Starring:
Date: November 11, 2013
Summary:
Yuuto is sent to find and retrieve a missing merchant, but finds an extra party in the way that must be dealt with.
"The Silk Conflict - Suna Encounter"
Land of Wind - Somewhere in the desert
A merchant has gone missing - a merchant. Most likely, an abduction. After Sunagakure's sources in every underworld organisation accessible were contacted, every long-range scout's report scanned, and all of this cross-referenced by some pretty talented data analists, a general area of where he may have been formed, and Kuoroke has grabbed the first guy available to get this done, which happened to be Yuuto. Convenient, for it's a quiet affair, most likely not requiring too much mental stability, and deniable if all things go to hell, yet in all of this still a decent evaluation of his readiness to be put in the field. So, Yuuto it put on the trail, to am area with a latticework of various criss-crossing narrow canyons and crevasses.
For this mission, Yuuto decided to take a little extra precaution with his… identity. While he didn't just garb up completely, he is wearing a pair of protective goggles built with sunshade like lenses to mask his eyes and keep from revealing his Sharingan to anyone while being free to use it still. Plus, this also eliminates the chance of eye damage during a sandstorm, should one arrive.
Moving swiftly through the canyons and crevasses, the white and black-adorned former shinobi has already awakened his Sharingan and is searching vigilantly for the missing merchant. Through the perceptive abilities of Sharingan as well as a little something of his own, Ink Scouts in the form of what appear to be trails of oversized black ants, he hopes to find this man as quickly as possible to prove his merit as a shinobi… mainly that he's capable of taking up active duty again.
The ants fan out, scanning the area, while the once and future, hopefully, shinobi analyses the details of the area. He notices a drag mark here and there, a faint scratch on rock too recent to be brought about by natural phenomena… and during this, he can more precisely narrow down the search area of his scouts, until a ripple travels back along the line of ants. They've found something -well, someone, or even more specifically two someones- in a dead-end canyon. The path that will take him there isn't simple: a passage between four and five stories tall, in some places narrow enough for him to have to force himself through sideways with a risk of getting stuck or leaving bits of himself on the rocks.
With the dual set of information, Yuuto begins to move toward that canyon where a presence has been found. The trip isn't exactly pleasant, as he has to do a bit of squeezing and contorting and even a bit of tunneling with kunai here and there to avoid injury. He moves as quickly as he can past these obstacles and onward, hoping to catch up to whoever's in this canyon before they find a different route back or something happens to them.
After making his way through the tunnel, Yuuto finds that the tunnel widens quite abruptly, opening into what's essentially a round room, some eight feet in diameter, going up for a bit over thirty feet without getting narrower, and there opening to the naked sky. But what's in this natural room is more interesting: he sees a slab of rock, worn or chiseled in a slightly curved shape and put in a slanted position so that one may half-lie, half-sit on it. And someone is, although Yuuto can barely make this out: it's turned so that he only sees an arm and a hand, slightly twitching occasionally. Around the room, all the way to the top, several helixes of strange symbols, neither seal nor word, twist upwards. They emanate a faint humming. The same symbols, chiseled out of rock, cover the ground, lying on the sand. His eyes make out that the grains of sand just around these rock sigils are slightly shifting all the time.
Near the slab of rock, a cloaked figure stands, hands raised over the person on the slab. Two similar sigils, these made out of metal, are fastened to the palms of his hands with leather straps. He is chanting to himself in a language Yuuto doesn't understand, and even as he looks up, or at least seems to under the obscuring cloak, he doesn't stop - whatever he's doing must be important. But Yuuto's eyes see more: a thick spring of chakra burst forth from the ground, flowing through all of these strange symbols, being amplified by them, and then being fed into the cloaked figure. He sees that chakra coil around his arms and, once more focused and amplified by the symbols on the palms of his hands, hammer into the man on the slab with great intensity and precision both.
Finally reaching that opening, Yuuto would quickly study his new surroundings. The sight of hand sticking out of the rock is at least a sign that the merchant may still be alive. However, the cloaked figure using some kind of intense chakra technique on him may mean that opposite is true now. This guy seems good enough that it's too late to hide from him and observe by this point, so confrontation is likely the only solution, and thus Yuuto would dart up onto the rock wall and run around to where he can look down upon the cloaked man. "Just what do you think you're doing in the Land of Wind? And what do you think you're doing to this man?" he asks, hoping that the man may be able to understand him, even though the inverse isn't true.
As Yuuto dashes upwards, he can see that the man on the slab is the missing merchant - unconscious, apparently. He can see the figure's chakra enveloping the victim in a sticky mess. The figure continues chanting, despite Yuuto's demand. Even as Yuuto speaks, his voice goes into a crescendo of rapidly pronounced words, the chakra around the victim growing thicker and violently turbulent… then the figure casts his hand up, and lays it down on his victim's forehead, in complete silence, and an almost cathartic pulse of chakra travels along his limp body.
Whatever this guy is doing, looks like he's either killing the merchant or about to. Reaching to his back, the former shinobi grabs a priorly prepared scroll and opens it in front of him. Just as as he does, a large tiger and several snakes made of ink leap off the page and split to charge at the shrouded man from all around in an attempt to knock him down and bind him. "If you won't answer me here, I guess I can torture it out of you later."
The man jerks to the side as the beasts come for him, but he's not nearly quick enough, the animals entangling him and pressing him down on the ground. He jerks a few times, attempting to struggle free, but then seems to give up.
Well, that was easier than he thought it would be… With his prey ensnared, Yuuto would leap off the rock wall and down to him. "Guess you'll get to answer what the heck all these symbols are and what you were trying to do to this guy too while we're at it," he says as he opens the scroll more, releasing more ink snakes to attempt to cover up the guy's body even further, now with multiple snake heads at his throat with their fangs positioned so that resistance could cause his throat to be pierced if Yuuto so chooses. "Hope you're comfortable in that cocoon," the former shinobi says with a bit of sarcasm in his voice before looking over to the unconscious merchant, eyes narrowing a bit. He's still alive, it seems. That makes two passengers coming back to Sunagakure. While he IS capable of transporting them both, at least one of them is dangerous enough for a possibility of getting away in the trip over… And so Yuuto grabs a brush and quickly draws out a message before bringing his hands into a seal, which turns the message into the form of a bird that then races off toward Sunagakure to head back to Kuoroke's office and inform him of the circumstances and request for whatever backup may be available to take care of the merchant and figure out what kind of jutsu was being used on him, as well as be sure this foreigner doesn't get away.
The man struggler and fights against the creatures, but to no avail: they are far stronger than he is. The messenger shoots off into the distance, but Sunagakure is far away and backup won't get here for at least several hours. Yuuto can't guarantee he can keep the man contained for that long. What's worse, he has no idea how urgent medical assistance for this figure's victim is.
As he studies his current situation, Yuuto lets out a sigh. The stream of chakra from the ground to his hostage suggests it's possible this is a jutsu creation of sort that could die out… Which could mean interrogation could be pointless anyway. With the only local language-speaking witness unconscious currently, there's really only one option at the moment. Letting out a sigh, the former shinobi draws out another letter, quickly sending it as a bird to Kuoroke before drawing a pair of over-sized wolves that he sends off the pages as well. He then loads each man on a wolf, tendrils of ink coming out to bind them to it before he turns and darts out on the path he described to Kuoroke in the latest note with the wolves in tow.
First, his enemy continues trying to struggle, slightly injuring the animals in the process but not even that to any relevant degree. As the cloaked figure is torn away from the, however, site of its power, the wellspring of chakra it was tied to, it goes limp. Yuuto sees how the flow of chakra ends - but at least they have a body, and Yuuto's witness report, to study. So, with two limp humanoid figures on their back, the wolves return to Suna.
