Wheels of the bus go round-n-round [Force Enter]

[Zethui Kobayashi]

Zenichi had been watching the guards for hours now. Timing their routes, watching their movements and body language for who was on their game and who was being lazy. He knew that every piece of armor had a weak point and he would find this one. Dozens of scenarios crossed his mind as patterns emerged on their routes. He saw one opportunity arise but fear gave him a moments hesitation, costing him the chance.

He decided the next time he saw an opening, he would take it without a second thought.

[S-rank = 30 minutes to enter village + 0 Alert Level = 30mins to enter]

 

[Kairyuu]

”Please do stop right there.”

A golden-skinned man in a blue robe stands just outside the gates, watching as another tried to force his way in. Hoshikata had no real cause to be here, no real desire to stop this man. But the words of another filled his head, how he would be a threat to all she loved. He would not. He would protect that instead. In his hand was the Staff of Verin, it's clear globe glowing softly. Boots crunch on the snow as he moves to intercept the other, whistling softly.

”I'm afraid you'll have to wait on a guard.”

(Caught, S-rank)

 

[Rakujo Yumeko]

Yumeko walked around the village, and had soon found herself at the gates. As she approached them, she noticed that there was someone approaching the gate and seemed to have no intention of stopping. Though as she made her way closer to the gate, she noticed someone had arrived there moments before she did. Yumeko didn't speak as she got closer, though she would stop only a few feet away from the new arrival and would speak after she stopped. "If i may ask, where do you think you're going in such a hurry?" She asked to the one who seemed to not wanted to wait at the gate.

[caught - S Rank]

 

[Senka]

Only because Senka was sitting on top of the walls in her usual resting pose - that of a doll with its strings cut - she was clearly paying attention to everything that was going on, as well as the person waiting below, looking all suspicious.

"I hope you're not trying to..."

Suddenly he made his move and Senka clicked her tongue in annoyance.

"You actually are doing this."

Mumbling to herself, she got up from her sitting position and walked down the stairs of the wall, wondering time and time again why she always went through the trouble to climb up to the top, if she had to get down again every time somebody approached the gates.

When she arrived downstairs, another person had already approached the suspicious person, somebody she had never seen before and regarded as just another suspicious character.

"What he said. I mean... I'm a guard. What are you here for?"

Then she noticed the presence of another person, the woman she had seen around the gates a few days earlier, telling her how to do her job. Senka's expression grew increasingly annoyed, as she showed her teeth under her surgical mask, the simulated mouth on top of it revealing no such emotion.


[Caught ; S-Rank]

 

[Zethui Kobayashi]

Zenichi was completely broadsided on three sides by people he didn't even notice before as he made his attempt for the gates. He knew it was bad when the first one called out to him, it was a sickening feeling when a third voice was added to the mix. He thought about trying to back out but knew it wasn't possible if they were even the slightest bit skilled. He decided to go in the opposite direction of what he normally would do at this point, to tell the truth.

Oy, I'm Zenichi of the former enterprise known as Konoha. My country is in shambles and I find myself selling my services to anyone willing to pay. I have recently left Suna where a picked up some decent coin and wanted to see what Kumo had to offer. In my line of work, it makes me more marketable if no one knows I'm here. Being more marketable means more coin in my pocket but it seems that I may be entering an area that has much higher training than I've seen before.

 

[Morishige]

With her mask, Itsuki sat a top the walls, unmoving as three people stopped the would be intruded. She was on ANBU duty this time, and wouldn't make an entrance unless absolutely necessary. Her Byakugan was active and searching for any anomalies within the man who attempted to force his way through the gates. Rules were there for a reason...

(Caught, S-rank)

 

[Kairyuu]

He looks up as not one, but two other people arrive talking to the man who tried to simply walk in. Those golden eyes fall on this one, a man calling himself Zenichi. Hoshikata's eyes matched his skin tone, a light golden color, but the pupils were as black as the void and shaped like hourglasses. His long white hair was pooled into the hood of his robes, and black boots sat upon his feet. With a sound of clearing his throat, he gives a false smile, obviously so, to the man.

”Konoha you say? I can't say I'm sad to hear that the country is no more. It was run with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop.” He had little love for Leaf, but now he was worried for Tatsuya, who upon last sight was in Fire Country. This was not good. Hoshikata looks around, noting now a fourth person sitting watching them. Lovely. He steps back, nodding to the other two around him. ”This would be your show.”

 

[Rakujo Yumeko]

Yumeko noticed as Senka had arrived on the scene soon after she did, and she would soon listen to the man who tried to force his way into the village. He called himself Zenichi, formerly from Konohagakure. She continued to listen listen, in which the man who had arrived there moments before she did spoke. She took a few steps back before speaking herself. "I'll leave it to another, since there's more than enough people here." She said, looking around a little, noticing a fourth person had arrived.

 

[Senka]

For some reason Senka felt a dejavu at the mention of the village hidden in the leaf. It was all just an act for the reader as she acted inferior in mind and tried to recall the fact that only a few days earlier, with the presence of the woman who had shown herself again this time, another woman, a certain Hasegawa Mana, had entered through the gates on Senka's authority. However, while Mana had waited and announced her presence voluntarily, this one had done so involuntarily and even attempted to run through the gates in what he had possibly perceived as a moment of inattention.

"Thank you... err..."

As the strange person with the golden skin and golden sclera, with black irises, gave way to her business, Senka nodded in agreement while wondering who exactly this person was. She knew the woman who also made way for her from the previous time somebody had tried to enter and could feel the presence of at least another member of her own branch on top of the walls.

"... never mind... Well, I've been to Leaf before, was a nasty place, as far as I can remember."

The only thing Senka was sure of, even without clearly remembering it, was that she had to thank the village hidden in the leaf for all the scars running across her body, even if she knew that there were perpetrators from outside the village responsible for actually doing the gruesome act to her.

"Either way, you seemed hasty to enter the village illegally. Am I safe to assume you have no passport then?"

She then proceeded to point out a very simple fallacy in this Zenichi's argumentation.

"And please explain to me in what way you become more marketable with nobody being aware of your presence."

 

[Zethui Kobayashi]

Zenichi slowed down his fast walk and came a stop before the collective group. He looked each of the over as he approached, trying to figure out any strengths or weaknesses he could exploit if they decided blood was the toll for his ferry crossing. He listened to each of them pass of command until it stopped at Senka. He listened to her talk of his homeland in the correct vision. Konoha wasn't anything more than an industrial machine that fed upon itself. Each sprocket churned out more trash and waste and most people were consumed by it in the end.

At the mention of a passport, Zenichi smurked a bit as he thought about it sitting in the back of his satchel. He had though of throwing the disheveled item away several times since it laid claim to a nation that no longer existed and a person who didn't want to be known. But nastalgia always got the better of him in the end so he carried it in a hidden section that was laced with an E-note in case of tampering.

I do have a Passport that I can dig out for you if you can trust me enough to dig into my bag, though a passport to a village that no longer exist seems more like trash than anything else to me.

As far as marketability, I am a ghost. I am usually sent on suicide missions that heavy players won't send their own troops to do. I only collect payment upon success. If you want someone assassinated in another country, would you want your village tied to it? Or would you prefer someone with no ties and no allegiance other than the one you pay him for? To sweeten the pot, if said assassin was to be caught, wouldn't it be the smoking gun if that person's name was plastered in your countries visitor logs?

In the end, I am a man without a country. I've been trained to do one thing and I do it well. And since being a real estate agent or opening my own Ramen shop isn't something I am qualified to do nor care to, I am making my living in the only way I know how. It's nothing personal, simply a profession deemed appropriate after the fall of Konoha.

 

[Kairyuu]

He listens as the man speaks of his passport, and his line of work. To Hoshikata words were power, for words could be used to give or deny knowledge, to confuse and disorient or enlighten and reveal. The words of this man were straightforward enough, but it was the words he did not say that revealed the most to the Seer. A man who desired not to be known to be here, but was offering his services as a shinobi to the highest bidder. A man who would sneak in, then mentioning he can assassinate others. He was a true mercenary shinobi, but the trouble was he was not offering his services to the village itself, but rather those inside of it who would prefer not to be known. Else, he would have announced himself to them much as Hoshikata himself had twice.

”So you're sneaking in like a thief, and then going to sell your services to whoever buys. Without including the village itself in that list of people. In short, you could just as well be here to murder the Raikage than to help him. By your own admission no less.” He had no idea of the protocols of the village, but a man such as this, who knowingly tried to break the law and admitted he would do whatever he was paid to, that was a dangerous man to simply let go.

”I'm not liking this at all. If you're simply let go, you may well return and enter later. If you're let in, then you'll go about selling your services and could end up harming the village. That leaves imprisoning you as the only option that does not leave a potential threat at the gates of this village.” He looks once more to Senka, for he had no authority to arrest anyone here, but he certainly hoped she would follow the logic of that thought.

 

[Rakujo Yumeko]

Yumeko watched the rest of the people, and then the man named Zenichi. She figured the other three had full hold of it now and would turned around and headed into the village. She figured Senka could handle herself, along with whoever else had arrived. The three seemed more than capable to handle one man from the fallen Konohagakure.

[Topic Left]

 

[Senka]

Strangely enough, it appeared that whenever Senka was at the gates, somebody else would tell her, in one way or another, how to do her job. The woman from last time did not speak up again, decided that all the others present had the situation under control and walked away, back into the village. At the same time the man with the golden complexion voiced his concerns of letting this suspicious man inside the village.

"Damn you all! Why do people keep speaking for me? If I were some crazed meth-head, I would have started to bash somebody's head in."

The stitched up girl voiced her annoyance by flailing her arms up and down in a comical and cutesy manner, befitting of her body size and apparent age, regardless of the choice of words she employed.

"First of all, who are you even? What's your name?"

She pointed at the golden man who had spoken in her place while looking up to him, pouting.

"Secondly, my question was purely rhetorical and full of sarcasm. You didn't have to answer me seriously, I know how mercenary work is like. Better yet, you think a Ninja village can't just... not show their records to inquiries from other villages? Or even fake them? Is this here a naive children's story?"

Senka continued to spout all the issues she had with the whole situation with her little girl voice.

"Thirdly, I was never going to let you in, in the first place. You were trying to... what he said."

Once again she pointed at the man with the golden eyes, her whole demeanor that of a child's.

"Lastly, stop discrediting me by making me appear like some little kid!"

She yelled up the sky towards an unknown entity, both her arms raised in fists.

"Actually, not lastly! You, you are under arrest. Comply or croak... wait, really? That one sounded so forced."

It was now up to Zenichi to choose his fate. She only hoped he would comply, she hated to fight, and she could not trust her back to anybody but Kurogane, who was painfully absent at the moment.

 

[Zethui Kobayashi]

Aren't I already trying to sell my services to the village now, by telling you exactly what I am? If I was here on a mission to attack the Raikage, I wouldn't have tried to enter in the dead of night through the front door, I would have found a more stealth way in to insure a secure way out. Your Raikage is safe from me. As far as me becoming a threat to Kumo, seems to me that the ball is in your court since I am offering you my services now.

Tension seemed to come from the other side. It was odd to see a bit of disharmony among the troops. The way that 4 of them seemed to come out of no where suggest that this was a well oiled machine but the snide remarks and inner bickering showed that things weren't always what they seemed. He found the back and forth almost comical until he was told that he was under arrest. He was instantly relieved that they weren't demanding his life for disrespecting their immigration policy but at the same time, they may be offering a much slower death in comparison.

How long will I be kept in prison? What happens when I am finally released? I can see that I am at a severe disadvantage. Fighting all of you wouldn't end well for me but at the same time, I can't rot in a cell for 20 years only to leave an old man with no home and no money. Death would be a more merciful judgement. How about I offer a third option. Let me work off my debt for such an intrusion. I'm sure that there has to be some dirty work that Kumo doesn't want their hands meddling in. Give me a chance to prove I am an asset and we both can profit from it.

If you don't see this as a mutually beneficial option.................

Zenichi let that last sentence fade out. Not to evoke a threat but because he really didn't know how to finish it. He knew that he didn't stand a chance in fighting them or in a long incarceration. Ending that sentence could seal his fate either way. He could only hope that they would see a glimmer of opportunity before them.

[OOC, I'm not trying to start a fight nor am I trying to talk my way out of going to jail. OOC, I want to just take the jail deal because it's a safe way to not lose my character. IC, I can't see my character just going to jail without a fight. Anyone up for a T-3 fight where you all take me down fighting and throw me into jail?]

 

[Kairyuu]

The man denied what he was, a shadow who sold to those who paid. He tried to talk his way out of it, tried to use words to plead innocence without knowing that he was talking to a true wordsmith. Hoshikata could use words to convince the world that up was down if he wanted to, the attempts of this man were at best laughable and at worst just pathetic. ”If you were offering your services to the village, you would not be sneaking in. That you have done so means you do not want the leadership to know you're here. That alone makes you a threat to them.”

The girl's explosion went unnoticed for the moment as golden eyes bored into those of the Konoha native. This man was a threat to Cloud, but so was Hoshikata himself according to people. The globe atop his staff, clear as a crystal, would fill with colorful lights of every hue of the rainbow, the colors flowing and swirling in an intricate pattern as his mind went to work. ”I do not see it as such. I have decided to aid this village in terms of safety and stability. Your attempts to talk yourself out of this are rather inept. You're really not very good at this you know.” He lets a smirk come over his face as his hand rises, kinetic power infusing the air around him and lifting several stones from the ground at his feet.

”If you did not wish to be imprisoned, you should not have attempted to force your way in. A desire not to be punished does not put one above the laws. Now, the young woman here has said you are under arrest.” The stones drop as he sweeps his staff up in a double grip and twists the shaft, a foot long blade of blue stone sliding from the bottom to aim at the man. ”You can follow her wishes or my own.”

(Leaving it to Senka and Itsuki)

 

[Senka]

The man's answer was to talk himself out of the situation he had brought himself into. As the golden-skinned stranger, who outright ignored her inquiry, refuted Zenichi's points, in the same manner Senka would have, an anger vein popped up on her forehead. However, there were more pressing matters than to get mad at a person who appeared to be on her side at the moment. This man had implied the breakdown of peaceful negotiations, should his appeal not be heeded.

"We are not going to enter into any business relationship with a person who would try to illegally enter the village and spout nonsense about selling his services to it. Isn't it great, a person breaks into your home and suddenly tells you that he will sell you something? What would your first reaction be? Well, obviously to call the police... I mean, authorities."

Senka was well aware of the fact that not everybody knew the things she did, and had to paraphrase certain expressions for them to be understood.

"Guess what, you tried to break into the police-station. And to hell with paraphrasing this."

With this, negotiations were truly over.

"How long you stay in prison depends not on my decision, or the decision of anybody else present. And part of it also depends on how you behave now."

That was the cue for her to take out whatever cuffs were used in this village to transport potentially dangerous individuals with Ninja powers into the prison. However, since she was comparatively new to the whole "surrender" thing, she did not exactly know how to proceed from then on. Turning around and looking up the giant stone wall, Senka called for "backup".

"He... bi... come down here."

She was reluctant to speak that way too commonplace and clichéd name, but had to do so in compliance with regulations.


[Preparing to take Zenichi into custody]

 

[Morishige]

And so it was time that Itsuki was to intervene, or rather, be called into the situation. It appeared that the man was possibly giving up, he had not made an offensive move as of yet. Though, tensions were on the rise.

The young Kyokuju rose her hand to an ear and began to speak on all channels. "This is Hebi, reporting from the Dragon Tooth Pass. Several shinobi have stopped at attempted force entry and are preparing to take this... Zenichi of Konoha into custody. Should the worst occur, know that I am here with Shougo Rori. Kunoichi Rakujo has left the scene, for unknown reasons, perhaps fear of dealing with a potential threat. There is an unknown man with strange chakra and golden eyes, he appears to be on our side and trying to dissuade this Zenichi from doing anything reckless. I will continue to report as the situation furthers on all frequencies. Assistance is requested to take this man into custody, as he is believed to be a shinobi of some caliber. I'm moving in to assist Shougo Rori with the arrest."

And with that, Itsuki disappeared from the wall and reappeared next to Senka. "Please do not make this more difficult than it needs to be. I'm sure it's a misunderstanding." she said, approaching Zenichi to help Senka put the cuffs on him. Her eyes were focused on his chakra to know if he was preparing jutsu of any kind and would take action to hopefully stop him.

 

[Zethui Kobayashi]

Zenichi didn't even see the fourth guard arrive. When she started to call out a sit rep to others on the comm, he knew it was fight of flight time. He might be able to elude the two before him maybe even three but there was no telling how many were on their way towards the gates. Furthermore, he didn't know if he may be running towards more reinforcements as he tried to escape.

No, defeat wasn't easy to admit but death wasn't an option.

[Surrender]

 

[Senka]

Hebi followed Senka's order, but proceeded to first report the situation over the headset. She mentioning the stitched up girl's call sign, causing her to flinch for two simple reasons. Firstly, they were within earshot of a potential enemy and the unknown, golden-skinned entity who had left the field to the two known Ninja of the village hidden in the cloud. Secondly, she hated her call sign.

"Grr... why did you give me that name? I know, I do look like it. Ok, now that I said it myself, I feel sad..."

She murmured, possibly audibly so for everybody to hear, but certainly not to make sense of.

"I appreciate your cooperativeness, Zenichi. It's duly noted and might affect the duration of your incarceration."

With this, she finalized the shackles on the former member of the village hidden in the leaf, making the arrest official.

"I'm sure you are proud enough to demand not to be pushed forward or pulled along all the way, so please walk for yourself."

Senka turned to the golden-skinned man, looked up to him skeptically, noticing the distinct features of his spirit, and opened her mouth underneath the surgical mask. She then reconsidered and just turned back to Zenichi, to guide him inside the village.


[Topic Left with Zenichi and Itsuki ; Join this]

 

[Kairyuu]

The blade lowers as Hoshikata twists his hand, the foot of crystal sharpness retracting into the staff once more. The pointed cap comes to rest on the ground as he looks at the man, his face impassive as the other surrenders. Hoshikata looks to Senka and nods, and then Itsuki, also giving a nod, before he steps back to let them do their job. He does, however, give a piece of advice as he did. ”I suggest calling in your Sennin for escort. This man does appear dangerous.” The words were following the woman with stitches attempting to say something.

Those golden eyes move from the captive to the two ANBU present, betraying nothing. In truth he was the outsider here, more so even than Zenichi, but he made a promise and he was keeping it. This village could use some help, as shown by how easily he turned it into his toy once already, and his help was far from useless. He looks back to Senka, his own eyes noticing the oddity of her own spiritual embodiment before laughing. "And perhaps he can explain who I am to you."

With those words, the golden skinned Seer turns and walks back into the village.

(Left)