Just once, Makoto wanted to go to a bar and have nothing happen except drinking.
As long as he was still in Wind Country, this did not seem likely to happen.
Earlier that evening, he had decided to head back out to the port to have a look around and familiarize himself with the lay of the land now that he wasn't ridiculously distracted by his empathy. It seemed like a good idea to know his way around before the whole wedding thing started up. And well, going to bars was a good way to unwind after a long day of scouting, right? Right.
Apparently not.
His mistake, he decided, was going in with visible weaponry. Because the bartender had seen his knives, brightened, and gone to talk to someone he assumed was the owner. They had held a whispered conference, which he didn't need to be a genius to figure out was a 'he's obviously a ninja, let's have him fix all our problems' conversation.
(Strictly speaking, he was a genius anyway. He just felt it wasn't necessary to be one to figure that bit out.)
After this interlude, the manager had hustled over to him. Sipping at his glass of water, he listened as she relayed the problem to him. One of her bartenders, she explained, was having an issue with someone who might have meant to do her harm following her home and sending her threatening letters. They had followed her to work a few days earlier and the poor girl was freaking out in the back room because it had happened again. Could he possibly look into it?
Makoto had decided not to insult anyone's intelligence by pretending he wasn't a ninja. He had said he was not a Sand ninja, but they did not really care about that, nor the fact he was a foreign ninja and not technically a mercenary for hire. So he'd shrugged, agreed, and asked for any relevant details on said stalker.
(He didn't bother asking why the manager didn't do anything herself. She was at least fifty, graying, and even shorter than he was. Besides, stalkers could get pretty crazy and were often armed.)
The manager had escorted him to a booth in a corner, then gone into a back room and fetched the girl being harassed, which was who he was sitting with his water listening to.
"It's gotten really bad," the girl said. Her eyes were red, and he was sure she'd been crying. "I think it's one of my exes, but I'm not sure--they don't really speak and I haven't gotten a good look at their face. The letters were typewritten, so I can't tell from the handwriting. They always wear this big brown jacket, and that's all I can tell."
"Do you have one of the letters with you?" he asked, swirling his water glass idly. "I could pick up the chakra signature if they've handled it at all in delivering it to you."
"I hope they're not a ninja," she said, sounding worried. "But yes, I brought it in so my manager could see I wasn't playing around."
She fished a folded piece of typewriter paper out of her carrying bag and handed it over silently. Makoto was polite enough to not comment on the way she nervously fidgeted with her hands as he unfolded and read it.
"I don't need someone to be a ninja to pick up a chakra signature," he said. "There's three on this paper. One of them is yours, and I can filter that out easily enough. I'm guessing one of the others is your manager's from when you showed it to her. The third one should be your stalker's, unless you handed it to anyone else?"
The girl shook her head, seemingly unconsciously reaching up to twirl her pinkish-red hair. "I think it was hand-delivered too."
"Good. Shouldn't be hard, then." The letter itself was fairly generic, though there were some disturbingly graphic bits in there, to send to a civilian. "I do have to ask...is one of your exes a ninja, and if so, is it the one you think most likely to have written this?"
Her head drooped briefly. "...Yes. Minoru Akiko."
The name was unfamiliar. "And she was a threatening or violent sort while in the relationship still?"
"Threatening, yes. Never...violent." The girl seemed a bit hesitant on that one. "Not...to me. Not directly. She pulled a knife on my brother once, he told me later. But she didn't actually hurt him."
"I'm assuming you dumped her not long after?" The third chakra signature was certainly strong enough to belong to a ninja.
"I did, yes. She...wasn't happy about it." The girl was still fiddling with her hair. "That was about four months ago. The stalking started a few weeks later, I guess?"
Bingo. "All right. Listen, if you need to get home before this is wrapped up, don't go alone, okay? And even then, it would be better for you to stay with a friend. Okay?"
This was, depressingly, not the first such case he'd ever worked, so he knew the sort of thing to say. He even had learned how to say it so people listened and didn't get defensive about taking care of themselves.
She nodded slowly, and just as slowly brought her hands down. "My manager offered me the room above the bar for now. There's always someone here."
"Good." He rose. "I'll need to keep the letter on me as a sample, is that okay?"
She shook her head. "I don't want it."
Half an hour later, he found himself hot on the trail of one Minoru Akiko, just as thought. The young woman he was tracking certainly fit the description the girl and her coworkers had given. Of course, it helped that he had knocked the hood of the large cloak they wore off with a precisely aimed wind jutsu.
It was dark, but he'd employed his light fireflies trick to give himself good enough visibility to track someone. Chakra Sense on the letter had done the rest of the work, once he filtered out the two signatures back at the bar.
Akiko was a tall woman, taller than him, with her blonde hair tied back in a whippy ponytail. She seemed to have a permanent scowl.
Or perhaps she was simply annoyed at him for catching up to her.
To be sure, she was not easy to track. She seemed to be some kind of stealth specialist. However, he had ways of getting around that, even in the dead of night, so once he'd tagged her, she wasn't getting away.
He caught up to her on a rooftop, where she stood her ground, glaring. There were blades along her belt of various shapes and sizes.
"What do you want?" she demanded. "Why are you following me?"
"Ah, I suppose it is annoying for someone stronger than you to be trailing you around everywhere," he said lightly. "So I don't suppose you've been doing the same to one Yamada Emiko, hm? Since you know it's not a good thing?"
"Emi-chan is mine," Akiko snapped. "She was talking to that orange-haired bimbo neighbor of hers way too much! She needs me to protect her."
"Yes, 'protect'..." He took out the letter, withdrawing and unfolding it with the quick ease of a lifetime weapon user. "That's why you threatened to quote, 'tear her legs off so she can't walk around whoring herself out,' end quote."
She stared at him for a moment, red eyes narrowed. "...I didn't wear gloves to deliver that, did I."
"Apparently not," he said cheerily. "I'm fairly sure this would count as evidence for Wind Country to take you into custody for stalking and harassment, no?"
"I'll have to take it off you and burn it," she decided, before flipping her blades out and lunging.
Makoto quickly folded and replaced the parchment inside his jacket, rapidly sidestepping her first lunge. He flipped his own knives out before she could strike again and blocked her next attempt at a blow before kicking her shin. Akiko hissed in pain and swiped at him again,. He was forced to duck as it scored lightly across his cheek.
"Should've figured she'd squeal to someone," she griped. "Didn't expect her to send a foreigner after me. Did you think she's rich? She's not."
"I really don't care," Makoto said. His own net worth was almost certainly higher than that of the person he was fighting. "I do care that you are a potentially homicidal jealous ex stalking a civilian with your advantages over her."
He connected with her again finally, slashing open her arm from elbow to shoulder. She flinched back, dropping that arm to her side. He pressed the attack and scored another hit, this one seeming to sever something on her other arm. She cried out and dropped the knife, at which point he swept her legs out from under her, sending her crashing to the ground. Her knives spun off onto the roof out of her grasp, and he strode over to her, placing a booted foot on her back.
"Stay down," he said, indicating his own serrated knives. "I'm going to call the local pickup on you, and I'll have this letter as evidence to give them for why this happened."
She snarled and spat an invective at him, but he ignored her and tuned into a local report frequency on his headset. Fifteen minutes later, she was being patted down for weapons while an officer double-checked the letter and chakra signatures.
Another fifteen minutes after that, Emiko was thanking him profusely, and the bar manager was offering him free drinks for whenever he came back. Seemed like he'd found a proper bar hangout in Wind Country, after all.
As long as he was still in Wind Country, this did not seem likely to happen.
Earlier that evening, he had decided to head back out to the port to have a look around and familiarize himself with the lay of the land now that he wasn't ridiculously distracted by his empathy. It seemed like a good idea to know his way around before the whole wedding thing started up. And well, going to bars was a good way to unwind after a long day of scouting, right? Right.
Apparently not.
His mistake, he decided, was going in with visible weaponry. Because the bartender had seen his knives, brightened, and gone to talk to someone he assumed was the owner. They had held a whispered conference, which he didn't need to be a genius to figure out was a 'he's obviously a ninja, let's have him fix all our problems' conversation.
(Strictly speaking, he was a genius anyway. He just felt it wasn't necessary to be one to figure that bit out.)
After this interlude, the manager had hustled over to him. Sipping at his glass of water, he listened as she relayed the problem to him. One of her bartenders, she explained, was having an issue with someone who might have meant to do her harm following her home and sending her threatening letters. They had followed her to work a few days earlier and the poor girl was freaking out in the back room because it had happened again. Could he possibly look into it?
Makoto had decided not to insult anyone's intelligence by pretending he wasn't a ninja. He had said he was not a Sand ninja, but they did not really care about that, nor the fact he was a foreign ninja and not technically a mercenary for hire. So he'd shrugged, agreed, and asked for any relevant details on said stalker.
(He didn't bother asking why the manager didn't do anything herself. She was at least fifty, graying, and even shorter than he was. Besides, stalkers could get pretty crazy and were often armed.)
The manager had escorted him to a booth in a corner, then gone into a back room and fetched the girl being harassed, which was who he was sitting with his water listening to.
"It's gotten really bad," the girl said. Her eyes were red, and he was sure she'd been crying. "I think it's one of my exes, but I'm not sure--they don't really speak and I haven't gotten a good look at their face. The letters were typewritten, so I can't tell from the handwriting. They always wear this big brown jacket, and that's all I can tell."
"Do you have one of the letters with you?" he asked, swirling his water glass idly. "I could pick up the chakra signature if they've handled it at all in delivering it to you."
"I hope they're not a ninja," she said, sounding worried. "But yes, I brought it in so my manager could see I wasn't playing around."
She fished a folded piece of typewriter paper out of her carrying bag and handed it over silently. Makoto was polite enough to not comment on the way she nervously fidgeted with her hands as he unfolded and read it.
"I don't need someone to be a ninja to pick up a chakra signature," he said. "There's three on this paper. One of them is yours, and I can filter that out easily enough. I'm guessing one of the others is your manager's from when you showed it to her. The third one should be your stalker's, unless you handed it to anyone else?"
The girl shook her head, seemingly unconsciously reaching up to twirl her pinkish-red hair. "I think it was hand-delivered too."
"Good. Shouldn't be hard, then." The letter itself was fairly generic, though there were some disturbingly graphic bits in there, to send to a civilian. "I do have to ask...is one of your exes a ninja, and if so, is it the one you think most likely to have written this?"
Her head drooped briefly. "...Yes. Minoru Akiko."
The name was unfamiliar. "And she was a threatening or violent sort while in the relationship still?"
"Threatening, yes. Never...violent." The girl seemed a bit hesitant on that one. "Not...to me. Not directly. She pulled a knife on my brother once, he told me later. But she didn't actually hurt him."
"I'm assuming you dumped her not long after?" The third chakra signature was certainly strong enough to belong to a ninja.
"I did, yes. She...wasn't happy about it." The girl was still fiddling with her hair. "That was about four months ago. The stalking started a few weeks later, I guess?"
Bingo. "All right. Listen, if you need to get home before this is wrapped up, don't go alone, okay? And even then, it would be better for you to stay with a friend. Okay?"
This was, depressingly, not the first such case he'd ever worked, so he knew the sort of thing to say. He even had learned how to say it so people listened and didn't get defensive about taking care of themselves.
She nodded slowly, and just as slowly brought her hands down. "My manager offered me the room above the bar for now. There's always someone here."
"Good." He rose. "I'll need to keep the letter on me as a sample, is that okay?"
She shook her head. "I don't want it."
Half an hour later, he found himself hot on the trail of one Minoru Akiko, just as thought. The young woman he was tracking certainly fit the description the girl and her coworkers had given. Of course, it helped that he had knocked the hood of the large cloak they wore off with a precisely aimed wind jutsu.
It was dark, but he'd employed his light fireflies trick to give himself good enough visibility to track someone. Chakra Sense on the letter had done the rest of the work, once he filtered out the two signatures back at the bar.
Akiko was a tall woman, taller than him, with her blonde hair tied back in a whippy ponytail. She seemed to have a permanent scowl.
Or perhaps she was simply annoyed at him for catching up to her.
To be sure, she was not easy to track. She seemed to be some kind of stealth specialist. However, he had ways of getting around that, even in the dead of night, so once he'd tagged her, she wasn't getting away.
He caught up to her on a rooftop, where she stood her ground, glaring. There were blades along her belt of various shapes and sizes.
"What do you want?" she demanded. "Why are you following me?"
"Ah, I suppose it is annoying for someone stronger than you to be trailing you around everywhere," he said lightly. "So I don't suppose you've been doing the same to one Yamada Emiko, hm? Since you know it's not a good thing?"
"Emi-chan is mine," Akiko snapped. "She was talking to that orange-haired bimbo neighbor of hers way too much! She needs me to protect her."
"Yes, 'protect'..." He took out the letter, withdrawing and unfolding it with the quick ease of a lifetime weapon user. "That's why you threatened to quote, 'tear her legs off so she can't walk around whoring herself out,' end quote."
She stared at him for a moment, red eyes narrowed. "...I didn't wear gloves to deliver that, did I."
"Apparently not," he said cheerily. "I'm fairly sure this would count as evidence for Wind Country to take you into custody for stalking and harassment, no?"
"I'll have to take it off you and burn it," she decided, before flipping her blades out and lunging.
Makoto quickly folded and replaced the parchment inside his jacket, rapidly sidestepping her first lunge. He flipped his own knives out before she could strike again and blocked her next attempt at a blow before kicking her shin. Akiko hissed in pain and swiped at him again,. He was forced to duck as it scored lightly across his cheek.
"Should've figured she'd squeal to someone," she griped. "Didn't expect her to send a foreigner after me. Did you think she's rich? She's not."
"I really don't care," Makoto said. His own net worth was almost certainly higher than that of the person he was fighting. "I do care that you are a potentially homicidal jealous ex stalking a civilian with your advantages over her."
He connected with her again finally, slashing open her arm from elbow to shoulder. She flinched back, dropping that arm to her side. He pressed the attack and scored another hit, this one seeming to sever something on her other arm. She cried out and dropped the knife, at which point he swept her legs out from under her, sending her crashing to the ground. Her knives spun off onto the roof out of her grasp, and he strode over to her, placing a booted foot on her back.
"Stay down," he said, indicating his own serrated knives. "I'm going to call the local pickup on you, and I'll have this letter as evidence to give them for why this happened."
She snarled and spat an invective at him, but he ignored her and tuned into a local report frequency on his headset. Fifteen minutes later, she was being patted down for weapons while an officer double-checked the letter and chakra signatures.
Another fifteen minutes after that, Emiko was thanking him profusely, and the bar manager was offering him free drinks for whenever he came back. Seemed like he'd found a proper bar hangout in Wind Country, after all.