Twilight: Hi all!
Kage: Hello.
Twilight: Well, sorry I'm late with this chapter…there was a problem with one of my video games…and now I've got to do the entire game over…it's more tedious than Shadow of the Colossus…
Kage: Oi, I liked that game.
Twilight: Only because you were contemplating what the giant horse tasted like.
Kage: …No I wasn't. It would only taste like rocks and dirt anyway.
Twilight: And you know this how if you weren't thinking about what it tasted like?
Kage: …Ok, that wasn't fair.
Twilight: I've cared about being fair, when?
Kage: …Bitch.
Twilight: Ok, well, here's the part where the story starts to veer towards traveling to Suna. Don't worry, she'll meet Gaara…just not in the way you might think.
Kage: I don't like the sound of that.
Twilight: Tough. Oh, and there's an awesome story that I find great enjoyment in reading called Joker and the Thief by T. W. Patchwork. She's going to discontinue it soon, and I've been kind of depressed.
Kage: KIND OF depressed?! You moped around being bitchy for three days!
Twilight: Well…maybe 'kind of' was an understatement.
Kage: Naw, you think?!
Twilight: Well, point is, I want to try and figure out why she wants her story to be discontinued, and so my updating might be put on hold…again.
Kage: …You utterly fail at life.
Twilight: I know. -.-'
Chapter 4: The Departure
"Bye, Midori! Thanks for the map!" Yukari called cheerfully, but a slight hint of annoyance tinted her smile as she felt the skin of her cheeks stinging in the cool early morning air, scrubbed raw red and smelling strongly of jasmine. Her nose twitched at the strong smell, and she grimaced a little as the fumes completely clouded her sense of smell.
Oh, how I loathe soap…
"Good bye, Yuurei-chan! Good luck on your journey!" Midori called, gray eyes sparkling as she waved to Yukari's back, who glanced back down the road at the figure of the green-haired baker that had scrubbed her unmercifully less than three hours before, giving one last wave.
Yukari walked down the well-traveled road among the early-risers in the village, attracting less curious stares than usual, despite her noticeable golden eyes, thanks to the facts that most people out on the road were still half-asleep, and that Midori had miraculously managed to go shopping during the fifteen minutes that Yukari was trying to recover from her torture…I mean bath…and buy some new karinginu (classic samurai hunting shirt), light traveling gi (karate shirt), and hakama (pants) for Yukari that weren't bloodstained.
Or stitched up so much they looked like a patchwork quilt.
Yukari found it odd that Midori seemed to know her exact size.
In addition to the shirt and pants, Midori also had scrounged up some newly-imported shinobi gloves, a small but hardy traveling backpack, and a kunai pouch with 10 kunai in it ("Sorry, Yuurei-chan, that's all that I could get without going over my budget.").
Midori had also been about to offer Yukari a pair of standard shinobi sandals, but after eyeing the calloused state of Yukari's soles, she decided not to bother.
Yukari spent another hour exploring the Moon village and began scrounging around for odd jobs to afford a ticket to the Land of Water, but after only earning about 800 ryo out of the 1,500 needed Yukari gave in to the urge to do what she always did when she needed something and couldn't get it otherwise: Steal.
So it was with a slightly guilty conscience that Yukari pickpocketed several unsuspecting civilians and two Tsuki chuunin at about 200 ryo per person. She brushed off the guilt easily enough, consoling herself as always to the fact that she didn't pickpocket anyone that appeared poor or elderly and that no one was hurt, psychologically or physically.
Pickpocketing those chuunin also gave her confirmation on whom she could sneak past and whom she couldn't. The few jounin she attempted to approach silently without resorting to any ki techniques seemed to sense her within about ten feet, while the chuunin didn't seem to notice at all.
For a newly-established shinobi village in a land that had previously only been inhabited by ki users and samurai,
Midori had provided food and water provisions, along with a spare first aid kit and a map of the Five Great Shinobi Nations and the countries around them. The last hour Yukari had spent perfecting her physical disguise.
When Midori had walked in on Yukari, she had been amused.
Flashback:
"Yuurei-chan, what are you doing?" Midori asked in a light tone filled with badly hidden laughter, finding Yukari bent over, seeming to be in a struggle with a black piece of fabric.
Yukari blinked awkwardly from under the ratty black cap she had dug up from somewhere and was attempting to stuff the length of tangled mess that was unfortunately her hair into it.
"Trying to stuff my hair into this hat." She answered bluntly, resuming her struggle with her hair after briefly glancing up at the baker.
Midori smiled slightly and walked to Yukari's side, snatching the raggedy hat from the young woman's hands. Yukari looked up with an annoyed grunt, allowing Midori to see what had been hidden when Yukari was wrestling with the cap.
Yukari had bound her chest as tightly as she could without constricting her movements and allowing her to breathe. She had also donned one of the baggier, long-sleeved gi and tied it with a simple gray obi, along with a loose, baggy pair of hakama. She had used bandages to bind the loose fabric to her legs to make she didn't trip on it or get it snagged on something.
Intrigued, the baker handed the hat back to the girl, who crammed it on her head and began tucking in the strands that remained exposed. Yukari tucked in all of the strands but her signature lock of hair between her eyes and a few flyaway wisps to make it look natural.
When the young woman glanced up at Midori for evaluation, Yukari was gone, and in her place was a skinny boy with large golden eyes gleaming in a dark face. As the baker stared, a grin filled with startlingly white teeth was flashed in her direction.
"Yuurei-chan…" Midori murmured, in admiration. "I can barely tell that you're a girl…but…" She paused as a thought hit her.
"What are you going to do about your voice?"
Yukari's voice was unusually husky for a female, but it had a feminine tone that rendered her voice solidly female. There was no way it could be mistaken for a man's.
The 'boy' smirked.
"Hi, my name is Hisoka (1)." A deeper, raspier version of Yukari's voice rumbled from 'his' mouth. A simple trick every thief worth his salt had to learn, but nevertheless; it was enough to make the baker's jaw drop.
End Flashback
Yukari let out a long sigh, missing the green-haired baker already. Despite her overly maternal gestures, she would miss Midori, and knew that the life of a wanderer was much too perilous to assure that she would ever see the gray-eyed baker again. Yukari had wanted to start traveling before becoming attached, which was something she easily did, whether she decided to or not.
Hell, she even missed the bad-tempered onbaa duo back with Keiji's caravans. And those damn things had put her in the healer's tent!
Heaving another sigh, Yukari glanced up to check her location, only to stop short. She stared in surprise as she realized how far she'd gotten while deep in her own reminiscing.
She'd gone right through the marketplace of Tsukigakure and the docks were barely a quarter of a mile away. She could easily see over the forest-covered hills that made up most of Ametsuchi's geography, to the long stretch of water that was the sea.
The beach was absolutely crammed with relaxing civilians, warriors, shinobi, and sailors. The general murmur of noise was absolutely overwhelming. The docks were loading the supplies into the large metal trading ships. Yukari stared up at these ships in awe; they were huge metal monsters with tall spires that belched white steam in giant clouds (2).
The land of Ametsuchi didn't have a lot of trees father inland, but it made up for the shortage in lumber in rock, mineral, jewel quarries and mines. Titanium was fairly common, but expensive because its difficulty to work with for common blacksmiths. All in all, the economy was stable. Yukari just hoped it was stable enough for the security to have eased up a bit.
Spotting a large and professional looking building with a large sign that declared in bold, fancy script, 'Administration Office,' Yukari pulled her wad of ryo from her hakama's baggy pocket and cautiously approached the building, putting on a show of looking nervous for anyone suspicious nearby that might recognize her.
She was mostly on guard for anyone from Keiji's caravans. She'd left them behind since Keiji had betrayed her and sent her on a suicide mission, but she knew that she was far too valuable a prize for someone as greedy and coldly ambitious as Keiji to be let go without a fight. She knew after serving under him for so many years, that he would come for her eventually. And she would have to fight to remain free of him. She didn't need him to survive.
She couldn't wait to land a punch on the bastard for sending her on a suicide mission, though…
Gently pushing the door open, Yukari stepped inside the administration building. A bell, fixed above the door to ring whenever someone opened the entrance, let out a loud clang as she allowed the heavy metal door to swing shut.
The heavyset, balding man behind the counter looked to be in his late thirties or early forties. He sat hunched over a large pile of paperwork that Yukari assumed to be shipping records, working away at a frantic pace, a faint dew of perspiration misting over his dark-skinned forehead. Yukari walked quietly up to the desk, playing the role of a meek, unsure young man.
"Excuse me, sir…" She quavered out, the question as quiet as she could make it while using her 'male' voice.
The man paused in his work, looked up briefly for a moment, revealing wide, watery eyes that were a hazy blue in color, and then went back to scribbling on the scroll of shipping supplies he appeared to be working on. As if encouraged by the man's silence, Yukari prodded further, still playing her disguised persona.
"I…I was wondering…when will the next ship be leaving for the Water Country? I'd like to get a ticket…"
At this, the man let out a heavy sigh that sounded like a puff of air whooshing from a blacksmith's bellows, and put down his pen, giving Yukari's disguise a good once-over for the first time. Shifting sluggishly in his seat, the man put one elbow on the counter and leaned his cheek on it, giving 'Hisoka' a flat look from one dull blue eye.
"Look, kid." The guy let out exasperatedly. "The ship bound for Kiri's on Dock 108, and it's gonna leave in fifteen minutes. I'm not gonna waste my time to give some underage punk a ticket for a ship that he's not allowed on anyway—" The man's tone suddenly turned spiteful, contemptuous—"Because it's a trading ship. No runty stowaways allowed."
She instantly didn't like this man; he had the seedy look of a political manipulator who enjoyed causing other people pain when his day was going crappy, because his sluttish, over-paid maids didn't put enough sugar in his coffee. His voice was rather high, a whiney pitch that made Yukari want to punch him. But she gritted her teeth and bowed her head, schooling her features into a look of disappointed acceptance.
"Oh…ok, sir. Gomen for wasting your time…" She mumbled, turning to leave.
Pushing the door open, the bell resounded with a mournful 'ding,' as if sharing 'Hisoka's' gloominess. She caught the man's cruel smirk as she exited, and resisted the urge to throw a knife into his sweaty, ugly face. But suddenly she grinned instead, a crooked smirk spreading across her face. A sharpened tooth poked out one side of her mouth, pricking her lower lip slightly (3).
So she wasn't allowed on with a ticket, eh?
No problem; at least, not for a thief.
"…Why, oh why did I have to hide here, out of all the possible ships I could have picked?" A certain gold-eyed thief growled crossly to no one in particular, wincing when her cramped pose made her chest bindings tighten slightly, restricting her breathing even more.
Yukari shifted painfully from her position, jammed uncomfortably between two large wooden crates in the cargo hold. The hold itself was large and spacious, but it was crammed with sailing supplies, goods from Tsuki, and so on covering practically every square inch.
There were also a lot of other things Yukari wasn't exactly pleased with about her selected hiding place.
One: it was cold.
Two: the sounds of the waves slapping violently against the sides of the ship made Yukari feel as if the vessel was going to sink any second in a dramatic, small-scale version of the Titanic.
Whatever the hell a Titanic was…
Three: she could hear the sounds of the crew working in the upper decks above her, and whenever footsteps echoed from directly above, (which was about every fifteen seconds) she felt like she was going to be discovered.
She didn't think that they'd be inclined to be very understanding to her situation if they found her. More than likely, she'd be thrown in a filthy civilian jail that would take her about three hours to break out of with considerable noise and chaos.
And finally, and most important, four: there were a group of other stowaways hidden somewhere in the spacious cargo hold.
And they definitely weren't intending on simply waiting to get to the Land of Water.
These ten-plus men were brutal outlaws who specialized in hijacking ships.
And now Yukari was stuck on a ship with them out in the middle of the open ocean with absolutely nowhere to run and no high-quality places to hide. It was only a matter of time before they made their move to capture the ship.
She couldn't warn the crew; sailors were naturally suspicious and there was no way she could get them to trust her in time. Yukari's stomach clenched slightly as she realized how many of these brave sailors would die, whether they fought or not.
The cargo ship would be commandeered by a group of thugs and taken to Kami-knows-where.
And she was going to be dragged along for the ride.
(1) It means 'secretive'.
(2) A paddle steamer, for any of you sailing fanatics.
(3) Think Midna from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Her smirk.