Kaori; A Certain Non-Magical Index: B Rank: Solo - private

Kaori had felt this before... Her heart was racing, her veins felt like they were collapsing in on themselves, her muscles were tightening, her stomach was churning, and she couldn't stop shaking. It was the same every time she did this, every time she went on what was most likely her last mission, her swan song, her grande finale. Kaori to her beauty stand and looked in the mirror. Her eyes shifted from being awake and alive, to being somewhat dead inside. She picked up her mask and turned it, placing it in front her face without actually mounting it on her head and looked at it. Kaori remembered her training and the things she'd gone through to get to this point. She remembered the things she saw, and smelled, and did that brought her to her final moments. "They'll never kill me, my mask will be all they see." Kaori said confidently while reminding herself mentally that she was never truly a member of this clan, and no one will miss her. Everyone wore a mask, and everyone was trained to be deceptive. Everyone there had lived their lives learning to fight face to face, as well as assassinate targets. No one had a true personality since they changed personalities so often. Kaori was no different... Over the past decade, Kaori had worn many costumes, many masks, many personalities to accomplish her missions. She had been a high ranking officer for the government, an insane and blood thirsty fiend, a prostitute, a thief, and even a vagrant a few times. Kaori had no concept of who she truly was; as was the life of a Lareci warrior... an assassin. Her mask however, was different from the other clan members. The normal members all wore black clothes with black masks, each with accents that were a slightly lighter shade of black. Hers was white, a color that was extremely high profile and easy to spot in almost any situation. It was like this so Kaori could be spotted in combat, and thus, made an easy target. The reason she wanted that is because it meant she needed to have better skills to compensate for being obvious. She needed to be better at sneaking around, not making noise and drawing attention. She needed to be fast so her opponents couldn't be able to track her movements. She needed to be able to hit harder than anyone in her clan so she wouldn't need to worry about being hit. Because of those high profile clothes, Kaori had to be the best; and she was the best. Kaori put the mask down and grabbed her hair ties, pinning her hair in twin tails to keep it from covering her eyes up or flowing about too much. After that she mounted her mask, tying off the white ribbon to keep it held in place. The ribbon had a pattern that worked like camouflage, helping to make it blend into her hair so as to not stand out too much.

Kaori got up, moving to her wardrobe and taking out one of her sets of clothes. Kaori took a pink top out with a crimson border and floral pattern on it, wearing that as her base layer. This was tucked inside a dark pink, pleated skirt that hung down just a bit under mid-thigh; maybe an inch or two. On top the pink kimono top, Kaori wore a thick black sash that wrapped around her bust and kept her breasts from bouncing around during combat. While it made her look flatter than normal, Kaori didn't care what men though of her chest or anyone else for that matter. She wanted combat efficiency, not sexiness. Over her skirt, Kaori wrapped a pink sash with red flowers loosely. The sash matched her kimono and added a bit of cuteness to her attire. Over all of that, Kaori wore a white shirt with a light blue trim. The shirt was longer than normal ones, hanging down to just below Kaori's rear end and while it did have buttons on it, Kaori left it open so she didn't get too hot with it on. She pulled out a pair of white slippers and put them on, adjusting the heel to be comfortably in place. Once dressed, Kaori left her room and made sure the door was locked behind her.

Kaori made her way down to the armory in the castle where they kept an assortment of useful explosives and tactical items. It was also the place that Kaori kept her sword from time to time, normally after maintaining the blade. She took the sword and looked at it and sighed. The blade was virtually useless against skilled opponents. It was normal, and made of low quality steel. Kaori could snap it if she tried, and would break it if she wasn't careful of where she hit. It was something some guy was selling at a prop shop that Kaori confused for a weapon shop, and didn't feel like replacing since she had the sword skill to make it work. She grabbed the sheathe for it and slid the sword inside before mounting it on her waist, figuring that she'd eventually come across a better one; or even better, she'd find materials to make a better one. She then grabbed her tool belt and went to the different areas and began filling it. Six lacrima explosives were first, and then a set of smoke balls that were followed by a set of flash lacrima. A pair of bombs that released a wave of compressed air upon detonation were stuffed in the belt, which completed the set. Kaori closed the clasps on each compartment before grabbing a holster from a rack and sliding off her shirt. She mounted the holster over her kimono and grabbed a pair of explosive charges, slipping them in the back portion of the holster. There were to clips on the back end that Kaori used to store her fusion cores from her motorcycle, an extra set of bombs she used frequently when she needed to do some massive damage.

This had all seemed familiar to Kaori... taking down an encampment filled with enemies. She had been surveying the area for a while, and found that it was Saia's clan who had moved into the settlement just outside Shirotsune. She remembered the last time she had done this all to well, and how it turned out absolutely horribly for her...

It was night when Kaori arrived within range of the encampment and she had the hawk drop her off on the back end of a mountain. From there, Kaori would move around front under the cover of night using the brush as her cloak. A field mouse nearby served as Kaori's eyes and ears, running into the camp and scurrying about while Kaori was viewing its past to learn what it was seeing. She learned the layout of the area after twenty minutes, and how many enemies there were, what weapons they used, who was on shift and where they were stationed. Kaori couldn't have done any of that were it not for her psychic abilities, and she was grateful for the little mouse being willing to help her in spite of the obvious danger. When it returned, Kaori thanked it and let the little creature go off to live its life.

She waited for everyone to tuck in for the night and trust their lives to the guards who were sworn to keep them safe. When that happened, the first guard began choking on a solid dark steel arrow that suddenly got lodged in his throat. The woman next to him turned in shock while grabbing a hammer, getting ready to start smacking a gong to wake everyone up. Before she could fully react, before she could even think to scream she was choking on a sword in her throat. Kaori dragged their bodies and pinned them to a post to make them look like they were standing up. She vanished again, reappearing behind one of the tents. She figured it best to start at the low ranking members and work her way across the encampment. It would mean she didn't get ambushed, and she wouldn't need to fight a hundred people at once. Kaori waited for the guard in the area to pass by before sending an arrow through his skull, ending him instantly. There were ten tents, one of which contained the officers for the camp. The rest were empty, either belonging to the night guard or being reserved for incoming reinforcements. Kaori had counted eight guards; two at the towers on each corner and two patrolling the tents. She vanished and made her way to the other side of the camp where the second patrolling guard was. Just like the other, he hit the ground without knowing how he died. Kaori turned quickly and fired two more arrows, pinning the heads of the tower guards in the south-west corner to the posts and preventing them from becoming an issue.

Kaori ran for the wall and reappeared on the other side. With ghost like silence she moved along the edge of the wall behind a set of sharpened spikes that were meant to keep out invaders; well, they weren't keeping this one out. Kaori pulled out a pair of kunai, throwing knives used for distracting enemies and creating an opening. She kicked one of the posts on purpose to force one of the guards to talk and reveal his position. "What's that?" he said softly, trying not to alert their intruder that they were found. Kaori appeared behind him and his partner and rammed the kunai in the back of their necks, right between the c1 and c2 vertebrae; instant death awaited them. She then jumped back over the wall and ran to the other side. This time, she didn't need to do anything since the two guards had seen the dead bodies Kaori just made and one of them began getting ready to shout. "In-" was all he said before a small throwing knife hugged the inside of his partner's spine. He looked at Kaori with terror and knew the mask of the person who killed him a moment later.

Next on the list was the tents themselves. With the guards all taken care of, the only thing Kaori had to worry about was one of the sleeping trainees waking up and freaking out. For that, Kaori had her own tools for the trade. Rather than walking in and slitting everyone's throat and risking being caught in the process, Kaori slipped in and set a single explosive lacrima on the ground with the variable switch set to incindiary. She did this for the first six of each of the tents. She then went to the next to and set the explosive charges. At the last two tents, she took the time to slit the throats of the officers and the recruits as they slept; none of them suspecting a thing. Kaori stood at the desk of the officer and began reading through the letters that were stacked on her desk. "Saia..." she whispered in a hateful tone. It was the second time he'd targetted the magic clan, and the second time Kaori had to thwart his efforts.

She left the premisis and used her telekinesis to pull the pin on the explosion lacrima. She also pulled out her iLac and timed it just right so the explosive charges went off alongisde the lacrima in near perfect sync. The flames spread quickly and the entire camp was set ablaze, but Kaori noticed that things had gone far too smoothly. She vanished quickly, her instincts telling her too and when she did, she had just barely dodged an incoming attack. Kaori saw that she was facing an massive enemy force, most likely the ones missing from the tent. Kaori was a smart girl, she knew her limits and didn't push them. The lava hawk was already gone, it knew it was in danger and took off to await Kaori's command. Kaori began running, vanishing and reappearing frequently to dodge arrows and javalins. She didn't want to call the hawk in yet, she didn't want him to get hurt. Kaori pulled out her three smoke balls and slammed them on the ground to create a thick smoke screen. The feeling of four arrows slamming through her right arm let her know that Saia had planned for that trick. The easiest thing was night vision, so Kaori took a gamble and tossed a flash grenade in the air before vanishing again. The bright light seemed to make the arrows stop, and she saw the enemies all reeling back. "Damnit." Kaori said, seeing few options here. She pulled out one of her fusion cores and began making her way to a place that was essentially a natural funnel. She set the first one down and primed it and set the second one on the other side. An arrow slamming into Kaori's back, emerging through the other side let her know time was up. She used her heavenly wall to cover her back while running away, going deeping into the crevice and luring her attackers in. Just when she was sure they were all there, Kaori used her telekinesis to detonate the fusion reactors. The blast was so powerful it instantly destroyed Kaori's barrier and shot her from the land formation as a smouldering blur.

The Lava Hawk had shown its intelligence by grabbing her mid-air. It knew what she was doing, and where she would be when she emerged and used that to go in for the save. There was only one place it knew Kaori could be helped, and it was the one place that it would take her. When Kaori arrived to that place she called home, the magic user's castle; her body had cooled off but her face was unrecognizable. Her mask was half melted to her skin, and the other half of her face was burnt to a crisp. She had no hair at all, and there were three arrows in her right arm that were bent from the force of the explosion to wrap around it. The arrows in her chest were melted in place, and her clothing was almost entirely gone aside from some charred scraps of her skirt and kimono. Needless to say, Kaori wasn't conscious, but she wasn't dead yet. When the bird brought Kaori in, the members were in uproar and they had worked for over a week to get her stabilized. When Kaori woke up, she was in her bedroom with a new mask next to her that was exactly like her old one.

"I won't let it happen again." Kaori said under her breath, vowing that she'd never be in debt to anyone again. This time, she would be fighting without failure and without being caught. She had made sure to it that her movements were silent, and she knew her enemy as well as they knew themselves. The men below had no idea she was here this time. This far from the castle on the eastern sea, no one was able to spy on her. Then again, Kaori was the captain of one hell of a ship... the Arc of Destiny. The ship alone was one-thousand five hundred feet from front to back and three-hundred fifty feet across. It towered at six hundred feet above the sea, and had two massive guns that a grown man could walk in, jump around and never hit the top of the barrel in. The top of the ship had a hatch that opened up to reveal a third one of these guns, and the sides had another hatch with two more half their size... the most terrifying part of the ship was that a man could still never hit his head on the top of the barrels if he jumped around in them. Hargeon Port's government had no problem with Kaori parking such a monstrosity in its port as the one who owned it was technically a government official herself, and held high status in the Magic Council as a 'Star' of sorts. While people did know of the ship, since it stuck out like a sore thumb; no one had ever seen the insides. No inspections were performed of the vessel since the ship was also considered Midi territory and any trespassing could be considered an act of war. No one was taken on board who wasn't crew, and the people who were crew were people Kaori all knew better than they knew themselves.

When your entire ship was made of people you hand picked, hand trained, and picked apart their lives at an atomic level- knowing every last memory of theirs, there was no room for someone to slip a little spy in. That spy would instantly be snuffed out, and executed by Kaori's hand. But surely, someone who was protected by an entire crew, massive cannons, and diplomatic imunity couldn't possibly be dangerous right? Wrong. Kaori's office was her trophy room. It was a room on her flagship that doubled as the war and strategic planning room. In the middle of it was a large, circular table with the map of the world and rolled up pages pinned to it with daggers. The pages marked contracts that Kaori had taken up, and there were currently four of them. Wooden figures shaped like men, horses, and ships dotted the map. A large cluster of men and horses were in Midi, with several ships on the largest port in the country. All of the ship pieces looked like a normal boat, except for one... At Hargeon's end of the map were two ships, one that was a normal boat piece, the other was a tiny version of the Arc of Destiny that was scaled to match.

The walls of the room were made of bloodwood, an extremely rare and expensive, but beautiful and rugged wood. Mounted on the walls at the top were the heads of different animals, taking up three rows and encircling the room. The animals weren't the cute ones like deer, elk, and gazelle; no, they were the horrifying types... the ones that Lamia Scale hunted. Below them, on each of the walls were weapons galore. Swords, spears, axes, bows, daggers, guns from all civilizations and time periods- all in perfect condition. Tables with glass cases on them lined the bottom of the room with treasures within, neatly arranged to display Kaori's travels. On the far side of the room was a desk with a stack of paper on it a foot thick sitting in the middle, and four more stacks of equal size on the right side. The desk, like the walls, was made of bloodwood and had an ornate golden pattern embedded into the top that made of gold, not gold paint. Hovering in front the desk were a dozen lacrima screens, all flashing with video feeds from within the residing guild and port town of Hargeon. She didn't earn her position, fortune, or crew's loyalty with beauty or inheritance. She did it all of her own merit.

Kaori had come this far, and taken up this contract. She was told that men wearing black suits had stolen a precious book from an excessively wealthy man. He told Kaori that the book was powerful enough to level nations if it was ever put in the wrong hands. Kaori had known many powerful objects, and even held one on her person... She knew there were objects that could be bad in the wrong hands, so she took on the mission and spent a great deal of time watching the men moving in and out of the complex. Her first day had revealed that the enemy were ninja, all wearing colored bands that Kaori recognized easily as Saia's men. After that, it was learning their patterns, ranks, names, and routines.

Ten men had been designated to search the surrounding area, marking the time for Kaori to make her move. She watched the men as they spread out and used her Shadow Clone spell with a combination of her Doppleganger spell to create nine clones who could use all of her spells. They all vanished, each picking a target and following them. They all waited until the ten crimson bands had gotten far from the camp, the distance at which they'd turn back as the area was clear. Simultaneously, all ten of them had their throats cut by none other than themselves. Of course, it wasn't really themselves who had slit their throats. It was the ninja who'd come to end their little camp, and ensure the surrounding area had nothing to worry about.

Kaori began moving back to the camp, all ten of her, and easily got past the guards. No one suspected they allies had been killed not even ten minutes ago under the cover of moonlight. Upon walking in, the nine clones all dispersed. Six of the clones were armed with a small lacrima that would explode and light the surrounding area on fire. These explosice lacrima all were covered in black tar, contained in a thin plastic wrapping to prevent the tar from getting on Kaori herself during transport. The clones set the incindiary explosive devices on the four gates, and two of them on a set of walls that were fairly short. Two clones had explosive charges that were place on two walls that were very long, totaling eight small explosives. Kaori, the original one, and another of her clones had fusion cores from her motorcycle. There were two tents in the camp that they entered and as the ones within were sleeping, slit their throats and activated the fusion cores.

After the cores were activated, Kaori reappeared in the room devoted to their best and brightest members... the platinum ninja. Her footsteps went unheard, and she easily took the stolen book from on top their desk. She vanished and reappeared outside the complex, vanishing several more times as she quickly got out of range of the blast. The denizens of Shirotsume had felt the shockwave and saw the fire on the horizon as the encampment went up in flames at the will of two nuclear blasts, reducing the platinum band wearing ninja and their subordinates to literal dust in the wind. Standing atop a hill and looking at the explosion, Kaori opened the book to find out what sort of knowledge inside was so damn dangerous that it could destroy nations. She then closed it upon seeing naked women drawn in excruciating detail. "There damn well better be a good reward for this shit." Kaori said in an annoyed tone as she began walking back to the rich ass hole who set her on the mission in the first place.

Kaori had returned home to Hargeon, the city on the eastern shore where Kaori had a room at the local castle, owned by the local guild of magic users. The trip back wasn't so bad since she was using her motorcycle, a nuclear powered monster of a vehicle that was quiet as a soft whisper but faster than vehicles of its class. She had met up with her servant Ikuchi who wore a pair of black dress shoes polished to a perfect shine. In the middle of the bottom lace was a solid gold flower, a hibiscus. He wore a set of black dress pants to match, and a well cared for shirt of the same color was tucked into them. From his neck dangled another golden hibiscus, as though it were symbolic to the man. His broad shoulders gave way to normal sized arms, the muscular structure hidden behind black silk sleeves; courtesy of his dress shirt. The man wore a dark grey tie that had a crimson outline on the top, and holding the two tie ends together and preventing wind from flicking them about was a golden clasp. Their final task for the day was checking on Hibiscus to ensure the remodeling had gone well. From what they found, it had seemed that everything was okay and the restaurant looked beautiful.

The walls of the restaurant was a large, elegant waterfall that wrapped around the entire room. Behind the waterfall, various goldfish could be seen swimming around completely unaware of the presence of humans in their home. The waterfalls emptied into a receptacle that looked like it was made of glass despite being made of a transparent type of steel, making it highly resilient. In the walls of the receptacle was more freshwater fish that were small enough to not mind the limited space. In the receptacles where the waterfalls empties into, but not in the walls, were koi fish that children could feed if they so desired. The entire floor of the restaurant was another story, and the only one of its kind... They were made of the same transparent steel as the walls of the water fountain receptacles, and under that was sound lacrima that negated even the loudest of foot stomps. Under that was a massive aquarium with various saltwater fish. The Aquarium hosted blue ringed octopi, lion fish, small sharks, pistol shrimp, several different species of tang, eels, and a couple tasmanian giant crab and crayfish were scuttling about the various corals within. Despite there being so many predators, none of them attacked each other no matter how close they got since they were trained to know three things; when meal time was, what was on the menu, and that there was plenty to go around. The bar counter was made of the same kind of steel and showed many different sized lobster and crab in front it. The backboard was made of black steel, and behind the counter were wooden shelves to hold their various cups and glasses. The overhead shelf was made entirely of bloodwood, Kaori's favorite kind for its dark and rich color. The tables were one with the floor, and allowed the smaller fish and eels to swim up the legs and move about the table tops which amused many of the young children as they ate. A bloodwood staircase in the corner lead to rooms that all had bloodwood floors, but aquarium walls. The hallways were bloodwood to make it so no one could spy on the residents, and between each room was a blacksteel wall inside their walls for the same purpose. Sound lacrima provided privacy, and negated any chance of eaves dropping for the more... intimate residents who stayed the night. Small gaps at the top and bottoms of the steel walls allowed the hundred or so tiny fish move about between rooms. These fish were all bioluminescent salt water fish, and even a few small varieties of squid that put on a dazzling display when the lights were turned out at night.

4508