This is something that popped into my head. Maybe it'll help tide readers over while 'Vapors' is at a standstill. Or maybe it'll make people angrier at me. Who knows?
Involves unimportant original characters, as a method of exposing part of my personal head canon on Uzushiogakure.
Sayu grunted, hacking away at a long-rotten wooden door. Kenji chuckled behind her.
"Well, you could help, you lazy asshole!" she snapped over her shoulder.
She couldn't see him, but she'd been working with him long enough to know that he was probably holding both of his hands up and looking innocent.
"This isn't a good place to linger," she repeated, not for the first time.
"Don't be a scaredy cat," Kenji mocked lowly. She heard the scrape of his sandals wandering off to the side. "No scary ninja is going to jump out of the shadows and get you."
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," she grumbled, shaking her head to dislodge sweat. For an island city, Uzushiogakure was warm. The hive-shaped stone buildings had somehow been heated by the sun instead of creating a nice cool damp place to work.
It was also creepy as all hell. Digging through the remains for easy loot had seemed a much better idea on their little ship. She didn't even know where the rest of the crew was. All scrambling to gather as much interesting wealth as possible, she supposed.
Kiri was the closest center of shinobi power, and they had been allies with Uzu. They wouldn't appreciate idiots like her and her crew tromping around the site of a genocide. Apparently, to ninja, this place was all but sacred, in a weird way. (Pretty rich, coming from people who killed everything they touched. Fucking shinobi). When the village had been destroyed, no one had bothered to loot.
They hadn't bothered to clean up, either. Bones had been washing up ashore in Water Country's island chains occasionally for years. Thankfully, she wasn't seeing any of those. There were more than enough collapsed buildings and odd holes for her to be perfectly aware that some serious shit had gone down here.
"If we get caught here, they'll kill us all," Sayu muttered, not really invested in what she was saying. The reason, of course…
"And if we don't, we're rich!" Ichigo crowed, striding up behind her. "Need some help, sweetheart?"
Sayu wheeled around and kicked him in the shin for that improper endearment, scowling. "Back off, fuckhead," she snapped. "I'm a damn lady."
The teen gave an enormous, wobbly pout, shaking his head. "You wound me," Ichigo said seriously. "May I assist you then, fair lady?"
She rolled her eyes. "Knock yourself out," she sighed. With a gesture at the boards she'd been prying, Sayu stepped back to give him room. "There must be something interesting in there," she continued. "See how they tried to block it off at the last moment? The Uzu shinobi didn't want the invaders to get their hands on what's in that room."
Ichigo grinned. "Sounds like something we'd like, then." He delicately plucked the axe out of Sayu's grip, positioning himself like he was going to swing a mallet. "Stand back, fair pirate queen." He was a wiry boy, at that awkward stage where he was seventy percent elbows and knees, but it took him only a couple of tries to break through the bit she'd been having trouble with. With the block gone, Sayu stepped forward and helped her shipmate pull the massive stone door open, wondering if the problem was disuse and age, or if shinobi just didn't notice the weight. Sayu was pretty strong herself, but this was ridiculous.
"What do you think's in there?" Ichigo grunted conversationally, flashing her a white-toothed grin.
They were so close that she could almost taste it, so she favored him with a smile. "Scrolls, maybe?" she guessed optimistically. "They definitely wouldn't want any information like that in their enemy's hands. They didn't bother to hide things that were more conventionally valuable, like their money or heirlooms."
Which made sense. Ninja didn't really loot.
"Aww," Ichigo sighed, pretending disappointment. "You're going to lock yourself away and read, hiding the gift of your beauty from the crew. How cruel, Sayu-sama."
She repressed a snort. Sayu was twenty years his senior with a nasty facial scar from acid, burns on her arms from working with rope, and an insistently unfeminine build. She wasn't much of a beauty.
Her retort fled when the door jerked with a scraping sound. She crowed triumphantly, leaping directly over the clutter piled up (on the inside of the room, how odd). And then she was silent.
"Sayu?" Ichigo called, awkwardly scrambling up after her. He nearly landed on the older scavenger. "Oh," he said stupidly, eyes as wide as hers.
There were no scrolls, or gold, or jewels, or anything that Sayu would have hidden. Skeletons. Piles of tiny skeletons were huddled in the room, some still embracing each other.
"Ugh, what a waste of our time. Nothing worth taking in here after all. They hid the kids," Ichigo realized aloud. "Probably thought that they'd be able to come back." He shrugged.
Sayu didn't answer. She couldn't. Her jaw was clenched too tightly shut. She couldn't help but notice the larger skeletons probably belonged to children about eight years old. Almost all of them were holding onto toddlers or infants, though some of the mid-sized skeletons had been grasping bits of metal instead.
"I guess they couldn't get out, after the fighting died down," Ichigo summed, a hint of sympathy in his voice as he prowled the room. "I guess dehydration got them. Funny, they're all so little. You think the older kids were fighting?" Instead of replying, Sayu walked out and started pushing the door shut. Ichigo gave a surprised yelp and darted out before he was sealed in, clearly thinking she'd made a joke.
Four days later, Sayu left her much-wealthier companions at the docks of one of Water country's bigger islands and confessed to grave robbery at a Kiri outpost.