Stealth Training

[Deleted]

It was fortuitous of Juubei that he’d been trained as a marksman for a good portion of his life. That invaluable training had allowed him to develop the talent to control his breathing and bodily movements as these things can affect the outcome of a pistol or rifle shot. Needless to say, Juubei didn’t have to worry about these things in the midst of a tense situation. So, as a result of that training, the patrolling soldier hadn’t seen detected Juubei as he blended into the shadows of a corner. When the man had passed, his back now facing Juubei, he struck him on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol and knocked him out. Juubei recognized who the man was and knew where his quarters were in the castle. He draped the unconscious man over his shoulders, brought him into his room and tucked him into his bed as if he were simply in a deep sleep. Of course he also bound him and gagged him, but that was more of a precaution in the event he woke up before Juubei had accomplished his task.

I suppose now is a good time to mention what Juubei was doing in the middle of the night, creeping about a castle. That morning, Juubei was told that he’d be taking part in a training exercise in which he’d have to rely upon stealth to take out ten men in a nearby castle that was being occupied by the mercenary camp for the purpose of training their men. A lot of people had taken on this test, but they weren’t allowed to tell the others about how they had accomplished it. So Juubei had no way of knowing if someone else had done things the way he was going to. Juubei finished draping a thin blanket over the sleeping man and quickly put on his uniform that he’d relieved him of before placing the blanket over him. The uniform fit a bit snug, but it would do. In the low lighting of the castle, it wouldn’t be hard to get close enough to someone and have them not recognize that Juubei wasn’t a guard until it was too late. The next nine guards were fairly easy to dispose of, taking them out when their backs were turned or before they had the chance to realize who it was that was standing before him.

“Hey, quite the uneventful evening?” Juubei stuck to the shadows as he approached a weary guard who stood at the intersection of a couple corridors. The man hadn’t expected someone to be in his section and turned around in a haze. He spotted the uniform and let his guard down, just for a moment, but that’s all the opening that Juubei needed. He punched the man square in the jaw, knocking him out, and causing his body to land in a crumpled heap upon the cold floor. “You look tired, I think you should lay down for a bit. “ Juubei snickered to himself as he dragged the man away and ensured that he wouldn’t be found.

Juubei hid the bodies in beds, like the first one, and things couldn’t have gone smoother. It wasn’t until the last two guards, that someone started to get suspicious. These two would be trickier. “There’s someone out on the walls!” Juubei shouted as he ran towards the last two guards. These men were tired and there nerves were quite frazzled. Had they been aware of their surroundings better, they might have realized that this was a training exercise and that they weren’t really in an active combat zone. The two men turned to gaze out of a window, towards the walls, and that’s when it was all over. Juubei brought the butt of his pistol across both of their heads, and knocked them out, just like all the others. These two were however not taken to a bed and were instead left out on the floor. The training was over, Juubei had completed it. Juubei wondered why others had seen this training as a challenge.

[Takeda Shingen]

Kurosawa Juubei: +3 Dex

Proficiency: Stealth - D

[Fujishima Shigenobu]

Shigenobu reflected on the circumstances that had led to his current predicament. Entirely too much sake at the tea house. An arrogant little gnat's prick of a noble. An apparent grudge against the Azai clan. An offer of a whole lot of money. Badda bing, badda boom, Shigenobu now crouched at the base of the outer bulwarks of Odani. Maybe if things went well, he might gain a little notoriety, boost the prestige a bit. Then again, maybe not. Time to focus on the task at hand.



He set a foot to the rough-hewn stone of the wall and began climbing. Hand over claw, foot after foot, the wall succumbed to his amorous advances, yielding itself to his prowess. More than the slowly fading influence of sake, this was intoxicating. He was finally getting to truly test the skills he had been training for years! The thrill of it gave Shigenobu chills. He continued picking his way carefully up the wall until he reached the nearest viewport he could reach. Sure, he could have climbed higher, perhaps gotten a better vantage point, but dammit, he was Fujishima! He didn't need to participate in any of that childish nonsense like "reconnoitering" or "having a plan". Babies had plans. They were called poop sacks and they were wrapped around their butts. Filthy children.



He shook his head once to clear it and reached up with his claw gauntlet to find purchase in the wooden frame of the viewport. Feeling the ends of the claws bite, Shige used the leverage to heave himself up and through the viewport, landing on his feet in some sort of storeroom. That noble had mumbled something about storerooms, he thought, but what it was he honestly could not say, having been far more interested in the sake. Couldn't have been terribly important. Shige's close-cut garb, mostly black with some rather avant-garde splashes of grey strewn through, made him feel almost invisible in the dappled shadows of night, but the storeroom was almost completely dark anyways so it was wasted here.



He could just make out the doorway and so moved towards it quietly, about to pull a throwing knife from his bandolier before recalling that he wasn't technically supposed to kill anybody. He sniffed indignantly. Of all the things for him not to do. There were a pair of muffled voices on the other side of the door, but they were receding rather quickly, so Shige carefully slid the door open far enough to peek out. In one direction, he could see a trio of guards walking away from him, in the other direction, nothing but an empty hallway. He didn't really know where he was going, but by the gods that wasn't going to stop him.



Making a quick decision, he turned away from the retreating guards and crept quickly and quietly down to the other end of the long hall. Along the wall to his left at fairly regular spacing, there were decorated fans hung, and Shige couldn't resist the urge to pause momentarily and shift one of the fans ever so slightly down and to the left. He laughed quietly and moved to glance around the corner. Further down the next corridor, he saw a pair of guards standing post outside of a doorway. Guttering candles flickered and cast indistinct light against the walls, and Shige could see that he was already at the room he was supposed to enter. That was almost too easy, he thought to himself. But then again, he couldn't kill these two chumps so that didn't leave a whole lot of easy options. He glanced around quickly and settled on up.



The ceiling of the hall was typical of the few castles he had visited ("fact finding missions" he had called them), wooden panels set into wooden slats. He hadn't really practiced exactly how to get them, but he had a pretty good idea that he could move about unseen if he did so. Now was a good time to learn. He took a quick two-step run-up to the wall, jumped and kicked off of it to gain some more height to the leap. At the same time, both hands shot up toward one of the panels. The claws impacted the panel with a dull thud, pushing it up from its seat just enough for his other hand to get a bit of a grip on the slats. He quickly brought the claws back to the wood and felt them bite, securing him a little better. Success! he thought to himself, elated. Of course, now he was hanging from a ceiling tile in the middle of a patrolled hallway just outside the bedroom of a very important man, but those were all just minor details, really.



Using the gauntlet to let himself hang, he reached up with his free hand and pushed the tile fully aside and heaved himself up into the ceiling. It was a maze of rafters and rice paper divisions up here, what a mess. But.... yes, it seemed to follow the layout of the floor below him, as far as he could tell. May the gods bless the laziness of castle designers. Shigenobu picked his way oh so carefully around the corner of the "hallway" and made his way as quietly as possible to where he thought he remembered the guards standing. He couldn't hear a damned thing up here, but he was fairly certain he was correct. It felt right. Pulling one of his knives from the bandolier, he expertly sliced a nice X in the rice paper and climbed through to the other side.

Choosing a panel a little further in, he moved it quietly aside and peered down into a..... closet, filled with boxes and clothing. Damn. Well, while he was here...... Hanging from the rafters by his claw gauntlet once more, he used his feet to shift some of the boxes around, and grabbed a rather elegant-looking folded kimono with his free hand, hauling it back up into the ceiling with him. With a couple quick movements from his knife, one of the sleeves was now about nine inches shorter than it had been. CHAOS! Refolding it, he tossed it back down to roughly the same place he had gotten it from and replaced the ceiling tile. 

Shige decided to try a little further down now, and cut his way through another bit of rice paper to the next section. He chose another panel and removed it. Looking down into this new area, success! Or close enough that he really didn't care. There was a man asleep in this room, and he vaguely fit the description Shige had received. And over against the near wall, there was even a rather ornate looking tanto in a display rack. Shige shrugged. Good enough. A cursory glance around revealed no other occupants, and against the far wall he could see the shadows of those two guards he had seen earlier, outlined by the candlelight against the thin walls. Suckers. 

Shigenobu dropped to the floor, a ghost amongst the living, a whisper in the darkness, a gentle night breeze in the...... night. He'd have to work on those. Slinking over to the display rack, Shige snatched up the tanto and secured it beneath his bandolier. Man, was he ever happy to have that thing. Now.... what else could he mess with? There wasn't really a whole lot here; it was a rather spartan room, all told. How dull. So instead, he decided to shift the man's slippers to the other side of his bed. Better than nothing. Gods, it would so simple to just run the blade across his throat..... This was just not a fun assignment at all. 

Oh well, it could always be worse. A sound to his right. The door to the room was sliding open, and there was a third shadow against the wall. Well, this wasn't good. Shige froze, knowing the gig was up. But instead, the door only opened halfway, and the third man was framed in the opening, back to Shige and apparently having a hushed argument with one of the door guards. No help for it now, thought Shige. Swift feet flew up the display rack and he soared up to the open ceiling panel, using the extra momentum to swing himself up into the ceiling right as the display rack crashed to the floor, spilling the rest of its contents as it did so. Half a dozen swords clattered across the room, and the man in bed sat bolt upright, staring with wide eyes directly at Shigenobu and the wide-open ceiling panel. 

But no, even that wasn't quite as it seemed, as the man pulled a sleep mask from his real, for more bleary and sleepy, eyes, and stared at the mess on the floor, then immediately looked at the open door, where all three guards were now staring into the room, jaws agape. Shigenobu hurriedly replaced the ceiling tile before he could actually be spotted and listened breathlessly, an almost manic grin on his face, as the formerly sleeping man berated the guards for being just soooooo clumsy and disturbing his restful sleep and don't they know how busy he is and they were going to replace anything that was broken and they had better clean up this mess right now and if they make another noise tonight he was going to hang them from the ramparts by their big toes. 

Smirking, Shigenobu retraced his steps as best he could back to the original hallway and cautiously lifted a ceiling tile to surreptitiously check if the coast was clear. Two more guards were having a discussion of some sort right in the center of the hall. Of course. How annoying. Shige moved through the rafters to get further down the hall. He wouldn't mind being closer to the storeroom anyways. He chose a likely panel and started to lift it for a better look when he immediately put it back down. Were those two stalking him?! They had chosen to stop directly below this panel too! And this panel was perfect. Right outside the storeroom door. And of course now the castle's designer had decided that he really wanted to put timbers up instead of rice paper. Shige grumbled some more to himself until those two stupid guards started walking again. As he heard their muffled conversation retreat further down the hall, Shige again shifted the tile and stuck his head down to get a better look...... only to immediately retreat and again move the panel back to its normal spot as the third guard in that patrol (how had he not remembered that?) came running down the hallway to rejoin his comrades from whatever he had just been doing. Shigenobu sat back on his heels and just waited, shaking his head. 

Soon enough, the hallway had cleared and Shigenobu dropped slowly and quietly back down to the floor, replacing the tile one last time. Finally he might be able to get out of this annoying castle and get his payment. Entering the storeroom and sliding the door closed behind him, Shige moved over to the window he had entered from and looked out. Oh hell. Going up had been no problem but damn did that look like a long way down from here. He looked out to the east as the blackness of the sky had begun to lighten almost imperceptibly. Oh goodie, he would have to hurry as well. The things Shigenobu was willing to do....

~~~

The climb down had been at least 20% more annoying than the climb up, but he was down now and hurrying from the castle before anything else bad happened. Of course, when he told his employer the story, he would leave out all of the annoyances. It wouldn't do to have anybody think things had gone off other than completely perfectly to plan. 

Once to the treeline below the castle, Shigenobu slowed to a light jog and headed toward the rendezvous point with his benefactor. It was nearly dawn by the time he got there, and the noble stirred from his sleep when gently nudged by what Shigenobu assumed was some sort of butler or something. Whatever, he was old. The noble stood and looked at Shige in irritation. About time, you miscreant. How long does it take you to retrieve a simple blade? Ugh, I knew I should have hired someone else to do this j-- 

The tirade was cut short as the hilt of the ornate tanto suddenly sprouted from the man's neck. If anyone was going to be arrogant and disdainful, it was going to be Fujishima Shigenobu, not this prick. The old man next to him just stared at his master, his jaw working open and shut but no sounds coming out. Well, no sense in leaving witnesses. A sharp movement of the arm sent the knife edge of Shigenobu's hand slamming into the old man's wrinkled throat. Now both men's eyes were wide as saucers as they each fell to the ground, dead before they hit. 

Shige searched both bodies, coming up completely empty. Bastard hadn't even intended to pay. Typical. One final swift kick to the former noble's hindquarters was the only further attention Shigenobu spared either of them before he turned to walk away. He needed better bosses.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Fujishima Shigenobu: +3 Dex

Proficiency: Stealth - D

[Yoshida Katsuo]

x- The silvery-white moon was poised in the middle of the starlit night sky and the visibility level in the area was exceptional. It would make his mission even more complicated, but it was hardly something that couldn’t be overcome is someone had the dedication & willpower to succeed. Katsuo’s trident was usually kept broken down into two parts for ease of carrying and when he approached the towering stone wall of the castle he’d remove the weapon from his back. Katsuo had approached the castle by clinging to one side of a horse, the side that was obscured from view by the animal’s body, and simply guided the animal towards the structure. When he’d gotten close enough he’d leapt from the beast and stuck the shadowy regions provided to him by the very thing he’d been tasked with infiltrating. Once Katsuo was at the wall he’d tie a rope around the shaft of the up portion of his trident and throw the weapon with considerable force. It wedged itself in between the stonework of the castle wall and stuck in place with a sharp metallic ring. Katsuo waited in the shadows as a face peered out over the edge of the wall to investigate what the source of the noise was. He looked into the darkness for a few minutes before he seemed satisfied that it was no cause for alarm and resumed his patrol upon the battlements. -x


x- Katsuo climbed up the rope, stood upon the shaft of the trident, and was about halfway up to the wall where he needed to be. Katsuo then attached the other half of the handle to the weapon and left the rope tied around it, but also took hold of the opposite end of the rope in his left hand. Katsuo used his weapon as something of a spring-board and launched himself up the rest of the way and simply pulled the weapon up to him with the rope. Upon the castle’s battlements he crept from shadow to shadow and slowly mimicked the patrol of the two guards that made rounds through the area. Katsuo approached the first one from behind, placed him into a choke hold, and rendered him unconscious in a matter of seconds. He used the rope and tied it around the waist of the guard and threw him over the edge of the wall where he dropped for a good distance before coming to a stop and dangling their in place. The next guard was a little tricker as he didn’t have anymore rope to utilize and instead had to render him unconscious via another choke hold and prop him up against the wall, so that any passerby would think that the man was just lazy and taking himself a nap on duty. -x


x- Katsuo entered the castle at this time and proceeded to make short work of the guards. Most of them were easily dispatched with a proper choke hold and Katsuo either stashed the bodies in closets or he got creative and splashed some booze down their throats so that anyone who discovered them would assume that they’d just passed out after one to many drinks. Of course this couldn’t be done to much more then two of the guards and anymore would arouse suspicion, but it was a good tactic. Katsuo only had to get physical with one of the guards. Katsuo had gotten a bit cocky and had stolen a uniform from one of the guards and had acted drunk as he approached him. It worked and as Katsuo approached he was already getting verbally reprimanded for being intoxicated. The staggering was a feint and when Katsuo had gotten close enough he’d asked the man to hold the drink he was holding. The guard took it and lowered his gaze to examine the bottle and that was when Katsuo head butted the man. He fell to the floor in a crumpled heap and that was that. Katsuo had taken out all the guards in due time and simply strolled out through the main gate in the pilfered uniform. It wasn’t until early morning when the relief shift showed up that anything was discovered to be amiss. Everyone had been incapacitated and the supervisor who had directed the men wasn’t exactly a happy camper he was embarrassed about their piss-poor performance and rightfully so. By the time these guys were getting their asses chewed for incompetence, Katsuo was enjoying a drink for real. -x

[Tokugawa Ieyasu]

Yoshida Katsuo: +3 Dex

And Proficiency Stealth (D)