Mission Harmful Harmonies

[Ryuu Sumika]

Silent in her subjects, the young girl was rarely spoken to inside of the academy many often ignoring her due to her disability, her freakishly tall height coupled with her quiet aura made for her carry a somewhat delicate presence. Those who knew of her connections to the main branch sennin certainly steered clear of her or would do kind things such as opening the door for her or referring to the Hashigaki student with a higher status than she deserved. Usually blessing them with what appeared to be a fragile smile however under the mask would only be her diligence to become stronger, the less people spoke the better, with her acute hearing she could hear far more than the natural person, and all of the rubbish which people would spout clogged up her mind.

With the school day coming to an end she was leaving her homeroom class as she overheard two girls across from her talking about some handsome magician. Under any normal circumstances she would have already been out of the classroom by now making her way back. Yet she had been hearing about this mysterious maestro all day, her passion for music was second to none and it seemed as if this person had quite a talent. They had arranged to go see him after school and were to make their way in to the entertainment district, Sumika had only heard of it through her acquaintance Michiko who didn't quite yapping about how amazing it was. As the two left the academy Sumika would stalk swiftly behind them hiding round alleyways yet not letting them leave her sight, there wasn't a chance in hell she wouldn't figure where all the hype was coming from. Whilst she did this it helped her train her own hearing being able to track the two distinct vibration patterns each of the girls made in a sea of people, at times it was tricky yet eventually her prey would come to a halt, with a prominent sound of a flute echoing from all around.

WC: 344

 

[Hashigaki Honome]

As the flute's haunting melody, a low-tune echoed throughout the crowd those gathered would come to a hush, everyone waiting with a breathless air, all breathing at once. It was a good day to be a musician. The flautist pressed the cold metal to his lips again, his eyes darted to three people in the crowd, not ninja by any means, but the lilting music that lifted people's spirits made them feel lighter than air, and with that lighter air, came lighter wallets. The reverberations in the woodwind instrument echoed around the tube of the flute, creating a crescendo of light ditties and slow trills that would thrill even the most stout-hearted madames and misseurs out of their money.

The two that were cutting purses didn't really have to do much, as the genjutsu wound its way out of his flute and around those that listened. It was a simple one, a distraction so that things like the weight of a purse, or the brushing of skin against a stranger were not noticed. As his flute played, his companions danced throughout the crowd, moving slowly here and there, only getting close to the ones that were completely enraptured by his melody, he counted fourteen people that would feel lighter, not only of spirit but of wallet, by the end of the melodious musician's malevolent music. He continued to play, the music picking up the pace, a couple set to dancing, first the wife's and then the husband's wallets were snatched from the crowd who had come to clap along with music. The patter of feet getting lost in the crescendo of higher and higher pitched notes, exploding out from his fingers and his lips, as his tongue dittied out the notes of the flute to an ever faster, ever more feverous tune. With a last blasting three notes, he took a bow, putting away his flute and strode over to the edge of the stage, offering his hat to a couple of people that had come. Most people would watch, and few would pay.

A little theft here, a little bit of a lighter wallet there, no one going home without a wallet meant that no one would miss a couple yen, here or there, and he split it among the three workers. One of them signalled that they hadn't gotten through all of their picking. The man cleared his throat.

"For an encore, I will sing you a song of the land that I came from, accompanied by guitar!" He waved his hand in the air, the flute disappearing and reappearing like magic in the form of a guitar. He twisted his well curled mustache, winking a baby-blue eye at one of the girls who was fawning over him. His accomplices stood by, waiting for their chance.

Striking a D chord, he strummed the guitar, then adjusted a few pegs, looking to see whether the other accomplices had taken up positions and then struck the D chord again. It was sound, and the perfect pitch reverberated off of the cobbled stones and wooden houses surrounding the area they had chosen to put up their collapsible stage.

"It's a song." He stated, strumming the guitar quick and supple, his fingers dancing over the frets, finding their place between them like a lover's well-placed kiss, "about a maiden of course. Because What else inspires long like a fair maid."

The fingers danced, bringing a tune to the fore, his voice coming out in a fine baritone that complimented the alto tones from the guitar, the bass notes reverberated in his chest, giving his voice depth.

"A bright pink morning in the countryside,
did I see a maid sitting right beside,
the bank of a river, clear and blue,
her hair was a perfect color and hue,
to match the sun on a summer's day,
so I walked up to her and I did say,

'where do you come from my fair miss,
with eyes meant to dazzle and lips ripe for a kiss?
where do you come from my fair miss,
you've come into my life, and now my heart's gone amiss!

A twirl of her hair, round her finger so thin,
brought a shiver to my spine and a burn to my skin,
and her breath so soft, and her eyes so bright,
I'd trade all my money for her sole delight,

With a

'where did you come from my fair miss,
with eyes meant to dazzle and lips ripe for a kiss?
where did you come from my fair miss,
you've come into my life, and now my heart's gone amiss!'
"

At this part the guitar solo flew past his finger, strumming each chord perfectly and matching the melody of the musician's magic fingers. The genjutsu started to work again and he looked at the crowd. The others started to work their magic as he did his again, he was halfway through his song and they were doing splendidly. Four adults up to a bit of petty mischief wouldn't be noticed by the shinobi, so they could steal with nigh impunity. His lips opened again, and he closed his eyes.

"Well she came to my side and she stroked my chin,
and said that she'd love to hear my sweet words again,
so I asked her the question that burned bright in my heart,
and that's how my lass and I got a start

With

A

'where did you come from my fair miss,
with eyes meant to dazzle and lips ripe for a kiss?
where did you come from my fair miss,
you've come into my life, and now my heart's gone amiss!'

I took her round the middle, and she took me round mine,
and our love in the moonlight, the stars did outshine,
we walked down the lane, where I'd first began,
and we still to this day, walk the lanes hand in hand

and she still has
eyes meant to dazzle and lips ripe for a kiss,
even after 80 odd years of life's fair bliss,
she came into my life, and my heart's gone amiss,
she stole it, and I've never regretted one moment since!"

He strummed the guitar, landing on the last note of the song and then took a bow, the other accomplices nodded at him and he took off his hat again, "Well that's it for the performance for this evening, if you have anything to spare, I'd sure appreciate a hot meal and a roof tonight, all donations are welcome, no matter how small or strange they might seem. Yes, thank you I do accept baked goods miss, I appreciate it." He started to schmooze as the other three started to head in different directions, trying to follow the crowd, he would meet up with them later. He pocketed the biscuit and kissed her child on the head that she proffered him, "I don't take children, as they're more trouble than they're worth, but thank you for the kind offer." He got a laugh from the father of the child for that one.

[wc:1138]

 

[Ryuu Sumika]

Listening intently to the song which the man had played on his flute, it was clear to see that his proficiency with the instrument was one not to be scoffed at, if anything they were likely far more experienced and better than her in almost every way. Whilst she preferred the far more quiet and humble harmonies of her Biwa which she could delicately pluck to her hearts content, this style of music was much to her distaste being far more energetic and crowd pleasing. It went against everything which she had known and loved, a sigh of relief would puff out from her small lips, glad that she never did accept Michiko's invitation to see all the 'glamour and glitter'. However to her there was a sense of an eerie silence whilst the music simmered everyone down, there was hardly any vibrations coming from anyone around as the crowd fell still completely and utterly entranced by some sort of invisible spell.

To her luck it seemed that she was completely uneffected, her mind must have blocked out whatever the genjutsu used to captivate the rest of the civilians. Not everyone in Kumokagakure was gifted with exceptional chakra control, hell a large amount have no chakra at all. There was some sickening maddening power which laid deep down inside of her wishing to wreak havoc on Sumika's mind at all cost, figuring it was likely the same thing that doused her hair completely snow white, it was clear that it would help her in small situations like this. Using this to her advantage she quickly would begin to take a mental note of each and everyone of the people who were still moving, they were almost erratic with how much they moved swiftly around the crowd, however underneath the sound of the singing, her keen ears could pick up the small noises of jingles. When each person creating the vibrations through the ground would stop for just a moment there would the sound of a jingle.

As their footsteps made there way towards her direction she wasn't fast enough to react and in seconds her purse had been easily swiped from her schoolbag. Finessed in public as the song continued through guitar her rage began to kindle. Acting as if she had no idea not reacting as they made their quick retreat, deep inside she was ready to explode, screaming and shout, throw an entire tantrum. Small veins splurging out on her scalp unseen to the human eye, yet she waited like a predator to strike on their prey who knew none the wiser. Silently standing as her rage only grew, as soon as the music ended the one who had stolen her wallet was making their quick get away. Gracefully darting and making her way through the crowd she began to chase after them in pursuit.

Once getting away from all the hustle and bustle of the entertainment district and in to the more desolate areas away from the majority of lights and music she would cast a genjutsu on the thief, if her genjutsu was successful he would be placed inside of a deep black void, the texture of the ground appearing to be a dark liquid of sorts with lumps that could only be described as grotesque. The sounds of vultures ripping and tearing at flesh could be heard as their squawks echoed throughout. Using this opportunity to catch them by surprised with a singular pluck of her Biwa she would send a slice of wind directly towards their wrist in an attempt to cut it off and retrieve her purse.

 

[Hashigaki Honome]

The man, hustling away from the bustle, darted into an alleyway on his round-about way to the meeting place that they all had agreed upon after the crowd died down. It was still three hours until he had to split the take, and honor amongst thieves meant that he could spend some of the ryo on a good meal and hide out in plain sight away from the crowd. The first thing to do, was to get rid of the purses and wallets that he hadn't been able to reverse-pilfer like the others.

He scratched at his loose scruff, hanging off of his Adam's apple like a mangy dog's and spat, getting the grit out of his teeth that had worked its way in there from years of living a hard life on the streets. When he had picked up this gig from the dandy that had hired him, he had been stunned. He thought that he had been able to make a clean getaway before finding that no matter where he turned, he found the same man approaching him, with a natural musician's flair. It was dishonest work, mind, pilfering from the shinobi class society, but it was well worth the danger that came from it as it usually had a fat payout. Anyone worth their salt wouldn't go after anyone higher than a Genin rank, and the ledgers clearly stated who was of a higher rank than that, so a headband and no ledger rank meant that they were ripe for the picking.

Since he hadn't seen this gentleman in the books, he thought that he had been easy pickings, but clearly he had been wrong. The man, the dandy man, much to his surprise said that he could keep the money in his purse for a proposition of coming to work with him and his band of miscreants. He called them miscreants. Remembering that made his eyes roll as he rifled through the belongings of another person, tossing their wallet aside, he pocketed the money and kept digging.

It was as he was remembering how they had all come to this gig, four of the eight regulars, that all of the sudden the world went dark, darker than the blackest black that the man had ever seen. He groped around, dropping some of the loot in the process, but keeping the purses around his arms, he flailed and came into contact with a solid wall. So at least the world was still there. So one of those ninja mind-tricks eh?

"Show y'erself or I'll cut ya." he put on a bravado. Perhaps he could get away with it too. He fumbled around for his pocket knife with his non-dominant hand as he groped at the air in front of him, trying to find his assailant in the murky dark. The first thing that he noticed was that he could no longer feel his fingers as he groped, looking for a foothold or his enemy to strike. A moment later the sensation of cold ran up his arm, and his stump left over from the wind cut assailed his brain, making him clamp down on the stump and howl.

The reverberations of his voice tore through the alley, reverberated off of the walls and echoed in the bare windows, covered with pasted on paper from magazines in the absence of blinds, though they were so dirty in this part of town that paper wasn't really needed to block out the light or keep people from seeing in. He grit his teeth, sucking in the air hurt his back two molars, ones that he had split on a peach pit two years ago. He had been saving up for crowns, and for some dental work, and almost had enough money on hand at the place where they all met to get himself the dental work he so badly needed.

The radial artery, the one that he hadn't plugged, spurt four times in quick succession as the man kicked at the air in the direction he hoped the blast had come from, trying to at least get a hit in on his assailant, the purses bounced and spun as he flailed towards who he only assumed was a high ranking ninja. The pain, starting to reach his brain in its full intensity brought curses to his lips as he tried to staunch the bleeding, but lacked the medical knowledge necessary to fix the situation. He could feel the cold spreading up to his shoulder as he waved his arm around and tried to get his coat off. The purses kept the makeshift tourniquet fastened to his body as he flailed, trying to get it off and hold the wound closed.

He clenched his jaw, broke the two teeth that had cracked, pain surged from the broken teeth to his mind, bringing even more agony to his state. The sensation was enough to send him past the threshold of consciousness and into the inky black that fit neatly into the genjutsu that he had suffered.

If he didn't receive medical attention to his handless arm, he would die within a couple minutes, each spurt came in a decrescendo of life, the pulses expelling less and less of the life-blood of the man.

 

[Ryuu Sumika]

The thief's cries would just make her face cringe in sheer disgust whilst he rolled and screamed in agony, if anything it was kind of infuriating, her enhanced hearing would make these screams of pain slightly irritating to her own sense of audio. Tightly pressing down on each hand as she winced in annoyance she slowly would make her way up to the severed hand still clutching on to her purse with what little life it had left, fingers ever so slightly twitching as if trying to make their escape from it's inevitable end. Snatching it back in to her grasp quickly placing it back in to her cute grey handbag, each item carefully assorted to slide in just right. The empty space which her handbag had been untimely ripped finally had been restored back to it's former glory.

Only as she had finally retrieved what was hers and had full control of the situation would she realise the actual mess she was in, there was no vibrations aside from the flailing wretch before her. "Shut up! Stop making so much noise!" Proceeding to furiously send kicks towards their head several times whilst keeping her eardrums covered by each of palms, yet this only made him louder. Deciding to cut her losses the deed was done, she quickly made her way back and away from the entertainment district, her curiosity would have to wait as the young Ryuu had taken one step too far in her short lived adventure.

[Topic Left]

 

[Hashigaki Honome]

The man known to the others as "the dandy man" walked up to the unfortunate co-conspirator of his and nudged the body with his foot. He knew which way that the man had gone at the end of the performance, and had been fuming the whole way here. He and the others, of which there were five not including the Dandy Man himself, stalked the alley before recognizing the body almost immediately. They had moved toward it before the woman known as "Kitten" had vomited behind a bag of trash that someone had discarded out of one of the greasy windows.

The dandy man put a hand to the man's neck, no pulse, and looked at the reason for the man's passing. His head had been caved in, quite neatly with three kicks to the eye, temple, and ear with a high-heel of some sort. The wedged indentation reminded him of about twenty of those in attendance that had come up to pay their respects for his music. The dandy man motioned one of the others over, "Looks like we have ourselves a ninja, what do you think, doc?" The man, whose name in their ranks was just 'Doc' was a medical ninja, intent on making more than he would at the hospital for patching them up from wounds, such as this one, in the event of them being caught by a ninja patrol.

"I'd say they're chakra inclined, yes. The Lacerations indicate as much on his wrist, two clean cuts, one deeper than the other and, poor man, went through his tendons and missed the wrist bones." Doc pushed his glasses onto his face before he pointed at the man's head, or at least what was left of it with the swelling and the holes in it, "Not much I could have done about those wounds, but the hand I could have worked with. Poor bastard didn't know what to do when he lost the hand, not that it would have done him much good with the savagery that the other person showed." He took out a cigarette and lit it, blowing a plume of blue acrid smoke into the air above the other people's heads, "Strip 'im and leave 'im." He spoke around the cigarette as he started to walk over to a box of old papers to sit down, cradling the cigarette against the damp wind that blew down the alley, "Isn't any helping him now, he's gone."

The man called 'snake', who had been part of the crowd walked his way up to the man and within a couple of seconds, left the man naked, "Looks like the person didn't take anything off of 'im." Snake observed, frowning, his slit pupils widening as he took in all of the corpse, and the belongings. His eyes narrowed in suspicion and he broke into a cold sweat, "Why go after one of ours if they didn't take anything?"

"Why leave the body?" Kitten spoke up, her voice grating against the cobbles, "Why kill him and leave the body and the loot?" Her sharp tone fit her name as she moved her sharpened nails across the bricks of the nearby building, leaving a trail of five marks where she was, walking toward the body in a predatory way. The muscles of her forearms bulged, but she made it look like the bricks were made of soft clay.

"Don't." The shadow clutched at the woman's hand before she got too far with the movement, his hand didn't press too hard into hers, but she recoiled from his touch anyhow as if she had been shocked, "Don't leave any trace, we need to leave less evidence than the person who walked off with blood on one heel." He pointed off to the distance where the bloody heel tracks became less and less visible until they disappeared completely, the blood running its course on the cobbled ground, "Problem is, if they're not from around here, then we won't be able to catch up to them. Whoever did this was sending us a message. Perhaps a challenge. I'd suspect a trap if we follow."

"Damnit!" The woman slammed her fist against the wall, a brick split and Snake frowned at her, "Damnit all. Were we on someone else's turf? I thought you checked this Shadow."

"It's no one's turf." The shadow reminded her, his voice a loud hiss from the depths of his hood, "I know whose turf it was, and disposed of him. His rabble scattered like frightened mice."

"Find who did this." The Dandy Man rose and pulled his coat taut twice, trying to shake the grime of the alley off of his person. The stink would linger for days, he knew, unless he took care of it when he got home.

"I'll take care of it." The Shadow promised.

"We'll take care of it." Snake amended, his eyes narrowing at The Shadow. The two had somewhat of a bickering rivalry within the ranks, and found each other redundant. The only one who wasn't redundant, The Dandy Man thought, was himself.

"I'll count it up and split it between us," 'The Accountant' chimed in, "But we should get away, like The Shadow advised." He walked along the path back to where they had come from. The shadow stayed a moment longer, when he was done, the face of the corpse, his hands, his feet, and his teeth had all been obliterated, along with any record that he had even existed. It was easier to break these things than it was to hide the whole body, and they couldn't be mended to be used in post mortem identification easily.

--

It was hours later, as the first rays of the sunlight rose over the buildings that the dandy man made his way back home. He put his hat on the coat rack and his coat as well, then brushed it with a boar-bristle brush before continuing his methodical way to bed. He kept strange hours, but that was due to his business. It was best to sleep during the day and perform in the evenings. His mind was abuzz with what they had found. The man known as 'hands' as they didn't exchange true names in case they were caught, turned out to be a man that was just desperate to take care of himself and was actively engaged to a woman in the slums of the city. She probably wouldn't notice or think that he'd skipped town, being where she was and coming from that part of Kumogakure. The dandy man, however, was a musician, and had grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth. He didn't do this for the money, he did it for the thrills, and the trills.

Running a hand through his beautiful hair he picked up a tumbler of scotch he had just poured and drained the three fingers of alcohol in one smooth motion before setting it down. His house, overlooking a garden of at least three acres, he left behind to stand out on the balcony.

He screamed, the shockwaves of his Hashigaki blood echoed throughout the space, the one note, a primal one upset the waters of the three tiered real-marble fountain in the front yard and stunned the waterfowl that had taken flight as soon as he had opened the double-paned doors to the fine tiled balcony. They dropped out of the sky, paralyzed by his use of chakra and the shockwave that eminated from his voice; his jutsu that came more from his soul than it did from his body. He was tired, and defeated, and confused. He had been bested.

No one bested the dandy man.

[Exit thread/End thread]

 

[Honnou]

Sumika's WC: 1197
Honōme's WC: 3305

Approved