From the Mouth of Babes Turned Black & Blue [Self-Modded Mission]

[Saburo]

Saburo waited on the front stoop of a tenement building on the western end of Crater City, hoping whoever else accepted this mission would arrive shortly. It wasn't like the Kaguya to do things by the books, but on this particular occasion he felt that he must. It seemed sneaking a child into Konoha proved more difficult than he had originally planned. Still, the young man was chomping at the bit to get this show on the road. The priest Akahito had disgraced the already tarnished name of Saburo's home, so in the chuunin's eyes, it was only right that the man should suffer... whether or not he did prove to be a child abuser.

Of course, Saburo had no reason to disbelieve Yun's fear was without merit, so that made him just that much more volatile. Saburo could remember the abuse he suffered at his father's hands well, after all. If there was one thing that could blind the kaguya with rage, it was an unsafe home environment. Hell, Saburo meant third son and yet here he was, the oldest living sibling. That alone should tell you how toxic his idea of family values had become over the years. Granted, he killed his second oldest brother, but that didn't mean his father didn't have his hand in it.

Shaking his head to clear his mind, he checked the time by the twinkling of street lights popping on, one after another. In other parts of fire country, it was probably late afternoon at best. Here in Crater City, the approach of an unnatural dusk had arrived. Saburo would consider this the opportune moment to strike, seeing as how the priest's "day drunk" ought to be wearing off. Much later and the old man would be hitting up the bars and taverns throughout town, trying to squeeze a few drops from the grace of the the faithful. It truly sickened Saburo to think about how a man could fleece his own flock for nothing less than a quart of two of the devil's nectar.

Fortunately, the time to put the fear of God back into the priest was quickly approaching. Checking over the notes collected by some of his people, Saburo began to imagine what life looked like inside the tenement that seemed to be his target. No one could know that he was the one that actually paid for this mission, but being the person "in charge", so to speak, came with its own set of perks. Forewarned was forearmed after all... or something along those lines.

If only his people had gotten a better look inside. No worries there, though... it was the other reason Saburo had decided to enlist a little back up. Paper trails for adoption records were one thing, but having a walking, talking meat shield might prove to be even handier.

[Topic Entered]
[MFT: 426]

 

[Yume]

She didn't like the look of this thing. Staring at the mission request on not her office desk, but her own dressing table. In her bedroom. In her house. Yume narrowed her eyes at the file suspiciously, but picked it up to look through it nonetheless. Her sights darted straight for the requester's name. Saburo? He did not appear to be there by the books kind of guy. Why would he request something like this?

Yume skimmed the rest of the mission details, seeing nothing that would raise a red flag. Instead, her suspicions grew. What exactly did he mean by cleaning up Crater City? She was almost certain that he was not referring to picking up litter--not with that B rank stamped right on top.

"Oppa, you did this, didn't you...?" she muttered under her breath.

She could refuse this. She could, as Head Jounin, pawn this task off to someone else. But the blood in her nagged, as if she couldn't afford to have an unrelated shinobi take up this seemingly innocent task. With a groan, she tossed the file back on her dressing table haphazardly, and walked out of her home. Hand to headset, she buzzed in a call to her personal hairstylist.

It's not like she wanted to temporarily dye her hair, but it wasn't feasible keeping a transformation while on a mission that she personally felt that she was going into blind. Who knows who was going to try and whack her.

Another stylist dressed her for the mission, and coloured contact lenses reminiscent of her mother's eyes were the final touch. Underneath her mask was a thin necklace that held her Konoha insignia pendant. She didn't wear the headband. That was too tacky. Yume gave out a long sigh by the end of it all, and slipped out of the gates. She was running late, but she was stalling for as long as she possibly could.

Much faster than her previous travel to this forsaken city, Yume sped from tree branch to branch, then rooftop to the other until she found Saburo waiting around. She landed next to him silently. Her movements were muted, nothing like what he saw when she was an idol.

"Saburo, I presume?" Yume said, bringing her voice key lower than usual. Hopefully he didn't ask for her identity so soon, she was still figuring that out herself.

Word count: 399/3000

 

[Saburo]

Saburo bows with as much gentlemanly grace as possible.

"Indeed! Himura Saburo at your service... or should I say, yours at mine, correct?" The Kaguya smiled, but it had an icy shimmer of sorrow at its heart. Was this what it came to, he wondered... having to enlist the aid of others to further his own ambitions for a purified Crater? "Who might my lovely assistant be tonight, though, I ask?"

Saburo could care less what the kunoichi replied, but proper form dictated a certain level of a camaraderie if he hoped to achieve his ultimate goal by sundown. Hopefully the female standing before him didn't push too forcibly against the wide boundaries of his mission parameters, but odds were high that by the end of this, even that wouldn't matter. Child abuse is rarely a smiled-upon affair; surely whatever this shinobi believed in could facilitate a need to end such a threat. Nevermind that, however. If Saburo hoped to keep the mission from running off course, he had to stay ahead of it at every turn.

"I presume you're not from around here, so let me give you a brief layout of the land. I'm sure you've never found yourself living in a hole quite as deep as this one, regardless of your choice in vice, so I'll start from the dark and work my way back to the sky. Where we stand now..." Saburo spread his arms out wide and pivoted left to right, as if to present the city in its entirety. "This is what the world would call Crater City and its what many would call the slums. Project housing such as the tenement building we stand before was cobbled out of any habitable space Konoha could find in this once great village. The residents were meant to be criminals, of course, so little real care was really given on the definition of habitation."

Saburo smiled again, and paused. Lost in thought as he recalls a childhood of playing hopscotch in dimly lit, nearly deserted streets, he nearly forgot the point of his assessment of his childhood home.

"Of course, not everyone here wound up being as bad as Konoha would have you believe. Did you know that more than eighty percent of the citizens here are guilty of no crime? I mean, not all of that responsibility falls on shinobi shoulders, since most of the city's poor landed here in the crater during the Daimyo's rule, but still... eighty percent. That means that, odds are, you could wander the streets all day and not encounter a single villainous person. It is the fault of the shinobi that any of these poor souls are left to suffer and I hope to rectify that, one mission at a time."

Saburo looked at the kunoichi and noticed a surprising lack of village ornamentation. Maybe she was free-spirited enough to overlook the glory of Konoha for a moment.

"This is where you come in, miss. I have it on good authority that a man, nay, a priest... well, he's been abusing young women. I can't say for sure how far a reach his touch has had, but I do know that his adopted daughter has received multiple blows, the least of which were to her psyche. Her name, not that it should matter, is Yamiya Yun... and I will be officially requesting asylum within Konoha for the girl as soon as we can collect proof of the man's misdeeds. Any questions so far?"

[Mission Word Count: 584 + 426 (This Post + Previous Total) = 1010 / 3000 (Current Total / Needed Total)]

 

[Yume]

He appeared to be as gentlemanly as she first met him here in the city. Of course he would ask for her name, that was a given. Yume just hoped that he didn't ask so soon. She inwardly wracked her brain for a solution, until she realised the loophole she created when she signed the contract for Head Jounin.

She used her true name.

Half of it, anyway. Yume was sure to dislike it a lot whenever she's going to be working as a ninja, but if she can create a different persona far away from her idol self, then perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. Behind the mask, she opened her mouth to finally reply with her name.

"... Kiseki."

He didn't seem to think much of the name, which was probably the best thing Yume could hope for. He went on to explain the situation of Crater City. Her thoughts wandered, briefly noting how much of a politician Saburo sounded like with this spiel. Or a human rights activist?

"I see." she merely replied as she took in probably half of what he said. The name Yamiya Yun made a small blip on her radar, but mostly was lost on her. Names usually escaped her, but faces were no problem. Seeing the face of the father wouldn't quite help her either, since Saburo just said she was adopted. There wouldn't be any genetic resemblance there to give any hints.

Oh well.

"So that is what you meant when the mission objective said 'clean up crater city?' Hm." That was the only question she had, and it was rhetorical. Her manager's face flashed in Yume's mind for a millisecond and she visibly frowned. Such a pain. Such... a... pain. But of course, she couldn't let a child abuser walk free, especially someone that was meant to be from a sect of love and acceptance. Like names, the concept of religion was lost on her.

Fine, whatever. She'll take on this mission and this one mission only. Gather some evidence, take some eyewitness testimony, arrest the priest, call it a day. If that was all, then it shouldn't take too long or tax to much of her emotions. She was so done.

"Let's go then."

Word count: 775/3000

 

[Saburo]

Saburo would take this moment between explanation and execution to lay out some basic strategy for the mission ahead. He didn't try to act as grandiose in his examination of the mission parameters, but would rather focus on the task at hand. Those that knew the Kaguya were aware of his sudden shifts in personality, but it always seemed to come out of the blue. One minute he might be all jokes and snide remarks, but then the next, he would be all brass tacks and business. This was obviously one scenario where the chuunin took his responsibilities seriously.

"I'm not here to tell you how we should go about this mission, but I will make it known now that I don't believe this is a man that deserves to be walking free in a few months. My plan is to simply go door-to-door, disguised as a poor sinner in need of a rekindling of the spirit. Some of the apartment owners might not know the priest in question, but every door that proves to be a dead end will lead us one step closer to the door we need. Hopefully, it won't take long before a well-meaning neighbor rats out Akihato, but even if I just stumble into the right door by instinct, you might consider a couple different options to help ferret the man out."

Saburo pulled out a set of prayer beads from his jacket pocket and slipped them around his neck. He then took his jacket off and placed it in a neat pile on the stoop, revealing his rather worn clothing previously hidden beneath. He immediately looked like he belonged in just such a rough part of town, but appearances are deceiving. Odds are, he chose just such an outfit prior to coming out simply because it worked best for the situation. When he righted himself and looked back to Kiseki, he grinned.

"The way I see it, we can go into this one of two ways: together or apart. If you'd rather have us stick together, I was thinking we could play the young couple in need of counseling. A man racked with spiritual guilt might be looked upon in a negative light by some, but a man with his beautiful bride elicits far less suspicion. Of course, there are always the fire escapes as well. I could cause a scene in the hallways while you venture from window to window looking for signs of our alcoholic priest."

Saburo thought hard about what might give away the presence of just such a man, using what little information he had gleaned from Yun and what further intel his goons had managed to supplement. The man seemed to be QUITE the booze hound and did very little cleaning for his own sake, plus he was apparently convinced that "the end was nigh," if you could believe the rambling stories he told of demon spawn...

"If you go that route, look for beer bottles on the fire escape. The girl would never risk being out on such a ledge for fear that Akihato might push her to her death, but I do know he is a smoker and that he leaves bottle after bottle in his wake, so it's as good a place to start as any. Also, check windows... if he truly believes his daughter is a demon, there's bound to be some sort of seals around. Hell, maybe he even has scripture glued to the panes. Either way, it's definitely go time."

The Kaguya slumped into his role as beaten-down churchgoer and clutched at his beads while he shuffled towards the tenement building. Should Kiseki follow him, he'd listen to her opinion on how to best approach the obstacle of the room-to-room search, should she provide one. If she elected to go from apartment to apartment by way of fire escapes, Saburo would simply stick to his already established plan.

Surely the building hosted no more than a couple dozen apartments. No way could this take all night.
[spoilername="Mission Parameters"]The tenement building in question has eighteen apartments in all. Each side of the building has three apartments per floor and even though the building is four stories tall, the ground floor is something of a lobby/ communal living area. Several apartments will be empty, but each needs to be checked just in case someone knows something.

It is up to the participants to decide how many apartments they would like to check per post, but a minimum of three should be observed in order to hasten a quick resolution to the search.

Each unsatisfactory search will lead to a 20% chance increase in uncovering telling information about the resident in question, starting at 10% and growing greater per apartment investigated. Apartment 2 would have a 30% chance of revealing the location of the priest, Apartment 3 will have a 50% chance, etc.

Details of the man's appearance and that of his domicile will be left up to the participant that first happens upon his domicile.[/spoilername]


[Mission Word Count: 673 + 1010 (This Post + Previous Total) = 1683 / 3000]

 

[Yume]

Yume scratched her cheek, considering the possibilities on how to approach this so-called mission. She was doubly confused when Saburo stripped, revealing his worn and tattered clothing underneath. A hand of hers raised up to mouth as she chortled shortly, even though it was already covered by mask.

She gestured to her appearance, showing off the well crafted outfit that probably looked like it would stand out real quick in a setting like this. The beautiful bride comment was brushed off and ignored. "I don't have a change of clothes. So, being a couple in need of counselling would look doubly suspicious in my eyes, since..." Saburo looked way out of her league to be a significant other. "... We don't match so well. I'll take the fire escape."

Hm... Was it racist to expect that she'll find every balcony full of cigarette butts and broken beer bottles?

Her ears perked up at the mention of demon seals though. Should she be worried? Her blood was heavily diluted with human though, so if they were real and powerful seals, the worst she would feel was a tingle in her arm... probably. Nine times out of ten though, the seals she finds in life are nothing but squiggles.

"I understand," she said anyway.

The girl watched Saburo shuffle off into the tenement building until he was out of sight and sighed. With a powerful launch of her legs, she leapt up the side of the building, grasping onto the ledge of one of the balconies on the first floor. Yume vaulted over into the balcony, finding herself face to face with a young man crouched against the barrier and smoking a cigarette. He blinked at her. She blinked back. Then she smiled from behind her mask and raised a hand in greeting.

"Hi. You wouldn't happen to know if a drunken priest lives in this building would you?"

He shook his head silently, inhaling his tobacco casually like this encounter happened on a regular basis.

"I see," Yume mumbled. "Thanks."

She hopped over to the next balcony. No one was here.

By this point, Yume was already getting bored and thought of switching up this meticulous system of checking each every one of these apartments. Perhaps using Saburo's profile would speed things up. Or make her look more prejudiced. Ah... If only she inherited her mother's sixth sense for these kinds of things. Instead, she got time warping.

Yume climbed one floor higher, briefly scanning the windows for wooden planks or balconies with bottles of alcohol or cigarettes. There was one, she noticed, stepping carefully in between the bottles. The door was open though. She peered through into the apartment to see a figure slumped over on the tatami mat floor, though a shock of warning made her pull back almost immediately. A bottle flew out from inside. It narrowly missed the girl's nose as it whizzed by, followed by some incoherent and slurred yelling.

Never mind. That was a woman.

Word count: 1275/3000

 

[Saburo]

Saburo shrugged off the comment about how Kiseki was no sort of match for him, mostly because it was entirely factual. Plus, he knew that it was far more efficient for the shinobi to approach this mission from a variety of angles. Stepping foot inside the apartment building, he initially decided to head straight to the top floor and work his way down. Once inside, though, his plans changed drastically.

"Is that a bulletin board, here of all places?"

The Kaguya walked across a floor littered with discarded clothes and trash and went straight to the bulletin board, hoping to see some posting about spiritual counsel. Other than a brief mention of some psychic trying to drum up business for her work with the spirits, though, it seemed to no avail. That would have been the end of his search too, had he not realized a fundamental truth regarding psychics. Who would be more ingrained to gossip among her peers than someone who fleeced her friends with faux readings based on nothing more than hallway chatter, after all?

Taking in the psychic's room number, he proceeded to the second floor, hoping she could contact the living as easily as she could contact the dead. Room 204, home of Madame Yori... As the chuunin came to the door he was searching for, he went to knock only to be startled by a call from inside the apartment.

"Come in, my child. I have been expecting you."

Not one to be fooled by some parlor trick, Saburo scanned the hall for some sort of video recording devices. Nothing seemed to stand out, but he was sure there was more to this story than actual psychic detection. Regardless of how Yori knew he was outside her door, Saburo chose to step foot into the medium's lair anyway. Incense coated the air the young man tried to breathe and beaded curtains hung from any doorways leading from the main room, but little stood out about the place besides the woman.

"That's some talent you have there, Madame Yori. How did you know I was going to be stopping by? Even I didn't know until mere minutes ago."

The buxom female seemed slightly flustered at the sight of Saburo, so in a way it proved his question to be more rhetorical than anything. It was apparent to the dark-haired lad that she didn't realize it was a stranger at her door at all. He just showed up in place of her actual appointment.

"Dearie, we in the business always have a sixth sense regarding those out of place in this mortal realm. Normally, I sense the dead, but every once in a while, strange visitors of an earthly sort prove just as noticeable."

Saburo laughed lightly and openly applauded the woman's showmanship. For all this psychic knew, he could be an addict looking to score, but she was nothing if not a master of her trade. Anyone could be made into a client with the right words of wisdom, he guessed.

"Well sister, I find it fortuitous to hear you admit to such things, because I am indeed strange and of the earthly sort, but hopefully you are equally aware of strange men elsewhere in your building? I seek one of your neighbors and I thought only an esteemed spiritual counselor such as yourself might no where to find such a man that would dabble in a similar field. Perhaps you know the man I seek, a priest of sorts with an obsession for demonology and a penchant for the drink?"

The voice that answered him didn't come from the voluptuous woman sprawled before him on a tattered if not regal chaise lounge. Instead, it came from behind him. For a split second, Saburo almost thought the spirits were indeed alive and well in this domicile. Then he realized this must be the visitor Yori was actually waiting on.

"Pretty sure you mean that weird dude that barred up his windows with boards. He's in the apartment adjacent to mine and when he's not throwing liquor bottles at the wall separating us, he's belittling that daughter of his and talking about demon spawn."

Saburo spun around to greet this newcomer to the conversation, sure that the man must know exactly where Akahito resided. The coincidences of booze, daughters, and demons were too many to be anything but signs that he had found the man he needed to pacify.

"What room is this, if you don't mind my asking? I need to speak with him concerning that daughter of his."

Madame Yori crossed her heart and cursed lightly. Based off her male visitor's gifts of roses and champagne, she was not expecting to talk about possessed children as much as she was expecting to make children. She sure had her fill of things to say about the priest, however.

"Akahito is human garbage, to be sure. He knows nothing of the spiritual realm and it sickens me to see that poor girl of his being made to suffer his presence. 303 is the room you seek. He doesn't even live directly above me and I can still sometimes hear his prayers during the night. 'Cast down this devil child into the lakes of Hell' always seemed to be one of his fondest pleas to the heavens, but honestly he just gives me the creeps. I hope you are taking that little girl from him, young man, because I fear it's only a matter of time before that loon snaps and does something we all regret."

Saburo shuddered at just such a thought, even if he had already freed Yun from her adoptive father's clutches. He wasn't expecting things to go this smoothly, but apparently a man of Akahito's renown earned his share of enemies even from the spiritually harmonious. Nodding, he merely stepped to the threshold of the apartment, letting Yori's gentleman caller take his place at the woman's side.

"Worry not, you two. I plan on making sure the priest is no longer a bother to anyone."

Dropping a few thousand yen into an urn by the psychic's door, he left the room with a renewed vigor. Surely he was doing God's work today and Saburo had to admit, it felt nice not being the devil for a change.

[Mission Word Count: 1054 +1683 (This Post + Previous Total) = 2737/ 3000]
[MFT]

 

[Yume]

The next suspicious looking balcony was boarded up, though this particular place looked much more worse for wear compared to the others. The concrete was flaking and cracked beneath her feet, so much so Yume thought that this thing was going to give way at any minute from her modest weight. This one was probably abandoned and the landlord never bothered to fix the damages. Peering into the gaps of the wooden boards confirmed it.

Third time is the charm... That's how the saying went, wasn't it? This one looked much more promising at first glance. Broken beer bottles on the balcony floor? Check. Smashed up cigarette butts and ash? Check. Sliding glass door boarded up? Check, and what a doozy that was.

Yume examined the holy scriptures written on the wooden planks. The first few boards were meticulous and careful, a stark contrast in the surroundings she was in now. As her eyes trailed down though, the writing became sloppy and rushed, but in essence was still useable. Hmm... Saburo wasn't kidding when he said that the priest was paranoid about his so-called demon daughter. For added measure, there were even paper talismans slapped on the door too. Yume straightened back up in posture and exhaled heavily through her nose. The image... That took her back, sometime, somewhere.

She blinked, scratching her cheek in confusion. She had ever seen scriptures like this before in her life. Nothing that would bring on this sense of nostalgia anyway. The closest she got to knowing about these were her mother's stories. And those tattered tags inside her brother's tomb.

There wasn't much else to do but brush the thought off. Her hand reached out towards the barricaded door fearlessly. A mere brush of her fingertips got her to jerk back ever so slightly. Her skin tingled, like an uncomfortable sense of pins and needles after coming out of numbness.

"Hoh..." she mused to herself, impressed. To be honest, the girl thought his priesthood status was just for show, a fraud. To have some semblance of spiritual power was rather amazing for the modern times like today. If she had just one percent more demon blood in her veins, perhaps her fingers would have burned lightly.

The old man's blood was good for something after all.

Yume tugged on the handle of the door. Locked, of course, and with a barlock too. She shouldn't expect anything more or less with this. Well, guess she had to get in the hard way. Her hand stayed upon the door handle. To the naked eye, Yume didn't appear to be moving at all. On a microscopic scale and with the right sight however, her hand concentrated enough chakra to produce sound vibrations to encourage the barlock to remove itself. It might be a long process to unlock the door, but was a creative way to break in, if she may say so herself.

Eventually, the lock unlatched and she was able to slide the door open. With all this effort boarding up the place, Yume wondered why the priest didn't bother with installing multiple locks. Money problems maybe. Maybe he blew his lock quota on his front door instead. That made sense too. Now all that was blocking her way in were these boards.

"Hmm..." she hummed in thought. Punching them in probably would be the quickest method in. But these were working scriptures... If she wanted them to cease, she'd have to burn them.

So that's what she did.

Exhaling enough of a fire to burn the papers and ink on the board to a crisp, Yume made her entrance with a light chop of the weakened and burned wood in half.

"Pardon the intrusion," she called in blandly, stepping inside the apartment. The next thing she realised, her vision was obscured in the middle. Something was stuck on her forehead, and her neck felt twenty grams heavier. Yume glanced down. Were these prayer beads? As if these things could weigh her down. Her hands twitched irately by her sides, a little insulted.

There was a yell, as if it accused her of being a demon, followed along with a chant, no doubt with the intention to banish her or something.

"On baishiraman taya sowaka!"

Ah. She heard this chant before.

"On isha naya-!"

"In tara ya sowaka," she joined in, bemused. The priest's sudden silence didn't stop her from continuing the rites. "On jite rashi itara jiba ratanō sowaka... Hm? What's the matter?"

Yume blinked at him past the talisman on her face. Ugh, this thing was getting in the way. Delicately peeling the paper off her forehead, it burned in her hand and she smiled at him from behind her mask.

"You were doing very well. Good practice for when you get rid of that demon daughter of yours, wouldn't you agree?"

Word count: 2085/3000

 

[Saburo]

Saburo found the door to the priest's apartment easy enough after the helpful advice he was given. Sure, he had to shimmy past his share of winos that inexplicably chose the stairwell as the perfect place to pass out, but otherwise the passage from the second floor to the third was unremarkable. When he got to apartment 303, however, he grew concerned. There seemed to be chanting coming from inside, but it didn't make sense considering Saburo had already facilitated the departure of the priest's obsessions. The only thing the aspiring criminal could conclude from this was that Kiseki must have already got the drop on the old man. Of course, Akahito might have just finally spun that far off the rails, too.

Not wanting to risk being late to the party, Saburo did what he did best. Forming gauntlets of bone around his fists to protect his hands from the work they set out to do, he began his barrage on the front door. One sixteen hit combo later, though, and the door was still upright, if only from sheer determination. Saburo could only assume that the door had been barred from the inside. There was more than one way into an apartment, however.

Spiraling chakra moved through his body and down his arm, collecting into a massive sphere those in the know refer to as the Odama Rasengan. One punch with this orb of chakra was bound to clear the door, but his target was the wall itself. Directly beside the sturdy barrier, the wall proved to be an easier target for the chuunin. Paranoia rarely tempted a man to shore up his walls, even though buildings like this one had proven time and time again to be crumbling prone. Knocking a hole through the wall in the most extravagant of fashions, Saburo stepped inside the home of his most recent rescue just to curl his lip up in disgust. Kiseki and the priest were having some sort of chant off and there on the floor in a demolished picture frame was a photograph of a slightly younger Yun.

Picking the photograph out of its wrecked frame, Saburo threw the image at the feet of the dueling couple shortly after Kiseki's remark about the priest's practice.

"You know, if Yun were here, she'd probably be upset that her boogeyman proved to be such an easy target. I guess exorcisms don't work too well against opponent's of flesh and blood, huh?"

The priest was now trapped between Kiseki and Saburo. There were two gaping holes in his apartment that could provide a hasty retreat, but instead the priest spit on the photograph and eyed his newest opponent coldly.

"You don't know what you're talking about. The demons have blinded you to the truth of the righteous and yet you accuse me of being weak? You make your bed with hellspawn and ruin my goddamn wall in the process!"

Saburo laughed at that.

"Watch your mouth, priest. Where you're going, walls will be the least of your concern."

 

[Yume]

"You can fool the rest of the world, but you can't fool me, demon."

Yume's eyes crinkled up in a smile. She took one step forward, not in menace, but in a smooth enough movement that it was just as threatening. The priest managed to stand in his place as she stared him down. "Ehh, how..."

A photograph of a young girl landed in between their feet.

"... Rude."

The action caused the priest find himself a new person to target. Breaking his sights away from the demon, he glared icily at Saburo and spouted some nonsense about... Being blinded by the demons about something or other. Yume folded her arms over her front, with one hand raised up against her cheek as she watched the exchange in thought.

Well... He wasn't wrong.

But then again, humans are much worse.

At this point, Yume thought her job was almost over. All she was needed for was to find the guy. That was done. She could even arrest him now and call it a day. Having probable cause and eyewitness testimony would probably be enough for just that. The girl shifted her arm sleeve up a little to look at her wristwatch. It's past her dinnertime. She was getting hungry.

"Oh, before I forget..." she quipped, garnering the attention of the priest. Yume took off the prayer beads and held it out towards him. "It's a pretty necklace, but I'm returning this."

A brief silence fell over the priest before he responded with lips curled back into a snarl. "Don't... Don't make a fool out of me, demon!"

Before Yume could react herself, his hand gripped onto her wrist like a vice. His other hand snatched the prayer beads out of her hands while forcing her palm open at the same time. Tiny red blisters lined her palm where the beads touched her skin. He stared at her burned hand with a furious expression, but at the same time, surprised that his accusation was true. At least, that's what it looked like to Yume.

"Let go of me." She had half the mind to end the demand with "human," just so she could mess with him some more, but thought against it. Instead, the girl moved her chakra to her arm, developing a scorching heat that would be much worse than the sting of prayer beads. The priest inevitably released her and jolted away, glaring hell's fury on both her and Saburo. Yume shifted her weight to one leg and put her uninjured hand on her hip. It wasn't a demonic move at all, any ninja that uses fire could potentially do that.

She shook her other hand to and fro. Like turning back time, the blisters receded into her skin and her palm was as good as new. At the same time, the mild burns that were hidden behind her bangs and back of her neck also faded away before the priest could think of finding more so-called evidence of her demonic blood.

"Well, Saburo-san. Please do what you need to, I'll arrest him, paperwork ensues and we can call it a day."

Word count: 2609/3000

 

[Saburo]

Saburo was all ready to admit that maybe this freak didn't deserve a violent death, even if it would set the tone for his upcoming stranglehold on crime within his city. Kiseki seemed to be the one most targeted by the man's crazy obsessions, after all, and if she thought prison was the place for his kind, then the Kaguya might have been willing to take her council to heart. Of course, that was when the priest decided to go ape shit.

Something about the thought of imprisonment had sent the spiritually wayward father into an even deeper spiral than he already seemed to be set towards. Before Saburo could even nod approval at Kiseki's plans, the man began issuing forth a flurry of hand seals. The chuunin, by way of both his rank and his life experiences, wasn't the most well-versed at identifying jutsu he didn't personally practice, but something about the motions made him think wind jutsu just as the air within the room began to whip about at an ever-increasing pace. The cyclone seemed to center around the priest and those more versed in the various jutsu of the wind element might know that this was a move called Cyclone Movement, a chakra armor meant to deflect all non-melee attacks. Of course, in such a small space, this ability also forced quite a lot of shrapnel to fly into the air. Pretty much everything weighing less than a sofa seemed to take flight around the room. The shinobi were only safe from the effect due to their own gifted natures, but the debris flying about raised real concerns.

If that wasn't enough to deal with, another flurry of hand seals were well under way inside the cyclone. Saburo dodged pots, pans, and even a very bewildered cat in his hurry to avoid potential impalement while he considered his options. When a great scythe of wind launched from inside the tempest at the shinobi, however, he was completely caught off guard. As the wind slammed into him and began slicing into his clothes and flesh, only some quick thinking saved him from potentially being skinned alive.

Bones exploded from the young man's body and encased him in a skeletal armor. This was the Kaguya's Ultimate Bone Defense and besides looking pretty badass, it also minimized the effects of the shredding capacity inherent in both the scythe and the torrent of books and prayer beads that continued to assault him. If the two shinobi didn't do something soon, the maniac was liable to bring the apartment ceiling down on them.

Through all this, Saburo was pretty sure he could hear the priest screaming from within the whirlwind.

"You'll never take me alive, demons! The heavens bring peace to the righteous, but they rip away at the sinners!"

Saburo's skeletal armor protected him from the worst of the buffeting, but it made it difficult to move; between the constricting nature of his armor and the gale-force winds assaulting the apartment, it was alll he could do to issue a warning to Kiseki as another great scythe of wind launched her direction.

[Mission Word Count: 521 +3245 (This Post + Previous Total) = 3766 / 3000]
[MFT: 521]

 

[Yume]

The longer they stayed in the vicinity of the target, the quicker he transitioned from delusional to downright psychotic. Yume instinctively raised her arm to shield her face from the slicing winds. After a couple of rips and tears of her sleeve though, she realised it was only a matter of time until she'd be turned into sashimi like this. Seeing Saburo in his bone armour for protection, she followed suit and clapped her hands together in prayer for a barrier to form around her. By looks alone, her barrier looked flimsy. Objects came crashing into it, cracking the surface with each impact. It would have to do for now, bide her some time to figure out the next course of action.

A yell of warning was coming from the general direction where Saburo was--at least, she thought it was in his direction. It was hard determining over the whirlwind. What did he say? Watch out?

The wind attack collided against the barrier, breaking it once and for all. It shattered with the sound of glass, but dispersed as wind. The act built onto the already powerful wind from the priest, forcing Yume's original defensive plan to resume. Her head snapped to the side, with her arm protecting her eyes. Her sleeve was in tatters at this point, with some additional tears on the body of her clothing too. The most noticeable damage was of her mask, with rips within the fabric looking like a beast had clawed it apart.

Saburo would be able to see her lips pursed in an unimpressed line through the gaps of her mask. As the wind died down a level due to the dwindling level of the priest's chakra, Yume turned back to look at him. Her eyes were sharp, with a viridian green that peeked out the edges of her brown contacts.

Yume was pissed.

It wasn't because of anything sentimental like her favourite clothing being ruined by the priest, or that her face was revealed because of the torn up mask (though it had a partial contribution to the anger). She simply lost interest and patience. There were better things to do back home, back at the record building, than being here and dealing with a stupid abusive priest.

So she dealt back the blow, entertaining his psychosis.

"Shall we judge?"

From behind her praying form, it looked like the air behind her was distorting. A decent description, but that was not the case. Reality, as they knew it, was ripping apart. A dark rift, twice as tall as her and wide, opened with the sense of dread. Shadowed hands reached out from the rift and surrounded Yume. Some dragged themselves on the ground, others reached out to air, lost and hungry for what they call freedom.

"Are you familiar with King Enma? You should, right?" Yume asked cheerfully, as if it were a normal conversation. "You're a priest after all."

The shadowed arms stretched out faster and faster, eager to grab onto the priest in a bind and stop his wind attack. Then slowly, they'd tug and pull, like they wanted to drag him towards the Gate of Enma. It was a matter of time before his mind breaks, whether it was because his psychosis was reinforced or he resigned to the King of Hell's judgement, Yume didn't care. She sighed, weaving through the strings of arms and counted down the seconds until the priest would start screaming again.

Yume fiddled with her torn mask, as if it would magically meld together and fix itself. She frowned. No such luck.

Word count: 3209/3000
Word count requirement met - will not be counting for later post.

 

[Yume]

Like expected, he screamed both bloody murder and in foreign tongues. So much so that even Yume was getting annoyed. It was a lie really, this wasn't King Enma. It was his gate of judgement, sure but it wasn't him. He wouldn't come judge a mortal just because Yume called on a whim. Instead...

"I think he learned his lesson, Prince. Thank you for your service..." she said behind her hand. One of the many shadowed hands brushed against her shoulder, dark fingers running through the tresses of her hair before they all pulled back into the gates. The doors shut with a booming slam before it dissipated into wisps of smoke, then nothing.

The priest was on his knees, voice barely escaping the back of his throat as he stared blankly out into space. Yume watched him carefully for a few seconds before deciding that this mission had her attention for long enough. She had a meeting with a producer not long after this. She should get going.

Stepping closer to the forsaken man, Yume removed her hand from her face for the sole purpose of revealing her knowing smile. Words were unneeded. He'd know. They will be waiting to meet him when he dies.

Glancing at the bone covered boy, Yume let him be to continue on with whatever plan he had for the priest. She had to go now. So she jumped off the balcony and disappeared. This mission will disappear from her mind soon, as forgettable as any other.

This thread is inactive due to Saburo's disappearance and I'm way too lazy to continue and meet the 15 post requirement. Mission failed, claim for failed rewards.

Original request: https://www.ninpocho.com/viewtopic.php?f=776&t=51208
Failed A-rank rewards: 3000Y

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