Starring:
Date: March 31, 2013
Summary:
A team of Genin is sent to cure a sick village and encounter looters.
"A spoonful of sugar…"
An unnamed village in the desert surrounding Sunagakure
In his usual abrasive, direct way, Kuoroke has summoned a trio of of ninja to his office: the recently promoted Miira Nao, Yamauchi Chitose, who in light of recent events may need a bit of time away from the village, but not on a very high-profile mission, and Hayato Satoru, whose avian friend is one of the more reliable guides through the desert. He waits at his desk for them to arrive. His summons did not contain any hint as to why they were called - simply to be in his office at the mentioned hour. Once they've all entered, or once the appointed hour comes, whichever is first, he begins his explanation.
"Good morning. I've called you here because I have a mission for you." A trio of scrolls, neatly lying before him, are rolled towards each of them with a flick of Kuoroke's fingers. "Here you have detailed medic reports, a map to your destination, and detailed instructions on how to administer your cargo. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Your mission consists of delivering and administering a cargo of medicine to a village that has been struck with a disease, called…" he frowns. "Well, the official name's in there, but it's not really relevant. What you need to know is that most -if, by now, not all- of the village has come under its influence. Symptoms include, at first, lethargy, followed by hallucinations and manic behavior." He looks at his young team. "For the non-experts, that means they'll be seeing things and bursting with energy. Finally, it will lead to damage to the patient's nervous system, and death. The medicine you'll be delivering will be liquid, to be given to them to drink. Any questions?"
A look at the scroll and then Chitose looks up with a blink, "While I'm not questioning my mission, I'm questioning why we instead of Medic Nin are being sent on a medical mission?" Chitose looks impassive as she looks up, showing little emotion at the question, just kind of seeming confused. She then looks back at the scroll, reading it over as she looks at it, "Also, are there any ninja in the village affected by this or is this just simply a group of normal villagers?"
To say that Nao is nervous would be an understatement. This is her first official mission, after all, and she'd arrived with absolute punctuality. The girl, does not look good, though. Pale, scratched old glasses, lightly trembling… no, she doesn't look like a bastion of strength and reliability. She looks like she might pass out. Diseases?! Diseases are scary, and crazy people, also, quite scary. Her eyes stare at Kuoroke as though he's asked her to go and bring him the heads of the seven swordsmen.
But in the final analysis, mutely, she nods. Unrolling the scroll, she examines all the information there before she dares to say a word. She doesn't want to ask any stupid questions after all. Which means, for now, reading. Read read read, read read read. She hasn't even looked at Chitose properly; the brown-robed girl is doing her best to be one with the furniture.
Satoru arrives in the office at the appointed hour, with only seconds to spare. His heavy breathing suggests he had move quickly to get there in time. Baizo calmly preens himself on Satoru's shoulder, stopping only briefly when the bird is referenced. Satoru looks over the rest of the group when arrives, a somewhat hesitant smile for Chitose, then, when he looks at Nao, still smiling, but with a quiver in his lip, hinting at a sneer.
He listens to Chitose's question, then adds one of his own. "If the nutjobs don't want to drink, do we… Force them?"
"Because we don't have quite as many Medic nins to spare as we do regular ninja. Most of them are out trying to figure out if the disease has spread anywhere else in the Land of Wind." Kuoroke answers. "And measuring an amount of liquid before giving it to someone to drink should not require medical training." He gives her one more look. "Of course, as with any of these missions, if you don't think you're qualified, you can always request to be replaced." He nods to Satoru. "Yes, you do. If there aren't any more questions, get to the hospital, take your medicine, get innoculated, yourselves, and prepare to leave as soon as you can."
As long as no one else declines the idea, Chitose suggests they leave immediately and heads to the hospital herself to get innoculated. She isn't entirely sure her going into a manic state is the absolutely best idea in the world. Either way, once they are all innoculated, she'll start a run toward the village, peering at girl that has joined up with them before she looks forward, "What's your story?" She hmms at Noa, not having seen so nervous a genin or scrawny a genin in this village ever. "I don't believe we've met, I'm Chitose." Though, the girl might have heard the name before given there was a rampage involving her not too long ago.
Noa looks up from the scroll, and shakes her head, "I don't need to know anything else, Sir." She says, as she rolls it up and tucks it away in her robes. Internally, she's already trying to think. Assuming that one in ten of the population will have died or fled, which seems like a reasonable estimate to her, even if she's not got a huge amount of experience, that means there's approximately one hundred and eighty infected individuals. Which means approximately sixty each for the three man team to deal with.
"I'll go and pick up some extra rope and some spikes. Uhm. I might have difficulty carrying too much though, if, if one of you wouldn't mind…" She's already starting to trail off, by the time they are leaving to get innoculated.
"My name is Noa." She'll answer Chitose, smiling hesitantly as she does. She touches the sigil she wears next to that of Sunagakure on her forehead protector. "Miira Noa. I, just graduated a little time ago…"
And true to her word, even carrying the relatively slight amount of supplies she's brought with her, she's having a hellish time keeping up with Chitose's run. She tires easily, even if she's trying her very best not to slow the others down.
"Wow. A real strong one you are, huh? I've got them." Satoru takes the rope and the spikes from Noa, shaking his head.
After they have gotten their innoculations, Satoru follows after Chitose, Baizo taking to the sky and flying ahead of them. Occasionally, he gives suggestions to avoid having to climb the highest dunes, the bird providing a reference point for the group.
After the girls exchange introductions, Satoru half-mutters to Chitose, loud enough for Noa to easily hear. "I hope this mission goes smoothly. Since four-eyes doesn't know how to use a comb or carry anything, I don't have high hopes for her other skills."
A look over at Satoru and Chitose grins, "If you'd like I can hamstring you that way you feel less like she's a burden on this group." She hmms and tilts her head, "Then you'd have a problem, too!" She nods and then looks forward before saying, "We all have our burdens to bear, Satoru." She nods her head, "Some are just more obvious than others. She then looks forward, "When we get there, we had better not delay. We attack as a group, it may take longer but there'll probably be lower chance of us getting surrounded, attacked and harming hte people we are helping. Two hold a person, the third delivers the medication."
Noa doesn't defend herself when Satoru questions her. The girl doesn't have the will to do so; she doesn't know if he's right. What she does do, is hesitate at Chitose's plan, and take a deep breath.
"A-actually, I was, looking at the map of the village." She says, "I was thinking, potentially outnumbered sixty to one, what we need to prioritize is ensuring we have a position we can draw them to where their superior numbers mean nothing… I suspect that energized, hallucinating, they'll be drawn to loud noises."
She … CAN talk it seems, because she keeps on going, "I would suggest using the spikes and the rope to block off an alleyway, and then drawing them to us. It is, unlikely we'll get all of them, but when we've drawn out the most exciteable ones, we can proceed watching each other's backs and be less likely to be mobbed."
And then she pauses. Coughs. "I, I just, had, you know. The idea…"
"You could certainly /try/ to hamstring me," Satoru fires back. He then looks over over at Noa. "Do we need to slow down for you?" He asks, his tone sounding rather taunting rather than considerate. He then shrugs. "I'm not sure roping off the alleyway will do much good. I mean, how hard is it to climb over or under or through some rope. But maybe the rest of your idea isn't completely terrible. We could use it the rope trap? Like, a big lasso on the ground. Pull it and nab whoever walks into the circle. So I guess making some noise and drawing them into it could still be useful." He looks to Chitose for approval.
A look at Noa and then at Satoru before nodding, "I think th e ropes at the end are just to slow them." She nods, "Keep them from going crazy at us in force." She then eyes Satoru more closely, "Quit being so hard on her. We all have our issues and we all have our strengths." She then eyes Satoru more closely, "Lets focus on the mission." She then looks toward the distant village that they are approaching as quick as Noa will allow, "We find a safe alley, lure them in and work together to administer the medication." She then hmms, "Lets focus on the strongest of the lot first…if we can get some innoculated and fixed up quick enough, we might find allies to help us…that is, if this medication works quick enough."
As the group moves over barchans and dunes at a high pace in the stinging, but luckily not too strong wind, they come closer to the destination, and after climbing yet another dune, they see what Baizo had cried about minutes ago: their destination. With the bird's native insight and Chitose's experience with deliveries, their trip is both safe -if, due to some internal disagreement, not entirely uneventful- and relatively short. From their vantage point, they see a village with an architecture reminiscent of Sunagakure: covered from the wind by a small rock formation one one side and walls around the rest, it has hemispherical buildings, scattered apart but near each other in a haphazard fashion. From the distance, it looks like yet another desert village.
That is, if these were not trained ninja with trained ninja eyes. Even from afar, they can see that the village is a mess: although the noon heat is over and life should be resuming its normal level of activity, the streets remain desolate, debris scattered around them. The people that do populate these streets are doing anything but what you'd expect: some are running around, some are just sitting by the side. From where they are, they can see a couple of fights, including one in which one of the participants is stubbornly trying to punch a wall, whereas the other one, being a small girl, is feebly but fiercely trying to punch him in the ribs - to no avail. Chaos has entered this village, and made itself comfortable.
Noa nods her head to Chitose. "I meant, ankle height, if they are hallucinating, they'll trip, fall… easy to deal with." She does look, truly apologetic when she turns to Satoru though. "Really, I understand why you are angry. I'm, untested, and… n-not, strong." Which isn't quite the same thing as admitting she is weak, but probably not far off. "I will do my best not to jeopardize the mission."
Seeing the village, even from this distance, the necessity of Noa's glasses is… called into question, as she sees just as aware of the fighting as anyone else. Her teeth tug at her bottom lip, and she nods her head towards a hopeful-looking spot. "Maybe, there? At least sneaking in will be easy…"
Satoru sighs as Chitose tells him to back off the bullying. "Oh, fine. I was just joking around, anyway." Oddly, none of his comments were particularly funny! As Noa proclaims her own weakness, Satoru opens his mouth to say something else, glances at Chitose, and snaps it shut. Passing on an easy one. Such restraint.
As they cross over the last dune, Hideaki surveys the scene, and then releases a short, barking laugh. "Wow. These people are even more messed up than I guessed." He points at the man and the girl 'fighting.' "I think that man over there is losing, but only because the wall is helping the little girl." He snickers at his own observation.
He then nods to Noa. "Yeah. Alright, sounds like as good a place to enter as any. And I guess ankle height would make sense." With that, he starts to move to the part of the village Noa has suggested.
Following Noa's plan, Chitose nods and then looks at Satoru, "In the desert, Satoru, you gotta accept what you can't change or else you'll spend all day fighting it." She looks at Noa, "She has accepted her weaknesses." She glances at Satoru, "Surprised you are having such trouble with it." She hmms, "Perhaps it's like walking up walls…" She shrugs and then rushes forward a little, peering about, "We need to be careful at first not to draw attention…don't want to get the party started too early."
The group enter the village, and the situation becomes more obvious: somewhere, someone is singing in an off-key falcetto. Somewhere else, someone is laughing. As they continue on, they can hear at least three conversations which obviously have only one side, loudly enough to be heard outside, taking place inside the houses. Baizo circles overhead, and soon spirals down to inform the group of something: amongst all the chaos and the aimless people, he's spotted a small group, ten people at the most, that is suprisingly well-organized moving through one of the nearby streets, from one house to another.
"Looters…" Noa mumbles, but, aside from that, the girl doesn't, add any more to the conversation. She looks between the other two and, her inexperience shows. She doesn't even try to suggest a course of action. She's completely conflicted. Stealing, wrong! But the mission isn't anything to do with stealing. And that's assuming her assumption is correct and there isn't something even more nefarious at play.
Satoru groans in annoyance, his voice dropping in volume as they get closer to the village. "Oh, enough with lectures already. I let her off the hook, didn't I? And you don't need to tell me about the desert, neither. I grew up out here."
Baizo drops out of the sky. "Uh oh," Satoru murmurs. Anything that Baizo thought was worth coming down for instead of sending some signal from above was trouble. Baizo makes some soft noises directly in Satoru's ear, and he looks at the rest of the group. "Doesn't look like we're the only healthy people around here. People moving around from house to house." As Noa mumbles about the looters, Satoru nods. "That seems pretty likely. These folks probably can't even tell which house is theirs anymore. Easy pickings if you're willing to risk catching this stuff or already got innoculated."
Satoru then grins, a hint of cruelty in his smile. "It maybe isn't our primary mission objective, but I'm thinking I wouldn't mind bashing some heads and whatnot."
"It is our primary mission objective." Chitose responds and looks at Satoru, "These people may be responsible for this disease, not just simple looters." She shakes her head, "If we leave them, they may repeat it somewhere else. I wouldn't be surprised the way some ninja operate." She nods her head "We should bring them down and keep a few alive for purposes of questioning them later." She then looks at Noa, "Are you good with ninjutsu?" S he hmms at the girl, "We could use that about now."
While the group discusses what they're going to do, Baizo does another fly-over of the group -who seem not to pay the bird any mind- and returns to update the team's information: they have moved on to the next team. At the same time, a man comes running through the street they crossed somewhat earlier, screaming and waving his hands like he's trying to swat something off himself. What exactly it is, however, is lost in the unintillegible gibberish of his screams.
Noa looks distinctly uncomfortable at the notion of bashing heads. She doesn't know if she could bash heads! She swallows, and tugs at her robes for a couple of moments, but, well, the others seem to have made up their minds, and who is she to argue?
"Y-yes." She says, "I can, use ninjutsu quite well. Uhm. What, did you have in mind?" The girl's hands emerging from her robe, one to push up her glasses, the other flexing gently. Even if it was just villagers… ten people who aren't insane could pose a real threat!
"Well we don't have a lot of choice, now that I think about it. What are we going to do? Try to cure the whole village without those jerks noticing?" Satoru watches with an amused smirk as the man runs by screaming, watching him. "I think we got to deal with the intruders first anyway." He then looks over at Chitose and smirks. "Race you there." With that he takes off, slinking against the walls and trying to make his way to the house Baizo is circling without being noticed.
"Stay back then, use ninjutsu from afar." Sh e nods to Noa, "I'm good at getting in close." She then turns and runs up a wall before pointing to an alley nearby, "Stay in the alleyways, Noa." She nods her head before turning to run along the roof after Satoru, shaking her head as she goes and then licking her lips. Frankly, she seems far more serious since her…incident.
Noa's approach is much slower than the others. "R-right." She stammers to Chitose, and, starts to make her way after the other two. She sticks to the alleyways, just as she's been told to, and makes sure to stay in the shadows there, too. In fact, the shadows, out of the blazing heat from the desert, are quite a pleasant place to be. She's still focused though; this situation has become a lot more dangerous! She doesn't want to be the reason it all goes horribly wrong!
The screaming man continues on his screaming way, still trying to get rid of whatever assails him in his mind, while the team move around the building and towards the building. Whoever these people are, they either don't notice or don't care about whatever's going outside, and they are being careful: from the outside, it's impossible to hear what's happening. As the team goes quiet and the only noises in the air are those of the village in the grasp of disease and utter chaos, the tension becomes palpable…
Satoru waves his falcon down from the sky as he reaches the front door of the house, having no intention of entering danger without his companion. He glances over at Chitose, if she is still on the roof. He cracks the door open takes a moment to focus his chakra, then nods to Chitose. "I'm right behind you if you want to take the lead."
"Oh so brave of you, Satoru." Chitose whispers and then does indeed take the lead. She looks inside only a little before slipping in and looking around. She tries to keep quiet as she goes, peering this way and that as she slips inside, looking for the enemies that they ahve found in the looney bin of a town.
Noa stays back, as, she has been told to. Covering the others, she focuses on her breathing, and tries to prepare herself in case something happens unexpectedly. Or, expectedly, really. She's no idea what her allies are capable of, and if either of them should suddenly flip out - as ninjas are wont to do - she doesn't want to panic… equally, these are an unknown group of enemies. Anything is possible! It is, terrifying!
Inside, the house looks at lreast as turned upside-down as the rest of the village. More so, even: every cupboard, every wardrobe, and every container in the house seems to have been emptied and rifled through, as Nao correctly supposed. As soon as she enters, Chitose hears voice upstairs. When she moves inside, however, the voices stop for a moment and then continue in more hushed, and more tense tones. The pattern of movement she hears is entirely different as well: where before they were moving heavy items and, by the sounds of it, throwing with fragile ones, now all such motion has stopped. After a few minutes, she can see a pair of feet descending the stairs slowly and as quietly as they can, which, admittedly, isn't very.
Satoru shrugs at the barb on his bravery. He murmurs back, "You've been lecturing me all day. You want to give the orders, you get to be the leader." He then follows Chitose in to the house. And the sound of the men coming down the stairs. Moving behind a corner he focuses his mind. And then, he takes off, snaping his fingers as he attempts to invade the mind of one, causing him to see a bright flash of light. While he is distracted, Satoru rushes up the stairs, roughly grabbing the man he attempted to blind earlier and shoving him downward with all the leverage he can manage.
Looking up as she spots the foot coming down the stairs, she follows after, watching as Satoru does something to the man and rush him. Chitose follows suit, rushing up the stairs as well, t hough she has got two kunai in hand. As she gets up there, she'll attempt to pierce the chest of the first two she spots up there. She is remaining silent for now, s haking her head as she throws.
Noa is more circumspect. As the sounds of battle commence, she pauses. Waits for the count of three, to see if anyone or anything from outside starts to move towards the house to investigate… its only if there's no obvious sign of backup, that she scurries from her position in the alleyway opposite the house, to press herself up against the doorframe as stealthily as she can, ready to give backup to the team if they require it, though the close quarters means they are - in her mind at least - better left on their own fornow.
As the pair rushes upstairs, they catch the first one off-guard. He blinks, helplessly, while Satoru grabs him and shoves him down the stairs. Chitose has to evade the body as it comes rolling down and ends its movement with a wet, unpleasant thud. The girl makes her way past Satoru, only to find more prepared defenses: her first trike is parried with a chair, but the second one lands squarely into a man's chest, bringing her down. The looters retaliate, however. Now that they have the time to look around, they see that there are eight more of them. They divide in equal groups, each ganging up on one of the children, swinging chairs, lamps, and whatever else is handy at them. Noa, in the meantime, sits outside, with no sign of backup coming.
Satoru backs up against a wall to keep himself from being completely overwhelmed on all sides, but with four men attacking him, he has little room to retreat or regroup at this point. He weaves through various attacks, keeping his movements subtle and using the false image of himself disappearing behind a mirage to aid him. "My friend said to take some of you alive, so it's your lucky day," he taunts a man who missed him with a heavy looking lamp. He makes some handsigns and, in a moment, baring a stronger will than Satoru expects, his whole body would suddenly experience the exhaustion of the desert heat.
Noa's fears that this group are leading them into a trap allayed, she has to try and give them backup. The girl makes her way up the stairs, and what she sees… she takes surprisingly well. Being Miira, even weak, sickly Miira, these aren't the first bodies she's seen. Keeping her head down, she performs a quick series of handseals herself, using exactly as much chakra as needed, a moment later, a tiny bullet of chakra shoots from the stairwell, aiming directly between the eyes of one of the men nearest Chitose.
The more experienced pair defend from the joint assault with surprising quickness, but the assault does succeed in distracting Chitose: her arms flail out, extending and bending beyond what should be anatomically possible, but find no enemy to strike. In the meantime, Satoru has more luck: the first man he targets groans, grasps his head, then his throat, and then slowly collapses. In the meantime, the man that was knocked down the stairs seems to regain at least part of his ability to move, and comes back up the stairs, trying to grab Noa from behind and throw -her- off the stairs he just fell down.
Still weaving, Satoru gives up on trying to use his genjutsu to decieve them into striking the right place, instead letting his efficient movements and sharp reflexes evade one blow after another.
Satoru focuses in on the man furtherest to his left, Baizo screeching as he does so. He nods, then makes some handseals, trying to blind this man as he successfully did on the other. He then launches his entire body at the man, leading with his shoulder aimed squarely at the man's chest. He barely regains his balance in time to launch a snapping side kick at the enemy that was to his right.
Moving through the attacks, Chitose grumbles as she gets hit with one attack and also misses with her first round of attacks but doesn't have a lot in the way of options at the moment so she whips a fist into one man before spinning to send one out like a stretched out to reach him from farther than s he should and then ends with a double handed punch right into the last guy that appears to be going for his gut but turns up at the last second for his jaw.
Noa, just isn't expecting to be attacked from behind. She'd assumed the villager had been rendered unconscious, and she pays for her mistake. She tries to bring her hands together to defend herself, but, she's grabbed, and hurled down the stairs, her fragility is made all too clear.
When she lands, she's got a nasty cut on her face, bleeding profusely, and, well… she panics. "S-stop this!" She stammers, pushing herself back across the floor, though she doesn't, actually, get to her feet. "D-do you know what this headband means? I, I'm a, a n-ninja! I'll kill you if you touch me again!" She sounds desperate. She IS desperate. Trying to remember her training. Handseals. Chakra. She shouldn't panic. She can do this. Ignore the fact you're bleeding. Focus through the pain.
All much easier said than done when confronted by someone determined to hurt you, and apparently quite capable of doing just that.
Satoru's combination of a blinding flash and his entire body thrown into a blow once again pays off, this time even better: he slams into the man's chest and throws him backward, into the next room, while he's clawing at his eyes. Then he swings a leg at the man he sees from the corner of his eyes, but the man is further than he estimated, and his kick does not connect. However, he now only has two enemies, who are trying to flank him. Despite the single strike that passed through Chirose's defense, she is moderately successful: the first attack misses, again, but that only makes her successive ones fiercer, and these do connect, knocking one of her assailants on the ground, and throwing the other one straight out of a window. She, too, has two opponents left. Noa, in the meantime, is not doing as well. "It means you're a dumb girl who's in our way!" he shouts, as he rushes down the stairs, and leaps from the last few stairs, trying to land on her with both his feet.
At this point, Satoru is breathing quite heavily and his body is starting to show signs of slumping. "You clowns can surrender at any time," he suggests. But, figuring he isn't going to be so lucky, he makes an effort to slip out of the flank, and just barely manages to evade a pair of blows as he does so. He makes some more handsigns, trying to down both of his opponents at once rather than continuing to try and defend on multiple signs. He staggers from the exertion as he attempts to make these last two feel the same heat delirium that felled his foe earlier.
RPCOMBAT: Satoru attacks with HEAT-EXHAUSTION…28
Looking pretty tired at this point, one attack hits Chitose, causing her to stumble. She growls as she looks at her attacker and then just whips out to kunai and throws one each at both men before shaking her head, "This needs to end." She then points, "Satoru, if you get them down, help out Noa." She nods and then she herself will head that way if she has finished her opponents.
The man descends from above, and his feet impact cleanly with Noa…
Who promptly explodes into a cloud of smoke.
Now on the other side of the room, the girl's breathing has calmed again. She's, focused. Intent. Its, frightening, yes. Every other battle she's had her family around her, and she never really had to contribute herself because of their overwhelming strength. For the moment at least, it is her and this man, one on one, and if she is going to win, she needs to seize this advantage.
Her breath explodes out of her all at once, three tightly compacted bullets of air aimed at vital points of the body. She, knows she wasn't meant to kill, but after the threat had been issued… she felt like her honor was on the line. So one aims for his throat, and two for his heart. She's never actually tried to kill a man before… she understood the theory, but she doesn't know how well her wind bullets will measure up to her tutor's in practice.
Satoru stumbles, but so do his opponents, after he's performed his hand seals: one of them looks around desperately for something to cool his from the sudden heat, stumbles one step in a random direction, then collapses, and hte other can't do even that. He simply falls where he stood. One of Chitose's kunai finds a man's throat, and he grabs at it, making a horrible, bubbling noise. The other blade misses, and at first, its target grins… but then he realises he's here alone and clearly outmatched. He swallows and simply backs away into the next room, slowly, his hands raised - one holding the thrown kunai.
Downstairs, Noa defends herself to the best of her ability, striking with three spheres of air. The moment he sees the girl inhale, the man moves out of the way, narrowly avoiding the bullets, which tear through the wall behind him.
His opponents are not the only ones about to collapse. Satoru wavers, placing a hand on the wall to steady himself. He struggles to return to the stair landing, looking down at it. "I think- she might be okay- without me." Baizo squawks and Satoru just shakes his head. He pulls out a kunai to toss it the man who is still troubling Noa, but it slips through his fingers and lands on the floor with a thud. Satoru slumps backwards onto a nearby wall, trying his best to keep his eyes open. He looks over at Chitose who has similarly vanquished her foes. "I really- think- she's doing fine," he insists.
Looking at her opponent, Chitose points at him, "You had better drop that or I'll drop you." She pulls out three kunai, "I haven't any problem throwing all three at you, feeling lucky?" She hmms, "Why are you here? What do you know about the disease…tell me or you die."
Downstairs, Noa is getting more desperate. The sound of fighting upstairs has stopped! The others had taken three a piece, and she can't even land a hit. She's running out of options, but she doesn't want to retreat, that'd be too humiliating even for her. Blood trickles into her eye, and she hmphs. She can't, encourage him to flee either; what if he got reinforcements?
Noa carries practically no ninja equipment… she's always been terrible with it. But she does have a kunai tucked into the lining of her sleeve. So, she takes another deep breath….
And hoping that she can trick the man into moving again, she swings it forwards and hurls the slender metal dagger, more with hope than skill.
The man moves, but Noa overestimates the amount by which he was going to move, and the kunai sails past him, still. He comes at her, swinging, with little regard for the fact he's a grown man about to beat up a little girl. In the meantime, upstairs, a grown man is quite alert of the fact he's about to be beaten up by a little girl: he backs away one more step, looks back into the room behind him with despair, and then drops the kunai. It drops into the floor with a thud. "I… uh… I don't… W-we just saw that they're, uh… that everyone here was, well… easy… uhh… easy pickings…"
Satoru's legs give out, and he slides down the wall he is backed up against until he is seated. He takes one last look at Noa, who is the only one still in any trouble, but he can't will himself to stand up again, so instead he flips his head back against the wall, trying desperately to catch his ragged breath.
A deep frown at that, "Oh, well, in that case, you're useless to me." And with that she sends two Kunai at the man and heads to the stairs to throw one toward the back of the man about to try to beat up a poor Noa. She then looks over at Satoru, "Rest for now."
Noa isn't surprised that she messes up the throw. Taijutsu is her biggest weakness. As evidenced by the fact that the kunai, though it hits the ground point first… does not do so with a satisfying thunk, but instead skitters pitifully to a halt.
When the man comes at her again, Noa brings both hands together. The air in front of her shimmers with heat, and unlike Satoru's techniques, this is no illusion. When her image shimmers and breaks up, dissolving away into nothingness, it is because she's heated the air in that barrier to rival the hottest desert days.
Which leaves him with the sweat-inducing heat where she was, and she, back at the foot of the stairs. She's made herself another opportunity, and in conjunction with the kunai hurled by her ally, she fires off another trio of air bullets. She, hates to use so much at once… but she can't afford to waste the opening.
"Wa- Gurgle." This is the note on which yet another of the looters' life ends, as he falls to the ground. But Chitose isn't there to watch him die: by the time his head lands on the ground, she's on the stairs. By the time the last twitches stop, the kunai has left her hand. The last of the attackers rushes Noa, and then finds the place empty again. He looks around, enraged, only to see a kunai flying for his head. He swiflty steps back, allowing it to pass before him, only to have a bullet of air rip through his chest. He gasps, and then two more hit him, another one through the chest and one through the gut. The last of the looters, now, is dead as well.
It seems Chitose has very little patience for robbers and thieves. She at this point, ,finds her own wall to lean into and then points at Noa, "Make sure we aren't attracting unwanted attention, we'll heal these people in a few. We need to catch our breathes." She nods, "Anyway, good job." She settles on to the floor, "Next time don't threaten…just kill." She then lets out a breath and slumps to the floor.
Noa just killed a man.
Its, funny. She's seen lots of people die - usually in quite gruesome ways - but she's never taken a life herself before now. She's silent for a few, long, moments, and then she nods her head to the more experienced ninja. "Yes." She murmurs, feeling… a little tired herself. But also buzzing with adrenalin.
She goes outside, and, after confirming they aren't going to be swarmed immediately… the inexperienced genin, very quietly, throws up a little distance from the building. She'll get over it. She just, needs a few seconds herself.
After they've eliminated, sometimes in messy ways, the looters, the village returns to being what it looked like when they first arrived here: a mess of people wandering around, running around, and screaming inarticulately. A quick examination of the house tells them, also, why the looters were so confident about being able to get away from this. The house's owner is in the house, lying in the room the second last looter to die was backing away in, too apathetic to even react to all of the fighting going on several feet away from him.
Looking across toward where Noa goes, Chitose slumps and shakes her head as she sits there, she's just going to rest for a while, only spending a small amount of effort to prepare the first couple of doses for the villagers. She only gets moving after fifteen minutes, finally feeling like moving. She starts off with the man in the room upstairs and then gets moving.
After some rest, the team regain their strength in this eerie village filled with the haunted spirits of the still-living. And then, they can get to their real business of the day: they find the sick, some too apathetic to move when they come, some so active and misguided by the figments of their own imaginations that they flee or try to fight against the their efforts, and even a few for whom all help comes too late, usually curled up in the street with foam in the corners of their mouths. It's not easy work, but with some organisation, they manage to cover the village eventually. Those they treat sink into a brief sleep, and by the time they're finished with the last, the first have woken up and are trying to get their bearings. The team are invited to spend the night in the village and recover for a while, as the sun is down before their work is done, and they leave the next day, with new experiences from a job well done.
