Hanza made it a specific effort to put down more than enough money to double what they had actually purchased, making sure the bartender had received a huge tip and would welcome him back when he inevitably decided to sneak back and have another one of those “hot toddy” drinks. He would avoid letting Hakara or anyone else know that he had enjoyed the drink so much. It was possible that a young man who had grown up accustomed to the cold enjoyed the warmth of a friend and perhaps a drink as well. The sun had reached the horizon as they made way into the streets. Though he had handed off his drink to Hakara, he had yet to see him drink the lemonade. He hoped it would be enjoyed as much as he enjoyed it himself.

It seemed even as the sun began to face behind the horizon, Konoha did not dull in the slightest. Certain stalls began to turn on lights, even a good couple of the larger shops had changed over staff and were planning to remain open for business into the late evening. Hopefully nothing looked unsettling about a couple of hidden mist ninja with alcohol on their breath hitting the night streets of Konoha.

“How long have you been here, if that’s not too much to ask? I notice you have a bit more of an understanding of your surroundings and whereabouts than I have. Wandering the streets of Kirigakure as the sun left the sky would be a sure invitation to lose your wallet, I’m guessing it’s not the same here?”

He had so many questions for Hakara, likely due to the fact he had just traveled here with bare minimum conversational companions and even outside of that, he had hardly ever had a decent companion in the first place. It was likely that his excitement would burn down in time, and he would retreat to his standard introverted behavior, but in this moment, at this time, he was ventilating all of that pent up extroversion.

“What motivated you to come here in the first place? I’m sure I’ve made it clear enough by now that I was just a bit bored of Kirigakure and wanted to find something new in traveling. There is always someone new needing to be treated, and always new discoveries to be made in a new region. A medics work will never, ever quite be done.”

After asking this next question, Hanza would let up on Hakara, to avoid being strange or making him uncomfortable. He would take another moment to slowly scan the surroundings, trying to figure out what was what. There was something so thrilling about not knowing, in this case. Wherever it was that Hakara chose to lead, Hanza would follow. It was going to be a wonderful night of fun and discovery, at least if it went the way Hanza wanted it to go. He waited for further instruction.

WC: 500

As the sun began to set upon the village of Kohagakure no Kato, the sky lighting up with brilliant oranges, reds and yellows above them, and the temperature began to drop to a more comfortable level for one to be wearing a coat such as he was, Hakara looked down at the lemonade that he held in his hand, eyeballing it before taking a sip and making a bit of a face while doing so. Lemons were bitter, though of course lemonade tended to be quite sweet. He wasn’t huge on overly sweet drinks, knowing full well that they were what led people to experience headaches after drinking a few of them, but he drank it none the less. He wasn’t going to appear rude by not partaking in what this stranger who was far from home had offered to him. As the two of them walked, Hakara pulled one of his senbon from the pouch at his hip, feeling more comfortable holding it in his hand as he traversed the still not entirely familiar territory that was Konoha.

“I have been here for a month, no longer. I chose to come here in order to study the effects of some of the different diseases that I had noticed common in our village on people who were not acclimated to such a place. It is interesting to view even a common cold in a warmer climate as opposed to a place that is always damp and cool.” As they walked he was still scanning the surrounding area, looking for potential areas that he could come later on in order to find more potential test subjects for his experiments. There were a few people on the streets whom he noticed that he had previously worked on; a man with an odd rash, a woman with a wet cough who seemed to cough every forty seconds exactly, and a handful of others. It truly was good to see his experiments at work, and he revelled in the moment, a smile creeping across his face as they walked. He didn’t know what the viruses would do to these people, but he was excited at the prospect of finding out.

“As for your query about the safety of the village, every place has its vagrants. It never hurts to be prepared to defend oneself in such a place, especially after the lights of the village have dimmed. I have heard rumour of extremists of the village who follow some old cult like organization in the village, and of important people, or the families of those people, going missing and turning up dead. Konoha has been through dark times recently, and I feel there is no doubt that it has something to do with the fact that they once again allow criminals within their walls. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the spawning ground of so many criminals and terrorists would have such things happening in their underbelly, and even ot in the open.”

As his eyes scanned he noticed that it appeared that they were being watched. Though Konoha and Kirigakure shared a peace that other villages could only dream of, there were still those xenophobic types whom wished all from other villages deceased. Hakara counted five people who appeared to be watching them, a couple following them not too closely, and others at different vantage points. He was curious to see if they would try to jump the two young Kiri ninja, but not curious enough to say anything too loudly. He dropped his voice to a whisper.

“As a note, if you have any prowess in a fight, there is a slight chance we may need to use it. We are being followed…”

626

It had not even taken an entire day for the inevitable to occur. Hanza felt his social functions all seem to scream and shriek in horror as the crowd the two Mist Ninja were now blending through seemed to constrict and suffocate the anxious man.  Thankfully enough he was in the company of a friendly indidivual. It was all too natural for Hanza to try his best to pretend everything was okay in a situation like this. It was likely that the oddly high skill in understanding all of the mechanics and intricacies of his cryogenics was due to some form of savant-like prowess that left his social skills at a deficit. It was not an uncommon occurrence for him, becoming overwhelmed suddenly in public and struggling to find a foothold withwhich to sturdy himself.

“Heh..y..yeah. I suppose i..it would be nice t..t.to study those things. I try to stay thinking about my c..c..frost experiments. They keep me calm.”

Hanza dropped his glass which shattered on the ground in the midst of the crowd, his hand shaking as he gently grasped his hair with both hands, clenching tightly on either side as he paid as much attention as physically possible to the words of Hakara. He mentioned the recent events and how that could have likely brought about a sharp rise in criminal activities within. On top of that a new piece of information had struck. It was basically just confessed by his new friend that he was in Konoha to make people sick and study them. It was all a little much for Hanza to process, that was until Hakara pointed out that the two had been being followed and that a battle might be in order.

This was what jolted Hanza into a state of functionality, as he was prepared to focus all of his efforts into protecting himself and his work. As Hanza nodded to Hakara to show he had acknowledged the situation, he opened his mouth to whisper an idea for what their next move should e been but was met with a small shiv sliding into the lower right side of his back. The injury was not lethal, nor was it even very deep, but it hurt terribly up until his reactive ice hide cooled and halted the bleeding.

“Idiot, idiot, idiot..idiot!” Hanza had never in his entire life, in all of his training, in all of his late night expeditions though Kirigakure as a small boy, been actually hurt like this. His fury was apparent. He turned quickly toward the pain and, due to his opponent’s being more likely untrained street thugs, not practiced shinobi, even if genin level, Hana was capable of landing one quite powerful backfist to the assailant’s jaw. The other two men with him would step forward for retaliation while their master recovered, Hanza would begin to block with the best of his ability as he awaited Hakara’s own intervention.

WC: 502
TWC: 1002

There it was, the telltale sound of blade entering flesh...A sound he knew too well...

They seemed to attack much quicker than the young mist shinobi had anticipated, causing him to grit his teeth as he pulled two more senbon from his pouch, keeping all three of them between his fingers. He could feel the natural feeling of chakra attaching itself to the senbon, making them an extension of himself, all within a fraction of a second. It was something that he had practiced since he was a small child, his father teaching him that the way to be more useful was to ensure that your tools never got away from you. The young Guanyin, as his chakra threads attached themselves to his senbon, took a second to scan the field, seeing the enemies to their sides as two approached to circle to their front and the other two charged their sides. He chuckled slightly, not entirely sure what they wished to gain from this interaction, but expecting that they would be met with disappointment none the less.

As the one man faltered back, the other two with him would move towards the two boys, causing more threats for them to watch out for. Hakara didn’t like this kind of fight, preferring to avoid fighting all together if he was able to, but he had trained how to fight multiple opponents before. He spun on his left heel, delivering a round kick with his right foot directly into the side of the head of the assailant closest to him, who would spin in place with the momentum. When he spun Hakara threw one of his senbon at the man, having it stick into his temple. It would stop when it hit the bone, causing virtually no damage itself, but when he created a half hand sign his Shock Treatment jutsu would activate, putting a raiton charge through the man’s brain and causing his entire body to twitch and convulse as he fell onto the ground.

He didn’t stop there, sing the continued momentum of the kick to bring him forward, the foot that had delivered the kick planting as he swept the leg on the other person behind them before putting a senbon into his jugular, specifically targeting the area that would cause the most damage with his weapons. The man would clutch his throat, pulling the senbon free and sending a stream of arterial blood everywhere, Hakara using the chakra strings to bring the senbon back and put it into the jugular of the man who had stabbed his new friend. Battle was constant motion, and his technique certainly proved that, chakra lines beginning to surround everyone as his other two senbon had been circling around their opponent’s legs and arms, the chakra string flowing through them in places.

“Attacking us was pointless, fiends. We wished you no harm and yet here I stand amid a pool of the blood of your friends. Was it worth it?” The other men were clearly too angry to see reason, continuing their advance towards the two mist shinobi, Hakara sighing and preparing to pull the trigger on his next set of attacks...

1163

Hakara was having no trouble at all handling these street thugs. It was like watching a bloody marionette show, the only difference being that the men were becoming the puppets without even realizing it as they were plucked and prodded, shocked and dissected by senbon. The Guanyin clansmen struck with a finesse the likes of which Hanza had only ever imagined out of the best shinobi in the world. The pain from his stab wound was gone as his bodies natural defense took over and protected him, forming a coat of ice across the surface of the wound and chilling it so that blood would no longer escape it.

Hanza’s combat training from the academy took over, breaking him from his panic attack as liquid nitrogen seeped into the ground through his feet, creating five three meter pockets of the extremely cold substance just below the surface. His ability to manipulate multiple aspects of combat at once with efficiency made it simple to control these pockets while keeping his eyes locked onto the enemy. Knowing the limitations of his next technique, Hanza shaped the five pockets into one continues hollow circle beneath the opponents’ feet, widening the area of effect but still maintaining the same overall mass.

When the two remaining, bleeding combatants shifted their body weight to proceed forward, from just in front of them would sprout four thick, sharp icicles, which they’d have absolutely no ability to stop from impacting with based on their forward momentum. The icicles were pointed in a way that the first point of impact would be a low jutting formation to hit each of their ankles, causing them to trip forward and land on the second icicles which  were arranged to catch them both somewhere on their torso when they fell forward. Normally, these would not have pierced more than inch deep, but with the weight and momentum of falling were accounted for, both of the remaining gentleman, still bleeding profusely from their throats and quickly approaching the point in which they’d pass out from blood loss and then shortly afterwards they would likely die. “There is no future for you in my world of cold, miscreants. Bleed, suffer slowly, and perish where you lie.”

Hanza looked down at the unconscious man who has been shocked senseless at point blank range in one of the fantastical displays of combat prowess by Hakara.  Hanza broke off the tip of one of the icicles that jutted through the closer of the two impaled gentleman, who were now sunken far enough on to the formations for Hanza to do so easily. They still tried to form words, crying out and carrying on in pained efforts to survive the inevitable.

“We should not kill this one. If you have no use of him perhaps we should leave a mark that the Mist is not to be trifled with and that we will not be bullied like school children.”

What Hanza was suggesting was to etch the symbol of the Hidden Mist on the unconscious man’s forehead. Either way, he didn’t care what happened to this man. Hakara would find his personality to have taken a deep change in these intense moments. Never before had Hanza been exposed to such cruelty, despite being bullied as it were.

WC: 554
TWC: 1556

As quickly as it had begun, it had now ended...

As his chakra strings had worked their way around the throat of the man whom he had shocked, the only one remaining alive after the attack, he was prepared to deliver the finishing strike, the last jutsu he would need to activate that would solidify his chakra strings, slicing them in and through the flesh of the individual at his feet. The rest of them had fallen before he had a chance to activate his chakra harden technique, but he wouldn't be robbed of his opportunity to unleash it...ir at least that was the plan, but occasionally plans change. The boy he was with was not the same as he had been, none of that nervousness seemed present and his demeanor had entirely changed to that of a killer. It was interesting to see a shinobi snap like that, but it wasn't entirely unusual as well. He wondered if he could capture that and infect people with it...

There was another curious thing. The man hadn't bled when he was cut. Hakara knew a thing or two about wounds, and he certainly knew that when you were stabbed you were supposed to be. He wondered what it was that had stopped it. Did he not have blood? Was it some kind of medical technique that he could potentially master? Was it some weird thing that the medics of the ice clans had mastered/ It didn't particularly matter at the moment, more of a curiosity for a man who sought the things he did. He wanted to take out a scalpel and cut the man again to observe what would happen but he figured that wouldn't be the best thing to do at the moment. He didn't know this man's fighting prowess necessarily, having only seen him use one technique that proved to be fairly dangerous. He really didn't want to find out more about it when he himself would be the target.

He flexed his fingers, tightening the chakra strings around the unconscious man's throat, the chakra seeping into him in a way that if he were to activate his chakra harden technique the man would be completely skewered, no chance of survival. It took much restraint to hold off from finishing the shinobi off, the training of his village deeply engraned in him. They had the nickname of the Bloody Mist for a reason, the assassination techniques of the shinobi of the village tending to be quite masterful. He stopped for one reason however, or perhaps two. He was not a murderer, so killing a defenseless man seemed out of character for him, and he figured he could do something else with him. He put the senbon back in his pouch and pulled out a scalpel and a small vial, creating a precise incision in the man and carefully having the vial emptied into the wound. The man's complexion would change to a curious grey and green tinge.

"There is no need to punish this man any further. His mistake has cost him the life of his friends and it would be cruel to push past this. I will observe him to ensure that he has learned his lesson. Perhaps we should depart this place however, lest the authorities come and believe that we were the cause of this scene." He healed the incision so that it could never be noticed, the virus he had introduced into the new host beginning to take root. It would take a few days before it took full effect, but he was a patient man. In the field of medicine patience was key.

"There is a food stand nearby. I believe it would be wise for us to go there. There is nothing wrong with us walking the streets, and if anyone does ask we were defending ourselves. These men look like common thugs so we should likely be okay." He dusted himself off, kicking his boot into the side of the curb and dragging the toe across so that no blood was on it. He turned to walk away, not caring about the scene he was leaving behind. He would allow the plague to fester and leave it to its own devices. There was nothing more that he could do here except leave. As the cool wind whipped through the streets and the smell of blood followed, Hakara frowned slightly. He wasn't a killer, he didn't like having to do such things to anybody, and he imagined that the people who had died tonight were simply less fortunate than others and down on their luck, looking for something to help them out. He would have happily given them money had they asked for it, but instead now they were dead and would never have the chance to pull themselves out of the hole that they had been placed in. Unfortunately, such was the way of the world of the shinobi...

{Exit Thread}

2006
Katon D Rank -> C Rank - 1500
Perception E -> E3 - 450

The air in this particular area was even more chilly now, as the ice formations created by Hanza absorbed what little heat remained after dusk. Blood had dripped onto the ground in pools from all of the many wounds the opponent’s had sustained which sang the short song of their demise. Bystanders had been something Hanza had not even taken into consideration, now suddenly feeling like he was being stared at. His display had been more excessive in force than his friends subtle picking apart of vital points and arteries. Hanza took in the words of his fellow Kiri ninja, staring blankly at the mess he had made and nodding once in agreement that they ought to depart as soon as physically possible, lest the ANBU arrive and they be questioned.

It was a quiet walk as Hanza tried to rationalize the happenings. Survival instincts had exploded and taken hold, turning Hanza from a normally jovial and kind young man to what he had been trained by the academy to be. A deadly and efficient killer of man. The method of justification for what had occurred that Hanza had taken to was one which blamed the attackers. They were not striking to gain anything, they were striking at Hakara and himself because of who they were, because of where they were from. People like them, who were less than people really, did not deserve a second thought when force was required. At least this is what Hanza kept repeating in his head. Anything else would have lead to guilt, which inevitably would lead to madness. That was not going to be permissible at all.

Hakara made sure to reassure Hanza as they made way to a food stand nearby which skilled Guanyin recommended would be a good next stop. Hanza was in no position to decline and made his way there at a matching pace.

“We truly volunteered our lives to being high spirited one moment and covered in blood the next, haven’t we?”

He gave a sad, sad smile as they approached the food stand. That is where he stood for a bit and watched back at the scene, wondering if it would turn in to something much worse than what it had been at face value, knowing the fragility of bonds between villages. Two Kiri ninja cause a bloodbath in the middle of the nighttime streets of the market. They appeared to have just left the pub, and were likely under the influence.

The papers would have a field day with something of that sort. Hanza could only hope quietly that they would not, before bidding Hakara farewell and making his way home for the evening, his head low and his stride quick.

WC: 557
TWC: 2013

Training Icicle Blossom (C) - 1000 WC
Training Binding Frost (C) - 1000 WC

Discarding 13 words