The pair weaved their way through the forest, the cloud shinobi carefully ploughing through the trees’ canopies whilst the gray, hidden mist shinobi ran closely behind across the hairy floor. Han had always traveled above ground as to leave behind the loosest track possible: a habit he had trained to adopt ever since his enlistment into the ANBU corps and one of the few he had decided to keep. Few trees in the hidden cloud village where sheathed in bark that was soft enough to register footprints and the strong scent of the leaves that grew off of them was enough to mask the average shinobi’s scent from detection. The Sannin wasn’t sure whether Sero had considered any of these factors or not when he decided to journey through the forest across its floors; but if he was half the Hunter Nin he appeared to be he would’ve at least considered falsifying his steps by wearing boots that had animal footprints erected from beneath their soles. Un-proposed and unrehearsed, their pace was a little faster than a jog - as to conserve as much energy as possible without compromising the time they had to capture their target before he escaped their reach. Through the gaps in the trees and their twisted, overhanging branches Han leaped his way towards the lightning country’s borders, casually pushing off of the occasional tree branch that was strong enough to support his mass. The wind resisted the form of his ANBU cloak, though it wasn’t enough to stop the Sannin or even slow his pace. An ambitious expression was plastered across the swordsman’s silky face, albeit shadowed and hidden from plain sight by his porcelain mask of duty.
After a few minutes of forging, the gray-haired mist ninja was the first to break the silence that had settled between the two ANBU, saying, "When we find the target I will have to engage at a range in order to get in an attack before I am sensed. I will blind and then blow up the area directly in front of the target. Since I assume you are more here to make sure I behave them to assist I suggest you move ahead when we detect the objective and cut off retreat. Even if the Explosive device is not effective in disabling the target’s movement I will immediately follow up with close combat. Any issues?" The man spoke with an unsettling echo of voices, all repeating his words at a similar-yet-not-exact frequency to his main. His creepy demeanor intrigued the Sannin at best: it sent more chills down his spine than the bloody cemetery itself, though the ANBU fought through his fears in order to convince himself that Sero was harmless. At least he was, so long as you weren’t his target. The mist shinobi had proved his tactical intelligence, at least to a satisfactory level. Intercepting their target from two opposite directions would not only limit the target’s chance to escape the ANBU’s confrontation, but it’d also mean that they could effectively throw mid-ranged attacks and cover double their range if they decided to launch any collaborated attacks. Han sought for the hunter nin’s gaze before giving off a nod upon receiving it. Shortly after, a flock of birds suddenly took off for the sky - tweeting and screeching as they flew off into the distance. Han would have otherwise dismissed the phenomena as just a trivial display of the nature of birds, if the birds hadn’t all taken off from the same location and all dispersed in every direction from it. His grim partner had picked up on the sign as well it appeared, as he had just suddenly increased his pace to speed-past ahead of the Sannin whilst also taking his stride to the trees above him. Han could’ve have easily outmatched the mist ninja’s speed in a full-on sprint from what he had deduced about the man thus far, but he allowed the gray shinobi to take the lead. After all, his true mission was to observe how the mist ninja fared in battle compared to a shinobi from the hidden cloud village of the same rank.
Alas the pair had finally located the runaway shinobi. He couldn’t be mistaken for any other random traveler: he was exhausted, most likely because of his failed attempt to out-run his chasers, and he reacted to Sero’s upcoming attack as though he had expected it. The man looked up and having barely enough time to register the kunai flying at his face, he side-stepped it before a flash of light exploded in his face. “The kunai had a flash tag attached to it,” Han thought to himself as he silently weaved through the trees, around the confronting pair and stopped just twenty meters behind their target. A second kunai was quickly launched towards the man and he jumped back in response, though he had failed to react to the instantaneous explosion that had occurred in the split second the kunai had struck the earth below. He was tossed backwards several feet and was painfully caught by the trunk of a tree that had stood behind him. Shortly afterwards the man blindly fired an Aoe in the same direction the kunai had come from. Multiple tendrils of flames shout out from his mouth, but they had no target to kiss. Several trees around the man caught fire instantly and burnt up in the same instance, due to the misdirected attack, though it wasn’t enough to set the entire forest a’blaze. Not that it would’ve helped anyway. Without giving the frail man a second to catch his breath, Sero quickly summoned a black sword of some sorts as if out of nowhere, before driving it’s length through the unfortunate beggar's chest in an instant. The maneuver was executed far too quickly for the victim to react, though Han had seen it almost a fraction of a second before it had begun. Sero’s dark demeanor was a warning of the unforgiving strength and ruthless nature he always tried to suppress. It didn’t surprise the Sannin that a man of his, nature, was recruited into the hidden mist’s infamous Hunter Nin program, though he wondered why he was trusted enough to aid foreign countries, given his sadistic mentality. In the end it didn’t matter what Han or anyone thought of him, the cold hard truth was that he was an efficient assassin and a notably strongly individual.
An assert to any military task force...
Han exits thread ~
Mission Complete - WC: 2,387/2,000 (efficient perk)