As he stared through his spyglass, Kakatsyuki Endo could be seen almost salivating at his prize. He was nearly leaning over the edge of the Explorer, his modestly sized galleon that was positively gargantuan for something supposedly used ‘for research’. Its staff bustled about in absolute silence, as even the slightest noise could upset their allegedly ‘saintly’ boss. Kirigakure was known for having its share of difficult to work with shinobi, and ‘Head of Research’ Endo earned a reputation for being even worse than the Mizukage when it came to making problematic people ‘disappear’.
“Fishlips!” Endo’s voice cracked out despite his ban on talking that morning. “Where is that ingrate? Give me a smoke!” Appearing from below decks, a vest-wearing shinobi darted to his side with a cigarette and a match. Endo smacked it out of his hands and into the ocean. “Bent! My cigarettes are to be bent! How many times have I gone over this?”
“It...I did bend it-”
“You bent it the wrong way!” Endo spat, then pushed the man aside as he went back to his spyglass. “Get out of my sight.”
Sitting on the horizon, shrouded by the deep fog natural to Water Country at this time of day, floated the barest outline of what looked like a hastily constructed outpost. Most notable was a sizable antenna looking device shooting upwards into the sky. As someone with far too much invested into the size of his own structures, Endo barked out some more orders to extend the length of the main mast of the ship to compensate before returning to his close watch.
Eventually he straightened out the pristine white lab coat over his shoulders and pulled on a set of thin leather gloves. “Everyone is to stay here unless I give a signal!” Endo tidied up his nearly shimmering platinum blonde hair and with a snap summoned some more of his crew to the decks. They all wore uniforms denoting them as official Kirigakure shinobi, soldiers for their homeland who commanded respect and admiration from their peers- normally. On the Explorer, anyone not named Endo might as well have been a dog, and the man himself snapped and poked a nasty finger at each one of his ‘subordinates’ as they appeared.
“This mission will break the Water Lord’s blockade, and I’m in charge, so that means nobody does anything without me telling them to! I’ll personally gut every pig who tries to take my credit. I’m only taking one soldier, and he's just going to carry my bags. The rest of you just try not to embarrass me!” He scanned the faces of his crew, and a disgusted look contorted his face into a scowl.
“Where is that man? Where is JELLOSHOT?”
A man far too tall for typical ship duty ducked his way out of the cabin and strolled out to the deck. A large sword – even in comparison to his own massive frame – was strapped on his back, tilted at an angle to help him maneuver through the tight clearances. He was in the middle of fastening the final few buttons on his padded, thick vest he wore over a relatively simple worker’s cover-alls. The high collar and simple design of the armor had become iconic, over the decades, of well-disciplined and sharp-minded swordsmen from the village. Not so iconic was the unshaven stubble on his face, his overgrown shaggy hair, and general demeanor of someone waking up with a bad hangover. It was a stark contract to Endo's pristine white getup, and the more Ren spoke the harder it was not to notice just how unshinobi-like the man was.
“Just bending these cigs, boss.” He called back. In his fingers he twirled a soft pack of imported cigarettes with a simple geometric design on the labeling. A true gentleman’s habit, it proclaimed. The type of cigarettes with almost no taste, ideal for a man of similar standing.
Gushiken Ren, in defiance of what the upper-crust shinobi of Kirigakure liked, found the brand disgusting. He preferred tobacco that didn’t hide its poison beneath a veneer of bleached flavor. Ren finished folding the pack against his palm, getting the curve just right, and then proffered them towards the head-honcho. “Measured them out myself, you like twelve degrees of deflection, am I right?”
He jerked his head back towards the deck of the ship where the stock-still shinobi still stood. “You can trust me, I know how to count to at least fifteen. Unlike some of your goons here.”
Ren kow-towed to the whims of Endo, for whatever reason, and that much was dead apparent to everyone but the titular boss himself. Nobody, except maybe Endo, was surprised- the man’s gift of gab seemed able to get him out of any trouble...in the short term. Since he was serving on the Explorer, obviously Ren hadn’t been able to slip away from the consequences of his actions this time. No one chose to work with Kakatsyuki Endo and unfortunately being a brown noser tended to be the fastest way to get free of his groping grasp.
Ren’s blatant sarcastic tone hadn’t yet seemed to catch on with Endo, however – face was split into a smile as he looked over at the distant turgid staff in the air, as only the large antenna on the floating platform was visible to the unaided eye. “Water Lord’s whole deal with the blockade was just to protect this thing, huh? Showing off his big stick, not even knowing how to swing it. Not like a real man, he’s all talk.”
For all his intelligence in the field of medicine and research, Endo proved time and time again to be relatively simple when it came to massaging his ego. Just say platitudes, agree with everything he said, and nod when he yells at you. Ren had had more engaging deployments with stray cats. The life of a shinobi sometimes meant having to suffer indignities like this. At least it was marginally better smelling than a litter box.
With a minor adjustment of the stethoscope around his neck, Endo gathered all of massive intellect for his response after taking the cigarettes.
“Obviously, duh, why even open your mouth if you’re just going to say something everybody already knows?” Still, the pleasure on the man’s face was quite clear as he lit up. “Let’s get this pony show started. Shortstuff, fetch my transportation. The rest of you, stand watch!”
A grumbling man, the shortest in the group but still a few inches taller than Endo, grumbled as he scampered off. The rest of the crew likewise scattered leaving Endo and Ren on the deck alone. Endo turned his attention to Ren and shook his head in mock disappointment. “Now, I would have much preferred a Tanshin to you, but, well, I’m smart enough for the both of us, even if your IQ is in the negative numbers.” He gestured to two suitcases, plopped down by one of the sailors who ran off before Endo could shout out another awful nickname. “You will carry these to that platform, and take out any resistance you find. Might be some MLEA mixed in there so and naturally, those shinobi are our brothers and sisters even if they do work for the Water Lord, so when it comes to using lethal force-” He smacked his fists together. “Go right ahead. I’m the best doctor in Kirigakure, I’ll just heal anyone you hurt too bad. So you can really go nuts, got it?”
“I, of course, will be following close behind.” He coughed, then tugged at his somewhat cumbersome cloak. “There is...a BOMB, on the platform. Yes. A big one. Only I can disarm it. So it’s very, very important-” He waggled one of the fingers on his small hands. “-that you not touch anything. Except the other shinobi. Touch them violently.”
He paused.
“But be nice to any ladies who happen to be over there. I can’t have you ruining my reputation.”
Miles away, a skeleton crew of shinobi wearing similar uniforms to those on Endo’s ship milled about restlessly. The vests they wore bore a slightly different color, but apart from that these ninja were cut from the same cloth as the others. The group barely numbered half a dozen and their Mist Law Enforcement Agency insignias sewn into their vests made it clear none of them were of particularly high rank. The platform was constructed of little more than bamboo and ropes like a giant raft, and every slight wave that went by shook it precariously. The only two people not wearing a shinobi uniform both wore jackets identifying them as belonging to the Water Lord's personal bodyguard force- though at that moment they seemed far more interested tinkering with the large rusty antenna jutting out of the floating barge rather than guarding any bodies.
"This is bloody stupid, innit?" Standing atop the hastily constructed crow's nest, one of the MLEA agents sneezed while keeping their eyes trained on the horizon. "Listening post my ass...the Water Lord's gone mental if he thinks this is a good use of manpower."
"He's mental already, ain't he?" The other MLEA agent tossed some crumbs down to a swarm of fish gathering at the base of the platform. "Blockading off Kirigakure's ports is pure madness. It's like he's trying to get assassinated! What could have gotten into him?”
“Shinobi politics.” The other agent grunted and tossed some stale crumbs into their mouth. “Maya is the dumb one, a village can’t fight back against an entire country...but the Mizukage’s ego is just as bad as the Water Lord. Bleh, this bread is terrible, where did you get it?”
“That’s not bread, it’s fish bait.”
Ren mused at Endo’s fussing about as he stepped over the edge of the Explorer with a suitcase in each hand. Instead of dropping down to the water, he simply walked down the hull, careful not to slip on any muck or grime on the edge of the ship, until he was in decent distance to the water. He then stepped forward, at a 90 degree angle, and fell with a near silent *plop* on the surface. The edges of his boots slapped against the top of the salty ocean and refused to sink farther, an invisible web of chakra at the bottom of his feet making him perfectly buoyant. The same web had let him climb down the ship, and from Endo’s shouting it was clear that despite being a ninja, the big boss himself never bothered to learn that trick.
Stage Two Global Ninjutsu
Kinobori/Kabenobori no Jutsu (Tree Walking / Wall Walking Technique)
Requirements: Power 5, Control 4, Reserves 4
Description: By focusing chakra into the feet and keeping it balanced, the user can walk up against vertical objects and cling to its surface. This technique is passive and does not require any jutsu usages.
Stage Three: The user may walk across water or other liquids as though they were solid surfaces.
It had taken him months to master wall walking. And many more to get the hang of walking on water – but now it all felt second hand, reflexive and simple. Civilian children said as easy as riding a bike – many shinobi said as easy as scaling a wall. It drained no chakra once mastered and felt like learning to walk all over again but at the end of the day, nothing quite beat the feeling of being able to stomp your boots where nobody else could dare to tread.
Ren glanced back up at the ship, and Endo’s silhouette, and flashed a smile. The man was shouting something – likely that he shouldn’t be getting the suitcases wet – but it was drowned out by the sound of the ship bobbing in the water. With a small ripple, he took off running, leaving small disturbances in the seawater with each step. The fog provided the perfect cover and the splashing of the waves meant his tiny splashing footsteps wouldn’t be heard at all. His lungs held in a breath, reflexively, as he approached the rig, trying his best to peer through the mist to see any on-lookers. He couldn’t see anyone, so he wagered, they couldn’t see him.
The hastily constructed little rig was rife with openings and the small on-board crew seemed more preoccupied looking for something the size of a ship than the size of a person. Ren identified a platform floating on the surface of the water tied to one of the support braces for the watch tower as a perfect landing spot. He sighed as he tied Endo’s suitcases together with a string from the tool kit on his thigh, and then lashed that to the side of the rigging after approaching when the two lookouts got distracted by a distant seagull. High tide peaked a few hours ago, and the water wouldn’t be rising again for at least half a dozen hours. If Endo couldn’t make it over here in time for that, well…
It meant more ego massaging would be necessary. Ren shuddered at the thought.
With a shake of his head he started his ascent up the rigging, silently climbing by shifting his weight with the washing of the waves and using the chakra-web on his feet to maintain balance. Each time the rig creaked and groaned, he flung himself up a few more feet.
Soon, he was close enough to hear the muffled grumblings of the crew up above.
A frown covered his unshaven face, quickly followed by a focused furrowed grimace. Cutting down other Kirigakure trained shinobi, ones who might have gone to the same Academy as him, wasn’t a common occurrence. The standoff between Kirigakure and the Water Lord only grew more dire by the day. Kirigakure controlled Water Country, but the Water Lord controlled the oceans, and their alliance had always been fraught with peril. The Water Lord’s own branch of ninja, the MLEA, were drafted right out of the ranks of Kirigakure. Ren might have been on a first name basis with some of them!
Or, well, an alternate version of Ren. This version of Ren wasn’t really friends with anyone, and after the fleeting guilt passed, the thrill of getting to go head to head with the ‘police’ of Water Country was too overwhelming to ignore. A test of his stealth, his sword, his skill, plied against others who had all the best training in the world to beat him. Ren’s hand reached back to the hilt of his sword, and he focused his breath one more time.
Some distance away and still on his ship, Endo delicately bounced a bent cigarette on his lips. “Did you know,” Endo wiped some dirt out from under his fingernails with a kunai while one of his underlings held the spyglass up to his eye so he could watch the show. “That nitroglycerine is used in medicine to treat anal fissures? It’s kind of like that saying, ‘the dosage makes the poison’, it's funny. It's a funny joke, you should laugh. Oh, no, I forgot, you’re a dumbass so you wouldn't get it. Anyway, watch this.”
The mist parted as if a fist from an angry god erupted out of the sea and completely engulfed the rig. The concussive shockwave of the explosion was perfectly visible in the fog, rippling outwards with almost perfect, surgical, spherical precision. The mist ate a significant chunk of the sound as well, making the deep bowel shaking rumble mildly pleasant by the time it reached Endo’s ears. He smiled, the rows of his unnaturally white and small teeth somehow gleaming despite the lack of sunlight. Stealthy shinobi assassination work had its charms, but nothing quite got a rise out of Endo like a big boom.
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After a few minutes to let the falling pieces of bamboo settle (and to churn through a pack of cigarettes), Endo made his move. His hands knitted together, weaving together the chakra before pressing it deep into his eyes. When he removed his globes, both of Endo’s eyes took on a black hue, and the ocean lit up with the sight of corpses.
Kinjutsu: Shibito Tankyuu - Forbidden Technique: Corpse Search (Shiyrote)
Requirements: Intelligence 4, Willpower 4
Description: A hand is pressed against the eyes, causing their sclera to turn black for the duration of this technique. While active, dead bodies and body parts will begin to glow to the user, frequently in colors that relate to their cause of death. They will also always see a glowing, wispy trail leading to the nearest mostly intact body, which can be anywhere for up to a mile. The medic’s allies will also glow more depending on their closeness to death- healthy individuals look no different, with less healthy individuals growing brighter the closer to death they become. Hostile targets will only glow red when they are very close to death, and otherwise look normal.
Finding the number of dismembered limbs agreeable, Endo finally deigned to enter the water. He floated towards the remains of the platform, not by walking, but rather more like a leaf gliding across a pond. He surveyed the damage with the look of a satisfied child who had just kicked over someone’s sand castle.
The Water Lord’s platform barely managed to stay intact, and only seemed to hold on by the mercy of the metal antenna that still stood tall. Naturally that was all within Endo’s calculations, and with quite a smug look he stepped off his ‘raft’ and onto a piece of the platform that hadn’t completely shattered. He barely made a ripple as his nice black dress shoes landed on the reinforced girders of the platform.
“Oh?” Endo turned briefly to a body he just noticed, which was grasping on for dear life at the base of the tower. Somehow they were pushing themselves upwards- likely some feeble use of the water walking technique. He leaned over the unlucky soul with an inquisitive look. “I could have sworn you were a corpse a few seconds ago. Willed yourself back to life, huh?”
The shinobi, completely unidentifiable, just gasped and clawed at whatever might get them up and out of the water. Endo clucked his tongue and pulled out a cigarette. “Poor thing. Blood coming out of every orifice, you can’t even see or hear me, can you?” He took a drag and blew out some smoke. “I could heal you, though. Yeah, I definitely could. Then you’d come to me. ‘Oh, Mister Endo! Let me join your team! I’ll be loyal forever! Yeah. Heard it before.” He finished his cigarette and tossed it on the struggling body. Then he put it out with his heel, dunking the survivor under the water.
“You little shit! You think you’re better than me, huh? Coming back to life without needing any medical assistance- fucker! I bet you think you’re hot shit because you can walk on water like a fucking genin! Well, fuck you! F-u-c-k-y-o-u!” After a few more stomps, and satisfied that the body wouldn’t be coming back up again, he went for another cigarette. Endo’s eyes glanced up the tower, looking for the easiest way up it. Something danced out of the corner of his vision and his self-satisfied smile evaporated.
A crackle of electricity danced around the tip of the steel antenna, arcing and sparking like loose wires had made contact with the steel frame. After a few seconds, Gushiken Ren appeared, gripping the edge of the pole with one hand and the other holding his oversized sword against his back. Tendrils of electricity danced around his body, popping and sizzling, until it faded away. Ren was soaking wet, his face bruised, and his lips split into a shark-toothed grimace.
Raiton: Denki no Henkan (Lightning Release: Electrical Transformation)
Requirements: Power 10, Control 10, Intelligence 8
Denki no Henkan allows the user to momentarily abandon their physical form to become electricity. They can move along conductive surfaces at a rate equal to their speed, even when such a route would not normally attract electricity, making light sparks and emitting a smell of ozone that can tip off that something is off. The user remains aware of the area around them within five feet, even while transformed and can leap to any metal object they can sense and have a clear shot too. Some shinobi have been known to use this as a method to trace power lines or move secretly by affixing themselves to a metal object in order to avoid suspicion. They can be forced out by violence or by being drenched in water.
No bomb, Ren mused to himself. Came from below the rig...if I didn't know that specific raiton, I wouldn’t have made it. Gods bless that old drunk who taught it to me.
He scanned down the pole and saw a familiar silhouette, white coat standing out like a cut in the grime and gray of the misty ocean. A suspicious frown pulled at Ren’s lips and threw a wet blanket on his thrill at having avoided the blast. Endo certainly didn’t look happy to see him, either.
With one hand on the pole, and the other on his sword, Ren slid back down to what remained of the rig’s structure – throttling his descent by careful manipulation of his wall-walking technique. He rested with one foot against the pole and the other on a twisted reinforcing bar, looking down at Endo.
“They musta detonated that bomb!” He shouted, though it took a few seconds for him to pull back his excitement and take on a more insincere tone. “Fools took themselves out. I guess that’s...mission complete, yeah?”
Ren’s contempt was clear enough despite his words. Endo, Kirigakure’s self proclaimed ‘smartest man alive’, was known to collect corpses of all kinds. Darker rumors swirled that Endo sent people on suicide missions just to generate more corpses – or just to get rid of someone he didn’t particularly like. Kissing ass hadn’t seemed to work, apparently, though it wasn’t as though Ren had been trying particularly hard to make it believable.
Rem lowered his stance to a crouch and held up his fingers gripping the hilt of his sword in a wave. “Doubt your luggage survived though. Damn shame.”
Not much an expression graced Endo’s face as Ren spoke down to him. His most loyal sycophants, of course, would have noticed the slight way he inhaled differently on his cigarette, or the exact distance his hand traveled when he waved it upwards at the chuunin. “I did warn you, Jelloshot. But, your fecklessness too was accounted for in my plan. Who else but you could have survived?”
He glanced down at the water where the bubbles from the submerged body finally stopped rising to the surface, then returned his attention to Ren.
“Our job- my job, that is- isn’t quite finished. I will be inspecting this antenna they tried so hard to protect. Tch!” He shook his head as he surveyed the damage. “To think the Water Lord would do this to his own soldiers. How shameful. Anyway.”
Without much warning, Endo approached the antenna and then pried a panel on its side loose with his bare hands. The man’s skinny arms and delicate fingers were deceptively strong as he muscled open a junction box just inside the mostly hollow antenna. “As long as you’re still intact, why don’t you round up any survivors? It would be dreadful, dreadful, if you got hurt because you carelessly allowed a counter attack. Come on, now, chop chop. We haven’t got all day. Try to be a bit more attentive this time.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Ren called out, nose upturned. He spat, but Endo didn’t notice or pretended not to. Then Ren looked over his shoulder, found a decent spot, and leapt from his high perch. He wasn’t worried about any survivors. He was more worried what Endo might pull if he let the man get too far out of his sight.
As insufferable as Endo could be the man did have one point, and letting any survivors...survive would cause more complications than needed. Cleaning up the aftermath was far more grisly work, though. Delivering coup de grace executions to the fallen was one of the unfortunate realities shinobi didn’t tend to record in the hero scrolls. Ren pulled up a body by the hair, heard it gurgle, and thrust his kunai deep into the throat, tearing it clean open. Blood spilled freely and the signs of life fell quiet. It was hard to tell, at least for someone with no real medical training, what was a death gasp and what was a dying man’s last breath. . .and either way, ending them quickly was a mercy.
Even if they could be patched back together, revived – they’d have no shinobi career before them. Without a family to care for them, they’d just end up starving on the streets. There was no love for disabled warriors. Not in Kirigakure, anyway – and certainly not among the ranks of the MLEA. The best you could hope for was that – any family you did have – would get your next paycheck before they got cut off entirely.
“Sorry, mate.” Ren murmured as he dropped the now limp body. Every intact body he came across he repeated the action, regardless of whether any life remained in the flesh or not. Too many tricks in the shinobi’s toolkit let them fake death. Even the old pros would frequently attack dead bodies just to be sure there wasn’t any chance for a surprise. When he was done, fresh blood was staining his forearm and most of his vest. He found a spot free from the gore and smell of burning hair and did his best to wash his hands with the briny salt water from beneath the rig. He was standing on a precarious section that wasn’t much more than a plank, while the splinters and framework of the rig rose up around him. The water was getting more choppy, he noticed. Not a good sign for the trip back.
He reached into his shinobi pack and carefully pulled out a small lump wrapped in a cloth – a simple bar of soap, and scrubbed his hands as clean as he could get them. Then, he slumped down onto his rear, let both legs rest under the surface of the water, and fished his own bent cigarette from the pack hidden away underneath his vest.
Quitting smoking was one of his New Year's resolutions, but some days…
He lit the cigarette with a small rectangular lighter, then stuffed the lighter and the bar of soap and washcloth back into his hip mounted pouch. His sword’s dark steel didn’t reflect any of the sun’s mist shrouded light, but the warm red bead of the tip of his cigarette cast an odd amber glow against it.
After a long drag, he rested his forehead against his palm, arm propped against his knee. It was weird, right? Endo had claimed they were there to dispatch the MLEA, remove a bomb. Then a bomb did go off – from below the rig, even, where Ren had first performed his search – and Endo was still here poking around.
Maybe this was spec-ops or a highly classified job Ren didn't have the clearance for? But the explosion... and Endo wasn’t fussed about his cases being gone.
Paranoia. Wasn’t it just paranoia? Paranoid shinobi stayed alive, but too much could drive away friends and allies. Suicide missions were no stranger to Ren, whose frequent punishments sent got him assigned to dangerous jobs, but in his life Kirigakure had never openly tried to get him killed. He flicked the half-smoked cigarette out to the ocean, where it sizzled and disappeared. Then, he slowly started climbing up the rig, back towards the pole that Endo was so enraptured with. There was only one way to really know for sure - and the asshole loved to narrate to himself.
His body slowly melted away, until the only evidence of Ren was a slick running water sliding along the skeleton structure.
Name: Mizutamari no Jutsu (Water Puddle Technique)
Requirements: Intelligence 5, Tactics 4, Willpower 4
Description: The user melts into a goo-like puddle of water roughly the same size as their body. From the outside the puddle looks just like water. While in this form the user can only see what images are reflected in the puddle's surface. If someone steps into the puddle, the user may suddenly 'boil' up to life, splashing hot water and causing small burns. If the puddle is attacked the user reverts back to normal and takes the full damage of the attack. The puddle may move at Level 1 Speed on dry land, or at normal Speed levels in larger bodies of water. This technique cannot be used to travel through any gaps the user normally couldn't squeeze though.
Each of Endo’s swift and precise movements looked not unlike that of a surgeon. The bowels of the antenna stood no chance as he pulled out wires and circuits with a proficient ease. Endo’s fluid movements didn’t look random or like guesswork. Every jerk and tug and cut was familiar, practiced. Endo knew exactly what he was doing.
His eyes lit up as he pried something from deep within, grunting slightly as he stood on his tiptoes to reach far enough to pry it loose. One big grunt was all it took to free his prize and he stumbled pack as it popped out. “What simpletons!” Endo wheezed to himself as he dusted off a small, blocky device in his hands, resembling a metallic toilet paper roll. One wire still tethered it to the antenna. “Didn’t even change the voltage...lucky me! Are you recording this, dimwits?” Another powerful yank and the strange object’s tie to the antenna snapped apart. It quickly disappeared into the voluminous pockets of Endo’s lab coat as he furiously fiddled with the radio plugged into his ear.
“Jelloshot!” A shout ripped from his throat as he spun around. “What on earth is taking you so long? You better not be looting any corpses!”
Ren’s puddle boiled and sizzled as he appeared from it, rising out of it slowly as the liquid reconstituted itself into a person once again. He had one hand swept over his chest, head slightly bowed as he appeared, although the entire salute felt like it had an arrogant sarcasm to it.
As the last of the water boiled away at his feet, he took a step forward. One of the problems with the water puddle technique was that you could only see what was directly reflected in the puddle’s surface. So he hadn’t gotten a good look at whatever it was Endo had just pocketed, but Ren wasn’t sure it would matter if he saw what it was or not.
What it was was irrelevant. What Endo was doing however…
“Taking a prize from your venture, Kakatsyuki?” He tilted his head back to look down at the man from across his nose. “Need to make sure I got the right story. Maya-san sure does love to dress me down, I wanna make sure I give her the right bits when I’m getting yelled at for...”
He extended his arm out from his salute to gesture widely at the ruined rig. “Well, all this.”
“You don’t worry your little chuunin head about it.” Endo patted his chest with pride. “You wouldn’t remember anything I told you anyway. Way too...high level. Even if you were sober you wouldn't get it.” He glanced out towards the sea, then began twisting something in his ear. “I’ll call my Explorer in. Naturally, when we are back on board, I expect you to cooperate with a routine physical. I can tell from here (since I’m the best medical shinobi to ever exist in Kirigakure) that you took some hefty internal damage from that blast. No, no! Don’t even try it.” He stuck his nose up. “Everyone says they feel fine, but that’s because the shock hasn’t hit you yet. Trust me. I’m the expert.”
“The expert, huh? So you’re the one to blame for all this?”
Despite how detached and bored the voice coming from above sounded, Endo immediately puckered upon hearing it. Once again his eyes were thrown skyward, towards the very tip of the antenna. There, sitting squat upon its narrow top, was an older looking and shirtless gentleman. His clothes were remarkably simple, with just shorts and a pair of sandals, with nothing more than a decorative tattoo across his chest to identify him. Endo’s breaths got shorter again.
“Ah, I anticipated this. Very unsurprising. One of the Water Lord’s lapdogs.”
The man shrugged after a long pause, stretching out each of his fingers as he stared downwards. “Gonna have to ask you to return that detonator you just took, doctor. I can look past all those other folks you killed, so let’s just call it a fair trade, huh?”
“Hmph!” Endo slowly sidled away, inching closer to Ren as he did so. “You’re outnumbered, Konkaji Senmitsu. I’ve figured out the Water Lord’s plan, too. Everything is going to be undone by the brilliant Director of Research Kakatsyuki Endo!”
Then, when he got close enough to Ren, he whispered in an infuriated tone. "Jelloshot, you imbecile! You took too long! Someone must have called for help, this is all your fault!”
The man identified as Konkaji Senmitsu sniffed, then yawned. “I don’t mind, folks. Take your time.” With a grunt he stood up and stretched. “I already dealt with your ship and crew, anyway, so you got nowhere else to go.”
“You- huh?” Endo squinted, as if he hadn’t heard right. Upon closer inspection, the Konkaji wasn't exactly in pristine condition. Like Ren, some of the man’s tattooed skin was coated in a liquid red sheen.
The Kirigakure-style Head-chopping Cleaver sang as it shifted through the air, a ringing metallic sound as it was brought to bear, pointed up at the top of the pole. Gushiken Ren, unlike Endo, advanced. He held the blade by the hilt guard – or what passed for a hilt guard on such a massive sword – and rested his forearm on the handle. All the force of the massive blade must have been eating directly into his limb but if it bothered him, he didn’t show it.
His face was split into a shark-toothed grin, eyes wide.
“Greeted by the goddamned Flame himself.”
It was as if Endo wasn’t even there. Ren spread out his feet to better his stance, and then raised his right arm up to grab the handle of the blade.
“You wouldn’t remember me, but I’m the man who’s gonna kill ya. Don’t make any mistake about it. The name’s Gushiken Ren. Memorize it for the few minutes you're left standing!”
There was no waver in his eyes – but Ren knew full well at this point in time, taking on the Flame was suicide. Worse than suicide, because Endo might be able to pick up the pieces and claim the kill for himself. As much as it stabbed at his pride, he growled over to Endo.
“You’re the jounin – what’s the fucking plan?”