Starring:
Suterusu, Sachiko, Keiji, Kuoroke
Date: September 22, 2012
Summary:
Yet another inmate of Garatsuku Asylum is being hunted down: this time a cunning lightning speedster.
Poster's note: Profanity filtered in obvious places.
"Spark Boy Akira"
Outside of an unnamed power plant
One of the inmates who had escaped from Garatsuku Asylum and is still at large is a man called Akira. Deemed sociopathic, not to mention dangerously sadistic, by the medics at the Asylum, he was still quite wily, and for his escape he pretended to be a hostage -more specifically, a plaything- of another escaping ninja, which allowed him to get out with pity instead of suspicion. After she had escorted him out, he'd vanished as quickly as he could.
Akira was kept in a cell with thick, rubber walls and a double door for a reason: his forte as a ninja was electricity and incredible speed. The latter made it next to impossible to track him, but the former has given him away: one of the power plants in the Land of the Wind has suddenly stopped providing electricity, as if it had been cut off the grid. A quick investigation showed that it has indeed been disconnected, and now all of the power created by the plant is routed around and through the building, turning all of it into a gigantic, electrified booby trap. It is suspected, but not certain, that there are hostages inside, as well.
Of course, this cannot be left the way it is for, the sake of the power supply, the potential hostages' safety, and, of course, the principle of letting a madman with the power of lightning run free. So, the village of Sunagakure has dispatched a team, and they are expected to solve the problem.
First it was Firebug. Now it is Akira. These were actually the type of missions that Keiji preferred. Now sitting on the other side of a dune, Keiji looks at those placed on his team for the moment. This would be his first mission with Suterusu. Sachiko on the other hand he had worked with before. "Ok. So we need to find an entrance point into the power plant. We are also looking out for traps. Once we find a way inside, we will need to keep our eyes open for more traps and hostages. The first goal is to see if we can turn off the reactor on the inside. The second goal is to take down Akira. I am ok if his return to the Asylum comes in a black bag. Are we clear?" he asks. He glances between the two of them to make sure they are on board.
A silent nod is given in response. That quick check over his gear verified that he had everything he would need to prepare for such things. Pondering for a moment, he'd study the building for a long moment. A small nod is given then. "I could sort the grid. Ground it. That should get us in. Potentially alert him we are coming, however. Depending on how well he is watching the network he has built." Glancing over at Sachiko, he'd watch her for a moment before a shrug was given as he'd look back to Keiji. It was an offere dplan, afterall.
Sachiko listens to the Chuunin in charge and sighs. How was she useful for this again? Probably isn't… Must be part of the council's plan to whip her into shape. "Clear," she answers in short. She has the one eyeball ahead, trying to figure things out. Trying to find some way in or any hint of what to do in general. She planned ahead for once and didn't have it linked to her for anything but vision, thankfully. But there is a second eyeball on her shoulder for normal sight.
From the inside, the typical buzzing and crackling of electricity bridging gaps in the air is audible, creating a uniform, pulsing, humming background for the team's discussion. Sachiko's eyeball slithers into the building, and almost immediately finds that the first corridor it enters is 'decorated' by hanging electrical wires, which sway back and forth gently, small discharges dancing between it and the ground. She barely evades the first of the traps, but she does manage to get a general idea of the layout near the door before her eyeball weaves out of the way of a swinging electrical wire and onto a grated catwalk, through which it plummets down.
Keiji nods his head as he listens to the layout. "Try to stay away from electrical conductors if you can. Remember to walk on walls. Stay out of general paths and watch for electrical wires. Just because you can turn off a circuit breaker doesnt mean it will kill the power."
He nods at Suterusu. "Try to ground the system. Do me a favor. Do not die." It was a concern from his last mission. He then looks towards Sachiko. "Make sure you stay close to Suterusu. Keep an eye out for him. He'll keep you safe."
Keiji then looks towards the plant. "I am going to enter in through the top of the facility. Just make sure you get the grid offline. I really do not want to fight a man powered up to be a god." He then moves over the dune and makes his way to the power plant wall. He's sure to look over it for booby traps before walking up the wall.
Blinking at Keiji's instructions, the Iga mutters a vague, "Umm…" Unsure how to say this, Sachiko just shakes her head. "I can't Tree Walk… so no wall-walking for me." Soon after this explanation, she hums thoughtfully and shrugs. "This guy really messed up that place," she mumbles, almost to herself. Even so, she starts on ahead as well, staring at the wires in the entrance that her eye had found. This should be… interesting, she figures.
The eyeball turns to glance around, revealing a sturdy-enough branch. With a sigh, the Iga turns to pick it up and 'hops' onto the first bit of floor in the actual building. Then she reaches out to push some of the wires away with her stick and hops onto her other foot. "This volts," she mutters. Not only is it ridiculous-looking, but it's a rather noisy form of travel. Even so, she continues on, trying to avoid hopping onto the grate her eyeball fell down.
Keiji scales the wall easily, on the way spotting and easily avoiding a few places where pairs of copper wires have been installed in the walls to electrocute anyone careless enough to touch both. After making it all the way up, he finds that the ceiling has a few exits for the ventilation system, and a few pipes, from which thick smoke rises.
In the meantime, Sachiko makes progress into the building, but does so insanely slowly. Only after several minutes, she makes it to the place where her eye perished, a grated walkway spanning a service area. Besides that, there's two more corridors, one with just as many dangling wires. In the other one, Sachiko sees thin metal wires spanned across it.
Air ducts were made from metal and could easily be trapped in ways that were hard to see. Keiji knew this. The pipes were filled with smoke and lead to a furnace. Though he could use them the smoke was not easy to breath. The pipes were also made of metal. The boy scanned around for a service entrance. Unfortunately he was not spotting one. Keiji takes a kunai out and taps it against a vent exit. Once he does not see a spark, he moves the kunai to the metal and starts to cut the shaft. He was looking to cut it far enough that it might push away to allow someone inbetween it and the roof.
Keiji
Sachiko looks around the spot she is in and sighs softly. Choices, choices. Since she can't really do much about the metal wires, she can either repeat her arduous journey of hopping or… go the noisy way of the service area. Maybe… She's unsure if that's electrocuted too, though it likely is. To test the theory, she starts to chew in order to create an eye, which she pulls from her mouth and drops it onto the grate. Sighing as she sees the result destroy the eyeball, she glances between it and the other hallway. She ultimately decides to take the hallway again.
Sachiko has missed an important part, and that is that the arch discharges erupting from the hanging wires have increased lately. While they're debilitating to her movement, Akira's mode of transportation thrives in the environment he's created: the electricity that coursed through it, when controlled by him, forms magnetic fields, and these interact with similar charges he creates in metal bands around his wrists and ankles, having his lightning dance around it. This way, he floats between the wires hanging from the sealing, suspended by these unseen forces, and, coupled with his shocking speed, it allows him to flash between them like bolts of lightning.
Sachiko becomes aware of that in the mere instants it takes Akira to catch up to her in such a favorable environment. And, speaking of bolts of lightning, that is what the young man - in his late teens, to be specific - summons, by forming a few hand seals, to rush towards her. His file was right: the inmate is sadistic, and as such carefully measures his strikes not to do serious harm to her, not quite yet. It merely locks her muscles down in an agonizing spasm.
In the meantime, Keiji crouches down by the entrance to the ventilation system and stabs at it. His suspicions are correct, but he gets more than he bargained for: not only does he get a spark, he gets a discharge strong enough to cause his muscles to contract violently, throwing him back. For a few seconds, while recovering, he has this horrible sensation of falling. Quick as he is, however, the boy can turn around in mid-air in those last few metres before hitting the ground. His arm, shoulder, chest and legs are a bit sore, but otherwise he seems to be healthy enough after that little run-in with the traps. His disastrous decision proves to be useful, after all, as does Sachiko's tortuous movement speed: she is still close enough to the entrance for Keiji, now that he's recovered his senses, to have a good view of Akira's back as he, sniggering like the sick sadist he is, watches Sachiko as the lightning wracks and flays her.
What had the other chuunin that had all but vanished since the whole thing started been doing? Easy, crippling Akira's setup. Those wires of his were leading anywhere he went, while he'd flick from shadow to shadow, anything metal would be wrapped with his own wires. The wire itself would lead out of the building, back to be buried several dozen feet under the ground in the sand. Ground the system and it loses power. So it'd be that he'd creep into that area Akira was torturing Sachiko at. The wires about where Akina was would have that grounding wire weave through them, almost akin to a snake dancing among the reeds, before they would pull fast, locking down on the electrical currents to ground out the whole room in one swoop. Subtle? maybe, however his assistance, while slow in coming, should potentially be critical at this moment.
Keiji muttered a four letter word as the shock hit him and he was thrown back. Soon he realized that the feeling of falling was not caused by the zap, but by actually falling. He was able to catch himself though and turn in the air to prevent the fall being on his back. His eyes spot Akira torturing Sachiko. Instead of reprimand himself for being so stupid as to get zapped, he transforms into the giant, crimson, fattailed scorpion. As he is about to lunge for Akira, it seems the man is currently tumbling downward for some odd reason.
The only logical reason was a lack of electricity for him to float around using. The giant scorpion hopes like hell his reasoning is accurate before dashing forward attempting to fall on the man and stab him with the paralytic venom from his tail.
Sachiko had less time than she could really comprehend for her to realize what was happening. The initial shock brings her to the ground, where she cries out in pain. There's really not much else she can do, though she does grit her teeth and attempts to push herself back to her feet. She only makes it to her hands and knees before she has to stop, groaning at the electricity coursing through her. She hears the clicking caused by Keiji's now-scorpion 'feet' but has no idea what it is and can't really find out… since the consistent pain caused her to lose focus on the eyeball, thus causing it to disintegrate.
The crazy they're hunting for has only a brief moment to savour his victory over a poor, defenseless blind girl. Instants after he's begun enjoying her company, the electrical situation around his sharply changes with Suterusu's small, but very significant change to its makeup. With an expression of utter surprise, he drops down, hands reaching around helplessly, only to meet Keiji's tail on the way down. It slives into him, smoothly, and releases its toxin. Merely seconds after Akira's surprised yelp started, it has already turned into a painful scream and then been silenced by the chemical paralysis caused by the poison. Stiff as a board, he hangs on Keiji's tail.
Making sure that the rest of the area is secure, he'd finally leap down. A shadow turning living, it reveals those crimson eyes as he would study the crazy man they had been hunting for a moment. Attention turning to Keiji, a nod was given towards the shippodoku scorpion, before he'd finally attend to Sachiko. Simple bandages may be all he has, but that is what he can offer to Sachiko, along with that soft tenor voice, "We got him. You should recover shortly, I have some bandages for you, hai?"
The giant scorpion moves with the man on his tail until he approaches the furnace. With a quick snap of the tail, he tosses Akira into it. He watches for a few moments as the body burns up. Only afterwards does he revert to his normal form and make his way back to the others. "Mission accomplished. Are you ok Sachiko?" he asks. He then turns to Suterusu. "Good job."