firefly dance



2 – GAVOTTE



Chakra humming along her skin, Sakura presses her back and thighs against the side of her cabin and plants her feet firmly onto the open deck. As her hands make the transition from Hare to her mouth, she pulls in an impossibly deep breath and shouts, "Suiton: Mizurappa!"

A violently pressurized torrent of water rushes through her puckered lips to crash into the ocean surface at a shallow angle. Her ship slinks towards the horizon bow-first, slowly but surely slipping away from the vacuum of the immense vortex that had caught her unawares. Sakura continues to propel the Kunoichi forward until she has escaped from the whirlpool's powerful drag altogether, and then leaps off the deck to hold her ship in place manually, the soles of her shoes alit with pale chakra.

The whirlpool had appeared out of thin air; one moment she had been reading a book under the cloudless sky and idly keeping course to the log pose, and the next, a vortex had set upon her with the wrath of a wronged god, accompanied by a full pantheon of black storm clouds that, like a jealous lover, hid any hint of sunlight.

Sakura silently ponders her next course of action. The most immediate route to her destination is apparently straight through the whirlpool, which is why she had been on that course in the first place. Such a path is inaccessible now, but to fully circumvent that island-sized obstacle without endangering the Kunoichi will add another couple days to the journey, not to mention that the only winds to be had lead directly to a death-trap. There is also the likelihood that the vortex will leave as suddenly as it had come, except she does not know how soon that will be, nor how long she will have to wait.

Of course, this is all assuming that her log pose is functional in the first place. Sakura has been told repeatedly that the only instrument she must trust on this perilous, unpredictable sea is the log pose, but she wonders if that rule still applies when the needle is pointing to the clouds. Perhaps hers is faulty. That would be quite unfortunate after having gone to the pain of getting its mount customized, especially since she'd sacrificed sections of her hitai-ate to do so.

In any case, for now she will trust in the words of Olvia and the old man and hold the course set as faithfully as she is able. Her ship cannot fly, but she can still follow a horizontal quadrant as well as any other.

A sudden harsh gale whips at Sakura's baggy red sweater and sends gooseflesh racing up her arms, drawing her out of her thoughts. The strange crackle of energy compels Sakura to glance back at the whirlpool; she has withdrawn from its influence and there should be no reason to feel its winds from here, so why...?

Her eyes go wide when she realizes that the whirlpool is not, in fact, a whirlpool at all, but rather the precursor to a behemoth geyser. It is a monster of a natural disaster that greets her eyes, a pillar of water perhaps the width of the Ten Tails bulleting to the heavens with all the force of Kyuubi's bijūdama.

Sakura cannot tear her eyes away, not when she knows that if she had allowed herself to be caught in that, Kunoichi would have been torn to pieces. It's one thing to hear that the waters of Grand Line are dangerous, but quite another to see something like... this.

She does not even bother to entertain thoughts of circumventing the towering column of water. Leaping back onto her ship, she drops the anchor and resigns herself to waiting it out with a book in one hand and a mug of hot chocolate in the other.


Sakura steps off the docks and swerves to the left to avoid two pirates brawling, hops over the head of a pirate passed out on the ground, and swiftly ducks under another pirate's arm before it can settle over her shoulders.

As expected from the series of black-sailed ships docked along the harbour, this town is overrun with pirates.

She watches a man in a shaggy coat being smashed over the head with a bottle of beer and contemplates the bleeding gash for a half-moment before continuing forth. There is no cure for pirates and idiots, and there is no point in healing a wound like that when he'll just get back up and find himself a worse one. He probably deserved it, anyway, though she has found it is true that too often pirates pick fights for no reason at all.

Spotting a comparatively respectable looking establishment with 'Bluewater Navigation' stenciled across the storefront, Sakura reaffirms that the log post is indeed pointing almost directly vertical and enters the shop.

"Hello," comes the lackluster greeting. A young woman, barely edging on adulthood, is manning the till with an expression that broadcasts how much she'd rather be anywhere but here. "Can I help you with anything."

"Quite a few things, actually." A corner of the girl's mouth turns down petulantly and Sakura has to rein in a laugh. Still, her eyes dance as she continues, "The name of this island, for one, and a map and eternal pose of the same. And perhaps most importantly, an explanation for my own misbehaving log pose, as well as a replacement if necessary."

The clerk huffs out a sigh and gestures towards the thick wooden door with a lazy wrist. Her hand does a sad flop backwards, missing the intended target by quite a distance – unless, of course, the intended target is to thoroughly demonstrate her apathy, something she manages quite handedly.

Sakura allows herself an internal snort, because, ha. Handedly.

"Welcome to Jaya, the resort island of assholes galore," the girl answers dryly, reaching behind the counter with the other palm firmly glued to her cheek. "Your current stop is the ever illustrious Mock Town, the beloved resort of scumbags and dirty pirates. Please watch your step, as there are probably glass shards and morons sprinkled liberally along the roads."

She places both a map and an eternal pose onto the wooden countertop, where the latter lands with a faint thunk, and then holds out the same hand towards Sakura. By now Sakura has succumbed to a full-bodied grin and she gladly tips her log pose into expectant fingers.

It receives only a single glance before it is deemed, "Broken."

She raises a thin brow, doubtful of the careless prognosis. "Is it really?"

"Yes. It is. For a small fee, I can mount a new log pose on your custom brace and keep your current log pose, saving you the trouble of disposing it," the store clerk recites dully.

Sakura leans in with an arm on the countertop and narrows unblinking green eyes at the other girl in a way she knows is disquieting. "Is it really," she repeats.

The girl begins to look quite uncomfortable, but she glances to the side to avoid Sakura's probing gaze and stalwartly answers, "... Yes."

"You know," Sakura says through pursed lips. "I was told that the log pose is the single-most reliable instrument to be used to navigate the Grand Line. I was told that in order to be able to record the gravitational pull of every island, the log pose must be made with exceptional skill, and that the slightest error in assembly results in immediate dismantling. I was told that not a single malfunctioning log pose would be found in circulation of the market of the entire world.I was told that so long as the glass encasement remains whole, a broken log pose is rarer to find than even a phoenix, if such a thing exists at all. Now, that being said," and here Sakura crowds in closer to the shop girl, looming over her with both arms on the counter. "I wonder, then... how could any self-respecting navigator lay eyes on an otherwise undamaged log pose with a 'broken' compass and be entirely unaffected? Such a rare phenomenon should warrant at least a bit of fascination, don't you agree?"

There is a long moment of silence, where the only thing that fills the air is the dim drone of cheer-making that filters through the thick door and the faint tick-whir-click of navigational instruments unseen.

In the end, it is the girl who finally breaks their stand-off.

"There's an island in the sky," she deadpans casually, only she's watching Sakura so closely that it comes across as anything but.

Sakura lets the tension run out of her body and relaxes into a slouch, arms still braced against the counter. "Really?" she asks, lips curling with an intrigued smile. "Is that where the needle is pointing?"

"You…" the girl starts, her brows raised high. "You're gonna believe me? Just like that?"

"Of course. People living amongst the clouds is hardly the most impossible thing to exist in this world. And besides, the compass is pointing up, isn't it?"

The young shopkeeper gradually sloughs off her defensive slouch like a long-held burden, Atlas setting down the world, and her spine goes straight and proud. "Yes," she says, eyes slowly growing bright. And then, with enthusiasm, she brings a hand down on the counter with a loud bang. "Yes. Exactly!"

"I'm sensing a long withheld rant coming on," Sakura says, amusement raising her brows as the girl begins to pace back and forth behind the counter, restlessly crossing and uncrossing her arms.

"Everything you've said is exactly right – in the first half of the Grand Line, the log pose cannot be broken if the glass encasement is whole! Everyone who purchases a log pose from any establishment that dares call itself a nautical supply shop is told this without exception, and any self-respecting navigator of the Grand Line should know it too. So why is it sooo hard to think that maybe the needle is pointing to the sky because there's something to point to? But god forbid such a ridiculous thing be suggested to these dumb pirates, because then they'll die choking on their own spit from laughing too hard! Brainless morons!" The girl slams her palm on the counter again to express the magnitude of her rage, and all objects in contact with the wood rattle from the force.

A spindly looking gadget that had already looked as if it would topple over with a breath is now quivering in place; Sakura eyes it with concern and then makes a sympathetic noise at the girl, unable to articulate words because she's too busy trying to hold in a guffaw.

"You would not believe how many people insist that I'm some sort of— some sort of amateur, who doesn't know what the hell I'm doing! The log pose doesn't lie, especially not several thousands of them; if that arrow is pointing at the sky, then there must be an island in the sky, simple as that. Nobody else in my family believed Grandmama, but I always did. To be honest I think that's why I was the one who inherited the shop, and all her journals and maps, instead of..."

Sakura tilts her head, feeling a very interesting personal backstory simmering just below the surface, but the shop attendant appears to have decided she has said too much and clams up.

Shame. Sakura is quite unrepentantly nosy, after all.

"So I don't suppose you know any way of actually getting up there, do you?" she asks instead.

This time the girl raises an eyebrow at her. "No, not unless you or your ship can fly."

"Uh-huh." Sakura taps her finger on the desk, contemplating something. "How long does it take for the log pose to set on this island?"

"Four days."

"I suppose that once those four days are up, just as with any other island, I cannot pick up the gravitational field again until I travel back to the island previous to this one?"

"I would imagine so, yes."

"And there probably aren't any eternal log poses to this 'sky island' sitting around here?"

"Not that I am aware of," the clerk answers, forehead crinkled. "What are you…?"

"Is it possible for a log pose to be converted into an eternal pose within four days?"

The girl looks at her with wide eyes. "Converted—? I mean…" she says slowly, "I suppose, theoretically it's possible, but… I've never done anything like that before, and, well, the probability of making a mistake or cracking the glass during the procedure is so high, and even if I managed to somehow set the log pose to the proper mount and coat it seamlessly with the magnetic shielding film, I couldn't know if I'd successfully done it until the time for the log pose to set passes and the needle doesn't change. By then it'll be too late to fix if it does change."

Sakura purses her lips in thought, slowly parsing through that dense explanation. After a long moment of pause, she finally suggests, "I'm sure I'm not the only one who's come in here with a 'faulty' log pose. You must have a bunch of them stocked away somewhere right? And some of them must have come in quite recently, too. I'll reimburse any damaged in the process, so how about it? I'd really like that eternal pose."

"But…" the girl hesitates. "If I can't manage to do it at all, then—"

"Then just think of it as an intellectual exercise that you're being paid to do," Sakura tells her, winking in what she assumes is a reassuring manner. "This is only a request, after all. I'm not gonna get mad if you can't do it, I'm just asking that you try."

"I mean, I guess I… I'll do my best, miss."

Sakura beams. "That's the spirit! Here's my den-den number, so ring me up when you think you've got it, alright?" she says, reaching forward to offer a slip of paper, as well as money to pay for her other purchases. With a final, "I'll see you around," she throws a wave over her shoulder, and leaves the store.


Her next order of business is to acquire lodging for her brief stay here. With the apparent state of the town, she's afraid that decent board will be in short supply; better to find something sooner rather than later. She could sleep on-board the Kunoichi, of course, but the whole point of traveling this world is to immerse herself in the different experiences available to her, and in the months and years to come, she'll be staring at the walls of her ship's cabin too often to count anyway.

After that's done with

Ambling along the road, deep in thought, Sakura hops to avoid a prone body with his face in the dirt and raises a brow at the smashed open barrel next to his ear. She bends over to check on the unconscious man's head wound, only for a pirate seated at the patio of an adjacent restaurant to begin to catcall her. Without looking, she plucks up a thick shard of wood and tosses it over her shoulder; the jeering is cut short by a sharp yelp from behind. Deeming the prone man's injury to be non-fatal, Sakura straightens up and continues her path, her sedate departure hailed by a rising chorus of raucous laughter and cheering from several nearby establishments.

After that's done with, she supposes she can spend the next few days exploring what Mock Town has to offer – namely, alcohol, debauchery, and pirate watching – while slowly perusing the stores to browse for supplies. Even though she hasn't been at sea for too long since her departure from Alabasta, a sailor can never know when they'll next encounter an accommodating island to restock from.

A few brief inquiries and an extended survey of what seems to be half the town brings her to the walkway of a leisure resort called Tropical Hotel, managed by a short man who has acquired the distracting habit of swaying unceasingly from side to side and rubbing his hands together. Although the most costly, it is also the most sanitary place to stay in town, and some vigorous haggling brings the exorbitant price down to something more reasonable. It's hot, this pirate paradise, so she takes a moment here to change into something that won't make her sweat before setting out again.

As the sun sets over the far coast, Sakura enters a relatively respectable pub – that is, one not currently embroiled in a bar-wide fight between drunk pirates – and perches herself at the bar, where several cloaked men are already seated. The nearest one, settled a few stools away, gives her a long glance. She pays no mind to it.

"Gimme something strong," Sakura tells the bartender, laying some beri on the table. Brisk and efficient, he takes the money and slides a tankard nearly the size of her head in front of her, into which he pours something of a deep caramel colour. She tips the glass at him. "Thanks."

She takes a small sip, testing the flavour, and then knocks the whole thing back. It stings going down, but not enough. Sakura hums a little and when the barkeep looks to her, she asks, "Do you have anything stronger?"

"Sure do, miss," he tells her, turning to reach for another bottle. She tastes the newly poured drink, which is a pale amber this time, and throws it back again. It's still not enough to get her drunk.

"Can I get something stronger—" Sakura starts to say, before a thick arm falls over her shoulder. Instead she says, "What."

"Little girl, you like strong things?" chortles a booming voice, far too close to her ear. "Then yer gonna love me!"

Sakura, her face shuttered of all expression, turns her head to observe the pest taking liberties with her person. He's a large man, more than two heads taller than her, with a hairy, exposed chest and broad shoulders. His face is red with drink, and he has a leer on his face that she finds deeply offensive. A captain's hat with a jolly roger she doesn't recognize is tilted precariously on his head.

"Listen," he says, pulling her in closer when she tries to lean away. Her nose fills with the stink of cheap alcohol and clothes that haven't dried properly. The smell is even more offensive than the look on his face. "Listen, listen," he insists. "If you want strong, this powerful pirate captain is standin' right in front of you. My bounty's thirty million! Little girl, you best believe I'm gonna show you a real good time."

By now, the bartender is beginning to look worried. The cloaked man is staring intently at her. Sakura continues to say nothing and tries to control her simmering temper, not wanting to collapse the building on the undeserving barkeep's head. When she silently attempts to stand and distance herself from the touchy pirate, however, his grip abruptly becomes bruising and he glares hard at her.

"Where d'you think yer going? I said I'd show you a good time, bitch."

Sakura's teeth creak a little from the sudden pressure she's putting on them, and she almost chokes over the fury that swells up in her throat like bile. As she prepares to hurtle this asshole through the roof, out the corner of her eye she spots someone approaching the door to the pub, clearly about to leave.

Her jaw relaxes.

"A good time?" Sakura says lightly, eyes curving. A cute little smile suddenly blooms on her face and the pirate's grasp of her shoulder goes lax with surprise. She puts one hand on his collar and strokes it intimately; across the room, the front entrance yawns wide open. Still smiling, Sakura spits, "I think I can show you an even better time, bitch," and then lifts the half-wit into the air by his shirt.

In one swift motion she flings him violently through the pub, out the door, and headfirst into the cement building on the other side of the road. The pirate's short scream is cut off with a large crash as his head is smashed against the stone wall. He falls limply to the ground, and a large, solid piece of cement drops onto his prone body.

Shannaro, Sakura thinks, not a little smug. She contentedly settles herself back in front of the counter and repeats, "Can I get something stronger?"

The wide-eyed bartender slowly nods and brings her an entire bottle of a clear liquid. "The strongest we have, miss," he tells her nervously. "Hope you like it."

As she reaches for a few bills to give to him, another hand beats her to it, pushing a bundle of beri into the barkeep's hand and snatching the bottle away. An unfamiliar, authoritative voice demands, "Two glasses."

The bartender looks to the man beside Sakura and then back to her. She considers his silent question. After the demonstration she just gave, it would take quite an interesting character to approach her again, and she really has nothing to lose from having her drinks paid for. Curious, she says nothing, and the barkeep takes her old tankard and hurries away to do as told.

Sakura tilts her head to look at the cloaked man, who has migrated to the seat next to her, and says, "I was going to drink all that."

"Well," he begins, turning to face her directly. His grin is impish, and his words suggestive. "I like strong things too."

His hood has been drawn back, in part, and from this close she can appreciate the entirety of his face. Even covered by sweeping blue hair and goggles, it's a good face, with a strong jaw and proportionate features. But… he's young. He looks a little younger than her, and not really suited for a bar.

The youth, as well as a smile that could only suit such a rascal, makes his advance seem cute rather than obnoxious; it makes her want to tease him. It does not, however, instill in her the desire to do much more than that, unfortunately for him.

"So what brings a beauty like you to a place like this?" he asks, and Sakura grins at the jaunty way he says the age-old line.

"I'm just killing some time," she tells him, carelessly swinging her legs from the high stool.

As brazen as you please, the young man leans toward her and replies, "What a coincidence! I also have some time just before my kill."

Oh, that's pretty clever, Sakura thinks. She can't see his eyes to be sure, but the way the other cloaked men shift behind him has her believe that he's not entirely joking. It still makes her cough into her fist to cover up a laugh, because his quip is equal parts horrifying and hilarious and she's just immoral enough that she can see the hilarity.

The return of the barkeep with clean tankards is welcome distraction from contemplation of how terrible a human being she actually is. She watches the man pour their drinks, the bottle neatly emptying out into their two glasses. Sakura lifts hers to her mouth and then stops. Recalling that the age of majority in this world is seventeen, she says, "Aren't you a bit young to be buying drinks for women at bars?"

"You're one to talk," the young man beside her replies, taking an easy swig. "You can't be much older than me, if at all."

Sakura takes a sip too. It tastes disgusting, like something meant to peel paint, and burns like a fucker going down.

It's perfect. She chugs it and when the whole tankard is empty, she thrusts it out for a refill and breathlessly gasps, "I'm seventeen."

He pauses for a moment, eyes narrowing. He silently finishes his own tankard off, and then as the bartender tops off their glasses with a new bottle, he says, "Fifteen and seventeen are basically the same thing."

"That's not true and you know it."

"If I'm old enough to kill people, I'm old enough to do whatever the hell else I like."

Sakura concedes the point. This was the very same reasoning that kept all shopkeepers quiet when young shinobi came into bars, tripping over themselves like puppies, and asked for drinks they had no real business drinking.

Instead, she throws her cup back and says, "Are you going to keep paying, then?"

The boy bares his teeth at her in something more wicked than a grin. "I'll keep paying as long as you keep drinking."

"I hope you have deep pockets," Sakura snorts, and under his watchful gaze she drains her most recent round of drink. He copies her, and together they finish off their third bottle of the wince-inducing poison. "Since you're offering, you should know that I'm gonna keep drinking on your tab even if you're passed out under the table."

"Don't worry about my pockets, beautiful," he laughs. Another refill. Another chug. "All the liquor in this building wouldn't make a dent in those. Or my level of intoxication, really."

"Enough of these," Sakura says, waving around her half-filled tankard, "And I won't be able to say the same. I'm planning on getting drunk enough that I can't smell the stench of unwashed men anymore. With a town's worth of pirates, I might go crazy otherwise."

The boy's brows twist, maybe in amusement, maybe in derision, and he finishes his drink before she does. "I don't know about getting drunk, but if the purpose of this revolting swill is to destroy my sense of smell, it's doing remarkably well." Curiously, despite saying so, she recalls that his face has never once distorted from the taste of this booze, quite unlike her own repeated nose wrinkles.

Already, her tongue has gone numb from the drink's potent — and quite honestly revolting — flavour, dulling the stink of the room by a fair margin. The bartender approaches their seats to refill their glasses again, but after realizing how sober the two of them still are, appears to give up on serving them entirely. A line of bottles are arranged along the bar counter for their convenience, and then the bartender finally takes leave of his post in front of them.

"So what do you do, to be such a god of wealth?" Sakura asks, leaning against the counter with her chin propped in her palm. The boy parrots her, and this brings their faces in so close it feels like they should only speak in whispers, in secrets.

"I'm a mercenary, of a sort," he tells her. She still can't see his eyes because of those opaque goggles, but she can still feel his gaze heavy on her skin.

"I didn't know mercenaries made so much money. What do you specialize in?"

"War," he says, with an amused turn of his mouth. "Why, are you interested in a job? We don't recruit, but I'm sure an exception can be made for someone this gorgeous."

"I'm unsure how just my face could be so useful as to warrant recruitment into a mercenary organization," says Sakura dryly, poking her cheek for emphasis.

He smiles, and they take another drink. "You'd certainly boost morale."

"I think I'd rather your job."

He laughs at her. "You couldn't do my job."

"Oh?" she says, her voice eerily calm. She rises, slowly, from her slumped position, tilts back her head, looks at him through lowered lashes. "You think I'm not strong enough?"

With a grin, the boy says, "I know you aren't strong enough."

What a chore. Now she's duty-bound to show him how excruciatingly wrong he is, and it'll be a whole thing, and she isn't sure she's tipsy enough to enjoy it.

Just to make sure she is, Sakura takes up a whole bottle and guzzles it all down, and then another, and then a third, the boy happily meeting her drink for drink. She finally slams the fourth bottle down and looks at him in the eye, and says, "Alright, puppy. Let's go, you and me."

The punk looks almost gleeful.

Sakura knows she's just being baited, of course. She knows that while this brat certainly believes his own words, this is really just an excuse to touch her. He's saying exactly what he knows will get a rise out of her, and if she had any measure of dignity, she'd be the bigger person and not let him get under her skin. But she's running quite low on dignity today, and her temper always runs quite high regardless, so she's unashamedly going to allow herself to be provoked — because in the end, the satisfaction after she makes this little punk eat his words will be completely worth it.

Sakura leaps off of the barstool and stomps over to the nearest table. A challenging toss of her blush-pink head has the boy trailing after her. The table is already occupied, but a look from Sakura and the few men sitting around it scramble to their feet. One of them holds his seat out for her, and as she graciously takes his offer, the puppy following her bares his teeth threateningly at the man. The group immediately beats a retreat.

As he drops into his new chair, the boy says, as they all inevitably do, "How about we make this more interesting?"

"What d'you propose?" Sakura asks, giving him an indolent smirk. "I'm fine with you just squaring off my tab, but I suppose it'd be nice if you could settle my hotel fee too."

"Are you always such a gold-digger, or am I just special?" he asks playfully, putting a hand over his chest and feigning injury.

She laughs at him. "You shouldn't flaunt your deep pockets to women in bars if you don't want anyone to reach into them."

The boy shrugs a shoulder in a 'fair enough' gesture and adopts a contrived look of innocence. "I just want to spend some more time with you," he tells her, but his face is soon taken over by the wicked smile constantly playing at the edge of his mouth.

"Oh my," Sakura drawls, batting her eyelashes in an exaggerated way. She puts a hand to her chest as well. "Are you propositioning me, sir? I must protest; I don't know if my maidenly heart can take this indecency." She mimes outrage and makes to stand, but a gloved hand shoots out and grabs her bare wrist in a grip just short of bruising.

"Sit down," he says commandingly, his face turning dark. Sakura frowns at him, unsure if she wants to humour this kind of bratty behaviour. At her unimpressed, raised brow, his grip relaxes and he adds a reluctant, "Please."

She considers the boy for a moment longer, but sits down anyway. It's not like she's got much else to do, and it's just an arm-wrestling match. She's not black-out drunk either, which means he has more use in him yet.

The boy grins happily at her when she settles back into her seat, and it makes him look his age, but Sakura has no doubt that he's dangerous. She's not worried though.

She's dangerous too.

"So if you win, you want, what... for me to go back to your place with you?" Sakura asks, her brow still raised.

"No, nothing so crude," he tells her, turning over the wrist still in his grasp. He inspects the thin taper where her arm flows into her palm, the complex network of veins running under her milky skin. "When I win, go on a date with me. Tomorrow."

"When you win?" she repeats mockingly, his arrogance going straight to her temper. She grins at him, shark-like, and her captive hand suddenly shoots up to flick the boy's nose. "Well, when I win, you better be ready to turn into my new purse."

He raises a hand to his nose, touching the pinkening tip curiously, and grins back at her. "I would have done it anyway."

"Alright, puppy. Now that we've settled the terms," Sakura plunks her elbow onto the surface of the table and holds out her hand. "Let's do this. Don't cry if I accidentally break your hand."

"I'd like to see you try," he says, putting his own elbow down, "But I assure you, that's not going to happen."

"What's not going to happen? The crying or the breaking?"

He has to think about this for a moment. "...Probably the breaking, but definitely the crying."

"I guess we'll find out," Sakura leers, and her hand tightens over his. "On three."

"Three."


When Sakura leaves the bar, it's with a sack full of the bar's strongest alcohol and a whistle on her lips. "He'll pay for the damages," she tells the bartender over her shoulder, swaggering jauntily out with her new plunder.

Behind her, her newest admirer watches her go with bright, glowing eyes and a lax, besotted grin. Dreamily, he sighs, "God, that woman is hot."

"Sir, should we go after her?" one of the Type-MB clones murmurs, staring worriedly after the door as it swings shut with a merry clatter.

Niji tosses him a scathing look. "What the hell for?"

"Your hand…"

All of the accompanying Germa soldiers crowd around the broken and tilting table upon which the battle had taken place, doing their best to hammer the exoskeleton of his arm back to rights. It's hard going; there is quite a lot of damage, and the bones are relatively tiny.

The arm wrestle had been an all out war, a free-for-all that left Niji's fingers bent strangely and crushed together. There are now several thin, finger-shaped indents on the back of his hand. He can still remember her battle-cry as she pushed savagely against the full force of his enhanced strength, her fierce grin when his arm went right through the middle of the table and cracked the wood clean in half. It's honestly doing all sorts of things to him.

"Well, what do you expect her to do about it? Just cos she broke it, doesn't mean she knows how to fix it."

"But sir, it's nearly time to meet our target."

"Shut your trap, shitface. You aren't here to think," Niji sneers, and then with his undamaged hand he lobs an empty bottle at the clone's face. It breaks against his forehead, glass shattering in a cascade, and leaves behind a dark gash and an even darker bruise. The clone teeters back and forth for a moment, and then suddenly topples over. Niji scoffs at the prone body. "Not like I need two hands for a job this easy."

He leans back into his seat and a rakish smile curls over his mouth. "I'm gonna be seeing her tomorrow, anyway. After all, I still have to pay her hotel fee."



Notes:

Bijūdama - Tailed Beast Ball

Suiton: Mizurappa - Water Release: Water Trumpet

If you ask why I used the Japanese names of the techniques, the first time is because i used the word tailed earlier in the sentence and didnt want to repeat, and the second time because i think water trumpet sounds stupid. But i guess now that i've set a precedent, i gotta stick with it.

It's been three years… hello. Remember this little thing? I haven't forgotten it! Just, you know, been side-tracked and procrastinating a ton. The writing style's changed (and keeps changing throughout the chapter) because i forget how to get into the necessary mood to write like the previous two chapters (for me, certain mental states correspond to different writing styles), and also it's been three years, so… for a long while i had no clue who to have sakura meet in mock town, but then the vinsmokes appeared and it was like an answer to my prayers!

i started working on this a bit more recently because i wanted to read something like this but it didn't exist. i hate when that happens. it means work for me and, as a result of my flakiness, sorrow for everyone who reads anything i write. btw, i recently posted a harry potter oc self-insert if u wanna check it out.

hope you enjoyed this new chapter. love you guys!