Remember those monsters we had you deal with and the criminal organization that we suspected were tied to their appearance? Well the sample you brought back from your last mission has suggested evidence of human experimentation. This cannot stand! And yet… we can’t just send in a raiding party on a hunch and a shred of evidence. What this calls for is tact. You must infiltrate their base of operations and bring us definitive proof that what we suspect is true. There is no room for interpretation here. Anything short of absolute proof of their guilt will be regarded as a failure. Don’t disappoint us.

Bokuden sighed as he folded the mission briefing he had received from the kage’s office and placing it inside his coat pocket, having read through it once more before embarking on his assignment. Well, perhaps embarking was not the appropriate word for what he was about to do, having arrived at the designated location already. It was a large cave by the Kaminari no Kuni border which enjoyed the benefit of natural protection, having been safely out of sight and hidden behind the thick shrubbery that engulfed the forested area just outside the cave. Just beyond the forested area was the common road which almost all travelers took when passing through the Lightning Country. A perfect place to pick up vagrants and nobodies as test subjects if the village’s suspicions were confirmed to be true, a frightening prospect indeed. Human experimentation… the name alone was enough to make Bokuden grimace in disgust. To use people, even willing participants, as some sort of lab rat to perform all manners of ungodly experiments on, changing them into those things.

When Bokuden had first heard the news he merely raised an eyebrow at the gravity of such allegations, but the more he thought about his encounters with the beasts that this organization has been tied to the more the theory made sense. The eyes of the creatures he had slain were the eyes of human beings, not monsters. They were sorrowful… ashamed to be seen as what they had become. Their humanity, at least a fragment of it, still remained beneath their grotesque and monstrous forms, almost crying out for help. They were aware of what was going on but powerless to stop themselves, a living nightmare. The quick deaths that Bokuden had given them were surely merciful to their pained souls, but Bokuden still could not shake the uneasiness he felt.

He had taken the lives of men and beasts alike, for much of his career without a single shred of grief. He was just following orders then, as he was now. Why did this feel different? Perhaps it was the thought of the lives he had taken being guiltless in their actions that disturbed him. A thought he would immediately dismiss as foolish; no man is guiltless. Maybe it was just the sheer horror of such things being practiced just beyond the gates of his home. Regardless of what the cause was, there was nothing to be done just yet. The order of the day was stealth and attacking in broad daylight would be a disadvantage. His infiltration would have to wait until night fall, where he would descend upon their damned souls.

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Word Count: 551/2500

Night fell as Bokuden sat in the treetops of the forest, silently scanning the area while staking out his target. Under the cover of nightfall he would be able to more easily infiltrate the criminal organization’s base, using the darkness to mask his movements, get in, get what he needed, and get out. With any luck some of them will have gone to sleep or started drinking already, taking them out of the equation. As he moved silently from tree to tree, drawing a bit closer to the exit with each leap, Bokuden was scanning the area for any possible outside scouts. There weren’t any, prompting Bokuden to begin to doubt whether or not the Raikage’s office’s information was good. Their defenses and cautionary measures were close to non-existent. The only concrete defense Bokuden could see were two guards who stood just outside the entrance to the cave, which no doubt was also the entrance to the hideout.

The two men were quite gruff looking, certainly not the type to be involved in something as complex as the Kage’s office was concerned with. Their uneducated manner of speaking and brutish mannerisms hardly suggested the level of intelligence that would be required to perform real experiments on people with any kind of finesse. They seemed like run of the mill thugs if Bokuden were to be honest, but there was always the possibility that they were just hired muscle. Either way only one thing was pertinent in this situation; Bokuden needed to get into that cave and they were in his way, those poor, foolish souls.

The time for waiting was over, it was now time to act. Bokuden moved through the shadows of the forest, darting from tree to tree, circling around the clearing where the cave opening was located until he reached the large stone formation which housed the cave. Examining the wall for any manner of chakra coating which would prevent him from scaling the wall of earth Bokuden determined that it was clear and activated his Supernatural Walking Practice jutsu. Using his jutsu Bokuden silently walked up the side of the cave wall until he reached the middle most point directly above the two unsuspecting thugs. With a sinister grin Bokuden removed a spool of wire from his leg pouch and began unwinding its length. Cutting the wire in two lengths Bokuden tied a shuriken to an end of each of the lengths of wire. He paused for a moment, exhaling quietly and aiming his shuriken, before throwing them down in an arching pattern towards the two guards. Using the wire that was cut just shorter than the distance to ground level, Bokuden manipulated the flight of the shuriken, causing them to swing up and aroung the guards’ necks. The wire swung around their necks, wrapping around tightly and cutting into their throats, silencing them in the process. When the wire wrapping around their necks ran out of length the shuriken swung into and lodged themselves into the necks of the men, who were then pulled up away from the cave entrance by Bokuden. Fastening his ends of the wire to two rocks at the top of the cave Bokuden hung the two corpses over the entrance of the cave and out of site to all but those who would be approaching the hideout. Leaving the dangling corpses behind Bokuden made his way into the cave.

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Word Count: 1126/2500

Bokuden carefully made his way into the cave, taking note of the suspicious change in the décor as he travelled further inside. After a few meters the dirt cave floor gave way to laid tile, confirming the suspicions about this being more than an ordinary cave as if the armed guards outside weren’t enough of a give away. As he proceeded further into the cave the tunnels became much narrower and shaped in unnatural forms. “These tunnels were man made,” Bokuden thought to himself as he passed his hand over the smoothed wall, “The job was done pretty well too. If I didn’t have to kill them on sight I might hire them to do some work around his house. Too bad for them I guess.”

Bokuden continued through the narrow tunnel, dragging his hand against the smoothed wall, keeping his eyes and ears open for signs of approaching members of the gang. Before long the tunnels began to slope, creating a descending path which could easily be recognized as leading down below ground level. “I’ve got to hand it to this bandit group,” Bokuden thought as he made his way through the cave, “They do good work. This kind of setup is going above and beyond what would suffice as a hideout for a group of mere highwaymen. I guess that means I’m in the right place.” Bokuden winced as his mind shifted back to the monsters he had slain that have been tied to this group. If the kage’s office was right and the monsters came from this location then this might be more trouble than he originally anticipated. If they have been made here before who’s to say that there weren’t more of them lurking around in these tunnels. It was a thought that Bokuden had no interest in seeing coming to life. Those beasts were difficult enough to kill in the open with full mobility, in this cave it might be suicide.

Bokuden brought himself to a halt as he heard the sound of approaching footsteps echoing throughout the cave. Immediately recognizing the sounds as drawing closer to his location Bokuden scanned his surrounding for a means to hide himself. The straight and narrow tunnel made the thought of hiding behind a corner or in the shadows all but an impossibility. His options limited Bokuden proceeded to activate his Supernatural Walking Practice jutsu in order to run up the side of the wall and used his Transformation jutsu in order to make himself appear as a formation of rocks on the ceiling. After a moment the source of the footsteps could be heard as two men came into his line of site and began walking through the tunnel, seemingly unaware of his presence. As they passed beneath Bokuden he dropped down from the ceiling, landing behind them, and performed a series of quick slashes with his sword from the draw. Bokuden sheathed his blade as the two men’s lifeless bodies fell down to the floor. Dropping his gaze down to the corpses at his feet Bokuden began contemplating how to deal with them, “It would probably be unwise to leave these corpses here out in the open… but I’m not carrying them anywhere so I guess there’s no choice.”

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Word Count: 1680/2500

Leaving the corpses behind Bokuden continued his trek down into the depths of the hideout, eventually coming across a fork in the tunnel. To the left the tunnel seemed to continue on for an immeasurable distance, visibility darkening the further down the tunnel Bokuden peered. On the right however, there was a large steel door, seemingly with too elaborate of a lock and sealing system to belong in a bandit cave. His curiosity having been piqued Bokuden made his way over to the door and began examining it. The translucent window made it impossible to simply peer into the room, causing Bokuden to use his Current Perception: Combat Range to scan the room from the outside, confirming that there were no enemies within 40m of his location. “Good enough,” Bokuden muttered to himself quietly, “I guess I’ll try and check it out.” Bokuden examined the door, especially around the handle looking for a way to unlock the door. To his surprise the door’s locks and bar were located on the outside of the room which was… curious to say the least. “Why would they need a door that locks people into the room?” Bokuden thought as he eyes the handle suspiciously, “A holding cell?”

Entering the room, Bokuden grabbed a nearby chair and placed it in the doorway to prop open the door, allowing himself an escape route before he proceeded to inspect the room. Finally turning his attention to the room Bokuden paused as he gazed over the massive area he had wandered into. The air was cold and dry, constantly running vents sterilizing the room. Screens, paperwork, and medical equipment could be seen scattered all over as Bokuden made his way through what was obviously a laboratory of sorts. Making his way up a flight of stairs Bokuden came across an enormous computer screen which seemed to be running the software that was maintaining this underground lab. “Looks like this is what I was looking for,” Bokuden said to himself as he began clicking through the windows on the screen, his eyes narrowing as information regarding the experiments that were conducted in this lab flooding into his brain, “So we were right…” Bokuden swallowed air as he looked at the screen to see what appeared to be a person hooked up to an oxygen machine and floating in a vat of liquid. He sighed as he examined what was left of the human that was floating in that glass container, taking note of the transformation that was already taking place. He was beginning to look more and more like one of the beasts that Bokuden had encountered so many times before. The man was beyond saving and Bokuden knew it, prompting him to access the software that was controlling the oxygen supply to the tank and hit the kill switch. That… “thing” would suffocate and die, but Bokuden had no choice, it would be negligent to allow it to be unleashed into the world. Removing the disc that was given to him by the kage’s office to copy the data he might have found during his investigation, Bokuden inserted it into the computer and ran the program.

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Word Count: 2212/2500

“Hey!” Bokuden heard a voice call out from behind him as he turned to face his guest, “What do you think you are doing in here without the doctor’s permission?”

Turning to see an older man, dressed in worn and tattered clothes with scars adorning his visible flesh, Bokuden raised an eyebrow in curiosity about the man’s choice of word. “The problem he has with me being here is that I don’t have permission? Not that I’m an intruder?” he thought to himself before realizing that he was still transformed into the image of one of the guards he had killed upon just entering the cave. “Lucky me,” Bokuden thought as he considered trying to lie his way out of the situation before deciding on just ending the man’s life. “Oh, I’m not supposed to be in here?” Bokuden answered sarcastically before drawing his sword, bisecting the man, and sheathing his sword in one lightning fast motion, “Sorry for my intrusion.” By the time the two severed halves of the man’s body hit the floor Bokuden had already turned back to retrieve his disc from the computer.

Bokuden stored the disc of his coat’s left breast pocket before beginning to make his way out of the lab and back towards the fork in the cave, closing the steel door shut behind him. His attention was immediately stolen away from the task at hand as the sounds of voices and footsteps once again rang through the tunnel from further down in the cave. “Not wasting any more time here,” Bokuden muttered to himself as he darted at full speed in the direction of the cave exit, passing by the two corpses he left behind on the way. As Bokuden noticed the change in his surroundings from cave walls to open air he did not stop running. The deed was done and there would no doubt be fallout from his actions that day. All that was left was to report back to the Kage’s office.

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Word Count: 2554/2500