OOC Details:

Kashizudoto's disguise

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Kashizudoto's mission was clear: disguised as a Kiri ninja, he was to infiltrate Kiri's ranks and find out more about the assassination of the late Hokage Dr. Chi Rippa. It was speculated that a Kiri ninja was responsible for conducting the assassination, and Kashizudoto was here to find more. Dr. Chi Rippa was his jonin sensei as a genin, and along with Jinta Nara, they formed Squad 3. Although they didn't get very far as a squad, as Kashizudoto and Rippa both had to travel away from the village on long-term missions, the friendships they formed were meaningful to Kashizudoto. And with Jinta apparently MIA and his former sensei Rippa now dead, Kashizudoto was the only remaining member of Squad 3 as far as he was concerned, and he was quite determined to get to the bottom of why.

This was his first ANBU mission, and, although he would not be donning his mask for it, it was to be conducted with the same level of precision and secrecy expected of an agent of the ANBU. He had acquired a few leads while poking around in Kiri, but none so far led to any meaningful information. He sent out his messenger hawk Hawky earlier to send an interim progress report with the leads back to Konoha, and they were to rendez-vous at this point, a location deep within the wilderness of the Land of Water, where he wasn't expecting anyone to see him.

He waited for a bit, and then, sure enough, his hawk came swooping down from the skies and perched upon his shoulder. The pouch for carrying message scrolls was empty; evidently, the village didn't want to send Kashizudoto any messages in the case that the enemy was intercepting communication on the way back. It occurred to Kashizudoto that after having searched for so long and finding nothing, he just might not find anything at all and would have to come back to the village essentially empty-handed. If that was the case, he was sure it would not make a good first impression on the new administration, which was already quite dissatisfied with him for having left the village five years ago on what could best be described as a whim. Of course, there wasn't much he could do about it; at this point, it was quite possible that Kiri had nothing to do with this assassination and that he was simply going on a wild goose chase on behalf of the administration.

Kashizudoto's abilities made him the perfect fit for this job. His body had naturally blended into nature after years of meditation, making him naturally imperceptible to sight, sound, and smell, so in tune with the natural surroundings that he left no impression on the nature around him as he traversed it. Although his chakra signature could still be sensed and shinobi could thereby be sent out looking for him, his innate stealth combined with his variety of mobility techniques, both mechanical and chakra-based, made him quite confident that he could escape even if a hunter-nin was on his tail.

It was quite clear to Kashizudoto from the time he had spent poking around the village that Kiri had neither the resources nor the manpower in this tumultuous time to go investigating random suspicious shinobi lurking around their village anyway. After all, the Mizukage had disappeared, and as her iron fist released its grip on the nation, a huge wave of crime spread across the land, as if a nasty can of maggots had finally been opened after years and years of being sealed up, painted over, and labeled as a can of freshly made ramen. Apparently, a new Mizukage was being coronated, and Kashizudoto shared as much news as he could find with the Leaf. He had not even seen this new Mizukage, but he had heard their name: Lord Chigetsu. He doubted that the coronation of the new Mizukage had anything to do with the death of Sensei Rippa, but, nevertheless, he did find it strange that Kage were dropping left and right, like flies who had just laid eggs and given birth to the aforementioned maggots.

Kashizudoto was sitting on the top of a tree, in a disguised form but still in plain sight, looking out towards the waves for Hawky. Normally, he would've reverted to his invisible state, but revealing himself to sight was the only way he could rendez-vous with his avian pal. His hawk eventually returned as expected, soaring down from the sky, perching upon his left shoulder, and then squawking loudly, making a little bit more noise than Kashizudoto would have preferred during on a stealth mission. In this moment, he noticed the presence of what was evidently another shinobi, who appeared to be a pretty young girl around Kashi's age. Pretty or not, he doubted that she would find it amusing to see a stranger with what was evidently a messenger hawk out in such a remote area of Mizu no Kuni.

If she were to ask for his identity and/or purpose, he would simply respond, "Sorry, classified work. Mizukage's orders." He figured that in such a tumultuous time that would be enough to shut them up and send them scurrying away. The title of Mizukage was one that struck fear into the hearts of many - and for good reason. He had seen a glimpse of the Mizukage's powers during the climax of the Kumo-Kiri war, in which the Mizukage Solstice Ayakashi confronted the Sanosuke Flynt, the Raikage and Kashizudoto's sensei in the sage arts. On the request of Sensei Sanosuke, made only out of concern for the safety of his student, Kashizudoto left the battlefield before things got serious, but not before feeling the pure killing intent and the force of chakra that emanated from the Mizukage Solstice Ayakashi, eclipsing that of even the most powerful of shinobi on both sides of the war, including the Raikage Sanosuke Flynt himself. In short, her power was something unbelievable, and it was that moment that made Kashizudoto realize that the Mizukage was something not to be trifled with. Now there was a new Mizukage in town, but he assumed that the title itself would continue to strike fear into the hearts of whomsoever heard it, as if the blood Ayakashi had spilled had tainted the title itself and soaked it in a bloody mist that could never be washed even by her successors.

Chakra:

For a moment, it seemed that he had fooled the young girl and that she was about to wave goodbye and leave him alone, but instead, as she raised her hand, water bullets came out, flying straight towards him. It wasn't a particularly remarkable technique, Kashizudoto noted, but it was useful for the sheer speed and subtlety of its activation; he wouldn't have guessed that she was preparing for an attack until the bullets had already left her hand. There was little time for Kashizudoto to prepare anything fancy, so he was going to go with something akin to mimicry.

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He lifted his left hand in a similar fashion to how the girl had done and pointed at the bullets with his own two fingers. Underneath the sleeve of his left arm was an arm bracer containing the Dansuburedo, his kunai launcher, and the kunai within it, the Sealing Kunai. Using a fuuinjutsu technique, he reached out to the bullets with his own invisible chakra, beginning at the kunai as the origin point and emanating from there at a speed of 50 m/s before reaching the bullets, and then sucked them in underneath the sleeve of his left arm and into his kunai at the normal speed of the water bullets. It would look to someone standing below, at least one without chakra sensory, as if he had sucked the water bullets into his own hands, as they would not be able to see the kunai hidden above his arm and under its sleeve from their position below. At least that's what he hoped.

Then, in a similar manner to how the girl had fired the bullets at him, he pointed his fingers at the girl, although his attack would not be coming from his fingers, but, rather, they would be coming from directly above them. He began to unseal the bullets from the kunai in her direction, aiming for her center of mass just as she had done, and any slight twitch in any direction would cause him to reorient his shot towards her new center of mass. His hawk meanwhile brought his wings close together, preparing for an attack or defense if either was necessary.

Kashizudoto smirked mischievously. He'd gotten himself into trouble once again.

Items/Abilities Used:

Kashizudoto Jutsu:

OOC:

The water bullets hit the mysterious girl and sent her flying back with cuts all over her body. In seconds, Kashizudoto and Hawky swooped down to restrain her together, covering her mouth in case she were to scream, and then Kashizudoto proceeded to ask her a few questions. He asked her who she was. No response. He asked her why she attacked him even though he was there on the Mizukage's orders. No response. He asked her what had become of the former Mizukage Solstice Ayakashi. No response. He sighed.

In order to see if he could glean information directly related to his mission, he asked if she knew what had become of the former Raikage Sanosuke Flynt and then afterwards asked if she knew what had become of the late Hokage Dr. Chi Rippa. It was his mission to find out more about the assassination of the late Hokage, but, by asking of the Raikage and Mizukage as well, he figured that he could throw her off her trail in case she had suspicions that he was a Konoha spy. But there was still no response to either of his questions.

Before embarking on this mission, he had learned a few techniques from the ANBU shadowing him that would help him if he were to find himself in a pickle, and it appeared that one of them was going to come in handy: specifically, the Time Reversal Technique. Kashizudoto gathered chakra in his palm and touched the girl's forehead, extracting her recent memories against her will. The memories played in Kashizudoto's head on fast forward from a first-person perspective, and though he could not read the thoughts of the person, past or present, while using this technique, he could still experience the same things that the other person experienced: what they saw, what they heard, what they smelled, what they tasted, and what they felt. And what Kashizudoto felt, as he played through these memories and experienced the same sensations of the person whose memories he was scanning through, was not the body of a girl but that of a boy; it appeared that this girl was not a girl after all but a cross-dressing boy!

The scene began in an office, which Kashizudoto soon deduced was that of the Mizukage's, and the crossdressing boy was sitting in the Mizukage's chair. Kashizudoto could feel every sensation that the boy had felt earlier in the day and would have been able to feel the boredom too had the memories not been playing in fast forward. Kashizudoto wondered why this boy was sitting in the Mizukage's chair. Surely, some crossdressing freak would not be Lord Chigetsu, the replacement for Solstice Ayakashi, the tyrant who was known across the land as the Demon Ice Witch of the Blood Mist. However, this was confirmed by the assistant who walked in and addressed the boy as the Mizukage and asked him about an unfamiliar chakra signature that was evidently Kashizudoto's. Fast forward to just a few minutes ago, and Kashizudoto watched from the perspective of the boy as he fired his water bullets at Kashizudoto and was soon afterward hit by his own bullets and then was caught and restrained by Kashizudoto and his hawk.

If this was the Mizukage, then Kashizudoto could not take any chances. If there was even the slightest possibility that this boy, given all the resources at his disposal as Mizukage, could figure out what Kashizudoto was up to, given the line of questioning that he had pressed earlier and Kashizudoto's presence on the Land of Fire's border, then both the mission and Konoha's relationship with Kiri were both in peril, and for Kashizudoto's own sake, he could not allow his first mission to go so awry, as his reintegration into Konoha was still probationary and dependent on him doing a good job on this mission and as the Hokage would not be so pleased if Kashizudoto were to get him into diplomatic trouble with Kirigakure. He delivered a blow to the boy's neck using his Dansuburedo and checked for vital signs; as far as he could tell, there were none to speak of. Kashizudoto sighed in relief and threw him into a river that flowed in the direction of the Land of Fire.

Little did Kashizudoto know, the Mizukage was a master of the Hozuki's Hydrification Technique and was probably still alive for the time-being, floating downstream along with the current. Whether the Mizukage would return to his village, however, was an open question.

Items/Abilities Used:

Kashizudoto Jutsu: