Mission name: Creeping Creeper
Mission rank: A
Objective: Put an end to the serial killer's rampage.
Location: Konoha
Reward: 490
Mission description: A strange experimental creature has begun to appear. There once was a legend, decades ago, about a strange creature that only came around every twenty three years for twenty three days, and it spent that time hunting. The legend goes that the body part or organ that the creature would eat depended on what sort of fear could he spot in his victim. Your job is to hunt this creature down and destroy it. Put an end to the mass killings once and for all.
Mission details: The creeper has wings, and can fly for short distances (maximum of 30 meters at 30m/s). It has A2 STR, B0 SPD, B3 END, B2 REA and PER stats. It's claws are enhanced, able to leave gashes 3in deep, or pierce 3/12in into flesh. It can produce shuriken made of bone from it's body, which are treated as being B-rank, are roughly 8in in diameter with 4 points, and each blade of the shuriken can cut 2in deep.  He also has special eyes that allow him to see the deepest fear of his victim and then judge from that which body part he wishes to harvest and save. Good Luck.~

It had taken her for so long, having to exterminate hideout after hideout. she had to restructure each and every part of her uncle's old organization just to make it fit her needs. Lots of the experiments and research had to be shut down and destroyed and those that were involved with the events of her youth and the events that lead to the raid upon Konoha had to be punished as well. All those willing to follow a new path under her direct leadership were welcome, those that refused were instantly disposed of, a cleansing had happened and the Black ANBU was nearing the brink of its reastructuring, the final part of its rebirth as a new organization.

Alas, that was her initial plan, yet the more hideouts she raided, the more questions started to surface. the more she learned about the organizations goals, the more she started to understand her uncle's motives, his dreams and desires and even if she did not exactly agree with everything, like for instance his methods, there was no denying that he was right at at least one thing: the shinobi world needed a guiding hand, it needed to be restructured and reformed. perhaps not like he had desired it, but still, Lamya could understand his motives and the more she got to learn, the more she started to feel that perhaps, despite all he had done, Enaka was still useful.

It was in that sense a pity that he had been captured and imprisoned during her absence and because she had managed to kill Hataro with that Uchiha called Tenzo, the organization was crumbling without leadership. It was at the point that she realized the use of the organization that she decided to control it, use it and its resources rather than force it to shut down. The only problem was the main hideout, the place where Enaka's own office and his own Laboratories were, was still not found, despite all her efforts in locating it.

A frustrating thing it was, to realize that one's own efforts were seemingly not good enough to reach the goal they had been fighting for, struggling for, for the past two years and still not having seen the end of it, still not having tasted the sweet taste of victory, of completion, of freedom. Only her uncle had the key and only Enaka could give it to her, but how was she supposed to get it, how was she supposed to try and get it from him, while he was in prison and she was probably pressumed to be missing in action or simply dead.

It was there, when she was deep in thought, looking over a fire she had made and was using to warm herself during the cold night, that her only companion for the past two years appeared. Uraeus slithered out of the bushes, a big bump in his body showing that he had caught himself a decent sized meal, a rodent of average size no doubt. As he let out a hiss, the creature slithered towards lamya and curled up into a coil next to her on the ground, looking at the meat she was roasting over the fire and then at her. "I saw something funny about a few hundred meters away from here."

lamya shrugged and looked at uraeus, her eyes conveying that she hardly had any interest and that she was obviously thinking deeply about other, possibly more complicated matters. "There was this guy...well not perhaps a guy and probably not even human, taking organs and stuff from what I think were real humans, dead people though. That thing smelled strange, but it was a funny sight, very amusing."

"Uraeus, you probably had a delirium from eating too much rodents," She showed a faint smile as she nodded towards the bump in his body, after which she grabbed the roasted meat from the fire and started eating. "Now be quiet, I'm trying to formulate a plan to deal with my own issues at the moment."

Suddenly, a loud scream pierced through the darkness of the night, a scream filled with agony and pain, a scream which would only be made by a person confronted with such devastating despair that it would be unavoidable not to react to it.

Lamya looked up, her hands tightening their grip around the stick upon which she had been roasting the meat over her own little campfire. No one made such a scream when confronted by shinobi or even wolves or a bear, this was different, muc much different. "maybe that story you told wasn't a delirium after all..."

782/2500

The very sound of a human screaming wasn't a first for Lamya, since she had heard it many times before, not counting her own screams of pain and despair, of which she had let out quite enough in the early days of her youth and at the start of her path to become a shinobi. Yet there were other factors which made this particular scream so interesting. One was the fact that someone had obviously chosen the night to act and that particular person or thing had according to Uraeus already killed someone not too long ago. Another fact was the smell, Lamya could actually smell the scent of iron in the air, a scent which was closely linked to blood and to have it permeate the air this much, there had to have been not just a murder, but a slaughter.

Because of all this, the taste of her food had changed and the roasted meat despite its nice smell and texture, had gotten a bitter taste because of the fact that she could still smell the iron despite the meat being so close to her. "I guess I won't be eating much more this night."

Filling her body with nutrients was no longer a priority, as he interest had shifted towards the origin of the noise and whatever it was that had managed to force a person to let out such a horrifying sound. Motioning her pet snake Uraeus to remain at the small camp she had made, Lamya grabbed her ANBU mask and made sure that the zipper and buttons of her Black ANBU armor were closed and tightened, for whatever it was that had gotten her attention, it was probably best not to be foolish and underestimate the seriousness of the situation.

Running through the forest, the former ANBU captain jumped up into the trees and moved from branch to branch and tree to tree, feeling the wind batter against her mask as it started to rain, making it quite a dark night, as the rainclouds had started to blot out the pale light of the full moon. If she did not have the expertly honed senses thanks to the years of harsh training and medical expertise in the field of bodymodification, Lamya would've been unable to find her away, let alone see anything further than a meter around herself. "Hmm, something's odd..."

As soon as that last word escaped her lips, she could feel a presence slip past her. from the corner of her eyes, she could see what looked like a man in a raincoat and a hat jump right past her, the stench of death filling the air instantly, leaving its pungent mark on the area Lamya was passing through.

She wanted to turn around and follow this strange presence, but she was slightly more interested in what had happened to the person who she had heard screaming, intrigued by what would drive someone to scream like that, she finally arrived at an open spot in the woods, instantly noticing that many of the trees had blood splattered upon them and a body of a man or rather to be precise, the remaining parts of a man's corpse could be found hanging from a single tree.

The body had been ripped apart, legs and arms thrown aside and the head and torso strung up to a tree with the dead man's own intestines, which given the fact that it looked as if the man had committed seppuku yet with a giant cleaver or at least a hunting knife rather than the standard tanto for the job. The carcass of the man was ripped open from his groin to just below his ribcage and as she was looking at the corpse, Lamya started checking it out of medical interest.

The lungs seemed present, same for the heart, stomach, kidneys, pancreas and all parts of the bowls, yet the man's liver was gone from where it should've been. Slightly confused, but at the same time highly intrigued by her new find, the young woman started to look around, checking the perimeter of where she had first seen splatters of blood to the site itself, but still she could not find the liver. "What on earth could someone do with a man's liver?"

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The very sight of a man being ripped apart in such a brutal and rather unconventional way, would've probably invoked fear, distress and certainly an amount of overwhelming disgust in lesser people, yet Lamya was no such thing. Already as a child had she seen the difference between a clean and an unclean kill, already in her early development as a shinobi had she encountered the ruthless and cruel nature of man and their absolute desires and through the pains and horrors of her uncle's torturous machinations on her behalf, had she learned to distance herself from the horror that transpired within the shinobi world. No, she did not feel the usual amount of disgust in a situation like that, on the contrary even, as her interest piqued and her thoughts started to wander off into a few memories of her past.

With her keen interest in the background of this particulary brutal and savage dismemberment an disembowlment of a human male, the former ANBU captain sought to discover the truth behind the killings, to understand the logic from the point of view of the killer and if possible even identify the killer.

One of the first things she found to be rather out of the ordinary was the cut that had lead to the disembowlment of the corpse, as it was not a smooth or almost smooth cut which would be the result of a bladed weapon or ninja tool, the outline of the wound was way too jagged o be made with surgical precision or the skill of a shinobi. This had to have been done by claws or perhaps a bone weapon of sorts, which usually don't have the smooth, even edge of metal weaponry and tools.

In part, this very corpse reminded her of one of the failed experiments of her uncle. An experiment which roamed around in these very same forests and which she had a hard time taking down, even with the help of the hokage at the time; Senju Sousetsu. Whatever had caused this brutal death had to be equally vicious and perhaps slightly more intelligent than the creature she had faced back then. It was odd though, that she had not seen any sign of the creature, nor had she found anything that could lead her to a cause of death. After all, it seemed nearly each wound and each part of the vicious maiming of this once human male could or rather would've been fatal, as everything indicated that the man was still alive even after having had his limbs torn off and his gut ripped open. If anything, the most logical explanation could've been death by eventual bloodloss or the loss of his liver.

Alas, as she was pondering on all these ideas, she suddenly had a shiver run accross her spine, the hairs on her neck tingling and standing straight on end. Something was watching her and that strange presence felt rather familiar. She suddenly remembered that fleeting encounter in the dark, with that figure she could not place as human or something beyond human.

While she looked around, she noticed that the spot of the murder had been rather dramatically chosen by what or whomever had killed the man, with the very outline of the murder scene bathing in the moon's pale light, granting the scene a quite sinister feel and look. Again she could feel the presence, closer this time, much closer and without a doubt stalking her like prey from beyond the boundaries of the open spot, out of the moon's pale light and straight within the deep and dark shadows of the forest. "Oh...it's hunting...me?" It was a strange sensation at best, the feeling of being hunted by a creature she did not know nor had any recollection of meeting or ever hearing about.

But then again, no snake was ever used to become the hunted rather than being the hunter and Lamya was no different. After all, as an ANBU, she was basically the perfect hunter of shinobi, the ultimate human stalker of prey and still she was now the target of another hunter. If anything, this was an interesting change of situation for her and though she could feel the very tinge of fear starting to creep up on her in the back of her mind, her calm and collected nature allowed her to take a look around, scouring off the edges of the open spot until she finally managed to have a glimpse of what it was that was stalking her.

From out of the Woods, a strange creature, almost looking like a walking scarecrow, complete with long coat and hat came out of the forest's dark interior and with greyish eyes lurking at her filled with a certain hunger, the creature suddenly grabbed something and threw it at Lamya's chest with pinpoint precision.

Alas, the shinobi's armor managed to stop the projectile from burying deeply as it would've had if she didn't wore her specially crafted armor. It merely grazed her skin when it rebounded and flew past her left arm, yet the cut was still bleeding rather profusely, showing just how dangerous the weapon, which looked like a bone shuriken must've been to ordinary people.

With a growl, the creature suddenly showed that neither the hat or raincoat were what they seemed, but were in fact a leathery collar with spikes formed around its head and neck, while the coat was a pair of leathery wings neatly folded up around it moments before.

As it suddenly flew up, it launched another two bone shurikens towards Lamya, which she only managed to escape from by placing both her hands on the ground and instantly creating a massive mud wall in front of her.

She was obviously pissed, was this the creature that had done those things? Was this the terrifying hunter that had managed to at least give her some sense of a long forgotten feeling?

Ridiculous...

She started to weave a few handseals, after which two wings started to form and sprout from her back, allowing her to rise up into the air, even reaching a height beyond that of the creature. As she rose above the beast, the moon's pale light shone upon her back, casting her shadow upon the vile creature and as she looked at it, it could see the depth of her disappointment in her eyes, those golden eyes that seemed to show that whatever fear the creature had sensed earlier, had faded and had been replaced with a cold and dark anger that was overflowing, so much so that the creature itself felt a new sensation, a sensation it had only brought upon others had now been bestowed upon itself by Lamya, who in all accounts was a far more impressive, far more brutal and far more deadly being that the ill-natured beast.

"Begone, you disappointment."

With a single flapping motion of her wings, what looked to be a Thousand, scale-like chakra projectiles flew through the air, crashing upon and cutting through the beast as it cried in agony and despair before falling down to the ground, looking more like a bat having flown through a garbage disposal rather than the terrifying creature it was supposed to be.

Lamya in the meantime landed next to the "thing" and made her wings recede. "You are filth, you are dirt...and as dirt, you will return." With those words and a few handseals made in an instant, two massive snakes made from mud descended upon the tattered and battered beast, until it seemed that nothing had transpired there.

Shrugging her shoulders, Lamya walked over to the corpse, made a few handseals and touched it with her hands, after which it dissintegrated until it looked as if there had never been a corpse in the first place. "Talk about ruining someone's dinner, now I've got to find myself something new to roast and I'm starving... Maybe some liver would be nice."

1355/2863/2500 Complete