The criminal

[Suzuri]

“Your shadow is my shadow; your path is now my path. I call upon your ancestors,” she slapped her hands, “-come!- and tell them. Listen to the river, wise spirits, and let your anger wash away in it. Guide him to a heaven of his choosing, and kindly watch over him. Do not resent an unfinished story. For I will carry his story with me, on my shoulders, for the rest of my life.” The girl’s voice lowered. “Forgive a fugitive for not being able to send you off according to your culture. I will carry on your story, so you can go in peace.”

Her palm moved to close the glassy eyes reflecting the sky. The dead boy smiled at her with a lopsided smile. She was at his side, with her palms connected in a praying gesture, unfeeling to the stones burying in her knees. He was lying in front of her, still radiating the warmth of life. But his heart had stopped beating. The river murmured near them, the sun shone above, but only for Suzuri. A forehead protector glistened around the boy’s neck, engraved with a twirl with a triangle on the side. To its side, there was a small bunch of white wildflowers, gathered from the river edge. They smelled like hay, reminding Suzuri of home and the hay barn that she used to read books in. Near his hand, was the kunai that he had thrown after her, still rusty with her blood.

Unconsciously she reached out for the boy’s hand, massaging his fingers as if to sustain his pulse. She retreated, as if burnt by her impiety, and frowned. When she’d left her grandparents’ home, she had not imagined that she would ever kill someone. She hadn’t imagined that she would kill someone younger than her, someone with their whole life ahead of them. There were no tears streaking down Suzuri’s cheeks, but her heart ached. Something inside her shouted that she should hide the body, disfigure it with concentrated turpentine in hopes that a whole village of ninjas would somehow miss it. At the very least, the rational brain nodule argued, she should scram before any more came after her, with dogs that could follow her smell and countless ways of killing in their pockets. But Suzuri was tired. Not physically, but mentally, she was exhausted by being hunted, by murder, by not understanding what was going on. The up-and-down motion of her breathing felt mechanical, jarring. To rise to her feet seemed beyond her.

‘One more minute’, she kept telling herself. ‘Just let me catch my breath.’

‘One more minute, please.’

Rank As considered necessary. D/C
From Hideaki Kakiemon, danshaku (baron) of Fire Country
Requesting A thief and con artist has conned the baron’s elderly mother, Chouko Kakiemon, into trusting her. Unsatisfied with a court life, this vile creature has then strangled the baroness and made off with a large, precious diamond. We wish her brought to an end immediately, and the gem recovered. She has been known to travel under the name of Suzuri Rinrin, selling stolen art under the guise of a travelling painter. The woman appears to be in her late teens, and can be recognized by her foreign hairdo involving stone beads and feathers. Attacking from afar is most recommended, as Suzuri seems to be dangerously skilled in close-range genjutsu.

[Jinan B]

Katsurama couldn't help but bite into his lip when he saw what had already happened. Not even an hour after Hideyoshi had managed to get away from the rest of the team, he was dead. How could I have let this happen? The boy had abandoned Katsurama and the other two genin during the night, leaving to find their target during his watch. Not only had he left the rest of the team at risk, as they slept without a single guard, but he had arrogantly placed himself in harm's way.

And now look what happened.

Once he had woken up, he had demanded that the rest of the team stay behind while he went after Hideyoshi, and so it was that he was alone as he witnessed the girl speak to his corpse. The girl who had so clearly killed the fool. But was it an act of murder, or simply self defense? Considering what the Shinobi had already down prior to his death, Katsurama would have assumed that it was the latter.

Of course, they had been tasked to kill the girl, and so he would not have expected anything else from the boy other than an immediate attack. If only he had waited for the rest of us... It was still strange, considering everything else that the girl had supposedly done, to see her just... Lying there as if she was just trying to sleep next to the corpse of a person that she'd killed. Why would a cruel and brutal con-women and murderer not know better than this? There is more to this than I'm aware, it seems.

That made up his mind for him, as he began to reach for his bow. He crouched in the undergrowth a good 40 meters away from the girl, hopefully far enough to avoid her notice, but still close enough that he could close the distance if he so wished, and close enough to put an arrow in her if he needed to. He would've liked to get closer, but he knew that the risk of being caught would become far too great. Some day soon, he knew, he would have to teach himself to hide more effectively.

Two arrows made their way out of his quiver as he prepared himself for what was to come. The first he thrust into the ground in front of him, ready to draw with as little time lost as possible. The second found itself among the Senju's drawstring. 1 for a warning, the second goes in her leg if she tries to fight. He had no doubt that he'd be able to take care of the girl in a battle, it was his genin that had been put up for the task after all, not him, but after what had already happened he wasn't about to allow them to fight the girl next to Hideyoshi's cooling corpse. More than that, however, was that he had no desire to see her dead by any of their hand's. There was something odd about the whole situation, and Katsurama was determined to see that the girl was given some form of trial.

If the trial ended in her death, then his mission would be fulfilled regardless.

He lifted his bow his bow, and fired the first shot. The arrow flew into a tree just above the girl, if she wasn't aware of his presence already, she sure as hell would be now.

"Rinrin, Suzuri. You have been accused of the murder of an innocent women, as well as that of the Genin Hideyoshi. Surrender now, and you will receive a fair trial to determine your guilt. Resist, and you will be captured regardless."

He stood, and drew the other arrow to his ear, ready to fire should he need to.

"You have 5 seconds to comply."

[Suzuri]

You are always within three feet of a ninja. Most of the times, they just don’t bother being seen.

Or, wait, is that spiders?

Suzuri’s mouth went dry. Between her shoulder-blades, she felt a sour clump of flesh that the arrow would pierce next. Waves of heat and chills rippled across her skin. She glared at the lopsided smile of the lifeless boy. Milliseconds crawled on, slowly, too slowly. Like a victim of torture that had been systematically broken down, Suzuri found that it was the peaceful breaks that made her soul scream. What point was there in prolonging this indignity?! The silence seemed to go on forever. Her shoulders were frozen. She didn’t dare flinch, or the arrow might miss. Then, she wouldn’t die immediately. The possibility of forcing herself through unnecessary pain in someone else’s power, of boots striking at her face and stomach as she lay powerless, of dying meaning choking on her own vomit, made the girl tremble. She found herself laughing before the unseen ninja even finished speaking, a hiccup-y sort of noise that bumped between her throat and nose. Yet even that stimulus was not enough to fight off the silence. Time was slow, slow, slow. It was the sort of boredom that strangled one with their own guts.

To fight off the madness, Suzuri resolved to live.

With her hands still in prayer, her numb fingers shifted. She breathed in the river of light that trickled upwards through her soles. Her chakra. One moment she fidgeted, her body hiding her gestures from the pursuing ninja.

The next moment she found herself meters away, stumbling as the ground seemed to roll under her feet. A smooth river boulder popped up in her place. And then she moved again, further upstream. A moss-covered boulder had replaced her body, the energy of moving it through time without the intervening space teleporting her in its stead.

Suzuri curled up between the roots of a weeping willow, pressing a hand on her chest. Her pulse drummed in her temples. Using the Replacement Technique twice in sequence made her chakra writhe in protest. She forced herself to breathe, and do so slowly, the feeling of suffocation balanced by the dread of being hunted. Her body had been reduced to its most basic instincts.

She would fight until the end, because waiting for her demise was unbearably boring.

[Jinan B]

1

The girl had frozen, trying to look for a way out perhaps, or maybe she was simply that surprised at the recent turn of events. She must have thought that she was safe, Hideyoshi was dead, she was not. Had she been foolish enough to believe that there were joined other Shinobi coming after her? No, that just seemed unlikely. Someone capable of killing a genin would be smarter than that.

Or perhaps she wasn't? The more Katsu looked at the situation, the more he began to realize that there was something out of place. A ruthless assassin who had killed an old women in her bed for the sake of her valuables wouldn't offer her aggressor any kind of funeral would she? No, there was another piece in play here behind the scenes, and the Senju had to know who it was

2

The other possibility could not be discounted, however. The possibility that the girl was trying to find her way out of the situation that she found herself in. Any second now she would try and make a run for it, or charge at Katsu himself in an attempt to kill the threat on her freedom. She would fail of course, the Senju could hardly imagine a girl like this troubling him.

3

The girl remained silent, still unmoving, her plan not yet in place. Would she surrender to the Senju, and allow him to fulfill his mission without any trouble, or was the wait simply an attempt to lower Katsu's guard. She was said to be a master manipulater, perhaps she had even anticipated the man's thought process, and was waiting for the most opportune moment to strike. The Shinobi hand tightened around his bowstring, he refused to allow himself to be taken unawares.

4

There! It was a faint hint of movement perhaps, but it was movement all the same. The girl had turned that moment into the second one her attack, but what was the attack. The critical second taken as Katsu was enough for him to hesitate where otherwise he would have fired. The girl had timed her moment perfectly, she had had the Senju too caught up in his thoughts, and when the arrow let fly it took a second longer than it might have taken otherwise

5!

The arrow struck a rock where moments before there had been a girl. Shit! it seemed as if the Senju quarry had access to the arts of ninjutsu, but at the same time it looked as if she were running from him. and using only the most basic of techniques as well...

A slight grin lit up the Shinobi's face as he slung his bow over his shoulder. The girl was most definitely out of her depth, and that meant that it would be an easy matter to find her. He closed his eyes, sending his senses out in an attempt to find the girl. Before long he opened them again.

She wasn't far after all.

Jutsu UsedShow

Sensory Style • Broad Sense
B-Rank Ninjutsu
Prerequisites: *[Beyond Senses], Ninjutsu/Control/Instinct stats of 20
This jutsu is an extension of [Beyond Senses]. With this jutsu initiated, a sensor can focus on individual chakra signatures to get a precise idea of where their opponents are at up to 25 yards. A general sense of the direction and number of chakra sources can be determined at about 50 yards. It should be noted that this jutsu requires intense concentration; often making the user shut their eyes so they can focus on the jutsu solely. Even with high levels of Chakra Control and Instinct, this jutsu can be mentally taxing as it requires the user to sort through the individual chakra sources in the sensor’s range.

[Suzuri]

There was no way out.

She had hunted before. She knew how to slip in the mind of the prey, trace its steps before they happened. Now she forced herself into the mind of the predator. Forced her breathing to go quiet, so she could hear her enemy. Turned her ear to the ground, to better catch the sounds carried by the cool air over the water. There were not many hiding places along the stream. The willow shielding her would be one of the first to be checked out – she would have to strike then.

All while he knew that. And she knew that he knew. That was the sort of game they were playing.

‘I don’t feel well.’

The girl reached for her bolas, and tried to imagine the best angle to aim it at. She looked down at her hands. They were trembling. She couldn’t do this anymore. Shinobi ran fast, Suzuri knew – fast enough that even stumbling on a measly cord might rasp them along the ground with enough force to break their neck. It didn’t matter to the girl how unlikely that was. She couldn’t stand to keep climbing atop a mountain of corpses.

Yet part of her shouted that she didn’t want to die.

Therefore, when the shinobi arrived at the tree, what he would find was a corpse. Motionless, breathless, bloodied, the body of his student rested with its back against the trunk. In a maddening instant, the body would stand up and start running towards him, all while throwing an implement made of three cords and weights – a bolas – far to the side.

But just as Suzuri would sharply change direction, her disguise melting away, so would the bolas glance off a rock and head towards wrapping itself around the shinobi’s legs.

She would be caught soon, of course. Their levels were too vastly different.

At that point, she would have no weapons left but words. But the expression on Suzuri’s face could still spark kindling.

“How much did they pay you?” She spoke, tilting her head.

SpoilerShow

Techniques used:

b]*[Basic Jutsu • Transformation Technique][/b]
E-Ranked Ninjutsu
After completing the needed handseals, the user of this technique will be able to alter their physical appearance to match that of another person. By consistently emitting chakra throughout their body, the user is able to keep their appearance adjusted at the cost of their stamina draining over time. As this technique is quite strenuous to uphold, experienced shinobi may see more clearly through this delusive disguise. This technique lasts for a number of posts equal to that of the user's stamina.

[Capture Style • Ricochet Shot]
C-Rank Taijutsu Maneuver
By launching their throw at the proper angle the practitioner is capable of bouncing their projectile off solid surfaces without losing accuracy. Any surface they bounce off causes the projectile to lose ⅕ of its impact strength and soft or uneven surfaces are impossible to bounce off. Normally unusable for lasso.