Beat
Anyways, the club. In my previous life, nightclubs had blaring music, loud thuds, percussions resonating with the repeating rhythm of my beating heart, excitement and adrenaline feeding it a unrepenting pulse of energy. This one had no such repetition, yet it did have a band, string music floating music so smooth it made me uneasy, and I did have that same dancing, pounding thud crashing like waves against my ears.
An echo of war fought against me in the swirl of noise, the clashing of metal, smashing of limb against limb drowning my ears to ruination, malfunction constant in the heat of near battle syncing up with attack on attack. I managed to deflect the thoughts, running paranoia caught by a wide net, straying thoughts silenced as need be.
The club was easy enough to get into, I already had a membership from my links, but I reckon I would have been given one just for looking shifty and having a wad of money in my back pocket. The place had class, but the bourgeois purple shone upon by red light and blanketed in a fog-smoke mix was tacky, telling of the false opulence exhibited by those in control of the place.
Scrying this type of information displayed my increased skill in espionage, pouring over mission reports for hours on end, spotting good picks in groups of marketgoers. It eventually managed to pay off, the creation, and mainly management, of my spy network paying dividends in full.
The club was really a shithole, a regretful hole of bygones and by-go-ers. Nezu had said that much when I asked him. He was an interesting guy, even in his enjoyment of drinks and such he inclined me towards with repeat posturing, he had a grace you didn't tend to see on civilians. Back when, I admired him somewhat, for what he had made of himself. The perception of a poor pauper picking pockets until positions presented themselves with power precious as it was, is one of a heroic tale, reminiscent of a legend I learnt of as a child my first time around, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
There was no recognition of that same admiration when I peered at the respective yet not respectable faces of those in the club, broken teeth and broken faces and broken people in a broken place.
Regardless, I carried on, the allure of intel too important to chase for me to neglect it.
Some looked at me like I was prey, vulnerable. I wanted to kill them, rend them until their bones showed, but I didn't. Gross sickness and disgust smothered by ambition and desire.
Some looked vulnerable, yet had nothing to show or give. They were as weak as I used to be, and had no potential for anything else, gaunt cheeks and soulless eyes telling the tale of ruination and potential squandered.
There was a counter from which a bar was stationed, and the red mahogany wood stretched across horizontally, multiple harried barmen and maids serving patrons, the ongoing reddish stripe accompanied by a falling gradient of lucid people, bit by bit the alcohol content of their bloodstream increasing, as well as the content of their orders.
I sat at a round velvet button stool, nestled slightly too squashed between two, the one on my left possessed by a male consort to a rich guest, their eyes telling of uncomforted quelled by promises, the right creaking under the weight of a portly man, bald head and blonde moustache with a bulbous round face.
The beating didn't leave my ears as I looked forward, ordering a drink. I needed something sharp, whiskey a vice squeezing down on my throat, fire ignited distracting from fire inside.
The spices ran down my throat. Drinking on the job wasn't a favourite but it was needed now and then, and then was now, or was then. Where was I?
"Where is all the gossip?"
Obvious. Too obvious, I hoped, for a spy to make. It was one of the main reasons to come to a place like this after all, rumours spreading like a sick spit sloshing around the ulcered mouths of this dark red stomach. I wouldn't and couldn't trust a single fucking one, but I could find a target, one with experience and such who would direct me to a less than upstanding citizen.
The man pointed me to a corner filled with old women trying to fill out tight dresses with wrinkled skin, accompanied with daughters, youthful images with less callousness, a lure to trap prey-like suitors surely. I travelled, eavesdropped, and did such for a time, moving from group to group and using my enhanced hearing to allow for the collection of looks and postulations, painting a vivid picture.
Finally, I walked to a man dressed in a loose kimono that nonetheless communicated money and power, the regal suit nearly dropping of his tanned aged skin and leading up to his emaciated face, adorned with a well-groomed yet grey beard.
I leaned on the banister he was resting forwards on, my back to the air where his front was looking into the emptiness above the club, on the second floor as we were. Then, from my lips whispered known truths, yet blackened with guile and shadow with which it was obscured.
"Congratulations on the grandson, -"
The patriarch looked at me confusion and rising tension in his eyes as it dawned upon him the action being taken against him. He looked as if he wanted to strike, throw me of the railing as if his withered frame could, but he acquiesced.
"What do you want then?"
I couldn't help but laugh a little to myself. Straight to business then.
"I want information. Specifically on the Numa Fishing and Mining corps. No questions asked about why. Deal?"
The man's face hardened by age and time hardened again as he looked harder "I don't trust you one bit. You want something you can't tell me you want, and I have no guarantee you will let me go after this."
"No, you don't."
We stared at each other, unsaid challenge floating between the electric stream our eyes held up.
"You tell anyone about this, I have links to very powerful people. The Kurosawa family, the Takigami city council. This gets out, you are dead."
"I guess that's my guarantee then."
His brow furrowed as he stared intently at me, his sentinel face the image of pure stone, sharp edge and weathered blunt pebbles, and unmoving rock, until he spoke.
"Well let us begin."
…
I glided across the club floor, walking past half drunk partygoer and full drunk hooligan. It had somehow gotten hotter, both because the activity had increased, and I was experiencing a high from the adrenaline blackmail always gives.
My pace had to be slow however, it would be suspicious if I sprinted out the door. People would ask and observe and soon they would figure out I did something. So even though my mind kept pushing me out, wanting me to exit the suffocating oesophagus I was being smothered by, I kept slow and controlled. I needed to.
Then I saw her. She was shorter than me by a few inches, but seemed to take up the room with her slender figure, a black dress flowing delicately off her body, clinging to her, protecting the bare skin underneath from prying eyes yet revealing healthy curves.
Her appearance slowed me down a bit, I will admit that, where her face came into focus, dark red lipstick layered perfectly on full, beautiful lips, the crimson flesh complementing her rosy skin. She had high cheekbones that drew the eyes to her own, eyeshadow focused them further to a piercing grey, looking away, staring intently at some other part of the club.
And oh, how so much even in that first encounter, I wanted those eyes to see only me, to stop ignoring me.
My pace continued yet aimed at her now. She noticed my approach, and her silky black hair swept across with the movement of her head as she looked upon me, assessing. She looked noble, rich, and I was dressed well but not perfectly as she, and so when her stone-cold orbs gazed on my muscled, stronger figure, I thought she would look away in disgust. Yet my apprehension turned to excitement as her features turned to one of intrigue and appreciation.
Her body language welcomed my approach, at which point I realised I had no clue what to say, the heat of the moment inspiring such courage that I went in unprepared.
And so I said the first thing that came to my head.
"Hello, my name is Takai."
And it was simple, and I was for a moment terrified, that she would refuse, or shriek, or turn into a monster, but she smiled, one of affection, and responded.
"A pleasure to meet you, my name is Aka."
And the response was so simple, to such a simple question, but both of us, young and excited and enamoured instantly, ran hot with exhilaration and undue desire.
I will not say what I wished to do out of respect, but one could imagine.
Yet we didn't because we were afraid, of what the other would say, if we weren't good enough. She saw a prince charming, strong jaw and simple brown hair and an endearing face and calloused fingers, both rough and soft somehow in her imagination.
And I saw black allure, of smooth soft skin on a genuine face, one that believed in what was real and was so beautifully intelligent, yet hiding something deeper, and addicting inside.
We didn't want to lose one another. We were somehow in love even then, looking back. Yet we couldn't resolve those impossible feelings, and we couldn't tell the other, so we talked.
We talked and talked, and though half of what I said about myself was a lie, it felt as if she still understood me. How hard I worked, how much I wanted.
Then she asked what I had been doing, and the look on her face told me she knew something dangerous. I said meeting an acquaintance, and she giggled and asked me if I needed to eavesdrop for it. I should have been scared, or angry, that this woman had somehow uncovered my ruse and found out my goal so quickly, but she was addicting, so impossibly addicting. So, I played with her.
With a smile I asked "Hm? Well, correct me if I'm not mistaken, but wouldn't that have required you to have been looking at me the entire night?"
And her eyes opened at that, surprise but still so beautiful, God, she was beautiful, as she responded, "Maybe I am just especially observant."
"Observant of good looks and mystery perhaps."
And a heat rose in her already rosy cheeks, as she then laughed, cute and subdued, embarrassment striking her hard.
We talked for an hour more, then I needed to leave.
I kissed her on the lips, she didn't protest. I took one last look at her, and left.
…
Exiting the club the pounding stopped, yet the silence felt hollow. The beat halted, a heart attack of peace.
Phantom rings of music, old life and new, pounded in my ears, the canals raw from volumetric blankets placed over cloaked conversation forcing me to heighten my hearing, violins shrieking and filling them with a resonant sea of thick air.
Yet once the sound had gone, my ears yearned for more. More noise and more information, my thirst not for cheap drinks and second-hand smoke, but for rumours and intentions. Whispers of real and fake mixed into an intoxicating package from which I wanted to drink until I was full and sated.
Morning chill and dew made the new morning outside I had joined feel both hostile and homely. The sharp bite of the cold cooled me down, yet I knew it was too much to stay in for long.
I felt dazed, head hammered by the work and events of past days, combined with the new information and objectives.
And Aka.
Yet I cleared my head to the clearer air, venting the thoughts that distracted me out, and I continued on my investigation.
…
The Numa storage facility worked as both an export and import site, where coal and metals from around Fire were delivered for transport to other greenlighted nations, and fish from the coast and neighbouring countries were transported.
Is what the official statement said about the place.
In reality, it transported weaponry and bodies in crates marked mining and fridges marked fishing. It was one of Nezu's rival operations, one he wanted me to weaken. Despite that, this mission wasn't official, or as official as a mission approved by a rat could be, as I had other plans, namely, finding out the scope of the Iwa group's plans and operations. As I had found out, Iwa had dealing with this group, in the way of weapons and food supplies, but to what extent evaded me even after weeks of looking.
And so the dampness of the swamp it was situated in clung to my skin, made my shirt and improvised face mask stick, as I peered ahead at the facility.
I was competent with stealth, which meant that I should be able to get by these kinds of people without a single chance of them finding me, but it paid to be thorough, and so I observed.
And when I found the perfect opening, I leapt.
Near silent thuds followed my steps as I travelled to the warehouse, pointless guards unaware of me as I jumped from tree to tree, moving closer and closer with each step on wet moss and cold wood. Thuds kept me sane, kept me thinking through the thick droplets I had to carve through, feeling as if they could suffocate me at any moment yet how I knew I could push past them.
Eventually I arrived at the shed of badly put together corrugated steel, climbing the walls with a small shudder that would be soon dismissed for the wind by the perimeter guards. I continued, light wisps of soaked wind blanketing my face with new wetness as I opened a grate, entering the ventilation shaft and travelling through.
If I was feeling murderous and stupid, I could have killed everyone here, but that would have not only alerted the Stone leaders that something was going one, but possibly killed me, considering that there may be guards creeping around every corner, and ninja ones at that. I wasn't strong enough to kill legions of stonefuckers yet, so it was worthless really. It made more sense to creep around, leaving no bodies and no witnesses. So that was the plan.
Eventually, across darkened corners and fooled workers I had made my way to the management offices. By the time I had made it, it was times for work to be over, so they exited and walked, making jovialities and jests, unaware of me clinging to the roof above.
I broke in, quickly diving into chests of documents rich and filled with information. Useless information though, business meetings and such, lots between the upper echelons of the village, particularly the ones with expensive family ties and family sizes expenses for each member of each noble name. But there were nearly none that exposed the assorted affair between the fish distributor and Stone. Nearly. Yet, the golden goose, a timetable of every needed interaction, I found shuffled between the other reports on an unorganised desk.
I scanned each line, accounted for every meeting, except for a series of 5 uninterrupted hours per week. No deliveries, no movements. It was a break. One conveniently made so that Stone could move in and do what they needed to do, wherever it was turning a body into mincemeat or topping up on kunai.
They would get killed, undoubtably, I thought, leaving the room with a quickened pace, excitement and a cool adrenaline making me rush in both body and though. Erroneously, it nearly killed me.
Because I failed to notice that they were meant to come 5 minutes ago.
I rounded the corner, still quiet but much too loud for what I was walking into, as A figure leapt at me, slamming me into the wall, spiderwebs stretching from the hole he had slammed me into.
My head pounded, so I don't remember too much of what happened next, but I must have been hit with something hard and strong, because next I knew I was sinking into the bog of the swamp, ribs aching and covered in wall dust.
I forced my body back up, then jerked my head to the side as a glint flashed a warning of a whistling kunai, the razor-sharp side barely nicking my cheek, leaving a fresh gap of scarlet red blood, contrast with the pale smudged face that it laid upon.
I was still dazed, head still pounded, thoughts still a fragment. I knew in the next moment I was attacked in close range, but who the attacker was, a mystery. It remained a mystery in the next lucid moment, as they lay bloodied and ripped open, guts hanging from their stomach and face caved in.
I was bloody too I realised, cuts across my entire body, and I felt cold, and tired, and wanted to lie down and die. But I couldn't.
Then I was hit by a stone pillar in the ribs. They didn't pierce my lungs, but they hurt and winded me, and I knew I would lose in a physical fight.
So when the Ninjutsu expert came to finish me off, they were face to face with the dead body from before, illusion cast to obscure the single explosive note I had managed to buy of the black market.
I was only a few meters away then as the ninja recoiled, believing himself to be the one who killed his partner, crawling amongst the dirt and covered in my own blood and filth. And I did not dare blow the note up until I was at least a couple meters more away.
The two bodies went up in flames, ash skin recoiling, scattered from bone as their bodies were vapourised leaving only blackened bones.
Explosive notes are awful. Have you ever seen them Minato? In action I mean. They don't kill people like us as they should. A normal person would either get their body ripped apart or simply get vapourised, but shinobi are built different. We have skin that doesn't cut easily, hardened muscles that are resistant to blunt force and cuts, and our bones very rarely break.
What this means however, is we die badly to explosives, and notes are the most common example. Shinobi die hard, and our most widespread method will more often than not kill them with the shock of the pain rather than the damage itself. As a tracker, I have seen our squads walk out from the aftermath of battles with skin peeled of their faces, eyes melting, blinded red faces of dead men. Not even Tsunade could have saved them, and yet I tried.
So after the explosion took them both out, I continued to crawl, to get away from the carnage, and I found an outcrop in the nook of a tree, crawled in, and fell asleep.
One of the worse things one can do when wounded and in enemy territory, but I did it. And then day came, with an invasive beam of light, that slammed against my retinas like how the pounding in my ears slammed against my head. Rhythmic thumps hit again and again as I rose up.
I saw both the bodies had been recovered.
Then the pounding intensified, badly.
The shed was gone.
Overnight, it had vanished, as if it was never there in the first place.
The only evidence being an upturned patch of dirt where there should be dirt.
It was then and there where I finally began to understand the size of the operation here. This wasn't a few ninja, this wasn't even a sizeable group.
Most of the village was probably, in one way, involved with Stone.
My first thought:
Fuck.
…
I stumbled my way back to Akagami, body sore and cut, weakened and vulnerable, and feeling as if at any time a ninja could come and kill me, yet I made it to the walls.
And then I waited. Waited for a sign of anybody, a patrol, lookout ect. Then I realised how folly that was. Stone didn't need to look for me themselves, they would just listen to gossip, pay somebody to look for me. My head started thumping again as I took into account how fucked I was.
If I tried to leave, they would catch up to me and find me. They might already have a perimeter and they would cast a net over me way before I managed to reach Leaf strong territory. Sneaking back in was my only choice, and risky. I was bloodied and bruised, and had left a day earlier, I was a prime candidate if discovered, and I would be discovered.
But what if there was a better candidate?
My head was still foggy with the day old memories of pitter pattering of rain against corrugated steel and red lights mixed with real string music, yet I was more lucid in that moment that I had been in weeks.
There was a boy. 19. He was a fool, maybe played it but it mattered not either way, he was seen as a fool. Yet he was well known, a jester and troublemaker, and ambitious. He tried to reach the upper echelons of gangs with his fists alone, which is a good idea if you don't have sense, but a bad one when you realise these gangs prefer tact and wit to fists of steel, and so he would get outnumbered and battered every time he tried.
Nobody killed him, yet they wouldn't miss him if he was gone. So I scanned for him, finding him lying asleep by the side of a lake.
I'm not proud of what I had to do next.
I placed him under a genjutsu and went to work.
An hour later, Stone ninja would find a bloodied black figure stumble through the gates, with a Stone headband in their grasp, a letter detailing the location of another captured Stone ninja, and an offer for a reward from grass to disrupt Numa.
Nobody would be surprised to find out who had done it, though his strength they found confusing. Then they would set off in search for this kunoichi, and call off the search because they had found their adversary.
And by that time, I would be in.
…
By the time I had reached my apartment I was wounded, tired, and relieved. The ploy had worked, obviously seeing as I'm still alive, and so I could return to normal life.
Except not really, because people would ask questions, about how I got hurt, why I was red run with the consequences of assault. But then I realised, the only person who mattered here, was Nezu. Anybody else might have suspicions, but it was only really what Nezu thought that was important, and as my position as his head of counter intel, he had nobody to turn to for the purpose of dispelling my lie. I would simply say it was a hoodlum, a thief, they had come with a gang, and though they cut me slightly, I dealt them the same pain in many more magnitudes. Easy. Expected.
So I got a shower, and the water ran down my thin, shallow wounds, partially repaired by time, like rapids through rivers. The never-ending pattern of droplets impacted my hardened skin and the floor below like the rain from the day before.
And I realised that I hadn't even thought to try to not kill the boy. Young, and foolish, and innocent, I killed him, damn near tortured him myself, all to not get caught.
It was a good thing, that I had become so hard. The soft fool from before would have been in his place, getting his skin peeled and boiled alive, subject to the sick whims of his captors, yet I wasn't. I survived, because I sacrificed another.
Like a true ninja.
…
Nezu ended up speaking to me, with an interested and curious look on his face. He may have seen the cuts on my body with a sly eye, but that supposed observation left my sight as soon as it was made. Either way, he didn't ask about them, instead inquiring about some fool who attacked a rival operation and got gutted for it.
I needed to get something from this, wherever he was told to do this by some overlord not even I was privy to, if he was linked to Iwa too, why he needed to know.
But all of them were suicide. Being next to Nezu gave me protection. A weak one, like an ant hiding beneath a rock to avoid the stomp of a tailed beast, but I needed every inch of stone I could get, information and shielding both. Attracting any suspicion from him compromised that, and placed me a meter closer to death.
So I chose a compromise. I would ask him a half measure.
"Am I getting paid from you or a contractor?"
The question was really, 'are you getting paid by somebody else?', but it was open enough to not make me sound like a spy, like the hardening but hapless boy turned man I was meant to be rather than the murderous ninja perfecting my skills I really was.
"Don't worry about that, you'll get your money. I want this done mainly because I need to know what's going on in the streets, if a gang war or something is brewing. That's your job, isn't it?"
The temperature of the meeting room chilled, wisps of cold seeming to intertwine with the smoke floating away from the ashtray placed in the middle of the round brown coffee table, the candles dimming slightly as if wind sought to smother them with its bare light grasp.
"Yes sir."
I felt as if I could, and should kill him, my fear was that real. He had no strength that I knew of, but he still instilled a fear within me. Like I have said before, it was similar to that first conversation we had, but cold, rather than the sunshine hot rage and passion that filled you.
I remember people talked of your wife, the red-hot habanero, a silly name but an apt one, telling of her rage on and off the battlefield, but after that meeting I had the feeling that her rage was the nicer out of the two of you, a warm bath rather than the skin peeling flame of yours.
But his was of an ice-cold sear, the loss of heat death crawling up by spine, spindly legs stabbing into each of my nerve joints. Yet I continued in the face of that fear.
"I'm sorry but, didn't they already find him? I hear Korou got strewn up by his guts on a pole yesterday. Wasn't a pleasant site, he'd been tortured plenty, and a sign was carved into his stomach that said "DON'T FUCK WITH US". It was a crude message but it got the job done, the only real mystery is how the body got up there in the first place."
His older face looked in front, face perpendicular to my point of view, as I saw his features scrunch up slightly, as if in deep though, his dry lips opening to inhale a newly lit cigarette, a short kindling at the end of the paper, before he exhaled a grey cloud of smoke. Then he began to speak to me, still facing away, as if his mind had been made up.
"You see, when I was, friends with this ninja I told you about, he taught me that when Shinobi are involved, never trust the obvious."
"How do you know that ninja are involved?"
"Ha, simple. Only ninja are brutal enough to show a dead body in the street, gangs take care of this stuff in private. Well if that's the case, how did the village idiot get involved with them?"
"Maybe he was a ninja too?"
"Not likely. He would have to be a bad one, he didn't get far before he got killed, yet he was well known. Shinobi only show themselves when it benefits them, someone like Lord jiraiya only has such an excitable personality because it gets him something. The fool wasn't a ninja, not a chance."
"Well, what should I do?" I asked, my stomach swirling as I thought on what complications had been added to my life.
Then he looked at me, long and hard, as if contemplating a big decision.
Then he decided.
"Research it. Find things out. Do your fucking job. Have it done by the end of the month, 13 days."
"What if it was the guy? What if I don't find anything."
And in response he just gazed forward. His oldened featured looked sharper, wizened, harder in the contrasted light of the dimming evening.
I left without another word.
…
And I knew I was fucked. I had been in danger since the moment I walked into the warehouse, no even earlier, the moment I walked into the godforsaken village I was well and truly fucked, and I knew the walls were closing in bit by bit.
What did he know, how did he know it, what is he going to do?
I had 13 days before time ran out, before something happened, and I was scared.
Not terrified, but it was a fear that drilled deep and stuck. And my sleep was not peaceful that night but fraught with plans and paranoia and ideas that ran like mania through an addicts mind. And I was frightened.
And it was what made me survive.
…
A/N: The theme of this chapter was sound, beats. Some of that was lost but I tried more to use figurative language and metaphors to create an atmosphere.
Takai tells us of his skills progressing, of a revelation that he wasn't at all prepared for the this twisted village, and of his love.
A lot of plot threads have been set up and continued but by bit. Overall, I'm pretty happy about this chapter.
I apologise for taking so long to update. I am not a fast write and I spend not much of my time on this story. I hoped you liked it regardless.
Remember to review, and thank you for reading.
