Chapter 10 Ann and Net Kakra
Before their stop in the armory Haku Zabuza and Nikkia went to processing, where everything business related behind the missions of the Operatives of Ouroboros took place. They were in charge of taking missions, managing, payroll, summarizing findings for and reports, sending off reports, financing, and legal matters just to name a few tasks. The unit was the only place Haku and Zabuza saw that was carpeted, and more like an office complete with cubicles, business attire, and a soundtrack of typing and phones.
The woman who was interviewing them was in her thirties only slightly younger than Rose. She had caramel skin dark hair in a bob with a scarab beetle necklace, gold cuff bracelet, and turquoise headband. Her pear shape body was covered in a navy skirt, white blouse, and boyfriend blazer. The oddest feature were the bandages that covered most parts of her body including, her thighs, left leg and knees, lower arms, hands, and the bandages on her neck and chest which were tied in the back in a bow. Net Kakra was in charge of matters involving reports for missions, including those that involve outside organizations that legally required them to keep paperwork. Her twin sister Anouke Kakra was in charge of defense systems, teaching self-defense classes, and the armory. When they were done giving their information to Net, Haku, Zabuza, and Nikki met Gaia in front of a teleporter and went to the armory. Gaia was wearing a mustard and white flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows under a grey vest with dark jeans and grey vans. She was more energetic than before explaining that she was going to celebrate not completely failing her latest astronomy test.
The armory appeared to be a spacious dojo with vertical illustrations of snakes dividing columns of a beige mat, wooden walls divided into sections with stairs, large landscape pictures, charts of weapons, and balcony below many windows with odd shapes seen through them. In the middle facing the teleporter was a meditating woman that looked exactly like Net but with her right leg covered. She lifted with her arms and jumped to her feet in a way that showed great strength. Unlike Net this doppelgänger wore an aqua and white sports bra and matching tight knee length pants that said chaotic cobra.
"Hi, ladies, I see you brought visitors. Haku and Zabuza, I'm Anouke Kakra, defense management." Anouke said with her hands on her hips, revealing a faint outline of abs. They all greeted her and then moved to a chart of weapons on the wall, they seemed to be organized by the time they were most often used in many dimensions and while the swords and kunai looked familiar, some weapons such as alien technology and any of the guns were completely foreign. The area they were standing in front of had most weapons that looked familiar like kunai, shuriken, senbon, bomb tags and kunai, as well as odd ones such as a double edged kunai staff and fans with blades instead of wood. "I heard you two were ninjas, what kind of weapons do you use?" Anouke asked.
"I mostly use senbon ma'am" Haku said. He pointed to the picture between a katana and smoke bomb then let Anouke see one of his. She held the acupuncture needle in her hand testing the balance and weight, after some deliberation she selected the picture and made a few types of needles appear, selecting 8 and giving a box full to Haku with a new holster. "What about you big guy?" Anouke said smiling toward Zabuza.
"Swords, big ones." He said. Anouke nodded, thought for a moment, then lifted her hand to scroll to a new part of the chart, this was full of giant swords including one the seemed to be a gun/sword hybrid. "Ooh, that seems familiar." Zabuza pointed to a buster sword with a picture of an oni etched onto the blade. When Anouke summoned it the blade seemed to radiate with power. His eyes glowed silver for a second, giving Nikki and Haku an uneasy feeling that others didn't see. They looked at each other and when exiting the armory she said quietly "We need to talk alone, that might be bad news." When Zabuza and Gaia inched closer she mouthed "target practice?" and Haku nodded understanding that it was their cover story.