[Ishikawa Ren]

     He'd been right. A little over an hour passed in silence, Ren contenting himself with mental training so as not to waste any precious time. In the micro-breaks he took, he often found himself thinking of his newfound traveling companion - time would tell, but so far, being beside her was nearly as good as being alone - she seemed almost as much of a non-entity as himself.

     Perhaps it was the lack of a name, of a label - that was causing some dysfunction in his broken mind, but it made her seem almost an extension of himself, and by the time they'd arrived, he - subconsciously - held this stranger in greater personal regard than anyone else he'd met since awakening. Still, it didn't change the fact he viewed her as a means to the same end he viewed everyone as, including himself - growth.

     How she might help him grow, he wasn't quite sure yet.

     Ren let out a small laugh - still fake, but the closest to a genuine one he'd made yet - for her sake. "Sure," he said while pulling his sword's bag off his shoulder and unsheathing it. "plan is to not die." The windchimes rattled in the rain as Ren surveyed the place. He wondered what she thought he was doing out here, why he would bother helping her rescue this guy.

     There wasn't any benefit in revealing his true purpose for being here, at least not yet. "Leave the leader alive though," he said while he led her around the side of the house, looking for a good entryway. "these guys took something from me and I need to know where it is." he lied. A window on the east side looked dark enough, leading into a hallway in which Ren couldn't see anyone.

     It'd hardly come as a surprise when the pane easily cracked open and slid up - the gang thought themselves the big bads of the area. Who'd creep into their place? Ren motioned for Saki to head in first, and after she'd crawled halfway through, he formed a single one-handed seal. "I'll leave a clone out here, to watch our backs." The shadow clone sat up against the side of the house, under the overhang of the roof, to make sure no one escaped or entered without their knowledge.

     After Ren had pulled himself through the window and lightly stepped onto the wooden floorboards, he silently closed the window and stood beside Saki. "Could transform into those two," he whispered. "or take them one by one, or all at once. Your call."

     Lightly dripping on the floor, he wiped his brow dry - noting his skin was frigid. While he could ignore the effects to a point, he'd need to warm up soon or his combat capabilities would deteriorate. Physical needs needed to be met. Perhaps they'd set the place ablaze after he'd gathered the information for his report.

ayase saki | 482 words

[ayase saki]

His laugh rang hollow, the performance of someone playacting at personhood for another’s benefit. Saki appreciated the gesture regardless. "Always a mainstay,” she said. She had, so far, not found herself to be much of a planner; it was something of a relief that her survival-by-improvisation tactics were not wholly unique. She followed Ren ‘round the side of the house, watched with bemusement as he simply—slid the window open. Arrogance breeding complacency, she thought, and failed to note the irony. Finally, though, the revelation: why he was helping her in the first place, a fellow hunter also seeking something stolen. Simple enough, and while he was vague about it, she took the request at face value. "Sure,” she said, easy to acquiesce. He’d helped her get her information; it was only fair that she help him get his. The implication simmering beneath the request was that she needn’t concern herself with leaving the others alive, as he surely wouldn’t. No innocents, she reminded herself, but the reminder grew weak with Ren’s implicit permission, buckled beneath the weight of knowing that these were not innocents, that they were thieves and kidnappers and criminals, that no one would notice or care if she gutted each of them in a grotesque display of visceral supplication— Keep it together. She wriggled through the open window, heard the faint sound of a clone materializing behind her, made a mental note to see if she could watch him perform the technique again. The hallway was empty as she entered, and entering the house proper brought the final stuttering heartbeat into her perception: number eight, on the far end of the house. There was no way for her to differentiate between the blood-scents that choked her, but the eighth was so still and so isolated that logic dictated that it must have been Reiji. Transform? Saki chewed her lip, considering this. If he assumed it was something she was capable of then it must have been a rudimentary technique, she thought, but did she remember how to perform it? The chakra flow would presumably be a full-body shift, but did she know the handseals? Could she stumble her way through it in time? She shook her head. Entering the relative warmth of the house made the cold-wet of her skin all the more freezing for the contrast, and she shivered in spasms, her jaw clenched tight to keep her teeth from chattering. It saved her from explaining herself, at least, and her blood would be up soon enough. One by one had been her intended plan, but the map of the house became clearer once she had entered it: one isolated in the back end of the house, while seven sat in a circle closer to the center. She could hear gruff but friendly conversation, ice clinking against class, creaking chairs, the clattering of something small and plastic; all punctuated by a collective groan and a good-natured you fuckin’ bluffed, fuck you! They were playing cards. Saki sighed. "All at once,” she whispered, resigned. It was going to be a bloodbath. Saki drew her katana. In lieu of experimenting with something she might have known, she defaulted instead to something she did know; with her free hand she formed one handseal. It was hard to hold with her fingers stiff with cold, but she forced them into position and held the seal in plain sight at her chest level. Anyone who caught sight of her would likely see it first, and in so doing, absolutely refuse to see her at all. She kept Ren at her back to shield him from the technique, then led the way down the hall, careful to keep her steps light and the floorboards un-creaked, leaving a wet trail of dripping rainwater in her wake. Just off the kitchen there was a large dining room, and within were the card players seated around a large oblong table. At the head was a woman in her late twenties, a drink in one hand and five cards in the other, a sword casually propped up against the table next to her; the leader, Saki assumed, the one she wasn’t supposed to kill. A couple of others had swords, but the one at the leader’s right hand had a nice-looking naginata propped up against his chair, and Saki eyed it greedily. She walked into the room as if she belonged there. There was a brief ripple across the group’s collective expressions as something was clearly wrong, but her footsteps were quiet and the genjutsu was effective. The gang continued the next round of cards with a distinct air of unease, tension pulling thick in the air as Saki hopped up onto the table, careful to keep her handseal in collective view, making her way up to the head until she was positioned immediately in front of the leader’s seat. Lop off the head to kill the snake, she thought, but she wasn’t allowed to kill this one; still, she didn’t doubt that the woman’s participation in the carnage to come would prove problematic for everyone involved, as she was surely one of the chakra-trained of their number. Better to neutralize her first, then deal with the rest. She flipped her grip on the katana, the echo of her own head injury throbbing painfully as she channeled doton chakra into the weapon and delivered a hard, brutal strike to the top of the woman’s head. She fell unconscious almost instantly, slumping in her chair as the table devolved into chaos, a cacophony of shouting and swearing and lunging for weapons erupting as the genjutsu abruptly stopped, and the invader in their midst was revealed.

Ishikawa Ren -- 952

LAIKA OF THQ

SPOILER: Click to show

NAME: Tairai Joukei no Jutsu [Plain Sight Technique]
RANK: B
CHAKRA USAGE: To Use: Low | To Maintain: Low
CLASSIFICATION: Genjutsu
ELEMENT: -
HANDSEALS: 1
TRIGGER: Visual
DESCRIPTION:

This jutsu while not being able to be used offensively can make many jobs much more simple. This technique causes all other people who can see the user's handseal to not notice them. Meaning that when someone is using this technique people will subconsciously not take notice of them, the affected person(s) eyes looking around or right past them. Even in combat this can be a useful technique, as long as the user holds the seal the opponent will find it impossible to bring any focus on the user from their five main senses.

A technique meant for assassinations and infiltrations, its only true drawback is the small amount of chakra required to maintain it and the fact that the user must hold the seal while using it, making them unable to use other techniques. This technique however does not stop the target(s) from utilizing additional senses from detecting them. This including, but not limited to sensor shinobi.

[Ishikawa Ren]

     Chairs slammed against the wooden floor as the criminals leaped to their feet, an uproar of yells and curses masking the sound of Ren's approach - he slid into the action from out of a dark corner of the room, leg tracing an arc that shattered one of the table's supports, swept one of the men off his feet, and threw his chair against the back wall in an explosion of wood.

     The man was knocked forward, nose smashing into the edge of the table with a sickening crunch and a spray of blood that began rolling down the now-slanted table in little beads. One of the others grabbed his chair and smashed it over Ren's shoulder to buy enough time to draw his sword. The Chuunin blocked the attack with an arm and drew his own sword just in time to clash blade-to-shattered blade.

     Another combatant approached from behind and swung for Ren's back, only for the Shinobi to leap above the arc of his swing and land on the table, tipping it so harshly one of the corners smashed off and one of the opposite leg smacked into one of those Saki was fighting. Cards and glasses and plates and utensils flew off the table - Ren grabbed a knife from midair and chucked it into someone's shoulder.

     Muscle memory seemed to take over, Ren hardly aware his movements were mirroring those he learned from and with Sadako, Akirei, and Sanosuke. He slid down off the table in time to avoid getting skewered by a spear, rolling down past his combatants before quickly turning to slash at their legs.

ayase saki | 269 words

[ayase saki]

With the leader unconscious, Saki’s obligation to Ren was fulfilled, which left her with the larger issue of the remaining six of this half-assed gang to deal with. The man and woman seated at the leader’s right and left hands were her primary targets now—she wanted that naginata. Her chakra flow pivoted from doton to fuuton, the length of her katana extending by half a foot as the blade itself grew lighter and more buoyant in her hand, easier to swing. Before she could pivot to strike at the man with the naginata, though, her footing was abruptly thrown off; Ren barrelled into the fray, taking out one of the table supports and throwing Saki off-balance along with it. She couldn’t react quite fast enough to dodge the incoming blow from the naginata entirely, instead pivoting hard on the ball of her foot to take the brunt of the slash to the meat of her back instead of her vulnerable front. Electricity rippled staticky and white-hot through the blade, searing through her nervous system and leaving her left arm tingly-numb even as a thick flow of blood dripped down from her shoulder blade—answering her remaining question of who were the remaining chakra-users. Pain made her mind go quiet, clearing the chaos around her and allowing her to focus—the kind of inner stillness borne of a body accustomed to militant repentance. Faster, now, more reflexive, her vision narrowing to the life in front of her and her urgent, ardent desire to end it. Dimly she sensed Ren leaping up at her back, channeled chakra to her feet to keep her footing on the table as again it buckled under the weight of two grown adults; she was less aware of the table leg that flew up, smacking solidly in to the side of the left-hand lunging to attack Saki from the flank. From her defensive position Saki pivoted, ducking under a follow-up strike to lunge within the right-hand’s melee distance; her left arm was dead weight until the feeling came back, but she only needed the right to skewer him with her fuuton-charged blade, ripping through meat from pelvis to sternum and inhaling deep as his offal tumbled from his belly. Behind her, the left-hand, recovering from her brief daze and her attention now pivoted to Ren. Saki’s sword clattered to the table as she thrust her hand into the right-hand’s belly, unceremoniously ripping out his large intestine; she spun on her heel and kicked the left-hand squarely in the back of the head before her thrust of a combat knife to Ren’s side could land, looped the organ twice around the woman’s neck, and kicked her again sharply to the back to send her to her knees and cinch the noose. Saki surveyed the action around her as she strangled the woman, calm as the eye of a hurricane; an errant glass wildly flung smashed against the side of her head, but she hardly reacted, and only tried to shake out the numbness still tingling through her injured shoulder.

Ishikawa Ren -- 514

LAIKA OF THQ

SPOILER: Click to show

NAME: Hien - [Flying Swallow] [Fuuton]
RANK: B
CHAKRA USAGE: Low
CLASSIFICATION: Bukijutsu
ELEMENT: N/a
DESCRIPTION:

The user funnels their chakra into a blade which can absorb chakra easily. The materialized chakra is shaped like a blade whose length can change with the right chakra control. The chakra is dense enough that it becomes visible and can cut through solid rock and iron. What makes this jutsu so versatile is that one can apply elemental chakra into it, which can greatly change the effects of the technique.