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Absence. That was the only way to describe Kazue. In fact, that singular word described both her reputation and her current state of mind. She was rarely seen by the guild. Only those who sought to investigate jobs suddenly vanishing from the board were given clues on her existence. In fact, only a select few of both guilds  knew her face. Most people who did know of her only knew of her as a money-grubbing ninja. A fact that, for all intents and purposes, was 100% correct. But in her current state, Kazue's mind was empty. She needed focus.

She never had the luxury of dwelling on the little things. She always had to focus on her next plan and scheme. Preparations were everything - especially for today. Of course, sometimes preparations made little sense. For example, hiding inside of a bush for the past hour.

With nothing on her mind, time seemed to slip and fade. She was in perfect concentration for hunting. And hunting she did. All she needed was for her prey to get closer. The prey had been skulking around this bush for some time, but had never reached close enough to the bush. Of course, Kazue's luck was about to change. Perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of carelessness, her prey walked closer and closer to the bush.

In one fell swoop, Kazue's stagnant mind awoke. She quickly began to think - all possible escape plans for the beast. Almost instantly, she grabbed shuriken from her bags. Like a bolt of lightning, the shuriken quickly struck around the beast, causing it to jump up in shock. The leaping Kazue, still in mid-air, grabbed the beast by the nape of its neck.

[color=a187be]"Mraooow!"[/color] The beast had exclaimed.

In one fell swoop, Kazue lightly dug her hand along the ground, allowing for her momentum to shift and her legs to come in to stop her short flight. She looked at her prey triumphantly. This kitty had done well to evade others for so long, but compared to a master ninja? Nothing but a mere trifle - a joke.

Of course, confused bystanders looked at Kazue awkwardly. There was just a cat in the middle of town and someone jumped out of a bush, grabbing the cat and throwing little metal stars on the ground? It was an awkward situation. Nobody made eye-contact. Nobody wanted to acknowledge what had just transpired.

With cat in hand, Kazue quickly ran away.

The reward, of course, was 5000[img]https://i.imgur.com/0hform5.png[/img]. A nominal amount of money. Though, her employer was confused when he turned away to grab the money, they realized the reward was already gone and Kazue had been replaced by a log.

[hr]

But of course, it was time for the big announcement. The S-class trial. A large crowd was gathering - Kazue was no good with crowds. For the solitary life of a ninja, crowds were simply just a way to escape detection. It would be obvious that Kazue would be in disguise. A near-perfect disguise, in fact. Everything was changed about her. Her long gold hair had been replaced by a short black pixie-cut. Where her hair had went? Unknown. Her clothing could only be described as cute and non-ninja like. She even had a mask on - a perfect reproduction of a human face, making her look as though she actually displayed emotion. Though, the mask only had the singular emotion of [i]smug[/i]. Of course, her disguise wasn't perfect - she was still extraordinarily short.

Despite this, she blended in perfectly with the crowd. Mostly because she was too short to be seen within it. In fact, she didn't even need the disguise.

She eagerly awaited the announcement - an S-class trial would let her become an S-class mage. Then, she could take on even harder jobs for even more money. She salivated at the thought.