Mission Grind [Private]

Rising early, the young man of Yogensha would move slowly through his regular morning routine. He had no particular rush on this day and thus found no particular reason for moving quickly through his rising ritual. He laid in bed for some time, blankets strewn about his body at random, pillows flooding the area near his head. When finally he roused himself from the mattress, he paced slowly through the house, caught in an indifference or inability to decide between showering first and then eating or eating and then showering. After an embarrassingly long time of indecision, he finally settled on staving off the decision by brushing his teeth. Unfortunately, once he had finished with this part of his morning routine, he found that he had done nothing but delayed the inevitable decision. Already finding himself in the room of his bathroom, he simply decided to shower so as to save the few moments that it would take to leave the room only to eventually return.

As with everything about him and the day on this morning of the day, Gen moved slowly in his disrobing, stripping his clothes off without swiftness or flirtatiousness. His body did not shimmy, his hips did not sway, and he did not make the motions slow out of any sort of intention other than sheer tiredness. Of course, there was not a person around to see him and, even if there were, such a person would almost doubtlessly find him or herself in the bathroom of the soon to be showering man. No he was peacefully alone for now and could freely take his time, however much of that time he needed. She pulled off his remaining clothes, tossing them loosely into something that was at least some kind of approximation of a pile, and entered the now steaming stream of water pouring from the showerhead.

He stood in the running water for some time, unmoving and, for the most of the part, unthinking. His mind blanked out entirely at the hot spray peppering his body, everything eventually becoming a kind of white, blank haze in his mind which almost perfectly reflected the whispy white tendrils of vapor that had gone about curling lazily through the small bathroom, pooling here and there around the man’s body and in the corners of the room. The small mirror had entirely fogged over above the sink and Gen hardly even noticed. No, the obliterating whiteness had reduced him to a state of almost non-consciousness, the heat steaming away his every thought effortlessly. The only difference between the whiteness in his mind and the whiteness of the room was that in his mind, the whiteness was a cold one. Not a chilled or unwarm one, but a deep, pervasively cold one. He wished that the mist here in the room could be the same but could not bring himself to alter the temperature of the wonderfully warm flow of water spewing from his shower head.

His thoughts then did eventually return to him, drifting about his head and occasionally entering his mind and consciousness. In and out, in and out, in and out, endlessly in a loop. They were amorphous, for the most part, but occasionally the mist would sprout a particular and definable shape: a tree, growing rapidly from the ground under the care of the man’s chakra; a huge mess of black and glowing tentacles; a clear sky, utterly cloudless, over top of a huge mansion in which now rested a doubtlessly terrified girl, fearing always in the back of her mind if not in the forefront of her thoughts for her life. And Sei. He had not seen him in so long, had not heard his voice in such a long time. In fact, he had never even entertained the idea or the notion that he ever would hear his voice or see his face once more. He had only been, after all, a random medical personal, a civilian persona of the medical corpse sent as an ambassador from Suna long ago. If Gen had not possessed the prison of a memory he did, the inability to forget seemingly anything, he may have not remembered the other boy at all. Well, the other man at all, as the passage of time would have dictated.

But he did.

He remembered him and he remembered guarding him. He remembered following him randomly through the village and catering to some of his more absurd whims, helping him find places to eat and then being forced to try a hundred samples of foods that he had already tried to decide which ramen was better. He rolled his eyes with begrudged fondness at the memories, at being drug to and fro through the village to see sights and taste foods and to sit by lakes and to look at trees and some of the Senju flower beds. Sei had greatly appreciated the delicate plants that some of the civilian and senior members of his own clan tended and kept alive in the expansive and elaborate green houses located both within and without the clan compound and its boarders. And Yogensha had to admit, the houses did house some of the most beautiful and delicate plants that a person could ever want to look at. They had a great deal of practical use as well,  as many of the leaves and flowers and stems possessed great use as herbs, cures and salves and balms being fashioned from them that were said to work all sorts of miracles. The clan sold the herbs at ridiculously low prices as well, a perk of the old money and phenomenal wealth of the family, especially when combined with their near absolute dominance over the village.

And Gen remembered other things too, not just the running around and the goofy food and the pretty flowers. He remembered waiting around in hospital room after hospital room, sometimes outside and sometimes inside, always stoic and silent. He did not know these patients. Sei did not either, of course, but the treatment of them was his job. And he did it with a strange passion, quite unlike the removed dispassion of many of the other medical personal that Gen had seen. Rather than towing his face and keeping his body in line, Sei worked with a kind of exuberance that seemed to make him float weightlessly around the hospital rooms where everyone else seemed instead to drag as though in slow motion. It was, if Gen could call the watching of another go about a profession that he had little idea about how to do himself, somewhat enchanting.

It did cause some problems though. Where other doctors and the occasional medical shinobi could freely lose patients and shrug off the death with and almost practiced calloused ease, Sei frequently could not. It was not, either, that he could not handle death; clearly he could. Yogensha had seen it. But there were times, there were certain people who died or even who simply had grievous wounds, that would get Sei down. Now so down as to drag about in a gravity well like the rest of the staff of Konoha, but down in a way that seemed distinctly not Sei. He would stop smiling, which was strange and jarring, even to someone like Gen who had only recently met the other boy. On days like these, Sei would bring Gen to a smaller, more secluded part of the village, sometimes a reflecting pond or a small garden or a little bench overlooking nothing in particular, and sit for a long while. Eventually, Sei would talk, about trivial things, after the two had gotten to know each other better, but they never spoke about the death. Gen had grown accustomed to it; while he was yet young, he was an already accomplished warrior who had seen death, had perpetrated it. Dealing with the grief was not the young boy’s area of expertise.

Still, all was not gloom and doom, for shortly after such an episode between the two Sei would inevitably say something playful and, oftentimes, plainly rude. He liked to tease Yogensha whenever he could, the former having realized rather quickly that the latter of the two had a sharp wit and a penchant for oftentimes scathing sarcasm. Sei always took this in stride, something that many of Gen’s peers and superiors seemed incapable of doing, and frequently shot back some comment or question that was equally caustic. Or, if he did not feel up to the bouts of fake rudeness, he would simply go on annoying Gen endlessly and about any and everything that he could think of, alternatively asking endless questions about his life, life in the village, life in his clan, and so on. While such nonsense would normally annoy Gen, the knowledge that Sei did this in part out of genuine curiosity and in part specifically to annoy his bodyguard made it somewhat touching and somewhat like a small game between the two, both trying to see who would crack up and laugh first while both remained far too stubborn to do so.

The man, Yogensha, snapped back from his small reverie, realizing that a good chunk of time had passed since he entered the relentless stream of the shower now steaming his body. The water was just beginning to lose some of its heat, causing the swirling mist to thicken even more and begin to blind the man in the shower. He reached on down and grasped the handle of the nozzle of the shower, twisting both it and its twin. The water snapped off almost immediately and the man withdrew himself from the shower, drawing aside the curtain in a billowing sweep of hot, white mist and he strode into the bathroom proper, reaching for a towel to dry himself a bit. He wrapped the thing loosely around his waist and exited the small room, moving now into the kitchen.

He realized, as the memories of Sei and their time spent together so long ago, that he was now quite hungry. In fact, if he were to have been forced to say so by any other, he may in fact just so happened to have to be made to say that he was in fact famished. He scrounged around in the pantry before moving along to scrounge around in the fridge. Certainly he had food in his house, though he could not decide upon exactly what it was that he wanted to eat at this strange and rather late hour. He decided, ultimately, to settle upon a heaping pile of bacon placed upon a sandwich made of toasted bread and a fried egg. The man had never been much for cooking but was not in any particular or notable way opposed to the act. Rather, he simply disliked the dishes that came from after the cooking, the clean up process to be totally and utterly specific. Still, as his stomach rumbled the man fired up his stove and set to work frying up the eggs and bacon for his little sandwich.

His mind remained notably blank as he went about this particular routine of cooking, seasoning the eggs and toasting the bread. Having no butter, he simply went without and allowed the yet runny yolk to serve as a kind of lubricant of the type that the butter would otherwise serve. His meditation was improving and he was able to, more and more, free himself from this simplistic nature of unrefined and unwarranted thought even as he went about his daily routines. Even now, his cooking of breakfast was filled only a kind of thoughtless peace, an almost spiritual knowledge of something solid and unsolid, of something that defied description, that waited in a far off or perhaps very near place. He would need work, power, money, all kinds of things that he currently did not have in order to get there, but he would be able to. He would be freed of this mortal shell and become something else, something perhaps greater, perhaps more, but also it was entirely conceivable for one to imagine that in fact it would not be a matter that could be encompassed by mere quantity or quality but rather that could only be explained as something other. He would become other, something that was not himself and was not like anyone or anything else. He would be free.

The preparations for his meal completed, the young man who by general standards most commonly went by the name of Gen but who in fact was Yogensha, the prophet of his clan and the world at large, would make short work of his eating, taking special care to acknowledge the particularly delicious taste of the tangy yolk as it interacted with the thick and juicy flavors of the bacon that he had piled onto the sandwich. In all honest, the man was bored though. He had learned so much, had been gifted so many techniques, had learned and come to know and understand so much, and yet he had nothing to do. He needed something to happen, needed the world to begin turning, but instead it insisted on remaining utterly still. So he went on as he did, drifting about, showering for too long, eating his eggs in silence, in the quiet of his very own personal home.

The organization had been curiously silent as well. Not strange in their silence specifically, though, as they tended to do that, simply vanishing off of the face of the earth for long reaches of time, offering no explanation or reason for their disappearance. They had always returned, though, with requests. Things to be stolen, information to be gathered, people to be intimidated or interrogated or found or shaken down. Sometimes they even had people that they needed killed. That was always interesting, particularly because their clients seemed to range freely and wildly from children to the vastly elderly, from people in positions of obvious power and wealth to random peasants in the countryside or beggars on the streets. It was strange, to say the least, but not all together totally opaque. While Gen could rarely make out the direct effect that their missions would have, he could safely infer that in completing them, he was supporting the wishes of the organization and, to at least a similar extent, the village, the place where the organization seemed to have based itself and the place in which the organization likely acquired a large pool of its human recourses. Certainly they would undoubtedly have a hugely vested interest in the protection of the village and, even if they did not, they had yet to do anything that could be construed as directly harming the place. Gen, therefore, was relatively safe. Or at least as safe as one could be in the world of ninja, of shinobi who could level villages and who seemed to jointly suffer from a particularly malicious form of absolute insanity.

It did not, therefore, very much at all astound or confuse the man when he found it. The seal. He had found a blank wax seal sitting upon the very one of his counter tops that he had neglected until just this very moment in time and in his day, the day itself being a bit later than the norm of when he would normally have arisen if he had been more on top of things or had already had a mission from his particular employers who favored their rather strange method of contact. There was simply a note, a square sheet of paper placed upon the counter with nothing more than that blank wax seal affixed upon the surface. He turned the sheet over, looking at the crisp cream of the cardstock. The thing was of a hefty thickness, expensive paper no doubt. Things had progressed from his first meeting with the strange man who had acted as the face of the organization for a time. No longer was he to meet in dark and dirty alley ways to get missions geared around rather petty theft. No, they delivered things directly to his house now on thick paper.

Of course, the page was mostly blank. On one side was nothing more than the aforementioned blank seal, a glob of wax which had been pressed down upon by an unblemished and unmarked oval of metal. The wax, today, took the color of the palest of reds, still rich enough to be called a red, but pale, like a chunk of taffy that had once been a bright cherry but which, under pressure of great stretching and having been made overly pliable, had taken in a huge dose of white from the air and its own inner color, resulting in a kind of gummy looking pale red, a poor approximation of pink and yet somehow still a color which seemed to depict absolute wealth, total power. The seal commanded. It commanded with an authority of a thousand shadowed faces and ten thousand unknown hands and Gen, a servant, at least for now, would obey. People needed killing as it were, and Gen happened to be good at that. In fact, he happened to be extremely good at that.

The reverse side of the card was almost as plain and utterly blank as the front, if the seal could rightly be said to have been properly placed upon what would be the front of the card. The back, as it could potentially be called if one were to accept that the wax seal constituted the front, was simply covered in writing. Nothing else. The letters formed a short list of names, people who were, apparently, quiet important. Gen raked his mind for what they could possibly have done but came up, for the moment, empty of thoughts. He looked down to the bottom of the card, past the collection of names, and saw the imprint of a place and time. Finally, after that, was simply the word “Meeting.” His mind clicked then as he realized what was going on.

The group of people whose names had so terribly unfortunately found themselves inscribed upon that card were all having a joint meeting. How unfortunate for them indeed, though Gen could not help but to smile at his own luck. This list would generally take much longer, would require a huge amount of planning and thinking and forethought and staking out. Assassinations were not, as much as people seemed to think, easy business. They required planning and thought, required one to know his or her target with the utmost intimacy. One had to know where his or her target would be at every moment of the day, when he or she would use the restroom and for how long, what time her or she slept, when he or she liked to eat and what he or she liked to eat. Who among their friends would randomly barge in and who among them simply could not be bothered. It was work of terrible stress, though work that Gen happened to enjoy greatly. The meticulousness of the whole thing was like game, like an elaborate game with a preset board and hundred different pieces to be manipulated and accounted for and counted up and taken apart. He loved the detail of the whole enterprise. And, of course, it was terribly rewarding.

And he would be rewarded most handsomely. He had worked with these people long enough to fully and easily realize what this meant. The fact that these people were having a joint mission and could be destroyed with ease meant nothing. It changed nothing. It had no bearing on the numerical value of the man’s payment as he did not receive such money on the basis of the number of missions that he went on for these people but rather what he did. In the case of this particular mission and those like it, this meant one thing and only one thing. The young man known as Gen was paid by the head. So, seven heads would mean seven payments, would equate to seven rewards. Seven fat stacks of cash. He grinned once more to himself, relieved that he needed not worry about such matters. Haggling with a group of people while carrying around a couple trophies of the kill was never something that anyone could ever say he or she actually truly enjoyed. How lucky it was then for Gen that he would not need to deal with such nonsense as he, having worked with these people for so long, knew of their standards, of their codes and how they would pay, and he knew they would pay for each death. Gen planned to deliver all of them, each and every kill, and collect the meaningless reward of money and the much more meaningful reward of connections and political clout.

His mind wandered once more to the card and, specifically, to the names written there. He looked down upon them, dredging up some various memories about people and families and events that one could say were around the village and yes even that one could say were and occurred around the very country itself. He thought long and hard about them though his wonderful mind allowed him to do this with some amazing levels of speed as his mind raced through his memories in order to locate the once that he was looking for in his mind. He at first came upon nothing worth noting that he could consider noteworthy until he did after a few moments more of this kind of intense thought. He looked at two of the names, the last name in particular, and recalled something about them, about the business that their families tended to conduct. If memory served him faithfully and correctly then it would appear that at least two of them were large tycoons in the trading world, establishing lucrative trade routes and each owning a large empire worth of work animals and worker contracts. As such, they were without a doubt and needlessly to say rather important people within the nation, though if Gen were pressed he did not believe that either had been made it to the position of the head of the families, meaning that these two individuals on this list had not officially made it onto the actual list of the people who ruled this sort of trade union.

It was therefore just a little bit and a tad strange that they were ordered to die, though not terribly so because the organization worked in some of the most wonderfully mysterious ways. It was, however, even more strange and even more odd and raised even more of an eyebrow on the supposed face of Gen to know that in fact they were having this meeting. What on earth could they be planning? It was likely something not anything near what could be considered or construed as good. While their actions would likely not cause harm directly to the Village Hidden in the Leaf for that would bring upon them the fully military strength of the Village Hidden in the Leaf it very well could harm the nation and, if his intuitions served him right, would clearly result in some harm to the organization, especially if it was in fact true as it plainly could be said to be that they wanted these people dead. They clearly must pose some kind of threat and therefore Gen had of course been chosen to be sent to go to silence the lot of them.

He shifted his eyes down the list. A large chunk of the people present were entirely mysterious to him, people who he had never even heard of, names that did not in any way shape or form ring even the slightest of the slightest bells. No certainly the majority of the list, though by a narrow margin, were unknown to the man and he would likely never know the, at least not in the conventional sense of the word. He would know things about them like their habits and their favorite dishes and what they do and do not trust but he would not know them in the sense that most people used it. He would not know their general favorite time of day or things about their personal life for such would be utterly unimportant in the eyes of the shinobi. He would not care for them personally but only in their mannerisms and quirks.

There was one other who tripped the attention of the man known most commonly as Gen. One of the names, towards the bottom but not entirely at the bottom, held some familiarity to the man. It would or at least should hold some level of familiarity to anyone who claimed to be a shinobi of any village though particularly those who claimed to be a warrior by the name of shinobi specifically for the Village Hidden in the Leaf. He was rather well known, to say the least. In fact, one could say were one to find oneself in a state of such desire or prerogative to call him infamous. He was as it just so matter of fact happened to be a rather well known trader and seller of arms. General stuff was well within his jurisdiction, kunai and shuriken and the like, but even aside from that he sold other things. It was rumored though not terribly well confirmed that he also sold people, soldiers for higher, slaves, prostitutes, and all other manner of unsavory thing.

But the biggest claim was that he sold large weapons. Many people from around the Village Hidden in the Leaves and the entire and whole nation of the great Land of Fire would know of these claims. Generally they were thought to be wildly ungrounded but no one could definitively say that he or she did not, at least some of the time, believe them. It was widely and most normally said that he sold bombs of a huge type, elaborate destructive objects that had been used in all kinds of acts of terror and rebellions and coups. In fact, many believed that he had had a hand in the destruction of various small nations and villages and that he perhaps had maybe even in fact created the very tailed beasts himself. Gen was certainly not sold on this final matter of the tailed beasts as such a thing seemed quite absurd but he could not say that he did not think the man was capable of wide spread destruction through all kinds of terrible means. And so Gen would feel in no way bad or negative about bringing an end to his reign of destruction and rampant terror, not that he would anyway of course for such was simply not his way and so of course he would simply go about his job and daily life and deliver to his employers exactly what that was that they themselves had already in the past demanded of him.

The list would provide him with little else in the way of useful or relevant information and so he would simply just get rid of it, burning it quickly to cinders and ensuring that the whole of it from the expensive paper to the seal and of course the ink of the names would be utterly consumed and totally and completely destroyed in every possible and conceivable way such that no one would be able to acquire the information that he had previously acquired from the small card the organization had given him. He then disposed of the remaining ashes that he had created and gathered into a small waste paper bin that was residing currently in his kitchen and was now free of anything that could be considered incriminating to either his own person or to the greater functioning of the organization and therefore he felt at least a bit on the safe side as far as what he was about to be doing with his life in the current moment known as the here and know or otherwise the only area in which a person could ever hope to reside, unless he had somehow become totally unbound by the silly restraints of his silly mortal shell known most often as what many people would claim was his body.

And so he was completed for now in his current actions and adventures. He no longer had any need of what was currently occurring within his house and he had finished off his breakfast. He had only now to go and get dressed before he was prepared to leave. He could of course wait awhile before departing off to go crash this certain mission of his where he would interrupt the meeting but to do so seemed quiet silly and absurd. There was no reason for him to simply wait and instead he would leave at the most post haste and hurry onward to his mission that he could see it through. He would complete this mission in full stealth at the location in which the group was to conduct their meeting and then he would be done with the sordid business and could relax once again. His village had been a bit annoying as of late since he had chosen to take a bit of a break from much of the nonsense of the ninja life that was silly and usually pointless in their every way missions. The village council had been rather displeased and had said that he would never become a jonin unless he shaped up and began to conduct some more of his mission that he was supposed to be doing so that he would be able to generate revenue for the village. The man who most commonly at the general times known only by the nick name of Gen had simply rolled his eyes at this but was powerless to simply refuse their edicts and so had to go off and complete more missions. Luckily this assignment has shown up when it did just in the nick of time which would allow him to complete his mission quota and bring in a great deal of money for the village which would get the council off of his back and allow him some more free time in which to simply attend to his own affairs and learn many new things.

And so he left, though not instantaneously. He of course collected all of his things that he would need, donning his prized earring and dressing himself in some practical travel clothes, long pants and a light jacket and the like, some comfortable shoes. Simple things that would make him look wonderfully civilian and yet which would allow him maximum comfort and mobility so long as he required it. And of course he brought along with him the whole of his throwing knives, though he highly doubted that he would need the instruments as he had yet to use them in his career as anything other than practice objects which would allow him to keep his sharp and keen ability to hit targets from far distances, even if they were moving. However, he never really needed to prove himself in this way as he almost never required the use of these bladed weapons. Still, it was fantastic to have them with him should he ever need to use it.

And just like that he was off, off out into the world to complete his mission and make his money, to put down the people that his employers demanded him to. He strolled quickly and efficiently through the village but did not run. He simply walked quickly through the village, passing people that he knew and that he did not, though few people even gave him the time of day. As was usual, the few members of his clan, generally speaking the elders but also a few of the older ones as well, gave him absurd birth upon the street as he passed, though not out of fear or anything like that but out of sheer respect. There was one woman whose house he simply could no longer go near for fear that she would, as she almost always did whenever he crossed her path, bow down on the ground in prostration, refusing not only to meet him in the eyes but refusing even to face him for fear that he may in some way pass some kind of holy judgement while simultaneously hoping that her prostration and good behavior in the face of this man would get her something good.

That was of course the inherent problem with being raised and raised up as the prophet of a clan. It was odd, to say the least, but what really made it go over the top were the looks people gave him. It was not simply good enough for them to believe that he was the savior of the clan or that he would revive the clan or that he would some how lead them to even greater greatness. No, people had to believe much more, they had to have the idea in their absurd heads that he was in some way a living god or, if not that, that he was at least the incarnation of a god, or the avatar of a god, or the most holy mouthpiece of a god. People were simply and shortly insane and seemed to want to believe anything in the realm of superstition or divinity. It probably would not have mattered the elders of the great Senju clan decided to call him a ghost instead of a god. People would have eaten it just as easily so long as it meant they had something or someone that they thought they could believe in.

His walking had taken him away, out to the gate of the village through which he passed most effortlessly. The guards there knew him by now and knew that he oftentimes left the safety of the village on important errands and missions and thus hardly asked him any questions whenever they did in fact decide to actually ask him questions. Generally they simply allowed him to come and go as he pleased, never even checking his credentials or the like since he at least knew them all a bit. So they were content in knowing who he was and how important he was to the village and let him do more or less whatever he wanted. After all, he never actually harmed the village even though he likely could if he really wanted to. He shrugged on his way out. He had no real ill will towards the Village Hidden in the Leaf and so harming it would not only be random and crazy but would also be totally pointless and a waste of time. He had other, more important things to attend to.

And with that he was once more out of the village, passing effortlessly through the front gate and into the big bad world beyond the Village Hidden in the Leaf. He moved onward then, closing in swiftly upon his destination which was unfortunately a good trek away from the Hidden Leaf Village but not so far away that he could not make the journey in just a piece of the day. He would arrive long before night fall and would then be able to set up some spying upon the people who would be gathering there to go to this meeting that the undoubtable thought was secrete. For them, this belief in something so untrue would cost them most dearly. Gen shrugged once more as he continued forward. It was less that he thought they deserved to die, for he had no idea if this was the case. Rather, he simply did not care. He was paid to end the lives of these men and would do it, regardless of personal qualms he had with the thing. Such was his job and he just so happened to be good at it. He would do it calmly and without passion, neither bearing disgust for his actions nor

The scenery passed calmly and serenely around him as he walked, though he took in very little of it in the traditional sense. He knew where he was going and what the paths looked like as he had already in the past traveled these areas many a time, so an actual acute attention was generally unnecessary. He still took reasonable precautions of course, extending his senses over a truly vast and amazingly impressive area and range such that he could taste the chakra of any who dared to attempt to cross his path. However he found no one and instead lazily took in the passing trees and forests, the meadows and plains and flowers that sprung up all over the Land of Fire. However, all of this was little more than a gauzy filmy in the back of his mind. What really grabbed his attention was the thing.

The beast of the eternal depths had arrived once again and with its coming came the destruction of all sense and logic. It was and as a direct consequence of nothing other than its simple being all else lost the very essence of it. By some miracle of grace Gen, Yogensha, the Prophet, seemed able to withstand the obliterating effects of the presence of the beast. Perhaps this was why he had gained its seeming favor, perhaps this would explain why clearly no one else had ever seen the thing. He alone had received this call from beyond because he alone was capable of rising to the great and powerful call of the beast. He would rise too, would achieve the state of self definition without external reference to anything else. He would be free, truly and entirely free of all and everything. Free even of himself if he so desired.

And so the paired moved in silence and conversation, Gen walking quickly and in an almost something close to a semi unconscious state while the thing existed in the way it did, partially in reality and mostly outside of it, not quite floating next to Gen but not exactly not doing that. There, of course, were not actually words for it and Gen personally in his own opinion found no particular reason or compulsion to attempt to attach words to it. The beast did not need words. It defied them, rose above the, existed just perfectly without them and Gen would not find himself compulsively attempting to pin the thing down with mundane descriptions and words.

It was a while before the young man of Gen found himself approaching the small area where the meeting would be held. It was a rather well known vacation area, not properly within a village but functioning almost as a fake or pseudo village for the rich who wanted to party and have a good time beyond the prying eyes of the peasants or anyone who otherwise would want to spy on them or gain information about the going on of any activates that happened there. A normal person would never be allowed admittance without a truly vast and huge and amazingly large sum of cash and usually some kind of family name and even then they would need to have some kind of reservation. The small area did not take very kindly to people simply showing up unannounced though they had in the past been known to make a few exceptions for people of great political sway and those who had an almost completely unlimited amount of money to throw at them. Most often, the exceptions that had been made and had been ruined to be made by the club involved people of said political power and who found themselves in possession of fast sums of money. It was quite rare indeed to hear of people being allowed in randomly who did not fit both criteria.

Gen approached the place anyway, activating a downright absurd technique that would simply allow him to cover his body in a wondrous layer of water held together by the young man most often and commonly known as Gen’s very own chakra source. In doing so he would simply vanish from sight but not only sight was the place he would vanish from but he would also vanish entirely from the ability of anyone to sense him without the use of a contact based sensing technique. Normally this may be cause for alarm but contact sensory abilities were amazingly rare even amongst some of the greatest sensory based shinobi and thus it was rare to find one. However even more importantly was that he was sneaking in to a place which had body guards and the like but which were not generally trained in shinobi arts or in ninjutsu or sensory abilities or any sort. Thus, he, the boy of Gen, would have found it quite odd indeed to even encounter a person capable of sensing him if he had simply walked right up to the gate and, because of this, it was even more absurd that a person would have had a sensory technique of the contact variety that would be able to pinpoint him as he hung out around the small compound of the vacation area that was essentially for rich people.

He entered the compound now in his totally invisible state, essentially having become less than a person. A non person to be totally specific and it was likely for this reason and by this account that he had been selected for so many of these positions and missions. The organization that he had worked for for such a time had not every explicitly stated what they knew of the boy’s powers but certainly they knew of this ability if nothing else. It was without even the slightest of doubts why he was so frequently selected for these missions and why he was so good at them. He had, in effect, built up a lack of a name through his prolific use of this technique; by completing so many stealth and spy and assassination missions without ever even being seen he had a name among very select and secretive groups but had essentially no face. Almost no one even knew of most of the things he had done in his invisible state and those select few who did paid him very, very well to keep doing it. He was a shadow, a specter, little more than an apparition of mist that delivered results for high prices and without fail. He had the utmost in discretion and a shadow reputation built on such. He was the perfect assassin and the prefect spy.

Thus, it became almost trivially easy to infiltrate the compound. All he needed to do when he was there was avoid making any absurdly loud noises or leave any kind of incriminating footprints anywhere, an easy thing to do for a multitude of reasons. For one, he was well versed in avoiding such nonsense as he was in fact a shinobi of some import as was easily capable of avoiding leaving behind evidence of his having made passage somewhere. This was not his first mission nor was it his first endeavor in the arts of stealth and for him to be careless would not only be foolish but would be completely careless and would make almost no sense considering how and who he was. Another reason that it would be easy to remain hidden had to do with the great care that people took for the ground here. The place was very clean and free of any dust or dirt that Gen could leave any footprints in and even were he to leave some kind of inconceivably careless trace in mud or something it would be quickly cleaned up by the various people working tirelessly to keep the place quite and very clean the whole time of the day and the night.

And so he moved quietly through the compound, wrapped effortlessly in a shroud of invisibility as he did so in his motions through the small collections of buildings. Night was beginning to fall as the sun set behind a wide expanse of trees and such on the far horizon. The off seasons had begun and so the place was slow though not entirely abandoned. As he crept about he allowed himself to be on the constant look out to see if he had anyone that he was looking for in the very midst of his. As it turned out a few of the people he was looking for were already here, three of them sitting around casually and drinking and talking over what appeared to be some kind of appetizers. Having already found at least a couple of them he figured that it would make sense for him to decide to stay and listen in on them at least a little bit. He wanted to scout out the area that they would be having the meeting in of course as well in good time but for now since he had found them he would simply allow himself to hear what they were talking about and to learn about their mannerisms and habits and the like as he did so. He would have time to look into the specific place of their meeting at a later time.

His listening did not give him a great deal to go off of however. The people seemed boring and almost banal. Two of the three quiet loudly and the third was more quiet, but it seemed that they refused to speak of anything interesting. One of them was however the very arms dealer and person who Gen thought to be the single most dangerous among the group and he was one of the loud once who never seemed to shut up and talked endlessly about nothing in particular, loudly bragging on and on and on about himself endlessly and yelling about this that and another thing. He was also the one who seemed to spend the most amount of time trying to attract the attention of the few girls who were serving as wait staff in the eating portion of this kind of rich person hotel and who was constantly yelling at them. Even when he did manage to miraculously acquire their attention it seemed as though it did nothing because he simply would scream semi incoherent nonsense at them about how pretty they were and they would do nothing but smile softly and nod their heads and then simply walk away. This seemed not to in any way deter him though as every time he found one, even if he had already hit on her a hundred times, he never stopped and just kept right back on trying to woo one of them over. Gen hoped that he would fail before remembering that it didn’t matter because he would soon be dead.

Gen eventually took to laying down upon the grass just a few feet away from the table of the group. He had actually become so bored that he hardly cared to listen anymore even though he knew in his mind and rational thought that he had to. One could never know when a person would say something insightful or useful, especially when one was in the business of killing the person that he or she was currently listening to. Still, even the blades of finely cared for grass managed to grab Gen’s attention farm more easily than the frankly stupid conversation happening between these three idiots. Well actually it was four idiots now as another had arrived, one who had a name that Gen had originally recognized as a richer family that just so happened to be in the business of trades and such. He was perhaps if it could even be said to be possible more vapid and awful than the first three. Where at least the first three were somewhat chatting and a little bit of the talkative well this newcomer was essentially the already dried paint of the group. He never wanted to talk and did not order any food or order anything at all to drink whatsoever and did not like it when the other people talked about anything that he thought other people including the girls currently serving as wait staff could overhear. He was awful and boring and blatantly in the way of the boy who most commonly went by Gen though of course he could not simply kill him yet. He would have to wait.

Eventually the young man known as Gen would simply have to give up entirely on listening to the endless stream of stupid and absurd drivel that was currently in the process of being issued form the mouths of these fools in a never ending deluge of pure and unchanged stupid. He got up off the ground quickly and silently, waving a small goodbye to one of the tiny flower he had found growing stubbornly among the grass and small shrubs and walked over to the main tower. There was where the meeting would be held by the people that he was currently in the process of stalking in classic bad guy fashion it was of course going to be held in the absolute top part of the tower. From what he had heard the girls who were currently in the process of serving as wait staff they seemed to have said that once the men exited the green and went upstairs to have their secret meeting everyone would have to be evacuated so that no one could hope to hear what they were discussing. This brought a bit of light to the mind of the boy most commonly referred to as Gen for this meant that collateral damage would be reduced to an absolute minimum and that he would not need to worry himself or busy himself with the nonsense that was moving the unarmed people out of the building. The job would already have been done for him and he could therefore end the lives of the driveling fools who were still currently outside as of right now without a second thought.

He got up to the top of the tower by simply scaling the wall with the help and aid of some chakra applied to his feet and effortlessly walked casually up the wall so that he could reach one of the upper windows. The place looked like it was in the middle of being cleaned and some of the windows had been left open to allow the place to air out which allowed the young man in the form of Gen an easy access into the tower. He looked around at the room that comprised the whole of the top floor only to realize that it was essentially just a large conference room that the people would be meeting at. On one side of the room was a long and narrow table packed full of food and refreshment presumably so that the people in attendance of the meeting could snack and drink causally while they waited. Seeing as how no one was currently around at the present moment Gen simply helped himself to a few of the delicacies as he waited.

The wait was a long and mind numbing one as Gen simply sat around hoping that the meeting would start soon. In all reality he only had to wait something like a bit over a half an hour and yet it still felt like it had taken forever since there was nothing to do. The people from outside did eventually decide to get their meeting on the road and came in from outside, trickling in slowly from the outer world. As a few of them came in first Gen could quite clearly see as plain as day that they were drunk. No all of them were drunk of course but a few were. The loud one who dealt in arms and weapons and bombs and the like was definitely very drunk which would probably make the whole thing easier anyway. Gen of course did not think that the man was actually trained in combat since it seemed so often that the people who sold the weapons did not know how to use the weapons but still it made little difference as Gen would simply demolish the lot of them in one fell swoop. They would likely never even see what exactly it as that was coming at them as he ended their lives and the fact that they would be impaired by drink and such would simply serve to help the cause that Gen had currently and at this very present of moments put himself to.

The time, however, had finally come. The room finally filled up entirely with the room full of the people present in it that needed to be present and so Gen could soon begin his work. Still invisible and unable to be detected by anyone in the room or in the whole of the complex he would simply continue to lean back and watch as the last of the eight people filtered into the room and took their seats. They bantered a great deal and for a great while saying many many many words and yet making almost no points that meant anything at all whatsoever. They were just filling the air with empty talk. Gen felt compelled to wait around for them to actually start he meeting proper before executing them though not out of respect or anything of that nature but because he would of course logically prefer them to be fully engrossed in their activates so that they would not even notice when he began to do anything.

After a while of their seemingly endless and never ending and totally pointless banter they finally settled down and the terribly drab and boring one from earlier who refused to have a drink of any sort began the meeting in full, calling attention to what they were going to do about the trade tariffs and this that and another thing. Gen really could not be bothered to care less in any meaningful way and yet he allowed them to speak for about ten minutes on these subjects as he eventually came to passively acknowledge that these people were planning some kind of almost elaborate and very terribly hostile take over of the two trading factions run by the two families from with the two names that he had recognized had been born into. Gen could not help rolling his eyes for a few reasons, not the least of which was his total inability to either fully comprehend or even remotely care about why they needed at least four of the people currently in attendance since they seemed not to provide anything of use to the group. He shrugged to himself as he decided that it did not matter since it was quite literally their funeral and they were allowed to orchestrate it or conduct themselves in any manner that they saw fit.

And then the time truly came for him to strike. The majority of the group had finally calmed totally down and they had all started to lean in in the most conspiratorial of ways as they all spoke more and more softly to each other and even the loud and drunk ones had seemed to decide that a certain modicum of discretion seemed to be at least in a small way in order. This greatly amused Gen as they did so and his hand would easily come together in rapid motion and near utter silence as he crafted his singular technique. The very vapor of water in the air would be bent to his will as he created a little masterpiece with which to end the lives of these rather foolish and annoying people. For the initial moments of the creation of the thing the people in the room other than Gen did not even take note of what was going on. It was not until one of the people on one side of the roughly round table pointed over the shoulder of another and asked what was going.

All attention focused to the area to which the man pointed where a strange thing was happening. The attention had been shifted to one side of the room and as it happened Gen simply moved to the other, selecting a window at random to open as he was about to make his escape. It was a simple feat really and at this point he did not even feel the need to quiet the click of the window latch that he was opening. The more sensory stimulation and confusion at this crucial moment the better in his eyes and he was proven right as a couple of pairs of eyes shifted attention for a few seconds form the gathering vapor to the no opened window. Gen was of course still invisible and so they would be terribly perplexed at what was going on which would cause him almost to reveal himself as he just about snickered but he ended up refraining.

The momentary lapse gave the clone enough time to form completely, a chibi version that was almost an accurate approximation of him had he been about ten years younger and a hundred pounds chubbier. They looked at it perplexed for a singular heartbeat before the thing charged forward, its right arm changing into an elongated spear and piercing the flesh of the nearest man while maintaining a manic, cartoonish grin on its face. While this happened Gen would remove himself from the building, attaching himself to the side as the clone would swell, heating up. The man next to the now impaled one struck out at the now billowing clone and just like that, the room vanished in a scalding haze of white which would almost instantly roast the members of the meeting alive leaving no one alive and blowing out the windows of the place.

Gen unstuck himself from the side of the building and fell to the ground whereupon he would not collide with the earth but instead simply sink into it without a sound, regaining his normal level of visibility and speeding away. The upper room of the place, now destroyed and filled with eight flash roasted bodies, also fluttered with a seemingly innumerable amount of thick, cream colored cards of stock paper imprinted with nothing at all and bearing only a blank wax seal the color of white that had been tainted with the faintest of faint hints of red. A lovely, terribly pastel pink fluttering around on cream paper. News of this would easily spread and the organization would be very please and Gen would be rather wealthy.

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