Shigeki marched with sheer determination to the edge of the village. He was determined to one day become one of the sannin of his beloved village and he knew that one day many of the things he was doing now would be considered below him, but the mission he had taken today would always be important. There were bandits outside of the village assaulting the villagers and robbing visitors on the road to Iwagakure no Kato. Bandits were the scum of the earth and they were one of the few things that Shigeki would get truly passionate about destroying. He was dressed in a long black trench coat overtop of his fishnet half shirt and his regular fishnet gloves and black leather pants and boots. He walked quickly with a purpose, nothing being able to stop his will right now as he made his way towards one of the believed bandit camp locations. He knew that he wasn’t much of a fighter but that wouldn’t stop him from doing everything he could to take these bastards down. He held his hands together and looked towards the sky, a small smile covering his face as he did.

The sky was lit up with beautiful colours as the sun began to go down, a palate of pinks and purples and reds and blues like Shigeki had never seen before. He saw the sun descending and it made him even more determined as it raised over the beautiful village of Iwagakure no Kato; the village that these foolish bandits had decided they would try to destroy. He had no intention of allowing such a thing to happen and he made his way towards the location where the camp was supposed to be, being rewarded when the sun had gone down by an orange glow piercing the darkness. This was most likely a fire created by the foolish bandits to keep warm which, in their defence, they probably had no idea would end up being their downfall. Shigeki would be going when the most of them were asleep, and if he was quiet enough he would be able to kill most of them as they slept. He could hear snores from inside of tents and made his way around to the back of one of them, taking out a kunai and quietly cutting it opened so he could step inside. He saw a sleeping bandit with a sword beside him, which he picked up and stabbed through the man’s heart, killing him quickly and quietly as he moved along.

Shigeki silently killed eight bandits with their own weapons as they slept, hearing a few of them chattering around the fire and knowing that he was inevitably going to have to fight these men. He sighed and prepared himself for the battle that would inevitably begin once, choosing a position that would suit him well and taking a length of wire from one of the bandit’s packs, using it to surround the entire area of the tents. As he did so he made sure that nobody was watching or able to see what he was doing. Once he had surrounded the entire area in a ring of wire he held onto it and made a couple of hand signs before whispering “Katon: Ryūka no Jutsu” and igniting the wire, which simultaneously burnt the tents and the dead bodies of the bandits inside of them. He could hear confused screams and the four people trapped inside of the ring of fire were now trying to both escape and find out where the fire had started. He would be ready for it as soon as they made their way towards him. He made a few more hand signs and suddenly two clones of himself appeared, both of them making their ways around so that the three of them were standing and forming an equilateral triangle.

The two clones ran into the middle of the circle and both formed globs of lava in their palms, two each, and threw them at the feet of the four bandits, managing to get two of them stuck as they both used created a hand sign to quickly cool them and make them hard as rock. Shigeki watched as the clones dissipated and he created a tiger hand sign, firing off a massive fireball into the middle of the bandits, frying the two who were stuck in place as the other two jumped out of the way and grabbed their weapons. This was where it became more dangerous. Shigeki was not good in close quarters and so far he had been able to completely avoid a close combat attack, but now it would be hard to avoid it. He watched as the first of the bandits came towards him and inhaled deeply before breathing out, roughly twenty small balls of fire launching themselves towards the one who was quickly approaching him. He looked towards the other and formed his hand signs once more, stopping the man in his tracks as a vision of the ideal mate in his eyes began to walk towards him. He hadn’t believed these two would be the sharpest and clearly they hadn’t run into a genjutsu user before.

The first of the two had dodged most of the small fireballs and was now advancing quickly on Shigeki, who moved out of the way and created a mudslide beneath him, causing him to fall to the ground before Shigeki was on him again. He put his hands together and dug himself deep into the earth, coming up directly below him, the two doton arms reaching out and grabbing him by the throat to keep him stationary as Shigeki took the man’s weapon, slicing his jugular vein and turning his attention back towards the man whom he had entrapped. He smiled and performed a series of hand signs when he noticed the man was looking right back at him once more, slamming his palms to the ground and seemingly causing a pool of lava to form around the man’s feet. It was large enough that he wouldn’t be able to jump or step out of it and he began to panic, shaking on the small piece of ground that was keeping him from falling in, not paying attention to the Kanetsu, who had begun to run around to the man’s back. He smiled and took the blade that he had killed the previous nin with, taking it and sliding it against the man’s neck in the same way he had his associate, watching as he bled out before his very eyes. Shigeki wasn’t the strongest ninja, but he knew that Genjutsu was a very powerful too, and had these bandits lived through this encounter they would have learned the same thing. He walked back towards the village soaked in blood, the blood of the enemies of Iwagakure no Kato, something he would certainly be soaked with again in his bloody future.

(1162/1000 Mission Complete)