sunshineverse | [closed; July 15th-August 16th]

Considering her partner's distraction, it was fortunate she didn't actually need any help with the final ninja. They weren't really that impressive, these ninja. Maybe that's why they felt the need to attack them in a group? Whatever the reason, she quickly disarmed the last one, and backed the nin off of the branch.

Although it wasn't directly her intent, she wouldn't say it wasn't useful to her that he managed to fall in such a way that he managed to injure his leg (broken, she thought, but from where she was she couldn't really say). Either way, he collapsed immediately, and a moment afterward earth curled tightly around him, imprisoning him. They weren't likely to need two prisoners to question, but they could deal with them later.

She'd already jumped down from the tree herself and started to approach her distracted teammate by the time he finally spoke. Which was also good, because she probably wouldn't have heard him where she was before, and it would be a problem if those three recovered while his hands were full.

She clasped her hands together as she walked, throwing him a curious look, and mud-nets sprang up around the unmoving nin, quickly hardening into rock. "...A nest?"

"A -- yeah," he responded, because really there was nothing else to say. A giant nest had clearly fallen on him and a baby animal was injured through his fault, however unintentional ... there was bad karma down the line from this, he could only assume. The other two chicks were making aggressive noises that suggested that it was unlikely he'd be able to get past them without hurting them even more, so he turned his attention to Sakura for the moment.

It looked like all the enemy-nin were secured, at least. A glance over at the dome of earth around their charges reminded him to check his own chakra: the fire inside was still burning, which meant:

"We should let the diplomats out," he said, gesturing at the remaining earth jutsu around them. "How many of the enemy left alive?"

Technically, they only needed one alive for information, but given their level ... it was embarrassing to have to kill them.

If their survival caused problems later in the mission, Sasuke only had himself to blame. It wasn't particularly efficient, leaving behind ninja of unknown origin, motivation, and supplies just because they could. Even if they got information out of them, she still didn't think it was the smartest thing. But he was the leader, and so she would defer to his choice on the matter.

Speaking of following his leadership, she glanced quickly across the battlefield. "...Eight." Three from her were left, and...all...of his. An odd choice. As all of them seemed to be incapacitated by genjutsu, paralytic senbon, or earth, there was no danger in turning then to lower the earth barrier.

The civilians inside looked a bit red from overheating and a bit jumpy, but otherwise seemed no worse for wear. Other than the worried looks they gave ring of fire still around them, anyway. "What do we do with them?"

The enemy, not the clients.

Eight, and all unable to move at the moment. Sasuke took his attention off the nest of birds long enough to judge the looks the diplomats were throwing at their attackers -- and decide that they could stay in the ring of fire for now, because the last thing he wanted was disruptions from civilians when they were trying to conduct an interrogation. With this many survivors of the attack, they could hopefully construct at least some semblance of a full story.

Or at least that was his thought, up until the enemy-nin closest to them suddenly started to froth at the mouth and twitch violently despite paralysis.

"Poison -- they've got poison capsules in their mouths!" He shouted the words at Sakura, already heading toward the next prone body. With a last, hurried: "I'll heal your brother if you stay put" at the huddled chicks (as if they'd understand), he took off for the remaining nin, prying open the first man's mouth to hunt for another suicide pill.

Damn it, they needed at least one for the information, not to mention what a damn waste these stupid pills were: and he didn't like what the willingness to actually bite down on one implied about the dedication behind this attack. He'd been hoping it was a case of mercenaries-for-hire with little to gain from putting up any additional fight, but the excuse that he'd left the fire for continued protection of the diplomats was starting to look legitimate.

Civilians involved in any form with interrogation was a very unpleasant and unwise choice, as a general rule. It was best not to let the civilians get too far from where they were now until they were ready to move on anyway. Still, letting the dome down was a necessity: eventually the fire and the enclosed area would start to do more harm to their charges than the immobilized shinobi could.

When she heard his shout (and saw the results of the nin closest to them) she immediately cast her glance over at the two she'd subdued on the other side of the clearing: in all likelihood, if they weren't already dead, they'd be gone before she could stop them. Two of the men she'd just subdued here had already poisoned themselves, and the third Sasuke already attended to. Ultimately she chose to sprint across to the last remaining ninja that Sasuke had paralyzed, summoning a small tendril of earth (wedged at the end) to force the nin's mouth open even before she reached there.

Admittedly, saving them wasn't crucial, as she and Sasuke had one nin under genjutsu each. As long as they maintained control of the men, their dream selves could bite down all they wanted, their body would do nothing. (Unless they managed to discover it was a genjutsu and then managed to break themselves out of it, of course--but hers at least should be too consumed with terror to form any such thoughts). That said...if this was a tactic they'd use...they couldn't just rely on the two they had, if it was avoidable.

If, in fact, it wasn't too late for the one she approached or Sasuke's, anyway. She wouldn't know for sure until she got there. She dropped to her knees as she reached the man, and quickly scanned him for any sign of poison. --She assumed that it would show by now if he'd gotten it in before she'd stopped him, anyway.

Rather than risk him finding some other way though (how, she didn't know, since she assumed the senbon would keep him paralyzed a while longer), she quickly wove another genjutsu, putting the man to sleep before he could choke himself on something. She frowned down at him (he...seemed to be fine...) and then turned her attention back to where Sasuke was. "Is he alive?"

His captive, not hers, obviously.

"No," was the short response from Sasuke, fighting down the urge to kick the final twitches out of the body in front of him. He'd stopped the lungs in a last-ditch effort to keep the contents of the crushed ampoule from travelling into the body, a seal still burning red on the man's throat, but it hadn't taken effect quickly enough to catch the inhalation that had killed him.

The rapidity of the poison could only mean one thing. He stalked over to the closest genjutsu victim, prying open the ninja's mouth and retrieving the capsule tucked against the side of the cheek.

"Potassium cyanide," he muttered. The counter-drug wasn't issued even to licensed medic-nin on a standard escort mission like this. "It's not cheap stuff to get in quantity."

"Get the capsule out of the one you've got," he added, a frowning afterthought as he headed for the remaining enemy-nin still slumbering under genjutsu. "If it's been damaged in any way, inhalation will still kill him."

If sufficient damage caused it, then the one who fell from the tree was already dead. But then, she'd already assumed that by the time that had passed. For now, it seemed they had three. She could still sense the chakra network of the first she'd genjutsu, so the impact of them collapsing had clearly not broken the capsule.

Withdrawing the earth from the one before her, she carefully fished out the capsule (once she found it) and pocketed it, calmly making her way back to her own and doing the same again. If it wasn't cheap, whoever sent them had to be well supplied. Just what did they want with the civilians under their guard? The mission details hadn't indicated any force thus dedicated after the civilians...

She straightened and frowned over at Sasuke. "It looks like we have three survivors. Do you possess any interrogation jutsu?"

"Not formally," Sasuke answered, disgust still in his voice as he looked over the corpses. "There are the usual Sharingan techniques, and a few other things we could try, but if they're willing to kill themselves to protect their mission ..."

Simply hitting them with a killing-intent genjutsu was unlikely to convince them to talk, and for all that he knew the usual pain points of anatomy, standard-issue torture would take too long. Though there was ... he glanced back at Sakura with a frown and nothing else in his expression because he was a professional, damn it, and whatever had happened in the course of training he'd agreed to was nothing that could affect his professionalism. Definitely.

"What about you?"

Why was he looking to her? She was even less trained in genjutsu than he was. If either of them would have been taught that kind of jutsu it would be him, not her.

Still, if he didn't know of anything...they were a long distance from other shinobi who would know. There was little choice but to make do with what skills they did have. She crossed her arms and frowned down at the one closest to her. "Then we'll have to improvise. Even people who are willing to die have weaknesses. Sharingan can take advantage of those weaknesses...right?"

Perhaps he should have been more surprised that she knew that the Sharingan could take advantage of specific weaknesses, but given her genjutsu techniques ... Sasuke eyed her askance for a long moment, a frown creasing his brow. There was enough about the Uchiha that was public knowledge that it wasn't weird for someone to make the assumption, he supposed.

"Sharingan or not, this sort of thing is about psychology," he said after a pause, toeing one of the unconscious shinobi over onto his back. It was an old line for Uchiha who developed the Sharingan, that the eyes weren't to be treated as a cure-all and needed to be backed up with skill. The problem was that Sasuke had all of Academy-level interrogation classes to work with.

Crouching, he rifled through the man's pockets, looking for any identifying personal information -- dog tags, located quickly in a scroll pocket. No further self-destruction options turned up, which was at least a sign that they weren't desperate enough to have alternative methods, but the jackpot appeared when after a moment he found a locket carefully sewn into the back of a weapons pouch.

"They expected to die on this mission," he muttered, half to himself, all irritated; personal effects only partially concealed like this were hardly a good sign. Holding the trinket to the light, he gestured to the other ninja. "Look for this sort of thing."

Was...that...not common knowledge? While she tried endlessly to conceal any knowledge that would condemn Shisui, it was sometimes difficult to discern which of her knowledge was safe information to have and which wasn't. She had known...abnormally less about the Uchiha and their sharingan before Shisui had started teaching her. Some of the things that she learned early on became indistinguishable from what she'd known before. Besides that she could only feign so much ignorance before she became responsible for whatever went wrong without access to that knowledge.

While Sasuke searched the nin, she studied another, thoughtful. She had none of the jutsu that the Yamanaka possessed to forcibly extract information from people, or to dig around in their brain or memories for it. But...maybe it was possible to get it another way. If she could fool them into believing they were in a situation where it was safe to give their information...no, that seemed unlikely, given what they needed, and how most nin were trained. If she managed such a thing it would only be with showing a level of skill with genjutsu and certain techniques learned from Shisui that she couldn't risk revealing to the Uchiha heir for anything less than saving his life.

But...there was that genjutsu she'd been developing that she wanted to practice. Tormenting them enough to break their spirit or minds would undoubtedly allow them to get the information they wanted. Unless they broke too far...

She blinked when Sasuke spoke, and knelt down to begin searching the other ninja. "Personal effects? Those will be useful to you?"

The question very nearly made him stare at her openly -- had she forgotten that he'd seen the kind of genjutsu techniques she was working on? Granted, they seemed to rely far more on the mind conjuring its own images as much as the intent of the jutsu-user, but they still needed some basis in order for a resisting mind not to reject it as immediately unreal.

"What they choose to carry will help determine what they consider important," he said, turning the locket over in his hands until he found the catch. It sprung open to reveal a photo of a young woman, carefully cut to fit into the small frame.

"We'll have a better chance given proper leverage," he added after a pause, moving on to the next body. Simply throwing fear at people who were, by all evidence, willing to go on a suicide mission would likely lead to unwanted results, if any at all. He'd seen at least that much when he'd done rounds with certain types of ninja.

Well, there were more pleasant methods of extracting information, but her specialties weren't really meant for that. She had no idea what would happen if she tried the same thing she used with Sasuke but with the parts of their mind that evoked good feelings. It would be worthless for information gathering, most likely.

How much personal effects on their own would help with genjutsu based interrogation was questionable...but he was the expert in such things, so she busied herself with searching for something of use.

...If only they knew whether one of the survivors might be fooled into helping them with the apparition of someone who appeared to be a superior.

She hesitated a moment in her search, and frowned down at the man below her. "I wonder how much information they know about each other." It would surely be easier to convince one of them they were among allies and the others were their captives than to convince that person to spill their own secrets.

Sasuke stopped to consider the thought, midway through rifling the contents of a thin pouch sewn into the lining of a vest. If they could pull off the genjutsu, it would be perhaps the easiest way to handle the situation. The only difficulty was managing the mannerisms of those who had died in a convincing way for long enough to get the information they needed, and even with the Sharingan active, Sasuke had only captured combat mannerisms.

A glance at Sakura made him doubt the extent of her ability to act like someone else, which meant ...

"It'll work best if one of us handles the genjutsu and the other one uses henge, pretending to be one of the civilians," he said, glancing briefly in the direction of their charges. "We can try to convince them to tell the civilians their demands.

"Which is your strength?"

[closed; July 15th-August 16th]

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