Threat Elimination Protocols: Active

[Summer]

Not more than a few moments after Hatate had created a notepad and ink brush, as she was still sort of gawking at it, surprised at the rules of this world, a voice rang out over the crowd. Her head turned up in curiosity, at just about the same time as everyone else’s each brought up by the person’s cry for attention. She faintly recognized the person who was shouting as one of the figures she had seen as she had floated above the crowd. Who exactly it was happened to be unknown to her, however.

Questions rose up from those within the crowd, some spoken to be heard, others whispered amongst themselves. Most of them were along the same lines though, wondering what the yellow man trying to command attention wanted. Hatate briefly wondered if this was the start of the hunt, disappointment stirring in her heart. She had hoped to get in a few more interviews before it happened, but now she might just have to track down survivors after the fact.

Keeping an ear on the gold fellow up front, she quickly began jotting down what she remembered from the previous interview on the first page of her new notepad. Fortunately, notes were something she wouldn’t publish. So her hastily-written scrawl, legible only to her, would be useful for getting down what she remembered before anything else came up that she would have to commit to memory.

The reporter’s swift writing saved her in that regard. In no more than thirty seconds after she began, she had finished, just in time to witness the man who had been gathering their gazes summon several golden rings out of thin air. Hatate’s eyes widened, and her hand instinctively shot down to the case at her hip. She deftly flipped it open and lifted her camera out in one fluid movement, quickly bringing it to bear and snapping it open with a flick of her wrist.

With the flash safely off, she was able to snap photos of the moment relatively subtly, with nothing more than the click of the camera to give her away. This wasn’t something that she could miss. Even more so when something happened, and those who had actually been gifted the rings erupted into an all-out brawl.

Hatate took to the sky, hovering out to a nice, safe distance from the scuffle, where she could take pictures of their fight without interfering or being hit. Odds were that these pictures would be entirely useless to the main article she was going to write, about the justice mob closing in on Sasuke. A nice little side article could come out of this though. ‘Loose Alliance Broken’ or ‘Lawlessness Among Lawbringers.’ After all, some of them were really quick to jump onto the brawling bandwagon.

Then four people became one and the reporter damn near dropped her phone. From well away, Hatate stared at the amalgamation which called itself “Harbinger.” Her lazy drifting picked up in pace, as she began to circle the group like an eagle. A consistent clicking sounded from her camera as she tried to get pictures of the being from every angle. She grinned widely, something like this could possibly make an even better front-page headline than what she had originally planned.

The very brief appearance of Sasuke only served to further that expectation. Her camera captured the moment of attack, as fleeting as it was, and the boy was tossed away almost effortlessly. In one quick moment, the hunt that everyone had been gathered there for was over. With the odds so stacked against the criminal even before the amalgam, Hatate hadn’t expected much of a fight in the first place. She had mostly been there for some witness questioning. If she was quick about it, she could swoop down and question more people before they split up and dispersed.

That was her plan, until, in a totally human fashion, some of the party attacked the Harbinger, causing yet another fight to break out. It wouldn’t do to just up and leave this, as it tied in with everything she planned to write about. The camera continued to click sporadically.