"If I had a ryo every time I got stuck in a place I've never been stuck before with the three of you, I'd have two ryo," Kisame said from between his hunched shoulders. He was mindful of the stalagmites—stalactites? Stala... ites... hanging around his head that he'd already knocked his head against more than a handful of times. This was almost as bad as running into the bounty station walls, but then again the bounty station walls never dug into him like the cavern was doing to his left side. "It's only enough ryo to buy me a single tootsie roll, but it's weird that it's happened twice."
Samehada, wedged in the corner, rumbled mulishly in agreement.
"My ASS is WET," Hidan hissed from his spot pressed against Kisame's right side. He splashed the thin layer of water they were all forced to sit on. "This doesn't fucking happen to normal people."
"You didn't wear snow boots to the Arctic Zone, but you're wearing socks and sandals in the middle of River Country in the moistest month of the year," Sakura sniffed from Hidan's right. Her hair was damp and she'd crossed her arms as much as she could squished between two other bodies. "You don't get to call yourself normal."
"Oh my fucking—again with the socks and sandals, I thought you were a medic, not the fucking fashion police—"
"I didn't know you were a grandpa disguised as a twenty-one year old!"
"Twenty-two, bitch. Keep up," Hidan retorted. "My birthday was at the start of April—"
Deidara's face screwed up in utter disgust from where he sat, plastered between Sakura and the other side of the cavern wall. "You're an Aries? God, no fucking wonder, yeah."
"Why'd you say it like that?"
"If it makes you feel any better, I'm a Pisces," Kisame said. Sakura snorted.
"That's a little on the nose, don't you think?"
"Coming from the other Aries," he said, thinking back to all their arguments with those insane cultists. "March 28th, right? Maybe it's because you're a stubborn, impulsive, impatient risk-taker that we're down here."
"Me?! Oh, I don't care if Hidan's between us right now because Mars isn't in retrograde and this Aries is gonna start swinging—"
"What's a sports drink gotta do with this?"
"Sports..." Deidara's brows furrowed for the briefest of moments before he stuck out his head. "Dumbass, she said retrograde, not Gatorade!"
"Reprobate, marmalade, whatever!" Hidan raised his hands and immediately smacked them against the stalac-lag-tites-mites. He swore and kicked up his feet, previously submerged in the pool of water, and splashed the rest of them. Not that they weren't already damp to begin with. "This is crazy, right? What are the chances we get stuck in an underwater cave that's barely big enough to fit all of us on this wet-ass ledge while a literal mercenary convoy is camped right fucking above us?!"
Deidara opened his mouth.
"I'm not done!"
Deidara shut his mouth and scowled.
"Hoshigaki-chan's out of chakra—"
"I know, but hey."
"—Haruno-chan can't punch 'em out since she's on a wack-ass political mission to Suna—"
"It's not my fault Shishou said not to get into any trouble!"
"—and Kabak-chan's on probation because Big Daddy Onoki grounded him for that explosion by Kumo—"
Kisame groaned and dragged his eyes to the blond two heads to his right. "That was you?"
"One, never call my Granduncle that ever again or I'm obligated to slaughter you, hm. Two, kah-bahk? Is that, like, Yuno for something?"
"Yeah. Pumpkin."
"LISTEN HERE, SWEETIE—"
Kisame sighed as he eyed their current predicament. It wasn't like Hidan's wrong, but he was running on three days of no sleep and dried fish from a mission that took him to the other side of Earth Country, and he was tired. The mercenary convoy was probably full of genin—chuunin at the very best—but thirty or so opponents would leave a mess regardless and also like Hidan said, Deidara and Sakura couldn't afford to make a scene today.
It was kind of dumb, now that he thought about it. He'd been taking a break by a river when Sakura and Hidan came out to greet him, having collided a few miles back before deciding to stick together for as long as they were on the same route. Then not thirty minutes later Deidara dive-bombed them straight out of the sky and into the river to scream about mercenaries on his tail and that he couldn't blow them up because the Tsuchikage could remove him from the active field roster for months if he so much kicked a pebble out of place and, well.
Kisame grabbed the three of them before the shouting could start, dragged them deeper into the river, and here they were.
The underwater cave was far enough down for them to get away with waiting out the convoy, and while it was pretty enough to be a mermaid's little hideaway, it was an air block with a long open space in front of them, the stalagacatimites overhead leaving them with three feet between water surface and rock ceiling. The ledge they were lucky to be sitting on ran on the shortest length of the cave but jutted out at about a foot while being submerged about a finger's width, leaving everything below the knee dangling in the water and their asses soggy.
All their tiny flashlights were wedged into the cracks behind them and worms glowed blue overhead. Which was cool.
But they were still stuck and cramped and wet, which was decidedly uncool. He just hoped that the promise he made to one of his summons wouldn't have to get cashed in while they were still down here.
Plus, if he so much decided to stretch out the crick in his neck he'd get bashed right in the face with a—
"Okay, so are the ones hanging above us stalagmites or stalactites?" He asked, because this had gone on too far. "I'm losing my mind here."
"Ceiling and stalactite both have a 'c,' so stalactites go on the ceiling, yeah," Deidara said. He rolled his shoulder and accidentally scraped it against the back wall. "Ow. What are you guys doing out this way anyway? I heard about a new type of clay in the area, hm."
"Messing up my scent trail," Kisame replied.
"Heading to Suna to teach some medical lessons," Sakura answered.
"In the middle of a honeypot," Hidan added. He cupped some water in his hands and wet his hair when some strands started to droop over his forehead. "I headed out a few days earlier than I was supposed to and you're damn lucky the fucker shouldn't be there 'til the end of the week, so as long as we don't pull an Arctic Zone I guess I can hang."
Kisame cocked a brow. "Isn't that a little above your paygrade?"
"Uh, hello? All you long schlong nations call us Goeigakure and you think a honeypot's out of my paygrade?" And Kisame had to give him that because it wasn't like Yugakure was snidely nicknamed the Escort Village for nothing. "I mean, normally I wouldn't have the time, but my target's this fucking five star VIP or whatever and we can't afford to mess up, so." Hidan shrugged. "I went on enough of 'em before I became Commander."
"I've actually been kind of curious about that," Sakura said as she shifted a bit to face the Jounin. The harsh white of one of the flashlight lights was glaring against the pink of her hair. "Shishou's been having me read up on notable groups and figures, and I saw that Steam Country is most known for their Silk Division? There wasn't a lot of info, though."
Not surprising, Kisame thought. Considering how unfairly they were looked down on by a lot of the other shinobi villages.
"Holy shit, okay, story time." Hidan rubbed his hands together and cast a glance over each one of them, a glint in his eyes and a bit of a craze in his grin. "This would be so much better if I had a whiteboard or some shit but y'all are still gonna get an all-access pass to one of Professor Hidan's history lessons."
"God," Deidara muttered.
"Hold on, maybe he'll get somewhere," Kisame said.
"So it's common knowledge that we can weaponize being horny—"
"Nevermind."
"—and sure, you know all the other shinobi villages do the same thing," Hidan continued like he didn't hear a thing. "Historically, active nin have always been men since they thought that having dicks meant they had bigger brains, but as the years went on women got themselves enrolled in the Academies and had to constantly prove themselves to have just as much balls to their peers and teachers. But eventually, they got themselves put on missions and were judged based on their skill instead of their sex. I mean, it was a very long eventually considering the ruling classes had their heads so far up their asses and kept going on with their superiority complexes, and in most of the larger countries, the general ratio of men and women in shinobi-classified careers is 3:1, and the numbers haven't changed much probably due to tradition, propaganda, blatant sexism, and old bastard ideology."
Kisame and Deidara exchanged slow, surprised looks from each side of the ledge. Sakura leaned closer with rapt attention, eager to soak up all the knowledge like a sea sponge.
"So women got their 'kunoichi' designation even when 'shinobi' could have very well been used as a gender-neutral umbrella term, but here we go again with these no-thoughts-head-empty jackass shinobi in positions of power." Hidan rolled his eyes. "It wasn't long after women established themselves in this community that mandatory kunoichi classes followed where girls in the Academies are required to take extra classes to learn how to present themselves with certain postures, arrange flowers, apply make-up, perform ceremonies, cook. You know, a shit ton of things that force girls to grow-up faster because of societal expectations and that boys were only expected to be boys. I'm pretty sure every village makes their kunoichi learn some type of fine art, right?"
"I remember how mad my cousin was when she had to learn el baile flamenco with those castanets, yeah." Deidara scratched his cheek. "Pissed her off when it took her a whole week to break in her heels."
"Uh, the dancing was a bit more universal for us. We all had to learn certain hakas and dance the Siva Afi, and each graduating class had to perform a Sasa during the graduation ceremony," Kisame mentioned, then narrowed his eyes. "My old genin teammate had trouble in one of her kunoichi classes, though. She almost failed flower arranging, and because of that she could've been held back a year."
"That shouldn't even be a requirement for passing for the next year anyway!" Sakura crossed her arms and frowned. "In Konoha we have to learn to play both the sanshin and the shamisen, and all my friends hated it. Worst of all, I don't think my teammates even know about that kind of stuff."
"They never had to," Hidan shrugged. "They tell kunoichi it's all for infiltration, which I guess is true, but a lot of infiltration missions that require those certain skill sets become honeypots even if it wasn't in the job description to begin with. Like—like think of those little food samples they give you at the grocery store. Everyone knows you're not gonna buy it and you're only there because it's free. Staff doesn't care, neither do you. Same thing with those missions; both customer and employee know how they'll end up and the employee just takes it because that's the expectation. You hammer enough of that bullshit into your shinobi and you get a lot of unspoken rules that never change even if there's a huge problem with it. Honeypots are given to a shallow kunoichi pool, and free samples are given to customers who never buy."
"How can you sound so smart but so goddamn stupid at the same time, hm?" Deidara questions incredulously.
"Fuck off," Hidan said. "But around three decades ago, the previous Jounin Commander had a stint working with Suna-nin for a hot minute before taking up the position. Seeing how fucked and discretely honeypots and honeypot-like missions were being handled, she decided to do something about it. Almost all nin trained in seduction are kunoichi, but it's bullshit to assume it's only kunoichi that targets are attracted too." He waved a hand, flicking a stray droplet into Deidara's face. "So, she took the concept of kunoichi classes—flower arranging, posturing, make up, all that jazz—and made it a mandatory curriculum in Yu's Shinobi Schoolhouse. We all had to pick a string or wind instrument to learn, had to pass speech and debate classes, switched between general physical education and ballet, and sat through six years of Sex, Orientation, & Health Education classes. It didn't matter who you were or how you identified; if you wanted to be a Yu shinobi, you learned."
Kisame was... dumbfounded. And that wasn't something that happened often. Gender relations were different in every country, but they were all stilted in their own ways with the general power structure, organization, and hierarchies first established by old beasts and forefathers.
"We're not a big village. At least, not as big as any of yours'." He gestured to the rest of them. "But about half of the citizens are shinobi, and half of those shinobi are part of the Silk Division specializing in honeypots, infiltration, and surveillance. And within the Division is the Mantid Unit where their primary assignments are assassinating targets during or after seduction." He clapped his hands together. "Any questions?"
Kisame raised his hand.
"Yes, the bitch to my right?"
"Shut up. So is that the reason why Steam Country holds the greatest relative ratio of seduction to non-seduction missions?"
"Yep."
"And why you guys have the highest completion rate and lowest number of associated deaths?"
"Yep."
"And the reason why other shinobi villages haven't studied your model is because they typically dismiss these types of missions and limit their services by only allocating kunoichi, and only a few kunoichi at that, to fulfill job prospects?"
"Fuckin' bingo."
"Just making sure," Kisame sighed. Well, that explained why Kiri would only get a handful of requests or requirements a year. He'd thought it was only his village that saw the slow influx, but it wasn't like Yagura-sama or any of the other Kages would look too much into the reason. Civilians tended to turn their nose down at most sexual missions and though Kage would always be shinobi, there was also the need to keep civilians on the side of their military forces.
Which was a whole other can of worms he just wasn't going to get into when he was wet and scraped and at the risk of a face full of stalactites with a 'c.'
"But I mean, 'course it's not all ass-up and daisies—"
"That phrase exactly," Sakura deadpanned.
"—but since then there's been a huge open and out there culture and a lot of older bastards didn't like it, so there's also been a stupid high insurgence of religious-like cults and, eh, just a lot of cults in general, actually. The one I left when I was fifteen was huge on that abstinence-until-you-die shit—"
"Uh, wait, wait. H-Hold on!" Sakura latched onto Hidan's arm and shook him. "You left a cult when you were fifteen?"
Her eyes widened and she waited for his answer with the most puppy-looking captivation, having hung on to his every word since he started talking about history. Deidara leaned against her back with his head popped over his shoulder, grudging and hooked at the same time.
"Oh yeah, I was raised in this religious-ass commune far enough from Yu that they weren't considered too big of a problem. They indoctrinated us through scripture study, taught us how to make rosaries, and used all parts of the small animals we practiced sacrificing." Hidan shrugged. "Y'know, the usual."
Mm. One of these things is not like the others.
"I don't want to ask, but at this point I feel like I have to." Deidara looked three seconds away from losing his mind. "Was there, or was there not, kool-aid?"
"I mean, I think I would've liked some fucking high fructose corn syrup, but the Leader thought that ingesting human blood would fortify our bodies so on the occasions that we were actually able to get human sacrifices, they made sure to preserve the blood and distribute it around the commune. Younger kids got the most of it and we learned pretty early on that you had to throw them back like shots unless you wanted to taste, like, everything." A worm dropped from the ceiling and plopped into the water, and Hidan flicked it towards the farthest wall. He pouted when it didn't land in one of the rock pockets. "At least I got out before I turned sixteen, though, 'cause I would've had to bleed into a human sacrifice's heart and live off that for a week for the 'cleansing ritual.'"
Kisame liked to think he had a pretty healthy lifestyle. He did his morning yoga, ate his vegetables, ate mostly seafood like a lot of other Kirians, trained nearly every day. He was in peak condition for his age and general flavor of life, and if he was going to die sometime over the next few years, it wouldn't be anything relating to his health.
But hearing all that from someone currently wearing socks and sandals made him feel like he has a cholesterol issue. His blood pressure was rising. Suddenly, his foot had gout.
Deidara blinked slowly. "... Are you okay, hm?"
"Yeah, why?"
Sakura looked like she was trying really hard not to give him a big bear hug. But then Kisame caught her eye from over Hidan's head and shook his head once.
She sighed like an old person coming back from their morning exercises and briefly squeezed Hidan's wrist before she swung his arm back and forth. He raised a brow, but didn't pull away. "I guess we should've looked into Steam's cult problem a bit more so we can be better prepared next time." Her head tilted. "Hey, Kisame-san, do you remember the name of the cult leader I punched out? Since I couldn't say you were with me I told Shishou I just happened to run into him." She scratched her cheek, completely ignoring the way Deidara's previous concern morphed into curiosity. "She yelled a lot and called me an idiot for turning in a bounty on my own, which was weird because she gave me sake after Shizune-senpai left the office. A lot of mixed signals, but anyway, didn't he have black hair?"
Kisame hummed. "I'm better with faces than with names, but I know he had blue eyes, ear piercings, that neck tattoo that went up to the chin, had an 'I-unironically-call-myself-an-alpha' look in his eyes—"
"He sounds like a poser, yeah."
"He sounds like the leader of the Blessed Under the Tormented Truth Society!" Hidan sputtered. "How the hell were you two the motherfuckers that got him? We've been trying to figure it out for WEEKS! Send a postcard next time!"
Sakura's face scrunched up. "Blessed Under the Tormented—B-U—I smashed in the face of the leader of BUTTS?!" She whipped a worried gaze toward Kisame. "Is that something I want on my resume?"
But he was too busy trying to work out the logistics in his head. "They allowed a cult to call themselves BUTTS?" he questioned, aghast.
"I can't believe you guys smacked ass and didn't tell me, hm!"
Kisame snorted as Sakura launched into her own story, recounting their trip along the Steam-Fire bordering, starting right with the no-fun-allowed Bounty Officer.
He'd been needing something like this after dealing with all the mess back home. Some of the elders were in a sour mood during the annual meetings that discussed promotions and other promising shinobi, but hey, it wasn't his fault them and Yagura-sama couldn't make it through a single discussion without making the rest of the room feel like they were sitting through a divorce. Outdated geezers, the young and hungry; thinking about it like that, maybe he could understand Yugakure's situation a bit better.
Was this something he should bring up to Yagura-sama? Kiri's intel on smaller nations were lacking enough as it was, the focus firmly on bigger oppositions like Konoha and Kumo—
"—threw me into a cult! Just chucked me! I'm just some firewood and he was the lumberjack!"
"Did you bring the heat?"
"Hidan. San."
"What? Afraid my puns are too flame-buoyant?"
"Don't do this to me, yeah."
"Relax, I've still got a shit load of sure-fire puns I'd be de-lighted to bring to new farenheights."
"I hate you."
"PFFT—"
—but honestly?
(The cave was wet and noisy and Deidara was cry laughing into his sleeve as Sakura barely held herself back from punching the noodles out of Hidan while he cackled, and Kisame tried not to smile.)
Ah, it wasn't a big deal. Yagura-sama didn't ask him to dig out any info about Steam Country so it wasn't anyone's loss, right?
::
A telltale thrum of chakra ran down Kisame's back like a mallet on a xylophone, and he made the mistake of saying the first thing that popped into his head.
"Uh-oh."
Silence.
"Uh-oh?" Deidara repeated an entire three octaves higher than usual. "Uh-oh?!"
There had to be some divine entity that hated each and every one of their guts, spleens and kidneys and all. Getting trapped in the middle of a snow storm with a bunch of strangers was one thing—a weird thing that he still wasn't quite sure how to feel about yet—but having it happen again? Heh, then coincidence was one hell of a bitch.
"We've spent twelve fucking hours camped in a fucking underwater cave literally up to our asses in fish piss," Hidan hissed. "The fuck you mean uh-oh."
Kisame slowly raised his hands. "Okay, so don't get mad."
"I'm already fucking fuming."
Sakura opened her mouth, paused, then narrowed her eyes at Hidan.
Kisame pressed his hands together and held them against his mouth. "I don't know if this is just a coincidence or punishment or karma from something I don't remember, but about a month ago I made a promise to a summon that I'd help her with something and long story short," he coughed, "will you guys help me deliver shark pups? I think you'll do great!" Probably.
Silence. Again.
"Because it's going to happen right now."
Chakra overflowed the cave like a burst pipe, raising hairs and filling the space with something ominous. Sinister.
For a handful of seconds, no one breathed.
Then.
A shark tail sent Deidara sprawling.
::
"You're a goddamn medic!"
"I've never delivered a baby before!"
"It's a SHARK, yeah!"
"It's still a BABY!"
"Whose foot is literally up my ass?!"
"I'm trying to accommodate a three ton great white who says she'll eat me if we don't get these babies out of her immediately!"
::
"5'5" is average!"
"Average for what? A fucking Kids Quest?"
"Pinche pendejo—you know what, hm? I'm a Short King and you can suck my nuts and before I come over there and kick your disrespectful ass, you gotta help with these six feet long shark babies—oh my god, please stop moving Baby Four you're gonna choke, yeah—!"
"Baby Five and Six incoming! Shit, Seven—"
"Kita-sama, your underwater breathing exercises!"
::
"Everyone shut up, I'm going to perform a cesarean."
"WHAT?!"
"That's the opposite of shut up!"
::
"Uh, the ledge might give..."
"We've got one flashlight left, yeah, don't—"
"I can't—I'm—there's so many fucking babies—"
"Fifteen! Uh, Sixteen? Seventeen, Eighteen, Nine—"
"Uh-oh."
"UH-OH?!"
::
The Park Ranger currently scouting along the river that cut through the Cagayan National Park blinked at the sight of four bloody people flopped in various states along the riverbank. Now, Ranger Training went all the way up to an equivalent chuunin level and she prided herself on being able to quickly assess a situation and act promptly and rationally, whether that be to fight or flee. But Ranger Training also had a boss that was full-on "clean up the earth" and "save the trees" and "oh the company that was going to decimate the bee population and triple the area's air pollutants without remorse had their CEO murdered? What a shame," so, there were a lot of mandatory environment classes and rules to follow.
Typically, this was one of those flee situations. No questions asked. High-tail it the hell out of there. Running was probably her best possible chance of survival, but even then there wasn't a way she could escape four nin from four different nations.
The Yu-nin was face down in mud with his face in his hands, unmoving, his hitai-ate settled backwards on the nape of his neck. Next to him, the Konoha-nin massaged her forehead looking way too stressed for a teenager while the Iwa-nin sluggishly tried to rinse his hair in the river. His hand kept knocking against a rock—she didn't think he noticed—and the Kiri-nin was just a bit downstream, smack dab in the water with his arms crossed just... thinking? At his side was a bandaged sword, or at least what she hoped was a sword. Did it just move? No way, absolutely not, nope, this wasn't in the job description—
"You're a fucking degenerate for not even getting out," Yu accused, muffled and utterly drained.
"How did that math work out?"
"Kisame-san, no," Konoha groaned.
"If each pup is almost two meters long and Kita-sama's just over nine meters long, two and a half meters high, three tons—"
"Shut your fuck."
Iwa hit his hand again. Konoha pulled him back by the collar and he tipped over.
They were covered in scratches and runny pink liquid and some sort of mucus that made her want to blow her nose. At this point, even if she ran as fast as she could there was no doubt in the world that at least one, if not all of them, would catch up and gut her like a fish in three seconds flat. She should make her peace. Mentally write her will. Hope her brother made sure her cousin wouldn't take her brand new blender just because she wanted it that bad.
But...
"Um, excuse me." The Ranger cleared her throat and shuffled a few steps closer, bracing her citation pad in one hand and a pen in the other. She clenched them tighter when four pairs of eyes locked on her at the exact same time. Oh god. "Wh-While we do remain neutral in regards to foreign shinobi traveling through the country, Cagayan strongly encourages a clean park and asks for the reduction of any sort of bodily fluids in the water. Extended exposures could be subject to fine."
Kiri stared at her for a few moments before looking down at his body and the way all his dirt and stains were sloughing off. "I," he said, "am so sorry, Ranger-san."
He lugged himself out the river with a surprising speed for someone as huge as him, but his teeth were sharp and she was low-key freaking so she wasn't even going to think too hard about it.
She should retreat, what the hell was she doing? She should already be half way through thanking them for their time and mind her own business, but there was that image of her boss again lecturing right in her about nature preservation and protocol and she steeled her nerves just a tiny bit.
"Also five hours ago, a large pulse of chakra was detected in this area and this part of the park has been closed off for the time being. The borders are lined with a low-level seal with the request to use a different route while we investigate. I ap-apologize for the inconvenience. but I must ask you to vacate the park until the area is cleared."
Iwa's entire face scrunched up. "Wait, this area was cleared five hours ago, hm? Did you—was there ever, like, a convoy here?"
"Oh, yes!" She bobbed her head. "They were very polite when they cleaned their space and moved out when I made my first round this morning."
The current position of the sun said it was pretty late afternoon.
Yu turned his face back into his hands and screamed, startling the Ranger into dropping her things.
Konoha eyed Kiri as he tucked blue hands under his Iwa's arms and hauled him up to his feet in one swift, easy jerk. "I hope you know that you owe us ramen for this," she said. "And I mean the good stuff."
"Ramen? Aren't you at that age where you should be demanding things like swords?"
"I better get two portions, double the meat in each, and I want dessert, because delivering twenty babies at once changes a person and I'm not dealing with it on an empty stomach!" The girl, by far the shortest of them all, took a breath to yank Yu up to his feet as well.
"Hey! I'm processing my fucking trauma!"
"Process it over a bowl of noodles!"
"There's..." the Ranger gulped as she crouched to pick up her things, her gaze never leaving the scene. "There's a really good ramen place a few kilometers north of Taki, and if-if you want to try the local cuisine, I'd recommend getting their halo-halo for dessert?"
"Ranger-san," Konoha sniffed, tears welling up in her big green eyes. "That's the best thing I've heard all day."
"I'm sorry, I got you all starry-eyed with an explanation on Yugakure's gender relation politics and you betrayed your badass senpai for food?"
"Senpai? Since when were you my senpai—"
"Since I've been older and obviously cooler."
So the Ranger knew a few things about high-ranking shinobi. While Taki didn't have as many as say, Konoha or Iwa, they definitely had enough for her to come to the conclusion that everyone that passed a certain threshold of skill, power, or potential was just super weird. Like, the Jounin Commander in her village was one scary motherclucker who held his position for over fifty years for a reason, but once she and a bunch of other rangers once watched him slam an entire coupon stack in front of a cashier and then, with the seasoned spirit of a hardcore housewife, got his payment down eleven ryo.
Eleven. When the original price would've run him ninety.
Iwa wrung out his long blond hair and tossed it over one shoulder, grumbling all the while. "Fucking Aries."
Konoha and Yu shoved him back into the water and Kiri only sighed, walking the Ranger's way as he adjusted the hopefully-a-sword and reached into his hip pouch. "So those fines you were talking about." He pulled out a damp checkbook and carefully started to pry apart the wet pages. Behind him, something shot out of the water and exploded. "Just add together everything for a decent radius of body fluid exposure, destroyed terrain, uprooted trees, probably disturbing wildlife populations?"
Konoha and Yu stood on the bank, dumbfounded, the blast showering them in thick ash.
"YOU PUNK ASS BITCHBOY!"
"Oh how the turntables you goddamn—WAIT, YEAH! WAIT!"
"SHANNARO!"
"GET HIS ASS!"
Kiri finally pried a slip free and wiggled it to dry it quicker. "Could I also borrow a pen?"
"... Of course."
When the Ranger got back, she was going to take the fattest nap.
