Decidedly the worst place in town... Yeah, no shit Sherlock.
The streets themselves don't look particularly intimidating unless you know what to look for. The boarded up establishments and the bare streets simply suggested that the people here were just poor. There was no crime in that, however there were eyes watching from those closed in hovels. That white glint you catch as out of the corner of your own eye that is gone when you turn your gaze towards them. Then there were the degenerates and the riffraff, mostly children and teens of ill repute that had congregated in the narrow alleys. They were up to no good, but where was the proof? Without an assault or a criminal incident, just the expression on their face and their intimidating posture. It could be one's imagination but you knew better, call it intuition or call it experience, you would keep an eye on those teens and keep them at arm's length. It was one of those moments where the fact that you had a weapon, that you could afford one, meant that you had more cash than some of these kids and they wanted what you had.
So cheap places to stay had a different sort of cost, one that you did not pay with money but you did with brawn and fleet of foot. More than likely you had already been accosted, but you might have been lucky thus far. There was a reason for coming here, a reason for staying because you could have afforded better. You could have done better. You were here because there was a name whispered in these streets that had caught your attention: Nap. A singular name with no introduction, never a physical description. Just the occasional rumor that he was a powerful 'wizard' perhaps 'necromancer' or even 'dark ninjutsuist' that had allied himself with the Daimyo. It was one of Sunagakure's best kept secrets, at least among the degenerates that human life was not valued the way it should. That lives can be bought and sold and they were for cheap. His actual location never disclosed, but some of his let's call them 'suppliers' could be traced back to here. Dubbed 'flesh peddlers' by some, there was a market for flesh:
Where were they taken, what was done to them? Hard to say, but it was the first semi-solid link you had to Nao. You knew of one of the places that housed this human product, a 'harem' of sorts. After the arrest several years ago of one Haku Saborou, there was a gap in the department of companionship for sale. People wanted to be loved and touched, but some were unlovable without compensation and for some they were not necessarily paid. That was the alleged case here, a den that stunk of cheap liquor and cigarettes, of sex and self-loathing. The doors were locked at night, the ladies and men and in some cases people too young to be defined as either were not allowed to leave. That a violation of human rights alone, a fact circulated to only a few but you happened to learn this one way or another be it through pummeling someone with your fists or overhearing this fact. As a hero you might feel compelled to help for that sake alone, but that was not what had drawn you to there, but rather the fact that there was a 'man' that frequented such an establishment. Not to partake in the women or the men or even the children, but rather to take one or two with him, paying absorbent sums to do so. He seemed to seek those with chakra capacity primarily, but on rare occasion he found something else that caught his eye for whatever reason. Perverse taste? Perhaps. Something else entirely? Possible as well. The profit made by taking someone, to possibly Soons or Sora, hard to say at the moment, was passed onto the criminals that had abducted these people from the street. They were encouraged to find people that had some chakra capacity that 'would not be missed.' You were likely a potential victim once or twice if they determined you were alone and that you were capable, it would not go as well for them as it would have for the others. That likely being how you learned but that is a story only you would know.
So you were there, in a narrow alley. Eyes were on you from the boarded up houses and a handful of teens down an alley to your back. They were approaching. "Hey buddy! Yeah, you!" A kid with way too much metal in his face called out. "You got some fancy pants n'shit," he added. "You don't look like you're from around these parts here pretty boy."
The streets themselves don't look particularly intimidating unless you know what to look for. The boarded up establishments and the bare streets simply suggested that the people here were just poor. There was no crime in that, however there were eyes watching from those closed in hovels. That white glint you catch as out of the corner of your own eye that is gone when you turn your gaze towards them. Then there were the degenerates and the riffraff, mostly children and teens of ill repute that had congregated in the narrow alleys. They were up to no good, but where was the proof? Without an assault or a criminal incident, just the expression on their face and their intimidating posture. It could be one's imagination but you knew better, call it intuition or call it experience, you would keep an eye on those teens and keep them at arm's length. It was one of those moments where the fact that you had a weapon, that you could afford one, meant that you had more cash than some of these kids and they wanted what you had.
So cheap places to stay had a different sort of cost, one that you did not pay with money but you did with brawn and fleet of foot. More than likely you had already been accosted, but you might have been lucky thus far. There was a reason for coming here, a reason for staying because you could have afforded better. You could have done better. You were here because there was a name whispered in these streets that had caught your attention: Nap. A singular name with no introduction, never a physical description. Just the occasional rumor that he was a powerful 'wizard' perhaps 'necromancer' or even 'dark ninjutsuist' that had allied himself with the Daimyo. It was one of Sunagakure's best kept secrets, at least among the degenerates that human life was not valued the way it should. That lives can be bought and sold and they were for cheap. His actual location never disclosed, but some of his let's call them 'suppliers' could be traced back to here. Dubbed 'flesh peddlers' by some, there was a market for flesh:
- Children from the streets.
- Women from the street corners.
- Men too drunk or strung out to fight back.
Where were they taken, what was done to them? Hard to say, but it was the first semi-solid link you had to Nao. You knew of one of the places that housed this human product, a 'harem' of sorts. After the arrest several years ago of one Haku Saborou, there was a gap in the department of companionship for sale. People wanted to be loved and touched, but some were unlovable without compensation and for some they were not necessarily paid. That was the alleged case here, a den that stunk of cheap liquor and cigarettes, of sex and self-loathing. The doors were locked at night, the ladies and men and in some cases people too young to be defined as either were not allowed to leave. That a violation of human rights alone, a fact circulated to only a few but you happened to learn this one way or another be it through pummeling someone with your fists or overhearing this fact. As a hero you might feel compelled to help for that sake alone, but that was not what had drawn you to there, but rather the fact that there was a 'man' that frequented such an establishment. Not to partake in the women or the men or even the children, but rather to take one or two with him, paying absorbent sums to do so. He seemed to seek those with chakra capacity primarily, but on rare occasion he found something else that caught his eye for whatever reason. Perverse taste? Perhaps. Something else entirely? Possible as well. The profit made by taking someone, to possibly Soons or Sora, hard to say at the moment, was passed onto the criminals that had abducted these people from the street. They were encouraged to find people that had some chakra capacity that 'would not be missed.' You were likely a potential victim once or twice if they determined you were alone and that you were capable, it would not go as well for them as it would have for the others. That likely being how you learned but that is a story only you would know.
So you were there, in a narrow alley. Eyes were on you from the boarded up houses and a handful of teens down an alley to your back. They were approaching. "Hey buddy! Yeah, you!" A kid with way too much metal in his face called out. "You got some fancy pants n'shit," he added. "You don't look like you're from around these parts here pretty boy."
It's been a while since Tao has set off to Sand, years, almost a decade even, maybe more. He can still clearly remember that machine that saved him in the desert and guided him to the village. He can still remember the dark skinned people walking out in the open unlike Arcadia where they were forced to live in their own town inside the mountain, underground. Not that they wanted to leave or go to the surface, but it was still... Different. Everything was different here, and yet, the same threat was looming over humanity, even here, so far away from the barbaric Stone village. These, humanoid creatures, wearing the faces of humans, often changing them for whatever reason to look like someone else entirely, with their sharp spinning knives, with their destructive magic, with their hidden blood-lust. They are simply dangerous, and yet, they live so close to humans, and the humans don't fear them, not in Stone and not in Sand, not until they start to outwardly threaten and kill. Tao still had a hard time grasping that notion. He tried to teach some of them to be different, do to different things, beneficial things, but it was useless, they didn't care, they were amused that Tao even tried to talk them into it, he even told them about Lord Terra, a deity he made up with a story that might drive some good morals into them but, it wasn't good enough either.