Mission name: Find the Casino Cheater
Mission rank: C
Objective: Discover the ninja who is using ninjutsu to cheat in the casino, and arrest him.
Location: Kirigakure
Reward: 180 Ryo
Mission description: The local casino has enough evidence to assume that someone is using ninjutsu to cheat for more earnings. The security footage has had not much luck finding out who it was and how they did it, so they are asking for a ninja to go undercover and exploit this illegal gambler.  
Mission details: The ninja is a Chuunin who is using her power for corruption. She used a mixture of jutsu, one being substitution techniques with cards and transformation techniques to keep herself hidden, specifically invented for the purpose of cheating in the casino. If caught, she may fight back and resist arrest.

In a world where a ninja career is synonymous with everyday life, it is almost unavoidable that some people would use their gifted abilities to get the better of others.

In other words, it was almost a given that, in your everyday life, there was someone out there who was cheating his way into an easier life. You might be the victim, you might not be the victim, but it didn’t change the fact that someone was doing it, and with such abilities so widespread, it was almost difficult to pinpoint that they were the ones doing it, since you couldn’t count on locating small bursts of chakra, which ninja in a village constantly give out.

To catch a ninja at work when he wasn’t supposed to was a tricky task indeed. One could even say that people could only suspect as to the interference of a ninja in their daily lives. Any further, and you would need to hire an actual ninja to investigate the issue for you, since you needed a ninja to counter other ninja in most cases. Normally, this only exacerbated the need for ninja, increasing the demand and making the prospect of a ninja career more appealing, resulting in a greater number of students enrolling as ninja, resulting in a larger number of people graduating, which would arguably lead to more ninja going astray, thereby worsening the problem.

Hyouga had been tasked with uncovering one such ninja who had been suspected of cheating in the local casino. The casino owner hadn’t noticed it at first, since it was a small dent in his profits, but when the dents grew bigger and bigger and he realised he was making far less than he used to, he was tipped off to ninja activity around his casino. Given that his casino was located in one of the busier places in Kirigakure, it was very unlikely that it was a foreign ninja at work. Also, foreign ninja didn’t often work to undermine local casinos, instead targeting the administration or supply lines, and that was if they even wanted to in the first place, in a time of peace such as this. As such, he had guessed that it was a rogue ninja who was simply trying to earn a quick profit, and being that a simple mission probably cost him nothing with respect to the amount he could be losing, it had been a simple task of getting a mission. Much more preferable than the alternative of continuing to lose money.

Hyouga stepped into the casino, and was promptly brought outside the owner’s office. He sat down in the waiting room while the man’s secretary went inside to discuss about his arrival. This was all just formalities’ sake, since it was almost common knowledge among the executive staff that someone had been siphoning money off of the casino illegally, and while not many other activities at the casino were legal, they were also much harder to detect, and ninja didn’t tend to wander out of the area they were tasked to, so the casino owner had no worries that the few drug trades happening in his casino would be found out. Even if they did, Hyouga was sure he could deny it completely, meaning it would be a waste of time. As such, Hyouga decided to just focus on the issue at hand - the cheater - and waited for his turn to be called inside.

A casino.

Arguably one place that she hadn’t yet been to.

Even so, Aizou was currently standing inside the office of the man who now owned one, who was also asking her to partake in his casino’s doings so that she could weed out the person who had been cheating the casino of their money. She would call it well-earned, but knowing that places like these were more than likely to scam people of their money made her hesitate in using that one adjective to describe the casino’s trades.

“I’m telling you he’s out there!” the owner claimed.

“And how would you know that it isn’t pure luck unless the casino was rigged?” she asked.

“The casino isn’t rigged!” the owner yelled again. Aizou didn’t flinch, but she supposed whoever was outside was probably wondering why the man was in such a fit. “No one can be that lucky to win so many times in a row!”

Aizou scoffed at his comment, which only made him angrier. “Relax, old man,” she said. That possibly only made him go even redder in the face. “I’ll find that so-called ‘cheater’. Just know that if it turns out he isn’t cheating and you’re just sad that you’re losing more than you’re gaining, you’re not going to be reimbursed for the cost of this mission.”

Not waiting to hear whatever he had to say to her, she turned around and exited the room, taking note of the only individual outside of it. He was also very distinctly familiar, with that wild hair and that bored look on his face, and it took her three seconds to realise that it was the same man that had escorted her home a few weeks ago. While not particularly memorable, she could still sort him out from the many people that she had randomly met since then, since it wasn’t every day that a man had followed her back to her home to keep her dry from the rain, before not even pressing to be invited up to her place.

It almost made that warm feeling of having a family come back, but she crushed it on the account that he was anything but family, and he probably viewed her the same: not family.

Nevertheless, she suspected that he was here for the mission as well, since she vaguely remembered the casino owner claiming that she would be working with someone before her accusations of there not really being a cheater got to him and he devolved into pointless finger-pointing.

“So, you’re my teammate for this mission?” she asked, a smile gracing her features as she found the prospect itself to be interesting. “Hyouga Kouri, was it? Well, we might as well go scope out the casino itself. Try not to stare too much at me. We don’t want the cheater getting away now, would we?” she grinned at that last part, before heading to the elevator at the far end of the room, waiting for Hyouga to follow her in before heading straight for the ground floor, where the bulk of the casino was located.

If anyone was going to try cheating, it was likely going to be there, since the other floors had too few attractions for anyone trying to cheat to look inconspicuous. A poor cost-benefit decision if she would have been the cheater. As such, she decided to start their search where their target was most likely to be, though she would be open to any suggestions that Hyouga had for her.

If he didn’t object to her decision, she would stake herself at the elevator, giving her ample view of the room, while she directed Hyouga to peer more accurately into the doings of the individual gamblers who visited the casino. She didn’t want anything to do with the casino games, not even being too close to them.

She hated luck, if her life so far was anything to go by, and she didn’t plan on only being recompensated at the end of it.

Word count: 695/695

Hyouga tapped his feet impatiently against the floor of the waiting room, eyes darting furiously left and right to find something to occupy his time.

The man who had contracted him for a mission sure had the gall of keeping him waiting when, supposedly, it was his casino that was currently being robbed of its profits.

Hyouga let himself slump against the back of the chair, irritated at having been required to wait, though he didn't dare barge into his client's office for fear of infuriating his client and tarnishing Kirigakure's reputable mission record, nor did he feel like interrupting whatever arguing was audibly occurring within the confines of the man's office.

The door finally opened, and he was greeted with a familiar sight. The ears and the tail were what gave her away as Aizou Kitsuchi, the girl he had walked home several weeks prior, but had never seen again simply due to his busy schedule, and likely hers as well. Their housing estates being distant from each other's also served to inhibit any coincidental bumping into on the streets, and soon enough, she had faded away in his mind, buried under days of taking missions and searching for his supposed sister.

"So, you're my teammate for this mission?" she asked, and Hyouga nearly did a double take.

Teammate? He hadn't been told he'd have a teammate, did he? Even so, having someone else to rely on would help, though he was weary of her stealing credit for his part in the mission. Strangers or not, there was a thing to note about ninja, and like everyone else they were just human and prone to stooping low.

"Yeah, guess I am," he answered with a smirk. "Never thought I'd see you again."

"Hyouga Kouri, was it?" she asked. "Well, we might as well go scope out the casino itself. Try not to stare too much at me. We don't want the cheater getting away now, would we?"

"Tch, as if an ass and a tail are anything to look at," he retorted, but it didn't stop him from following her into the elevator, the two of them going down to the main floor where he had walked past all the gamblers who were painfully losing more than they were making.

Going with her plan, he walked up to one station and sat down at one of the tables with three others, who threw him menacing looks. To any other newcomer, the psychological warfare may have worked, but for Hyouga, a quick return of their looks got him in, and the man-in-charge shook the box that contained a pair of die, while he and his three newfound friends would try to guess the exact value.

He spared Aizou a glance, who was still standing at the elevator, though she did a very good job of looking inconspicuous about the matter of scanning the place for the cheater. He let her do her thing, especially when the man-in-charge raised the box which hid the die from view, and he saw that he had won.

"Alright!" he said, standing up so suddenly the chair dragged back, one hand coming down to slam itself on the table in triumph.

"Hey, what do you think you're doing?! You cheated!" one of them accused.

"No I didn't! Don't blame me if you're such a pissy player!" he retorted, his left shoulder now pressing against the man's right as the two glared at each other.