Breathing out, the Assassin kindled the Darkling Flame about her hands. A wavering fire of deepest blue, almost invisible, the flames somehow rendered her profile wavering and indistinct, making it harder to pick out the human shape of her silhouette. She still didn’t know precisely how the technique managed its trick; her mother had died before being able to pass on that morsel of knowledge to her daughter. Forcing down a wellspring of the ever-present grief her mother’s death and current circumstances caused her, she channeled the corrosive, powerful sadness into fuel for her rage at those responsible. Senju Hizashi would pay. She would see to it. If need be, she would burn his precious Garden down around his ears. Taking deep, meditative breaths, she drew her thoughts back into the precise focus this mission would require of her. Though she didn’t know the precise location of her enemies, she was fairly certain by this point that Tsubaki would know hers. Her last mission had ossified her suspicion into certainty on the matter. The attacks so far had been neither random nor unplanned. They consistently came at times when she was at her most vulnerable: away from Sunagakure or any potential support from other Sand shinobi. She could take advantage of that fact. Yes, it meant she would have no back-up if things went south, but she was long-accustomed to working alone. It was, after all, something of a specialty of hers.
Setting off into the badlands of the Desert Expanse, the Assassin made a show of trying to go unnoticed. She didn’t give the effort her all. She didn’t want to Tsubaki actually being unable to locate her. Her preparations and plans would be for naught if she couldn’t bait out the kill-squad the Garden had been sending after her. It was several hours before she was certain her efforts had borne fruit. Feeling that old, familiar itch between her shoulder blades that signified someone was stalking her, she quickly went through the seals to create a localized heat wave around her. If it was the team from before, then projectile attacks and water or ice jutsu would be the order of the day. The rippling heat currently rolling off of her in waves would hopefully blunt some of the sting of such techniques. Following up on that, she called up a mud clone inside the ground near her, and readied herself to slip beneath the earth once she’d switched places with the clone.
True to expectations, the enemy had launched a trio of attacks consisting of a fuuma shuriken, an immense wall of water, and a razor-edged cascade of ice directly at her. Smiling, she swapped herself out with the underground mud clone, calling up her sharingan as she watched the clone be neatly bisected, blasted to the side by water, and frozen in place by the ice. Drifting slowly through the earth beneath the foes, she watched their worried, frenetic attempts to locate her. As they wasted chakra blasting the earth nearby to clouds of stinging grit, she deftly wove between affected areas and set up a kill-shot on the water jutsu user. They were the one least able to stand up to her lightning jutsu and best able to cancel out her fire techniques. She frowned, regarding the target. They’d seen the touch of a medic recently, as the lack of scarring or impairment from her last clash with them showed amply and in spades. Directing the mud clone to bum-rush the blue-tinged foe, she went through the seals to sheath her hand in a crackling, screaming wreath of lightning-aspected chakra and rushed in straight at the target’s back, planting her entire right arm past the wrist through the left side of the target’s chest, obliterating their heart in an instant. To their credit, the other enemies had immediately reacted to the shrill, trademark keening the jutsu produced and were already sending another assault her way. Kicking the corpse loose from her arm and into the path of a set of kunai thrown by the projectile user, she was clipped by a razor-sharp arc of ice set flying by the hyouton user.
Calling up her Mangekyou, she dodged another fuuma shuriken hurled her way, meeting the blade-thrower’s eyes and sending a killing intent into their hindbrain by way of the sharingan’s innate tie to genjutsu. Turning and vaulting over another sickle-shaped blade of frozen air from the ice user, she met his eyes as well, calling up that same primordial panic to freeze his limbs and grant her the advantage in this fight. Stepping over, she perform a coup de grace upon the paralyzed projectile user, knocking him unconscious with a single sharp blow to the back of the head. Turning to the ice-user, she noted the beginnings of tremulous motion in her foe. Sighing that it had come to that, she called up her Tsukuyomi, banishing the foe to a mental hellscape of her own design. Banishing the foe to a featureless plain alight with baleful, black flames, she proceeded to disrupt his senses with genjutsu before drawing the ebon flames of Amaterasu up from the plain about them to roast the roaring, immobile enemy. As they broke out of the jutsu, she sent her mud clone rushing at the foe, burying him in thick, restrictive mud. Her enemy so handicapped, she came in with a swift roundhouse kick to the back of his head, knocking him out cold.
Collecting the two unconscious enemies after stasis-sealing the corpse and storing it within a sealing scroll, she made her way back toward the Toraono complex. She hoped at least one of the two would prove pliable to interrogation. If she wanted to truly be free from the menace the Garden’s recent attacks represented, she needed Tsubaki’s location. Only once Hizashi’s forces were blind to her movements would she truly be able to go about her routine and establish herself in this village with a minimum of worry. She did not, after all, expect Hizashi to be willing to oppose his own Overlord directly, even assuming the miserable silver-haired bastard wasn’t still the one giving Hizashi his orders.
[WC: 1031, MFT]
Setting off into the badlands of the Desert Expanse, the Assassin made a show of trying to go unnoticed. She didn’t give the effort her all. She didn’t want to Tsubaki actually being unable to locate her. Her preparations and plans would be for naught if she couldn’t bait out the kill-squad the Garden had been sending after her. It was several hours before she was certain her efforts had borne fruit. Feeling that old, familiar itch between her shoulder blades that signified someone was stalking her, she quickly went through the seals to create a localized heat wave around her. If it was the team from before, then projectile attacks and water or ice jutsu would be the order of the day. The rippling heat currently rolling off of her in waves would hopefully blunt some of the sting of such techniques. Following up on that, she called up a mud clone inside the ground near her, and readied herself to slip beneath the earth once she’d switched places with the clone.
True to expectations, the enemy had launched a trio of attacks consisting of a fuuma shuriken, an immense wall of water, and a razor-edged cascade of ice directly at her. Smiling, she swapped herself out with the underground mud clone, calling up her sharingan as she watched the clone be neatly bisected, blasted to the side by water, and frozen in place by the ice. Drifting slowly through the earth beneath the foes, she watched their worried, frenetic attempts to locate her. As they wasted chakra blasting the earth nearby to clouds of stinging grit, she deftly wove between affected areas and set up a kill-shot on the water jutsu user. They were the one least able to stand up to her lightning jutsu and best able to cancel out her fire techniques. She frowned, regarding the target. They’d seen the touch of a medic recently, as the lack of scarring or impairment from her last clash with them showed amply and in spades. Directing the mud clone to bum-rush the blue-tinged foe, she went through the seals to sheath her hand in a crackling, screaming wreath of lightning-aspected chakra and rushed in straight at the target’s back, planting her entire right arm past the wrist through the left side of the target’s chest, obliterating their heart in an instant. To their credit, the other enemies had immediately reacted to the shrill, trademark keening the jutsu produced and were already sending another assault her way. Kicking the corpse loose from her arm and into the path of a set of kunai thrown by the projectile user, she was clipped by a razor-sharp arc of ice set flying by the hyouton user.
Calling up her Mangekyou, she dodged another fuuma shuriken hurled her way, meeting the blade-thrower’s eyes and sending a killing intent into their hindbrain by way of the sharingan’s innate tie to genjutsu. Turning and vaulting over another sickle-shaped blade of frozen air from the ice user, she met his eyes as well, calling up that same primordial panic to freeze his limbs and grant her the advantage in this fight. Stepping over, she perform a coup de grace upon the paralyzed projectile user, knocking him unconscious with a single sharp blow to the back of the head. Turning to the ice-user, she noted the beginnings of tremulous motion in her foe. Sighing that it had come to that, she called up her Tsukuyomi, banishing the foe to a mental hellscape of her own design. Banishing the foe to a featureless plain alight with baleful, black flames, she proceeded to disrupt his senses with genjutsu before drawing the ebon flames of Amaterasu up from the plain about them to roast the roaring, immobile enemy. As they broke out of the jutsu, she sent her mud clone rushing at the foe, burying him in thick, restrictive mud. Her enemy so handicapped, she came in with a swift roundhouse kick to the back of his head, knocking him out cold.
Collecting the two unconscious enemies after stasis-sealing the corpse and storing it within a sealing scroll, she made her way back toward the Toraono complex. She hoped at least one of the two would prove pliable to interrogation. If she wanted to truly be free from the menace the Garden’s recent attacks represented, she needed Tsubaki’s location. Only once Hizashi’s forces were blind to her movements would she truly be able to go about her routine and establish herself in this village with a minimum of worry. She did not, after all, expect Hizashi to be willing to oppose his own Overlord directly, even assuming the miserable silver-haired bastard wasn’t still the one giving Hizashi his orders.
[WC: 1031, MFT]