Ch4- Saving lives instead of taking them

Bingo Book entry, Shinpi:

Picture: N/A (typical Anbu clothing with a hawk mask)

Country: Land of Earth

Hidden Village: Iwagakure

Rank: High-level Jonin

Taijutsu: N/A

Ninjutsu: N/A

Genjutsu: N/A

Danger Level: A

Name: N/A

Epithet: Shinpi

Sex: Female

Age: 14+

Birthdate: N/A

Chakra Affinity: Earth, Wind (this is what is known by other villages)

Height: 179 cm (around 5'9)

Weight: N/A

Eyes: N/A

Hair: Blonde

Other: Highly dangerous assassin with high speed and defense. Specializes in Earth style and has multiple unknown Jutsu for assassination. Dead or Alive with a bounty of 29.000.000 Ryo (Suigetsu has a bounty of 33.000.000 Ryo for reference)

***

As days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and months turned into years, Kurai had done nothing other than train and complete her assigned missions.

Her missions had mostly consisted of assassinating enemy shinobi, with most of them being from Sunagakure and other minor nations. However, recently she had started getting higher-ranked missions as her strength had also reached closer to the top.

Despite getting her missions personally from the Tsuchikage, almost no one had seen her, including most of the top brass of Iwagakure.

She was like a ghost, doing the dirty work for the village, which would normally be done by an Anbu unit, just even more hidden. Sometimes her job would also consist of getting rid of corrupt elders.

She was currently 15 and had the strength of a high-level Anbu, which made her one of the strongest in the Village, being just below the Anbu captains, Tsuchikage, and a few others.

Today she had finally returned from another S-ranked mission. While she was gone, she had noticed the repeated skirmishes with smaller nations on the borders and had personally eliminated multiple squads of enemy shinobi after they had attacked her.

But it seemed that it was already too late for negotiations, as war was imminent. It might not start right at that moment, but she would give it a maximum of two years to erupt into a full-blown war.

***

"Here is the mission report, Lord Tsuchikage."

"Good Job once again Kurai. Your next target will be Hisazato Hyuga, an elder of the Hyuga clan from the hidden leaf. He is on an escort mission to the land of bears with his Genin squad."

"Yes, Lord Tsuchikage."

Resupplying her weapons and rations, Kurai once again left Iwagakure for her new mission.

***

As she was nearing the border, Kurai was again met with many shinobi assaulting her, which just resulted in them dying without the knowledge of how it was done.

While she was continuing on her way, she suddenly noticed a bloody figure, leaning on a nearby tree. Noticing the deep wounds, she immediately started healing the Iwa-shinobi.

Although she wasn't very proficient with medical Jutsu, she had been taught everything possible to learn in Iwagakure. Well maybe expect the Tsuchikages Dust release as she wasn't proficient in the fitting nature transformations.

As she was the 'perfect' weapon created by the project, there was no need to keep useful Jutsus a secret. There was no way for her to spill those secrets, even if she died.

Having done her best, she was able to temporarily stop his condition from worsening. However, she wasn't a medic and was thus unable to save his life.

"Guess I will still die..." The Iwa-nin weakly commented after noticing his condition worsening. They were shinobi and knew when someone was about to die, even if that someone was themselves.

"Yes." The emotionless voice of Kurai responded, giving the Iwa-nin a slightly creepy feeling.

"Can I ask you for a favor, if it won't interrupt your mission."

"Yes, but my mission goes first."

"Thank you, my teammates and I were tasked with eliminating bandit camps around here, some of them having shinobi in their ranks.

But we never would have expected that they had a shinobi that was of the Jonin-level."

"Hm..., normal bandits would at most have a Chunin as their leader, something is wrong there. I will send a clone over to take a look, while I go complete my mission."

"Thank you, may the will of the stone prevail."

As his body turned limp, Nozomi got up, before making an Earth clone, letting it follow the bandits.

"[Fire Release: Body Elimination Jutsu]"

Watching the body burn to nothingness, Kurai got up, hurrying to her mission location.

***

Kurai soon arrived at the location where she easily hid almost perfectly. Her enemies consisted of a Jonin and three Genin and her best bet to win, was to heavily injure the Jonin before getting rid of the small fries.

'The Hyuga can easily see me if I get close. Let's see, I'll use my wind style to speed up and attack him from behind. That should at least guarantee a hit.'

Although her face was not visible behind the mask, judging by her posture it was obvious how confident she was.

Collecting chakra to her feet, Nozomi started using her wind affinity to change the pressure in the air. As it finally reached its peak, she let go of her control, catapulting her straight toward her enemies.

While her flying was a bit unsteady, it wasn't the first time she had done this and she was thus able to quickly stabilize herself.

However, she had underestimated the Byakugan, as the Hyuga was quick to get into a defensive stance, trying to block her.

The Hyuuga had a 359° vision angle, causing her plan to use a surprise attack to turn into dust. While she had expected that to happen, she had underestimated the strength of the enemy, making her fail her first attack.

Kurai seeing this, made the split-second decision to get rid of the Genin squad blocking her way, as she figured that those little bugs could still cause her to be defeated in the end if they got lucky to hit something at the correct time.

They didn't even have time to put up their defense, as their bodies were riddled with holes thanks to her Earth Bullets.

Narrowly dodging an attack from behind, Kurai noticed the immense hatred in the eyes of the Hyuuga, which was not an easy feat to notice considering he was a Hyuga.

However as Hisazato looked at the figure before him, he could see nothing but indifference and boredom. Unfortunately, her face was blocked by an Anbu mask and he was unable to make out who she was.

Making a move, he got into a stance to beat her with his Taijutsu, the gentle fist.

"[Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms]"

However, Kurai didn't even move one bit, as the attacks came raining down at her.

"Four Fists."

"Eight Fists."

"Sixteen Fists."

"Thirty-two Fists."

Glee could be seen all over his face, as he noticed that he had indeed hit the real body, perfectly at that.

However, that glee soon turned into absolute horror, as a disappointed Kurai got up from the ground.

"What a bother."

She had hoped for a good fight but was disappointed to notice how easy it was to defend herself.

She merely used a bit of Earth Armor and coated her body with chakra, making the Hyuga's technique useless. Though one had to know that it would still work, had Kurai been weaker than her enemy.

She also took measures in case her little experiment would fail, but it just seemed too easy.

'How disappointing, I thought I could at least use him as a guinea pig...'

"[Wind Style: Rotating Tornado Spear]"

The Hyuga, still in a daze due to shock, was unable to react, as the Wind spear impaled him. "Monster...."

Although disappointed, Kurai got rid of the bodies before turning towards the person to be escorted. She didn't care if he lived or died, but it would be detrimental to have even one bit of her identity and abilities revealed.

Finishing him off, she followed her clone which she had sent after the bandits.

***

Dispelling the clone, Kurai quickly searched for clues about the current situation. Unlike the shadow clone Jutsu from the hidden lead, normal clones didn't give the original their memories. The only known exception was the wood clone Jutsu, which continued to provide the memories at all times.

Her clone meanwhile had massacred all the bandits in the hideout, with only a sole survivor remaining.

It seemed her clone had been quite meticulous, as there were clear signs of torture on some of the bandits.

Turning to the Jonin-level bandit, Nozomi noticed a small wound on the enemy's abdomen, which she quickly realized was due to an Earth spike. Although it was visible and looked bad, for a shinobi of his level a wound like that was treated as if it didn't exist.

As she had no interest to play with spoiled food, she quickly finished the leader off before clearing out the hideout.

Although her clone was unable to fight against him since it merely had a small fraction of Kurai's real strength, she had no problems with taking him out in a few moves.

At least now she knew, why her clone had been so quick to kill everyone instead of waiting and observing. Multiple women, some not even adults were tied to the wall with lifeless looks in their eyes, there were even a few males but most of them had been used as physical labor slaves, causing their demise.

Seeing Kurai coming in, looks of despair were sent towards her, with only a few having a hint of hope in them.

Creating a few clones and making them transform into different people, she got rid of the chains binding the prisoners

Each of them got a clone, which would protect them till they were home. Her real self meanwhile kept searching for the missing shinobi, which had been her main focus for coming here. Those prisoners were just extras.

Luckily they were still alive and Kurai was able to stabilize their conditions easily, though they had gone through some torture.

"Miss, can we accompany you? Our home has already been destroyed and we have nowhere to go."

She was speechless, she had never focused on saving lives. Her missions always focused on taking them and now she was suddenly asked to babysit normal civilians because they were scared to be alone.

"No. Be grateful, that I'm sending my clones with you. You're lucky I was tasked with saving any survivor of this nation if it doesn't interrupt my work. Now behave and go, I don't have time for you guys."

She could see most of them shivering at her apparent lack of morals and care. Despite their fearful gazes, Kurai couldn't care less. It was not her mission and she was only there to find the abducted shinobi of her village.