Blood and Shadows.

Sendo was traveling through one of the minor villages of the shinobi realm. He weaved in and out of people as if he were a ghost, like he didnt exist. It was amazing how when you didnt want to exist, you didnt to the people around you, but if you sought gratification of your existence at there cost, then they took notice right away. It just went to show that people were selfish beings down to their very core. All of them, himself included. He lived for the drive of spilling blood, and was all to ready to do anything necessary to do it. He didnt know what it was that drove him, but he did know that the drive was there, and to fight that drive would mean losing what little bit of sanity he had left. If that happened, the drive would be fulfilled anyway, so why not revel in the joy, rather than cloak yourself in mental delusion and paranoia. No, Sendo liked this option much better.

There were people everywhere, and he could sense about what they were all thinking. It only reaffirmed the fact that humans were disgusting creatures. So disgusting that it brought Sendo great pleasure to be called one. To be the single most slimy thing on the planet was his ultimate goal. And in his goal, he would try to make as many as possible believe him to be a saint. He was absolutely beautiful in his own eyes. Today was to be a great day for him, because he was going to leave a mark. He was going to destroy this village, and no one would know. He would be the great devil, the deceiver, and he would smite them, for no more reason than a sudden whim of his. A whim to kill, to spill blood. To enhance the feeling of his own being.

Yoshimo was up to nothing today, running errands here and there about things that were irrelevant. He was doing busy work, something he'd always hated to do. He was suppose to be out shopping, but today was a beautiful day and he'd decided to sit around under a shade tree and mind his own business for a while. It was time that Yoshimo sat down with himself and thought about what he was getting into with the Akatsuki. As he sat under the tree he began to think about the people he'd left behind in Kumogakure, and how they were doing. He wondered how Munashii and Lelia were doing, and he hoped that they were growing as ninja. He would probably end up fighting them again soon, and that meant that they would have to be strong enough to go against him. Yoshimo signed at the thought of fighting his former students he was attached to. He'd literally sacrificed blood to take care of them, and they were like his children, and he had to protect them. Yoshimo continued on, thinking about what was right for him.

Even though they'd been planning the Akatsuki since day one, Yoshimo knew that he belonged with Kyouken-san. As a teenager, he was the only person that kind of gave him a life. His grandfather had died, and he'd no where to go. He was a wanderer, destined to be killed. It all led up to that day when he met him, and Yoshimo swore that he'd stand by Kyouken until he died. He had to stay somewhere, so he stay in Akatsuki until he re payed his debt to Kyouken with his own sweat and blood.

As he was walking down the streets, examining the people who would soon become his sheep to slaughter, he brushed upon a consciousness that was different than the rest. He couldn't tell exactly what it was, but he could pick out pieces, stuff about people considered family, past times, future struggle, killing, and pain, oh yes, definitely pain. The act intrigued Sendo but he did not pause to wonder about it. There would be time for reflection later. Now was the time for doing what he did best, which was obviously not pondering trivial things that had no true meaning. It was killing. Sendo was an artist in his own right, and he when he set about making his work, it was a masterpiece almost every time. He decided to have a little fun.

Sendo picked his target carefully. The man looked muscular, and his brain told him that this was not the person to take note of a random cut out of no where to the pinkie, which is exactly where sliced the man open, barely touching the tip of the kunai to flesh as they passed one another. As discreetly as possible, he made exactly three hand seals, and the fun began. Using masterfully precise control of his chakra, Sendo turned a single drop of the mans blood into acid. He suspended it in the vein, careful to not allow it to touch the walls of the tube. He channeled it up and through the mans arm and across his chest. It was the left hand which Sendo had sliced open, so the path was that much quicker, the goal was the heart.

It reached its destination almost instantly, chakra made everything go so much faster, and blood flow was already an extremely fast bodily act. Now he let the acid go where it needed to go. He pushed it outwards with his mind, forcing the droplet to move horizontally and straight through the muscle that made up the heart. right through it all, burning clean through. The man instantly clutched his chest, a scared look on his face, he had felt a slight burning sensation in his chest. That is when true fun began. Sendo pushed with his mind, forcing all the blood in the mans upper body to flow out of the tiny whole in the mans heart, ripping it open. It stopped beating, the damage to great for it to function. The man collapsed on the street, a glazed look in his eye. A large lump formed under the skin where the heart was a mangled mess and blood began to build under Sendo's influence.

Suddenly the bulge began to move up, tearing through pathways, destroying already dead tissue. The mans voice box exploded, but no one would be able to tell. A vertebrae was pushed out of place as the bulge passe, causing a pop to sound through out the crow of people who had gathered around the fallen man. Sendo was amongst them, with a birds eye view of his own performance. The bulge finally passed and disappeared in the mans head, but it was not over.

A jet of red exploded from the deceased individuals mouth, coating several people nearby. Sendo made the same three hand seals he had earlier, coating the people who had been sprayed with the blood with acid, destroying their skin and causing them intense pain. They were sure to die. Sendo couldnt surpress a grin. Who cared who knew. They would all be dead soon anyway.

Yoshimo though that he was dreaming. Suddenly screams and people rushing around was heard and it instantly got his attention. The crowd was in mass confusion, and Yoshimo couldn't tell what was going on. Something was happening, and he quickly stood up to see what it was. Still he couldn't see! There were so many people running about, and he couldn't tell what was going on. Yoshimo quickly decided to make his way into the tree that he was under and climbed up a few branches, enough to be over the crowd and look down at what was going on. Yoshimo searched around ads the crowed began to dim.

What he saw throughly surprised him. Some ninja had been bold enough to kill right in the open. He'd taken a kunai, and randomly sliced the man open. As a medical shinobi, Yoshimo began to think the worst. He didn't want to get into a battle with another medical ninja, that would be the worst then for him. Yoshimo sighed, and continued looking at the gory scene. He couldn't really see what was going on, but it seemed as if the ninja was putting something into his blood. Something really small that he couldn't see from a distance, but Yoshimo could tell was dangerous. He looked on, wondering what it was, and Yoshimo jerked his head back.

A gory scene played right into his eyes. The man began to clutch his heart, and Yoshimo automatically though he'd induced a heart attack on the man, but that wasn't it. Something was wrong with his blood flow, something was wrong with him. After he'd fallen to the ground Yoshimo could see a gory scene, in which the man's chest began to fill up with blood. Soon after, the blood began to jet from the mans mouth, which meant his lungs were packed full of blood. The people that were near were instantly soaked in the blood, and whatever the shinobi had put in his blood surely meant pain. The people coated in blood were screaming as if they were on fire, and Yoshimo didn't have a clue to what it was.

Through the midst of the blood and the chaos, Yoshimo disappeared from the tree. Moving through the crowd, a small trial of dust began to dodge its way through the people as if they were moving in slow motion. It was like an invisible man was running through them. To the trained eye, they could see Yoshimo moving through the crowd, but most of the probably couldn't. Yoshimo skidded away from the man and the blood, but close enough to see what was going on. He had to stay clear of that blood, and he had to make sure that he didn't get cut.

Yoshimo stood there through the midst of the gory scene. Surely the man had recognized his presence and knew that a battle would be imminent. Yoshimo was a medical ninja and his job was to heal people. Of course he'd tested his poison and things on people, but that was surely in humane to kill people without some type of reason. His hand reached for his katana as he held the grip of it tightly. His muscles could be seen clenching, waiting for the moment of the battle to begin. He was wearing a regular shinobi uniform, trying to conceal his power. Yoshimo thought about fighting him, and still wanted to go through with it. If he was to fight him, he wouldn't be able to spill a drop of blood.

Sendo was pissed. There weren't supposed to be any ninja in these parts, which is why he had chosen here. To show that he could catch the world off guard and wipe them all out if he so desired. Yet here was a shinobi, and there was a good chance that there could be more. That wasnt all though. Sendo was also pissed with himself. By brushing against the mans consciousness, he could tell it was the striking thought he had felt just moments ago. He had just walked past this individual, and had not caught on to the fact that he was a shinobi. Either this shinobi was good, or Sendo was losing his touch. Neither one really appealed to him. a tough opponent meant more work that he had not expected to have to deal wtih, and losing his touch, well the implications to that were pretty obvious weren't they.

Sendo realized he was gripping his kunai so hard that he was cutting off circulation to his fingertips and relaxed his whole body. Regardless of the opposition. He could not afford to get worked up. In battle he had to be calm and collective, able to keep his strong mental processes in tact. Otherwise he would probably lose against who ever the fuck this was. His tongue slid out of his mouth slightly and decide, now was the time to play a game with this new arrival. The situation was perfect and he could easily set a trap this way. In fact, the trap was pretty much set, all that was left, was to set the gears turning to work the machine. He let go of the kunai and it hovered in the air beside him. It still had the blood on it from the man he had killed a moment ago. It wasnt much blood, but he was a professional in this art.

Suddenly the Kunai whipped forward, careful not to hit anyone. If he had cut someone, this ninja could notice and detect his relative position by following the path of red, so he was cautious in his approach. It came from directly behind, but Sendo had something else in mind. Instead he forced it up and had it come down at the nin from an angle. With luck, the shinobi would think that Sendo was perched somewhere trying to pick him off or something to that effect. The goal was to lead him away from Sendo's position, and of course, he had a back up plan that was sure to work if this failed him.

The shinobi that Yoshimo was facing had to be someone smart, but not all that smart. He wasn't trying to think down on the shinobi's intelligence, maybe he just liked a fight over really thinking about how he would put things together. However that was no matter to Yoshimo. He would still defend himself at all costs and make sure that he was protected from the shinobi's attacks. Yoshimo's travels were all but normal, and if he'd had a paper and pencil he could write a book on the weird things that he'd seen from these ninja that he'd come across. Some of them were easily defeated, but this one seemed like he would give Yoshimo nothing buy a hard time.

Yoshimo waited for the first strike from the shinobi and then began to watch for anything that he would have up his sleeve. He didn't know if the shinobi was a bunshin, so he would have to make precautionary methods to protect him from bunshin that might be lurking around in the shadows. Too bad for Yoshimo he couldn't sense chakra really well, or tell if there was anything going on around him. He would just have to play the first move carefully and make sure that he was protected from all sides. This shinobi was after blood and nothing else. Yoshimo wouldn't even dare to let spittle fly from his mouth.

A flick of the wrist and kunai signaled that the battle had begun and Yoshimo was on his way into another fight with some stranger. He didn't feel like he should make conversation with this stranger, because Yoshimo felt weird just being around him. He couldn't feel or sense chakra well, but he could sure feel a weird feeling. Yoshimo reacted to the kunai by removing his sword and throwing it down. At the same time, he remembered that he needed to watch out for things that he couldn't see, so he quickly pivoted on his left foot, spinning quickly around to find that more than one kunai was directed at him. He stopped spinning, quickly trying to regain his senses as he'd thrown off his equilibrium. He held his sword with a death grip, wondering what was this feeling he was getting from the shinobi. Yoshimo tried to connect it to some of the weird feelings he'd felt from another member in the Akatsuki, Kaji-Kanto. He knew the feeling now, and it was pure blood lust. Whoever it was had a strong lust for it, because it was even greater than that of his fellow Akatsuki member. Pure blood lust...

After Sendo made the kunai attack, he decided that it didnt matter about keeping himself concealed. Who cared at this point. His only opposition was this one ninja, he could tell that there was no others around after using the mind coins abilities to search the area. He didnt even have to activate the coin fully. He shuddered to think what he'd be capable of it he used it to its full potential. THe shudder was from sure joy at the thought of it. He wanted to end this quickly. There was a good chance that people would flee the area in the midst of their battle and that would mean he would have to hunt them down and kill them, a much more tedious task then he would like to partake in.

Sendo activated the chakra of his kekkei genkei again. Again he used the same blood source as before. So far the crowd was unaware that a battle was taking place, and were still gathered around the dead body and the other ninja. The kunai had not yet found its mark, and Sendo made his way through the crowd in a circle, till he was again behind his prey. "Servants of blood," he focused his chakra and created two scorpions by clotting the blood into a certain shape. On the inside, they were filled with blood which had been affected by his hemo acidosis. Instead of poision, they would inject this directly into the bloodstream.

He used the two in two different ways. The first one he had approach the other ninja from behind, specifically targeting the ankle. The other one used its claws and odd shaped body to burrow underground, as to conceal itself and be used again later. The kunai was just a split second away from finding its mark. Hopefully either it of the scorpion would score a hit. Sendo waited patiently in the crowd to see how his test for the shinobi would work. After this, the crow would probably scatter, aware that this would quickly turn into a full out ninja battle.

He was the first ninja that Yoshimo had ever seen do something like that. Yoshimo realized that he did have some type of brains on him, and he was smart enough to take advantage of the dead mans blood to use as his arsenal. As a medical ninja, Yoshimo had been used to blood and lots of it. But this was the first time that he'd actually seen someone use blood to their advantage in battle. Yoshimo had to think carefully and know what would be coming and how he would return attacks. He couldn't fuck up, not one bit.

Yoshimo watched as the shinobi began to use the blood and create scorpions out of them. He was amazed by the art of the shinobi, and especially his chakra control and shape manipulation. Getting a ball of chakra was already insanely hard, and now that he'd created a scorpion out of pure blood Yoshimo knew that he had to be A ranked or S ranked. The scorpions were unbelievably quick, and Yoshimo watched carefully. One of them had somehow made it to the back of his ankle, and Yoshimo reacted quickly. He pushed his foot forward, as if doing a split, but quickly brought the other around towards the back of it, letting both of his heels meet back to back. He'd dodged the scorpion so far, but he was still in range. Yoshimo quickly jumped to a shack wall, keeping his feet and body up against the wall with chakra his feet. Simotaneously he moved for a tagged kunai, two of them in fact and threw one down at the ground towards the scorpion and one at his opponent.

Yoshimo jumped higher up, out of the range of the notes, and stood on the top of the shacks roof. The best way to get rid of anything bloody was to burn it, and that's what Yoshimo would have to try to do even if he didn't have a fire nature. Hearing the *thunks* of the tagged kunai in the ground, Yoshimo quickly placed his hand in the tiger handsign, allowing a small bit of chakra from a remote distance to cause the notes to sizzle.