Asuka was getting really tired of this whole "waking up disoriented and unsure where he was" thing.
He was propped up in a wicker chair in a room with an ocean view. The patio doors were open. The sheer white curtains in front of them fluttered. He immediately went for his cigarettes, a comforting weight hidden up his yukata sleeve.
In their place, Asuka found a box of plain candy sticks.
…
"Give that to me, Asuka! Those things'll cause your death!"
"Baaaaa-chaaan, Baaaa-chaaaan! It was just one time!"
"Then you should have no problem handing the whole carton over, humph!"
He stood up and walked towards the balcony.
Outside, there was a foggy mist so thick that he could hardly tell if it was late at night or very early in the day.
"What the fuck," Asuka said, not for the first time.
The rest of the room was extremely nice. And not in a cave.
He wasn't sure if that was comforting or alarming.
In the middle of the room were half-opened paper doors separating a master bedroom from the rest of the room. He could see that behind them lay a single neatly made futon with a note atop it.
He turned around and went into the room, then picked up the note.
It read:
" Dear Nohara-chan,
Tobi had to go out to meet with an important man but he'll be back later. So don't worry a bit!"
"Who the fuck is Tobi?" Asuka said aloud. He then went back to reading the note.
"Tobi left you some snacks on the table. But don't eat all of them. Tobi doesn't want you to ruin your dinner!
(Here, there was a drawing of a masked stick figure wagging its finger] ."
"Is...Is he referring to himself in the third person?"
He looked over at the coffee table. Indeed, it held a treasure trove of sugary treats: freshly made mochi, dango, anmitsu. There was also takoyaki and fried squid that was still steaming – his captor had probably gone and acquired these recently.
Asuka was no stranger to bribery.
Kanae, desperate in her attempts to win back his affection during his exile from the Academy, frequently spoiled him. Asuka lavished in the attention until he realized that by doing so, he was losing ground in their moral battle. So, he disengaged.
Asuka really, really liked anmitsu. Like a lot.
Like an unhealthy amount.
Like to the point where he went an entire month surviving on the stuff exclusively.
And the takoyaki smelled so good.
…
Asuka threw the pile of treats out the window.
Have I been underneath the fucking Bloody Mist village this entire time? Asuka wondered, dismayed.
It appeared so.
Immediately after tossing the food off the balcony ledge, something occurred to Asuka.
"What the hell am I still doing here?"
Then he jumped off the balcony himself.
He had no weapons, only the clothes on his back; which happened to be that bloodied white yukata he'd been wearing since his…surgery. Blech.
Whatever. That was fine. Asuka himself was a deadly weapon who knew how to kill seven different ways with a teacup alone .
It was early morning, just before dawn. The streets were abandoned. The white fog was so thick he could hardly see past a few feet. The gray, blocky buildings were run down, windows were boarded up and there was a suspiciously high amount of dark stains on the cobblestone streets.
Asuka quickly ducked into the one alleyway around that didn't seem to already be occupied by either corpses or…those were presumably guerrilla fighters… and summoned Natsuki.
"Asuka-kun! I was so worried about– Are we in Kiri?!"
"It's a long story and I don't have time to explain but, uh, can you help me?"
"Any time," the rabbit replied. "What do you need?"
Asuka grimaced, "A map."
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Asuka asked Natsuki to retrieve some money for him, and thus, he used his funds to enter a seedy bar and buy the clothes off of a drunk. Said drunk thought the entire encounter was hysterical and was subsequently cut off by the bartender.
He scoped out as much of the village as he could from the rooftops for a few hours, then had to transform into a bird and hide to avoid some of the fighting that had started up again once dawn broke.
Half of Kiri was a charred crater from all of the fighting. Most of the civilians, Asuka found out through listening to hushed whispers, hid in the hills outside of the village or in the sewers. Kiri also had a serious problem of looting and grave robbing, on both sides. And a massive wealth disparity, as most of the civil war was fought in the shinobi and poor civilian districts down by the wharfs.
The wealthier districts, like the merchant district where the fat cats lived or the Red Lotus district – whatever that was – remained unscarred and untouched. Allegedly, whoever was winning at the time had control over the Red Lotus district, and it was Karatachi and his loyalists, currently.
He'd heard whispers that Karatachi Yagura, dictator supreme himself, was actually going to come out and address his followers sometime that afternoon.
The way the kunoichi in the alley below had phrased it made it seem like the man routinely stayed up in his ivory tower barking orders while everyone else bled out for his ceaseless and worthless, bloody civil war. She sounded shocked that this was occuring.
Asuka simply had to see it.
After all, Karatachi Yagara and his bloody damn civil war was what had gotten Asuka into this mess in the first place.
It was only fair that he paid Yagura-sama a visit.
(A voice, deep in the pitch-black excesses of Asuka's mind, sounding suspiciously like Natsuki, cried out: "What're you doing?! NO! Run! Run, Asuka-kun, get out of here and never come back!"
Naturally, he ignored it in favor of sweet, sweet revenge.)