Generally speaking, Konohagakure had a relatively weak night life. Most people would retire into the comfort of their own homes to discuss the happenings of the day, have dinner with their families, or perhaps just relax on their own in preparation for what the next day had to offer. There were, however, pockets of more vile people getting up to less than legal things when night fell upon Konohagakure. Small dens of sin and debauchery were scattered throughout the village, most of them in the regions most stricken with poverty. It is within one of those dens that the tale of Ting and her story as a shinobi begins.

A frail looking young woman with beautiful pastel blue hair would shake nervously as she pushed open the door to a familiar place. Men and women from all walks of life were placed all around the room, some laughing and others in deep conversation as they periodically indulged in mind altering things. That young woman herself had come empty handed in search of snow in the middle of fall.

A man in stained clothes with a few missing teeth would notice her entry to the den and leave his little corner to confront her. “So, do ya have it this time? We talked about this before, you know I can’t have you in ‘ere freeloading all the time. This isn’t a charity.”

Ting’s mind was not on him, his words seeming to fall upon a husk as she somewhat dissociated. She knew she was supposed to have brought money or product tonight. She knew she had been threatened early on that week for doing this exact thing. She couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that her landlord had finally locked up her door and left her things outside it. Or the fact that she hadn’t eaten a meal in a few days. And the withdrawal. The nausea and profuse sweating she would get hit with constantly as she sought out another line.

Ting truly had nothing to say to the man who sought to shove her out of his shitty house and back onto the streets. When he felt his hands upon her shoulder and the harsh shove, something reflexive seemed to take hold, something beyond her as a drug addicted, homeless civilian. It was that shinobi training she had spent the last few years neglecting. Her left hand would fly forward in an upward angled open palm aimed directly for the man’s nose, cracking it severely and sending him to the ground.

She could manage nothing other than an anguished cry as she tried to gather thoughts that would not stop racing, and before she could react she had dozens of angry denizens upon her, striking her and spitting at her as they shoved her through the door back into the streets. Within a few minutes of sobbing into her hands she would walk with fatigue along the lamplit market district. Every few blocks she would find herself doubled over, dry-heaving onto the sidewalk.

Finally, the blue-haired snow angel would slide down the side of a brick storefront and pass out in exhaustion.

---

531

Ting would remember almost nothing of the night passed. Her mind was a swamp, and as she seemed to raise her head out of the disgusting, thick muck she had sunken into for the last several hours, she was greeted by intense light a slight sting in her arm. She was far too weak to jerk away from the source of pain, and could only just squint to keep away the bright fluorescent lighting of the room she was in.

“Where am I?”

A man and a woman each stood by, coming into focus rather slowly. As more and more became clear, so did the sensations coursing throughout her body. Those sensations being nausea and pain. Without a point of reference as to what had occurred the night before, Ting was working with limited perspective. She knew she was in a hospital. She recognized the woman before her as a medical professional the academy had been given a demonstration from years ago. She was flooded with an immense shame as she realized she was being spoken to, and decided to respond politely despite the agony in her head.

“I am Ting. I imagine you might know how I managed to get myself into the hospital, Mr. Kimura?” She would say this with her usual dose of lighthearedness in the midst of a situation which might have seemed a little more grim to those who surrounded her. It was a genuine question. She very well may never recall the events of this night in particular, and it would remain unpleasant for much of her future.

“How much trouble do you imagine someone like me would be in? Shirking their duties as a shinobi to...” Her voice would trail off as she began to wonder just how much this hospitalization would reveal about her life of irresponsibility. Her eyes would dart over to the needle in her arm and the drip it was connected to. She would have an incredibly hard time concentrating as her withdrawal continued to wreak its havoc upon her. Cravings were through the roof. She was at the height of it. The worst part.

“Would it be possible for me to have some water, please?” Ting would ask with a tentative voice toward, directed at the woman in the room. For the young blue-haired woman, this was a waking nightmare. She had not been faced with the consequences of her lifestyle until just recently. It was likely that bloodwork had already been done. This establishment in particular would know fully well what she had been into.

There was no way she could think of to ask the man in the room to look away. He was tall and toned, his hair black and his face as serious as sin. No amount of analyzing her situation and taking deep breaths would have been able to stop the inevitable doom that was her break down into sobbing. She held her left forearm across her eyes as she clenched the soft hospital bed with all her might. She didn’t want to be seen crying, which is why she tried her best to avert herself from Takao, even though the low woeful sobs gave it all away.

---

537 | 1068

Ting would manage away her tears in order to speak with Takao as he stood somewhat close at hand and spoke with what the young woman would presume was a gentle tread around any sensitive material around what had unfolded earlier that night. At this point in time, not even Ting was aware of anything more than being roughed up and shoved into the street. The rest was a blur. She had only a vague idea of what had lead to the chain of events that left her unconscious on the side of the street.

Just as she had prepared to ask something of Takao, the woman returned to the room with a tray of fruit, apple and orange slices. Next to that plate of fruit was an empty cup which she would fill with water from a pitcher.

“Thank you, miss.” She would say, not yet gathering the hard working woman’s name just yet, but recognizing a good person when she saw one in action. With a small bite of apple and a long drink of the water, her hunger and thirst would dissipate leaving her more aware of the specific pain across her body. Some of that pain localized and focused in places she would have rather not mentioned to anyone, let alone the people helping her.

The kind woman would discreetly exchange some information she seemed to be reading from a file to Takao at the other side of the room. This caused Tinf’s heart to sink a little as she pretended not to mind, taking an orange slice into her mouth and biting off half in a modest and gentle manner. She was able to choke back any further sobbing and pelt to Takao with sincerity.

“The night itself is mostly a blur. I made my way to a regular spot, but with empty pockets and nothing to contribute. I was met with anger and shoved from the door. I did manage to break the main dealers nose before I was whisked away into the streets.” She would flash a smile to indicate that she was happy to have done so.

“I am no good with drawing, and most do not give proper identities in little holes like that one. I do know exactly where and when they gather, though.” She would want to come along if Takao intended to pay some justice to those vagrants. She wanted to see them pay.

Once again, the nurse would enter the room except this time she would whisper to Ting, the result of which was a descent back into pained sobbing and a nod of agreement. Takana would look with a grim expression at Takao before pulling the wrap around curtain to obscure view of the bed and administering a rape kit on Ting. The results were already plain to see, but the kit would prevent pregnancy and the contraction of any sexually transmitted diseases.

When the curtain opened back up a near expressionless Ting would look over to Takao and into his eyes directly.

“You must let me come with you.”

---

516 | 1584

Ting had made the decision to pull on her jeans right under the hospital gown, wearing Takao’s jacket on top of it all. She was dressed as though she had made a grand escape from a mental health facility or something of that sort. It was no matter to her, however. The blood that seemed to boil in her would radiate through her arms and legs, she was heavily animated and ready to take action. Nothing of the bruises or withdrawal had any effect in hindering her as she followed close behind Tako. The man had opted to take a much more discreet visage, dawning a black mask just as they were preparing to enter.

“I will not get in your way.” This was the most she could promise him after he requested that she allow him to handle all of the fighting. The anger and frustration which had built within her over the last several hours was much more than she alone could ha e contained. It flowed through her muscles, through her fists and through her legs. It wanted an avenue to escape.

Just before the first few instances of the calculated chaos which would unravel shortly, Ting would notice the fiery looking eyes which overtook Takao’s normally very dark ones. She had no idea exactly what it was, but the way he looked at the den before them, she could only assume it was a Dojutsu of some sort. She would make a mental note to inquire later on when the circumstances were not so steep.

The might displayed by Takao in only the first few moments of the assault on that den would leave Ting in awe and admiration. Watching his fist lash out like an unstoppable cannon, dispatching the doorman and obliterating the door with ease...it was inspiring. These were the sorts of moments that help shinobi realize why they have chosen to focus on the things they did during academy.

Ting would enter the room with behind Takao, moving off to the side in a way that he need not worry about her safety and had all of the space he needed to attack without regard for her. As he used the environment to his advantage, slamming tables into the denizens of that pit of filth, Ting used the chaos to scan around the room with her eyes, searching for an already broken nose.

While she searched, she noticed someone attempting to get a drop on the preoccupied Takao, and though she more than suspected that he was a capable shinobi and would have handled it, she was never fond of the idea of allowing him to be the sole combatant here.

Ting would grab the man who attempted to strike the focused shinobi. Her hand would go over the entirety of his face as she pulled with all of her might and swept his legs out from beneath him, slamming him onto the ground. It would take only a few additional jabs to his jaw to render him unconscious, and that’s just what Ting would do. This was not the man she was looking for, so his pain needn’t have been extravagant.

With raw might, Takao had dispatched so many already, slamming heads through plaster, delivering knockout Taijutsu maneuvers as a true professional. Ting hadn’t known initially that she had been in the presence of such a powerful shinobi. It was a bit of light in the dark, that such a unit of power had been concerned enough to sweep her away from that street corner in the first place.

Though incredibly skilled and able to handle himself well, the low and rat-like methods of the street thugs meant he had to expect and be ready for strikes at his six, despite Ting trying her best to lookout for him, she was only a genin. From the other room a few more opponents would enter the fray, one of which bearing the bandages of a broken nose. It was the him.

Both Takao and Ting noticed at around the same time, but once Takao’s attempted takedown at range failed, the target seemed to understand he had to leave in order to survive. Takao has to turn away to handle the assault from behind. It seemed for but a moment that they had lost him, or that his escape was inevitable.

“He is mine.” a sinewy cover of muscle fiber would envelope Ting’s arms and legs, the fleshy red coloration made her look like some sort skinless anatomy model of the muscular system. She would launch across the room at high speed, at least quite high for the likes of a genin. She would catch up to the fleeing rapist in only a fraction of a second, at which point she would cock back her left fist, still carrying the momentum from her dash, and slam it into the back of his neck. This strike would send him careening into the opposite wall of the main foyer which he sought to escape through. The muscles upon her arms would retract after that strike.

The man would try to stand himself back up, dazed from the impact with the wall which had likely concussed him. Ting would wait just long enough for him to focus on her face before she twirled around, delivering an empowered roundhouse kick to the side of his head. The muscles on her legs would retract immediately after this, several of the target’s teeth would scatter across the room.

Resolved to his fate, the slumped man against the wall would spit out the blood that had filled his mouth from the loss of his teeth, and then he would flash a smile at her. It was that sinister sort of smile that you simply knew was of only evil and cruelty.

“I suppose this is the price you pay for a virgin, then.” Those words slammed into Ting’s mind with a gargantuan force. That would signify the moment that all went white for her consciously.

She would grab his short, scrappy hair at the top of his head and bring her right knee across his jaw with all the force she could muster. While he was dazed further, she would grab his arm and bend it against the joint, giving it a straight jab which dislocated it from the socket. She would repeat that with the other arm, leaving him unable to defend himself.

Her body was under the effects of her soft physique  modification, so even as a few additional vagrants entered the room to strike her with pipes and attempt to get her away from him, she simply did not react to their strikes. She was entirely absent from her mind as she pulled the man’s jeans and boxers to his ankles and looked up into his face as she stomped down on the bits that were revealed. Over. And over. And over. She would not cease until someone was able to drag her from the room and snap her out of her state.

---

1187 | 2771

Panting heavily, her breaths choppy and burdened by anger and exhaustion, Ting felt herself pulled away from her object of rage. Takao would speak unto the young woman something that would stick with her for the rest of her days. The dedication and service the powerful shinobi before her gave to his homeland was incredibly honorable, and his view on how even someone as despicable as the man who had taken so much from Ting should not have been allowed the time of day to suffer, but should have been removed from all being and forgotten about as he deserved. This was a far different manner of thinking than what was conventional. It sat well with the greenhorn shinobi as she watched Takao dispatch the bloodied husk of a man in the ground.

She was tired. Extremely so, by that point. The adrenaline of getting her vengeance was only ever going to carry her so far, and Takao was most likely away of that too. Ting would place her hand against the wall to support her weight as she looked up toward the man who had helped her lift a that impossible burden from her shoulders. A soft, genuine smile would form across her face. Even as her bloodied fists and shoes made such a smile seem incredibly out of place, the silence that pierced the den the two shinobi stood within brought a sense of finality to this unfortunate part of Ting’s life.

“The greater part of the last few years, I was one of those people. Indulging in trash. Associating myself with trash. What I had become during that time was trash myself. What would someone who doesn’t want to fall back into that be wise to do going forward?” Ting wouldn’t mention her financial situation or homelessness to Takao, it was too much for her pride. She would however seek more wisdom from him on how she might avoid falling back into her old life.

The hand he had on Ting’s shoulder was more human warmth than the young woman had felt in what was likely years, not since her last encounter with her lovely friend Yuna. That was a story for another day, however.

“I have been shirking my duties as a genin of the leaf for around three years now, wasting away in little hollows like this one. My mind and body are still weak with temptation even now, even after all of this.” She would ball up her fists as she spoke. Despite not wanting to regurgitate all of her little sob story, she was petrified of where she might go or what she might do if the two parted ways without any further discussion of the circumstances. She didn’t want to go back to what she was before.

“My strength has diminished from what it should be, I graduated the academy with decent standing and yet I’m the only one who didn’t make anything of myself.” She needed direction.

---

503 | 3274

Nothing much had ever come of Ting’s adventures through the drug dens of Konohagakure. She had evaded authorities, she had fought with rival operations, there was no end to the list of heinous favors she had done for the next hit. Tonight, with her pale skin still littered with bruises and her eyes surrounded with darkened marks of fatigue, Ting would receiver an offer to change everything for herself. A cause that meant more than her dealings of the past.

The symbol which formed upon the palm of Takao’s right hand was one Ting had not laid eyes upon since the academy. The notorious ROOT organization of the Hidden Leaf Village. The information the young shinobi had on this group was limited by public perceptions, despite her forms education in the academy. The academy wouldn’t reveal secrets of a covert organization, after all. Formerly lead by Danzo Shimura, it was just as Takao described it. The young woman’s face remained as stoic and set with determination as Takao’s, her eyes met with his as she listened intently to what he proposed.

This was an opportunity to reset everything. To become something more. Ting would nod as he spoke, the cold fall air infiltrating the darkened foyer through the space where a door once sat. There was nobody left here to protect from the cold. The blue haired woman would fall to one knee and bow her head down, her hospital gown protecting her from much of the debris on the ground.

“Konohagakure will have my service as an operative of ROOT. May her leaves bask in the sun while we grow in the dark.” She would rise back to her feet after speaking and allow Takao to place the seal in whatever manner he needed to do so.

After receiving her seal, she would accept any further instruction from Takao and obey it without question, a new Ting was borne of opportunity and trust. Her loyalties to he who saved her would be directed unto the village she called home, as that’s what she imagined he would most appreciate.

Ting would be prepared to leave this place to return home, when she realized that she did not have one any longer. She wondered to herself if ROOT had a barracks she could rest within for the time being.

“Sensei,” Ting would begin timidly. Is there a main point of operation for our organization? If so, I would like to remain there as I go through the motions of clearing out my system and training myself for what’s to come.”

Whatever his reply and however things would turn out from this point onward, Ting was prepared. She was entirely submitted to the ideals of ROOT and would begin immediately working out the details of how to strengthen herself as a shinobi and as a person. She would sleep either in a barracks, should Takao reveal the location of one to her, or on the ground near this place. It mattered not to her.

---

[Exit Thread]

509 | 3783

Strength: E-0 ~> D-1 (1075)
Speed: E-0 ~> D-0 (750)
Endurance: E-0 ~> D-0 (750)
Perception: E-0 ~> D-0 (750)
Reaction Time: E-0 ~> D-0 (750)

Total: 4075 (-10% Mentor Reduction) = 3667

116 WC discarded.

Training-

Fire Release: Cruelty Devouring Blaze || A-Rank(2,000wc) - 20%(genius) - 10%(kimura) - 10%(scroll of seals) = 1,200wc
Wind Release: Divine Winds || A-Rank(2,000wc) - 20%(genius) - 10%(scroll of seals) = 1,400wc
Fire Release: Remote Immolation Seal || C-Rank (1,000wc) - 20%(genius) - 10%(kimura) - 10%(scroll of seals) = 600wc
Dragon Art: Devouring Divinity || C-Rank (1,000wc) - 20%(genius) - 10%(kimura) - 10%(scroll of seals) = 600wc
Fire Release: Holy Purifying Flame || C-Rank (1,000wc) - 20%(genius) - 10%(kimura) - 10%(scroll of seals) = 600wc

TOTAL = 4400wc
62wc discarded