Chakra was what seperated the haves and the havenots into distinct, simple, piles. It was a way of life and a way of death. It decided who was the snake and who was the mouse and often neither party knew their roles until the shinobi showed their fangs. They were obvious to those with a practiced eye but the average chakraless citizen knew little of their function and knew even less about picking them out from a crowd. Thankfully, the youth made this task much simpler by flaunting their abilities in places where the two had to intermingle and thus invited crowds of mice to look at a snake and count its fangs. Then again, he had literally detonated the floor of a building with ice shards for a class once so he wasn't the best judge of appropriate chakra usage in the public setting.
Yukiin had grown a bit though, to become a snake among the weeds, intermingling with the mice and finding himself slightly agitated with another serpent coming into the grasslands on his time to ruin his facade and disrupt his prey. The cards and dice on the table were left untouched as the crowd in the streets where he had been consistently expanding upon his earnings, not in coin but in information, began to thin. Once the girl decided to make a sand shower sunrise, what he could only assume was the name of an alcoholic beverage in the traditional Byakko country, it disturbed the confidence of the targets he'd been softening all night and they muttered and rose, trying to get out of the area for fear of shinobi.
This was a rational fear.
He tapped his finger against the cards in his hand as he folded them up and handed them over, gesturing to collect every other participant's cards as he went around and collected them from their hands. He'd earned their trust over the past couple weeks but it was misplaced. That was the job after all, to lie.
The medic rose from the table with his company, sliding a piece of cloth across the table as he did so. His company seemed...uncomfortable, bodies not moving like they wanted as they braced their chairs to struggle to lift but finding that something in them had betrayed them. Something outside of them had also betrayed them, it was talking too.
"All our conversations over the past few weeks have been recorded, your illicit activities are only Primary offenses but your conspiracy to deprive Kumogakure of her resources by raiding an academy compound are much more serious. I'm afraid thats the last hand you're going to be playing for a while."
The light of the hanging lantern caught the glint of metal within the cloth, the symbol of Kumogakure glistening below it.
The mark of a shinobi.
The mark of the law.
Yukiin allowed a single white claw to slip from the flesh of his fingers, tapping his headband as a slight powder dusting fell off.
"Dusted the hands, highly toxic. Tell the nurses when you get there that it was Test Compound 3-Delta-77-Charlie, they'll sort it out."
He wasn't speaking to them, he was speaking to the assistance that stepped out from the crowd to carry the bodies off, slung over the shoulders like luggage, as the Medic wrapped his headband around his right hand, folding it in like a boxer's wrap until the emblem shone brightly out the outside and the cloth was affixed tightly. Mission complete. Another day at work for Byakko, Yukiin when was forcibly dragged from the office to attend to squad missions, a gaggle of Genin , which he had counted himself among their number not long ago, working alongside him. They made some remarks of praise but the presence of the icy gripping aura of the undead 'thing' in human skin killed the high of achievement as dead as winter and they moved on quietly to turn the targets over and recieve their rewards.
Byakko, Yukiin didn't care for the rewards, the reward was service. Almost losing them to being spooked by a random party's use of chakra had forced him to play his hand too early, however, and thus he struck at the mice, envenoming each, before they could lead him back to their hole. It was unfortunate, it was annoying, but there was no reason to take it out on someone who didn't know better and who didn't know what was going on around them. Though why they chose to come out here to this part of the city was an unknown, shinobi didn't typically live here after all...perhaps a detour? Perhaps it didn't matter.
He moved to accompany the other, more boisterous, serpent. Shinobi and kunoichi, just because he'd shed his skin a few more times and intended to outlive the sun that was presently setting didn't fill him with a sense of superiority or a desire to physically assault as seemed the norm for Kumogakure Chunnin-equivalents. The Byakko's reasons for approaching, quietly, devoid of breath and treading as lightly as cat paws, were entirely personal anyways.
It was the white hair. Again. So many of them...none of them were her but eventually someone had to be. He'd find her eventually and why not today? Fate had been unusual already in his life and despite recalling quite specifically that the one he was searching for didn't have these kinds of sand powers he had seen weirder things before.
Yukiin's presence was announced once he'd sat himself adjacent to the student, the creeping cold of his presence expanding before his voice and its accompanying soundwaves could startle.
"Exercise caution when spreading your wings, the wind goes in many directions."
He gestured to a bar below which was pushing its patrons out to shutter its doors, avoiding the scrutiny of shinobi or being caught in the middle of their conflicts at the sight of chakra in use. Whether one felt charitable in assuming they were afraid for the right or wrong reasons, the fear was the thing worth noting. Yukiin opened his lips, pushing out a steady stream of invisible cold that crept into the place below, chilling the patrons without their awareness of the source watching them from above until they banged on the doors to be let back in, citing the cold. They were allowed back in and once this change had been 'righted' the shinobi smiled in his inhuman and yet intensely sincere way at the kunoichi.
"Byakko, Yukiin. I'm not in your authority structure, we're in different branches, so you have no fear of reprisal from me for extra circular chakra practice. I encourage it, when you fuck it up and blow out your digits it keeps us employed."
It didn't sound like a joke coming from him but that was largely because he was bad at telling them. He was only halfway through 'Social Etiquette and You: Humour Volume 2 - Delivery' so it couldn't be reasonably expected that he master such an advanced technique so early in his curriculum. He was a shinobi, not a comedy god...that was part six.
