[Yamamoto Shosuke]

.... Well, no. That had not, in fact, been what Sho had been thinking when he had said that, but without being a mind-reader Sho was unable to tell the way her thoughts were going and thus was unable to correct her.

As cold as it might sound, Sho really didn't care if these people were Shitai or just generic cultists. He had no attachment to the Shitai one way or another, and as long as he could trust Umechika not to fail in her duties due to family bonds, he would take them out one way or the other. There was no love lost between him and the Shitai, but that wasn't a factor here; enemies of the village were enemies of the village, that was the end of it.

What Sho did care significantly more about was the nature of the ritual that was taking place in the antechamber. Fortunately, he was spared from much of the grislier details through the sheer implacability of much of the gore, the sheer violence done upon the constituent bodies rendered them much like mince, but there were still bits that were unfortunately identifiable such as what appeared to be canine and feline skulls littered among the piles.

What Sho didn't understand was how they even got this level of a "collection" in the first place. Yes, they had been alerted to their activities, but this amount of gore had to come from at least tens of people and animals. They should have been called in already, either this was truly sloppy work from the village or...

Well, he didn't really wanna consider what the alternative was.

Turning his head only slightly in Umechika's direction, Sho nodded. "With you next to me? Of course I am." There was something about the way that he said that... It came off far less like an idle compliment and far more like a mere statement of fact. Of course he was confident they could take them out, he was a Chuunin and she was a member of the Kumogakure Black Ops, whereas these guys... who even knew if they had combat training at all?

The moment that Ume dropped, his arm shot out regardless, three of the kunai landing home. It had taken a while to get used to aiming with his blind eyes, but now that he'd had sufficient practice it was no wonder that they landed home, striking all three of the cultists in their unprotected necks. It seemed that whatever garb they were wearing, it was not rated for combat as the kunai met with absolutely no resistance on its way to the target.

With three of them already dropping, clutching their throats, Sho vaulted from his position, charging in the opposite direction from Umechika. As long as they kept them separate, they only had to deal with half each, something that was becoming easier and easier with each passing second. Good thing his partner was so competent.

"Don't kill all of them - Leave enough alive to answer questions!"

506 words | Shitai Maimomu

SPOILER: Click to show

Jutsus Used: None

[Shitai Maimomu]

Though she hadn't responded verbally to his assurance, her smile was brazen, flashing teeth. It remained all through jumping down and slaughtering the man who had first approached.

His kunai had incapacitated three; two cowering; one dead at Ume's hand. Two left, and they were both heading toward Sho, following him as he recedes to separate the pack.

Well. That was anticlimactic.

As she approaches the three with kunai through their throats, she keeps in mind Sho's command. Two for questioning was fine. With a rather bored expression, Ume stands over the men, in the center of their painted star and beside a hoard of viscera. No wonder it stank so putrid down here. Looking back toward where Sho is handling the other two, then back over the three, then the two who are sobbing against a wall, clutching each other. Ume clicks her tongue, then whistles short - she knew they were already looking at her, but she wanted their full attention. Without saying a word, Ume's still whirring hand comes up and down unceremoniously through one's already punctured throat.

The guttural scream is cut short, replaced instead by the shriek of one of the shaking cultists. Its head falls to the ground, and its skull headdress rolls away to reveal a painted face stuck in a horrified, agonized visage. After a moment, the body slumps forward too, and there's a still.

Plainly, Ume walks forward, her chakra scalpel dissipating as she slides her blade into the one still gasping for breath through the gash in his diaphragm. He falls dead as well; the third was already on the ground. Blood pools at Ume's feet, and so she steps out of the circle carefully and slowly approaches the other two as they plead incoherently with the operative.

Waiting for Sho to rejoin, confident he was capable of taking care of his two cultists, Ume stands over the pair with a hand on her hip. The other hand twirls her knife, showcasing it in front of the weak. One whimpers. For someone so close to satanic ritual and apparently unheard of horror and gore, Ume thought them to be pathetic. It was disheartening, to say the least, and she felt almost bad about having to kill them both.

Later.

For now, she sighs. She gestures between the two with the sharp point of her blade. "Alright. Which one of you is willing to talk?"

Whimpering, stammering, words strung together to form fragments of sentences and bargains. But no answer. Useless.

The fledgling crouches on one knee beside the closest, holds a knife to the smaller one's throat and rips off the headdress, pulls back a heavy hood. A girl no older than Ume, painted face streaked clean with fresh tears, begs for her life. The vampire does not let it sway her heart. She holds her by the hair, cinches her tight so that her chin is up. The cultist sobs. "I can rip out yer heart and eat it in front of you as you perish," Ume is saying in a sultry, low voice, lips pressed to the girl's ear but eyes on the other one pressed against the earthy wall, frozen in place with wide eyes shining through the holes of its skull mask. Ume's voice continues in a drawl. "I will gladly feast on both of you now, and kill you after." Her pearly fangs flash from beneath her lips as she grins, lowers her teeth to the girl's throat - and pierces her flesh in one swift bite. The girl lets out a shriek. Ume doesn't drink; the bite is enough demonstration.

Blood trickling down her chin, Ume lifts her head and plants a wet, crimson kiss on the girl's painted face and cackles. Still laughing, she concludes. "Or you can cooperate."

If he wasn't back by then, Ume would have grown a little concerned. If Sho had joined, she'd stand, letting go of the girl's hair with a rough push. She steps away. "I, er, got two." Maybe she could have saved one of the men with a kunai in the throat for more information. Ah, well. "Ask away."

---

Yamamoto Shosuke

Post 17/20

[Yamamoto Shosuke]

Two of their number seemed to make the decision to follow Sho to his side of the room, allowing Umechika to have her way with the remaining crowd. Of course, if they had been smart, they would have focused on the nearest person to their collective, all swarming Umechika and leaving Sho as little better than useless. He only had so many kunai after all, but it seemed these guys were far too interested in continuing the fight to think clearly.

It was clear that whatever fervent madness had gripped these lot, it was painted and speckled red with blood. Their bloodthirst was almost palpable, even ignoring the viscera surrounding them. Without questioning, or really thinking, the pair shot towards Sho, swinging what appeared to be daggers at his frame. Well, he called them daggers, they were little better than butcher's cleavers, only just sharp enough to cut and rusty with assorted blood and effluvia.

If one of those things so much as grazed him, he was pretty sure he was going to get tetatnus.

Fortunately for Sho, their skill in battle was as rusty as their blades were dull. They were operating off of mad instinct, not actual training - in that way, fighting Mitsuki and Risi had been more of a challenge than these guys were, and they were genin. Stepping back as one swung their blade, it shot through the air and went wild, instead slashing across their "friend"'s arm, cutting a nasty gash.

Taking advantage of the sudden moment of friction and discord between the supposed allies, Sho shot back in, drawing one of his remaining kunai and going straight for the throat of the uninjured man. With but a slight amount of resistance, the knife found its place, slicing cleanly into the man's jugular vein. One of the many benefits of the Yamamoto's tremorsense was being able to parse one's anatomy with but a bit of concentration, so he was able to see their veins and arteries pulsing through their body with slick, wet beats of their hearts.

Thinking about it too long was a little nauseating, but it seemed the first man's slice had all but crippled his companion's arm, causing him to drop the knife. If he thought that being unarmed would earn him a reprieve, however, he would soon find himself proven quite bloodily wrong as Sho instead simply used the same kunai to slash across the other's throat.

A shower of gore splattered across Sho's frame and painted his usual fastidiously clean face with the man's lifeblood. Yet, unlike his Shitai companion who likely would have delighted in the morbid shower, Sho seemed if anything unbothered by it. He was used to being coated in blood whilst working in the hospital, and whilst he didn't have the benefits of scrubs he could take off and burn afterwards, it was a trivial thing. It probably wasn't a coincidence that the cloak that he was draped in was particularly easy to wash stains from.

---

After he had finished his pair, Sho eventually rejoined his companion. From what he could tell, it seemed she had been busy, rendering the rest of the group into little more than meat to add to the pile they had amassed already. Ironically, Sho had to admit that he was impressed by Umechika's generosity - one man probably would have been enough to get the answers they were looking for, but she had left two alive.

"Well now, you're giving me the honors of the interrogation? I'm touched." He said, turning his face towards the girl in question. Painted in his tremorsense like this, he could see the frantic, panicked beating of her trembling heart, seeming almost more like a defenseless prey animal in front of a predator than the bloody-handed cultist she actually was. He might have even felt pity for her, had her crimes not guaranteed her a death sentence in any court in the world.

"Okay, so I'm going to make this transparently clear; My companion and I," Sho gestured back towards the Shitai. ", are here to wipe out this little cult of yours. Now, that can either be because you're rotting behind bars in a Kumogakure jail cell, or it can be because you're all dead.

Frankly, you'll probably be sentenced to execution anyway so I'm not particularly fussed, but if you want to stretch it out for every breath you can take? Well, I'd advise you start talking."

The girl nodded frantically, perhaps believing that she might get off lighter with but a life sentence or even maybe one day earning parole if she talked compared to the certainty of death if she didn't.

"What's with the meat - Why did you turn this place into a charnel house? Where did you even get this much? I'm assuming at least some of its human, but what about the rest? I'm hoping you're gonna tell me you've been killing cows or something..."

825 words | Shitai Maimomu

SPOILER: Click to show

Jutsus Used: None