Starring:
Date: November 11, 2011
Summary:
After Kirigakure’s weapon in ruins, Keisuke, Tsiro and Yuuka are assigned the task of destroying remaining bodies on the beach to prevent scavengers from obtaining any secrets from the dead.
"Boned Bandits"
Water Ferry Docks [Land of Water]
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Welcome to the docks of the land of Water. The welcome really isn't much exsistant as a light mist and cold breeze seems to move through here at all times. At the ferry an old man is tying off a boat and sitting in wait for one to want passage back towards Fire Country.
Many small houses seem to populate the docks here and a strong smell of fish permiates from the south. Up a flight of stairs and proceeding eastward is a path that is slightly obscured by a thick mist.
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As the sun sets on the battlefield where the compound that held the beam used to wreak havoc on the Land of Fire was once, Keisuke is already busy leading a mission now that he's back in Kirigakure. The giant Kaguya Swordsman walks along the ruined area, looking for any corpses of Kirigakure shinobi. Yuuka and Tsiro are here with him, though they are free to wander and search on their own. If anything happens, she can let him know.
"Looks like your story will not go on," he says as he comes to the corpse of a young Kaguya. He reaches to a pouch and withdraws a bottle of fuel, which he promptly proceeds to pour over the body before striking a match and tossing it down to set it ablaze.
Yuuka is slow as she walks along the beach where the final battle took place, bodies littered across the sand even days afterwards, from Konoha and Kiri alike. Regardless of country, they are all dead now. She lightly presses her lips together as she approaches one body, leaning down enough to gently roll it over just enough for her to see it was a Konoha shinobi. A young one that was probably seeing his first war, his first taste of battle, and his last. Yuuka gently shakes her snowy head as she pulls away and rises to her feet, "Keisuke-sama, what are we looking for exactly?" she asks out loud.
Tsiro walked between Yuuka and Keisuke. His eyes fell upon all of those who had died. He had missed the final battle. It was a blood bath, more gruesome than anything he had been a part of. This was like the effect someone would boast of in a tall tail. Though his eyes did not really fall on anybody in particular, his eyes did not leave the ground. Not even when Yuuka asked what they were looking for.
"Any of them," Keisuke says, turning his head to Yuuka. "We are here to destroy these corpses and make sure no one is able to get Kirigakure's clan's Kekkei Genkais from any of them. Call it your first taste of the life of a Hunter nin." He then turns his attention to the boy at her side, lifting an eyebrow faintly. "Pay attention to what you're doing here. The ground is not your mission. If you are to be tempered to be a suitable Kirigakure shinobi, you will become accustomed to the idea of death." That said, he begins walking around, pouring fuel on bodies and tossing matches on them as he moves. Unlike Yuuka, he seems to have no sympathy or remorse. "There is also the threat of grave robbers working for scientists that want to try to duplicate our Kekkei Genkais. We might run into a few and have to put them down."
"Some of them are Konoha shinobi. How much use would they be?" Yuuka asks with some curiosity, though she pulls out the bottle the Swordsmen had given her and pours some of the fuel on it, leaving the young body to be burned with the others as she moves on to the next. A Kiri shinobi. "Grave robbers… I wonder how likely that will be." she murmurs softly to herself, "But this is the best burial we can give our men, our shinobi. They died with honor for our country."
Tsiro raised his eyes for a moment. "I appreciate the concern over my future. Death does not bother me. I was just looking for those I had previously fought. If they died here, I will never get the chance to kill them myself." The boy then produces a bottle he had been given as well. He pours a bit of it over a body and lights a match. He drops the match and the flames begin.
"To some jutsu-crazed scientist? Plenty. To those who don't give a damn what those scientists want like me, they're just as good destroyed," Keisuke says bluntly as he continues walking around and burning corpses. Whatever fuel he has concocted here is certainly doing the job, as it is rather quickly incinerating down to the bones of the fallen shinobi. Tsiro's words draw a simple nod from him, nothing more, as he continues about his work.
Suddenly, he feels someone stepping on a tiny particle of bone; the Swordsman turns his head off toward the ruins of the compound. "… Ah, there are insects among the ruins," he says before bringing his hands up into a seal. Three copies of him then rise up out of the water crashing onto the shore and dart off toward what's left of the compound to find the intruder. "Prepare yourselves."
Keisuke has partially disconnected.
Another body burning at her feet, Yuuka instantly snaps her bright eyes up in the direction of the building ruins not even a fraction of an instant after Keisuke does, movement at the edge of her senses only confirming that they are not the only ones here. "They must be searching for something in there…" she murmurs lightly to herself. Her jaw firms as her hands at her sides curl just a bit tighter, though Yuuka is quick to slip the collar of her kimono from her shoulders, slipping her arms from the long sleeves to reveal more skin, curves, and the pale ivory that's wrapped around her chest. "Looks like this is not going to be all that dull, is it." Yuuka murmurs with a quirk of a brow, smiling as she gives her student a sideways glance.
Tsiro watched as the swordsman took off. Before his sensei spoke, bones began to protrude from his hands. "Come on sensei. We cannot let him have all the fun here. He'll continue to view me like any other genin if we do." The boy was off in a full run towards the location of the bandits. He comes to a stop before he reaches the compound. He did not want to fall into any trap just yet.
Keeping his eyes on the area around the compound, Keisuke simply waits. "This should prove fairly interesting… at least for you two," the Swordsman says, no expression on his face now. Suddenly, four figures are seen running away from the compound, chased by the three copies of him. As they are kicking it into high gear to try to get away from him, they find themselves running directly toward him, Yuuka, and Tsiro. "Oh, they have an extra. I suppose I could kill two instead of just one." The grave robbers are all dressed in brown shinobi gear that matches the sand of the beach, their attempt at a disguise, even their faces completely covered, save their eyes.
Yuuka chuckles once as Tsiro takes off ahead of her. From the sounds of it, the boy was eager to have Keisuke-sama's approval on the battlegrounds, though he does have a good point. The kunoichi lightly shakes her snowy head, watching as the water clones chase after the bandits and drive them from the ruins on the compound. "Hm, it does not look like much, to be honest…" she murmurs. Four against three Kaguya, one of which is a Seven Swordsmen, is hardly fair in her opinion. "I suppose it would be a good chance to see what skill you have, hm Keisuke-sama?" Yuuka quirks a brow, giving him a glance out of the corner of her deep blue eyes.
Tsiro runs directly towards the closest bandit to him, a blatant smile across his face. As he looks to pass the bandit, the boy sticks his knee out. He successfully takes out the leg of the bandit sending him into a nose dive into some corpses. "If I kill you off quickly, I might get to kill one of your buddies before those two do." the youngest Kaguya states as he walks towards the man. He turns his palms outwards so that the man can see the bones protruding from his hands.
"Oh, that's not all," Keisuke says to Yuuka, a faint grin on his face as he watches the bandits running their way. "These just happen to be the ones my clones saw the others handing the DNA samples to." As Tsiro kicks the leg out from under one, the bandit plants his hands down and drives both feet up at the boy's chin in a mule kick. The other three don't even bother stopping, simply continuing to run away from the clones in the direction Yuuka and the real Keisuke stand. A small rumble is heard as about thirty bandits dressed the same as these four come charging out of the direction of the ruins of the compound. These four are carrying the entire group's meal ticket, so saving them, or at least the DNA samples, is priority. "Still, these peons aren't enough to make me show my true level of skill," he says, giving a wink to Yuuka before he turns to walk calmly toward the charging bandits.
Yuuka lifts a pale brow as she feels the growing number at the edge of her senses, several dozen shinobi dressed in brow beginning to pour from the ruins of the compound. "Hm. This should be interesting…" she murmurs lightly to herself in thought. Extending her right hand, the flesh of her palm bulges and parts with a spill of crimson blood as the long, hiltless blade of her Camellia sword forms. Yuuka faintly narrows her aquamarine eyes and throws the blade out beside her, only for it to whip around in midair as if being spun around by invisible piece of rope, twisting with her wrist. The slight smirk tugs at her lips as the Kaguya kunoichi spins the sword at the closest shinobi and slashes at his back, sending him flying several feet and spraying blood.
Tsiro moved out of the way of the bandit's mule kick. Soon after both of his palms launched forward stabbing the man in his legs. Instead of pulling out both bone blades, Tsiro leaves them in the man's legs. He pulls his hands away and new bones protrude from them. His head turns momentarily towards the hoarde. "I thought there might be a shortage. Seems I was wrong." The boy then turns around and attempts to stab the bandit in the chest.
As the other two begin to fight directly with the brown-clad shinobi, Keisuke just continues walking in their direction. He lifts a hand up in a seal, and suddenly hundreds of small spikes of bone shoot from the sand like spikes rising from the floor of a dungeon, stabbing into the feet of the dozens of shinobi running their way. With that, thirty shinobi are suddenly falling on their faces and piling up like dominoes, the Swordsmen responsible only laughing at their plight. "A truly great shinobi can take down masses because he knows how to spread out his use of chakra and make sure that he is never left too worn down to continue to fight," he says as he crosses his arms over his chest, quite unconcerned with these bandits.
Yuuka twists her wrist as she continues to spin the blade in the air at her side, spinning and slashing at each opponent she comes across, the number falling in her wake growing while Keisuke ahead of her takes out a good majority of the remaining bandits. At least injuring them to the point of hindering their movements. Slowing to a stop, she catches the sword in her hand and narrows her gaze as she glances around; searching for the other two shinobi that had the body parts they had stolen from the dead.
After Tsiro pulls his Camellia sword from the chest of the bandit he turns to watch a group of bandits fall. His eyes then move towards Yuuka. He shrugs his shoulders a little bit. The boy was not partial to dancing, but it was his greatest weapon at the moment. He moves towards the downed bandits. He had hoped that Keisuke would not take offense to this. He simply was trying to help the guy conserve chakra. The boy tried to stay to the outside of the group. He was twirling and slashing the downed bandits attempting to finish them off before they figured out how to escape.
Glancing to Tsiro as he moves toward the swarm of downed bandits, Keisuke chuckles. "Kid, I'm not the one in danger of running out of chakra here. You're a bit young to be trying to take on an army by yourself," the Swordsmen says, his clones leaping over the mass of shinobi and landing beside Tsiro in a flurry of a tripled Kaguya dance as they begin to dart through making slashes at the bandits with Tsiro.
Using a pair of the ivory spikes that Keisuke used to maim several dozen shinobi in one wave, Yuuka narrows her eyes as she wills the spikes to stab at the pouches from the first shinobi Tsiro and herself took out. The gathered bundles, pierced through with the spikes, fly towards her as the kunoichi idly lifts a hand, grabbing them as they lightly land in her extended fingers. With Keisuke and Tsiro taking out the enemy, she keeps her sharp gaze scanning over the gathering bodies, extending her senses as she searches for the other two pouches.
There is a sadistic smile from Tsiro as Keisuke lectures him on chakra and biting off more than he can chew. "You really are Takeshi's son." the boy states as he throws a bone from his hand into another bandit. The boy then started to twirl again as some of the bandits start to stand up. He glanced towards Yuuka for a moment but continued his dance. It was easy for him to assume the pouches would be in good hands with her going after them.
As his clones take out the fallen shinobi with Tsiro, Keisuke looks between them and Yuuka. "That I am," his deep voice rings out. He turns and walks over beside Yuuka, bringing a hand up and pointing it toward where the final two bandits with the samples are running. Reaching over, he goes to grasp her hand with his free hand. "Help me out with this one, love," he says as thousands of shards of bone begin to surround the runners on the front in the left side, as well as over the top. "Cover them from the other side."
Turning her snowy head, Yuuka quirks a pale brow at Keisuke for a short moment before her bright eyes follow the gesture of his hand, narrowing her gaze on the remaining two bandits that were running as hard as they were physically able. He reaches for her hand and lightly takes it in his own, though she pauses for a moment longer as the corner of her lips tugs with a faint smirk of amusement. "As if you really need my help with this." Yuuka murmurs to him, turning her vivid aquamarine eyes back to the fleeing men. With only a light breath escaping from between her lips, another thousand shards snap up into the air and fly towards their target, becoming the second half of a deadly dome of ivory as they cover the right side and from behind.
Tsiro turned to watch the collaboration. He seems fairly impressed at the size of the dome around the two shinobi. This one was all but as good as over. There is a smile on his face. "This sure does beat all that… awe… we still have to go burn the bodies." With that the boy looks down to see a bandit moving. He was not sure if it was a bodily reflex on the woes of death or if he was still alive. A bone to the skull ends the question.
"I don't," Keisuke says with a wink. "But I thought you might enjoy this one. Follow my lead," he says, bringing her hand up and placing a kiss on it. "Shikotsumyaku: Bone Maiden," he whispers into her ear, like whispering sweet nothings to a lover as he prepares for the oncoming slaughter. As he whispers, the bones surrounding the running shinobi form into spikes and all impale the bandits thousands of times over, destroying every organ in their body and killing them brutally and almost instantly.
Though part of her concentration is on the bone that surrounds the pair of bandits, Yuuka quirks a brow and turns her head just slightly to give Keisuke a sideways glance, the wind pulling at the length of her snow white hair around her shoulders and teasing pale strands against the curve of her face. The whisper was light into her ear and she feels the movement with her senses, the ivory sharpening as if becoming a thousand kunai. With their wills synchronized as one, the dome of sharp bone spikes instantly shrinks and impales their targets. "That was rather lovely of you." she murmurs, smiling softly.
