Eyes wide open.

Fri Nov 11, 2022 7:16 pm

Mission details:

After all the spiritual madness that happened in Halloween and all the supernatural, crazy stuff Jun was put through recently, it looked like that Kumo Shinobi’s high ranks were finally paying attention and trusting the young Shibasaki clansman. After all, they finally gave him a real mission. “Real shinobi stuff, at least! Jun was eager to put his ninja skills under proof in more “tactical” situations, as his latest mission involved insane situations, like rising spirits from the past, gigantic killer trees or haunted mansions.

Not this time… at least in theory. In one hand, Jun’s new mission couldn’t be more “ninja”: Jun was assigned to track down a group of ninja who were sent out to run reconnaissance on a nearby bandit camp to determine how dangerous it is for the local populace. The problem? They did not returned on schedule and were most likely in danger. On the other hand… Jun would again tag along with the flamboyant shinobi, Saturn… and every time that Saturn was somehow involved in Jun’s missions, shit went crazy.
The scroll containing the mission instructions determined that all the shinobis involved should gather at the village’s gate before heading out to search for the lost ninja party at the village’s outskirts, so that is where Jun as heading out to. He was wearing his usual, baggy clothes, but this time he was better equipped, already hoping to see some action.

While on his way, Jun was recapping the briefing he received about the mission from his captain, trying to organize the intel he provided so he could elaborate some sort of plan or strategy.

As the scout party was lost and never reported back, obviously no one knew their currently location, but Jun’s captain did provide him with the group’s final known location: a camp in the woods, near the village where Jun and his fellow shinobi fought the mutated tree. They sent a report from that location with their coordinates to the village command, saying that they were approaching the bandits' camp and that they would soon bring more information about their scouting … but since that, they completely went silent and missing.

Jun theorized that they were most likely ambushed, because all of the ninja sent to this scouting mission were very seasoned and would never fail to report back, especially in a simple scouting mission like that one, so nearby the village. Moreover, because they were talented scouts, but not so talented fighters, they would have little to no chance of resisting a well-done trap. “Let's hope that's not the case and that these thugs are just some brainless fools...”

Only when the young Shinobi finally caught sight of the village gates did he stop theorizing. Finally, the time was coming. Jun looked around and there was only him there, most likely, his anxiety had made him arrive a few minutes early. He knew that most likely Saturn would arrive in some surprising way, via teleportation or some other crazy thing, so he just took out his pocketbook and began to read, leaning against a nearby tree, patiently waiting for his eccentric partner to arrive.

----

WC: 525

Sat Nov 12, 2022 4:14 pm

A real ninja mission, huh? Saturn scoffed as he took a sip of his black coffee and read the scroll that contained the mission briefing. He was on the balcony of his humble flat in the outskirts of Kumogakure. From behind the railing, he could see the gates of the village in the distance. He was to pair up with Jun once again. He had not heard from the young shinobi since they carried out a string of missions together with Moyasu and Z a few days earlier. Saturn had been on a much needed break after feeling as though he was being overworked with a bunch of bizarre jobs that were of little consequence to the village and did not test his skills in combat. After dealing with vultures, bears, a monstrous skunk tree and a monster house which was later demolished as part of another mission, Saturn was excited to finally be called upon to carry out a 'real' ninja mission. He placed the remaining half of his steaming black coffee on his small coffee table - every second counted and his smoke would have to wait until after the mission.

Saturn appeared next to Jun at the gate in a puff of smoke, forming the Ram hand seal - he Body Flicker'd into the scene in true ninja fashion. He was clean shaven in his trademark cyan gear - a knit cap, hoodie and pants with starry yellow patterns on them. As always, he wore his cowboy boots with the spurs on them. His face gleamed with a hint of a smile. For once, he seemed happy to be at the scene whereas usually he would appear to be bothered.

"Jun, the village called us both on this one. You won't be getting any bonus from me this time, alright?" His first words to the Shibasaki clansman perhaps made him sound like a cheapskate and a knob, but he did not mind. "As you know, the scouts were last spotted near that skunk tree, or rather where it used to be..." He sounded morose as his voice tapered off, reminiscing all the skunk he could have saved if not for the unfortunate fire brought forth by the chef after Jun's instructions to him, "As much as I'd love to catch up with you, the clock is ticking..." He looked at the moving second hand of his metal pocket watch. He peered at his fellow Genin and raised his right brow with a mischievous smirk on his gleaming face.

"You wanna wager on which one of us gets to the scene first? It's a race!"

With those words, he vanished into thin air.

WC: 442

Wed Nov 16, 2022 3:37 pm

As Jun predicted, his fellow genin Saturn showed up in extravagant fashion, in a puff of smoke, right next to him. Maybe in the first or second time he did that before, Jun got surprised by it, but now he was already used to Saturn’s entrances.

- Quite the entrance as always Saturn.

But before the young Shibasaki could anything else, Saturn looked at his pocket watch and said that they had no time, and called a race to the scout team last known location.

- Yeah sure, but let’s use our legs instead of… - and before he could finish his sentence, Saturn just vanished into thin air. – Ok maybe only I will use my legs to get there…I will learn this tricks soon, wait for it Saturn…

So Jun started running as fast as he could, knowing that probably he would never catch up to Saturn’s space-time techniques. While running, Jun activated his Tengan so he could scout the area ahead with his thermal vision and select a better path, while also avoiding any obstacles. With the power of his doujustu, Jun was able to cut through, running in the middle of the trees without getting hit by any branches or stumbling over unseen roots.

The location the scouts were last spotted was near the skunk tree that Jun, ZNe, Moyasu and Saturn dealt with the skunk, mutant tree, so it wasn’t far away from Kumogakure. After a few minutes of intense running, that location came into the Tengan’s range, so Jun could see details of the scout’s camp: there was a camp fire in the middle of it, and it seemed that all 5 scouts were chilling, seating around it in a circle… but something looked weird. Jun slowed down his speed and began to better analyze the environment with his doujustu. They all appeared to be still, not moving at all, with only one of them kind of shaking sideways. Jun knew they weren’t dead, as they all still emitted a red glow through the Tengan’s thermal vision, but he also noticed that all 5 of the scouts had some kind of cold, blue colored object around them, maybe ropes? “Sorry, Saturn. As you said, time is short or something like that…” Jun knew that it looked like an obvious trap using the scouts as bait, but he looked at the area around and he could not see anyone else near the camp, so he decided to approach it anyways.

He then proceeded to enter the camp perimeter, slowly approaching the camp fire where the scouts were around. They were all indeed tied by ropes, with tape on their mouths, and they all seemed to be unconscious, except by a single shinobi, who got extra agitated when he saw Jun, screaming something through the tape, but obviously the sound was muffled so Jun could understand it at all. The young genin approached the man and and ripped the tape off his mouth.

- IT’S A TRAP!!!!

“I freaking knew it, god dammit”. Just before he could finish his thought, Jun was surrounded by bandits, all of them with swords or other weapons in hand, ready to attack the young shinobi all at once. But Jun wasn’t afraid at all… that was actually what he was seeking. “Shit is getting real… wait, where the hell is Saturn?”

WC: 560
TWC: 1085

Thu Nov 17, 2022 12:07 pm

Saturn first hid in the bushes, using both Chakra Nullification and Hiding with Camouflage together to conceal his presence. Not only was he invisible to the naked eye, but his chakra was also undetectable to all forms of Dojutsu except for the fabled Byakugan. As he lied patiently in wait, his mind remained quiet and still. He had found both the scouts and the bandits with the use of Mind's Eye of the Kagura. While the scouts were incapacitated, he and the Shibasaki clansman would be vastly outnumbered by the troupe of bandits. He figured that there was no use in reviving the captured scouts as they had already failed to match up to the opposition. Instead, he would remain patient and wait for the culprits to make their first move. In this way, he could perhaps gain insight into their capabilities and think of a counterattack from an angle that they could not predict. His face shimmered with delight when Jun walked right into the camp as he had anticipated that the enemy would attempt to use the captured scouts as bait. Although he was slightly worried for his fellow Genin's safety, he was more amused by his brevity. Perhaps the boy he had once paid off at the bar was now the real deal.

When the tape came off of the face of the unfortunate scout, Saturn was already in position. From atop a large oak tree, perched on one of its thick branches, he could see all eight of the bandits who had surrounded his colleague. While he was tempted to wait and see what Jun could do by himself, he himself was eager to fight. He had fought ostriches, bears, sharks, and dragonflies in that order but it had been far too long since he had engaged in combat with another human being. Keen to return the favor to the sneaky bandits in kind as retaliation for their cowardly ambush, Saturn set his eyes on the specimen who was closest to the trunk of the oak tree. It would be far too reckless and unlike the Fortuneteller to make a direct attack under his current circumstances. He acted quickly to realize an improvised course of action.

Monkey, Snake, Horse, Bird. Tiger, Snake, Horse, Ram. Yamanaka hand seal. Shit, I need to think of a name for this handseal. A thin beam of invisible chakra stretched out from the Kumon shinobi's forehead, passing through his headband before spreading out in branches. When the beam of chakra touched the nape of the unsuspecting bandit, it penetrated his psyche. At the same instance, him and three of his kin that were closest to him were compromised by the signature jutsu of the Yamanaka clan - the Mind Body Switch Technique while Saturn remained fully conscious in his own body up on his branch. They each stood still in their positions with their weapons drawn; the one closest to the trunk of the tree carried a scythe, another carried a machete, another a pair of nunchucks and the last one wielded a crowbar. Once they were in the clasp of Saturn's vice mental grip, he deemed that it would be far too dull - and suspicious - to make them attack each other. Instead, he had a much better idea.

The four bandits simultaneously made a reckless beeline for Jun Shibasaki, running next to each other with no more than one meter between them. Any prepared shinobi should be able to punish their unbridled gamble. They each cocked their weapons back, keeping them ready to swing at the Genin from every possible direction. On the opposite side, behind Jun, the four remaining bandits erred on the side of caution. "Oye, oye, Kenpachi! We don't know what this kid is capable of..." One of them called out to the advancing troupe. "Stop! You're being far too careless!" Another warned his kin. "Have you lost your minds?!" The words that came out of the mouth of a buff bald bandit made Saturn chuckle before he teleported directly behind the confused quartet. He remained invisible while he threw his voice using Ventriloquism. Dragon. Hare. Horse. Ram. "Perhaps they have."

When one bandit turned his head towards the voice, a portal opened up behind him. It was blue on one side and orange on the other. A kunai equipped with an explosive tag came out from the blue side before a loud explosion took place, instantly knocking out two of the four bandits with the impact force of the blast. The two others were far too distracted to pay any attention to Jun and the four bandits who rushed him as they frantically looked around for the second Kumon Genin, but there was still no sign of Saturn.

WC: 791

TWC: 1233

Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:36 pm

…“There are 8 of them” – Counted Jun, while being surrounded in all directions by the bandits. He was constantly moving his head in all directions, scanning the environment with his Tengan. The young Shibasaki clansman was ready for some combat at least, but his foes seemed quite hesitant to attack him. He was extremely focused, waiting for the bandit troupe's first moves to counterattack, and as he learned from his previous sensei at the ninja academy, a combat was a game of patience, with reckless and imprudent moves resulting in defeat… but that wasn’t academy at all, this was the reality of the shinobi world, and defeat in this scenario meant death.

But Jun’s ambushers seemed to also understand this and were only surrounding him while slowly approaching him from all directions in a circular formation, narrowing the perimeter little by little. It appeared that they somehow respected Jun, even with him being so young, maybe because of his flaming doujustu, which Jun took to stage 2, with his eyes now conducting even more Solar Chakra through it, turning into two small fireballs emanating pure solar chakra, becoming bright yellow in the center and orange at the extremities, with his eyes now resembling in shape snake eyes, emitting a much stronger shine than in its first form, making it hard for the bandits in front of him to look straight at where he was standing.

Suddenly, the 4 bandits in front of him abandoned this circular formation and formed a strange beeline in front of him, a serious mistake strategically speaking, as they would become much easier targets for any shinobi. “They all seemed extremely organized… what the hell is going on?”. But before Jun could find a logical explanation… BOOM! A loud explosion happened from behind Jun’s position, which made him quickly glance backwards, and thanks to his Tengan’s advanced thermal vision he could see the causer of all the mayhem: Saturn! His doujutsu could detect a glimpse of the heat signature of his fellow genin, before it would vanish out of nowhere. “Quite the entrance as usual…”

With this distraction, Jun quickly turned his attentions to the 4 bandits in front of him, who all seemed scared and agitatedly looking for the one behind the sudden explosion. “This is my chance!”. Serpent, Ox, Tiger, Bird, Ram and Dragon. After doing the handseals, Jun’s Tengans started to shine even brighter, with loads of Solar Chakra being concentrated on both.

- Taiyōton: Rēzāaizu!

Jun then shot from both his eyes a powerful and blinding beam of pure, vaporizing Solar Chakra at the bandits in front of him, with such beam having a cylindrical shape and 10m in width, running 40m long before starting to dissipate in the air, causing havoc and destruction to all trees it touched on its way. After his Tengans stopped firing the bright Solar Chakra beam and the ambient brightness returned to normal, the damage caused by Jun's powerful jutsu became visible to all: all the trees on the beam’s way were either scorched or partially destroyed, with the ground also being extremely burned, with a black trail of destruction following the jutsu’s trajectory. About the bandits… only small body parts of them were left, a piece of a leg from the right-most foe and a piece of an arm from the left-most one, with the rest of their bodies being absolutely vaporized by the Jun’s Laser Eyes technique.

The other two bandits behind Jun’s position that escaped the sudden explosion from before were looking in awe to what was left of their mates, horrified by all the destruction coming out of a mere teenager such as Jun.

- WHA…WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY BROTHERS? NO NO NO, I’M OUT OF HERE! LET’S FREAKING GO, SHIBURO! – shouted one of the remaining bandits to the other survivor.

They both started running away desperately after Jun displayed Taiyōton’s might, probably heading to the bandit’s camp. “Saturn can take care of this cowards…”. Jun looked around and saw that the two bandits caught in the explosion were knocked out cold on the floow. He proceeded to untie all the captured scout shinobi, starting with the only one that was awaken.

- Tha…thanks for helping us... - Said the ninja, in a mixture of relief and a little bit of fear, maybe because of Jun's flaming eyes, maybe because of the destruction the young man had caused with his jutsu.

The young genin untied the rest of the scouts, and used the same ropes that were restraining them to firmly tie the knocked out bandits. “That was enough bloodshed for today…I’ll take this guys to the village and they will face Kumogakure’s law, which can be worse than death”. He instructed the conscious scout to awake his fellow squad members and sat near the camp fire, reflecting on what just happened… after all, those 4 bandits were Jun’s first kills ever. But besides having easily prevailed in his first real combat experience, the young Shibasaki clansman still felt… incomplete. “This was too easy… maybe only by facing other shinobi I can get what I seek…”

WC: 855
TWC: 1940

Sun Nov 20, 2022 10:32 am

Saturn could only watch in awe as the divine Rēzāaizu passed its judgment on the troupe of bandits. He had fully evacuated the parts of his consciousness that he instilled into the four bandits to control their movements in the very last second. His niche technique had a fatal weakness - had he not stopped using his chakra to maintain his use of Mind Body Switch Technique, his own limbs would have been severed along with those of the bandits. He would have been steam and minced meat. A few months ago, the gruesome sight before him would have disgusted and horrified him. Now, he was more desensitised to the gore that came with being a shinobi. He had learned that the world was an unforgiving place. The scene before instilled a sadness in him, but he would not let it show as he did not wish to be perceived as a liability to the village. "Good grief." Saturn muttered, letting an untimely chuckle escape his blue lips. As the two remaining bandits made a mad dash into the woods, he did not bother to chase them. Their mission to retrieve the scouts and determine if the bandits were a threat was already fulfilled. After their brief interaction, the Genin was sure that the amateurs were no threat to the state. Letting two of them escape was also strategic - they would tell their peers about the consequences they had to face for their unlawful activities and deter them from taking further action. Even if their story bred further hate in the hearts of the bandits, Jun and Saturn had captured two of them to thoroughly interrogate. This would give the Cloud and upper hand over the group should they wish to escalate the conflict.

After letting his teammate reflect on his actions at the camp, he cautiously stepped forward towards Jun. The apprehended bandits were tied and bound to each other using the same ropes that were used on the rescued scouts. When he reached his colleague, Saturn looked down at him with a dark emotionless stare. The boy was still in his mid-teens, but he was only an inch or so shorter than the older Genin. His eyes were blue, and his hair was blonde, just like that of Saturn's. "That was quite the spectacle. You did not hesitate. Was that your first kill?" He asked in a deep, monotonous tone. The foul stench of blood and spilled organs reeked all around them. It was a disheartening sight; another child whose innocence was taken from them by the endless killings brought on by the quarrel between the Cloud and the miscreants who opposed them. Although he yearned for peace, Saturn was in no position to point any fingers as his hands were not clean either. "Go home, Jun. I'll take the bandits to the authorities. We should interrogate them and see what we can find out about their activities." His voice was more calm now, "Just see the scouts back to the village on your way."

Behind him, his shadow clone weaved hand seals - Ram. Rat. Tiger. Snake. Bird. A weakened version of his technique Imitation Black Hole manifested in the air above, and proceeded to quickly and selectively suck in the blood, stray limbs and uncoiled guts of the bandits who had been dismembered. In a few seconds, the site was void of any evidence. He then grabbed one of the tied up bandits by his torn yukata making him open his eyes and shriek before he vanished once again, taking both of them along with him.

EXIT;

WC: 601

TWC: 1834

Claims:

Thu Dec 01, 2022 7:21 pm

EXIT CLAIMS:

2x Mission Rewards with Beloved Presence; 12,000 Ryo, 60 AP.
New Balance: 55,970 ryo

TOTAL WORD COUNT: 1940

188 words towards Smoke Veil (25% discount by having max stats)
1125 words towards Hair Needle Senbon (25% discout by having max stats)
375 words towards Storage Displacement (25% discout by having max stats)
The remaining 252 WC towards Stage 3 Tengan [636/4500] (25% discount via max stats. - I already had 384 words toward this as stated in my stat page.

Sat Dec 03, 2022 9:42 pm

Jun Shibasaki wrote:EXIT CLAIMS:

2x Mission Rewards with Beloved Presence; 12,000 Ryo, 60 AP.
New Balance: 55,970 ryo

TOTAL WORD COUNT: 1940

188 words towards Smoke Veil (25% discount by having max stats)
1125 words towards Hair Needle Senbon (25% discout by having max stats)
375 words towards Storage Displacement (25% discout by having max stats)
The remaining 252 WC towards Stage 3 Tengan [636/4500] (25% discount via max stats. - I already had 384 words toward this as stated in my stat page.

Approved

Eyes wide open.

Eyes wide open.

Re: Eyes wide open.

Re: Eyes wide open.

Re: Eyes wide open.

Re: Eyes wide open.

Re: Eyes wide open.

Re: Eyes wide open.

Re: Eyes wide open.