Scroll 10: Meiko's Trouble

Meiko continued to mutter all the way home and barely greeted her parents and younger sister, Mai, before stomping down the traditional wooden-style floor and slamming her rice-paper door to her bedroom shut.

"Pssst." a bodiless voice spoke to Meiko in her room.

"Tch!" Meiko had flopped down onto her mat-bed and when she heard the voice speak, she was up on her feet in seconds.

"Mai-onee-chan, I swear, if you're trying to play a trick on me, I'll cut your fingers off." Yea, real miss-cool girl there.

"That sounds pretty mighty of you. It's not Mai. Just me. I heard you wanted to be strong, right?" An eye opened up in the wall, but rather than evil it did its best to look friendly and inviting. It winked at her.

Meiko blinked at the eye and smirked.

"Just who do you think you are? I AM strong! And I'll only become stronger than onee-san and then I'll show her and that stupid cat of hers!" Meiko proceeded sneer at the eyeball. "Are you an eyeball monster?"

"A monster?" The voice laughed. "No, but I am rather good at using my eyes. Do you want to be stronger than you are now? Stronger than…your sister and that infernal cat?"

"YES! I want to be stronger than my sister and that cat! Where do I sign up?" Meiko stood up now and had the fire of strength burning in her red eyes. "I wanna kick that stupid cat's butt twice over!"

"Such ambition! I love it. I don't have anything with me, but you can join up just a little outside the village and we can start training there. Would you like to start now? Remember, the quicker you start, the faster you can beat the kitty." The person laughed at how easily this child was swayed.

"Great! I am so ready!" Meiko opened another rice-paper door and leapt through the next room and into the grassy backyard where a bamboo water-tube clunked down onto the rock and spilt its watery payload before tilting back up to catch yet more water. Meiko found her rather cliché-loaded clan house to be sickening. Not only did it half-way mirror the Hyuuga Clan houses; it was so old-fashioned, that Meiko begged to move out to the newer places. She wasn't a priestess, or a recluse, so why did her family live in a daimyo-like clan house? She had no answer for that. Meiko smirked to herself as she made her way towards the village gate.

XXX

Elsewhere, Tsunade began reading over profiles of all the major Darkness ninja, and some of the Twisted ninja. She pulled out the bottle of sake Skiminachi had given her earlier, along with a cup. It was getting late, time to start calming things down.

Shozaku was strolling through the village, trying to find Tsunade's office building. He was bored, had a deck of cards, and missed having somebody to talk to. He was also new at this whole 'leading' thing and wanted a little advice…or just tales of personal experience from somebody that was good at it. Eventually, he got to the building. If no resistance was met, he knocked on Tsunade's door.

"Come in. I'm not busy, nor am I drinking." Tsunade quickly hid the bottle of sake under her desk and straightened her hair.

Shozaku opened the door and walked in, laughing. "You are and we both know it. Cards?" He held up the deck of cards he was holding. Since, at the moment, he wasn't planning on gambling for anything in particular, he had brought a clean deck of cards. This meant that he didn't have any marked way of cheating.

"I'd love to!" Tsunade grinned evilly as she pulled that sake bottle back out.

"Pick a game, any game. I guarantee you'll lose them all." He smiled, pulling off his sunglasses and setting them aside. Shozaku sat on the ground and started shuffling the cards. It was almost like a show; as he did shuffled in fancy ways and did shuffled well.

"Strip Poker…" Tsunade laughed as she pushed the pile of paperwork onto the floor. Shozaku coughed in surprise, looking up.

"Gods be praised; I wish I'd brought my cheating deck. As it is, I'll have to resort to old-fashioned tricks of the eye." He was pretty sure the busty woman was joking. If she was serious then, as awesome as that would be, he was only 20, and she was two and a half times his age, Shozaku would have to decline.

"How about just regular poker?" the Gambler blushed.

"I agree; loser buys the winner breakfast tomorrow morning." Tsunade walked to the door and made sure Shizune wasn't walking down the hall. The aide wasn't in sight, which meant she was off to bed, good. Tsunade wanted to have fun tonight. "Why don't we go to the local casino and play there?"

"If you say so. People in groups tend to get angry when I catch them cheating. If we play anything together, and if you do cheat; I suggest not hiding a card or anything any spot you wouldn't want me seeing…" He took a swig from a bottle of something he had brewed himself. "So were you looking out for somebody just now? I thought the leader could do whatever she wanted?"

"Oh, it's nothing, Shozaku-san, let's just buy a few drinks, loosen up and have some fun." Tsunade smiled as she looked out the window to the darkening sky. "It's been a while since I've had a chance to relax here…"

The two walked out of the Hokage's building and into the night.

"Yeah. Kentarou always liked this place best. He never got to meet you though, but he had heard a lot of good things. So, what first?" He asked, waving a hand to most of the casino. "Gambling, games, or drinks?"

"I know you've been traveling for a while now it seems and you've picked a good spot to take a rest stop for a bit. Konohagakure is great." Tsunade was loosened up slightly now and was enjoying herself. "What did you do while traveling?"

"I've spent the last six months searching for Wydra and skirmishing various ninja, find her, have another battle. I could use a little down-time."

"Well down-time it is!" Tsunade led the way to a slow-traffic-ed casino and just walked right into like she owned the place – she technically didn't, but she was still Hokage so she flaunted it to a degree.

She and the gambler launched in on games of poker, and other casino games, and began to forge a friendship that would last well into the night and beyond.

XXX

"Are you part of those freaky ninjas that came to the village today? The ones that Onee-san played with?" Meiko had slipped out of the gate and was making way for the nearest training place: team 1 grounds. "Those ninja are freaky weird."

"We could be. Your sister fought one of us. She didn't win though. Want us to show you how to win? Be stronger than her?" He laughed on the inside. The child had no idea just how right it was when she said 'freak.'

"Come on, this way." a finger, covered in a black material, rose up out of the ground and pointed farther away from the village. "That's where we've got camp set up."

Meiko grinned to herself as she followed the beckoning hand. "What's your name anyway, mister hand?"

"You can call me James. Can I ask you something Meiko? Are you a person that scares easily? Oh, we're almost there…" he slowed down. He was using this as a set-up; for normal people, it was pretty hard to be weird-ed out or scared by pretty much the entire family except for Gilligan. People would keep thinking the was cute until he hit puberty, just as they had with the rest of the family.

"Not really, I mean if you're not a ghost or a flesh-eating zombie or that idiot sharkman, then I don't scare." Meiko chuckled to herself. "Or if you're not a giant snake or a big cockroach, then I'm not afraid of you." Meiko followed the hand as she spoke.