Starring:
Sousa (emitter), Kaidan, Ayumu
Date: January 10, 2015
Summary:
Suna nin move in to stop a fiendish Erhu player.
Poster's note: foul language filtered in obvious places.
"The Mad Musician"
A civilian town near Sunagakure
B-rank: Another Garatsuku Asylum escapee has surfaced. Yamayuki Myoushu is a sound ninjutsuist who is also a virtuoso with the erhu. He prides himself on performances which move the audience to tears…which isn't that difficult when his fiddling is capable of paralyzing and bringing excruciating pain to those who hear it. Plugging your ears will help obviously, but remember that sound has more effects than just being heard. Bring an end to Myousha's concert before his captive audience bleeds to death through the ears.
Batman's gotta have Arkham, Suna's gotta have Garatsuku. Today's looney popping up is one Yamayuki Myoushu, from the sound-manipulating clan of the Land of Lightning. Funny thing is, if he just used his ability to carry out ninja missions, he'd be just one ninja among many. A potential threat, to be sure, and depending on how ruthless he was and what sort of missions he undertook for whom he might have some sort of price on his head, but he wouldn't get that much attention. What makes him a villain is that he relishes the suffering and deaths of random people, by means of musical performance.
What allowed for Suna to respond to his appearance was, ironically, a deaf man. A former musician himself, the old fellow was in the habit of attending concerts and carefully watching the musicians' motions, able to imagine the sound that must be resulting and gaining some enjoyment through it. But when everyone except a lone erhu player began stiffening and gritting their teeth in pain, the musical devotee realized something was wrong that only he was immune to. c.c; He waited until the erhu player was caught up in a frenzied solo, then slipped out of the concert hall and alerted the authorities. It's now a couple hours after the start of the performance, and the captive audience has doubtless endured quite a bit of agony.
Appearing before the concert hall after having heard about this terrible 'concert', Kaidan looks at the hall, already in his puppetry armor. He licks his lips as he looks at the place before looking around for his back up. He squints about before nodding his head and looking then at the concert hall again. He can already kinda hear the sound from afar. He frowns some at the place before looking around again, "Where are you?" He whispers to himself and then looks at the area before him, "We can't let those people be there for much longer."
Kaidan would not be alone for the mission of apprehending the runaway. Why they thought bringing a member of a clan infamous for their sensitive senses on a mission that threatened said hyper-sensitive senses was beyond Ayumu's comprehension. He simply went along hoping only to not need to create an ear whenever he wanted to listen to someone.
"An encore he is giving perhaps? Better to suss such out before proceeding further, neh?" Ayumu asks with a wiry grin as he stepped up beside the puppeteer. Flesh is molded and eventually spat out as several blobs of pink orbs. Orbs that rapidly transform into eyes or rounded noses that scatter like roaches caught in the light during a kitchen raid.
Oh, I dunno, maybe because his player mentioned the possibility of going after the Garatsuku escapeesomebody on the missions board figured an Iga might be able to shut off his ears? At any rate, Myoushu is still in there fiddling away and enjoying how very moved his audience is by his performance. Why else would they all have tears streaming down their cheeks? A few of them have even passed out from hearing his genius. As for smell, well, it smells mostly like a concert hall could be expected to smell, which is to say nothing most humans would find especially noticeable…although a few of the unfortunate paralyzed patrons have had a little difficulty holding out for the restroom seeing as Myoushu decided against an intermission. @.@;
Even a psychotically dedicated virtuoso gets hand cramps after a while, though, and Ayumu's eye scouts see that Myoushu eventually does pause in his performance. The audience starts to stir, and one particularly enterprising person darts for the door, but Myoushu makes a quick saw on his instrument, and the would-be escapee arches and collapses as though shot in the back. The rest of the audience seems to get the message, and settles uneasily back into their seats. But, Myoushu is resting now! This could be a prime chance for a sneak attack!
"Yeah, an encore." Kaidan looks at Ayumu and shakes his head before hearing the lack of noise. He blinks and looks over before hopping down and rushing for the building. He is not going slow as he slips in and attempts to do his best to slip in quietly. Even as he goes, he gives only a gesture for Ayumu to follow as he prepares to confront the man directly. He seems to be big on trying to slip in low behind the audience and perhaps make his way around to the stage quickly enough if possible.
Ayumu wrinkles his nose at the sarcastic sounding remark, but doesn't debate the matter further. Truthfully, he could not do so and hope to win while partially distracted with the sensory input of his spies. Before he can pass along the information immediately (minus the part about one of the audience death), Kaidan rushes off. At first the Iga could do no more than gape at the man's seeming stupidity, but belatedly he catches on and chides himself for having thought poorly of the puppeteer. Instead of following as dictated, Ayumu creates three clones. One would shadow Kaidan. Another seeks to secure an escape route for the hostages. And the last one follows an eye delegated to the task of finding a means behind or beneath the stage undetected. It really all boiled down to what seemed most effective.
With that task done, the original settles down to focuses his chakra and play coordinator, more or less, from afar.
When Kaidan arrives in the concert hall, he finds that Myoushu is subjecting the audience to a different kind of torture: an impromptu oral autobiography. "…but my father was so insistent that the huqin was a superior instrument, I simply couldn't talk any sense into him! So naturally it led to a challenge to see which instrument was better. Of course it was only supposed to be a spar, but my muse struck during the fight, I couldn't stop just because the strings on his silly fiddle snapped, I had to complete my composition, and — " Then Myoushu catches movement behind the audience. "Ex-CUSE me! Do you have a ticket?!" >/ Myoushu draws his bow along the strings, and a compressed blast of sound bounces off the ceiling and shoots down toward Kaidan's position.
As far as finding escape routes for the audience, that's both easy and hard. There are several exits, including the regular ones and emergency exits off to the sides, but none of them are big enough to allow more than about three people through at a time, and they're all fairly visible to Myoushu. He'd be able to paralyze everyone again before a significant number of people could escape. But getting behind stage? Not that difficult. It's a performance hall after all, it's set up to allow access to that area if you're part of staff, and nobody's standing in the way of clone!Ayumu right now.
Wincing as he feels the incoming sound pass over him, Kaidan simply raises his arm up to try to protect himself and his armor simply dispersed the damage off of his person even as he stood up. He then looks toward the man on stage and shakes his head, "Sorry, just a party crasher." He then rushes forward, trying to use his amazing speed to zip forward even as he raises up his chakra levels and glances at the man on stage, "I am Karakuri Kaidan." He gives a slight bow and then nods to the man, "A pleasure to meet you. An interesting sound you create. Do I recognize a bit of the Biwa movement in there, perhaps?" He hmms even as a pair of blades flick out of his right arm, making that arm clawed.
With an eye or nose at every perspective, the original Ayumu could see it all. Sadly, the same did not exactly go for the clones, but they managed as best as they could. The clone that had followed Kaiden in almost rushed in along the man, but is given pause by a singular eye. As weird as it moves were the Iga-clone understood enough to try and relay the message to Kaiden verbally. Kaiden would only be told — suggested to force the mad Yamayuki's attention towards backstage along with the assistance of the clone waiting there.
In the meantime, the other two clones divided the task of escorting folks out of the emergency and main entrances in as orderly a fashion as possible. Of course with more than likely half the crowd being deaf thanks to Myoushu, their jobs were going to be exceedingly difficult, to say the least. Still, it was a plan.
Myoushu's jaw works in silent astonishment for a moment. "B…biwa!?!? That horrible twanging cacophony?! You DARE compare my erhu with THAT!?" D< Myoushu unleashes a storm of high-pitched screeches that zoom at Kaidan like shuriken. There's one plus side to Kaidan's musical gaffe, though — Myoushu's attention is totally on Kaidan, and he doesn't notice for now that the audience is being herded out of the concert hall.
Slipping to the side of the first blast, Kaidan simply kicks through the second blast and then slips aside the third. He peers at the man and then states, "Well, I could compare it to kazoo." He then suddenly rushes forward and attempts to send a kick right up into the man's jaw before a blade will whip up and out of his foot as he kicks downward to try to cut across the man's chest before all his fingers open up into claws on his right hand and he tries to put a nasty gouge into the Yamayuki's shoulder, "After that last solo, I'm thinking kazoo."
Both clone and original could feel a facepalm coming on. However, considering the fact that the mad Yamayuki's focus was completely on Kaiden they could focus ont their on task. The backstage shadow clone transforms into a hairy, two-tongued, dog-like, many-eyed — Alright in short, it turns into a very disturbing monster that creeps up during the exchange of blows, opens its mouth, then sends multiple sharpened tendrils flying out at the man's backside. What few do not try to lacerate the man's face and chest, instead try to bind and drag them man towards its gaping jaws.
Myoushu's eyes widen as Kaidan rushes him, and he changes his bow-drawing stance. He's a bit too late to stop the kick to his chin, but the subsequent downward slash and the clawed strike are both halted by a literal sound barrier. "Your ignorant criticism can't touch my genius," Myoushu sneers. "And now for the forte of my piece!" >D
Funny thing about using sound for everything: it kinda makes you easy to sneak up on. Ayumu's hair assault pierces through the weaker part of the sound barrier at Myoushu's back, lacerating and binding him before he can pull off whatever big boom he was about to unleash on Kaidan. "Gahhh! Ow, no fair! You can't play a duet against a solo!" >.<;
A blink as he watches the hairy beast…be a hairy beast. He chuckles an Kaidan nods his head, "Well, there you are." He walks up to the man and then shrugs, "It seems we can, though." He nods his head, "I mean, look. It's happening." He then looks over as people get out before he gestures a finger around, "Go ahead and tie him up. I think we're done here." He then nods to the Ayumu clone, "Good job."
The beast nods its head as it continued to drag the musician closer. It prey is brought around to its back to be not only bound further, but continually drained of his chakra in the imprisoning mantle. If that wasn't enough of a problem for Myousho barbs shaped more into blades slip between the man's fingers; warning him of what the consequences might be should he try to pull off another jutsu.
Meanwhile, the clones continue their duty just in case there was more to the man's plan than meets the eye. Then again, now that folks have listened to his brand of music, it isn't likely they'll be forgetting him anytime soon. Heck, news may spread far and wide of the man's insane exploits! Which… was the whole purpose the event, right? Either way, the hair beast murmurs some mentioning of this in hopes to keep the man pacified further. The original on the other hand continues to figuratively hold his breath until assured that the hostages were out of the way first.
Yup, round stun FTW, we're not going to drag this out any further. Myoushu isn't going to risk his precious gifted hands trying to escape the hair monster's clutches, as much as he wants to finish his performance. ;.; Chalk up another Garatsuku looney dumped safely back in the bin! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
