Mission name: Evil Hobbies (Repeatable)
Mission rank: C-rank Crime
Objective: Keep yourself occupied with traditional evil actions.
Location: Any
Reward: 450 ryo
Mission Description: You're not truly evil if you aren't bringing unnecessary violence to the table. Of course, you can't just waltz in a village and start mayhem, because that would compromise plans still need to be set in motion. No, you'll be enjoying that dark heart in your lair, with one or more of the following 'hobbies': torturing captured subjects with questionable tools, trying out experiments as you seek to improve secret formulae, plague them with nightmares and horrible illusions, threaten their family and coerce them, put up maddening music or improve your evil monologues as subjects listen to it.
Mission Details: 1875 wc, 3 posts required.

A new day. Two more subjects to go. Lais had the feeling she wasn't that far off from perfecting her technique. Number Two, as she so quaintly named the second victim of her practises, had proven this. She had achieved a point where she was able to bestow others a sense of undeath. The unfortunate downside to her Yin-chakra was that it ate its host alive and killed them once the chakra used to fuel her technique ran dry. The end result was permanent death rather than a simple dissipation of the effects. Beautiful. But not what she wanted, neither something her mistress would come to accept as a sign of mastery.

Stepping inside the room of Ryujin's research centre which she had come to claim as her own, the two remaining prisoners that served her as guinea pigs were chained against the walls, sombre expressions on their faces which only turned darker when she stepped inside. Lais' eyes would look at the two of them but say nothing, too preoccupied with trying to find a formula that would allow her to improve upon her technique. In a way, she'd have to restore the destruction wrought by her Yin-chakra. A difficult feat for the carrion crow sage whose chakra was so imbalanced by Yin energies that she was unable to rely on the presence of Yang in the lives of others or herself without destroying it. Meaning, she'd have to find a means to remove Yin rather than to bother with Yang. Like... Remove Yin chakra so there would be room for Yang chakra to return to a natural degree? Taking position on the operation table where Number Two had perished, her eyes would linger on Number Three as her mind searched for the solution of this anomaly. How did one remove the presence of an energy that was by its very nature inexisting? Eat away the wound. No matter the paradox, that was the solution. Rather than to push Yang to recreate flesh, she had to eat the wound. Bring it to a non-existing state so that the existence of a healthier state was restored.

Moving over to Number Three shackled against the wall, she'd grab his chin and left it up. Poor man. Having lost all hope. Delivered in the merciless hands of a young woman who was in turn at the mercy of a indescribable force. Everyone had their fate written before them but whereas some took the decision to make the best of it, others left their head hanging. Almost involuntarily, the chakra runes pertaining to her sage form would scribe itself slowly on the surface of her arms to remind Lais that she too was shackled, but the Jugo pressed back the manifestation of the senjutsu chakra that seemed to flicker on the surface. Irritated, as it meant she'd pass another night with a bursting headache due to an overflow of senjutsu chakra, she considered it high time to get to action. Number Three's faith awaited, and her time was limited if she wanted to experiment properly.

---

522 of 1875

His screams would fill the rooms as the necrosis of her chakra ate away at the surface of his skin. All she had done was touch his bared arm with her finger, allowing small fingerprints of her chakra to run rampant. Three spots she had touched. Three spots were now slowly burning away. The upper layer skin tissue flaked turned pale, flaked off before the reddening surface of the lower layers revealed themselves. Then, slowly, those too would turn ashen and slouch away. His nervous system would be affected, his muscles would reveal themselves and be touched. Then her necrosis would halt its workings. It was but a small touch but the effects remained enormous, his pain intolerable. Lais felt a need to silence him but other than sewing his mouth shut, which would take too much of her precious time, she had no direct means to do so. Enduring was the only option.

Watching how her touch of Yin would eventually dissipate and leave behind the gaping holes, the Jugo analysed with a dead serious expression the aftermath of the ruinous effects in hopes to find the reasoning behind the paradox she was to bring. Yang healing was out of her scope. Yin healing was what she needed, the very nature of the devouring Yin-chakra inherent to herself not permitting such a thing. But there were secrets she had picked up during her stay in Iwagakure. ANBU could retrieve memories, meaning they were able to somehow copy an inexistential, immaterial notion into their own. If nothing could be copied into nothing, then nothing could be destroyed by nothing just as much.

"Let's try this...", she said, more to herself than to Number Three who had finally decided to find the power to endure most of the pain as a temporary respite. The silence before the storm, most likely. He'd grit his teeth when he saw Lais' finger inch closer, holding it just a little above the wound so as not to touch it. Invisible chakra would be allowed to seep out as she concentrated on destroying the wound itself, or rather on the 'lack of health' in this case. Her Yin chakra would bleed out and into the wound but leave no trace upon the suffering man, seemingly coagulating together into an invisible puddle and slowly eat away the damage she had inflicted until the wound was pretty much reversed. In actuality, Lais had created a different sort of Yin chakra that destroyed itself and removed its own presence, allowing the natural presence of Yang chakra within the body to be restored. A confusing process, even for the Jugo who had just come to put it on a practical matter.

Lais stepped away from Number Three, visibly shocked at the paradox of the situation, and took a seat on the operation table. The man, who had not the slightest idea what exactly had transpired, feeling only as if the wound had simply been restored, didn't quite understand what the Jugo was going through or how much that little detail changed so much for the future progress of the carrion crow sage. The impossible had been made possible. Life in death. She had discovered the key to open the gate that would allow her to reach those secrets on a more intimate level. Lais would smile brightly. Almost maddeningly so.

"You have no idea what I just discovered.", she'd say laughing to the shackled man. "This... This changes so much. If I can use this little discovery on my black medicine I may as well have found the path towards indestructibility and immortality. Oh, mistress will be happy to hear this."

The first steps were set, now it was a matter of learning to walk and eventually to run. If she could reverse inflicted damage, she could prevent people from dying once her zombification technique ended. It would simply require the Yin chakra to destroy itself as it ran out. Of course, theory was easy. The practical approach was a much harder part. Hard, but not impossible. Especially when she still had two people to use as a test subject.

---

695
Total: 1217 of 1875

"See? I may have found a way to avoid death even if my dark blessing leaves you.", she'd coo, hopping off the table and inching closer to the man in shackles. She'd cup his face with two hands, amethyst eyes brightened by joy looking deeply into his as her lips curled up in a smile. "We'll try it right away..."

From her hands, Yin-chakra would gush out and engulf his head. The tainted chakra painted his face white as it drained the presence of Yang chakra in his body. The brisk moment of excruciating pain would quickly replaced by the numb feeling shared by the dead, her chakra continuing to soak his entire physique while the last companion - aptly called Number Four, of course - had to watch the horror with his own eyes. The result of her powers would not dally to reveal themselves. Pallid as the dead, emotionless and dull, Number Three stared back at her with the emptiness of the world of the dead.

"That's not the hardest part. I slightly altered my chakra to self-destruct as it is about to run out. Once the effect ends, you should feel like your old self again. So... Let us wait some."

Silence would settle. Time trickled by. The young woman waited expectantly, the victim seemed to hold his breath in hopes to avoid coming death, whereas the third one's eyes were filled with fear as he knew that sooner or later he'd be the next one to fall prey to the carrion crow's antics. This moment was probably the longest one he had ever felt. Every second feeling like an eternity for the three of them, for different reasons each. Aware of that fact, Laïs mused how time was such an odd thing once a person detached themselves of that existence. Like the crows, past, present and future meant nothing. Just a circle that kept on turning while everyone else believed time was linear.

Eventually the starting point of the circle would be reached. Her technique would run out in power, the Yin-chakra indeed destroying itself. The whole ordeal was magnificent to see as the man was left with an alien feeling washing over him. Returning to life. Rebirth, in a way, as he woke from a dead-state and embraced life again. He'd breathe. Blink. The portrait of life would return to his body and face. Her black medicine, formerly a dream, had become reality. She knew this would become the corner stone of her future abilities.

"A success, if I do say so myself. How are you feeling?"
"I... I am... not dead?"
"Not any longer, you aren't. It was just a passing blessing. Combining Yin coagulation with the undead state, I improved the ability to some degree. If done right, I can save lives by taking life itself away now. Grant immortality, even if only for a brief moment."

Immortality. The first steps to a path Lamya had been searching for so long. The word alone reminded her of that ambition. An ambition shared by a man she had known long before her - Eli Crowly, her father. One of the journals bore that title, and it had been his favourite for as long she could remember. Her father had always believed that his plagues would be the key to immortality, the quick evolution of viruses being that which would deliver him the answers needed. And her she was. Finding it in death itself. In the 'mort' of immortality. It made sense, if you thought about it. Only those who had died tended to live on in history. Though the body perished, the name remained.

"Immortality.", Laïs would whisper the word as if it was a newborn child. How far could she push forward on this path of necrosis? Was a permanent undead state possible? Was it possible to raise an army of undead? Bind others in death like one could bind others in life? So many questions in need of answers. But first... She had someone to inform.

---

[EXIT]

686
Total: 1903
- 1875 Crime