192 Gesellschaft? More Like Gaysellschaft! Ha! Ha!

Gesellschaft base, Germany, February 22nd, 19:40.

"Guten tag, little Shinobi!~"

Shinobi does his best to hide his startled flinch at his teacher's sudden greeting, but he doesn't truly believe that his old teacher wouldn't have caught on to it, and he's all but certain that if he didn't have his butterfly mask on, that he would see that insufferable, taunting smirk on his face once more.

"We're on a mission, Butterfly, so do try to keep your voice down," Shinobi responds as he turns around to fully face the man who somehow still manages to sneak up on him, despite having ordered some Tinker-tech of his own to enhance himself.

Dressed in his flowery pink kimono, Butterfly looks like he's dressed for the exact opposite of stealth, but Shinobi knows that what he wears won't really matter. Not to the man formally known as Sage.

"My oh my, little Shinobi.~ What ever happened to calling me Sensei?~ After all I've done for you, you'd think you'd be a bit more respectful.~"

Turning away, Shinobi clenches his fists at the reminder of his time under the man's tutelage.

He wasn't the only student that Sage took. He rounded them up from slums, offered them a chance to be something greater than they were.

If they knew how relentless a teacher he was, none of them would have accepted.

Shinobi is the only one who survived, and he has more than enough scars to show for it.

"You're not my Sensei anymore, I don't  have to show you  any respect. Now stop wasting time with your stupid  games, we have a job to do."

Taking a step closer, causing Shinobi to tense up, Butterfly looks out over the almost military base looking compound from their spot on a distant cliff.

Bringing a hand up to his brow like he's blocking out the sun, even though it has long since set, Butterfly speaks up again, his tone playful. "Oh but my dear little ninja, we are  Clowns now, remember?~ Everything is a game, even this."

Bristling slightly at the retort, Shinobi finds himself subconsciously rubbing at a particularly thick scar on his thigh, the result of a tanto digging into his bone, and brings the hand away, not wanting to give Butterfly the satisfaction.

"Whatever. I assume you have a plan?" Shinobi answers, not willing to engage in banter.

"Why do you ask? Do you not have a plan yourself? Surely you haven't forgotten my lessons so soon that you can't even come up with a plan for something so simple? Maybe we should do some remedial lessons?~"

His taunting words manage to push past the cold façade that Shinobi is trying to keep, stirring up a long forgotten anger. "I have a plan. I just figure that no matter what my plan is, you'll call it retarded and make us use a plan  you came up with instead."

Letting out a short laugh, Butterfly shakes his head in amusement. "Yeah, that sounds about right, good job kid," he says as he raises a hand to pat Shinobi's shoulder, only for the hand to be smacked away immediately.

"Don't touch me."

Shinobi realises his mistake as soon as he made it, knowing from experience that showing any emotional vulnerability will only make Sage want to push.

"Oh?~ Why not?~ Bad experience with the church got you phobic?~" Butterfly mocks as he reaches out to forcefully poke Shinobi's chest, only for the hand to be slapped away before it reaches.

"I told you not to touch me. Try again, and I'll kill you," Shinobi threatens, even as shadows of his younger self shout at him not to question the man before him, memories of pain trying to control him.

He truly hates this man.

"Hah! Good one kid.~ Unfortunately, killing me doesn't usually seem to work out, does it?~" He says, leaning forward slightly to get in Shinobi's face as his voice turns into a low whisper, "what was her name again?"

Shinobi feels his blood freeze and his breath hitch as his former teacher's words register, memories he does his best to forget flooding his mind. Memories of chocolate brown hair, and a sunny smile.

"It was Charlotte, right?~" Sage continues, uncaring of the way Shinobi's hand's clench tighter, his whole body tensing, "her attempt was commendable at least, better than the others. But she was also kinda dumb wasn't she? I mean, seriously? Using seduction against  me? I'm the one who taught her everything she knew about seduction, did she really think I wouldn't notice? Or that I'd not notice the poison she brought? It was  my poison, I keep track of my own shit. What a dumb whore, am I right?~"

In a blur of movement, Shinobi's arm snaps upwards, a monomolecular kunai appearing in his hand mid swing, aiming straight for Butterfly's jugular.

But, as if he saw the attack happening before it did, Butterfly simply tilts his head to the side slightly, dodging the stab and swinging one of his hands up to bat the arm away from his neck, all while his other arm rushes forward, aiming a palm strike at Shinobi's chest.

Similar to his old teacher, Shinobi manages to bat the hand to the side, bringing his other arm back just in time to block another blow from Butterfly's other hand and retaliating with a strike of his own, another copy of the same blade appearing in his other hand as he does his best to kill his former teacher.

But every attack he throws is parried, simply slapped away with ease that only his old teacher could posses, all while Shinobi himself is barely able to keep Butterfly's own offensive at bay, until he makes a mistake, falling for a feint.

Butterfly slips into his guard, grabbing one of his arms and spinning around his body, kicking him in the back of the knees and pushing him forward until he is lying on the ground, his face in the dirt and both of his hands locked down by Butterfly's own.

He lost.

He's not really surprised, but he had hoped that he'd have at least had a chance against his old teacher.

"tut tut little Shinobi.~ I'm disappointed, it's been how many years since you left my tutelage? And you're still so incompetent? It almost makes me feel like I wasted my time with you or something.~"

Shinobi doesn't respond to his old teacher's mocking words, simply letting his body go limp as his mind regresses to that of the scared, obedient student that he used to be, giving up on even trying to oppose Sage, knowing exactly how futile doing so is. 

He has those lessons carved into his skin after all, it's not something he can ever forget.

"Not going to say anything? Well, whatever, you don't need to talk I guess," Butterfly says as he lets go of Shinobi, who doesn't move, and gets to his feet, "just get up already, stop being such a pussy."

Shinobi does as said, his hidden face perfectly neutral as he waits for instructions in silence.

"Kids these days are so dramatic," Butterfly says with a roll of his eyes, "I only taught you how I was taught, hell, my training was probably worse actually, there's no need to be such a pussy about it, move on and grow up already like a normal person."

Shinobi still says nothing, and Butterfly just huffs, giving up on getting his old student to stop being so depressive.

"Well whatever, we've got a job to do, stop wasting our time by being dramatic. Lusia wants us to let them get a call out in... three minutes, so now, because of you being a drama queen, we have to rush things a little."

Walking over to the edge of the cliff, Butterfly takes a small device out of his kimono and plants it into the ground before taking out another, more gun-shaped object and pointing it at the compound, shooting out a line of wire and watching it go.

"There should be about seven hundred people down there, give or take a bit, though only six of them should be capes, so no biggie really. We don't really have enough time left to kill enough of them that they'd send out an urgent enough distress call, so we'll just cheat."

The zipline hits the roof of one of the compound's buildings, and Butterfly attaches the other end to the device in the dirt, tightening the line.

"You go to the barracks and kill everyone who's sleeping, then head over to the medical building and kill everyone in there too. I'll head for their comms and send out that distress call myself, I can do a pretty good German impression, then we'll meet up over  there and find the capes before they can gather together and become a problem. You understand?"

Shinobi nods his head and Butterfly takes that to be enough, bringing a pair of handheld hooks out of his kimono and chucking one at Shinobi, who catches it easily.

"Let's get to it then," he says as he simply jumps off the cliff, catching the hook on the line and speeding down, hanging only by a single arm.

He does hope that they can kill the capes before they gather together, because killing capes is easy when you catch them by surprise, but a group of alert capes can be really annoying.

...Sometimes he really does wish he had powers, but he still doesn't think the mental issues that come with powers is worth it.

Shinobi meanwhile, simply stands there for a moment before letting out a soft sigh, his tensed muscles loosening as Butterfly disappears further into the distance.

"I'll kill him someday Char, I promise," he says as he walks to the edge of the cliff, giving his hook a glance and sighing again, "but for now, I guess I've got some killing to do."

And so, he too, descends into the base, ready to start a slaughter.

===

"Are you sure?"

Buccaneer only gives Casper a condescending look in response to his question, taking a swig from his flask before pointing again at the same warehouse.

"Uhuh, the things are there, go get 'em already, I wanna go to bed."

Rolling his eyes, Casper turns to the other cape present, Fast Travel, and holds his hands out for the half sized door in his hands.

"Just to be sure, what should I be focusing on?" Casper asks.

"Well," Fast Travel says, before allowing Casper to learn why people don't ask Fast Travel questions, "Lusia said that Gesellschaft were preparing for a war or something, not like a real war though, cuz they're not a country or anything, but more like a proxy war I guess. Kinda like just being terrorists I guess, so they've been buying a bunch of stuff from arms dealers, and Lusia said that if it's all going to be there anyway, we might as well take it for ourselves instead of just destroying it. After all, we could resell it or something, and more money is always good."

Fast Travel pauses to take a breath and Casper tries to interject, but he's too slow.

"And she said that this should be where they're keeping most of their stuff, like guns and ordinance and stuff. I don't really know what ordinance means, but that's the word she used, so it's probably helpful. I don't know how she knows about it though, cuz it wasn't Fool of No Face that told her, and when I asked she just said that she got a hint from the numbers, but I don't really get how that would work, it's not like she can talk to numbers right?"

As he takes another breath, Casper hurriedly reaches forward and puts a hand on his shoulder, stopping him before he can start again. "So I'm looking for weapons mainly, right? Yes or no?"

"Yup, that sounds about right, but I guess if you find- where'd he go?" Midway through speaking, having heard what he wanted, Casper simply activated his power and disappeared from view, sighing to himself as he does so.

He's learned a valuable lesson today.

With a mental chuckle, Casper takes to the sky, flying towards the warehouses he was pointed at, door in hand.

He soon finds himself where he wants to be, surrounded by enough munitions to arm a small country, and he deactivates his power, becoming material once again.

With a shrug, he gets right to work, opening the purposefully designed door and peaking through it, giving the Last Laugh employees on the other end a small wave before walking up to the first crate of weapons and simply holding the door up to it, whereupon a pair of arms reach through the door and grab the crate, pulling it through with supernatural ease.

Then he moves onto the next, and then the next, over and over again until the entire warehouse is empty.

"What a haul, all of this is probably worth more than I'm gonna get from stealing it in the first place." Shaking his head at all the money involved in this job, Casper picks the door back up and reactivates his power, returning to the other two with haste, all three of them then going through the door themselves, leaving behind a small fire to leave no evidence of it.

"So, you disappeared earlier and I guess you didn't realise that I was still talking, but what I was saying was basically that-"

As Fast Travel returns to his rantings, Casper can only question god on why he has to have ears.

=================

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

I had a pizza today, which marks the end of me eating just chocolate and biscuits, so go me I guess.

Also, that was not at all what I had in mind for the Shinobi Butterfly bit, it was supposed to just be them sneaking about killing people assassins creed style, but whatever, a little backstory never hurt anyone.

Except for Charlotte I guess...

(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!

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