Escort the Ninja [C-Rank Mission]:

Another day, another mission. Kaiji Kyudoka had been a Genin of the Village Hidden in the Leaves for a while now. He'd lost track of exactly how long that had been, but suffice it to say, things had begun to plateau. The boy was feeling not so much lost as much as he was feeling confused and just generally tired. Progress on advancing his birthright, the Dōjutsu known as the Takamegan or "Eyes of the Hawk", had slowed to little more than a crawl. That had been his entire purpose for coming to this land and taking up the mantle of a ninja, or so he had thought at least. While stumbling through the everyday life as one of the Leaf's own and eking out a living as a Genin, taking missions, meeting other ninja, etc., Kaiji had over time started to have, well, flashbacks of a sort. They came to him as fragmented vignettes of memories, never revealing too much, and always without a doubt leaving him reeling and more puzzled than ever. He had attempted to breach the subject of these episodes with his father via a letter, but that had ended up leading nowhere. What was a boy to do? Perhaps the answers would not be found here in the Hidden Leaf. Maybe, just maybe, Kaiji was destined to venture elsewhere?

The pink-haired archer shook his head of the ever-increasing mountain of thoughts, not wanting to end up like Atlas of old, forced to bear a world's weight. "Better to just... forget it, for now," he muttered harshly. "Okay, so the mission briefing says that there's some young hotshot ninja leader of a small village who is making his way back home today, and that I have been chosen to guard him on his journey." He pondered momentarily, cooking up an imaginary image of what he guessed the ninja might possibly look like. "I bet he's not so special," Kaiji snorted, not yet aware of the events that would occur on this day.

Saigai, Fukō. A couple years Kaiji's junior, but radiating a aura of confidence that Kaiji could never dream of possessing. The boy was about a head shorter than his guard for this trip, but that same self-assured effulgence made one think otherwise, that perhaps this boy, this child, was ten feet tall at the very least. "You there!" young Fukō boomed, pointing a finger in Kaiji's general direction. "Tell me, what is your name." Each word the boy spoke was positively brimming with boldness. The force of his voice struck Kaiji like a blow to the back of the head and it took him some time to respond.

"K-Kyudoka Kaiji, m-my name is K-Kaiji. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Saigai-dono." The teenager's teeth were chattering as he hoped he had addressed the young lord appropriately. Milliseconds, seconds, what seemed like minutes passed before Kaiji received any sort of response from his young charge.

"...Kyudoka?" Fukō drawled, still cocksure, but genuinely inquisitive for some strange reason. "That name... you are not originally from here, correct?" Kaiji's eyes only widened in response. A mix of fear, shock, and bewilderment roiled within him, hardening his stomach with a dreadful ill feeling.

"You would... be correct, S-Saigai-dono. H-how is it, may I ask, that y-you know this?" Kaiji pushed, attempting to mask his anxiety. The boy, Fukō, merely stared off into space, face unreadable. Kaiji took a step towards him, eager for a reply.

"Not another step!" barked Fukō, an edge of apoplexy tainting his command. "Forget... forget I mentioned it. We should be off." And with that the young village leader turned on his heel and set off, leaving Kaiji to retrieve his dropped jaw and scurry after the boy, scared and sweating and above all, unnerved. Despite the fact that Kaiji had only lived in The Land of Fire for a fairly short time compared to other shinobi of his rank and stature, he had learned the lay of the land rapidly, preferring the wilderness of the surrounding forests to the hustle and bustle of the village proper. Kaiji Kyudoka and the young lord Fukō Saigai took a lesser known route that led out of the village, one that Kaiji hoped would be safer than any main roads. For the majority of the journey two of them trekked in complete silence. The only break from this tense stillness was the occasional cry of a bird or other small forest dweller. Kaiji, not the smartest ninja but no fool, never for a moment took his eyes off of the boy. His earlier outburst and show of knowledge had put a fear into Kaiji's heart and a writhing ball of eels into his stomach. He wanted to vomit, wanted to abandon the mission, shirk his duties and find a nice tree to climb and spend his pent up tears. But doing so might be enough to become labeled as a missing-ninja, and Kaiji would surely die if hunted down. So uneasily, he carried on, walking and not saying a word, hoping to just get this whole ordeal over and done with.

After a series of forks in the road, both Kaiji and Fukō saw that up ahead the gates of the young lord's village stood. Kaiji breathed a long sigh of relief, shaky though it was. Fukō only grunted, picking up his pace to something akin to a jog. "Saigai-dono, w-wait, we're not quite there yet, you don't know if-" Of course. Or course his words were cut short. That was par for the course with these types of things. Being a ninja, he should have known. Of course his words would be cut short.

A sliver of silver, wickedly sharp, split the air in a flash. Fukō stopped short of his goal, stood still, legs weak. The boy would absentmindedly clutch his face, as if on instinct, only to find his hand returning wet with a liquid that was meant to be inside the body, rather than outside. "G-Guard!" he cried, and he was truly crying, tears diluting the flow of blood, the mixture painting his shirtfront a washed-out shade of crimson. Little to no time to think, they were in battle, and it appeared that the young lord would be of no help.

"Young hotshot, my ass!" Kaiji quipped, terrified but oddly prepared for an event such as this. This right here, action, battle, life or death, that was the ninja way. "Takamegan," Kaiji's eyes turning golden, chakra surging to his visual center. He spotted two, no three, probably opportunist scum preying on a child. The men had formed a semi-circle around Fukō, closing in, ignoring the pink-haired boy because well, frankly he looked nothing like a threat. "Tch," Kaiji spat, raising his arm perpendicular with his body and bringing a bow forged from chakra into existence along with three arrows. "Yoo-hoo!" the Kyudoka called out, loosing a pre-nocked arrow. The man closest to Fukō looked up from his target only to become a target himself.

"WAARHGhLJAL!" was his reply, the projectile piercing his trachea and boring a bloody stoma. The second of the attackers, hesitant regarding a second arrow, whispered a string of words to his remaining companion, and whatever he said must have been convincing, because the two of them ran off towards the treeline. Then, there was the matter of the fellow that Kaiji had shot and struck down. He had rolled over onto his side and was twisting this way and that, the arrow already having dissolved into chakra and vanished. He wore no headband, so it was likely that he was a missing-ninja.

"Saigai-dono, I urge you to continue on into the village and seek medical attention. I will finish the job h-here." The impact of what Kaiji had just done was gradually seeping into him. He put on a grim smile for Fukō's sake but there was no denying the bile ascending his throat like a hand up a sock puppet. "P-please," Kaiji begged, hoping he could find the strength to end this once and for all. Young Saigai stood there, motionless, clutching his wound, hard lines on his face that would have seemed out of place on even the sternest, oldest man.

"You're not from here... and as far as I can tell, you're not much a killer..." That cryptic speak again. Kaiji's eyes were burning with red-hot tears. "Allow me," Saigai Fukō, young hotshot ninja leader of a village, spoke sullenly. He knelt, pulled an item from his belt, and with a forceful shove, planted the object between the gurgling missing-ninja's ribs, putting a stop to the frantic frothing at the mouth he'd been doing less than a second ago. Fukō sighed and stood. "Kyudoka... Our village elder, my grandfather, told me the stories of your clan. Tell me, Kaiji of the Kyudoka," he stopped, the world silent around them, no wind blowing through the leaves and not a single birdsong trilling away. "Have you ever heard the tale of Kyudoka Mishito and the Year of Shi?" Kaiji turned chalk-white, a series of lightning-fast images swimming across his vision. He felt himself falling. Before his eyes, a massacre, bodies strewn about, a man with haunting marigold eyes, Sachiko, sweet Sachiko with an arrowhead adorning her throat like a macabre pendant, among many other maddening things.

"I'm gonna be sick!" Kaiji bellowed, finally ridding his stomach of the foulness of this day.

"Kaiji," Fukō went on, ignoring the bespectacled boy's retching, "If by chance you're looking for answers, may I suggest... the Sand?"

Kaiji Kyudoka of the Leaf was curled up in the foetal position, looking much like the man he had helped kill. When he finally rose to his feet, unsure of everything he had ever known, Saigai Fukō was gone, along with the body of the missing-ninja from earlier. It was nearly dark out now, and like a man possessed, Kaiji broke into a sprint, senses dulled, head and heart numb, but with a newfound purpose realized.

[EXIT]

TWC: 1723 - 1000[C-Rank Mission] = 723 remaining.

Training: