Chapter 11
Waking up calmly, Sora immediately scanned her immediate surroundings with her Byakugan, and upon seeing nothing of note, she opened her eyes for a proper look.
She was leaning against a tree, and beside her was a pile of six scrolls. After scanning her surroundings which consisted of nothing but forests, she opened the topmost scroll, revealing a photograph and a profile of her target. Their name was Ashira Kentaro, a single thirty-five-year-old merchant and retired career Genin from the Land of Fire who needed to be assassinated, reason not included, which made sense, all she needed to know was that he needed to die.
Alongside that was a rough location, a town on the coast of one of Mizu no Kuni's many islands. She had been deposited on a nearby island and was expected to make her way to the target through whatever clandestine means she deemed necessary, assassinate the target, then exit the town and await a pickup. Her mission would be deemed failed if the target managed to leave the island after detecting her, if the target managed to kill her...obvously, or if the target managed to force her to retreat, all very obvious failure conditions.
At the bottom it told her the contents of the other scrolls, which included a storage scroll she was to use to store the head of her target after killing him, another with food and water rations for two weeks, then two of which had various equipment, poisons, senbon, kunai, ninja wire, ryo and the like, which she was allowed to use as she saw fit. One was a map of the surrounding islands, marking the one she was on as well as which one her target was on. As for the final scroll, it contained her personal naginata, though she was warned that she had to decide whether or not she wanted her Hunter-nin or her regular identity to use the weapon, as it was too distinctive for both to use.
Closing that scroll, Sora then opened up the notification that had appeared the instant she opened said scroll.
Quest Received!
Hunting The Most Dangerous Game...Man
Objective: Assassinate Ashira Kentaro
Reward: 20,000 Experience, 10 Fine Kunai, induction as Hunter-nin Operator
Bonus Objective: Eliminate the target without being detected by the target
Reward: 15,000 Experience, option of either 3 Random Jutsu between C-A tier or 15 perk points, chance of induction as Hunter-nin Lieutenant
The quest seemed reasonable enough, and the bonus reward was also certainly respectable.
Three random Jutsus sounded good at first, but it was a gamble. Those three could all be utterly useless supplementary techniques from the ass-end of the world which would never have value, or there could be three A-tier techniques from a major village which would be very useful...if she wasn't already on the path of being a Hunter-nin, meaning she would never lack for techniques to use, especially not considering her special status as a prodigy among prodigies.
On the other hand, 15 perk points. That was an extra 15% experience right there, or extra melee damage or 1.5 meters per second of movement speed. The later on she was, the less valuable it would be, but for right now, 15 perk points was still a significant increase to her abilities. As for the regular rewards, they were kind of boring. Fine Kunai would do extra damage, sure, and having 20,000 experience would kick her close to the next level, but considering how much she earned from being beaten the shit out of by Karatachi, it was honestly not that valuable.
Flicking her hand, she used a basic Hi Yubi no Jutsu (Fire Finger Technique) which cost a negligible amount of chakra to light the scroll on fire and burn it, as it instructed her to do so. She had already memorized the contents thanks to her increased intelligence stat, which seemed to help her in that regard, so she wasn't at risk of forgetting where he was or what he looked like.
Picking up the next scroll on the pile, she saw that it was her food scroll and so tucked it into one of the pouches on her armour, then did the same for the rest, leaving her with the scroll that contained her weapon. Honestly, she wasn't sure what to do. Logic told her that her regular identity was already known for using a Naginata, so it would be best not to, but logic told her that not only was it unlikely that anyone notable took note of it and would remember it, but also that she needed every advantage she could get as a member of the Hunter-nin, cutting off the weapon she was most proficient in was a stupid idea and liable to get her killed.
She rolled her lip between her teeth a few times as she tried to decide before with a sigh putting the scroll away in one of her rear pouches. She would try to not use it, but if it ended up that she needed to, she would just bite the bullet and use it anyway. It would be more valuable and get more use if she used it as a Hunter-nin, but at the same time it would incur a risk of her regular and Hunter-nin identities being put together, even if she no longer used it. Anyone could ask around about the kunoichi who used a naginata during the examination and quickly find her name, then investigate her and voilá, she'd end up getting revealed.
Well, not quite as simple as that made it sound, but that was the gist of it.
After a day spent plotting a route and travelling across her island, Sora made it to her destination.
It was a small village on the shore with a marked jetty, telling her that it was definitely a fishing village, as many in Mizu no Kuni were. A fishing village would typically have boats, which meant she could commandeer a boat and use it to travel out past the next island and to her destination which was the one after it. Of course she couldn't just reveal her identity, but that was where the beauty of the Hunter-nin and ANBU in general came in. As long as she offered some ryo as compensation, they would ferry her across with little argument. It wasn't like they were going to refuse a masked Kiri-nin who told them that they had a mission and needed to be ferried to another island that was only an hour away.
Of course it gave away the fact that there was a masked shinobi travelling through the area, but the other options were stealing a boat, which was a dumb idea that would hurt a friendly village needlessly, or water-walking all the way over, and while she had learned that Jutsu from Karatachi, she wasn't sure her chakra could support her running to the next island. If she could be boated even halfway across she...hmm.
Looking at the village with a keen eye, Sora began to form a plan. If she stole a boat in the night, got halfway to the next island, then started to water-walk, sent the boat drifting back to the jetty and ran across the rest of the way, she would be fine and dandy. Clearly marked on the map was a small islet in between the island her target was on and the one she was planning to walk to, which meant she would be able to cover it without assistance.
The issue she had with the plan was sending the boat back, there was no guarantee whatsoever that she could actually send it back accurately, and even if she did, it would likely drift away with the waves. But hell, it was the best plan she could come up with on such short notice, and if the boat did drift away, the village would just have to build another one. They weren't fancy boats anyway, they were wood and some oars and that was pretty much it, it was more that she wasn't sure if they made them or bought them.
Currently, it was approaching 2pm, so she would have to wait a good 8 hours to make her plan nice and safe, but honestly, that was just time to get some good sleep in for the night ahead. So, after looking over the village one final time and then the waters beyond, Sora moved back into the dense forest and picked a tree to climb, making a small nook for herself with some sticks, ninja wire and a few hammered-in kunai, then settled down and started to practise her chakra control.
It was something Karatachi had taught her to do, which unlocked a proficiency that increased the magnitude and power of her techniques by an incrementally increasing percentage based on how high her proficiency was. Currently all her attacks would do an extra 21% and have 21% extra magnitude, owing to the fact that her chakra control proficiency was at level 6. On top of that it also gave her a small amount of experience for 'training' and very rarely intelligence and wisdom increases.
So, that and some sleep were all she had planned for the next eight-plus hours.
As night fell, Sora dismantled her nook and walked down the tree, lightly stretching as she did so and enjoying the small dopamine impact she felt from it.
Following her previous footsteps, Sora quickly came across the village which was now mostly asleep, only a handful of people even still awake at that time. Upon seeing that, Sora amended her plan slightly, though still followed her same idea. Thanks to her past training with her stealth-increasing perk, before she removed it at least, her stealth proficiency was at level 12, and thanks to how it worked through different detection strengths for different levels of ninja, at level 10 or above, civilians would only detect her when she was within 5 metres of them when she was sneaking.
At level 12 that was reduced to 4.8, which instantly told her that at level 50, it was very likely that the detection range would be down at a meter, as before her stealth had gone down every level from 45 on the first level down to 5 meters for civilians. So if she reached stealth 100, would civilians only be able to detect her within a half-meter? Would it go down the last meter and make it so civilians couldn't detect her? She was curious as to how it worked honestly, but still stood firmly by the fact that the other perks she now had were more valuable, at least early-on.
Maybe later once she was super-confident in her combat abilities and she got another perk reset she would take it again, but for right now, being able to fight was about a thousand times more important than being sneaky, since she was a Hunter-nin. Sure, stealth was a part of the job, but even if she snuck up on a target, she had to be able to kill them before they could react, and most of her targets would be strong Missing-nin, not civilians, which meant a much higher detection radius.
Shaking her head, she activated her stealth and crept through the village, taking note of the few people who were awake and making sure to stay far enough away from them, feeling a hell of a lot like a ninja since she was just sneaking around in the darkness but because she was in stealth the people who should have been able to see her movements weren't in fact able to see her. Sure, she was in the darkness and not moving super-fast, but they still should have been able to see her.
If she was a stupider person she would go nearer or just stand up straight and walk cockily, or get closer to them and show off. Fortunately enough she wasn't that dumb, she knew she was being observed by at least one Hunter-nin for her assessment, so showing more of her abnormalities would be a complete mistake. No, it was good enough to show that she was able to move unseen by civilians even when in front of them, just by using the darkness of the night and her own abilities.
Upon reaching the jetty, she unmoored the boat at the end of the docks and got in, beginning to quietly row herself to the next island, all the while keeping her eyes fixated on the village, just in case someone happened to notice the missing boat. However, nobody did, and before too long she reached the midpoint between the two islands. After assessing the distance and remaining a hundred percent confident that she could cover it, Sora took out a flare from one of her equipment scrolls, popped the cap off, then swung her legs out of the boat and stepped onto the water.
Glancing at the village, she moved to the end of the boat and angled it appropriately, then struck the flare and lit it, sticking it against the prow of the boat, then giving it a strong shove, which with her heightened strength generated a wake as the boat cut through the water towards the jetty. Without staying to see if anyone noticed the marked boat, Sora turned and began to sprint at her maximum speed across the water, keeping an eye on her chakra level. When it hit 72% was when she managed to reach the island on the other side, telling her that she was being massively overcautious and could have made the trip on her own with like 30% chakra remaining
Rather than get annoyed at herself, she simply filed that information away for later use. She had done a lot of training, but didn't have experience using her abilities in the actual world, so it was fair that sometimes she would misjudge things and cause issues for herself needlessly, that was exactly why they were being assessed, not only to see if they were ready to be Operators, but also to see what issues they still had that needed to be worked on.
It was better that she learned stuff like that carefully than fucking up and taking a dive in the water, that would be hellishly embarrassing.
Crossing the next island was easy but took up a good chunk of the night, similarly crossing the water to her target island, though it did give her an uncomfortable premonition.
Her mission had obviously been chosen carefully, which meant the island she was placed on was chosen based on the path she had to take to her target. It meant that the second island had to be there for some reason. Unless...maybe she was reading too much into it? She honestly couldn't think of a good reason for why they would use the island to test her, nothing had happened and there was only one village on the island, which was off to the side and not even remotely in her path.
Clearing her mind, Sora focused on the task at hand. Ahead of her lay the target location, a large-ish village, within which was her target. According to his description, he was a merchant, so he would either be running a shop or a stall or at the very least doing something trade-related. That meant she would need to do some reconnaissance to find said target, pick a good time and place to assassinate him, then do so.
In such a small village the body would be discovered fairly swiftly, unlike in a larger town or city where she could hide the body quite easily and have it go weeks without discovery, so she'd need to either get his body out of the village, or leave him there and just accept its discovery. Palming her chin, she considered the task before her carefully. Even if his body was discovered, would it matter? All she had to do was kill him, cut his head off and seal it then leave and get picked up. Did it matter that it was known that he was killed? Not really, he was dead either way.
If her task said she had to kill him and not let the body get found then she'd do that, but from the fact that it didn't, she figured that while she might be marked up for not letting the body get discovered, she might also get marked down for being overly cautious when there was no need for it. Removing the body just added more danger for little reward, since it'd still be obvious that he had disappeared.
Settling her mind, Sora checked the time and saw it was now approaching midday, then activated her stealth and began to sneak into the village, climbing up onto the buildings and observing the area keenly. By tracking the villagers moving around, she was able to follow where the ones who looked like they had ryo on them to where the market for the village was, and before too long she laid eyes on her target for the first time.
Just from observing him it was obvious he hadn't been keeping his skills up, his body was still relatively fit but starting to fade with the laxness of civilian, more specifically merchant, life. His arms had no scars on them, nor did his face or really any part of him, so that fit well with the fact he was a genin for life, it was likely that when paired with the fact he was from Konoha he had never even killed before.
Observing him, however, was a different story.
Ashira Kentaro
Level - ?
Health Points - ?
Chakra Points: ?
Strength: ?
Vitality: ?
Agility: ?
Wisdom: ?
Intelligence: ?
Luck: ?
Immediately her spine began to tingle as she tried to figure out what was wrong.
She was able to observe even the Commander of the Hunter-nin and see his stats, so why couldn't she see his? There was absolutely positively no way that his stats could be higher than the Commander. Then she saw it. On his wrist there was a tattoo. However, it wasn't actually a tattoo, it was a seal. She'd been looking at the seal on her wall thatr dispensed food plenty, so she recognised Fuinjutsu when she saw it.
Then she pieced it together. He was a retired genin from Konoha who had come to Kiri. That meant he no longer held a connection to Konoha, probably for a reason, otherwise why would he go to a place which beforehand he would have fought against? Because he was pissed off at Konoha for something. Whatever had happened, he likely ended up having his chakra sealed away which was why her observe couldn't tell her what his power level was. Curiously enough, when she noticed the seal, his information actually did change to reflect that, with a small '-sealed' beside each line.
Sora idly wondered why it was she was being sent to assassinate him, but maybe it was just that Kiri didn't want an ex-Genin from Konoha in their borders, even if his abilities had been sealed away. Whatever the case was, he was her target, and so she would have to keep an eye on him throughout the day and night to see his routine. After that, she could pick out a spot when he was vulnerable, perhaps when sleeping, and kill him.
Since she also had to decapitate him and take his head away, at home and alone would be the best option. His profile marked him as single so all she had to be worried about was any pets he might have, or the slim chance that somebody was staying over at his home. That however was why she would do a 24-hour surveillance first to gather information and properly assess the situation, it would leave her perfectly able to find the best place to take him down.
So, while it was boring to sit hidden on a rooftop and watch a man selling things for the day, that was the job she signed up for.
When the end of the day come and Kentaro finally started closing up his stall, Sora had honestly only ever felt more relieved when she had finally died in her past life.
It was just so boring, especially as she was getting incredibly tired, and he wasn't a very good merchant, he didn't have a silver-tongue of any kind, so he usually ended up selling things only a tiny bit above the starting price. Maybe that was why Konoha even let him go, he was useless in more regards than one. Still, he had to be killed, so at least she could find amusement in the fact that she was ridding the world of a frankly awful merchant.
Tracking him back to his home, Sora slipped onto the roof and used her Byakugan to watch him enter the small building. As soon as she did so, she realised that something was terribly wrong. Inside his home was not just him, there was a woman in there as well, and from how her face lit up as she turned to face him, it was obviously either his girlfriend or wife. She would have thought that the woman was a new girlfriend and that the intel was just a little dated, but no, that was very quickly remedied by the small limpet-like girl that had attached herself to his leg. He wasn't single at all, he had a lover and a fucking child who by her estimation was about six or seven.
Pacing on the roof, Sora watched them interact, trying to figure out what was going on. It didn't take her long to realise that the job really wasn't as simple as she had thought it was. Obviously, the intel was false to make her think it was just taking down a target, then wham! The target actually had a family, and she still had to kill him. As the family sat down at their table to eat and talk, Sora similarly sat down on the roof, planting a hand on her chin as she watched them.
That really made things difficult. It was one thing to kill other academy students, she and they both knew they were going to fight and die, and so did their families. But this was different, this was a retired Genin who had come here simply to live with his family away from Konoha. His family might not even know he was a Genin, not with the fact that his chakra was sealed away, he just looked like a fairly fit but slowly weakening middle-aged man.
Gnawing at the end of her thumb, Sora tried to figure out what the fuck she was going to do. She had to kill him or else she'd be booted from the Hunter-nin and probably killed. But she also had to live with herself afterwards. As she pondered it, she was also listening to the conversation beneath her. Most of it was entirely irrelevant chatter, but then he reminded his wife and child that he was going to be away for a few days, taking his shipping boat to the adjacent island to trade as per usual, with his lover fretting a little about how the weather was turning a bit bad.
That explained it, she was expected to be trailing him, upon which she would discover this scheduled trading route, where she could catch and kill him on his boat, take his head and ditch his body in the ocean. It was pretty much a perfect assassination. She decided that she would follow him onto his boat and kill him out at sea where she didn't have to think about anything difficult. It would hurt his family but quite frankly?
She cared about her own life more.
Sora spent the night on an adjacent house, sleeping in a hidden nook where she couldn't be seen from below.
She would have stayed awake but since her target had no idea she was there so she felt safe in doing so, and thanks to her vitality she would only need a little over 7 hours of sleep to be fully functional. Honestly, she couldn't wait until she had a thousand vitality, she wouldn't need even a wink of sleep then. Yawning, she blinked a few times then unsealed some food for a quick breakfast before rising and heading across to the target building again.
After observing the pair currently asleep in their bed, she saw that their daughter was currently foraging in the kitchen for breakfast. Sora quickly focused elsewhere, not letting herself focus on how adorable the little girl was. Instead, she sat down and began to focus, keeping track of the target whilst at the same time she practised her chakra control, managing to level it up in the time it took for him to rise, get ready then bid his wife and child farewell before leaving.
Following him from building to building, Sora watched as he walked onto the small docks and headed onto a boat, beginning to prepare it to sail. Using her stealth she slipped onto the boat, laying prone on top of the little cabin within which was the wheel, then used her Byakugan to look inside the ship itself. Upon seeing that there was nothing in the hold, she realised that he was going to go to the other island to buy things, not going to sell things as she vaguely expected.
After another short wait, the boat was finally cast off and began to sail out of the docks, turning to follow the shoreline across towards the other island. Frowning, Sora debated when to kill him. Would it be best to do it right then or on the return journey? It would probably be best to do it then and there as waiting increased the risk of being caught way too much, whereas doing it now incurred no risk at all.
She took out a kunai from her inventory and clenched her hand around it, her Byakugan tracking her target as he fiddled with the boat controls. Closing her eyes, she steadied herself, trying to psych herself up to kill him. He was the target, and if she wanted to survive she would have to kill others who undoubtedly had families of their own waiting at home for them.
But this was different. She had seen his family, saw the love he had for his family and the love they held for him. Killing him, she knew the faces of his family and knew how they would react to his death. He wasn't just some faceless man she could put a kunai in and then ignore forever, she would always know that she killed that man who had a family, which was something she had never experienced before.
She had killed before, not just in her past life but in her current, and she could do that because their families knew they were going into a fight and that they had a very good chance of dying, but this man was just living his own harmless life. Why did he even have to die, what was the point of it, what could he have possibly done to deserve a Hunter-nin coming to kill him? It just didn't make any sense, none of it did.
But...she also couldn't not kill him. If she didn't kill him at best she would be expelled from the Hunter-nin, and at worst she would be executed for insubordination. She was trapped by this mission. If she killed him she wouldn't be able to live with the knowledge of what she had done, but if she didn't kill him she wouldn't be able to live full-stop, or at least it was likely she wouldn't be able to, maybe they'd let her live, but why would they let an insubordinate kunoichi live?
Biting her lip, she considered the kunai in her hand, then observed the man who was currently directly below her, utterly at ease without knowing that a killer sat directly above him trying to work up the courage to decide whether she was able to kill him or not. After a few minutes of arguing with herself, she moved down to the rear of the ship, directly behind the open-back cabin, directly behind him, where she could see with her own eyes his back.
It...would be that easy. Just stab the kunai into his neck, remove his head and seal it, then take his boat out into the ocean, toss his corpse overboard and use a Suiton Jutsu to clean the blood off the boat. He wouldn't be found for a while if at all, and what happened would be lost to the sea. His family would mourn and be broken, but they'd recover, they had to, the world wasn't kind enough to give anyone a free lunch.
Tightening her grasp on her kunai, Sora raised her arm, staring at the back of his neck. A stab straight into his cervical vertebrae, followed by a slight adjustment and a simple pull across, straight through his brachiocephalic trunk, it would starve the brain of oxygen and kill him exceptionally swiftly. With his severed spinal he wouldn't be able to stop the bleeding, and it would also help her ensure he died quickly.
Then, despite her trying her hardest not to think about it, her mind supplied her just one memory, the memory of that little girl hugging her father's leg. And she realised that no...she really couldn't do it. If she knew nothing about him, if he was just a faceless enemy to kill, she could do it. But as soon as she knew...it wasn't possible. In her past life, everyone she ever killed was just that, faceless. She knew nothing about them when she killed them.
Maybe when she searched them she'd find evidence, photos or pendants or other pocket-litter that would tell her a story, but by then he was dead, there was no time for her to think about it and hesitate, she would search the dead and then move on. She lowered her arm, quietly walking back up onto the cabin and laying down, looking up at the sky as she just thought about what the fuck she was even going to do now that she couldn't kill her target, now that she knew too much about him for her to just take him down as another faceless target to shoot.
And, before she could spend any time contemplating that, darkness overcame her.
So...yeah.
I'll be honest, when I started this chapter, I thought it was going to be simple, she would kill a target, come back, all happy days and cakes and more training. Then boom, my hands decided to write that. Honestly, I don't know if other people will think it was any good, and if you think it sucks then tell me, but personally I think that it was honestly a great showcase of a moral dilemma. She can kill people, and has before in both her lives, but when she knows adamantly that her target has a family who loves him, she just can't do it.
So, reviews pl0x!
Name: Sora Metami
Level: 34
Age: 12
Experience: 423/34,000
To Next Level: 33,577
Title: Hunter-nin Recruit - +50% increased damage to Missing-nin, +50% increased experience gain within Hunter-nin locations
Health Points: 2,100 (100 Base HP + (Vitality x Strength)
Regeneration Rate: 70/minute (Health ÷ 30) (Severe or noticed injuries can be chosen to retain scars)
Chakra Points: 1,930 (100 Base CP + (Wisdom x Intelligence)
Regeneration Rate: 64.3*/minute (Chakra ÷ 30)
Strength: 40 (Each point increases melee damage by 1%, adds 1 slot to inventory)
Vitality: 50 (Each point raises poison resistance by 0.1%, reduces need for sleep by 0.1%)
Agility: 50 (Each point increases top speed by 0.1m/s, increases weapon proficiency gain by 1%)
Wisdom: 30 (Each point decreases chakra cost for techniques by 0.1%)
Intelligence: 61 (Each point increases experience gain by 1%)
