Author's Notes: New, chapter, with a bit of a gear shift considering Shino isn't in this chapter, but its relevancy should kick in pretty obviously. I really like this chapter actually, there's some good writing in here, so hopefully others will enjoy it to.
Thanks to reviewers, it's always welcome to have feedback. Let me throw a few answers back as well.
Meggido: Actually, I've been working on this story for some time now, as I was done with Forged in Water for a while and just taking my time editing and posting it, so I'm not writing that fast.
Yumeko: I like Shino a lot too, and he's also just developed enough to have a few hooks, and also left alone enough to give me some room to work with.
Chapter 2 – Entry through Glass
(Kodori Manor – Late Evening)
The Kodori Manor was a very nice residence, a place bearing the distinctive mark of a rich man who knew what true class looked like. It was a classic castle imitation, complete with soaring tile roofs and styled carvings at every corner, all maintained with great cleanliness and not a hint of gaudiness. Also, like a castle it was built in a sound and sturdy way, a building that would stand the test of time.
Ling Ying decided Kodori Tokimitsu was a smart man, and that it was almost a pity to have to break in. Almost a pity, but missions must come first, and a ninja who starts to question the mission over the merits of style needs to straighten out her priorities. With a practiced eye Ying assessed the building. It's similarity to a castle had some advantages, the stone structure would be easy to climb, if necessary, and the design all but insured that Tokimitsu's study was on the top floor in a room all by itself. Ying knew he must keep his secret documents there.
Tokimitsu himself was not at home, there was a major theatre production in the town this evening and all the illustrious citizens were in attendance, so his study was sure to be empty. Ying knew all she had to do was get to the windows on the top floor and the scroll was as good as hers. The trouble would come in reaching that point.
The estate was well guarded, and even a cursory analysis showed that Tokimitsu had taken steps to prevent theft. His grounds were walled, and inside there were only carefully manicured gardens, with few plants tall enough to hide even a ninja. Guards patrolled constantly, and though their patterns were fixed the boss was apparently paying well enough that they were reasonably alert. That, or this area was troubled enough to keep them that way. Ying knew the reason didn't really make a difference, that the guards were alert was enough. It would be tricky getting past their watch.
Still, a ninja who couldn't sneak past a few hired thugs was hardly a ninja at all. Ying timed out the intersection of two guard's patrols, and the moment they were farthest from a point on the middle of the south wall. This wall was in shadow behind the manor, so no moonlight shone. She waited until the guards were further apart, and then threw a kunai straight into the wall at chest height.
Patiently Ying waited for the guards to close and separate again, making certain they did not see her kunai in the wall. Then, as they passed halfway to their turns she left her place of hiding and ran.
It would have been impossible to climb the wall in the time it took the guards to turn and close to see her, but by leaping up and vaulting off the hilt of her stuck kunai Ying was able to grasp the top of the wall and pull herself up and over swiftly. She tumbled across the stone battlement, and then into the inner courtyard, but not off the wall entirely.
Instead she rolled forward off the inside edge to cling underneath the wall itself, using her chakra to hold in place on the underside of the battlements, where the guards couldn't see her. Of course, there were a few guards posting at the building's edge, one at each corner, and they could see her clearly, but why should they look underneath the battle walk? It was a risk, but Ying felt assured they would not notice her there. She waited for the guards to close over her, and when their footfalls were directly above she dropped to the ground, using the sound of their own movements to mask the slight ruffling of gravel her sandals made when she struck the rock garden below.
Immediately the ninja dropped to her belly, her eyes searching diligently, making certain she had not been observed. When it was clear she was still unseen she considered a final time her plan to get to the wall without being seen. The two guards stationed at the building's corners could potentially see her move in the dark garden. Potentially so could the guards atop the wall and the people in the still functioning kitchens whose windows were still lit at this hour, but Ying discounted these as being unlikely to look inwards and unable to overcome the glare of the indoor lights.
The two guards, however, were a real problem, but there was a method available to avoid them. First Ying snuck close by crawling along the ground like a lizard until she was at the bare edge of the guard's potential visual range. Though she guessed their night sight to be less acute than her own there was no point in taking senseless risks. Instead, Ying watched both men very carefully, crouching with her knees bent. When an opportune moment came as both men looked away from her position and the center of the garden court at once she channeled chakra to her legs and simply sprang.
It was a rather brute force approach, leaping unnaturally high above the vision field of the guards, which was naturally tracked to the top of the outer walls, and then striking the stony wall to cling like a fly stuck to sticky paper by using more chakra, but it was effective. By the time the guards had shifted their gaze back to the center Ying was already in line with and above them, where they would never look, and even if they did she would be almost impossible to spot against the dark and uneven stone wall. After that, all that was left was to climb.
It was an easy enough climb, the widely-spaced nature of imitation castle masonry was simple to find hand and footholds in, and the building was only four stories tall, not so far considering Ying's climb began halfway up. It was not until she reached the roof below the top floor that Ying encountered a significant obstacle.
In the manner of the castle, the Kodori manor had sloping roofs extending out from each floor, providing an overhanging obstacle that would have daunted most normal climbers. Of course, all ninja are properly trained in overcoming just this type of architectural difficulty, so Ying had not anticipated any trouble here. That is, until she spotted the seals.
They were strips of paper pasted to the underside of the roof at key positions, precisely those a ninja would have used as holds for the ascent to the next level. The seals were not complex, only a single character, not capable of doing more than deliver a small jolt of energy if they were delivered. Yet Ying reasoned that was all they needed to do. Even a small jolt of electricity would be enough to force a hand or foot to lose the grip and fall to serious injury or death. The presence of these seals confirmed absolutely to Ying that Tokimitsu had a Cloud ninja on his staff, and she smiled softly at the challenge this represented. A moment later she calmed down and considered the matter with rather less amusement. The Lightning ninja was hopefully not present, instead guarding his employer at the theatre, but his traps would still have to be considered carefully. Thankfully, Ying had a simple way around this one.
Hanging from the last safe position with her right hand, she brought her left behind her back and gave a sharp tug, releasing from its holding guard the large scythe she wore hung there. Flipping it around in her hand so the blade came high instead of low Ying swung the scythe out to grasp onto a tile on the upper edge of the roof. Then she let go with her right hand and swung out. Pulling down on the scythe's haft with both hands she vaulted herself upwards, pulling the weapon up behind her. The moment she reached the rooftop she flipped the scythe around again and slipped the haft up into its harness, locking it into place with a quick motion of her left hand, leaving the blade hanging in its usual low position behind her left side.
It was not a completely foolproof method. The scythe's blade had left a sharp gouge in the ceiling tile, one the lightning ninja was almost certain to find once the theft was reported. However, such a gash could have been caused by many things, and it would not add much information to the rather obvious fact that a ninja had committed the theft.
Once on the roof it was a fairly simply task to walk up to the windows. With her well trained night vision Ying could see clearly into the study beyond. It was a very nice room, one packed with books and papers, but also some exquisite lamps and chairs, all stylishly arranged around an ornate antique desk. Such a room was designed to be used freely by its occupant, which informed Ying that the traps would not be inside the room, but outside.
She inspected the window, and sure enough it was laden with a complex trap, one with a multiple trigger mechanism and strengthened by a series of seals. It would launch out poison darts, trigger an alarm, and blast the trespasser with a powerful jolt of lightning if either the opening mechanism was tampered with or the glass was cut. Such a trap was quite a piece of diligent workmanship, and under normal conditions even a skilled ninja would have required many minutes of exposed work at the top of the manor disarming it. Ying, however, smiled upon seeing the trap, for she was not bound by the normal conditions.
If the cloud ninja was going to expend so much effort on seals at these windows Ying decided she would use a jutsu of her own. Her hands moved slowly through a series of chakra-molding hand seals, and she whispered the technique with the barest breath. "Fluid Crystal Traverse no Jutsu."
Ying reached out her hands and put them to the glass, and then she pushed up with her legs propelling her whole body forward. The glass window, rather than forming a solid barrier to stop her, rippled like the surface of a pond struck by a stone, and Ying's hands and then her whole body passed swiftly through the window. Behind her form the glass sealed up as if nothing had happened.
Her balance never wavering Ying rolled easily onto the fine rug laid down on the stone floor of the study. Now it was only a matter of locating the scroll she needed. It was obviously not one of the many scrolls on the bookshelves of the room or left about the desk. The scroll she required would be hidden somewhere, likely with several other scrolls describing the various illicit dealings Tokimitsu's clients were engaged in. it was just a matter of figuring out where the banker would put such a thing.
There were few clues, but Ying knew she could rely on her target's sense of style in this. With everything else so exquisitely well placed a secret compartment would be as well, it would not fit the banker's sense of aesthetics otherwise. Carefully, the ninja thought about it for a moment, wondering where it would be placed. She ruled out locations such as behind the bookcases or in a safe in the floorboards immediately, and none of the chairs, lamps, or wall hangings seemed appropriate as well.
A moment later her eyes fell once again on the antique desk. It was indeed ornate, and clearly handcrafted. It also was also positioned farther out from the wall than one might expect of a desk.
Curious, Ying approached, and in fact, it turned out that the desk was not actually far from the wall, but that its back was several inches thick, far more than necessary for support. Though the carver had made it appear that this was an artifice to allow completion of a complex design by incorporating the thickened side Ying sensed the deception quickly. She pulled a kunai from her weapons' pouch and tapped it against the back piece. When the distinctive hollow sound came back the ninja infiltrator knew she had found what she was seeking.
It was the work of only a moment to find the catch, and Ying opened the hidden compartment with her kunai. When the piece of wood slid back to reveal a space filled with several scrolls she took a good deal of satisfaction in having outsmarted her target and his ninja guardian. Unfortunately, even with good night vision and the moonlight shed into the study from the windows, there was no way to read the scrolls in the dark. Yin would have to risk a light source.
Most ninja would have struck a match, but she relied on a different method. Instead Ying took a mirror and a piece of polished glass from pouches in her uniform. She positioned the mirror before the scrolls, and then struck the glass against the floor, causing something inside it to shake and glow for a moment. Magnified with the mirror it produced enough light to reveal the writing on the scrolls, but would not cause enough light to be seen as a flash should anyone be watching. It would only have appeared as a wandering moonbeam.
Ying read the scrolls quickly, noting happily that they were all labeled with simple titles. Of course, in keeping with his sense of aesthetics Tokimitsu had given them somewhat creative titles as metaphors to what they truly represented. Ying was forced to quickly reason out their meaning. Thus, unrecorded transportation was smuggling, personal weaknesses meant drugs, irregular finances meant fraud and embezzlement, and irregular mercenaries meant ninja. The last was the scroll Ying grabbed.
She opened the edge of the scroll to make certain it contained actual information and was not a dummy, and then placed it in a hidden pocket of her uniform. That done she made certain to restore everything in the room to the way it was before and used her jutsu to pass through the window out onto the roof.
Now came the easy part, the escape. Tying a line to one of her kunai, Ying spun the weapon around rapidly in a circle, building momentum to a tremendous level, and then flinging it outward.
The kunai landed squarely embedded in the outer wall. Ying reeled the wire in and tied it off against a spoke of the roof, insuring that it remained taught. She had no worries that the wire would be seen, it was thin enough that it could not be glimpsed on such night in a shadowed courtyard, and it would serve as the perfect mechanism for her descent.
Taking the scythe from its harness once more Ying draped it over the wire in the middle of the haft, and placed one hand on either side. It was a simple trick to slide down the wire to the edge of the courtyard. Of course, such an obvious escape would be observed, but Ying had an easy way to overcome that. "Henge no jutsu," she whispered out the command, and her body's appearance was altered to take the form of a crow. With that done she grasped the scythe firmly and leapt out into the dark night air.
It was an exhilarating rush down, one Ying punctuated by screaming out the harsh imitation of a crow's cries through the night, as the wind rushed past and whipped her hair back and cold air bathed her face.
At the bottom Ying spun herself off the wire to land once more underneath the outer wall. She replaced her scythe, reeled in her hanging wire, and pulled free her kunai, diligently erasing all signs of her escape. After that it was easy enough to repeat the entry over the outer wall in reverse, retrieving the first stuck kunai in the process.
Once she was safely outside the grounds Ying paused for a few moments, letting the adrenaline of the mission drain away and savoring the elation of success. She was quite proud of herself for this intrusion, having managed to get in and out expending only a little chakra and using only two relatively minor jutsus. It was quite the accomplishment considering the substantial defenses. As her emotions calmed she remembered to check the scroll once more, insuring she had the genuine article. That confirmed she simply walked off into the night, heading west.
The quiet night in the forest was disturbed by a disquieting rustle of tree branches. It was a rustle Ying knew should not have happened, for there was no wind to move these trees. Such a sound signified a ninja in the trees, one moving in a hurry, and Ying was immediately certain that she had been tracked.
The Cloud ninja was the cause, Ying had no doubts. However, beyond his country she knew nothing of her potential enemy. Her first thought was that he must be quite skilled to track her through the night swiftly like this, especially as she had left few clues. Her second thought was that perhaps he just got lucky. Regardless, Ying knew there was no time to plan anything substantial. Instead, she simply turned and jumped into a nearby tree, seeking a decent place to hide.
Though sound heralded the cloud ninja, he would not prove easy to pinpoint. The night was dark here under the trees and the cloud ninja uniform, with its drab grays, browns, and blues, was not easy to spot in such an environment. Ying tried to judge the distance between the rustles of leaves, attempting to gauge the distance to the enemy, but without success.
Then suddenly, the sounds stopped.
Instantly Ying recognized that her pursuer had reached the end of her trail.
She reacted on instinct, seizing her chance to ambusher foe and take the initiative.
With a single step the ninja burst free of her hiding place to come flying down on the position where her trail ended. There, as she suspected, a lightning ninja knelt in front of her final footprints. Ying reacted with brutal swiftness, pulling two shuriken from her pouch and hurling them at her enemy.
The lightning turned to see Ying's leaping descent, but failed to act in time, and the shuriken struck him along his left arm and right torso.
With a puff of smoke the cloud ninja vanished.
It was a bushin! Ying's eyes widened in surprise, as she now knew her enemy had anticipated her. She spun in midair, so that she struck hands first. Exerting her strength through the painful landing the desperate young ninja was able to flip forward and come to her feet immediately several feet in front of her initial landing point.
A blast of lightning, brilliant blue and blinding, flashed through the space Ying would have occupied had she landed normally.
As the cackle passed her Ying opened her closed eyes and she spun around to face her enemy.
The man had already begun a series of hand seals, expecting his enemy to be blinded by the flash even though she dodged. Ying's preemptory action to shield her vision had caught him at a vulnerable point.
Her enemy having begun the jutsu so rapidly, Ying had a moment to guess he had not yet determined one of her tricks, so she took a chance and acted now. She pulled a kunai free from her pouch with enough haste to send several other weapons spilling out to the ground, but she was ready to throw the moment the cloud ninja released his jutsu.
"Lightning Element: Thunder Blast no jutsu!" the ninja shouted, bringing forth a powerful blast of rushing air, sound, and force.
Ying dodged not by rolling to the side, but leaping up and back, hurling her kunai as she moved.
Though she had timed the dodge well, Ying had not anticipated how wide the jutsu's blast would be, and so it clipped her feet as she moved a torrent or air and force throwing her tumbling through the air.
She landed sprawled, caught in a split-second of vulnerability that could mean her end if her enemy acted.
The cloud ninja was swift, he had pulled out his own kunai the moment his jutsu was finished, and would have buried it in Ying's back, but first he was forced to block her previously thrown kunai.
It was an easy enough block, nothing that would take long enough to delay his attack and save Ying. The cloud ninja did not even look back at the kunai as he turned to target his prone foe, but blocked it blind, basing his own kunai's placing on his glimpse of the throw.
Kunai struck kunai, but the sound that rang in the forest night was not the clang of steel on steel, but a sharp crash.
Ying's kunai, like the shuriken she had thrown earlier, was not made of steel, but of glass.
When the kunai of glass struck the kunai of steel it shattered along its many lines, precisely as it had been designed. Yet those shattered pieces of glass carried the momentum of the original throw, and razor sharp, went on to strike the lightning ninja's exposed face and neck.
The ninja screamed in pain as glass shards struck him, and his own throw was lost in the loss of his focus.
Ying somersaulted to her feet immediately, leaping at her opponent, not waiting for him to recover. As she sprang through the air her left hand went back and unlocked her scythe, swinging the long weapon down and then up again, so she held the weapon behind her still with her left hand low near the blade and her right hand high.
The cloud ninja recovered in time to try and block the oncoming blow, but Ying, still in midair, could chose any level on his body to target, and a kunai could only block a small portion.
Brilliantly edged, the scythe blade cut clean through the enemy, delivering a swift and fatal cut. Ying's feet met the branch underneath the cloud ninja and she pulled back, freeing her weapon and causing the already dead ninja to fall messily to the ground.
When Ying came down she looked sadly at the body. It struck her as a great disappointment, for she had not wanted to kill anyone tonight. She did not like killing, even a clean death like this. It was a part of being a ninja that she knew must occur, but in this context she considered it a failure. He had been good enough to catch her, but not skilled enough to avoid dying at her hands, such was common among ninja in sudden engagements such as this. Ying's glass kunai had tricked him, as it so often tricked her foes, and in a battle such as this had been the one who falls for the best trick is usually the one to perish.
Without urgency Ying cleaned her blade on her enemy's coat, returning the blood from the weapon to him. She made an obligatory search of the cloud ninja's belongings, a task she detested, especially, when, as she had been all but certain, the lightning ninja carried nothing important or useful. He bore only the standard weapons and gear of a ninja, and a number of blank seal papers for the creation of his shocking traps. It saddened Ying to rifle through a dead man's belongings for so little purpose, and she deliberately put everything back as she had before.
Despite now being certain she was not followed, Ying did not lessen her wariness as she continued west. Instead she endeavored to be ever more alert, for the only way to insure no mistakes was to constantly practice even when the risk was low. Otherwise laziness would inevitably develop, and a ninja who was lazy was soon dead. The young lady wished to be well away from both the manor and the site of this small but lethal duel well before the dawn rose behind her.
Bug Stuff: No real bug stuff in this chapter, probably the only one where that'll happen.