The air outside was thin and crisp, barely breathable by even the most rugged of shinobi. A cold flurry of snow rushed around the open air, and the pine trees that were some of the sole foliage to weather such harsh conditions shook from the fury of the wind. Covered in extra layers and a black cloak, Shinjo quietly trudged on with the mental fortitude of a self-centered madman. His breathing was ragged, and came out in wheezes and crackles. His lungs were devastated by the mountain air and the altitude, and yet he continued to push his way through the fresh snow that had built up all the way to his knees. For the fifth time since he started his journey, his foot came across an extra slippery rock and Shinjo found his body slamming against the snow before slowly sinking in. After a minute his arms stubbornly fought the hypothermia and pushed his body back up before he wavered back into a standing stance. His eyes lifted from the snow and stared up, looking at the destination; a mountain peak that was still too far away.
This journey all started about a week ago. The actual walk up the mountain was more like, yesterday, but the location of what he sought was found in the earlier parts of the work week between his moments of madness and inebriation.
Shin had found himself back in the library of the Academy for the first time since he had graduated, but he wasn’t there looking for anything important in keeping up with his duties - no, it was something far more…personal. His Yamanaka blood were quickly becoming immune to the things that gave him a blissful state of ease. Things like alcohol had long stopped working, and drugs were next to impossible to actually find and purchase in Kumogakure ever since Kitsune took over the head title of the village. It pushed Shin to create his own ‘medicine’ to seek a better state of mind where he didn’t have to think about anything but his missions; work that was becoming harder to do as it was becoming more scarce with his failures. In order to keep working in the Branch he had signed up for, he needed something to silence the ever present ghost in his head screaming at him.
What he had found, instead of any new poisons to work with, was an old scroll tucked way in the back of the library in the section that was cut off from students and only allowed to people of higher rankings; or in Shin’s case, people with the right connections. Just mentioning Miro’s name got him into the highly restricted sections of the library where he had hoped to find a chemical compound that hadn’t been thought of or used in centuries. Instead, he found the details of something that might be able to just simply ‘fix’ his state of mind completely.
It was called the Reality Chip. It was a small thing, something about the size of a thumb, that was from ancient technology granted to the earliest humans by the gods that used to walk among them. According to the scroll, it was a device created by mixing the technology and earliest ninjutsu known to Lightning’s humans to make a sentient artifact that could plug itself into a person and rewire them. Originally its purpose was to settle down a person’s power if they got too out of control with it; or too close to the power the gods wielded. It seemed like the perfect ticket out of…well, everything for Shinjo. According to the paper it would correct his mental break, remove his chakra talent, and return his body to a ‘base human form’, which would allow him to live a normal life. A far fetched dream for anyone who had experienced the shinobi life, but a dream Shin lusted for all the more.
Of course, that wasn’t the only thing the chip was capable of. It could also be reprogrammed to actually enhance the powers of someone, and that wasn’t all. They could also outright chance a person’s personality, opinions, flaws, and…well, everything. It was like a reset button that then rewrote a person’s entire identity if it was fixed just right. That was the very reason this scroll and information was forbidden and locked away. Over 99% of the chips created to cull the ever growing power of humans, by humans, were destroyed once it became known how easy they were to reprogram for nefarious deeds, but around 1% of the chips were considered missing or unaccounted for meaning that somewhere in Kumogakre or Lightning Country in large these chips potentially existed. Because of their very nature, they could withstand the test of time and elements, and were potentially just as powerful now as they were thousands of years ago.
This lead Shinjo on a chase, wild and goosey as it was. The scroll of course didn’t mention who might have hidden away one of them, but it did note the original creator and his other works. From there the assassin spent days inside of the library, sleeping only when his body completely wore out, piecing bits of the puzzle together. Former colleges, assistants that worked under the man, lovers, rivals, and nemesis. Nearly every last path that the teen explored ended with a dead-end as, even the people who wanted him dead, wanted nothing to do with the Reality Chips. It wasn’t until the dawn of the sixth day in the library did it occur to look into the scientist’s original death and location of body did Shin finally stumble upon a clue.
Unlike most people who were celebrated with their works, this man’s body was never buried in a graveyard proper or even secreted away like Kumogakure did to powerful shinobi to safeguard their secrets. Instead, it was unknown where he died. The only thing mentioning his likely death from completely vanishing from society was that he had a mountain home deep within Monumentum Deo. It never said where though, because that was a location lost to time, but there was evidence his main lab was out there due to how powerful his experiments could become and the free space of the mountains really allowed him to work without worry of destroying a village or two by accident. The problem with his home being in those mountains was that they were gigantic. Shinjo could spend his entire life combing them and still only get about half way through; he needed something more concrete.
That something came to him in a dream. He wasn’t sure if it was his brain relaying information he had already uncovered by accident through all of his studies, or if it was divine intervention of a sorts, (or if he had just lost it), but he had a dream of the scientist and where he would trek to reach his home near the peaks of a mountain furthest to the West. As flurries of snow and then a gust easily reaching 70mph threatened to blow Shin off the mountain he was now on, he had to wonder if his dream was just that; his hubris. So badly did he want for anything to get out of the madness that invaded his brain that he was willing to die for it, but as he turned around and looked down at the clouds skimming the cliff he was above, the assassin couldn’t help but want for a glass of whiskey. With a heavy sigh he turned back towards the village and started to head down. Going any further up, even equipped for it as he was, would be folly. Even if he made it up the rest of the way and found the lab, found the Chip, he would still be too weak to make it back down.
In his turn he stumbled slightly and stepped on something that just, gave way beneath his weight. He yelped in surprise as his body descended into the sudden hole, but the howls of the mountain wind covered any sound. Thankfully, the drop wasn’t a long one, but a stone floor caught his body painfully. He coughed heavily from the sudden shift in air, weather, and floor before slowly getting his senses enough to find the strength to push himself back up to his weary feet. Reaching into his coat he withdrew a flare, struck it awake, and held it up reveal a ruin from a civilization bygone. His heart began to hammer within his chest. He held up the flare and moved it around to reveal his new location a little better and, more or less, it did look like something that would beget the study of things. Shin slowly shuffled out of the snow bank that fell in with him and held the light over a pile of ancient scrolls settled on a stone platform near where he fell. Placing the light within his mouth he checked through them, one by one, to see if they would give any further clues or hints to where he needed to be.
Most of them were too destroyed by the elements of the mountains to be legible. Some where written in a code he couldn’t decipher but were in otherwise decent condition; those he tucked away inside of his coat. Two of them, however, were printed in a legible fashion that he could understand and a code he had learned from studying the documents at the Academy. They claimed the works of the man he was looking for, revealed his ultimate invention that the assassin had no care for, and spoke of what actually happened to his body; again, nothing Shin actually cared much fore. It did, however, mention he was actually in the right place…
Using the Guaranteed Find ASP Card for Tsukumogami
This journey all started about a week ago. The actual walk up the mountain was more like, yesterday, but the location of what he sought was found in the earlier parts of the work week between his moments of madness and inebriation.
Shin had found himself back in the library of the Academy for the first time since he had graduated, but he wasn’t there looking for anything important in keeping up with his duties - no, it was something far more…personal. His Yamanaka blood were quickly becoming immune to the things that gave him a blissful state of ease. Things like alcohol had long stopped working, and drugs were next to impossible to actually find and purchase in Kumogakure ever since Kitsune took over the head title of the village. It pushed Shin to create his own ‘medicine’ to seek a better state of mind where he didn’t have to think about anything but his missions; work that was becoming harder to do as it was becoming more scarce with his failures. In order to keep working in the Branch he had signed up for, he needed something to silence the ever present ghost in his head screaming at him.
What he had found, instead of any new poisons to work with, was an old scroll tucked way in the back of the library in the section that was cut off from students and only allowed to people of higher rankings; or in Shin’s case, people with the right connections. Just mentioning Miro’s name got him into the highly restricted sections of the library where he had hoped to find a chemical compound that hadn’t been thought of or used in centuries. Instead, he found the details of something that might be able to just simply ‘fix’ his state of mind completely.
It was called the Reality Chip. It was a small thing, something about the size of a thumb, that was from ancient technology granted to the earliest humans by the gods that used to walk among them. According to the scroll, it was a device created by mixing the technology and earliest ninjutsu known to Lightning’s humans to make a sentient artifact that could plug itself into a person and rewire them. Originally its purpose was to settle down a person’s power if they got too out of control with it; or too close to the power the gods wielded. It seemed like the perfect ticket out of…well, everything for Shinjo. According to the paper it would correct his mental break, remove his chakra talent, and return his body to a ‘base human form’, which would allow him to live a normal life. A far fetched dream for anyone who had experienced the shinobi life, but a dream Shin lusted for all the more.
Of course, that wasn’t the only thing the chip was capable of. It could also be reprogrammed to actually enhance the powers of someone, and that wasn’t all. They could also outright chance a person’s personality, opinions, flaws, and…well, everything. It was like a reset button that then rewrote a person’s entire identity if it was fixed just right. That was the very reason this scroll and information was forbidden and locked away. Over 99% of the chips created to cull the ever growing power of humans, by humans, were destroyed once it became known how easy they were to reprogram for nefarious deeds, but around 1% of the chips were considered missing or unaccounted for meaning that somewhere in Kumogakre or Lightning Country in large these chips potentially existed. Because of their very nature, they could withstand the test of time and elements, and were potentially just as powerful now as they were thousands of years ago.
This lead Shinjo on a chase, wild and goosey as it was. The scroll of course didn’t mention who might have hidden away one of them, but it did note the original creator and his other works. From there the assassin spent days inside of the library, sleeping only when his body completely wore out, piecing bits of the puzzle together. Former colleges, assistants that worked under the man, lovers, rivals, and nemesis. Nearly every last path that the teen explored ended with a dead-end as, even the people who wanted him dead, wanted nothing to do with the Reality Chips. It wasn’t until the dawn of the sixth day in the library did it occur to look into the scientist’s original death and location of body did Shin finally stumble upon a clue.
Unlike most people who were celebrated with their works, this man’s body was never buried in a graveyard proper or even secreted away like Kumogakure did to powerful shinobi to safeguard their secrets. Instead, it was unknown where he died. The only thing mentioning his likely death from completely vanishing from society was that he had a mountain home deep within Monumentum Deo. It never said where though, because that was a location lost to time, but there was evidence his main lab was out there due to how powerful his experiments could become and the free space of the mountains really allowed him to work without worry of destroying a village or two by accident. The problem with his home being in those mountains was that they were gigantic. Shinjo could spend his entire life combing them and still only get about half way through; he needed something more concrete.
That something came to him in a dream. He wasn’t sure if it was his brain relaying information he had already uncovered by accident through all of his studies, or if it was divine intervention of a sorts, (or if he had just lost it), but he had a dream of the scientist and where he would trek to reach his home near the peaks of a mountain furthest to the West. As flurries of snow and then a gust easily reaching 70mph threatened to blow Shin off the mountain he was now on, he had to wonder if his dream was just that; his hubris. So badly did he want for anything to get out of the madness that invaded his brain that he was willing to die for it, but as he turned around and looked down at the clouds skimming the cliff he was above, the assassin couldn’t help but want for a glass of whiskey. With a heavy sigh he turned back towards the village and started to head down. Going any further up, even equipped for it as he was, would be folly. Even if he made it up the rest of the way and found the lab, found the Chip, he would still be too weak to make it back down.
In his turn he stumbled slightly and stepped on something that just, gave way beneath his weight. He yelped in surprise as his body descended into the sudden hole, but the howls of the mountain wind covered any sound. Thankfully, the drop wasn’t a long one, but a stone floor caught his body painfully. He coughed heavily from the sudden shift in air, weather, and floor before slowly getting his senses enough to find the strength to push himself back up to his weary feet. Reaching into his coat he withdrew a flare, struck it awake, and held it up reveal a ruin from a civilization bygone. His heart began to hammer within his chest. He held up the flare and moved it around to reveal his new location a little better and, more or less, it did look like something that would beget the study of things. Shin slowly shuffled out of the snow bank that fell in with him and held the light over a pile of ancient scrolls settled on a stone platform near where he fell. Placing the light within his mouth he checked through them, one by one, to see if they would give any further clues or hints to where he needed to be.
Most of them were too destroyed by the elements of the mountains to be legible. Some where written in a code he couldn’t decipher but were in otherwise decent condition; those he tucked away inside of his coat. Two of them, however, were printed in a legible fashion that he could understand and a code he had learned from studying the documents at the Academy. They claimed the works of the man he was looking for, revealed his ultimate invention that the assassin had no care for, and spoke of what actually happened to his body; again, nothing Shin actually cared much fore. It did, however, mention he was actually in the right place…
Using the Guaranteed Find ASP Card for Tsukumogami
