Chance X Stealth[Solo/Job]

Spoiler:

The job board often held all sorts of requests. From simple tasks such as doing some fishing for the local merchants to important duties handed out by the minister herself, there were jobs for all shapes and sizes of people. For someone who lived off doing odd jobs such as Zafar, most of these jobs would seem common place and dull, but ever once and a while one would pop up which caught his interest. Tonight Zafar was pursuing once such job.

Apparently an informant in Zou managed to get back a juicy bit of news recently. A shipping manifest arrived by messenger bird revealing that two passengers on a ship that was scheduled to dock in the evening were in fact shinobi. Ninja in the service of the Zou empire. Few rumors about ninja had reached the lands of Balbadd, however Zafar's background in the underground world of assassination and subterfuge had let him hear whispers of what these ninja could do. They were supposedly master's of disguise and escape, but they were also deadly lethal fighters when forced into confrontation.

Eager to see if those rumors were true, Zafar had torn the job posting from the board so no one else could accept the mission before staking out the docks where his prey was supposed to appear...

~219/500~

The ship was late. Balbadd was famous for having ships coming and going all the time and late arrivals were common place as no matter what dates a man schedules to arrive in port, he can only go as fast as the sea and winds allow. Still, for this particular ship to be late probably meant something had gone wrong. The information about the ninja arrived through a message carrier bird which probably meant someone on board the ship discovered the Zou agent's identities. If this were so, then it was possible the shinobi realized they were found out. Zafar knew full well that an assassin's duty was to leave no surviving witnesses of your presence. While the man didn't much care about the fate of the ships crew he despaired at the thought anyways. After all, just two men alone can't run sail a ship which meant killing the crew would leave them at the mercy of the ocean. Who knows where they would land ashore then?

Zafar entertained a few other theories for what was behind the ship's tardiness as he sat crouched atop the roof of a nearby building where he could over look the harbor. From here he could see the entire bay for as far as the horizon would let him in the shrouded darkness of night. Zafar's yellow cold gaze focused on a bit of obscured movement in the distance and listened carefully as the sound of a warning bell rung from the light house. The bell was a signal let people on the dock know that a ship was port bound when it was too foggy or dark to see from the docks. It also served as a warning the other way around to let ships know they were close enough to port to be noticed and to bring attention to the light house. Had Zafar's prey finally arrived?

~500+/500~

As the ship approached it became more and more clear that something was wrong as the sails remained unfurled and its course was maintained full speed ahead despite the warning bell's rings. The trade vessel crashed into the docks scattering splintered wood and floatsam into the dark as night waters. From his vantage point above, Yakuroro was able to spot two figures jumping off the side of the ship just before it smashed the harbor into pieces. A smile curved on Zafar's lips and his eyes narrowed before he licked his lips and began moving from roof top to roof top. The assassin's free running would take him south in the direction the men had jumped ship from as he tried to think of what his plan would be were he the one who had just rammed a ship into a port.

If you had to kill the crew of the ship, then docking normally would have been out of the question. Crashing the ship creates a diversion which you could then use to enter the city. But once they were here, what would they do? Immediately move to a target? Or would they try to blend in? If they were still swimming south along the docks then that would put them on the poorer side to town making the latter to be more likely. The sick, homeless, and otherwise unemployed lived in shanties and relied on the good will of others or dirty deeds to survive. If a pair of foreign agent's made it there then all they would need to do to disappear was flash some coin and ask to be hidden.

Zafar could not afford to waste the next week tracking these ninja down, but there was always a chance they would defy his expectations. Perhaps jumping off the southern bow of the ship was just a precaution in case they were seen. Once underwater, it was impossible to tell if they had doubled back north to the wealthier side of town. Such would make all Zafar's efforts meaningless as the ninja would likely kill their target and then disappear before anyone ever knew they had been here. To be honest, that is the approach Zafar himself would have deemed most effective but that was from the perspective of an assassin. Understanding his own bias, Zafar decided to take a chance on the possibility that the shinobi's objective here was not an assassination.

There was no more time to think about it as Zafar reached a point where he would have tried sneaking into if he were the infiltrator. It was a particularly narrow alley between two buildings, but what made it appealing was the line of tree and plant cover leading up from the beach. The ninja would probably chose this place to enter as it would mean the least possible chance of being seen. Unfortunately for them, Zafar had gotten here first.

It would be a few minutes before Zafar could even know whether or not his gamble had paid off. Sitting on the roof top obscured by shadows and darkness, Zafar silently shuffled a deck of cards over and over while he waited. The assassin's eyes calmly never left the tree line as his hands expertly manipulated the deck to randomize the cards as much as possible. After five minutes of shuffling, Zafar finally stopped and broke his gaze on the treeline to see what card ended up atop the deck. It was the Ace of Diamonds. "Looks like my lucky night~" Zafar thought to himself before looking back to the tree line just in time to see the ninja emerge. "Very lucky indeed~" This time Zafar spoke aloud as it was too late for the shinobi to do any thing even if they had noticed him.

An acrobatic flip would carry Zafar off the roof and into the air landing between the two ninja in a crouched position like a lion about to pounce. Zafar took the briefest of moments to confirm the two men were still dripping with water from the ocean before leaping into the air once more utilizing his Fundamentals of Fire. As Zafar's acrobatic flip carried him into the air he delivered a series of kicks and blows to both men on either side of him. By the time Zafar landed into a handstand before flipping back onto his feet, both men were already unconscious on their feet after receiving five D-tier blow's each, all to the head. As Zafar stood to his feet, the ninja fell to their faces only to both be caught on either of the assassin's shoulders.

There was now an entirely bored expression on the assassin's face as the supposed master infiltrators from Zou were defeated in a single move. He thought they would have at least dodged his surprise attack so when that ended things Zafar could not help but feel his expectations deflate. This left him in a sour mood in which he didn't even feel like killing the men. Instead, Zafar simply brought them to the local authorities and received his reward.

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