Deep within the hidden brush of many trees that make up a seemingly unnamed forest in the ninja world, there is a fairly large sized estate that sits alone several miles from the nearest town. Known to the nearby town as belonging to an esteemed gentleman, Tatsuhara Tsukisho, who lost his wife several years ago in a bandit raid on their carriage, they tend to bring food and clothes for the children that Mr. Tsukisho takes into his home to care for as his own... Those without any unique abilities play around the estate day after day, in the care of Ms. Shizu. Ms. Shizu is someone who shares no relation to Mr. Tsukisho. She is the caretaker for the children while Mr. Tsukisho spends time in his study. It is said that Mr. Tsukisho keeps his estate and his caretaker paid through his import and export trading between various merchants.
Little do they actually know that underneath such a wondrously designed estate is a horrible secret that would cause the townspeople to come against Mr. Tsukisho in force and born him and his possessions to the ground. That deep within the secret passageway that leads far underground is a facility for horrible experiments that are practiced as often as possible. Those with abilities in the ninja world are collected, experimented on and dissected for one single purpose. A purpose to resurrect his deceased wife.
Unfortunately for Mr. Tsukisho, he was found by a young ninja from a small encampment. The break in, during the night, lead to a reveal of the secret passageway to the facility and into the storage cages for his experiments and his prisoners. The ninja, having freed all of the prisoners, was attacked by Mr. Tsukisho's most resilient one: Masami Junsei. She killed her rescuer and Mr. Tsukisho which allowed her to take over the various things the esteemed gentleman had been able to acquire over the years.
Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2020 11:47 am
Cut. Tear. Sew. Each movement was sloppy and rugged, but with each mistake the young girl became better at her task. As the knife moved one way and the needle took the other, the visual appearance of what she had mentally envisioned was coming to fruition. It took several hours to complete the task and there was times that she needed to stop and move things out of her way so that she could rest, but once all was said and done she felt proud of herself. Using both hands, she finalized the completed task and pulled to secure her new boots onto her feet. The outfit that she had used so much time to create looked great in the mirror stained with blood. It was neither a reminder of her family nor of the prison she had been held within.
Masami took a step over the dead bodies of her rescuer and captor to move to the staircase. However, she had another idea. She moved back over the body of Tsukisho and carried him up the stairs with her. She'd always assumed there was someone else in the area due to the freshness of the clothes the scientist wore and the food he always brought with him. She'd use the body as a shield for her words. As she strode up the stairs, she made each movement quietly and without hesitation. At the top of the stairs, she opened the door which actually was a bookcase. This lead into a study type room with a number of books that she couldn't even begin to count at the moment. Masami took several more steps and watched as the bookcase moved back into a closed position on its own and a single item on the shelf moved back into place. She took note of such things.
Moving over to the armchair in the corner of the room, where an open book was sprawled out over one arm, Masami moved the dead body over to it and sat it up just right. She knocked the book in the floor with Mr. Tsukisho's own hand, then moved herself over to a portion of the shelves, took several books down, opened a few of them and made it look like she had been sitting near him while studying materials. She glanced over a few pages and then screamed.
Within moments, an older woman came sprinting into the room after bursting the door wide open. "Who are you?!" she shouted out. Masami, who was fighting fake tears in her eyes while grabbing the shirt of the dead man and pushing her face into his chest, raised up for a moment and spoke out in hast. "I'm his daughter! Help me! He grabbed his chest and now he's not breathing..!" The older woman gasped and ran over to help, but he was already gone. The fire from the hearth, still warming his body, hide the details of his earlier demise while Masami was continuing her game of pretend. It wasn't long before more children started to appear at the doorway and the young hyuuga became concerned with who they were. She ignored the fact for the moment, but the direction of her eyes put the older woman on alert and she moved to the doorway to stop the children from looking on at the situation. "I'll call a doctor right away, ma'am!" she called out to Masami as she closed the door behind her.
'This was it', she thought to herself. I've managed to succeed at stage one. I'll have to keep playing this part from now on... she continued to process her thoughts as stages until it came to her to check and make sure Mr. Tsukisho was truly dead. It took only a moment for her to concentration her chakra to the point of being able to diagnose the man's heart. There did not appear to be any external damage to his heart, nor his body. The hyuuga's gentle fist was quite unique in that regard. She had not closed any of his chakra points, she had merely used a large amount of chakra to strike his heart. No doubt that was what stopped his heart. It was like electricity stopping it, but much more effective. It could have even been considered a technique for assassination. Masami would quickly try to recall that feeling to herself.
Before she realized, her eyes still closed, the older woman burst through the door with several people, dressed in strange uniforms. She pointed at Masami and they quickly surrounded her, grabbed her arms and holding her down on her knees. "What are you doing?! Save my father!" she shouted loudly. The older woman stepped forward and shouted back towards her. "Mr. Tsukisho has no children, you fiend! Take her away!" Masami then began to cry stopped resisting. "Of course he didn't..." she began as she recounted all the stories he told her while she cut and sliced her body to test theory after theory. "He couldn't tell anyone. His wife... My mother... She died in a horrific accident. But she was pregnant and due in only a few days. He did... terrible things to save me... But he still saved me and gave me a name that he had only read about in books. Masami was the name my mother wished for me... Junsei was the family name given to people who survived terrible accidents... Who were covered in scars... You can look over my body... You'll see the truth for yourself..."
She waited for a moment and then the older woman grew angry, believing things to be lies. She stepped forward and ripped Masami's shirt. Scars. There had been so many on her body that the woman was unable to even count. Some even looked fresh. "Why are some of these scars red and stitched up?!" she yelled out. Masami couldn't help but let tears stream from her eyes. "Two days ago... He tried to save my life... My heart was failing and he fixed it... He did everything for me, my whole life... But I couldn't even save him... from a single heart attack..." She continued to weep and the guards even let her go. Some of them even cried. Masami would continue her show. She would not let up for a single moment. [71]
The older woman didn't know what to do. She wasn't in tears, but she was choked up over the situation. Masami believed it more to be that Tsukisho was dead than the part about her being his true daughter. But for the time being, she placed Masami under surveillance by the town guard. She wouldn't be allowed to stay in the home until they could do something about her story. Masami was upset in her tone, and tear were still running down her face, but she nodded her head softly. "I don't want... what my father did for me... to be for nothing... I will agree to be taken somewhere else right now, but I cannot be gone from this house for too long." Immediately, the older woman demanded an explanation on the matter. Masami took a moment and dried as many tears as she could upon her face. "No one else knows, so please don't spread this news... But my father was once a very skilled shinobi for the land of water... It was a long time ago, but he was one of the most gifted in a specific kind of ninjutsu that gave him the ability to transfer chakra with seals. I have one on my body, as does this house. If I am too far away from the house, that my father sealed his chakra into, since the day he first fixed my body, I will die." She began to cry again and the guards stopped taking her away. They all asked her how long it would take for her to die and she shrugged her shoulders. "I've never been away from the house since I was born... I don't... I don't know..."
That was the end of the conversation. The older woman, herself, immediately took the young hyuuga back to the house. "You lot will discover whatever you can about the accident and report back to me. We can't have her dying without an explanation." And the guards disappeared into thin air. They were all apparently trained shinobi. Masami would keep this in mind as time went along. For now, she'd allow herself to be escorted back to the house and given a bed to sleep in. It was awkward explaining to the older woman that she had been kept in a secret room for the last sixteen years to make sure nothing happened to her and that she'd only been allowed to visit the library during the night time. The old woman couldn't know the truth about anything. Masami told the older woman that she preferred to be alone most of the time, due to the nature of how she was raised and that the library was off limits to everyone from now on. She told her the times of the night when she ate and what time she slept during the day all these years and that her father was very insistent on her following this order constantly to maintain her health. The older woman agreed and that was the last of it for the time being.
Over the course of the next month, things progressed like normal and Masami kept up the roose that who she had said she was and what direction of her life had already been in had maintained as such. She was no longer a prisoner of that man who experimented and tortured her on a daily basis. She was free to sit around and read, study and sit in silence. A lot of her wounds had even started to heal nicely. If anything, Mr. Tsukisho was precise with his cuts and prods. Within a months time, the young girl even managed to acquire knowledge about subjects she wouldn't have normally learned. There were quite a number of books with information about the world around her. With that knowledge compared to what she had overheard Tsukisho telling to the prisoners and experiments over time and she had a fairly good set up of knowledge to use for her own purposes. Within the books that she found, the import and export business ledgers were found and Masami did what she could with her limited knowledge to keep them going. During the night, she received deliveries from questionable shinobi within the world who dropped off new subjects and others who came around to buy certain parts of a body. Some even sought pieces of the inside and others the outside of it. Masami had never known of a world like this hidden in the shadows, but who was she to deny them of the business they had been profiting from.
Some days, she would have to be awake in the daylight, to receive and send deliveries for the estate to keep the appearance of business. There were a few things like grain, vegetables and water that had been exported from the estate's land. Things like clothing, meat and building materials had to be imported. The building materials were stored for the moment, but Masami had the idea to expand such things. She explained some of these ideas to the Ms. Shizu that took care of the children. They couldn't all keep living in the estate if Masami was going to find and care for more children. The thought of that made Ms. Shizu happy and that kept her from prodding too deeply during conversation when Masami would bring up the subject with faked interest. [120]|[Narrative Mission: Growth - 300 XP]
It took quite some time until Masami was capable of learning sealing techniques. They definitely weren't her specialty, but she managed to do it. She even used one of the techniques she learned in display of everyone to see, as another barrier to overcome and be able to leave the house with supervision for fear of her death. She claimed the technique was to send chakra directly from the house to herself over great distances and was one that her father was developing for years so that she could see the world. The techniques required hours of practice to learn and develop, but became more and more interesting as time went along. It was even ironic that techniques used to allow Mr. Tsukisho to bring bodies home was one that she herself would use for the same purpose. The ability to seal something away and then to unseal it was unheard of where she came from. But a well to do family probably had no usage for techniques like this. Either way, the display about practice and the outdoor excursions she went on with Ms. Shizu and some of the children proved more and more every day that she could maintain her adventures outside. Once she proved this, then she began to sleep more at night, even though her business kept progressing, and making appearances during the day for everyone to see and speak with her. However, above all else, Masami was unable to do anything about all the scars that had been left on her body. It was a shame that it would continue to be a problem, but her outfit was designed to hide them all perfectly. --- [ Learned: Enclosing Technique, Unsealing Technique, Tethered Blade ] --- [ Bonuses Learned from Classes: Uchiha Art: Lightning Seal, Diagnosis, Summoning: Body Sealing Technique ]
Masami had taken the time to explain to Ms. Shizu and the town guards, when they were around, about the unsavory people that had been prowling about at night. Though she lied through most of it, she confirmed a few things with the guard's reactions. She explained that news of her father's death was attracting people to the estate due to the flow of money that came from the import and export business. She also explained that during the last few months, she had been practicing more ninjutsu and taijutsu than she probably should have, but seemed to feel healthier because of it. Though everyone was against her confronting these low lifes, the town guard agreed that they could not come running to their aid with the estate being outside of the town's protective range. They just couldn't make it in time and could not spare men and women to watch over the place all the time. Ms. Shizu was the most upset at this fact, but reluctantly agreed to the suggestion from Masami.
Later that night, Masami wandered the grounds of the estate from the tree branches to avoid any line of sight with anyone that might be around. The first person she noticed was three different figured wearing black clothing and black bandanas around their faces. They were trying to conceal their identity, but did not have any markings of allegiance as those that came to purchase or sell their black market wares to her. The young girl waited to see which way they would split up before focusing her chakra into the scalpel technique she had studied on before. She formed it into both hands and dropped to the ground behind one. She touched the throat and the inner thigh which caused the man to drop to the ground in pain, but be unable to tell anyone. She then touched both of his arms and the other inner thigh. He would be unable to do much for a while. She then moved back up into the tree and jumped from one to another until she made it near the next figure. They were smaller in height, but looked about the same build. She dropped from the tree, but grabbed the branch and swung over them to land in front of them, face to face. They were both very short. Masami tapped her throat with her right hand and slid her left foot back in the stance of the gentle fist, only to tap both shoulders at the same time and swing around again with a crouch to tap the outside of both legs. This one went down next, but the sound of something flying through the air at high speed came from behind her and she dropped down. The kunai knife had hit the tree a little ways in front of her and she knew that she had been seen. She took the moment to release her chakra scalpel technique and leap into the treetops quickly.
Calm your breathing... Where are they? She closed her eyes for a moment and waited for sounds to hear her. She cleared her mind and used the time to come up with a strategy. It didn't matter that she only saw three figures. There could always be more. She needed to focus on the estate, not herself. She pulled kunai from her pouch and attached wire. Attaching one end to the tree and throwing the other end towards the estate, she would move from tree to tree creating wire traps. Once she finished this setup, she dropped to the ground outside the wire traps. Standing out in the open was a stupid thing to do, even at night, but she had a wire attached to her and the tree. As the sounds of footsteps could be heard in the grass and on the wooden branches of the trees, she pulled senbon from her thigh pouch and threw them into the ground about ten feet from her position and turned around. Once she saw one figure, she dashed towards them, dropping more senbon behind her as she did. The one she approached swung a katana down at her from over his head at her and she immediately used two palms against the bottom of his elbows to drive the sword back up. She swung her body and hit him with two more palms in the chest. She then activated chakra scalpel once more in both hands and tapped his throat and right arm before moving to his right side and tapped his back with both hands to drop him to the ground, also paralyzed. She then released the technique again and picked up his katana. It wasn't a high grade item, but it wasn't useless. They weren't poor underlings. [43]
She took a moment and scanned the area. Masami noticed a group approaching. She couldn't tell how many there were coming for the estate, but it seemed like eight maximum from the way the shadows moved. After a few moments, she noticed that she was wrong. There were twelve. For the level of her skills that were known to the townspeople and Ms. Shizu, this was too many. They approached, all using different weaponry. Masami shoved the katana into the ground and placed her left hand on the hilt. She created a seal, then grabbed the hilt with her left hand and ran towards the group. The twelve figured spread out to avoid her quick assault with the sword as she spun on her heel and tried to cut a few of them at once. She missed all but one who managed to avoid anything more serious that shallow wound on their bicep as they created more distance from her. She dropped the sword and moved her hands from her sides and spread her feet apart. She entered the stance of the gentle fist, even if she was missing a very useful aspect of it.
As only two of them approached her with weaponry, at a time, she slid her feet across the ground hovering slightly above it as she moved. She aimed for their hands to disrupt the swings of the weapons and managed to be capable of this with a low number of combatants at once. One at a time, she moved her body and attacked with open hands to send her attackers back, but once they seemed to have gauged her range and reach, they began to lean in with more designated attacks from the various weaponry on their person. One cut her hand with a knife and another sliced the back of her shirt with a chained blade before she reached the speed needed and released chakra from her tenketsu and spun in a heavy rotation. She enlarged the spread of chakra and pushed most of them back. --- Learned | Eight Trigrams: Heavenly Spin (B-Rank, Bloodline) --- Bonuses Learned | Incineration Style: Amaterasu's Blessed Breath (C-B Rank, Bloodline), Touch-less (B-Rank, Iryo), Great Fireball Technique (C-Rank, Katon)
After the initial push back, she reached down and grabbed the katana. The group began whispering out to one another that she was a hyuuga and could see them with her byakugan. So they're familiar with shinobi clans? I might take the fight up a notch then... She stepped forward and performed a single hand seal overtop of the katana hilt, but nothing happened. The assailants took this as a good sign and two of them leaped towards her. She lowered her body quickly and rose back up in the next movement to cut them off from using their dominant hands with her sword, at the same time touching the opposite one as she moved. They lost their hands, but also their sense of touch completely. They showed how weak they were when the sight of the loss caused them to faint. She smiled, dropping the katana again and jumping backwards to the now open area behind her. She had judged the range enough. Masami was now outside of their range and two of them had been dealt with. Ten left now and she wasn't tired yet.
Then she moved both hands up to her chest and create the chakra scalpels in both hands. She moved into the gentle fist's standing style and dashed towards the edge of the group with her hands forward. She moved to disable each one in the primary muscle zones that kept them holding their own bodies up. She moved faster than before and more attuned to the level of shinobi that she was fully capable. One after another, she tapped their bodies, reactivating the technique again and again as she moved through them exhausting the chakra blades full number of usage. Within moments the group was on the ground unable to do anything. She lowered her hands when she noticed that there was no one else around and then began clean up and capture of all the new prospects. [81]
The night lasted long enough for Masami to gather the bodies, move them into the laboratory and clean up the mess of weaponry outside before first light. It was a long and strenuous process, but she felt stronger after it had been completed. She had taken care of most of the empty cages that had been emptied months back when some shinobi from another land released them all. She hadn't forgotten about him. She had taken most of his belongings and used them already, but he had an identifying headband, that she kept in the lab, for study. She hadn't seen the symbol on it before. There were four wavy lines but in the vertical direction. Masami held a perplexed gaze over the headband for a moment before pulling herself away to a new task.
It was clear that she was going to need aid. Unlike Tsukisho, she could not spend most of her time within the confines of the estate. She needed to explore the world and learn more about who lived in it and get even stronger. It would take time, but she would determine which of the potential captures she had acquired throughout the night and bend one to her will at a time until they were trustworthy enough to use. Masami was sure that the process was going to take time, but fortunately with all the attackers missing to their bosses and leaders, that would surely dampen the number of possible counter attacks. They would be more weary, but... They would probably send much stronger foes to deal with if that's the case. She hummed over her thoughts while preparing her trials of experimentation on the lesser of the group. Her first step was drawing blood from them all and seeing what differences she could tell from such a simple, yet marvelous liquid.
For several hours, the young girl took samples of blood from her subjects and tested them against one another with the unique equipment that Tsukisho had available. She absolutely needed to learn more about the technology here if she ever needed to replace it, but that thought would be for another time. For the moment, she had one goal and that was to devise a way to make one of the stronger members of her cattle into a pawn to use. Several of them actually barginned for their freedom during the process and offered her knowledge for that same freedom. She agreed under specific circumstances and move along in the process. She told each of them that she merely wished to learn of any abilities they might have that others couldn't perform by watching or learning from them. Very few of them had abilities like this which lead her to "release" them first. Unfortunately for them, once she got one at a time out of the room where they were all kept, she silently knocked them unconscious and sealed their bodies away into scrolls, which she would hide within a drawer. Each one could be used to harvest organs from and there was no reason to sacrifice such good quality parts. With each one, however, she would probe for information first. Nothing deep was needed, just ideas of places, people and things of that nature. Easy enough to be considered good hearted before knocking them completely out and long enough to make each one believe the lie should would tell to the next while they were with the group. "If I take more than one of you outside at a time, the town guard will learn that something else is going on here besides the normal business." No one said a word against her. No one had the strength or the position to argue.
Day by day and no reinforcements came. That was how it looked. Masami wished for her dearest subjects to think that they had been abandoned. However, she had been dealing with each threat that came against the estate and sealing their unconscious bodies away to be used for profit and research. As time progressed, Masami used various resources to build the children and Ms. Shizu their own home. The estate was old and in need of renovations. This excuse allowed her to quietly upgrade her laboratory without question. Stone was brought in from the land of lightning and wood from the land of fire. Eventually things were constructed how she wished and the time needed to do so also allowed her to convert one of the subjects to side of things. She realized that to normal people, this was a horrible thing to do, but life wasn't without its own ups and downs. This converted thrall of hers just happened to have a lot of uphill challenges and was now living the downhill benefits, even if she had to experiment on him an innumerable amount of times. He did as he was told and only by her. His job was the feed the prisoners and make sure they had water. He was not to be seen by Ms. Shizu or the children.
With preparations mainly completed, Masami could finally make her way into the surrounding area. This small journey would allow her to discover more about the area she was in and find out more about the situation in the land of snow. Though the land of snow wasn't very much at the top of her list of tasks, she did eventually need to claim the byakugan for her eyes again. She wasn't lost without them, but things she was once used to were all but useless. If she happened upon a rare hyuuga, she would surely start there. The byakugan was granted at birth after all. Masami would make her wishes known to the thrall and close off the secret passageway behind her. Grabbing her gear on the way and her cloak from the armchair, the young shinobi would leave the estate behind for a few days. She informed Ms. Shizu that the estate needed to stay locked in case of a possible break in. She did inform her that there was a shinobi who specialized in traps and security inside of the estate to protect everyone in case of trouble, but not to make contact with him even once. Things might be dangerous, but no one needed to worry with her showing the appearance of taking a large pack with her and stopping the import/export business for the next week. They would no doubt follow her wherever she went as it was made to look like she was abandoning the estate completely. [57]|[Narrative: Growth]
