OOC:

Mission Details:

These charting missions were definitely getting more and more dangerous. That much Kuno was certain of as he sat in the administration building, looking over the scroll that had been handed to him. The young Uchiha had arrived at the building that day in search of a mission that would allow for him to get out of the city gates for a time. After his meeting at the Door to Hell with Issei, Kuno was reminded of how much he loved to explore and visit new places, which prompted him to try his best to get outside of the village as often as he could. With his investigation into Autumn hitting a bit of a snag, on top of the fact that he and Syekren Uchiha had recently cleared out one of their main headquarters, Kuno figured that he had earned a break for the continuous searching. After all, if he kept going the way he was going, eventually he would wind up just searching in circles.

And so, with that in mind, Kuno had decided to take on one of the charting missions like the first one he had taken for the village back when he was still a genin. That mission had been an exciting one that had led to him finding a spot for a new outpost in the Endless Dunes. It had been his first real accomplishment as a ninja, and so that first mission still held an important place in his memories. With that mission in mind, he now glanced over the latest charting mission, which was dangerous enough to be classified as a B-Rank mission. In this iteration of the familiar mission, Kuno would be required to travel out into the wilderness to a large cave entrance known as the Scorpions’ Den. The cave had its namesake for a reason, being the home for thousands upon thousands of poisonous scorpions for longer than Kuno had been alive.

But lately, the territory that these creatures normally roamed had expanded to places that the village could not ignore. Not only were some of the beasts appears just outside of the village walls and attacking travelers, but they were also emerging inside of the village Hidden on the Sands proper, some even attack people in the slums of the city. Regardless of where the scorpions were getting to, it was acceptable to have them within the walls of Sunagakure no Sato, and so a plan had been devised by some of the higher ranking ninja of the village. A lone ninja would go through the cave’s proper entrance and work their way through the tunnels roughly toward the village. As they did this, they were to map out the tunnels as best they could for future reference to the shinobi that would venture out later to cave in some of the tunnel networks. Ultimately, the hope would be that they could eventually find where the tunnels emerged into the village, and emerge from there. Wen they did so, some of the village ANBU using sensory techniques would seal up the entrance so that there would be no risk of any more scorpions coming though it. The unfortunate part for Kuno was that he was not a member of the ANBU, which meant that he had the best job of all: travelling through the tunnels.

Mumbling quiet complaints to himself as he journeyed outside of the gates, Kuno could not help but shake his head and begin talking out loud to himself, as he was wont to do when facing a solo mission. “Well, it’s not quite the charting mission I was hoping for…but hey, it’s an adventure to be sure!” The trip did not take very long, especially since he knew approximately where it was located, so he was able to use the Body Flicker Technique in order to travel most of the way there. Eventually, the young Uchiha arrived outside of the Scorpion’s Lair. The cave entrance itself was pretty unremarkable, appearing to be not much more than a small hole in the round surrounded by rocks, wide enough for maybe two people to walk side by side, but not much more. Taking a deep breath, the chuunin stepped over and into he mouth of the cavern. “Well…here we go.”

Slowly and carefully, Kuno lowered his foot onto the cave floor, careful not to set it down so hard as to make any noise. If he was going to do this, he would have to be as stealthy as possible. And so he was. Deciding that he could take his time, Kuno slowly allowed himself to be swallowed up by the darkness of the cave, squinting so that he could manage to see in the darkness. It was slow going at first for the young Uchiha; bending low so that he would not get caught on anything handing down from the ceiling, as well as controlling his footsteps to much that he thought he would go insane before reaching the end of this place. The only positive thing about the pace was that it made it easy for him to mark down every intersection that he came to, which was a number that was growing much faster than Kuno would have liked. It seemed that after every hundred metres or so, the caves would open up into an enormous cavern that had three exits leading deeper into the network. Reluctantly, at each intersection Kuno would choose the tunnel that he felt led in the direction of the village proper, in the deeper he went, the more uncertain he became.

The most unsettling thing of all, however, was the complete and utter lack of scorpions. It seemed like there were none in these caves, despite the name that the caverns held. Shaking his head in disbelief as he stepped into another cavern, he sighed at the complete lack of light. Even though his eyes had adjusted for the most part now, the sheer depth of this cavern left any hope of light as nothing but a memory, leaving Kuno with little choice in how to proceed. “It’ll just be quick…it’ll have to be.” Slowly, he channelled Katon chakra into his fingertips before running them slowly across his miao dao that he had drawn. Being heated by the jutsu, Kuno watched with a smile as it began to glow ever so slightly. Sitting down and setting the blade next to him on the ground, he pulled out his map and began to mark off his current location.

After a minute or two of ensuring that he had taken every exit in the room into account, he reached down for his blade, hoping to pick it up and continue on his way. But what he found was not what he expected. All around his slightly glowing blade were a multitude of small scorpions. They would not touch it due to the heat emanating off of it, but it seems that the strange stimuli and left them curious. Slowly and calmly, the young Uchiha reached down and lifted his crimson blade off of the ground. The way that the scorpions shifted with its movement was unsettling, but not nearly as unsettling as what he would see when he looked up. Standing in front of him, at least three times his size, was a scorpion that was staring him down, waiting for any sort of movement or sound. Glancing up at its stinger, Kuno knew that one shot from that would be the end of him, and with that revelation, he decided that he would have to draw the rest of the map by memory. For now, he had to run.

Reacting on instinct alone, Kuno formed a series of one handed seals with his left hand before exhaling a cone of fire into the scorpion’s face, causing it to retract in pain and surprise. Wasting no time, he jumped up onto it, charging across its back and springing off of it toward a nearby tunnel. Sprinting faster and faster Kuno pressed, hearing the ravenous screeches of anger and predatory hunger coming from not only the large one that was following him, but the hundreds of small ones that had now begun to pour out of the walls and into the tunnel behind him. With each step that he took, Kuno saw more and more of the creatures flooding into his path.

This continued as he continued to run through tunnel after tunnel, twisting and turning in hoped of finding a way out. And just as Kuno was about to give up, his lungs burning from all of the heaving breaths he had been taking, he saw it. A faint light up ahead, showing the promise of daylight. With a renewed vigour, the young Uchiha charged for the light his only hope just a few feet ahead of him. As he rounded the corner to face the sunshine, he realized that it was a partially buried entrance, and so he would need to dig for a moment to get out. But with the scorpions on his tail, he didn’t have a minute. He would have to make one.

Spinning around, he gritted his teeth at the sight of thousands upon thousands of small scorpions chasing him through the single narrow tunnel that he was now in, and with a breath of air that he infused with chakra, Kuno released a blast of fire in the shape of a dragon’s head, completely engulfing the entirety of the tunnel in flames and killing nearly all of the creatures that were immediately behind him. Luckily for Kuno, that burst of chakra seemed to alert the ANBU on the other side of the tunnel to his presence, and shortly after they, they managed to open up the hole quickly enough for him to run in, before sealing it shut with a combination of doton techniques that ensured those scorpions wouldn’t be bothering anyone for a long time.

WC:1676
Mission Complete! (1500/1500)
Unused WC: 176