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"What did she say to you, Mugen?" Fuu chirped at her bodyguard's gaunt back.
The irritated tension in his shoulders made whatever the floozy at the corner had whispered into the rogue's twitching ear a very hotly contested commodity – that was, if she could get boring ole' Jin to play along, for once.
"Nothin', you nosy little brat, knock it off!" he hissed back and shrugged his heavy blade across his back for no good reason.
"Well, it must have been something! You're upset! Someone finally found a soft spot in Mugen's armor – ha!", Fuu spat out, her shrill voice escalating in both pitch and volume as she taunted the tall being before her, waggling her finger and skipping in that childish way she knew irritated him the most.
Jin – he just kept walking and said nothing. He knew better.
Hours passed. The shrill taunting continued. So did the skipping.
Mugen ground his teeth in supreme aggravation.
They made their way out of town, across paddies, down the long road a-ways and thence into another such nameless mail-coach town as found on their slow journey.
"Haha – Mugen's such a sensitive guy! A wilting flower in the sun!" Fuu chimed in her best and worst voice. Like an ice pick to the ears, she was neither hoarse nor tired. Jin looked as wilted as Mugen was goaded – and stopping short in the middle of the street, the pirate swore vehemently and decided to put an end to Fuu's reign of irritation. He'd had enough about five miles back…
"THAT IS FUCKING IT!!!"
"Not here." Jin warned, too late.
"You want to know what she said to me, do you?" he sneered, large twitching hands on his bony hips.
Fuu, brought up short and stupidly surprised by his outburst, mumbled, "Well…yeah!"
"FINE!" Mugen shouted and brought his tattooed wrists together in her sweating face.
"She asked me if the carpet matched the curtains!"
Fuu snorted a laugh and let the first unbidden thing fall out of her silly mouth:
"Well? Does it?"
Mugen narrowed his mad eyes and quick as a viper, whipped the tie from his pants, which immediately dropped to his getta-shod feet. Jin made a nauseated face. Fuu just bugged out her eyes in abject mortification. A passing octogenarian tittered behind her hand and another woman screamed, somewhere in the unheeded distance of the open road on which they stood, in the middle of the quite busy – and pedestrian filled town.
"Happy now?" he sneered with a nasty laugh.
All the furiously blushing Fuu could stutter out was, "…th-three…stripes!"
There was more – but they figured they had better split before the Shogunate got there…