Kirigakure Academy: A-maze-ing Tuition

Mission Name: Kirigakure Academy: A-maze-ing Tuition
Rank: E
Mission Location: Kirigakure Academy

Challenges: Arc
Task:

So you’ve had your first day, you’ve likely failed to impress but maybe this is your opportunity to get even. It’s time for a field trip.

Little do the Students know that this field trip is quiet literally a field trip. They are taken to large field, a Maze appears from underneath them, tearing through the earth.As if this wasn’t scary enough. A mist expands from the centre outwards. Those the mist touch disappear and then - a hideous scream takes their place.

The mission: escape.


Word Count Requirement: 500
Reward:1250 Ryo / 6 AP

Character Requirements: Kirigakure Academy Student, Completed Boot Camp
Character Exclusive:

Ryusame stepped off the small boat and looked around. The islet seemed to be barren, just an large field covered with a short grass that clung to the sandy soil. Where exactly they were he couldn't say, although it must be somewhere within the confines of the village proper. He shuffled a bit away from the group of students and pulled his hood down to ward off the sea breeze. There were fewer students with him than he had expected. I guess the instructor wasn't kidding when he threw those kids out, he thought. The anxious knot of energy he had felt during the entrance exam began to tie itself in his gut again.

Despite how the first class had started Ryusame still had not taken to heart the lesson it should have taught him. He did not pay attention to his surroundings, meaning that he never noticed that the instructor hadn't gotten off the boat with them, or that the boat had begun to move back out into the channel. His thoughts were on the small red crab crawling at the water's edge when the earthen wall erupted from beneath his left foot, sending him sprawling to the ground. A few students chuckled at him, but most were fixated on the smooth arc of wall that stood ten feet high between them and the shore where they had landed. It cut in to the islet about fifty feet to either side of them to form a semicircular barrier punctuated by a half dozen exits.

Ryusame had just pushed himself back to his feet when the mist erupted from the approximate center of their enclosure and started boiling out in a dense gray wave. Most of the students nearest the mist stepped back cautiously, but one was too slow. The mist seemed to divert towards him just before the moment of impact, reminding Ryusame of the sudden, darting motion of a shark. His scream cut through Ryusame to his marrow in the heartbeat before it was strangled short. "Shit!" he swore, and tore off towards the leftmost exit, the one nearest to him.

At first it was just a mad scramble. Students across the clearing ran for exits of their own, and the mist surged in cold waves at their heels. Ryusame made it  to the first turn with just a few yards to spare and flung himself to the left. I can't stop moving, he realized. While he had quite a decent supply of chakra for a Student he would wager that he was the slowest person in the entire Academy, if not the Village. Fortunately he new the basic trick to escaping a maze, and fixed his attention on the left side wall. Whenever he was presented a choice he followed it no matter the direction. To his relief he seemed to be gaining ground as he drove deeper into the maze, the mist evidently slowing behind him, but he didn't allow himself to risk a break.

After all, I don't know what might be ahead. This trick only works as long as I can walk back from dead ends, and the if the mist closes me in.... He shook his head. No point in worrying about that. I'm not fast enough to stop and come up with a better plan, and there's no guarantee that there even is a winning strategy here. They might just be watching us squirm, seeing how we deal with the pressure.

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Word Count: 579

Ryusame had lost track of how long he had been running through the maze. Overhead the sky was dark with the beginnings of a thunderstorm, making it hard even for someone accustomed to overcast skies to judge the hour. Rather than being pushed to the brink though he found himself in a kind of meditative haze. His body ran mechanically, needing little conscious effort, leaving his mind carefully balanced between tracking the mist behind and the path of left hand wall ahead. At first the calm had been periodically shattered by a terrified scream, but it had been a while since that had happened.

It was maybe because of this zen state that he didn't immediately notice that he was running through a passage much wider than all the previous ones. Slowly he started noticing other details, a faint drop in temperature, a soothing pulse of tide currents at the edge of his hearing. He snapped back to himself and began looking around, noticing with a lurch that the path ended in a dead end. Without meaning to he came to a stop as he searched for the next turn, following the wall around behind him.

The lurch in his gut went into free fall as he realized that he was completely boxed in. Behind him the mist had slipped around the last branch from the main path he found himself on, and worse it seemed to have regained the speed it had out in the open. Ryusame gave a garbled cry that was equal parts curse and animal fear and started for the dead end again, pouring on the last bit of speed he possessed in a desperate, mindless bid for freedom. Despite knowing that is would do him no good he looked back at the mist. Darting plumes knifed from its leading edge, falling less than an arms length behind him. Adrenaline poured through his veins as he fought to gain ground.

A dozen paces from his inevitable doom he realized that the corners of the dead end didn't look right. There was something off about the shadows, an error in the edges of the wall that gnawed at his brain without purchase. Fear was the only thing in his world as he drove onwards, crashing bodily into the barrier of earth before he realized that the passage did not end here at all. He scrambled to the left and through the new opening, some process in the back of his mind working out that someone had placed an external wall an arm's length out from the end of the maze. The deception was simple but effective, and that same small part of him that had risen above the fear to work that out guiltily admitted that it probably would have worked if the mist hadn't forced his hand.

"Now I was sure that there was no one else coming out," a bored voice said from somewhere off to his right. Ryusame began stumbling to a stop and looked around. "I don't think I've ever seen someone cut it that close. If I were you, I'd put some serious thought into getting faster. The last student beat you by a full five minutes." The instructor caught Ryusame's shoulder, stopping the last of his momentum and redirecting him to the boat moored in the channel beside them. "But you did manage to complete the mission."

"Thank you, sensei," Ryusame mumbled. With a bit of difficulty thanks to limbs still operating on quick twitch adrenaline mode he clambered into the boat and dropped into the first seat he could find. As they pulled away from shore he noted that there were far fewer students than on the trip out that morning.

[Exit]

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Word Count: 621
Thread Total Word Count: 1,200 [621 + 579]

CLAIMS
Mission Word Count: 1,200/500
Rewards: 1,250 Ryo, +6 AP
Claiming Milestone "Hit the Ground Running"

Improvements:
Vigor +6: 600/600
Speed +3: 300/300
Chakra +3: 300/300
Total Stat Cost: 1,200 Words

Jutsu:
Jutsu-Body Flicker: 500/500
Jutsu-Tree Climbing/Surface Walking: 250/250
Jutsu-Rope Escape Technique: 450/500
Total Cost: 1,200 Words

Ryusame Namito wrote:
[Exit]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Word Count: 621
Thread Total Word Count: 1,200 [621 + 579]

CLAIMS
Mission Word Count: 1,200/500
Rewards: 1,250 Ryo, +6 AP

Improvements:
Vigor +6: 600/600
Speed +3: 300/300
Chakra +3: 300/300
Total Stat Cost: 1,200 Words

Jutsu:
Jutsu-Body Flicker: 500/500
Jutsu-Tree Climbing/Surface Walking: 250/250
Jutsu-Rope Escape Technique: 450/500
Total Cost: 1,200 Words

Approved!

Footnote: Milestone Reward claim declared on PC's Stat Page → here.