with his blood, but there was no helping it.

If he somehow denied this or did not let them do anything to him when everyone else had no qualms with it whatsoever, he would look extremely suspicious, so he simply walked over and sat down on the stool next to the person in white. There was some sort of wine glass on his left, and he simply copied what the other person that he saw before did, which was to grab the wine glass and wait for the drawing of blood. The woman looked really professional, and she decided not to talk during it, and simply pulled out a small dagger, cutting a small incision in Zaibatsu’s arm. He did not even wince, his threshold for pain was insane, and he was a big guy. The woman looked at him slightly strangely, and Zaibatsu realized he probably messed up a bit, so he simply said “Ouch” pretty deadpan. The woman paid it no more mind, and thought it was just a little curious, so she simply collected his blood into the cup he was holding in his other hand for a bit, before she used some sort of simple jutsu to stop the blood loss and seal the cut. The cut was not gone, but it had stopped bleeding, and he noticed that even genin would be able to heal him better than what the woman did, and so he figured they only knew a tiny bit of how to manipulate chakra, which was still worrisome. Even though these helpers only knew a tiny bit, that did not mean that everyone here had the same amount of proficiency in this particular ability. For all he knew, some of these people would be full fledged ninja, capable of using jutsu just like he was, and in that case he had to be extra cautious on how he was going to proceed with this mission. After the blood was drawn and wine was mixed in, Zaibatsu got up and started heading back down the long hallway from which he came. The person that he was supposed to meet had yet to show up, and so he was simply content with wandering around and looking around at things after he gave the cup to the man that wanted it back in the main room. There were people walking through all three of the doors that led to the other places in the facility, so he assumed there was nothing strange about him wanting to do the same thing. After the monotonous walk back to the main room from the long hallway, he walked into the main room once more and went back to where he was previously, where the pale man asked him for a drink. As he handed the man the drink, the man smelled it and seemed to be intoxicated immediately, taking a big gulp of the liquid. Zaibatsu cringed on the inside when he saw that man, or creature, if he really was a vampire, enjoying his blood so much, but then he remembered that the Ajin people had very powerful bodies and conducted blood rituals themselves that would be used to toughen up their muscles and bones.

There was a difference, he thought, to just consuming the blood for some sort of weird high that would not grant them any extra ability to defend themselves if need be. Zaibatsu did not want to stick around to watch the man slowly sip his blood for the rest of the night, so he immediately made himself scarce, and wanted to wander around the facility and look for his contact. The first room was already given the symbol that he needed to show that he was here for his contact, so he figured that he was going to have to go to the other rooms and do the same, slowly looking for the person. He did not believe that the person was one of the helpers that did the thing with the blood and the cups, as that would be an incredibly hard place to draw the symbol, and an even harder place to actually infiltrate yourself into this cult place, because if you had that much skill in something, even though it was considered mediocre by ninja standards, they would check your background very thoroughly and make sure you were who you said you were. Zaibatsu put that place in the back of his head for now, as he nibbled on the cookie that they had given him for donating the blood to the vampire, and soon he found himself approaching another hallway, one that went west of the facility, with the place leading to the winery to the east. The west hallway seemed to be just as long as the east one, but he could not see anyone there that was carrying anything in particular. People were simply walking to and from wherever the long hallway led, and he was unsure what was there, but one thing was for sure, and that was that this hallway was a lot more populated than the one with the wine, so Zaibatsu assumed that there was something interesting over in this direction. He had no idea how large this facility actually was, and what the people were all doing here, so he would simply have to wait and see, as the night crept on and on, closer to midnight.

If these things were actually vampires that he thought they were, then there would be something happening at the stroke of midnight, as that was just cliché enough to be a fact when things like this were involved. He had no doubt that something special would be happening at midnight, and he had a bit of an internal clock going at the moment. He only had a vague idea of what time it was, as his mind was not some sort of super computer, he simply had an inkling of how much time had passed when he had been down here. As he reached the end of this hallway, he was confronted with some sort of strange art exhibit, or at least it looked that way. This art exhibit seemed to be filled with some strange artifact, including a large scythe with three red blades attached to it, and the handle was also attached to a long rope, so it seemed that you could swing it around you like a chain. This seemed strange, and Zaibatsu looked around at the other things, such as ritual daggers, a vial of blood with a little plaque near the bottom of it describing it being from their divine being, among other things. This was also the first time that Zaibatsu had seen people show a facial expression other than blank, at least the non vampires. The vampire people seemed to have a smirk of happiness when they drank the wine, other than that, everyone seemed pretty deadpan. The people here though showed signs of happiness and of awe when they looked upon these artifacts, as if they would give their very lives for a chance to simply hold them. Zaibatsu also saw a fairly large man standing, and he had some sort of dark purple robe, as he was watching everyone moving around the room. It seemed that he was just one of the stronger people here, meant to guard the possessions in this room so that no one actually touched them. These people seemed to be fanatical in the worship of these objects, so it made sense that this facility would have some sort of guard for all of these things, and Zaibatsu assumed that he was pretty strong, as there were plenty of people in here, and if one of them started becoming a bit crazy and fanatical, he assumed a lot of people would follow their lead if an insufficient display of power was used.

It seemed that most of these people were on their very best behavior, on tiptoes around the large man in the purple robe, which showed that he was most likely the strongest one here that Zaibatsu had seen so far, but he still thought that the man must have paled in comparison to his own strength, as these people were not even ninjas from what he could tell. They were just weird cultists from a city or village that hated the ninja, or at least what the people confirmed to be “their kind” whatever that meant. They were different, and did not have the same society structure as the ninjas did, and this also meant that they had to get power a different way. If Zaibatsu knew this was some sort of nightmare dimension where he could not actually die, he would have slaughtered everyone in here in some sort of crazy flurry of blood and gore, before simply saying that he was not spotted or detected. There was no reason to fail him for being spotted if all of the witnesses were dead, right? That was Zaibatsu’s idea of it anyway. He looked around at the artifacts, making sure to pretend to be awed just like a lot of the other people in here. After making a round or two, looking at all of the artifacts in turn, he started to wander out, but he had gotten to scratch the symbol into one of the pedestals that were holding up some of the artifacts, so that he could potentially get his contact in the cult to tell him what he needed to know and what he actually needed to do. He was wondering what these people were doing, and he really hoped that he was able to go ahead and stop it. He was really getting pissed at his so called “contact” as he should have made an effort to make himself known by now, but he had not. Zaibatsu was wondering if he even had a contact, or maybe the contact had been found out and was being tortured or killed right now. Well, whatever, he could not be bothered about that, and so he simply walked around and did his usual thing, wanting to head to the final room. Just so he did not look any more suspicious than maybe he did, he decided to hang out in the main room for a couple of minutes, simply watching the other people around the area.

Soon though, he noticed that someone had slipped something into his cloak quickly, and Zaibatsu could barely register it, as if the contact was quite professional. He could tell who did it, but soon the robes made whoever did it blend in with the crowd. This was in addition to the fact that he did not want to run around looking for the person, as that would be suspicious as hell in and of itself. Zaibatsu walked around, drank some water, and then after a couple of minutes, decided to walk all the way out of the building so that he could go and relieve himself. At least, that was what he was going to pretend to do so that he could take a look at and read whatever was given to him, slipped into his cloak pocket. He took the long trek back up to the sunlight, but he noticed that it was really dark when he got out, the moon drifting in the sky quite heavily, illuminating the ground in a silvery blanket. He did notice, however, that the moon was starting to put on a slight red hue, a sliver of red seeming to be on the side of it. He nodded to himself, thinking that the clichés could not keep themselves in check, as of course tonight was going to be some sort of blood moon, and it would happen immediately at midnight. As he went to a nearby bush to relieve himself, he carefully took out the piece of paper that had been slipped into his pocket. It was a small cylinder, one that could be hidden anywhere, and soon Zaibatsu unfurled it to reveal a simple message. It was not coded or anything, but it was fairly cryptic, and said to ascend the stairs of Jashin. Zaibatsu remembered that there was some sort of Jashin symbol he knew of, as it was given to him when he learned of the mission he had to undertake in the first palace. He thought about it as he finished relieving himself, eating the paper message as he finished and started walking back.

The stairs had to be somewhere in the third doorway he had yet to go in. There was something definitely up with the blood moon, but Zaibatsu was not really a philosopher or thinker, so he decided to go back down and look at the third doorway he had yet to go to. As he entered the doorway, there was almost no one there walking the halls, and the people that were looked a bit distraught, as if something bad had happened to them. Zaibatsu was pretty sure you had to go here for punishment of some kind from the downtrodden faces that he could see going in and out. They seemed resigned to their fate, however, and simply continued walking, almost as lifeless corpses. As Zaibatsu made it all the way down another exceedingly long hallway, he was met with a strange staircase, flanked by a couple of cultists in the purple robes that dictated them to be some sort of disciplinary squad. When Zaibatsu got to the staircase, the guard on the right looked at him, and then motioned him to follow him up the stairs. The stairs had a strange symbol next to them, and he instantly recognized it as the Jashinist symbol, which made him know that this was the correct place to be. As he looked up the staircase, it was dark up there and he could see nothing of where it would lead, and simply followed the man up there.

EXIT
WC: 4064/4000
Claiming 10,100 ryo for mission and genin 
Claiming 50 ap from mission
Claiming 39 strength and 1 speed
Claiming Gate of Opening with 1476 words - Previous
Claiming Gate of Healing and Gate of Life with 2000 words
Putting 588 words towards Gate of Pain 588/1000
Claiming 10 event tickets

Approved