The cold wind blew in through the café. Sakura's head shot up and she glared at the scruffily dressed blond man who had walked in. He pushed a bald midget off the chair the smaller man had been sitting in and sat down. The small man tried to protest but ended up with his head embedded in the wall. The door opened yet again and a tallish man with black hair walked in and sat across from the blond man, his boots resting up on the table. Sakura strained to see through the smoke the drifting around the café. She sighed and placed her hands together. With a quiet word that couldn't be heard over the blasting music and the sounds of people swearing and talking. Her hair grew out, turning black as it went, and her eyes changed form green to a dark grey. With a sigh she almost regretted falling into the vat of radioactive waste when she was little as she gazed in the broken and dirty mirror, but then she cracked a grin and told herself that it was very useful in her business. Grabbing a name tag off the table, she tacked it to her shirt and flounced out into the noisy and crowded café and stopped at their table.
"Hello boys, I'm Nana, can I get you anything to eat?" She asked, a cheesy smile plastered on her face, running over this disguises profile in her head.
Nana Star, a young woman in her late twenties, a flirt with a bit of an empty head. Works as a bartender and a waitress at the Rusty Star, supposedly owned by her husband, Harley Star, in reality another one of Sakura's disguises.
As she ran over the personality of Nana Star in her head and slipped into 'Nana's mind' the two me turned to look at her.
"You serve ramen?" The blond boy asked, to eagerly for his weather-wore appearance, pulling the unlit cigar out of his mouth to allow him room to speak.
"Uh, no, but I do have the menu here, and we have a wide variety of drinks to choose from." She responded. Ramen, what an odd request.
"Set me up with something strong then." The blond man grunted and 'Nana' nodded and whipped out her notepad.
"May I suggest the Cherry Blast Martini?" She questioned and upon receiving a nod of assent, scribbled it down on her pad. Then she turned to the other man. "And Sir, what about you?"
"Just give me a coffee." The black haired man said flatly, not even looking at the girl. She frowned then wrote down coffee in large letters under the other mans drink.
"That'll be a few minutes then, thank you!" She tore the sheet off the pad and went over the kitchen entrance.
"Yo, Choji got an order for you!" At her call a heavy set man jogged over and took the slip of paper from her hand.
"This isn't an order! It's a snack! A drink! They want drinks without food!" Exclaimed the chubby man in outrage, obviously disgusted that someone could walk into his pub and not order food. A crime against humanity, it was.
"Hey, hey, clam down, it's all they want. No need to blow a gasket!" She said, efficiently cutting off the man's hissy fit.
"Take a little longer than necessary, please, Choji, I'm going to go talk to her for a bit." Choji nodded knowingly and walked back into the kitchen. Sakura turned and walked out to the rear exit. She slipped outside and glanced up and down the small alleyway. The coast was clear, so she stepped out into the cold and silently shut the door behind her. Her disguise melted away as she walked down the dark and grimy alley. At the end of the path the lithe form of yet another woman melted out of the artificial sunlight that had somehow managed to make it's way down through the mess of cables and wires tangled above her, giving the ground a dappled look that reminded Sakura of those old pictures of forests and trees, oddities though they were. At the sound of her footstep, the stranger turned, blond ponytail whipping around.
"Oh, it's you forehead, thought it was the fuzz, here to bust me, again. You know how annoying they are?" The blonde complained, but she visibly relaxed. Sakura grinned and hopped up onto a metal crate beside the lady.
"Hm, lost a lot of business because of them, huh?" The rosette haired girl asked, glancing through a bullet hole in the top of the crate to view the piles of the illegal objects and substances inside.
"Yeah, and what about you? I saw two of 'em sneaking through the front door of your establishment a few minutes ago, what are you going to do about that? Secondly, why are you here talking to me, you certainly don't need anything I have to sell, Forehead Girl." The blond asked, glancing over her shoulder at Sakura, an almost worried look in her eyes.
"Hey, can't a girl say 'hi' to her best friend once in a while, Ino-pig?" Sakura questioned, ignoring the scruff my who requested something in hushed tones from her friend, glancing from side to side as he spoke.
"Eh, I guess so, get your fat ass off that crate and open it up for me, will you?" Ino replied, turning away from the nervous man who was still glancing from side to side. Sakura complied and helped Ino lift the off the iron plate. Ino bent over and rummaged through the bin for a few minutes before coming out with a small glass bottle filled with a nasty looking green substance that jiggled slightly with the movements of her fingers. The man held out a wad of what looked to be about twenty hundred dollar bills. Ino took the money with manicured nails and handed over the small glass vial. The man instantly uncorked it and took a deep sniff, relaxing visibly and seeming less nervous. He languidly waved a hand and walked off, tucking the bottle into his pocket.
"What the heck was that?" Sakura asked in disbelief, staring at the wad of bills Ino was counting lovingly.
"Dragon's Bite, a combination of opium, and couple of new world drugs, smelling salts and some stuff you really don't want to know about. You get addicted to the smell of the jelly and you crave it, like most drugs, except if you don't get this one in time you can go one rampage until you die or get some. That's why it's included in my many incredibly illegal substances box." Ino said plainly, tucking the money into her money pouch that hung from her hip.
"Wow."
"Yes, wow, never try it, or I may have to kill you. Anyways, I do know that you have a job right now, shouldn't you be getting there?"
"Yeah, but I need you to help me with something…" A single blond eyebrow rose at the sight of the smirk on the other girls face.
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"Excuse me, miss, but do you know where Rock Lee-san is so he can fix my board?" He said, in that cold tone Tenten still remembered from years ago. She stood in shocked silence, staring at him. Then what he had said sunk into her brain. He had so just not told her (indirectly, of course) that females obviously couldn't make good mechanics. Totally skimming over the fact that he knew Lee's name and probably everyone else's, and the fact that there were three men, boys, rather, hiding and waiting for a chance to run for it. Plan, fast.
"I'm sorry, sir, but he's not here right now." Tenten snapped waspish at him, putting her hands on her hips. He cocked his head slightly, though his expression stayed blank.
"Excuse me? I was informed that he would be here this time of day." The man, boy, Tenten corrected herself silently. Boys were easier to take care of. Anyways, the boy smirked at her, almost as if he had just ruined her most brilliant plan. Like he could out - think a girl from the streets.
"Well, want to know what you can do with your information?" Tenten asked sweetly, shifting her right hand slightly to the right, into position. The Hyuuga didn't seem to realize, nor know what she was talking about. He shrugged. "You can take it, and shove it up your ass!" She finished loudly, pulling and old power gun out of its holster at her waist and firing three shots in the boy's direction. He ducked and rolled across the floor.
"Time to leave now, boys!" Tenten called loudly, and Shikamaru, Kiba and Lee broke away from their hiding places and dashed out the door. The Hyuuga was already on his feet and chasing them. Suddenly, his body was jerked back from his neck, and he found the cold circular metal of the gun pressed against his temple, and a cold voice whispering in his ear. He couldn't see who, but he presumed it was the girl from before.
"Hey, don't forget about me." Tenten held onto his shirt neck with one hand, and the gun with the other, "I'm more danger than they are to you."
"Ah? Really? You'd think about hurting and old friend?" Hyuuga responded, smirking slightly at Tenten's shocked twitch.
"Now, now, don't get all confident because you think I'm too weak to handle people like you." She hissed again. Her legs were suddenly chopped out from under her by another person.
"You might not be able to deal with him, but there's me too." Came another voice, and Tenten rolled away from both it and her captive. In the high metal supports of the hanger crouched another man dressed entirely in black, including a weird sort of hat thing that resembled what ancient Arabs would put on their heads to keep from getting heat stroke. From his position in the rafters he couldn't have possibly knocked her legs out from under her. Scanning the room, she found the culprit, a scrawny metal humanoid robot stood at ease were she had previously been, a slightly disgruntled Neji. Huh, so they had brought it the puppeteer. Tenten glanced around before deciding to make a break for the hangar door, as she was outnumbered two to one. Surprisingly she made it to the exit before any of them could react and was out in the street.
"You! Get back here!" Rolling her eyes, who the heck would go back to someone who wanted to arrest her (presumably) and take her away from her friends, never to be seen again? A metallic hum signified that the horrible annoying puppet had taken off and was chasing her through the alleys.
"Tch." She shot it down with a well-aimed bullet and jumped up to grab a cable to swing away from the flaming debris. Using the same cable to swing up onto the top of a short building, Tenten gave a cheery bow to her annoyed and ticked off pursuers and jumped down the other side, landing on a crate between two surprised girls.
"Hey, what's up? We might want to move away pretty quickly."
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Yeah… I haven't updated because I didn't have any ideas… at all… anyways, maybe my updating will be better now… cross your fingers. It's short, I'm sorry.
- Kugi