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A short story that I wrote during my AP Literature class out of boredom and reviewing Hamlet. Enjoy.

ANBU: Cold Blooded

Nightfall had descended over the small mountain fortress, under the cover of darkness a solitary figure moved through along base of the stone wall that had been carved from the mountain face. Sentries strode casually upon the ramparts unaware of the silent threat that roamed beneath them.

Kei moved quickly, his presence was of yet undetected and he planned to keep it that way until the last possible moment. He followed the wall until he found the juncture at which it met the stony cliff face of the mountain, jumping upwards he planted his feet against the rocky surface and began to ascend the vertical plane of the mountain, as he approached the ramparts above the ANBU of Gaioh leapt upwards and clamped a hand on the rampart. Hugging the wall, the raven haired shinobi hung from his position and cautiously peered over the stone cut defenses at the pair of sentries along the walkway.

The two men stood huddled together by a torch, the evening had the distinct chill of a winter night and the barren catwalks that they were stationed upon did little to ward of the wind that leached the warmth that accumulated under their coats. Kei felt the cool air sharply as he was dressed in the skintight ANBU uniform he wore for this particular mission.

With a sudden explosion of effort, Kei kick off the wall with his toeholds and rolled over the rampart, keeping his body as close to the stone as possible to minimize his silhouette. The two guardsmen turned simultaneously towards the intruder but were unable to utter a word, much less rise the alarm as the ninja leapt from the floor and buried a pair of kunai knives into an eye of each man; the weapons delved deep, leaving only their ringed hilts protruding from the orbital socket of each man’s face. Carefully propping the two men against the stone and concealing his own form, Kei moved away from the corpses; bent double he moved beneath the cut planes of the ramparts to prevent his detection.

The shinobi moved towards the stone portal of the closest observation tower and entered the spire, he glanced up at the trapdoor above his head and listened for any sign of a commotion that might indicate that someone had noticed his breach. After a full fifteen seconds of waiting, Kei stepped out over the empty air that was the center of the tower and fell slowly to the ground floor where he touched down silently; aided by his Ichijin bloodline ability of Air Walking.

Moving towards the exit, the Ichijin sidled against the wall and listened for the footfalls of patrols within the fortress. He heard what sounded like at least three men arguing amongst themselves about which taverns and brothels to acquaint themselves with during their leave. As the passed, Kei mentally counted the seconds until they passed by again, that incident was a full seven and a half minutes later. As the men passed, Kei cracked open the door and glanced around to make sure that the passing guards were looking in the opposite direction of him.

Assured, the ANBU darted through the open and moved into the shadow of the barracks; moving beneath the windows the shinboi could hear the snores of the soldiers housed within. He slunk clandestinely towards the next building but paused just as he was about to move across the alley way that separated the barracks complex from the mess hall. Kei pressed his back against the wall and peered around the corner as carefully as possible, a single guard stood there trying to light a match but was unable to strike the flame. Kei knew he couldn’t sneak past this guard unseen so he would have to try a different approach. Grabbing a lighter from his pack, Kei wheeled around the corner and approached the guard quickly; flicking open the lighter and striking the flint wheel, Kei ignited a piece of flash paper and extended his hand toward the guard.

Shutting his eyes, the flash paper lit up brightly as the guard turned around and was night blinded. “Need a light?” Kei asked the man as he opened his eyes to slits, the guard blinked as his vision had been totally thrown of by the bright light after adjusting to the dark, but he didn’t think anything amiss as he leaned forward with his cigarette. Lowering his hand a bit, Kei allowed the guard to get in close and bend his head down to ignite the cig before he brought his left hand up sharply and slammed the heel of his palm into the nostril of the guard. The cartilage of the man’s nose crunched as it was broken and ejected backwards into the man’s brain and killed him. Closing the lighter with a flick of his wrist, the ANBU caught the falling cadaver and pressed it up against the wall.

Opening the exterior door to the kitchen larder, Kei dragged the body inside and quickly removed the dead man’s coat and trousers, and slipped them on himself. Donning a muffler around his neck to conceal his face and slipping a skull cap on masked his appearance by only exposing his face. Kei then took the dead man and slipped him inside a nearly empty flour bin. Exiting the larder, the ANBU walked openly past the patrolling guards and greeted them as he passed them past while keeping his arms folded across his chest and hunched over slightly to ward off the cold. Moving at a brisk pace, he went unchallenged by the guardsmen as they only saw a fellow soldier who had an aide’s insignia upon his left shoulder.

Kei had swiped the rank identifier from a man on leave at the town at the base of the mountain. Posing as an aide gave him the access and the excuse to move unhindered at night, and he wasn’t going to be drawing any attention with salutes as if he were one of the officers. Middle management was an unrewarding job of little recognition and great effort.

The raven haired ninja made it into the fort’s command post and breezed past the midnight guards who were playing cards in the relative warmth that they had inside the building. Kei had two objectives, and as he picked the lock of the fort commander’s office he was working on the first; he rifled through the room quickly and carefully replacing the documents as he found them. Finally, the ANBU found what he was looking for; prying open the side of the commander’s desk to reveal a secret compartment, the shinobi had obtained a file containing the account numbers for the bank deposits that were being used to fund and supply the training camps of the White Hand.

Storing the papers inside his combat vest, Kei exited the office and proceeded down the hall to the commander’s personal quarters and approached the bolted door. The commander of the fort took his personal safety a bit more seriously than the safety of his office seeing as how his personal rooms was secured by a thick steel bolt. However, this had been accommodated for, Kei reached under the borrowed coat and extracted a tube and a vial from his vest.

Using his combat knife, Kei slice away a chunk of soft clay from the tube he had and rolled it into a long cylinder and placed it against the door frame. Then using a senbon needle, the ANBU drilled a hole through the malleable substance but halted just short of poking a hole through the entire roll. Slipping the cork out of the vial, Kei tapped the contents of the vial into the pit he had made in the clay, before threading a wick into the hole. Using the rest of the clay, Kei reinforced the clay he had already placed and lit the wick.

Moving away from the door, Kei counted to thirty as the wick burned, the flame reached the vials contents and then a thermite reaction began to occur; the substance burned at nearly three thousand degrees and melted straight through the door and the metal lock while baking the clay. After thirty seconds, the substance had burned itself out the door was simply pushed open.

The shinobi crossed the anteroom quickly searching for threats, moving to the commander’s suite; Kei pushed through the door and moved towards the bed where the commander was sleeping peacefully. Without any kind of hesitation, the ANBU assassin moved over to the commander’s side and cupped his chin delicately, turning his head to the side before driving the eight inch blade of his combat knife into the base of the sleeping man’s neck and driving it up into the medulla. A viscous twist neatly separated the spinal column and destroyed the man’s brainstem, killing him instantly.

The fort commander had been recruited by the White Hand and used as a money man to legitimately purchase weaponry and training equipment for his base. He then shipped surplus goods to numerous small outposts which were subsequently raided by the White Hand. Beyond this, he allowed opium and slave traffickers to cross through the mountain’s unhindered for a cut of the profits and he used his men to extort pilgrims and travelers. He had amassed a large fortune this way, making him a very powerful player from behind the scenes.

Kei stepped away from his target and quickly exited his quarters, making his way up several floors he used the roof access door to step out onto the highest point of the fort where a solitary guard stood in a booth watching the dawn as it crested over the mountains. Moving behind the man slowly, Kei fished out a length of wire from his vest and stretched in taut between his two hands. The ninja slipped the cord over the man’s head and drew it back across his throat before crossing his hands and pulling sharply at the ends of the wires. The guard toppled backwards out of his chair but couldn’t pull the cord away from his neck before he blacked out from blood deprivation. Kei held the cord in place until he was positive the man was dead. Stripping off the coat and trousers that he confiscated from his previous victim, the shinobi was once again clothed only in his uniform and combat vest.

Turning away, Kei approached the mountain face and began to scale the vertical face with his chakra. After a quarter of an hour and a vigorous pace, the raven haired ANBU reached the summit of the peak and slipped into a tent of the base camp that was set up. Changing into his climbing gear, the ninja slipped out of his tent as the other climbers began to file out of their tents tiredly and began to break down camp. They would be scaling the cliff back to the base today, and as far as they knew the man they called Kei was just another mountain climbing enthusiast who had decided to push himself to the limit by scaling a tricky mountain in the heart of winter.