[Yamanaka Itsuki]

Yamanaka Itsuki

Scanning the opposite cave, the young Yamanaka felt like he had gotten all the enemies with his attack, now that he knew what he was looking for he could feel the chakra within these little hidey holes. It might have been impossible for other sensors, but he had been trained by one of the greatest in the elemental nations and so it wasn't too difficult to circumvent the measures they had set up to full sensors.

"We should probably search these hiding places for any information about this operation," Itsuki stated, even as he sought out the weak chakra signatures of the ones who had fled, "I doubt they were doing this of their own accord, this has to be part of a bigger operation... there are two men over that way getting away by the way, would you like to take care of them?" he gestured in the direction the fleeing men had run, even as he began to examine the surrounding area for any sort of missives, mail, or messages. It would have been really stupid of them to keep paperwork on their operation, but it was a first step at least as he began to investigate the whole area.

There was no way these men were going to be keeping secrets from him!

"Maybe bring one back alive for interrogation?" he added absentmindedly.

Word Count: 226
Tags: Honō Kojirou
Mission Count: 16/15

[Honō Kojirou]

… Oh yeah, intel would be splendid to get from here. Really, Kojirou didn’t expect these dumb bird-abusers to stash their entire life insurances up here, but Itsuki had a good point. People, even bandits, didn’t just wake up in the morning and decide to prison birds – especially not messenger birds with, at times, sensitive information that needed to be sent to other locations. If this was part of something greater, then it’d just be extra cookie points to bring back tangible evidence to back up their suspicions.

But Itsuki pointed towards the couple of bandits running away from the rest of the corpses. Kojirou nodded and charged at them with vengeful intent – they hadn’t shown any mercy to those birds, so he wouldn’t show mercy to any of them!

Apparently, they were able to control some of their chakra to run fast as well. Kojirou could tell that their speed wasn’t without augments, but Kojirou was able to weave, with only his left hand, the necessary handseals (or half of them) to spawn a small carpet of tar in front of him that reached out to the running bandits before they could leap off the precipice from the other side. The carpet wasn’t spawned all around Kojirou like the Jutsu usually performed, but he was able to pinpoint the direction towards those bandits – a clear sign of development in his little project.

And without wasting any more time, he leapt up in the air and faithfully divorced one of the bandits’ head from their shoulders, mortifying the other one into submission. Kojirou grabbed the last one by their collar and simply dragged them back to the cavern where Itsuki was searching for intel, while the bandit he held in tow was unable to pull off from Kojirou’s arm.

"I got one, Itsuki! He’s not sorry for killing the birds, though, so I want to send him to them instead – make him say sorry to them all in person… but you said you needed to interrogate-"

"W-Wait, wait, wait, wait! Don’t kill me, I was just following orders! I’m actually innocent, I swear! I didn’t even kill those birds- I-I just tried to keep them safe, but the others wouldn’t feed them! Really, I swear! Don’t kill me, I-I got so many answers to give you! Trust me, I can tell you everything!”

"… I don’t trust him.” Kojirou puffed his cheek with a pout, still visibly upset with the fate of those poor messenger birds.

[Yamanaka Itsuki]

Yamanaka Itsuki

It seemed these particular criminals were particularly stupid, because it didn't take Itsuki very long to find a whole stack of papers that were clearly taken from the murdered messenger birds. He tucked them into his pouch casually and continued to search through the various cupboards and bags that were just laying around in this little hideout. He'd read what he could later when he wasn't likely to be spotted by Kojirou-nii, better that the Kusa-nin didn't know what he had found.

Sure, they were allies to an extent, but it wasn't his call what info Konoha shared with Kusa, so...

It didn't take too long for the older boy to come back with one captive of the survivors, the Yamanaka boy having hidden away anything of interest he had found besides a relatively heavy stack of cash that he was tossing in the air casually as he turned to face the man and his partner in the mission.

"Ne, you're not off to a start birdkiller-san, lying to us already" he stated with an innocent smile and dead eyes. Yamanaka were a staple of the Konaha Torture and Interrogation division, and while it wasn't the direction that Itsuki intended on going it was very much something he had been trained in.

"Now, you're going to start telling us the truth, or I'm going to make you beg my companion here to throw you off the cliff rather than be stuck with me here"

Word Count: 244
Tags: Honō Kojirou
Mission Count: 18/15

[Honō Kojirou]

”Cash? Why are you guys holding so much cash up here?! It could get stolen so easily!” Kojirou reprimanded their current hostage upon watching Itsuki bounce the cash up and down in front of them both. It looked, at least, like a couple, uh, 14 stacks? Kojirou wasn't a revisor, so the amount was probably higher than that - were they allowed to take that? It'd feel ill to take money belonging to thieves and bird killers, since that money was likely aimed to be used to kill more birds. Kojirou wanted none of that - money couldn't buy pride, after all.

Obviously, it began pissing off the hostage himself, and he had half a mind to use the confusion to wrench himself off Kojirou’s grip-

Itsuki stopped him from thinking of such foolish things, and the younger shinobi did so with a single stare. A stare void of pleasant intentions, a deceiving grin on the Yamanaka’s face that said so many awful things to the punk that they’d captured. The latter’s face contorted into a grey veil of fear… which might’ve seemed a bit overdramatic, or sort of overreactive, if not for his next words: "Y-You’re… you’re a Genjutsu specialist, aren’t you? Only you mindfuckers can pull off a face like that…”

Now, whether part of Itsuki’s plan or not, Kojirou didn’t take very lightly to that insult – his face was beyond shocked by the foul language used against Itsuki – and slammed his other fist square on the hostage’s dome, echoing a bell-like ring across the precipice accompanied by a loud groan of pain. "You apologize to him! Now!” Kojirou violently rebuked the man, pulling him up by his collar and shaking him back and forth as the hostage was tearing up, "I won’t forgive you for what you did to those birds, and I won’t forgive you for mocking him! Do as he said and spit it out!”

"S-Stop! Give me a moment, please! S-Stop hurting me, you animal!”

"Who are you calling an animal?! You’re a hypocrite, and I should cut you down where you stand!!!”

"Like you did my guy before?! Go ahead, then! I’m not saying shit!”

[Yamanaka Itsuki]

Yamanaka Itsuki

"A genjutsu specialist? Me?" Itsuki question innocently, gesturing to his chest, "hardly, I might know a trick or two but nothing like what you're imagining. No, I'm a bit worse than that for you I think." It was unfortunate that he hadn't gotten around to learning the clan's mindreading techniques yet, but he still had basic training in interrogation, and his Kagura's Mind Eye technique meant he'd be able to read the emotions of the man, as well as his truthfulness.

Stalking forward as Koujirou-nii shook the bandit, Itsuki managed to loop ninja wire around the man's arms and legs in such a way that he was fully restrained, leaving the man on his knees and unable to move.

"Did you know about half the bones in the human body are in the hands and feet?" The Yamanaka said conversationally, as he pulled his metal tessen out and tapped it against the man's face, allowing him to feel the weight of the weapon. His expression remained as unnervingly pleasant as it had before, a cute smile accompanied by completely dead eyes.

"It'd take me a long time to break every bone in your body, but half... half wouldn't be too difficult..."

Hopefully that would spook him enough to start talking.

Word Count: 210
Tags: Honō Kojirou
Mission Count: 20/15

[Honō Kojirou]

”…” The hostage went silent upon Itsuki’s explanation. Kojirou was unsure as to what Itsuki had in mind, given his mysterious threats, but he quickly had to let go of the terrible man once Itsuki had swiftly coiled ninja wire around the hostage like a lasso.

Wait, if he doesn’t have what… what a Yamanaka’s known to have, like weird Genjutsu stuff and that, then what’s Itsuki planning to do? Kojirou pondered with a tilted head, listening intently to a tidbit of trivia about the human body which made the hostage shiver, even more so when a metal tessen was poking his face. That made things much clearer for everyone involved – Kojirou wasn’t able to torture people, since that would imply that the target had no way to fight back, and his clan would scoff at the thought of acting cowardly like that.

But as a shinobi, these were options out there, and those birds wanted retribution. Despite having come this far with their crime, the hostage didn’t feel like it was worth breaking his hands and feet for. Not anymore. "… D-Don’t, don’t break my hands, please… I get it, okay? I’m a dead man walking at this point, so why even bother torturing me…?”

This time, the hostage was genuine. Something in him, a flickering flame of determination to see this operation through, had extinguished. "We get orders, but… not from a ninja village, as you might think. Those birds carried messages about a trading village that’s being built in Suna – just check the letters, if there are any left… and about the man behind it all… there’s a bill underneath one of the cargo boxes at the back of the cave. In case I had to backstab him at one point – the others were burned per his request."

Kojirou had no clue whether or not he was telling the truth, or if he wanted them to lose attention to him for a moment to let him escape. Even though the hostage was being honest…

[Yamanaka Itsuki]

Yamanaka Itsuki

Humming slightly as he read the feelings of the man, Itsuki turned to go and check the location indicated, finding the bill as he had been told. Opening it up briefly and reading through it quickly, Itsuki nodded to himself and added it to the others he had stowed away on his person.

Walking back towards the man, Itsuki quickly drew a kunai and slashed it across his throat, casually stepping away from the spray of blood so it didn't hit him. "Thank you for your assistance, excuse my rudeness but could you please die now," he stated mildly as he walked past the rapidly bleeding out bandit to glance outside and see if there was any point heading to the other side of the canyon and check out their other hidey hole. It probably was, so he sighed slightly and readied himself to jump.

"Ne, Koji-nii, we should probably dispose of the bodies so no one knows what happened here, could you like, burn the whole cave clean with your lava?" he asked curiously, one hand tracing out the single seal that he had seen the older boy try and use to create the molten rock. 

Regardless of Koji's response, Itsuki would head out and over to the other side, rifling through whatever was left there and pocketing anything of any use to Konoha. Waste not want not.

Word Count: 229
Tags: Honō Kojirou
Mission Count: 22/15

[Honō Kojirou]

It appeared… that he was speaking the truth, after all. Itsuki was checking out the indicated areas for the clues that the hostage gave out, while Kojirou kept a close eye on him. He didn’t try to push Kojirou away, neither did he look like he was getting back up on his feet or anything… but he was still an enemy. An enemy who had killed birds without eating them – and that was taboo. He was, regardless of his realizations, malicious through and through, being here, hanging out with the likes of these hoodlums, stealing birds and messing with communication…

When Itsuki drew his kunai, Kojirou could already tell that this hostage of theirs wasn’t getting out of this alive… at least, they’d fully enacted vengeance on the fallen birds now. And they deserved that – for every drop of blood that sprayed out of his neck, each bird who’d died in their capture found peace. All that Kojirou could do was pray that the bandit could find peace, too… even if he didn’t deserve it.

"… Mhm. Let’s see if this one-handed seal works for real, now,” Kojirou replied, trying his best to focus and hold up half of the… was it the Horse seal or the Rat seal? Either way, he just needed a couple Lava Shurikens to manifest between his fingers… slowly, but surely, lava did leak out between his fingers, but it didn’t take form of shurikens.

As a random side-thought, he pulled up a couple shuriken from his holster with his free hand, and to his great surprise, a visual representation of what he wanted to manifest actually helped! The lava lifted itself back up his hand, returned to the space between his fingers, and formed sharp shurikens! "H-Hey, this works! Gotta tell Itsuki…” Kojirou jubilated before flinging the shurikens at the couple bodies that he could hit, before repeating the same process with the rest of the corpses inside the cave. The lava splattered on their backs, caught them all on fire immediately, and slowly incinerated their exteriors as the lava puddled down their entire forms.

"All the bodies are burning now,” Kojirou updated to Itsuki from the other side of the precipice, "Also, I found a neat trick for the one-handed seal trick – hold up an item that resembles what you wanna create with a Jutsu. It really works…!”

[Yamanaka Itsuki]

Yamanaka Itsuki

Emerging from the second hidy hole with everything of value, and a myriad of explosive tags scattered around the area to clear it of any vermin that might decide to use it again, Itsuki met his companion outside where the smell of burning.... rock?... permeated the air. Lava jutsu... what a crazy concept, and not something he wanted to be on the wrong side of.

Still, it was clearly really good for getting rid of the evidence... well sorta. It would also leave traces of course, but he didn't much care about that, just that whoever came didn't realise that they had cleared out all the paperwork too. Whoever tried to enter the cave Itsuki emerged from would find the whole thing exploding, and if they survived, there'd be no signs left.

Listening to Koji-nii's explanation on the one handed seals, he nodded slightly in consideration as he turned to head back the way they came, with the mission completed rather handily if you asked him. 

"So it's a visualisation thing, ne? The mirror, and the shuriken, it's helping you keep the technique better in your mind?" he asked, ready to pick the older boy's mind clean over the way such a skill worked. It seemed far too useful not to try and pick up in his mind, and would make him less likely to avoid learning jutsu that had too many handseals.

It'd be a game changer for him.

Word Count: 240
Tags: Honō Kojirou
Mission Count: 24/15

[Honō Kojirou]

Kojirou spotted the various tags spread around the other cave’s walls… and soon realized what kinds of tags they were, if only by gut feeling. Bombs. Let us not accidently activate them here, okay? Especially since Kojirou, recently – very recently, surprisingly given his clan’s profession with weapons – equipped Explosive Tags himself. It was stuffed in his holsters along with… other bombs. Like smoke bombs, he carried those as well… wait… he could’ve perhaps used those earlier. To confuse the enemies while preserving chakra to take them down without them being able to attack him confidently-

Ah, forget that. The mission was completed, right?

Itsuki began turning back the way they came, while Kojirou was quickly catching up, listening to his thoughts about the swordsman’s new gold nuggets of advice concerning the very interesting technique of weaving handseals with one hand. "Visualization… yeah, maybe that’s it! It works a lot when I look at the things I wanna manifest… or something similar to it. And if I imagine it hard enough, it kinda works,” he added holding his chin, "It helped a lot to repeat it today… so just make sure to practice it well! There are so many Jutsus that you’d be able to cast while holding a sword like me…”

[Yamanaka Itsuki]

Yamanaka Itsuki

"I suppose that makes sense... probably why the whole mirror thing was working for you too..." the Yamanaka mused as they began the trip back, "maybe we can do some practicing while we travel... though perhaps you shouldn't try it with lava jutsu while we do that?" It would be pretty bad to leave chunks of lava laying around as Koji-nii practiced, besides forming a trail that would be really easy to follow, it could cause fires and stuff too, something that was less than ideal in any situation.

---

Itsuki would pick Kojirou's brain the rest of their shared trip together, trying unsuccessfully to get a grasp of just what it was that was happening to get the single handed seals to work. It was just such an odd thing that he couldn't figure his way around it, too much for him to really do.

It was going to take a lot of work it seemed to really figure this one out, but he was pretty determined to do so. It would make a lot of other jutsu way more viable in his mind, to avoid the limitations that came with having to make a long string of seals. Sure, he'd need one hand free, but that was better than needing both of them.

Eventually, the two Genin would part ways, and Itsuki would begin the trip back to Konoha, all the info he had obtained safely tucked away and ready to hand in to the mission desk

[End]

Word Count: 250
Tags: Honō Kojirou
Mission Count: 26/15