1 When Eyes Meet [Mission|Nayoko] Wed Nov 14, 2018 2:04 pm
Rokumaru
D-rank
- Mission Details:
- Mission name: Extra Pair of Eyes.
Mission rank: B-A.
Objective: Proctor a match for the Exams.
Location:
Reward: 1000 Ryo +4 EP.
Mission Description: There are hundreds of matches taking place for the Chūnin exams, and more overseers are needed than ever to ensure the safety and fairness of the bouts we host.
Mission Details: You are in charge of half a day’s worth of matches, about 5 or 6. They will mostly go without incident, but a few entrants are especially bloodthirsty; restraining them will require defensive and/or supplementary jutsu of at least B-rank. This is overall an easy or boring mission, but necessary enough that you receive pay regardless.
Konohagakure, already the de facto center of civilization in the Elemental Nations with its large and dense population crowding the well-developed metropolitan settlement, was an absolute wonder to behold when the annual Chuunin Exams were held in the Land of Fire. It’s population of several million seemed to multiply in the span of just a few days until Rokumaru found himself in one of the largest gatherings of people this continent would ever see; young shinobi seeking to prove themselves worthy of promotion and recognition with many supervising Jounin in tow, civilians using the occasion to conduct business with other villages and see what quality of shinobi their Academies were churning out, and the always present merchants taking advantage of the crowds to hawk wares to foreign customers. If the sheer amount of visitors to the village hadn’t raised the prices of hostels and boarding houses far higher than the youth could afford, he would have wished for Konoha to always be this lively.
Unfortunately for him, the rising prices of goods and services that resulted from the influx of so many people put even more pressure on him to ensure a steady stream of ryo to support himself with came in. D and C-Ranked missions had been the staples holding his schedule together, the lousy pay allowing him to live a comfortable hand-to-mouth existence, but every day that passed saw his stack of bills grow scarcer and scarcer. Spending two hours painting a fence for a few hundred ryo or hunting vermin the entire day for twice that could barely cover housing costs alone, and staying in the forest overnight again was not an option. He still felt the sensation of that ant colony that had stumbled into the hole in his sand-hammock.
No, if he wanted to actually be efficient in his money-making endeavors there would need to be bigger payouts, and B-Ranked missions were the closest he could get to higher amounts of ryo per each hour worked. B-Ranks that were officially too difficult and dangerous for a common C-Rank ninja like Rokumaru, missions that he could never be assigned without a superior to follow along and supervise. Given that he had no one ranked above him to ask for help, it seemed he would be stuck with D’s and C’s for the rest of his life.
So like any good shinobi would do, Rokumaru simply decided to pretend to be B-Ranked. How could they prove him wrong? The young man’s ninja records were ash beneath glass somewhere in the ruins of Sunagakure where the main administrative building had stood, and beyond the meager handful of souls he had told his sob story to he was simply a former Suna-nin with a flak jacket. Technically this could identify him as anything up to a Jounin, though the redhead knew he could not maintain that facade should it be challenged unlike he could as a pseudo-Special Jounin. A strong Chuunin was comparable to a very weak Special Jounin, after all. Chastising himself for not thinking of such a simple yet underhanded idea before, Roku embraced the false promotion he had given himself with zeal.
When he had gone to apply for a mission the next day Rokumaru sought out the desk that provided B-Ranked missions, thumbing through the folders stacked on top for something simple and borderline easy that he could handle himself. The young kunoichi in a Konoha flak jacket must have noticed his hesitation after several moments of finding nothing but bounties on enormous animals and descriptions of bandit groups harassing the surrounding areas; she caught his attention by clearing her throat and pulled another folder from a drawer of the desk.
The woman remarked that the ochre flak jacket he wore was a very uncommon sight these days and offered the folder to him, saying that there was demand for proctors to conduct and supervise matches for the Exams. That Konoha could look even more sympathetic to the displaced natives of Suna by having one of their own involved in the Exams, even as a novelty. The idea of not only getting free admission to the exams that he had mostly written off, but also getting paid to stand back while Genin scrap for the crowd’s amusement, made the decision to accept a no-brainer. He thanked the woman manning the desk and was given directions to one of the many locations where the matches would take place.
He arrived at one of many side entrances to a large arena building without a roof where he handed the folder to the guard standing beside the door, who waved him in and closed the entrance behind him. Another Konoha-nin wearing their distinct flak jackets lead him through a hallway to an empty room with padding reinforcing every inch of the walls and ceiling. The Leaf ordered him to showcase any techniques or skills that would allow him to do his duty in restraining or protecting an exam participant: using his sand Rokumaru created a perfectly-smooth dome around the stranger that required a chakra-enhanced taijutsu blow to crumble, then snatched him up with the sand littering the floor that became a massive hand-like construct. After breaking free from that technique the Konoha-nin tested the fortitude of his wall of Doton, which the redhead spit into a tall and dense mass of stone before him, and with a scoff announced Rokumaru’s ability to perform his duties as ‘barely acceptable’, which sounded fair to the boy in question. He wouldn’t even be here if not for lying; he hoped nothing would happen that actually required his intervention. Squared away and given leave to begin, Rokumaru followed the Leaf to where the exhibitions would take place. They exited the hallway into the huge, open-ceiling clearing with high rows of seats surrounding a field of tall grass that seemed far too high to be functional.
The first matches of the day began just a half-hour later, the time between being used to speak with a bald Leaf Jounin who instructed him on what to do. He memorized the lines he would say to start a match and the protocols should certain events happen, such as a combatant forfeiting the match or when to step in should a match get out of control, and was showed a moderately sized room containing couches, chairs, televisions and a long table with food against the wall that would serve as the hospitality room for the proctors who were not overseeing matches.
The proctors would rotate between matches randomly to ensure impartiality and allow breaks, with Rokumaru set to oversee the second match to start with, and so he sat in the proctor’s room watching the televisions showing the opening ceremonies for the day. A few shinobi wearing the garb of various villages began to trickle into the room as they awaited their own turn to head into the field, though he was sad to see none with the same ochre flak jacket that he himself wore among them. In his hands was a photocopied sheet detailing the matches for that day, the participants for each match and a general overview of their abilities. Thirty bouts were scheduled for this specific arena today, six of which he was tasked with supervising.
Roku folded the sheet and stowed it in his pocket, stretching his hands and wrists in preparation for any abrupt seals or motions of his hands needed to do his duty. He looked around at the others who would proctor matches of their own, the time he would have to wait before he was needed making him unusually sociable.
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