Yorugakure-the Village Hidden in the Night
Time-unknown.
"There's no use in trying to be quiet!" Shinri said quietly, coming to a dead halt in that dark, ominous forest, "I can sense your chakra, not to mention the beating of your heart."
Out of the shadows, materialized a slender Otogakure genin. It was Kin
"That's right, a little trait of the Hebigiru that i overlooked!" She tutted, shaking her head in mock pity. Kin was dressed and primed for battle, looking ready to make a kill.
Hebigiru Shinri gave a humorless smile, "One thing you should learn is to never overlook anything about your opponent. Now, why don't you run along, now, before i kill you?"
"You don't intimidate me, snake!" Kin snapped defiantly, jamming her hands in her pockets.
"You sound ninja are all alike." Shinri stated with no emotion, not even doing his challenger the favor of facing her, "You don't know what's good for you. Crawl back to the hole from where you came, and give Lord Orochimaru my regards."
"Don't even get started, Hebigiru!" Kin stated, her hard glare boring into the back of Shinri's head, "I'm not your message runner, and everyone knows you'll never follow your clan into allegiance with our master. Your weak."
"Yorugakure is off the edge of the map, my dear!" The snake ninja hissed, a wild gleam in his eye as he whirled around to face Kin, "HERE THERE BE MONSTERS!"
Quicker than even Kin's keen eyes could follow, Shinri had fired off the signs for the boar, monkey, rat, and snake in quick succession.
"HEBIOKU NO JUTSU!!!"He cried, "ART OF THE SUMMONED SNAKES!!"
All at once there were snakes everywhere, creating a bizarre sort of writhing carpet for the forest floor. There were snakes of all sizes and colors, with various signs of elements painted onto their backs, each animal strikingly different. About a half a dozen of the larger ones immediately coiled around Kin's arms and legs, holding her immobile. The snakes wriggled and moved on their own account, yet still under Shinri's control, a never ending pit of scales.
The snake ninja in question was perched on the head of the largest animal, his hands coolly in his pockets, not a care in the world. His mount was a monstrously large King Cobra with it's hood spread, and the symbol for wind decorated on his face.
"Do you like my little friends, here?" Shinri laughed, that mad glint still in his eyes, "Oh, my dear, there is no use in struggling, though it does whet my appetite so!"
"Orochimaru was right!" Kin spat, hardly able to breathe, "You are like him!"
At that, the snakes binding Kin wound even tighter. Shinri was feeding off of the mixture of fear and spite in Kin's eyes. His eyes were narrowed as he said in a low, poisonous voice,
"Let's get one thing straight, my dear little sound ninja. I will NEVER be like my father, you can be sure of that. I know where my loyalties lie, with the winning team."
At that moment, Kin would have said something clever, but she couldn't breathe. Shinri looked positively diabolical as he stood there, a true cold blooded killer, a ninja to the core. He had no consciousness, no real sense of right or wrong, which made him all the more dangerous. He gave a mad grin, and the snake he was riding on moved in even closer to Kin. Shinri said-
"By the way, Kin, i just thought you might like to know that we in Yorugakure know all about the alliance between sand and sound, and you can be sure that we even now are preparing to tell Konoha all about it. I imagine that Lord Orochimaru suspected this, and sent you to polish off the only set of genin in our village that might actually pose a threat? A shame you were sent to try and kill me, since as you can see, the tables are turned!!"
Kin was choking, and her eyes were starting to roll back into her head when all at once there was an echoing cry in that forest.
"SHINRI!!! Who are you victimizing, now?"
Out of nowhere stepped another of Yourgakure's genin, Seiroyuki Makuro. He was dressed in an outlandish outfit, resembling a wrapped up mummy in a robe rather than a deadly ninja of the Village hidden in the night.
He folded his arms across his chest, and said, "Maybe my memory is skewed, but i did think that Yorukage Yoake told us to keep a low profile."
"I am keeping a low profile, oh 'one who is folded in linens'" Shinri said delicately, using the literal translation for Makuro's clan name.
Both boys were acting as though Kin were not there, holding their conversation like they were in class. Shinri continued, "Before you showed up, there would have been no witnesses. Besides, she came after me, first. i didn't go after her."
Makuro frowned, not believing it for a moment..
Shinri penetrated the boy with a look that would have stopped any other ninja dead cold.
"If the sight of blood bothers you so much, Seiroyuki, then look away if you must." Shinri said blandly, the taunt in his voice barely hidden. Makuri caught it, but chose not to comment on it, something that was generally a wise idea.
"What are you guys doing?"
A females voice rang out over the forest, and with a soft, 'CRACK' there was suddenly a slender blonde haired ninja among sound, snake, and night.
"Wonderful." Shinri muttered, "The cavalry has arrived."
The girl adjusted her hitiate headband, and gave Shinri a level glare, "I heard that, snake-charmed. For gosh sakes, what is going on? You can hear all this way back at the village!"
"Not all of us have super-sensitive hearing, Tasogare." Shinri said quite carefully.
Tasogare Satora took in the scene with the many snakes, and arced an eyebrow, "And not all of us can sense chakra. The poor girl, all she was doing was trying to collect information for her Snake Lord, and then mean old Shrinri jumps on her!"
Both boys gave Satora a look that screamed, "ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?" Before they realized that Sato was merely wielding her sarcasm again, one of her less endearing traits. She was pretty enough, with a well formed face, unmarred by scars from the life she had chosen. Her outfit was simple, yet attractive. Khaki pants, and a black long sleeve shirt. Sato carried very few Ninja tools, but she didn't need them. She was a Tasogare, which was reason enough for certain someone's back at the village to hate her guts.
"Oh, that was a joke by the way, chaps." Sato quipped, taking a few steps closer to the mosh pit of snakes. Kin was already dead. Sato sighed as Shinri undid his ninjitsu, and the snakes vanished. The young ninja went to Kin's side, and said with resentment, "For Gosh sakes, Shinri, why do you always have to kill with the finesse of a butcher? I wanted a crack at her!"
"The reason is simple, tasogare." Shinri said coolly, his hands still in his pockets, "When you kill, it's no fun, or a challenge. When i kill ,it's an art."
"If you wanna call a load of snakes an art." Sato muttered, ripping the hitai-ate from Kin's dead form, and twining it around her wrist.
"It's a lot more fun than a legion of shadows flying in and leaving the body a mangled carcass of flesh." Shinri fired at his cellmate, his fists clenched.
Sato rolled up her sleeve, and pointed to the symbols all up and down her left arm, cruel runes cut into her skin at birth. The scars shone with chakra all the time, the color always depending on what mood she was in. Now they were throbbing a deep crimson red.
Sato's face was curled in a snarl as she spat, "HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU, SNAKECHARMER! DON'T CHALLENGE THIS LEGACY! MY CLAN IS THE ONLY REASON THAT YORUGAKURE IS BACK ON THE MAP OF THE LAND OF FIRE!"
"Oh, i know." Shinri stated calmly, "And rest assured, were it not for the ties of this village that bind us together, i would have killed you already."
Sato's lip was curled, "Tried. You would have tried to kill me. You know my kind can't be killed."
Shinri drew a Kunai knife from nowhere, "Let's test that Tasogaryn myth, shall we?"
Sato channeled her Chakra, and her palms began to glow with a pale fire.
"ENOUGH!!!" Makuro shouted. Two linen strips shot from his body, lancing for each of the two genin faster than any eye could follow, holding them in place, and stopping them from attacking each other. Try as they might, Shinri and Sato could not break free.
"When will you two put your differences aside, and work together for the good of the Village?" Makuro demanded, anger in his voice, "Sato, yes, we know this whole plan with sand, sound, and leaf is about you! Shinri, we know how you feel about that. We know how the Hebigiru was Yorugakure's most prestigeous clan before the Tasogare fled here from Konoha...we all know the story, since you two are the only members of your clan who WON'T LET IT GO!"
"Well, how ironic!" Sato panted, still fighting with all her strength against Makuro's strange Kekki Genkai powers, "WE BOTH ARE THE ONLY ONES LEFT IN OUR CLAN!"
"That's quite enough from all three of you!" Another quiet voice came from the depths of the forest, the fourth person to drop by that night. The three genin recognized the voice, and were stopped cold. It was smooth and filled in the jagged cracks of their raucous conversation with ease. There was only one ninja in Yorugakue with a voice like that.
Makuro let the other two go, and the two in question left all traces of their fight behind as they snapped to attention.
The tall woman stepped into the light of the full moon. She was wearing the habit of a Yorukage, for that was what she was. There rose from about her an air or command, of power. This was Yoake, the leader of the Village hidden in the night, and also the cell leader of Makuro, Satora, and Shinri.
"I am ashamed." She said simply. The three formidable teens hung their heads like little children caught in the middle of doing some taboo act.
"We're sorry, mistress Yoake." Sato said humbly, her face still pointed at her toes, "But it's not my fault that Shinri here is a freaking WORM..."
Shinri couldn't take any more. He let his Kunai fly across the clearing at the girl, knowing in his heart as he did so that it would be in vain. Sure enough, even without taking her eyes off of their sensai, Sato snatched the kunai out of the air inches from her face.
She threw Shinri a bizarre sort of sideways smile. "That makes eight times you've tried to kill me, snakecharmer, and eight times you've failed."
"STOP!" Yoake barked, and the kids were shamed once more. Yoake glared at the three of them in turn, though the heat of her gaze rested longer on Sato and Shinri, "You know the importance of teamwork for this mission to sucseed! If you cannot allow your personal bickering to take a backseat, i will have no choice but to terminate you from the plans...permanently."
"We ALL understand, Yorukage." Makuro said. Here he gave Shinri and Sato the evil eye, "I hope i speak for all of us."
"I hope you do to, Seiroyuki." Yoake said. She nodded, "I am off to konoha to put into action the first part of our plan. I will be in touch, and don't kill each other when i'm gone...and i mean it!"
With that, their sensei was up and away.
"Maybe now we could train together for the upcoming battle?" Makuro said hopefully,
Though in the back of his mind, he had a feeling what the response was going to be.
"FREAKING SNAKECHARMER!!" Sato fumed.
"WORTHLESS TASOGARYN!" Shinri shot back.
Both Shinri and Sato vanished into the shadows to stew in their own messes for a while.
Makuro looked over Kin's dead, headbandless form, and sighed a deep, long, sigh. Their cell had always been like this, Shinri and Sato hating each other for reasons that went back further than any in the Village could remember, and Makuro stuck in between, trying to keep the uneasy peace for the sake of the plan. Moody Shinri, and proud, proud Sato.
'and where does that leave me?' Makuro thought morosely.