Skilled (T)

[Moon]

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Rank: "E"
Skill: Skill
Effect: This skill focuses certain powers of observation - sight, smell, hearing, and touch.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: Can be learned by an Animal. A failed check indicates that the character is oblivious until the thing is pointed out to him. This skill is important for ferreting out advancing enemies or ambushes, generally real-time events and actions occurring, versus scrutiny, which covers static objects or areas. A Game Master may roll an Observation skill check for a Character any time there is an NPC, monster, event or happening that a character might notice, even if he did not specifically state that he is monitoring his surroundings. Characters are capable of noticing any event within their perception. Observation reveals only facts, not motivation. If user has 25 or more Ranks in Evidence Analysis user gains a Synergy Bonus +10 to Observation. Each time learned user gets 1 die roll to increase the skill.
Limit: ---

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Ōm stood atop one of the many worn metal rooftops in the village, clothed in his own flesh. It had been made to resemble the outfit he'd slowly become known for, a tanktop and simple pants and boots; he relished such contrivances. Looking like everyone else was perhaps a good step towards feeling like everyone else, he reasoned. He stared at his own skin, at the shifting pattern of scales that would project his surroundings at any time, peered over the edge of the small storefront he stomped atop, still clumsy, still genin-level. From his vantage point, the village was like an enormous web of steam. A monster with teeth made of people, and a belly that was the tower at Kirigakure's center. He stared, unmoving, unnoticed by those who walked below at street level. He took in what details he could.

The village was never silent, for one. The buzzing of insects and neon signs, of machines whirring with their work, of batteries and engines and endless half-heard conversations spilled into each other and became the background of everything. He narrowed his gaze, trying to pinpoint the location of each specific sound, its origin, its destination in the gloomy wetness. The olfactory system he'd recently grown hoarded in the aroma of animals and men, the waste and the excess. It was a heady intoxication, to pinpoint each sense, but he ached to refine such observational ability. To see what others might not. He scanned the verge of buildings several meters beyond the horizon of half-finished buildings marking the continuous construction zones of the Drowning Gutter Ghettos. He shook his head as if the noise of subtle cruelties crushing roaches beneath the steps of thieves in the nearby sewer-maze was music.

He crouched down, but only for a second. He felt individual muscles bunch, then expand, carrying him in a high leap towards a new roof. As Ōm moved through the air his eyes wandered the land blurring beneath him. Was it fourty-eight people, sixty one? The flash of his passing was too quick to get the exact number and he cursed himself only long enough to grow steady for a new jump. The sensation of the wind carried particles of dirt and soggy swamp-plants that he named as they passed his periphery, and he glared, hoping for a spot of relative quiet in the uproar of the Hidden Mist.

What was that?

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[Moon]

It was a flickering, barely on the edge of notice. A shard of metal refracting off the dim light being swallowed by shadows. The streets below him crawled with people, civilians and shinobi alike, and he found it difficult to focus without straining. The motion of something hard and artificial had been a warning from the southeast end of a block called "Hung Row", but it flowed into and out of his line of sight at almost the exact moment it appeared. A shuriken? He narrowed his gaze, tried to force his understanding into the overlapping dark spread like a claw, holding them all in. It was hard to find the words, and not just because his sight was average at best.

Necril was the language of the undead; for many things, Ōm simply didn't have the context to describe them to himself, let alone to analyze their components. There was no word for 'streetlamp', where a careful pounce now deposited him, using its slowly fading aura to pierce the urban veil. In Necril, to express it was to use a bastard word, to say living-creature's-obstacle-brightness-unmoving, and gain all deeper understanding from experience alone. Even the word shuriken, small-moving-hard-dead-doubleclaw, was a task of deciphering, and Ōm realized that his focus was spent more on processing than on perception. He had to look, to really look. To absorb the surroundings without trying to fit them into categories.

Men gathered below, around a woman. Their were what could have been insults or mating calls, sweat dripped from foreheads scrunched together in anger and lust. The flickering motion he'd caught had been the tossing of some sort of container, some personal artifact of the woman as she was handled harshly by what Ōm could only identify as attackers. He stared at the woman's face then, tried to place her emotion. Distress. Cheek-bones extended upwards, attempting a scream. The fear in her eyes that seemed to subconsciously trickle down to her mouth, gritted her teeth for her. What are they doing? He does not know.

He watches and waits.

[Moon]

He opened his eyes wider as if it would help, felt silly. This observational study was not about the physical functioning of the eyes, after all, but about how he dedicated his attention. The woman's face; absent the wrinkles that meant age to the various human clans, he could safely assume she was young. But what age? He spied her movements, the shrill pitch of her voice as she let loose a cut-off scream. Several of her attackers tried to silence her and she bit them, crying as they struggled. Ōm moved closer for a better view, but too close. His presence seemed to disturb their activity and the grou of five large men turned to face him at the noise of his landing.

They were shinobi, he felt on instinct, but not very skilled. Why do I think that? Their turning was slow; even to greet a possible attacker, as was the sort of paranoid reaction shinobi trained a lifetime to make habit, they moved only with concern for their discovery. Two of the five, the last to turn, seemed to do so only to follow the actions of the others, and one took a tentative step towards him, his arm swaying back as if to ward off his comrades interference. The man wet his lips. He was going to speak. His step forward, the subtle wave of authority, they gawking of his allies...this man was their leader. Ōm could see it. The woman seemed momentarily thrilled at the interruption, but was attended to by the four who would not come nearer to the young Genin shortly after, and that thrill turned to despair held in the furrowing of her brows, her resumed shortness of breath.

"What you doing man? Beat it. This don't concern you."

Their 'leader' said, rising up to his full height in a stance full of attitude and fake confidence. Ōm could tell that the man was making an attempt to intimidate him, even though he didn't understand the words that were being said. He did not respond, merely stared on. The man had stepped forward with his right foot first, even after the turn, but had turned to the left to face him. His fist. The man's right fist had been bunched up though, immediately, and he seemed to be cocking his head to the side in confusion to Ōm's reaction. He took heavy, stomping steps, not bothering to quiet himself. He carried no easily visible weapons, and neither did the others. Their assaults on the woman were clumsy. They were having difficulty restraining her even though she did not seem very strong, and were more concerned with keeping her quiet than anything else.

"You deaf man? LEAVE. Get outta here, before there's a problem."

The man reached for his left side, beneath a flap of fabric, with the same right hand that had been balled up before. His sword arm?